the atom

The issue with that is that if they started penetrating the crust, the material in front of the bolt still has to go somewhere. You'd see a gigantic explosion anyway just from the displacement of material.

My theory is that due to the slower nature of turbolasers, as well as the fact that they're pretty much the single most power capital ship weapon availible, closing to well within a few dozen kilometers or less becomes pretty much necessary even if ships can go incredibly fast. It would just be impractical and nobody would ever accomplish anything. Like Brian said though, it could also be an issue of the way turbolasers interact with shields at range. From what I saw in the warp speed combat scenes posted by Brian, maneuvering to line up a shot took waaay more time, and then the rate of fire consequently suffered. I imagine ships would probably find it more convenient to simply drop to STL speeds and let the other guy have it whilst tanking the return fire as best as possible. I believe Sisko's son also mentioned that excessive maneuvering at warp caused could cause stress on a ship's frame. As to why they close to knife-fighting ranges when at STL, I might attribute that to jamming or something. My preference is to rationalize and reconcile perceived contradictions where possible.

Actually one thing I learned not too long ago is that the Death Star is apparently capable of tanking it's own superlaser at full power, so even assuming everything went according to plan and the Death Star did nothing to acknowledge or destroy the attackers then the asteroid would just splatter across it's shields like a firecracker hitting a tank.

Not to be a nosey nelly, but um, what did he....y'know......do?

Ahahahaha! You poor people think Jason is the real troll? Ladies and gentlemen! People of all ages! Step right up, step right and behold! The one! The only! MASONICON!!! Some question his sanity! Some question his (it's?) very sentience! But all agree that his is among the most notorious un-minds to curse the interwebs!

Well for fucks sake, it was 4chan all along? Godfucking dammit. If only there was a way to seal them off from the rest of the internet.

I'm not entirely clear on the concept of warp strafing. Is it the idea that ships can fight at FTL or that they can attack STL targets while at warp?

KHAAAAN or UN-LIMITED....POWAAAHH

One way it might possibly work is if the DS is charging up it's superlaser and the attack is perfectly timed. Assuming it can't just jump to hyperspace while charging the main weapon, Starfleet might have a window of opportunity, if only for a few seconds.

An interesting plan, but it has a few critical flaws. First, in order to succeed, the plan requires that the DS does not simply detect and obliterate the asteroid before it even comes within so much as a lightsecond. This is extremely implausible for obvious reasons, so you'd need a lot of ships towing a lot of asteroids to have any hope of getting past it's superlaser. Unfortunately this entails problems of it's own. Once it becomes apparent that the superlaser isn't going to be able to intercept every single projectile, a fleet of warships, along with swarms of fighters are going to be dispatched to intercept the rest. Starfleet would need to send an escorting fleet somewhere in the hundreds to possibly thousands (depending on where you stand on the firepower issue) to have any hope of getting through. Now then even assuming you've done all this, the DS still has the option of simply jumping to hyperspace and evading danger, like it has from the start.

OUR galaxy is also considered 'modest sized' FYI.

It's not that cut and dried actually. Anything that explicitly appeared in the films is G-canon, but stuff that was added in that we didn't see or hear is still C-canon.

Where'd it say that, and why is it somehow more canon then other stuff?

I believe it comes from rough extrapolation based on the average size of sector fleets and their composition. Though needless to say, star destroyers only make up a tiny fraction of that total number.

I've heard whispers about this 'timmy' character on three different boards now. Who was he and what did he do to earn the mockery of half the internet?

Well yes, G-canon has always superseded lower canon. What else is new? What Picard is trying to say is that the EU is not canon at all, which is demonstrably false as we have multiple quotes from Lucasarts employees flat-out stating that it is. That makes no sense at all. What if I'm making an argument regarding the New Republic, or Thrawn, or the Yuuzhan Vong? How is anybody supposed to get G-canon or T-canon information on any of these things?

Thaleron weapons were not put into relatively wide use until the 25th century, so no.

And how exactly does it say that they're 'exploited'? Sailing vessels used to 'exploit' the fog to their advantage. Does that mean that sailing vessels were seriously damaged by fog?

If that was the case, then how exactly did the entire first Tyrannic war take place across multiple systems in the timespan of a year? If your quote was indeed the case, then the Ultramarines should have had decades to centuries to prepare for Hivefleet Behemoth.

Plenty of other sources peg it much higher too.

Possibly, although I highly doubt the Empire would commit that many ships to the conflict.

Again, according to the article, most of the damage was apparently from the field fucking with the ship's internal systems. Federation ships aren't going to be harmed by those sorts of temperatures on their own, let alone Tyranid vessels.

Maybe a little, but I doubt it. Most of the damage mentioned in that wiki seems to come from interference with critical systems. E.g. like shields and warp cores. The Tyranids have none of these, and the exoskeletons on their bioships can handle much greater temperatures then what the Enterprise or Kelvans faced (as seen every time a bioship lasts for more then a millisecond against a lance turret).

Hooray I'm the king of everything!

That's not necessarily the question. Section 31 can generally be counted on to pull out all the stops regardless of what anyone else thinks. The real question is whether or not they can pull it off on the scale needed to make a difference. If not, then more sensible option would be to organize a mass evacuation of as many Federation citizens as possible.