Vince

Isn't the red glow as the hull is heated something that happens regardless of if the ship is taken damage or not? To be honest it doesn't look like Invisible Hand is suffering to badly from mere atmospheric entry, considering it was pock-marked with 60 meter holes and was cut in two. Jedi Crash offers another example of a heavily damaged ship with failing power in systems crashing into a planet.

For there to be no shock waves, explosiveness, literally all of the teratons would have to be absorbed and stored inside the ship at 100% efficiency. And that doesn't explain the stray shots. And surely if a metal needs a teraton to vaporize one cubic meters, that just means its going to be very explosive when it finally is vaporized? As in, the gasses are expanding much faster than they would if you vaporized a thousand cubes instead?

According to some, the combat above coruscant was close enough to the planet that nuclear fireballs would occur with the energies being unleashed. And then we got the capital ships dueling in atmosphere in TCW. I have a possible rationalization inspired by force-field enhanced armour (but it is rather sillY! lol).

If SW beams are technobabble I'd still assume their quite different to phasers, regardless of lacking secondary effect. With phasers targets normally appear to just disappear, blasters do appear to melt, vaporize, and blow up the target, but always with very little explosiveness.

Theres one instance where shots miss a ship and hit a planet in one of Brians videos, the laser one I think, but other than that there hasn't been a "maxim bombardment" in the primary canon. The only time I know of a heavy turbolaser being used is in one of the novels, and that was to destroy a single Hellfire droid. Ships absorbing all the energy was one of my initial ideas too, but its seems quite implausible that they could sustain 100% efficient energy absorption once they start sustaining serious damage and the tech responsible for that absorption is compromised. If ships do scale their shields armour and weapons down so so many orders of magnitude to fight in atmosphere, then in theory a single shot form a ship in orbit could engulf them all in a single all destructive fireball, wiping out both fleets. I imagine if this is the case, it is because they must. Shields or weapons might not be capable of generating that much energy in atmosphere without nasty secondary effects to the planet or the ships forcing both sides to play down. I can't easily imagine both sides agreeing upon setting weapons and shields down to one billionth (or whatever) their capacity to fight fair and not damage the planet, and all it would take is for one side to ramp up the power ten or a hundred times to start creaming the enemy. Another possibility is that their actually technobabble like phasers, achieving massive damage to the primary target with little to no secondary effect. The primary effect often looks like blasting or vaporization non the less, and there is evidence in the EU for weapons shunting excess matter/energy into other dimensions (death star / thermal detonators containment fields), and even primary canon leaves us wondering. Some do assume what we see there is the upper limits on a Venators firepower, because it overcomes shields and armour. Logically it must be powerful enough to do so, so Venators are limited to WW2 level firepower. But then ships such as Slave 1 or X-wings from the movies would rival them in firepower, which makes no sense. The only ways to reconcile this example imo, is to assume technobabble or to assume situational variable everything.

Well most spectators don't agree with those conclusions unfortunately, claiming total energy is still important and that explosions don't scale linearly according to power. Under their assumptions, the point-defense guns used to vaporize asteroids in TESB would result in town-destroying shock-waves and multi-hundred fireballs if used in atmosphere. According to your own methodology, the teraton guns would still be like megaton nukes demanding far greater secondary effects than what we saw, something more like the Tsar bomb each time a ship is struck. In the episode explosions are no larger than they are in space.

How come there are relatively static asteroid belts where Alderaan used to be? The EU calls it the "Alderaan Graveyard" which became a permanent feature, and the Falcon comes out of hyperspace right into it in the films. If the planet was merely fragmented at velocities less than 11kps (less than e32J) then we might expect to see something like that before the planet reformed. But the visuals suggest the planets mass was accelerated to percentiles of light-speed, an average of six million meters per second! At this velocity, I can't see fragments being caught by the stars gravity, so what happened? I have one idea: Its been calculated that the planet blowing up so violently would mean the Death Star is hit by e32J (enough energy to blow up a planet!), perhaps besides tanking it on the shields, the seven hundred odd tractor beams intercept thousands of fragments, slowing their velocity to a near stand still, resulting in the "graveyard". Or maybe, the pressure generated could have some effect on the velocity of fragments from the centre of the planet? Secondly, the gravitational binding energy of a planet is orders of magnitude higher than the energy required to vaporize the planet. And the Death Star overwhelmed Alderaans gravity a million times over, more than enough power to vape the planet. Yet we clearly see planetary fragments the size of mountains flying about. Why? I don't know if its possible, but maybe the pressure was so very great that it forced lumps of the planet to remain solid despite the stupendous energy levels? We might be talking something like neutronium density requirements here guys.

I usually accept the EU where its logical, but the claims about Eclipses Death Stars and percentages are invariably silly.

To knock the planet back 6000 kilometers over one second would require ~1e38J, and this part must be DET. God knows what the figure is for a near massless beam to do this. This happens in a fraction of a second. To DET mass-scatter the planet at the velocity on screen needs a further ~1e38J, and this is the part of the process Death Star claims technobabble. But when we get to 1/3rd power vaporizing lakes, or searing continents, or anything short of blowing up the planet 300,000 times over, I consider the EU at conflict with higher canon. 1e38J impact the shields before the planet blows up, a million times the energy needed to blow up a planet. The Death Star should be capable of blowing up a planet even if the lasers fired at 0.0001% of its maximum power, let alone a significant fraction. In that specific example, the difference in firepower between the first shot and the third stretches many orders of magnitude. Would make sense if their testing the different settings out, from "fry the oceans" to "blow up the planet".

I had considered that, but technically it still does nothing about the energy of the beam. Consider Brians composite image; before the planet was destroyed it was accelerated backward by its own radius in a fraction of a second. Iiic the energy figures to do this are more than enough to destroy the planet, and must have been dispersed by the shields (or else the planet would have just blew up, not fly backwards and then blow up). This is before the energy to mass-scatter the planet is considered, or any technobabble takes place. Shunting the planets mass into hyperspace is still work and would still require the beam to have a certain amount of energy. Personally I think the energy to accelerate something to light-speed and then past it into hyperspace would be more energetic than the energy needed to blow up the planet... so why would they use the technobabble? This is not without precedent in the EU as one source states an (billion odd ton) ISD uses more energy than some civilizations had in their entire existence to jump to light-speed. Lets be very conservative and say an average of 5 terawatts for 1,000 years, that would be 1.577845e+23J. Alderaan would be about five or so trillion times more heavy, so 9.42289034e+35J. Still enough to mass-scatter the planet one thousand times over. And vaporize it. Now for an upper limit we could use one megawatt per head. People have megajoule range blasters and fifty MW engine powered airspeeders after all . So a planet of five billion over one millennia would have consumed 1.577845e+36J! It would take an ISD with 25th watt power generation ten seconds to get that sort of energy, so might be appropriate. Extrapolating from that you'd need a ludicrous ~1e45 joules to throw a planets mass into hyperspace! So even if the beam transports some part of the planet to hyperspace it probably is as powerful, if not more powerful than the conventional calcs anyway.

Yep. If the on-film firepower would also result in greater secondary effects, it would give some credence to the idea.

The asteroid and millennium falcon calcs peak at some megatons in the films, most of the time with KT lower limits. Anyone got ideas on how to calculate the effects of a 1 KT fighter laser, considering wattage and stuff like that, using resources like Atomic Rocket and the SD page on it? Its beyond me I'm afraid.

Its a bit far-fetched, I know

One of my rationalizations considers the mundane limitations of armour. This armour must be enhanced by energy fields so that it can endure the impossible energies some sources would suggest, and these energies, along with propulsion, weapons and shields will require power. A SW ship produces so much power that it must use it, turbolaser capacitors for example seem only to hold a couple of seconds worth of built up energy before its discharged, and if a ship does not expend all the power through its systems, it probably wont have capacitors large enough to store the energy for very long before it overflows. So the ship must use its power, externally to avoid build up. 24h watts being used externally ought to be unhealthy for the planet, maybe even if it is in the form of energy shields. I also imagine, that as time went on and the capability to end worlds or ground battles from space became easier and easier, laws and unspoken codes become more and more complicated and layered to compensate, as either side dosen't want to destroy resources, nor perform attacks that would open them up for the same kind of attack. If two ships were slinging about teratons/petatons in atmosphere, its fair to say it could have some very nasty world ruining secondary effects before either side were destroyed. According to some, the battle in Coruscant should have cause nasty effects in the planet too with such yields. Perhaps it is a possibility that weapons nor shields can be used in atmosphere without nasty secondary effects? The armour and shields being ramped up to full power they may react violently with the atmosphere, this is not an unrealistic proposition considering they may be 24th watts in power. So ships may mutually lower both weapons AND shields/armours to compensate for this, or it may be an involuntary built in function of the technologies that don't allow for maximal use in atmosphere - because of the secondary effects. This would allow ships to fight atmospheric battles using only giga/terajoules of energies (whatever the visuals allow) whilst still destroying one anther. Provided we never see evidence of this on-screen or in books and logical plot points like one side deciding to ramp up the armour or firepower and turning the battle never happen, it makes sense that the reason for low yields is not one under a captains control. So either it is a built in counter-measure to ensure fair combat and preservation of the environment, or ships simply cannot run their reactors at full capacity in atmosphere for unknown reasons.

Khas, if those turbolaser bolts were a couple of megatons a piece, would they still cause fireballs/shockwaves? Or kilotons a piece? Is there any simple math / sources you could share so i can get a better idea.

Thats a very good point Khas, the ability to both bombard and assimilate from space could be a major advanatage here, overcoming the Imperiums overwhelming advantages on the ground. So while the Imperium looses planetary populations to the Borgs space assets, the Borg are actually growing in number and resources. Of-course, relizing the dire threat the borg represent, the Imperium will likely go for all out extermination of Borg held worlds or what not. Using week to month long bombardments OR less than a day exterminatus to wipe out entire planets. An Imperium force may arrive in system within weeks of it being attack, this force may be up to a few dozen ships perhaps, or a handfull of battleships. This fleet has enough firepower to lay waste to an entire planet in days using conventional munitions, no technobabble. So we're talking about up to dozens of warships in defence within weeks, and maybe a similar amount of non-ftl defense ships already in system. How many borg cubes may attack a world, and how long would it take them to get what they need from that world? This might be a difficult qustion, but how fast can the borg react to a planet being attacked and how many ships will they bring? I say this is a difficult qustion because we never see it. The most cubes we have ever seen was like a couple of dozen iirc, fleeing from the bioships. Maybe we could extrapolate from (assuming 1 cube 1 planet) their FTL speed. Or we could assume parity with the Feds, which would mean like weeks or months (too long). The IoM depending on the defensive capability of the borg may organize many fleets of dozens of ships, or a couple of crusade fleets numbering thousands of ships. Either way we can assume they take months to get between planets. The IoM has a million planets, the Borg have thousands. This makes the IoM a much tougher opponent. The IoM fleet has tens of thousands of warships, the Borg perhaps thousands, BUT, the IoM must spread its forces more finely to defend, while the Borg can (depending on their FTL) gather forces more easily. Finnaly, we know Borg cubes can endure many many megatons of explosive force and maybe thermal energy, but could they withstand several hundred megatons of KE, like that delivered from a single heavy cannon (a IoM cruiser can have like eight of them too!)? I'll try an do some research at some point for any of the unknowns.

Rules. The borg don't have millions of cubes, they have millions of space craft including everything. Maybe thousands of cubes for their thousands of systems. IoM firepower calcs based of actual examples of bombardment NOT hyperbole or shell velocity extraplations. IoM fighting speeds are not .75C (so silly), but more along the lines of BFG and RT. How ya think things play out?

Drones are typically hand to hand combatants that rely on overwhelming numbers and impunity to small-arms to win. In Star Trek they don't have the heavy weapons in every platoon that could kill borg by the dozen(s), where as the Guard do. That mortar fired bomb would kill a lot of men i, but it wouldn't destroy reinforced bunkers, or tanks (which have withstood explosions powerful enough to lift them through the air and continue to fight). To kill a very tough bunker or a tank, that bomb would have to penetrate through the armour first. And what about all the combat taking place at less than 1200 yards? Watch this video and imagine it were borg instead of orks, imagine how many borg would die in the march toward the marines. I do assume borg would adapt the use of their own pulse-phasers wrist mounted though, i just don't think it will be enough against the superior diversity of guard small arms, and the tanks.

I think logistics will need some more thorough comparison. And I thought the transwarp was quite limited in its routes? Indeed most of the time we hear that [the big] ships take decades to build, but a ISD sized escort can be banged out in a few years. BFG mentions a 5km ship being put together (probably from pre-built modular pieces) in six months. Typical trans-galactic journeys may take months to years, but in a bad case decades or even a century. I have to disagree about the infantry comparison, I mean come on, the Guard face among the most menacing enemies in all of sci-fi! Despite what the third edition said about guass rifles, everything else implies many man-portable weapons are megajoule range or even higher. Check these out... Assuming thule = joule (supposedly the author confirmed this) i' speculate its those over-charged maximum power shots that drain the power pack within a few shots. Still, it should allow a guardsmen to overcome adapted shields for a few shots, going by the 10 mega business in Enterprise. The Guard also have heavy weapons in every platoon, ranging from heavy bolters firing fist sized supersonic AP rounds with mass-reactive cores, to plasma guns and meltas... which can do really nasty, nasty things... And melta's.. Vaping 12 tons of ice. A man-portable weapon bunker slagger! All ballistic weapons and any energy weapon above a las-gun will likely kill borg all day long. So IMO guard would absolutely dominate the borg on an infantry level, before we even consider their love for armoured devisions and massed artillery barrages... or 300 ton tanks. Without exterminatus, a fleet may bombard a planet for an entire week to ensure total world-wide fatalities, compared to what, minutes in TDiC (assuming just one ship firing)? The shittiest exterminatus I have seen takes a full 24 hours to cause near total world-wide fatalities, still orders of magnitude behind ST. The most destructive cyclonic bombards (short of core busting ultra-rare stuff) take a full 24 hours to melt the entire crust, and might be comparable to a single ship from TDiC. So the Borg absolutely dominate in planetary bombardment. Because they don't stand a chance on the ground, I think the borg will opt for annihilation from the sky.

That song is mad whack hahah

As for Star Wars and the OP, I kinda like Brians theory on deflectors. Maybe its much easier for a turbo-bolt to force its way past deflectors at close range. Maybe at a range of thousands of km, deflectors would shunt away the whole barrage indefinitely. For any that haven't watched the video... In the OT most shots that miss the X-wings are coupled with a small white flash away from the hull, usually in a place completely unrelated to the tl bolt, like the other side of the ship. But they occur at roughly the same time. With the mon cal and ISD nose to nose, two long red bolts miss the ISD, flying above it, this is accompanied by a large shield effect behind the ship also away from the hull. Weapons of SciFi should be super accurate, extrapolating from modern Earth. The novel of RoTJ has a heavy turbolaser destroying a tank, on the ground. A demonstration of accuracy. I can imagine the thousand G accelerations being useful for tight situations though, to get out when things gets hot. They go unused. But maybe it could take minutes for a ship to prepare the tensor fields, navigational shields and gravitational compensators for such acceleration. Perhaps these counter measures (along with the propulsion) are very power intensive, and a ship cannot perform in combat while preparing for significant acceleration. Thus we get snail paced warships Actually we have those two ISD's that almost collided, and apparently failed to perform a few G to simply halt. Whats going on there? Curtis theorized that ships have different thrust modes. Low presumably single G, and max. multi-thousand G. Maybe those ISD's didn't have the right precautions in play to perform a higher de-acceleration? This kinda suggests different magnitudes of acceleration don't just come at the flick of a switch, and require extensive (maybe minutes) of prep-time.

The turn based BattlefleetGothic [40K] offers an interesting combat style based on 30 - 60 minute turns. Ships travel at tens of KPS with little to no turning capability (45 - 90 degrees over half hour) due to the immense stresses placed on the ships. It becomes notoriously difficult to strike accurately under these conditions so warships must fill space with hundreds of shells in order to catch their prey amongst a shower of firepower. However, a ships shields regenerate fully every turn (a few minutes in lore) so within the time a ship passes another releasing her killpower, she must batter down the shields AND damage the opponent or else all was in vain. Its sorta like ship jousting in space!

Awesome guys

Well, I'm thinking of uploading some piece meal 40K analysis in the coming weeks/month, just basic stuff. Anyone here willing to read over it and give me feedback? The feedback can be on anything really, from errors in math or interpretation, to spelling, grammar and wording ( I admit,eloquent writing isn't my strong point). Cheers guys!

People dispute acceleration based on no secondary effects, mentions of mass-lightening, and mentions of 1 million ton (not billions of tons like the ICS version) ISD's. And the extrapolated firepower based on the lack of demonstrated firepower. Amazingly acceleration calcs assuming 3000G and mutli-billion ton mass and DS1 scalings both come to the same order of magnitude. That is remarkable isn't it?