Vince

Why bring it up then? Second ICS video near the end i think, brian spends about 5 minutes going frame by frame through the scene pointing out vapoirzed ones, iirc the fighter even flies through a asteroid that was largely vaporized. Thats not the only scene taht suggests kiloton level firepower though. So does penetrating the armour on the external buildings of the DS1.

Khas; We have slave 1 vaporizing some asteroids, and X-wings causing massive collateral in the films, suggesting terajoule range firepower. Its worth noting that the armours that fighter firepower penetrate can withstand multi-hundred megajoule blaster shots taking only trivial surface damage, like stray shots that hit tanks or the Falcon. ICS gives yields of between 1 and 2 kilotons per shot to fighter based weapons, which is consistent with these on screen events. X-Wings are have larger heavier laser guns, so probably yield 2 or more kilotons per shot, and have four lasers total. According to SWvST they have a volume of ~27 cubic meters. In a New Hope, we see the Tantive with its proportionally massive turbolasers fire of a couple of bursts on to the bare armoured hull of a ISD, the energy is spread over hundreds of square meters and leaves zero visible damage. This Corvette is close to 2,400 times greater in volume than the X-wing. If it had proportionally more firepower we would be talking tens of megatons. In reality in may wield far more firepower, because larger capital ships dedicate a larger percentile of their power output to weapons – even hundreds of megatons. These are the energy levels which the main hull of the ISD can harmlessly dissipate, receiving trivial damage at best. In contrast, the heavy turbolasers of a capital ship may blast 60 meter wide holes through such armour, and even penetrate half way through a starship, as demonstrated in both ROTS and ROTJ. Armour which can withstand hundreds of megatons harmlessly could well require teratons to blast through. So from observed firepower in the movies, we can set a lower limit orders of magnitude greater than tens or hundreds of megatons, for single shots from heavy turbolasers. We also have the Falcon’s shields withstanding a single digit megaton blast in ESB, when she is escaping through the asteroid field. The shields are taking a beaten, but we don’t know how many shots of this yield it would take to lower them. And this is a 35 meter long freighter, not a warship. This blast is spread over a far larger volume than the tie lasers, explaining how fighters might compromise shields with less firepower. Then we have propulsion and required power generation, suggesting very high firepower, and the fleet wielding close to twice the firepower of the Death Star’s superlaser, suggesting greater firepower still. Fighter extrapolated firepower, the falcon scene, the propulsion figures, DS calculations, are all independent of each other and are all from the films. They all dictate firepower orders of magnitude higher than what you were proposing (<14 kilotons per second_). This and more is covered in the videos Brian has created.

Do you concede about the superlaser/fleet thing now?

The "high end" of BDZ definitions are consistent with power generating capabilities demonstrated by on screen propulsion, the low end ones are not. Primary canon comes first. Even Jango had access to munitions you could probably hold in your hands which shatter asteroids for several kilometers around. In the EU, there are hand grenades which create fireballs of comparable size to the one proposed for maximum power turbolaser strikes from the Executor - yea the EU is inconsistent, only some molds much better with figures derived from the films, and others directly contradict them.

Actually we could all have the same ideas and views on firepower, power output, acceleration, and still debate sci fi cross-overs. I thought that was the idea, to establish the technical stuff first, and then debate what would happen? IF we can all have orders of magnitude different opinions on firepower about the same franchise, then how are we supposed to discuss how things would play out? I covered what the Death Star novel said about TL emplacements, and it is inconsistent with multiple other sources of equal validity. So your using one source in favour of many. Isn't that "creationist". BTM cd says it was in reference to teh superlaser - SDN. And it would seem pretty silly to lie about it on a public website. If your using the EU, then you have to accept the Base Delta Zero and its potential, several sources now make it clear the upper crust of an entire world, can be turned molten by turbolaser fire. And a couple even suggest a single ISD can achieve this in a matter of hours. The power output you come up with would not even cover the energy required to vaporize the asteroids seen in the films. Low showings from random expanded sources mean nothing, when they are indisputebaly contradicted by the films, where we see fighters wielding kilotons of firepower, not kilojoules.

- The fact the DS is the ultimate power in the universe is consistent with ICS figures or doubled DS total firepower based calcs -The source for comparing firepower to the superlaser is one: Death Star -This is contradicted by several other sources regarding actual turbolaser number -it is also contradicted by the behind the magic cd made about the films, where the beam is confirmed as context -The notion that the Imperial fleet wields almost twice the firepower of the laser beam is therfor better supported by multiple EU sources as well as higher sources too -the implied fleet sizes in the movies [millions of worlds, thousands of ships at coruscant alone, and availability of starships] also suggests a greater number of turbolasers than is numbered for the death star The fleet combined does wield almost twice the firepower of the Death Star. The comparatively conservative figures in ICS suggest the Empire has more numerous superweapons. to argue other wise is actually taking one source in favour of several, exactly what you was accusing Brian of.

I already explained how the rather silly figure from TFU, can be reconciled with other sources. There is an orders of magnitude difference between ship deadiweight, and the massive fuels on board, in fvor of the latter. And obviously, the figure is simply absurd to begin with. Beside which, In a interview i read, Curtis was hired exactly for his technical knowlege, and was told to use it; thus the hard figures and technical information in the ICS. Because of this, the book is regarded as "authoritative" and even says so on the back. And why Chee, head of the canon department or w/e said it would be "the first place to look" for him. He was hired to be authoritative on the technical subjects, thus i would take that particular detail from that source over the detail in the "higher canon" TFU book. But take story based contradictions with favour to TFU, because of context. It is higher canon in relation to story, but Curtis was hired for his technical knowledge. The numbers make more sense, making ics reliable, considering the the books purpose/author. So far your counter argument has been pretty weak imo, so posting what are quotations likening to virtual face palms comes across seems rather silly, Saying "thats so last decade" or "debunked years" ago is a brush off, not a argument.

whats your point? This is consistent with the ICS math, because it is the most powerful starship ever built, wielding a million times more destrucive energy than is required to mass-scatter a planet, and yet that is one ship. The entire Imperial Navy [millions of military starships alone] combined wields half this power, making it the most powerful destructive force at their disposal, and indeed the entire galaxy. Using EU, the millions of starships will pack turbolasers by tens of millions; compare that to the unrealistically small tens of thousands on the Death Star, a generous potential are only XX-9's, as seen in the films... we can quickly determine that any comparison between firepower would stack in regular feats favour by many orders of magnitude. This means any comparison made or theory based on favouring the Death Stars regular turbolaser arsenal to that of the entire imperial fleets is completely illogical. The expanded material reading millions of starships, and novel material describing millions of worlds, and EU numbers on DS turbolasers makes the comparison in Death Star seem very silly, even inconsistent. The propulsion demonstrated in the films, the behind the magic cd about the films themselves confirming fleet = half the DS's superlaser, all suggest firepower figures much greater than is printed in the ICS, by orders of magnitude.

Could u supply the quote from TFU please. A VStars volume according to darkstar is 15,838,619 cubic meters, with the 1 million ton mass this would work out as a 63 kilogram per cubic meter density. This makes the ships lighter than styrofoam. One possible rationalization might be, that this is the deadwieght of the ship, when the fuel still out-masses it by orders of magnitude. Its better to harmonize sources where possible. This is a very sturdy rationalization for conflicting stated masses i think. It isn't 5.5E21 watts, it is 5.52E22 watts (just over 13 teratons per second), perhaps you used G's rather than meters? Thanks for clarifying 2300G's.

So to clarify: acceleration multiplied by C multiplied by mass = power output. This assumes exhaust velocity very close to C, which is the case in SW, and ignores any inefficiency.

2300 is for the far larger Executor isnt it? If not ignore what im about to say. You should use 3000G, the ISD is like the venator in that it can outrun blockade runners and other smaller craft. THe isd is shown to do this in the films, the VStar is said to do this in the ICS, making them comparable. Anyway, with 8mill tons and twenty-three hundred G i arrived at 5.52e22W, which is in the teratons each second. A spreadsheet did this for me though, im too lazy Acceleration in meters per second per second, multiplied by exhaust velocity (very close to light speed in this case), multiplied by the ships mass, is the method i used to find power output. I shared a spreadsheet earlier on the forums which does these calcs for you, if you plug in certain parameters. The e25th power watt figure mentioned in Brians video is calculated using that method, assuming the ISD is over a billion tons and capable of 3000G. To be exact, it is about 4.4 times the volume of a Vstar, and the Vstars mass can be derived from the ICS. Multiplying the Vstars mass results in 1.736 billion tons. I think this works out at something like 8 metric tons per cubic meter or something, the EU states durasteel and other armours are very dense, very heavy. Then theres the fuel which might out mass the ships deadwieght by orders of magnitude, which might be somewhat reduced by the manipulation of mass mentioned in the Starships of the Galaxy book.

Cool, heres the first three docs on firepower... theres a few issues to be addressed yet that have been brought up. There's also a case for a lower magnitude which will have to be covered separately - 40K has a lot of books! Macrocannons : https://www.dropbox.com/s/9q2cyo2k99lh9yc/Macrocannons.pdf This document covers the possible carried kinetic energies of macro shells, and potential nuclear warhead yields. The term 'macrocannons' is a catch for all for the weapons batteries mounted on imperial warships. Typically, the largest cannons may fire shells around 50 meters in diameter, but a cruisermay only mount between four and eight of them in broadside. They have range measuring tens o thousands of kilometers, and sometimes wield nuclear warheads. Their mass maybe reduced. Also in this category is everything right down to the rapid firing macroturrets which may be kiloton range as per rouge trader, and might be mounted in the dozens, hundreds, or thousands, depending on what you read. The Imperium's planetary bombardment capabilities: to level cities and ruin continents! : https://www.dropbox.com/s/thg02hwsv4w1q5v/Continent%20busting%23.pdf What kind of force must the Imperium bring to level a continent, or even an entire world, and how long does it take? Also covered are the most devastating arms in the Imperium: exterminatus WMD's such as cyclonic torpedoes. It would seem firepower is generally city destroying. Ork Roks are tough : https://www.dropbox.com/s/i9zugfk6l50b60n/Ork%20Roks.pdf Roks are invaribly said to be composed pretty much entirely of rock, implying limitations on how tough such a repurposed asteroid can in fact be. It can take several dozen conventional capital ship plasma torps to destroy a rok, but these weapons primarily melt the target. An imperial cruiser may have six prow torpedo launchers, and said torpedoes are most often 60 meters long.

I have been working on a selection of PDFs to perform some ongoing alnalysis of 40K firepower, both on the ground and in space. Once i get them up on Dropbox ill post the links up here if anyones here is interested. There dosnt seem to be huge interest in it here, but it crops up in the vs. now and again. I posted the first doc at SFJ, but forgot my password lol. But it'll get there when i can remember that too. Also Brians latest commentaries on beam weapons have given me some ideas for (and settled some fears) regarding my work with their ground based energy weapons too, which is exciting!

Acording to ISD the flaw is that the energy required to sustain magnetic bottles makes the energy output of most plasma weapons moot. Maybe the sheer energy (gigas-terras tons) yields of TL's actually makes such magnetic confinement more feasible.

Phaser tech backed by the power output of an Executor could probably make planets disappear in short order, leaving no remains. That would be unsettling for the enemy!

WHen it comes to firepower, SB and SD do tend to go with the very high end, the petatons/teratons calculations make no sense to the setting (Mcloud of SDN admits the flaws of his old 40k firepower calculations now). Exterminatus is the franchises weapons of mass destruction, and several books make these out to be far more powerful than conventional bombardment; fifteen minutes of exterminatus deployed by two ships can do as much damage as a bombardment lasting six full days commenced by an entire fleet. Six full days of bombardment from the fleet fell to level every supermassive structure on the crust or blow of the atmosphere, limiting firepower to far less then what is available in SW, by at least an order of magnitude. Every faction in 40K combined is going to have a larger military force than the empire, possibly with several times as many starships (nids are mostly external the galaxy), but most will take between weeks and years to cross the galaxy. They can take weeks to get reinforcements to attacked worlds too. The only factions that can cross the galaxy in very short periods of times or even instantly are the necrons and the Eldar with their webway, both these factions are the rare and powerful. The Eldar have dozens of FLT moon sized crafworlds in which the survivors of their empire reside (supposedly billions according to the codex), and the necrons have thousands of tomb worlds awaiting to rewake according to newer fluff. I do think the Empire could pacify this galaxy, and even destroy every major empire. As always the largest threat will be chaos and the warp, something the empire will not be accustomed too, but the native empires do endure and survive. Golden age imperium who are stupid advanced would likely be a more even match up, not in raw power but through technobabble and extremism of the written fluff. But we know virtually nothing about them besides a few snippets. Indeed it would take the empire time to map out the Milky Way, and find the holdings of the various empires within it, perhaps the Federation could help out here, as they have already mapped out portions of the galaxy. IMO it would be a more fair and even match up if the Empire were replaced with the Borg in the same scenario. Squadrons of Federation vessels could overwhelm a IoM cruiser while outmaneuvering its biggest guns, meaning it would have to rely on its dozens - hundreds of rapid firing kiloton ordinances. Federation shields should hold up reasonably well against these lighter weapons, though some of these are kinetic for what its worth. Due to the sheer scale of the IoM cruiser (5 km) and regenerating shielding (every few minutes to full power unless harassed) it could take many minutes for the Feds to cause significant damage to the IoM cruiser. Going with ~1 gigaton broadsides because theres a reasonable collection of sources that could support it, a good in universe analogy for a IoM cruiser might be a borg cube, only the smaller ships can much more easily avoid the heavy firepower of the IoM vessel, making the cube the more frightening opponent. Both are very tough. The mentioned ST forces combined couldn't take the whole milky way though, it would have to be vs the imperium to be interesting.

Most people rate IoM and GE as about the same, or even IoM as >>>GE, I think its a no brainer lol.

IoM take weeks, months or even years to cross the galaxy, have a fleet at most a few hundred thousands of warships (tens of thousands of cruisers, millions of commercial/other), single digit gravity sustainable accelerations with feasible combat speeds of several dozen kilometers per second. The Empire (using the ics figures) in a whole nother magnitude. The only way 40K will get up in the ICS realm of numbers will be through cherry picking or w**k. Their firepower is probably high megatons to low gigatons based on massed evidence, with some examples of exterminatus requiring sustained cyclone bombardment sustaining teratons of killpower a second, to effectively boil the oceans and melt the crust in less than a day. Ofc a number of sources indicate lower firepower still, in the kiloton range. I think the high mt/low gt hold the most salt at the moment. Regardless, the SW factions are orders of magnitude more powerful. If we took firepower out the equation, or even said the empire ships were the ones an order of magnitude less powerful, they would still win through logistics. They have stupendous FTL and SL speed advantages over the IoM, allowing them to speedblitz, take out worlds before the imperium can react (days - weeks to send patrol). There wouldn't be a 'cease fire' because the empire could dismantle this foe with such ease BUT i dont think they would. With war comes money and power, the emperors finest excuse to really gain a vice grip over the galaxy and form massive fleets would be the existence of the utter hell that is 40k!

It's not that relevant to this discussion, because as i said, i doubt the Enterprise will have the required full. Several hours to get a moon to 4km/s, several dozen thousand to get the same thing to .8C or whatever. I just can't see that. Maximum thrust with the warp core at maximum output for a number of years lol. SOme of the mountain sized debris traveling at single digit percentiles the speed of light might well have been impacting the first death star when it blew away Alderaan, confirming that you're going to need extremely high yield events to threaten the shields of the station. Any debris that did impact didn't leave any significant damage, so we will probably need something on the order of thousands of petatons. I dont think the Enterprise can add that much kinetic energy to an object. With teleportation attacks or heavy bombardment, they may be capable of causing what would be considered superficial surface damage, to the heat dissipation areas. Like destroying the heat vent, or radiators, maybe making the gun impossible to fire without melting/vaporizing the DS along with it... or maybe they could teleport the missiles straight into the muzzle of the gun, again superficial damage, but might make it impossible to focus the beam. A far cry from blowing the station up, but at least you won't have a mass-scattered world on your hands. Just a slagged one, which wont be as terrorizing.

SW sensors are FTL, and can detect heat sources and (at least at the very close ranges) life signs... there are blind spots close to the hull that can be exploited, or turning off all power. Hoth had no trouble detecting those ISD's when they come out of hyperspace to close to the world; with sonar/radar i'd expect serious lag time. So i think TCW is using these terms to get across "sensors" to the audience and they didn't really think about it. I haven't seen the ep but what they were used for might even been beyond the capabilities of those technologies. It isn't a technical guide SW but rather a cartoon targeted at kids, after all. Sonar and radar wouldn't detect ships at FTL, or ships as they enter system in real time. Secondary sources like Empire at War and the ICS future support very long range sensors.

If it takes hours to get a moon to 4km/s, then i have to question whether they would have enough antimatter onboard to fuel such a plan... and it would take a stupendous amount of time... smaller SW vessels have multi light-day sensors, so they will detect this activity well before it takes off... considering the Federation vessel will be running hot.

Yea, its not magic though no, its technobabble - science we just don't understand it! ST obviously try to make everything sound like it is scientific and thus possible, and SW makes it look likes its supposed to be scientific and thus possible; both actually equate to the technobabble. Hence we end up with things like "neutrino radiators" or "warp fields" and functional teleportation devices, which all work on the in-universe "science".

I'd have to agree wit RayCav that there's a lot of w**k involved in some parts of the fandom. In analysis of 40k i go with what seems consistent and what makes sense, setting wise. The 'highest ends' or taking hyperbole as literal, as some do, is a seemingly common position when talking about warhammer cross over. THe figures used often thrown about don't make sense imo. Some 40Kers do seem to be fast to flame on forums too :L. I think its because of the oh so high figures so readily accepted around the net, that so many feel the need to be so absolute about the other end of the spectrum too, when in reality, the reasonable 'figures' are neither, but rather somewhere in between.

Jump to 14 minutes in, near the end. Several .75 cal bolt guns and one 1 cal heavy bolter vs a big stone tower... explosive rounds. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJhHKzSyQbE

Come on, most of 40K's fan base are kids, teens, or harmless table top game players. It would be a very small percentage trhat are so retarded.