Star Trek Ships vs. Stargate Ships

[Tetsujin]

Skin of Evil had them seeking to ensure that the creature on the planet could never leave. Whilst it is on its own a rather weak example of low firepower, when combined with other examples it shows the limitations of Federation weaponry quite nicely. It does after all, tie in with Nemesis- you claim that the Scimitar's forward shields were the worst hit, but you have not backed this up at all- in fact, in the scene where the cloak fails, most of the hits are on the aft quarter! Prior to that, Commander Denotra's warbird is firing primarily at the Scimitar's aft quarter! So your claim that the forward shields were somehow much weaker is complete speculation. Besides, even if the forward shields were only at 20%, with the sort of firepower you claim is the norm, a collision should not have breached the shields.

Exactly my point. You are merely trying to make it fit with your example but it does not because they only meant to destroy the shuttlecraft. Therefore would have only used a yield capable of making the non shielded shuttle inoperable. So it shows nothing other than an attempt to place a logical occurrence in a grouping of illogical ones.

I am referring to when Deanna uses her empathic ability to locate the position of the Scimitar. First there was a volley of 6 quantum torpedoes to the Scimitar's forward shields, then another volley of at least a phaser shot and 3 more quantum torpedoes and 2 photon torpedoes and a continued exchange of fire on the Scimitar's forward shields while it follows directly behind the enterprise (unless you are somehow suggesting they plotted in a pursuit course while flying backwards or while sideways they were hitting the forward shields) A ship flying at relativistic speeds would actually be quite some force and since Picard ordered Geordi to divert all power to engines they had to be going pretty fast in reality. So the shields and momentum of the Enterprise coupled with damaged forward shields of the Scimitar could have produced a force great enough to overpower the forward shields of the Scimitar. And the shields must have been overpowered and down at that point since Picard transported on to the ship afterwards and Data jumped on to it. I all honestly a logical question for you to be bringing up is why didn't they just warp at the Scimitar if they wanted to ram and destroy it so badly. The fact that they did not shows an illogical element ie plot event. Actually in my mind that entire battle was illogical since it should have been easy for them to follow the cloaked ship once they hit it even once by simply setting a group of phasers to low power and wide dispersal to constantly hit the scimitars shields and follow their most probable trajectories allowing lock on with all other weapons. Another plot element would be how the auto-destruct was magically off line when Picard was ready to blow up the ship. How can the auto-destruct be offline when the warp core is still active and he could have easily just told someone to slap a bomb on or phaser the core or one of the antimatter storage tanks and that would have done it. This is all just to illustrate that plot events do happen, and every visual or scenario is not always how it would actually happen.

You're misrepresenting the facts. 'All of the evidence' does not support high firepower, in fact the visual evidence suggests the complete opposite. The fact remains, the simplest explanation is usually the right one- the chances of starship debris being the cause of the damage we see in Skin of Evil is highly unlikely, for the reasons I have already explained, plus the odds of such debris hitting a city instead of open space are highly unlikely. I have also explained why surface damage would not be apparently unless any hypothetical shield had already failed, so the most likely explanation in like of these simple bits of logic is weapons fire. It is pure assumption on your part that the weapons used would be something other than the norm, especially seeing as the Breen could have paralyzed the Federation's military and political bodies with a single shot under the firepower you claim.

I apologize, all of the evidence does not support this. However a good majority of it does, enough to lead to an average of high firepower. I would like to point out your usage of the word usually which means there are situations were the most simple solution is not applicable or is simply incorrect. I will assume you are referring to “Changing Face of Evil” and not “Skin of Evil”. Google “plane crash” images and look at how much damage they do to a surrounding area, and then logically tell me that a ship having many times more volume and mass than a 747 would not be capable of causing damage to the ground if large chunks of it impacted the surface at high speed. Also the idea that the odds of debris of a ship that is attacking a city impacting the city when it is shot down is strange. So if you were flying over a city as large as San Francisco and you are shot down, you would most likely hit empty space?

I am saying that we have seen shields and weapons on surface instillation before. So having them on the Federations capital planet is logical. Also paralyzing an opponent with the first shot usually indicates use of the element of surprise. Since Earth would have been pretty fortified and the Breen do not possess cloaking technology I would say the element of complete surprise is not impossible but unlikely. Considering all your evidence on this episode is 100% circumstantial and hypothetical considering there is no dialogue or visuals of the events that took place besides the aftermath, I am choosing to not even address the episode “Changing Face of Evil” any longer.

More speculation on your part. You seek to dismiss the evidence with mystery mechanism and appeals to god-like entities having an influence on proceedings. The bottom line is, a fancy mechanism would have taken out the shields in the first instance, if this is how the shields were brought down, yet they didn't- application of greater power later on did.

A god-like entity created the ship. There is no evidence that the ship carried any kind of real technology on it at all, nor that the ship was even based on the ships that attacked the planet . You saying a fancy mechanism would have taken out the shields in the first instance is like saying an ounce of paint remover can get all the paint off a whole house. Its the same paint remover but its simply not enough, you just need more of it for the desired effects. Again I will reiterate that if there was only brute force at work, how could the enterprises hull survive a second shot of a weapon that completely took down the shields with a single blast? If it was pure force, the second shot should have destroyed the ship completely since the shields were down and the hull is nowhere near as strong as the shields. So this points to either the weapon having shield disrupting capabilities and/or the powers of the god-like being that created the ship at work.

Even if we are extremely generous and assume the asteroid was instead 20KM, the energy required to fragment such an asteroid is 8GT. The Enterprise D carried 275 photon torpedoes, so if we divide that by 8GT, we get 0.02GT per torpedo! Another way to do it is to divide 8,000MT by 275- you get 29MT per torpedo- and remember, 20KM is an extremely generous assumption, since the asteroid was in all actuality no bigger than 10KM at an absolutely maximum (in which case we are looking at 3.6MT per torpedo).

First I would like to point point out that in this argument you blatantly contradict all your evidence stated prior to this by even suggesting one is anywhere in the double digit megaton range. All your evidence hinges on it not being even that powerful with you constantly trying to push forth C4 level explosions. Also I would also like to point out the full torpedo compliment of a galaxy class ship is 250 not 275, and this is assuming that the Enterprise was fully stocked at the time. I dont understand how you assume 20km is extremely generous considering that very small portion of the asteroid shown was over 2 km long with the enterprise serving as a 641m reference and over 6km being the smallest the asteroid could logically be and far larger being plausible since it is doubtful the enterprise was at the very core of the asteroid. I would also like to ask what you mean by “fragmentation” since the goal of the course of action Riker was proposing was vaporizing the asteroid and the starship inside with it completely to keep the Romulans from recovering anything at all from it. Fragmenting the astreroid into medium to large pieces would have not met this requirement.

Voyager was not a 'good distance' away and neither were the 8472 ships- for that matter, the bright flash we see is not that big in relation to the 8472 ships we see! It's clearly not a huge explosion, no matter how you try to spin it.

So you are claiming that if you are moving at relativistic speeds on a linear trajectory, and you fire a weapon that is also traveling at relativistic speeds on a linear trajectory in the opposite direction you would not be a good distance apart in 4-5 seconds? Even if Voyager was only traveling .05c(and ships can move faster than .8c) there was a minimum of 60,000 kilometers between them and the explosion. Also it is not about visual size but intensity and the blast was intense enough for Voyager to feel it after having the sum distance of the ships travel and the torpedoes travel in those 4-5 seconds between them and the cushion of traveling in the same direction of the blast wave.

A Hatak can take close proximity to a much more energetic star at far closer ranges. The star in Relics was a relative sedate type of star compared to the monster the Hatak sat near- the Hatak absorbed far more energy.[/QUOTE]

You have no evidence of closer ranges. Given the size of the star and the vessel seeing a large portion on the surface we can approximate the full diameter of the star using the shown curvature from that perspective would be a few meters and the Ha'tak is about a few inches. Given those two sizes we can conclude the Ha'tak is very very far away since a standad Ha'tak is only 600m wide and being able to even visually compare them with the Ha'tak being inches and the star not taking up the entire background.

Here is a scale picture of the sizes of the planets in our solar system:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...lanets2008.jpg

Here is the difference between Sol and a blue giant and red giant star: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...comparison.png

Given that even in the picture showing only part of our sun earth is incredibly small. If using the two pictures to establish a perspective, compared to a blue giant Earth would not register as anything more than a dot and something less than 1/12,000th the diameter of Earth(The Ha'tak) would not even be seen. So at very least it is many times farther away from the blue giant than the enterprise is from the star with some peoples estimates being around one stellar radius(Half of that stars diameter) away.



Enterprise was stated to be 150,000km(which is more accurate that only visuals and words like “close proximity” and is definitely much less than a stellar radius) from the star during a period of instability and increasing flare activity with only partial shields. Also the Ha'tak would not have gone closer to the star than necessary further denoting a decent distance.

[darth_timon]

Exactly my point. You are merely trying to make it fit with your example but it does not because they only meant to destroy the shuttlecraft. Therefore would have only used a yield capable of making the non shielded shuttle inoperable. So it shows nothing other than an attempt to place a logical occurrence in a grouping of illogical ones.

You are twisting my words. When taken as a single example Skin of Evil would not make a compelling case. Taken with the other examples I have provided, it fits in perfectly.

I am referring to when Deanna uses her empathic ability to locate the position of the Scimitar. First there was a volley of 6 quantum torpedoes to the Scimitar's forward shields, then another volley of at least a phaser shot and 3 more quantum torpedoes and 2 photon torpedoes and a continued exchange of fire on the Scimitar's forward shields while it follows directly behind the enterprise (unless you are somehow suggesting they plotted in a pursuit course while flying backwards or while sideways they were hitting the forward shields) A ship flying at relativistic speeds would actually be quite some force and since Picard ordered Geordi to divert all power to engines they had to be going pretty fast in reality. So the shields and momentum of the Enterprise coupled with damaged forward shields of the Scimitar could have produced a force great enough to overpower the forward shields of the Scimitar. And the shields must have been overpowered and down at that point since Picard transported on to the ship afterwards and Data jumped on to it. I all honestly a logical question for you to be bringing up is why didn't they just warp at the Scimitar if they wanted to ram and destroy it so badly. The fact that they did not shows an illogical element ie plot event. Actually in my mind that entire battle was illogical since it should have been easy for them to follow the cloaked ship once they hit it even once by simply setting a group of phasers to low power and wide dispersal to constantly hit the scimitars shields and follow their most probable trajectories allowing lock on with all other weapons. Another plot element would be how the auto-destruct was magically off line when Picard was ready to blow up the ship. How can the auto-destruct be offline when the warp core is still active and he could have easily just told someone to slap a bomb on or phaser the core or one of the antimatter storage tanks and that would have done it. This is all just to illustrate that plot events do happen, and every visual or scenario is not always how it would actually happen.

The battle between the Enterprise and Scimitar can be found on Youtube, and it's hardly the case that the Scimitar's forward shields bear the brunt. When Troi does her thing, some shots hit the forward shields, and some also hit the port wing, starboard wing and aft quarter! This is the case throughout the entire battle, so your suggestion that the forward shields were much weaker than the rest is not backed up by the evidence. Finally, as I mentioned before, if the shields were even as low as 20%, given the sort of weapons and shield strength you are arguing for, such a visibly slow collision should not have taken out the shields.

I apologize, all of the evidence does not support this. However a good majority of it does, enough to lead to an average of high firepower. I would like to point out your usage of the word usually which means there are situations were the most simple solution is not applicable or is simply incorrect. I will assume you are referring to “Changing Face of Evil” and not “Skin of Evil”. Google “plane crash” images and look at how much damage they do to a surrounding area, and then logically tell me that a ship having many times more volume and mass than a 747 would not be capable of causing damage to the ground if large chunks of it impacted the surface at high speed. Also the idea that the odds of debris of a ship that is attacking a city impacting the city when it is shot down is strange. So if you were flying over a city as large as San Francisco and you are shot down, you would most likely hit empty space?

Why would the Breen ships be right over the city? They were most likely in orbit (unless you want to suggest they had to close to such short ranges to hit a stationary target). Plus, any debris would not be in a great condition (stands to reason if it's been explosively removed from the rest of the ship) and it would have an uncontrolled entry into earth's atmosphere. If by some miracle it didn't burn up, the chances of it hitting a city are remote.

I am saying that we have seen shields and weapons on surface instillation before. So having them on the Federations capital planet is logical. Also paralyzing an opponent with the first shot usually indicates use of the element of surprise. Since Earth would have been pretty fortified and the Breen do not possess cloaking technology I would say the element of complete surprise is not impossible but unlikely. Considering all your evidence on this episode is 100% circumstantial and hypothetical considering there is no dialogue or visuals of the events that took place besides the aftermath, I am choosing to not even address the episode “Changing Face of Evil” any longer.

My theory works with or without the element of surprise or planetary shields/defences. Yours is dependant upon pure speculation above and beyond the point of reason. I am still going to use Changing Face of Evil as evidence to support my stance and if you don't like it, tough.

A god-like entity created the ship. There is no evidence that the ship carried any kind of real technology on it at all, nor that the ship was even based on the ships that attacked the planet . You saying a fancy mechanism would have taken out the shields in the first instance is like saying an ounce of paint remover can get all the paint off a whole house. Its the same paint remover but its simply not enough, you just need more of it for the desired effects. Again I will reiterate that if there was only brute force at work, how could the enterprises hull survive a second shot of a weapon that completely took down the shields with a single blast? If it was pure force, the second shot should have destroyed the ship completely since the shields were down and the hull is nowhere near as strong as the shields. So this points to either the weapon having shield disrupting capabilities and/or the powers of the god-like being that created the ship at work.

There is not a single part of your argument that is not pure speculation. The dialogue gives us clear numbers. It does not refer to any additional effects, and if the shields recorded the power at the stated levels, that's what the power of those shots were.

Additionally, just because a weapon would knock out shields it doesn't mean it has to automatically cause explosive damage. I can run an electrical current through a building that's 10 times the current normally applied and short out every light in the building- but that won't cause any structural damage to the building.

First I would like to point point out that in this argument you blatantly contradict all your evidence stated prior to this by even suggesting one is anywhere in the double digit megaton range. All your evidence hinges on it not being even that powerful with you constantly trying to push forth C4 level explosions. Also I would also like to point out the full torpedo compliment of a galaxy class ship is 250 not 275, and this is assuming that the Enterprise was fully stocked at the time. I dont understand how you assume 20km is extremely generous considering that very small portion of the asteroid shown was over 2 km long with the enterprise serving as a 641m reference and over 6km being the smallest the asteroid could logically be and far larger being plausible since it is doubtful the enterprise was at the very core of the asteroid. I would also like to ask what you mean by “fragmentation” since the goal of the course of action Riker was proposing was vaporizing the asteroid and the starship inside with it completely to keep the Romulans from recovering anything at all from it. Fragmenting the astreroid into medium to large pieces would have not met this requirement.

Of course 20KM is generous! 10KM is generous! I refer you to http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/...&Submit=Submit for details. Scroll to the bottom of the page and you'll see the scaling of the asteroid. Riker does not claim they are going to vapourise the asteroid, only that it would require most of their torpedoes to destroy it. The 275 torpedo figure comes from the episode 'Conumdrum'.

So you are claiming that if you are moving at relativistic speeds on a linear trajectory, and you fire a weapon that is also traveling at relativistic speeds on a linear trajectory in the opposite direction you would not be a good distance apart in 4-5 seconds? Even if Voyager was only traveling .05c(and ships can move faster than .8c) there was a minimum of 60,000 kilometers between them and the explosion. Also it is not about visual size but intensity and the blast was intense enough for Voyager to feel it after having the sum distance of the ships travel and the torpedoes travel in those 4-5 seconds between them and the cushion of traveling in the same direction of the blast wave.

You need only watch the clip to see that none of the ships are moving that fast relative to each other or the explosion, and that the explosion is not very big, even in comparison to a 8472 ship.

A Hatak can take close proximity to a much more energetic star at far closer ranges. The star in Relics was a relative sedate type of star compared to the monster the Hatak sat near- the Hatak absorbed far more energy.[/QUOTE]

You have no evidence of closer ranges. Given the size of the star and the vessel seeing a large portion on the surface we can approximate the full diameter of the star using the shown curvature from that perspective would be a few meters and the Ha'tak is about a few inches. Given those two sizes we can conclude the Ha'tak is very very far away since a standad Ha'tak is only 600m wide and being able to even visually compare them with the Ha'tak being inches and the star not taking up the entire background.

They actually state that they are entering the coronasphere. This is close. The E-D was not as close to a less energetic star.

[Tetsujin]

You are twisting my words. When taken as a single example Skin of Evil would not make a compelling case. Taken with the other examples I have provided, it fits in perfectly.

How am I twisting your words? You are attempting to tie in a situation where they deliberately used a low yield with situations where you claim that yields are just weak completely. In this case they used only enough force to disable or destroy the shuttle but in your other examples you claim that something similar to a C4 explosion would be their best shot.

The battle between the Enterprise and Scimitar can be found on Youtube, and it's hardly the case that the Scimitar's forward shields bear the brunt. When Troi does her thing, some shots hit the forward shields, and some also hit the port wing, starboard wing and aft quarter! This is the case throughout the entire battle, so your suggestion that the forward shields were much weaker than the rest is not backed up by the evidence. Finally, as I mentioned before, if the shields were even as low as 20%, given the sort of weapons and shield strength you are arguing for, such a visibly slow collision should not have taken out the shields.

I have the movie and have watched it. The 6 quantum torpedoes hit the forward shields. Regardless of if they hit the the wing or not it was the forward section. I have also played enough ST games avoiding weapons fire to know the difference between the different areas of shielding. Regardless of if you dont agree with that instance, you clearly see the Scimitar exchanging fire with the Enterprise while it is chasing after it meaning the Enterprise's aft shields were taking damage and the Scimitars forward shields were taking damage At best you can say that some of the shots hit the forward section of the dorsal shields. I will also like to mention that it looked like a slow motion shot. There is no way that even with extra power to the impulse engines the ship would accelerate that slowly. The ships move at relativistic speeds and that is a canon fact.

There is not a single part of your argument that is not pure speculation. The dialogue gives us clear numbers. It does not refer to any additional effects, and if the shields recorded the power at the stated levels, that's what the power of those shots were.

Additionally, just because a weapon would knock out shields it doesn't mean it has to automatically cause explosive damage. I can run an electrical current through a building that's 10 times the current normally applied and short out every light in the building- but that won't cause any structural damage to the building.

So a near-omnipotent being creating the ship is speculation? 400GW being an unreasonably low amount of energy when ships have been shown to enter the corona of stars for prolonged periods is only speculation? You have admitted that a photon is at least a few megatons even 1mt is more than the energy of that blast and ships have taken several torpedo hits without completely failing, but that is also speculation correct? Also your analogy is massively flawed. One, an electric current through a building is in no way comparable to a directed particle weapon impacting a high energy gravitational distortion or the hull of a starship. Also depending on where you attach the device that is generating said currrent there might not be any effects at all. Regardless of how you wish to spin it, if the weapon took down the shields in one shot through brute force it would have destroyed the ship with its second volley unless solely designed to take down shields. Either way this situation doesnt make sense, even if you dont take into account the super being pulling the strings.

Of course 20KM is generous! 10KM is generous! I refer you to http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/...&Submit=Submit for details. Scroll to the bottom of the page and you'll see the scaling of the asteroid. Riker does not claim they are going to vapourise the asteroid, only that it would require most of their torpedoes to destroy it. The 275 torpedo figure comes from the episode 'Conumdrum'.

The link you have assumed that the asteroid was hollow and all we see is a single chasm. They also assume the sizes based on some method which I place no stock in since they incorrectly stated the height of a galaxy class in their calculations which means I can not trust they correctly stated the size of the asteroid. The also assumed what the asteroid was composed of. Also they did not take into account that with a potato-like shape the Enterprise still had to travel through 3 kilometers of rock to get out of the asteroid as well as the distance to the wall. They would not have traveled the long way through the asteroid so over 3 kilometers is the logical shortest distance out of the asteroid leading to at the very least over 3 kilometers being the radius of the thinner side of the asteroid. Busting their theory of the asteroid being only 5 at most. Also even this persons low end estimate of a torpedoes power still busts all your visual evidence of C4 like damage since even kiloton power is more than all your evidence shows. Ok he said “destroy” but what do you think the goal was exactly? It was to quickly destroy the ship inside completely not merely to fragment an asteroid. So it would require enough power to destroy the asteroid and the ship completely.

You need only watch the clip to see that none of the ships are moving that fast relative to each other or the explosion, and that the explosion is not very big, even in comparison to a 8472 ship.

All I have to say is relativistic speeds, and intensity those words alone is enough since I have explained myself clearly in my last post and handles all of what you just said.

A Hatak can take close proximity to a much more energetic star at far closer ranges. The star in Relics was a relative sedate type of star compared to the monster the Hatak sat near- the Hatak absorbed far more energy.

They actually state that they are entering the coronasphere. This is close. The E-D was not as close to a less energetic star.

I will again state that the corona of a star is a region comprising millions of kilometers away from the star itself so no inside the corona does not mean “close” in this sense. Also the documentation I showed proved that even though they looked close to the star they were a vast distance away and even someone elses calculations showed they could have been at stellar radius away(Sol has a stellar radius of over 600,000km and the blue giant is many times larger than Sol which means a much greater distance away) The enterprise was stated to be only 150,000km away from the star and dealing with solar flares. Anyway this particular instance was not necessarily meant to prove any kind of superiority and was primarily used to to clarify that 400GW of energy taking down shields is ridiculous considering it sat next to a star for 3 hours with only 23% shields and that would be much more than 400GW.

[darth_timon]

How am I twisting your words? You are attempting to tie in a situation where they deliberately used a low yield with situations where you claim that yields are just weak completely. In this case they used only enough force to disable or destroy the shuttle but in your other examples you claim that something similar to a C4 explosion would be their best shot.

You don't know it was a deliberately low setting. It is a pure assumption on your part. Skin of Evil fits in neatly with all other visual examples, so yes, you are twisting my words.

I have the movie and have watched it. The 6 quantum torpedoes hit the forward shields. Regardless of if they hit the the wing or not it was the forward section. I have also played enough ST games avoiding weapons fire to know the difference between the different areas of shielding. Regardless of if you dont agree with that instance, you clearly see the Scimitar exchanging fire with the Enterprise while it is chasing after it meaning the Enterprise's aft shields were taking damage and the Scimitars forward shields were taking damage At best you can say that some of the shots hit the forward section of the dorsal shields. I will also like to mention that it looked like a slow motion shot. There is no way that even with extra power to the impulse engines the ship would accelerate that slowly. The ships move at relativistic speeds and that is a canon fact.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeYrk...eature=related

We see a lot of shots hit unknown locations, a lot hit the aft quarter of the Scimitar when the Romulan Warbird is chasing it, and several shots from the Enterprise hit the aft, port and starboard shields too. The forward shields come under no greater level of firepower than the rest of the shields, and as I have said, now for the third time, if the forward shields were somehow as low as 20%, under the firepower you claim, the shields should have withstood such a slow collision- and your claim that collision was shot in slow motion is yet another piece of pure speculation on your part. Whether you like the visual evidence or not, it is pretty clear as to the relative speed of both ships, and such a collision should not be penetrating the shields, even if they were as low as 20%, under the power you claim.

So a near-omnipotent being creating the ship is speculation? 400GW being an unreasonably low amount of energy when ships have been shown to enter the corona of stars for prolonged periods is only speculation? You have admitted that a photon is at least a few megatons even 1mt is more than the energy of that blast and ships have taken several torpedo hits without completely failing, but that is also speculation correct? Also your analogy is massively flawed. One, an electric current through a building is in no way comparable to a directed particle weapon impacting a high energy gravitational distortion or the hull of a starship. Also depending on where you attach the device that is generating said currrent there might not be any effects at all. Regardless of how you wish to spin it, if the weapon took down the shields in one shot through brute force it would have destroyed the ship with its second volley unless solely designed to take down shields. Either way this situation doesnt make sense, even if you dont take into account the super being pulling the strings.

Power comes in more than one form. My analogy is perfectly valid, and what's more, that's what happened! We know the damage to the shields from the numbers provided! Since a second shot did not destroy the ship, the power must have been of a nature that did not do raw physical damage- remember the episode Disaster, when a quantum filament hits the ship? It overwhelmed the power grid with too much power, but didn't cause structural damage. Your argument about god-like beings is not relevant since we have numbers provided by dialogue (the sort you prefer) and they are very clear. You can assume all sorts of extra mechanisms to support your point, but you have no proof and the principle of Occam's Razor is against you. Finally, I have admitted nothing of the kind when it comes to torpedo firepower. I have pointed out some extremely generous upper limits, but the reality is torpedo firepower is much lower.

The link you have assumed that the asteroid was hollow and all we see is a single chasm. They also assume the sizes based on some method which I place no stock in since they incorrectly stated the height of a galaxy class in their calculations which means I can not trust they correctly stated the size of the asteroid. The also assumed what the asteroid was composed of. Also they did not take into account that with a potato-like shape the Enterprise still had to travel through 3 kilometers of rock to get out of the asteroid as well as the distance to the wall. They would not have traveled the long way through the asteroid so over 3 kilometers is the logical shortest distance out of the asteroid leading to at the very least over 3 kilometers being the radius of the thinner side of the asteroid. Busting their theory of the asteroid being only 5 at most. Also even this persons low end estimate of a torpedoes power still busts all your visual evidence of C4 like damage since even kiloton power is more than all your evidence shows. Ok he said “destroy” but what do you think the goal was exactly? It was to quickly destroy the ship inside completely not merely to fragment an asteroid. So it would require enough power to destroy the asteroid and the ship completely.

What exactly is wrong with their estimate of the E-D's size? If this is your justification for the evidence that the asteroid is so much bigger than the evidence suggests, then demonstrate why. Additionally, you assume the Enterprise would have taken the shortest route through the asteroid, but you have no proof of this. Thirdly, you assume they were intending to vapourise the asteroid, but again, why would this be the case? They didn't need to vapourise the asteroid in order to destroy it and achieve their objective.

All I have to say is relativistic speeds, and intensity those words alone is enough since I have explained myself clearly in my last post and handles all of what you just said.

In other words, you're dismissing the obvious of the visuals- that the explosion was not very big and did not destructive damage of any kind.

I will again state that the corona of a star is a region comprising millions of kilometers away from the star itself so no inside the corona does not mean “close” in this sense. Also the documentation I showed proved that even though they looked close to the star they were a vast distance away and even someone elses calculations showed they could have been at stellar radius away(Sol has a stellar radius of over 600,000km and the blue giant is many times larger than Sol which means a much greater distance away) The enterprise was stated to be only 150,000km away from the star and dealing with solar flares. Anyway this particular instance was not necessarily meant to prove any kind of superiority and was primarily used to to clarify that 400GW of energy taking down shields is ridiculous considering it sat next to a star for 3 hours with only 23% shields and that would be much more than 400GW.

The photosphere of a star like the sun (not unlike the star in Relics) has a temperature of between 4500 and 6000 kelvins.

The corona of our sun has a temperature of 10,000,000 kelvin, and the star in Enemies was a bigger more energetic star. I think that makes my case for me.

[Tetsujin]

You don't know it was a deliberately low setting. It is a pure assumption on your part. Skin of Evil fits in neatly with all other visual examples, so yes, you are twisting my words.

I think not. Picard stated the intent was to disable and/or destroy the shuttle still on the surface to keep the entity from using it to travel off planet. Since you have admitted that even in your calculations a torpedo is a few megatons or even if it is only hundreds of kilotons using it on full would be extreme overkill and was not even shown and hundreds of kilotons would have done something to the creature in close proximity and they neither wanted to kill it nor did they mention it was hurt or dead afterward. This suggest a deliberate low yield.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeYrk...eature=related

We see a lot of shots hit unknown locations, a lot hit the aft quarter of the Scimitar when the Romulan Warbird is chasing it, and several shots from the Enterprise hit the aft, port and starboard shields too. The forward shields come under no greater level of firepower than the rest of the shields, and as I have said, now for the third time, if the forward shields were somehow as low as 20%, under the firepower you claim, the shields should have withstood such a slow collision- and your claim that collision was shot in slow motion is yet another piece of pure speculation on your part. Whether you like the visual evidence or not, it is pretty clear as to the relative speed of both ships, and such a collision should not be penetrating the shields, even if they were as low as 20%, under the power you claim.

We have seen sporadic shots hitting random parts of the Scimitar over a relatively long period of time because none of the ships could successfully lock onto the ship to do any real damage ince most of their fire missed and went harmlessly off into space . We saw that once the Enterprise got a hold of the Scimitar it hit it so hard that they lost the cloak entirely. Also since fire was finally able to be concentrated on a single section instead of sporadically across the shields damage was shown to be done to the Scimitar backed up by Shinzon's urgency at getting the cloak back online when fighting the enterprise alone on a level playing field and the the sparks and all the rest of the effects shown on the bridge of the Scimitar. It is not speculative, it looks slow motion. Also since it is a canon fact that ships can accelerate to relativistic speeds quickly that slow collision does not make logical sense except for theatrical purposes. Even only using maneuvering thrusters the enterprise D was able to accelerate to moving kilometers in seconds. I would assume that the smaller more advanced Enterprise E would be able to accelerate to much higher speeds while utilizing its main sub-light engines as well as after channeling more power into them. If you apply common sense the collision is explainable. You also keep failing to mention that the Enterprise has shields too.

Power comes in more than one form. My analogy is perfectly valid, and what's more, that's what happened! We know the damage to the shields from the numbers provided! Since a second shot did not destroy the ship, the power must have been of a nature that did not do raw physical damage- remember the episode Disaster, when a quantum filament hits the ship? It overwhelmed the power grid with too much power, but didn't cause structural damage. Your argument about god-like beings is not relevant since we have numbers provided by dialogue (the sort you prefer) and they are very clear. You can assume all sorts of extra mechanisms to support your point, but you have no proof and the principle of Occam's Razor is against you. Finally, I have admitted nothing of the kind when it comes to torpedo firepower. I have pointed out some extremely generous upper limits, but the reality is torpedo firepower is much lower.

Yes, but the shot did not overload the power grid. You talk about me speculating, but now you are doing so. First it was pure force that reduced the shields but somehow that same force did not have the capability to destroy the ship after the shields were taken down. Interesting. That seems like the weapon is most effective against shields or maybe designed to disrupt shields. Also what directed energy weapon have you seen that cause shields to fail with a single hit but only cause superficial damage to an unshielded target. Your analogy is flawed and you know it since you are going back and forth between raw power and special weapon that only damages shielding which means it has the effect of overloading shields. You can also claim that Occam's Razor is against me all you want but that doesnt make you correct. God-like being trumps everything scientific as far as the simplest answer by virtue of a god-like being possessing the ability to do almost anything regardless of if it makes sense or not. You are simply not accepting the fact that you ship and your weapon were produced by a being that is not limited to the laws of physics because that would force you to abandon this anomaly entirely. This is like a Q or an Ascended being fully creating a ship from nothing and you trying to rationally come up with other reasons why the ship is not able to be defeated. The simplest answer would be because a super powerful being created it and they can do almost whatever they want. So in actuality Occam's Razor is against you.

Actually you stated your first figure was generous because it used a 20km size and your second to be generous of the 10km size. Even reduced to 10% of the number you stated it is still many many time more powerful than 400Gw(which is not even a tenth of a kiloton) . You cant hold on to both cases of evidence since they conflict with each other. So which one is it since you can only hold on to one and if you try to hold on to both it proves that you are not willing to admit when you are proven incorrect. Let me make this simple so you can not try and use fancy wordplay to get out of it.

1st argument: 400GW (.095kt) can completely knock down galaxy class shields through brute force.

2nd argument: You gave a “ very generous” figure of 3.6Mt per torpedo to destroy the asteroid. I will use only 5% of this per torpedo, which I can assume is no longer “generous” in your mind, and that is .18Mt or 180Kt. Galaxy class ships have been shown to take multiple torpedo hits, but lets just assume it can only take 1 for now just for the sake of argument.

So even using only your logic, despite how flawed I find it, one statement you support claims a galaxy class can only take .095kt of energy before shield collapse and another statement you support shows it can take 2000 times that. Its surprising how you wonder why I question your deductive process when you put forth these kinds of inconsistencies to try and support your arguments. You have just thoroughly discredited yourself 2000 times over by bringing forth arguments that contradict each other in such a blatant manner yet heralding that you are correct in both cases.

What exactly is wrong with their estimate of the E-D's size? If this is your justification for the evidence that the asteroid is so much bigger than the evidence suggests, then demonstrate why. Additionally, you assume the Enterprise would have taken the shortest route through the asteroid, but you have no proof of this. Thirdly, you assume they were intending to vapourise the asteroid, but again, why would this be the case? They didn't need to vapourise the asteroid in order to destroy it and achieve their objective.

Its 40 meters shorter than it should be. The only source that states that size is an older technical manual, with newer technical manuals stating it is 195m. My evidence of size comes from a technical manuals so where does yours come from since you place no stock in technical manuals? I am sure you would not mind giving me a reference on a number that if incorrect would change the outcome of the equation you support.

I have nothing concrete to support that they did take the shortest route but you having nothing at all to support that they did not. At least logic and common sense dictates that they would use the shortest route with the least possible danger. Them traveling through the most rock possible while using a device that left the last ship that used it half imbedded in rock is so irrational it hurts and only leads me to further question your deductive and logical capacities for suggesting they they would do such a thing without evidence to the contrary. What happened to Occams Razor that you bring up so frequently? Is the simplest solution to what direction they would take to escape the longest one with the most risk? Also why would they not vaporize the asteroid? I again point out that while the word “destroy” is vague yes he also used the words “...it would preclude any possibility of the Pegasus falling into Romulan hands” You can not preclude any possibility of the Pegasus or its technology falling into Romulan hands unless the ship is completely destroyed. Considering that Riker knew exactly what was on the ship and the trouble it would cause if the Romulans found it he would have known that the ship would have needed to be utterly vaporized to prevent any sort of salvaging of technology.

In other words, you're dismissing the obvious of the visuals- that the explosion was not very big and did not destructive damage of any kind.

Yes I am admitting it did not look big but my evidence shows the intensity of the explosion and the possibility that the explosion only looked small from that perspective.

The photosphere of a star like the sun (not unlike the star in Relics) has a temperature of between 4500 and 6000 kelvins.

The corona of our sun has a temperature of 10,000,000 kelvin, and the star in Enemies was a bigger more energetic star. I think that makes my case for me.

Yes it is bigger and more energetic, however do I again have to reiterate increasing flare activity, the distance the Ha'tak was away from the star(which equals a massive drop in temperature), and the close proximity the enterprise was to the star in “Relics”? Also this argument is more fuel to the fire of your arguments having no continuity or logic because to even admit that the enterprise can survive being 150,000km away from a star exhibiting large flare activity for hours with only 23% shields conflicts with your claim that a galaxy class ship with full shields can only take .095kt of energy before completely collapsing. With every attempt to prove me wrong you seem to shoot yourself in the foot with progressively larger weaponry. This should plainly illustrate that you are quoting anomalies?

[darth_timon]

I think not. Picard stated the intent was to disable and/or destroy the shuttle still on the surface to keep the entity from using it to travel off planet. Since you have admitted that even in your calculations a torpedo is a few megatons or even if it is only hundreds of kilotons using it on full would be extreme overkill and was not even shown and hundreds of kilotons would have done something to the creature in close proximity and they neither wanted to kill it nor did they mention it was hurt or dead afterward. This suggest a deliberate low yield.

I love how you continue to twist my words. We can take the Pegasus figures (even the kiloton ones) as a high-end, but remember, Pegasus is dialogue-driven evidence, and trumped by visuals (Skin of Evil fits neatly into the catagory of low firepower, especially in light of the evidence from First Contact, Changing Face of Evil and Nemesis).

We have seen sporadic shots hitting random parts of the Scimitar over a relatively long period of time because none of the ships could successfully lock onto the ship to do any real damage ince most of their fire missed and went harmlessly off into space . We saw that once the Enterprise got a hold of the Scimitar it hit it so hard that they lost the cloak entirely. Also since fire was finally able to be concentrated on a single section instead of sporadically across the shields damage was shown to be done to the Scimitar backed up by Shinzon's urgency at getting the cloak back online when fighting the enterprise alone on a level playing field and the the sparks and all the rest of the effects shown on the bridge of the Scimitar. It is not speculative, it looks slow motion. Also since it is a canon fact that ships can accelerate to relativistic speeds quickly that slow collision does not make logical sense except for theatrical purposes. Even only using maneuvering thrusters the enterprise D was able to accelerate to moving kilometers in seconds. I would assume that the smaller more advanced Enterprise E would be able to accelerate to much higher speeds while utilizing its main sub-light engines as well as after channeling more power into them. If you apply common sense the collision is explainable. You also keep failing to mention that the Enterprise has shields too.

If weight of fire is a factor in why the forward shields should be much lower than 70%, then we must also factor in the weight of fire on the Scimitar's aft shields (such as when the Warbird was chasing the Scimitar and scoring hit after hit). If the 70% is an overall figure, then you need to factor in the aft shields in your equations as well, since they also took a lot of hits. The bottom line is still that the forward shields did not take this hugely overwhelming firepower that you insist upon.

And slow motion is still speculation. We had enough shots of the bridges of the two ships where no one was moving about in slow-mo to conclude the scene was at normal speed. I really hope you don't persist with this line of reasoning when there's nothing to back it up.

Finally, the Enterprise's shields make little difference here. They failed as the result of the collision too, and I note with interest that you continue to ignore my point about how even 20% shields, under the firepower you claim, should have resisted such a low speed collision.

Yes, but the shot did not overload the power grid. You talk about me speculating, but now you are doing so. First it was pure force that reduced the shields but somehow that same force did not have the capability to destroy the ship after the shields were taken down. Interesting. That seems like the weapon is most effective against shields or maybe designed to disrupt shields. Also what directed energy weapon have you seen that cause shields to fail with a single hit but only cause superficial damage to an unshielded target. Your analogy is flawed and you know it since you are going back and forth between raw power and special weapon that only damages shielding which means it has the effect of overloading shields. You can also claim that Occam's Razor is against me all you want but that doesnt make you correct. God-like being trumps everything scientific as far as the simplest answer by virtue of a god-like being possessing the ability to do almost anything regardless of if it makes sense or not. You are simply not accepting the fact that you ship and your weapon were produced by a being that is not limited to the laws of physics because that would force you to abandon this anomaly entirely. This is like a Q or an Ascended being fully creating a ship from nothing and you trying to rationally come up with other reasons why the ship is not able to be defeated. The simplest answer would be because a super powerful being created it and they can do almost whatever they want. So in actuality Occam's Razor is against you.

That's not the point I am getting at. You are insisting that the power is meaningless and there must another mechanism, even though in the dialogue the Enterprise takes two less powerful shots and the shields hold (which naturally implies the application of extra power made the difference). You gloss over this with appeals to god-like beings, then assume that because it knocked out the shields, it must do structural damage, even though are real-life examples of how applying extra power to something can cause damage without causing structural damage! In short, you have no evidence to back up your claims about fancy mechanisms, and until you produce something concrete, I am going to follow your own example of refusing to address the point any further.

1st argument: 400GW (.095kt) can completely knock down galaxy class shields through brute force.

2nd argument: You gave a “ very generous” figure of 3.6Mt per torpedo to destroy the asteroid. I will use only 5% of this per torpedo, which I can assume is no longer “generous” in your mind, and that is .18Mt or 180Kt. Galaxy class ships have been shown to take multiple torpedo hits, but lets just assume it can only take 1 for now just for the sake of argument.

So even using only your logic, despite how flawed I find it, one statement you support claims a galaxy class can only take .095kt of energy before shield collapse and another statement you support shows it can take 2000 times that. Its surprising how you wonder why I question your deductive process when you put forth these kinds of inconsistencies to try and support your arguments. You have just thoroughly discredited yourself 2000 times over by bringing forth arguments that contradict each other in such a blatant manner yet heralding that you are correct in both cases.

Pegasus sets us an upper-limit based on the observed firepower and clear statements I have provided so far. It also blows your own arguments about multi-megaton yields out of the water, a point I note that you overlook.

However, Pegasus is dialogue-based evidence and is trumped by the visual evidence of the other episodes I have mentioned. It can be take as a speculative and generous upper limit, but one which still falls well short of your unsupported firepower claims.

Its 40 meters shorter than it should be. The only source that states that size is an older technical manual, with newer technical manuals stating it is 195m. My evidence of size comes from a technical manuals so where does yours come from since you place no stock in technical manuals? I am sure you would not mind giving me a reference on a number that if incorrect would change the outcome of the equation you support.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(NCC-1701-D) Hopefully that link will work. It states the size on the right hand side.

I have nothing concrete to support that they did take the shortest route but you having nothing at all to support that they did not. At least logic and common sense dictates that they would use the shortest route with the least possible danger. Them traveling through the most rock possible while using a device that left the last ship that used it half imbedded in rock is so irrational it hurts and only leads me to further question your deductive and logical capacities for suggesting they they would do such a thing without evidence to the contrary. What happened to Occams Razor that you bring up so frequently? Is the simplest solution to what direction they would take to escape the longest one with the most risk? Also why would they not vaporize the asteroid? I again point out that while the word “destroy” is vague yes he also used the words “...it would preclude any possibility of the Pegasus falling into Romulan hands” You can not preclude any possibility of the Pegasus or its technology falling into Romulan hands unless the ship is completely destroyed. Considering that Riker knew exactly what was on the ship and the trouble it would cause if the Romulans found it he would have known that the ship would have needed to be utterly vaporized to prevent any sort of salvaging of technology.

Has it occured to you that they may not have known the quickest route out of the asteroid? I'll grant the odds are better for them taking the quicker route, but the possibility still exists that they didn't.

Plus, they wouldn't need to vapourise the asteroid to destroy it and Pegasus. The ship itself was an older design, hardly valuable to the Romulans, and the phase cloak could have been destroyed without having to vapourise the ship.

Yes I am admitting it did not look big but my evidence shows the intensity of the explosion and the possibility that the explosion only looked small from that perspective.

The explosion was small, even in relation to the small and quite close 8472 ships. You cannot therefore assert it was a significant blast.

Yes it is bigger and more energetic, however do I again have to reiterate increasing flare activity, the distance the Ha'tak was away from the star(which equals a massive drop in temperature), and the close proximity the enterprise was to the star in “Relics”? Also this argument is more fuel to the fire of your arguments having no continuity or logic because to even admit that the enterprise can survive being 150,000km away from a star exhibiting large flare activity for hours with only 23% shields conflicts with your claim that a galaxy class ship with full shields can only take .095kt of energy before completely collapsing. With every attempt to prove me wrong you seem to shoot yourself in the foot with progressively larger weaponry. This should plainly illustrate that you are quoting anomalies?

I love how your rhetoric is becoming more prominent. Firstly, you obviously glossed over how the corona of a star is much more energetic than the photosphere, which is where the E-D was. The E-D lost some shield strength to a flare yes, but they don't report any additional flares in their proximity do they? Plus, as I have already mentioned, the star was not that much different to our own, given the presence of liquid water on the inside of the Dyson Sphere.

Finally, the Hatak was stated to be in the blue giant's coronasphere, aka corona, which as I mentioned, is much more powerful than the photosphere, even in respect of our own sun, let alone a more powerful star. The Hatak absorbed much more energy.

[Rise Of The Phoenix]

Hope everyone's been well, I've been really busy lately so haven't had a chance to write any replies to my posts, I think Tetsujin replied to a couple of the posts you wrote to me Darth, I may write my own replies to those posts, maybe not since I think Tetsujin has dealt with the points raised in them pretty well.


I've been looking at this whole star issue, with how much activity the vessels can deal with.
In Relics Enterprise was dealing with increasing solar flare activity, if we use Echoes as a template for how much flare activity a ZPM powered 304 shield can take then the Enterprise can take more damage since.
The Daedalus was sitting further away and took a shot from a flare that lasted much less time (problems began to occur with heat building behind the shields moments after the flare began), Enterprise was sitting close to the photosphere and was taking impacts from flares for much longer.
That example shows the enterprise has stronger shields.

Relics taken next to the Enemies example of dealing with solar activity also shows the Enterprise has stronger shields than the Ha'Tak, since the star is emitting solar flares and had entered a period of increased activity and enterprise's sensors detected that the flares would continue to grow.

From what I understand flares can equal millions of 100 megaton explosions at once, no flares were mentioned to be hitting the Ha'Tak so it must be conluded that the Enteprise has stronger shields.

[darth_timon]

Hope everyone's been well, I've been really busy lately so haven't had a chance to write any replies to my posts, I think Tetsujin replied to a couple of the posts you wrote to me Darth, I may write my own replies to those posts, maybe not since I think Tetsujin has dealt with the points raised in them pretty well.

Hi again- thought you'd abandoned us!

I've been looking at this whole star issue, with how much activity the vessels can deal with.
In Relics Enterprise was dealing with increasing solar flare activity, if we use Echoes as a template for how much flare activity a ZPM powered 304 shield can take then the Enterprise can take more damage since.
The Daedalus was sitting further away and took a shot from a flare that lasted much less time (problems began to occur with heat building behind the shields moments after the flare began), Enterprise was sitting close to the photosphere and was taking impacts from flares for much longer.
That example shows the enterprise has stronger shields.

Relics taken next to the Enemies example of dealing with solar activity also shows the Enterprise has stronger shields than the Ha'Tak, since the star is emitting solar flares and had entered a period of increased activity and enterprise's sensors detected that the flares would continue to grow.

From what I understand flares can equal millions of 100 megaton explosions at once, no flares were mentioned to be hitting the Ha'Tak so it must be conluded that the Enteprise has stronger shields.

I don't recall the sheer number of solar flares the E-D was in range of, although it did not appear to take a direct hit from one, and I think there was only one seen on screen. Aside from the flare, the E-D was sitting in the star's photosphere, which typically has a temperate of between 4500-6000 Kelvins. The corona is between one million and three million Kelvin, and the corona is where the Hatak was- and bear in mind it was in the corona of a bigger, more energetic star. From this, it is not unreasonable to conclude that a Hatak can endure greater levels of energy for longer. I'll try to address the Daedalus thing tomorrow.

[Rise Of The Phoenix]

Hi again- thought you'd abandoned us!

Na, just busy, I've been on holiday and I've been ill since I came back.

I don't recall the sheer number of solar flares the E-D was in range of, although it did not appear to take a direct hit from one, and I think there was only one seen on screen. Aside from the flare, the E-D was sitting in the star's photosphere, which typically has a temperate of between 4500-6000 Kelvins.
The corona is between one million and three million Kelvin, and the corona is where the Hatak was- and bear in mind it was in the corona of a bigger, more energetic star. From this, it is not unreasonable to conclude that a Hatak can endure greater levels of energy for longer. I'll try to address the Daedalus thing tomorrow.

It wasn't specified exactly how many flares were nearby, though Data did say the Star had entered a period of increased activity, which likely means it's more active than the norm.
He also states that the flares are continuing to grow, he wouldn't mention it if it wasn't something that would concern the Enterprise.
I know Enterprise had entered the photosphere, in the beginning it wasn't rocking the crew all over the place, later in the episode we see the shield bubble surrounding the enterprise being struck by star material and the enterprise is being rocked violently, indicating that it's being struck by a violent phenomena, whilst it's not outright stated that flares are directly striking the ship, I think it's safe to assume that is the case given the circumstances.

I also need to talk about Descent, in that episode the Enterprise D uses it's metaphasic shields to stay in a star's corona for some time, although that amount of time isn't specifically stated, I think the star was a yellow one, I realise that is a less active one.

[Tetsujin]

Hi again- thought you'd abandoned us!



I don't recall the sheer number of solar flares the E-D was in range of, although it did not appear to take a direct hit from one, and I think there was only one seen on screen. Aside from the flare, the E-D was sitting in the star's photosphere, which typically has a temperate of between 4500-6000 Kelvins. The corona is between one million and three million Kelvin, and the corona is where the Hatak was- and bear in mind it was in the corona of a bigger, more energetic star. From this, it is not unreasonable to conclude that a Hatak can endure greater levels of energy for longer. I'll try to address the Daedalus thing tomorrow.

You dont need to recall the numbers since the Enterprises shields obviously would not be affected by solar flares not even in their vicinity. So activity was near enough to the ship to be a problem. Also 150,000km from the star is not the photosphere. The photosphere is the relative surface of the star. The said they would be entering the photosphere had they remained on course but they did not so it can be concluded that they did not enter the photosphere. The Hatak was in the corona yes, but incredibly far away. So while the blue giant may have been more energetic, the Ha'tak was so much farther away from it than the enterprise was from the star in relic you cant use “bigger and more energetic” as an argument. You may be able to shoot me from a miles away with a high caliber rifle, but me shooting you in the face with a pistol point blank would have the same effect.

[Tetsujin]

I love how you continue to twist my words. We can take the Pegasus figures (even the kiloton ones) as a high-end, but remember, Pegasus is dialogue-driven evidence, and trumped by visuals (Skin of Evil fits neatly into the catagory of low firepower, especially in light of the evidence from First Contact, Changing Face of Evil and Nemesis).

No one is twisting your words you are just noticing how they dont make sense when someone repeats them back to you in a different way. Why would it be trumped by visuals? Visuals that dont make sense dont trump anything. And how are kiloron yields high end? Your own calculations say it is in the megaton range. I used only 5% of your numbers(which by your logic I should have used 50% since you claim the asteroid is only 5km) and it still doesnt fit with your other evidence. Also even your calculations were low end in the respect that you did your calculations based of a high end torpedo load, the assumption that they had a full compliment of torpedoes at the time, and them using all of their torpedoes when Riker clearly used the wordB]most[/B]. You can try to add the word low end afterwards all you want but you were still proven to contradict yourself.

So after doing those calculations for “Pegasus” when you are proven to be contradicting yourself drastically you act as though the episode “Pegasus” does not matter anymore since it was only dialogue? If it was inconsequential and trumped by dialogue why even do the calculations to attempt to prove a yield. You cant bring something up then say it doesnt matter when it doesnt suit you any longer. You seem to place so much illogical faith on pure visuals that you ignore common sense. I have shown you visual evidence of phasers destroying a mountain 200 years ago on overload and on normal mode was rated at 500GJ and there is evidence of phasers being set to super low setting to drill into planets and we saw the defiant crack an asteroid with a single volley. So are you again stating that a disruptor blast from a Borg ship logically amounts to a C4 explosive? You argument are based on anomalies and have no basis in logical fact.

If weight of fire is a factor in why the forward shields should be much lower than 70%, then we must also factor in the weight of fire on the Scimitar's aft shields (such as when the Warbird was chasing the Scimitar and scoring hit after hit). If the 70% is an overall figure, then you need to factor in the aft shields in your equations as well, since they also took a lot of hits. The bottom line is still that the forward shields did not take this hugely overwhelming firepower that you insist upon.

It is not simply how much fire shields took in total since shields now regenerate at a much faster pace (as demonstrated by the Enterpise E's shields being severely weakened in areas and then being battle ready a short time later). I am stating that most of the weapons fired at the Scimitar missed and the ones that did hit were few and far between with the Scimitar maneuvering to minimize damage. Also the romulans were in the fight for a very short time before being disabled, and it was long after that when the Enterprise made its move. The foreward shields on the Scimitar took the most concentrated firepower in the shortest period of time in that single exchange and was then exposing their foreward shields to even more punishment when chasing after the enterprise when they cloak was down(which allowed the enterprise to actually lock weapons onto the ship.) I am not saying the power was hugely overwhelming(considering how much phaser fire and torpedoes the Enterprise should have technically been able to unload on the Scimitar in a short period of time given it has 3 forward photon tubes and the quantum launchers which were all poised to strike in that moment.) I am saying it was more concentrated than all the rest of the firepower that hit the Scimitar both in terms of time and intensity.

]And slow motion is still speculation. We had enough shots of the bridges of the two ships where no one was moving about in slow-mo to conclude the scene was at normal speed. I really hope you don't persist with this line of reasoning when there's nothing to back it up.

It is not speculation since relativistic speeds achieved by starships is canon. If you transfer energy into the impulse engines and go full speed ahead and you are not moving at relativistic velocities you are either moving in slow motion or the shot has been slowed down in general to better display combat. Relativistic speeds are the basis of my reasoning and I hope that you do not illogically continue to try an dismiss my information even though it is canon while insinuating that I am not giving any supporting evidence at all.

Finally, the Enterprise's shields make little difference here. They failed as the result of the collision too, and I note with interest that you continue to ignore my point about how even 20% shields, under the firepower you claim, should have resisted such a low speed collision.

How do they make little difference? Are you are illogically implying that since both shields failed after a collision that they somehow didnt interact which is why they failed? Shields vs shields then hull vs hull. Also I have explained you error already. Impulse engines quickly accelerate a ship to relativistic velocities and this is a canon fact. To suggest that the were not capable of relativistic speeds while using full impulse power is going against canon. It even goes against the movies own continuity because we have seen the enterprise accelerate faster than that and we have seen the Scimitar bank harder than that. The logical explanation is that they were moving in slow motion. Unless Occam's Razor has something more simple to offer considering relativistic speeds are canon and no damage was seen done to either ships sublight propulsion systems.

[Tetsujin]

That's not the point I am getting at. You are insisting that the power is meaningless and there must another mechanism, even though in the dialogue the Enterprise takes two less powerful shots and the shields hold (which naturally implies the application of extra power made the difference). You gloss over this with appeals to god-like beings, then assume that because it knocked out the shields, it must do structural damage, even though are real-life examples of how applying extra power to something can cause damage without causing structural damage! In short, you have no evidence to back up your claims about fancy mechanisms, and until you produce something concrete, I am going to follow your own example of refusing to address the point any further.

Yes, I am insisting that the power stated is not difinitive as logic would dictate given all the evidence to the contrary. Also since you yourself has done calculations that prove a shields can take many times the energy of a 400Gw blast(while only using 5% of your numbers). Again I will go back to the paint remover analogy. Another apt analogy would be while Aspirin does help headaches, however if you take an insufficient amount it will not help you regardless of possessing the capability to alleviate a headache. Another example would be that magnets are used to pick up cars but you would not be able to pick up a car with a refrigerator magnet. Your argument simply isnt logical since you are ignoring intensity playing a factor in result. Appeals? An entity in the show was a god-like being. “He” had the power to kill an entire race just by thinking it. The entity also created the ship that attacked the Enterprise. So saying that there is a possibility that the ship was merely an extension of his will is not illogical. If “he” can will the death of an entire race, “he” can certainly will the shields of the enterprise down. So there are real life examples of directed energy weapons not doing damage to an object? If there are I would very much like for you to show me? Or are you merely confusing an electric current with a particle weapon? The evidence is the show itself. Worf said “400GW of particle energy” not 400GW of electric current. You are caught in an illogical statement and and are incorrectly trying to attach the effects of an electric current to that of a particle weapon knowing full well that they are not the same and do not have the same effects on matter. In fact you even assuming that the weapon doesnt affect hulls but can easily overpower shields aid the logic of either a weapon designed to disrupt shields or a powerful being will at work. So I again ask you to show me an example of a particle weapon not causing any structural damage. You completely ignoring the presence and influence of this being goes to show that you are arguing not with logic but with the intention of being right at any cost. If you were arguing with logic there would be no way that you would ignore the entity pulling the strings who has the power to do almost whatever he wanted. Its like going to the zoo and saying the zoo was completely normal.......despite the fact you saw a flying pink elephant.

Pegasus sets us an upper-limit based on the observed firepower and clear statements I have provided so far. It also blows your own arguments about multi-megaton yields out of the water, a point I note that you overlook.

I overlooked nothing. I stated that I thought your calculations were incorrect from the start. However even using you own evidence and calculations I proved that all the evidence you have brought forth thus far conflicts with your own numbers. I do not recall any piece of evidence you have brought for that isnt contradicted by the high kiloton yields your own calculations support. I stand by the 64Mt figure, but noticed that you can not bring any evidence that doesn’t contradict itself leading to proof that you are arguing anomalous low ends and not averages.

However, Pegasus is dialogue-based evidence and is trumped by the visual evidence of the other episodes I have mentioned. It can be take as a speculative and generous upper limit, but one which still falls well short of your unsupported firepower claims.

You statemnt has nothing to do with what I know since I used your own calculations to prove you wrong Lol. I again will point out I believed your math to be incorrect from the beginning based on many obvious factors that have nothing to do with torpedo yields(I have stated these reasons earlier in this post). Also I took 5% of your generous upper limit and proved all your other pieces of evidence wrong. 5% of a generous figure still proving you wrong denotes either you other evidence is anomalous or you can not do math correctly since you calculated that 3.6Mt was even remotely correct even if it was generous when 5% of that proves you wrong on all other accounts. A 20 fold variation wouldnt even qualify as a rough estimate even while being generous.



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(NCC-1701-D) Hopefully that link will work. It states the size on the right hand side.[/QUOTE]

hahahahaha http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_class_starship.

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Galaxy_class

So its stands at 2 to1 for now. And I wouldnt trust wikipedia for specialized information(like sci fi and other detailed information on shows) Memory Alpha is a dedicated ST wiki. Also just in case you were thinking it, the Enterprise D is not a different size than other Galaxy class ships -_-.

Has it occured to you that they may not have known the quickest route out of the asteroid? I'll grant the odds are better for them taking the quicker route, but the possibility still exists that they didn't.

No, it did not occur to me since it would be completely illogical. Sensors were not impaired and there is no indication that they were.Also even if they were not functioning they had taken scans of the asteroid prior and they not the router they took which would have allowed them to extrapolate their place in the asteroid and their general direction. Also they were preparing to phase through rock in a strait line, so a point an go method is all that would have been required. So while the possibility does exist that they did not take at least the most relatively short route from their position it is very unlikely that they did not.

Plus, they wouldn't need to vapourise the asteroid to destroy it and Pegasus. The ship itself was an older design, hardly valuable to the Romulans, and the phase cloak could have been destroyed without having to vapourise the ship.

One, the ship itself was inside the asteroid and partially imbedded in the asteroid. So I would vaporization would likely be required especially to preclude any chance of the Romulans finding anything. Two, if the ship was not valuable at all, why were the Romulans even bothering since they did not know of the cloaking device. Three, re-read one to explain why the ship and the asteroid needed to be destroyed completely. Finally if they did not completely destroy the asteroid the Romulans would have found pieces of a federation starship embedded in rock in a highly suspect manner. That alone would have been giving them too much information when your goal was to keep them from gaining anything at all.

The explosion was small, even in relation to the small and quite close 8472 ships. You cannot therefore assert it was a significant blast.

I never tried to assert that it was a large blast, size is your fixation not mine. I asserted that it was an intense blast since despite traveling away from the explosion at relativistic speeds, having a head start of at least 3 seconds before detonation to move away, and traveling parallel to the direction of the blast wave Voyager was still shaken by the explosion.

I love how your rhetoric is becoming more prominent. Firstly, you obviously glossed over how the corona of a star is much more energetic than the photosphere, which is where the E-D was. The E-D lost some shield strength to a flare yes, but they don't report any additional flares in their proximity do they? Plus, as I have already mentioned, the star was not that much different to our own, given the presence of liquid water on the inside of the Dyson Sphere.

I glossed over nothing. I knew before hand that the corona of a star is much more energetic than the photosphere. I have even tried to the best of my abilities to understand the two main theories behind why such a thing is possible. I also believe I stated before that they stated in the episode that they were heading for the photosphere, not that they were in it. Also a distance of 150,000km away from the star would seem to support this. The lost shields to a flare and data said that the star was becoming unstable and flares were becoming more intense. The time of 3 hours was cause by increased flare activity. If the flares were in another area of the star then they would not have an effect on the Enterprise and would not have been an issue. I also never disputer that the star was similar to our own.

Finally, the Hatak was stated to be in the blue giant's coronasphere, aka corona, which as I mentioned, is much more powerful than the photosphere, even in respect of our own sun, let alone a more powerful star. The Hatak absorbed much more energy.

I find it interesting how you twist dialogue and ignore logic for your own purposes. They did not state at any time that they were inside the photosphere. Data's exact words were “We will enter the photosphere in three minutes” and then within the next 30 seconds of dialogue they are in a orbit at 150,000km. I dont see how you take that and assume they are in the Photostat when even the visuals(which you hold in such high regard) show that they clearly are not.. Also I seem to have mentioned that even on our much smaller and less powerful star, the corona is a region that extends millions of miles into space from the photosphere. So it mean that the Ha'tak could have been millions of miles away from the star while the Enterprise is stated to be only 150,00km.


In the end, if you were accepting of logic that is, you would accept the fact that even if you prove up and down that the weapons are weak in the show it doesn't matter in a real conflict. In reality all they have to do it add more antimatter to make weapons more powerful, use all the technologies they are forbidden to use by treaties, random plot elements, or were simply disappeared by writers because they were too awesome. Even by pure numbers a starship carries hundreds of tons of matter and antimatter. It would take a 30tons to equal over a Teraton. So so one ship could make multiple gatebuster yield weapons simply from using small portions of their own fuel. If it was an already assembled weapon it would simply be in addition to the ships arsenal and fuel reserves. Also SG projectiles and fighters would be useless since phaser beams in reality move at the speed of light and would, coupled with the reality of an extremely accurate targeting system, be a massively effective CIWS. I would also take the delta flyer over a puddle jumper, dart, and F303 any day of the week. Especially if they made a battle variant featuring ablative hull armor, cloak, and a heavier weapons load out.

[darth_timon]

Na, just busy, I've been on holiday and I've been ill since I came back.

It wasn't specified exactly how many flares were nearby, though Data did say the Star had entered a period of increased activity, which likely means it's more active than the norm.
He also states that the flares are continuing to grow, he wouldn't mention it if it wasn't something that would concern the Enterprise.
I know Enterprise had entered the photosphere, in the beginning it wasn't rocking the crew all over the place, later in the episode we see the shield bubble surrounding the enterprise being struck by star material and the enterprise is being rocked violently, indicating that it's being struck by a violent phenomena, whilst it's not outright stated that flares are directly striking the ship, I think it's safe to assume that is the case given the circumstances.

I also need to talk about Descent, in that episode the Enterprise D uses it's metaphasic shields to stay in a star's corona for some time, although that amount of time isn't specifically stated, I think the star was a yellow one, I realise that is a less active one.

I'll grant that the E-D may well have been hit by more than one flare. That seems consistent with the transcript I found of the episode. I will also grant that solar flares can release millions of megatons. However, all this does is make Relics the exception to the rule- Skin of Evil, Survivors, Pegasus, First Contact, Changing Face of Evil and Nemesis all goe against this. What's more, all the visual examples of firepower are in line with low firepower.

The Hatak in Enemies sat for several hours in the corona of a blue giant- a region which although millions of miles from the star, is actually more energetic than the photosphere and cromosphere. The Hatak would have faced consistent bombardment from more energy, which would make Hatak shields stronger than their Starfleet counterparts. For an interesting look at the number crunching, have a look here: http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=352

[toddvegaswraiths]

i think if you had the startrek ships and Wraith ships, then that would result in a UBER ship that could destroy life as we know it....

[darth_timon]

You dont need to recall the numbers since the Enterprises shields obviously would not be affected by solar flares not even in their vicinity. So activity was near enough to the ship to be a problem. Also 150,000km from the star is not the photosphere. The photosphere is the relative surface of the star. The said they would be entering the photosphere had they remained on course but they did not so it can be concluded that they did not enter the photosphere. The Hatak was in the corona yes, but incredibly far away. So while the blue giant may have been more energetic, the Ha'tak was so much farther away from it than the enterprise was from the star in relic you cant use “bigger and more energetic” as an argument. You may be able to shoot me from a miles away with a high caliber rifle, but me shooting you in the face with a pistol point blank would have the same effect.

I am going to provide a quote from Mike Wong's site that goes into a great deal of detail about the Relics incident:

In "Relics", the Enterprise-D was pulled into a close orbit (150,000km) around a star enclosed in a Dyson sphere. This star was a G-class star which was most likely less than 45% of Sol's luminosity because the Dyson sphere was 2E11m in diameter (66% of Earth's orbital diameter) yet green vegetation and bodies of water could be clearly seen on its inner surface. If the star had been as luminous as Earth's sun, the bodies of water would have quickly boiled away and the vegetation would have been destroyed. The star is said to be releasing a lot of prominences, but we never see the ship actually get engulfed in one of these prominences so they aren't really relevant. At a 150,000km distance from that star's surface (perhaps 700,000km from its centre), the power intensity would be roughly 25-30 MW/m². This is based on the inverse-square law; divide the total luminosity by the surface area of a sphere of 700,000km radius to get intensity.

In order to determine the shield absorption rate at that intensity, we must multiply the intensity by rate of bombardment at that intensity, This figure is derived from calculating the ship's profile area. The stellar radiation which hits an object will be based on the distance from the star, the luminosity of the star, and the ship's profile area. Imagine taking a silhouette of the ship; the area of this silhouette is what the radiation from the star "sees". Now, a GCS is roughly 610m long, and 130m high when viewed from the side. If we assume that it is a rectangle, then its projected surface area is 78,000 m² (note that this is a very generous estimate- the ship is obviously not a solid rectangle when viewed from the side). Some would argue that the entire area of an ellipsoid "bubble" should be used instead of the profile of the ship, thus bumping up the estimate to 100,000 m², and while it is easy to get drawn into a debate over such minutae, it is ultimately a waste of time (it is an obvious nitpick to wrangle over a difference of only 30% in calculations based on low-accuracy source data in the first place). However, the 1E5 m² estimate does have the advantage that it simplifies the mathematics.

In any case, if we simply multiply the power intensity of 25 to 30 MW/m² by 1E5 m², we get 2.5 to 3.0 TW (let's say 3 TW for simplicity's sake). They said they could withstand roughly 3 hours of bombardment at this rate, and their shields were said to be down to 23%. Quarter-strength shields could mean one of two things:

1) a full-strength shield could handle 3 TW for 12 hours.
2) a full-strength shield could handle 12 TW for 3 hours.

Either way, it would appear that roughly 30 megatons of stellar radiation should overwhelm a Federation starship's shields over an extended period of time. A smaller amount would probably suffice if applied all at once.

So, a chap with a university qualification in Applied Sciences has concluded, based on a combination of visual data and dialogue, that the best shield strength for a GCS is 30MT. If you want more details, have a look here: http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/...s/Shield1.html

An Ancient on Spacebattles.com did the following for a Hatak:

Low End Luminosity;

(3.827x10^26) * 20,000 = Luminosty (total power output) = 7.654x10^30W

(6.96x10^8) * 7 = Radius = 4.827 x 10^9m

4 x pi x r^2 = Area = 2.928 x 10^20 m^2

Luminosity / Area = Power per m^2 per second = 2.614 x 10^10 W

Multiply by shield area and then by time = (2.614x10^10) * 7,602,654 * 60 * 60 * 10 = 7.154 x 10^21 W = Total Shield Capacity =1.709TT

High End Luminosity;

(3.827x10^26) * 1,400,000 = Luminosty (total power output) = 5.3578x10^32W

(6.96x10^8) * 15 = Radius = 1.004x10^10m

4 x pi x r^2 = Area = 1.369x10^21m^2

Luminosity / Area = Power per m^2 per second = 3.913x10^11 W

Multiply by shield area and then by time = (3.913x10^11) * 7,602,654 * 60 * 60 * 10 = 1.07x10^23W = Total Shield Capacity =25.6TT

Medium Luminosity;

(3.827x10^26) * 710,000 = Luminosty (total power output) = 2.717x10^32W

(6.96x10^8) * 11 = Radius = 7.656x10^9m

4 x pi x r^2 = Area = 7.36x10^20m^2

Luminosity / Area = Power per m^2 per second = 3.69x10^11W

Multiply by shield area and then by time = (3.69x10^11) * 7,602,654 * 60 * 60 * 10 = 1.01x10^23W = Total Shield Capacity =21.148TT

I also point out once again the Hatak being further away from the star does not matter here- if the more energetic region is further away, and the Hatak is in the more energetic region of a more energetic star, it stands to reason it would absorb more energy.