Culture GSV vs Star Trek galaxy

[StarWarsStarTrek]

A Culture GSV is traveling along its way when the Q decides to play a prank on it and transports into the Alpha Quadrant. The GSV decided for the time to try and, um, fix the nearby civilizations and bring peace to the galaxy.

Short of nigh omnipotents such as the Q, is there any Star Trek alliance, faction, etc that can do jack about it?

[Mike DiCenso]

Sure it's possible for some ST factions to defeat a single Culture vessel. The Borg have the potential. Species 8472 (the version seen in "Scorpion" could do it. Depending on when you set this, the 29th through 31st century United Federation of Planets. Quite possibly the Voth. An alliance of the Dominion and the UFP could possibly manage a stalemate for a while.

Don't know if the First Federation could do much, but even one ship small was pretty powerful compared to the Constitution class Enterprise.

The Machine Lifeform planet that built V'Ger.

The Metrons qualify as borderline on the "Omnipotent aliens".
-Mike

[General Donner]

The Culture isn't just wanked, it's not taken seriously by its own author. Debating it is like VS between Tom Corbett, Space Cadet on the one hand and Futurama on the other. It just doesn't work. SDN-style Star Wars is both hard sci-fi and weaker than War of the Worlds Martians when compared to it.

One GSV can destroy whole planets by itself. One GSV can rebuild the Culture's entire infrastructure from scratch using its techno-nanowank. One GSV can use its omnipotent magitech ("Affectors") to shut down whole planets from lightyears away and brainwash their inhabitants into obedient slaves to the Culture. And it pulls its entire energy from "The Grid", aka free thermodynamic violation and perpetual motion machines for everyone. Makes hypermatter look hard as fission.

Hell outside of anime and web comics I doubt there are any significant contestants with them for wank. Dr. Who maybe?

The GSV stomps every Star Trek faction, barring possibly the "omnipotent energy aliens". Its only limit is its relatively slow FTL, which means it'll take it a couple of months or years to get within range of all planets.

[Trinoya]

There are at least a dozen races just in the original series alone that could defeat a single culture battleship... you might be able to double that number if you incorporate all the movies and later shows.


That said: Would the federation be allowed all of its technologies, how much warning are they given...


Long story short: Anything short of the, "we can exit the normal universe" or "so powerful we can think and you die" races are going to have one hell of a time defeating the vessel. They'd be lucky if they got to see it, much less shoot at it.

Time travel would be a bitch for the culture to deal with though. i'm gonna say races with dedicated time travel tech survive/win this.

[General Donner]

Time travel doesn't allow anyone to hit back at the GSV. Using Culture wanktech it can just sit around in "hyperspace" and shoot at them however much it likes with no option for retaliation like an extremely extreme example of how old-time Trekkies thought warp strafing would kill the Galactic Empire. (And given the series outright pissing on conservation of energy, it won't ever run out of ammo.) At best the time machines allow for them to flee from it -- if they get enough advance warning. The Culture's a post singularity style AI wank society, with supercomputers in charge of everything that fire teleported weapons at whole fleets in the space of microseconds, so once they're in range it's already going to be too late to attempt much anything for your average space opera.

Oh, and affectors. The best "I Win!" button that's been invented since The Power Of Love.

[Mike DiCenso]

I disagree there. Temporal tech allows you to learn precisely where at any given time the GSV will appear. You then select an appropriate spot where the thing is not going to be able to strike anyone or anything, then mine the whole area with devices such as the temporal disruptor from VOY's "Relativity", and utterly destroy it.

Conversely, since the Culture has never experianced temporal tech, you rush off to the Delta Quadrant and the Krenim Imperium and get ahold of the temporal weapon ship and it's weapon, then proceed to wipe out the GSV from existance all while sitting safely sitting outside time.
-Mike

[General Donner]

I disagree there. Temporal tech allows you to learn precisely where at any given time the GSV will appear. You then select an appropriate spot where the thing is not going to be able to strike anyone or anything, then mine the whole area with devices such as the temporal disruptor from VOY's "Relativity", and utterly destroy it.

That assumes the GSV's in "real" space in the first place and can't teleport out before the anti-time weapons strike. Given that its activation time for the hyperdrive is in the micro- or nanoseconds (see above -- some SBC people say picoseconds but them I see no reason to take seriously so far)), they'll have to take it by complete surprise, detonate considerably faster than real-life nukes, and propagate their effect millions of times faster than the speed of light to catch it. From what I get online (haven't seen the episode in question) the effect isn't instantaneous or even nearly so, pretty much ruling it out IMO.

Plus, GSVs are huge (more Death Star size than GCS or Star Destroyer) with massively redundant systems. You have to destroy it all in one go or it just comes back angrier. And they have another magical defense besides shields -- a "Trapdoor Tarpacle" that teleports away all harmful effects from the ship. Presumably that would include spacetime stuff.

Conversely, since the Culture has never experianced temporal tech, you rush off to the Delta Quadrant and the Krenim Imperium and get ahold of the temporal weapon ship and it's weapon, then proceed to wipe out the GSV from existance all while sitting safely sitting outside time.
-Mike

The Time Ship weapon effect still wasn't instantaneous spread or effect -- you could visibly see things fade away. The GSV, after experiencing a microsecond of it (assuming it didn't detect the the attack in advance) decides it doesn't like it and just moves into Culture hyperspace and continues to blast the Alpha, Delta and all other quadrants from there with affectors and a literally endless supply of hyper-missiles (unlike replicators, Culture ships _do_ make stuff literally from nothing) without suffering major damage.

The guys in the time ship might be safe from the GSV (it doesn't have weapons that can hit "outside time" from what I know -- having the sillier technobabble usually helps) but the Krenim also can't hit it in turn. They can only watch how it goes about destroying all they have that wasn't brought on board.

There's a reason why the Culture is called the king of wank and why the people at SBC drawl over it. It's simply the most ridiculously powerful sci fi there is out there except comic books and anime.

[StarWarsStarTrek]

This is absolutely hilarious. I have no disrespect for this forum, but it's my opinion, that, be it a good thing or a bad thing, the members here are more devoted to Star Trek than the stardestroyer.net members are devoted to Star Wars.

Both stardestroyer.net and spacebattles.com agree that a single Culture GSV is an Out of Context Problem for high end ICS Star Wars and high end WH40k.

Since the GSV is in the Star Trek galaxy via the OP, time travel won't do anything, because they can't hit the Culture universe which isn't in this fight.

I would, however, be interested in these races within the OP parameters that some members have been claiming can defeat a GSV.

Did somebody just claim that the borg could defeat a Culture GSV? Are you serious? The same borg that cannot defeat the Federation?

[Khas]

If the Borg threw all their resources - millions of ships, going by Chakotay's quote in "Scorpion" - then they might be able to.

Once V'Ger starts scanning it - in V'Ger's own style, of course - the GSV is going to have a tough time.

On a slightly unrelated note, the fact that the Culture, Dr. Who, the Xeelee Sequence, and the Downstreamers all come from Britain has me thinking that the Brits must be overcompensatin' for somethin'.

[Mike DiCenso]

This is absolutely hilarious. I have no disrespect for this forum, but it's my opinion, that, be it a good thing or a bad thing, the members here are more devoted to Star Trek than the stardestroyer.net members are devoted to Star Wars.

Both stardestroyer.net and spacebattles.com agree that a single Culture GSV is an Out of Context Problem for high end ICS Star Wars and high end WH40k.

Since the GSV is in the Star Trek galaxy via the OP, time travel won't do anything, because they can't hit the Culture universe which isn't in this fight.

I would, however, be interested in these races within the OP parameters that some members have been claiming can defeat a GSV.

Did somebody just claim that the borg could defeat a Culture GSV? Are you serious? The same borg that cannot defeat the Federation?

No, the fact is that you don't pay any attention to what anyone is actually writing to understand what is being proposed in the first place. This is what got you into such deep doo-doo in the other threads you participated in, and I might point out that you are the one so ignorant of the subject of ST the tech and storylines that you actually apparently thought that a fan-made video and a fan-made photoshop picture were canon depictions of actual Trek events.

Time travel would work not to prevent the GSV from necessarily ever having been made, but in plotting out where it has surfaced from hyperspace (and General Donner is being rather insanely generous to the GSV in assuming that Culture-verse hyperspace exists in the ST-verse for it to exploit), and mine the place with temporal disruptors and other similar devices that can, in theory, totally destroy the GSV in Planck seconds before it can even realize what is happening and stop it.

As for the Borg, suggesting that they have the potential of defeating the GSV is not the same thing as being able to. The Borg clearly have limitations, at least the Borg as portrayed after VOY's "Scorpion" episodes, and even then they were powerful enough that modest sized UFP fleets could not harm even a fully prepared Borg sphere ship in "Endgame".

You claim that the Borg aren't capable of defeating the Federation, yet you provide no evidence of this. What we do know is that the Borg haven't even seriously tried compared to what we know that are capable of as far as their dealings with the Federation are concerned. In each of two whole times the Borg have bothered themselves with coming after the Federation with single large cube ships. However we know in episodes like "Scorpion, part I and II", "Hope and Fear", "Dark Frontier, and more that the Borg, when they want to, can field huge fleets of cube ships and other smaller craft.
-Mike

[StarWarsStarTrek]

If the Borg threw all their resources - millions of ships, going by Chakotay's quote in "Scorpion" - then they might be able to.

Once V'Ger starts scanning it - in V'Ger's own style, of course - the GSV is going to have a tough time.

On a slightly unrelated note, the fact that the Culture, Dr. Who, the Xeelee Sequence, and the Downstreamers all come from Britain has me thinking that the Brits must be overcompensatin' for somethin'.

Uh, even a fleet of millions of borg cubes has the problem that Culture GSV's can wipe out fleets of ships in microseconds. Even if it takes a full microsecond for a GSV to destroy a borg cube, that's a million cubes destroyed per second, from light years away.

[Mike DiCenso]

That assumes the GSV's in "real" space in the first place and can't teleport out before the anti-time weapons strike. Given that its activation time for the hyperdrive is in the micro- or nanoseconds (see above -- some SBC people say picoseconds but them I see no reason to take seriously so far)), they'll have to take it by complete surprise, detonate considerably faster than real-life nukes, and propagate their effect millions of times faster than the speed of light to catch it. From what I get online (haven't seen the episode in question) the effect isn't instantaneous or even nearly so, pretty much ruling it out IMO.

Did you even read the articles linked to on the temporal disruptors? We're talking about knowning exactly when and where the GSV will come out of hyperspace (this also assumes that hyperspace cannot be accessed by a sufficently advanced Trek power: i.e. the Borg transwarp, or Voth transwarp). The temporal disruptors will be there before the GSV, not fired at it or anything, and they will be out of phase with the rest of the universe making their detection difficult.

Plus, GSVs are huge (more Death Star size than GCS or Star Destroyer) with massively redundant systems. You have to destroy it all in one go or it just comes back angrier. And they have another magical defense besides shields -- a "Trapdoor Tarpacle" that teleports away all harmful effects from the ship. Presumably that would include spacetime stuff.

Source for this? The temporal disruptor mines allow you to do just that. Destroy the thing in one go with a massive disruption.

The Time Ship weapon effect still wasn't instantaneous spread or effect -- you could visibly see things fade away. The GSV, after experiencing a microsecond of it (assuming it didn't detect the the attack in advance) decides it doesn't like it and just moves into Culture hyperspace and continues to blast the Alpha, Delta and all other quadrants from there with affectors and a literally endless supply of hyper-missiles (unlike replicators, Culture ships _do_ make stuff literally from nothing) without suffering major damage.

The guys in the time ship might be safe from the GSV (it doesn't have weapons that can hit "outside time" from what I know -- having the sillier technobabble usually helps) but the Krenim also can't hit it in turn. They can only watch how it goes about destroying all they have that wasn't brought on board.

Why do you presume that the GSV would be able to target anywhere in the ST Milky Way galaxy with impunity while it sits in hyperspace? I do know that the scanning range of Culture ships has limits, and it must move about, or change position in realspace from time-to-time.

As for the Krenim timeship, the weapon was fast enough that it wiped out an entire planetary civilization in seconds. A GSV is much smaller than a planet. Furthermore, being outside time gives an advantage that the crews of those ships could work on the problem of developing sufficent defenses and weapons to affect the GSV, then going back in time and delivering that tech prior to it's appearance in the ST-verse in the first place.

This is basically a Xelee-type strategy.

There's a reason why the Culture is called the king of wank and why the people at SBC drawl over it. It's simply the most ridiculously powerful sci fi there is out there except comic books and anime.

No, the Xelee and Photino Birds, Downstreamers, Time Lords, ect are nearly as bad, or far worse.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

If the Borg threw all their resources - millions of ships, going by Chakotay's quote in "Scorpion" - then they might be able to.

Once V'Ger starts scanning it - in V'Ger's own style, of course - the GSV is going to have a tough time.

On a slightly unrelated note, the fact that the Culture, Dr. Who, the Xeelee Sequence, and the Downstreamers all come from Britain has me thinking that the Brits must be overcompensatin' for somethin'.

Uh, even a fleet of millions of borg cubes has the problem that Culture GSV's can wipe out fleets of ships in microseconds. Even if it takes a full microsecond for a GSV to destroy a borg cube, that's a million cubes destroyed per second, from light years away.

Can they? Please cite where this has ever happened in a canoncial Culture story. I request full passages quoted so that there is no misunderstanding, or links to such thereof.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

Oh, another thing. GSVs are not all created equal. The are several distinct classes of GSVs known so far to the Culture fleets.

They can range from a mere 25 km to 200 km in size. So Donner, which class of GSV are we dealing with? Also, interestingly enough, it is possible for the three Minds controlling the GSV to disagree, and rather violently with one another, so if the situation in the ST MW galaxy gets too nasty, they might wind up fighting one another, and as such an exiled Mind would be a huge advantage to whomever it decided to throw it's lot in with.
-Mike

[StarWarsStarTrek]

Kudos to a poster from starfleet Jedi.

The Killing Time plunged intact through the third wave of ancient Culture ships; they rushed on, towards the Excession. It fended off a few more of the warheads and missiles which had been directed at it, turning a couple of the latter back upon their own ships for a few moments before they were detected and destructed. The hulk of the Attitude Adjuster fell astern behind the departing fleet, coasting and twisting and tumbling in hyperspace, still heading away from and outstripping the Killing Time as it braked and started to turn.

There was only a vestigial fourth wave; fourteen ships (they were targeting it now). Had it known there were so few in the final echelon, the Killing Time would have attacked the second wave of ships. Oh well; luck counted too. It watched the Attitude Adjuster a moment longer to ensure it really was tearing itself apart. It was.

It turned its attention to the remaining fourteen craft. On its suicide trajectory it could take them all on and stand a decent chance of destroying perhaps four of them before its luck ran out; maybe a half-dozen if it was really lucky. Or it could push away and complete its brake-turn-accelerate manoeuvre to make a second pass at the main fleet. Even if they'd be waiting for it this time, it could reckon on accounting for a good few of them. Again, in the four-to-eight range.

Or it could do this.

It pulled itself round the edge of the fourteen ships in the rump of the fleet as they reconfigured their formation to meet it. Bringing up the rear they had had more warning of its attack and so had had time to adopt a suitable pattern. The Killing Time ignored the obvious challenge and temptation of flying straight into their midst and flew past and round, targeting only the outer five craft nearest it.

They gave a decent account of themselves but it prevailed, dispatching two of them with engine field implosures. This was, it had always thought, a clean, decent and honourable way to die. The pair of wreckage-shells coasted onwards; the rest of the ships sped on unharmed, chasing the main fleet. Not one of the ships turned back to take it on.

The Killing Time continued to brake, oriented towards the fast vanishing war fleet and the region of the Excession. Its engine fields were gouging great livid tracks in the energy grid as it back-pedalled furiously.

It encountered the ROU which had dropped aft with engine damage, falling back towards it as the Killing Time slowed and the other craft coasted onward and struggled to repair its motive power units. The Killing Time attempted to communicate with the ROU, was fired upon, and tried to take the craft over with its effector. The ROU's own independent automatics detected the ship's Mind starting to give in. They tripped a destruct sequence and another hypersphere of radiation blossomed beneath the skein.

Shit, thought the Killing Time. It scanned the hyper volumes around itself.

Nothing threatening.

Well, damn me, it thought, as it slowed. I'm still alive.

This was the one outcome it hadn't anticipated.

It ran a systems check. Totally unharmed, apart from the self-inflicted degradation to its engines. It slackened off the power, dropping back to normal maxima and watching the readouts; significant degradation from here in about a hundred hours. Not too bad. Self-repairing would take days at all-engines-stop. Warhead stocks down to forty per cent; remanufacturing from first principles would take four to seven hours, depending on the exact mix it chose. Plasma chambers at ninety-six per cent efficiency; about right for the engagement system-use profile according to the relevant charts and graphs. Self-repair mechanisms champing the bit. It looked around, concentrating on the view astern. No obvious threats; it let the self-repairers make a start on two of the four chambers. Full reconstruction time, two hundred and four seconds.

Entire engagement duration; eleven microseconds. Hmm; it had felt longer. But then that was only natural.