Culture GSV vs Star Trek galaxy

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Re: Culture GSV vs Star Trek galaxy

Post by User1659 » Fri Oct 07, 2011 6:59 am

I have to say upfront Im a culture nut of any one has been in SL Starflet
you would have come across Spuglyfuglet the Culture Drone.

So saying that heres what I think.

The culture dos not play fair, they make every Villains in ST look like a street thugs.
They cheat, they lie, they campaigns to manipulate and shift other civilizations to be just like them. Its not speed the culture has its time, lots and lots of time.

Banks once said a topical mind as an IQ in the 10,000s, even Q him self said his was only 8000 (but he lies we all know that) so he dumps an GSV in ST space.

So in the few Picoseconds to takes the ships mind to work out its just meet a Sublimed
shows done this. Now it would love to go and Sublimed it self and head off for a wee chat but minds are built NOT to do this.

Wile thinking this its looking around and finds it knows where it is, Why?
Well in Banks story "State of the Art" he says a GCU went to earth in 1977
left it as is as a test case. So Star Maps and some local info long out of date.

Humm it thinks best hide, Cloaks its self and looks around.

What to do, head home, it can do that in about 3 years or change its self and go faster.
O stick around for a look see.

Lets say it stays for a bit.

1st think is any race with ESP had it, Banks never talks about it so the ships spotted.

2ed same with time Travel, This has all ready been talked about I have nothing to add.

But lets say its meets a SF ship.

Hello it says wile downloading the chips complete data banks and then uplifting the ships Computer to Self-awareness
"hello it says, would you like to join the culture?, we can ask your crew later, but for now lets talk."

So its finds out lots most Techs of the week and Omaga Particals, O that sounds fun have look later)

So it heads off to have a look around now with the horrible advantage of now knowing
about ESP and Time travel.

You can see where this is going I can tell.

They need not fire a shot, just some bad press here, an introduction of new tech there.
Blocked or sent info etc.

The Borg (all of them every where)
One of the meany things the GSV could do is, Down load all the borg minds it meets into a the Virtual, then west them in the real wile weeding them all of there need for a cybernetic parasite. Then once its done say "hi would you like to be in the culture?"

in a nut shell if a GSV dos not com a cropper V one of ST Unba Races (which is asking some) with in 1st contact. The will run a muck and try and make every one into sax changing Hippies.

I have a feeling that Q will step in at this point and send them home chuckling all the way.

Mind you the Culture also know beings as powerfull as the Q-C

Hummm

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Re: Culture GSV vs Star Trek galaxy

Post by StarWarsStarTrek » Mon Apr 23, 2012 8:42 pm

Trinoya wrote:
The Iconian virus, if it exists on any of their other worlds, requires all systems it encounters to be shut down and wiped to prevent the ship from exploding. It's the only way to deal with it. The culture AIs would be screwed. Nonetheless I'll give you that they don't exist technically.
Completely useless against a culture mind. In the time that it takes for the delivery ship to appear, locate the GSV and attempt to disperse the virus, the mind could have simulated the life-death cyles of a million universes, while effectorizing the ship into a giant lollipop.

The point is that they could defeat a single culture vessel, what was so hard to understand about that?
Because you say so?


As I said before 8472 has the capability to ESCAPE the culture
The time that it takes for one to think of the possibility of escape, and for his/her electrical impulses to reach a foot to take a step, the mind would have destroyed the entire fleet a thousand times over. Do you understand that Culture ships fight entire battles in microseconds[/i[?
and choose the time and place of their attack, and they have the demonstrated fire power to hurt it. Meaning numbers + time + learning = victory sooner or later... it could take them 1000 years, or it could take them a million tries, but sooner or later they'd succeed due to sheer probability.


Nope, hide in hyperspace, then gridfire. Species 8472 will run out of ships long before they can take on a GSV, and literally cannot touch one in hyperspace.

There are, however, a few NON omnipotents who are powerful enough to do so in ST, for the most specific example, the Douwd.


The Douwd cannot even bring people back to life. Mass Effect Citadel Races can do this; the Culture most certainly can. Unless if they have nanosecond reaction times, they don't stand a ghost of a chance.

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Re: Culture GSV vs Star Trek galaxy

Post by Trinoya » Wed Apr 25, 2012 6:07 pm

Almost everything in your post can be attributed to, "because I say so" as well. You're arguing against probability, and I'm arguing for probability, because there isn't enough evidence to argue anything else.

However, there was one thing that had absolutely nothing to do with that. I shall address it.

StarWarsStarTrek wrote: The Douwd cannot even bring people back to life. Mass Effect Citadel Races can do this; the Culture most certainly can. Unless if they have nanosecond reaction times, they don't stand a ghost of a chance.

What do the capabilities of mass effect have to do with anything?

Moving on past that thought: You're presuming the culture vessel will automatically discern what he is, what he is capable of, and kill him before he blinks them out of existence, that is something you'd have to prove, and you can't. The Culture vessel will, per the Douwds own capability, be unable to detect what he really is, as he is able to mask it.

To that end: Remember they are also busy doing that task for the entirety of the star trek galaxy, which includes dealing with consuming the total knowledge of the entire universe... something even they will have trouble with.

Personally, odds are they may be just a wee little bit busy.

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Re: Culture GSV vs Star Trek galaxy

Post by StarWarsStarTrek » Wed Apr 25, 2012 8:48 pm

Trinoya wrote:Almost everything in your post can be attributed to, "because I say so" as well. You're arguing against probability, and I'm arguing for probability, because there isn't enough evidence to argue anything else.

However, there was one thing that had absolutely nothing to do with that. I shall address it.
On the contrary, you haven't explained how a swarm of species 8472, for example, would ever take out a ship residing in a different dimension.

Your ideas all assume that the GSV will simply sit still in one place and do absolutely nothing to defend itself. For example, there isn't even a shadow of a conceivable plot in which a deadly virus would ever make it aboard the GSV. Not because I say so; because the mind can analyze and run a complex analysis on said virus, then replicate it, then immunize against it, and then contemplate the metaphorical implications of Plato's teachings in the time that it takes for any mortal's brains to exchange electrical impulses to even subconsciously think about delivering it.
What do the capabilities of mass effect have to do with anything?
That you are under the impression that being able to bring people back to life is impressive in this context?
Moving on past that thought: You're presuming the culture vessel will automatically discern what he is, what he is capable of, and kill him before he blinks them out of existence, that is something you'd have to prove, and you can't. The Culture vessel will, per the Douwds own capability, be unable to detect what he really is, as he is able to mask it.
And if the Mind deduces that the Douwds are able to shield any attempts at analysis, it can make the conclusion that these beings must be really, really powerful in an infinitesimal time-frame, and would then shift into hyperspace and gridfire at them at will.

Nothing less than the tier of a Q could conceivably challenge a GSV, in any quantity. The Douwd are at least arguable; species 8472, the iconians, or the borg?

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Re: Culture GSV vs Star Trek galaxy

Post by User1657 » Wed Apr 25, 2012 8:53 pm

In Excession, we see a single Culture GSV over the course of forty years produce 90,000 warships. That's something like six ships every day. Each of them are capable to wiping out entire fleets, spread out across dozens of lightyears, in microseconds. They have bombs smaller than you can see that are capable of destroying planets. And, as is explicitly stated, outside of plunging itself into a black hole, there is no natural force in the universe than can harm a Culture ship.

Relevant quotes:
Culture ship weaponry and reaction times:
It sensed the oncoming fleet ahead, like a pattern of brightly rushing comets in that envisaged space, Ninety-six ships arranged in a rough circle spread across a front thirty light years of 3-D space across, half above, half below the skein. Behind them lay the traces of another wave, numerically the same size as the first but taking up twice the volume.
-Excession, Pg 334

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.
-Excession Pg 396

He looked for the Culture ship, then told himself to not to be stupid; it was probably still several trillion kilometres away. That was how divorced from the human scale modern warfare had become. You could smash and destroy from unthinkable distances, obliterate planets from beyond their own system and provoke stars into novae from light-years off . . . and still have no good idea why you were fighting.
-Consider Phlebas, Pg 33

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Suppose we make ourselves known to this ghastly rabble; what happens?' Li stretched his arms out, and looked round us all just long enough to get a few people starting to answer him back, then roared on; 'I'll tell you what! They won't believe us! Oh, so we have moving maps of the galaxy accurate to a millimetre contained in something the size of a sugar cube, oh so we can make Orbitals and Rings and get across the galaxy in a year and make bombs too small to see that could tear their planet apart… -The State of the Art

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Grey Area was Fascinated and Appalled. It had never thought to experience anything like this. It had grown up in a universe almost totally free from threat; providing you didn’t try to do anything utterly stupid like plunge into a black or a white whole, there was simply no natural force that could threaten a ship of its power and sophistication; even a supernova held little threat, handled properly.
-Excession, Pg 418

*The Grey Area isn't even a main Culture Warship (though it has some armaments, it is just a Contact unit).

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have been rather more constructively employed over the last few decades than might have been imagined. The following have been manufactured:
Type One Offensive Units (roughly equivalent to Abominator class prototype): 512
Type Two Offensive Units (roughly equivalent to Torturer class): 2048
Type Three Offensive Units (roughly equivalent to Inquisitor class prototype, upgraded): 2048
Type Four Offensive Units (roughly equivalent to velocity-improved Killer class): 12288
Type Five Offensive Units (based on Thug class upgrade design study): 24576
Type Six Offensive Units (based on militarized Scree class LCU, various types): 49152
-Excession, Pg 436

*note that this isn't the entire Culture, this was a single Culture ship over the course of 40 years.

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Re: Culture GSV vs Star Trek galaxy

Post by Trinoya » Thu Apr 26, 2012 1:19 pm

StarWarsStarTrek wrote: On the contrary, you haven't explained how a swarm of species 8472, for example, would ever take out a ship residing in a different dimension.
Because it doesn't always reside there? I already stated this is due to sheer probability, if you are willingly ignoring statements that is your problem, not mine.

Your ideas all assume that
See, I was just about to say this about YOUR ideas... more on that later.

That you are under the impression that being able to bring people back to life is impressive in this context?
That's odd, I spoke NOTHING of bringing people back to life being impressive or unimpressive. You brought it all up in the context of, "well even mass effect can do this, so LOL I COMPARE TO MASS EFFECT." It had no place in the debate what so ever.
And if the Mind deduces that the Douwds are able to shield any attempts at analysis, it can make the conclusion that these beings must be really, really powerful in an infinitesimal time-frame, and would then shift into hyperspace and gridfire at them at will.
Naturally you'll have evidence to prove the mind will deduce that? Oh, that's right, it doesn't exist. Remember when I said I'd get back to that idea thing? You're starting at a presumption, hell you're still operating under it, and that presumption was that nothing in trek short of a god can stop a single culture ship. You've yet to show me how the culture ship will magically detect and be immune to the Douwd. You just presume they can because, "Lol culture."

Bring in a new point or two and maybe this will be worth some measure of debate... as it is, it's a year old topic with year old arguments.

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Re: Culture GSV vs Star Trek galaxy

Post by StarWarsStarTrek » Thu Apr 26, 2012 10:49 pm

Trinoya wrote:
Because it doesn't always reside there? I already stated this is due to sheer probability, if you are willingly ignoring statements that is your problem, not mine.
You realize that residing in realspace or hyperspace is a matter of choice and not chance, do you? That a GSV could indeed "always reside there" if it wanted to, and there is jack and shit that Species 8472 could do about it?


That's odd, I spoke NOTHING of bringing people back to life being impressive or unimpressive. You brought it all up in the context of, "well even mass effect can do this, so LOL I COMPARE TO MASS EFFECT." It had no place in the debate what so ever.
My point is that these allegedly god-like beings cannot bring a sapient being back from the dead. They are powerful; they are not on the level of the Culture.

Naturally you'll have evidence to prove the mind will deduce that?
What the fuck? This isn't a unique power that the vessel must posses, it's basic logic, that I deduced within fifteen seconds of reading your reply. Relative to a mind, this is quite literally a fraction of a fraction of a nanosecond; and a mind is also far more intelligent than I am, even accounting for processing speed.

Really, what is next?

"Naturally you'll have evidence to prove species 8472 will deduce to use your strategy?"

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Re: Culture GSV vs Star Trek galaxy

Post by Khas » Fri Apr 27, 2012 12:16 am

StarWarsStarTrek wrote:My point is that these allegedly god-like beings cannot bring a sapient being back from the dead. They are powerful; they are not on the level of the Culture.
Um, yeah. It was mentioned in "Hide and Q" that the Q could easily bring people back from the dead. And the Borg also have this ability, as per the episode "Mortal Coil".

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Re: Culture GSV vs Star Trek galaxy

Post by Trinoya » Fri Apr 27, 2012 4:05 am

StarWarsStarTrek wrote: You realize that residing in realspace or hyperspace is a matter of choice and not chance, do you? That a GSV could indeed "always reside there" if it wanted to, and there is jack and shit that Species 8472 could do about it?
Yes, I'm well aware of how it works. So, pray tell, how is it going to effect all the inter dimensional beings from hyperspace? I'm sorry, it can't. It has to come out to interact with those species, and when it does there is nothing to stop them from destroying it.

This is moot, though, since it was blinked out of existence the moment it showed up and fucked with shit.
My point is that these allegedly god-like beings cannot bring a sapient being back from the dead. They are powerful; they are not on the level of the Culture
.

Allegedly aside, I stated they were powerful and NOT gods specifically. Species far weaker than the Douwd have the capability to bring back the dead. At best we can discern that the entirely sentient constructs it created to replace its lost loved one just wasn't real enough for him.

But regardless, his capability to bring back the dead or not doesn't reflect at all on his capability to THINK the culture out of existence. When you find the cultures magical solution for that, let me know.


What the fuck? This isn't a unique power that the vessel must posses, it's basic logic, that I deduced within fifteen seconds of reading your reply. Relative to a mind, this is quite literally a fraction of a fraction of a nanosecond; and a mind is also far more intelligent than I am, even accounting for processing speed.

Really, what is next?

"Naturally you'll have evidence to prove species 8472 will deduce to use your strategy?"
Whoa, way to go with your proving it there, "THey are powerful so naturally they can deduce it even though they have no reason to because the douwd presents no evidence what so ever to anyone as to what he is... LOLCULTURE FOR THE WIN"

You have to prove they can DETECT him as anything more than a mere human, because he is able to mask what he really is.


As for the 8472 thing: 8472s entire tactic was to jump in, kill targets, and jump back out, it's the ONLY tactic we know they actually do!

So yeah... once you address the Douwd (which is impossible) then we can move on to dealing with any of the lesser races, like 8472.

Until you can prove the culture can survive a being that wipes entire species from existences in the mere blink of a thought, I think it's entirely pointless to continue. So, in short...

Citation

Still

Needed.

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Re: Culture GSV vs Star Trek galaxy

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Fri Apr 27, 2012 10:24 am

AnticitizenOne wrote:In Excession, we see a single Culture GSV over the course of forty years produce 90,000 warships. That's something like six ships every day. Each of them are capable to wiping out entire fleets, spread out across dozens of lightyears, in microseconds. They have bombs smaller than you can see that are capable of destroying planets. And, as is explicitly stated, outside of plunging itself into a black hole, there is no natural force in the universe than can harm a Culture ship.

Relevant quotes:
Culture ship weaponry and reaction times:
It sensed the oncoming fleet ahead, like a pattern of brightly rushing comets in that envisaged space, Ninety-six ships arranged in a rough circle spread across a front thirty light years of 3-D space across, half above, half below the skein. Behind them lay the traces of another wave, numerically the same size as the first but taking up twice the volume.
-Excession, Pg 334

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.
-Excession Pg 396

He looked for the Culture ship, then told himself to not to be stupid; it was probably still several trillion kilometres away. That was how divorced from the human scale modern warfare had become. You could smash and destroy from unthinkable distances, obliterate planets from beyond their own system and provoke stars into novae from light-years off . . . and still have no good idea why you were fighting.
-Consider Phlebas, Pg 33

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Suppose we make ourselves known to this ghastly rabble; what happens?' Li stretched his arms out, and looked round us all just long enough to get a few people starting to answer him back, then roared on; 'I'll tell you what! They won't believe us! Oh, so we have moving maps of the galaxy accurate to a millimetre contained in something the size of a sugar cube, oh so we can make Orbitals and Rings and get across the galaxy in a year and make bombs too small to see that could tear their planet apart… -The State of the Art

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Grey Area was Fascinated and Appalled. It had never thought to experience anything like this. It had grown up in a universe almost totally free from threat; providing you didn’t try to do anything utterly stupid like plunge into a black or a white whole, there was simply no natural force that could threaten a ship of its power and sophistication; even a supernova held little threat, handled properly.
-Excession, Pg 418

*The Grey Area isn't even a main Culture Warship (though it has some armaments, it is just a Contact unit).

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have been rather more constructively employed over the last few decades than might have been imagined. The following have been manufactured:
Type One Offensive Units (roughly equivalent to Abominator class prototype): 512
Type Two Offensive Units (roughly equivalent to Torturer class): 2048
Type Three Offensive Units (roughly equivalent to Inquisitor class prototype, upgraded): 2048
Type Four Offensive Units (roughly equivalent to velocity-improved Killer class): 12288
Type Five Offensive Units (based on Thug class upgrade design study): 24576
Type Six Offensive Units (based on militarized Scree class LCU, various types): 49152
-Excession, Pg 436

*note that this isn't the entire Culture, this was a single Culture ship over the course of 40 years.
I'm yet to see an explanation of the discrepancy between the vaunted microseconds long battle durations in hyperspace and the known FTL max speeds. The battle takes places over too many light years for the FTL speeds to even allow the real battle to last only for real microseconds. Even the text speaks of missile trajectories and maneuvers that seem to imply a certain duration that would easily exceed microseconds only.

As for the production capabilities, let's also not forget that those Culture ships are massive. Like, near Death Star massive for some. Imagine a 100 km long factory which entire point for several years is just to produce smaller ships and you start to get a picture that's less impressive.

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Re: Culture GSV vs Star Trek galaxy

Post by User1657 » Fri Apr 27, 2012 11:50 pm

Mr. Oragahn wrote:[I'm yet to see an explanation of the discrepancy between the vaunted microseconds long battle durations in hyperspace and the known FTL max speeds.
General cruising speed for Culture ships is around the 200,000c mark, but Culture ships are capable of going at far faster speeds (as the Killing Time's run demonstrates) for short bursts if they push their engine to the limit. In this case it was some insane speed like 30 trillion c, but at that speed the engine can only maintain it for several microseconds before it degrades. I believe it even says so at the end of the passage, there was self-inflicted engine degradation, and the ship needed to stop and repair for a few minutes (which is a hell of a long time for a Mind).
As for the production capabilities, let's also not forget that those Culture ships are massive. Like, near Death Star massive for some. Imagine a 100 km long factory which entire point for several years is just to produce smaller ships and you start to get a picture that's less impressive.
The ship wasn't a dedicated manufacturing ship either, it was a Special Circumstances (the Culture's secret service agency) ship, pretending to be an Eccentric (i.e. a ship that has detached itself from the main Culture, and basically goes around doing whatever the hell it wants).

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Re: Culture GSV vs Star Trek galaxy

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sat Apr 28, 2012 1:28 pm

AnticitizenOne wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote:[I'm yet to see an explanation of the discrepancy between the vaunted microseconds long battle durations in hyperspace and the known FTL max speeds.
General cruising speed for Culture ships is around the 200,000c mark, but Culture ships are capable of going at far faster speeds (as the Killing Time's run demonstrates) for short bursts if they push their engine to the limit. In this case it was some insane speed like 30 trillion c, but at that speed the engine can only maintain it for several microseconds before it degrades. I believe it even says so at the end of the passage, there was self-inflicted engine degradation, and the ship needed to stop and repair for a few minutes (which is a hell of a long time for a Mind).
How are those 30 trillion c obtained exactly?
As for the production capabilities, let's also not forget that those Culture ships are massive. Like, near Death Star massive for some. Imagine a 100 km long factory which entire point for several years is just to produce smaller ships and you start to get a picture that's less impressive.
The ship wasn't a dedicated manufacturing ship either, it was a Special Circumstances (the Culture's secret service agency) ship, pretending to be an Eccentric (i.e. a ship that has detached itself from the main Culture, and basically goes around doing whatever the hell it wants).
What was the size of that undedicated ship?

User1657
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Re: Culture GSV vs Star Trek galaxy

Post by User1657 » Sat Apr 28, 2012 2:16 pm

Mr. Oragahn wrote:How are those 30 trillion c obtained exactly?
I didn't do the calcs myself, but those are the numbers I've seen thrown around on other sites... I'll see if I can find a source. It fought a battle across several dozen lightyears in microseconds, so that's pretty damn fast.
What was the size of that undedicated ship?
90km x 60km x 20km.

EDIT: And in defense of Iain M. Banks, since there seems to be a lot of hating on him, he is a very talented author and the majority of his (sci-fi) novels are very well-written. You don't get the sense when reading the novels that he is simply wanking the Culture for the fun of it.

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