The Covenant (Halo) invade the Federation

[Praeothmin]

And then you have the other end of the spectrum with Higher power plasma shots that don't destroy an UNSC ship in one shot, and low Megaton explosions that destroy a lot of Covenant ships in one explosion...

We need to find an average for both franchises for a good debate to be possible.

[Mith]

There might be discrepancies, but just to point out, the higher end feats on these vessels and the like is pretty... high.

Vessels with multi-kilogee accelerations, plasma-torps that accelerates from going near c one way to reversing course and going near c the other way, bombs that are meant to crack open planets and destroy a moon with a proximity detonation, etc.

But so are the Federation calculations. We have bombs that can rip off half the atmosphere of a planet, bombs that can toss starships clear from giant space germs, firepower that can reduce a planet to a cinder, firepower that can destroy all but the core of an earth-like planet in six hours, warp that requires hundreds of megatons just for two seconds, weapons that zap away people in one shot (not even the highest setting), moving moons, and along with a society that can seem to get around the requirements of DET, and even compact a shit-load of antimatter into the size of a bowling ball.

In fact, Star Trek is full of obscure overpowered stuff that people often ignore for MT level calculations, when most of the average stuff is mostly not them giving it their all. In fact, you have to fight for every megaton where as other, more popular sci-fi often get a pass simply because the loud mouth jerkholes like it.

It's utterly retarded. A lot of sci-fi have upper and lower limits with more consistent displays inbetween. In each case (well, save for the low end stuff at times) easily outstrip Covenant or UNSC firepower by orders of magnitudes. There is just no getting around it.

[Picard]

http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=130988

[User1401]

There might be discrepancies, but just to point out, the higher end feats on these vessels and the like is pretty... high.

Vessels with multi-kilogee accelerations, plasma-torps that accelerates from going near c one way to reversing course and going near c the other way, bombs that are meant to crack open planets and destroy a moon with a proximity detonation, etc.

But so are the Federation calculations. We have bombs that can rip off half the atmosphere of a planet, bombs that can toss starships clear from giant space germs, firepower that can reduce a planet to a cinder, firepower that can destroy all but the core of an earth-like planet in six hours, warp that requires hundreds of megatons just for two seconds, weapons that zap away people in one shot (not even the highest setting), moving moons, and along with a society that can seem to get around the requirements of DET, and even compact a shit-load of antimatter into the size of a bowling ball.

In fact, Star Trek is full of obscure overpowered stuff that people often ignore for MT level calculations, when most of the average stuff is mostly not them giving it their all. In fact, you have to fight for every megaton where as other, more popular sci-fi often get a pass simply because the loud mouth jerkholes like it.

It's utterly retarded. A lot of sci-fi have upper and lower limits with more consistent displays inbetween. In each case (well, save for the low end stuff at times) easily outstrip Covenant or UNSC firepower by orders of magnitudes. There is just no getting around it.

That may be true for Star Trek, but they don't have overly ridiculous firepower numbers and the like as central parts of the plot or show. Things that can be considered the most mainstream of canon examples in Trek- the movies- are devoid of such displays. The Enterprise didn't just fire a few weapons to wipe out the whole surface of Veridian III to kill Soren in Generations. The Borg didn't use nuclear-scale weapons to wipe out the missile complex in First Contact. Shinzon having a planet-wiping weapon was a big deal. The movies are situations where the main writers for Star Trek have the most direct control- yet they lack such high-end examples.

Meanwhile, Halo 3 has the Covenant glassing Africa. The Halo Encyclopedia gives the UNSC frigate a main gun with 1.17 teratons of firepower per cannon shot. There may be a few contradictions, but they can be considered the low-end, overridden by more recent and central canon.

[Mike DiCenso]

That may be true for Star Trek, but they don't have overly ridiculous firepower numbers and the like as central parts of the plot or show. Things that can be considered the most mainstream of canon examples in Trek- the movies- are devoid of such displays. The Enterprise didn't just fire a few weapons to wipe out the whole surface of Veridian III to kill Soren in Generations. The Borg didn't use nuclear-scale weapons to wipe out the missile complex in First Contact. Shinzon having a planet-wiping weapon was a big deal. The movies are situations where the main writers for Star Trek have the most direct control- yet they lack such high-end examples.

This is a disengenous statement. Nothing about Star Trek canon policy says anything about the movies abrogating anything else in Star Trek, especially the dozens of statements and examples contrary to your assertion. Most of what you have above there can be explained away, or is contradicted, or is outright incorrect about the vast body of the movies in general. For example, the Borg in ST:FC's goal was not nuclear destruction, but assmiliation, hence they only used what force was absolutely needed to stop Cochrane's warp flight in the Phoenix.

In ST:TMP, we see all space combat occuring, with implications of fantastic firepower as the klingon's torpedo assault on V'Ger takes place over millions of kilometers at warp speed, and the E-1701 herself mostly vaporizes a large asteroid with a single photon torpedo, and Kirk's choice of phasers beforehand indicate that phasers can do the same.

In ST:TWOK, and ST:TSFS, there is almost nothing except ship-to-ship space combat, often with heavily damaged, so what firepower we can see only sets lower limits.

In ST:TVH, we have no space combat since circumstances with the Whale Probe prevent any starship combat from occuring.

ST:TFF shows only the single torpedoes fired by a BoP and the E-1701-A, with the latter being fired down onto the surface with minimal effects. Kirk had made some off-screen orders to Sulu while Spock and Sybok said their good byes to one another and Sybok sacrifices himself to by time for the others by fighting the false God creature. So Kirk had plenty enough time to order a low-yield torpedo, and we know from various episodes, most in particular ST:ENT's "The Expanse", that torpedoes yields are variable, and can be set so lowered that they can merely "knock the comm array off a shuttlepod", which is we see in the ST:TFF incident. So no contradiction there.

In ST:TUC we have all space combat between starships. So nothing there helps your case.

In ST:Generations, we have them not knowing where the Duras sister's Klingon BoP was, so they had to spend time figuring out if the missile was on the planet, or was to be fired from the BoP, and they imply some pretty insane ranges as they contemplate having to lock onto and shoot down a missile that could launched from anywhere in the Veridian star system!

ST:FC is dealt with. ST:Insurrection has no need for planetary bombardment, and all combat is largely between starships or on the surface between troops.

All you are left with is ST:NEM, really. And given that we know from "Whom Gods Destroy" that the Federation has large-scale planetary shielding, we have to assume that there is a property about thalaron radiation which allows it to bypass sych defense in a manner quick enough to implement before the ship can be triangulated and destroyed by other defenses, whereas conventional fleet bombardment would likely meet with failure since they would not be able to sufficently penetrate the shields before all being destroyed.

So what else have you got? Nothing.
-Mike

[Khas]

No, not quite nothing. He still has fanboyism... ;)

[Mike DiCenso]

The Wank is strong with this one. ;-)
-Mike

[User1401]

This is a disengenous statement. Nothing about Star Trek canon policy says anything about the movies abrogating anything else in Star Trek, especially the dozens of statements and examples contrary to your assertion. Most of what you have above there can be explained away, or is contradicted, or is outright incorrect about the vast body of the movies in general.

I never said there is a canon policy for that; only that since they have the most work put into them and attention to detail by the writers, they can be most expected to reflect the writer's vision of the Star Trek universe. It's better than just picking a random episode and holding it up for a "high-end" example.

For example, the Borg in ST:FC's goal was not nuclear destruction, but assmiliation, hence they only used what force was absolutely needed to stop Cochrane's warp flight in the Phoenix.

Assimilation is still possible if you only detonate a small nuclear-scale device. Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and various nuclear weapons tests have hardly rendered our Earth barren and uninhabitable. The Borg's weapons clearly *failed* to either kill Cochrane or render the Phoenix damaged beyond repair- it was temporarily inoperative, but still intact. Either the Borg didn't have such scale weapons on hand- that would certainly not mean that the Borg don't have weapons at all, but it could mean that such scale weapons are not too widespread. Either that, or the Borg are incompetent and arbitrarily chose not to use a single nuclear-scale weapon that would have done the job quickly.

In ST:TMP, we see all space combat occuring, with implications of fantastic firepower as the klingon's torpedo assault on V'Ger takes place over millions of kilometers at warp speed, and the E-1701 herself mostly vaporizes a large asteroid with a single photon torpedo, and Kirk's choice of phasers beforehand indicate that phasers can do the same.

The Klingon assault is notable for range;, however, V'Ger is quite a large target, so it doesn't prove anything about accuracy. We don't even know if the torpedoes did in fact hit the main ship. As for the Enterprise firing on the asteroid, that was a small rock, and doesn't do much to support high

The other TOS movies indeed do not support more mid-range feats as you say, or rather, that do not support mid-range or high-end feats either way.

In ST:Generations, we have them not knowing where the Duras sister's Klingon BoP was, so they had to spend time figuring out if the missile was on the planet, or was to be fired from the BoP, and they imply some pretty insane ranges as they contemplate having to lock onto and shoot down a missile that could launched from anywhere in the Veridian star system!

They were pretty sure that Soren would be on Veridian III to meet up with the Nexus, so if they had wiped out the planet and killed Soren, or made it impossible to survive on Veridian III, that problem would be solved. At least it would be a good place to start. That fact that they didn't either means that they don't have the ability to, or were incompetent for not trying it.

All you are left with is ST:NEM, really. And given that we know from "Whom Gods Destroy" that the Federation has large-scale planetary shielding, we have to assume that there is a property about thalaron radiation which allows it to bypass sych defense in a manner quick enough to implement before the ship can be triangulated and destroyed by other defenses, whereas conventional fleet bombardment would likely meet with failure since they would not be able to sufficently penetrate the shields before all being destroyed.

So what else have you got? Nothing.
-Mike

We have to assume? First provide the quote from "Whom Gods Destroy" regarding planetary shielding, and then we'll see what we have to assume. It may be much more cost efficient to just smuggle a bomb onto Earth somewhere- not an easy task, but the Romulans are especially known for there espionage. Again, the lack of such an approach either suggests incompetence or incapability.

[Mike DiCenso]

I never said there is a canon policy for that; only that since they have the most work put into them and attention to detail by the writers, they can be most expected to reflect the writer's vision of the Star Trek universe. It's better than just picking a random episode and holding it up for a "high-end" example.

Horse hockey, that is exactly what you are saying. There is no consistant vision among the movies, much less the TV series, except for the basic tentent of a bright and optimistic future, though DS9 tended to push the edge of that. But there is no policy for canon that will support that the movies hold to a higher vision of Trek than anything else. If anything, they're less so since they tend to stress more in the way of action and space battles, which goes against the themes Gene Roddenberry set forth and most of the series have adhered to over the decades.

Assimilation is still possible if you only detonate a small nuclear-scale device. Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and various nuclear weapons tests have hardly rendered our Earth barren and uninhabitable. The Borg's weapons clearly *failed* to either kill Cochrane or render the Phoenix damaged beyond repair- it was temporarily inoperative, but still intact. Either the Borg didn't have such scale weapons on hand- that would certainly not mean that the Borg don't have weapons at all, but it could mean that such scale weapons are not too widespread. Either that, or the Borg are incompetent and arbitrarily chose not to use a single nuclear-scale weapon that would have done the job quickly.

Kilotons are still overkill given what we know about about how systematic the Borg are. They came out of a temporal rift that left dehabilitating effects on the ships using it, and as seen by the E-E crew, they were successful in assimilating Earth in the altered timeline. All they needed to do was to kill Cochrane's assistants and seriously disable the misile as well as the silo enough to prevent first contact with the Vulcans. all pf which they did, and it says a lot given how much a nuclear silo such that people down in a control room 20 meters underground could all be killed and much of the equipment seriously damaged like we saw. So without the E-E's crew helping him, it would have been impossible, again as seen in the altered timeline.

The Klingon assault is notable for range;, however, V'Ger is quite a large target, so it doesn't prove anything about accuracy. We don't even know if the torpedoes did in fact hit the main ship. As for the Enterprise firing on the asteroid, that was a small rock, and doesn't do much to support high

The other TOS movies indeed do not support more mid-range feats as you say, or rather, that do not support mid-range or high-end feats either way.

Actually, you are wrong yet again. The battles in TWoK happen the way they do for reasons. The First encounter with Khan, and his ambush of the E-1701 was done to catch Kirk with his proverbial pants down, and to allow Khan to gloat over his victory. Later, Kirk drives into the Mutara Nebula and by necessity of impared sensors, the ships have to close up to point blank range. All other circumstances do not allow for the two ships to fire on each other, such as when both ships were heavily damaged or had the Regula planetoid between them. In ST:TSFS, Kruge used point-blank ambush tactics, making use of the cloaking device to sneak up on, and attack his enemies right in their face (probably to take them by suprise and prevent them from reacting). In the confrontation with the E-1701, he even tells his gunner to hold off on shooting from thousands of km away. In ST:TVH, there is no starship combat because of the Whale Probe's ability to disable ships, and planetary defenses. In ST:TFF, the E-1701 does a precision torpedo strike on False God from what looks to be thousands of km away. Only ST:TUC seems to really support your assertions as all the others have special circumstances, like ST:Insurrection and NEM having their main battles occur in nebula like-phenomena.

Speaking of precision weapons fire, the Klingons had no way of knowing what was at the center of the cloud. So their most reasonable course of action would be to fire at the dead center of the cloud and hope they hit something. Even if they somehow knew what the E-1701's crew learns later on about the size of the V'Ger vessel, that still means that they need to target a roughly 100-200 km object over a distance of at least one A.U. distance to hit it (over 41 A.U. in the original version), which is pretty freaking insanely good.

On ST:TMP torpedo firepower, you are again wrong as we see that the torpedo disappears well before it reaches the asteroid, indicating not only many kilometers of range, but also a rather large size for the asteroid.

They were pretty sure that Soren would be on Veridian III to meet up with the Nexus, so if they had wiped out the planet and killed Soren, or made it impossible to survive on Veridian III, that problem would be solved. At least it would be a good place to start. That fact that they didn't either means that they don't have the ability to, or were incompetent for not trying it.

Really? They didn't necessarily know that he needed to be down on the planet that whole time, which is why they were having to plan for the possibility that the missile could be fired not only from the planet, but also the BoP, from anywhere in the star system, which means that Soren does not have to be down there on Veridian III until after the missile is fired. It would be incompetent for them to just come in guns blazing and wiping out the planet's surface which would have risked them tipping off the Duras sisters as well as Soren.

We have to assume? First provide the quote from "Whom Gods Destroy" regarding planetary shielding, and then we'll see what we have to assume. It may be much more cost efficient to just smuggle a bomb onto Earth somewhere- not an easy task, but the Romulans are especially known for there espionage. Again, the lack of such an approach either suggests incompetence or incapability.

No need to retread over well-trodden ground as there are quite a few threads such as this one here that discuss the matter on SFJN.

Again, here you create a false-dilemma arguement. The third alternative is that they know Starfleet is aware of such a possibility, which is why the Federation borders make use of tacyon nets to sweep for cloaked ships. If one should slip past the net, every planet goes on alert and has shields and other defenses up. The Scimitar was unique among Romulan vessels with it's cloaking device, but the thalaron weapon not only allows them to possibily get through planetary defense, but also given what was described it can cover the whole target planet in mere minutes at most, wipping out all life, and in the process leaving buildings and infrastructure for the Romulans... or in this case Remans to make good use of, and to aid them in setting up a nice new colony as well as seat of power right in the midst of the Federation.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

There might be discrepancies, but just to point out, the higher end feats on these vessels and the like is pretty... high.

Vessels with multi-kilogee accelerations, plasma-torps that accelerates from going near c one way to reversing course and going near c the other way, bombs that are meant to crack open planets and destroy a moon with a proximity detonation, etc.

But so are the Federation calculations. We have bombs that can rip off half the atmosphere of a planet, bombs that can toss starships clear from giant space germs, firepower that can reduce a planet to a cinder, firepower that can destroy all but the core of an earth-like planet in six hours, warp that requires hundreds of megatons just for two seconds, weapons that zap away people in one shot (not even the highest setting), moving moons, and along with a society that can seem to get around the requirements of DET, and even compact a shit-load of antimatter into the size of a bowling ball.

In fact, Star Trek is full of obscure overpowered stuff that people often ignore for MT level calculations, when most of the average stuff is mostly not them giving it their all. In fact, you have to fight for every megaton where as other, more popular sci-fi often get a pass simply because the loud mouth jerkholes like it.

It's utterly retarded. A lot of sci-fi have upper and lower limits with more consistent displays inbetween. In each case (well, save for the low end stuff at times) easily outstrip Covenant or UNSC firepower by orders of magnitudes. There is just no getting around it.

That may be true for Star Trek, but they don't have overly ridiculous firepower numbers and the like as central parts of the plot or show. Things that can be considered the most mainstream of canon examples in Trek- the movies- are devoid of such displays. The Enterprise didn't just fire a few weapons to wipe out the whole surface of Veridian III to kill Soren in Generations. The Borg didn't use nuclear-scale weapons to wipe out the missile complex in First Contact. Shinzon having a planet-wiping weapon was a big deal. The movies are situations where the main writers for Star Trek have the most direct control- yet they lack such high-end examples.

Meanwhile, Halo 3 has the Covenant glassing Africa. The Halo Encyclopedia gives the UNSC frigate a main gun with 1.17 teratons of firepower per cannon shot. There may be a few contradictions, but they can be considered the low-end, overridden by more recent and central canon.

1.17 TT, a low end for an UNSC ship? That's just silly.
It goes without saying that the Halo encyclopedia is the biggest pile of nonsense I've seen in ages in terms of official material. In fact, the Halo cannon is a perpetual sawtooth mess. Claiming teraton level guns for ships which only managed to pull artificial gravity very recently is just too laughable, too absurd to be taken literally, and just doesn't fit with the references. Of course Halo's numbers are all over the place. The encyclopedia makes the mistake of treating the high ends as standards.
It's also due to fans taking cutscenes at face value, and that since Halo 1.

[User1401]

Horse hockey, that is exactly what you are saying. There is no consistant vision among the movies, much less the TV series, except for the basic tentent of a bright and optimistic future, though DS9 tended to push the edge of that. But there is no policy for canon that will support that the movies hold to a higher vision of Trek than anything else. If anything, they're less so since they tend to stress more in the way of action and space battles, which goes against the themes Gene Roddenberry set forth and most of the series have adhered to over the decades.

Again: I know there is no canon policy to support my approach. Nor is there a canon policy that says the high-end stuff takes precedence over mid-range. All I'm saying is that in absence of such policy, the movies merit more attention than a random episode.

Kilotons are still overkill given what we know about about how systematic the Borg are. They came out of a temporal rift that left dehabilitating effects on the ships using it, and as seen by the E-E crew, they were successful in assimilating Earth in the altered timeline. All they needed to do was to kill Cochrane's assistants and seriously disable the misile as well as the silo enough to prevent first contact with the Vulcans. all pf which they did, and it says a lot given how much a nuclear silo such that people down in a control room 20 meters underground could all be killed and much of the equipment seriously damaged like we saw. So without the E-E's crew helping him, it would have been impossible, again as seen in the altered timeline.

The Ent-E was fully capable of using quantum torpedoes upon exiting the temporal rift, so it's not like the Borg were incapable of using whatever nuclear-scale weapons they might have had. The Borg may have been successful without the Enterprise's intervention, but that doesn't excuse them if for some reason they chose a less efficient bombardment method. Also, they apparently weren't expecting any Federation ship to follow them through, so that's another knock against their competence.

Actually, you are wrong yet again. The battles in TWoK happen the way they do for reasons. The First encounter with Khan, and his ambush of the E-1701 was done to catch Kirk with his proverbial pants down, and to allow Khan to gloat over his victory. Later, Kirk drives into the Mutara Nebula and by necessity of impared sensors, the ships have to close up to point blank range. All other circumstances do not allow for the two ships to fire on each other, such as when both ships were heavily damaged or had the Regula planetoid between them. In ST:TSFS, Kruge used point-blank ambush tactics, making use of the cloaking device to sneak up on, and attack his enemies right in their face (probably to take them by suprise and prevent them from reacting). In the confrontation with the E-1701, he even tells his gunner to hold off on shooting from thousands of km away. In ST:TVH, there is no starship combat because of the Whale Probe's ability to disable ships, and planetary defenses. In ST:TFF, the E-1701 does a precision torpedo strike on False God from what looks to be thousands of km away. Only ST:TUC seems to really support your assertions as all the others have special circumstances, like ST:Insurrection and NEM having their main battles occur in nebula like-phenomena.

I mean range as in the range of firepower with weapons, not actual weapons range. Sorry for the poor wording.

Speaking of precision weapons fire, the Klingons had no way of knowing what was at the center of the cloud. So their most reasonable course of action would be to fire at the dead center of the cloud and hope they hit something. Even if they somehow knew what the E-1701's crew learns later on about the size of the V'Ger vessel, that still means that they need to target a roughly 100-200 km object over a distance of at least one A.U. distance to hit it (over 41 A.U. in the original version), which is pretty freaking insanely good.

That is, assuming the torpedoes made it to the main part of V'Ger at all.

On ST:TMP torpedo firepower, you are again wrong as we see that the torpedo disappears well before it reaches the asteroid, indicating not only many kilometers of range, but also a rather large size for the asteroid.

Proof?

Really? They didn't necessarily know that he needed to be down on the planet that whole time, which is why they were having to plan for the possibility that the missile could be fired not only from the planet, but also the BoP, from anywhere in the star system, which means that Soren does not have to be down there on Veridian III until after the missile is fired. It would be incompetent for them to just come in guns blazing and wiping out the planet's surface which would have risked them tipping off the Duras sisters as well as Soren.

Tipping off? What did they have to hide? And while they couldn't know that Soren was on the planet, they at least knew he would need to be on the planet eventually. Render the planet hostile to life by wiping out the atmosphere or some other thing as "demonstrated" by high-end Trek episodes, and that option is over for Soren.

We have to assume? First provide the quote from "Whom Gods Destroy" regarding planetary shielding, and then we'll see what we have to assume. It may be much more cost efficient to just smuggle a bomb onto Earth somewhere- not an easy task, but the Romulans are especially known for there espionage. Again, the lack of such an approach either suggests incompetence or incapability.

No need to retread over well-trodden ground as there are quite a few threads such as this one here that discuss the matter on SFJN.

Again: Provide the relevant quotes. I didn't ask for link to a thread discussing the matter; I just want to see the quotes.

Again, here you create a false-dilemma arguement. The third alternative is that they know Starfleet is aware of such a possibility, which is why the Federation borders make use of tacyon nets to sweep for cloaked ships. If one should slip past the net, every planet goes on alert and has shields and other defenses up. The Scimitar was unique among Romulan vessels with it's cloaking device, but the thalaron weapon not only allows them to possibily get through planetary defense, but also given what was described it can cover the whole target planet in mere minutes at most, wipping out all life, and in the process leaving buildings and infrastructure for the Romulans... or in this case Remans to make good use of, and to aid them in setting up a nice new colony as well as seat of power right in the midst of the Federation.
-Mike

A cloaked ship is not the only way to get a bomb in. Regardless, the fact of the Scimitar's "perfect cloak" only works against the utility of the thalaron weapon- if such a cloak is possible, why not build a bunch of smaller ships with such cloaks and put bombs on them? Seems a bit more cost-efficient. Also, Shinzon's goal was clearly not to preserve the infrastructure of Earth, but eradicate it. A bomb would be better for such a goal. (but then, if incompetence can be expected from anyone, it would be Shinzon).

1.17 TT, a low end for an UNSC ship? That's just silly.

Learn to read. I meant that the contradictions for 1.17 TT could be considered low-end, not the 1.17 TT itself.

It goes without saying that the Halo encyclopedia is the biggest pile of nonsense I've seen in ages in terms of official material. In fact, the Halo cannon is a perpetual sawtooth mess. Claiming teraton level guns for ships which only managed to pull artificial gravity very recently is just too laughable, too absurd to be taken literally, and just doesn't fit with the references. Of course Halo's numbers are all over the place. The encyclopedia makes the mistake of treating the high ends as standards.
It's also due to fans taking cutscenes at face value, and that since Halo 1.

That doesn't make it any less canon.

[Mike DiCenso]

Again: I know there is no canon policy to support my approach. Nor is there a canon policy that says the high-end stuff takes precedence over mid-range. All I'm saying is that in absence of such policy, the movies merit more attention than a random episode.

I accept your concession here since you are unable to provide a reason that we should take your personal vision of Star Trek canon as a sound methodology, other than it might give you an advantage. I see no real difference between choosing a random movie or a random episode. It comes down to a matter or quanity to distingush between statistical outliers, and in that case we have to take the whole body of work, both televised and motion picture alike to make a determination.

The Ent-E was fully capable of using quantum torpedoes upon exiting the temporal rift, so it's not like the Borg were incapable of using whatever nuclear-scale weapons they might have had. The Borg may have been successful without the Enterprise's intervention, but that doesn't excuse them if for some reason they chose a less efficient bombardment method. Also, they apparently weren't expecting any Federation ship to follow them through, so that's another knock against their competence.

So you are saying that the situation regarding both vessels is now perfectly equal? That because the E-E was able to fire quantum torpedoes, though other critical systems were down, means automatically that the Borg sphere, which narrowly escaped from the exploding cube ship and went through the rift would would have full weapons capability? And they did win just using the force that they did. Only the E-E was able to follow, and even then the Borg anticipated things enough that they were able to beam off the doomed sphere and onto the E-E, and came very close to assimilating the ship and it's crew. So I see no real "knock" against Borg competency, other than you merely saying it is.

I mean range as in the range of firepower with weapons, not actual weapons range. Sorry for the poor wording.

That's cool, these things happen to everyone. But the examples I gave in my previous posting to this one do not necessarily support your assumption either way as the vast majority of it is ship-to-ship combat, where shields, ISF, weird hull armor made of things like tritanium, nitrium, and duranium which we have seen withstand thousands of degrees centigrade without even glowing, and in the case of tritanium, is 20 times harder than diamond.

Proof?

Fine, watch this Youtube video from 2:04 through to 2:45. At 2:38 you can see that the flare structures span about the width of the 140 meter saucer section, suggesting a an asteroid of no less than 50 meters before the torpedo disappears just over half a second before detonation. Lucky for you that the ST:TMP novelization is not canon, otherwise you'd really be in trouble as it describes on page 105 the asteroid as being "mountain-sized, nickel-iron". The definition of a mountain given here suggest a mountain should be no less than 2.5 km tall. So that would be a rather impressive bit of firepower, don't you think?

That is, assuming the torpedoes made it to the main part of V'Ger at all.

Come now, there is little reason for the Klingons to have even attempted to shoot at whatever was inside the cloud, if they couldn't reach whatever was there in the first place. In fact, they reacted in shock when the torpedoes were snufffed out on reaching the cloud boundry.

Tipping off? What did they have to hide? And while they couldn't know that Soren was on the planet, they at least knew he would need to be on the planet eventually. Render the planet hostile to life by wiping out the atmosphere or some other thing as "demonstrated" by high-end Trek episodes, and that option is over for Soren.

So what? He beams down in a space suit, or borrows a small shuttlecraft, if the E-D wastes time bombarding the planet.

Again: Provide the relevant quotes. I didn't ask for link to a thread discussing the matter; I just want to see the quotes.

So you concede the point? I provided you with a link to the thread discussing it, and there you will find the quotes you are looking for as well.

A cloaked ship is not the only way to get a bomb in. Regardless, the fact of the Scimitar's "perfect cloak" only works against the utility of the thalaron weapon- if such a cloak is possible, why not build a bunch of smaller ships with such cloaks and put bombs on them? Seems a bit more cost-efficient. Also, Shinzon's goal was clearly not to preserve the infrastructure of Earth, but eradicate it. A bomb would be better for such a goal. (but then, if incompetence can be expected from anyone, it would be Shinzon).

Why are you making the presumption that the Scimitar's cloak will work on a smaller ship? Firing a thalaron weapon as we have seen at the begining of the movie does not destroy non-organic things, like buildings. It killed everyone in the Romulan senate, but that was the extent of it. Thus Shinzon's motivation had to have been to keep infrastructures around after his bombardment with the thalaron weapon since he knew what the weapon would do, and this way he would not necessarily draw fire from planetary defenses, or have to batter them down with his ship's conventional firepower.
-Mike

[Praeothmin]

The Federation is not in thehabit of destroying Class-M worlds, even uninhabited ones, just for the fun of it...
They had other options, and they took them.
Plus Soran's "allies" had a prisoner at that point, namely one Geordi LaForge.
So if they fired upon the planet and killed Soran, they could have signed Geordi's death warrant.
Really brilliant...
They had no way of knowing what was going to happen.
They had every confidence that they could either talk Soran from this, or stop him directly.
The E-D was standing "guard" over the planet, unconcerned about an old, out-gunned BoP staring at their backs...
So no, not destroying Veridian III's surface because it made sense to you doesn't mean they can't, no matter how much you would like it too...

[Mith]

That may be true for Star Trek, but they don't have overly ridiculous firepower numbers and the like as central parts of the plot or show.

Yes they do. TNG's Booby Trap, part of the main plot was that they were in the asteroid field of what used to be a planet. Just because the overall impact of that episode was small for TNG, doens't make it insignificant. Also, TDiC is a massive, massive plot point that's mentioned throughout the rest of the series and was one of the large factors contributing towards the Dominion War.

Things that can be considered the most mainstream of canon examples in Trek- the movies- are devoid of such displays.

Not that you have any evidence of such a claim--but where are you getting that the movies are higher canon?

Oh right, where the sun don't shine.

The Enterprise didn't just fire a few weapons to wipe out the whole surface of Veridian III to kill Soren in Generations.

It's called the Prime Directive. You can't just nuke a planet within sight of another world and expect them not to notice. Even if the impacts aren't immediate, they'll easily be able to tell once they discover efficient STL drives.

And yes, we know from Voyager that Earth had ships that could reach other planets like Mars and Jupiter. Starfleet is forbidden to reveal the existence of advanced cultures to pre-warp civilizations.

The Borg didn't use nuclear-scale weapons to wipe out the missile complex in First Contact.

Why would they have to? Their bombardment was simply to keep the Phoenix from leaving. The Borg aren't going to nuke a site for absolutely no reason. Why would they? They take no joy in mass murder. Even Quark dispensed free advice that nuking a planet you plan to inhabit isn't good for your health.

Your argument, is as mentioned, a false dillema. There's no reason the Borg should have been forced to use a nuke other than you saying so.

Shinzon having a planet-wiping weapon was a big deal.

It was a big deal because of how fast it would kill everything on the planet and the fact that it could be dispersed from a ship with a perfect cloaking device.

The movies are situations where the main writers for Star Trek have the most direct control- yet they lack such high-end examples.

Yes, that explains why the original version of Shinzon that the writers had in mind doesn't at all look like the one that the director gave us. Do you by any chance, have any idea how a movie works? They just don't always go with what the writer wants. In fact, given that movies most often than not try and aim for the mainstream crowd more than they do otherwise, it would in fact, be the most watered down form of Star Trek.

Hell, Picard hardly even acts the same in the movies as he did the TV show. He's far more impulsive and prone to violence than in the TNG series. Only Generations potrayed his character at all accurately--and by that, I mean they just dumbed him down. FC was fine too, Insurrection was just plain out stupid and out of character, and Nemesis had him being far, far more impulsive with him beaming over to Shinzon's ship to lay waste to the crew single handidly rather than try a mass transport and assault the ship with a large security force.

Meanwhile, Halo 3 has the Covenant glassing Africa.

Which is of course, why most of Earth is now incapable of being inhabitable by humans...no wait...

The Halo Encyclopedia gives the UNSC frigate a main gun with 1.17 teratons of firepower per cannon shot.

The Halo Encyclopedia can kiss my ass. Their guns are retarded, their ship masses are retarded, and their weapons calcs are retarded. The original MAC yields were closer to 64 kilotons, not teratons. We've seen megaton weapons blast apart shielded ships. Your argument is simply just not sound.

There may be a few contradictions, but they can be considered the low-end, overridden by more recent and central canon.

Your interpretations are bullshit. What about Halo Legends? Didn't that come after the HE? You know, the same one that shows Booster Frames blowing through shields and small missiles dealing significant damage to bare hulls?

[Mike DiCenso]

Yes they do. TNG's Booby Trap, part of the main plot was that they were in the asteroid field of what used to be a planet. Just because the overall impact of that episode was small for TNG, doesn't make it insignificant. Also, TDiC is a massive, massive plot point that's mentioned throughout the rest of the series and was one of the large factors contributing towards the Dominion War.

This is the important difference. TOS and TNG were not really intended to have a big overall story arc, ala series like B5, DS9, NBSG, or to a lesser extent ST:ENT. So episodes tend to take a stand alone focus, which results in contradictions because the episodes are designed with people who may never have watched the series before in mind, and so that they can be aired in any order in sydication. However, there is nothing about that which makes TOS or TNG suddenly less important as far as ST canon is concerned, and General Order 24, "Booby Trap", TDiC and more are here to stay.
-Mike