Galactic Empire vs Federation of Planets @ Spacebattles

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Galactic Empire vs Federation of Planets @ Spacebattles

Post by User1450 » Fri Nov 05, 2010 3:58 am

http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=176730

An... interesting thread to say the least.

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Re: Galactic Empire vs Federation of Planets @ Spacebattles

Post by Mike DiCenso » Fri Nov 05, 2010 4:27 am

This thread belongs in the "Other Websites" forum. I am moving it there.
-Mike

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Re: Galactic Empire vs Federation of Planets @ Spacebattles

Post by Mith » Fri Nov 05, 2010 4:47 am

Huh, wondering when a thread like this would be made here. Overall, the thread would be more interesting if people would stop with the absurdities. The constant assertions of gigatons by sci-fi fan has gone from innocent claim to denial. It would be nice if he actually started to address the issue.

As for the part of firepower itself, I fear I have little place to go. The more I look into Star Wars firepower, the less and less impressive it seems to be. Inferno makes even a kiloton firepower for the old Venator class ships to be exceptionally generous considering the limitations shown in the book. And while it's clearly not fair to just take that, into consideration, the Clone Wars also suggest lower firepower.

And it's clear to everyone that they can produce massive explosive effects, even in atmosphere for the series. While people in the thread are complaining that I'm using a cartoon with no doubt a limited budget in special effects, I wonder how they can even dare suggest that to me when you have these same people using early and late 90s special effects that were clearly limited at the time, far more so than the Clone Wars are now, yet they themselves demand special treatment.

On one hand yes, a TV show for kids is not going to worry about being 100% scientifically accurate and nor would its budget always allow for that. And yet...it's not written by children and the guy in charge of the operation clearly does appease to the older fans. We see him mentioning it all the time in the show. He does countless references to EU and does his best to reduce the impact upon the series.

In any case, I find myself compelled to use lower firepower capabilities found in the series as they're playing out, but I have this nagging feeling that I don't like it. I thought at first it may be that I'm not applying this to say Star Trek, whose been known to take it up the tailpipe in the past for their rather poor special effects. Dragon's Teeth being the least remarkable of them all, all said and told.

And yet...Star Trek has almost always been about that sort of firepower. The old NX's could take a quarter mines to the hull at point blank range without polorazing the hull and only have a chunk torn out of them (it did serious damage, but the ship would have lived on, obviously) as we saw in Minefield. We also know that the 1701, while it would have been crippled by presumably a 1 kiloton nuclear warhead, it was in space and it didn't seemingly have shields, so it would have been far, far deadlier. This isn't even mentioning the atomic war between 22nd United Earth and the Romulan Star Empire.

So no, it doesn't feel wrong to consider modern Trek in the mid megaton area.

But the more I see Star Wars Clone Wars, the less I see it being some sort of super-advanced society and more like a bashing of old pre-WWI, WWI, and WWII battles in space and with magical knights. That's the feel I'm getting from the series as a whole. I don't see these kilotons or megatons or gigatons on their ships.

That's not to say that they can't produce bombs or the like of such power--they clearly can, but it feels less like they're ships are tossing this out.

Ah well, I suppose for now I will stick to the 1-10 kiloton concept. Personally, I'm holding out for the live action TV series that will start up in 2012. It's a bit off, but it would provide invaluable insight into this problem. Any grumblings of insufficient VFX or maturity on the part of the series would be such a weak argument that it would fall apart before it took off.

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Re: Galactic Empire vs Federation of Planets @ Spacebattles

Post by User1450 » Fri Nov 05, 2010 5:52 am

Well vaporizing the asteroids is controversial between kilotons and megatons, depending on just what you accept. Vaporizing even a 20 meter asteroid in .0666 seconds require 1,000 terajoules or 15,062 terawatts. An 80 meter asteroid, however, requires 64.1 petajoules or 961 petawatts. The 100 meter asteroid, which I have seen for myself, would require 125 petajoules or 1.878 exawatts. Then add all the guns the ISD has and you easily have a single digit megaton to gigaton vessel.

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Re: Galactic Empire vs Federation of Planets @ Spacebattles

Post by Mith » Fri Nov 05, 2010 5:57 am

Bane wrote:Well vaporizing the asteroids is controversial between kilotons and megatons, depending on just what you accept. Vaporizing even a 20 meter asteroid in .0666 seconds require 1,000 terajoules or 15,062 terawatts. An 80 meter asteroid, however, requires 64.1 petajoules or 961 petawatts. The 100 meter asteroid, which I have seen for myself, would require 125 petajoules or 1.878 exawatts. Then add all the guns the ISD has and you easily have a single digit megaton to gigaton vessel.
The asteroid wasn't vaporized. Leo1 has had that pounded into his skull by l33t and Oraghan multiple times now--he simply refuses to accept it.

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Re: Galactic Empire vs Federation of Planets @ Spacebattles

Post by User1450 » Fri Nov 05, 2010 6:01 am

What are you talking about?

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Re: Galactic Empire vs Federation of Planets @ Spacebattles

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Fri Nov 05, 2010 12:58 pm

The budget has precisely nothing to do with the presence of nuclear fireballs or not.

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Re: Galactic Empire vs Federation of Planets @ Spacebattles

Post by sonofccn » Fri Nov 05, 2010 1:57 pm

Mith wrote:We also know that the 1701, while it would have been crippled by presumably a 1 kiloton nuclear warhead, it was in space and it didn't seemingly have shields, so it would have been far, far deadlier.
Now forgive me if I'm recalling wrong but in Balance of Terror{TOS}, the only time the ship was crippled by nuclear weapons, the yield was never stated. Checking here I didn't catch any remarks on the yield at least. Just that it was an old style nuclear device/atomic and without seeing it could be argued in yield from hiroshima scale to even tickling the megaton range as nuclear weapons did back when the show was written. Unless I'm missing something basic again in which case I do apologize.

Looking elsewhere to Tommorow is Yesterday{TOS) we come across another time when the 1701 was threatened by "Old style" nuclear weapons.
Tomorrow is Yesterday wrote:[Bridge]

FLIGHT [OC]: Bluejay 4, you are ordered to close on the UFO. and attempt to force him to land. We want it brought down or at least disabled until the other planes arrive.
CHRISTOPHER [OC]: Acknowledged. Closing on target.
SPOCK: Positive identification, Captain. Aircraft is an interceptor, equipped with missiles, possibly armed with nuclear warheads. If he hits us with one, he might damage us severely, perhaps beyond our capacity to repair under current circumstances.
So in this case the Enterprise, running on impulse power without deflecter screens, is in grave danger but not absolute from a nuclear strike from whatever type of nuclear missile a jet fighter could carry. If anyone could narrow what possibly a jet fighter of that era could be armed with we might be able to establish a lower limit to a connies endurance.

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Re: Galactic Empire vs Federation of Planets @ Spacebattles

Post by Praeothmin » Fri Nov 05, 2010 4:00 pm

My pet peeve in this argument is that, while people (read, Rabid Warsies who cannot accept the truth) say we shoul ignore TCW because it is a kid's cartoon, they willfully forget that nothing in TCW wasn't already shown in the PT movies.
RotS shows us exactly the same size explosions on ships as we see in TCW, hand weapons are no more powerful in RotS as they are in TCW, and starships are no more powerful in RotS as they are in TCW, so if we ignore TCW, then we must also ignore RotS, AotC, and thus we are in effect cherry-picking our sources, which means we can safely ignore all the movies and shows we hate in ST, because they will have been even more constrained with SFX budgets as they would in an animated show...

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Re: Galactic Empire vs Federation of Planets @ Spacebattles

Post by Mith » Fri Nov 05, 2010 5:03 pm

sonofccn wrote:
Mith wrote:We also know that the 1701, while it would have been crippled by presumably a 1 kiloton nuclear warhead, it was in space and it didn't seemingly have shields, so it would have been far, far deadlier.
Now forgive me if I'm recalling wrong but in Balance of Terror{TOS}, the only time the ship was crippled by nuclear weapons, the yield was never stated. Checking here I didn't catch any remarks on the yield at least. Just that it was an old style nuclear device/atomic and without seeing it could be argued in yield from hiroshima scale to even tickling the megaton range as nuclear weapons did back when the show was written. Unless I'm missing something basic again in which case I do apologize.

Looking elsewhere to Tommorow is Yesterday{TOS) we come across another time when the 1701 was threatened by "Old style" nuclear weapons.
Tomorrow is Yesterday wrote:[Bridge]

FLIGHT [OC]: Bluejay 4, you are ordered to close on the UFO. and attempt to force him to land. We want it brought down or at least disabled until the other planes arrive.
CHRISTOPHER [OC]: Acknowledged. Closing on target.
SPOCK: Positive identification, Captain. Aircraft is an interceptor, equipped with missiles, possibly armed with nuclear warheads. If he hits us with one, he might damage us severely, perhaps beyond our capacity to repair under current circumstances.
So in this case the Enterprise, running on impulse power without deflecter screens, is in grave danger but not absolute from a nuclear strike from whatever type of nuclear missile a jet fighter could carry. If anyone could narrow what possibly a jet fighter of that era could be armed with we might be able to establish a lower limit to a connies endurance.
I am indeed refering to the second incident--and yes, I did note that shields were down and they were on impulse. Please also note that the power of a nuclear weapon in atmosphere is far greater than that in space, so it's not really a slam against durability. As for the interceptor, that type carried 1 kt nukes if my memory is correct.

EDIT:

I do lol at Ricrery though. He's been posting in that thread, despite the fact he knows that I've got him on ignore. Interestingly enough, logging out, he seems to be masturbating to the usual, up to and including claiming that Kuat could build hundreds of GCSs in a month or so (or whatever).

Seeing as he's probably stalking me here; Yes Ricrery, perhaps the Kuat yards could produce ships of similar size to the GCS. However, keep in mind that the sophistication is far, far beyond their current technological capabilities. The computer core alone is probably far larger and far more advanced than any computer the Empire has ever built. Given the computer security against R2 and the displayed intelligence by droids in the series, I'd say that would be pretty accurate.

That's not even including all the other massive technological disparities between the two parties. If it took UP 13 years to produce the first three Galaxies, it would take Kuat thirteen decades. But please, continue providing emotional support for Leo1. I'm sure he needs it after his banktrupt arguments about the NCC numbers.

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Re: Galactic Empire vs Federation of Planets @ Spacebattles

Post by sonofccn » Fri Nov 05, 2010 5:57 pm

Mith wrote:I am indeed refering to the second incident--and yes, I did note that shields were down and they were on impulse.
Sorry, you miss typed in space in your post which led me to believe you were refering to Balance Of Terror.
Mith wrote:Please also note that the power of a nuclear weapon in atmosphere is far greater than that in space, so it's not really a slam against durability.
Its actually a fairly good example because even essientally crippled, running on fumes and utterly naked to the world a direct hit with a nuclear missile won't utterly destroy the Connie. It just could inflict greater damage than could be repaired by the crew.

Besides as far as versus ego is concerned it isn't like an ISD in a similar situation could just have the intercepter go to town on it without issue through I do think it would do better. Thicker armor and more "bluntly" built compared to a Connies elegant, thinner curves.
Mith wrote:As for the interceptor, that type carried 1 kt nukes if my memory is correct.
W-25 type warhead appears to have been the standard used from the late fifties to the early eighties, estimated yield 1.5 kilotons.

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Re: Galactic Empire vs Federation of Planets @ Spacebattles

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Fri Nov 05, 2010 6:22 pm

Praeothmin wrote:My pet peeve in this argument is that, while people (read, Rabid Warsies who cannot accept the truth) say we shoul ignore TCW because it is a kid's cartoon, they willfully forget that nothing in TCW wasn't already shown in the PT movies.
RotS shows us exactly the same size explosions on ships as we see in TCW, hand weapons are no more powerful in RotS as they are in TCW, and starships are no more powerful in RotS as they are in TCW, so if we ignore TCW, then we must also ignore RotS, AotC, and thus we are in effect cherry-picking our sources, which means we can safely ignore all the movies and shows we hate in ST, because they will have been even more constrained with SFX budgets as they would in an animated show...
However, a hint of the importance of budget and time is seen in an episode from season 1, with the bounty hunters, where the Galactic Senate counts as many people as an iceberg counts polar bears. It's retarded, but they had no time nor money to tell a story with that many CGI "NPCes". Add laziness and you're done. In the movie, you can bet your mom's garters that this same senate would have been crowded like hell.
That and some nonsense such as in the first episode with AAT that can't even destroy the branches of trees. Plus silly ranges issues which make the stomtroopers' movie-level accuracy stuff of legend.

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Re: Galactic Empire vs Federation of Planets @ Spacebattles

Post by Mike DiCenso » Fri Nov 05, 2010 6:43 pm

Bane wrote:Well vaporizing the asteroids is controversial between kilotons and megatons, depending on just what you accept. Vaporizing even a 20 meter asteroid in .0666 seconds require 1,000 terajoules or 15,062 terawatts. An 80 meter asteroid, however, requires 64.1 petajoules or 961 petawatts. The 100 meter asteroid, which I have seen for myself, would require 125 petajoules or 1.878 exawatts. Then add all the guns the ISD has and you easily have a single digit megaton to gigaton vessel.
Several problems with this:

1.) We have never seen an asteroid vaporized in TESB in .0666 seconds. The frame count varies between 4-8 frames covering each asteroid's destruction or 1/6th to
1/4 a second, so your wattage will be vastly lower.

2.) Your volumetrics and energy requirements are horribly off:

Volume of asteroid: 4188.79 m³
Mass of asteroid: 32,965,759 kg
Heat Capacity of iron: 447 J/kg·K
Initial temp of asteroid: ~200 K, normal for objects in space
Final temp of asteroid: 1853 K for melting
Energy for vaporization of 1 kg of iron: 7.6 megajoules

This would mean approximately 250 TJ for vaporization, or 1,000 to 1,500 TW. The number above presumes that the asteroid is a perfect sphere and is solid elemental iron. It also presumes that the 20 meter number calculated by Brian Young is also correct, which it is not. Using the width of the TL bolts as measured against the width of the asteroids' long axis, you will find that they seldom exceed a range of 2-14 meters.

3.) Please provide proof of this 100 meter asteroid in TESB. There is no 100 meter asteroid vaporized in that movie, ever. We see 40 m wide flak bursts, but no asteroids of that size or larger vaporized.
-Mike

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Re: Galactic Empire vs Federation of Planets @ Spacebattles

Post by User1450 » Fri Nov 05, 2010 9:15 pm

Mike DiCenso wrote: Several problems with this:

1.) We have never seen an asteroid vaporized in TESB in .0666 seconds. The frame count varies between 4-8 frames covering each asteroid's destruction or 1/6th to
1/4 a second, so your wattage will be vastly lower.
Where's your proof for this? .0666 seconds came from Mr. Wong's site.
2.) Your volumetrics and energy requirements are horribly off:

Volume of asteroid: 4188.79 m³
Mass of asteroid: 32,965,759 kg
Heat Capacity of iron: 447 J/kg·K
Initial temp of asteroid: ~200 K, normal for objects in space
Final temp of asteroid: 1853 K for melting
Energy for vaporization of 1 kg of iron: 7.6 megajoules

This would mean approximately 250 TJ for vaporization, or 1,000 to 1,500 TW. The number above presumes that the asteroid is a perfect sphere and is solid elemental iron. It also presumes that the 20 meter number calculated by Brian Young is also correct, which it is not. Using the width of the TL bolts as measured against the width of the asteroids' long axis, you will find that they seldom exceed a range of 2-14 meters.
Where's your proof for this, too?
3.) Please provide proof of this 100 meter asteroid in TESB. There is no 100 meter asteroid vaporized in that movie, ever. We see 40 m wide flak bursts, but no asteroids of that size or larger vaporized.
-Mike
I made no such claim.

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Re: Galactic Empire vs Federation of Planets @ Spacebattles

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sat Nov 06, 2010 12:57 am

Bane wrote:
Mike DiCenso wrote: Several problems with this:

1.) We have never seen an asteroid vaporized in TESB in .0666 seconds. The frame count varies between 4-8 frames covering each asteroid's destruction or 1/6th to
1/4 a second, so your wattage will be vastly lower.
Where's your proof for this? .0666 seconds came from Mr. Wong's site.
0.0666 is 1/15th of a second.
Against a frame rate of 25 fps, that would be equivalent to 1.6667/25th.
I'd agree with that estimation. On the video I have (25 fps), it takes two frames for an entire asteroid to turn into a white blob, including the first frame which already shows asteroids largely destroyed. The smallest asteroid turns into a white blob within one frame. So we're clearly under two frames in fact.

The problem is that a vaporized rock would not look like that. What kind of physics is that where vaporized matter makes blobs with neat shapes and such contrasted boundaries?
Even if the material was moving away at 1000 m/s (it's higher than the speed indicated on the Turbolaser Commentaries page, pegged at 600 m/s by Wong, following an observation by C. Saxton), we'd get 40 meters per frame only. Needless to say that we would see the expanding ultra hot and still quite dense cloud of vaporized material for several frames before it would dissipate to a point of being too diffuse and distant to be visible.

Besides, talking about the expansion speed, there's an entire other problem.

I find it intriguing that Wong says on the Turbolaser Commentaries page, as his own addition to Young's page, that even if the fragments of the asteroid moved at "only" 600 m/s through the asteroid, they'd still vaporize, and yet he argues that the bolts actually injected far more energy than what was needed for that.
Yet we see one of the largest asteroids hit, and in the second frame we see black fragments. If you check out the size of the asteroids, which is not 40m but below 20m, with the frame rate in question, that means the shock wave needed more than a full frame to cross the entire asteroid, from the area that's hit, to the opposite side.
Even with 20 meters, at 25 fps, that's only 500 m/s. And much less with smaller asteroids.
In other words, it's even below the 600 m/s figure he went with (he used that speed after citing Saxton who said the blast was supersonic).
Yet on his explosive page, when it comes to describe how much speed it really takes to deliver enough energy into rock in order to vaporize it (that is, the complex process of delivering enough excess energy beyond what the object itself can structurally sustain), he says that speeds in the thousands of meters are needed for that.
So basically, if you compare the hosted and commented Turbolaser Commentaries page, and his explosive page, you see that he's actually admitting that the asteroids could never be vaporized.

And to conclude, let's not forget the clear evidence that the rocks in question tend to be rather sensitive.

We could easily claim that those cannons were firing gigajoules of energy only, or even much less than that.

Mike DiCenso wrote: 3.) Please provide proof of this 100 meter asteroid in TESB. There is no 100 meter asteroid vaporized in that movie, ever. We see 40 m wide flak bursts, but no asteroids of that size or larger vaporized.
-Mike
I made no such claim.
Bane wrote: The 100 meter asteroid, which I have seen for myself, would require 125 petajoules or 1.878 exawatts.

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