ST.com

[Mr. Oragahn]

Just for the note, since the hyperspace weird effect plays a role in the destruction of the planet, it is not possible to argue that the Death Star generated the necessary 3.3 e32 joules to blow the planet.

Main sequence stars have luminosity that cover the whole board of luminosities.

The lowest luminosities in the main sequence correspond to class M stars.
That's luminosities 0.001 - 0.08 that of Sol's.

After a week, our sun will have generated 2.326 e32 J.

That's, of course, if you got some interest in conservative figures, and be an attempt to fit this with the novelization comparison to a "small artificial sun" note.

That would likely, in fact, fit with what the firepower description of the superlaser mounted on the Eclipse, with the Dark Empire sourcebook indicating the Eclipse's superlaser having 2/3 of the power of the first Death Star (or 1/7, it's incredible that no one has really managed to get the correct quote!), able to crack the crust and sear a continent in a flash, and still destroy a world with enough violence.

It would also fit with how the superlaser on the Darksaber failed to cut a path through the space rubble of the Hoth asteroid barrier (why the hell every major story back then had to happen in film locations ffs? the galaxy is vast damnit!).

The only difference would be that the Death Star was able to achieve the overkill effect (assumed portion), in that only the Death Star superlaser managed to create that hyperspace rift.
Maybe a certain amount of energy - a threshold - is necessary to "fracture" spacetime, and create that kind of rift.

The Starlancer fake project, supposedly a superlaser able to strike anywhere in the galaxy, was, on the paper, described as distorting space time to make the beam travel through hyperspace.
Though it does not really relate to the Death Star's superlaser, it seems that weird theoretical hyperspace effects would look believable enough on paper, to lure Yuuzhan Vong intelligence.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Going back to the original topic, the latest pro-Star Wars visitors to the debate on ST.com have added several new speed references for me to factor into the Mean Warp Speed project, and reminded me of one.

They are:

"Booby Trap" (cruising speed; tens of thousands of light years on the warp engine by season 3 episode 6)
"The Icarus Factor" ("months" to a distant sector, one week to the heart of the Federation)
"Family Business" (eight weeks by freighter to Cestus III on the other side of the Federation)
"Second Chances" (four months from one part of the Federation to the other)
"Bloodlines" 20 minute 300 billion km warp nine sprint.

Taken as a set, once I see how well I can quantify these (the farthest end of the Federation is clearly best estimated as being 6,000 +/- 2000 light years away in general) these look to increase the median speed, the mean speed, and the geometric mean speed of the table slightly. After adding these and a "Generations" reference someone else pointed me to, I will then have 94 warp speed references on the table.

[Jedi Master Spock]

I've declared victory and told everybody I'm going home - I would wager, were I a betting man, that the SDN crowd will claim that to be a concession.

If anyone else is interested in continuing at ST.com, by all means inform the rest of us so we can watch it; I, however, am quite tired.

The longer posts - particularly the ones in reply to Aratech, who seemed particularly long-winded - were taking a half hour to an hour to write (C&P them into a text editor - most of the larger replies are 5-20 pages' worth of text including the quotes), and I can't healthily let forum posting eat an extra 2-3 hours a day out of breaks, meals, and sleep.

[Jedi Master Spock]

I take it by the latest posts over at SDN that Aratech finally posted a massive reply to my most recent reply, but I haven't gotten any e-mail notifications for that thread lately, curiously enough. I thought that he had given up for good on account of the length of the posts. Anything worth reading?

EDIT: Went back. Apparently my e-mail notifications for that thread stopped a week ago, which is funny. Reading through his entire set of posts in that thread, which take up half of page 161, I get the impression this is the content breakdown:

60% flat denials and personal attacks.
35% arguments I've already addressed at least twice in the thread - including a reiteration of the slow warp speed list Point 45 put together that I already took apart in detail.
3% other invalid arguments that may not have been addressed twice or more previously by myself in that thread.
2% or so - three items - worth paying attention to.

One: A curious line from "Ensigns of Command" that further undermines his argument. Not only had I supplied figures demonstrating it actually suggested 20,000+c speeds, but it turns out that what I posted first - that Picard refers to the arrival of a dedicated transport vessel - is directly supported in the episode.

PICARD
Three weeks. Starfleet is profuse
in their apologies, but it will
still be three weeks.

RIKER
Until?

PICARD
Until the arrival of a colony
transport ship equipped with
dedicated personnel shuttles.

Serves me right for glossing over everything after "three weeks."

Two:

A fairly nice example in his favor in "Best of Both Worlds" of the Romulans saying that the Borg attacks were too destructive to be Federation attacks, which is actually worth analyzing and adding to the website.

Three:

Discussed the issue of the droids being directly hit in TPM, which I conceded here the 17th of October (read back in this thread). This is not new, but would be worth replying to had he brought the point up with me a couple weeks ago.

On the basis of those two new points of information, it was worth reading. As expected, the SDN crowd there is claiming victory from my withdrawal, but nobody offered to take that bet.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Mr. Oragahn wrote:

I guess lip reading will settle this.
Damn.

I don't believe that would help, either. IIRC, Data literally stops speaking when the klaxon goes off. So no lip movements.
-Mike

Yes, so it can be anything, notably like x watts per hour, or per day.



JMS:

What did Aratech add regarding TPM and the droids?

EDIT: there's been that idea that once the yatch's shields were down, the TF ship dialed its cannons down to shoot down droids and not harm the ship.

Yes, the TF's behaviour is slightly different. I admit, they're trying to aim at the droids.

That said, dialing down the cannons is absurd. Unless the TF has some precognition ability, they couldn't guess precisely when their weapons would take down the shields.
What do you do about all the bolts that have already been fired, while the shields are now down, and the weapons weren't dialed down?

My point would be that these cannons were not capable of more power. If you had to estimate their firepower, all you'd have is a yatch loosing shields with a direct hit, droids being largely destroyed, but for two of three with parts largely seen surviving, and a N-1 directly hit by four bolts... and not being vapourized in the slightest.

We've seen that a TF tank took down a N-1 in one shot only. Yet, we've seen the power of these tanks later on, during the battle against the Gungans.

[Jedi Master Spock]

What did Aratech add regarding TPM and the droids?

EDIT: there's been that idea that once the yatch's shields were down, the TF ship dialed its cannons down to shoot down droids and not harm the ship.

Yes, the TF's behaviour is slightly different. I admit, they're trying to aim at the droids.

That said, dialing down the cannons is absurd. Unless the TF has some precognition ability, they couldn't guess precisely when their weapons would take down the shields.
What do you do about all the bolts that have already been fired, while the shields are now down, and the weapons weren't dialed down?

My point would be that these cannons were not capable of more power. If you had to estimate their firepower, all you'd have is a yatch loosing shields with a direct hit, droids being largely destroyed, but for two of three with parts largely seen surviving, and a N-1 directly hit by four bolts... and not being vapourized in the slightest.

Well, my claim (as of ... what was it, October 12th or so?) was that the droids didn't even appear at all to be directly hit in the Youtube clip Aratech had linked to, and that's what Aratech was responding to.

Per the higher resolution shots displayed around the 17th, I conceded that point over here, but Aratech didn't actually post his reply on ST.com until much later. Thus, although late, it was a valid argument.

We've seen that a TF tank took down a N-1 in one shot only. Yet, we've seen the power of these tanks later on, during the battle against the Gungans.

Wait, we have? Would you link or post that? I don't remember that.

[Mr. Oragahn]

We've seen that a TF tank took down a N-1 in one shot only. Yet, we've seen the power of these tanks later on, during the battle against the Gungans.

Wait, we have? Would you link or post that? I don't remember that.

When the wings of N-1 fly out of the tunnel, an AAT tank is camping on the edge of the cliff, and starts shooting at the ships reaching for the stars.

One gets hit and plummels towards the river, and crashes.

My bad though, we don't see them activate their shields. So that one was likely shieldless. Disregard that case.

That said, as a sidenote, it's interesting to see what's needed to take down the shields of droidekas, by looking at the damage done by the shots that miss.

Ah, btw, if there's any SDN denizen reading this, the Masks case, with the ice comet melting, was a large part of the following versus thread: ST vs. SG Scenario.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Interestingly, some of them are now posting nonsense, while the rest have focused back on FTL travel, for the most part.

Vespasian is advancing an argument I don't recognize as one of the traditional Endor-Sullust arguments, although it's quite weak and visibly flawed. He's relying upon the angle of the dish to give him a position of the Death Star, which is unfortunate, because doing anything with it requires that the fleet take almost or nearly a full Endor day.

He doesn't quite seem to understand that, though.

[Who is like God arbour]

Can you please give me a link to that debate?

[Mr. Oragahn]

Can you please give me a link to that debate?

It's probably found on the last pages on the thread linked to in page 1.

[Praeothmin]

Speaking of TPM, I just started watching it last night on DVD, and I must say I cannot, in view of what I watched, accept the explanation that the TF Battleship was aiming for the droids.
From the very beginning of the firing sequence, we clearly see blanketing fire that passes near to the body of the vessel, even before any droids are seen outside.

And the TF in the movie seems to be a fairly well organized military force.
The beginning scroll talks about the "mighty warships" of the TF, and in the movie, when the Queen talks about resisting an invasion, her guard's Captain tells her that their "Security Force" would be no match for the "battle-hardened" Federation army.

You cannot be "battle-hardened" unless you've actually seen some combat, and that comment was from someone who should know about such things, especially since Naboo seemed to know the TF pretty well.

Just some food for thought...

[Jedi Master Spock]

Here's a relatively fresh link to the more current bit of debate:
Link.

Current focus has shifted entirely to the Endor timeline. About half the arguments they're currently offering are clearly designed to attack the ST-v-SW.net timeline, and don't even have relevance to the timeline I'm talking about, which is rather shorter.

[2046]

Now they're claiming that pilots' circadian rhythms would be messed up, and hence the pilots would be useless in combat, and thus the clear timeline as shown in the canon is invalid? Jeez.

Why is it that this topic begets such absurdities? Why is the human body suddenly frail and incapable of useful activity should the slightest disruption occur, so long as it is a rebel pilot?

This is the same thing as the claim they used to make wherein the pilots would be useless because they would be unable to see a natural horizon for the duration of the trip, which supposedly reduces efficiency, and hence would be a reason to ignore the timeline . . . though of course they ignored that *everyone in space* would have such difficulties.

And why is it they *still* haven't figured out that butt fatigue is a non-issue because the gravity could be turned off?

I just don't get it. I mean I do . . . the causes for their arguments are obvious . . . but I fail to comprehend how exactly it occurs that they make the choice to type out such things and consider it a good idea to do so.

(sigh)

About half the arguments they're currently offering are clearly designed to attack the ST-v-SW.net timeline, and don't even have relevance to the timeline I'm talking about, which is rather shorter.

Compromise is not really an option with the sort of people who would make arguments like you're dealing with over there. Feedback folks tell me all the time that I sometimes go too far giving SW the benefit of the doubt, yet still I am The Great Satan.

[Mr. Oragahn]

And why is it they *still* haven't figured out that butt fatigue is a non-issue because the gravity could be turned off?

Yep, that's pretty much the thing that baffles me about their arguments. How the hell can they miss that out?

The Obsidian Project you host has references of rather long travel periods, even for top notch spaceships, and I remember one reference found somewhere else about X-wing pilots staying inside their fighter for many many hours.

[Roondar]

Two:

A fairly nice example in his favor in "Best of Both Worlds" of the Romulans saying that the Borg attacks were too destructive to be Federation attacks, which is actually worth analyzing and adding to the website.

I suppose this is about the surgical removal of colonies from planets. It's not so odd to see this outside of the Federations abilities - most of the things blown up in ST lore leave some sort of debris, there was none here.

On a sidenote, the Romulans may have been bluffing or speaking from a point of view reinforced by propaganda. They have made prety wild claims about their own and the Federations abilities all throughout the series, a lot of which where clearly false.