Sovereign vs 1 Star Destroyer?

[Mith]

By all evidence, highly advanced fusion.

Or at least an advanced reactor.

Well, while the 40m asteroid scalings may be disputable, the fact remains that these are medium-size weapons, probably somewhere in the terajoule range, and we do see much larger bolts in play. An ISD probably could obliterate a 40 meter asteroid, with its heavier weapons if nothing else.

Of course, but the fact that these weapons are considered meduim would imply that they are used against other ships of at least equal strength, unless an ISD only uses heavy TLs against capital ships, which is somewhat silly.

And while the size advantage of the ISD is occasionally disputed as well, most would place it around 53 million cubic meters, and the Sovereign only 2.4. The ISD is some 22 times as large, which should help compensate for using a less powerful fuel.

It is much larger than the Sovereign, that much is true (and at least almost twice as long), but that doesn't help as much when your enemy is faster, has more power per inch, and better targeting systems.

[Mith]

Actually, as per the episode, they couldn't use a torpedo because they couldn't directly scan the creature, so they needed human beings on the ground in order to attract the creature with their blood.

Actually, if I remember correctly, the creature would phase out when phasers and torpedoes were used, but my point is, that they could have just carried a torpedo down with them, rather than say, an antimatter container from their engine, although I suppose that depends on which is easier to obtain, which may in fact be the antimatter container given its size. =p

[Jedi Master Spock]

By all evidence, highly advanced fusion.

Or at least an advanced reactor.

Well, if you're typically storing and piping fuel in hydrocarbon form, I feel it's safest to assume that your fusion process goes a few stages past D+D=>He.

The Federation, by contrast, uses deuterium fuel for fusion, and deuterium/antideuterium mixes for matter/antimatter reactions.

Of course, but the fact that these weapons are considered meduim would imply that they are used against other ships of at least equal strength, unless an ISD only uses heavy TLs against capital ships, which is somewhat silly.

Well, they were firing both small and medium sized bolts on the Falcon, and we do see occasional larger bolts than those hitting asteroids. The logical conclusion is that while the size of bolt we see fired on the Falcon/asteroids is a commonly used one, more powerful ones exist. They are simply inconvenient/wasteful/slow reacharging/et cetera, and therefore are only seen quite rarely.

It is much larger than the Sovereign, that much is true (and at least almost twice as long), but that doesn't help as much when your enemy is faster, has more power per inch, and better targeting systems.

For reference, if all we knew about Star Wars and Star Trek ships were their respective power technologies, and the total cubage of the ships, a neutral analysis would go something like this.

Neutral means "evenhanded," so we'll pick between evenhanded options:

• They burn the same volume of fuel per second per reactor cubage (64:1)
• They burn the same mass of fuel per second per reactor cubage (333:1).
• They have the same percentage of size in reactor cubage (1:22)
• Because the UFP ship has two different kinds of power systems, it has half the reactor cubage (1:44).

Obviously, each one of those assumptions favors one, so we'll take the rough geometric mean of all our options to be completely neutral, and then include the whole range.

So it's 1.5:1-15:1 power advantage for the UFP ship, and our "fair" guess is 5:1. Not actually that huge, especially when you consider how often ships a fifth the size with technology on par with one another are seen as threatening in SW and ST.

[Cocytus]

All right, I just rewatched the relevant sections of the episode in question. They couldn't scan for the creature directly, only for the dikironium it emitted, nor would phasers or torpedoes affect it as it would indeed phase out. They needed bait to lure the creature to the antimatter which they would then set off. I forgot that the bait is actually hemoplasm from sickbay medical stores. Since Spock said "an ounce should be sufficient," it hardly makes sense for them to beam down a torpedo for that little antimatter. My question now is, since Spock raised a red flag about the blast interfering with their transport back, why they didn't simply beam down the antimatter and hemoplasm and set it off by remote. Of course, it worked to their advantage that they didn't, since the creature went through the hemoplasm faster than they anticipated, then turned on Kirk and the ensign. Had they not been there to hold its attention, the mission would have failed.

[Mith]

Well, if you're typically storing and piping fuel in hydrocarbon form, I feel it's safest to assume that your fusion process goes a few stages past D+D=>He.

Of course.

Well, they were firing both small and medium sized bolts on the Falcon, and we do see occasional larger bolts than those hitting asteroids. The logical conclusion is that while the size of bolt we see fired on the Falcon/asteroids is a commonly used one, more powerful ones exist. They are simply inconvenient/wasteful/slow reacharging/et cetera, and therefore are only seen quite rarely.

If this requires that the weapons have a lower fire rate, and are slower, then how does that per say help an ISD ship when their counterpart has little trouble deploying their own weapons with faster refire times and still maintain considerable damage? Not to mention lack of torpedoes means they're stuck firing from their limited angles, and those turrets can only turn so fast. The heavier the turret, the slower it moves. This is a considerable weakness.

In such a battle, an ISD would have to resort using light and medium shots as per their usual assualt, and then carefully plan their heavier ones, while their enemy is capable of firing off multiple torpedoes, and using multiple phaser arrays. Tactically, the ISD is at a great disadvantage, not per say fatal one, but compensating for that weakness isn't a good sign.

For reference, if all we knew about Star Wars and Star Trek ships were their respective power technologies, and the total cubage of the ships, a neutral analysis would go something like this.

Neutral means "evenhanded," so we'll pick between evenhanded options:

• They burn the same volume of fuel per second per reactor cubage (64:1)
• They burn the same mass of fuel per second per reactor cubage (333:1).
• They have the same percentage of size in reactor cubage (1:22)
• Because the UFP ship has two different kinds of power systems, it has half the reactor cubage (1:44).

Obviously, each one of those assumptions favors one, so we'll take the rough geometric mean of all our options to be completely neutral, and then include the whole range.

So it's 1.5:1-15:1 power advantage for the UFP ship, and our "fair" guess is 5:1. Not actually that huge, especially when you consider how often ships a fifth the size with technology on par with one another are seen as threatening in SW and ST

A good point, it would take a dedicated threat to figure out their respective generation powers, as well as the consumption rate of their fuel.

[Mith]

All right, I just rewatched the relevant sections of the episode in question. They couldn't scan for the creature directly, only for the dikironium it emitted, nor would phasers or torpedoes affect it as it would indeed phase out. They needed bait to lure the creature to the antimatter which they would then set off. I forgot that the bait is actually hemoplasm from sickbay medical stores. Since Spock said "an ounce should be sufficient," it hardly makes sense for them to beam down a torpedo for that little antimatter. My question now is, since Spock raised a red flag about the blast interfering with their transport back, why they didn't simply beam down the antimatter and hemoplasm and set it off by remote. Of course, it worked to their advantage that they didn't, since the creature went through the hemoplasm faster than they anticipated, then turned on Kirk and the ensign. Had they not been there to hold its attention, the mission would have failed.

That may have been the point; in case the plan failed.

[Mike DiCenso]

Actually, as per the episode, they couldn't use a torpedo because they couldn't directly scan the creature, so they needed human beings on the ground in order to attract the creature with their blood.

Actually, Kirk and Garrovick did take along a container of blood to use as the bait. They only used themselves when the cloud creature appeared unexpectedly quick and consumed the bait before they were ready.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

There's further evidence that the antimatter used by the Federation is a compressed version with more power per kilogram than standard antimatter (which is about 43 megatons per kilogram). One example which springs to mind are TOS "Obsession," in which a small handheld container of antimatter produced a sizeable blast stated to be able to strip the atmosphere off the planet.

Compressing mass X still leaves you with mass X, no matter if it's building sized or eye sized.
TOS uber antimatter is extremely disputable. Mostly embarassing nonsense scientifically wise.
Not only that funky antimatter was mentionned a few times, but such references are the result of TOS, mainly. If it was so easily present (considering that the Enterprise crew in those TOS episodes didn't struggle to obtain that uber AM), it makes zero sense that this AM would be lost all of sudden.

It is much larger than the Sovereign, that much is true (and at least almost twice as long), but that doesn't help as much when your enemy is faster, has more power per inch, and better targeting systems.

Unless I'm wrong, if we consider Trek ships' mobility, they could remain "underneath" an ISD, and therefore out of reach of the heavy turrets.

[Cocytus]

I believe I said all that in my last post.

[Mike DiCenso]

Nevermind about that previous post. The bait issue was already noted. I was going to delete it, but it it apparently isn't allowed with replied to postings.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

Well, while the 40m asteroid scalings may be disputable, the fact remains that these are medium-size weapons, probably somewhere in the terajoule range, and we do see much larger bolts in play. An ISD probably could obliterate a 40 meter asteroid, with its heavier weapons if nothing else.

Actually, interestingly enough, I believe in the TESB ISD asteroid busting scene one of the TL bolts can be traced back to a part of the trench brim notch where there is indeed a heavy gun turret in the lower right corner.
-Mike

[Cocytus]

Compressing mass X still leaves you with mass X, no matter if it's building sized or eye sized.
TOS uber antimatter is extremely disputable. Mostly embarassing nonsense scientifically wise.
Not only that funky antimatter was mentionned a few times, but such references are the result of TOS, mainly. If it was so easily present (considering that the Enterprise crew in those TOS episodes didn't struggle to obtain that uber AM), it makes zero sense that this AM would be lost all of sudden.

Yes, compressing X mass still gives you X mass as long as the space requirements change with the mass (from building sized to eye sized, say) But if we're considering storage volume here, i.e. the antimatter storage tanks, which have a fixed volume regardless of whether they are full or empty, then with more mass per unit of volume for the antimatter, the tanks would contain more power over all. Spock says "an ounce should be sufficient." An ounce can be a unit of mass or volume, and the latter makes far more sense, since an ounce of standard antimatter could not account for the blast's described effect of stripping off half the planet's atmosphere, not the massive crater we see in the remastered version of the episode.

Here's an interesting parallel. The Empire State Building weighs 365,000 tons. If all the void space (including atomic void space) were to be compressed out of it, it would still weigh 365,000 tons, but it would be the size of a sewing needle. But if a volume equal to that of the Empire State Building were filled with 365,000-ton sewing needles...

[Mith]

Compressing mass X still leaves you with mass X, no matter if it's building sized or eye sized.
TOS uber antimatter is extremely disputable. Mostly embarassing nonsense scientifically wise.
Not only that funky antimatter was mentionned a few times, but such references are the result of TOS, mainly. If it was so easily present (considering that the Enterprise crew in those TOS episodes didn't struggle to obtain that uber AM), it makes zero sense that this AM would be lost all of sudden.

Well, those guys didn't fully understand the tech they had, and even if they did, then they already had it on the ship, so it would hardly matter. It would explain how the Enterprise D is able to generate 12.7 billion gigawatts (or was it terrawatts?). Or how the Defiant is able to put out the same energy despite being much smaller. If you were to find a way to put a 100 kilograms into say half a kilogram, that would explain why ship sizes don't matter as much as they should.

Unless I'm wrong, if we consider Trek ships' mobility, they could remain "underneath" an ISD, and therefore out of reach of the heavy turrets.

Well, yes, that's true, or at the very least avoid most of their weapons.

[Praeothmin]

Jedi Master Spock wrote:

Well, while the 40m asteroid scalings may be disputable, the fact remains that these are medium-size weapons, probably somewhere in the terajoule range, and we do see much larger bolts in play. An ISD probably could obliterate a 40 meter asteroid, with its heavier weapons if nothing else.

Actually, interestingly enough, I believe in the TESB ISD asteroid busting scene one of the TL bolts can be traced back to a part of the trench brim notch where there is indeed a heavy gun turret in the lower right corner.

I recall that one of these bolts, from the angle at which it travelled, could also have come from the dorsal weapons, which we know from the first ICS only has HTLs.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Compressing mass X still leaves you with mass X, no matter if it's building sized or eye sized.
TOS uber antimatter is extremely disputable. Mostly embarassing nonsense scientifically wise.
Not only that funky antimatter was mentionned a few times, but such references are the result of TOS, mainly. If it was so easily present (considering that the Enterprise crew in those TOS episodes didn't struggle to obtain that uber AM), it makes zero sense that this AM would be lost all of sudden.

Yes, compressing X mass still gives you X mass as long as the space requirements change with the mass (from building sized to eye sized, say) But if we're considering storage volume here, i.e. the antimatter storage tanks, which have a fixed volume regardless of whether they are full or empty, then with more mass per unit of volume for the antimatter, the tanks would contain more power over all. Spock says "an ounce should be sufficient." An ounce can be a unit of mass or volume, and the latter makes far more sense, since an ounce of standard antimatter could not account for the blast's described effect of stripping off half the planet's atmosphere, not the massive crater we see in the remastered version of the episode.

Here's an interesting parallel. The Empire State Building weighs 365,000 tons. If all the void space (including atomic void space) were to be compressed out of it, it would still weigh 365,000 tons, but it would be the size of a sewing needle. But if a volume equal to that of the Empire State Building were filled with 365,000-ton sewing needles...

You said "more power per kilogram"... the 43 MT figure is an absolute theoretical one, you can't get above.