Nature of Empire vs. Federation technology

[User1442]

Actually quite a few "mundane" things can hurt ST shields, just as they can also hurt SW ones. For one thing, the shields can be hurt by kinetic impacts. We see examples or hear of where such damage can occur to ST ships' shields, such as in "Mudd's Women" where the E-1701 has to extend her shields to protect Harry Mudd's little Class J cargo ship, or in TNG's "Final Mission" where the E-D does something similar to escort a radioactive barge through an asteroid and into a star. Compare this to the ISD bridge tower incident from TESB, and with the Falcon in desperately avoiding colliding with modest sized asteroids at low relative velocity. In The second highest canon of the TCW series, the episode "Downfall of a Droid" has Munificents having to double-front their shields, taking power away from the aft arc of the vessels to protect themselves from impacting sub km asteroids at again low relative velocity. So ST shields seem better than their SW counterparts at deflecting KE impacts, but they still can and do take damage from it.
-Mike

Um....you ever played the game asteroids? Its rather old but its extremely hard, even though the asteriods are pretty small and move rather slow.

[KirkSkyWalker]

Ten thousand rads? that's huge. And anything which can be bring the hull of such a ship to thousand of degrees is not just some mundane radiation. It's more like sitting next to a leaking singularity that pumps out nasty levels of energy. How the ship could survive that even before the E-D could be threatened is another question.

Still, plain E-M radiation shouldn't harm a starship; even in "Balance of Terror," a nuke exploding 100 meters from the Enterprise only caused a few radiation-burns.
Maybe tractor=beams interfere with shields?

[Mr. Oragahn]

Actually quite a few "mundane" things can hurt ST shields, just as they can also hurt SW ones. For one thing, the shields can be hurt by kinetic impacts. We see examples or hear of where such damage can occur to ST ships' shields, such as in "Mudd's Women" where the E-1701 has to extend her shields to protect Harry Mudd's little Class J cargo ship, or in TNG's "Final Mission" where the E-D does something similar to escort a radioactive barge through an asteroid and into a star. Compare this to the ISD bridge tower incident from TESB, and with the Falcon in desperately avoiding colliding with modest sized asteroids at low relative velocity. In The second highest canon of the TCW series, the episode "Downfall of a Droid" has Munificents having to double-front their shields, taking power away from the aft arc of the vessels to protect themselves from impacting sub km asteroids at again low relative velocity. So ST shields seem better than their SW counterparts at deflecting KE impacts, but they still can and do take damage from it.
-Mike

Um....you ever played the game asteroids? Its rather old but its extremely hard, even though the asteriods are pretty small and move rather slow.

The 2008 version with Kirk and loliships?
I wonder if they're still making that Asteroids movie btw...

[Mike DiCenso]

The 2008 version with Kirk and loliships?
I wonder if they're still making that Asteroids movie btw...

Please, don't encourage him.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

Still, plain E-M radiation shouldn't harm a starship; even in "Balance of Terror," a nuke exploding 100 meters from the Enterprise only caused a few radiation-burns.
Maybe tractor=beams interfere with shields?

Um, no. Here's the dialog:

KIRK: Captain to Sickbay.
MCCOY [OC]: McCoy here.

KIRK: Casualties?

MCCOY [OC]: Twenty two so far. Mainly radiation burns, mostly from the ship's outer areas. Could have been much, much worse, Captain.

KIRK: Thank you, Doctor. (the lights come back on) Report, Mister Spock?

SPOCK: Nuclear device of some kind, sir. Our phasers detonated it less than one hundred metres away.

KIRK: Ship damage?

SPOCK: Mainly overloads and circuit burnouts.

KIRK: Weapons status?

SCOTT [OC]: We've only the forward phaser room, Captain.

KIRK: Fully operable, Scotty?

SCOTT [OC]: Yes, sir. But Specialist Tomlinson is manning it alone. No standby crew available.

STILES: Sir, my first assignment was in weapons control.

KIRK: Go. Lieutenant Uhura, take over navigation.

UHURA: Yes, Captain.

SPOCK: We have engine power now, Captain, if you'd like to move off and make repairs.

KIRK: Maybe we can pull them back to our side of the Neutral Zone. Hold our position. Play dead.

The E-1701 herself suffered quite a bit of damage, even had her engines knocked out by the blast. And all that from an old-style nuke, not any kind of technobabble weapon, or weird spatial phenomena. There's also a bit of luck it seems involved here as McCoy's report implies that things could have been much worse. Even still, more than 22 radiation burn causalties out of a crew of only 430 is pretty serious, and it left the ship not only damaged, but short-handed.
-Mike

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

The E-1701 herself suffered quite a bit of damage, even had her engines knocked out by the blast. And all that from an old-style nuke, not any kind of technobabble weapon, or weird spatial phenomena. There's also a bit of luck it seems involved here as McCoy's report implies that things could have been much worse. Even still, more than 22 radiation burn causalties out of a crew of only 430 is pretty serious, and it left the ship not only damaged, but short-handed.
-Mike

I thought the enterprise had already taken damage from the plasma torp and was not at 100% at the time the blast from nuke hit.

Do we have any idea what the yield of the nuke was or any other info apart from it exploding at under 100m from the enterprise?.

[Mike DiCenso]

The plasma torpedo did not hit with full power as it was in hte process of dissipating when it hit the E-1701. Furthermore, the crew spent 9 hours when the Romulan ship went into "silent" mode doing some repairs, so while the E-1701 might not have been up to 100 percent, she was still in very good shape at the time, especially compared to the Romulan warbird.

As for the yeild, there is never any statement as to how pwoerful it was, but consider that it was enough to knock a nearly million long ton starship askew, and dispite being in the near-vaccum of space was able to do that from 100 meters distance, implying a significant yeild.
-Mike

[KirkSkyWalker]

Still, plain E-M radiation shouldn't harm a starship; even in "Balance of Terror," a nuke exploding 100 meters from the Enterprise only caused a few radiation-burns.
Maybe tractor=beams interfere with shields?

Um, no. Here's the dialog:

KIRK: Captain to Sickbay.
MCCOY [OC]: McCoy here.

KIRK: Casualties?

MCCOY [OC]: Twenty two so far. Mainly radiation burns, mostly from the ship's outer areas. Could have been much, much worse, Captain.

KIRK: Thank you, Doctor. (the lights come back on) Report, Mister Spock?

SPOCK: Nuclear device of some kind, sir. Our phasers detonated it less than one hundred metres away.

KIRK: Ship damage?

SPOCK: Mainly overloads and circuit burnouts.

KIRK: Weapons status?

SCOTT [OC]: We've only the forward phaser room, Captain.

KIRK: Fully operable, Scotty?

SCOTT [OC]: Yes, sir. But Specialist Tomlinson is manning it alone. No standby crew available.

STILES: Sir, my first assignment was in weapons control.

KIRK: Go. Lieutenant Uhura, take over navigation.

UHURA: Yes, Captain.

SPOCK: We have engine power now, Captain, if you'd like to move off and make repairs.

KIRK: Maybe we can pull them back to our side of the Neutral Zone. Hold our position. Play dead.

The E-1701 herself suffered quite a bit of damage, even had her engines knocked out by the blast. And all that from an old-style nuke, not any kind of technobabble weapon, or weird spatial phenomena. There's also a bit of luck it seems involved here as McCoy's report implies that things could have been much worse. Even still, more than 22 radiation burn causalties out of a crew of only 430 is pretty serious, and it left the ship not only damaged, but short-handed.
-Mike

We don't know how powerful the nuke was, or whether it was an old-style one.
And no, 22 radiation-burns aren't that bad, when no one was killed.
And the only "luck" was that the nuke wasn't closer when it detonated.

It's also quite a feat that the engines were only disabled for a few seconds-- when a mere ion-cannon blast can cripple an ISD, but a nuke at less than 100 meters can't cripple a UFP starship.

[Mike DiCenso]

No, it was stated to be an old style nuclear warhead. Also I don't know where you get the "seconds thing", the engines don't get restored for a while after the hit with the nuke at 1:23 onwards as seen here. Spock does not report engines are back online until 2:55.

As for ion weaponary affectiing ST ships, we see in VOY's "Resistance" Voyager take multiple hits from a number of phased ion cannons, and while it's shields held up, they still took enough damage prompting the ship to hide in a magnetic storm to confuse the cannons' targeting sensors.
-Mike

[Praeothmin]

As for ion weaponary affectiing ST ships, we see in VOY's "Resistance" Voyager take multiple hits from a number of phased ion cannons, and while it's shields held up, they still took enough damage prompting the ship to hide in a magnetic storm to confuse the cannons' targeting sensors.
-Mike

Plus we have no clue how powerful the cannons were.
The Ion bolt that hit the ISD was quite big compared to the ship.
How big were the Ion pulses or bolts that hit Voyager?

[Mike DiCenso]

Eighty five planet-based phased ion cannons were locked onto Voyager. One hits them before they get full shields up. Watch here as Voyager starts taking a pounding at 2:19. They keep getting hit until about 3:48 when Kim spots the storm, which they then use as a blind spot to hide in. The size of the bolts are difficult to determine since we only see the first hit of the volley on the viewscreen.
-Mike

[KirkSkyWalker]

No, it was stated to be an old style nuclear warhead.

In the year 2268, not 1968; mind the context.

Also I don't know where you get the "seconds thing", the engines don't get restored for a while after the hit with the nuke at 1:23 onwards as seen here. Spock does not report engines are back online until 2:55.

Ok, 92 seconds-- not bad for the ship just having been nuked 300 yards from ground zero.

As for ion weaponary affectiing ST ships, we see in VOY's "Resistance" Voyager take multiple hits from a number of phased ion cannons, and while it's shields held up, they still took enough damage prompting the ship to hide in a magnetic storm to confuse the cannons' targeting sensors.
-Mike

What part of "phased" did you not understand? The Jem H'dar also used phased polaron-beams to render UFP shields useless, but it's also clearly out of anything even close to of SW's league.

[Praeothmin]

but it's also clearly out of anything even close to of SW's league.

And you conlcude that how?

[KirkSkyWalker]

but it's also clearly out of anything even close to of SW's league.

And you conlcude that how?

They don't have anything like it.

[Mike DiCenso]

In the year 2268, not 1968; mind the context.

Hardly much of a difference. The term old style means that it's an out of date weapon that works very much like any nuclear weapon we have now in real life.

Ok, 92 seconds-- not bad for the ship just having been nuked 300 yards from ground zero.

That's a minimum amount of time since there is a cut between the E-1701 being nuked, and the Romulans going all happy about it, then back to the E-1701, then back to the Romulans with possibly some extra time passing there. Had the Romulan commander not hesitated as soon the as the big E was nuked, and pressed an attack, he'd have won. Or had he simply Decius tossed in the brig and ordered his ship to go home, he'd also have won.

What part of "phased" did you not understand? The Jem H'dar also used phased polaron-beams to render UFP shields useless, but it's also clearly out of anything even close to of SW's league.

The two weapons of the Jem'Hadar and the Mokra Order are not the same thing. The phased ion canons are still ion weaponary that damages the shields of a Federation starship.
-Mike