Speculations on 22nd BOP shield strenght
Posted: Thu Aug 12, 2010 3:13 am
Hi Everybody!( Hello Doctor Nick!)
Just felt my line of thought was going beyond topic on the feds vs Halo thread. As it says on the tin this here is just my groping in the darkness to understand and comprehend the 22nd century bird of prey. Specificly the episode expanse where we really get to see the ship strut her stuff as well as what she can take. This should be considered thinking very loudly and any critique, critisim or advice you might provide would be most welcome.
First of all we must know what we are looking at before we can proceed, to that end here is the episode in question shamelessly found on Youtube.
Vid 1
Vid 2
Vid 3
vid 4
Now we can look at the three battles in depths and see how the old war bird faired.
A. Battle #1
Vid 1 the battle starts with the Bop landing the first blow at the 9:50 mark and proceeds to rapidly cripple the Enterprise. Only thing note worth for our purpuses is at the 10:05-10:07 mark the Enterprise scores a hit of two out of three spatial torpedoes on the Bop. The real meat and potatoes of the battle occure at 10:38 when the three starfleet ships show up guns blazing. From 10:38-10:45 the three vessels collectively hit the ship 10 times by my count and continue to do so unseen, the bridge rocks indicating weapon hits, from 10:46-10:50 the end of Vid 1 likely maintaining thier 1.4 shots per second.
Vid 2 opens up right where we left off in mid battle and a less than happy Duras. At the 0:02 mark Klingon crewman reports that their shields are failing, about 12-14 seconds since the start of the battle, through he reports at the 0:06 mark that they are still online as thier ship is continually pounded by the unseen flotilla. 0:10 the ship is badly rocked and from 0:10-0:14Klingon crewman #2 reports disrupter banks 2 and 4 are down. No statment on if the shields have failed utterly at this point or if this was merely leakage. Ship still groaning and shuddering Duras orders a retreat at the 16 second mark and warp speed at 18. From 19-21 we get a brief glimpse of the ongoing battle as the Bop jumps to lightspeed with three shots shown. And voila two borderline obsolete warships and more modern vessel just schooled a Klingon warship albiety an escort.
Tally:
Low: 13 phase cannon strikes at absolute minimum going off shots physical seen.
Middle:the 13 observed and assuming a strike a second, the rate of fire observed from 19-21, for the rest of the duration which works out to be roughly 23 additional seconds. So mid count 36 phase strikes.
High count: assume 1.4 strikes for the unseen time period which evens out to more or less 45 strikes.
Which in and off itself means virtually nothing without knowing the yield of thier guns which sadly is an unknown. We know the NX's phase cannons were rated at 500 GJs but we don't know if that would hold true for the Intrepid class much less for the older Neptune class starships. For the sake of running a few numbers however lets play with the 500 rating, after all it isn't impossible that three anti-matter powered ships can churn out that output for a minute.
First the mid count:18000 Gjs=18 TJs=4.5 kilotons.
High count:22500 GJs=22.5 TJs=5.6 kilotons
Maximum high count(assuming 5000GJs instead of 500):225000GJs=225TJs=56 kilotons
B. Battle 2
Vid 3, 8:30 mark Duras's ship is hit with two photon torpedoes set to low. Shakes bridge,startles them. 8:36 Duras orders shields increased. 8:44-8:46 Archer orders yield increased to fifty percent. Shot not observed but likely another pair of torps based upon previous volley as well his later shot in the expanse. 8:47-8:56 Crewmember flung across bridge, sparks and Duras yelling. 8:57-8:59 ship is rocked again, second strike?, and warp drive fails.
Tally: 2 torps set to "Low" and 1-2 torps set to 50%
Estimate #1:The two low torps likely hit stronger than a pair of spatial torpedoes since Duras sat up and took notice at the unexpected weapon discharge. Spatial torpedoes might be quarter kiloton based off of a comment by Reed that the quarter kiloton Romulan mine's warhead was roughly similar, or the most similar in his experiance, with the Triton spatial torpedo's. This does mesh with quarter kiloton phase cannons, narrow and concetrated beams, hosing them. A pair of such torpedoes, which the Bop had previously shrugged off without issue, should roughly land at least 333 GJs on target and a pair of low yield Photonics noticably more than that. Considering Klingons consider 500 GJ rated phase cannons to be low partical weapons possibly much more.
Estimate #2: If JMS doesn't mind me borrowing one of his calculations...
he estimated 2.5 megatons for the photonics from the episode sleeping dogs{ENT}. A full powered torp, or a pair of fifty percenters, should strike with 416 kilotons or roughly 1664 TJs or 1,664,000 GJs onto the target. For comparison my max supercheating high count back up topside maxes out at 224000 GJs. Now we are talking about far more concetration for the phasers, and that ship was moderatly damaged at best and left under its own power vs a semi-crippled wreck, and Duras did reinforce the foward shields after the first salvo of photonics but you still have to smile. ;)
C. Battle 3
N/A to be continued sometime tommorow after I sleep and maybe come up with a better way to mesh the phase yields to torpedo yields.
Just felt my line of thought was going beyond topic on the feds vs Halo thread. As it says on the tin this here is just my groping in the darkness to understand and comprehend the 22nd century bird of prey. Specificly the episode expanse where we really get to see the ship strut her stuff as well as what she can take. This should be considered thinking very loudly and any critique, critisim or advice you might provide would be most welcome.
First of all we must know what we are looking at before we can proceed, to that end here is the episode in question shamelessly found on Youtube.
Vid 1
Vid 2
Vid 3
vid 4
Now we can look at the three battles in depths and see how the old war bird faired.
A. Battle #1
Vid 1 the battle starts with the Bop landing the first blow at the 9:50 mark and proceeds to rapidly cripple the Enterprise. Only thing note worth for our purpuses is at the 10:05-10:07 mark the Enterprise scores a hit of two out of three spatial torpedoes on the Bop. The real meat and potatoes of the battle occure at 10:38 when the three starfleet ships show up guns blazing. From 10:38-10:45 the three vessels collectively hit the ship 10 times by my count and continue to do so unseen, the bridge rocks indicating weapon hits, from 10:46-10:50 the end of Vid 1 likely maintaining thier 1.4 shots per second.
Vid 2 opens up right where we left off in mid battle and a less than happy Duras. At the 0:02 mark Klingon crewman reports that their shields are failing, about 12-14 seconds since the start of the battle, through he reports at the 0:06 mark that they are still online as thier ship is continually pounded by the unseen flotilla. 0:10 the ship is badly rocked and from 0:10-0:14Klingon crewman #2 reports disrupter banks 2 and 4 are down. No statment on if the shields have failed utterly at this point or if this was merely leakage. Ship still groaning and shuddering Duras orders a retreat at the 16 second mark and warp speed at 18. From 19-21 we get a brief glimpse of the ongoing battle as the Bop jumps to lightspeed with three shots shown. And voila two borderline obsolete warships and more modern vessel just schooled a Klingon warship albiety an escort.
Tally:
Low: 13 phase cannon strikes at absolute minimum going off shots physical seen.
Middle:the 13 observed and assuming a strike a second, the rate of fire observed from 19-21, for the rest of the duration which works out to be roughly 23 additional seconds. So mid count 36 phase strikes.
High count: assume 1.4 strikes for the unseen time period which evens out to more or less 45 strikes.
Which in and off itself means virtually nothing without knowing the yield of thier guns which sadly is an unknown. We know the NX's phase cannons were rated at 500 GJs but we don't know if that would hold true for the Intrepid class much less for the older Neptune class starships. For the sake of running a few numbers however lets play with the 500 rating, after all it isn't impossible that three anti-matter powered ships can churn out that output for a minute.
First the mid count:18000 Gjs=18 TJs=4.5 kilotons.
High count:22500 GJs=22.5 TJs=5.6 kilotons
Maximum high count(assuming 5000GJs instead of 500):225000GJs=225TJs=56 kilotons
B. Battle 2
Vid 3, 8:30 mark Duras's ship is hit with two photon torpedoes set to low. Shakes bridge,startles them. 8:36 Duras orders shields increased. 8:44-8:46 Archer orders yield increased to fifty percent. Shot not observed but likely another pair of torps based upon previous volley as well his later shot in the expanse. 8:47-8:56 Crewmember flung across bridge, sparks and Duras yelling. 8:57-8:59 ship is rocked again, second strike?, and warp drive fails.
Tally: 2 torps set to "Low" and 1-2 torps set to 50%
Estimate #1:The two low torps likely hit stronger than a pair of spatial torpedoes since Duras sat up and took notice at the unexpected weapon discharge. Spatial torpedoes might be quarter kiloton based off of a comment by Reed that the quarter kiloton Romulan mine's warhead was roughly similar, or the most similar in his experiance, with the Triton spatial torpedo's. This does mesh with quarter kiloton phase cannons, narrow and concetrated beams, hosing them. A pair of such torpedoes, which the Bop had previously shrugged off without issue, should roughly land at least 333 GJs on target and a pair of low yield Photonics noticably more than that. Considering Klingons consider 500 GJ rated phase cannons to be low partical weapons possibly much more.
Estimate #2: If JMS doesn't mind me borrowing one of his calculations...
he estimated 2.5 megatons for the photonics from the episode sleeping dogs{ENT}. A full powered torp, or a pair of fifty percenters, should strike with 416 kilotons or roughly 1664 TJs or 1,664,000 GJs onto the target. For comparison my max supercheating high count back up topside maxes out at 224000 GJs. Now we are talking about far more concetration for the phasers, and that ship was moderatly damaged at best and left under its own power vs a semi-crippled wreck, and Duras did reinforce the foward shields after the first salvo of photonics but you still have to smile. ;)
C. Battle 3
N/A to be continued sometime tommorow after I sleep and maybe come up with a better way to mesh the phase yields to torpedo yields.