Excelsior vs. ISD

[AnonymousRedShirtEnsign]

Since these are both the most commonly seen vessels for their respective sides I thought I'd see what people thought the outcome would be. This battle takes place in a neutral system, and both are unable to use faster than light propulsion. Other systems are unaffected. Both captains are experienced commanders with full crew compliments, but no force users or empaths. Both are stock vessels (not the Lekota) and there is no hope of reinforcements for at least a week. What happens? Canon only, please.

[Nonamer]

That depends on what constitutes canon and how you interpret it.

[AnonymousRedShirtEnsign]

I prefer just using films and TV shows for canon. I can explain my rational if you want, but part of it is that I don't like how inconsistent the EU is. So I guess for the purpose of this topic the canon policy is films and TV shows (novels and radio dramas included).

[Enterprise E]

I would say that an Excelsior, without the Lakota upgrades would lose to an Imperial Star Destroyer, especially an ISD II. Even against an ISD 1, though, it would have a rough time. While the Excelsior is definately faster and more maneuverable than an ISD at sublight speeds, it lacks the firepower to quickly deal with an ISD, unless it hits those two globes, something that is not out of the realm of possibility. The problem is that the Excelsior is an old vessel by the time of TNG. It doesn't have the Type X phasers, the lowest level of phaser that equals an ISD HTL blast, in my mind, and it does not have a lot of weapons. It has three Photon Torpedo launchers, I think, and they don't have rapid fire capabilities as far as I know, and the ship has fewer phaser emitters than a Galaxy class, and they fire a weaker phaser. Not only that, but while it is faster and more maneuverable than an ISD, it is not the most maneuverable of Starfleet vessels, compared to the newer vessels. It will be easier to hit than the more modern of starships, save maybe the Galaxy class. And there's the issue of targeting capabilities. They aren't on a par with modern starships either, since the Defiant managed to avoid phaser fire from the Lakota, an upgraded Excelsior, in "Paradise Lost", I think it was. While I think that it would take an ISD some time, and while it would not be able to blow off an Excelsior as a non-threat, I do believe that this fight does favor the ISD. I think that newer ships like the Galaxy would be needed in order to take on an ISD one on one, and be able to win more than half the time.

[Jedi Master Spock]

I disagree with EE's assessment.

First and foremost, the Excelsior's continued production - suggested by the large number around in TNG and the registries - implies that only the design of the chassis is old. It is standard practice for weapons to be upgraded several times during a starship's life; if we're dealing with a TNG-era ship, it will have TNG weapons and shielding.

For reference, the E-D carries ("Conundrum") somewhere around 250-275 torpedos; the E-A carried 96 in its magazines (STVI).

The Excelsiors should have a capacity falling in between, i.e., 100-300, most likely 150-200 considering how obsolete the E-A is considered in comparison to the Excelsior.

Whether we take TOS or TNG as our frame of reference, an Excelsior has significant firepower; even if the phasers are weaker than the turbolasers, the photon torpedos surely make up for it.

Take the basic facts: We have a fusion powered vessel commonly scaled at ~60 times the size of an antimatter powered vessel that gets ~60 times as much energy per liter of fuel.

Maneuverability favors the Excelsior, especially at sublight - as does fire control. The Excelsior is a smaller and faster target with better accuracy.

There's a lot more ISD to destroy, granted, and a Galaxy or Ambassador would probably fare better - but the edge clearly goes to the Excelsior in my book.

[AnonymousRedShirtEnsign]

Don't forget about weapon ranges, a TOS constitution regularly engages at 40,000-100,000 kms. There have been four canon instances of around 100 km range or greater for Star Wars, and none of them involved an ISD. They are:(1) Trade Federation ships shoot at Queen's yacht from orbit in TPM, miss mostly (2) DS1 blows up Alderaan, multiple planetary diameters (3) Rebel ground based Ion Cannon disables ISD in orbit (4) DS2 takes out rebel ships at around 1000 kms(?).

Plus even TOS era Photon torpedos pack quite a punch. According to the main site its around 200 MT per torpedo. I think this is low given that it is based on the assumption that a single Romulan Plasma Torpedo could take out the Enterprise's shields; where as in "The Deadly Years" (TOS) the Enterprise takes between 12 and 15 torpedos without its shields failing, though they are not doing well. So I think it might be closer to 500 MT to 2 GT range torpedos for TOS era, possibly greater for TNG era ships.

Additionally the Excelsior, with it's STL speed advantage, could just stay behind the ISD, which is either unarmed, or poorly armed back there. I base this on two things. First, we have never seen an ISD should at something behind it, nor are there any visible guns back there. Second, is its wedge shape, which is designed to be able to shoot pretty much all of its guns forward (except of its heavy turrets for some reason, design flaw?), which is good for attacking stationary targets and engaging in battle line fighting.

[Nonamer]

Be careful about the ISD though. It's one of the few instances where we solid evidence of pretty serious firepower from a ship in the TESB asteroid scene. Of course, you could interpret all the asteroids as solid lodes of iron and get insane calcs. More realistically, most of the asteroids are rock piles and not iron lodes, so you'd get upwards of mid to high megaton range firepower. Low end is of course assuming that they are comets and you'd get high kiloton level firepower at best. Also be wary of VFX errors, since all we see are vanishing asteroids akin to the vanish matter effect from phasers and not clean vaporization. This leaves more to the interpretation.

Personally, I favor the idea that they are comets since vaporized comets leave no trace afterwards whereas vaporized rock and iron will glow rather brilliantly. That at least makes things pretty nice and clean without major reinterpretation of what happened. In this case we get upwards of around 100-300 KT per shot for the ISD, for a guessimate of several MT of total firepower per second. Likewise, the Excelsior has photon torpedoes, which are easily MT level firepower. A few spreads of PT would definitely cause major damage, but there's always the possibility of the ISD commander pulling out a lucky hit since it has nearly omni-directional fire, if it can get close enough.

[Mike DiCenso]

Jedi Master Spock wrote:

For reference, the E-D carries ("Conundrum") somewhere around 250-275 torpedos; the E-A carried 96 in its magazines (STVI).

Actually, the E-D simply carries 250 photon torpedoes, at least at the time of "Conundrum", according Worf's dialog. The 275 torpedo loadout number comes from the non-canon TNG TM, which according to the script, is what Worf is supposed to say, but in the actual, as-spoken-on-film dialog, he says there are "250" torpedoes on board.
-Mike

[AnonymousRedShirtEnsign]

Nonamer, I like your idea about it being a comet, that makes the most sense given the visual evidence. I'd say LTLs are around ~100 kiloton and HTLs are ~10-50 megaton. So HTLs might be on par with TOS/ movie era phasers, but should be weaker than TNG era phasers, especially pulse phasers. I disagree with the lucky hit, since imperial individual weapons are slightly weaker than their Starfleet counterparts, their redeeming quality is the large numbers of TLs per ship. And as for the notion of getting close enough to shoot that shouldn't happen if the Excelsior's commander is competent, which he his as stated in the initial post. It is true that most trek battles take place at single km range, but as Riker says in that officer exchange episode (sorry, my encyclopedia is at my other residence) that closing the distance reduces enemy response time. So once the Excelsior's captain realizes that the ISD has much shorter weapons range than his ship he should remain at long range.

[iconoclast]

I'm going to have to give this one up to the Star Wars ships.

http://www.starwars.com/databank/starsh ... yer/?id=eu

If you look at the Star Destroyer's weapons you can see why.

The Imperial-class Star Destroyer bristles with 60 turbolaser batteries, 60 ion cannon batteries, and 10 tractor beam projectors.

While most Star Wars fans will point to the 60 turbolasers, these would do little damage against a shielded Star Trek vessel. Turbolasers, while powerful against unshielded targets, are known to bounce off energy shielding doing little damage.

Instead, it's the Ion cannons that would put an ISD over the top. We don't know the accuracy of an Ion Cannon, but assuming even a totally pathetic level of accuracy (say 2%) the ISD could strip the shields off a federation vessel and leave it vulnerable to the 60 turbolaser batteries (as the federation vessels, with the exception of the Defiant, aren't known for their impressive armor.) left firing at it.

So if, as per the conditions you listed, the federation vessel couldn't escape into warp, it'd be stuck facing a heavily armored enemy craft that could take away it's shields in just a few hits.

Sorry, I just can't see the Trek ship winning this one. Taking down the ISD's shields is very possible, but penetrating the armor before they can retaliate with overwhelming force seems unlikely to me.

[Enterprise E]

The only problem with the ion cannons is that we don't know how they work exactly. If they work just like the Breen energy dampening weapon, then they will be next to useless against any post-Dominion War starship, even an Excelsior. If not, though, it could be interesting.

[AnonymousRedShirtEnsign]

Ion cannons might be sort of useful, assuming that the ISD even has any, if they could hit the Excelsior. The fact that ISDs have trouble hitting the Falcon at less than a kilometer doesn't bode well for them taking out a ship at >10,000 kms. So I think that your 2% accuracy is incredibly generous given the range the Excelsior can engage from. If I'm not mistaken the only instance we see an ion cannon fire is in TESB, when the rebel ground based ion cannon disables the ISD in a few shots. I have doubts about the Imperials even knowing the Excelsior was there until the ISD takes fire.

[AFT]

Instead, it's the Ion cannons that would put an ISD over the top. We don't know the accuracy of an Ion Cannon, but assuming even a totally pathetic level of accuracy (say 2%) the ISD could strip the shields off a federation vessel and leave it vulnerable to the 60 turbolaser batteries (as the federation vessels, with the exception of the Defiant, aren't known for their impressive armor.) left firing at it.

Weak Armor? Surfing around in other forums and sites that seems to be a common believe and sadly one that is mostly taken as face value, but as many other Trek myths, mind you anti-Trek myths, it holds very little water. A few examples: During “Generations” the E-D was taking disruptor fire to its bare hull, you know the whole frequencies thing, and although damaged and latter crippled and destroyed she wasn’t outright destroyed with the first shots. We can reduce the firepower all the way down to the kiloton level and still the ship absorbed several shots without being destroyed. That points out to a very effective armor or some impressive hull strength, take your pick. Later on in the same movie the saucer section made an almost uncontrolled crash-landing on the planet, surviving the re-entry and the impact with no appreciable hull deformation whatsoever. Compare this with the Invisible Hand at RoTS or Thor’s flagship during the third season of SG-1 (I assume that we all are familiar with these events so no need to elaborate). So even before the Ablative Armor Federation ships have very effective armor or very tough hulls.

On a side note, since Federation hulls seems to be relatively thin, around 30 cm. or so, people might be confounding thickness with strength but as far as I know a titanium plate would offer better protection than a steel plate of the same thickness.

[AnonymousRedShirtEnsign]

To the best of my knowledge the two components of Starfleet hulls are tritanium and duranium. Tritanium is described as being quite hard and very resistant to damage. I'm not sure about how tough duranium is. There is also that stuff from "The Balance of Terror" that is described as the toughest material in the known universe (it should be noted that Kirk also refers to diamonds as such in "The Arena" and I think Spock says that about tritanium in "Obsession"), but I don't know if they put that in Starship hulls. Anyways, I agree that Trek hulls are pretty tough; at least as effective as ISD hulls.

[Mike DiCenso]

The dialog in TNG's "The Arsenal of Freedom" indicates that at least regular hand phasers won't do anything to tritainium, and in ST:ENT's "Minefield", an approximately 1/4 kiloton blast from a Romulan tricobalt mine blasted off a 10-15 meter section of hull plating from the NX-01's saucer section.
-Mike