Underestimating The Requirements For General Order 24?

[Lucky]

KIRK: And tried to destroy Antos Four. Why? 
GARTH: Well, I could say because they were actively hostile to the Federation. 
KIRK: Yes, you could say, but that would be untrue.

Here we have the spirit of General Order 24 even if it is not named. General Oder 24 is meant to permanently remove threats to the United Federation of Planets, but in order to be a threat you must be warp capable

KIRK: All that it means is that I won't be around for the destruction. You heard me give General Order Twenty Four. That means in two hours the Enterprise will destroy Eminiar Seven.
...
SCOTT: Open a channel, Lieutenant. This is the commander of the USS Enterprise.
[Council Room]
SCOTT [OC]: All cities and installations on Eminiar Seven have been located, identified, and fed into our fire-control system. In one hour and forty five minutes
[Bridge]
SCOTT: The entire inhabited surface of your planet will be destroyed.
[Council Room]
SCOTT: You have that long to surrender your hostages.

That sounds easy enough, but what sorts of defenses can a star ship in Star Trek expect to face?

DATA: The surface settlement appears to be all but destroyed. Sensors show that the colonists now live in structures that extend nearly three kilometres beneath the city.

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2 ... ty_map.jpg
Cities several kilometers underground.

SPOCK: It is of little consequence, Captain. Memory Alpha has no protective shields. 

KIRK: No shields? 

SPOCK: None, Captain. When the library complex was assembled, shielding was considered inappropriate to its totally academic purpose. Since the information on the Memory planet is available to everyone, special protection was deemed unnecessary. 

KIRK: Wonderful. I hope the storm is aware of that rationale.

Kirk is surprised that Memory Alpha does not have shields. This mean that the Federation must normally shield anything of importance.

LAFORGE: We have reached the coordinates, Captain.

DATA: Sensors indicate it is Vandor Four, a planetoid in elliptical orbit around the binary system.

PICARD: Standard orbit, Mister La Forge.

LAFORGE: Aye, sir.

PICARD: Give me a visual.

WORF: Viewscreen on. There's a small forcefield on the planet. Latitude twenty degrees, nine minutes north. Longitude forty degrees, two minutes east of the present terminator.

PICARD: Penetrable?

DATA: No, sir.

PICARD: Open hailing frequencies.

WORF: Hailing frequencies open, sir.

PICARD: This is Captain. This is the Captain of the USS Enterprise responding to your signal for help.

JENICE [OC]: Enterprise, thank you for hearing us. Where are you?

PICARD: We're in orbit around Vandor now.

JENICE [OC]: Then you can help me. I don't know what to do. It's only the two of us left. He's having convulsions. Please.

PICARD: Can you lock on to her coordinates?

LAFORGE: No, sir. The forcefield is preventing any kind of contact other than audio.

PICARD: There is a force field at your location.

JENICE [OC]: Yes. I know.

PICARD: Good. But it is preventing us from helping you. Now, you must find some way to shut it down.

JENICE [OC]: I'll try.

WORF: Force field is off.

Theater Shields defend small things like labs

SCOTT: Mister Sulu, what do your sensors show? 
SULU: We can't beam anybody down, sir. The force field on the planet is in full operation, and all forms of transport into the asylum dome are blocked off. 
SCOTT: We could blast our way through the field, but only at the risk of destroying the Captain, Mister Spock and any other living thing on Elba Two. 
MCCOY: How can we be powerful enough to wipe out a planet and still be so helpless?

The Federation has shields that cover entire planets.

CHAKOTAY: If she's given the other ships temporal shielding they've undoubtedly informed their home worlds. They'll be able to protect their planets against your weapon.

Shields that cover entire planets are common.

WORF: It is confirmed. The Borg have broken through the Mars defence perimeter. 
WESLEY: Enterprise now approaching Terran system, sir.

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/File:Ma ... imeter.jpg
Earth is protected by a fleet of ships.

LAFORGE: We've finished replicating the parts they'll need, but what I don't understand is why a three man station would need a reactor capable of producing four point two gigawatts. 

RIKER: Enough to power a small phaser bank, a subspace relay station, or 

LAFORGE: A hologram generator. Oh, a duck blind. Right. They're anthropologists.

The Federation has ground based Phasers, and different sizes.

DUKAT: Because the outpost's planetary defense weapons are system five disruptors. They were never designed to operate aboard a moving spacecraft, and this cargo bays were never designed to hold them.

Even weak powers like the Cardassians have ground based Disruptors.

DEPAUL: Sensor readings just shot off the scale. 
SCOTT: Well, now. They're taking pot shots at us. Holding, Mister DePaul? 
DEPAUL: Screens firm, sir. Extremely powerful sonic vibrations. Decibels eighteen to the twelfth power. If those screens weren't up, we'd be totally disrupted by now.

Planet based energy weapons can have obscenely high outputs

BARAN: Our next objective should prove an interesting challenge. We're headed for the Sakethan burial mounds on Calder Two. 

PICARD: What? Calder Two isn't just another archaeological site, you know. It's a Federation outpost there. 

BARAN: I don't see that as a problem. 

PICARD: It's defended by Starfleet. You don't think they're just going to stand by while we walk in there and take whatever we want. 

BARAN: I'm familiar with the tactical situation. 

VEKOR: What are their defences? 

BARAN: Nothing to worry about. They have a type four deflector shield protecting the outpost and the ruins. 

PICARD: They also have a minimum of two phaser banks and possibly photon torpedoes. Is that enough to worry about? 

TALLERA: How do you know so much about this outpost?

A small archaeological dig and Federation out post has shields, photon torpedo launchers, and phasers.

SALESMAN: Beautiful, isn't it? It's the centrepiece of the whole unit. 

CRUSHER: Who's that? 

PICARD: A projection. It's the automated salesman who greeted us on the Enterprise. What unit? 

SALESMAN: Why, the Echo Papa Six Oh Seven. Our proudest achievement. The ultimate in weapons system technology. 

PICARD: Is that what's behind the attack on my people? 

SALESMAN: Impressive demonstration, isn't it? 

PICARD: Demonstration? It tried to kill us. 

SALESMAN: Versatile, powerful, and easy to use. The Six Oh Seven does it all. Its various modules can gather information, neutralise ground personnel, even destroy enemy space vessels. 

PICARD: The Enterprise. Is one of those things after my ship? Tell me. 

SALESMAN: Of course I can tell you. I am programmed to answer any and all questions about the unit. I can talk terms, arrange for delivery, whatever you need. 

CRUSHER: It doesn't understand anything other than what it's peddling. 

SALESMAN: The Six Oh Seven represents the state of the art in dynamic, adaptive design. It learns from each encounter, and improves itself. 

PICARD: So what went wrong? Where are it's creators? Where are the people of Minos? 

SALESMAN: Once unleashed, the unit is invincible. The perfect killing system. 

PICARD: Too perfect. You poor fools, your own creation destroyed you. What was that noise? 

SALESMAN: The unit has analysed its last attack and constructed a new, stronger, deadlier weapon. In a moment, it will launch that weapon against the targets on the surface.

DAMAR: Not as vulnerable as you think. We don't need starships to protect Chin'toka. Not anymore. These are our new unmanned orbital weapon platforms. Their hulls are protected by regenerative forcefields and their arsenals consist of a thousand plasma torpedoes.

Drone weapons systems that can go head to head with Star Ships are used by some.

ARCHER: We see it, Malcolm. (on the viewscreen, a silhouette familiar to original series fans) Ever see a ship like that?

T'POL: No. It's reflecting our scans. 

ARCHER: Why didn't the beacons let us see through its cloak?

T'POL: Perhaps the mines use a more primitive cloaking system.

TRAVIS: Sir, they're hailing us.

(T'Pol goes to Hoshi's station and soon an alien language comes through the speakers)

T'POL: The translator's not locking on.

ARCHER: Archer to Sickbay.

O'BRIEN: What about pulse mines? We could equip them with variable geometry detonators. 

DAX: Not good enough. Dominion ships can wait at the mouth of the wormhole and pick them off one by one. 

O'BRIEN: What if we cloaked them? 

DAX: Cloaking doesn't always work against the Dominion. 

O'BRIEN: Maybe cloaked ships don't, but I'm thinking a lot smaller. Each mine no more than a metre across. 

DAX: Mines that small don't have a lot of power. It would take dozens of them to disable a warship. We'd run out of mines before they ran out of ships. Rom, are you here? 

ROM: Cloak. Small. Dozens. I heard every word. 

O'BRIEN: Well, something's wrong. You haven't touched your food. 

ROM: It's my stomach. Ever since Captain Sisko agreed to officiate at our wedding, I haven't had much of an appetite. 

O'BRIEN: I thought you wanted Captain Sisko to marry you. 

ROM: I did. But now that he's said yes, it's become so real. I'm going to get married! 

DAX: Not for another two weeks. And in the meantime, we have work to do. 

ROM: But what if Leeta turns out to be just like Nog's mother? What if I can't make her happy? What if this is the biggest mistake of my life? What if 

O'BRIEN: Rom. 

ROM: Self-replication. That's the only answer. 

DAX: Self-replication? 

ROM: If the mines are going to be small, we'll need a lot of them. And we'll need a way to replace them quickly if the Jem'Hadar try to blast their way through. And, uh-oh. I forgot to request new quarters. Mine are too small. Where are Leeta and I going to live? 

DAX: Rom, I think you're on to something. 

ROM: I know I am. I've measured them three times. There's nowhere to put her prayer mandala. 

O'BRIEN: We could equip each mine with a replicator unit. 

DAX: No matter how many the Jem'Hadar destroy, there'd always be more.

Then you have mines. The Federation even uses cloaked self replicating mines.
__________
Do you think the requirements for General order 24 are underestimated?

[StarWarsStarTrek]

I don't know. The more you estimate the energy requirements for General Order 24, the more you must for Base Delta Zero by several orders of magnitude. Order 24 involves destruction of all cities (in planets slightly more populated than modern day Earth). Base Delta Zero invovles eradication of all sapient life (Hutt's Gambit), at the very least.

[Khas]

Quit your lying, SWST. General Order 24 is an order to destroy all life on a planet. Not all cities, not all sentient life, all life period.

[Praeothmin]

Quit your lying, SWST. General Order 24 is an order to destroy all life on a planet. Not all cities, not all sentient life, all life period.

And the Troll is back to troll once more... :)

[mojo]

which one is the troll?

HAHAHA

[StarWarsStarTrek]

So when allies come together and mention turning a planet's surface to molten slag, they're just exaggerating, but when threatening a planet, a good Trek character will speak honestly and literally, being careful not to exaggerate anything so as to let its deziens make an honest and rational decision.

This is what they say to each other:


All cities and installations on Eminiar Seven have been located, identified, and fed into our fire-control system.

All cities and installations. Meaning that 90+% of the population would without a doubt die, but nowhere are "all natural resources" exterminated. Nowhere is the destruction fitting with any reasonable figurative definition of "molten slag", nor would the planet still be uninhabitable to space age terraformers four decades in the future. In fact, Malak with his tiny cruiser 5000 years before the movies was able to so thoroughly blast Taris that, in KOTOR 2, you, a Jedi, can't step outside of certain areas without dying quickly of radiation poisoning.

[Praeothmin]

And then:

In one hour and forty five minutes
[Bridge]
SCOTT: The entire inhabited surface of your planet will be destroyed.

:)

In fact, Malak with his tiny cruiser 5000 years before the movies was able to so thoroughly blast Taris that, in KOTOR 2, you, a Jedi, can't step outside of certain areas without dying quickly of radiation poisoning.

And did it with his hundreds of ships, in many many hours, for each individual blast, as seen in KOTOR, were not even close to KT range... :)

[StarWarsStarTrek]

Fuck P, at least read my entire post in detail, you know, with analytical thought. Heck, you don't even need that. Your argument was the very first thing I addressed, clearly stated to anyone who bothered to read it. It's obvious from your response that you merely skimmed it.

[Praeothmin]

So, 1 old Constitution-class ship can do in less than 2 hours what it takes 3 ISDs less than 24 hours to perform?
Nice...

And Dankayo is not a valid example of a BDZ, as Kor so nicely demonstrated... :)

[Khas]

When carrying out orbital bombardment, wouldn't it make sense to target the cities first, and then continue the bombardment to ensure no survivors?

[Praeothmin]

Khas, don't use logic, Trolls hate that... :)

[General Donner]

I'm a bit wary of using "A Taste of Armageddon" as solid evidence of what GO 24 entails, if only because Kirk and company had every reason to emphasize their capabilities while trying to intimidate the Eminiars. So some of that dialogue might well be exaggeration or hyperbole.

That said, I don't doubt a ship like the Enterprise could ruin a planetary civilization in fairly short order if they wanted to. But there's a rather huge difference between that and wiping out all life on the planet.

[Praeothmin]

Agreed, but let's say they exagerated the power of their ship a hundred fold?
That still makes the ship extremely powerful indeed...

[Admiral Breetai]

Fuck P, at least read my entire post in detail, you know, with analytical thought. Heck, you don't even need that. Your argument was the very first thing I addressed, clearly stated to anyone who bothered to read it. It's obvious from your response that you merely skimmed it.

can you just out of curiosity show me anywhere in the movies where an ISD showcases more fire power in a single shot then the NX E did when it mountain busted?

because as it stands down upon reviewing the matter it seems like an NX could carve up an ISD like a Christmas turkey were it not for it being a terrible ship and a glass canon

[Picard]

Agreed, but let's say they exagerated the power of their ship a hundred fold?
That still makes the ship extremely powerful indeed...

I did calculations on my blog a while ago. 8 to 50 gigatons per torpedo. If we go by your "hundredfold" exaggaration, that's 80 to 500 megatons per torpedo; which fits well with 500 magton to 30 gigaton TNG era torpedoes. So, yes, I'd say there was some exaggaration.