Capitol Ship Firepower

[AnonymousRedShirtEnsign]

I've seen a lot of different figures on this topic that range many orders of magnitude. I'm most interested in standard TNG culminating phaser arrays, photon torpedos, light turbolasers, and heav turbolasers. I suppose I'd also like to hear some ideas on quantum torpedos, pulse phasers, ion canons, et cetera. As always, provide evidence.

Eligable material is only what we see/ hear on screen.

[Mike DiCenso]

Again, I wish that the Strek-v-SWars forum and Matt Carpenter's site was archived somewhere, since this very question got answered, at least where SW light and medium turbolasers were concerned.

A lot of the controversy comes from how you scale the asteroids being destroyed by the ISD in TESB, and in making assumptions as to whether or not the asteroids are actually being vaporized, fragmented, or something else entirely (like the material disappearance effect being discussed by JMS and Kane).

To be absolutely generous, we can assume vaporization, that the asteroids are more or less solid nickel or iron composition, and that the asteroids are essentially perfect spheres (they are clearly not) The problem then becomes one of determining the size of those asteroids. That's were the big controversy lies. No one can come to an agreement on their size because there is nothing, except the TL bolts themselves, that are close enough to the asteroids to provide a reasonable scaling with. Warsies will almost invariably fall on using Brian Young's old Turbolaser Commentaries site for asteroid scaling, which generally places the size of the asteroids at around 20-40 meters in size. But the problem is that Brian Young was found to have made some serious errors in his scaling assumptions; namely in using screen caps that show the Falcon being chased by the ISD Avenger, and went with the assumption that a series of flack bursts near the Falcon are asteroids being vaporized. If you go back and look at those scenes frame-by-frame, you'll see that there are no asteroids being hit at all. Another problem is that Young stopped working on the TLC site a number of years ago, and would have let it die altogether but for Mike Wong saving it and bringing it in under the SDN domain. The TLC site has seen little updating since. The errors made in the late 1990's with questionable screencaps are still painfully evident for anyone who bothers to take a look, and is honest about those errors. However, those errors have been compounded on, mostly because they give the pro-Wars side a seemingly large advantage in the Versus Debate with vastly inflated firepower figures.

So how big are the asteroids? On both the Strek-v-Swars.Net forum, as well as Matt Carpenter's forum, a variety of scalings were done, often using the approximate width of the TL bolts, as opposed to Young's method, which involved comparing the asteroids to the TL's length. The use of the TL width produced a more accurate scaling, simply due to the fact that height (when impacting or just a frame from impact an asteroid) is less effected than using the length since the the length measurements require correcting for the 3/4 view perspective we are seeing them at. The height of the TL was determined based on comparisons of TL bolts passing close to objects like the X-wing fighters in ANH, and the Falcon in TESB. After that was done, an average was made, and the ratio of the height of the TLs to the long axis of the asteroids was determined. When all was said and done the asteroids in the TESB ISD scene were averaged out between 1.5 to 8 meters. On the extreme outside 14 meters was the maximum size (as scaled by Kane Starkiller). Nowhere near the 20-40 meter size. So about 16 TJ, assuming a perfectly spherical asteroid of 8 meters. The wattage would be around 48 TW, since it takes 8 full frames out of 24 to vaporize the asteroid. However, because the asteroids are lumpy, not perfect spheres, the energy and power required to vaporize them will likely be somewhat less than this.

Starfighters' firepower has been often compared to Slave I's demonstrated firepower in AoTC, which falls well below the 600-900 gigajoule firepower often cited, is pretty well documented on RSA's St-v-SW.Net website. We clearly see asteroids being shattered, with little or no vaporization or melting observed, and an extremely generous upper range firepower of 19-20 gigajoules under the assumption that the asteroids shattered are solid spheres of iron. Even if we assumed that Jango Fett had the blasters dialed down in output, as Saxton and his apologists suggest it was, it is still very interesting to note that Obi-Wan's Jedi starfighter could actually still be threatened with destruction.

So I'am putting in with light to medium TL bolts at low single to double-digit TJ range firepower, and top-of-the-line starfighters and small ships at low gigajoule firepower.
-Mike

[2046]

A terajoule is just under a quarter-kiloton, so 16TJ would be about 4 kilotons. (3.82 to be exact, but what's a couple hundred tons between friends? (Just a public service announcement for those who don't have conversions handy.))

In any case though, that's not the highest-end value. IIRC Ep3's novel mentions ship-mounted weapons that would've had to have been in the megaton range. I think that was on the Strek forums . . . I'll see if I can find my old estimate somewhere else.

[AnonymousRedShirtEnsign]

So basically an ISD has a s*** load of almost Hiroshima level weapons and a few thurmonuclear level weapons (presumably the turrets on both dorsal sides).

How about for trek ships? I was thinking somewhere around low gigaton photon torpedos, and high megaton phasers (of course a wattage value would be more useful for standard phaser arrays), give or take an order of magnitude.

[GStone]

From melting the ice that surrounded the library in "Mask", I think Captain Newland rated ship phasers of a GCS to be a couple gigatons. The dialogue says the phasers were at 10%, but I can't remember if the 2 gigaton reading was for 10% or at 100%. Does anyone remember?

[AnonymousRedShirtEnsign]

I think the 2 GT figure was referring to what happened on screen, so it would be for the 10% phasers over several seconds.

[Nonamer]

So we can pull out the 2GT figure for ST. How nostagic. ;-)

[GStone]

To add more nostalgia, we can go back to photon torpedos and shields. While the shields of a GCS (sans metaphasic shields) show strong stamina when the ship is close to a star with their freuqency windows, the shields of a torp let torps travel into a star itself to blow it up. Torps give off pure EM raidation when they explode and pure EM radiation is given off by stars.

And it's a little baby of a GCS in terms of size. It's just like a little premmie.

We've also got the "Rise" asteroid torping with a 100-150 megaton range and higher with examples, like with Skin of Evil and gravimetric torps that can blow up planets.

Aaaaahh.

[Mike DiCenso]

AnonymousRedShirtEnsign wrote:
So basically an ISD has a s*** load of almost Hiroshima level weapons and a few thurmonuclear level weapons (presumably the turrets on both dorsal sides).

To be extra-fair, we can also assume that the light and medium TLs are delivering a larger amount of energy to the asteroids above and beyond the exact amount needed to the vapor point. I know some of the Warsies have claimed that the TL bolts are likely to be more energetic. This is all fine and well, but the more militant Warsies use this as part of an arguement for megaton-level light and medium TLs, and for the gigaton-level heavy firepower on the basis. They are again taking the most optimistic viewpoint with such a stance. Realistically I would put out for no more than 30-50% over the firepower calculated. Given the calculated low megaton range firepower from RoTS. It makes more sense than assuming they are 100,000% stronger than what we see on-screen.

AnonymousRedShirtEnsign wrote:
How about for trek ships? I was thinking somewhere around low gigaton photon torpedos, and high megaton phasers (of course a wattage value would be more useful for standard phaser arrays), give or take an order of magnitude.

Canonically, we know that the second largest phaser array on a Galaxy class starship have variances in their power output of at least 60 GW, based on Data's statements to Geordi and Picard in "A Matter of Time" [TNG5], and that these variances are margins of error of an "extremely critical" nature. This means that 60 GW is likely a very small fraction of the total overall output. By how much is not something we know. A "small" phaser bank needs a 4.2 GW fusion reactor to power it as per "Who Watches the Watchers" [TNG3]. With stated efficiencies for phasers of up to 86.5%, a small phaser should be able to manage around 3.89 GW in output. So, if nothing else, we can bracket the very lower limits in terms of actual firepower for phasers.
-Mike

[AFT]

I think the 2 GT figure was referring to what happened on screen, so it would be for the 10% phasers over several seconds.

It was 236 Megatons for the 10% setting, so about 2 Gigatons for a full power blast. However many debaters in the forum where I saw these calculations said that these example contradicts other examples that show lower or higher firepower. But to my knowledge this is one of the few examples, if any, that provided most of the variables needed for an accurate analysis unlike many others events where anyone attempting something similar would face many unknown variables such as energy shields or unknown hull materials, unknown power settings, etc. Therefore in my opinion, all the other contradictory examples are the ones that have to be rationalized to explain the lower or higher firepower observed. To do so, it would require an analysis of all and every one of the available examples for ship-mounted phaser firepower, something that I believe no one has ever done (unless I am mistaken about it, that is).

[AnonymousRedShirtEnsign]

So does anyone remember for how long E-D shot the comet? I haven't seen the episode in a while, but would venture a guess somewhere around 5-10 seconds. If someone actually knows please correct me.

[GStone]

I don't remember exactly either and I don't have the ep, but 5-10 seems like it might be a good time. I do remember that it wasn't that long for screen time, though it wasn't a continuously single shot.

[Mike DiCenso]

Even if the E-D had been firing continu for a full minute, you would still have 2.933 megatons (12,318 TJ) of firepower delivered to the comet each second. Since this is only 10% power output, you would have the equivalent of 29.33 MT (123,186 TJ) per second at full power, and this from the second largest of the 11 available phaser arrays on the ship.
-Mike

[AnonymousRedShirtEnsign]

Not bad for a ship that is classified as an explorer, especially since 29.33 MT/s is based on a minute of phaser fire.

[Mike DiCenso]

Well, given that the actual episode has the ventral saucer main phasers firing instead of the larger dorsal ones, means that this is not likely the highest firepower that the E-D can manage. There are something like 742 emitters on the ventral large array, and 965 on the dorsal large array for a difference of 23%. So one might expect the larger of the two arrays to have about 36 MT (151,200 TJ) of firepower.

Also, as has been noted, the actual time the phasers take to do the job in melting most of the comet nucleous is far less than a minute, thus 29.33 MT is a lower limit. If the phasers were fired intermittently as some people are claiming for the scene, not as a single continuous blast, then the firepower for the phasers will be much higher as a result.
-Mike