List of expanded universe sources incompatible with ICS

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SailorSaturn13
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Post by SailorSaturn13 » Wed Jun 18, 2008 4:50 pm

I'm assuming omega molecules rip energy from subspace. It's noted this has consequences for warp travel and FTL communications, which omega molecules have caused problems for, so that's plausible to me.
Yes and in "New Ground", soliton wave increased, and the energy could only come from subspace

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Post by l33telboi » Wed Jun 18, 2008 6:17 pm

Mike DiCenso wrote:For the dedonator it's sub-kiloton at the very lowest end of the scale. For the 1000 kg warhead, it's at least around a megaton or so on the upper end. But realistically I would assume kiloton range yeilds for the missile warheads, if I understand JMS's estimates correctly. But even if megaton range in yeild, it would still be orders of magnitude below the ICS level firepower.
-Mike
100 - 800 TJ/kg would carry an energy equivalent of 23.9 megatons to 191 megatons for a one ton warhead. And to be quite frank, saying that a über-capship missile that can blow largish vessels apart with a single hit would be less powerful then modern nuclear missiles is ludicrous to say the least.

Even the above figures seem far from plausible to me, I'm afraid. Above the gigaton mark I could deal with - but not this.

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Post by Jedi Master Spock » Wed Jun 18, 2008 8:20 pm

l33telboi wrote:
Mike DiCenso wrote:For the dedonator it's sub-kiloton at the very lowest end of the scale. For the 1000 kg warhead, it's at least around a megaton or so on the upper end. But realistically I would assume kiloton range yeilds for the missile warheads, if I understand JMS's estimates correctly. But even if megaton range in yeild, it would still be orders of magnitude below the ICS level firepower.
-Mike
100 - 800 TJ/kg would carry an energy equivalent of 23.9 megatons to 191 megatons for a one ton warhead. And to be quite frank, saying that a über-capship missile that can blow largish vessels apart with a single hit would be less powerful then modern nuclear missiles is ludicrous to say the least.

Even the above figures seem far from plausible to me, I'm afraid. Above the gigaton mark I could deal with - but not this.
Well... I'd like to offer a few points to consider. I know 20-200 megatons sounds like a very small amount, especially for a proximity detonation that outright destroys a cruiser.

But it's smaller than a Star Destroyer. 98% of it is contained within a 500m radius sphere centered almost 500m away. Because it's a proximity explosion, the dovin basals used by the Vong to defend the ship blocked maybe ... 0.1% of the blast. This means the ship was effectively unshielded. The idea was to exploit the Vong's particular shield technology.

Now, according to the X-Wing books (namely X-Wing: Bacta War), a Victory class star destroyer - 900m long - has a whole side of shields drop from just 24 fighter protorps in a concerted salvo. A second spread that hits the unshielded side can destroy it outright.

So 24 protorps, fighter grade, can blow up a 900m Star Destroyer if they don't have to deal with shields.

24 protorps, hitting directly, vs 20-200 MT at 500m proximity from a cruiser probably in the 700-800m range... considering the shadow bomb turned out to basically be the perfect anti-Vong weapon,I think this incident actually a lot more generous than what we get if we work from the X-Wing books.

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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Wed Jun 18, 2008 8:40 pm

Wookieepedia has a page about Xizor's palace, and I must say that the drawing about the palace's demise seems quite exagerated.
It literally blows the whole thing up, while the description in the book had the detonator destroy the basement, and have the whole building collapse.
There, again, it's seen blowing up like if it was full of C4.
Still, when you consider the exagerated picture, and look at the size of the staircase, you get an idea of the size of the structure.
Well, it doesn't look like a 100 stories building at all.
Besides, I wouldn't expect the explosion of a single Class-A TD to surpass the firepower of a MOAB (11 tons).
It really how much baradium there was in that TD Lando used.
It could be anything between 0.01 gram and 1 gram, or more.

No matter how you look at it, I have hard times seeing that stuff being in the high megaton range.

Now, again, we have no idea about what the cruiser in question was.
Are there bits of info about the number of weapons it had, or the crew, or if carried fighters, which would help to know how big it was?

Remember, the bomb exploded 500 meter aways from that cruiser, the bomb had a radius of 500m (due to the magic frontier of something), and still 98% of the cruiser was within that radius, which means it could be terribly huge. There's obviously going to be a margin of error, and the fact that if the bomb exactly had a radius of 500m and was detonated at 500m from the ship, it wouldn't have hit it much.
So more details about that cruiser are definitely required I think.

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Post by Jedi Master Spock » Tue Jul 01, 2008 5:58 am

OK, I've moved this thread to the section dealing with specific sources and stickied it in the hopes that that will be the best thing for this little project.

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Post by Mike DiCenso » Tue Jul 01, 2008 2:34 pm

In my opinion, threads like this one are very borderline in nature. They could go in the regular Trek/Wars forum, or they could go here, depending on how things develop.

In fact, it dawns on me that like other forums, past and present, it might not be a bad idea to have specific forums for Trek, Wars, and other sci Fi franchises' technologies that are outside the general scope of the usual Versus-type debates.
-Mike

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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Tue Jul 01, 2008 11:23 pm

Mike DiCenso wrote:In my opinion, threads like this one are very borderline in nature. They could go in the regular Trek/Wars forum, or they could go here, depending on how things develop.

In fact, it dawns on me that like other forums, past and present, it might not be a bad idea to have specific forums for Trek, Wars, and other sci Fi franchises' technologies that are outside the general scope of the usual Versus-type debates.
-Mike
Yes, the mysteries of forum hierachies. These issues crawl in everywhere, in so many projects.

There's the obvious issue of knowing if this section is restricted to Trek/Wars as well, or not.

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Post by Mike DiCenso » Thu Jul 03, 2008 1:28 am

This thread could even be cross-posted to both forums, actually.
-Mike

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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu Jul 03, 2008 2:16 am

Stop talking dirty. ;)
+Mr. Oragahn

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Post by Jedi Master Spock » Wed Jul 16, 2008 10:45 pm

In light of this thread on SB.com, which explains that an ISD failed to get at a Vong worldship through the thick icy crust of a small planet, I have also added Vector Prime to the list of actual observed firepower events that contradict the ICS.

I'm also moving this thread back to Trek/Wars.

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Post by Mike DiCenso » Thu Jul 17, 2008 1:22 am

Wow... you really know how to find these little gems, don't you, JMS? Not only have you found another piece of contradictory evidence against the ICS in the EU, but you've also found a great and shining example of SB.com's supposedly "unbiased" mods. ;-)

By the way, what book are all those quotes from?
-Mike

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Post by Jedi Master Spock » Thu Jul 17, 2008 1:37 am

Mike DiCenso wrote:Wow... you really know how to find these little gems, don't you, JMS? Not only have you found another piece of contradictory evidence against the ICS in the EU, but you've also found a great and shining example of SB.com's supposedly "unbiased" mods. ;-)

By the way, what book are all those quotes from?
-Mike
Since the SB thread is about an incident in Vector Prime, and the two contestants are clearly arguing about a single incident without diverging to other incidents, I'm pretty sure all the quotes in that SB thread are from Vector Prime. It doesn't increase the number of sources; Vector Prime was already on the list due to an incident with a small asteroidal moon. I'm sure we would have heard about the thread shortly even if I hadn't decided to read a little on SB.com today.

I'm frankly not quite sure the Serndipal and Helska incidents are completely in line with each other, actually, but they do both contradict the ICS firepower figures.

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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu Jul 17, 2008 2:28 am

I think both incidents are in line with each other. If anything, they can both easily point to megaton ranged firepower, eventually low gigatons at a high end if you push it.

Helska IV: There's enough evidence the ISD fires a good number of salvos at the planet and still looks for a weakness in the icy crust to get some shots beneath.
Visibly that planet wasn't dense enough to have anything but liquid water in its core. Plus we have to consider the pressure and Vong swimming in the water, and I think some of the Jedi captive there. It wouldn't seem the Vong ship was located that deep into the liquid region of the planet.


Dobido: the ISD couldn't deal with the 20 km wide moon, a Death Star would have been needed, and the ISD couldn't even demolish the escaping debris to small enough bits, despite an awful amount of batteries and supposedly light second ranges. An 8 GT bomb placed in the core would fragment the asteroid to ten meters wide bits. Of course, an ISD would have all her batteries firing at the asteroid surface, which dilutes the yield. More, Solo made this estimation fully knowing that Dobido would hit Sernpidal in seven hours.

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Post by l33telboi » Thu Jul 17, 2008 7:26 am

The thread there is a split from another thread, so most of the quotes I gave and referring too isn't even in it. Here's the post that kicked it all off.

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Post by Mike DiCenso » Thu Jul 17, 2008 11:44 pm

Jedi Master Spock wrote:
Mike DiCenso wrote:Wow... you really know how to find these little gems, don't you, JMS? Not only have you found another piece of contradictory evidence against the ICS in the EU, but you've also found a great and shining example of SB.com's supposedly "unbiased" mods. ;-)

By the way, what book are all those quotes from?
-Mike
Since the SB thread is about an incident in Vector Prime, and the two contestants are clearly arguing about a single incident without diverging to other incidents, I'm pretty sure all the quotes in that SB thread are from Vector Prime. It doesn't increase the number of sources; Vector Prime was already on the list due to an incident with a small asteroidal moon. I'm sure we would have heard about the thread shortly even if I hadn't decided to read a little on SB.com today.

I'm frankly not quite sure the Serndipal and Helska incidents are completely in line with each other, actually, but they do both contradict the ICS firepower figures.
Ah, I see that now. Actually, the primary source is "Vector Prime" with two decidedly sub-ICS incidents in it. As for how "in-line" the two incidents are with one another, I think they are within a reasonable ballpark range of each other, and both put the combined weapons firepower of an ISD in the low single-digit gigaton range. The AoTC: ICS numbers are way too far out there over both examples by several orders of magnitude.
-Mike

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