Mike DiCenso wrote:Because, if you had bothered to look again at the image in the link, the D'kyr class in that one screencap is about 4 times the length of the 225 meter NX-01, which means that 900 meters, or nearly so was possible, and the Federation was even around then, this was just what the Vulcans were able to do on their own.
Because previously I'd underestimated the size. Use your pixel counting crap and look at the size ratio between the two docked ships. It's not 2.67 to 1. It's at least 3.6 to 1. The 600 meter number is clearly off given the size difference. Even rounding down the NX class size, that is still around 800 meters long.Kane Starkiller wrote: Wait a minute. First you said 600m-800m now all of a sudden is 900m. Memory alpha which you linked to says 600m and besides we are talking volume. With that huge empty space between the rings I can't see it being more massive than Galaxy.
Mike DiCenso wrote:Now you're just mincing definitions. Is the B-1B Lancer a bomber or is it not? Is it an aircraft capable of super-sonic speeds? Yes to both. The capability existed for the U.S. to follow up and build a second class of large, super-sonic bomb post-XB-70. The only thing that changed was the mission requirements.
Also, the U.S. still has maintained the capability to build a large, sub-sonic bomber as witnessed by the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. Although the stealth capability requirement necessitated a different configuration and use of composite materials, the overall size and capability of the B-2 is similar to the B-52 bombers.
One does not have to create exactly the XB-70 design. The whole XB-70 program was nearly cancelled because of the increasing missle threat, which eventually necessitated that a whole new approach of low-level penetration rather than high-altitude super-sonic speeds. The B1-B is better suited to that role and it still maintains a modest mach speed. As for your analogy, it is flawed; the ability to have a warp driven starship is important since it is a key propulsion advancement, just as super-sonic or hypersonic speeds are. For it to work, it would have to be a case were the capability to fly at super-sonic speed or warp speed were totally lost as technologies for large vehicles. In either case they were not.Kane Starkiller wrote:You make it sound as if supersonic is a homogenous class of bombers and if you can build one you can build the other. Yes B-1 is a supersonic bomber just like XB-70. Meanwhile Galaxy is a warp ship just like D'Kyr. But just like B-1 is smaller than XB-70 the Galaxy might be smaller than D'Kyr. If US tried to build fleets of XB-70's today it would bankrupt itself. The same could be true with the Federation. I'm not saying that is the case merely responding to your claim that you can't loose previously owned capabilities.
Would the U.S. bankrupt itself, if it chose to revive the XB-70? Not necessarily as the data collected by North American, the U.S. Air Force, and NASA are still available, as are the aircraft's blueprints and the surviving number one prototype which could be used to back-engineer the aircraft and it's components, though no doubt an effort would be made to incorporate new technologies where possible.
In fact, the XB-70 bomber program from the sources I've seen cost $1.5 billion USD. Adjusting for inflation and assuming the earliest possible date of 1959, it would cost 10.64 billion dollars to redo the program from scratch. That's hardly enough to bankrupt the U.S.A, even in the current flagging economy.
Mike DiCenso wrote:No, you are the one broad-brush twisting of a dictionary definition. That JMS turned it back on you is simple tit-for-tat.
JMS has already made many points against all of that. The EU is subordinate to the movie and novelization canon. If the Death Star only need use it's antigrav to slingshot around Yavin, rather than maneuver signifcantly, then it is a fuzzy area vehicle. Not quite a ship, but not a stationary structure, either.Kane Starkiller wrote:I wouldn't even have to use dictionary definitions if it wasn't for your overwhelming urge to find any way to ignore Death Star. Yes it can fly supralight, has weapons, shields, armor and EU sources explicitly describe sublight engines but is it really really really a starship?
Here's a thought for you to dwell on. If the Death Star had signifcant maneuver capability at sublight as a proper independantly mobile ship should, then why did it's commanders bother orbiting Yavin at all? Why not fly out and around to where the gas giant no longer blocked line of sight and just fired on the moon. Even if the power of the DS superlaser goes down by an order of magnitude, it should still be capable of dealing a death blow regardless, right? Would that not be quicker and easier?
Mike DiCenso wrote:They are not unavoidable, especially when you couple that evidence with Bernd's article's evidence.
But his own research is independant of mine, and it contains very signficant evidence that I did not present eariler that only makes the assumptions we both worked from even more vaild than before. Evidence is evidence in this case.Kane Starkiller wrote:I'll assume you meant unavoidable. Bernd makes the same assumption you do: that the Galaxies seen in various Dominion war battles were not the same which may or may not be true.
Mike DiCenso wrote:You are the one pretending here. I have shown over and over more and more evidence, and all you do is come up with excuses, or handwaving to ignore it.
Bernd's article is merely icing on the cake with the additional "dark neck" variants that are seen nowhere else in addition to the Venture's unique "bumps" on her warp nacelles.
Again, we see enough of them at various points to know that they are not the Venture. We also see in later battles that the "dark neck" GCS are not in any of the fleet scenes, further indicating larger numbers of GCS.Kane Starkiller wrote:Venture's bumps only seen from above. Again I ask you did we see all five ships from above at once? And even if we did it only raises the number of ships by one. You can assume the ships are not the same but you can't call it evidence.
Mike DiCenso wrote:So? Even if we were to assume the three gaps there, it still does not disclude that there are elements that have Galaxy wings in them as part of their makeup. That would be 2-3 GCS per fleet, or about 14 to 21 GCS total in Starfleet.
Obviously Galaxy wings are a formation of GCS as seen in SoA. If there are only 5 GCS total in the Operation Return battle, then we have to split the GCS seen between the two fleets whose elements made up the 624 ships present in the fight. Working off that as a minimum, we have 2 ships per each fleet, multiply that by seven known fleets, and you get 14 possible GCS at the time of the Dominion war. If three GCS per wing, then you get 21 GCS. All of which would, of course, not include the three GCS destroyed prior to the war, which would bring the counts up to 17 and 24 respectively. The average would be 17 GCS, excluding the lost three.Kane Starkiller wrote:What are Galaxy wings? How many Galxies are in each? Does Galaxy wing consists only of Galaxy class ships or is the wing simply led by the Galaxy similar to " 5 Carrier battlegroup" which doesn't mean there is actually 5 groups each consisting of several aircraft carriers.
Mike DiCenso wrote:What does it matter? Why would all 8 (there are eight as per the screencap in Bernd's article) GCS be there? Were they having a GCS convention? It makes no sense, nor would it make sense that all 8 or more were sitting around within a light year of Earth just waiting for something to happen as per the dialog from "Endgame":
ADMIRAL PARIS: What the hell is it?
BARCLAY: A transwarp aperture. It's less than a light year from Earth.
OFFICER: How many Borg vessels?
BARCLAY: We can't get a clear reading, but the graviton emissions are off the scale.
ADMIRAL PARIS: I want every ship in range to converge on those co-ordinates now.
CREWWOMAN: Yes, sir
So even though this takes place about 3 years after the Dominion War in 2378, you still have to explain why all of the existing GCS in Starfleet are hanging out around within a light year of Earth. It certainly would not take that long for all of them to have battle damgage repaired, and it certainly would not take that long for redeployment to other parts of the Federation and beyond... Not unless there is a larger number of them out there. Like the "dark neck" GCS that are conspicously absent from the Endgame fleet, and the Venture with her distinctive warp nacelles.
That many... the entire Federation contingent of Galaxy starships all at the same time? It makes no sense. As for the "dark necks", they do exist as Cocytus has shown. None are visible at all among the 7-8 GCSKane Starkiller wrote:Refit and repair perhaps. And I honestly never observed these "dark neck" Galaxies. In the images that supposedly show them they all look like normal Galaxies to me.
at the "Endgame" engagement. Neither do there appear to be any GCS with warp nacelle bumps, thus excluding at least one other GCS.
Mike DiCenso wrote:No you are not. You are asking for ever increasing standards. I the Death Star 2 case, I remind you that I was stating that it was theoretically possible that the Empire could have or would have desired to complete it. I even clarified that for you. Did the DS2 get completed. Yes or no? No, obviously. Could have possibily been completed. Theoretically, yes.
You on the other hand are ignoring and continuing to do so with each level of evidence provided to increase the standard of that evidence concerning the existance of more than 5 GCS. Now you are faced with at least 8 currently existing GCS and likely 10 more, given the two "dark neck GCS", and an 11th in the form of the unique varient USS Venture. We also have to deal with the practicallities of deployments. Why would all 8 GCS be sitting around for 3 years in within a light year of Earth?
That does not even include the three GCS destroyed prior to the Dominion war which would bump that number up to 11-14.
Fine, for now we'll say it's an assumption. But even you would have to recognize that for an assumption, there is quite a bit behind having made it in the first place.Kane Starkiller wrote: My standards are not increasing: find me evidence of more than 5 or so Galaxies. So far we are at 8 or so not counting the 3 lost. I am not saying they definitely don't have more we just have no evidence either way.
We could assume that those seen at various campaigns are not the same but then it would have to be acknowledged it's an assumption.
With the existance of at least two "dark neck" GCS varients confirmed, then we have to place the numbers even higher than 8 or so.
Mike DiCenso wrote:No, I would remind you that we have seen the second Death Star under a later stage of construction, while we saw the first Death Star early on, however unlike the second, there is a distinct lack of internal superstructure. The Mandel blueprints are not canon, nor even offically licensed material just as was the same with his ISD blueprints. We also have seen a distinct contradiction between the canon AoTC and RoTJ scematics of the Death Stars and most of the offical EU/ICS material.
As for the Unicomplex, I can simply turn things around to point out that neither did Paris or anyone else state that the signal was coming from 600 km away in a seperate unicomplex. In fact, in "Dark Frontier", they talk only about one unicomplex.
It's the total volume of all those structures, regarless of how they are connected. The minimum stated linear dimensions of the Unicomplex are on a scale that clearly dwarfs the only completed Death Star by a fairly significant amount, even if we choose to go with the 160 km ICS number.Kane Starkiller wrote:So what? We've seen the complete Death Star and it is one ship just as much as any Borg cube or Federation starship. Unicomplex on the other hand was never explored in detail and consists of many loosely connected structures and it's impossible to make out whether all are actually connected.
Anyway since we don't know other dimensions and since the entire complex is a bunch of barely connected modules your initial claim that it dwarfs the Death Star is baseless.
The real question then becomes what size sphere would you get if you were to take those "thousands of structures" and roll them up? Obviously the Unicomplex is not a single-file chain 600 km long, or it would not be composed of thousands of interconnected stuctures, and probably would not be able to house trillions of drones.
This is the only view that I can find that shows anything like the whole complex, obvious it does not:
http://voy.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/ ... er_288.jpg
You'll have to copy and paste it since Trekcore does not allow hotlinking.
A shot of a cube ship dwarfed by one of the structures:
http://voy.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/ ... er_342.jpg
Mike DiCenso wrote:Opinion? The two ships are pretty much in the ballpark in terms of size, that is something even the average layperson would agree on. You are also confusing tonnages, BTW. The displacement tonnages are within 25% of each other, and the linear dimensions are within 90% of each other (30 meters for length, and 10 meters in beam).
Most people seeing the two ships side-by-side would not notice much of a difference to care about.
Because they are different points of comparison, that is why. I find it odd that you cannot except that. Also, the Soviets did build a full-deck carrier class that was comparable in size, and was jump of up to four times anything they'd previously built. For our purposes, they are in the same approximate size catagory.Kane Starkiller wrote:But that doesn't change the fact Soviet Union never constructed anything larger. I honestly don't understand why is it so hard for you to accept the same standard of evidence you seek for the Empire. We never saw the Federation construct larger ships and the fact that Romulan Empire and Dominion can do it doesn't mean the Federation can. They are not the same political, economic or technological entity.
So by your logic, we would have to ignore it if the Federation built a ship 90% the linear dimensions and 75% the mass of a D'Deridex warbird.
The fact that we have an additional roughly equivalent powers in ST with which to compare and extrapolate what the Federation could do is important as is comparing what a single member (Vulcan) was capable of building in the 22nd century. All of this adds together.
On the other hand, there is no other movie or novelization canon level power in the SW universe with which to make a similar comparison. It is that simple, and I don't understand why you cannot grasp that.
Mike DiCenso wrote:You still don't understand, do you? The vane debris is not being pushed laterally by the explosion enough to make it appear larger in size. But that is not all. The YouTube Video of
"Azati Prime" at 3:11 through 3:16 shows the explosion in all visible directions is only a about a 100 or so meters a second.Thus even with an asymetrical explosion, in two seconds the fireball laterally is not travelling all that much further, and therefore the vissian ship is underneath the E-J saucer near or underneath the dome.
All of you objections so far are hand waving, and thus there is nothing to disclude the vissian ship being near the dome or just underneath the E-J saucer.
The screecap I linked to shows otherwise however for the lighting of the Archer/Daniels side of the dome's base structure (the dome itself appears to be illuminated from within ala the very similar TOS and ENT style domes).Kane Starkiller wrote: Now that I look at the video it's clear that no part of the ship that wouldn't be in the line of sight even if the ship is beyond the saucer is not illuminated. Bottom left of the dome is lit up bot not the dome facing Archer and Daniels. Again there is no evidence that the ship is beneath the saucer.
-Mike