A challenge to Trekkies

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Lucky
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Re: A challenge to Trekkies

Post by Lucky » Sat Nov 27, 2010 11:23 pm

So how about addressing my points, or do you concede that all my points are correct?

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Khas
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Re: A challenge to Trekkies

Post by Khas » Sat Nov 27, 2010 11:43 pm

I don't think he'll concede. I think he's just trying to push our buttons.

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Re: A challenge to Trekkies

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sun Nov 28, 2010 12:05 am

That's quite a lot of truly mediocre arguments made by you Swap (I'll call you Swap cause I can't be arsed to type your entire uninspired nickname all the time).
  • Vaporizing a small town: Mos Eisly is a fine enough example of a small town because []it is[/i], and if you look at SW, most planets are fairly normal planets, nothing like an ecunemopolis or even half of it. The COruscant and Christophsis, Nar Shaddaa and woop-tee-doo are complete outliers.
  • Combat ranges: The Executor is at best 19 km long. There's no proof whatsoever in the movie that the ships engaged any target even that far. So yes, in a way, we can safely claim that ranges weren't even long enough to be measured in "Executors". The only good indication of range is from the novelization of ROTS, which indicates hundreds of km. It also claims ships are exchanging fire at near light speed, which is obviously not the case.
  • MT concussion blasts: It's from "The Story of Darth Vader", part of a short introduction by Steve Sansweet. The way it's formulated clashes with what we've seen from the movies and read from the novelization, simply because it makes it a generality, and if it were true, then we'd actually see that happen. But we don't. Not to say that there's little evidence that shields can withstand thousands times the shock of an low kiloton asteroid against a hull that utterly crippled an ISD.
    The best example to the scale of a starfighter is about any engagement we've seen thus far, where shields actually provide minimal protection. Be it X-wings, Y-wings, TIE-advanced, Delta-7, N-1, etc, everytime they're hit by firepower from a ship of the same tonnage, the hull suffers a lot, when the ship is not outright destroyed.
    Now if you care to go through that hell of a mess and get into the details of the discussion about that text from the EU, see this thread: Turbolasers make my head hurt, and start at post 187 (it's mine). It has plenty of quotations.
    This is where things got ugly with Leo1, who spent an eternity into trying to make readers believe that a special zone in the asteroid field existed, off screen and off book off course, where there existed an inferno of constant collisions, where the impacts of the "smaller" asteroids were on the average rated at the megaton level, and with larger ones being even more powerful (the ISDs going through that one supposedly destroyed the larger asteroids). That was just bonkers. I can let you imagine how the asteroid would have looked like if such a natural hazard ever existed. Associated to the stupidity of claiming that the ISDs would bother going through that even when the Millennium Falcon and TIEs never did. And that's just stupid because the Avenger was on the MF's tail and there's no reason to believe this warships had to go through was didn't exist some minutes earlier when smaller ships flew there as well. I guess it's just another case of Imperial incompetence in order to save the big numbers. Quite usual.
    See post 195 for more fun. I even made a calc in that one, and compared it to facts from the novelization such as TIEs being "deadly pursuit ships" and using "full laser fire", with the effects we've seen against the moon sized asteroid. ;)
    Leo trying aruging the volatile nature of asteroids in the Hoth asteroid field was just mind boggling. I mean, you know, the movies... they show *something*.
    Unfortunately, many thing just flew above Leo's head, which is quite a habit with him, along refusing to lower the grip on any evidence of über awesomeness even when greater canon and even logic and some basic science say it's bull.
    Note: I and Leo begun to refer to the EU book by using the SoAS acronym several times, but it should have been AS:tSoDV, since the complete title is "Note: I refer to a book by SoAS several times, but it should have been AS:tSoDV, since the complete title is "Anakin Skywalker: The Story of Darth Vader".
  • Use of HTLs in ROTS: I don't know how it can be more obvious. We routinely see the Venators use their HTLs throughout the entire sequence. Watching the movie would help.
    A lot.
  • Random mistakes:
    Star Wars ICS: 200 gigatons
    Star Wars slave ship: gigatones
    Star Wars ROTS novel: gigatons
    BDZ examples: gigatons
    Scaling down from the death star: teratons/petatons+
    Based on power generation: teratons
    ESB: megatons lower limit
    Let me correct you here.
    • Star Wars ICS: 200 gigatons for Acclamators (supposedly the movie version, even through all evidence shows that they never had such weapons!). ISDs should have more than Venators, which themselves can channel their entire core output to their HTLs, and said output is of the order of +850 teratons per second. Oh, and citing the ICS in a thread to defend the ICS is silly. -_-
    • Star Wars slave ship: gigatones - that I give you, but I'm yet to see someone explain why the recoil systems would have to cope with internal explosions in the "giga-tonnage range" when ICSers claim SW weapons are lasers (a laser in the exajoule range won't produce the same recoil as the blast of an explosion in the giga-tonnage range).
    • Star Wars ROTS novel: gigatons - that would be your interpretation of it. If we can't agree, then it's useless to both camps.
    • BDZ examples: gigatons - nope. It's even more obvious when you stop paying attention to the lies of SDN and SWTC, and actually look for the real quotes, pictures and facts. As I said, it's all on this board. Heck, we even have an anti-ICS thread solely dedicated to that.
      Scaling down from the death star: teratons/petatons - again, nope. The "Death Star" book explicitely states that low powered shots from the Death Star, which would rate at gigatons/teratons if you go with the vaporization of a small sea or large lake, or much less if you go for burning a city or two, totally outclass the firepower of an ISD firing all its weapon at once.
    • Based on power generation: teratons - where did you get that from?
    • ESB: megatons lower limit - kilotons upper limit. Asteroids are not as big as claimed on SDN'TL commentaries, and they tend to explode violently with little push: 'sploding 'steroids : gasoline rocks :D.


    Now I won't bother you with all the events we have archived which are ample evidence against the ICS and point to kiloton-low megaton firepower. You can click on the obvious threads and read them first.

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Mith
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Re: A challenge to Trekkies

Post by Mith » Sun Nov 28, 2010 7:51 am

StarWarsStarTrek wrote:Woah...that's a lot of responses.
Indeed. And don't forget my examples.

Ok, to counter some of the main arguments:
1. The asteroid field scene with that big asteroid hitting the star destroyer was AFTER it had been in a very high intensity asteroid field for at least a day with "multi megaton compression bomb" asteroid hitting them.
Where is your evidence for such a thing? Novel? Movie?
2. The CWC series asteroid field scenes are pretty reasonable, given that an asteroid field behind the ship wouldn't stop turbolasers, but would cause them to go off early, sort of like flares.
1) They would see each other just fine.

2) It would take literally one volley for the Venators in that scene to chew their way into the fleet with the amount of firepower ICS claims they're packing. Oh wait, correction; the firepower that a transport ship that would in no way match up to the Venators would be packing. It'd be no more helpful as a flare than just watching them shoot at you. Because by the time those things explode, round two is ready to knock on your door.

The best you could hope for would be for them to stop the bolt, either by acting as a sacrifice or by physically stopping it. The first is the best possible answer, but it doesn't do much by offering it. We are again, forced to conclude that to a power that can toss out teratons, that asteroid field would be worthless.

Especially with the density of that field.
3. The ROTS opening scene was too close for turbolasers to be used,
Bullshit.

hence why you don't see ships using them.
...We don't?
Also, since the CIS was a) trying to LAND TROOPS into Coruscant and b) needed the element of surprise, it's clear that they would want to get within really close range of Coruscant.


Um...except there's no way they'd get so close that they wouldn't come within range of any ships orbiting the planet. Try to remember, we see ships engaging in and out of atmosphere in the Clone Wars. That alone limits their capability; fighting in atmosphere would be an outright holocaust with teratons of firepower being tossed around. Even one stray bolt would cause massive and very visible damage to the evironment.

Just a hint? a 18-20 gigaton explosion would be over a hundred miles in radius. If detonated in Washington DC, the shockwave would encompass very possibly the entire state and all of its neighboring ones. The states all around it would be filled with lethal radiation starting from their exposed border and towards the center.

The ICS claims that a single barrel on a transport ship is 10x stronger than that explosion.

The ROTS novel implies that parts of the battle were fought in ranges of at least 100s or 1000s of kms.
...And?
4. The Federation didn't mass produce transwarp/slipstream/etc., nor is there any proof that they're as fast as hyperdrive.
It should only take them a few decades. And yes, they are very fast. In fact, transwarp hubbs are much, much faster (but that's major Borg tech).
5. The industrial and numerical advantage that Star Wars has makes a conventional war a forgone conclusion, even if technology was equal. WW2 proved this; the Allies won largely because of a >2:1 industrial advantage, in this case it's a millions to one industrial advantage, which results in an epic curbstomp.
Except that the technological scale of the nations at that time was roughly equal. Yes, one side may have been better in some areas or what not, but the gap wasn't that large. Not enough to overcome the industrial advantage.

Here, it is. Kilotons is your best argument thus far. And that's from the most powerful cruiser in the Imperial fleet. Whose sole existence is a massive, massive investment by the Imperial Navy. And they wouldn't stand a chance against a ship that's a century out of date for Star Trek. Remember Trek 2009? An equal to a modern day oiling rig bitch slapped dozens of the top of the line warships.

Now compare a crusier of that time to the ships that would have laughed off an ISD. Starfleet doesn't need to have the number advantage. They'll inflict such massive losses on the Empire that they'll either destabalize as more and more ships are pulled off towards the front lines or force a revolution to cease the senesless loss.
6. Centerpoint station can destroy stuff from across the galaxy. Therefore, it can effectively destroy the Federation while any Federation force would have to find Centerpoint station and then spend decades reaching it.
Too bad it's in the wrong galaxy...
7. The sun crusher was expected to take a full on shot from the death star. It could simply make the Federation stars go nova and the Federation can't do jack to stop it.
Yes. Except after one or two stars go nova, the closest ship captures it with a tractor beam, beams the occupants aboard, and takes them home to be tried for war crimes. Not that the Empire every really had the Suncrusher to begin with, right?

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Trinoya
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Re: A challenge to Trekkies

Post by Trinoya » Sun Nov 28, 2010 11:02 am

Looking over this thread SWST... I do believe that there have been an appropriate number of examples that you have failed to address... I* believe the time for concession is upon you.


That said, might I recommend creating a separate thread to more directly debate specific points? These debates can quickly bog down into massive walls of text with dozens of points going in every direction if people don't take a step back.

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Re: A challenge to Trekkies

Post by Picard » Sun Nov 28, 2010 1:54 pm

Khas wrote:The ICS 200 GT yield is contradicted by the sub-KT TL yields we see in TCW. You also have to remember that Curtis Saxton, who wrote ICS, was a poster at the Usenet group alt.startrek.vs.starwars. He also had those numbers given to him by other posters, just so he could say "Ha Ha, Wars Wins!". Just to make things clear, those same posters also thought that pissing off 4chan was a good idea.

And Picard, you overestimated the Executor's length. According to "Star Wars: The New Essential Guide To Vehicles And Vessels", it was 12.8 km long. Or, if we want to go by the Star Wars Encyclopedia, a "mere" 8 km long.

And as for you saying that battless take place at longer ranges, all the books I have seem to show them taking place at the same ranges they do in the movies. The only way that these could be justified is that we are seeing ideal weapons ranges.

And maybe you should look at this thread.
I do not read EU at all, nor I think it is valid. And movie gives 19km length.
http://www.playtime-magazine.com/wp-con ... tor_01.jpg
Althought, question is how we know ISD is 1.6 km?

RotS battle is around 60 kilometers range. TESB ion cannon shot gives us 5000 km, but we don't know if their ships can actually engage at such range.

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Re: A challenge to Trekkies

Post by Picard » Sun Nov 28, 2010 2:00 pm

StarWarsStarTrek wrote:Ok, so how about a Trekkie (no offense, simply a term) try and answer these challenges. If 2 of these can be proven, then I'll concede.

1. A blatant, unjustifiable contradiction by G canon OR 3 or more by T/C canon of the ICS.
2. An explanation as to how the Federation matches or even comes close to matching Star War's industrial and numerical advantage.
3. An explanation as to how the Federation's warp drive can possibly be matched to the far faster Star Wars hyperdrive.
4. A plan as to how the Federation could possibly mount any successful invasion of the Star Wars galaxy in under 100 years.
5. An explanation as to how the Federation counters the sun crusher, centerpoint station or even the 2 death stars.
1) http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/10/i ... acies.html
http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/08/c ... ished.html
http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/08/t ... power.html
http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/09/d ... laser.html
http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/10/e ... -zero.html
http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/11/s ... -size.html

2) http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/11/s ... -size.html
http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/08/t ... ished.html

3) http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/11/s ... -size.html
http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/08/f ... drive.html

4) http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/11/s ... -size.html
http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/08/s ... fleet.html

5) http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/11/d ... ar-ii.html
Sun Crusher and Centerpoint station are not canon.

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Re: A challenge to Trekkies

Post by Mike DiCenso » Sun Nov 28, 2010 7:38 pm

Picard wrote:This is pretty good summary by Rama from StarDestroyer.net:
Really? Did you know that "summary" is a cherrypicked bit of propaganda from SDN's Imperialwiki article on warp that has since been corrected to some degree? Here's the additions, which Ted tried to do damage control on:

TOS, "Obsession"
The Enterprise pursues an alien cloud creature to it's point of origin 1,000 light years away in the Tycho system. Kirk then notes that they must make a rendezvous with the starship Yorktown, coming back the 1,000 ly to make the rendezvous in 48 hours. Thus one day to get to the Tycho system and one day to come back for a speed of 365,000c

TOS, "The Squire of Gothos"
The Enterprise is 900 light-years from Earth. While this is not a specific speed versus distance quote, it does show that the Enterprise can travel in one week out into unexplored territory across nearly a thousand light years, then the next week be somewhere completely different for the events of "Arena".

TOS, "The Cage/The Menagerie"
Pike attempting to communicate with his Talosian captors "My name is Christopher Pike, commander of the space vehicle Enterprise from a stellar group at the other end of this galaxy". This implies travel on a galactic scale, and would require speed and knowledge unlike anything seen in all of Trek. Some have taken it to mean not the literal other opposite side of the Milky Way galaxy from where Earth would be located, but something much closer.

TOS, "Where No Man Has Gone Before"
The Enterprise seems capable of routine travel to the very literal edges of the galaxy where they are turned back by a mysterious energy barrier. This will not be the only time the ship travels this far and beyond in TOS; "By Any Other Name" and "Is There In Truth No Beauty?". Even if the ship is somehow heading "up" or "down" straight out of the Galaxy though the shortest distance possible, not going to the outer edges of the spiral arm disk, it still means the Enterprise has to traverse across thousands of light years, and all in a very short span of time.

TOS, "Bread and Circuses"
The Enterprise travels across one-sixteenth of a parsec in "seconds". This would equate to a speed of approximately 215,000c, assuming it took a full 30 seconds to get to the system, never mind the specific planet there.

Trekkies have difficulty explaining why Federation starships of the 24th century would be substantially slower than Federation starships of the 23rd century. Their response is that Warsies cherrypick modern Trek for the lowest showings, ignoring higher examples, such as the following:

TNG, "The Chase"
Picard's old professor Galen marks out a path on a map of the Milky Way galaxy that must be followed in order to put together an ancient puzzle. The line Galen traces subtends an impressive 40,000 lys. Galen then notes that with a shuttle or transport, the trip will require months to complete, but if he had access to a starship, then it would only be a matter of weeks. The minimum speed a starship would require to complete the journey as shown would require an average speed of 1 million c.

TNG, "The Best of Both Worlds, Part I and II"
The E-D chases the Borg cube back to Earth over the course of 6 days from the edges of Federation territory. Assuming the nearest edge of Federation space was just 1,000 ly away from Earth, it would require the E-D to maintain a speed of nearly 61,000 c.

DS9, "Valiant"
The cadets tell how the original mission of the Defiant-class USS Valiant was to circumnavigate the 8,000 ly Federation in 90 days. Assuming by that they ment the ship was to go straight out 8,000 lys and then come back to Earth with no stops along the way, then the ship would need a speed of 64,888c.


As you can see, even Ted couldn't deny their existance, just simply try and do a pathetic attempt at insulting the opposition with cheap insults and twisting of the original wording. And just remember, there are more examples where those came from.
-Mike

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Praeothmin
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Re: A challenge to Trekkies

Post by Praeothmin » Sun Nov 28, 2010 11:18 pm

Mike, don't forget FC where the E-E travels from the Romulan Neutral Zoone to Earth in a matter of minutes, at the most a few hours...

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Re: A challenge to Trekkies

Post by Mike DiCenso » Sun Nov 28, 2010 11:55 pm

Praeothmin wrote:Mike, don't forget FC where the E-E travels from the Romulan Neutral Zoone to Earth in a matter of minutes, at the most a few hours...
I know, which is why I said at the end of my previous post "And just remember, there are more examples where those came from."


In addition to the ST:FC movie example, we have TNG's "First Contact" (the episode) where Troi states that Picard is from Earth, which is 2,000 light years from Malcor III. That episode is less than 5 months prior to the events of BoBW, and the E-D had undergone many adventures prior to getting out there to Malcor III. So any speed derived from this would be rather conservative. "Conspiracy" and "Where Silence Has Lease" are among several other addtional examples of very fast TNG-era speeds.
-Mike

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Re: A challenge to Trekkies

Post by Mith » Mon Nov 29, 2010 4:52 am

Hmm, and here I just sorta took the 'Damage' ftl speed, scaled it from that and then doubled the rates for the TNG era. It's from a single source and is contradicted by different episodes that gives higher and lower numbers, but it 'fits' the setting better. It allows for ships to cross thousands of light years in months instead of days, weeks, or years. Throw in a few places where warp works 'better' and I think it works.

That's really the best you can do here. Trek is so fucked up in its warp scales it's not even funny. I had thought that of all series, Enterprise would have tried to be more accurate...but they too get things off so often or give absurd travel distances that it's outright laughable. According to Archer, the Klingon homeworld would be only one to three light years away from Earth (which is stupid).

Hence why I go with the Damage for the average for Enterprise. It's fast enough that Kronos at warp 3 is still 5.33 ly away from Earth and working off that scale for warp four, is roughly eight light years.

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Re: A challenge to Trekkies

Post by Mike DiCenso » Mon Nov 29, 2010 6:14 am

Mith wrote: Hence why I go with the Damage for the average for Enterprise. It's fast enough that Kronos at warp 3 is still 5.33 ly away from Earth and working off that scale for warp four, is roughly eight light years.
Going off the speeds given in "Cease Fire" and "Horizon", the NX-01 is perfectly capable of managing speeds in excess of 1,500c. Perhaps even as high as 1,700 to 2,000c. In which case Qo'noS is at least 17.1 light years away. Preferably in a different direction from Vulcan, which is 16.45 ly from Earth.
-Mike

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Re: A challenge to Trekkies

Post by Khas » Mon Nov 29, 2010 4:07 pm

According to some non-canon sources, they managed to reach Qo'noS in such a short time because of subspace shortcuts.

I also dislike the idea of Earth and Qo'noS being so close together because that puts the capitals of two interstellar empires who had been enemies for so long within striking distance of each other.

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Re: A challenge to Trekkies

Post by Nowhereman10 » Mon Nov 29, 2010 4:33 pm

Well, that's why I'd always assumed that the Vulcan star charts were so important to the mission. Otherwise it would have taken months to reach the Klingon homeworld. Like in Voyager whenever they got their hands on improved data for navigating the Delta Quadrant, they were able to go faster without any engine improvements, super-tech, or spatial anomalies.

I mean, "Broken Bow" is very self-contradictory to itself, never mind other Enterprise episodes. Archer is saying at one point the ship only does about 100 or so times light speed, but then our heroes take a side-trip 15 light years over to Rigel 10 without it taking nearly 8 weeks. At most it seemed like 1 week, if even that. Then there's the other examples Mike and everyone else has brought up that again contradict the 100 c statements.

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Re: A challenge to Trekkies

Post by StarWarsStarTrek » Wed Dec 01, 2010 12:06 am

Sorry, I've been busy.

ROTS hull breech: since when were they using HTLs when Jedi and the chancellor were on it? Since when would they use it when they're practically right next to it and it's in atmosphere? The ROTS novel also states that a turbolaser can vaporize a small town; a STAR WARS small town would probably be larger than New York City given the huge population disparity and the enormous size of most Star Wars cities.

TWC: still nobody has made a blatant contradiction, nor have they specified the size of that asteroid field

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