The SSD vs an ambassador class and two excelsiors

[Admiral Breetai]

the massive ship from the movies gets tossed into the trek universe this is set about two months after the dominion war so the ships should have their upgrades

the fleets work horses and the galaxies poor cousin take on the monster of the imperial navy

hows this go?

[Trinoya]

This would highly depend on which calcs and what is deemed possible.

My personal belief on the matter is that without warp strafing the SSD can effortlessly pwn the small group of ships with minimal damage. It did have an entire fleet engaging it, and odds are the federation ships will be much more concerned focusing on 'weapon systems' and 'engines' rather than the bridge.

With warp strafing: The SSD simply runs away.


The SSD is big... very big.. and even some of the conservative weapon estimates still give hundreds of turbolasers. They'll hit.. some might be from dumb luck, but they WILL hit.

[Admiral Breetai]

I was thinking that too that with the ships size taking a pounding long enough to get in lucky shots could possibly do it..if they aren't outranged

[sonofccn]

My two cents:

I think it'll be a rather close affair with either a mangled SSD surviving or a burned out wreck of one of the three Fed ships. The SSD just never really impressed me, for its size it should have been able to curbstomp the rebel fleet rather single handedly yet it never really did anything before its shield was relativly quickly taken out, either by the fleet or a lucky fighter strike, and it died.

[Picard]

Dozen photon torpedoes should do the trick...

[Who is like God arbour]

The SSD may have hundreds of turbolasers. But their range is very limited. That's a situation where it makes sense for the StarFleetships to keep their distance and fire from there. The SSD can't do anything against StarFleetships that are firing their weapons from a distance of maybe 100.000 km.

No warp strafing is needed to pawn the SSD.

[Praeothmin]

SSD wins, it has the shield, size and weapons advantage.
Perhaps its individual weapons are not stronger than ISD weapons, but it has much, much more of them.
Plus, more hull to take out, and shields should be able to take a beating...
While it may get some damage in the fight, I do not believe one second the ST side has any chance of winning this...

[Picard]

I don't think SSD will be able to hit anything... Starfleet ships can simply sit outside of its weapons range and blow it to pieces... that is, unless they decide to strafe it on point-blank range which seems pretty common tactics during TNG era. But from what I know, heaviest SSD's artillery is concentrated on "island" on top of it, so Starfleet ships can close from below or behind it. Now, I estimated ISD's shields to be around 240 megatons maximum. That might give 24 gigatons for SSD's shields upper end. That is between 40 and 120 photon torpedoes. Now, we don't know how much torpedoes ST side has, but I think they can simply stay out of range and wear SSD's shields down until they can destroy bridge. It is standard "death of thousand cuts".

Unless, of course, SSD makes tactical hyperspace jump, but aside from fact that we never saw it doing that, Starfleet ships can do same thing with warp drive.

[Praeothmin]

I disagree, Picard, because mst of the fights in ST, like 90-95%, are at short range, just like the fights in SW.
Why?
Because of ECM.
We know it's used in both universes, and big ships like an SSD most likely has more power for ECM than the smaller ST ships...
So we come down again to the size and power difference of the SSD and the ST ships, and the SSD wins...

[Who is like God arbour]

What's your evidence that StarFleet ships are engaging enemy ships at short range because of ECM?

There are enough other reasons too, why they could do that [see here]. These Reasons don't apply when the enemy has no long range weapons and is to lame to come nearer so that you can stay out of the enemies weapon range but can fire on it nevertheless.

Furthermore, what evidence do you have that the SSD has more than EM based ECM and that such ECM would interfere with subspace based sensors?

[Picard]

I disagree, Picard, because mst of the fights in ST, like 90-95%, are at short range, just like the fights in SW.
Why?
Because of ECM.
We know it's used in both universes, and big ships like an SSD most likely has more power for ECM than the smaller ST ships...
So we come down again to the size and power difference of the SSD and the ST ships, and the SSD wins...

Given that SSD uses fusion reactors, and that there is no evidence of ECM doing anything (seems to be takeover from Kirk's doctrine of "closing distance and blasting enemy in face"), I disagree on both points. Do we actually know how strong SSD's shields are?

[Enterprise E]

We've also seen engagements in Star Trek at the hundred thousand kilometer range, and even at the tens of thousands of kilometers range as well. In addition, there's another belief that says the reason fleets close in on each other to knife-fighting ranges is to preclude the use of photon torpedoes, known to be unsafe at such close ranges, at least in TNG. Even if ECM does come into play, which it may not since the SSD is only one ship, the Starfleet vessels can use their own ECM to confuse the targeting sensors on the SSD as well. I agree that if the Federation ships manage to get into range of the SSD's weapons, they'll lose. The SSD is just too big and has too many weapons. But the Federation ships' incredible maneuverability, compared to any of their Imperial counterparts, and their much longer weapons range means that the SSD will have to weather a terrible assault before closing into firing range of the Federation starships, and that's assuming the Federation ships are standing still and not backing up or getting better firing arcs. And this is before targeting the two shield generator domes on the bridge tower and taking them out to quickly strip the bridge, at least, of its shields. Once those go down, it's a matter of dumping torpedoes into the bridge, blowing it out, and likely forming more gaps in the SSD's shields to fire through and the SSD praying that one of those torpedoes doesn't detonate too close to the main reactor. Either way, if the Federation ships take down the shields of the SSD quickly, their chances of winning improve dramatically, and the plan is something that they can take advantage of.

[Picard]

Do we actually have any calclations for SSD's shields?

[Praeothmin]

WILGA, all the reasons ST ships have to fight at knife range except for Torpedo danger) also apply to SW ships: shorter reaction time, weapon spam on one specific location, etc...

The SSD will have a very good weapon coverage because it has many more weapons than an ISD, already bristling with guns...

And these "subspace-based" sensors are affected by simple radiation many times, so EM ECM should also hamper them if poweful enough...

Given that SSD uses fusion reactors, and that there is no evidence of ECM doing anything (seems to be takeover from Kirk's doctrine of "closing distance and blasting enemy in face"), I disagree on both points.

Given the probably size of it's fusion reactors, and that while Hyperreactors on ships was problemtaic during the first DS construction, there's no indication an SSD doesn't have one.
And there's no evidence of ECM NOT doing anything since standard radiation can hamper sensors...

You are all still using special circumstances, and assumptions favoring ST, for your scenario to work.
Most of ST fights are at close range, for mutliple reasons, that can apply also to SW, and we know many natural phenomena that exist in realspace can affect ST sensors, so why should we assume that the ECM from an SSD wouldn't?
Because you guys don't want it to?
A Hypermatter reactor was already being planned for an ISD before ANH, so while there mayhave been issues for an ISD, why could not the SSD, built 10 years after the DS novel, have a fully functional Hypermatter reactor in addition to its fusion power plants?

[Picard]

DSI was fusion-based, SW starships are also fusion-based... why would SSD be hypermatter-powered? Plus, several MonCal cruisers managed to drop its shields and survive. I know neither Ambassador nor Excelsiors are Galaxy-class starships, but...

heavy turbolasers are between 1.4 and 1.6 megatons
photon torpedoes are 550 to 600 megatons, depending whether you take pre- or post- "Genesis" TNG era.
Rate of fire of either Ambassador or Excelsior class with photon torpedoes is at least same as RoF of MonCal cruiser with its heavy TL... maybe even more, considering possibility of Ambassador class having Galaxy- or Akira- type torpedo launchers
and you expect SSD to survive assault by 3 Federation starships when it could not survave assault by several comparatively underpowered and undergunned MonCal cruisers?