Argument Thread OOC Future Tech Only

[The Akasha Colony]

The Empire is a bit overrated. Doing basic equations on the asteroid that destroyed that Star Destroyer in Empire Strikes Back indicates that a few hundred megatons of explosive force would evidently be enough to not only breach a Star Destroyer's shields, but utterly obliterate the bridge tower beneath it. Most of the supplementary material talking about the might of the Empire is written by third parties, or complied by rather partisan fans looking for an excuse to say the Federation would get stomped by the Empire. Which is not to say that I am inherently neutral.

On top of that, we essentially have no reliable figures for Star Trek powerplant outputs, and the damage they seem to cause with their weapons is inconsistent. Photon torpedoes are measured in 'isotons,' but have been demonstrated to be able to vaporize cities in a single blast, indicating a yield of at least a few megatons. Quantum torpedoes being significantly more powerful, and transphasic torpedoes a few magnitudes above even that.

There's also the matter that according to the DS9 Technical Manual (based on production notes, and considered mostly canon), phaser rifles can cause major ground displacement (e.g. collapse entire cliff faces) if set to maximum power. Then there is the transporter rifle used in DS9 itself to shoot through walls.



IIRC, the Empire at the peak of its power manufactured only a few thousand Star Destroyers and less than a half-dozen Executors. Even if they went on the offensive against the Borg, it would still take them much longer to destroy those millions of cubes than it would for the Borg to adapt. If even a handful of cubes survived, it would be over for the Empire. And I doubt the Empire is clever enough to use Voyager-esque finesse to kill the Borg Queen. Even with the Force, there is only so much that can be done, as indicated by the fact that the Clone Wars were largely decided by combat between conventional troops. At the height of the Old Republic, the Jedi numbered only a few thousand, most of which were not terribly powerful, and despite outnumbering the CIS force-user corps several thousand to one, the might of the CIS' droid forces held the Republic back for years.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but to travel via transwarp don't the Borg need to use per-constructed Hubs?

To travel via transwarp conduit they did. But the hubs only maintained the network and served as a transfer point. Once the hub was built, any cube with a transwarp engine could access one of its nodes in any other system, opening a portal into the network. They could also travel via transwarp without the conduit, but this was slower. The conduit would allow them to reach the Alpha Quadrant within hours, whereas transwarp would still take a long time.

[Feazanthia]

(this may be 100% wrong)
But isn't startrek based in the megawatt range, whilst starwars is in the gigawatt range. So a turbo laser might be have 1000 times the energy of a phaser.

The actual yields of both have been calculated by fans (often based on extrapolation from bad special effects), and frankly they vary from iteration to iteration within the canon for both series.

However, as I said, the only difference between a turbolaser and a pulse phaser is a matter of scale. Once the Borg are able to adapt, that issue of scale is no longer an issue.

[The Akasha Colony]

(this may be 100% wrong)
But isn't startrek based in the megawatt range, whilst starwars is in the gigawatt range. So a turbo laser might be have 1000 times the energy of a phaser.

No figures have ever been given for phasers. All that is known is their visual effect. Of course, this could be calculated in the same manner as the Death Star's power by calculating how much energy is required to vaporize the average humanoid. My guess is quite a lot. Starship phasers are hard to evaluate since they usually just hit shields, which are also of nebulous power. But the output of an antimatter reactor of the size we are shown would easily indicate gigawatt, if not terawatt or petawatt, weapon strengths.

AFAIK, we have no true energy figures for turbolasers either, aside from statements about how much they could destroy. Like how a Venator's turbolasers could vaporize a sizeable asteroid in a single hit. Also likely much higher than a gigawatt.

[Feazanthia]

And I doubt the Empire is clever enough to use Voyager-esque finesse to kill the Borg Queen.

Remember, the Queen is just the manifestation of the Collective itself. Killing her just disrupts the Borg in the local area and she can be quickly respawned (for lack of a better word) once the local Borg recover.

[Risen Britannia]

(this may be 100% wrong)
But isn't startrek based in the megawatt range, whilst starwars is in the gigawatt range. So a turbo laser might be have 1000 times the energy of a phaser.

The actual yields of both have been calculated by fans (often based on extrapolation from bad special effects), and frankly they vary from iteration to iteration within the canon for both series.

However, as I said, the only difference between a turbolaser and a pulse phaser is a matter of scale. Once the Borg are able to adapt, that issue of scale is no longer an issue.

I still don't get how borg can "adapt" to weapons fire.

[Arthropoda Ingens]

Sure is sd.net & co in here.

[Zebian Syndicate]

I still don't get how borg can "adapt" to weapons fire.

Supposedly, the Borg adapt in the exact same way you would invent and develop new defenses normally.

Say, you go up against an enemy. You've got your fancy shields raised, but they shoot you with some alien weapon that goes right through. Automatically, you can assume the frequencies of the weapon and shield do not match (or whatever,... I won't bother being politically correct.) After studying the damage, you'd find out latter that it was some fancy phase thingy instead of a regular lazor like you usually deal with at home. So, what do you do? Think, draw up some plans for a new phase thingy shield, build some prototypes, and go out and get hit a lot more times. Then you come back, see how they did, and make changes as necessary. Do this a couple times, rinse wash repeat, and before you know it you have effective shielding against alien weaponry.
...
......
...
Except for the Borg, imagine this on a cellular level. (Their tech base kind of revolves around nano tech, so it's quite literal.) This is exactly how your immune system handles viruses. Fight like hell, and the cells that live for what ever reason had resistance. So they reproduce, and all of the new ones have the same resistance. So next time you get the exact same cold or flu, it's no where near as effective as it previously was, AND your white blood cells already recognize the threat and are better able to combat it. Eventually, you'll become immune to it, kind of like how you never get chicken pox twice.
Now imagine your cells were nanites, and your body was a ship. See where this is going?

As the Borg keep getting hit, they try different counter measures, eventually finding one that works best. (I refuse, however, to believe there is such a thing as "immunity to weapons fire." That's absurd. It's like saying if you fly close enough enough times, you can eventually fly a space shuttle into the sun. Stop bull shit'n me! You can still get pretty damn close,...) So after wards, they've won the battle, and you didn't die of whatever diseases were trying to get you, like Syphilis or something.
And what do you do? Brag. Well that, and take some of your now 1337 super epic awesome white blood cells, and use them to help make a vaccine. Then when your done, you mass produce this vaccine and send it to all your sciencey friends to distribute to the whole population, to finally eradicate this ebil plague once and for all.

In much the same way, the Borg are all like "Hey, we figured out how to make an epic shield against this stuff! Here are the blue prints;,.........." then they email it to all their friends, and then the next thing you know, they've adapted (mostly) to the weaponry.


Make sense?
Should.
Though I kind of sucked at describing it.

[The Akasha Colony]

The actual yields of both have been calculated by fans (often based on extrapolation from bad special effects), and frankly they vary from iteration to iteration within the canon for both series.

However, as I said, the only difference between a turbolaser and a pulse phaser is a matter of scale. Once the Borg are able to adapt, that issue of scale is no longer an issue.

I still don't get how borg can "adapt" to weapons fire.

It seems to be mostly a matter of adapting their defenses to be as efficient as possible against that weapons fire. Borg ships are usually the biggest thing in the battles they fight by far; the standard cube is 3 km per side, larger than any Federation ship as well as standard Star Destroyers. This means that they likely generate far more power than at least any Federation ship, being both larger and more advanced. Likely more than an entire fleet of them.

Which means that with efficient defenses, it would be able to block their fire without problem, assuming energy output equals shield strength (which seems to be the case; rerouting additional power to shields seems to make them stronger, given how often that order is given). A less efficient, more wasteful shielding system would squander this advantage.

There are other methods, such as the potential to simply dissipate the energy of incoming weapons through the use of energy sinks, or even absorb it as useful energy to throw back at the enemy ship. This would allow them to dissipate attacks from enemies with greater energy output than themselves.

[Thrashia]

Sure is sd.net & co in here.

You rang?

[Thrashia]

The Empire is a bit overrated. Doing basic equations on the asteroid that destroyed that Star Destroyer in Empire Strikes Back indicates that a few hundred megatons of explosive force would evidently be enough to not only breach a Star Destroyer's shields, but utterly obliterate the bridge tower beneath it. Most of the supplementary material talking about the might of the Empire is written by third parties, or complied by rather partisan fans looking for an excuse to say the Federation would get stomped by the Empire. Which is not to say that I am inherently neutral.

The asteroid that impacted on the bridge section of the ISD-II was as large as the bridge section itself, and hurtling through space at such high speeds it's not surprising that it obliterated the bridge due to its mass and velocity. There were not just "a few hundred megatons" of force within that asteroid impact. Also, it would be important to point out that hologram-transmissions cannot be made between ships using SW tech if their deflector shields are up, ergo the shields for the ship in question were down and not able to help deflect the force of the asteroid that killed it.

IIRC, the Empire at the peak of its power manufactured only a few thousand Star Destroyers and less than a half-dozen Executors. Even if they went on the offensive against the Borg, it would still take them much longer to destroy those millions of cubes than it would for the Borg to adapt. If even a handful of cubes survived, it would be over for the Empire. And I doubt the Empire is clever enough to use Voyager-esque finesse to kill the Borg Queen. Even with the Force, there is only so much that can be done, as indicated by the fact that the Clone Wars were largely decided by combat between conventional troops. At the height of the Old Republic, the Jedi numbered only a few thousand, most of which were not terribly powerful, and despite outnumbering the CIS force-user corps several thousand to one, the might of the CIS' droid forces held the Republic back for years.

Numbers are always a large question in SW-lore.

Once the Empire realized the threat posed by an organized rebellion with the downfall of the first Death Star battlestation, the Super Star Destroyers began to be mass-produced, with an average Moff or Sector Group Commander estimated to have at least one or more such superweapons in their arsenal throughout the course of the Galactic Civil War, bringing the total amount of ships up to hundreds or even thousands.

From this alone we can see that there were at least a hundred Super Star Destroyers. This quote is from the Dark Empire sourcebook, one of the most reliable sources currently in use on the Empire.

The generally accepted strength of the Imperial-class Star Destroyer numbers hangs around 25,000.

The number of star destroyers in service is immense. The hull number of the star destroyer Entor (CVS 1049) indicates either that in excess of a thousand star destroyers of this class have been built, or that this is the 1049th built by its particular shipyard. According to the reports of Rebel Alliance historian Arhul Hextrophon (in The Imperial Sourcebook) the Galactic Empire has a about three to five dozen or so destroyers in an average sector group fleet, of which there is at least one for each of the Empire's thousands of sectors. This indicates that the local territorial fleets alone account for tens of thousands of star destroyers galaxy-wide. It should be noted that though Hextrophon's reports have proven to be error-prone on many occasions; they consistently tend towards gross underestimates of Imperial naval and military strengths. The true number of star destroyers is probably much greater than the values he implies. In addition to the vessels assigned to particular sectors, there must be uncounted numbers attached to Imperial High Command and elite roving forces such as those of some Grand Moffs, and higher officials such as Lord Darth Vader.

Now, naturally I can not claim to be impartial in such a debate as I am an avid SW-tech user and SW-lore hound. However it behooves you to do a little more research before so candidly writing off an entire Tech. So hopefully my efforts here have educated you a bit more in regards to the Galactic Empire.

[Feazanthia]

Thrash, I'm curious for your input in the realm of Collective vs Empire.

[Risen Britannia]

major snip

less major snip

...So up the power of your energy weapon enough and their adaptations wont matter? Well its a good thing I use KE and explosive weapons.


slightly related: As I have made a slight edit to my FT race and changed them from humanoid organics to robots (sort of necron/geth mix). I have decided to mount a 20-30mm auto cannon to my "Mobile Combat Units" as their primary weapon

[Feazanthia]

From what I understand of anti-Borg weaponry, Borg defenses adapt to the energy frequency of incoming fire. Essentially, if they know precisely on what frequency the incoming bolt of energy is, they will be able to fashion a near perfect deflection.

That said, yes Borg defenses can be overwhelmed even after they've adapted. It takes heavy, sustained fire however and it has historically been damned difficult for even entire fleets to muster that kind of force. An ISD would have a better go at it until the Borg were able to match (or exceed, given the much larger size of the cube) their sheer power output.

[Thrashia]

@Feazanthia:

I believe that you underestimate a few key factors in regards to the Empire's reaction time, etc. I'll expound upon them:

• Should the Empire face a threat on the magnitude of the Borg, with clear evidence that to fall prey to them will invite assimilation, that most petty squabbles will be set aside to deal with the common threat. If the Bord attack happens when the Empire is at the height of its power, the psychological impact of the Borg would be easy meat for Imperial commentators to show how evil they are to the citizens at large and how it is a patriotic act to resist these extragalactic invaders and rally support around them. At the height of the Empire's power the Rebel Alliance was a nebulous idea and all resistance to the regime was definitely in the minority, as Palpatine was still enjoying the kudos from having brought the Clone Wars to a swift end and nipping the Jedi Rebellion in the bud. The ability of the Empire to marshal the public for jingoistic purposes in resisting the Borg would be easily enough made that, if only for a short period of time, any rebellious factions in the Star Wars galaxy would manage to put aside their differences with the Empire in order to eliminate a common threat.
  
  
• Talented commanders such as, at this point in time, Senior Captain Thrawn, Lord Darth Vader, and any number of the Grand Admirals would likely be dispatched to handle such an incursion into the Galactic Empire. The collective ability of so many officers with an unlimited amount of men and material with which to oppose the Borg ships lends me to believe that even if the first counter-attack against the Borg fails, that such talented officers and a renewed counter-attack force would prevail a second time. The Empire is able to adapt to its opponents as well, though understandably not as fast as the Borg.
  
  
• Darth Vader's Force abilities would undoubtedly play a role (at the height of the Empire's power) as well as the hundreds of Dark Side adepts that the Emperor kept at his beck and call. Though the Borg may be resistant to a mind trick, the physical applications that can be made with the Force means that Vader and any other Force adept would likely be able to destroy a fair number of Borg opponents in such a fashion. (There is an example in SW lore where several Force users, a dozen, used their collective power to shove an entire Imperial armada out of orbit and into deep space. It wouldn't be much of a step further for a few Dark Side adepts to shove a Borg cube into a local star.)
  
  
• While technologically speaking from the military stand point the turbolaser is the most common weapon within the Imperial Navy, the missile is the second one. From what I personally know of the Borg (and please correct me if I am wrong), their ships are still susceptible to missile attacks. There is also the fact that nearly all major cruisers and battleships in the Imperial Navy are armed with ion cannon, a weapon that should be quite effective at, in the very least, disrupting communication with the Collective and their Cubes offensive and defensive capabilities.
  
  
• Size matters. The Galactic Empire has an entire galaxy of resources to call upon. The Collective have only a single quadrant. In a war of attrition, even if the Borg prove harder to beat than any Imperial officer estimates, Imperial numbers will eventually tell. Also, as an autocratic regime the Galactic Empire will not suffer from "War-Weariness" and so match the Borg in stubborn determination.

[Sskiss]

Thrashia, that's an interesting analysis. However, I'll throw a bit of a monkey wrench into the works and point out that ships within the ST universe tend to be faster and more manueverable at sub-light speeds than their SW counterparts. Surely, on a tactical level, this would have an impact.

[Thrashia]

Thrashia, that's an interesting analysis. However, I'll throw a bit of a monkey wrench into the works and point out that ships within the ST universe tend to be faster and more manueverable at sub-light speeds than their SW counterparts. Surely, on a tactical level, this would have an impact.

A regular ISD-II can go up to 2,300g at sublight acceleration. A TIE Fighter can get up to 4,100g acceleration. More maneuverable? Maybe. More speed? Not necessarily. Also, from what I have read, SW ships can engage at greater distances than ST ships.

[Thrashia]

Also, for a fun little Hollywood poke at the SW vs ST argument, you can always watch Fanboys; although its fairly evident on whose side the directors and writers were when they wrote the script...

[Axis Nova]

Thrashia, that's an interesting analysis. However, I'll throw a bit of a monkey wrench into the works and point out that ships within the ST universe tend to be faster and more manueverable at sub-light speeds than their SW counterparts. Surely, on a tactical level, this would have an impact.

A regular ISD-II can go up to 2,300g at sublight acceleration. A TIE Fighter can get up to 4,100g acceleration. More maneuverable? Maybe. More speed? Not necessarily. Also, from what I have read, SW ships can engage at greater distances than ST ships.

This is clearly garbage considering the speeds and distances in the TIE Fighter and X-Wing games and related material. Hell, boot up the games yourself, pick some distant target, and start flying towards it. Furthermore, all fighters in Star Wars, other than the droid fighters, are primarily manually controlled with some computer assistance (eg similar to modern-day aircraft). It is impossible for a human to react fast enough to control ANYTHING accelerating at 4100G.

For that matter Star Trek ships use extensive computer assistance for their flight too; they have emergency direct controls but they are only used at VERY low speeds and even then still require computer assistance.

[Thrashia]

This is clearly garbage considering the speeds and distances in the TIE Fighter and X-Wing games and related material. Hell, boot up the games yourself, pick some distant target, and start flying towards it. Furthermore, all fighters in Star Wars, other than the droid fighters, are primarily manually controlled with some computer assistance (eg similar to modern-day aircraft). It is impossible for a human to react fast enough to control ANYTHING accelerating at 4100G.

For that matter Star Trek ships use extensive computer assistance for their flight too; they have emergency direct controls but they are only used at VERY low speeds and even then still require computer assistance.

Word of the wise: never bring the TIE Fighter or X-Wing games into an argument on speeds. They're not usable in such arguments due to the fact that they are not accurately depicting the full function and abilities of the craft in question. Source material comes out of the Expanded Universe writings for Star Wars tech and ships, meaning also the speeds.

Secondly, SW tech have inertia cancelers, so that even if a TIE pilot is going at full 4100Gs of acceleration, he won't feel it and has combat computers to help him with target acquisition and fire control. Droids are also used a lot for piloting assistance as well. Just because the Trekies have more visible crutches for moving about doesn't mean that SW-peeps don't have them.

[Axis Nova]

I really don't think you understand how reaction times work.

[Orthodox Gnosticism]

I really don't think you understand how reaction times work.

Please don't concern yourself about Real life concerns, physics, and biological limitations when it comes to the Trek VS Wars debate. You'll just end up with a headache from slamming your head into your desk multiple times.

[Yes Im Biop]

Ok..Not sure what im gettign into but seeing as how Both series/movies are older than dirt. Im Throwign a new Bone.


What would the best armor be to stop Mass accelerated rounds? Hyper sonic shot that is...o the size of a pencil eraser.

[Orthodox Gnosticism]

Ok..Not sure what im gettign into but seeing as how Both series/movies are older than dirt. Im Throwign a new Bone.


What would the best armor be to stop Mass accelerated rounds? Hyper sonic shot that is...o the size of a pencil eraser.

N7 Armor, it seems to work well for Shepard.

[Thrashia]

I really don't think you understand how reaction times work.

Believe me, as I former Abrams commander, I understand perfectly about reaction times. Also, Imperial pilots are the only major body within my own NS Imperial military that is comprised of clones bred for void combat. There are SW-book sources of clone pilots made from the genetic template of the Empire's ace pilots being good enough to worry even the best of the vaunted Rogue Squadron pilots. So the Empire isn't lacking in the piloting/combat skills department.

[Yes Im Biop]

Ok..Not sure what im gettign into but seeing as how Both series/movies are older than dirt. Im Throwign a new Bone.


What would the best armor be to stop Mass accelerated rounds? Hyper sonic shot that is...o the size of a pencil eraser.

N7 Armor, it seems to work well for Shepard.

Thats for Paint chip sized rounds. XD But yeah. Im thinking or more ridge as well as Biop's soldiers have no sheilds other than teh Spec ops division and they are very early prototypes.