... can't be easily refuted? I've seen the TDIC case, and the Silent Enemy case from ENT, but are there any which actually offer the Federation a glimmer of hope?

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It would help if you were being more precise. more particularily, what do you consider 'high firepower' and 'easily refuted' and what is your actual goal? People have different ideas about what constitutes any one of those, nevermind all at once.

What I'm doing is comparing the firepower of Federation ships and Goa'uld ships from Stargate (which I am aware suffer horribly from plot-driven firepower). The reason for this is to show to some pro-Trek debaters that the Goa'uld would be capable of defeating the Federation in a war. If the evidence actually panned out that the Federation would win, then I'd accept that, but I'm hoping to prove the opposite.

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I did some calcs for Goa'uld ships a while back.

The only calcs given for a Goa'uld Ha'tak's firepower is from 'There but for the Grace of God', where the blasts hitting the coastal cities were described as being the equivalent of 200 megaton nukes (840 Petawatts IIUC). The simplest interpretation would be that this is one shot from a Ha'tak's heavy staff cannon. As for shields, an indication of their capacity comes from 'Serpent's Lair', where Apophis' two Ha'taks each get hit by a single 1x gigaton missile. Since an explosion would throw around half its force away from the shield, this means that at the very least that a Ha'tak's shield can take the equivalent of a 500 megaton blast without going down.

Given that the most commonly cited figure for a Photon Torpedo is 64 megatons, a Federation starship would be in for a rough ride against a Ha'tak. Then again, the observed rate of fire for a Ha'tak's heavy guns is rather low, generally about one shot per second.

Petajoules. Watts are a measure of power, TNT equivalence is a measure of energy.

The problem with SG is that its numbers are all over the shop, worse even than Trek. High-end gives them low-teraton weapons (the gatebusters), low end puts even Atlantis' shield dissipation in the low TW-range (the Asuran satellite weapon).

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You can do accurate (which is legnthy, messy, and won't neccesarily go the way you want) or you can try to use evidence to win your debate.

If you're going to go for 'accurate' -and I use this term loosely - you have to look at multiple different examples and do comparisons to make sense of it. This isn't going to be precise, because more often than not you get a range of values (eg 'between x and y') and those numbers may not always match up, so you have to come up with some explanation for the discrepancies. What's more, if the people you are arguing with are opting for the second route, they will more than likely try to cast 'doubt' on your numbers by pointing out contradictions, flaws, name calling, or whatever, so all that hard work may be fruitless.

If you're trying to 'win', then pretty much any numbers will suit because there's a shit ton of them out there. Deja Q for example has a Fed Warpcore putting out some e19 watts (although thats 'per-' which is normally why its not useful.) There is some Voyager episode where they past through some shockwave or something that had millions of terajoules in it, or something. There's the TOS super-antimatter quote (one ounce to blow off half a moon's atmosphere.) There's the 'Balance of Terror' plasma torpedoes which some have (purportedly) placed at gigatons. IF you're not picky about specific placement Enterprise had photonic torpedoes that could put a 3 km crater in a moon (IIRC) at max yields, or phase cannon that had 500 GJ (but could still output 10x that amount. Whilst components burnt out they didn't blow up, and the weapons could still output it meaning their systems can handle that magnitude of power.)

If you ARE going for 'win' then its probably alot simpler just to try to undercut the opposition's 'evidence' or force him onto the defensive. The more evidence you have to pony up to refute their claims, the harder you have to work and the more likely you are to give up. Stargate is chock full of 'variable' scenes on its own - calcs for starships can range from 'can take gigaton nukes and ignore Coronal Mass ejections' to 'hataks can't even destroy a city'. and thats just baesd on my dated knowledge of Stargate. Forcing them to do the hard work and undercutting their own evidence with doubt and uncertainty is not conducive to a positive, fruitful discussion but it will probably be the best bet for winning an argument.

Gah! Sorry about that.

One problem with calcing SG-1 is that there aren't many 'physical' examples to draw on. Shooting an asteroid provides a least a vague basis for calculation, because we can have some idea of how much energy it would take to fragment, melt, or vapourize an asteroid based on its size and makeup. When you've got two spaceships shooting at one-another, all you've got are existing figures, because there isn't a real-life equivalent.

In terms of a versus debate, the best argument is to draw on the lowest figures. If the Goa'uld have the advantage even in conversative estimates, then you're on to a winner.

That's at least partially where the low-end Atlantis figures come from - the failure of the Asuran's weapon to punch through a decent-sized asteroid.



It depends on how conservative those conservative figures are - low end Trek figures would be easily outgunned by modern Earth.

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Apologies if this is seen as thread necromancy, but I have an update on the matter that prompted me to start this thread. Basically, amongst other arguments, I've pointed out the low levels of destruction caused by the Breen in Cfoe. My opponent is arguing the damage could be due to shield bleedthrough, or even due to an away team.

A similar argument exists about the Borg bombardment of Cochrane's missile complex in FC. My argument is that the Borg would not have repeatedly fired at the surface if they weren't trying to destroy something. He's saying we shouldn't assume anything as for all we know the Borg were trying to instill fear in the local population.

He also appears to want us to disregard all evidence that contradicts the apparent firepower of TDIC, because if TDIC shows high firepower every other example must be flawed somehow.

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Breen in what? Cfoe?


The borg bombardment being weaksauce might possibly due to component failure on the Sphere's part. The cube was blowing up around them as they evac'ed outta there, and when the Enterprise came through the time thing they blew them up with barely any effort at all (4 quantum torpedoes IIRC), which might suggest that the Sphere was already heavily damaged and didn't have its defences/weaponry at full power. The fact that as soon as the Enterprise arrived the Queen beamed the fuck off the Sphere with however many drones she had on hand also lends credence to this.

Your friend's argument is a bit naff though, I'll give you that.


That doesn't mean you dismiss it. Furthermore a number of factors exist that explain why it should be considered: first, the fleet had as its mission the planetary destruction of the Founder's homeworld in mind, so it stands to reason that they would equip their fleet with ordnance to accomplish that end. Second, trek firepower is explicitly mentioned to have variable yields and power settings (phasers can be set to 1/100th power for wargames exercises and torpedoes can be set to low yields which don't do much appreciable damage - 'The Ultimate Computer' and 'Redemption part two') so there is literally no reason why you have to have one or the other.

EDIT: The other thing is, since this thread is basically about Trek vs Stargate, how many ships do the goa'uld have? Remember that Starfleet has thousands of ships, and the question is how many can they bring to bear vs how many the goa'uld have on hand. It's not just about firepower but also the strategic disposition of forces. Stargate hyperspace is a lot faster than Trek warpdrive IIRC, but Federation territory is more condensed which oddly aids the defenders more. I've been slowly watching SG-1 and I'm up to season five. The cliffhanger for season four basically had Apophis' fleet be wiped out in one fell swoop due to Act of Carter (tm). I didn't count a great many goa'uld hataks in his fleet, and it was said he had a high number of them (enough that basically he was poised to strike at the other systemlords, he was that powerful). Yet they were pretty effectively taken care of. On the other hand, wasn't it one of the movies that showed a huge fleet of hat'aks attacking earth? Anyway you need to consider this stuff as well as firepower.

As an aside, Carter would fit in well with Starfleet I think.

As far as TDiC goes, 'destroying a planet' and 'raw firepower' are not connected unto death. ST has shown alot of ways that planets can be destroyd in one way or another - dumping huge quantities of energy into the planet to do so does not seem to be the primary method. And that's not neccesarily a bad thing. One person's 'massive firepower' is another's 'massive inefficiency.'

Secondly, arguing based on 'high end' and 'low end' examples not only confuses the point of lower and upper limits, it distorts discussions of firepower into a case of 'forcing a square peg into a round hole.', 'stones and glass houses', blah blah...

Logically, ST ought to be able to equate modern nuclear firepower (megaton range). We know photorps can destroy cities, we know they can blast 3 km craters in asteroids. WE have the 1.5 kg of matter/antimatter example. We know they're variable firepower (and that makes sense - why would you want to use a single yield against all targets? That's wasteful.) (25 isotons is also not the most powerful photorp - 200 isoton torps are metnioend later, and one presumes they have quantum torps that are still more powerful yet.)

We know they have other explosives. the 90 isoton explosives with the 800 km destructive radius. the 54 isoton gravimetric weapon that could destroy 'a small planet'. The exact mechanisms aren't known but the destructive power is obvious as is their potential for mass destruction. There was that plasma igniting weapon that destroyed atmospheres that the Klingons used. There are various biologicla and chemical weapons as well.

On the other end of the scale we have stuff like The Dreadnought weapon (1 thousand kilos of matter, 1 thousand kilos of antimatter.)

We know phase cannons were 500 GJ, and coudl be overcharged by a factor of 10 (and they could make it work in some way, so it shoudl be within their capabilities to engineer in future designs.) The NX was meant to carry 3 such weapons, which means that successive warships hsould be at least capable ot 15 TJ phaser output, and for E-Nil and later (to E-D) double Digit TW should be more than likely. I'd actually say triple digit at least. They don't make huge (orders of magnitude) leaps over short timeframe, but being at least several times greater what I estimate shoudl be at least possible over a period of a century or so.

We also know that Voyager was capable of petawatt level energy transfer (and thus generator) and the E-d could generate 12.75 billion 'gigawatts per-' whichever.. hour, day, minute.. again terawatt to petawatt level implied. Deja Q implied tens of petawatts sustained output. Fed starships should be capable of some fraction of that (10% or 1% is not unreasonable.)

What does Stargate bring to the table? well they have some fairly unimpressive scnes too. I vaguely recall mention of a single Ha'Tak (at some point) being unable to destroy a city (a least with secondary weapons) and we know all about the Death Gliders. But that isn't the only story.

We know they intended to use 1200 megaton nukes against Ha'Taks in one episode. E ven if they didn't detonate against the ship (That's up for debate) the fact they went with 'enhanced' nukes rather than conventional megaton range warheads is telling - they actually needed that magnitude of firepower ot have a chance to take out a Hatak, which in turn suggests they can withstand megaton range firepower. SG1 'Failsafe' had a similar 1200 megaton naq bomb that was able to be moved on some sort of wheeled probe Later in Stargate Atlantis "The Siege, part 2" they had 1200 megaton mines small enough to take on those puddle jumpers IIRC. The PEgasus project (Atlantis again) had 26 megaton 'directed' nuclear warheads that were also fairly compact as I recall. And we've heard of the Goa'uld using a 200 megaton weapon of some kind. We also know from the movie that the naq stuff can enhance nuclear reactions (IIIRC) by a factor of 100.. that should suggest they have access to high kiloton/low megaton range 'enhanced' nukes at least, and low gigatons is not impossible.

There is of course the Gatebuster, which is gigatons to teratons, and has been weaponzied into a MIRV in later Atlantis eps (although I suspect at the cost of reducing the yield compared to the original, larger, and more stationary design.)

Stargate energy weapons are not nearly quite so impressive of course, and they do use smaller (double digit kiloton) explosive devices (one naq generator I recall and a bomb in another) but I imaginet hey could enhance both conventional and more compact nuclear munitions for destructive effects (like nuclear howitzer shells, or aircraft/cruise missile carried nuclear missiles and such.)

Overall I'd say the potentials are quite comparable. In the pure 'nuke' scale of things STargate might have something of an advantage (at least a proven one), but as Stofsk notes the FEderation has far more starships. And territory. So in anything beyond single engagements the FEds probably could more than mop the floor with virtually anyone in Stargate, were that the actual intent.

Of course that doesn't make a lot of sense in context of the whole Scorpion arc though does it? Logically one would assume that the vessels that can pop Borg Cubes like party balloons should be ahead of some dinky Federation science vessel by at least a half a dozen orders of magnitude in the KABOOM! department. Yet according to the series, it takes 8 bioships+1 larger modified vessel to accomplish what aforementioned dinky science vessel can pull off with a couple of these super charges(? ).

Um-no? Why would Species 8472 have the technology that made that gravimetric (whatever that may mean) weapon work? We're talking technobabble weapons and since it is technobabble that weapon may be completely useless against a shielded stasahip.

Logically somebody that far ahead wouldn't need to bother with 9 ships to do the job that a single ship from a far more primitive race can do with a couple bombs.

Anyways, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that the 'gravimetric' probably has something to do with gravity. If I had to guess exactly how it worked,(warning: completely unfounded and baseless speculation incoming!) I'd say that it might use a planet's gravity against itself or something of that nature. I say this because true singularity devices capable of tearing apart a planet with brute force weren't developed until years after Nemesis, so it wouldn't make sense for some random exploration vessel to be running around with a weapon that does the exact same thing.

Then there's the fact that such a 'gravimetric weapon' has never once been used against the Borg which rather speaks for itself.

So yes, I'd say that it likely wouldn't work against a shielded starship of any significant caliber.

There's another argument that has come up- the assertion that the Federation could duplicate Goauld hyperdrive technology just by scanning a hyperspace window. My opponent's reasoning is that if the Tauri could reproduce hyperdrive to any degree, it must be really simple and the more advanced Federation could do so with ease.

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That depends on how you define 'small planet'. some definitions can simply mean a really big asteroid. Nevermind it doesnt explain the actual damage mechanism. For all we know its something like a Nova bomb on a smaller scale from Andromeda and it just does somethign weird like negate or reverse gravity.

When has the Federation successfully reproduced a very different and far faster FTL drive just by scanning the effects of that drive? The E-D scanned transwarp conduits in Descent and was able to use them but the Federation wasn't able to reproduce such technology at large.

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The closest they came was Voyager's slipstream drive, where all they had to go on was sensor readings and a pretty cursory poke round the Dauntless.

They do, however, have a pretty good record of wiring random bits of alien technology into their ships and make it work, so it's at least conceivable that they might be able to do the same with a stolen hyperdrive.

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They also had days or weeks to analyze the Dauntless engines, and a computer(that at the time) was completely accessible to them, allowing them to build a copy on Voyager.

In Timeless, the one where they try and use a slipstream drive to get home, the biggest problem they have is that the slipstream drive regularly requires crystals that other FTLs do not, and took a while to produce or find. Otherwise, they also had the problem of plotting a course without either A) crashing into something, or B) plotting a course that didn't fail that kicked them out of slipstream.

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At the end of First Contact, they reproduced the Borg's time vortex with minimal difficulty. Not quite the same thing, but a pretty crazy achievement nonetheless.

When you consider episodes like "The Nth Degree" where Barclay makes the warp drive open a rift to take them right to the Cytherians' home near the center of the galaxy and "Scorpion Part II" where Seven uses the deflector dish to open a gateway to the parallel continuum of fluidic space, it really seems like the Federation's technology already has the necessary power to take them practically anywhere in time and space; they just haven't figured out how to program it properly yet.

What has the time vortex got to do with FTL travel? It's time travel, which they knew enough about to do on purpose in Kirk's time.
Seven managed to modify the swiss army knife deflector to allow them to get into fluidic space. This translates into them having the means to get anywhere in time and space-how, exactly?