Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

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Re: Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

Post by Norade »

Destructionator XIII wrote:
Norade wrote:You're still a fucking moron given that an weapon of exceptional yield will push the clouds away meaning you would still see it from space.
You mean like how we saw big puffs and waves through the atmosphere in the episode :V
I'm debating the claim that you made regarding nuclear weapons being seen through cloud cover you goalpost shifting moron. It's also clear that those are not fireballs nor smoke clouds as they appear and vanish far too swiftly for that to be the case.
Connor MacLeod wrote:I'm not even sure what yields are being talked about. I'm also not sure if the individual people involved in here are having different ideas of firepower involved and exactly what we are seeing. I'm not convinced, for example that what we're seeing are actually shockwaves, fireballs or anything like that. Whatever it is, its still persisting after the initial bombardment though (we see just before the Jem'Hadar arrive that there's still those same effects going on - it doesnt look liek any fireball I've ever seen though, although I admit I'm not an expert on such matters.)

i also don't think we're dealing with airbursts really, their goal is to destroy the "surface/crust" (whatever "destroy" means) and that implies something more akin to surface or ground detonations.

What I find curious, and telling, however, is the lack of more secondary effects. If they were gouging huge holes in the ground we'd be seeing stuff like ejecta and the related effects (atmospheric heating, etc.) Also curious is that the torpedoes appear to be travelling at tens/hundreds of km/s (at least) yet the atmosphere isn't getting heated in the least bit, despite a clearly hypervelocity atmostpheric entry, and the fact we know the surface of the founder homeworld is meant to be habitable.

And yet, none of these are a dead tipoff something is wrong either. If they were intendeding to blow off/vaporize/destroy the crust in some brute force manner involving explosives, you think they'd be worried more about lack of ejecta and such rather than lifesigns.

Maybe it would be better to decide first on exactly what sort of outcome we are expecting (EG what is "destroy" supposed to mean), then figure out what is needed to accomplish that, and THEN decide whether or not it fits with what we see or not?
I've been saying that, given the effects we see, the blasts would likely be radiation emitted by something along the lines of a 50 megaton nuclear device. It would explain it being visible so far from the site of the blast so swiftly and the short duration. The only question that would be left to explain is why the light lingered, refraction in the clouds would be reasonable, and what sort of damage they expected it to cause to the crust. (Though them saying 30% destroyed is clearly nonsense and may be a product of false sensor readings which were already obscuring life signs.)Things like the lack of trails from atmospheric entry could be explained away by shielding on the torpedoes or even the phasors/disruptors clearing a path and this neatly explains the lack of ejecta and secondary effects. Of course if you had a better explanation I would listen as you're unlikely to be biased and have more experience with this than I do.
Lord Helmet wrote:So you are going to claim that one was set to max as well i assume?..
He doesn't need to, though the fact that it did less damage than an empty casing falling at the same speed would it does still raise questions.
Sorry, you're going to have to go into more depth of why the weapons types in Trek work better beneath a body of liquid and why explosives would have issues with killing the founders via airburst.
Because the body of liquid was the founders so the explosion going off in the sea/lake means 100% of the energy hits them.
Wrong! We have an optimal air burst height on nuclear weapons for a reason numbnuts. That reason being the fact that the vertical and horizontal shockwaves meet and merge creating a more widespread and powerful wave of destruction. Try some research before spouting off next time.
And that comment gets you told to go fuck yourself asshole.
Big words from a bitch who doesn't even know how shock waves from large explosions work.
And i have told you that i have no fucking reason at all or fucking need to explain the issue with your obsession with the duration so go fuck yourself.
So you concede due to lack of evidence to support your theory then?
Considering the figure i just calculated did not include the thermal radiation the answer is clear moron.

And the fact is that we see photon torpedoes go off on literally dozens of occasions and only a fucking retard would claim they are pure M/AM reactions in pretty much any of the examples apart from perhaps a couple of scenes in TOS.

All you have shown is that you can preach about the duration and whine about nukes while also ignoring the fact that virtually every example is nothing like a nuke or simple a m/am reaction in pretty much every aspect a photon torpedo blast has not just fucking duration.
So you can't explain shit, nor do calculations. Why are you here proving that you're a moron again?

PS: Capitalize your I's, this is an English language forum where we ask for decent spelling and grammar. Things you commonly fail to display at the same time that you don't do your own math or research and keep repeating the same wall of ignorance attacks over and over again.
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Re: Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

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Lord Helmet wrote:You mean apart from the rather obvious fact you mentioned yourself where they fire near a friendly position?.
And failed to do the trick as "god" was rather obviously not destroyed by the wimpy blast. So again, what good is the peashooter setting? Especially since we've already seen phasers used for pinpoint accuracy shots.
Why would i need to when doing so or not does not allow you or anybody else to make the application of the word "superweapon" in regards to the dreadnought canonically correct anyway?.
The idea is rather easy. If there's nothing stronger than the dreadnaught missile than we can presume that either there're no genuine superweapons in Star Trek at all, or the shipcrew of the Voyger is too stupid to recognize strategic weapons when they're right thrown in their faces and I wouldn't put the latter past them since they literally don't know shit. Your choice.
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Re: Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

Post by Lord Helmet »

Norade wrote:
He doesn't need to, though the fact that it did less damage than an empty casing falling at the same speed would it does still raise questions.
Only to a fucking asshole like you or did you miss that he answered his own fucking question already.
Wrong! We have an optimal air burst height on nuclear weapons for a reason numbnuts. That reason being the fact that the vertical and horizontal shockwaves meet and merge creating a more widespread and powerful wave of destruction. Try some research before spouting off next time.
Destruction of what retard lifeforms that can exist as fucking fire?.

Big words from a bitch who doesn't even know how shock waves from large explosions work.
Hey look its now all about the shockwaves when you were whining like a pussy about how it is the thermal effects that are so great earlier, nice back track shitstain.

So you concede due to lack of evidence to support your theory then?
It is your bullshit that is in shreds retard as you keep trying to apply nuke effects to weapons whos effects seen over and over again to be nothing like fucking nukes.

So you can't explain shit, nor do calculations. Why are you here proving that you're a moron again?
What i have proven is that fuck all changes on this shithole, if you point out the Hypocrisy the insults are fast to follow.

You preach about proof, calculations and science ect then focus on the duration of a photon torps explosion like its a nuke while at the same ignoring the fact that every example of them bares little or no resemblance to how a nuke behaves in any other aspect.
Last edited by Lord Helmet on 2011-06-25 06:41pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

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Metahive wrote:And failed to do the trick as "god" was rather obviously not destroyed by the wimpy blast. So again, what good is the peashooter setting? Especially since we've already seen phasers used for pinpoint accuracy shots.
So with 20/20 hindsight you can say it did no good against the "god" chappy good for you.


The idea is rather easy. If there's nothing stronger than the dreadnaught missile than we can presume that either there're no genuine superweapons in Star Trek at all, or the shipcrew of the Voyger is too stupid to recognize strategic weapons when they're right thrown in their faces and I wouldn't put the latter past them since they literally don't know shit. Your choice.
I choose to ignore the moron trying to force a very pathetic false dilemma fallacy on me.
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Re: Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

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You know I can be unkind and just mention that neither Kirk nor Scotty specified any yield and therefore conclude that TOS era torpedoes only had the peashooter setting. Like that one better?
Lord Helmet wrote:I choose to ignore the moron trying to force a very pathetic false dilemma fallacy on me.
I accept your concession. The dreadnaught missile is a strategic weapon mislabled by the retarded VOY crew. There, that was easy.
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Re: Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

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Lord Helmet wrote:
Norade wrote:He doesn't need to, though the fact that it did less damage than an empty casing falling at the same speed would it does still raise questions.
Only to a fucking asshole like you or did you miss that he answered his own fucking question already.
I saw it, you just deserve to be dog piled like the sack of shit you are.
Destruction of what retard lifeforms that can exist as fucking fire?.
Given that it's Trek I'd be willing to bet most life forms destroyed are retarded, though many can't exist as fire. On a more serious note, I think you meant "Destruction of what retard, lifeforms that can exist as fucking fire?" Notice the comma and lack of a period after the question mark. Also, you just defeated your own point, if they can exist as energy or light then no shockwave would kill them so you don't have a point anyway.
Hey look its not all about the shockwaves what you were whining like a pussy about how it is the thermal effects that are so great earlier, nice back track shitstain.
You're a moron. Any explosive effect that covers 300 to 2000 kilometers in seconds will create enough heat to cause the air around them to ignite. Those are the thermal effects I was talking about. Keep showing that not only can you not write but that your ability to read is suspect as well.
It is your bullshit that is in shreds retard as you keep trying to apply nuke effects to weapons whos effects seen over and over again to be nothing like fucking nukes.
So once again you bring nothing to this debate. Look at Conor and DXIII, at least they have valid points.
What i have proven is that fuck all changes on this shithole, if you point out the Hypocrisy the insults are fast to follow.

You preach about proof, calculations and science ect then focus on the duration of a photon torps explosion like its a nuke while at the same ignoring the fact that every example of them bares little or no resemblance to how a nuke behaves in any other aspect.
You've proven nothing yourself, done no calculations, can't read, and can't write. Begone worthless troll.
Lord Helmet wrote:So with 20/20 hindsight you can say it did no good against the "god" chappy good for you.
That 'blast' could leave a man alive let alone a 'god' so they need foresight and not hindsight moron.
I choose to ignore the moron trying to force a very pathetic false dilemma fallacy on me.
Good that you finally decide that maybe dialogue from Trek isn't worth pay attention to.
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Re: Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

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So going to ignore my accusation of backpedaling now are we DXIII?
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Re: Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

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Metahive wrote:You know I can be unkind and just mention that neither Kirk nor Scotty specified any yield and therefore conclude that TOS era torpedoes only had the peashooter setting. Like that one better?
I love it actually, although why you are being so unkind to yourself by looking like a total twat for doing so is beyond me.

I accept your concession. The dreadnaught missile is a strategic weapon mislabeled by the retarded VOY crew. There, that was easy.
You know if you search very hard this board actually has one or two reasonable and smart people on it, unfortunately you are obviously from the other end of the scale, oh and i concede nothing to you moron.
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Re: Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

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Helmet, shape up and start using English correctly before calling others morons. Basic use of commas, periods, and capitalization as well as being able to understand what others write are key to proper debate. I've seen ESL kids with better English skills than you.
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Re: Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

Post by Lord Helmet »

Norade wrote:
I saw it, you just deserve to be dog piled like the sack of shit you are.
Truth hurting you is it retard?.


Given that it's Trek I'd be willing to bet......

And here is the real problem, standard warstard trek hate coloring every fucking aspect of the discussion..
So once again you bring nothing to this debate.
All you brought was retard blinkers and insults when things did not go your way, fuck off asshole.

That 'blast' could leave a man alive let alone a 'god' so they need foresight and not hindsight moron.
Looks like it is you who cannot read retard.
Good that you finally decide that maybe dialogue from Trek isn't worth pay attention to.
Dialog from trek is fine, assumptions from retards like you is not.

Helmet, shape up and start using English correctly before calling others morons. Basic use of commas, periods, and capitalization as well as being able to understand what others write are key to proper debate. I've seen ESL kids with better English skills than you.
Get fucked.
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Re: Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

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Looks like it is you who cannot read retard.
No, I can read just fine - you still leave periods after question marks though - you said that they would need hindsight to realize that the blast wouldn't kill the 'god'. With a blast that small it's a wonder they thought it would kill anything.

Given that most of your post was worthless screeching I cut it. Come back when you can type and understand standard English.
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Re: Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

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Norade wrote:So once again you bring nothing to this debate. Look at Conor and DXIII, at least they have valid points.
ok...
Destructionator XIII wrote:
Dead wrong.

1) They said it. Unless there's good evidence against it, this has weight.

2) They planned this and expected it. False sensor readings wouldn't change their computer simulations and pre-planned strategy. You could say the shapeshifter lied and everyone else was so stupid they bought it, hook, line and sinker, but that's unbelievable.

3) If it was a false reading, wouldn't they have realized something was wrong from that alone? Tain was surprised to see life signs still there, not rapid destruction.

4) The visual stuff does not, I say again, not contradict it, especially since

a) It wouldn't be visible at that distance and through the clouds anyway

b) Phasers and disruptors make things magically disappear, so even if I'm wrong about ejecta not being expected (which I doubt; see my sig), magic disappearance accounts for that anyway.

/waits for insults towards Destructionator XIII now he has dared disagree with Norade... :roll:
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Re: Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

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Norade wrote:
Looks like it is you who cannot read retard.
No, I can read just fine - you still leave periods after question marks though - you said that they would need hindsight to realize that the blast wouldn't kill the 'god'. With a blast that small it's a wonder they thought it would kill anything.
Again major reading fail. :mrgreen:
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Re: Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

Post by Metahive »

Destructionator XIII wrote:For example, probes (used as a weapon again in ST6).

When are "probes" used as a weapon in STVI? The torpedo they use to nail Chang's ship was retrofitted with equipment scavanged from a probe, but it was still a torpedo.
Also, perhaps, space burials (TWOK - launched at some kind of high speed, but managed to make a soft landing. By design? idk) and maybe transportation in a punch ("The Emissary" TNG, though that one IIRC didn't stop on it's own and was launched at high warp).
As we see in STIII, space burials do not require there to be a warhead present and the soft landing was due to the still shifting gravitational fields of the genesis planet.
In STV, they probably:

a) Underestimated God and

b) Went as low as possible to buy Kirk time without blasting him
I have read the script for STV and the torpedo was supposed to go down a long shaft that was created by "God"'s pillar of light to explode far beneath the surface. Chalk it up to yet another special effects failure in that movie.

But the setting would exist so probes, etc., can be launched from the same mechanism and make a fairly soft landing for planetary research, or to do slow fly-bys of things in space. We know probes are apparently launched from torpedo tubes and torpedo casings can accept probe style equipment as we've seen both on a few occasions. IIRC a class 9 probe is literally a photon torpedo without a warhead.
I don't know why you're talking so much about probes here since Kirk rather explicitely ordered a torpedo strike.

SULU
In firing position. Torpedo
armed.

Lord Helmchen wrote:You know if you search very hard this board actually has one or two reasonable and smart people on it, unfortunately you are obviously from the other end of the scale, oh and i concede nothing to you moron.
Yes, yes, you did by failing to meet my challenge. Petulant denial is not a sufficient substitution for arguments, didn't you learn that from the two smart people of this board?
Last edited by Metahive on 2011-06-25 07:07pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

Post by Norade »

Destructionator XIII wrote:
Norade wrote:(Though them saying 30% destroyed is clearly nonsense and may be a product of false sensor readings which were already obscuring life signs.)
Dead wrong.

1) They said it. Unless there's good evidence against it, this has weight.

2) They planned this and expected it. False sensor readings wouldn't change their computer simulations and pre-planned strategy. You could say the shapeshifter lied and everyone else was so stupid they bought it, hook, line and sinker, but that's unbelievable.

3) If it was a false reading, wouldn't they have realized something was wrong from that alone? Tain was surprised to see life signs still there, not rapid destruction.

4) The visual stuff does not, I say again, not contradict it, especially since

a) It wouldn't be visible at that distance and through the clouds anyway

b) Phasers and disruptors make things magically disappear, so even if I'm wrong about ejecta not being expected (which I doubt; see my sig), magic disappearance accounts for that anyway.
1) Trek has said many things that are clearly bullshit so dialogue is always going to be suspect.

2) We've seen many times in Trek that people overestimate the power of their weapons and that they clearly have lax standards for testing and simulating things before they use them.

3) I doubt it given that they took so long to react to the false life form readings. Besides, if one sensor was being fucked with chances are others were too even just as a side effect.

4a) I've already shown that it would.

4b) That explanation is weak at best.

5) Still waiting for your concession that 'afaik no bomb tested in real life would be particularly visible from space at all from under heavy clouds...'
/waits for insults towards Destructionator XIII now he has dared disagree with Norade... :roll:
Considers waiting for Helmet to grow a working brain. Does some math. Sighs. Gives up as the time spent waiting would be at least several lifetimes.
Lord Helmet wrote:Again major reading fail. :mrgreen:
Did I miss read this?

"Destruction of what retard lifeforms that can exist as fucking fire?."

I mean, just look at how butchered that is.

How about this?

"What i have proven is that fuck all changes on this shithole, if you point out the Hypocrisy the insults are fast to follow."

If I misread anything it's because you mistyped it.
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Re: Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

Post by Lord Helmet »

1) Trek has said many things that are clearly bullshit so dialogue is always going to be suspect.
Even if that were true it does not give you the right to pick and choose asshole.
2) We've seen many times in Trek that people overestimate the power of their weapons and that they clearly have lax standards for testing and simulating things before they use them.
I would disagree with this considering how much must be going on throughout the federation compared to the problems and the fact the episodes are set normally on ships who's main intent is to push the boundaries ect.
3) I doubt it given that they took so long to react to the false life form readings. Besides, if one sensor was being fucked with chances are others were too even just as a side effect.
They considered the destruction well within what was expected, that is obvious from the scene.
4a) I've already shown that it would.
All you did was look stupid, whats next are you gonna claim phasers are DET so you can whine about scenes with them in as well?.
4b) That explanation is weak at best.
You mean perfectly consistent with phaser and disruptor effects but it hurts your whine about the scene.

Norade wrote:
If I misread anything it's because you mistyped it.
And yet you used examples that you not only understood no matter the grammar (as per your replies to them) but also chose not to post the comment in question because it maybe had no errors... :lol: :lol:
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Re: Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

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I would argue that for a soft landing they don't need any warhead yield at all but rather something to correct the course upon atmospheric entry. Something that wasn't supposed to happen with Spock's coffin anyway judging by David's surprise that it was even there.
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Re: Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

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Destructionator XIII wrote:I'm trying to decide if this is an ad hominem fallacy or guilt by association fallacy or poisoning the well fallacy....
It's neither, it's a conposition fallacy (arguing that what's true for one part of the whole must also be true for the sum of it). Sorry, Norade, but that's what I call cheating. Characters in ST say a lot of dumb or wrong things (and literally don't know shit), but that doesn't mean ST dialogue as a whole is automatically suspect.
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Re: Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

Post by Norade »

Lord Helmet wrote:
1) Trek has said many things that are clearly bullshit so dialogue is always going to be suspect.
Even if that were true it does not give you the right to pick and choose asshole.
So you're going to tell me that Trek dialogue isn't wrong at times?
2) We've seen many times in Trek that people overestimate the power of their weapons and that they clearly have lax standards for testing and simulating things before they use them.
I would disagree with this considering how much must be going on throughout the federation compared to the problems and the fact the episodes are set normally on ships who's main intent is to push the boundaries ect.
We see shit go wrong all the time in ways that could be modeled. So don't tell me they model everything.
3) I doubt it given that they took so long to react to the false life form readings. Besides, if one sensor was being fucked with chances are others were too even just as a side effect.
Metahive wrote:
Destructionator XIII wrote:I'm trying to decide if this is an ad hominem fallacy or guilt by association fallacy or poisoning the well fallacy....
It's neither, it's a conposition fallacy (arguing that what's true for one part of the whole must also be true for the sum of it). Sorry, Norade, but that's what I call cheating. Characters in ST say a lot of dumb or wrong things (and literally don't know shit), but that doesn't mean ST dialogue as a whole is automatically suspect.
I would argue that because dialogue has been so inconstant it should not be allowed as a primary form of evidence.

They considered the destruction well within what was expected, that is obvious from the scene.
What is expected and what happened seem to line up like a square peg in a round hole most of the time.
4a) I've already shown that it would.
All you did was look stupid, whats next are you gonna claim phasers are DET so you can whine about scenes with them in as well?.
Nobody has yet rebutted the claim that you couldn't see a nuke through clouds yet. Also, the fuck with with the periods after question marks? Are you retarded or just a terrible ESL student?
4b) That explanation is weak at best.
You mean perfectly consistent with phaser and disruptor effects but it hurts your whine about the scene.
We never see Phasers or Disruptors do anything like that ever again so calling bullshit is easy.
Destructionator XIII wrote:
Norade wrote:1) Trek has said many things that are clearly bullshit so dialogue is always going to be suspect.
I'm trying to decide if this is an ad hominem fallacy or guilt by association fallacy or poisoning the well fallacy....

but since they're all pretty similar and have one key point in common it doesn't matter. They're all fallacies.
You and your fallacies again... Get some new material.
4a) I've already shown that [destruction of the crust would be visible from space].
No, you haven't. You've been talking about bombs, not damage.
So you choose to not bother adding context to your quotes and then claim I was wrong... Great tactic.
4b) That explanation [that phasers did the job] is weak at best.
Why? It's consistent with everything we've seen in the show. Moreover, you haven't even demonstrated that there would be ejecta in the first place! Or, even what exactly 'ejecta' means.
When have we ever seen wide scale damage done by Phasers or Disruptors besides this claimed event?

I never made the claim of ejecta dipshit...
5) Still waiting for your concession that 'afaik no bomb tested in real life would be particularly visible from space at all from under heavy clouds...'
Why would I concede it when you haven't actually countered it? My biggest thing is even if the mushroom cloud does above normal clouds.... several kilometers is nothing compared to the scale of a planet.

In TDiC, one pixel on the screenshot represents something like 100 km^2.

Though, tbh, I am actually tempted to grant it anyway because then I could throw it back at the next asshole who claims gigaton turbolasers because Daala or whomever it was saw their effects from space. "lol didnt u hear all bombs are seen like that so whatevs"
That's also bullshit given that even in screen cap I took from a nonmaximized youtube video gave a resolution of roughly 13 km per pixel. This means that a 50 megaton cloud would need to cover at least 3x3 pixels, not much, but still visible even at low resolution and certainly noticeable IRL. Mushroom clouds have breached cloud cover and expanded to 40 kilometers before and the flash from the detonation would have lit up clouds in a much larger area given that the explosion of the Tsar bomb was visible 1,000 kilometers and lightning strikes are visible from space with much lower energy output.

Your last bit is also retarded as it doesn't do shit about the ICS.
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Re: Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

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Destructionator XIII wrote:Actually, what I think it is is secondary phaser style effects. As stuff gets disintegrated on the large, [TECH] happens.

Phasers would seemingly be super effective vs founders, much like Squirtle on Charmander. Hell, they'd probably do a huge number on any ground structures if they hit the ground and disintegrated outward, like they do to starship hulls. I think I talked about earthquakes earlier in this thread - it'd be pretty devastating and very energy efficient. A lot of the damage is done by the structure's own gravitational potential!

The torpedo looking things may have been distruptors, which are like pulse phasers (similar to TOS and the Defiant).

Indeed, I think they called them disruptors... which are very very similar to phasers in other contexts.
I thougth about that, and even that the "torpedoes" might have been carrying some weaponzied phaser-disintegration warhead (if they are torpedoes. Maybe they are pulses.) That would work... except that we run into problems with the earlier "one hour for crust, 5 hours for mantle" destruction bit. For a roughly earthlike planet (which IIRC the founder's homeworld is) the crust masses some e22 kg, while the crust masses some e24 kg. Put another way: they destroyed some 20x more matter in 5 hours than they did in an hour, which complicates any calculations massively. I suppose you could try arguing some weird "material dependence" bit, but much of the crust IIRC is actually less dense than the mantle (which would imply the exact opposite of what I've seen such a theory imply, but eh.)

There's also problems with preceding examples of phasorization. IF they can casually destroy huge volumes of matter we would have to conclude the Federation and other polities have this capability (otherwise the Romulans and Cardassians would have their equivalent of a Death STar and could curbstomp everyone.) But if Federation starships had this capability routinely, there would be a great many cases where it would have solved problems (many of the times you had a rogue asteroid, planetoid or whtaever that threatened a planet, or had to drill a hole through the crust, and so on...) Hell, there's that Pegasus asteroid bit too. I suppose you could argue "new technology", but I'm not sure you could just argue a massive upsurge in technology like that with no consequences (we're talking WMD levels of upgrade here).

At the very least, you'd have to argue it's not a typical capability they possess, and they had to modify their starships to be capable of achieving it. That might explain why 150 Jem'hadar fighters were such a massive threat to 30 major warships, though.
So the phaser disintegrate effect is very likely what's going on there. With phasers, traditional heating and explosions are actually a secondary consequence of their main goal. It can be very significant - Star Trek 6's heat kill from stun, phasers on overload, heating rocks, exploding like in Hide and Q, the list goes on.

But their primary effect is the disintegration magic, and I expect starship phasers and disruptors are the same deal.
True. Phasers IIRC can ignite a planet's atmosphere (although they likened it to a match to a flame or something), but you'd think they'd use that capability more often.
I don't think ejecta would actually happen beyond big cloud cover. It'd kick up dust, but actually giving enough speed to them to get into orbit, without disintegrating (in the regular sense of turning to dust rather than the Star Trek meaning of disappear into nothingness) is hella tricky - compare the engineering that goes into an Orion style nuclear pulse spaceship.

Massive clouds kicking off a nuclear winter works (which isn't as thick cover as it might sound!). Expecting to see some kind fragments actually go into space strikes me as completely unrealistic. The momentum each kilogram would need to is another challenge.
That again depends on what kind of yields you think they're bombarding the planet with, and what sort of "destruction" was achieved at the end. We only see less than a minute of what was projected to be an hours-long bombardment.
This is where the idea of pulse phaser/ distruptor bolts comes in again. If they aren't physical casings (which is unlike photon torpedoes), they might not interact with the atmosphere like one; they might not actually compress the air in front of them, thus avoiding heat generation.

Alternatively, they might just be small enough that we don't really see it from our vantage point. I wonder if someone at GEO could see the heat trails of a space shuttle? I think yes.... so I really lean toward the energy weapon explanation rather than a physical object.
I suppose their shields might reduce the amount of atmospheric friction they endure. Maybe they use warp fields (I hate always calling it mass lightening) somehow as well.
re energy yield: I'm pretty happy with the photon torpedo being ~10 megatons of tnt at max power - it seems the most consistent with all the sources. It doesn't fit perfectly everywhere, but what can you ask for from a show with 500 hours of material from dozens of writers... who don't give a flying shit about this garbage? That it's the same ballpark as the TM is just icing on the cake.
It doesn't have to fit perfectly. Nevermind the imprecision of the typical "back of the envelope" calcs we normally are forced to do, there is plenty of reason to believe they can adjust the yield to suit whatever need or purpose. There's no reason to believe that weapons must be used at MAXIMUM FIREPOWER!!! in any universe all the time just because the capability exists. There has to be a good reason to use it.
Energy for phasers is virtually irrelevant - that's a secondary consideration next to their special ability. The energy into phasers gets multiplied several times over in actual effect; a 10 kilowatt hand phaser can do things that a 10 megawatt laser couldn't dream of accomplishing, like make things disappear...
Terawatt/petawatt phasers don't seem improbable. We know that the phasers have less power than the deflector dish (which can channel the full power of the deflector dish.) And we know from Enterprise they had 500 GJ phase cannon, an increaes of a few orders of magnitude over the centuries doesn't seem out of place.
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Re: Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

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Destructionator XIII wrote:
Norade wrote:So you're going to tell me that Trek dialogue isn't wrong at times?
Nice false dilemma - it's either right all the time or wrong all the time. In reality, it's sometimes right and sometimes wrong. You look at them on a case by case basis.

You repeated this mistake on the simulations as well.
Except that Connor saw the same issues with your idea as I did.
When have we ever seen wide scale damage done by Phasers or Disruptors besides this claimed event?
Virtually every time they are used on the higher power settings.

Hand phasers make people and rocks disappear. (Large thing of rock disappearing is seen in Chain of Command and mentioned in The Devil in the Dark.)

Starship phasers have drilled through kilometers before in a matter of seconds, with high precision (Legacy, A Matter of Time, Inheritance). They also did surgery with the ship's phasers once, in Galaxy's Child. It's incredible how precise and accurate they can be.

They've also "evaporated" the skin off starships in DS9 battles (see the main site for pictures of this).

In "A Piece of the Action", a low power, wide beam phaser shot from the ship instantly stunned a city block.

What we see here is precision, power, magic disappearing act, and wide beam capabilities. Put them together, and you get my Die is Cast theory.

While I don't believe we've seen them do it again (partially because there's never a need to do it again, though it was contemplated at one opportunity - the Garak quote I posted during my DS9 episodes last week. btw, got another disc today so I'll probably post more random comments tomorrow.), it all follows from the same kind of things we've seen them to before.

They did have to crank up the power - IIRC, in the episode with Thomas Riker, they made a mention of how the secret ships weren't quite the same as standard Cardie warships - but the rest of it is in line with what we've seen before, just more massive. More ships, more power, more time, etc.
On the drilling in seconds bit that's been debunked so many times it's not even funny. A starship's skin is not large scale compared to 300km of a planets surface. A city block is also not even close to the same scale. Thus your theory is full of shit as are most of the ideas you claim about Trek's capabilities.
This means that a 50 megaton cloud would need to cover at least 3x3 pixels, not much, but still visible even at low resolution and certainly noticeable IRL.
Video doesn't actually work that way. Individual pixels in individual frames are unreliable due to inconsistent lighting at film time, etc., and compression artifacts when streamed or recorded.

Video is meant to be watched as a big moving picture, not focusing in on individual pixels.

The SFX people, knowing this, also don't really care about what frames look like. They can't spend all their time on shit people won't actually see under normal viewing!
I'm not talking about a movie here. You said a 50 Megaton blast wasn't going to be visible, I'm saying that it could be even more so with a better zoom on the view screen. This out of universe stuff is just another tangent that you just love tossing into every debate on the subject. I don't give a shit about Trek's special effects because of just how terrible many of them are.

Anyway, I noticed you didn't say anything about my idea for what may have happened Connor. I normally wouldn't care about a second opinion, but your work is always of such good quality that I'm interested in what you have to say.

"I've been saying that, given the effects we see, the blasts would likely be radiation emitted by something along the lines of a 50 megaton nuclear device. It would explain it being visible so far from the site of the blast so swiftly and the short duration. The only question that would be left to explain is why the light lingered, refraction in the clouds would be reasonable, and what sort of damage they expected it to cause to the crust. (Though them saying 30% destroyed is clearly nonsense and may be a product of false sensor readings which were already obscuring life signs.)Things like the lack of trails from atmospheric entry could be explained away by shielding on the torpedoes or even the phasors/disruptors clearing a path and this neatly explains the lack of ejecta and secondary effects. Of course if you had a better explanation I would listen as you're unlikely to be biased and have more experience with this than I do."
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Re: Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

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Destructionator XIII wrote:
Norade wrote:Thus your theory is full of shit as are most of the ideas you claim about Trek's capabilities.
I prefer some fun speculation to ignoring evidence and spewing fallacies left and right. You can't even actually discuss the points aside to appealing to some vague authority debunking primary evidence. How do you do that anyway?

If you have at least a link, maybe we can talk about it.
This thread here dealt with at least the episode 'Inheritance' and the supposed drilling there. Serafina ripped it to shreds.
I'm not talking about a movie here.
The rest of us are...
I've already debunked the statement that a 50 megaton explosion would have been visible from the shot we got. You had made a claim that it wouldn't be and I showed that you were full of shit so you shifted the goal posts again by talking about the production crew. So fuck off you useless pedantic twat.
I don't give a shit about Trek's special effects because of just how terrible many of them are.
Yet, that's all you talk about. Tell me, do you use black soul? if so, you can't see this text under normal circumstances. But, that doesn't mean it's not there - it just means it's not visible from your current vantage point, much like a sub-pixel fireball and mushroom cloud under clouds would be on a small, compressed, color limited video. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. shit son
Sorry, I saw through that shit easy just by looking at the blank space where something should be. However your point is still bullshit, what is 3 pixels on a small youtube video would be at least 3 if not four or more times larger on a normal TV. 9 to 12 pixels is still small, but not so invisible as you claim. You've also ignored the flash from the radiation and fire that would light up a larger region. Of course you're great at ignoring evidence you dislike.
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Re: Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

Post by Connor MacLeod »

Norade wrote: Anyway, I noticed you didn't say anything about my idea for what may have happened Connor. I normally wouldn't care about a second opinion, but your work is always of such good quality that I'm interested in what you have to say.

"I've been saying that, given the effects we see, the blasts would likely be radiation emitted by something along the lines of a 50 megaton nuclear device. It would explain it being visible so far from the site of the blast so swiftly and the short duration. The only question that would be left to explain is why the light lingered, refraction in the clouds would be reasonable, and what sort of damage they expected it to cause to the crust. (Though them saying 30% destroyed is clearly nonsense and may be a product of false sensor readings which were already obscuring life signs.)Things like the lack of trails from atmospheric entry could be explained away by shielding on the torpedoes or even the phasors/disruptors clearing a path and this neatly explains the lack of ejecta and secondary effects. Of course if you had a better explanation I would listen as you're unlikely to be biased and have more experience with this than I do."
Honestly? I don't think we can scale the yields based off visuals in TDIC. There was a similar problem i 40K with one of the Eisenhorn novels involving "petals of flame the size of continents" - it got interpreted as firballs, but that's not neccesarily the case, it could be global firestorms. HEre, we don't really know what those disturbances are, because we're seeing the bombardment from an angle that doesn't tell us alot. We don't know what they're bombarding with, what "destroy" means, or what sorts of effects we should even be seeing.

I don't think we're dealing with atmospheric detonations either, even if we are dealign with just photorps. Nevermind the bit about "destroying" the crust suggesting ground bursts, but the whole point of this attack is to kill the founders. Were I to venture a guess? The distortons, disruptions, or whatever they are is the liquid surface of the founders reacting to the bombardment (or at least, the decoy reacting to it.) The disruptions are either the weapons impacting/detonating within the link, and quite possibly reactions of shock/pain/surprise (or at least meant to be) to attack - they are living beings even if they are largely goop in this stage.

Now, when it comes to destroying the founders you have to consider what sort of state they're currently in. They don't have solid bodies, so I'm not sure blast will do much to them. They seem pretty resilient to physical impact in that way. Radiation and thermal effects seem likelier, since IIRC we've seen them burned and irradiated before. At the same time, we dont know how thick/deep the Great Link ocean goes (at least, I don't remember), and to maximize damage to what is basically an ocean, I would want it to actually be a subsurface detonation (Who knows, maybe the shockwaves inside the link would be worse.)

This means, however, that since we dont know the depth of the detonation, nor the properties of the material in question (its basically more magical than normal), that we can't calculate anything from the actual bombardment. All we can say is that the planet (IIRC) was pretty much fucked over afterwards. By what mechanism though we cannot say, or how it was fucked over even - just that they settled on a new planet. (Then again, that might also have been for security purposes. Again I don't remember for sure.)
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Re: Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

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Connor MacLeod wrote:
Norade wrote: Anyway, I noticed you didn't say anything about my idea for what may have happened Connor. I normally wouldn't care about a second opinion, but your work is always of such good quality that I'm interested in what you have to say.

"I've been saying that, given the effects we see, the blasts would likely be radiation emitted by something along the lines of a 50 megaton nuclear device. It would explain it being visible so far from the site of the blast so swiftly and the short duration. The only question that would be left to explain is why the light lingered, refraction in the clouds would be reasonable, and what sort of damage they expected it to cause to the crust. (Though them saying 30% destroyed is clearly nonsense and may be a product of false sensor readings which were already obscuring life signs.)Things like the lack of trails from atmospheric entry could be explained away by shielding on the torpedoes or even the phasors/disruptors clearing a path and this neatly explains the lack of ejecta and secondary effects. Of course if you had a better explanation I would listen as you're unlikely to be biased and have more experience with this than I do."
Honestly? I don't think we can scale the yields based off visuals in TDIC. There was a similar problem i 40K with one of the Eisenhorn novels involving "petals of flame the size of continents" - it got interpreted as firballs, but that's not neccesarily the case, it could be global firestorms. HEre, we don't really know what those disturbances are, because we're seeing the bombardment from an angle that doesn't tell us alot. We don't know what they're bombarding with, what "destroy" means, or what sorts of effects we should even be seeing.

I don't think we're dealing with atmospheric detonations either, even if we are dealign with just photorps. Nevermind the bit about "destroying" the crust suggesting ground bursts, but the whole point of this attack is to kill the founders. Were I to venture a guess? The distortons, disruptions, or whatever they are is the liquid surface of the founders reacting to the bombardment (or at least, the decoy reacting to it.) The disruptions are either the weapons impacting/detonating within the link, and quite possibly reactions of shock/pain/surprise (or at least meant to be) to attack - they are living beings even if they are largely goop in this stage.

Now, when it comes to destroying the founders you have to consider what sort of state they're currently in. They don't have solid bodies, so I'm not sure blast will do much to them. They seem pretty resilient to physical impact in that way. Radiation and thermal effects seem likelier, since IIRC we've seen them burned and irradiated before. At the same time, we dont know how thick/deep the Great Link ocean goes (at least, I don't remember), and to maximize damage to what is basically an ocean, I would want it to actually be a subsurface detonation (Who knows, maybe the shockwaves inside the link would be worse.)

This means, however, that since we dont know the depth of the detonation, nor the properties of the material in question (its basically more magical than normal), that we can't calculate anything from the actual bombardment. All we can say is that the planet (IIRC) was pretty much fucked over afterwards. By what mechanism though we cannot say, or how it was fucked over even - just that they settled on a new planet. (Then again, that might also have been for security purposes. Again I don't remember for sure.)
Well, I was at least right on it being more likely to be radiation than pure brute explosive force. So I'll take that one. I'll also agree that it is difficult to scale properly and almost certainly can't be used as a definitive calculation for massive firepower numbers.
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Re: Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

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Destructionator XIII wrote:I'd prefer some creative interpretation of the line, actually. Perhaps that planet's mantle is relatively small, like our own friend Mercury.

Perhaps the destruction wasn't required to be complete - perhaps they just wanted to blanket the whole thing.

The blanket interpretation would mean they take about 1 hour to blanket the crust entirely, some ~4 hours to phaserize the crust out of the picture, then the last hour is spent doing some punishment on the mantle.

Here's the actual line for reference:

LOVOK
Computer analysis indicates that the
planet's crust will be destroyed
within one hour, and the mantle within
five.
Eh, it's not a great fit at all, but taking out the whole crust is such ridiculous overkill and the mantle is really pretty absurd on top of it.

Could be that they meant upper mantle rather than the whole thing too. As we learn more about the structure of planets, we add more layer classifications - upper mantle, inner core, etc. Maybe in Star Trek, the word has changed it's meaning a little.


(Or maybe Ron Moore didn't realize/care about the implications of what he wrote!)
Regardless, I wouldn't read too much into it.
Well, like I said alot of this hinges on what you mean by "destroy". Most Trekkies I've seen dealign with this actually prefe rto hinge the bulk of their argument on that particular passage, especially the mantle destruction, so I've gotten used to having to cope with it in aggregate. I don't mind tossing it out or being looser in interpretaton, but I know some trekkies would scream about it. (especially igven my "Filthy Warsie" status.)

A small or unusual mantle is a possibility, but then again that argues that the crust composition (or ell the planetary composition) could be unusual too. I'm hesitant to be definitive on this because my knowledge of geology and planetary composition in general is limited, and for all I know there could be some hard and fast requirements for habitable/earthlike planets.

Another possibility is that "destroying" the crust or mantle involved disintegrating some key/essential elements in it, or maybe just causing some massively nasty tectonic activity - perhaps they feared the Founders might have some deep-ground faciltiies and they wanted to use quakes/laval to break them up or something. That sort of thing wouldn't need huge amounts of energy (magnitude 10 quakes are single digit TTs as I recall, and they work on a global scale. So do supervolcanos)

Heck, for all we know they bombarded the planet with the ST equivalent of seismic charges, and the surface disturbances were from massive groundquakes and volcanic activity. That wouldn't involve massive and blatantly obvious thermal effects, but I think it could fuck over a planet. (I'm also not sure the founders could survive contact with lava.)
That parenthetical doesn't follow. Even if they do have a massive advantage in this area, it's not something they could really use to win wars, and probably not even battles.

If your starship can fuck up planets, but can't make it's way through the other guy's ships/planet defense guns, it's not of much help. (shields may be very effective at stopping this kind of thing. Actually, shields might work on planets too.) Or if it can fuck up a planet, but the other guy can outproduce you and smother your worlds, it's not much help.

Like in hard sci fi discussions: eggshells and hammers. You might have the bigger hammer... but you're still an eggshell.


That said, I don't think this is likely.
How heaviyl defended is your average federation planet? I can buy that they couldn't blow up EArth that way, for example, but what about some random colony in the middle of bumfuck-nowhere? I know they have at least some of those around. Hell, Trek has never been big on the sorts of large scale ground warfare or planetary invasions like you see in (for example) 40K, where millions of soldiers invade or hold territory, which woudl argue that "densely populated" urban type worlds aren't typical, but that's just me.

That said, I still wouldnt rule this out as a weapon, given the existence of weapons platforms like Dreadnought. Stick a MIRV equivalent on a number of those, cut them loose at the enemy, and see what happens.
This is more compelling. I don't like giving tech capabilities that ruin other drama.

However, there was one case with a comet, where they did plan to vaporize the whole thing. DS9's season 3's "Destiny":

SISKO
(continuing)
Chief... Dax feels that we can't
risk using tractor beams to deflect
the comet.

DEEP SPACE: "Destiny" - REV. 12/19/94 - ACT FOUR 40.

30 CONTINUED: (2)

DAX
It would probably break up into
smaller pieces and we'd have a bigger
mess on our hands.

GILORA
The same thing would happen if you
tried to destroy it with a phaser
beam.

O'BRIEN
Not necessarily. I could modify the
Defiant's phaser array to generate a
beam wide enough to encompass the
entire comet.

ULANI
(nods)
Vaporizing it evenly so it won't
break up.
It was a special mod, but he did it in just a few hours. (Funny thing in that episode: they do to red alert to shoot at a comet. I guess they wanted people to be prepared in case a fragment hit the ship, but I laughed a bit when I watched it. Ambushing the scary comet warrants the klaxon!)


The plan didn't work, but only due to sabotage causing the phasers to fire normally (thus blowing up in the comet - the Defiant's phasers are made to kill ships by default - and leaving large fragments behind.). All the people who would know thought the plan would work - O'Brien, Dax, and one of the visiting Cardassian specialists after the plan was explained. The others didn't object, and one decided it was worth blowing her cover to sabotage it!


Now, it was fairly small and icy - not a rock big moon like in, say, Deja Q, so your general point still stands. If thirty ships can do it to a planet, surely one ship can do it to a much smaller asteroid, and that ruins some drama.... though this "Destiny" example is still a counter point too. The tech can do it, at least on some level, and it's come to mind before. (I think the Deja Q asteroid was just way too big.)
That actually sounds more like brute force to me. If the thing could be scaled, and the timeframe measured, it might be a viable calc for phasers.

What I find especially odd about that is that they need to "modify" the phasers for widebeam - I mean nevermind TOS where they could widebeam stun from orbit, but hand phasers are easily adjustable for widebeam (we've seen that several times). And even then, disintegration effects have never been reliant upon widebeam or narrow beam effects anyhow.
I like this a lot. It covers the cases, is on a similar vein to what O'Brien did in the quote above, and has some direct support.

We know there were some special modifications to the Obsidian Order ships. From "Defiant" DS9:
48 INT. CARDASSIAN WAR ROOM (OPTICAL)

Everyone watching the tactical display as the two ships close
in on the Defiant.

GUL DUKAT
Those are faster than any Keldon
class ships I've ever seen.
(beat)
What's going on in that system?
(Note: both "Defiant" and "The Die is Cast" were written by Ronald D. Moore - he surely thought at least some of this stuff this out ahead of time.)


If the engines were beefed up, and cloaking devices added - as we see in TDiC - it's not too big of a stretch to think they would have put special weapons on for the job too, and perhaps beefed up power plants as well.

The ships were essentially built to order for this special mission, after all.
It wouldn't require phenomenal modifications. We know the energy weapons can be modified to fire other kinds of particles out of them (I think they've discharged antimatter from the phaser banks, for example.) Just because we see a glowy colored pulse fire doesn't always mean it has to be the exact same weapon (I use this line of argument for Star Wars as well WRT turbolasers.)

For all we know they were shooting some special/unusual/new kind of special "planet killing" radiation or some such. It wouldnt be the first time they made up a magic particle for specific purposes *coughcoughNemesiscough*
Indeed. As a side note, while I don't think there was too much time compression there, since the characters were standing and watching mostly in real time (if they were sitting I buy skipping time more easily than standing or leaning..), there might have been a little bit. Maybe several minutes actually went by, but it was cut because watching ships constantly fire is boring. These few minutes would give the Jem'Hadar some more time to get in position too.


Regardless, we definitely only saw a small percentage of the total.

No comment on yield, we agree.
I will note in Mike's "Planet Killers" page he notes specifically that even large nuclear detonations (50-60 megatons) are unlikely to produce significant large scale atmospheric or dangerous effects the way certain large (EG gigaton or higher) yields would, and multiple smaller yields (even in the tens of megatons) won't behave the same way as one large, single yield. Hell, I remembe r reading and hearing that the entire world's nuclear stockpile, even at its height (single or double digit gigatons) would not neccesarily produce severe global effects like that (it would still kill alot of life, though) If these aren't as I think, airbursts but some sub-surface "underwater" detonations inside the Founder ocean thingy itself, the observable effects probably wouldn't be close to what we expect.

But even with atmospheric detonations, you don't heed a stupendously huge yield to kill a giant organic lake the way you need a single asteroid impact. double digit TT could probably kill off all life on the surface reasonably well, nevermind ancillary or other effects, and TTs spread over a matter of hours is going to degrade that even further.
Could be. Even if the warp core is ~1 TW, PW phasers are still possible, especially since the phaser banks charge - they can do big shots at times but that needn't be available for continued action. Trek battles seem to either be fast or slow - fast means the charged banks did their job. Then it slows down since they are stuck in steady state power.

The deflector dish can perhaps take all the charged power and release it at once - something that would burn out a phaser emitter; they are meant to stream rather than burst the full load.
I always figured that the e16 watt figure Mike estimated from Deja Q to move that giant asteroid/moon thingy was a good order of magnitude figure for a GCS. It fits in with True Q's power estimation of "gigawatts per.." (per minute or per hour, I figure.. that would put it in single to triple digit petawatts). There's also some voyager bits where they can run 5 million GW or something through some major conduit, which sets something of a lower limit. Like torpedo yields though, power generation won't be fixed due to various requirements (need to conserve onboard fuel, etc.) so they won't neccesarily be able to run at max power for long or do it very often (zero safety margin, increased strain on the systems, etc.)

If you figure phaser output is something like 10-20% of the maximum reactor power (other power going ot engines, shields and other important combat systems) you still get into high TW/low petawatt range. And like you say, there could be a charge up via capacitor as well.
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