The Millennium Falcon vs. a Borg Cube

[seanrobertson]

I love the Falcon, but is this some kind of joke I missed?

I mean, seriously: The Millennium Falcon might occupy/mass 1,800 sq. meters and <1 kT to a generous 60 kT.

A Borg Cube is 28 cubic kilometers according to "Dark Frontier."

All cuteness aside, I've never seen ANY proof that the Falcon's missiles could cripple, let alone destroy, a cube. MF's concussion missiles targetted a big FUCKING REACTOR. That's about as good evidence as some dickhead aiming a phaser at a GCS warp core

I also see no reason why the Falcon wouldn't be caught with a tractor pulse and pulled inside a cube for close study. The Borg captured one of the Voyager's shuttles, which is much smaller than the Falcon.

My take is that the Borg assimilate the Falcon and, with some study, gain hyperdrive. I doubt they could do much with that; I'm just "sayin' " ...

[Batman]

The problem is the Wars EU undeniably has fighter-scale projectiles that can take down capship shields in nonridiculous numbers, giving them yields hopelessly exceeding photon torpedoes (unless you want to argue they work via technobabble instead of brute force, which while possible is at least to my knowledge never stated to be the case), which begs the question of why wouldn't the Falcon have them...while he's with the Rebels. Han & Chewie operating on their own, or even Lando and Wuffi Raa would quite probably have given them a pass even if the could get their hands on them because they saw no need for a too expensive weapon they never expected to have to use and that's assuming the Falcon even had the missile launchers at the time.
Post-RotJ Falcon, however, which was for all practical purposes government-employed, funded, and equipped, would likely have access to those missiles.

[Connor MacLeod]

Well yes, brute force is one answer, but its not neccesarily the only one depending on the sources you use. And the logic can actually work in reverse depending on your assumptions - the fact fighter scale munitions can take down shields may be proof that the shields are not as hugetastically powerful as some sources claim.

[Batman]

Not when the sources claiming it are higher canon than the ones having fighter torpedoes taking down capship shields (i.e. the ICSes vs the Rogue Squadron books). Not that the Wars EU isn't inconsistent as hell anyway.

[Captain Seafort]

A Borg Cube is 28 cubic kilometers according to "Dark Frontier."

Or about eight cubic km going by "Q Who?", compared with a 470m wide E-D, or somewhere above about three cubic km going by FC, compared with a 120m long Defiant - their dimensions obviously vary from ship to ship.

All cuteness aside, I've never seen ANY proof that the Falcon's missiles could cripple, let alone destroy, a cube.

Assuming the Falcon's CM's are roughly equivalent to Slave 1's (190 Mt), one or two such hits might well do the trick. Based on the deflector dish weapon delivering the same warp nine power output calc'd from "Deja Q", the cube in BoBW withstood about 125 Mt, delivered over 25 seconds, and the crew were surprised that it survived, based on their extrapolations from the effect of their earlier attack.

[the atom]

A Borg Cube is 28 cubic kilometers according to "Dark Frontier."

Or about eight cubic km going by "Q Who?", compared with a 470m wide E-D, or somewhere above about three cubic km going by FC, compared with a 120m long Defiant - their dimensions obviously vary from ship to ship.

All cuteness aside, I've never seen ANY proof that the Falcon's missiles could cripple, let alone destroy, a cube.

Assuming the Falcon's CM's are roughly equivalent to Slave 1's (190 Mt), one or two such hits might well do the trick. Based on the deflector dish weapon delivering the same warp nine power output calc'd from "Deja Q", the cube in BoBW withstood about 125 Mt, delivered over 25 seconds, and the crew were surprised that it survived, based on their extrapolations from the effect of their earlier attack.

Why is Deja Q the gold standard? There's True Q as well, which has it at 12 billion GW or something like that as well, which means that the cube would have survived over 71 teratons.

[Batman]

That'd be the part where that was dialogue, interrupted halfway through, is in serious conflict with pretty much every other number given in TNG, means the E-D burns up 133 kg of fuel a second (assuming perfect efficiency) sitting in orbit doing nothing and of course begs the question why they'd need to use most of their photon torpedoes to destroy that asteroid in Pegasus, as even a tenth of that fed through the deflector dish of doom would equal 29 64MT photon torpedoes a second (and that's ignoring photorps don't seem to be all that directional and are nowhere near that).

[the atom]

That'd be the part where that was dialogue, interrupted halfway through, is in serious conflict with pretty much every other number given in TNG, means the E-D burns up 133 kg of fuel a second (assuming perfect efficiency) sitting in orbit doing nothing and of course begs the question why they'd need to use most of their photon torpedoes to destroy that asteroid in Pegasus, as even a tenth of that fed through the deflector dish of doom would equal 29 64MT photon torpedoes a second (and that's ignoring photorps don't seem to be all that directional and are nowhere near that).

You're something of a SW/ST war veteran I take it.

I'm not arguing that True Q aught to be the gold standard either, but I am saying you'd better be pretty damn careful in a series like star trek when you hold up something from a single episode and say 'this is the way things are!' when you know for damn sure that there's a lot of other evidence floating around that supports the other stuff.

You can rightfully say that an episode like True Q doesn't stack up with an episode like Pegasus, but then I can turn around and say True Q is contradicted by Skin of Evil. Or that both are contradicted by Rise.

[Batman]

That'd be the 'pretty much every other' part. But feel free to show me any other episode where the E-D did anything requiring that kind of power (or why it would be consuming that much power while...sitting in orbit doing nothing?)
And no I'm not.

[the atom]

That'd be the 'pretty much every other' part. But feel free to show me any other episode where the E-D did anything requiring that kind of power (or why it would be consuming that much power while...sitting in orbit doing nothing?)
And no I'm not.

You can apparently accept the fact that an ISD puts out hundreds of thousands of times more power basically doing the same thing, so I'm not sure why this is suddenly an extremely hard pill to swallow.

[Connor MacLeod]

Not when the sources claiming it are higher canon than the ones having fighter torpedoes taking down capship shields (i.e. the ICSes vs the Rogue Squadron books). Not that the Wars EU isn't inconsistent as hell anyway.

Which 'higher canon' sources would these be? If you're referring to the ICSes they're the same level as every other EU source out there, if the incredibly convoluted, bizarre, and quasi-religious 'canon hierarchy' of Star Wars could be taken to mean anything that is, and even if it doesn't your argument is only valid if its an actual contradiciton, as opposed to you thinking things must exist in a particular context and no other context making sense.

[jwl]

Not when the sources claiming it are higher canon than the ones having fighter torpedoes taking down capship shields (i.e. the ICSes vs the Rogue Squadron books). Not that the Wars EU isn't inconsistent as hell anyway.

Which 'higher canon' sources would these be? If you're referring to the ICSes they're the same level as every other EU source out there, if the incredibly convoluted, bizarre, and quasi-religious 'canon hierarchy' of Star Wars could be taken to mean anything that is, and even if it doesn't your argument is only valid if its an actual contradiciton, as opposed to you thinking things must exist in a particular context and no other context making sense.

Chee said "Cross-Sections would still be the first place I'd look when determining firepower."
That may mean, in terms of firepower, ICS is a higher authority than other C-canon.

[Connor MacLeod]

Trying to pin your hopes on 'canon' and 'interpretations of what some other guy said' is pretty tedious and futile. People have been trying to argue over Lucas interpreations of 'canon' for a long time now, for example.

and I'm well aware of what the ICS numbers say and what their implications are, quite possibly better than what other people typically do. They're not absolutes.

[jwl]

Yeah, I suppose.

[the atom]

Trying to pin your hopes on 'canon' and 'interpretations of what some other guy said' is pretty tedious and futile. People have been trying to argue over Lucas interpreations of 'canon' for a long time now, for example.

and I'm well aware of what the ICS numbers say and what their implications are, quite possibly better than what other people typically do. They're not absolutes.

What do you mean exactly? If a guy who's job is to organize canon for a franchise makes a ruling on a specific contradiction, then it's kind of end of the argument as far as we're concerned.

[Connor MacLeod]

Chee's got a lot of experience playing with semantics and avoiding giving a definitive answer, especially when it comes to potential minefields. Saying the ICS stats regarding firepower are canon does not neccesarily mean that particular INTERPRETATIONS of firepower are canon, and there have been lots of interpretations pinned to them because they are for the most part incomplete (eg we know TL firepower is a certain yield per shot, but we dont know always things like rate of fire, what the purpose of a given setting is, etc. Alternately for the shield ratings we don't always know what 'peak shields' mean, and the fact they're given in wattage can mean alot of things depending on how you interpret shields to work - which again is not very explicitly stated.) And Chee stating he'd look in the ICS books for determining firepower isn't clear given that it could be his opinion on matters, rather than the 'authoritative' stance.

In either caes you're making the requirement of 'knowing' the author's mind from a specific statement (much as Lucas' 'two worlds' discussion has been nitpicked endlessly without further elaboration of his mind on this.)

Then again semantics have long been part of SW debates, this is just the most tedious iteration of it yet.

[Batman]

That'd be the 'pretty much every other' part. But feel free to show me any other episode where the E-D did anything requiring that kind of power (or why it would be consuming that much power while...sitting in orbit doing nothing?)
And no I'm not.

You can apparently accept the fact that an ISD puts out hundreds of thousands of times more power basically doing the same thing, so I'm not sure why this is suddenly an extremely hard pill to swallow.

I'm not aware of any source claiming the power generation numbers for Wars ships are for them idly orbiting. They're likely peak reactor output. I see no inherent problem with the peak output of the Warp core being in that range, it'd just mean they'd go through their fuel reserves mighty fast but for something they can only do for a short while when they really need to, why not? Them burning up that much fuel (and since there is to my knowledge no indication that TNG+ Warp cores don't work on M/AM as we understand it, they'd have to) while the ship is idling is what irks me, as is the fact that that kind of power generation would have really come in handy on a number of occasions. Plus, unlike Trek, Wars cheats on the fuel storage issue so them burning up ludicrous amounts of fuel is far less problematic because we don't really know beans about hypermatter but we understand deuterium reasonably well.
And just for the record, if there is a Wars source saying Star Destroyers burn fucktons of fuel when essentially all they're doing is powering life support, lighting, the ship's electronics and the crew's home theatre systems, I'd find that just as appalling.

[StarSword]

The problem is the Wars EU undeniably has fighter-scale projectiles that can take down capship shields in nonridiculous numbers, giving them yields hopelessly exceeding photon torpedoes (unless you want to argue they work via technobabble instead of brute force, which while possible is at least to my knowledge never stated to be the case), which begs the question of why wouldn't the Falcon have them...while he's with the Rebels. Han & Chewie operating on their own, or even Lando and Wuffi Raa would quite probably have given them a pass even if the could get their hands on them because they saw no need for a too expensive weapon they never expected to have to use and that's assuming the Falcon even had the missile launchers at the time.
Post-RotJ Falcon, however, which was for all practical purposes government-employed, funded, and equipped, would likely have access to those missiles.

The best solution I can come up with for fighter missile spam bringing down capital ship shields is that it's a software thing on the receiving end. Every time it happens in the X-Wing series it requires most of a squadron, minimum, hitting a single area with multiple missiles within fractions of a second of each other (Wedge mentions this specifically late in Starfighters of Adumar, that the Adumari won't bring down an ISD's shields without synchronous impacts). I figure they're forcing the computers governing the shields to deal with too many impacts simultaneously, something that is supported by (I think it was) The Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology noting that the Falcon's turrets have beam splitters which split the shot into two, forcing the target to deal with two impacts at once.

The Falcon only has two missile tubes and only a small number of missiles. I don't think it can put enough birds in the air simultaneously to pull that off.

[Jedipilot24]

That'd be the 'pretty much every other' part. But feel free to show me any other episode where the E-D did anything requiring that kind of power (or why it would be consuming that much power while...sitting in orbit doing nothing?)
And no I'm not.

You can apparently accept the fact that an ISD puts out hundreds of thousands of times more power basically doing the same thing, so I'm not sure why this is suddenly an extremely hard pill to swallow.

I'm not aware of any source claiming the power generation numbers for Wars ships are for them idly orbiting. They're likely peak reactor output. I see no inherent problem with the peak output of the Warp core being in that range, it'd just mean they'd go through their fuel reserves mighty fast but for something they can only do for a short while when they really need to, why not? Them burning up that much fuel (and since there is to my knowledge no indication that TNG+ Warp cores don't work on M/AM as we understand it, they'd have to) while the ship is idling is what irks me, as is the fact that that kind of power generation would have really come in handy on a number of occasions. Plus, unlike Trek, Wars cheats on the fuel storage issue so them burning up ludicrous amounts of fuel is far less problematic because we don't really know beans about hypermatter but we understand deuterium reasonably well.
And just for the record, if there is a Wars source saying Star Destroyers burn fucktons of fuel when essentially all they're doing is powering life support, lighting, the ship's electronics and the crew's home theatre systems, I'd find that just as appalling.

I did some research: the ISD-II has 6 years of consumables which, according to the source I found, translates to 2208 fuel cells. Each of the following activities expends one fuel cell:
• one jump to hyperspace
• one hour of combat, sublight travel (at top speed), or atmospheric flight
• six hours of hyperspace travel or sublight travel (at typical combat speed)
• one day of sublight travel (at typical cruising speed)
• one week (five days) of sublight travel (at docking speed)
• one month (35 days) while stationary or in orbit

So if an ISD-II did nothing but sit in orbit over a planet, it could go without refueling for 2208 months, which is 184 years. I'd hardly call that 'burning fucktons of fuel while doing nothing'.
For some perspective:
An X-Wing fighter, with one week of consumables, has 5 fuel cells; this means that it has enough fuel to jump to hyperspace, travel for six hours, engage in a combat raid for up to one hour, jump to hyperspace, and travel six hours to return home. This limited range is quite similar to that shown in the X-wing series of novels and I don't think that the Alliance/New Republic actually engaged in very many maximum range missions both because it was costly and because you don't put your pilots through 13 hour missions unless you really have to. The X-Wing novels also mention external drop tanks, which can extend the range even further or allow the X-Wing to spend more time over a target.

[Metahive]

Assuming of course that the fuel doesn't degrade and that all the other daily operations on an SD other than remaining stationary in orbit do not cost any additional fuel cells. It might also be that those 2000+ fuel cells are also needed by the SD's fighters, transport ships and ground attack craft explaining why it carries such a huge load of them with it.

[Jedipilot24]

Assuming of course that the fuel doesn't degrade and that all the other daily operations on an SD other than remaining stationary in orbit do not cost any additional fuel cells. It might also be that those 2000+ fuel cells are also needed by the SD's fighters, transport ships and ground attack craft explaining why it carries such a huge load of them with it.

No, I'm pretty sure that there are separate fuel stockpiles for the fighters, etc. That, among other things, is what's carried in the cargo bays. The Katana Fleet Dreadnoughts were still running on their original fuel cells when they were discovered, so the fuel doesn't degrade. And they were only intended for two year missions and had been sitting there in deep space for at least 36 years; and they still had enough fuel to fight a battle and then some.

[Metahive]

You're pretty sure because...? Did the ICS or wherever you got your info from actually state where the fuel for the various vehicles is stored?

[Batman]

By the time the New Republic found the Katana fleet one Dreadnought was still marginally operational-as in being able to move under its own power. The one they boarded had life support and little else. Since the Dreadnoughts the Imperials took might have been extensively refurbished before use that's no indication their fuel cells were still good when they were taken.

[Eternal_Freedom]

By the time the New Republic found the Katana fleet one Dreadnought was still marginally operational-as in being able to move under its own power. The one they boarded had life support and little else. Since the Dreadnoughts the Imperials took might have been extensively refurbished before use that's no indication their fuel cells were still good when they were taken.

Not quite, the Katana had enough fuel for a single turbolaser volley (probably enough for more than one, but the capacitor banks disintergrated or something).

[Batman]

I'd say a single turbolaser volley still falls under 'little else' but duly noted. I think we can agree that'ds hardly evidence for their fuel cells being up to specs.