How powerful could a hard sci-fi civilization be?

[Connor MacLeod]

I'm not really sure the STL 'hard' galactic (or greater) uberciv can really outdo a GE that is really committed to some TO THE DEATH global war scenario, simply because of all the advantages hyperdrive and FTL comms/sensors give them when it comes to shooting explodey death in various forms as I mentioned before.

But to be frank the idea of either side going TO THE DEATH to begin with is pretty silly. For one thing we've never seen SW have the slightest indication to utilize a significant portion of its industrial/technological/resource potential for anything other than silly political or trivial matters (like the Death Star, or the Holonet) More often than not they seem to be lazy, corrupt, and rather conservative. Given that there are no real threats or outside pressures acting on it, that's not really surprising though. So in any 'external' contact situation, those factors are going to be pretty hefty handicaps in how the GE operates. Whether its a fatal disadvantage depends on the speed with which their oppposition acts and/or how quickly they recognize a threat and its scale, but there's no way to generalize about that because it will depend on the threat (threats of conquest or economic war won't warrant the same response that a threat of utter annihilation would, for example.)

And we've already discussed the suicidal lunacy of any STL 'HARD' civ trying to out-attrition the GE (or similar oppponent.) - it doesn't play to their advantages or to this 'enlightened/intelligent' approach we're supposed to be assuming rather than this apprently genocidal, xenophobic and militant 'HARD' civ that has been discussed.

Plus, any avenue for interesting debate is going to lie in the 'non-total war' direction anyhow for much those same reasons - there's literally nothing to discuss in an 'total war/attrition' scenario other than to tabulate body counts.

[Connor MacLeod]

Um-a 10MW laser is going to be hard pressed to hurt Wars civilian craft, leave alone capital warships.

That depends entirely on how the starship is built. It's pretty silly to assume a SW civilian ship or freighter must be able to stand up to military grade weaponry just because SW tech is ADVANCED. There has to be a reason for them to want that durability, as it is going to represet a trade off in cost, mass/tonnage (or volume - does this durability come in the form of thick/dense armour plating, or fancy ass defensive forcefields, or what.), costs, maintenance, etc. And most mercantile or civilian shipping probably wouldn't have a need for that and would be happy with less robust materials.

So yes, its quite possible to argue that SW craft might be fucked up by 'less than uberton' yields, depending on how you approach it. Again remember they have no real external threats and limited internal, so proliferation of uberyields is not really needed and may even be counter productive (what happens if you start arming every cruise ship and freighter with the equivalent of tactical nukes?)

Ignoring the fact that with a range of a lightminute, the Wars ship has a whole minute to just get out of the way thanks to having FTL sensors (two if they don't wait for the laser to actually fire). Heck, since your hard SciFi civilisation is limited to c speed sensors, it'll be a minute from the time your mine noticed there's a target to the laser arriving. Using modern day technology the target can be out of the way of the laser. Something with FTL sensors and thousands of gs worth of acelleration?

Also, since Wars warships can hit targets from lighthours out, imagine the number of mines you'd need to be sure any of them are in range.

It could b eargued based on the ICS that SW ships really are sluggish enought that they can be hit from ten LM out (which was the range of the Venator's guns, recall.) There can be lots of factors dictating that (craptacular manuvering jets, the place combat takes place - close to a planet or out in space, where repulsors and tractor beams can aid in manuvering) and simple power allocation can be an issue - simpyl knowing your enemy is shooting at you doesn't guarantee you can instantly dodge out of the way, and those shittastically huge yields have drawbacks when it comes to power allocation and manuvering (such as turret rotation.)

[Batman]

Um-a 10MW laser is going to be hard pressed to hurt Wars civilian craft, leave alone capital warships.

That depends entirely on how the starship is built. It's pretty silly to assume a SW civilian ship or freighter must be able to stand up to military grade weaponry just because SW tech is ADVANCED.

Thing is, by Wars standards 10MW isn't military grade weaponry. Amidaala's freaking yacht has a peak shield dissipation rate of 2E12 MW and by Wars standards the thing is tiny. Now I'll grant you that a former Queen's yacht isn't exactly your baseline civilian ship
and that the shield wattage numbers don't necessarily translate straight into 'can resist X watts of firepower' but we're talking an 11 orders of magnitude discrepancy here...for a ship that isn't particularly large by modern day standards.

There has to be a reason for them to want that durability, as it is going to represet a trade off in cost, mass/tonnage (or volume - does this durability come in the form of thick/dense armour plating, or fancy ass defensive forcefields, or what.), costs, maintenance, etc. And most mercantile or civilian shipping probably wouldn't have a need for that and would be happy with less robust materials.

11 orders of magnitude. For a yacht. Are you telling that Wars civilian/commercial ships are millions of times more fragile than Amidaala's loveboat? When some of them could use it for a lifepod size-wise?

So yes, its quite possible to argue that SW craft might be fucked up by 'less than uberton' yields, depending on how you approach it. Again remember they have no real external threats and limited internal, so proliferation of uberyields is not really needed and may even be counter productive (what happens if you start arming every cruise ship and freighter with the equivalent of tactical nukes?)

There's no uberton resilience, and there's...those 11 orders of magnitude. Now I agree that Wars ships aren't going to be any tougher than they think they need to be, but with this kind of discrepancy they might be able to blithely ignore that kind of firepower simply by virtue of the materials they use to build those ships anyway. And while I know our (or at least my) sample base of Wars ships is skewed in favour of those that expect to get into trouble and are thusly equipped it does seem to be a given for even civilian ships to be shielded, and with the firepower thrown about in Wars even on the fighter scale (the Aethersprite's laser cannon amount to 70MW with a once a minute refire rate ) I seriously doubt a 10MW laser is going to be much of a threat.

Ignoring the fact that with a range of a lightminute, the Wars ship has a whole minute to just get out of the way thanks to having FTL sensors (two if they don't wait for the laser to actually fire). Heck, since your hard SciFi civilisation is limited to c speed sensors, it'll be a minute from the time your mine noticed there's a target to the laser arriving. Using modern day technology the target can be out of the way of the laser. Something with FTL sensors and thousands of gs worth of acelleration?
Also, since Wars warships can hit targets from lighthours out, imagine the number of mines you'd need to be sure any of them are in range.

It could be argued based on the ICS that SW ships really are sluggish enought that they can be hit from ten LM out (which was the range of the Venator's guns, recall.)

The movies, however, disagree. And the ICS never comes out and explicitely says the target vessel will still be there. It just states that the TLs are accurate enough to hit a vessel at that range.

There can be lots of factors dictating that (craptacular manuvering jets, the place combat takes place - close to a planet or out in space, where repulsors and tractor beams can aid in manuvering) and simple power allocation can be an issue - simpyl knowing your enemy is shooting at you doesn't guarantee you can instantly dodge out of the way, and those shittastically huge yields have drawbacks when it comes to power allocation and manuvering (such as turret rotation.)

Getting out of the way of that laser beam requires like what, half a second at worst at Wars accelerations? They've got a minute to do it. 10 for the 10 lm scenario. And I'm not sure where the limits of Wars turret rotation come into play-wether they're targeting the mines or anything else, they have plenty of time?

Also, thanks to PeZook for his minefield calculations-I so seem to have massively overestimated the number of mines needed.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Actually, on the matter of turret traverse the ICS (in the same paragraph as it states the ten light minute range figure no less) states that in it's fast-tracking mode the Venator's heavy turrets can rotate in three seconds. Pretty speedy.

[PeZook]

The max range on the Venator's guns might be theoretical, but it's doubtful that this is because Wars ships are too sluggish to avoid a shot from TEN LIGHT MINUTES OUT

Seriously, at 10 light minutes all you need is a measly 1 m/s of additional velocity to be 600 metres to the side when the beam arrives ; If they can't accelerate by more in ten minutes, then they're not starships but space stations.

More likely, it's like theoretical range on modern anti-ship missiles ; The Harpoon has a theoretical range of 124 kilometres, but guidance issues limit it quite severely and in practice it will usually be fired within the launch platform's radar horizon. So when SW ships have to slug it out against a moving, jamming target they have to get up close, but bombarding a planet, not so much.

[Batman]

It also states that that's the close fighting fast-tracking mode, which seems to indicate that they can't do it for long range for some reason.

[PeZook]

It also states that that's the close fighting fast-tracking mode, which seems to indicate that they can't do it for long range for some reason.

Precision, most likely. Up close and personal you can use high power to traverse quickly, at long range slight errors will result in a miss, so the actuators probably use only very slight nudges to train the turret.

[Blayne]

I'm a little confused, 10MW was just an example, why couldn't the HSF Civilization have larger ones capable of dealing damage to SSF ships?

[Batman]

I don't think anybody said they can't. But 10MW was the example given, and at least against Wars...it's not all that impressive (at least not until Conner thoroughly deconstructs my reasoning for why it isn't, anyway ).

[Connor MacLeod]

Thing is, by Wars standards 10MW isn't military grade weaponry. Amidaala's freaking yacht has a peak shield dissipation rate of 2E12 MW and by Wars standards the thing is tiny. Now I'll grant you that a former Queen's yacht isn't exactly your baseline civilian ship
and that the shield wattage numbers don't necessarily translate straight into 'can resist X watts of firepower' but we're talking an 11 orders of magnitude discrepancy here...for a ship that isn't particularly large by modern day standards.

A SENATOR's Yacht. Someone, I might add, who has also been the target of assasinations and similar problems for much of her career and quite obviously has enemies since she was an elected Queen. What proof do you have Amidala's yacht represents the 'standard' for civilian vehicles, exactly?

And comparing things simply by 'orders of magnitude' discrepancy is a pretty damn silly way to make a comparison. I could do that just as easily with an ISD or SSD, or either of those compared to the Death Star and it wouldn't make any more sense.

11 orders of magnitude. For a yacht. Are you telling that Wars civilian/commercial ships are millions of times more fragile than Amidaala's loveboat? When some of them could use it for a lifepod size-wise?

I like how you blatantly ignore everything I said simply to reiterate your arbitrary 'orders of magnitude' discrepancy claim like that actually means anything. Without knowing anything about the civilian craft in general, its silly to assume anything, either way. Of course, I wasn't the one making claims about the durability of SW civilian craft either so...

There's no uberton resilience, and there's...those 11 orders of magnitude. Now I agree that Wars ships aren't going to be any tougher than they think they need to be, but with this kind of discrepancy they might be able to blithely ignore that kind of firepower simply by virtue of the materials they use to build those ships anyway. And while I know our (or at least my) sample base of Wars ships is skewed in favour of those that expect to get into trouble and are thusly equipped it does seem to be a given for even civilian ships to be shielded, and with the firepower thrown about in Wars even on the fighter scale (the Aethersprite's laser cannon amount to 70MW with a once a minute refire rate ) I seriously doubt a 10MW laser is going to be much of a threat.

Assuming all your assumptions hold out, then yes, that might be the case. But what's to say your assumptions are, in fact, representative of the situation as is? You're making absolutely no allowance for any variations whatsoever.

The movies, however, disagree.

I am assuming oyu're referring to the turn rates of ships in TESB or ROTJ, right? Those would be the scenes where they manage to rotate or manuver without any obvious relativistic exhaust blasting out, right? I believe I covered that possibility with repulsors and tractor beams (such as the ICS listing tractor/pressor beams precisely for that purpose on the Geonosian built craft) Manuvering in close to a mass is not the same thing as manuvering out ni open space hundreds of thousands or millions of km away from your target.

If we were going to reference ROTJ, IIRC the novelization makes mention of ships colliding with the DS2's shields, so their manuvering may be more problematic than simply 'rotating on your axis to face a different direction'.

And the ICS never comes out and explicitely says the target vessel will still be there. It just states that the TLs are accurate enough to hit a vessel at that range.

So your argument sums up as: 'The ICS quote on the Venator guns only specifies that its accurate enough to hit a ship at light minutes - unless it moves out of the way of the shot.' If its remarkable that the Venator guns can hit a stationary target there's must be some really hefty problems with SW targeting.

Getting out of the way of that laser beam requires like what, half a second at worst at Wars accelerations?

Only if you assume the ship's systems leap into action instantaneously in all cases. Of course how you arrived at this conclusion I would love to know - I assume you took into account orientation of the craft, the relative velocities, the reaction times of the crew and associated human factors (time to interpret sensor data, time to to pass along orders, etc.), issues related to power allocation and the strength of manuvering engines and/or main thrusters, and so on and so forth.

Moreover, did it occur to you that engines may not immediately ramp up to full power - at least not in every case? A great deal of it is a 'depends on' scenario, because ti depends on how the ship is built and the capabilities built into it. The entire situation comes down to 'depends on' circumstances - velocity, crew, sensors/ecm (both the kind and how they work, as well as the quality of the data you receive vs efforts to prevent you from acquiring that data), etc. Hell it even depends on what you consider 'good' accuracy.

[Connor MacLeod]

It also states that that's the close fighting fast-tracking mode, which seems to indicate that they can't do it for long range for some reason.

Precision, most likely. Up close and personal you can use high power to traverse quickly, at long range slight errors will result in a miss, so the actuators probably use only very slight nudges to train the turret.

Or its related to recoil. Chucking out megatons, gigatons, teratons of energy is not a trivial matter, and you need to be able to make sure that the guns can stand up to their own firing (CF Slave Ship.) Mike commented on this actually WRT ANH and even fighter scale guns, I believe. Basically all those fantastically huge yields they vomit could require a great deal of recoil/strucutral bracing and other compensation, which can limit (or negate) their ability to track and hit targets - a big, heavy turret with lots of bracing is not going to be as able to move as quickly or precisely as a small, mobile turret can.

(as a side note: IIRC this was also supposed to be one of the factors addressing the sharp disparity in firepower between fighter guns and their power generation, relative to capital ships and their power plants. EG warships beign able to put nearly all their reactor output through guns or engines, but a fighter can only put a small fraction of its total engine power through its guns. Other factors considered were heat dissipation, I believe.)

Close up is probably something like we saw with ANH or ROTJ where you have fighters and small craft flying point blank to the target ship. This isn't a problem against big ships probably because they can use tractor beams to inhibit ship mobility at closer ranges (but those tractor beams would not neccesariyl be agile enough to hit a fighter at range.) and at longer ranges (anything where the opposing starship is a small dot or even beyond visual range) you don't need to move the turret much to track them.

I'm probably oversimlifying all the issues pertaining to recoil and accuracy (such as how that stupendous recoil - which for mayn parts may represent a not-inconsiderable fraction of a ship's accelerative capability and probably can impart motion to the ship in different and interestng ways.) but it can give an idea of what it may be referencing.

Edit: The same recoil-related issues to rotating a turret could quite likely apply to thrust deflection or turning manuvering jets/thrusters or however turning and direction changes are handled. Once again, those stupendous energies probably cannot just ramp up or be redirected instantaneously at a whim (Indeed, thre's the near-collision of ISDs in TESB by the Falcon.)

[Batman]

Thing is, by Wars standards 10MW isn't military grade weaponry. Amidaala's freaking yacht has a peak shield dissipation rate of 2E12 MW and by Wars standards the thing is tiny. Now I'll grant you that a former Queen's yacht isn't exactly your baseline civilian ship and that the shield wattage numbers don't necessarily translate straight into 'can resist X watts of firepower' but we're talking an 11 orders of magnitude discrepancy here...for a ship that isn't particularly large by modern day standards.

A SENATOR's Yacht. Someone, I might add, who has also been the target of assasinations and similar problems for much of her career and quite obviously has enemies since she was an elected Queen. What proof do you have Amidala's yacht represents the 'standard' for civilian vehicles, exactly?
And comparing things simply by 'orders of magnitude' discrepancy is a pretty damn silly way to make a comparison. I could do that just as easily with an ISD or SSD, or either of those compared to the Death Star and it wouldn't make any more sense.

I explictely said it wasn't? I DO have a problem with that standard being a quadrillion limes less resilient than that.

11 orders of magnitude. For a yacht. Are you telling that Wars civilian/commercial ships are millions of times more fragile than Amidaala's loveboat? When some of them could use it for a lifepod size-wise?

I like how you blatantly ignore everything I said simply to reiterate your arbitrary 'orders of magnitude' discrepancy claim like that actually means anything.[/quote]
It does. It means civilian ships that are massively larger than that yacht and have access to the same general tech base are a quadrillian times less shielded.

Without knowing anything about the civilian craft in general, its silly to assume anything, either way. Of course, I wasn't the one making claims about the durability of SW civilian craft either so...

Actually, you're assuming they can be a quadrillion times worse shielded than that yacht. While I don't think that's technically a positive claim, it's one hell of an assumption to make. Especially with the kind of shields small time smugglers seem to be able to afford.

There's no uberton resilience, and there's...those 11 orders of magnitude. Now I agree that Wars ships aren't going to be any tougher than they think they need to be, but with this kind of discrepancy they might be able to blithely ignore that kind of firepower simply by virtue of the materials they use to build those ships anyway. And while I know our (or at least my) sample base of Wars ships is skewed in favour of those that expect to get into trouble and are thusly equipped it does seem to be a given for even civilian ships to be shielded, and with the firepower thrown about in Wars even on the fighter scale (the Aethersprite's laser cannon amount to 70MW with a once a minute refire rate ) I seriously doubt a 10MW laser is going to be much of a threat.

Assuming all your assumptions hold out, then yes, that might be the case. But what's to say your assumptions are, in fact, representative of the situation as is? You're making absolutely no allowance for any variations whatsoever.

I am. I allow for the yacht not being standard issue technology, allow for MW resilience not equaling MW firepower blocked. I will indeed not allow for a factor of a quadrillion resilience difference unless provided with very good reason for why baseline ship many times bigger than the yacht would have that much weaker shielding.

The movies, however, disagree.

I am assuming oyu're referring to the turn rates of ships in TESB or ROTJ, right? Those would be the scenes where they manage to rotate or manuver without any obvious relativistic exhaust blasting out, right?

Why would they need them? They're [rotating. Not that we ever see those exhaust blast anywhere that I recall. So fine, they used repulsors in ESB (though how do you use those to rotate that far away from the planet, instead of simply pushing yourself away from it?9

If we were going to reference ROTJ, IIRC the novelization makes mention of ships colliding with the DS2's shields, so their manuvering may be more problematic than simply 'rotating on your axis to face a different direction'.

They also had what, half a minute's warning that the shield was still up? We're talking ten minutes from firing to arrival here.

And the ICS never comes out and explicitely says the target vessel will still be there. It just states that the TLs are accurate enough to hit a vessel at that range.

So your argument sums up as: 'The ICS quote on the Venator guns only specifies that its accurate enough to hit a ship at light minutes - unless it moves out of the way of the shot.' If its remarkable that the Venator guns can hit a stationary target there's must be some really hefty problems with SW targeting.

Your targeting can be as precise as it wants if your recoil fucks up your aim

Getting out of the way of that laser beam requires like what, half a second at worst at Wars accelerations?

Only if you assume the ship's systems leap into action instantaneously in all cases.

No, I'm assuming they 10 minutes warning what with us talking about a laser satellite 10 lm away.

Of course how you arrived at this conclusion I would love to know

And I would love to know how you assumed I did, when the scenario at least last time I checked was 'mining a system with 10MW laser mines for the purposes of denying Wars ships entry, which rather presupposes Wars warships on a war footing.

- I assume you took into account orientation of the craft, the relative velocities, the reaction times of the crew and associated human factors (time to interpret sensor data, time to to pass along orders, etc.), issues related to power allocation and the strength of manuvering engines and/or main thrusters, and so on and so forth.

I assumed that an alert wars crew with properly manned sensor array and the engines at least on idle could do enough to manage it inside of 10 minutes, yes.

Moreover, did it occur to you that engines may not immediately ramp up to full power - at least not in every case? A great deal of it is a 'depends on' scenario, because ti depends on how the ship is built and the capabilities built into it. The entire situation comes down to 'depends on' circumstances - velocity, crew, sensors/ecm (both the kind and how they work, as well as the quality of the data you receive vs efforts to prevent you from acquiring that data), etc. Hell it even depends on what you consider 'good' accuracy.

They don't immediately need to-they've got 10 minutes? ECM doesn't figure into it as the HSF kind needs 10 minutes to get to the target and the Wars kind won't likely even register on the HSF's sensors. And for what I think the 'orginal' minefield scenario was-using said mines agains Wars ships-unless you manage to catch a ship (a small ship, likely as not) wandering into the field unawares, they're not going to do much. Against Wars warships actually bent on causing trouble?

[Sea Skimmer]

Or its related to recoil. Chucking out megatons, gigatons, teratons of energy is not a trivial matter, and you need to be able to make sure that the guns can stand up to their own firing (CF Slave Ship.) Mike commented on this actually WRT ANH and even fighter scale guns, I believe. Basically all those fantastically huge yields they vomit could require a great deal of recoil/strucutral bracing and other compensation, which can limit (or negate) their ability to track and hit targets - a big, heavy turret with lots of bracing is not going to be as able to move as quickly or precisely as a small, mobile turret can.

No reason exists why a big turret cannot be as precise as a small one, indeed the pointing accuracy and overall accuracy of battleship guns was much better then anything else around. Size actually helps with precision by making it harder to overadjust and providing a lot more space for variable gearing and motors. Speed is largely a matter of how much money and complexity do you feel like affording, and since Star Wars has levitation type technologies you could actually have the turret weigh nothing on the roller path if you wanted, swing it around like crazy and then weight it back down for greater precision in fine tracking. Rather in fact like the earliest naval turrets which in some cases had to jack up to traverse, and then crank back down in a fixed position to fire or for storage to make the roller path watertight.

Most recoil will only be felt by the ships structure after the bolt has already left the barrel, observations of turbolasers firing tend to show the bolt leaves the barrel before it finishes recoiling, which makes recoil be of minimal importance to the firing accuracy of any given shot. This isn't a human shooting from the shoulder who flinches from the act of pulling the trigger and the sound of firing. Recoil would could still affect the time to relay between shots, but that isn't which isn't that huge a factor when the weapon is already continuously tracking a target and not firing multiple times a second.

[Batman]

If I recall correctly, recoil itself doesn't even apply to modern day assualt rifles (at least for single aimed shots)-by the time you pull the barrel off-target the bullet has already left the barrel. Yeah, kinda torpedoing my own point, but it's not like that's a first.