Brian Young's new website: Houston, we have liftoff!

[Brian Young]

The gates I know of that were destroyed we're by Drakh-controlled Centauri ships, one by the Vorlon fleet, one by Sheridan with the bonehead maneuver, and B5's gate was damaged by an exploding Centauri ship.
Nothing to suggest they are hard to destroy. In fact, just knocking out the beacon would do the trick.
I don't recall any stray shots being an issue. They would be careful to avoid that, as everyone in B5, minus the Shadows, needs it. BTW, for pro-Vorlon guys out there, this is a decisive advantage for the Shadows. But they weren't actually fighting each other, in any normal kind of war.
Revan, good comments about logistics. It is what makes the military go, or companies for that matter.

[Lord Revan]

btw something you haven't mentioned that could change how a this vs that encounter goes is doctrine and the attitude and character of the nation

for example had both tactical and logistical advantace for North Vietnam but lost due to combination of bad doctrine and the attitude of the nation turning against the war.

[Brian Young]

True, but that is hard to quantify.

[Ted C]

The gates I know of that were destroyed we're by Drakh-controlled Centauri ships, one by the Vorlon fleet, one by Sheridan with the bonehead maneuver, and B5's gate was damaged by an exploding Centauri ship.
Nothing to suggest they are hard to destroy. In fact, just knocking out the beacon would do the trick.
I don't recall any stray shots being an issue. They would be careful to avoid that, as everyone in B5, minus the Shadows, needs it. BTW, for pro-Vorlon guys out there, this is a decisive advantage for the Shadows. But they weren't actually fighting each other, in any normal kind of war.
Revan, good comments about logistics. It is what makes the military go, or companies for that matter.

I kind of wonder if the Drakh were willing to destroy Alliance jump gates because they were able to use the Shadow beacon system. They were a Shadow "servant race", after all.

[Batman]

There was a Shadow beacon system?
It's clearly been too long since I saw B5.

[Stofsk]

I don't ever recall any mention of a 'shadow beacon system'. It's always referred to as the hyperspace beacon network or system. All we know is that the Shadows enter and exit hyperspace in a different way than the vorlons or the rest of the younger races do. They still travel hyperspace as normal, which means they would still need to have a beacon network in order to do so.

That said, the technomages have pretty sensitive abilities with regards to picking up and amplifying the faintest signal from the beacon network, which gives them greater capacity to navigate hyperspace. And I believe it was revealed in the technomage trilogy that their technology is derived from the shadows. (the aborted spin-off, Crusade, was meant to go into this in greater detail before it got the axe) So they're not really that vulnerable to gate destruction than the younger races would be. But to answer Ted C's question, we don't even know if the drahk have the same kind of abilities that the technomages have, but it does stand to reason they might be better placed to deal with hyperspace beacon disruption compared to the rest of the younger races.

[Ahriman238]

IIRC, the Technomages were created to be human weapons, the Shadows' answer to the Vorlon spreading of the telepath gene. But they rebelled and decided they wanted nothing to do with cycles and wars.

[Ted C]

There was a Shadow beacon system? It's clearly been too long since I saw B5.

Brian brings it up in the Federation vs Minbari video. Basically, Lieutenant Kefler figured it out when he got lost in hyperspace. He was way off the beacon, but he kept seeing a Shadow ship going by and concluded that it must be following a different beacon. He followed the Shadow ship, and it led him back to the conventional beacon network.

[Luke Skywalker]

Young's website is great, and I agree with his decision to utilize video instead, which is a welcome change of pace.

But I cannot understand why he quantifies firepower on the basis of effects against unshielded starships in a vacuum. Yes, the starships are not shielded; but they are armored, and unless if its material strength can be quantified, you might as well argue that a mongolian composite bow is more powerful than a 50 caliber sniper rifle on the basis that the former can penetrate chain mail, but the latter has no effect on a tank.

Brian, if you see this, can you please clarify?

[Captain Seafort]

But I cannot understand why he quantifies firepower on the basis of effects against unshielded starships in a vacuum. Yes, the starships are not shielded; but they are armored, and unless if its material strength can be quantified, you might as well argue that a mongolian composite bow is more powerful than a 50 caliber sniper rifle on the basis that the former can penetrate chain mail, but the latter has no effect on a tank.

While I agree with your general point, I think it's weakened by the hyperbolic example. A better example would be saying that a longbow is more powerful than an AK-47 because the latter can be stopped by modern body armour, but the latter could pierce plate armour.

[Batman]

At least we know how armour works by and large. Do tell me how to determine the firepower of an unquantified, unqualified 'well it's clearly visible in a vacuum so it's probably some sort of ray gun' weapon against shields of unspecified resilience.
With armour, yes, you do have to make assumptions about its material strength, but if you're suffciently conservative in your assumptions (like, for example, assuming ordinary steel-I don't remember what Brian's baseline back on Babtech was) you can at least use that to establish a lower limit.

[Lord Revan]

I seem to remember him using steel or iron as the baseline but I'm not 100% sure about that.

[Ted C]

I seem to remember him using steel or iron as the baseline but I'm not 100% sure about that.

We used iron for our material estimates most of the time.

[Luke Skywalker]

At least we know how armour works by and large. Do tell me how to determine the firepower of an unquantified, unqualified 'well it's clearly visible in a vacuum so it's probably some sort of ray gun' weapon against shields of unspecified resilience.
With armour, yes, you do have to make assumptions about its material strength, but if you're suffciently conservative in your assumptions (like, for example, assuming ordinary steel-I don't remember what Brian's baseline back on Babtech was) you can at least use that to establish a lower limit.

Which doesn’t really work, because Brian Young was trying to compare the lower limits of Federation and Minbari vessels to determine who possesses the firepower advantage, assuming that both ships’ armor are of equal material strength and heat capacity. I typically like his work…but this is completely arbitrary.

Obviously, you can derive lower limits for various weaponry, but it’s completely useless to compare only lower limits across universes: see the longbow vs 50 cal analogy.

[Simon_Jester]

This is why the 'Warsie' group that basically founded this site makes such a big deal out of analyzing the effects of weapons on things like asteroids and seawater- we know what they're like, and we can safely assume they're the same across multiple settings.

[Connor MacLeod]

I want to know why comparing 'lower limits' across the board is somehow a bad thing, and what is supposed to be better. I kinda doubt that 'upper limit' analysis is going to be any better, because either seems to demand a far greater degree of precision of sci fi analysis than is actually possible (which leads into the usual 'sci fi analysis can't ever be super precise so we shouldn't bother' crap, which is usually just an excuse to allow people ot make whatever shit up they want.)

[seanrobertson]

Which doesn’t really work, because Brian Young was trying to compare the lower limits of Federation and Minbari vessels to determine who possesses the firepower advantage, assuming that both ships’ armor are of equal material strength and heat capacity. I typically like his work…but this is completely arbitrary.

Luke,

Look at this way.

A Minbari beam cuts through an ~800m long starship, stem to stern, in about a frame of video or so. Let's guess that the beam is four to five meters wide based on this quick image I threw together:



That's almost 16,000 cubic meters. If we assume the ship's 90% empty air and the armor has thermal properties similar to iron, knock it down to 1,600 cubic meters of solid material. 7.8 tons per cubic meter times ~7 MJ to vaporize one kilo = ~90 terajoules. To do that in a single frame of video (1/15th of a sec.?) would require well over 1,200 TW of firepower ...

... unless I made a really poor path error somewhere. I hate to have ready-made excuses, but being up for over 36 hours makes Sean an even duller boy than usual

Now, as Brian's noted in some of his videos, I have mentioned Federation hulls, specifically their resistance to heat, in some of our discussions. Circa TNG, there are occasions in which hull materials of that era ARE incredibily resilient ... but then, that's almost 100 years after Kirk's heydey.

And lest we get too far off-topic, let's remember observed effects: In "The Wrath of Khan," the Reliant burns a swath along the Enterprise with phasers and, later, carves a similar path somewhat higher on the hull, even taking out one of the E's torpedo launchers.

As Brian pointed out, these phaser cuts weren't much more than, if even, 2m high based on the docking ports. And the shots didn't cut so deep that both torpedo rooms, immediately adjacent to one another, were compromised.

I can see how that might indicate low-terawatt range phasers, even with the caveat that Federation hull materials are made of "sterner stuff."

Beyond that ... what are we to believe? That the Enterprise and Reliant are made of hull materials some hundred or so times more resilient than what the Earth Alliance fielded in its warships?

That is a very, very bold claim. Where's the proof of that?

I'm all for assuming Kirk's Starfleet fields tougher ships pound-for-pound. But with all respect, folks start to miss Brian's point altogether when they focus solely on unit-per-unit superiority in this context. Things like armor quality, shields and things are important, but in light of what I said in this post, take a second look at his conclusions.

[Batman]

Which doesn’t really work, because Brian Young was trying to compare the lower limits of Federation and Minbari vessels to determine who possesses the firepower advantage, assuming that both ships’ armor are of equal material strength and heat capacity. I typically like his work…but this is completely arbitrary.

Feel free to present more solid information on Fed/Minbari hull/armour material properties.

Obviously, you can derive lower limits for various weaponry, but it’s completely useless to compare only lower limits across universes: see the longbow vs 50 cal analogy.

Which is incredibly stupid, because it relies on blithely ignoring material strength, which Brian didn't do, he merely assumed equality (which in the absence of evidence to the contrary, which you are welcome to present any time you like, seems like a reasonable approach).