Nemesis calcs?

[Manji]

Anyone care to do probable weapon/shield estimates for the Scimitar?

What we know:

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The Scimitar absorbed the Enterprise-E's entire torpedo loadout and multiple maxyield phaser strafing, plus strafing from two Romulan Warbirds, all of which only managed to reduce its shields to 70% strength (a 30% reduction).

A single (disruptor) broadside from the Scimitar destroyed a fully shielded Warbird instantly, blowing it in half.

A torpedo volley disabled another warbird in short order.

It bushwacked the E-E fast, despite being only playing with it (Shizon ordered the shields brought down, not the ship destroyed).

[Master of Ossus]

Well, let's see.

The Enterprise E carries both quantum torpedoes and photon torpedoes, so I'll say that it has 600 photon torpedoes (64 MT each) and 500 quantum torpedoes (128 MT each). That total comes out to be 102400 Megatons. I don't know how long this takes, and I don't know how much phaser energy hit, so I will combine that with the firepower of the Romulan Warbirds because it should be fairly insignificant next to the power of the torpedo hits. We know that Romulan D'Derix class ships are not as powerful as the Enterprise-E, but we also know that they are more powerful than a GCS. To be VERY generous, I will just multiply the firepower that the E-E pumped in with its torpedoes by 3 (E-E and two warbirds). This comes out to 307200 megatons worth of energy. that is the equivalent of thirty percent of the Scimitar's shields, so their total rating is about 1024000 Megatons, as an upper limit. That is significant, but not as strong as an ISD or similar.

Firepower wise, the Scimitar does not seem to be nearly so powerful. Since a D'Derix class ship is more powerful than a GCS, I will rate its shields at 500 MT to make the numbers pretty easy. This is pretty generous. I'll say that its armor can stop a 10MT blast without failing, and it takes an additional 50 MT to blow the ship in half. Please note that this is EXTREMELY generous. This indicates that it would take about 560 MT in a one time hit to defeat a warbird so easily. This is NEITHER an upper, nor a lower limit. It is not a lower limit because I have been so generous with my figures. It is not an upper limit because we don't know that there was not considerable excess energy left over from the shot. Instead, this is a somewhat accurate estimate of the Scimitar's abilities. This is considerable power, and it represents a ship that is VASTLY more powerful than anything seen in ST before. On the other hand, it is still no where near as powerful as an ISD or similar, whose 200+ gigaton shots would shatter the Scimitar.

[Manji]

Damn it! I was going to edit the post, but for some dumb reason the edit option has been removed.

Here's what the original post would have looked like if I'd been able to edit it:

(Note: This is assuming that the "leaked script" is genuine)

Anyone care to do probable weapon/shield estimates for the Scimitar?

What we know about the Scimitar's capabilities:

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• The Scimitar absorbed the Enterprise-E's entire torpedo loadout and multiple maxyield phaser strafing, plus strafing from two Romulan Warbirds, all of which only managed to reduce its shields to 70% strength (a 30% reduction).
• A single (disruptor) broadside from the Scimitar destroyed a fully shielded Warbird instantly, blowing it in half.
• A torpedo volley disabled another warbird in short order.
• It bushwacked the E-E fast, despite being only playing with it (Shizon ordered the shields brought down, not the ship destroyed).
• It survived a ramming (although so did the E-E), however it sustained much less damage in the ramming, and its engines were still functioning (unlike the E-E which had to be towed away).

Additional observations (not likely to be related to weapon/shield power):

• It was over twice the size of the E-E, making it 1.4 km long. Not much longer than a Warbird - just much more powerful. However, a Warbird is mostly empty space for all its length, IIRC from the trailer the Scimitar seems well filled out, so its tonnage could be much greater than a Warbird's.
• It had a main weapon which falls into the planetkiller bracket (where something that wipes out all life on a planet may be defined as a planetkiller), being capable of killing every living thing on a planet in one shot. This could also have been used against a ship. It was not a physically destructive weapon - infrastructure was left intact. It worked by shrouding/filling the target with a technobabble type of radiation that destroyed all organic material within seconds.
• While the actual ship Scimitar is destroyed in the film, there is nothing whatsoever to indicate that the PK weapon is lost tech.
• Its cloak was perfect (the very word that Geordi used to describe it) - totally undetectable, it approached to within a few hundred yards of the Enterpise and stayed there, and the E crew had absolutely no idea it was there.
• It could fire both its disruptors and torpedoes while cloaked
• It could keep its shields raised while cloaked
• The cloak was not singular, but sectioned, and the sections could be raised and lowered independantly, leaving more or less of the ship invisible.

[Master of Ossus]

I don't see how this should affect my calculations. My calcs just involved shield and weapon strength, they did not even attempt an estimate at total power generation. The ability to disable a warbird in a few shots is not spectacular, even for ST. I also forgot that it required a broadside in order to destroy the one warbird. That would mean that its firepower is even smaller than what I had believed when I said it was not as much as an ISD.

It's PK ability is fairly impressive. I would have to learn more about the mechanism behind that weapon in order to get a better estimate. It clearly does not require as much ENERGY as it would take to destroy a planet, but it may be even more effective than the DS. My guess is that its mechanism is very unusual and effective.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

So the estimates will be lower than the group average...I think. But here's my way.

The E-E will be ASSUMED to be carrying 1100 torpedoes, 600 quantorp, 500 photorp (blame DITL for this). Photorps are rated by the new generation of canon calcs to be anywhere from 500kT to 12MT, and common wisdom says a quantorp is perhaps 2-3 times a photorp. Let's call it three.

Thus, the lower limit says:
Photorp = 500kT * 500 = 250MT
Quantorp = 1.5MT * 600 = 900MT
Total = 1.15GT

The upper limit says 27.6GT. Generously double that to apply for phasers - 50GT, times about 3. The shield capacity is 150GT. that really ain't half bad - for ST. They can ALMOST withstand one Acclamator shot, a new one for THEM

Now, offense. I'll just use 200,000TJ effective for the shields (thank Wong) and double to account for the hull. That's 400,000TJ, or close to a 100MT between ALL its disruptors. Finally they get a weapon suite that significantly better than a light turbolaser

The wierd function of your planetkiller makes any real calculation attempt impossible. Defining the word "destroyed" might be a start. Is organic matter merely killed? Disrupted? Vaporized? Converted to neutrinos and thus no longer perceptible a la phasers?

The cloak was "perfect," but all that really means in my book is that the UFP population as a whole wasn't able to find a way to beat it yet. If it can scan outside, then something must be going out. Logically, that means that there is a vulnerability somewhere, just that they hadn't found it yet.

[Manji]

Umm... which part of your ass are you pulling these anti-uber numbers for torpedo power from? Photorps are over 60 MT, and quantorps twice that.

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

Umm... which part of your ass are you pulling these anti-uber numbers for torpedo power from? Photorps are over 60 MT, and quantorps twice that.

Even using TM, torpedoes are at most 48 megatons.

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

In the SW vs ST debate, you don't have to make SW weapons more powerful or ST weapons weaker, they already are!

[Master of Ossus]

Umm... which part of your ass are you pulling these anti-uber numbers for torpedo power from? Photorps are over 60 MT, and quantorps twice that.

Where the hell did you get those figures?

[Master of Ossus]

Even with all of my VERY generous figures (I didn't even bother to divide the yields in half to account for the omnidirectional explosion of torpedoes) the Scimitar still is not "up to snuff" against SW ships, except for its unusual PK ability. I am unable to estimate that.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

Umm... which part of your ass are you pulling these anti-uber numbers for torpedo power from? Photorps are over 60 MT, and quantorps twice that.

Pal, you're outdated. The only pro-SW people now that would allow you to use this number without challenge are three types (generally speaking):

1) They don't realize the TM is not valid.
2) They realize it, but they are veteran combatants that had used the TM for too long to forget it.
3) They want to be generous.

Unfortunately for you, I came up right when they first realized the TM was invalid, so I'm one of the first generation that were brought up not using the TM. And I'm not generous.

Case you are interested, the 500kT came from Pegasus, and 12MT came from Night Terrors (or a high end calc for Pegasus).

[Manji]

Those are extremely low end calcs for Trek that are based on one episode.

The most high-end calcs I've seen were 600MT for a QT. I'm not sure what was used to work that out, but it was probably just as valid as whatever you used.

In that case, the Scimitar would have a shield capacity of 60,000 GT, equivelant to 300 Acclamator shots, which means quite a number of full broadsides from the Acclamator would be needed to destroy it.

Even if we don't use that (and why shouldn't we - you are well known for always using the highest-end wars calcs), and just use 64 MT for photorp and 128 for quantorp, the Scimitar would be able to absorb 12,800 GT, equivelant to 64 Acclamator shots, which still makes for several full broadsides required to bring down the shields.

Sounds to me like you've realised this, and now that Trek is levelling the playing field vs the ICS, you're trying to move the goalposts. Well get outta here. There's a shitload of calcs from other episodes showing much higher yields than what you gave.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

Those are extremely low end calcs for Trek that are based on one episode.

The most high-end calcs I've seen were 600MT for a QT. I'm not sure what was used to work that out, but it was probably just as valid as whatever you used.

In that case, the Scimitar would have a shield capacity of 60,000 GT, equivelant to 300 Acclamator shots, which means quite a number of full broadsides from the Acclamator would be needed to destroy it.

Even if we don't use that (and why shouldn't we - you are well known for always using the highest-end wars calcs), and just use 64 MT for photorp and 128 for quantorp, the Scimitar would be able to absorb 12,800 GT, equivelant to 64 Acclamator shots, which still makes for several full broadsides required to bring down the shields.

Sounds to me like you've realised this, and now that Trek is levelling the playing field vs the ICS, you're trying to move the goalposts. Well get outta here. There's a shitload of calcs from other episodes showing much higher yields than what you gave.

This explains it, you came from SB.

First of all, let me just say that 200GT is already a very low estimate and is not disputable. It gurantees the security of any calc that requires a HTL to be up to 200GT. Kind of like what the TM used to do for photorps in the waves of low-energy photorp incidents.

Tell me this, does that calc say 300MT for photorps? If you don't even have an inkling of how the calc was derived, and it isn't an official source (so it has its own authority), claims of such a calc is an empty threat.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

Let's grant you this generosity. There is a acceptable-source book, somewhere, that DECREES that photorps have a max yield of 300MT and quantorps 600MT, so that I cannot debate the way the calculation was made or anything (either I prove your book dead wrong and claim a direct contradiction, or bite it). There, I've now covered the worst possible aspect, have I?

First, I'll like to hear you explain why it takes so many such powerful torpedoes to take down a shield which has been canonically hard-rated at 100,000-200,000TJ versus EM (Relics and Descent)? But I digress.

I'll grant that the Federation ship has 1100 torpedoes, all quantorps, which should pay for everyone's phasers. Then we have the D'Deridex warbird, supposedly 800 photorps each (that's DITL, and even GK admits he's almost or fully pure guessing here).

That is 1100 0.6GT torpedoes, for 660 gigatons, and 1600 photorps, for 480 gigatons. The two combined make 1140GT. Round it up to a full 1200GT (that REALLY should pay for the phasers).

Now, multiply by three. That's 3600GT. You are facing someone with TWELVE 200GT guns, that's 2400GT. Whee, that's 1.5 full frontal salvoes or 3 full broadsides. For an ISD, don't ask.

Sigh, what happened to the 60,000GT there, boy?

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

Those are extremely low end calcs for Trek that are based on one episode.

The most high-end calcs I've seen were 600MT for a QT. I'm not sure what was used to work that out, but it was probably just as valid as whatever you used.

In that case, the Scimitar would have a shield capacity of 60,000 GT, equivelant to 300 Acclamator shots, which means quite a number of full broadsides from the Acclamator would be needed to destroy it.

Wow, your math really sucks. Are you telling me the Scimitar can take 100 000 quantum torpedoes and took 30 000 (there shields were down 30%) from the Enterprise. Yeah fucking right.

[willburns84]

Question. The Enterprise fired all of these torps in how many seconds, minutes, and hours? The values of firepower that can be delivered by 1100 torps is not going to be delivered in a single overwhelming volley. How long will it take the E-E to unload all 1100 torps - assuming the Romulan vessel doesn't damage or otherwise disable the launchers? And well, I'd love to see the movie actually fire off that many torps. Give us a good battle scene to look forward to.

[Master of Ossus]

I assumed they were all fired in a such a short period of time for the Scimitar to have no chance of recovering its shields because I was interested in creating an upper limit. Once we see, though, we will be able to lower that upper limit. Since my upper limit is nowhere near the firepower of an ISD or similar in SW, the only question is how much LESS powerful is the Scimitar than my INCREDIBLY generous estimates.

[Vympel]

Believe me guys, what's in that script will not be like that in the film- like come on as if you think they're actually gonna give us some eye-candy like the Enterprise firing ALL of its torpedo tubes at once (i.e. the quantum launcher we know of, which is supposedly a turret that can move IIRC- and the two photon tubes below the deflector dish- as well as a rear launcher which I believe fires quantums).

In all liklihood, the E-E will fire a pansy ass burst of four or five and that's it. Think STFC- the battle with the Borg cube we LISTEN to, then SEE for about THIRTY SECONDS. Talk about unsatisfying.

Hope I'm wrong though.

[Master of Ossus]

Believe me guys, what's in that script will not be like that in the film- like come on as if you think they're actually gonna give us some eye-candy like the Enterprise firing ALL of its torpedo tubes at once (i.e. the quantum launcher we know of, which is supposedly a turret that can move IIRC- and the two photon tubes below the deflector dish- as well as a rear launcher which I believe fires quantums).

In all liklihood, the E-E will fire a pansy ass burst of four or five and that's it. Think STFC- the battle with the Borg cube we LISTEN to, then SEE for about THIRTY SECONDS. Talk about unsatisfying.

If that happens then I will have to revise my estimates. Actually, I would have to do that, anyway, if I wanted to make my calculations even the LEAST bit accurate. I was just trying to make sure that Trekkies woul accept them as the highest possible output for the Scimitar, and see that even that was less than the output of an ISD or similar. That way, when I see the movie I can easily lower those estimates, not get flak about it, and get everyone to agree that they are accurate and that the Scimitar would lose horribly to an ISD. Now, it won't work out that way. They'll think that I'm crazy and attack my calcs, but I just want to see HOW they do it.

[Eleas]

"I was just trying to make sure that Trekkies woul accept them as the highest possible output for the Scimitar, and see that even that was less than the output of an ISD or similar."

How many diehard trekkies have you debated? They'll likely argue that your upper limit is a lower limit.

[Cpt_Frank]

But it is obvious that MoO's calcs are a very generous upper limit. How could they possibly - *glances over at DarkStar and User099*
Oh well.[/i]

[Ender]

[*]It had a main weapon which falls into the planetkiller bracket (where something that wipes out all life on a planet may be defined as a planetkiller), being capable of killing every living thing on a planet in one shot. This could also have been used against a ship. It was not a physically destructive weapon - infrastructure was left intact. It worked by shrouding/filling the target with a technobabble type of radiation that destroyed all organic material within seconds.[/list]

Well, I beat the shit out of this argument at SB, but I might as well do it again here.

IF this magic weapon can be used against ships... why didn't they use it against the warbirds? You have zero proof it can, just a jerk-off dream of power. (I love how you said that the scimitar could blast the DS, take it over and use it BTW. There is no way in hell they could do it, a they lack the sheer man power, b there is the tech difference)

Lets go into detail of smashing your argument, shall we?
1) Targeting: Can you even hit a ship with it? There is quite a bit of difference between hitting an imobile planet and a moving starship. And don't give me that "We'll use our other targeting system that has perfect accuracy" crap. There is a huge difference between the targeting on an AA gun and the targeting systems on an SSBN. Plus you have ECM, which a planet lacks.

2) Will it even work: You assume it will just go straight through the ship, killing everyone, even though the storyboards I saw showed it wrapping around the planet, killing life on the surface. It would end up wrapping around the hull, but not penetrating.

3) the Hull: An Arliegh Burke class Destroyer can lock itself down against a CBR attack, leaving it perfectly safe to kill the fuggers who did it. Yet you are assuming that a spaceship, a machine far more advanced that travels in a more hostile enviroment where much more intense radiation accross a broader spectrum is present, can't do the same thing.

4) Who it would kill: If, IF! we make the allowance that it could pierce the hull, do you know who would die? Not the Stormtroopers, they are CBR shielded (preventing your little take over the ship fantasy). Not the engineers and techs, they will be in shielded areas. Not the pilots, their flightsuits are safeguarded against radiation. Same goes for the gunners, whose suits are designed along the same lines. Boatswain, yeoman, MS duties are all run by droids. CnC will be shielded (assuming that since we already do that on carriers, they will do it on a spaceship.) So you know who will die?

The command staff, the ships biggest handicap. Smooth move.

Even if we don't use that (and why shouldn't we - you are well known for always using the highest-end wars calcs), and just use 64 MT for photorp and 128 for quantorp, the Scimitar would be able to absorb 12,800 GT, equivelant to 64 Acclamator shots, which still makes for several full broadsides required to bring down the shields.

Now, lets do some calcs, shall we?
We know from TNG that phasers are atleast weaker then photons, but not how much weaker. I'll be generous and say that since a PT is 64 MT, a type 10 phaser is 63 MT. It doubles each time, so a type 12 is 252 MT. This fits with the fact that type 12 phasers were shown to be stronger then QTs in DS9 SoA. Now a Sovie mount 12 of these big boys, so that theres 3024 MTs. Now according to the Neutral Zone tech database (good site), a sovie carries 250 pts and 250 qts. So that's 16000 MTs for the PTs and 32250 MTs for the QTs giving a Sovie the total weapons output of 51274 MT.

Now then, assuming (and this is a big one) disruptors are a powerful as type 10 phasers, this gives the romulans 378 MT pers ship from them. (I'm assuming tech equivlentcy here, the DDredix were designed at the same time period as Galaxies afterall. Besides, 63 NT is probably too high). Now then, I can't find a listing of how many torps a DDredix carries, so lets say 300 PT for now. (E-D only carries 250, it can't be that far off, if somjeone has hard numbers, tell me) End result is 19200 MT. So that's 19578 MT per ship; 39156 MT total.

39156 + 51274 = 90430 MT total from the three

90430/1 = 30/100 = 301433 MT total shielding for the Scimitar. OR 301.433 GT, not 12800.

Also interesting to note is that this means it gets it's ass handed to it by a single System Patrol Ship who can take this thing out in 4 salvos, tops.

First of all, let me just say that 200GT is already a very low estimate and is not disputable. It gurantees the security of any calc that requires a HTL to be up to 200GT. Kind of like what the TM used to do for photorps in the waves of low-energy photorp incidents.

Tell me this, does that calc say 300MT for photorps? If you don't even have an inkling of how the calc was derived, and it isn't an official source (so it has its own authority), claims of such a calc is an empty threat.

I wold really love to know where people get the 200GT HTL from. It's 200GT for a Quadturbolaser. A Quadturbolaser is 4 LTLs. Using the Endor shot, a HTL is 125x more powerful then a LTL. 50 * 125 = 6250 GT, not 200.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

That's why 200GT is a very low starting point. We could use logic similar to this and come up with higher numbers, but since it is now official, few people short of DarkStar would dispute its validity. They may hate it, call it inconsistent, but they acknowledge they can't do anything about it.

[Master of Ossus]

A quad turbolaser is not just four LTL's put together. Also, the gigaton figure was "per-shot." In order for that measurement to be consistent with the rest of the ICS, that would have to be the yield of one shot from one barrel. Now, remember that the Acclamator was a troop transport, and that it was both smaller and less powerful than an ISD, and that it was not designed for combat, and that an ISD actually dedicates considerable interior space to weapons, which an Acclamator does not. I would not be surprised at all if the ISD's firepower for its HTL's was actually somewhere between 500 and 1000 gigatons. It may even be higher.

Anyway, even making every generous assumption I made, and even making every effort to raise the numbers to make them reasonably safe from Trekkie attack, the Scimitar's shields and firepower are still PATHETIC by SW standards. It would lose to a single ISD. It might not even be able to stop one shot from an ISD's HTL's, but that is speculative. Note that this potential ability to live through one shot from an HTL is a considerable step-up for ST ships.

[Doomriser]

Season 7, Ep# 164: "Pegasus"
RIKER: I recommend we destroy the asteroid. It would take almost all our
photon torpedoes, but it would preclude any possibility of the Pegasus
falling into Romulan hands.

The Asteroid Destruction Calculator
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Sci ... roids.html
Fragmentation energy is the energy required to shatter the asteroid so that
no individual fragment exceeds 10 m in diameter. From "Deflection and
Fragmentation of Near Earth Asteroids" by T.J. Ahrens and A.W. Harris, it is
projected that a 1 kiloton buried explosive will fragment a 100m diameter
asteroid (based on experiments with terrestrial igneous rock), a 1 megaton
explosive will fragment a 1km diameter asteroid, and a 1 gigaton explosive
will fragment a 10km diameter asteroid. Using these figures as a basis, we
can produce an approximation Y = (d/100)³, where d is diameter in metres and Y is yield in kilotons

A 5 km diameter asteroid would require 125 megatons to destroy. Riker states that it would take "almost all" of the E-D's photon torpedoes.

Season 5, Ep# 114: "Conundrum"
WORF: I have completed a survey of our tactical systems. We are equipped
with ten phaser banks, 275 photon torpedoes, and a high capacity shield
grid.
MACDUFF: We're a battleship.
WORF: It appears so.

So the E-D has 275 photorps. "Almost all" would be about 250 (though it
could also mean 274).

125 MT / 250 PT = .5 MT (500 KT)

Scaling data is below on this page:

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Dat ... apons.html

Wong points out that the asteroid was very hollow. So the 500 KT estimate is extremely generous. Not only that, but the asteroid was not
well-consolidated. If we use the figures for cratering granite instead of
igneous rock, we get ~12 KT per photorp, which is more consistent with
visuals.

Let's take the extremely generous 500 KT figures for photon torps and 1.5 MT for quantum torps. I will assume, generously, that the E-E carries 1100 photon torps [550 MT worth] and 1100 quantum torps [1650 MT worth]. This gives a max of 2.2 GT for the E-E's total maximum torpedo firepower.

Let us now assume that the E-E can fire 1 quantum turret [10 QTs per barrage], 2 forward photon launchers [12 torps each per barrage for a total of 24] and 1 rear photon launcher at 12 torps per barrage.

15 MT + 12 MT + 6 MT = 33 MT. The maximum amount of torpedo firepower than can be unleashed by the E-E is 33 MT per barrage. Note that a maximum of 50% (16.5 MT) will actually hit the target.

Given this evidence, it is doubtful that the Scimitar's shields have a burst capacity greater than a few hundred MT, if that, since that is all it would need to outclass the E-E and 2 Warbirds.