Using Transporters against Star Destroyers

[SpaceMarine93]

Just how powerful is an anti-matter warhead in Star Trek anyhow?

for what?

photontorps are in the KT-low MT range depending on various factors (the tech manual gives 64 MT but that's an "optimal" yield IIRC)

but again anti-matter gives us the type of explosive not the yield (and since there's no minium yield of anti-matter bombs)

What's the maximum yield mentioned in Star Trek canon?

[Ted C]

Just how powerful is an anti-matter warhead in Star Trek anyhow?

for what?

photontorps are in the KT-low MT range depending on various factors (the tech manual gives 64 MT but that's an "optimal" yield IIRC)

but again anti-matter gives us the type of explosive not the yield (and since there's no minium yield of anti-matter bombs)

What's the maximum yield mentioned in Star Trek canon?

Nothing concrete. They started describing explosions in "isotons", which doesn't tell us much.

[Napoleon the Clown]

Well, technically there is a minimum yield. It's the sum of the rest energy of a positron and an electron. But I imagine that's fairly little energy, so it'd be effectively too small to do much of anything.

[Stofsk]

One further factor that complicates this is that yield can be variably adjusted. 'Level 6' photorps were fired against cloaked romulan Warbirds in 'Redemption part 2' and all it did was disrupt the cloak and reveal the Warbirds; none of them were destroyed or seem to have suffered any damage.

Then there was 'Cost of Living' which had the Enterprise destroy a planet threatening asteroid with photorps and the navigational deflector. (Sean Robertson analysed this scene, I can't remember where though - somewhere on this site)

[Irbis]

As for how this could be used tactically? Well they can transport whilst at warp so a variant of the warp strafe appears! (muahahaa - actually it would be more like the Picard Manoeuvre, a ship would have to slow to subwarp speeds, transport, and in the middle of the transport process accelerate back to warp speed; to transport an away team would be risky, because precise targeting information is required, but to transport a bomb?)

Question here - assuming the range of transporter is 40.000 km, this means you can transport on 80.000 km distance during 'strafe'. Let's assume ship moves at 1 C, lowest possible warp speed, which gives us less than 1/3 of second to transport. Can they even do it so fast? In ST episodes, it always looked like transport takes 5-15 seconds...

[EnterpriseSovereign]

As for how this could be used tactically? Well they can transport whilst at warp so a variant of the warp strafe appears! (muahahaa - actually it would be more like the Picard Manoeuvre, a ship would have to slow to subwarp speeds, transport, and in the middle of the transport process accelerate back to warp speed; to transport an away team would be risky, because precise targeting information is required, but to transport a bomb?)

Question here - assuming the range of transporter is 40.000 km, this means you can transport on 80.000 km distance during 'strafe'. Let's assume ship moves at 1 C, lowest possible warp speed, which gives us less than 1/3 of second to transport. Can they even do it so fast? In ST episodes, it always looked like transport takes 5-15 seconds...

Dark Frontier
About 4-5 for a photon torpedo, which was beamed in 15 seconds after they disabled the shields on the Borg Probe. And the small matter of the ships being less than a ship-length apart at their closest

[Jedi Commisar]

With a bomb detonation the key question would where and how big, if you detonated bomb with yield of about an equilevant of modern hand grenate in the storage closet containing the captain's holos of twi'lek porn the damage would fairly minimal but a large device in a critical location might take out the whole ship.

Except the guy's ego

[Lord Revan]

With a bomb detonation the key question would where and how big, if you detonated bomb with yield of about an equilevant of modern hand grenate in the storage closet containing the captain's holos of twi'lek porn the damage would fairly minimal but a large device in a critical location might take out the whole ship.

Except the guy's ego

and the commander is gonna a tad cranky due to blue balls but that's hardly anything mission critical, which was my point.

[Korgeta]

I must confess this is one of the issues that's left me wondering, looking at the movies I never saw anything outstanding about the SW shields, however it is fair to assume they have more shielding and may have more jaming defences to make up for their huge size, so even though SW has to date not have transporters to the extent of the federation (I think the movies only shown a sample qui-gon requested beamed before him) has I don't think the federation could pull it off effectively.

One is that trick is only going to work so many times before the enemy catch on, and the other being that despite their resources cloaking is still a limited feature for the federation. You only need to look at the Dominion war to see the federation were calling in warships that were dated and not the cutting edge designs of soverign class or heavy escort (those elite red idoits would mess it up anyway) against an enemy who could build theirs (and more modern) faster. The federation needed the klingons for cover as they make upgrades and not just support.

It sounds like a good idea but it wouldn't be a long term tactic, the empire would catch on.

[Batman]

When in Valen's name has movie Qui-Gon (or anybody else) ever asked for anything to be beamed anywhere at any point?
That SW doesn't have transporter technology, at least to the everyday 'people beam to and from work' extent the TNG Feds have was never under contention.
And what's outstanding about Wars shields at least in this context is that they, even in the movies, have resisted damage far in excess of what AQ in general and Starfleet ships in particular have.

[Crazedwraith]

I think Korgeta's referring to the scene where Qui-Gon sends Obi-Wan, Anakin's blood sample to test, apparently through a comlimk. The scene was ambigious to what the hell was going on, I seem to recall.

[biostem]

It seems that many responders take the not-so-stellar effectiveness of SW shields *against SW weapons* as a measure of their effectiveness vs ST weapons. Given the figures in the ICS, and the fact that Anakin was able to safely crash land something like the front 3rd of a capship, (that had taken significant battle damage), indicate the robustness of SW tech.

I'd also like to point out that the Millennium Falcon, while a smuggler's ship, *was* able to mask lifeform readings from the Deathstar's scanners, (thus why they had to send in a scanning crew to check it in-person), means that scrambler technology is available and utilized. This is further backed up by the fact that the second Deathstar was scrambling sensors in the area to such a degree that Lando couldn't tell if the theater shield was up OR down.

Unless the feds were able to exploit known blindspots, like Han did in TESB, it is highly unlikely that a fed ship would even be able to approach a SW ship w/o them knowing...

[Crazedwraith]

That's rather non sequitor. 'we know SW sensors can be jammed therefore they will be able to detect ST ships'?

[Batman]

While it does rather look like he's saying that I think that's a side effect of biostem lumping several points into one post and not him arguing a, therefore b.

[biostem]

While it does rather look like he's saying that I think that's a side effect of biostem lumping several points into one post and not him arguing a, therefore b.

Yes, that's it.

My points were:

A) SW shields don't seem impressive because we only see them vs SW weapons. Since ST weapons are much less powerful than SW ones, these shields would be *that much more* effective. The same goes for SW armor.

B) The safe crash landing of the Invisible Hand in RotS, given just how damaged it was, vs how injured passengers get when a ST shuttle goes down, (and those are under much better vehicle conditions), demonstrates just how robust SW tech is. The internal damage on the Ent-D at the end of Generations, given the saucer section being, well, whole, is another comparison.

C) The fact that a smuggling vessel can mask lifesigns, even at point-blank range of the DS1, means that jamming/interference tech in SW is extremely powerful and frequently used. The susceptibility of ST transporters to such jamming and interference would make them unlikely to be usable vs SW ships.

D) The instance we saw of Han exploiting a blind spot on an Imperial vessel, (or other such weakpoints in SW tech), means that ST ships/crew are unlikely to be able to pull off the same thing, since ST personnel are not privy to the same knowledge and experience...

[Batman]

C) The fact that a smuggling vessel can mask lifesigns, even at point-blank range of the DS1, means that jamming/interference tech in SW is extremely powerful and frequently used. The susceptibility of ST transporters to such jamming and interference would make them unlikely to be usable vs SW ships.

Wait one. Since when is a smuggler stealthing his smuggling compartment evidence for jamming technology, leave alone it being frequently used? We're talking completely passive shielding here. Heck jamming would be completely counterproductive in that situation, because it sort of gives away there definitely is something somebody doesn't want you to see too clearly.
Remember how Lando immediately knew there was sensor jamming going on at Endor, while on the Death Star, there was merely apparently nobody aboard (including the droids), which made Vader suspicious.

[biostem]

C) The fact that a smuggling vessel can mask lifesigns, even at point-blank range of the DS1, means that jamming/interference tech in SW is extremely powerful and frequently used. The susceptibility of ST transporters to such jamming and interference would make them unlikely to be usable vs SW ships.

Wait one. Since when is a smuggler stealthing his smuggling compartment evidence for jamming technology, leave alone it being frequently used? We're talking completely passive shielding here. Heck jamming would be completely counterproductive in that situation, because it sort of gives away there definitely is something somebody doesn't want you to see too clearly.
Remember how Lando immediately knew there was sensor jamming going on at Endor, while on the Death Star, there was merely apparently nobody aboard (including the droids), which made Vader suspicious.

Ok... so some relatively thin material, (remember the compartments they hid in were under the existing floorboards), was able to completely conceal them from point-blank scans from, (at that time), the most advanced battle station in the galaxy. Still supports my stance that jamming/interference tech in SW is pretty impressive and in use.

[Batman]

No it's not. It's evidence for there being completely passive shielding available that could block standard imperial technology scanners, nothing more (unless you have evidence they were using anything other than off-the-shelf gear?) Doesn't make it jamming, doesn't make it widespread. Yes, jamming is pretty common in the Wars universe. This is not an example of it.

[the atom]

A) SW shields don't seem impressive because we only see them vs SW weapons. Since ST weapons are much less powerful than SW ones, these shields would be *that much more* effective. The same goes for SW armor.

That's sort of an overgeneralization. While it's true SW has more powerful weapons, it'd be inaccurate to say that SW weapons are all more powerful by default. This applies to armouring as well, because as I've pointed out in the past we've never actually seen ship armour actually stand up to heavy anti-capship weapons in the movies to any degree at all.

B) The safe crash landing of the Invisible Hand in RotS, given just how damaged it was, vs how injured passengers get when a ST shuttle goes down, (and those are under much better vehicle conditions), demonstrates just how robust SW tech is. The internal damage on the Ent-D at the end of Generations, given the saucer section being, well, whole, is another comparison.

How does comparing a kilometer-long warship to a tiny shuttle make any sense at all?

C) The fact that a smuggling vessel can mask lifesigns, even at point-blank range of the DS1, means that jamming/interference tech in SW is extremely powerful and frequently used. The susceptibility of ST transporters to such jamming and interference would make them unlikely to be usable vs SW ships.

We're talking about entirely different types of sensors that are trying to scan for entirely different things. It's not so much as the comparison is bad as much as there's no comparison period.

[Batman]

A) SW shields don't seem impressive because we only see them vs SW weapons. Since ST weapons are much less powerful than SW ones, these shields would be *that much more* effective. The same goes for SW armor.

That's sort of an overgeneralization. While it's true SW has more powerful weapons, it'd be inaccurate to say that SW weapons are all more powerful by default.

It would however be completely accurate that most of not all Wars weapons of the same class are.Wars hand weapons are, wars fighter weapons are, Wars capital ship weapons are.

This applies to armouring as well, because as I've pointed out in the past we've never actually seen ship armour actually stand up to heavy anti-capship weapons in the movies to any degree at all.

Of course we didn't, as those ships were shielded. We do, however, see such in the EU (well read technically).

[the atom]

It would however be completely accurate that most of not all Wars weapons of the same class are.Wars hand weapons are, wars fighter weapons are, Wars capital ship weapons are.

I'd argue that SW fighter weapons and the lighter capship weapons are generally a bit weaker then most standard Trek equivalents. It's the bigger stuff like MTLs and HTLs that sort of seal the deal.

Of course we didn't, as those ships were shielded. We do, however, see such in the EU (well read technically).

Actually as we can see in the beginning of ROTS and the end of ROTJ, the few unshielded interactions between armour and heavy-anti capship weapons in the movies tend to result in the unfortunate capital ship being lit up like the 4th of July. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZDa09gR ... age#t=361s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8Daw4Ng ... age#t=759s

[StarSword]

I think Korgeta's referring to the scene where Qui-Gon sends Obi-Wan, Anakin's blood sample to test, apparently through a comlimk. The scene was ambigious to what the hell was going on, I seem to recall.

I think the NEGWT clarified that Qui-gon's comlink was transmitting a scan of the sample, not the sample itself. AFAIK the only example of an actual teleporter in Star Wars is a one-off device a magician used in his act.

[Jedipilot24]

I think Korgeta's referring to the scene where Qui-Gon sends Obi-Wan, Anakin's blood sample to test, apparently through a comlimk. The scene was ambigious to what the hell was going on, I seem to recall.

I think the NEGWT clarified that Qui-gon's comlink was transmitting a scan of the sample, not the sample itself. AFAIK the only example of an actual teleporter in Star Wars is a one-off device a magician used in his act.

The magician was a her (one of Han's old girlfriends) but it wouldn't require a teleporter to explain what she did; real world magicians pull off the same kinds of tricks. The only time real teleportation has appeared in Star Wars has been when Force-users are involved, most notably the Aing-Tii but there are also examples of Jedi, Sith, and Nightsisters all displaying some kind of teleportation ability. The Rakata had some kind technology, probably powered by the Force like all their other technology, that could teleport but it's still extremely rare.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Teleport
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Teleporter

[Batman]

Since when was Magwit female or one of Han's old girlfriends?

[Jedipilot24]

Since when was Magwit female or one of Han's old girlfriends?

I was thinking of Xaverri.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Xaverri

Just checked out Magwit on the Wook; wow, that has to be one of the most obscure SW characters ever.