Using known M/AM energy output...

[Manji]

Would a Federation ship ever be able to match pound-for-pound power generation of a SW ship, whatever size of warp core they used?

It occurred to me that the power core usually is a large part of a SW ship's internal volume, but a small part of a ST ship's internal volume.

Let's say the E-E had a warp core oriented laterally and just about filling the entire engineering hull...

What kind of power generation could they expect...?

[SPOOFE]

:: The typical counter to simply adding up the maximum possible energy from a M/AM reaction is to claim that the M/AM isn't what provides the power (not all of it, anyway), but rather the dilithium crystals. It's rubbish, of course, as there's only been off-the-cuff mentions of "using dilithium" in some manner.

But, to answer your question, there ain't no way in hell any Trek ship can ever hope to match an ISD - or any largish SW ship, I'm betting - in terms of power generation. Maybe they can match a Corellian Corvette. Maybe.

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

to do a BDZ, about 44,000 tons of antimatter would have to be annihlated. This would require it to be stored at a density higher than the density of a SF ship's tanks.

[seanrobertson]

:: The typical counter to simply adding up the maximum possible energy from a M/AM reaction is to claim that the M/AM isn't what provides the power (not all of it, anyway), but rather the dilithium crystals. It's rubbish, of course, as there's only been off-the-cuff mentions of "using dilithium" in some manner.

But, to answer your question, there ain't no way in hell any Trek ship can ever hope to match an ISD - or any largish SW ship, I'm betting - in terms of power generation. Maybe they can match a Corellian Corvette. Maybe.

Any Trek ship? I dunno about that. V'Ger probably qualified, though
it did have a slight size advantage LOL.

Seriously, I bet other ships could potentially match an ISD's reactor
output. The Voth city ship was probably quite powerful. If transporting
objects requires power proportionate to mass (at least, at the
same distance and similarly complex structures)--and given that in the TNG ep. where Riker falls in love with that hermaphrodite thing, or whatever it was, we learn that a few megawatts is roughly the requirement of transporting around 150 kg of humanoid matter--the Voth's transporters
alone would be capable of 3,500 petawatts minimum.

Further assuming that the Voth's geniune weapon systems are proportioned
similar to the Fed's transporters/weapons ratio (3,000 to one minimum, given the 60 GW variance mentioned in "A Matter of Time"), they'd be capable of firing weapons in the 2 gigaton range or so. That's
a far cry from an ISD, and I grant that such is VERY assumption-laden,
but that ship is heads and shoulders above most anything we've
seen in Star Trek. It may well be capable of at least coming close
to ISD-levels of power. Too bad for the Voth that they seem to only
have one huge ship...Executor could take it anyway. So could
your standard ISD, most likely. Who knows <shrugs>.

I'm also frankly unconvinced that Species 1234ABCD doesn't have
ships capable of generating ISD-levels of power. Even if we grant
that their planet-killing involves some sort of super-physical
steps to go from cracking the crust to shattering the planet,
the fact remains that 9 ships *could* crack the crust in two seconds
of firing. We saw the entire surface of the planet heat up to the point
it was red hot.

Why do I insist on saying 9 ships, rather than focusing mostly on
the central ship in the formation? Simple. Those ships wouldn't
form up like that unless each ship had significant energy to contribute
to the operation; and at that scale, a few terawatts or even a few
million wouldn't make much of a difference. From conservative estimates of Base Delta Zeros' ability to melt planetary surfaces, we know roughly how much energy this requires. It's very close to what an ISD is capable of generating, since its total firepower is at least a *fraction* of its reactor output.

Thus, a Species 8472 ship should be capable of generating something
similar to an ISD, though the ISD maintains its output for quite
some time and a bioship has only been seen approaching that magnitude
for seconds at a time (though, even divided by 9 ships, the energy requirement would be higher/ship than Curtis and Michael's lower-limit figures for a BDZ). There's a big difference there, obviously.

Other than those two, and maybe the people who built the Dyson Sphere,
though, I don't know of any Trek powers capable of generating upwards
of 1E25W. Even then it remains in the realm of "maybe this, perhaps
that"!

That's one of the things I like about Star Wars. With the exception
of a couple of passages in the ENTIRE EU, most everything is so clear-cut,
so vague as to be easily consistent.

Sean
Analyst http://www.babtech-onthe.net/

[Martin Blank]

:: The typical counter to simply adding up the maximum possible energy from a M/AM reaction is to claim that the M/AM isn't what provides the power (not all of it, anyway), but rather the dilithium crystals. It's rubbish, of course, as there's only been off-the-cuff mentions of "using dilithium" in some manner.

Any Trekkie who claims that dilithium crystals are a power source is not deserving of the title.

Dilithium serves as either a focussing matrix or a catalyst for the M/AM reaction (not sure which, and my books are at home). Matter is fed down the warp core, and AM is fed up. They meet at and the reaction is carried out in the dilithium crystals, and the resulting energy stream is fed off into the rest of the ship's systems.

Yes, it's a Trek explanation. No, I don't necessarily endorse it nor do I apologize for it. It's just what's there in the official books.