The Die is Cast

[SCVN 2812]

This is an episode of DS9 where 20 ships bomb a planet and predict that within 1 hour they will have destroyed the planet's crust.

That would make this fleet of ships (14-15 Cardassian Keldon-class, and 5-6 Romulan D'deridex-class warbirds) equal to 1 Imperial stardestroyer.

Just thought I'd toss that out there.

[Darth Garden Gnome]

SCVN, its been done to death! LET IT GO MAN!

[Typhonis 1]

And after that FIRST bombardment you hardly see any surface damage from orbit.

[SCVN 2812]

Didn't know it had been brought up before, not that it changes anything any great deal, might mean a few more losses on the Imp side.

As for not appearing to do any damage, in dialogue they said that 30% of the crust was destroyed in the opening volley and there were some pretty continent scale explosions.

[Darth Garden Gnome]

As for not appearing to do any damage, in dialogue they said that 30% of the crust was destroyed in the opening volley and there were some pretty continent scale explosions.

And are we to take dialouge over apperance? If I was to say an X-Wing could blow up the DS in one from its lasers onto the surface would you believe me? Because on screen evidence says otherwise.

Its the same here. So and so says they melted off 30% of the crust, but we see that the planets surface is virtually unchanged. Tellin ya somethin? It speaks volumes to me.

[SPOOFE]

And after that FIRST bombardment you hardly see any surface damage from orbit.

Indeed. There're pretty pyrotechnic displays, but we don't know how they were caused. They didn't look like normal shockwaves, that's for sure.

[Typhonis 1]

*LMAO*More Imp losssess ???against ships whos shields are designed to take prolonged ,30minutes to over an hours duration, hits from high gigaton and low teraton class weapons???Also what do they consider destroying the crust?? just blasting it to bedrock?? or maybe liquifing portions of it and an hour???please they it would take longer than that given they have megaton range weapons .

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

If you really want to learn more about what would qualify as one of the ten best hopes for Trekkies, I suggest the Google archives of ASVS. Back when I started (late December 2000,) we had TDiC debates every few months, and BDZ debates almost as often.

You will notice we don't have TDiC debates nor even real BDZ debates anymore. Yet SW firepower went up and ST if anything went down. Guess what happened

[nightmare]

Well.. there's no problem with the logic presented in SCVN 2812's post. It only misses one point. SD's perform BDZ operations by sheer force. Cardassian and Romulan warships uses phasers to my knowledge, a weapon highly effective against rock, but much less so against shields or dense materials. The conclusion is that the TDIC fleet is equivalent to an ISD at shooting rock, but there is no evidence for any other parity.

[SirNitram]

Besides, the 30% damage to the crust dialogue is incorrect.

1st, it would require their weapons to be hundreds of times more powerful than they expected... Odd, huh?

2nd, it is stated bluntly that something on the surface is sending up false sensor readings.

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

Deefending their position, a small minority of Trekkies said that they didn't show the mantle because of "special effects costs".

[Master of Ossus]

They are destroying the crust, they are not terminating all life on the planet, as an ISD can in a matter of hours. They are also not stopping communications and survivors. Their firepower is insignificant next to the power of an ISD.

[Howedar]

In all fairness, destroying the crust would have all of these effects.

[Master of Ossus]

In all fairness, destroying the crust would have all of these effects.

Breaking up the crust would not have wiped out bacterial life, nor would it have made the planet more difficult to terraform than another planet. That is part of what a BDZ does. Also, there would have been escapees and communications from the planet. An ISD stops those when it BDZ's an area. The ST fleet did not.

[Howedar]

Destroying the crust is just as much, if not more than, a BDZ (which IIRC would melt it down to a specified depth).

This is not to say that I think that the assembled fleet did, or could ever, have destroyed the crust.

[Master of Ossus]

Wrong. Destroying the crust is very little. I interpret that to mean that they were breaking it up into nicely sized chunks. That is nothing compared to a BDZ. In order to eliminate life on Earth, one would need to melt the entire crust uniformly down to a depth of more than a half mile. One would also need to do that at the bottom of the ocean. That is FAR more than just destroying the crust, which is what the fleet in Die is Cast was attempting to do. They were clearly not out to wipe out all life, and BTW, they were not stopping escapees and communications simultaneously, a necessary step in a BDZ.

[Dark Primus]

Well.. there's no problem with the logic presented in SCVN 2812's post. It only misses one point. SD's perform BDZ operations by sheer force. Cardassian and Romulan warships uses phasers to my knowledge, a weapon highly effective against rock, but much less so against shields or dense materials. The conclusion is that the TDIC fleet is equivalent to an ISD at shooting rock, but there is no evidence for any other parity.

The Cardassians are using phasers, Romulans are using disruptors beams, pulses and plasma torpedoes.

[Master of Ossus]

The Cardassians are using phasers, Romulans are using disruptors beams, pulses and plasma torpedoes.

And who says that the Romulans are pulling their weight in the operation? Maybe the Cardassian ships are assigned vastly more area per ship than the Romulans.

And, BTW, the operation in TDIC is not even close to a BDZ. A BDZ is VASTLY more impressive. It involves destroying far more rock and melting far more rock. It is independent of the type of target, and is largely independent of support ships. It also involves preventing witnesses from escaping, and messages from being sent. And it eliminates all life on a planet--something that this action doesn't even come close to. AND a BDZ takes less time.

And BTW, if it takes twenty ST ships to equal an ISD, then the Federation would lose miserably, anyway. The Empire has more ships, and its ships (by this incredibly flawed analysis) are twenty times as powerful per ship as the Federation's.

[Howedar]

The most literal interpretation of "destroy" would suggest at least to me that the crust was removed from existance through some phaser-ish effects, probably using a phrase with "subspace" in it.

Again, I do not feel that any number of any Star Trek ships (within reason of course) could accomplish such a task.

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

TIDC was not normal "shoot planet. Watch planet burn" those shockwaves were way too fast.

[Master of Ossus]

The most literal interpretation of "destroy" would suggest at least to me that the crust was removed from existance through some phaser-ish effects, probably using a phrase with "subspace" in it.

Again, I do not feel that any number of any Star Trek ships (within reason of course) could accomplish such a task.

In every-day speech, you would be correct. In military terms, the term "destroy" means to damage something beyond any utility, and beyond the point where a reasonable amount of repair could restore the object to functionality. To do this to a planetary crust, I think, means to break it up so that only very small buildings can remain (which would also do a whole bunch of other damage to the planet, BTW). I do not think that this requires anywhere near the firepower of a BDZ. It would mean that the top of the planet is lightly scarified, to the point where it takes a highly concerted effort to remove the debris and begin building, again. That is where I got my interpretation of the word "destroy." You are quite correct, though, Howedar, we have NO idea what the term actually meant, but I do not think that it could have meant "melted" or "vaporized." At the most, it would involve drilling down to the liquidy parts of the planet and creating small volcanoes.

[Kamakazie Sith]

The Cardassians are using phasers, Romulans are using disruptors beams, pulses and plasma torpedoes.

And who says that the Romulans are pulling their weight in the operation? Maybe the Cardassian ships are assigned vastly more area per ship than the Romulans.

And, BTW, the operation in TDIC is not even close to a BDZ. A BDZ is VASTLY more impressive. It involves destroying far more rock and melting far more rock. It is independent of the type of target, and is largely independent of support ships. It also involves preventing witnesses from escaping, and messages from being sent. And it eliminates all life on a planet--something that this action doesn't even come close to. AND a BDZ takes less time.

And BTW, if it takes twenty ST ships to equal an ISD, then the Federation would lose miserably, anyway. The Empire has more ships, and its ships (by this incredibly flawed analysis) are twenty times as powerful per ship as the Federation's.

You would be correct if the plan didn't call for the destruction of the mantle....

1 hour crust
5 hours mantle

[Master of Ossus]

The destruction of the mantle is still not particularly impressive. It takes more energy to melt the surface kilometer of a globe than to shatter rock and break the mantle of a planet apart. In fact, it takes far more energy. And BTW, life would survive on a planet whose mantle had been turned up, too. In fact, life would survive easily. This is not a BDZ. In fact, it's not even really a poor man's BDZ, because it does not even eliminate escapees and communications, which is a critical phase in a BDZ. Also, a BDZ is material independent.

[Darth Garden Gnome]

TDiC, "destroys" a planets crust. Lets just assume right now that they can do this (which I do not believe they could) it is of course not anything like a BDZ. To destroy the crust would simply be to break it up, scatter it about. Its still there, its just been displaced. Not so with the mighty BDZ it melts the crust of the planet, ie turns to slag. Would the TDiC demonstation have wiped all all life? Not by a long, long, long shot. We could even assume sentient lifeforms (humans ect.) could survive such a bombardment, their world would have been destroyed but they would live on. A BDZ has no survivors, everbody goes down with the ship, they all melt in the planets mantle. So much damage is done to a planet in a BDZ that fourty years after a planet has been BDZed its easier to teraform a new one than try to inhabit the old done.

But hey, even if they could destroy 30% of a planets crust, whats it to the Imps? A few more bloody noses, perhaps?

[Crossover_Maniac]

TIDC was not normal "shoot planet. Watch planet burn" those shockwaves were way too fast.

Yeah, I noticed too. They had to be spreading out at a rate of at least 100 miles per second. Something like that would happen if you concentrated your firepower on a small volume of land, causing sudden thermo-expansion. Something similar happens to real life lasers. Most of the damage done by the more powerful SDI lasers is caused by shockwaves in the target, not the heat from the laser beam itself.