StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Watched a couple of eps recently that perked my curiosity.

First was 'Broken Link' DS9.

In it, Garak was attempting to gain control of the Defiant's weapon systems and fire at the Founder's new planet. But he was detected and stopped before he could, and when Worf confronted him, Garak said:

'We have enough firepower on this ship to reduce that planet to a smoking cinder!'

Does this mean the Defiant could do what an ISD does? I cant think of any visual evidence which may support this.

Worf did not correct him, infact he more or less confirmed it by saying 'And what of Odo? And Doctor Bashir and the Captain?' or something like that. Garak later said:

'Don't tell me you'd be opposed to a little genocide in the name of self defence?'

What do you think of that?
What would the tonnage per torpedo need to be to accomplish this?
Garak also tried to access the phasers to try out his plan, so I guess they'd be needed to complete his plot.

Also in 'Bliss' VOY.

While inside a 2000 KM wide starship eating-telepathic-wormhole impersonating alien, the Monster expert was perusing Voyager's weapon stocks while in Sickbay.

He said:

'These Class 9 torpedoes in your weapons manifest, if we can detonate on of these charges in his (the monster's) neural plexus (or something) we might be able to destroy the beast'

Now, earlier in the series Janeway ordered an attack on a Moon-busting Cardassian Missile. She said Voyager had Type 6 Photons.

Making the reasonable assumption that 'Class' and 'Type' mean the same in regard to torpedoes, does this mean that Voyager normally uses Type 6 torps in normal combat, but does have some Mega Destruction weapons at their disposal?

I dont know the destructive figures required to blow up an organic thing 2,000 Km wide, but I guess it would be in the Gigaton? range.

Thoughts?

TurboPhaser wrote:Garak said:

'We have enough firepower on this ship to reduce that planet to a smoking cinder!'

Does this mean the Defiant could do what an ISD does?

Hyperbole, most likely. Presumably the ship has enough firepower to vaporize the lake of organic matter that constitutes the Great Link, but no Federation ship has ever demonstrated anything like the power to scour a planet's surface in a short time.

TurboPhaser wrote:While inside a 2000 KM wide starship eating-telepathic-wormhole impersonating alien, ...

'These Class 9 torpedoes in your weapons manifest, if we can detonate on of these charges in his (the monster's) neural plexus (or something) we might be able to destroy the beast'

I dont know the destructive figures required to blow up an organic thing 2,000 Km wide, but I guess it would be in the Gigaton? range.

I see no reason to think that these torpedoes need to literally destroy the creature's body. The "expert" is talking about detonating the torpedoes in a vital organ to kill the creature; that's all.

The Breen attacked earth during the Dominion war, and I bet they used more than one ship, but the planet was no "smoking cinder" after the attack. The Federation could not fight back, because they had no defense against the EMP(?) weapon at that time.

And the bombardment of the home-world of the founders by the
Romulan/Cardassian fleet was not very impressive either.

I don't think there is any on-screen evidence that a single Federation(or a ship with the same tech level) is capable to destroy the entire surface of a planet.

The Voyager "Dreadnaught" was stated onscreen to be carrying one thousand kilograms of antimatter, and it was considered to be a superweapon. This obviously places some limits on the firepower of a conventional ship.

The lack of noticable recoil puts a pretty fair upper limit on the power of phasers (assuming only 1 cm, the thing at most is 3.24 MT)

And yield of torpedos is limited by that the shields can handle (indications are single digit MT or less)

Luzifer's right hand wrote:The Breen attacked earth during the Dominion war, and I bet they used more than one ship, but the planet was no "smoking cinder" after the attack. The Federation could not fight back, because they had no defense against the EMP(?) weapon at that time.

The Breen didn't use that weapon during their attack on Earth and the Feds did fight back because the Breen lost the fleet they used to attack with.

TheDarkling wrote:

Luzifer's right hand wrote:The Breen attacked earth during the Dominion war, and I bet they used more than one ship, but the planet was no "smoking cinder" after the attack. The Federation could not fight back, because they had no defense against the EMP(?) weapon at that time.

The Breen didn't use that weapon during their attack on Earth and the Feds did fight back because the Breen lost the fleet they used to attack with.

They did not use that weapon?(something is terrible wrong with the person who wrote this ep.)
I assumed the Klingon's destroyed the attack fleet, because they had the only immune ships.

But the statement about their firepower remains true, because they hit san francisco during the attacked and dealt only minor damage(the bridge was damaged).

Darth Wong wrote:The Voyager "Dreadnaught" was stated onscreen to be carrying one thousand kilograms of antimatter, and it was considered to be a superweapon. This obviously places some limits on the firepower of a conventional ship.

That's a very good point. I'd never thought of that, but it does place a very hard upper limit on firepower, regardless of what some fanatical Trekkies would propose.

Howedar wrote:

Darth Wong wrote:The Voyager "Dreadnaught" was stated onscreen to be carrying one thousand kilograms of antimatter, and it was considered to be a superweapon. This obviously places some limits on the firepower of a conventional ship.

That's a very good point. I'd never thought of that, but it does place a very hard upper limit on firepower, regardless of what some fanatical Trekkies would propose.

The dreadnought was also considered powerful enough to take out a planet.

Matt Huang wrote:

Howedar wrote:

Darth Wong wrote:The Voyager "Dreadnaught" was stated onscreen to be carrying one thousand kilograms of antimatter, and it was considered to be a superweapon. This obviously places some limits on the firepower of a conventional ship.

That's a very good point. I'd never thought of that, but it does place a very hard upper limit on firepower, regardless of what some fanatical Trekkies would propose.

The dreadnought was also considered powerful enough to take out a planet.

Considering what a 20 GT level explosion will do to an unprepared civilization, particularily the environment, I'd say that is valid.

Ender wrote:

Matt Huang wrote:

Howedar wrote:That's a very good point. I'd never thought of that, but it does place a very hard upper limit on firepower, regardless of what some fanatical Trekkies would propose.

The dreadnought was also considered powerful enough to take out a planet.

Considering what a 20 GT level explosion will do to an unprepared civilization, particularily the environment, I'd say that is valid.

The original purpose of the "dreadnought" was to take out a Maquis base. I'd hardly call them an unprepared civilization.

Matt Huang wrote:

Ender wrote:

Matt Huang wrote: The dreadnought was also considered powerful enough to take out a planet.

Considering what a 20 GT level explosion will do to an unprepared civilization, particularily the environment, I'd say that is valid.

The original purpose of the "dreadnought" was to take out a Maquis base. I'd hardly call them an unprepared civilization.

Given the level of shielding we've seen demonstrated on Trek...it would cripple them all the same.

Especially since they are a small rebel faction that has broken off from their formal government, I doubt they much access to military hardware.

Ghost Rider wrote:

Matt Huang wrote:

Ender wrote:Considering what a 20 GT level explosion will do to an unprepared civilization, particularily the environment, I'd say that is valid.

The original purpose of the "dreadnought" was to take out a Maquis base. I'd hardly call them an unprepared civilization.

Given the level of shielding we've seen demonstrated on Trek...it would cripple them all the same.

Especially since they are a small rebel faction that has broken off from their formal government, I doubt they much access to military hardware.

Never mind that they fought the cardassians to standstill, had agents placed throughout Starfleet sending them supplies, and had their own small fleet of starships.

Matt Huang wrote:

Howedar wrote:

Darth Wong wrote:The Voyager "Dreadnaught" was stated onscreen to be carrying one thousand kilograms of antimatter, and it was considered to be a superweapon. This obviously places some limits on the firepower of a conventional ship.

That's a very good point. I'd never thought of that, but it does place a very hard upper limit on firepower, regardless of what some fanatical Trekkies would propose.

The dreadnought was also considered powerful enough to take out a planet.

1000kg antimatter are the equivalent of 22 GT TNT. 22 GT are by far too weak to destroy a planet.

I would go so far to say that this weapon is by far too weak the destroy the entire civilization of a sentient species on a planet.
e.g. The Asteroid which hit the Nördlinger Ries(Germany) about 15 Million years ago did not cause widespread deaths in other parts of the world( 1,2 km, 5TT TNT).

Luzifer's right hand wrote:

Matt Huang wrote:

Howedar wrote:That's a very good point. I'd never thought of that, but it does place a very hard upper limit on firepower, regardless of what some fanatical Trekkies would propose.

The dreadnought was also considered powerful enough to take out a planet.

1000kg antimatter are the equivalent of 22 GT TNT. 22 GT are by far too weak to destroy a planet.

big giant "duh." Either trek planets are a lot weaker than their real life counterparts, or the ST writing staff seriously exaggerates the power of antimatter. The second is a proud ST tradition dating back to TOS (ST writers seem to have have no problems with blatantly ignoring the various laws of physics, e=mc^2 included).

22 GT is not enough to kill a planet but it is more then enough to kill 99% of all life on a planet. You drop a 22 GT explossion on earth today and watch as the world populations die very rapidly.

Alyeska wrote:22 GT is not enough to kill a planet but it is more then enough to kill 99% of all life on a planet. You drop a 22 GT explossion on earth today and watch as the world populations die very rapidly.

did you read this?

The Asteroid which hit the Nördlinger Ries(Germany) about 15 Million years ago did not cause widespread deaths in other parts of the world( 1,2 km, 5TT TNT)

5TT=5000GT

Alyeska wrote:22 GT is not enough to kill a planet but it is more then enough to kill 99% of all life on a planet. You drop a 22 GT explossion on earth today and watch as the world populations die very rapidly.

Drop the crackpipe. 22GT would produce a fireball between 20 and 40 kilometers in diameter.. Damned impressive, but it's not going to kill 99% of the human population. Hell, at best, the thermal radiation will cause third-degree burns seven hundred klicks out.. But that's still not planetkiller.

Luzifer's right hand wrote:

Alyeska wrote:22 GT is not enough to kill a planet but it is more then enough to kill 99% of all life on a planet. You drop a 22 GT explossion on earth today and watch as the world populations die very rapidly.

did you read this?

The Asteroid which hit the Nördlinger Ries(Germany) about 15 Million years ago did not cause widespread deaths in other parts of the world( 1,2 km, 5TT TNT)

5TT=5000GT

NASA says 1 TT is enough to wipe out all major life, I'd like to see your proof that the impact was that strong.

SirNitram wrote:

Alyeska wrote:22 GT is not enough to kill a planet but it is more then enough to kill 99% of all life on a planet. You drop a 22 GT explossion on earth today and watch as the world populations die very rapidly.

Drop the crackpipe. 22GT would produce a fireball between 20 and 40 kilometers in diameter.. Damned impressive, but it's not going to kill 99% of the human population. Hell, at best, the thermal radiation will cause third-degree burns seven hundred klicks out.. But that's still not planetkiller.

No, but it can disrupt a society enough to efectivly be one, especially for small colonies like the Marquis. Wipe out the main colony, and the dust there is enough to kill any crops nearby, then you have no power, no shelter, no food, and you are fucked.

Ender wrote:

SirNitram wrote:

Alyeska wrote:22 GT is not enough to kill a planet but it is more then enough to kill 99% of all life on a planet. You drop a 22 GT explossion on earth today and watch as the world populations die very rapidly.

Drop the crackpipe. 22GT would produce a fireball between 20 and 40 kilometers in diameter.. Damned impressive, but it's not going to kill 99% of the human population. Hell, at best, the thermal radiation will cause third-degree burns seven hundred klicks out.. But that's still not planetkiller.

No, but it can disrupt a society enough to efectivly be one, especially for small colonies like the Marquis. Wipe out the main colony, and the dust there is enough to kill any crops nearby, then you have no power, no shelter, no food, and you are fucked.

Never disputed that. It would be devastating against isolated colonies.

Matt Huang wrote:The dreadnought was also considered powerful enough to take out a planet.

Was it? Or was it simply powerful enough to be a deadly menace to the Delta Quadrant planet it had locked on to? (as well as to any Maquis colonies)

The Dreadnaught missile carried a thousand TONS of antimatter, not a thousand kilograms.

So assuming metric tons of antimatter, that's 22,000 GT of TNT.

Is that a bad thing?

Noooo, it was 1000kg.

Metrion Cascade wrote:The Dreadnaught missile carried a thousand TONS of antimatter, not a thousand kilograms.

So assuming metric tons of antimatter, that's 22,000 GT of TNT.

Is that a bad thing?

Incorrect. The Dreadnaught missile was stated to carry 1000 KG of antimatter. That would put its yield at around 48000 megatons, less than quarter of a heavy turbolaser but very powerful by Trek standards.