Unfortunately, history is silent on the issue. We'll never know!
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Dudes. I regularly engage in discussions about how to make it so a woman with a big sword can stand on even terms with a man in funny hat and smelly clothes with a dusty book. I have a painting of Pokemon hanging over my computer. I bought my girlfriend gaming systems for Christmas.
And I'm still pretty damn sure I've been outgeeked by that last post about Star Wars versus Star Trek.
God damn the interwebs.
An Eclipse class Super star destroyer, yes- which has a superlaser. Ordinary star destroyers- no- scorch the surface, but not burn all the way though the crust.
I agree with the suggestion that Star Wars ships are in general larger and more powerful, but disagree with comments like these, which slightly exaggerate the power of ships.
Indeed. Base Delta Zero slags the surface to a depth of meters; it doesn't crack the crust.
Yeah, you're right. I was thinking of the Eclipse. Slagging the entire planet is still way beyond destroying a few cities.
And, at least in the Trek-verse, there are some planet-killers. The Doomsday Machine, for example- with an anti-proton beam capable of cutting up planets- which the Enterprise survives being hit with.
Similarly, the shields of the Enterprise shrug off a hit from a nuclear weapon in Patterns of Force- as far as I can tell, proton torpedoes in Star Wars are comparable to nuclear weapons.
I think there are some scenes in TNG where phaser fire bores a long way into the crust of a planet.
Trek ships are small, but they are quite heavily shielded, and possibly quite well armed as well- in A Piece of the Action, Kirk targets a city block from orbit with phaser fire- which shows some accuracy.
"Nuclear weapons" covers a very wide range of power, you realize. Even today the world's arsenals include nuclear bombs ranging from a few kilotons to the 50 megaton Tsar Bomba, which although it never entered service, was tested at fifty megatons, and could have reached twice that if the Soviets had cared to risk the fallout that such an explosion would have caused, which as it turns out they didn't. (They replaced U-238 tampers in the bomb with lead, eliminating the tertiary fission stage and making it a nearly pure fusion bomb.) Saying "comparable to nuclear weapons" therefore doesn't mean a whole lot, especially considering we could likely do better than the Tsar Bomba if we felt the need to; it's just that so large a weapon has no practical use.
true- and when faced with a 20th century aircraft with nuclear air-to-air missiles, it does say "with only partial shielding, it could damage us severely"
This was in Tomorrow is Yesterday set around 1969, suggesting the missiles would have been 1.5 kiloton AIR-2 Genie missiles. (Could have been AIM-26 Falcons, but the Genie was much more common.)
The Patterns of Force one is described simply as "a thermonuclear warhead" implying it's a fusion weapon, which tend to be larger than this.
Similarly, star wars proton torpedoes, according to Wookiepedia, vary greatly in power.
Trek Vs Wars threads should probably be kept to narrow areas- i.e-
"if a division of 1000 federation troopers with phaser rifles, went up against a division of 1000 Republic Clone Troopers, who would win?"
or:
"If a federation starship went up against an Imperial one of similar length and mass, which would be expected to win?"
How many star destroyers are needed for Base Delta Zero? It isn't very clear.
I think, based on the info on Memory Alpha site, Federation torpedoes and phasers are quite damaging- setting 16 on phaser- destroys 650 cubic metres of material with one shot. This is phaser rifle- starship phasers may be more powerful or fire more shots with one bank.
Three Star Destroyers are needed for a by-the-book Base Delta Zero operation, because that's how many are required to cover every angle of escape from the planet. One can do the job given more time, but leaves the possibility of refugees.
another question might be- how long would it take? There isn't much info on how much energy each weapon puts out canonically, and how much energy would be needed to do the job described:
"liquify the surface of the planet to a depth of metres"
If we assume a spherical shell of rock, maybe sandstone, roughly the size of the earth, 2 metres thick, somebody better than me at the maths can probably work out the minimum amount of energy needed to melt all that, and thus provide a ballpark figure for the amount of energy expended in Base Delta Zero.
In Voyager, it descibes gravimetric torpedoes "capable of blowing up small planets" so we do have some evidence of Federation planet-killing technology.
Yeah, they could use them more effectively, but if every problem was solved by 'using the Force' what would be the point of the movies? There'd be no conflict, since according to Vader, destroying a single planet is nothing compared to the power of the Dark Side.
Why fight the Speratists normally: just have crafts with one Jedi on board get close enough to crush the ship, or distablize the reactors so the whole thing blows up?
Why not just force grab and throw a large asteroid onto the rebel base destroying all life? (since I believe its cannon that a single Jedi can grab a Star Destroyer and slam it to the ground dispite the ship attempting to resist, a single planet killing asteroid should be easy for Vader and Palpatine.)
The Power of the Force is nothing compared to the power of the Plot and the rule of cool. :smallcool:
One, single, very very overpowered jedi/sith apprentice. Who appears to be capable of taking on The Chosen One and the mightiest known Sith Lord, together.
Generally though, Jedi and very big objects don't mix. a group of Jedi pool their powers, taking advantage of the presence of the old Sith temple, to throw a small fleet of Star Destroyers across the system in Darksaber, but this kills the one they channel the power through.
Nah, Palpatine's not the strongest Sith Lord. That title goes to Exar Kun.
Possibly. Wookiepedia does place him at, or very near, the top of the Sith lord ranking:
Palpatine was the most powerful Dark Lord of the Sith in the history of the Sith Order—something he himself also firmly believed—he was the only Sith Lord in a thousand years to achieve the ultimate goal of the Sith: to eradicate the Jedi Order and bring the galaxy under the rule of the Sith.
A possible source which might support this view, is Naga Sadow's Supernova Spell- one of the few things we see that shows the dark side of the force being used to destroy an entire star system- by yanking the core from the star, and causing it to explode. It required the crystals in his battleship to cast though.
Second to this, in power, is Palpatine's Force Storm- creates a hyperspace wormhole capable of destroying entire starfleets, and does not appear to require technological components.
Wiping out life on a planet is a property of a few weapons in Star Wars- bioweapons, the torpedo used by the Sorcerers of Tund, the firestorm kicked off by Exar Kun's spell used to preserve himself, etc.
EDIT: the firestorm is blamed the Jedi's attempt to stop him, on Wookiepedia.
though Nihilus does rank pretty high.
Am I the only one annoyed by how the SW Expanded Universe makes the events of the movies feel horribly insignificant?
I try to pretend that the KotOR games, while I enjoyed them, are not in continuity with the books and movies. Nihilus was over the top even for a Sith Lord.
Only with the revelation of Legacy of the Force. The New Republic and even the Galactic Alliance don't last more than 100 years. Sad.
In Sage Edition Nihilus is more on a level with the other Sith Lords- Use The Force bonus of +22, compared to +23 for Exar Kun and +24 for Palpatine and Revan.
in the EU it suggested that the reason Anakin didn't have cloned replacements for his missing hand, and later, other limbs, was that it was due to being one of those rare people who cannot have any form of transplant, not even ones cloned from his own cells.
Oddly, it seems to be common in Force-users- maybe it has more to do with the nature of the Force.
Holy Sith Lords, Batman! This thread's geek level... It's... it's...
It's over ni- *Gets shot*
Seriously, start a Vs. thread for this stuff so that we can make fun of it, don't discuss it here!
Geeky can be fun: :smallamused:
Wookiepedia on the whole Vader's spine thing:
Vader's back, specifically his spine, was not whole. Vader at some time had suffered serious spinal injury in the upper neck. However, his injuries on Mustafar did not affect the spine. This forced Vader to wear a thick electrode-studded collar that supported his helmet to safeguard the cybernetic devices that replaced his upper vertebrae. The first few vertebrae of his neck were not natural and their sharp-edged regularity suggests that they were cybernetic replacements. Bone was broken at the second and third vertebrae, and possibly the first and fourth. The spinal cord itself was not broken above the third or fourth vertebra. The severing must have been nearly but not totally complete, as he retained the ability to breathe weakly for at least a few seconds unaided.
I'm wondering where it says this kind of technology is unavailable to the Federation?
Of course, tech can be more advanced in some places (teleportation) and less advanced in others.
We know the Borg can replace spinal components with metal ones, and we know the Federtion can replicate spinal components, but its not clear if the Federation can replace spinal components with metal ones (probably wouldn't bother, once they had the replicator technique to replicate them).Quote:
demonstrating the ability to repair the central nervous system, something that Federation medical technology is canonically unable to reliably do.