I’m with the Vader chokes Jean Luc with the force-and Vader does the dumb Priceline commercials crowd
Er, we are talking about a battle between starships of similar size, one with more firepower, and the other with the ability to engage in combat in superluminal speeds with weapons that travel at superluminal speeds, right?
What makes anyone think that the Star Destroyer would ever even hit the Enterprise? It can’t see the Enterprise-since it is travelling faster than the speed of light any image they recieved would be hopelessly “behind” where the Enterprise was when they recieved the image. The Enterprise doesn’t need to ever drop out of warp-it can fire at warp, and has good enough sensors to know of the sensory capabilities of the Star Destroyer. While microjumps are neat, they wouldn’t help unless the Enterprise decided to drop out of warp, which they have no real reason to do.
All in all, it really doesn’t matter how powerful the Star Destroyer was, you can’t fight what you can’t see, let alone hit.
Monster104 wrote:
Um, the hydrogen bomb developed in 1956 was about 1000 times more powerful than the nukes we developed during World War 2.
GreyGriffin wrote:
But they did blow the smack out of the Borg Sphere in Star Trek: First Contact. They just waited until it started firing at the surface of 21st century Earth before they did so.
However, the Enterprise and the Borg Cube were NOT travelling faster than light when they started firing…otherwise the earth would have smacked them in the face (they were close enough to establish low orbit and heading straight at it.) They didn’t fire on the Borg Sphere (which, since they were trying to defend the Sol system from the Borg, they should have had no hesitation with blowing to smack) because they would have had to drop to Impulse speeds, thus losing the Sphere, until it reached Earth and started that time thingy…during which the Enterprise would have been torn in half if they’d blown up the sphere and ended the process…
So, they get through the temporal doohickey and THEN they blow up the Sphere (one problem Tachyons can’t solve for them! Mwu hu ha ha ha!)
The “Enterprise attacking from warp” bit… I hate asking for a cite in a thread like this (like Monster said, it’s all make-believe and all the “sources” are make-believe… and rather inconsistent, t’boot), but has there been an episode where the Enterprise went to warp to attack a target that wasn’t in warp? I asked this earlier in the thread, but didn’t get any answer, and I myself have never heard of that tactic used in any show/movie/novel/source other than in this thread.
The Enterprise isn’t ALWAYS in Warp. Warp travel in Star Trek requires tremendous amounts of energy to maintain the warp field (in Star Wars, traveling in hyperspace requires negligible amounts of fuel). And the Enterprise wouldn’t GO to warp unless there was some sort of threat that it wouldn’t be able to overcome. However, my theory is that, in a chance encounter, the Star Destroyer would be likely to open fire first (with no provocation, mind you), and this initial volley would disable or destroy the Enterprise. Or the Star Destroyer’s eight tractor beam projectors can lock the thing in place.
Oh… and the Enterprise (we’re talking about the Enterprise-D here, not the Enteprise-E) is about 650 meters long… an Imperial-class Star Destroyer is 1600 meters long. Just wanted to clarify.
See, the problem with that is that wouldn’t have had to drop to impulse to fire. Plenty of episodes have shown them firing all variety of weapons while travelling at warp. Either you misunderstood what was happening, or they just needed a reason why the Enterprise couldn’t fire then and that was all they were able to come up with and didn’t really care that the rest of the Star Trek shows, tech manuals, etc disagreed with them.
Personally I’m leaning toward the second option, First Contact was crap, I mean if they were going to radically redesign the Borg, why not the laws of physics as well?
I know they can fire weapons while in warp. I’ve seen it happen, too, but only when they were firing at something else that was ALSO in warp. What I want to know is, has the Enterprise ever encountered a hostile ship that couldn’t go to warp, and gone to warp themselves to attack it?
Another flaw with that theory is that the Federation has very strict “peace” principles in place (the Prime Directive, for example). Going to Warp to attack a non-warp-capable target would probably be seen as “unfair” and/or “excessive”… and by the time the crew would decide that they’d NEED to go to warp, it’d be too late.
This is something I’m not really convinced of actually…I know they’re evil, but I doubt that the Empire would just randomly fire on unknown vessels.
On the issue of fighting at warp: the reason that you don’t see many battles between one vessel at warp and one not at warp is that in Star Trek there really aren’t too many ships worth fighting that don’t have warp drives. The Picard Manouver comes to mind though.
And on the fairness issue, when faced with an ISD, you use what you can. I doubt that it would be considered too cowardly to stay out of the way of that much weaponry. (A probably situation would probably involve the Enterprise doing a few flyovers, then backing way off and trying to negotiate a bit…)
hey, i’m back, and so it seems is this thread.
and where did all the damn newbies to this thread come from?
with their 2 cents i might add.
geez, well, back on the original topic.
this is The Enterprise vs. The Imperial Star Destroyer
not Macross, Not the Borg, not the smurfs, or the lion, witch, and her god damned wardrobe. stick to it kids.
i was toasty and done a long time ago, but they’ve peaked my interest again.
sorry for my interjection of BBQ pit type analysis on the goings on in here,
carry on…
i’ll by sipping my tea, earl grey, hot.
Soulsling… THANK you…
Well, look at it this way… the Enterprise comes across this big ol’ ship… they don’t detect a Warp drive, they don’t detect any phasers, they don’t detect impulse engines, none of the stuff that they’re used to. They assume it’s just a big, clunky ship. They open a comm channel (I think we can assume that the two ships would be able to communicate).
Now, over on the Star Destroyer… they see this lil’ ship, moving pretty damn fast, they’ve never seen anything like it before. The captain wants to bring glory to his Emperor, so he decides to disable the thing (a Star Destroyer has 40 ion cannons, after all… or 60, depending on which source book you read). All of a sudden, he gets a transmission from the captain of the Enterprise, who says he wants to be friends. With a grin, the captain of the Star Destroyer plays along, gets in close… then orders the tractor beams to lock on and orders all guns to open fire. A few volleys of turbolaser fire bring down the shields, and then ion cannons fry the circuits of the ship.
I know that there’s a lot of other scenarios possible, but that’s the one that I figure is most likely in a chance encounter brought about by some unknown random fiction-splicification wormportal thing.
Well, A) the Enterprise would also be able to detect the weaponry on the ISD, and the fact that it was powering up to fire-and would hence, knowing that the ISD wasn’t capable of superluminal manuovering, probably be in warp long before the ISD was able to start firing. Also,
Now, you’ll want to double check this, as I no longer have a tech manual, but as best I recall the Enterprise doesn’t have circuitry, they have plasma conduits, and other fancy whatzits, but not circuitry. An Ion cannon might do something, but not anything as dramatic as that, and in any case, they probably wouldn’t have the opportunity to use it anyway.
oh goodness, i just spent the better part of my evening reading this entire thread. scary, non?
anyway, my take on the matter, as someone with a much better understanding of the trek universe versus sw.
commenting on a far ancient question, there ~are~ federation marines, complete with armor and everything. i remember some ds9 (i think) ep where one died or something. however, these wouldn’t be on the ent. and my opinion is that storm troopers would probably whoop the fed if they were boarded, unless the ent. put up some containment fields which isn’t so far fetched.
however, i seriously doubt “hand-to-hand” combat would become an issue. imho, the isd possesses sufficient firepower to give the ent a real beating at close range, especially with all its tie fighters etc. however, any microjump would separate the tie fighters from the isd, keep in mind. either way, my opinion is that the ent would need to implement spread-fire (possibly homing?) photon torpedoes or phaser fire, both of which exist, esp. against ties but also against the isd itself. my opinion is that both possess sufficient power to severely damage the isd, although they do seem to be able to take quite a beating.
the warp-by shooting idea seems plausible, but i highly doubt the ent. crew would implement it. it’s not something i’ve ever seen in the st universe (albeit there’s way much of it i haven’t seen). the transport-the-bomb-onto-the-isd is also lame and non trek-like, imho. same thing with shuttlecraft.
long range photorp fire seems the most likely scenario, because surely the ent would have detected the weapons capabilities at long range. i’m somewhat curious, tho, if adding warp capability to a photorp decreases the available space for explosives, which i suspect it does, but even so, i’m still not sure if warp-photorps would be necessary. …and also perhaps something nifty could be done to the deflector dish as well to be weapon-ified.
on the subject of torpedoes, if a proton torpedo bombards with high energy protons, couldn’t a resourceful officer merely zap it with some electricity and turn it into hydrogen?
also i concur w/ initial about the optronic computers. i seriously doubt the ion cannon would have significant effect of the ent’s systems.
to comment on spoofe’s separation plot – this is usually only done in extremely dire conditions, because of the aforementioned weakness of each part alone.
however, i very much realize the good chance of the crew being held offguard if the isd fires first with little warning, which could feasibly disable several internal systems. however, this depends on the success of long range scans and communications. success also seems dependent on some sort of brief planning/regrouping stage for the ent, which may be before any encounter, or after an initial retreat.
none of this is to say the ent would win, either. i haven’t decided on that.
now the defiant. that would be cool to see against an isd… (loves those megaphasers)
ok enough from me.
-psiflare
why not just dump the warp core after overloading it, use pod thrusters to aim it over to the ISD, then detonate, if a single warp core can seal a subspace rift, its sure to have enough power to blow up a measly star destroyer, oh sure you say, but then the enterprise would be powerless against the remaining tie fighters, well now, dosent the enterprise carry a spare warp core? i seem to remember a movie or episode when mr laforge just slapped a new one in and continued to whoop ass. personally, the white star4 from Babalyon 5 would kick all their asses, or a shadow ship or a vorlon ship, but hey who am i to say?
First, I agree with SPOOFE that there is no evidence that the Enterprise can fire from warp at targets not in warp. It’s never been done or even mentioned before now, so it presumable it can’t be done.
Second…this may be a little confusing (my thought process is usually very random), but I don’t think the entire ship can run via plasma conduits. Plasma conduits would be a good way to provide power to things like warp nacelles, phaser arrays, and transporters since they would theoretically be able to provide so much power…but why would they run plasma conduits to computers or display monitors that would require relatively very little energy? Another thing…would plasma conduits emit showers of sparks when damaged, or would they make a huge explosion? If they do emit showers of sparks, that means they are transferring electricity along some type of circuitry, which would mean the Enterprise would be affected by ion cannons.
Third…I know this one may not make sense either, but here goes…ISD’s always have weapons armed and ready for combat…so if their weapons are ALREADY charged and ready to attack, the Enterprise would not be able to detect any type of warning power-ups. The Enterprise would detect power coursing through the ship constantly, and possibly assume that although the ship is large, it is outdated and harmless, and would therefore attempt to communicate and establish friendly relations which would then leave them vulnerable to a surprise attack by already-charged and ready weapons and tractor beams (which it has 10 of, not 8).
One last thing…tracer, about the hydrogen bomb…although it uses the exact opposite type of reaction than the atom bomb, it’s merely a refinement of nuclear technology of the time. Although it is considered an innovation in the use of technology, it did not really create new technology (aside from the bomb itself as a whole being considered new technology). With that being said, I still stand by my statement that new technology developed during war is more powerful than new technology developed during peace time.
The reason that the future Enterprise can go Warp 13 is because warp speeds are a function of a recursive asymptote (not sure if this is correct terminology). A ship that closes in on Warp 10, will jump into Transwarp. In which case, the ship will go really fast, until, thereotically, it reaches the upward limit of Transwarp, and jumps into Trans-Transwarp, and so on ad infinitum. This allows for an infinite range of speeds, without ever reaching infinite mass. Warp 13, would then be, I guess, an extrapolation from the other warp speeds. I assume this is also how you go to Warp. You would accelerate close to the speed of light, and jump to Warp. The formula for velocity addition is an asymptote, as I believe Cecil wrote in one of his columns, and is an example that it’s impossible to ever reach the speed of light, but why can’t you shift into another dimension if you go fast enough? The reason the Borg were able to get into the Alpha Quadrant so quickly from the Delta quadrant was because they had Transwarp capability, which the Federation does not, at least in the Trek present, although Voyager was able to use a stolen Transwarp coil until it burned it out. I got this information from the CD-Rom Version of the Star Trek Encyclopedia.
This discussion has been very interesting, though I feel the need to inject a few facts that seem to have been missed.
ST shields block everything, even ions and the energy byproducts of such electrically charged particles. Unless I’m missing something, this would mean that ion cannons would be innefective so long as the shields are up.
At least in the ST universe, a ship cannot be tractored while its shields are up. Those same energy, matter and kitchen-sink-blocking shields at work again.
Those segmented phasers are capable of VERY rapid firing, as well as sustained (beam) firing. The enterprise freeing itself from the borg cube’s tractor beam is one example. I might also add that this same scene is an example of those shields in action. The borg cube could not grab the enterprise in a tractor beam until it had “adapated” and broken through their shields. This is also why federals rotate shield harmonics so often nowadays. 
I like a good debate as much as the next guy, but I keep seeing people on both sides conveniently ignoring, misrepresenting or just plain dismissing (this is law, 'cause I’ve made an arbitrary decision based on a biased collection of data… so never bring it up again!) important information. That last one is downright offensive, and again it’s happening on both sides. Cut that out. 
Yeah, they block everything… I, for one, never said otherwise. However, they seem to be pretty unstable, since during battles they get a good hit, you see a computer terminal explode, a random crewman gets knocked unconsciouse… then you hear Worf yell, “Shields down to 60%!” Seems that the shields take a little feedback from damage.
For the Star Destroyer, you’ve got to get all the way through a section of the shield to the hull in order to begin damaging it.
Based on this information about the E’s shields, I’d imagine that the feedback from a hundred or so really-powerful cannons pounding against the shield would cause some dire consequences.
Now to addres Initial Entry’s two points…
First, Rules of Engagement: The Federation has standards of “Ethical Combat” in place, really strict standards, too. To wit, there are just some things you don’t do. You don’t bring excessive force to the battlefield, you never fire unless fired upon, things like this.
Think the Fed’s ethics are bunk? Check this out… in the Next Generation episode that first introduced us to Hugh the Borg, Geordi came across a technique to kill all borg everywhere, instantly. Pretty simple process, too. But they decided not to implement it. Why? 'Cuz it was unethical. So, with that in mind, does it really seem that unlikely that the E wouldn’t immediately use a tactic that gives them a huge advantage over an unknown adversary? I mean, it’s a good tactic… but with their “Ethical Combat” rules in place, they’d only use it for a last resort… that is, they’d try other tactics first, tactics which probably wouldn’t work. By the time the E went to warp… boom.
Now, the plasma conduits… are you sure that they’re the only means of transmitting power through the ship? I mean, a stream of plasma not only sounds difficult to achieve on teeny-tiny scales, it sounds REALLY dangerous, t’boot.
Ion cannons eliminate any form of electrical charge in its target… it’s really late, and I don’t want to go check the sourcebooks in my room, since I’ll wake everyone up, so I don’t know the exact mechanics to it (I’ll get the cite tomorrow), but I’d imagine that they combine electrons to existing electrical charges, thus rendering them neutral. So it’s not just electrical circuits, it’s EVERYTHING that carries an electric charge… and plasma (unless a plasma conduit carries blood plasma? Yeah, right…) is essentially a super-charged gas.
Now for Fnord’s tactic… that would actually be pretty damn feasible, and I can imagine them doing it in our Scenario B (which is the scenario where both ships have prior knowledge of the other, and are able to plan accordingly). Dumping the warp core takes a bit to accomplish, and when you’ve just been surprised by an alien ship, dumping the core is the last thing on your mind (unless there’s a core breach). So that’s another of the tactics to list under scenario B (which provides a larger number of possibilities).
Here’s a thought… to make things easier, howzabout everyone refer to which scenario they’re talking about when you’re posting? That way, all assumptions would be able to be molded to that particular chain of events. Scenario A is a random encounter, with no knowledge of each other beforehand, and Scenario B is where both ships have been given a good piece (though not intimate) knowledge of their adversary.
Whew! That’s a long post. I rant a lot at 2:00 AM.
Ator wrote:
You must’ve missed the Warp Speed Formula discussion in the official Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual. It’s on page 55.
In this standardized formula, warp speed X is X^3.33333 times the speed of light, up to warp 9. Beyond warp 9, warp speed asymptotically approaches warp 10. “Warp 10” is only a theoretical “speed” – an object travelling at warp 10 is moving infinitely fast. Crossing the “Transwarp Threshold”, as mentioned in the Star Trek: Voyager episode “Threshold”, refers to a ship achieving warp 10 and, thus, travelling infinitely fast. (Since the universe is curved, an infinitely fast object passes through all points in the universe at once.) There is no “upper limit of Transwarp” any more than there is an upper limit to infinity.
The canonical answer as to why the Enterprise of the future (in the ST:TNG episode “All Good Things…”) could go Warp 13 is that, by the time these events take place, the old warp speed formula had become to cumbersome to describe high speeds, and was scrapped in favor of a new one. After all, in the ST:TNG Tech Manual warp speed formula, Warp 9.8 is about 3 times as fast as Warp 9.0, and Warp 9.9 is nearly twice as fast as that. If improvements in warp engine technology allow a ship to cruise at, say, warp 9.97 by this old warp-speed formula, it makes sense to re-calibrate your scale so that you don’t have to keep saying “nine point nine” every time you change cruising speed.
first things first, “power transmission for onboard systems is accomplished by a network of microwave power transmission waveguides known as the electroplasma system (eps).” (st:tng tech manual) nowhere does the tech manual discuss electrical systems. from my understanding, they are all plasma conduits or these eps conduits, although since it is the _electro_plasma system, who knows. explanations for sparks when they’re hit are probably a matter of fx practicality – you can’t on a regular basis have a console spewing plasma at people.
to fnord, there is no extra warp core. once you eject it, you’re basically dead in the water. it’s the ship’s main source of energy.
and about the firing from warp at non-warp deal. i don’t understand the problem here. ok, it’s been established that photorps can be launched at warp speeds. assuming this, the photorp could easily just power down the warp field around it and continue at sublight speeds towards the target.
btw, each phaser segments emit 5.1 megawatts, and a saucer phaser has 200 segments = 1.02 gigawatts, and recharge time is less than 0.5 seconds, maintainable full blast for 45 minutes.
also take note of fast shield response time…also in the tech manual, it mentions shields energizing in 550 ns, noting this is just as they are shot at, and fully energize in 2000 ns.
hmm…i think that’s all for now.
-psiflare