“Crossing the T” is jargon from old naval battles between sail-drawn boats (like in the 1600s, 1700s, etc.). It was a highly desired maneuver since it allows one ship to bring half of its’ cannons to bear on another ship while facing minimal return fire (all the cannon were along the sides of the boat).
Anyway, Tracer, I agree that it’d be a much more interesting battle if both ships’ knew the others’ capabilities before hand. In that case, the Enterprise would probably come up with some unorthodox method of winning. And thanks for the info about Ray and Particle shields… I think it’s safe to assume that Ray shields could stop a transporter beam from getting through, but a Particle shield wouldn’t.
In terms of unorthodox fighting styles, the Enterprise surely gets the upper hand. My original posts held that the Enterprise wouldn’t have a chance to implement anything like manipulation via warp drive. You see, a Star Destroyer has so many damn weapons that once it starts firing, it doesn’t stop 'til the target is destroyed (kind of like a mini-gun). The sheer volume of firepower aimed at the Enterprise would be too overwhelming.
HOWEVER, if the Enterprise was able to anticipate this massive volume of destruction coming their way, they’d find some way to avoid it, in which case the only way a Star Destroyer would possibly manage to win would be to snag the Enterprise with a tractor beam… which would be tough if the Enterprise was anticipating that maneuver, as well (for a ship of its’ size, the 'Prise is surprisingly spry).
BUT… (and you know there’s always a “but”)… if the crew of the Star Destroyer (or the Empire as a whole) knew of the ‘Prise (or the Federation as a whole), they’d probably manage to get their hands on some good ol’ transporter technology or a functioning warp drive (and that goes the other way, too). Man, that’s scary… a Star Destroyer with several dozen phasers lining the hull? The Enterprise going to hyperspace? The implications are too frightening… we’re playing God here, people!!! Run!!!
What is the SOP for First Contact in the Federation? If the ISD’s range is only about 10Mm (10k km), then I really don’t think that the Enterprise would ever come within range. My impression is that in the ST universe, ships try to keep several thousand kilometers between them.
Well, particle shielding “repels matter of any form” (A Guide to the Star Wars Universe, pg. 341), but I guess that could count as reinforcing the hull.
You’re right about the shield generator’s on the ISD. I never really looked it up, and assumed they were just the bridge deflector shields (From the quote you mentioned and one about taking out the bridge deflector shields).
However, the idea that since ray shields take up so much energy that they can’t afford to be on all the time would only apply to something like an X-wing or Y-wing, since they have very small power generators. An ISD, on the other hand, has such a large power generator it can run its shields continuously.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Monster104 wrote:
Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology, page 76, also describes proton torpedoes as carrying “high-yield proton-scattering warheads.”
However, I interpreted the phrase “proton-scattering warhead” to mean that, when the warhead detonates, it scatters a blast of protons at its target. I did not interpret it to mean that the protons belonging to the target material would get scattered.
Still, a blast of high-energy charged particles is nothing to sneeze at.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Monster104 wrote:
Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology, page 76, also describes proton torpedoes as carrying “high-yield proton-scattering warheads.”
However, I interpreted the phrase “proton-scattering warhead” to mean that, when the warhead detonates, it scatters a blast of protons at its target. I did not interpret it to mean that the protons belonging to the target material would get scattered.
Still, a blast of high-energy charged particles is nothing to sneeze at.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Monster104 wrote:
Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology, page 76, also describes proton torpedoes as carrying “high-yield proton-scattering warheads.”
However, I interpreted the phrase “proton-scattering warhead” to mean that, when the warhead detonates, it scatters a blast of protons at its target. I did not interpret it to mean that the protons belonging to the target material would get scattered.
Still, a blast of high-energy charged particles is nothing to sneeze at.
Porkins and Red leader also both set their shields to double front (to avoid being killed by lucky blasts from the DS defenses)and shunted some power to their engines to make that trench run faster. When they got blasted by those single shot TIE wonders, it was because they weren’t shielded in the back. Xwing shields are accepted (in gaming circles) to take 3-4 direct blasts of a TIE Interceptors lasers linked before failing. Then you’re in trouble.
And I hate to have to do this, but Monster suggested:
Hate to tell you, the fiction disagrees with you. In most every Xwing: Rogue Squadron book in the series, they link and co-ordinate proton torpedo attacks because simultaneous blasts of a “relatively” weak torpedo would leave an area in the shields that was open. The first volley dropped that small local area, the second hot on its heels slammed into the Destroyer’s hull. What that means is there is an amazingly big difference in shield technology in both universes… Whereas the Enterprise-D’s is a single unified field (no justice in that is there?), it can be disrupted enough to feedback into the ship’s systems thereby causing damage like power outages and sometimes explosions. I think. In SW, the shield seems to be generated by local areas, like left aide shields, right side shields, dorsal and ventral shields… and smaller holes can be punched through, provided enough assault is launched in the first place.
Tracer asked a while back:
The games Xwing Vs Tie Fighter, Xwing Alliance, the old Xwing game itself, and the followup Tie Fighter, all suggest capital ships have an effective range of about 6 SW kilometers. Outside of that, they’d need to be firing at something bigger than a capital ship. Now, as for the actual range of the weaponry? I can only assume its greater than 6 km’s, seeing as they routinely talk of a Impstar as being a platform for planetary bombardment, which means greater than 80 kilometers.
Tracer, the Heir to the Empire is great. I’d suggest you find the Stackpole Xwing series too… all nine books.
And while you have the technical manual, check out Ion cannon.
Having reviewed the posts, and thinking/rethinking the scenario in my head, I fail to see how the Enterprise’s warp capability helps much offensively. Lets say they do a Picard maneuver… It was only ever used (to the best of my knowledge) to present the Enterprise’s attackers with a decoy, as it were. if they could actually fire between point A and point B, while in warp, why didn’t they?
I thik we’ve all gone a bit crazy in trying to understand warp / hyperspace. And I definitely don’t think they’re related, as was claimed earlier… If anything, I see hyperspace as being much more similar to subspace in the ST universe, or even a wormhole in a more classical universe. Warp is achieved though a field being generated around the ST ship’s hull, a higly localized field… which is why I think this firing from the Ent-D and the Borg cube (so often quoted) is something that was never intended for the ST universe but was added because it allowed cool effects. Once an object leaves that warp field (say a shuttle piggy-backed) it drops immediately out of warp. Why is phaser fire or photon torps any different? They have Warp nacelles too?
hyperspace totally eludes me. All I know is they have some kind of hyperdrive which has a fuel of sorts, and its by far the easiest thing to mess up on the Millenium Falcon.
Porkins was hit by one of those lucky blasts from the DS defenses; the TIE fighters hadn’t even joined the battle yet.
By the time Red Leader got nailed, Gold Leader had already ordered his squadron to “stabilize your rear deflectors”; since Red Squadron also faced the threat of fighter attack, Red Leader’s rear shields were probably up by then as well.
The Picard Maneuver bugs the hell out of me, too. According to The Star Trek Encyclopedia, the Picard Maneuver worked because the unnamed enemy ship was using light-speed sensors to lock its weapons onto the Stargazer. If the enemy ship couldn’t detect anything moving faster-than-light, why didn’t the Stargazer just fly at warp speed in random circles around it and fire photon torpedoes at it?
Personally, I blame the fact that the episode the Picard Maneuver appeared in (“The Battle”) was from ST:TNG’s first season. They didn’t yet have a science advisor on their writing staff, and worse, the Season One Writer’s Bible made the egregious error of claiming that, since photons travel at the speed of light, photon torpedoes travel at the speed of light too. (This contradicted everything about photorps that had gone before in ST:TOS and the movies, and has since been swept under the rug by later Writer’s Bibles. Both the ST:TNG Tech Manual and the Star Trek Encyclopedia now claim that photorps are warp speed weapons.)
And speaking of light-speed sensors, Bored2001 wrote:
I looked up “Starship Sensor Array” in Star Wars: The Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology. While some of the types of sensors described were definitely light-speed (e.g. electro-photo receptors), the book is silent on the issue of whether all sensor types in the Star Wars universe are limited to acting at the speed of light or slower. A Guide to the Star Wars Universe likewise says nothing on the topic. The short conversation when the Millennium Falcon disappeared off the Star Destroyer’s scanners in The Empire Strikes Back also fails to shed any light on the issue (no pun intended).
However, The Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology, page 115 et seq., does talk about the existence of subspace communications, which propagate nearly instantaneously across insterstellar distances. (I presume that “subspace” in Star Wars means something totally different from “subspace” in Star Trek.) It is not inconceivable that some kind of active sensor system could be rigged out of subspace communications technology, assuming it was possible to “bounce” a subspace transmission off an object (the way RADAR does with radio waves).
Are there any SW novels or comics that speak of FTL sensor technology, or subspace radar?
I would agree that both the Star Wars and Star Trek universe is EXTREMELY inconsistent. If one guy created both things and laid out the law of how things were precisely, we’d avoid a lot of problems… of course, that would probably detract from the entertainment value. As it is, both series’ are products of many, many writers’ imaginations… they didn’t think “now what would be likely and work in coordination with the tried-and-true specs of this starship?” They think “now what would be entertaining?”
When I lay out specs for stuff like this, I usually take the average (starting with what is written in “official” books, like the encyclopedia) of what has been described by the plethora of writers out there.
I generally avoid using Star Wars games as a reference… all the specs used in the games are used only FOR the game. For example, in X-Wing, if you judge how fast it takes for an X-wing to fly past an Imperial Star Destroyer, you can estimate that the X-wing’s top speed is 70 MPH or so (which is ridiculous). Also, a friend once calculated that if you take the speed of a proton torpedo as it appears to travel in X-wing, it would have taken Luke’s torp about half an hour to travel down the exhaust shaft to the Death Star core. So when you’re playing one of those games, take the measurements with a grain of salt.
Now, the difference between hyperspace and subspace… Warp requires a constant stream of energy to remain in warp. If the warp drive fails while in warp, you fall out of warp. Hyperspace requires a huge chunk of fuel to get in and out, but while IN hyperspace, only miniscule bits of fuel are needed (there’s talk about the “One-Way Jump”… jumping into hyperspace and not being able to get out… this happened to Nil Spaar in The Black Fleet Crisis). Also, there is a supposed speed limit to subspace (unless you cound Warp 10, which is an oddity). In hyperspace, the speed limits are technological rather than theoretical… that is, you can go as fast as you want as long as your engines can push hard enough. However, I think it’s pretty clear that both realms violate the laws of physics.
I would agree that both the Star Wars and Star Trek universe is EXTREMELY inconsistent. If one guy created both things and laid out the law of how things were precisely, we’d avoid a lot of problems… of course, that would probably detract from the entertainment value. As it is, both series’ are products of many, many writers’ imaginations… they didn’t think “now what would be likely and work in coordination with the tried-and-true specs of this starship?” They think “now what would be entertaining?”
When I lay out specs for stuff like this, I usually take the average (starting with what is written in “official” books, like the encyclopedia) of what has been described by the plethora of writers out there.
I generally avoid using Star Wars games as a reference… all the specs used in the games are used only FOR the game. For example, in X-Wing, if you judge how fast it takes for an X-wing to fly past an Imperial Star Destroyer, you can estimate that the X-wing’s top speed is 70 MPH or so (which is ridiculous). Also, a friend once calculated that if you take the speed of a proton torpedo as it appears to travel in X-wing, it would have taken Luke’s torp about half an hour to travel down the exhaust shaft to the Death Star core. So when you’re playing one of those games, take the measurements with a grain of salt.
Now, the difference between hyperspace and subspace… Warp requires a constant stream of energy to remain in warp. If the warp drive fails while in warp, you fall out of warp. Hyperspace requires a huge chunk of fuel to get in and out, but while IN hyperspace, only miniscule bits of fuel are needed (there’s talk about the “One-Way Jump”… jumping into hyperspace and not being able to get out… this happened to Nil Spaar in The Black Fleet Crisis). Also, there is a supposed speed limit to subspace (unless you cound Warp 10, which is an oddity). In hyperspace, the speed limits are technological rather than theoretical… that is, you can go as fast as you want as long as your engines can push hard enough. However, I think it’s pretty clear that both realms violate the laws of physics.
Stupid bad Internet connection… ::grumble grumble:: Sorry 'bout that, y’alls.
Anyway, an ISD certainly has access to faster-than-light communication arrays (hypercom and the Holonet, for example), but I’m not certain at all about sensors. It’s possible, but I wouldn’t bank on it. I know that it’s impossible to detect something that’s in hyperspace (unless you’re also in hyperspace and REALLY close to the target… this also happened in The Black Fleet Crisis). But I doubt the Star Destroyer would be able to track the Enterprise through warp. Even if subspace was used millenia ago in the Star Wars universe (maybe as a “precursor” of sorts before they went even farther in hyperspace???), they wouldn’t be expecting it. So I think it’s a safe assumption that the Star Destroyer can’t track the Enterprise through warp.
Well, then! In that case, when the Enterprise backs up at warp 1.1 and lobs photon torpedoes at the Star Destroyer, it can make tiny alterations in its course that would prevent the Star Destroyer from knowing exactly where it is, so that the Star Destroyer couldn’t do a microjump into the Enterprise’s path and fire at its pre-calculated position. The only option left to the Star Destroyer would be to hyperjump out of there and lick its (probably light) wounds.
I’m still pretty sure that the Enterprise crew wouldn’t come up with that tactic before it’s too late.
Of course, my theory assumes an intelligent captain in the ISD (there WERE quite a few of them in the Empire, amazingly). But if one of the arrogant, “The Empire is all-powerful” officers were in charge, the Enterprise would be able to play the Star Destroyer like a harp from hell.
However, if Thrawn were in the bridge… sorry, Enterprise, you go boom.
We’ve seen the Enterprise, the Voyager, and the Defiant badly damaged several times. How come you never see a badly damaged Star Destroyer? Star Destroyers are all in either pristine condition, or blowing up in a cataclysmic fireball (e.g. near the end of Return of the Jedi). Is their outer hull lined with dynamite or something?
Well a Star Destroyer is just so stinkin’ big… battle damage is tough to see. Also, there were only three movies, and only one had Star Destroyers gettin’ damaged, anyway.
To blow up a Star Destroyer, you’ve gotta pound through all the hull and hit the main reactor (pick up the “Incredible Cross-sections” book to see just how much ship you have to get through to reach the reactor). A better tactic would be trying to DISABLE the Star Destroyer… that is, blasting away all the guns and damaging the engines… or, if you’re lucky, taking out the bridge.
Apparently, taking out the bridge on a Super Star Destroyer also has the beneficial side-effect of causing the ship to careen downwards and crash nose-first into the Death Star.
