Dahak vs Death Star

cralkhi wrote:Given how long it takes for the DS to charge up, Dahak would destroy it with gravitonic missiles long before it could fire. The response times aren't even vaguely comparable, and the DS wasn't designed to combat targets of comparable scale, nor was it expected ever to meet anything that could really fight back!

Also, given how close it looks to Alderaan (and to Yavin IV when it prepares to fire) the range must be far less - yes, I know the original post asked about DSII, but we never saw it blow up a planet, so... Dahak can fire from dozens of light-minutes away, at which distance a planet would be only a point of light - no visible disk.


(EDIT: and I now see that Kytheros posted much of this while I was writing...)

If the DS somehow DID manage to fire, though, I'm not sure what would happen. Dahakverse shields clearly do block lasers (as the Achuultani use them), but I'm not sure if we've ever seen anything like that much firepower concentrated into one point against a planetoid's shields. They can stand up to millions of Achuultani antimatter warheads which are 10 GT each, at least for a while... but permanently blowing up an Earth-sized planet (at least, destroying it so thoroughly that it doesn't re-form later due to gravity) is on the order of *trillions of gigatons* (~2.2 x 10^32 joules, the equivalent of ~5.3 x 10^22 tons of TNT, for Earth).

Yes, Dahak's shields can survive gravitonic warheads, but those don't seem to destroy entirely via direct energy transfer but rather by somehow removing the target from the universe via black hole/wormhole (though the gravitational stresses around the core effect do seem to inflict more ordinary damage, as ships 'crumple' and such, and the annihilation of Iapetus causes gravity stresses that cause earthquakes on Earth). If the shield prevents the black hole from forming within the protected area, I'm not sure this is really comparable - the actual energy it has to deal with may be far smaller than a planet-killer laser.

The shields do not prevent the black hole from forming within the protected area, so far as I know. At least, we've seen hits from gravitonic warheads that popped both inside and outside shields, and they seem to have functioned normally.

Edit: The weapons that "remove from universe" are utilize hyper technology, such as warp grenades and hyperguns. There may or may not be such "warp warheads" sized for missiles, though there seem to be similar weapons sized for mines.

Kytheros wrote:

cralkhi wrote:Given how long it takes for the DS to charge up, Dahak would destroy it with gravitonic missiles long before it could fire. The response times aren't even vaguely comparable, and the DS wasn't designed to combat targets of comparable scale, nor was it expected ever to meet anything that could really fight back!

Also, given how close it looks to Alderaan (and to Yavin IV when it prepares to fire) the range must be far less - yes, I know the original post asked about DSII, but we never saw it blow up a planet, so... Dahak can fire from dozens of light-minutes away, at which distance a planet would be only a point of light - no visible disk.


(EDIT: and I now see that Kytheros posted much of this while I was writing...)

If the DS somehow DID manage to fire, though, I'm not sure what would happen. Dahakverse shields clearly do block lasers (as the Achuultani use them), but I'm not sure if we've ever seen anything like that much firepower concentrated into one point against a planetoid's shields. They can stand up to millions of Achuultani antimatter warheads which are 10 GT each, at least for a while... but permanently blowing up an Earth-sized planet (at least, destroying it so thoroughly that it doesn't re-form later due to gravity) is on the order of *trillions of gigatons* (~2.2 x 10^32 joules, the equivalent of ~5.3 x 10^22 tons of TNT, for Earth).

Yes, Dahak's shields can survive gravitonic warheads, but those don't seem to destroy entirely via direct energy transfer but rather by somehow removing the target from the universe via black hole/wormhole (though the gravitational stresses around the core effect do seem to inflict more ordinary damage, as ships 'crumple' and such, and the annihilation of Iapetus causes gravity stresses that cause earthquakes on Earth). If the shield prevents the black hole from forming within the protected area, I'm not sure this is really comparable - the actual energy it has to deal with may be far smaller than a planet-killer laser.

The shields do not prevent the black hole from forming within the protected area, so far as I know. At least, we've seen hits from gravitonic warheads that popped both inside and outside shields, and they seem to have functioned normally.

Edit: The weapons that "remove from universe" are utilize hyper technology, such as warp grenades and hyperguns. There may or may not be such "warp warheads" sized for missiles, though there seem to be similar weapons sized for mines.

So far as we know, the idea of warp warheads do not appear to exist in missiles. We don't know if there is a particular reason for that. I suppose it's theoretically possible that the initial hyper trip could somehow prevent the second hyper generator from functioning, but I wouldn't call that very likely. Most likely the "shock wave" from the gravitonic weapon (and/or antimatter weapon) would have simply been considered far more useful for a ship (rather than merely scooping out a part of that ship without actually causing any "secondaries".

As for the original questions about the gravitonic weapon not being "focused" enough, I believe I did originally mention that. However, there is at least some confusion on how they work. The way they work is by the creation, implosion, and then resultant explosion of a micro black hole. Said unstable black hole would be IMMENSELY destructive, even if probably not anywhere near as focused (or intense) on a one-for-one basis with a Death Star superlaser shot. However, it was specifically stated that a single gravitonic weapon placed "at the right spot" inside a planet's core would be sufficient to destroy it. And this was while we were still looking at Fourth Imperium technology, because this information came through Horus in the lead-up to the Siege of Earth. We don't know for sure that such a single weapon would completely destroy the planet "so thoroughly that it doesn't re-form later due to gravity"... but we don't know that it would not, either.

As for how the shields function in respect to gravitonic weapons, it's pretty obvious if you think about it. The shield reaches into hyperspace (per textev) and simply prevents the hyper missile from continuing on to its pre-programmed destination, either by forcing it back into normal space or just stopping its progress until it does return on its own. At which point the weapon, coming back out into normal space but still on the outside of the shield, detonates in the next best thing to physical contact with the shield. Whatever the actual energy budget is, it's without any doubt absolutely immense... and it's going to detonate within meters (at most) of the shield, so the "dissipation" factor -- beyond whatever is imposed by the simple design of the weapon -- is going to be extremely minimal.

Has to be Dahak

It is designed from the keel out as warship, whilst the DS is described as 'station'.

The 4th empire (or now 5th) weapons technology is mush more effective than the equivalent StarWars technology.

It always amused me how people compare verse which by there nature are based on different psychical laws, you really need to compare equivalent factors, such as:

How does the civilian sector see its military forces
How the military see its self
How the military is routinely deployed (allowing for the nature of the show)
How the military has employed its available technology

Then with those basics sorted put them both in one verse (so they have advantages and disadvantages), construct a vessel and have at it.

Kytheros wrote:Edit: The weapons that "remove from universe" are utilize hyper technology, such as warp grenades and hyperguns. There may or may not be such "warp warheads" sized for missiles, though there seem to be similar weapons sized for mines.

Well, yes, but gravitonics must do something of the sort - we see mention of the gravitational shock of Iapetus' destruction causing earthquakes and volcanoes, and of Chien-su dealing with those and the other traumas caused by the Siege, but no pieces of Iapetus raining down on earth - which would probably have been a far, far bigger problem. So I think they've got to totally destroy somehow (and if it just converted into energy, that would have totally fried the Earth: it would have been on the order of tens of thousands of years of the Sun's *total output*. The mass/energy of Iapetus has to have gone somewhere not in the immediate vicinity - if the planetary shield couldn't block Iapetus itself, it probably couldn't block its fragments (it's possible, since shield 'density' is talked about, but seems unlikely unless Iapetus was only barely beyond what it could block). I guess the planetoids could have scooped up the bits, but it's never mentioned.

FriarBob wrote:However, there is at least some confusion on how they work. The way they work is by the creation, implosion, and then resultant explosion of a micro black hole. Said unstable black hole would be IMMENSELY destructive, even if probably not anywhere near as focused (or intense) on a one-for-one basis with a Death Star superlaser shot.

Dahak mentions (when they're looking at the ruins of Sheskar) 'implosive destruction consistent with' a gravitonic warhead. So that sounds like it's all implosion, no explosion (as do the description of Achuultani ships being crumpled in). I'm not sure there is an explosion involved - the black hole goes away somehow, yes, but it doesn't appear to be explosive; otherwise we'd see ships blown apart rather than crumpled in on themselves, and explosive rather than implosive destruction of Sheskar.

cralkhi wrote:

Kytheros wrote:Edit: The weapons that "remove from universe" are utilize hyper technology, such as warp grenades and hyperguns. There may or may not be such "warp warheads" sized for missiles, though there seem to be similar weapons sized for mines.

Well, yes, but gravitonics must do something of the sort - we see mention of the gravitational shock of Iapetus' destruction causing earthquakes and volcanoes, and of Chien-su dealing with those and the other traumas caused by the Siege, but no pieces of Iapetus raining down on earth - which would probably have been a far, far bigger problem. So I think they've got to totally destroy somehow (and if it just converted into energy, that would have totally fried the Earth: it would have been on the order of tens of thousands of years of the Sun's *total output*. The mass/energy of Iapetus has to have gone somewhere not in the immediate vicinity - if the planetary shield couldn't block Iapetus itself, it probably couldn't block its fragments (it's possible, since shield 'density' is talked about, but seems unlikely unless Iapetus was only barely beyond what it could block). I guess the planetoids could have scooped up the bits, but it's never mentioned.

FriarBob wrote:However, there is at least some confusion on how they work. The way they work is by the creation, implosion, and then resultant explosion of a micro black hole. Said unstable black hole would be IMMENSELY destructive, even if probably not anywhere near as focused (or intense) on a one-for-one basis with a Death Star superlaser shot.

Dahak mentions (when they're looking at the ruins of Sheskar) 'implosive destruction consistent with' a gravitonic warhead. So that sounds like it's all implosion, no explosion (as do the description of Achuultani ships being crumpled in). I'm not sure there is an explosion involved - the black hole goes away somehow, yes, but it doesn't appear to be explosive; otherwise we'd see ships blown apart rather than crumpled in on themselves, and explosive rather than implosive destruction of Sheskar.

I'm sorry, but you are completely wrong about all of this. The problem with Iapetus wasn't the mass, it was the concentration. It was all of that mass hitting at once. When the sublight missiles took station on Iapetus, it was blasted into tiny and even microscopic fragments that the shield (or for that matter, simply the atmosphere) could handle as easily as falling off a log. The mass didn't disappear, of course, but huge amounts of it were blasted out into the middle of nowhere and caused no further problems for anybody, and what little of it still hit Earth was in such tiny pieces they had essentially no impact whatsoever on either the shield or the atmosphere (much less the surface). No the books don't state this explicitly, but it's the only realistic reason for the sublight missiles to have taken such precise station before flashing into destruction. They were taking precisely calculated positions to cause the maximum possible "shatter factor".

And while my phrasing may be a bit confusing, the word "explosion" was a non-technical way of explaining what happens. Both implosions and explosions create shock-waves and release massive quantities of energy. Even in space, such shock-waves can propagate for at least a short distance (extremely little of course, but still some). The "resulting explosion" I referred to is actually the shockwave and the energy release from the implosion. Poor choice of words from a technical accuracy standpoint, but the effect is all-but-identical.

As for "crumpled in" this is again only explained by exactly what I said. If a part of the ship was translated into hyperspace there would be exactly ZERO effect on the rest of the ship around it. The "crumpled in" effect can only be explained by an implosion (or explosion) that caused a massive gravity-based shockwave. The micro black hole of a gravitonic warhead would produce exactly that.

The reason Iapetus's pieces didn't hit Earth, or at least, not enough to matter would be because there were sixteen gravitonic warheads, carefully positioned to ensure that no dangerous chunks of Iapetus would go anywhere near Earth. That's what would normally be called overkill. In that case, it gets called being thorough.
Also, by shattering Iapetus into pieces, the combined impact force (assuming it all hit Earth/Earth's planetary shield) remain the same, but it would be spread out over a longer duration, and the individual impacts making up the entire event would be far below the amount required to punch through or overload the shields. And, if Iapetus's pieces are not hitting dead on, but are hitting obliquely, or would skip off the atmosphere ... then, well, you're looking at even less energy needed to prevent dangerous impacts. And if, as seems likely, the gravitonic warheads also imparted side vectors onto the pieces of Iapetus, some would miss altogether.

No dimensional shifting required.

Dahak would win easily with him being self aware would really speed reaction time vs the death star; plus the death star did always suffer from some really cliche design flaws in their several incarnations.

A very entertaining but equally unrealistic clip. All Enterprise would have to do would be to stay out of a direct frontal confrontation. Agility was not a DeathStar forte. As Ali said "Dance like a butterfly and sting like a bee ..."

Michael Everett wrote:I know Dahak doesn't appear in it, but this clip may be thought-provoking...

If you could man the Death Star purely with Jedi it would maybe have a chance

"This is not the Battle Station you are looking for"

Emo Otaku wrote:If you could man the Death Star purely with Jedi it would maybe have a chance

"This is not the Battle Station you are looking for"

Nope. They wouldn't be able to react fast enough. Again, hyper missiles with gravitonic warheads curbstomp just about everything they can reach.

About the only thing that could hit Dahak, much less hurt him, before he blew it to pieces would be something like the Galaxy Gun, assuming he wasn't in the same system as it, or Centerpoint Station, again, assuming he wasn't in the same area as it. Or something else along those lines.