Ship to Ship battle: The Ark vs a Star Destroyer

[Sunburst]

Hi all,

Here's the scenario, The Ark (of Transformers G1 cartoon continuity) commanded and crewed by generic Autobots must fight a Star Destroyer (of Star Wars) commanded and crewed by generic Imperials.

As far as what Star Destroyer class: any class you want to compare, compare all of them if you'd like. I'm interested to see what peoples' opinions are.

[Mike DiCenso]

Um, which SW canon information is allowed in here? Movie only? ICS stats? Makes a difference here you know.
-Mike

[Sunburst]

Um, which SW canon information is allowed in here? Movie only? ICS stats? Makes a difference here you know.
-Mike

Huh I didn't think it mattered since Star Destroyers are star ships that get their bridge towers knocked off by asteroids. I'm pretty sure that trumps anything in the ICS.

I didn't know I got to pick an choose canon, But if it helps...anything Saxton touched is disqualified for any fun reason you can come up with. I'd also prefer to avoid anything Vong or evil Jason related as well...but if that's too complicated just use the movies.

Although, the star wars lore that actually makes a difference to me is generally: the original trilogy, the bantam novels and any tech book you can find before the prequels came out....and I suppose the prequels.

[Mike DiCenso]

All right. Now that that's been established, do you have some links to what the Ark is capable of in combat?
-Mike

[Sunburst]

The Ark:

It's capable of flying through an asteroid field getting hit multiple times with no visible damage, and then it was shown blasting its way through the same asteroid field with a "laser gun". All this happened in the Transformers (1984) Pilot: "More than Meets the Eye: Part 1"

A few images are found here:
http://www.seibertron.com/cartoons/imag ... _episode=1
http://www.seibertron.com/cartoons/imag ... _episode=1

And here are a few example images:
http://www.seibertron.com/images/cartoo ... f08976.jpg
http://www.seibertron.com/images/cartoo ... f08982.jpg
http://www.seibertron.com/images/cartoo ... f08984.jpg

[Mike DiCenso]

That's rather interesting stuff. Do you know of a reliable scaling for the Ark's size?
-Mike

[Sunburst]

All I've found is info for the Nemesis (the Decepticon flagship which is about the same length); the length is 4 km long. However that is Dreamwave comics continuity. The Transformers universe is filled with multiple different realities: cartoon, marvel comic, dreamwave comic, etc.

Here's an excerpt from the Transformers wiki on the Nemesis dimensions.

http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Nemesis_(G1)
"Dreamwave comics continuity

The technical specifications for the Nemesis were:
Estimated length: 2.5 miles
Wingspan: 1.75 miles
Height: 1.25 miles

More Than Meets The Eye issue 8"

Sizes in the cartoon and comic fluctuated greatly and even differed between continuities. However I figure that the starships (Ark and Nemesis) are supposed to be large in any continuity and in the show Beast Wars (ep: Nemesis) the ship is shown to be as large as a mountain and figuratively described as a mountain. So I'm perfectly content using the dreamwave stats as a general length for the Nemesis and the Ark.

[Mike DiCenso]

Okay, that gives us something to work from there. If the Ark is 2.5 times longer than an Imperial class star destroyer, then it makes the asteroids in that super-dense field the Ark was plowing through over an order of magnitude greater in volume than the ones the ISDs in TESB had to shoot at or collided with in the Hoth asteroid belt. This shows at least several orders of magnitude greater firepower as well as possibly shield capacity, especially given that the Ark was slamming into that field at a relative velocity of over 1,000 km a second.
-Mike