Mr. Oragahn wrote:Back in ME1, the most powerful all had a handful of those long dreadnoughts, yet I remember calcs putting their firepower in the low-mid kiloton range for their mass drivers.
I could be wrong, of course, can't remember much.
Between them, the Citadel races have 86 dreadnoughts, the main guns of which fire 38 kiloton (at least) rounds ever 2 seconds.
Wasn't one of them relays going to be blown to bits by something in on of the two latest ME games?
Yes, a relay was destroyed in a Mass Effect 2 DLC. By chucking a small planetoid at it. And, as I indicated, the system it was in got wiped out by a supernova-level explosion consequently.
Being "knocked" off system when the main object which kept things in system has been blown off and turned into stellar drifting gases isn't really tantamount to anything impressive, barring the supernova itself.
Plus it's wild speculation until the orbital distance to the local star is known.
It survived a supernova. In fact, it's described as being "undamaged". That's impressive by itself.
They are small point defense systems. Are the photonic torps as tough as those which were seen later on?
I don't see any reason to assume that they are.
Torpedoes allow for any kind of long range in system. It's only a question of fuel for trajectory correction and guidance.
With ships being able to warp in at any range, by all logic, this should be a total massacre.
Er, what? Evidence on that first statement? As for the second, it's only a massacre if torpedoes hit. They won't.
Trinoya wrote:I'm seeing some claims of greater fire power, numbers, and ranges, but I'm not seeing evidence. We have a few codex statements that put the alliance at 200-300 ships I believe, with the Turians being ahead of them, and with all the other races behind. We know that most of these ships sit around at relays waiting to respond to threats, and we know the biggest guns are rated in kilotons. Ranges may be very large, but since starships could dodge, intercept, or deflect any of these weapons with their current technologies, I doubt that the range effectiveness may be a major factor... perhaps for planetary bombardment...
The 200 ship number comes from the novel "Mass Effect: Revelation", and it's referring to a single Alliance fleet directly prior to the First Contact War with the turians (over 30 years before the games). This fleet was likely the Second Fleet, as this fleet was preparing to counterattack the turians and the codex says the counterattackers were the Second Fleet. By the time of Mass Effect 3, the Alliance and turians both had at least seven fleets, the salarians had at least three, and the asari had at least six. If we assume a minimum of 200 ships per fleet, that's 4600 ships between the four of them.
And what evidence do you have that Trek ships will be able to easily "dodge, intercept, or deflect" 20 kg slugs moving at 1.3% of light speed?
Even the latter is moot though. For example, if you were to try to bomb earth in sol system, you'd have to worry about mars shooting at you with energy beams that are FTL AND capable of pinpoint city wide destruction.
Unless you're on the far side of Earth...
Finally, what would be the solution to simply beaming torpedoes on board, or critical systems off of, mass effect ships?
Kinetic barriers. Though I think we already discussed this on SB.
I am entirely aware of what it took, a big rock crashing into one, not a planetoid, it was an asteroid. You'd have to quantify the super nova hitting a relay based on distance, star type, etc... Super Novas are notably not FTL phenomenon in the real world, and can actually apply smaller ammounts of energy to push objects further from their star... which fits in well with the displacement. Until such quantification is done all I know is a big rock blew one up, and a super nova moved one.
It's described as a small planetoid, and that's still more firepower than the 22nd century Trek factions can muster.
Also super nova level explosions, complete with the subspace shockwave, can be out run fairly effortlessly in star trek.
Perhaps, but they won't be expecting it the first time, and judging by how close ST ships are when they shoot something...things won't be pretty for the first fleet that tries. Assuming they even can blow it up.
Now then, as far as I'm aware a mass relay has no special defenses that make them immune to just putting bombs aboard them via transporters (a few well placed torpedoes), and as far as I'm aware if they can be destroyed easily from the outside, they can be destroyed easily from the inside. Relays can be pushed off course, which apparently can be a big issue in trying to rediscover them, and notably in trek things like tractor beams were implied to be able to move moons... I don't think the vulcans will have any trouble making that relay problem just simply go away.
"Relays can shield themselves to preserve their integrity down to the quantum level, so taking a sample for analysis proves nigh impossible." -- from the codex. No transporter beaming. And tossing a small planetoid into a relay is still not something I'd call "easy".
Moving a relay probably is the better option (and it avoids the nasty "wipe out system" effect). However, the "move a moon" tractor beam examples come from 24th century Trek, IIRC. What's the biggest thing they've moved in Enterprise?
Since the entirety of all trade and commerce is dependent upon these relays, I think it's a safe bet that the citadel races will likely collapse economically with their destruction to some degree. More importantly, these relays do not exist in the milky way galaxy, meaning the mass effect citadel races will require copious amounts of fuel in order for mass effect ships to travel, and they won't exactly have a refueling station conveniently located in any system they visit.
That's what supply lines are for. Also, since they run on antimatter and fusion, they should be able to take fuel from Trek fuel depots.
If this was just Earth starfleet vs all the mass effect races, I might be inclined to give it to mass effect, since the largest on screen showing, at one time, of starfleet vessels was over a dozen... Still, the picture painted in ENT was a galaxy on the verge of going to war at the drop of a hat, and with everyone on all sides, except the humans, getting ready for it. It's why the romulan attack on all the races was almost successful at turning them against one another, and why they chose stealth over direct combat.
So? The Citadel races are (regardless of publicly refusing to acknowledge it) getting ready for the Reaper invasion. How does this make a difference?