Sovereign vs 1 Star Destroyer?

[Jedi Master Spock]

For the first, i'd point out that federation torpedo weapons go in pretty much straight predictable lines.

Not really. These are guided weapons which home in on maneuvering targets. They rarely follow a precisely predicatble path.

do you know what happens to things that are small and go in straight predictable lines near the deathstar? they get shot down. Remember that pilot losing the ability to manouver momentarily due to damage? the deathstars surface guns locked on in seconds and killed him. They'd have longer to track startrek torpedoes so could probably swat them down all day.

Where do you get this idea? Fighters did not begin evasive maneuvers until quite close to the Death Star, and are both larger and slower than the torpedoes in question. Proton torpedoes in particular are quite close to football sized, and photon torpedoes are not only an order of magnitude smaller than TIEs, but shielded.

There would only be seconds in which to act; a salvo of photon torpedoes launched from Yavin IV would have met the Death Star in seconds, rather than around ten minutes, and would not have had to match velocities. It is reasonably likely they would fail to shoot down any incoming photon (or, for that matter, proton) torpedoes, let alone nailing all with ease.

Also when have starwars fighters done attack runs on capital ships which had their shields up and did anything of note?

Done hull-skimming close attack runs on shielded ships? TPM, ROTS, and ROTJ all see fighters get in every bit as close to enemy capital ships as they do to the Death Star in ANH. Would have done damage on their own? Unclear but seemingly quite likely. Did they actually inflict said minor [and sometimes major] damage? Yes.

As for the second bit? use long range torpedoes when? lets have some examples please cause what i remember of trek combat is all short ranged with phasers distinctly used as primary weaponry and torpedoes secondary.

I believe you have a limited and inaccurate picture.

Both phasers and photon torpedoes are effective at long ranges, and both are used extensively at ranges far exceeding the Death Star's presumptive shield radius. Even It is never clear which is actually more powerful, although photon torpedoes are generally in more limited supply.

And where are these displays of durability, out of curiousity?

Everywhere from "Obsession" to "The Ship." For example, tritanium's extraordinary thermal resistance is displayed in "Descent," remaining solid at 12,000 C (at which point any real metal would be a cloud of glowing plasma). The ability of a 22nd century Klingon hull to casually [mostly] ignore the NX's phase cannon in "Judgment" is a good example of the ability of an unshielded hull to shrug off near kiloton to kiloton range attacks.

[mr.dark]

Not really. These are guided weapons which home in on maneuvering targets. They rarely follow a precisely predicatble path.

A target which wont be manouvering, the deathstar does not evade. what i meant is that the photon torpedo wont be evading either, admittedly because the federation have conveniently forgotten the art of point defence but the fact stands.

There would only be seconds in which to act; a salvo of photon torpedoes launched from Yavin IV would have met the Death Star in seconds, rather than around ten minutes, and would not have had to match velocities. It is reasonably likely they would fail to shoot down any incoming photon (or, for that matter, proton) torpedoes, let alone nailing all with ease.

Explain how the torpedoes go nowhere near that fast in the series unless being used in warp against warp targets.
Oh i'd also note that the matching velocities was to pass through the shield without going splat, unless photon torpedoes have ever been shown to decelerate and then accelerate again then photon torpedo attacks against the deathstar arent gonna work.

Also when have starwars fighters done attack runs on capital ships which had their shields up and did anything of note?

Done hull-skimming close attack runs on shielded ships? TPM, ROTS, and ROTJ all see fighters get in every bit as close to enemy capital ships as they do to the Death Star in ANH. Would have done damage on their own? Unclear but seemingly quite likely. Did they actually inflict said minor [and sometimes major] damage? Yes.

You know the deathstar is using planetary shields which arent hullhugging like ship shields right? on account of being a spacegoing moon. So let us have an example of a capital ship with shields up being attacked and suffering damage from a fighter or fighters.

As for the second bit? use long range torpedoes when? lets have some examples please cause what i remember of trek combat is all short ranged with phasers distinctly used as primary weaponry and torpedoes secondary.

I believe you have a limited and inaccurate picture.

Both phasers and photon torpedoes are effective at long ranges, and both are used extensively at ranges far exceeding the Death Star's presumptive shield radius. Even It is never clear which is actually more powerful, although photon torpedoes are generally in more limited supply.

I've bolded the relevant word for you.

And where are these displays of durability, out of curiousity?

Everywhere from "Obsession" to "The Ship." For example, tritanium's extraordinary thermal resistance is displayed in "Descent," remaining solid at 12,000 C (at which point any real metal would be a cloud of glowing plasma). The ability of a 22nd century Klingon hull to casually [mostly] ignore the NX's phase cannon in "Judgment" is a good example of the ability of an unshielded hull to shrug off near kiloton to kiloton range attacks.

Also do we have proof that in descent the relevant vessel was unshielded? i'll go investigate memory alpha or something later today to find the episode information.
Same phaser cannon that is 5TW? ie, 1 kiloton, so two orders of magnitude too small for your megatons statement.

[Cocytus]

Hello all. Long time lurker, first time poster.

In Scientific Method, Voyager flies through a binary pulsar, which heats the hull to 9000 degrees after the shields have failed. The ship loses main power and suffers a few hull breaches, but otherwise performs remarkably well.

Mr. Dark, are you referring to Red Leader in your earlier post about the pilot who gets shot down? As far as I knew, both his starboard engines were disabled by Vader and he crashed into the Death Star's surface.

[mr.dark]

And yet trek ships are torn apart like they're made of cheap balsa wood when crashed into by jemmy ships in the dominion war.

And Cocytus, i'll get back to you when i've rewatched the movies.

On the subject of the ships being able to stand temperatures around 10,000 degrees. That temperature is white hot, provide a piccy of the incandescently glowing voyager please.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Maybe that was Voyager after all the modifications?

[Mike DiCenso]

And yet trek ships are torn apart like they're made of cheap balsa wood when crashed into by jemmy ships in the dominion war.

And Cocytus, i'll get back to you when i've rewatched the movies.

On the subject of the ships being able to stand temperatures around 10,000 degrees. That temperature is white hot, provide a piccy of the incandescently glowing voyager please.

Here you go:

http://voy.trekcore.com/gallery/thumbna ... 62&page=21

http://voy.trekcore.com/gallery/thumbna ... 62&page=22

Trekcore doesn't allow direct hotlinking to images anymore so I chose to link to two pages that show the images of the ship and the binary neutron stars.

Voyager at this point has passed right between two relatively close orbiting neutron stars. Note that the hull is largely red hot with some areas getting near white hot.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

Maybe that was Voyager after all the modifications?

It was actually some time after the Borg mods were removed.
-Mike

[l33telboi]

And yet trek ships are torn apart like they're made of cheap balsa wood when crashed into by jemmy ships in the dominion war.

You mean the ones with anti-matter reactors?

On the subject of the ships being able to stand temperatures around 10,000 degrees. That temperature is white hot, provide a piccy of the incandescently glowing voyager please.

If you're saying that statement is wrong, then you're the one supposed to back it up.

Basically what I'm seeing here is someone trying to say that parts of the episodes didn't really happen and that we should ignore them. So if we're allowed to do that, why not just ignore the low showings instead?

The obvious conclusion is that we can't do either, otherwise we're left with a completly subjective outcome. Everything that happened in the series did happen.

And that's ignoring the diffrences between heat-based weapons and kinetic-weapons.

[mr.dark]

Hmmm, much obliged mike. though i'd disagree and say that it is in the red to dull orange glow but washed out by the surrounding glare. Which means either the hull is A. not at the temperature stated and is somewhat cooler hence not radiating as much or B. the temperature refers in some way to the amount of energy hitting the hull and it has some sort of reflective properties.

[Mike DiCenso]

mr.dark wrote:

And Cocytus, i'll get back to you when i've rewatched the movies.

No need. Red Leader's engines are shot out by Vader, and he does crash into the DS' surface:

INTERIOR: RED LEADER'S COCKPIT.

LUKE: (over headset) Red Leader, we're right above you. Turn to
point...

INTERIOR: LUKE'S X-WING FIGHTER -- COCKPIT.

Luke tries to spot Red Leader. He looks down at the Death Star
surface

LUKE: ...oh-five; we'll cover for you.

RED LEADER: (over headset) Stay there...

INTERIOR: RED LEADER'S COCKPIT.

A wary Red Leader looks about nervously.

RED LEADER: ...I just lost my starboard engine.

INTERIOR: LUKE'S X-WING FIGHTER -- COCKPIT.

Luke looks excitedly toward Red Leader's X-wing.

RED LEADER: (over headset) Get set to make your attack run.

INTERIOR: DARTH VADER'S COCKPIT.

Vader's gloved hands make contact with the control sticks, and
he presses their firing buttons.

INTERIOR: RED LEADER'S COCKPIT.

Red Leader fights to gain control of his ship.

EXTERIOR: SPACE AROUND THE DEATH STAR.

Laserbolts are flung from Vader's TIE fighter, connecting with
Red Leader's Rebel X-wing fighter. Red Leader buys it,
creating a tremendous explosion far below. He screams and is
destroyed.

[Mike DiCenso]

Hmmm, much obliged mike. though i'd disagree and say that it is in the red to dull orange glow but washed out by the surrounding glare. Which means either the hull is A. not at the temperature stated and is somewhat cooler hence not radiating as much or B. the temperature refers in some way to the amount of energy hitting the hull and it has some sort of reflective properties.

Or the materials are not yet heated to whatever their fictional physical properties say that they must be in order to glow red hot or white hot, or it really is getting white hot on some parts of the hull. Given the enviroment that Voyager was passing through, reflectivity of the hull materials and or refractive index of it is rather impressive. At the very least the hull was heated to 1,800 degree K. Also note that areas that are shadowed from the neutron stars have little reddish-yellow or white glow to them at all.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

Photon torpedoes have been stated and shown several times through Trek to be capable of travelling across great distances and in only a matter of a few tens of seconds. An example here is of the E-D in "Half a Life" firing torpedoes at a red star to reignite into a hydrogen fusing one once again:

http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/thumbna ... =95&page=4

Note the sequence of the images with the E-D launching the torps from what appears to be a relative standstill sublight speed and the torps then travelling across what is at minimum millions of km (based on star subtending the field of view in the establishing shots).The torps take only about 10 seconds at most to travel towards the star. The torps before impact and entry into the star's chomosphere and photosphere also appear to then decelerate.
-Mike

[Cocytus]

And yet trek ships are torn apart like they're made of cheap balsa wood when crashed into by jemmy ships in the dominion war.

Several Klingon ships (a bird-of-prey and two Vor'Chas) were indeed torn apart by suicide rammings by Jem'Hadar attack ships in both the Battles of Chin'Toka and Cardassia (the same footage from Tears of the Prophets was reused for What You Leave Behind.) But considering that a ship of the same class survived the crash JMS mentioned in The Ship, and that in The Die Is Cast the Defiant rammed clean through another such ship, I'd hardly take that as evidence that Star Trek starship hulls are weak. The birds-of-prey, which fared poorly against Jem'Hadar suicide runs, are also seen to skim the surfaces of stars in both Redemption and Image in the Sand, undoubtedly subjecting themselves to considerable heating effects and gravitational forces. As for Star Wars, aside from the oft-cited TESB bridge tower asteroid impact, there's also the scene from the Battle of Geonosis in AOTC, in which a Trade Federation battleship attempting to reach orbit is shot down by Republic forces. The relatively low-speed impact it suffers crumples about half the hull and jolts several components loose from the top. Compare that to the E-D's crash from Generations. Yes, the ship was unsalvageable, and to be fair we can't see the underside of the saucer, but the leading edge, which plowed through several hills and rocky outcrops, isn't blunted, buckled or marred. It's just dirty. The windows in Ten Forward are still intact. The interior is a mess, but that's probably to be expected. I'd guess Federation starship interiors (aside from exceptions like the computer core and shuttle/cargo bays) are mostly non-structural subdivisions (given that Geordi was sent pirouetting right through a pair of doors in Conspiracy) which allow for easy adaptability of interior spaces to serve a variety of functions, much as office space is subdivided into cubicles by lightweight partitions. In fact, in most of the crashes we've seen, while the interior systems are destroyed, the outer hull is largely intact. In both Once Upon a Time and Homestead, the Delta Flyer crashes, in the first case into a planetoid at impulse speeds, and in the second example into the Talaxian's asteroid. Both times the hull was intact and the ship was recovered. Similarly, a Danube class runabout survives a bomb and a crash in The Ascent. Although the systems are destroyed, the hull is certainly intact. Presumbaly the ship would have been recovered by the Defiant.

[Praeothmin]

You know the deathstar is using planetary shields which arent hullhugging like ship shields right? on account of being a spacegoing moon.

Where exactly are shields mentioned on the DS1?
The novel?
Because all the movie talks about I believe are Magnetic fields or something.

So let us have an example of a capital ship with shields up being attacked and suffering damage from a fighter or fighters.

ESB, the fighters attacking the SSD and destroying an unscathed (according to visuals) shield generator (now, according to the way the movie was cut, it seems like a shield generator, but I believe many different EU sources call them sensor domes).

And yet trek ships are torn apart like they're made of cheap balsa wood when crashed into by jemmy ships in the dominion war.

And an ISD gets its dorsal tower destroyed by a low kinetic impactor...
It goes both ways you know...

though i'd disagree and say that it is in the red to dull orange glow but washed out by the surrounding glare. Which means either the hull is A. not at the temperature stated and is somewhat cooler hence not radiating as much or B. the temperature refers in some way to the amount of energy hitting the hull and it has some sort of reflective properties.

Or C. The hull is so good at resisting heat that it never gets hot enough to get past the red glowing stage...
For example, you put a metal knife in a flame, and leave it there for a few minutes. If you take the knife out quickly, it might be hot enough to burn you badly, but without glowing red.

The hull of Voyager was perhaps not glowing white because it hadn't been heated long enough to get to that point. Since we don't know the melting point of Voyager's hull, we cannot say the hull wasn't at the stated temperature.
Edit: Just finished typing, and saw that this was exactly what Mike had said... :)

And finally Mr. Dark, it seems you really don't remember ANH too well, because the last time I checked to movie, those fighters weren't maneuvering that much.
They were in fact flying in a straight line to get to the DS, and their strafing runs were pretty much also done in straight lines (except for a few fighters).
They're also much bigger (about 12 meters long x 8-10 meters wide) than a Photon Torpedo, and since the gunners on the DS were having trouble hitting the fighters, even in the trench when those fighters were flying srtaighter then ever, I really don't see how they would even come close to hitting Photon Torpedoes...

[Mr. Oragahn]

So let us have an example of a capital ship with shields up being attacked and suffering damage from a fighter or fighters.

Invisible Hand

Anakin destroys an external structure on the hull of the cruiser, while the shields are up.
It's proved as the novelization mentioins the IH's faltering shields after Anakin shot the hangar bay shield generator.

The entire quote can be found here.

Another example would come from the EU. X-wings comic books have such example, and in Zahn's trilogy, Mara Jade leads a group of fighters, many of them being Z-95s, and concentrate fire on the shield section protecting the belly dome of an ISD, and poke a good hole in it.