Challenge: Invade the Star Wars galaxy

[mojo]

swst...

be my increasingly belated valentine.

[Mr. Oragahn]

:D

[StarWarsStarTrek]

Mr. O, I am not claiming a linear correlation between the Death Star's mass and the mass of ISD's, for example, that the Empire could have built in its place. But unless if the battle station were hundreds of billions of times cheaper to build per unit of mass compared to an ISD, I can hardly see the relevance here, except for arguing over just about how much the Empire outproduces the Federation.

[Mike DiCenso]

Which you have provided little in the way of information, except to keep trying to cite one-off battlestations that were astounding, even to the most experianced people in TGFFA.

If you go down that route, why don't we add in all those massive multi-kilometer wide and long space stations the Federation has by the metric crapton, like Spacedock and Starbase 74? Why don't you include the fact that the Federation has the capability of building 700-1000 meter long starships in large numbers at any time it likes, as per Star Trek 2009?

In fact, let's go over that. I'm sure your familiar with this scene:

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/thum ... 443&page=6

The last few rows showing the Spacedock with starships docked to it, including the Enterprise. The Alt-E being at least 762 meters long per some offical sources and others it is 925 meters. The Alt-E, in case you can't find it, is in the upper right corner, and all the other starships docked appear to be the same size as her with eight total starships. So we have 8 ships that are somewhere between 700 and 1,000 meters long. Some simple measurements of the station's width show it is approximately 14 times the Alt-E's length. So 14 x 762 = 10,668 meters. If the ship is 925 meters, then the station will be 12,950 meters. So, a century and a half before the TNG-era, in a time of great crisis caused by the Narada's temporal incursion, Starfleet and the Federation built a super huge space station and at least eight large starships. All that in the 2250s and without apparently breaking the proverbial sweat.

In the Prime Timeline's 24th century, in addtion to the 14 km Starbase 74, we had several other similarly sized space stations, like Starbase 84 ("Phantasms"), Lya Station Alpha ("Ensign Ro"), and 133 ("Remember Me"), plus one unnamed Utopia Plantia station ("Booby Trap"). The implication from the numbering and naming system is that there are many more like those out there, and there are at least 800 starbases out there.

In addition to that class, there are other space stations, like these large "dumbell" shaped ones seen here in VOY's "Relativity":

http://voy.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/ ... ty_003.jpg

These are also multiple-km tall and wide. So if the Federation has large multi-km space stations floating around that are not even offical starbases, how does that factor into things? See, given an SB 74-sized station with a volume of at least 6.7E9 cubic meters it would be only 133,000 times less than the first 120 km wide Death Star. So that means the gap is considerably narrowed here.

Now, if we were to translate the 5 known SB-74-type stations into Galaxy or Sovereign-class starships, we'd wind up with a fleet over 11,500 per station or 57,747 GCS and or SCS starships!

So you see how this works against you?
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Well, the stations in question, aside from the alt-Trek movie, were built over unknown times. It translates into many ships, sure, but just how long to get those stations built?

[Mike DiCenso]

Oh, while it's true that we don't have good approximate times, we can get a rough idea from the fact that from the founding of the Federation to the TNG-era timeframe where we first see SB-74 is 70 years, give or take. So that is likely an upper limit. With Spacedock, first seen in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, that is constrained by not having seen anything like that in the the ST:ENT-era (approximately 130 years). So to add to that, in TOS the highest starbase numbers never reach more than 24 or so. We can conclude that a starbase like SB-74 is likely to be far newer than 70 years.
-Mike

[KSW]

Oh, while it's true that we don't have good approximate times, we can get a rough idea from the fact that from the founding of the Federation to the TNG-era timeframe where we first see SB-74 is 70 years, give or take. So that is likely an upper limit. With Spacedock, first seen in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, that is constrained by not having seen anything like that in the the ST:ENT-era (approximately 130 years). So to add to that, in TOS the highest starbase numbers never reach more than 24 or so. We can conclude that a starbase like SB-74 is likely to be far newer than 70 years.
-Mike

Also not all starbases are entirely constructed artificially. The one destroyed by the Romulans in "Balance of Terror" was built inside a huge iron asteroid over 2 miles wide.

If you go down that route, why don't we add in all those massive multi-kilometer wide and long space stations the Federation has by the metric crapton, like Spacedock and Starbase 74? Why don't you include the fact that the Federation has the capability of building 700-1000 meter long starships in large numbers at any time it likes, as per Star Trek 2009?

Let's also not forget quality vs. quantity, with Starfleet ships being built of tritanium, while Imperial ships are constructed of some more primitive polarized metal that allows them to be disabled by an ion-burst.
And we saw what the Romulan plasma-weapon did to that in "Balance of Terror," when it destroyed a base constructed of more than 3 cubic miles of solid iron even with a full deflector-shield.
It's easy to construct plenty of ships from readily-available materials, but in battle it would be like the Pinafore vs. the Nautilus, i.e. a five-second suckfest with plenty of toothpicks.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Oh, while it's true that we don't have good approximate times, we can get a rough idea from the fact that from the founding of the Federation to the TNG-era timeframe where we first see SB-74 is 70 years, give or take. So that is likely an upper limit. With Spacedock, first seen in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, that is constrained by not having seen anything like that in the the ST:ENT-era (approximately 130 years). So to add to that, in TOS the highest starbase numbers never reach more than 24 or so. We can conclude that a starbase like SB-74 is likely to be far newer than 70 years.
-Mike

How many cubic meters a year does that make?
There's several options there.

[Mike DiCenso]

Well, you can figure out that by the TOS-era, if there were 24-25 or so starbases, excluding smaller outposts and space stations like K-7, then we have an average of one starbase every 5.2 years. But we don't know how many starbases have those huge space station facilities, and we don't know when they started building them as part of starbases.

See, it's only in the TNG-era starbases that we see them, like SB-74 or SB-133 where the numbers get huge for starbases. But if they can pop one of those out in 5 years or less when they need to, well, that's pretty damn impressive. So if there are 600 TNG-era starbases, that's not one every 5 years, that's 3-7 new starbases every year! Yikes!
-Mike

[Picard]

But not all Starbases are actually space stations, and many are relatively small - Starbase375 is probably around size of Galaxy class starship - and we already know that Federation can pump out several dozen new starships every year.

[Mike DiCenso]

Bigger than a Galaxy-class starship.



By a factor of five or six in volume, easily.
-Mike

[StarWarsStarTrek]

Now, if we were to translate the 5 known SB-74-type stations into Galaxy or Sovereign-class starships, we'd wind up with a fleet over 11,500 per station or 57,747 GCS and or SCS starships!

-Mike

If the Federation had devoted all of their industry into building a fleet instead of space stations, I do not doubt that they could achieve such a fleet size. Similarly, if the Empire constructed a massive conventional fleet instead of a Death Star, the same is true. But your own calculations do little more than prove my point. All observed starbases in the Federation don't add up to even the first Death Star. Mind you, the Empire also possesses an enormous array of massive space stations, torpedo spheres, dreadnaughts, super star destroyers and even artificial planets, as well as the enormous skyscrapers on planets such as Coruscant. There is no comparison in industry here.

I'm under the impression, if my memory is correct, that you believe the Empire would defeat the Federation in a conventional war. Is this so?

[Picard]

Problem is that volume is not indicative of industrial capacity - powerplants may add disproportionate amount of expense, for example; FTL drive components are another thing that will likely be expensive. In that respect, it may actually be cheaper to build a Starbase - or a Death Star - than their weight n starships. And not even to go into crewing requirements.

[StarWarsStarTrek]

Problem is that volume is not indicative of industrial capacity - powerplants may add disproportionate amount of expense, for example; FTL drive components are another thing that will likely be expensive. In that respect, it may actually be cheaper to build a Starbase - or a Death Star - than their weight n starships. And not even to go into crewing requirements.

Wait, so you are arguing that volume being an inaccurate indicator of industrial capacity leads to the conclusion that mass isn't now? Or is this a typo?

Larger starships would generally be far more difficult pound for pound to build than smaller ones. You have to deal with more internal and external stresses, there is more room for error, you need tougher materials, etc. The Death Star's hull would have to be made from a material 300,000 times stronger than structural steel just to accelerate at 1 km/s^2.

[Picard]

That is assuming it doesn't use something like inertialess drive and/or SIF.

EDIT: I am saying that both mass and volume are inaccurate measures of industrial capacity. If US was to build 2000 F22s, it would have completely annihilated its economy in doing so, due to the 500 billion USD being added on top of the already existing 1 trillion USD budget it is barely supporting as it is. 2000 f15s in 1970s configuration, on the other hand, would have cost 100 billion USD, and 2000 F16s in 1970 configuration would have cost 62,6 billion USD.

Another nice detail about F22s flyaway cost of 250 million USD is that full half of it goes on its stealth coating.

Empire uses fusion powerplants. Federation uses antimatter powerplants. Which ones would you think are more difficult to build? Add to that the fact that warp nacelles (hyperdrives for Star Wars factions) are also likely to be disproportionately costly, and that personnell costs are ALWAYS one of highest costs incurred by any military, and you can see why Empire almost certainly cannot build equivalent weight in starships to Death Star. Actually, I think that Death Stars were a cost-saving measure.