USS Enterprise D vs Super Star Destroyer

[theta_pinch]

If the USS Enterprise D had to face a super star destroyer in battle, who would win.

[2046]

The Galaxy Class completely owns the field in the areas of weapons range, sublight acceleration, and almost certainly maneuverability. The SSD wouldn't even come close in weapons range or acceleration, unless it's suddenly faster than the Falcon.

I don't know how many guns are on the Super Star Destroyers, but assuming at least 100 cannons in the 1.5 megaton range, and assuming a decent firing rate, the SSD could lob the equivalent of a photon torpedo with every salvo, plus extra for what I would presume are numerous smaller guns. Let's just call it the equivalent of a full spread of torpedoes every few seconds.

So, if the entire bridge crew of the Enterprise were knocked on the noggin and forgot how to position themselves outside the weapons range of the opposing vessel (as we've seen Starfleet captains do), and if Riker forgot how to return fire again, then the SSD could take the Enterprise after a time.

I say "after a time" because although the SSD is lobbing that much firepower potentially, we know that even at short range and with a stationary target, a bridge tower similar in size to a midrange Federation starship was only hit once in a blue moon.

Put simply, based on what we've seen it seems unlikely that a gun at the rear of the SSD would hit a target the front of the same SSD on the first try.

We don't know the resilience of an SSD, but given that RotJ shows one being overwhelmed by the Rebel fleet . . . the entirety of which probably failed to match its volume, given that it was about 38 times bigger than the Mon Calamari Home One . . . I don't see them as being as resilient as their size would suggest they ought to be. Harder to kill than an ISD or Republic Attack Cruiser? Sure. But a juggernaut well nigh impervious to attack? Not so much. They are command ships, impressive to look at, but seemingly erring more on the side of prissy pomposity than wanton bloodthirsty warshippiness.

[Picard]

They also seem to be designed more as a carriers than battleships...

[2046]

The SSD primarily a carrier? I don't know . . . when I think of a hardcore carrier, I think more of the Republic Attack Cruiser, which was just bursting with apertures for smaller ships, and even split along the top for the purpose. She was virtually a through-deck, and yet canonically was not named as a carrier. Even then, though, the Attack Cruiser really didn't carry that many fighters, when you get down to it.

Certainly there was sufficient room to make mere throwaway space give the SSD more carrier space than most other ships, but we don't see much evidence of a lot of things being carried. It's kind of like the Death Star problem, where theoretically they ought to have been able to fighter-spam the Rebels but instead we virtually get just Darth Vader's fighter and an unarmed guy in a space suit yelling "pew-pew" really loud.

There were a large number of fighters at Endor, certainly, but off the top of my head there weren't enough to really be a well and truly overwhelming number.

I think of the SSD command ships more as a city-ship (or party-barge depending on who's in charge). Per Lando (IIRC) in the radio play she's three times the size of Cloud City. And yet as the Falcon is escaping, much to Vader's chagrin, how many fighters are launched? We only ever see a very small number.

[Mr. Oragahn]

The SSD is a terribly underpowered ship for its size.
There's no evidence of the presence of any weapon system that might take advantage of the ship's greater volume and therefore extra room for superior power cores.
The ship still requires its own escort and most likely worked as a symbol of power and a threat to any other small ship: no one in the galaxy could rival a SSD and no one would be mad enough to challenge the crew of such a starship.
The Executor most likely only had greater firepower by virtue of housing more battery slots. The side effect of this choice of quantity over quality is that, line of sigh aside, the aft section of the ship would hardly be relevant to engage a target located on the other side of the ship, while a vanilla Star Destroyer's heavy TLs are clearly capable of doing so and meant to be used that way as often as possible when not engaging targets laterally (although this requires the SD to slightly dive beneath its target in order to clear a LOS for all its HTLs).

One might speak of missiles and claim that a SSD to be stuffed with them, but they're rarely used in SW, and no good reason has ever been given why, although I remember that during the years before the release of the new prequels, it was said that Lucas would actually show why this never happened.

If the SSD had a better range and accuracy than usual I'd easily give it to the imperial ship. The sheer amount of firepower that could be delivered per second would easily turn any close encounter into a rapid end for the Galaxy-class.
The SSD has armour, is very big and even the destruction of the bridge would have no good reason, on such a large craft, to dramatically incapacitate it (so would think the Federation crew).
Add shields for which each patch is ought to sustain a heavy bombardment from different capital ships before going down and the G-C would have a hard time bisecting the SSD before she'd be smoked out of the sky.

But if the G-C is parked out of the SSD's range, it can lob groups of torpedoes and totally cripple the SSD and finish it quickly after that.

[2046]

Well, I don't know about "quickly" . . . I mean, that SSD's a huge honkin' bird.

The Defiant's crew considered the ship running low at 45 torpedoes in wartime. In peacetime, Voyager had only 38 loaded for her mission to the Badlands, plus at least two tricobalt thingies. But the Enterprise-D was carrying 250 in peacetime in "Conundrum".

So I'm not too worried about a Galaxy Class having the goods to tear into the Executor. And as we've seen more than once, if you can hit the reactor you can cause the ship to explode. The most notable example was "Cargo of Doom"[TCW], though we also see an immediate evacuation order upon the reactor being hit in "Nomad Droids", and in the Episode IV radio play the Tantive IV reactor had to be shut down upon being hit lest the ship explode.

Come to think of it, I think that deserves a page all its own . . . after all, the Star Trek side's been beaten over the head for years with exploding warp cores, and rightfully so . . . but fairness demands that the topic be treated equally if there seems to be an equal problem.

Indeed, I can think of an occasion or two of exploding consoles in the prequels and TCW that might fit on a page like that, too.

But I digress . . .

Even if some might argue that 250 torpedoes wouldn't be enough to tear the huge SSD apart bulkhead by bulkhead, certainly that's enough firepower to render it a mission-killed burning wreck, and, if the reactor was properly damaged, a big exploded mass of debris.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Well yes, the idea wasn't to literally turn the ship to pebbles. Plus those phasers would help as well, ocne the ship is knocked out.

[Picard]

The SSD primarily a carrier? I don't know . . . when I think of a hardcore carrier, I think more of the Republic Attack Cruiser, which was just bursting with apertures for smaller ships, and even split along the top for the purpose. She was virtually a through-deck, and yet canonically was not named as a carrier. Even then, though, the Attack Cruiser really didn't carry that many fighters, when you get down to it.

I was referring to this:


And carrier does not necessarily carry only aircraft. SSD would be something between Iowa class (large battleship, command ship), Nimitz class (largest combat ship, command ship for a group of warships, aircraft carrier), and Tarawa class (aircraft carrier, troop carrier, amphibious assault ship). So it would carry fighters, transport craft and ground troops, with latter two potentially taking up far more space than fighters.

Certainly there was sufficient room to make mere throwaway space give the SSD more carrier space than most other ships, but we don't see much evidence of a lot of things being carried. It's kind of like the Death Star problem, where theoretically they ought to have been able to fighter-spam the Rebels but instead we virtually get just Darth Vader's fighter and an unarmed guy in a space suit yelling "pew-pew" really loud.

I got impression that Veer's assault force came from the Executor?

[Mith]

The Galaxy Class completely owns the field in the areas of weapons range, sublight acceleration, and almost certainly maneuverability. The SSD wouldn't even come close in weapons range or acceleration, unless it's suddenly faster than the Falcon.

I don't know how many guns are on the Super Star Destroyers, but assuming at least 100 cannons in the 1.5 megaton range, and assuming a decent firing rate, the SSD could lob the equivalent of a photon torpedo with every salvo, plus extra for what I would presume are numerous smaller guns. Let's just call it the equivalent of a full spread of torpedoes every few seconds.

So, if the entire bridge crew of the Enterprise were knocked on the noggin and forgot how to position themselves outside the weapons range of the opposing vessel (as we've seen Starfleet captains do), and if Riker forgot how to return fire again, then the SSD could take the Enterprise after a time.

I say "after a time" because although the SSD is lobbing that much firepower potentially, we know that even at short range and with a stationary target, a bridge tower similar in size to a midrange Federation starship was only hit once in a blue moon.

Put simply, based on what we've seen it seems unlikely that a gun at the rear of the SSD would hit a target the front of the same SSD on the first try.

We don't know the resilience of an SSD, but given that RotJ shows one being overwhelmed by the Rebel fleet . . . the entirety of which probably failed to match its volume, given that it was about 38 times bigger than the Mon Calamari Home One . . . I don't see them as being as resilient as their size would suggest they ought to be. Harder to kill than an ISD or Republic Attack Cruiser? Sure. But a juggernaut well nigh impervious to attack? Not so much. They are command ships, impressive to look at, but seemingly erring more on the side of prissy pomposity than wanton bloodthirsty warshippiness.

I'd actually suggest far less in terms of their turbolasers, closer to several terajoules per barrel at most for the larger ships. If the Enterprise D was for some reason, within close range, the particle weapons could put some decent damage on the shields, but I find this unlikely and the Enterprise has every reason to remain at range, drop their shields with their photon torpedoes and then rip them apart with several well-placed phaser shots.


EDIT

Ooh, a SSD? Sorry, I was thinking an ISD for some reason.

Yeah, the Enterprise is going to need to stay out of the near vicinity of its weapon ranges. If it gets in close enough for the Executor to bring its particle weapons to bear, the Enterprise will be ripped apart by sheer ROF. But as I said, most particle weapons don't really have the sort of range as a phaser. If they can hang back, the Enterprise could eventually punch through its shields and hopefully, hit something vital.

Still, hell of a task.

So I'm not too worried about a Galaxy Class having the goods to tear into the Executor. And as we've seen more than once, if you can hit the reactor you can cause the ship to explode. The most notable example was "Cargo of Doom"[TCW], though we also see an immediate evacuation order upon the reactor being hit in "Nomad Droids", and in the Episode IV radio play the Tantive IV reactor had to be shut down upon being hit lest the ship explode.

Come to think of it, I think that deserves a page all its own . . . after all, the Star Trek side's been beaten over the head for years with exploding warp cores, and rightfully so . . . but fairness demands that the topic be treated equally if there seems to be an equal problem.

I'd like to see that.

Even if some might argue that 250 torpedoes wouldn't be enough to tear the huge SSD apart bulkhead by bulkhead, certainly that's enough firepower to render it a mission-killed burning wreck, and, if the reactor was properly damaged, a big exploded mass of debris.

It probably wouldn't, not unless we're talking direct hits here, some of them within the bulkheads. It certainly still has enough torpedoes to mission kill the ship, but the Enterprise's best beat against its armor is to turn its phasers on the exposed hull and either drill deep into one of its core systems (reactor--though unlikely given it's Picard, shields, heat sinks, life support, vents, and engines) or attempt to give the Executor the death of a thousand cuts.