Enterprise NX-01 vs Normandy SR-2 (Mass Effect)

[Jedi Master Spock]

Erm, I keep seeing that one creep up, but how do we know it even was of the size of a mountain. It seems to be nothing more than the little mound left in the middle of some couple kilometers wide crater. Like, you know, nothing to brag about much.

As quoted earlier in this thread:

ARCHER: What about yesterday? I saw you blow something up the size of Mount McKinley.
REED: Yes sir, but that was due to an overload.

Mount McKinley has a peak about 6,200 meters above sea level - about 5,500 meters from base to peak. It's a Terran go-to standard when it comes to large mountains.

They were on lower setting?

When first fired, yes. Which got their attention. I mean, previously, the Klingons pretty much considered the NX completely laughable.

They also were effective only because the Klingon ship had minimal shielding on aft. Considering that we see ships use phasers a lot, even after the NX got photonic torps iirc, wouldn't that mean that there's not so much of a big advantage with torps?

The NX had a fairly limited supply of torpedoes, but I'm pretty sure the photonics come out almost every time the NX crew realizes they need some serious firepower.

I expect that the next generation of ships following the NX class - the only canon candidate we have is the Daedalus - would mount significantly more powerful phase cannons. I see the imbalance between photonic torpedo power and (nominal) phase cannon power as being a temporary thing, clearly the result of Earth adopting wholesale a relatively mature piece of alien technology.

I doubt it could be shaped, but you never know.
In TNG, the E-D still used vanilla omnidirectional torps, and it took quite some time for Data (I think it was him), like hours, to make sure the torpedo could be specially modified in order to be shaped. Considering that if Data could make such a modification rapidly, yet the UFP didn't come with shaped torps, it seems the modification had a significant cost. One could be less guidance, much smaller range, lower velocity, weaker shields or less firepower. I haven't seen the episode though so I can't tell if any of those suggestions would fit.

I doubt that photonic torpedoes use "shaped" explosions at all. I'm pretty sure that it's not safe for the NX to fire maximum yield torpedoes at point-blank range, even if it was never explicitly mentioned.

Oh there's been a huge discussion about what Mass Effect shields can stop, and it's been messy when we started talking about the Mass Effect fields themselves, and just how exactly they affected mass, over what distances, etc. It's quite complicated. There's also been a discussion about the shields of different types and the whole question of do they stop particles yes or no and at what speeds.

Oh oh oh! If we're talking about Earth's first shields and torp shields, I feel absolutely compelled to dig a link to that SFJN thread were I more or less recently (a few months ago) exposed my views about this. Or perhaps it was at SBC.
I'll have to find it. What I can say right there, although it's just a bit of the whole paint, is that I totally agree about the Vissian origin of the photonic torpedoes.

Is it this thread?

[Mr. Oragahn]

Erm, I keep seeing that one creep up, but how do we know it even was of the size of a mountain. It seems to be nothing more than the little mound left in the middle of some couple kilometers wide crater. Like, you know, nothing to brag about much.

As quoted earlier in this thread:

ARCHER: What about yesterday? I saw you blow something up the size of Mount McKinley.
REED: Yes sir, but that was due to an overload.

Mount McKinley has a peak about 6,200 meters above sea level - about 5,500 meters from base to peak. It's a Terran go-to standard when it comes to large mountains.

Ah, I see the problem then. You have something like phaser banks which can be overloaded to a couple terajoules, blast a 6.2 km high mountain in a very explosive manner...
Rationalization: technobabble, and quite a very exceptional one, since this time it seems energy came out of nowhere to amplify what appeared to be a rather conventional explosion, not even a NDF reaction!

They also were effective only because the Klingon ship had minimal shielding on aft. Considering that we see ships use phasers a lot, even after the NX got photonic torps iirc, wouldn't that mean that there's not so much of a big advantage with torps?

The NX had a fairly limited supply of torpedoes, but I'm pretty sure the photonics come out almost every time the NX crew realizes they need some serious firepower.

On the same hand, they're not that much more powerful. It's understandable they don't waste them if they don't have much of them either.
Wouldn't a multiplier of 10 feel right, as an example?

Oh there's been a huge discussion about what Mass Effect shields can stop, and it's been messy when we started talking about the Mass Effect fields themselves, and just how exactly they affected mass, over what distances, etc. It's quite complicated. There's also been a discussion about the shields of different types and the whole question of do they stop particles yes or no and at what speeds.

Oh oh oh! If we're talking about Earth's first shields and torp shields, I feel absolutely compelled to dig a link to that SFJN thread were I more or less recently (a few months ago) exposed my views about this. Or perhaps it was at SBC.
I'll have to find it. What I can say right there, although it's just a bit of the whole paint, is that I totally agree about the Vissian origin of the photonic torpedoes.

Is it this thread?

THis would be the thread indeed, but I'm sure I mirrored this position at SFJN in the following weeks. Anyway the crux of the argument is quite there. The shields of torps are chaotic, particles saturated and highly charged, running on shorst lived generators pushed to max, lethal to humans (so you don't use torp shields like you use ship shields), etc.
That's actually why, despite the speculatory nature of the claim, using the battle in the nebula is barely relevant to torpedoes shields, for a wide variety of reasons. Oh I'm sure Leo would have shouted "speculation! speculation!", but the point is that it works and it's not far fetched, and I think that's quite noble in this.

I realize I also missed a couple posts from people in the SBC thread. I noticed one of l33telboi's arguments:

And as if that wasn't enough. The Vissians promise to show the Enterprise advanced hull materials capable of withstanding enough heat to dive deep into the photospheres of stars without trouble. But those plans come crashing down due to the aforementioned suicide.

So the Vissians had a tech that would allow ships to fly into photospheres? Clearly, perhaps they didn't put shields on their ships, but surely they wouldn't need to go through the pain of metaphasic shields like the E-D needed to centuries later.
That said, of course, it swings both ways, because the UFP never got access to that tech apparently. It's probable that the Vissians gave the UFP weapons which the Vissians themselves had nothing to fear about, considering the quality of their hulls apparently. Giving them torps would be a sign of good faith, friendship and allowing the UFP to defend itself, without giving too much to the point the Vissians would be idiotic in losing their advantage.

As for the state of relations, four episodes in a TV show is quite a lot of time, especially in diplomatic relations. Things can change very rapidly.

As for the Normandy's shields, old and new, if you've read the SBC thread, you probably saw what kind of a mess it is. Technical the kinetic barriers repel fast and dense discrete objects, but they're unable to do anything against streams of particles???

[Jedi Master Spock]

Ah, I see the problem then. You have something like phaser banks which can be overloaded to a couple terajoules, blast a 6.2 km high mountain in a very explosive manner...
Rationalization: technobabble, and quite a very exceptional one, since this time it seems energy came out of nowhere to amplify what appeared to be a rather conventional explosion, not even a NDF reaction!

It's quite problematic on that account.

On the same hand, they're not that much more powerful. It's understandable they don't waste them if they don't have much of them either.
Wouldn't a multiplier of 10 feel right, as an example?

Not in terms of comparing the pre-upgrade phase cannons and the post-upgrade photonic torpedoes.

"Judgement" shows that Klingon ships can completely laugh at the NX's pre-overhaul phase cannons.

Photonic torpedoes on a low yield are sufficient to get their attention and suddenly take the NX seriously, meaning that they're much stronger than what the NX had to offer.

Photonic torpedoes on a higher yield are capable of actually giving them pause, and when the Klingon captain leaves a hole in his deflector shields, are actually capable of destroying it. Now, I'll grant that the post-upgrade phase cannons may be capable of significantly higher yields than the pre-upgrade phase cannons; we seem to have some indications of that in subsequent battles.

However, the upgrades to the NX at the end of the second season were serious enough to move the NX from being a ship that could be curbstomped by ships that Klingon vessels could curbstomp (Vulcans, Andorians, et cetera), to a ship that could actually engage Birds of Prey and not immediately get stomped.

Oh there's been a huge discussion about what Mass Effect shields can stop, and it's been messy when we started talking about the Mass Effect fields themselves, and just how exactly they affected mass, over what distances, etc. It's quite complicated. There's also been a discussion about the shields of different types and the whole question of do they stop particles yes or no and at what speeds.

Now that I've reviewed the thread, I think I have a pretty good understanding of what the mass effect fields will and will not stop - and how to derive it qualitatively.

In general, the mass effect field is designed to have a chance of stopping a shot fired from the ship's own main gun by applying a "mass field" - a gravitational-type force spread over a distance. The cyclonic shield applies the force sideways instead of outwards.

If you think that phase cannons are firing slow particles, you'll conclude that the Normandy's shields should be effective at deflecting phase cannons. If you think that phase cannons are supposed to be near lightspeed weapons, as ship-to-ship phasers clearly are when fired at long ranges, you'll conclude that they'll be ineffective.

Myself, I feel that taking bolt speed perfectly literally from visuals is a very bad idea; some universes, such as Star Wars, get completely ruined by that, and others, including Star Trek, exhibit truly absurd levels of inconsistency (even ENT; bolt speeds which are measurable at point-blank preclude being able to target mobile ships at 100 km as in "The Aenar"), and that we should assume that the mass effect fields will only minimally deflect a phase cannon beam.

Against the blast from a photonic torpedo, it'll do almost completely nothing. The GARDIAN lasers are the only thing that will. There, the two main questions are how easy it is to shoot down photonic torpedoes, and what range it's likely to happen at.

Photonic torpedoes of the era probably have duranium casings, but since the GARDIAN system is able to disable Mass Effect fighters, it's probably powerful enough to blow them up, except in the odd case that they're shielded.

And as if that wasn't enough. The Vissians promise to show the Enterprise advanced hull materials capable of withstanding enough heat to dive deep into the photospheres of stars without trouble. But those plans come crashing down due to the aforementioned suicide.

So the Vissians had a tech that would allow ships to fly into photospheres? Clearly, perhaps they didn't put shields on their ships, but surely they wouldn't need to go through the pain of metaphasic shields like the E-D needed to centuries later.

Actually, the E-D was capable of diving into the star; it simply didn't handle staying there very well. Photon torpedoes were very capable of diving into a star.

We've seen the E-D hull heated to up to 12,000 degrees; the Vissian ship reached 18,000. It's quite possible that the later era UFP is capable of using trinesium construction, but that tritanum and duranium are preferred for various reasons. As I recall, the Vissian ship was a toxic environment for humans; their hull technology may have some complications that made it not worth pursuing.

It is also possible that the Vissians decided to keep to themselves, but the sudden development of photonic torpedoes seems to be too much of a coincidence to be anything but borrowed technology.

[Mike DiCenso]

Ah, I see the problem then. You have something like phaser banks which can be overloaded to a couple terajoules, blast a 6.2 km high mountain in a very explosive manner...

Rationalization: technobabble, and quite a very exceptional one, since this time it seems energy came out of nowhere to amplify what appeared to be a rather conventional explosion, not even a NDF reaction!

It's quite problematic on that account.

No, the power for this event did not come from "nowhere". It either came from the ship itself, or it came from the alien sabotage and monitoring device. Also, if you scale the phase cannon beams to the peak itself, you wind up with with it being only at best a few hundred meters tall and about as wide at the base.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Well that's exact. If you go by the size of the phase cannons' two beams, and assume they never widened, the mound is small. Why would they widen naturally? It generally takes a special mode to get a wide setting, and when it happens the beams are diffused, they don't look like concentrated streams of light and matter but like some stretched aurora borealis.

But Archer makes a comparison to the mountain. It's almost like if it's two different events. :p
I see no reason why the cannons could even suddenly tolerate petajoules of energy, no matter how they were fiddled with. You just can't suddenly increase what a system can deal by so many orders of magnitude without rebuilding from scratch with such potential or tolerance in mind.

Perhaps a trillion antimatter rabbits lived under that "mountain"?

[Jedi Master Spock]

Well that's exact. If you go by the size of the phase cannons' two beams, and assume they never widened, the mound is small. Why would they widen naturally? It generally takes a special mode to get a wide setting, and when it happens the beams are diffused, they don't look like concentrated streams of light and matter but like some stretched aurora borealis.

Collimating a beam is tricky business.

I consider scalings on beam/bolt width to be highly unreliable for that reason; but even then, the blast fills (and deepens) pretty much the entire crater surrounding the mountain.

However, I think I'd like to recap.

We have nothing (as of yet) indicating a real difference in maneuverability. It is most likely that if the NX-01 starts off by firing photonic torpedoes at range, the GARDIAN system will be able to shoot down the first several; enough that the crew of the NX will conclude that a change of tactics is needed. I find I agree with Stargazer that it's not too likely the NX will overwhelm the GARDIAN system with targets.

The SR-2 will take mostly cosmetic damage from far-proximity photonic torpedo shots if the NX opens up with maximum yield, which is not likely (usually they would fire first on a lower yield); we may see some reduction in its laser system efficiency or its cyclonic shields being converted to normal ME fields if this is the case.

Meanwhile the SR-2 will have been able to score a couple hits using its Thanix Cannon, which is most likely strong enough to threaten the NX. The NX must maneuver well in order to evade the fixed main gun, and must either land a fairly large number of phase cannon hits, or identify and destroy the GARDIAN mounts, then knock it sideways with a photonic torpedo (likely detonating at the edge of the SR-2's shields, but that's probably enough to do substantial damage).

I think the SR-2 most likely has an advantage. It's not an overwhelming one, and it's a delicate advantage; if photonic torpedoes are well shielded or very well armored, or if the NX has a substantial advantage in maneuverability, that could easily change. This is one of the closer proposed match-ups I've seen in a while. Good pick, Stargazer.

[Mike DiCenso]

Well that's exact. If you go by the size of the phase cannons' two beams, and assume they never widened, the mound is small. Why would they widen naturally? It generally takes a special mode to get a wide setting, and when it happens the beams are diffused, they don't look like concentrated streams of light and matter but like some stretched aurora borealis.

But Archer makes a comparison to the mountain. It's almost like if it's two different events. :p
I see no reason why the cannons could even suddenly tolerate petajoules of energy, no matter how they were fiddled with. You just can't suddenly increase what a system can deal by so many orders of magnitude without rebuilding from scratch with such potential or tolerance in mind.

Perhaps a trillion antimatter rabbits lived under that "mountain"?

Hyperbolic statements. We've seen phase cannons used to provide precision weapons fire to cover boarding parties in episodes like "Shockwave, part I", and the beams we only about 1.5 to 3 meters in diameter. Even if they expand several times that over hundreds of kilometers, it still would not make that peak anywhere near the size of Mount McKinley.

As far as what phase cannons do, we already know clearly from "In a Mirror, Darkly, part II", that phasers and phase weapons are not the same thing at all.
-Mike

[l33telboi]

In a straight up fight I'd say that whichever ship gets the first few hits wins. The Enterprise shouldn't be capable of withstanding the Thanix cannon for more then a few shots, similarly I doubt the Normandy would fare well against a few hits from the phase cannons, given that they would ignore kinetic barriers. Photon torpedoes are a different matter. The GARDIAN point-defense system on the Normandy would probably detonate them before they can reach the ship, but the question is, can they detonate them before they get close enough to damage the vessel?

So which ship gets the first few hits? It's iffy. The Thanix cannon is rather on the slow side in terms of how fast the beam propagates, but with Mass Effect you never really know whether the visuals are an accurate representation or not. The weapon is also axially mounted, meaning that the entire SR-2 has to turn towards the NX-01 to fire. The NX-01 in comparison has turreted weapons and multiple emitters, meaning they can fire in any direction. The Normandy seems more agile, however, though I don't know how much that will matter since the NX-01 doesn't need to turn in order to target the enemy vessel.

Effective range of either ship? This would again depend much on how we treat the visuals in relation to the Thanix cannon.

...and in "Stormfront," a damaged NX-01 has trouble locking onto a stationary target at 100 kilometers.

Are you referring to the incident where the Enterprise is trying to target the building on earth from orbit? If so, then it should be pointed out that they specifically say this is due to the damage the ship had taken, and it's indicated that had the ship not been damaged, it would've been able to do it.

It will be interesting to see how the Normandy shields will react to a multi-megaton explosion. Mass Effect ships are (going by Codex and game dialog) limited mostly by how much heat they can store.

Long story short - the shields can prevent the photon torpedoes from physically reaching the hull of the vessel, but they can do nothing to stop the radiation from them once they explode. And no, the upgrade is not stated to change this. Relevant quotes from the codex:

Kinetic barriers, colloquially called 'shields', provide protection against most mass accelerator weapons. Whether on a starship or a soldiers' suits of armor, the basic principle remains the same.

Kinetic barriers are repulsive mass effect fields projected from tiny emitters. These shields safely deflect small objects traveling at rapid velocities. This affords protection from bullets and other dangerous projectiles, but still allows the user to sit down without knocking away their chair.

The shielding afforded by kinetic barriers does not protect against extremes of temperature, toxins, or radiation.

[Jedi Master Spock]

...and in "Stormfront," a damaged NX-01 has trouble locking onto a stationary target at 100 kilometers.

Are you referring to the incident where the Enterprise is trying to target the building on earth from orbit? If so, then it should be pointed out that they specifically say this is due to the damage the ship had taken, and it's indicated that had the ship not been damaged, it would've been able to do it.

And we see it do precisely that in "The Aenar." So damaged, it cannot lock onto a stationary target at that range; undamaged, it can lock onto a mobile target at that range. To me, that suggests it's about maximum effective range.

We also have a third point of evidence: The 0.2% scanner error in "Fight or Flight." This is higher than desired, but probably not more than several times the normal error of the scanners. To hit a 200m ship at 100 km requires precision of 0.1% - one meter of miss per kilometer of range, from the combination of scanner error, firing delay, and cannon alignment.

There is one incident in which the NX-01 appears to be able to lock onto a target at longer range. This is in "Cold Station 12," in which T'Pol orders photonic torpedoes loaded, and then orders weapons locked at 5,000 kilometers from the station. The NX does not, however, fire at the station until substantially later.

All things considered, I'm very confident that the maximum effective firing range of the NX's phase cannons is about 100 kilometers against other ships of similar size after its upgrade. I'm quite a bit less sure of the photonic torpedoes' range.

My best guess is that their maximum designed effective range is 5,000 kilometers - this would align with "Cold Station 12" in the most generous fashion possible, and would put spatial torpedo range at 100 kilometers, matching phase cannons. (As mentioned earlier, "The Expanse" gives us photonic torpedo range as over fifty times spatial torpedo range.)

[Mike DiCenso]

You're missing at least one other example of longer range for the NX-01. In "The Beach" (Season 2) weapons fire from the local planetary government troops endangers the landing party there, and the following dialog occurs:

ARCHER: One of your patrols has opened fire in the vicinity of the caves. Your general order doesn't go into affect for another hour and a half.

GOVERNOR [OC]: I assure you, they're not targeting your crewmen or the Denobulans.

ARCHER: Then who are they shooting at?

GOVERNOR [OC]: Soldiers from the previous regime. They've refused to accept the shift in power.

ARCHER: That's not my concern. You're endangering my people. You've got to wait until they're in the clear.

GOVERNOR [OC]: I'm afraid that's impossible.


ARCHER: It's what we agreed to.

GOVERNOR [OC]: We agreed to give you three days, nothing more.

ARCHER: Target the patrol that's firing at those caves.

GOVERNOR [OC]: If you attack us, we'll retaliate.

T'POL: We're locked onto the co-ordinates.

ARCHER: Charge weapons.

GOVERNOR [OC]: Do you really want to be at war with us, Captain?

ARCHER: The question is do you want to be at war with us. It sounds like you've got your hands full already. Stick to our original agreement and you won't find yourself fighting on two fronts.

This is obviously prior to "The Expanse" and the upgrades to the ship, plus the need for precision targetting so as not to further endanger the landing party as well as the fact that the good Govenor took the theat seriously, I think it safe to say that not only where phase cannons being charged up here, but that their range would be in the hundreds of kilometers at minimum given the orbital visuals seen here (the images are left and middle of the last row).
-Mike

[User1401]

In a straight up fight I'd say that whichever ship gets the first few hits wins. The Enterprise shouldn't be capable of withstanding the Thanix cannon for more then a few shots, similarly I doubt the Normandy would fare well against a few hits from the phase cannons, given that they would ignore kinetic barriers. Photon torpedoes are a different matter. The GARDIAN point-defense system on the Normandy would probably detonate them before they can reach the ship, but the question is, can they detonate them before they get close enough to damage the vessel?

So which ship gets the first few hits? It's iffy. The Thanix cannon is rather on the slow side in terms of how fast the beam propagates, but with Mass Effect you never really know whether the visuals are an accurate representation or not. The weapon is also axially mounted, meaning that the entire SR-2 has to turn towards the NX-01 to fire. The NX-01 in comparison has turreted weapons and multiple emitters, meaning they can fire in any direction. The Normandy seems more agile, however, though I don't know how much that will matter since the NX-01 doesn't need to turn in order to target the enemy vessel.

Effective range of either ship? This would again depend much on how we treat the visuals in relation to the Thanix cannon.

The codex states that the Thanix fires its beam at a fraction of the speed of light. The visuals don't necessarily need to be reconciled because codex & dialogue supersede visuals for Mass Effect, but can be explained by the fact that nothing on screen moves relative to the beam when it seems to be going slow, thus leaving the possibility that this is an extremely slow-motion scene.

Since the Thanix has such speed and is stated to have the firepower of a cruiser, and since cruisers likely have the range of thousands of kilometers, it's safe to assume that the Thanix has such range at minimum.

Long story short - the shields can prevent the photon torpedoes from physically reaching the hull of the vessel, but they can do nothing to stop the radiation from them once they explode. And no, the upgrade is not stated to change this. Relevant quotes from the codex:

This might not apply to the Normandy SR-2's upgraded shields, which Tali states may give them a better chance against the Collector ship, which has particle beams. Emphasis on "might", though.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Well that's exact. If you go by the size of the phase cannons' two beams, and assume they never widened, the mound is small. Why would they widen naturally? It generally takes a special mode to get a wide setting, and when it happens the beams are diffused, they don't look like concentrated streams of light and matter but like some stretched aurora borealis.

But Archer makes a comparison to the mountain. It's almost like if it's two different events. :p
I see no reason why the cannons could even suddenly tolerate petajoules of energy, no matter how they were fiddled with. You just can't suddenly increase what a system can deal by so many orders of magnitude without rebuilding from scratch with such potential or tolerance in mind.

Perhaps a trillion antimatter rabbits lived under that "mountain"?

Hyperbolic statements. We've seen phase cannons used to provide precision weapons fire to cover boarding parties in episodes like "Shockwave, part I", and the beams we only about 1.5 to 3 meters in diameter. Even if they expand several times that over hundreds of kilometers, it still would not make that peak anywhere near the size of Mount McKinley.

As far as what phase cannons do, we already know clearly from "In a Mirror, Darkly, part II", that phasers and phase weapons are not the same thing at all.
-Mike

With Tucker's thousand NXes needed to blast a planet, it's starting to make a lot of precise yet hyperbolic statements. Time before we treat Reed's statement as hyperbole?

[Jedi Master Spock]

You're missing at least one other example of longer range for the NX-01. In "The Beach" (Season 2) weapons fire from the local planetary government troops endangers the landing party there,

Granted. I missed that one on my pass through. There's nothing explicit about range, but that should probably be more than 100 km.

It's also against a relatively stationary ground target, but looks to be pretty precise. Still, I'm going to still favor 100 km as the expected effective range of the NX's phase cannon in this particular case.

This might not apply to the Normandy SR-2's upgraded shields, which Tali states may give them a better chance against the Collector ship, which has particle beams. Emphasis on "might", though.

I'm doubting it rather heavily at this point.

With Tucker's thousand NXes needed to blast a planet, it's starting to make a lot of precise yet hyperbolic statements. Time before we treat Reed's statement as hyperbole?

What's interesting about that line is that it's basically the same thing Han Solo says in ANH.

A thousand really isn't that precise.

[Mr. Oragahn]

With Tucker's thousand NXes needed to blast a planet, it's starting to make a lot of precise yet hyperbolic statements. Time before we treat Reed's statement as hyperbole?

What's interesting about that line is that it's basically the same thing Han Solo says in ANH.

A thousand really isn't that precise.

It is not that precise because you're already willing to treat it as hyperbole. On its own merits, the description is actually very precise. And even if the count wasn't meant to exactly represent a thousand ships of the NX type, it still vehicles an idea about the order of magnitude here.

[quote="Tucker, in "The Forgotten""]
Hell, it'd take at least a thousand starships like Enterprise to blow up an entire planet. [/quote]

It would take at least a thousand NXes to blow up a planet.
We blew up a mountain the size of McKinley with our phase cannons.
A torpedo is capable of leaving a three kilometer wide in an asteroid.

The only changing factor is the likeliness, and that's only if you have a basic knowledge of what it takes to do X.

[sonofccn]

It would take at least a thousand NXes to blow up a planet.
We blew up a mountain the size of McKinley with our phase cannons.
A torpedo is capable of leaving a three kilometer wide in an asteroid.

The only changing factor is the likeliness, and that's only if you have a basic knowledge of what it takes to do X.

Well you also have to account for the context. Tucker was really starting to lose it at that point, with good reason, and the thousand could simply been him pulling a large number out of his rear.

Similarly, but under a far less extreme variant, Archer was slightly stressed trying to stop the "Silent Enemy" and could similarly spoke as hyperbole. Now yes under normal circustances I'd call that what it was a cop out but since we have have harder claims by Trip and Reed in that episode, being more firmer and specific, I'd chalk Archer comment up as an exageration.

Lastly Reed's photonic statment was him trying to inform Trip I believe of thier capability and he was slightly more specific than if he was using merely hyperbole. Claiming it would put a three kilometer crator into an asteriod as opposed to claiming it would utterly vaporize it or incinerate it or reduce it to rubble. Doesn't rule it out all togather but, in my opinon of course, it has the strongest legs to stand on.