How powerful is Babylon 5?

[Enterprise E]

I know that we haven't debated much about Babylon 5 recently, but I was wondering, how powerful is the B5 universe? What are the ship and station firepowers for the various races? Who would they be a good match for?

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

I know that we haven't debated much about Babylon 5 recently, but I was wondering, how powerful is the B5 universe? What are the ship and station firepowers for the various races? Who would they be a good match for?

The Vorlons, shadows and travelers ect would stomp pretty much anybody if you go by their EU abilities.

[Enterprise E]

Are their EU abilities considered canon? I ask because I've heard conflicting information about that, and I know that their EU abilities are...vastly different from their onscreen feats. Also, what about the younger races? Where do they rank compared to other sci-fi races?

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

Are their EU abilities considered canon? I ask because I've heard conflicting information about that, and I know that their EU abilities are...vastly different from their onscreen feats. Also, what about the younger races? Where do they rank compared to other sci-fi races?

J M Straczynski says the EU is canon, but then most of the books ect are based on outlines written directly by J. Michael Straczynski himself unlike other franchises.

I would say that most if not all of the less advanced younger races were around ST:Enterprise level although it is hard to compare as the B5 verse was a totally divergent line of tech development to trek. A lot of the younger races do not have artificial gravity in their ships or stations and need to rely on rotating sections but they do have fleets of warships far in excess of what we see earth being able to field during the ENT series. They also have jump gates that give them access to hyperspace and as such the ability to reach anywhere in the galaxy that has a gate or if they have a ship large enough they can create their own jump point without a gate.

Over all id say a lower level of tech than ENT from a outside view looking at both but B5 races would be higher up the ladder in their own galaxy compared to how ENT compares to other races in its galaxy.

[Mr. Oragahn]

From the series, it's not impressive until we begin to look at Technomages. But then limitations crop up. There are some numbers of hundreds of megatons used at times for some nukes, but then there are also cases of much less firepower that prove deadly for warships.
The GOD orbital cannons are capable of a certain degree of destruction, and depending on where you place the cursor, the low end will end with kilotons and the high end pretty much anywhere higher as long as you think it fits with the universe, really.

The EU is a bit of a contradiction in some ways. Even if it's from JMS, the point is that in the show, it was clear for example that towards the end of the protracted war, the Shadows and Vorlons decided to come out of the woods and really were going at each other's throats without pulling punches. Hell, even in the novel there's no particular feeling that they're holding back like generally claimed when the reader is allowed to be given samples of Kosh's thoughts.

The Shadow Planet Killer, used to its best potential, is a fantastic weapon. It absorbs vast amounts of energy, so much that any power grid goes down and defenses are inactive. Its complex structure remain in hyperspace or some such while missiles or 1000 MT each I think enter the world, hit the surface, burrow into the crust and explode. You'd have to check Babtech and B5tech for more info, plus perhaps some wiki.
Plus there may be a bonus technobabble effect which can make planets go boom or something.

The Vorlon PK seems much less powerful. I'm not exactly sure if there's been any definitive evidence about its planet busting capacity, but at least it can totally f*** up a planet's biosphere in little time.

I also noticed Fivers critically misunderstanding entire sections of text, notably from the novel that covers the attack on Za'Ha'Dum from Galen's view point, on such cases as the Shadowskin or the survival. I dealt with those problems at SBC, so I'll need to find my posts in case one of you wants to read them.

[Mike DiCenso]

The power levels of B5 are grossly overrated by a lot of it's more fanatical supporters, often with little to no evidence, which is why you rarely see B5 ships tossed into Versus debates anymore. B5 also lacks the large legions of supporters, like SW has, so they do not have the numbers to effect a take over of a forum, or barring that, dogpile on opponents until they are silenced or driven away.

Anyway, there are a couple of good threads that go into ST-SW-B5 match ups just take a look at the "A New Empire in Babylon 5" thread and the "B5, ST & SG stuff (ships, firepower, bits and bangs) " thread that hashes out the issues in good detail.

As for the B5 EU, with it's alleged ancient battlecrab warships that can slice planets in half and such, it runs so contrary to anything in the TV series and TV movies that it almost is a parallel universe. Not even in the worse case scenario did the Vorlons or Shadows, when it would have made sense to do so, ever pulled anything like that out. The Shadow's planet killer would be rendered superfluous by such a thing. So B5 is a bottom feeder power-wise in the Versus debates along with the likes of Firefly and the Reimagined Battlestar Galactica.
-Mike

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

As for the B5 EU, with it's alleged ancient battlecrab warships that can slice planets in half and such, it runs so contrary to anything in the TV series and TV movies that it almost is a parallel universe. Not even in the worse case scenario did the Vorlons or Shadows, when it would have made sense to do so, ever pulled anything like that out. The Shadow's planet killer would be rendered superfluous by such a thing. So B5 is a bottom feeder power-wise in the Versus debates along with the likes of Firefly and the Reimagined Battlestar Galactica.
-Mike

While having the cutting power to do it is impressive it is not exactly a effective weapon used in such a way due to gravity and i would think that it was primarily used to get past the planetary defenses ect and hit underground facilities that the first ones seem to prefer to use.

The shadow planet killer was a weapon of terror for use against the younger races and was no use against other first ones that had ships with much better sensors and weapons than even the excaliber that managed to scan it and find its weakness.

B5 is still the best story ect, well unless im in a DS9 mood as i kinda switch favorites between those two depending on my yearnings.

[The Dude]

Ineffective? Wouldn't slicing a planet in half utterly fuck anything up that was on it and screw the biosphere all to hell?

Yeah it might not go BOOM! ala the Death Star but to the Younger Races (or anyone without shielding technology) it would be a pretty horrific weapon. Add to that if they can slice and dice a planet, their regular old orbital bombardment would be equally scary.

[Who is like God arbour]

Ineffective? Wouldn't slicing a planet in half utterly fuck anything up that was on it and screw the biosphere all to hell?

Yeah it might not go BOOM! ala the Death Star but to the Younger Races (or anyone without shielding technology) it would be a pretty horrific weapon. Add to that if they can slice and dice a planet, their regular old orbital bombardment would be equally scary.

I'm not so sure. Considering the plastic nature of the mantle of a planet, the high pressure and high temperatures, it may be as if you would try to cut water. You get trough it but behind your blade (or energy beam) the cut closes at once. You would damage the crust where you are cutting through it and this could result in earthquakes around the cut. But far away from the cut, it could be possible that there are no noticeable effects. You may end with a planet which has a deep trench going around it similar to the Death Star trench. But of course it depends from the weapons effects.

[Lucky]

Two two megaton bombs destroyed the Black Star from a distance. Some fivers will tell you this was a golden BB, but just a short time later three more Minbari war ships show up looking for the Black Star, and are blown up by a two megaton bomb.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Ineffective? Wouldn't slicing a planet in half utterly fuck anything up that was on it and screw the biosphere all to hell?

Yeah it might not go BOOM! ala the Death Star but to the Younger Races (or anyone without shielding technology) it would be a pretty horrific weapon. Add to that if they can slice and dice a planet, their regular old orbital bombardment would be equally scary.

I'm not so sure. Considering the plastic nature of the mantle of a planet, the high pressure and high temperatures, it may be as if you would try to cut water. You get trough it but behind your blade (or energy beam) the cut closes at once. You would damage the crust where you are cutting through it and this could result in earthquakes around the cut. But far away from the cut, it could be possible that there are no noticeable effects. You may end with a planet which has a deep trench going around it similar to the Death Star trench. But of course it depends from the weapons effects.

The problem with that is that unless your slicer is a pure technoBS weapon, you'll need to meet two things to reach the other end:

Smallest time as possible, and as much energy as available.
Combined, the two form power. Basically, the only way for your beam to get on the other side, through the highly pressured mantle and core, is to have god awful amounts of power and energy.

Now, if it's just hyperbole to say that the ships could drill through the crust...

[Mike DiCenso]

Two two megaton bombs destroyed the Black Star from a distance. Some fivers will tell you this was a golden BB, but just a short time later three more Minbari war ships show up looking for the Black Star, and are blown up by a two megaton bomb.

What I find hilarious about this is how incompetent it makes the Earth Alliance's EarthForce military. Okay, so once you figure out that Minbari ships can be defeated by indirect, proximity blast nukes of low-end yield, do you:

A.) Start implementing this tactic as far as you can take it.

B.) Never use it again, and keep fighting mano-a-mano, ship-to-ship the way you have been until Earth is nearly overrun.

If you chose B, you are correct. Instead of implementing a practice of firing off proximity nukes in the general vicinity of where you know by Mark-I eyeball visual means the Minbari ship or ships are, and then letting the explosions disable or destroy them, the idiotic EarthForce continued to fight as they had always done. Even Sheridan, who came up with the concept, never is mentioned as trying this again. This is why Star Trek's Federation would eat the Minbari for breakfast; get someone like Lt. Stiles and a smart Captain like Kirk and have them do to the Minbari ships what they did to the Romulan BoP using proximity blast phaser bolts and or photon torpedoes, and the UFP steamrollers over the Minbari ships, even if we assume the lower ST firepower numbers (high kiloton to low megaton range) since we know that the Minbari flagship Black Star only absorbed a fraction of each the two nuke mine's total 8,370 TJ energies.
-Mike

[The Dude]

It's worse then that Mike, they never even bothered to manually aim their existing weapons.

[Mr. Oragahn]

I'm willing to consider that the Minbari ships are not necessarily very strong.
One saw its top fin easily punctured by a fighter impact at low speed, and perhaps it's the same incident or independent, but a famous Minbari captain died inside his ship (internal damage) after the ship got more or less lightly hit.
Those ships strike me as artillery ships. Earth ships had sensors which had most difficulties to pick Minbari ships.
I always saw those Sharlin cruisers as best suited for long range shooting, taking on the surprise advantage of score cheap kills.
I also accept the theory that those ships suffered to ranged megaton radiation and kinetic impacts because its cannons were precharged. We see that it's largely in the region of the weapons that the damage occurred.
They're possibly best used as long range attack crafts.
For one, I'd encourage people to read this.

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

As far as i am aware the minbari capital ship design was historically based on fighting the shadows so they went for pure damage output and range because no matter what armour they used or how thick it was it was utterly worthless against shadow weapons.