LMAO@SpaceBattles!

[Mr. Oragahn]

To be honest, I tended to ignore the weird gravity thing in order to have a case which could be used to obtain a yield of some sort, but really, that thing about gravity and else makes no sense. Would have been better to just say the ship is there and voila. Of course they wanted a reason to bring E-D inside and no shuttle.
I'd have penned it so the field became dangerous (too many high speed collisions) or made it so the E-D was attacked by pirates and they got them down but were damaged, and couldn't survive an engagement with a much more hostile Romulan warbird (say two or more) and then Picard would order the E-D to be parked inside the asteroid to use it as a cover. Either they'd have found that the Pegasus was there beforehand (like, after sending a probe or shuttle), or would have found it by sheer dumb luck when entering the asteroid.
The former would be better so we'd have Riker still pull his speech about blasting the asteroid from outside, although the second scenario would also allow Riker to suggest blasting the rock from inside, perhaps with some critical mass build up from the Pegasus warp core, or detonating several torpedoes set on a delay.

But you'll excuse me, as I'm putting this on hold to read some awesome "let's claim megajoule level fireball guns for Wraith capital ships" thread from someone who has watched an episode of SGA and thinks and has unlocked his mind to the real of Truth all Truths about Stargate firepower.
Seems like he has slept during the former episodes then.

[Trinoya]

Just thought I'd link to this gem of a thread.

http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=198533

[Mike DiCenso]

*Shakes head in amazement*

I really love how people are still trying to push the TNG TM 64 MT yeild for photon torpedoes in that thread.
-Mike

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

*Shakes head in amazement*

I really love how people are still trying to push the TNG TM 64 MT yeild for photon torpedoes in that thread.
-Mike

You can bet both your bollocks that if they were posting the 690gt figures or the hand phaser stats the usual suspects would be howling about the TM's not being canon.

[Jedi Master Spock]

*Shakes head in amazement*

I really love how people are still trying to push the TNG TM 64 MT yeild for photon torpedoes in that thread.
-Mike

Honestly, the TNG TM photon torpedo yield isn't that ridiculous. It does fall short of the more energetic examples, but there are very few people who would claim that photon torpedoes range much higher than a gigaton (i.e., a factor of 16).

It's not like the ICS figures, which are usually at least three orders of magnitude off from what's seen in the movie (that's as close as you can get the Slave I cannons if you're generous).

[Praeothmin]

Yeah, Leo1 being Leo1 isn't very surprising...

You cannot more obviously ignore evidence, unless of course you are SWST...

[Mike DiCenso]

*Shakes head in amazement*

I really love how people are still trying to push the TNG TM 64 MT yeild for photon torpedoes in that thread.
-Mike

Honestly, the TNG TM photon torpedo yield isn't that ridiculous. It does fall short of the more energetic examples, but there are very few people who would claim that photon torpedoes range much higher than a gigaton (i.e., a factor of 16).

It's not like the ICS figures, which are usually at least three orders of magnitude off from what's seen in the movie (that's as close as you can get the Slave I cannons if you're generous).

You might make an arguement for that being a blog-standard photon torpedo yeild, but the fact remains, as calculated here and elsewhere, the torpedo yeilds are often 2-3 times more energetic than the TNG TM number. As Kor points out, you can push the numbers well into the middle gigaton range by going with the more energetic interpretations of the destruction of the Pegasus asteroid, and you can also take that nifty little 690 GT estimate from the TNG TM to argue for single digit petatons. Teratons are even possible, if you permit TDiC, the most energetic interpretation of what Garak says to Worf in "Broken Link" about reducing the Founder's homworld to "cinders" with just the Defiant, and the "blow up a small planet" bit from "The Omega Directive".
-Mike

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

*Shakes head in amazement*

I really love how people are still trying to push the TNG TM 64 MT yeild for photon torpedoes in that thread.
-Mike

Honestly, the TNG TM photon torpedo yield isn't that ridiculous. It does fall short of the more energetic examples, but there are very few people who would claim that photon torpedoes range much higher than a gigaton (i.e., a factor of 16).

It's not like the ICS figures, which are usually at least three orders of magnitude off from what's seen in the movie (that's as close as you can get the Slave I cannons if you're generous).

You might make an arguement for that being a blog-standard photon torpedo yeild, but the fact remains, as calculated here and elsewhere, the torpedo yeilds are often 2-3 times more energetic than the TNG TM number. As Kor points out, you can push the numbers well into the middle gigaton range by going with the more energetic interpretations of the destruction of the Pegasus asteroid, and you can also take that nifty little 690 GT estimate from the TNG TM to argue for single digit petatons. Teratons are even possible, if you permit TDiC, the most energetic interpretation of what Garak says to Worf in "Broken Link" about reducing the Founder's homworld to "cinders" with just the Defiant, and the "blow up a small planet" bit from "The Omega Directive".
-Mike

Obsession, the immunity syndrome and skin of evil are all high power events.

[Mr. Oragahn]

And many of them are nonsense.
The one that's very good to study is "Rise", which can already give several times the TM yield.

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

And many of them are nonsense.
The one that's very good to study is "Rise", which can already give several times the TM yield.

My favorite two are TDIC and obsession especially when dealing with your typical SDN type who for TDIC raves about visuals being the defining characteristic of VS debating to dispute the event while at the same time ignoring "the defining characteristic" visuals for Obsession and focusing on a bit of dialog.....

Plus all of them are far more supporting of higher yield abilities in trek than anything G canon has to support the ICS or higher yields in SW.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Aside from the Death Star, there's clearly nothing at all. It's all pure conjecture.

Now, don't get me wrong, we do see some impressive stuff at the lower levels. For example, the fact that a nimble Jedi starfighter could withstand like four hits from several multi-megajoule main weapons mounted on Slave-I's mid section, the equivalent of several shots from modern tank guns, is quite nice.
But Star Trek put that to shame iirc, with the demonstration of a shuttle being lightly damaged by phaser rifles used to scorch it so as to make it look like it did go through a severe battle, when we know that these rifles can be working in the MJ range on max.
The difference is rather large.

[Mike DiCenso]

And many of them are nonsense.
The one that's very good to study is "Rise", which can already give several times the TM yield.

But not so nonsensical as you might think. "The Pegaus", even if you remove the funky magnetic fields and gravitational issues out of the equation, still leaves you with 114 gigatons per torpedo, if you assume a regular rock-based asteroid of 6.5 x 9 km on the upper end of things. All things taken together, we can make a pretty stong case, if we really want to for an average torpedo being 100-500 megatons, and single digit gigatons on average.
-Mike

[Picard]

But Star Trek put that to shame iirc, with the demonstration of a shuttle being lightly damaged by phaser rifles used to scorch it so as to make it look like it did go through a severe battle, when we know that these rifles can be working in the MJ range on max.
The difference is rather large.

I think that one DS9 episode gives 1.57 GW output for phaser rifles.

[Mike DiCenso]

Actually we don't know what the upper limits for a phaser rifle are exactly, and in the instance that Mr. Oragahn cites, the phaser had been continuously used on the shuttle's hull for a number minutes just to make one modest-sized scorch mark.
-Mike

[Jedi Master Spock]

Actually we don't know what the upper limits for a phaser rifle are exactly, and in the instance that Mr. Oragahn cites, the phaser had been continuously used on the shuttle's hull for a number minutes just to make one modest-sized scorch mark.
-Mike

While Trek materials are unusually strong, that would be an indicator that the hand phaser really wasn't putting out all that much energy at the time. Granted, you probably wouldn't want to use a maximum energy beam on anything you're close to, but it's one of the incidents that suggests phasers are generally not that high energy, at least on normal settings.

Phasers are particularly interesting because they have unusual effects. Thus, the questions of actual energy and destructive effect are not particularly well coupled; if they differ because of strange Treknobabble effects, we expect that destructive effect exceeds actual energy levels. (This is why it's actually puzzling on first glance that Warsies tend to insist that phasers' effect is mostly due to an amplifying chain reaction using target matter; since they cannot mitigate the effects, they wish to mitigate the energy).

The case for them being different isn't that strong. In "Ensigns of Command," we see steam puffs bursting out of pipe nearly a kilometer away from impact from a 24th century hand phaser (several tens of gigajoules, realistically speaking, since that means thousands of cubic meters of steam are under pressure enough to do damage); in "Galileo Seven," we have 23rd century hand phaser batteries being drained to provide what seems probably a few tens of gigajoules. Even this doesn't provide a hard and fast requirement for amplification of destructive effect; it's possible that Data's modifications allowed him to drain most of the phaser's power pack in one shot, or that 24th century hand phasers' power cells contain a bit more energy than 23rd century ones.

At the roughly gigawatt levels that are suggested in DS9, humanoid vaporization from short bursts measuring a visible fraction of a second aren't that strange.

And many of them are nonsense.
The one that's very good to study is "Rise", which can already give several times the TM yield.

But not so nonsensical as you might think. "The Pegaus", even if you remove the funky magnetic fields and gravitational issues out of the equation, still leaves you with 114 gigatons per torpedo, if you assume a regular rock-based asteroid of 6.5 x 9 km on the upper end of things. All things taken together, we can make a pretty stong case, if we really want to for an average torpedo being 100-500 megatons, and single digit gigatons on average.
-Mike

In order to make the TM look anywhere near as inaccurate as the ICS, we would need more than single digit gigatons. As I pointed out, one of the closest quantifiable events from the movie to the ICS are the asteroids the Slave I blasts. It's believable that those guns put out as much as a gigajoule per bolt (pushing the assumptions in the generous direction to support as high a yield as is plausible); the ICS is more on the order of a kiloton per bolt (3.5 orders of magnitude off; shift the parameters and that easily becomes 4-5 orders of magnitude).

"Rise" is really a very good case to study. There are some complications involved with scaling the asteroid next to a glowing photon torpedo, but it's a simple case of knowing exactly what should happen to a nickel-iron asteroid hit with a photon torpedo - mostly vaporized, with no fragments larger than a centimeter - and how energetic the resulting explosion from a non-nickel-iron (but still largely inert) asteroid is (energetic enough that it clearly could have vaporized the asteroid - if only it hadn't fractured too quickly, leaving large intact chunks).

I don't think there are any other cases on the big or little screen that control as many of the unknowns in Star Trek or Star Wars as "Rise" - "Pegasus" has worse scaling problems and involves an asteroid of unusual composition and density. So "Rise" provides a very good measure of photon torpedo yield, just like "Galileo Seven" provides a very good measure of the total energy stored in a hand phaser.