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Gigatonne vs. Yottawatts

Zakalwe

Zakalwe

Inactive Member
For a long time the SA has measured its shields output in Yottawatts, and the output of some of its weapons. For example the Chiharu, which is meant to be one of the most powerful ships the SA has as its disposal has a shields defence of 55 YottaWatts ever which is meant to be "extremely powerful" and makes "the ship VERY difficult to damage, even with most main gins."

The Yuumi, the SA's major battleship currently, has a shield that can protect against 20 Yottawatts of damage every five-foot area in either kinetic or energy form. That's 20,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules.

This sounds very impressive, and it is, unless you compare it with NDI's weapons output. The problem is that while the SA likes to use watts, going up into the Yotta (10^24), the NDI likes to use it in tons of TNT, gigaton's, or even higher powers.

And this is all well and good, since a conversion ration has never been established, but low and behold, I have calculated it:

1 Ton of TNT = 4.184 GJ

Now, where GJ means the amount of work done, it is effectively interchangable with GW, or Gigawatts.

Now, that's not so bad, because while a GJ is only 1,000,000 joules, a YJ is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, four categories of power above it. However that's only one ton.

For example in the Orion (D) Battleship has weapons, and not it's primary, secondary, or tertiary weapon, but its fourth most powerfull. This weapon (The Type 25 Energy Wave Projection Cannon which it has 4,500 of) has a power that "is measured in the mid-gigaton ranges (50-75 gigatons of destructive power) and it's high-end output generates in excess of 1,000 gigatons at peak levels."

Not too bad, but it's far more impressive once you put it through the formula we now have. And the new figure is:

4,184,000,000 gigawatts.
4,184,000 terrawatts
4,184 petawatts
4.184 exawatts

That's still two orders of magnitudes from Yottawatts, but it is still a reminder that the ship has 4,500 of them, and it by far not the most powerful weapon they have on that ship.

As for main weapons? Let's have a look at the main weapon of the Daishi Super Carrier, the stellar convertor.

The upper limit for this weapon approaches many orders of magnitude above this, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1E38 megatons.

That's 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Megatons.
That's 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Gigatons.
That's 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Teratons.
That's 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Petatons
That's 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Exatons
That's 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Zetatons
That's 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Yottatons

That's off the chart's there is no larger measurements.

I can't even start those calculations, but sufised to say, with that weapon your overwhelmed.

Ah, perhaps I'm being a little harsh, the weapon does have to charge up for two minutes for that power. At it's lowest power it's 1E22 megatons.

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Megaton's
1,000,000,000,000,000,000 Gigaton's
1,000,000,000,000,000 Teraton's
1,000,000,000,000 Petaton's
1,000,000,000 Exaton's
1,000,000 Zettaton's
1,000 Yottaton's

And (to make it easier for me to calculate) that is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Tons. Roughly.
And that means that it is:

4,184,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Watts
4,184,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Kilowatts
4,184,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Megawatts
4,184,000,000,000,000,000,000 Gigawatts
4,184,000,000,000,000,000 Terawatts
4,184,000,000,000,000 Petawatts
4,184,000,000,000 Exawatts
4,184,000,000 Zettawatts
4,184,000 Yottawatts

And it only needs to charge up for 30 seconds. I think I can safely say that the Chiharu could not stand up to that main gun, despite its claim that the shields make "the ship VERY difficult to damage, even with most main gins." More like a casual effort.

There is another weapon that has 1E55 Megatons, and fires once a minute. I'm not going to even start calculating that.

Feel free to make your own conclusions from this, and your own calculations. Perhaps I have only chosen one of the most powerfull weapons at the NDI's disposal (although its actually only the secondary weapon of that ship). However it is something to think upon.

Even that ships 4th most powerfull weapon, the Type 19 plasma cannon, has "The low-end estimate of the Type 19 plasma cannon's destructive power has been measured as the equivalent of a 25 gigaton fusion weapon. High-end estimates have been placed in the 55-60 gigaton range. "

60,000,000,000 tons

= 251,040,000,000 Watts
Or 251.040 gigawatts.

And it has 720 of them.

Perhaps we should reach some form of agreement on this, or at least we should revise the SA's shield strength.

Of course the NDI doesn't like to put down actual quantities for there shields.

I've run out of energy. Maybe I'll talk more later.
 
But Thomas, energy does not equal power.

1 Watt = 1 Joule per second

You're assuming that each volley delivers its entire payload to the shields in 1 second, which might or might not be true. Also, note that none of the weapons can recharge in 1 second.

And I'm guessing that those auxiliary guns don't have the proper placement or effective range to concentrate fire on a single target that's a good distance from the ship, but I'll have to defer to Derran on this one.

Having said all that, taking a direct hit from a capitol ship is always a bad idea. :p Even in 20th Century naval warfare, the victor was usually the one who fired off the first shot. (No. I don't remember the source on this one. Sorry.)
 
Well, in the history of warfare.....the lethality of weapons has always outstripped the effectiveness of defenses.

Ships such as the Orion (D) battleship (of which, only three exist - Ragnarok, Cataclysm, and of course, the Uriel, were designed to be able to take on entire enemy fleets single-handedly. The Daishi Super Carrier (there are only two, the Daishi, and the Mourningstar) is another such ship. They are more of a symbol of Nerimian manufacturing capacity (and part of the Confederation's fail-safe system in the event of its destruction by alien forces), which is why they are so vastly powerful.

Weapons such as the Stellar Converter were designed to attack planetary targets. They aren't designed to merely glass planets (basically eliminate all life), but rather to completely destroy a planet much like the Death Star's main cannon from Star Wars.

Make no mistake, NDI warship weapons are incredibly powerful because they are designed to defeat enemy defenses outright, because naval warfare is that of attrition - whoever shoots first will often win. Given the insane degree of accuracy (if you shoot at something, there is a virtually 100 percent chance of hitting), there's no reason to have weapons that can't effectively render an enemy ship useless in a single salvo.

Equipping ships with enough defensive capacity to deal with such colossal power is proven to be not truly cost-effective, because the degree of power generation (and a conmensurate amount of power distribution and bandwidth) increases exponentionally.

Why else do you think the Star Army has fleets with millions of warships, and not just escorts like destroyers and frigates, but including powerful cruisers and battleships?

Even the NDI, which builds its ships in a far more sturdier manner (but lesser numbers) than the Star Army, upguns its vessels with such powerful weaponry and sensor capacity in hopes of getting that first shot kill. The ships you pointed too, the Orion, Suzaku, and Daishi, are exceptions to the rule. They are designed to survive the kind of insane attacks because they are so incredibly huge that they can equip the kind of generation systems and conduit to power defensive systems on par with their weapons.

Still, no single warship, station, or whatever should be able to handle something like a Stellar Converter.
 
Here's a stupid question, but do planets have shields, and if this is the case what kind of stopping power would they have? Because, I mean, everyone's gotta have a last line of defence.
 
Please note: The Star Army only has 5 active fleets of about 125 ships each, and newer Star Army ships are generally more powerful than their NDI counterparts in terms of primary weaponry (however, Star Army ships usually have less weapons and smaller crews).
 
This year (IC). The fleet plan before this one called for around 3,000 ships.

I've been improving the RP universe by making individual line ships (the ones the characters are RPed on) important again.
 
Seems like that whole Iori star fortress constructing millions of ships in a small timeframe wasn't so useful after all..?
 
I realize that this thread is quite old, but the magnitudes that you are talking about here, along with the relative nonchalance you talk about them with means this is a topic in desperate need of some discussion, since many of you don't seem to get the numbers your talking about here.

The Deathstar has a yield of "onlyâ€
 
The amount of punishment ships/shields can take and the amount of damage weapon can deliver seems really nebulious to me. Listing a weapons power in joules is, for me, going over the top, and listing it as light, moderate, heavy, extremely-heavy, total annihiliation and such doesn't really help my understanding either.

*sigh* I really do like the downgrading Wes is trying to do with the Star Army ship numbers - not only because it makes plotships seem to be able to make more of a difference, too. It does detract from how clinical space battles seems to be.

Um, I'll elaborate on that. I personally do not get a thrill of watching the SDF-1 (Robotech/Macross) fire it's main gun and obliterate several dozen enemy ships. I do get a kick out of seeing battles in Star Trek/Babylon 5 though because they do showcase power, resilience and maneuvering.

What am I supposed to expect from space battles in the SARP now? I'd really would like to know, because it could make all the difference in that light cruiser I'm designing right now ^_^;
 
Um, I'll elaborate on that. I personally do not get a thrill of watching the SDF-1 (Robotech/Macross) fire it's main gun and obliterate several dozen enemy ships. I do get a kick out of seeing battles in Star Trek/Babylon 5 though because they do showcase power, resilience and maneuvering.
Click to expand...

I can relate to that. I'm not much of an anime fan myself.
 
I agree with Kotori, however I also believe that space battles could be made much more interesting if a fighter craft was created that was designed to dog fight and blow up other fighters, which would make being a fighter pilot so much fun. Hmmmmm maybe I will design one!
 
The Star Army's power armor was designed to supercede fightercrafts, which is why Statr Army shuttles are older, less effective models - they're gradually growing outdated. The small craft of choice in the Star Army is the Fox T4 combat aeroshuttle because it serves a role as a landing craft.
 
The energy required to destroy a planet was calculated via a kinematic analysis of the explosion and the size of planet (from which a mass can be calculated). The frame-by-frame analysis of the film allows the velocity and acceleration of the planet-matter to be determined as it is in the process of exploding outward. For the nitty gritty of it, please see this website: http://www.theforce.net/swtc/ds/#power (this is, btw, a excellent SW site, if anyone is interested in it).

In closing, I would like to concur with Kotori in that, yes, Crest of the Stars was awesome.
 
Now, just a darn minute. This is aether we're talking about; it already /is/ a black hole in whatever dimension it comes from. It's only this powerful /because/ it comes from an alterior-dimension black hole. When it is drawn upon in order to fire the aether beam which should in theory annihilate everything, it's just ripping them apart with the energy whose mass equivalency is already dealt with in an arbitrary plane of existence (say, q-r-s-o); the event horizon covers certain other dimensions which are curled upon themselves, in the words of our leading scientists, and so has no effect on space-time (the standard x-y-z-t).

Amirite?

Besides, how do you account for the massive amount of potential energy everything has due to its gravitational attraction to each other? There's something about the mass-energy equivalency that we don't know, and this was brought to my attention while discussing laser weapon recoil...

If you wanna put numbers to stuff, you gotta explain it first. Thass one o' the basic principles of science. Observe, theorize, THEN predict. You ain't theorized aether worth two pennies yet. In fact, no one has. Feel free to do it in a way what makes sense, rather than just saying it doesn't. While you're at it, look up Zesuaium and the Combined Field system, cause I'd sure as knickers love to know what they do to work their magic, too.

If you don't, I'll explain it, and your head will hurt, and you won't be able to put any numbers. The first paragraph of this post is your first warning...

P.S. I would like to post this link:
http://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/misc/destroy.html
...on every Tech page there is, but unfortunately, this is the only one to which it is remotely relevant that I can find at the moment.
The author of the above link said:
This is a guide for those who do not want the Earth to be there anymore.
Click to expand...
 
The aether beam was first developed in Yuumi battleship program and has become a staple of Star Army weaponry. The spatial distortion around the ship is used to release condensed potential energy from the aether, the ubiquitous sea of energy.
Click to expand...

I'm interperting these "Aether" technologies to be comparable to the theorized zero-point energies (which, btw, many physists believe will be renormalized, much as QFT was to eliminate the Dirac Sea). The mass-equivalent could not have been "already dealt with". As soon as the energy left whatever realm it existed in, its mass-equivalent gravity would leave with it, immediatly bringing about the the same effects in our space-time. Matter-equivalency is not some crack pot thoery or some such, it is a fundamental fact of relativity, which has been one of the cornerstone theories in physics for the last half century.

If you could provide links that these effects would not follow general relativity, please do provide them. As I understand it, any energy or matter that exists in space-time (as it would have, to interact with the enemy) would create space-time curveature, and, with sufficient mass density would form a black hole.

The photon, being a massless particle, is a special case in this, energy and matter (excepting massless particles) are governed by the generic E=mc^2.

[The event horizon was calculated with by deriving a equation based on that for the escape velocity, but assuming said velcoity to be equal to c. This makes r the radius at which the escape velocity is equal to c, which is the even horizon.

r=2*Gm/c^2]
 
Kotori said:
The Star Army's power armor was designed to supercede fightercrafts, which is why Statr Army shuttles are older, less effective models - they're gradually growing outdated. The small craft of choice in the Star Army is the Fox T4 combat aeroshuttle because it serves a role as a landing craft.
Click to expand...

That still doesn't stop the fact that starfighter dogfighting would be so much fun!
 
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