Although take into account that this match was not intended to qualify which vessel you would rather seek passage on dependent on the environment, after all what kind of retarded versus match is that? If given the option between driving a luxurious Porsche along the Hawaiian coast or driving a Tank through the middle of a heated war zone with little probability of survival, anyone everyone with a functioning cortex will always go with the option that doesn’t involve fear, discomfort and the certain likelihood of death. Yet pitch a Porsche and an M1 Abrams in battle and the victor will remain unquestionable in every scenario that doesn’t involve a nuclear warhead being strapped to the Porsche.

Initially this was to test the merits of a low tech high performance vessel against a high tech low performance vessel; so why out of the dozens of postulated mecha battles on Factpile, why are we doing something so different for this scenario?

the pillar doesnt have shielding, obviously, so its vitals are more exposed.
however, the MAC gun might be able to punch a hole in the enterprises shields.

also, can the UNSC board the enterprise? if so, the trekkers are fucked.

Are we including some of Star Trek’s tech that they use in only one episode, and forgotten about in the next episode, or are we dismissing them?

I would like to see a covenant assault carrier againts the Enterprise.
I think that would be a lot more even.

What I would like to know is how effective would the Enterprises phaser’s would be against the Autumns armor. Would it carve away at it piece by piece or would it just completely blast through everything in it’s path. Plus the Enterprise is fairly agile. I think the autumn is at a major disadvantage since it’s most powerful weapon outside of nukes is on it’s bow meaning it has to point at it’s target and if the Enterprise can avoid being directly in front of it, then all it has to worry about are Archer missiles, the point-defense autocannons, and any launched nukes though I have no clue how effective nukes would be against he Enterprise.

“and any launched nukes though I have no clue how effective nukes would be against he Enterprise.”

Unknown.

Photon torpedoes are roughly equivalent to high-yield nuclear fusion weapons. We know that shielded Federation starships can withstand nuclear explosions (albeit with damage and radiation exposure to some crew) from “Balance of Terror”. This indicates that a single hit from a large nuclear weapon or photon torpedo could be expected to penetrate a TOS Federation starship’s shields (since the TOS Enterprise was threatened by 50 KT tactical nuclear warheads at one point), but several would be required to destroy it.

This is consistent with the pattern of battle in TOS, where a single volley of photon torpedoes (only two torpedoes with the old TOS launchers) heavily damaged a fully shielded Klingon warship in “Elaan of Troyius”.

The Pillar does have a wide range of nuclear ordinance though, ranging from hundreds of 30 megaton shaped charge nuclear mines (which are as effective as Photon Torpedoes in terms of yield) and only a handful of Shiva nuclear warheads, which seem to have yields measured in the gigaton range.

Crew competence is never taken into account during Mecha battles, otherwise the Pillar of Autumn would merely just ram the Enterprise at flank speed and the typical Federation response would be no more than “brace for impact!”, before being squashed under several hundred thousand tons of Titanium-A (a modus operandi response during every instance in which Federation vessels are charged at a few kilometers per second).

Ideally this is a match between one high technology, low powered vessel with the consistency of toilet paper, versus a low technology, high powered warship built like a Russian Tank; it is for this reason why I believe the battle is more even than people give it credit for based on shallow surface appearances alone. The belief that UNSC vessels are slow hulking mollusks is one of these surface estimations, whereas a deeper analysis of novel sources state that they are incredibly nimble, producing full turns and barrel rolls whilst accelerating at thousands of G’s during the midst of heated combat measured at light second ranges.

“The Autumn is probably going to launch fighters. What are their fighter’s nuke yields?”

Longswords generally don’t enter combat with nuclear warheads, opting instead to use conventional high explosive missiles and rotary cannons to combat Seraphs. In only one instance has a Longsword been used to insert a Shiva missile within close range, which in fairness would utterly destroy the Enterprise with a multiple gigaton detonation.

Though you did bring up two interesting points:

A) A single Longsword, by virtue of being far faster than Jem’Hadar fighters, would outright destroy the Enterprise in a kamikaze strike; although this should only be considered a minor plausible threat by the virtue that UNSC pilots have only ever rarely demonstrated the fanatical zeal of their Jem’Hadar counterparts, and even if an entire squadron of fighters are pitted to the death against the Enterprise, I doubt we would see many Longsword pilots willing to fly through the bridge at high speeds.

B) With a squadron of Longswords, a dozen Pelicans, nearly eight thousand Archer missiles, a handul of Shiva missiles and possibly hundreds of nuclear and non-nuclear mines; the Enterprise can expect a lot of chaff to flood her defensive screens, more so than even the largest of fleet battles seen in the series.

The Enterprise D has the ability to disengage its saucer section, causing the pillar of autumn to divide its attention between to targets.

which might allow one half of the vessel to get behind the pillar, which i would imagine is her weak point (if anyone has any info on her rear defences to would be great) and attack her engines or even try beaming torpedos aboard.

I thought the Saucer section was where they kept the military personel and the rear end was used for non essential/civilian personel to retreat. Of course I’m only thinking about this because of the movie Generations were the Saucer section crash lands after being in combat and I forget the details of why they seperated.

The Back Section is the one for the military. It contains the Warp Core, and the Photon Torpedo Launchers, while the Saucer only has Phasers and does not have an advance warp engine, if it has any at all. They were evacuating to the Saucer in Generation only because the Warp Core was going critical.

Now why isn’t that I don’t see your stars ?

1) “In the beginning of Halo 2, you can see capital ships moving past each other and the Super MAC stations.”

Moving to form a ring around the SMAC stations, since the Admiral decreed that they would only move to intercept the Covenant once they entered their own firing range (although the SMAC stations started opening fire beyond visual range). Not a reliable depiction of flank speed.

2) “Another example is near the end of Halo 2, when the Covenant Fleet turns inside out fighting each other right beside High Charity.”

I calculated that at a cruising speed of 20km/s based on the dimensions of High Charity; although once again this is an instance of the Separatist and Loyalist fleets forming divisions and setting a defensive perimeter around their respective quarries, in which case it isn’t tactically viable to charge into picket lines of heavily armed warships. Not a reliable depiction of flank speed.

3) “The next best is about half way through Halo 3, when the Sanghelli ships engage the Brute ships just outside the Ark, but none of them are all that great for calculating velocities.”

Nothing in that entire cutscene could be used to calculate Covenant or UNSC sublight accelerations (other than the Forward Unto Dawn’s impressive 3000G deceleration), the fact that we know that both forces were racing to land troops on the Ark and deactivate the planetary shield grid should have been an indicator that neither fleet was interested in anything other than an up close and personal slug fest.

Thus High Charity took the entire fleet by surprise, even though the loose Flood-ified debris was falling at a mere 1-2 km/s (insignificant compared to their cruising speeds).

4) “The point was though, I can’t count how many times I’ve seen Janeway or Picard say something along the lines of ‘close to 50 km’ and the ship is shown being parked like 400 meters away.”

Neither dialogue or visuals must be negated in lieu of one another.

Dialogue is patently as subjective as visuals. There is always the problem that the character might be wrong, but that is not a matter of subjectivity for us, it’s a matter of in-universe characterization and the problems accruing to ‘real’ people, who are not perfect and who do not behave in perfectly accurate ways at all times.

But television and film are a visual medium, and science fiction is obviously based as much on effects as it is dialogue. Assuming that everything the characters say is the holy intent of the creators and the visuals are just pap is not only dubious, but also completely disrespectful of the work that the visual effects artists do – which is under the helm of the creators as much as the script – to make an episode or sequence work.

So when faced with a TV show whose producers have deliberately made it look a certain way, we cannot throw out proposed evidence in favor of another. We must look at all evidence, including historical context to deduce the most reasonable outcome.

(as a side note, I could not view those images – try re-posting them elsewhere)

5) “but the armor on the Pillar is Titanium-A, no? May be super sturdy, but certainly not ultra dense like neutronium.”

This is where I’m once again confounded by UNSC material science.

At several points throughout Halo lore UNSC vessels have been described as possessing remarkably low tonnage ratings; the Frigate for example is said to weigh only 4,000 tons (which I assume doesn’t include the contents such as crew, ammunition, fuel etc.) whilst the heavier UNSC capital ships are rated at around 90,000 tons.

My estimation is probably rather low since it assumes 90% of the vessel is hollow which is rather unlikely. But just for fun let’s say the ship’s half a meter thick armour DOES weigh 4,000 tons; based on the dimensions of 478×151x112 would tell us that the ship has a volume of about 2,020,984 cubic meters while 4,000 tons equals roughly 3,628,738 kilograms. Thus we have a volume of about 1.79 kilograms per cubic meter. Air has a mass of 1.204 Kilograms per cubic meter at about room temperature. it wouldn’t float in an Earth Like Atmosphere, but it would be extremely light as a result.

In fact no known metal on the periodic table comes close to this material (lithium is somewhere in the order of 50kg per cubic meter), yet it possesses such fantastical properties that it is a miracle of engineering that this substance can survive a person leaning against it for balance without shredding like wet toilet paper, let alone accelerating at thousands of G’s or taking double digit gigaton hits from Covenant plasma torpedoes. Either way the Pillar of Autumn is coated in a two meter thick layer of this stuff, so it can take a slugging before going down. Lest to say, we aren’t talking about bog standard titanium here.

6) Another component that makes the Pillar unique amongst UNSC Cruisers is not only the thickness of the armour, but the specialized structural bracing that honeycombed the interior. In “Halo: The Fall of Reach”, Dr. Halsey asked which ship Cortana chose for the original mission to capture a Covenant Prophet. Cortana chose the Pillar of Autumn for the skeletal structure, designed by Dr. Robert McLees. “…At the time, deemed unnecessarily over massed and costly due to series of cross-bracing and interstitial honeycombs… Halcyon-class ships, however, have a reputation for being virtually indestructible. Reports indicate these ships being operational even after sustaining breaches to all compartments and losing ninety percent of their armor.” This, obviously, implies that the Pillar of Autumn can take an immense beating, and as we saw throughout the novel and the subsequent events in “Halo: Combat Evolved”, she not only sustained several torpedo impacts (likewise in the double digit gigaton range), but a bracketing shot from a high gigaton to single digit teraton beam, dozens of strafing shots from Covenant Serpah bombers and remained at 9% operational capacity after hitting the surface of installation 04 at supersonic velocities.

7) On the issue of Federation “dog fighting”.

We have two clear examples now, of Federation weaponry failing to strike its target during Insurrection (one of the proposed movie examples). One example involves a So’na shuttle craft, and the other example involves a full-sized So’na warship. There are no mysterious invisibly distant targets at which these torpedoes might have been aimed (the stock excuse for “Way of the Warrior”). In fact, the second sequence allows us to estimate the range at which the Enterprise-E failed to hit its pursuer, because the So’na ship is less than 10 kilometres behind the Enterprise-E at the time this happens.

During one sequence, an aft-launched torpedo, fired from a Federation shuttle craft being piloted by Jean-Luc Picard and Worf. The target is another Federation scout ship, being flown by Data; the fired torpedo misses easily, even though Data has flown his ship in an almost totally straight line throughout this sequence and both vessels are traveling at near relative velocities. Of the two ships. Data’s scout is definitely larger than the Enterprise shuttle- this allows us to establish the size of the target that Picard and Worf were shooting at and missing against a target with these supposedly perfectly accurate Federation torpedoes.

Although whilst their ships occasionally do wallow about and exchange fire like early 20th century naval dreadnoughts, they are capable of maneuvering more quickly. However, they do not dogfight like late 20th century fighter aircraft. Their maneuvering tends to be a compromise between these two extremes, similar to the maneuvering of light corvette-class naval warships. They maneuver in combat, but in large sweeping turns and gentle arcs rather than brutal twists, turns, and rolls.

In “Maneuvers”, the USS Voyager executed evasive pattern “omega three” when confronted by a primitive Kazon warship. This maneuver did not seem to involve any discernible change of direction, and not only did Voyager fail to evade subsequent shots, but it could not even keep those shots from repeatedly hitting the same 10m wide spot. This proved to be a serious failing, since the Kazon warship quickly breached the Voyager’s shields in that spot, and sent a small projectile through it to breach the hull. In “Best of Both Worlds”, the USS Enterprise executed evasive pattern “riker alpha” when confronted by a Borg cube, and it merely turned to the left (at a rate which would have required several seconds for a 180 degree orientation change). Amazingly, this maneuver actually allowed the ship to evade a Borg weapon discharge. In Star Trek First Contact, the relative speeds of the Federation starships and the Borg cube were in the range of 300 m/s. The ships can obviously achieve far higher speeds than this, but extremely high relative velocities increase the difficulty of targeting, so this establishes the maximum relative speeds at which a Federation starship can maneuver while still being able to reliably target an enemy vessel (even one as large and unwieldy as a 3km Borg cube). It should be noted that similar relative speeds were seen in later battles such as the battles of “Sacrifice of Angels” and “Tears of the Prophets”.

We also know that space combat maneuvering (and the effect of distance) is effective in foiling or delaying Federation targeting efforts, as demonstrated by the following examples. Such as In Star Trek Genesis, we saw a Klingon vessel repeatedly fail to hit a 600 meter long, heavily damaged vessel fleeting at low speed. In “Arsenal of Freedom” we saw that a starship which decloaked for a full second could not be targeted by the Enterprise-D. This establishes a long targeting delay and raises serious questions about their computer systems. This would seem to suggest that a GCS targeting system requires a predictable velocity for at least one full second before it can reliably target anything, even at extreme close range. In “Way of the Warrior” we saw DS9 repeatedly miss incoming Klingon warships with both phasers and photon torpedoes, in spite of the fact that those warships were following very predictable flight paths, usually straight lines. Some Federation cultists dispute the misses, claiming that the weapons were merely targeting other vessels off-screen, but some of the scenes were shown from the perspective of DS9 itself, and the torpedoes could clearly be seen heading for nothing but empty space, in spite of their vaunted guidance and targeting systems. In “A Call to Arms” we saw DS9 miss numerous Cardassian and Dominion warships, as it did in “Way of the Warrior”. One crippled Cardassian warship actually managed to ram the station’s shields, even though it was more than 100 metres long and traveling in a perfectly straight line. Somehow, the DS9 targeting systems failed to hit it, even when it got into very close range prior to impact! As a result, the DS9 shields had to absorb the impact and explosion of the starship.

It is important to remember that direct observation of every Star Trek space combat incident since ST2 has failed to reveal a single incident in which starships engaged in combat at the long ranges and relativistic speeds. Ship-to-ship fire invariably occurs at ranges of a few kilometres at most, and any long-range fire is invariably directed at constant-velocity targets such as planets. This indicates that maneuvering impedes targeting, which is logical since maneuvering targets are more difficult to hit at long range due to beam propagation delay. There have been many suggestions that extremely high relative speeds occurred before ST2 (in TOS), but all of these incidents are based on interpretations of dialogue, rather than direct observation. ST2 was the very first time we were able to directly observe space combat, rather than relying on conjecture based on dialogue. In that incident, as well as each and every subsequent incident, we observed close ranges and sub-relativistic relative speeds.

I still belive the main concern for the pillar is the Enterprise’s transporter, which has a range of 40,000 kilometres.

[quote]
During the 22nd century, standard Earth transporter systems had a range of 10,000 kilometers; however, by the 24th century, standard transporter systems maximum range was about 40,000 kilometers, though a special type of transport, called subspace transport could beam over several light years. (ENT: “Rajiin”; TNG: “A Matter Of Honor”, “Bloodlines”) Many 24th century starships were equipped with an emergency transporter system, but these only had a range of at best ten kilometers. (VOY: “Future’s End”)

Although having a maximum range of about 40,000 kilometers, some conditions adversely affect the effective range. In at least one instance – due to missing components of Voyager’s primary computer systems, – the starship Voyager had to be within 500 kilometers of a planet’s surface to use transporters on Kathryn Janeway and the hologram character Leonardo da Vinci. (VOY: “Concerning Flight”)

For context, 500 kilometers above the surface of Earth would place the ship inside the ionosphere. [quote]

I am unsure how the Tianium-A armor will effect, the Enterprise’s sensors and targeting scanner’s, however the transporter has been shown on numerous occasions to be affected by certain minerals and energy fields.

So if the transporter can beam torpedoes onto the autumn, its game over since their specialized armor is designed to take massive amounts of external punishment, so a bomb detonating from within should do considerable damage.

However if the Enterprise cannot beam torpedoes onboard, if will go with the autumn.

1) “I love how point #7 was nearly completely copy and pasted from ”

Mike Wong is a very reliable source for analyzing fictional events, and I have frequently cited or used materials form Stardestroyer.net with direct quotations, links, copy and pasting or mere paraphrasing (I can point to a dozen threads where I have).

So what puzzles me is, how is this new to you specifically? After all I’ve debated or been in debates with you on such subjects in the past, and quite frequently I’ve explicitly or implicitly used (in the case of paraphrased context) Mike Wong’s intellectual property with near wild abandon and have yet to provoke such a response. Perhaps this is another case where your memory failed you.

On a different note, food rich in amino acids is excellent for memory retention.

2) “If the Enterprise warped in and let a full Photon spread right into the Pillar’s bridge, what effect would it have?”

Unknown. Although since the Pillar is designed to operate with practically all of her hull stripped away, can perform 40,000 G barrel loops which place the cockpit within view of Seraph fighters without apparent risk and can survive supersonic impacts into hard granite; it must be either very tough, or capable of operating under a redundancy system if decapitated, otherwise the oft touted structural integrity would be borderline useless.

3) “If Titanium-A is super light like you say, it couldn’t be super dense, which is usually the primary factor preventing transport.”

Yet the bizarre exotic nature of such a material isn’t yet quantifiable and is clearly beyond known comprehension as to whether we could certify the usefulnessof such a tactic, in fact, all sorts of things block transporters; certain alloys, several hundred meters of rock, sensor jamming systems, ECM (although would Subspace ECM interact with UNSC grade ECM intended to disrupt Archer missiles and enemy communications?), ionic interference, ambient electromagnetic radiation.

Titanium-A is too much of a wild horse to rationalize at this point without a degree of certainty due to what could only be described as a degree of leniency between a high electron number and an impossibly low atomic weight.

Therefore we must analyze this one variable on a set basis much like any other:

Pros – Eliminates the need for shuttlecraft, near instantaneous.

Cons – Can be jammed by any number of conditions, even including the weak EM field of planets. Transport errors result in possible instant death or grievous injuries. Plus in fairness, I do tend to doubt transporter performance when a substation transformer for a fusion power plant was capable of blocking the transporter room signal.

4) “The size disparity is so drastic, it’s mind boggling.”

As I said, neither method of analysis is completely infallible or supersedes one another, otherwise there would simply be an absence of a television show as a visual medium altogether. As with anything else, evidence is compiled and analyzed based on an individual case by case basis, but we cannot intellectually abide by the fallacy that a few minor cases of questionable production on behalf of the producers (as stated: when faced with a TV show whose producers have deliberately made it look a certain way, we cannot throw out all proposed evidence of one bracket in favor of another) therefore overrules ALL evidence by fiat; to do so would be endemic to hypocrisy and doubt. In such a case we cannot allow our wishes to become the rigors of intellectual thought, otherwise we become prone to fancy rather than reason (otherwise known as the faith vs reason conundrum).

Unless there is a canon statement made on behalf of Paramount that states that all visuals must disregarded in lieu of one (every series is guilty of such mistakes), then we must continue to analyze as we always have beforehand; by logical discourse of all reasonable evidence.

George F. Will, the ever-eloquent back page columnist for Newsweek magazine, once said:

“Intellectual rigor annoys people because it interferes with the pleasure they derive from allowing their wishes to be the fathers of their thoughts.”

Likewise, based on the evidence, I believe that this is still a reasonably close match. On one hand you have the low tech equivalent of an F-22, on the other you have a high tech T-34 fitted with a modified AA chassis.

My post didn’t show up agian…. >.<

Hang in there, server moves are always a bit bothersome. – Admin

Dude, OUCH. That hurt. That link was real! Here let me post it again.

http://www.soundnouswriterblog.blogspot.com/

“everyone’s provided a lotta good info on the ship specs and armaments. How about the crew? Or more specifically, how good are the Captains and their 1st officers/equivalents compared to each other? When it comes to piloting/commanding feats, how do Captain Keyes and Cortana fair against Captain Picard and Commander Riker?”

Doesn’t matter.