The Galactic Empire from Star Wars VS the Federation from Star Trek.

Welcome!

For information on Star Trek, I would recommend StarDestroyer.net. In fact, large portions of his site have been used here, recognizable by black highlight on white text. Unfortunately, Mr. Wong has not updated his site in quite a while, so much of his information about the Empire is outdated and from legends, so it is far lower than actual canon nowadays. (I don’t know about far lower ...) (Yes. He estimated gigatons-teratons and I estimate teratons-petatons) This is not an insult or challenge to him. He also tended towards Star Trek’s lowest numbers, which, while they are canon (except the TNG TM’s numbers), many people prefer to use the higher numbers. Remember, during the time period it was created, his website was all facts, (not the tech manuals) until Disney took over and saw it fit to buff Star Wars even higher.  I would also recommend Scifights.net, Firmus Piett’s youtube channel, and Brian Young’s youtube channel. No copyright infringement is intended and no money is being made from this.

Anyone can comment on this document. If you have suggestions, comments, arguments, whatever, feel free to make comments on this document.

Author & owner: Sci-Fi Show

Contributors:

You’re Wrong - green

I also plan on adding information on the Reapers (Mass effect series), Imperium of Man (Warhammer 40k), Terran Federation (Starship Troopers), Borg (Star Trek), the Covenant (Halo series), the Empire (legend of the galactic heroes)  and Confederacy of Independent Systems (Star Wars). In the far, far future we may have a section dedicated to almost every sci-fi show out there!

Before we get started on this, we are using quotes from star wars books and comics etc. I know someone’s gonna say something like “but the books aren’t canon for Star Wars...”

Well guess what?

http://www.starwars.com/news/the-legendary-star-wars-expanded-universe-turns-a-new-page

You’re wrong. All books and comics and most other material published after May 2014 is canon. What’s more, “Levels of canon” no longer exist, so every piece of information is equally valid. Without further ado, let’s get started.

Galactic Empire (Star Wars) Statistics

-Ship Sensors, jamming capability, miscellaneous examples of ECM, and cloaking.

“Large, high-powered Imperial jammers are often coupled with distortion field generators which can actually affect the maneuverability of starships, in addition to interfering with their sensors, as described in the following quote from General Dodonna during the Yavin briefing in ANH:

"Also, their field generators will probably create a lot of distortion, especially in and around the trench.

 I figure that maneuverability in that sector will be less than point three."This passage suggests that high-powered jammers actually perform a secondary function of distorting the space-time continuum itself, thus making starship maneuvering difficult at best. As an aside, this is the probable explanation for the slow X-wing speed in the trench runs (along with the fact that the heavy jamming would have made it impossible to accurately target the port at higher speeds). The X-wings were travelling much slower in the trench than they did during their trip around Yavin to attack the Death Star.”-Mr. Wong.

 It could also be that they needed to travel slowly because they were dogfighting. After all, in real life, fighter planes did not dogfight at top speed. Human reaction times are too slow.

I remember in one Clone Wars episode Venators were able to locate explosives (“Point of No Return”. In addition, in Aftermath: Life Debt, New Republic sensors can scan for explosives.), and in the Star Wars Rebels finale season three, Star Destroyers were able to track and shoot at Kanan, from space! But they have problems with finding things deep underground, as seen in many episodes of Star Wars Rebels. They also seem to have blind spots near the ship.

Interdictors have the ability to detect cloaked ships. Imperial cloaks allow them to fire, jump to lightspeed, and have shields up while cloaked. However, the shields of the cloaked ship appeared to be very weak, nearly failing after being hit by fighters. It is unknown if larger cloaked ships have the same weakness. The fact remains the Empire has many cloaked ships that are impossible to detect without Interdictors, which the Federation does not have.

In the canon book, Tarkin, it is written in Ch17 pg194 :Tarkin compressed his lips and shook his head. "Not even a cloaking device could keep it hidden from being detected in an interdictor field."

Interdictor fields have some sort of stealth-detecting capability. Although not expanded upon, it could involve detecting the gravitational field of the ship being looked for, same as the old CGTs in the EU. Tarkin had tried to detect the Carrion Spike using similar methods earlier, but it can be assumed that ship's sensors weren't quite as sensitive as a military-grade capital ship, one designed specifically to play around with gravity fields no less. 

The prototype cloaked ship, seen in TCW, was detectable by its magnetic field, though this issue seems to be fixed. The newer cloaked ship is later said to be able to wipe out cities in a single shot, but this should be obvious.

The ability of interdiction fields to detect cloaked ships will be useful for detecting cloaked Federation ships.

I believe Firmus Piett has done some research into ship sensor range. I believe he calculated it to be many light years, but I can’t remember the numbers.

I'll try to do a calculation on the spot. in TCW, many times the ships are able to detect ships about 10 seconds before they arrive. Hyperdrive is tens to hundreds of millions of times the speed of light. I'm going to assume these ships go at 50,000,000 c for simplicity of calculation. That means that Star Wars ships can scan for incoming FTL ship as far out as 15.85 ly away. This would give them literally hours of warning against an incoming federation fleet moving at thousands of times c, which would give them more than enough time to prepare for an assault and reposition ships as needed, and this is therefore one of their greatest advantages against the federation. For some weird reason that I don't know, they can actually scan much farther ahead while in FTL transit, they have almost a minute of warning, as seen in “Jedi Crash” and “A Sunny Day in the Void”. This implies a range of nearly 100 light years.

Imperial sensors can tell shield strength, as when they saw they could not break the shields protecting Hoth.

Jammers appear to be able to hide things like shields, such as the DS 2’s jammers hiding it’s shields, and ships are most often not able to detect when they’re being jammed.

In heir to the Jedi, Ch 20 pg 230 wrote:Artoo reported finding and eliminating not one but five different tracking programs hidden in the nav computer's code sometime during the last few days. Drusil found another he missed, an Imperial Sleeper she called it, tied to the ship's clock. It would become active at a set time, triggered by the turning of the clock, note our current course and position, and send a coded burst reporting it to the nearest Imperial world.

An example of Imperial spyware.

In Heir to the jedi Ch 20 pg 232-233 wrote:"The flagship captain has ordered us stopped now, and the Interdictor captain is complying. Turning off gravitational projector to realign in front of our present course."

"Can they stop us?" Nakari asked.

"Maybe," I said. "Depends partly on the crew and partly on their power situation. They've been conducting operations for awhile here, turning the projectors on and off, and their generators might be drained. Or they might not. I haven't done this all that often in raids, much less alone. ..."

-snip-

With thirty-two seconds to go, Drusil made another report. "Interdictor captain announced the projector is down and realigning to our sector. Spinning up."

Our intelligence was spotty here. Thirty seconds had to be a minimum time to get a gravity field projected - intelligence suggest it took more like a couple of minutes - but we weren't safely outside of operational parameters yet..

So rather than just projecting a gravity-well at their current location, Interdictors can project them at some distance from the ship itself, although this takes time, which was also demonstrated in Rebels. There is also the possibility that extended operations can have a negative effect on Interdictor functions.

In Battlefront: Twilight Company, Ch6 Pg79 wrote:There would be no attempts at communication; if they tried to send a message through the satellite uplink, odds were the Imperials would detect the signal.

Yes, the Imperials do practice things like SIGINT.

Addressing Counterarguments.

The ISD Solo attached to didn’t scan it’s hull.  Can you blame them? It seems to be harder for them to do that, actually. In Heir to the Jedi, Luke tries to hide by going really close to a ship, supposedly it couldn’t see him as well when he was too close. In episode 7, Han yells “If we go any higher they’ll see us!” meaning he had to skim the surface of starkiller base in order to hide. Remember that starkiller is basically a planet-sized starship, as it must move from system to system to reload. Also, in Rebels season 3 episode 1, “Steps into shadow”, the rebels hide from an imperial station by attaching the Phantom to its hull. 

-Ship Firepower

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXnJxnZE3XI  12:38. A van sized bomb can destroy most of a planet. That’s a lot of firepower, so that translates to likely a lot of firepower from missiles and other explosive weaponry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAK5NofUnKA&list=UUMMMBM7hKk1MvLZgj-dPTaw&index=10

Here is an image of a star destroyer in combat, the planet in the background being superimposed on an image of the Earth. While this only shows gigaton level firepower, remember this star destroyer is firing at fighters and small ships, not other capital ships. Presumably, they reduced weapon outputs to be more efficient. And, with TLJ showing that turbolaser range drops significantly over a few hundred kilometers at most, that might also be what’s happening. The picture comes from “Star wars Armada”, a game that we aren’t sure is canon or not.

In the assault on the Death Star, rebel torpedoes shake the entire Death Star. We know this because in chapter 14 of the canon book “Star Wars The Force Awakens: Tales From a Galaxy Far, Far Away”, we are told the ENTIRE Death star seemed to shake, from the point of view of a man deep inside it. On top of that, we see it in the film. Shaking the Death star with mere fighter bombs is an impressive feat.

It is important to note that “seemed” does not invalidate the sentence, since the following sentence says “it was as if a small group of fighters was bombing the surface of the space station”, which would seem to indicate a small group of fighters was not bombing the space station-but we know that’s true.

Star Wars The Force Awakens: Tales From a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Twilight Company said in Ch30 Pg300-301 The duty officers began to applaud. It was a breach of protocol Tabor could forgive - this was their triumph as much as his, and they deserved to linger on it. They deserved a reminder that they had earned their positions aboard a Star Destroyer, earned the power to ruin planets and battle fleets.

Firepower to ruin planets. Not quite BDZ yet but getting there. It matches up with the firepower shown in Tarkin. Since BDZ is canon again.

Catalyst said:

"So they've found respite under the mountain wall," Tarkin said.

The aide consulted his datapad again. "We have squadrons of starfighters in the vicinity. We could divert one."

Tarkin considered it briefly. "Are any of the Venators within range?"

The adjutant kept his eyes fixed on the pad's display screen. "Admiral Utu's ship is the closest in that hemisphere."

"Then why waste time with strafing runs? Relay my request that she use her turbolasers to bring the entire cliff down on them." Tarkin grinned faintly. "Though we could say that the smugglers brought it down on themselves."

Fighters or capital ships can bring down mountain bunkers. To destroy the Cheyanne Mountain Complex, one would need 30 megatons.

`Also in Catalyst:

"Hypori wasn't phased out," Galen said finally. "It was destroyed."

"Anarchists," Lyra started to say when he cut her off.

"Not by anarchists or Separatist holdouts, but by Imperial Star Destroyer-grade turbolasers." Galen turned away from the humming, chirping devices to look at her. "It's more accurate to say that the installation was scoured."

Catalyst said:

On the bridge of the Executrix, Tarkin paced while Salient II burned. With the Star Destroyer parked a hundred thousand kilometers out, the planet turned slowly below, rashed with ruin. Each rotation revealed new areas of fiery devastation, expanding explosions dissipating in the upper atmosphere, the starlit horizon gray and black with cycloning smoke. Tarkin's adjutant updated him from nearby.

"Most of the infrastructure is in ruins: dams destroyed, fusion and fission facilities smoldering, reservoirs poisoned, cities ransacked and on fire."

Aftermath of Tarkin's attack. Everything is destroyed with civilians only surviving by fleeing into the wilderness. It’s also worth noting that this disproves that star destroyers only have an accurate range of a few hundred kilometers. If that were true, then if they bombed a planet at 100,000 km out, they would literally miss their target by over a thousand miles (clearly not the case here.)

This doesn’t invalidate the fact turbolaser power drops off over distance. To rationalize this, we can point out that missiles might have been used instead.

Calculating what sort of firepower would be needed for the explosions to dissipate in the upper atmosphere:

The upper atmosphere is 700 to 10,000 kilometers, or 435 to 6,213 miles.

At a minimum you would need 30,000,000 megatons if explosion refers to the fireball, per explosion, or 30 teratons.

The maximum firepower this could represent is 70,000,000,000 megatons, or 70 petatons.The result must lie somewhere in this range.

The absolute minimum firepower this could represent, assuming this refers to the thermal radiation radius, is 20 gigatons. Therefore it is absolutely clear firepower of star destroyers is teraton to petaton level, since using absolute minimums is unreasonable.

 Explosions visible from space

ssssPlanet could be bombed to smithereens

Life Debt said:

"Orbital bombardment," Tolruck says with a sloppy grin. Those two words, drawn out drunkenly. "Annihilation from the stars. Or rather, from the Star Destroyers. I sent the code. Nothing is to survive."

****

A triumvirate of Star Destroyers floats in the slate-gray sky-gauzy shapes hanging there above Kashyyyk like executioner blades.

And destruction rains from those ships as they earn their name.

Death comes in streaking flame and shrieking light. It comes from the shuddering batteries of turbolasers. It comes from the bellies of the beasts, dropped as propulsion bombs. It is clumsy and brutal-an act of killing like spraying a hive of wasps with a flamethrower. Imprecise, yes.

Goal to kill everyone 

"The terrorists have won, Admiral Orlan. The inhibitors are down. The animals are..." His voice slurs when he says this next bit. "Escaping the zoo. Bomb it all. Burn it to a cinder. Uploading authorizuh...authorization code now. Begin orbital campaign."

World to be reduced to a cinder.

 In Chapter 32 of Life Debt, page 343, it is stated: “Everything shakes and rumbles. Kashyyyk is caught in the throes of tectonic spasms—above their heads, the packed-dirt ceiling one stream of soil at a time.” The energy needed to cause a planet to undergo tectonic spasms is intense.

The largest earthquake recorded, a 9.5, released the energy equivalent of 2.681688e+9 tons of tnt, or 2.68 gigatons. It did not have nearly the same effects. Again, star destroyer firepower is likely teraton level. Catalyst and Life Debt both show star destroyers performing feats requiring, at a  bare minimum gigaton level firepower. It’s reasonable to assume these are more like teraton level firepower.

No, this is not a proximity blast. Notice the ejecta and lack of black smoke. This is just point defense weapons, aimed at an escape pod!

In Complete Locations, The Death Star, p. 136 wrote:Ancient Origins “The Rebel Alliance sees the Death Star as a technological terror emblematic of the Empire's new order, but the battle station actually has an ancient pedigree: long ago, the Sith had created similar superweapons powered by massive kyber crystals. In the Empire's secret weapons labs, scientists tasked with refining the Geonosis prototype choose a new approach: vast arrays of smaller kyber crystals focus and amplify eight laser beams, combining them into a single massive beam that can destroy a planet. But turning that concept into reality proves fiendishly complex - if the firing-chamber arrays are not precisely aligned, crystals will burn out and overload, sending dangerous levels of waste heat back into the Death Star's main reactor.”

Undoubtedly some will latch on to the "amplify" part of this background to suggest the Empire can't build reactors with planet-busting output. I would note within this same passage that the use of eight focusing kyber crystals was decided after the Geonosians had built the prototype, which meant even the Geonosians believed they could build the thing without the help of kyber crystals. It’s heavily implied in catalyst that the geonosians thought the weapon would be insufficient to destroy a planet in one shot though.

Ahsoka said:

There were at least two Star Destroyers and a massive mining ship in orbit around the planet. The Empire definitely knew there was something it wanted beneath the surface of the icy world.The planet itself was much worse off than she'd feared. Before, it had looked like a giant white ball from orbit-uniform in color except the brighter spots where it reflected the light of its sun. It had been as striking from up high as it was on the ground, even though the great cliffs and deep crevasses that scored the planet's surface weren't visible from afar. Now it almost hurt her to look at it. Great chunks of the planet had been carved away, exposing rock and lava that boiled up from the planet's core.

So at least large continents are scorched with exposed lava if not the entire planet. So lower limit continent to higher being the entire planet.

In Star Wars: Thrawn, the Chimaera shoots at the ocean next to an island protected by a shield, which creates a tsunami. This implies a multi-teraton yield weapon.

The cruisers were moving inward toward the planet, their turbolasers firing at Scrim Island. At the moment it was a waste of effort; even without the island’s shield, the shots would have been mostly ineffective. But as the warships dropped lower and penetrated deeper into the stratosphere, the level of energy delivered would become progressively higher. Eventually, if the cruisers continued, the blasts would begin to stress the shield and possibly overload the generator. Before that happened, the insurgents would have to make their move.

This indicates that turbolasers have significant dropoff in terms of output with range, but it makes no specifics in terms or range. This may explain why ships choose to engage at close range. Atmospheric disruption may have an effect in this case too.

They didn’t wait until the situation became that critical, of course. The cruisers were still in the upper atmosphere when the shield contracted simultaneously from the entire shoreline, opening firing vectors for all three ion cannons. “Ion cannons clear,” Thrawn called. “Cruisers: Fire at will.”

The three warships shifted their targeting vectors from the center of the shield toward the new targets. It was, Eli thought, like a replay of Admiral Durril’s first attempt.

But this time something new had been added to the mix. Even as the cruisers’ turbolasers hammered at the ion cannon emplacements, a fourth ion cannon opened fire from a position on the southeast shore.

The Shyrack spotted it and tried to shift its aim. But the ship’s response time was too slow for that large an angular shift, and the hazy ion blasts shooting up from the surface were too fast. Before the cruiser’s fire could track to its new target the ion clusters splattered across its hull, knocking out sensors and silencing weapons. Before the Flensor and Tumnor could shift their own aim, the fourth cannon had sent a salvo at each of them, as well, and their attacks also went silent.

“So the admiral was right,” Faro commented. “They did have a fourth active cannon. Must have had a spare cathtron tube when they first took the island.”

“We’ve tangled with Nightswan before,” Eli reminded her. “You learn not to take anything at face value.”

“Cruisers: Report,” Thrawn called.

Eli listened closely as the reports came in. Nightswan was smart, all right. But he didn’t know everything.

Including how tough even Imperial light cruisers were. All three ships had lost primary weapons and main drives, but their communications and some of their secondary weapons were still intact.

Most important of all, so were their auxiliary drives.

“Final maneuvering,” Thrawn ordered. “Flensor: Now.”

The Flensor began drifting to starboard. Thrawn watched it a moment, then gestured. “Shyrack: Now.”

In turn, the Shyrack and the Tumnor moved casually to their assigned positions. “What about that fourth ion cannon, Admiral?” Faro asked.

“It will not be a problem,” Thrawn assured her. “Captain Yelfis? The Tumnor took the last salvo. What were your observations?”

“The cannon was already sputtering, Admiral,” Yelfis’s voice came from the speaker. “My engineering officer says that’s the sign of a cathtron tube emitter in the process of burning out. Whatever black-market dealer they got it from, they were robbed.”

Note imperial sensors were able to tell that the cannon was in bad condition, and through a shield no less.

“Given that its primary goal was to force us to withdraw and reevaluate, I would say its brief functionality was probably worth the cost,” Thrawn said. “Fortunately, we are not so easily dissuaded. Commander Faro, take us in.”

Ahead, the planetary horizon rose a little higher as the Chimaera shifted position. It moved in behind the three partially disabled cruisers, entering the stratosphere and moving ever closer to the surface…

“Northern ion cannon clear to fire,” Flensor’s captain warned.

“Compensate, Commander,” Thrawn ordered.

“Compensated,” Faro confirmed calmly.

Eli smiled tightly. The insurgents had seen the Chimaera moving in and had hoped to take it out as they had the Judicator. But a small shift in the Imperial ships’ positions had put the Star Destroyer directly behind the damaged cruiser.

“Commander?” Thrawn asked.

“Still moving inward, Admiral,” Faro reported.

“Western ion cannon clear to fire,” Brento reported from the Shyrack. “Adjusting…you’re covered, Chimaera.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Thrawn said. “All ships, continue as planned.”

Faro took a step closer to Eli. “I wonder if they’re getting worried yet,” she murmured.

“I doubt it,” Eli said. “Whoever they’ve got running things down there, he’s clever enough to know that shadows work in both directions. If his ion cannons can’t hit the Chimaera, the Chimaera’s turbolasers can’t hit his ion cannons.”

“What about the island’s turbolaser?”

“He’ll wait until we’re closer,” Eli said. “With only that one target still available to us, he’ll assume we’ve already locked in on it. He won’t want to open the shield until he’s got his best chance at a kill shot.”

“As you said, a clever man,” Faro said. “I almost feel sorry for him.”

The island’s three ion cannons continued with sporadic fire, clearly trying to get a shot past the cruisers to the Chimaera. But Thrawn had positioned his ships well, and the four captains had followed their orders precisely. Each time the cannons fired, their bursts merely expended themselves against the cruisers.

The standoff couldn’t last forever, of course. If the cannons continued to fire, the cruisers’ systems would eventually become so frozen that the ships would have no power or mobility of any sort and be unable to restart. At that point, they would begin the slow inward spiral that would ultimately send them crashing to the surface.

Fortunately, that wasn’t going to happen. The Chimaera eased its way inward…

“Optimal firing distance, Admiral,” Faro reported. “Turbolasers standing ready.”

“Thank you, Commander,” Thrawn said. “Target One. Turbolasers: Fire.”

Through the viewport, Eli watched the sky light up as the brilliant green bolts hammered their way toward the planet below.

But not to the island itself. As Admiral Durril and the Judicator had so painfully demonstrated, the insurgents’ defenses were more than adequate to fend off any orbital attack.

But Scrim was an island…and the ocean immediately off its shore was not under the protection of that shield.

“Direct hit on Target One coordinates,” a voice came from one of the 96th’s two frigates, flying high observation over the battle zone. “Water crater—implosion—waves heading outward—”

“Impact!” a voice shouted from the second frigate. “Tsunami-scale wave has slammed into the western shoreline.”

“Target Two: Fire,” Thrawn ordered. “Damage at Target One?”

“Unclear, Admiral,” the second frigate’s observer said. The man was trying to stay calm and professional, but Eli could hear the awe creeping into his voice. “But the tsunami made a direct hit on the western ion cannon emplacement.”

“Report on Target Two,” the first frigate’s observer cut in. “Turbolaser emplacement also hit. Looks even more swamped than Target One—the ground must be level or even bowl-shaped there.”

“Alternate fire,” Thrawn said. “Targets One and Two.”

“Shield retracting,” the Flensor reported. “Turbolaser clear to fire—”

“Second tsunami has hit Target Two,” the first observer called.

“Second tsunami on Target One,” the second added. “Western ion cannon is awash. Turbolaser—” He broke off. “Explosion at turbolaser emplacement, Admiral. Looks like the water shorted the capacitors. I’d say the weapon is out of action.”

“Comm, open transmission,” Thrawn ordered. “Scrim Island, this is Admiral Thrawn aboard the ISD Chimaera. Lower your shield and surrender, or we will continue to inundate your heavy weapons and shore defenses until they have been destroyed and those operating them killed. Repeat: Lower your shield and surrender or be destroyed.”

There was no response. “Do we continue firing, Admiral?” Faro asked.

“Alternate fire between Targets One and Three,” Thrawn said. “Alert the assault boats for imminent action.”

Another burst of turbolaser fire sizzled from the Chimaera into the now seething ocean. “Tsunamis on Targets One and Three,” the first observer reported. “Looks like a fire has started in the area around Target Two.”

“Sir, the shield is down!” the sensor officer called excitedly. “Looks like they’re surrendering.”

“Confirm that, Admiral,” the comm officer added. “The insurgent leader is formally asking for terms.”

“Tell him he and his men are to leave their weapons in the buildings and wait outside for the assault boats,” Thrawn said. “Any attempts at further resistance will be met with deadly force.”

He half turned to the crew pit, and Eli could see an especially harsh glitter in his glowing red eyes. “And tell him,” he added quietly, “that the cost will be severe if any of his hostages are harmed.”

He waited for an acknowledgment, then turned and walked back along the command walkway to where Eli and Faro were standing. “You may signal Coruscant with news of our victory, Commander Vanto,” he said. “Once the island has been fully retaken, Commander Faro, you will oversee the task of tractoring the three cruisers safely out of Batonn’s gravity well so that they may initiate repairs.”

Eli nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Yes, Admiral,” Faro said. “And may I add my congratulations. A brilliant plan, perfectly executed. An outstanding victory.”

“Victory, Commander?” Thrawn shook his head. “This battle is over. But the war for Batonn has not yet been won.”

We also see that ion cannons are not one-shot killers.

Catalyst said:
Krennic inclined his head in acknowledgment."Preliminary results indicate that the energy released during the test-fire had the destructive power of the combined batteries of a qaz-class Star Destroyer." The Qaz class Star Destroyer combined batteries have the same power as a DS test shot.(Note from You're Wrong: It's a shot from a prototype 2-beam superlaser that is stated to be 500 times smaller in every dimension than the final DS1 superlaser - and because of the stated size, we can get a solid number on how powerful the “Qaz class” really is. If the laser’s power scales down by volume, then this implies energy on the order of ~2e24 joules, or about 478.01 teratons. However, this is quite high, so let's see what we can do to bring this down to a comfortable level of power… It's a 2 beam superlaser, vs the Death Star being an 8 beam, so if we divide this number by 4, then we get about 119.5 teratons, which is slightly more reasonable. But I'm gonna be generous to the federation and squeeze this down as much as I can… Let's say that since the Death Star charges for 24 hours, we can divide this number by 86,400, which is the number of seconds in a day. If we do this, we get it all the way down to 1.383 gigatons/second… But this is the absolute, I bent over backwards so much I broke my back lower limit. If you want an absolute upper limit, you could technically scale the prototype to only 50 times smaller than the final product. You can get it even higher because of Vince’s 250 sextillion megatons calculation which would output an upper limit of 2 Yottatons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUSQZmqFQl8

 So the batteries of a Qaz class star destroyer are 1.383-2,000,000,000,000,000 gigatons (that's 2 yottatons) per second, and while this is a very large range, the firepower MUST fall into this range. If these numbers seem too high to you, well then, that's too bad, because it's 100% canon. If it still seems too high for you, the you seriously need to consider the possibility that you are wrong :p ) 

The DS single reactor shot has been calculated at 300 exatons. I would calculate it in the teraton-petaton range instead. I do wish I knew more specifics about the explosion size so i could do the calculations myself.

If this helps, the explosion allegedly engulfed 12.5% of the planet’s surface, I think I read that in Wookieepedia. Use Wong’s nuke calculator. I'm too lazy to do it myself.

A nuke calculator doesn’t work here because a laser is a directed energy type of weapon. A nuke creates explosive force on it’s own, but the laser has to vaporize other things to create the explosion. Well, I think.

You're correct, but it gives us a conservative lower limit. Another Reason that the estimate is conservative is that the rate at which energy is delivered -otherwise known as the power- of a bomb of equal yield would be higher than the yield of a beam.

My biggest complaint is that when I did it myself, I got 1.4 petatons. This is too low. My explanation is the fact a laser is a directed energy weapon, not an explosive. I couldn’t find a calculator for that.

Fine, I guess I have to stop being lazy. Brian Young did a “collateral damage for Star Wars beam weapons” video on scifights.net. He calculates that one cubic meter of collateral damage on non-armor materials translates to one gigajoule. The crust of the earth occupies 10 quintillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) cubic meters of space (about 1% of earth’s total volume). Divide this by 8 and we get 1,250,000,000,000,000,000. This is therefore the number of gigajoules required. One ton of TNT releases 4.184 gigajoules upon detonation, so that means that this is 298,757,170,172,100,000 tons of TNT, or 298.757 exatons. Therefore, the 300 exatons calc you mentioned earlier seems like it could be accurate. Worth noting that even if we use the 1.4 petatons figure, it's still well above anything the federation has ever shown - except maybe the romulans’ and cardassians’ bombardment in the very inconsistent “The Die is Cast”’s 30% quote, which is inconsistent even with other dialogue in the episode and happens under questionable circumstances.

Here’s a picture of Jedha after the Death Star. This is from Marvel Comics episode 38.

Incredibly, that looks like the results of 300 exatons! Someone at marvel is doing their math! Also note how similar the planet looks to Concord Dawn: Floating asteroids. Obviously, SW has ridiculously OP grav-tech.

What's even more surprising (although this really should not be a surprise by now) is that the Empire called this a ¨mining accident¨. The fact this is believed by the population despite the massive hole which was caused by a multi exaton explosion is further proof of the massive amounts of energy being tossed around here.

 The comic also states that Jedha’s mantle is torn up and buckled, a feat which on its own requires hundreds of petatons if not low exatons. This farther invalidates any argument that argues star wars DEWs effects can be compared to pure conventional explosive, because a pure explosive would only need about a petaton of TNT equivalent energy (around 4 yottajoules) to make an explosion of similar size.

 This is Lola Sayu. Imagine the power which destroyed it!

http://eleven-thirtyeight.com/2016/02/the-scars-of-concord-dawn-a-physicist-overthinks-star-wars-rebels/

This is Concord Dawn, a planet seen in rebels. To carve out that much planet, even if this planet was earth sized, one would need hundreds of exatons. But, this planet is not earth sized! For a sense of scale, that moon in front of Concord Dawn is habitable. This raises the question: Is the moon small, or is the planet huge? Both have atmospheres, so this means the gravitational effects on both are truly planetary. In any case, this represents extraordinary control over gravity. I believe that Concord Dawn is large, because there must be some control over gravity going on. Otherwise, those floating rocks would have fallen back on Concord Dawn, and reshaped into spheres.

The Death Star has more power than half the Imperial fleet. Assuming 700 million ships (based on Thelea’s calculations) the power of the average ship is 1.45E25W for the average ship in the Imperial Starfleet, or 107,552,581 gigatons per second, or 107 petatons per second. This was including fighters, I think, and using the death star lower limit. (Here you have to choose: overwhelming numbers, overwhelming firepower, or a bit of both. This quote makes it so you can't have it without one or the other.you could make each individual ship have less firepower, while adding more ships to the fleet, or you can take away ships from the fleet, but add more firepower. Your choice.) Notice this falls in the range calculated for the Qaz class star destroyer. In fact, it is on the smaller side. This is probably because a Qaz class star destroyer may be more powerful than the average Imperial ship. Alternatively, the fleet numbers may be smaller.(Note on the size of the Qaz class: it was less than 8,000 meters in length, meaning that it was not in fact an SSD.)

If we use the 250 sextillion megaton figure from Mr. Piett’s calculations and divide that by a billion we get 200 exatons per ship if we assume General Dodonna’s quote refers to the firepower the Death Star carries. Which happens to be exactly what he said. If we assume it refers to power generation we must divide it by how many seconds are in a day, assuming the Death star takes a day to charge. 200 / 86400 is 0.00231481481, or a “mere” two petatons per second. If we go with the six hour recharge once listed on the official website, it is 9 petatons per second. Since the average ship (including fighters) is going to be much weaker than an ISD we can assume ISD firepower as likely low exaton range, especially if Dodonna was referring to the single shot firepower of the death star, which is most likely.

 Dodonna cannot be referring to how many turbolasers the death star carries because the death star has far fewer turbolasers than half the Imperial fleet. Just for comparison, the death star has 20,000 weapons emplacements, according to wookiepedia. Even if we only count the 25,000 star destroyers, 60 x 25,000 is 1,500,000, far more than 20,000. Each star destroyer carries 60 turbolasers, according to wookiepedia.

        If he was exaggerating the number of surface turbolasers, he would have been lying very, very hard, which is somewhat hard to believe from a tactical, in-universe, and out of universe point of view.  Tactically speaking, it would be best to tell the correct number of turbolasers. Both in and out of universe, we should expect a General to tell the truth to his men, especially if lying to them in that manner would only serve to further demoralize them, lessening their combat efficiency!

If Dodonna was “exaggerating the firepower of the Death Star”, as some have postulated, then the Death Star would carry less than half the firepower of the Imperial fleet, and the Imperial Fleet would be even more powerful, which is not likely.

If Dodonna was downplaying the firepower of the Death Star… well, that just doesn't make sense. There is no reason for him to lie about something like that.

Since we know ships can change the damage their guns do we can easily rationalize smaller explosions as a ship captain wanting to conserve energy. We know the Empire prizes efficiency-they make Star Destroyers dump garbage before jumping to lower how much they weigh, saving fuel.

“Efficiency is predictability. And the Empire is nothing if not efficient.” Everi Chalis.

Also, here’s this picture from The Force Awakens Incredible Cross Sections, which is canon. Notice it says that the largest turbolasers (or laser cannons) can crack a planet’s core. It isn’t referring to the Death Star’s superlaser because it said “The largest such weapons” when talking about laser cannons and turbolasers.

Believe it or not, some people actually tried to argue that it was talking about the Death Star's superlaser, despite the fact nowhere in the box were superlasers mentioned, and “laser cannons and turbolasers” were talked about just before it.

 According to Wikipedia, “Post-April 2014, the official Star Wars canon consists of the eight released Star Wars theatrical feature films, the Star Wars animated film, the television series The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels, multiple novels and comics, and any other material released after April 25, 2014, unless otherwise stated.” TFA ICS was released December 2015. Yep, it’s canon. Emphasis is mine.

http://www.starwarsdatapad.com/canon-reference-books-release-dates/

Here is a list of canon reference books, with TFA ICS being listed.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Force_Awakens:_Incredible_Cross-Sections
TFA ICS is listed as “canon”.

http://www.killermovies.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-620026-are-incredible-cross-sections-canon.html

No one denies TFA ICS is canon.

http://www.slashfilm.com/force-awakens-cross-sections/

“Is it a sexist addition to Star Wars canon?” Emphasis mine.

I heard“legends” books will be printed with the “legends” banner. I saw no such thing on TFA ICS.

@YW, how much energy would cracking a planet’s core take?

Oh…. too many factors here… is the outside of the planet (IE mantle and crust) a factor? How big is the core, How “Deep” is the crack? My best guess is probably low petatons at least.

Let’s assume Earth. How much energy would it take to blast all that crust and mantle and just get to the core?

To drill a 10m diameter hole through the crust and mantle would take over 220 megatons if we use Brian Young’s collateral damage calculations. However cracking the actual would be far more impressive than drilling a hole to said core. In addition, you’d have to get all of the liquid part of the core out of the way in order to “crack” the solid core, which implies an additional 165 or so additional megatons, assuming the collateral damage also applies to liquids (Which it probably doesn’t, but it would probably actually have to be higher to be able to). If the crust and mantle are a factor, then even if we assume a ludicrously small hole, assume that liquids don’t flow, and assume next to no actual damage to the core we’re talking about 400 megatons bare minimum.

We know that blasting large chunks out of planets (even when this does not require core cracking) usually requires high exatons of energy, which is massive power, even going by bare minimums. But for real, we would expect much more power. Star wars weapons don’t drill. However, it should be noted that these turbolasers are probably the ones on the First Order Mandator Dreadnought, and regular turbolasers aren’t THAT powerful, being closer to low exatons in my opinion. Notice that those guns are referred to as “Orbital Autocannons”, meaning that they might be separate from turbo/laser cannon technology on Resurgent class Star Destroyers and so they might still be core-cracking, but it’s more likely just an accident.

Notice the huge gun we see under it. There’s another one, but it’s hidden by the ship. Even after tremendous falloff in terms of damage, it still put out petatons of energy at long range if we use Mr. Young’s calculator, indicating that it probably puts out enough energy to crack planetary cores if at close range.

In Lords of the Sith.Ch 9 pg 129-131 it is written: The explosions spread rapidly, one after another. The aft section blossomed into a single, huge ball of fire, vaporizing the engines, though inertia kept the Star Destroyer moving for Ryloth. Debris and flames flew in all directions. The blasts raced along the length of the ship, one section after another vanishing behind an orange curtain.

Isval's escort ship bobbed on the blast waves. Even with her naked eye, she could see some of the escape pods hit by the waves starting to spin uncontrollably.

.....

The vacuum killed the flames almost as quickly as they blossomed, and for a moment the Star Destroyer slid along in space, quiet, dark, and still, blackened by fire, torn by explosions. It looked almost peaceful, like a relic from a long-ago war. But the moment ended when the chain reaction set off by the dying hyperdrive turned the Perilous into a miniature star.

Imperial Star Destroyers carry so much fuel and explosives that when they are destroyed they create miniature stars. This ties in with Wong’s claim that Imperial Star Destroyers generate power on the same level as a star. It also ties in with their name. STAR destroyer. Why don’t they do this every time they die, though? My theory is that usually, by the time a star destroyer is destroyed, the energy they have is already spent. After all, a star destroyer isn’t going to just lie down and die with potential shield energy still in its tanks. The reason the Perilous is special is because it’s literally the first star destroyer ever to be destroyed. The captain of the ship may not have known how much energy was still in its tanks. While this would be a viable suicide tactic, I doubt the Empire would use it-they have only 25,000 of them, after all. Going further on energy generation - unless ISDs are only refueled every several billion years, they generate much more energy per second than a miniature star.

As demonstrated by the hypermatter reactor of DS2, Imperial power systems are far more advanced than Federation power systems. The original Death Star's hypermatter reactor was roughly 16km in diameter as seen in the detailed cutaway details in Star Wars Cross Sections, yet it produced 3 million times more power than the Federation homeworld's sun, as described in the Imperial beam weapon analysis.

The hyperdrive of a Star Destroyer consumes as much energy in a single hyperjump as many planetary civilizations will consume in their entire lifetimes. Primitive 20th century Earth nations were never able to merge into a planetary civilization, but this is a chart of yearly energy consumption of just one of their prominent nations (the United States) over a 20-year period (ref. A Physicist's Desk Reference, 2nd Edition):

The average energy consumption over this period averaged to 7.56E19 J/year for a population of roughly 250 million. A smallish Imperial planetary civilization will have at least 10 billion citizens (and in many cases, several orders of magnitude larger than this; there are billions of beings in the orbital shipyards of Kuat alone). Therefore, even if its citizens only consume as much energy as a primitive 20th century Earth civilization like the United States, such a planetary civilization would consume 40 x 7.56E19 J/year, or roughly 3E21 J/year (3E23 J/century). Most of the planetary civilizations of the Old Republic have existed for at least 25,000 years, so if we again take a relatively "young" planetary civilization that has only persisted for 10,000 years or so, its lifetime energy consumption would be well over 3E25 J. Since the power systems of a Star Destroyer can initiate a hyperjump with no charging period necessary, their reactors' peak output must therefore be at least 1E25 watts, if not much larger.

This is similar to a small star's power output; Earth's sun generates 3.827E26 watts at the current stage in its life-cycle. Since the solar ionization reactor of a Star Destroyer is invariably described as a "miniature sun" in the official literature, this result is not unexpected. It is also fairly consistent with the size of the reactor in comparison to the Death Star's reactor. The 16km diameter DS1 main reactor must put out at least 1.2E33 watts to be able to unleash 1E38 J superlaser blasts once per day, so the 140m diameter main reactor of an ISD should generate 8E26 watts if it produces the same number of watts per cubic metre of reactor volume.

This is completely consistent with other aspects of Imperial powerplant performance. The Death Star 2 is more than 3.2 billion times as large as a single Star Destroyer. If hyperjump energy requirements are proportional to the size of the vessel (the most likely situation) then a DS2 hyperjump probably requires ~5E30 joules. Some Federation cultists might undoubtedly claim that these numbers are far too large (which only indicates the massive discrepancy between their sense of scale and our own), but these scales of energy are completely consistent with other incidents as well, such as the first Death Star's circumnavigation of Yavin. During the last 5 minutes of the battle, the Death Star was averaging 670 km/sec. Its diameter was roughly 160 KM, and if we assume similar density to a Federation GCS, then the first Death Star's mass was roughly 1E18 kg. The kinetic energy associated with a velocity of 670 km/sec is 2.2E29 joules. Therefore, we can plainly see that stellar-level energy outputs are required to perform the simple act of moving the Death Star, never mind the acts of performing hyperspace jumps and obliterating planets.

Starfighter propulsion systems also produce a prodigious amount of power: TIE fighters easily overcome the 6E7 J/kg minimum energy requirement for escaping the gravity of a planet, and by comparing the size of a TIE fighter with the size of a Star Destroyer we can compute that hyperdrive-equipped TIE fighters (TIE Defenders) most likely consume at least 1E15 J every time they jump into hyperspace, assuming that hyperjump energy requirements are proportional to volume.

Although there are no SI unit quantifications of the energy required to create artificial gravity, it is nevertheless still interesting that interdictor cruisers can simulate the gravity well of an entire stellar mass.

Darkstar points out that the novelization states ¨small artificial sun¨ He claims this means that the Death Star was powered by a small artificial sun. This is untrue. We are clearly told the Death Stars are powered by hypermatter. The small artificial sun was a result of the death star being destroyed.

Han Solo states that it would take 1,000 ships to destroy a planet in the manner of the death star- i.e. put out 250 sextillion megatons. He also states he does not believe that it would be possible and states that would be more firepower than he’d ever seen before. Of course, Thyre claims that this means that the Empire has less than 1,000 ships. Since we know the empire has 25,000 star destroyers, we know he is wrong. Han must have been referring to the fact that the Empire could not put 1,000 star destroyers in a location without leaving many areas vulnerable to rebel attack.  While this might seem to contradict Dodonna´s quote of the death star carrying half the firepower of the Imperial fleet (does the imperial fleet only have 2,000 ships?!) we can easily rationalize this discrepancy.

1. Han Solo is wrong.
2. There is more than one starfleet.
3. Since Han did not give a time limit, he might have been talking about the destruction of Alderaan happening over a longer time period. This would imply Dodonna was talking about the single shot firepower of the Death star, and how much energy it stored, although does not confirm it.

Note to self: Add section on reactor sizes.

The death star’s reactor is 17 km across.

On tractor beam firepower, tractor beams alone are shown shredding tie fighters in the canon book, “Smugglers Run”. In addition, it is hinted that they may be able to devastate cities as well.

Addressing Counterarguments

Some people point out events when Star Destroyers put out less energy than I claim they can. I counter this by pointing out blasters, and by extension turbolasers, can change the damage they do. One example that’s often used is in Star Wars Rebels, where Thrawn fires very weak shots which are weaker than modern artillery. The reason he did this was that Tarkin ordered him to take the rebels alive. Had Thrawn used full power, the rebels would have been dead.

-Shields

Able to stand up to their guns...very high, at least petaton-exaton level. But there are also many different kinds of shields, kinetic, ray, thermal, bubble style gungan shields,  green planetary shields, blue base shields, magnetic shields, bridge forcefields, blue ship shields, and deflector shields.

Also,  in TFA we see a downed star destroyer which probably fell from space and maintained structural integrity, which speaks volumes about how tough their hulls are. We see this again in TCW season 2: Death trap, in which a Venator-class that is completely powerless free falls down from high orbit- and everyone onboard survives.

The Empire has access to planetary shields, which we see in Rogue One and on Alderaan. The one Alderaan had was able to withstand the Death Star blast for an astonishing 0.13 seconds.

In perhaps the most spectacular demonstration of a planetary shield's power, the destruction of the planet Alderaan shows the 'breaking point' of a core-world's planetary shield. The Death Star I fires its planet destroying superlaser at Alderaan, a beam with a calculated energy of 1E38 J. This energy beam strikes the planetary shield, but the planet does not begin to sustain damage for another tenth of a second. This may mean that, before giving out, the shield was able to dissipate 1E37 J of energy, or 239,005,736,100,000 megatons. This is only 239 exatons, so planetary shields might not be meant for an actual fleet deterrent, although we don’t know if shields go back to full power after a refresh, so it may be that a shield can take 239 exatons every 1/10th a second, which is a bit more reasonable. It would allow a lone planet to mostly handle a Qaz class star destroyer (assuming the Qaz’s guns weren’t coordinated, which they usually aren’t), especially since ground based ion weapons are extremely powerful. Considering that many believe there to be an invisible portion to the superlaser beam, however, it is may be less.   Planetary shields can be penetrated by FTL objects. This is limited to planetary shields, not ship shields, because planetary shields draw much more energy, so they flicker. I have two theories on why planetary shields are used even though ships can FTL through them.

1. Only small ships can fit, and even then, it’s dangerous. Bigger ships can’t decelerate in time to avoid burying themselves in planet surface. This doesn’t explain why robot ramships can’t be used. We’ve seen them in TCW, and they create huge explosions. This wasn’t even designed as a ramship, it just rammed into a planet. Perhaps it’s because planets are valuable.

It didn’t create a miniature star because it had been attacked and had very little fuel left.

2. In times of attack, more power might be diverted to the shield, preventing it from flickering, preventing ships from getting through.

Alderaan’s planetary shield is first hit.

 Shield is still up.

Shield is still up but about to fail.

Shield has failed. (kinda obvious)

Here’s a gif of the scene from (I believe) the blu-ray edition. As you can see, the planetary shield is very obvious, despite what many people say.

An interesting point to consider is that the planetary shield, by spreading the energy out across Alderaan’s surface, may have actually assisted in the destruction of Alderaan by allowing the energy to make contact on more points on the surface at once, increasing the efficiency of the weapon by increasing the rate of energy transfer.

At 24 frames per second, 0.83 seconds pass between those two pictures. If Alderaan was roughly Earth-like in size, then the first frame shows a superheated debris cloud roughly 17500 km wide, with large trails of debris that extend to a width of roughly 31000 km. The second frame shows a debris cloud that is 37500 km wide, and the fastest-travelling debris has been thrown so far that it is no longer visible in the screen. Some of the fastest-moving debris pieces are hundreds of kilometres wide.

Therefore, the main edge of the cloud has covered roughly 10,000km in a time of 0.83 seconds, for an average velocity of 1.2E7 m/s. Some of the debris is obviously travelling much more quickly than the main edge of the cloud, but some of it is travelling much more slowly as well. If we substitute the mass of an Earth-like planet (5.97E24 kg) and the velocity of the Alderaan debris cloud's main edge (1.2E7 m/s) into the kinetic energy formula KE=½mv², we will find that the energy state of the cloud (not including any increase in thermal energy) is roughly 4.3E38 joules higher than the initial energy state of the planet.

Of course, the average velocity of the cloud will be lower than the velocity of the main edge (although it is noteworthy that the fastest-moving chunks, some hundreds of kilometres in width, are being ignored). If we assume a roughly symmetrical velocity distribution from 0 to 1.2E7 m/s so that the average velocity is 6E6 m/s, and plug that into the kinetic energy formula, we will find that the result is 1E38 joules.

Now, the Death Star releases enough power to destroy a planet every 24 hours.The minimum  energy required to destroy the planet in question is 2.25 x 10^32 J. It could be up to 1e40, however. This is from gizmodo. Now, the second Death Star was able to destroy a Mon calamari ship every 3 minutes. Three minutes is 0.002 percent of a day. Now 2.25 x 10^32j x 0.002 is roughly 4.5e+29 joules, or 107,552,581,300 gigatons worth of shielding.

This indicates that a Mon Calamari ship has at least 107,552,581,300 gigatons worth of shielding. (You have to remember that some of this is advanced armor as well) Or 107 exatons.

(This may be slightly overkill too, as in they may not have needed the full 107 exatons. However, we can put a solid upper limit on it by using the 250 sextillion megatons figure. The upper limit is 465 Yottatons, or about 3-4 minutes of fire from an upper limit Qaz class (yottatons range firepower is simply an insane upper limit… Highly unlikely that this is the case). This does suggest that the Qaz class is a rather powerful ship, maybe two or three times an ISD, as we have seen ships take ~ 10 minutes worth of fire from a roughly equal strength ship, as over endor and Coruscant, and a 3v1 against malevolence)

While it is true that there was a bit of overkill, the fact that the superlaser did not penetrate indicates that the gunners put just enough energy to destroy the ships, because we see in Rogue One that the superlaser can penetrate objects. Imperial Star Destroyers and Mon Calamari Capital ships can compete with each other, indicating their shield power is similar.

Another possibility is that the superlaser is less powerful when it fires an off-axis shot targeted at a capital ship. However, even if that takes 95% of its power away, which seems rather ludicrous really, and you assume that it’s still 2 times overkill, which seems too high, you still have a tolerance of about 3 exatons.

I’m still going with at least 100 exaton shield Mon Calamari ships.Probably more. In fact, I’m going to do the calculations with Wong’s 1e38 joule estimate. 10^38 x 0.002 joules is 2x35 joules, which is 4.780114723e+16 gigatons, which is 47,801,147.23 exatons, which is a lot, enough to destroy a planet.  Why is the number so high? I don’t know. Could it be that YW was right when he talked about potential yottatons from star Destroyers? (highly doubtful...) Do Star Destroyers alone have planet busting capabilities, and only planetary shields prevent that from happening? (I don't think that's the case, otherwise BDZ wouldn't be a thing. Also in catalyst they thought it was going to be hard to destroy a planet) After all, we know the Death Star was for busting planetary shields, which withstood mindboggling amounts of energy from the Death Star even then, so it would be reasonable to conclude the planetary shields and other defensive systems could hold off star destroyers, necessitating the Death Star.  Well, yes these numbers are very high. But if you look at Wong’s calcs up above, you will see they are perfectly fair. Remember that TFA ICS has said the heaviest turbolasers can crack the core of a planet. So given enough time I would say something that can CRACK the CORE of a planet should be able to destroy a planet. The “turbolasers” TFA ICS is referring to may be the Orbital Autocannons on the Mandator...but they might be, you know, turbolasers.

DS2 apparently charged up for a planet destroying blast in 5 hours rather than 24. This means that the DS2 3 minute blast is actually around 513 exatons. Therefore, The reasonable estimate for an MC-80 shields and armor is probably Just under the 500 exaton range. It could be higher… It can't be that much lower.

The Qaz class would be far more powerful than a ISD, unless the Death Star is more powerful than I calculated, which is entirely possible, given I had used the smallest possible numbers. In fact, the Death Star might fire a shot up to 8 orders of magnitude more powerful than the shot I used to calculate shield strength! So, Mon Calamari shields are probably WAY more powerful.

Not necessarily… It's not unlikely that the shields are stronger than you estimated, but there's a variable we haven't considered here… We don't know how long it takes the DS1 to charge for a single reactor ignition. If it is, in fact, slightly less than 10 minutes, then everything here is perfectly consistent.

Some people say shields can’t stop matter. This is wrong. Notice it says shields stop particles. Particles are matter. Therefore, shields stop matter. This is from TFA ICS, which is canon. Funnily enough, in Legends (not canon), shields could not stop matter. As I have said, canon star wars is many times more powerful than Legends. In conclusion, I believe that Imperial Star Destroyer shields are exaton-yottaton range. However, as Brian Young has talked about, most shields in Star Wars seem to not be able to stop slow moving objects, as can be seen when slow moving ships can ram each other, or when Anakin demonstrates that one can throw grenades into droideka shields, but only if thrown at the right speed. In fact, I can’t remember a single incident of shields stopping low speed objects, with the exception of Admiral Trench’s shield that stopped slow moving homing missiles. However, this was only seen in one episode of the clone wars, and is definitely not on every ship. There was also a forcefield in Rebels that turned on when a hole was made in a Star Destroyer. It stopped air, (like just about every other force field in the SW universe…) although I can’t remember if it stopped the pieces of metal as well. And there was a forcefield bridge, able to hold up droids, in the Clone Wars, although we aren’t told how strong it was.

Another potential weakness of the shields would be that occasionally weapons fire seems to bleed through, but this never happens at full power. I would say the battle of Coruscant shows this.

Notice, however, that it says nothing about low-velocity projectiles. This means that Brian Young’s theory about semi-permeability may have significant weight to it. However, you must keep in mind that most star trek ships are too large to exploit this weakness, as they place a very significant amount of emphasis on their capital ships. Fighters are rarely seen.

That’s true. Considering we see that low speed grenades can penetrate droideka shields, I wouldn’t be surprised if low speed torpedoes could as well. At the same time, however, the shields used by Star Destroyers and shields used by Droidekas are very different. For example, Star Destroyer shields don’t glow, and aren’t spheres. Still, this would explain why very quick asteroids are stopped by CIS shields, yet slow moving starships can successfully ram each other.

It should be noted the ISD that was hit by an asteroid was transmitting messages. Since they mentioned the asteroids were interfering with the signal, so would the shields. Therefore, the shields were probably down when the asteroid hit. (I’m not sure about this, it seems like transmitting with shields down would be pretty inefficient, though it is possible. I think that it had probably just taken a lot of asteroid hits from beforehand… it had been in the field for days, after all.)

In Lords of the Sith, in Ch 1 pg 13-14 it is written:"Focus your fire on the aft shields," Vader said, his interceptor wheeling and spinning, sliding between the red and the green, until he was within range. He fired and his blasters sent twin beams of plasma into the aft shields. He angled the shot to maximize deflection. He did not want to pierce them and damage the ship, just drain them and bring them down.”

Deflector shields actually deflecting. It would make sense given how many times people have mentioned angling the shields and whatnot, but in a way it's almost like physical armor; hitting head-on gives a better chance of penetrating than at an angle. This also explains partly how attacking ships can aim to specifically disable a ship and not destroy it. It also adds on to Brian Young’s theory of slow moving projectiles being able to penetrate ship shields.

The Death Star’s shields would need to be able to repel gigatons per square meter to protect itself from the debris from the planet it destroyed, assuming it was 6 planetary diameters from Alderaan. The movie seems to show it as being closer, but we will go with the novelization to be more conservative.

 Heir to the JediCh 14 pg 155 wrote:

I didn't bother firing at the cruiser, since there was no way our lone ship could weaken the shields enough to punch through, but I would gladly pull the trigger on the TIE fighters whenever the opportunity afforded.

The Empire had stopped making these particular Interdictor cruisers because of their vulnerabilities, but while they weren't making any new ones, there were still plenty of them out there. The Alliance kept running into them, so we had been training recently on how to eliminate them before our raiding parties got wiped out by their escorts of destroyers and cruisers. The Empire was putting gravity projectors into Star Destroyers now, much more difficult to take out for a group and impossible for a single ship to damage. To my knowledge no one had ever taken out an Immobilizer with a single ship before, but I'd theorized about the possibility with Wedge. I wouldn't be trying except that we were desperate - and we also had a bonus weapon that we'd picked up on Rodia. The Empire must have been frantic to find us if it had sent this one Interdictor to the edge of Hutt Space without any escorts.

Already in touch with the Force, I opened myself more to it and slipped into a nonthinking state of awareness, anticipation, and reaction, sliding the Desert Jewel into an attack vector that minimized my profile to the Interdictor's gunners and led us straight to the portside shield generators.

Some more information about the Immobilizer, Luke doesn't exactly spell out the vulnerabilities but presumably its shields are part of it given what happens next, which as he notes hasn't been done before. There's also the sweet revelation that ISDs are packing gravity-well projectors now. It would seem the Immobilizers have been phased out in favor of stronger ships, as per the Tarkin Doctrine, as mentioned in Tarkin Chapter 16. “[P]ositioned against a radiant sweep of stars, floated three Interdictor vessels, a Detainer CC-2200, a newer model CC-7700 frigate, and—fresh from deepdock in the Corellia system and as yet untested—an Immobilizer 418.”

Ch 14 pg 156-157 wrote:Artoo, light up their particle shield generator for me on the targeting holo." A small rectangle flashed and blinked for me on the bladed edge of the cruiser, and I assigned two of the Jewel's six concussion missiles to it while also locating it with the Force. ... Spinning and juking my way down and feeling the ideal moment approach, I took two more hits from TIE fighters before launching the missiles. Cruiser fire aimed at me ceased and shifted to the missiles, which gave me more leeway to dodge the TIEs. I pulled the nose of the Jewel starboard so that we would dive past the shield generators shortly after the missiles hit. The sensors could pick up whether we scored a hit or not.

-snip-

The concussion missiles struck one after the other, the first weakening the generator's own shield and the second following up, penetrating and destroying it. Before we passed it, another hit took our shields down to 50 percent, and then we were briefly hidden from line-of-sight as I pulled the Jewel up to skate underneath the cruiser, just a meter above the shields to make it impossible for the TIEs above the cruiser to track me - to their scanners I was invisible now, lost in the shadow of the Interdictor. I planned to come up over the opposite side and take a shot at the newly vulnerable gravity projectors.

While the shield generators are self-protected, clearly these couldn't stand up to the one-two punch of the concussion missiles Luke fired. No idea what model or type of concussions missiles were fired though. Also note that it’s easier to penetrate weakened shields, lining up with other examples, and adding on to Mr. Young’s theory. On top of that, they do shoot at missiles, but they don’t hit them. They probably usually do, given they shot at the missiles, but the force protected Luke. (more on this later).When about a meter from an interdictor, jamming, or ship “shadow” makes one invisible to sensors, forcing pilots to rely on visuals. (which is probably why they have windows).

I would say that Mr. Young is correct in that slow moving object can penetrate shields, but I would say that it probably takes a few shots to weaken the shields first, and the torpedo must be angled correctly.

Much forcefield technology seems to be based on states of matter, for example, the forcefield which keeps air in yet ignores matter on the hangers of Star Destroyers, blaster bolts, which ignore air and water yet destroys solid objects, and Droideka shields, which ignore most solid matter unless they are moving quickly.

-Addressing Counterarguments.

Some people point out that the ISD that was hit by an asteroid went down. My counterargument is that its shields were down. It was communicating with Vader, and they mentioned interference from the asteroids. The shields would interfere with communications as well. As for the ISD collision scene in rogue one, the Empire wasn’t ready. They had been hit by ion torpedoes, preventing them from activating their shield and disabling their propulsion. And, as previously addressed, the Federation will not be able to hit the Empire with FTL torpedoes that ignore shields. For one, torpedoes in subspace don’t affect ships in realspace. Secondly, only planetary shields flicker on and off - ship shields don’t.

-Ship Speed

The ISD has an acceleration of 2300G, equivalent to about 22,500m/s2. The thing is very fast, in spite of appearances in on-screen examples. According to the book  Star Wars: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know, the maximum atmospheric speed of a star destroyer is 975 kilometers.

Contrary to what you may think, this is actually EXTREMELY IMPORTANT! This is the basis for ALL of Curtis Saxton’s Much-disputed ICS calculations. So, if you're a devout Trekkie, you're probably thinking, “But hey, you have no canon proof that the ISD is that fast! And even if you do, why does it matter so much?” In response to number one, the book that sci fi show mentioned says that the droid Tri fighter has a maximum acceleration of 3,600 G's. Now let's assume that this cheap and mass produced fighter is 5 times faster than the Millennium Falcon, which seems rather ridiculous, as the falcon is able to (almost) keep pace with most rebel starfighters. This puts the Falcon at 720 G’s. ISD’s are seen to consistently outrun Han Solo’s freighter, so let’s put the ISD at around 750 G’s, or 7357.5 m/s/s, which, keep in mind, is a very conservative estimate. Now in response to the second part of our hypothetical Trekkie’s question, I will show you. Let’s do some rearranging.

• E=F*D, where E is energy in joules, F is force in Newtons, and D is the distance traveled

• F=M*a, where F is force in Newtons, M is mass in kilograms, and a is acceleration in m/s/s
• D=a*t*t, where D  is the distance traveled in meters, a is acceleration in m/s/s, and t is the elapsed time in seconds

If we substitute these, we get:

• E=M*(a^2)(t^2)

Now we need to find values for time and mass. The canon comic book “The Last Flight of the Harbringer” suggests a mass of 40,000,000 metric tons, or 40,000,000,000 (40 billion) kg. While this does seem quite conservative (this is only 75% the density of water) and you could reasonably estimate higher masses, I will go with this. Now we need a time. This would be the endurance of the ship at maximum acceleration. The Geoffrey Mandel blueprints of an ISD says that the endurance of an ISD at maximum speed is 480 hours. While these blueprints are not canon, the numbers the blueprint gives are generally very conservative. But wait! We need seconds, not hours. There are 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds in a minute. Therefore, 480 hours is 1,728,000 seconds. Now let's plug these values into our equation.

• E=M(a^2)(t^2)
• E=(40,000,000,000)(7,357.5^2)(1,728,000^2)
• E=(40,000,000,000)(54,132,806.25)(2,985,984,000,000)

This gives us about 6,465,587.7 yottajoules.

This is equivalent to about 3 zettatons of TNT.

However, this is the energy of ALL the fuel on the star destroyer; it doesn't use this all at once. It uses it over the course of 480 hours of course. This gives us almost 895 teratons per second per ISD. This is a rather conservative estimate. If the destroyer only uses 5% of its total power for firepower, and it has 60 guns, and each gun shoots twice per second, then that’s 372.9 gigatons per shot per gun. Now, if an ISD can only bring a quarter of its guns to bear on one target, and it misses 90% of its shots, then that's still 1.1187 teratons per second directed at the target… And literally everything I did in this calculation was pretty conservative.

How about a non-conservative estimate? Well, TCW “water war” and “ARC Troopers” (the latter of which is a very good episode in my personal opinion) and in the Empire Strikes Back, starship densities appear to exceed that of water. That means that a star destroyer must have a mass of at least about 60,000,000 metric tons. An ISDs acceleration is stated to be 2,300 G's. Let's again use the 480 hours figure. That gives us 5.28e25 watts. Again, if 1/20 of this goes to the weapons, then that's 630.7 teratons per second per gun. Even if only 10% of the guns can fire at the target AND 99% of their shots will miss, then that's still 630.7 gigatons per second at the target. Accept it, the numbers are high.

Yes, but don’t guns and propulsion systems use different power sources? That’s a possibility, but i feel that it would be inefficient to do it that way.

The Battle of Endor demonstrated the accelerative capabilities of Star Destroyers. The Star Destroyer group was clearly seen on the Endor shield-generator bunker's tactical display, heading toward the Rebel fleet at a velocity of at least 6E4 m/s. It decelerated to near-zero velocity relative to the Rebel fleet, in roughly 2 seconds. This means that their decelerative capability (which is equal to or less than their forward accelerative capability) is at least 30 km/s². This means that a Star Destroyer has at least 30 times the acceleration of the Death Star, and 3 times the acceleration of a Federation Galaxy Class starship.

For reference, 3,000 G’s is only 29.43 km/s². Therefore, it is clear that ISD acceleration forward is at least 3,000 Gs, which is even higher than what You’re Wrong calculated for.

 It seems there is a limitation to how small a hyperspace jump a large ship can make-for the Malevolence, it is ten parsecs, or 32.6 light years. (Source: The clone wars season 1 episode Shadow of Malevolence, at the 18 minute mark. It’s on netflix.) Most ships, however, including the venator-class, can make an intra-system “micro jump” as seen in Tarkin. We don’t know what the limitations of a Star Destroyer are, though.

Hyperdrive allows imperial ships to travel at least 100,000 light years in a week. Actually, it appears to be ~50,000 light years in a day, as seen in Star Wars Darth Vader volume 1: “vader”. Similar, and maybe even faster speeds are shown in Lords of the Sith. In Rogue One, the rebels change course in hyperspace. I have no doubt the Empire can do this.They do it in Rebels as well.

In heir to the jedi Ch 20 pg 234 wrote: I'd had very little to do with it - this part of the trip was all made possible by math and physics and brains that could process it far faster and more accurately than I ever could. It wasn't without its own tension, however. Without traveling established lanes, there was a chance we'd never come back into realspace again. But if we did, we'd have a view of the galaxy no one else had ever enjoyed before.

Over the next eight hours, we would up spending more time in realspace than hyperspace. Drusil's short jumps dumped us into new systems, and she spent time with Artoo taking readings, scanning the stars, and then tweaking her calculations for the next jump. I encouraged her to take all the time she needed.

-snip-

The worry of being lost in space got replaced by the worry of running into Imperials again once Drusil and Artoo announced that we were back on established routes, skirting the far side of Hutt Space and traveling to the galactic north....

So we have a direct comparison of traveling along established hyperspace routes vs forging your own in untraveled space. In this case, a few hours time to travel from one part of the galaxy to the other vs a few hours to travel through an unexplored sector of space. While the insane speeds of established hyperspace travel are lost in such a situation, it is still a good deal fast and would provide only an inconvenience in a fight against another foe, one which wouldn't last long once fast lanes were established. Also, there are only 20 sectors in the Star Wars galaxy, (ref. Tarkin Revealed, Star Wars Insider #153) so this means a star wars ship can travel 1/20th an unexplored galaxy in a matter of hours. Of course, the Empire could just spam probe droids if it wanted maximum safety.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICGLE_vn28o&list=UUMMMBM7hKk1MvLZgj-dPTaw

See one of Firmus Piett’s video on starfighter speed. The arguments are in the description  

You can change the programmed course in transit, as we see happen in Rogue one.

In the book, Lords of the Sith, it is written on Ch 5 pg 68-69:"Hyperdrive is online and course is set, sir," the helm called, and the information was echoed up to Luitt.

"I'd be honored if you'd give the order, my lord," said Luitt.

"Oh, no, Captain," the Emperor said, waving a hand. "I'm a political leader, not a military one. Proceed as you normally would."

"Engage the hyperdrive," the captain called, and the command caused a ripple of activity to flow along the bridge crew.

Vader felt the faint thrum in the deck as the Perilous's powerful hyperdrive engaged. Stars and the black of space disappeared, replaced by the blue churn of hyperspace.

"En route to Ryloth," called the helm.

"Dim the view," Luitt ordered, and the transparisteel darkened until hyperspace was no longer visible. He turned to the Emperor. "My lord, if you and Lord Vader would prefer to retire to your quarters, I will let you know the instant we arrive in Ryloth's system."

"I think we will remain on the bridge for now, Captain," the Emperor said.

.....

The two surveyed the bridge in a silence broken only by the rasping of Vader's respirator while the Perilous crossed parsecs in a blink. After a time, the bridge crew broke into a different rhythm as they prepared to return the Star Destroyer to normal space.

Parsecs in a blink implies...very, very fast speeds. Very fast. Light years per second fast.

"Coming out of hyperspace," called the helm.

"Coming out of hyperspace. Aye," the call echoed up the bridge.

"And the test begins," the Emperor said.

Vader looked at his Master, head tilted in question, not taking his meaning until he, too, felt the disturbance in the Force.

While it is not explicitly made clear from where the Perilous began the hyperspace jump, it is highly likely that they started out at Coruscant given the way the scene is written out, in which case the journey from the Imperial Capital to Ryloth takes about as long as Vader and Palpy can hold their bladders standing around on the bridge.

In heir to the Jedi it is wrote Ch 4 pg 43 :We took a longer route back to the fleet, a circuitous path that involved forging a new hyperspace lane between Kirdo and Orto Plutonia - but only after scanning the ship for tracers and spyware. Without immediate pressure and with the luxury of time, Artoo minimized the inherent risk of traveling along unknown hyperspace lanes in conjuction with the nav computer of the Desert Jewel.

Confirmation that anyone can make a new hyperspace lane as long as they have some time, a good nav computer and an astromech on hand.

In Lords of the Sith, Ch 9 pg 133, it is written: Mors's ship would have to swing around Ryloth, but that would take only a minute or two.

Minutes for an Imperial shuttle to travel around a planet, at least while still out in space. And some still try to claim that Imperial fighters have similar mobility and speed to WW1 fighter planes.

According to Star Wars: TIE Fighter Deluxe Book and Model Set, the maximum acceleration of a tie fighter is 4,100 G. The book came out in 2016, so it is canon.

Addressing Counterarguments

Some people point out that in legends, ships cannot change course in hyperspace. This is irrelevant because legends is no longer canon. Again, current SW canon is far stronger than legends in almost every respect.

Ref: Rogue one.

Many people point out that people say “lightspeed”. However, like “laser”, we see that this is a misnomer. Millions of systems cannot fit into an area a light-week wide. Also, canon maps indicate the SW galaxy to be about a hundred twenty thousand light years across. Since almost everyone crosses it within a week, it should be obvious “lightspeed” is not lightspeed, like turbolasers are not actually lasers.

Special quote, from Thyre Radim, a person we’ve debated often:

“here is a direct quote form a new hope “She'll Make .5 Past Light Speed"HAN SOLO SAID THAT ABOUT HIS SHIP WHICH IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE FASTEST EVER SO HAH BECAUSE .5 WOULD MEAN LIGHTSPEED IS 1 SO HE GOES 1.5 TIMES THE SPEED OF LIGHT YOU DICKHEAD."

Do I even need to post a counterargument, after you’ve seen the above?

Also from him:

“ok and you're wrong said they use tactical in-system hyperjumps but this is not possible if the speed he is saying they have is true becasue they do not use computers lol so they would literally have to go into hyperspace and come out in nano seconds which is total rubbish bullshit so we know that  hyperspace is both slow and not capable of that because Thrawn could only do something similar which was use interdictors to pull his ships out so yah it's not possible lol. ok you can't what about personal cloaking huh theirs was more advanced ok what about energy swords alot better ok what about weapons whose projectiles track enemies not usefull ok what about the engineers who can reverse engineer literally anything and make it better still not usefull what about the letgoli huh yah dipshit so stfu.”

Yes, he seriously is claiming Star Wars does not have computers. Apparently, the existence of droids is lost on him. He also ignores examples of homing missiles, cloaks, and lightsabers.

Some people point out Finn saw the destruction of the planets by Starkiller base instantly, but this is explained by technobabble. Apparently, the light from the explosion travelled instantly. Also, if light reached Finn this quickly without being sped up, that would mean the SW galaxy is about the size of a solar system. This is clearly not the case.

Ref: Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens novelization and  http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Starkiller_Base#cite_note-awakensnovel-2

And some people still try to say SW fighters have ww1 era fighter plane speed...ugh.

The continent grows significantly because of how fast the ship is going. Obviously, the maximum speed for a ship in realspace is about lightspeed, so this doesn’t really prove much. Credit to Brian Young for the gifs.

-Ship Range

Ships approaching each other to the tens of kilometers in range is considered “Point blank”.Imperial ships prefer to be at close range. Turbolasers power drop-off restricts their range to hundreds of kilometers at most.

Possible beyond visual range combat.

A similar thing was mentioned in RotS novelization regarding seeing ships relatively close to each other.

However, with TLJ showing that turbolaser range is only in the hundreds of kilometers, this proves turbolaser power does drop off quickly at that range, so BVR combat would have to use rockets or missiles.

Addressing Counterarguments

What is there to debate?

-Single-man craft/fighters

Imperial fighters are designed with numbers, speed, and maneuverability in mind. A single Star Destroyer carries 72 TIE fighters. There are many variants. TIE defenders have shields and hyperdrive. Interestingly, many TIE fighter pilots seem to have slight German accents, and one of them is referred to as “Baron”. In one of the Rogue One books (I’m sorry, I can’t remember), it is said that TIE fighters are generally cocky and regard shields as something for cowards. Yet, the TIE defender has shields… perhaps because it’s reserved for elite pilots, like TIE interceptors are used for skilled pilots.

Ch 1 pg 13 wrote:I engaged the ship's baby laser cannon and waited until I got a system go-ahead, then dived on the lateral axis toward the TIE fighters. I flipped on the deflector shields and locked on the targeting computer. One look at the ships and I knew the TIE pilots were hanging on to the orientation of the Star Destroyer from which they had deployed; they had a sense of which way was "up" and they were sticking to it, which is a limiting and even dangerous perception to hold on to in space. Up and down don't really have a meaningful use until you're in atmosphere. I deliberately rolled as I dived, adjusted my nose so that the leading TIE fighter was in my sights, and fired.

It's curious how Luke seems to recognize this fact while these TIE pilots do not. It could be just that these pilots are newbies since there's no mention of this in any other incidents, or this may be standard protocol to help prevent collisions.

To repeat myself, TIE fighters accelerate at 4,100 G.

-Planet Numbers

At its peak the Galactic Empire had approximately several million member planets.

In Heir to the jedi, in Ch 10 pg 104 it is written:Denon is an ecumenopolis like Coruscant, a vast city sprawling over all the landmass and dependent on imports for food and raw materials. Coming from a rural planet with a very scattered population, I wasn't used to seeing an endless vista of buildings all lit up at night and ships buzzing around them like they were flowers to be pollinated. The planet did kind of seem that way, a field of stiff bright plants swarming with alien insects. Except it wasn't nearly as peaceful as a field might be. The visual clutter was dizzying and even from orbit I imagined I could hear the constant throb of it pulsing in my bones.

So re-confirmation that Coruscant isn't the only city-planet in the SW galaxy, which again speaks to the level of infrastructure, logistics and technology needed to support such planets. The "throbbing" Luke is feeling may be his Force abilities picking up the sheer number of life on the planet.

In Complete Locations,

Planet Profiles, p. 10 wrote:There are hundreds of millions of worlds harboring intelligence life and countless millions more where intelligent life is now extinct or never arose.

Battlefront-Twilight Company tells us there are more than 3.2 million inhabitable systems in the galaxy, although we can rationalize this disparity by pointing out Complete Locations might be referring to extragalactic systems or that Twilight company says “more than”.

In Complete locations, Planet Profiles, p. 10 wrote: Kamino is a stormy world in a system of 13 planets circling an aging star that straggles south of the Rishi Maze, an irregular dwarf galaxy in a close and decaying orbit about the Galactic Republic.

Re-confirmation that the Rishi Maze is a dwarf galaxy outside the GFFA galaxy proper, again indicating the type of speed and range of hyperdrives.

This should be obvious from the name, “Intergalactic banking clan” but some people really need it hammered into their head.

https://youtu.be/qUNgURqFiLk

The republic has a few million planets at least.

-Production Capability

Two death stars. 25,000 star destroyers. Unknown number of smaller ships and tie fighters.

 In Complete Locations,  Death Star II, p. 166 wrote:
As had been confirmed during development of the original Death Star, construction advanced most efficiently when the working surface allowed sufficient space for the greatest possible number of self-replicating construction droids. This was Moff Jerjerrod's justification for filling the station's interior in a piecemeal manner.
Von Neumann machines!

Ch8 Pg102 wrote:The Redhurne system was a charnel house adrift with the corpses of planets. Its sun had gone supernova centuries earlier, burning worlds to cinders; now no sign remained on those planets' ravaged surfaces of life or civilization. The remnant of the Redhurne star, a collapsed post-nova fragment that glowed white with seething intensity, exuded radiation deadly to any unshielded creature.

But Redhurne was not empty. When the planets of the inner system had cracked open, their cores had been exposed to the star's toxic rays and been transmuted into exotic new materials - the building blocks of hypermatter fuel. Thus, in the waning days of the Republic, Redhurne had become host to parasites: scavenger drones that crawled across its planets and carried their bounty of volatile minerals and gases to orbital mining stations operated by skeleton crews.

The source of where hypermatter comes from. Don't recall if this is similar to how it was in the old EU.

We know that the empire has the following ship classes:

Dreadnought classes:

Executor-class Star Dreadnought

Unknown dreadnought in catalyst**

Eclipse-class Star Dreadnought**

Star destroyers:

Imperial I-class Star Destroyer

The Imperial I-class star destroyer is designed to function as a mobile orbital bombardment platform, carrier, and capital ship destroyer. This image shows XX-9 class turbolasers in action, putting out high gigatons of firepower. (Of course, this does not account for damage falloff, the unique way turbolasers behave, or firepower settings, so it is not a high end feat.) 60 of these are present on a single ship.

http://vsbattles.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Soldier_Blue/Star_Wars_-_XX-9_heavy_turbolaser_yield

Imperial II-class Star Destroyer

Designed as an anti-capital ship, this ship has very little light point defense, although it does have what seems to be flak cannons, which seem to have kiloton range firepower. It’s heavy cannons are probably petaton range firepower given various calcs like the Death Star Firepower calc and reactor size calcs.

Is the design of the Imperial Star Destroyer bad?

Issue #1: Non-symmetrically distributed firepower. (Ventrally and dorsally)

People often claim that the fact about 90% of an ISD’s armament is on the top half is a design oversight, and a failure to see space in three dimensions. However, it is these people who are failing to realize a star destroyer can simply reorient itself during combat to make certain about 90% of it’s guns are able to fire upon a single target, and nearly 100% if the ISD is pointed towards it. It is the Arquitens that is so widely praised for its distribution of fire that cannot focus all of its firepower above itself.

Issue #2: Exposed hanger bay.

The exposed hanger bay allows fighters to vacate the star destroyer without the star destroyer needing to open hanger bay doors. It is in fact the Venator that is poorly designed, as not only does it need to open its armor prior to combat or even occasionally in combat, the open doors present a sweet target for enemy gunners and bombers. It cannot rotate to avoid this without also moving the enemy out of it’s heavy guns’ firing arcs. By contrast, the ISD can engage in combat with an opponent above it while deploying fighters faster than the VSD, and the hanger bay is not vulnerable unless the ISD is surrounded. In this case, the battle is likely lost anyways and the only advisable option would be to retreat though hyperspace.

Issue #3: Exposed bridge, sensor suite, and shield generators.

The ISD line is equipped with a secondary bridge, deep in the core of the ship, in the unlikely event the main bridge is destroyed. The main bridge houses the sensors and shield generators. Therefore, it is actually the most well defended area, as it is nearest to the shield generators that the shields are strongest. Similarly, the sensors are well protected by the shields. The shield generators and sensors being away from the ship may also be an intentional design decision, both to help the shield completely envelop the ship and to allow sensors to scan more efficiently without the rest of the ship being near it.

Issue #4: Lack of Point Defense:

The ISD is designed to be accompanied with a fleet. Smaller ships such as the Gozanti are to be used as fighter screens, with 2 being the standard for an ISD-2. In practice, however, star destroyers are often used alone. Therefore, star destroyers also carry 72 TIE space superiority fighters, which are more than enough to deal with small fighter/bomber attacks.

Qaz-class Star Destroyer

From the clone wars, and had incredible firepower. Demonstrated high exaton level firepower, according to YW’s calculations.
Secutor-class Star Destroyer

The Secutor is a carrier only briefly mentioned in canon. Legends depicts it with a double bridge, like the venator. This image is from legends and may not represent actual canon.

Tector-class Star Destroyer

The Tector class star Destroyer is a Star Destroyer with the ventral hangers removed, presumably replaced by additional reactors, fuel, or supplies. This picture only shows the bottom view. This allows it to be a much more potent against capital ships, but leaves      it vulnerable to fighters and bombers.

 
Venator-class Star Destroyer*

Another star destroyer from the clone wars, this ship focused on carrying fighters and bombers instead of raw firepower. However, it is noted that most, if not all, of these ships have been destroyed by the Empire due to their lack of survivability and firepower.

Victory-class Star Destroyer

Essentially a smaller star destroyer, with a focus on ion weaponry and filling an anti-capital ship role. This image is from legends and may not represent actual canon.

Cruisers and Corvettes:

Arquitens-class command cruiser

When the Empire deems a world worthy of blockading or protecting, yet not worthy of a Star Destroyer, an Arquitens is sent. The Arquitens is also a light carrier, being able to drop TIEs into battle. It probably carries low teratons of firepower at most. They often have upgraded communications systems when used as a command vessel.

https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:Soldier_Blue/Star_Wars_-_Imperial_light_cruiser_turbolasers

The arquitens demonstrates gigatons of firepower in this comic, but this is only measuring the effects of turbolasers on shields, which we already know absorb energy from weapons. Therefore, the actual firepower is likely higher.

Arquitens-class light cruiser

Although only a support craft in larger engagements, the Arquitens is capable of holding its own in most brief skirmishes. It is also very fast, and can outrun that which it cannot outfight. Certain variants carry more firepower in exchange for hanger capacity.
Carrack-class light cruiser

An anti-fighter ship, described in legends as 350 meters long, but mentioned only briefly in canon. While it is said to be an excellent anti-fighter unit, the design prevents concentration of firepower and is overall very poor.
Carrion Spike

Had cloak, although was still detectable in an interdiction field. Was capable of wiping out cities in a single shot, as described in Tarkin.
CR90 corvette

A fast blockade runner, but didn’t seem to have large fuel storages, at least in TCW era, with fuel problems being highlighted as a limiter to its range.
Gozanti-class cruiser

The Gozanti is a useful light carrier, being able to haul troops, ties, AT-DPs, and even AT-ATs into battle, despite being only 64 meters long. It carries light anti-fighter weapons, but is generally incapable of attacking capital ships. In addition, much of its weapons arc is limited towards the rear of the ship, meaning that it is probably not intended for actual sustained combat.

Raider-class corvette

This 150 meter long ship carried ties into battle, but also filled an important anti-fighter role. Some also carried concussion missiles.

Interdictor cruisers:
CC-7700 frigate
Detainer CC-2200 interdictor cruiser
Immobilizer 418 cruiser

Has light point defense, used for shooting down missiles. It seems they no longer have missile jamming abilities from legends video games. Interdictors are capable of finding cloaked ships via their interdiction fields.
Imperial Interdictor (star destroyer with gravity well generators)

Frigates:
Razor-class frigate
Salliche
Support carriers:
Quasar Fire-class cruiser-carrier

Minimal firepower, but usable as a mobile base of operations and carrier. Had light point defense weaponry that behaved unlike turbolasers. It is capable of holding and rapidly deploying 48 fighters or bombers, but some operate with far fewer in stock.

Goliath
Shuttle
Delta-class T-3c Shuttle
Eta-class supply barge
Lambda-class T-4a shuttle
T-5 Deliverance
Sentinel-class landing craft
Theta-class T-2c shuttle
Zeta-class cargo shuttle
Gunships/troop transports:
Imperial Dropship Transport

Low Altitude Assault Transport/infantry*

Patrol transport

Low-altitude Imperial transport
Delta-class DX-9 stormtrooper transport
Theta-class barge
TIE lander
Y-85 Titan dropship
TIE Reaper

Starfighters
Alpha-3 Nimbus-class V-wing starfighter*

Aggressive ReConnaissance-170 starfighter*

Eta-2 Actis-class light interceptor*

TIE/D Defender

The TIE Defender is the Empire’s attempt to create the best starfighter they could, and it was arguably successful. Equipped with hyperdrive, heavy cannons, missiles, and shields, it can quickly deploy and engage rebel craft-and nearly always comes out on top. However, the extraordinary price tag prevented it from being mass produced.
TIE/ln space superiority starfighter

Cheap, fast, and powerful, the TIE fighter has a maximum acceleration of 4,100 Gs, allowing it to quickly reposition even in combat. Assuming it is similarly armed as the X-wing, it carries low kilotons of firepower.
TIE Advanced v1
TIE Advanced x1
TIE/sa bomber

The TIE bomber carries bombs to engage rebel bases, but can also carry missiles and participate in fighter combat.
TIE/IN interceptor

Faster and more heavily armed than the TIE/ln.
TIE/sk x1 experimental air superiority fighter

It also carries bombs.
VT-49 Decimator
Yachts:

Imperialis
Imperialis (Jakku)
*marked ships are retired, and very little numbers of these ships were used after the early years of the empire

**It is unknown whether these ships are different classes of SSD or executor classes. Contexts at times suggests both ways.

 Millions of smaller ships per year (fighter and maybe small corvette sized) is “small scale production”, from twilight company.

So, especially considering Thelea’s calculations, I would put Imperial fleet numbers at anywhere between 500 million to a billion, not including privately owned ships.

I assume this is including fighters and other small craft?

Yes.

Addressing Counterarguments

The Empire built two Death Stars.

Well, one and a half Death Stars.

In secret, without it even affecting the galactic economy. The first was discovered by spies, and the second was leaked purposefully.

-Ground Forces

Not particularly bad.

Walkers

AT-AT’s are very strong, (Maximum power shots have been estimated in the kiloton range) but given that we have yet to build any ground combat vehicle of its size, we don’t know what the power-to-size ratio for that would be appropriate. Chicken walkers seem to be very weak for their size, not very good. (Worth noting that scout vehicles are almost always bad, so don't be too hard on the AT-ST’s) We don’t know their speed, (Yeah we do, top speeds are 60 km/hr for an AT-AT, 80-85 for an AT-RT, and 90 for an AT-DP. 90 kph over flat ground for the AT-ST as per The Rogue One Visual Guide.) but since other walkers have been seen to run very quickly in the Umbara arc, it makes sense they would be fast as well. The tank seen in Rogue One was far more powerful than tanks here on Earth, (same with the transport tanks in rebels, seen blowing up houses and such.) so it stands to reason the AT-ST has similar power generation capabilities. Perhaps it diverts the power to the legs instead.

The AT-DP is a walker used for supporting ground forces and AT-ATs. They (presumably) have a longer range and, while not as heavily armed as an AT-ST, are taller.

Do Walkers have shields?

Evidence For: We see walkers take no damage from weapons, and seem to have shield effects. Also, in Star Wars battlefront, a rebel officer states “Its shields are down, the Imperial Walker is vulnerable.”  

X-wings have shields, and they are far smaller than AT-ATs. Watch the following gifs.

 Before you complain that the shields failed in a few shots, remember it had been shot many times by the AT-TE and had probably angled most of its shields to the front to compensate. These shots are probably half-penetrating the shields, as we see happen sometimes. If they’re  sparks...why is it sparking against a smooth surface? We also see that the shield probably has a repulsive effect, else the shield would have been glowing constantly.

Obvious shields, no scorch marks. Bolt completely stopped. Even the explosive part is negated. Interestingly, the shield absorbs all the explosion, instead of redirecting it away. The Empire may have chosen such a shield for psychological value, or technical reasons. We know shields that redirect energy outwards instead of absorbing it exist in the star wars universe, (the gungan energy shield comes to mind) so there must be some reason to use such an inefficient system. These are easily kiloton range power shots if we use Mr. Young’s energy calcs, although they may not be valid here because of the different type of explosive used. Then, it would be ¨merely¨ ton level firepower. But, there does seem to be lots of vaporization going on; note the fact the tower was felled in one shot, which is very difficult for modern day tanks to do, indicating far superior firepower.

Also, I’d bet AT-TE’s have shields too….they would have been one-shot by the AT-AT if they didn’t. Below is an AT-AT firing at maximum firepower. The power of this shot has been calculated in the kiloton range.

Evidence against: Some guy on the internets said they didn’t. That’s literally it. Oh, and there’s some legends stuff that says they don’t, but that’s legends. Not canon. Again, canon SW is more powerful than legends.

The following section, highlighted black,  is from Mr. Wong’s site.

Mobile Infantry Combat Vehicles: The AT-AT Walker

General Capabilities

The most famous type of Imperial armoured vehicle needs little in the way of introduction. The AT-AT (All Terrain Armoured Transport) walker is a heavy assault vehicle which combines some of the characteristics of tanks, artillery, and MICVs. Although one could make an argument for its classification in any of those categories, its cargo capacity (40 men and 5 speeder bikes) leads to a primary classification as an MICV, albeit one of astonishing size and power. There are enough misconceptions about the AT-AT walker that it deserves its own discussion, so it will be discussed separately from other Imperial MICVs.

AT-AT walkers advance during the Battle of Hoth

An AT-AT's basic capabilities are fairly well known: its armour shrugged off direct hits from Rebel artillery fire or snowspeeder guns in the Battle of Hoth. Its combination of two heavy chin-mounted guns and two light side-mounted blasters (seen above) have variable firepower and enough flexibility to target and destroy anything from infantrymen to enemy artillery pieces, low-flying aircraft, and even entire installations as far away as the visible horizon. However, its mechanized underside is vulnerable if you can get close enough to exploit it, and it has two dorsal vents which appear to be vulnerable points. Its maximum speed over flat terrain ground is said to be over 60 km/h, which would mean that it can cover its own length in roughly 2 seconds at full speed.

Size

Given the well-established anti-Imperial bias of the official literature, it should not come as a surprise that the size of Imperial AT-AT walkers has been grossly distorted in the technical books. The books all state in unison that its height is 15 metres, but you can clearly see from the picture at right that this is impossible. The walker is more than 13.5 times the height of Luke Skywalker, even with his arm extended upward to hold the grappling gun. If it were only 15 metres tall, as the books insist, then Luke Skywalker would be less than 3½ feet tall! That is obviously ridiculous. Luke Skywalker is almost exactly my height, and I can reach with one arm up to more than 2¼ metres without difficulty, so the picture actually shows a walker which stands at 30 metres tall (that's a hundred feet), not 15 metres. In other words, New Republic propaganda describes AT-AT walkers being only half as big as they truly are.

Tactical Strengths and Weaknesses

Of course, no discussion of walkers would be complete without answering the question: why? Why would the Empire build walkers, when they could use repulsorlift armour or tracked vehicles? The AT-AT walker suffers from numerous well-publicized weaknesses:

1. Poor concealment. Its sheer height means it can be easily seen from many miles away even with the naked eye, and the thundering noise of its crashing footfalls would reveal its position even to a blind man. Indeed, one could probably use seismographs to detect the movement of AT-AT walkers from well beyond the horizon, even in zero-visibility conditions.
2. High centre of gravity. The AT-AT's body is suspended so far off the ground that its centre of gravity is almost unthinkably high for a ground vehicle. It has even been suggested that an AT-AT could be easily toppled by firing a projectile at its side. However, its sheer mass precludes this possibility unless you have a weapon that can fire projectiles the size of a battle tank.
3. Poor close-in combat capability. The AT-AT's flexible neck permits engagement of vehicles in a broad forward firing arc, but it has difficulty with targets to its rear. It has no downward-firing weapons so it cannot engage targets which have somehow gotten underneath it (apart from attempting to crush them with its feet), and its agility is poor. Like real-life four-legged animals, it requires many steps in order to turn around, so it cannot react quickly to close-in targets.
5. High resource requirements. Such an enormous vehicle must also be very massive, hence the fact that its footfalls could be felt many miles away in the Rebel bunker. To put its sheer size in perspective, a single leg (not including foot) is roughly 16 metres long, 2.25 metres wide, and 1 metre thick. Therefore, even if we ignore everything but its legs and assume iron construction, we're already talking about more than a thousand tons of metal! One could theorize that the legs are hollow instead of being solid as they appear to be, but that would be extremely curious in light of their load-bearing requirements, not to mention the fact that we saw those legs take direct hits from Rebel artillery without perceptible damage. It is therefore likely that this vehicle's mass is on the order of several thousand tons. This seems like a lot of material for a single vehicle.
6. High ground pressure. Its feet, at roughly 4.5 to 5 metres in diameter, have less than 60 m² of ground contact area when one foot is in motion. This means that the vehicle's ground pressure will be several times atmospheric pressure. If its mass is 2500 tons, its static ground pressure with one foot up will be greater than 4 bars, and it will spike dramatically with each footfall, hence the thundering reverberation and ground quake. Modern armoured vehicles, in comparison, are usually designed to exert no more than one half atmospheric pressure on the ground. Now, 4 bars is nothing to get overly excited about (a scuba diver will experience it at 40 metres depth), but it is certainly enough to confine AT-ATs to solid terrain.

This list of weaknesses seems quite daunting, however they actually make sense in light of the AT-AT's combat role. Every type of real-life weapon is designed to perform a particular job, and its capabilities will be complementary with other weapon types, hence the importance of combined-arms tactics. The AT-AT is no different. It is not capable of waging ground war on its own, but its capabilities can be utilized very effectively within the larger framework of an Imperial ground army.

So what is the role of the AT-AT, and how can it possibly explain the weaknesses above? Well, we know it was used to attack a well defended target in TESB. Therefore, it must have been the most appropriate available weapon for the job. An attack on a well defended target with theatre shields, air support, and artillery is no easy task. You would have no air support, and no high-speed repulsorlift vehicles. Since the only known varieties of towed and self-propelled artillery use repulsorlifts for mobility, they would also be unavailable. This means you must be able to perform the combat duties of artillery, tanks, and MICVs without the wide array of vehicles you would normally use. No single vehicle can possibly perform all of those jobs as well as specialized vehicles would, so there would inevitably be compromises, and ironically enough (considering its classification as a transport), the most likely compromise would be its ability to function as an APC. Its ability to destroy enemy artillery, structures, and fortification is paramount, since no other weapons will be available for that task. Its ability to destroy enemy vehicles, low-altitude aircraft, and infantry units is secondary, since its great strength would reduce its vulnerability to such targets. Furthermore, smaller walker classes such as AT-STs should be available for support. Its ability to carry and support infantry is its least important attribute, since the destruction of enemy artillery and shield generators would open the door for various classes of specialized troop transports such as air drops and repulsorcraft.

Armed with this knowledge, we can see that some of the AT-AT's "weaknesses" are inherent side-effects of its combat role, while others aren't really weaknesses at all:

1. Poor concealment. It is often assumed that the AT-AT's poor concealment is an unfortunate design flaw, but how do we know it isn't intentional? As a weapon of assault, subjugation, and domination, it was undoubtedly designed with psychological warfare in mind, and deliberate high visibility would not be unreasonable in such a role. There are times when maximum visibility can actually be useful; for example, the US Navy uses enormous "supercarriers" even though they are obvious targets for enemy missile attack. However, their visibility serves the useful purpose of intimidation. Few sights can be more sobering for a tin-pot dictator than a huge, heavily armed American aircraft carrier and its task force, steaming within plain view of his coastline. In the Empire, highly visible weapons such as mile-long starships and hundred foot tall armoured transports are the psychological equivalent of "sabre rattling", and they work. The official literature actually describes entire star systems surrendering at the mere sight of a Star Destroyer, and soldiers being paralyzed with fear at the mere sound of AT-ATs.
2. High centre of gravity. The AT-AT's great height may initially appear to serve no useful purpose. However, upon closer examination we can determine that its height does serve a useful purpose, just like its high visibility. Remember that an AT-AT must be capable of long-range bombardment, but its weapons are limited to a line of sight. Therefore, if it was built low (like a modern MBT) with a gun only 2 metres above the ground, its range would be severely limited in all but the flattest terrain types, and it would be unable to shoot above even relatively small obstacles such as disabled vehicles. Even on perfectly flat terrain, its maximum range on an Earth-like planet would be limited to the distance to the visible horizon, which would be a mere 5 kilometres. However, by elevating its guns to a lofty 23 metre height, the AT-AT gains the ability to shoot over the top of small obstacles, it gains a broad view of the battlefield, and the distance to the visible horizon jumps from 5 kilometres to more than 17 kilometres. This number may sound familiar if you've watched TESB recently; according to General Veers' driver, his AT-AT destroyed the Rebel shield generator facility at 17.28 kilometres.
3. Poor close-in combat capability. The AT-AT's poor close-in combat capability is simply the inevitable side-effect of its sheer size and power. Real-life heavy armour is similarly limited at short ranges, hence the need for support from light vehicles and infantry. In the case of the AT-AT, it derives close-range support from its AT-ST escorts, which were seen in both TESB and ROTJ. While the AT-STs cannot do battle with enemy artillery, assault fortifications, and destroy large structures, they can support the vehicles which can, by keeping their flanks clear of infantry and light vehicles. This is a good example of the sort of complementary weapon classes which normally work together in real-life armies, as well as the Imperial army.
4. High resource requirements. The AT-AT's resource requirements are high by terrestrial standards, but a galactic Empire can casually call upon resources that would bankrupt a mere planetary government, or even an alliance of ten or twenty thousand planetary governments (never mind a tiny collective like the Federation). Therefore, although it may seem exorbitant from our frame of reference, it really wouldn't be an issue. The resources required for the construction of a single Star Destroyer make the cost of armoured divisions seem insignificant by comparison. Furthermore, the excessive use of metal might actually serve a useful functional purpose: its legs would be unacceptably vulnerable to stress fractures and artillery damage if they weren't solid, and the enormous feet are so massive that they would be virtually immune to any but the most enormously powerful land mines. In real life, land mines are dangerous to armoured vehicles because their undersides are typically quite weak. However, the massive, mostly solid feet of an AT-AT walker will eliminate this vulnerability; while it has a vulnerable underside, it would be unaffected by land mine detonations which are fifty feet below, and which would most likely be completely smothered by the aforementioned feet.
5. High ground pressure. This will definitely limit the AT-AT's terrain flexibility. However, it is the inevitable side effect of its mass, which is an inevitable side-effect of its size, which in turn is required for its long-range bombardment capabilities. Moreover, the AT-AT's powerful weapons were capable of destroying large structures such as the Rebel shield generator with a single blast. Such heavy weapons would undoubtedly produce significant recoil, and the friction provided by high-pressure ground contact will give the walker enough stability to repeatedly fire such blasts without sliding out of position or losing its aim point. Gun recoil is a significant problem for repulsorcraft, as demonstrated graphically by the Trade Federation battle tanks in the Battle of Naboo. They rocked noticeably back with each shot, thus forcing them to steady themselves and reacquire the target before the next shot. Repulsorlift towed artillery wouldn't suffer from this problem since it sits on the ground once deployed, but repulsor tanks and repulsor artillery will definitely have a poorer rate of fire than vehicles which are stabilized on solid ground, such as the AT-AT.

Troop Deployment

One mystery about the AT-AT is its method of troop deployment. We've only seen people debark from an AT-AT once, and that occurred in ROTJ when Luke Skywalker was escorted from an AT-AT's "head" into a special elevated platform (you can see the walker approaching the platform in the picture at right). This didn't solve the mystery at all, since the AT-AT cannot expect to have special elevated platforms ready whenever someone wants to get out! Some of the official literature describes the walker "kneeling" in order to unload troops from a rear hatch, but no rear hatch is visible. Furthermore, the process of kneeling down to debark troops is extremely difficult to conceptualize. Its ankle joints don't appear to have enough freedom of motion to permit such a maneuver, and the very idea is questionable since it would involve a temporary loss of mobility. It's hard to imagine anyone deliberately designing an armoured transport in such a manner, but the official literature is not unanimous on this claim.

The SWICS shows troopers lining up to jump out of a side hatch near the back of the walker body, in much the same way as modern paratroopers jump out of an aircraft's side door. It explains that "AT-AT walkers can unleash their assault forces in several rapid waves using drop-lines with attached harnesses." This makes much more sense than the physically, tactically and logically questionable idea of the walkers kneeling to unload, since the AT-AT would lose none of its combat capabilities during this process. Troopers on speeder bikes could simply fly out of the side hatch, while other troopers could either slide down the drop-lines or use jet-packs and/or repulsor harnesses to deploy from the side hatch with a modicum of air mobility, so that there is no risk of being crushed by the AT-AT's elephantine feet if they deploy while it is in motion.

Armour

An AT-AT's armour system is capable of withstanding intense energy bombardment, as seen during the Battle of Hoth:

1. Snowspeeder blasters were useless against AT-AT armour. They produced nothing but bright flashes at the point of impact, without even so much as a small puff of smoke. When you compare this to the destructive effect of X-wing blasters on the surface of the Death Star, or even ordinary small arms on building and starship interiors, you can see the problem. Blasters normally vapourize a small amount of material, thus  filling a combat area with thick, opaque smoke. Even against heavy blast doors, a blaster hit produces a small puff of smoke. The great strength of AT-AT armour is all the more impressive when you consider how the Naboo speeders' tiny anti-tank guns blasted huge holes through Trade Federation battle tank armour, and how X-wing guns blasted entire buildings on the Death Star's surface.
2. Even large Rebel artillery pieces had no effect whatsoever on AT-AT armour. One particular blast struck an AT-AT on its right rear leg, with very interesting effects. The armour glowed white-hot at the point of impact but in a fraction of a second, the heat apparently conducted away in all directions without even the faintest puff of smoke that normally accompanies even the smallest blaster hit. This indicates that the armour was thermally superconductive, but that would beg the question of why the Death Star, an "armoured battle station", wasn't made of the same material. A better explanation is that the apparent superconductivity of the armour has nothing to do with the armour itself, and is actually the result of an active energy diffusion field that acts along or perhaps even inside the surface of the armour. The Death Star, by virtue of having a much larger shield (albeit one that semi-permeable to slow-moving objects, hence the intrusion of the X-wings), was not expected to require such defensive measures. Therefore, it actually served as a useful demonstration of the effectiveness of starfighter blasters on unshielded armour, while the AT-AT walkers served as a demonstration of the impotence of light vehicle-mounted guns against shielded armour.

It has been suggested that AT-AT armour might be some sort of thermally superconductive but mechanically brittle ceramic, rather than a strong, ductile metal (which would suggest that it would be easily damaged by projectiles). However, this simply cannot be the case. No fewer than two AT-AT walkers were felled during the battle, and in both cases, they crashed to Earth without suffering any noticeable structural deformation. This is very impressive; the impact of such a massive object crashing to Earth from that height would normally be expected to deform hull plates, shear off bolts, and overwhelm welded joints, while the thickly armoured hulls of the AT-AT walkers in TESB suffered no discernible physical damage or deformation whatsoever.

Engineering Concerns

The design of a walker's legs seems to be a potential source of concern. A simple visual inspection of the legs will show that while they have a respectable 7:1 ratio of length to width when viewed from the side, they have a 16:1 ratio of length to width when viewed from the front. This has led to widespread concerns that they would be structurally weak, and highly susceptible to the phenomenon known as "column buckling". The best way to dispel myths like this is to perform an actual analysis, based on conservative assumptions of material properties.

The leg of a walker is pin-jointed at its knee and its base, but free at its end. Therefore, it is an example of a column with one free end and one fixed end, thus doubling the effective length to width ratio (for the purposes of Euler's Formula calculations) to 32:1. If we assume that a walker's legs are made out of present-day structural steel, then they would have an elastic modulus of 200 GPa. Note: do not confuse elastic modulus with with the entirely different concepts of yield stress (260 MPa for structural steel) or ultimate tensile stress (400 MPa for structural steel). Anyway, the moment of inertia I for the leg in bending would be bh³/12 = 0.1875, and Euler's Formula states that critical column buckling load P is (pi/L)²·EI. Substituting L = 32m, E = 200 GPa, and I = 0.1875 m^4, we get P = 360 MN, which is equivalent to the weight of 36,000 tons in a 1g gravity field. Remember that this is the critical load on just one leg, and a walker always has at least three feet on the ground. Therefore, even if we used a safety factor of 2, the walker's mass would have to exceed 72,000 tons to create a column buckling situation in its legs! A walker is massive, but not that massive.

Other engineering concerns raised in the past have included the issue of efficiency (although, as previously noted, the AT-AT was obviously not designed with efficiency as a priority) and articulation. The issue of articulation is an interesting one: to put it in the simplest possible terms, there are many methods of designing a robotic limb that can provide much more freedom of movement than the simplistic pin joint used in a walker's leg. In its current design, its turning ability is based entirely on rotations of the hip joint group (a less flexible version of the AT-ST hip joint). The most obvious alternative is some sort of ball joint, which would provide many more degrees of freedom and therefore superior agility. However, this is a huge combat vehicle which is far too large to evade fire. Therefore, its joints must be capable of withstanding direct hits from Rebel artillery, sustaining enormous structural loads (with correspondingly high friction), and exerting enormous forces (in order to move walkers whose mass is in the range of thousands of tons). Those requirements would take precedence over the number of degrees of freedom when choosing a joint type.

Here, the quote from Mr. Wong ends. Quoting Darth Physbod:

I dont believe anyone has estimated AT_AT firepower, from the battle of Hoth there is an opportunity to estimate the "maximum firepower" using:

heat content = (Pi/6)*(d^3)*P/0.4 (SWTC, explosions section)

Firstly we need to know the height of the cockpit viewport. From the film we can see it is at least as tall as the modified stormtrooper helmet worn by the crew. The original stormtrooper helmet is 35cm x 35cm x 48cm. i.e~35cm.

We can also estimate the viewport height directly from the battle scene. If a walker is 23m tall, the ‘head’ is ~4.5m; therefore from the macrobinocular image the viewport is < 40cm. From Luke’s strafing run the head appears to be ~4.2m (again using 23m overall height). And from ICS the head appears to be 4.2m putting the viewport at 35cm. In short it is 35cm in height.

Secondly using the ICS/TJ diagrams we can obtain the maximum distance from the viewport. It cannot be greater than ~1m in the following shot, given the position of the Driver/gunner relative to the camera (and that it is in front of General Veers station).

We can now estimate that the generator subtends >0.1 radians (generator 55 pixels, viewport 165 pixels high). If the distance is 17.28 Km, the generator is >1.7Km across. However this shot takes place at 28:54, General Veers walker reaches 17.28 Km at 31:34. Assuming the walkers made steady 5m/s progress (guestimate based upon walker taking ~2 seconds to half enter a shot) with no time cuts (208 s) the generator is at 18.32 Km thus >1.8 Km across. This now gives us a rough idea of the diameter of the explosion in the images that follow.

In image02 the generator is still intact and therefore the fireball is solely from the energy content of two bolts. As this is ~1Km in diameter, this requires ~16 KT per bolt. This is however only the inital stage (note the blinding flash that immediatly follows it), the fireball expands further:

In images 5-7, the fireball expands to its maximum of ~2Km (Image 7) before shrinking to reveal the generator is still there (image 8 ). This is followed by the second larger explosion (Image 10), possibly the generator 'cooking' off?. In any case, as the generator is still there and a secondary explosion occurs, it suggests the 2Km fireball was probably caused by the bolts themselves, thus maximum firepower is ~130 KT per bolt

The second larger explosion is captured in image 10 above, the fireball must subtend a minimum angle of 0.35 radians (constrained by the cockpit layout, fireball 191 pixels, viewport 104 pixels) and thus at 17.28 Km is ~6Km i.e an explosion 6.8 MT. It is not clear weather or not this is due to the generator cooking off or the result of the AT-AT shots.If it is the generator cooking off why the relatively small explosion? after all this generator was capable of holding off any bombardment from the entire Death Squadron.

To summarise:

A "Maximum a firepower" AT-AT shot appears to be 16KT per bolt taking into account only the first stage of the explosion, 130 KT per bolt considering the maximum fireball diameter, and possibly as high as 3.4 MT per bolt if the final fireball was not the result of the generator 'cooking off'.

If any of the images crap-out (they all worked fine in the preview) try viewing them from the index here:

http://man1ac0.tripod.com/index.html

Note that the whole explosion takes place over 52 frames before the scene change to Veers Walker. A seven second DivX clip (5.02 codec required, 874kb) I made and captured the images from is here (right click, save as): http://man1ac0.tripod.com/GenExplosionI.avi

In Star Wars Rebels, we see AT-AT prototypes being literally dropped into battle.

This represents a fall of about 30-40 feet, indicating the legs are able to take a lot of kinetic energy.

Bioengineering does exist in star wars. However, they “never lasted more than a few months”, although this is more likely referring to their popularity. The bioengineered tail would be rather strong if it would have been able to carry a person.

Blasters

“Most blasters have several settings which include 'stun', 'kill' and 'blast'. On maximum power a blaster could obliterate kilograms of stone or metal with a single shot, and the explosion could potentially subdue infantry from up to a meter away. A dozen shots could level part of a building or collapse a cave entrance.” They are mini-bazooka type weapons that can be set to stun, kill, or blow up. Take a look at what Han's blaster does.

Leia uses a stormtrooper’s blaster, an E-11, to blast a hole in a grate, which requires several pounds of TNT to do, and is calculated as requiring 500 megajoules of energy.

Blasters aren’t perfect, however. Their projectiles are very slow.

Blaster speed is inconsistent. In rogue one, on Edau, they appeared to go quite fast. Perhaps they are variable speed, and they normally engage at close range on screen. Mythbusters proved that you can't dodge a blaster bolt at close range, so they wouldn't exactly need to add more speed at those ranges.

“Range Dependent Bolt Velocity

NOTE Blaster bolt velocity varies scene from scene and is dependent on range, because on film a blaster bolt is always visible in transit for at least 1 frame or 1/30th of a second. A blaster bolt that travels across a small room will only hit a few tens of meters per second, whereas a blaster bolt covering a kilometre could travel hundreds of meters per second. The same phenomena could be observed in space with turbolaser fire, which could potentially achieve even greater bolt velocity (multi-km / s) over greater ranges measuring hundreds of kilometers. The orbital bombardment cannons achieved much greater bolt velocity in The Last Jedi.

Mythbusters and other sites often do not take this into account or ignore it to sample an average. In universe it may be however be a quirk of technology used”

That’s a good point.

Baze from Rogue One had a gun which was able to identify and target stormtroopers automatically. However, he had to carry a power generator.

It’s important to note that disruptors, which vaporize people, are actually banned in the Star Wars universe for being too powerful. This means they will be be very surprised by powerful ground weapons.

In Heir to the Jedi it is written in Ch 12 pg 120:I pulled out my blaster and checked for perhaps the fifth time that it was dialed up to its maximum power...

Variable yields! On blasters!  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC8hwysZFd4

http://www.scifights.net/powersettings.mp4

Thermal Detonators

        Their power can be changed. Either that, or a stormtrooper can survive the equivalent of 2-3 pounds (probably closer to 4-6 pounds in my opinion, because Vince was conservative as possible) of TNT to the face. Both might be true.

Body Armor

The armor was also resistant to projectile weapons and blast shrapnel.(star wars rebel journal). However, the plating probably makes running difficult, and was vulnerable to hits at the non armored parts, even against arrows. (Ground battle of endor) The armor dissipated energy from blaster shots, leaving the trooper unconscious, and with burns on large areas of the body. This meant that the trooper could survive direct hits, and after a quick bath in bacta, he/she was ready for service again. (star wars rebel journal) The armor didn't protect against blunt weapons though, some hits to the head with a club, or with stones could lead to falling unconscious, or even death, due to brain trauma and damage.(seen in Rogue One, backed up by basic physics. No armor can protect against sheer force, it can only dissipate it.)

Its reinforced combat helmet featured an integrated comlink, (star wars rebel journal) audio pick-up, two artificial air-supply hoses, and a broadband communications antenna powered by a single power cell. (lost stars) The helmet featured built-in filtration systems that extracted breathable atmosphere from polluted environments. (ultimate star wars)The helmet's visual processor assisted the wearer in seeing in darkness, glare, and smoke, (star wars rebels the visual guide) though it limited the wearer's field of vision. (Star wars rebel journal) When firing a blaster, the helmet's visor polarized against the glare. A built-in heads-up display also provided targeting diagnostics, power levels and environmental readings at the corner of the wearer's eyesight, and one could access data on various military subjects and civilian organizations on the helmets display. In addition, motion sensors alerted the wearer to any enemy the soldier might have missed. Seeking to discourage non essential chatter which was strictly off-limits while on-duty, stormtrooper helmets recorded everything that was said by the user, sending it to monitors to review after downloading the data off of the armor's memory. (twilight company)

Stormtrooper armor was capable of protecting its wearer in extreme environments, including deserts, forest, icy wastelands, and limited exposure to the vacuum of space. The armor's torso plating featured environmental controls on its midsection, its black body glove was vacuum-sealed (star wars rebels the visual guide)  and made of a smart material that could adjust to the wearer's’ body heat and external temperature.(Battlefront, twilight company) Though a rebreather pack was required for extended use in environments that lacked a breathable atmosphere or to filter potent toxins, telling us toxins in the Star Wars universe are meant to penetrate even vacuum sealed suits and filters. Troops in the field were allowed additional ammunition and comprehensive survival equipment, with backpacks that could feature field communicator sets, mortar launchers, and blaster components.(ultimate star wars). It was a punishable offense to utilize the armor's internal cooling options in noncritical situations due to its power drain, however many Imperial cadets still attempted to do so. Stormtroopers were also expected to remain in uniform at all times, with the rule considered essential for maintaining the public trust and representing the Empire in a positive, professional manner. By wearing one's armor, one represented the Empire, not the individual. (Battlefront, twilight company). This is from wookieepedia. Stormtrooper armour is stated in the Rebels Journal book to be very resistant against physical attacks. Considering we see that blasters are basically mini-bazookas, it makes sense. However, Stormtroopers are very visible and would probably have difficulty moving quickly.(Although rebels seems to disprove that by showing them running.)According to Battlefront II (the canon one) there are personal shields in Star Wars used by stormtroopers. I found that more surprising than I should have, considering droidekas use them.

Also, given that in Rebels Spark of Rebellion, Kallus casually kicks a stormtrooper down indicates he believed the stormtrooper would survive. I’m surprised the stormtrooper managed to grab that pillar in the first place, indicating incredible strength and coordination.

 In Battlefront company, Ch9 Pg122 wrote:SP-475 resisted the urge to pull Cobalt Front data onto her helment's display.

Stormie helmets can retrieve information, presumably from a friendly database.

In Heir to the jedi, in Ch 2 pg 19-20 it is written:We arrived at a dock that appeared at first to be unguarded, but I sensed somehow that wasn't the case. After all the security I saw getting this far, I couldn't imagine they'd leave this wide open. Laneet caught my expression and interpreted it correctly. "There are guards. They're in stealth armor."

"Oh, really? I've never seen stealth armor."

Laneet made a noise similar to a chortle but closer to a digestive problem. "Hence the name."

It reminded me of Ben's assertion that your eyes can deceive you. The Force would help me pierce through such illusions if I could learn how.

A return of stealth armor from the EU which hides the wearer, at least from the visual spectrum. Luke opines about being unable to see past these stealth suits but it could be the sense he had felt earlier was the Force trying to warn him.

Shadowtroopers are canon now.

Heir to the jedi Ch 22 pg 250 wrote:The white electric bolt splashed and crackled against an egg-shaped obstruction, which fizzled and popped and then melted away, revealing a Rodian bounty hunter who had been advancing upon us using a stealth-field generator attached to his belt.

The return of stealth-fields from KotOR.

Troop types:

Stormtroopers: We’ve already gone over how sophisticated their armour and weapons are, but they’re also moderately trained in hand-to-hand combat, although their style is usually very aggressive. They also occasionally dodge, however, their training seems to be “march in a straight line towards enemies, firing occasionally.” In a fair fight between a stormtrooper and a modern day soldier, unless the soldier gets lucky, the stormtrooper would win. Their armour is likely more than sufficient to hold up against bullets, given it doesn’t shatter when hit by blaster bolts that create explosions or explosions that fling them about 20 feet in the air. Of course, if hit in the joint, the stormtrooper’s going to be injured. Their gun would be able to kill the soldier.

Scout Troopers: Lighter armour and different visor. Scout trooper rifles fire green bolts which reduce reaction times, injure, and slow enemy movements, according to Force Arena, a canon video game. In battlefront II scout troopers are able to temporarily project a shield around them which prevents them from firing. (I’d advise against using video games unless there is other evidence to back them up. I’m not sure that this is valid considering there isn’t really evidence of this in other instances.)

Scout troopers on speeders are equipped with blaster pistols, although the speeder itself has powerful guns. According to Ultimate Star Wars, the EC-17 featured a built-in targeting scope to assist its user's aim, and a short-range laser emitter. The pressure-sensitive grip located on the weapon's left side made it easier to fire while wearing gloves. The blaster was designed for short-range targets, and therefore lost accuracy over greater distances.

Heavy Weapons Troopers: Imagine a grenade launcher with a rapid rate of fire and anti-armor capabilities. You now have the main weapon of the heavy trooper. While it does take them some time to rev up the gun, it destroys tanks very quickly. Also, heavy troopers can deploy a directional shield through which they can fire.

Heavy Troopers: Heavily armored melee troopers with electrostaffs.

Shoretroopers: Essentially a lighter stormtrooper, specialized for coastal and tropical environments. One variant carried a large gun, presumably used as anti-infantry.

Snowtroopers: Stormtroopers equipped to operate in the cold. Seemed to have weaker armor than regular troopers, as demonstrated in the clone wars, when they were attacked by Talz, but this is inconclusive, since the Talz are superhuman in terms of strength.

Jump Troopers: Highly mobile stormtroopers equipped with a jetpack.

Shadowtroopers: Regular stromtroopers equipped with a cloaking device and a faster firing gun.

Deathtroopers. Taller, leaner, and meaner. They’re equipped with cybernetic implants and treatments to make them more than human. Their guns have a wide blast radius, subduing rebels from several feet away. They were able to overcome the force protection of the monks in Rogue one, but not able to for Ezra. They were trained in unarmed combat, heavy weapons, and sniping. Specializing in commando missions, the troopers were experts at covering their tracks, leaving little to no evidence of their missions. The helmet had a number of advanced sensor and targeting systems to give them total situational awareness of combat areas, enemies and allies. These various upgrades to the helmet systems included a Neuro-Saav macromotion monitor, multi-frequency targeting and acquisition sensors and image-intensifying active pulse emitters. Their armor was also covered by a spray polymer called reflec, which warped electromagnetic signals commonly found in sensor arrays.

Combat droids.

The Empire does not use many combat droids, but most of the ones they do have are well armored, able to tank getting hit by blasters. Commando droids are a good example of how awesome droid-making technology can be, but the Empire is reluctant to make many, or make them intelligent.

While those were CIS droids, I don’t doubt the Empire could make something similar if they tried-the only limiting factor is public opinion, which is not surprising given they fought a war with droids.

Tens of kilonewtons of force at least. Probably more like meganewtons, maybe even pushing hundreds of meganewtons. (tens of kilowatts at worst, possibly up to gigawatts. For the foot.)

Commandos also seem to be somewhat blaster resistant.

Even weak and cheap droids can quickly target an enemy with extreme accuracy when it is not moving.

This is a B1- Droid commander. B1 battle droids weren't given much starting information, but do have learning capacity. This unit saw the danger the gun possessed, reacted quickly, and eliminated the threat, indicating their adaptability. It should be noted B1s were not originally designed with the ability to think, instead, a droid command ship was supposed to do that for them.

To prove that B1’s have some durability.

This B2 battle droid knocks an incapacitated droid out of the way before unleashing a rapid fire (around 10-15 shots per second, just eyeballing it) barrage of blaster bolts, demonstrating independent thinking and forethought, proactively preventing the droid from getting in its way.

Droids the Empire used:
    -  Infiltrator Droids. Very powerful and fast droids, capable of looking like regular droids to infiltrate rebel facilities. They are carried in pods capable of travelling FTL, disproving the ridiculous notion (invented by Darkstar, of course) that a star destroyer would have to be in the same system to deploy them.

• Imperial sentry droids.

Seemed rather tough, able to tank several blaster hits, but unable to stand under sustained fire. Were also capable of engaging in melee combat, but was slow. "They possess sufficient physical strength to kill a normal person with a single strike, as they could punch armoured stormtroopers through the air forcefully enough to incapacitate them."

Their ranged weaponry was capable of blasting apart remains of a metal door which was blocking their progress, but they did not attempt to use this superior firepower against packaging crates, which the rebels used for cover. This indicates their programming is either limited (possibly to prevent a droid rebellion from being effective) or their guns had overheated to the point of them not being able to use that superior firepower.

• Imperial Probe Droid.

A few types of probe droids appear. Notable models include the

Viper:

Slow, but seem to be cheap. Used for scouting and guarding. It’s very likely they were transported by hyperspace pods, given that infiltrator droids are.

"The Stalker was an Imperial II-class Star Destroyer[3] of the Imperial Navy. Stalker was responsible for deploying Viper probe droids across the galaxy in hyperdrive pods[10] in an attempt to discover the Rebel base. One of these probes reached the ice planet Hoth, the location of Echo Base." Page

“Hyperdrive pods,[1] also known as hyperspace pods[2] or probot pods,[3] were hyperdrive-equipped pods that delivered probe droids to their destination planets.[1] Tactical infiltration pods were specialized hyperdrive pods used to deploy E-XD infiltrator droids.[3]" Page

The Prowler 1000 seeker:

Could Transmit long distances, even after it was destroyed.

The ID9 seeker droid, also referred to as a parrot or mimic droid. Apparently, parrots exist in Star Wars.

Another view of the ID9.

The ID10 seeker, the direct successor to the ID9:

The DRK-1 Probe:

Used by maul in Episode One.

The Dwarf probe droid seen in rebels:

• Security Droid. Seemed to be very strong, with good reaction times, aim, and durability,  though not exceptional, especially considering commando droid performance. K2s0 had subpar improvisational skills and was bad at lying. This was likely intentional, given the Empire would not want its droids lying to it! 

Addressing Counterarguments

During the Death Star scene, the Stormtroopers were ordered to let the rebels go. This is stated by Tarkin. Therefore, their poor performance was actually intentional. Also, we see in Rogue One that the Force can protect even non-force users, making enemies miss. (Although extreme combat training and technology can overcome the force.)

Supporting this is this quote from Heir to the Jedi.

Ch 14 pg 161 wrote:"We should have perished. Mathematically we had almost no chance of survival once we attacked. How did you accomplish this?"

I shrugged. "Artoo got us out of there."

"The droid did his job adequately," the Givin said, a dismissive summation to which Artoo belched an electronic burst of outrage, "but I speak of the piloting prior to that. Are you a Jedi in fact, Luke Skywalker?"

"No," I snorted. "Not even close."

"You refuse the title yet dress yourself in the trappings. You carry a lightsaber. And you used the Force to aid in the piloting of the ship, correct?"

"Yes," I admitted, wondering where this would lead.

"Astounding. I have never thought it before, having had no occasion to do so, but the Force must be a fulcrum variable. Yes, I must give this more thought."

"Sorry - a fulcrum variable?

"A variable around which improbabilities can be turned to probabilities, or vice versa. The impossible becomes possible - at which point one might as well not even do the math. But of course I can't help myself in that regard."

Yeah, the Force basically lets you give a big ol' middle finger to probability and do the impossible, which in this case was using a small freighter to kill a cruiser.

The force allows even non-jedi to screw not only with probability, doing the impossible, but as seen in Rogue One, can actually force enemies to miss, although it can be overcome with sufficient skill.

The Ewoks had numbers on their side, as well as the force. They were also able to casually throw 30 pound rocks about.

Superweapons

Two death stars constructed, with the capability to destroy planets. There are small satellites with the power to create hurricanes. (Covered later.)

Federation (Star Trek) Statistics

A socialist paradise, the Federation is an all-inclusive but human-dominated state, that relies on powerful capital ships to compete with their neighbors. However, as external threats to all arise, the Federation is capable of calling on nearby states to assist each other. Despite their outwardly peaceful appearance, a Federation captain can authorise orbital bombardments under general order 24, targeting major population centers and military bases. On the ground, powerful phasers dominate the battlefield, but land warfare has been mostly abandoned in favor of taking control of space.

As you all probably know, Star Trek is very inconsistent with their numbers. One episode their ship can't generate a Terawatt (the Dauphin), and later they generate tens of thousands of them (Q who). And I know that the Trekkies always try to find reasons why the lower numbers are wrong, and the “Warsies” do the same for the higher numbers, but ask yourself honestly… “Are all these reasons I'm spouting about why this or that example shouldn't be trusted really what the show’s writers intended?” Probably at least 95% of the time, the answer should be “no, they probably just don't care about consistency.” For this reason, sci fi show will handle the mid and lower numbers, and I will handle the higher ones. Pick which one you'd like.

Ship Sensors

They seem to be good at detecting ships in warp,

TNG Season 3, Ep# 63: "Yesterday's Enterprise"

WESLEY: Long-range scans have picked up Klingon battlecruisers, Captain. They are on an intercept course.

RIKER: ETA?

WESLEY: Fourteen minutes, thirty-one seconds.

RIKER: Number and type of ships, Mister Crusher?

WESLEY: Three K'vort class battlecruisers.

RIKER: Not bothering to cloak themselves.

PICARD: They shouldn't be so confident, after the pasting we gave them at Archer Four.

 If we assume the same 2700c maximum speed described in "Q Who", this would suggest that they can pick up the uncloaked ships at a range of roughly 2.7 light-days.I would estimate sustained ship speed to be much slower however, probably in the 900c-1000c range. Wong calculated their subspace sensors as having a range of 27 light days. I assume this is a typo, however maybe I’m the one who screwed up. (Worth noting that they would not have any warning at all for a ship moving at many millions of times c as they do in Star Wars if these numbers are in effect.)

HIGH END

in voyager they are at one point able to detect a sphere at I think ~13 light years away, though this may be after they got some funky tech upgrades from who knows what. This would give them a few seconds of warning from a ship coming out of hyperspace.

(This may be because borg spheres put out more energy than regular ships. This would mean they would probably be able to detect Star Destroyers very easily, given how much energy they put out..)

but not as good at detecting ships in realspace.

Also, they aren’t good at locating things that are underground.

TNG Season 4, Ep# 80: "Legacy"

(looking at Ishara's map of the underground tunnels and structures)

DATA: What is this structure?

ISHARA: A main fusion source -- there's one next to each of the Alliance headquarters. It powers all their defensive systems.

they need Ishara's map to see where all of the underground tunnels are, and they need her knowledge to know that the large structures in question are fusion reactors, even though you would think a fusion reactor throws out enough energy to be easily detectable. This indicates the degree to which the intervening rock interferes with their sensors. But we should note Star Wars sensors suffer similar limitations.

Their cloaking devices are not used frequently, but seem to be good. They would be vulnerable to being discovered by Imperial Interdictors, however. (Maybe the magnetic tracking missiles would do the trick, but maybe not. I'm not sure.) Definitely not. Federation ships use a variety of sensors for almost every type of emission, there’s practically no way that they’ve made an oversight that horrible. Of course, there isn’t any way to hide from an Interdictor. Considering the Empire was installing them on Star Destroyers, the Federation won’t be able to use their cloaks well, except before the Empire realized they use cloaks. The phase cloak might be countered by tractor beams, given it does not stop gravity.

I think Federation ships can detect shield power levels most of the time. The other times, when they fail, must be due to jamming. At the very least, they are able to determine if shields are up or down.

Addressing Counterarguments

I haven’t seen anyone debate ship sensors.

-Ship Firepower

TNG Season 7, Ep# 162: "Inheritance"

GEORDI: I've configured the phasers to create the most highly focused particle beam possible.

...

JULIANA: The mantle is less resistant than I thought it would be.

DATA: We are within two kilometers of the magma pocket.

JULIANA: Another five seconds should do it. We've broken through.

...

DATA: The drilling process has raised the temperature inside the magma pocket by almost three hundred degrees C. It will be several hours before it cools enough for us to enter.

...

SCREENPLAY: (after beaming down into the now-cool pocket) the shaft they drilled from the surface is suggested by a hole about seven feet in diameter in the pocket's ceiling.

After the phasers were modified for "the most highly focused particle beam possible", they were capable of drilling a 7 foot wide (roughly 2 metre wide) hole at a rate of only 2 km in 5 seconds.

The math is grade-school simple: that's about 1250 m³/s

n case you're interested, whenever a Star Destroyer vapourizes 40 metre wide asteroids with a 1/15-second turbolaser bolt in TESB, the vapourization rate works out to more than 500,000 m³/s, or 400 times greater than the rate at which the Enterprise drilled through rock in this episode. And that's from just one of a Star Destroyer's two hundred guns. It's not even one of their heavy guns!

Since the energy required to vaporize a cubic meter of crust is 10 gigajoules we can multiply 1250 by 10 to get how many gigajoules the phasers were putting out, which is 12,500. This, converted to kilotons, is 3. Therefore, maximum phaser power output is 3 kilotons per second, but it is important to remember that phasers work on chain reactions, penetrate shields, mess with electronics, are effective point defense, and transfer thermal energy.

http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/mar2002/1015040902.Es.r.html

Seconds earlier in the same episode, they drilled through thousands of km of rock in a stated 29 seconds. This implies far greater power than this… However, this particular pocket of rock probably was more dense than the rock they had just drilled through. When all is said and done though, this still only amounts to hundreds of megatons per second, even assuming full vaporization and a planet made of solid titanium (which is ridiculous)

Is there any way to rationalize it with the other scenes, which show kiloton range firepower?

(later note: They hadn’t drilled through thousands of kilometers of rock, so the following ¨gigaton range calcs¨ are invalid.)

This is not thousands of kilometers, in fact, it is, at a maximum, about 50. This suggests that this planet is much smaller than Earth.  Therefore, we can conclude phasers do not put out hundreds of megatons per second. As an additional note, this is yet another small planet observed in the Star Trek universe.

Only way I can think of is the highly focused beam quote. Also hundreds of megatons per second is pretty generous even assuming vaporization

I've seen a mk 10 phaser calculated at 1 megaton per second at maximum firepower, and this lines up perfectly with the DS9 Technical manuals placement at 4.1667 petawatts per phaser bank.

Since the Enterprise’s shields are probably around the 6 megaton range, that means the Enterprise could tank it’s own weapon for 6 seconds. But I think they have to divert power to their engines and shields as well, so that is probably why they can’t use that firepower in combat.

I guess that's a semi reasonable explanation. Another one is that the ships may receive hefty upgrades when a war is going on. Since I'm handling upper limits, I'm going to go with this. This site says that a galaxy class’s shields can take about half a gigaton. It's worth noting Star Trek suffers from vast and horrible inconsistencies. That means that both the kilotons and the megatons claims are probably equally valid, sadly.

Yeah, that does make some sense and lines up with some other feats. It would also pin their torps at 5 megatons, which agrees with wong, who has estimated them to be around 6 megatons. Since Picard said his ship could take 98 photon torpedoes. I definitely remember it from somewhere, but I can remember.

Again, since I'm handling higher numbers, I'm gonna go with the TNG Tech manual 64.5 megatons, unless someone has a higher number that is within a reasonable yield.

So five gigaton shields. That’s reasonable.

Or half gigaton shields, and enterprise can only take 10 shots instead of 100. I'll leave it for the reader to decide.

It could be true, considering Picard might have been wrong or lying.

Nvm, I just realized it was half a gigaton per second, not in all. Therefore it can withstand power at a rate of half a gigaton per second, for up to 10 seconds.

Let’s return to TDiC calculations earlier. If we assume that it was 9 teratons per second per ship, that federation ships are twice as powerful, and that 1 torpedo is launched per second, the we get about 1800 teraton shields for Enterprise-D. These numbers would be able to compete with mid-high star wars numbers, but only barely. However, this is a complete top-of-the-line “maximum-wank” calculation.

Purposefully overloading and detonating the impulse engines of a Constitution-class starship will produce an explosion equivalent to approximately 98 megatons, as seen in TOS, The Doomsday Machine. Interestingly, the ships were unable to create such explosions with their own weapons...[2]

According to Malcom Reed, photonic Torpedoes at maximum firepower can put a three kilometer crater into an asteroid, suggesting they carry 1-100 megatons, depending on the asteroid’s composition.

TNG Season 4, Ep# 80: "Legacy"

GEORDI: We could use the ship's phasers to cut a shaft through the bedrock to this storage tunnel here. With a clear path through the rock, we'd be able to transport down to the tunnel. That would put us close enough to get to the crewmen. It would take me a few hours to adjust the phasers for drilling.

...

PICARD: How far must we penetrate to safely allow transporter function?

GEORDI: One point six kilometers.

PICARD: Fire phasers.

GEORDI: Aye, Sir.

...

GEORDI: One point three kilometers. One point four. One point five. One point six. Deep enough for transport, Sir.

This drilling sequence must have taken close to 20 seconds if Laforge was able to verbally call out the depth every 0.1 km (try counting from 0 to 1.6 in 0.1 increments without rushing the words, and time it). The depth is known but the diameter isn't, and since the ship is capable of varying the dispersion of its beam, it could quite literally be anything. However, external shots of the impact site didn't suggest a particularly large beam, and we know that they only needed enough width to transport the away team.

If we estimate the required width to be 3 metres, then this would mean they drilled through 11300 m³ of granite in 20 seconds, at a rate of roughly 565 m³/s. Note that some Trekkies have been running around claiming that a hand phaser can blast through 650 m³ in 0.28 seconds, which would mean that a hand phaser has four times the rock blasting power of the Enterprise's phaser array, even after the array has been specially modified for drilling! This is obviously silly.

TNG Season 7, Ep# 164: "Pegasus"

SCRIPT: The ship nears the Devolin system -- a solar system that never coalesced into discrete planetary bodies. It's a swirling disc of rock and other matter.

RIKER: I recommend we destroy the asteroid. It would take almost all our photon torpedoes, but it would preclude any possibility of the Pegasus falling into Romulan hands.

Since the Devolin asteroid field is proto-planetary matter rather than a pulverized planet (like the Hoth asteroid field) and its asteroids are obviously not well-consolidated (since the asteroid in question was hollow), there is a <10% chance that it was metallic. If we use fragmentation figures for igneous rock (see the Asteroid Destruction Calculator), it would take 125 megatons to pulverize the asteroid. If we use cratering figures for granite, it would take 30 megatons to catastrophically disrupt it.

If it takes almost all of the USS Enterprise's 275 photon torpedoes to do this, then we can conclude that photon torpedo yield is between 110 and 450 kilotons (keep in mind that this is a rather generous estimate since the asteroid was hollow so it was obviously not well-consolidated, thus making it easier to fragment).

Note that just one of Slave-1's eight seismic charges (as seen in AOTC) would have easily destroyed this asteroid, which means that Slave-1 can deal out many times more destruction than the entire photon torpedo payload of the Enterprise-D! If a one-man patrol craft carries more destructive power than one of the Federation's most powerful warships, one can only imagine the overwhelming firepower advantage that an Imperial Star Destroyer would have.

Wong’s scaling work.

Some people say the Federation can simply destroy the stars that important planets orbit. That’s not true for two reasons. First off, it would take the Federation many years just to get to the Empire, and by then the Federation would have lost already. And there’s this.

TNG Season 3, Ep# 67: "Captain's Holiday"

AJUR: Have you heard of the Tox Uthat?

...

BORATUS: It was invented by a scientist named Kal Dano in the mid 27th century. The Uthat is a quantum phase inhibitor... capable of halting all nuclear reaction within a star.

PICARD: But why bring such a powerful weapon into the past?

BORATUS: Criminals attempted to steal the device from Dano. He was determined to keep it out of their hands, so he fled back to the twenty-second century... where he hid it.

The ability to destroy a star in Star Trek is obviously much rarer than some Trekkies would have you believe. Dr. Soren found a way to do it in "Generations" but his technology was lost, the Dominion supposedly has the ability to do it but we never saw it demonstrated, and this "Kal Dano" character will eventually figure it out three centuries in the future.

More about firepower….

TNG Season 4, Ep# 91: "Night Terrors"

DATA: What we must discover is a means by which, working together with the aliens, we can produce an explosion more intense than either of us could achieve alone.

TROI: What is it you're looking for?

DATA: These are the elements we have available. Some of them could be used in the creation of an explosive reaction. If we can communicate this inventory to the other ship ...

...

TROI: "One... moon... circles... "

DATA: Yes, Counselor, one electron circles one proton... this is a hydrogen atom.

TROI: "One moon circles"... that's what they have been telling me... over and over ...

DATA: Perhaps the aliens are thinking as we are... to collaborate in producing an explosion. If hydrogen is combined with certain elements... calendenium, for example, it is extremely volatile.

The chemical reaction of hydrogen (from the Enterprise's Bussard collectors) and "calendinium" (from the aliens' ship) will exceed not only the firepower of the Enterprise's phasers and photon torpedoes, but also its specialized anti-Borg weapon.

No wonder the Borg weren't impressed with their defensive capabilities.

TNG Season 4, Ep# 91: "Night Terrors"

DATA: Sir, Commander La Forge and I have come up with a potential solution to our predicament. Perhaps the modifications we used to increase firepower against the Borg might be effective here.

PICARD: Channeling power into the main deflector dish...

DATA: I believe within six hours we can generate a concentrated burst of energy which might disrupt the Tyken's Rift.

...

DATA: We are ready to discharge the main deflector, Captain.

...

GEORDI: Deflector power coils charging...

...

WORF: Discharge in three seconds... two... one...

...

RIKER: Nothing... it just fizzled out.

In "Conundrum," [TNG] Riker is confident that one photon torpedo "ought to do it" to an outpost with a shield output of 4.3 kilojoules. Note that this is a laughably tiny observed firepower, and Riker was unable to guarantee a destruction of the outpost with a single torpedo! (Ossus).

Darkstar attempts to refute this by saying

Oh, so naturally we should consider this to imply that the torpedo might not get through the 4.3kJ shields, as opposed to being rational and looking at the fact that the "outpost" (actually the Lysian command station) was freakin' huge, as seen in the following (when the Enterprise was still quite distant, several several seconds from "optimal torpedo range"):

Yes, boys and girls, Ossus just seriously tried to use the fact that the bohemoth above could be wiped out with a single torpedo as proof that torpedoes suck.

I think it’s funnier that the ship targeting sensors are so bad they aren’t in optimal range until they’re right on top of it. It only had 15,311 people, so it couldn’t that big. (For comparison, a Star Destroyer carries 46,803, and a modern day Nimitz class aircraft carrier has more than 6,000.)  Also, it should be pretty obvious you can destroy that with a single photon torpedo if its shields are that pathetic. Hit it in it’s command center! http://www.ditl.org/station-page.php?ClassID=lysian&ListID=Stations claims that it is only 3,520 meters in height by scaling from the Enterprise, so it is not hundreds of kilometers wide as Darkstar is attempting to imply. Even more hilarious? To add onto what Darkstar was saying “several several seconds” was actually 55 seconds. In other words, they were travelling so slowly, they only went a few meters (less than 4,000) to get within optimal range, taking them 55 seconds!

What are phasers?

My personal theory is that phasers can “phase” matter into subspace. We know they can heat up matter, make it disappear, stun, and screw around with ship machinery. Whether these functions work on the same principle is unknown, but I don’t think so.

Stun can be used on wide beam mode because we see ships stun entire city blocks. It would be extremely useful for clearing enemies as long as they did not have space superiority.  We don’t know the radius of the stun beam in the Picard era.

Heating is easy to explain : Direct energy transfer in the form of thermal radiation. Probably useful due to its accuracy. (It moves at the speed of light. Pretty hard to dodge, although some scenes show slower speeds.)

Causing scorch marks in ship hulls and harming ship systems. This is probably just circuit breakers in ships being overloaded by some sort of electronic weaponry, or high-temperature ion beams. Would it work on Imperial ships? Probably not, since Imperial ships have multiple backup systems and the shots would probably be stopped by shields in the first place. I also think the setting for heating and causing scorch marks are probably the same. Notice that it is not very destructive, failing to destroy an unshielded ship. Of course, remember the damage is supposed to be directed at internal systems.

        Making matter disappear. This is more difficult to rationalize. The theory I subscribe to is that phasers rip apart their target and transport it to subspace. Since matter in subspace returns on it’s own volition, this shouldn’t cause any problems with space debris in subspace.Because the matter is probably being ripped apart we might want to use vaporization calculations. Or the energy expended might be just the energy required to move the object into subspace.

                It should also be noted phasers have an explosive shot that travels at sublight speeds. The shields were up but failed later. Notice the difference in explosive power, and the fact they seem to be homing. I’m sure you, the reader, can find similar scenes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYZgMo_Z0f0

Phasers are excellent point defense weapons due to the speed and accuracy of their turrets, rendering fighters useless except in large fleet battles, where jamming reduces their accuracy.

Phasers should be useful for penetrating star trek type shields both because of their frequencies and the methods by which they damage (thermally), which ST shields have shown themselves to be weak to.

What are Photon Torpedoes?

Basic antimatter/matter reaction weapons. They have shields and a guidance system.

Photon torpedoes have a sublight propulsion system that allows them to accelerate and change course at sublight speeds; this is presumably a small impulse engine. They also have a guidance system that allows them to track a target using built-in sensors.

Photon torpedoes do not have a warp drive, but they do have something called a "sustainer engine" that allows them to keep travelling at warp speed if launched from a starship that is already traveling at warp. Ref: TNG "Half a Life" Since this propulsion system is described as a "sustainer", it stands to reason that a photon torpedo cannot accelerate to a greater warp speed after launch.

Torpedoes in the 24th century have shielding of unspecified strength. For example, a torpedo which was being used for a specific research purpose had a shield that allowed it to survive briefly inside a star.[3] Torpedoes can also burrow underground for at least a short time without being destroyed or detonated,[4] an activity that may be related to shielding. The specific purpose of torpedo shielding isn't clear, but Mike Wong has hypothesized that their primary purpose is to allow the torpedo to pass through the launching ship's shields via wave cancellation.[5] They could potentially also pass unimpeded through a target's shield if the frequency is known. The shield may also provide a small amount of resistance to point defense weapons.

Some Trekkies have suggested that the signature glow of torpedoes is a side effect of shielding; therefore, 23rd and 22nd century torpedoes which glow also have shielding. However, photon torpedoes still glowed in the Battle of the Mutara Nebula, where shields were supposedly disabled, indicating that the glow is not indicative of shielding. [6]

Do photon torpedoes grow? No. There is no proof for it, other than simple matters of perspective.

Addressing Counterarguments

Whenever we see big explosions, it’s often very easy to explain.

In TDIC, we see no visible ejecta. In fact, the only things pointing to actually powerful weapons are these weird ripples and the 30% of crust destroyed quote.

So, how do we rationalize this with the lack of ejecta, destruction, or luminescence?

Remember that phasers can start fires very easily, and in very wide beams.

If one lights something on fire, that can be considered “destroyed.”

Fires occasionally cause chain reactions which can burn several types of foggy gasses. However, a single shot would not kill everything, the act of the fire burning would create a partial vacuum, which would suck the fire back, killing it.

Fire would probably be used by the Romulans. It’s cheap and would spread itself, especially on a living ocean. It explains pretty much everything, except the “5 hours to destroy the mantle” part.” Of course, this could be saying it would take five hours for the fire to travel into the mantle.

(honestly, that statement doesn’t make much sense… fire can’t exactly travel down and through rock)

No, I meant if the fire was following the living ocean into the mantle, if the living ocean retreats into caves and such.

In addition, this planet could be a very tiny planet (see next paragraph). However, I believe our friend Vince did a calculation on the actual power of each ship in that fleet assuming the planet was earth-sized, and i’m pretty sure that it came out to single-digit teratons per second per ship. This is pretty impressive, but we don’t see anything else like this before or since. Therefore, it was probably a small planet.

In the episode Obsession from TOS Star Trek Idazmi7 used, Spock states that the ounce of antimatter would blast off half the planet’s atmosphere.

He states an ounce should be sufficient around the 42 minute mark. He also claims it would rip off half the planet’s atmosphere. However, in real life an ounce of antimatter would only have an explosive force of 1.22 megatons. The fact they do not use a photon torpedo to accomplish this indicates photon torpedoes have less than a megaton of energy.  

 That’s impossible...unless the planet is a small, super dense chunk. We know small worlds exist in Star Trek.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUiDc6pOfxw&t=8s

This video is about a planet in Star Trek which is very small.

The same for Idazmi’s other example: Despite covering such a large area of the planet, the captain mentioned it was only the size of a mountain. Again, small worlds are very common in Star Trek.

Why is this the case? Why are tiny worlds so common? The answer is simple: Neutronium.

While in real life, neutronium explodes while not in a deep gravity well, in Star Trek, neutronium is surprisingly stable.

n the TNG episode Evolution a neutron star was sucking up stellar matter from its companion star which was a red giant. This stellar matter built up on the surface of the neutron star until it reached a critical stage and exploded, expelling the stellar matter out into space. This is what they called neutronium. That event does show that neutronium in Star Trek is naturally stable, to a significant degree. If it were the instant explodo neutronium, it would have, well, exploded the instant it left the star's, presumably, significant gravitational well.

The following photographs are from the Star Trek:TNG season 1 episode 3. They want to fire a volley of photon torpedoes a thousand meters short of the planet’s surface.

That’s not 1,000 meters… Unless this is a tiny planet, like the others we’ve already covered. Also notice how small the explosion is...not even 1000 meters in diameter, or it would have hit the planet’s surface.They fire multiple shots afterwards, which are very inaccurate.

(it would have to be 1000 meters in RADIUS to hit the planet’s surface, which would require ~9 megatons. Therefore this torpedo was less than 9 megatons in yield in this scene.) I may be wrong, but I think you mean 900 kilotons. Because this website says that a fireball a mile in diameter (or 800 meters in radius) would be 900 kilotons.Considering it is obvious that the fireball is less than 800 meters in radius I believe this to be a generous estimate. It should also be noted Wong has calculated about 600 kilotons from photon torpedoes(covered above) before, so 600 kilotons is more likely the actual number.

 This was a display blast, so they must have been firing at full power to demonstrate their strength… no wonder Lutan wasn’t impressed.

There is no counterargument to this, unless you want to say Federation targeting systems are so piss-poor they miss a practically non-moving target (at least, in terms of changing velocity) by literally hundreds miles. And these shots are in order, netflix just counts backwards for some reason.

(Netflix counts time left, not time elapsed)

The Doomsday machine also had pure neutronium armour.

Now, the reader might wonder why the Federation does not use neutronium armor. That’s because neutronium is extremely dense. Considering how slow Federation starships travel, I would not be surprised if a starship covered in neutronium couldn’t change direction well. Also, it would probably be very expensive.

Trekkies have argued that the episode "Skin of Evil", in which a photon torpedo detonation on a planet is viewed from orbit, indicates a yield of as much as 9.83 gigatons (air blast) to 144 gigatons (fireball), but the effect seen appears and disappears far too quickly to be either phenomenon. Their "low end estimate", assuming the effect seen was result of thermal radiation, is 500 megatons.

What do you think it is? I think it’s probably just a smaller planet. But that’s my excuse for everything.

Addressing the Star Trek Discovery scene:

Note that this is also a tiny planet-proportionally speaking, this must be tiny. As we already talked about, tiny planets in Star Trek are common. Unless size of those bolts changed by orders of magnitude on the way down, that planet was NOT earth sized. These were fired from a ship much larger than the enterprise, and the ship was from a parallel timeline much more warlike. The ship also carried a tiny star-like object about, suggesting their reactors aren’t capable of generating such (already small) power on their own.

Below is an image comparing another starfleet ship to the ship in question.

-Shields

Watch voyager season 2 episode 14.

TNG Season 1, Ep# 4: "The Last Outpost"

WORF: They are firing on us!

PICARD: Damage report!

TASHA: Shields holding!

DATA: Mostly electromagnetic, sir. Fusion generator and batteries down by (thirty percent)

GEORDI: Our impulse engines are surging!

WORF: They're firing again.

TASHA: Deflector shield power weakening, Captain. Phasers ready, sir. Photon torpedoes ready...

RIKER: Shall we return their fire, sir... ?

PICARD: Negative, Number One. They are reacting to close pursuit. Fall back a bit but stay with them.

And we learn they CAN be harmed by electromagnetic weapons. In other words, lasers.

TNG Season 4, Ep# 93: "The Nth Degree"

DATA: Captain, an energy field is forming around the device. Intensity is three point two terawatts, and increasing.

...

DATA: Captain. The probe's energy output is overloading our shields. Failure anticipated in forty-seven seconds.

If we round it up to 4 terawatts, and 1 minute,(after all, power was increasing) we find their shields are equivalent to 6 megatons.

(I'm pretty sure you did your math wrong here- remember that a kiloton is about 4 Terajoules, which would be one second under 4 Terawatt Fire. That gives us just about 60 kilotons.)

Yeah, you’re right. Guess I was influenced by confirmation bias....It seems Star Trek shields are even weaker than I thought. I was really hoping they were stronger. This kind of weakness is unexpected. Perhaps we can explain this discrepancy in firepower by pointing out ST shields are generally weaker against gases and attacks that occur over an extended period of time due to the fact their shields use frequencies.

DS9 Season 1, Ep# 13: "Battle Lines"

KIRA: We're being scanned by one of the satellites. (checking sensors) I don't like this... it's heading toward us...

SISKO: Shields up!

KIRA: (urgent) ... Reading a significant power build- up in the satellite... six hundred megawatts... nine hundred...

A ANGLE - MONITOR (VPB): to see the growing image of a satellite approaching... releasing an energy burst...

KIRA: (continuing) ... it's firing... !

RESUME - WIDE: A huge shake... Red warning lights flash and a klaxon sounds. Kira frantically presses panels. Smoke fills the cabin.

KIRA: Shields are down... forward thrusters are gone... we're losing power...

SISKO: Attempting to compensate with secondary boosters.

KIRA: Impulse generators failing --

Sisko and Kira struggle to control the shaking craft.

SISKO: Hold on... we're going down!

Remember how I said 6 megatons was a likely estimate for Star Trek shield power? Well, this implies low gigajoule energy output when they say megawatt power...It would take 25,104,000 gigajoules to equal 6 megatons. I may have been too generous with my previous estimate.

It’s interesting to note that shields seem to be completely useless or mostly useless against X-rays, magnetic fields, and heat based weaponry. This supports Wong’s gas-shield theory because gases do not usually block magnetic fields, x-rays or thermal radiation well.

PICARD: All hands, this is the captain. The sun in the Delos system is undergoing large-scale magnetic field changes, producing violent, gigantic flares. We will be studying this star at close range. Even though we will be running with full deflectors, the closeness of the event and its severity are going to create problems. Intense magnetic fields have a disruptive effect on electrical systems. We can therefore expect an interruption of communications, and potential temporary loss of other systems. As a precaution, we are now going to Yellow Alert…

the Enterprise's communications systems are electrical, and can be affected by magnetic fields in spite of full shielding.

It should be noted that these solar flares, contrary to some Trekkies' claims to the contrary, were not astronomically remarkable. Two planets in the system sustain life, which would not be the case if the star were highly unusual in nature.

It should also be noted that we could see the ship from outside, and it was no closer than the planets in the system.

WESLEY: Captain, deflectors are being hit by a huge burst of X-rays (bridge panels begin to short out) ... Sir, my console seems to be overloading.

WORF: The X-ray burst is disrupting systems, Captain. I'm adjusting deflectors to compensate.

...

DATA: Captain, our sensors are being severely affected by the sun flares.

...

TASHA: The solar flares are interfering with the tractor beam, Captain. I am unable to lock on.

...

RIKER: I'll beam over with a team.

TASHA: Captain -- I strongly recommend against anyone from this ship beaming over. The solar interference is too great.

...

TASHA: Have them go to their own Transporter Room. It will be tricky, but perhaps I can link the two transporters in series and get them over with the increased power.

...

TASHA: Reading six life forms... but I can't get a solid lock.

RIKER: We've no choice. Energize.

(four people materialize)

RIKER: You said six; where are the other two?

An X-ray burst from the solar flare disrupts the operation of onboard computer consoles despite full shielding.

Also notable is the fact Worf tried to angle shields to compensate, indicating only partial protection at best. This also helps explain why fighters are used in large fleet engagements- to target the more weakly shielded sections of ships.

“In "Relics", the Enterprise-D was pulled into a close orbit (150,000km) around a star enclosed in a Dyson sphere. This star was a G-class star which was most likely less than 45% of Sol's luminosity because the Dyson sphere was 2E11m in diameter (66% of Earth's orbital diameter) yet green vegetation and bodies of water could be clearly seen on its inner surface. If the star had been as luminous as Earth's sun, the bodies of water would have quickly boiled away and the vegetation would have been destroyed. The star is said to be releasing a lot of prominences, but we never see the ship actually get engulfed in one of these prominences so they aren't really relevant. At a 150,000km distance from that star's surface (perhaps 700,000km from its centre), the power intensity would be roughly 25-30 MW/m². This is based on the inverse-square law; divide the total luminosity by the surface area of a sphere of 700,000km radius to get intensity.

In order to determine the shield absorption rate at that intensity, we must multiply the intensity by rate of bombardment at that intensity, This figure is derived from calculating the ship's profile area. The stellar radiation which hits an object will be based on the distance from the star, the luminosity of the star, and the ship's profile area. Imagine taking a silhouette of the ship; the area of this silhouette is what the radiation from the star "sees". Now, a GCS is roughly 610m long, and 130m high when viewed from the side. If we assume that it is a rectangle, then its projected surface area is 78,000 m² (note that this is a very generous estimate- the ship is obviously not a solid rectangle when viewed from the side). Some would argue that the entire area of an ellipsoid "bubble" should be used instead of the profile of the ship, thus bumping up the estimate to 100,000 m², and while it is easy to get drawn into a debate over such minutae, it is ultimately a waste of time (it is an obvious nitpick to wrangle over a difference of only 30% in calculations based on low-accuracy source data in the first place). However, the 1E5 m² estimate does have the advantage that it simplifies the mathematics.

In any case, if we simply multiply the power intensity of 25 to 30 MW/m² by 1E5 m², we get 2.5 to 3.0 TW (let's say 3 TW for simplicity's sake). They said they could withstand roughly 3 hours of bombardment at this rate, and their shields were said to be down to 23%. Quarter-strength shields could mean one of two things:

1) a full-strength shield could handle 3 TW for 12 hours.

2) a full-strength shield could handle 12 TW for 3 hours.

Either way, it would appear that roughly 30 megatons of stellar radiation should overwhelm a Federation starship's shields over an extended period of time. A smaller amount would probably suffice if applied all at once.”-Mr. Wong.

Note that like star wars shields and semi-permeability, star trek shields also have a glaring weakness… I am, of course, talking about their frequencies. However, once again, the enemy will not be able to effectively exploit this weakness, as continuous-beam weapons are rarely used in star wars.

According to “When the Bough Breaks” they are centuries away from developing planetary shields which cloak planets.

Planetary shields are occasionally mentioned in Star Trek but generally are not powerful enough to protect an entire planet from a major attack.

• The planet Elba II had a planetary shield that blocked transporter function and could withstand phaser fire from at least one Constitution-class starship, but it's not clear whether the shield could have withstood a determined attack.[1] Commander Scott, commanding in the absence of the captain and first officer, was concerned about damaging the Elba II asylum, which was a sealed habitat in a toxic environment. Consequently, his efforts at penetrating the shield were restrained by the need to avoid rupturing the asylum. Nonetheless, the Enterprise did try to penetrate the shield using the starship's main phaser banks on full power, attacking a point on the far side of the planet from the asylum where the shield would be weakest, and the attempt failed. Phaser attacks against surface targets have been sustained for substantially longer, though.[2]
• The Federation penal colony on the planet Tantalus V was protected by a force field that blocked transporter function, but no attempt was made to defeat the field with starship weaponry.[3]
• The Federation science outpost on Calder II had a deflector shield to protect it and the archeological ruins being studied there, but there was no indication that this shield protected the entire planet. Disruptor fire from a single mercenary starship was capable of defeating the shield (an effort made easier with trickery known to a Federation starship captain). [4]

What are ship shields?

According to Michael Wong, probably gas suspended in a field of some sort. That would explain many features of the shields.  I think he’s right. It would explain their weakness to gas, why they use frequencies (flexing and stiffening the gases), why they glow when hit, and why they can be injured even when shields are up.

They use frequencies because their shields are omnidirectional, and therefore block their own weapons. However, when they tune their phasers to the same frequency, they are interrupted by their own shield, allowing them to fire effectively and without injuring themselves. This also explains why multiphasic shields aren’t used in combat-they would prevent the ship from firing.

-Ship Speed

TNG Season 3, Ep# 56: "The Price"

DATA: The data from the Barzan's probe into the wormhole is impressive, Captain. The wormhole delivered the probe beyond the Denkiri Arm, in the Gamma Quadrant.

PICARD: It would take us nearly a century at warp nine to cross that distance...

DATA: We are not where we are supposed to be.

GEORDI: What do you mean... we're on the other side of the wormhole, aren't we... ?

DATA: According to the Barzan probe, we should be in the Gamma Quadrant... but the readings clearly indicate we are nearly two hundred light years away. In sector three-five-five-six of the Delta Quadrant.

GEORDI: Dammit, Arridor, we're seventy thousand light years away from our ships... follow us... we'll lead you in...

According to Picard, it would take them nearly a century at warp nine to travel to a point in the Gamma Quadrant which is roughly 70,000 light years away. This pegs warp nine around 700c

TNG Season 7, Ep# 174: "Bloodlines"

DATA: I have traced the transporter beam Bok used to send the probe -- His ship is holding position approximately three hundred billion kilometers from here.

PICARD: Plot a course -- maximum warp.

RIKER: Even at warp nine we won't get there for almost twenty minutes.

according to Data and Riker, it takes 20 minutes to cover 300 billion km at warp 9. This means warp 9 is roughly 830c.

The “official equation” used to calculate TNG warp scale up to warp 9 is c*w^(10/3), where w is the warp factor. This places warp 9 at 1516.4c.

TNG Season 1, Ep# 6: "Where None Have Gone Before"

PICARD: That's not possible. Data, what is our distance traveled?

DATA: Two million -- seven hundred thousand light years.

...

GEORDI: And I calculate that at maximum warp, sir ... it would take over three hundred years to get home.

 Geordi claims that the Enterprise-D could travel 2.7 million light years in 3 centuries at "maximum warp", for an average velocity of 9000c

TNG Season 5, Ep# 11: "Hero Worship"

PICARD: Ensign, full about -- go to warp two.

ENSIGN FELTON: The gravitational distortion is too high -- we can't maintain a warp field.

Their warp drive is useless in strong gravity fields. Like an...Imperial Interdiction field…

An impulse engine consists of one or more nuclear fusion reactors connected to exhaust vents that generate thrust to accelerate the ship. The thrust generated by an impulse engine is typically tiny compared to the actual mass of the ship, but the use of "mass lightening" technology (involving subspace fields) reduces the effective mass of the ship enough for the thrust to provide considerable acceleration.

Because impulse engines include fusion reactors, they are typically the ship's secondary power source, outpowered only by the warp core.

Impulse engines are capable of powering a ship for short journeys at FTL speeds (assuming the ship has a functioning warp drive), but doing so drains fuel rapidly. The Enterprise nearly exhausted the fuel for its impulse engines in just 14 hours of interstellar travel when the warp core was inoperable due to "burning out" the ship's dilithium crystals.[1]

Purposefully overloading and detonating the impulse engines of a Constitution-class starship will produce an explosion equivalent to approximately 98 megatons.[2]

WARP STRAFING:

Warp strafing is a very commonly debated aspect of ship to ship combat in Star Trek. For those that don’t know, proponents of warp strafing argue that a Star Trek ship could attack an enemy ship while at warp, even if the enemy is traveling slower than lightspeed. To be quite honest, I normally try not to take a side in this particular aspect of the debate. There are two reasons for this:

1. Like a lot of similar aspects of space combat and other things in in Sci-fi, it exists when the writers want it to and doesn’t when the writers need it not to. In general, It appears to exist in The Original Series and appears not to exist in The Next Generation, though there are some exceptions to this. This creates an interesting problem for us vs. debaters: there are seemingly equally fair points on both sides. Therefore, the debate about whether or not warp strafing is actually valid never ends.

2. It doesn’t affect the final outcome of this war in the slightest. This is by far the more important of the two reasons. First, It might take a while before the federation realizes that Imperial ships cannot combat at faster than light speed, and therefore it probably would not be used in the beginning of the war. While warp strafing tactics may be devastating the first few times it is used, The empire will soon learn to employ interdictors in their fleets to pull the unsuspecting federation vessels out of warp and stop them dead in their tracks. While the Empire may take some losses before that time, it would not be an amount of losses that they could not recover from rather quickly.

In conclusion, warp strafing may or may not exist; however, it doesn’t really matter in the end, as even if it does, it would not help the federation that much.

The Picard maneuver. According to Idazmi, we can shoot you while in warp, but we’re going to drop out and then shoot you. Why? Maybe….we can’t shoot a guy in real space while we’re in warp?  This would not fool an Imperial gunner for more than half a second. Since no Federation ship could destroy an ISD in that time, it’s safe to say any Federation captain attempting that would regret his actions in a few seconds. Also, note how quickly and easily Federation ships drop in and out of warp. Is it not possible that Kirk was simply dropping back into realspace and then shooting, instead of warp-strafing? Federation ships appear to be able to transfer into subspace and back very quickly, giving them a slight advantage and making it harder for Imperial ships to track them.

Addressing Counterarguments.

Idazmi pointed out that in the animated series, the Enterprise left the galaxy. However, the animated series is not canon. His point is meaningless. If warp strafing existed the Picard Maneuver would be pointless.

-Ship Range

TNG Season 1, Ep# 21: "Arsenal of Freedom"

GEORDI: Keep those shields at full power. It'll be on us any moment.

WORF: Shields holding.

GEORDI: Ahead one-quarter, heading two-five mark three-zero-zero.

LIAN: That heading will take us further into the planet's atmosphere.

GEORDI: That's correct. We're going to lose some maneuverability, so keep a firm hand on the helm.

LIAN: Aye, sir.

WORF: You want our attacker to follow us into the atmosphere.

GEORDI: That's what I'm hoping. Scan for any air disruption or vortex -- cloak or no cloak, we'll spot it by its turbulence.

The effectiveness of this tactic is proof that the attacker's weapons are similar to Federation weapons, with an effective combat range of a few dozen kilometres at most. Otherwise, it wouldn't have to follow the Enterprise into the atmosphere in order to fire on it.

If its effective combat range were thousands or tens of thousands of kilometres, it could have easily fired on the Enterprise without entering the atmosphere itself, even if the Enterprise went so deep into the atmosphere that it was skimming treetops.

It should be noted that Federation range is far greater when they target objects which are not changing course, probably in the 300,000 kilometer area.

TNG Season 2, Ep# 34: "A Matter of Honor"

WORF: We are getting an emergency signal from a command transponder. Location nine-three-five mark six-one-three... Frequency and code designate it as Commander Riker.

PICARD: Chief O'Brien, align with emergency transponder signal.

CHIEF O'BRIEN: Yes Captain. We are not yet in safe range for a transfer and defensive shields are still in place.

PICARD: We may have to stretch it a little. On my command.

WORF: Forty-eight thousand.

DATA: Lieutenant Worf to the Transporter Room. Doctor Pulaski will accompany you. Mendon take over the count.

MENDON: Yes sir. Forty-five thousand and still closing.

MENDON: Forty-four thousand.

PICARD: Transporter Room, ready. You will control defensive shields...

CHIEF O'BRIEN: Ready sir.

MENDON: Forty thousand...

KLAG: Forty thousand.

KARGAN: Prepare to drop cloaking shields and fire. Steady...

PICARD: Transporter Room, energize.

(Kargan is transported off the Pagh's bridge, having been tricked by Riker into confiscating and then activating his transporter.

This scene seems to confirm weapon and targeting ranges of many tens of thousands of kilometres. That in itself is not shocking; any starship capable of bombarding a planetary target from geosynchronous orbit must be capable of such ranges, and this capability is common in sci-fi. However, it directly contradicts external visuals in which the ships are seen to be very close to one another (a few kilometres) and subsequent battles such as "A Call to Arms", in which ships are explicitly stated to be out of weapons range even though they're already within a few dozen kilometres of the target. I see two possible explanations for this conundrum:

1. The most straightforward explanation is that since direct observations are far more valuable than dialogue, the dialogue must simply be wrong.
2. A more complex explanation may be that effective range is dictated by sensor jamming rather than physical weapon constraints. Ships would have to get close enough to "burn through" the jamming and acquire targeting locks, and we might surmise that the crews are so inexperienced with manual targeting that they generally don't even attempt to fire until they get target locks. This would explain why they can hit faraway celestial bodies (asteroids don't have jammers) or lone targets (jamming isn't very effective for a lone ship, because all of the jamming emissions actually make the ship more visible; it is most useful in group engagements), but they can't hit the side of a barn in fleet battles. This sorta contradicts with Arsenal of Freedom, though.

Addressing Counterarguments

There are none.

• “Fighters”

Federation fighters are based around flanking and taking advantage of weakly shielded areas on opponents. When enemy shields are angled forward in “battle wall” formation, the fighters can flank and destroy the enemy ships. Since their weapons are not located on turrets they probably are about as powerful as capital ships. They are very rare, however. This is probably due to cost or mindset issues, as outlined by Mr. Wong.

Addressing Counterarguments

There are none to address.

-Planet Numbers

DS9 Season 1, Ep# 13: "Battle Lines"

SISKO: The Federation is made up of over a hundred planets who have allied themselves for mutual scientific, cultural and defensive benefits. The mission that my people and I are on is to explore the galaxy.

I see. Only 200 planets at most, else he would have said over 200.

In another episode of TNG, Picard says “over one hundred and fifty”. So 150-200 seems reasonable.

According to Kosinski, they have only charted 11% of their galaxy.

In one episode of TNG, Wesley mentions they have explored 17% of their galaxy. Perhaps Wesley and Kosinski have different definitions of charted and explored. Kirk claims the Federation has thousands of outposts. Perhaps the Federation has lost those outposts, or does not count them as planets.

Addressing Counterarguments

There are none to address.

-Production Capability

TNG Season 4, Ep# 75: "Best of Both Worlds Part 2"

SHELBY: We'll have the fleet back up in less than a year.

Shelby expects to be able to recover from their losses in less than one year. We don't know how many of the ships at Wolf 359 were salvageable (the Borg do leave ships in salvageable condition once they're disabled, if the battle in STFC is any indication), but if we assume that none of them were salvageable, this would mean the Federation is capable of building around 40 ships a year.

Given the average sizes of the ships at Wolf 359 (which were smaller than GCS's), this would mean that the Federation's shipbuilding capability amounts to the equivalent of less than two Star Destroyers.

•  If I remember correctly the federation is around 500 years old (no they are NOT! TNG takes place in the late 24th century, or late 2300s), so if they can build 40 ships a year they should have 20,000 (it’s actually more like 8,000 under this mentality) ships, assuming they haven’t had ANY LOSSES. Again, 20,000 capital ships is the MAXIMUM amount of capital ships they could have. Remember, many ships are lost, so the number is likely far less. Ships are said to have a 30 year lifespan, so a good number would be 1,200. (This is where daystrom institute technical library comes in.)

Ok, I added up all of the remaining ships in Starfleet (it's long and complicated so I'm not going to post it here) and I got 3,491 ships (this is NOT including shuttle craft). I may have made a few mistakes in my calculation, but I am quite Certain that I was not off by more than 300 or so. However, 1,137 of these ships are light explorers that are barely combat-worthy, as in literally 10 times weaker than a Galaxy class. It's possible that they would be upgraded in times of war though. They also have around 35,000 shuttle craft.

So about 40,000 total ships. Perhaps the reason for the difference between what I got and what you got is because all 40 ships were capital ships, and more difficult to build.

Another thing to consider is that the ships At wolf 359 were probably relatively powerful capital ships, meaning their losses were more devastating… After all, they (probably) wouldn't try to throw barely combat-worthy science ships at a massive invading ship that is about a hundred times larger than one of their starships…

Final tally: 4,000-8,000 combat-capable capital ships, around 35,000 shuttles, fighters, and other small craft.

Addressing Counterarguments

There are none to address.

-Ground Forces

They are not good.Their phasers are powerful but no one knows how they work seeing how sometimes they will make a person disappear (not vaporize, there would be a cloud of steam), and other times they won’t do anything against like rocks ands stuff (packing crates, for instance). Our modern military would definitely be victorious in a combat with equal numbers.

Their phasers.

Armed with stun and kill settings, their phasers are good weapons in that they can stun many people at once with their spread setting. Their kill setting has a straight, visible line so one could theoretically easily adjust where they are firing at. However, phasers are not very ergonomic. The gif, provided below, shows phasers having their aim adjusted while firing. Also, note the slow travel of the phaser beam and the weakness of the beam in general, although it seemed to have a stun capacity as well.

Phasers are said to have an auto aim setting but as you can see by the gif above it’s not very good. Others have theorised the auto aim setting is more of a stabilizer so the beam doesn’t move and is thus more effective. I agree that the auto aim is probably just a stabilizer.

Mr Wong has a theory he calls the NDF theory. It claims that phasers must use some form of chain reaction to deal the amount of damage they can do while not using much power. He proves it by pointing out many examples of phasers slowly disappearing victims, which is something not explainable by direct energy transfer, but completely explainable with chain reactions. However, it appears to not affect elements with high atomic density as strongly as those with low atomic density.

Their body armor. Is it leather?

Seriously, what is this? Not even goggles. Arms, back, face, and legs are all unprotected. Instead of rifles, they use pistols. It’s safe to say these guys won’t survive in space as long as a stormtrooper. They do, however, have personal shields. Worf was able to jury rig a personal shield in canon which was able to block gunshots (This was on the holodeck, but it's unclear whether they can use them outside the holodeck.). They can, as we hear them mention personal shields in several episodes...we just don’t see them used. Perhaps there are limitations we don’t know about-cost  is the only factor I can think of, though. Would it be able to stop a blaster bolt? Probably, but remember a personal shield cannot break the laws of physics-that energy must go somewhere. So it’s likely Worf felt the force of the bullet, only diffused over the shield. And the shield only lasted about 15 seconds, although I think that was because it was created partly from a telegram. Even so, it’s pretty easy to see that Stormtroopers would defeat Redshirts.

Addressing Counterarguments

There are none to address. That’s not true at all. There are tons of counterarguments to address here:  example is “Phasers would be enough to destroy most armored vehicles, so they don’t need them in star trek”

Well, the fact is we never see them demonstrate the power to destroy armoured vehicles-all we see them do is blast stone. Their weapons are usually ineffective against dense or metal objects. For example, against the silicon parasites in “Devil in the Dark” they could hardly kill them, even with phasers. We have also seen that high-density armour is extremely resistant to phasers, as we can tell from comparing something like "The Die is Cast" or "Inheritance" (in which light silicate planetary surface crust is destroyed) with something like ST2 or "Way of the Warrior", in which repeated phaser blasts did only minor damage to armour. Therefore, it is quite obvious that the material composition of the target has an enormous effect on the effectiveness of phasers. Since we already know that phasers operate on some sort of chain reaction, and that they must derive much of their energy from the target itself, this is not a surprise. The pattern appears to favour atoms with very high nucleon counts, such as heavy metals. Apparently, the higher the atomic number, the less susceptible an element is to the NDF reaction. This is also consistent with "Devil in the Dark", since silicon has a higher atomic number than carbon (14 as opposed to 6). I would recommend Michael Wong’s work here especially. 

or “there is other equipment in Star Trek, we just don’t see it”.

The fact they never use it would indicate they don’t have it.

I agree, but I’m not sure our trekkie friends would see it that way.

Let me put it simply: we have to assume they don’t have it until they show it, period. Any other assumption is unfair.

Well, they might replicate modern day tanks and such. The reason they do not is because the vehicles would be expensive to maintain and pointless. Because the Federation has only very weak planetary shields, if they attempt to defend a planet without a ship in orbit, the enemy can simply bomb them into submission from orbit with impunity, no matter how powerful their ground forces may be. While the Federation might do so after being attacked by the Empire, it would still be pointless because they still do not have powerful planetary shields, and Imperial ships could bomb them from orbit. The Federation doesn’t usually attack other planets, so using them as an aggressive army would be pointless.

Combat Droids.

NG Season 1, Ep# 14: "Datalore"

DATA (talking about Lore): I've been anxious to hear the chief engineer's opinion, Mister Argyle. Do you believe he can be made to function?

ARGYLE: It appears to include all the components in your body. Not that we really understand your construction either...

BEVERLY: We'll have our top medical and engineering specialists working on its assembly, Mister Data.

Apparently, Data's bio-mechanical construction is beyond the Federation's comprehension. This means that their ignorance of his technology extends beyond his brain to include his body.

It would take the best efforts of their best specialists merely to assemble the components of another Soong-type android, although they apparently learned enough from this exercise for Data to attempt to build another Soong-type android himself (later on, in another episode).

TNG Season 1, Ep# 14: "Datalore"

LORE: Lesson one in becoming more human, my brother. You must observe all human customs.

DATA: Champagne?

LORE: An ancient ritual, still practiced when they celebrate events of importance. My brother, I toast our discovery of each other. May it fill our lives with new meaning.

DATA: I have some doubts about the value of human ... customs in this ... my ... brother ... (he begins to slump)

LORE: And let us toast also ...

DATA: Brother ... help me ...

(Data collapses from the effect of the drug in his champagne glass).

 Data can be drugged. This is actually the second incident in which exposure to a particular chemical caused debilitating effects on him (the first being "The Naked Now")

This, along with several statements by Data himself, seem to indicate he is partly organic.

TNG Season 3, Ep# 61: "Deja Q"

DATA: Although I do not require sustenance, I occasionally ingest a semi-organic nutrient suspension in a silicon-based liquid medium.

Q: Is it good?

DATA: It would be more accurate to say it is "good for me" as it lubricates my bio-functions.

The Federation's most advanced android is actually a type of cyborg. His biological components use some form of sustenance. It seems that they are unable to create a totally inorganic android.

TNG Season 5, Ep# 113: "The Masterpiece Society"

DATA: The characteristic response to the Kriskov Gambit is to counter with an el-Mitra Exchange -- particularly since I have already taken both your rooks. By missing that opportunity, you have left your king vulnerable.

TROI: We'll see...

DATA: As you wish. (makes a move) Check.

(Troi makes a move)

DATA: Intriguing. You have devised a completely unanticipated response to a classic attack. You will checkmate my king in seven moves.

TROI: Chess isn't just a game of gambits and ploys -- it's also a game of intuition.

Data is soundly defeated by Troi because he can't see eight moves ahead. Troi concludes with the snide claim that Data needs "intuition" in order to play chess effectively (the subtext being that since Data has no intuition, he will never be a good chess player).

However, computers don't necessarily need intuition in order to be fearsome chess opponents. In May 1997, world chess champion Garry Kasparov faced off against "Deep Blue", a supercomputer built by IBM. He lost, and I highly doubt that "Deep Blue" had intuition. Therefore, Data's ability to analyze the game of chess seems to be inferior to that of an IBM supercomputer, circa May 1997.

TNG Season 7, Ep# 162: "Inheritance"

JULIANA: But... how do you know the same thing won't happen? Creating a stable positronic matrix is very tricky -- your Father lost several prototypes before Lore.

DATA: I was not aware that he created any androids before my brother.

JULIANA: There were three of them... they were like children to us... losing them was very painful. When Noonian decided to try again, I was very much against it. I didn't think we had the right to bring a life into the world that had so little chance of surviving.

Data's positronic brain was very difficult to construct, even for his brilliant maverick inventor. It seems that the process is still so flaky that multiple attempts must be made in order to produce a reliable model. His success rate was 2 of 5, which is not exactly a stellar yield.

Obviously, you won't see any eight year old Federation boys cobbling together androids from junkyard parts in their spare time.

Data is disabled by Skoran's attack, and remains disabled until he can be repaired on the Enterprise. This tells us two things about the Federation's famed android:

1. His body is not strong enough to withstand the pressure applied by a man wielding a primitive spear made using metallurgical techniques roughly on par with Earth's Renaissance period.
2. Wayne Poe notes that his self-repair systems are inferior to those of a Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 Terminator, since Arnold took a metal rod clean through the chest in T2 and was able to get back up on his feet without outside help.

This raises an interesting conundrum when compared to STFC, in which Data took several shots from an M-16 at close range without injury. One possible explanation is that he was upgraded with armour plate after this incident, but that seems highly unlikely since he doesn't look any different. Another possibility is that their metallurgical techniques had advanced to the point where they understand heat treatment, and they can produce high-impurity cast irons. Cast iron is often thought of as "primitive" and inferior, but a good cast iron, if quenched and tempered to a highly martensitic microstructure, can exhibit tensile strength in excess of 120,000 psi (more than 800MPa). If a 5 kg spear was carried by a running man at 5 m/s and thrust into Data's body as hard as possible, it would strike with more than 25m/s of momentum, plus the driving force of the man's arms and his own momentum. If it was a very hard spear with a sharpened tip, it is entirely possible that it would indeed penetrate where the M-16's bullets could not. There are real-life bulletproof vests which cannot stop a knife or a spear, so this theory is not without precedent.

In conclusion, while Data may be superior to many types of droids in the SW universe, the Federation cannot mass-produce him. (Strange, considering they have replicators Data’s positronic processor probably is prohibitive for replicators), and he is not indestructible, and has many flaws, such as being inferior to some computers in some regards, and overall seems less suited for combat than commando droids.

Superweapons.

None to speak of, except those in alternate timelines, such as red matter.

To sum up:

-Ship Sensors and jamming capability.

Wong calcs federation scanner range at 27 light-days. I calculated it at 3 light days. YW mentions they were able to detect a Borg sphere at 13 light years (I’m not 100% sure this was the exact number), but this was with an upgraded ship. They would have several seconds of warning before an Imperial ship was on top of them.
Imperial sensors are not as refined as Federation sensors, but seem to be longer ranged, at the fifteen to hundred light-year range.

Imperials can detect cloaked ships with gravity fields.

The Federation does not have many cloaks. It has been hypothesized that, since phase-cloaked ships are still subject to gravity, it would be possible to pull them apart with tractor beams. The same with regular cloaks.

Basically a tie for sensors, but half a point goes to the Empire in terms of cloaking and cloaking detection and half goes to the Federation due to scanner precision.

This could possibly be considered a tie, because it is actually quite close, especially if you use the 13 light years thing. Federation sensors have some advantages that imperial sensors don't, and vice versa. Both sides will be able to track and see each other once in battle, and that is the most important thing. Both sides have capable sensors, so this section doesn't actually matter that much, and while imperial sensors have blind spots close to the ship and can't seem to detect the exact genetic makeup of a faraway organism, that won't really help the federation in a fight scenario.

-Firepower and shields.

Imperial firepower is at least Teraton range, with full broadsides being in the exaton range (petatons-exatons for a Star Destroyer in my opinion.) . The upper limit is Yottaton range. Highly unlikely. Most of those numbers were insane and probably should not be taken seriously. For instance, a few dozen zettatons would destroy a planet, and that kind of firepower is never observed for non-Superweapons. Also, in Catalyst they said it would be hard to destroy a planet and said nothing of planetary shields in that conversation, so I highly doubt that even fair sized fleets could put out this much energy in under a week or so. I would estimate high gigatons per second per small gun, low teratons per second per medium gun, mid teratons per second per heavy gun, and therefore mid teratons - mid petatons per second per ship, with stronger ships like Star Destroyers being closer to petatons and teratons for the smaller ships like the Arquitens or Nebulon-B. Imperial ships can survive combat with ships of similar firepower, and their hulls alone are tough enough to survive crashing from orbit and getting hit by ships with similar firepower. Confederate ships have survived multi-gigatons (probably higher, since a 1.2 gigaton impact didn’t even shake their unshielded ship and the firepower they survived (from fighters) did shake the ship) It’s worth noting that the ROTJ novel describes fighter or bomber firepower as “thermonuclear fireworks”. It’s probable that Bombers in star wars carry bombs that are comparable to a thermonuclear bomb, and this is seemingly confirmed in Tarkin, which says craters from bombs were the same size as Trade Federation Core Ship landing sites. This is almost as impressive as the US’s Castle Bravo Test, which was the largest nuke ever detonated by the US. range firepower with shields down. Mon Calamari capital ship shields have been calculated as being at least 100 exatons based on the interactions with the Death Star, although they could be up to eight orders of magnitude higher. I, personally, believe Imperial Star Destroyer broadsides to be in the 500’s exaton range and their shields to be around a yottaton. Interestingly, this would mean a Star Destroyer would have to hit another Star Destroyer with around 2000 broadsides before it’s shields went down. This seems impossible to rationalize, until we remember that Star Wars shields have weak points, and small, slow, craft can bypass shields entirely if shields are low enough. If we go by the several shot per second broadsides shown in rogue one (I will estimate only two shots per second) this would mean a Star destroyer could take down another star destroyer in about 17 minutes, which seems about right.

Federation ships shields are estimated to be around 60 kilotons to 5 gigatons, and their weapons are estimated to be around 6 kilotons-500 megatons. I estimate their shields to be low megaton range and their weapons as high kiloton range.

Both sides’ shields have a quite major weakness. However, neither side puts enough emphasis on the other’s weakness for these shortcomings to actually have a major effect on the battle. If the federation started mass-producing fighters, and the Empire started mounting SPHA-Ts on all of their ships, (I believe Anakin did something similar with his Venators (well they’d also have to find and tune to the frequency, which may present some problems...)) However, then this may have a significant effect on the outcome.

I would not be surprised if the entire Federation’s navy would be unable to destroy a single Mon calamari capital ship. (This may be slightly excessive, but you get the point. A toe-to-toe firefight would not end well for a federation starship.)

Even if you think all the numbers we’ve calculated are wrong, Star Wars weapons are still considerably more powerful than their Star Trek counterparts. Many Trekkies use the battle of coruscant to try to show that star wars firepower is weak. However, they often forget to take into account 2 major things: 1: star wars ships have very strong armor. They are not helpless when shields are down, unlike Star Trek ships. 2: Star Wars ships are larger than Star Trek ships. This means the holes punched in the star destroyers were around 50-60 meters in diameter. Assuming that star trek and star wars ships have equal hull strength (which is generous to the federation), these pictures show what a turbolaser shot would look like in a star trek ship:

Klingon torpedo radius vs turbolaser shot radius

Klingon disruptor shot radius vs turbolaser shot radius

More klingon weapons vs. Turbolasers

Turbolaser shot on a klingon Bird of prey

Turbolaser shot on an Excelsior-class starship

Turbolaser shot on Defiant

Turbolaser shot on Kirk’s enterprise

Turbolaser shot on an Intrepid-class

Turbolaser barrage on an Intrepid-class

(Photos from Brian Young on Scifights.net.)

Clearly, one shot from a turbolaser destroys any unshielded Trek ship, even ignoring the hard numbers.

Point to the Empire. Big point, considering the size of the gap.

-Sublight speed

Star Trek:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wtso6FVQgxo

Star Wars:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScysfwK70tc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9o0URlcb6o

The ships here were about Millennium Falcon sized. An ISD can outrun the Millennium Falcon.

However, since Trek ships are more maneuverable in sublight, I’m going to call it a tie. 

I can’t really add on to this except that fighters on both sides seem to be faster and have better acceleration than the carrier ships. For example, Cad Bane’s ship from the clone wars, which accelerated very quickly. However, since there is no “max speed” in space except lightspeed, neither side has a real advantage, and in any case ST ships can jump to FTL very easily.

I will call this a tie because even though SW ships are faster ST ships can jump to FTL very quickly.

-FTL Speed

Imperial ships can travel 100,000 light years in a week. Other sources say Imperial ships can go 50,000 light years in a day. This is two light-years per second, which is a little slower than “parsecs in a blink”, but it’s close enough.

Federation ships travel at a maximum of 9,000 times the speed of light. They would take 11 years to cross a galaxy at maximum speed, but we don’t see them do this often or for long periods of time, because it damages the ship. However, since they can jump to subspace very quickly, and are adept at microjumps, this makes the gap a little smaller.

Both Star Wars and Star Trek ships can change direction in FTL. (as seen in Rogue One)

Point to the Empire.

-Ship Range.

Both Imperial and Federation ships seem to prefer close ranges. Maximum range on ST seems to be around 300,000 kilometers, although it’s theoretically infinite. Star wars ships have been observed to fight at tens of thousands of kilometers, but damage falloff from turbolasers generally limits them to close range.

Point to the Federation.

-“Fighters” and single man craft.

Imperial fighters rely on numbers, maneuverability, and speed.

Federation fighters are rare but effective, primarily used on strafing runs on “battle line” formations. They will probably be effective against TIE fighters, but since Rebel torpedoes managed to shake the Death Star, Imperial torpedoes probably have many gigatons of power behind them. Also, Republic torpedoes were able to shake a CIS ship when a calculated gigaton-level asteroid impact could not. So Federation fighters will not be invincible against Imperial fighters and bombers.

I’m torn on this, but since Federation fighters have shields and their mindset is based around exploiting shield weak spots I’m giving this to them. In Star wars legends, ships often left small gaps or weak points in their shields. I’m not sure if this is canon anymore. (It is still canon, Han has mentioned angling his shields).

It’s worth noting the Empire has the TIE defender, which has shields, but it is very rare.

Imperial fighters, while far more numerous, would probably be mowed down by Trek shuttlecraft and the like.

Point to the Federation.

-Planet Numbers

Galactic empire has a few million fully developed planets.

The federation has less than 200 fully developed planets.(but more than 150)

Point to the Empire.

-Production capability.

Galactic empire has built 2 death stars, 25,000 Imperial star destroyers, an unknown number of smaller ships. (Which is said to be more than millions. It would have to be at least about 2 million to even “fill up” all the Empire’s capital ships.)Don't forget, they also have 13 SSD’s, including the Eclipse (yes that one is canon now).

Federation seems to have at most 40,000 ships,  35,000 of which are small craft. (although this is not based on canon, only fan-done estimates. It is very generous, however.)Relative to size, the Federation is actually much more militarized than the Empire.

In terms of member planets, the Empire is more than 6,666 times larger than the

Federation, but has only five times the number of capital ships. (If we go by 1 million divided by 150, but the Empire is in actuality much larger)This means the Federation has proportionally, in terms of capital ships more than 1,300 times as many capital ships per planet! Of course, the Federation has many more enemies, so this is understandable.

Point to the Empire.

-Ground Forces.

The Empire uses vehicles and combined arms tactics.

The Federation sends its men out without vehicles with the exception of the “hopper”, which we only see a few times. They have armour which does not protect them from chemicals and seems to be very weak. Many of their forces are not even equipped with armor in the first place. Phasers will vaporize stormtroopers on higher power levels, probably traumatizing them, given the Empire’s attitude towards disruptors, but this won’t stop the Empire.

The federation has also shown no heavy artillery of any kind.

Point to the Empire.

Not merely a point… This section is an utter curbstomp. The only chance the federation has is utilizing their transporters, which would probably not work most of the time due to environmental conditions or hostile ECM.

-Possible unique weaknesses, and unique technology/advantages.

Federation ship shields can be angled, like Imperial ships. A weaker ship can take advantage of the weak points. This is a moot point, however, because an Imperial ship would one-shot the Federation ship no matter where it hit. This information would be useful for TIE fighters, though.

The Federation has transporters. These allow the Federation to teleport their men. However, transporters have weaknesses. They can be jammed very easily and cannot penetrate shields. They could be used in combination with a cloaked ship to approach a star destroyer (if the star destroyer was not doing scans or had its shields down) and transport bombs into the reactor room, which would destroy the Imperial reactor. But Imperials would quickly catch on, so this would not be very useful in the long term. And the Imperial ship would be able to easily destroy the cloaked ship even by blind firing. Note that only scimitar could have shields up while cloaked (I'm pretty sure no other ship in ST could, I Could be wrong here though)

The empire has interdictors. These ships create gravity fields to ensnare ships. Since Federation ships also cannot enter warp in gravity fields, Imperial interdictors would be able to capture Federation ships. Interdictors can be used to detect cloaked ships. This would be useful because Imperial ships could quickly drop into realspace around Federation ships, activate their interdiction fields, and completely crush even cloaked ships by detecting them with their interdiction fields. It is the perfect counter to the Federation.

Imperial ships have reactors which are vulnerable to even small explosives. Take TCW season 2 episode Death Trap, in which a young Fett takes down a Venator by attacking a reactor with a blaster. However, destroying the reactor of a star destroyer does not destroy the entire ship, as seen in the same episode.

From Lords of the Sith, in Ch 5 pg 75-76 it is wrote:

The commander synced the fighters' identifications with the bridge comp, so they could easily be distinguished from the incoming vulture droids and mines.

The existence of IFF tags in a galaxy far, far away.

Ch 6 pg 77 wrote:Vader saw the shields flare and fail even before Luitt's frantic call came over the comm.

"Shields are down, Lord Vader."

Scores of mines, drawn by their attractor arrays, floated toward the ship, gradually picking up speed, and hundreds of droid fighters chewed up the space behind them, swarming toward the vulnerable ship.

The mines have propulsion and guidance systems, smart enough to detect when a ship's shields are down at least. If pirates have access to these mines, so should the Empire.

The Empire has bacta, which can be used to heal troops. The federation has that strange wand thingy that I forgot the name of and does basically the same thing, but faster.

Star wars shields don’t stop slow moving objects. I think that Federation sensors would be able to detect this, but given SW hull strength, I don’t think they’ll be able to really take advantage of it, unless they aim for the bridge tower. This would give them the ability to inflict a few casualties on Imperials, but not enough to change the game. At best, it could persuade Imperials to leave the federation alone.

And Imperial ships one shot fed ships no matter where they hit, so this at best provides a tiny chance for Fed ships to destroy Imp ships.  They won’t be able to use phasers. Considering the ridiculous levels of jamming the Imps put out I doubt that the Feds will be able to land a lot of shots. I don’t know if Interdictors still jam missile guidance systems in Disney Canon, and given an occurrence in Heir To the Jedi, they likely don’t.

One thing we haven’t covered is mindset. The Federation has a mindset of peace and understanding. They rarely fire the first shot and are patient even against aggressive foes. The Federation would not attack the Empire. In fact, they wouldn’t even be able to attack the Empire in a reasonable amount of time if they wanted to.

        The way the Empire acts has its flaws. For example, most strategies the Empire used requires risks, baiting, and/or sacrifice. This is a logical tactic for the Empire against rebels, but against an equal force it would cost them. Of course, the Federation is not an equal force. It should also be noted the Empire permits other nations to exist like the Hutts (although they were blockading them later to persuade them to join them) and have not been aggressive in colonizing the unknown regions, so if they were not bloodlusted, it is unlikely they would attack the Federation.

 Of course, in most VS debates both sides are bloodlusted, so this doesn’t really matter unless one is writing a fanfic. If neither side was bloodlusted, and it was a “portal opens up in both galaxies” scenario I think the nations would become puppet states to the Empire, with only the Borg posing a small threat to the Empire. Perhaps some godlike beings would close up the portal or fight the Empire. The Empire wouldn’t be able to stop them, but godlike beings don’t really attack anyone.

A non-bloodlusted first contact between the Federation (TNG) and the Empire might play out like this: The exploring Imperial ship locks weapons and begins broadcasting orders for the Federation ship to surrender. The Federation captain, being a diplomat (assuming they can communicate) will probably comply.

However, if he decides not to, and decides to launch a first strike (violating their normal behavior, and Federation protocol), he could destroy the Imperial ship if he hit the bridge. The Imperial ship’s shields are unlikely to be up, because when fighting the Millennium Falcon, they were down until Han moved into an attack position, and they seemed to be down when attacking the blockade runner. Imperial gunners would target and fire at the Enterprise, regardless of the functionality of the bridge, but the Federation ship would be able to jump back into subspace and escape, because of how slowly turbolasers move.

If there is an interdictor, if an ISD is equipped with gravity projectors, or if Imperial shields are up, then the Federation ship is pretty much dead.

These satellites are able to create multiple class five hurricanes. A single average  hurricane releases 5.2 x 1019 Joules/day or 6.0 x 1014 Watts, or 143 kilotons/second. One class five hurricane released 13 gigatons. So these satellites are literally creating gigatons of energy. There’s less than 20 satellites, very small, (I’d estimate a little bigger than TIE fighters), putting out a bit more than a gigaton each. They created three class five hurricanes, while only at 20 percent power. This implies that at full power, they could create 15 or so hurricanes, which would stretch their power to about 2 megatons per second. There are 15 platforms, so each platform would be creating one full hurricane and therefore be putting out at least 143 kilotons/second. Remember that these satellites are each not much larger than a starfighter. Ironically, a trekkie tried to use this to prove SW had weak ships!

In battlefront 2, the satellites seem to be bigger, but they are able to strip a planet of its atmosphere, which takes far more energy.

-Conclusion and how this would play out.

The Empire is superior to the Federation in most ways except ship range (the federation capital ships also have superior Sublight maneuverability). A bloodlusted war between the Federation and the Empire would last a few weeks after the first Imperial ship got to the Federation. The Empire would be victorious.

There is no way to make this a fair fight without changing canon. Wong’s fanfic was exceedingly generous to the Federation, but that was necessary (else the story would have been boring).

Half of our readers are going to go away angry no matter who loses. We hope you won't be blinded by your love for your favorite franchise. Just cuz one has bigger guns and more ships, that doesn't make it better or worse. Both series’ have their ups and downs, and have a very large fan base. I'm sorry if your chosen favorite lost, but it doesn't make Star Trek any worse because it did. They’re just… different.

That’s definitely true. I just want to let you know I love watching Star Trek with my dad, and I’ve actually seen more Star Trek than Star Wars.

Well there is more Star Trek to watch than there is Star Wars, however, with disney planning to make more star wars for the rest of the foreseeable future, I suspect that won’t be true for long...

Hey, if you thought the Federation would defeat the Empire, I really hope I was able to change your mind. If you wanna check out my youtube channel, its https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCayT-e6bBFowZR0Zr3H5xJw .

Leave a comment there if you want me to add something or want to debate with me. If you convince me, I will put it in the doc, and I will give you credit!

Reapers (Mass Effect) Statistics

-Ship Sensors, jamming capability, miscellaneous examples of ECM, and cloaking.

An especially dangerous capability of the Reapers is indoctrination. Reapers produce an energy field that slowly alters the limbic systems of the brains of sapient species. Prolonged exposure to the field will cause those exposed to be controlled by the Reapers unquestioningly. However, the more control a Reaper exerts over its victims, the less competent the victim becomes. Some devices created by Reapers also generate this field, and the body of a dead Reaper can still indoctrinate beings in its vicinity. This can be seen as a jamming or sensor field, but it doesn't seem effective, fast, or too practical.

Addressing Counterarguments

None so far.

-Ship firepower.

A Reaper capital ship (or "Sovereign-class" Reaper) is a two-kilometer-long warship and by far the heavier class of Reaper. A Reaper capital ship's main gun has an estimated firepower between 132 to 454 kilotons (presumed to be peak output per shot) I would place it as more likely nearer the 132 kiloton range. A Reaper destroyer is a much smaller warship, but it still measures hundreds of meters in length. The Reaper is armed with one or more main guns that fire streams of molten iron-uranium-tungsten alloy accelerated to a significant fraction of c, with a range measured at tens of thousands of kilometers. They also mount laser defenses for shooting down enemy fighters and missiles.

-Shields.

A Reaper capital ship's kinetic barriers can withstand the sustained firepower of two Citadel-race dreadnoughts (about 76 kilotons every 2 seconds) indefinitely, while the sustained fire from three dreadnoughts causes it to show strain, and four dreadnoughts are enough to inflict damage. This suggests that the Reapers have a high recharge rate of their kinetic barriers relative to their full strength. The shell is armored and protected by powerful kinetic barriers.A kinetic barrier uses mass effect technology to create a force field that repels or deflects objects that enter the field at dangerous speeds. Basic barriers simply "push back" against the projectile, slowing it to a harmless speed or (if strong enough) stopping it entirely. Advanced "cyclonic" barriers apply lateral force to projectiles, deflecting them so they miss the target. Barrier technology is only effective against physical projectiles; barriers provide virtually no protection against directed-energy weapons.

-Ship Speed

They also have advanced FTL drives that can sustain speeds of 30 light-years per day for an indefinite period of time. It would take them 3,333 days to travel across the Milky way, or 9 years. Their power source is unknown, but they have never shown any interest in capturing fuel supplies from targeted systems.

-Ship Range

Tens of thousands of kilometers.

-Single-man craft/fighters

 Some Reaper capital ships carry squadrons of Oculus drones, which are used as fighters.

-Planet Numbers

Irrelevant, since the Reapers do not depend on planets.

-Production capability.

It is said a “capital ship” type reaper takes an entire civilization, but I disagree. It’s more likely far smaller, given how little biomass is inside a reaper. Reapers do take a long time to create, however, with only a small part of a reaper (although the most important part) being completed after a year. Reaper numbers are estimated in the 18 thousand to 150 thousand range.I’d estimate at most several years to make a reaper.

-Ground Forces

There are many Reaper ground forces, and those are generally very tough. This section will be expanded upon later.

-Conclusions

Against the Federation, the Reapers are much weaker in terms of ship to ship combat. Reaper shields will be completely useless against phasers and overloaded by Federation firepower. For example, Federation torpedoes are probably around 400-600 kilotons in terms of firepower. By contrast Reaper ships are harmed by explosions in the 152 kiloton range. Even if Reaper point-defense systems take out the photon torpedoes (unlikely, since photon torpedoes are shielded), they have literally no way of dealing with phasers. But there is a sticky wicket. Reaper manipulation. Reapers don’t always rely on firepower to win battles-their ability to control others makes sure they have an advantage. Would they be able to use that to beat the Federation? No. The Federation has Betazoids, which would probably be able to detect Reaper manipulation and warn the Federation. Even then, reaper manipulation is very poor, having to be balanced between control and sanity. And there has to be a reaper artifact in close proximity to the person they are controlling. In light of these factors, I think it’s obvious the Federation would defeat the Reapers, if we assume the reapers have 18,000 ships. But if we go with the higher 150,000 Reaper fleet numbers, I think the Reapers might win by sheer numbers. If we include other members of each galaxy, however, the Reapers definitely lose. Even if they lost, the Reapers would cause many casualties. It would not be a curbstomp.

Another advantage the reapers have is speed.  

Against the Galactic Empire, the Reapers lose. This should be obvious to everyone. The Galactic Empire is faster, stronger, and bigger.

Imperium Of Man (Warhammer 40k) Statistics

The Imperium of Man is not actually a single state, but more like a confederation of almost independent states working together for the greater good. For example, the Mechanicus has its own navy and army in the Skitarii, certain Space Marine chapters are mostly alone, and the Ecclesiarchy has its own military. In the end, however, all have sworn fealty to the Emperor, and all have a duty to protect the Imperium. In a galaxy rife with enemies, surrounded and outnumbered at every turn, the Imperium shines brightly as Mankind’s mark on the universe. Imperial ships often use long range attacks at the start of combat with powerful nova cannons and energy lances, then close to short range and unleash hails of mac-cannon broadsides. The Imperial Navy, though slow to recuperate from some types of losses, has hundreds of billions of hands and can casually fling thousands of ships into battle, and is willing to accept massive casualties to assure victory. On land, Mechanicus Titans dominate the battlefield, unleashing massive amounts of energy upon enemy fortifications and functioning as mobile fortresses. Imperial Space Marines, superhumans with increased speed, faster reflexes, and powerful, self repairing armor penetrate enemy lines with ease and quickly stamp out incursions into Imperial territory. The ever-present Astra Militarum can throw millions of troops into battle- regular humans with far better armor and guns than modern day soldiers. Assisted by artillery, tanks, and planes, they have all the aspects of military today, and use them to their maximum capacity to defend the Imperium.

-Ship Sensors:

Ships use Auger arrays to detect other ships and can reduce emissions to  lessen the risk of being seen.  They use both passive and active scanning.

-Ship Firepower:

Exterminatus shows exaton level firepower.

 According to the Space Hulk rulebook, “Four Gothic-class cruisers--Intolerable, Invincible, and Righteous Force--awaited four parsecs from target. Each ship carried 100 Hellfire nuclear missiles. Each missile 122 warheads, each with a firepower of 5 GT. If boarding action fails, nuclear missiles will turn a ship to dust.”  This seems to indicate each missile has a power of 610 gigatons, and each gothic class cruiser carries 61 teratons.

Macro cannons have been calculated as megaton range weapons and they fire very quickly.

As you can see, not all of the Imperium’s weapons are exaton level. This is likely low megatons, because of the lack of mushroom clouds, although it could be high megatons if enough time had passed to let them blow away. This was probably done with MAC cannons. According to the book, Caves of Ice,

Nothing in our inventory would even come close to doing the job, but an astropathic message to the nearest naval unit would bring a task force here within weeks, and a flotilla of battleships ought to be enough to level the continent. A couple of barrages from their lance batteries would be enough to excise this cancer, however deeply it was buried. Of course the planet would be rendered uninhabitable for generations.

A “lost” technology the IoM had access to was a ship with the ability to shoot black holes at the speed of light. This was established in the book, Priest of Mars.

Addressing Counterarguments.

The Exterminatus proves the Imperium has access to exaton level firepower. Exterminatus may actually represent closer to petaton-range firepower. The K-T impact that wiped out the dinosaurs was a estimated to be in the teraton range. Though exterminatus is a few orders of magnitude above this, exatons may be pushing the limit. (tera x1000 = peta, peta x1000 = exa). It’s not likely more than single digit exatons.

I respectfully disagree on the grounds that the K-T impact did not ignite the atmosphere, and nor did it cause ejecta many miles in diameter, proving that the bombs used were much higher than exaton level firepower.

~550 mile diameter crater. Ejecta is planet-wide (we can dig down through  basically any old rock layer anywhere and find a lining of ejecta material from the blast). It raised nearby atmosphere temperatures to killing levels BEFORE impact. Though it didn’t ignite the whole atmosphere, I’m under the impression that this is a chain reaction specifically designed in a cyclonic torpedo. Now, while I’m not denying Exterminatus is orders of magnitude more powerful, this is only a high-teraton range impact. So exterminatus is probably high petatons - MAYBE low exatons. It’s probably not in the range we estimated for the DS Single-Reactor ignition (hundreds of exatons).

Ships of the Imperial Navy:

Emperor Class Battleship:

Equipped with large hangar bays that can carry eight squadrons, and excellent Auger arrays, the Emperor Class may be slow, but it is a powerful carrier, battleship, and recon vessel. The diagram below is somewhat suspicious in that it claims an Emperor class battleship weighs less than the Mars class battlecruiser. Aside from this, however, the other facts do add up.

Mars Class Battlecruiser:

Equipped with hangar bays, lance batteries, heavy mac-cannons, and the powerful Nova Cannon, the Mars Class battlecruiser is an excellently designed ship that fills a light capital ship role in the Imperial Navy. It is 5.4 kilometers long, with a crew of 107,000.
The Mars class has average speed and armour, but its weapons load out certainly was designed with flexibility in mind: with Nova cannon and Launch bays for long range strike support, and Dorsal Lances and Heavy Macro Cannons for tearing apart enemy cruisers at mid range and in close quarters. While it was initially thought of as a bad design, its excellent performance in the Gothic War changed that.

The breech of the Nova Cannon is 50 meters wide.

The maximum acceleration of this ship is 2.3 gs, despite its mass of 33 megatonnes, according to White Dwarf #232, "De'Aynes Fighting Ships of the Gothic Sector", pg. 15. This acceleration would require 2 kilotons of energy per second.

Dominator class Cruiser:

The Dominator Class cruiser is meant as a support craft, able to hold back enemies that are attempting to flank the fleet, but also able to rain death and destruction upon the main battle with the ever powerful Nova Cannon. Five kilometers long, with a crew of 95,000, the Dominator lives up to its name. However, it has a slow rate of fire and lacks strike craft or lances to deal with smaller craft, and anything that survives the first salvo is likely to destroy it.

Dictator Class Cruiser:

The dictator is the light carrier of the Imperial navy, able to perform both as a flagship for small fleets and a support carrier for larger formations. It carries a crew of 85,000 and is 5.1 kilometers long.

Dauntless Class Light Cruiser

4.5 kilometers long, with a 4.3 G maximum acceleration and a mass of 20 megatonnes, (requiring 4 kilotons per second to maintain said acceleration) the Dauntless carries a powerful prow lance, mac-cannon broadsides, and turreted dorsal mac-cannons. It should be noted that canon is contradictory in this matter. Some graphs show it as being only about a kilometer long.

-Ship Shields

Most people estimate their shields as being capable of absorbing low teratons per minute. If we accept video game mechanics as being canon then according to battlefleet gothic, Imperial shields regenerate in a minute.

Medium end calcs use the same 610GT Torpedoes and equate them to 1 point of firepower in Battlefleet Gothic, resulting in ships being capable of tanking and dishing out single-digit teratons on a minute-to-minute basis. An Imperium battleship, using these assumptions, using the Emperor-class as an example, could tank 2440 gigatons on their shields before their shields went down (though keep in mind that their shields regenerate completely every 60 seconds or so) while unshielded they could tank about 7320 gigatons before being destroyed assuming the weapon used is armor penetrating (it's hard to get a real number for hull strength as all non-Lance or non-Lance-equivalent weapons have to beat a certain armor value on a d6 roll to actually cause damage even if they hit the target).

Stock ship shields don’t protect against torpedoes or asteroids in Battlefleet Gothic Armada, but one can install “navigational shields” to protect against asteroids. It’s interesting to note that the asteroids do not affect the shields, indicating Imperial shields in WH40k discriminate based on speed. Bombers have the ability to penetrate shields as well, much like in the SW universe.

-Ship speed.

Ships take a year to cross the galaxy, but have to drop out of warp often when not working within a hundred thousand light years of the Astronomicon. When in realspace it is said they travel at significant fractions of lightspeed, although this does not make much sense in light of how comparatively slow their mac cannons are. Perhaps they are unable to change speed quickly, and combat occurs between ships traveling at similar speed.

-Ship range.

Mass-based weapons have a theoretically infinite range in space, but realistically they can only target those whose positions they can accurately calculate. Rogue Trader pins that at least 30 minutes, and since they travel at “thousands of kilometers per second” that puts their range at least 2000 x 60 x 30, or 3,600,000 kilometers. It mentions their range can be even greater. However, if they can accurately predict where a ship will be in 30 minutes, that suggests ships are unable to change course quickly, which is supported by official figures on ship acceleration. However, since the speed of mass based ship weaponry is relative, this means that mac weaponry has the potential to travel at significant fractions of lightspeed, imparting gigatons to teratons of energy . However, since must macrocannon batteries are located on the sides of imperial craft for broadside action, this presents targeting issues and is likely not used often. According to “Warlord: Fury of the God-Machine”, the Thunderstrike-pattern Macrocannons fire multi-kilotonne artillery shells. Assuming ship-based macrocannons fire similarly sized artillery shells (an extreme lower limit), the firepower of a ship based macrocannon is 40,00,000,000,000,000,000 joules at least. This translates to about a gigaton but since this is an extreme lower limit (assuming only 2 kilotonne shells and 2,000 k/s travel speed), the actual firepower of ship-based macrocannons is likely much higher, probably about 25-100 gigatons, which would line up with what we see occur in Battlefleet Gothic Armada in comparison to 610 gigaton torpedoes.  Keep in mind that Thunderstrike-pattern macrocannons are outdated and inferior artillery units.

-Single man craft and fighter/bombers.

Imperial fighters are diversified, with different types being focused on air and space combat. Bombers must carry gigaton level payloads to penetrate ship armor.

According to the Lexicanum, the Fury interceptor is a space superiority fighter that carries a three man crew of pilot, gunner, and navigator, but can carry an astropath to help communicate. Variants are between 60 to 70 meters long, making it much larger than most atmospheric craft. Crew will have special suits to help them survive the g-forces they sustain in the craft’s maneuvers. The Fury's tough armor contains life-support such as pumps that cycle super-oxygenated blood into the crew's body through the spine[2c], a chemical toilet and sleeping compartments. Furies are normally equipped with multiple forward-firing banks of lascannons and anti-starfighter missiles and its twin engines are able to put out sixty thousand pounds of thrust, [3d] although this doesn’t mean much without a figure on the weight. This is comparable to the (probably) lighter modern day 747, however, so it probably isn’t very fast or maneuverable.

“Some variants of the Fury Interceptor are known to possess shielding of an undetermined type. [4b] This is seen on Hornet and Storm Squadrons of the Lord Solar Macharius, including the ability to redirect shields to individual facings.”

The starhawk bomber:

Covered in las-turrets and equipped with living quarters and crew, the Starhawk is an impressive craft. Squadrons of these can injure capital ships, which, as previously mentioned, requires gigaton level firepower.

The fact this bomber is equipped with living quarters indicates these bombers either have abnormally long transit times or are expected to function long periods of time without access to a capital ship or station to resupply.

Valkyrie:

A troop transport which carries 12 people into battle, and is armed with 2 door mounted heavy bolters and a multilaser. Optional are heavier armor, searchlights, missiles, and a las-cannon.

-Planet Numbers.

Anywhere from 1-2 million “Imperial Worlds”, with more different types of worlds.

Speaking of the FFG rule book, it should be noted that the most recent rule books give some... interesting context to the million worlds figure.

There is a type of world called an Imperial World which is pretty much a world controlled by the Adeptus Terra directly. Like an Ecclesiarchy Shrine world or a Munitorum supply world (Adeptus Mechanicus Forge Worlds do not count because the AdMech is technically an Allied Empire [As per the Treaty of Mars] and not a sub-section of the Adeptus Terra).

The FFG rule books state that there are about a million "Imperial Worlds" and then gives separate sections about Forge Worlds, Civilized Worlds, Feral Worlds, etc. This pretty much establishes the Imperium of Man as a multi-million world Empire, which is consistent with the "millions" of worlds figures thrown around in primary sources like Codex Necrons 3rd Edition and some extremely funny figures from stuff like Heart of Rage.

Presuming that you are taking the FFG numbers as gospel, you can extrapolate some fairly decent fleet sizes.

-Production capability

According to FFG (Rogue Trader, pg 315) the combined merchant fleets make up 90% of the ships in the Imperium, with the battlefleets and civil ships (owned by individuals, families, other parts of the Imperial government, etc) making up the rest.

Rather than count up the ships held by other Adeptus, civilians, planetary monitors, segmentum reserves (which are implied to be small, maybe 10 sectors of ships; emergency ships are normally levied piecemeal from nearby sectors) and naval munitions-worlds, or non-combat naval craft like warp tugs or IG transports; let's limit it to ships of the line.

The FFG books indicate the average sector caps off around 200 worlds, with a median of about a hundred; with a fleet of 50 to 75 ships of the line and 2-3 times or more their number in escorts, probably not more than 6-fold.

A "million worlds" with an average sector size of 120 worlds is about 8300 sectors and 400,000 to 650,000 ships of the line; with maybe 2 million escorts, so 3-5 million combat ships is probably a reasonable approximation not based on outliers.

That would make total imperial shipping about 30-50 million. If we assume ship distributions resemble medieval population distributions (reasonable given the distances and fluff involved), this agrees with the fluff about frontier worlds seeing ships once a century while major worlds see a constant stream of traffic.

This ignores the fact other sources claim there are “millions of worlds.” With that in mind the actual number is more likely several million, although it’s impossible to give an accurate estimate, except probably being less than 10 million worlds. So increase the upper limit number he gave by ten and you get the actual upper limit.

Some ships can take centuries to build, but since the Imperium has been around so long it has quite a few of them.

6eBRB Page 154

In deep space, the Imperium also maintains battle stations - planet-sized ports that tether ships of the line. At various strategic points can be found larger starforts - the lynchpins of Imperial expansion since the days of the Great Crusade. Even further into the wilderness of the void drift an array of listening probes and exploratory stations.

Needless to say, planet-sized ports are indicative of extreme industrial output-although these likely took many hundreds of years to construct. Such a port would be able to harbor hundreds of millions, if not billions of ships, indicating potential fleet sizes.

-Ground forces

Trillions of guardsmen. Space marines. Titans. The Imperium of man has one of the best ground militaries in sci-fi history.

Troop Types Analysis

Cadian Shock Troopers: Cadian Shock Troopers come in large numbers, and are equipped with a lasgun and flak armour which leaves the lower arms, legs, and face vulnerable. They excel in trench warfare, but can be used in almost any situation. Cadians were trained from birth on their home world of Cadia, but that planet was destroyed by Abbadon.

The Death Korps of Krieg: The Death Korps of Krieg excel in siege, trench, and attrition warfare. They are mass produced and trained for unconditional loyalty. While they do have protection against chemical agents their armour does not appear nearly as good as cadian armor against other weapons. However, underneath the cloth is armor plates.

Mordian Iron Guard: A strong defensive army, the Mordians are trained to hold their ground. However, they do not use cover and instead rely on a constant hail of supressive fire.

Vostroyans: Specialists in urban, long-ranged, and cold-weather combat.

Weapons Analysis

The Boltgun: The stock weapon of the Adeptus Astartes and Adepta Sororitas, boltguns fire .75 caliber rocket-propelled shells that explode after penetrating into the target. Canon disagrees on the actual speed of the bolt, but it seems to be always subsonic, with one possible exception being the Ultramarines movie.  It is a rapid fire weapon, capable of tearing apart lightly armoured targets with ease. Most bolters can fire 30 rounds before needing to be reloaded, but can carry more ammo. Certain magazines allow for more ammo to be carried or a faster reload. They can also be equipped with scopes and are overall highly variable.

The Heavy Bolter: Longer ranged, faster firing, and without a need to reload, the heavy bolter fires fist sized armour penetrating bolts that can tear through infantry and light armour alike. However, it is prone to overheating and cannot be moved about quickly, though the lack of accuracy can be negated by properly bracing it. Unlike the Boltgun, the Heavy Bolter is used heavily in the Astra Militarum, or Imperial Guard.

The Lasgun: The Lasgun is an easily modifiable laser weapon used mainly by the Imperial Guard, capable of severing limbs at close range. It creates an explosion of vapor on the target when it hits, and carries 150 shots per power-pack. It seems the bolt travels at lightspeed and the gun itself fires rapidly, being almost comparable to modern day weapons but dealing far more damage. Some calculations (not to mention actual canon) indicate they put out 19 megajoules of energy per shot. According to the Imperial Infantryman’s uplifting primer, they fire 220 shots per minute. At this rate a lasgun would put out 68.5 megajoules a second. For reference, the M4 fires at a rate of 700-950 RPM.

Variants to this gun exist, such as sniper rifle and shotgun equivalents.

The Meltagun:

The meltagun is a short-ranged but effective anti vehicle weapon.

Imperator titan size:

The Schadenhold had been hewn out of a gigantic, conical rock formation protruding from the roof of the cave. Dantioch had immediately appreciated the rock feature’s potential and committed his troops to the difficult and perilous task of carving out an inverse citadel. This hung upside-down, but all chambers, stairwells and interior architecture were oriented skywards. The communications spires and steeple-scanners at the very bottom of the fortress were hanging several thousand metres above a vast naturally-occurring lake of crude promethium, which bubbled up from the planet depths. At the very top of the stronghold were the dungeons and oubliettes, situated high in the cavern roof.

“‘It’s the Omnia Victrum,’ Dantioch said. ‘Krendl finally has his Titans in position.’ The Warsmith tried to picture the acid-scarred colossi outside, the remaining war machines of the Legio Argentum. The Omnia Victrum was an Imperator-class Titan. A mountain of rust-eaten armour, striding across the cavern like a vengeful god. At its sides it mounted weaponry of titanic proportion: monstrous instruments of destruction, capable of razing cities and felling enemy god-machines. Upon its hunched back sat a small city of its own: a Titanscape of corroded steeples, towers and platforms. A base of operations and a mobile barracks of waiting reinforcements. ‘She’s softening up the south face of the Schadenhold with her cannons and turbolasers before landing troops.’ The Imperator was huge and certainly tall enough to stand beside and beneath the Iron Warrior citadel. It could disgorge a siege-ending horde of traitor Iron Warriors and reinforcement foot contingents of the Bi-Nyssal Equerries.”

This is from Hammer & Bolter Issue 5 and can also be found in the Age of Darkness Anthology. The short story's title is "The Iron Within".

Analysis: An Imperator Titan is tall enough to land troops into the Schadenhold, which in turn the lowest parts are hanging "several thousand metres" above the surface of a crude promethium lake in a ridiculously large natural-cave(meaning the Imperator's legs would be submered beneath the promethium, making the Imperator even taller). Unless Imperators happen to have multi-kilometer ladders, they are several thousands of metres tall, going by the simplest explanation.

-Analysis by Guderian 2nd.

It should be noted, however, that there are plenty of examples of smaller Imperator titans- the Chaos Imperator Titan Dies Irae of the Legio Mortis that attacked the Imperial Palace during the closing days of the Horus Heresy was said to stand approximately 43 metres or 141 feet tall, although the explanation given was that it had cathedrals honoring the God-Emperor removed. This does not make sense, however-even if the top parts were removed, the legs of a unit several kilometers tall should still be at least a kilometer long, not just a twentieth of a kilometer.  

Titan Firepower-

The book, Baneblade states:

The screens on Mars Triumphant whited out again as Lux Imperator’s volcano cannon discharged once more, terawatts of energy unleashed in one blast. Mars Triumphant’s screens cleared for Cortein to see Lux Imperator’s beam stopped and spread like molten glass across the energy fields protecting the Titan.

..

And Brasslock reached out. His mind was foggy, but its boundaries seemed less hard than they had been, as if his consciousness no longer stopped at the limits of his skull or intelligence core. Away from himself, he felt a huge and powerful spirit, caged and enraged – the machine spirit of Lux Imperator. It roared helplessly as rough ork hands twisted at the levers of its metal shell, Brasslock felt its pain and sorrow at the changes wrought upon it. Softly, Brasslock reached out, chanting the litanies of calming in his mind, soothing the beast within the machine. He encircled it with his prayers; it calmed.

He felt the capacitors as a reservoir of light. He touched them, felt a greater presence still guiding him as he bade them vent their energy through the hull of the tank. Like waters through a ruptured dam, four terawatts of caged electricity leapt joyously through the skin of Lux Imperator.

Analysis- Four terawatts of energy per second would be about a kiloton. However, Titans have demonstrated much greater firepower in the past, including destroying hive cities (megatons of firepower), and “burning continents”, which could indicate teratons of firepower, but is certainly ambiguous.

Since we tend to go for the highest reasonable firepower numbers, in my opinion Imperator titans probably are 100s of meters tall and carry megatons-gigatons of firepower, and this scales perfectly fine with starship firepower.

-Conclusions

The Imperium of Man would be able to defeat the Federation and Reapers with ease. The Imperium of Man has faster, more powerful ships, better ground forces, and more planets. Against the Galactic Empire, however, I am not sure which would win. The Galactic Empire has the advantage in terms of ship firepower (Omitting Exterminatus weapons) but are hilariously overmatched on the ground. The Imperium of man also has a lot of superweapons, is more willing to accept casualties and if we include other factions in the same universe the Galactic Empire will also be fighting Orks and chaos, which will sap their will to fight and make them more likely to seek a compromise. Remember, the Galactic Empire are not very aggressive-  they’ve banned disruptors because they vaporise people. Seeing a simple Guardsman lasgun chop off a stormtrooper’s arm would probably make the Empire’s method of dealing with the Imperium as “bomb it from orbit whenever possible, or retreat”. Much of the Empire’s leadership is incompetent and unused to fighting battles, planning strategies, and winning wars. It’s also important to note that the Empire has only 25,000 Imperial Star Destroyers (probably counting both types), while the Imperium has at least 400,000 to at most 6,500,000 capital ships. However, the Galactic Empire has faster, more powerful ships and seems to have faster manufacturing. In the end, I believe this would end in a draw. The IoM would be unable to attack the GE, which is too far from the Astronomicon for the IoM to move about in effectively. At the same time, the GE would not have enough forces to invade the defenses of the IoM. Hypothetically, the IoM could simply send more and more ships into the meatgrinder, but they would be slow, nearly blind, and unable to accurately make jumps. The GE, by contrast, would be faster and have near constant updates on where the IoM was.

The Terran Federation (Starship Troopers) statistics.

The Terran Federation is a militarized society, but also very libertarian. As described in the books, the military was actually looked down upon-until the bugs arrived. Suddenly, the military was useful again, and the Federation’s armies of mobile infantry - a new type of soldier which replaced tanks, artillery, and paratroopers, were able to be used in full force. The Federation has access to the nova bomb, a weapon that destroys planets, vast armies, and a huge navy, used to fight for freedom and humanity.

The movies, while they may be used as evidence, are a perversion and parody of the author’s original creation.

 Ship sensors, ECM, etc.b

No examples.

Ship Firepower

According to the official website, gigaton range total, with Nova bombs being said as able to crack planets. Tactical strikes with nukes are visible from space. So they aren’t pushovers.

The Corvette Transports (aka the Rodger Young Class) - these have three types namely one with more internal space for cargo, a carrier version, and the standard one. The way to tell the differences between ombs them is the space just behind the front of the ship. The standard version is pretty much the Rodger Young, the carrier version will have this as its flight deck, and the last one is just a solid block that covers the whole space. Here is image so that people can see the differences between them for themselves.

If you want to see them in the movie, you're have to pay close attention to the space scenes.

Length: roughly 550m (for all three types). Weight: 661 386.787 short tons/tons (or 600,000 metric tons).

Weapons: energy/sonic weapons. (never used in canon). They also carry nukes however they too have never been shown, however the old website and now dead website did mention they were able to carry nukes ranging from 30kt to 300mt at it's largest.

Ship shields

No information yet. It seems they don’t possess shields.

Ship Speed

... The fastest vessels of the Fleet, with the most modern and efficient Cherenkov drives ever made, still cannot break what has been dubbed as the "Four Parsec Barrier." A full burn-day, 20 hours of active Cherenkov drive use with four hours spent in power cycling and diagnostics, can take a starship nearly a full four parsecs through space, though this rate can be reduced considerably if the flight path travels through the gravity wells of celestial objects.

In order to maintain this rate of speed, a starship requires hydrogen fuel. While this is stored in large tanks that run along the armoured underside of most vessels, a vesel's primary means of fuelling itself for any transit is the atomic scoop mounted to all ships expected to make voyages between stars (as opposed to intersystem ships that never leave the orbital rings of a given star). This induction device collects hydrogen - present throughout space - and funnels it into the ship's stores.

... The closer a vessel gets to the bulge or core of a galaxy, the greater the gravitational interference it experiences. This ratio of fuel and thrust to gravimetric disruption literally stops a ship completely at a distance around 3.5 kiloparsecs from the centre of the galaxy. The converse is also true; as trace gases become rarer at the edges of a galaxy's halo, a Cherenkov drive is quickly depleted of fuel.

...

... At less than four parsecs a day, even a nearby star like Alpha Centauri takes more than 30 hours to reach. This is a vast improvement over previous methods of transportation, but even if the fuel problems of a Cherenkov drive were fixed, it would still take roughly two years to reach the centre of the galaxy. This time frame does not factor in the gravity wall effect that would occur just over five kiloparsecs into the journey.

Files and further information on Cherenkov rates of decay in momentum and its correlation to gravitational forces, its ability to almost completely circumvent the mass increase shift of rapid physical movement, its fuel requirements and their rise as the ship increases in speed, are all classified. The files on the Cherenkov drive system discussing theoretical reasons for the "Four Parsec Barrier," relativistic proofs that the barrier has the potential to be broken, and engineering documentation proving just as quantifiably why it cannot, are all readily available at and [sic] Federal library or via FedNet.

Ship range

Potentially infinite, but realistically, given how slow their weapons travel (at least from the movies), they won’t be able to accurately target enemies at long range.

Single man craft/fighters

The f-76 thunderbolt is the main starfighter/bomber commonly used by the Federation, dropping bombs capable of flinging warrior bugs many feet in the air. However, they should also be able to drop mini-nukes, since we see regular soldiers carrying them.

Planet Numbers

I can’t remember any statistics.

Ground Forces

Mobile infantry is pretty overpowered in the books, at least. I’m not counting the movies because the movies have not stayed true to the books, with the possible exception of the Roughnecks series. It makes a large difference depending on which sources you use. Even in the movies, they use nuclear scale weapons in ground battles. Mobile infantry uses jetpacks, missile launchers, and AI-enhanced guns able to mow down bugs automatically.

Conclusions.

Well, they curbstomp the Reapers and Federation in terms of speed and weapon power. But given they are slower and probably have a smaller population than the Imperium of Man and Galactic Empire I am not so certain the Terran Federation could defeat them, even though the Terran Federation carries planet busting weapons, since the superior speed of the IoM and GE allows them to carry out Exterminatus and BDZ on TF worlds without really having to fear repercussions or counterattack.  

The Borg statistics (Star Trek).

The Borg are a powerful faction in the Star Trek universe, thousands of species united by one thing-nanoprobes. Spread by their armies and integrated into their technology, they are capable of spreading and infecting most races with ease. The Borg Hive Mind, while slow at making decisions, can divert resources as necessary and is made of the minds of each and every infected individual. Borg ships are large, with firepower being put out from every side, and able to engage multiple ships at once. The borg also have massive constructs, which allow them to quickly transport themselves across the galaxy along certain routes laid by ships before them, and a single cube can assimilate an entire planet.  

Ship Sensors

Usually able to detect ships at LY ranges. Borg ship have probably assimilated Romulan cloaking technology, but do not utilize it.

Ship Firepower

Probably gigaton-teraton level, given how they can vaporize targeted ships.

This scene also represents significant ramp up in damage over time, as we see the rates of vaporization accelerate. Although one could point out that there is a lack of vapour, I think that since it is clear the hull is being vaporized, what with the glowing metal and all, it is still fair.

They only rarely use full power on targeted vessels since they want to assimilate them.

When a borg cube self-destructs, it gives off at least several megatons of energy, enough to destroy a medium-sized Federation ship. This is a very conservative estimate, it is probably more about a teraton. The shrapnel is also dangerous. However, most ships around the cube would only take a fraction of that energy.

Borg weapons includes tractor beams, cutting beams, phasers, and some form of torpedo equivalent.

The Borg can fire plenty of weaponry when it’s necessary.

Ship Shields and Hull strength.

Since we see borg ships destroyed by the kinetic energy of ejecta from the planet destroyed by Species 8472, we can calculate how powerful their shields are. Their shields cannot be more than petaton range because of this, and keep in mind they were destroyed in mere seconds. After all, saying that the Borg had not encountered kinetic energy before is ridiculous. Borg ship shields, like Federation shields, can adjust their frequencies to better counter enemy phaser fire. However, they adapt much more quickly. There is a limit to adaptation, however. After all, they cannot be infinitely immune to something. To combat the fact that since they use frequencies a little bit of energy will usually get past their shields, they have self repair systems, which appear to operate very quickly. Borg cubes usually remain functional until a majority of the cube is destroyed, but there is a transmitter linking the cube to the rest of the hive mind somewhere within the cube, which, if destroyed, destroys the cube. Certain cubes, called tactical cubes, are more armoured than regular cubes.

Pictured above: A Borg Tactical cube, presumably with more firepower, better response times, and superior armor. I conclude this because these seem less equipped to assimilate, focusing more on actual combat. Since we know that the more borg drones are in a collective, the slower it reacts, we can conclude that since there are probably less drones in a tactical cube, it should react to threats faster.

However, like Federation ships, Borg share a weakness to gas and plasma based weapons.

In Descent Part 2, the Enterprise-D moved deep into the corona of a star using special metaphasic shields, and its chief engineer estimated that its shields would fail within 5 minutes under this bombardment. Based on the presence of a habitable planet in that star system as well as the colour spectrum of the star, we can conclude that its star was very similar to Earth's star in terms of general luminosity. We can estimate corona power intensity to be roughly 60 MW/m², since that is the approximate power intensity at the surface of our Sun (note that the corona is outside the star). If we use a 100,000 m² profile area estimate, total absorption is roughly 6 TW, which would add up to roughly 420 kilotons (let's just say ½-megaton).

The problem with this incident is that the same vessel has entered solar coronae in other episodes34 without using metaphasic shields, and it has demonstrated superior strength in these incidents as well, supposedly being able to stay there for hours in one case. Since multi-phasic shields were clearly portrayed as a strength improvement rather than a strength reduction, this is an obvious inconsistency. The most obvious explanation is that shields have some special vulnerability to plasma (as demonstrated in numerous nebulae, atmospheric re-entry incidents, etc), and they were in the densest part of the corona in this case, but not in the other cases. However, several other explanations have been floated by Trekkies:

1) They were actually in the photosphere, not the corona, since misuse of terminology is common in Federation starships. However, the ship was clearly visible as it moved into the corona, and it was nowhere near the photosphere. Furthermore, the Enterprise-D used a particle-beam to induce a solar prominence by aiming it downwards to hit the photosphere. This obviously indicates that the ship was well above the photosphere. Therefore, this explanation is unworkable.

2) The hot corona gases are extremely dangerous. However, while corona gases range up to a million K, they are extremely diffuse- from 1E10 to 1E14 ions/m³. This means that the average translational kinetic energy of individual ions would be less than 2E-17 J, so the thermal energy of a cubic metre of corona gas is less than 0.002 J (it's very hot, but there is very little of it per cubic metre). Therefore, a GCS would absorb less than 60 kJ for each km of forward movement, generously assuming 100% thermal energy transfer and assuming that it is moving through the densest, hottest part of the corona. Even if the ship is travelling at 0.9c, it would be absorbing thermal energy at a rate of only 16GW. Clearly, this explanation is also unworkable.

3) The star was not a main-sequence star, and was a highly anomalous, exceptionally luminous star. However, the star did not have an unusual colour, and there were naturally habitable planets in its system. Again, this theory is unworkable.

Ultimately, the simplest explanation remains that Star Trek shields do not handle gas contact very well. This was made even more clear by subsequent events, in which the Enterprise induced a solar prominence to destroy the Borg vessel which had chased them into the corona in the first place (note that it was sitting outside). The largest solar prominences are known as "coronal mass ejections", or CME's, and in such a prominence, the mass and velocity of ejecta are typically around 1E12 kg and 400 km/s. Anomalously large CME's have involved masses and speeds of as much as 1E13 kg and 2000 km/s in the past. However, the prominence in "Descent Part 2" was nowhere near this size- it was barely wide enough to engulf the Borg vessel which was, in turn, no wider than 5km. However, a large CME is more than 250,000km wide. If we assume that the Borg cube was hit with a large CME in spite of the 40 billion to 1 size discrepancy, then we can use the ~1E25 joule energy content of the largest observed solar CME's to estimate that roughly 1 forty billionth of such a vast CME would actually strike the Borg ship. In other words, the Borg ship was hit with a burst of energy equal to, at most, 4000 TJ.

This is much lower than the known capabilities of Federation vessels to resist EM radiation, and since Borg vessels are generally superior to Federation vessels (this one had recently crippled the Enterprise-D in battle), it is reasonable to assume that they should be able to handle much more than this. The Borg ship's immediate obliteration due to a <4000TJ plasma burst indicates that plasma is highly dangerous to Borg vessels as well as Federation vessels (note: flare information can be verified on NASA's solar flare page).

Being fair to the borg, 4,000 TJ is about a megaton.

Ship Speed

Borg ships, while travelling in transwarp lanes, are capable of crossing the galaxy in about a week, putting them on par with the Galactic Empire and far above the nearest contender, the IoM. However, they are much slower when laying down a transwarp lane, only travelling at about the same rate as a Federation Starship. Borg ships seem to be a little slower at accelerating than Federation ships in realspace, though we haven’t any examples of them attempting to accelerate at their top speed, so they might be faster.

Ship Range

Likely comparable to the Federation- several hundred thousand kilometers against stationary targets, but about 100-1000 against mobile ones.

Single man craft/fighters

There are no examples of Borg fighter craft.

Planet Numbers