So how LESS powerful is the Xindi weapon than 24th century Phasers?

[Guy Gardener]

WE staggered at the destructiveness of the prototype Xindi Weapon, and marveled at the sight of earth exploding from a firm and palpable strike during the alternate timeline seen in Twilight...

But compared to the Enterprise D's drilling phashers?

Hell, compared to the Phasers on a Runabout?

Compared to a spread of Quantum torpedoes?

Surely it must be like comparing barrels of gunpowder to atomic weapons?

Or the attack on Pearl Harbour to the initial shock and awe campaign on Bhagdad?

 

[mythme]

Re: So how LESS powerful is the Xindi weapon than 24th century Phasers

If 24th century Cardassian and Romulan starship weaponry is comprarable to the Federation's, then I would assume that the Xindi weapon is probably near or a bit less powerful than a Warbird or a Keldon class, since it took an armada of these ships to decimate the crust of the Founder homeworld.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Re: So how LESS powerful is the Xindi weapon than 24th century Phasers

General order 24.

Kirks Enterprise could rip off a crust all by itself.

The more starships however firing at the surface the faster the job jects done.

 

[JNG]

Re: So how LESS powerful is the Xindi weapon than 24th century Phasers

I believe General Order 24 would have taken at least some hours to execute. The Xindi weapon, purpose-built, is pretty good at its job. Considering that their propulsion technology is notably more advanced than Starfleet warp drive of two centuries later, I can't imagine the directed energy weapons tech employed by the probe and its big brother is much less effective than, say, TNG-era phasers. (On the other hand, I suspect the operating principle is somewhat different, because the way the casualty numbers came in higher and higher over spans of time suggested to me some sort of secondary effect, like a vast radiation exposure killing hundreds of thousands or something like that.)

 

[Guy Gardener]

Re: So how LESS powerful is the Xindi weapon than 24th century Phasers

Really?

That's possible.

I just assumed the climate change/ecological issues of tidal waves and earthquakes and possibly a volcano or two would have increased the duration of danger well past the actual firing of the weapon, but the casualties kept increasing because it takes a long time to find and count 6 million dead bodies compared to guessing that there couldn't have been more than a million people who died which is what they said in the first place, and then they constantly had to keep reaccessing their estimates as the number of bodies they found lapped their predictions.

Although, Enterprise couldn't take the second probe onboard because it was too "hot" which is why it was fortunate that Shran turned up with a ship that used energy shields in it's cargo bay to protect his crew.

Although Paxton would have mentioned it? he "loved" the bravery of Colonel green who euthenized millions and millions of the radiation scarred and deformed making sure that future generations would be pretty and healthy. He would have repeated history as soon as he took over if that was an issue?

 

[Infern0]

Re: So how LESS powerful is the Xindi weapon than 24th century Phasers

I always wonder what would happen if the enterprise Nx-01 was hit with one quantum torpedo? Anyone know?

 

[Gepard]

Re: So how LESS powerful is the Xindi weapon than 24th century Phasers

I dunno. My impression was that the Xindi weapon was one of the most powerful weapons we've ever seen in Trek; keep in mind a ~1000 meter wide sphere completely blew apart a 12,760 kilometer wide planet in a matter of seconds. That's nothing to sneeze at, and I can't imagine that 24th century Starfleet ships have anything to even come close to that. Especially given the pathetic yields we always see out of torpedoes.

And to say that General Order 24 involves "ripping" the crust off a planet has no precedent in Trek. The statement in "A Taste of Armageddon" was that it involved killing all life on a planet, which doesn't require nearly as much firepower. In fact, there's no reason to assume it would be accomplished with phasers or torpedoes; there may be a toxin or other agent involved.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Re: So how LESS powerful is the Xindi weapon than 24th century Phasers

Other than a listing of beta zed having outdated and undermanned defenses during In the Pale Moonlight, you would think that there would be planetary shields? At least they could have acquired the cloaking shields used by those people in the first season TNG episode When the bough breaks, or probably a couple other episodes they could have adapted the technology from... because the jem ha dars assault on Sanfransisco wasn't all that effective....

Though if there were a couple hundred of those partical cannons littered about the solar sytem from the terra Prime arc, you'd think that any invasion fleet would be cut to ribbons?

I suppose that really means that capital ships with enough fire power to do damage can't get close enough to damage because of increased targetting acuracy from increased range, so it's fighters doing a trench run on something delicate like over in that other popular sci fi universe.

 

[Timo]

Re: So how LESS powerful is the Xindi weapon than 24th century Phasers

The strange practice of revising casualty figures upwards isn't dependent on the type of attack, it seems. The same thing happened with the Breen strike.

Nobody does it like that today: one always assumes the worst-case scenario first - everybody who cannot be reached is supposed dead or at least "missing", and things get happier when contact is eventually made with survivors. But that's a practice based on pessimism, a certain desired type of psychological impact, and a lack of any real means to judge the number of dead. The 22nd-24th century Earthlings might have learned how to predict or model the casualties of a given type of disaster, and usually the model would be smack on, requiring no revising. In the very rare case, such as with these two explicitly unprecedented types of attack, it would be revised upward.

Anyway, the first Xindi beam seemed pretty much like what one would expect of a 24th century starship that is left to work its evil unopposed. Just imagine the drilling beams of the E-D, as seen in "Legacy" et al., dragging along the surface of the target planet instead.

The second was significantly more powerful than any beam weapon we have seen elsewhere, though. But perhaps that's still normal 24th century phaser technology - perhaps a phaser emitter that is a kilometer across could be constructed by 24th century Starfleet to achieve the same effect, but it's not tactically practical to do something that big and clumsy.

As for planetary shields, I don't think the Feds have ever had anything comparable to that. The only large shield we hear of would be the one around Elba II, and that wasn't said to be resilient to starship weapons. It only blocked transporters - and it was said that if Scotty had chosen to fire at it to remove the blockage (supposedly at the minimum setting required), the result would have been a destroyed penal colony and a dead Captain Kirk, suggesting the shield wasn't worth anything as a defensive measure.

So they'd have to go beg from the Aldeans - but even then, all they would get would be an invisibility screen. And the enemy wouldn't need visible cues to attack Earth. An accurate almanac would suffice...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[GodThingFormerly]

Re: So how LESS powerful is the Xindi weapon than 24th century Phasers

An accurate almanac would suffice...

Ephemeris, to be exact.

TGT

 

[JNG]

Re: So how LESS powerful is the Xindi weapon than 24th century Phasers

There have been mentions of planetary outposts in the Federation which are protected by a deflector shield (Calder II). The type of the shield was numbered a la phaser types and such, suggesting larger ones are possible. If Aldea could put a not-entirely-dissimilar cloaking field around their whole planet, I imagine the Federation might some day be able to rig a whole planet with shields...but what a massive undertaking! I don't imagine it is practical or particularly necessary.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Re: So how LESS powerful is the Xindi weapon than 24th century Phasers

I saw Lessons 20 years ago.

That would have been the perfect opportunity to turn on the planetary shields if they had some.

Maybe harry is thick, but he couldn't identify shields covering an entire city just because they were 3 miles under ground.