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General Discussion => General Non-RP EVE Discussion => Topic started by: Vikarion on 06 May 2015, 15:38
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So, recently I made an attempt to determine the power of EvE weaponry via an analysis of railgun rounds. Unfortunately, as one person noted, we don't actually know the velocity of EvE railgun rounds. So much for that, then.
Well, I figured, perhaps there is something that can be quantified. And, since I'm home from work with food poisoning today, I had time to go browse the EvE Fiction forum, where someone had posted about these two articles (in the Lapetan Titans thread, where Falcon chimed in to blab some more about just how fucking awesome the Federation attack on Caldari Prime was). Incidentally, in these articles, it is NOT a Lapetan Titan, but an Avatar. Anyway, here are the two articles:
https://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/eve-online-news/planet-wide-explosion-strikes-reschard-v/?_ga=1.175351074.1267934737.1413253271 (https://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/eve-online-news/planet-wide-explosion-strikes-reschard-v/?_ga=1.175351074.1267934737.1413253271)
https://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/eve-online-news/rescue-ships-finally-reach-disaster-planet-surface/?_ga=1.175351074.1267934737.1413253271 (https://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/eve-online-news/rescue-ships-finally-reach-disaster-planet-surface/?_ga=1.175351074.1267934737.1413253271)
So, Reschard V was destroyed by the old Avatar doomsday weapon. Which is great - I mean, not great for Reschard V - but great because we can know the average damage of an Avatar's Judgment doomsday. We also have a fairly good idea of how much energy it takes to inflict that level of damage to a planet. Specifically, we can correlate it to the energy released in an asteroid strike.
Incidentally, because Titan doomsdays do the same amount of damage, we can also dispense with any worries about overestimating the potential damage of an EvE weapon. EM would do less damage to a planet than Kinetic, perhaps, but certainly not more.
Now, we know how much base damage an Avatar does with the old Judgment doomsday: 46,875. For ease of calculation, and also as a hedge against overestimation, I'll round this to 50,000. Increased skills on the part of the pilot can raise this a bit, but it's a good base number.
How much damage did Reschard V take? Well, it appears to have taken damage somewhere in the range of a large asteroid strike. Preliminary estimates in the news theorized that around 87% of all life on the surface was instantly killed. Later examination in the second article stated that the entire surface of the planet was incapable of supporting life, although a few survivors (percentage-wise) were recovered from caves and ruins. So we can conclude that the strike on Reschard V was, in terms of damage to the planet, nearly a total extinction event.
In comparison, the roughly 10 km-wide asteroid that caused the Cretaceous Extinction killed about 75% of all species on earth, according to present knowledge, and did so over a period of time, as much of the dying was caused by secondary environmental effects. Thus, we can conclude that Avatar's Judgment weapon possessed much more destructive power than the Chicxulub impactor. This is especially true when you realize that the spherical nature of the Judgment doomsday would have only partially impacted the planet, as the Avatar was in low orbit, whereas the entire power of the Chicxulub impactor was expressed. On the other hand, since the damage Judgment inflicts does not vary by size (a Dread takes the same amount as a frigate) it seems that damage done is a flat amount per entity.
I then did some digging to see what kind of impact could express the necessary energy for the destruction of Reschard V. It turns out that you would probably need an asteroid of a size of 16 km or more. Since I'm trying to be as conservative as possible, I will use the 16 km size, although I could justifiably argue for larger.
A 16 km asteroid striking a planet would possess a destructive yield of 200 million megatons, or 200,000,000,000,000 tons of TNT. That's - if I got the math right - 200 trillion tons of TNT. We can safely say that an Avatar's Judgment doomsday weapon (the old one, still) possesses at least that much power.
Now we can simply divide the power of the weapon in real terms by EvE damage units. That is to say, an Avatar's weapon does roughly 50,000 damage in game, so we divide 200 million megatons by 50,000. That comes to 4,000 - again, if I'm doing the math right. Which means that every point of EvE damage works out to at least 4,000 megatons.
Even if you think that my estimates, which are hopefully based on the reasonably well-grounded science of asteroid impact, are far too high, even if you think that my estimates should be reduced by 75% (In which case Reschard V should have merely had a bad day), that still works out to each point of Eve damage expressing 1,000 megatons of energy.
And someone had the bright idea to give capsuleers these toys.
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Wow.. Thank god Hitler didn't play EVE: Online.. Me thinks he would have gotten some idea's..
As for your theorycrafting, not bad, I personally would think the old Titan weapons stronger and would say that your estimates might be more at home with the Capsuleer Titans and not the Empire Titans (From lore at least they make them seem different). Because you have to remember, We have no idea what an EM weapon of that power would do to Earth, it could stop our planet rotation and stuff like that..
But the power of EVE: Online weaponry is pretty up the charts, even looking at DUST 514, the kickback and the damage on the target.
As for the railgun idea, safe to say speed of light or a half of that, times the weight of the projectile, and all those things, you could work it out, though in space, with gravity and that stuff who knows, I do know that if you fired a railgun in EVE at a target, and it didn't connect, well.. That rail round will just keep going, till it ruins some ones day at some place, at some place in space in a few hundred years, also, on a fun note, firing a railgun off the side of a supernovering planet, or a massive sun, could cause the round to do a loop and come back at you :D
Only thing I disagree with is the mega tonne yield, I'd be up.. Way up, as the speed of the damage hitting the planet would also cause more damage then just the actual impact, same math used for weapon like tungsten rods, imagine that, but in stead of just a metal rod, it's a 1km wide lighting beam made of pure hate and religious fury smashing into your planet, and who knows how long the beam would take to die out, could dig pretty deep into a planets crust, that.. And I just thought of it,but that amount of raw energy would probably super heat the air and kill most people, then the air vacuum after the strike, well.. That noise would kill a lot of people too, I wish i was good at math to work it out properly.
Something interesting though would be the Erebus Doomsday weapon, given that it uses Dark Matter energy, I don't know much about Dark Matter, but come on, it's got dark in it's name, that is never a good sign! :D
P.s. Love this post so much, made me think about it all, but now I have an image of Hitler standing on the bridge of a Titan with Swatstikars all over it.. :P
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Heh, thanks. BTW, the articles are actually about the Avatar Titan with the old doomsday, not the Lapetans. I just found them in the Lapetan thread.
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Oh I know :) that is what I meant, I think a old Titan would have much more destructive power, as Capsuleer Titans are just shadows of those empire Titans, actually, speaking of it, do they look the safe? Or are they different?
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Oh I know :) that is what I meant, I think a old Titan would have much more destructive power, as Capsuleer Titans are just shadows of those empire Titans, actually, speaking of it, do they look the safe? Or are they different?
No, the Lapetan Titans are much, much bigger and nastier: http://aurora-arcology.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/the-empire-titans-bigger-is-better.html (http://aurora-arcology.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/the-empire-titans-bigger-is-better.html)
I'd love to have any of them, though. For...display purposes.
Also, if I have my Star Wars math right, this means that an EvE frigate, properly fitted, is going to output much more damage than an entire Imperial Star Destroyer. Which means that Star Wars: The Old Republic is utterly hosed if we ever get an EvE ship into it :twisted:
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Display? I'd love to have one just to use as a POCO basher :D bloody Wormholes have them everywhere, and I can't see that from work, but when I get home I will look it up! Can't wait to see these bad boys!
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Now translate that to the new Doomsdays - 2,000,000 damage per hit to a single focused target.
Seems to me those would be more in line with Death Star type planet-obliterator, which explains why CONCORD locks us out from using them on anything but a "valid target".
Additionally, a single battleship doing a conservative 500DPS (two million megatons per second) could reliably glass a decently sized continent in under a couple hours.
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Now translate that to the new Doomsdays - 2,000,000 damage per hit to a single focused target.
Seems to me those would be more in line with Death Star type planet-obliterator, which explains why CONCORD locks us out from using them on anything but a "valid target".
Additionally, a single battleship doing a conservative 500DPS (two million megatons per second) could reliably glass a decently sized continent in under a couple hours.
Yup. The new superweapon comes out to around 800,000,000,000 megatons, if I got my math right, again, or roughly 3.3472e+27 joules. That's not enough to vaporize a planet like the Death Star does, which requires 2.2 x 10e+32 joules of energy...I think. It's been a while since I blew up a planet. Nonetheless, it's more than enough to make it uninhabitable, probably for several million years.
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Fun fact, firing a 250mm Railgun at say New York from orbit, would destroy all of New York, and firing a 1000mm Railgun would vaporize most of Australia, just realized that.. That is a scary thought when we are firing this bastards through space.. That has planets in it.. Are there any situations in the lore when Capsuleer rounds have hit planets?
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Fun fact, firing a 250mm Railgun at say New York from orbit, would destroy all of New York, and firing a 1000mm Railgun would vaporize most of Australia, just realized that.. That is a scary thought when we are firing this bastards through space.. That has planets in it.. Are there any situations in the lore when Capsuleer rounds have hit planets?
Keep in mind that atmospheric friction would destroy many artillery or railgun rounds before they hit the planet. Large rounds might easily have a self-destruct mechanism for just this reason. Atmosphere would diffuse energy beams, and blasters don't have nearly enough range.
No, what you want to worry about is someone getting a Caldari Scourge Citadel Torpedo onto a planet. Those things kill their targets by creating gravity shear - in other words, turning local space-time into ribbons. That's really bad news anywhere.
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But Kinetic Bombardment theory crafting would surggest that based of a 1000mm Railgun round (And off the shape of the charge) it would theoreticly make it to the planet rather easily, also, keep in mind that railguns move at such a speed in RL now that they compare it to speed of light as a reference, so EVE is a few million/hundred thousand years ahead of us, I can safely assume that they would use tech to fire at a higher velocity then Mach 10, and with gravity pulling it in as well.. Well.. That would tickle..
True.. Didn't even think of them, they have a gravitation generator in them don't they? And given it's size and the fact it is used for space fights we can assume thrusters are on the front and sides of it, so the atmosphere wouldn't damage it like a projectile..
I like this discussion! :D
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But Kinetic Bombardment theory crafting would surggest that based of a 1000mm Railgun round (And off the shape of the charge) it would theoreticly make it to the planet rather easily, also, keep in mine that railguns move at such a speed in RL now that they compare it to speed of light as a reference, so EVE is a few million/hundred thousand years ahead of us, I can safely assume that they would use tech to fire at a higher velocity then Mach 10, and with gravity pulling it in as well.. Well.. That would tickle..
Yeah, that's why the larger ones would need self-destruct mechanisms. Only the smaller ones - probably below a meter - would burn up.
Also glad you're enjoying it. The math wasn't too bad - I used calculators. :P
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Calculators? As in plural? 0_0
And hmm.. True.. Didn't think about them having self destruct options, but, you'd have to be quick on that button.. Cause the ships fire volleys ever 6 seconds, they move at the speed of light, you have like 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000021 percent chance to hit the button in time.. Cause the system wouldn't be able to compute fast enough.. Unless there was like a bubble that if the rounds past it (Say the hard range of 249km) they would just splinter, that could work.. But would be.. Odd.. Capsuleer generally dont give 2 shits about humans, by generally I mean the majority
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Moar numbers pl0x. I want more wanton destruction. Put them up against other fictional weapons! Phasers and turbolasers! Photon torpedoes and proton torpedoes!
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There is no such thing as to much pew pew, but, if you want pure destructive power, you would probably have to look at the Warhammer 40k Universe, they have a gun so powerful that just firing the thing tears open black holes and wipes out fleets of daemon vessels.. Yeah.. It kills things that dont have a physical body..
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DD's do three million damage with max skills.
Also if each damage is worth roughly 4,000 megatons...
"The total global nuclear arsenal is about 30,000 nuclear warheads with a destructive capacity of 7,000 megatons or 7 gigatons (7,000 million tons) of TNT."
According to wikipedia.
So does the earth do like 2DPS total?
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Earth does 1DPS.. But that is cause it only ever has to fire one volley :D
Go Earth! It's your Birthday!
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I take the figures for the Imperial Star Destroyer from StarDestroyer.net, which I think is being unreasonably kind to them, as the author uses the methodology of accepting only lore that points towards a higher power level, and ignores evidence for under powered Star Wars weapons. For example, in the battle over Coruscant in Revenge of the Sith, taking a turbolaser hit in a gun bay produces a relatively mild explosion, and leaves several clone troopers alive. Similarly, in Return of the Jedi, an A-Wing hitting the Executor at a relatively slow speed (certainly nothing like relativistic) does far more damage than a turbolaser bolt. Or when, in The Phantom Menace, Anakin uses a fighter to kill droids in the hanger, they are merely dismember, not vaporized as one would expect from the calculations at SSDnet.
Nonetheless, taking them, a Star Destroyer with 60 turbolaser batteries will put out around 1900 megatons every second. That's pretty impressive. Of course, my Hawk frigate, fit with light missiles, puts out around 880,000 megatons every second. Of course, a Hawk frigate is something around the size of a C-141 Starlifter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-141_Starlifter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_C-141_Starlifter)), but still. Or, in other words, a Star Destroyer, if I have my math right, does around .5 dps.
If you want something like a Star Destroyer in the EvE universe, though, to be fair, you need to compare it to something like a Raven battleship. Let's say that the Empire attacks the State. A Raven Navy Issue, with CN Ballistic Control Systems, CN ammo, and CN launchers, but no drones, does 1,100 DPS with level V skills. Lesser skills will take it down a bit, but not much. It has a volley damage of 7,868. Or, to put it another way, a Caldari Navy Raven will output 4,400,000 megatons per second, with each volley delivering 31,472,000 megatons. The .5 DPS per second of the Star Destroyer will probably not overcome natural shield regeneration under any circumstance.
With this sort of disparity, the alleged vast numbers of the Empire are entirely moot. In fact, if an EvE dreadnought managed to get into the SW-verse, it would be a super-weapon.
Sorry, my post got cut off somehow. Anyway, what I was going to say is that a war between any of the major EvE entities and the entire Star Wars universe would end very quickly, and very badly for the Star Wars side. That's even if the EvE entity is one of the pirate factions. If it was, say, the State, which is, as of EvE:Source, the strongest non-Jovian entity in the cluster in military terms...well, you get the idea. Even EvE travel is faster and more efficient than Star Wars travel, if somewhat less flexible. Still, the empires have jump drives that don't need cynos.
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A war between who? Don't leave me hanging!
(Will be edited at a later date)
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Star Trek weapons appear to be rather under-powered. Or, rather, more sane.
A standard photon torpedo, according to Memory Alpha (Star Trek site), has a yield of around 64.4 megatons, but they are adjustable, so a Star Trek photon torpedo probably does 0.01 to 0.04 damage. This is if we use canonical sources (the shows and movies).
I couldn't find information on quantum torpedoes. Phasers seem to be pretty weak, as an entire phaser bank (albeit a small one) could be powered by a 4.2 gigawatt generator. That's a lot, sure, but it's not massive: the Three Gorges Dam in China, produces around 22.5 gigawatts.
Both the Trekkie and SW books/fiction/technical manuals are so wildly all over the place and contradictory that I am hesitant to use them at all. Picking and using any of them is essentially an exercise in selecting what you like. I would, however, argue that the understated damage effects in the SW movies are more demonstrative of low-powered weapons than some few other scenes are demonstrative of high-powered ones.
EvE, on the other hand, is pretty consistent with depicting very powerful weapons. Not totally - TonyG, as with everything else, considered technical detail something to be twisted around his railroad plot, whether or not he contradicted himself within his own book or contradicted everything outside it.
Still, we know that the Amarrians used Tachyon lasers to essentially destroy a planet. We have several other instances of major destruction caused by EvE weapons. And keeping a Leviathan over Caldari Prime doesn't even make sense if the Oblivion super-weapon couldn't destroy the planet.
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Very true! This is fun, much better conversation then I get in my wormhole, haha!
I know the EVE universe is superior, but then you have to factor in the fact that the Jedi's would be a tough thing to beat, using boarding torperdo's and shit, mine control, suffocating a Capsuleer in his pod from 200km away in another ship, and since the universe would be side by side in this alternate train of thinking, Jedi's would be able to use Capsule tech, that wouldn't be good, imagine giant pods like Drop Pods from Warhammer, filled with empty soft clones like the Dusters use? They would just hit a single Titan with one and then they would have a Jedi with 99 lives..
One thing that has interested me, is does EVE have anything like that? i.e. Magic?
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Very true! This is fun, much better conversation then I get in my wormhole, haha!
I know the EVE universe is superior, but then you have to factor in the fact that the Jedi's would be a tough thing to beat, using boarding torperdo's and shit, mine control, suffocating a Capsuleer in his pod from 200km away in another ship, and since the universe would be side by side in this alternate train of thinking, Jedi's would be able to use Capsule tech, that wouldn't be good, imagine giant pods like Drop Pods from Warhammer, filled with empty soft clones like the Dusters use? They would just hit a single Titan with one and then they would have a Jedi with 99 lives..
One thing that has interested me, is does EVE have anything like that? i.e. Magic?
Not unless you count Empress Jamyl Sarum, the heretical telepathic schizophrenic zombie savior princess. And yes, that title is completely accurate.
As for the Jedi, well, first, boarding torpedoes aren't going to work. I mean, they work just fine in Star Wars, because solid objects go through shields. In EvE, solid objects do not go through shields. At all. The image of the likely result brings to mind the phrase "bugs on a windshield".
As for killing capsuleers from 200km away, force powers seem to be attenuated by distance, and by line of site. Otherwise, why would Vader just squish the droids (C3P0 and R2D2) that escaped the Tantive IV? They were looking for them, after all. Or why wouldn't Vader just force-choke Luke during the Death Star run? Hell, if you could choke out opponents within a 200 km circumference, Vader could have just sat on the bridge of the Death Star and choked the pilot of every fighter that came up from Yavin.
Not to mention the fact that EvE has Dust 514 soldiers, and we know that Jedi are easily overwhelmed by numbers. Not to mention that EvE ground weapons are also orders of magnitude nastier than Star Wars ones. No, I think that a puny laser sword and the ability to do magic tricks are going to fare badly against a railgun firing solid rounds at relativistic velocities. Hell, forget deflecting it - even the shockwave will rip the flesh from your bones. That's why Dusties wear all that armor, after all.
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As for the rest of that.. I like how you think, especially tearing there skin of there bones, but you do have to think that in an environment like DUST the Jedi wouldn't need numbers, they would just re spawn like DUST'ers, which the Jedi's would do if it was possible in order to spread "Peace" forever, but Jedi's tricks are all with there swords and shit, remember, Jedi's can become "Invisible" by messing with peoples heads, and one dude with a sword in a hall way beats 50 guys with meter plus long assault rifles, even more so when you add in lightning and backflips.
Though, in a fire range set up, oh hell yeh, Jedi's would just be mowed down wave after wave, but on a battlefield there is cover, and then some Jedi's have those cool teleporting moves, and the stronger ones could just turn the tank guns on the DUST'ers.
And they do go through shields if they hit hard enough to deplete them, so that is why i used a Drop Pod as a reference, if the SW verse and EVE collided, safe bet the Jedi would use things like Citadel missiles as boarding vessels, no?
As for the Force, it doesn't always require them to see the person they want to kill.. I can recall stuf in the movies and books where it is done over quiet some range, and with a Jedi being a capsuleer (Lets just assume they would not waste the tech) he would have access to the CONCORD network, and hence a direct link to the other capsuleer, then you have those new Entosis links..
Dont get me wrong, a Caldari patrol would skull**** the entire empire armada, but doesn't mean there are variables that wouldn't effect that, don't you think?
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I don't think it's really fair to compare Eve to Star Wars, since Eve is (at least in lore) about the closest thing you'll get to hard sci-fi in a modern video game, and Star Wars is WW2 tech reskinned for space with wizards.
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^ this, so hard, every day
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Dont get me wrong, a Caldari patrol would skull**** the entire empire armada, but doesn't mean there are variables that wouldn't effect that, don't you think?
Not really, no. I mean, I actually agree with Gwen that comparing the two universes is not a serious project. Here, it's just for fun - what I was really concentrating upon was quantifiable damage for EvE weapons.
The point I would make about the Jedi, however, is that at most, there are a few hundred or a few thousand of them. And they aren't that powerful - Order 66 had Stormtroopers wiping them out. Compared to a DUST 514 trooper, an Imperial Stormtrooper is a fat, unarmored, slow moving target.
How are the Jedi going to get to be Dust clones? The procedure is complicated and expensive. The hardware is hard to make and had to be re-engineered from Sleeper tech. Even if a Jedi managed to get the tech or get himself implanted - assuming he's compatible in the first place - how is he going to build the factories to produce more of them for other Jedi, or the cloning centers needed to regenerate them? Will the Force even work once your brain is replaced by a machine? Don't forget that a Dustie body only lasts you a few months before you have to be re-cloned.
It's even worse with capsuleers. Becoming a capsuleer is incredibly dangerous. You have to have the right genetic profile, you have to pass many, many, many tests, and you face possible death, mindlock, or insanity during training. The process is long, complicated, and only about 5% of candidates make it through. You can't just hop into a capsule and go. And even if you could, where are you going to get those capsules?
As for hitting a shield hard enough, well, EvE ships don't allow damage bleed-through until down below 25%. how are the Jedi going to damage them enough for that? Where are they going to get a Citadel missile, either? A capsuleer in an EvE battleship would consider slaughtering both fleets at the Battle of Endor to be a trivial endeavor, and even if you somehow disabled or boarded his ship, he's still out of your line of sight. He'll just eject and warp off.
Still, it's entertaining momentarily to consider Jedi capsuleers, I suppose. :P
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"Still, it's entertaining momentarily to consider Jedi capsuleers, I suppose. :P"
Tell me about it, haha!
But true, you bring up good and valid points, anyways, back to the weapons, what universe do you think would compare with EVE then? Maybe Homeworld? The Dreadnought in that (The one that looks like an assault rifle with a shit load of barrels) has a mega beam, from memory that almost caved in the face of what i think is the equivilant of a Super carrier, and it is pretty small, then you have those massive Jove like motherships..
I need to spend more times on the forums when the WH is empty! :D This is more fun then D-Scan, haha!
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"Still, it's entertaining momentarily to consider Jedi capsuleers, I suppose. :P"
Tell me about it, haha!
But true, you bring up good and valid points, anyways, back to the weapons, what universe do you think would compare with EVE then? Maybe Homeworld? The Dreadnought in that (The one that looks like an assault rifle with a shit load of barrels) has a mega beam, from memory that almost caved in the face of what i think is the equivilant of a Super carrier, and it is pretty small, then you have those massive Jove like motherships..
I need to spend more times on the forums when the WH is empty! :D This is more fun then D-Scan, haha!
Homeworld has some powerful weapons, however, I don't know of any way to quantify them to real life damage amounts, so I couldn't say.
However, I think the WH40K - which, incidentally, sits on the other side of the hard-to-soft scifi spectrum - probably has the best bet. WH40K ships, as you might expect in a universe where The Power of Awesomeness is the reigning consideration, are freakishly insane. Void shields operate pretty much like EvE shields - nearly full protection until they're gone. And WH40K ships can crack planets pretty quickly too, as so:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h67JpMyrOVE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h67JpMyrOVE)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYPSg-Ab7Dc (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYPSg-Ab7Dc)
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Seen another way, a megaton of TNT is on the upside of 4 petajoules of energy. Lasers would have to be doing really cool1 tricks to turn "mere" gigajoules of capacitor into that much energy.
(1: "free unlimited energy forever" cool)
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Seen another way, a megaton of TNT is on the upside of 4 petajoules of energy. Lasers would have to be doing really cool1 tricks to turn "mere" gigajoules of capacitor into that much energy.
(1: "free unlimited energy forever" cool)
Well, EvE lasers don't look like lasers, don't act like lasers, and, in some cases, aren't really called lasers as we know lasers. I mean, what is a "tachyon laser"?
They could be lasers, but given Amarrian tesseract capacitor technology (i.e., storing energy not only in physical space, but also in time), they could be very powerful indeed. But what they really look like is particle beams.
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Well, for SW, most attempts to numbers usually don't make much sense either way. It's fantasy WW2 in space, not hard science. I wouldn't qualify Eve as hard science, far from it, but well... Not comparable.
In any case, SW canon as we already mentionned in that other thread, tells clearly energy outputs from SW ships as thousand times more powerful than Eve (which was based on reactor/capacitor outputs). Which is different to what your source seems to tell here, I suppose...
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Well, for SW, most attempts to numbers usually don't make much sense either way. It's fantasy WW2 in space, not hard science. I wouldn't qualify Eve as hard science, far from it, but well... Not comparable.
In any case, SW canon as we already mentionned in that other thread, tells clearly energy outputs from SW ships as thousand times more powerful than Eve (which was based on reactor/capacitor outputs). Which is different to what your source seems to tell here, I suppose...
Actually, the only thing I currently have for low EvE power outputs is the capacitor rating. On the other hand, if those capacitor outputs are correct, then half the stuff in EvE lore doesn't make sense - the Starkmanir genocide via planetary bombardment by battleships, Reschard V, the Leviathan threatening to doomsday Caldari Prime, the Xenocide Chronicle (I get that many think the capsuleer is bluffing, thanks to CONCORD lockouts, but the only way the bluff works is if 350mm railgun rounds are incredibly destructive even after transiting atmosphere).
I think the simpler explanation is to decide that "joule" in the EvE universe is a different unit of measurement than in ours, just like a "slaver hound" is not actually a dog, and the Caldari may not actually know what sort of bird a Moa was.
I get that you're a Star Wars fan, and, to be honest, I at least enjoy it. And these arguments are just for fun. But in any argument, I don't think it's fair to compare the best of your argument to the worst of your opponent's. I could write three pages of text about how Star Wars movie material and EU fiction portrays their weapons as weaker than modern tanks. But I didn't. I did avoid the EU material, because Disney has stated it to be non-canon, but I accepted the strongest evidence from the movies (vaporization of asteroids, etc).
I've done, I think, similarly with EvE: operated upon the preponderance of the evidence, which portrays EvE weapons as world-killing nightmares. I could toss out all that lore, all those Chronicles, on the basis of maintaining "joule" as being exactly the same in our universe, but that wouldn't be consistent, and it wouldn't explain anything. Actually, it would render some of the lore incoherent.
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No no you are right... I didn't mean to actually enter the debate here, or any debate at all... I'm sorry if that was the impression.
I find your analysis interesting from a pure empirical point of view based on what we see, and not the hard numbers behind that don't make much sense, be it in Star Wars or Eve. I will be the first one to say that all those attempts to 'hard sciencify' Star Wars that have been done are a bit... weird. I mean, it's like trying to quantify magic in the lord of the rings... Even for Eve, has its limits : ships flying in a non newtonian fashion, etc. That can't be explained without explanations so stretched that they would be ludicrous.
That's actually why your view based on just facts and what we see is rather refreshing, and serves well to illustrate that numbers for Star Wars were not really thought further than "we need that star destroyers to be STRONG", and for Eve out of pure game design intentions.
And, Star Wars fan... Well I guess so... I have been shown the first movies when I was a child and eventually got a huge nerd/fan of it instantly, then... Well, since I turned adult I got a bit disillusioned though... Especially regarding the prelogy. I have fond memories of the universe and the stories (especially the non force sensitive ones), but that's it. I'm still a Star Wars walking bible I guess.. Obsolete bible since they trashed the EU.
But that's not the point.
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one of the Star Wars books, (expanded universe), had a bunch of technical specifications and stuff in it.
the numbers for reactor output, energy in a single weapon round, and all that other stuff, were all very large.
Spaceship weapons for example, could apparently release so much energy, that it makes you wonder why the Death Star was even thought necessary, because a fleet of Star Destroyers could easily whack a planet, in less time, and for cheaper, than it would take to move the Death Star there.
Anyway, the point was, that the book was written by someone who was a massive fan.
And their alleged intent was, to publish such vast numbers, so as to unquestionably win arguments between Star Trek and Star Wars fans. Star Trek has a few numbers about how much energy a phaser releases per burst, that sort of thing. The author supposedly took those numbers, added a couple or more zeros to the end of them, and then said that the larger number was what the Star Wars weapon does.
Nerds, lol.
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And their intent was, to publish such vast numbers, so as to unquestionably win arguments between Star Trek and Star Wars fans. Star Trek has a few numbers about how much energy a phaser releases per burst, that sort of thing. The author took those numbers, added a couple or more zeros to the end of them, and then said that the larger number was what the Star Wars weapon does.
...woah, woah, woah. Saxton did not publish an 'I win button', and it's extremly unfair to him to say he did. He looked at other people who'd actually gone through and did the math to figure out the kinds of yields and energies were going to be involved, did his own calculations based on those, and came up with the numbers in the ICS:AotC book.
If you can point me to anywhere where he unquestioningly says he published that to 'win arguments', then go ahead - because I can point you to where he says he did not.
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well, that's what I saw once. Some argument between people, citing some book, with numbers, that said that a thingie star destroyer from the attack of the clones has more firepower than all of the star trek ships, and it was all a bit :S
i think it was that stardestroyer.net website
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No no you are right... I didn't mean to actually enter the debate here, or any debate at all... I'm sorry if that was the impression.
I find your analysis interesting from a pure empirical point of view based on what we see, and not the hard numbers behind that don't make much sense, be it in Star Wars or Eve. I will be the first one to say that all those attempts to 'hard sciencify' Star Wars that have been done are a bit... weird. I mean, it's like trying to quantify magic in the lord of the rings... Even for Eve, has its limits : ships flying in a non newtonian fashion, etc. That can't be explained without explanations so stretched that they would be ludicrous.
That's actually why your view based on just facts and what we see is rather refreshing, and serves well to illustrate that numbers for Star Wars were not really thought further than "we need that star destroyers to be STRONG", and for Eve out of pure game design intentions.
And, Star Wars fan... Well I guess so... I have been shown the first movies when I was a child and eventually got a huge nerd/fan of it instantly, then... Well, since I turned adult I got a bit disillusioned though... Especially regarding the prelogy. I have fond memories of the universe and the stories (especially the non force sensitive ones), but that's it. I'm still a Star Wars walking bible I guess.. Obsolete bible since they trashed the EU.
But that's not the point.
Lyn, please, I didn't mean to say that you were trying to debate. Although...I admit...I love debate. Heck, I did debate during high school. :P But seriously, I'm not getting worked up over this. I just did it for fun while feeling sick.
I agree with you about Star Wars. That universe is governed by nothing but "what services the plot". That said, I'm not unhappy with that, really. I like Star Wars, a lot, but I like it for the story, for the force. When it comes to hard Sci-fi, I turn to other sources.
Nonetheless, it is still fun to play "what-if". And, in that case, the EvE universe absolutely destroys the SW one. I'm not unhappy about that, I admit, and for a good reason: I participate in the EvE universe. I can't affect what happens in Return of the Jedi, but it's nice to know that the weapons my character is using are truly nasty.
That's just personal bias, but hey, it is fun. Which is exactly the reason I enjoy any of these fictional universes, in the end.
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By the way, Eve Online shield systems utilise a futuristic version of the Plasma Window that is being worked on in reality. It uses high viscosity plasma, contained within a magnetic field, to deflect shots fired at it. EM weapons are wonderful against it since they disrupt the magnetic field and cause the plasma to bleed away, if not outright just negating the charges contained inside the field and render the plasma inert. It's also why kinetics and high explosives do little against the shields but will eventually penetrate due to the plasma being slowly shed away by the impact.
Oh, btw, Star Wars warships are freaking insane far as firepower goes, as I mentioned before in another thread. Eve ships are comparatively undergunned for their sizes and won't be able to match a Star Destroyer in a stand up fight. However, the turbolaser range is pathetic in comparison to what Eve Ships can put out so their best bet is to stick a bunch of Tornados at range and just stay the hell away with MWDs and alpha the Star Destroyers until they die.
Also, to answer the query about Death Star, it's a terror weapon, a statement against any dissenting elements. The logic that is being applied to the Death Star is the same one behind the planned construction of those absurdly huge superheavy tanks by the Nazi. The idea is to make something so huge and so ridiculously powerful you make your enemies piss themselves and think twice about trying to make trouble with you.
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Oh, btw, Star Wars warships are freaking insane far as firepower goes, as I mentioned before in another thread. Eve ships are comparatively undergunned for their sizes and won't be able to match a Star Destroyer in a stand up fight.
Not according to the math, or the lore depictions. Read my original post. Pound for pound, EvE ships are far more devastating. Rather what you'd expect when Phoenix dreadnoughts are firing, essentially, extra-powerful black holes.
Incidentally, since (according to some SW lore) SW shields don't block non-energy projectiles (like proton torpedoes), it's even worse for Star Wars. Most of what the Caldari and Minmatar might throw at them will go right through their only form of protection.
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In most SW sources, missiles are actually blocked by shields... Supposedly, you have two kinds of shields : particle shields (against physical objects) and energy shields (against energy based stuff). Most ships have both... or none.
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Not according to the math, or the lore depictions. Read my original post. Pound for pound, EvE ships are far more devastating.
I actually take some issue with your damage estimation above, because you make one massive assumption which is not justified by the actual news articles. You assume that the doomsday event instantly killed 87% of all life; however, nowhere in the article does it say this. Rather, it just says that 87% of surface life will die, while listing other reasons for the extinction to occur: Notably, total planetary storms and vast sea level rises.
Additionally, if we were to assume the values you come up with are accurate, then there would be secondary effects - notably, significant excavation of the crust directly beneath the detonation - which are nowhere described.
Even if this were not the case, this yield is not actually that spectacularly high. The Acclamator-class, for instance, had a main battery capable of firing a net yield of around 9.6 teratons with each barrage fired. It was also expected to survive similarly destructive inbound barrages; nonetheless, it was considered outdated and outmoded by the end of the Clone Wars. Its replacement, the Venator, has by some calculations an estimated peak weapons output of over 286 Teratons/sec, although this is admittedly a rough estimation.
Incidentally, since (according to some SW lore) SW shields don't block non-energy projectiles (like proton torpedoes), it's even worse for Star Wars. Most of what the Caldari and Minmatar might throw at them will go right through their only form of protection.
This is a non-canon depiction typically used in video game mechanics. By canon, starship-grade shields deflect projectiles. See the article on shields (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Deflector_shield#Shield_types) for more information.
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I actually take some issue with your damage estimation above, because you make one massive assumption which is not justified by the actual news articles. You assume that the doomsday event instantly killed 87% of all life; however, nowhere in the article does it say this. Rather, it just says that 87% of surface life will die, while listing other reasons for the extinction to occur: Notably, total planetary storms and vast sea level rises.
First, the SoE ships doing the first analysis arrive within a "few hours" of the incident. In the Cretaceous asteroid strike, the extinction took some time...weeks and months. In terms of extinction, within hours is close enough to "instantly".
Also, regarding the extinction, your statement is only true if you read only the first article. I made no such assumption, because the second article states that the entire surface of the planet is incapable of supporting life. Not human life, life at all. That's a total extinction event. The article also states that the polar caps have been melted. To do that, you'd need to essentially boil the sea. Since it's EM damage, the article states that the surface of the planet has been "scorched".
Additionally, if we were to assume the values you come up with are accurate, then there would be secondary effects - notably, significant excavation of the crust directly beneath the detonation - which are nowhere described.
Again, it's EM damage. No crater necessary. The surface of the planet is scorched, not impacted. And, actually, this would resolve to more energy release than an asteroid impact, so my estimates of energy released are probably very low.
Even if this were not the case, this yield is not actually that spectacularly high. The Acclamator-class, for instance, had a main battery capable of firing a net yield of around 9.6 teratons with each barrage fired. It was also expected to survive similarly destructive inbound barrages; nonetheless, it was considered outdated and outmoded by the end of the Clone Wars. Its replacement, the Venator, has by some calculations an estimated peak weapons output of over 286 Teratons/sec, although this is admittedly a rough estimation.
First of all, that comes from the books, which Disney has declared non-canon. I used calculations based on the best case scenario (for the SW high-damage side) from the movies, where Star Destroyers were vaporizing asteroids. Why they seem so under-powered in other scenes, I don't know, but I was trying to give SW a giant benefit of the doubt.
Still, let's say we do take the SW extended universe as canon, and ignore all the books that portray SW weaponry as pea shooters. Even so...
A teraton is 1,000,000,000 tons of TNT. Let's assume that the Venator does 286 teratons every second. The Avatar doomsday, at the most conservative estimate, had to release the energy of at least 200,000,000,000,000 tons of TNT. That is to say, 200,000 teratons. I stress that my estimate of the energy needed to scorch the surface of a planet, render it unfit for life, and melt polar caps, is woefully, incredibly on the conservative side. I could be low by orders of magnitude.
A Hawk frigate - fit with light missiles, not rockets, so less dps - will put out 880 teratons a second. A Raven battleship can put out 4,400 teratons a second. Even given your estimate, a couple of frigates from EvE are more powerful than a Venator class, while being much smaller.
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The article also states that the polar caps have been melted. To do that, you'd need to essentially boil the sea.
Correction: The article does not state that the polar ice caps were immediately melted, but rather that they will nearly melt eventually. This is significantly different.
Again, it's EM damage. No crater necessary.
Strictly speaking, a crater should still be created through immediate heating of the ground directly beneath the explosion. It may not be as large as you would expect from a direct kinetic impact, but it would still be there.
First of all, that comes from the books, which Disney has declared non-canon.
They are non-canon to Disney's continuity; they are still canon to the EU/Legends continuity.
A teraton is 1,000,000,000 tons of TNT. Let's assume that the Venator does 286 teratons every second. The Avatar doomsday, at the most conservative estimate, had to release the energy of at least 200,000,000,000,000 tons of TNT. That is to say, 200,000 teratons.
Check your math: 200x1012 tons is 200 teratons, not 200,000. The Venator's main battery is outputting more firepower than a doomsday every second.
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A Hawk frigate - fit with light missiles, not rockets, so less dps - will put out 880 teratons a second. A Raven battleship can put out 4,400 teratons a second.
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Even by reducing these values by a commensurate amount to correct for the earlier math failure - to 0.88 teratons/sec and 4.4 teratons/sec respectively - we run into another problem: There is no evidence of damage output this high - or that our craft are capable of supporting weapons output in this range. If this were accurate, our orbital bombardments should be catastrophic, battle-ending affairs which would incinerate battlefields.
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Do we have any other sources for calculating EVE damage? Perhaps by taking a known laser method and measuring how much wattage it uses, or projectile ammunition ballistics based on their size? How much power could a 125mm Carbonized Lead shell conceivably do? How much damage could a small beam laser do operating in the visible light spectrum? Translate those to damage points. What about measuring armor plating? How much energy would it take to penetrate a 1.6m steel plate? Now translate that to hitpoints.
Most importantly, before we draw our conclusions, do all these conversion rates match each other? Do they still make sense? Can we still use DPS as an even remotely accurate measurement?
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I tried calculating the output of a laser in another thread using the energy consumed in firing it, and came up with some considerably lower outputs; I hoped that would be most accurate, since laser turrets are going to get us closest to any sort of direct mass->damage conversion devoid of any unknowns like stored chemical propellant or unknown mass of a fired projectile.
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Correction: The article does not state that the polar ice caps were immediately melted, but rather that they will nearly melt eventually. This is significantly different.
Actually, the article states that "We are facing almost full polar cap meltdown" which does not indicate time either way - however, later in the article you read "we expect sea level to have risen, covering at least two thirds of the existing landmass, the remaining surface being largely scorched", which is past tense, indicating that this has already occurred.
Strictly speaking, a crater should still be created through immediate heating of the ground directly beneath the explosion. It may not be as large as you would expect from a direct kinetic impact, but it would still be there.
I think that that would reasonably fall under "scorched". In any case, this is an argument from absence of perfect evidence, which is invalid. Especially when the articles explicitly state that it was an Avatar's doomsday weapon.
They are non-canon to Disney's continuity; they are still canon to the EU/Legends continuity.
To me, it makes sense to use a source which is acknowledged as canon on all levels, rather than pick a source from one line of canon. Star Trek also has a non-canonical/semi-canonical line of books that portray those ships as being much more powerful, but I reject that, too.
Check your math: 200x1012 tons is 200 teratons, not 200,000. The Venator's main battery is outputting more firepower than a doomsday every second.
Sorry about that math failure. Show's why I shouldn't calculate while groggy. Again, however, I still have to reject that figure from the EU. Not just because the EU is non-canon, but also because there are wildly varying depictions of firepower in the EU, and a figure that high completely disagrees with depictions seen in the movies. For example, in the battle over Coruscant, you see un-shielded ships taking turbolaser fire and not disintegrating into chunks.
Also, there is the slightly eye-rolling nature of building a Death Star if an outdated 20-year-old starship can accomplish the same thing.
Even by reducing these values by a commensurate amount to correct for the earlier math failure - to 0.88 teratons/sec and 4.4 teratons/sec respectively - we run into another problem: There is no evidence of damage output this high - or that our craft are capable of supporting weapons output in this range. If this were accurate, our orbital bombardments should be catastrophic, battle-ending affairs which would incinerate battlefields.
Actually, if you read some of the lore, you find lots of evidence for it. Planetary bombardment for DUST actually does require special rounds - probably powered down rounds for precision strikes. And they're using small ammo, for frigates. When the Amarr decided to destroy the Starkmanir, they simply hit the planet with tachyon lasers, which essentially glassed the surface. According to EvElopedia, the planet's crust was rendered, the tectonic plates shattered, and the planet flows with rivers of magma.
Similarly, unless a titan's superweapon would destroy a planet, there was no reason for Heth to park a ship like the Leviathan in orbit. Go through the lore, and you can find quite a few depictions of massive damage being done. It's also the only reason I can think of for Caldari dreadnoughts in TEA to use plasma beams to bombard Gallente forces - citadel missiles would have destroyed everything around. As it is, Caldari dreadnoughts are perfectly capable of destroying entire populations if they want, as Tibus Heth uses that threat against Fouritain.
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Do we have any other sources for calculating EVE damage? Perhaps by taking a known laser method and measuring how much wattage it uses, or projectile ammunition ballistics based on their size? How much power could a 125mm Carbonized Lead shell conceivably do? How much damage could a small beam laser do operating in the visible light spectrum? Translate those to damage points. What about measuring armor plating? How much energy would it take to penetrate a 1.6m steel plate? Now translate that to hitpoints.
Most importantly, before we draw our conclusions, do all these conversion rates match each other? Do they still make sense? Can we still use DPS as an even remotely accurate measurement?
I'm skeptical about EvE lasers. I'm of the opinion that they can't possibly be lasers as we know of them - they don't act like it, they don't look like them, and the whole idea of needing to "cycle" beam lasers is kinda funny too.
I have two theories for what they might be.
First, it could be a laser, but a laser in which, thanks to tesseract technology, a portion of "frozen" space time has been fired into for an much longer period of time. When the laser "fires", it releases all of that energy at once.
Second, the "laser" part of the weapon only functions as, essentially, part of the process. When the "laser" fires, it paints a track in space, then directs an extremely dense, concentrated beam of particles (x-ray, gamma, whatever), along the path, along with a massive amount of ions, which give the weapon such great shield-disrupting qualities. This combination dense-laser/particle beam would explain why you can see the laser fire.
EvE armor is obviously not like RL armor, also. So I don't know how to quantify it.
I have trouble with EvE projectile ammunition. We know it can be rocket-assisted, and we know some variants are very powerful nukes, but other information is limited. What is "phased plasma"? One of the rounds will penetrate a ship and then release sub-munitions. Of what? Antimatter?
Another problem is that the physics in EvE are somewhat different (although apparently not too much) from our world.
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What is a phased plasma round?
It's plasma contained within a shell which can generate its own magnetic field, lobbed at the other ship you don't like. The shell penetrates before detonating a split second later, releasing the plasma to melt the matter around it.
Plasma is plasma. It's not anti-matter.
For all I know, Eve Online projectile weapons might actually be upsized bolt-guns firing exotic ammunition. Also, don't overthink the Matari tech. Matari technology should be at once very familiar to us since they are using technologies very similar to what we are using now, except with more refined application and very heavy use of miniaturisation and advance materials like nanofibers, ceramic-based plating (that's what Fernite Carbide is, highly advanced ceramic plating). Seriously, the Minmatar are still using electrolytic capacitors (should be very familiar) and nuclear reactors (just like what we did with modern naval warships).
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What is a phased plasma round?
It's plasma contained within a shell which can generate its own magnetic field, lobbed at the other ship you don't like. The shell penetrates before detonating a split second later, releasing the plasma to melt the matter around it.
Plasma is plasma. It's not anti-matter.
That's just regular plasma. I want to know what the "phased" part is. :P
My pet theory is that "phased plasma" is plasma somewhat out of phase with our own universe, like a warping EvE ship, which allows it to partially pass through matter/shields, before phasing back, making it exponentially more destructive.
It is somewhat interesting, though, to note that with the Caldari and Gallente, you have weapons that are obviously truly nasty, like missiles (citadel torps, for example) that work by actually shearing space-time apart. Or blasters accelerating matter to something like 99% of the speed of light and throwing it at an enemy. And then you have Minmatar using depleted uranium rounds. That's sort of a "huh"?
Yes, Minmatar use "fission" reactors. That's not necessarily the same thing as a modern nuclear reactor. For all we know, Minmatar ships are operating off of a sustained nuclear explosion. Which would be awesome.
Anyway, nuclear reactors are great, but the Amarr use antimatter reactors, and their power generation isn't all that different in scale from Minnie ships. The Caldari use gravitic reactors, which probably involves black-hole-like entities, and the situation is the same. So either the Minmatar have much better methods for generating power with fission than we do (and they are said to be brilliant mechanical engineers), or the other two races are incredibly incompetent at power generation using far more powerful technologies.
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What is a phased plasma round?
It's plasma contained within a shell which can generate its own magnetic field, lobbed at the other ship you don't like. The shell penetrates before detonating a split second later, releasing the plasma to melt the matter around it.
Plasma is plasma. It's not anti-matter.
That's just regular plasma. I want to know what the "phased" part is. :P
My pet theory is that "phased plasma" is plasma somewhat out of phase with our own universe, like a warping EvE ship, which allows it to partially pass through matter/shields, before phasing back, making it exponentially more destructive.
It is somewhat interesting, though, to note that with the Caldari and Gallente, you have weapons that are obviously truly nasty, like missiles (citadel torps, for example) that work by actually shearing space-time apart. Or blasters accelerating matter to something like 99% of the speed of light and throwing it at an enemy. And then you have Minmatar using depleted uranium rounds. That's sort of a "huh"?
Yes, Minmatar use "fission" reactors. That's not necessarily the same thing as a modern nuclear reactor. For all we know, Minmatar ships are operating off of a sustained nuclear explosion. Which would be awesome.
Anyway, nuclear reactors are great, but the Amarr use antimatter reactors, and their power generation isn't all that different in scale from Minnie ships. The Caldari use gravitic reactors, which probably involves black-hole-like entities, and the situation is the same. So either the Minmatar have much better methods for generating power with fission than we do (and they are said to be brilliant mechanical engineers), or the other two races are incredibly incompetent at power generation using far more powerful technologies.
My idea of a 'phased' plasma is just plasma that's contained, to keep it from reacting with the shell itself (or anything really, until the shell detonates). That's the difference between the Gallente plasma ammunition and the Matari plasma ammunition. Blaster weapons have to draw energy from the capacitor to convert the matter within the rounds into plasma before discharging. Projectile weapons do not do that, the munition charges are already in plasma form, contained inside the shell by means of magnetic fields and whatever tech wizardry the Matari engineers came up with.
Also, remember that the Minmatar's claim to fame is in mechanical engineering, materials research and nanotechnology. The latter two will explain the efficiency of their nuclear reactors. Improved techniques in refining nuclear fuel, miniaturised machinery, advanced energy capture and heat dissipation techniques, etc.
Also, I doubt the Caldari missiles shear space time at all. Nova utilises explosive shockwaves to do damage (no idea how they manage that since shockwaves can't really be transmitted in the vacuum medium. Then again, how does falloff work in a vacuum, zero gravity environment anyway? It's not like the shells deaccelerate or fall towards a surface or anything. If anything they should keep travelling until they eventually hit something at some time), Scourge ejects shrapnel to pierce through the target's armour and hull, Mjolnir releases electromagnetic pulses, Inferno releases contained plasma or some kind of future napalm. On the matter of Citadel Torpedoes, that just how the Caldari classify something a capital-ship sized Torpedo. I imagine that the Caldari specifically designate those huge Torpedoes as 'Citadel' Torpedo because the Torpedoes actually look like this:
https://youtu.be/NNc242mbiUs?t=58s
Also, blasters do not accelerate matter to 99% speed of light. That's railguns. Also, railguns do not convert matter to plasma, they just straight up fire the shell at the target. The capacitor's energy is drawn to activate the rails for this acceleration.
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Well if we have to go down that road, explosive damage does not make any sense in space afaik. A shell exploding in space will only result in thermal and kinetic damage (energy heat + frag).
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Edmund,
First, Caldari (Scourge) missiles do play havoc with space-time. That's what increasing or decreasing gravity is. From the Citadel Torpedo description:
Citadel Torpedoes are behemoths designed for maximum firepower against capital ships and installations. They are usable only by capital ships and starbase defense batteries.
Fitted with a graviton pulse generator, this weapon causes massive damage as it overwhelms ships' internal structures, tearing bulkheads and armor plating apart with frightening ease.
Second, blasters do convert the hybrid ammunition to plasma, yes, but they then use a cyclotron to accelerate the charge. From the description for a large blaster:
Particle blasters operate on a similar principle as the railgun except they fire a magnetically contained ball of subatomic particles. No other turret class can match the sheer destructive power of particle blasters, but due to the rapid dispersion of the containment field, it also has the worst range of all turrets.
And from the text describing the antimatter charge:
Consists of two components: a shell of titanium and a core of antimatter atoms suspended in plasma state. Railguns launch the shell directly, while particle blasters pump the plasma into a cyclotron and process the plasma into a bolt that is then fired.
By the way, it's darkly hilarious that in EvE, it's not enough to just fire antimatter at the enemy. Nope. You have to get it up to around the speed of light, first. Otherwise, it's apparently just not awesome enough. :P
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Well if we have to go down that road, explosive damage does not make any sense in space afaik. A shell exploding in space will only result in thermal and kinetic damage (energy heat + frag).
There really are quite a number of things in Eve Online that really shouldn't work the way they did. For example, every projectile that's fired should keep travelling if they miss because Newtonian Physics. The ships shouldn't be stopping when the engines are turned off (though that's explained away as being a warp core quirk), and etc.
However, all of that had to be ignored for the sake of gameplay balance.
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Edmund,
First, Caldari (Scourge) missiles do play havoc with space-time. That's what increasing or decreasing gravity is. From the Citadel Torpedo description:
Citadel Torpedoes are behemoths designed for maximum firepower against capital ships and installations. They are usable only by capital ships and starbase defense batteries.
Fitted with a graviton pulse generator, this weapon causes massive damage as it overwhelms ships' internal structures, tearing bulkheads and armor plating apart with frightening ease.
Second, blasters do convert the hybrid ammunition to plasma, yes, but they then use a cyclotron to accelerate the charge. From the description for a large blaster:
Particle blasters operate on a similar principle as the railgun except they fire a magnetically contained ball of subatomic particles. No other turret class can match the sheer destructive power of particle blasters, but due to the rapid dispersion of the containment field, it also has the worst range of all turrets.
And from the text describing the antimatter charge:
Consists of two components: a shell of titanium and a core of antimatter atoms suspended in plasma state. Railguns launch the shell directly, while particle blasters pump the plasma into a cyclotron and process the plasma into a bolt that is then fired.
By the way, it's darkly hilarious that in EvE, it's not enough to just fire antimatter at the enemy. Nope. You have to get it up to around the speed of light, first. Otherwise, it's apparently just not awesome enough. :P
Graviton pulse generator is for propelling the ship by use of gravitons. Standard rocket fuel won't work due to the sheer mass of the Citadel torps themselves (seriously, just look at the Citadel missiles fired in the Inferno trailer. Those are huge. That's why I draw comparison with 40k's Cyclonic warheads, which actually has a human to draw comparisons with). The actual damage is inflicted by the four flavours of warheads. The kind of damage described doesn't need to be inflicted by gravitons at all. Just look at the size of the Torpedo. Propellant of that mass flinging shrapnels of that mass? If that goes through the shield and the armour, it's going to really rip the decks apart! It would be just like some poor dude getting a grapeshot to the face!
Point taken on the blasters however. Then again, if they didn't accelerate it the plasma won't even travel 500m. Instead the Incursus that fired it will find its armour eaten by the cloud of plasma it just fired. Also, the anti-matter probably has to be contained in plasma state the same way the Matari contained their plasma munitions because otherwise, the anti-matter, which isn't suspended by a magnetic field and kept away from everything else, would instead just react with the shell and blow up the gunnery deck (and the rest of the ship along with it).
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Well if we have to go down that road, explosive damage does not make any sense in space afaik. A shell exploding in space will only result in thermal and kinetic damage (energy heat + frag).
There really are quite a number of things in Eve Online that really shouldn't work the way they did. For example, every projectile that's fired should keep travelling if they miss because Newtonian Physics. The ships shouldn't be stopping when the engines are turned off (though that's explained away as being a warp core quirk), and etc.
However, all of that had to be ignored for the sake of gameplay balance.
Well that was what i'm getting at... Newtonian physics in eve is non existent.
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Well if we have to go down that road, explosive damage does not make any sense in space afaik. A shell exploding in space will only result in thermal and kinetic damage (energy heat + frag).
There really are quite a number of things in Eve Online that really shouldn't work the way they did. For example, every projectile that's fired should keep travelling if they miss because Newtonian Physics. The ships shouldn't be stopping when the engines are turned off (though that's explained away as being a warp core quirk), and etc.
However, all of that had to be ignored for the sake of gameplay balance.
Well that was what i'm getting at... Newtonian physics in eve is non existent.
I wonder why there hasn't been anyone in Eve Online who publish a paper to prove the existence of Ether in Eve Online, and that we in space are surrounded by the damn thing instead of, you know, actual vacuum?
That would explain alot.
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I seem to remember some obscure old lore about warp cores that prevents that or something... Which was a bit silly.
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I seem to remember some obscure old lore about warp cores that prevents that or something... Which was a bit silly.
Yeah, I hear of how warp cores are the reason behind all ships flying around like submarine, and how you can't just turn it off.
IC Elmund describes it as warp cores forming an anchor in space-time, so that when activated, it can then use this anchor to move space-time around the ship, thus achieving FTL. I figured that makes more sense than depleted vacuum. Seriously, what is depleted vacuum anyway? IRL I don't quite buy the explanation.
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>.>
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Soooo. Just read through this interesting mass of fun.
I have a thought to add, just for the moment in regards to a possible correlation between falloff and that freaky deaky idea of projectiles flying forever.
For a railgun/munitions weapon I like the idea of an internal accelerometer and basic guidance system in the munition. I'm thinking quite literally a dumb system that tracks distance from origin.
Optimal range then becomes the range at which that the ammunition counts before the munition becomes unstable. Fall off is the extra distance the munition will travel before it self destructs.
Now you say. Why don't they just make this self destruct range something ludicrous and we have near infinite range?
Well if you're hurling missiles/ammunition at incredible speeds, they won't hold together forever, if you want those projectiles to deliberately explode and shred on impact you can't make the shells too strong (things like depleted uranium excluded) or they won't deploy properly.
Similar idea for lasers, which we seem to be agreeing are particle beams as opposed to pure light beams. At optimal the beam has maintained focus and still creates an appropriate focus point to do damage, fall off being the range when focus disperses and after that. It'll be bright but won't hurt a ship
Thoughts kiddies?
Also. Mmm hai? Been a while ;)
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>.>
<.<
Soooo. Just read through this interesting mass of fun.
I have a thought to add, just for the moment in regards to a possible correlation between falloff and that freaky deaky idea of projectiles flying forever.
For a railgun/munitions weapon I like the idea of an internal accelerometer and basic guidance system in the munition. I'm thinking quite literally a dumb system that tracks distance from origin.
Optimal range then becomes the range at which that the ammunition counts before the munition becomes unstable. Fall off is the extra distance the munition will travel before it self destructs.
Now you say. Why don't they just make this self destruct range something ludicrous and we have near infinite range?
Well if you're hurling missiles/ammunition at incredible speeds, they won't hold together forever, if you want those projectiles to deliberately explode and shred on impact you can't make the shells too strong (things like depleted uranium excluded) or they won't deploy properly.
Similar idea for lasers, which we seem to be agreeing are particle beams as opposed to pure light beams. At optimal the beam has maintained focus and still creates an appropriate focus point to do damage, fall off being the range when focus disperses and after that. It'll be bright but won't hurt a ship
Thoughts kiddies?
Also. Mmm hai? Been a while ;)
That's actually been some of my thinking on the subject. My other consideration is that EW is very powerful in EvE. Perhaps the problem is that ships cannot maintain a good resolution target lock past 250 km or so.
Also, more support for my position of EvE Weapons being higg-powered: Falcon stated (in the EvE fiction forum at the EvE forums) that an activation of the Oblivion superweapon would have erased all life on Caldari Prime.