Need help with "Star Chronicles" (my eight-way sci-fi fanfiction)

[Yukaphile]

Well, this takes place during the height of the Galactic Empire, in the past, where the Rebels have destroyed the Death Star, but you could still dispatch Death Squadron to conquer another universe. That's like 30 Star Destroyers, and even if we're ejecting VS scaling, I can't see a Star Destroyer being taken out by anything less than 50 Federation ships. That makes them like a Borg Cube. And they have the Executor with them as well. Vader's command ship. So yeah. They will need a New Republic fleet, which includes Star Destroyers and tech of their own (Star Wars ships have greater firepower, by how much, depends, but that's necessary yo the story). It was Palpatine's orders. And they have 25,000 Star Destroyers. They could spare Death Squadron.

[AquaReggie]

That's a fair point that if Palpy wants something done, it could be done - conceded . I'm a little bit more iffy on the "Star Destroyer is equivalent to a Borg Cube" point. Obviously there's no real-world comparison of shield power we could do, but imo the Borg's greatest threat isn't that they have shields OVER 9000, but that the collective stores the knowledge of dozens or hundreds of civilizations and uses that knowledge to rapidly problem solve and counter your tactics.

However, I will admit that I'm coming at Star Wars more from how it treats/see itself than exact reading of the tech manuals. And the paradigm of classic Star Wars is basically "WW2 mixed with a bit of the Vietnam War - IN SPACE". So the Empire's war machine is strongly similar to Nazi Germany and its giant battleships and impractical wunderwaffen, with the AT-AT attack on Hoth as an echo of panzer tactics. (Actually, now that makes me wonder what an alternate Star Wars franchise would look like with the Empire standing in for the IJN and its also impractical "decisive battle" doctrine).

In that paradigm, a group with matter transporters, antimatter weapons, and the ability to fire broad-beam phasers at a sizable land area seems like they should do better.

[Yukaphile]

Well, I am subscribing to VS calcs, mainly, and while they are subject to tweaking, the baseline for photon torpedo yields at first setting would be 60 megatons. For any Imperial Star Destroyer, light guns are around two to three gigatons, and heavy guns are like 100,000 gigatons. And of course, for a Super Star Destroyer, the figures become 250,000 gigatons for light guns, and 9,000,000 gigatons for heavy guns. That said, these are subject to being tweaked, as are the Federation weapons. 60 megatons is just a baseline. I need stronger yields all the way up to level 16, the highest.

[AquaReggie]

My apologies, this is a point of unfamiliarity for me - where are these "vs calcs" coming from? Spacebattles? elsewhere?

As for the figures for Star Destroyer weapons...yikes. Forget standard sci fi differences between the special effects shown on screen, and the numbers SF writers throw out. Nukemap (https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/) suggests that a 100 megaton bomb detonated in Chicago would be felt a short distance into Michigan, and that's peanuts compared to the claimed power of SD batteries.

Put simply, if the Imperials could actually do this kind of thing in the Original trilogy, they could have scoured the landmasses the Hoth and Yavin bases were on rather than invading.

[Yukaphile]

From official guides.

Yeah, but remember, those had planetary shields. If the ragtag Rebels could afford them, then there you go. Besides, sci-fi mumbo-jumbo means it's probably contained in a sheath that doesn't affect the surrounding area or something.

[AquaReggie]

I'd personally rather chalk it up to another case of Sci Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale than bend backwards to include everything in the official guides, but ymmv.

Also wait, if the beam is contained and doesn't dump much of its energy into the atmosphere/water/soil of a planet like a bomb would, Star Wars planets that don't have shields should look like a saloon in a spaghetti western movie - full of bullet holes!?

[Yukaphile]

Well, point being, a Star Destroyer should be like a Borg Cube anyway.

[Yukaphile]

Thinking about changing the name of this to "Foldspace." Maybe even "The Foldspace Wars."

[Yukaphile]

Hey Simplicius, wanna discuss more plot details?

[Simplicius]

Sure. Hit me.