The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

I want to ask someone about battle with another ships. How about these two ships battle, Druuge Mauler vs. Imperial Star Destroyer, which one win?

Considering that one is the space equivalent of a battleship, loaded with powerful cannons and protected by shields, and the other is a single giant cannon with no shields and carrying 13 slaves thrown in a furnace for ammunition, there isn't even a contest.

Go download P6014 and find out for yourself. ;)

How about Kohr-Ah Marauder vs. Borg Cube (from Star Trek)?

Borg are weak against kinetic weapons. So this one is obvious.

Let's try this: Avenger VS Klingon Bird Of Prey (or the Romulan Warbird of The Classic Series), or a Cruiser VS Kirk's Enterprise.

And while at it, try the ZFP vs Smurfs.

Admiral Zex vs. Grand Admiral Thorn! :)

The ISD has an effective range on static targets that's best measured in light-minutes. The Mauler... it's not clear, really. Based on the fact you can have a battle with a group with other groups nearby but not engages, all within one light-second, well, it's less. The Borg seem to engage at a range of a few km under normal circumstances, but that could be an illusion of cinematography.

In terms of destructive power, it's hard to say. Their destructive effect on asteroids is the same... though to be fair, the ISD does that with the equivalent of its anti-fighter gun, not its main cannons. On the other hand, if the mauler had any secondary weapon, no matter how weak, it too would be able to take out asteroids... of completely unknown size.

The ISD can cross the galaxy in a few days at most, perhaps less, and can go superluminal within a few thousand km of a planet surface. The Mauler would take several years (at minimum, using the very smallest estimates for the galaxy) to cross the galaxy, and can only go superluminal somewhere around the heliopause.

Oh, and, based on its RU cost, the mass of the mauler is strictly less than 567 kilotons (unless it's made of PLASTIC), and very likely noticeably below 500. That's 1/50 the mass of an ISD! For more useful comparison, 500 kilotons is 6 times the mass of a large aircraft carrier, or around the size of the largest cargo ship ever built, when fully loaded. Incidentally, a Borg Cube masses in at 90 Megatons, around 3.5 times the mass of an ISD.

This really throws a wrench in the works of how large these ships are... by photographic evidence, the Vindicator is only 250m long, roughly the same length as an aircraft carrier - while it is significantly larger than other ships.

The Ilwrath Avenger and Klingon Bird Of Prey is match to engage and fight because they has a cloaking device. But the Ilwrath Avenger is armed with short-range flamethrower and the Klingon Bird Of Prey is armed with plasma cannon. So I think maybe the Avenger win.

The BoP has much longer range. A wily (not head-on-confrontation type) could wear them down.

And Kirk's Enterprise can take thermonuclear weaponry with little difficulty: consider "A Taste of Armageddon", in which they were only simulated to go down against a simulated barrage of nuclear weapons because they didn't raise their shields against the imaginary weapons.

That said, there is little upper bound on the size of a thermonuclear device. However, if these weapons are based on models made for terrestrial warfare, they won't be that big, at all.


SC is not especially high-powered, in terms of the tech normally used by ordinary ships. The Sa-Matra could well be on par with the best the Empire could put up - but that's just because the precursors are so much (to an undefined degree) more powerful than the others.

Let's try this: Chmmr Avatar vs. Klingon Negh'Var Warship.

Vice Admiral Thrawn

I believe the most fair comparisons would be against the Babylon 5 universe or Battlestar Galactica. Both are weak enough that nuclear weapons are still a significant threat.

However, the two have a very strong capital ship vs. fighter divide which is absent in UQM. I'm not at all sure how a fight would play out there. B5 capships have serious range, that's for sure.

Here is the picture of Ur-Quan Dreadnought attacking USS Enterprise (Galaxy-class Starship).  ;)
(http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6207/6065172926_054b706df9.jpg)

Newb player, he forgot to activate shields.

I'm not sure that it's fair to judge SC ships by apparent graphical scale.  I mean, if everything in the SC universe IS being drawn to scale, then even the smallest fighters are about half the size of your average planet, which would make these ships much bigger than an SSD.

That said, there are a large number of ships in the SC universe that appear to use projectile weapons, which probably does mean their effective combat range is VERY short, on a stellar battleground.  The lack of energy shielding on most SC ships also means they probably aren't that durable, compared to other sci-fi universes.

Then again, I don't really see the point in these cross-over match ups anyway.  The various sci-fi settings were not meant to interact, so why bother?  Lasers are a serious threat in most sci-fi universes, but they're laughably inadequate in Star Trek (apparently whatever technology phasers work on is much better or something.)  Of course, who's to say that what Star Wars characters call a "laser" isn't the exact same thing as a "phaser" in Star Trek?  Different settings have different terminologies for the same tech, after all, and that's not even considering techs one of them just pulled out of their ass.

How so? There's no air resistance in space, which means that a fired projectile is going to keep going indefinitely until it hits something. Granted, those projectiles do vanish after a certain range in SC, but scale is very strange in combat as mentioned before.

The problem of aiming would become insurmountable after a certain distance. Energy weapons will hit consistently where they are pointed (unless plasma becomes involved with magnetic fields or something), but projectiles tend to spread out the farther they travel.

Wow, people still believe this? They were talking about those specific low-powered lasers used by the weak ships in that one episode. Heck, the Borg are one of the most dangerous races in Star Trek and they use lasers

http://www.stardestroyer.net/mrwong/wiki/index.php/No_laser_fallacy

I recall reading somewhere (but not any of the manuals I can find) that SC ships do have shielding, and without it the weakest weapons would go through any of these ships like they were made of cheese - just like they wipe out asteroids of arbitrary size.

The problem isn't that the projectile will stop (it won't), the problem is that the enemy will have plenty of time to get out of the way at stellar distances.  Assuming they have roughly equal computer systems, the enemy's ship will be able to track the incoming projectile and avoid it as easily as the firing computer can "lock on" to take the shot.  Remember, space is REALLY REALLY BIG.  When I say "they have very short effective combat ranges" I'm talking probably a few hundred to maybe a thousand miles here.

Here are some numbers if you still need convincing:
I did a couple quick Google searches and turned up the average speed of a high-caliber rifle bullet at maybe 4000mph.  Let's go ahead and assume that the guns mounted on these space ships are REALLY advanced and they actually fire their projectiles at more like 8000mph (also accounting for lack of wind resistance and gravity, etc, etc.)

The Earth is 7,926.41 miles in diameter.  That means if two ships were hovering in space at exactly the same distance from each other as the planet Earth is wide, and one of them fired a projectile going 8000mph at the other, it would take the better part of AN HOUR for that projectile to reach the other ship.  Assuming it was still there by the time the bullet arrived, of course, which would be the real surprise if it were.

This is the reason most shows use energy weapons of some sort usually based on the concept of the laser. Speed of light is hard to get out of the way of.

(http://i1096.photobucket.com/albums/g330/mohammad20112/Space_Battle.jpg) (http://s1096.photobucket.com/user/mohammad20112/media/Space_Battle.jpg.html)

Another Star Wars ship battle against Kohr-Ah Marauder. I know that Star Wars ship is called Venator-class.