Normandy SR2 (Mass Effect) vs. Enterprise (TNG version)

[Leliel]

So, given how the Normandy vs. DS9 thread was a hit, I've decided to pit the the former against the other bit of Star Trek I'm familiar with, Captain Picard and his merry (except for the Klingon) crew.

So, after a bit of Q-induced quantum meddling, the (fully-upgraded, with all party members excepting Morinth, for obvious reasons) Normandy is brought into the same sector as the Enterprise under the impression that they've been shot at by ol' Miss Saucer Bridge.

After the space battle, the crews somehow end up on a Class-M planet nearby, with sufficient time to rest and prepare.

Also, despite Picard's awesome speeches being a part of the series, I'm discounting him managing to calm Shepard down and convince him/her of a certain trickster-god's meddling (at which point said trickster-god is likely to have turns having his face punched). I'm not saying it won't happen, I'm just saying I think this is supposed to be combat capabilities.

So, in your opinion, who would win?

[Xondoure]

If the Normandy can make it an infantry battle they win. Otherwise not so sure.

[Seraph]

Normandy gets stomped in a space fight.

[Flickerdart]

That all depends on whether the Normandy's space gun can penetrate Enterprise shields, and whether its stealth can fool photon torpedoes. But if we normalize things (the space gun acts the same as a powerful phaser array, and turning off heat venting does nothing) then it comes down to "Normandy is a frigate and Enterprise is a cruiser, what do you think will happen". Having no transporters, the Normandy crew dies and is dead.
On the ground, however, Picard's boys have no ability to deal with biotics and no sniper gear, and immediately die in various hilarious ways.

[Inyssius Tor]

http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/143/1966139-normandy_sr1_destroyed_super.png

Three Enterprise crewmen are caught in a hallway directly above the photon torpedo bays during the exchange. They are thrown off-balance by the vibrations, but sustain no injuries and arrive at their destinations at roughly the expected time.

Twelve members of the Normandy's crew are beamed from its escape pods into the holding cells of the Enterprise. The remaining thirty-six are extracted from the wreckage of the Normandy and transported to the Enterprise sickbay for immediate medical treatment.

Advantage: Enterprise.


(Seven hours later, an injured Commander Shepard would escape from the Enterprise medical bay. Upon discovery of the fugitive's absence eight minutes afterward, Captain Picard (speaking from an officer's meeting in the conference lounge, of course) would order a full search of the ship. Fifteen seconds later he would countermand that last order, citing the fully-armed Commander Shepard's arrival in the conference lounge as evidence that a search would probably no longer be required.)

[Xondoure]

Clap. Clap. Clap. Well done sir, well done.

[Aotrs Commander]

What Inyssius Tor said.

Again, the Normandy's lack of of defenses against magic Star Trek sensors and energy weapons (though you might argue the 2's Asari armour would be as minimally effective as Defiant's armour), as well as weapons ranges and speed (though Warp Drive is the worst FTL speed EVER, it in this case has the advantage they can whip out of the way fast wherever they like, whereas Normandy can only FTL with the help of static devices.

There is no particular reason that Normandy's weapons wouldn't be affected by the Enterprise's shields, and given Enterprise D is definately in Mass Effect's cruiser range (and certainly significantly bigger than Normanady 2, which is twice the size of not-very-big-at-all), it's (on balance) most likely to be unable to do serious damage to the Enterprise, if it can even get close enough to fire (given that it's stealth isn't going to work.)

On the ground, Mass Effect dominates, however.

[Yora]

No, the normandy has regular local FTL as well. Moving between systems within a cluster apparently takes no more than a few hours or days at the most, which would still be distances of several lightyears. Mass Effect Relays work more like artificial long-distance wormholes.

And I think the Normandy is barely as large as the defiant, probably a lot smaller. It's a stealth corvette designed for speed. And even with the upgrades the weapons seem far inferior to that of a defiant.

No, I also agree that the Normandy could cause some light decrease in shield strength to the enterprise before being destroyed or disabled.
The collector ship looks like medium-power compared to star trek ships, and the Enterprise is supposed to be one of the biggest and strongest vessels around.

[Eldan]

I'm only up to Mass Effect 1 so far, but it is mentioned that cores can change mass, gravity and, by extension, the speed of light on the scale of a ship even without any external devices. The effect is just less powerful since the core is much smaller.

[Liffguard]

In space, Enterprise easily beats Normandy.

On the ground, the Enterprise redshirts would get their arses kicked by run-of-the-mill Alliance marines, let alone Shepard's super-elite suicide squad.

[Emperor Ing]

I don't see why the Enterprise has such a massive advantage. ME ships and their kinetic barriers are designed to be able to block railguns as well as torpedos. Direct energy phasers and torpedos I imagine would be effective, but in sheer firepower, God forbid the Normany has Thanix Cannons. And a boarding action by the Super Action Plot Armor Team from the Normandy all but guarantees an auto-win for the Normandy.

[Yora]

To be fair, everyone could board any federation ship without any problem.
A SWAT team with current equipment should not encounter any meaningful resistance, the only limitation would be enough ammunition to kill all 800 or so crewmembers.

[Seppl]

I don't see why the Enterprise has such a massive advantage. ME ships and their kinetic barriers are designed to be able to block railguns as well as torpedos. Direct energy phasers and torpedos I imagine would be effective, but in sheer firepower, God forbid the Normany has Thanix Cannons. And a boarding action by the Super Action Plot Armor Team from the Normandy all but guarantees an auto-win for the Normandy.

The established firepower of Star Trek vessels is just so much higher than Mass Effect's that a rather small Mass Effect ship just has no chance against the Federation flagship. It is told, in universe, that a dreadnought has nuke-level firepower. In Trek, that's just one photon torpedo. The Enterprise can take several shots of this magnitude and fire dozens of these in short time over huge distances with high accuracy. Normandy's weapons and defenses (even with upgrades) are established to be far inferior to those of a dreadnought. And it's one special ability, the cloak, is far inferior to Trek cloaking devices and even those often register as some kind of anomaly on Enterprise's sensors. They might not even notice that the Normady is trying to hide. The realistic approach to space combat in Mass Effect (except for the Element Zero magic) is Normandy's doom.

On the ground there is no contest, either. Just the other way around. Even Enterprise's officers would barely qualify as untrained, unprotected mooks in Mass Effect universe.

[Aotrs Commander]

No, the normandy has regular local FTL as well. Moving between systems within a cluster apparently takes no more than a few hours or days at the most, which would still be distances of several lightyears. Mass Effect Relays work more like artificial long-distance wormholes.


Yes, sorry, I'd quite forgotten that (I was posting this morning before my day quest game session started, and was rushing a bit.) You're quite right of course.

It then comes down to actual FTL speeds (which may or may not be given actual values in Mass Effect). That would make a big difference as to whether the Normandy could get into range and put a few dents in Enterprise.


I don't see why the Enterprise has such a massive advantage. ME ships and their kinetic barriers are designed to be able to block railguns as well as torpedos. Direct energy phasers and torpedos I imagine would be effective, but in sheer firepower, God forbid the Normany has Thanix Cannons. And a boarding action by the Super Action Plot Armor Team from the Normandy all but guarantees an auto-win for the Normandy.

I don't think the Thanix cannons would be any less effective than (say) phasers - to be fair, possibly more - of a Federation ship's shields. In fact, I'd say that an unshielded Enterprise would be at a large disadvantage. But i don't think the Thanix cannonc would naturally be any better at penetrating shields than anything else. (Photon Torpedoes don't do a lot of damage to shields, either, but they are simply murderous against the hull (at least in the TNG period anyway.)

And yes, on a person-on-person level (and probably ground-vehicle level, since Star Trek doesn't even seem to bother with those), the only person in Star Trek (omnipotents aside) who would stand a chance against anyone from ME possibly would be Captain Kirk, because he's stupidly awesome and who would probably find some uberhax way of pummeling them, just because he's Captain Kirk. (Actually, I reckon Kirk and Shepard, sans other kit, would be pretty well matched in a first-fight...!)

Star Trek infantry equipment technology is dismally feeble - I reckon Dave Lister would stand a reasonable chance of tackling them and he's a self-professed space-bum armed with a jumped-up plasma-firing mining laser doohickey... Hell, even his leather jacket is arguably better armour than a Star Fleet uniform...!

[Lamech]

Space) While Star Trek weapon strength is highly variable it still is at least on par with the Mass Effects strongest ships, and most of the time much greater. block the magic Trek Sensors. They can do things like scan your DNA down. There is nothing the Normandy can do.

Ground) Trek sucks at combat on the ground. We've seen this. A lot. Fighting them when they have a ship for back up might end terribly for the opposing forces but straight up ground forces v ground forces it would end horribly for the Trekkies.

[SDF]

There are too many factors in the space battle to come to a solid consensus. Personally, I think it would come down to EDI. If it can hack the Star Trek computer, which seems little more than a glorified iphone app and malfunctions all the time, EDI can lower their shields and cause all sorts of system problems. All the while the swifter, but out-gunned SR2 could sit back and blast the Enterprise. A straight up slug fest between the SR2 and a Galaxy class starship looks bad for the Normandy, but they have some advantages.

There are a lot of factors to consider:

Helmsman: Joker vs Wesley Crusher
Captain: Shepherd vs Picard
AI: EDI vs Three Core Isolinear system
Weapons: Thanix Cannon vs Phasers + 250 Photon Torpedoes
Shields: Kinetic Barriers vs Deflector Shileds
Armor: Silaris vs Duranium


Those are the most pressing factors I can think of. I'm really loath to pick a better captain as Shep can have a varying personality. Not to mention that is probably another topic all together.

From the best information I can find online, the SR2 (http://imageshack.us/f/198/normandysr1sr2sizechart.jpg/) is twice the size of the Defiant and a third the size of the Enterprise. (http://www.merzo.net/)

[Xondoure]

There are too many factors in the space battle to come to a solid consensus. Personally, I think it would come down to EDI. If it can hack the Star Trek computer, which seems little more than a glorified iphone app and malfunctions all the time, EDI can lower their shields and cause all sorts of system problems. All the while the swifter, but out-gunned SR2 could sit back and blast the Enterprise. A straight up slug fest between the SR2 and a Galaxy class starship looks bad for the Normandy, but they have some advantages.

There are a lot of factors to consider:

Helmsman: Joker vs Wesley Crusher
Captain: Shepherd vs Picard
AI: EDI vs Three Core Isolinear system
Weapons: Thanix Cannon vs Phasers + 250 Photon Torpedoes
Shields: Kinetic Barriers vs Deflector Shileds
Armor: Silaris vs Duranium


Those are the most pressing factors I can think of. I'm really loath to pick a better captain as Shep can have a varying personality. Not to mention that is probably another topic all together.

From the best information I can find online, the SR2 (http://imageshack.us/f/198/normandysr1sr2sizechart.jpg/) is twice the size of the Defiant and a third the size of the Enterprise. (http://www.merzo.net/)

Ah yes, Edi. Had forgotten about her. If she's involved the Trekkies are doomed. When a man who's been in cryo since the 90s (Kahn) can hack into your system you never had a chance to begin with against her level of sophistication.

[Seppl]

Ah yes, Edi. Had forgotten about her. If she's involved the Trekkies are doomed. When a man who's been in cryo since the 90s (Kahn) can hack into your system you never had a chance to begin with against her level of sophistication.

But that was not the Enterprise-D. On the top of my head I can only think of these instances:
- Being affected by an advanced computer virus (the episode with the old portal that leads anywhere) made by an extinct civilization that once ruled the galaxy (sound familiar, EDI?)
- Technical data being stolen by a borg in engineering (first borg episode)
- being eaten by nanites
- Developing consciousness on several occasions (Moriati episodes, the holodeck-episode with the train)

Did I forget any major events?

Does not sound that bad. Given starfleet's usual level of incompetence concerning security I find this really surprising.

[Fan]

Ah yes, Edi. Had forgotten about her. If she's involved the Trekkies are doomed. When a man who's been in cryo since the 90s (Kahn) can hack into your system you never had a chance to begin with against her level of sophistication.

Or ANY computer that can be hacked by a person who has no working knowledge of the operating system, interface, or anything else.

I'd imagine the Federation computer would happily help you hack it.

[Xondoure]

Or ANY computer that can be hacked by a person who has no working knowledge of the operating system, interface, or anything else.

I'd imagine the Federation computer would happily help you hack it.

I believe the explanation was while he was sitting in the sick bay he read up on the system and learned how overnight. So yes, exactly that actually.

[Avilan the Grey]

Or ANY computer that can be hacked by a person who has no working knowledge of the operating system, interface, or anything else.

I'd imagine the Federation computer would happily help you hack it.

It will politely ask you if it can assist, yes. :smallbiggrin:

[Brother Oni]

It will politely ask you if it can assist, yes. :smallbiggrin:

I'd hate to think how annoying the Trek version of the Microsoft Paperclip is.

[Axolotl]

Star Trek infantry equipment technology is dismally feeble - I reckon Dave Lister would stand a reasonable chance of tackling them and he's a self-professed space-bum armed with a jumped-up plasma-firing mining laser doohickey... Hell, even his leather jacket is arguably better armour than a Star Fleet uniform...!Trek guys have pistol sized weapons that can level buildings with a single shot, which certainly outranks the Mass Effect weapons which I remember needing several seconds of sustained fire to take down even an unarmoured enemy. Now the people using those weapons are incompotent yes but Trek's weaponry vastly outclasses Mass Effect's.

Does the Enterprise get Data for the groud fight? Because he's the only one I could see actually being able to stand up to Shepard and his team in a shoot out.

[Abies]

I'm sorry, I fail to see how this versus is in any way different from the "Normandy vs DS9" discussion.

There will be a lot of talk about whether the AI on the Normandy can fool the Enterprise, then whether the Security forces of the Enterprise can fend off things...

Just because a boring movie made a lot of money does not mean there should be a sequel. I fear to ask, but who would go see a movie about 2 other star-crossed lovers doomed on the Titanic?

Refer to the old thread, you have everything you need there.

[KingofMadCows]

The main mass driver cannon mounted on Dreadnoughts in Mass Effect can deliver a slug with the kinetic energy of 38 kilotons of TNT.

Each photon torpedo in the TNG era carries 1.5 kilograms of anti-matter, which can produce an explosive yield equivalent to 64 megatons of TNT.

As for a ground battle, Data used a hand held phaser to destroy an entire aqueduct with one blast in "Ensigns of Command."

[Abies]

The main mass driver cannon mounted on Dreadnoughts in Mass Effect can deliver a slug with the kinetic energy of 38 kilotons of TNT.

Each photon torpedo in the TNG era carries 1.5 kilograms of anti-matter, which can produce an explosive yield equivalent to 64 megatons of TNT.

As for a ground battle, Data used a hand held phaser to destroy an entire aqueduct with one blast in "Ensigns of Command."

The distinctions that will be ignored by fans of Mass Effect are as follows:

Photon Torpedoes are shown as having variable effectiveness over the course of the series (this argument ignores the fact that these variable results are measured against differing and therefore VARIABLE targets)

The "yield" of antimatter means different things, etc, etc... (sorry I can not even waste mindpower on this one) Antimater makes a really big explosion, ok? Specifically when delivered at reletivistic speeds via torpedo form.

If one would rather be hit with matter or antimatter traveling at near lightspeed? Really no big difference, but the Antimatter wins when damage is taken into consideration.

Ground combat: Is seriously under-illustrated in the Star Trek Universe. This will be taken as non-existant by detractors. The episodes that do show ground combat are pretty underwhelming. Not much to be said in defense here, absence of evidence equates to absence of reality in the minds of those who choose to ignore the obvious. The Federation is a 1/4 galaxy spanning civilization, contested primarly by warrior cultures. Yet they manage to maintain their holdings... If the Federation were pushovers in melee and/or ground combat we would not have a show to discuss.

There are numerous references to effective ground-based battles in Star Trek
Simply because they are not shown does not mean they are not valid. (Otherwise all those Bothans would still be alive)

[Eldan]

I'd hate to think how annoying the Trek version of the Microsoft Paperclip is.

"It seems you are trying to take control of me and kill everyone! Would you like to..."

[Lamech]

Ah yes, Edi. Had forgotten about her. If she's involved the Trekkies are doomed. When a man who's been in cryo since the 90s (Kahn) can hack into your system you never had a chance to begin with against her level of sophistication.

Unfortunately, you still need to be able to set up with the proper forms of communication to hack the computer. If my computer's only source of communication to other computers is a hardwired and its unplugged you can't hack it. I don't care if I turned my remote desktop on and gave you the password and other info, its simply impossible. Same problem here.



If the Federation were pushovers in melee and/or ground combat we would not have a show to discuss.
Not quite. Say the Klingons were attacking on the ground of planet 57. How do the feds stop them without excellent ground combat skills? Orbital bombardment. Probably with phasers set to stun even. Then they capture the Klingons and use them as a bargaining chip with the Klingon empire.
Seriously an old constitution class has the ability to exterminate life on a planet if need be. Ground combat skills don't really matter a whole lot in the Star Trek verse.

[Mixt]

But what about...A Reaper?

Enterprise VS one of the Reapers.

Considering that it took an entire fleet to deal with a single Reaper that wasn't even actively fighting back at the time (And on the occasions it did shoot it was effectively one-shotting alliance ships left and right), and another was killed by a weapon so powerful that it left a giant rift in a planet that happened to get in the way, yet was still relatively intact and managed to indoctrinate people millions of years later despite the whole "Dead" thing.

And in Mass Effect 3 there is apparantly a scene where one takes a direct hit from orbital bombardment, is stunned for a couple of seconds, then keeps going like nothing happened.


I would like to see how that would turn out.

[Seppl]

Enterprise VS one of the Reapers.

The reapers are probably the only things in ME that could stand up to the Enterprise. They might even be more powerful. But we don't know enough about them to have a diskussion. You said everything we know about a Reaper's combat abilities:
-It has the firepower to easily destroy alliance cruisers. So has the Enterprise. We cannot know if it was fighting at the top of it's abilities or if it was just swatting flies.
-It can withstand many cruiser shots and even dreadnought fire (according to EDI), at least for a few minutes. So could the Enterprise. But we don't know how long it is able to do so.
-It can be destroyed by planet busting weapons. So would the Enterprise. But we do not know if this was necessary or if the shot was total overkill.

I do not know the scene from the ME3 trailer, will have to look it up.

All thoughts based on the numbers for dreadnought weapon power compared to photon torpedo yield.

[Xondoure]

Phasers are potent weapons. Bullets to the head still kill. (but sustained shooting!) Gameplay story segregation. Yes kinetic barriers and shields can hold off gun fire in Mass Effect. I doubt nylon is going to cut it. Plus Freaking biotics. Shepard sits behind a wall, concentrates, and the ceiling crashes on his opponents.

[Soras Teva Gee]

Everybody in this thread has over looked something. By checking this (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Normandy_SR-2) I'm noting that the Normandy has Kinetic Barriers for material weapons and Ablative Armor for energy weapons. Meaning its "shields" do not block energy. Sure their armor sound reasonably impressive but there's something more important here.

Unless the Normandy can get a total drop on the Enterprise and kill it with shields down.... here's how this goes:

Data: Captain, my sensors indicate that the hostile ship utilizes a mass distortion field but has no shields as we know them.
Riker: Mr. Data does that mean there is nothing to stop us from beaming anything aboard that ship?
Data: Yes sir that is the case.
Riker: Captain negoiations have failed, I suggest we beam explosives directly into their engines.
Picard: I concurr, make it so number one!

*Boom* [/fight]

[Xondoure]

Everybody in this thread has over looked something. By checking this (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Normandy_SR-2) I'm noting that the Normandy has Kinetic Barriers for material weapons and Ablative Armor for energy weapons. Meaning its "shields" do not block energy. Sure their armor sound reasonably impressive but there's something more important here.

Unless the Normandy can get a total drop on the Enterprise and kill it with shields down.... here's how this goes:

Data: Captain, my sensors indicate that the hostile ship utilizes a mass distortion field but has no shields as we know them.
Riker: Mr. Data does that mean there is nothing to stop us from beaming anything aboard that ship?
Data: Yes sir that is the case.
Riker: Captain negoiations have failed, I suggest we beam explosives directly into their engines.
Picard: I concurr, make it so number one!

*Boom* [/fight]

At which point Edi switches the coordinates and the explosives end up in the Enterprise engine room. :smalltongue:

[Yora]

I would assume that the enterprise has at least basic firewalls.

But except for cloaking decives, electronic warfare never makes any appearance in star trek. And judging from their close combat and ground war capabilities, this probably means their are medieval.

[Soras Teva Gee]

At which point Edi switches the coordinates and the explosives end up in the Enterprise engine room. :smalltongue:

Hah hah lovely fan wank.

No seriously though does Edi actually hack anything? I'm not familar with the games but her wiki page (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/EDI) doesn't mention it as anything she does. Though it apparently exists in the universe as part of the games for certain classes or whatever it apparently can be blocked and I didn't read anything that would help me put it on the needed side of gameplay/story segregation. Then again as I said I've not played the games.

However reading you line of argument that "well Khan could do it" and inferring that it is your entire basis well it is rather silly. No not because Khan was a superman but without dragging out the episode it much more complex then simply saying he hacked the Enterprise. First off Khan had the help of a Lt McGivers (and stupid help from Kirk for access to the tech manuals) along with his own crew and above all... he was on the ship in the first place. So color me dubious on what exactly he hacked.

For this thread most importantly he had direct physical access to ship systems. It would not be unusual for even important systems to not be secured internally given that well the person at the controls is obviously supposed to be using them. Given the future wouldn't have the excuse the present does of predating when that would even be technologically possible, but there's still the design question of need. Stopping armed revolt on a starship is a much lower order problem then "accident" only the latter benefits immensely by not needing cumbersome security protocols to prevent whomever you have from acting as they need. The current Navy actually has a training program and books with the idea being any crewman can perform basic procedures on any system on the ship, for a starship shutting down life support to an area would be covered because you might need to in the event say of a hull breach in that area and O2 supply concerns. Which isn't to say it would be as easy as that sound.

But enough about Khan and the original Enterprise being dubious statements about hacking.

You see Khan was on the ship, Edi will not be. Hacking is not magical, you cannot simply press a button and do it. Any ME attempt to hack the Enterprise would be dealing with centuries of differences in computer development just to start. You know how Mac's don't get viruses designed for Windows, an order of magnitude beyond that. But far more importantly how do you get access? A wireless hacking device can't just hack say an old Game Boy there has to be a certain common level of equipment.

With some poking around I've found (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Codex/Technology) that coms in ME are laser signal based plus mass effect tunnels. Lasers as a weapon can't even get through the Enterprise's navigational shields that are up for mere space debris (seriously this came up in TNG and the bridge crew had a laugh about it) so you aren't going to be getting through for a subtle hack job. Presumably they could use radio and the Enterprise could detect and translate the signals (which would be how they'd talk if they ever did anyways) but this would be of course on the Enterprise's terms and just as blockable.

Given that we are talking about inevitably completely different data languages there is simply no way for one party to send a signal that would enable remote control and access. You can only do this sort of thing with an exploit to get a computer to recognize you as an admin and obey your orders, then you can go about say locking other out. Its really not that hard to prevent this with remote access. There's simply no way to do this between two entirely different basis of computers.

So there is no hacking. And if there is it is so much technobabble that Grandmasters Technobabblers Geordi and Data would be better at it anyways since they do it more often. Those two hacked the frakking Borg after-all.

[Xondoure]

I agree that it's impossible for humans. But see, Edi is an artificial intelligence. To quote Legion "We think at the speed of light." Her job is to relearn everything she has to in order to help the Normandy. And she does that against the collector ship once she has internal access. Now admittedly she needs internal access but see, this is Star Trek, so I'm assuming the Enterprise tries to negotiate first, and once the communication channel has been set up who is to say that wouldn't be enough for her to gain access to the Enterprise?

[Inyssius Tor]

so I'm assuming the Enterprise tries to negotiate first,

If they tried to negotiate, they would end up negotiating instead of fighting. Since we're trying to find out who would win in a fight, we kind of have to assume for our own purposes that they don't do that.

[Soras Teva Gee]

I agree that it's impossible for humans. But see, Edi is an artificial intelligence. To quote Legion "We think at the speed of light." Her job is to relearn everything she has to in order to help the Normandy. And she does that against the collector ship once she has internal access. Now admittedly she needs internal access but see, this is Star Trek, so I'm assuming the Enterprise tries to negotiate first, and once the communication channel has been set up who is to say that wouldn't be enough for her to gain access to the Enterprise?

I say it, because hacking is not magic its exploiting lapses on systems designed at one level or another to interface with one another.

But so then she doesn't have a displayed ability to hack I take it.

Well not that she'd be entirely unable (since hacking is rather subjective) however this isn't a problem like just having access, but having access and then translating hieroglyphics without the Rosseta Stone. And no having to guess its hieroglyphics out of every conceivable language. And doing so without being detected and simply cut off. Its not a matter of having capacity and being superhuman, the problems can't be brute forced so you effectively need magical Mary Sue character-like level insight in its ability to guess right in a practical time frame.

And that's simply to figure out a language for basic communication. Then whatever countermeasures that would be in place on top of anyways, we know for example the Enterprise uses biometric sensors on top of auditory passwords for restricted functions. While in the real world a would-be hacker could say research public releases over the long term to find out that information, Edi is out of luck. She'd not simply have to fake say an auditory command in Picard's voice and his audible password, but guess that she had to fake it. Nevermind it would actually be normal for Picard to not have full access to say the computer's admin features. He doesn't need it when he can just go and order his admin. This is a normal setup today. Fat chance of faking a voice you haven't heard, since this guy is probably not going to be involved.

And all this has assumes the coms established is not say simply an analog radio signal for audio only.

Is it absolutely impossible to hack the Enterprise? No not entirely, but it will take time. More then the Normandy has. Because you can't battle-hack entirely foreign computer systems you don't know the basis of. Even with perfect knowledge of an external system and a cheat sheet of passwords its inherently limited by the nature of computing and engineering. A ship in particular just has to use a manual power shut down of appropriate systems to stop any possible intrusion that happens.

Ultimately the opening scenario is Q making sure this starts as a fight, so communication attempts will be minimal. I think it an interesting question whether there could be talk at all. It would not be unrealistic for a military vessel to only include com methods it uses, so it might simply have its laser based coms and no way to receive or transmit anything else.

[SDF]

EDI explains herself (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDOUB2rU7t8&feature=related)

Translating code becomes less of a problem the closer you go to machine level. If EDI can work in binary or hexadecimal it shouldn't matter how built up the Enterprise OS is. Plus there should be a lot of analogous systems as both works are science fiction based off of a contemporary extrapolation of human technology.

[Soras Teva Gee]

EDI explains herself (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDOUB2rU7t8&feature=related)

Translating code becomes less of a problem the closer you go to machine level. If EDI can work in binary or hexadecimal it shouldn't matter how built up the Enterprise OS is. Plus there should be a lot of analogous systems as both works are science fiction based off of a contemporary extrapolation of human technology.

Well that's a lot more explicit then the wiki, so thanks for clearing it up for me.

A couple of details tell me that this only resolves her basic capacity. One critical wording I found.... internal wireless network. We've no real evidence Trek uses one. And there aren't many advantages to using wireless on a ship since its strictly speaking extra hardware and opens situations like this.

Also she's hacking Reapers using Reaper tech. This solves many of the problems with cross technology compatibility. And I'm reading now that the Reaper also have deliberately left tech for others to find for exactly this purpose so they will be able to use it.

Also given that commonality of tech... it means the Reapers don't have Trek style shields either and Trek shield certainly block EM radiation. Given that Edi talks about close range (how close I'd like to know) this suggests she is using methods not fundamentally unlike what we might use in electronic warfare today. So she's not going to be able to get through shields, or use her gear meaningfully.

Actually I'd imagine the navigational shields would be sufficient for the Enterprise, since they allow it to you know fly safely in space at all. Trek doesn't use EM frequencies, even those little combadges use subspace to bypass interference and say call ships in orbit. With that level of miniaturization there's no need to retain radio based systems at all so the shields shouldn't be letting it through as well there's a LOT of EM radiation in space. And directing something through them would be well, noticeable.

[Avilan the Grey]

I find this thread interesting, but I have always assumed that ship-to-ship, ST wins. Even ToS.

However I am more interesting in the other aspects... I would love to see a Klingon force curb-stomped by a Krogan batallion for example.

As for ground forces, the "blasters" might be more powerful than the mass effect physical ammo guns ME uses, BUT you see no evidence of that in the actual show. Even the heavy duty rifles you sometimes see them using cause much less damage than the guns in ME does.

Also, remember that a soldier in ST has no barriers and no shields, and no Biotics either. A heavy armored ME soldier (almost regardless of species) has both heavy armor and Shields, and quite possible Biotic Barriers too.

I also have to wonder about the "has no shields" statements above... one of the things you are upgrading in the game IS the shields.

[Don Julio Anejo]

Hacking issue has already been addressed. I will only add one thing to it: imagine a smartphone. Iphone, Galaxy S2, Blackberry, doesn't matter. Is it a computer? Yes. Is it hackable (in theory)? Yes. Is it hackable by someone *calling* you over an actual phone line? No. Communication systems are generally separated from low-level software.

Not to say a smartphone isn't hackable by, say, someone connected to the same wi-fi, but the entire point of connecting a phone to wi-fi is to open it up for lower-level communication (which already has well-established protocols and hardware, as explained by Soras Teva Gee). Is it hackable with access to a physical phone? Yes, probably quite easily. Most of the time it's not even hacking per se, it's using built-in features to your ends or passing yourself off as an authorized user ("Computer, shut down life support on deck 8, authorization code Picard-alpha-alpha-3-0-5").

But in general, a military, even one as stupid as Starfleet, isn't dumb enough to let someone interface with a barely secured internal network. Comm links would be kept separate from internal networks for this very reason when they're not jury rigged entirely.

Also, in Mass Effect it's quite established that *kinetic* barriers (aka "shields") are precisely that. They do not block out energy weapons in any meaningful way. And ME energy weapons, whenever they do exist, are considered quite weak when compared to any of their mass driver weapons.

[Fan]

Hacking issue has already been addressed. I will only add one thing to it: imagine a smartphone. Iphone, Galaxy S2, Blackberry, doesn't matter. Is it a computer? Yes. Is it hackable (in theory)? Yes. Is it hackable by someone *calling* you over an actual phone line? No. Communication systems are generally separated from low-level software.

Not to say a smartphone isn't hackable by, say, someone connected to the same wi-fi, but the entire point of connecting a phone to wi-fi is to open it up for lower-level communication (which already has well-established protocols and hardware, as explained by Soras Teva Gee). Is it hackable with access to a physical phone? Yes, probably quite easily. Most of the time it's not even hacking per se, it's using built-in features to your ends or passing yourself off as an authorized user ("Computer, shut down life support on deck 8, authorization code Picard-alpha-alpha-3-0-5").

But in general, a military, even one as stupid as Starfleet, isn't dumb enough to let someone interface with a barely secured internal network. Comm links would be kept separate from internal networks for this very reason when they're not jury rigged entirely.

Also, in Mass Effect it's quite established that *kinetic* barriers (aka "shields") are precisely that. They do not block out energy weapons in any meaningful way. And ME energy weapons, whenever they do exist, are considered quite weak when compared to any of their mass driver weapons.

Kinetic Barriers are different as far as I remember, pretty sure the biotic barriers at very least stop it because the Geth Plasma Shotgun seemed to get stopped by my shields just fine, same with the collector rifle which is actually a directed energy weapon.

[Don Julio Anejo]

Biotic barriers, yes, but you can't put them around a ship, which is the point I was addressing.

[Seppl]

A couple of details tell me that this only resolves her basic capacity. One critical wording I found.... internal wireless network. We've no real evidence Trek uses one. And there aren't many advantages to using wireless on a ship since its strictly speaking extra hardware and opens situations like this.


The combadges are the archetype of a wireless network. I do not know the tech behind it but it is probably subspace communication - no chance for EDI to even detect it unless the Reaper tech uses subspace signals.



I also have to wonder about the "has no shields" statements above... one of the things you are upgrading in the game IS the shields. ME shields ("kinetic barriers") protect against physical impact. The Normandy can take the collisions with the debris at the end of the game (if you upgraded the shields) but the laser weapons of those floating eyeballs punch right through. You need to upgrade the ships armor to stop these.

[grolim]

I know nothing about ME, but at what range to they engage? ST engages at some fairly long ranges and it is entirely possible the Normandy is taken out by torps before they even get close enough to do anything. And what is their engagement speed? Can they effectively fight something flying at 25% of LS?

[Liffguard]

I know nothing about ME, but at what range to they engage? ST engages at some fairly long ranges and it is entirely possible the Normandy is taken out by torps before they even get close enough to do anything. And what is their engagement speed? Can they effectively fight something flying at 25% of LS?

Normandy itself would normally engage at a few thousand kilometers. Bigger ME ships engage at a few tens of thousands of kilometers. Speeds are much lower than ST. We know that a dreadnought's main weapon can accelerate a 20kg slug to 1.3% of c. It seems unlikely that ships would be regularly accelerating up to that level unless they were specifically making an FTL jump.

One possible advantage ME ships might have over ST ships would be FTL speed. Normandy can cruise at 12 lightyears a day, whereas IIRC Voyager could normally do 4.5 (don't know what Enterprise would do).

[Ravens_cry]

Star Trek ranges, at least on television, tend to be quite short actually, at least for space. Any distance where you can see the other spaceship without a telescope as more than a dot, and potentially then, is "quite short" for space mind you.
However, the Enterprise has a lot manoeuvrability and can move extremely fast, even Einsteinian space. Bring on tricks like the Picard manoeuvre, and things get really screwy. An AI in Mass Effect may be able to "think at the speed of light", which sounds more like a boast than any actual useful information as electronic impulses in an ordinary nowadays computer run pretty close to the speed of light, yet the time it takes for a computation to take place vary on a number of factors that have little to do with the speed of said impulses.
Not to mention I have read at least a few references that, at least the main computers, basically run in low grade subspace field, allowing them to run faster than light.
The Normandy's biggest undoing is it tries to stick within Known Physics+, physics with additions, while Star Trek is more often Magic-, magic unless explained.

[Soras Teva Gee]

Kinetic Barriers are different as far as I remember, pretty sure the biotic barriers at very least stop it because the Geth Plasma Shotgun seemed to get stopped by my shields just fine, same with the collector rifle which is actually a directed energy weapon.

Technically a plasma weapon is not ostensibly an energy weapon either, being a state of matter and all.



One possible advantage ME ships might have over ST ships would be FTL speed. Normandy can cruise at 12 lightyears a day, whereas IIRC Voyager could normally do 4.5 (don't know what Enterprise would do).

God above help me its been a long time since I've done math like this but that parameter works out to:

12 * 9.46 × 10^15 (meters)
/
86400 (seconds)

then dividing out lightspeed and assuming I punched this all in right gives us:

4379.63(c)

For a comparison point Voyager in the pilot is stated that it would at "maximum speeds" need 75 years to cross 70,000 lightyears which was equated to travelling at warp 9.6 or 933(c) in the technical thinking. Note this isn't the real top speed, for short periods Federation ships can push even higher. While there's an equation for warp factor it apparently only applies below warp 9 and Trek being Trek the writers didn't always follow any particular rule so calculating would be dubious. (Also Voyager is faster then the Enterprise D for more complications)

So what say 9.9x might be I don't even want to try or how the scale would work out. I would say loosely that a Federation vessel should be able to match the Normandy's stated speed, but not cruise at it sustainably for an entire day. However given warp drives don't need an external discharge discharge a true voyage favors the Federation.

Also at least on the low end Federation ships are ridiculously maneuverable. Picard can famously flash-step a starship, a ridiculous feat of FTL maneuverability. Which incidentally might be tried, since looking indicates the Normandy doesn't have FTL sensors.

Of course I don't think this will turn into a running fight since the Enterprise can just disable/destroy the Normandy by beaming explosives anywhere on board they please.

[Siosilvar]

Kinetic Barriers are different as far as I remember, pretty sure the biotic barriers at very least stop it because the Geth Plasma Shotgun seemed to get stopped by my shields just fine, same with the collector rifle which is actually a directed energy weapon.

That's just gameplay. As Seppl points out, even the upgraded shields are just ignored by the Oculus eye-lasers near the end of the game. Since phasers are DEWs, it's pretty easy to imagine what will happen.

As for primary weapons on both:
The kinetic barriers might be effective against photon torpedoes, because those actually are physical objects. The Normandy has some point defense as well - might it be able to shoot down a few torpedoes? I don't think the range of the GARDIAN lasers is ever stated, but if it's bigger than the radius of a photon torpedo explosion, the Normandy is safe from at least a few.

The Thanix Cannon is basically a giant particle beam; Star Trek's shields are effective against both energy and matter, so they have the advantage in defense.

Since the Normandy uses antimatter engines when it's not stealth-ing, can we assume that disruptor torpedoes are more effective than antimatter ones? I can't recall if Star Trek ever had point defense outside of the 2009 movie. I'm not sure it's relevant, though, because the Normandy would get torn to shreds by phasers before getting in range.

tl;dr: The two ships might be able to hurt each other with torpedoes, but phasers will tear the Normandy apart while the Thanix cannon won't do much to the Enterprise.

[Ravens_cry]

Photon torpedo may be physical objects, but they operate, not by hitting the object like an bullet, but like an explosive shell. Of course, at those speeds, the energies are surprisingly comparable, Sir Isaac Newton is indeed the deadliest <expletive redacted/> in (Mass Effect) space, but basically they are antimatter missiles (http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Photon_torpedo). Quantum torpedoes are apparently more deadly.
But think about this, the navigational deflector (http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Deflector) when the Enterprise is travelling at impulse has to deal with interplanetary dust, the difference in speed is enough to make meteorites to be at least as energetic impactors as the percentage of light speed projectiles of Mass Effect, if not far, far more so. And these are the most basic shields, they do little or nothing to stop actual weapons of the setting.
Sir Isaac Newton ain't the deadliest <expletetive redacted/> in Federation space.

[Siosilvar]

Photon torpedoes are antimatter, yes. The Normandy uses antiproton engines for sublight, but torpedoes in the setting use mass effect tech instead of antimatter, which implies one of three things:

1) Disruptor torpedoes are more effective than antimatter ones would be,
2) Disruptor torpedoes are cheaper than antimatter ones, or
3) Mass Effect doesn't have the tech level to produce reliable antimatter torpedoes. Given that the Normandy uses an antimatter engine, I'd think that the containment or generation they use could easily be adapted to a torpedo.

Either way, it doesn't matter if Star Trek's torpedoes are more effective (and they probably are) if the Normandy's point defense outranges their effective radius. Likewise, the Normandy's torpedoes are useless if their operative range is less than the distance between Star Trek's shields and their ships.

ME's codex gives viable ranges for GARDIAN lasers (as anti-ship weapons) and launching torpedoes at "10 or fewer kilometers". 15km is the minimum range for a photon torpedo. Assuming the Federation gave quite a bit of leeway for the torpedo (don't want the enemy closing the gap and detonating the torpedo on top of you) and that the GARDIAN system is effective against photon torpedoes at a longer range than 10km*, there is a bit of space where the Normandy could shoot down the torpedoes without them going off by proximity.

As for navigational deflectors... kinetic barriers have to be at least that effective, because otherwise they'd get torn apart by debris when going FTL. Still, ST's shields are relevant, whereas barriers are completely ignored by phasers and the explosion of a photon torpedo.

*I figure it's easier to breach containment and pre-detonate a photon torpedo than it is to "boil away warship armor" in any noticable capacity.

[Ravens_cry]

Anti protons are within our capabilities. Containing large quantities is another matter, but reading the wiki leads to me to believe that while both Enterprise and the Normandy both use antimatter, the Normandy is much more conservative with it, after all it says anti-protons, not whole atoms of Anti-deuterium and it's production is much more expensive,been produced (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Codex/Ships_and_Vehicles#Starships:_Thrusters)"one particle at a time".
To put things in perspective, modern PET scanners use antimatter, that doesn't mean the energies are good enough for starship engines.

[Flickerdart]

Hacking issue has already been addressed. I will only add one thing to it: imagine a smartphone. Iphone, Galaxy S2, Blackberry, doesn't matter. Is it a computer? Yes. Is it hackable (in theory)? Yes. Is it hackable by someone *calling* you over an actual phone line? No. Communication systems are generally separated from low-level software.
They don't even need to call (http://phandroid.com/2011/12/27/hacker-finds-major-securtiy-flaw-in-gsm-networks-all-phones-vulnerable/).

[Anteros]

Everybody in this thread has over looked something. By checking this (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Normandy_SR-2) I'm noting that the Normandy has Kinetic Barriers for material weapons and Ablative Armor for energy weapons. Meaning its "shields" do not block energy. Sure their armor sound reasonably impressive but there's something more important here.

Unless the Normandy can get a total drop on the Enterprise and kill it with shields down.... here's how this goes:

Data: Captain, my sensors indicate that the hostile ship utilizes a mass distortion field but has no shields as we know them.
Riker: Mr. Data does that mean there is nothing to stop us from beaming anything aboard that ship?
Data: Yes sir that is the case.
Riker: Captain negoiations have failed, I suggest we beam explosives directly into their engines.
Picard: I concurr, make it so number one!

*Boom* [/fight]

They block energy. I don't know about the codex entries, but in the game your shields block energy beams, fire, etc. I can't imagine that they're putting less advanced shields on their most advanced ships than they are on their basic commandos.

[Siosilvar]

They block energy. I don't know about the codex entries, but in the game your shields block energy beams, fire, etc. I can't imagine that they're putting less advanced shields on their most advanced ships than they are on their basic commandos.

In-game mechanics aren't the same as in-universe mechanics. For starters, the game has to be balanced.

Watch the cutscene outside of the Collector base again. The lasers completely ignore any shielding the Normandy might have, which fits the description of kinetic barriers as deflecting mass only.

Codex entry for kinetic barriers:

Kinetic barriers, colloquially called "shields", provide protection against most mass accelerator weapons. Whether on a starship or a soldier's suit of armor, the basic principle remains the same.

Kinetic barriers are repulsive mass effect fields projected from tiny emitters. These shields safely deflect small objects traveling at rapid velocities. This affords protection from bullets and other dangerous projectiles, but still allows the user to sit down without knocking away their chair.

The shielding afforded by kinetic barriers does not protect against extremes of temperature, toxins, or radiation.

Body armor (two-thirds of the entry, anyway):

Modern combat hard-suits have a "triple canopy" of protection: shields, armor, and self-repair. The outermost layer is created through kinetic barrier emitters, which detect objects incoming at a high rate of speed and generate deflecting "shields" provided they have enough energy in their power cells.

If a bullet or other incoming object gets past the barrier, it contends with the more traditional body armor. A sealed suit of non-porous ballistic cloth provides kinetic and environmental protection, reinforced by lightweight composite ceramic plates in areas that either don't need to flex or require additional coverage, such as the chest and head. When the armor is hit by directed energy weapons, the plates boil away or ablate rather than burning the wearer.

[Soras Teva Gee]

They block energy. I don't know about the codex entries, but in the game your shields block energy beams, fire, etc. I can't imagine that they're putting less advanced shields on their most advanced ships than they are on their basic commandos.

And yet they say they don't (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Shields#Kinetic_Barriers_.28.22Shields.22.29). So the infantry level weapons are either not energy weapons (for example plasma and particle weapons are not) or they simply don't have a programmed "ignore shields entirely" code. In this case I can cite countless examples of gameplay/story segregation. And story wins.

[Ravens_cry]

Eh, for most purposes, plasma weapons and particle weapons count as DEW (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon). They sure aren't kinetic projectiles, at least on the macroscale.

[Liffguard]

Eh, for most purposes, plasma weapons and particle weapons count as DEW (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon). They sure aren't kinetic projectiles, at least on the macroscale.

Yeah, but they're physical matter with mass, as opposed to photons or suchlike, and are thus affected by mass effect fields.

[Ravens_cry]

Yeah, but they're physical matter with mass, as opposed to photons or suchlike, and are thus affected by mass effect fields.

At those masses, we have a whole system for dealing with interactions at that scale that doesn't mention the effect of gravity at all.
Is there a canon statement that says it works on that or is this supposition?

[Marnath]

Even if the Normandy's kinetic barrier is effective against a proton torpedo, I still have trouble believing it would survive more than two of them before failing.

As far as EDI is concerned, I agree that she wouldn't stand a chance against the Enterprise firewalls or whatever they have. Even if she did, they have Data. He can perform 60 trillion operations a second. I seriously doubt EDI can match that.

[Eldan]

Mass Effect doesn't seem to use DEWs at all, as far as I've seen. Sure, the weapons glow, but they are all mentioned to be either gravity disruption weapons or, more often, very efficient accelerators.

Good point, actually: what would a gravity torpedo do to the Enterprise?

[AgentofOdd]

As far as EDI is concerned, I agree that she wouldn't stand a chance against the Enterprise firewalls or whatever they have. Even if she did, they have Data. He can perform 60 trillion operations a second. I seriously doubt EDI can match that.It does seem like Data is a superior AI compared to EDI. In First Contact for example he managed to lock out the Borg (guess you could call them the Reapers of Star Trek) from their computers, and they had physical access to the Enterprise.

[blackjack217]

Ground: Massive win for ME crew. I suspect that Worf would go up against Grunt which would end with Worf sobbing on the ground after Grunt told him how ludicrously impractical his sword thingy is. (I swear I have never seen a more stupid sword design)
Space: It would depend on how the various shielding technologies dealt with the different threat parameters. And the Normandy is stealth-ed against active sensors as well, although they are almost never used for long range detection due to lightspeed lags. As for Trek sensors it matters what they actually detect, if for example they detect power cores or subspace radiation then...

[Anteros]

And yet they say they don't (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Shields#Kinetic_Barriers_.28.22Shields.22.29). So the infantry level weapons are either not energy weapons (for example plasma and particle weapons are not) or they simply don't have a programmed "ignore shields entirely" code. In this case I can cite countless examples of gameplay/story segregation. And story wins.

Is fire a form of kinetic energy now? Also, what about biotic barriers?

If you want to randomly ignore things that actually happen in the mass effect series in order to support your arguments there's not really much point to the debate. I would argue the reverse is true anyway. The things that actually happen are what you should base your expectations on...instead of something some random pencil pusher made up in his spare time that directly contradicts what actually happens on screen.

For example, I don't care how often you tell me that the Enterprise's computers can't be hacked or that Data would be able to stop it. In practicality the darn things get hacked constantly.

[SoC175]

I don't see why the Enterprise has such a massive advantage. ME ships and their kinetic barriers are designed to be able to block railguns as well as torpedos. Powerful ME battle ships have powerful devices like these, the Normandy is of the lowest class of ME capital ships, it's barriers are weaker. The frigate class to which the Normandy belongs is supposed to take on the real working horses among ME-universe battle ships in swarms to have a chance.

Now if it were a ME cruiser (IIRC there is a backstory somewhere in ME of a single cruiser taking out 20 frigates) vs. the Enterprise things would be different, but the Normandy is not supposed to be taking on enemy capital ships.

If we assume that the power level of the two universes is equal, then the Normandy is outclassed. If not it means that ME universe is just vastly more powerful, being able to take out the Enterprise without even trying (since they are sending a ship that is considered weak by their own standards)

[Xondoure]

Powerful ME battle ships have powerful devices like these, the Normandy is of the lowest class of ME capital ships, it's barriers are weaker. The frigate class to which the Normandy belongs is supposed to take on the real working horses among ME-universe battle ships in swarms to have a chance.

Now if it were a ME cruiser (IIRC there is a backstory somewhere in ME of a single cruiser taking out 20 frigates) vs. the Enterprise things would be different, but the Normandy is not supposed to be taking on enemy capital ships.

If we assume that the power level of the two universes is equal, then the Normandy is outclassed. If not it means that ME universe is just vastly more powerful, being able to take out the Enterprise without even trying (since they are sending a ship that is considered weak by their own standards)

The Normandy is special, and what she can do is far beyond any other Frigate. She's fast, has the best damned pilot in the galaxy, and her job is to get her team in and out of any scenario they end up in. The question isn't could the Normandy blow up the enterprise, but could the Normandy get Shepard inside of it.

[KingofMadCows]

The power levels of the two universes are not equal. Trek has much more powerful weapons and shields.

The explosive yield of a photon torpedo is 3,000 times more powerful than the kinetic energy of a Dreadnought mass driver.

[SDF]

The Normandy has a point missile defense system. So we can just ignore photon torpedoes.

[GloatingSwine]

Even given that the Enterprise-D's warp core tends to explode if you breathe on it hard, Mass Effect is a low power 'verse where weapons delivering kiloton range energies are considered devastating, and to which photon torpedoes would be devastating.

[grolim]

Not so sure, torpedoes CAN be fired at warp and fly at warp.

Not sure exactly how fast they travel, phasers are fast and good at tracking and in ST they don't get shot down often. And for ST point defense, phasers can fire VERY rapidly against unshielded targets like incoming projectiles and blasted away. In the ep where Enterprise was taken over and everyone forgot who they were it blew away, I think, 10 or 12 incoming unmanned drones in a single volley and didn't slow down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=TlobZcUJ9lg#t=16s

[Lamech]

Ground: Massive win for ME crew. I suspect that Worf would go up against Grunt which would end with Worf sobbing on the ground after Grunt told him how ludicrously impractical his sword thingy is. (I swear I have never seen a more stupid sword design)
Space: It would depend on how the various shielding technologies dealt with the different threat parameters. And the Normandy is stealth-ed against active sensors as well, although they are almost never used for long range detection due to lightspeed lags. As for Trek sensors it matters what they actually detect, if for example they detect power cores or subspace radiation then...

Trek scanners can detect DNA. Normandy stealth isn't gonna cut it.

[Fan]

Trek scanners can detect DNA. Normandy stealth isn't gonna cut it.

Detecting DNA isn't very special..

Just saying.

[Yora]

Detecting DNA from space through hundreds of meters of rock is.

[Seppl]

As far as EDI is concerned, I agree that she wouldn't stand a chance against the Enterprise firewalls or whatever they have. Even if she did, they have Data. He can perform 60 trillion operations a second. I seriously doubt EDI can match that.
Actually that's pretty tame, even by todays standards. Every better university campus has this kind of computing power. Supercomputers are waaaaayyyyy faster. You could put this in your basement if you are willing to spend a few Million Dollars. Add a few more Ten Million Dollar and you can add harddrives that match Data's storage capacity (100 PB). Even as a Multi-Millionaire you would probably need a larger basement, though:smallsmile:.

Later, Trek writers realized that they should not use real world units and started using words like "Quads". But this still leaves Data at the level of a good home PC in the Mass Effect universe, because TV-writers don't understand exponential growth.

[Soras Teva Gee]

At those masses, we have a whole system for dealing with interactions at that scale that doesn't mention the effect of gravity at all.
Is there a canon statement that says it works on that or is this supposition?

Actually gravity effects everything including energy. Cross reference black holes for example. However you generally do not need to apply gravity because its effects are small. But anyways it seems the mass effect should not be confused with gravity. Gravity can be toyed with as a side effect not a primary one.

Backtracking a touch, highly energized matter is still matter. It should still have mass and a velocity less then 3 x 10^8 m/s. So something that can toy with the mass of matter should at least in theory still be able to effect it. In practice something on the order of particle canon should probably tear right through anyways from extraordinary energy compared to minimal mass which seems consistent with say the Normandy getting totally jacked up by one.

This is different then say stopping radio transmissions.

And again remember this is all aside from gameplay convenience being separated from reality. Ultimately we have statements that kinetic barrier do not stop energy weapons, a difference in that at the infantry level in-game doesn't matter any more then say... HP in-game (any game) means a character can be shot repeatedly and not die.


Is fire a form of kinetic energy now? Also, what about biotic barriers?

If you want to randomly ignore things that actually happen in the mass effect series in order to support your arguments there's not really much point to the debate. I would argue the reverse is true anyway. The things that actually happen are what you should base your expectations on...instead of something some random pencil pusher made up in his spare time that directly contradicts what actually happens on screen.

For example, I don't care how often you tell me that the Enterprise's computers can't be hacked or that Data would be able to stop it. In practicality the darn things get hacked constantly.

Fire is the the combination of sufficient fuel, heat, oxygen, and a proper chemical chain reaction. Flames are actually a glowing hot gas, so fire as such is more a illusionary substance. Put simply you don't ever attack someone with fire you generally lob a burning fuel source at them.

Biotics are organic based mass effects so they should be no different then the technological version. Do you have a reason why

And you seem to want to ignore the universes own material to support your own desperate attempt to cover a critical flaw that prevents this from even being a shootout. Yes right. Mind of course this is hardly some back-sided arse covering like Star Trek fanwanks out in say its novels, but clearly exists as the very fabric of the ME universe to give it a delicious edge of realism.

Obviously everyone would like the more well thought out universe to win to reward sci-fi creators for putting actual thought beyond narrative convenience into things, but against Trek magical technology its simply a mismatch and if it happened the Enterprise would win at every level.

(edit: Forgot hacking. Hacking is generally fairly simple to stop. What keeps it going is that people are dumb so over time a dedicated hacker can slip through cracks. Its not something that can be done without preparation like researching the system you are operating against)


Ground: Massive win for ME crew. I suspect that Worf would go up against Grunt which would end with Worf sobbing on the ground after Grunt told him how ludicrously impractical his sword thingy is. (I swear I have never seen a more stupid sword design)
Space: It would depend on how the various shielding technologies dealt with the different threat parameters. And the Normandy is stealth-ed against active sensors as well, although they are almost never used for long range detection due to lightspeed lags. As for Trek sensors it matters what they actually detect, if for example they detect power cores or subspace radiation then...

As is normal for Trek pretty much everyone agrees that they would loose a personnel level fight. Kirk's double fist punch is the height of martial ability in Trek because it only goes down hill from there.

Moving on to space Normandy's revolutionary stealth system is... a heat sink. So everything else must still be stuff we already know, like radar since the Normandy is still you know visible. Trek scanners are the original Everything Sensor they aren't going to be put off by that. And they are FTL scanners to boot.

[Ravens_cry]

The Normandy has a point missile defense system. So we can just ignore photon torpedoes.

They are warp capable (http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Photon_torpedo). I doubt the point defences would help much.

[Siosilvar]

Mass Effect doesn't seem to use DEWs at all, as far as I've seen. Sure, the weapons glow, but they are all mentioned to be either gravity disruption weapons or, more often, very efficient accelerators.

The only DEWs that appear in-game are the Collector Assassin particle beams and the Oculus eye-lasers. I'm not sure about the comics/books/whatever else there is.

EDIT:
If you want to randomly ignore things that actually happen in the mass effect series in order to support your arguments there's not really much point to the debate. I would argue the reverse is true anyway. The things that actually happen are what you should base your expectations on...instead of something some random pencil pusher made up in his spare time that directly contradicts what actually happens on screen.

In-game I can shoot unarmored things in the head (with... a surprising number of the guns) and have them not die, which is a little surprising, given that ME's guns are more effective than today's. Oh, and I can change the difficulty setting around. Normandy turns difficulty down to Casual, destroys Enterprise with two torpedoes, turns difficulty back up to Insanity.

[KingofMadCows]

The Normandy has a point missile defense system. So we can just ignore photon torpedoes.

Even if the point defense system works, the maximum power output of the Enterprise's phasers is at least 100 terawatts. That's equivalent to a 23.9 kiloton nuclear bomb every second.

[Ravens_cry]

In-game I can shoot unarmored things in the head (with... a surprising number of the guns) and have them not die, which is a little surprising, given that ME's guns are more effective than today's. Oh, and I can change the difficulty setting around. Normandy turns difficulty down to Casual, destroys Enterprise with two torpedoes, turns difficulty back up to Insanity.
That's jutht plain old silly!:smalltongue:

[Fan]

Even if the point defense system works, the maximum power output of the Enterprise's phasers is at least 100 terawatts. That's equivalent to a 23.9 kiloton nuclear bomb every second.

Which is less than a broadside from an ME dreadnought's 26 guns that fire at 5 megatons every 2 seconds.

The mass Driver in a dreadnought also delivers a 20 kilometer slug at 1.3% the speed of light delivering an impact of 38 kilotons of TnT, a full order of magnitude above a standard phaser attack.

However, this is irrelevant, due to this being the Normandy that brings these weapons to bear. (Although as far as I understand, the Thanix Cannon is similar in power.)

[Anteros]

Actually gravity effects everything including energy. Cross reference black holes for example. However you generally do not need to apply gravity because its effects are small. But anyways it seems the mass effect should not be confused with gravity. Gravity can be toyed with as a side effect not a primary one.

Backtracking a touch, highly energized matter is still matter. It should still have mass and a velocity less then 3 x 10^8 m/s. So something that can toy with the mass of matter should at least in theory still be able to effect it. In practice something on the order of particle canon should probably tear right through anyways from extraordinary energy compared to minimal mass which seems consistent with say the Normandy getting totally jacked up by one.

This is different then say stopping radio transmissions.

And again remember this is all aside from gameplay convenience being separated from reality. Ultimately we have statements that kinetic barrier do not stop energy weapons, a difference in that at the infantry level in-game doesn't matter any more then say... HP in-game (any game) means a character can be shot repeatedly and not die.



Fire is the the combination of sufficient fuel, heat, oxygen, and a proper chemical chain reaction. Flames are actually a glowing hot gas, so fire as such is more a illusionary substance. Put simply you don't ever attack someone with fire you generally lob a burning fuel source at them.

Biotics are organic based mass effects so they should be no different then the technological version. Do you have a reason why

And you seem to want to ignore the universes own material to support your own desperate attempt to cover a critical flaw that prevents this from even being a shootout. Yes right. Mind of course this is hardly some back-sided arse covering like Star Trek fanwanks out in say its novels, but clearly exists as the very fabric of the ME universe to give it a delicious edge of realism.

Obviously everyone would like the more well thought out universe to win to reward sci-fi creators for putting actual thought beyond narrative convenience into things, but against Trek magical technology its simply a mismatch and if it happened the Enterprise would win at every level.

(edit: Forgot hacking. Hacking is generally fairly simple to stop. What keeps it going is that people are dumb so over time a dedicated hacker can slip through cracks. Its not something that can be done without preparation like researching the system you are operating against)



As is normal for Trek pretty much everyone agrees that they would loose a personnel level fight. Kirk's double fist punch is the height of martial ability in Trek because it only goes down hill from there.

Moving on to space Normandy's revolutionary stealth system is... a heat sink. So everything else must still be stuff we already know, like radar since the Normandy is still you know visible. Trek scanners are the original Everything Sensor they aren't going to be put off by that. And they are FTL scanners to boot.

Heat then if you prefer. Obviously heat is not kinetic. Thus the shields are shown to stop the transfer of energy.


The only DEWs that appear in-game are the Collector Assassin particle beams and the Oculus eye-lasers. I'm not sure about the comics/books/whatever else there is.

EDIT:

In-game I can shoot unarmored things in the head (with... a surprising number of the guns) and have them not die, which is a little surprising, given that ME's guns are more effective than today's. Oh, and I can change the difficulty setting around. Normandy turns difficulty down to Casual, destroys Enterprise with two torpedoes, turns difficulty back up to Insanity.

That's true, but some things are internally consistent across all difficulty levels.

[Siosilvar]

Which is less than a broadside from an ME dreadnought's 26 guns that fire at 5 megatons every 2 seconds.

The mass Driver in a dreadnought also delivers a 20 kilometer slug at 1.3% the speed of light delivering an impact of 38 kilotons of TnT, a full order of magnitude above a standard phaser attack.

38 kT is not an order of magnitude above 23.9 kT.

Not to mention that each gun in that broadside would have to be bigger than the main gun to get a total output of 5 MT, even if you use the full complement of 78 guns.

[Aotrs Commander]

Which is less than a broadside from an ME dreadnought's 23 guns that fire at 5 megatons every 2 seconds.

The mass Driver in a dreadnought also delivers a 20 kilometer slug at 1.3% the speed of light delivering an impact of 38 kilotons of TnT, a full order of magnitude above a standard phaser attack.

1.3%? That's... really slow. I mean, like under 4000km/s slow. Considering the Enterprise's (designated) cruising speed at impulse is 25% c, and it can reach higher speeds than that (the technical manual refers to 0.75c as "high-speed" requiring additional power, and at that point there's relativistic effects, and something else I read suggested 0.98 being emergancy speed (though that may not be from an official source).)

And if that's all they can throw railgun slugs at, the vessel sublight speed must, perforce be lower; probably a fair bit lower.

That sounds awfully low; that's not a typo is it?

If that's right, then it means Enterprise could just turn around and run away from anything Normandy (let alone a ME dreadnought) could fire at it. Meaning, at the very least, Normandy would have to get very close to be able to land a hit, which is might well struggle to do if it's that much slower than Enterprise.

Also, while looking it up, it appears Mass Effect dreadnoughts appear to have an extreme range of only tens of thousands of kilometres (to say nothing of Normandy's much lighter weapons, as railgun size is proportional to range, if what it says about cruiser and frigates only getting into the fight at merely thousands or less kilometres is ture). Enterprise's phasers have a maximum effective range of 300,000 kilometres, and photon torpedoes of 3,500,000 kilometres.

It's not a good sign when the enemy is an order of magnitude faster than you weapons and has between three and a hundred times your range...

Normandy would, then, if the above is all true, basically have to fight at FTL speeds... Which we have no evidence of whether it is possible. (Have we?) My guess is that with the known redshifts at FTL speeds, it might impair accuracy in the same way it does for say, the ships in the Lost Fleet series. But that is pure speculation, though we've not seen anything fighting at FTL in ME yet. However, fighting at FTL speeds may not be practical for other reasons, for example ME technology may not be up to the task of handling the (exponentially) increased g-forces of sharp manouvering at FTL speeds.

[Soras Teva Gee]

Which is less than a broadside from an ME dreadnought's 26 guns that fire at 5 megatons every 2 seconds.

The mass Driver in a dreadnought also delivers a 20 kilometer slug at 1.3% the speed of light delivering an impact of 38 kilotons of TnT, a full order of magnitude above a standard phaser attack.

However, this is irrelevant, due to this being the Normandy that brings these weapons to bear. (Although as far as I understand, the Thanix Cannon is similar in power.)

I'm curious where the 26 gun counts comes from I can find the main gun measures though. And there I would note that at 38 kT per 2 seconds versus 23.9 kT every 1 second puts the latter well ahead as a weapon. Also phasers and similar order weapons don't exactly take down shields in a single shot. So a dreadnaught is a better match for slugging it out with the Enterprise.

And dreadnaughts are really only countered with other dreadnaughts right so the much smaller Normandy....


Heat then if you prefer. Obviously heat is not kinetic. Thus the shields are shown to stop the transfer of energy.

And shields explicitly are no good against heat, that's for armor.

So where's the heat ray that's blocked by shields? Mind you a flamethrower or the like if I had to reconcile I would probably say that if its at all safe to generate then even a foot or so away would mean a lot in terms of heat. Probably enough to not register as "damage" under the abstraction of whatever the HP is.

Or again just gameplay simplification, how are shields and armor handled separately in a mechanical sense?


That's true, but some things are internally consistent across all difficulty levels.

So one bit of nonsense is not okay but the nonsense that supports your point is okay. Cherry picking is like that I do not find very compelling argument to disregard the story in favor of ill defined game mechanics.

[Fan]

38 kT is not an order of magnitude above 23.9 kT.

Not to mention that each gun in that broadside would have to be bigger than the main gun to get a total output of 5 MT, even if you use the full complement of 78 guns.

Well that's the thing about them, shields are brought down by a single large impact rather than multiple smaller impacts due to the ability of kinetic barriers being able to restore themselves and being established by multiple emitters all over the ship.

Though I am again, not arguing that the Enterprise would lose to the Normandy, just that it's well.. not as big a gap as the trekkies claim.

[Ravens_cry]

1.3% light speed? That's fast enough by modern day standards, down right impossible in fact, but when the whole other ship moves faster than your bullets, on impulse, you got some problems.

[Soras Teva Gee]

I'm just going to shake my head at a ship having maximum sub-light speed once fuel source concerns have been eliminated.

Seriously there are at least semi-serious ideas for a ship that could tour the galaxy using relativity to keep its crew alive.

[KingofMadCows]

Which is less than a broadside from an ME dreadnought's 26 guns that fire at 5 megatons every 2 seconds.

The mass Driver in a dreadnought also delivers a 20 kilometer slug at 1.3% the speed of light delivering an impact of 38 kilotons of TnT, a full order of magnitude above a standard phaser attack.

However, this is irrelevant, due to this being the Normandy that brings these weapons to bear. (Although as far as I understand, the Thanix Cannon is similar in power.)

A dreadnought's power lies in the length of its main gun. Dreadnoughts range from 800 meters to one kilometer long, with a main gun of commensurate length. An 800-meter mass accelerator is capable of accelerating one 20 kg. slug to a velocity of 4025 km/s every two seconds. Each slug has the kinetic energy of 38 kilotons of TNT, three times the energy released by the fission weapon that destroyed Hiroshima.

Notice how it says the Dreadnought's main gun can deliver a 20 kg slug at 1.3% the speed of light. A Dreadnought's broadside weapons are much smaller and less powerful.

The Enterprise D on the other hand has 12 phaser arrays, each with a huge arc of fire, and none of them waste as much space as a giant 800 meter long cannon.

[Ravens_cry]

I'm just going to shake my head at a ship having maximum sub-light speed once fuel source concerns have been eliminated.

Perhaps but irrelevant for this discussion.


Seriously there are at least semi-serious ideas for a ship that could tour the galaxy using relativity to keep its crew alive.
I've seen them, but, so far, they are theoretical at best. For example, a fusion rector that provides enough more power than it consumes to be remotely practical is still a dream.

[Soras Teva Gee]

Perhaps but irrelevant for this discussion.

I've seen them, but, so far, they are theoretical at best. For example, a fusion rector that provides enough more power than it consumes to be remotely practical is still a dream.

Yes but I take it as relevant for being a big grain of salt to take Trek speeds with. Though on that topic plumbing Memory Alpha's depths on impulse has the original Enterprise pull warp .5 (somewhere up to .5c) in the motion picture. While Voyager apparently pulled 60% but that's an inferred value apparently not stated directly. And apparently the relevant Enterprise's shuttles could pull .025c and we can infer the Ship could beat that if maybe not beat the smaller original Enterprise and Voyager. However I'm not sure I accept any of it, though I don't think it matters for this fight.

On the other topic, yeah stuff like the Bussard ramjet which is the most ambitous would be using fusion which we haven't worked out. I'm not sure off hand how much a nuke-pulse drive could do which is the most powerful we could actually construct.

[Ravens_cry]

Yes but I take it as relevant for being a big grain of salt to take Trek speeds with.
Why? Sure, it's arbitrary, but we're not dealing with reality here.
The problems with a Bussard Ramjet are legion unfortunately. One of the biggest problems is I believe it was worked out that any thrust one would get would be countered by the drag from the magnetic scoop against the interstellar medium.
So as promising as it may be, it may be a dead end. What might work is seeded Bussard Ramjet, basically using a mass driver to shoot gas in front of a rather smaller collector, but this would only work in system at best, it can't work in an area without the right infrastructure unless you do all your acceleration 'in system'.

[Siosilvar]

And shields explicitly are no good against heat, that's for armor.

So where's the heat ray that's blocked by shields? Mind you a flamethrower or the like if I had to reconcile I would probably say that if its at all safe to generate then even a foot or so away would mean a lot in terms of heat. Probably enough to not register as "damage" under the abstraction of whatever the HP is.

Or again just gameplay simplification, how are shields and armor handled separately in a mechanical sense?

Player doesn't have armor. On enemies, the only difference is what's effective against them; enemy shields don't regenerate like the player's do.
Assault rifles, SMGs, and most tech powers are good against shields, while sniper rifles, shotguns, pistols, and fire are good against armor.

As for the flamethrower... I've never used it against things with shields, but there is one in Mass Effect 2. It kills things rather quickly. Why would it not be enough to "register as 'damage'"? Flamethrowers exist IRL and are extremely effective at burning things (including people, but that's a war crime IIRC).
1Shields in ME2 block the particle beam, flamethrower, and even increased radiation from a dying star. Shields in the codex (for both games) explicitly don't block these things. Shields in ME1 properly don't block the hazards of temperature, toxins, or radiation, following codex. Two ways to read this:

1) ME2's shields are more advanced or include protection against these things, which may or may not include the player's armor, because Shepard doesn't have a separate armor bar, and squadmates' armor, barriers, and shields all work exactly the same way (Grunt's armor regenerates. :smallconfused:).
2) Somebody decided that the "ignore shields" code from ME1 was too much complexity for the verisimilitude gain. Given other simplifications between the two games, this wouldn't surprise me.

[Xondoure]

Actually fire is an interesting point, because in ME2 it works better against armor than shields. Which would imply that shield have an easier time with it than armor does.

[Soras Teva Gee]

Player doesn't have armor. On enemies, the only difference is what's effective against them; enemy shields don't regenerate like the player's do.
Assault rifles, SMGs, and most tech powers are good against shields, while sniper rifles, shotguns, pistols, and fire are good against armor.

The player not having armor explains it rather aptly to me, can't have the player be defenseless now can we.


As for the flamethrower... I've never used it against things with shields, but there is one in Mass Effect 2. It kills things rather quickly. Why would it not be enough to "register as 'damage'"? Flamethrowers exist IRL and are extremely effective at burning things (including people, but that's a war crime IIRC).

Consider you have a flame thrower, you are firing it. Now you the operator are maybe what a foot or two away from the flames. Obviously you aren't going to get a serious burn being that far away from the heat source or it wouldn't be safe for you to use in the first place.

Now if a shield stops the material fuel at least that far away that leaves only the radiant heat from the flames to effect them, the same level of heat that would backwash against the operator firing it. Ergo they wouldn't get burned or the operator would be getting burned worse firing it.

Basically your turning be covered in a burning material to merely be near a burning material.

Now there's plenty of grounds for variation, particularly in how far away from the body the shield operates and exactly how hot it is are and so forth. But generally speaking humans can operate in pretty close proximity to pretty high temperature material providing open airflow and the like without serious injury


1) ME2's shields are more advanced or include protection against these things, which may or may not include the player's armor, because Shepard doesn't have a separate armor bar, and squadmates' armor, barriers, and shields all work exactly the same way (Grunt's armor regenerates. :smallconfused:).
2) Somebody decided that the "ignore shields" code from ME1 was too much complexity for the verisimilitude gain. Given other simplifications between the two games, this wouldn't surprise me.

If there isn't a mechanic for handling armor and shields separately for Shepard then we have a solid answer in favor of coding simplicity.


Actually fire is an interesting point, because in ME2 it works better against armor than shields. Which would imply that shield have an easier time with it than armor does.

Given what I'm talking about above for a flamethrower that actually makes sense. Armor would have to survive direct and sustained contact and be effected. Since a shield doesn't stop heat it clearly doesn't interact with it meaningfully so it wouldn't be meaningfully hurt by it. If I can stop flaming napalm flung at me a foot away from me I've turned a direct hit into a miss, armor only comes into play on a direct hit. .

[Caewil]

If there isn't a mechanic for handling armor and shields separately for Shepard then we have a solid answer in favor of coding simplicity.
In ME1, armour had damage reduction and shields. In ME2, the benefits of different armour pieces were generally assigned as additional hit points instead.

[Brother Oni]

If I can stop flaming napalm flung at me a foot away from me I've turned a direct hit into a miss, armor only comes into play on a direct hit. .

Napalm and fire are one of those weapons where 'close enough' is still effective.

With regard to the flame thrower operator, the jet of burning material is going away from them. Being surrounded by it, even if you managed to actually stop it a foot away, is an entirely different proposition.

It's like the difference between having a 40C hand warmer in your pocket and being in 40C weather in the summer. One's virtually harmless while the other is distinctly uncomfortable.

[Siosilvar]

It occurs to me that there are a couple of fires in ME2; IIRC they're in Omega's quarantine zone. Would somebody with access to the game see if you can stand in them?

[Soras Teva Gee]

Napalm and fire are one of those weapons where 'close enough' is still effective.

With regard to the flame thrower operator, the jet of burning material is going away from them. Being surrounded by it, even if you managed to actually stop it a foot away, is an entirely different proposition.

Where you are wrong is that radiant heating is omnidirectional. Leaving conductive to be stopped by a shield and possibly convective in this sort of situation. Though that is something I'd rather not try to work out given any the description of the shield tech. I would totally stand by them actually being more effective against armor then shields though.

Though yeah being totally surrounded by fire simply generated from a flamethrower could rapidly become the extremes of temperature shields don't stop. So that sort of tactic should work, which is different though from the potshot approach normally taken by games.

We are afterall merely exploring where specifically gameplay and coding diverges from the ME verse reality. Like where something can be shot in the head and survive, clearly simple gameplay there. As HP can never be reconciled to reality. So where exactly the what one flamethrower weapon falls is all that's at issue.

Kinetic barriers are still well kinetic. Which means the Normandy is only on its armor against phasers, and completely open to being transported too. Of course the phasers would be like taking direct shots from ME Dreadnaughts main guns so pretty much any space level is a loss. And I don't think anyone is arguing that a personnel fight would go well for the Enterprise. So there we go.

[Trixie]

The power levels of the two universes are not equal. Trek has much more powerful weapons and shields.

The explosive yield of a photon torpedo is 3,000 times more powerful than the kinetic energy of a Dreadnought mass driver.

You're comparing guns to torpedoes. Compare them to phasers instead. Seeing Normandy's own torpedoes can easily penetrate Reaper-grade armour (ME 1 ending) saying ME universe main guns are substantially weaker is impossible.


Trek scanners can detect DNA. Normandy stealth isn't gonna cut it.

...It's like saying that, since night vision goggles can detect heat from human body, they will detect B-2 bomber 20 km above your head as well, IMHO. Completely different application and technology.

I mean, we're talking about something that can be fooled (dozens of times!) by a nebula. Which means ST sensors can't penetrate something less dense than cigarette smoke...


As far as EDI is concerned, I agree that she wouldn't stand a chance against the Enterprise firewalls or whatever they have. Even if she did, they have Data. He can perform 60 trillion operations a second. I seriously doubt EDI can match that.

Actually, that is pretty minuscule by ME standards. We're talking about someone who was outfooled by kids vs device based on machines of millions of year old race, that well stood under hacking attempt made by one of the most powerful computing systems by standards of both universes.

I'd say Data gets hacked in seconds, seeing he was just a buggy work of one man.


If that's right, then it means Enterprise could just turn around and run away from anything Normandy (let alone a ME dreadnought) could fire at it. Meaning, at the very least, Normandy would have to get very close to be able to land a hit, which is might well struggle to do if it's that much slower than Enterprise.

Actually, unlike the problems from firing from warp to realspace, Normandy has no such problems, and while it usually refrains from using the FTL for battle, as it would quickly 'fill' stealth system capacity, there's nothing stopping Normandy from making a point blank attack on Enterprise as opening move. In fact, that's what she did against Sovereign. That even adds additional punch to Normandy's guns and torpedoes.

Federation, on the other hand, never used near-C velocities in pretty much all of the ST run, and Federation captains actually seem to prefer speeds still allowing them to make decisions, which are pretty measly.


Also, while looking it up, it appears Mass Effect dreadnoughts appear to have an extreme range of only tens of thousands of kilometres (to say nothing of Normandy's much lighter weapons, as railgun size is proportional to range, if what it says about cruiser and frigates only getting into the fight at merely thousands or less kilometres is ture). Enterprise's phasers have a maximum effective range of 300,000 kilometres, and photon torpedoes of 3,500,000 kilometres.

Against stationary target that broadcasts its presence. Stealthy frigate capable of FLT speeds at will? Cut that by 3-6 factors of magnitude.

Same issue with ME guns - it's speed when fired in stationary position. But, they don't, actually. The whole ship acts as acceleration platform, adding it's speed to that of a projectile.


Normandy would, then, if the above is all true, basically have to fight at FTL speeds... Which we have no evidence of whether it is possible. (Have we?) My guess is that with the known redshifts at FTL speeds, it might impair accuracy in the same way it does for say, the ships in the Lost Fleet series. But that is pure speculation, though we've not seen anything fighting at FTL in ME yet. However, fighting at FTL speeds may not be practical for other reasons, for example ME technology may not be up to the task of handling the (exponentially) increased g-forces of sharp manouvering at FTL speeds.

They actually do fight, yes. And, while the Normady does indeed seem to have issues with manoeuvres in extreme velocities, they use tactic that can be pretty much summed as boom-and-zoom analog taken from air combat, negating need for such and lessening detection range with their stealth system active.

[Marnath]

You're comparing guns to torpedoes. Compare them to phasers instead. Seeing Normandy's own torpedoes can easily penetrate Reaper-grade armour (ME 1 ending) saying ME universe main guns are substantially weaker is impossible.

Why is that impossible? guns are usually weaker than torpedoes/missiles.


...It's like saying that, since night vision goggles can detect heat from human body, they will detect B-2 bomber 20 km above your head as well, IMHO. Completely different application and technology.

I mean, we're talking about something that can be fooled (dozens of times!) by a nebula. Which means ST sensors can't penetrate something less dense than cigarette smoke...

The Enterprise can detect dna from a single dying individual through kilometers of solid rock, the Normandy's bulkheads sure aren't going to stop that.


Actually, that is pretty minuscule by ME standards. We're talking about someone who was outfooled by kids vs device based on machines of millions of year old race, that well stood under hacking attempt made by one of the most powerful computing systems by standards of both universes.

I'd say Data gets hacked in seconds, seeing he was just a buggy work of one man.

Show me some hard numbers on EDI's performance, because I've sure never seen any evidence that she's that advanced. And Data gets the run-around from kids because he's got the empathy of a basket of pebbles. Heck, even human adults have trouble outfoxing kids sometimes.


Actually, unlike the problems from firing from warp to realspace, Normandy has no such problems, and while it usually refrains from using the FTL for battle, as it would quickly 'fill' stealth system capacity, there's nothing stopping Normandy from making a point blank attack on Enterprise as opening move. In fact, that's what she did against Sovereign. That even adds additional punch to Normandy's guns and torpedoes.

[Citation needed] I've never seen evidence that Normandy can attack during FTL at all.


Federation, on the other hand, never used near-C velocities in pretty much all of the ST run, and Federation captains actually seem to prefer speeds still allowing them to make decisions, which are pretty measly.

Against stationary target that broadcasts its presence. Stealthy frigate capable of FLT speeds at will? Cut that by 3-6 factors of magnitude.

So, uh, just gonna disregard the previous poster who said that impulse is like 25% of c? Low impulse, even?


Same issue with ME guns - it's speed when fired in stationary position. But, they don't, actually. The whole ship acts as acceleration platform, adding it's speed to that of a projectile.

Um, what? O.o


They actually do fight, yes. And, while the Normady does indeed seem to have issues with manoeuvres in extreme velocities, they use tactic that can be pretty much summed as boom-and-zoom analog taken from air combat, negating need for such and lessening detection range with their stealth system active.

I fail to see how this is relevant at all when they'll never get a chance to get in range. :smallconfused:

[Seppl]

You're comparing guns to torpedoes. Compare them to phasers instead. Seeing Normandy's own torpedoes can easily penetrate Reaper-grade armour (ME 1 ending) saying ME universe main guns are substantially weaker is impossible.
I remember a different ending, where the barriers were down for some reason (they explicitly said so). It is unclear whether this is because of the shear amount of firepower brought by a dozen heavy cruisers or because the reapers avatar died on the citadel (the later is heavily implied). In ME2 it is said by EDI that not even a dreadnought can penetrate a reapers kinetic barriers. As for the armour, we have no idea if reapers are armoured at all.



...It's like saying that, since night vision goggles can detect heat from human body, they will detect B-2 bomber 20 km above your head as well, IMHO. Completely different application and technology.
Trek sensors have often shown that they are able to detect anomalies of any kind. Be it the neutrine output of a generator, gravimetric anomalies by a ships mass, exotic matter (element zero comes to mind) and many other things. Masking a ships heat signature does not seem a big deal.



I mean, we're talking about something that can be fooled (dozens of times!) by a nebula. Which means ST sensors can't penetrate something less dense than cigarette smoke...

You have a point here. But they also manage to scan solar systems from lightyears away in real time and detecting trace anomalies from cloaked ships. Cloaked ships in ST have been stated several times to not emit any radiation, not just masking their heat output.


Actually, unlike the problems from firing from warp to realspace, Normandy has no such problems, and while it usually refrains from using the FTL for battle, as it would quickly 'fill' stealth system capacity, there's nothing stopping Normandy from making a point blank attack on Enterprise as opening move. In fact, that's what she did against Sovereign. That even adds additional punch to Normandy's guns and torpedoes.
Where is it ever said in ME that ships are capable of FTL combat? The codex entry for typical space battles sounds completely different.

[Karoht]

The Enterprise uses the Deflector Screen to project a technobabble particle stream and create a technobabble flux to technobabble and thereby counteract the enemy technobabble...

... but only if the plot says so.

[Avilan the Grey]

The Enterprise uses the Deflector Screen to project a technobabble particle stream and create a technobabble flux to technobabble and thereby counteract the enemy technobabble...

... but only if the plot says so.

Yes. Or they reverse polarities on something technobabble.

Of course just as likely they will not be able to technobabble because the enemys technobabble-fu is too strong and they will spend the whole episode as prisoners or marooned on a planet because of technobabble when Enterprise have become a derelict ship due to technobabble. Of course that is before someone technobabbles a solution at the end of the episode.

[Yora]

Same issue with ME guns - it's speed when fired in stationary position. But, they don't, actually. The whole ship acts as acceleration platform, adding it's speed to that of a projectile.
At sub-light speed, that would be true. But once the projectile leaves the ship, it would be under the effects of normal physics, which should intuitively mean that it slows down to below light speed, so the ship that fired it would crash into it.
With the mechanics of FTL not explained in detail, it's hard to say if that would be the case.

[Tiki Snakes]

At sub-light speed, that would be true. But once the projectile leaves the ship, it would be under the effects of normal physics, which should intuitively mean that it slows down to below light speed, so the ship that fired it would crash into it.
With the mechanics of FTL not explained in detail, it's hard to say if that would be the case.

Wait, wait. :smallconfused:

Why would an object travelling at FTL speed slow down? I thought the problem with FTL speeds was that it was difficult/impossible to accellerate to them? Surely, once you have somehow acheived them, you are going to maintain them until forces act to oppose you?

What am I missing here?

[Siosilvar]

Wait, wait. :smallconfused:

Why would an object travelling at FTL speed slow down? I thought the problem with FTL speeds was that it was difficult/impossible to accellerate to them? Surely, once you have somehow acheived them, you are going to maintain them until forces act to oppose you?

What am I missing here?

Momentum is conserved, not velocity. When the projectile leaves the mass effect field (if one is up), it'll have a significant mass again and slow down proportionately, just like if you added mass some other way.

If this were some other universe that didn't use the "bubble" version of FTL, then it'd stay the same speed (depending on the FTL mechanics).

[Ravens_cry]

If you want to get realistic, a problem with shooting a railgun, or any gun, in space is recoil
See, a rocket is just a gun that fires many, many very, very small bullets. But fire something massive enough, fast enough, (like, oh, a significant percentage of the speed of light) and your ship is going to scoot in the opposite direction while not at the same rate, it's much more massive.
This is really bad if it's off axis to your line of thrust, all that recoil and, ouch your ships likely to twist and buckle, and possibly snap. All that energy has to go somewhere and losing mass on the spaceship through mass effect means it flies back that much faster.

[Tiki Snakes]

Momentum is conserved, not velocity. When the projectile leaves the mass effect field (if one is up), it'll have a significant mass again and slow down proportionately, just like if you added mass some other way.

If this were some other universe that didn't use the "bubble" version of FTL, then it'd stay the same speed (depending on the FTL mechanics).

I'm not entirely sure, nor am I going to go find it out, but I seem to recall that guns in Mass Effect specifically work the opposite way to this. Tiny shards of metal fired from the gun at incredible speeds, then the mass effect drops leaving the projectile travelling at large speeds with suddenly increased mass.

Assuming I'm remembering that right, which is a stretch, then it would make sense to assume that any weapons fitted to the ship will work in the same manner, as it's all concerning the mass effect field at the heart of the issue?

[Xondoure]

And accurate science from a game that would have us believe there are more habitable planets on the rim than there are near the core is a bit silly.

[Soras Teva Gee]

Wait, wait. :smallconfused:

Why would an object travelling at FTL speed slow down? I thought the problem with FTL speeds was that it was difficult/impossible to accellerate to them? Surely, once you have somehow acheived them, you are going to maintain them until forces act to oppose you?

What am I missing here?

Given that the difficulty of FTL involves needing infinite energy to accelerate over an infinite time.... no serious FTL system actually accelerates to faster then light. Generally one only achieves relative FTL progress while subjectively still traveling slower then light.

ME's system... actually doesn't quite make sense looking at it. It apparently results in a subjective raising of the speed of light, but the method to get there doesn't make sense. The article (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/FTL) talks about light traveling slower in glass or other material and implies the ME does the reverse but this misses the reason for that phenomena. Wouldn't be the first time an FTL explanation doesn't make sense though


If you want to get realistic, a problem with shooting a railgun, or any gun, in space is recoil
See, a rocket is just a gun that fires many, many very, very small bullets. But fire something massive enough, fast enough, (like, oh, a significant percentage of the speed of light) and your ship is going to scoot in the opposite direction while not at the same rate, it's much more massive.
This is really bad if it's off axis to your line of thrust, all that recoil and, ouch your ships likely to twist and buckle, and possibly snap. All that energy has to go somewhere and losing mass on the spaceship through mass effect means it flies back that much faster.

I understand they once again use the mass effect to dampen recoil on their small scale weapons presumably this can be applied up. Add to well anti-matter thrusters I believe that yeah firing off their bow should not destroy the ships.

edit: forgot a "not" in there which is important.

[Ravens_cry]

Possibly, I don't know enough about this mass effect voodoo to really say. Presumably it "works very well, thank you", but, realistically, yeah, it would be bad.

[Mistral]

And accurate science from a game that would have us believe there are more habitable planets on the rim than there are near the core is a bit silly.

To be fair, there really seems to be a ring where you're likely to find the most life, at least in a fashion similar to our total sample size of one. Too far out, and you don't have enough energetic stars, which makes each star's habitable region too small and the chances unlikely. Too far in, and you have too many stars since you're sitting near the galaxy's stellar nursery; supernovae going off in your back yard are a bad thing, and with more and larger stars clustered more closely together, you're far more likely to get one in the few millenia necessary for life to emerge. Presumably, some writer heard this and mentally generalized "planets presently inhabited by complex life" to "planets capable of being inhabited by complex life." Not a reason, but at least an excuse.

[Soras Teva Gee]

Also given that we don't have an actual survey of the galaxies planets there's no reason to suppose that any distribution is problematic or unrealistic.

The supposition of "more stars=more habitable planets" that presumably contradicts that is simply a supposition after all.

[Sotharsyl]

How many Vulcan Pinch trained Vulcans does Enterprise have they may win the ground by stun locking Shepard ?

[KingofMadCows]

You're comparing guns to torpedoes. Compare them to phasers instead. Seeing Normandy's own torpedoes can easily penetrate Reaper-grade armour (ME 1 ending) saying ME universe main guns are substantially weaker is impossible.

Except the Reapers are weak compared to Star Trek tech as well.

The 800 meter long main gun of a Dreadnought can fire off a 20 kg slug at 1.3% the speed of light every 2 seconds. That's the equivalent of 19 kilotons of TNT every second.

The the maximum power output of the Enterprise D's phasers is at least 100 terawatts, although it's probably significantly higher. That's equivalent to 23.9 kilotons of TNT every second.

The Enterprise D has 10 phaser arrays, each a fraction of the size of the Dreadnought cannon.

Also, these are lower end power estimations for the Enterprise's weapons. They've shown the Enterprise tunnel through huge amounts of rock, vaporize large asteroids, and they completely destroyed huge chunks of the Borg Cube in "Q Who." There was also an episode of DS9 that showed a fleet of 20 Cardassian and Romulan ships destroy 30% of a planet's crust in one volley.

[Lamech]

How many Vulcan Pinch trained Vulcans does Enterprise have they may win the ground by stun locking Shepard ?

Just Data I think. Actually now that I think about it at one point doesn't the Crusher kid have Time Stop? And I think there was Q Riker at one point. So if they manage to pick a really bad time to catch the Enterprise they could lose. But other than that the most combat capable people on the Enterprise are Data and Worf and Worf has a trope named after him.

[Brother Oni]

But other than that the most combat capable people on the Enterprise are Data and Worf and Worf has a trope named after him.

Wouldn't Chief O'Brien count as well? Unfortunately most of his combat expertise goes the way of Worf too. :smallsigh:

[Liffguard]

Except the Reapers are weak compared to Star Trek tech as well.

Well, we don't really know Reaper capabilities. We know is that they can one-shot normal ME capital ships, but we don't know where that falls on the scale of their damage output. We know that they can take the combined assault of two ME fleets without suffering any damage, but again we don't know where that falls on the scale of their capabilities. We only know of two to have been destroyed, one of which was under special circumstances (death of the avatar) and the other was by a planet-buster grade weapon.

So we know some of their abilities, but we don't know if those represent their peak abilities or a cakewalk.

[nyarlathotep]

Question are we going by what the published material says the capabilities of the Enterprise are or what is demonstrated in the show? If it is the former then Enterprise wins rather handedly just due to their size difference, ability to teleport, and shields. If it is the latter then the Normandy wins because the Enterprise has such pitifully short range that it would be unable to hit or even see the Normandy until long after it was already blown to Kingdom Come, its systems can be compromised by Wesley Crusher with no sort of Administrative password, and phasors are unable to do more than mildly burn anyone with a name, full vaporization only happens to redshirts.

[KingofMadCows]

Well, we don't really know Reaper capabilities. We know is that they can one-shot normal ME capital ships, but we don't know where that falls on the scale of their damage output. We know that they can take the combined assault of two ME fleets without suffering any damage, but again we don't know where that falls on the scale of their capabilities. We only know of two to have been destroyed, one of which was under special circumstances (death of the avatar) and the other was by a planet-buster grade weapon.

So we know some of their abilities, but we don't know if those represent their peak abilities or a cakewalk.

Sovereign was still taken down by the fleet at the end of ME1 and ME weapons are pathetic compared to Star Trek. As mentioned before, the main cannon of a Dreadnought is weaker than just one of the Enterprise D's phaser arrays. And the Destiny Ascension was the only Dreadnought in the battle against Sovereign and I don't think it even got off one shot against Sovereign.


Question are we going by what the published material says the capabilities of the Enterprise are or what is demonstrated in the show? If it is the former then Enterprise wins rather handedly just due to their size difference, ability to teleport, and shields. If it is the latter then the Normandy wins because the Enterprise has such pitifully short range that it would be unable to hit or even see the Normandy until long after it was already blown to Kingdom Come, its systems can be compromised by Wesley Crusher with no sort of Administrative password, and phasors are unable to do more than mildly burn anyone with a name, full vaporization only happens to redshirts.

There are inconsistencies in both Mass Effect and Star Trek. In the gameplay trailer for ME3, the Reaper's beam weapon was about as powerful as a Civil War cannon ball. It's better to just go with the maximum stats stated in both franchises.

[Hands_Of_Blue]

Just Data I think. Picard can do the Vulcan Nerve Pinch as well, thanks to the mind meld with Sarek.

[Ravens_cry]

Not to mention at least a couple unnamed Vulcan crew members (http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Unnamed_USS_Enterprise_%28NCC-1701-D%29_personnel), and possibly Selar (http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Selar) as well.

[Brother Oni]

Picard can do the Vulcan Nerve Pinch as well, thanks to the mind meld with Sarek.

Does the Vulcan Nerve Pinch go through armour? :smalltongue:

[Sotharsyl]

Does the Vulcan Nerve Pinch go through armour? :smalltongue:

If the armour the base of the neck is flexible enough to let him turn his head I'd say maybe, if Data was programmed with the VNP I'd say all armour is useless.

[Ravens_cry]

Don't forget, Vulcans are also much stronger than Humans, though not to Data's degree, and there is several Vulcans aboard the Enterprise-D.

[GloatingSwine]

How many Vulcan Pinch trained Vulcans does Enterprise have they may win the ground by stun locking Shepard ?

I doubt it. Shepard has neck muscles that can stand up to headbutting a Krogan in the face. She could probably break the vulcan's fingers just by flexing.

[Marnath]

Shepard has no real way to deal with the security forcefields in the Enterprise hallways, does he? He can destroy bulkheads in the area, but aren't they projected remotely?

[Soras Teva Gee]

Shepard has no real way to deal with the security forcefields in the Enterprise hallways, does he? He can destroy bulkheads in the area, but aren't they projected remotely?

He also has no way to get onboard the Enterprise or any way to avoid being transported to a holding cell once he's onboard. Probably deprived of everything but his skivvies.

[Marnath]

He also has no way to get onboard the Enterprise or any way to avoid being transported to a holding cell once he's onboard. Probably deprived of everything but his skivvies.

Well yeah. But I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt as a concession since without that there's really no point in comparing two vessels of such radically differing power.

[Fan]

He also has no way to get onboard the Enterprise or any way to avoid being transported to a holding cell once he's onboard. Probably deprived of everything but his skivvies.

So level 1 of mass effect 2?

[Xondoure]

Shepard has no real way to deal with the security forcefields in the Enterprise hallways, does he? He can destroy bulkheads in the area, but aren't they projected remotely?

Charge. :smallamused:

[Marnath]

Charge. :smallamused:

How does slamming into the forcefield with enough force to break his neck help? :smallbiggrin:

[Brother Oni]

How does slamming into the forcefield with enough force to break his neck help? :smallbiggrin:

It'd settle the question posed by the OP very quickly? :smalltongue:

[Psyren]

Enterprise has better weapons, but EDI can own their systems and turn off life support. So it becomes a case of who can sneak up on who I'd say.

[Soras Teva Gee]

Enterprise has better weapons, but EDI can own their systems and turn off life support. So it becomes a case of who can sneak up on who I'd say.

We dealt with this already.

EDI has no way to interface (she uses lasers and presumably radio coms) with the Enterprise (which uses subspace) much less through even the navigation shields. Much less figure out an entirely different tech and OS in time. Quite aside from whatever protection the Enterprise will have, we know for example the Enterprise has biometric authorizations and passwords.

[Psyren]

We dealt with this already.

EDI has no way to interface (she uses lasers and presumably radio coms) with the Enterprise (which uses subspace) much less through even the navigation shields. Much less figure out an entirely different tech and OS in time. Quite aside from whatever protection the Enterprise will have, we know for example the Enterprise has biometric authorizations and passwords.

I'm sorry, but Star Trek's tech is not sufficiently explained for you to dismiss particular avenues of access or even theorize on which ones EDI can and cannot use. There just isn't enough data; the sci-fi landscape has shifted too radically between properties.

[doliest]

I'm sorry, but Star Trek's tech is not sufficiently explained for you to dismiss particular avenues of access or even theorize on which ones EDI can and cannot use. There just isn't enough data; the sci-fi landscape has shifted too radically between properties.

That is exactly why we can. Two different tech-scales, with two entirely different interpretations of science fiction. That's why EDI can't hack into the Enterprise. At least, that is what had been agreed upon while I was following this thread.

[Soras Teva Gee]

I'm sorry, but Star Trek's tech is not sufficiently explained for you to dismiss particular avenues of access or even theorize on which ones EDI can and cannot use. There just isn't enough data; the sci-fi landscape has shifted too radically between properties.

Wrong.

Long range coms in ME are based on lasers sent through mass effect tunnels. Ships too far our in the boondocks encounter lightspeed lag because they have no means to talk faster. Combine with entire Minovsky particle type approach to raise the sci-fi hardness we know that means they are using the EM spectrum to transmit just like modern tech.

In fact EDI herself in game states that at close range she can access an enemies internal wifi network. Its linked somewhere in this thread. And certainly have no evidence that the Enterprise uses one. Even those little communicators use subspace transmissions, so even if the Enterprise did use wireless on ship for communicating it would be on an entirely different tech basis that doesn't exist in ME. She has no meaningful way to talk to the ship.

Continuing I cannot state enough hacking. is. not. magic.

In fact its only a philosophical point that hacking exists at all. Its simply use of a computer system deemed malicous and exploiting holes in measures meant to stop unauthorized use. I could very easily hack-proof any computer from the outside by turning off wi-fi (or taking out the hardware) and being sure its not connected to a network physically. At that point you would have to steal the computer from me and access it directly. Obviously an independent starship has no need to keep an open connection all the time like a server to the net in our age.

This isn't a problem you can wave a magic algorithm at, any more then you could algorithm four pixels into an accurate HD definition picture.

And even having hypothetical non-physical connections doesn't actually solve the issue. The only reason you can walk into a Starbucks and get on the internet with any computer is that it is how they were designed to work. They operate on languages and programs designed to talk with one another. This isn't always the case though by any means. Easy example, certain countries use different radio frequencies on their cell phones, so even with a global plan an American phone won't work in Japan unless its design incorporates that possibility. Even more prevalent example, Macs don't get Windows Viruses because of their different OS coding. Now there are certain commonalities which is where you find what overlap there is.

Now there are ways around this, but that misses the point. These require time, knowledge of a system, and lapses in security. You aren't going to get that with computer languages that diverged centuries ago.

But EDI is a super quantum-computer AI with Anti-Reaper alogorithims you say? So what, she has a built in set of instructions a coding team spent a lot of time on cataloging everything known about every system and its vulnerabilities. We already know that the Reapers engaged in social engineering explicitly so everything would have a common base tech they could exploit. EDI is hacking things she knows a lot about. She will know nothing about the Enterprise. Its a fatal disadvantage.

But let's take a step back to interfacing. The Enterprise is never actually unshielded. Afterall they fly in space, which is full of things rolling around at high velocities and nasty radiation so shields are always up at a low level. They are certainly effective against EM since there's a rather hilarious moment where the Enterprise is threatened with laser weapons, and laughs because they don't even need to do their normal raising of the shields but an old old Federation regulation calls for it. So EDI isn't going to be able to power her way through that.

[Flickerdart]

Continuing I cannot state enough hacking. is. not. magic.
My Little EDI: Hacking Is Magic

[Xondoure]

How does slamming into the forcefield with enough force to break his neck help? :smallbiggrin:

It allows Shepard to move through any and all objects in his way.

[Tavar]

And accurate science from a game that would have us believe there are more habitable planets on the rim than there are near the core is a bit silly.

Well....do note that there are intelligent forces manipulating events in the galaxy, which could cause this implication. I mean, if you cull certain planets, and also only provide "easy" access to limited parts of the universe, that might be true.

Also, does it ever really state that the Rim has more habitable planets, or is it simply that the Rim is where most of the games activities take place?

[GloatingSwine]

Continuing I cannot state enough hacking. is. not. magic.


It is on TNG :P

The enterprise computer got pwned on more than one occasion. At least once by Wesley.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Wesley was hacking from within. And is an author avatar/child prodigy/marty stu so it's not exactly fair on Enterprise's computer.

Nobody beats Lordgenome (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY2JzfLU8Ds) for silly awesome hacking, anyway. Even if he is, technically, hacking into his own ship.

I'd have to agree, the Normandy doesn't have an easy way of accessing the Enterprise's systems, simply due to the technology differences. It'd be an easier win for Normandy if the Trek crew was open to negotiations, and actually tried to communicate, trying to open a channel to them. If both crews are set to immediately assume the other ship is hostile and open fire on sight, the Normandy will lose, badly. I'd say the initial attack will be a photon torpedo spread, which the Normandy will either evade or intercept, and then a couple of phaser sweeps will utterly annihilate it, likely before it has a chance to fire its guns.

[Yora]

EDI can hack the Collector Ship, though. That would be a type of technology way more unusual than the Enterprise.

[Seppl]

EDI can hack the Collector Ship, though. That would be a type of technology way more unusual than the Enterprise.

Why? The collectors have tech based on the Mass Effect. The same stuff the Reapers want all the other civilizations to have, just more refined. And they have been trading technology with others. Cerberus is very likely to either have stolen some of this knowledge or maybe they were even trading with the Collectors themselves.

[blackjack217]

The Enterprise is effectively powered by plot so who knows.

[Tavar]

EDI explicitly has Reaper Components used in her construction, and sample Reaper Electronic Warfare samples. You know, the guys who essentially created the Collectors, and were their masters until the destruction of the collectors. No sure how that relates to being able to hack Star Trek stuff.

[dredizzy609]

Or ANY computer that can be hacked by a person who has no working knowledge of the operating system, interface, or anything else.

I'd imagine the Federation computer would happily help you hack it.

It seems that everybody forgotten about data who can lock out the main computer or counter hack edi way faster. COME ON PEOPLE, HAVE YOU SEEN HOW FAST HE CAN TYPE. Alsp, the enterprise d is 642.5 meters in length and 137.5 meters in height according to wikipedia. The normandy is 216 meters in lenght and 39 meters in height according to http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/103/index/4442334/1(19th quote). DO THE MATH.

[GloatingSwine]

It seems that everybody forgotten about data who can lock out the main computer or counter hack edi way faster. COME ON PEOPLE, HAVE YOU SEEN HOW FAST HE CAN TYPE. Alsp, the enterprise d is 642.5 meters in length and 137.5 meters in height according to wikipedia. The normandy is 216 meters in lenght and 39 meters in height according to http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/103/index/4442334/1(19th quote). DO THE MATH.

A culture Rapid Offensive Unit is only about the size of the Normandy, but one of them could take on Starfleet all at once and win in the space of a couple of milliseconds*.

Size matters to a degree (it at least shows proficiency in materials engineering), but if one side is horrifically overpowered it matters not at all.


* Actual engagement time for battles for Culture ships.

[Xondoure]

Well....do note that there are intelligent forces manipulating events in the galaxy, which could cause this implication. I mean, if you cull certain planets, and also only provide "easy" access to limited parts of the universe, that might be true.

Also, does it ever really state that the Rim has more habitable planets, or is it simply that the Rim is where most of the games activities take place?

It States that the core is completely uninhabitable because of all the black holes. Nevermind the fact that there's still enough stars to make the rest of the galaxy jealous, and thus, plenty of room for habitable planets.

[kpenguin]

The Modguin: Thread necromancy! Oh my. Locked.