IH: Sci-Fi Edition

Hey all!

I think an easy way to solve our problems would be to determine what an individual of one civilisation can do.

For instance, how powerful is a single character of the Star Wars Universe contrasted with that civilisations ability to destroy a whole planet (vis-a-vis the Death Star).

Its seemingly quite a jump. Also I don't think you can simply correlate the difference linearly and apply that up or down the Kardashev Scale.

If we take the best personal armour and the best handheld weapons of each civilisation, contrast that with the best tanks and ultimately their best weapons altogether.

I'll just throw out the following.

...50 Megaton 'Tsar Bomba' (current most powerful created) 2.1E17

...FOAB (44 Tons) 1.8E11

...Hellfire Rocket 5E8

...tank 5E7

...grenade 5.2E5

Death Star maybe 4.2E34 (?)

If the Star Wars universe has a potential doubling (or more specifically a squaring) of the current world weaponry, then potentially...

Heavy Weapons (Heavy Turbolaser on a Star Destroyer?) = high Gigaton range
Proton Torpedo (Star Wars) = megaton range
Tanks (Star Wars) = could deliver in the kiloton range
Grenades (Star Wars Thermal Detonator) = could deliver in the 1 ton of tnt range

The problem with Grenades dealing damage equal to 1 ton of TNT is that the blast radius is going to be ridiculous - no wonder everyone in Jabba's palace was scared of Bousch threatening to detonate one.

Well, here are some links for Star Wars firepower (perhaps not always unbiased). They estimate the DS to be around 1E38.

STAR WARS Technical Commentaries

Star Wars vs Star Trek: I Want YOU for the Galactic Empire! Turbolaser Commentaries

Upper_Krust said:

Hey all!

I think an easy way to solve our problems would be to determine what an individual of one civilisation can do.

For instance, how powerful is a single character of the Star Wars Universe contrasted with that civilisations ability to destroy a whole planet (vis-a-vis the Death Star).

Its seemingly quite a jump. Also I don't think you can simply correlate the difference linearly and apply that up or down the Kardashev Scale.

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Definitely not.

SW personal weaponry does not seem ALL that dramatically beyond ours. However, this is probably because human carried weapons need a lethal radius smaller than the range they will be fired at (your grenade blast radius problem). Hand carried weapons that fire 1 megaton bullets might be possible, but will be useless since they will always kill those using them.

So personal, or even tank carried - anything for use on-planet - will hit a hard limit not determined by a civilization's actual energy capabilites. Space based weapons (or on-planet weapons that fire into space), which can fire at far greater ranges, can increase in power theoretically indefinitely.

But if we are to consider the power of a WHOLE civilization vs. a SINGLE immortal, like on your table, I'd suggest a Lesser or Intermediate deity would probably have a pretty good chance against us. It would probably have the hp and resistances to soak up a nuke hit [if it took Cosmic Toughness as an esoteric, it CERTAINLY would], and that in itself would probably shatter world morale to fight it. Anything less than nukes it could defeat easily. A shrewd Demi-deity might be able to do it. When I was working on the Cloverfield stuff I did some math based on the x2 damage - x64 energy thing, and it looks like a Great Wyrm Red Dragon could survive anything short of a nuke, and it would have a decent chance against a smaller nuke. Conventional weapons would be practically useless. So there are only a few nations on Earth that could defeat a Great Wyrm Red. Our world is simply not that powerful compared to Epic/Immortal D&D. Even a mid-high-level monster like a Nightwing or Gelugon would require major military intervention (multiple tanks or fighter planes) and would be a city-level threat.

Khisanth the Ancient said:

Definitely not.

SW personal weaponry does not seem ALL that dramatically beyond ours. However, this is probably because human carried weapons need a lethal radius smaller than the range they will be fired at (your grenade blast radius problem). Hand carried weapons that fire 1 megaton bullets might be possible, but will be useless since they will always kill those using them.

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Well, a few things. Remember that personal armour will usually parallel developments in hand weapons.

Also its possible for ground troops to carry rocket launchers that can stop a tank.

Doesn't Starship Troopers, or rather the original Heinlein source have individual troopers who can fire nukes? In fact even in the movie they can fire a nuke from a sort of bazooka.

So personal, or even tank carried - anything for use on-planet - will hit a hard limit not determined by a civilization's actual energy capabilites. Space based weapons (or on-planet weapons that fire into space), which can fire at far greater ranges, can increase in power theoretically indefinitely.

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I don't think theres necessarily any limit.

But if we are to consider the power of a WHOLE civilization vs. a SINGLE immortal, like on your table, I'd suggest a Lesser or Intermediate deity would probably have a pretty good chance against us. It would probably have the hp and resistances to soak up a nuke hit [if it took Cosmic Toughness as an esoteric, it CERTAINLY would], and that in itself would probably shatter world morale to fight it. Anything less than nukes it could defeat easily. A shrewd Demi-deity might be able to do it. When I was working on the Cloverfield stuff I did some math based on the x2 damage - x64 energy thing, and it looks like a Great Wyrm Red Dragon could survive anything short of a nuke, and it would have a decent chance against a smaller nuke. Conventional weapons would be practically useless. So there are only a few nations on Earth that could defeat a Great Wyrm Red. Our world is simply not that powerful compared to Epic/Immortal D&D. Even a mid-high-level monster like a Nightwing or Gelugon would require major military intervention (multiple tanks or fighter planes) and would be a city-level threat.

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Its possible I underrated nukes in 3E.

I remember my on Lesser God's humbling at the hands of a mortal ambush - although admittedly my own views on immortals is more anime/comic book levels of toughness than S'mons.

I'll try and balance things as best I can. I don't think Godzilla should necessarily survive a point blank nuclear strike (although I seem to recall he did by absorbing all the radiation - which is a sort of a cheat since he doesn't absorb any other monster breath weapons and attacks) of megaton level at any rate. Godzilla is effectively a Lesser God as I rate him.

Upper_Krust said:

Doesn't Starship Troopers, or rather the original Heinlein source have individual troopers who can fire nukes? In fact even in the movie they can fire a nuke from a sort of bazooka.

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Yes, but they were REALLY mobile with the powered armor, and they were pretty small nukes.

It's possible I underrated nukes in 3E.

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Maybe... but I think a middling god (Lesser or so) should be able to soak up a nuke hit, not entirely unharmed but enough to make people go "Oh $%@& it didn't work, what do we do NOW?" Our world just doesn't have those sorts of superpowered beings running around...

I don't think Godzilla should necessarily survive a point blank nuclear strike (although I seem to recall he did by absorbing all the radiation - which is a sort of a cheat since he doesn't absorb any other monster breath weapons and attacks) of megaton level at any rate. Godzilla is effectively a Lesser God as I rate him.

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Yeah, Godzilla is usually shown as nuke resistant due to his radioactive nature. (Most of the monsters he fights aren't supposed to be using radiation attacks IIRC - Angurus & Gigan use pure physical force, Mothra is supposed to be using some earth/life energy I think, Battra uses weird lightning, Ghidrah uses a variety of things depending on the version but usually not radiation - fire/magma for "Death Ghidorah", "Keizer" energy for Keizer Ghidorah in Final Wars, electricity, gravity, etc.)

I'm not sure an ordinary nuke should stop him, even allowing for that, though. He's generally presented as immune to any human attack except the really unusual ones (Oxygen Destroyer type).

Hiya mate!

Khisanth the Ancient said:

Yes, but they were REALLY mobile with the powered armor, and they were pretty small nukes.

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Still must have been kiloton range though.

Maybe... but I think a middling god (Lesser or so) should be able to soak up a nuke hit, not entirely unharmed but enough to make people go "Oh $%@& it didn't work, what do we do NOW?" Our world just doesn't have those sorts of superpowered beings running around...

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I'll run things through the math to see what I come up with. They might be able to survive it but they'll be in a bit of a state afterwards.

Yeah, Godzilla is usually shown as nuke resistant due to his radioactive nature. (Most of the monsters he fights aren't supposed to be using radiation attacks IIRC - Angurus & Gigan use pure physical force, Mothra is supposed to be using some earth/life energy I think, Battra uses weird lightning, Ghidrah uses a variety of things depending on the version but usually not radiation - fire/magma for "Death Ghidorah", "Keizer" energy for Keizer Ghidorah in Final Wars, electricity, gravity, etc.)

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My point though, is that the collateral damage from the monster's breath weapons seems less powerful than a typical nuke.

I'm not sure an ordinary nuke should stop him, even allowing for that, though. He's generally presented as immune to any human attack except the really unusual ones (Oxygen Destroyer type).

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True. Though I generally thought they never used nukes on him because that would be even more destructive to the city than Godzilla himself.

Upper_Krust said:

In fact I actually have some races and monsters in the pipeline that are technological 'types'. Notably the Bisects, who are now going under the monicker of Atomic Demons (I think I initially had Cyberdemons - which was an obvious Doom the videogame reference).

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This is really, really awesome. I was wondering WTF the bisects were when I first read IH. I have wanted playable cyberdemons and such from the point I first ran into them in Doom.

Deinos said:

This is really, really awesome. I was wondering WTF the bisects were when I first read IH. I have wanted playable cyberdemons and such from the point I first ran into them in Doom.

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Well the Bi-sects are really a lot of different ideas rolled into one.

So if you can imagine the Shadows from Babylon 5, crossed with the Replicators from Stargate SG1, with the caste system from Alien/Aliens, throw in a little bit of Doom then in typical Krust fashion turn the dials up to eleven and thats basically where I want them.

Nice slice of references, there. So can these Bisects/Atomic Demons be mastered, at least potentially, by a high epic Cosmic Descryer's Greater Planar Binding?

Howdy Deimos!

Deinos said:

Nice slice of references, there.

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Thanks.

I think the initial concept was trying to come up with a race that was stuck between two of the dimensions. I think it was originally Time and Thought, though I probably changed it to Time and Matter somewhere along the way.

So can these Bisects/Atomic Demons be mastered, at least potentially, by a high epic Cosmic Descryer's Greater Planar Binding?

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Well without checking the Descryer stuff I presume the Binding has some sort of limits revolving around Hit Dice/Level/Challenge Rating. So presumeably it would be on a case per case basis.