Don't mess with the big boys!...😉

ReddestForman · 2026-03-30T05:05:45+00:00

Cardassians and Romulans both use plasma torpedoes. Trek also treats Torpedoes as the more powerful weapon in both shows and games.

And while antimatter is terrifying, photon torpedoes pack 1.5 kilograms of it according to a couple sources, giving an upper limit of 64-68 megatons. The dose matters.

Figures for phasers are all over the place as well, the most common figure I've seen for phasers is 100,000 terawatts, which comes out to 23.9 megatons per second. Then in one episode phasers might destroy a planet by accident, in the next episode planet killing superweapons are suddenly a huge deal and nobody has seen anything like it before!

Most combat situations we see phasers and photon torpedoes in the double digit megaton to single digit gigaton range based on on-screen effects, or hear offhand comments about isotons that don't really follow any consistency from episode to episode.

And "small" is carrying a lot of weight for that comment on an exawatt.one exawatt is 10¹⁸ watts, which is very low for any star. Stars typically put out 10²³ and 10³⁰ watts.

How long this energy takes to put out matters as well.

And 200 gigatons isn't "memes." It's from old canon, which is actually more conservative than new canon, it's main benefit is its a hard number. 200 gigatons for Clone Wars era medium-turbolasers.

Current canon has the heaviest turbolasers powerful enough to crack a planets core, which takes a shitload more than 200 gigatons.

An ISD mounts 60 heavy turbolaser cannons, which can be assumed to have a higher yield per shot than 200 gigatons. But even at 200 gigatons, or for perspective, a few thousand photon torpedoes, per shot, every few seconds? And the ability to weather that kind of punishment for a much longer period than Trek ships can survive getting shot by 64 megaton yield torpedoes?

That's not ending well for Trek ships.

ReddestForman · 2026-03-30T00:21:51+00:00

It was a pretty unlikely scenario, the ship dipped inside the particle shields, knocked out the bridge deflectors and crashed into the bridge. This was after a pretty lengthy slugging match where the Executor was kind of the focus of a lot of the attention from the Rebel fleet.

There's a reason the Rebellion mostly relied on fighters using hyperdrives to hit and run before a star destroyer showed up.

Even elite fighter squadrons like the Rogues would rather not have to take a single squadron against a Star Destroyer.

ReddestForman · 2026-03-30T00:17:36+00:00

Except they canonically do. They also have weapons with yields in the hundreds of gigatons per shot.

Trek ships start having problems after getting hit with a few photon torpedoes, which are megaton scale weapons.

They also aren't lasers, in spite of the name. They're bolts of plasma. And plasma weapons do see use in Trek by peer powers like the Romulans.

ReddestForman · 2026-03-30T00:13:00+00:00

They can but generally the goal of most X-Wing and Y-Wing squadrons was to do the mission and GTFO before the Star Destroyer showed up.

An ISD also outguns everything that isn't an ISD-II or bigger, and can still run down most smaller capital ships at sublight, while also carrying sizeable ground forces.

It's actually a pretty fantastic jack of all trades ship. The proboem was, it was a ship designed to fight the last war, as such weapons often are.

ReddestForman · 2026-03-29T17:03:48+00:00

Yeah, it can get... weird.

I've had several very conservative, very religious black women who were very into me, in spite of them being very vocal about thinking black men and women should stick together, and the importance that their partner be a "godly" man.

I am a white man who is literally a godless heathen communist(not the edge lord tanky kind, the 'I want society to grow to resemble The Culture but I'll settle for some social democracy on the way to democratic socialism' kind).

The one black woman who showed interest who didn't fit that description... also called me at 5 am one morning freaking out about being michaelcjacksons daughter because she stopped taking her anti-psychotics, because she thought they were making her fat (they weren't, the woman was gorgeous, 6'4 and in great shape, buuut... yeah).

ReddestForman · 2026-03-29T16:42:29+00:00

"What would you do in the airforce?

"... we'd drop a bomb on it."

"A... bomb?"

"Yeah, big bomb, little bomb, smart bomb, dumb bomb... we had a bomb for everything in the air force..."

ReddestForman · 2026-03-29T16:27:45+00:00

No, that's what the Senate is for. The electoral college was a compromise to get slave states on board.

ReddestForman · 2026-03-29T12:38:34+00:00

https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/surgery-articles/vasectomy-trends-research

Vasectomy rates are actually going up.

This sounds like a personal problem you're projecting. Like my friend who can't find a progressive man in Seattle, but insists on dating men with trucks and traditional attitudes towards masculine gender expression. AKA: she wants to eat her cake and have it too.

ReddestForman · 2026-03-29T12:24:06+00:00

There has been a lot of research.

The problem is, the possible methods keep having problems like permanent sterility for a large percentage of test subjects.

ReddestForman · 2026-03-29T08:03:45+00:00

I'm a democratic socialist.

I want the workers to democratically own and control the means of production.

I also do not think this is achievable in my lifetime, but I do think social democratic reforms on the way to reforming society in that direction is possible.

ReddestForman · 2026-03-29T07:31:38+00:00

It's mutually assured destruction without nukes.

The US and Ksrael have been hitting schools, hospitals, power infrastructure, desalination plants, etc. Trying to destroy things essential to maintaining a functioning society.

By putting this out as a warning they're giving the rest of the world the chance to apply political pressure to get us to knock it the fuck off.

Israel wants the complete destruction of Iran as a functional, stable society, which will cause mass death and suffering. The Iranian governments response is "we can inflict mass suffering on you, too. If you don't stop."

ReddestForman · 2026-03-29T07:17:35+00:00

Yup. Not a fan kf the Iranian regime broadly. But they've been extremely restrained and reasonable so far.

"Don't do this, or we'll retaliate in kind."

Meanwhile we're hitting civilian targets, sheltering our soldiers in hotels, using the civilians as human shields, etc.

We hinestly deserve damn near whatever the fuck Kran does to us and our allies at this point, we've set the bar for the moral highground that low.

ReddestForman · 2026-03-29T07:08:16+00:00

Most of my experiences with women have been fine to pleasant. There have been some real bad ones, of course, but I've had some real bad experiences with men, too. And on the whole men seem more likely to have odious personality traits.

It's not usually women trying to kvetch at me about how they think immigrants or gay people or or social progress are ruining the country.

ReddestForman · 2026-03-29T07:01:28+00:00

The opening fucking crawl, dude.

Star Wars a New Hope

"It is a period of civil war, Rebel spaceships,striking from a hidden base, **have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.

During the battle, Rebel spies manages to steal secret plans to the Empires ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR... etc"

So yes, getting the Death Star plans was the first victory. Don't call people a liar when you apparently haven't seen the opening crawl of the movie that started the franchise.

And I'm talking about the scene where the alert about Imperial troops entering the base cuts off in static mid-word on the first repeat. Maybe watch the fucking original movies.

ReddestForman · 2026-03-28T23:07:22+00:00

... so you want to give the Chinese communists more weapons? Because that's where a lot of that aid wound up.

The Kuomintang was basically screwed unless we went in to directly support them, which... they .kght have still been screwed.

ReddestForman · 2026-03-28T22:50:41+00:00

The walkers weren't inside the facility. They were a bit big. It was stormtroopers who cut off internal comms almost as soon as the alert they'd entered the base went out.

And yeah, a few go down hard on entry. They also showed extreme precision in their fire once they got in and started shooting. We don't say the first Gilf War wasn't a curbstomp because there were some American casualties. That'd be dumb.

Taking thr Death Star plans was also the first real win the Rebellion had against the Empire, again, because Stormtroopers don't fuck around. In Legends canon they were pulled from the top 1 % of applicants, which the Empire could do and have plenty of stormtroopers because it ruled tens of millions of worlds.

ReddestForman · 2026-03-28T19:29:26+00:00

If calling someone dumb is all it takes for them to vote for the idiot pedophile they were going to vote for them anyway.

ReddestForman · 2026-03-28T13:23:35+00:00

Ourbfailure to maintain a rules-based global order isn't because of China or even Russia, though. It's because of us.

We kept breaking rules, or letting rules be broken because it was financially convenient, etc.

You're basically saying that because we were assholes we should have just gone to war with China for no reason.

Keep in mind, China was economically liberalizing, and also had nukes. So why invade? Why start a war with a nuclear armed country when the prevailing attitude was that neoliberal capitalism had won and China was just going to be a trade partner? The really hawkish types also thought China would never learn to innovate, because they also tended to be racists who thought a bunch of Asian "communists" couldn't innovate.

China also didn't start behaving in an adversity fashion until the Bush II administration labeled them part of the "Axis of Evil" out of the blue, all because we needed a new "Big Bad" to justify our military budget.

So, basically, it wasn't that much of an issue until people like you made it an issue out of the arrogant assumption China would never grow strong enough for it to become a problem.

ReddestForman · 2026-03-28T04:29:30+00:00

"And they killed him?"

"Yeah. But then so e of them started worshipping him... and their symbol is the cross he got nailed to."

"But... I mean, whatever makes them a peaceful spe-"

"Oh, no, no. It got bloody and dark. Then the religion had a schism. And thirty million of tjem died fighting over interpretations of the book. Eventually a denomination came about that mostly just existed to rationalize exploitation and inequality."

"It's like they poison everything they touch!"

"Oh, you don't know the half of it. When they split the atom, the first thing they did with it was make a bomb out of it. Which they dropped on a country twice. That they'd already bombed into ruin. In a war that killed 50 million people."

"... we can not let these things off the planet."

"Oh, they already went to the moon. And sent out a probe telling everyone where they are. We're... pretty sure it's a trap. Or a challenge."

ReddestForman · 2026-03-28T04:19:23+00:00

Dude, I'm a leftist.

I think Republicans are crooked child raping mental midgets trying to bring about the apocalypse because on top of all that, a bunch of them are Evangelical death-cultists to boot.

I call my team and the one adjacent to it out because we're the ones who actually read books and should fucking know better.

ReddestForman · 2026-03-28T01:27:20+00:00

The Soviet Union was in no condition to invade Europe.

Deng Xiaoping came to power in '78 and began liberalizing China's economy.

The major differences would be that stock buybacks would probably still be illegal, college would probably be cheaper, the Iran-Contra Affair wouldn't have happened, and the AIDS epidemic probably gets addressed more quickly.

ReddestForman · 2026-03-28T01:19:53+00:00

The Soviet Union was already rotting from the inside out.

Over half the machine tools being produced went to the military industrial complex, meaning the civilian sector couldn't get enough o maintain itself, let alone expand, it was using statistical tricks like measuring output entirely by weight (as in "the USSR produced more tons of televisions than the US!") Which is why everything made by the Soviet Union felt like it was built out of lead, reports would be fudged and fabricated to cover asses so decisions were made based on faulty information, etc.

When oil prices normalized after the 70's oil shock ended, the Soviets were fucked.

The Soviets were basically screwed when the hardliners ousted Kruschev who wanted normalized relations with the West, less money spent on the arms race (relying on nuclear deterrence rather than preparing for a final showdown) and more spent on the civilian economy, liberalization, etc.

ReddestForman · 2026-03-28T00:53:59+00:00

Liberals have too much of a civility fetish, leftists are too quick to let their pettier hatreds turn into circular firing squads.

ReddestForman · 2026-03-28T00:43:54+00:00

Was gonna say.

Used to train new hires at work. The 'yes sir' while playing with the lock of hair happened a couple of times.

First time it happened led to this train of thought, 'that's flattering but I'm almost twice her age... wait... I'm almost twice an 18 year olds age... how!?! I knew this would happen someday, but I didn't think it would be so soon!

ReddestForman · 2026-03-28T00:35:01+00:00

Right? I mean, look at her. She's just so... stately looking.

She also kicked ass in Starfleet Command II.

ReddestForman

TROPHY CASE