[Meneldil]

Amusingly those BFRed numbers aren't totally of the charts at the first look; the kinetic energy is at least 8 orders of magnitude below the death star, and the unobtanium the sathanases are made of needs to be only a bit denser than iridium for the recoil to not be a problem.
I do wonder though, what would actually happen if a kiloton of something hit a planet at that speed.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

I don't see the problem.  That's the tech entry for the goddamn BFRed.  That thing chews through anything and everything in a matter of seconds.  Why are you assuming it tells you anything about the firepower of GTVA ships? 

The BFRed is far, far, far beyond anything the GTVA can do.  It's beyond lighter Shivan beams.  It's the end-all be-all of direct fire weaponry.  Stop assuming other beams are anywhere near it.

Well, what I think the problem is that, from an ingame perspective, it takes more than a fraction of a second for a single of these planet-cracker-per-salvo thing to rip appart/vaporize ships bigger than corvettes. Yes it is beyond anything the GTVA has, but something with even a fraction of the firepower described in the techroom would still appear to be so by quite a margin. In any case, it's just a silly bit of techroom weapon trivia.

I usually think it's a bad idea to include figures regarding any piece of sci-fi tech because someone, somewhere is going to do the math and have a good laugh at how hilariously huge/tiny those figures are. In this case, I would do away with them entirely, say that the Alliance has trouble measuring just how powerful that thing is or whatever.

I do wonder though, what would actually happen if a kiloton of something hit a planet at that speed.

Here is fun read about a 200 feet-wide diamond hitting the Earth at various speed: https://what-if.xkcd.com/20/
I have no idea how big it actually is, or how much it weighs, but the end results are pretty funny nevertheless

[qwadtep]

I always assumed that the overblown numbers were because the game is an abstraction and realistically you'd be fighting at a distance of light-minutes where catching the enemy with a 16.5kt near-miss is a lot more reliable than actually hitting anything.

Amusingly those BFRed numbers aren't totally of the charts at the first look; the kinetic energy is at least 8 orders of magnitude below the death star, and the unobtanium the sathanases are made of needs to be only a bit denser than iridium for the recoil to not be a problem.
I do wonder though, what would actually happen if a kiloton of something hit a planet at that speed.

With some numbercrunching, 1 metric tonne at 0.9998c = 4.50023e24J, or a bit over a petaton. The dinosaurs were killed by a 120 teraton impact. Suffice to say such an attack would end all life on earth, consistent with Shivan bombardment. Twenty or so Sathanases blowing off the atmosphere instantly.

[emkay]

To have a look from a different point of view, a task for the numbercrunchers here:
It should be possible to estimate the actual mass per shot from those values:
- t = Fire duration (7 seconds for the BFred)
- v = Plasma velocity (0.9998c)
- r = Plasma density (to be estimated by the expert physicists here)
- d = Beam diameter (to be estimated by the FS cracks here)

I'm not sure whether there are some relativistic issues which actually would need to be taken into account here. But if one assumes a cylindrical form of the overall beam, the calculation formula should be something like that:
 m = t * v * (d/2)^2 * r * PI

Now, just to get an idea of what the result could be, I will now assume some random values for r and d, being well aware that they are completely arbitrary:
 r = 1kg/m^3 (air)
 d = 10m

That gives us an actual mass of 7s * 0.9998 * 3*10^8 m/s * (10m/2)^2 * 1kg/m^3 * 3.14 = 164800545000 kg = 164800 kT
That's approximately 1000 times higher than the given value of 120 kT.

Now, would proper values for r and d give us something that is actually anywhere near 120 Kilotons...?


But as already pointed out by others before: All here is fiction, and the numbers really aren't there for doing calculations...

[Meneldil]

I do wonder though, what would actually happen if a kiloton of something hit a planet at that speed.

Here is fun read about a 200 feet-wide diamond hitting the Earth at various speed: https://what-if.xkcd.com/20/
I have no idea how big it actually is, or how much it weighs, but the end results are pretty funny nevertheless

I knew there must be a xkcd what if on the subject, thanks for finding it!

Anyway yeah, those number are too large, but they're surprisingly close to what we know Shivans are capable of, considering what Lucifer did to Vasuda and what Earth looked like in AoA. If they were an order of magnitude or two smaller, say at γ = 2, I'd call them perfectly in sync with other insane FS physics.

[JerichoDeath]

Anyway yeah, those number are too large, but they're surprisingly close to what we know Shivans are capable of, considering what Lucifer did to Vasuda and what Earth looked like in AoA. If they were an order of magnitude or two smaller, say at γ = 2, I'd call them perfectly in sync with other insane FS physics.

I agree with that, in that it's really more important for the internal logic of the FS universe to be consistent.
It doesn't necessarily have to be completely on par with "Real Life".

(I kept arguing with myself about whether or not I should bring up the Lucifer...)