[Droid803]

Yeah, I'm thinking the point is that Koth wanted to damage the Colossus so it would be out of commission for a while with his kamikaze run, giving the rest of the NTF more breathing room for a while.

[deathfun]

And Koth attempting to ram the Colossus - a real world, where ships don't have hitpoints, having a billon tons slam into you WOULD hurt..very, very much. the collie wouldn't survive.

This reminded of the movie I watched only two nights ago. Star Trek: Nemesis

The Enterprise rammed into that other thingy, causing more damage to the thingy then the Enterprise due probably to the way it was built. But that's a movie



The Colossus would survive because of the beam cannons slowing down the Repulse, and the size of the Colossus playing a large factor. Only a portion of the front section would be hit by the smaller Repulse Destroyer. That, and the Repulse would need far more momentum to penetrate the amount of hull. It's a billion tonnes going at maybe 20 m/s hitting a trillion tonne warship moving minimally backwards due to the beam (Third Law).

Heavy damage would be relative though. A large portion of hull missing? Of course, but confined to the front section of the ship.

[Droid803]

Which would probably warrant pulling it from the front lines for repairs. Mission accomplished.

[deathfun]

Didn't it in the game?

[Scotty]

The Colossus would survive because of the beam cannons slowing down the Repulse, and the size of the Colossus playing a large factor. Only a portion of the front section would be hit by the smaller Repulse Destroyer. That, and the Repulse would need far more momentum to penetrate the amount of hull. It's a billion tonnes going at maybe 20 m/s hitting a trillion tonne warship moving minimally backwards due to the beam (Third Law).

Time for a nice, fun lesson in masses and densities.  Current ships are not really all that heavy, when you think about it.  The modern aircraft carrier displaces what, 400,000 101,600 (off high) tonnes (source: Wikipedia, ship: Gerald Ford class carrier, scheduled for 2015)?  The carrier is slated to be almost exactly 1/3rd of a kilometer long, and 41 m wide (unable to find height.  Reasonable estimate:  50 m).  An Orion is, what, 2 kilometers long?  Call the width 100 m, and height 300?.  If both were just big boxes, almost 88 carriers would fit into an Orion, which I actually doubt on the face of it (682,650 m³ for a carrier, 60,000,000 m³ for an Orion?).  I need to get actual measurements for an Orion, since it isn't completely a box.  Anyway, that equates to about 9.3 million tonnes, not a gigantic number of billions.  Using the cutscene on the Colossus, 12 Orions could fit inside its hull.  That equates to just under 111.8 million tons.  However, that could be off by orders of magnitude due to lack of known average density, internal open spaces, and actual, complete dimensions and volumes.

[deathfun]

I hope you do realize I was whipping masses out of my arse for the sake of an example, right?

[Scotty]

I'm a jackass like that.

Even in fiction, I prefer things to be right.

[Thaeris]

<Thaeris gives Scotty mad props.>

 

[karajorma]

I'm going to have to disagree with Karajorma here...

I don't think the NTF was a bunch of idiots. Sure, not exactly the brightest out there, but they weren't exactly retards either.

That's pretty much the point I was making. The NTF aren't the brightest. Koth fell for the trap. And that's before we get to the fact that the entire NTF basically committed suicide by Mjolnir trying to get to Gamma Draconis without ever once questioning why the **** they were killing themselves trying get there in the first place.

[TrashMan]

Becasue the plot demanded it.

Let's face it, some FS2 missions could have been planned out better...more sensible.


@Scotty:
"And the comparison is not really there. As mass and size increase, the frame/armor/plating do less and less to stop the impact."

[stuart133]

As I have already said the front of the Collie is just a weapons platform. Oh sure there will be ammo and maybe some power cells there but the engines are at the back (with most of the power generation I would have thought). The crew are in the middle. The entire ship is prepared to take huge forces, its own beams are incredibly powerful and the front of the destroyer will be torn to pieces by the time it hits. That means that all this talk of masses is pointless. The front of the Repulse would have collapsed and worked like the crumple zone on a car, taking a lot of the energy out of the impact. This would have lead to a small amount of damage to the Collie, though it would have taken some time to extract it from the wreckage.

On a side note the Collie also has a spike at the front, problem solved 

[Scotty]

@TrashMan:  Comparisons of armor are a non-issue to my post.  I was comparing relative volumes (with rather iffy dimensions at that) and trying to determine what a reasonable mass would be for large scale ships.  It was in direct response to the "billion ton vs. trillion ton" comment (I realize it was hyperbole, but it intrigued me).

If we were talking armor, my post would have taken several more paragraphs.

[deathfun]

"And the comparison is not really there. As mass and size increase, the frame/armor/plating do less and less to stop the impact."

They do less do they?
Do elaborate

[Kolgena]

It makes sense. Take a toothpick. Snap it in half. Then snap the halves in half. Compare how hard it was to snap the toothpick, versus the halves.

As size/scale increases/decreases, materials keep their same innate strengths. So, a chunk of wood the size of a toothpick subject to 0.01N would fare a lot better than a toothpick 1000x the volume (10x longer and 10x greater diameter) under 10N.

Same applies to armor plating, support trusses, etc.

(Actually, also the reason why lego is freaking indestructible, but w/e)

[NGTM-1R]

You assume the ship design here isn't, y'know, sane, and therefore built in sections connected or anything (which would be another on the long list of ways to make it stronger against explosive power).

[deathfun]

It makes sense. Take a toothpick. Snap it in half. Then snap the halves in half. Compare how hard it was to snap the toothpick, versus the halves.

Makes sense in small scales, but as previously mentioned, ship design.

Who would make a ship 6 km long and not think about a last ditched attempt at ramming into it?

Which brings me again to another Star Trek example
The most recent movie with the huge ass Romulan ship and this tiny ship crashing into it.

[Kolgena]

Who would make a ship 6 km long and not think about a last ditched attempt at ramming into it?

Someone who puts 1 directional engines that only point to the rear of a 6km long ship--that can also swing around like a baseball bat.

More seriously, I find it hard to imagine a spaceship that is built to withstand collisions with objects the size of city blocks going 72km/h. Cars are built to withstand collisions through crumple zones, but putting giant crumple zones on a warship doesn't seem like a great idea what with all the conventional weapons it's supposed to withstand.

Also, as a half-example, people never modified their ships to withstand fighter planes in WWII once the Japanese got kamikaze-happy.

[NGTM-1R]

Withstanding 5000 megaton blasts gives it every reason to believe it can withstand an object about five city blocks sized moving at 15m/s relative.

[Kolgena]

Withstanding 5000 megaton blasts gives it every reason to believe it can withstand an object about five city blocks sized moving at 15m/s relative.

K, you got me there. To be honest, something made with real life materials really shouldn't be able to survive a blast like that, but okay. I'll buy it since it's canon

5000 megatons (directional bomb) = 2.09 x 10^19 joules.
City block (111.8 million tons, 15m/s) = 1.26 x 10^10 joules.

Even though the 5000 megatons won't be a shaped charge, I doubt it'd drop the energy by billionfold.

[Scotty]

The city block should use the Orion mass, not the Colossus mass, as the Colossus isn't ramming itself.

It should be about 1/12th that, I think.