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(3.19) Captain's Eyes Only
(GM's Notes, this Intermission contains information that was asked about during a gaming session. I finally have all the numbers I need. If you wish to compare this information to Star Wars Tech, please feel free. Just pass all findings on to me for approval before taking them as fact.)
Captain's Eyes Only
Captain's Files “Report on Chaos Ships”
ISS Ka-riss-ah
This report has been commissioned to show the brutal effectiveness of the Chaos weapon and defense in battle. Also to support the plan issued by the Minister of Science which seeks the authorization to use the last remaining Alpha-Omega Class Heavy Destroyer in a field test which could lead to the further development of a planetary defense weapon systems that could defend planets from further Chaos attacks. The risks to the A-O Destroyer and her support ships would be at a manageable level, however, the data from such tests could prove hands down the need to further weapon's development along the lines of the plan submitted by the Minister of Science.
One of the very first demonstrations of the impressive capabilities of the Chaos Death-Ray which had been recorded was during the battle of Gorash VII. In this epic battle we saw the Chaos Death-Ray used against a number of our G'Quan class Heavy Cruisers, as they attempted to push the Chaos ships from the system, with horrific results. Based on surviving videos of the battle from a near by gate, we were able to analyze the battle between our twelve Heavy Cruisers and two Chaos ships.
To determine the effectiveness of the Chaos weapon, I used detailed measurements of the G'Quan class Heavy Cruiser. At a total length of 1,400 meters the bridge section of the G'Quan came to 30 meters along the y-axis, with an estimated armor thickness of no more than 3.5 meters. Length of the bridge, in the center, was approximately 25 meters along the z-axis.
Next measurements were done on the landing bay its self. The bay on the top and bottom, which appears to be nothing but solid metal, came to 2.5 meters thick along the y-axis an top and bottom and 3.8 meters thick where the upper bay meets the lower bay. Total length along the z-axis came to about 252 meters. Next came measurements on the G'Quan's center body. The center body came to be 207 meters along the z-axis. and 105 meters along the y-axis with an estimated 5 meters of armor on top of that. The reactor its self was 115 meters in diameter. This gives it a total volume of 796,328.2 cubic meters but, as it is probably hollow with an internal volume of 523,598.7 cubic meters the actual volume of armor is likely 272,729.5 cubic meters.
Last item to be measured was the engine housing of the G'Quan. As this section curves I had to break my estimate into three sections. From back to front, before the curve begins the armor thickness on the engines is 16 meters along the y-axis, all the way around. The interior of the engine is 45 meters in height across the y-axis. Total length of the engine, before the curve begins, is 232 meters along the z-axis. Next was the curved area. As before we have armor thickness of 16 meters and 45 meter diameter along the engine's interior, with a length of 100 meters. Lastly, with the 16 meters and 45 meter figure remaining consistent through the last third of the G'Quan's engines, which stretches along a final stretch of 170 meters along the z-axis to join with the hull of the G'Quan.
There is some miscellaneous equipments, armor and constructs along the hull. Now, if we use solid Iron for the G'Quan's armor which has a density of 7,874 kg/m^3 and for the hull area we also use Iron but use the classic 400 kg/m^3 figure - the relative density of an automobile - to estimate the ship's wispy interior and unarmored sections. As the beam that struck the G'Quans are estimated to be roughly 20 meters thick, the total volume vaporized by the Chaos Death-Ray would have been 4,211,816,279.6 kilograms. Vapor point for Iron is 7,800,089.3 joules per kilogram of Iron. This means that the whole of the volume vaporized by the Chaos Death-Ray would have required 3.2*10^16 joule to vaporize.
This now brings us into the question of time. It takes 42 frames to kill one G'Quan in the sequence of images featured in our footage, and only 28 frames to kill second G'Quan featured just above the G'Quan in the foreground. The second G'Quan offers slightly better information, because the Chaos vessel that destroyed that ship did so from directly behind the G'Quan #2 where as the Chaos vessel that destroyed G'Quan #1 was attacking from below.
This being the case, we'll use the destruction of G'Quan #2. Within the time frame of 28 frames in video format, where 25 frames equal one second, the total time in this frame is 1.072 seconds. This means the Chaos weapon demonstrated a level of destruction equaling 3.06*10^16 joule, when adjusting for the time required to destroy the G'Quan; to slice the Alliance ship in half.
As the Chaos beam went right through the G'Quan and did not appear to be impeded in any way it must be more powerful than the low-end estimates featured above. This being the case the Chaos's beam is, likely, an order of magnitude greater than what was seen. This would bump up the Chaos beam's low-end destructive capability to 3.0*10^17 joule.
Another demonstration was recovered from our base within the Nestia System. Our base along with the Iron mining colony below were attacked by the forces of Chaos. Note that the base is much larger than 1.4km Heavy Cruiser, seen docked with the orbiting station.
Forces of the Chaos, consisting of three ships, slipped out of Hyperspace and proceeded to attack our Base. Their first strike is devastating, all but ignoring our defending fighters and instead attacking the base, effectively knocking out early warning systems and any semblance of command structure. The beam weapon raked across the base, which was no less than 1,600 meters relative to the docked 1,400 meter long Heavy Cruiser, the surface explodes and erupted in a brilliant flash, suggesting that the beam is vaporizing the materials comprising the base.
Still, while not a usable to determine the yield of Chaos weapon from these set of images, we can clearly see that the entire arm of our base has been totally blown away, the Heavy Cruiser destroyed as well in one activation of the weapon. Our fighters bravely fought on, but they are no match for the Chaos and, while trying to protect the sizable colony on the surface below, the trio of Chaos vessels penned in the remaining forces and cut them to ribbons. With the our defenses broken, the Chaos moved in on the planet. The first ship to move into targeting position opens fire!
First Chaos vessel strikes the colony with ease and precision. The area around the cliff side base glows, and the impact of the beam is immediately followed by sparks, the beam striking the surface and burning through the planet's crust. Soon the first ship's attack on the surface is joined by her sister ships, the Chaos determined to make sure that the entire colony is destroyed. There were survivors, but very few and all records had be destroyed with the destruction of the base and colony less this one recording which had been recovered from a life pod.
Finally the third ship joins the attack on the Colony. By this time the first Chaos vessel has discontinued her attack, after 0.8 seconds of sustained weapons fire. Note the large plumes of smoke and glowing ash around each point where the Chaos's weapons have hit the surface. Immediately after the first Chaos vessel ceases fire, the whole of the plateau which the colony rests, explodes in a violent eruption. Second Chaos vessel also discontinues fire, the third ship's beam still digging then rounding to follow the cliff face to destroy anything at the bottom of the cliffs around the colony. Running clean-up ops., the last Chaos vessel destroyed any/all of the surrounding area around the colony. Total attack on the colony lasted between 1.9 to 2.0 seconds - no longer.
Ceasing fire, the Chaos turn and begin to leave, the flames from the destroyed colony plainly visible from high orbit. The base, colony, and all records of the battle had thought to have been destroyed. The Chaos ships begin their exit of the system, but not before firing upon the ruins of the orbiting space dock one last time... presumably they detected life signs or possibly residual power signatures and wanted to make sure everything is dead. Once they make this final strike the Chaos disappear and phase back into Hyperspace. What remains is rubble. The orbiting base has been obliterated. The Colony, vaporized. According to the rescue teams, the beam penetrated all the way through to the mantle, causing a plume of lava to come spewing out nearly five kilometers in the skies above where the Colony once stood.
You can see that, from orbit, we would have easily been able to see the fires of the destroyed colony. As a matter of fact, if we used the base of the plume to determine the approximate diameter of the blast zone, the maw of the newly formed volcano would have stretched from Newzics Bay to the Imperial Palace - making the destroyed area no less than 210 kilometers in diameter. Despite the apparent massive area destroyed, we will limit our figures to only that which the Chaos weapons were seen doing, not the final effect for their attack. The planet in Quadrant 14 had an average crust thickness of roughly 40,000 meters. If the diameter of the energy blast was a conservative 20 meters, which appears to be the average total beam width from a Chaos vessel, than the beam would have destroyed 12,566,370.6 cubic meters of rock in less than one second.
Now, for expediency we will use Iron exclusively as our resistant medium. Given that Iron has a density of some 7,870 kg/m3, the total volume vaporized by the Chaos Death-Ray would have been 98,897,336,735 kilograms. As the Chaos weapon vaporized nearly 100 billion kilograms of Iron in 0.8 seconds, and knowing that it takes some 7,845,085.6 Joules to vaporize one kilogram of Iron, the Chaos weapon must have produced a beam no less than 9.69*10^17 joules per second, or nearly 1 million terajoules per second in power.
This is, as I stated, a LOW-end estimate of the Chaos weapon's power, as we do not know the exact exact diameter of the energy beams fired on the planet or how far the beam had to drill in order to reach the mantel. As such, we can assume that the upper limit for Chaos weapons is NO less than 1*10^18 joules per second, per discharge.
The defensive abilities of the Chaos are just as impressive. As seen during the battle of Losun'ade where we saw the first destruction of a Chaos ship. We have been able to learn a great deal by reviewing this critical battle. For the first time since the war started we were able to actually review first hand sensor logs of a Chaos ship in battle. Sadly this victory did come at an extremely high price both during the battle and in battles to come as Chaos ships started to hunt down the newly created A-O Class Destroyers and the yards where they were being built at.
During this critical battle we were able to learn that the Chaos ships use some kind of energy shield to protect their ships from our weapon's fire. These shields have the capability of refracting/deflecting incoming weapon's fire around the ship. They appear to be skin tight defense fields capable of refracting and/or deflecting energy and solid matter away from the hulls of their ships. As seen from the battle footage recorded by the ISS Ka-riss-ah, here we see the Chaos vessel hit with a direct hit.
Notice how the ship starts to glow upon being struck by incoming fire as their shields disperse the energy beam across it's entire hull, dissipating it's effects out and away form the ship. Also notice in this frame that the energy levels of the Chaos ship increase slightly as the ships takes the full attack. We believe that the ship is actually using the energy from our attack and will be focusing it on its next attack on our ships. As you can tell by the energy signature of its next attack, you can clearly see that the energy stored from our attack has been used on the ISS Galio (Light Cruiser, which was destroyed during the attack).
Later in the battle, the ISS Ka-riss-ah under the command of her advanced AI was able to deliver an attack that finally destroyed the Chaos threat and allowed the planet to be evacuated. Please take note as the ISS Ka-riss-ah starts her attack. She was able to focus her entire power reserves as well as those of her remaining support ships and fighters in to a single coordinated attack. As the ISS Ka-riss-ah and her support units fire on the Chaos vessel. Note how the weapons' energy is being dispersed around and away from the Chaos vessel. As the ISS Ka-riss-ah presses her attack, which lasted a total of eighty seconds, the Chaos vessels ability to disperse the energy weakens as her shields begin to fail. Again we can see the Chaos vessel attempting to dissipate the energy from the attack, but it is a loosing battle. Even as the shields continue to disperse the onslaught of energy, the shields weaken and as they fail the Chaos vessel begins to glow red as her hull is super heated. Eventually, unable to withstand the Alliance assault, the Chaos vessel's shields fail and she is cooked like a bug on a skillet, until finally the energy build-up causes it to explode after eighty seconds of sustained fire.
So we know that under the right conditions, it is possible to stop a Chaos ship in its tracks and even Destroy it. However, there were other attempts to over load the Chaos ship's shield which had failed horrible. One such note that should be discussed is the use of 500 megaton fusion bombs during the siege of Basibee IV. Here the defending commander mined the approaches to his resupply base with fusion bombs. While there were hardly any survivors of the attack, were were able to piece together a few eyewitness accounts as well as some minor footage of the battle. Based on both sources we were able to gather enough information to create this conclusion.
First off, we only have evidence that three of the twenty devices used were actually detonated. Secondly, only the first nuke did any real damage, as the camera was so tight on the second that we could not see it's effect on it's environment, and the third one was so far away it was little more than a light show - the nearest Chaos ship to the third explosion just absorbed the blast and merrily kept on going on her way. Surely the first and closest nuke succeeded in destroying the Chaos ship nearest to it... right?
Here we see a Chaos ship moving towards one of the Asteroids that the Commander has had seeded with a cloaked 500 megaton fusion bomb. Note that there are several smaller vessels around the main vessel seen in this footage and the following images. We have identified these smaller vessels as support scouts and fighters. It is unclear how many total Chaos ships took part in this massive battle. We do know that there were nearly fifty Alliance and allied ships stationed at the anchorage. None of the defending ships survived the battle.
Only a ship length away and slightly above the asteroid - just enough to miss it - the hapless Chaos vessel undauntingly moves forward as the 500 megaton fusion bomb begins to detonate. Given we do not know for sure how large this Chaos vessels is, we will assume it is about 1,000 meters long - an average size Chaos assault ship. At this point the Chaos vessels has flown right into the exploding Fusion bomb, placing her mean distance at 450 meters. 500 megatons = 2.093*10^18 joule. Apply rA=4*pi(r^2).
rA=12.6(202500)
rA=2.54*10^6 J
mt / rA = 8.22*10^11 J/m^2
S=1,666,463.3m^2
S*J/m^2=1.37*10^18 joule.
So, by this time the Chaos vessels has absorbed a MINIMAL of 65.5% of the fusion bomb's total, low-end, yield of 500 megatons, or 1.37 exajoules! This would mean that, in total, the Chaos vessel was struck by energy almost equal to what she herself is capable of generating, as seen during the attack on the colony in Quadrant 14 listed above. So, surely in the next scene we will see the poor ol' Chaos ship blown to bits... right?
Wrong! And in this scene we see the Chaos ship... MOVING! I couldn't believe it myself when I first saw it, but there's the proof! Chaos ship hit hardest by any of the nukes used, is TURNING to her left! She's not burning, not exploding or being crushed, she's moving AWAY from the blast!?! Here again, we can clearly see the motion blur of the Chaos ship moving off to her left, out of frame of what we can see, moving as far away as she can from the nuclear blast that stopped her in her tracks! Now the Chaos vessel has completely moved out of view from our monitors. Now I know what you're thinking... "Surely it was the force of the blast that sent the Chaos ship reeling backward"... but if that was the case, given the ship's position, if the blast did send the ship flying (which it didn't because we saw her stop and turn), she would have been sent hurtling backwards, not moving deliberately away and to the left. Now we begin to see new things - what appears to be debris flying out from the ejecta cloud.
Unfortunately, upon closer examination we see that they are not the bits and parts of the Chaos ship (perhaps a blown-off spine from the vessel), but rather the all too familiar (all be it warped) silhouette of a Chaos fighter. More debris tumbles from the harsh but fading glow of the 500 megaton fusion bomb. Some of the bits and parts look like they came off Chaos fighters or the Scout craft, as well as some chunks of asteroid, but none of the debris is consistent with the components of a Chaos capital ship. Again it is the unmistakable outline of a Chaos FIGHTER... not a Chaos capital ship. Point of fact, none of the debris appears to have come from a Chaos capital ship, rather all the debris is eerily consistent with Chaos Fighters and Scout ships. Again we see another large chuck come flying at us,
With the light finally falling dim, we see what remains - the Chaos vessel moved out of the way, some fighters and maybe a Chaos Scout craft or two were destroyed, and we are left with the dizzying and somewhat frightening realization at the vaunted 500 megaton fusion bombs we had - at first - been so certain were capable of blowing a Chaos vessel apart... fragged a few fighters and a scout ship and nothing more. At the end of this battle, the base was destroyed and we are only a bit wiser from the battle.
In the wake of the previous realization, it would appear that the Chaos ships are easily capable of shrugging off assaults from both beam and explosive weapons in the multiple exawatt range. Exactly how much punishment for sure is uncertain, but given that the Chaos ship which was destroyed by the ISS Ka-riss-ah had sustained combat for no less than 20 minutes prior to starting her sustained fire plan of eighty seconds. What we can mathematically prove is that these ships are capable of withstanding strikes in the range of multiple gigatons. This is why we need to further our tests and field studies till we can accurately prove at which point their shields fail.
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