Shields and weapon power is rather weak compared to modern day power generation...

[sadron]

TV Tropes brought up a very good point about our ships' shields and weapon power generation:
"Shipboard weapons and shields are much weaker than anything in a sci-fi setting has a right to be. Most transport ships and fighters as of Terran Conflict have no more than about 100 megajoules of shielding. Burning a gallon of gasoline releases about 130 MJ. There is, of course, a difference between releasing 130 MJ over the course of burning a gallon of gasoline, and releasing it all at once, but the point remains.

The most powerful weapon in the game, the nuclear-tipped Hammerhead missile, releases 1.2 gigajoules (enough to destroy fighter swarms and all but one M6). By contrast, Little Boy, the nuclear fission bomb that demolished Hiroshima in 1945, released somewhere between 54 and 75 terajoules (at least 45,000 times more). The major powers of the X-Universe would lose to modern-day Earth."

That's a very good point, why is power generation so low?

[Lone Jedi]

X series is known for its low realisticity. A Ferrari today does outrun some of the spaceships in X Universe.

[TTD]

Think you've been around long enough in X to know that if everything was factual in the game,we would not enjoy it half as much as we do.

There is a long list of all the things that are not true to science fact.

[Lone Jedi]

I understand and it's been discussed many times before. I just still have the queries, how hard can it be to alter the numbers to a more realistic sense while not affecting the gameplay? Say, to increase the speed of ships to realistic m/s (just add zeros to the numbers), so at least the specs of the ships won't look as stupid as they are today.

[sadron]

Yeah I've done some conversions from m/s to k/h and then compared them to say, a Tie Interceptor (which is 1250kph while in an atmosphere) and a lot of stuff such as my Elite which is an interceptor class ship are a lot slower, where my elite only makes it to about 576 kph.

[brucewarren]

Your answer is in the first sentence. No car I know burns an entire gallon in 1 second. I know the US car industry is working on it but we're not there yet

At 70mpg, a prius would take over an hour to burn through a gallon. So that would be 3600 seconds. Divide your numbers by 3600.

At 1.5 Kilowatts to the horsepower, I don't think the energies are that bad.

A four megawatt laser (As used in elite) is enough to power a 9 coach train at 140mph.

A twenty megawatt laser would move an 18 coach Eurostar at 200mph. This is a lot of energy.

The Gigawatt shields used on cap ships are equivalent to entire power stations.

[Rhox]

Apart from the energy release point already made, consider the following:
weapons of mass destruction (nuclear weapons for example) are banned by all species of the Commonwealth by the time the X series take place (the Paranid use some of them to take one sector away from the Khaak; if I remember correctly, this information is given during the Aldrin missions in TC where you have to search the sector for Khaak remains).

best regards,
Rhox

[ApatheticEthic]

I don't think you can really compare x ships to star wars ships. Sure, the tie fighter is faster, but it's a light fighter that doesn't even have shields. They're made to be cheap, fast fighters. Oh, and the species in that universe have also been spacefaring for at least 20,000 years, so they have a bit of a head start.

Going back to the x-universe, I don't think the values for shields and weapons are all that unrealistic. We don't really know how weapons work in space. It's possible that shields don't need all that much power to do their jobs and that weapons are inefficient in space.

[TTD]

Going back to the x-universe, I don't think the values for shields and weapons are all that unrealistic. We don't really know how weapons work in space. It's possible that shields don't need all that much power to do their jobs and that weapons are inefficient in space.

Given mankind's history,I doubt it will take too many years before such information will be critical knowledge for all space fairing nations.

[sadron]

I don't think you can really compare x ships to star wars ships. Sure, the tie fighter is faster, but it's a light fighter that doesn't even have shields. They're made to be cheap, fast fighters. Oh, and the species in that universe have also been spacefaring for at least 20,000 years, so they have a bit of a head start.

Going back to the x-universe, I don't think the values for shields and weapons are all that unrealistic. We don't really know how weapons work in space. It's possible that shields don't need all that much power to do their jobs and that weapons are inefficient in space.

You make a very good point! And then there's the thing where it's the constant use of energy rather than burning a gallon of fuel for 130MJ of power. Rather than slowly adding up to that power this is a constant power output.

[Nanook]

TV Tropes brought up a very good point about our ships' shields and weapon power generation:
"Shipboard weapons and shields are much weaker than anything in a sci-fi setting has a right to be. Most transport ships and fighters as of Terran Conflict have no more than about 100 megajoules of shielding. Burning a gallon of gasoline releases about 130 MJ. There is, of course, a difference between releasing 130 MJ over the course of burning a gallon of gasoline, and releasing it all at once, but the point remains....

You're assuming our megajoule is defined the same as their megajoule. After 1000 years or so in the future and who really knows how many lightyears away, not to mention the language and cultural differences of several alien races, that seems like a very risky assumption to me.

[sadron]

You're assuming our megajoule is defined the same as their megajoule. After 1000 years or so in the future and who really knows how many lightyears away, not to mention the language and cultural differences of several alien races, that seems like a very risky assumption to me.

Hey, no hand-waving! ;p

[Zaitsev]

Well ...

If you're going to be "realistic", the shields in space mainly have to deal with small particles, fairly low level kinetic impacts and different forms of radiation. The reason behind this is that blast waves, the major damage dealer down here, don't exist in space. Thus traditional explosives lose much of their power, and even with a fragmentation warhead the shrapnel would have to reach relativistic speeds to do anywhere near 100 MJ of damage. Even a modern "long rod" armor piercing round doesn't carry more than about 12 MJ of kinetic energy, and it flies a lot faster than the bullets in X.

Nukes are also, ironically enough, fairly ineffective in space, much for the same reason. Most of the structural damage we see from nukes here on earth comes from the blast, and with that taken out of the picture you need (close to) a direct hit or a very big bang to do any actual damage. Even with a really big nuke the energy is radiated in all directions, and your ship only takes a small fraction of it. The energy you get also diminishes greatly the further away you are from the explosion, thus, again, making nukes somewhat ineffective.

As for the speed question I'm gonna go all smart ass and say "relative to what?"

Quick and dirty example - I can make any car supersonic. Really, it's easy. Put it on the equator and drive straight east.

What?

As I said, it's easy. I simply measure the speed from a point that's stationary relative to the earth's surface. The angular speed of the earth's surface at equator is some 1674 km/h, which makes my car go Mach 1.37, give or take a few decimals. Now, since most people measure speed relative to the earths surface it putters by at a measly 80 km/h ...

So, my idea is that speed in the X-universe is measured relative to some local point, for example in the middle of a sector, while the whole deal in reality is flying around the planet at whatever speed they need to maintain orbit. If you want a real world example, take the space shuttle and the International Space Station. They're both flying around the earth at some 28 000 km/h, but in order to dock the speed of the shuttle needs to be close to zero relative to the station. Otherwise it might get ugly

My two nerdy cents.

[ApatheticEthic]

75 MJ is a substantial amount of energy to expend per second, especially if these shields are always active. These ships also have to use energy for engines, life support, weapons, and other systems too.It's possible too that the shields don't absorb all the energy from weapons, but deflect it. That would be less demanding on energy.

I'm reminded a little bit of star trek. They only have so much energy to work with on those big ships. They don't have their shields on all the time.