- Fin5434p
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"but you already knew that, I mean, how couldn't you?
Only when no Human brick is left atop another, shall we be satisfied with your destruction.
The problem here is what numbers to use really.
The numbers for Mass Effect are stated as 38kt-equivalent every 5 seconds from the main gun of an Everest-Class dreadnaught.
That gives us a 'firepower' value we can abstract to 27.36Mt per hour, or 27,360kt/hr if you prefer.
(Assuming the Everest can fire at this rate continuously for an hour.)
Lets look at the Covenant:
The start of the book The Fall Of Reach has John watching the glassing of Jericho VII (This is not related to the Reach game and so has not been contradicted story-wise).
I have the old copy of the book (if the new one changes anything someone let me know please) and took the liberty of runing a basic 'back of envelope' calculation.
It gives us one of very few calculable events for a Covenant fleet going all-out.
It is also undeniably a very high-end event, probably the highest 'observed' Covenant firepower shown in canon.
We are told;
Three dozenCovenant ships-big ones, destroyers and cruisers, winked into view in the system.
So, 36 capital-class vessels in the Fleet.
Their lateral lines brightened with plasma, then discharged and rained fire down upon Jericho VII.
This is consistent with the book's description of plasma torpedoes being fired, and is not consistant with the use of an excavation beam the so-called 'glassing beam' observed in Covenant ground actions. (I believe that the 'glassing beam' is more a tactical device than a strategic weapon due to the way it is used in Halo3, Halo ODST, and Halo Reach)
The Chief watched for an hour and didn't move a muscle.
The planet's lakes, rivers, and oceans vapourised. By tomorrow, the atmosphere would boil away, too.
Fields and forests were glassy smooth and glowing red hot in patches.
Where there had once been a paradise, only hell remained.
So we have timeframe and effects for this too. (yay)
Lets focus on one part for simplicity;
In one hour, the time John spent watching, the oceans of Jericho 7 have completely boiled off. Vapourised.
The planet is described as a paradise, and seems Earth-like, so it must have a similar ocean volume to Earth to maintain that climate.
Let's assume it does anyway, Earth has 1.3 billion cubic kilometers of water in her oceans, this weighs in at roughly 1.3x10^18 Tons.
To simplify the calculation, we'll just assume the oceans of Jericho VII are already at boiling point (they obviously won't be, so the resulting calculation will be less than the 'realistically' required amount of energy, but this is just a ballpark figure anyway).
We will also assume that all the fire from the Covie fleet goes into the ocean water alone, ignoring heat lost to the land, and atmosphere, and assume 100% efficient energy transfer to the water.
The enthalpy of vapourisation of water is 40.68kJ/mol
One mole of H2O weighs 18.015 grams, so the enthalpy of vapourisation can be expressed as 2.258x10^9 J/ton
How much energy is required to evaporate the ocean? (assuming it's already at 100 degrees C);
(2.258x10^9) X (1.3x10^18)
= 2.936x10^27 Joules.
One Megaton=4.184x10^15 Joules
So the Covenant fleet between them put out (as a minimum) 7.016x10^11 Megatons of energy in that hour.
Divided by 36 gives us an average of 1.95x10^10 Mt/hr for a covenant cruiser or destroyer.
So let's compare;
Everest-Class: 27.36 Mt/hr
CCS-Class: 1.95x10^10 Mt/hr
or 19500000000 Mt/hr if you prefer.
This number is debatable of course, but as I said at the start, your answer will depend on the numbers you choose to use.
[Edited on 09.13.2011 2:07 PM PDT]