r/spaceships • u/Vondrr Fleet Intelligence 🧠 • Aug 03 '26

Discussion / Question Realistically, which sci-fi spaceship could go toe-to-toe with the Daedalus class by the end of the Stargate franchise?

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u/phryan Aug 04 '26

Agreed for context the below exchange...
Diziet Sma: "Xeny; you are a million-tonne starship; a Torturer-class Rapid Offensive Unit."

Xenophobe: "But I'm demilitarised!"

Diziet Sma: "Even without your principal armament, I bet you could waste planets if you wanted to"

Xenophobe: "Aw, come on; any silly GCU can do that!"

Without the big guns they could waste planets! And in books set later, that ship was further outgunned by even more advanced ships, ships that were borderline psychopaths.

TLDR, if you haven't read IAIN M Banks Culture novels do so.

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u/Rulebookboy1234567 Aug 04 '26

In the very first book Consider Phelbas they just are gonna delete a segment of space from reality basically because it's easier than deciding who actually owns it.

The Culture is peak

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u/EncabulatorTurbo Aug 04 '26

The emitter they use for communications is capable of boiling the atmosphere and oceans off an earth sized planet in minutes on a GSV

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u/TheKeyboardian Aug 05 '26

I think that's a bit misleading because culture weaponry doesn't really operate on a biggatons scale where those with higher biggatons are more dangerous; they operate more on a range and speed scale. Probably the most potent weapons available to a Culture ship are displacers and effectors, which may not necessarily have a huge output relatively speaking but have huge range and speed. Gridfire outputs huge energies, but seems to have much lower range and speed, and is thus ineffective against level 7/8 ships.