Big, THICC, Juicy Note
First thing I have to mention is that Daleks are minimalists in some capacities; this is an alternate timeline from The Quantum Archangel where the Time Lords go to war with the Daleks.
- The president could imagine the Enemy battle-computers calculating the strategies and tactics, working out the precise formation necessary to take out three of the six dreadnoughts – their standard response. A minimum of four dreadnoughts was necessary to run sufficient interference to give the WarTARDISes a chance to demonstrate their prowess. At least, that was what the Matrix predictions indicated. But they were predictions – the president himself had succeeded with two dreadnoughts. It was not an experience he particularly wanted to repeat.
During the invasion of Earth, they
pulped cities, such as New York, all across the solar system and
busted many colony worlds, yet London is left about as intact as the Blitz and they threaten to obliterate it later.
- BLACK DALEK [OC]: Rebel against us and the Daleks will destroy London completely. You will all die, the males, the females and descendants. Rebels of London, come out of your hiding places. The Daleks offer you life.
- 'Until the end of July next year. Almost nightly attacks. It's incredible so much of the city survived it. Then there were the VI and V2 attacks in 1944. After that the city survives pretty much intact until the Dalek invasion. Then, all this ' he gestured expansively 'is just so much gravel.'
Why is this? Simply put, it's probably useful for them. They simply destroy what they needed to to keep the solar system isolated and compliant, while leaving populations over as a source of slave labour. In fact, in Enemy of the Daleks (which is implied to be set in the Second Dalek War), they would alternate between killing and enslaving humanoids depending on their needs.
Speaking of which, they initially just wanted to force the humans and Draconians into a war that would collapse both empires and leave the Daleks with the spoils. When that failed, they were so aggravated that they began wiping out every planet they could with brute force tactics.
What else does this minimal force approach mean? They probably don't use shields in all situations. For example, while bombarding Davros, post-Movellan War Daleks had their
energy beams directed back at them before they could activate their defences.
Hell, if the Rutans (who've been in a war for millennia) don't keep their shields up, why would the Daleks?
- DOCTOR: I don't know. We've nothing here that would stop a Rutan spaceship in its tracks. Rutan ships have a crystalline infrastructure, you see. Shielded, of course. Still, landing on a planet like this, they might just cut off the energy fields to save power. No, I'd need an amplified carbon oscillator.
Basically, this is my excuse for why they tend to only destroy buildings and get pulped by conventional missiles. You'll see later why this makes sense.
2060s
During the late 2060s, Daleks upgraded their saucers to look
like this, which is far from the designs used by the 2160s invasion of Earth. The previous, more saucer-like model in the early 2060s has a
Town level and
City level feat.
Dalek Wars to Movellan Wars
The thing I have to mention here is that there's a
huge time gap between the Earth invasion and the Movellan Wars. I'm talking thousands of years. But there's no consistency in the timeline and technology.
In
The Dalek Gambit, a Dalek Saucer's forcefields contain the explosion of a bomb (explicitly a bomb/explosive, not a weapon similar to the Movellan
Nova Device, which is never even referred to as an explosive) powerful enough to destroy the Earth's atmosphere.
Destroying the atmosphere with a thermonuclear or atomic weapon (which the Daleks use) requires
at least 28.72 gigatons. However, at most 1% of that energy actually goes to the necessary heat needed to boost the atmosphere's temperature. So it's more like 2.872 teratons.
Is this consistent? Yes. There's several sources I know of that support this.
Firstly, in
GodEngine, a handful of saucers each perform a
Large Island level+ feat. They are also frequently described as being able to
melt planetary surfaces within minutes, and do this a bunch.
Secondly, in
The Dalek Defence, a few saucers blow up Mto. Mto is a
massive artificial planetoid composed of crashed vessels.
Third, a massive Command Saucer from
Prisoner of the Daleks withstands the shockwave of an explosion that rips open a small planet. Though it can't withstand the flare it made.
- The explosion ripped the planet open. The Lodestar station itself disappeared in the initial blast – a stone, metal and plastic town one moment, a gaseous mass of atoms the next. The exit wound spewed a glowing, fiery stream of astronic radiation straight up into the atmosphere. Fragments of the deep silos and rock were hurled up like a hundred thousand tonnes of shrapnel, propelled at supersonic speeds. The force fields of the Dalek Command Saucer hovering over the station absorbed the first wave, but they could not withstand the point-blank onslaught of the astronic blast. The Exterminator took the blast amidships, crunching under the impact, flaring with a thousand secondary ignitions as the neutronic power source at its centre overloaded. The ship was ruptured, disembowelled, fire spurting from the rim. And then the vast saucer tipped, slowly at first, and slid into the broiling chasm below.
- Through gritted teeth the Doctor said, ‘Hurala.’ The Command Dalek twitched excitedly as it processed the information. ‘PLANETOID KX–NINE IN THE LASRON SOLAR REGION!’
- On the very edge of explored space, the planet resembled little more than a speck of dirt floating between the stars. From the surface of this world, the nearest sun was visible only as a distant blue glow on the horizon. The planet existed in perpetual dusk.
Lastly, there's a novel called
Cold Fusion that takes place in 2692, which is about 12 years after the
2nd Dalek War (something referenced in the novel). The ships here are designed to be larger and more powerful than ever due to some military build-up, but they wouldn't be astronomically superior.
- ‘ABOUT MECHINF,’ it bellowed. ‘SAAB-ROYCE MECHINF VERSION FOUR POINT ONE TWO. COPYRIGHT COPYRIGHT SYMBOL TWENTY-SIX-EIGHTY-ONE TO TWENTY-SIX NINETY-TWO SAAB-ROYCE CORPORATION.’
- Since the Dalek Wars Earth’s fleet has been operating on reduced capacity. This colony doesn’t have any mineral wealth any more and it’s not in a strategic sector.’
Six heavy cruisers from this era pour enough antimatter into a hole to annihilate 1 mile of bedrock every minute while suppressing their firepower.
- The six heavy cruisers moved into their geostationary positions and began to pour streams of anti-matter onto the designated point. Anything that had been on the surface was instantly vaporized, along with the cloud and snow. There was little soil to burn off, and within seconds the beams were annihilating the bedrock.
- Dattani watched the tactical display as the anti-matter beams tunnelled down at the rate of about a mile a minute. Any faster might trigger fusion and fission reactions, according to the scientists. Nevertheless, the progress of the drilling had a sense of inevitability to it. ‘Ready the bomber squadrons. When we’ve dug the hole we’re going to drop a couple of photon charges down there.’
Even assuming the hole (large enough for overhead bombers to drop charges into) is 1 square metre, this still means they'd be annihilating 26.8224 cubic metres of bedrock every second. Bedrock has a density of 2700 kg/m3, so this would mean they're annihilating 72420.48 kg of matter per second, which is
equivalent to 259.274543685 gigatons per second from each heavy cruiser.
Imperial Era and Beyond
Post-Imperial Daleks fleets are implied, stated, or outright defeat regular Sontarans ships in
Starlight Robbery,
Master of the Daleks and
The Five Companions (there's no explicit statement that the Daleks are post-imperial in TFC, but they're very easily capable of flight, implying that's the case).
Prior to this, the Sontarans were portrayed in
The Sontarans and
Conduct Unbecoming as having a sizeable, but not astronomical, advantage over Dalek Wars era humanity.
Anyway, what are the Sontarans/Rutans capable of with regular ships?
- A 26th century Rutan fleet makes Country level explosions that wipe out Sontar.
- 3575 BC era ships can life-wipe Earth.
- 3,000 cobalt-headed missiles from a War Sphere could have destroyed Samur, a somewhat Earth-like Sontaran colony.
- Rutan and Sontaran photonic ordinance in The Horror of Fang Rock could have reduced the Earth to a 'cinder hanging in space.'
So I'd say this is
Country level. However, this isn't everything.
Davros' planet-destroying ship in
War of the Daleks was a Killcruiser.
- The Gold Dalek continued. 'Earth records indicated that the Hand of Omega was a device man- ufactured by the Time Lords of Gallifrey. It was placed on Earth for unknown reasons. Davros believed that it would give him the power to conquer time, and took a killcruiser back in time to retrieve the Hand of Omega. He obtained the device and triggered it. He did so despite warnings that the Hand would not perform the actions he believed that it would. He ran no tests on the device, but fired it directly at the heart of what he believed was Skaro's sun. This caused a super- nova effect, destroying the star and its planetary system.'
The novel shows that, while generally inferior to such a heavily armed ship, Earth, Thal and Draconian ships are capable of affecting them.
- The closest Dalek ship opened fire, impacts slamming into their force shields. Dyoni knew that this was only a testing; the Daleks didn't expect to cause serious damage at this distance. 'Hold your fire,' she ordered quietly, as the ship shook under the barrage. A second killcruiser joined in, the combined fire power causing a rolling effect similar to that of being on water. Still too far for her to consider wasting their ammunition. She gripped the edges of her monitor, her knuckles white, as she stared at her displays. Almost within range... The shelling on their shields was increasing in intensity, but that was to be expected. 'Ready,' she called to the weapons officer. And a moment later, 'Fire!' Her ship's missiles began to streak out, dots of light against the blackness of space. Several exploded in the Dalek fire power, but most made it through to their target, the closest killcruiser. The Daleks' shields flared almost white as they strove to absorb the impact, and then Ioki reported: 'They've lost power to their forward shields. It's down almost fifty per cent.'
However, Killcruisers are hardly portrayed as planet-levelling craft in this novel.
- 'Operation Kill Zone,' he answered happily. 'We made the Daleks think that this planet was strategically important to us. They've committed half their Eighth Fleet to this battle. Three kill- cruisers, twenty destroyers and who knows how much else?' [...] Ayaka was about to protest, but closed her eyes anyway, looking partly away. The flash of light still almost blinded her. She heard Cathbad cry out in pain. Opening her eyes, she stared at the screen. Terakis was gone - no more than rubble and vapour, expanding rapidly in space from where the planet once had been. 'What the hell happened?' she demanded, but she knew the answer already. 'Planet buster,' Delani said smugly. 'We planted it yesterday. Today's operation was merely to convince the Daleks there was something there we wanted badly enough to fight for. We lured down half their Eighth Fleet and destroyed it in one blow. Operation Kill Zone was a great suc- cess.' He looked at the three of them. 'God, you're a sight. See the medic, get patched up and then get some rest. We've a new mission coming up, and I want you all ready for it.' He turned on his heels and marched away, his head held high.
- 'Detonate one-third of the mines,' he ordered Tactical. 'Some of the debris might get through. And it might make them think we've detonated them all.' 'Understood.' There were nine flashes of green from the pit, and the Daleks ceased firing. 'Some minor damage from those blasts,' Science reported. 'Not worth speaking of.' Well, that gamble had failed. But did the Daleks believe he'd triggered all of his remaining mines? He'd find out if they started firing on asteroids again. They didn't, and were now approaching the next block of mines. The captain permitted himself a small smile. They were going to get a nasty little surprise in a moment. The lead ship was approaching one of the larger asteroids that had been booby-trapped. When this one went, it would be spectacular. There was another flare of green in the picture pit, followed within seconds by a larger explosion. 'Lead killcruiser has been destroyed,' Science reported unnecessarily.
- Then one of the Dalek ships slammed into an asteroid. Perhaps they had been focusing so intently on the Hunter that they had not seen the asteroid in its path. Or their tactical computer had sustained damage. The collision broke the Dalek ship into two parts, both of which were engulfed in fireballs.
- In the killcruiser, the Red Dalek had the power systems up and working. It was realigning all of the weaponry to concentrate on the command building. A few moments earlier, it had witnessed an explosion that had torn out part of the lower floor and sent a gout of fire into the air. Bombs had clearly been triggered there, damaging the integrity of the structure. A few well-placed shots could bring the tower crashing down in ruins.