I recognize the huge potential for anger over this topic, but we're having the same discussion in the SW forums, so I'd like to see what arguments will be used in the Lion's den, so to speak.
For the thread's protection, and my own sanity I would appreciate it if insults could be kept to a minimum, and if any fanboyism or intentionally ignorant bias could be kept out entirely.
In the name of fair play I will make a few restrictions. All EU is applicable, so long as it fulfills the canon requirements for its universe. but the Eras will be restricted to any timeperiod shown in one of the television shows (obviously for Trek) in at least five episodes: there will be no 30th century tech used in this discussion. Also, I am banning Q, the Douwd, and possibly Guinan. Any species with powers bordering or including Omnipotence are barred. Omnipotence simply does not work in a Vs. match.
The Star Wars era that will be used is the Empire era shown in the Original Trilogy. All EU is applicable, so long as it fulfills the canon requirements for its universe. For clarity's sake: The Empire's army does not include Jedi, but it does have Lord Vader, The Emperor, many Emperor's Hands (Force Sensitive assassins) and other trainees in the Dark Side.
This is for a military conflict, so ST can not make alliances that do not exist onscreen: The Borg cannot ally itself with the Federation Government, nor with the Dominion. The Romulan empire (I think) can't ally with the Vulcans/Klingons.
I will be arguing in favor of the Empire's capacity to defeat any single Star Trek group: They can take the Federation -OR- the Borg. I don't think they could take both at once.
Thoughts? Sorry it is so long, but this topic has a large potential to get out of hand and the narrower I make it now the fewer problems there will be down the line.
why the huge restrictions?...is it because, as pointed out in the SW forum, that the reality is that ST would win over SW, all things considered.
regardless. the dominion, cardassian, breen alliance that exists in DS9, at full strength and from what is known about weapons of those races then they have the advantage
cardassian weapons:
trilithium resin
polaron torpedos
the dreadnaught
the long range tactical armour unit series 5
dominion strength
Jem'Hadar warrior able to be grown in 3 days in desired quantities
designed to not require rest or have needs that "normal" troops require i.e no leisure or recreation time. they can fight constantly and their only requirement for effective fighting is a drug.
as for the idea that there was no alliance between the federation and the borg....that's not true...they cooperated in order to fight species 8472 and it's feasible they could do so again under threat from the galactic empire.
nothing shown in star wars could have much effect on what i've seen of ablative armour (which i've shown both the federation and borg have) as it is designed specifically to work again direct energy weapons which is almost the entire capability of the galactic empire's fleet.
then there is, as i've also mentioned, the borg's capability to adapt to enemy weaponary after only a few exposures to it. we've not seen any evidence to suggest that the galactic empire's weaponry can be as easily altered as the federations in terms of frequency changing phasers and even they were only succesful for a short period of time.
speaking of species 8472...not much is known of their numbers but they come from an alternate liquid universe and were virtually indestructible in terms of conventional weapons and only a specific biological weapon had any effect.
then there's the Krenim. a race which has at it's disposal, temporal weapons...they were not the dominant species in their sector of the delta quadrant but a single shot from the temporal weapon shit changed that. all that would be required is to target specific empire events....wipe the birth of palpatine or the discovery of vader from the past...or the creation of the clone army...or whatever they deemed to be the most effective target....they have ability to destroy an entire species much as Kevin Uxbridge (The douwd lifeform) had.
they also have chroniton torpedos which phase out of normal time and thus standard shielding has no effect on their ability.
in terms of travel speed. standard engines SW has it as hyperspeed beats warpspeed
prometheus class ships are fitted with ablative armour and transwarp capability (as do Borg some borg vessels)
as for what difference the sith would make to the fight i wouldn't wish to guess but if we were to take the events of return of the jedi as an example of whether they could directly influence a massive space battle...the answer would be simply no.
i'm not sure what super weapons from SW fall within the empire era as you define, aside from the death star of course. as i haven't read alot of the canon EU stuff from that period.
also...it's debatable when the start of the empire actually is...some argue that it's when palpatine takes charge of the senate and instigates the clone wars...some when he finally reveals himself to be a sith lord and officially declares the 1st galactic empire
obviously this would have a huge bearing on the number of jedi available to the SW universe who i have no doubt could cause alot of havoc with the participants from the ST universe.
The restrictions were basically to avoid a "Q turns them all into X-mas ornaments" debacle and to avoid "All of the species ever combine into the Borg and beat Palpatine in a nanosecond. If you think its too restrictive what would you have done?
Notice that I said "Borg and Federation Government, not just Federation. The Council did not approve it, so it does not count. That was pretty much the point of that section. Sheer numbers of anything can take out a superior foe, but the truth is that SW tech is superior to ST in almost every way.
To your questions:
RE: Jedi- I do not consider the empire to have risen until after the Jedi Purge: Jedi will not fight on the side of the Empire.
RE: Superweapons: If it existed during the Empire's reign then it is available. Centerpoint, then, is usable, as is the Sun Crusher. In addition to these weapons are the World Devestators, which are a feat in and of themselves.
The bottom line is that a single state originating in the Star Trek universe does not have the capacity to defeat the Empire in a war. The Empire has superior weaponry, power capabilities, travel, tactics and a war mentality. The Federation, at relative technical parity with its contemporaries, wouldn't have a snowball's chance at standing up to the Empire. Nor would any of the other organizations during the period shown in Star Trek.
I will attempt to summarize my arguments after I eat dinner. I might be back in about an hour.
tactics are debatable...war mentality is certainly debatable given what we see of stormtroopers and their small talk as well as their ineptitude in general...compare that with the Jem'Hadar and they're onto a severe loss.
superior weaponry is again debatable...perhaps in terms of raw power...but in delivery they have no idea of temporal phasing weapons and other such ST technologies.
you haven't ever addressed any of those issues in any of the threads.
if you show that the empire has a feasible way to tackle some of the weapons i've mentioned then put it forward...otherwise you'll have to stop simply insisting that SW has superior weapons.
you're simply playing with semantics with this point. given that sworn enemies have often combined to tackle foes in the ST universe. to discount the alliance between the borg and voyager on the basis that the federation command didn't approve is silly given that they couldn't even communicate with the federation command. it seems like merely a blatent attempt at trying to disallow such thing purely on the basis that you know the results would be detrimental to your arguments.
anyway...you're off for dinner...i'm off to bed...it's 3am here
Heh. All the Star Trek folk'd have to do, is beam into what ever star destryoyers are hanging about, with armed quantum weapons and lit the fuse and runbeam back out...
(As long whatever craft they are in's shields can withstand an assault for the time in which it takes to do that quick beam in/beam out)
A good counter move would be infecting the federation fleet with kaminoan Jar-Jar clones that would evetually destroy the fleet with incompetance and slapstick mayhem.
It seems like everything in Star Wars comes down to "get behind their defences and deactivate the shields allowing the troops to attack en mass.)
And on top of that, Star Trek is based on a earth future.
So they will all have seen the DVDs and will know how to defeat the empire anyhow...
__________________
"Van Zan is the Pinocchio of feces." - Lestov16
Last edited by Sadako of Girth on Dec 18th, 2008 at 05:40 PM
as the links i've gave show...all the ST ships need to do if fire barrages of transphasic torpedos from well outwith the range of the stardestroyers.
1: there's no evidence that SD's can mount an effective defence against the transphasic weapons
2: even if they were to get in close enough, ablative armour negates direct energy weapons power regardless of whether the ST ships can generate shields that can withstand turbo-laser fire.
in the other thread in the SW section i gave the ground war to the SW galaxy...now in hindsight and i think ST might have it as we've seen what the SW weapons have done when princess leia gets hit by fire from storm troopers it barely grazes her...ST standard phasers can either knock someone unconscious or completely vapourise them and that's the least powerful federation handheld weapons.
[QUOTE=11402077]Originally posted by jaden101 as the links i've gave show...all the ST ships need to do if fire barrages of transphasic torpedos from well outwith the range of the stardestroyers.
1: there's no evidence that SD's can mount an effective defence against the transphasic weapons
2: even if they were to get in close enough, ablative armour negates direct energy weapons power regardless of whether the ST ships can generate shields that can withstand turbo-laser fire.
in the other thread in the SW section i gave the ground war to the SW galaxy...now in hindsight and i think ST might have it as we've seen what the SW weapons have done when princess leia gets hit by fire from storm troopers it barely grazes her...ST standard phasers can either knock someone unconscious or completely vapourise them and that's the least powerful federation handheld weapons. [/QUOTE
Excellent points, Jaden.
But I would dispute that the ground battle advantages automatically are the federations as the Death Star factor negates that.
You do make a powerful case for Phaser superiority, although
it was the energy weapon equivalent of a glancing blow barely- touched-her-kind-of-shot though in 'Jedi'. Look at what blasters did to everything and everyone else in the saga (The dirty great chuncks of hangar ceiling taken out by Solo's blaster in 'ANH')... They aint no elastic band in the eye...
Maybe the blaster shot was from a blaster low on power...?
I bet low power phasers are shit too.
Sad to hear about Majel Roddenberry.
Last edited by Sadako of Girth on Dec 19th, 2008 at 12:21 AM
Wasn't she hit in the hand, also if the sw blaster rifles as weak as you seem to apply then Storm troopers shouldn't be getting killed with one hit. He raw power in the force might have came into play but I can't argue that either way. On the ground the empire's force users will come into play which will provide a tough challenge to any ST ground forces , the same will the Empire's armor division which includes AT-ATs.
Infantry, I suspect is closer depending on a what Storm troopers are on the ground. The best storm troopers are the clones that were created from Jango Fett's(other capable men were also cloned at later dates) DNA. The non clone storm troopers are not at the level as the clone storm troopers but they still have to go through training. Another factor would be some of the special troopers of the empire such as the dark troopers,etc.
Last edited by Elite Hunter on Dec 19th, 2008 at 12:23 AM
I hadn't actually considered the ground attack vehicles to be honest...but yes that might well swing it the other way...most startrek ground battles are hand-to-hand or with hand held weapons rather than in any kind of vehicle.
actually from what i know of storm troopers they aren't from Jango fett as the Kaminoans in their fight against the empire began to deliberately introduce defects into the clones and so they replaced by volunteers and conscripts...at least that's my understanding...i'm sure i read it somewhere...regardless Jem'Hadar shock troopers would be far more powerful on the ground than stormtroopers of clone troopers
When we examine all the available data objectively we find that Star Wars has technological superiority when compared to Star Trek. Even when only looking at published numbers, Star Wars has objective, provable superiority in transportation, weaponry and shielding. With some extrapolation we can deduce superior tactical sensor systems, tactics, numbers and ground capabilities.
EDIT: This (the bold) was all that I had time to address. The rest will come during the next few posts. Sorry for the delay.
Locomotion
In any large scale confrontation, transportation of troops and supplies plays as important a role as does actual combat. In this area the Empire has an advantage over any of the Star Trek species- including the Borg. Hyperdrive is far faster a means of travel. The Galactic Empire ruled almost the entire galaxy. Traversing even a third of the distance of the galactic diameter (from the edge of the core to the outer rim) of even the smallest galaxy is a tremendous feat not replicable by the Federation. It would have taken Voyager many decades (80 years maybe?) to reach earth from the Delta Quadrant. Star Wars technology is able to make a similar trip in a matter of days rather than years. During the events leading up to Episode 3 Obi-Wan and Anakin were conducting the 'Outer Rim Sieges.' They were able to make it to the Battle of Couruscant within a very small amount of time, and without much prep time- they were in combat directly before making the jump into battle. (I'm looking for a timeline- I'll have to substantiate this next post. Maybe EH can help out here- I'm not very good at dates/time lines.)
Star Trek: ~80 years in superluminal speeds to traverse a galaxy.
Star Wars: ~Days, possibly weeks if other sources are examined. (I'll investigate this more fully at another time- I just want to keep going with this tonight.)
Weaponry
The conventional weaponry of Star Wars outclasses that of Star Trek. I will not debate superweapons in this section- that will be the final part of this post. Handheld
Phasers: In the hand held form they are startlingly inaccurate- they have no form of sights or guidance system. True proficiency must therefore come only with years (or at least months) of practice. Phaser rifles are much more practical, and have greater applicability in tactical (battle) situations, yet they are not shown to be more powerful than a solid blaster rifle. Phasers are often used within a ship as a defensive tool (look at any of the attempted/successful boardings of Voyager/the Enterprise) yet there is rarely any significant damage to the ship itself. When combat extends to a cargo bay (as it often did during Voyager's cruise) the containers are not shown to be damaged by the stray shots.
-Damage potential: Phasers are shown to be very effective at killing single, unarmored enemies. When set to full power, the phaser has been shown to remove an organic being from existence. (vaporization might be the wrong word- the disappearance of the body has no outward effect on the surroundings.) They have not shown much utility when aimed at metal: the walls and floor of starships are often unaffected by phasers, and storage crates are sufficient cover for an extended firefight. When pitted against Stormtrooper armor there is a possibility that each kill might require multiple shots.
Blasters
Traditional Wars weaponry encompasses 'blaster' rifles, pistols and sniper-rifles. All have greater accuracy potential than conventional phasers, as shown by Han shooting out the controls for a blast door (to delay Vader in ANH) from across a hangar. Accuracy is maintained over a greater range than Star Trek's weapons.
-Damage potential: Blasters are enough to blow chunks out of walls and leave charring on starship hulls. During the 1st scene of ANH, the collateral damage from richochettes (sp?) quickly filled the hallway with smoke. The entire area was quickly totaled. Blasters have shown a greater potential for destruction, so they must be considered more powerful, if not as versatile. When it comes down to a fight though, would you like to be able to heat rocks or be able to blow up part of a wall?
Ship Mounted phasers:
These work on the same principle as regular phasers, but are (most likely) many, many times more powerful. The omnidirectionality of point defense systems (or phaser arrays) would give the Federations a much needed advantage when faced with the swarm tactics of fighters. I will try to find/generate some estimates of phaser destructive/fire power.
Turbolasers:
-Mechanics: ICS (AotC) describes the energy weapons on starships as 'invisible energy beams that travel at lightspeed.' The visible bolts' light depletes the overall energy of the beam, decreasing its range. Turbolasers gain a larger range by spinning the beam, reducing its glow.
SW clearly does not use lasers, nor does it use a phaser based technology. Direct comparrison is therefore difficult, because SW weapons rely on direct energy transfer while Phasers appear to set up a chain reaction.
-Utility: Turbolasers have been shown to hit extremely fast moving fighters at difficult angles. Star Trek Ships are (almost?) all larger than the fighters used in dogfighting, so they are more likely to be hit.
This was all that I had time for- I meant to back up the weaponry section with a part on energy production, and I haven't had a chance to look up major Star Trek Superweapons. I'll try to post another section within 8-10 hours, but sledding and this Gears 2 competition both come before KMC. (Who wouldn't rather go sledding than sit in a chair?)
1: hyperdrive isn't faster than transwarp...the figures speak for themselves...the SW galaxy map said that, dependant on the hyperdrive used that an SW ship can travel the entire width of the galaxy between a few weeks and a few months....transwarp can deploy anywhere in the galaxy within a few minutes...
it should also be noted that warp speed is a logarithmic scale in which warp 6 is equal to 392 times the speed of light and warp 9 is 1649 times the speed of light.
warp 10 is actually considered infinite speed (and is attained in 1 episode of voyager) in the star trek universe and the prometheus class are capable of attaining warp 9.99
as for accuracy...Stormtroopers are meant to be highly trained yet they are notorious for missing their targets....obviously this is more for dramatic effect (as it is in star trek) because if the weapons were all supremely accurate and the people using them were extremely proficient then we wouldn't have much of a story line as everyone important would be dead in the 1st shoot out.
scared of flaming?...wouldn't worry too much...only the ones who are up for proper debate from the starwars forum have come over so far and we've all been civilised
This thread was had in the GDF, the ST side was constantly gimped, while the SW side could draw on the likes of the Emperor and his ability to destroy entire armadas with a Force-fart.
Well, Star Trek has omnipotence, so that has to be limited or else there can be no comparrison. The rest of my post was just trying to narrow down what we'd be debating: an argument about all of the ships ever during ST vs. the Empire, or even Vs. all the ships in SW seems (seemed) too unwieldy to discuss intelligently. Mostly, I didn't want to hear (and still don't, ever, during the entire course of my life) that there would simply be kamikazee attacks at every SW ship and that ST would win simply through numbers.
In any one on one empire vs. empire fight Star Wars will win.
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Dec 18th, 2008 01:22 AM
