31st Century UFP vs. Galactic Empire (A New Hope Era)

[Metahive]

Time travel isn't any more of a ineffable blackbox than other soft sci-fi conceits like FTL travel and communication and those have hardly ever been presented consistently in either ST or SW. Just look at the endless firepower debates which were only really kinda' resolved by authorial fiat and still crop up with regularity.

[Batman]

90 million c is 90 million c is 90 million c. A teraton is a teraton is a teraton. The problem there is merely to find out if those figures are correct. With time travel, you have to figure out what kind of time travel is used, and prove that that's the kind actually used. A 1MW phaser remains a 1 MW phaser no matter where it's used. With time travel, it gets a lot more complicated. Is it the original timeline rearranged, is it a parallel timeline virtually identical to the original, there's no way to tell the difference.

[Batman]

Yes they are, you just don't like the answers.

And I'm sorry Adam, the rest of that post is just pathetic. You don't like the fact that Wars massively out-everythings* Trek, we already know that. Get either used to it or lost.

*including abject stupidity, thanks to the EU

[Batman]

You're dismissing the observed effects of time travel because of a bullshit non-falsifable sophist statement about alternate universes.
I'm dismissing other tech because of a bullshit non-falsifable sophist statement about alternate universes.
What's the difference here?

The fact that the effects aren't observed. They're claimed. By all means Do tell me how we as the observer would be able to tell the original altered timeline from a virtually identical branching one. We DO see photorps undeniably have the effects we see. We DO see turbolasers undeniably have the effects we see. We have NO such evidence wrt the alterations actually affecting the original timeline other than dialogue, and half the time TNG+ characters don't know what they're talking about wrt real world physics but I'm supposed to assume they know time travel mechanics?

[Metahive]

90 million c is 90 million c is 90 million c. A teraton is a teraton is a teraton. The problem there is merely to find out if those figures are correct. With time travel, you have to figure out what kind of time travel is used, and prove that that's the kind actually used. A 1MW phaser remains a 1 MW phaser no matter where it's used. With time travel, it gets a lot more complicated. Is it the original timeline rearranged, is it a parallel timeline virtually identical to the original, there's no way to tell the difference.

OK, let's be unkind then, no weapons do any damage in SW, no shields offer any protection and the engines and generators they use don't actually work. It's all the FORCE! Blasters hurt because the people using them have faith they do, people travel between the stars because they imagine themselves being capable of doing so and the Force caters to their delusion, shields protect because the people deploying them believe subconsciously in the Force protecting them. and so they do . In other words, it's the same mechanism at work that makes Space Ork technology function. The actual reason for Han's hyperdrive not working in TESB? That's because he offended the Force with his lack of faith and that's why its functionality was restored as soon as he suffered for it. R2's fiddling with the engine was just conincidental. Same reason why the Death Star was destroyed, that was punishment for Motti's blasphemous, atheist (aforcist?) utterings.

Let's be even more unkind, nothing that happens in SW actually happens, it's all a dream of the sentient Force. Vader, Obi Wan, Skywalker, they all don't really exist, they're phantoms dreamt up by a sleeping God and whatever they can and can't do is limited to the Force's own sense of drama. That's why Luke's one in a million shot hit the exhaust port, it entertained the Force to have him succeed. That's why Palpatine's hair-brained scheme of galactic domination worked, because the Force considered it dramatically appropriate.
So when the Force decides to bring in phantoms resembling the people and technology of the ST universe into the dream that is Star Wars they won't be curbstomped to death because that wouldn't be entertaining to the sleeping God. Ergo the turbolasers harmlessly bounce off Enterprise's navigational deflector and one sweep of her phasers cuts a Star Destroyer in half. Dream logic. Gigatons be damned.

Yeah, that happens if you introduce fickle, omnipotent, sentient energy fields into a story. A little space-time manipulation is nothing against that.

Two can play that game.

[StarSword]

Ow. My brain exploded.

[Darth Tedious]

*some pretty novel and interesting ideas about GF paradox*

Who's overthinking it now?