ST v SW

[Cesario]

Yeah. Some tramp freighter or other showing up that has considerably more advanced technology than the AQ will immediately scare the AQ into going 'WAAH! They're going to invade!!! We have to use all that nifty technology we somehow never used to save our bacon against in-universe threats' because of-what again? It's not like running into societies considerably more technologically advanced than themselves is something that hasn't happened to them before. Guess what-not all of them were bent on conquest. Why in Valen's name would the AQ immediately assume the guys in the YT-2000s trying to get the lay of the land and wanting to trade-especially willing to trade technology far ahead of what they currently have-inevitably must be the scouts for an invasion force?

Odd strangers come trading away technology infinitely more advanced than your own, and all they want are the maps to your homeworld and those of your neighboring powers. Nope, nothing suspicious there. Not at all. No one would ever feel any desire to build a countermeasure against the possibility that these strangers might not be on the up and up. No sir. It's not like anything like this has ever happened in the Star Trek galaxy before, after all.

They wouldn't be buying maps specifically for your homeworld...local star maps are more than just a chart with Earth and a big arrow saying "YOU ARE HERE."

And of course, the Federation, peace-loving society that it is, will instantly jump to the paranoid conclusion that this new power is a MASSIVE THREAT. Surely they would try to make peaceful first contact first, as is their mandate?

And having made First Contact, the Federation learns that the freighters are from a distant group of worlds that are seeking to explore other areas of the galaxy, using their newly-developed hyperdrive. Of course, they'd be willing to share this new drive technology with the Federation, once we get to know you better. Etc, etc.

All it needs is a good cover story and a freighter captain with a modicum of sense.

Of course the Federation would attempt diplomatic relations. They did that with the Cardasians, and attempted it (repeatedly) with the Borg. Attempting diplomatic relations does not preclude the Captain muting the comms for a minute and asking his science officer to figure out how to take these guys appart if it turns out we have to.

And really on both avenues the Empire is in serious trouble. Not only is the Federation diplomatic corps good at what it does, making it entirely possible they'll succeed in establishing a peace treaty, but the number of exotic avenues of attack avalible in the Trek universe makes it statistically very unlikely that every single one of them will prove useless. Standardization throughout the Empire which we've seen goes back thousands of years in this relatively stagnant society means that they're less likely to be able to implement a countermeasure quickly to whatever trick does end up working.

Won't do a thing about the numbers advantage, mind you, but the Federation doesn't know about that aspect of the threat just yet.

As you can see, the officially published figures are massively in favour of the Empire, even if you disregard the fact that an Acclamator is not a particularly powerful warship by Imperial standards (an Imperial Star Destroyer is roughly 10 times larger (by volume) than an Acclamator and presumably 10 times more powerful, even if we disregard the fact that an Acclamator is just a transport). In fact, the only way to generate a remotely close match between an Imperial ship and a Federation ship is to use a small patrol craft such as Jango Fett's Slave-1:
[...]
Even this seemingly Trek-biased matchup seems to heavily favour the Empire, with Jango Fett's small patrol craft able to hit the Enterprise-D with much heavier firepower than it can dish out in return.

"just a transport" is implying that the lowest warship can crush the Federation's strongest ship

Happily ignoring that the transport in question is an assault transport of considerable size by AQ terms, mounting a goodly number of weapons, not some tiny civilian cargo hauler,

, and the Slave 1 thing is outright saying that even some civilian's small ship is much better for the Empire.

Yeah. A heavily modified bounty hunter vessel based on the in-universe equivalent of a coast guard cutter is absolutely the baseline for 'lowliest ship'. I also completely fail to see the part where Mike claim it could defeat an entire AQ fleet, which is what Cesario claimed.

If you want to keep up that title of Worlds Greatest Detective, it might be useful for you to occasionally read what I actually write.

Here's the thing. The Empire doesn't know how much weaker the Federation's weapons, armor, or power output are before they send their scouting party. That's what the scouting party is going to tell them. If they know ahead of time, they might be able to deliberately cripple some ships, sail in some museum pieces, and try to pretend that this is all they have, but how did they know they'd need to do that to avoid tipping off the galaxy of the enormous advantage they didn't know they had?

'Isn't it a standard conceit of your side that even the lowliest of Wars vessels could wipe the floor with entire fleets of Trek ships? '
Show me the part where Mike claims that.

Ah yes, I can see why "entire fleets" is exactly the same as "the entire alpha quadrant fleet". How could I have missed that detail. My appologies, Batman. You truly are the Worlds Greatest Detective.

[the atom]

The double digit KT weapons on a TIE are as per the main site and I called them highest end for a reason. My whole point was that I seriously doubt the MF could take on a Sovereign, leave alone a whole fleet of them?

Oops, missed that.

Against a ship with TT and up shields having MT PD guns. Trek main guns are in the KT to maybe MT range.

An assumption based entirely on one single low-end calc that makes a load of vague assumptions for the seeming express purpose of making a low calc. Brilliant.

[Batman]

An assumption based entirely on one single low-end calc that makes a load of vague assumptions for the seeming express purpose of making a low calc. Brilliant.

What single quote would that be, pray tell?

[Batman]

Of course the Federation would attempt diplomatic relations. They did that with the Cardasians, and attempted it (repeatedly) with the Borg. Attempting diplomatic relations does not preclude the Captain muting the comms for a minute and asking his science officer to figure out how to take these guys apart if it turns out we have to.

Which is relevant-how, exactly?This, again, presupposes that not only they can but can figure out a way to do so in time.

And really on both avenues the Empire is in serious trouble. Not only is the Federation diplomatic corps good at what it does, making it entirely possible they'll succeed in establishing a peace treaty, but the number of exotic avenues of attack avalible in the Trek universe makes it statistically very unlikely that every single one of them will prove useless. Standardization throughout the Empire which we've seen goes back thousands of years in this relatively stagnant society means that they're less likely to be able to implement a countermeasure quickly to whatever trick does end up working.

Presupposes any of them does. Why don't you give me a list of the tricks that you think could beat the Imps, and I tell you why they won't work.

If you want to keep up that title of Worlds Greatest Detective, it might be useful for you to occasionally read what I actually write.

I do. You obviously don't. What you said was' Isn't it a standard conceit of your side that even the lowliest of Wars vessels could wipe the floor with entire fleets of Trek ships' which quite explicitly includes, by your very own wording, the lowliest of Wars vessels. Not small military vessels, not upgunned midrange cargo ships-'the lowliest of Wars vessels could wipe the floor with entire fleets of Trek ships'.
show me the quote..

Here's the thing. The Empire doesn't know how much weaker the Federation's weapons, armor, or power output are before they send their scouting party. That's what the scouting party is going to tell them. If they know ahead of time, they might be able to deliberately cripple some ships, sail in some museum pieces, and try to pretend that this is all they have, but how did they know they'd need to do that to avoid tipping off the galaxy of the enormous advantage they didn't know they had?

And more of the deliberate and baseless assumption of Wars having to intentionally cripple their ships.

'Isn't it a standard conceit of your side that even the lowliest of Wars vessels could wipe the floor with entire fleets of Trek ships? '
Show me the part where Mike claims that.

Ah yes, I can see why "entire fleets" is exactly the same as "the entire alpha quadrant fleet". How could I have missed that detail. My appologies, Batman. You truly are the Worlds Greatest Detective.

Wow. You're even stupider than I thought. Mike said that individually, Wars ships are (on average) stronger thasn Trek ships and, overall, (thanks to having individually stronger ships and having a lot more of them) Wars is more powerful overall. Where in this treat has anybody ever claimed a single ship can defeat the entire AQ fleet?

[the atom]

An assumption based entirely on one single low-end calc that makes a load of vague assumptions for the seeming express purpose of making a low calc. Brilliant.

What single quote would that be, pray tell?

This one: http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Dat ... mit=Submit

[Cesario]

Here's the thing, either Wars ships are vastly superior to Trek ships or they aren't. If they aren't, that means the Trek powers can fight a conventional war before they get rolled over under the weight of numbers. If they are, that means that the Trek powers will figure that out damn fast and will start fighting unconventionally long before the numbers advantage can be pressed, which might reverse things even in the face of superior numbers.

It's an either/or scenario. Ironically you're arguing that the Empire's tech base is far weaker than I've seen as the standard here precisely because you realize the simple fact that the Empire actually has a better chance of winning if its ships are individually weak enough to lull the AQ powers into a false sense of security.

I hope that's added some clarity, detective.

[Connor MacLeod]

I see no reason to treat it as an either/or just because you say it is so. Particularily when we're hinging it on vaguely defined semantic interpretation.

[Cesario]

I see no reason to treat it as an either/or just because you say it is so. Particularily when we're hinging it on vaguely defined semantic interpretation.

What was the other interpretation besides A or not A?

(with A being defined as "wars ships are vastly superior to trek ships")

[Batman]

I see no reason to treat it as an either/or just because you say it is so. Particularily when we're hinging it on vaguely defined semantic interpretation.

What was the other interpretation besides A or not A?
(with A being defined as "wars ships are vastly superior to trek ships")

And on average, they are. This means every Wars ship is vastly superior to every Trek ship because of what again?

[Cesario]

The word vastly, especially in this context, has a meaning.

Consider the internal combustion engine. A technology we have today. Now, let's say we go up against an enemy with horses, and further assume we don't have any horses of our own.

Since we're trying very hard not to show off how much more powerful our engines are than their horses, we look at what we have in stock. Now, we could grab some museum pieces, dust off the designs of the first cars that no one ever figured would catch on. But just looking at what we have now, every one of the modern engines would have some aspect that would tip off a horse-using civilization that our engines trump their horses by a vast margin.

While there is a major difference between a race car, a tank, and a motorcycle, none of these things are going to be able to fool the horse using civilization into thinking your engines aren't better than what they have.

Then that civilization takes into account that you're scouts. Whether peaceful explorers or the vanguard of an invasion, they do know that you're trying to get the lay of THEIR territory. And more importantly, you're pretending you aren't military, and thus they'll be pretty clear on the fact that you aren't using your culture's top of the line. (Since even the horse users know that you don't give your best horses to random explorers.)

Now, consider that the magnitude of the difference between horses and internal combustion engines is significantly lower than the magnitude we're looking at between Trek and Wars power production, engine speed, weapons output, and shield capacity.

Your scouts are going to need to expend a hell of a lot of effort to avoid tipping anyone in the local quadrant off.

[Connor MacLeod]

What was the other interpretation besides A or not A?

(with A being defined as "wars ships are vastly superior to trek ships")

Practically anything? You seem to be arguing that SW exists only on one single technolgoical plateau, with a very narrowly (albeit vaguely) defined performance envelope, and that anyone showing up in the ST galaxy will shit a break just on the sight of HOW BIG AND AWESOME THEY ARE.

If I am in error, then by all means correct me.

[Cesario]

You are in error.

I'm saying either what you misinterpreted me as saying is the case, or it is not.

Which is the case will determine the course of the next stage of the conflict.

If the Empire isn't so invincible on the individual ship scale, they'll have a much better chance to use their production advantage. If they are so invincible on the individual ship scale, no one in Trek will be stupid enough to engage them conventionally.

[the atom]

Again, this very depends on what kind of ship you're talking about. Sure a ISD might chuck out several times it's volume in sovereigns (depending on the calcs and your interpretations of them of course), but I highly doubt anybody is going to be extremely impressed by something like a YT-2000 or a Lancer, and fighters would probably be a joke.

As Conner already said, it's not an either or thing, and power levels can vary wildly across each setting.

[Connor MacLeod]

You are in error.

I'm saying either what you misinterpreted me as saying is the case, or it is not.

Which is the case will determine the course of the next stage of the conflict.

If the Empire isn't so invincible on the individual ship scale, they'll have a much better chance to use their production advantage. If they are so invincible on the individual ship scale, no one in Trek will be stupid enough to engage them conventionally.

So you can define what we're talking about when you say 'invincible' right? Because thats not a very precise word even if we restrict it to *just* transports, and there's alot of ways to cover that. Besides which, its not exactly uncommon for ST ships to serve multiple functions (Federation ships themselves serve as transports, warships and exploration/science vessels - what's to stop them from assuming this is likewise?)

Moreover I'm still not seeing where you get this idea that Trek is going to omnisciently realize there full and complete capabilities just by observation. It's not exactly the first time the Enterprise has faced more powerful enemies, after all.

[Cesario]

I believe "we can shoot at them continuously for eight hours and not do any damage" would be in the right ballpark for "invincible".

The AQ powers won't omnisciently realize anything, much less the full capabilities of the enemy. The real threat, the enemy's industrial base, won't be recognized no matter what ships are sent or how powerful they may or may not be. What they will realize is the ballpark of the power generation, weapons, and shield disparity (assuming one exists).

[Connor MacLeod]

I believe "we can shoot at them continuously for eight hours and not do any damage" would be in the right ballpark for "invincible".

Depends on how the defences and the ship, doesn't it? If the ship is a small one, but has very good defenses and no weapons, it might be damn misleading about capabilities.

The AQ powers won't omnisciently realize anything, much less the full capabilities of the enemy. The real threat, the enemy's industrial base, won't be recognized no matter what ships are sent or how powerful they may or may not be. What they will realize is the ballpark of the power generation, weapons, and shield disparity (assuming one exists).

How big a ballpark? Depending on where you place SW firepower, this could mean only a few times greater or orders of magntiude greater. Besides which even if there WAS an advantage it doesnt take advantage of context. We could assume a "ton for ton" parity in capability between Fed and Imperial ships (or even an advantage to the Feds, if it wasn't a vast disparity) and SW could still have an advantage if you built big enough.

[Batman]

I believe "we can shoot at them continuously for eight hours and not do any damage" would be in the right ballpark for "invincible".

Not every Star Wars ship is a Star Destroyer. We're talking civilian freighters here. Remember ANH? Where a whopping 4 TIE fighters (that probably had orders to let them get away) managed to damage the Falcon, as ship considered heavily armed and shielded for a tramp freighter? What, exactly (other than their stardrive being considerably faster than Warp, and it's not like the Feds haven't run into people with that before), what exactly do civilian freighters tell the AQ about the capabilities of the Wars military?
What can I learn about the capabilities of the US Air Force from a Piper Cherokee? About the Navy from a tuna boat? About the Army from a New Beetle?

[Cesario]

I believe "we can shoot at them continuously for eight hours and not do any damage" would be in the right ballpark for "invincible".

Not every Star Wars ship is a Star Destroyer. We're talking civilian freighters here. Remember ANH? Where a whopping 4 TIE fighters (that probably had orders to let them get away) managed to damage the Falcon, as ship considered heavily armed and shielded for a tramp freighter? What, exactly (other than their stardrive being considerably faster than Warp, and it's not like the Feds haven't run into people with that before), what exactly do civilian freighters tell the AQ about the capabilities of the Wars military?
What can I learn about the capabilities of the US Air Force from a Piper Cherokee? About the Navy from a tuna boat? About the Army from a New Beetle?

Depends on how little you knew before, now doesn't it? You look at those civilian vessels and you can divine some of the basics. From the tuna boat, you learn that the enemy can field naval craft capable of floating on water and propelling themselves without the use of wind power. From the new beetle, you learn that the enemy is using a mechanism other than animal power for routine transport, which has significant advantages in speed and endurance over anything your best horses can provide.

Depending on exactly how little you had before you might also learn that the enemy is in posession of something they call "metal" that is far more durable than the wood or bone you're using.

We are talking about what can be learned about the ballpark of the enemy's tech base, right?

[Connor MacLeod]

You can tell certian qualitative things yes, but how is that going to help you? knowing they use metal isn't very useful unless you know the qualities of the material. you might be able to figure out they have defenses that can stand up to a certain level of punishment. You might even be able to gauge their firepower by how quickly they take you down. Or how quickly they accelerate. If they use a big starship like a Trade Federation donut, you might tell something about theinr shipbuilding and engineering. This isn't neccesarily going to be useful stuff militarily, and relying on it could be very misleading (indeed, one could argue that deliberate misdirection is useful in such cases.)

And then there are other capabilities that will be hard to divine, like their command and control and coordination abilities, their ability to communicate.

[Cesario]

It's quite useful if you can tell from the materials in their construction that their civilian ships are using armor that rivals or exceeds the top of the line military hardware of any other race you've ever encountered. Likewise it's useful if you can look at the speed they're going at (which they can't hide at all without pretending to be a sublight power) to see what we're looking at in terms of tactical mobility.

Look at a freighter, and you see a power that can reach earth within five minutes from any point in the quadrant, and which could bypass your entire defensive fleet while doing so.

And you don't think they'd be interested in even thinking about preparing a countermeasure in case these people turned out to not be friendly? How stupid would they have to be to ignore something like that?

And you think they'll not only ignore it and not prepare any defenses, but they'll actually sell you maps to make your job conquoring them easier?

[the atom]

Where did you get that idea? Wars ships seem to rely on shields a bit more then trek ships, I'm actually pretty sure that the armor used on Star Destroyers might not even be as good as the stuff used on Federation ships. If hyperdrive freaks out the natives too much, well then just use a local ship instead.

[Rommel123]

'Isn't it a standard conceit of your side that even the lowliest of Wars vessels could wipe the floor with entire fleets of Trek ships? '
Show me the part where Mike claims that.

Only such thing I can recall is part when he claims that Slave-I can defeat Enterprise-D.

[Connor MacLeod]

Only such thing I can recall is part when he claims that Slave-I can defeat Enterprise-D.

Depending on how it's armed and the scenario is set up Most small craft would qualify in the fighter range (including Slave-1, The Falcon, and a good many of the smaller freighters.)

Besides if we took the 'lowliest vessel' all that literally, we'd be talking something like an unarmed freighter or a skyhopper or anything equally absurd that either can't fight back or lacks any sort of serious anti armour firepower (since its basically a civilian vessel.)

[Connor MacLeod]

It's quite useful if you can tell from the materials in their construction that their civilian ships are using armor that rivals or exceeds the top of the line military hardware of any other race you've ever encountered. Likewise it's useful if you can look at the speed they're going at (which they can't hide at all without pretending to be a sublight power) to see what we're looking at in terms of tactical mobility.

how are they going to know its armor alone? What about stuff like tensor fields and particle shields (which can strengthen the hull as part of its defensive measures.) And this only proves true if they get past the shields (which they could or couldn't) and the kind of shielding involved.

and by 'speed' I assume you mean hyperdrive speed? What are the capabilities of SW sensors for tracking FTL objects (as in how fast, how precise, and to what ranges?) - assuming of course SW ships can operate at full speed potential in the ST galaxy, or that it woudl even be smart to do so (due to inherent dangers, design limitations, etc.)

Look at a freighter, and you see a power that can reach earth within five minutes from any point in the quadrant, and which could bypass your entire defensive fleet while doing so.

Possibly. If your assumptions hold out.

And you don't think they'd be interested in even thinking about preparing a countermeasure in case these people turned out to not be friendly? How stupid would they have to be to ignore something like that?

I dunno. People can be pretty stupid, and stupidity can be a hard thing to accurately gauge in debates. And that applies to both sides.

And you think they'll not only ignore it and not prepare any defenses, but they'll actually sell you maps to make your job conquoring them easier?

Depends on who you ask and how you play it, I suppose. It's not as if the ST galaxy is a single, unified government after all.

[Batman]

Why would civilian ships even be armoured to begin with beyond the point necessary for fractional c travel (something both sides seem to handle mostly via shields)?
As for the speed issue, do we have any information on how intentionally variable hyperdrive speeds are? We know they can be all over the board depending on circumstances, plot, and writer ignorance, and the fact that backup hyperdrives are considerably slower than the standard ones indicates that you can build them for different speed ranges, but are they dial-a-speed the way Warp drives are? They seem to be to some extent ('Star Destroyer cruising speed' in TTT, Lando explicitly manipulating hyperdrive speed in his trilogy and probably others), but their problem with microjumps seems to indicate they can't dial it down arbitrarily far, at least not all that accurately. Which would in turn mean that at least their advantage in stardrive speed is something they cant help but give away, at least not using their own vessels.