ST v SW

[Baffalo]

What you forget in this analogy, that although the Weimar Republic was a failed, broken state, it was a modern nation state nevertheless compromised of 95%+ of Germans. Now even the Galactic Empire at its heyday never achieved similar centralization (lacked the monopoly of violance, harmonized legal system, there were uncontrolled territories within the Imperial proper... etc) and the Galactic Republic was even less centralized, what's more it lacked an armed force or a centralized bureaucracy. The Republic itself was more like an UN-like umbrella organization than a state and the position of the Chancellor was equal to a UN Secretary General (a pompous place but more prestige related than real executive powers). The reason of the New Order stuff was nation building, there was no such thing as a Republic citizen, but Corellian, Alderaanian etc.

That would however mean that there was indeed little loyalty to the Republic and resistance to its destruction minimal. All the more reason to presume that Palpatine didn't need any gratuitous bogeymen to cement his rule and that having the single biggest army in the galaxy a sufficient way to keep control of an atomized society. Just like the Holy Roman Empire kept being dominated by the guys with the biggest military.

See that's where you're wrong. A good analogy would be the former 13 British colonies prior to adoption of the US Constitution. The colonies were more or less united towards the common goal of becoming independent of British rule, but afterwards, each state acted more or less independently of each other. That's why they're called states, because each one was a nation in its own right, united under the Articles of Confederation about the same as nations are under the UN. The Articles had no power, the states did what they wanted, and there was nothing to hold them together. That's almost exactly like the Old Republic, with individual planets acting autonomously. Lots of people saw the flaw to this system, but Palpatine exploited it and used it to seize power. I think lots of people really wanted a more central authority, and so weren't opposed to it when Palpatine began seizing power.

My theory is that the population felt that the Senate was weak, and so they were perfectly willing to let Palpatine take more power as long as he kept them safe. It was obvious that the scale of the Separatist Crisis far exceeded the ability of individual planets to handle on their own. So, they let Palpatine get more power, believing the Senate still had the authority to reign him in when he pushed too far. But for the majority of senators, they'd spent years living decadent, extravagant lives and didn't dare risk their positions in the Senate by challenging the most popular chancellor who was rolling up his sleeves and making their constituents happy. So naturally, they go about their lives, letting Palpatine do his thing, and then sit back and continue to do nothing when he declares himself Emperor.

If you look at the level of power excersized by the galactic government, you go from almost no authority in the Old Republic, total authority in the Galactic Empire, and finally a mixed, federal style government in the New Republic. I think that while Palpatine was smart enough to work slowly to get where he was, but the galactic population was still used to a government that wasn't there. That's something that takes quite a bit of getting used to. That's why I'm glad they didn't go straight back to the same level of authority of the Old Republic (Though I'm sure being written prior to the prequel trilogy helped in that regard). The New Republic returns lots of freedom to the population, but still has quite a bit of authority. They learned the lessons of the Empire and the Old Republic and knew that the government needed to let people be free, but have the authority to do what needed to be done.

[Metahive]

Baffalo, I don't see anything in your post that refutes even one single of my arguments, especially as I have confirmedly canon on my side as far as Palpatine's supposed "need" for the Rebels as bogeyman to mask the cementing of his rule goes. Try again.

ETA:
To clarify, refuting my argument entails showing that Palpatine's grip on power right after the Clone Wars was weak enough to merit a distraction and that the Rebels represented that distraction. Please no "common sense" style answers anymore. If you have canon-evidence for political, systemic threat X,Y and Z that were honestly able to depose of Palpatine right after he had crowned himself emperor show them, then also explain how you work around TFU.

[Baffalo]

Baffalo, I don't see anything in your post that refutes even one single of my arguments, especially as I have confirmedly canon on my side as far as Palpatine's supposed "need" for the Rebels as bogeyman to mask the cementing of his rule goes. Try again.

You don't want to see what's there. What I'm saying is that the people of the Galactic Republic wanted a change in the way things were run. For centuries, they've had a weak, ineffective government trying to maintain order while organizations like the Trade Federation, Techno Union, et al. grew bloated and powerful. Microstates within the Republic exerted their own influence such as the Hutts and Black Sun, with no central authority around to stand up to them and enforce Republic law. The people didn't necessarily want the Republic destroyed as much as they wanted a more effective government to handle the numerous problems that were only making things worse. Palpatine seized the reigns of power by using the public's desires for a better government, swinging the pendulum and making people happy, then letting that momentum carry him all the way up to being the Emperor. Had the Rebel Alliance failed, I'm sure it would've been a matter of time before the general populous of the Empire either demanded more freedoms or grew complacent and fearful. That might be why the Emperor took so long to remove the Senate, because he wanted to do it piece by piece and get people used to the idea so they'd be less likely to rebel.

[mutanthamster]

If you suddenly reduce the Empire to Federation technology

That would be difficult considering that a lot of Federation technology is evidently superior to that of the Empire.

[Batman]

Really. Which technologies would that be, if you could be bothered to elaborate?

[Batman]

GHETTO EDIT: Damn, never took a look at the time stamp of the post I was responding to vs the one before it. My bad.

[Dalton]

It was still on the first page. I'll allow it.

[Connor MacLeod]

This thread is never going to die.

Also there is the transporter. SW has no real equivalent in common usage. Doesn't mean they need it, but the Fed has it and SW doesn't. they have nothing quite with the versatility of replicators (partly because the kinds they do have have to achieve the effect without some magical transporter effect. World Devastators are not singular tech - they're like the Coruscant construction droid self fabrication facilities - but they build a particular class of things usually. World Devastators consume resrouces and churn out military components and vehicles and equipment. the CCDs made buildings. duplicators were strictly for fabricating paper and texts and the like. Maybe ST replicators have similar specialization, but we've seen them produce both the food AND the container before, so it has some overlap.)

Warp drive has some inherent advantages over Hyperdrive (more precise, more manuverable) - but this is generally because of its lower overall velocity - thousands of c generally allows for more reaction times than millions of c over the same distance. But that's also kinda the point. "Superior" and "inferior" as a general, all around "rule" is silly. It's not about either/or. The ST powers have advantages in some areas of technology because they had the ability and they had a need to be met. SW likewise. you cant generalize about superiority like that because to match something doesn't neccesarily mean duplicating the effect. (EG a drop ship or shuttle can still suffice in some ways for deploying on planet. It may be slower, but it can also allow you to carry or deploy more people. Transports usually only dispatch small numbers of people - good for deploying small investigation teams, but this can bottleneck you in emergencies, which is probably one reason why they still use shuttles and other landing craft.)

[Stofsk]

You can use transporters rapidly don't forget. Several times in TOS a Constitution-class ship was evacuated of its crew in what seemed to be a short time (although it wasn't actually stated), and with only a single transporter room IIRC that could transport a maximum of six people in one go. With a crew of 430, that's around 71 transports, and if you assume you can do multiple transports per minute - let's say one every ten seconds if you want to rush, or one every fifteen might be better. (the actual transporter effect takes seconds, and you're beaming them all down to the same location so maybe you don't need to reset the coordinates every transport) You could get everyone off the ship in less than twenty minutes.

I am pretty sure that the Enterprise-D also had even better/quicker transport capabilities than its predecessor. The Galaxy-class had multiple transporter rooms, and also ones for cargo transportation (which I don't think is much different from personnel transport, other than maybe a larger pad for larger volume transports). IIRC 'Descent' had much of the crew beam down to that planet with the self-aware Borg, and they had to beam them up in a hurry at one point and it took like a minute to transport hundreds of people. Also by this stage, many shuttles had transporters too.

You might still want shuttles and obviously the Enterprise carries them for some purpose. We usually see them used when risking the ship would be ill-advised but using a probe either hasn't or wouldn't give the same kind of information than sending mission specialists. One example is 'The Price' where Data and IIRC Geordie went through a wormhole to test its stability rather than risk sending the Enterprise through. Other usages of shuttles involve extending the mission parametres of an exploration survey (for example a shuttle or runabout goes and explores other planets in a solar system or whatever) to mundane long distance transport where the home ship cannot be diverted (we see this most of the time where the crew are returning to the Enterprise after going to some conference or whatever). But for mass-transit from orbit to a planetary surface, the transporter>>>anything else, to be honest.

It's not perfect, because transporter inhibitors are a real thing and also the writers obviously wrote themselves into corners where the logical solution would have been 'welp why don't they just beam in/out and problem solved' so they compensated by inventing all sorts of crap that block or interfere with a transporter signal. But these don't seem as common as people assume.

[Eternal_Freedom]

In the novel "Federation" (which I don't know if it's cannon, but it's what I've got to hand) The E-Nil apparently has six transporter rooms capable of moving 6 people per cycle, with two cycles per minute in it's fastest mode. It also has at least 4 (possibly 6) "Emergency transporters" which can move 30 people per cycle, with one cycle per minute.

Bizarrely, the E-D in the same novel is stated to take at least 10-15 minutes to evacuate a Romulan D'deridex warbird. Even with the Romulans helping it would take more than 5 minutes.

[Connor MacLeod]

I'd guess 2 cycles a minute and 6 per cycle isn't too bad.. IIRC the transporter effect tends to take a few seconds.. so we're talking 6-8 seconds both ways, not including time for people to move off the pad, time to acquire targets, and so on (safety margins perhaps) still at the fastest you might figure 4-5 cycles per minute, which isn't much different. The biggest problem i would see is funnelling the people to accomodations, especially in a panic. Do we have any idea how large transporter rooms are? I'd guess they oculd hold dozens of people at least, maybe hundreds, but you'd have to keep moving them out in an orderly fashion.

of course it also depends on the emergency. We know in the ST Universe there are lots of things that can interfere with (or even completely negate) transporters, so it could be that transports are not always desirable because of the risk. Like I said they haven't totally gotten rid of shuttles and that makes sense.

[Batman]

I haven't checked for the E-D but at least as per TUC the only way you're getting hundreds of people into a transporter room on a refit Connie is to stack them.
There's the pad, which can maybe hold 35 or so people, and then there's room for perhaps 20 more (and I think that's pushing it).
As per that same movie however the transport cycle (from Kirk saying 'Energize' to the transporter visuals fading away) takes 16 seconds, which should at the bare bones minimum allow for three cycles a minute (and that's talking TOS transporters).

Furthermore, we know TOS era transporters can do volume transports (as in just beam up a chunk of space) with no (at least none immediately apparent) ill effects on mammalian life (those whales from TVH) and I doubt they lost that capability by the TNG era. So as Connor pointed out, the locking on individuals thing may just be a safety measure that gets overridden in emergencies. 'Yup, got a lock of every single one of them' as standard procedure vs 'Can't get a lock on them, sir'-'In 12 seconds they'll be dead either way, just beam up the freaking room they're in in its entirety' when they have to.

[Stofsk]

In the novel "Federation" (which I don't know if it's cannon, but it's what I've got to hand) The E-Nil apparently has six transporter rooms capable of moving 6 people per cycle, with two cycles per minute in it's fastest mode. It also has at least 4 (possibly 6) "Emergency transporters" which can move 30 people per cycle, with one cycle per minute.

Bizarrely, the E-D in the same novel is stated to take at least 10-15 minutes to evacuate a Romulan D'deridex warbird. Even with the Romulans helping it would take more than 5 minutes.

Sounds like bullshit to me. For one thing, the show never referred to any other transporter room than the one we see in TOS. In fact it is always referred to in the singular, implying there was only ever one. For another, the events in 'Descent' contradict the E-D's capabilities you reported. From the script:

BEVERLY
Red Alert. How long before
they're in weapons range?

STAR TREK: "Descent, Part II" - 6/24/93 - TEASER 4.

3 CONTINUED: (2)

TAITT
Ahh... about... ninety seconds.
No -- no, make that seventy
seconds.

Taitt is nervous and having to work hard to hold
herself together. She does not inspire confidence.

BEVERLY
(to com)
Crusher to Transporter Room Three.

SALAZAR'S VOICE
Salazar here, sir.

BEVERLY
Start transporting the Away Teams
off the surface.

SALAZAR'S VOICE
Aye, sir.

BEVERLY
Use the transporters in the cargo
bays if you have to. I want those
teams up here as fast as possible.

In the previous episode, Picard decided to beam down most of the crew in order to search for Data. He left a skeleton crew aboard. We're not given numbers but given the E-D's crew complement of a thousand people, we could be looking at hundreds who beamed down to the planet. In this encounter we're given a time, 70 seconds, for Salazar to work the controls (and the E-D has a lot more transporters than the E-Nil had).

BEVERLY
(to con officer)
Prepare to leave orbit.

TAITT
Sir, the Borg ship is powering up
its forward weapons array.
They'll be in firing range in...
in twenty seconds.

BEVERLY
(to com)
Salazar, how many people are still
down there?

5 INT. TRANSPORTER ROOM (INTERCUT)

SALAZAR, a young NCO, is at the controls. We can see
several Away Teams stepping off the Transporter pad.

SALAZAR
Seventy-three, sir.

So from 70 seconds down to 20 seconds remaining on the clock, Salazar beamed up however many people went down to the planet with only 73 remaining. I'd say that in around a minute, you can easily beam up hundreds of people via a Galaxy-class's transporter capabilities (although this was an emergency situation granted).

On the Bridge, Beverly moves toward the Viewscreen.

BEVERLY
Put the Borg ship on screen.

6 ANGLE - VIEWSCREEN (OPTICAL)

The Borg ship is bearing down in the distance.

TAITT
Should I raise shields, sir?

BEVERLY
Not yet. I want to keep bringing
people up until the last possible
second.

STAR TREK: "Descent, Part II" - 6/24/93 - TEASER 6.

6 CONTINUED:

Everyone reacts to Beverly's order; she's cutting it
close, but if she pulls it off she'll have gotten that
many more people off the surface.

TAITT
Ten seconds.

BEVERLY
Stand by to raise shields and
break orbit on my mark.

TAITT
Five seconds.

BEVERLY
Mark.

7 ANGLE - VIEWSCREEN (OPTICAL)

The Borg ship fires at the Enterprise. The Enterprise
is rocked by the blast.

TAITT
Shields are down to seventy
percent.

BEVERLY
Establish a frequency-shift firing
pattern and return fire.

TAITT
Ah... right.

On the Viewscreen, we see the Borg ship taking a direct
hit as the Enterprise passes above it and continues
away.

TAITT
Direct hit... no damage.

BEVERLY
Helm, set course for the conduit,
maximum warp.

8 OMITTED

STAR TREK: "Descent, Part II" - REV. 6/24/93 - TEASER 7.

9 EXT. SPACE - THE ENTERPRISE (OPTICAL)

as it flashes away.

10 INT. BRIDGE

TAITT
The Borg aren't following us, sir.

BEVERLY
(to com)
Salazar, how many people did we
leave behind?

11 INT. TRANSPORTER ROOM

Where we see more Away Teams stepping off the Pad and
filing out the door.

SALAZAR
Forty-seven, sir.

12 INT. BRIDGE

Beverly is not happy about this. Her frustration
shows.

BEVERLY
(to herself)
Another minute and we could have
had them...

Now we have more exact numbers: in 15 seconds, we went from 73 on the planet to 47 - 26 who were beamed up in that time. That corresponds to the four transporter rooms on the E-D beaming up six people at once, with two more people coming up probably via cargo transporters or maybe a transporter on a runabout or shuttle. The cargo transporters are probably not used all that often in ferrying people around but if they helped beam up hundreds of people in that initial 50 seconds then you can probably see how effective even they can be.

BEVERLY
(to com)
Crusher to Salazar... how long
will it take to get the rest of
the crew off the surface?

19
thru OMITTED
20

20A INT. TRANSPORTER ROOM - INTERCUT

SALAZAR
One minute should do it.

BEVERLY
We don't have one minute. How
much can you shave off that?

SALAZAR
If I can get a good lock on them
quickly... I might be able to do
it in forty-five or fifty seconds.

Later in the episode Salazar reckoned it would take a minute to beam up the remaining 47 crew members. However, by this time the crew had scattered from their previous positions in order to elude the borg. I would say that minute estimate probably factored in targeting their coordinates, more so than in the initial beam up because there was prep time already in place making targeting each crew member easier. Even with his revised estimate it was still more than half-a-minute. I'd think that it would be much easier to do mass transport when you already have firm locks on the people you want to move, thus you can beam up a lot of people quite quickly. But when you do have to search for their coordinates, it does take longer.

tl;dr this shit is canon bro

[Eternal_Freedom]

I'm aware of that. I posted the Federation details FYI. I always thought it was bollocks that the E-Nil could move people faster than a ship 100 years more advanced.

[Connor MacLeod]

As I said alot of it can on circumstances. Both in funnelling the people out of the transport facility (you don't want panic and fighting or people getting in the way), as well as locating them (if we're talking about crew for example - do we know how they lock onto them? It's quite possible if they are crew they have a comm badge, and that means the badge could assist in the locking on/targeting process.)

It also depends on other factors I'd imagine - available power, enviromental conditiosn (like I mentioned before, things could complicate transporter procedures or make it more risky, so you wouldn't want to rush it in those cases even if you can still transport), and strain/wear on the machinery. The last bit is of particular interest to me, since if you were evacuating large numbers of people (Say in the tens of thousands) and you could say evaucate 400 people per minute (just to pulla number out of the air) you're still talking the better part of an hour or two at least to evacuate the population, and that's constant operation. AS a RL example: The M16 (and other assautl rifles) have a cyclic rate of fire something on the order of 700-950 rounds per minute, but its actual, sustained ROF (due to various factors ) is much lower. That doesn't mean it isn't capable of the higher rate of performance, it just carries certain tradeoffs that make it undesirable (or risky) for prolonged usage.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Actually, now you mention it power constraints would explain why the E-D's transporters weren't very fast in the Federation situation: at the time the E-D's warp core was offline due to some funky effect of the cloaking device ont he Warbird, so they were operating on impulse power only.

[Ted C]

What I would actually be interested in seeing was a scenario where the two were put on approximately equal footing; namely, scale the Empire back to roughly the Federation's tech level and size (since it's rather difficult to have a battle between two galaxy-spanning civilizations, if nothing else due to the sheer distance between even close galaxies), and then play things out from there. Also, no 'hero' advantage to the Federation - as far as I'm concerned, that defeats the purpose of putting them on similar footing. Think along the lines of a war game.

Just thought I'd throw the idea out for consideration.

Might as well ask if the Federation could defeat the Klingons or the Romulans, then, since you've really just put the Empire into the same role: enemy with comparable technology and resources but a more ruthless government.

[Cesario]

Might as well ask if the Federation could defeat the Klingons or the Romulans, then, since you've really just put the Empire into the same role: enemy with comparable technology and resources but a more ruthless government.

On the other hand, the Empire's more likely to survive in this scenario, since the Federation will be less likely to feel justified in using doomsday weapons.

[Ted C]

Might as well ask if the Federation could defeat the Klingons or the Romulans, then, since you've really just put the Empire into the same role: enemy with comparable technology and resources but a more ruthless government.

On the other hand, the Empire's more likely to survive in this scenario, since the Federation will be less likely to feel justified in using doomsday weapons.

The same could be said of the Klingons or Romulans, so I still see no point to the scenario.

[Andras]

Hyperdrive is an I Win button against the Feds/AQ. It can't be intercepted in transit. You don't need large ships, think millions of 'probe droid' style hyperdrive missiles. With a handful of corvettes and a probot factory you can simply bombard the Federation into dust from thousands of lightyears away.

[Panzersharkcat]

Hyperdrive is an I Win button against the Feds/AQ. It can't be intercepted in transit. You don't need large ships, think millions of 'probe droid' style hyperdrive missiles. With a handful of corvettes and a probot factory you can simply bombard the Federation into dust from thousands of lightyears away.

Mind you, I'm pro-Wars, but this is pretty much:

[Batman]

Hyperdrive is an I Win button against the Feds/AQ. It can't be intercepted in transit

Um yes it can, if not necessarily with AQ technology. The express purpose of Interdictors and Empion mines is doing exactly that.

[Andras]

Panzersharkcat, you're about 10 years out of date, that's old-school ASVS tactics

Batman, the AQ doesn't have those. It can't be intercepted by them, and competent Imperial leadership won't give the AQ time to figure it out.

[Batman]

Yes, it's not like I commented on that aspect or something. The fact remains that your original statement was 'it can't be intercepted in transit' with absolutely no qualifiers which is simply incorrect.

[Panzersharkcat]

Panzersharkcat, you're about 10 years out of date. That's old-school ASVS tactics.

Can't remember the specific argument made by DXIII about hyperdrive wank. Something about the galaxy being a huge place to have to explore and the Unknown Regions (though I seem to remember something about a "dark matter galaxy" colliding with the GFFA which is why the Unknown Regions are hard to navigate).