Why does ST look stronger?

[Mad]

Now, speaking from experience with people I know (sci-fi fans), most seem to claim that (from their perspective) the Star Trek universe seems to be more powerful and that it's "better". So to put a twist on the old argument why is it like that? Of course, these people are just normal fans and they don't analyze and dissect each episode, so what is it?

A few reasons from my friends:

* Star Wars doesn't use shields.
Ignorance, they forget all the times they mention shields in SW.

* Okay, but you can see Star Trek's shields, so they're stronger!
I'm not sure how he thought this meant anything. I just pointed out that it doesn't matter that SW chose to have its shields be mostly invisible.

* The Federation will eventually come up with some way of winning, like they always do with their technobabble.
They've never done it on this scale. It's the toughest one for me to counter in person, because of the amount of explanation required. He's so used to see technobabble solve problems, that he thinks the Federation can overcome anything given enough time. In a way, it's true. But it took 25,000 years for SW's technology to reach where it is. I don't think the Federation has 25,000 years...

* Q.
Taken from a Star Trek galaxy vs Star Wars galaxy context. I just give this to him, because if they see ST vs SW as an unrealistic "everyone teams up against the other galaxy," then they aren't wrong because "ST vs SW" is not universally defined as "Federation vs Empire." So I say "yeah, well, there's not much that can be done there. Q would probably spend more time annoying Picard, though." I then say "Q vs God" and he shuts up.

* Star Trek ships look sleeker.
Looks like the ships would snap like a twig, to me.

* Photon torpedoes
Oh, those 64 megaton things? (I'm hardly in a formal debate, so he'll accept the TM. This is just easier than going to all kinds of calculations.) Fighters can launch 200 megaton concussion missiles, and they can't take out capital ships, remember TPM? Now, I want you to think of a 64 megabyte hard drive. Small, right? Now think of a 200 gigabyte hard drive. Big, right? Turbolasers are 200 gigatons. One shot, boom. He doesn't even attempt to refute this, but goes on to something else.

Can't remember much else at the moment. These are the ones I hear the most, though.

You're kidding I read up some on that 6000-year earth theory. I think that Jehovah Witnesses held that belief some time ago, do they still have it?

Not exactly. Creation, but stretched out over an unknown period of time; not 6 literal days, but 6 figurative days. They accept that earth is not young.

[Master of Ossus]

I believe that SW actually looks more powerful, but mine is obviously not the majority opinion or there would not be so many "Rabid Trekkies" for us to beat down. Thus, I believe that the answer lies in the fact that SW technology always seems more familiar than ST technology. It looks like it has been used, and sometimes cobbled together. Its weapons are designed in a reasonable manner, from real-life weapons, and its space combat is visually similar to WWII, although the battleships (capital ships) appear to be less powerful because their full capabilities are so rarely seen. In short, SW seems to be less powerful because it seems more realistic and familiar, and many sci-fi fans believe that because ST seems less familiar and more distant it must also be more advanced than anything that seems similar to what we see in real life.

[RedImperator]

I think personal preference has a lot to do with it. Trek has a very vocal core fanbase, and it's just natural if you're a fan to think your favorite is the best. SW obviously has its own hardcore fans, but I think there might be more Trekkies out there. My friend who was here tonight saw this board up on my comp screen, and when I explained to her the premise of Mike's site, she said, "Oh, Star Wars would win." Not surprisingly, she loves Wars and dislikes Trek (save for TOS).

[Darth Wong]

Generally speaking, I have noted that the less one knows about real-life science, technology, and military matters, the more likely one is to subscribe to GK-esque notions of Trek military superiority.

Take a room, split apart all of the people who know the most about science, technology, and military matters from the rest, and I guarantee that after a cursory examination of the facts, they will reach the only reasonable conclusion, which is that the Empire would ass-rape any AQ power with a miniscule fraction of its forces.

Now, take all of the people who don't know jack shit about science, technology, and military matters, and I guarantee that they will think the Feddies would win, because they will judge technology by its cosmetics, and every techno-idiot knows that the more plastic and flashing lights something has, the more advanced it must be.

It's the same mentality that leads people to buy these ridiculous Christmas-tree A/V receivers with LED displays covering the entire front panel, while professionals use those big ugly heavy-metal power amplifiers.

[Isolder74]

Generally speaking, I have noted that the less one knows about real-life science, technology, and military matters, the more likely one is to subscribe to GK-esque notions of Trek military superiority.

Take a room, split apart all of the people who know the most about science, technology, and military matters from the rest, and I guarantee that after a cursory examination of the facts, they will reach the only reasonable conclusion, which is that the Empire would ass-rape any AQ power with a miniscule fraction of its forces.

Now, take all of the people who don't know jack shit about science, technology, and military matters, and I guarantee that they will think the Feddies would win, because they will judge technology by its cosmetics, and every techno-idiot knows that the more plastic and flashing lights something has, the more advanced it must be.

It's the same mentality that leads people to buy these ridiculous Christmas-tree A/V receivers with LED displays covering the entire front panel, while professionals use those big ugly heavy-metal power amplifiers.

The Scarry thing is for me is that these fools are demanding these flashy thing in their computers and things and then expect us Engineers to make it for them. We do it knowing the flashing lights really do nothing but still, according to them we should have touch screens on our computer instead of keyboards. Of course lights on a computer covering walls comes from the old ENIAC and UNIVAC days when it was important to know if any of the Vacume tubes had burned out, light on ok light out change tube.

[SWPIGWANG]

SW ship looks like a big trashcompactor.

Yes, technobabble and shiny appearance does play on untrained instincts. Even with "calculations," the fact is that the result is fuzzy as the visuals on both sides don't really show the firepower in easily visible and qualifiable ways that often. After all, there is all those problems with scaling and invisible energy that make both side look like they are often throwing around merely kg worth of energy when things gets hit. The only weapon in wars that looks impressive is the DS, but it is hard to scale them down to normal ship sizes and trek shows planet busting capacities as well.

After all, ST vs SW ship battles is still open at times even with calcs before all the BDZ calcs and ICS smack down where the average normal guy have no chance of knowing. The fleet sizes are largely invisible in the films and a accurate number takes some digging. People don't think in magnitudes but linear scales.

When a few thousand kilometers look like a few hundred meters, the visuals is pure bullshit and it is extrapolating actually capacity from it is almost absurd, but it is what most people have to go on.

Someday we might see a SW film where a "full power HTL shot" (from crew statement) manages to only blast a tiny sub kt level explosion on say a planetory surface. If that happens, I'd be so laughing.

I'd agree that I though the SW-verse if far better structured for war, but the real ship capacities weren't really know until I've read some stuff about vs debates, and I still doubt the writers actually know enough science to make tech consistant enough for debates to be valid.

[Glocksman]

It's the same mentality that leads people to buy these ridiculous Christmas-tree A/V receivers with LED displays covering the entire front panel, while professionals use those big ugly heavy-metal power amplifiers.

Kenwood?

Or they assume that Bose speakers and systems must be good because they're so expensive.

ST tech does look cool, but I wouldn't want a set designer to make the control panels that my life may depend upon. In other words, no unergonomic exploding Okudagrams for me.

[Coalition]

Maybe in episode 3, we'll see a LTL hit a planet, and everyone there ducks for cover. After they come out, several days later, someone asks what happened. The reply would be along the lines of "When firing thousands of shots during a battle, even a planet this far away will get hit by the lighter weapons. Be glad it wasn't a heavy weapon."

Pull back, and they are looking at a 10-20 mile wide crater.

That might convince a few people that Star Wars has more power. Afterwards, I might be able to sell skies in hell.

[Darth Wong]

Yes, technobabble and shiny appearance does play on untrained instincts. Even with "calculations," the fact is that the result is fuzzy as the visuals on both sides don't really show the firepower in easily visible and qualifiable ways that often.

They do enough. Jango Fett pulverizes asteroids for several km in every direction with a seismic charge. The entire E-D photon torpedo payload would be hard-pressed to do that in "Pegasus". End of discussion.

After all, there is all those problems with scaling and invisible energy that make both side look like they are often throwing around merely kg worth of energy when things gets hit.

That is what it looks like to uneducated morons, yes, but that's the point we're making: that the people who think the data is either inconclusive or pro-ST think so because they're idiots.

The only weapon in wars that looks impressive is the DS, but it is hard to scale them down to normal ship sizes and trek shows planet busting capacities as well.

The DS is not hard to scale down; do you own a calculator? And Trek planet-busting capabilities are ... where? I must have missed the episode where a Romulan, Klingon, or Federation ship blew a visible chunk out of a planet.

I'd agree that I though the SW-verse if far better structured for war, but the real ship capacities weren't really know until I've read some stuff about vs debates, and I still doubt the writers actually know enough science to make tech consistant enough for debates to be valid.

Just the simple fact that "shiny and consumer-like" is equated to "militarily superior" is more than enough indication that the pro-ST conclusions come from idiots. That's why I made a point of noting that military types favour the vastly more military SW.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Also there's the whole question of Murphy's law.

Would you rather have a touch Screen or a switch you can SEE is in the plus or minus position?

[SWPIGWANG]

Some people here thinks that it is because of zealous stupidity on the basis of trekkies that fails to see the light.

While design philosophy and culture attitude is visible, it is extreamly difficult to get a grasp of the scale we are talking about here, especially if they are inexperienced.

People use representative heuristic (use similarity to determine properties) and to a average person, all space ships looks alike. When you first saw SW/ST did you really think that a ISD is magnitudes more powerful than a Galaxy? If you ask a average person about the relative strengh of the two ships, they'd probably give you a value between 1 to 100 and no more. This illusion is partially based on the limitations of visual sci-fi and the lack of understand of basic numbers of events involved.

For visual sci-fi, the primary limitation is that people want to see things that makes sense to them. A sci-fi that shows a ship and then a flash then some vaporized dust might be more realistic than visible laser beams, km/h level relative speeds, sub-KT explosions, uber-dense astroid belts and "correct"-top-down orientation. Because of this catering to viewers, most things in sci-fi looks as to be about the same magnitude in strengh except in rare cases where you have special weapons in that universe and they might get better treatment with things like 1000 ship killing shots and stuff. Due to this, real strengh have to be judged based on its effect on neutral objects that is suppose to be universal. However for the average person this is difficult as few people can remember the energy to break apart a planet or capable of calculating volume of the deathstar or have a clue on how large a galaxy spanning fleet should be (and there is no answer for the last question)

Even if the said person have some ability in analyzing events, one could easily arrive at absurd answers. For example Tie fighters limited to superslow speeds that even manned guns can hit, or that TL bolts travel at 100km/h or proton torpedos have a yield of 200kg TNT or something of the type. Of course all "absurdity" that arise is rationalized in debates. However the method of rationizing itself is really based on the general image of the universe and a different starting point might give completely different result, for example the .5c past lightspeed thingy or laser bolt travel speedy thing gives completely different scale of the galaxy. Normally this is resolved though large amounts of infomation supporting each other, but most people that does not have a whole library in the head can easily come to the conclusion that a connie can take a DS blast thanks to doomsday machine.

To the average person, there is no technobabble and the shown capacity is what counts, and they can't link up different aspect of technology. To them things like units make no sense, only capacity counts.

And to the average person, they'd have no idea what BDZ, ICS, SWEGWT or DS9TW is. So they'd have to rely on the only the above with half hearted effort. At this rate, they shouldn't be right.


And Trek has enough technobabbly things to make it look okay in comparison. Planet killing firepower displayed in doomsday machine, TNG Generations (oops star instead), Species 8472, Genesis torpedo...etc. It is enough to confused most non-nerds.

And no, people DON'T sit down and punch calculators by default.

[BabelHuber]

It's the same mentality that leads people to buy these ridiculous Christmas-tree A/V receivers with LED displays covering the entire front panel, while professionals use those big ugly heavy-metal power amplifiers.

Well, just before christmas I saw a man walking out a store with a package that was about 30cm X 30cm X 30cm in size and included a Dolby 5.1 Receiver and Loudspeakers.

On the package there was written 5 X 200W in big letters. Makes one wonder how these manufactors are measuring the power output of their amplifiers. After all, real 1000W should easily melt the receiver´s cheap plastic case.

[beyond hope]

Let's see...

An Imperator-class Star Destroyer is a mile long, boasting numerous visible weapons turrets. In shape it's a wedge protected top and bottom with obvious layers of armor.

The Enterprise-D, on the other hand, is 641 meters long, with no weapons in evidence on the hull (you'd never know what the emitter blisters were until you saw it fire.) The hull does not appear to be thickly armored, and fragile struts join the secondary hull to the primary hull and the warp nacelles.

and you think that the E-D "looks stronger" than a Star Destroyer?!

[HemlockGrey]

On the package there was written 5 X 200W in big letters. Makes one wonder how these manufactors are measuring the power output of their amplifiers. After all, real 1000W should easily melt the receiver´s cheap plastic case

Could he have 5 recievers, each clocking in at 200W?

[Knife]

On the package there was written 5 X 200W in big letters. Makes one wonder how these manufactors are measuring the power output of their amplifiers. After all, real 1000W should easily melt the receiver´s cheap plastic case

Could he have 5 recievers, each clocking in at 200W?

[Knife]

ME thinks that Mike has hit the nail on the head.

Uneducated or unexperienced people will assume that anything they do not understand is superior to that in which they do understand, at least in equipment. In the SW universe, technology is old, familure, and easy for all to use. Nobody questions how a speeder works, they work and get us from point A to point B. Nobody exept of course the mechanics and engineers, questions how the down and dirty workings of a hyperdrive functions. Again, its good enough to get millions from point A to point B. The familure look and feel of the tech leads some to believe it is like there own and therefore not as superior as things they do not understand.

On the other hand, in the ST universe, technology is still in the relm of the highly educated. Only really smart, trained, and elite people get the chance to understand warp and subspace and all the other nifty things. Everything is specialized and has a technical name to it. There are no shade tree mechanics, you have to attend "The Academy" to know how to fix it. People don't understand the techno-babble so it becomes superior to the familure and regular looking gear that may or may not be more advanced but looks more plain.


I belive that the characters work opposite of the equipment though. Unexperienced people in military matters tend to like the "Rambo" figure for military personel. Some one who can fight, shoot, fly, drive, command, spy, and do the laundry. While in reality, people get trained to do specific jobs in combat and rely on others to do their jobs. In SW, there is a highly structured military where a trooper is a trooper and not a pilot and a trooper and a commander and a spy. They have people trained for the Navy and others for the Army. While in ST, everyone is able to be the hero. If you were at "The Academy", then you can be a commander, a pilot, a infantry soldier, and a spy all at the same time and on the same mission. In short, the "Rambo" military figure that no right minded military person would want in his unit.

[Peregrin Toker]

Just a question - wouldn't the "sleek appearance" argument also mean that Federal ships are more advanced than Borg Cubes, since they are sleeker? (and most ST fans are convinced that Borg technology are more advanced than that of the Federation)

[Ghost Rider]

Ah the conudrum.

But yeah like Mike said and Knife reiterated, the whole technobabble and sleeker look, APPEARS to have more power when in reality...it's all a nice illusion.

[SWPIGWANG]

Let me warn you people something though, the appearence of SW is insufficient to establish its superiority. So you have what looks like logical engineering and traditional ship design with a actual military structure.
Compare this to the culture with their get-laid a lot population, total lack of structure and anti-militaristic attitude, you'd think the culture would get owned.

It all comes down to numbers in the end.

[Master of Ossus]

Let me warn you people something though, the appearence of SW is insufficient to establish its superiority. So you have what looks like logical engineering and traditional ship design with a actual military structure.
Compare this to the culture with their get-laid a lot population, total lack of structure and anti-militaristic attitude, you'd think the culture would get owned.

It all comes down to numbers in the end.

Agreed. I still think it has to do with the unfamiliarity of life in Star Trek. It appears to be different from what we see in real life, and so people think it must be more advanced.

[Darth Wong]

Let me warn you people something though, the appearence of SW is insufficient to establish its superiority. So you have what looks like logical engineering and traditional ship design with a actual military structure.

You also have that little thing called "Death Star", which is a really big deal if you have an ounce of intelligence, and a military structure which uses combined-arms tactics. None of this requires enormous effort to recognize.

The problem is that Trekkies do not even seem to recognize the difference between positive and negative numbers, ie- the energy requirement for collapsing a cloud into a planet (ie- Genesis Device). That's a whole different level of incompetence and ignorance than simply not bothering to punch figures into a calculator.

Compare this to the culture with their get-laid a lot population, total lack of structure and anti-militaristic attitude, you'd think the culture would get owned.

If the ships are vastly superior in power or numbers, then the failings of their society would not be significant. It doesn't change the fact that they are a detriment.

It all comes down to numbers in the end.

It's more than that. Where do arguments like "nav deflectors can handle lasers of infinite power", "Borg adaptation is omnipotent", "touch-screens indicate superior computing power", or "the Federation could easily build a Death Star if they wanted to" come from, if not profound ignorance of real-life science, engineering, and even logic?

I reiterate: technically and scientifically incompetent people tend to be the ones to espouse these "theories", since they're the only ones capable of actually buying into them.

[NecronLord]

Let me warn you people something though, the appearence of SW is insufficient to establish its superiority. So you have what looks like logical engineering and traditional ship design with a actual military structure.
Compare this to the culture with their get-laid a lot population, total lack of structure and anti-militaristic attitude, you'd think the culture would get owned.

It all comes down to numbers in the end.

Yeah but a single look at a gridfire incursion (assuming you aren't blinded) would convince any sane person. The culture is not anti-millitristic, that's the peace faction. The culure will do what they deem neccessary... They do however have logical engineering. (hell a mind has it's own FTL, now that's redundancy)