ST v SW

[Connor MacLeod]

Actually this leads to a hilarious method of the Empire defeating the federation: Let the information get out that this is a perfect, perfect utopia. And don't stop anyone from going there if they want. Imagine the chaos arising from trillions/quadrillions of citizens from the SW galaxy flooding the Federation's worlds. The logistics alone is going to be staggering.

And while ST has more neat toys than SW (at least the movies portray), I'm not sure I'd want to live there unless I was guaranteed an existence on one of the major worlds (like Earth.) Colonies tend to have a mixed record of survival in Trek, and there's lots of random, nasty unknowns out there.

[Cesario]

That is an amusing use of the Empire's population advantage.

[Stofsk]

Note that the only thing the genetically modified can't do is join Starfleet. And even that rule wasn't an ironclad absolute as we see with Julian.

That's bad enough though.

As to what became of his parents, let's also note that they put Julain through this medical procedure without his consent. That may well be where the crime lay.

They had his best interests in mind though. But I don't remember that episode well enough to argue the point.

Artificial intelligence rights are still being sorted out in the Federation, but for the most part, they're moving in the right direction precisely because they've got a social system that raises people to be able to look past their own prejudices and instills a desire for justice. Every non-main at Data's trial started that one with the preconception that Data was just a machine, but they were also all openminded enough that they were actually listening to the arguments of their oposition. In far less than ideal conditions, I might add.

Let's agree to ignore Voyager and its treatment of holographic life :V

Actually this leads to a hilarious method of the Empire defeating the federation: Let the information get out that this is a perfect, perfect utopia. And don't stop anyone from going there if they want. Imagine the chaos arising from trillions/quadrillions of citizens from the SW galaxy flooding the Federation's worlds. The logistics alone is going to be staggering.

The population of the Federation is already pretty large, but an influx would still cause chaos and disruption I agree.

And while ST has more neat toys than SW (at least the movies portray), I'm not sure I'd want to live there unless I was guaranteed an existence on one of the major worlds (like Earth.) Colonies tend to have a mixed record of survival in Trek, and there's lots of random, nasty unknowns out there.

Neither universe has a guarantee on safety. SW is arguably worse - we've seen many highly populated city planets be attacked and outright destroyed in the case of Alderaan, but very rarely do we see major worlds in the Federation be attacked or destroyed (earth seems to get picked on by various galactic menaces but there's always some intrepid crew of adventurers around to save the day).

[Cesario]

Artificial intelligence rights are still being sorted out in the Federation, but for the most part, they're moving in the right direction precisely because they've got a social system that raises people to be able to look past their own prejudices and instills a desire for justice. Every non-main at Data's trial started that one with the preconception that Data was just a machine, but they were also all openminded enough that they were actually listening to the arguments of their oposition. In far less than ideal conditions, I might add.

Let's agree to ignore Voyager and its treatment of holographic life :V

I think that's something we can all get behind.

[The Romulan Republic]

It's also not a post-scarcity economy either, but frankly I wouldn't count the lack of military readiness as some kind of slight against the Federation. Nor the Maquis 'debacle' - which was something that frankly the Maquis brought upon themselves. The Federation did everything they could to relocate the Maquis colonies but the latter simply refused - and they paid for that decision years later.

The attitude against artificial life wasn't that bad - sure, one guy tried to argue Data was Starfleet property but in the end of the episode he was ruled to be an autonomous sentient individual with rights. The bigger slight was actually the Federation's attitude against gene-modded people.

The Federation isn't perfect. But it's still pretty awesome society all things considered.

As has been discussed God knows how many times on these forums and the main site, their ground forces are underequipped. There are also issues with internal security and lack of available Starships.

As for the Marquis... sure, the Federation tried to resolve it. But its hard to call something a Utopia when a significant number of its citizens and military officers rebel and become terrorists. And while Data's rights were upheld, holograms were still treated poorly about a decade later.

[Stofsk]

The only way they're underequipped is because we never see them pack up things for long term surveys on planets. Since there is almost always a starship in orbit and you can get supplies simply by having them beamed down to your location, or beam yourself up, having a pack may not be as necessary as it is today.

I also don't know if I would call the Maquis a 'significant' number. I mean we don't really know how many people lived in the DMZ, nor how many people defected to them, but it couldn't have been that much as the Enterprise was ordered to resettle some colonists elsewhere (and I believe the same offer was extended to all the other colonies). There were a few senior officers like Hudson, Riker Two and Eddington, and a few junior officers like Ro Laren and Paris (actually I am not sure Paris counts much the same way Chakotay doesn't - I don't think either one was in Starfleet at the time they joined the Maquis). But I suppose I agree that if the Federation were perfect then those idiots would have relocated rather than take up arms.

And I thought we agreed not to bring up Voyager's bollocks

[Connor MacLeod]

Star Trek's military is only 'bad' in a 'crossover' sense, but that is hardly unique to Trek (Star Wars, 40K, etc. all have their share of 'poor' military something or others.. whether its vehicle design, gear, or whatever.) For it's own universe it seems to fit the dynamic. We've never really seen any great push for massive ground forces or anything like that (and depending on who you ask, people insist starships make such concepts obsolete.) and the nature of their combat seems to focus around small unit/close quarters combat (with transporters, shuttles, etc. this would make sense.) All their hardware tends to be man portable or easily deployed (the dune buggy. the laser artillery from The Cage, the photon mortars, etc.) And I would point out that not having massive ground militaries can 'make sense' in that you save alot in terms of money and resources which would otherwise be wasted (and can be spent elsewhere.) It's a tradeoff, but it's not neccesarily a bad one.

Neither universe has a guarantee on safety. SW is arguably worse - we've seen many highly populated city planets be attacked and outright destroyed in the case of Alderaan, but very rarely do we see major worlds in the Federation be attacked or destroyed (earth seems to get picked on by various galactic menaces but there's always some intrepid crew of adventurers around to save the day).

While you have a point, I'd argue its a relative thing. The SW galaxy is largely settled and 'civilised' - some places are wilder than others and there is the ever present danger of civil wars or piracy, but you aren't going to have great Space amobae, crystalline entities, or random super powerful alien aggressors popping out of the woodwork to threaten you - several of which I might add have proven initially superior (or numerically greater) tahn the Federation (The Borg and the Dominion.) Star Wars' risks are ones that can be controlled and localized to prevent them from spililng over (this is one of the more valid arguments against SUPERMASSIVEGIGATONNAGES being common actually. you don't want pirates, terrorists, or civilllians getting easy access to that sort of stuff.) The Federation occupies a much smaller portion of the galaxy, and being on a colony is something of a risk/gamble for the reasons I outlined above (that doesn't mean its happening frequently either, but its still a risk.)

[Cesario]

From a security standpoint, I think the Federation does have a slightly better track record on the "my entire civilization didn't get conquored by an evil wizard" front, though.

[Connor MacLeod]

The Evil wizard didn't conquer anything. He was elected, and it was entirely legal. Stupid and foolish, but legal forSpace America The Republic/Empire.

[Stofsk]

Deceptively legal. Palpatine did a lot of illegal things, and I am pretty sure starting the Clone Wars off tops the list of douchebag things you can do. He simply covered his tracks well enough that nobody figured out he was a Sith Lord, until such a time that it was too late to do anything to stop him.

[Connor MacLeod]

Legal or illegal is technically up to debate. It was always one of the more fascinating (and convoluted) things Publius and I used to discuss when he was still writing/analyzing the Empire. Palpy had the Republic/Empire system so screwed up by that point it was difficult for him to do anything 'against' the law because he'd had so much influence in writing (or distorting) said laws. Remember by the EU stuff that by the time of the OT the Empire literally could not exist without Palpatine in control, and that was deliberate. He was a real bastard, that guy.

Of course 'legal' and 'right' are two completely different things, but I put that 'Space America' thing in there for a reason, because you can draw alot of parallels between the two.

[The Romulan Republic]

The only way they're underequipped is because we never see them pack up things for long term surveys on planets. Since there is almost always a starship in orbit and you can get supplies simply by having them beamed down to your location, or beam yourself up, having a pack may not be as necessary as it is today.

I also don't know if I would call the Maquis a 'significant' number. I mean we don't really know how many people lived in the DMZ, nor how many people defected to them, but it couldn't have been that much as the Enterprise was ordered to resettle some colonists elsewhere (and I believe the same offer was extended to all the other colonies). There were a few senior officers like Hudson, Riker Two and Eddington, and a few junior officers like Ro Laren and Paris (actually I am not sure Paris counts much the same way Chakotay doesn't - I don't think either one was in Starfleet at the time they joined the Maquis). But I suppose I agree that if the Federation were perfect then those idiots would have relocated rather than take up arms.

And I thought we agreed not to bring up Voyager's bollocks

Like it or not, Voyager is canon and I certainly never agreed not to bring it up . Even discounting Voyager, though, I have plenty of examples of Federation failings. On the issue of military capabilities, I find the lack of body armor in particular inexcuseable.

This is not because I'm trying to bash the Federation, and on the whole I would say the Empire is worse (though "better than the Empire" is setting the bar pretty damn low). Hell, its probably better than any real world nation. I just don't think its as perfect as its sometimes portrayed as.

[Cesario]

I still want to know what body armor you're positing that's going to stop a "make you disapear" phaser.

Or is this still the unfounded belief that dense materials are phaser-proof because of packing crates you know nothing about.

[Stofsk]

On the other hand, it is a potentially interesting topic to speculate on what other areas Starfleet could improve as far as their landing party equipment is concerned.

[Batman]

"Am I doing the right thing, Bones? Once I said that man rose above primitiveness by vowing, 'I will not kill, today.'"
Captain Kirk said that when struggling with the decision to kill a space creature who was threatening to devour a planet with 80 million people on it. ("One Of Our Planets Is Missing" [TAS])
He ultimately resolved the situation diplomatically with no loss of life.
If I was given the choice between wearing body armor and trusting Jim Kirk, there is no choice. I'm with Kirk.

I'm wearing body armour given that stuff works (to the extent of its abilities) all the time whereas Kirk's performance includes him going 'nah, why should we raise shields? Reliant's a Starfleet ship, why would she be hostile just because she won't answer hails? It's not like my ship has ever been hijacked before or something.' Kirk got out of that one because essentially, Khan didn't really know what he was doing. (Hint: If you're hijacking a starship, make sure you know the controls-including knowing where the override for the remote shield shutdown is-before you go into battle ).

[the atom]

I still want to know what body armor you're positing that's going to stop a "make you disapear" phaser.

Or is this still the unfounded belief that dense materials are phaser-proof because of packing crates you know nothing about.

We know durainium plates are effective enough to completely absorb phaser fire one full settings, so it's not as if there aren't any materials that can protect against it. There's also the tiny fact that we have seen them use body armor before, meaning it does have it's uses.

[Stofsk]

Oh come on. For all you know those security guards were on their way from a laser tag work out session.

Lol 'body armour'. You might as well go 'well the klingons wear body armour too' - yeah, and it doesn't even protect them from stun settings.

Also as far as duranium is concerned, they can mitigate the damage of a phaser blast but not perfectly. A shuttlecraft in 'Lower Decks' was intentionally damaged with a phaser rifle to make it look like it had been damaged fleeing pursuit. There was also 'Q-Less' which did suggest that while it can absorb damage for a time, it wouldn't hold out forever. (I believe Sisko told Kira that it would take her an hour to burn through the bulkhead of the runabout) Maybe you could construct a suit out of duranium that could protect you for a time - indeed, I think that would be pretty neat to see honestly. But if you have to walk around in it then it has to be relatively flexible, and that means you can't have full protection everywhere. It might stop a few blasts at high settings but then that's no different from modern armour that can protect you from a shot or two and then needs to be junked.

Another possibility is personal forcefields. We know they work because the borg demonstrate it time and time again. There was also mention of personal forcefields being deployed in 'Homefront' but we don't see this and we don't know what the context is. TAS did show personal forcefields after a fashion.

[the atom]

Also as far as duranium is concerned, they can mitigate the damage of a phaser blast but not perfectly. A shuttlecraft in 'Lower Decks' was intentionally damaged with a phaser rifle to make it look like it had been damaged fleeing pursuit. There was also 'Q-Less' which did suggest that while it can absorb damage for a time, it wouldn't hold out forever. (I believe Sisko told Kira that it would take her an hour to burn through the bulkhead of the runabout) Maybe you could construct a suit out of duranium that could protect you for a time - indeed, I think that would be pretty neat to see honestly. But if you have to walk around in it then it has to be relatively flexible, and that means you can't have full protection everywhere. It might stop a few blasts at high settings but then that's no different from modern armour that can protect you from a shot or two and then needs to be junked.

And who decided that body armor needs to provide perfect protection? If it can surivive even one or two shots before needing to be scrapped, then it's doing it's job, because those one or two blasts would have killed you.

[Stofsk]

No shit. Didn't I just say that? On the other hand the need for armour to be relatively flexible might make armouring against phasers and disruptors impossible.

[Stofsk]

Nothing about that on Memory Alpha.

[the atom]

No shit. Didn't I just say that? On the other hand the need for armour to be relatively flexible might make armouring against phasers and disruptors impossible.

Well that depends on how much protection you'd want. Most people seem to aim at the torso right off the bat, so just wearing a plate vest or chain mail of some kind might be good enough.

[The Romulan Republic]

I still want to know what body armor you're positing that's going to stop a "make you disapear" phaser.

Or is this still the unfounded belief that dense materials are phaser-proof because of packing crates you know nothing about.

Strawman.

I don't know weather its possible to build some sort of armour that will stop one of the upper phaser settings, and I never claimed you could.

It should, however, be possible to make something that would stop a low-level blast. Or if not, at least something that would be resistant to shrapnel, Klingon bladed weapons, etc.

[The Romulan Republic]

A lot of their casualties in battle are due not to being phasered, but to exploding consols, Borg assimalation, or being hacked at by some crazed Klingon with a bat'leth (among other things).

As for what Stofsk mentioned on the last page about ground equipment in general, I wouldn't want to load up troops with too much gear, but their are a number of things I would bring along. Phasers, communicators, and tricorders (as is already the case). Some rations. A couple grenades per security officer, probably, at least in combat zones. Armor, as above, at least when beaming into unknown or hostile environments. A medical officer with some medical equipment (medical tricorder, hypospray, etc.) which I think they already bring along sometimes. I'm sure their are other things one could add as well.

To bring this back to Star Trek vs Star Wars, this would be closer to the level of equipment Stormtroopers carry with them, and would give them a much better chance of handling dangerous situations.

[the atom]

I think body armor would cost lives.

If the armor blocks stun blasts, that will just encourage the enemy to use kill settings instead.

You can walk away from being stunned a while later. Not so if you're atomized.

Klingons and Jem Hadar don't use stun blasts, so you're safe there. So what if they have to go to higher settings to kill you? That's like forcing your enemy to switch to his underslung grenade launcher or armour piercing bullets. Besides, the wearer also now better protected from things like shrapnel.

[Batman]

Besides, since we don't know beans about the workings of the weapons it's entirely possible that body armour does protect against low level kill shots while doing nothing about stun settings-those pesky packing crates again. We know they block standard kill shots without so much as punctures yet do exactly dick to people they topple over onto so they can't be that heavy, making body armour out of the same material should be entirely possible.
Whether or not that is worth the effort is another matter entirely. The underslung grenade launcher or AP ammunition is something you need to have brought along on the off chance that you might need them. With a phaser, you just go setting 16. Yeah, might drain your power cell mightily fast, but it is an option that is always available (unlike AP ammo or that grenade launcher).