Ahhahahahaha, oh man. Outragious Okana ought to be given the same treatment as
Threshold. Oh, not for the abuse of the audience's intellect, its just a
horrible episode in general. Its telling that trektards can sit through it at all, let alone think it is a great example of federation capabilities.
But really, one doesn't even need to argue the lasers issue, because its a perfect example of how people fail to understand basic combat tactics. If your first weapon doesn't work, switch to something that does.
Okay, so lets assume for just a millisecond that the turbolasers are even mildly inconvenienced by the shields of a Galaxy Class ship (and why should it be the flagship?
Enterprise is always going on diplomatic and exploratory missions, because Picard is clearly disinclined from pursuing military solutions unless forced by circumstances beyond his control). All the No Lasers argument addresses is lasers, not any other kind of energy weapon let alone kinetic warheads. So the Empire simply orders fire control to open fire with their Ion Cannons instead. Assuming that the electronics and other ship systems of Federation ships are effected the same way by such weapons as Imperial technology is, their shields quickly go offline and Turbolasers come into play again. And we have seen plenty of different types of strange radiation and particle showers wreak havok on the electronics of Enterprise, Voyager, and even the Defiant, so we know their shields don't protect them from these kinds of hazards and that they have an effect on the preformance of Federation ships.
But okay, lets assume that the Empire's Ion Cannons don't shoot the right type of radiation to seriously impair Federation technology or ship performance. The Empire staffs its ships with professional tacticians and soldiers, and this isn't exactly rocket science. They change weapons again. Instead of using their energy weapons at all, they switch to Concussion Missiles and Proton Torpedoes instead. We
know that the Federation's shields are vulnerable to physical missiles and warheads, and we also know that Imperial ships have missile tubes for scenarios where they preform better than turbolasers, such as pinpoint bombardments. Their fighter squadrons also use missiles as well, and likely have the advantage that Federation weapon systems probably aren't calibrated to accurately hit such small vessels; its a rare situation that the Enterprise has to fight off shuttlecraft after all. The fight gets a little bit more expensive for the Empire since they have to load out more torpedoes and concussion missiles, but its still easily within their ability to supply that many warheads to take down such a relatively small polity.
Furthermore, the Empire can supplement their use of warheads by using boarding tactics. Star Trek has demonstrated over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over...
...and over and over and over and over and over and over and over...
...and over again, over many, many episodes that Federation security personnel are flatly incompetent. Both Voyager and Picard's Enterprise make the very basic mistake of making one officer double duty as Head of Security and Tactical Operations; thus creating the completely inexcusable situation where both Worf and Tuvok in their own shows have at times had to leave their post at tactical during a ship to ship shootout to go round up boarding parties. And so many plots of the show rest upon foreign aliens and other entities getting aboard the ship and running amok without getting caught that it goes from funny to pathetic and right back to hilarious again-- you can cite whichever alien of the week episode you want, they are all evidence of this problem. And even as I say this, there was an era when the Enterprise had separate tactical and security officers-- that was when Tasha Yar was in charge, and under her command security often plain failed to show up even when called by Captain Picard himself. That happened in the second episode of the show ("The Naked Now"). If it happened even
once under Vader's command, Yar would have been choked like a bitch. In other words, Worf doubling as both Security and Tactical was actually an
improvement for the Enterprise D.
And of course, there are the movies. In two of the TNG era movies the Enterprise was boarded; in First Contact it was Borg, in Nemesis it was
Morlocks Remans. In the first situation, the Borg ships had all been destroyed, but the personal shields worn by Borg drones made them so much more effective than the mighty Federation officers-- named Characters, even!-- that even though the Borg Drones forgot to pack disruptors like the Borg in
Descent did and basically shambled around like goddamn zombies, they
still overwhelmed security and nearly forced Picard to self destruct his own vessel to get rid of them. Now think how much more effective Stormtroopers will be with their plasteel armor, heavy blasters, grenades, career long combat training, and experience *.
In the case of the Reman, the Federation knew that Reman are sensitive to bright light due to the conditions of their native planet. Did the elite Starfleet personnel (again, named Characters) take advantage of this fact by doing the very obvious and turning the lights up until the Reman all collapsed with migraine headaches? NO! In fact, they turned the lights
down until it was dark enough that their own troops could barely take aim at people just three meters away. And of course, both the tactical officer and the ship's First Officer were both down in the lower decks fighting hand to hand combat instead of at their posts on the bridge, because technically the tactical officer was also chief of security while Riker is just a moron, and neither of them understands delegation of authority. Did I mention that the ship was locked in ship to ship combat at the time? Well, the enemy ship
was slow and commanded by someone dumber than Edward Cullen and more obsessive than his girlfriend, but it still managed to kick the shit out of the Enterprise. I wonder why.
And before you say it, CIS ships also used forcefields as a security technology during the Clone Wars; Revenge of the Sith showed Anikan and Obi-Wan get caught in one while trying to rescue Chancellor Palpatine. So don't think Imperial Soldiers will be surprised if Starfleet uses them to try and contain boarding parties (which Starfleet personnel frequently and conveniently forget to do save when the plot tells them they should).
Oh, and speaking of boarding parties, that reminds me. First scene of A New Hope (A.K.A. the Original
Star Wars before it had sequels or prequels) was a boarding scene. It featured the Star Destroyer shut down the main reactor of Leia's ship (consistent with the effects of ion cannons), then tow the ship with a tractor beam into the hangar bay to be boarded by the Dark Lord Vader himself. So tractor beams. Imperial Star Destroyers all outmass Starfleet vessels by at least as much as a Borg cube, more depending on class (IIRC a Victory Class is about as big as a cube, while the more familiar Imperial class is bigger, and ships of the Executor's class dwarf even those). No Starfleet vessel has ever gotten out of a Borg Cube's tractor beam without first damaging the emitter, and the Borg are often seen using tractor beams to simply break Starfleet ships in half. Imperial ships have redundant tractor beam emitters on turrets just like all the other weapons on their ships, and while we've never seen them use tractor beams to break the hulls of enemy vessels I don't see any reason they couldn't try. Besides, once in a tractor beam there is no more maneuvering for the victim in either universe. Even if the ship is too small to be brought into the hangar (like a Galaxy class as opposed to a Defiant), the Empire has specially made shuttlecraft for preforming boarding actions.
Besides all this, the Empire has huge fleets of ships this size. Even though the Federation had technological advantages over the Jem'Hadar (and presumably the Dominion in general), right from the first episode where they were introduced the show made a point of demonstrating why better technology doesn't always guarantee victory. The Jem'Hadar outnumbered the Federation forces ten to one. The Empire outnumbers them by an even greater margin. When the Jem'Hadar were losing against a single Galaxy class ship, the
Odyssey (proving that you can have Galaxy class vessels other than Enterprise), they decided to simply ram her right in the deflector dish. Blew her up like a Pinto on Mythbusters. And Jem'Hadar ships are little corvets. The Federation and her allies are frequently seen employing walls of ships holding a battle line (even though that makes no sense in space). If getting rammed by a Jem'Hadar vessel is like being hit with a sledgehammer, getting rammed by an Imperial Star Destroyer is like betting run over by a snow plow. One way or the other, a war with the Galactic Empire is a war the Federation is going to lose, laser-proof shields or no laser proof shields.
