A way ST forces could win a battle with the Empire

[Jm81]

Star wars shields, weapons, and power generation far exceeds startrek's. However, utilizing cloaking devices small ST ships can pass through SW shields and deploy anti-matter weapon payloads. While this won't win them a war it does provide a way for ST forces to utilize gorilla warfare to incur heavy losses to the Imperials.

Anti-matter is the only weapon that would be useful as matter armor doesn't offer any protection during the matter antimatter annihilation reaction.

So the assertion of a weakness in SW shielding technology that allows small slow moving ships to pass through their shields is the lynch pin.

Canon evidence of this has been compiled by Brian Young and I take no credit in this videos creation nor do I have any part in making it.

Thread: http://forums.asvs.org/showthread.php/2 ... lds-part-2
Movie link is in his first post.

[Srelex]

'Gorilla warfare'? Yes, I suppose giant cyborg King Kongs thrown against ISDs would...take the Imps by surprise if nothing else.

[Jm81]

Ha! Good catch...

guerrilla warfare

[The Romulan Republic]

This can only work if Star Wars ships don't detect the cloaked craft. There are ways to detect cloaked ships in Star Trek, and Star Wars might have other ways of doing it, including a rare type of technology that becomes a major part of the plot in The Thrawn Trilogy and sensing them through the Force.

I also wouldn't underestimate Star Wars armour. You'd probably need a lot of anti-matter.

Best bet might be to try to sneak through the shields and then set something off in the hanger bay. That would hurt.

[Ted C]

Exactly how are Star Trek forces supposed to deploy "anti-matter weapon payloads"? It sounds like you're suggesting just throwing masses of antimatter directly against unshielded hulls, but we've never seen any Federation weapon that operates like that. Further, Imperial shields are "skin tight" to the hull on anything smaller than a Death Star, so there's no way to "pass through" the shield to get a shot at bare hull (even if ST cloaking devices could "pass through" shields, which there's no evidence they can do).

[The Romulan Republic]

Isn't there a scene in Empire Strikes Back where the Falcon lands on an ISD's hull after an Imperial officer ordered the shields raised?

Do you have any proof the shields are skin tight?

As for using anti-matter, I'm sure they could devise some sort of device to fire it at a ship.

I have no idea weather cloaks could go through shields.

[Batman]

There's no explicit mention of the shields being up at the time the Falcon attached herself to the ISD, just them being raised in reaction to her apparent ramming attack. Indeed, the captain of the Avenger ordered a shuttle prepared for departure in that very scene, indicating they dropped shields pretty quickly thereafter (at least per the EU they can't get parasite craft off with the shields up and I don't recall anything in the movies contradicting this).
As for the cloaks can go through shields' idea, I have no clue where that comes from, as there's no indication in Trek that any of their cloaks (including the infamous phase cloak they don't actually have) can do that.

[Lord Revan]

well something we also might consider is that all it takes is few ships to lost this way for the imperials to become really cautious or worse see this as escalations and start using their own cloaks (of which there's several different types).

only time I can think or anti-matter used as a "spray" rather then as a torpedo warhead was as a distration against the borg in best of both worlds. Seeing as that tactic hasn't been used before or since suggest that it's not viable for what ever reason.

while there's enough eveidence to say that SW shields aren't quite "skin tight" they're very close to the hull so you'd need to use something about the same size as SW fighters or size of the falcon at the largest. Now while there's precident of cloak capable ST shuttles, there's the matter of size to consider, in 2 ways in fact. First to date the only craft to use anti-matter in and of itself as weapon was the Enterprice-D saucer section which is way too big sneak past any SW shields so smaller craft might not have the hardware needed to do that we don't know. second is that any payload is gonna be limited by the size of the craft carrying it and as it's stated SW is thick and SW craft are big so a small amount of anti-matter is not gonna cause a catastrophic damage to them.

[Jm81]

This can only work if Star Wars ships don't detect the cloaked craft. There are ways to detect cloaked ships in Star Trek, and Star Wars might have other ways of doing it, including a rare type of technology that becomes a major part of the plot in The Thrawn Trilogy and sensing them through the Force.

I also wouldn't underestimate Star Wars armour. You'd probably need a lot of anti-matter.

Best bet might be to try to sneak through the shields and then set something off in the hanger bay. That would hurt.

You are right a lot of antimatter would be needed. Kilogram for kilogram for the annilation reaction that would produce energy equal to mass x c^2.

[Jm81]

Exactly how are Star Trek forces supposed to deploy "anti-matter weapon payloads"? It sounds like you're suggesting just throwing masses of antimatter directly against unshielded hulls, but we've never seen any Federation weapon that operates like that. Further, Imperial shields are "skin tight" to the hull on anything smaller than a Death Star, so there's no way to "pass through" the shield to get a shot at bare hull (even if ST cloaking devices could "pass through" shields, which there's no evidence they can do).

You are right Starwars shields are skin tight in many circumstances and yet I will again point you to the canon evidence of fighters passing through such skin tight shielding in the link.

[Jm81]

only time I can think or anti-matter used as a "spray" rather then as a torpedo warhead was as a distration against the borg in best of both worlds.

...but we've never seen any Federation weapon that operates like that.

Actually we have.
http://www.scifights.net/SciFights.net/Star_Trek.html

I direct you to the "antimatter" link to watch Brian's case study of it. Again this is canon evidence from the shows and movies. Side note, I didn't label this thread feds can win a battle. I said ST forces. Includes romulans.

[Jm81]

I also want to clarify something. In my opinion, this tactic can NOT defeat the empire in a war. Imperials can still hammer logistical supply lines and population centers. The alpha quadrant governments can't weather that storm.

[Jm81]

This can only work if Star Wars ships don't detect the cloaked craft.

Good point. Please watch the video that I linked in the OP. You will see canon evidence from the clone wars of a cloaked ship being invisible to SW sensors. I believe it is at 12:47 time stamp.

[Lord Revan]

if you're talking about the vid I think you're talking about.

We NEVER got any details as what caused the anti matter to be there or how much of it was there (since the episode in question (the Troy as romulan one) didn't give us any). It could have trace amounts as by product of the disruptors, we don't know, that's what is important here, only time we for absolute certainty that anti-matter was used as weapon is when ENT-D used it against the borg and even there we don't know how much.

anti matter isn't some magic matter destroying silver bullet, it can destroy only as much matter as there is anti-matter (which secondary damage from the radiation).

IIRC even Brian didn't say "this means that Romulan disruptors shoot anti-matter" but rather "this means that they either use anti-matter or something in the process generates anti matter".

[Lord Revan]

This can only work if Star Wars ships don't detect the cloaked craft.

Good point. Please watch the video that I linked in the OP. You will see canon evidence from the clone wars of a cloaked ship being invisible to SW sensors. I believe it is at 12:47 time stamp.

the thing is that it doesn't have to mean that SW ships have no way of detecting cloaked ships what so ever, but rather since cloak capable ships are still semi-rare in SW they simply didn't bother with it due those resources being of better use elsewhere.

also there's the thing that SW cloak isn't the same thing as ST cloak.

there's a lot of "if A then B" in your arguments and for minimal gain.

now I'm not saying that ships with ST cloaks would automatically be detected, I'm sure they could make a few ambushes before imps got wise to them. there's still the matter of escalation to consider and while ruthless the Romulan aren't totally stupid so they would more likely to adopt a wait and see strategy then try to launch attacks that could end up biting them in the ass badly and even if successfull would change very little (it's not like destroying the founders homeworld.)

[Jm81]

if you're talking about the vid I think you're talking about.

We NEVER got any details as what caused the anti matter to be there or how much of it was there (since the episode in question (the Troy as romulan one) didn't give us any). It could have trace amounts as by product of the disruptors, we don't know, that's what is important here, only time we for absolute certainty that anti-matter was used as weapon is when ENT-D used it against the borg and even there we don't know how much.

anti matter isn't some magic matter destroying silver bullet, it can destroy only as much matter as there is anti-matter (which secondary damage from the radiation).

IIRC even Brian didn't say "this means that Romulan disruptors shoot anti-matter" but rather "this means that they either use anti-matter or something in the process generates anti matter".

I am not sure if we are talking about the same video and I am not sure what your point is. I assume we are on the topic of: Have A/M (antimatter) weapons been used in ST before?

Romulans use antimatter in their disruptors as seen in canon evidence.
http://www.scifights.net/SciFights.net/Star_Trek.html
Antimatter video: Timestamp = 6:58

Secondly, what does it matter how the antiprotons got there. Even if they were directly injected or some bi product, the process still resulted in the injection/creation of antimatter that has an annihilation reaction.

Lastly, as a side note, you stated before that you only saw a/m as a "spray". In the video case study you will see the romulan weapon fire and it clearly isn't a spray.

[Jm81]

This can only work if Star Wars ships don't detect the cloaked craft.

Good point. Please watch the video that I linked in the OP. You will see canon evidence from the clone wars of a cloaked ship being invisible to SW sensors. I believe it is at 12:47 time stamp.

the thing is that it doesn't have to mean that SW ships have no way of detecting cloaked ships what so ever, but rather since cloak capable ships are still semi-rare in SW they simply didn't bother with it due those resources being of better use elsewhere.

also there's the thing that SW cloak isn't the same thing as ST cloak.

there's a lot of "if A then B" in your arguments and for minimal gain.

now I'm not saying that ships with ST cloaks would automatically be detected, I'm sure they could make a few ambushes before imps got wise to them. there's still the matter of escalation to consider and while ruthless the Romulan aren't totally stupid so they would more likely to adopt a wait and see strategy then try to launch attacks that could end up biting them in the ass badly and even if successfull would change very little (it's not like destroying the founders homeworld.)

You are creating excessive convolutions in an attempt to avoid what is simple observed canon evidence.

A. Ship decloaks
B. Droid announces at that point they detect the ship.

Thus while it was cloaked they couldn't detect it. Thus some degree of cloaking that does confound ship sensors in sw. Does this mean it is perfect? No. Is it possible that its a probability of detection? Perhaps. But it still highlights a weakness.

[Batman]

Good point. Please watch the video that I linked in the OP. You will see canon evidence from the clone wars of a cloaked ship being invisible to SW sensors. I believe it is at 12:47 time stamp.

Which, unfortunately, doesn't say beans about whether a ship under a Trek cloak would be, especially as they're rather often detectable by Trek sensors, despite the cloak, and most Trek cloaks have this pesky problem of you not being able to fire weapons without dropping it.
Also, while I generally respect Brian's work, he makes several unwarranted assumptions in that video.
1.'All shields are created equal'. Just because the plainly visible obviously bubble shields of a Droideka, or the equally visible equally bubbly theater shields of the Gungans, leave alone the shield of the Gungan underwater city, which might not have been a combat shield at all given its apparent purpose was merely to keep the water out, allow passage of slow objects, doesn't mean the skintight shields of an Imperial era ship will.
2.'The Imperials got under the shield in Episode V so they must have penetrated it.' Not true. The Alliance needed to open the shield to get their own people out so getting through the shield even from the inside seems to be nontrivial, and again he presupposes it must have been a bubble shield, when an umbrella one would have worked just as dandy for deflecting orbital bombardment while easily allowing the Imperials to walk right in under the shield with no problem.
3. Is it me or are all the examples in this video from the Clone Wars cartoons? Because since we know for a fact that all Star wars shields aren't created equal, why exactly would tactics that worked on Clone Wars era Separatist warships automatically work on Imperial era Navy ones?
4. Oh, and since all of those examples involved ships with Wars level tech, including Wars shielding, and there's Episode IV's 'We're passing though their magnetic field. Set deflectors to double front' to indicate that maybe there's some shield/shield interaction allowing them to pass, how do you know a Trek ship (with or without shielding) can do it?

[Lord Revan]

It matters how they got there as how they got there tells us how much of it is there in the first place, if it's a byproduct we're probably talking about trace amounts (aka there's very little of it) remember that ST sensors are quite powerfull, but if it's the main way of damage then there should be a signifigant amount.

Also if the anti matter is a by product then it means they can't project anti-matter directly as a weapon, but rather when a disruptor hits a target it creates an unknown quatity(note that is doesn't mean there's alot of it) of anti-matter that can be detected later.

and yes it the weapon fired was a bolt so what, it still was something else then a torpedo warhead which was my point there.

[Batman]

Romulan weapons leave behind antiproton traces that curiously enough don't seem to do any damage whatsoever, which to me indicates there's not all that many of them.
Burden of proof to show that romulan disruptors involve delivering serious amounts of antimatter (as opposed to resulting in a lonely antiproton or other as an aftereffect) is on you, especially as just like phasers, disruptors have this nasty tendency to create effects completely incompatible with a DET weapon.

[Lord Revan]

Then there's the question of why, if it's not gonna effect the outcome of the war and could cause severe retaliation against you, why would any ST power choose this course of action, which has absurdly high risk (especially if they know about DS or DBZ) with little to know reward (you still loose).

only way this could work from strategic PoV (not touching if the attack itself is possible) is that if the SW side is already unwilling to continue the conflict, but unable to stop due to some reason and needs something to call a "time out".

[Jm81]

Good point. Please watch the video that I linked in the OP. You will see canon evidence from the clone wars of a cloaked ship being invisible to SW sensors. I believe it is at 12:47 time stamp.

Which, unfortunately, doesn't say beans about whether a ship under a Trek cloak would be, especially as they're rather often detectable by Trek sensors, despite the cloak, and most Trek cloaks have this pesky problem of you not being able to fire weapons without dropping it.
Also, while I generally respect Brian's work, he makes several unwarranted assumptions in that video.
1.'All shields are created equal'. Just because the plainly visible obviously bubble shields of a Droideka, or the equally visible equally bubbly theater shields of the Gungans, leave alone the shield of the Gungan underwater city, which might not have been a combat shield at all given its apparent purpose was merely to keep the water out, allow passage of slow objects, doesn't mean the skintight shields of an Imperial era ship will.
2.'The Imperials got under the shield in Episode V so they must have penetrated it.' Not true. The Alliance needed to open the shield to get their own people out so getting through the shield even from the inside seems to be nontrivial, and again he presupposes it must have been a bubble shield, when an umbrella one would have worked just as dandy for deflecting orbital bombardment while easily allowing the Imperials to walk right in under the shield with no problem.
3. Is it me or are all the examples in this video from the Clone Wars cartoons? Because since we know for a fact that all Star wars shields aren't created equal, why exactly would tactics that worked on Clone Wars era Separatist warships automatically work on Imperial era Navy ones?
4. Oh, and since all of those examples involved ships with Wars level tech, including Wars shielding, and there's Episode IV's 'We're passing though their magnetic field. Set deflectors to double front' to indicate that maybe there's some shield/shield interaction allowing them to pass, how do you know a Trek ship (with or without shielding) can do it?

You are grasping for straws to explain the obvious. You seek canon evidence of ST tech acting upon SW tech? No such thing exists because they are different franchises. If they did, the debate forums would be empty. Secondly, you arguement undermines any sort of comparison. How do we know hyperspace exists in the ST galaxy? How do we know how turbolasers would interact with ST shields. Once you go down this road of refusing to compare any tech till we see it in action you have destroyed all the tools for any vs debates and you might as well only visit the Starwars forum and stay away from this one.

All we can do in vs debates is analyze what we look at. And make comparisons ignoring that knowing full well that we don't know how one tech interacts with another.

So direct observations:
1. ST and SW cloak makes the ship invisible to the eye
2. ST and SW cloak make strange rippling effects when the decloak
3. ST and SW cloaked ships don't fire while cloak (for the most part)
4. ST and SW cloaked ships can't be detected till they uncloak.
5. George Lucas chose to call it cloak on the clone wars knowing what that word means having been popularized on star trek


So by what is observed and the functions it performs we can say that the technology is similar at least on that level.

[Jm81]

It matters how they got there as how they got there tells us how much of it is there in the first place, if it's a byproduct we're probably talking about trace amounts (aka there's very little of it) remember that ST sensors are quite powerfull, but if it's the main way of damage then there should be a signifigant amount.

Also if the anti matter is a by product then it means they can't project anti-matter directly as a weapon, but rather when a disruptor hits a target it creates an unknown quatity(note that is doesn't mean there's alot of it) of anti-matter that can be detected later.

and yes it the weapon fired was a bolt so what, it still was something else then a torpedo warhead which was my point there.

Please review the video they correlated residual antimatter to romulan disrupters. Secondly we already know when they eject cores its filled with matter and antimatter. So the technology clearly exists to project an object filled with antimatter. What are you disagreeing with precisely?

[Jm81]

Romulan weapons leave behind antiproton traces that curiously enough don't seem to do any damage whatsoever, which to me indicates there's not all that many of them.
Burden of proof to show that romulan disruptors involve delivering serious amounts of antimatter (as opposed to resulting in a lonely antiproton or other as an aftereffect) is on you, especially as just like phasers, disruptors have this nasty tendency to create effects completely incompatible with a DET weapon.

So this is what it has come down to? You want me to show that a disruptor carries 'serious' amount of antimatter?. We know ST tech keeps antimatter stored in containment. So we know they have the technology hold antimatter. So you show me how big of a container ST forces can make and that's how much a/m they can deliver with the upper limit being the constraints of the ship carrying it.

[Jm81]

Then there's the question of why, if it's not gonna effect the outcome of the war and could cause severe retaliation against you, why would any ST power choose this course of action, which has absurdly high risk (especially if they know about DS or DBZ) with little to know reward (you still loose).

only way this could work from strategic PoV (not touching if the attack itself is possible) is that if the SW side is already unwilling to continue the conflict, but unable to stop due to some reason and needs something to call a "time out".

I agree, it would. And the threat of massive retaliation may be enough to prevent its use. This isn't a discussion on "if" they would use it, rather, can it be used.