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So I have read quite afew of these now. Is there any other fictional universe that stands a chance in a VS with SW? The only one I have seen that seems to come close is WH40k. Is that it?

Use the search function. The thread 'can anyone stand against the Empire' has been done, to my knowledge, almost a dozen times.

And there are plenty of niche/wanked groups who can defeat the Empire. Start with 'the culture', jump to 'the time lords', then search the damn forum.

thanks. I use the search function but I don't always know what to serch for and putting in Star Wars Vs.... well I'm sure you get the idea.

By the way, I liked you meaner and not so helpful

I edited out several 'fuck's I thought were unnecessary. Was that wrong?

I don't remember off the top of my head any groups that are a close match for the Empire, but I guess that's just the reality of space warfare. If you can evade the enemy fleets and destroy their planets, you win and there's basically fuck all the enemy can do to you.

Stark wrote:Use the search function. The thread 'can anyone stand against the Empire' has been done, to my knowledge, almost a dozen times.

And there are plenty of niche/wanked groups who can defeat the Empire. Start with 'the culture', jump to 'the time lords', then search the damn forum.

This might just be my perception, but it seems to be a prevailing attitude that any race that cannot defeat the Empire is percieved as 'weak', while any race that can is percieved as 'wanked'.

I find Star Wars to be pretty wanked to be honest, but that comes from EU nonsense.

OmegaGuy wrote:This might just be my perception, but it seems to be a prevailing attitude that any race that cannot defeat the Empire is percieved as 'weak', while any race that can is percieved as 'wanked'.

The groups that come up most often in vs SW debates are groups like the photino birds, time lords, and the culture. They're all wanked to a greater or lesser degree, and they don't just 'beat' the Empire - they obliterate it with little effort. Like I said, I can't think of any group that has rough parity with the Empire other than perhaps 40k... there are plenty weaker, and plenty way, way more powerful however.

The thing is, 'weaker' or 'wanked' shouldn't be an indication of quality. Banks is widely liked for writing compelling stories, even though the Culture is 'wanked'. Similarly Doctor Who, and if something is 'weaker' that doesn't mean that they're not a good universe with good fiction.

"Wanked" is as much a function of the writing as the actual military power. There are plenty of fictional stories involving modern American forces that are wanked to the max.

Stofsk wrote:I find Star Wars to be pretty wanked to be honest, but that comes from EU nonsense.

Considering the EU-minimalism, wouldn't it be the other way around? Sometimes I think LFL and its employees are afraid of being accused of SW-wanking and give us 3 million clones and so on because of that.

FTeik wrote:

Stofsk wrote:I find Star Wars to be pretty wanked to be honest, but that comes from EU nonsense.

Considering the EU-minimalism, wouldn't it be the other way around? Sometimes I think LFL and its employees are afraid of being accused of SW-wanking and give us 3 million clones and so on because of that.

EU is both wanked and minimalist. They try to reduce the scale, because they can't wrap their heads around the scale of a galactic civilization and they find it convenient to work with a small number of characters and settings. That's really just lazy, stupid, small-minded writing, of the sort that I'd expect from people who don't do a lot of thinking or reading (or someone who thinks that being a "journo" makes her intellectually superior). But then you also have wanked-out bullshit like the Suncrusher.

Darth Wong wrote:

FTeik wrote:

Stofsk wrote:I find Star Wars to be pretty wanked to be honest, but that comes from EU nonsense.

Considering the EU-minimalism, wouldn't it be the other way around? Sometimes I think LFL and its employees are afraid of being accused of SW-wanking and give us 3 million clones and so on because of that.

EU is both wanked and minimalist. They try to reduce the scale, because they can't wrap their heads around the scale of a galactic civilization and they find it convenient to work with a small number of characters and settings. That's really just lazy, stupid, small-minded writing, of the sort that I'd expect from people who don't do a lot of thinking or reading (or someone who thinks that being a "journo" makes her intellectually superior). But then you also have wanked-out bullshit like the Suncrusher.

Right, but the Suncrusher is presented as an exception to the rule of what is technically possible in SW. The same claim is made about the DeathStar, but that ignores the huge resource- and labour-base, infrastructure, energy- and transportation ect.. Things that are "ordinary" for the GFFA, but are / have to be wanked, too, to make things like the DS possible.

FTeik wrote:

Darth Wong wrote:

FTeik wrote: Considering the EU-minimalism, wouldn't it be the other way around? Sometimes I think LFL and its employees are afraid of being accused of SW-wanking and give us 3 million clones and so on because of that.

EU is both wanked and minimalist. They try to reduce the scale, because they can't wrap their heads around the scale of a galactic civilization and they find it convenient to work with a small number of characters and settings. That's really just lazy, stupid, small-minded writing, of the sort that I'd expect from people who don't do a lot of thinking or reading (or someone who thinks that being a "journo" makes her intellectually superior). But then you also have wanked-out bullshit like the Suncrusher.

Right, but the Suncrusher is presented as an exception to the rule of what is technically possible in SW. The same claim is made about the DeathStar, but that ignores the huge resource- and labour-base, infrastructure, energy- and transportation ect.. Things that are "ordinary" for the GFFA, but are / have to be wanked, too, to make things like the DS possible.

I don't consider scale to be wanking, in the sense that it's a logical and continuous progression of an ancient spacefaring civilization. It's a bigger problem when technology is treated like magic. I know about that famous Arthur C. Clarke quote, but it's noteworthy that he himself did not write fiction by treating technology as if it were immune from logic.

Darth Wong wrote:EU is both wanked and minimalist. They try to reduce the scale, because they can't wrap their heads around the scale of a galactic civilization and they find it convenient to work with a small number of characters and settings. That's really just lazy, stupid, small-minded writing, of the sort that I'd expect from people who don't do a lot of thinking or reading (or someone who thinks that being a "journo" makes her intellectually superior). But then you also have wanked-out bullshit like the Suncrusher.

On some point, the minimalism and the tech wank kind of go hand in hand. They write the society having just have a few people, a few ships, so in order to have an effect on galaxy at large, they need to wank the shit out of if.

havokeff wrote:So I have read quite afew of these now. Is there any other fictional universe that stands a chance in a VS with SW? The only one I have seen that seems to come close is WH40k. Is that it?

Besides the "wank verses" (Culture, Xeelee, Time Lords,etc.), there have been a few universes that are competive with the Star Wars Galactic Empire. One of these is Issac Asimov's Foundationverse (Foundation etc. Caves of Steel etc.). This is a universe in which a Galactic Empire exists, and after it falls, a whole bunch of technological advances are made. The idea is that it's a civilization which has made major technological advances and which has a galaxy wide industrial base, along with fast FTL, which is essentialy the basis of the Star Wars galaxy. The only problem is, Asimov wasn't much interested in showing off or allowing quantifying of the Foundationverse tech, and so we can't really quantify the capabilities of the Foundation, or their antecedents or descendents. In addition, the canon of the Foundationverse is ill-defined.

Frank Herbert's Duneverse has a similar problem. Here we have a universe with very fast FTL, a civilization which spans multiple galaxies, and with precog that makes the Jedi look like amateurs. The Duneverse is especially interesting because it's a world in which people have personal shields which might very well block blasters but permit lightsabres, and so it's ripe with opportunites for Jedi (or Sith) to fight badasses who also have pre-cog and also fight with swords. But again, we have both a lack of specific description, and a problem of canon.

In any case, both universes stand a chance against the Empire. The Foundationverse probably stands a better chance, but the Duneverse does as well.

Foundation...yes.

Dune has never shown any real military capability, especially in space, whatsoever, and far too many people wank to the shields. Every single time someone brings up Dune versus SW...it gets owned like a boy in a confessional.

Ghost Rider wrote:Dune has never shown any real military capability, especially in space, whatsoever, and far too many people wank to the shields. Every single time someone brings up Dune versus SW...it gets owned like a boy in a confessional.

Please note that I said that I placed Foundation first, and also noted that we didn't really know the capabilities of Dune. We know that Dune has fast FTL and the ability to colonize multiple galaxies, and that Dune has personal shields, which might, or might not, resist blaster shots (as I said in my original post, we don't know if Dune shields will resist them, but they might).

I don't really think that the Duneverse could take the Empire in a stand-up fight. I do believe, however, that the Duneverse could subvert the Empire from within, assuming any kind of integration between the societies took place. At least some members of the Duneverse have precog far more advanced than anything we see in the Star Wars movies (I am not familiar with the EU, so I can't speak to it), and personal shields can only help in lightsabre duels. So yes, I believe that the Duneverse may have an advantage in a "cold war", and it could even have an advantage in a "hot war", but that is only because we know little about space combat in the Duneverse...in my opinion it would get owned and survive solely on their superior FTL. Dune itself talks with pride about the Houses nuclear arsenals after all, and a nuclear arsenal would hardly give the Empire pause.

My personal belief is this: In a full out war the Duneverse either gets owned or flees due to superior FTL. In some kind of cold war the Duneverse has a chance to infiltrate the Empire and undermine it from within, because it has some superiorities in that department (better precogs, Face Dancers, etc.)

FTeik wrote:

Stofsk wrote:I find Star Wars to be pretty wanked to be honest, but that comes from EU nonsense.

Considering the EU-minimalism, wouldn't it be the other way around?

No, it's actually the reverse: the minimalism leads to the wanking.

The movies give us the immense Death Star, with the notion that you really do need a ship that big to have the power necessary to destroy a planet that's protected under a shield. What does the EU give us? The suncrusher, the galaxy gun, Sith star-destroying magic, Centrepoint station (and only Anakin Solo can really use it)... need I go on?

Sometimes I think LFL and its employees are afraid of being accused of SW-wanking and give us 3 million clones and so on because of that.

And you don't think 3 million clones winning a war over tens of thousands of worlds (if not hundreds of thousands), to be wanking? It's analogous to watching a war film about the Dirty Dozen winning WW2 single-handedly.

The idea comes from the 'less is more, more is less' idea in creativity. While that might work for interior decoration, I don't see how it works for writing fiction and keeping the sense of scale consistent. It's like writing a military story about a special ops unit, but remembering that regardless of what your small team of heroes does, the USM is vast and has a million personnel. That doesn't diminish the story, just puts it into perspective. But there is a notion that it does diminish the story, and so we get EU-isms of doing more with less (fighter wank and Rogue Squadron taking on the Lusankya - and winning - for instance), rather than depicting small units in a big galaxy.

The ultimate irony is that the movies do exactly as I say, showing a small unit in a huge galaxy (I mean how big is the Executor alone, compared to Echo Base?), but for some reason most of the writers who've worked for the EU somehow fail to see what's on the screen.

skotos wrote:

Ghost Rider wrote:Dune has never shown any real military capability, especially in space, whatsoever, and far too many people wank to the shields. Every single time someone brings up Dune versus SW...it gets owned like a boy in a confessional.

Please note that I said that I placed Foundation first, and also noted that we didn't really know the capabilities of Dune. We know that Dune has fast FTL and the ability to colonize multiple galaxies, and that Dune has personal shields, which might, or might not, resist blaster shots (as I said in my original post, we don't know if Dune shields will resist them, but they might).

I don't really think that the Duneverse could take the Empire in a stand-up fight. I do believe, however, that the Duneverse could subvert the Empire from within, assuming any kind of integration between the societies took place. At least some members of the Duneverse have precog far more advanced than anything we see in the Star Wars movies (I am not familiar with the EU, so I can't speak to it), and personal shields can only help in lightsabre duels. So yes, I believe that the Duneverse may have an advantage in a "cold war", and it could even have an advantage in a "hot war", but that is only because we know little about space combat in the Duneverse...in my opinion it would get owned and survive solely on their superior FTL. Dune itself talks with pride about the Houses nuclear arsenals after all, and a nuclear arsenal would hardly give the Empire pause.

My personal belief is this: In a full out war the Duneverse either gets owned or flees due to superior FTL. In some kind of cold war the Duneverse has a chance to infiltrate the Empire and undermine it from within, because it has some superiorities in that department (better precogs, Face Dancers, etc.)

Face Dancers can be detected, A force user would spot one easily and better precog would only make the Navigators aware how badly they're gonna get owned.

I thought it was established that the Empire could simply wipe out the spice and massively cripple the Duneverse. Wasn't one of the major plot points of the original book the fact that they could effectively hold the entire empire for ransom by threatening to destroy the spice?

Darth Wong wrote:I thought it was established that the Empire could simply wipe out the spice and massively cripple the Duneverse. Wasn't one of the major plot points of the original book the fact that they could effectively hold the entire empire for ransom by threatening to destroy the spice?

Yep. Since they refuse to use computers, they need Navigators to use their FTL drives. Since Navigators rely on being immersed in a solution heavy in Spice, if you simply fry Arrakis, they are crippled and STL.

Much, much, much later in the series, they find a non-spice FTL system. But that's ridiculously late in the series.

Of course, if they'd just stop their infantile hatred of thinking machines, it'd be easy...

SirNitram wrote:Of course, if they'd just stop their infantile hatred of thinking machines, it'd be easy...

Do we know how, or even if, the Duneverse denizens travelled FTL prior to the Butlerian Jihad? I'm pretty sure Frank Herbert never mentioned it, but possibly Brian Herbert and KJA have detailed it (assuming, of course, we accept their works as canon).

In any case, it was pretty silly of me to think that the Duneverse can be a rival to the Star Wars galaxy. Yes, they have Star Wars level resources or better, and they have FTL comparable or better than Star Wars FTL, but they lack any military technology that can rival Star Wars - after thinking about it today, I seem to recall that they consider nuclear weapons to have significant destructive power. So yeah, there's no way the Duneverse could rival the Empire in a straight up fight. I do still think there's a chance that some Duneverse denizens could go far in the Empire if they were at peace, and perhaps even take it over from within, but I don't think that that is what havokeff was looking for in the OP.

As for other sci-fi universes that I know of that are competitive with the Empire, the only one that is in any way close is Larry Niven's Known Space. "Modern" Known Space contains no civilizations that could take the Empire on (not even close), but most Known Space groups have vessels that could easily survive an encounter with a Star Destroyer (by running). In addition, the thrintun from the Known Space could easily destroy the Empire, at the cost of their own lives, if the Suicide Weapon penetrates Star Wars shields.

EDIT: Added "that I know of" to the final paragraph. My accidental ommision of those words resulted in some unfortunate misunderstanding.

skotos wrote: As for other sci-fi universes that are competitive with the Empire, the only one that is in any way close is Larry Niven's Known Space. "Modern" Known Space contains no civilizations that could take the Empire on (not even close), but most Known Space groups have vessels that could easily survive an encounter with a Star Destroyer (by running). In addition, the thrintun from the Known Space could easily destroy the Empire, at the cost of their own lives, if the Suicide Weapon penetrates Star Wars shields.

Define 'competetive'. If you mean by 'on par with', there are a few-- 40K as mentioned before (more powerful infantry, weaker ships) for one. If 'better than', there's shitloads. The Daleks from Doctor Who would easily defeat the Empire, for example, and they're just one faction from that particular series; Who-verse factions tend to be rather ungodly powerful, especially when you throw time travel into the mix. Culture, Xeelee-- those two would be utter overkill for 80 percent and up of *all* the races that have been depicted in science fiction, let alone the Empire. Various races from E.E. Smith's Lensmen and Skylark series. I could keep going...

There are plenty of obscure sci-fi universes with extreme power levels and scales. Not quite so many which are known to the average person, though. Wanking out a sci-fi universe does not necessarily enhance its reader appeal.

What about the Core and the Arm from Total Annihilation?