Why is there no Star Trek vs B5 column?

[U.P. Cinnabar]

The debate was settled long ago. Trek roflstomps all other franchises including SW, B5, WH40K, BSG, Cultureverse combined and quintupled.

Really?! I seem to recall one Culture GSV going up against 200,000+ ships and prevailing.

Obvious troll is obvious.

[NecronLord]

You know, I didn't see the culture reference there originally. Well played Chimaera.

Now I want you to defend your claim that star wars any faction you please, can fight the Culture.

[Iroscato]

You know, I didn't see the culture reference there originally. Well played Chimaera.

Now I want you to defend your claim that star wars any faction you please, can fight the Culture.

I hereby rescind any and all contributions I made to this thread and will now go and hide in the corner sucking my thumb ._.

Seriously, your avatar makes me think I'm about to be vapourised with a flourish of the gauntlet. Scary shit.

[NecronLord]

Heh, it's not even reliably top dog of TV sci-fi. There's a serious case to be made for the daleks being able to beat the shit out of Star Wars, at least in the episodes where they had serious numbers.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Heh, it's not even reliably top dog of TV sci-fi. There's a serious case to be made for the daleks being able to beat the shit out of Star Wars, at least in the episodes where they had serious numbers.

I imagine if they could fight the Time Lords across all of time and space, and hold the Movellians(a race of androids with an empire comparable to the Daleks)to a stalemate, they can probably deal with Palpatine's Galactic Empire.

Same goes for LoGH's Empire, especially after Reinhard re-forms it and conquers the FPA, given the size of the average Imperial fleet(low tens of thousands at the start of the animé to the hundreds of thousands by the end of it). Even the smallest Alliance fleet(Yang's 13th)numbered "only" 6,400 ships.

[Iroscato]

Heh, it's not even reliably top dog of TV sci-fi. There's a serious case to be made for the daleks being able to beat the shit out of Star Wars, at least in the episodes where they had serious numbers.

The Daleks would almost certainly handle the SW universe quite easily, at least at their peak during the Time War. I mean them fuckers fought a civilisation that had mastered time travel and adapted black holes into power sources to an absolute standstill. Additionally they had '10 million ships' according to the 9th Doctor. The Galactic Empire had what, 25,000?

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Well, if the current state of SWvsST is any indication, it'd be dead quiet. The Science Fiction catch-all works fine.

Seems all the Trek trolls have chosen to infest YouTube and Google Minus instead of here. They're beating their chests, claiming superiority, and talk in contemptious tones of the Shark—err, I mean SDN.

[Lord Revan]

Well, if the current state of SWvsST is any indication, it'd be dead quiet. The Science Fiction catch-all works fine.

Seems all the Trek trolls have chosen to infest YouTube and Google Minus instead of here. They're beating their chests, claiming superiority, and talk in contemptious tones of the Shark—err, I mean SDN.

Well that's happend for ages, the hardcore trekkies seemed have retreated to their own enclaves for the most part, kind of a shame really as it means we don't get rational opposition so we tend to become more fanatical in our stances and that's not a good thing at all.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Except, most of the Trekkies I've come across on YT don't qualify as rational, just fanatical. I mean, c'mon, there are some of them who use In the Pirkinning as evidence of Star Trek's superiority to B5. Which it may or may not be, but that's not the yardstick I'd use to measure that by.

Besides, it tends to be a bit of a religious crusade with them, trying to convert everyone to the Gospel of the Lord that Saint Roddenberry Never Wrote In the First Place.

To be fair, the same can be said for the hardcore in many fandoms. You have the Jedi/Sith wankers amongst the Star Wars fans, the Zeon fanboys amongst the UC Gundam fandom, the EA fanboys amongst the Fivers, and so on. It's all the same, and they all irritate me equally.

[Iroscato]

I find the best solution is to ignore these people, as you would any other extremist. I mean there are people who honestly believe the fucking Moon is a hologram, what're you gonna do, engage them in debate? :/

[U.P. Cinnabar]

I find the best solution is to ignore these people, as you would any other extremist. I mean there are people who honestly believe the fucking Moon is a hologram, what're you gonna do, engage them in debate? :/

That would be an oxymoron. Trying to engage an extremist in debate only gives him an opportunity to air his extremism.

The best one can do(okay, the best I can do, which, also, should not be taken as a benchmark)is tell them flat-out how little I think of them, then ignore them, especially if what they're espousing is blatantly insulting to the average intellect.

[Tribble]

Heh, it's not even reliably top dog of TV sci-fi. There's a serious case to be made for the daleks being able to beat the shit out of Star Wars, at least in the episodes where they had serious numbers.

The Daleks would almost certainly handle the SW universe quite easily, at least at their peak during the Time War. I mean them fuckers fought a civilisation that had mastered time travel and adapted black holes into power sources to an absolute standstill. Additionally they had '10 million ships' according to the 9th Doctor. The Galactic Empire had what, 25,000?

I'd say the Daleks were on the verge of winning against the Time Lords. They had invaded Gallifrey, destroyed its second city and were in the process of bombarding the Capital. The Time Lords appeared to be out of Tardises and out of weapons (apart from the Moment and their attempt to use the Ultimate Sanction). Only the Doctor's intervention at that point could have stopped them.

Bear in mind that the '10 million ships' was at the very end of the war, where the fighting had been going on for well over 1,000 and both sides had taken massive casualties. The attack on Gallifrey was probably an "all-or nothing" campaign where the Daleks threw in everything the had left in order to finally end the war. While it might have been the biggest single battle in the war, it's implied that the Daleks combined fleet was at one point much larger than that.


The Time War was such a massive conflict that "millions were dying every second only to be reborn and die again," "every moment in space and time was burning", and there was a real risk that even without things like the "Ultimate Sanction" being used the universe was so torn by the war that it could have disintegrated on its own. The fighting between the Time Lords and the Daleks was several orders of magnitude greater than anything else in most sci-fi shows, let alone Star Wars. At their height a fight between the Daleks and the Empire would have resulted in the Empire being curb-stomped even harder than the Federation would have been curb stomped in a match against the Empire.


Even if we strip away the numbers, one-on-one a Dalek ship would curb-stomp anything the (canon) SW universe could throw at it. Dalek saucers can travel in any point in space and time within seconds, have tractor beams capable of disabling ships including the Tardis, and have planet-killer missiles. Hell Daleks are able to build planet-killer weapons so easily that a small group of scavengers were able to build one into a human-sized android, and that was just their "backup plan" to distract the Doctor in case he started to win. Unless they are caught completely off guard and/or their propulsion systems are completely disabled (don't forget that the Daleks are perfectly willing to retreat if they feel the odds aren't in their favour), I don't see how any SW ship could compete with that. Even the Death Stars / Star Killer Base would be taken out in a single volley, though they may take out the Dalek Saucer in the process.

[Parallax]

I would be interested, however, in how Stormtroopers would handle a Dalek. Would SW blasters be effectively against Dalek personal shields and armour. If a small number of Daleks boarded a Star Destroyer, could their attack be handled?

[U.P. Cinnabar]

I would be interested, however, in how Stormtroopers would handle a Dalek. Would SW blasters be effectively against Dalek personal shields and armour. If a small number of Daleks boarded a Star Destroyer, could their attack be handled?

I would say that SW blasters would be effective against Dalek shields and armor, but you'd lose a lot of stormies taking down that one Dalek. And, there wouldn't be just one to contend with, they would just keep rolling them in, in as many numbers they need to exterminate every stormtrooper on the battlefield.

Daleks are way more bloody-minded than the Empire.

As for boarding an ISD, the Daleks are unlikely to send a small number; they would send numbers proportionate to the opposition they'd expect, being coldly-calculating, maniacal overgrown pepper mills they are.

[Iroscato]

The closest comparison I can think of for that scenario would be from Enter The Dalek, series 8. Small number of humans armed with energy weapons who took losses but also took out a number of Daleks as well. Scale that up to thousands of stormtroopers and I'd imagine they'd hold them off fairly easily. If the Daleks decided not to just obliterate the Star Destroyer, I would think there'd be a stalemate of sorts.

[Tribble]

The closest comparison I can think of for that scenario would be from Enter The Dalek, series 8. Small number of humans armed with energy weapons who took losses but also took out a number of Daleks as well. Scale that up to thousands of stormtroopers and I'd imagine they'd hold them off fairly easily. If the Daleks decided not to just obliterate the Star Destroyer, I would think there'd be a stalemate of sorts.

Certain sections of the Star Destroyer are likely to be lost as the Daleks have no problems swarming around the hull to find weak points. If you're in places like the bridge when the Daleks attempt a takeover your going to want to put on a vac suit asap as they are probably going to start things off by blowing out the windows.

[Q99]

There's a lot of tiers, B5 isn't actually *that* low, there's plenty of universes they would totally roll due to their respectable fleet sizes, big ships, and beam weapons.

Trek, with larger fleet sizes, more powerful ships, shields, stronger weapons (some of which rapid fire and consider unshielded fighters to be skeet), and tons of funky advantages, simply happens to roll them.

The difference is Trek loses because they're stupid. BattleTech loses because their weapons are significantly inferior to modern world stuff.

Fair enough, I still remember one of my first posts being something about a Mech going up against a column of MBT's... *shudder*

Seriously though, Mechs and associated stupidity aside, what about the rest of BT ground forces? Or were they really just that colossally shitty?

Weirdly enough, due to the fact everything is scaled off mechs and expected to both take hit from and dish out damage to mechs and tanks, their power armor is actually really really good (makes Spartans and Space Marine armor look fragile, and they come with built-in mech scale weaponry so anything that's not at least tank tough goes down *fast*, and they have jump jets for high mobility), and their aerospace fighters are flying bricks that'd laugh at our puny anti-air missiles because they have the same armor that's on heavy ground units, just less of it.

It's the kind of thing you get occasionally in series that scale off a certain thing. Like how Trek 'fighters' are way overpowered next to many other SF's since they're made to fight and take the odd hit from Trek ships rather than modeled after real fighters but in space like most SF, and while Trek's actually ground stuff is sucky, logically simply hovering a shuttle or Runabout not far off the ground and you've got an invincible death 'tank' next to a lot of SF ground stuff. Or heck, land a Voyager-type ship and you've got a fortress base that can withstand anti-matter warhead hits, places wherever on a planet you need. Not that they actually do so, but it's just funny how the scaling works sometimes, where an overall weaker power sometimes dominates in particular scale bands.


Mechs and such have pretty good armor and firepower due to the advanced material technology (a modern tank cannon is supposed to do about 2-3 damage points by their game terms- a fairly light weapon by their terms), just, y'know, 36 mechs is considered a large force and they don't have great range with all but a few weapons (unless one considers that just a game-convenience thing). If a mech was right *near* a column of MBT's it'd do fine due to simply the advanced alloys and lasers that will kill all kinds of stuff (the novel-descriptions have them melting or even *evaporating* a ton of armor- in short, anything modern hit would be insta-cooked), but what'd actually happen is the MBTs would simply kill it with tons of hits from a distance from the mech.

Or if you ignore the range issue, a mech would be pretty darn dangerous, but on the flip side, totally logistically outmatched and way too small in number for a mech force to fight well.

Tribble covered their issues pretty well.

[LastShadow]

Bear in mind, i have not watched Bab5 since it was on TV when reading this.

Babylon 5, i may not be remembering correctly but the Earth forces us rotation to provide gravity, yes?

Secondly, Star Trek ships in theory could stop said rotation with a tractor beam.

So in theory one quick maneuver, a powered up tractor beam and the Earth forces are just floating about trying to restore order and fight back....

On top of that you have the old St vs SW argument of beaming a torpedo onto the other ship, again if i remember correctly, Babylon ships dont have shield tech.

[Q99]

Bear in mind, i have not watched Bab5 since it was on TV when reading this.

Babylon 5, i may not be remembering correctly but the Earth forces us rotation to provide gravity, yes?

Yes, at least on the central sections of some ships. Older and smaller ships don't.

Secondly, Star Trek ships in theory could stop said rotation with a tractor beam.

So in theory one quick maneuver, a powered up tractor beam and the Earth forces are just floating about trying to restore order and fight back....

Yep, that'd be disruptive.

On top of that you have the old St vs SW argument of beaming a torpedo onto the other ship, again if i remember correctly, Babylon ships dont have shield tech.

Correct. Not even the higher end civs- though they do have high-energy jamming which could prevent beaming.

That said, simply shooting the torpedoes is going to be pretty effective itself. At best, they hit the torpedo with an interceptor and it detonates in close proximity, killing fragile stuff on the outside of the ship like the interceptor system and guns. If not just killing the target outright, we do have examples of Minbari ships being killed by proximity blasts from MT range bombs (though there may have been some asteroid or such propelled by the blast for a bit of 'golden BB,' but still).

A Galaxy class, which can fire bursts of torpedoes, will kill any B5 ship in a single volley (well, exceptions being the Vorlon Planet Killer, or maybe some of the unique First One ships, but as a general rule of thumb even large and powerful ships like the Victory Class will go down in one). A smaller ship like an Intrepid or a Klingon Bird of Prey may take a bit more time, but won't normally have too much more trouble.