Star Wars vs. the Sh'Daar

[Rhadamantus]

What would happen if Star Wars and the Sh'Daar (from Star Carrier), came into contact? Two galactic empires against each other. Who would win?

[Enigma]

I have an inkling of Star Carrier but can you elaborate on them?

[Rhadamantus]

They're a galactic scale empire with 50ish million species, they appear to have tens or hundreds of millions of km scale warships (they have far less firepower), and their FTL speeds are Star Trek range.

[Batman]

How do you build a galactic scale empire with Trek FTL speeds?

[Simon_Jester]

Very slowly?

The hard part would be political stability- preventing border satraps from rebelling against the central government. Having a system of communications that moves faster than the speed of ship would help a lot (as Star Trek does, and as Warhammer 40k, whose ships move at comparable speed, does).

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Very slowly?

The hard part would be political stability- preventing border satraps from rebelling against the central government. Having a system of communications that moves faster than the speed of ship would help a lot (as Star Trek does, and as Warhammer 40k, whose ships move at comparable speed, does).

All of the races in the Star Carrier verse are restricted to speed of light communications. The Sh'Daar Masters do use some form of mind control over their client races, IIRC.

[Simon_Jester]

It's not so much keeping the general population controlled that's the problem. As long as taxation isn't too high (and there's no reason why it should be), there's a good chance most of your population will obey whoever is set directly over them.

The problem is one of keeping the empire's own bureaucracy from fissioning. How exactly do you stop a frontier satrap who's thirty years' travel time from the imperial capital from rebelling? By the time you find out and send a punitive expedition to stop him, there's a good chance he'll already be dead.

It reminds me of all those people who think a tyrannical government is stable because IRON CONTROL OF THE SERFS, but then forget that it's entirely possible for internal divisions to occur within the government of a single empire.

[Rhadamantus]

Speed of light communications in system, I'm pretty sure they have FTL communicators that just don't work near stars.

[Elheru Aran]

Not enough information.

With what we have thus far:

It comes down to firepower and speed (Star Wars) versus numbers (Sh'daar). That's about it. Speed is usually the deciding factor in these versuses, as if the Empire can zoom around and take planets while the Sh'daar are still trying to get from point A to B, the Sh'daar are going to lose by attrition.

[Tribble]

I agree Elheru here. If the Sh'Daar's ships are stuck at Star Trek levels of speed and firepower they stand no chance in the long run. They would never be able to concentrate their fleets fast enough to be able to engage the Star Wars 'verse in a battle on equal footing, and even if they do have some planets defended heavily enough to give the Star Wars 'verse pause, the Star Wars 'verse could simply bypass those planets to attack others. Plus, depending on the time period they may have to deal with a Death Star or Starkiller Base, which they have no counter for. I really don't see how the Sh'Daar would win this one, and given the slow speeds of their communications (they may be FTL, but would they be able to cross the galaxy like Star Wars communications?) it's entirely possible that the war would be effectively over before the majority of the Sh'daar planets are even aware that a war broke out.