Which factions can defeat star wars universe EASILY?

[Starglider]

This is an unconventional and certainly debatable entry, but I'd like to mention it as the book it's from is really interesting. Specifically, the posthuman civilisation in Greg Egan's 'Schild's Ladder'. At the start of the book they're nothing special in sci-fi terms, antimatter drives but no FTL, moderately transhuman, a few hundred worlds colonised, relatively slow nanoassemblers etc (though they have some pretty flash if very limited femtotech). It's a non-militarised setting, no sentient aliens and no apparent weapons at all (even the paranoid luddite humans have to resort to improvised explosives and sabotage as their only means of attacking the protagonist's starship).

However the whole premise of the book is that one of their physics experiments starts a chain reaction that begins to destroy the entire universe at a rate of 0.5c (similar in concept to true vacuum decay, but different in the details). There is absolutely no way to stop this using conventional technology; it's simply an expanding sphere that eats up the fabric of space and everything in it at 0.5c. Most of the book focuses on the protagonists slowly unravelling the physics of what's going on, and discovering the true nature of the quantum graph based substrate that their own observable universe and every other possible universe (within the setting) is based on. By the end of the book, they have developed sophisticated technology that operates directly on this substrate (the stuff that actually defines the laws of physics for normal universes), at the zeptometer scale. Development is still in progress as the novel ends, but they can essentially rewrite your entire universe out from under you, at the maximum local speed of information propagation (c for their own original universe, presumably max FTL speed for other universes), or use a more localised version to achieve whatever Q-style arbitrariness (creating and destroying matter and energy, moving stuff around, changing the laws of physics) they like. On top of this, at the start of the book all their tech runs on quantum computers which work by manipulating wavefunction collapse on a very small scale, over very short timescales. As with real world quantum computers, you can essentially chose which of a vast number of possible outcomes becomes real, but only for a tiny system. Late in the book being able to manipulate the quantum graph substrate directly allows them to do this on a (relatively) macro scale, playing mind-bending games with probability and also enabling a truly silly levels of computing power. Sounds wankish, but really it's not in its original context, it just renders all conventional technology irrelevant.

Matching that up to other sci-fi universes is going to be pretty hard given how tightly everything is tied to the invented physics and cosmology, but if you went for a strict interpretation of 'all parties tech works just like it did in their home universes' they'd curbstomp just about everyone. There is just no way to block or otherwise affect this stuff with anything other than more of the same tech, and they only managed to develop it after a few hundred years of intensive research on a relatively benign instance of the phenomenon. You could postulate that entities like the Q and similar 'transparent wrappers for writer fiat' are based on identical or equivalent manipulation, but then those are even less amenable to versus matchups due to total lack of described mechanisms or quantified limits.

There are a few other sci-fi stories which have a similar theme of 'hacking the underlying substrate for the universe/multiverse' and would have similar effects. 'The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect' is an interesting short story with a similar result. The end of System Shock 2 has SHODAN doing something similar, though seemingly more limited in scope and range. Some of Egan's other books have similar though less potentially powerful themes. The Excession at the end of the Banks book of the same name seems to have some of the same kind of reality-hacking/local-laws-of-physics-defying capabilities. Essentially any sci-fi 'verse with well-developed capabilities of this kind is going to trivially crush any 'verse that doesn't have them in a straight match-up, because these sorts of capabilities effectively render conventional tech and numbers irrelevant. Match-ups between rival reality hackers are a very interesting question, but alas usually lack of quantification and/or insurmountable base physics/cosmology differences make a verdict impossible.

[Starglider]

P.S. This originally came up in a 'Vader versus Tagon' thread on Nightstar Zoo, which kinda turned into a 'Schlock Mercenary versus Star Wars' thread, which might be of interest to readers of this forum.

[SG-17]

I would have to go with the Ancients and Asurans (SGA).

[B5B7]

Would you now?
The Ancients are generally considered pretty retarded - they got their arses handed to them by a bunch of space vampires (the Wraith) that most imperial universes would have little trouble with.
An episode of SGA I watched recently had an Atlantis puddle jumper being shot down by a jury-rigged mortar (!!!) created by some prisoners on an island - that doesn't speak highly for Ancients tech (of course that the prisoners could accurately target it was unbelievable also).

[Starglider]

I would have to go with the Ancients and Asurans (SGA).

Both of them loose horribly to overwhelming numbers alone, before you even start looking at individual ship strength. The (non-ascended) Ancients lost to somewhere around 100 hive ships - and ISDs are vastly more powerful and numerous than hives. The Asurans have a single planet, and most of their (presumably unshielded) ships and shipyards were taken out by a SINGLE earth MIRV with naquada-enhanced nuclear warheads in the single-gigaton range at best (Imperial capship weapons range from gigatons to teratons per shot). Their supposed uber-weapon that could defeat the Atlantis shields in a day or so took nearly a minute to burn through an asteroid similar to ones we've seen ISDs vaporise with single shots from their light guns. An Executor class could probably kill a city ship with a single broadside. The ancients do have an impressive array of plot devices, but I can't see how any of them can be used for anything better than a scorched earth policy of destroying planets and/or wiping out population in the face of an imperial advance into their own galaxies (which is completely against their philosophy). An assault on the Empire's home galaxy is a laughable proposition for both of these.

I'm a big Stargate fan myself, and many of the factions could take out the UFP, but I'm afraid they're just hopelessly outclassed against the Empire.

[Starglider]

Both of them loose horribly

Loose/lose/I fail speeliing. Actually though if you'd bothered to read all of this thread before posting in it the Empire/Ancients question has been thoroughly covered already. Maybe the Milky Way replicators could win if they got enough of a head start on assimilating ships and tech before the Empire reacted, but no other Stargate factions have a chance, not even an invasion from the Ori's galaxy.

Though I expect you'll claim that the Ancients will win because they have all-powerful telekinesis.

[Perry Rhodan]

The Perry Rhodan universe has many civilisations that ca beat the GE.
Even the solar empire at its peak could take a shot at the GE maybe not even in true firepower but in other things like manouvrability they would win.
Also ground war would be a piece of cake for pr only because the infantry in PR are all shielded.

[Teleros]

Even the solar empire at its peak could take a shot at the GE maybe not even in true firepower but in other things like manouvrability they would win.
Also ground war would be a piece of cake for pr only because the infantry in PR are all shielded.

I've not come across that universe, but there many figures for this? For example, how much energy can a soldier's shields stop?

[Luzifer's right hand]

I've not come across that universe, but there many figures for this?

Perry Rhodan is a German SF series.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Rhodan

For example, how much energy can a soldier's shields stop?

That's not that easy to answer, it depends about which faction we are talking about and which era.
For example manupulation of the laws of nature by the high powers of the perryverse in a recent cycle has reduced the brute firepower available to terrans factors by the factor of 100 to 10000(depending on how much technobabble a weapon uses). Even the Solare Empire PR mentioned in his post used three differnt shield technologies in the time between it's rise and fall(about 1500 years).

Numbers for shields are rarely mentioned in the series and never for personal shielding.

By rule of thumb most personal shields can take direct hit's by single energy weapons and most of the times multiple energy weapons are used to overload a shield. Battles between single combatants are most of time lenghthy, however there are technoabble weapons which ignore some shield types completly or are weaken them quickly.
Some values for the max-yields of small arms (For Solare Empire tech base) exist from low double digit kg TNT equivalent range(per shot) for toothpick-sized energy weapons made by smallish people to triple digit kg TNT equivalent range for normal weapons.
Big ground battles are do not happen often in the perryverse and soldiers of real ground units(as opposed to spys and small teams) rarely go into battle without robots and vehicles and many vehicles and some ultra-heavy robots mount weapons which no soldier can hope to survive.

[fusion]

Another one: Excession which thought the culture were "savages".

[Perry Rhodan]

Even the Solare Empire PR mentioned in his post used three differnt shield technologies in the time between it's rise and fall(about 1500 years).

Well i said the peak of its power so i ment before the collaps due to the Laren. The paratron screens that are used then are powerfull enough to take 1000 gigaton bombs.

The true question in a battle between the solar empire and the GE would be iff GE shield have a hyperspace component that can stop Transformation bombs otherwise the stardestroyers would even be easy picking for a small pr fighter like a muskito or a lightnig jet. because I dont think a stardestroyer can take a 20 gigaton explosion iff it happened inside the ship

PS: Heavyest weapon off the solar empire are the transform cannons with a firepower of 6000 gigaton

for more info check www.perrypedia.de (german)

[fusion]

The true question in a battle between the solar empire and the GE would be iff GE shield have a hyperspace component that can stop Transformation bombs otherwise the stardestroyers would even be easy picking for a small pr fighter like a muskito or a lightnig jet. because I dont think a stardestroyer can take a 20 gigaton explosion iff it happened inside the ship

They would have to because the ships move through hyperspace and there is a metion of why hyperspace ramming technique does not work (not enough power as a hyperspace rammer can only take on a ship that is only a few times larger than its self). Other people should be able to back me up on this.

[Perry Rhodan]

Quote:
The true question in a battle between the solar empire and the GE would be iff GE shield have a hyperspace component that can stop Transformation bombs otherwise the stardestroyers would even be easy picking for a small pr fighter like a muskito or a lightnig jet. because I dont think a stardestroyer can take a 20 gigaton explosion iff it happened inside the ship

They would have to because the ships move through hyperspace and there is a metion of why hyperspace ramming technique does not work (not enough power as a hyperspace rammer can only take on a ship that is only a few times larger than its self). Other people should be able to back me up on this.

The PR universe uses two different types of weapons
1 the normal beam weapons that are comparable with turbolases ecept for the fact that these beam weapons travel with LS. I think the turbolasers of the GE are more powerfull then te PR beam weapons.
2 Weapons that are hyperspace related.
the tramsform bomb travels true hyperspace and rematerialises within the target in other words it bypasses a shield and shields are therefor useless

[Tanasinn]

I anticipate rocks or hand grenades being thrown at me for this, but what about the Flood? We know for a fact that they can fully utilize a host's knowledge; we further know that they don't seem to have problems hopping from species to species. We also know that they looooooooove to spread as quickly as possible, and aren't afraid to utilize technology to try and do so. In a galaxy as big and busy as the Wars one, Flood-infested vessels could be flying pretty much everywhere before anyone even noticed anything was wrong. Certainly, more affluent planets would find ways to detect a Flood-infested cargo ship or what have you, but what about poor dirtballs or slum-covered locales, like Nar Shaddaa?

[Surlethe]

We know for a fact that they can fully utilize a host's knowledge; ...

I'm not particularly familiar with Halo lore; would you mind backing this up, please?

... We also know that they looooooooove to spread as quickly as possible, and aren't afraid to utilize technology to try and do so.

How quickly are they actually capable of spreading?

EDIT: Also, if they can, I don't know if they'd be able to beat Star Wars easily, which is what this thread's about.

[Tanasinn]

I can't back up the first with a watertight, word-for-word answer until I grab one of my novels and find lines concerning the spores utilizing and absorbing the host's knowledge, but I can give you an example of the Flood utilizing advanced knowledge in the games themselves: we see the Flood repairing a massively-damaged Covenant cruiser and human cruiser for launch in the first Halo game, and we actually witness them hijack a human frigate in Halo 2, then warp it inside a sort of mobile planetoid-ship of the Covenant.

We don't know exactly how quickly the Flood spread in a galactic scale, but we see them become ubiquitous within a span of hours on both Halo rings they're seen on, as well as on the aforementioned Covenant city-ship. Halopedia, the Halo wiki, claims the Halo ringworlds have a diameter of 10,000 km, for an idea of scale. I can probably dig up a figure from one of the novels, too.

I only proposed the Flood because of what I thought might be a practical challenge they pose: how do you wipe them out without attacking your own economically-vital supercities and such, considering the rate at which they're observed to spread amongst even foes who know of their existance and danger, as seen in Halo 2? Further, how would one go about protecting themselves from stray ships infested with Flood hosts from crashing and starting another infection all over again?

[Imperial Overlord]

The industrial base of Star Wars allows Death Stars to be constructed in secret and their FTL allows ships to quickly go from the Core Worlds to the Rim. Their soldiers have sealed armour and they can produce Quadrillions of battle droids. The Flood just get exterminated by turbolasers from orbit and, if necessary, soldiers on the ground.

[Lord_Sturm]

Metroid can defeat star wars in ground combat (can't say that for space as we have seen no real space combat) as metroids are difficult to kill without dark energy or cold weapons and Samus herself is freaking armed to the teeth and has done things that have often defied a law of physics and her shielding is far more effeciant (she is the one man err woman army). Next The zerg they have inhumanely large numbers and the infestation will only add to their numbers and the Cerabrates, And Overmind can only be killed permenantly by dark templar energy which robs star wars of it's ability to kill the zerg's command chain.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Metroid can defeat star wars in ground combat (can't say that for space as we have seen no real space combat) as metroids are difficult to kill without dark energy or cold weapons and Samus herself is freaking armed to the teeth and has done things that have often defied a law of physics and her shielding is far more effeciant (she is the one man err woman army).

We have no idea on Space pirate or Galactic alliance numbers, all we know is that the pirates have the resources to mine a world to the point that it loses a major percentage of its mass and can rebuild and re-armour the planet ina time-frame of months while in war conditions (Implying a decent level of industrial power) as well as the fact that they're highly mobile and rely on pilfering technology, cloning and cybernetics extensively.

The fact that they would slaughter stormtroopers (Or Clonetroopers or Dark-troopers) given odds even at the 10:1 range (Samus has Kilo-ton level weaponry [Yoshi's Metroid quantification thread] and shielding that can take a pounding from that, yet normal Space-pirates can still give her a fight and overwhelm her shielding) is irrelevant if they might be facing numbers in the millions to one range (If we ignore Odds and the like ).

And indeed Space makes the point moot since we have absolutely no idea as to what metroid ships are even remotely capable of.

and the Cerabrates, And Overmind can only be killed permenantly by dark templar energy which robs star wars of it's ability to kill the zerg's command chain.

The Zerg would be slaughtered.
The bloody UED handled them (granted with help and the Overmind debilitated) without Dark Protoss helping, and Protoss ships are markedly superior to Terran craft (With them being able to perform a planetary sterilization alone, but having a pitiful, highly centralized resource and industrial base compared to the GE).

Next The zerg they have inhumanely large numbers and the infestation will only add to their numbers

Zerg numbers are in the mere double-digit billions at most even with a short spreading period, their "peace time numbers"/travel numbers are merely in the billions-hundred of millions (Try reading the numbers of the "large" swarms in the manual sometimes).

[Lord_Sturm]

They did spread from the central part of the milky way to the fringe of it infesting evrey planet in their path it's just the korpulu sector force (i think) that is in the billions as the tiamat brood has several hundred billions of zerg in it alone.

[Imperial Overlord]

They did spread from the central part of the milky way to the fringe of it infesting evrey planet in their path it's just the korpulu sector force (i think) that is in the billions as the tiamat brood has several hundred billions of zerg in it alone.

The CIS had battledroid numbers measuring in at least the quadrillions. Against the kind of numbers Star Wars can muster, hundreds of billions is nothing. Zerg go splat.

[Lord_Sturm]

What about the tyranids of 40,000k warhammer they have vastly greater numbers than the zerg I suppose they could win (keep in mind I have not seen tons of diffrent kinds of sci-fi)

[Stark]

Why are you name-dropping when you have no idea on the capabilities? You just admitted you don't know much about the Tyranids - so why suggest them? Are you just going to keep suggesting laughable opponents until you run out of sci-fi names?

[Lord_Sturm]

I haven't been connected to the internet for more then a year my knowledge is set back by it so I don't have the all knowing capability of some people.

[CaptHawkeye]

Here's a hint, we don't care. If you're going to make a claim, you had damn well better know something about it.

So far all you've done is go "How about these guys! Oh, then how about THESE guys?"