Shadow, allow me to present you a categorical reasoning as to why Trek loses... and loses badly.
Ship/fleet wise
Firepower/Defense: Star Trek ships rely heavily upon fancy NDF/chain reaction weapons to achieve victory, though these are complemented by photorps, which IIRC, have been calced by Vivftp over at Space Battles as falling between 2-20 megatons on average. They usually engage opponents at ranges of no more than two to three kilometers, especially in large fleet battles. Their ships, with one notable exception, are notoriously fragile when fired upon. Notice
Sacrifice of Angels and
Tears of the Prophets in which Federation, Klingon, and Romulan ships were being riped apart by Jem'Haddar kamikaze strikes, Cardiassian weapons platforms, and falling to capital ship phaser/disruptor strikes after being hit three or four times (the 'Magellan' was destroyed rather spectacularly after taking just two). These shisp sport zero heavy armor plating and utlize frequency based shielding that leave them vulnerable for a split second in the oscillation, as can be observed by hull damage and exploding console even before the shield's crash.
Star Wars ships, by comparison, utilize brute force, direct energy weapons. It should be noted that while it has the term 'laser' in its name, a Turbolaser, is not, in fact, a laser, for a number of reasons (visible in a vacuum, the noticeable recoil to the guns, and the fact that the barrels have holes at the end, rather than lenses). We have observed the smallest of these weapons to be able to instantly vaporize a 40 meter wide asteroid, around 1-2 megatons worth of firepower. It should be noted that in Star Wars, the light turbo laser has pretty much just one function: point defense.... it is an anti-aircraft equivalent. Let that sit with your mind for just a second. Higher level weaponry ranges up into the triple digit terraton range, and have light minute engagement ranges. Obviously, there is no need to even begin to mention the Death Star(s) or any other Imperial super weapons, nor the fact that turbo lasers move significantly faster than phasers, giving the Empire another tactical edge in battle.
Defense wise, Star Wars ships are mobile fortresses, sporting heavy shielding that is able to take thier own level of firepower for several minutes before going down, and, most wisely, heavy armor plating to protect them in the event of shield overload. The most drastic example of this comes from
Republic Commando in which the Acclamator class assault vessel, The Prosecutor, was subject to a multi-minute bombardment from a Trade Federation battlecruiser. The ship lost its engines, main computer systems, shield generators, hull integrity, atmosphere, and life support systems... and the ship was not only still intact, its reactor core still stable but it
was still shooting back! And this was after two weeks of hellacious infighting between Clones, Trandoshian mercenaries, and batlte droids had ripped apart the ships interior. The best G-canon example of hull defensive protection comes from the Empire Strikes Back novelization, in which the Avenger (unshielded) plows straight through a number of asteroids and is not even damaged in its pursuit of the Millennium Falcon.
Ship Speed: Star Wars ships demonstrate significantly faster STL accelerations than their Trek counterparts, up to many thousands of G's worth, and while they may not be as maneuverable, their significantly larger weapon firing arcs make up for this. FTL, it goes without saying that Hyperdrive is faster than anything observed in Trek (high end examples include Maul going from Coruscant to Tatooine in less than twelve hours, and Obi Wan and Anakin rushing in from the outer rim to reach the battle of Coruscant in a matter of hours), with one or two exceptions, and it can be performed consistently.
Industrial output. Now here is the clincher. If memory serves correctly, it takes almost two years for the UFP to make a Galaxy class ship, pretty long considering how easily they cook off when they actually get in a fight. By comparrision.
Aratech wrote:
Going by onscreen evidence. If we assume that the DSII represents maximum Imperial production capacity we get the following.
Taking the deminsions of a Venator and scaling as is appropriate, we get an ISD's deminsions at roughly 1600x771x100 (Disregarding the bridge tower as actual hieght, since it is much taller than the rest of the ship). Multiplying by the formula for finding the area of a 3-D shape of that nature (1/2 BxHxH or 800X771x100) we get about 61,680,000 cubic meters of production space.
Now, the DSII was supposed to be 800KM in diameter. Figuring that for the volume of a sphere (R^3(4/3)xPI or 400000^3(4/3) X 3.14...) we get 2.68082573E17 cubic meters of production space. Now, multiply that by 60%(the commonly accepted percentage of completion) and you get 1.60849539E17 cubic meters.
Divide this by the afformentioned 61,680,000 meters and one gets 2,607,807,131 ISDs. Now then, divide that number by six months, or about 182.5 for the timespan and one gets... roughly 14,289,354.14 ISDs a day... or about 165.4 ISDs per second...
And if you go by Shadows of the Empire... all that was being supplied by a single private shipping company, and all of it in such discrete amounts that no one noticed.
No Trek power has ever demonstrated industrial capacity even approaching a minuscule drop in the bucket of that.
On the ground, it goes without saying that Star Wars, with its tanks, heavy assault craft, and sane weapons designs, will piss all over the redshirts... to say nothing of what will happen if Palpatine decides its a good time to fire back up a old project like say, the Dark Troopers.
Long story short, Trek loses, badly. Nothing wrong with that, its still one of my favorite sci-fi shows, even if it has gotten a little more retarded since two certain people took over.
"Impossible! Lasers can't even harm out deflector dish! Clearly these foes are masters of illusion!' 'But sir, my console says we-' 'MASTERS OF ILLUSION! - General Schatten
