Defending the Federation(RAR)

[Azron_Stoma]

Yeah I was thinking the same thing when I read the OP.

Though the Thirdspace Aliens could only mind control Telepaths if memory served, Palpatine isn't so limited.

[Metahive]

No, not just telepaths, people like Vir and that crimelord got mind controlled too despite not being telepaths. It seems it was more that they were limited on how many people they could control at any one time since they only got about half the people on the station to riot and none on the defending ships.

But maybe they were just sure they could pummel them in a straight fight, their tiny fighters alone were already giving the fleet pause after all.

[Azron_Stoma]

Ah, I wasn't sure if Vir and the crimelord weren't just somewhat Telepathic, like Ivanova who was also somewhat affected.

[Batman]

IIRC several of the research scientists were also affected, and while in B5 you never know, I don't think there was any mention of them being telepathic.

[darthy]

Time Travel eh? concession accepted.

That's a strange way to word a concession on your part. You must have remembered when O'Brien saw the Romulans destroy the station then went back in time to warn them and thus saving them in episode "visionary". Or was it when the faction from the future warned archer of the xindi attack in episode "The Expanse" thus saving earth. Maybe it was when Braxton warned voyager of earth's solar system being destroyed in episode "future's end" thus saving earth's solar system. final episode of voyager, etc.. etc.. ahh well I'm sure one of the countless examples popped in your head. Good call. Anyway, I accept your concession. Time travel does make it pretty easy.

[Metahive]

Yeah, time travel is a great weapon[sarcasm]. The Borg Queen used it after FutureJaneway infected her to undo the damage...wait, no, she didn't. Kirk used time travel to undo the attack on Gorkon's ship...no, he didn't either. I got it, Sisko used time travel to prevent the fakeBashir from sabotaging the wormhole closing procedure, ah, no he didn't. There's also the fact that Trek can never decide if it's one changable timeline or multiple branching lines because both are presented over the course of the series and movies. Remember Annorax', the guy with the most potent time-altering device, attempts to create a perfect timeline which ended up having him and his ship drift endlessly through space infinitely trying and trying and failing to get it right? What does it tell us? Trek time travel is an unreliable crapshoot that only works accidentally but most of the time does more harm than good. Relying on it to win a war gets you nowhere really fast.

darthy, go fuck yourself. Your smug, self-satisfied bleating does not make up for your failure to distinguish between facts and assumptions, the latter of which you consistently treat as the former.

[darthy]

Yeah, time travel is a great weapon[sarcasm]. The Borg Queen used it after FutureJaneway infected her to undo the damage...wait, no, she didn't. Kirk used time travel to undo the attack on Gorkon's ship...no, he didn't either. I got it, Sisko used time travel to prevent the fakeBashir from sabotaging the wormhole closing procedure, ah, no he didn't. There's also the fact that Trek can never decide if it's one changable timeline or multiple branching lines because both are presented over the course of the series and movies. Remember Annorax', the guy with the most potent time-altering device, attempts to create a perfect timeline which ended up having him and his ship drift endlessly through space infinitely trying and trying and failing to get it right? What does it tell us? Trek time travel is an unreliable crapshoot that only works accidentally but most of the time does more harm than good. Relying on it to win a war gets you nowhere really fast.

Temporal prime directive doesn't prove that time is a bad weapon. Everyone 27nd century and up seem to think it's a great weapon.

darthy, go fuck yourself. Your smug, self-satisfied bleating does not make up for your failure to distinguish between facts and assumptions, the latter of which you consistently treat as the former.

great argument against time travel here. You really are a fuckwit huh

[Metahive]

Temporal prime directive doesn't prove that time is a bad weapon. Everyone 27nd century and up seem to think it's a great weapon.

You're wrong as usual, the only people who think it's a great weapon are reckless villains like Henry Starling, the Na'kuhl, the Krenim and the Shadowy Future Guy who are often shown to be in over their heads and subsequently fuck up everything even for themselves. That's why the heroes seldomly use time travel deliberately. Way to know your Trek, fanboy.

great argument against time travel here. You really are a fuckwit huh

Considering your non-rebuttal to what I said above, I guess yeah so, pigshitboy.

[Connor MacLeod]

If you want to argue Federation victory in a different scenario without the wormhole, the approach I'd take is to attack the Empire's size. (Indeed, that's my general approach to all the vs scenarios: knock the other guy down rather than build me up.)

That's the approach alot of people take in Vs debates. Frankly, it works, although I think it takes out any of the enjoyment of debating at all, since I personally enjoy discussing the technologies in a somewhat intelligent manner. Most VS, however, seems to involve coming up with comic-book like "insta-win" scenarios (EG warp strafing/phase cloaked doomships for ST, or a Death STar's mass worth of super-sized robotic star destroyers/robotic armies of DOOM.) which may or may not have much or any bearing on the "reality" of the universes in question. Which often means that in those cases, "knocking down the other side." is the only way to operate. (either that or yell at the other side enough and hope they go away.)

with the advent of the ICS, the "knock down the other side" approach seems to have become about the only way to carry off a vs debate (involving SW vs ST, SW vs 40K, 40K vs Trek, Starcraft vs Trek, SW vs Halo, Sw vs Culture, whatever the hell you want to make up.) Since 90% of SW vs ST discussions seem to devolve down to arguing over canon and interpretation and similar nitpickery, I've generally lost interest in it.

Of course, there is still the quesiton "why would you want to have ST fight SW" on a large scale... since you really can't do that without distorting the material on either side... seems pointless to me unless we're dealing with fanboys on either side (and that does happen.)

[Connor MacLeod]

I think you're right about the size. Nothing comes to mind that's bigger than those whales.

You know what, I don't think the whales would have fit on the transporter pad... they must have done a site to site transport! Or maybe the pad was bigger than I think. I've never thought about this before.

Anyway, that beam up was 18,000 cubic feet (510 cubic meters)* with dimensions of 60x30x10 feet. IIRC the heavy turbolasers are about the same size as an X-Wing, length wise. (though the perspective of the shot might be ruining my memory) X-Wings are about 16 meters long; that's around 50 feet.

So, for the size, I'd put it at a maybe, not convinced, but not out of the question either.

Its an interesting idea and I don't disagree in theory. However, my experience with vs debates tells me that unless you're VEEERRY careful with the idea, this can turn into some nonsensical comic-book esque no limits crap that can crop up in debates (look at Borg and the assimilation or adaption idea? I get tired of seeing how often that is treated as some godlike uber-ability. IT happens alot with the Flood too in Halo, or alot of "organic" entitites.)

You also noted that there are obvious problems or limtiations that would have to be addressed (like with Data not being mass produced.) but there are other unknowns I could think of. Let's grant for a second that, in theory, anything could be replicated, no matter how advanced. There would still be alot of unknown questions that could be problematic. How much material does it require, and how efficient can it be for more sophisitcated tech? How much enerrgy is required? Will it need special materials (you noted fuel, but it could be other "magical" materials too, like coolant, metals, etc.) and so on.

In short, Trek might replicate that turbolaser, but it would not neccesarily be efficient or cost effective to do so (EG not get into mass production.) And even if it IS cost effective, that doesn't guarantee they'd be able to match up to SW numbers via replication. And then there's the whole logistics angle. For that matter, what would be the limits of the size of replicators can be built ? THey might be able to (in theory) replicate even a superlaser, but would there be big enough replicators that could do that all at once?

Personally, I don't believe transporters are the same as replicators though, despite sharing some quantities. This, of course, makes the argument even harder - who knows how big replicators get. (The thing in "Rivals" DS9 was about the size of a beach ball; 2 foot diameter sphere or so.) We've heard of industrial replicators, but as far as I know, we've never actually seen one or heard about the kind of things they make, so it's a big unknown.

They don't neccesarily have to be identical technologies. There may be components of either subsystem that tie into either separate system. For example, maybe a transporter beam has to "replicate" certain parts of a person's body (certain elements, molecules, whatever) to make up for inefficiencies or losses during the transport process. Or maybe replicators use transporters to move mass from holding tanks to the replicator. Depending on how the systems are connected, malfunctions (software for example) may result in the sorts of accidents we smetimes see happening (transporters cloning people because some glitch in the system also triggered the replicator program, or something.)

[EnterpriseSovereign]

And there's also another issue- even if the Federation could produce the kinds of numbers of ships (with SW weapons) to challenge the Empire (doubtful given how crappy their production was in the Dominion War), they'd never be able to train enough crewmen and officers to be able to staff them.

[Big Phil]

And there's also another issue- even if the Federation could produce the kinds of numbers of ships (with SW weapons) to challenge the Empire (doubtful given how crappy their production was in the Dominion War), they'd never be able to train enough crewmen and officers to be able to staff them.

Dude - they'd totally just replicate them

[Eternal_Freedom]

Crew of a single ISD is 37,000 as per te original trilogy ICs, with an extra 9700 Stormtroopers. so 46,700 people.

As I recall, the number of personnel lost at Wolkf 359 was something like 11,000. From 39 destroyed starships, some of which had crews that evac'd.

So if Starfleet magically got an ISD, they'd need to pull the crews of something like 100-150 starships just to have the right number of crew, ignoring the lack of training.

And as I recall from a DS9 episode in the early part of season 6 (before retaking DS9 itself) Bashir describes the loss of 7th fleet, 112 starships I think.

So Starfleet would have to pull crews from an entire fleet to man a single ISD. That puts things in yet more perspective.

Incidentally, 46,700 is roughly the population of my home town. All on an ISD. Wow. Lot of people.

That's something else. I know I'm rambling, but run with it. In vs. debates, I have commonly seen the shitty tactic of "Beam security teams through shields and capture the ship."

Ignore the tech issues. I don't see how they think they can capture a ship that has a Stormtrooper complement thats over 9 times the crew of the E-D including families. Yeah, good odds that!

[Metahive]

Which makes me really wonder what all those people are actually doing on the ship. Shouldn't they have automatisation technology capable and reliable enough to reduce such humongous crew requirements? Ha, maybe when the hypermatter runs out they break out the oars and row the ship home, it's a big ship after all.

[Agent Sorchus]

Excess people isn't a flaw per-say, since it means extra people for damage control. One of the things the Navy has learned is that lots of automation is good for driving down the patrol costs, but when you are in shit those extra hands really help keep the ship working.

[Batman]

The crew size isn't exactly all that bad. 47,000 seems humonguous, until you look at the size differences. A modern day CVN has a crew of about 6,000 and is easily more than an order of magnitude smaller, has essentially zero offensive weapons other than its air wing, and doesn't have the Wars inherent distrust of unsupervised automation/droids.

[Darth Tedious]

Crew of a single ISD is 37,000 as per te original trilogy ICs, with an extra 9700 Stormtroopers. so 46,700 people.

That number traces all the way back to the very first edition of the West End Games Sourcebook.

[Batman]

I don't know though, everything about the Empire just screams "WASTE" to me. Look at the gigantic walkers they have. The enormous Death Star. Ridiculously big capships.
All of them are much bigger than they really need to be to make a statement.

WH40K has gigantic walkers. Perry Rhodan has ridiculously big starships/space stations/general artificial constructs (get back to me when you've run into an artificial country a lightyear across). Until and unless you provide evidence to the contrary, the DS1 did need to be the size it was, so did the DS2, so do all the capital ships in Wars. You are by no means required to like that, but ridiculously big either means they were a hell of a lot bigger than they needed to in your personal opinion, which is your prerogative but also essentially useless, or that they were a lot bigger than they needed to be for doing the things we saw/were told about them doing in universe, for which I'd rather like some evidence.
Not that I see where Wars uses ridiculously big capships to begin with.

[darthy]

Considering your non-rebuttal to what I said above, I guess yeah so, pigshitboy.

The rebuttal to the very post you said was the very post you replied to. Proof by counter example. The fact that there are so many examples of using time travel to save themselves says something about time travel... that they can use it to save themselves. You pointed out some random cases in history where time travel could have saved them but they didn't bother to use it in order to preserve continuity or whatever.

Yeah, time travel is a great weapon[sarcasm]. The Borg Queen used it after FutureJaneway infected her to undo the damage...wait, no, she didn't.

Well first off the borg queen was kinda... well dead shortly after Janeway infected her. And she did try to alter time to undo the damage.

QUEEN: (pulls off a disintegrating arm) Sphere six three four. They can still hear my thoughts. I may have assimilated your pathogen but I also assimilated your armour technology. (leg falls off) Captain Janeway is about to die. If she has no future, you will never exist and nothing that you've done here today will happen. (Queen dies, central complex explodes)

This is a non-example on two fronts dumbass.

Annorax', the guy with the most potent time-altering device, attempts to create a perfect timeline which ended up having him and his ship drift endlessly through space infinitely trying and trying and failing to get it right? What does it tell us? Trek time travel is an unreliable crapshoot that only works accidentally but most of the time does more harm than good.

It tells me that dispite the objective, he had time on his side. He didn't give up until the timeline was restored. Once his ship was erased the timeline was restored causing his mission to take no time at all.

You're wrong as usual, the only people who think it's a great weapon are reckless villains like Henry Starling, the Na'kuhl, the Krenim and the Shadowy Future Guy who are often shown to be in over their heads and subsequently fuck up everything even for themselves. That's why the heroes seldomly use time travel deliberately. Way to know your Trek, fanboy.

the borg, the xindi, darvin, etc... all unanimously agree it's a great weapon. And the temporal agents think it's such a sucky weapon that they have to use this sucky time travel weapon as the only way to combat them. Star trek has so much time travel in it that I could tear apart your statement all day long. You're an idiot, get your head on straight before you talk and stop wanking off to naked pics of yoda.

[Azron_Stoma]

the borg, the xindi, darvin, etc... all unanimously agree it's a great weapon.

And like Henry Starling, the Na'kuhl, the Krenim and Future Guy, they were all defeated by those who never use it as a weapon. Seriously when you were giving that whole "Plan A, Plan B" spiel, one of the things running through my mind was "The only way this guy could come up with a plan even worse than the ones he's already proposed would be if he brought in Time Travel on top of it."

Sure enough that's exactly what you did, the moment you brought in Time Travel you conceded defeat. Not because you admitted that they can't win otherwise, but because Time Travel is useless.

Hence I Accept your Concession.

Star trek has so much time travel in it that I could tear apart your statement all day long.

Which at best all it does is create a new, alternate timeline that has no affect on the one the travelers came from, ala Star Trek XI.

[Metahive]

The Borg used time travel once and that was in a last act of desperation. If it were a regular tactic of them they could have taken the modified nanoprobes they got at the end of Scorpion and travelled back to give them to their ogirinal liquid space invasion force, but they didn't. The Xindi don't use time-travel, it's their secret allies, the sphere builders who do but they too don't use it to undo their defeats. Darwin, great choice, they guy who almost blew his past self up in a fit of petty vengeance.

Yep, time travel is a great weapon...not.

[darthy]

And like Henry Starling, the Na'kuhl, the Krenim and Future Guy, they were all defeated by those who never use it as a weapon.

Not sure what to make of that statement.

Weapon: an instrument of attack or defense in combat or hunting, e.g. a gun, missile, or sword;

Henry Starling, the Na'kuhl, Future Guy, and Krenim were stopped with assistance from time travel themselves. When a police officier uses a weapon to stop someone else that's using the same kind of weapon, that doesn't inheritly make the weapon a bad one. Quite the opposite in fact. Maybe when you said weapon you meant to say "for destructive purposes". Plus Archer had help from Silik to stop the Na'kuhl. Silik is someone who does uses time travel for destructive purposes so your statement isn't even a correct one.

I'm not even sure what that's supposed to prove except time travel can only be successfully used when its intentions are just? Okay well that's what's happening here. The Federation survive thanks to time travel. Sounds pretty positive to me.

- Picard uses time travel successfully as a weapon against Dr. Soran in star trek generations.
- O'Brien used time travel to prevent the station from being destroyed in episode "visionary".
- Jake sisko used time travel to save his father in episode "The Visitor".
- Janeway uses time travel to save a planet in episode "Time and Again"
- Kim and Chakotay use time travel to save voyager in episode "Timeless"
- Janeway uses time travel to get voyager home and cripple the borg in episode "Endgame"

I don't understand, I thought time travel didn't work man? You said it was useless, looks pretty useful to me. What's up with that? You need to debunk these cases to prove your statement correct. Help me to see the light that time travel cannot be useful like all those episodes suggest. I just don't see it. Time travel can backfire sure but to say time travel can never work just isn't true.

Which at best all it does is create a new, alternate timeline that has no affect on the one the travelers came from, ala Star Trek XI.

You mean "at best for you". It totally depends on the method of time travel as to whether it alters the current timeline or creates a parallel universe. Like in episode "Pasts tense", captain sisko changes the past and he sees himself in the history file on Gabriel Bell. In episode "Time's Orphan" when molly sends her younger self back in time, preventing her from being stranded on the planet in the future, we see her future self disappear.

Even if I pretend you're right and the federation gets destroyed in one time line but saved in another, I'd still consider that saving the federation just like I would consider the empire in the alternate timeline still the empire.

The Borg used time travel once and that was in a last act of desperation. If it were a regular tactic of them they could have taken the modified nanoprobes they got at the end of Scorpion and travelled back to give them to their ogirinal liquid space invasion force, but they didn't. The Xindi don't use time-travel, it's their secret allies, the sphere builders who do but they too don't use it to undo their defeats. Darwin, great choice, they guy who almost blew his past self up in a fit of petty vengeance.

Voyager never gave the modified nanoprobes to the Borg at the end of scoripion. Voyager never disclosed to the borg how to modify their nanoprobes. Sure they were going to but the Borg broke the deal by not giving them safe passage. The Borg cannot send back in time knowledge of something they don't have. If the borg told their past selves that they needed to modify their nanoprobes to stop species 8472, the response would be something like "no shit". Failure as usual. You have much to learn young grasshopper.

[Darth Tedious]

From the OP:

You are being observed by an audience of Stardestroyer.net regulars that is statistically representative to the maximum extent possible (again, RAR)- you obviously can't win, but are playing to impress your audience with how you do rather than any real political or military objectives.

Here's the problem right here.

[Big Phil]

Since darthy seems to take the approach that canon doesn't matter, here's my argument.

Palpatine clones himself quintillions of times and overwhelms the ST galaxy with force using emperor's. Then he bypasses cloning and just replicates storm troopers using Trek transporters. For every stormtrooper the Borg or the Federation kill, 100 are replicated. Then he starts replicating TIE Fighters, star destroyers, and even Death Stars. Pretty soon the Star Trek galaxy is overwhelmed by hundreds of thousands of Death Stars, blowing up anything that moves.

Game over.


Wow, if I was darthy, I'd totally be in my bathroom right now stroking myself for such genius.

[Azron_Stoma]

- Picard uses time travel successfully as a weapon against Dr. Soran in star trek generations.
- O'Brien used time travel to prevent the station from being destroyed in episode "visionary".
- Jake sisko used time travel to save his father in episode "The Visitor".
- Janeway uses time travel to save a planet in episode "Time and Again"
- Kim and Chakotay use time travel to save voyager in episode "Timeless"
- Janeway uses time travel to get voyager home and cripple the borg in episode "Endgame"

You mean "at best for you". It totally depends on the method of time travel as to whether it alters the current timeline or creates a parallel universe. Like in episode "Pasts tense", captain sisko changes the past and he sees himself in the history file on Gabriel Bell. In episode "Time's Orphan" when molly sends her younger self back in time, preventing her from being stranded on the planet in the future, we see her future self disappear.

Even if I pretend you're right and the federation gets destroyed in one time line but saved in another, I'd still consider that saving the federation just like I would consider the empire in the alternate timeline still the empire.

Sorry, but it doesn't depend on method at all, every example you've given fit perfectly with the "Many Worlds" model.

There is no way to alter the current timeline, time travel only creates parallel universes in trek.

Picard created a parallel universe using the Nexus, where he would stop that soran from entering said Nexus and saving an alternate version of his crew.

O'brien saved an alternate station, while he himself was killed and an alternate him took his place.

Jake saved an alternate Sisko.

Janeway saved an alternate version of the un-named civilization in "Time and again"

Kim and Chakotay saved an alternate Voyager.

Janeway saves an alternate voyager, and cripples an alternate borg.

Sisko created a parallel universe almost identical to his own, the main difference being his picture in the file on Gabriel bell.

Time's orphan, due to the fact that past and future molly cannot exist in the same timeline, one stays in that one while the other is shunted to an alternate, that's why she "Disappears".

This isn't Back to the Future, where changes in the timeline can erase something from existence.

Besides, how is warning the federation of the Empire's invasion, or that the Empire will follow them through into the mirror universe supposed to help anyway? Just because they can see it coming doesn't mean they can stop it.