mutanthamster wrote:In the SW vs ST debate, I have to side with ST. I wrote this years ago, before STTNG, but I think it still stands scrutiny.
The Empire vs The Federation
Space travel:
Both space fleets have faster-than-light travel. The Empire has hyperdrive which works by entering hyperspace in which faster than light speeds are possible and the Federation has warp drive with which the ship remains in normal space, but creating a space warp that allows it to move through space at faster than light.
Hyperdrive clearly gives the impression of being capable of traveling further in a short time than warp drive. This gives the Imperial Fleet a big advantage in being able to move its fleets to an advantageous position with Star Fleet struggling to keep up.
Advantage - the Empire
No kidding.
Space weapons:
The Empire has blasters and the Federation has phasers. The powerfulness of both seems to depend on the size of the ship. Both are capable of damaging large, heavily defended space craft.
The Federation has another weapon; photon torpedoes The photon torpedo is depicted as enormously powerful with blasts that effect vast areas of space. Hitting another space craft, even if it is heavily shielded, will cause it crippling damage.
Why? Because you say so? The torpedoes shown on TV and in the movies range from negative yield to maybe MT level and even the never seen on screen never
stated in the TM to be 64MT torpedoes are...64MT. ISD LTLs are in the single figure MT range and are so tiny that they dissapear against the trench background (at least from what I recall in the movies, are they actually visible on the model?)
Advantage - the Federation
Only if you happily ignore math. 'Powerful blasts that affect vast areas of space' tells us-nothing, essentially. without knowing how powerful over what areas of space.
Defences:
The Imperial ships are seen taking damage even from fighters and substantial damage from collision.
Um-the only damage I recall from the movies was that A-Wing crashing into the Executor's bridge, which-destroyed the bridge. The ship remained fully intact until it crashed into the Death Star. There's zero evidence for fighters doing more than superficial if any damage to a capital ship unless they are/can reach the
insides of it. If you're talking about the asteroid hit in ESB, we have no clue if that ISD was even damaged at all-all we
know is it lost holocom fir a while.
Star Fleet on the other hand has shields, i.e. force fields, that must be overcome before the ship takes structural damage.
Yeah. Nobody ever mentions shields in Star Wars at all, ever. It especially wasn't in ROTJ, where there was no shield around Endor and the DS2 so Han could land and the Rebels could move in with impunity, and neither was their any mention of the Executor's bridge deflectors being down when that A-Wing Kamikaze happened. And nobody mentioned shields in the series
ever before and we totally didn't see any in, say, TPM.
And if the Federation's oh so powerful shields are that resilient, why did a measly 400GW particle beam bring down those of the very Federation Flagship, why are they routinely in danger from their own damned torpedoes if they have to use them at short range, and if they're so impervious to kinetic impacts, what do they need the main navigation deflector for and why do ramming attacks work quite well against them?
Advantage - the Federation
I'd think the issue over if I were you.
Targeting systems:
In Star Wars, guns are mounted in turrets that physically turn to bear on target. The films depict these guns firing and missing a great deal.
In Star Trek, phasers are able to fire instantaneously at any angle. Federation ships hit their targets most of the time and only have difficulty against warp driven targets. Against sublight targets they never miss.
Blatant lie. They routinely miss capital ships inside Sidewinder range. Capital ships
essentially sitting still. If you're referring to those turrets in ANH, thank you for intentionally ignoring those were capital ship guns firing at
fighters.
Advantage - the Federation
Yeah, if you ignore all available evidence.
Battle Speed:
In Star Wars ships travel at hyper speed, but drop out of hyperspace for battle. No battles take place in hyperspace. Star ships on the other hand fight at warp speeds.
No they don't They fight while under Warp drive. Not quite the same thing.
In a space battle, sublight Imperial ships would be up against superlight speed Star Fleet ships.
No they wouldn't, as there is exactly
zero evidence for that tactic having
ever been used. At best, they chase each other at Warp with decidely superluminal relative velocities.
Regardless of all of the advantages and disadvantages of weapons, defences and targeting, the ability of Star Fleet ships to fight at superlight speed when Imperial ships cannot would give them a big advantage in combat.
One wonders why they never do that then. Oh wait-they
can't. They can duke it out FTL when they're
chasing each other, nothing more. Relative velocities are still STL.
Advantage - the Federation
Only in your fevered imagination. Oh and by they, why don't you compute the time you have to aquire the target, get a firing solution, and fire if you're passing the target at a 100 c.
Space battle doctrine:
The Imperial Fleet has destroyers carrying a large number of smaller fighters, like an aircraft carrier. The fighters fight against the other sides fighters and try to break through to attack the capital ships. The capital ships have large weapons plus a large number of small weapons in gun turrets to defend against the fighters.
The Imperial fighters do not seem to have especially powerful weapons to be able to threaten Star Fleets ships, and Star Fleet phasers seem to be powerful and accurate enough to easily deal with fighters
Oh
please. They can barely keep up with their own ships, which essentially sit still, move in a straight line, or maybe make wide sweeping turns, but you expect them to hit a Wars fighter the appromiate zie of a WW Spitfire?
, but a swarm of fighters attacking a Star Fleet ship might cause it some damage sufficient to limit its effectiveness against the Imperial cruisers.
In sufficient numbers, they could kill Starfleet ships at their leasure because they have virtually no defenses against them. Sure, their shields are going to take a while to batter down but there's plenty of fighters and there's going to be very few phaser hits. And that's excluding proton torpedoes.
However, this fighting is done when the fleet comes out of hyperspace and fights at sublight speed.
That, at least, ist correct. The Feds either run away into Warp or get annihilated.
The Federation ships do not carry fighters, only shuttle craft which are not used for battle, only transport. Federation ships fight more like a submarine, maneuvering into position to be able to fire its weapons in a devastating attack.
Advantage - the Empire
Their lack of fighters is actually pretty incosequential given the firepower and resilience difference.
Size of space fleets
No size is given for the size of the Imperial space fleet, but from the films it is clear that Imperial destroyers travel in small groups, giving the impression of a large number of vessels.
Um-we
saw a pretty largish battle group at Endor you know.
Star Fleet on the other hand has only 12 starships, which rarely come together, giving the impression of a small number of extremely powerful ships.
Um-we actually know that by the time of the Dominion war, it had several
thousand ships, thank you very much. And even TOS Starfleet had more than twelve, that was the number of
Constitutions at the time.
The larger number of ships in the Imperial fleet would give it more flexibility, especially if the fleet split up and used the advantages of hyperdrive to attack multiple targets. Although a starship would be more than a match for an individual Imperial destroyer,
I like how have shown the math behind that. You know, firepower of the ISD vs firepower of the Connie, relative shield resilience, all that.
Super weapons:
Obviously for the Empire this is the Death Star. A hugely powerful planet-destroyer.
The Federation has nothing comparable. It does has 12 Star Ships and in the TV series a star ship is capable of laying waste to a planet with its phasers. However, this is never done. Judging by the seeming powerfulness of photon torpedoes you would think one of those could destroy a planet in its entirety,
As evidenced by what, exactly? Show me the math. Hint: They are M/AM weapons. Wait. Were they back in TOS? I don't think that was ever mentioned. Anyway, assuming they were even back then, DS'ing a planet would require a torpedo to mass 1.11E14 tons. Um-no. Especially as apparently overloading the Constellation's impulse drive (with a yield of some 97 megatons) was obviously more than the E-Nil's entire photon torpedo complement could provide.
but this is never mentioned. Perhaps because the Federation is just far to decent for such behavior.
Or maybe they simply don't have the firepower.
Individual weapons:
The Empire has blasters. Storm troopers wear armor, which seems to give them little or no protection. As depicted in the films, storm troopers’ blasters are not that accurate and storm troopers blast away at Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia at a short range and miss.
Which has nothing (necessarily) to do with the weapon and a lot with the accuracy of the user, and you
do remember that during the escape sequence on the DS in ANH the troopers were shooting to
miss, right?
Star Fleet phasers on the other hand seem almost incapable of missing. In addition, phasers are so powerful that if they can disintegrate large solid objects.
Advantage - the Federation
You do know Starfleet phasers routinely
do miss, their disintegration says nothing about their power because it works on magic and if I do remember my TOS correctly they where virtually always used at point blank range.