Galactic Empire vs. Galactic Empire

Moonstone Spider · Post by **Moonstone Spider** » 2002-09-13 09:56pm

That is to say, the Empire under Palpatine vs. the Trantor Empire of Issac Asimov's Empire and Foundation series'.

The Galactic Empire is as of ROTJ just before the Rebel Attack, but no rebels will attack them in this Thread.

The Trantor Empire is as of 100 years before Hari Seldon comes on the scene, when they were at their height of power.

Rather than a convinient Wormhole, the Two Galaxies are stacked neatly on top of each other, leaving all territory easily accessable to the enemy Empire. Palpatine wants to take over this new Galaxy and add it to his Empire. R. Daneel Olivaw wants to get some humane laws in action in this new place he finds in order to fulfill the first law. Both sides mobilize fleets and begin attacks.

Who wins?

septesix · Post by **septesix** » 2002-09-14 12:10am

err...

Each Asimov's Empire's Battleship is at least as powerful as a Deathstar..and they got plenty of those too. SW doesn't stand a damn chance.

Moonstone Spider · Post by **Moonstone Spider** » 2002-09-14 12:51am

They're that strong? I thought the real Empire had an edge in ship numbers and had more people, I didn't realize they had that much firepower. Kinda puts 200 Gigaton Turbolasers in their place I guess.

septesix · Post by **septesix** » 2002-09-14 01:05am

the percise quote :

"It's a ship! They could build in those days. Its cubic capacity is half again that of the entire Anacreonian navy. it's got nuclear blasts capable of blowing up a planet, and a shield that could thak a Q-beam without working up radiation..."

This is a normal battle cruiser of the Asimov Empire. Now care to show me the 200GT HTL blast again?

Moonstone Spider · Post by **Moonstone Spider** » 2002-09-14 01:22am

Well that doesn't really prove they each have as much power as the Death Star. It delivers far more energy than that needed to blow up a planet so each Battle Cruiser might only have a tenth or less of the power of the Death Star. That said, given that quote a single cruiser is still going to be able to swat ISDs more easily than ISDs can kill Federation Shuttlecraft and I seem to remember Trantor have 30,000 ships as a defensive fleet.

Really when you think about it Star Wars reads like a major rip-off of the Trantor Empire. Think about it:

Trantor: Massive city covering the entire planet's surface. It's criss-crossed with thousands of hover-cars flying between buildings as large as mountains. It's the center of power for an entire Galaxy.

Coruscant: Ditto

The Trantor Empire, a democratic galaxy-wide, is dying of it's own size and suffering from an internal collapse.

The Lesser Galactic Empire: Ditto

The Second Foundation, a group of gifted and powerful beings, are guardians of the future and protectors of all. They weild a power that is like precognitian and can control the minds of others.

Jedi: Ditto

A Mighty being known as the Mule using the same power as the Second Foundation protectors appears and destroys a lot of stuff before setting up his own Empire. The Good Guys take him down eventually using their powers.

A Mighty being known as Darth Sidious using the same power as the Jedi protectors appears and destroys a lot of stuff before setting up his own Empire. The Good Guys take him down eventually using their powers.

The Old Trantor Empire Falls, but after a Dark Time the Foundation Federation Arises stronger than ever with vastly enhanced scientific abilities.

The Old Galactic Republic Falls, but after a Dark Time the New Republic Arises. . . only they're really weak, have little in the way of scientific advance, okay that part isn't quite as good.

There are definite differences, notable the presence of Aliens in SW, but the similarities are just eerie.

The Nomad · Post by **The Nomad** » 2002-09-14 07:15am

SW still has the advantage of mobility : Trantor's Empire FTL drive is nearly instantaneous, but can only cover some hundreds of LY in a jump and then needs some time to recalculate jump vectors.

The Far Star, OTOH...

And now : the two Foundations ( by Golan Trevize's time ) + Gaia vs the Old Republic or Palpatines' Empire.

septesix · Post by **septesix** » 2002-09-14 11:26am

The Nomad wrote:SW still has the advantage of mobility : Trantor's Empire FTL drive is nearly instantaneous, but can only cover some hundreds of LY in a jump and then needs some time to recalculate jump vectors.

When your common battleship has the firepower of the enemy's greatest weapon, that hardly matters.....

The Far Star, OTOH...

And now : the two Foundations ( by Golan Trevize's time ) + Gaia vs the Old Republic or Palpatines' Empire.

Make that just one battle group from the First Foundation, and it'd still be enough, Why, one of those is enough to "eat the whole Old Empire's navy for lunch, and have Trantor for desert".....

Solid Snake · Post by **Solid Snake** » 2002-09-14 11:51am

I've only read Prelude to Foundation. Then i think i got into Star Trek and quit Isacc Asimov for a while. I must read the next book!

Moonstone Spider · Post by **Moonstone Spider** » 2002-09-14 02:07pm

The Nomad wrote:SW still has the advantage of mobility : Trantor's Empire FTL drive is nearly instantaneous, but can only cover some hundreds of LY in a jump and then needs some time to recalculate jump vectors.

The Far Star, OTOH...

And now : the two Foundations ( by Golan Trevize's time ) + Gaia vs the Old Republic or Palpatines' Empire.

Actually even in "Stars Like Dust" which was before Trantor was even colonized (as in tech a millionth as advanced as Imperial) they were covering much further distances, as in half the Galaxy, in one jump. It's simply that power comsumption is much higher for longer jumps and it's more efficient to take a whole day to cover the Galaxy than a few minutes. Asimov Hyperspace is much faster than SW Hyperspace. The calculating of new vectors also is just a safety precaution, in a hurry (such as if somebody is attacking a planet) they can do without and have many times. Of course since Trantor alone has more ships in it's defensive fleet than the whole Wars GE has ISDs they can easily blockade them and the ISDs will be too busy futilely trying to protect their own worlds from Battlecruisers.

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2002-09-14 08:20pm

Moonstone Spider wrote:Of course since Trantor alone has more ships in it's defensive fleet than the whole Wars GE has ISDs they can easily blockade them and the ISDs will be too busy futilely trying to protect their own worlds from Battlecruisers.

Anyway, going by Marina O'Leary's Imperial Fleet Calculations (http://daltonator.net/fanfics/essays/impfleet.txt) there are roughly 378 million hyperspace-capable starships in the GE Navy. Roughly 25,000 ISDs are available as a loose fleet; the rest (by her calcs, 2,153,000
Heavy Destroyers 1,001-1,600 meters long) are stuck on patrol/defense duty.

I know her calcs aren't canon, but they're as good a guess as we're going to get at the Galactic Empire given the inconsistencies in the offical reference materials.

Moonstone Spider · Post by **Moonstone Spider** » 2002-09-14 10:43pm

Um, that Essay is pretty messed up and the Author admits herself that's an upper limit calc. It's in the same vein as the DITL calcs showing the Federation has 70,000 starships, take a known number and multiply it by sectors.

But hey, if we want to play that game we know that Trantor has a 30,000 ship defensive fleet and it's just one planet. Given that the Trantor Empire rules 35,000,000 systems that gives us a high-end but by no means maximum (just like that text file

) rating of 1,050,000,000,000 Starships in the Trantor Navy. Of course not every one of those will be Battlecruiser and above in firepower, in fact probably half of less of these ships will be of that size. On the other hand since the Planet-busting battlecruiser was 300 years old (200 for the Empire in this thread) it's weaponry is almost certainly obsolete junk and their patrol and scout ships probably have as much or more firepower than that.

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2002-09-15 12:27am

Moonstone Spider wrote:But hey, if we want to play that game we know that Trantor has a 30,000 ship defensive fleet and it's just one planet. Given that the Trantor Empire rules 35,000,000 systems that gives us a high-end but by no means maximum (just like that text file ) rating of 1,050,000,000,000 Starships in the Trantor Navy. Of course not every one of those will be Battlecruiser and above in firepower, in fact probably half of less of these ships will be of that size. On the other hand since the Planet-busting battlecruiser was 300 years old (200 for the Empire in this thread) it's weaponry is almost certainly obsolete junk and their patrol and scout ships probably have as much or more firepower than that.

Yeah, heh. This is like debating Federation vs. GE.

As one guy on Spacebattles put it, the Culture is somewhere near the top, the Foundation Federation is in the middle, and the Galactic Empire is the bully on the corner curbstomping some bum, which is the Federation.

gravity · Post by **gravity** » 2002-09-15 12:36am

The Nomad wrote:SW still has the advantage of mobility : Trantor's Empire FTL drive is nearly instantaneous, but can only cover some hundreds of LY in a jump and then needs some time to recalculate jump vectors.

Not to mention that they do it by hand and have no computer technology whatsoever, iirc.

gravity · Post by **gravity** » 2002-09-15 12:39am

Crayz9000 wrote:
Moonstone Spider wrote: Yeah, heh. This is like debating Federation vs. GE.

As one guy on Spacebattles put it, the Culture is somewhere near the top, the Foundation Federation is in the middle, and the Galactic Empire is the bully on the corner curbstomping some bum, which is the Federation.

I think the quote was something like, "if the Culture is the United States, then the Foundation Federation is like New Zealand, and the Galatic Empire (of SW) is some guy on a street corner somewhere curbstomping a hobo, who is the ST Federation."

gravity · Post by **gravity** » 2002-09-15 12:42am

The Foundation-Universe Empire would easily win this, despite the fact that they've lost a great deal of technology over the millenia.

I think that the Foundation universe also has one of the longest continous narratives of any universe, as stories that are set in that universe (at least retroactively) range from an (alternate) 1999 to about 12000 or so years from the present.

septesix · Post by **septesix** » 2002-09-15 12:58am

gravity wrote:The Foundation-Universe Empire would easily win this, despite the fact that they've lost a great deal of technology over the millenia.

I think that the Foundation universe also has one of the longest continous narratives of any universe, as stories that are set in that universe (at least retroactively) range from an (alternate) 1999 to about 12000 or so years from the present.

nah, that honor would go to either the Xeelee stories, or even Hitchhicker's Guide to Galaxy. (although the timeline on HHGG is really screwed up), and maybe something else.

The Nomad · Post by **The Nomad** » 2002-09-15 06:45am

gravity wrote:
The Nomad wrote:SW still has the advantage of mobility : Trantor's Empire FTL drive is nearly instantaneous, but can only cover some hundreds of LY in a jump and then needs some time to recalculate jump vectors.
Not to mention that they do it by hand and have no computer technology whatsoever, iirc.

Huge mistake. They have extremely powerful computers ( as those used in Seldon's time, to run the most complicated psychohistory calculus ), and intelligent droids were created half a century before the first hyperdrive came up, in the end of the 21st century ( the Robots and Foundation sagas are in fact one single saga ) . They just don't build them anymore ( sentient computers and droids ) ---> Asimov's Bulterian Jihad ? .

By Trevize's era, R. Daneel is 10 millenia old, and was created probably something like 10 millenia after the first sentient computer came up. I'd think that the First Foundation was created some 20 000 years after 21st century. The Empire lasted 10 000 years, but was established 10 000 years after our era. That's what I remember from the books, but I just started to read Foundation for the third time, and I probably won't have the time to read the others again until... some months. Anyway I think the TE is nearly as old as SW galactic civilisation...

BTW I just read some interesting stuff : the junk cruiser was ... 3 km long. 2 times the lenght of an ISD, 10000 times the power.

And in a book with an attack against the Jedi Academy, Jedi students combined their powers to repel the Remnant supercruisers to the edge of the stellar system, which took the hyperdrives offline. The admiral ( a woman IIRC ) complained about the fact that it would take weeks months to go back to the planet if the hyperdrives weren't made operational. Now in Foundation, it takes 1 week to a basic trade ship to go to the edge of a solar system ( damn 2D reasoning ) to engage safe hyperdrive. Any idea of what that means ?