A Star Wars idea...

Because Star Wars would be much cooler without all of the exotic planets, species and creatures!

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

You know, just from the movies alone it seems to me like we'd pretty much end up devastated.

But but but, what if the Empire shows up in the future when....STAR TREK is reality.

The ultimate Star Wars vs Star Trek debate played out in movie form as the Evil Empire descends upon Earth and encounters the United Federation of Planets in the ultimate battle of geekdom known to man.

The first story I ever heard about the internet, back in the early '90's, was from a friend who recounted an "Imperial Star Destroyer vs. Starship Enterprise" debate. The consensus back then was that the Star Destroyer would win because Star Trek is "space drama," requiring actual explanations for things, while Star Wars is "space opera," merely requiring incident. Our Geek Forefathers decided that the Star Destroyer would blow up the Enterprise while its crew was still attempting to create an explanation for how it would beat the Star Destroyer.

The sad thing is that this debate apparently raged for over a year before someone decided this. Nothing has changed on the internet.

Not sure if you knew this, but in Raiders of the Lost Ark, R2D2 and C3PO appear in a heiroglyph on the wall of the well of souls. So there's even more prescedent for your idea.


As for the book that asserts the SW universe is populated by descendents of Earthlings... huh? The story takes place "A long time ago," so how would Earthlings have populated another galaxy thousands of years before events that take place a long time ago?

Hehe, side-stepping the whole EU writing is terrible belief that I hold...
I am thinking that it was John Connor who began populating the Star Wars universe with humans. Anyone else with me?

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

Presuming that George Lucas and Paramount could strike a bargain to allow such a movie to happen, it won't matter as neither Lucas nor Paramount will want to lose the battle.

Stalemate.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

You'd think, but I think I remember the Alliance becoming involved and it sort of becomes like V, where we humans are scurrying around being resistance fighters against our Imperial occupiers.


S.

Consensus? People were arguing about whether the Enterprise could transport photon torpedoes onto the bridge of a Star Destroyer from a farther range than Darth Vader could kill with the Force. You're not going to build consensus around that debate.

From a purely technological stand point, the only two really interesting questions from that debate were who would attack first (probably the empire) and what the numerical odds would be. Starfleet wins in a straight up one on one fight, but that's not the likely circumstance. Its more likely to be a first strike by the Empire, using hyperspace to surprise its targets, and at odds of dozens to one.

True and I wonder if Star Trek would be able to fend off the hundreds of Tie Fighters that would accompany the Star Destroyers.

- Considering in lasers can't damage the Enterprise's shields in Next Generation when a less advanced race attack them, Yes. I see them unleashing their full weapons spread and putting down majority of the Tie fighters quickly.

TIEs don't shoot lasers, those things are bolts of supercharged plasma. Most Star Wars blasters/turbolasers are. But more to the point, the laser comment in Trek is so woefully misused, anyway. The point wasn't so much that no laser could ever harm the Enterprise, the point was that those particular lasers weren't able to as they were just too weak to overcome shield recovery. The Borg have that nasty cutting laser that did damage the Enterprise-D, if I remember right.

A single TIE? As long as it's just a Fighter, I'm sure the Enterprise can take it easily. A full wing? That remains to be seen, although it's would at worst end in a tie. Since the TIEs can't go faster than light and the Enterprise can. But the TIEs are pretty much just there to harass the enemy when a Star Destroyer uses them. If a fighter with Proton Torpedoes come into play, though, all bets are off. Those things are nasty. But that's not normal armament on a basic TIE Fighter. Now Darth Vader's prototype that became the TIE Advanced would be a problem, since it does have torpedo tubes. And hyperdrive. And a precognitive pilot, although using Vader might be cheating.

A full loaded Star Destroyer on its own can probably take on anything non-Q that Trek has. Maybe the Borg has something that would challenge it. A Star Destroyer is huge, about a mile long, and it's a dedicated warship. It's just plain bad news. And it has a bigger brother in the Super Star Destroyers. But honestly, I got a bit bored with the Federation vs. Empire discussions a long time ago. It's not so much if the Empire wins, it's how dominating it will be. The Empire is just that much better suited for a full on war and has a severe speed advantage.

A fight that could be interesting, though, would be to see how big a target that Rogue Squadron could take on. I'm thinking that we'd at least get to Enterprise-E, possibly even a Borg Sphere or on a good day, a Cube. Yes, it's a dozen stupidly good pilots in tricked out X-Wings, who are just that good at hyperspace guerrilla strikes.

Yes, that Death Star Laser sure was ineffective. Do we know the potency of lasers in SWs?

EDIT: NcNum did a much better job than me. -10 Geek points for me.

Actually, and I'm strictly using the movies for direction here, Star Destroyers have never been depicted as being able to bring a significant percentage of their weapons to bear on a single target and they aren't depicted with something you would call "main batteries." Star Wars combat just doesn't seem to work that way in the movies: the weapons aesthetic seems to be designed around size and numerical superiority, and not around capital ships with appropriately sized weaponry. The only weapons platform specifically designed around its weapons system in the movies seems to have been the Death Star itself.

And on the subject of speed advantage: the Star Wars universe and the Empire in particular may have an advantage in terms of deployment speed - that's not entirely clear. But it doesn't have an advantage in combat velocity. There's no evidence that ships can attack other ships in normal space while in hyperspace. Star Trek ships can attack Imperial ships while at warp moving faster than light. That virtually nullifies the size advantage of Star Destroyers.

As I mentioned previously, the problem is numbers. The Empire wouldn't likely attempt to take on mobile fleets of starships: they would be at a tremendous disadvantage. As an Imperial task force commander, I would attack stationary targets like starbases and planetary colonies, which Starfleet would then have to defend. They couldn't blockade me because I could attack these things by jumping right to them from hyperspace, and so they would have to spread out and remain mostly fixed targets themselves. And then I would get a fifty to one fight against a starship can cannot run away, and I would then be able to neutralize most of Starfleet's advantages. In that kind of fight, Starships have an enormous advantage but Starfleet would be at a tremedous disadvantage, even with no Death Stars to consider.

I should point out, though, that while numbers are on the Empire's side, time is on the Federation's side. The Federation may be militarily disjointed and numerically weak, but in the Star Wars universe military technology appears to be stunted: they haven't made quantum leaps in military technology in thousands of years. On just a time scale of years Starfleet has shown an ability to build things like the Defiant when they are sufficiently motivated. If the war lasts longer than a couple years, Starfleet would soon be massing fleets of hundreds of warships and commanders that are much less ambassador and much more tactician.

Moving forward in time, many of the big league Alpha quadrant powers were willing to work together to defeat the Dominion. If the Empire takes on the Federation that's one thing, if they try to take on the entire Alpha Quadrant simultaneously that's another thing.

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

I'm going to have to call on a source for the warp strafing. It's true that the Trek ships do some fancy things with warp, like the Picard Maneuver creating an illusion of the ship with a very controlled microjump, but I don't believe they've ever been seen shooting at warp. Which makes sense, when you think of it. Phasers don't go faster than the speed of light, so firing one when you are seems like a bad plan.

And yeah, I agree on the battle plan for the Empire. Go for stationary targets, and spread the locals thin. It has to be devastating for morale if the enemy can hit your installations, blow them up, and be gone before your first response can get there. Classic wolf pack strategy, really. With capital ships. It then becomes the dilemma of spreading your forces thin and risk getting jumped by a trio of Star Destroyers or giving up on non-essential installations and letting the Empire shoot it up. As for navigation, that comes down to probe droids, of course. Like in The Empire Strikes Back, when searching for the Rebels. As for technological stagnation, yeah, Star Wars is moving rather slowly with that. It seems that it's just scaling things up and down rather than innovating. The Death Stars are some of the better examples, but we also see that hyperdrives have been miniaturized slightly from the prequels to the originals. Jedi Fighters had external drives, X-Wings have internal drives.

I still think we need the Borg to scare the Empire. The Empire seems to have a size fixation and a Borg Cube is bigger than a Star Destroyer, so that'd at least make an impact on them. How Star Wars tech deals with cloaking is an unknown, but we know the tech exists in the galaxy. "No ship that small has a cloaking device!"

As evidence for just how stupidly quick hyperdrive is, consider the events of Episode 3's end. Obi-Wan cuts down Anakin who is now limb-less and on fire next to a lava flow. Obi-Wan leaves. Palpatine senses Anakin in trouble with the Force and rushes to Mustafar (Outer Rim) from Coruscant (Galaxy Core). He makes it there fast enough to put out Anakin. That is FAST! That's roughly 40,000 lightyears in about 10 minutes, including takeoff and landing! Granted, this is Palpatine's tricked out personal shuttlecraft, which I'm sure has the best tech and upgrades credits can buy, but it's the upper limit for hyperdrives we've seen in the movies. I'm sure this kind of thing is only possible using previously plotted out routes, though. (Which actually is a plot point in season 3 of the Clone Wars series. Palpatine set it up so HE would be the only one knowing the express route to the Outer Rim.)

But you know what's going to be sad? A Stormtroopers vs. Redshirts firefight. I might have to give this to the Stormtroopers, but it's going to be on the part of "losing less" than winning. At least the Stormtroopers carry weapons with sights and they did manage to shoot Leia twice.

I'm a little surprised, though. I didn't expect you to be a Wars/Trek debater. I'm almost retired with that, was into it 4-5 years ago. It got old.