Star Trek vs. Star Wars

[telcontar42]

First of all, Solo doesn't have weird bony things on his face.

Second, according to that link, Garak is claustrophobic. Han Solo is too cool to have irrational fears. Unless they are cool ones.

Thirdly, DS9 was not a good show. Any character from it automatically has their cool reduced. If you going to look for competition for Solo, you need to look in a better show. For example, Picard. He's a badass. You could make an argument for him being cooler than Solo. You would be wrong, but you could make the argument.

[hideki101]

I'd like to add some meta-story thinking about the Federation vs the Empire: In both universes, good always triumphs over evil in the end. This is a little more true for Star Wars since it is a fantasy setting which must always have some good vs evil conflict in it, while Star Trek spends some of it's time as a science fiction, dealing with technical difficulties (and tribbles) or thinking about the repurcussions of new technology and strange cultures (and tribbles).

So in a Star Wars story about the Empire invading the Federation, the Federation would suffer incredible losses until everything seems desperate. Then a young hero on an impossible mission would by chance discover a vital vulnerability in the enemies war machine. He would then need to overcome great obstacles (and tribbles) to get a plan made to exploit this flaw. (heroes never seem to do much planning on their own, do they?) This plan will involve an epic battle, risking everything for the hero to get one chance to defeat evil.

In a Star Trek story someone in the Federation wil hatch a very immoral diabolical scheme to defeat the Empire. (setting assimilated tribbles on them) The captain will be charged with executing this plan, putting him in a moral dilemma. Just before or just after he made a decision a third option will reveal itsself. Be it technical ("Captain, if we destabilize the quantum foam intertia of the deflector dish, the wormhole will suck all matter which has once traveled trough it back in.") or social (the second-in-command of the attack fleet makes the Empire see the error of its ways), it will completely save the day.

Either way, the Federation is so goody goody they're destined to win!

Now, what if it's the Federation vs the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances? They're both on the "good" side.

[Azrael001]

First of all, Solo doesn't have weird bony things on his face.

Second, according to that link, Garak is claustrophobic. Han Solo is too cool to have irrational fears. Unless they are cool ones.

Thirdly, DS9 was not a good show. Any character from it automatically has their cool reduced. If you going to look for competition for Solo, you need to look in a better show. For example, Picard. He's a badass. You could make an argument for him being cooler than Solo. You would be wrong, but you could make the argument.

I don't know about that. They are different kinds of cool. (Picard and Solo, not Boner face. (sorry I just went on a zero punctuation spree. (also it is past sleepy time.)))

Upon further consideration I have to say that Picard is in fact a better character than any in Star Wars.

[Spock22]

What id like someone to clarify for me, is if the ICS book says that the Venator's guns can track and shoot 10 light years, and it is canon, when it says that the juggernaught can stop and turn in a smaller radius that any other repulsorcraft... I rekon its a typo but that seems ridiculous. A juggernaught, as im sure most of you people know, is huge. How can it POSSIBLY turn in a smaller radius that say, a hovertank?
Or is it talking about a craft of a similar size?
Little help?
Oh and you guys won me over to the Star Wars side. Still dont like Wong and Poe... but yes, you win you good damn debaters!

[Rilian]

Star Trek would win because they have a few really determined scientists, even though they also have lots of idiots.

[Antimatter Spork]

Star Trek would win because they have a few really determined scientists, even though they also have lots of idiots.

Because Star Wars totally doesn't have any scientists. The death star plans were done by a million space monkeys randomly hitting space typewriters.

[Berengal]

Star Trek would win because they have a few really determined scientists, even though they also have lots of idiots.

Because Star Wars totally doesn't have any scientists. The death star plans were done by a million space monkeys randomly hitting space typewriters.

Not too unlikely, considering some of the SW material I've seen...

[Levi]

I think Star Trek would win.
Even though SW has ridiculously huge fleets and overpowered weapons and ships, they can't design them well.

1. Several squads of X-wings manage to get through the Death Star's defenses despite the fact that its surface is almost entirely composed of turrets (They are not designed to shoot fighters, but if you have that many, it shouldn't be too hard). This means that either (a) the gunners are really, really bad shots, or (b) the turrets can't swivel very fast and were badly placed.

2. There is a trench running around the DS that allows one to avoid 99% of the turrets. Why?

3. There is a hole in the DS. Why would anyone in his right mind build a tube straight to the reactor? There should at least be an S-bend.

4. The DS is taken down by one, and only one, torpedo.

If the other ships designed by the empire are similar to this, it shouldn't be too difficult to beat.

[hideki101]

1. Several squads of X-wings manage to get through the Death Star's defenses despite the fact that its surface is almost entirely composed of turrets (They are not designed to shoot fighters, but if you have that many, it shouldn't be too hard). This means that either (a) the gunners are really, really bad shots, or (b) the turrets can't swivel very fast and were badly placed.

Actually, the Death Star isn't completely composed of turrets.
The surface area of the Death Star is about 321699 square kilometers. There are about 10000 turbolaser, laser, and Ion cannons on the death star. this means there is about one turret to cover 32 square kilometers. This doesn't sound like much, but remember that the Death Star itself was designed to defend against capital ship intrusions. That many cannons could take out an entire fleet. This was the reason for the "...don't consider one-man fighters to be a threat, or they would have a tighter defense." argument from Jan Dodonna.

And how many architectural engineering projects that big never have faults in them? Even in science fiction, there are still bureaucrats.

[Levi]

1. Several squads of X-wings manage to get through the Death Star's defenses despite the fact that its surface is almost entirely composed of turrets (They are not designed to shoot fighters, but if you have that many, it shouldn't be too hard). This means that either (a) the gunners are really, really bad shots, or (b) the turrets can't swivel very fast and were badly placed.

Actually, the Death Star isn't completely composed of turrets.
The surface area of the Death Star is about 321699 square kilometers. There are about 10000 turbolaser, laser, and Ion cannons on the death star. this means there is about one turret to cover 32 square kilometers. This doesn't sound like much, but remember that the Death Star itself was designed to defend against capital ship intrusions. That many cannons could take out an entire fleet. This was the reason for the "...don't consider one-man fighters to be a threat, or they would have a tighter defense." argument from Jan Dodonna.

And how many architectural engineering projects that big never have faults in them? Even in science fiction, there are still bureaucrats.

Perhaps the turrets aren't spread out evenly because there seem to be an inordinately large number of turrets surrounding the trench for there to be so few on the entire Death Star if they are evenly distributed.

[Berengal]

Or perhaps the fighters are just moving really fast. If there's one turret per 32 km², then that means there's about a turret every 11 km if you're going in a straight line (sqrt(32) * 2). What was the range of the turbolasers again? And the speed of the x-wings?

[tigerhawkvok]

Here, I sort of think that the borg will act the same way against the Star Wars galaxy as they do against the Star Trek Galaxy. Problem being, I think shield and weapon technology are completely different between the two galaxies. In the Trek galaxy, both shields and weapons work by modulating shields. That's why the borg are so strong: they can easily find the right shield and weapon frequency of their opponents, and open fire with impunity. Star wars shields and weapons rely on pure brute force. Hence, I guess they would be like omnishields: they protect from any energy source thrown at them, regardless of frequency. As stated above in other posts too, transporter beams are easily blocked, or the borg cube in Wolf 359 would have assimilated all the attacking ships instead of wiping them out. Therefore, the borg would need to conventionally fight a ship and take down the shields before transporting themselves onboard.

There is nothing in SW canon to say how their shields operate. To that end, it is silly to assume that they truly operate any differently than ST shields. Besides, we've seen Borg transport through shields. Besides, it is constantly shown that shields of any reasonable power block also brute force in ST -- consider shields in the brig! Read http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Deflector_shield for more about shields. In TOS, they could take about 90 photons at once, putting a bottom energy absorption (long long long before "modern" Trek era) at 5.7 gigatons. Ablative armor's (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Ablative_generator) capability is not really well quantified.

If we are talking about pure destructive power here, nothing I've seen here can beat the sun crusher. A ship the size of a starfighter (think Y-wing) has the weaponry to destroy a star system and making the sun go nova. Furthermore, the sun crusher utilizes quantum-crystalline armor, allowing it to survive said supernova. Not even the highest-yield torpedo could hope to penetrate that armor. So far, the only known way to destroy it is to pilot it into a black hole.

Star Trek 7. A single missile can nova a star. Star Trek 2. A single missle can wipe out a nebula.

Also, in a next generation episode, Q sends some of the crew to a planet, where data scans some aliens approaching them and says something along the lines of "they have weapons simlar to earths 18th centuary mustkets, range, 100 meters maximum."
To which riker replies "no match for our phasers!" Which suggests that phasers can shoot a few hundred meters at least.

And E-11B blaster rifles can shoot 300 meters. The DC-15A blaster rifle in use during the clone wars can shoot 10 kilometers. 100 meters is nothing.

>= 100 m. We have no reliable data on maximum range.

Actually, in the Star Wars Galaxy, faster-than-light travel is commonplace. In some places, Star Wars ships are definitely faster than Star Trek ships. The distance from Tatooine(Outer rim) to Alderaan(core world) is approximately 60,000 light years. This trip took hours, maybe a day in the Falcon. A Star Trek vehicle, at warp 9.9, seems to travel about 21473 times the speed of light. To travel that same distance between Tatooine and Alderaan would take the ship ~2.79 years. The Falcon is also said to be twice as fast as a military starship; still unbelievably faster than any Star trek ship.

Just Federation warp. Consider that in Voyager "Endgame", transwarp enables moving from the Delta Quadrant to the Alpha Quadrant in minutes. This is much much faster than Wars.

Even here, I think that Star Wars wins, just due to having smaller spacecraft with heavy weaponry. Anything in the Star Wars galaxy freighter size or smaller will be able to completely outmaneuver virtually anything Star Trek can throw at them. For example the TIE defender is 9.2 meters long. By comparison, a Bajoran raider is ~33 meters long. Both have fixed gun emplacements. The TIE defender can DANCE around the raider and take it apart at leisure. On the other side of the scale, the ships don't NEED to be maneuverable. Certain ships have point-defense lasers. Even if a ship starts lobbing torpedoes from max range (so far I've read over 3 million km) that leaves plenty of time for the lasers to track and destroy the missiles before they even come close.

Canon is canon. Canon has said squat about Wars superlaser actually *not being lasers*. Deflector shields > wars. And if they are particle weapons, then they operate pretty much identically to ST weapons -- meaning their shields are even more likely to operate like ST shields. See http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Nadion -- phasers are, for example, particle weapons in SW terminology and directed-energy in ST terminology. There is no appreciable difference.

WIth regard to other weaponry, consider: http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Isoton

Its a bit inconsistent unfortunately, but it strongly implies a single class-6 photon torpedo warhead is near gigaton-TNT range, and quantum / transphasic torpedoes are both more powerful (the bottom range for a quantum torpedo is about 2x photon, with an unknown maximum range). In particular, the transphasic torpedo passes through sheilds and completely obliterated a 3x3x3 km cube. Assuming it vaporized 50% of a 50% iron cube at 300 K (easily that much was gone), we're talking a 93.5 gigaton-TNT minimum equivalent explosion that passes through shields. Considering Trek materials are much more durable than iron, this is also a bottom range. GG, SW. (VOY: Endgame).

Also, (in general) do not throw around semi-canon Wars "turbolasers -> gigatons, but Trek phasers -> megawatts". If nothing else, look at the units. One is destructive equivalent, one is power generated. Just power generated does not necessarily equate to destructive potential. It might be possible to do something with the craters the Borg left in TNG ( http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/The_Neu ... e_(episode) ), but I'm not sufficiently motivated. Besides, this doesn't really work too well, since the Federation often does stuff like daisy-chaining multiple emitters per firing attempt.

Finally, one 8472 ship handed 15 cubes their asses with little damage. How many cube equivalents do you think one ISD is worth? I doubt even that many. 8472 *alone* hands SW. (VOY: Scorpion, Part I)

Cloaking techinology as well, is available in both universes, the difference is, that in star trek, it can be held by a small mine no bigger than a meter sqaured each, but in star wars, an officer comments "a ship that size couldnt have a cloaking device!" referring to the Millenium Falcon.

Consider that the Feds also have personal cloaks, as seen in ST 9 (Insurrection). The Federation also has a phase cloak (TNG: Pegasus). While various cloaks have some problems, there are also (difficult) "perfect" cloaks, such as seen in ST10 (Nemesis).

once again, you have no Idea what you're talking about. Planetary shields are all over the official material, and you can actually see Alderaan's in slow motion. Please stop making up your own canon. The Battle of Coruscant took place in the upper atmosphere, inside the planetary shield.

1) You can't see it in the DVD canon. Both stardestroyer.net and st-v-sw.net have their problems, but the screencaps here ( http://www.st-v-sw.net/STSWalderaan.html ) are pretty nice at showing the lack of shields on Alderaan.
2) Praytell, how did the battle take place inside the shield ... if the shield is nigh-impossible to get through?


It is really quite important to know your Trek if you're going to argue. When the universes collide, Wars is not definitively better than any aspect of Trek, and manifestly worse in some ways.
[Edit: Tech updates]

[hideki101]

Here, I sort of think that the borg will act the same way against the Star Wars galaxy as they do against the Star Trek Galaxy. Problem being, I think shield and weapon technology are completely different between the two galaxies. In the Trek galaxy, both shields and weapons work by modulating shields. That's why the borg are so strong: they can easily find the right shield and weapon frequency of their opponents, and open fire with impunity. Star wars shields and weapons rely on pure brute force. Hence, I guess they would be like omnishields: they protect from any energy source thrown at them, regardless of frequency. As stated above in other posts too, transporter beams are easily blocked, or the borg cube in Wolf 359 would have assimilated all the attacking ships instead of wiping them out. Therefore, the borg would need to conventionally fight a ship and take down the shields before transporting themselves onboard.

There is nothing in SW canon to say how their shields operate. To that end, it is silly to assume that they truly operate any differently than ST shields. Besides, we've seen Borg transport through shields. Besides, it is constantly shown that shields of any reasonable power block also brute force in ST -- consider shields in the brig! Read http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Deflector_shield for more about shields. In TOS, they could take about 90 photons at once, putting a bottom energy absorption (long long long before "modern" Trek era) at 5.7 gigatons. Ablative armor's (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Ablative_generator) capability is not really well quantified.

Read this:http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Deflector_shield
Apparently a Star Wars ray shield acts as a conductor, dissipating the energy over the surface of the shield and re-radiating it back outward as harmless energy, or converting it into neutrinos and releasing them. There tends to be multiple layers of these on a ship at a time, preventing most anything from getting in. Particle shields can deflect solid objects by absorbing kinetic energy and strengthening the hull by using energy to strengthen the molecular bonds in the ship's hull. Also, as shown in Episode 1, low-power blasts can be completely deflected by shields. These shields are completely different from trek shields, and as such, may be completely incompatible with transport tech. (meaning can't get in). <physics>Also, you may be mistaken about how photons work. A photon's energy is directly related to its frequency. For ninety photons to have the power of half the world's arsenal of nuclear weapons would mean the photons would need a frequency of 8.61*10^32 Hz to create energies of such magnitude, much higher than the highest energy EM rays known.</physics>

If we are talking about pure destructive power here, nothing I've seen here can beat the sun crusher. A ship the size of a starfighter (think Y-wing) has the weaponry to destroy a star system and making the sun go nova. Furthermore, the sun crusher utilizes quantum-crystalline armor, allowing it to survive said supernova. Not even the highest-yield torpedo could hope to penetrate that armor. So far, the only known way to destroy it is to pilot it into a black hole.

Star Trek 7. A single missile can nova a star. Star Trek 2. A single missile can wipe out a nebula.

Just a question: How does a missile destroy something that's barely there in the first place? A nebula is just a slightly higher concentration of stellar gas and dust. It seems there would be no reason to destroy it, and there's not much that's solid that a missile would impact.

Also, in a next generation episode, Q sends some of the crew to a planet, where data scans some aliens approaching them and says something along the lines of "they have weapons simlar to earths 18th centuary mustkets, range, 100 meters maximum."
To which riker replies "no match for our phasers!" Which suggests that phasers can shoot a few hundred meters at least.

And E-11B blaster rifles can shoot 300 meters. The DC-15A blaster rifle in use during the clone wars can shoot 10 kilometers. 100 meters is nothing.

>= 100 m. We have no reliable data on maximum range.

And therein lies the problem. There is no reliable standard for the maximum range on any of the Star Trek weapons. Not that there isn't one, but the upper bound is undefined. Until there is a definite range limit set for a Trek phaser, I will not address this argument any further.

Actually, in the Star Wars Galaxy, faster-than-light travel is commonplace. In some places, Star Wars ships are definitely faster than Star Trek ships. The distance from Tatooine(Outer rim) to Alderaan(core world) is approximately 60,000 light years. This trip took hours, maybe a day in the Falcon. A Star Trek vehicle, at warp 9.9, seems to travel about 21473 times the speed of light. To travel that same distance between Tatooine and Alderaan would take the ship ~2.79 years. The Falcon is also said to be twice as fast as a military starship; still unbelievably faster than any Star trek ship.

Just Federation warp. Consider that in Voyager "Endgame", transwarp enables moving from the Delta Quadrant to the Alpha Quadrant in minutes. This is much much faster than Wars.

Three problems with that:
1) Transwarp is limited to the borg almost exclusively (you neglected to mention that the Transwarp coil was stolen from the borg)
2) Transwarp is basically a wormhole effect. Meaning that both ends of the tunnel have to be intact, and it allows you to travel only to a specific place. A Stargate transports a body in much the same way. (all the way from earth to Atlantis)
3) It needs a hub, which was destroyed in the same episode you said.

Even here, I think that Star Wars wins, just due to having smaller spacecraft with heavy weaponry. Anything in the Star Wars galaxy freighter size or smaller will be able to completely outmaneuver virtually anything Star Trek can throw at them. For example the TIE defender is 9.2 meters long. By comparison, a Bajoran raider is ~33 meters long. Both have fixed gun emplacements. The TIE defender can DANCE around the raider and take it apart at leisure. On the other side of the scale, the ships don't NEED to be maneuverable. Certain ships have point-defense lasers. Even if a ship starts lobbing torpedoes from max range (so far I've read over 3 million km) that leaves plenty of time for the lasers to track and destroy the missiles before they even come close.

Canon is canon. Canon has said squat about Wars superlaser actually *not being lasers*. Deflector shields > wars. And if they are particle weapons, then they operate pretty much identically to ST weapons -- meaning their shields are even more likely to operate like ST shields. See http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Nadion -- phasers are, for example, particle weapons in SW terminology and directed-energy in ST terminology. There is no appreciable difference.

There was nothing in the above quote that said anything about weaponry, shields or canon. However, since you have brought up canon, the current official policy on canon and the Star Wars EU is that the EU is canon unless a superior source (the movies and novelizations) directly override it. Therefore, the EU and almost everything in it is fair game.

once again, you have no Idea what you're talking about. Planetary shields are all over the official material, and you can actually see Alderaan's in slow motion. Please stop making up your own canon. The Battle of Coruscant took place in the upper atmosphere, inside the planetary shield.

1) You can't see it in the DVD canon. Both stardestroyer.net and st-v-sw.net have their problems, but the screencaps here ( http://www.st-v-sw.net/STSWalderaan.html ) are pretty nice at showing the lack of shields on Alderaan.
2) Praytell, how did the battle take place inside the shield ... if the shield is nigh-impossible to get through?

1) I CAN see it. Along the upper edge of the planet there is an outcropping of sorta bluish sphere. when the laser hits it, and just before the actual fireball, this little outcrop supports the shield theory. Notice that it's hardest above the planet. If it was just the atmosphere, then it would be brightest closer to the planet surface, and fade out. also, from such a distance as to be able to see the entire planet, the atmosphere would be completely lost to view, do to it being so thin. The reflecting effect is about 1/16th the radius of the planet. On a scale assuming earth-like qualities (a safe bet, due to the human-friendly climate there) the atmospheric effect would have to be 1/750th the size of the planetary radius to be attributed to the planet's atmosphere. Therefore the effect has to be something else. Also, http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Planetary_shield.

2) Two words: Surprise attack. In the novel Labyrinth of Evil, it is counted as a surprise attack that caught Coruscant off guard, and penetrated the atmosphere within minutes. Also, Courscant's planetary shields are governed in sectors, allowing one sector of the shield to fall while keeping the others strong. This provides a bottleneck for the attackers to squeeze their way through to reach the planet while the defenders can concentrate their fire. However, this means the entire shield structure can't be put up at once.

It is really quite important to know your Trek if you're going to argue. When the universes collide, Wars is not definitively better than any aspect of Trek, and manifestly worse in some ways.

Same thing goes to trekkies. Read up on Star Wars, its EU and its canon policy before engaging in any debate on it. Here's a good site to start:http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

[tigerhawkvok]

<physics>Also, you may be mistaken about how photons work. A photon's energy is directly related to its frequency. For ninety photons to have the power of half the world's arsenal of nuclear weapons would mean the photons would need a frequency of 8.61*10^32 Hz to create energies of such magnitude, much higher than the highest energy EM rays known.</physics>

Haha, I was referring to "photon torpedoes", I was just being lazy. But, on the physics front, I don't see how applying energy to molecules can possibly strengthen their bond o_0. Particularly since that's how you break molecular bonds! Also, the "giant conductor" analogy is problematic ... how does their own weapons fire get out? It would seem that their frequency-less operation needs actual holes in the shield of the appropriate type.

Just a question: How does a missile destroy something that's barely there in the first place? A nebula is just a slightly higher concentration of stellar gas and dust. It seems there would be no reason to destroy it, and there's not much that's solid that a missile would impact.

Its mostly an event-radius thing. It did <treknobabble> to the nebula, involving restructuring it in some fashion. But nebulae are huge + the whole restructuring nonsense. It was a big deal that it coulbe be used as a weapon.

Three problems with that:
1) Transwarp is limited to the borg almost exclusively (you neglected to mention that the Transwarp coil was stolen from the borg)
2) Transwarp is basically a wormhole effect. Meaning that both ends of the tunnel have to be intact, and it allows you to travel only to a specific place. A Stargate transports a body in much the same way. (all the way from earth to Atlantis)
3) It needs a hub, which was destroyed in the same episode you said.

It is frequently (strongly) implied that the bog in general can just access these conduits; presumably, the hubs make life easy for things without transwarp coils rather than actually create the conduits (particularly as the Federation was experimenting with it, hub-less) ( http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Transwarp ). Besides, even if it did need the hub, Endgame explictly mentions they just destroyed 1 of 6 hubs (I believe by Janeway, in Part I). Finally, there are other, similar technologies periodically used (ie, Quantum Slipstream, which doesn't need a hub in any way), and this debate is a "universe" argument, excepting Q, so the Borg are fair game.

[Edit] Confirmed: Transwarp drives *create* conduits. http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Transwarp_conduit (VOY: Hope and Fear)

(Shield stuff)

My bad, I did not know that the shields were not always up (seems an odd decision for a planetary shield, given FTL, but OK) nor the whole quadrant thing. As to atmospheric halo effects ... note that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tatooine.jpg has halo effects >> 1/750R. Its a stylistic convention of the Wars universe. I suppose you can claim Tatooine has one, but again, no evidence (particularly for such a dirt-poor rim planet -- its ratio is roughly 1/34, in particular). Besides, halo effects during the shot are just as likely beam-glow or vapor/ejecta from the planet as a shield ... particularly since that's exactly what you'd expect before the entire thing went "boom". This might even happen with the chain-reaction theory, which is rarely believed in SW circles. Your link does not cite any evidence for the Alderaan shield, just says it exists -- everything I've linked to has been referred to in dialogue.

The EU material is rarely well sourced (I don't have the books or the time to read them, but you know, quotes, book, page number ... that sort of stuff is good times, but I've never seen it cited in these debates. Just kinda "check out this book! Or this link that claims to have sourced this book!" ). I do know the official canon policy, but in general, its referencing is horribly wishy-washy. I've seen all the movies several times, as well as the in-between Ep II/III CN cartoon series, and played several of the canon games. The only planetary shield references I can recall are those involving Endor, which had an invisible shield -- none of this glow stuff!

[Spock22]

Didn't Slave II's side wing get ripped off by a planatary shield?
*research*
Wookieepedia: "However, as the Falcon entered the atmosphere of the planet the planetary shield was activated, causing Fett to collide and rip off his stabilizer bar, disabling his ship."
Don't think anything in the films overwrites that does it?

Lets be honest, if this battle ever took place, the Feds would team up with the Empire, realise that they are evil, then stick with the Rebels. The Borg would just be independant, or they would team up with the Empire, then double cross them in that typical Borg way... Going all eras, Republic would be on the good side, maybe the ROTS clones would turn bad but oh well... Jedi would work with feds, all happy and teamworky. Battle droids no match for huge ion cannon thingy that the goodies build when they combine their technology.
Anyway, the goodies would obviously win, and then they would go their seperate ways... back through some wormhole...
Lets face it, that what would happen. Ish...

[scarecrovv]

I am heavily in favour of Star Trek, assuming both sides have warning of the coming battle.

What happens in the Star Trek universe:
Now all the Star Trek people are allied right? So the Borg go out and assimilate everything in the Galaxy. Now, all of a sudden, all Star Trek technology and knowledge is combined into a monolithic whole. The result is a technological singularity of incredible proportions (Google it). Very quickly, the collective figures out how to do ridiculous things like Warp 9000 kamikaze attacks, and using transporter/replicator/whatever technology to spontaneously create huge amounts of antimatter inside hostile vessels. Also, they use their new hyper-advanced replicators they figured out how to make to convert all the matter in the entire universe into a huge fleet of whatever they darn well feel like. And they also figure out all sorts of other things we can't even begin to imagine, so I'm not going to try, but it could be equal to, or even greater than, the power of the Q. Even if it wasn't quite that awesome, it would be ridiculous. Also, their incredible combined intelligence would know about the force (and every other possible Star Wars defence/weapon/technology/strategy) in advance, and would either formulate a defence against mental control, or simply be an incredibly strong mind in it's own right, and therefore not be controllable. After all, they have all the knowledge of everything in the Galaxy, including Humans, and Human knowledge includes knowledge of Star Wars!

What happens in the Star Wars universe:
I don't know, but they can possibly match the mental synthesis power of the Borg, or the production capability of the replicators the Borg will create. Also, they wouldn't know anything about Star Trek in advance (if it was a long time ago in a galaxy far far away (from Earth, presumably), they wouldn't have access to Star Trek episodes, books, or whatever constitutes the cannon), except perhaps, that it is called "Star Trek", and that they will have to fight it. This leaves them totally unprepared.

Result: Total Star Trek walkover.

If neither side knows in advance, and they're all randomly thrown together, it would be a much closer fight, but I still think that Star Trek will win, simply because I think they have greater technological diversity (consequently a greater probability of possession of an unstoppable superweapon, or whatever else they need to win), and the designs of their spacecraft don't usually have dumb things like small thermal exhaust ports that lead directly to the hypermatter reactor.

[Sto Helit]

I am heavily in favour of Star Trek, assuming both sides have warning of the coming battle.

What happens in the Star Trek universe:
Now all the Star Trek people are allied right? So the Borg go out and assimilate everything in the Galaxy. Now, all of a sudden, all Star Trek technology and knowledge is combined into a monolithic whole. The result is a technological singularity of incredible proportions (Google it). Very quickly, the collective figures out how to do ridiculous things like Warp 9000 kamikaze attacks, and using transporter/replicator/whatever technology to spontaneously create huge amounts of antimatter inside hostile vessels. Also, they use their new hyper-advanced replicators they figured out how to make to convert all the matter in the entire universe into a huge fleet of whatever they darn well feel like. And they also figure out all sorts of other things we can't even begin to imagine, so I'm not going to try, but it could be equal to, or even greater than, the power of the Q. Even if it wasn't quite that awesome, it would be ridiculous. Also, their incredible combined intelligence would know about the force (and every other possible Star Wars defence/weapon/technology/strategy) in advance, and would either formulate a defence against mental control, or simply be an incredibly strong mind in it's own right, and therefore not be controllable. After all, they have all the knowledge of everything in the Galaxy, including Humans, and Human knowledge includes knowledge of Star Wars!

What happens in the Star Wars universe:
I don't know, but they can possibly match the mental synthesis power of the Borg, or the production capability of the replicators the Borg will create. Also, they wouldn't know anything about Star Trek in advance (if it was a long time ago in a galaxy far far away (from Earth, presumably), they wouldn't have access to Star Trek episodes, books, or whatever constitutes the cannon), except perhaps, that it is called "Star Trek", and that they will have to fight it. This leaves them totally unprepared.

Result: Total Star Trek walkover.

If neither side knows in advance, and they're all randomly thrown together, it would be a much closer fight, but I still think that Star Trek will win, simply because I think they have greater technological diversity (consequently a greater probability of possession of an unstoppable superweapon, or whatever else they need to win), and the designs of their spacecraft don't usually have dumb things like small thermal exhaust ports that lead directly to the hypermatter reactor.

Not necessarily. Would they not receive prior warning from the force? The Jedi are not limited to mind trickses and lightsabers.

[Spock22]

I agree, In SW there are numerous visions that foretell what will come. HOWEVER, they nearly all seem to be very unspecific, and show blurry images of what will happen. None the less, it will give them time to prepare at least.

[aleflamedyud]

Both of those franchises easily lose *hard* when set against Firefly or Doctor Who.

[bigglesworth]

Dr Who perhaps, but Firefly is deliberately less powered up than other sci fi series, and for good reason.

[aleflamedyud]

Dr Who perhaps, but Firefly is deliberately less powered up than other sci fi series, and for good reason.

DO NOT BLAS-PHEME. DO NOT BLAS-PHEME. EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!

[Sto Helit]

Both of those franchises easily lose *hard* when set against Firefly or Doctor Who.

Take that back! Although Star Trek may lose against Doctor Who, Doctor Who itself is no match for Star Wars.

[Spock22]

Dr Who perhaps, but Firefly is deliberately less powered up than other sci fi series, and for good reason.

Well... there are a lot of ultimate beings in Doctor Who, but most of the time its a small monster that threatens the lives of a few unarmed people. So you're talking like, humanoids.
If we go Daleks, however...
Daleks vs. Ship Phasers on maximum setting = Dalek sheilds fail, Daleks vaporized
Daleks vs. Turbolasers = Same result.

Dalek sheilds can be taken out with hand held weapons, so i should think a ship mounted weapon would just overload their sheilds and they would become space dust very quickly...

Daleks do of course, tend to attack in swarms... But I think their weapons (even the heavy weapon Daleks) would take a long time to get through the sheilds of a Star Destroyer.

Oh wait... Daleks have motherships...*slaps self on forehead*

Not an expert on Doctor Who. Can you give me any examples of beings other than the Daleks who are seriously up to the challenge?
That isnt a retorical question, Im just not that good at Doctor Who

Oh, and if the moderators decide this is too off topic, which it is... Then by all means delete it!

[bigglesworth]

Other than Daleks? Apart from the fact that Daleks have time travel technology, allowing them to invade where you are weakest, have superweapons that destroy universes and fought a war with the Doctor's entire race?

Not that at every point in the series they have this power, you understand. This is the Dalek Empire of the 51st Century. Not that that means much, since the battles ranged through time.

[-KF-]

I am very glad I'm not the first person here to think of the Sun Crusher.

To everyone who has said that Star Wars is cheesy or overpowered, I would also like to point out that in the SW universe space travel has been commonplace for something like 100,000 years.

[GoC]

This is a classic.
I've always argued that the two universes are too inconsistent to be compared as is, however...
Put someone with a bit of brains (like... me! ) in control of the federation with access to all their canon tech and this person will steamroll more or less any universe (including things like The Culture and the Fleetmind from Schlock Mercenary).
There's simply so much of it: Planet/solar system/galaxy (your pick) destroying superweapons the size of a suitcase, Star Fleet engineers, very long range teleportation that goes through shields, strong AI(!!!!!!), controlled time travel, Von Newmann machines, teleporter abuse, scanners that appear to be able to see through everything (very inconsistent), weapons that literally destroy space, nanites, ect.

An example of an idea noone in star wars thought of: Duct-taping three blasters together in a triangle formation when out jedi-hunting.

[Moloch]

When both universes meet they won't be aware that the great lump of destoyed spaceships drifting their direction is from neither universe. Just when they want to start the ultimat battle they see thousands of smaller ships emerge from the Space Hulk and with all frequencies reciving just one message
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGHH...and so the Space Orks tear them all apart.
Far away the God-Emperor of the 40k universe pitties darth Sideus for his little collection of planets


On Topic: There is no way Star Wars would lose with so much experience and ifrastructure optimised for large scale war.

[Robert'); DROP TABLE *;]

There is no way Star Wars would lose with so much experience and ifrastructure optimised for large scale war.

Impulse drive + asteroid = Goodbye, Coruscant. (Warp drives may or may not be more effective, depending on physics behind them.)

Duct-taping three blasters together in a triangle formation when out jedi-hunting.

Oddly, automatic weapons seem to have gone out of fashion.

[Neuman]

Your statement missed three things:

1. The Star Wars Galaxy has had Hyperdrive, and thus relatively easy interstellar travel, for the past 25,000 years. Coruscant has been the capital of the Republic for about that long. Thus, someone is bound to have tried using a relativistic impactor on it before.

2. Coruscant has thousands of ships going in and out everyday. All of these ships have sensors, in addition to the sensors on the planet itself. The impactor would not go undetected, and would be easy to destroy before it gained any significant momentum.

3. Even if it got past the ships, there's still the planetary shield. During the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, the Vong used waves of kamikaze attacks to disable the shield, but it took a while. Certainly not something a single rock could do.

[Robert'); DROP TABLE *;]

Your statement missed three things:

1. The Star Wars Galaxy has had Hyperdrive, and thus relatively easy interstellar travel, for the past 25,000 years. Coruscant has been the capital of the Republic for about that long. Thus, someone is bound to have tried using a relativistic impactor on it before.

From my understanding, the SW hyperdrive does the same thing as a wormhole: Jumps the ship from point to point, without passing through normal space in between. This device is unsuitable for RKVs.

2. Coruscant has thousands of ships going in and out everyday. All of these ships have sensors, in addition to the sensors on the planet itself. The impactor would not go undetected, and would be easy to destroy before it gained any significant momentum.

Unless you have sensors that can detect faster than light can, it's very hard to see it before it hits the planet. (After all, sending an object from Proxima Centuari at 0.99c gives Earth 35 hours to respond.) It is even harder to aim a laser at it. The projectile does not have to be particulary large, either. A 10cm diamond accelerated to 0.99c creates an explosion of 150 megatons upon impact. (Remember, the mass is getting futzed around by the extraordinarily high speed, so even a compared-with-a-planet-small object will probably produce an impact in the hundreds of gigatons.)

3. Even if it got past the ships, there's still the planetary shield. During the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, the Vong used waves of kamikaze attacks to disable the shield, but it took a while. Certainly not something a single rock could do.

What is absorbing the kinetic energy? Even if the sheild turns it into heat, this will still destroy a very large area.

[Neuman]

Your statement missed three things:

1. The Star Wars Galaxy has had Hyperdrive, and thus relatively easy interstellar travel, for the past 25,000 years. Coruscant has been the capital of the Republic for about that long. Thus, someone is bound to have tried using a relativistic impactor on it before.

From my understanding, the SW hyperdrive does the same thing as a wormhole: Jumps the ship from point to point, without passing through normal space in between. This device is unsuitable for RKVs.

Actually, it passes though hyperspace in between. But obviously they they would be using sublight drives.

2. Coruscant has thousands of ships going in and out everyday. All of these ships have sensors, in addition to the sensors on the planet itself. The impactor would not go undetected, and would be easy to destroy before it gained any significant momentum.

Unless you have sensors that can detect faster than light can, it's very hard to see it before it hits the planet. (After all, sending an object from Proxima Centuari at 0.99c gives Earth 35 hours to respond.)* It is even harder to aim a laser at it.** The projectile does not have to be particulary large, either. A 10cm diamond accelerated to 0.99c creates an explosion of 150 megatons upon impact.*** (Remember, the mass is getting futzed around by the extraordinarily high speed, so even a compared-with-a-planet-small object will probably produce an impact in the hundreds of gigatons.)

*Of course they do have FLT sensors.
**Not true, unless it's dodging. If it's going in a straight line with constant acceleration it doesn't matter how fast it is.
***Technically true, but it's probably difficult to mount an impulse drive to a diamond.

3. Even if it got past the ships, there's still the planetary shield. During the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, the Vong used waves of kamikaze attacks to disable the shield, but it took a while. Certainly not something a single rock could do.

What is absorbing the kinetic energy? Even if the shield turns it into heat, this will still destroy a very large area.

If I remember correctly, the energy is spread out over the hundreds of thousands of shield relays on the planet. The heat produced would be dealt with the same way the rest of the waste heat Coruscant produces. I could be wrong, or course.

[Robert'); DROP TABLE *;]

Your statement missed three things:

1. The Star Wars Galaxy has had Hyperdrive, and thus relatively easy interstellar travel, for the past 25,000 years. Coruscant has been the capital of the Republic for about that long. Thus, someone is bound to have tried using a relativistic impactor on it before.

From my understanding, the SW hyperdrive does the same thing as a wormhole: Jumps the ship from point to point, without passing through normal space in between. This device is unsuitable for RKVs.

Actually, it passes though hyperspace in between. But obviously they they would be using sublight drives.

**Not true, unless it's dodging. If it's going in a straight line with constant acceleration it doesn't matter how fast it is.
***Technically true, but it's probably difficult to mount an impulse drive to a diamond.

**Whether or not it's possible depends on the speed of the movement of the weapon, and the angle it's approaching at.
*** Particle accelerators work just as well.

If I remember correctly, the energy is spread out over the hundreds of thousands of shield relays on the planet. The heat produced would be dealt with the same way the rest of the waste heat Coruscant produces. I could be wrong, or course.

Assuming 1000 (metric) ton projectile (adjusted for dilation), at 0.9c, and 100,000 relays, this produces the energy of just over a ton of TNT in each relay.

It really boils down to how much energy the Federation/Borg can imbue into a single lump of rock.

[SpazzyMcGee]

I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but I don't think the Borg have come into play enough in this hypothetical intergalactic war. The Borg number in the trillions and it only takes one battle for them to make up any technological disadvantage. Can you imagine what would happen if they overwhelming Courageous?! That would be another few hundred million entities to the collective.

Usually the Borg are overcome by the Federation taking advantage of some flaw as stated as a key point within the story line of any epic struggle within the Star Wars universe. I suppose a jedi could fill the role of hero and take advantage of some flaw such as killing the queen of the Borg or destroying the Borg nexus, but in an all out war without a storyline to determine who would win I have to give it to the Star Wars universe solely because of the Borg. Those half living half mechanized hive mind would jump at the chance to assimilate a whole unknowing galaxy ignorant of what the Borg are.

[afrothunder75]

Now if you are trying to say that Star Trek would win just based off of the Borg, then my friend I would say you are wrong. I would call it a tie; one reason Star Wars has ION cannons.

[Robert'); DROP TABLE *;]

Now if you are trying to say that Star Trek would win just based off of the Borg, then my friend I would say you are wrong. I would call it a tie; one reason Star Wars has ION cannons.

You have ion cannons capable of destroying 75% (I think that's the right figure) of a cube with a volume of 28km³? (Before they transport in and assimilate your ship?)

[McCaber]

You have ion cannons capable of destroying 75% (I think that's the right figure) of a cube with a volume of 28km³? (Before they transport in and assimilate your ship?)

Well, SW ion cannons knock out computers and electronics. I think a big one has a good shot at at least temporarily shutting down a cube before the Death Star opens up on it.

[Antimatter Spork]

Hey guys a lot of these arguments have been made and addressed several times earlier in this thread (and at many of the linked websites).

I'll summarize a bit:

-Hyperdrive is way faster than warp drive, SW ships could run circles around all of ST (yes, even the Borg)
-The Borg's adaptive technology relies on shielding and weaponry that oscillate at some sort of frequency, SW shields and weaponry don't do this, so the Borg wouldn't be able to make themselves immune or whatever.
-Transporters are extremely fickle and are unreliable/unusable if there's certain materials in the way, and it's very likely that in order to transport on or off of SW ships (if it's even possible at all), ST ships would need to get close enough that they would be blown to bits before they even got a chance.
-SW is a much bigger and older civilization that would likely overwhelm ST just by sheer size and industrial capacity even without their technological advantages.

[GoC]

-SW is a much bigger and older civilization that would likely overwhelm ST just by sheer size and industrial capacity even without their technological advantages.

I'm afraid that's untrue. In ST there are canonically races hundreds of millions and even billions of years old and most spiral galaxies are of similar size.
Anyway, I stand by my earlier statement.

[Antimatter Spork]

-SW is a much bigger and older civilization that would likely overwhelm ST just by sheer size and industrial capacity even without their technological advantages.

I'm afraid that's untrue. In ST there are canonically races hundreds of millions and even billions of years old and most spiral galaxies are of similar size.

If those races/civilizations were even close to being fleshed out enough to actually figure in this debate, someone would have mentioned them.

As it is, I'm guessing they're just darkly hinted at or something.


And yeah, the galaxies are probably physically the same size, but ST takes place in a much smaller civilization than SW does (just in terms of the number of people/planets involved, and the size and capability of the industrial base).

And there's no way that either of them would beat the Culture. Not even a chance. (Assuming the Culture even bothered to fight instead of manipulating their civilizations into nicer forms through trickery)

[GoC]

-SW is a much bigger and older civilization that would likely overwhelm ST just by sheer size and industrial capacity even without their technological advantages.

I'm afraid that's untrue. In ST there are canonically races hundreds of millions and even billions of years old and most spiral galaxies are of similar size.

If those races/civilizations were even close to being fleshed out enough to actually figure in this debate, someone would have mentioned them.

As it is, I'm guessing they're just darkly hinted at or something.


And yeah, the galaxies are probably physically the same size, but ST takes place in a much smaller civilization than SW does (just in terms of the number of people/planets involved, and the size and capability of the industrial base).

And there's no way that either of them would beat the Culture. Not even a chance. (Assuming the Culture even bothered to fight instead of manipulating their civilizations into nicer forms through trickery)

1. Nope, for instance an episode of Voyager has them finding a superadvanced race descended from our earth's dinosaurs! Roughly 65 million years old. I can't remember any other specific examples but I remember at least a couple of races who had numbers like "hundreds of millions" attatched to their age.
2. It's just that the federation and their enemies inhabbit a tiny portion of the galaxy.
3. Obviously. I was speaking as if the fed used all the tech available in a decent way. They never will though.