Critique of scifights.net Federation vs. Empire: Conclusions

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359
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Critique of scifights.net Federation vs. Empire: Conclusions

Post by 359 » Thu Jan 23, 2014 6:58 pm

Conclusions – scifights.net: Federation vs. Empire

This is a bit more of a random smattering compared to my previous critiques as I try not to cover things in this conclusion which are covered else ware. In fact I wasn't planning on making a critique of the conclusion, but as soon as I bumped into the item at 5:30 I felt there was easily sufficient reason for something.

5:30:

"You know, one side has to have more firepower. And when you get right down to it. Let's just forget the numbers. We saw the Borg ships fire twenty times on armored Voyager, and didn't leave a scratch. And heavy turboalsers, when they hit similar things they blow a hole the size of a baseball field and you have to kind of realize that these weapons are the more powerful ones."

I'm sorry, but this is just an awful comparison by any measure. In order to draw this conclusion one must assume that, for no reason or evidence of any kind (what so ever), that the one-off super armor seen in VOY: "Endgame" is equal to that used on Imperial ships. That is a stupid assumption. Especially when one considers that an analysis of their performance place the hulls about on par in most cases, if not slightly in favor of the duranium hull.

An analogy would be to compare the penetrative powers of a bullet fired from a pistol vs a pencil in someone's hand poking things. The pencil stabs through a block of Armor_A with ease, yet the bullet fails to penetrate a block of Armor_B in the slightest. So does this test clearly demonstrate the pencil is better than a gun in combat? Well maybe, but what are the materials? Let's say Armor_A is 10 cm of styrofoam and Armor_B is 10 cm of hardened steel. Now are we surprised by the results? Of course not!

Using these two scenes as evidence that Imperial weapons are better is like saying the pencil is better in the analogy. To do that you must first assume the two materials are of equal strength, which they aren't. Not all "advanced armor" is created equally.


14:24:

Here Brian compares starship combat to chess, mobility of pieces determining the strength of the piece in chess. He then applies this to starship combat, in so far as the only thing that matters is mobility.

Again this is a horrid analogy as it leaves out so many factors. Such as what happens if your fleet arrives to invade planet 'xyz-642' but your entire fleet is destroyed by the fleet defending planet xyz-624 with the defenders taking minimal losses? Obviously your superior speed isn't too useful if you can't do anything meaningful when you arrive. This is why starship combat is important not for when random individual ships meet in space, but when one side must break through another's blockade, repel an invasion force, and other such stuff that we see in The Clone Wars all the time.

This is where Star Trek and Star Wars combat styles depart in the greatest of ways. In Star Wars the purpose of ships is to break through to a planet to land troops or to defend a planet from having troops landed, space combat is secondary to ground combat. In Star Trek ship combat is used to gain space superiority and therefor control over a region, and ground combat is secondary being used for finishing off the enemy and securing your hold on an area, not as the primary fight as it is in Star Wars.

Now I'm not saying mobility isn't an important factor, because it is. But on the other hand it is not the only factor as the chess analogy implies.


16:15:

This bit just bothered me a bit, not much here of technical merit. The use of the farm "fanatics" being used to describe anyone who thinks Federation ships are vastly superior seems somewhat unfair.

Do I think a Federation ship could "curb-stomp" a Stardestroyer in straight up combat? Well I wouldn't use those words exactly, but essentially yes (although not to the extreme to which Brian and others argue a Stardestroyer would curb-stomp a Federation ship (this is not to criticize them, just a comparison of scale (10-to-1 vs 10,000,000,000-to-1 kind of thing))).

Does this automatically make me a fanatic? No.
And do I have reasons? Yes.
Am I emotionally clinging to what I want the outcome to be? No.
Am I too emotionally engaged in this silly subject? Perhaps, but much less than many sports fans are to their sporting teams. So on the scale of things, no.

Circling back to the use of the word "fanatics", it was completely un-nessicary and did nothing to support his argument. All it did was serve to, likely inadvertently, attack the people who hold a different viewpoint (ad hominem).


17:15:

Here the video covers the quick landing of Imperial troops showing a clip of the invasion of Utapau by the clone army.

Now the clones did appear suddenly, but that's because they finished setting up their attack and they attacked. We have no idea how long it took to put all those men into position (and there wasn't all that many of them) plus more were still in the process of landing, hence all the gunships. For a more in-depth landing, see TCW: "Landing at Point Rain". All the clones there were deployed via gunships which suffered immense losses before even touching the ground. And the whole landing procedure took at least 2.5 minutes and was cut short by everyone being forced to land prematurely. This is all after the assault ships are already hanging out in the atmosphere.

To read more about specific Logistics bits go: here.


18:30:

Here Brian scratches another element off his list favoring the Federation because it would be nullified by a higher element. Well isn't that why the other element is higher? Because it is more important? Having better advantages does not remove your opponent's own advantages.


So this critique was short and contained far less information regarding actual technical comparisons. This is to be expected as it is about a conclusion. Which is why I didn't want to write one in the first place, I greatly prefer finding and analyzing direct evidence. But watching the video I saw several huge methodology flaws which I felt needed addressing.

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Re: Critique of scifights.net Federation vs. Empire: Conclus

Post by Firmus Piett » Sat Feb 08, 2014 3:26 pm

And what about the overall conclusion, 359? Do you feel the Federation would defeat the Empire, or vice versa.

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Re: Critique of scifights.net Federation vs. Empire: Conclus

Post by Mike DiCenso » Sat Feb 08, 2014 4:49 pm

I don't know about 359, but the conclusion I would come to is that things are a lot more even between the Galactic Empire of Star Wars and Star Trek than people realize.

The Empire cannot willy nilly invade the Federation and the rest of the Alpha Quadrant simply because their war effort would grind to halt as they scrounge around Voyager-style trying to get local starcharts and or scout for anything resembling hyperspace lanes. According to the EU, it took centuries to map the largest of the routes.

So that's a big, big problem for the Empire right there, if they are the invader, likewise, the Federation cannot just simply mount an invasion since as ST:VOY establishes, warp drive also requires good navigational data and it would take many decades to do that.

So both sides strategically are now bogged down in local skirmishing at the point of where first contact occurred. So the whole thing now is reduced to can individual ships or fleets defeat soundly one side or the other in combat. Can one side defeat the planetary defenses of the other. There I think, based on all available objective evidence the Empire is generally inferior to the Federation in that regard. Federation starships have superior range (75.000 km to 200,000 km or better versus 250-5000 km), on average better firepower, and greater acceleration and maneuverability. The Empire does have some advantages; namely superior industrial capability and they have practical A.I. in the form of droids. However, except for scouting, the Empire never ever used droids for combat, even when it would've given them a decisive advantage over the Rebellion.

The Death Star would be a big factor, but the Federation may be able to counter that, and even may use protomatter/trilithilum weapons to destroy the stars and by extension planets of the Empire.

You see, Firmus, without the two Saxton-authored ICS books (books that Brian contributed to) and their over-inflated numbers, the Empire just cannot pull any easy win, and it will suffer mightily for any win it does manage to pull off. The Federation cannot go invade the Empire, but it can hold out against the Empire over time and maybe bloody the Empire enough to force a peace, or give the Rebellion the leg up they need to topple Palpatine's regime.
-Mike

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Re: Critique of scifights.net Federation vs. Empire: Conclus

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sun Feb 09, 2014 6:35 pm

There are more armed forces and ships per square light year in the Alpha Quadrant than in the Empire.
Data charts in Trek don't seem to be as ubiquitous and easily traded as those in SW where any civilian with some money can circle the galaxy in a taxi starcab if he wants to.
Trek ships seem to have more firepower per cubic meter as well. Ranges, SL speeds, accelerations and maneuverability all seem well superior. FTL speeds in uncharted territories still come as good if not better than those in the Empire, although the Empire has some crazy very speeds evidenced in movies, although it seems most of those super fast routes were only used by the Sith (Palpatine and his accolytes). Very little times the EU has every evidenced the use of similar speeds at all.

The Empire's main force was always about total numbers + Death Stars.
When total numbers prove to be a logistics conundrum and the Death Stars not so secure against guided and burrowing torps, teleporations and other weapons of doom, the Empire isn't that impressive.

Then you add the EU's supposedly mothballed fleet that Palpatine kept in reserve, but somehow we can't see how this combines well with other EU facts like the Empire not being able to protect all convoys, having to cannibalize some FTL transceivers to build his star destroyers, or the fact that they were at pain to intrude the Dak system, and you've got a different canvas there as well.

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Re: Critique of scifights.net Federation vs. Empire: Conclus

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sun Feb 09, 2014 11:15 pm

On the other hand, the Alpha Quadrant is not just one big happy family either.
Right in the Dominion war, I could see Palpatine pushing sides for a mutually assured destruction, reinforcing most notably the Dominion in drips so they get a favourable push when needed.
It really depends on where the connection is made between both universes.
Besides, being 100% human, the Empire would easily first appear as a somehow rough and uptight but military civilization.
In many occasions, this would open so many doors and lead the Empire straight to Earth, UFP headquarters. Protocol droids would easily take care of the language barrier, as muc has universal translators would on the other.

There is no absolute reason for the first encounter to automatically translate into a battle, just as much as there's no reason for a first battle to result into a war unless one side is trigger happy and looking for any excuse to engage any enemy despite knowing simply zip about it.

I could easily see some members of the UFP considering dealing fervently and favourably with the Empire (especially if the UFP is stuck in a period of war or threatened by the Borg), while other utopic hippies siding for the "terrorists", the Rebels.

The introduction of Trek forces in the SW galaxy by the time of the Empire's end could radically change the face of the conflict and prevent certain key events from happening. With the conflict gaining in intensity, both Skywalkers may never get the occasion to get closer enough as to bond and destroy the Sith.

Besides, if Trek tech is superior, the Empire has certainly more resources at its disposal to incoporate it to its military in specialized units and ships than the Rebels do, who will largely rely on gifts.

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Re: Critique of scifights.net Federation vs. Empire: Conclus

Post by 359 » Tue Feb 11, 2014 12:57 am

Firmus Piett wrote:And what about the overall conclusion, 359? Do you feel the Federation would defeat the Empire, or vice versa.
I try not to engage in generating conclusions as a general rule because there always seems to be something more to bring to the table, and that's what I prefer working on.

However, currently I would have to say that I disagree with the video's conclusion that the Empire would win. And while ship-to-ship combat would be highly in favor of the Federation in my opinion I don't think it would be a quick stomp in their favor either. For the most part the Federation is very defensive by nature and it could easily be quite some time before they made an offensive. Also, depending on how you set this conflict up, warp drive is still limiting in terms of crossing a galaxy although not as much as some would make it out to be.

In the end I think that there are several options depending on one's mood:

1) They never actually fight, as Mr. Oragahn mentioned.
2) They fight until they both no longer feel it is in their best interest to continue.
3) Parts of starfleet, after a long and drawn out war, finally inflicts enough damage to small sections of the Empire to force the Empire to surrender.

The first one is just boring, and I can't imagine a Federation intent on destroying another civilization so I generally assume the Empire appears, and quickly becomes bent on the destruction of the Federation for some reason or another.

The second and third seem both plausible to me depending on how close the Empire is and how aggressively Starfleet acts. Once they get there Starfleet could take a system and move on to the next one at a decent pace, or at least secure space superiority, I haven't done too much on the subject of ground combat yet.
So overall I would have to say I give victory to the Federation, but it would not be a short conflict.

Sorry this is such a jumble, as I said earlier, I haven't spent much time thinking about conclusions recently.

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