Enterprise E wrote:Yeah, this is a slaughter, assuming comparable firepower, even between individual turbolaser bolts and phaser/disruptor blasts.
Assuming comparable firepower is a rather big assumption, given the nature of the debate.
The Empire has, at its height, 25,000 Star Destroyers or so of the Venator and Imperial types (Victory as well if you wish to include the EU), plus at least one Super Star Destroyer, and numerous smaller starships that likely won't have much effect on the battle. In the Dominion War, the Dominion, near the end, had 30,000 starships of various classes, with the Federation/Klingon/Romulan (FKR) Alliance having, probably at least 15,000 to likely close to 30,000 starships. Even if you include the low end for that, that's likely at least 45,000 starships or so against 25,000. And that's not including the Federation Attack Fighters and runabouts.
You do realize that the 25,000 figure is only for star destroyers, right? There would be many, many more smaller craft. Also remember that said figure was not for a full scale war mobilization against a conventional full.
I know that the Empire has starfighters as well, but they're not good for much besides being phaser and torpedo sponges.
Which actually makes them helpful. The Enterprise had less than 300 photon torpedos; if they have to expend 70 of them, they lose about a fourth of their payload and lots of time.
Heck, the smaller Imperial starships are likely only going to be useful against the weakest of Federation ships and as buffers between the Federation/Dominion fleets and the Star Destroyers.
This is false. Even a cruiser was stated in a Lando novel to have continent destroying weapons. A civilian cruiser in a novel flew within 3000 kms of a neutron star without suffering any damage. The Enterprise could not last for more than 18 minutes tens of millions of miles away from a pulsar.
And this is only the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. Who knows how many ships the Dominion has back in Gamma Quadrant.
Said ships would literally take decades to get to any place significant, so they're irrelvent.
They were able to send through more than two thousand starships to reinforce their fleet in the AQ during the Dominion War, and most of those ships looked to be Battlecruisers to me, which is why such a small number, compared to the 30,000 that were seen at the end of the war, may have been so significant at the time.
2000 ships would hardly be a tide changer in a war like this.
Also, even though the Galactic Empire has smaller ships like Corellian Corvettes and Nebulon B Class Frigates, those starships are much weaker than ISDs, and the ISD is the only ship that I think stands a chance against some of the weaker Star Trek ships.
You need to provide evidence if you are to claim it.
And this is before we get into the argument of weapons range between the two powers. We have numerous examples of long range combat in the tens of thousands, to even hundreds of thousands of kilometers for Star Trek.
Only in small scale battles, and even then they're usually within visual range. In every single large scale engagement in Star Trek the battles are always fought in visual range. Don't believe me in that? Go watch a borg cube battle or dominion battle online. They're all within a few hundred meters. Sometimes they're actually at danger of colliding into eachother. Where's this uber long range that you claim?
The maximum I've seen in either the movies or The Clone Wars tv series is hundreds of kilometers.
The maximum combat range I've ever seen in a Star Trek engagement involving more than 10 ships is in the tens of kms.
The FKR Alliance and Dominion forces not only vastly outnumber the Imperial fleet, but also have superior weapons range, too.
You yourself admitted that the imperial fleet would have far more smaller craft.
As for the Death Star, it has its weaknesses, and even if we include the DS II, it may still be taken down by Changeling infiltrators, or by any number of Federation tech of the week items, like a Trilithium Torpedo that blows up the star system it's in, or even a massive assault by Transphasic Torpedoes.
There's a reason why those technologies are Trek plot devices of the week. They don't ever get used again, or at least very rarely. Why? Either there's some unmentioned technical limitation to these technologies, or starfleet is a moron filled incompetent piece of shit when it comes to military capability. Probably a bit of both. So unless if the Star Trek side suddenly gets competence, they won't use these technologies.
All in all, the Federation, its allies, and the Dominion just have too much power and weapons at their disposal for the Empire to be able to win in a war like this.
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You haven't proven these allegedly more powerful weapons, shields or ranges.
You've also cleverly dodged the issue of logistics and industrial might.
The Empire built the Death Star 2 in secret in 6 months to 60% completion. The would equate to literally several million star destroyers every second. That's right; every second. Even after several years of full military mobilization the Dominion could barely muster 30,000 ships. If you were to compare the respective volume and mass of the two feats, you'd notice that the Empire is literally quadrillions of times larger and more capable in terms of industry.
Logistics. For the sake of the debate, let's say that the two sides have some sort of wormhole connecting each other. It took Voyager 7 years to cross a part of a quadrant of the galaxy. Assuming a 100,000 LY diameter for the Milky Way, that's 25,000 light years...and this isn't even taking into account that it was only a part of the galaxy, and was being boosted by various deus ex machinas, including god like beings.
There are two interpretations of the size of the Star Wars galaxy: 120,000 LYs and about 25,000 LYs. Two possibilities:
120,000 LYs: 33.6 years to cross the Star Wars galaxy. By then, the Empire could have produced at least 40 Death Star 2's.
25,000 LYs: 7 years to cross the Star Wars galaxy. By then, the Empire could have produced at least 8 Death Star 2's.
What does this mean? Depending on your interpretation of the size of the Star Wars galaxy, any Star Trek invasion force would be facing 8 to 40 Death Star 2's when they get there. No amount of reasonable trekkie arguments could rationalize how the Federation or Dominion could take on that many moon sized planet busting battle stations. Oh, and many of the crew members would be old men if we use the higher time estimate.
And these numbers are ridiculously conservative, because they do not take into account:
The Death Star 2 was constructed in secret in the outer rim. In a full scale military mobilization, it would be constructed in an easier to reach location with more resources to use.
As more Death Star 2's are produced, it will get easier and easier to produce them as they get more and more used to it.
The Voyager had help from god like beings.
The Voyager didn't even cross the entire quadrant.
The Voyager iirc had to refuel.
The Dominion and Federation both have failed to plot out their own galaxy in several centuries. They would have no idea where any major Star Wars planets are.
