A challenge to Trekkies

[StarWarsStarTrek]

Here's my answer to some of the claims as I see it:

Woah...that's a lot of responses.

Ok, to counter some of the main arguments:

1. The asteroid field scene with that big asteroid hitting the star destroyer was AFTER it had been in a very high intensity asteroid field for at least a day with "multi megaton compression bomb" asteroid hitting them.

But there's still the issue of turbolasers being used against unshielded hulls, and the damage they inflict per hit is nothing like the damage done by that asteroid impact.

Since when were turbolasers EVER unable to destroy something that was unshielded in the movies? In the movies we never see them fail to destroy an unshielded object.

3. The ROTS opening scene was too close for turbolasers to be used, hence why you don't see ships using them. Also, since the CIS was a) trying to LAND TROOPS into Coruscant and b) needed the element of surprise, it's clear that they would want to get within really close range of Coruscant. The ROTS novel implies that parts of the battle were fought in ranges of at least 100s or 1000s of kms.

What makes you say that turbolasers weren't being used by the ships? They certainly looked like turbolasers to me, and the placement of the guns indicates that they were as well.

The manned cannons did not look like turbolasers at all and did not fire the green energy beams that turbolasers seem to fire.

5. The industrial and numerical advantage that Star Wars has makes a conventional war a forgone conclusion, even if technology was equal. WW2 proved this; the Allies won largely because of a >2:1 industrial advantage, in this case it's a millions to one industrial advantage, which results in an epic curbstomp.

The problem is that the Empire is going to have a tough time getting to the Federation, and vice versa. The Federation can simply mine their side of the wormhole. Unlike WW2, it is the only way for either side to reach the other. Besides, the Galactic Empire still has to deal with the Rebel Alliance. And even without the Alliance to deal with, unless they get maps pretty early in an invasion, their progress will be quite slow. The war's result may well be who gets maps of the other's side first since the Federation has any number of ways to take out Coruscant.

Any Star Wars faction is still going to be able to invade the Federation if they devote enough resources to it; however, the Federation has absolutely no chance of invading the Star Wars galaxy.

6. Centerpoint station can destroy stuff from across the galaxy. Therefore, it can effectively destroy the Federation while any Federation force would have to find Centerpoint station and then spend decades reaching it.

The Federation is in another galaxy. Unless that wormhole has a direct line of sight on Earth from its opening, then I find it difficult to believe that Centerpoint can destroy it. The best that it can hope for is that the Federation fleet lingers close to the entrance so that Centerpoint can get a bead on it on both sides. And once the first defense force is lost, the Federation will adapt and find other means of fortifying the wormhole. There's also the issue of finding the Federation fleet, and this only becomes a problem if the Federation invades the SW galaxy, something that would be pretty out of character for them.

If that technoblabble wormhole can allow for ships to pass through, why wouldn't it allow for weapons to pass through?

7. The sun crusher was expected to take a full on shot from the death star. It could simply make the Federation stars go nova and the Federation can't do jack to stop it.

Too bad that physics is its bane. When matter and antimatter collide, they annihilate. It's not a question of firepower, but having the right tools to take out the Sun Crusher. Star Trek is one of the few universes that has the tools necessary to destroy the Sun Crusher, in the form of antimatter, and has such tools in both abundance, and easy to deploy weapons. Remember that antimatter spread that the E-D used against the Borg Cube in "Best of Both Worlds"? It was merely a fireworks display because the Borg Cube had shields. Unfortunately, the Sun Crusher's defense is Quantum Molecular Armor, not shields. It's laser cannons were destroyed by fire from the Star Destroyer and TIE Fighters, so if it did have shields of some sort, they were clearly not planetary shield level shields.

How about some proof? Proof that the Federation can find a starfighter sized superweapon, outrace its far faster hyperdrive, get through its armor and blow it up before it destroys the nearest star?

[Praeothmin]

How about you address some of my points?

:)

[StarWarsStarTrek]

Woah...that's a lot of responses.

Ok, to counter some of the main arguments:

1. The asteroid field scene with that big asteroid hitting the star destroyer was AFTER it had been in a very high intensity asteroid field for at least a day with "multi megaton compression bomb" asteroid hitting them.
2. The CWC series asteroid field scenes are pretty reasonable, given that an asteroid field behind the ship wouldn't stop turbolasers, but would cause them to go off early, sort of like flares.
3. The ROTS opening scene was too close for turbolasers to be used, hence why you don't see ships using them. Also, since the CIS was a) trying to LAND TROOPS into Coruscant and b) needed the element of surprise, it's clear that they would want to get within really close range of Coruscant. The ROTS novel implies that parts of the battle were fought in ranges of at least 100s or 1000s of kms.
4. The Federation didn't mass produce transwarp/slipstream/etc., nor is there any proof that they're as fast as hyperdrive.
5. The industrial and numerical advantage that Star Wars has makes a conventional war a forgone conclusion, even if technology was equal. WW2 proved this; the Allies won largely because of a >2:1 industrial advantage, in this case it's a millions to one industrial advantage, which results in an epic curbstomp.
6. Centerpoint station can destroy stuff from across the galaxy. Therefore, it can effectively destroy the Federation while any Federation force would have to find Centerpoint station and then spend decades reaching it.
7. The sun crusher was expected to take a full on shot from the death star. It could simply make the Federation stars go nova and the Federation can't do jack to stop it.

1-Are you talking about the asteroid field with the explosive asteroids, where two small asteroids colliding create an explosion as if they had been bombs?
It wasn’t that dense, and they did not stay there for more than a few hours (the time for Solo to examine the ship, perform some repairs, and discover the mynocks), and for ships capable of resisting Gigatons, these -never heard of- "multi megaton compression bomb" asteroids should not even have been an issue, unless hundreds hit each ship at the same time…
The SW wiki doesn’t mention the belt to be very dense...

The belt WAS very dense, this is stated in the ESB novel and is obviously on screen, as you can see numerous asteroids of various sizes moving at rather fast speed.

2-Nope, 200 GTs TLs would have made short works of those asteroids, pushed the debris towards the Republic fleet, creating navigation issues, and if the ships were that powerful, than the AT-TE’s shots would have been completely useless, which they weren’t…

That depends on the size of the asteroid belt. How big was it?

3-As Khas mentions, they were indeed used, and at point blank, and they were devastating…

Yeah, and? The shields of both sides were obviously down.

As for ranges, we have many more examples in ST of battles at ranges of 5000, 40 000, and even over 200 000 km, so ST clearly has the range advantage…

And we also have examples of ST ships going within 10 km to hit a giant borg cube. Long range battles in ST are the exception, not the norm. Meanwhile, long range battles in SW are the norm, not the exception.

4-Well, you did not use any figures to prove ho fast Hyperdrives are, so your point is moot. Khas, OTOH, provided a 20 000 LY within an hour figure for Transwarp, and I’ve provided a few figures for simple Warp which were in the hundreds of c, and even over a million c.

That's the thing; the highest showings for warp drive are still around on par with the lowest showings for hyperdrive. We have instances of SW ships going across the galaxy in a matter of hours.

Can you provide speed figures for Hyperdrives?

To go across a 120,000 LY galaxy in a day (which most SW ships can do in under a day) would take a speed of about 40 million C if I'm getting the math right.

5-Problem is, while the Allies (mostly Russia and the USA) could send their complete forces in the war, not having to keep the peace in their territory, the Empire already commits its forces to secure holdings, and keep the Rebels in line, and thus cannot send their full forces into the fray…

That's your only excuse? So if the Empire gets to devote its full forces to an invasion, or if the New Republic/Galactic Alliance devotes its full forces to an invasion, then Star Wars wins?

6-Indeed, and I cannot see how they could defend against it, but the problem is that the Empire, in order to use the weapon, first need to send to the ST Galaxy, and then map it in order to obtain the necessary coordinates for the station’s weapons to work.
Not an easy task, and then the station could be discovered by the Federation or its allies…

It would be difficult, but once they DO map the ST galaxy and get a superweapon over there, the Federation's completely screwed.

7-And if it was their prerogative, the Feds could simply fire Trilitium torpedoes inside an Imperial star and make it go Nova as well, or use Red Matter in the same way, or the Genesis device.

Except that Federation warp drive is too slow to reach any Star Wars star system.

You are using “one-shot” special Imperial weapons, yet you want to deny the same for ST.
That’s not a fair debating tactic.
If the Imperials have access to their super tech, then so do the Feds, which includes Transphasic Torpedoes, Transphasic Armor, etc, etc… :)

Transphasic torpedos - unlike Centerpoint station, they can't fire from across the galaxy, so they'd have to be sent slowly to a SW star system.
Transphasic armor - which helps against 200 gt turbolasers how?

[Praeothmin]

The belt WAS very dense, this is stated in the ESB novel and is obviously on screen, as you can see numerous asteroids of various sizes moving at rather fast speed.

No, it wasn't...
While there are clusters of high density, the sixe of the rocks should pose no danger whatsoever to ships capable of resisting 200GT of firepower...
Plus, these asteroids were pretty funky, since they tended to explode like fireworks when they hit each other, as seen at 2:31 of the linked video...

That depends on the size of the asteroid belt. How big was it?

Doesn't matter, AT-TEs still destroyed those capital ships using anti infantry vehicules weapons, not Capital ship grade weapons...

Yeah, and? The shields of both sides were obviously down.

No no no, my young Padawan, your first position was that no TLs were used in the battle, while we can clearly see, at 2:46 (when the fighters pass between two ships), they were ...
Also, looking at the movie, you clearly see the battle is not fought at any type of long range at all, contrary to your claims...

And we also have examples of ST ships going within 10 km to hit a giant borg cube. Long range battles in ST are the exception, not the norm. Meanwhile, long range battles in SW are the norm, not the exception.

Actually, RotJ, RotS, and TCW all show battle ranges in the low km range, nothing longer.
Care to back up your claims with evidence of this in the movies or TCW, like we did?

That's the thing; the highest showings for warp drive are still around on par with the lowest showings for hyperdrive. We have instances of SW ships going across the galaxy in a matter of hours.

I've always been of the opinion, based on what we see in shows and movies, the Hyperdrive is indeed a bit faster than Warp Drive, but what we've shown is that the difference isn't as big as Warsies would like us to believe...

To go across a 120,000 LY galaxy in a day (which most SW ships can do in under a day) would take a speed of about 40 million C if I'm getting the math right.

Well, this is where I ask for proof that the SW Galaxy is indeed 120 000LY, because two sources in higher canon, both movie novels, state the opposite.
And second, can you provide evidence that most ships can indeed cross the Galaxy in less than a day, because you haven't for the moment...

That's your only excuse? So if the Empire gets to devote its full forces to an invasion, or if the New Republic/Galactic Alliance devotes its full forces to an invasion, then Star Wars wins?

Yes, but un-necessary.
My answer to who would win always depended on the time period.
If we give the SW Galaxy the DS or the DS II, then SW wins, even if it doesn't throw all its ships in the fray...

It would be difficult, but once they DO map the ST galaxy and get a superweapon over there, the Federation's completely screwed.

Yes, if they do indeed succeed in getting maps, then I agree the Federation, the Klingons, the entire Milky way is screwed... :)

Except that Federation warp drive is too slow to reach any Star Wars star system

Not really, since the higher Canon points to a very small SW Galaxy, barely bigger than the Federation, which most ships can cross in a few days, and in less than a day for the fastest, like the E-E...
And since the Empire has over 1 000 000 systems as of ANH, there will be plenty of systems close to any wormhole leading to the SW Galaxy...

Transphasic armor - which helps against 200 gt turbolasers how?

200GT weapons that don't exist in the higher canon, such as the movies, TCW or even novels of the movies...

[Khas]

About DS I, it really wasn't all that. A huge waste of resources, with a glaring weakspot. In the novel "Survivor's Quest", by Timothy Zahn, Mara Jade mentions that the Death Star's design stunk, it just happenned to be big and mean enough to get away with it. To which Luke replies "mostly".

And while DS II is a huge improvement, it still can be taken out by a Genesis device or red matter, neither of which Section 31 would think twice about using.

[Picard]

Ok, so how about a Trekkie (no offense, simply a term) try and answer these challenges. If 2 of these can be proven, then I'll concede.

1. A blatant, unjustifiable contradiction by G canon OR 3 or more by T/C canon of the ICS.
2. An explanation as to how the Federation matches or even comes close to matching Star War's industrial and numerical advantage.
3. An explanation as to how the Federation's warp drive can possibly be matched to the far faster Star Wars hyperdrive.
4. A plan as to how the Federation could possibly mount any successful invasion of the Star Wars galaxy in under 100 years.
5. An explanation as to how the Federation counters the sun crusher, centerpoint station or even the 2 death stars.

1) http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/10/i ... acies.html
2) http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/11/s ... -size.html
3) http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/08/f ... drive.html
4) Just mobilize one third of Starfleet plus any addition from allies, fly to SW galaxy (presuming there is connection via wormhole) and blast Imperial Starfleet to bits and pieces
5) Death Stars are only true issue since SW EU is not any more canon than ST EU, and these can be blasted by Attack Fighters.

[Enterprise E]

Woah...that's a lot of responses.

Ok, to counter some of the main arguments:

1. The asteroid field scene with that big asteroid hitting the star destroyer was AFTER it had been in a very high intensity asteroid field for at least a day with "multi megaton compression bomb" asteroid hitting them.

But there's still the issue of turbolasers being used against unshielded hulls, and the damage they inflict per hit is nothing like the damage done by that asteroid impact.

Since when were turbolasers EVER unable to destroy something that was unshielded in the movies? In the movies we never see them fail to destroy an unshielded object.

Turbolasers have never been shown to disintegrate something as large as the bridge tower of a Star Destroyer with one hit. The one long turbolaser blast fired from the Mon Calamari cruiser missed the bridge tower. It only hit with three subsequent blasts fired at the base of the tower, and the way the explosions played out indicated that the ship suffered from a chain reaction destruction.

3. The ROTS opening scene was too close for turbolasers to be used, hence why you don't see ships using them. Also, since the CIS was a) trying to LAND TROOPS into Coruscant and b) needed the element of surprise, it's clear that they would want to get within really close range of Coruscant. The ROTS novel implies that parts of the battle were fought in ranges of at least 100s or 1000s of kms.

What makes you say that turbolasers weren't being used by the ships? They certainly looked like turbolasers to me, and the placement of the guns indicates that they were as well.

The manned cannons did not look like turbolasers at all and did not fire the green energy beams that turbolasers seem to fire.

Since when has color coding indicated the type of energy weapon in use in Star Wars? If you want to go down this route, then you should know that the laser cannons on the Republic starfighters and gunships were all green, while the energy weapons on the Venators were blue. To me, that would indicate that if there was a difference, that they would be turbolasers, not laser cannons, which were green in the republic era.

5. The industrial and numerical advantage that Star Wars has makes a conventional war a forgone conclusion, even if technology was equal. WW2 proved this; the Allies won largely because of a >2:1 industrial advantage, in this case it's a millions to one industrial advantage, which results in an epic curbstomp.

The problem is that the Empire is going to have a tough time getting to the Federation, and vice versa. The Federation can simply mine their side of the wormhole. Unlike WW2, it is the only way for either side to reach the other. Besides, the Galactic Empire still has to deal with the Rebel Alliance. And even without the Alliance to deal with, unless they get maps pretty early in an invasion, their progress will be quite slow. The war's result may well be who gets maps of the other's side first since the Federation has any number of ways to take out Coruscant.

Any Star Wars faction is still going to be able to invade the Federation if they devote enough resources to it; however, the Federation has absolutely no chance of invading the Star Wars galaxy.

The question becomes how many ships can the Empire afford to send to invade the Federation? There is only one point of entrance, and it's a pretty good choke point. The Empire has about 25,000 Star Destroyers, Imperial, Victory, and Venator. The disparity in firepower between these ships and the medium and light cruisers of the Empire is very large. The disparity in the firepower between Trek ships, however, is not nearly so great. And in my opinion, I think that a Galaxy class starship can beat an Imperial Star Destroyer in a close battle, and that's before taking into account the extreme weapons range advantage the Galaxy, and other Trek ships, has. The Empire's medium and light cruisers are, to me, only going to be good for potentially ramming Federation ships or stations, or as energy and torpedo sponges to shield the Star Destroyers from the Federation onslaught. And as for Star Trek, they don't have to invade the SW galaxy to win the war and take down the Empire. Just fire a Genesis torpedo on Coruscant or use a Trilithium torpedo on Coruscant's star and Palpatine dies if he's on the planet.

6. Centerpoint station can destroy stuff from across the galaxy. Therefore, it can effectively destroy the Federation while any Federation force would have to find Centerpoint station and then spend decades reaching it.

The Federation is in another galaxy. Unless that wormhole has a direct line of sight on Earth from its opening, then I find it difficult to believe that Centerpoint can destroy it. The best that it can hope for is that the Federation fleet lingers close to the entrance so that Centerpoint can get a bead on it on both sides. And once the first defense force is lost, the Federation will adapt and find other means of fortifying the wormhole. There's also the issue of finding the Federation fleet, and this only becomes a problem if the Federation invades the SW galaxy, something that would be pretty out of character for them.

If that technoblabble wormhole can allow for ships to pass through, why wouldn't it allow for weapons to pass through?

It can. The issue is whether or not the opening would have a direct line of sight towards Earth. A little too far to the right or left, or up or down, or actually being behind the wormhole for that matter, and Centerpoint's main weapon would not be able to hit Sol. And before Centerpoint comes into play, the Empire would have to get the star charts of the Milky Way galaxy and get Earth's precise location. If the Rebellion is still going strong and the Empire starts to amass troops near Centerpoint with the intent to use it, I could easily see them telling the Federation about Centerpoint, especially if someone close to whatever project to reclaiming Centerpoint, defects to the Rebel Alliance.

7. The sun crusher was expected to take a full on shot from the death star. It could simply make the Federation stars go nova and the Federation can't do jack to stop it.

Too bad that physics is its bane. When matter and antimatter collide, they annihilate. It's not a question of firepower, but having the right tools to take out the Sun Crusher. Star Trek is one of the few universes that has the tools necessary to destroy the Sun Crusher, in the form of antimatter, and has such tools in both abundance, and easy to deploy weapons. Remember that antimatter spread that the E-D used against the Borg Cube in "Best of Both Worlds"? It was merely a fireworks display because the Borg Cube had shields. Unfortunately, the Sun Crusher's defense is Quantum Molecular Armor, not shields. It's laser cannons were destroyed by fire from the Star Destroyer and TIE Fighters, so if it did have shields of some sort, they were clearly not planetary shield level shields.

How about some proof? Proof that the Federation can find a starfighter sized superweapon, outrace its far faster hyperdrive, get through its armor and blow it up before it destroys the nearest star?

The Federation could find a Soong type android energy reading from light years away, and they weren't looking for any Soong type android signatures. In a wartime setting, I think that they'll pick up any anomalous readings that appear in or near any major star system and they will investigate. Don't forget that in a wartime setting, the major worlds will have fleets protecting them, and it won't take long for an intra system jump to bring them close to their own stars. They will pick up the Sun Crusher and they will fire on it. When reading that it has no shields, yet regular weapons are ineffective, I could easily see someone deciding to use antimatter against it since the craft is still made of matter. As for shooting down the torpedo, we've seen Federation starships shoot down missile weapons and even photon torpedoes before they managed to reach their targets before. As for reaching the Sun Crusher before it fires or leaves the system, assuming it doesn't come into a system patrolled by the Federation fleet or a defense force of a member state, the size of the Star Wars Galaxy is still up for debate, with many indicating that it could be merely 30,000 light years in diameter, or even smaller, to the point of being the size of the Federation (I still tend to go with between 30,000-50,000 light years in diameter, but that's still a high end for me). I also have yet to see any indication in any EU source that I've read that says that it is larger than Milky Way. The largest I've seen is that its size is comparable to Milky Way's. And if it is smaller, than the speed advantage of the Sun Crusher will decrease, depending on the galaxy's size, to the point where it might not be able to outrun Federation starships. And once the Federation catches the Sun Crusher, it merely uses my plan of attack to destroy it.

[Who is like God arbour]

Since when were turbolasers EVER unable to destroy something that was unshielded in the movies? In the movies we never see them fail to destroy an unshielded object.

From the ROTS novelization (Hardcover), pg.90:

• • • As its shields failed, Invisible Hand began to roll, whirling like a bullet from a rifled slugthrower, trailing spiral jets of crystallizing gas that gushed from multiple hull ruptures. The rolling picked up speed, breaking the targeting locks of the ship's Republic adversaries. Unable to pound the same point again and again, their turbolasers weren't powerful enough to breach the Hand's heavy armor directly; their tracking points became rings that circled the ship, chewing gradually into the hull in tightening garrotes of fire.

The heavy armour of the unshielded Invisible Hand is the same that had problems with withstanding the heat of a more or less controlled entry into the atmosphere of Coruscant:

• • • 
      
      
      
      

And now look at the outer hull of the Enterprise after an totally uncontrolled entry into the atmosphere of Veridian III:

• • • 

Let's recapitulate: The heavy armour of the unshielded Invisible Hand burns off at a more or less controlled entry into the atmosphere of Coruscant. But the same armor can stop turbolaser-fire.

But the outer hull of the Enterprise is able to withstand an uncontrolled entry into the atmosphere of Veridian III.

Simple logic dictates that the outer hull of the Enterprise is able to withstand turbolaser fire better than the heavy armor of the Invisible Hand.

With other words: Turbolasers used against StarFleet ships are not able to impress anyone.

[StarWarsStarTrek]

The belt WAS very dense, this is stated in the ESB novel and is obviously on screen, as you can see numerous asteroids of various sizes moving at rather fast speed.

No, it wasn't...
While there are clusters of high density, the sixe of the rocks should pose no danger whatsoever to ships capable of resisting 200GT of firepower...
Plus, these asteroids were pretty funky, since they tended to explode like fireworks when they hit each other, as seen at 2:31 of the linked video...

There is still a mention in some novels of multi megaton compression bomb level asteroids hitting star destroyers at a rate of at least one hit per second.

That depends on the size of the asteroid belt. How big was it?

Doesn't matter, AT-TEs still destroyed those capital ships using anti infantry vehicules weapons, not Capital ship grade weapons...

Where?

Yeah, and? The shields of both sides were obviously down.

No no no, my young Padawan, your first position was that no TLs were used in the battle, while we can clearly see, at 2:46 (when the fighters pass between two ships), they were ...

Interestingly enough, that blast was actually from a SPHAT firing from inside the star destroyer according to Wookieepedia, and it makes sense, since the blast is clearly coming from INSIDE the ship.

Also, looking at the movie, you clearly see the battle is not fought at any type of long range at all, contrary to your claims...

As I have explained before, the CIS fleet was trying to LAND on Coruscant with the ELEMENT OF SURPRISE. Duking it out with a larger and more powerful Republic fleet would not work out.

And we also have examples of ST ships going within 10 km to hit a giant borg cube. Long range battles in ST are the exception, not the norm. Meanwhile, long range battles in SW are the norm, not the exception.

Actually, RotJ, RotS, and TCW all show battle ranges in the low km range, nothing longer.
Care to back up your claims with evidence of this in the movies or TCW, like we did?

Actually, RotJ clearly shows a space battle in the hundreds to thousands of KMs. Otherwise, the Executor would have been bigger than the range between the two sides.

That's the thing; the highest showings for warp drive are still around on par with the lowest showings for hyperdrive. We have instances of SW ships going across the galaxy in a matter of hours.

I've always been of the opinion, based on what we see in shows and movies, the Hyperdrive is indeed a bit faster than Warp Drive, but what we've shown is that the difference isn't as big as Warsies would like us to believe...

Hyperdrive is thousands of times faster than warp drive, as is clearly shown with hyperdrive's ability to allow for galactic travel within hours.

To go across a 120,000 LY galaxy in a day (which most SW ships can do in under a day) would take a speed of about 40 million C if I'm getting the math right.

Well, this is where I ask for proof that the SW Galaxy is indeed 120 000LY, because two sources in higher canon, both movie novels, state the opposite.
And second, can you provide evidence that most ships can indeed cross the Galaxy in less than a day, because you haven't for the moment...

The movies are filled with instances of ships traveling across large parts of the galaxy in under a day.

I got my 120,000 LY claim from an EU source. Even if we take a smaller sized galaxy, we still get millions of C, which is far faster than warp.

That's your only excuse? So if the Empire gets to devote its full forces to an invasion, or if the New Republic/Galactic Alliance devotes its full forces to an invasion, then Star Wars wins?

Yes, but un-necessary.
My answer to who would win always depended on the time period.
If we give the SW Galaxy the DS or the DS II, then SW wins, even if it doesn't throw all its ships in the fray...

Oh, then Star Wars wins!

It would be difficult, but once they DO map the ST galaxy and get a superweapon over there, the Federation's completely screwed.

Yes, if they do indeed succeed in getting maps, then I agree the Federation, the Klingons, the entire Milky way is screwed... :)

Yep.

Except that Federation warp drive is too slow to reach any Star Wars star system

Not really, since the higher Canon points to a very small SW Galaxy, barely bigger than the Federation, which most ships can cross in a few days, and in less than a day for the fastest, like the E-E...

Uh, no. It took Voyager 7 years to cross the galaxy, even with deus ex machinas to help them.

And since the Empire has over 1 000 000 systems as of ANH, there will be plenty of systems close to any wormhole leading to the SW Galaxy...

Uh, what? Even a million planets is a small portion of the galaxy; the Federation would have lots of trouble finding and reaching Star Wars planets.

Transphasic armor - which helps against 200 gt turbolasers how?

200GT weapons that don't exist in the higher canon, such as the movies, TCW or even novels of the movies...

"vaporize a small town" - contrary to what darkstar claims, Mos Eisley is NOT a typical small town. Taris's cities are at least the size of Texas. A decent sized city is about 5 times the size of an average small town (darkstar's small town is about 1.5 miles long, Rockville in Maryland is about 5 miles long), but let's be fair and say 10.

Texas is about 790 miles long. Scaling down, that makes the average Star Wars small town about 79 miles long. That makes the ability to vaporize said "small" town somewhere from 20 gigatons to actually more than 200 gigatons.

[StarWarsStarTrek]

Woah...that's a lot of responses.

Ok, to counter some of the main arguments:

1. The asteroid field scene with that big asteroid hitting the star destroyer was AFTER it had been in a very high intensity asteroid field for at least a day with "multi megaton compression bomb" asteroid hitting them.

But there's still the issue of turbolasers being used against unshielded hulls, and the damage they inflict per hit is nothing like the damage done by that asteroid impact.

Since when were turbolasers EVER unable to destroy something that was unshielded in the movies? In the movies we never see them fail to destroy an unshielded object.

Turbolasers have never been shown to disintegrate something as large as the bridge tower of a Star Destroyer with one hit. The one long turbolaser blast fired from the Mon Calamari cruiser missed the bridge tower. It only hit with three subsequent blasts fired at the base of the tower, and the way the explosions played out indicated that the ship suffered from a chain reaction destruction.

Still, a turbolaser didn't ever fail to destroy an unshielded target in the movies (I'll get to that other post later), so we don't know their upper limit from the movies...but we do from the ICS.

3. The ROTS opening scene was too close for turbolasers to be used, hence why you don't see ships using them. Also, since the CIS was a) trying to LAND TROOPS into Coruscant and b) needed the element of surprise, it's clear that they would want to get within really close range of Coruscant. The ROTS novel implies that parts of the battle were fought in ranges of at least 100s or 1000s of kms.

What makes you say that turbolasers weren't being used by the ships? They certainly looked like turbolasers to me, and the placement of the guns indicates that they were as well.

The manned cannons did not look like turbolasers at all and did not fire the green energy beams that turbolasers seem to fire.

Since when has color coding indicated the type of energy weapon in use in Star Wars? If you want to go down this route, then you should know that the laser cannons on the Republic starfighters and gunships were all green, while the energy weapons on the Venators were blue. To me, that would indicate that if there was a difference, that they would be turbolasers, not laser cannons, which were green in the republic era.

It's not just the color, it's the overall design of the weapon. The weapons looked like big, manned cannons that fired chemical explosive rounds. However, from the glimpses of turbolaser batteries, said turbolaser batteries look completely different than those big cannons that were used in ROTS.

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&safe ... 80&bih=860

5. The industrial and numerical advantage that Star Wars has makes a conventional war a forgone conclusion, even if technology was equal. WW2 proved this; the Allies won largely because of a >2:1 industrial advantage, in this case it's a millions to one industrial advantage, which results in an epic curbstomp.

The problem is that the Empire is going to have a tough time getting to the Federation, and vice versa. The Federation can simply mine their side of the wormhole. Unlike WW2, it is the only way for either side to reach the other. Besides, the Galactic Empire still has to deal with the Rebel Alliance. And even without the Alliance to deal with, unless they get maps pretty early in an invasion, their progress will be quite slow. The war's result may well be who gets maps of the other's side first since the Federation has any number of ways to take out Coruscant.

Any Star Wars faction is still going to be able to invade the Federation if they devote enough resources to it; however, the Federation has absolutely no chance of invading the Star Wars galaxy.

The question becomes how many ships can the Empire afford to send to invade the Federation? There is only one point of entrance, and it's a pretty good choke point. The Empire has about 25,000 Star Destroyers, Imperial, Victory, and Venator. The disparity in firepower between these ships and the medium and light cruisers of the Empire is very large. The disparity in the firepower between Trek ships, however, is not nearly so great. And in my opinion, I think that a Galaxy class starship can beat an Imperial Star Destroyer in a close battle, and that's before taking into account the extreme weapons range advantage the Galaxy, and other Trek ships, has. The Empire's medium and light cruisers are, to me, only going to be good for potentially ramming Federation ships or stations, or as energy and torpedo sponges to shield the Star Destroyers from the Federation onslaught. And as for Star Trek, they don't have to invade the SW galaxy to win the war and take down the Empire. Just fire a Genesis torpedo on Coruscant or use a Trilithium torpedo on Coruscant's star and Palpatine dies if he's on the planet.

Oh come on.

The idea that a galaxy class starship can take on an imperial 2 class star destroyer is ridiculous.

6. Centerpoint station can destroy stuff from across the galaxy. Therefore, it can effectively destroy the Federation while any Federation force would have to find Centerpoint station and then spend decades reaching it.

The Federation is in another galaxy. Unless that wormhole has a direct line of sight on Earth from its opening, then I find it difficult to believe that Centerpoint can destroy it. The best that it can hope for is that the Federation fleet lingers close to the entrance so that Centerpoint can get a bead on it on both sides. And once the first defense force is lost, the Federation will adapt and find other means of fortifying the wormhole. There's also the issue of finding the Federation fleet, and this only becomes a problem if the Federation invades the SW galaxy, something that would be pretty out of character for them.

If that technoblabble wormhole can allow for ships to pass through, why wouldn't it allow for weapons to pass through?

It can. The issue is whether or not the opening would have a direct line of sight towards Earth. A little too far to the right or left, or up or down, or actually being behind the wormhole for that matter, and Centerpoint's main weapon would not be able to hit Sol. And before Centerpoint comes into play, the Empire would have to get the star charts of the Milky Way galaxy and get Earth's precise location. If the Rebellion is still going strong and the Empire starts to amass troops near Centerpoint with the intent to use it, I could easily see them telling the Federation about Centerpoint, especially if someone close to whatever project to reclaiming Centerpoint, defects to the Rebel Alliance.

Right, centerpoint would take a while to load up and such, would take a while to get info on Federation worlds and would have to be able to fire through the wormhole, which isn't that hard since it wouldn't need a direct line of sight (spotting? scanning?) But those are not obstacles that would take any more than a few months to overcome.

Granted, the Empire didn't have access to Centerpoint station, but the Galactic Alliance/Confederation did.

7. The sun crusher was expected to take a full on shot from the death star. It could simply make the Federation stars go nova and the Federation can't do jack to stop it.

Too bad that physics is its bane. When matter and antimatter collide, they annihilate. It's not a question of firepower, but having the right tools to take out the Sun Crusher. Star Trek is one of the few universes that has the tools necessary to destroy the Sun Crusher, in the form of antimatter, and has such tools in both abundance, and easy to deploy weapons. Remember that antimatter spread that the E-D used against the Borg Cube in "Best of Both Worlds"? It was merely a fireworks display because the Borg Cube had shields. Unfortunately, the Sun Crusher's defense is Quantum Molecular Armor, not shields. It's laser cannons were destroyed by fire from the Star Destroyer and TIE Fighters, so if it did have shields of some sort, they were clearly not planetary shield level shields.

How about some proof? Proof that the Federation can find a starfighter sized superweapon, outrace its far faster hyperdrive, get through its armor and blow it up before it destroys the nearest star?

The Federation could find a Soong type android energy reading from light years away, and they weren't looking for any Soong type android signatures. In a wartime setting, I think that they'll pick up any anomalous readings that appear in or near any major star system and they will investigate. Don't forget that in a wartime setting, the major worlds will have fleets protecting them, and it won't take long for an intra system jump to bring them close to their own stars. They will pick up the Sun Crusher and they will fire on it. When reading that it has no shields, yet regular weapons are ineffective, I could easily see someone deciding to use antimatter against it since the craft is still made of matter. As for shooting down the torpedo, we've seen Federation starships shoot down missile weapons and even photon torpedoes before they managed to reach their targets before. As for reaching the Sun Crusher before it fires or leaves the system, assuming it doesn't come into a system patrolled by the Federation fleet or a defense force of a member state, the size of the Star Wars Galaxy is still up for debate, with many indicating that it could be merely 30,000 light years in diameter, or even smaller, to the point of being the size of the Federation (I still tend to go with between 30,000-50,000 light years in diameter, but that's still a high end for me). I also have yet to see any indication in any EU source that I've read that says that it is larger than Milky Way. The largest I've seen is that its size is comparable to Milky Way's. And if it is smaller, than the speed advantage of the Sun Crusher will decrease, depending on the galaxy's size, to the point where it might not be able to outrun Federation starships. And once the Federation catches the Sun Crusher, it merely uses my plan of attack to destroy it.

I am not an expert on antimatter...but does antimatter ALWAYS annihilate any matter, even if their charges are not matching? Either way, the sun crusher's armor is basically as dense as the laws of physics permit...you'd need a LOT of anitmatter to annihilate the sun crusher's armor.

The sun crusher's superweapon moves at near lightspeed, so shooting it down isn't really an option.

[Khas]

WHERE DOES ROTJ SHOW A SPACE BATTLE AT THOUSANDS OF KILOMETERS? THE SHIPS ARE FIRING AT POINT-BLANK RANGE FOR MOST OF THE BATTLE!

Your argument still fails, as SPHA-T stands for Self-Propelled Heavy Artillery TURBOLASER. Shown to be capable of damaging and even destroying starships.

There is no way that the cities of Taris count as a small town, by anyone's standards. And as I said, I've seen the bombardment of Taris, and it took many shots to destroy a single building. Not really that impressive.

The Death Star's design also stunk, as pointed out by Mara Jade in "Survivor's Quest". She then said that it just happened to be big and mean enough to get away with it, to which Luke replied "Mostly". And DS II could be taken out by red matter or a Genesis device.

And yes, antimatter always does annihilate with matter, albeit you need to have the right particle and antiparticle to do so (Proton-Antiproton; Neutron-Antineutron; Electron-Positron). And antimatter would be devastating on the Sun Crusher, as the explosion caused by it annihilating with matter would send very fast shockwaves through the armor. The denser an object, the faster and more powerful the shockwaves that go through it are.

[Picard]

Actually, RotJ clearly shows a space battle in the hundreds to thousands of KMs. Otherwise, the Executor would have been bigger than the range between the two sides.

Executor is 19 km long. Range at that battle was 60 kilometers absolute maximum.

Hyperdrive is thousands of times faster than warp drive, as is clearly shown with hyperdrive's ability to allow for galactic travel within hours.

Something quantifable, please. And SW galaxy is 30 000 times smaller than Milky Way in volume.
http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/11/s ... -size.html

The movies are filled with instances of ships traveling across large parts of the galaxy in under a day.

I got my 120,000 LY claim from an EU source. Even if we take a smaller sized galaxy, we still get millions of C, which is far faster than warp.

Link I provided above.

"vaporize a small town" - contrary to what darkstar claims, Mos Eisley is NOT a typical small town. Taris's cities are at least the size of Texas. A decent sized city is about 5 times the size of an average small town (darkstar's small town is about 1.5 miles long, Rockville in Maryland is about 5 miles long), but let's be fair and say 10.

Texas is about 790 miles long. Scaling down, that makes the average Star Wars small town about 79 miles long. That makes the ability to vaporize said "small" town somewhere from 20 gigatons to actually more than 200 gigatons.

Mos Eisley is only thing we have from canon.

Still, a turbolaser didn't ever fail to destroy an unshielded target in the movies (I'll get to that other post later), so we don't know their upper limit from the movies...but we do from the ICS.

ICS is written by longtime rabid Warsie, and is contradicted by actual canon.

Oh come on.

The idea that a galaxy class starship can take on an imperial 2 class star destroyer is ridiculous.

No it is not. Heavy turbolasers are 35 megatons absolute maximum. Photon torpedoes are 200 megatons minimum.

I am not an expert on antimatter...but does antimatter ALWAYS annihilate any matter, even if their charges are not matching? Either way, the sun crusher's armor is basically as dense as the laws of physics permit...you'd need a LOT of anitmatter to annihilate the sun crusher's armor.

The sun crusher's superweapon moves at near lightspeed, so shooting it down isn't really an option.

Even for Federation? Intrepid class starship can achieve 0.8 c by using its impulse engines only.

[StarWarsStarTrek]

Actually, RotJ clearly shows a space battle in the hundreds to thousands of KMs. Otherwise, the Executor would have been bigger than the range between the two sides.

Executor is 19 km long. Range at that battle was 60 kilometers absolute maximum.

Proof?

Maybe other sources show battles in the ranges of thousands of KMs. If anything, this is an area in which Star Wars is pretty consistent in. The only regular contradictions are ROTS (which is justifiable) and the CWC (which is justifiable)

Hyperdrive is thousands of times faster than warp drive, as is clearly shown with hyperdrive's ability to allow for galactic travel within hours.

Something quantifable, please. And SW galaxy is 30 000 times smaller than Milky Way in volume.
http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/11/s ... -size.html

...

Seriously, what?

The movies are filled with instances of ships traveling across large parts of the galaxy in under a day.

I got my 120,000 LY claim from an EU source. Even if we take a smaller sized galaxy, we still get millions of C, which is far faster than warp.

Link I provided above.

"vaporize a small town" - contrary to what darkstar claims, Mos Eisley is NOT a typical small town. Taris's cities are at least the size of Texas. A decent sized city is about 5 times the size of an average small town (darkstar's small town is about 1.5 miles long, Rockville in Maryland is about 5 miles long), but let's be fair and say 10.

Texas is about 790 miles long. Scaling down, that makes the average Star Wars small town about 79 miles long. That makes the ability to vaporize said "small" town somewhere from 20 gigatons to actually more than 200 gigatons.

Mos Eisley is only thing we have from canon.

Did you even read my post? Scaling from a large city and using scaling from our large cities to our small towns, we get a gigaton level range for the energy needed to vaporize a Star Wars small town.

Still, a turbolaser didn't ever fail to destroy an unshielded target in the movies (I'll get to that other post later), so we don't know their upper limit from the movies...but we do from the ICS.

ICS is written by longtime rabid Warsie, and is contradicted by actual canon.

Which you still haven't proven.

Oh come on.

The idea that a galaxy class starship can take on an imperial 2 class star destroyer is ridiculous.

No it is not. Heavy turbolasers are 35 megatons absolute maximum. Photon torpedoes are 200 megatons minimum.

Star Wars ICS: 200 gigatons
Star Wars slave ship: gigatones
Star Wars ROTS novel: gigatons
BDZ examples: gigatons
Scaling down from the death star: teratons/petatons+
Based on power generation: teratons
ESB: megatons lower limit

Really, your idea of heavy turbolasers being 35 megatons maximum is ridiculous, especially since Star Wars NUCLEAR WEAPONS that were actually used once are more powerful than that.

Also, the idea of photon torpedos being 200 megatons minimum is ridiculous.

TM: <64 megatons
Borg battles: kilotons
Earth bombardment scene: kilotons
Scaling from 30 megaton shield strength estimated by Mike Wong: sub megatons

I am not an expert on antimatter...but does antimatter ALWAYS annihilate any matter, even if their charges are not matching? Either way, the sun crusher's armor is basically as dense as the laws of physics permit...you'd need a LOT of anitmatter to annihilate the sun crusher's armor.

The sun crusher's superweapon moves at near lightspeed, so shooting it down isn't really an option.

Even for Federation? Intrepid class starship can achieve 0.8 c by using its impulse engines only.

And do you have any examples of a Federation actually HITTING a ship moving that fast?

In dominion battles we see dominion and Federation ships missing each other from almost literally spitting distance.

[Picard]

Proof?

Maybe other sources show battles in the ranges of thousands of KMs. If anything, this is an area in which Star Wars is pretty consistent in. The only regular contradictions are ROTS (which is justifiable) and the CWC (which is justifiable)

1) Movie itself.

2) Longest range I am aware of is 5000 km shot by Rebel ion cannon in TESB.

Seriously, what?

Canon, that what.

Did you even read my post? Scaling from a large city and using scaling from our large cities to our small towns, we get a gigaton level range for the energy needed to vaporize a Star Wars small town.

Curiously, I did scaling with US definition of small city, and it came out as 35 megatons high end.

Which you still haven't proven.

I did, on my blog.

http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/10/i ... acies.html

http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/10/e ... -zero.html

http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/10/e ... -from.html

Star Wars ICS: 200 gigatons
Star Wars slave ship: gigatones
Star Wars ROTS novel: gigatons
BDZ examples: gigatons
Scaling down from the death star: teratons/petatons+
Based on power generation: teratons
ESB: megatons lower limit

Really, your idea of heavy turbolasers being 35 megatons maximum is ridiculous, especially since Star Wars NUCLEAR WEAPONS that were actually used once are more powerful than that.

Also, the idea of photon torpedos being 200 megatons minimum is ridiculous.

TM: <64 megatons
Borg battles: kilotons
Earth bombardment scene: kilotons
Scaling from 30 megaton shield strength estimated by Mike Wong: sub megatons

ICS: not valid. Contradicted by canon.
ROTS: misinterpretation on your part
DS: http://picard578.blogspot.com/2010/09/d ... laser.html
Power generation: from where? certainly not from canon.
ESB: kilotons lower limit
----
TM: not valid. Contradicted by canon.
Borg battles: antimatter explosions in vacuum. Do you know how that will look? Obviously not.
EBS: what scene?
Mike Wong estimate: biased as hell, and completely wrong

And do you have any examples of a Federation actually HITTING a ship moving that fast?

In dominion battles we see dominion and Federation ships missing each other from almost literally spitting distance.

I don't remember seeing any misses. Plus we have 90 000 km range against 1 meter probe from TOS plus 40 000+ and 200 000 km ranges from TNG.

[Khas]

The ICS 200 GT yield is contradicted by the sub-KT TL yields we see in TCW. You also have to remember that Curtis Saxton, who wrote ICS, was a poster at the Usenet group alt.startrek.vs.starwars. He also had those numbers given to him by other posters, just so he could say "Ha Ha, Wars Wins!". Just to make things clear, those same posters also thought that pissing off 4chan was a good idea.

And Picard, you overestimated the Executor's length. According to "Star Wars: The New Essential Guide To Vehicles And Vessels", it was 12.8 km long. Or, if we want to go by the Star Wars Encyclopedia, a "mere" 8 km long.

And as for you saying that battless take place at longer ranges, all the books I have seem to show them taking place at the same ranges they do in the movies. The only way that these could be justified is that we are seeing ideal weapons ranges.

And maybe you should look at this thread.