Who Wins?

For polite and reasoned discussion of Star Wars and/or Star Trek.

Who would win in a war between the Empire from Star Wars and the United Federation or Planets for Star Trek?

Poll ended at Sun Aug 05, 2007 1:59 am

The Empire wins easily and quickly.
2
9%
The Empire wins in a long, drawn out war.
2
9%
Neither side can make much head way and the war ends in a treaty.
7
30%
The Federation wins in a long, hard fought war.
9
39%
The Federation wins easily and quickly.
3
13%
 
Total votes: 23

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Who Wins?

Post by AnonymousRedShirtEnsign » Tue Feb 06, 2007 1:59 am

I thought it would be interesting to see what people here think the over all outcome of a war might be.

There is a worm hole or other plot device connecting the two galaxies. The Star Wars side openning is located a few hundred light years out side the galactic core. The Trek side is near the edge of Federation space, probably in the Bajoran sector since all sorts of weird astronomical stuff is there. Time wise, the Wars side is right after TESB, the Trek side is a few years after Nemesis, so around 2381.

Which ever allies either side has can be counted on aiding in defensive operations only.

For this thread Film only continuity will be used, were the novels and radio dramas are also included, but don't carry much weight.

If I need to clarify anything else please let me know.

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Post by Dragoon » Tue Feb 06, 2007 3:24 am

I say that the Empire trys to fight the Federation, ends up running right into the Federation's new rearming process post-Dominion War, along with a semi-rebuilt Klingon navy and possibly even the Romulans. The war is long, bloody and neither side plans to give in. The Empire makes some headway, but the war turns into a bloody stalemate and eventually both sides decide to end it with a treaty, as the Empire cannot afford to fight this war and the rebellion at the same time.

In the end, the Rebellion still wins at Endor and the Empire goes down to defeat. The Federation doesn't get involved, as per the prime directive.

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Post by AnonymousRedShirtEnsign » Tue Feb 06, 2007 4:13 am

Dragoon, if the war is long then wouldn't the Empire fall at Endor before they capitulate to a treaty with the Federation. The Imperial reminants would be in no shape to continue a war in the Alpha Quadrent, so the matter would be closed as far as the Federation is concerned.

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Post by AFT » Tue Feb 06, 2007 12:37 pm

Dragoon wrote:I say that the Empire trys to fight the Federation, ends up running right into the Federation's new rearming process post-Dominion War, along with a semi-rebuilt Klingon navy and possibly even the Romulans. The war is long, bloody and neither side plans to give in. The Empire makes some headway, but the war turns into a bloody stalemate and eventually both sides decide to end it with a treaty, as the Empire cannot afford to fight this war and the rebellion at the same time.

In the end, the Rebellion still wins at Endor and the Empire goes down to defeat. The Federation doesn't get involved, as per the prime directive.
I pretty much agree with you in this assessment of a possible war between these two parties (Except for the part about the new Federation rearming process). From my point of view the Federation has the quality advantage while the Empire has quantity on its side. So, yes a bloody stalemate is the most likely outcome.

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Post by Praeothmin » Tue Feb 06, 2007 5:43 pm

Wasn't this already debated some time ago?
Here:
http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=120

If I remember correctly, the general consensus seemed to be that the Empire didn't seem to be able to field the number of ships talked about in the EU, and Endor's ship number was used as an example.
Also the fact that the Empire felt the need to create the Deathstar, and bigger and bigger ships in order to keep the Galaxy under their rule.

Which got me to think:
The Federation probably doesn't have that many ships either, because of all the times a crisis was declared and only one ship was sent to avert it.
Even in the Fed Romulan blockade, where they used a Tachyon detection grid to detect cloaked Romulan ships, only 20 or so ships were used, and that was considered sufficient.

Which brings me to my question:
Using all the movies (for SW) and the movies and series (for ST), how many ships could each side field in the event of a war, à la Dominion war?

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Post by Dragoon » Tue Feb 06, 2007 7:25 pm

I would say both can field, at the very least, several thousand capital ships.

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Post by AnonymousRedShirtEnsign » Tue Feb 06, 2007 8:07 pm

The UFP was the most powerful of the three faction alliance that was powerful enough to defeat a 30,000 ship fleet and 1000+ orbital defense platforms. However, they didn't have to fight their way to Cardassia, so they still have a large fleet and would most likely continue to increase their numbers to replenish the ships lost through out the four years of war (2 yeas agains the Klingons and 2 against the Dominion). So I would say the UFP is capable of fielding ~6000 ships for an offensive campaign and ~10-15,000 ships for defensive purposes, plus several thousand ships from allied factions.

The Imperial fleet is a lot harder to get a fix on how many ships it has. Han implies less than 1000, but some fans claim millions of cap ships. The number I've seen most is the equivalent to 25,000 ISDs.

The Federation blockade to prevent Romulan engagement in the Klingon civil war actually consistend of 40 ships as per dialog and Picard expressed his feeling that 40 ships was inadequate. 40 ships seems about what the Federation can scrounge up to deal with a sudden emergency (Wolf 359 had 40 ships, the battle with the Borg in ST:FC seemed to be about the same).

The link posted is about the logistics of an invasion by either side. This is meant to be more all encompassing.

Oh, I forgot to mention that both the Empire and Federation become aware of the crossover point at approximately the same time.

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Post by GStone » Wed Feb 07, 2007 12:42 am

All right, here's an idea. The Feds beat the Empire into submission and make them want to sign a treaty of peace with the Feds and it's done by one invention: the repilcator. Forget about building more and more ships. They build drones. Lots of them. They're remote controlled, have shields (we've seen torp shielding let them go into suns, so they can survive for a while). They've also got payloads and replicator units, like the self-replicating mines. The repilcator units survive the explosions and remakes itself (minus its payload) and leaves, though it can still have its tiny phaser ball part. They're dropped off like the ISD in ep 5 in the Wars galaxy and you can replicate shitloads of these things in short order to swarm capital ships and instillations. They aren't torp size, so they can have at aleast some impulse speed. Let the phaser ball shoot at different angles simultaneously and it can plow through gaggles of fighters.

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Post by AFT » Wed Feb 07, 2007 1:45 am

Praeothmin wrote:Wasn't this already debated some time ago?
Here:
http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=120

If I remember correctly, the general consensus seemed to be that the Empire didn't seem to be able to field the number of ships talked about in the EU, and Endor's ship number was used as an example.
Also the fact that the Empire felt the need to create the Deathstar, and bigger and bigger ships in order to keep the Galaxy under their rule.
Hi there Praeothmin! It was a very similar yet different discussion there. Here is kind of a more direct question, not only the logistic issues but the general result of a conflict between the GE and the UFP as a whole.
Praeothmin wrote:Which got me to think:
The Federation probably doesn't have that many ships either, because of all the times a crisis was declared and only one ship was sent to avert it.
Even in the Fed Romulan blockade, where they used a Tachyon detection grid to detect cloaked Romulan ships, only 20 or so ships were used, and that was considered sufficient.
The “They only send one ship” cliché is (as many other ST clichés) a little bit too much overrated IMHO. I’m not eloquent enough to put it in on my own words but surfing around at another’s forums I found a post that pretty much summed up the whole issue, not completely but close. (I don’t known if quoting posts from another forum is permitted so, Jedi Master Spock feel free to delete this post if needed be).
Bond, James Bond[/i]
Posted May 23, 2006 01:28 PM

Well, lets compile a list of the times Earth's been threatened or attacked or there was only one ship "in range":

1) ENT - "The Expanse":
The Xindi weapon appeared in Earth orbit while no state of hostilities was in effect and fired its weapon then self-destructed within the span of thirty seconds. Complete surprise and no time to respond.

When the Klingons under Duras attacked Enterprise on the way back to Earth there was a defensive contingent that responded and repelled the threat.

2) ENT - "Twilight":
Same deal except hostilities were known in advance this time, with the exception being that this situation was made even worse by the fact that it was the virtually indestructible from the outside full-scale Xindi weapon and had an escort of several vessels which undoubtedly cleared its path by destroying Starfleet ships and/or space stations.

3) ENT - "Zero Hour":
The lack of a response by Earth forces in this episode baffles me, especially considering we did see that there was a fleet of vessels waiting to defend Earth at the end of "Storm Front Part 2" before they realized the crisis was over. My only conclusion is that:
- The Xindi arranged for some kind of diversion elsewhere that would pull the fleet away from Earth. This would be a good idea since for some reason warming up the weapon took eleven minutes in this episode.
- The fleet was caught in the "temporal wave" or whatever it was that began changing the timeline in an erratic and uneven manner and sent Enterprise to the past. Perhaps the fleet was intentionally sent back by Daniels to ensure that they didn't destroy the Xindi Sphere before Archer was transported off since Archer needs to be alive for the Federation to form.

4) ENT - "Terra Prime / Demons":
Enterprise was already in system and on the way to attack the Verteron Array in secret, so scrambling ships would have been unnecessary and would have resulted in Robocop firing the weapon when he detected an imminent attack.

5) The Romulan War:
From all indications in dialogue the war did reach Earth and the Romulans were repelled, so the fleet did its job there.

6) "ST: TMP":
Not much a space station or other ships are going to be able to do against a giant energy cloud with a 93 kilometer vessel at its heart, and Enterprise was already going to self-destruct inside it if they couldn't talk V'Ger down.

At this point in time Earth had been safe from attack since the Romulan War, so Starfleet had probably grown complacent on its defense, hence the Enterprise being the only combat capable starship in range.

7) "TWoK":
In this case I feel the "only ship in range" thing was a product of the crisis on Regula being largely unknown and possibly not yet a big deal, Kirk trying to wrestle control of the ship again by claiming theirs was the only ship in range when others could have possibly answered the call, or the Enterprise being the only ship in range that was unassigned to any specific mission other than training cadets and thus could afford to go investigate the situation.

8) "ST: TVH":
The massive Greenpeace Tootsie Roll with the glowing soccer ball deactivated all the ships and stations with it's whale-techno music, so there was nothing Starfleet could do in this case.

In "ST:TFF" and "ST:TUC" the Enterprise was not the only ship in range IIRC but was simply the most qualified in either situation to deal with the crisis as the flagship and with having the most experienced and talented crew.

9) TNG - "Conspiracy":
Nothing Starfleet could do about this since they had been taken control of from within. Only a quantum can of Raid could deal with that pest problem.

10) TNG - "BoBW":
The fleet that intercepted the Cube at Wolf 359 was probably composed mainly of the Earth's home defense fleet plus whatever vessels they could muster. However, a fleet of forty starships is not a bad response, just not enough to stop the Borg. The Mars Defense Perimeter, which might be serviceable in other situations, was completely ineffective against the Borg. Spacedock might have been gearing up to fight the Borg when it was stopped by Locutus' subspace link being hacked.

11) "Generations":
It stretches credibility that the Enterprise-B was the only ship in range in this instance, but perhaps it was the only Starfleet ship with the ability to go into a hostile environment in the area. Civilian vessels might have been nearby but might have been too small or weak to approach the Nexus or Starfleet forbade them from attempting a rescue since they thought they could handle it. There were probably other ships at Utopia Planitia in drydock being built or repaired but not capable of responding in time.

Again though, this was a time of peace for the Federation when they had just signed a peace treaty with their primary enemy the Klingons and were friendly enough with the Romulans to have them sitting in on military operations planning sessions (good call by the way), so they could have grown complacent about Earth's defense again.

12) "First Contact":
I don't think anyone would argue that the Starfleet response and presence at Earth was pretty good in this case.

13) DS9 - "Homefront / Paradise Lost":
Starfleet was either a part of or baffled by the situation with Leyton except for the Defiant and Lakota crews who knew what was going on and therefore had a reason to engage each other. The rest of the ships probably were phoning HQ asking what the hell was going on.

14) DS9 - "The Changing Face of Evil":
Considering the fact that the Breen assault fleet was almost entirely destroyed by Starfleet and managed to inflict only relatively minor damage on San Francisco when a big ship could have potentially wiped out all life on Earth, I would say that Earth's defenses did work in this case and that the only thing that got through were probably some small fighter craft sent in on a stealthy raid while the main Breen fleet drew all the fire.

15) VOY - "Endgame":
A Borg transwarp conduit opens up right in Earth orbit and is immediately met by fire from around twenty ships, so the response was appropriate in this case as well.

16) "Nemesis":
Earth was threatened and immediately a seven ship task force was dispatched to the Romulan border with more ships between it and Earth, so again a good response.

So I wouldn't say Earth's defenses are as bad as it would seem except for a couple occasions during times of peace where Starfleet got complacent.


Please note that during the TNG era and beyond the whole “only one ship in range” is far away from being the norm rather than the exception. Sure, the Enterprise-D handled many situations on her own but take into consideration that she was exploring on the frontier or beyond Federation space, not many ships there. More important, the instances were only one ship was available to handle any given crisis were during the era that most fans regards as the more militaristic of Starfleet and the Federation as a whole.

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Post by Praeothmin » Wed Feb 07, 2007 2:02 am

So it seems that the "one ship response team" (:) ) isn't the norm, but I have to disagree on this assessment in some situations:

ST:TWoK
We have no idea if the crisis at Regula is an unknown, and to think that Kirk would have gone to the space station where Genesis is being develloped without advising Starfleet in advance is ludicrous.
We know he does, and is told that they are the only ship available, even when Kirk tells them he has an inexperienced crew.
If another ship had been available, Starfleet would more than certainly have sent it there.

ST:Generations
This proves my point exactly.
In a dangerous situation, where another, fully armed and equiped ship would've helped, Starfleet only sends one ship, a new ship, lacking a lot of needed equipment.

ST:FC
No, Starfleet's response in this case was very bad, because they had sent their Flagship away, out of combat, and only responded with a fleet even smaller then the one from BoBW.
The only reason they won was because the E-E came back, and Picard knew a weak spot to exploit.
At least twice as many ships would have been truly neede in this case, but they weren't there.

Voy:Endgame
Again, without knowing they would have help from an Uber Voy, 20 ships is a ridiculous amount of ships to defend against a Borg vessel coming to Earth.
Although it is true the Borg have been very weakened by Voy writers... :)

So I would say Earth's defenses, while not as bad as originally thought, still lack much in the number of ships it can muster in very short time.
Compare that to the fleet above Coruscant that responded to the Separatists...

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Post by AnonymousRedShirtEnsign » Wed Feb 07, 2007 7:30 am

In TWoK, Kirk and co. weren't convinced that anything was wrong, it might have just been interferance, Kirk probably conveyed this to Starfleet Command, who said that since his ship wasn't very far away and was on a training cruise that it would be sufficient to investigate. Starfleet probably thought it was a rather low priority, or at least, low risk mission that the Enterprise would easily be able to handle.

As for RotS, I thought that the Republic fleet had chased the CIS fleet there from a previous engagement. And the Republic fleet really isn't that big, about 100 ships (we've heard of fed fleets loosing way more ships than that in a single battle). And the Seps did manage to capture the chancellor and only got caught on the way out.

Generations, yeah that was lame. Nothing else to say.

ST:FC- well we only see the end of the battle and at the rate the Starfleet ships were being destroyed they probably had significantly more ships than we see. I'd guess around 50, though it depends on how long it took the Enterprise to get to Earth. Not great, but not terrible.

Endgame- They had all of about 10 minutes of warning, so 20 ships is pretty good. And these weren't stocking stuffer Mirandas and Excelsiors like in the Dominion War, they were newer, better ships (Prometheus, Nova, Akira, etc.).

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Post by Praeothmin » Wed Feb 07, 2007 12:55 pm

In TWoK, Kirk and co. weren't convinced that anything was wrong, it might have just been interferance, Kirk probably conveyed this to Starfleet Command, who said that since his ship wasn't very far away and was on a training cruise that it would be sufficient to investigate.
All of a sudden, you have a Station that was able to communicate with you that went radio silent, with the last message being:
"Jim, don't let them take Genesis away from us... *garble, static, more garble*"
I don't know about you, but if I had been at Starfleet HQ and got that report by Kirk, I would have felt something was afoot and would have sent the best and closest ship to deal with it.
The fact that it was Kirk's, full of cadets, tells us a lot about the situation...
about 100 ships
That we see, that were assembled within the short time it took Grevious to capture Palpatine, which, judjung from the Clone Wars cartoon, was around 10-12 minutes, the time it took Starfleet in Endgame to ghather
all of about 10 minutes of warning, so 20 ships
ST:FC- well we only see the end of the battle and at the rate the Starfleet ships were being destroyed they probably had significantly more ships than we see. I'd guess around 50, though it depends on how long it took the Enterprise to get to Earth. Not great, but not terrible.
Well, those are assumptions on your part.
The ships could have started being destroyed more often because they were at the end of a long and hard battle, I mean the Defiant wasn't dead yet, and it probably was there from the beginning.
And the Enterprise, onoce it arrived, got hit a few times and fared rather well against those first shots.
So I'm still not convinced that there were more than 20 or 30 ships to defend Earth against the Borg, knowing the threat they represent.

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Post by AFT » Wed Feb 07, 2007 2:23 pm

Praeothmin wrote:So it seems that the "one ship response team" (:) ) isn't the norm, but I have to disagree on this assessment in some situations:
Well, at least we are making some progress, so let see if we can reach an agreement.
Praeothmin wrote:ST:TWoK
We have no idea if the crisis at Regula is an unknown, and to think that Kirk would have gone to the space station where Genesis is being develloped without advising Starfleet in advance is ludicrous.
We know he does, and is told that they are the only ship available, even when Kirk tells them he has an inexperienced crew.
If another ship had been available, Starfleet would more than certainly have sent it there.

ST:Generations
This proves my point exactly.
In a dangerous situation, where another, fully armed and equiped ship would've helped, Starfleet only sends one ship, a new ship, lacking a lot of needed equipment.
No doubt these two events are not the best showing ever of Starfleet, but I would expect that to happen during the TNG era where the overwhelming majority of fans thinks that the Federation and Starfleet were “space hippies”, clearly it’s not the case. And yes, it’s unbelievable that Starfleet only had one ship available to handle those emergencies. The origin of the cliché might have been these two examples. However it remains as the exception rather than the norm.
Praeothmin wrote:ST:FC
No, Starfleet's response in this case was very bad, because they had sent their Flagship away, out of combat, and only responded with a fleet even smaller then the one from BoBW.
The only reason they won was because the E-E came back, and Picard knew a weak spot to exploit.
At least twice as many ships would have been truly neede in this case, but they weren't there.
I fully agree that the actual number of ships that fought the Borg cube during FC is not clearly established anywhere on the canon but to say that there were fewer or more ships than at Wolf 359 is hard to back up. Visuals alone are clearly subjective as the Dominion War clearly demonstrates. Fleets stated to be several hundreds strong by dialogue only got about 50-60 ships on screen at any given time. But that’s not the point, isn’t it? The point is that Starfleet mobilized more than one ship to meet this (very bad) emergency. Although the Enterprise E added considerable firepower to the fleet, she alone wouldn’t be enough to tip the balance to Starfleet favor. It was her captain that made the difference.
Praeothmin wrote:Voy:Endgame
Again, without knowing they would have help from an Uber Voy, 20 ships is a ridiculous amount of ships to defend against a Borg vessel coming to Earth.
Although it is true the Borg have been very weakened by Voy writers... :)
For the record, there were 18 ships on position with 9 more on the way, so 27 ships mobilized in mere minutes while the 40 ships task force at Wolf 359 had at least several days to be assembled. I’ll say that Starfleet actually learned from its mistakes, don’t you think? The fact that the transwarp aperture opened less than one light year from Earth should clearly demonstrate that they had a very short time to respond to this threat and they still managed to send about ¾ the number of ships that they had at Wolf 359 and by the way the Borg didn’t have any transwarp conduits so close to Earth before, so they couldn’t have anticipated that a Borg ship would show up right at their backyard. Moreover, 20-30 ships might not be enough to deal with a Borg ship but any other attacker would have been hard pressed to face them. But again that’s not the point, when needed be, they scrambled more than one ship, the cliché I find to be very engraved on the minds of many fans but highly inaccurate as the facts clearly demonstrate. Perhaps they don’t deploy the thousands upon thousands of ships that we, the fans would want to see but the extreme opposite (only one ship) it’s also false.
Praeothmin wrote:So I would say Earth's defenses, while not as bad as originally thought, still lack much in the number of ships it can muster in very short time.
Compare that to the fleet above Coruscant that responded to the Separatists...
The battle over Coruscant was during war time, while most ST examples were not. If I recall correctly, there was a full fleet at Earth during the Dominion War: The Third Fleet. This fleet nearly destroyed a Breen assault force of unknown size during that war. Earth defenses and Starfleet as a whole are underestimated way too often, but I would expect that in this kind of debates.
Last edited by AFT on Thu Feb 08, 2007 2:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by Praeothmin » Wed Feb 07, 2007 5:20 pm

For the record, there were 18 ships on position with 9 more on the way.
still managed to send about ¾ the number of ships that they had at Wolf 359
Well, we really don't know how far away those 9 additional ships were, so what we can actually say is that they assembled half the fleet from Wolf 359 in a very short time.

And as for the fleets assembled during the War with the Dominion, don't forget that they re-commissioned many decommissioned ships in order to be able to fight the war with some effect.
The battle over Coruscant was during war time, while most ST examples were not.
Agreed.
But what this shows, IMO, it that it seems Starfleet keeps a lot of ships on stanby (or in drydocks) during peacetime, and then takes them out during war time.
It is also a good indication of the Federation's industrial capacity, that they start with so few vessels during Peace time, and come in guns raging with so many during War time...

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Post by AnonymousRedShirtEnsign » Wed Feb 07, 2007 6:39 pm

We know that the Dominion, and presumably now the Cardassians use orbital defense platforms, do you think that the Federation or anyone else in the AQ/BQ area uses them? I wouldn't be suprised if Romulus had cloaked ones, and Qo'nos might have a planetary defense grid, but does Earth?

As for ST:FC, as AFT pointed out it isn't stated, or shown how many ships were there. However, using the two toughest ships in Starfleet as examples saying the fleet just started getting destroyed right as the Enterprise arrived is faulty reasoning. The Defiant is the only dedicated warship in Starfleet, and the Enterprise is the most advanced ship so they are going to last significantly longer than the rest of the fleet. And the Defiant was almost dead when the Enterprise showed up anyways.

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