United Federation of Planets vs Galacitic Empire

[Mike DiCenso]

I remember the SBC thread in 2009 wherein Vespa said the Empire can still brute force hyperlanes if it wants to, but this kind of information conflicted with facts such as the real expansion of the Empire in the EU, and the TCWS which show that brute forcing a route would be no problem even with mines, yet it's not done.

Well, that would depend on exactly what you mean by "brute force". That is they send a bunch of ships in and launch as many probe droids as they can to chart a path. Or they go around capturing ships and or forcing planets to give up starcharts on the local area. Also what about the EU and and TCWs suggests that brute forcing a route is doable that way. As for minging a route, I don't know that if even the Empire at it's most dasterdly would want to completely shut down hyperlanes like that. It hurts them as much as it hurts the Rebellion.
-Mike

[Trinoya]

It all comes down to how the two meet. If you just suddenly transport them both into the same arena, with all their assets and full navigational data on the other the Empire will curb stomp the federation by sheer weight of numbers...

If, however, you actually force them both to have navigational concerns.. lets say through the use of some sort of wormhole connecting the two then you get a draw. Neither side will make any progress and the federation will eventually capture and hold the opposing side of the wormhole, but due to nearly no navigational data on the empire it won't be able to wage a war effectively in the star wars galaxy (and vice versa for the empire).

If we assume that it's all of star trek and star wars with the Empire and the Federation at war, connected by a wormhole, and limited by navigational data things get a bit more interesting. Essentailly you'd have a scenario where the federation eventually meets the rebels, technology is shared to defeat a common foe, and the Empire is ultimately brought to its knees, with a good chance that the Alliance will formally become members of the federation (and most likely its new center of industrial power and culture, with Earth being its second capital in the Milkyway). The virtue of having a galaxy with no galactic barrier, no borg, and vast resources (not to mention thousands if not hundred of thousands of groups that would love to join the vast power of the federation at that point) means the new Inter Galactic Federation reigns supreme in both galaxies as new grandious ships are built and refitted.

Of course all this will come tumbling down when someone clones Khan, Thrawn, and the Emperor and proceeds to put them in a room together for 23 minutes and 17 seconds. It would also be awesome.

...

What? <_<

[Picard]

I'm not sure if Empire really has such numbers. Darkstar estimated 25 000 ships of ISD-level equivalence, which means if SSD is equivalent to 20 ISD's and there are 50 of them then fleet is 24 000 ISD's and 50 SSD's. Starfleet is estimated on DITL to have 7800 capital ships. Given that Galaxy class can destroy ISD in 0.02 seconds, and there are 2000 ships of Galaxy class equivalence... Empire is finished. Especially if Federation acquires hyperspace drive.

[Mike DiCenso]

The downside to that equivalency, as I pointed out in the other thread, is that there can also be many more ships, particuarly since the Empire might still be operating older and smaller vessles like the Clone Wars era attack ships (Acclamators) and cruisers (Venators), which could easily push the numbers much, much higher, well into the hundreds of thousands.

Also I still don't see where you get 100 megatons for an ISD shield capacity. At 1.5 megatons per gun average and some 100 guns total, you can get a full broadside of 75 to 150 megatons. Given that Republic and Imperial starships withstood up to several hours of combat, gigaton range shielding is more than possible.
-Mike

[Kane Starkiller]

However, while hyperspace lanes in the ST galaxy may not even be mapped by the UFP (they may not know what to look for), and fast warp drives don't seem to be commonly available to civilians (freighters travel slowly - see DS9), the ability to travel within Imperial territory quickly is something that the Federation can acquire simply by capturing - or purchasing - several bulk freighters.

Not even from Imperial loyalists, and there are a number of disloyal planets that would love to aid a foreign power in knocking over the Emperor, especially the Federation really doesn't have the manpower to engage in conquest.

The fact that the Federation has tactical superiority would make it easy enough; the Rebels' existence makes it expected. The narrowness of hyperlanes allows the Empire to defend itself by blocking them, but that's an extreme step.

The Empire's tactical inferiority leaves purchase the primary means by which the Empire can be expected to get good starcharts, and the data they can purchase may not give them all the needed information to find good hyperlanes(if any even exist within Federation space; if you look at the Atlas map, we can see that areas purportedly 8,000 or so light years across may not be particularly accessible with hyperdrives).

Regarding the "hyperspace lanes" they are not an actual astronomical phenomenon but merely a region of space that is thoroughly mapped and thus allows for high speeds. It is simply a matter of detailed mapping the locations of stars.
Reaching a 50,000ly distant Mustafar in a matter of hours requires speeds in excess of 100 million c which are the kind of speeds at which "suddenly slamming into a star" start to be a real threat and at which it becomes important to have a detailed map.
As Essential Atlas states without maps exploration consists of 1-2ly "microjumps" and scanning ahead.

Furthermore let's look at the profile of a galaxy it is 100,000ly wide, about 5000ly thick and has 400 billion stars but 180 billion systems since many of the stars are binary.
A system is about 10 billion km wide which means that viewed from the "side" systems take up about 0.1% of projected plane.
Obviously even a 0.1% chances of death are pretty much unacceptable for civilians especially if we are dealing with millions of ships going every which way.
At a rate of 50 long range galactic trips per year the fatality rate wold be about 4900 per 100,000 ships. In comparison fatality rate in US is 15 per 100,000 motor vehicles.
However if we are talking about making a deep strike on Utopia Planitia then a blind jump causing even 10%-20% losses would be militarily acceptable if it means destroying the shipyards.
According to Deep Space 9 Technical Manual Federation "core worlds" are 50ly away from the Bajoran Wormhole. That distance for example would be crossed in a matter of seconds by the Imperial fleet giving Federation no warning or time to regroup its forces if caught unprepared or off system.

The technological expertise required to maintain, operate and fuel those bulk carriers is another matter entirely and assumption that Federation would be up to the task is unsupported let alone the assumption that Federation has the industry capable of replicating the hyperdrive technology. There is no telling how many supporting technologies go into creating a hyperdrive and which Federation doesn't even have or hasn't sufficiently perfected.

My evaluation is this: Assuming a wormhole that lands within Imperial territory proper (i.e., near a major hyperlane), it is quite within the ability of Commander Sisko with the USS Defiant and a crew to locate a nearby poorly-regulated system, insert personnel into that system to collect the necessary intelligence about the nature and structure of the Empire, obtain readily commercially available intelligence on the location of Coruscant and the political structure of the Empire, commandeer or subvert a bulk freighter capable of transporting the entire Defiant, and then deal a sharp death-blow to the Empire, which at no point was more than a few well-placed proton torpedoes away from disintegrating under its own weight.

It is, in other words, not that hard to effectively destroy the Empire as a political entity. Conquering the Empire, however, is not IMO within the Federation's capabilities, and the UFP is not politically inclined to meddle with the internal affairs of other sovereign nations ordinarily.

Unless Tom Clancy is current Federation president this simply isn't happening. Any number of things can go wrong and if they are captured and a Starfleet vessel is discovered on a freighter deep in Imperial space it's war.
The Federation leadership would risk their planets getting the Death Star treatment on a chance that Sisko will manage to obtain a Defiant carrying freighter without arising suspicion, load Defiant onto the freighter, cross thousands of ly without detection, manage to fire photon torpedoes before getting blown out of the sky, accurately hit and penetrate whatever defenses Imperial palace has and catch the Emperor in the palace.
Upon the improbable successful completion of the mission the Federation leadership expects the Empire to collapse (presumably because they watched the ending of ROTJ) instead of the citizenry screaming bloody murder at the assassination on the part of extragalactic invaders.

[Mike DiCenso]

According to Deep Space 9 Technical Manual Federation "core worlds" are 50ly away from the Bajoran Wormhole. That distance for example would be crossed in a matter of seconds by the Imperial fleet giving Federation no warning or time to regroup its forces if caught unprepared or off system.

Unfortunately for you, that information is largely non-canon. We only know of a few founding member homeworlds, like Earth, Andor, and Vulcan that even qualify for being so close to one another (Vulcan being stated in ST:ENT as being a little over 16 light years form Earth, and it is implied that Andor is not that much further away). I also seriously doubt that without a major coup in gaining the proper navigational data, that the Empire could even attempt such rapid speed jumps, assuming they are really capable of such a thing.

Within it's own territory, Federation starships also seem to be rather fast as well, given examples episodes like TOS' "The Squire of Gothos" (hundreds of light years in less than a week), "Obsession" (A thousand light years crossed in a day), "Bread and Circuses" (1/16th of a light year in a "few seconds"), and "That Which Survives" (990 light years in 11.5 hours or less) . Or episodes in the TNG-era like "The Chase" and "Valiant" where tends of thousands to over a million c are strongly stated or hinted at. The movies are no exception to this as we have seen in Star Trek 2009 with the Alt-E crossing the more than 16 light years between Earth and Vulcan in no more than a few hours time, and of course the infamous ST:TFF example of the E-A travelling to the center of the galaxy in 6 hours for a speed in excess of 20 million c. So if you want to wank up SW numbers, just remember the door swings both ways.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

50 LY seems ludicrously small anyway. We don't really have much leeway within a radius of 4~5 LY around Sol to fit one main UFP world there, it's hard to believe that this 50 LY figure is true when this figure would seem to be more appropriate as the maximum distance between two main UFP worlds, which would mean the Bajoran wormhole would certainly not be anywhere that close to the core worlds of the UFP.
50 LY may eventually be the distance between Bajor and one of the UFP major worlds, but not most of them.

[Mr. Oragahn]

I remember the SBC thread in 2009 wherein Vespa said the Empire can still brute force hyperlanes if it wants to, but this kind of information conflicted with facts such as the real expansion of the Empire in the EU, and the TCWS which show that brute forcing a route would be no problem even with mines, yet it's not done.

Well, that would depend on exactly what you mean by "brute force". That is they send a bunch of ships in and launch as many probe droids as they can to chart a path. Or they go around capturing ships and or forcing planets to give up starcharts on the local area. Also what about the EU and and TCWs suggests that brute forcing a route is doable that way. As for minging a route, I don't know that if even the Empire at it's most dasterdly would want to completely shut down hyperlanes like that. It hurts them as much as it hurts the Rebellion.
-Mike

Brute force as they send specific and expandable ships and probes.
But hyperlanes need to be maintained. I think that the figure is the safest routes can remain without an update for like a month, or several weeks, and the other routes need more updates. The safety is not related to the number of updates but the hazards. Apparently certain regions of space in SW have lots of crap flying between systems and whatnot.

I also noted in one of the EU books which says that there are Force-related disturbances around Endor that prevent proper hypertraffic.
It's either from the essential guides, or one of the D6 or D20 guides which describes several planets.
That said it's not really relevant here.

Also, the point I made was that if brute forcing hyperlanes was so efficient and easy, the Republic would have had plenty of spare ships and probes to send in order to get a clear way through the lanes mined by the CIS.
I think the hyperspace mines are FTL capable. Somehow there has to be sensors deployed somewhere, capable of sniffing incoming ships, and then the mines activate, jump to FTL and then try to hit the ship in hyperspace - assuming they can match speed and trajectory and enter the ship's own tunnel or something - or really place themselves at a point in realspace and activate some gravity shadow which will either destroy the ship in hyperspace, or pulverize it after forcing it out.

So yes, mines need to be mobile, fairly complicated and they would not necessarily be small. But at least you wouldn't need many to really mine a hyperlane that would be several lightyears wide.
But then, again, sacrificing ships on purpose would have the mines blow up uselessly, and FTL capable ships can be very small.

There would then need to be more mines than expandable small ships or FTL probes. It's hard to imagine. The mines, by design, really need to be more complicated than the expandable probes.
The probe is just an FTL drive and a trajectory. The mine needs all that, plus a warhead and a system to destroy a ship in hyperspace, it needs to located an approaching ship, calculate an interception trajectory, or rely on a network of probes to get fed with appropriate data.
The infrastructure to mine a hyperlane seems much more heavy than just the dumb probes you can throw at abandon, spray and pray style.

I figure that a nasty function is needed here. Like, for example, a bit of randomness. Say that for example, mines will let a ratio of 3 ships out of 10 make it through, with no precise period.

Therefore the Republic would be throwing more probes than needed, since some would pass but then there would be nothing they could do in return, safe eventually be programmed to fly back, but then this rises costs.
The effect on probabilities would be that you'd never know if a successful pass was due to the absence of mines or not.

[Kane Starkiller]

Unfortunately for you, that information is largely non-canon. We only know of a few founding member homeworlds, like Earth, Andor, and Vulcan that even qualify for being so close to one another (Vulcan being stated in ST:ENT as being a little over 16 light years form Earth, and it is implied that Andor is not that much further away). I also seriously doubt that without a major coup in gaining the proper navigational data, that the Empire could even attempt such rapid speed jumps, assuming they are really capable of such a thing.

"Canon" as explained is an internal matter which determines what source wins in case there is a contradiction. It doesn't mean that technical manuals aren't a part of Star Trek and that they should be discarded on a whim when there is no contradiction.
Also from Star Trek:Worlds of the Federation:
Vulcan-40 Eridani A, 16.5ly
Tellar-61 Cygni, 11.4ly
Andor-Epsilon Indi, 12ly
Again there is nothing exotic about charting hyperlanes, it is merely a matter of detailed knowledge of star location. However space is mostly empty and at distances of less than 100ly the chances of running into something are extremely small even if running blind.
Hyperdrive is clearly capable of high speed (in excess of 100 million c) jumps as I already demonstrated, in fact if it weren't capable of such speeds then "running into a star" which are several ly apart wouldn't even be an issue.

Within it's own territory, Federation starships also seem to be rather fast as well, given examples episodes like TOS' "The Squire of Gothos" (hundreds of light years in less than a week), "Obsession" (A thousand light years crossed in a day), "Bread and Circuses" (1/16th of a light year in a "few seconds"), and "That Which Survives" (990 light years in 11.5 hours or less) . Or episodes in the TNG-era like "The Chase" and "Valiant" where tends of thousands to over a million c are strongly stated or hinted at. The movies are no exception to this as we have seen in Star Trek 2009 with the Alt-E crossing the more than 16 light years between Earth and Vulcan in no more than a few hours time, and of course the infamous ST:TFF example of the E-A travelling to the center of the galaxy in 6 hours for a speed in excess of 20 million c. So if you want to wank up SW numbers, just remember the door swings both ways.

The first step must be to form a consistent and coherent image of ST speeds rather than throwing out individual incidents which, in a body of work as large as ST, will point in all directions.
First thing is to notice is that the incidents you list are not even mutually consistent or are not equivalent.
1.4 million c for a distance of 1/16ly, 140,00c for a distance of 16ly for example can easily be reconciled with 1000c for long distances although there are plenty of episodes pointing to 1000c as being maximum even for short ranges.
Other incidents like "Chase" are completely incompatible with the entire story arc of DS9 and Voyager and the episode doesn't even explicitly mention such distances, it is implied from the map. I believe I already went over this on this forum but it is easily possible that a portion of the map was zoomed in and overlaid over the existing galaxy chart.
Similarly it is impossible to reconcile the idea that a Constitution class can travel to the core in a few hours yet Galaxy class will need years to return from J-25 system unless we posit that an unstable wormhole existed in 23rd century or that they didn't end up going to the actual core.
On the other hand SW speeds are not the results of wanking: locations of Coruscant, Mustafar, Alderaan, Tatooine, Naboo, Geonosis are given in several publications as is the diameter of the galaxy. Therefore the speeds are calculated directly with no assumptions and all involve great distances rather than short bursts of speed.
Even if you compare ST short range speed like Earth-Vulcan it comes unfavorably when compared to Emperors 50,000ly+ trip from Coruscant to Mustafar.
Thus on a strategic level Empire will be able to outmanouver the Federation by performing lightning strikes before the Federation fleet has time to reposition.

[Mike DiCenso]

"Canon" as explained is an internal matter which determines what source wins in case there is a contradiction. It doesn't mean that technical manuals aren't a part of Star Trek and that they should be discarded on a whim when there is no contradiction.
Also from Star Trek:Worlds of the Federation:
Vulcan-40 Eridani A, 16.5ly
Tellar-61 Cygni, 11.4ly
Andor-Epsilon Indi, 12ly
Again there is nothing exotic about charting hyperlanes, it is merely a matter of detailed knowledge of star location. However space is mostly empty and at distances of less than 100ly the chances of running into something are extremely small even if running blind.
Hyperdrive is clearly capable of high speed (in excess of 100 million c) jumps as I already demonstrated, in fact if it weren't capable of such speeds then "running into a star" which are several ly apart wouldn't even be an issue.

Um, no. The issue of canoncity for Star Trek does not work like in Star Wars, that has been known for many years because unlike Lucasfilm, Paramount, and now CBS have made it abundantly clear that only the live action TV series and films are canon. Nothing else is. Not the TNG or DS9 TMs, not the Gene Roddenberry written Star Trek: The Motion Picture novelization, nothing else is canon, with the exception of the animated series' episode "Yesteryear". Otherwise we would have some really wanked out and interesting stuff for Star Trek, should we go that way, such as Kirk's thoughts on V'Ger's twelfth power energy cloud field, and how that relates to some rather insane starship power generation numbers. Or the James Blish novelizations of the TOS episodes with mention of interesting weapons carried by the Constitution class as a matter of course that can blow up entire planets.

So don't go down that route, if you do you'll be opening up a can of worms you'd rather not want to deal with.

The first step must be to form a consistent and coherent image of ST speeds rather than throwing out individual incidents which, in a body of work as large as ST, will point in all directions.
First thing is to notice is that the incidents you list are not even mutually consistent or are not equivalent.
1.4 million c for a distance of 1/16ly, 140,00c for a distance of 16ly for example can easily be reconciled with 1000c for long distances although there are plenty of episodes pointing to 1000c as being maximum even for short ranges.
Other incidents like "Chase" are completely incompatible with the entire story arc of DS9 and Voyager and the episode doesn't even explicitly mention such distances, it is implied from the map. I believe I already went over this on this forum but it is easily possible that a portion of the map was zoomed in and overlaid over the existing galaxy chart.
Similarly it is impossible to reconcile the idea that a Constitution class can travel to the core in a few hours yet Galaxy class will need years to return from J-25 system unless we posit that an unstable wormhole existed in 23rd century or that they didn't end up going to the actual core.
On the other hand SW speeds are not the results of wanking: locations of Coruscant, Mustafar, Alderaan, Tatooine, Naboo, Geonosis are given in several publications as is the diameter of the galaxy. Therefore the speeds are calculated directly with no assumptions and all involve great distances rather than short bursts of speed.
Even if you compare ST short range speed like Earth-Vulcan it comes unfavorably when compared to Emperors 50,000ly+ trip from Coruscant to Mustafar.
Thus on a strategic level Empire will be able to outmanouver the Federation by performing lightning strikes before the Federation fleet has time to reposition.

There is no real contradction since with any of these rather numerous high speed Trek incidents, and theVOY and DS0 arcs. As you well know by now, Kane, there are three definite VOY episodes that describe how obtaining improved navigational data cuts years from off the journey home. Starting with "Year of Hell, part 1", we learn that just a minor change in Voyager's trajectory cuts 5 years off the trip. In "Hope and Fear not long after YoH, Starfleet sends information on the Delta Quadrant to try and shave off several more years, and in "Q2", Q gives Janeway some navigational data as a gift that shaves off a few more years off the trip.

I know you don't like it, but it is a fact and it's there. Deny all that you want, or handwave away all you like, but it won't change anything. So when we seen starships zipping around tends of thousands of light years in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants with little effort, we now know wh that is possible in such short spans of time usually, and why making the trip form there through uncharted space to the Delta and Gamma Quadrants takes 60-75 years.

On the other hand, with Star Wars, we have discussed why the lower canon which you keep insisting outranks the highest canon of the movies and their novelizations, is in conflict with them. We have whole huge threads on that here as you well know, so I won't go over them again with you.
-Mike

[Kane Starkiller]

Um, no. The issue of canoncity for Star Trek does not work like in Star Wars, that has been known for many years because unlike Lucasfilm, Paramount, and now CBS have made it abundantly clear that only the live action TV series and films are canon. Nothing else is. Not the TNG or DS9 TMs, not the Gene Roddenberry written Star Trek: The Motion Picture novelization, nothing else is canon, with the exception of the animated series' episode "Yesteryear". Otherwise we would have some really wanked out and interesting stuff for Star Trek, should we go that way, such as Kirk's thoughts on V'Ger's twelfth power energy cloud field, and how that relates to some rather insane starship power generation numbers. Or the James Blish novelizations of the TOS episodes with mention of interesting weapons carried by the Constitution class as a matter of course that can blow up entire planets.

So don't go down that route, if you do you'll be opening up a can of worms you'd rather not want to deal with.

I didn't dispute that only live shows are canon. What I'm saying is that "not canon" and "not Star Trek" are not synonymous. If I'm paying for Star Trek title but it's not actually Star Trek is that false advertising? Shouldn't there be a warning on the book or the technical manual stating that it's not really Star Trek or something?
As for "opening a can of worms" I don't fear the evidence since I'm interested in the truth. If the information comes from an official Star Trek source and doesn't conflict with the live show there is no reason to ignore it.

There is no real contradction since with any of these rather numerous high speed Trek incidents, and theVOY and DS0 arcs. As you well know by now, Kane, there are three definite VOY episodes that describe how obtaining improved navigational data cuts years from off the journey home. Starting with "Year of Hell, part 1", we learn that just a minor change in Voyager's trajectory cuts 5 years off the trip. In "Hope and Fear not long after YoH, Starfleet sends information on the Delta Quadrant to try and shave off several more years, and in "Q2", Q gives Janeway some navigational data as a gift that shaves off a few more years off the trip.

I know you don't like it, but it is a fact and it's there. Deny all that you want, or handwave away all you like, but it won't change anything. So when we seen starships zipping around tends of thousands of light years in the Alpha and Beta Quadrants with little effort, we now know wh that is possible in such short spans of time usually, and why making the trip form there through uncharted space to the Delta and Gamma Quadrants takes 60-75 years.

There is the obvious contradiction between the high speeds and the entire Dominion War arc. If your interpretation of "Chase" and "ST5" were correct Dominion shouldv'e been able to circumvent the wormhole and attack the Federation directly. Also capture of Betazed wouldn't be required for it to put core Federation worlds in Dominion striking distance. The same goes for Voyager, every single episode operates under premise that it takes 70 years to cross 70,000ly.
Furthermore I never ignored the fact that Voyager managed to shorten its travel time slightly by improving its sensors and I don't see how that changes anything.
In "Year of Hell" they improve their sensors by a factor of 10 and the result is 5 year time decrease or about 7%-8%. Clearly no amount of sensor improvement will result in thousands of times of speed increase. This is evident even from the trajectory which is not a straight line. Even if they managed to plot a straight line course to Earth it would only be maybe 20% decrease in time. We are still talking about speeds on the order of 1000c. Nothing close to what is implied in "Chase" or "ST5".
Certainly there are episodes like "That which survives" which imply 750,000c then there are episodes like "Hope and fear" in which it takes Voyager two days at high warp to cross 15ly for a speed of 2,700c. In the end there are far more episodes that point to roughly 1000c then there are episodes which point to 100,000c or million c and which are completely incompatible with the political situation in the galaxy (Dominion, Borg, Federation never heard of each other etc.).

On the other hand, with Star Wars, we have discussed why the lower canon which you keep insisting outranks the highest canon of the movies and their novelizations, is in conflict with them. We have whole huge threads on that here as you well know, so I won't go over them again with you.

If you are referring to ROTJ novel Endor-Sullust distance "Hundreds of ly" from the novel is nothing specific and doesn't present us with any difficulty of reconciling it with many detailed EU sources all of which explicitly give 100,000ly-120,000ly galaxy.
The fact that every time this argument comes up the main focus ends up on "higher canon" vs "lower canon" only serves to prove that people are aware the evidence itself is inconclusive so there is a need to dress it up by pointing out it's higher canon.

[sonofccn]

Aw what the hell. Might as well jump in.

The Federation leadership would risk their planets getting the Death Star treatment on a chance that Sisko will manage to obtain a Defiant carrying freighter without arising suspicion

Hardly a risk as the fringe worlds are home to smuggler types, traders and the what not and are pretty much against Imperial rule encrouching in on them. Hell Jabba, assuming he's alive, might even hand over a ship if he thought there was a good chance of success.

load Defiant onto the freighter

Which assuming you can find a freightor is child's play. It isn't like you have to stealthy or anything. The imperials have little to no presence on the outer rim unless they are activly searching for something.

cross thousands of ly without detection

Which one of those super-duper hyperdrives? The ride should take minutes and besides once you are in the negative space wedgie, baring a tracking beacon, you can't accuratly track a starship so unless the system your dropping out in has imperial ships nearby and they think anything amiss with a frieghtor arriving your odds of detection are pretty low.

manage to fire photon torpedoes before getting blown out of the sky,

Defiant's cloak might come in handy here or drop out of warp on the edge of weapon range and fire, or simply stay in warp and buzz past the planet at several times the speed of light leaving the Imperial clueless as to what just happened.

accurately hit and penetrate whatever defenses Imperial palace has and catch the Emperor in the palace.

The only real difficulty in the whole operation, knowing where the bloody hell Palpy will be. It is a little dicy but this is a war you have to gamble if you plan to win.

Upon the improbable successful completion of the...

Despite your wishes to the countrary hardly improbable. Difficult? Possibly. Against the grain of the Federation? Quite likely. But completly doable with at least moderate chance of success.

Federation leadership expects the Empire to collapse (presumably because they watched the ending of ROTJ) instead of the citizenry screaming bloody murder at the assassination on the part of extragalactic invaders.

Kane its cannon, as you noted, Palpy dies and five minutes later people are dancing in the streets. As far as those people are concerned the Rebels just snuffed out Palpy so just like ROTJ its party time. The New Republic kicks off, the various imperial commanders began ripping each other to shreds jockying for position and the whole thing sinks into a bloody, expensive and brutal civil war.

Frankly your only real argument post Palpy is hoping Vader still kicking and that he can unite the imperial commanders, at least for the moment, against the rebellion but in any event for the forseeable future the Empire has it plate full and can't be bothered to attack elsewhere.

[Mike DiCenso]

There is the obvious contradiction between the high speeds and the entire Dominion War arc. If your interpretation of "Chase" and "ST5" were correct Dominion shouldv'e been able to circumvent the wormhole and attack the Federation directly. Also capture of Betazed wouldn't be required for it to put core Federation worlds in Dominion striking distance. The same goes for Voyager, every single episode operates under premise that it takes 70 years to cross 70,000ly.
Furthermore I never ignored the fact that Voyager managed to shorten its travel time slightly by improving its sensors and I don't see how that changes anything.
In "Year of Hell" they improve their sensors by a factor of 10 and the result is 5 year time decrease or about 7%-8%. Clearly no amount of sensor improvement will result in thousands of times of speed increase. This is evident even from the trajectory which is not a straight line. Even if they managed to plot a straight line course to Earth it would only be maybe 20% decrease in time. We are still talking about speeds on the order of 1000c. Nothing close to what is implied in "Chase" or "ST5".
Certainly there are episodes like "That which survives" which imply 750,000c then there are episodes like "Hope and fear" in which it takes Voyager two days at high warp to cross 15ly for a speed of 2,700c. In the end there are far more episodes that point to roughly 1000c then there are episodes which point to 100,000c or million c and which are completely incompatible with the political situation in the galaxy (Dominion, Borg, Federation never heard of each other etc.).

Again you keep ignoring the evidence. Yes, we are told it takes 70 years approximately for the ships to get from the Gamma or Delta Quadrents to get to the Alpha and Beta Quadrants and vice versa. But with the clear cut information from not one, not two, but three episodes, which I named for you, and we have discussed before in detail here in other threads, we know that it is critical to have navigational data to shorten the journey in a rather significant. And here again we see you in action, ignoring or trying to strawman away the other episodes by pretending that two of them do not exist and attacking the most significant remaining one of the the three, in this case YoH and the 5 years reduction number. Unfortunately, the "Hope and Fear" episode's end makes it clear that more years could possibly be shaved off from the trip. We do not know for certain if the Starfleet data helped or not, but we definitely know that Q's little gift of data to Janeway at the end of "Q2" would most certainly shave "a few years" more off the trip home. By a few years, Q coud have saved as little as 2 years, and as much as 6 years or so depending on how chose to define what a few years is. Same thing with the Starfleet data, if anything was gained from it. In which case Voyager saved at least nine years.

Tie this information in with the examples, quite numerous of the high-speed incidents, and there are many more out there, that I did not cite, like the 500 parsecs line from TOS' "Arena", or TNG's "Where Silence Has Lease"" where the E-D zips across 1.4 parsecs in a matter of a couple of minutes, then we can only come to the conclusion that within Federation space or other well-charted regions of the Alpha and Beta quadrants, they can manage tens of thousands of c, and possibly well over a million c.

There is just no getting around this for you, Kane. Deal. The one thing that is certain, however, is that the Federation's starships will not just be travelling with impunity in Imperial space since they will not have any navigational data other than their own sensors.

As for "opening a can of worms" I don't fear the evidence since I'm interested in the truth. If the information comes from an official Star Trek source and doesn't conflict with the live show there is no reason to ignore it.

Yeah right.
-Mike

[Kane Starkiller]

Despite your wishes to the countrary hardly improbable. Difficult? Possibly. Against the grain of the Federation? Quite likely. But completly doable with at least moderate chance of success.

So the mission is hardly improbable, possibly difficult, quite likely [to succeed], completely doable? That's the risk analysis? No numbers no plan B for failure? Like I said unless the current president is Tom Clancy that mission isn't happening.

Kane its cannon, as you noted, Palpy dies and five minutes later people are dancing in the streets. As far as those people are concerned the Rebels just snuffed out Palpy so just like ROTJ its party time. The New Republic kicks off, the various imperial commanders began ripping each other to shreds jockying for position and the whole thing sinks into a bloody, expensive and brutal civil war.

Frankly your only real argument post Palpy is hoping Vader still kicking and that he can unite the imperial commanders, at least for the moment, against the rebellion but in any event for the forseeable future the Empire has it plate full and can't be bothered to attack elsewhere.

Sure it's canon but Federation doesn't know that at this point does it? Not to mention that civil wars and collapse of a state are not predictable events. What if August coup succeeded in USSR? If you replayed collapse of the USSR or Empire 10 times would it play out the same each time? What if US was more directly involved in secessionist movements in the Baltic states and USSR felt threatened enough to respond militarily? These are complex issues that require pages and pages of careful analysis and are still likely to be impossible to predict.

Again you keep ignoring the evidence. Yes, we are told it takes 70 years approximately for the ships to get from the Gamma or Delta Quadrents to get to the Alpha and Beta Quadrants and vice versa. But with the clear cut information from not one, not two, but three episodes, which I named for you, and we have discussed before in detail here in other threads, we know that it is critical to have navigational data to shorten the journey in a rather significant. And here again we see you in action, ignoring or trying to strawman away the other episodes by pretending that two of them do not exist and attacking the most significant remaining one of the the three, in this case YoH and the 5 years reduction number. Unfortunately, the "Hope and Fear" episode's end makes it clear that more years could possibly be shaved off from the trip. We do not know for certain if the Starfleet data helped or not, but we definitely know that Q's little gift of data to Janeway at the end of "Q2" would most certainly shave "a few years" more off the trip home. By a few years, Q coud have saved as little as 2 years, and as much as 6 years or so depending on how chose to define what a few years is. Same thing with the Starfleet data, if anything was gained from it. In which case Voyager saved at least nine years.

Tie this information in with the examples, quite numerous of the high-speed incidents, and there are many more out there, that I did not cite, like the 500 parsecs line from TOS' "Arena", or TNG's "Where Silence Has Lease"" where the E-D zips across 1.4 parsecs in a matter of a couple of minutes, then we can only come to the conclusion that within Federation space or other well-charted regions of the Alpha and Beta quadrants, they can manage tens of thousands of c, and possibly well over a million c.

There is just no getting around this for you, Kane. Deal. The one thing that is certain, however, is that the Federation's starships will not just be travelling with impunity in Imperial space since they will not have any navigational data other than their own sensors.

I haven't ignored any evidence. As I noted the course plotted in Year of Hell was not a straight line. Obviously there was room for improvement so incidents in "Hope and Fear" and "Q2" are not surprising. As I already pointed out, however, the plotted course was no more than roughly 20% longer than a straight line would've been therefore we are still talking about on the order of 50 years and speeds on the order of 1500c no matter how good their sensors and data was.
In no way does this support various one liners sprinkled over various series that imply millions of c and which are nullified by the weight of evidence pointing to 1000c. How much time did it take them to cross 500 parsecs in Arena?
In "Where silence has lease" we are again dealing with very short ranges where it might be possible for them to achieve million c.
Even with million c however they are still hundreds of times slower than Imperial ships which means that strategically they will be outmaneuvered even at short distances to say nothing of long range maneuvers across hundreds of ly.
No amount of sensor data will help Federation ships get around SW galaxy since warp drive is simply too slow and even assuming they can travel in straight lines through the galaxy it will still take them decades to even reach the Core.

[sonofccn]

So the mission is hardly improbable, possibly difficult, quite likely [to succeed], completely doable?

Kane if you can't debate against the likes of me without resorting to strawmen...

If you look back at what you quoted it would be clear to you that I claimed a moderate chance of success and clearly stated it was a difficult operation. It simply isn't this impossible or one shot in a million gambit you are desperate for it to be however.

No numbers no plan B for failure? Like I said unless the current president is Tom Clancy that mission isn't happening.

and you have failed to show why this mission has a higher than acceptable chance of failure. If you have evidence showing an ISD could detect and accuratly track a hyperdrive engaged ship randomly passing near its patrol route please provide it. If you have evidence the Imperials closely moniter smugglers and such on the outer rim I'd be glad to have it. Etc.

Sure it's canon but Federation doesn't know that at this point does it?

This is obviously based after at least limited first contact with the twin realization that the Empire is unpopular and the Emperor is ruling by a cult of personality , similar to both Stalin and Hitler, and removing him will create discord.

Not to mention that civil wars and collapse of a state are not predictable events.

Since the plan is to generate confusion, disorder and choas none of this conjecture matters unless you wish to prove the Rebellion won't push to free themselves following Palpy's death, which is unlikely, or that the Empire won't suffer from leadership issues or splinterization, also unlikely.