Star Trek/Star Wars-Strengths and weakness

[watchdog]

I'm curious as to what everyone thinks would be the main strengths and weakness of the two, what would help and or hinder them in a contest between the two?

My two cents; Star Wars main strength I think is their industrial capacity. All of the various movies and such have shown an amazing production capability so much so, that I would not be amazed at the appearance of an all-factory planet churning out goods at an incredible rate. Their ability to BUILD just makes them seem so dynamic.

Their weakness? As Luke Skywalker pointed out to Palpatine himself, their overconfidence. The Empire seriously is way too overconfident for their own good. That overconfidence allowed a handful of small fighters to take out the Death Star despite actual analysis that there was "a danger" as well as underestimating Ewoks and having inadequate defenses to their all-important shield bunker.

For Star Trek; their greatest strength is in their adaptability. Starfleet personnel are almost like the Borg in their ability to adapt to changing situations; indeed that ability is most likely what saved them repeatedly from the Borg threat. Adaptability is the backbone of all of their training really, and with so many unknowns in the galaxy you have to be able to adapt quickly to survive.

Star Treks weakness; aside from nearly everyone over the rank of Captain appearing to be dangerously unstable, I think not every captain is capable of that life-saving adaptability. Too many get set in their ways, too many get overly bound in rules, and the number one rule they are enslaved by is the Prime directive. It has high-minded ideals, but it’s too easy to use the Prime Directive as an excuse to simply do nothing while people die. You can make cases for the Prime Directive, and you can make cases against it. What it boils down to is not getting involved or turning your back on a situation so as to not have to take responsibility for what is happening.

These are what I think are the prime strengths and weaknesses of the two franchises, what does everyone else think are the strengths and weaknesses?

[User1604]

There's no match for the power of the Force.

[watchdog]

I'll see your Force and raise you a Plato's Stepchildren. Starfleet officers high on kironide will be more than a match for just about any force user.
Aside from the Force and cheats like the kironide, what do you think are the strengths and weaknesses of the two?

[User1604]

I'll see your Force and raise you a Plato's Stepchildren. Starfleet officers high on kironide will be more than a match for just about any force user.
Aside from the Force and cheats like the kironide, what do you think are the strengths and weaknesses of the two?

The books have plenty of examples of powers much greater than the Platonians.

[Khas]

And even they pale before Q powers.

[User1604]

And even they pale before Q powers.

I doubt Q has anything on the Organians, he's just a dumb-Puck :D

[watchdog]

No force lightning or super jumps sure, but it would still put one on par with most force users as well as offer them the ability to control the actions of others.
I tend to leave Q out of the discussion, my focus is usually Empire vs Federation. In such a situation there are only two dedicated Force users to contend with, and only one that is likely to come into contact with the Federation.

[User1604]

No force lightning or super jumps sure, but it would still put one on par with most force users as well as offer them the ability to control the actions of others.
I tend to leave Q out of the discussion, my focus is usually Empire vs Federation. In such a situation there are only two dedicated Force users to contend with, and only one that is likely to come into contact with the Federation.

You really can't use anyone but the Federation, and maybe their other allies, since the Earth-galaxy is full of various super-beings and other advanced races who simply don't interfere; and this could present a problem to SW taking over the Earth-galaxy, unless one is going to pretend that the Organians and the Metrons and everyone else is just going to sit by and do nothing, even though they didn't before with the wars against the Klingons and the Gorn.

In reality, however, the whole notion of ST v. SW is tricky, since in ST humans began on Earth, and so the only way they could exist in a distant galaxy in the past, is through some sort of time-travel via wormhole or something, by human space-travellers who populated that galaxy. The humans also seem to be the most technologically advanced, and also it's believed that hyperdrive came from oustide their galaxy, so your backplot would be that some human colonists discovered hyperdrive, but a big ship of them got lost in a wormhole and ended up long ago in a a galaxy far, far away.

[watchdog]

The Empire would have other problems in trying to take over the Federation, let alone what would hapen if some super entity decided to get involved. But yes, I tend to leave those supers out of the discussion unless it's specifically about them.
I started this thread because I was curious as to what others thought was the strengths and weaknesses of Star Trek and Star Wars (or rather, the Federation and the Empire).
All of the old discussions from years past tended to look at how powerful the Empire suposedly was and how weak the Federation was in comparison, not something I agreed with but there you go. In watching Return of the Jedi one day and hearing Luke tell the Emperor that his overconfidence was a weakness (and Palpatines weak comeback that Lukes faith in his friends was his), I realised that Luke was right. Indeed I recall reading once that the whole reason the Ewok incident went down the way that it did was because George Lucas was trying to illustrate that an advanced and arrogant power could be defeated by their own arrogance and hubris. Actually believing that these rock throwing-stick wielding savages are no match for our crack teams.
Giving it equal thought I realized that the Federations greatest strength was not who had the biggest gun or the most powerful superweapon. They survived the odds because they were able to think their way out of their situation, they adapted to the situation in order to find a solution. Aside from someone like Grand Admiral Thrawn, the Empire does not encourage that sort of thing, prefering blind obediance instead.

[User1604]

The Empire would have other problems in trying to take over the Federation, let alone what would hapen if some super entity decided to get involved. But yes, I tend to leave those supers out of the discussion unless it's specifically about them.

But that's cherry-picking, since you they're part of the Earth-galaxy, and so you really can't have one without the other. If the Metrons and Organians would get involved in a war with the Gorn and the Klingons, they'd definitely get involved against the Galactic Empire.

I started this thread because I was curious as to what others thought was the strengths and weaknesses of Star Trek and Star Wars (or rather, the Federation and the Empire).

And a strength of the Federation is that they've got higher powers willing to intervene on their behalf, like the Organians did.

All of the old discussions from years past tended to look at how powerful the Empire suposedly was and how weak the Federation was in comparison, not something I agreed with but there you go. In watching Return of the Jedi one day and hearing Luke tell the Emperor that his overconfidence was a weakness (and Palpatines weak comeback that Lukes faith in his friends was his), I realised that Luke was right. Indeed I recall reading once that the whole reason the Ewok incident went down the way that it did was because George Lucas was trying to illustrate that an advanced and arrogant power could be defeated by their own arrogance and hubris. Actually believing that these rock throwing-stick wielding savages are no match for our crack teams.

"Crack teams" who can't hit a target 2 feet away, more like, and armor that can't stop a pigmy-arrow.

Giving it equal thought I realized that the Federations greatest strength was not who had the biggest gun or the most powerful superweapon. They survived the odds because they were able to think their way out of their situation, they adapted to the situation in order to find a solution. Aside from someone like Grand Admiral Thrawn, the Empire does not encourage that sort of thing, prefering blind obediance instead.

Well in "Rise of Darth vader," Palpatine executed commandos who wouldn't kill the Jedi, because he didn't want people thinking for themselves.
The biggest problem with TCW series, IMHO, is that it makes the Clones appear too individualized, so that it doesn't make sense that they'd all turn on the Jedi without question; more like they'd be "WHA?"
It's also hard to believe that every clone would know Order 66, but that Palpatine's Dark Side power would be so strong as to shield every Jedi from knowing it.

[Mike DiCenso]

If the Metrons and Organians would get involved in a war with the Gorn and the Klingons, they'd definitely get involved against the Galactic Empire.

No, those super-beings would not get involved, not unless the fighting was carried right to their planets or star system. The Organians only got involved after several days of their planet being occupied and they did not come down on either side but their own. The same was true of the Metrons, who did not care which side won, and they were planning on destroying the winner in the first place, since they reasoned whomever won was the most dangerous of the two species. Fortunately Kirk chose to spare the Gorn Captain, and the Metrons decided that Humanity had something worthwhile about them, but that they would need several thousand more years.
-Mike

[Admiral Breetai]

industrial capacity fire power speed and range goes squarely to the federation

size toughness of vessels and ftl goes to the empire

[Mike DiCenso]

Except that the FTL is only good in SW territory. It's no use in the ST Milky Way galaxy because there are no ready-use hyperspace lanes to exploit, and it would take years, perhaps centuries for the Empire or whatever power in SW to chart strategically useful ones, never mind tactical ones.
-Mike

[Praeothmin]

And the opposite would be similar, Mike, Feds in SW would also suffer from slow speeds, as Voyager was very, very slow, while in a Galaxy the Federation had been probing for hundreds of years...

[watchdog]

Except that the FTL is only good in SW territory. It's no use in the ST Milky Way galaxy because there are no ready-use hyperspace lanes to exploit, and it would take years, perhaps centuries for the Empire or whatever power in SW to chart strategically useful ones, never mind tactical ones.
-Mike

That's a point I've never heard any of the warsies answer. I've pointed that out myself only to be pretty much ignored, or they just claim that mapping is easy and move on to the next subject.
I do recall MW saying that it was easy to measure the distance between stars and thus have your maps. He was at the time refering to how we do this now, probably not realizing that those measurements can be off by a light-year or two. The type of attacking that he and other warsies always claim the Empire would conduct-jumping in close to the planet and then bombarding it-that absolutely NEEDS precise calculations to do.
As I've often stated; the Empire could invade, but it would be at a super massive disadvantage.
Are there even still warsies who claim they could set up a base on the other side of our galaxy and just zip back and forth attacking Federation targets at will?