Would a Federation warship like the Defiant out gun a Star Wars Star Destroyer? Who has a bigger armada? Who has the tactical advantage? Don’t forget that The Federation includes the Klingons, who love warfare and have fast, agile, heavily armed ships, with cloaking devices, and the Vulcans with superior logic and tactical planning.
In case anybody is wondering, yes this is the nerd version of the “my dad can beat up your dad” debates.
it makes me happy that Batdad got to voice Batman later.
You’re very right… and yet I gleefully wade into it every time…
You should be ashamed that you left out the true fighters of the Federation:
But let’s be honest, the UFP would win. The UFP have that bomb that Soran used to explode a sun in Generations. The Empire destroyed a few planets. Sun destroying civilization beats planet destroying civilization.
I mean, are we not counting the New Order Starkiller base? I’m OK if we are, but they did blow up a sun.
I totally forgot about that scene. But the new empire sucked up a sun with a planet sized base. Soran blew up a sun with a missile barely bigger than a car. I still give the UFP the win.
There was a similar weapon in the extended universe, not that Disney cares.
I dunno’, IMO it’s kinda’ an orthogonal question to both universes.
Star Wars is about a struggle for what’s right despite what space-fantasy crazyness you’ll have to face. Star Trek is about trying everything short of violence before resorting to violence.
The overwhelming power in Star Wars is more about opressive threat and allegory (like what’s her face that has to get trapped in a cluster of black holes) than raw power, and in Trek, their extreme ability to do violence is to highlight how important the other options are. They almost always easily win the gun show, but they’re almost never happy for doing it.
So in the end, they both have very different forms of power represented. Star Wars is probably more capable of destruction over time since it’s always the whole galaxy at risk, but obviously Trek vaporizes plenty of things in one blast in any specific encounter. Hence why the Borg and Q, and shape shifters, and black puddles of sentient death, and such extreme entities have to show up when they want a classic threat to stay a threat.
In SW, it’s all fantasy that’s powerful. The setting itself is rugged, and only the powerful are powerful, so it has a much bigger hill to climb when pitting the few things with any kind of statistic against each other. Both universes have any number of means to defeat the other depending on what’s available and what actually works, who gets the jump, etc. Some things in both universes are insanely destructive by statistic, so one unarmored turbolaser shot or one full blast, unshielded phaser blast, is taking out an entire ship and then some. In either universe. Supposed to anyways, as much as they downplay turbolaser hits in the movies and games necessarily. Like how Halo would be drastically different if it were designed with any of the stats in mind.
Soran’s device was essentially an anti-bomb, based on how Worf described it:
Trilithium is a nuclear inhibitor. In theory, it could stop all fusion within a star.
If you shot it at a Star Destroyer I think you’d just give a handful of unlucky stormtroopers trilithium poisoning.
You don’t shoot it at the star destroyer. You shoot it at the star next to the star destroyer. When you take away nuclear fusion you get a large explosion more commonly known as a supernova. Everything within a few dozen light years is now obliterated. Gotta think like the Emperor if you want to beat him.
You don’t want to bring real-world physics into this. If you turned off fusion in a star, it would still shine for thousands of years.
A star massive enough to supernova, during the final stage, is held up by fusion. Fusion in the core continues to make heavier and heavier elements in stages. The final stage is measured in days. When that stage completes, the supernova initiation is measured in fractions of a second. The resulting shockwave travels faster than 10% of light speed.
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That was mostly to counter the “it will keep shining for thousands of years” in the previous comment. Yes, a starship might outrun the shockwave of material, but it might not detect the gamma waves until it’s too late, as the sudden influx of energetic light could overwhelm shields, and those do travel at light speed, and could reach the ship before it can jump.
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Well now we’ve just arrived at MAD, in space. Both sides deploy their Star Killers and both galaxies are rendered uninhabitable.
both galaxies are rendered uninhabitable.
The vast majority of stars are not big enough to nova, no matter what you do to them.
a supernova is caused by nuclear fusion
Depends what type of supernova you’re talking about. Type Ia supernova are caused by runaway fusion but most supernova are caused by core collapse which is when the fusion in the core dies out and gravity wins causing the star to explode. Depending on the size of the star you might even get a black hole at the end of this explosion.
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Carter and Mckay both destroyed a sun
McKay destroyed the majority of a solar system.
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‘Captain, scanners detect Palpatine on their bridge’
‘Chief O’Brien, program a quantum torpedo with a two second timer and beam it three decks below their bridge’
‘A quantum torpedo Captain?’
‘You’re right Chief! It’s a Tuesday.’
‘Sir?’
‘Send two!’
And I suppose that would end the war, since the rest of the Empire is only there under subjugation. No Emperor, no Empire.
Not really. The Emperor held together a bunch of power-mad sociopaths who enjoyed controlling the galaxy. Without Palpatine you get splintering and warlords
O’Brian will unite all the warlords together (in the pattern buffer)
That sounds awful. I’d like to go home to Star Trek now!
It’s worked for the rebels in at least two movies 🤷🏻♂️
Star Trek has vastly better sensors, shielding, weapons and science.
Sensors: they can detect the atmosphere and cargo inside a ship as well as how many individuals are in it. SW can’t detect when an entire ship has docked to the hull.
Science: and then they can beam a person out of it. They can screw with any technology while transporting too.
Shielding: ISDs and Death Star can’t keep fighter and the millennium falcon from running around inside their shield envelope. Federation shields give them the option to block crafting from passing.
Weapons: They made bombs that break space itself, and then apparently almost everyone agreed to ban them because its a stupidly dangerous idea.
Science 3: Genesis Device. Oh great you can destroy a planet. The Federation can create an entire solar system with a bomb.
Science 4: Federation developed a matter phasing cloak. Romulans made personal cloaks.
The only advantage the Empire has is numbers of ISDs. Even then, if the empire makes the wrong move they’ll piss off the Dominion or the Borg, and the empire literally can’t touch the borg.
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Oh, the Eclipse. Yeah, the ship that the rebels stole and then blew up?
Federation captains deal with Q, some on a regular basis. Palpatine can somehow he came back against a being that is everything he wishes he was.
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Now I want a cross over movie consisting just of Q making Palpatine miserable. Ending with Palpatine sighing in relief when Q finally gets bored just for Trelane to arrive.
Yeah but Star Was has religion. Obi Wan can “sense” when Alderaan was blown up. Vader can “sense” the presence of Obi-Wan.
All those “sensors” and “science” don’t mean much in the face of “bUt iTs mAgIc!”
Obi Wan can “sense” when Alderaan was blown up. Vader can “sense” the presence of Obi-Wan.
Science 3: Genesis Device. Oh great you can destroy a planet. The Federation can create an entire solar system with a bomb.
And the Feringi made it better with a paywall
SW also has a long distance speed advantage too. They travel around the entire galaxy while the federation takes months to get from one side of the federation to the other.
As far as I understand it though, their hyperspace is the same as ST’s subspace network used by the Borg. It’s very fast, but it only works on existing lanes. So while theoretically a SW ship is faster, it’s only if they’re using a known route. Which only exist in their galaxy.
Unlike ST though, SW ships can’t map out hyperspace paths with sensors but have to do so manually via manned ship.
I feel we’d have to account for their travel technology too. ST warp drives are considerably more versatile than specific hyperspace engines, especially if they end up fighting in ST space.
we talking cross universe or cross galaxy fight? Q likely takes issue with someone coming into his playground if we’re universe hopping. Galaxy to galaxy it’s carnage. As the thread here points out, both can destroy whole solar systems. Sure the federation would be slow to start doing so unless Janeway is still around. But they’d get there. Cloaking and transporter tech can make up for a fair amount of the federation being massively outnumbered. If the empire has to gind through borg territory before reaching federation space, that would balance things out. But really Trek time travels more often than stargate so who knows what madness that leads too. We may discover Sisko founds the jedi, while O’Brian finally snaps and founds the sith after being tortured for the 10,000th time.
Ha! The Sisko is Palpatine confirmed.
Just to pile on O’Brien, have something terrible happen to Keiko & Molly. That should really send him along the path to the Dark Side in an attempt to bring them back.
The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities - some consider to be… unnatural.
This has been bugging me since yesterday. I really want to see Darth Smiley now…
I think Trek has better weapons, do they not? I’m not a Wars fan (have seen them each once and “meh”).
From what I do remember, It took an entire Death Star the size of a small moon to destroy a planet. Don’t most federation ships carry enough armament to easily do the same?
AFAIK (again, not a Wars fan/expert) but don’t they use mostly laser weapons which are primitive and easily shrugged off by 24th century shields?
Assuming my memory is correct, then I’m going to say the Defiant itself could probably take out most of the Empire single handedly.
Trek has better weapons
Star Trek hand weapon effects:
Star Wars hand weapon effects:
I wonder what the rooms would smell like after that first scene.
Cancer. They’d smell like cancer.
Grilled hotdogs.
Isn’t that second gif after like 10-15 min of sustained contact?
Point that phaser at the door for 15 min and we can see what’s up.
That comes into an argument of lightsaber assembly.
Some wielders prefer to overcharge their saber, while others use unstable Kyber crystals. While it makes for a much more powerful blade, any damage to the hilt makes it even riskier than a standard saber due to the sheer energy output. Hell, it can start breaking itself apart if not built correctly.
IIRC, in the pre-Disney EU days, there were wielders who still carried around modified power packs, so they could give their saber an extra boost if needed.
That’s not even taking in the other ways they have been used, like a rifle that uses them as the ammunition. All the power of a focused beam of plasma launched from a snipers perch with pinpoint accuracy.
Thats good context, but i think “standard” phaser vs “standard” lightsaber is still going to be a weak show for the lightsaber.
I cant think of any door melting feats for phasers, but they are commonly used to heat up rocks during cave ins, and are shown to heat room temperature stone to red hot in a couple of seconds, likely raising the temps 1000f in that time frame.
I know those were special super dense blast doors, but I still think the phaser seems to have a much higher energy output.
Sustain is likely a winning category for the saber, but if the power output discrepancy is on the order of 100 or 1000x, that’s still not really a win.
Most of the time they’re “blasters,” sometimes they’re “turbolasers” or “lasers.” Star Wars canon is a hot mess but they are most commonly defined as charged particle beam weapons, i.e. they’re phasers by a different name.
Not really. I think the only time in Trek we see a planet outright destroyed by a ship is Species 8472 fighting the Borg. Many Trek ships could maybe render an undefended planet uninhabitable, but not pulverized, and probably not with standard weapons. There are random superweapon techs like the Thalaron Pulse or biogenic weapons that could kill everything on a planet, or the trilithium bomb that Soren used & that the Bashir changeling almost used that can cause stars to go nova.
Then in Star Wars EU you have things like single star destroyers doing a Base-Delta-Zero where they essentially raze the surface of a planet. The power levels of Star Wars weapons are really kind of all over the place, with many of the old Legends specs having insanely high energy yield for things like turbolasers.
IIRC some of the “hard numbers” put out would have things like a single turbolaser shot exhausting the shield capacity of a Sovereign-class.
The Xindi joined the federation. They have the technology.
It depends on whether you are approaching the question from a narrative perspective or an empirical perspective.
Narrative: The Federation wins because the Federation are The Good Guys™ and the Empire are The Bad Guys™. The Federation starts out on the back foot and it looks pretty grim in the middle, but ultimately they eke out a win. If this is a TNG two-parter it plays out the way “The Best of Both Worlds” did: engineering prowess combined with timely application of the human factor wins the day. If this is a DS9 arc or Discovery season, then Section 31 does what needs to be done.
Empirical: The Empire crushes the Federation like a bug. The Imperial industrial base is enormous and their power generation capabilities vastly surpass anything the 24th century Federation can muster:
- The Death Star could violently destroy an entire planet, reducing it to asteroids. In “The Die Is Cast,” a combined Romulan-Cardassian fleet requires multiple volleys to simply glass the surface of a planet.
- The Millennium Falcon—a ship a little larger than a runabout—could cross the known galaxy (Tatooine on the rim, Alderaan in the core) in a day. Voyager estimated a similar journey would take 70 years at maximum cruising speed.
- In the 2360’s the Federation built six Galaxy-class ships and maybe a few dozen more throughout the course of the Dominion war. These are among the largest, most powerful, most advanced ships the Federation can build, yet they are dwarfed by an Imperial II-class Star Destroyer and the Empire built hundreds of these in the mere two decades it existed.
It you could somehow snap these two spacefaring nations into existence and pit them against each other, it would be like late-WWII United States facing off against Napoleonic France. It’s a blowout.
Empirical: The Empire crushes the Federation like a bug.
I see what you did there.
The Empire doesn’t have shield technology. I don’t know if their weapons could penetrate shields, but they definitely have no defence against a teleporter. Yes, their fleet could get to any target faster than the UFP, but as long as the target has a teleporter system they can just teleport the commander into space.
The Empire can shield an entire planet. Those big spheres on top of a Star Destroyer’s command tower are shield generators.
Fair point. I didn’t remember seeing shields in space battles when watching SW, but forgot about that.
My man, taking down the Empire’s shields was a major plot point of the third act of RotJ.
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Good thing Luke had the power of narrative on his side! Once the Emperor was gone (for now), the entire Empire went with him (for now).
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Wars has literally zero defense against their engines being teleported out of their ship. Trek no diffs Wars.
teleporters don’t work through shields
In Trek thats because folks know about teleporters and presumably have calibrated for that. Wars doesn’t have that development
Yes, shields normally let transporters pass right through and definitely need to be specifically configured to block transporter beams. That’s why no away team has ever been stranded because their ship had to raise shields.
Yes, they have shields!
And cloaks
And intangible drives
The Star Wars universe is full of shields.
The only convincing question I have seen is “both have shields, but the Federation has teleporters. Can Star Wars shields block teleporting a torpedo onboard?”
I still think the Empire fleet outnumber Federation torpedoes, but it’s a good question.
It would not be close. Just from a logistics and industrial capacity standpoint. The Federation has around 150 member worlds while the Empire holds more than 1 million inhabited systems. No technical advantage could make up for that discrepancy. The Empire could lose 100:1 and still easily crush the Federation.
I don’t buy it.
Who would win, a star destroyer with laser like weapons that need to be manually aimed, or a ship with a shield, a battery of highly powered missiles and phasers that auto fire at targets?
Who would win, 100 tie fighters with no shielding that need to be facing the target to shoot, or a few shuttles with shields and phasers that auto fire in almost any direction?
Shields change the game, also having ships you don’t need to directly face the enemy with to shoot, or manually aim with, makes the empire look like chumps.
I don’t think you are grasping the difference in scale here. Even if you grant the Federation absolute technological supremacy (which is debatable, but ultimately doesn’t matter). The Galactic Empire at its peak has effectively unlimited resources and the logistical capability to build at unimaginable scale. They could park a fleet the size of the entirety of Starfleet over every Federation world at the same time. Even without superweapons they could devastate all those worlds, lose every single ship in the process and still be able to project power.
Wars are won with industrial capacity and the ability to leverage that capacity. The Empire is perfectly configured to conquer. Their weakness is asymmetrical war from within their infrastructure. The Federation could fight this way, surrender while hiding or scuttling their capital ships, join the Rebellion while bringing significant engineering and technology to bear from within the Empire. That would work.
But a straight-up conflict? No. It’s not a fair fight when one side can absorb losses of any amount and the other side can’t.
I highly doubt it.
Tech wise, they would be on par, but Empire forces would FAR outnumber federation forces.
Place the skirmish in the Star Wars galaxy, and Sith enter chat, who would absolutely slaughter federation officers after boarding.
Place it outside their galaxy and odds would slightly improve, but not much.
The Star Wars galaxy is full of infinite resource mechanisms like the Starforge and cloning/droid programs for troops.
Star Trek universe has finite resources.
Also, as far as the Klingons and Vulkans argument, the Star Wars universe literally, according to descriptions of the senate, thousands over thousands of species, all with their own advantages and usually minimal disadvantages.
The only real thing that tilts it for me is if Q enters chat.
Edit: I love this thread, and am having a ball geek debating, but I am pretty firmly set that at best we have a Battle of Thermopylae situation here.
The Federation could put up a valiant fight, but they can’t get anywhere with Romulans or Cardacians, respectively 1 planet of adversaries each. They certainly could not defeat 1/3rd of the entire Star Wars core galaxy without an OBSCENE amount of plot armor.
Q is just as likely to side with the whole new universe to fuck with as he is to help his “friends.”
And the Continuum likely won’t choose sides.
‘Somehow Palpatine returned’
Q grins
Could green defeat purple?
A question as old as the Drazi.
Most certainly not, purple is the color of kings!
Green is made of yellow. And yellow beats purple.
So the Roman Empire would still be kicking if they were xanthogenitus instead of porphyrogenitus?
yes because is man and purple is a woman
I would say yes, since the technology demonstrated in Star Trek seems way more advanced than the technology demonstrated in Star Wars. Even Jedi powers don’t seem particularly strong compared to just the natural abilities of many species that are part of the Federation (and if they seek help outside the Federation, they could potentially have literal gods on their side).
However, in another thread today I saw a comment saying that hyperdrives are faster than warp drives, and allow people in Star Wars to traverse the entire galaxy in a day or two. Star Trek ain’t that fast so it might be hard to stop a Death Star obliterating all the planets before they can get there and stop it. 🤔 I don’t know how true that statement is though; I’m not nearly as well versed in Star Wars as I am in Trek.
I would say yes, since the technology demonstrated in Star Trek seems way more advanced than the technology demonstrated in Star Wars.
Care to elaborate?
Federation officers are more scientifically inclined, but in my opinion Star Wars tech is equal or greater at every turn, the tech just gets less fanfare because to Star Wars peeps, the stuff is boring ancient technology.
Teleporter for one. Hologram rooms, the machine to make any object (fuck was it called?!). Resources and ship characteristics will be very important to determining who would win. Star trek has teleporters which I think is a huge advantage
That’s a good question for me. How exactly do replicator work?
My first response was “they only make any food or drink, except alcohol.” All of this, however, does replicate on dishes. The food is obviously actually nutritious, unless nutrition is coming from pills off screen.
Do the dishes eventually disappear?
If they don’t, and a new dish is being fabricated from air for everyone each meal, wouldn’t the ship eventually just be a horde of dishes?
I dont know any of these details.
Can a replicator make a grenade?
This is answered in the show:
Replicators can make alcohol, they’re just programmed not to. This is for health reasons, because synthahol is considered safer. It’s possible to override that behavior though and make them replicate the real thing.
Similarly, while I don’t think grenades have ever come up, replicators are perfectly capable of replicating weapons, but there are sometimes restrictions on replicating weapons.
In general, replicators can replicate pretty much any “mundane” object. It’s only specific scifi elements they can’t replicate like Dilithium, latinum, etc.
As for dishes, they don’t disappear on their own, anything that’s replicated is a real physical object. It will stick around forever, so you have to “do the dishes” by putting them in the replicator to be broken back down into energy. There’s at least one episode of DS9 where we see someone’s quarters full of dirty plates and their roommate complains about them never putting their plates back in the replicator—even when you have a magic box that literally dematerializes your dirty dishes, sometimes it’s just too much effort.
They work by assembling atoms into their respective molecular structure to produce materials. Think of them as very fast atomic 3d printers. They have devices on-board that break matter (any matter) down into the building blocks for atoms (quarks, electrons, neutrons), and then that resource can be re-assembled in whatever configuration is requested. You can turn poop into whiskey with Federation technology.
in one episode on ds9 the replicators all spawned auto firing phasors that targeted any non cardasian. Yes they can make weapons
No shields in Star Wars, first of all. Much more powerful weaponry in Star Trek (it doesn’t take a moon sized station 30 hours to charge a laser; the Enterprise could nuke a planet in like 30 seconds with a phaser bank). Mind control and telekinetic powers are effortless vs taking years of dedicated training. Etc.
Not true. The entire plot of Return of the Jedi is taking down the shields protecting the Death Star 2. Droidikas have shields. Capital ships are equipped with corridor shields, as displayed in Revenge of the Sith.
They might not be implemented in the same way, but the tech is there and while I don’t have an example off the top of my head, I don’t believe there there are not shielded empire vessels in the expanded universe.
And at that, in such an absurd hypothetical, the legion of empire engineers could quickly see the Federation shield advantage and quickly mimic it.
Your statement of enterprises ability to blow up a planet with its phasers is also 100 percent false. Just straight gobbledygook.
The Empire shielded an entire planet in Rogue One.
If we are talking planetary warfare, I am now remembering the shield domes from Phantom Menace.
Don’t forget about the energy shielding used to protect the Mustafar refineries in RotS.
I am not a super buff on either franchise, and I definitely know more Star Wars, but I don’t remember any kind of terrestrial, infantry, or personal shielding in Star Trek, with the exception of the Borg, who continue to wreck the Federation because the only shields the Federation has are bubbles around their ships that fail pretty quickly with an energy weapon barrage.
Your statement of enterprises ability to blow up a planet with its phasers is also 100 percent false. Just straight gobbledygook.
There is literally an episode of TNG where they use that very thing as a threat to some colonists they need to move, and then go on to say that the incoming aliens that want the humans gone are even more powerful. Their ability to glass a planet with a single ship is mentioned *quite a bit.
As for the shields in Star Wars: They’re only good if the ships are near enough to a ground based generator that is vulnerable to attack. In a straight up space battle not near a planet, the empire is kinda fucked. Plus the shield generators in Return of the Jedi at least don’t seem to be shielded themselves… So lock photon torpedos and boom.
Even if hyperdrives are faster, SW ships have no shields. As long as the planet they are wanting to blow up has teleporter stations they can just start beaming officers into space. It takes time to charge the planet killing laser.
All I know is neither stand a chance against the formidable ‘shuttles’ of the Stargate SG-1 series
Cerritos makes any argument moot.
Self-aware beats in-universe every time.
