Star Trek all the way. Well, assuming that it's Next Generation, anyway. And a bit of DS9 is acceptable. But the original series, Voyager and Enterprise can suck it. Star Wars is better than thems. However, Next Generation whoops all the others, and then some.
Star Wars has been ruined by George Lucas, and everybody in Star Trek is too much of a goody two shoes. Although Gul Dukat and Garek are some of the best characters ever seen in sci-fi.
Depends. Is it the original Han shot first STAR WARS, or stupid dance routine star wars? I have to agree those last three and the redone releases of the original 3 just killed star wars for me.
To be quite fair it all depends on how far you take Star Wars. If you only take it as far as Lucas' Episodes 1-6 then obviously Star Trek all the way. However if you take Star Wars and all of its content then Star Wars no contest. The world of Star Wars outside of the movies is vast and very interesting and surpasses Star Trek. Don't get me wrong here I'm not trying to be bias. I myself am a Star Wars fan hardcore but i did venture forth into the darkside and watched many of the Star Trek Episodes, like Gen and DS9 and so on. IMO, Star Wars takes it home all the way.
Star Wars all the way for me, but not so much because of the movies but because of the EU and books. Those are really what added the depth to the universe for me, and frankly they have much better stories.
Star Trek. I just get more out of the universe. I highly believe in its core messages (strange yes when I mainly play Orks XD), and I see Star Wars as a space opera that's all about eye candy rather than substance.
nurglerulesslaneshdrools wrote:I doubt spock would be able to beat youda if he had the entire crew of the enterprise and also star trek hasn't got a death star
I don't quite reckon Star Trek needs a death star... I mean, lets see how far that goes for them when Spock drops a black hole right in the middle of it eh?
Star wars all the way. It's not all fluffy bunny the way Trek is. Love Trek, don't get me wrong, and I can watch it all day. But even Trek's attempts at conflict barely seem believable like you know it's going to be done at the top of the hour. Star Wars' expanded universe has got stuff really great stuff before and after the original trilogy.
Star Wars has a better MMO too.
But whatever <censored> let R.A. Salvatore kill Chewbacca off needs to be drawn and quartered. So does R.A. Salvatore for that matter. ...."and maybe I'll just drop a moon on Chewie to stir the pot a little." Dammit editors where were you!!!
Star Trek, both/either the tone of Wrath of Khan and Dominion War DS9 (with a sprinkling of First Contact). Basically if Star Trek had that darker tone throughout it'd be perfect for me.
I enjoy Star Wars, but it's just never grabbed my imagination like Star Trek has.
And I've always preferred the more naval style engagements in Star Trek over the aerial type engagements in Star Wars.
Star Wars could kick Star Treks butt IMHO.
Stormtroopers vs Guys with Phasers. Not a contest at all. Plus the sheer number of Star Wars fans (from all age groups, thanks to the games)
Automatically Appended Next Post: There is just no way in anyone's imagination that Trek > Wars just because of the story Star Wars tells, and because of the EPIC music tracks found on Star Wars troughout all the movies, games and the Cartoon series(s)
Plus, as mentioned above, Im a Battlefront sucker. It was my first ever FPS game, and I'm not ashamed to say that it is probably the best offline game I have ever played in my life.
I was going to vote. But i couldn't find the neither choice. I haven't seen any of each. That i can remember. When the star wars came out with the wookey fight, I smoked some things and tried to watch it. Took me about 3 tries and i still don't remember the movie. I think the paradises of these movies are alot better than the movies. Space balls, Fan boys, something something something dark side.
Babylon5
Farscape
Firefly
DS9
Original Star Wars Trilogy
Battlestar G (recent) (knocked down from 3rd place by the terrible end half of Series 4).
ST:THG
ST: Enterprise
ST: Voyager
(off the bottom of the map: Star Wars prequels and that bastard george 'put moar cgi in it rawr!' locust...)
Star wars appeals more to the kiddies who don't really understand what total schlock it is. It is the most generic "space opera" you can imagine. Granted the special effects were ahead of their time, but now days? The poor writing ruins any kind of nostalgia. And if the ewoks weren't its death knell, then jar-jar binks certainly was.
Star trek has always had more adult themes, not so much high fantasy swashbucklers in space. None of the star wars films hold a candle to wrath of khan, but empire and a new hope were both better than that save the whales 80's star trek movie.
Emerett wrote:Empire Strikes Back is the only movie in the series worth watching.
All of Star Trek is worth watching.
Well, except for Enterprise, the first two seasons of TNG and DS9, Voyager and all of TOS.
These parts of trek were turgid, badly written and acted, and persisted only because certain nerds could not be told.
Once the Dominion War kicked off for DS9, and once the movies grew some balls, it was watchable.
All pales before Farscape, though (but I am biased because I worked on it.). Yes, it is even superior to Firefly. Why? Because it doesn't need a legion of Brownnoses (or is that browncoats? I get them mixed up, given how far most of them wish to climb into Joss Whedon's rectal passage).
I am not surprised at the vote results ... Star Wars and Warhammer 40K have a lot in common, actually, both being in the "sci-fantasy" realm of sci fi, having essentially a form of magic and mysticism blended with science, and a plethora of different intergalactic species, wars, etc.
The biggest difference is the 40k universe is much ... "darker" than Star Wars.
IHateNids wrote:
Plus, as mentioned above, Im a Battlefront sucker. It was my first ever FPS game, and I'm not ashamed to say that it is probably the best offline game I have ever played in my life.
I think this question is very dependent upon your age. For me, I cannot understand why anybody would put ANY space themed show or movie before the Star Wars trilogy, but for me that was my generations big sci-fi experience. I loved Firefly and Farscape was cool, but better then Star Wars??!! Not for me. They hold no nostalgic emotion whatsoever. And again for Stat Trek, the original was cool because I watched everyday after Perry Mason, the Peoples Court, He-Man, Transformers, and the Brady Bunch. The kitsch factor is high here, and it's meant to be. Most modern sci-fi shows only attempt to harness this raw power (except the new Who. But Tom Baker still is the best doctor, hands down. NO. Don't argue with me, it won't change my mind) and usually fall far too short in their attempt. So to summarize: I like Star Wars, I can connect with it on many levels. I like the original Star Trek (and a smattering of STNG), but no where near as much as Star Wars. I'm a Who fan, always have been.
I prefer the SW, however if you could give me command of the USS Defiant, well that would change things. That ship looks so damn good, it's even eclipses the YT series.
nurglerulesslaneshdrools wrote:I doubt spock would be able to beat youda if he had the entire crew of the enterprise and also star trek hasn't got a death star
No, instead they have a regenerating cyborg faction, and creatures that eat planets...need I say more?
nurglerulesslaneshdrools wrote:I doubt spock would be able to beat youda if he had the entire crew of the enterprise and also star trek hasn't got a death star
No, instead they have a regenerating cyborg faction, and creatures that eat planets...need I say more?
Let's not forget about the technology to create black holes...
Star Wars for me. I was angry with the prequels until I read this article and then watched it following the Machete Order. This is the only way to watch it IMHO.
I'm gravitating slightly more towards Star Wars - both for it being more of a gritty Space Opera as well as it, quite ironically, being more realistic than Star Trek - but I really love both franchises, so I voted "no strong opinion".
Ever since watching the ST reboot, I sadly fear that the golden age of Trek is gone - but as long as they'll continue to show TNG on TV, I'll be happy.
Don't care that much for either. But purely out of seeing how gakky the star wars movies were (imo!) after hearing so many stories that kind of blew it so i'll go with ST.
Both shows are a serious nostalgia trip for me, my grandpa and I watched the Original Star Trek together on VHS tapes we made a weekly excursion to public library for. Then TNG, Voyager, and DS9 with my dad. Who also introduced me to the amazing world of Star Wars.
I really like Star Wars. It's probably one of my favorite "universes" to play in. I wouldn't even want to be a jedi, x-wing pilot is more then bad ass enough.
but if I have to pick between the two...
but Star Trek beats it out for me. Star Trek is a fantastic show that honestly does give me some hope for humanity. The best kind of scifi that truly imagines a better tomorrow for all humanity. We need that I think... now more then ever.
I cant call a favorite. It all depends on my mood. If I want high tech "clean" scifi, its Star Trek. If I want gritty (possibly more realistic) scifi, then its Star Wars.
However, I will say that Babylon 5 is by far my favorite scifi TV show of all time.
Huge epic battles, giant beasts, great effects, twists in the story and characters. Fallows Darth Vader's entire life. With aliens of different sizes, giant cities, fast galactic fighting, and darker characters and times.
Star Trek, it was all battleships in space. It was 100% navy. They have slow galactic battles where you wait for commands, fist fighting scenes that even an 18 year old could win, and aliens that were all the same shoe size. Most episodes were get a problem, solve a problem. Hard to get pulled into a story that is solved so fast, and is filled in an office like setting (or stage).
I do like character story boards like Spock, Worf, the Borg, Data, as they had dominate inhuman traits that made them seam more like movie characters rather then sitcom characters. I also enjoyed how the first Star Trek had a mix of characters that all had different accents and personalities.
Voted for Treck because even though I love the Star Wars universe, I genuinely loathe the story Lucas crafted for it. That said, though... both Treck and Wars take a back seat for me to Babylon 5, Firefly, and the remake of Battlestar Galactica.
The funny thing about Star Wars is, at least from my experience, is that no SW fan loves all the movies or even parts of movies. Some of them even suck balls but fans have the ability to ignore the things they don't like and love the things they do.
CDK wrote: The funny thing about Star Wars is, at least from my experience, is that no SW fan loves all the movies or even parts of movies. Some of them even suck balls but fans have the ability to ignore the things they don't like and love the things they do.
CDK wrote: Exactly my point! I love star wars but there are un-mentionables! As long as certain things are not said it's great.
Yeah not every minute of Star Wars is gold, especially the prequels and remasters.........but have you watched a Star Trek movie? Seriously, mostly awful except for WOK of course! Really, really terrible movies for the most part.
Star Wars. Yes, the prequels suck; so do most of the Star Trek movies and most of Voyager and Enterprise. Directly comparing the originals and Star Trek TNG, I find myself liking the basic cheesiness of Star Wars to the pretentious cheese of TNG.
CDK wrote: The funny thing about Star Trek is, at least from my experience, is that no ST fan loves all the series or even parts of series. Some of them even suck balls but fans have the ability to ignore the things they don't like and love the things they do.
Wow, surprised that so many people like those crappy TV shows. Farscape especially, but also Star Trek, Stargate, and every show where some douche is transported back in time to our time, or with robots that look indistinguishable from humans (with the exception of BSG). Poor effects, poor acting,, poor cinematography, lousy storylines. This comes from a complete Sci.Fi. nut. I watch almost everything sci.fi. but those low budget TV shows are just too crappy. They actually have a lot in common with those kid shows on Disney channel, like Hannah Montana, Jesse etc.
It's like they just stuck some actors, who never graduated acting school, some metal painted cardboard and some homemade 3D software into a cookie cutter and stamped those shows out like their lives depended on it. If I sound bitter about this, it's because I am. Being a giant sci.fi. fan, I'm always filled with hope when I see a new sci.fi. show come out, only to be deeply disappointed when I notice it's just the same old crap.
The SW galaxy is just 100% more interesting and entertaining then Star Trek.
Star Trek is very Dry and bland IMO and even if SW is Eye candy, whats wrong with that? its got depth, its got good backround, Some fans just get to serious with it sometimes is all.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
CDK wrote: The funny thing about Star Wars is, at least from my experience, is that no SW fan loves all the movies or even parts of movies. Some of them even suck balls but fans have the ability to ignore the things they don't like and love the things they do.
I am one of the few that enjoyed all 6 movies!
4,5,6, were obviously the best, then people asked for more! so George lucas gave it to them!! 1,2,3,.. then eevryone complained it wasnt good enough! lol
they are all good in their own way, fans just get to involved and in depth/technical as if its real when its a science FANTASY movie...
SgtSixkilla wrote: Wow, surprised that so many people like those crappy TV shows. Farscape especially, but also Star Trek, Stargate, and every show where some douche is transported back in time to our time, or with robots that look indistinguishable from humans (with the exception of BSG). Poor effects, poor acting,, poor cinematography, lousy storylines. This comes from a complete Sci.Fi. nut. I watch almost everything sci.fi. but those low budget TV shows are just too crappy. They actually have a lot in common with those kid shows on Disney channel, like Hannah Montana, Jesse etc.
It's like they just stuck some actors, who never graduated acting school, some metal painted cardboard and some homemade 3D software into a cookie cutter and stamped those shows out like their lives depended on it. If I sound bitter about this, it's because I am. Being a giant sci.fi. fan, I'm always filled with hope when I see a new sci.fi. show come out, only to be deeply disappointed when I notice it's just the same old crap.
CDK wrote: The funny thing about Star Wars is, at least from my experience, is that no SW fan loves all the movies or even parts of movies. Some of them even suck balls but fans have the ability to ignore the things they don't like and love the things they do.
Star Wars seems to have fallen so far. There was a time when you could say to someone "May the force be with you" and it was actually kind of cool. I can't even imagine that now. Aside from being very uncool, it would also just feel empty and meaningless after the whole midichlorians thing. There are a lot of bad things you can say about the prequels, but for me, what made them really terrible, is that they robbed Star Wars of all its magic. They made the force into an infection, Yoda into a fool, Luke's Father into a brat, Light Sabers into glowing Samurai Swords, and the Jedi into Space Cops. Even the old films that I loved so much just don't seem the same any more.
I actually voted Trek, it's a pretty solid drama that's always kept its focus on the human story.
Trek and Wars have very little in common. It's frustrating that they're always talked about oppositionally like this.
Star Wars is about giant allegorical wars between good and evil. Trek is about individual people having individual people problems on the backdrop of bigger events.
Totally different focus and style. Being in space is the only connection between the two.
I'm seeing a lot of people in here bashing one or the other with things that are simply untrue. Don't come in here and say you hate one based on parodies and cultural references.
Star Wars because of the OT, KotOR1&2, and the Thrawn trilogy&duology. The vast majority of the EU is garbage as are all of the prequels, including Revenge of the Sith. George Lucas is a hack that ripped off Dune and relied on others to turn his handful of good ideas into a well written and developed universe.
I really like Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home, The Undiscovered Country, and First Contact, but most of Star Trek suffers from unimpressive writing and pretentiousness. TOS has a few really good episodes, but as a whole its not particularly good. I think the Twilight Zone and Outer Limits were both much better series. TNG had its moments, but it was nigh unwatchable nearly on with Mary Sue Wesley Crusher, Roddenberry's self insert, saving every damn day. DS9 was the best series, but it is well documented that it "borrowed" many key elements from Babylon 5. Voyager isn't bad. Enterprise was terrible.
Star Trek is more consistent than Star Wars, but the best storylines and characters in Star Wars are superior to the peaks in Star Trek. I don't think either series is significantly better than the other or that either series is half as good or as important as its extreme fans believe them to be. The biggest thing that annoys me about Star Trek is the emphasis on scientific mumbojumbo and that the series is true scifi while Star Wars is a space opera. Star Trek is extremely soft scifi with a lot of complete nonsense and fantastical elements in it.
I'd rather have it combined into one uber show. Captain Sisko CO of Babylon 5, Klingons kicking crap out of Shadows, Lyta Alexander blowing up Jem'hadar with her mind.
#1 is Firefly. It was what Roddenberry claimed was his goal(Wagon Train to the Stars) only much better and deeper.
#2 The first 4 seasons of Babylon 5. A show set during war times that had no problem killing off popular characters. Favorite scene is when the Churchill rams the Roanoke
#3 First 2 Star Wars Movies...The originals where Han Shot first.
#4 Star Trek ... The Original Series
#5 Doctor Who ... Tom Baker and David Tenet are Equal, imo
#6 Star Blazers/Space battleship Yamato
#7 Star Gate 1 ... The Movie
#8 Star Wars .. The Clone Wars..(animated series)
#9 Star Gate Atlantis
#10 Star gate 1 the Series
#11 Farscape (Hercules in space? ... ookayy)
#12 Battlestar Galactica ...the original series
#13 Star Trek Voyager....From season 3 until its end
#14 Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century (Cheesy Disco Space Adventure still much better than socialist soap opera in space)
#15 Star Trek TNG ...Socialist soap opera in Space. Only thing redeemng about TNG is Micheal Dorn as Worf
#16 DS9 Only thing worse than TNG due to it being so bloody boring. Only saving grace was Micheal Dorn as Worf .
Note- Did not include Enterprise because I didn't watch it, Roddeberry was dead (had no control over it) and Scott Bakula is either loved or hated by many people(esp. women)
Did not include the new BSG because I haven't seen it.
What series would I like to see???
Aside From Fire Fly returning then maybe a 5th Element Series
Star Trek. I don't like the Star Wars prequels, so I'm straight away discounting 50% of the "main" part of Star Wars. Star Trek has bad episodes, certainly, but when I think of the prequels I have a hard time saying anything I genuinely like about them (though they did lead to some good spin-off games). Aside from that I feel I grew up more with Trek, I was into Star Wars as well, a great deal, but I wasn't watching it every week or talking about it so much with friends. I prefer the characters, the ships and the setting.
Also, I think First Contact is better than any of the Star Wars films
Didnt a group of people do the actual math on this once? i can't remember how it went but they somehow figured out equations for the power of weapons and shields and armor. Star Wars won, i think... it might have been Trek haha. Anyone recall this?
My personal list for pure Sci-Fi:
1.Firefly
2.SG-1 seasons 1-7ish (pre Ori)
3. Alien, Aliens, & Predator
4.Star Trek TNG / original Star Wars
...
About 50. new Star Wars for Monsters an Vehicles
...
ten bajillion. original Star Trek
If you throw in Pulp/Space Opera and tangential Sci-Fi make the list:
1.The Rocky Horror Picture Show
2.Flash Gordon (1980's with Topol, Timothy Dalton, Brian Blessed, & Queen)
3.Firefly
4.SG-1 seasons 1-7ish (pre Ori)
5.Muppet From Space
6. Alien, Aliens, & Predator
Etc.
Firefly is without a doubt the classiest and most fun to watch Sci-Fi I've seen. The characters were so well written and acted while the plots were so original and interesting.
Battlestar Galactica (the new series) was a really thrilling ride and the only Sci-Fi series along with Firefly I've watched every single episode of. I liked a lot of the characters and the story changed so unexpectedly at times I would eagerly anticipate every next episode. The last few episodes in the final season were a bit iffy though. The final episode was pretty good but the ending wasn't spectacular in general.
I never really loved the Star Wars movies, I just liked the universe. I liked the last two of the prequel series even if Anakin was a really bad stain on them.
I generally like Star Trek though I've only seen a few episodes of TNG. I've seen mostly the original series, which while cringy at times can have some pretty good stories.
Stargate is probably my least favorite of the big three "stars" as the plots are pretty repetitive and there are many cliches. I watched quite a number of the Jack O'Neill episodes before they got the spaceship and after, and I counted about 7-8 times that SG-1 got captured and imprisoned. Jack O'Neill's character is pretty good though, somewhat of a saving grace for the show.
I'd say Star Wars mainly because I grew up with the original films and as a kid, I really tried to like Star Trek but my attention span wasn't all too great, it also didn't help that there was so much dialouge that I couldn't understand. (we don't dub things here). However, as much as I fail to find interest in Star trek, I do kinda like the original series mainly due to William Shatner because it's freakin' Shatner!
And Star Wars has the horrid prequels. So I guess they both have ups and downs. But In the long run. I'd say Star wars.
I grew up in the 80's and 90's when Wars was actually considered niche. (Yes you fetuses, there was such a golden time.) Wars was where it was at; pop mythology, Joseph Campbell with light swords.Trek had some interesting ideas, but it was just shlock (I thought) and by the time I took a notice to it, it had entered its nadir.
Then the prequels...
After... that... (*shudder*) I started to look back at Trek. What I had dismissed as campy - well it still was - but it was a lot of fun and there was usually something below the surface. Both series' high points (Empire and Khan imo) are masterpieces, but not in the same way. Apples and oranges like Marvel vs Dc. I love and hate them both but for different reasons.
Spent most of my childhood growing up with Star Wars. The original movies were great, the books were a drug to me, it won hands down. The Star Trek books were alright (to my young mind), the movies were fun, but they just didn't have the punch that Star Wars had. The new JJ Abrams ST movies though are phenomenal, while the newest SW movies left much to be desired. But ST movies and shows do not trump episode 4-6 of SW+ books. Time will tell how the upcoming movies turn out, but I have confidence with Abrams doing both groups.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Star Wars has been ruined by George Lucas, and everybody in Star Trek is too much of a goody two shoes. Although Gul Dukat and Garek are some of the best characters ever seen in sci-fi.
I always liked Star Trek more. Even as a kid I always felt like the Trek universe was "bigger", and there was more stuff out there to see and explore. Also the whole mentality of there being more to the universe than one big war appealed to me. I appreciated the diplomacy/science/exploration part of it.
It could also be similar to Rogue Trader in some bizarre way...
Star Wars, hands down. The Original Trilogy is just incredible, and far surpasses any of the Star Trek media that I have seen, although I did enjoy the new (2009) film.
Plus, they don't make Star Trek Lego, so I'm not interested.
EDIT: 100th post! And a Lego Death Star is en route for my birthday!
You have this wrong. Farscape wasn't Hercules in space. That was Andromeda.
Farscape was "Fraggle rock in space" or "Muppet Trek" - and I say both of those as someone who worked on it. They were both nicknames we gave it at the time.
Star wars has Imperial class star destroyers,TIE fighters,The TIE series and death stars.I hate Jar jar but can TOLERATE him.He started the empire so he is the reason star destoyers exist.Hail the triangles!
I have to go with Star Wars since my parents had them on VHS when I grew up. This was in the days when video cassetes where cheaper to rent then to buy in my country. I was the only kid in my school that knew Star Wars and this was in the early 80's we all where into Transformers, G.I Joe, Starcom at my school and I could at SW to my list.
The fact that my grandmother through my American realtives got her hand on some old Star Wars movie comics and a book detailing the making off, the later must have had a serious hand in getting me into modelbuilding.
I also have had a strong love for Star trek TNG and bits of DS9 as it was one of the few Sci-Fi TV shows I got to watch regularly and other shows where either on the BBC at realy late hours.
The Star Wars releases with the added CGI where still ok but I realy liked the charm of practical special effects they origenaly had e.g. models, pyrothechnics and the lot. I am not a fan of the Star Wars prequels. To me they are like the Micheal Bay Transformers movies. The action bits are the only amusing bits.
The Aliens in Star Wars where more alien than Star Treks people with ridges on thier faces, but I understand that this was probably because of the TV budget for most part.
If you're only interested in the results, look at "Results" (at the bottom). If you want to know how I worked out those results, read everything else.
In several cases, I've used the symbol ^. This means "to the power of", in case anybody is unfamiliar with it. e.g. 2^7 is two to the power of seven, i.e. 2×2×2×2×2×2×2 (seven twos multiplied by each other).
In case anybody is unfamiliar with the concept of negative powers, x^(–y) = 1 ÷ x^y, where x and y both represent any number.
In physics, the letter c is used to represent the speed of light in a vacuum: 300,000,000m/s, or 300,000km/s.
On the matter of Star Wars canon: there are only six things which are canon: the six Star Wars films. Everything else is glorified fanfiction.
Table of contents:
1. How many inhabited planets are there in the Star Wars galaxy?
2. The speed of different methods of faster-than-light travel:
(a) For the Imperium of Man, the Orks and the Forces of Chaos
(b) For all Star Wars factions
3. Are Star Wars turbolasers and blasters made of matter, or of energy?
4. Star Wars shielding:
(a) Can Star Wars shields block solid objects?
(b) Can Star Wars shields block teleportation?
5. Star Wars fuels:
(a) How much energy can 1m³ of Star Wars capital ship fuel generate?
(b) How much energy does hyperdrive take up?
(c) What is the name of Fuel X?
6. Star Wars spaceship strengths:
(a) How much energy can the fuel of a Command-class battleship generate?
(b) How much energy can the fuel of a Magnificence-class battleship generate?
(c) How much energy can the fuel of a Trade Federation battleship generate?
(d) How much energy can the fuel of a Glory-class star destroyer generate?
(e) How much energy can the fuel of an Enforcer-class or Avenger-class star destroyer generate?
(f) How much energy can the fuel of a Unifier-class star destroyer generate?
7. Numbers of Star Wars Republican forces:
(a) How many clone troopers are there in a Glory-class star destroyer?
(b) What is the total energy generation capacity of the Imperial Starfleet at the time of A New Hope?
(c) Was the Grand Army of the Republic the entire Republican armed forces, or was there also a Republican Starfleet?
(d) How many warships does the Republican Starfleet have at the end of the Clone Wars?
8. Size of warships:
(a) Emperor Palpatine's enormous flagship from The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi
(b) The mysterious ship seen at the Battle of Endor in Return of the Jedi
(c) Trade Federation battleship from the Star Wars prequel trilogy
(d) The Galactic Republic's star destroyers from Attack of the Clones
(e) The Galactic Empire's star destroyers from the Star Wars original trilogy
(f) The Galactic Republic's star destroyers from Revenge of the Sith
(g) Imperial Navy battleships
(h) All the various classes of Imperial Navy escorts
(i) All the various classes of Imperial Navy cruisers
9. Warship types:
(a) What types of warships are there in Warhammer 40,000?
(b) What types of warships are there in Star Wars?
10. Ship statistics for the Imperium:
(a) How much energy can 1m³ of Warhammer 40,000 fuel generate?
(b) How much energy can all the various classes of Imperial Navy escorts generate?
(c) How much energy can all the various classes of Imperial Navy cruisers generate?
11. Numbers of Warhammer 40,000 Imperial forces:
(a) How many sectors are there in the Imperium?
(b) How many warships are there in the Imperial Navy?
(c) Why aren't Space Marine fleets counted in Calculation 11(b)?
Results: speed, ship numbers and energy generation capacity.
1. How many inhabited planets are there in the Star Wars galaxy?
I begin with the premise that the Galactic Empire and the pre-Clone Wars Galactic Republic controlled the entire Star Wars galaxy. This is blindingly obvious due to their very names.
By the time of Attack of the Clones, "thousands" of Republican planets have joined the Confederacy of Independent Systems, and Dooku claims that another ten-thousand are expected to do so soon. Therefore, the galaxy contains at least 12,000 inhabited planets.
Judging by eye, the Galactic Senate has about one-thousand seats. We know that it can't be one seat per inhabited planet. So what does one senator represent? Our best clue is from The Phantom Menace, more specifically, the line:
SUPREME CHANCELLOR VALORUM: The chair recognises the Senator from the sovereign system of Naboo.
This line tells us that the Galactic Republic is not a nation; it is a federalist network, encompassing sovereign nations, such as Naboo.
Clearly, each of the one-thousand seats in the Galactic Senate represents a sovereign member-nation of the Republic. Not all of them, obviously, are made up of just one inhabited planet; otherwise the galaxy would only contain one-thousand inhabited planets, and we know that it contains at least twelve-thousand.
The Trade Federation is an obvious example of a Republican member-nation which covers many planets. Ten-thousand Trade Federation battleships were seen blockading Naboo, each of them 38 times as powerful as an Imperial star destroyer (see Calculations 8(c) and (e) for evidence of this). If it can build the equivalent of 380,000 Imperial star destroyers (and it's unlikely that the Trade Federation would have sent its whole fleet to blockade an insignificant planet like Naboo, leaving itself unprotected), it can't be limited to a single inhabited planet. The Trade Federation must possess hundreds or thousands of inhabited planets.
So we know that some Republican member-nations have far more territory than others do. In this sense, the Republic is similar to the United Nations. Compare Russia to Liechtenstein in size and influence, and you'll see my point.
But if we can figure out the number of inhabited planets in the galaxy, we can figure out the average number of inhabited planets per region.
We can put an upper limit on the galaxy's number of inhabited planets, judging by a statement in Revenge of the Sith:
OBI-WAN KENOBI: The Chancellor will not be able to control the thousands of star-systems without keeping the Senate intact.
Obviously, Obi-Wan isn't talking in the 2,000-9,000 range, since we know that the Republic has at least twelve-thousand inhabited star-systems. However, we also know that he isn't talking in the range of one-million or beyond, or he'd say "the million star-systems" or "the millions of star-systems", rather than "the thousands of star-systems". Therefore, 999,999 is a plausible upper limit on the galaxy's number of inhabited planets.
Next, we can put a lower limit on the galaxy's number of inhabited star-systems. This is a subtler point, but still valid.
The Galactic Senate contains one senator for each region. There are at least 12,000 planets which sympathise with the Separatists. And yet, in Attack of the Clones, not a single senator speaks out in favour of the Separatist cause—not one. If those 12,000 planets made up half of the Republic—even if they made up 10%—their Senators would definitely speak out when the Senate was considering sending an army against them. I mean, if you formed a considerable portion of a democratic body that was considering sending an army against you, I think that you'd want to speak out, wouldn't you?
The only plausible explanation for the Separatist Senators' failure to speak out is if they weren't there; such people are willing to speak out even when public opinion is clearly against them, such as in The Phantom Menace. Since the Senate's numbers don't appear to have noticeably decreased since The Phantom Menace, when there were no secessions, then the Senators of those twelve-thousand planets must be a very small portion of the Senate: 2%, at most. If they were any more than that, we would have seen a significant change in the Senate's numbers. In fact, they're almost certainly less than 2%, but this is a lower limit.
Note: A potential object is that the Separatists might control most of the very large member-nations (like the Trade Federation), and very few of the small ones. However, it could also be the other way around. Indeed, the dominance of Trade Federation designs in the Separatist Droid Army and the Separatist fleet alike suggests that the Trade Federation dominated the Confederacy of Independent Systems, in which case there can't have been lots of other, similarly large member-nations in the Confederacy.
Note: Another potential objection is that the Separatists couldn't have stood up to the Republic in the Clone Wars if they didn't have lots of planets. However, the Confederacy of Independent Systems was largely formed from wealthy companies like the Trade Federation. These companies would control the very richest and most industrial areas of the Star Wars galaxy. Also, they started off with a vast fleet, while the Republic had to build its fleet from scratch, so they'd have time to seize plenty of planets to even the playing field while the Republic was struggling to build a fleet to stop them.
12,000 ÷ 2% = 600,000. Therefore, there are at least 600,000 inhabited planets in the galaxy.
So we have a lower limit (600,000) and an upper limit (999,999), but no way of telling which is correct. Let's go with the simple solution: average!
(600,000 + 999,999) ÷ 2 = 800,000 [calculated to one significant figure].
For a calculation as imprecise as this, it would be unjustifiable to go to more than one significant figure.
Therefore, the galaxy is composed of one-thousand member-nations, each of which contains an average of 800 inhabited planets.
2. The speed of different methods of faster-than-light travel:
(a) For the Imperium of Man, the Orks and the Forces of Chaos
White Dwarf is kind enough to provide very clear data here. There are two tables: the amount of time that passes in the material world, and the amount of type that passes for the people on the ship itself. While the fact that there's a difference is interesting, it isn't very relevant strategically. What matters is simple: if a Warp-capable ship enters the Warp to travel to somewhere five- or ten- or twenty-thousand light-years away, how far in the future does it emerge?
Now I'm going to say the speeds that all these numbers mean, in multiples of c. So 2c is twice the speed of light in a vacuum, 10c is ten times the speed of light in a vacuum, et cetera.
(Note: I'm taking a month to mean exactly 365 ÷ 12, in order to be as accurate as possible.)
1 light-year: 12,000c or 1,900c
5 light-years: 13,000c or 1,800c
10 light-years: 13,000c or 1,800c
50 light-years: 12,000c or 2,000c
100 light-years: 12,000c or 1,700c
500 light-years: 13,000c or 2,200c
1000 light-years: 12,000c or 2,000c
5000 light-years: 12,000c or 1,700c [all calculated to two significant figures].
So that's pretty clear. If Warp conditions are as good as can be reasonably expected, the speed is 12,000c to 13,000c. If Warp conditions are as bad as can be reasonably expected, the speed is only 1,700c to 2,200c.
So how do we produce a single figure? Easy. Average it!
This gives us a final answer: an average of 7,100 times the speed of light in a vacuum.
(b) For all Star Wars factions
Hyperdrive—travel through hyperspace—is the method of faster-than-light travel that is used by all Star Wars factions. I'm now going to make a conservative estimate of its speed: an estimate which gives as low a speed as possible.
In real life, we know that the radius of the Milky Way is about 60,000 light-years. We have no idea how big the Star Wars galaxy is, except that it's big enough to have two satellite galaxies (as we see in the Jedi Archives' galactic map in Attack of the Clones).
But that gives us a clue as to its size: it's only big enough to have two satellite galaxies, no more. The Milky Way has loads of satellite galaxies. From the little evidence available to us, it seems that the Star Wars galaxy might be smaller than the Milky Way.
Given that I'm making a conservative calculation of hyperdrive's speed, I'll assume that the Star Wars galaxy's radius is only 20,000 light-years.
In Attack of the Clones, Kamino is in one of these satellite galaxies, and judging by eye from the Jedi Archives scene, it's about 40,000 light-years away from the centre of the Star Wars galaxy. The whole Star Wars prequel trilogy often tells us that Coruscant is at the centre of the galaxy. Therefore we know that there are 40,000 light-years between Kamino and Coruscant. In Attack of the Clones, Obi-Wan crosses this distance in his fighter.
Judging by the sheer size of the fighter, it had nowhere to store food: it was tiny. Therefore we know that the trip lasted no more than 24 hours, unless Obi-Wan was willing to go without food for a whole day; he can't have picked up new supplies on his secret mission. Even this presumes that he spent large amounts of the trip sleeping in hyperspace—in fact, the trip might have taken just a few hours. But I'll assume that it took 24 hours, for the sake of being conservative.
If you travel forty-thousand light-years in one year, you're travelling at 40,000c. If you travel it in 1 day—365 times less time—then you're travelling precisely 365 times faster than that. 40,000c × 365 = 15,000,000c [calculated to two significant figures].
So hyperdrive goes at 15 million times the speed of light.
Some people might object to this, on the grounds that Obi-Wan's fighter would be an unusually fast ship. However, there are plenty of other examples of hyperdrive moving at this kind of speed: for instance, the Millennium Falcon going from Tatooine to Alderaan in A New Hope, or Padmé's ship going from Tatooine to Coruscant in The Phantom Menace, or Luke's X-Wing going from Dagobah to Bespin in The Empire Strikes Back. But the distance between Kamino and Coruscant is clearly defined, so I've chosen that.
3. Are Star Wars turbolasers and blasters made of matter, or of energy?
Regardless of their name, I can prove, in three different ways, that turbolasers and blasters are not made of energy—in which case they are almost certainly made of matter.
1. If turbolasers and blasters were actually lasers (i.e. made of pure energy), they would travel at the speed of light. The movies show us that they don't move at anywhere near the speed of light. You can actually see them moving: people can even dodge them. They're far, far, far slower than light. Therefore they aren't light.
2. Turbolasers and blasters emit a visible glow as they travel. Light does not glow. Are there big glowy yellow lines coming from the sun? No. Radiation doesn't glow; it only produces colour if it hits an object and is reflected back into your eyes at the right frequency. If anybody's ever seen a basic laser pointer, they'll know that a laser does not produce a streak of glowing stuff: it produces a bit of light at the destination. There is, however, an explanation for the streak-of-glowing-stuff phenomenon: actual matter which is glowing. Light itself doesn't emit extra light outwards, but matter can.
3. Turbolaser cannons have holes at the ends of them, not lenses. Therefore matter is physically leaving the cannon, not a laser beam.
4. Star Wars shielding:
(a) Can Star Wars shields block solid objects?
I don't know whether the Star Wars Expanded Universe has actually claimed that Star Wars shields can't block solid objects, but if so, it's wrong. I have three methods of verifying this.
1. We actually see shields capable of blocking solid objects in The Phantom Menace, in the final duel between Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Maul. This is the most conclusive evidence. It is literally depicted in the most canonical source of all: the movies. It is incontrovertible.
2. If shields were incapable of blocking solid objects in the Star Wars galaxy, turbolasers wouldn't exist. Instead, ships would spend the energy (which they canonically spend on turbolasers) on launching big blocks of solid metal at other ships, very very quickly. These blocks of metal would carry tremendous amounts of momentum. If Star Wars shields were actually incapable of blocking solid objects, everyone would use solid objects to get through shields: it would be a vast advantage to have weapons which could bypass your opponent's shields on their own.
3. The destruction of Alderaan was an incredibly violent event. An entire planet was turned into debris which was hurtled out through space tremendously quickly. We see from direct movie footage that the debris covered distances as large as the diameter of a planet in less than a second. Momentum = mass × velocity. The mass of a planet is very big. The velocity here is very big. See where I'm getting?
Even if the Death Star's armour was incredibly thick and incredibly tough, it is simply impossible for it to survive the blast without a scratch. Yet that's exactly what happens. The Death Star isn't even scratched by this incredibly large amount of debris moving incredibly quickly. Even if its armour was ridiculously tough, it would at least be scratched, and would probably be torn apart. Yet it survives unscratched. This, on its own, testifies that Star Wars shields can block solid objects.
In the Star Wars galaxy, there appear to be three kinds of shields.
1) Theatre shields. These are seen in The Phantom Menace, A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. The Gungan theatre shield in The Phantom Menace let battle droids on foot get through, but blocked hovering vehicles and weapons fire. The theatre shield of the first Death Star in A New Hope let Rebel fighters get through if they slowed down to match speeds with it; then, once they were through, they accelerated again. In The Empire Strikes Back, the Rebels have a theatre shield which is so powerful that it can block the turbolaser fire of five star destroyers and a Command-class battleship (for the name of that ship class, please see Calculation 9(b)), and which also prevented the Empire from using any units that didn't touch the ground: hence, the usage of heavy walkers at the Battle of Hoth. It's clear that theatre shields block fast-moving objects (such as turbolasers and proton torpedoes) and any objects that don't touch the ground, but let slow-moving objects through.
2) Ray-shields. These are seen in Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. In Revenge of the Sith, they prevent Anakin and Obi-Wan from getting out of them; something very similar is used by Dooku against Obi-Wan in Attack of the Clones, with identical effects, so it's almost certainly the same technology. In A New Hope, they're used for the first Death Star's thermal exhaust port (though not for the first Death Star itself), and they famously turn out to be proton torpedo-permeable. The only sensible reason why anyone would bother to use ray-shields for a spaceship is that they're cheap; they're far inferior to the other two types of shields.
3) The type of shields seen in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. These shields—such as star destroyer shields, and the shields of the second Death Star—are incredibly violent. Anything that touches them—an asteroid, a fighter, another spaceship—is instantly vapourised. Obviously, they can't be used on the ground, because they'd try to vapourise the earth underfoot, and they'd run out of power while trying to do so. However, in space, they're extremely effective, and they're used for all star destroyers. Interestingly, you can open holes in them for shuttles to move in and out, and (presumably) to fire a weapon through your own shields.
This three-part explanation explains every shielding phenomenon in Star Wars that I know of.
Note: I've heard it claimed that Star Wars ships can't block solid objects because the star destroyers were worried about entering the asteroid field in The Empire Strikes Back. However, some asteroids are many kilometres across, and there were lots and lots of asteroids there: the asteroid field in The Empire Strikes Back was far, far denser than any known asteroid field in real life. Asteroids move surprisingly fast, too, as anyone who's ever studied asteroids in real life can attest. Just because Star Wars shields can't block very large numbers of such massive objects moving at very high speed doesn't mean that they can't block any solid objects at all: that's like saying that a truck can't carry anything because it can't pick up the Eiffel Tower.
(b) Can Star Wars shields block Warp-based teleportation?
Void Shields can block Warp-based teleportation (and they definitely can; even the God-Emperor of Mankind himself was physically unable to teleport onto the Vengeful Spirit until she lowered her Void Shields). But that is only because Void Shields work by producing a disturbance in the Warp.
The people of the Star Wars galaxy don't even appear to know that the Warp exists. It is highly unlikely that any of their technology produces disturbances in the Warp.
So, in conclusion:
Definitely not.
5. Star Wars fuels:
(a) How much energy can 1m³ of Star Wars capital ship fuel generate?
Since I don't want to have to say "Star Wars capital ship fuel" every time, I'll call it Fuel X until I've given it a name.
Let's take a look at the destruction of Alderaan by the first Death Star, in A New Hope.
Having measured the speed of the explosion in A New Hope, and knowing the approximate mass of any human-habitable planet, Dr Curtis Saxton, the physicist who wrote the Star Wars Technical Commentaries website, comes to the conclusion that the destruction of Alderaan took 10^38 joules (or thereabouts). To find his articles on this subject, please see / swtc / ds / (remove spaces).
On the same page, Saxton also calculates, by a variety of means, that the first Death Star is about 160km in diameter, and that the second Death Star is about 900km in diameter.
Note: 10^38 joules is far, far greater than the energy necessary to destroy a planet, but that's perfectly explainable. In A New Hope, we saw that Alderaan had a planetary shield which actually blocked the Death Star's bolt for about a tenth of a second—and that was a supposedly defenceless planet. An incredibly heavily-defended planet, such as Coruscant, would probably be able to do much better—perhaps even to block the bolt completely.
Sheer logic dictates that the Death Star's reactor must be located within its massive bulk: its diameter is 160km, so its radius is 80km. The firing dish isn't that big: all that space must be used for something, or else what's the point of putting it there?
Note: An alternate hypothesis suggests that the Death Star was somehow teleporting energy from a black hole or a star, but there's absolutely no evidence that teleportation technology even exists in the Star Wars galaxy, so this hypothesis fails the test of Occam's Razor.
In order to make a conservative estimate of Fuel X's energy generation capacity, I'm assuming that the first Death Star's whole interior volume was made of Fuel X, and that Grand Moff Tarkin was reckless enough to spend literally all of the first Death Star's fuel on the destruction of Alderaan in order to test the power of the Death Star.
The volume of the first Death Star can be worked out with the equation for the volume of a sphere: V = 4pr³ ÷ 3. In case anybody is unaware, p is about 3.14.
Here, the radius (r) is 80,000 (measured in metres), so, to find the volume (measured in cubic metres), I calculate: V = 4 × p × 80,000³ ÷ 3 = 2.1 × 10^15 [calculated to two significant figures]
10^38 ÷ (2.1 × 10^15) = 4.8 × 10^22 [calculated to two significant figures].
Therefore, each cubic metre of Fuel X generates 4.8 × 10^22 joules.
Note: I've heard the objection that efficiency would make Fuel X less powerful than this, but it's incorrect. Whether Fuel X operates at 0.0001% efficiency or 99.9999% (100% efficiency is physically impossible), this is the amount of energy that Star Wars technology can actually get out of Fuel X. If anything, it's likely that the first Death Star—which was a new technology rather than a tried-and-tested one, and which we already know was badly designed—is less efficient than most ships, so most ships would generate more than 4.8 × 10^22 joules per cubic metre of Fuel X.
(b) How much energy does hyperdrive take up?
We know that Fuel X generates 4.8 × 10^22 joules per cubic metre.
Luke Skywalker's X-Wing has, at most, 5m × 5m × 5m for its reactors and fuel storage: 125m³. It's probably smaller: more like 2m × 2m × 2m: 8m³. Thus, it should be able to generate at least 1.92 × 10^23 joules of energy. Even if the X-Wing can fire a million shots before running out of fuel (highly unlikely), that would put its energy generation capacity at 1.92 × 10^17 joules.
In A New Hope, Luke's X-Wing fires its blaster-cannons at the surface of the first Death Star, vapourising at least 1m³ of material with a single shot: probably more than that. If this material was iron, that would take 6 × 10^10 joules. Even if the Death Star was made out of something 1,000 times as difficult to vapourise as iron, that would only take 6 × 10^13 joules.
So the X-Wing isn't even close to as powerful as a theoretical Fuel X-powered ship of the same size. This is unsurprising, since a Fuel X reactor is probably extremely complicated, and can't be duplicated on something as small as a fighter. It would be difficult to duplicate a nuclear reactor on a fighter, let alone something as complex and ultra-energetic as Fuel X.
Yet an X-Wing, which is thousands of times weaker than it would be if powered by Fuel X (instead of whatever it really uses), can power hyperdrive with no difficulties—see how easy it is for Luke to fly around the galaxy in his X-Wing in The Empire Strikes Back, never worrying that he needs to refuel.
Even more tellingly, X-Wings are fighters—every scrap of power is vital, and they're carried by capital ships, so there's no real need for them to use hyperdrive. Yet they do anyway. This shows that hyperdrive's energy requirements aren't just tiny for a Fuel X-powered capital ship, they're tiny for a fighter.
Therefore, on a warship captain's list of things that could go wrong, "What if hyperdrive takes up too much of our fuel?" would be somewhere next to "What if fairies come in and steal all the chocolate?"
Perhaps hyperdrive takes up enormous quantities of some kind of special technobabble device, but it doesn't take up much actual energy.
(c) What is the name of Fuel X?
The X-Wing does, however, have some weapons on the same scale as Fuel X: proton torpedoes. If they're similar in energy to Jango Fett's seismic charges from Attack of the Clones (since they're from several decades later, they're likely to be at least as powerful) they're in the range of gigatons—4.2 × 10^18 to 4.2 × 10^21 joules.
That's approximately the energy generation capacity that an X-Wing would have if it was powered by Fuel X (considering that a fighter only has single-digit numbers of proton torpedoes available, probably because of their size).
Proton torpedoes must have some sort of super-high-tech energy source to generate that kind of amount of energy. They're called 'proton torpedoes', so I suggest that they contain 'proton fuel'.
So Death Stars and Star Wars capital ships run on proton fuel. I don't know how it works, of course, but for the purposes of this calculation I don't need to.
6. Star Wars spaceship strengths:
(a) How much energy can the fuel of a Command-class battleship generate?
Emperor Palpatine's enormous flagship from The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi doesn't have a canonical name, but I'm keeping the SWEU's name for that ship, Executor, for two reasons: first, that the word Executor does sound like something that the Empire would call a ship, and secondly, I just like the word.
For the reason why I think that Executor is called a Command-class battleship, please see Calculation 9(b).
For proof that the total volume of a Command-class battleship is 54,000,000,000m³, please see Calculation 8(a).
Note: For those who object to this method on grounds that efficiency would change things, please see my note at the end of Calculation 5(a).
In real life, a warship's armour and internal walls and suchlike take up about 5% of the ship's volume. I'll go with this for my calculations.
I'm also assuming that a full 20% of a Command-class ship's volume is taken up by the spaces for crewmen, fighters and other operators. This is probably an overestimate, but that's acceptable, because I am trying to make a conservative estimate of a Command-class ship's fuel capacity.
The presence of General Veers indicates that there were troops aboard Executor, even though she is a battleship rather than a troopship. Though odd, this can be explained by the idea that Executor is so much larger than any other battleship that she can actually afford to use some of her internal volume for secondary functions, serving as a troopship too.
Since I'm going for a conservative estimate of a Command-class battleship's fuel capacity, I should go for a generous estimate of the amount of volume that she dedicates to troops. Therefore, I'll assume that 25% of her volume goes for troops.
That leaves 50% of the ship's bulk for reactors and fuel storage.
Note: Of course, it goes without saying that there wouldn't just be one massive reactor supplying the whole ship—if the designers had a grain of sense, there'd be lots of different reactors. But the total volume of all those reactors and their fuel storage, I estimate, is 50% of the ship's volume.
If 20% of that, in turn, is taken up by internal walls and equipment of sorts, that would leave 40% of the ship's volume as pure proton fuel.
Note: Some people argue that fighters would take up a significant portion of the ship's mass, but that's just stupid. Even if we made the ridiculously over-generous assumptions that TIE fighters are 15m×15m×15m in dimension and that 10,000 TIEs came from Executor, then, if we make the reasonable assumption that a TIE takes up ten times its volume in order to be accessed by its pilot and to comfortably get out of its mother-ship without bumping into other TIEs, TIEs would take up a total of 340,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures]: less than 1% of Executor's volume, and therefore a proportion that can be ignored.
Therefore, the volume of the proton fuel in a Command-class ship is 54,000,000,000m³ × 40% = 22,000,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures].
So she can generate 4.8 × 10^22 × 22,000,000,000 = 1.1 × 10^33 joules [calculated to two significant figures].
An exaton of energy is equivalent to 4.2 × 10^27 joules of energy.
Therefore, a Command-class battleship, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 260,000 exatons of energy [calculated to two significant figures].
(b) How much energy can the fuel of a Magnificence-class battleship generate?
For the reason why I think that this ship is called a Magnificence-class battleship, please see Calculation 7(d).
For proof that the total volume of a Magnificence-class battleship is 3,100,000,000m³, please see Calculation 8(b).
Note: For those who object to this method on grounds that efficiency would change things, please see my note at the end of Calculation 5(a).
In real life, a warship's armour and internal walls and suchlike take up about 5% of the ship's volume. I'll go with this for my calculations.
I'm also assuming that a full 20% of a Magnificence-class ship's volume is taken up by the spaces for crewmen, fighters and other operators. This is probably an overestimate, but that's acceptable, because I am trying to make a conservative estimate of a Magnificence-class ship's fuel capacity.
There is no reason to believe that there are any troops aboard a Magnificence-class ship, and active reason to believe that there aren't, since she's a warship and she should be trying to conserve space for firepower.
That leaves 75% of the ship's bulk for reactors and fuel storage.
If 20% of that, in turn, is taken up by internal walls and equipment of sorts, that would leave 60% of the ship's volume as pure proton fuel.
Note: Some people argue that fighters would take up a significant portion of the ship's mass, but that's just stupid. Please see my note on this in Calculation 6(a).
Therefore, the volume of the proton fuel in a Magnificence-class ship is 3,100,000,000m³ × 60% = 1,900,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures].
So she can generate 4.8 × 10^22 × 1,900,000,000 = 9.1 × 10^31 joules [calculated to two significant figures].
An exaton of energy is equivalent to 4.2 × 10^27 joules of energy.
Therefore, a Magnificence-class battleship, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 22,000 exatons of energy [calculated to two significant figures].
(c) How much energy can the fuel of a Trade Federation battleship generate?
For proof that the total volume of a Trade Federation battleship is 2,500,000,000m³, please see Calculation 8(c).
Note: For those who object to this method on grounds that efficiency would change things, please see my note at the end of Calculation 5(a).
In real life, a warship's armour and internal walls and suchlike take up about 5% of the ship's volume. I'll go with this for my calculations.
I'm also assuming that a full 20% of a Trade Federation battleship's volume is taken up by the spaces for crewmen, fighters and other operators. This is probably an overestimate, but that's acceptable, because I am trying to make a conservative estimate of a Trade Federation battleship's fuel capacity.
There is no reason to believe that there are any troops aboard a Trade Federation battleship, and active reason to believe that there aren't, since she's a warship and she should be trying to conserve space for firepower.
That leaves 75% of the ship's bulk for reactors and fuel storage.
If 20% of that, in turn, is taken up by internal walls and equipment of sorts, that would leave 60% of the ship's volume as pure proton fuel.
Note: Some people argue that fighters would take up a significant portion of the ship's mass, but that's just stupid. Please see my note on this in Calculation 6(a).
Therefore, the volume of the proton fuel in a Trade Federation battleship is 2,500,000,000m³ × 60% = 1,500,000,000m³.
So she can generate 4.8 × 10^22 × 1,500,000,000 = 7.2 × 10^31 joules [calculated to two significant figures].
An exaton of energy is equivalent to 4.2 × 10^27 joules of energy.
Therefore, a Trade Federation battleship, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 17,000 exatons of energy [calculated to two significant figures].
(d) How much energy can the fuel of a Glory-class star destroyer generate?
To make it clear, I'm referring to the star destroyer that we saw the Galactic Republic using in Revenge of the Sith. This ship class has no canonical name, so I've made up the name 'Glory-class star destroyer' for it. (The SWEU calls it a Venator-class star destroyer, but the Star Wars galaxy doesn't speak Latin or anything analogous to it like High Gothic, so that's stupid.)
I'm not referring to the 750m-long ship class from Attack of the Clones, which is clearly a completely different class.
For proof that the total volume of a Glory-class star destroyer is 33,000,000m³, please see Calculation 8(d).
Note: For those who object to this method on grounds that efficiency would change things, please see my note at the end of Calculation 5(a).
In real life, a warship's armour and internal walls and suchlike take up about 5% of the ship's volume. I'll go with this for my calculations.
I'm also assuming that a full 20% of a Glory-class ship's volume is taken up by the spaces for crewmen, fighters and other operators. This is probably an overestimate, but that's acceptable, because I am trying to make a conservative estimate of a Glory-class ship's fuel capacity.
We know that there are troops aboard Glory-class ships, since we see them several times in Revenge of the Sith. This tells us that star destroyers are actually destroyers cum troopships—which isn't surprising, since a star destroyer under the personal command of Lord Darth Vader dispatched Imperial stormtroopers to the surface of Tatooine in A New Hope.
Since I'm going for a conservative estimate of a Glory-class star destroyer's fuel capacity, I should go for a generous estimate of the amount of volume that she dedicates to troops. Therefore, I'll assume that 25% of her volume goes for troops.
That leaves 50% of the ship's bulk for reactors and fuel storage.
If 20% of that, in turn, is taken up by internal walls and equipment of sorts, that would leave 40% of the ship's volume as pure proton fuel.
Note: Some people argue that fighters would take up a significant portion of the ship's mass, but that's just stupid. Please see my note on this in Calculation 6(a).
Therefore, the volume of the proton fuel in a Glory-class ship is 33,000,000m³ × 40% = 13,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures].
So she can generate 4.8 × 10^22 × 13,000,000 = 6.2 × 10^29 joules [calculated to two significant figures].
An exaton of energy is equivalent to 4.2 × 10^27 joules of energy.
Therefore, a Glory-class star destroyer, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 150 exatons of energy [calculated to two significant figures].
(e) How much energy can the fuel of an Enforcer-class or Avenger-class star destroyer generate?
There are two different classes of ordinary Imperial star destroyer—the one we saw throughout the whole Star Wars original trilogy, and the one we saw in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi but not in A New Hope. Neither of them are given names in Star Wars canon, so I'll make up my own names for them.
The former, purely arbitrarily, I shall call the Enforcer-class star destroyer, since we don't know the name of any individual star destroyer of that class.
The latter, I shall call an Avenger-class star destroyer, after Avenger, a star destroyer of that class. Incidentally, the star destroyer Avenger is the only Imperial ship that was ever named in canon.
Fortunately, Enforcer-class ships and Avenger-class ships are the same size, have the same role and are from the same civilisation, so they're probably roughly equivalent in energy generation capacity.
For proof that the total volume of an Enforcer-class or Avenger-class star destroyer is 100,000,000m³, please see Calculation 8(e).
Note: For those who object to this method on grounds that efficiency would change things, please see my note at the end of Calculation 5(a).
In real life, a warship's armour and internal walls and suchlike take up about 5% of the ship's volume. I'll go with this for my calculations.
I'm also assuming that a full 20% of an Enforcer-class or Avenger-class ship's volume is taken up by the spaces for crewmen, fighters and other operators. This is probably an overestimate, but that's acceptable, because I am trying to make a conservative estimate of a Glory-class ship's fuel capacity.
We know that there are troops aboard Enforcer-class or Avenger-class ships, since star destroyers are both destroyers and troopships—please see Calculation 6(d).
Since I'm going for a conservative estimate of an Enforcer-class or Avenger-class star destroyer's fuel capacity, I should go for a generous estimate of the amount of volume that she dedicates to troops. Therefore, I'll assume that 25% of her volume goes for troops.
That leaves 50% of the ship's bulk for reactors and fuel storage.
If 20% of that, in turn, is taken up by internal walls and equipment of sorts, that would leave 40% of the ship's volume as pure proton fuel.
Note: Some people argue that fighters would take up a significant portion of the ship's mass, but that's just stupid. Please see my note on this in Calculation 6(a).
Therefore, the volume of the proton fuel in an Enforcer-class or Avenger-class ship is 100,000,000m³ × 40% = 40,000,000m³.
So she can generate 4.8 × 10^22 × 40,000,000 = 1.9 × 10^30 joules [calculated to two significant figures].
An exaton of energy is equivalent to 4.2 × 10^27 joules of energy.
Therefore, an Enforcer-class or Avenger-class star destroyer, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 450 exatons of energy [calculated to two significant figures].
(f) How much energy can the fuel of a Unifier-class star destroyer generate?
To make it clear, I'm referring to the star destroyer that we saw the Galactic Republic using in Attack of the Clones. This ship class has no canonical name, so I've made up the name 'Unifier-class star destroyer' for it. (The SWEU calls it an Acclamator-class assault ship, but the Star Wars galaxy doesn't speak Latin or anything analogous to it like High Gothic, so that's stupid.)
I'm not referring to the 1,100m-long ship class from Revenge of the Sith, which is clearly a completely different class.
For proof that the total volume of a Unifier-class star destroyer is 11,000,000m³, please see Calculation 8(f).
Note: For those who object to this method on grounds that efficiency would change things, please see my note at the end of Calculation 5(a).
In real life, a warship's armour and internal walls and suchlike take up about 5% of the ship's volume. I'll go with this for my calculations.
I'm also assuming that a full 20% of aUnifier-class ship's volume is taken up by the spaces for crewmen, fighters and other operators. This is probably an overestimate, but that's acceptable, because I am trying to make a conservative estimate of a Unifier-class ship's fuel capacity.
We know that there are troops aboard Unifier-class ships, since star destroyers are both destroyers and troopships—please see Calculation 6(d).
Since I'm going for a conservative estimate of a Unifier-class star destroyer's fuel capacity, I should go for a generous estimate of the amount of volume that she dedicates to troops. Therefore, I'll assume that 25% of her volume goes for troops.
That leaves 50% of the ship's bulk for reactors and fuel storage.
If 20% of that, in turn, is taken up by internal walls and equipment of sorts, that would leave 40% of the ship's volume as pure proton fuel.
Note: Some people argue that fighters would take up a significant portion of the ship's mass, but that's just stupid. Please see my note on this in Calculation 6(a).
Therefore, the volume of the proton fuel in a Unifier-class ship is 11,000,000m³ × 40% = 4,400,000m³.
So she can generate 4.8 × 10^22 × 4,400,000 = 2.1 × 10^29 joules [calculated to two significant figures].
An exaton of energy is equivalent to 4.2 × 10^27 joules of energy.
Therefore, a Unifier-class star destroyer, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 50 exatons of energy.
7. Numbers of Star Wars Republican forces:
(a) How many clone troopers are there in a Glory-class star destroyer?
For proof that the total volume of a Glory-class star destroyer is 33,000,000m³, please see Calculation 8(d).
I've already estimated in Calculation 6(d) that 25% of her volume goes to troops. This leaves the volume to troops at 8,300,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures].
Now, let's look at a real, oceanic warship: HMS Dreadnought (yes, I'm British, sue me). I'll work out Dreadnought's volume in cubic metres, and then divide it by her complement to find the amount of space which one person needs (in cubic metres). Then I'll divide 8,300,000m³ by that number, to find the number of people who can fit in the troops areas of a Glory-class star destroyer.
I'm making a conservative assumption of the number of people aboard a Glory-class ship. Therefore, I want to make a generous estimate of the size of HMS Dreadnought. I already know Dreadnought's complement (700 to 810: I'll assume 700 people, since I'm being conservative here). The larger Dreadnought was, the larger the amount of space it takes to hold 700 people, the larger the amount of space it takes to hold one person, the fewer clone troopers a Glory-class ship's troops areas can hold.
HMS Dreadnought was 160.6m long. She was 25m wide at her widest point, and equally wide for most of her length: not all of it, but then again, I am making a conservative assumption. Her hull extended 9m below sea level, and about the same distance above sea level: 18m in all. Therefore, her total volume was 160.6m × 25m × 9m = 36,135m³.
36,135m³ ÷ 700 = 52m³ [calculated to two significant figures].
8,300,000m³ ÷ 52m³ = 160,000 clone troopers [calculated to two significant figures].
Now let's look at the Star Wars Expanded Universe's suggestion for the number of men in a Glory-class star destroyer.
According to the SWEU, there are 9,400 people (2,000 troops and 7,400 crewmen) in a Glory-class ship. If so, in order to see how much volume there is per person, we divide 8,300,000 by 9,400. Our result is 880m³ per person [calculated to two significant figures].
If the SWEU's figure is right, Palpatine is an incredibly generous man, since he gives each of his minions—every single one—an on-board living space as big as a respectable two-storey house. Looking at the Star Wars films, tell me honestly: does Darth Sidious, Dark Lord of the Sith, strike you as that type of guy?
(b) What is the total energy generation capacity of the Imperial Starfleet at the time of A New Hope?
In A New Hope, General Dodonna of the Rebel Alliance—who, given his position, should certainly know—said of the first Death Star that "that thing" had more firepower than half the Imperial Starfleet. In order to make a conservative estimate of the energy generation capacity of the Imperial Starfleet, I'll assume that he meant only one Death Star bolt, not the entire fuel stores of the first Death Star.
Note: Given the context, I'm taking the word 'firepower' to mean energy generation capacity, not power (the rate of energy output), because it is Dodonna who is speaking, on Yavin. To Dodonna, it doesn't matter whether the first Death Star can fire once per second or once per day: either way, it can still destroy both Yavin and the Rebel Alliance, and that is the crucial point to make.
Therefore, the Imperial Starfleet's total energy generation capacity is at least 10^38 joules, since it took that much energy to destroy Alderaan: probably greater, since Dodonna did say "more firepower than half the Imperial Starfleet" (italics are my own), not "as much firepower as the entire Imperial Starfleet".
Even if Dodonna was wrong, the first Death Star can't be much more powerful than the Imperial Starfleet. That would be blatantly unrealistic, since the second Death Star was over a hundred times the size of the first Death Star, so if it was true the Empire would have to maintain a ludicrously small military.
(c) Was the Grand Army of the Republic the entire Republican armed forces, or was there also a Republican Starfleet?
At the end of Revenge of the Sith, we saw officers of the newly formed Imperial Starfleet: non-clone, non-Jedi officers. The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) was made up completely out of clones and Jedi. This proves the existence of the Republican Starfleet as a separate unit from the GAR, unless one believes that the First Galactic Empire suddenly took in lots of new, untrained officers in the few hours/days between the foundation of the Empire and the scene with the Imperial Starfleet officers.
Also, Bail Organa served in the Republican armed forces (as we know from Princess Leia Organa in A New Hope), but he is neither a Jedi nor a clone, so he can't have served in the GAR.
This means that the Galactic Republic did have a starfleet before the Clone Wars; it was an army that it lacked.
This makes sense, since, while it is one thing to hide the mass cloning of trillions of soldiers (as we already know that the Kaminoans did successfully), it's quite another to hide the massive resources that would be going into constructing a large starfleet, especially when the powers that would later form the Confederacy of Independent Systems would be watching carefully for such a thing. Therefore the Republican Starfleet probably existed before the existence of the GAR was revealed to the Star Wars galaxy.
Note: I call it the Republican Starfleet because its successor was known as the Imperial Starfleet (not the Imperial Navy, despite what lots of SWEU-loving morons would claim), so it's likely that it's called something very similar.
(d) How many warships does the Republican Starfleet have at the end of the Clone Wars?
In Attack of the Clones, the Republican Starfleet's best ships—the ones it sent into an active warzone to retrieve 200 of the galaxy's thousands of Jedi and to capture the Separatist leadership, ending the Clone Wars before they began—were 750m-long star destroyers, which I'll arbitrarily call Unifier-class star destroyers. (The SWEU calls them Acclamator-class assault ships, but the Star Wars galaxy doesn't speak Latin or anything analogous to it like High Gothic, so that's stupid.)
Yet, during the Battle of Coruscant in Revenge of the Sith four years later, there wasn't a single Unifier-class star destroyers in sight. Every Republican star destroyer—every single one—was a Glory-class ship. We saw hundreds of Glory-class star destroyers, and not a single other star destroyer.
Thus we know that almost all, and maybe all, of the Republican Starfleet's star destroyers were of the Glory class rather than the Unifier class during the last year of the Clone Wars.
The Republican Starfleet must have had some battleships, and they would have wanted their battleships to be slightly more powerful than Trade Federation battleships. The mysterious 5,900m-long ship class fits this description to a T, so I think that it might have been made by the Republic, in which case the class would have a Republican-style name such as 'Magnificence-class battleship', rather than an Imperial-style name such as 'Annihilator-class battleship'.
Note: For why I think that the mysterious 5,900m-long ship is a battleship, please see Calculation 9(b).
Judging by the construction rate of the second Death Star, we can figure out the size of the Republican Starfleet.
The second Death Star was at least 20% constructed (I'll assume 20%, in order to be conservative—it could be as much as 80%) between the end of A New Hope and the events of Return of the Jedi. 20% of it would be able to generate 3.6 × 10^39 joules: in other words, 860,000,000,000 exatons [calculated to two significant figures].
A group of (star) destroyers alone is called a flotilla. A group containing one battleship and several (star) destroyers escorting her is called a battlegroup.
At the Battle of Endor, Executor was escorted by five star destroyers, and, later, a Magnificence-class battleship turned up with twenty-seven other star destroyers. If the Magnificence-class ship, like Executor, was escorted by five star destroyers, then there were 22 star destroyers in a flotilla, and two battlegroups, each containing a battleship and five star destroyers escorting her.
Occam's Razor says that, lacking any evidence to the contrary, we should assume that the make-up of the fleet at Endor—a battlegroup of five star destroyers and one battleship, another such battlegroup, and a flotilla of 22 star destroyers—is fairly typical.
So the Republican Starfleet is split into units of unknown name—henceforth titled Unit Xs—, each containing two battlegroups and a flotilla.
Each Unit X contained 48,800 exatons of energy generation capacity: two Magnificence-class battleships, representing 44,000 exatons between them both, and 32 Glory-class star destroyers, representing 4,800 exatons between them all.
860,000,000,000 ÷ 48,800 = 18,000,000 [calculated to two significant figures]. So, instead of 20% of the second Death Star, the Empire could have built 18 million Unit Xs (albeit with perhaps old-fashioned Republican ships): in other words, 36 million Magnificence-class battleships and 576 million Glory-class star destroyers—though it might not have been able to provide crews for them.
But the Clone Wars lasted four years. How long did it take to build 20% of the second Death Star?
Between the end of A New Hope and the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back, anything between one year and five years might have taken place, judging by Luke having risen to the rank of wing commander (he is in the Rebel fighter force, and he is addressed as "Commander Skywalker"; what other conclusion can there be?) and none of the main characters appearing much older. As a middling estimate, I'll assume three years.
Luke must have spent at least three years on Dagobah, since the Millennium Falcon travelled slower-than-light from the Anoat system to the Bespin system, which are at least three systems—and thus at least three light-years, if those systems were ridiculously close together—away. More likely, since it takes time to accelerate to nearly the speed of light and then to decelerate from there, he spent at least four years there. (Of course, Han, Chewbacca and Leia would experience much less time, due to the effects of travelling at relativistic speeds, but at least four years would pass in the outside galaxy.)
If Anoat and Bespin were further apart, they might have been as much as twelve light-years away, turning the Millennium Falcon's travel time to thirteen years.
However, judging by how little Luke and Lando have aged by the latter stage of The Empire Strikes Back, then, unless Lando was swindled by and knew Han when he was a teenager, they can't have spent more than eight years. In fact, Luke appears to have aged so little that I think that it would take as short a time as I can conceivably imagine it taking: that is to say, four years.
Then, at least a year, during which Luke must have trained himself (probably with the help of Obi-Wan's ghost), must have taken place, in order to account for Luke's otherwise inexplicable increase in skill—he can't have got that much better without any tuition. More likely, he spent two or three years doing this: let's say, two.
So six years took place between the end of A New Hope and the events of Return of the Jedi.
So the galaxy could build 12 million Unit Xs—24 million battleships, and 384 million star destroyers—in four years.
But the Republic only held about half of the Star Wars galaxy's industrial capacity (albeit probably more than half the galaxy, since the Separatists had disproportionately large industrial capacity, due to being centres of business) during the Clone Wars, and the Republican Starfleet would suffer casualties during the wars. We must also remember that it would take time to mobilise the Star Wars galaxy's industries, which would not be mobilised at the beginning of the war. Each of those three factors is probably responsible for downgrading that figure by a factor of two.
So the Republic had 3 million Magnificence-class battleships and 48 million Glory-class star destroyers at the end of the Clone Wars.
This is consistent with The Phantom Menace, where the density of spaceships in the sky indicates that there are literally millions of spaceships above Coruscant alone. This isn't a galactic fleet, this is just ordinary civilian activity on one planet! Clearly, people who, like the SWEU, say that the Republic/Empire only has a few thousand ships are wrong: one planet, albeit a very important one, has millions of spaceships, and there are nearly a million planets in the Star Wars galaxy.
Also in The Phantom Menace, the Trade Federation—a private shipping company—deploys the equivalent of over 1.1 million Glory-class star destroyers in the blockade of Naboo (a helpless target), just to prove a political point. If that's what a private shipping company can do in peacetime as a political gesture, what can a galactic government do in wartime as a serious effort?
8. Size of warships:
(a) Emperor Palpatine's enormous flagship from The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi
Emperor Palpatine's enormous flagship from The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi doesn't have a canonical name, but I'm keeping the SWEU's name for that ship, Executor, for two reasons: first, that the word Executor does sound like something that the Empire would call a ship, and secondly, I just like the word.
According to Dr Curtis Saxton's detailed scaling from The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi on his Star Wars Technical Commentaries website, Executor is eleven times the length of an Imperial star destroyer, and, thus, is 17,600m long. Unfortunately, he didn't choose to scale her width or height (if he, or someone else reliable, did, then please tell me).
As such, I had to judge by screenshot + ruler. Her height is roughly equal to the length of an Imperial star destroyer (which is 1,600m), at her highest point: the back of her. And her width is roughly five times the length of an Imperial star destroyer, at her widest point.
Unfortunately, Executor doesn't have as simple a shape as an Imperial star destroyer. The front part of her declines fairly evenly to one point at the end, just like an Imperial star destroyer, but about 2/13 of her length—approximately the back 2,700m—is of a width which declines in the opposite direction, and which averages 1/3 of her width at her widest point: in other words, it's 2,700m wide.
Fortunately, the height of that section roughly follows the same pattern as the rest of Executor.
Therefore the average height of Executor is about 800m, and her area is:
V = 800m × 66,890,000m² = 53,512,000,000m³ = 54,000,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures].
(b) The mysterious ship seen at the Battle of Endor in Return of the Jedi
When Luke Skywalker looks out from the window of Emperor Palpatine's throne room on the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi, he sees a very large vessel that is obviously Executor, many smaller vessels that are obviously Imperial star destroyers, and a mid-sized vessel, a third of the length of Executor but half Executor's height. As such, this ship must be 5,900m long and an average of 400m high.
To confirm the existence of a warship class at Endor which is neither the Majestifc nor a known class of star destroyer, we see a damaged bridge tower which is different to any other bridge tower ever seen in Star Wars, as is described on Dr Curtis Saxton's Star Wars Technical Commentaries website.
Note: Of course, it's always possible that this bridge tower belongs to another new class of Imperial warship, but Occam's Razor says that, lacking any evidence to the contrary, we should assume that there's only one new class of Imperial warship.
If this ship's average width is 5/22 of her length, like Executor's width, then her average width is 1,300m [calculated to two significant figures].
If this ship's average width is 1/4 of her length, like the width of every star destroyer ever seen in Star Wars, then her average width is 1,500m [calculated to two significant figures].
Since this ship, like Executor, is a battleship (for why I think this, please see Calculation 9(b)), it's likelier to be similar to Executor than to a star destroyer. Therefore, I assume that this ship's average width is 1,300m.
V = 400m × 5,900m × 1,300m = 3,100,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures].
(c) Trade Federation battleship from the Star Wars prequel trilogy
Scaling from the Star Wars prequel trilogy reveals the Trade Federation battleship to be 3,200m in length. Simple eyesight reveals the Trade Federation battleship to be a torus, with a sphere in the middle.
The sphere's diameter is about the same as the diameter of the torus, which, in turn, is about the same as the gap between the edge of the torus and the corresponding point on the equator of the sphere.
Therefore, the sphere's diameter is a fifth of 3,200m: 640m. Therefore the radius of either the sphere or the torus is 320m, and, if a straight line was drawn right through the middle of the torus, it would be 1,600m – 320m = 1,280m away from the centre of the battleship at any point.
Let are be the radius of the torus's ring or the sphere, and let R be the radius between the centre of the torus's ring and the centre of the battleship.
Volume of sphere: V = 4pr³ ÷ 3 = 4p × 320³ ÷ 3 = 137,258,277.4m³.
Volume of a torus: V = pr² × 2pR = 2p²r²R = 2p² × 320² × 1,280 = 2,587,257,576m³.
But the ring is actually only 330 degrees of a ring, not a full 360 degrees, since it has a hole at one point of about 30 degrees. Therefore:
2,587,257,576 × 330 ÷ 360 = 2,371,652,778m³.
V = 137,258,277.4m³ + 2,371,652,778m³ = 2,508,911,055.4m³ = 2,500,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures].
(d) The Galactic Republic's star destroyers from Attack of the Clones
Judging by scaling from when Chancellor Palpatine watches some clone troopers boarding these star destroyers at the end of Attack of the Clones, these star destroyers are 750m long.
Judging by eye (which is all that I can do), their width is about a quarter of their length (on average, that is: they're narrower at the front and wider at the back), so they're 187.5m wide, and their height is about a tenth of their length (on average, since they're shorter at the front and taller at the back), so they're about 75m tall.
V = 750m × 187.5m × 75m = 11,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures].
(e) The Galactic Empire's star destroyers from the Star Wars original trilogy
Judging by scaling from the Star Wars original trilogy, these star destroyers are 1,600m long. The scaling has been performed with a star destroyer next to an Imperial shuttle in Return of the Jedi, with the star destroyer Avenger (on whose bridge tower the Millennium Falcon was perched) in The Empire Strikes Back, and with the Organas' "consular ship" (as it was described by a Rebel in A New Hope) next to the star destroyer which captured Princess Leia in A New Hope. All of them produce consistent results indicating a length of 1,600m.
Judging by eye, their width is about a quarter of their length (on average, that is: they're narrower at the front and wider at the back), so they're 400m wide, and their height is about a tenth of their length (on average, since they're shorter at the front and taller at the back), so they're about 160m tall.
V = 1,600m × 400m × 160m = 100,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures].
(f) The Galactic Republic's star destroyers from Revenge of the Sith
Judging by scaling from when Anakin and Obi-Wan's fighters fly over one of these star destroyers in the Battle of Coruscant in Revenge of the Sith, these star destroyers are 1,100m long.
Judging by eye (which is all that I can do), their width is about a quarter of their length (on average, that is: they're narrower at the front and wider at the back), so they're 275m wide, and their height is about a tenth of their length (on average, since they're shorter at the front and taller at the back), so they're about 110m tall.
V = 1,100m × 275m × 110m = 33,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures].
(g) Imperial Navy battleships
All four classes of Imperial Navy battleships—the Apocalypse, Emperor, Oberon and Retribution classes—are 8,000m long, and roughly the same as each other in all height and with.
Judging simply by appearance, the width of all Imperial Navy battleships is very similar to their height.
Unfortunately, Rogue Trader does not give the width of any battleship, as it does for the other warships.
However, one should presume that an Imperial Navy battleship is at least as big as even the largest grand cruiser in all dimensions, and Rogue Trader says that an Avenger-class grand cruiser is 1,800m wide, so an Imperial Navy battleship's volume is:
V = 8,000 × 1,800 × 1,800 = 26,000,000,000m³
Fortunately, every other Imperial Navy warship is either given exact measurements by Rogue Trader, or is given no data at all and is therefore unable to be calculated.
(h) All the various classes of Imperial Navy escorts
This calculation will compare the volume of seven of the eight known classes of escort warships in the Imperial Navy. It won't cover troopships or logistics ships.
The only class of escort warship that I've left out is the Defence Monitor. I would have liked to cover her, but I can't, because I know absolutely nothing about her size. She might be anything from 1,000m long to 3,000m long; I simply don't know.
First, we must calculate their volume. Judging simply by appearance, the width of all Imperial Navy battleships is very similar to their height.
Claymore-class corvette: 1,400m × 300m × 300m = 130,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures]
Cobra-class destroyer: 1,500m × 300m × 300m = 140,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures]
Sword-class frigate: 1,600m × 300m × 300m = 140,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures]
Firestorm-class frigate: 1,800m × 300m × 300m = 160,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures]
Turbulent-class heavy frigate: 1,950m × 300m × 300m = 180,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures]
Falchion-class escort: 2,200m × 300m × 300m = 200,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures]
Tempest-class frigate: 1,500m × 400m × 400m = 240,000,000m³.
(i) All the various classes of Imperial Navy cruisers
This calculation will compare the volume of twelve of the sixteen known classes of cruisers in the Imperial Navy.
The four classes of cruiser that I've left out are the Endurance-class light cruiser, the Dominator-class cruiser, the Gothic-class cruiser and the Vengeance-class grand cruiser. I would have liked to cover them, but I can't, because I know absolutely nothing about their size.
First, we must calculate their volume. Judging simply by appearance, the width of all Imperial Navy battleships is very similar to their height.
Defiant-class light cruiser: 3,800m × 500m × 500m = 950,000,000m³
Endeavour-class light cruiser: 3,800m × 500m × 500m = 950,000,000m³
Dauntless-class light cruiser: 4,500m × 500m × 500m = 1,100,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures]
Armageddon-class battlecruiser: 5,000m × 800m × 800m = 3,200,000,000m³
Lunar-class cruiser: 5,000m × 800m × 800m = 3,200,000,000m³
Tyrant-class cruiser: 5,000m × 800m × 800m = 3,200,000,000m³
Chalice-class battlecruiser: 5,100m × 800m × 800m = 3,300,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures]
Dictator-class cruiser: 5,100m × 800m × 800m = 3,300,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures]
Overlord-class battlecruiser: 5,300m × 850m × 850m = 3,800,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures]
Mars-class battlecruiser: 5,400m × 850m × 850m = 3,900,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures]
Exorcist-class grand cruiser: 7,300m × 1,100m × 1,100m = 8,800,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures]
Avenger-class grand cruiser: 7,500m × 1,800m × 1,800m = 24,000,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures].
9. Warship types:
(a) What types of warships are there in Warhammer 40,000?
Escorts—frigates and destroyers—exist, and do similar things to what they do in real life: frigates protect convoys from pirates and enemy raiders, and destroyers protect bigger ships from aircraft—or rather, their Warhammer 40,000 equivalent, namely attack craft. (In real life, destroyers are also supposed to protect bigger ships from torpedo boats and submarines, but there are no analogies for torpedo boats or submarines in Warhammer 40,000 warfare.)
However, unlike in real life, all Warhammer 40,000 escorts act like real-life destroyers, including Warhammer 40,000 frigates. For instance, Sword-class frigates are ubiquitous at the side of Imperial Navy battleships, whereas in real life frigates are just there to protect convoys, and the protection of battleships has always been a role for destroyers.
This tells us that, in Warhammer 40,000, all escorts are effectively destroyers, and the different names for each—for instance, Cobra-class ships being called destroyers, and Tempest-class ships being called frigates—are just names, not indicative of any true difference in role.
The majority of warships in most fleets are light cruisers (such as the Endurance-class and Defiant-class light cruisers), second-line cruisers (such as the Gothic-class and Dominator-class cruisers) and first-line cruisers (such as the Overlord-class and Armageddon-class battlecruisers).
Note: The phrases "second-line cruiser" and "first-line cruiser" come from warship counts for the Imperial fleet at Armageddon, from the 3rd Edition of Codex: Armageddon. Their meanings (conventional cruiser and battlecruiser, respectively) are my own assumptions, based on the fact that there are 63 first-line cruisers and 90 second-line cruisers, which would fit with the idea of first-line cruisers being more powerful (a bit like the rating system often employed in the Napoleonic Wars, where the most powerful type of ship was a 'first-rate', followed by a 'second-rate' and so on).
Battlecruisers play an interesting role in Warhammer 40,000. In real life, the Oxford Dictionary of English (Second Edition, Revised) defines a battlecruiser thus: "A large warship of a type built in the early 20th century, carrying similar armament to a battleship but faster and more lightly armoured." However, in Warhammer 40,000, battlecruisers do not perform this role: they are basically heavy cruisers, nothing more. They certainly don't have the same firepower as battleships.
There is another type of warship in Warhammer 40,000, however, which does not exist in real life: the grand cruiser. Grand cruisers are very rare in the 41st millennium, though they used to be popular in the Imperial Navy because they actually did have the same firepower as battleships, and many Imperial Navy officers began to treat them as battleships. However, it was soon discovered that they could not take as much damage as they could dish out, so grand cruisers became distrusted. This role (though it appears unpopular) is precisely analogous to a real battlecruiser: a warship with similar armament (offensive firepower) as a battleship, but with much less weaker defences, intended to beat anything less than a true battleship and run away if she does encounter a true battleship.
On the surface, it seems that battleships play the same role in Warhammer 40,000 as in real life: "A heavy warship of a type built chiefly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with extensive armour protection and large-calibre guns", as the Oxford Dictionary of English describes it. But if you look more closely, they don't. Battleships come in such small numbers—there are four battleships in an Imperial Navy battlefleet of 642 ships (360 escorts and 278 cruisers of various kinds)—that, in spite of battleships' great firepower, it's the cruisers that form the real heart of an Imperial Navy battlefleet.
So what's our conclusion? The Imperial Navy is centred around its cruisers, which are guarded by destroyers just as the battleships are. Battleships exist, but only really as a way for admirals to show off how powerful they are; they don't really fulfil the real-life role: that is to say, a line-of-battle ship, which exists for its firepower.
Essentially, an Imperial 'battleship' is more like a real-life super battleship, and an Imperial 'cruiser' is a sort of multi-role cruiser/battleship.
(b) What types of warships are there in Star Wars?
Sadly, the Star Wars films are much less consistent on warship types than Warhammer 40,000 sources.
The first thing to take note of is Emperor Palpatine's enormous flagship from The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi (she is Lord Darth Vader's flagship, too). This ship doesn't have a canonical name, but I'm keeping the SWEU's name for that ship, Executor, for two reasons: first, that the word Executor does sound like something that the Empire would call a ship, and secondly, I just like the word.
For proof that the volume of Executor is 540 times the volume of an Imperial star destroyer, please see Calculation 8(a) and (e).
When Luke Skywalker looks out from the window of Emperor Palpatine's throne room on the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi, he sees a very large vessel that is obviously Executor, many smaller vessels that are obviously Imperial star destroyers, and a mid-sized, 5,900m-long vessel.
This mysterious ship is 150 [calculated to two significant figures] times as powerful as an Imperial star destroyer, and 1.3 [calculated to two significant figures] times the volume of a Trade Federation battleship, though only 1/17 of the volume of Executor herself. Please see Calculations 6(a), (b), (c) and (e) for the energy generation capacity of Executor, the mysterious 5,900m-long ship, Trade Federation battleships, and Imperial star destroyers, respectively.
At Endor, Emperor Palpatine calls Executor "the command ship" more than once in Return of the Jedi. Obviously, this means that the other large vessel in the Imperial fleet at Endor—the mysterious 5,900m-long vessel—is not a command ship. In real life, the term 'command ship' is just another way of saying 'flagship': the vessel in a fleet where the commanding officer of that fleet resides.
However, it is possible that, in Star Wars, the term 'command ship' can have another meaning. This is not unreasonable; a very famous example of a term having additional meanings in Star Wars would be the word 'force'.
There are three ways to interpret this:
1. 'Command ship' is the same thing as the real-life term 'command ship'.
2. 'Command ship' is a specific type of ship, like 'light cruiser' or 'battleship'.
3. Executor is a Command-class ship.
But only one of these makes sense when we take into account another piece of evidence. When Han and Luke can clearly see Executor at Endor in Return of the Jedi, Luke claims that Lord Darth Vader is on that ship (later in the film, Luke reveals that he and Vader can sense when each other is near, via the Force), and Han says, "Now don't get jittery, Luke. There are a lot of command ships," implying that the one in front of them might not be Executor (which would have Vader on it).
This statement would be meaningless if he meant Option 1. Any ship can be the flagship of the commanding officer of a fleet. Lord Vader himself travelled to Endor aboard a star destroyer, not Executor, which was reserved for Emperor Palpatine on that occasion; thus, that star destroyer was, at that point, the flagship of the Empire's second-in-command.
The statement would also be meaningless if he meant Option 2. There might be lots of ship classes of around that size, but only one class—the class of which Executor is a member—would look identical to Executor, and Han's comment only makes sense if he means, specifically, that there are a lot of ships which look identical to Executor.
Thus, we know that 'command ship' is indeed a specific class of ship, so Executor is a Command-class ship.
To back this up, in The Empire Strikes Back, an Imperial soldier says, "Lord Vader, ship approaching. X-Wing-class." Thus we know that Star Wars people do have a habit of missing out the suffix '-class' in such situations.
Some people argue that Executor is a star destroyer, but that's just wrong. A statement commonly used to argue for this is Darth Vader's line: "Alert my star destroyer to prepare for my arrival." But we have no evidence that he was actually calling for Executor; he might have been calling for a star destroyer. Another such statement is Leia saying "star destroyer" as she spots Executor pursuing the Millennium Falcon from Bespin. But she's very tired at the time, and if you can't tell the size difference, Executor does look fairly like a star destroyer: they're both greyish, wedge-shaped warships, it's just that one of them is much, much bigger.
That's the most important reason why we know that Executor isn't a star destroyer. In real life, even the biggest ships ever built aren't 540 times the size of a destroyer. The idea that two ships whose size are separated by a factor of over 500 could be the same type of ship is just ridiculous.
There's only one type of ship into which Executor fits: a battleship, "A heavy warship of a type built chiefly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with extensive armour protection and large-calibre guns", as the Oxford Dictionary of English (Second Edition, Revised) defines it. Certainly Executor is a heavy warship; certainly, due to its sheer size, it must have lots of armour, and we've seen in Return of the Jedi that it definitely has lots and lots of big guns.
The mysterious 5,900m-long ship, we now know, is bigger than one class of battleship (a Trade Federation battleship), so it's too big to be anything other than a battleship; but it's about 1/17th the size of Executor, so it obviously can't be called a battleship of the same calibre as Executor. However, real life does possess an analogy to this situation: dreadnoughts.
When HMS Dreadnought was launched, it was a battleship so powerful that every other battleship was almost instantly made obsolete. As such, battleships built after Dreadnought's launch became known as 'dreadnoughts', and other battleships became known as 'pre-dreadnought battleships'. Pre-dreadnought battleships were practically useless in comparison to dreadnoughts.
Command-class battleships might be similar to dreadnoughts: new battleships, so much more powerful than previous battleships that they make previous battleships seem useless. This is backed up by the fact that the Command class must have been fairly new, or else it wouldn't have such an enormous design flaw as it does: namely, the fact that it has lots of shields instead of a single large shield covering the whole ship, so a much smaller ship might disable a Command-class battleship by breaking through her bridge shields and then firing at her bridge.
There is a common disagreement on whether the term 'star destroyer' is
1. A class of warship (like a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier)
2. A name for any warship of the Empire
3. A type of warship (like a light cruiser)
4. A name for dagger-shaped warships
My own opinion has switched many times, but we can disqualify Options 1 and 2:
The term 'star destroyer' is used for three classes of 1,600m-long Imperial spaceships. We see the first class throughout the entire original trilogy, the second class in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and the third class briefly in the Battle of Endor in Return of the Jedi. This disproves Option 1.
The phrase "Imperial star destroyer" is often used. This would be pointless if every star destroyer was, by definition, Imperial. Therefore, it must be theoretically possible for a star destroyer to be non-Imperial: the star destroyers of the Republic, for example. This disproves Option 2.
This leaves two ideas: Options 3 and 4. Option 3 is largely based on the term 'star destroyer' being roughly equivalent to 'destroyer' IN SPACE: the same idea as 'starships' or 'star wars' meaning ships or wars IN SPACE. Option 4 is largely based on Han's reference to star destroyers as "cruisers" in A New Hope.
So we should look at what a destroyer actually is, and what a cruiser actually is. Let's go to the Oxford Dictionary of English (Second Edition, Revised) and find the relevant definitions:
Destroyer: "A small, fast warship, especially one equipped for a defensive role against submarines and aircraft."
Cruiser: "A relatively fast warship larger than a destroyer and less heavily armed than a battleship."
The problem with the idea that star destroyers are cruisers is that they're so small. No real-life cruiser is 32 times smaller than a battleship; it just doesn't happen. The entire Imperial fleet at Endor (except for Executor, of course) of 32 star destroyers was equal in firepower to the Magnificence-class battleship there, all on its own. That makes some sort of sense if star destroyers are destroyers. It makes no sense at all if star destroyers are cruisers.
It's true that star destroyers sometimes operate alone, like cruisers do. But the vast majority of the time, star destroyers operate in teams, either serving as a star destroyer screen for a bigger ship or acting as a squadron or flotilla. Both roles are completely consistent with how destroyers operate in real life. They only ever operate alone when they're chasing far inferior opposition, such as Leia's tiny consular ship, or when they're launching probe droids (which isn't exactly combat duty). Even when chasing the Millennium Falcon in A New Hope, two star destroyers are sent, not one.
So, now that we've confirmed that a star destroyer is just a destroyer IN SPACE, we need to rationalise Han's calling them cruisers. My answer is to point to how a Trade Federation droid addressed a tiny Republican ship (probably less than 100m long) as a "Republic cruiser" and how Nute Gunray addressed Amidala's similarly small ship as a "Naboo cruiser" in The Phantom Menace. Basically, in Star Wars, people often use the word 'cruiser' in the informal definition of "any ship", rather than the formal, correct definition of "a relatively fast warship larger than a destroyer and less heavily armed than a battleship". This shouldn't be too surprising—after all, in real life, I doubt that most people check to see whether a luxury cruiser is technically larger than a destroyer before calling it a luxury cruiser.
There's one more piece of opposition to the idea that a star destroyer is a destroyer. The Rebel spaceships in Return of the Jedi, some of which are 3,800m long and others of which are 1,200m long and thus smaller than star destroyers, are all called "cruisers" three times in Rebel dialogue, so some people argue that star destroyers don't qualify as destroyers because cruisers are, by definition, larger than destroyers.
But all the Rebels' lines can be explained in two ways: either by the idea that the Rebels are using the informal definition of the word 'cruiser' (as described two paragraphs above this one), or by the following:
ADMIRAL ACKBAR: Once the shield is down, our cruisers will create a perimeter, while the fighters fly into the superstructure and attempt to knock out the main reactor.
Admiral Ackbar might have meant, "Our cruisers [the 3,800m-long ones] will create a perimeter, and our star destroyers [the 1,200m-long ones] will escort them."
LANDO: Draw their fire away from the cruisers.
In this case, Lando might genuinely only be talking about the 3,800m-long cruisers, since he doesn't specify. After all, it's more important to protect the Rebel cruisers (which are more expensive and less replaceable) than it is to protect the Rebel star destroyers.
ADMIRAL ACKBAR (referring to the second Death Star): Our cruisers can't repel firepower of that magnitude!
Ackbar is very likely to have meant, "Our cruisers can't repel firepower of that magnitude, so our star destroyers don't stand a chance!"
Next, we should deal with the term 'super star destroyer'. This term only appears once, used by Admiral Ackbar to describe Executor:
ADMIRAL ACKBAR: Concentrate all fire on that super star destroyer!
Obviously, the term 'super star destroyer' is likely to mean 'any warship larger than a star destroyer'. It's highly unlikely to be a formal ship type, because that implies that Executor is just an unusually large star destroyer, when in fact Executor is much, much, much larger than any star destroyer. We also know that it doesn't refer to Executor's specific class, because, if it did, the first ship of Executor's class must have been called Super, and no-one would call a ship Super; that would just be silly.
This leaves us with our final list of types of capital ships, in order of increasing size: star destroyer, cruiser and battleship.
There is only one question left to answer: Why are destroyers prefixed with "star", but not battleships or cruisers?
It's impossible to be sure on this one, but remember the Trade Federation-owned, and later Separatist-owned, destroyer droids from the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Perhaps the Republic renamed its destroyers 'star destroyers' to render them distinct from "those evil machines of those evil Separatists". It's a long shot, but as far as I know, no-one else has any better ideas.
10. Ship statistics for the Imperium:
(a) How much energy can 1m³ of Warhammer 40,000 fuel generate?
Warhammer 40,000 technology (except for that of the Necrons) is powered by "Plasma Generators", based on nuclear fusion. I don't need to know much about how they work: I'm going to work out how much energy they can effectively deliver.
I'm going to work out the total energy generation capacity of the Apocalypse-class battleship by calculating the energy delivered by its main weapon, the mighty Nova Cannon, one of the most powerful weapons in Warhammer 40,000. I'm calculating based on the Nova Cannon because its energy is fairly easy to work out.
The Nova Cannon is a massive object with a diameter of 50m (and therefore a radius of 25m), fired at nearly the speed of light in a vacuum (300,000,000m/s): let's say it's travelling at 99% of the speed of light in a vacuum, 0.99c (the letter c is used in physics to symbolise the speed of light in a vacuum). First, we have to work out its volume.
I've been informed that Rogue Trader says that Nova Cannon shells normally mirror traditional explosive shells, so they're cylindrical and their length is 75m (three times their radius). If so, we must work out the volume of a cylinder: V = pr²h.
pr²h = p × 25² × 75 = 150,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures].
We can use this to work out the mass of a Nova Cannon projectile. The densest stable metal in the universe, osmium, has a density of 23,000kg/m³ [calculated to two significant figures]. To put this into perspective, lead's density is 11,000kg/m³: about half as dense. Osmium is very, very dense. However, this is sci-fi, so the Imperium might be able to develop materials that are even heavier than osmium.
For the sake of making a generous assumption, let's say that Nova Cannon projectiles are a full ten times as dense as osmium: 230,000kg/m³. In that case, the mass of a Nova Cannon projectile is 35,000,000,000kg [calculated to two significant figures].
Now I calculate how much kinetic energy it takes to send that mass at 297,000,000m/s, by using the equation for relativistic kinetic energy: KE = mc² ÷ v(1 – v² ÷ c²) – mc².
But there's actually an even bigger difference than that. If that much kinetic energy was applied to the battleship in recoil (and it would be), then the battleship would be immediately hurled away from the battle at tens of thousands of kilometres per second. Obviously, this doesn't happen, so the recoil must be compensated for, by putting extra energy to the engines.
In that case, in order to counter the momentum of the Nova Cannon shell, the battleship actually needs 1.9 × 10^28 × 2 = 3.8 × 10^28 joules.
Now I have to find out two more things: How many times can an Apocalypse-class battleship fire her Nova Cannon? How much of the Apocalypse-class ship's energy generation capacity is devoted to her Nova Cannon?
I must estimate these: 192 times, and 1/10. The latter is fairly arbitrary (and thus I've chosen to be generous in assuming that the Nova Cannon is only a small proportion of the ship's energy generation capacity). As for the former, I've heard somewhere (I'm afraid that I don't recall the source) that a Nova Cannon's rate of fire is twice per hour. If that is true, then, given that an Apocalypse-class battleship was engaged in a fight, it would take 96 hours (four days) of continuous firing for her to run out of plasma fuel for her Nova Cannon: a highly generous estimate of the Apocalypse class's capability.
Therefore, the total energy generation capacity of an Apocalypse-class battleship is 3.8 × 10^28 × 192 ÷ 1/10 = 7.3 × 10^31 joules [calculated to two significant figures].
An exaton of energy is equivalent to 4.2 × 10^27 joules of energy.
Therefore, an Apocalypse-class battleship, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 17,000 exatons of energy [calculated to two significant figures].
For proof that the total volume of an Imperial Navy battleship is 26,000,000,000m³, please see Calculation 8(g).
Note: For those who object to this method on grounds that efficiency would change things, please see my note at the end of Calculation 5(a).
In real life, a warship's armour and internal walls and suchlike take up about 5% of the ship's volume. I'll go with this for my calculations.
I'm also assuming that a full 20% of an Apocalypse-class ship's volume is taken up by the spaces for crewmen, attack craft and other operators. This is probably an overestimate, but that's acceptable, because I am trying to make a conservative estimate of an Apocalypse-class ship's fuel capacity.
There is no reason to believe that there are any troops aboard an Apocalypse-class ship, and active reason to believe that there aren't, since she's a warship and she should be trying to conserve space for firepower.
That leaves 75% of the ship's bulk for reactors and fuel storage.
If 20% of that, in turn, is taken up by internal walls and equipment of sorts, that would leave 60% of the ship's volume as pure plasma fuel.
Note: Some people argue that attack craft would take up a significant portion of the ship's mass, but that's just stupid. Please see my note on this in Calculation 6(a).
Therefore, the volume of the plasma fuel in an Apocalypse-class ship is 26,000,000,000m³ × 60% = 16,000,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures].
Note: I'm generously assuming that the Apocalypse class, despite being an unusually powerful battleship, doesn't require an unusually large amount of plasma fuel.
Therefore, it takes 16 billion cubic metres of plasma fuel for an Imperial Navy warship to generate 7.3 × 10^31 joules of energy.
7.3 × 10^31 ÷ 16,000,000,000 = 4.6 × 10^21 [calculated to two significant figures].
Therefore, each cubic metre of plasma fuel generates 4.6 × 10^21 joules.
This is slightly less than a tenth as much as the value for proton fuel.
(b) How much energy can all the various classes of Imperial Navy escorts generate?
This calculation will compare the energy generation capacity of seven of the eight known classes of escort warships in the Imperial Navy. It won't cover troopships or logistics ships.
The only class of escort warship that I've left out is the Defence Monitor. I would have liked to cover her, but I can't, because I know absolutely nothing about her size. She might be anything from 1,000m long to 3,000m long; I simply don't know.
First, we must calculate their volume. That has been done in Calculation 8(h). Next, we must calculate the volume of plasma fuel in each escort.
Note: For those who object to this method on grounds that efficiency would change things, please see my note at the end of Calculation 5(a).
In real life, a warship's armour and internal walls and suchlike take up about 5% of the ship's volume. I'll go with this for my calculations.
I'm also assuming that a full 20% of an Imperial Navy escort warship's volume is taken up by the spaces for crewmen, attack craft and other operators. This is probably an overestimate, but that's acceptable, because I am trying to make a conservative estimate of an Imperial Navy escort warship's fuel capacity.
There is no reason to believe that there are any troops aboard an Imperial Navy escort warship, and active reason to believe that there aren't, since she's a warship and she should be trying to conserve space for firepower.
That leaves 75% of the ship's bulk for reactors and fuel storage.
If 20% of that, in turn, is taken up by internal walls and equipment of sorts, that would leave 60% of the ship's volume as pure proton fuel.
Note: Some people argue that attack craft would take up a significant portion of the ship's mass, but that's just stupid. Please see my note on this in Calculation 6(a).
Therefore, the volume of the plasma fuel in any escort warship of the Imperial Navy is (total volume of ship) × 60%.
Finally, we just multiply all these by 4.6 × 10^21 joules, and we get:
Claymore: 78,000,000 × 4.6 × 10^21 = 3.6 × 10^29 joules [calculated to two significant figures]
Cobra: 84,000,000 × 4.6 × 10^21 = 3.9 × 10^29 joules [calculated to two significant figures]
Sword: 84,000,000 × 4.6 × 10^21 = 3.9 × 10^29 joules [calculated to two significant figures]
Firestorm: 96,000,000 × 4.6 × 10^21 = 4.4 × 10^29 joules [calculated to two significant figures]
Turbulent: 110,000,000 × 4.6 × 10^21 = 5.1 × 10^29 joules [calculated to two significant figures]
Falchion: 120,000,000 × 4.6 × 10^21 = 5.5 × 10^29 joules [calculated to two significant figures]
Tempest: 140,000,000 × 4.6 × 10^21 = 6.4 × 10^29 joules [calculated to two significant figures].
To translate this into an easier-to-understand form, there are 4.2 × 10^27 joules in one exaton. Therefore, in conclusion:
A Claymore-class corvette, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 86 exatons of energy [calculated to two significant figures].
A Cobra-class destroyer, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 93 exatons of energy [calculated to two significant figures].
A Sword-class frigate, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 93 exatons of energy [calculated to two significant figures].
A Firestorm-class frigate, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 100 exatons of energy [calculated to two significant figures].
A Turbulent-class heavy frigate, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 120 exatons of energy [calculated to two significant figures].
A Falchion-class escort, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 130 exatons of energy [calculated to two significant figures].
A Tempest-class frigate, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 150 exatons of energy [calculated to two significant figures].
(c) How much energy can all the various classes of Imperial Navy cruisers generate?
This calculation will compare the energy generation capacity of twelve of the sixteen known classes of cruisers in the Imperial Navy.
The four classes of cruiser that I've left out are the Endurance-class light cruiser, the Dominator-class cruiser, the Gothic-class cruiser and the Vengeance-class grand cruiser. I would have liked to cover them, but I can't, because I know absolutely nothing about their size.
First, we must calculate their volume. That has been done in Calculation 8(i). Next, we must calculate the volume of plasma fuel in each escort.
Note: For those who object to this method on grounds that efficiency would change things, please see my note at the end of Calculation 5(a).
In real life, a warship's armour and internal walls and suchlike take up about 5% of the ship's volume. I'll go with this for my calculations.
I'm also assuming that a full 20% of an Imperial Navy cruiser's volume is taken up by the spaces for crewmen, attack craft and other operators. This is probably an overestimate, but that's acceptable, because I am trying to make a conservative estimate of an Imperial Navy cruiser's fuel capacity.
There is no reason to believe that there are any troops aboard an Imperial Navy cruiser, and active reason to believe that there aren't, since she's a warship and she should be trying to conserve space for firepower.
That leaves 75% of the ship's bulk for reactors and fuel storage.
If 20% of that, in turn, is taken up by internal walls and equipment of sorts, that would leave 60% of the ship's volume as pure proton fuel.
Note: Some people argue that attack craft would take up a significant portion of the ship's mass, but that's just stupid. Please see my note on this in Calculation 6(a).
Therefore, the volume of the plasma fuel in any cruiser of the Imperial Navy is (total volume of ship) × 60%.
Defiant: 950,000,000m³ × 60% = 570,000,000m³
Endeavour: 950,000,000m³ × 60% = 570,000,000m³
Dauntless: 1,100,000,000m³ × 60% = 660,000,000m³
Armageddon: 3,200,000,000m³ × 60% = 1,900,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures]
Lunar: 3,200,000,000m³ × 60% = 1,900,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures]
Tyrant: 3,200,000,000m³ × 60% = 1,900,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures]
Chalice: 3,300,000,000m³ × 60% = 2,000,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures]
Dictator: 3,300,000,000m³ × 60% = 2,000,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures]
Overlord: 3,800,000,000m³ × 60% = 2,300,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures]
Mars: 3,900,000,000m³ × 60% = 2,300,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures]
Exorcist: 8,800,000,000m³ × 60% = 5,300,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures]
Avenger: 24,000,000,000m³ × 60% = 14,000,000,000m³ [calculated to two significant figures].
Finally, we just multiply all these by 4.6 × 10^21 joules, and we get:
Defiant: 570,000,000 × 4.6 × 10^21 = 2.6 × 10^30 joules [calculated to two significant figures]
Endeavour: 570,000,000 × 4.6 × 10^21 = 2.6 × 10^30 joules [calculated to two significant figures]
Dauntless: 660,000,000 × 4.6 × 10^21 = 3.0 × 10^30 joules [calculated to two significant figures]
Armageddon: 1,900,000,000 × 4.6 × 10^21 = 8.7 × 10^30 joules [calculated to two significant figures]
Lunar: 1,900,000,000 × 4.6 × 10^21 = 8.7 × 10^30 joules [calculated to two significant figures]
Tyrant: 1,900,000,000 × 4.6 × 10^21 = 8.7 × 10^30 joules [calculated to two significant figures]
Chalice: 2,000,000,000 × 4.6 × 10^21 = 9.2 × 10^30 joules
Dictator: 2,000,000,000 × 4.6 × 10^21 = 9.2 × 10^30 joules
Overlord: 2,300,000,000 × 4.6 × 10^21 = 1.1 × 10^31 joules [calculated to two significant figures]
Mars: 2,300,000,000 × 4.6 × 10^21 = 1.1 × 10^31 joules [calculated to two significant figures]
Exorcist: 5,300,000,000 × 4.6 × 10^21 = 2.4 × 10^31 joules [calculated to two significant figures]
Avenger: 14,000,000,000 × 4.6 × 10^21 = 6.4 × 10^31 joules [calculated to two significant figures].
To translate this into an easier-to-understand form, there are 4.2 × 10^27 joules in one exaton. Therefore, in conclusion:
A Defiant-class light cruiser, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 620 exatons of energy [calculated to two significant figures].
An Endeavour-class light cruiser, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 620 exatons of energy [calculated to two significant figures].
A Dauntless-class light cruiser, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 710 exatons of energy [calculated to two significant figures].
An Armageddon-class battlecruiser, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 2,100 exatons of energy [calculated to two significant figures].
A Lunar-class cruiser, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 2,100 exatons of energy [calculated to two significant figures].
A Tyrant-class cruiser, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 2,100 exatons of energy [calculated to two significant figures].
A Chalice-class battlecruiser, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 2,200 exatons of energy [calculated to two significant figures].
A Dictator-class cruiser, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 2,200 exatons of energy [calculated to two significant figures].
An Overlord-class battlecruiser, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 2,600 exatons of energy [calculated to two significant figures].
A Mars-class battlecruiser, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 2,600 exatons of energy [calculated to two significant figures].
An Exorcist-class grand cruiser, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 5,700 exatons of energy [calculated to two significant figures].
An Avenger-class grand cruiser, if her fuel tanks are full, can generate 15,000 exatons of energy [calculated to two significant figures].
11. Numbers of Warhammer 40,000 Imperial forces:
(a) How many sectors are there in the Imperium?
Numerous Warhammer 40,000 sources state that the Imperium contains one-million inhabited planets; this figure is not in serious dispute. To give but one of the many existing examples, the 5th Edition says, "The Imperium of Man comprises a million inhabited worlds."
Imperial space is divided into five Segmenta, which are then subdivided into sectors.
There are many canonical figures determining this, but two of them are the most precise:
1. The Gothic sector contains 73 inhabited planets (if my count is correct: I might be off by one or two or three). I'll round this off to 70, for ease of calculations.
2. A sector is a cube of space with a side-length of 200 light-years. This gives it a volume of 8,000,000 cubic light-years.
Unfortunately, Warhammer 40,000 canon is rarely consistent (though it looks perfect, in comparison to the Star Wars Expanded Universe). These figures are inconsistent with each other, so I'm going with the former, because the latter leads to some truly insane conclusions.
In real life, the Milky Way is 1,000 light-years thick and 60,000 light-years in radius, so its total volume is 60,000² × p × 1,000 = 11,000,000,000,000 cubic light-years [calculated to two significant figures]. 11,000,000,000,000 ÷ 8,000,000 = 1,400,000 [calculated to two significant figures].
Therefore, even if the Imperium only controls half the Milky Way, the latter calculation suggests that the Imperium has a whopping 700,000 sectors. In that case, the majority of Imperial sectors have only one planet each, and all the others would boast a grand total of… two planets each. That's obviously wrong, so I'm going with the other calculation.
If the Imperium has one-million planets and there are 70 planets per sector, then there are about 14,000 [calculated to two significant figures] sectors in the Imperium.
(b) How many warships are there in the Imperial Navy?
The canonical nomenclature for Imperial fleets seems to vary all the time, so I'll make it simple: each sector has a battlefleet, and each Segmentum has a warfleet. Sometimes Segmenta are described as having battlefleets too, but I'll use the term 'warfleet' for the purpose of clarification.
For a start, let's look at the following quotation from the 5th Edition, on the subject of the Catelexis Heresy:
"Millions upon millions of ships are lost in the resulting upheaval and entire sub-sectors slide into barbarism without the dictats of the Adeptus Terra to guide them."
This proves that the Imperium has at least four-million spaceships ("millions upon millions" must mean at least two pairs of "millions", and "millions" must mean at least two-million). Of course, spaceships ? warships, so this statement doesn't prove that the Imperium has millions of warships; indeed, the combined number of supply ships, merchantmen (trading ships) and troopships are likely to dwarf the number of warships—but probably not by more than a factor of ten, and certainly not by more than a factor of one-hundred. As such, the Imperium has at least 40,000 warships, and probably at least 400,000, that were lost (this figure doesn't include all the other ships that were still working just fine); and that was going with the most conservative interpretation of the meaning of "millions upon millions of ships". As such, the figures that I'm about to give out are justified.
According to the 3rd Edition of Codex: Armageddon, the following Imperial Navy warships were present at Armageddon:
6 first-line cruiser squadrons
9 second-line cruiser squadrons
12 light cruiser squadrons
36 escort squadrons
Archangel - Defiant-class light cruiser
Forebearer - Defiant-class light cruiser
Ex Cathedra - Armageddon-class battlecruiser
Hammer of Light - Armageddon-class battlecruiser
Thunderchild - Armageddon-class battlecruiser
Green Lake - Oberon-class battleship
His Will - Apocalypse-class battleship
Leonid - Endeavour-class light cruiser
Triumph - Apocalypse-class battleship
Inomine Veritas - Emperor-class battleship
Sanctis Legate - Endeavour-class light cruiser
Sword of Voss - Endeavour-class light cruiser
If we assume that a squadron contains (on average) ten ships, this includes:
(I'm assuming that "first-line cruisers" are battlecruisers, and that "second-line cruisers" are standard cruisers.)
This adds up to 642 warships. I'm going to make the extremely generous assumption that all Imperial sectors have an average of 642 ships in their battlefleets.
In fact, the Armageddon sector contains a forge world: one of a few hundred planets that form virtually the entire industrial base of the Imperium. For that reason alone, the Armageddon sector is far more important than most sectors: it's stated that, if the planet Armageddon falls, hundreds of Imperial planets will be left vulnerable.
However, my assumption is vaguely excusable, on the basis that Armageddon's reinforcements seem to have consisted largely of Space Marines. There were 14 Battle Barges and 103 Strike Cruisers at Armageddon: a staggering feat, since there are only 1,000,000 loyalist Space Marines in the entire Imperium, and each Space Marine capital ship must contain at least a hundred Space Marines. Thus, this force represents at least 10,000 Space Marines. Let me repeat: at least 10,000 of the million Space Marines, who are meant to protect a million planets, went to only one planet.
With so many Space Marines at Armageddon, it's justifiable, albeit dodgy, to say that the Imperial Navy wouldn't see the need to give them large numbers of reinforcements. After all, a group containing thousands of Space Marines should be able to handle most opponents.
So I'm going with the assumption that a typical Imperial battlefleet contains 642 warships, 360 of which are escorts and four of which are battleships. Of course, places like Cadia contain far more, but I'm dealing with the average Imperial battlefleet, not the best of the best.
642 × 14,000 = 9,000,000 warships [calculated to two significant figures].
What about Imperial warfleets?
On the one hand, most Imperial Guard activity seems to be organised from a very centralised, high level. For instance, the Armageddon Steel Legion is found all over the Imperium, not just in the vicinity of Armageddon.
On the other hand, the Imperial Navy seems to be much less centralised. Virtually all activity seems to come from the battlefleets of individual sectors, with only limited help being given by the strategic reserve fleets at a Segmentum level.
However, there definitely are strategic reserve fleets: one in each Segmentum. These fleets are called warfleets, and they're based at one planet in each Segmentum: Warfleet Obscurus at Cypra Mundi, Warfleet Pacificus at Hydraphur, Warfleet Solar at Mars, Warfleet Tempestus at Bakka and Warfleet Ultima at Kar Duniash.
Warfleet Solar is especially large: likely to be, let's say, twice as large as any other warfleet. This is because the Sol system is the most heavily defended star-system in the Imperium: not just slightly so, but by a great margin.
However, the warfleets are strategic reserves; it's the battlefleets that are the main units of the Imperial Navy. Therefore, it seems likely that the warfleets form no more than 20% of the Imperial Navy: probably less, but I'll be generous.
So, if the battlefleets have 9,000,000 ships, then the warfleets have 2,250,000 warships.
Now we just divide 2.25 million by six, since there are five warfleets but Warfleet Solar is worth two other warfleets. This tells us that a normal warfleet contains about 375,000 warships, and Warfleet Solar contains about 750,000 of them.
9,000,000 + 2,250,000 = 11,250,000 Imperial Navy warships.
Obviously, because of the imprecision of this calculation, we shouldn't treat this as an exact figure, but it does tell us that the Imperial Navy contains somewhere vaguely around 11 million warships.
(c) Why aren't Space Marine fleets counted in Calculation 11(b)?
The 5th Edition of Codex: Space Marines says, "There are only a thousand such chapters [loyalist Space Marine chapters] spanning the galaxy." This is well established. It also says, "Chapters have often exceeded their basic fighting strength of one thousand souls during times of prolonged war." As such, if I'm going to be generous, I might assume that, in the troubled times of the 41st millennium, the Space Marines number as many as two-million.
However, only the greatest chapters have over two or three Battle Barges, and many chapters have only one. In order to be generous, let's say that each chapter has, on average, two Battle Barges. Since a Battle Barge carries two or three companies of Space Marines, two Battle Barges would take up 40%-60% of the entire chapter.
A Space Marine Strike Cruiser carries a company of one-hundred Space Marines. Therefore, each chapter can only use four to six Strike Cruisers. So, every Space Marine chapter has a fleet of two Battle Barges, four to six Strike Cruisers and the appropriate escorts—and that's the maximum. Some Space Marine chapters only have one Battle Barge and a few Strike Cruisers.
That simply isn't enough to count on a galactic scale. That's two-thousand Battle Barges and 4,000-6,000 Strike Cruisers: a fleet of similar size to the combined battlefleets of about 1%-2% of the sectors in the Imperium. And those Space Marines are spread all over the Imperium, with extremely disproportionate numbers heading to places like Cadia and the areas menaced by Hive Fleet Leviathan.
The Space Marines are definitely an essential part of the Warhammer 40,000 franchise, but they aren't an essential part of the Imperium's space warfare. There just aren't enough of them for that.
Results: speed, ship numbers and energy generation capacity.
Note: If you want to find the source of these results, please see the rest of my calculations.
Results about speed:
Hyperdrive is 15,000,000 times the speed of light in a vacuum.
Warp Drive is, on average, 7,100 times the speed of light in a vacuum.
Results about ship numbers:
The Galactic Republic has about 51 million warships.
The Imperium of Man has about 11 million warships.
Results about energy generation capacity (Warhammer 40,000):
Claymore-class corvette: 86 exatons
Cobra-class destroyer: 93 exatons
Sword-class frigate: 93 exatons
Firestorm-class frigate: 100 exatons
Turbulent-class heavy frigate: 120 exatons
Falchion-class escort: 130 exatons
Tempest-class frigate: 150 exatons
Defiant-class or Endeavour-class light cruiser: 620 exatons
Dauntless-class light cruiser: 710 exatons
Armageddon-class battlecruiser: 2,100 exatons
Lunar-class or Tyrant-class cruiser: 2,100 exatons
Chalice-class battlecruiser: 2,200 exatons
Dictator-class cruiser: 2,200 exatons
Mars-class or Overlord-class battlecruiser: 2,600 exatons
Exorcist-class grand cruiser: 5,700 exatons
Avenger-class grand cruiser: 15,000 exatons
Apocalypse-class, Emperor-class, Oberon-class or Retribution-class battleship: 17,000 exatons
Results about energy generation capacity (Star Wars)
Unifier-class star destroyer: 50 exatons
Glory-class star destroyer: 150 exatons
Enforcer-class or Avenger-class star destroyer: 450 exatons
Trade Federation battleship: 17,000 exatons
Magnificence-class battleship: 22,000 exatons
Command-class battleship: 260,000 exatons
Automatically Appended Next Post: Keep in mind that its Star Wars vs 40k but it does list technical info.
While I grew up with Star Wars (and am inevitably biased towards it) I enjoyed the campy lessons at the end of each episode of Star Trek. While watching Star Trek won't always necessarily make you really ponder the deep questions of the universe, the prequels are just CGI porn.
I didn't pay much attention to B5 when it first came out, so it was a wonderful surprise when I started watching it several years later. It had its shortcomings, but was a very, very, VERY good show.
When it comes to sheer coolness, Wars won hands-down, until it threw the fight with those damned prequels. It's still far superior in ship and equipment design aesthetics, though. Trek's got a lot going for it, especially (IMO) TNG starting in SEASON 3, and DS9. I grew up watching ToS, some of which isn't as good now that I'm grown. Neither franchise is worthy of some of the unbelievably over-the-top extreme fanaticism devoted to them, though. It's a show, not a lifestyle!
Automatically Appended Next Post:
MajorTom11 wrote: I find it amusing/unrealistic that the true option most of us would take is not there.... both.
Probably just an oversight. It was always fun in school to meet a fan who couldnt handle the idea that someone could like both shows. You know, the ones who wig out and insist that you choose a side, either theirs to bolster their ego, or the other so they have someone to argue with, and get all flustered and angry when you say that both are good.
SW ep1 is still fairly light on the CGI. The podrace arena was a physical model. Every one of those heads in the crowd (long shots) were q-tips coloured 1 of 4 or 5 different colours.
Lucas crapped on about how CGI had made great leaps and progressions in various making-of bits about ep1 - and ALL of the scenes he talked about had ACTUAL physical models and SFA CGI.
(Ep1 was the last SW movie to use physical props for ships and stuff - about 80% real stuff to CGI. Ep2 was about 60/40 and ep3 90% CGI and greenscreen.)
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Star Wars has been ruined by George Lucas, and everybody in Star Trek is too much of a goody two shoes. Although Gul Dukat and Garek are some of the best characters ever seen in sci-fi.
For me, Farscape all the way.
Indeed!!
Scorpius IS the best villain ever!!
Much agreement! He's such a good villain, he even convinces you at some point that he isn't! But he is! Its a bit grimdark for ALL the time, but Farscape was amazing and died a season or two too early.
I guess I like star trek more overall.
Star wars has a great space opera thing going on, but trek has provided me with more consistent entertainment over the years.
If I had to play a game table top RPG/mmo/whatever, star wars probably sets a better back drop overall, but I still vote star trek for all of the entertainment value over the years.
Holy crap mondo, did you just dump the entirety of that starwarsvsstartrek website or whatever it is (it exists, I've seen it, its creepy).
Star Trek is better in my opinion. Star Trek had great tv series, mostly good films and is set in a much more interesting universe. The last 3 Star Wars films were terrible, like watching a boring cut scene from a Final Fantasy game, bad acting in the lead roles and silly cartoon/cgi characters running about making silly noises.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Star Wars has been ruined by George Lucas, and everybody in Star Trek is too much of a goody two shoes. Although Gul Dukat and Garek are some of the best characters ever seen in sci-fi.
For me, Farscape all the way.
Star Wars has been ruined by George Lucas?
Star Wars doesn't exist without George Lucas, it's his baby, he can do as he wishes
The prequel trilogy isn't as bad as the world makes out (attack of the clones aside)
And the funding of Disney should be a major boost for the future, especially as J j Abrams has expressed a desire to use sets more than cgi
ChocletEyeOfTerror wrote: Star Wars. I given few chance's to ST and didnt like it.
kustom mega-dude badf Star Wars films? Did you watched new Star Trek ones?
I have watched the new Star Trek films and they're very good I am also a Star Wars fan and love the original trilogy, just not a fan of the last 3 films sorry. Lego Star Wars is good fun though.
I never really saw anything in either franchise, but then I never really watched star trek much or understood it, star wars just seemed a bit dull to me.
As much as I love Star Wars, Star trek (TNG specifically) is stronger Sci Fi. Sci fi needs to show how human nature will (or will fail to) change in the wake of the technology of the future. Star trek succeeds in this and also uses alien cultures to draw parallels to our own.
Use to like Star Wars more but that was because I never really watched Star Trek. But now that I've seen Star Trek TOS and working my way from Seasons 1 to 5 of ST:TNG all on Bluray, I must say that I like both.
I've always been more of a Star Wars fan. I think I was too young/dumb/impatient to get into Star Trek as a kid. Whereas Star Wars had lightsabers.
The 2009 movie kindled my interest and the Attack Wing game exploited it. Now I am in full Trek mode, trying to watch things in order. I'm about halfway through the original series. It's campy, but considering it was made in the 60s, you have to respect it.
Right now, I'd still say I like Star Wars more... mainly because of lightsabers. Next year at this time, I may very well like Trek more. After episode 7... who knows.
At one point in life, I would've answered with confidence "Star Trek".
However, the new movies, while entertaining, are not really what I liked about Star Trek in the first place, so I'm not sure I'm anything more than a casual Trek fan at this point in the evolution of the franchise.
Star Wars has been ruined by everyone working on the movies or expanded universe since episode II was a thing. And Star trek has this thing where it has depth, but that depth never comes out unless you watch every episode ever, or read the books. Battlestar Galactica All the way.
Star Trek TNG states that humans will "evolve" beyond the need for money, or selfish motivation to work for the good of the collective whole. Picard has multiple speeches about it. That is easily the least plausible part of the Star Trek universe, that humans can achieve a communist society where everyone is happy. Also, the Trek-nobabble took me out of it, because they try to explain everything, which makes all sorts of inconsistencies, such as a weapon with a set output performing a task that is mathematically impossible to achieve with so little energy. Also, Warp 10 was originally instantanious speed, which they called Transwarp. Later ships have Warp 14 capabilities.
Star Wars prequels (shudder), and the re-releases of the originals (grimace) definitely hurt the franchise. George Lucas just didn't realize that most of what made his movies good, was what the other people working on it influenced. So when he started changing it to make it more like "his original vision" he was stripping away the very things that fans loved about the movies. Personally, I have trouble getting into the books. There's an entire series where the antagonists are just clones of Palpatine. 1: that removes the consequence of death from meaning anything. 2: that is lazy writing to just kill the same enemy over and over instead of coming up with a new unique foe, and being able to resolve a story without killing him/her so that foe can be a recurring villain.
Stargate... The original movie was fine, SG1 was fine, Atlantis was fine, but SGU was horrendous, far worse than the Star Wars prequels, far worse than the odd numbered Star Trek movies. It was a soap opera where dead characters re-appeared for no reason whatsoever, and every single character except Mathboy had a reason why I wanted them to get killed off. After one season, I felt the only way to redeem the series was if the Aliens killed everyone, and the rest of the show followed the Aliens adventures on the ship.
I think Firefly/Serenity is objectively better than the others. They have good internal consistency, the premise is not contrary to human nature, and they don't over explain everything. The story is well written, and they show they are able to have stand alone and recurring villains which fit the story.
If it hadn't been for those mindnumbingly slowed prequels I would have voted Star Wars, but they really ruined a lot of things for me.
So Star Trek gets my vote even tho I had a tough time chewing through the original series, mainly because of horribel acting and effects.
By the way, I never undestood the hate for ST:Enterprise. Anyone care to enlighten me?
It's a really tough call for me. I love the original ST and TNG (though not Voyager, Enterprise and those abominable Abrams monstrosities) a lot, but then Star Wars has always been a huge part of my life and, along with LotR, basically defined my childhood, so even though the prequels are a bit rubbish, I owe them a hell of a lot. Also Clone Wars is just amazing, everything I-III should have been.
So in words of Iron Man, 'I say, is it too much to ask for both?' Much like Marvel vs DC, I don't feel a need to stay one camp or the other, I'll just enjoy whatever I can from both.
I loved Star Wars when I was 12 but somehow grew out of it, cant stand it nowadays. Stoormtroopers have ok helmets but the body armour is ridiculous, Vader looks like an s/m club member and dont get me started on ewoks. Palpatine is the only awesome thing there but he shares the universe with ewoks so meh. Ships are the saving grace, good designs like super star destroyer x wing etc. Also the movie is weirdly written not to mention incest, good music though and I loved the games, Dark Forces then Jedi Knight and ofc Rebellion, now that was something.
I tend to think the less Star Wars in 40k the better, thankfuly Rick Priestley doesnt even mention it as inspiration:
Star trek I tried to watch the ones with Pickard lately, good comedy not sure if intended. I understand nostalgia towards it though, didnt watch as a kid but hearing the opening theme takes me back 25 years, must have been on TV then.
Star Wars. It was such an intregal part of my childhood in a way that Trek never was.
Also:
Star Destroyers.
AT-AT's.
Princess Leiah kicking butt.
Scoundrels
Not a socialist utopia.
Female Twi-lek bounty hunter.
The entire last episode of season five of Clone Wars.
MWHistorian wrote: Star Wars. It was such an intregal part of my childhood in a way that Trek never was.
Also:
Star Destroyers.
AT-AT's.
Princess Leiah kicking butt.
Scoundrels
Not a socialist utopia.
Female Twi-lek bounty hunter.
The entire last episode of season five of Clone Wars.
Also:TIE fighters
Lightsabers
John williams
Darth maul
Tie fighters
Stormtroopers
Super star destroyers
And finally:The death star.And Tie fighters.
Plumbumbarum wrote: I loved Star Wars when I was 12 but somehow grew out of it, cant stand it nowadays. Stoormtroopers have ok helmets but the body armour is ridiculous, Vader looks like an s/m club member and dont get me started on ewoks. Palpatine is the only awesome thing there but he shares the universe with ewoks so meh. Ships are the saving grace, good designs like super star destroyer x wing etc. Also the movie is weirdly written not to mention incest, good music though and I loved the games, Dark Forces then Jedi Knight and ofc Rebellion, now that was something.
I tend to think the less Star Wars in 40k the better, thankfuly Rick Priestley doesnt even mention it as inspiration:
Star trek I tried to watch the ones with Pickard lately, good comedy not sure if intended. I understand nostalgia towards it though, didnt watch as a kid but hearing the opening theme takes me back 25 years, must have been on TV then.
Vader is the man, Fett is cool only cool characters in Trek are the Babes.
This is a really hard competition. Star Wars started really strong but faded as they transitioned into the prequels. Star Trek is a bit of a swing and a miss with some episodes being brilliant and some being about everyone tripping over their own boots.
In the end, I would say that Star Trek is able to bring the setting of the galaxy to life better. Star Wars has exciting wars and well designed ships, but Star Trek is able to explore a wider variety of emotions and situations. Even the cheaper series have their share of episodes that turn out pretty decent, for instance "Operation: Oblivion" of Voyager where the crew discover that they are duplicates of the real voyager and explore what is their purpose as they fade into oblivion. Star Trek explores genocide, effects of foreign occupation, ethics of terrorism, and what it means to be human, things that other series would not dare to approach. The original series pushed the bounds of gender and racial equality, putting coloured women positions of command and making it clear that Kirk did not care for race when he and Uhura kissed. Finally Star Trek offers a future of hope, a promise that mankind can pull itself out of the destruction of war subjugation and reach for the stars.
Both are settings with a sufficient variety of works by completely different creative teams that a broad comparison is kind of silly. Original works I think both are somewhat weak but I lean towards Star Wars there; Lucas may have handed us simplistic narratives burdened with excessive narrative baggage (After the message at the beginning of ANH R2-D2 exists to take screen time away from the action and resolve complications that spring up out of the blue just so he can solve them), but he kept everything entertaining instead of the preachy/dry gibberish the original Star Trek dissolved into. Setting-wise I prefer Star Trek; Star Wars is too heavily built on the idea of plot-armoured Jedi solving all the world's problems and one person's space magic making the actions of everyone else in the galaxy irrelevant, Star Trek goes into background and culture and politics with depth and eye for detail in a way that Star Wars never has, and leaves space for events to occur outside the scope of the protagonists doing things in a way that Star Wars doesn't. Best (or at least my favourite) works in both settings it's a toss-up, KotOR/TOR-canon and DS9 are both great for different reasons and in different areas, I don't think there's a fair way to compare them.
I have to go with Star Wars. I do have to admite that for a really long time I hated Star Trek but recently I was forced to give TNG a chance by a friend and it really isn't that bad.... I can't stand the Shatner series though
Plumbumbarum wrote: I loved Star Wars when I was 12 but somehow grew out of it, cant stand it nowadays. Stoormtroopers have ok helmets but the body armour is ridiculous, Vader looks like an s/m club member and dont get me started on ewoks. Palpatine is the only awesome thing there but he shares the universe with ewoks so meh. Ships are the saving grace, good designs like super star destroyer x wing etc. Also the movie is weirdly written not to mention incest, good music though and I loved the games, Dark Forces then Jedi Knight and ofc Rebellion, now that was something.
I tend to think the less Star Wars in 40k the better, thankfuly Rick Priestley doesnt even mention it as inspiration:
Star trek I tried to watch the ones with Pickard lately, good comedy not sure if intended. I understand nostalgia towards it though, didnt watch as a kid but hearing the opening theme takes me back 25 years, must have been on TV then.
Ewoks are one of the few things I hate about star wars.
Ewoks, Jar jar, horrible love scenes in episode 2, Anakin acting more like a whiny brat than anything, little Anakin's acting skill and a number of horribly designed aliens.
I voted no strong opinion, but honestly I strongly like both francises. They are very different (or at least were before the recent, unfortunate movie reboot) but there's a place in my heart for both.
melkorthetonedeaf wrote: Star Trek gives me hope for the future, while Star Wars makes me want to watch cowboy movies and read the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Its got to be Trek for me, although Ilove Star Wars. I keep returning to Star Trek, and that doesnt happen as much with Star Wars. Both are ace, Trek for the win for me!
Hrm, it's hard to say really. They both have epic parts (Empire, most of RotJ, Wrath of Khan most of TNG and DS9) and abysmal failures (SW Prequel trilogy, most of TOS, VOY and ENT).
Were this before 1999, taking each franchise as a whole, I'd say Star Wars. After that? Star Trek.
Personally though, I'd go with Babylon 5 over either
Vaktathi wrote: Hrm, it's hard to say really. They both have epic parts (Empire, most of RotJ, Wrath of Khan most of TNG and DS9) and abysmal failures (SW Prequel trilogy, most of TOS, VOY and ENT).
Were this before 1999, taking each franchise as a whole, I'd say Star Wars. After that? Star Trek.
Personally though, I'd go with Babylon 5 over either
I said the same thing, but about Battlestar Galactica
Vaktathi wrote: Hrm, it's hard to say really. They both have epic parts (Empire, most of RotJ, Wrath of Khan most of TNG and DS9) and abysmal failures (SW Prequel trilogy, most of TOS, VOY and ENT).
Were this before 1999, taking each franchise as a whole, I'd say Star Wars. After that? Star Trek.
Personally though, I'd go with Babylon 5 over either
I said the same thing, but about Battlestar Galactica
I was a huge fan of BSG...until they pooched the ending (at least, IMO). Then re-watching it, it's very clear exactly when the 2007 writers strike happens and you can see them doing things for shock value, writing themselves into corners, etc and everything gets weird...-er
Star Wars for me, without question...
i love the reissued original trilogy with all the extra CG bits, except for Han stepping on Jaba's tail, that was just silly...
i really love the look of the prequel trilogy...
we got so see so much cool stuff, like new planets and old ships...
i'm a CG nut, so i am really happy with the look of all six movies...
i do like the new Star Trek movies much more than any of the older stuff, but again, that is down to how far CG has come along...
i'm all about the visuals...
Vaktathi wrote: Hrm, it's hard to say really. They both have epic parts (Empire, most of RotJ, Wrath of Khan most of TNG and DS9) and abysmal failures (SW Prequel trilogy, most of TOS, VOY and ENT).
Were this before 1999, taking each franchise as a whole, I'd say Star Wars. After that? Star Trek.
Personally though, I'd go with Babylon 5 over either
I said the same thing, but about Battlestar Galactica
I was a huge fan of BSG...until they pooched the ending (at least, IMO). Then re-watching it, it's very clear exactly when the 2007 writers strike happens and you can see them doing things for shock value, writing themselves into corners, etc and everything gets weird...-er
The first half of the series I'd grant you
Would you humor me and fill me in on this writers strike (and what season it correlates to)? I think i was in the 5th grade in 2007
Vaktathi wrote: Hrm, it's hard to say really. They both have epic parts (Empire, most of RotJ, Wrath of Khan most of TNG and DS9) and abysmal failures (SW Prequel trilogy, most of TOS, VOY and ENT).
Were this before 1999, taking each franchise as a whole, I'd say Star Wars. After that? Star Trek.
Personally though, I'd go with Babylon 5 over either
I said the same thing, but about Battlestar Galactica
I was a huge fan of BSG...until they pooched the ending (at least, IMO). Then re-watching it, it's very clear exactly when the 2007 writers strike happens and you can see them doing things for shock value, writing themselves into corners, etc and everything gets weird...-er
The first half of the series I'd grant you
Would you humor me and fill me in on this writers strike (and what season it correlates to)? I think i was in the 5th grade in 2007
So, in 2007 there was a writers strike that affected huge numbers of TV shows of all kinds. IIRC this occurred during seasons 3 & 4, mostly impacting the weird turns season 4 takes.
Vaktathi wrote: Hrm, it's hard to say really. They both have epic parts (Empire, most of RotJ, Wrath of Khan most of TNG and DS9) and abysmal failures (SW Prequel trilogy, most of TOS, VOY and ENT).
Were this before 1999, taking each franchise as a whole, I'd say Star Wars. After that? Star Trek.
Personally though, I'd go with Babylon 5 over either
I said the same thing, but about Battlestar Galactica
I was a huge fan of BSG...until they pooched the ending (at least, IMO). Then re-watching it, it's very clear exactly when the 2007 writers strike happens and you can see them doing things for shock value, writing themselves into corners, etc and everything gets weird...-er
The first half of the series I'd grant you
Would you humor me and fill me in on this writers strike (and what season it correlates to)? I think i was in the 5th grade in 2007
So, in 2007 there was a writers strike that affected huge numbers of TV shows of all kinds. IIRC this occurred during seasons 3 & 4, mostly impacting the weird turns season 4 takes.
I guess that explains a lot. I had no idea, but i guess I was more concerned with Dragon Ball Z than BSG in the 5th grade
It has to be Star Wars for me, as nothing beats the TIE Fighters (Canon and Non-Canon e.g. TIE Defender & TIE Interceptor) and the story. Star Trek had some decent episodes/movies, but it is all about the ship designs than the stories themselves.
I have to say, I like both pretty well. Star Wars focuses more on characters and philosophy and the struggle between good and evil, whereas Star Trek seems to focus more on science and exploration. I don't think I could rate one above the other, really.
mdauben wrote: I voted no strong opinion, but honestly I strongly like both francises. They are very different (or at least were before the recent, unfortunate movie reboot) but there's a place in my heart for both.
melkorthetonedeaf wrote: Star Trek gives me hope for the future, while Star Wars makes me want to watch cowboy movies and read the Epic of Gilgamesh.
When you can produce anything from anything for the cost of nothing...why would you be opposed to this?
If you pay attention, the Federation is actually quite oppressive. All the spaceships are state owned, there are no private (human) merchants plying the stars or private shuttles with people exploring the galaxy alone. There are only colonists put on remote worlds by the federation who die in interesting ways to further the plot because they are unarmed scientists.
In the past, there was so much 'Trek and so little 'Wars that it was a quality v quantity thing. It was easy to point to awful 'Trek in recent memory and decent 'Wars.
I suspect that'll be changing with the advent of Star Wars: Episode YA, the Hunger Wars. I think if the Prequels/Clone Wars with its trade federations and diplomatic negotiations was StarWars' TNG period, we are now firmly in the Voyager period of bland strong female leads who 'can do no wrong' .
Star Wars is more visually appealing, but anyone wanting deeper and more meaningful content will vote for Star Trek. Or as the scifi hipster in me would say, Star Wars is too mainstream.
Well, since the original Battlestar Galactica wasn't an option...
Star Trek is more engaging in every possible way. Deeper actual science fiction, wider breadth of storytelling, and most importantly two points: being the most powerful being in the universe isn't caused by an STD, and nobody ever open-mouth kissed their sister on the Enterprise.
When you can produce anything from anything for the cost of nothing...why would you be opposed to this?
If you pay attention, the Federation is actually quite oppressive. All the spaceships are state owned, there are no private (human) merchants plying the stars or private shuttles with people exploring the galaxy alone. There are only colonists put on remote worlds by the federation who die in interesting ways to further the plot because they are unarmed scientists.
There were more than a few human traders/merchants, and far more non-human ones. You had, just in the original series, Cyrano Jones and Harcourt Vincent Mudd. And to be fair, the whole Socialism thing didn't get popped in until TNG. People still got paid in TOS, and through quite a bit of TNG. I think it was Berman who shoveled in the Socialist Utopia angle.
I have a feeling that the star wars and Warhammer fandoms have a bit more of an overlap, both very action oriented. I love both, but Star Trek (particularly Next Gen and DS9) is just leagues ahead for me.
Are there any villains out there as cool as the Scarans, love them scary and smart. That is one of the main things that annoyed me about the Star Gate villains, they seemed scary (and controlled whole sectors of space) but could surprisingly be out outsmarted and outfought every day of the week. Sure you could say that Star Gate was not a serious show, but neither was Farscape, shame about the second half of the last episode :(.
Comparing Star Trek and Star Wars is a bit of a tough one though, they are just so different.
Star Wars is a fun adventure story and Star Trek is more a story of ideas with adventuring.
Which one I like best usually depends on my mood at the time.
I like the original Star Wars Films and the new one, also the Lego version
Trek - again the Original, DS9 and elements of the others - but when Next Gen came out it was watched religiously.
Stargate I think was awesome - especially since it had a shaky start with the first few episodes but the cast was great and it had some fabulous episodes, some serious - some comic genius. Ended with a terrible episode but the tv films that followed were much better.
Farscape was a bit odd - great and with lots of interesting stuff - the series ender was not bad - although not good for my fav character Sikozu :(
Battlestar was a joy to watch - unlike the prequel series.
Babylon 5 I loved - again not happy about how it ended but enjoyed the ride....
If you pay attention, the Federation is actually quite oppressive. All the spaceships are state owned, there are no private (human) merchants plying the stars or private shuttles with people exploring the galaxy alone. There are only colonists put on remote worlds by the federation who die in interesting ways to further the plot because they are unarmed scientists.
Actually, NOT all human ships are "state owned" by the federation.
There ARE "free traders" (smugglers, pirates, etc) and there are examples of two of them in the one movie. STIII.
Both the crew of the freighter that is the klingon bird of prey's first victim (After the klingon spy Valkris gives Kruge the genesis file) and the captain of the ship McCoy tries to charter in the bar later.
Others get mentions in DS9 and occasionally in Enterprise and TNG.
Coldnap wrote:For Star Trek you have to get into the ships, love those DS9 battles.
Have you seen the ship they designed for the new show? I didn't realize the Federation HAD a D-7. I always thought there wouldn't be a ship as stupid and gakky looking as the Defiant, I was wrong.
Also, I'd never picture Star Wars touching anything as "heady" as Insurrection.
I always been a fan of the first star wars trilogy and always considered star trek very boring. But i love the new star treks and totally dislike the last four star wars, especially the force awakens. Rogue one was ok though.
Star Wars is great but if your dealt some bad luck you could be living the worst life ever.
Plus Star Trek has more solid content, tells more personal and deep stories. Star Wars is a pretty standard heroic space opera. I don't count the EU as half of it is trash and its non canon. And to top it off Disney is going to milk it to death. In ten years we're all going to be begging for them to stop with these movies.
I loved Star Wars more than anything as a kid, but now I guess it's time to let the younger folks have their way with it now.
Thargrim wrote: In ten years we're all going to be begging for them to stop with these movies.
IOW, we'll be at the point Star Trek got to a long time ago?
That is DEFINITELY a matter of opinion. Trek still has plenty of stories to tell from every iteration of the franchise. How much can you squeeze in to the Imperial vs. Rebels thing before it becomes REALLY dull? At least Trek has enough of a widespread and explored universe to have multiple protagonists and antagonists, not to mention the unexplored stuff. What does Star Wars have? Red vs. Blue. Old Red vs. Old Blue. New Red vs. New Blue. Not boring at all.
Just Tony wrote: That is DEFINITELY a matter of opinion. Trek still has plenty of stories to tell from every iteration of the franchise. How much can you squeeze in to the Imperial vs. Rebels thing before it becomes REALLY dull? At least Trek has enough of a widespread and explored universe to have multiple protagonists and antagonists, not to mention the unexplored stuff. What does Star Wars have? Red vs. Blue. Old Red vs. Old Blue. New Red vs. New Blue. Not boring at all.
It doesn't matter if, in theory, Star Trek has more stories to tell, the product that we're actually getting is mediocre cash cow milking at best and we're way past the point of begging them to stop. Voyager was awful, Enterprise somehow managed to be worse, the TNG-era movies ranged from decent (First Contact) to unwatchably bad (everything else), and the reboot movies were mindless cash cow milking with no reason to exist. It's been a long time since the Star Trek franchise was putting out new material that deserves to exist on its own merits, so if Star Wars might get to that point in 10 years then that's still a much better position than where Star Trek is.
And this is where we drastically disagree. I place Insurrection over FIrst Contact so will disagree with you there, totally agree with Enterprise and Voyager, but not with the new movies.
I think the Star Wars franchise hit that moment with Episode 1.
The original trilogy were formative for me - and I can remember not knowing ESB or RotJ existed.
Rebels is fantastic, as was Clone Wars. Of the films, I'd say only Phantom Menace is truly duff. Other prequels have 'oh dear' moments, but I suspect TPM was an Albatross round their neck.
Star Trek is still damned good at times. TNG and DS9 are the stand outs for me. TNG mostly because of Sir Patrick Stewart (his performance in Chain of Command is just superb, and shows off why he's a renowned Shakespearean actor), DS9 because it was the first Trek (possibly only?) where they couldn't just run away from their problems, and it showed a different side to Starfleet.
Star Wars = single person dressed like a goth can change the world.
Which a lot of people who are anti social or highschool kids can really connect to.
Star Trek = for the endless wonders and life itself is a journey of unknown.
Which a lot of people looking to fit in with a group can become a part of.
So depending on your view point one will be favoured. In a mostly 40k board I can imagine wars winning out big time since space marine single marine winning entire wars alone, then with sigmarines doing the same they are all kinda the same pandering system.
Myself I did no strong opnion either way. Never a fan of the wars people floating things around with their minds and flying and stuff. I always wondered if they could move like buildings around why not just crush the whole army or the enemy while hiding behind a rock? Like if they are in space float by their space ship and suck a few windows out of place.
Then with trek I always waited for the next episode when the imagination bay would mess up and they would need to fight the program's again.
Star Trek Next Gen and DS9 I love. First three Star Wars movies are good but are massively over hyped. Episode VII was awful! Rogue One to me beat all the star trek and Star Wars movies
Anaerian wrote: Star Trek Next Gen and DS9 I love. First three Star Wars movies are good but are massively over hyped. Episode VII was awful! Rogue One to me beat all the star trek and Star Wars movies
Kind of feel the same way, except about rogue one...I think that movie jumped around too much early on and failed to develop and make me feel for some of its characters. And it actually came seriously close to parody levels with the ip man guy chanting the same line over and over again. Plus blatant pandering/pro diversity and stuff. Sometimes it felt like it was trying way too hard. At least it had the balls to kill off nearly the entirety of the cast. It wasn't a horrid movie but it was no less flawed than the rest of the SW movies.
Star Trek - primarily because Star Wars fans and their religious wars are too tiring to deal with. Although Trek fans are starting to get that way too so I might just have to give up both.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Star Wars has been ruined by George Lucas, and everybody in Star Trek is too much of a goody two shoes. Although Gul Dukat and Garek are some of the best characters ever seen in sci-fi.
For me, Farscape all the way.
For the poll I voted Trek, but this. So much this. Farscape just blows everything out of the water.
Although Stargate and B5 were good fun, too.
Meh. I probably cared more as a kid, but both series have a poor ratio, with far too many misses with a few successes mixed in. Even DS9, which is the only Trek I can stand in long stretches, has episodes that simply need to be set on fire. SW has too many utter failures hiding amidst the fan screeching.
B5 was largely better (except at either end of the run), Farscape certainly had moments (and lots of 'oh get on with it already'), and Stargates SG1 and Atlantis had a fair bit of above average let down by some problem episodes and problematic stretches/assumptions.
I have seen all of TOS and TNG at least twice. I used to really love Star Trek, though when you think about it there are quite a lot of horrifying implications beneath its veneer of nobility. Star Wars always seemed like a fluke to me and my opinion of it is colored as such. The original trilogy was great, but it was basically an accident that it was good at all. Once Lucas had all the creative control it became clear that he was an exceptionally lucky hack that cobbled the original trilogy together with tired Jungian archetypes and the merciful assistance of people with actual talent. The new movies are carbon copies of the old ones.
The remake of Battlestar Galactica is one of my favorite series of all time.
The remake of Battlestar Galactica is one of my favorite series of all time.
Urgh. I'll take the worst of SW and ST over that steaming pile. Randomly jerking between torture porn, overly melodramatic relationships between adults that are forced to act like they're 13 and dating for the first time, and an empty-headed version of overly pompous religious philosophy is a nauseating mix.
The remake of Battlestar Galactica is one of my favorite series of all time.
Urgh. I'll take the worst of SW and ST over that steaming pile. Randomly jerking between torture porn, overly melodramatic relationships between adults that are forced to act like they're 13 and dating for the first time, and an empty-headed version of overly pompous religious philosophy is a nauseating mix.
I hold Star Trek's original series in the same high regard as the original three Star War films.
After that, it's a constant up and down, like a yo-yo.
With Trek, I liked the Animated Series as a youth. But now, it looks kinda lame to my adult eyes. The original cast films were good, with the exception of The Slow Motion Picture and Star Trek V.
The first two seasons of TNG sucked massive donkey balls, with the wooden acting, crap scripts, and holier-than-thou/impossibly utopian garbage. From Season Three onwards, it was like night and day. It turned into a great show. DS9 also was also a great installment into the Trek franchise, with some of the best moments in Trek history.
Voyager and Enterprise sucked ass.
Generations was an okay film. First Contact and Insurrection were enjoyable. Nemesis is best forgotten, except for those awesome scenes with the Argo. Of the Abrams films, the first one was a fun movie. Into Darkness was meh. Beyond had it's cool moments, but wasn't as good as the first "reboot" film.
And I have no interest in Sexually Transmit.....er, I meant Star Trek: Discovery. Especially after the pilot episode.
Star Wars Episodes IV through VI will always hold a special place in my science fiction loving heart (AND DAMN IT, HAN SHOT FIRST. SCREW YOU, LUCAS).
The only thing of the Prequels that I liked was the Clone Army's first battle and Yoda's kung-fu lightsaber duel with an arthritic Christopher Lee. Other than that, they sucked. And Jar-Jar can burn in hell.
After getting the low down on Abrams's butchery of Star Wars, I didn't think I could stomach Social Justice Wars: The Mary Sue Awakens. And Star Wars: The Last Mary Sue doesn't tickle my fancy any either.
There are other franchises and settings I liked better as I got older. Babylon 5, Firefly, Warhammer 40,000, etc. The Macross series were another favorite of mine that was ruined when Kawamori jumped the shark with the whole space magic/nNew Age mumbo jumbo crap.
Both series have their ups and downs. Neither of them have done anything good in decades. However, I've enjoyed the post-Nemesis Star Trek books and what they have done with the setting and new characters. I really wish Star Wars would do something like that, too...
They did, with the Star Wars Expanded Universe. The Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn expanded on events directly after the original trilogy, but Disney pretty much blew up the Expanded Universe thing and made it all non-canon.
Luciferian wrote: They did, with the Star Wars Expanded Universe. The Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn expanded on events directly after the original trilogy, but Disney pretty much blew up the Expanded Universe thing and made it all non-canon.
That's the joke.
But even more importantly, Star Wars went even further by creating the Old Republic variation on the setting. I don't know why there hasn't been more development of the Star Wars galaxy that doesn't revolve around Palpatine's brief reign.
I'd chalk it up to them being risk adverse, and not bothering to see how well the setting performs without the beloved characters all of the fans know.
Luciferian wrote: They did, with the Star Wars Expanded Universe. The Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn expanded on events directly after the original trilogy, but Disney pretty much blew up the Expanded Universe thing and made it all non-canon.
Except it was the Lucasfilm Story Group - Pablo Hidalgo and "Keeper of the holocron" Leland Chee - that did that, and they did it PRIOR to the takeover by da haus of maus. Pablo has been in that group since it was begun, back in the days when the only thing keeping SW going WAS a rpg.
Disney don't actually tell LFL how to run their business and the fluff. The same way they don't tell marvel.
The EU has never been "canon" to the LSG, and "canon" only ever mattered for the writers hired to write stuff for them. It shouldn't matter to the fanatic peat (whether you enjoy them should not come down to how "canon" something is.).
Thrawn is arguably a more popular SW villain than Kylo Ren or Snoke, and likely almost as recognizable to our generation. Ditto the KOTOR guys. They may not be canon, but they are Star Wars for many.
Both series have their ups and downs. Neither of them have done anything good in decades. However, I've enjoyed the post-Nemesis Star Trek books and what they have done with the setting and new characters. I really wish Star Wars would do something like that, too...
I've enjoyed the startrek reboots. Into darkness was kind of weak but they Beyond and Startrek were both really good IMO. Nemesis was entertaining at least but a lot of plot holes. Insuresction was just terrible though.
I have to admit as an older hobbyist, 43, I have played more Star Trek than Star Wars.
In the '80s there were both Star Wars and Star Trek role-playing games; however as a miniature enthusiast I read and played ship-to-ship combat using FASA's rules and RAFM's miniatures line.
I learned about Romulan, Klingon, and Federation ships and the galaxy as it was more fact being set using the Earth and current solar systems, and less fictional than the Star Wars galaxy.
* EDIT: Happy New Years ya filthy animals ... although for me 2018 isn't until February
The current Star Wars films have killed my interest in the franchise completely, while I've not been able to really watch Discovery, so I'm now even more decidedly Trek over Wars.
Star trek is great. But for me Star Wars is far superior. For me nothing captured my heart or imagination as a child as much as it did until I got a bit older and read the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. But for me the original trilogy (and to a slightly lesser extent yes even the prequels) were, are and will remain one of my favorite fictional universes.
Star Wars is just soooo repetitive... Popcorn, beer, switch your brain off and you are fine... in tng there are quite a lot of episodes that challenge you to think twice about real life issues.
Star Trek got me interested in philosophy and ethics... and turned me into a better person on the way.
An equal tie between Star Wars IV-VI (original cuts) & all of Star Trek.
A slight shift towards Trek if I have to consider Episodes I-III.
And then the pendulum swings way in favor of Trek with the introduction of Episodes VII, VIII, & Solo. I don't expect E:IX will help this. Hell, I might just skip IX & plug ESB in that night. Or re-watch the worst Trek can offer.
*I do not take into account novels, comics, animation, or toys/games etc - there's just more of this stuff than I could ever consume. Just SW movies & Trek movies/TV series.
I went for 'no strong opinion' as my answer really is 'it depends', or 'both, for different reasons'.
I've loved Star Wars since I was a little kid, grew up reading novels about the expanded universe, then watching the prequels as they released, so it's always had a place in my heart.
I didn't watch Star Trek until I was at uni, but I drew strength from Voyager when I was coping with bad depression and anxiety so I love it for a different reason. I really enjoyed TNG and find it infinitely rewatchable.
So for me, it goes Voyager > Star Wars = TNG > all other Trek
I'm more familiar with Star Wars because I was exposed more to it as a child then Star Trek, so I ended up preferring the former over the latter due to more constant exposure. I remember seeing a couple episodes of The Next Generation and liking Captain Picard as a character. But I either didn't have cable at the time or could never really figure out TV schedules so whenever I did catch those glimpses of Star Trek they were usually at somebody else's house.
Star Trek; I love Picard as a character, the next gen was decent show, the movies too; I find myself liking DS9 as a show even more, especially the cardacian character(name I can’t seem to remember), original Star Trek was b4 my time; voyager, forgettable reboot, and current show are meh.
Star Wars I only liked the empire strikes back, the other 2 original were ok, the prequels sucked hard, saw episode 7 and rogue one, they’re ok; haven’t and glad I didn’t waste my time on the other movies after seeing abysmal reviews. Never liked any of their video games; I do wish they had Star Wars LEGO’s when I was a kid though.
I'm one of the few Star Trek fans that hates the old series and movies and thinks that Star Trek Discovery is better than Picard and Kirk.
With Star Wars it's the other way around: I hate the new movies soooooooooo much. Since Episode 7 Star Wars is dead to me. Won't even watch a trailer for Episode 9. I've lost any interest in it. Same counts for Marvel. The Disney-Fatigue is strong with me.
So there is at least one choice missing:
"None, hate them both!"
Gosh, so wierd, this thread gets bumped just as i was thinking about making a thread asking this exact question....
I dont know much about either to be honest, but have been watching star treck episodes on youtube, and its very addictive. Makes me want to get some star trek models to paint.