Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 dogma wrote:
You're treating it as though it is "highest cannon", excluding the movie itself and all other cannon sources.

It is the highest canon, other than ESB itself, for that particular scene. Why is this so hard?

 Peregrine wrote:
Across all of the Star Wars movies hyperdrive is consistently portrayed as extremely fast, crossing the galaxy in a matter of minutes to hours, days at most. The ESB scene is entirely consistent with this portrayal, and you have no justification for denying it.

I don't think anyone is denying that hyperdrive is fast, the question is "How fast?"

 Peregrine wrote:

It is the highest canon, other than ESB itself, for that particular scene. Why is this so hard?

You just said that there is no such thing as a "magic highest cannon" and that movies matter more than script; which is confusing the argument you led with.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Nope. They come from between the front prongs.

To be honest duder, this is the first time I’ve ever seen someone say they were Blaster shots.

Wedge also uses Proton Torpedoes there, fired as a pair.

Through all the battle of Endor, all of the millenium falcons shots come from between the two prongs.

Not they don’t?

Have.....have we seen different films here?

 dogma wrote:
You just said that there is no such thing as a "magical highest cannon".

Not for every possible event or object in Star Wars. There is, however, a different highest canon for each question related to Star Wars. The script for ESB is not a magical highest canon in the sense that it can tell you how much firepower the death star in ANH had, because it is not a relevant source for that part of Star Wars. But it is the second-highest canon (after ESB itself) when trying to answer a question about a scene in ESB.

It’s also said to be outside of the Galaxy in ‘Tales From The Bounty Hunters’, I think Zuckuss’ tale?

But that’s old EU now. I think. It may have been declared canon again.

 Peregrine wrote:

Not for every possible event or object in Star Wars. There is, however, a different highest canon for each question related to Star Wars. The script for ESB is not a magical highest canon in the sense that it can tell you how much firepower the death star in ANH had, because it is not a relevant source for that part of Star Wars. But it is the second-highest canon (after ESB itself) when trying to answer a question about a scene in ESB.

"Second-highest cannon (after ESB itself)." Not the script of ESB, but the movie? I thought the script was the most important.

You're still mixing arguments.

 dogma wrote:
"Second-highest cannon (after ESB itself)." Not the the script of ESB, but the movie? I though the script was the most important.

You're still mixing arguments.

JFC this is getting absurd. ESB is the highest possible canon for things occurring in ESB. The script (along with the novelization and any other explicit explanations from the people who made the movie) is the second tier of canon, and provides explicit written explanations of things that may be ambiguous in visual form. It is canon unless it directly contradicts the on-screen evidence. For example, if the script had the window scene happening aboard one of the Hoth transport ships instead of the medical frigate then the on-screen version would be the canon one. But in this case there is no contradiction. The script says "it is a galaxy" and the on-screen scene shows an object that looks like a galaxy. And no other movie-level source contradicts the scene either. Conclusion: it is a galaxy, no matter how inconvenient the resulting conclusions about hyperspace speeds are for Star Trek fans.

You don't get a contradiction until you get to the lower tiers of canon, EU tie-in products. That material is canon, but only so long as it doesn't contradict the higher levels of canon material. If a kids book version of ANH says that Luke flew a y-wing at Yavin then the EU source is wrong. If a random EU source says that the galaxy in ESB is a "protostar" then the EU source is wrong.

Interesting stuff, but for me the easy answer to weapons power is the ships' capability.

The Federation turns matter into energy and vice versa so they can make tea, so they can avoid the monotony of a long shuttle flight. They've got nuclear submarines while the Empire has coal fired dreadnoughts.

Weapons power is obviously driven by the plot, weapons are as effective as the plot requires no more, no less.

But those plots routinely have the Federation tearing apart space and time and matter and energy while the Empire has never shown that ability. The Federation routinely improvises solutions and adapts new technologies on the fly, an ability, again, the Empire was never shown to have.

The point about hyperspace is interesting but, not surprisingly, ST has had its own subspace conduits and other counterparts.

Finally, the Empire never conquered anywhere, it came to power via a coup and lasted ~20 years. This does not imply a particularly stable or competent administration.

Yeah it looked cool and talked a good game, but the results are there.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
The Federation turns matter into energy and vice versa so they can make tea, so they can avoid the monotony of a long shuttle flight.

And? Raw numbers are what matter, not the source of the power. Making tea requires negligible power, so it is irrelevant to combat. And when you look at feats demonstrating raw firepower numbers the Star Wars ships win by orders of magnitude. It doesn't matter if the energy comes from antimatter or fusion or whatever, X megatons of firepower is still X megatons.

Weapons power is obviously driven by the plot, weapons are as effective as the plot requires no more, no less.

Then how can you conclude that Star Trek wins? If power is driven by the plot then a plot where the Empire wins would have Star Trek ships with pathetic weapons so they can fill their plot role of the designated loser. Your argument here is essentially "my plot is that the Federation wins, therefore they must have the best weapons".

The Federation routinely improvises solutions and adapts new technologies on the fly, an ability, again, the Empire was never shown to have.

Again, because the Empire doesn't need one-time technobabble inventions. Like real-world scientists and engineers the Empire develops standardized products and makes them work. They don't have to technobabble up a new solution every episode because the stuff they already have gets the job done.

Also, there is no time for improvisation because the Federation's entire population will be dead within hours of the war beginning.

The point about hyperspace is interesting but, not surprisingly, ST has had its own subspace conduits and other counterparts.

None of which work on the level of hyperspace. Remember, it is a plot point of an entire series that Star Trek ships can not cross galactic-scale distances within a human lifetime.

Finally, the Empire never conquered anywhere, it came to power via a coup and lasted ~20 years. This does not imply a particularly stable or competent administration.

You don't need stability to win a single battle. The Federation is still dead even if the Empire self destructs the next week.

Peregrine, 690 gigatons is more than 200 gigatons.

Would the Empire win a single battle?

It seems to me that Star Trek's advantage of moving and fighting from FTL speeds is tactically incomparable. The Imperial ships would be rapidly destroyed by weapons arriving from the future, which they simply could not see or defend against.

The strategic side is completely different, though. Clearly the Star Wars ships have much better FLT speed between systems. If they can find out the Federation stars and planets, they can jump round and as long as there are no defending ships, they will win all those sieges by weight of numbers.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Would the Empire win a single battle?

It seems to me that Star Trek's advantage of moving and fighting from FTL speeds is tactically incomparable. The Imperial ships would be rapidly destroyed by weapons arriving from the future, which they simply could not see or defend against.

The strategic side is completely different, though. Clearly the Star Wars ships have much better FLT speed between systems. If they can find out the Federation stars and planets, they can jump round and as long as there are no defending ships, they will win all those sieges by weight of numbers.

Good points

Could someone clarify how the FTL fights would work? Do the ST ships fly around in circles round the SW ships at FTL speed or do they nip in, get a few shots off then zoom away again?

Also why can't transporters convert the energy of a shield into matter (like butter or oxygen or something) then just blaze away at the ship now it has no shields?

Since ST ships can make stuff out of nothing with their replicators why don't they all have mass drivers and make huge blocks of matter out of nothing (maybe lead or uranium or something) to fling at other ships or planets or whatever. Do they already do this?

I imagine an FTL versus non FTL fight would work like this.

The FTL ship strafes in, firing weapons.

Its target can't see the attacker or incoming fire, because they are moving faster than light, and the target's sensors can't detect them. (Star Trek ships do have sensors that work to detect things at FTL speeds, but SW ships don't.) All the target knows is that it suddenly gets hit by loads of enemy fire out of nowhere from a ship it can't detect.

The FTL ship makes invulnerable firing passes until the target is destroyed or retreats by jumping to light speed.

Imagine you are the Yamato battleship. You are being strafed by an F 35 flying at Mach 2 at 20,000 feet hitting you with missiles.

It's actually worse than that.

The target ship will simply experience hits, because the incoming fire is moving faster than the light signals (visual, radar, etc) which it gives off.

It would be like being blind and listening for supsersonic missiles coming at you. You would only hear them when they had gone past or if they hit you.

So what I imagine is that the overall attack/defence levels of SW and ST ships are roughly comparable in terms of hitting power and armour/shields, so the ST ships are as capable of destroying the SW ships as SW ships are, in terms of the number of shots needed.

But the SW ships are never able to shoot at the ST ships because they can't see them until they aren't there any more.

Therefore every tactical battle would be a walkover for ST. The only survivors from the SW fleet would be the ones that managed to get into hyperspace quickly enough to avoid being hit.

This is where the weight of numbers comes in. Suppose the SW fleet has 20 star destroyers, and the ST fleet has 1 cruiser. Suppose the ST cruiser is capable of destroying a star destroyer in 60 seconds. Suppose it takes the star destroyers five minutes to understand what is happening, decide to retreat, and get up to speed for transition to hyperspace. Clearly the SW fleet will lose 5 ships, the rest will escape and the ST ship will not be able to catch up with them.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 ZergSmasher wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
They make up ion-cannons and missle launchers on ISD when there were never used in a film once from an ISD.

Have missile launchers ever been shown on screen as a major part of a ships armament?

I suppose proton torpedos might count as a missile, but what else?

In Return of the Jedi, the Millennium Falcon is seen firing concussion missiles at the second Death Star's main reactor. Also, in the prequels, Jango Fett's Slave I fires a missile at Obi-wan Kenobi's Jedi Starfighter, and the Vulture Droid starfighters shoot missiles at Anakin and Obi-wan in the space battle in ROTS.

No the Millenium Falcon uses blaster fire to blow up the Death Star.

Slave 1 does fire a missile and so do the vulture droids.

So missiles are seen in the prequels but not in any of the original trilogy.

I was specifically refering to ISD's not using any of it's amrments and it's arments being highly uneffective. Yet in Starwars books and EU content they are said to have 60 turbolaser batteries 60 ion cannons and like 20-40 concussion missle launchers. ISD only ever used 1/3 of that. Plus that 1/3 of it's firepower was shown to be pathetically weak - bouncing off freighters. It wasn't really until Rouge 1 that we saw a star destroyer actually kill something and it was Vaders ship Coming in and blasting a Mon Cal about to jump to light speed - I guess it's shields were down (though maybe RTJ we can claim they were doing some damage - but getting beat up by a MUCH smaller fleet)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It's actually worse than that.

The target ship will simply experience hits, because the incoming fire is moving faster than the light signals (visual, radar, etc) which it gives off.

It would be like being blind and listening for supsersonic missiles coming at you. You would only hear them when they had gone past or if they hit you.

So what I imagine is that the overall attack/defence levels of SW and ST ships are roughly comparable in terms of hitting power and armour/shields, so the ST ships are as capable of destroying the SW ships as SW ships are, in terms of the number of shots needed.

But the SW ships are never able to shoot at the ST ships because they can't see them until they aren't there any more.

Therefore every tactical battle would be a walkover for ST. The only survivors from the SW fleet would be the ones that managed to get into hyperspace quickly enough to avoid being hit.

This is where the weight of numbers comes in. Suppose the SW fleet has 20 star destroyers, and the ST fleet has 1 cruiser. Suppose the ST cruiser is capable of destroying a star destroyer in 60 seconds. Suppose it takes the star destroyers five minutes to understand what is happening, decide to retreat, and get up to speed for transition to hyperspace. Clearly the SW fleet will lose 5 ships, the rest will escape and the ST ship will not be able to catch up with them.

Yes - but where are we getting these huge numbers from? We've never seen a fleet larger than that at Endor in RoTJ and that was about 25 ships or so.

In any case - The federation in DS9 assmebled a fleet of over 1000 ships - and this was after taking huge losses in a several year long war previous to that. I'd say the federation actually has a larger fleet than the empire does.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:


Finally, the Empire never conquered anywhere, it came to power via a coup and lasted ~20 years. This does not imply a particularly stable or competent administration.

Yeah it looked cool and talked a good game, but the results are there.

The Empire fell because it was decapitated in a surgical strike by a commando force, headed by a boy who just happened to be the son of the Empire's penultimate commander. That commander then turned traitor and toppled the dictator at exactly the right moment. It's such an absurdly long set of odds* that using it as a yardstick to judge the stability of the administration isn't really fair. Had Luke failed, there really wan't anyone who could stop the (basically immortal?) Emperor from ruling indefinitely.

*It makes for a great story/RPG campaign, though.

 Peregrine wrote:

You don't get a contradiction until you get to the lower tiers of canon, EU tie-in products. That material is canon, but only so long as it doesn't contradict the higher levels of canon material. If a kids book version of ANH says that Luke flew a y-wing at Yavin then the EU source is wrong. If a random EU source says that the galaxy in ESB is a "protostar" then the EU source is wrong.

This book's summary explicitly states that it isn't written for kids. It isn't EU, it is cannon. There are no tiers of cannon, there is just "cannon". Unless you're trying to argue that anything made since The Mouse took over the franchise doesn't exist.

OK.

A mug of tea.

Tea.

Earl Grey.

Hot.

Rather than boil water with fire and mix in leaves like some kind of barbarian, the Federation finds it much more efficient to convert some of the ship's excess energy to matter.

How much energy do they need to do that?

250 g of tea, plug it into E=MC^2

https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/emc2

And get 22,468,879,468 megajoules. That seems like a lot of energy.

I wonder what that would be in explosive energy?

http://extraconversion.com/energy/megajoules/megajoules-to-tons-explosive.html

5,258,126 tons, or 5 megatons for short.

To.
Make.
Tea.
Earl Grey.
Hot.

I remember seeing an interview with the Captain of the USS Nimitz (a nuclear carrier). He mentioned that his top speed was 30 knots. But that he could only sustain that for... 20 years or so. Nuclear carrier y'know.

The Enterprise can spare 5 megatons of energy to make tea for each and every crewmember.

The Empire is not even playing on their level. It's not just coal dreadnoughts vs nuclear subs, it's more like sailing galleys vs nuclear carriers.

 feeder wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:


Finally, the Empire never conquered anywhere, it came to power via a coup and lasted ~20 years. This does not imply a particularly stable or competent administration.

Yeah it looked cool and talked a good game, but the results are there.

The Empire fell because it was decapitated in a surgical strike by a commando force, headed by a boy who just happened to be the son of the Empire's penultimate commander. That commander then turned traitor and toppled the dictator at exactly the right moment. It's such an absurdly long set of odds* that using it as a yardstick to judge the stability of the administration isn't really fair. Had Luke failed, there really wan't anyone who could stop the (basically immortal?) Emperor from ruling indefinitely.

*It makes for a great story/RPG campaign, though.

Except their Tiff was irrelevant. The rebels blew up the death star 2 with the emperor on it.

 feeder wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:


Finally, the Empire never conquered anywhere, it came to power via a coup and lasted ~20 years. This does not imply a particularly stable or competent administration.

Yeah it looked cool and talked a good game, but the results are there.

The Empire fell because it was decapitated in a surgical strike by a commando force, headed by a boy who just happened to be the son of the Empire's penultimate commander. That commander then turned traitor and toppled the dictator at exactly the right moment. It's such an absurdly long set of odds* that using it as a yardstick to judge the stability of the administration isn't really fair. Had Luke failed, there really wan't anyone who could stop the (basically immortal?) Emperor from ruling indefinitely.

*It makes for a great story/RPG campaign, though.

That's not really the sign of a stable system there. Does anyone think that if [insert world leader here] died tomorrow the country would fall apart and be replaced by a new republic? Stable countries have lines of succession and contingencies. The Galactic Empire had worse contingency plans than North Korea.

The New Order at least managed one peaceful change of rulership.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Yes - but where are we getting these huge numbers from? We've never seen a fleet larger than that at Endor in RoTJ and that was about 25 ships or so.

In any case - The federation in DS9 assmebled a fleet of over 1000 ships - and this was after taking huge losses in a several year long war previous to that. I'd say the federation actually has a larger fleet than the empire does.

Or at least a larger fleet to spare. The Empire can never bring the full weight of its numbers to bear, not if they want an empire to come home to, because the fleets and armies are what's keeping the systems in line. The Federation has no such impediment. From day one the Empire is fighting at least a two-front war against the Federation and its own people.

 Xenomancers wrote:

In any case - The federation in DS9 assmebled a fleet of over 1000 ships - and this was after taking huge losses in a several year long war previous to that. I'd say the federation actually has a larger fleet than the empire does.

Though the Federation was only able to muster 40 ships on short notice to defend Earth at Wolf 359 a few years prior - so a lot probably depends on whether the Federation has sufficient opportunity to recall all the exploration ships from wherever they're off exploring.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 feeder wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:


Finally, the Empire never conquered anywhere, it came to power via a coup and lasted ~20 years. This does not imply a particularly stable or competent administration.

Yeah it looked cool and talked a good game, but the results are there.

The Empire fell because it was decapitated in a surgical strike by a commando force, headed by a boy who just happened to be the son of the Empire's penultimate commander. That commander then turned traitor and toppled the dictator at exactly the right moment. It's such an absurdly long set of odds* that using it as a yardstick to judge the stability of the administration isn't really fair. Had Luke failed, there really wan't anyone who could stop the (basically immortal?) Emperor from ruling indefinitely.

*It makes for a great story/RPG campaign, though.

That's not really the sign of a stable system there. Does anyone think that if [insert world leader here] died tomorrow the country would fall apart and be replaced by a new republic? Stable countries have lines of succession and contingencies. The Galactic Empire had worse contingency plans than North Korea.

The New Order at least managed one peaceful change of rulership.

And it did so after the previous ruler was assassinated by a traitor second in command. So the First Order had a better line of succession than the Galactic Empire by quite a fair margin as even if the assassin had fully turned sides, Hux could still have taken over.

 Asmodai wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

In any case - The federation in DS9 assmebled a fleet of over 1000 ships - and this was after taking huge losses in a several year long war previous to that. I'd say the federation actually has a larger fleet than the empire does.

Though the Federation was only able to muster 40 ships on short notice to defend Earth at Wolf 359 a few years prior - so a lot probably depends on whether the Federation has sufficient opportunity to recall all the exploration ships from wherever they're off exploring.

Post Dominion war I imagine defenses are better.

 Peregrine wrote:

And? Raw numbers are what matter, not the source of the power. Making tea requires negligible power, so it is irrelevant to combat. And when you look at feats demonstrating raw firepower numbers the Star Wars ships win by orders of magnitude. It doesn't matter if the energy comes from antimatter or fusion or whatever, X megatons of firepower is still X megatons.

Those numbers come from sources you would consider to be EU, much as Timothy Zahn's explanation of why turbolasers can't be used to bombard a planet would be EU.

 Asmodai wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

In any case - The federation in DS9 assmebled a fleet of over 1000 ships - and this was after taking huge losses in a several year long war previous to that. I'd say the federation actually has a larger fleet than the empire does.

Though the Federation was only able to muster 40 ships on short notice to defend Earth at Wolf 359 a few years prior - so a lot probably depends on whether the Federation has sufficient opportunity to recall all the exploration ships from wherever they're off exploring.

I believe this is called The Federation getting angry.

 Asmodai wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

In any case - The federation in DS9 assmebled a fleet of over 1000 ships - and this was after taking huge losses in a several year long war previous to that. I'd say the federation actually has a larger fleet than the empire does.

Though the Federation was only able to muster 40 ships on short notice to defend Earth at Wolf 359 a few years prior - so a lot probably depends on whether the Federation has sufficient opportunity to recall all the exploration ships from wherever they're off exploring.

That could also be explained by the Federation being complacent and overconfident, not truly believing the capabilities of the Borg.

And it is also possible that the 40 ships might have been enough if the Borg didn't have access to starfleet knowledge from Picard's brain.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

That could also be explained by the Federation being complacent and overconfident, not truly believing the capabilities of the Borg.

It did take Q throwing the Enterprise D in front of a cube to make Picard realize that there are scarier things than Nausicaans, Romulans, and Klingons.

Though Picard also subsequently went back in time to protect Cochrane from the Borg.

 dogma wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

We still have the Millenium Falcon crossing half a galaxy to find Luke.

It goes from the Unknown Regions to the Outer Rim, both largely undefined areas of the Star Wars Galaxy; specifically so. Also, it's the Falcon, it is a special case.

Sure, the Millenium Falcon is 'the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy'. Now let's look at Episode 2, where Anakin and Padme travel from Coruscant to Naboo (along the outer edge of the Mid-Rim) in a spacegoing BUS, with no evidence of intermediate stops.

 Vulcan wrote:

And then coming BACK in less than the 18 hours it takes the Resistance fleet to run out of fuel. While crossing the same distance in Star Trek takes decades, if not centuries.

But the ships in Star Wars can run out of fuel. I'm fairly certain that a Federation ship has never run out of fuel.]

Hit Netflix up for Star Trek: The Animated Series. The Enterprise very nearly runs out of antimatter fuel in one episode. And then there's the Kobyashi Maru, a NEUTRONIC FUEL CARRIER...



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 ZergSmasher wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
They make up ion-cannons and missle launchers on ISD when there were never used in a film once from an ISD.

Have missile launchers ever been shown on screen as a major part of a ships armament?

I suppose proton torpedos might count as a missile, but what else?

In Return of the Jedi, the Millennium Falcon is seen firing concussion missiles at the second Death Star's main reactor. Also, in the prequels, Jango Fett's Slave I fires a missile at Obi-wan Kenobi's Jedi Starfighter, and the Vulture Droid starfighters shoot missiles at Anakin and Obi-wan in the space battle in ROTS.

No the Millenium Falcon uses blaster fire to blow up the Death Star.

Nope. On the OFFICIAL Star Wars cross-section, there is a concussion missile launcher mounted between the mandibles. And where does the shot that takes out the DSII's main reactor come from? Between the mandibles. Although if you want to be pendantic about it, we can call it a proton torpedo instead, since canon has shown those to be glowing projectiles that don't at all resemble what we would call a torpedo in our world.

The only blaster mounted on the Falcon is the repeater mounted on the underside, used in ESB to fend off Snowtroopers. The dorsal and ventral quad mounts are light laser cannon... which, of course, means something very different in Star Wars than the laser of the real world.

Remember, this is Star Wars. Just because it's called a concussion missile doesn't mean it will resemble anything our world would call a missile.

 Asmodai wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

In any case - The federation in DS9 assmebled a fleet of over 1000 ships - and this was after taking huge losses in a several year long war previous to that. I'd say the federation actually has a larger fleet than the empire does.

Though the Federation was only able to muster 40 ships on short notice to defend Earth at Wolf 359 a few years prior - so a lot probably depends on whether the Federation has sufficient opportunity to recall all the exploration ships from wherever they're off exploring.

The borg strike without warning. This is probably representitive of the type of responce you could expect after a hyperdrive attack from the empire. 20-40 ships travling at maximum warp to assemble for a battle.