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.

 Xenomancers wrote:
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.

So, 20-40 ships traveling at "maximum warp" and arriving weeks/months after the entire Federation population has been killed and the Imperial fleet has moved on to other goals? Because given the relative travel speeds involved and the Empire's ability to annihilate planetary targets via orbital bombardment that's the end result.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 dogma wrote:
There are no tiers of cannon, there is just "cannon".

Nonsense. Of course there are tiers of canon, because that's the only way to resolve a conflict between "canon" sources. If you allow a random EU tie-in product or toy package or whatever to overrule what we see in the Star Wars movies then you have a nightmare of contradictions and retcons and general questioning of why you have a concept of "canon" in the first place.

 Vulcan wrote:

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.

That took long enough that Jar-Jar had to assume Padme's duties.

 Vulcan wrote:

And then there's the Kobyashi Maru, a NEUTRONIC FUEL CARRIER...

Which existed in the 23rd Star Trek century, separate from the 24th Star Trek century. Star Trek technology advances, Star Wars technology does not.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
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.

This sounds like a pretty accurate description. Unfortunately it doesn't match at all with what we see on-screen in Star Trek. Ships don't make FTL strafing runs and deliver shots out of nowhere, even when firing against stationary targets (like DS9). They fly at very slow speeds with limited maneuverability and exchange fire at short visual ranges. And their weapons fly slow enough to be seen visually, clearly not at FTL speeds.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 dogma wrote:
That took long enough that Jar-Jar had to assume Padme's duties.

Because of the travel time between point A and point B, or because of the length of time they were expecting to spend at point B? And even in a situation where travel time is most of a day it would make sense to designate a representative, given the sheer size and complexity of galactic scale politics.

Also, remember that their trip is just one of many that are consistent with each other. Han goes from the outer rim ("if there's a bright center to the universe you're on the planet it's farthest from") to Alderaan (a core planet) then to Yavin apparently within the same day, while the Empire's scout ships make it to Dantooine ("too remote to be an effective demonstration") and back in a similarly short amount of time. Luke makes the trip to Dagobah from Hoth in a single-seat fighter, without showing any signs of being miserable about stuck in that tiny cockpit for a long period of time. The rebel fleet makes the trip from Sullust to Endor in the short time that the rebel strike team is dealing with the shield generator. Hell, the rebel fleet in Rogue One makes the trip from Yavin to Scarif within minutes.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
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.

This sounds like a pretty accurate description. Unfortunately it doesn't match at all with what we see on-screen in Star Trek. Ships don't make FTL strafing runs and deliver shots out of nowhere, even when firing against stationary targets (like DS9). They fly at very slow speeds with limited maneuverability and exchange fire at short visual ranges. And their weapons fly slow enough to be seen visually, clearly not at FTL speeds.

I actually looked that up after people were making the claim earlier. It happened in two different episodes of TOS, once the Enterprise at warp under command of a rogue computer torpedoed a freighter at sublight speed, the second time a Klingon ship used this Warp strafe attack against the Enterprise after her engines were sabotaged. How bizarre that for all the series after they forgot they had that ability.

 Peregrine wrote:

Nonsense. Of course there are tiers of canon, because that's the only way to resolve a conflict between "canon" sources. If you allow a random EU tie-in product or toy package or whatever to overrule what we see in the Star Wars movies then you have a nightmare of contradictions and retcons and general questioning of why you have a concept of "canon" in the first place.

You have spent this entire thread stating that scripts overrule movies, and insulting me when I disagree. I assume you're trying to bait me, but I'm not going to give in.

And yes, both Star Wars and Star Trek are nightmares of retcon. That's what happens when you change writers, producers, and directors.

 dogma wrote:
You have spent this entire thread stating that scripts overrule movies, and insulting me when I disagree.

I have said no such thing. And there is no conflict between the script and movies, only between the script/movie and a third-party tie-in product.

 Peregrine wrote:

Because of the travel time between point A and point B...

Or because the Bus was slow.

 Peregrine wrote:

I have said no such thing. And there is no conflict between the script and movies, only between the script/movie and a third-party tie-in product.

You're explicitly stating, again, that there is a conflict between the script and the movies.

While I agree that the Empire has vastly more numbers and Hyperdrive, like someone mentioned earlier, Star Trek is all about super science and out sciencing their enemies. All it would take is for them to capture one SW ship with hyperdrive and SW would lose the advantage in mobility. ST has always been good at swiftly updating ships to new tech. At least in the SW films, technology has seemed to have mostly stagnated.

The tech level difference is huge. I am not sure the brute force of the Empire would be enough.

 dogma wrote:
Or because the Bus was slow.

Which has no evidence, and directly contradicts other examples of hyperdrive being extremely fast.

You're explicitly stating, again, that there is a conflict between the script and the movies.

WTF? I have said over and over again that there is NOT a conflict. The conflict is with a third-party licensed product.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AdeptSister wrote:
All it would take is for them to capture one SW ship with hyperdrive and SW would lose the advantage in mobility.

Maybe if the Federation had a long time to study it. But the entire Federation will be dead within a day or two of the war beginning. There is no time for reverse engineering or capturing ships.

Little reminder that a fleet of ISDs lost to whales in the Rebels finale. ISDs are gak warships.

It's pretty well established that the Federation can science something up in an hour, 45 minutes when you take out commercials

About enough time for a Star Destroyer to turn 180.

 dogma wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

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.

That took long enough that Jar-Jar had to assume Padme's duties.

Not because of the length of travel time, it was because she was going to be hiding out for an extended period.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tyran wrote:
Little reminder that a fleet of ISDs lost to whales in the Rebels finale. ISDs are gak warships.

In the grand scheme of things, yes. But better than Star Trek where all the various military forces have the collective military acumen of a gnat.

If we're talking all Sci-fi together, Star Wars doesn't do well. But they do better than Star Trek which is what we care about here.

Tyran wrote:
Little reminder that a fleet of ISDs lost to whales in the Rebels finale. ISDs are gak warships.

Gigantic Squid Whales that literally can drag ships through hyperspace and Hyperspace at will (and did arrive on top of the Empire Fleet)

 Peregrine wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dreadwinter wrote:
After reading some of your arguments, like how it is a new Galaxy and not a Protostar, I have come to the conclusion that Leeland Chee is probably the worst thing to happen to Star Wars.

Why? Because he cited the original creators of ESB instead of a random EU source that you like?

Because the original creators of ESB are so wishy washy on what actually happened in the movie that they have changed it what, 2-3 times since release much to the disdain of the fans.

 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.

Itself a considerable improvement over ST 1 when they could only raise 1 ship to stop V'ger and ST 4 where they could only get 1 StarFleet ship and one Warbird filled with wanted criminals to stop the Whale Probe.

My head canon is that post WWIII/Eugenics War/Post Atomic Horror Earth has a strong pacifist streak ala post-war Japan and stationing warships (or what the peace faction considers warships) around Earth is a political 3rd rail.

 Peregrine wrote:

Which has no evidence, and directly contradicts other examples of hyperdrive being extremely fast.

There are hyperdrive classes, that's why the Falcon is stupidly fast relative to everything else in Star Wars. Though we don't know what ".5 past lightspeed" actually is.

 Peregrine wrote:

WTF? I have said over and over again that there is NOT a conflict. The conflict is with a third-party licensed product.

You straight up said that the ESB script is higher cannon than ESB the movie, and apparently higher cannon than anything related to ESB.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Not because of the length of travel time, it was because she was going to be hiding out for an extended period.

That isn't explained, all we hear is that Anakin is supposed to protect Padme.

 dogma wrote:
There are hyperdrive classes, that's why the Falcon is stupidly fast relative to everything else in Star Wars. Though we don't know what ".5 past lightspeed" actually is.

There are hyperdrive classes, but all of them are fast. It's the difference between "Tatooine to Alderaan in an hour" and "Tatooine to Alderaan in an hour and a half". Remember, the rebel fleet made the jump from Yavin to Scarif, a distance which seems to be half the length of the galaxy, in a matter of minutes. So unless you're going to make the absurd claim that the rebel fleet is orders of magnitude faster than imperial ships the Falcon's trips are arguably on the slow side of evidence for hyperspace speeds.

You straight up said that the ESB script is higher cannon than ESB the movie, and apparently higher cannon than anything related to ESB.

WTF are you talking about? Of course the script is not higher canon, but the two do not disagree. The canon conflict is between the script plus an official statement by the IP owner that the script interpretation is correct and a licensed third-party "Star Wars 101" guide.

Even if something I originally said was possibly ambiguous I have subsequently clarified, multiple times, that the order of canon is ESB -> ESB script -> third party licensed material. You have no excuse for repeating this straw man argument, so please stop doing it.

 Peregrine wrote:

Even if something I originally said was possibly ambiguous I have subsequently clarified, multiple times, that the order of canon is ESB -> ESB script -> third party licensed material. You have no excuse for repeating this straw man argument, so please stop doing it.

You said this...

 Peregrine wrote:

If you can provide a contradictory script element from one of the other movies that addresses a specific scene from ESB then yes, you'd have a canon conflict.

...on page 6, and never clarified it; except to write this...

 Peregrine wrote:

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

...on page 7.

It sounds like you're backtracking.

...

I have no idea WTF you are going on about here. You quote me explicitly saying "the script is the highest canon, except the movie" as proof that I claimed the script is higher canon than the movie. At this point I can't tell if you're arguing out of sheer stubborn determination to argue, long past the point where I have explained very clearly what my actual position is, or out of a desperate attempt to make Star Trek somehow win this comparison.

 Peregrine wrote:

I have no idea WTF you are going on about here. You quote me explicitly saying "the script is the highest canon, except the movie"...

That isn't the phrase you used in the quote, you're mixing arguments again.

Also, please stop insulting me. I asked this before, but you have continued.

WTF are you talking about? The original page 6 comment was a response to YOU mentioning scripts. Let us review:

But not the scripts for any of the other cannon movies? That's pretty selective.

You asked about the scripts to other movies, I said that the canon conflict would exist if one of those scripts had a contradictory element. Nowhere in there does it say "scripts are higher canon than the movies".

And I honestly have no idea why you are so obsessed with "proving" that I said something incorrectly pages ago. I have subsequently stated exactly what my position is, and you know this. What exactly do you hope to accomplish, besides congratulating yourself on finally finding a victory?

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
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.

How does this get buried with no responses? This, combined with everything stated about FTL strafing runs, leaves this as a non-debate.


Actually, the game ender goes like this: The Federation does some in depth research about the personnel of the Empire, collecting everything from assignments to duty stations. They go to all the planets of the Empire, use the transporters to obtain the patterns of the sisters of all the Imperial ships' officers. Fly up, beam copies of them aboard the ship that houses their siblings, and when they open mouth kiss their siblings (This is canon, after all. It appeared on film.) the Federation ships use the distraction to take the Imperial fleet apart. Finis.

 Just Tony wrote:
How does this get buried with no responses?

Because it isn't a very compelling argument. It makes major assumptions about how replicators work, and even the 5 megaton conclusion is still well short of the 200 gigatons of a single shot from a Clone Wars era troop transport. The fact that it's "just tea" doesn't mean anything, it's quite possible that, like the aircraft carrier he mentions, the Enterprise's power supply runs at a fixed output 24/7. So when not firing weapons or using higher levels of engine power there's a lot of energy left over for frivolous things like making tea the stupidly over-complicated way. But that doesn't necessarily get the peak output up to Star Wars levels.

This, combined with everything stated about FTL strafing runs, leaves this as a non-debate.

The same FTL strafing runs that rarely, if ever, happen on-screen and contradict the countless examples of Star Trek ships fighting at very slow speeds and short ranges with weapons that are nowhere near FTL? I mean, it's pretty difficult to argue for FTL combat when we keep seeing photon torpedoes moving slower than real-world missiles.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
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.

This sounds like a pretty accurate description. Unfortunately it doesn't match at all with what we see on-screen in Star Trek. Ships don't make FTL strafing runs and deliver shots out of nowhere, even when firing against stationary targets (like DS9). They fly at very slow speeds with limited maneuverability and exchange fire at short visual ranges. And their weapons fly slow enough to be seen visually, clearly not at FTL speeds.

... ....

We have to bear in mind that the ST films are dramatic visual representations of things which are actually impossible, and if they were possible, would be impossible to detect visually, and would have to be simulated.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
We have to bear in mind that the ST films are dramatic visual representations of things which are actually impossible, and if they were possible, would be impossible to detect visually, and would have to be simulated.

Then you can apply the same principles to Star Wars. If what you actually see happening on the screen isn't accurate then how can you conclude that Star Wars ships have trouble with slow targets, have limited firepower, etc? Perhaps the movies are just "dramatic visual representations" of Culture-level combat and Star Wars would win even more effortlessly than I've been arguing.

 Peregrine wrote:
WTF are you talking about?

Please stop yelling at me. Swearing at me, insulting me, and getting angry isn't going to reinforce your point.

 Peregrine wrote:

You asked about the scripts to other movies, I said that the canon conflict would exist if one of those scripts had a contradictory element. Nowhere in there does it say "scripts are higher canon than the movies".

I asked about the scripts because you started treating the ESB script as higher cannon. Or, indeed, "highest cannon".

Ok, I'm done with this nonsense tangent. I have told you very clearly what my actual position is, and I'm done participating in your absurd obsession with trying to prove that I somehow changed my argument at some point. You know what the current argument is, the fact that some previous statement may have been unclear is not relevant. I can't think of a single thing you could hope to accomplish besides "be so infuriatingly nitpicky and stubborn that Peregrine gets banned for responding properly to it", and I'm not playing that game with you.

ESB > ESB script > third-party licensed products.

The movie shows an object that is probably, though not explicitly confirmed to be, a galaxy. The script states explicitly that it is a galaxy. The person in charge of determining what is and isn't canon in Star Wars has explicitly stated that it is the Star Wars galaxy. It is indisputable canon fact that the rebel fleet left the galaxy, and did so in a very short amount of time. A random third-party "Star Wars 101" book calling the galaxy a "protostar" does not overrule the higher canon sources stating otherwise. It just means that some third-party author writing about ESB decades after the people who made the movie said "this is a galaxy" made a mistake in their book.

 dogma wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Which has no evidence, and directly contradicts other examples of hyperdrive being extremely fast.

There are hyperdrive classes, that's why the Falcon is stupidly fast relative to everything else in Star Wars. Though we don't know what ".5 past lightspeed" actually is.

For what it's worth the old West End game has classes of Hyperdrive with lower numbers being faster. It a trip takes 1 day with a class 1 drive, it takes 2 days with a class 2 drive, 5 days with a class 5 drive etc. Most ships, in addition to a main drive had a backup class 10 drive as well. So if your drive went down you could still get somewhere, just not all that fast.

The Falcon has a Class .5 drive, which more or less makes the .5 past light speed line work. More or less.

There's also the arguments that either Han was spouting nonsense because he doesn't know what's he's talking about, or he was spouting nonsense to see if the rubes he'd picked up were smart enough to get it. In that version the farmboy is probably eating it all up while the former Jedi is silently laughing his ass off




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
How does this get buried with no responses?

Because it isn't a very compelling argument. It makes major assumptions about how replicators work, and even the 5 megaton conclusion is still well short of the 200 gigatons of a single shot from a Clone Wars era troop transport. The fact that it's "just tea" doesn't mean anything, it's quite possible that, like the aircraft carrier he mentions, the Enterprise's power supply runs at a fixed output 24/7. So when not firing weapons or using higher levels of engine power there's a lot of energy left over for frivolous things like making tea the stupidly over-complicated way. But that doesn't necessarily get the peak output up to Star Wars levels.

But we never see those 200 gigaton shots or anything like that, we see ray guns that can damage but not destroy unshielded fighters and freighters.

While turning matter into energy is how the Feds eat breakfast.

So if they can spare 5 gigatons (1000 cups of tea) of power for their crew's wake up drink (plus oh, lets say 20 gigatons more for pancakes and sausage) how much power can they put into weapons and shields? And that's just one example of what the Federation can casually do that the Empire cannot even come close to. The Federation would have real trouble with the Daleks, no hope against the Time Lords, but against foes who can't even 'beam', I just don't see the problem.

Even if we throw out linking this to real world numbers, plot drives everything and the Federation's continuity gives them a wealth of story-driven options they can use while the Empire has just numbers.

In the end they're the good guys and the Empire are someone else's mooks destined to lose.

 Peregrine wrote:
Ok, I'm done with this nonsense tangent. I have told you very clearly what my actual position is, and I'm done participating in your absurd obsession with trying to prove that I somehow changed my argument at some point.

This...

 Peregrine wrote:

Higher canon is the script for ESB...

...is from page 5.

 Peregrine wrote:

You know what the current argument is, the fact that some previous statement may have been unclear is not relevant.

Yes, it absolutely is when you're trying to argue that you didn't change your argument in this thread.

 Peregrine wrote:

I can't think of a single thing you could hope to accomplish besides "be so infuriatingly nitpicky and stubborn that Peregrine gets banned for responding properly to it", and I'm not playing that game with you.

I asked you nicely to stop yelling at me, swearing at me, and insulting me; I don't want you to get banned.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
But we never see those 200 gigaton shots or anything like that, we see ray guns that can damage but not destroy unshielded fighters and freighters.

"Unshielded" means nothing when you don't know how strong their armor is. To give an extreme example, both Star Trek and Star Wars could combine their entire fleets and fire at an unshielded Culture warship and it probably wouldn't even notice. Does that mean their guns are weak? No, it means that they're shooting at an insanely durable target. That's why you have to look at performance against known targets like asteroids, where the star destroyer in ESB vaporizing asteroids with its invisibly tiny secondary batteries scales up to those 200 gigaton primary weapons.

So if they can spare 5 gigatons (1000 cups of tea) of power for their crew's wake up drink (plus oh, lets say 20 gigatons more for pancakes and sausage) how much power can they put into weapons and shields?

Unknown. Again, your aircraft carrier mention is relevant. If reactor power is a constant 24/7 output of 10 gigatons (comparable to the aircraft carrier being able to maintain 30 knots indefinitely) then dumping 5 gigatons into breakfast when outside of combat is just using energy that would otherwise be wasted. But using "spare" energy on luxury items doesn't mean that the peak output is much higher, or that the ship could spend that much power on breakfast while also powering its weapons and shields.

Also, remember the difference between power and energy. Producing 5 gigatons worth of tea doesn't give you power output unless you know how fast those cups of tea are produced. If, say, the crew's breakfast is spread out over an hour that doesn't mean that the ship can maintain useful rate of fire with weapons that require 5 gigatons per shot.

And that's just one example of what the Federation can casually do that the Empire cannot even come close to.

Alternatively, it's an example of the idiot scientists/engineers in the Federation using a vastly over-complicated system to provide basic meals for its starship crews. It may be "casual", but only because the Federation is run by idiots who love technobabble over practical solutions.

Even if we throw out linking this to real world numbers, plot drives everything and the Federation's continuity gives them a wealth of story-driven options they can use while the Empire has just numbers.

Only if you have no imagination. The Empire has plenty of story-driven options, and the Federation's "story" options largely consist of technobabble. And "spew technobabble for 45 minutes" is a terrible story.

In the end they're the good guys and the Empire are someone else's mooks destined to lose.

The Empire was the rightful government of the Star Wars galaxy, overthrown by terrorists and mass murderers. They're clearly the good guys of the story, and destined to win eventually. Meanwhile the Federation is clearly a communist state, and we know that communists are bad and always lose in the end.