Enterprise vs. Star Destroyer

Okay, first off, the big picture. Trek universe vs. wars universe (the Force aside).

I saw a post on the first page of this absurdly-long thread (I only read the first and last pages) saying something about the entire Federation vs. the Empire. The Empire was listed as having 25,000 ships in this conflict (TIEs, I think, I forget), and the Federation (ENTIRE Federation) as having 300 ships. That’s absurd. In the Deep Space Nine episode “Favor The Bold,” the Federation fleet goes to retake DS9, only to encounter the Dominion/Cardassian fleet. The D/C fleet consists of about 1200 some-odd ships. Bashir states, “they outnumber us almost 2 to 1.” Half of 1200 is 600. And that was just one fleet (the Ninth Fleet, actually). I’m not certain, but I think the Klingons were there too (the Romulans weren’t pulled into the war until the last season). This seems to indicate that the Federation has AT LEAST 8 other fleets, which consist of probably around 300 ships (if you assume that the Klingon ships composed half of the fleet that set out to retake DS9). That amounts to about 2700 ships. And while there’s never been any mention of it, there may well be more fleets. And this doesn’t even count the Romulans, Klingons, Cardassians, the Breen, and the Dominion. Oh yes, and I seem to ahve forgotten the Borg, but that’s a whole other story. A combined fleet of Federation, Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian, Dominion, and Breen ships is at least possible, given the end of “What You Leave Behind” (at that time, the Federation, Klingons, and Romulans were already united against the Dominion, so treaties with them are possible, and the Federation signd a cease-fire with the Dominion as well, opening up possibilities for treaties, and the Dominion was aligned with the Breen and the Cardassians, so they might follow suit as well, AND with Garak helping to rebuild Cardassia, they might not be as antagonistic towards the Federation, with Garak’s POV in place). I don’t think the Borg are stupid enough to form a “temporary treaty” with those races, then attempt to turn against them when they’ve prevailed. The Borg would be fried. Anyway, there’s been discussion rwgarding whether or not transporters could get through Star Wars shields. This is, in the end, irrelevant, because Dominion ships are equipped with transporters that can get through shields anyway. Stormtroopers don’t stand a chance against Jem’Hadar warriors, especially with that dinky armor that doesn’t even protect them against a laser. They also have polaron beam weapons which punch right through Federation shields. The Breen have the energy dampening weapon. Klingons, Romulans and Breen all have cloaking devices, which would catch the Empire off guard. And the Federation… Well, okay, the Federation doesn’t have anything that’s particularly interesting, although several of their ships have been designed specifically to fight the Borg (Steamrunner, Akira, Defiant, Sovereign). Also, several of the new ships have ablative hull armor, which provides for a little protection. They’ve also got new blue (much better looking than the photon orange) quantum torpedoes. And then we come to the Cardassians. They’ve got spiral wave disruptors. Oh, well la de da. Cardassians were never very interesting anyway. Their only major accomplishment was the occupation of Bajor, and they eventually got kicked out anyway. Even when allied with the Dominion, they were just puppets of the Founders. So don’t figure the cardassian fleet having any major impact on the battle :slight_smile:
Oh yes, and the thing about the Star Destroyer’s energy source (black hole). Even if it’s not true, which has been stated, Romulan D’Deridex-class ships use an artificial quantum singularity as their power source as well, and these ships are also significantly larger than Galaxy-class ships (Galaxy-class ships are around 640 meters, so figure maybe…at least 700 meters, if not more).
And then, there’s possible intervention by the Prophets if Bajor (or even the entire Alpha Quadrant) were truly in danger, but that’s unlikely, and the only time they ever intervened was to make certain that Sisko didn’t die in “Sacrifice of Angels” (because he COULDN’T die, because that wasn’t when the game ends). They also had to save Bajor as well.

Anyway, the Borg vs. the Empire. Bye bye, Vader. Several people have mentioned that a Star Destroyer would destroy (I’m sorry, I’m sorry) a Borg cube easily. However, the Enterprise was barely able to even scratch the cube with their strongest phaser bursts. Barring Voyager (haven’t seen any of the Borg episodes, and the Voyager writers are on crack anyway), we’ve only seen a cube destroyed twice. The first time was in “The Best of Both Worlds.” It was destroyed by the Borg themselves, actually, not the Enterprise or the fleet that fought it at Wolf 359. When Data gave the cube a sleep command through Locutus, the cube set itself to self-destruct to prevent their technology from falling into Federation hands. So, no weapons there. The second time was in First Contact. The fleet defending Earth was fighting a losing battle until the Enterprise came in. Just listen to the voices heard over the comm chanel on the bridge. Admiral Hayes’ ship was destroyed (although Hayes survived, as Voyager later shows), the Defiant was a derelict (although salvagable), the Lexington apparently had many wounded officers (it’s one of the ships I remember hearing mentioned). The only reason the cube was destroyed is because Picard knew where to fire (an apparently-unobvious weak spot on the cube that even Data didn’t notice). Now, let’s consider the Star Destroyer. It’s got turbolasers, which may or may not be as powerful as phasers. Whoopty-doo. The Enterprise’s phasers didn’t do much to the cube anyway. We’ll never actually know if their deflector burst weapon would have worked against a Locutus-less cube (it failed because Picard knew of the plan; this knowledge was passed on to Locutus and provided to the Collective so they could adapt). However, it probably would have done at least very significant damage to the cube. But more than 78%? Cubes can operate even if 78% of it is inoperable, according to Shelby’s estimates. From what I can recall, this burst was designed to hit the cube in several places at once (although, in one big burst, meant to disable several systems at once). And they would only have one shot at it, since it would end up burning out their deflector.
Do Star Wars ships even HAVE navigational deflectors like the ones in Star Trek? If so, would they even bother to try making a weapon like that? In a one-on-one encounter, the ISD actually wouldn’t have the chance to make the weapon anyway (the Enterprise did actually have some time to work on the weapon). And this is just one cube. Even if it were to be destroyed, the rest of the ships would adapt to whatever destroyed the first ship and then go after the ISD to assimilate the technology capable of destroying a cube. Weapons aside, I seriously doubt that an ISD is anywhere near the size of a cube. From what’s been mentioned here, ISDs are 1600 meters long. Sovereign-class ships are nearly half that at almost 700 meters (680, actually). The cube in First Contact dwarfed the Enterprise. And that’s one cube. And this isn’t taking into account the ability of Borg ships to pop out of a transwarp conduit anywhere. One cube is under fire, send in 2 or 3 more through a transwarp conduit right behind the ISD and begin assimilation.
The entire Empire vs. the entire Collective (hell, half the Collective, or even 1/4) would end up with the Borg having tons of new ships and drones to play with.

Now, I’m not saying that either of these would be short battles, and the Trek sides (Fed/Rom/Kli/Card/Dom/Breen being one, Borg being another) would both certainly take vast casualties (the Borg would take less). But given technology levels, I’d have to say that the Trek universe gets the upper hand, in the end.

Of course, people might have already brought up all of this, I dunno. I’m just killing time.

I enjoyed writing the satire a couple of months ago, but guys, aren’t we really talking here about whether Bart Simpson can take Bugs Bunny?

Ah… I AM flattered that another person put his first post in my thread (and resurrected the damn thing, too), but next time, Mr. Goblin, divide the thing into more paragraphs, huh? It’s a bit of a hard read.

Anyway… the title of this thread is “Enterprise vs. Star Destroyer”. It’s about what would happen should the U.S.S. Enterprise, from Star Trek, encounter an Imperial-class Star Destroyer, from Star Wars. While I appreciate the “Federation/Klingons/Whatevers vs. Empire”, that’s stuff that’s already been brought up.

Anyway, points of clarification…

Actually, it was having 25,000 Imperial Star Destroyers. It was also listed as probably having several thousand of each smaller class of support ships (dreadnaughts, cruisers, carriers, frigates, corvettes, etc.) TIE fighter count probably ranged in the millions (ISD’s carried 72 of 'em each, then there’re all the fighters to go with the smaller ships, and then for planetary defenses… so I would imagine ten million TIE’s running around to be a safe estimate).

But the Empire only has one ship in this conflict, a Star Destroyer, while the Federation only has the Enterprise. Simplifies things down a bit.

This is, in the end, also irrelevant, since we’re not pitting a Star Destroyer against a Dominion vessel. Second, I think it’s been shown that Star Wars’ shields are a lot more solid than Trek shields (ST shields work on a frequencey basis, which allows specially designed transporter beams to get through… SW ray shields basically create a complete, impenetrable wall around the ship, keeping all forms of foreign energy OUT).

Again, not part of the argument, m’boy… but even so, I would imagine Stormtroopers would have a better chance than you think. Stormtrooper armor is designed not to stop a laser blast, but to ablate the blast, meaning it spreads the heat and energy out over a larger area, giving the wearer of the armor a much better chance of surviving a shot. Are Jem’Hadar weapons designed to penetrate armor, as blaster rifles are? I don’t know, I don’t build Jem’Hadar weapons. Anyway, moving on…

I don’t figure the Cardassian Fleet having any impact whatsoever on the battle, since they ain’t there :smiley:

Actually, the ISD uses a matter/anitmatter reaction, same as Federation ships, except the reactor core is MUUUUUCH bigger (a simple eyeball estimate from the Star Wars: Incredible Cross-Sections book shows the ISD reactor to probably be as massive as the entire Enterprise itself, which probably shows that the ISD generates much more power).

Galaxy-class ships are 650 meters (slight nitpick, sorry, but it IS my thread). I would imagine that Warbirds are more than 50 meters longer than the Enterprise… I’ve always imagined them to be nearer 900-1000 meters long. Anyone have a definite length for these babies? (Off-topic, I know, but now I’m curious).

Again, not part of the argument. Maybe you can start your own thread on the subject…? I’d post there… but I think everyone would kill me if I started another Star Wars/Star Trek thread.

Actually, for the sake of argument, we had decided that Turbolasers are roughly on par with Phasers, lest we get into a “Phasers are weak/Turbolasers are weak” shout-match. 'Sides, the Star Destroyer’s equipped with dozens of the things (60 or 80, depending on the source book), along with ion cannons (40 or 60, again, depending on the source book). The highest estimate I’ve seen for the Enterprise’s phaser banks was 12, and the lowest was, well, one (but we all know it’s got more than that).

Dunno, I’d have to dig up my old source books for that one. They’ve lain dormant somewhere in my room for the past month… I’ll get back to you with that answer.

Not exactly… if you do an eyeball estimate, I’d imagine that the Enterprise-E is only slightly shorter than one side of the Cube. An ISD would probably be longer than a single side of a Cube (though not as massive, overall). Again, off-topic, but just wanted to address that, should a “Borg vs. Empire” thread ever come into being.

Well, getting into and out of transwarp takes several seconds, so it’s not a matter of instantaneous transportation. In addition, hyperspace travel is probably on par with transwarp… probably a bit faster, even. But even so, an object in transwarp cannot interact with an object in hyperspace. Heck, objects in hyperspace have difficulty interacting with objects in hyperspace.

Again, that’s up to debate, considering that the Cube/ISD ratio may be roughly equal (but that’s up to debate, even though I won’t change my mind on that one until someone gives me definite numbers on Cube numbers, along with a good source). But, again, off-topic, just wanted to address the point.

Anyway, a long reply to a long post. Ah, well… it’s not like anyone still reads this monster of a thread (although I consider it more entertaining than Esprix’s “Ask the Gay Guy” threads, but that’s just me :D).

Actually, Carny, I see this argument on equal footing with “Gore vs. Bush”.

In my opinion it’s no contest. The Enterprise would win. First off the Star Destroyer doesn’t have as much munoverablility as the Enterprise and doesn’t have as good a pilot as Data. The Enterprise can also fight at warp while Star Destroyers can’t. Star Destroyers just target a ship and fire while the Enterprise can target vital systems one by one(starting with the shield generators). The force users would be cancelled out by telepaths because I don’t think Vader is gonna be able to concentrate very well if he has a person in his head yelling at him and distracting him. Thanks for listening.

Again, I’m flattered you chose my humble little thread to place your first post in, but allow me to clarify some things…

As has been mentioned several times in this (abysmally long) thread, a Star Destroyer has 8 tractor beam projectors, one of which would be far more than capable of locking the Enteprise into place.

Yes, but it’s never been established that the Enterprise can fire from warp at a target that’s not in warp. In addition, the problems of attacking entirely from warp include the inability to get off more than a single shot before the E gets out of range (traveling at several times the speed of light tends to do this really quickly). Finally, it’s also been shown that the ISD’s mode of FTL transit (via hyperspace) is much faster than warp.

Incorrect. Star Destroyers certainly do target vital areas of a ship. Case in point: At the very beginning of Episode IV: A New Hope the Devastator manages to get a direct hit on the Tantive IV’s main communications dish. Just because you never saw a Star Destroyer do this in any of the movies doesn’t mean it CAN’T.

Second, you assume that the Enterprise would immediately be capable of detecting shield generators. Fine, I can live with that… they’ve shown themselves capable of detecting all manner of energy fields. However, there is no centralized weapons system on a Star Destroyer, unlike the Enterprise (and many other ships in Star Trek), and the E would be hard-pressed to find out exactly where the bridge on a behemoth like the ISD is situated. So that advantage doesn’t seem very important.

And finally, the shields on the ISD are hardly as important as they are on the Enterprise. The E would, quite literally, fall apart if it didn’t have its’ energy fields surrounding it. The ISD is designed for incredibly powerful hull strength, and would require several photon torpedo blasts to puncture very deeply into the hull.

What telepaths? Troi? She’s an “empath”… she’s capable of sensing feelings, nothing more. I don’t recall any instance where she even demonstrated any powers of manipulation. If Vader were involved in this fight, I see no reason why any mental counter-measures deployed by the Enterprise crew would faze him in the slightest (additionally, one would assume he’d be capable of blocking any other telepaths from entering his mind).

I apologize to all the other 'Dopers for this thread continuing to exist… but hey, it’s MY baby.

Hate to come into the tail end of a long thread, but isn’t it obvious that Star Trek technology is at least a couple of centuries ahead of Star Wars?

Star Wars has no replicaters, no holodeck, no transporters, no Data level androids, and much more primitive sensors. Hard to believe all of that computer technology doesn’t imply a tech level far beyond Star Wars, and it’s hard to see how that wouldn’t pay off.

Has is it established that hyperspace is faster than warp drive? In the first Star Wars movie, Solo says the Falcon is fast because he can go point five past light speed. I don’t know exactly how that scale works, but it doesn’t sound anywhere close to 1516 times the speed of light, which is warp factor 9. Achieving hyperspace seems to be a much more difficult and time consuming enterprise than warp speed, again implying the great disparity in technology levels.

Tie fighters? Cannon fodder against the Enterprise. I recall one of the manuals said they didn’t have shields. Even if they did, it’s hard to believe they could do much against a ship like the Enterprise E. It has been shown that the Enterprise can easily target multiple attackers with its phasers. It would pluck them out of space as fast as they could be sent. Star Trek phasers are aimed by those super high powered computers, not by gunnery crews physically aiming like in Star Wars.

What’s all of this about Vader attacking the Enterprise with the Force? If he could do that, why were any battles at all fought in the Star Wars movies? I don’t recall him ever shooting down ships with the Force, or even attacking rival captains. It’s hard to believe that these tactics would be more successful against the far more advanced Star Trek ships.

If the Enterprise stood still and let the Death Star shoot it with that planet buster ray, it might have a serious problem. Otherwise, it would be like an F-18 going against a WWI biplane.

On the other hand, a Jedi with a light saber would certainly carve up a Klingon with a baleth.

Incorrect. They DO have replicators… just not as fancy-shmancy as in Star Trek (in other words, food doesn’t appear in a shimmer of special effects… waste material is broken down and reconstituted into viable material).

They DO have holodeck, in a sense… in The Jedi Academy Trilogy, reference is made to using holograms to create a zoo of extinct animals. The holograms seen in the movies, however, are very fuzzy and poor quality, due to encryption codes, tranmitting through enemy shields/long distances/asteroid fields/etc

They DO have transporters… in one of the comic books (I forget which series, I’ll dig it up), a circus/carnival/whatever had an act that utilized transporters for entertainment (the transporter was built into a hula-hoop-sized ring, and the performer jumped through it and came out of the other ring). Transporters are not used for mass/military transit because of the possibility of transporter accidents (how many times has a crew member of the Enterprise been cloned/driven insane/lost in a transporter buffer? The things are obviously dangerous and should be banned). In addition, transporters aren’t used in Star Wars because the writers of the books/comics aren’t lazy asses who invented transporters because “shuttle landings are too expensive to film”.

They DO have Data-level androids… in fact, they have better-than-Data-level androids. Guri, a Human Replica Droid in the book Shadows of the Empire looked, acted, talked, emoted, etc. just like a real human woman. She was so exact that a full bio-medical reading of her didn’t spring any alarms that she wasn’t human. And she was faster than Data, smarter, and more populaced (the reason there weren’t more of them was because she was programmed to be an assassin, and she killed her maker).

Then there’re droids like IG-88… he didn’t look like anything other than a droid, but he was insanely fast, powerful, and intelligent. He almost killed Boba Fett (and in the Star Wars universe, that’s saying a LOT). Hell, he almost conquered the galaxy. And droids with super-intelligence/super-speed/super-whatever are rather common… well, not COMMON, but no UNcommon.

Anyway, the sensors… well, there’s really no basis for comparison. As far as I can tell, “sensors” are used far less as a plot gimmick in Star Wars than they are in Star Trek. Derive from that whatever you will.

This is how… in the first couple of episodes of the Voyager series, it is said that it’d take 75 years to travel 75,000 light-years. In Star Wars, it’s never been determined exactly how long it’d take to travel from one end to the other, but distance between locations that obviously are quite distant has never taken more than a week, as far as I can remember. From that, I’ve come up (on my own… and I’ve never gotten any argument) that it’d take a Star Destroyer no more than a couple months to travel the full 150,000 lightyear span of the Star Wars galaxy. And that’s being VERY generous with time estimates… my very first estimates were only at a couple of weeks.

Not so. To get into hyperspace, all you need is one big push. The trouble with hyperspace is making sure you don’t run into a gravity well (traveling so fast, you can’t detect the thing until you’re right on top of it), which would be the equivalent of driving into a brick wall at 200 MPH. But, anyway, in hyperspace, you don’t need any continued propulsion to STAY there (in The Black Fleet Crisis, they sent an escape pod with the bad guy in it into hyperspace, leaving him with no means of escape… it was pretty cool). In addition, it’s been mentioned that the limits of hyperspace travel are technological rather than theoretical… you could go as fast as you want without any upper limit to your velocity, as long as your engines are good enough.

To travel in warp, you need to generate a warp field around your ship (that’s what the nacelles do… which explains why every ship in the Federation follows the same basic design, 'cept the Defiant). If this warp field ever collapses, you leave warp. Seems like a very difficult way to travel, considering the warp core ALWAYS seems to go offline in a battle (in addition to phasers and hull pressure on Deck 10).

TIE fighters are cannon fodder to ANYthing. That’s what they’re designed for, you know… cheap, expendable ships with cheap, expendable pilots (silly, silly Empire). However, the TIE fighters/interceptors are designed to take out other fighters/interceptors… it’s the TIE bombers that are the real “threat” to the Enterprise. They’re slow, and they have no shields, but if the full squadron of bombers can unload their missiles into the Enterprise, that’s a world of hurt. In addition, Assault Gunboats and Missileboats would be dangerous, as would the Skipray blastboats, and numerous other small support ships that a Star Destroyer has in its belly.

No, the huge turbolasers are aimed by computers… they’re MONITORED by humans, who make sure that coolant, energy levels, power fluctuations, etc. are all kept in nominal levels. As for aiming and shooting… well, there’re guys telling the guns where to shoot, yeah… but same with the Enterprise. Why else would Worf be standing behind the captain’s chair at the weapons consol? (I think that’s what Worf does…). Basically, it’s the same sort of weapons system we have today… someone tells the computer where to shoot, and the computer does the rest.

However, smaller anti-fighter weaponry, like on the Falcon, are handled by people. It’s less of a drain on computer resources to do it that way, for the small guns.

Dude, you know what, I’m not entirely sure myself. Everyone else seems to keep bringing up Vader an’ all, so I just go along with it. Anyway… I, nor anyone else, has implied that Vader could use his abilities to actually sheer off a chunk of the E’s hull (although, in theory, he COULD do that… the Emperor was able to conjure Force Storms that obliterated entire cities). However, Vader could supposedly get into the minds of the E’s crew, figure out their plans, their capabilities, and plan accordingly. He could even alter the thoughts of the captain, if he tried. But most likely, he’d wind up doing what he does in his own personal fighter… sense what the other guy is doing and counter-attack. How else do you think Vader earned the title of “Best Starpilot in the Galaxy”? :smiley:

Again, they’re hardly “far more advanced”… they’re simply shinier.

Mmm…shiny…

The material produced via a holodeck is tangible (there was a great illustration of this in the last Star Trek film). The reference in the Jedi Academy Trilogy is simply a hologram, that is, non-tangible.

True, but the technology to manipulate force fields exists, leading to the implication that they could create a holodeck if they wanted. I just figure that they don’t, since the need for cheesy plot twists is lessened (“Oh, no, Luke’s trapped on the holodeck again!”) :smiley:

SPOOFE Bo Diddly wrote:

Can they hold on to their victim if it goes into Hyperspace? (Or in the case of the Enterprise, goes to warp speed?) Can they even capture a target that’s moving faster-than-light to begin with?

It’s never been established that the crew of a Star Destroyer wouldn’t pour molasses all over themselves when they first sighted a Galaxy-class starship, either. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: saying that the Enterprise can fire at faster-than-light targets while at warp, but not at sublight targets while at warp, is a cop-out of the highest magnitude.

Unless they fly in a warp-speed circle around the Star Destroyer.

True. The hyperspace cruising speed of the Kimura in one of the Thrawn books was around 25,000 times the speed of light. Warp 9 is only a paltry 1,000 times the speed of light, and even that is well above the maximum sustainable cruising speed of the Enterprise-D.

[Emphasis mine.]

Ooh, I really wish you’d apply this same reasoning to the Enterprise shooting at a sublight target while the Enterprise was at warp.

Some of the Star Destroyer’s “hull strength” probably comes from its particle shields (from the paltry descriptions I could find about particle shields in the various Star Wars sourcebooks, they seem to be analogous to the “structural integrity fields” on the Enterprise-D). But I agree that, unshielded, the Star Destroyer would still be much, much tougher than the Enterprise-D, if only from its sheer mass.

Not that the Star Destroyer could ever score a hit on the Enterprise-D, if the crew of the Enterprise-D knew the Star Destroyer only had sublight weaponry and expected it to be hostile. :stuck_out_tongue:

You misunderstood me, Tracer. It HAS been shown in the numerous novels and comic books that a Star Destroyer (or Mon Cal cruiser, or Nebulon-B Frigate, or what-have-you) can select different sections of an enemy ship to aim for and fire at. I said that just because that this wasn’t explicitly used/mentioned in the three movies, it doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been said that, yes, a Star Destroyers’ targeting sensors can lock onto smaller targets on a ships’ surface.

However, this tactic would probably be seldom used, since the sheer amount of weaponry a Star Destroyer possesses would probably prove to be far more than enough to overwhelm its target with a general salvo, a tactic which would be quicker. Remember, this is a ship with a hundred guns, instead of a mere handful.

Not so much a cop-out as it’s a desire to eliminate all undefinable variables (which is one of the reasons I’ve tried to keep Vader and such out of the argument… unfortunately, the Dark Lord keeps getting dragged back in! Curses!). Besides, I thought that the “drop out of warp-fire-return to warp” tactic would have been just as good, and we know for sure that the Enterprise would be able to do this.

I just wanted to put down the “The Enterprise can fire from warp so it automatically wins” argument :smiley:

True, true. Again, however, it seems like it wouldn’t make much difference if they did in-warp/out-warp hit and run tactics.

<rant mode>

Or the Enterprise-D could do the “Picard Maneuver.” :rolleyes:

Bleah. The Picard Maneuver was one of the biggest treknology brain-farts that have ever come out of the show’s writing staff. We know the Enterprise, and all other ships in the Star Trek universe, have faster-than-light sensors. We know these would be used in combat – even in sublight combat, knowing where your enemy is right now instead of where he was a fraction of a second ago is tremendously useful. Yet the only way the Picard Maneuver can work is if the enemy’s sensors work at the speed of light or slower.

What were they smokin’ when they wrote that episode anyway?!

</rant mode>

Question. Doe SW have a definition of canon? To be ‘real’ in ST, something must have occured on a TV series, in a movie, or in a few books written by producers. Comic book and your basic ‘Star Trek book’ don’t count.

Thanks

If you only want to include the stuff that’s been in the movies, then we know absolutely dick about what a Star Destroyers’ abilities are. However, most non-movie material that was brought up before Timothy Zahn wrote Heir To The Empire, Dark Storm Rising, and The Last Command are usually ignored in favor of more recent developments. That was the point where George Lucas gave permission for other people to make official additions to the Star Wars universe. Before that, all non-trilogy resources that were available were the Ewok Stores and the Adventures of Threepio and Artoo (well, okay, that’s not what it was really called, but you get the idea).

Whereas Star Trek has, what, nine movies and four series, making a total of hundreds of hours of TV, for reference material? Hence the difference in canonical standards :smiley:

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire.html

Go there…that will explain everything…not for the light of heart either.

This site tries to use REAL science to expain how things could done in both universes. (This doesn’t mean that it can happen, but it takes observations from the movies and applies real science to them.)

IE: The DS destroyes Alderan. For that to happen an unfathomable amount of energy would be needed. But, since it happened on the big screen, it is taken that it DID happen then tried to explain what would be needed for it to happen.

I’ve read a few posts here about ‘how an ISD is bigger, therefore…’ and ’ the Enterprise’s shilds can…" and so on…

Read this site right to the end…you’ll be surprised of the things that you never took into account. =)

Doubleclick, you just earned fifty SPOOFE points (but keep in mind, they’re worthless :D).

The site (although very, very biased in favor of a Star Destroyer) goes to great, excruciating pains to “prove” Star Wars technology to be superior to Star Trek. While some equations are questionable, they often provide several cites of source material that all support each other.

Today, I have seen the light… there ARE people with less of a life than me!! :smiley:

Picard peered at the viewscreen.
“Mr. Data, increase magnification. Numba one, can you make it out?”

“It’s a sign, Sir.”

“A SIGN?” demanded Picard.

“Yessir. ‘Do Not Feed The Aminals’”

:slight_smile:

Note to moderators: We need a pointey eared smiley.

If anything, the ‘science’ in SW is worse than ST – and that’s saying a lot.
Some bad science examples:
Star Trek:
You hold you breath when you encounter vacuum.

Star Wars:
Spice is a something you mine.

Both: you have windows on spaceships!

But, let’s just run some agreeable numbers, because, ‘numbers mean things’. We don’t have to make any non-logical assumptions.

Let’s look at living space for a moment:
According to the tech manuals, the Enterprise can hold about 1000 people, a 640 m craft, while the Imperial Star Destroyers can hold 45,000, a 1600 m long craft.
Now let’s run some math and talk about verifiables.
We know the interior or the Enterprise, which is quite lush, but not the ISD’s.
So, using a simple algebra technique:
to get even half the same living/working/playing space the Federation people have, the Imperials have to be short. About 30 cm tall.
More later,

Vahktang

But the big question is who is Anikan (Darth Vader) Skywalker’s dad. Easy. Paul Atraides.