The Federation vs. The Empire

In My Humble Opinion
1

Everyone is familiar with the latest incarnation of one of the best debates in science fiction. Star Wars vs. Star Trek… what could be better? As Spoofe pointed out, the debate gets a lot thornier when the battle isn’t ship vs. ship, but fleet vs. fleet. It’s time to pit the fleets against each other!

The situation:
A space-time rift has brought two galaxies and two times next to each other and shots have been fired between fleets. The Empire is about to launch a massive assault to conquer themselves a new galaxy, while the Federation is preparing to repulse the assault and destroy the Empire. It’s a wartime footing, there ain’t no Prime Directive to worry about, there ain’t no surrender, there ain’t no retreat.

The Rebel Forces see their fate hanging in the balance, as do the Romulans and the Dominion. They can’t bring themselves to help their traditional enemies, but they won’t launch an assault so long as the Federation and Empire are waging war. Will the Klingons join in with the Federation? Possibly, but they’ve been flakey ever since the Dominion wars. The Borg are simply waiting to see who wins, then take them over as well.

The Rules:
Ships are all the most modern, everything from the Enterprise E to Super Star Destroyers. HOWEVER, no Sun Crusher, no 29th century Federation Timeships. Nothing that overpowering. The Death Star is acceptable. Note the singular form.

Both universes are on a wartime footing. No stopping to negotiate anything but a surrender.

This battle won’t be based on what they might do (a sticking point in the other thread), but what they could do.

Drawing from websites as cites is perfectly acceptable. However, try to avoid websites that do the same “Trek vs. Wars” matchup. They’ll be biased in one direction or another. Something like the Daystrom Institute on the Trek side is much better.

The goal is to destroy the enemy fleet, not their planets. Using Warp or Hyperdrive to get to planets and wipe them out isn’t really the point of this, since the other side can’t follow you in the same means.

The Force is irrelevent, as are Vulcan mindmelds and the like. This is ship to ship battle here. Exception: Boarding parties on Darth Vader’s flagship, or the interrogation of captured stormtroopers.

The Federation, as the good guys, win everything (okay, maybe not this rule).

Star Wars vs. Star Trek… have at it!
Now for my view…

The Federation Fleet wins hands down. Why? I’ll be happy to tell you.
Quantum Torpedo Spreads. From long range.

Higher maneuverability of capital ships while firing the aforementioned torpedo spreads.

Ability to enter warp from nearly any point. No running for a hyperspace point.

Transporters. While it’s in dispute whether they could penetrate Star Wars shields, all fighter craft can easily be nullified by said transporters. All you have to do is transport the pilots of each craft 20 feet to the left. Note that in “First Contact,” shields did not have to be dropped for transport. Local gaps could be opened when the source originated within the shields.

The Defiant. A cloaked ship has a certain advantage when it can siddle up to be right in front of your bridge, drop the cloak, fire a quantum torpedo spread, and take off again.

I await all counter-arguments.
-Starfleet Fleet Admiral Psi Cop from his flagship, the USS Asimov

2

::opens bottle of Deschutes Jubelale & bag of Tim’s Cascade Potato Chips, sits back to watch the show::

“Go, Empire!”

3

Damn smilies!

Should have been “Opens…”

4

the “sheer brute ultimate ass-kicking planet-smashing” force vs. the “sheer tech and the omnipotent unstoppable technobabble” rock… i can’t wait!

[sub]yah, i just wanted to get my email option turned on…[/sub]

5

The Empire probably has a numerical advantage against the Federation. Combine the Federation with the Klingons, and maybe they’ve a chance. Pair the two with the Romulans, and definitely. (but getting the three to cooperate without slitting each other’s throats is another story, so I’ll just stick to the Federation and Klingon Empire)

Long-range Federation quantum torpedoes, Klingon ferocity and ‘borrowed’ technology would turn the tide against slow-moving ships the size of cities. Even if stormtroopers happened to board a ship, would you want to do battle with a bat’Leth-armed Klingon? Okay, how 'bout a pack of bloodthirsty Klingons boarding your ship? Eh?

Imagine the effect a wolfpack of cloaked Birds of Prey would have, cloaking, firing a torpedo, and cloaking, all the while supported by a Federation bombardment from beyond weapons range. It would be a slaughterhouse, especially if one gets Defiant-class vessels into the fray. Are tri-cobalt devices allowed?

Wonder if anyone’s made a computer game out of this? If so, then count this pathetic little geek in!

6

Star Wars ships are not restricted to fixed points: they can begin hyperspace jumps from any suitable stretch of space.

I’m convinced of an Imperial Victory. They’re larger than the Federation by a broad margin, and they’ve been at war for a long time. While the Federation must put itself on a war footing, the Empire can simply deploy. Ships in hyperspace can’t be stopped from going wherever they want, which means that Star Destroyers will show up in force whenever and wherever they want. They can drop their markedly superior ground troops and armored vehicles (which the Federation appears to lack entirely) and proceed to take inhabited planets. By the time Federation starships arrive, the Imperials have a strong foothold, with planetary shields, surface-based ion guns, and all kinds of fun surprises. The Federation, on the other hand, can’t just blast away for fear of killing their own civilians. That’s not to say that I think a Star Destroyer isn’t more than a match for a Galaxy-class starship.

Don’t even get me started on the Death Star. How on Earth is the Federation going to stop that? With the massive speed of hyperdrive travel, they can’t focus their forces to meet it, and they don’t have the small ships that would be necessary to take advantage of its weak points. So the Federation either abandons the majority of their planets so they can defend a few of them properly, or spreads out their defenses so broadly that they can be dealt with piecemeal.

The Imperial Fleet that we saw over Endor was larger by far than all of the Star Trek ships I’ve ever seen. The Empire can deploy more than one Star Destroyer per Federation starship of any class, not even counting their Super Star Destroyers and the vast array of smaller but still potent capital ships. There’s not a ground-based Federation force worth spitting at, and they certainly don’t have the air support that could be provided by TIE Fighters and Bombers. Yes, Klingons with sharp things are fun to watch, but give me a blaster any day.

Outnumbered, overstretched, and unable to stop the enemy from going wherever they want whenever they want, the Federation would find itself suddenly in incredibly deep trouble. They would sue for peace, if only to stop their people from being obliterated by the Death Star and orbital bombardment.

7

Trucido, we more-or-less have to leave the planetary aspect out of this, as I said in the initial post. Otherwise the Empire beats up on planets while the Federation does the same. The Federation can’t stop hyperdrive-equipped ships, and the Empire can’t stop warp ships. So you end up with two fleets tearing apart thousands of planets… nah. Let’s keep it a fleet-to-fleet battle, eh?

You never saw some of the latter-day DS9 episodes, did you? The Federation amassed a gigantic fleet while fighting the Dominion. Enough to make the few ships at Endor look paltry.

As for boarding parties, how do you expect the stormtroopers to get on board? No transporters. If they do what was done in “New Hope,” and tractor the thing inside to board it, say hello to Mr. Warp Core Breach, and goodbye to Mr. ISD.

The Death Star would certainly be impresive in blowing up the larger Federation ships and Starbases, but what would it do about a few dozen Klingon Birds of Prey cloaking and uncloaking randomly, while biting little pieces out of it? Heck, even the larger Federation starships could just maneuver out of the way, while the Death Star tries to re-aim.

The Federation is also at an advantage inside any gravity well. While it’s been long demonstrated that warp drive works from as far in as planetary orbit (and heck, nearly within the sun’s corona), hyperdrive needs to be significantly further out to work. If the Federation could make the equivilent of an Interdictor Cruiser (not really unfeasable – it’s a gigantic gravity generator), your ISDs are in big trouble.

-Fleet Admiral Psi Cop, from his flagship USS Asimov

8

[QUOTE Don’t even get me started on the Death Star. How on Earth is the Federation going to stop that? **[/QUOTE]

1 Death Star + 1 Genesis Torpedo = 1 New Planet!

9

Ah, the Genesis device. I like it! But I thought of another method. Just take out the engines of escorting ships (like SSDs). Gigantic ship + gravity field = Large Boom. Demonstrated in “Empire Strikes Back.”

-Fleet Admiral Psi Cop, from aboard USS Asimov

10

Why wouldn’t the Rebel Alliance throw in with the Federation?

11

Mea culpa, Psi Cop, mea culpa. Sometimes it’s hard for a fanboy to restrain his bubbling enthusiasm. I thought conquest might be allowed in place of destruction. Are we talking, then, about a single decisive battle, with both sides pooling their fleets and simply flinging them at each other? Pooling forces for a decisive battle does in a way favor the Federation, simply because of the nature of their propulsion systems- they’re much, much slower over long distances than Imperial ships.

 Let me try a new tack, and suggest a strategy from the viewpoint of a Grand Admiral watching the opposing fleet just coming into sensor range. I'll assume, here, that a Star Destroyer can go toe-to-toe with a Galaxy class starship on a more-or-less even footing, and let other relationships scale from that.

 I keep my heavy hitters in three groups- two wings on the same plane as the enemy, with a center supported by the Death Star. More capital ships arranged in groups above and below the plane, with a final force equal in power to one of the wings held in reserve.

I’d jump the reserve force in behind the Federation fleet, and fully engage them. Then the wings, right, left, above, below, would come down, followed by the Death Star engaging.
This is when fighters start becoming useful- the situation is going to look like one hellacious furball. Fighters can get in among the Federation formations and deliver heavy payloads while the Federation ships are hampered by having to shoot through their own ships. I can use fighters and the box technique to reduce the Federation’s maneuverability advantage, and let the Imperial heavy guns have full play. I think that once turbolasers and proton torpedoes start to tell, the battle will fall pretty quickly into a decent Grand Admiral’s hands.

12

I still say the People’s Eyebrow triumphs over the Dark Side any day of the week.

::running away now::

13

Um, Graham Kennedy, the author of the Daystrom Institute, is a long time regular of the vs. debate and is a biased as any. So Star Trek gets to use a highly biased site because the author didn’t include vs. in the title? :wink: In addition I have yet to see the in depth analysis of potential weapon yields from Kennedy as from say Michael Wong, author of StarDestroyer.Net. While Mike has his issues, his science and analysis is pretty good.

In addition I take askance at your basic premise. You are asking us to ignore things like an awsome tactical speed superiority. You are asking the empire to ignore its basic tactics and fight in a way that favors the Feds, despite the fact that would be really bad idea.

You have also asked to ignore what would happen in favor of what could happen. You want the Feds to be able to use long range Quantum torpedo volleys, when there is no instance that they have ever done that. Yes, the weapons have a great theoretical range. But if that is the true practical/operational range, why do they always close to within tens of kilometers (well within Imperial weapon ranges) before fireing them. This is similar to the fireing rates of a lot of WWII vessels. The manufacturers frequently listed incredible firing rates for naval guns. Frequently they would base this on the chambering rate, even though the feed rate would be much slower. In practice many of these guns fired much slower that the theoretical fireing rate.

Imperial ships can also (probably) detect cloaked ships like the Defiant. We know that the SW universe has cloaked ships. We also know that they are capable of scanning for them. If (a big if I realize) the Defiant uses anything like Imperial cloaks, they will be sensed and destroyed. Even if they cannot sense the Defiant there is very little that such a ship can do against the millions of ships the empire has.

Redukter
Klingons are not as tough as they are made out to be. I mean come on, a very pregnant unarmed Bajoran woman was able to take out three at once. The couple of dozen each ship has to spare for boarding or to repel boarders could in no way take on the nearly 10 thousand Stormtroopers on each ISD. While the troopers would not be able to attack active ships, they would repel any boarders. And yes, given battle armor and a tripod mounted e-web automatic blaster I would take on a bat’Leth wielding Klingon.

Buck The Diver
When has the Federation ever used a Genesis Device in combat? When did they ever make a second one? Let see never and never. Its hard to use something you don’t have and no one has thought of in a century. In addition we have no proof that such a device would work against a shielded opponent. By necessity the Genesis Device can’t produce much energy. That pesky second law of thermodynamics. So it is unlikely that it could penetrate a shielded ship in any case.

In the end even if we follow the original premise, the Empire wins. It has over 10 million member systems and can bring a comparitive amount of weight to bear. The Feds have a few hundred member systems and a few thousand colonies. The Feds have only one significant shipyard from which all major ships are launched (Utopia Planetia). The Emprire was able to build a single ship (DS2), which out masses everything the Feds ever produced combined, without even needing to use any of their multiple major shipyards. Even if the ships are equal one-on-one, which I don’t think they are, the Emprire can bring about 1,000 to 1 in capital ships. Bye-bye Federation.

14

Hmm. Well, I didn’t exactly mean one massive battle, either. I did mean a protracted campaign, but destroying worlds wasn’t really in there. I suppose destroying and capturing worlds is fair game here, but that’s not the primary goal. You want to destroy the enemy fleet, and capturing a world doesn’t really do that much except to morale. Sure, ships can still be produced, but I’m thinking it would probably be over before significant amounts were produced.

So, unless it’s really important, I think we just have to overlook the world-destroying part. The goal here is to destroy the enemy fleet first. Starbases and stations like DS9 are available for staging and targetting, as are bases on the Empire’s side.

Bartman, it has to be what could happen, not what would happen. Otherwise, the Federation would win against the Empire, because the Federation is the good guy, and the Empire is the bad guy. We also have to make allowances for television and movies. You need the ships close enough to engage each other while still seeing a fair amount of detail. Seeing flickering lights cross between two white specks wouldn’t make exciting viewing, right? Think of the battle as seen from the Emperor’s Throne Room in “Return of the Jedi”… that would excite no one if every battle in the movie was like that.

I think we’re also forced to conclude that since so many other aspects of the two universes are different (travel, shields, weapons, combat tactics, etc), cloaking devices are probably dissimilar too. At least at first.

As for Stormtroopers vs. Klingons, those Stormtroopers are very nice, but do you happen to have all ten thousand of them in one place? Beaming a boarding party onto the bridge or engineering or one specific weapons station… that would be fairly effective, no? Would Stormtroopers be able to guard everything? Also, in combination with the cloaking device, transportation works while the cloak is engaged… And, if all else fails, beaming a quantity of antimatter into ANYwhere would be fairly effective, right?

As for the Rebellion joining the Federation, I don’t know why they wouldn’t… But it makes it unbalanced if they do, because the Federation has access to their technology all of a sudden. So maybe the Klingons have sworn a blood oath against everyone from that universe or something.

-Fleet Admiral Psi Cop, from his flagship USS Asimov

(Come on, everyone… come up with some entertaining titles here! Am I the ranking person on both sides with my “Fleet Admiral?”)

15

A few observations there, Admiral.

Gravity Wells - IIRC, sub-space warp travel is also subject to disruption by real space phenomena. I can’t give specifics, but I seem to remember episodes in both TNG and Voyager where warp travel was disrupted by gravity wells.

Klingons -

Give me a Klingon in a street fight any day over the pansy security types usually found on a Federation vessel. However, a Klingon raiding party armed with bat’Leths trying to raid an ISD is a bit, no, exactly, like bringing a knife to a gun fight. The Empire’s ships of the line have trained combat troops on board to deal with these incursions. I would imagine the stormtroopers on an ISD are basically similar to US Marines in that they are there to repel boarders and handle combat assaults. Klingons are good, but a bat’Leth vs a blaster still loses in the long run.

Cloaked Birds of Prey - Again, IIRC, in “Undiscovered Country”, Kirk was dealing with the same problem. A Bird of Prey was causing headaches and they couldn’t find it because of cloaking. Spock rigged a torpedo with a tracking unit to follow [technobabble] the tachyon emissions [/technobabble] of the craft and home in on it. Much like a 20th century heat seeker (never understood why the Federation didn’t employ seeker technology on their torpedoes. Another 20th Cent innovation they seem to have forgotten). Missle is fired, picks up tachyons and flys up the poop shut of the Bird of Prey.

Granting that both sides have sensors that can detect sub-atomic particles in space and can learn and adapt to opposition technology, the Empire should rather quickly figure out what is going on and adjust. Light ships would move out to screen the capital ones (much like a modern task force deploys vs a submarine threat) by hunting for tell-tale tachyon emissions. The cloaking threat, while still present, would cease to be the danger it once was.

Finally

The Federation is going to have a very tough time doing any damage to Empire homeworlds. SW seems to have a much stronger planetary defense system then ST and any Federation ship would be unlikely to survive in orbit long enough to do real damage to a planet. Empire craft, OTH are designed with planetary systems in mind and they are equipped to actually conduct and support heavy assaults with ground troops.

If we get into a mode of planetary destructions, the Empire wins. No ifs, ands, or buts. Why? Because the Empire is built on the personality cult of the Emperor. As long as the Emperor survives, battle will continue. The federation might knock out some planets of value, but since the Empire has less concern for its individual citizens than the Federation, these losses are easier to take. In addition, the Empire is monolithic enough to maintain power over its political factions. Defections would likely result in the Emperor ordering that planet’s destruction himself.

The Federation, on the other hand, is made up of numerous homeworlds and, while they present a united front, power is so divided that I believe the destruction of a homeworld or two would convince other systems to break away from the Federation and sue for peace with the Empire, maybe negotiate a limited neutrality, before the same thing happened to them. I doubt Star Fleet would be willing to destroy systems forced into the Empire’s influence but officially neutral.

The Grand Poohbah.

16

Here’s a discussion point that just occured to me.

1)There has been talk that the Imperial Hyperdrive may bear a bit of a resemblance to a wormhole warp in nature and speeds it can attain.

  1. Imperial ships are fairly deaf, dumb and blind in hyperspace. They cannot see or fight.

  2. The Federation can sense and track wormholes, and can throw a ship into a wormhole, though for short unstable time periods (like happened to the Enterprise in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, by accident). They can still see and can launch weapons at targets (photon torpedos to blow an asteroid that had been drawn into the other end of the wormhole) while in these wormholes.

Discussion point: Could the Federation throw enough ships into artifical, unstable, warp worm holes and snipe at the blind defenseless Imperial ships in hyperdrive with enough photon torpedos to cause them significant harm with minimal Starfleet loses?

Side point: In an earlier thread I had miscalculated what the Enterprise D tech manual had said was the explosive strength of a new photon torpedo. It should be between 20 to 1000 terra(not giga)joules. Not very precise I know, but this is extrapolated from antimatter explosion rates. So to be safe, use the low ball figure of 20.

This makes the photons fall about the level of medium imperial weaponry, but with a much greater range. Useless in normal space (with imperial close in weapons), but good hits on unshielded, unsuspecting targets.
Personal point of view:
I’d view this Federation vs. Empire scenario as a space equivalent of the naval war of 1812. The Feds (Americans) winning small and single actions while the Empire (Brits) simply sweeps the smaller power from space. Noble, but futile unless something makes the Empire want to stop.

17

Disagree. Star Fleet is not going to simply transport stuff onto an ISD at will. Transporters have been disrupted numerous times in the ST world by anything from shields to weather. They would be unable to beam anything onto an ISD unless the ISD has been so heavily damaged that its shields had failed. That means a Federation ship has to be able to take the pounding of an ISD while delivering one of its own. Not likely. Boarding parties of both sides will most likely be going after battered or derelict vessels with little or no defenses left.

Klingon vs Stormtrooper
Klingons are great warriors. I would pick them in a mano a mano fight any day over what I have seen Star Fleet offer. However, Klingons suffer from the same problem as Star Fleet when you look at ground combat. They conduct battle in the same way as 15th Century humans. Little regard for small unit tactics and more regard for individual honor. Against a disciplined unit, they are going to die.

Actually, I don’t think the Empire has to work that hard at all to win. Here’s the plan. Get a congregation of Federation warships together. Set up an interesting phenomena to study on a planet’s surface. By the ST canon, all the senior and most experienced personnel will beam down as an away team to study said phenomena. This leaves the starships in the charge of junior officers with little command experience and even less combat experience. Destroy the Federation crafts at leisure (with shields up to defend themselves, they can’t beam-up the senior command structure). Commence mop-up operation of Federation officers on the planet below.

Now the Intergalactic Grand Poohbah of Empire and Federation Space.

18

One thing Star Warriors like to throw out is the immense numericaly superiority they allegdly have…I disagree. We have yet to see, in the Movies or Literature, SW fleet battles that equal that of the “Dominion War” storyline.

Therefore I submit that the “overwhelming numbers” arguement is moot.

Captain Ghost, USS BonHomme Richard (NCC-1278-D)

19

In several of the post-movie books, the New Republic has made mention of the Empire’s (former) massive Star Destroyer fleet. Now, if we’re talking the Empire v. Federation at their peak, there’d be one heck of a lot more Star Destroyers than all of Starfleet’s ships put together(hopefully SPOOFE will happen along with the actual figures). The biggest consideration is that the Empire has over a million member worlds to patrol/protect, so naturally, the Imperial Fleet will be a bit spread out. Of course, under the premise of this debate, the fleet has been condensed somewhat for a major assault, and we can assume the bulk of the Imperial Fleet has been amassed.

Now consider that Star Destroyers don’t travel alone. They almost always travel with a large group of capitol-class support warships. So you can assume that each Star Destroyer travels with at least 10-20 smaller warships. Advantage: Empire.

Fighters would be another advantage the Empire has. True, traditional TIE Fighters have no shields, but their older brothers TIE Advanced and TIE Defenders do (not to mention Assualt Transports, Assualt Shuttles, Assault Gunboats, Missileboats…) With all the Star Destroyers and support ships carrying these fighters, the numbers easily rocket into the tens of millions. Again, advantage: Empire.

Wormholes/Hyperdrive are not equatable. Hyperdrive boosts the ship traveling to a fabric of space above real space, whereas Warp drive merely ‘bends’ real space, which explains why Fed. ships can fire/use sensors while at warp.

Cloaking devices/Quantum Torpedoes: Do you think the Empire would just sit back while, if they are as powerful as stated, Quantum Torpedoes tear their fleet apart? Of course not. They would launch several covert missions to capture and analyze Quantum Torpedo and cloaking technology which allows the ship inside to use sensors (in the SW universe cloaking devices exist but cause the ship to be completely sensor-blind).

Another plus for the Empire: Remember when the Breen used their ‘power dampening weapons’ on DS9 against the Federation, which cut through shields and disabled all electronic systems on the ship. If I remember correctly, the Federation never developed a defense against it, but rather ended the war before the Breen could use it to full effectiveness. Now consider this: Ion Cannons, which are standard equipment on every Imperial warship, do the exact same thing.

Can you guess who I’m rooting for? Anyways, just some general battle strategies. I think once SPOOFE happens on this thread he’ll give us all some real numbers the lopsidedness of this battle will be revealed.

Admiral Chocobo, ISD Tempest

20

The conquest of planets would be crucial to any military effort, and certainly the point of any Imperial invasion. The Empire already controls the better part of a galaxy, and they didn’t get that way simply by fighting space battles and bombarding planets. Even if the Federation could win a few pitched battles, they would quickly begin to run short of ships and resources when Imperial raiders struck deep against shipyards, stations, and resupply points. Federation raiders would be confronted by a long-standing Imperial Defense (remember, they’ve been fighting an insurgency for years) and technologies such as planetary shields. Much more than, though, they must contend with the sheer scope of Imperial forces- they have shipyards and supplies scattered across a galaxy. Without the extremely rapid expedient of hyperdrive, the Federation is effectively unable to reach the majority of enemy space, while they themselves are fully open to the Imperial Fleets. If nothing else, the Imperial commanders are free to dictate the time, place, and circumstances of battle- anyone from Clausewitz to Sun-tzu to Napoleon hammers on the importance of that.

We look forward to bringing you the benefits of Peace or Else, courtesy of the Emperor. Our motto: “You’ll enjoy it, or a free vacation getaway to the spice mines!”

Grand Admiral Trucido, SSD Executor