The Federation vs. The Empire

[SPOOFE]

First thing’s first…

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.

The Empire had over 25,000 Imperial-class Star Destroyers, with appropriate numbers of other classes of ships. Around a dozen SSD’s, tens of thousands of cruisers, corvettes, frigates, gunboats, and millions of fighters. They outnumber the Federation more than 2-to-1 with just Star Destroyers, however. And that’s being VERY generous for Federation ship numbers.

Second thing…

Quantum Torpedo Spreads. From long range.

Slow. Slow slow slow. SLOW. Go pop in First Contact again. Fast-foward to the end. Data fires a spread of quantum torpedoes at the Pheonix, from visual (read: less than 10 km) range. Torpedoes take about twenty seconds to traverse that distance.

That’s PITIFUL.

Even allowing for a bit of “embellishment” on the part of the FC effects guys, you’ve still got weapons that lose all advantage by their lack of velocity.

Anyway…

As I’ve said in the other thread, all of the Federation’s advantages (range, maneuverability) can be countered, relatively easily, by the Empire. However, the Federation can NOT counter the Empire’s vastly superior FTL speeds and sheer amount of firepower that they can deliver. It will only take a single encounter before the Empire realizes, “Hey… these guys shoot from far away.” The microjump - or multiple-jump - tactic that I described in the other thread would come into bear. The Federation crews just simply don’t have the reaction time to escape from an ISD appearing suddenly from hyperspace, guns blazing (there’s no way to tell that they’re coming). Even if the Fed crews manage to keep their bearings, it would take them a dozen seconds or so to whirl around, plot in a course, and jump to warp… and in that time, a hundred turbolaser blasts would pound against its shields. And since their shields seem to be relatively porous, some of that energy would bleed through to the fragile hull.

Given that Federation ships tend to explode after receiving only a tiny amount of damage (Cause and Effect), the sheer mass of firepower that even a mid-sized Imperial ship can deliver would quickly overwhelm a Federation ship.

Even when you consider that the Empire would only be able to devote a fraction of its fleet to the war effort - say, a sixth - that’s still more ships than the Federation can muster in any way, shape, or form.

Furthermore, as a war of conquest, the Empire can move from planet-to-planet with near impunity. The Federation can’t detect their movements through hyperspace, and they REALLY can’t send ships to intercept. Additionally, the Federation stands absolutely NO chance to invade Imperial coreworlds… with a given speed of about 1 year to cross 1,000 lightyears, they simply can NOT launch a conquest of an Empire spanning over 100,000 lightyears.

Transporters: As has been pointed out, these things can be disrupted by almost anything.

The Genesis Device: According to ST2, all data on the Genesis Device was lost when the Regula station was destroyed. As such, the Federation doesn’t have access to it as a weapon. Sorry.

Cloaking devices: A very excellent advantage, and I have no doubts that the Federation would quickly lobby to nullify their no-cloaking-device treaty. However, as it is, the only cloaking device they have installed on a ship is the Defiant’s, and that one is on loan from the Romulans. Given that the Empire can have Star Destroyers pounding on Earth in, oh, a week, that’s not a whole helluva lot of time for them to develop a line of cloaked vessels.

Face it, the only way the Federation stands a chance is by calling in their “superpowers”… Q, the 29th-century timeships, the Douwd (or however you spell it).

[SPOOFE]

Oh, I can’t believe I missed this…

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.

Never been any description like that in any of the literature. Hyperspace has always been described as a “parallel dimension” that exists coterminously with ours, similar to subspace. A wormhole is a tunnel that connects two different points in space, and when you’re in a wormhole, you really don’t travel faster than light… you just arrive at your destination before light does.

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

Oh, they can. It’s just incredibly awkward to do so.

Star Trek’s subspace has been described as having a spatial augmentation effect that, even though it allows vessels to travel faster than light, they’re not really travelling faster than light (they bend space ahead of them and stretch it behind them). This piece of technobabble was invented to explain how the NX-01 (from the new series) can travel in warp without a navigational deflector.

In SW, hyperspace is just so godawful fast that sensors can’t pick up anything. It’s like driving on the freeway at 80 mph… if you look at the ground, you just see a big gray blur.

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.

They can NOT “sense and track” wormholes, and can’t “throw a ship” into a wormhole. They can detect an open wormhole, and they can go into an open wormhole (heck, this was the entire plot gimmick for the first episode of DS9). But they cannot open a wormhole at will, nor can they force another ship to go into another wormhole. And, as has already been mentioned, a wormhole is not hyperspace.

Also, Chocobo…

They would launch several covert missions to capture and analyze Quantum Torpedo and cloaking technology which allows the ship inside to use sensors

Most SW vs. ST debates assume a level of “no technology sharing”. Otherwise, it just becomes “SW & ST vs. SW & ST”… even more convoluted than THIS thread.

Other sites for reference:

Star Wars Technical Commentaries - Probably one of the best Star Wars analysis sites around.

The Great Link - A ST site that describes the events of a show with great objective detail. Unfortunately, the site was down when I tried it. Hopefully it’ll be back up momentarily.

[MattTheCroc]

Although not SPOOFE, I can say with some authority the number of ISDs (and ISDs only) in the Imperial Fleet at the height of its power was in the 25,000 range. If memory serves, 4 SSDs were created (due to the erroneous argument that the Executor “nearly bankrupted” the Empire. Uhh… Death Star?), but I can think of more than that off the top of my head from the Expanded Universe, so that figure must be wrong (after all, we are assuming that everything said about the series’ is correct, and not misinformation).

SSDs

• Executor (the one from the movies)
• Lusankya (Prison type deally)
• Iron Fist (Zsinj’s command ship)
• Razor’s Kiss (SSD Zsinj attempted to steal, although it was created after RotJ, which we could logically assume was the end of the Empire’s great power)
• That one from the X Wing Vs TIE Fighter Expansion
• I think there was one in the “Black Fleet Crisis” series.
• The sort of SSD Veangence from Jedi Knight

I won’t enter into any vs. arguments here, as my experience with Trek is pleasant, albeit limited (10-20 episodes of the series, and 4 of the movies). But the fact is, the Empire was a totalitarian war machine that needed force to keep its populace in line, while the Federation is a much better place to live in and ergo much less military oriented. Apples and Oranges and all that… but that won’t quell all of our bloodthirsty minds, will it?

[Max_Torque]

The Federation and the Empire are two very mismatched opponents. What happens when you bring together a bunch of stormtroopers, who can’t shoot the broad side of a barn, and pit them against an army of Star Trek red shirts, who die the instant they enter combat? It’s like the “irresistible force/immovable object” paradox.

[Gorgon_Heap]

Ohh. I have always daydreamed about this. Anyways, I have to agree with SPOOFE. In toto, it has been said there were 7 SSDs build … all names are not forthcoming.

As far as hyperspace travel, lets get geeky!!! It is akin to another dementional layer. It is, in fact, much like entering the Astral Plane in D&D – one of the more useful Transative Planes.

While there is no evidence to suggest any amount of effectiveness of SW’s rather pathetic laser-based weoponry against ST’s advanced sheilds, the simple fact is nearly all Imperial cap ships carry several to scores of these weapons. Ion weopons notwithstanding – it’s my beleif the Feds could figure out a way tostop them if they really wanted to.

Speed. Hyperspace travel is sooooo much faster than warp travel as to be just plain silly. The one thing that would slow the Imperial war fleets from running roughshod over the Fed is the lack of any sort of stellar cartographic information; No star charts = no fast traveling. (i.e. “Flying through hyperspace ain’t like dusting crops, boy!”)

Still, nobody can convince me a thousand TIE fightere, with or without sheilds, would be anything more to a Fed starship than a swarm of nats is to me. In this fight, the Imperial’s massive numbers of starfighters isn’t worth spit, since you’ve told us strategeis concerning planets isn’t part of the deal. Massing fighters against secondary targets while the caps duke it out with Fed ships would be their only real usefullness.

Lets also consider the Fed’s technical resoursefulness vs. sheer overwhelming numbers of Imp cap ships.

Also also, we do know the ST universe does posess planetary sheilds and defense weapons. There are comments of ground-based phaser banks greatre than type X. That’s pretty impressive. Unfortunatly, it would seem Earth completely lacks any sort of defense itself, as per the DS9 episode where a whole fleet came swooping in on San Francisco with only orbital starships fending them off.

I don’t really have time to keep going.

[Bartman]

*Originally posted by Max Torque *
**The Federation and the Empire are two very mismatched opponents. What happens when you bring together a bunch of stormtroopers, who can’t shoot the broad side of a barn, and pit them against an army of Star Trek red shirts, who die the instant they enter combat? It’s like the “irresistible force/immovable object” paradox. **

Well if it is Redshirts vs. Stormtroopers, the Redshirts win. Because the STs can each be killed by handheld weapons fire. While the RSs each have to be killed in a unique way. One is killed when a cavern callapses, one is eaten by indiginous flora/fauna, one dies in a mysterious accidental weapon discharge. The STs would run out of ways to kill RSs before they ran out of the RSs themselves.

On a more serious note (if anything on this thread can have a serious note) the Stromtroopers are actually pretty good shots. You try to hit a moving 2m by 1m target at a full run with a single fire, carbine class weapon. It is quite a difficult task. The main characters are just insanely good with their weapons. And they have the advantage of “Producer/Director Forcefields, The best forcefield money can buy TM”. Basically no primary character is allowed to be seriously wounded.

[Ferrous]

Still, nobody can convince me a thousand TIE fightere, with or without sheilds, would be anything more to a Fed starship than a swarm of nats is to me. In this fight, the Imperial’s massive numbers of starfighters isn’t worth spit, since you’ve told us strategeis concerning planets isn’t part of the deal. Massing fighters against secondary targets while the caps duke it out with Fed ships would be their only real usefullness.

While I agree about the ridiculous fragility of Imperial fighters, I disagree about their potential usefulness in a capital ship engagement.
Yes, a GCS could blast them apart by the dozen with their phasers. But every phaser being used to blast a fighter is a phaser not being used to shoot back at an ISD. Since the Empire can put a couple hundred fighters into space for every ISD, the Feds would be so busy swatting fighters that the ISD’s could pound them into scrap with impunity.

[Bartman]

OK here is my basic strategy for the Imperials.

1. Pre-campaign. The first assumption is that conflict will not break out the moment contact is made. The Feds will likely treat the Imps in a similar fasion as they did the Dominion (cautious negotiation). During this time the Imps would be trying to assess Fed capabilities. It is quite possible that the Empire maintains a peaceful relationship (but where is the fun in that? ). During this period both groups are likely to learn quite a bit about each other. Neither side picks up any new technologies, but they learn the basic capibilities of each other. Note neither side gets any finished counter devices. The Imps don’t get tachion cloak detectors. And the Feds don’t get gravity well projectors. If the campaign continues for months/years, eventually such devices are brought on line. In addition the Imps pick up Galactic maps from the Ferengi and Section 13 places covert operatives in Imp space. The wormhole connecting the galaxies connects two uninhabited systems so neither side gets a prepositioned base there.

2. War breaks out. To be fair, war breaks out in a such a way that neither side is surprised. So no surprise Imp attack. Given the nature of the parties, the Imps are the agressors. Also given the great oportunity this new galaxy offers, the empire sends 1/3 of their fleet for the conquest. The other 2/3 staying behind to maintain the empire. Thus the Imps have over 8,000 ISDs, 2 SSDs (Sources disagree on the number of these ships. They peg the number between 4-1000. Given that most souces are in the 4-7 range that seems a more fair approach, despite Han Solo’s comment that their are “Lots of command ships.”), 10,000 Victory class Star Destroyers (smaller and weaker than the ISD), hundreds of thousands of small cruisers, transports, freighters, and support ships, and millions of fighters.

In defense the Federation has 10,000 battle capable ships, half of which are older, obsolete or underpowered designs, like the Obereth or Miranda (I am way overestimating the Feds ship numbers. Even the Daystrom Institute only gives 3,700 as having survived the Dominion war. I am giving them every ship availible in the past 10 years). They also have between 40,000 and 70,000 shuttlecraft capable of warp travel including 1,000 to 2,000 combat capable runabouts. The Federation will need to maintain at least 1/4 of their ships on patrol with the Rommys and Klingons (just like they did in the Dominion war) this leaves them with 7,500 ships and 50,000 shuttlecraft.

3. Stage one - Preperation. As the Imperial Grand Admiral, the first thing I do is set up a forward base in the target galaxy. This will be on one of the barren planets in the system with the wormhole. SSDs carry prefabricated bases with planetary shield generators. This should prove to be an unassable position and roughly 1/3 of my fleet will be in this system (resupplying, refitting etc.) at any one time.

4. Stage Two - Raids. I then divide my fleet into 4 parts. Part one will consist of about 6,000 VSD (my fastest capital ship). These will be divided into squads of three VSDs each. These will focus on capture of the Feds comunication and sensor arrays. There are tens of thousands of these throughout Fed space. Once eliminated the Feds lose the ability of FTL comunication beyond a 22 ly range. Thus they are made blind and deaf. At the same time by tractoring the arrays into my cargo holds I can search for any data (communications, starmaps, etc.) that can provide me valuable information. This becomes more likely if the campaign becomes protracted. Otherwise decoding the information takes too long to be of immediate use. The VSDs will be under strict orders to avoid combat. Should the Feds choose to defend some stations they may be left with a skeleton system. But to do so will leave their planets undefended.

My other ships are divided into two large fleets each centered around a SSD. Again roughly 1/3 will remain in the wormhole system. So each fleet will consists of 2,500 ISDs, 1,000 VSDs, and about 5,000 small cruisers. In stage one, each fleet would break into multiple units of a hundred or so ISDs each. These would then strike as many colonies of the Federation as possible. We should be able to land 1 million troops complete with walkers and other heavy equipment on 50 different colonies simultaiously. None of which will be able to defend themselves. This would start before the VSD begin taking out the communications network. These task forces would be under orders to avoid combat with any forces even a fraction of the Imperial strength. This now presents a dilema for the Feds. Do they rush out and defend their border colonies or do they withdraw to their core member worlds. In either case, I leave small garasons on the colonies (a few thousnad on each) with appropriate equipment and supplies. Given that the only heavy weapon ever seen used by the Feds is a shoulder mounted “bazooka” even light forces should be able to hold off the few hundred non-dedicated ground troops the Fed seems able to round up for planetary missions.

5. Stage Three - Raids in force. Regardless of what the Federation chooses to do, once I have a few hundred colonies under my control I will start the next phase of my operation. Both major fleets will begin raids into the core worlds. These will not be conquest mission but instead will be focused on creating confusion and dismay. Early targets will include the shipyards at Utopia Planetia, Starfleet headquarters, and major starbases, such as Deep Space 9 and Star Base 1. This should throw their command structure into disarray and eliminate their ship construction and repair facilities. At this point any fleet encounted will be engaged. As my fleets are now moving in large groups of several thousand capital ships, I should have numerical superiority in any engagement.

6. Stage Four - Fleet elimination. Should the Feds decide to attack my forward position at the wormhole they will find a fleet larger than their own ready to give battle. Even if they are able to achieve some sort of surprise, my numerical supperiority should win the day. Such an attack makes my job easier as I would not need to hunt down and destoy individual ships. If such an attack is not mounted I will need to identify staging points and hit their fleets while they are staging. Should such a tactic not work. I would then place my ships near captured colonies and wait for relief missions. I could then attack such fleets at this point. This will obviously be the longest and most fluid stage of the war. In any case given my vast advantage in tactical speed I can pick and choose my engagements and hit smaller formations with overwhelming odds.

7. Stage Five - Conquest. Once the Starfleet has been eliminated from a force in being, I will begin invasions of major worlds. With the ability to drop tens of millions of troops on any planet, such operation should be painfully easy. Given that the Feds have no dedicated ground forces, conquest is forgone conclusion. Eventually the rest of the worlds will capitulate.

Several notes
Imperial comunications. Even though I will be without the Imperial HoloNet, my ships have a comunication range of 100ly, over 4 times the range of Federation ships. Those ships that are on longer distance missions will still be reachable by courier, and will be under orders to “return to base” on a regular frequency for additional orders. While the Federation could use similar methods their slow speed makes it a much less practical method. Their communications will take weeks to my days.

Resupply. As the war will be taking place over a fairly small portion of the galaxy, the imperial forces would not need any additional supply bases as they would never be more than a few days from the wormhole system.

Federation orbital bombardment. Such methods would be inadaquate to penetrate the heavy shields I could erect over my garasons. And as I would place my garasons within the colonies I have captured, any such bombardment would kill large numbers of Federation citizens.

The Death Star. I have deliberately left any superlaser equiped ship out of my tactics. If I have such a ship any tactics become unnecessary and pointless. Simply the DS drops out of hyperspace and issues an ultamatum, “Surrender or be destroyed.” Of course this is ignored and the DS destroys Vulcan. Then it moves to Andoria it issues the same ultimatum. This continues until there are no member worlds left in Federation space or until Starfleet surrenders. Certainly there would be a few rogue ships which would not obey a general surrender order but they would be eventually hunted down and destoryed.

Fighters. Imperial fighters do not have the punch to do much to capital ships. But they will completely eliminate the threat posed by shuttlecraft and runabouts. In addition later versions like the Tie Defender and Howlrunner (if available) have Hyperspace engines and could conduct small short range raids. This wil help keep the Feds even more off balance.

Long term engagement and disaster. Even if disaster overtakes an engagement or two, I can make good my losses while the Feds can’t. Kault Shipyards alone completes 3 ISDs a day. The Feds were completeing about 3 ships per day at the height of the Dominion war. But the majority of these were light combatants, not their heavy cruisers. And this was for the entire Federation. In addition their shipyards are vulnerable to attack. While the Imperial yards are well protected in the Imperial Galactic Core. I also only have a fraction of my strength engaged in the war and can shift ships in an emergency. While the Feds have almost no reserve and are fully engaged.

Well Psi Cop what do you think?

Grand Admiral Bartman

[Gorgon_Heap]

>>But every phaser being used to blast a fighter is a phaser not being used to shoot back at an ISD. Since the Empire can put a couple hundred fighters into space for every ISD, the Feds would be so busy swatting fighters that the ISD’s could pound them into scrap with impunity.
– Ferrous<<

Too true. An excellent point. If commanding a Fed ship, though, I would be inclined to completely ignore them when faced with an Imperial cruiser. I’d surmise their complete lack of offensive punch would have little noticable affect against the powerful Starfleet shields. And, asside from classic ST power problems, all Fed vessels have complete 720 degree fields of fire. That means even a couple stray shots out the stern or dorsal while facing towards an Imp ship can swat a couple fighters just the same.

And speaking of sheilds, I tend to think that’s the Fed’s main advantage in a stand-up fight against SW technology. Let’s not forget that in SW shielding tech, you have o physically alter the directions that are being covered by the directional sheilds … that means unless you have serious amounts of shielding to cover all arcs, a SW vessel will likely have most-to-all of its shields facing one arc. That is to say there will be huge gaps to utilize the afforementioned transporter tactics.

Don’t get me wrong; I still the Empire would beat the living piss out of the UFP any day.

[El_Elvis_Rojo]

I admit that my knowledge of both ST and SW is very limited (aside from what my roomates have told me over the years, I don’t know much outside of the television shows and movies), but one a one-to-one basis, a typical star destroyer is larget than anything the Federation has, right? Essentially, it’s an incredibly mobile space station. As for the SSD, comparatively, that could take out a Fed fleet single handedly no problem. And once the DS comes into things…I recall in RotJ the Executor being taken out and crashing into the side of the DT and what followed was a couple of stormtroopers falling over. The Emperor and his little party weren’t bothered one bit. I fail to see how the Federation could last long against even a small amount of these ships.
And as for Gorgon’s mention about TIE’s not doing anything to a Class E ship, that doesn’t make sense to me at all. Comparatively, how big is a Class E to a TIE? I never figured federation ships to be all that big, certainly not big enough to house twenty ties, much less have enough phaser banks and whatnot to fend them off. Like I said, I don’t know all that much, so please, enlighten me.

[Jeu_D_esprit]

SPOOFE- If the incident in ST:TMP was not a wormhole, then what the heck was it? Note that it was an unstable, exisiting only while the engines powered it,short range phenomena that occured regularly enough that Starfleet trained its officers to deal with it.

Okay, Hyperdrive ain’t a wormhole…got it.

Everyone: Just what is canonical? Can I have Starfleet use things from the Star Trek Cartoons? If so, how about some stasis field projector equipped ships? Just to break up Imperial formations…

How about the standard ST way of dealing with a big problem… Time travel? Big can of worms I know, but if it is available … how can the Feds loose? However, I always hated Time Travel plots so let’s forget it.

Imperial Weakness-

Since the supposition is that the Imperials attacked, their big weakness is being tied to the wormhole/gate-point between galaxies. The Federation has to find a way to either dominate the opening or make it too costly for the Empire to keep supplying their forces.

This question has to be answered early before any captured worlds can be put to productive Imperial use. This is where any and all cloaked ships available to the Feds should be employed in hit and run raids that concentrate on Imperial freighters.

Also periodic mining with huge antimatter mines or salvoes of antimatter drones to cross into Imperial space and explode to keep the Impies on their toes. The key here is to make the duty grinding on the forces keeping the wormhole open. Make the Imperials commit enough forces for security to slow their conquest.

The Federation really lost the war when the Imperials were allowed to capture and hold both ends of the wormhole. The Feds should have had large enough minefields and rings of stations capable of handling the large ISD’s they saw in the brief time that the two governments talked to each other.

I figure both sides would have limited travel in their respective spaces, so the Imperials are at a bit of a disadvantage trying to manouver and fight in Federation space … even though their ships are faster. To quote Han Solo: “You don’t want to bounce too close to an asteroid or fly through a star.” That would slow Imperial expansion a bit at first, and again make control of the wormhole a priority.

SO: The Federation needs to use its initial superiority in terrain knowledge to close or restrict the Imperial pipeline back home.

The Feds also desperately need to rally as much of the galaxy to their cause as possible. Imperial numbers would quickly make it obvious that Starfleet alone will be overwhelmed.

Starfleet studies hit and run tactics extensively, and may come to the conclusion that a fleet action would be pointless until a near balance of forces could be achieved at some strategic star system. So the Imperials would be faced with the same situation they have at home versus the Rebellion. Never losing a battle but not gaining any victory.

At least in the short term…

• Jeu d’Esprit, Thought Admiral,IKS (good enough title?)

[El_Elvis_Rojo]

Here’s a quick idea that may screw things up…what if the Empire isn’t teleported to Federation space, but the reverse happens? Or both are transported to some uncharted region all together. Everyone seems to be giving the Federation the benefit of the homefield in their discussions, what with the Empire not knowing galaxy charts and the Fed being able to rally support. What if the Empire doesn’t need to worry about taking over planets because it owns the galaxy the battle takes place in?
As for Jeu’s statements, I’m curious as to what everyone would think the Federation’s response would be if the Empire suddenly appeared in their space. Star Fleet’s general practice is to send diplomatic messages. Once those are met with oodles and oodles of cannon fire and the “delegates” destroyed, how long would a response take? And as for mining the enterance of the wormhole, you forget one more thing…the empires vast number of soldiers and complete disreguard for life. Let Star Fleet mine the entre entrance of the wormhole if that’s the source, the Empire will simply send one TIE at a time until all the mines are gone. Not a very good defense for the Fed if you ask me.
What say for the rest of the conversation (if people wish to continue it), everyone is taken to an unknown region with all their fleets and left to have at it. Demon possession, whatever, they just want to fight, and no one has the homefield advantage. If that’s alright with you, Psi Cop.

[Bartman]

*Originally posted by Jeu_D’esprit *
Everyone: Just what is canonical? Can I have Starfleet use things from the Star Trek Cartoons? If so, how about some stasis field projector equipped ships? Just to break up Imperial formations…

I’m working from the standard cannons agreed on in alt.startrek.vs.starwars.
For Star Wars cannon is easy. Lucas provided it. In order:
1- The Movies
2- The Radio Dramatizations
3- The Movie Novelizations
4- Everything else (Novels, Games, Reference books)
Not included at all The Holiday Special, The Droids Cartoon, The Ewok TV Special, and the Ewoks Cartoon (Because lets face it, they all sucked big time)

For Trek we follow Paramount’s Lead. In order:
1- The TV Shows
2- The Next Generation Technical Manual.
Everything else including the novels are out because Paramount has stated that ST writers do not need to know anything that takes place in the books. All books are considered to have taken place in an alternative dimension. The Cartoon is right out. Paramount has specifically asked authors NOT to refer to it. Which is to bad as it wasn’t nearly as bad as the Star Wars cartoons. But Trek writers have a problem with continuity anyway, so it is probably for the best.

Imperial Weakness-

Since the supposition is that the Imperials attacked, their big weakness is being tied to the wormhole/gate-point between galaxies. The Federation has to find a way to either dominate the opening or make it too costly for the Empire to keep supplying their forces.

This question has to be answered early before any captured worlds can be put to productive Imperial use. This is where any and all cloaked ships available to the Feds should be employed in hit and run raids that concentrate on Imperial freighters.

Good point. Fortunately for the Imps it would be out of character for the Feds to sieze control, before a state of war existed. This is also why in my scenario fully a third of the fleet maintains this forward garrison as soon as it is captured and established. The idea of using cloaked ships is a good one, but the Feds only have one. Not nearly enough to assault the only point of attack availible. Even if the Defiant leaks through to the Imperial Galaxy how is the Defiant going to catch freighters thatare faster than it?

Also periodic mining with huge antimatter mines or salvoes of antimatter drones to cross into Imperial space and explode to keep the Impies on their toes. The key here is to make the duty grinding on the forces keeping the wormhole open. Make the Imperials commit enough forces for security to slow their conquest.

Excelent Idea. But eventually the Imps get upset enough they start leveling planets. That’s what they did when the rebels tried similar tactics.

The Federation really lost the war when the Imperials were allowed to capture and hold both ends of the wormhole. The Feds should have had large enough minefields and rings of stations capable of handling the large ISD’s they saw in the brief time that the two governments talked to each other.

I figure both sides would have limited travel in their respective spaces, so the Imperials are at a bit of a disadvantage trying to manouver and fight in Federation space … even though their ships are faster. To quote Han Solo: “You don’t want to bounce too close to an asteroid or fly through a star.” That would slow Imperial expansion a bit at first, and again make control of the wormhole a priority.

Fair enough. Sadly we don’t know how long it would take the Imps to map things out. Or to what degree this would hamper them. Eventually the Imps get the maps they need. If I were the Imps and in this scenario I am, I would act real nice until I was ready to start the war on my terms. I just can’t see the Feds being the agressor is any scenario. Until then they can sit with massive superiority on the wormhole. In the end I’m sure the Ferengi would love the Imperial Galaxy. If I were a Ferengi I would deliver whatever the Imps wanted for a few years exclusive transwormhole trade. Just imagine what happens when the Hutt meet the Ferengi.

Starfleet studies hit and run tactics extensively, and may come to the conclusion that a fleet action would be pointless until a near balance of forces could be achieved at some strategic star system. So the Imperials would be faced with the same situation they have at home versus the Rebellion. Never losing a battle but not gaining any victory.

The problem is without at least speed parity, hit and run is hard to pull off. Simply put the Imperials only have to defend the wormhole. Any other target is non-vital. So the only place the Feds can try to force a main fleet action is there. And any smart commander would place enough forces to ovewhelm any potential attack. The Feds have no such option. They have many sites that simply must be defended. The Imps can pick and choose which ones to attack. And when they do, if they don’t have the local superiority they desire, they can choose to leave without engagement.

In the long run you are probably right. The Feds would turn into a second Rebellion. The two would eventually trade notes, and both would become far more dangerous than either had been. In the long run the Imps need to develop a good counter-insurgency plan. But the Federation as it was would be long gone by then.

Grand Admiral Bartman

[Monster104]

As for not having star charts, that’s not very difficult to take care of. Standard military procedure would require huge amounts of intelligence to be gathered, and star charts would be plotted (albeit rather crudely) by recon units relatively easily and quickly.

[Psi_Cop]

Well Psi Cop what do you think?

Grand Admiral Bartman

What do I think? Good Lord. There isn’t a chance in hell that I’ll be able to respond everything in this thread since my last post (at leastintelligently) at the moment. And I’m afraid the problem will compound. I’ll just toss out a few general things first.

If we’re going to use post-Dominion wars Federation Fleet Figures, I fully expect to see Empire Fleet Figures for after the Rebellion has taken over a large portion of the galaxy. After Grand Admiral Thrawn, after the “X-Wing” books. Or, we could just use figures from both fleets prior to great destruction.

…Which brings me to the next thing. 25k ISDs? Wow, Lucas was having a field day when he coined figures for the Empire. Trying to make the enemy seem overwhelming, I suppose. And in all fairness, the Dominion was organized the same way… massive numbers of super-powerful ships.

What say for the rest of the conversation (if people wish to continue it), everyone is taken to an unknown region with all their fleets and left to have at it. Demon possession, whatever, they just want to fight, and no one has the homefield advantage. If that’s alright with you, Psi Cop.

This suggestion by El Elvis Rojo is well taken. That is a good point. Why is the Empire invading Federation territory? Unless someone objects strongly, let his suggestion be enacted. I do seem to be learning from this, though. Maybe I’ll bring up the thread again in a couple years (like Spoofe did), and the paramaters can be defined better.

Obviously, defeating 25k ISDs is quite difficult, especially if they’re attacking planets at the same time. So let’s redefine things a bit more. I know that the “open space” thing does put a crimp on the Empire’s normal modus operandi, and I apologize. But it sort of takes the fun of battles away if you’re starving out planets, conquering them, and withholding supplies. Agreed that it is a vital part of battle, and it is what one would do if you wanted to win a war. But it does go against what I originally wanted in my inital post… a battle royale between massive fleets.

So how does this sound? A sphere of space 100 light years in radius. Many star systems, planets, asteroid belts, etc. No black holes, nebulae, or other strange space phenomonae. The two fleets are in there with sufficient supplies to carry out a prolonged campaign. Fleet Strengths are the same (I can’t see any way to legitimately shrink the Empire fleet, though I should have researched a bit more before opening this thread), but there aren’t any strongpoints to defend, except self-determined ones. Communications are fine, as are sensors. There isn’t much hiding, and not much running. But you can run and live to fight another day when necessary. And have massive thousands-ship fleets engaging each other when necessary. Empire vs. combined Federation-Klingon fleet.

Sound fair? Looks like I fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The first, of course, is never get involved in a space war in Federation Space, but only slightly less known is… Never start a thread without researching well. Whoops.

-Fleet Admiral Psi Cop, USS Asimov, NCC-4242

[Enola_Straight]

The Empire have more capital ships than the Federation.

Imp ISDs have more firepower than Fed Galaxy class
(Sovereign class is much more equal)

A hyperdrive vessel can cross a galactic distance that a warp vessel would require decades to transverse.
(Top warp speed, several thousand c, Hyperspace=1.5 million times c)

Imp-3 Fed-0

I have one tactical equalizer for the Federation:
Low warp strafing.

ISDs either go sublight or 1.5 million c…nothing in between. Furthermore, a ship in hyperspace can’t maneuver;
only travel in a straight line.

Fed ships can go from 0 to at most 5000 c and any speed in between…and maneuver at warp.

You would have a hard time fighting a ship that can out-move you at a speed you can’t reach.

[SpaceGhostofArrakis]

[sidecomment]The reason why everyone is assuming the Empire is Invading the Federation is because of that damn “Stardestroyer.net”.[/sidecomment]

I find the assertation that the Galactic Empire, at it’s height, had over 25,000 ISD’s astonishing, but since it * is* canon, there isn’t much we can do about it.

On that same note, we have yet to see a ST canon estimate for the number of Large Federation ships. Therefore, we couldincrease that number to whatever we choose(But I won’t)

I also find it highly dubious that the Hyperdrive is as fast as the Star Warriors, even the “canon” literature, claims. With just about half the galaxy unexplored (dispite thousands of millenia of rule by the Old Republic) I’m inclined to believe that the SW propulsion isn’t as great as it’s made out to be.

Don’t believe me? I’m looking at my copy of Vector Prime right now, the “top” half of the galaxy is almost completely unexplored, altough the map-maker has apperently used forced perspective to have the known galaxy appear bigger.

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

[El_Elvis_Rojo]

Again, I want to express my lack of full knowledge here, but aren’t warp fields created everytime a ship goes into warp? And aren’t they rather fragile? And if a warp field breaks down while a ship is in warp, isn’t it scattered throughout a large area in little tiny bits? Now, although a ship traveling at warp 3 can zip in and out rather quickly amongst an Imperial fleet, an imperial fleet can light up the sky with enough laser fire and TIEs that high speed manuvering would be rather difficult, even with Data at the helm. Therefore, I think the quick strike approach with the Fed ships would be much more risky than a more full frontal attack. And as for ships jumping in and out of cloak in the heat of battle, that doesn’t sound too smart either. While cloak is engaged, ships shields and weapons are offline, and in a fairly close quarter combat zone (space battle speaking), and seeing as how most TIE pilots don’t seem as though they’d be able to pass a basic driver’s test, again, the premise of a TIE (or several TIEs) smacking into your ship with your shields down seems like a very high possibility to me. Using the “swarm of gnats” simile earlier, how often have you walked through a swarm of gnats without bumping into any of them, even while trying to be crafty? And as far as I can tell, either through honor or just plain combat reasoning, flipping your cloaking device on and off in battle is a very stupid tactic…I don’t think I’ve ever seen it used. Ships approach cloaked, decloake, fire, and if the enemy’s still standing, stay uncloaked and finish the fight. Decloaking takes time, shuts down your shields, and leaves you visible long enough for the enemy to remember where you were and fire all hundred laser canons in your direction.

[Bartman]

Well if the number of ISDs is astonishing, it is astonishingly small. Remember the Feds have about 150 member worlds and maybe 10,000 colonies. The Empire has 10,000,000 member worlds and countless “uncharted settlements.”

So if 150 Fed worlds maintain a fleet of 3,000 to 6,000, they are suporting 20 to 40 ships each. And about 1/2 of these are “Capital” ships rather than freighters or science vessels.

The Empire on the other hand is only maintaining 25,000 Capital ships? That is 1 per 400 worlds.

Some of the novels suggests that the ISD is only 1 particular make and that their are hundreds of types each with production runs in the thousands. For example we know that the Victory Class Star Destroyers had a larger run. They of course are older and are becoming obsolete. They also suggest that ISDs are actually Destroyers, and we simply never saw the Cruisers and larger warships because nearly all the action takes place in the outer rim (the boondocks). This has some questionable on screen evidence to support it.

I choose to be as generous as I could to the Feds and gave them the number of ships they would have had if the Dominion war had never happened (even though production would have been lower in peace time and a fair number of ships would have been retired on time rather than pressed into extended service). I also took about the smallest numbers I could find for the Empire and made them leave 2/3 of their ships behind. And the empire still had a sizeable advantage in numbers.

Remember the Empire is about 50,000 larger than the Feds. This is similar to Andorra fighting a war with the Soviet Union. I think you picked a tough row to hoe Psi Cop.

SpaceGhostofArrakis
While I have read Michael Wong’s work at StarDestroyer.net I’m basing very little on it. I am assumeing that the Empire is invading the Feds, because that is what the Empire does. The Feds are not an agressive invading nation. So the assumption is natural.

Grand Admiral Bartman

[Deptford]

Why does 25000 ISD’s sound unreasonable? The Federation can field several 1000 ships, and its only 1 power in 1 quadrant of the Galaxy.Scaling up to the Empire , which has the resources of a whole Galaxy to call upon I don’t see the problem.