Grand Admiral Bartman
I know that, what I’m stating is the reason why everyone is assuming it’s a Invasion of the Federation is because of Wong’s fanfiction…even if you aren’t…
Psi Cop…
It’s usually traditional, in these types of debates, to assume that each side is at its best. That puts the Empire at pre-Endor, and the Federation at pre-Dominion.
I also like this suggestion, although it becomes more of a “Federation Strike Force vs. Imperial Strike Force”.
Enola Straight…
Well, yes and no. A ship entering hyperspace has a split second of “warmup” time in which it only travels at very slow speeds. Making a run into hyperspace but aborting the jump before actually entering hyperspace is known as a “microjump”. It allows jumps of up to only a few light-seconds… however, others have challenged that a microjump’s distance is measured in lighthours, not seconds. If this were the case, an Imperial vessel attempting the microjump maneuver would overshoot its target. That is why, in the previous thread, I’ve advocated the use of a dual jump tactic… jump to hyperspace away from the target, then whirl around and jump back, creating a very acute triangle in the process.
And some vessels have shown a capability of maneuvering in hyperspace (the Hound’s Tooth, for example), although we’ve never specifically seen a Star Destroyer display this capability.
True, and the Empire would quickly realize this. So they’d more than likely shrug off such a conflict and just initiate planetary bombardments. They can pull off a Base Delta Zero of most of the Federation’s planets before the Feds could even respond.
Space Ghost…
I disagree wholeheartedly. It just makes common sense: The Empire is the side most likely to indulge in total war, the Empire is the only side with the capability to do it, and the Empire says “Hi Opal!”
Actually, we can’t increase that number to whatever we choose. That wouldn’t make any sense. What we CAN do is make an estimate based on the evidence that we do have. Using Federation fleet numbers from DS9, the Federation’s total fleet size has been estimated around 8,000-12,000 ships (and I’m being very generous… some of the more diehard Warsies insist that the Feds only have about 3,000 ships).
Half? Try about a quarter. Out near the Galactic Rim, too.
Again, that is NOT “half”. That is a small section of the galactic rim. Additionally, the map is grossly inaccurate, as almost the entirety of the galactic rim has been left undeveloped. Why? Because it’s far away from everything, not because hyperdrive is too slow to get there. Would YOU want to start building cities in the middle of a wasteland if there was perfectly good real estate closer to home?
That map is meant as an entertainment guide, not as an accurate representation of the galaxy.
El Elvis Rojo…
I was always under the impression that if a warp field broke down, the ship simply dropped out of warp. Perhaps a more catastrophic failure results in destruction?
Anyway, I’d just like to use this opportunity to mention one primary difference between ST and SW faster-than-light propulsion: Warp requires a constant power usage, continually draining the engine while you’re in warp. Hyperspace takes one big gulp to get in, and another big gulp to get out, but while in hyperspace the fuel/energy consumption is nearly nonexistent.
Which brings up another useful tactic that the Empire can use: Run the Feds out of fuel. In the secondary scenario offered by El Elvis Rojo above, the Imps would drain the Feds’ energy reserves a lot less quickly just because their travel constraints aren’t as significant.
Other known classes of Imperial ships: Victory-class Star Destroyers, Dreadnaughts, Escort Frigates, Carrack-class light cruisers, Corellian corvettes, Strike-class cruisers, Lancer-class frigates, Corellian gunships, Star Galleons, Escort and Fleet carriers…
Basically, the 25,000 number of ISD’s is just a benchmark. There’s bound to be even larger numbers of the smaller ships, total.
Don’t forget Interdictor cruisers. Not only would they stop the Federation ships from using the ‘low warp strafing’ tactic suggested, they would also keep the Feds from running after the fight, setting up blockades of supply lines, etc. And since the Imperials can detect the Fed. ships in warp, that makes usage of the Interdictor that much more useful.
I don’t think Interdictors would stop warp travel. I’ve never seen anyone suggest that the presence of a large gravity shadow would make warp drive useless.
The only ways to really keep a ship from going to warp would be, A: lock a REALLY powerful tractor beam on them, or B: prevent them from creating a stable warp bubble, or C: destroy subspace in that region. Right now, the Empire is only capable of doing A, and they’d probably only be able to do that to the larger ships, and even then it’s possible that the Feds could still escape from the tractor beam.
As far as them researching for B and C, well, if the Federation hasn’t figured it out by now, the Empire’s not going to be able to catch up for a while.
An addendum: I also doubt the Empire’s ability to detect ships at warp.
It is questionable, but I view it as likely.
We know that the Imps have FTL communications. This requires the emission of something FTL and the interception and receipt of that same emission. Historically when we on Earth have this ability a sensor system is generally developed simultaneously or near simultaneously. Radio and Radar are good examples.
Once scenario that helps confirm this is the battle of Hoth. The Imps drop out of Hyperspace a long distance away, but “too close” to the rebels according to Vader. The Rebels sense them and raise the shield over Echo Base. The Imps detect the shield, before an officer is sent to inform Vader that they have arrived in the system. Thus when Vader is informed of their arrival at Hoth, we have already seen multiple uses of some sort sensing system that travels FTL.
A second scene that supports this is the Battle of Yavin 4. The rebel command center performs real time battle analysis for the fighter pilots. Now we do not know the exact distance between the gas giant and the moon with the rebel base. But given moons around Jupiter and Saturn, it should be between a few hundred thousand kilometers to a few million. Given that that DS was on the far side of the Gas giant the distance is even greater. Now it is possible that they had only light speed sensors and there was a few seconds lag, if the planet-moon distance is at the lower end of spectrum. At the higher end, the total lag time approaches a minute. This would be too long to be of any real use to the rebels. Not conclusive by any means, but indicative of FTL sensors.
Now if the Imps have FTL sensors, and if they have a decent range, they should be able to detect Warp ships because they travel in real space, they just do it really quickly.
Like I said it is questionable, but likely IMHO.
As far as Interdictors stoping warp, I agree that it seems highly unlikely that they would do anything.
gosh sounds like a discussion i had before , Empire all the time since they provide support for their capital ships , in the form of fighters , that carry small amounts of fire power but mulitplied by torpedoes and numbers , that said fighters can absorb losses of attrition and losing 10 of 100% only lowers their capabilities slightly,
Fed ships would be forced to defend themselves against fighters or the capitalships ,if they go after the fighters they get chewed up by the caps , etc , also against fighters the empire has lots and lots of turbolaser turrets all over their capital ships , also they have ION cannons on their gun boats to disable fedships to board them and capture them , or just blast them to hell.
The fighter idea was thought of in 1944 when capitalships got their asses kicked by fighters , most notably the Yamato who was designed to exchange blows with other capital ships , but was sunk by american fighters
oh also fed ships have domes where the bridge is on the bigger ships which are poorly defended (fighters and or turrets) so your average star destroyer would go thru the enemy fleet shooting at the weak dome points , much like the battle of wolf 359 where feds got their asses kicked badly ,
- federationships go to red alert , which essentially means drop shields , since whenever in ST i see a fed ship go into battle it always takes a major amount of damage
I always though red alert signified full power to shields? Just because they take a lot of damage during battle doesn’t mean their shields aren’t on, it just means that the way they work, a lot of damage is able to get through them. It usually takes two photon torpedoes to cause a control panel to explode while shields are up, but that usually only drops them to about 60%. Without shields, a torpedo would rip a whole straight through a ship. The shields are there, it’s just that the Federation ones allow a lot of splash damage through.
Also, I had a quick question about weaponry. Which is more powerful, a photon torpedo, or a proton torpedo? My old roomate, which is my source of information for most of this stuff over the years, explained proton torpedos as balls of high energy protons, that when they hit, cause a chain reaction of sorts in whatever they hit, thus making the damage rather extensive. Photon torpedos on the other hand, were described as basically huge blocks of lead (which apparently explode as well, or are those explosions more caused by things on the ship blowing up due to having a huge chuck of metal ripping through them at incredibly high speeds?). Give me some info, I’m curious.
Photon Torpedo is a lot more powerful. Photons carry a Matter/Antimatter reactor which powers the torp. On contact all remaining Antimatter is slammed into a block of matter causing a massive explosion. Given the size of the warhead (given in cannon sources), theroetically this explosion could be as much as 64-65 MT, or 50 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. However no reaction is 100% efficient and in any case at least half of the explosion will radiate harmlessly away from the target. My best wag is that the Photon delivers around 10 MT of energy to the target. In all it and the heavier (or more efficient) Quantum Torps are the heaviest weapons in Star Trek. The disadvantege to Photons is that the warhead does not seem to be stored in the torp. Instead the Antimatter is taken from the engine tanks (Which may explain why they carry several years worth of fuel). Of course this means you only have one containment system to worry about, so there are advantages to the system. But that means that firing rate is reduced by the need to charge the Torps before fireing and reducing the overall fireing rate.
In comparison the Proton Torp is not the heaviest weapon in Star Wars. In fact the only craft that seem to carry them are small (like fighters). The heaviest weapon (Excluding the DS Superlaser) in Star Wars is the Heavy Turbolaser. But fighters do not have the power generation to charge such a beast (even an ISD only has 12). So fighters and other small craft carry the Proton Torp to augment their standard Turbolasers without the power drain of the Heavy TLs. I would put the yield in the 100 KT to 1 MT range.
Grand Admiral Bartman
Hmmm… Going by just the movies here, so I’m sure to be contradicted by novels and other sources. Federation by a mile!
The Federation has:
Soldiers who each can actually hit their targets.
Hand weapons that can hit more than one target at once and vaporise it. That alone should put fear into any well trained trooper who is used to only blasters.
Better trained personnel with more manoeuvrable large ships (just watch in Empire how two star destroyers lumber into each others paths and can’t turn in time, who the hell was piloting those things a crew of hundreds if not thousands and not one bothered to notice they were on a collision course?!?!)
Starfleet tends to breed people who panic less and make risk assessments. Imperial fighter pilots tend to do more damage to each other by following others into incredibly dangerous situations without thought and then when things get to tight they tend to ram into each other (See Star Wars and Empire for examples of this)
A more self assured command structure. Sure the Imperials are cocky but the mere mention of a superior (Darth or the Emperor) and they begin loading their shorts and second guessing every move.
The Federation Commanders with a few exceptions tend to also have competent underlings who are not out to take their command or second guess their captain’s.
Redundant protected technology. The Imperials always seem to build their weapons with huge catastrophic Achilles heels. (The Death Stars and The shield generator’s power supplies are very venerable, The Walkers can be tripped, the Star destroyers shield generator sits out in the open,)
The ability to know when to retreat.
“evacuate in our moment of triumph?” need I say more.
Poor choices in appropriate equipment for terrain.
Really on a forest planet that is overgrown with vegetation what brilliant mind came up with the idea to bring in speeder bikes!
Transporter technology!
When you can pick up your competition and beam them into deep space you have an advantage.
The IMPERIALS: lots of ships and resources
No Moral code they will do anything to win. Unfortunately that also means many of the troopers don’t have the conviction in their own Empire, no wonder so many turn tail or change sides.
Magic: golly that Force is powerful, but Tecnobabble seems to defeat Magic each time the two meet.
The Death Star: Big powerful but they seem to always build them with a huge self destruct button.
Thousands of Elite Troopers, none of which have any marksmanship skills
Darth Vader: But he can’t be everywhere at once and he’s far too willing to sacrifice resources when he’s on a crusade. I mean look at the ships he wasted searching an astroid field for one small ship?
In the end the Fed’s have the advantages and the Imperials all the disadvantages. But The main Imperial weakness? They can be easily defeated by a small group of rebels by merely blowing up their emperor. (See transporter technology)
Okay, now I haven’t read any of the books either, but I’m pretty sure according to those, Stormtroopers were actually much better fighters. Shit, even in the movies they weren’t that bad. They managed to overcome the security on a vessel holding a royal diplomat (Star Wars), and after the shield generators were destroyed, it was the Troopers who cleaned out the rest of the base. Just because the movie’s main characters are able to kill them a lot doesn’t mean they all suck. Shit, if they didn’t, the movies would have all been short, no?
Af for all the Federations’ benefits? A phaser can vaporise someone, yes, but hey, a laser blast to the chest makes you just as dead. And I don’t recall a single phaser hitting multiple targets.
Better trained personnel? The movies never go into the personel of the Imp ships. Han and Chewie were just as good as any Fed engineer I would say, and as far as anyone else knows, they’re the equivillant to common grease monkeys. I’m pretty sure the Imperials have better trained personell on board. As for slower moving ships, sure Star Destroyers are slow, but missle boats and corveits are faster and probably just as manuverable in sub light speeds as Federation ships.
As for panic, you never see Imp. pilots panic. You see them turn a few knobs, walk down a hallway, and get blown up. That’s what they do in the movies, because that’s what they’re there for. Like stormtroopers, that alone doesn’t make them incompitant.
I know nothing of the Imperial command structures, but I give you the backstabbing lackies.
As for the Achilles heels, the Federation would never be able to know the Death Star’s weak point unless they stole the plans or someone gave them that information. I don’t think the Fed’s scanners are well enough to scan a moon-sized space station and find a three meter air vent and know instantly that it’s a weakpoint. And even if they did, they’d have to get to it. And anyway, everything has an achilles heel. Cloak can be detected, warp can be stopped, transporters screwed up, blah blah blah.
What type of terrain defense/protection does the Fed have? I’ve never seen them use anything but runabouts/shuttles and personal arms. I’d like to see the Fed hold off an Imperrial Walker with that.
The force vs. technobable? How can you create something through technobable that will stop a guy from strangling you WITH HIS MIND!!! Or using it to screw with highly sensitive yet important technologies that keep your ship running or, say, not explode? With the right knowledge and one quick thought, a photon torpedo’s anti-matter chamber could go off before it’s even loaded. A stretch? Yes, but when has technobable ever been within the constraints of normal reasoning?
And I think we’ve already determined that the transporter tactic is useless. You can’t get through the shields, and besides, beaming over away teams takes time and resources, and beaming people/equipment out of ship takes too much time and calculation to do it right. Plus, the transporters will go the first time something sparks on the ship.
The quantum torpedo warhead has a bundle of Quantum filaments in it, which, when detonated, release a proportional amount of vacuum energy from the zero-point field…basically, a small, localized version of the big bang.
Storm troopers are better than Fed Redshirt Ensigns cuz
the troops have armor and the Feddies have pajamas!
The federation does have one beam weapon which theoretically could equal that of a heavy turbolazer…
When a high warp-equivalent power is channeled through the main deflector dish, it could punch a hole in a Destroyer.
True, it didn’t work against Locutus of Borg, but they did get it to destroy an asteroid once.
BTW…
Has the Federation discovered any Strategic/tactical abilities of the Dyson Sphere?
The death star may be big as a moon, but the Dyson Sphere is the size of a SOLAR SYSTEM!
Agent Enola, Section 31
IMHO, if a few rogue Ewoks can take out an entire ground force of Emperial Storm Troopers, my money would side with the Federation.
But what I would really like to do is sabotage both sides with Tribbles and wait patiently to see who would survive.
Well, I’ve always said the person who wrote the software for the Trade Federation’s Battle droids clearly was the same person who wrote the software for the Stormtrooper’s training sims…
Captain Ghost, USS BonHomme Richard