Awesome, I've gotten a bad itch for ST vs 40k debates after playing Space Marine (3 out of 5 by the way--if you're a 40k fan, you'll enjoy it, but combat can be frustrating due to the healing system and the story is your standard 40k theme to where me and my friend were calling it long before it got there. Still, there are times when the game is exceptionally enjoyable...but then seems to nose dive afterwards in fun. Still, check it out).
An exageration of course, but one that needs to be corrected. The Imperium, in terms of planets, is only 870x larger (at most) and probably only a hundred times larger in terms of population. In terms of fleet, the Imperial Navy is at most three times larger, possibly only twice as large.
You have no idea just how wrong you are. Aside from liking really big things for no reason and having a massive empire and population, the Imperium does not operate on a scale larger than the UFP.
...That isn't a good thing. In fact, that's a very bad thing. Do you want to know why it takes half an hour to load a gun? Because they use slave and pulleys to move the weapons into place. Those slaves are a waste of space and energy for absolutely no gain over a more heavily mechanized system that would be fifteen to thirty times faster--at least.
In how per say?
Let's look at this.
Space Marines as genetic super soldiers.
Yes and no. While it's true that the Space Marines are incredibly strong, durable, and have a dozen different useful abilities that make them better than the UFP red shirt, the technology itself is archaic and decayed.
In order to make such a super soldier, you first need to select young men who have a large amount of combat training and are effectively veteran warriors. Most are also from barbaric societies because they tend to churn out the best in terms of physical abilities.
Then you need a gene seed. The gene seed is one of the largest flaws in this design scheme; because the Chapter can't just make their own. They need to grow them inside living marines until they're ripe for the picking. This usually takes a decade or so and a marine can only hold two at a time.
The then possible candidate must then survive a risky and painful procedure that will transform them into these weapons of destruction--and there's a fairly high rate of failure.
Altogether, most chapters have around 1,000 space marines, though there are a few exceptions on both ends of the scales and there are only about a thousand chapters. Meaning roughly, you have about a million space marines.
Now let's look at the Jem'Hadar:
They're as strong or stronger than Klingons (which have 3x the strength of a human), they can cloak, they can walk through force fields, and they're religiously loyal to their masters. They don't need to eat, sleep, or drink. All substances required is ingested through the white drug. They're also incredibly expendable and are the mainstay of the Dominion war machine. There are easily hundreds of millions, if not a billion of them. They can also be grown in a very short time. They literally reach adulthood in three days.
Pound for pound, the Space Marines come out ahead in hand to hand combat, especially with their power armor and longer combat experience (Jem'Hadar don't live very long--the oldest are thirty I think). But Jem'Hadar are also capable of stealth and greater mobility against force fields.
Now, that is the Dominion, but even the UFP could have better supers soldiers, were they not downright disgusted with genetic manipulation.
The reason is, that the UFP has had that technology for centuries. Hell, Humans developed it in the 20th century. And those humans, called Augments, were easily stronger than Klingons, had incredibly fast reflexes (one Augment literally told a normal human that he was going to take his weapon and kick his ass before he could stop him--and then did it), incredible intelligence, and fairly endurable (not super--but well above average).
Then of course, there was that sanction use of genetic humans in TNG, where they were telepathic (move objects with mind, talk to people, ect.) and were literally living biological weapons. Their bodies were designed to have an air-born immune system that literally attacked air born agents dangerous to them. Unfortunately, it turns out that was a bad idea, as their bodies responded to the imperfect immune systems around them by trying to kill them because they saw them as carrying agents for disease.
You seem to have a very naive idea of how Starfleet works.
First, let's address the Space Marines and their bolters. As a modern day gun--those weapons are incredibly powerful. No doubt about it. It fires a .998 calibre round. The closest thing we have to that in the modern world is a .95 calibre round. That round is beyond the firing capacity of most humans. As in, if you fire it, you're going to get hurt and not likely hit anything. They're that big. Those rounds, with the muzzle velocity of the gun they use (guns and rounds that big are rare and not used often by anyone) at ~50 kilojoules.
The bullet is literally powerful enough to punch through several body armored humans in a line without stopping.
The bolter is likely to have a similar KE, but due to greater size and muzzle velocity, it probably won't be over 80 kilojoules. At most we can easily stop it at 100 kilojoules.
Then there's the second aspect of the bolter; its explosive rounds. Although I've seen where these rounds are supposed to have the yield of hand grenades, the fact is, most of them don't seem to in any sort of animated game or movie. See Dawn of War, Dawn of War II, the Space Marine game, and the Ultramarines movies.
Therefore, I suspect that the more common rounds probably don't have a yield that goes any higher than a firecracker. That sounds bad, but keep in mind; this is exploding inside you. And its sending shrapnel throughout your body. If this round were to hit you in the stomach, you
might live if you have immediate medical assistance. If it hits you in the chest, you're dead. And that's one bullet. Bolters are automatic weapons.
There are also more powerful and larger rounds, which do explode like hand grenades, ect. Or break apart into shrapnel. You get the idea.
But consider this. According to Kira, a Cardassian phaser rifle has an output of 4.7 megajoules (on its higher settings, obviously). She also stated that the UFP version was slightly less powerful, so we're probably looking at 4.5 megajoules. Even giving bolter rounds a KE of 100 kilojoules, they're still 45x weaker than a phaser rifle or the phaser pistol (ie, both have the same output, but the phaser rifle has a larger battery).
You can see this in how ST weapons work. At high levels, the disintegrate setting takes hold and men and women are vaporized in single shots. Only really heavy Imperium weaponry has that sort of firepower. As in, a relatively large cannon that even a Space Marine is going to be struggling to hold and the Guard would require a small team to move, set up, and fire the thing.
That's all in the single hand of one Starfleet officer and is standard issue.
So in the gun department, the UFP has the advantage. Phasers are more powerful and have half a dozen different settings for heating objects, melting objects, low-depth tunneling, and can even be set to widebeam to encompass a cone-like area in relatively close proximity.
They also have photon grenade launchers, which are smaller than their own rifles, can be carried by one man (including ammunition), and have a range of at least a kilometer--and that was stated to be close range, suggesting that a range of 2-5 kilometers is very likely, with an upper possibility of maybe 10 kilometers. Yield is hard to determine, but it's worth stating that at their minimal setting, beaming a couple into an adjoining room full of guards will 'not kill anybody, but shake them up a bit'.
Needless to say, it's much more powerful than a typical hand grenade if people 3-5 feet away with a wall separating them is going to leave them shaken up at its lowest possible setting.
Even if one were to dismiss the photon grenade as being able to kill a Space Marine, one can look no further than the Breen CRM 114. It's an energy weapon with the ability to pierce a 4.6 gigajoule shield. Which suggests that at the very least, it can produce equal or greater firepower than that shield can absorb. To give you an idea of what that means, 4.184 gigajoules is equal to a one ton bomb. See here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAYVMXYYAp4
These were weapons that the Breen were selling to illegal arms dealers and one of them bought two thousand of such devices. The Breen are also less powerful than the UFP, so it's very likely that they can field something similar, if not more powerful.
...Um, Titans aren't all that impressive actually. See here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXiYGiqG1FQ
Time index 2:10.
The captain puts in a warp-based power source that enhances the Titan's main cannon. It fires and destroys the spire. The destruction was less than impressive. It maybe had a yield of a few tons.
Compare that to the CRM 144, which is just a bit larger than a rifle, has a quick recharge rate, and are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of such devices in the black market.
Titans are cool as all hell, but they're bulky and their firepower does not pay off for the large hulk of mass that they are. Small phaser banks can easily match its firepower, are smaller, easier to deploy, and are cheap as fuck for the UFP to make.
