Star Wars vs Star Trek

**Nasor** · 12-23-04, 01:34 AM

All the cloak/warp/etc. tricks in the world won't help you when a star destroyer comes melt your planet into slag. How are you going to stop it? Your weapons probably can't scratch its shields, and it can vaporize you (assuming you're one of the standard trek races) in one shot. Then it's off to wreck your next planet, and you can't even catch it because it's a bazillion times faster than you are.

**~~Roman~~** · 12-23-04, 01:37 AM

I seriously doubt just comparing volume actually means anything. Let's compare the volume of a conventional explosive, and an atomic bomb. The difference in destructive power is exponential. We aren't really comparing apples to apples.

If X- and Y-Wings can take out capital Empire ships, then I'm pretty sure they can knock down the Enterprise or whatever.

You also forget the few number of ships Star Trek has. Mostly governments own and operate space ships. In Star Wars, owning ships is relatively common. Star Wars outguns and out powers Star Trek.

**HiProfile** · 12-23-04, 10:52 AM

In ST there's tons of privately-held ships - just not capital ships, same as in SW. If it was, such a successful bounty hunter like Han Solo would have a fleet of ships, not just one.

As for the Death Star, first it has to be built. It could be done, but very slowly since it'd have to be far away from any ST bases. Also, the deflector shields in SW can be penetrated by vessels, but ST shields protect against physical projectiles too. Say the Death Star swoops in to a ST planet - it needs time to possition itself, then a bit of time to charge the weapon. If the Millenium Falcon can get inside the Death Star and destroy its generator up, I highly believe any small ST vessel could. By the time the Death Star would be in range, the ST ship would be inside already.

What I don't get is how when talking about ST everyone seems to only look at their capital ships, and even at that, just Federation ships. The Enterprise-D was something like 705 meters long IIRC (sans warp bubble/Traveler episode), compaired to 1.6 kilometers for a Imperator-class star destroyer to 17+ kilometers for an Eclipse-class. There are much more massive ships in the ST galaxy than usual Federation capital ships, but they don't need to be huge to have powerful weapons.

Also, ST ships (Federation in particular) used relatively low powered weapons because most of the time the ship wasn't design for war duty and/or their focus was on conventional, safe, run-of-the-mill & highly-acurate weapons. The death star or other star destroyers may be able to pick off a large ST ship, but not before it does a very short range FLT (warp) jump behind the ship/battlestation out of its main weapon range. I *know* SW ships are very powerful (when they're big enough), but sheer force means little of you can't deliver it before you're blown to bits.

For Roman's post: I think size is relavant. The Xindi superweapon, for instance, would be hard to target & destroy (by SW weapons/ships) in time before it wiped out a planet [assuming each planet doesn't just have a virtual satelite system consisting of thousands of TIE's/X-Wings holding formation 24/7]. The Death Star, conversly, needed well over a minute to possition itself to destroy a planet, in which time a small ship was able to penetrate its shields and destroy it. ST ships have the capability for accurate short-range (<1 billion miles) FLT jumps directly to (and away from) a SW capital ship, while SW ships rely exclusively on conventional propulsion when it comes to sub-lightyear distances. Basicly, ST ships' ability to deliver powerful-enough weapons directly to an attacking SW capital ship's doorstep in a few seconds nullifies most of the SW advantages (IMO...).

For Nasor's post: 1) planetary shield grids (how do you think the Death Star weapon would be weakened by that?), 2) planetary cloak fields (assuming you addapt & enlarge those used on the ST:Ent Spheres), 3) cloaked mine fields. If ST ships used borg warp conduit hubs, they could move fairly close to SW speeds, and I know that a couple quantum torpedos have the power to destroy the surface features of a planet. One ship with a couple torpedo launchers could fire enough of them to destroy everything on a planet's surface before any death star, star destroyer, or TIE fighter could get in range, target, and destroy it. Plus, whats the point in destrying a planet and creating a useless debris field when you can eradicate the surface and still mine the resources? FYI there have been cases of ST ships being capible of destroying planets by messing with its core - TINY ones (<300 KM) compaired to the size needed for SW ships to be capible of destroying a planet (1.6 KM for a Imperator-class)

As much as I don't want to start a flame war, I just can't find much advantage in having a small handful of planet-destroying battlestations that can blown up so easily. I may change my possition if this can be answered (since it just popped into my head) - were the first Death Star's shields penetrated by the x/y-wings, or did they have to be shut down before the fighters could move to the surface? If the shields had to be down, then ST may be screwed, unless they had a bunch of the cloaked Spheres around each planet. They could create a massive distortion around the death star or star destroyer, which they easily could, since they can do so with fast moving ~500 meter ST ships. The distortion would easily rip up any matter in it, shielded/Holtzman-protected or not. And given that some ST races have phased cloaks, the Spheres would be nearly impossible to get rid of.

And yes, I do type too much.

**Nasor** · 12-23-04, 01:46 PM

Originally Posted by HiProfile

For Nasor's post: 1) planetary shield grids (how do you think the Death Star weapon would be weakened by that?)

Actually, Alderan was supposed to had a planetary shield (it's in the novel and you can see it in the DVD version of the movie, although no one ever explicitly talks about it). It's didn't seem to do much. How many ST planets have ever been shown to have planetary shields?[quote], 2) planetary cloak fields (assuming you addapt & enlarge those used on the ST:Ent Spheres)Again, how many planets have cloaks? I believe we know of 2 or 3 at most. Earth certainly doesn't have one.

3) cloaked mine fields.

It's very unlikely that mines would do anything. Remember, it takes about 3000 photon torpedoes to equal the power of a single capital ship's turbo-laser. Just how many mines are you expecting them to hit? It had better be in excess of 30,000.

If ST ships used borg warp conduit hubs, they could move fairly close to SW speeds,

Assuming there's a warp conduit to take you were you need to go...

and I know that a couple quantum torpedos have the power to destroy the surface features of a planet.

Still insignificant compared to imperial fire power, and probably unable to scratch imperial shields.

As much as I don't want to start a flame war, I just can't find much advantage in having a small handful of planet-destroying battlestations that can blown up so easily. I may change my possition if this can be answered (since it just popped into my head) - were the first Death Star's shields penetrated by the x/y-wings, or did they have to be shut down before the fighters could move to the surface?

There seem to be different types of shields in SW. Some block everything, others only block weapon shots. The first DS had the type that only blocks weapons, which meant that small ships could fly to and from the death star without the shield being lowered. They probably wanted it this way so that they could launch fighters and shuttles without having to lower the shield. They were mainly worried about keeping capital ships out, since they couldn't conceive of small fighters being a threat to their moon-sized ship.

The second death star has a shield that blocked everything, but it was being projected from Endor rather than the DS itself because the second DS didn't have its shield generator working yet. It seems likely that they would switch to the second type of shield after their first little disaster, but who knows.

**WARBIRD** · 12-26-04, 05:34 AM

STAR TREK WOULD DOMINATE!!!!!!

A couple of quick points:

The Enterprise-D could destroy planets (if it so desired) and could make very quick work of the Death Star. This point I believe to be important because, as far as I know, the Death Star was the most powerful weapon in the Empire's Arsenal (and the empire was the dominate force in SW universe).

Data was a far finer specimen of artificial intelligence than R2D2 could ever hope to be.
Not that anyone has commented on this, but it lends itself to the Dominance of Trek.

The force was awesome. It was awesome, because it started sucking I first heard Quiggy mention in Ep.1 "metachlorines" or whatever they are called. Now the force is bahness.

**Nasor** · 12-26-04, 12:06 PM

Originally Posted by WARBIRD

The Enterprise-D could destroy planets (if it so desired) and could make very quick work of the Death Star.

And your reason for thinking this is....what, exactly? I recall one episodse where the Enterprise-D couldn't even destroy an ASTEROID, let alone a planet.

**OpteronGuy** · 12-26-04, 02:15 PM

Originally Posted by WARBIRD

The force was awesome. It was awesome, because it started sucking I first heard Quiggy mention in Ep.1 "metachlorines" or whatever they are called. Now the force is bahness.

Not to be an ass or anything, but WTF does this sentence mean? Can someone else decode it for me?

**Asguard** · 12-26-04, 04:24 PM

Originally Posted by WARBIRD

STAR TREK WOULD DOMINATE!!!!!!

The Enterprise-D could destroy planets (if it so desired) and could make very quick work of the Death Star. This point I believe to be important because, as far as I know, the Death Star was the most powerful weapon in the Empire's Arsenal (and the empire was the dominate force in SW universe).

have you ever herd of the sun crusher?

it was an invincable fighter plane that caried an arsanal designed to cause suns to go super nova instantly

think about that

it just flys in shoots one into the sun and there goes the head quarters of the fed. then it flys to romulas and there goes romulas and reames. then it does the same to the Klingons

then there was the little death star that was never finished. Tighter defences and slightly less power. Purpose was to target capital ships and it could fire out of more pods and faster than the first death star. So could the second as i recall

so you have a little death star flying around killing ships and a fighter plane destroying suns and killing worlds

whats left afterwards?

**STG** · 12-30-04, 06:16 PM

Star Trek would indefinately win no matter what!
Think of it this way, there are no Death Stars left because they got destroyed. The Empire has been destroyed. There are hardly any jedi left. The Rebellion has been exausted and there are numerous civil wars happening.
The fighters and the ships of the Star Wars universe require more maintainence and care than anything in the Star Trek universe as they are mainly computer based and can maintain themselves so this gives the star trek crews more time for battle. Star Wars doesn't have all the force of an entire galaxy anyway as most of it is yet to be explored and it is in threat of being invaded. The Star Wars galaxy must be so small anyway as it takes only days to travel accross it and thats traveling at less than 0.5 past the speed of light for most ships.It is supposidely 100 lightyears accross. What a load of *!@" it can't be as it takes 2 mins to travel accross it on a conventional ship.
Whereas in the star trek Galaxy it takes a high speed ship over 10yrs to travel less then half the length of the galaxy and thats traveling at more than 7 times the speed of light. This shows that in relation the Star Wars galaxy is much smaller and the laws of the speed of light have been exadurated a bit as the speed of light is far greater than it is possibly mentioned in the Star Wars galaxy. So I rest my case.
Oh and there is the matter of Q

**Kron** · 01-01-05, 05:07 AM

I believe Dune would triumph.

When it comes to speed:
Star Trek slow
Star Wars fast
Dune instantaneous.

When it comes to universe-size:
Star Trek is pathetic
Star Wars has an entire GALAXY
Dune has The Scattering, where humanity was so spread out, no-one one knew how many planets were colonized.

When it comes to ship-quality:
Star Trek good
Star Wars better
Dune bad. Until it got no-ships. Then Dune best

When it comes to ship-quantity:
Star Trek bad
Star Wars good
Dune MONUMENTAL. The thinking machines have a LOT of quantity

When it comes to ship-size:
Star Trek bad
Star Wars huge
Dune, one word: Heighliners

For the shield issue, I believe only Dune shields work on the Holtzman principle, and ALL lasers work on the Lasgun principle. Therefore if the Deathstar launched a super-laser on a Dune planet, and some guy was on the ground in the way with a personal shield, The guy blows up, the Deathstar blows up.

Truly Star Trak CANNOT compete with Dune. Star Wars would whoop Dunes ass, except for the shield issue I pointed out, which would leave Dune in the win. When it comes to space-warfare Dune's okay. When it comes to ground-warfare, Dune ROCKS. Take somebody like the Tyrant and give him a personal shield, he would slaughter. Same with Miles Teg, the Bene Gesserit, the Fremen, the Sarduakar, the Ginaz, the mechs, and just about anyone.

The Honoured Matres are a whole different issue, They could board a ship, capture the crew with fighting skills and then turn them into sex-slaves. Combined with the face-dancers, and the Ixian probe, and Dune wins. Period.

P.S. I forgot about jedi, Norma Cenva will kill them all too.

**OpteronGuy** · 01-01-05, 04:05 PM

Originally Posted by Kron

I believe Dune would triumph.

When it comes to speed:
Star Trek slow
Star Wars fast
Dune instantaneous.

When it comes to universe-size:
Star Trek is pathetic
Star Wars has an entire GALAXY
Dune has The Scattering, where humanity was so spread out, no-one one knew how many planets were colonized.

When it comes to ship-quality:
Star Trek good
Star Wars better
Dune bad. Until it got no-ships. Then Dune best

When it comes to ship-quantity:
Star Trek bad
Star Wars good
Dune MONUMENTAL. The thinking machines have a LOT of quantity

When it comes to ship-size:
Star Trek bad
Star Wars huge
Dune, one word: Heighliners

For the shield issue, I believe only Dune shields work on the Holtzman principle, and ALL lasers work on the Lasgun principle. Therefore if the Deathstar launched a super-laser on a Dune planet, and some guy was on the ground in the way with a personal shield, The guy blows up, the Deathstar blows up.

Truly Star Trak CANNOT compete with Dune. Star Wars would whoop Dunes ass, except for the shield issue I pointed out, which would leave Dune in the win. When it comes to space-warfare Dune's okay. When it comes to ground-warfare, Dune ROCKS. Take somebody like the Tyrant and give him a personal shield, he would slaughter. Same with Miles Teg, the Bene Gesserit, the Fremen, the Sarduakar, the Ginaz, the mechs, and just about anyone.

The Honoured Matres are a whole different issue, They could board a ship, capture the crew with fighting skills and then turn them into sex-slaves. Combined with the face-dancers, and the Ixian probe, and Dune wins. Period.

P.S. I forgot about jedi, Norma Cenva will kill them all too.

Good points. Most of this was pointed out by Roman and I, however I think this battle is coming down to merely Trek vs Wars. I also feel that Dune would pwn the rest of them. Leto II before he was the worm? Talk about a focking handful that would be.

**Kron** · 01-02-05, 10:35 AM

Let's not forget that Dune can clone dead heros as gholas. Let's not forget that that we can kill Trek and Wars heros, and then clone them into CONDITIONED gholas that will obey the will of Dune!!!

Some points that you and Roman forgot where the pre-guild times, where they were cymeks, Omnius, jihadis and mind-blowing (literally) sorceresses.

The fact that no-ships are shielded by prescience means that Palpatine and Vader CAN'T sense them through the force!!! No-ships are also known to take out planets by surreptitiously redirecting huge Doomsday-asteroids towards planets while cloaked.

**OpteronGuy** · 01-02-05, 04:59 PM

Originally Posted by Kron

Let's not forget that Dune can clone dead heros as gholas. Let's not forget that that we can kill Trek and Wars heros, and then clone them into CONDITIONED gholas that will obey the will of Dune!!!

Some points that you and Roman forgot where the pre-guild times, where they were cymeks, Omnius, jihadis and mind-blowing (literally) sorceresses.

The fact that no-ships are shielded by prescience means that Palpatine and Vader CAN'T sense them through the force!!! No-ships are also known to take out planets by surreptitiously redirecting huge Doomsday-asteroids towards planets while cloaked.

All good points made, but this is why we wanted to get some rules setup for this battle, Roman started on some but nothing ever really came from it. I mentioned some of the B.G (Before Guild) ships in one of my posts at some point but not anything about the cymeks, etc. Thing is, we need to setup a time period for each from which to pluck the different technologies, characters, ships, etc. out of. Let's say we add in the Thinking Machines from the B.G times in Dune then I don't think any of them stand a chance since machines are un-bound to greed, they work at (considered to humans) perfect levels and rates, but if we use them then are we going to add in the Leto II who doesn't come into play for another 10,000 years? There are alot of complications between all the universes that would have to be worked out for some sort of battle to take place that no one really wants to sit down and figure out, hence I don't think anyone can truely say who would win and who wouldn't. My vote would be Dune, but I could be wrong. Who knows?

**Nasor** · 01-02-05, 05:35 PM

Originally Posted by Kron

I believe Dune would triumph.

When it comes to speed:
Star Trek slow
Star Wars fast
Dune instantaneous.

This is true, and is probably the biggest advantage for Dune.

When it comes to universe-size:
Star Trek is pathetic
Star Wars has an entire GALAXY
Dune has The Scattering, where humanity was so spread out, no-one one knew how many planets were colonized.

There is no indication that the people in Dune have colonized even a small fraction of their galaxy. If they have, there's no evidence that they're actually working together or even aware of each other's existence.

When it comes to ship-quality:
Star Trek good
Star Wars better
Dune bad. Until it got no-ships. Then Dune best

I agree that no-ship are very good, but how many are there? There are thousands of star destroyers, and countless smaller ships. Considering the relative sizes the Dune space fleet to the Star Wars fleets, the SW people might be able to just slag every dune planet and accept the loses of a few dozen or hundred star destroyers to the no-ships, then just wait for the no-ships to break down from lack of supplies or run out of munitions.

When it comes to ship-quantity:
Star Trek bad
Star Wars good
Dune MONUMENTAL. The thinking machines have a LOT of quantity

Did they ever actually quantify the number of ships that the machines had? Also, keep in mind that these aren't no-ships. You can't have it both ways - do you want a small fleet of no-ships, or a large fleet of crappy ships?

When it comes to ship-size:
Star Trek bad
Star Wars huge
Dune, one word: Heighliners

From the descriptions in the books, heighliners appear to be little more than huge skeletons that other ships attach to. They're almost entirely empty space, and it's not clear that they even have any weapons. And exactly how big are they, anyway? Bigger than a 17 km long Executor class SSD?

For the shield issue, I believe only Dune shields work on the Holtzman principle, and ALL lasers work on the Lasgun principle. Therefore if the Deathstar launched a super-laser on a Dune planet, and some guy was on the ground in the way with a personal shield, The guy blows up, the Deathstar blows up.

Do you have any justification for this, other than the fact that it helps your argument?

Star Wars would whoop Dunes ass, except for the shield issue I pointed out, which would leave Dune in the win.

Do Dune ships even have shields?

When it comes to space-warfare Dune's okay.

Since it's not clear that Dune weapons could even penetrate SW shields, I disagree.

**Asguard** · 01-02-05, 06:19 PM

all star wars would have to do is fly the death star to dune and blow it up, after that they can just wait them out

**OpteronGuy** · 01-02-05, 08:10 PM

Here's my view on the whole slagging planets thing. If you are out to take over the universe to increase your power, what is the point of blowing up every planet of your enemy? You aren't going to have anything to show for all that you have destroyed. It seems unlikly to me that they would slag all the planets one by one like this. Typically when wars break out you want to take over territory of your enemy so that your power base increases. The slagging of planets seems to me to be more of a fall back tactic to say that you don't have to deal with the actual fighting.

**Asguard** · 01-02-05, 09:23 PM

i agree with the exseption of arakis. The spice is what gives there fighters "magic" powers and same with the witches. The spice is also what makes there space travel possable. As they say many times in the books "the spice must flow"

So if i was comander of the star wars forces and was faced with the dune forces i would send the death star with a task force to compleatly destroy arakis. It wouldnt matter what sort of losses i sustained because i could then just wait them out and in a few years they would be back to the stone age

**OpteronGuy** · 01-02-05, 11:28 PM

Originally Posted by Asguard

So if i was comander of the star wars forces and was faced with the dune forces i would send the death star with a task force to compleatly destroy arakis. It wouldnt matter what sort of losses i sustained because i could then just wait them out and in a few years they would be back to the stone age

This is true only to a certain extent. In Children of Dune, when Leto II takes over the empire it's noted that the Great Houses will be able to sustain themselves for hundreds of years before falling apart. For one Great House this could be 200 years, while for another it could be 600. So just waiting isn't really an option as most of the Great Houses had hordes set aside in case things went bad, but I see what you are saying with this.

Also, Arrakis becomes a moot point further down the line of books as the Tleilax make an exact copy of the spice.

**Kron** · 01-03-05, 10:11 AM

I agree that the timeline issue is a major obstacle, but I would like to point out that the Star Wars Death-Stars aren't the only slaggers. The Honoured Matres slagged Dune itself in a fraction of the time it would take to move the Death-star into position. In defense of my Holtzman issue, it is explained in the glossary of Dune that firing focused and polarized light at a Holtzman field would cause sub-atomic feedback which would cause nuclear fusion in both the laser and the the field-generater. Judjing by the fact that a single proton-torpedo in the core of the Death-Star blew it to smithereens, I believe sub-atomic fusion would do that and more.

The fact that Heighliners are huge empty spaces means that unlike the Death-Star, which is a static defense (which takes ages just to turn), The heighliner is a bustling HIVE of warships. Also the time and money it would take to have a single Death-star built would be enough to build more than 20 heighliners. Also Each Heighliner has a Guild Navigator, who have prescience. War's only has Vader and Palpatine, Dune has many,many more.

Apart from the timeline issue, I would like to point out that when two civilizations meet, they attempt to steal each other's secrets. Dune will want Trek and Wars tech, Trek will want Wars' and Dune's, and Wars will want Trek's and Dune's.

P.S. In my earlier posts, I forgot to point out that Dune's warriors are FANATICS.