United Federation of Planets vs Galacitic Empire

[KirkSkyWalker]

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And while I enjoy your little "conversation", KirkSkywalker, the Wong bashing seems a bit too much.
There isn't anything that was said here that has never been said before.
Do we really need to talk about him?

Believe it or not, I’d sincerely prefer not to, since I believe in peace like Kirk; but having been a pro-Trekkie for some time, I had to get that out of the way first, if we're going to discuss anything relating to ST vs. SW on a public website. Otherwise, the situation will come up sooner or later, and I've made the decision that it's best to be prepared-- and I assure you that I did not make it lightly, having read some pretty sobering accounts of what he's done to others who weren't ready for how ruthless and irrational he can be, resulting in him cyberstalking them, making legal threats, and worse.

For example, consider the following, also from his site:

Mike Wong:This category is reserved for flame mailers who don't have the guts to use their real names or even real E-mail addresses. Accountability is a prerequisite for respectability. People who refuse to divulge their real names can't ever be taken too seriously, because their insistence on anonymity is proof that they don't have any confidence in their own ideas.

In reality, people who don’t have any confidence in their own ideas, are those who react to other people's ideas by attacking the person directly, instead of the person's ideas. That’s why personal attacks are called “argumentum ad hominem“ errors-- i.e. argument against the person, rather than against their ideas.

And I certainly don’t want to be guilty of that! I'm simply illustrating his self-declared modus operandi of cyber-bullying in the guise of rational debate-- which is what I meant by the statement of his "protesting too much," i.e. he doesn't believe his own arguments if he's that vehement in attacking the person instead.
So when he discredits people for not giving their name, he really wants it so that he can cyber-bully, stalk, harass and defame them personally—and basically “know where they live--” particularly if he has their IP address via being the site’s admin, and he has been known to publish names and addresses and more personal info of those who disagree with him… all because they bought into that “give me your name or you’re chicken” nonsense, which was obviously just a strawman- argument in order to terrorize them, by illegally violating their privacy rights, and exposing their personal information to everyone on the web.
So basically it’s a deceptive Catch-22: i.e. if you don’t give your name then he calls you chicken, and if you do give your name then he calls your house at 3 a.m. (I don’t know for sure about that last part-- but he DOES give out your name, address and phone number to everyone, which is worse— but it’s not illegal, IF you give out your name freely yourself. Still think he’s not ruthless and crafty?).
And he continues:

Mike Wong:
Important note: for you people who ask why I don't take the moral high ground and adopt a firm, restrained, mature tone when dealing with these people, I would like to remind you that we are talking about whether the Empire would kick the Federation's ass! What the hell does maturity have to do with this? To most of its participants, this debate is a vacation from maturity. Those of us who have done this for a long time judge each others' efforts on skill and knowledge, as well as scientific accuracy and logical consistency. Maturity is simply a red herring, and as far as I'm concerned, the very idea of a "mature" Star Wars vs Star Trek debate is outlandish. In my experience, people start whining about "maturity" when they're trying to distract the audience from the fact that they're getting their asses kicked.

And in this regard, it's also a matter of his inciting all others on his board to do the same in emulating him, to the point where SDN has become a place where no Trekkie will go again,-- boldly or otherwise. It's how bullies operate: and the only alternative to recognizing and exposing them, is denial. So it's unforunate, but needs to be said at the outset.

[KirkSkyWalker]

And while I enjoy your little "conversation", KirkSkywalker, the Wong bashing seems a bit too much.
There isn't anything that was said here that has never been said before.
Do we really need to talk about him?

P.S. how do you feel about him implying that your own home-city is "white supremacist?"

Consider:

Mike Wong:
I grew up in Toronto, which is the fifth largest metropolitan city in North America. It's the most racially and culturally diverse city in Canada and it's a great place to live, unless you're a white supremacist and you agree with Today's Parent magazine, which picked the monocultural, nearly 100% white enclave of Quebec City as Canada's best city, and ranked the two most multicultural and multiracial cities in the country (Toronto and Vancouver) at the very bottom.

[Praeothmin]

P.S. how do you feel about him implying that your own home-city is "white supremacist?"

Why, it is...
All the buildings are supremely white and clean, the city is extremely secure, so all the people living here, Blacks, Asians, Arabs, Latinos and us Caucasians can live in the best city to live in, in Canada, and possibly the World... :)

The two most "multicultural" happen to be the two most dangerous cities to live in, so why would I want to live there? ;)

[KirkSkyWalker]

P.S. how do you feel about him implying that your own home-city is "white supremacist?"

Why, it is...
All the buildings are supremely white and clean, the city is extremely secure, so all the people living here, Blacks, Asians, Arabs, Latinos and us Caucasians can live in the best city to live in, in Canada, and possibly the World... :)

The two most "multicultural" happen to be the two most dangerous cities to live in, so why would I want to live there? ;)

Then this is is how Mike Wong sees you:


Who needs paranoia when you've got SDN?

[User1435]

For a core topic on y'all's board, this degenerated pretty fast. Ignoring the last four pages of flamewar, I'd figured I'd throw in my two cents.

The Empire gets crushed in short order.

I don't really care to do complex math based on crummy SFX shots, but simple logic shows that Imperial starships are completely outclassed by UFP ships. Not just a little outclassed, but Ship-of-the-Line vs. an F-22 outclassed.

Let me know if there are any holes in this:

Canon:
Assumption One: Star Wars movies override all other Star Wars media.
Assumption Two: Star Trek episodes & movies override all other Star Trek media.

Relative Firepower:
Assumption One: The Death Star would not have been built unless it gave the empire a tactical or strategic capability that the equivalent price of Star Destroyers did not.
Assumption Two: That is, at absolute minimum, hundreds of Star Destroyers.
Assumption Three: The ability in question is related to blowing up planets, since that is the function of said Death Star.
Assumption Four: The difference between "all civilization and bases destroyed" and "one less rock in orbit around the star" is not of tactical or strategic relevance.
Conclusion One: Imperial starships, even fleets of hundreds of them, do not have the firepower necessary to reduce a planet from orbit.
Assumption Five: The ability of a single TOS-era UFP cruiser to reduce a planet is clearly stated in "A Taste of Armageddon" (TOS). The ability of a small TNG-era fleet to reduce a planet in a single broadside is clearly demonstrated in "The Die is Cast" (DS9).
Conclusion Two: A TOS-era UFP cruiser has at least two orders of magnitude more effective firepower than an ISD.

Preemptive rebuttal to the obvious counterargument to the above:
The counterargument: The ability the Death Star gives the Empire is the ability to reduce shielded planets without a prolonged siege.
Assumption One: The Death Star is of sufficient importance to warrant a planetary shield, assuming Star Wars has such devices.
Assumption Two: It is clear from Episode IV that the Death Star does not possess an effective* shield.
Conclusion: Star Wars does not posses effective* planetary shields, so this counterargument is invalid.

*It is possible that the Death Star had a shield that simply did not stop starfighters, but in this case it would have been infinitely more cost effective for the Empire to simply build, say, a few hundred squadrons of bombers to knock out shield generators with. The construction of the Death Star would still indicate ISDs are unable to reduce an unshielded planet.

Star Wars weapons accuracy:
Assumption One: Episode III demonstrates Star Wars capital starship weapons are aimed by eye.
Assumption Two: There are numerous examples ("Journey to Babel", etc) demonstrating UFP starships attacking sublight targets while at superluminal speeds.
Assumption Three: You cannot a faster than light target with a weapon aimed by the Mark I Eyeball, let alone sublight SW weapons.
Conclusion One: Federation starships are immune to Imperial fire unless taken by surprise, previously damaged, sabotaged, or otherwise incapable of engaging their warp drives.

Relative weapons range:
Assumption One: A TOS-era starship was observed to score a direct hit on a man-sized target with the first shot while evading at warp speeds at a range of 90,000 km ("The Changeling"). A TNG-era starship was observed to destroy a target with a torpedo volley at 200,000 km ("The Wounded").
Assumption Two: Weapons aimed by eye are not capable of hitting a UFP starship sized target at anything near 90,000 km.
Conclusion: The Federation has an order of magnitude advantage in weapons range.

Relative fleet sizes:
Assumption One: It is stated in Episode II that there are 200,000 clone soldiers ready and 1,000,000 more well on the way.
Assumption Two: The Clone Wars lasted three years.*
Assumption Three: It takes ten years to grow a clone soldier.*
Conclusion One: Unless the cutoff for "well on the way" is above 70% grown/trained/etc, over the entire course of the war the Republic never had more than 1.2 million clone soldiers.
Assumption Four: A significant preponderance of the Republican military is composed of clones.**
Assumption Five: The Imperial military is not orders of magnitude larger than the Republican military.***
Assumption Six: The Republican Army and Republican Navy are of roughly equal size.***
Assumption Seven: The crew complement of a Star Destroyer type ship is 1,000 clones.***
Conclusion Two: The Empire has, very roughly, 600 Star Destroyers.****
Assumption Eight: The Dominion has about 30,000 starships. (IIRC, It was stated that a 1,500 ship Klingon force was "outnumbered 20-to-1" by the Dominion. Regrettably, I do not recall which episode.)
Assumption Nine: The UFP-Klingon-Romulan alliance is outnumbered roughly 3-to-2.*****
Assumption Ten: About one third of the Alliance ships are UFP.***
Conclusion Three: The Empire is outnumbered by roughly ten to one.

*These are not strictly limited to movie info, and may be wrong.
**This obviously cannot be proven, but given that through two whole movies every soldier we see is either a clone or a jedi I think it reasonable.
***This is me just plucking a "reasonable sounding" assumption out of a vacuum I do not know any canonical information about.
****A low-to-middling three figures for the Empire meshes well with OT fleet sizes. It would require the Battle of Coruscant to be Jutlandesque in terms of percentage of tonnage involved, but I have no problem with that. The UFP fleet sizes mesh well with most of DS9 and the registry progression (assuming a fairly high number of registries assigned to non-combat ships).
*****Based on conventional (maybe just traditional buy now) military wisdom, 3-to-2 is the tipping point between having enough guys to prosecute an offensive and not having enough. Obviously, there are a lot of things that could be wrong here but it should be in the ballpark.

The Empire has two major advantages, in my assessment: Strategic speed, and strategic depth. Both of those will last precisely as long as it takes for the Federation to capture a hyperdrive and reverse engineer it (my guess: not very long), even assuming a "no rebels" scenario (In a scenario with Rebels, they promptly fly to Earth and turn over 40 working hyperdrives and engineers who understand them. In a scenario with Klingons, Romulans, etc, this turns into the Scramble for Africa on a galactic scale, captured hyperdrive or no. The Empire's best potential friend is the Ferengi; they badly need phasers, warp drive, and Star Trek targeting systems, and they need them before their industrial base is too damaged to build enough warp-refitted ISDs to stem the tide. I should note that may not even be possible if they obtain the technology immediately; too many unknowns). Neither is potentially decisive, given their tactical and numerical inferiority.

Overall, it is clear from the above that the Imperial position is all but totally hopeless.

In a "no tech transfers" scenario, the Empire has no hope at all, but will last 50-70 years or more before the UFP finishes them off simply because of the slower strategic speed of warp drive. (Assuming galaxies of the same size).

In any case, the conquering Federation is in real danger of a "Mongols in China" scenario, when a numerically inferior conqueror is culturally overwhelmed by the conquered.

[KirkSkyWalker]

For a core topic on y'all's board, this degenerated pretty fast. Ignoring the last four pages of flamewar, I'd figured I'd throw in my two cents.

You clearly dont' know what a "flamewar" is, vs. a simple statement of fact which you clearly think to be politically incorrect; go to SDN and present your same exact post, and you will learn the difference in short order-- i.e. the words "The Empire gets crushed in short order" will be your last, before you feel like you're in a monkey-house with every primate flinging its feces at you.

The Empire gets crushed in short order.

I don't really care to do complex math based on crummy SFX shots, but simple logic shows that Imperial starships are completely outclassed by UFP ships. Not just a little outclassed, but Ship-of-the-Line vs. an F-22 outclassed.

Let me know if there are any holes in this:

Canon:
Assumption One: Star Wars movies override all other Star Wars media.
Assumption Two: Star Trek episodes & movies override all other Star Trek media.

Relative Firepower:
Assumption One: The Death Star would not have been built unless it gave the empire a tactical or strategic capability that the equivalent price of Star Destroyers did not.
Assumption Two: That is, at absolute minimum, hundreds of Star Destroyers.
Assumption Three: The ability in question is related to blowing up planets, since that is the function of said Death Star.
Assumption Four: The difference between "all civilization and bases destroyed" and "one less rock in orbit around the star" is not of tactical or strategic relevance.
Conclusion One: Imperial starships, even fleets of hundreds of them, do not have the firepower necessary to reduce a planet from orbit.

That's what Han Solo said already, and he used to fly for the Imperial navy.

Assumption Five: The ability of a single TOS-era UFP cruiser to reduce a planet is clearly stated in "A Taste of Armageddon" (TOS). The ability of a small TNG-era fleet to reduce a planet in a single broadside is clearly demonstrated in "The Die is Cast" (DS9).
Conclusion Two: A TOS-era UFP cruiser has at least two orders of magnitude more effective firepower than an ISD.

The term "reduce" is a bit vague, and is used loosely here; they can kill everyone on the surface, but not if they have planetary shields as shown in "The Dagger of the Mind" and "Whom Gods Destroy."
And these were minor shields compared to Earth's: in "Star Trek : The Motion Picture," for example, even V'ger's 12-power energy-field was not believed to be enough to knock out Earth-defenses, if V'ger had not gleaned information about them from from the Enterprise's computer.

Preemptive rebuttal to the obvious counterargument to the above:
The counterargument: The ability the Death Star gives the Empire is the ability to reduce shielded planets without a prolonged siege.
Assumption One: The Death Star is of sufficient importance to warrant a planetary shield, assuming Star Wars has such devices.

The Death Star is an entirely new and secret device, so they had no time to build planetary shields.However planets like Hoth had powerful enough shields to stop bombardment from Star Destroyers-- but the Empire didn't send bombers, they sent AT-AT's.So obviously, bombers can be stopped by fighters; the AT-AT's couldn't, as we saw.

Assumption Two: It is clear from Episode IV that the Death Star does not possess an effective* shield.
Conclusion: Star Wars does not posses effective* planetary shields, so this counterargument is invalid.

Again, the key word here is "effective." Effective against Star Destroyers, yes, not against the Death Star. This doesn't asnswer whether they'd be effective against Federation ships.

*It is possible that the Death Star had a shield that simply did not stop starfighters, but in this case it would have been infinitely more cost effective for the Empire to simply build, say, a few hundred squadrons of bombers to knock out shield generators with. The construction of the Death Star would still indicate ISDs are unable to reduce an unshielded planet.

See above: planets were not "unshielded" per se; they simply were not completely shielded like Federation planets are. However again, bombers were not used against the shield-generator, leading to the conclusion that they were not effective compared to AT-AT's.

Star Wars weapons accuracy:
Assumption One: Episode III demonstrates Star Wars capital starship weapons are aimed by eye.
Assumption Two: There are numerous examples ("Journey to Babel", etc) demonstrating UFP starships attacking sublight targets while at superluminal speeds.
Assumption Three: You cannot a faster than light target with a weapon aimed by the Mark I Eyeball, let alone sublight SW weapons.
Conclusion One: Federation starships are immune to Imperial fire unless taken by surprise, previously damaged, sabotaged, or otherwise incapable of engaging their warp drives.
Relative weapons range:
Assumption One: A TOS-era starship was observed to score a direct hit on a man-sized target with the first shot while evading at warp speeds at a range of 90,000 km ("The Changeling"). A TNG-era starship was observed to destroy a target with a torpedo volley at 200,000 km ("The Wounded").
Assumption Two: Weapons aimed by eye are not capable of hitting a UFP starship sized target at anything near 90,000 km.
Conclusion: The Federation has an order of magnitude advantage in weapons range.

You're assuming that all capship weapons are aimed by eye. The turbolasers are one thing, being short-range anti-fighter defenses; but the long-range anti-capship weapons are another. Clearly they are aimed by eye and fired by hand, otherwise the X-wings probably wouldn't have been able to outrun them.

However the FTL-issue is something else; obviously you can't hit an FTL ship with STL weapons, or even track it with STL sensors. In "Journey to Babel," even the Enterprise's FTL weapons couldn't hit the Orion ship since it was maneuvering so fast.

Relative fleet sizes:
Assumption One: It is stated in Episode II that there are 200,000 clone soldiers ready and 1,000,000 more well on the way.
Assumption Two: The Clone Wars lasted three years.*
Assumption Three: It takes ten years to grow a clone soldier.*
Conclusion One: Unless the cutoff for "well on the way" is above 70% grown/trained/etc, over the entire course of the war the Republic never had more than 1.2 million clone soldiers.
Assumption Four: A significant preponderance of the Republican military is composed of clones.**
Assumption Five: The Imperial military is not orders of magnitude larger than the Republican military.***

Not during the Clone Wars, but afterward is another story.
However Han Solo implied that the Empire had less than 1000 ships, and that destroying Alderaan would take more firepower than he'd ever seen on such.. This means that if they did have 1000 ships, they might have enough firepower; and this would mean each ship would produce 6E+26J. So the Empire might have 900 ships tops, and each might be able to produce 6E+25J each; but again, that's only STL weaponry; also we don't know how long the bombardment would take.

Assumption Six: The Republican Army and Republican Navy are of roughly equal size.***
Assumption Seven: The crew complement of a Star Destroyer type ship is 1,000 clones.***
Conclusion Two: The Empire has, very roughly, 600 Star Destroyers.****
Assumption Eight: The Dominion has about 30,000 starships. (IIRC, It was stated that a 1,500 ship Klingon force was "outnumbered 20-to-1" by the Dominion. Regrettably, I do not recall which episode.)
Assumption Nine: The UFP-Klingon-Romulan alliance is outnumbered roughly 3-to-2.*****
Assumption Ten: About one third of the Alliance ships are UFP.***
Conclusion Three: The Empire is outnumbered by roughly ten to one.

That's if you only count Star destroyers; so the Federation might need to pack a few flyswatters.
Imperial fighter-craft are STL, being ion-drive and solar-powered etc, so it'd be pretty much like watching a bug-zapper near a swamp.

[User1435]

You clearly dont' know what a "flamewar" is, vs. a simple statement of fact which you clearly think to be politically incorrect; go to SDN and present your same exact post, and you will learn the difference in short order-- i.e. the words "The Empire gets crushed in short order" will be your last.

Some hyperbole on my part, I freely admit (although I wasn't referring to my statement); apologies.

That's what Han Solo said already, and he used to fly for the Imperial navy.

Incorrect, but my fault due to vague terminology. By "reduce" I mean to render a planet tactically and strategically irrelevant. Han was stating that the Imperial starfleet lacked the ability to pulverize the rock, which would represent a lot more firepower than simply "reducing" it.

The term "reduce" is a bit vague, and is used loosely here; they can kill everyone on the surface, but not if they have planetary shields as shown in "The Dagger of the Mind" and "Whom Gods Destroy."
And these were minor shields compared to Earth's: in "Star Trek : The Motion Picture," for example, even V'ger's 12-power energy-field was not believed to be enough to knock out Earth-defenses, if V'ger had not gleaned information about them from from the Enterprise's computer.

I have defined my usage of "reduce" above. The notes on UFP shields are accurate but tangential; I was using a comparison of firepower against unshielded targets to argue relative firepower for UFP starships vs. ISDs.

The Death Star is an entirely new and secret device, so they had no time to build planetary shields.However planets like Hoth had powerful enough shields to stop bombardment from Star Destroyers-- but the Empire didn't send bombers, they sent AT-AT's.So obviously, bombers can be stopped by fighters; the AT-AT's couldn't, as we saw.

An interesting theory. The Death Star was, what, twenty years building, of critical importance, and distinctly sub-planetary in size and they still didn't have time to install a shield?

That would imply that it takes a minimum of several decades to build a shield (or shield grid?) on a major planet...certainly the Rebellion set up the Hoth shield (which was, unless I am way off base, a "theater" shield and not planetary - maybe that explains it?) much faster than that!

Again, the key word here is "effective." Effective against Star Destroyers, yes, not against the Death Star. This doesn't answer whether they'd be effective against Federation ships.

See above: planets were not "unshielded" per se; they simply were not completely shielded like Federation planets are. However again, bombers were not used against the shield-generator, leading to the conclusion that they were not effective compared to AT-AT's.

Such a shield would still not be sufficiently effective against ISDs to justify the building of the Death Star. Just investing a fraction of the DS's cost in AT-ATs could build thousands of the things and plenty of transportation, they could bring down the shield, and then the planet would be vulnerable to ISDs if said ISDs even had the ability to reduce an unshielded planet. I maintain my position that the existence of the Death Star demonstrates they did not.

You're assuming that all capship weapons are aimed by eye. The turbolasers are one thing, being short-range anti-fighter defenses; but the long-range anti-capship weapons are another. Clearly they are aimed by eye and fired by hand, otherwise the X-wings probably wouldn't have been able to outrun them.

However the FTL-issue is something else; obviously you can't hit an FTL ship with STL weapons, or even track it with STL sensors. In "Journey to Babel," even the Enterprise's FTL weapons couldn't hit the Orion ship since it was maneuvering so fast.

I was under the impression the guns seen during the Battle of Coruscant were the main anti-ship weapons. This may be in error. I haven't seen in a while. For now, consider the point conceded and the range of Star Destroyers as "unknown" rather than "eyeball". I don't think it helps the Empire very much.

Not during the Clone Wars, but afterward is another story.
However Han Solo implied that the Empire had less than 1000 ships, and that destroying Alderaan would take more firepower than he'd ever seen on such.. This means that if they did have 1000 ships, they might have enough firepower; and this would mean each ship would produce 6E+26J. So the Empire might have 900 ships tops, and each might be able to produce 6E+25J each; but again, that's only STL weaponry; also we don't know how long the bombardment would take.

I have no comment here, other than to note that an exclamation of disbelief at the notion of 1,000 capital ships meshes nicely with the low-to-mid three figures estimate. I would have mentioned Solo's statement originally, but the full version of the quote is only in the novelization and I was trying to keep things limited to the movies.

That's if you only count Star destroyers; so the Federation might need to pack a few flyswatters.
Imperial fighter-craft are STL, being ion-drive and solar-powered etc, so it'd be pretty much like watching a bug-zapper near a swamp.

I did, however, allocate every single clone. I probably should have said "600 Star Destroyers or an equivalent amount of some combination of Star Destroyers and smaller ships" but the overall estimate of fleet size should not, IMO, be throw off by this.

For "flyswatters", how about some wide angle phasers?

[Youngla0450]

Sorry If I am not on here as often. I have school again, so most of my day is "school-time", with no access to a computer. They would block access to this site anyways. So, can anybody please give me a link to any good Star Wars vs Star Trek fanfictions, direct links please! I prefer pro-Star Wars. Thanks if you can!

-Youngla0450

[KirkSkyWalker]

The Death Star is an entirely new and secret device, so they had no time to build planetary shields.However planets like Hoth had powerful enough shields to stop bombardment from Star Destroyers-- but the Empire didn't send bombers, they sent AT-AT's.So obviously, bombers can be stopped by fighters; the AT-AT's couldn't, as we saw.

An interesting theory. The Death Star was, what, twenty years building, of critical importance, and distinctly sub-planetary in size and they still didn't have time to install a shield?

It's not a matter of time, but knowledge; it was constructed in secret, and so obviously they couldn't construct a defense against a weapon they knew nothing about.

Again, the key word here is "effective." Effective against Star Destroyers, yes, not against the Death Star. This doesn't answer whether they'd be effective against Federation ships.

See above: planets were not "unshielded" per se; they simply were not completely shielded like Federation planets are. However again, bombers were not used against the shield-generator, leading to the conclusion that they were not effective compared to AT-AT's.

Such a shield would still not be sufficiently effective against ISDs to justify the building of the Death Star. Just investing a fraction of the DS's cost in AT-ATs could build thousands of the things and plenty of transportation, they could bring down the shield, and then the planet would be vulnerable to ISDs if said ISDs even had the ability to reduce an unshielded planet. I maintain my position that the existence of the Death Star demonstrates they did not.

But Star Destroyers are subject to direct attack from capships; the Death Star wasn't-- not in the time it would take to destroy a planet.

You're assuming that all capship weapons are aimed by eye. The turbolasers are one thing, being short-range anti-fighter defenses; but the long-range anti-capship weapons are another. Clearly they are aimed by eye and fired by hand, otherwise the X-wings probably wouldn't have been able to outrun them.

However the FTL-issue is something else; obviously you can't hit an FTL ship with STL weapons, or even track it with STL sensors. In "Journey to Babel," even the Enterprise's FTL weapons couldn't hit the Orion ship since it was maneuvering so fast.

I was under the impression the guns seen during the Battle of Coruscant were the main anti-ship weapons. This may be in error. I haven't seen in a while. For now, consider the point conceded and the range of Star Destroyers as "unknown" rather than "eyeball". I don't think it helps the Empire very much.

True enough; imagine the battle in "Journey to Babel," if the Enterprise only had STL weapons (though I don't know why Kirk just sat there like a sitting duck when his own ship could do warp 9; at least the SD would have an excuse for it ;-)

Not during the Clone Wars, but afterward is another story.
However Han Solo implied that the Empire had less than 1000 ships, and that destroying Alderaan would take more firepower than he'd ever seen on such.. This means that if they did have 1000 ships, they might have enough firepower; and this would mean each ship would produce 6E+26J. So the Empire might have 900 ships tops, and each might be able to produce 6E+25J each; but again, that's only STL weaponry; also we don't know how long the bombardment would take.

I have no comment here, other than to note that an exclamation of disbelief at the notion of 1,000 capital ships meshes nicely with the low-to-mid three figures estimate. I would have mentioned Solo's statement originally, but the full version of the quote is only in the novelization and I was trying to keep things limited to the movies.

No, it's from the movie; he says "it would take a thousand ships, and more firepower than I've--"
Obviously, "ever seen" is the end of that sentence. If it would take a thousand ships, and they couldn't do it, they don't have a thousand ships-- Q.E.D.

That's if you only count Star destroyers; so the Federation might need to pack a few flyswatters.
Imperial fighter-craft are STL, being ion-drive and solar-powered etc, so it'd be pretty much like watching a bug-zapper near a swamp.

I did, however, allocate every single clone. I probably should have said "600 Star Destroyers or an equivalent amount of some combination of Star Destroyers and smaller ships" but the overall estimate of fleet size should not, IMO, be throw off by this.

For "flyswatters", how about some wide angle phasers?

More like screens.As in doors.
Overall, the Fed wouldn't even need to hurt anyone; we've seen that SD's can be disabled by simple ion-cannons; so the Starfleet ships could easily just shut them down, beam the crews into holding-cells, and sell the SD's to the Ferrengi for scrap.

[Praeothmin]

Han actually states:
"It would take a thousand ships with more firepower than I've..." and is cut off after that.
If he was indeed in the Imperial Navy, and knew about ISDs, as he doesn't seem surprised when he sees one in ANH, then what he could possibly mean is that the ISDs do not have enough power, even 1000 of them, to reduce a world to rubble...

And the weapons seen in RotS were indeed the trench guns fired at other ships, the ones making big holes in them, and they did indeed seem to be aimed manually, since we saw gunners sitting in them...

The Hoth shield was indeed a theater one, and Cosruscant had a planetary shield in the EU (the Thrawn books), and even in the RotS novelization, which is G-Canon...

[KirkSkyWalker]

Han actually states:
"It would take a thousand ships with more firepower than I've..." and is cut off after that.
If he was indeed in the Imperial Navy, and knew about ISDs, as he doesn't seem surprised when he sees one in ANH, then what he could possibly mean is that the ISDs do not have enough power, even 1000 of them, to reduce a world to rubble...

And the weapons seen in RotS were indeed the trench guns fired at other ships, the ones making big holes in them, and they did indeed seem to be aimed manually, since we saw gunners sitting in them...

The Hoth shield was indeed a theater one, and Cosruscant had a planetary shield in the EU (the Thrawn books), and even in the RotS novelization, which is G-Canon...

And you know what that's worth-- particularly since there was no such shield in RotS (not that I'm going to try to prove a negative, like the pro-Warsies demand by saying "PROVE that it contradicts the films!).

As for Han's statement, we can surmise that the Empire's combined forces can't generate above 6E+28J, since it would take at least that much to pulverize a planet in that manner; likewise this would take some time for the Imperial ships to subject the planet to such bombardment, and it's been proven that theater-shields are effective against it; likewise during this time, the Imperial ships would be subject to attack from resistance-fighters and capships, and I seriously doubt that TIE-fighters could protect them effectively.

As for fattoad's comments, I agree 100% with the assumption that the Empire wouldn't spend more resources than necessary to simply remove a planet as a tactical threat; and for that reason, the Death Star obviously wouldn't be built to blow up planets per se, since that's wasteful overkill, and would have taken 20 years longer to build than necessary.

Rather, it makes more sense that it just couldn't do anything less than blow up the planet, via being a hyperspace-accelerator that simply excited and moved its mass to a certain distance from the core, possibly converting its geothermal energy to potential energy. For this reason, it couldn't destroy Yavin, since the entropy-field wasn't big enough to encompass both the planet and the space around it, and energy can only flow to a lower state from entropy alone. OTOH if it was an energy-weapon of any kind (whether DET or M-AM chain-reaction), then it would be a simple matter to blow up Yavin (basically eing a huge hydrogen-bomb waiting to be triggered), and the moons with it.

Likewise, the Empire would want a weapon that could eliminate the planet quickly, and thatwouldn't be subject to attack by Rebel capships. Papatine wanted an "enforcer" weapon that could remove threats without being subject to attack or counter-attack itself (and he was right; as shown, it was physically impossible to destroy the Death Star by any means available to Rebels, without Force-users among them, and the Rebels had two of them).

[Who is like God arbour]

[...] Cosruscant had a planetary shield [...] in the RotS novelization, which is G-Canon...

Not as far as I can remember.
Please provide a quote from the RotS novelization that shows that Cosruscant had a planetary shield.

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

[...] Cosruscant had a planetary shield [...] in the RotS novelization, which is G-Canon...

Not as far as I can remember.
Please provide a quote from the RotS novelization that shows that Cosruscant had a planetary shield.

Even if it is in the novel we know that absolute canon resides in the movies and i do not remember Cosruscant being protected by a shield at all during the movie or a shield being mentioned.

[Mike DiCenso]

Praeothmin is completely wrong about the RoTS novelization. You can find relevant tech quotes here for the part of the novelizaton dealing with the Battle of Coruscant and the rather conspicuous lack of planetary shielding.
-Mike

[Praeothmin]

Sorry if I erred, it had seemed to recall many claims made that the ships were under the shields during the battle, thus why we didn't see it...
Meh...