StarWarsStarTrek wrote:Industrial capability: The Codex confirms that less than 1% of the Milky Way had been explored. Most planets have populations of a few thousand. Against a galaxy spanning civilization with millions of planets, Mass Effect so ridiculously outmatched it's staggering. The Empire could literally produce more mass worth of material in a day than the Citadel races could in a century.
When it comes to an interstellar war like this industrial capacity only matters when it comes to the materials and manpower it can bring to any given conflict - i.e. starships, starfighters, soldiers, ground vehicles and all the supplies to support all that. And how quickly they can replace losses, of course. The Star Wars galaxy might have millions of populated planets in it, but when it comes to the resources it can pool towards a war it becomes somewhat less impressive. Blame it on authors not having proper sense of scale.
The clone war is probably the best example of this. It's supposed to be a great and terrible war that engulfed the entire galaxy and sent it all into turmoil. The Republic nearly goes bankrupt, yada yada yada. But when you look at the scale of it all it's really not that impressive. Large individual fleets have no more vessels then two dozen or so, and they're generally reserved for very important endeavors. Smaller fleets are more common, and they typically number less then a dozen. The liberation and conquest of entire planets is usually done by a handful of ships, and typically revolve around a single major battle that involves no more then a thousand or so clone troopers (usually much less). And the fighting usually ends within a day.
And then there's the whole clone trooper number issue, which has now been canonically confirmed to be millions of troopers (unit = trooper), with battle droids being less then a billion in total. This is probably the biggest slap in the face of scale.
The Empire would have greater numbers then the Republic. But not by factors like a hundred. And it's true that they'd probably have more ships then the Council races, but not by that big a margin.
The EU is all over the place when it comes to numbers, of course. Latest estimate on fleet strength I found was in The Force Unleashed II, which pegged the Imperial navy as having 10,000 ships in total. But the figure varies a lot.
Oh, and another important thing to mention is that the entire fleet can't be diverted to assaulting another galaxy. Normally 100% of the Imperial fleet does nothing more then patrol duty within its own borders, enforcing the peace and such. If the Empire suddenly decided to divert all those forces to a new galaxy, then there'd be open rebellion. Well, more open rebellion then there already was, I mean.
Logistics: Hyperdrive usually gives Star Wars an extreme advantage against most other sci fi races, but Mass Effect does have Mass Relays, which are arguably even faster than hyperdrive. That being said, Mass Relays are limited in that they lead to predetermined locations, and can be captured and blockaded. Although their durability is high enough so that it's doubtful if an imperial fleet can damage it in reasonable time, they can still take control of it and blockade it. Mass Effect conventional FTL is faster than warp drive but significantly slower than hyperdrive, is stated to be too slow for cross galactic travel, and has limited fuel, so that in the game you can barely cross a star cluster. In addition, if game mechanics are to believed Mass Effect ships have to drain entire planets of their resources...just to get some upgraded armor.
A few points I'd like to bring up in regards to this.
Mass relays aren't the only things that limited - hyperdrive is too. It has to follow pre-charted hyperspace routes, for example. This means that the Empire would have to chart the newfound galaxy before they can invade. And... well... it's been 20,000 years in the SW galaxy and they've charted little more then half of the galaxy, so it's going to be a somewhat epic undertaking. Some areas are also going to be completely off-limits, such as dense star clusters, nebulas, etc.
Oh, and there are catapult like secondary mass relays too, which don’t have that great a range, but can send a fleet anywhere within its range capability instantly.
In essence this would mean that the Empire can quickly and efficiently defend its own worlds. But assaulting another galaxy would be rather problematic to say the least. Curiously enough the exact same holds true for the council races.
Oh, and as the clone wars episode
Supply Lines shows, SW ships are also limited by range. They can only travel so far before they need to refuel. Granted, this is a helluva lot longer then Mass Effect vessels, but still.
Space combat: Estimates for Star Wars weaponry and shield strength range from megatons to teratons. The Codex confirms that a dreadnought's main gun is about 38 kilotons, with a RoF of one shot per 2 seconds and iirc only one main gun per dreadnought. This is a massive curbstomp.
More like gigajoules to petatons, if you want to consider the entire range. Higher canon lends no support to anything above the megaton mark, that stuff comes pretty exclusively from the ICS, and indeed higher canon suggest that smaller vessels like Venators pack guns that are sub-kiloton, with stardestroyers packing stuff in the nuclear-range (i.e. kilotons). At least when it comes to the more mundane laser weapons. It's possible they have more powerful proton torpedoes and such.
How would a stardestroyer react to a 38 kiloton kinetic impact? Badly, if the Hoth asteroid field is any indication. We've seen fighters kamikaze capital ships, we've seen capital ships slowly crash into each other, and we've seen asteroids impact capital ships... and all of those events tell us that a mass accelerator round would be problematic if it were to impact, to say the least.
Ground combat: This is more balanced, as Mass Effect infantry are very capable. They have powerful railgun-type weapons whose calculations vary from on par with modern weapons to 100 kj. They also have sophisticated hacking systems, kinetic barriers, and biotics which give them an edge in infantry combat, especially given their relatively high level of competence. However, we don't know that much about their large scale armored support; the Codex confirms that they do indeed have them, and the Mako is pretty competent. It has a large railgun with other weapons, a limited jetpack and armor advanced enough to withstand multiple rounds and being airdropped from very high altitudes. In terms of infantry on infantry combat Mass Effect might have an advantage, but in a large scale invasion the Empire is simply too numerous and their heavy weapons are too powerful for Mass Effect to have the edge here.
There's nothing balanced in terms of ground combat. Mass Effect dominates that area pretty heavily. We’re talking one of the better equipped sci-fi armies versus one of the worse equipped ones. Yes, we haven't actually seen ME heavier stuff (tanks, artillery, etc), but the truth is that even just infantry supported by MAKOs would be too much for the Empire to deal with. Partly because ME stuff is that good, and partly because SW stuff isn’t exactly stellar.
That Mass Effect remains one of the few verses where the authors realized how to properly use orbital control when it comes to ground combat doesn't make matters worse either.
Said asteroid hit what was potentially the weakest part of the star destroyer while its shields were down. Had its shields been up, the asteroid would not have done any damage to the star destroyer.
That particular argument was formed with the assumption that shields have to be dropped in order to communicate long distance. Since then we've seen that this is not true, however. There was a TCW episode where a Venator in the outer rim was able to communicate with Coruscant even though shields were up and they were under attack.
