It suffices that Yorktown fared orders of magnitude better than should have been expected
"What should have been expected" was that Yorktown wouldn't be able to repel Krall's attack without help. The rapid defeat of the defense satellites demonstrates that well enough. Yorktown holding out longer than Enterprise is more than adequately explained by it SIMPLY BEING LARGER. To be sure, it would have taken Krall a similar amount of time to destroy three dozen Constitution class starships, which again doesn't change the inadequacy of their weapons.
Whether he defeats you in 10 minutes or 40 minutes, a defeat is a defeat.
there were factors separating it from the Enterprise.
Size. Not much else.
But it very specifically does: elephants are more or less invulnerable to lions because they have specific anti-lion defenses
No they don't. They have SIZE. That's it, that's all. Groups of lions can and do take down elephants in the world, it's just a pain in the ass to do so because elephants are freaking big and it takes a lot of time and effort to do that.
Incidentally, this is the whole reason why wolves hunt in packs. A deer can easily outrun or out maneuver a single predator, but it can get boxed in and overwhelmed by a pack. This is the nature of Krall's tactics: it's scalable to just about any sized target, provided he can produce enough drones (which he probably can). The results are the same on any scale, because Starfleet's defenses aren't adapted to this kind of highly coordinated swarm tactics and, really, neither are anyone else's.
that makes it highly unlikely a pride of lions would bother to attack an elephant.
And yet they still do it, when easier kills aren't available. And they usually succeed.
Umm, not. Krall is not in a position to tailor anything.
Of course he is. He's been intercepting Starfleet traffic for years, analyzing their computers, their ships, their tactics, their systems. He is a FORMER Stafleet captain himself, and an experienced battlefield commander. He's even had time to personally study the commanders he's going up against; he's been reading Kirk's log, he knows the names and faces and the careers of the officers running Yorktown's defenses.
He's in a position to PERSONALLY TAUNT the gunners at Yorktown and call them out by name if he wants to. He knows everything about his enemy and Starfleet knows nothing about him.
And such micromanaging mattered not at all in the fight against the Enterprise, because that ship fell instantly
"Such micromanaging" was the REASON the ship fell so quickly: because Krall specifically directed attacks at its weapons and then shields (the deflector dish was their first target) and then cut the nacelles at their weakest points to prevent it from escaping. Everything Kirk tried to do, Krall quickly and precisely countered; he had planned the takedown of the Enterprise WEEKS in advance, and probably even had time to rehearse it.
Krall is whittling away his single-planet force in a series of attacks against a galactic empire that can replenish its assets. His knowledge may be current, but his fighting skills are a century out of date.
Incorrect. Apart from the fact that he has control of the MACHINERY that makes those drones in the first place, we know for a fact that he's been attacking other ships for decades to maintain his livestock. Jaylah also suggests that he and his "bees" have been roaming around the stars "death wishing" which suggests he doesn't just hunt in orbit of his own planet, and probably takes to raiding nearby worlds and shipping lanes on his side of the nebula. His battle tactics are FAR from out of date; he's had over a century to practice, and the attacks on Enterprise and Yorktown he's had MONTHS to plan in advance.
Again, this establishes that the Yorktown was coping much better than it had any right to
Again, a space station 16km across is going to last longer than a single starship 750m long. Even Deep Space Nine could temporarily off an entire Klingon fleet; Enterprise-D, not so much.
It has nothing to do with the quality of its defenses; it's simply bigger, and took more time to take down. Time which, thanks to Kirk, Krall did not have.
This bears very little relevance to the fact that Starfleet wasn't qualitatively unable to cope with swarm attacks from the get-go.
The movie is very EXPLICIT in the fact that Starfleet was not qualitatively able to cope with swarm attacks using conventional weapons. Spock outright SAYS this, and nothing that happens at Yorktown contradicts this; the station is simply bigger, and takes longer to chop through.
The film is also explicit in the fact that Starfleet was able to adapt a defense strategy that specifically and efficiently neutralized Krall's swarm tactics, and that this is basically standard operating procedure for Starfleet. USS Franklin wasn't qualitatively superior to the Enterprise -- do not even ATTEMPT to claim it was -- and yet the VHF signal from that ship turned Krall's entire formation into a glorified fireworks show.
When Yorktown followed suit, they annihilated them. That's just the facts, Sir: Stafleet didn't defeat Krall with phasers or photon torpedoes, it defeated him with the Beastie Boys and a radio signal. The proof, then, is in the pudding: Starfleet's qualitative advantage IS NOT in its weapons, but in its capacity to exploit its enemies weaknesses.
It just didn't guarantee victory, any more than the ability to build Panzerfausts would guarantee victory against a massive Soviet tank invasion
Indeed, defeat was pretty much gauranteed from the outset, it was just a matter of time.
The only thing that guaranteed victory was finding a countermeasure to Krall's swarm formations. If they had been able to do this in the FIRST encounter, even the Enterprise would have survived.
