Versus Battles R1 - Federation vs Empire

[TheMadCloner]

The site that was brought up about Star Wars was StarDestroyer.net. Was. It use t be a place of scum and villainy (with an extremely Imperial bias against the Federation...to the point of it being what would today be called toxic). I mean I like the concept of crossovers, but that place upset me to no end just how infuriating the "science" was and the "evidence" tended to do fit the weapons fire when used in actual combat. This was why I said the turbolaser was very inconsistent.

Exactly the site I was referring to, yes. And fully agreed.

 

[Paul Weaver]

Against the Federation, with their morals? Probably the Empire. Against the technology of the Federation? Send a few small ships (possibly cloaked) with trilithium torpedoes to destroy various stars in the Empire - we saw in Generations (and was implied in By Inferno's Light) that effects of the induced supernovas propagate FTL, which would wipe out a lot of the empires ships before they could start up their hyperdrives (the drives are fast, but they don't seem to cope well with "Warp One, Now" instructions). Don't want to go full on genocidal? A protomatter torpedo from a shuttle would be as effective as the Death Star.

We know the Empire struggles to keep a track of rebel ships like the Falcon, so a covert attack should be fairly simple. Heck launch them with long range transporters as seen in Bloodlines

 

[Xhiandra]

How many Jean-Luc Picards does Star Wars have? None? Federation wins without firing a shot, just words.

 

[Commander_Ninja]

Thanks for the reply Ninja!

Spore drive is strange, fast, and... strange. It is also limited to one ship, and not referred to at any point after Discovery's disappearance. Every other Federation vessel is limited to warp drive, which cannot remotely match hyperdrive for speed and strategic flexibility.

To answer your questions:

1. Post Dominion War for the Federation. This would represent the point where the Federation was still technically on a war footing. For the Empire, The Empire Strikes Back. A lot of Star Wars fans I know who've taken part in these discussions consider this to be the Empire's peak.

2. The Federation has access to all its resources and fleets, as does the Empire. In terms of 'standard', well, I guess that needs refining. Are we talking no 'one-shot' technobabble devices? Ideally, yes, as they usually appear only once, and are never referred to ever again, making them unreliable for debate purposes.

3. Think of it as 'the Empire is invading the Milky Way by means of wormhole'.

As for who would win an outright war - consider that circa A New Hope, the Empire controlled one million star systems (canon, as per the movie's novelisation), and had the industrial capacity to build, in secret, the Death Star, a piece of incredibly advanced technology that, in sheer volume terms, would be the equivalent of building thousands of Galaxy-class ships over twenty years.

In terms of fleet strength, the number often banded about for Star Destroyer numbers is 25,000, though I'm trying to find a source for that. Given that the Empire controls a galaxy via means of dictatorship, it's not surprising they would have a fleet to impress and terrorise the galaxy into submission.

The Federation is harder to pin down. To defend earth against the Borg at Wolf 359 they could only gather 39 ships. The gathering of some 600 ships (the result of two combined fleets) in DS9's 'Favour the Bold' was considered to be a large fleet by Weyoun. 2800 Dominion reinforcements were considered enough, added to existing Dominion fleets in the Alpha Quadrant, to decisively end the war. Yet there is evidence that later on in the war, the Federation fleet had dramatically expanded to several thousand vessels (still below the fleet strength of the Empire).

A note on hyper-drive and how it connects to your third point: it will be tactically useless here. The Empire needs to explore the Milky Way first to determine where the most important planets are. They need precise jumps and calculations through many trials and errors to not hit a star or fall in some space wedgie. Even if they do find them, we seen that in Star Trek Picard, almost every major planet has planetary shielding and defenses. Assuming that the Empire and Federation's firepower is on par with each other, this would require a lot more ships than needed to take over any single planet. We seen and have references to shielding withstanding attacks at full power since TOS, where the Enterprise tried breaking through the asylum dome on Elba II and did little to wither it down.

Since you are making this take place in the Star Trek galaxy, and most likely in the Alpha Quadrant, the Federation is restricted to be using cloaking devices, phasing devices, other cheats, etc. I'm not counting outliers, but the reason why the Federation doesn't have such things is due to treaties, so I'll be assuming these treaties are still in effect.

I don't see Disney-canon Star Wars coming remotely close to defeating the Federation, especially with awful tactics and technology shown throughout the shows, movies, and the Disney comics. If this were the old EU Empire using their mid to high-end feats (without outliers of course), then this may be more doable. Then again, the most concrete fleet sizes in both Disney and EU are around 25,000 which only outnumbers the Discovery era Federation 2 to 1. In the time period you're using and the quote by Weyoun about how "600 was a big fleet", it only seemed to have few numbers because of how thinned out they were across the galaxy. This is still a much bigger number to what was shown in the Battle of Endor.

 

[Paul Weaver]

Hyperspeed is painfully slow compared to Futurama, where a privately owned delivery truck can travel from Earth to one edge of the universe and back in a morning {I Dated a Robot}, and another edge and back in under a week {Route of All Evil}. When the crew are hungry the Planet Express crew pop over to another galaxy for lunch {Fry an the Egg Man}, and it can withstand observing a supernova from a couple of steller radii (at least assuming nobody puts metal in the microwave) {Roswell that Ends Well}

Maneuverability and speed over short distances are top notch too, able to travel from New York to other places on Earth in a couple of seconds without any atmospheric heating {The Duh-Vinci Code, The Deep South}, and Earth to the moon in a second or so.

Medical technology far surpasses that of both Trek and Wars universes - Fry got new hands from a local shop in a very short time (I Dated a Robot), the proper Doctor could repair all of Zoidberg's abonimations {The Tip of the Zoidberg}, but even Zoidberg had no problem with attaching heads {Put your head on my shoulders, The Tip of the Zoidberg}

Moving and destroying stars is certainly possible {Time Keeps on Slippin}

Destroying planets doesn't require anything fancy like a Death Star or Trilithium, it's a hum drum activity run by your local demolition worker {I dated a Robot}

 

[DarthTimon]

Hyperspeed is painfully slow compared to Futurama, where a privately owned delivery truck can travel from Earth to one edge of the universe and back in a morning {I Dated a Robot}, and another edge and back in under a week {Route of All Evil}. When the crew are hungry the Planet Express crew pop over to another galaxy for lunch {Fry an the Egg Man}, and it can withstand observing a supernova from a couple of steller radii (at least assuming nobody puts metal in the microwave) {Roswell that Ends Well}

Maneuverability and speed over short distances are top notch too, able to travel from New York to other places on Earth in a couple of seconds without any atmospheric heating {The Duh-Vinci Code, The Deep South}, and Earth to the moon in a second or so.

Medical technology far surpasses that of both Trek and Wars universes - Fry got new hands from a local shop in a very short time (I Dated a Robot), the proper Doctor could repair all of Zoidberg's abonimations {The Tip of the Zoidberg}, but even Zoidberg had no problem with attaching heads {Put your head on my shoulders, The Tip of the Zoidberg}

Moving and destroying stars is certainly possible {Time Keeps on Slippin}

Destroying planets doesn't require anything fancy like a Death Star or Trilithium, it's a hum drum activity run by your local demolition worker {I dated a Robot}

Well, no one is going to dispute the supremacy of Futurama! Especially when they have the best, most awesome, and fabulous Zap Brannigan!

 

[Hartzilla2007]

To address your points first of all @Marc , bear in mind that whilst hyperdrive needs calculations, it offers the Empire an enormous strategic advantage - it is far faster than warp drive, to the point where Imperial ships can travel across the galaxy in mere weeks, rather than decades. This would allow the Empire to jump into a system, attack, and withdraw to a distance far beyond the Federation's reach.

And Thrawn: Alliances points a out that without find a hyperspace lane (if it exists and is stable enough) They have to limp by with short jumps so as not to crash into planets, stars, or space rocks, unless they have a Force user to navigate

How many Jean-Luc Picards does Star Wars have? None? Federation wins without firing a shot, just words.

Well after reading Catalyst and Tarkin, Grand Moff Tarkin feels kind of like an evil Picard.