Argument Thread OOC Future Tech Only

[OMGeverynameistaken]

You know what more space ships need?

Propellers.

[Zebian Syndicate]

Says the Space Russian,...

[Feazanthia]

Right. Now we're getting somewhere!

Should the Empire face a threat on the magnitude of the Borg, with clear evidence that to fall prey to them will invite assimilation, that most petty squabbles will be set aside to deal with the common threat. If the Bord attack happens when the Empire is at the height of its power, the psychological impact of the Borg would be easy meat for Imperial commentators to show how evil they are to the citizens at large and how it is a patriotic act to resist these extragalactic invaders and rally support around them. At the height of the Empire's power the Rebel Alliance was a nebulous idea and all resistance to the regime was definitely in the minority, as Palpatine was still enjoying the kudos from having brought the Clone Wars to a swift end and nipping the Jedi Rebellion in the bud. The ability of the Empire to marshal the public for jingoistic purposes in resisting the Borg would be easily enough made that, if only for a short period of time, any rebellious factions in the Star Wars galaxy would manage to put aside their differences with the Empire in order to eliminate a common threat.

–

Size matters. The Galactic Empire has an entire galaxy of resources to call upon. The Collective have only a single quadrant. In a war of attrition, even if the Borg prove harder to beat than any Imperial officer estimates, Imperial numbers will eventually tell. Also, as an autocratic regime the Galactic Empire will not suffer from "War-Weariness" and so match the Borg in stubborn determination.

Organizing a response on the scale you're talking about would still require the Empire to first recognize the Borg threat for what it is (which, admittedly, could happen given Palpatine's expanded universe apparent obsession with preparing the galaxy for an extragalactic invasion), and even then it'll be some time before a response can be assembled and dispatched. Also, my time estimates were being conservative. Consider the speed with which the Borg can adapt to a new technology. Voyager's regenerative armor, a technology from the future and designed specifically to counter Borg weapons' fire, was effectively defeated after a trio of Cubes were able to scan it for less than a minute. Also, while the Empire may have more raw resources to draw upon, it still would take time to mobilize them. Your own figures mark the number of ISDs available to the Imperial Fleet in the thousands. There are hundreds of thousands to millions of Cubes and Tactical Cubes available to the Collective. Even a single ship assimilated by the Borg would grant them access to Hyperdrive and Star Wars-scale power generators. Size one of those up to facilitate a Cube or Tactical Cube, and the Imperial Fleet would have a very nasty surprise waiting for them when they mobilized. Contrary to belief, the Borg are fully capable of innovation. When they realized that 8472 was not only militant but resistant to assimilation, they began cranking out Tactical Cubes in very short order. While I don't have precise figures on the TacCube's capabilities relative to a regular Cube, in STO they have about four times the firepower and ten times the survivability.

Talented commanders such as, at this point in time, Senior Captain Thrawn, Lord Darth Vader, and any number of the Grand Admirals would likely be dispatched to handle such an incursion into the Galactic Empire. The collective ability of so many officers with an unlimited amount of men and material with which to oppose the Borg ships lends me to believe that even if the first counter-attack against the Borg fails, that such talented officers and a renewed counter-attack force would prevail a second time. The Empire is able to adapt to its opponents as well, though understandably not as fast as the Borg.

Even with talented commanders (and would Thrawn be any help against a foe that has no art? ), the Imperial Fleet at its peak would still be vastly outnumbered. As I said, if the Borg managed to assimilate a single ISD then the Empire's ability to fight them on equal terms would be vastly diminished. Even if the Empire managed to figure out weapon remodulation (which the Federation, for all its technical brilliance and adaptivity, didn't figure out for a good bit), they'd still be hard-pressed to engage Cubes and Tactical Cubes that had been upgraded to Imperial-scale power systems. They could stymie the Collective's efforts, certainly. Sabotaging transwarp conduits and slowing the rate of the Collective's spread. But tactical brilliance alone would be insufficient to deal with the threat.

Darth Vader's Force abilities would undoubtedly play a role (at the height of the Empire's power) as well as the hundreds of Dark Side adepts that the Emperor kept at his beck and call. Though the Borg may be resistant to a mind trick, the physical applications that can be made with the Force means that Vader and any other Force adept would likely be able to destroy a fair number of Borg opponents in such a fashion. (There is an example in SW lore where several Force users, a dozen, used their collective power to shove an entire Imperial armada out of orbit and into deep space. It wouldn't be much of a step further for a few Dark Side adepts to shove a Borg cube into a local star.)

I will admit that that amount of Force wankery (he has Force adepts? What happened to the Law of Two or whatnot?) was unknown to me (but not entirely surprising given how much the EU authors love those psychic ninja monks), but could the Empire hold out if the Force was its only effective weapon against the Borg? There's a sizable difference between pushing ships out of orbit and hurling them into a star. I could also see the Collective countering such moves with their own Warp Drives' reality-warping (see what I did there) capabilities, or the havoc the Collective could wreak should it successfully assimilate a Force-user, but that's fan wankery of a TRULY epic scale and I wont touch it [:P]

While technologically speaking from the military stand point the turbolaser is the most common weapon within the Imperial Navy, the missile is the second one. From what I personally know of the Borg (and please correct me if I am wrong), their ships are still susceptible to missile attacks. There is also the fact that nearly all major cruisers and battleships in the Imperial Navy are armed with ion cannon, a weapon that should be quite effective at, in the very least, disrupting communication with the Collective and their Cubes offensive and defensive capabilities.

Star Trek shields are fairly effective against kinetic force (and warhead detonations just release energy) given that Photon and Quantum torpedoes move at (reportedly) faster-than-light speeds. The Empire may enjoy marginally more success against the Borg with an arsenal of guided weaponry, but only just. Ion cannons are another story. These could feasibly be effective at first, allowing the Empire to get a good look at the inside of a Cube if they caught one on its own, but ion cannons (even ignoring the fact that in the real world they're ALSO charged particle beams and thus ARE THE SAME AS TURBOLASERS) are effectively very similar to Breen energy draining weapons. The Federation and Klingons found a counter to the Breen weapons in rather short order once they were deployed (though not before getting their holier-than-thou asses handed to them at the Third Battle of Earth), and the Borg are much more adaptive than the Feds.

A regular ISD-II can go up to 2,300g at sublight acceleration. A TIE Fighter can get up to 4,100g acceleration. More maneuverable? Maybe. More speed? Not necessarily. Also, from what I have read, SW ships can engage at greater distances than ST ships.

Again, I'll have to take your word on those figures, because in the movies they were engaging at a few hundred kilometers if that in every single engagement, while in comparison we know that the weapons' range for a Jem'hadar attack ship exceeds 100,000km. The Borg are much more advanced than the Jem'hadar. That said, ST ships have been known to get to appreciable fractions of C on Impulse, and can go to Warp at a moment's notice for tactical maneuvers (see: Picard Maneuver). In fact, Star Trek ships reportedly engage one another at Warp speeds with regularity. The Scimitar engaged the Enterprise-E when both were at maximum warp.

[OMGeverynameistaken]

Hey, just because I happen to have an exclusive monopoly on the production of space propellers is no reason that other people shouldn't adopt them in wide scale use.

EDIT:
You broke BBcode, Feaz.

[The Akasha Colony]

-Snip-

I had in fact considered all of the above factors, although I will admit to a bit of oversimplification in my previous posts for the sake of not writing an essay. I hate being 'that guy who writes walls of text to argue minor points,' but I also hate being 'that guy whom people assume knows nothing about the topic he's discussing.'

Now to start:

ON THE TOPIC OF BRIDGE IMPACTS: The actual movie footage does not bear out that interpretation. As conveniently screen-shotted and analyzed here, the asteroid was significantly smaller than the bridge tower itself, and it completely obliterates the tower. This video provides a useful clip of the scene in question. The asteroid takes approximately half a second to cross the screen and impact the bridge. The angle on the view makes it awkward to accurate gauge its speed, but based on this angle, it appears the camera is located slightly above the victim Star Destroyer's port 'wing,' meaning that the asteroid covers the distance from the port wing to the bridge tower in approximately 0.5 seconds.

Now it becomes a matter of scale to get measurements. The only good measurements on the Imperial-class that are widely accepted is that it's 1,600 meters long, but we have no dimensions on beam or height. This image provides a good idea of scaling, however, with a good view of the ship's layout. Basic measurements indicate that she's roughly 60% wide as she is long, meaning that her total width is 960 meters at the rear, her widest point (approx 580 px long, and 350 px wide). Her bridge tower seems to be approximately 108 px in width, although as it is elevated, proper proportion on the image would dictate that it should be smaller, so for the sake of rounding, I will use 100 px, giving it a width of 272 meters.

The asteroid enters the frame at a rather oblique angle, not directly perpendicular to the bridge. Using the approximate angle overlaid on the same image gives us roughly 170 px, or 469 meters, covered in half a second, for an approximate velocity of 938 m/s. Or about 10 m/s slower than the bullet from an M16 assault rifle. This seems correct since we clearly have enough time to see the asteroid, even given the short distance it must travel. Given the asteroid's size relative to the bridge tower, and for the sake of brevity, I will assume the asteroid is 50 meters, roughly spherical, and composed of standard nickel-iron. Using these figures, the asteroid's total volume comes out to 65,450 M³, and its mass to 515,090 short tons, or 467,281,788 kilograms.

We can now finally calculate the asteroid's energy, using basic kinematics. KE = (0.5)m x v². Which becomes: KE = (0.5) x (467,281,788) x (938)². This gives us 2.055675387 x 10¹⁴ joules of kinetic energy. One megaton of explosive force is 4.184 × 10¹⁵. This means that the asteroid had the equivalent of approximately 0.049 Mt of force when it impacted. Which obliterated the bridge to such an extent that it was no longer even visible, not even debris.

Now I fully admit that this calculation is approximate in the extreme, and of course George Lucas or some other canon author could simply say it was a chunk of degenerate matter that destroyed the Star Destroyer's bridge, giving it far more kinetic energy. But you could double the measurements involved and still come up rather short, and Arvel Crynyd's A-wing was able to cause crippling damage to Executor's bridge when he collided with it at Endor.

In a somewhat related aspect, the Star Destroyer Invincible was destroyed by a Rebel-planted nuclear fission device detonated within her. Wookiepedia notes that most of these weapons had a blast radius of 30 kilometers, and a lethal radiation range of 100 kilometers. This is a rather nebulous measurement, but the blast radius of the Soviet Tsar Bomba was hundreds of kilometers, for a 58 Mt detonation.

This says nothing of shield strength concretely, but shield strengths have always been extremely nebulous, changing as needed to repel something the writer doesn't want to hit, while also failing at key moments as dictated by the plot.



ON THE TOPIC OF NUMBERS: First off, I referred specifically to Executor-class Star Dreadnoughts in my post, not all of the ships which have received the Super Star Destroyer classification, which is basically any ship larger than the baseline Star Destroyer of the time. At the Empire's height, the Executor-class was far and away the most powerful, as later units such as Eclipse had not yet been produced. Even then, they out-massed and out-matched these later designs in conventional firepower by a wide margin.

But only thirteen Executor-class ships are named. They are:

-Annihilator
-Enforcer
-Executor
-Guardian
-Intimidator
-Iron Fist
-Knight Hammer
-Lusankya
-Razor's Kiss
-Reaper
-Second Death
-Terror
-Vengeance

Two of these should be dismissed immediately, as Second Death was a fake hull constructed from the wreckage of Razor's Kiss, who was herself bombed in drydock before completion. Knight Hammer was not operational until after the Battle of Endor. Lusankya was withheld from combat service until the New Republic discovered her. There are indications that others were constructed aside from the named ones, but nowhere near the number necessary to furnish all sectors with them, as no more than two are ever mentioned as being under construction at a time in any of the Empire's major shipyards, of which there were only a handful capable of building such a leviathan. So yes, more than a half-dozen were built, but not very many more.

This does not preclude the possibility of Moffs receiving a Super Star Destroyer each, as there were many classes of 'Super Star Destroyer' in service. However, all of the classes in service during the period were significantly weaker than the Executor-class, even her reduced-size retcon siblings of 12.8 and 8 kilometer lengths. The EU novels further confirm how difficult it is to construct such a behemoth, and only a small handful make it out of the chaos surrounding the fall of the Empire and the establishment of the New Republic intact. By the time of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, the New Republic is still relying on captured Executors, with only a tiny number of their own Star Defenders to supplement them.

In terms of conventional line ships, 25,000 for the Imperial-class is what I have also seen. However, they seem to make up the bulk of any standard squadron, indicating that they likely outnumber the other ships in their relative size/power class (and thus make up more than half of the total number of 'Star Destroyers' in service). This sounds like a lot of ships, but in relation to the size of the territory the Empire controls, it's tiny. 1.75 million worlds were full members of the Empire, while 69 million had representation. The galaxy itself contained 400 billion stars. If we assume there were 100,000 Star Destroyers (and thus the Imperial-class was a minority), and each had five escorts, that's still only 600,000 ships for 69 million worlds, many of them rather restive.

There are also canon conflicts as to how much firepower a Moff controlled, and how much was assembled. Admiral Giel's 'Secret Armada,' claimed to be the largest in Imperial history, contained 'dozens of Star Destroyers' and 'hundreds of escorts.' It was presumably larger than any Moff Sector Group by a decent margin, given its importance. The Star Wars Technical Journal states that only 24 Imperial-class Star Destroyers were assigned to each Sector Group. Vader's Death Squadron was claimed to be the most powerful assemblage of warships in the Empire, but was only composed of Executor plus a half-dozen Star Destroyers, although many more were attached during the Battle of Endor.

From what I understand of anti-Borg weaponry, Borg defenses adapt to the energy frequency of incoming fire. Essentially, if they know precisely on what frequency the incoming bolt of energy is, they will be able to fashion a near perfect deflection.

That said, yes Borg defenses can be overwhelmed even after they've adapted. It takes heavy, sustained fire however and it has historically been damned difficult for even entire fleets to muster that kind of force. An ISD would have a better go at it until the Borg were able to match (or exceed, given the much larger size of the cube) their sheer power output.

They can also regenerate from damage that does pierce their shields, so an attacker attempting to destroy them must not only pierce them, but pierce them with enough energy to destroy them in one shot, or have the ability to continuously pierce their shields and deal more damage over time than they can regenerate.

While technologically speaking from the military stand point the turbolaser is the most common weapon within the Imperial Navy, the missile is the second one. From what I personally know of the Borg (and please correct me if I am wrong), their ships are still susceptible to missile attacks. There is also the fact that nearly all major cruisers and battleships in the Imperial Navy are armed with ion cannon, a weapon that should be quite effective at, in the very least, disrupting communication with the Collective and their Cubes offensive and defensive capabilities.

Size matters. The Galactic Empire has an entire galaxy of resources to call upon. The Collective have only a single quadrant. In a war of attrition, even if the Borg prove harder to beat than any Imperial officer estimates, Imperial numbers will eventually tell. Also, as an autocratic regime the Galactic Empire will not suffer from "War-Weariness" and so match the Borg in stubborn determination.

Cubes are just as resistant to missile weapons as energy weapons. They shrugged off barrages of photon torpedoes without any more effect than the phaser salvos they also waded through. The transphasic torpedoes that Voyager used to destroy them in the final episode was future technology specifically designed to combat the Borg. No true canon explanation is given as to how they work, but non-canon sources claim they work by using a subspace compression pulse to generate multiple simultaneous phase states, of which the Borg can only block one element at a time, leaving the others to destroy the target. Ion cannons are always a bit iffy, since based on their name and description, they shouldn't be anything more than standard charged-particle weapons.

While the Empire was certainly a large state, the Borg are just about as efficient as you can get. Their entire population is basically composed of soldiers, they have no civilians, no weak spots, no morale, no politics. Their entire existence is dedicated to the subjugation and assimilation of others, in a way even the Yuuzhan Vong couldn't match. They were essentially the embodiment of pure, calculating, mechanical efficiency.

The Empire, meanwhile, had its own share of diversions. Even in a total war situation, assuming the entire galaxy mobilized like it had during the Clone Wars, there are still an immense number of inefficiencies. The Imperial-class alone had over 174,000 defects, and even Lira Wessex herself was aware of a number of them. Cubes aren't perfect, but when a design flaw is brought to light, it can easily and quickly be fixed throughout the entire Collective.

A regular ISD-II can go up to 2,300g at sublight acceleration. A TIE Fighter can get up to 4,100g acceleration. More maneuverable? Maybe. More speed? Not necessarily. Also, from what I have read, SW ships can engage at greater distances than ST ships.

Debatable (as is everything, which is why it is still being debated). G-canon sources depict Star Wars ships as fighting at visible ranges, which in a real space battle would be basically knife fighting. Star Trek ships also engage at similar ranges. Secondary sources indicate that SW ships are capable of engagements at light-minute ranges or more, but are rarely if ever shown to fight at such ranges, given the inherent inaccuracy of any sublight munition against a mobile target at anything more than a few lightseconds.

Both sides are rather loathe to provide accurate velocity figures, however. Full Impulse ranges between 3.33% to 33% c in stated speeds. SW uses 'megalights,' but no measure of this speed is known aside from the one used in the video games, which holds it as being equal to the ship's velocity in meters per second. Relative speeds, as observed in video footage, tends to be about the same as, if not lower than, the speed of a modern jet fighter. Fighters in the Battle of Endor take approximately one second to cover the distance of an MC80 LIberty-type cruiser's wing, which is approximately half her length of 1,200 m. This would indicate a speed of 600 m/s, or Mach 1.76 at sea level.



The ultimate problem with both universes is that both are made for popular audiences, meaning they have to be visually interesting, but often not realistic based on mentioned or written material. I personally found it hilarious when in Revenge of the Sith, clone troops are shown manually loading and aiming the guns. One would think that with thousands of years in space, an autoloader would have been developed. Or the lines of droids and clones walking right into each other while firing in Attack of the Clones, as if this were the Civil War, but with blasters. Ultimately, both sides end up writing and depicting whatever level of power and physics is necessary to drive the narrative.

On top of that, Star Wars tends to be afflicted by conflicting figures from various lesser-canon authors, while Star Trek suffers from the problem of a lack of information by declaring all non film/television works as non-canon. Star Trek is further compounded by the fact that the technology changes almost exponentially between ENT, TOS/TMP and TNG/VOY/DS9, while the vast numbers of ships thrown around in the Star Wars prequels blows the entire power balance out of whack.

[Senestrum]

Star Wars can smash the entire starfleet galaxy almost effortlessly. After all, the death star superlaser had an energy of at least 10³⁹ joules. Dodonna stated that the death star "carries a firepower greater than half the star fleet". He does not, however, state which starfleet he was talking about. I would assert that he is, in fact, talking about the rebel starfleet, which at that point is seen to consist of a couple dozen fighters. Due to the incredible overkill of the death star superlaser (mass-scattering a terrestrial planet requires ~2.4 x 10³² joules), this means that individual starfighters have orders of magnitude more firepower than is required to destroy a planet. This also means that imperial ships can withstand firepower of this magnitude, since we see them being fired upon by starfighters several times in the movies.

You may take issue with the fact that I assumed he was talking about the rebel starfeet. However, that doesn't help you much. Han Solo, upon seeing the Alderan debris field, states that "It'd take a thousand ships" to destroy Alderan. Due to the hilarious overkill, this still leaves Star Wars with ships capable of dishing out and receiving planet-destroying energies.

Based off of that, I am forced to conclude that the Star Trek universe gets its shit utterly ruined.

[OMGeverynameistaken]

Star Trek loses because the only people canonically capable of actually doing anything with a decent success rate are aboard the Enterprise, DS9 or Voyager.

[The Akasha Colony]

Star Wars can smash the entire starfleet galaxy almost effortlessly. After all, the death star superlaser had an energy of at least 10³⁹ joules. Dodonna stated that the death star "carries a firepower greater than half the star fleet". He does not, however, state which starfleet he was talking about. I would assert that he is, in fact, talking about the rebel starfleet, which at that point is seen to consist of a couple dozen fighters. Due to the incredible overkill of the death star superlaser (mass-scattering a terrestrial planet requires ~2.4 x 10³² joules), this means that individual starfighters have orders of magnitude more firepower than is required to destroy a planet. This also means that imperial ships can withstand firepower of this magnitude, since we see them being fired upon by starfighters several times in the movies.

You may take issue with the fact that I assumed he was talking about the rebel starfeet. However, that doesn't help you much. Han Solo, upon seeing the Alderan debris field, states that "It'd take a thousand ships" to destroy Alderan. Due to the hilarious overkill, this still leaves Star Wars with ships capable of dishing out and receiving planet-destroying energies.

Based off of that, I am forced to conclude that the Star Trek universe gets its shit utterly ruined.

Except that nothing shown bears anything out aside from the firepower of the Death Star's superlaser. Characters can be wrong, and they can exaggerate in their dialogue, but what is shown speaks for itself in both cases. Considering that the Eclipse-class SSD's continent-cracking superlaser is considered to be an extremely powerful weapon, second only to the Death Star's own superlaser, and requires a 17.5 km ship to house it, these statements can safely be dismissed as hyperbole and exaggeration in light of the actual specifications provided and actions demonstrated.

Star Trek loses because the only people canonically capable of actually doing anything with a decent success rate are aboard the Enterprise, DS9 or Voyager.

The Empire loses because they get taken down by a rag-tag group of rebels and their stormtroopers lost to giant koalas with slingshots, logs, and kites.

[Arkania 5]

So.

What're we talking about?

[The Akasha Colony]

So.

What're we talking about?

ST vs. SW. The usual.

[Yes Im Biop]

So.

What're we talking about?

Armors Xd

[Arthropoda Ingens]

Who'd win if the Empire used mecha and the Federation used tanks? :V

[The Akasha Colony]

Who'd win if the Empire used mecha and the Federation used tanks? :V

We would. As would the Rule of Cool.

[The Converters]

I am forced to conclude that the Star Trek universe gets its shit utterly ruined.

This isn't universe Vs. Universe, if it was Q might have something to say about your conclusion.

I don't know too much about either universe so I don't really want to join this debate but it seems that you didn't read a thing Feaz said... Don't know about you but it usually pays off to read another persons argument in a debate for me.

[OMGeverynameistaken]

The Empire loses because they get taken down by a rag-tag group of rebels and their stormtroopers lost to giant koalas with slingshots, logs, and kites.

Hey man, I was on the Endor Moon. Everybody jokes about how we lost to a bunch of 'teddy bears', but let me ask you, how many teddy bears do YOU know that have a craving for human flesh? The little bastards just LOVE how we taste. Size wise they aren't much to look at, but when one of those little fuckers comes hurtling out of the bushes at crotch-height jabbing everywhere with his goddamn spear, that's when a man learns to rely on the Force if he wants to have children. So you can criticize the Empire's performance there after you spend three weeks running around a goddamn death jungle being pursued by tiny man eating bears.

[Yes Im Biop]

Who'd win if the Empire used mecha and the Federation used tanks? :V

Which ever side wasn't Using mechs. Just shoot the legs and BOOM its dead

[Thrashia]

@Akasha Colony: Please don't preach Star Wars to me my young friend. All those figures and names I know like the back of my own hand, so long have I nerdishly poured over them in minute detail; sad as it is to admit.

Bridge: I agree with your hypothesis and testing calculations, however, again, I must stress that the shields were down when the asteroid hit. The ship was destroyed by secondary explosions, undoubtedly being impacted by numerous other asteroids in its death-throws as well. We also have cannon sources that state that the majority of the debris in that asteroid field were made up of super-dense materials, as the field was created when two planetary bodies in the Hoth System collided and 'sploded apart; so danger-danger Will Robinson for those going through the field. You'll also notice from the movies that the ISDs are clearing their way through the field by blasting asteroids out of their way. This reinforces my previous assertion about the shields being down, as the only way for the fleet to coordinate their efforts in the search for the Falcon would have been to keep shields down and transmissions open.

Also, for the A-Wing reference: the Executor was thrown into its death throws due to the fact that its bridge deflector shields were destroyed and the A-Wing that lost control and slammed into the non-shielded bridge effectively destroyed the command-and-control functions of the executor. SW-lore states that the secondary bridge crew were desperately trying to take back control of the ship when it was being propelled off course directly into the DS II. It was this event that would spur on later Imperial shipyards to create better redundant ship systems for controlling the craft, so that if the bridge of any cruiser or battleship was destroyed like that of the Executor it would not suffer a similar fate.

Numbers: There were only thirteen named Executor-class SSDs, but that does not account for all made from that class. Admittedly it is true that the title of SSD could be applied to any vessel larger than the standard ISD-class, but these classes were exponentially more powerful in magnitude than the regular ISD and by that they earned that new designation in type.

In terms of conventional line ships, 25,000 for the Imperial-class is what I have also seen. However, they seem to make up the bulk of any standard squadron, indicating that they likely outnumber the other ships in their relative size/power class (and thus make up more than half of the total number of 'Star Destroyers' in service). This sounds like a lot of ships, but in relation to the size of the territory the Empire controls, it's tiny. 1.75 million worlds were full members of the Empire, while 69 million had representation. The galaxy itself contained 400 billion stars. If we assume there were 100,000 Star Destroyers (and thus the Imperial-class was a minority), and each had five escorts, that's still only 600,000 ships for 69 million worlds, many of them rather restive.

EU sources have made it clear that in those sectors that were considered a low priority for the Empire, were assigned older model ships for system defense. In his new book "Choices of One" by the acclaimed Timothy Zahn, the Candoras Sector where the events of the book take place, the local Imperial defense forces have only a single Dreadnought (old class of ship) and a Golan-I Defense Platform that had only 30% of its weaponry operational. Obviously those sectors of space where the Empire felt confident that its rule did not need a constant military presence to remind its citizens of their loyalty need not have been as heavily seeded with ISDs or other ships. This does not take into account ships that were under the scale of designation of "capitol ship" type.

To correct your territory citation: "The Galactic Empire's territory at its peak consisted of some one and a half million member and conquered worlds, as well as sixty-nine million colonies, protectorates and puppet states spread throughout the entire galaxy, stretching from the borders of the Deep Core to at least Wild Space."

Ten percent of those planets developed life, while sentient life developed in 1/1,000 of those (about 20 million). Factoring in output of heat and light for advanced civilizations to form, there were 7.1 billion truly habitable stars, and 3.2 billion habitable star systems, with only 69 million systems meeting the requirements for Imperial representation, and 1.75 million planets considered full member worlds.

While there are tens of thousands of Star Destroyers, there are hundreds of thousands to millions of smaller vessels that make of the Imperial Navy. To measure a navy by capitol ship strength alone is foolish.

There are also canon conflicts as to how much firepower a Moff controlled, and how much was assembled. Admiral Giel's 'Secret Armada,' claimed to be the largest in Imperial history, contained 'dozens of Star Destroyers' and 'hundreds of escorts.' It was presumably larger than any Moff Sector Group by a decent margin, given its importance. The Star Wars Technical Journal states that only 24 Imperial-class Star Destroyers were assigned to each Sector Group. Vader's Death Squadron was claimed to be the most powerful assemblage of warships in the Empire, but was only composed of Executor plus a half-dozen Star Destroyers, although many more were attached during the Battle of Endor.

Special fleet operations groups were created at the will of the Emperor and he gave a large amount of leeway to those trusted servants, such as Darth Vader, Admiral Giel, etc. Those sector groups you mention also contained, at least, another 1,600 combat starships. That doesn't take starfighter strength into account either.

The Death Squadron was so feared as one of the most powerful assemblage of warships in the Empire is because that formation under Vader's direct command was the creme-de-la-creme of the Imperial Navy, the most elite of the elite. Hence why you have such references to the disparaging loss of the Executor by Captain Gilad Paelleon in the Thrawn series of books, as it contained a disproportionate amount of the best crewers and midshipmen and officers that the Imperial Navy had to offer. Their power came not just from their vessels, but from the elite skill of the men crewing those vessels. Not to mention the dark reputation of the Lord Darth Vader helping to add an extra bit of fear to anyone seeing the Death Squadron.

The Imperial-class alone had over 174,000 defects, and even Lira Wessex herself was aware of a number of them.

This was a quote from a minor Republic/Rebel engineer that was working on Booster Terrik's old ISD-class Mk. 1 ship. In the grand scheme of things, very few of these supposed defects were able to be exploited in a combat situation. Most, if not all, starship captains were trained to use their vessels tactically well enough to counter any problems they may have encountered as a result of these supposed defects. The idea of assaulting a ISD was considered suicide by many rebels, as was exemplified in the movies when you had a terrified C-3P0 ranting "Sir, the odds of surviving a direct assault on an Imperial Star Destroyer..." before Leia shuts him up and depriving us of the odds.

Debatable (as is everything, which is why it is still being debated). G-canon sources depict Star Wars ships as fighting at visible ranges, which in a real space battle would be basically knife fighting. Star Trek ships also engage at similar ranges. Secondary sources indicate that SW ships are capable of engagements at light-minute ranges or more, but are rarely if ever shown to fight at such ranges, given the inherent inaccuracy of any sublight munition against a mobile target at anything more than a few lightseconds.

Actually it's not that debatable. We know for a fact that the Rebel Blockade Runner that we see in Star Wars: A New Hope can go 2,100Gs thanks to the "New Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels," and that the ISD chasing it was easily keeping pace. Therefore we can stipulate that the ISD classes have, at least, the acceleration rate of +-2,100Gs of acceleration.

According to the "Revenge of the Sith: Incredible Cross Sections" source book we know that the Venator, the predecessor of the ISD class, could "In its precise, long-range tracking mode, the DBY-827 [the main HTL armaments on the wings] could hit a target vessel at a range of ten light minutes. During close-range fights, the turrets could rotate in three seconds with their fast-tracking mode." Naturally it would make for a boring movie to the wider amount of audiences if you had to sit there and watch a battle between ships so far apart. You have to remember that Lucas' directing and shooting style were modeled after the WWII dogfight movies he watched as a kid, so much that the starfighter battle in "A New Hope" might as well have been a sci-fi copy-paste of them. As such the battles we see in the movies are up close and personal and therefore cannot be a valid representation of the effective combat ranges of SW ships.

The ultimate problem with both universes is that both are made for popular audiences, meaning they have to be visually interesting, but often not realistic based on mentioned or written material. I personally found it hilarious when in Revenge of the Sith, clone troops are shown manually loading and aiming the guns. One would think that with thousands of years in space, an autoloader would have been developed. Or the lines of droids and clones walking right into each other while firing in Attack of the Clones, as if this were the Civil War, but with blasters. Ultimately, both sides end up writing and depicting whatever level of power and physics is necessary to drive the narrative.

I quite agree. However, on one small note, it must be understood also that Imperial military doctrine required gunners to be able to manually aim and target with their guns in the event of their targeting system failing due to any manner of problems. It was so that in the event of a major loss in command and control, the gunners could still operate well enough to fend for themselves.

On top of that, Star Wars tends to be afflicted by conflicting figures from various lesser-canon authors, while Star Trek suffers from the problem of a lack of information by declaring all non film/television works as non-canon. Star Trek is further compounded by the fact that the technology changes almost exponentially between ENT, TOS/TMP and TNG/VOY/DS9, while the vast numbers of ships thrown around in the Star Wars prequels blows the entire power balance out of whack.

And agreed.

[Feazanthia]

Technical issues involving CPBs aside, the concept of hitting a moving target with a non-guided weapon at 10 LM is just laughable

[Vocenae]

This and the Advice thread are dead to me. It's so full of trash and spam at this point that no one has any reason for reading either of them unless they like killing braincells.

We actually had a good arguement going and it gets derailed because someone has to interrupt and change the subject because they have nothing to contribute to the conversation.

[Thrashia]

I'll get around to answering the rest of your post, but I wanted to get this part answered quick.

Organizing a response on the scale you're talking about would still require the Empire to first recognize the Borg threat for what it is (which, admittedly, could happen given Palpatine's expanded universe apparent obsession with preparing the galaxy for an extragalactic invasion), and even then it'll be some time before a response can be assembled and dispatched. Also, my time estimates were being conservative. Consider the speed with which the Borg can adapt to a new technology. Voyager's regenerative armor, a technology from the future and designed specifically to counter Borg weapons' fire, was effectively defeated after a trio of Cubes were able to scan it for less than a minute. Also, while the Empire may have more raw resources to draw upon, it still would take time to mobilize them. Your own figures mark the number of ISDs available to the Imperial Fleet in the thousands. There are hundreds of thousands to millions of Cubes and Tactical Cubes available to the Collective. Even a single ship assimilated by the Borg would grant them access to Hyperdrive and Star Wars-scale power generators. Size one of those up to facilitate a Cube or Tactical Cube, and the Imperial Fleet would have a very nasty surprise waiting for them when they mobilized. Contrary to belief, the Borg are fully capable of innovation. When they realized that 8472 was not only militant but resistant to assimilation, they began cranking out Tactical Cubes in very short order. While I don't have precise figures on the TacCube's capabilities relative to a regular Cube, in STO they have about four times the firepower and ten times the survivability.

We know cannon-ly thanks to the Star Wars Sourcebook that quote:

A full ten percent of the entire Imperial Navy was kept in reserve in the Core Worlds, so as to be able to quickly respond to threats throughout the galaxy.

10% of the largest and most powerful military in the Star Wars universe...yeah...let that sink in. If we take the 25,000 ISD count at face value, that leaves at least 2,500 ISDs available for immediate deployment to hot zones across the galaxy.

Also, where are the sources of these Borg cube numbers? I'm curious.

[Yes Im Biop]

This and the Advice thread are dead to me. It's so full of trash and spam at this point that no one has any reason for reading either of them unless they like killing braincells.

We actually had a good arguement going and it gets derailed because someone has to interrupt and change the subject because they have nothing to contribute to the conversation.

The ADvice thread helps. But yeah. This one is useless

[Thrashia]

Technical issues involving CPBs aside, the concept of hitting a moving target with a non-guided weapon at 10 LM is just laughable

Hey if I could hit a moving target with my Abrams dead center whilst going full speed myself at a mile distance in range...I can only imagine what the targeting and tracking systems are for FT weaponry.

[Zebian Syndicate]

This and the Advice thread are dead to me. It's so full of trash and spam at this point that no one has any reason for reading either of them unless they like killing braincells.

We actually had a good arguement going and it gets derailed because someone has to interrupt and change the subject because they have nothing to contribute to the conversation.

The ADvice thread helps. But yeah. This one is useless

Oh no, not by a long shot. Just scroll way back to some of the earlier posts,...

[Feazanthia]

Technical issues involving CPBs aside, the concept of hitting a moving target with a non-guided weapon at 10 LM is just laughable

Hey if I could hit a moving target with my Abrams dead center whilst going full speed myself at a mile distance in range...I can only imagine what the targeting and tracking systems are for FT weaponry.

Except your shell didn't have to travel for ten minutes to hit a maneuvering target.

[Tahar Joblis]

Hey if I could hit a moving target with my Abrams dead center whilst going full speed myself at a mile distance in range...I can only imagine what the targeting and tracking systems are for FT weaponry.

Except your shell didn't have to travel for ten minutes to hit a maneuvering target.

This is the central problem of space warfare weaponry in a high-FT setting.

If a is the component of unpredicted acceleration of your target - on a non-relativistic scale, anyway, so we're still talking about slow-moving ships - and r is the radius of a circular target, then the maximum range d at which you can guarantee hitting some portion of the target is given by:

d = c(2r/a)^0.5

And if your sensors are limited by lightspeed, that distance drops in half.

For example, if you're shooting at a 3200m diameter sphere - an immensely large target by any standard - that has an unpredictable acceleration component of 1 g, i.e., not that much by FT standards, you don't even really need inertial dampeners to avoid killing humans at that rate - you cannot completely guarantee a hit at 18 light seconds even with arbitrarily good angular precision and perfect sensors.

A typical FT ship on NS has a smaller target profile than a 3200m diameter sphere - several hundred meters is, as far as most people are concerned, a big ship - and they very often have acceleration profiles that require inertial dampening technology in order to avoid squishing passengers. It might not be freely vectored, but targeting ships outside a light-second with an unguided shell, even a lightspeed one, just isn't going to happen in a FT RP unless you're being silly.

Guided missiles, of course, are a different question.