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[Taricus]

The problem with trek is that there's no real... standards? When it comes to measuring defenses, whereas Star wars' defences are are fairly standardised in regards to that. Star wars also does have shielded shuttlecraft and the like.

Now, the transporter torpedo trick I'd say would be unviable due to the difficulties in actually acquiring a target in a timely and accurate fashion, given that the SW ships will be moving throughout combat, and that won't necessarily work against all the small craft like fighters that can be sent. Heck, something like the A-wing or TIE interceptor could possibly be the most difficult thing for a ST ship to deal with purely because they don't have the weapons to effectively counter them.

As for SW weapons, they tend to be turreted weapons, and there's a pretty diverse array depending on power output and size.

@Maniac: The federation is TINY compared to the empire/republic. Coruscant alone has a population of a single trillion, and with thousands of planets under it's aegis which likely have populations in the billions. Sure, it might be more difficult for them to move all that manpower around, but I'm certain that transporters have range limits, necessitating being close (roughly geosynch orbit range for a planet) to the area where you want to transport things to and from.

Star wars shields don't operate on frequencies however, actually being a 'barrier' which effectively diffuses incoming energy weapons, there's not much chance of actually slipping through it with a phasor. And the average hull integrity of a star destroyer I would say is actually pretty sturdy. Not unbeatable, but it will take more than a single torpedo. Those things do dwarf most ships in the federation fleet.

[mainiac]

@Maniac: The federation is TINY compared to the empire/republic. Coruscant alone has a population of a single trillion, and with thousands of planets under it's aegis which likely have populations in the billions

Okay here we run into the problem that Star Wars clearly does not have any consistent cannon so you can basically make an argument for any number you want.

Consider Naboo and Tatooine, two of the planets were actually see in any sort of detail.  They clearly do not have billions of inhabitants.  Tens of millions would be my estimate.  These were two of the thousands of planets in the Old Republic.  But then later on one of the expanded universe writers decided that the average planet had a couple billion people even though we never see such an average planet at any point in any movie.

A population of that size makes little sense in the lore.  The size of the attack force that Naboo was able to muster was about the size of the attack forces that the rebels mustered at Yavin and Hoth.  So a scale that assumes that Naboo is a minow among whales is wildly inappropriate for assessing military industrial power.  If the scale that each planet is billions were true that would mean that the Galactic empire would need to be so inefficient as to make North Korea look like an economic juggernaut.

The galactic empire probably only has tens of thousands of star destroyers.  The battle of Yavin makes this seem like a generous estimate.  The USS Voyager is NCC-74656.  And the Federation added at least 10,000 starships in just a few years before Voyager was built because they were facing their first real threat in decades.

Star wars shields don't operate on frequencies however, actually being a 'barrier' which effectively diffuses incoming energy weapons, there's not much chance of actually slipping through it with a phasor. And the average hull integrity of a star destroyer I would say is actually pretty sturdy. Not unbeatable, but it will take more than a single torpedo. Those things do dwarf most ships in the federation fleet.

Literally the entire point of a phasor is to pierce unmodulated shields.  It's a phased laser.  They try to hit so many different frequencies that the enemy shield doesn't protect them all.  But in Star Wars there aren't phased shields.  So the phasor would pass straight through the shields with it's complete power.

A structural integrity field in star trek parlance refers to technology they have to use an energy field to reinforce materials.  This allows star ships to shrug off attacks that would tear through the hardest materials.

Star trek teleporters would have no trouble at all going onto a star wars ship.  They regularly teleport people off of spaceships at great distance in short order.  The things that stop teleporters in star wars are shields (which you have to modulate through but Star Wars doesn't have shield modulators) and huge amounts of matter (or structural integrity fields).

A single photon torpedo would be plenty to take out a star destroyer.  They dont have shields that can stop them.  They dont have structural integrity fields to mitigate the damage.  They would be depending on alloys to stop antimatter.

[Taricus]

That's easily explained by just how much territory the empire needs to administrate. It's a far cry from the comparatively small states.

As for the numbers thing, The population of corusant is constant and that is atleast 1 trillion, if not more. And the movies typically focussed on where the action was and not some peaceful, well-developed world far removed from the plot.

Naboo being a minnow is inline with the politics of the world. You think a pacifist nation is going to have a large military? And the rebels operated on a cell structure; while the bases on yavin and hoth were their HQs, the military hardware there likely represented only a fraction of what the rebellion had, in case the empire found a base and rolled over them as it did in the movies as it can ill afford to concentrate it's forces for anything but particularly decisive engagements.

[mainiac]

Naboo being a minnow is inline with the politics of the world. You think a pacifist nation is going to have a large military? And the rebels operated on a cell structure; while the bases on yavin and hoth were their HQs, the military hardware there likely represented only a fraction of what the rebellion had, in case the empire found a base and rolled over them as it did in the movies as it can ill afford to concentrate it's forces for anything but particularly decisive engagements.

Yavin was described as the primary rebel base.  Hoth was described as a later primary rebel base.  The potential loss of the rebel forces at these locations was described as a grave threat to the rebellion, not just another cell.  Naboo has a military approximately on par with the attack force mustered at Yavin and Hoth.

So whatever the population of the galaxy is, the fact of the matter is the galaxies military potential is along the lines of what would make sense if Naboo was a typical world.  Call it googleplex people for all I care.  It's googleplex people who aren't making any military assets.

[Taricus]

The threat of those losses would've likely been smiliar to what happened to the empire; it was never the loss of material that was so damaging was it was all the command personnel that would've gone with all that equipment. The first death star took many of the empire's high-level government officials when that went up, and the emperor kicking the bucket as the second death star went up did far more damage than the material losses on those death stars.

And taking naboo as the average world is disingenuous; naboo was far from the average in terms of development and had an economy primarily based on gathering a single resource. Add to the fact they were pacifists (Meaning they saw little need for military industrial development.)

[Strife26]

Star Trek exists in a post scarcity environment, Star Wars doesn't. Unless there's some ancient hokey religious win condition, the Federation and company are victorious.

[mainiac]

The threat of those losses would've likely been smiliar to what happened to the empire; it was never the loss of material that was so damaging was it was all the command personnel that would've gone with all that equipment. The first death star took many of the empire's high-level government officials when that went up, and the emperor kicking the bucket as the second death star went up did far more damage than the material losses on those death stars.

And taking naboo as the average world is disingenuous; naboo was far from the average in terms of development and had an economy primarily based on gathering a single resource. Add to the fact they were pacifists (Meaning they saw little need for military industrial development.)

You say that it's disingenuous to say that naboo is typical because it's really a minnow but we dont see that on camera.  A random shopkeeper on tatooine has heard of naboo.  Whereas I live in a small town and I can go to the nearest city and people have never heard of my town.  The blockade of Naboo was enough to sink the career of the president of the galaxy.  That is not a minnow.

When I say that a phasor can shoot right through shields if it matches the frequency, that is something that is established in the lore.  Repeatedly.  When the Voyager fights the Equinox, a barely flying space hulk is able to kick the ass of a ship in fighting trim because they have the shield frequencies.  That's one of the essential facts of space combat in star trek.

And when you say that it's the high ranking leaders that is even less supported by the actual material we see.  When do we ever see Crix Madine or Bren Derlin again?  These guys are super important?  Did you even know their names?  I know I wouldn't have if I wasn't into Star Wars Rebellion.

[WealthyRadish]

This is almost as bad as the weebs going on about reading their mangoes and watching their animated mongolian comics. I feel gladder every day that I haven't seen either of these natural-philosophy-fantasy serial publications by Tolkien that show up so often in popular culture.

[mainiac]

Oh man, look at you, so cool dissing the NERDS. 

[Loud Whispers]

This is almost as bad as the weebs going on about reading their mangoes and watching their animated mongolian comics. I feel gladder every day that I haven't seen either of these natural-philosophy-fantasy serial publications by Tolkien that show up so often in popular culture.

Why you gotta hate on Tibetan goat herding cartoons

[WealthyRadish]

It's not the polynesian video drawings themselves that I find very offensive, it's just the excessive enthusiasm for azerbaijani television doodles that can be a bit off-putting.

[mainiac]

[Parsely]

It's the underwater Luxembourgian picture flippers that really get my goat.

[Baffler]

It's not the polynesian video drawings themselves that I find very offensive, it's just the excessive enthusiasm for azerbaijani television doodles that can be a bit off-putting.

You say that like you don't know Uzbek televised flipbooks aren't the only form of entertainment anyone could ever need.

[Radio Controlled]

I do think star wars' ftl is much, much faster than that of star trek. An extremely important advantage, I'd say. And I got it from reading this website: http://www.stardestroyer.net
Which is an entire website dedicated to the question of star wars vs star trek. Kinda biased for the former, but interesting nonetheless.