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[Amperzand]

Star Trek ships barely have any velocity at all.  The warp drive works by distorting space, not adding kinetic velocity.

Star Wars?  I dunno.  Looks like some sort of wormhole thingie.

I'm acting under the assumption both sides have engines that allow them to change their realspace velocity without firing up big scary warp drives. Star Wars ships definitely have non-hyperspace engines. These engines seem to have pretty good acceleration, and don't seem to need much fuel. That gives you a planet killer, at least if you give it a while to speed up first. You don't need to be moving at warp speed to blow up a planet, just a little bit below the speed of light, since relativistic effects become exponentially stronger the closer you get to c.

[mainiac]

The sublight maneuvers in both lores are distinctly non Newtonian.  You are talking about them like they are rockets capable of indefinite acceleration.  They aren't.

[Strife26]

The sublight maneuvers in both lores are distinctly non Newtonian.  You are talking about them like they are rockets capable of indefinite acceleration.  They aren't.

If anything, the fact that near c kinetic kill vehicles to planets isn't the preeminent form of warfare in either universe says that it's either taboo or not effective.

[Amperzand]

The sublight maneuvers in both lores are distinctly non Newtonian.  You are talking about them like they are rockets capable of indefinite acceleration.  They aren't.

Inertialess drives/non-newtonian accelerators/whatever the heck are even more terrifying, unless given arbitrary limitations by the author specifically to avoid their use as weapons.

The sublight maneuvers in both lores are distinctly non Newtonian.  You are talking about them like they are rockets capable of indefinite acceleration.  They aren't.

If anything, the fact that near c kinetic kill vehicles to planets isn't the preeminent form of warfare in either universe says that it's either taboo or not effective.

My default assumption is that it's taboo, a taboo that will be broken in sufficient emergency, like nukes in our world.

[Strife26]

The sublight maneuvers in both lores are distinctly non Newtonian.  You are talking about them like they are rockets capable of indefinite acceleration.  They aren't.

Inertialess drives/non-newtonian accelerators/whatever the heck are even more terrifying, unless given arbitrary limitations by the author specifically to avoid their use as weapons.

The sublight maneuvers in both lores are distinctly non Newtonian.  You are talking about them like they are rockets capable of indefinite acceleration.  They aren't.

If anything, the fact that near c kinetic kill vehicles to planets isn't the preeminent form of warfare in either universe says that it's either taboo or not effective.

My default assumption is that it's taboo, a taboo that will be broken in sufficient emergency, like nukes in our world.

We see an awful lot of desperate straights in both universes, though. Why build a death star if you can get a beater starship to do it?

[mainiac]

If anything, the fact that near c kinetic kill vehicles to planets isn't the preeminent form of warfare in either universe says that it's either taboo or not effective.

When the engine fails the ship doesn't hurtle forward, it just stops.  It doesn't have any energy.  If you want to give a mass kinetic energy you are going to need to supply that with energy from your anti matter core.  You are stuck back in the realm of Newtonian physics.  And if you are doing that, why not just send down an antimatter torpedo?  A kinetic killer might always just harmlessly pass through the planet because some clever captain got the idea of putting it into a warp bubble for a few seconds.

[Amperzand]

@maniniac: In fairness, above .84c you get more energy per impactor mass than antimatter, but I see your point.

The sublight maneuvers in both lores are distinctly non Newtonian.  You are talking about them like they are rockets capable of indefinite acceleration.  They aren't.

Inertialess drives/non-newtonian accelerators/whatever the heck are even more terrifying, unless given arbitrary limitations by the author specifically to avoid their use as weapons.

The sublight maneuvers in both lores are distinctly non Newtonian.  You are talking about them like they are rockets capable of indefinite acceleration.  They aren't.

If anything, the fact that near c kinetic kill vehicles to planets isn't the preeminent form of warfare in either universe says that it's either taboo or not effective.

My default assumption is that it's taboo, a taboo that will be broken in sufficient emergency, like nukes in our world.

We see an awful lot of desperate straights in both universes, though. Why build a death star if you can get a beater starship to do it?

Why spend billions bombarding enemy positions with fighter-bombers and tomahawk missiles of only uncertain effectiveness when you could drop a nuke and end it?

[mainiac]

@maniniac: In fairness, above .84c you get more energy per impactor mass than antimatter, but I see your point.

I guess they should ditch those antimatter warp cores and install flywheels.

[Amperzand]

I would guess that flywheels don't like holding together under the centripetal/centrifugal force of rotational velocities near c, whereas a straight velocity doesn't inherently try to tear you apart.

[Strife26]

@maniniac: In fairness, above .84c you get more energy per impactor mass than antimatter, but I see your point.

The sublight maneuvers in both lores are distinctly non Newtonian.  You are talking about them like they are rockets capable of indefinite acceleration.  They aren't.

Inertialess drives/non-newtonian accelerators/whatever the heck are even more terrifying, unless given arbitrary limitations by the author specifically to avoid their use as weapons.

The sublight maneuvers in both lores are distinctly non Newtonian.  You are talking about them like they are rockets capable of indefinite acceleration.  They aren't.

If anything, the fact that near c kinetic kill vehicles to planets isn't the preeminent form of warfare in either universe says that it's either taboo or not effective.

My default assumption is that it's taboo, a taboo that will be broken in sufficient emergency, like nukes in our world.

We see an awful lot of desperate straights in both universes, though. Why build a death star if you can get a beater starship to do it?

Why spend billions bombarding enemy positions with fighter-bombers and tomahawk missiles of only uncertain effectiveness when you could drop a nuke and end it?

Because it's not important enough to pay the political cost of a nuke. An all out war implies that it is worth that cost.

[Amperzand]

Not necessarily.

[misko27]

Not necessarily.

mini-rant: Depends on how all-out. Hermann Kahn, the Cold-War Theorist who was one of three inspirations for the character of Dr. Strangelove, with such lovely book titles as On Thermonuclear War, Thinking about the Unthinkable, and On Escalation, was a staple of my tween years. He theorized the existence of a "Escalation ladder". Whereas most thinking about Nuclear Weapons traditionally imagines that Nuclear weapons are a very simple "Yes/No" value, he argued that Nuclear Weapons had their place on the "ladder" of confrontation, where the bottom  rung is "Ostensible Crisis" and the Top rung is "Spasm or Insensate Nuclear Warfare", and everything else inbetween covers everything else, from shows of force to legal and diplomatic sanctions, from limited conventional warfare, to Nuclear Ultimatums, and from Local "Exemplary" use of nuclear weapons to limited military usage, all the way up to targeting of civilians to various extents. No such crisis needed to go through every single step on the ladder, he thought, so a situation COULD just develop straight to "general nuking of everything", but it need not. There are stages between using war and nuclear war, and there are stages between local nuclear war or military nuclear war and the popular image of sending 50-megaton bombs to all the major cities. I'd say that this ladder would only become more diverse and complicated when different types of WMDs are used with wildly different capabilities, so the space version of the Escalation ladder must be pretty complex.

Spoiler: The Ladder (click to show/hide)

Arguably, that ladder is also one of the biggest issues with hypothetical wars in general. With a hypothetical war you have to "assume" that one stage or another is being used, when reality might be different. The Federation here might be superior in one localized, "conventional" space conflict limited to one solar system, while the Empire might clearly win out in any sort of multi-system war, while perhaps the Federation has a significant when it comes to a localized military-targeted WMD-using conflict, while perhaps the Empire has a slight advantage when it comes to "blindly flinging the strongest bombs we have at any target that presents itself." We might end by saying that the one who is best at the last stage wins, but the issue is that the results of a real war will depend on what stage is actually used, and when, whether, and how much the rung of escalation changes (can't nuke anyone if you lose your entire fleet in conventional warfare, for example). Do the Federation and the Empire start off by flinging both the regular and jury-rigged WMDs at major population centers? Most wars don't start that way. In fact, no war has ever started that way. And if they don't start that way, when do they get there? These are questions the Armchair general must answer.

TL;DR In short, I'd say it's impossible to analyze how a "real" war would go between the two, while it might be worthwhile to figure out who has the advantage in a variety of different scenarios, and then guess from there what that means.

[Sheb]

Why spend billions bombarding enemy positions with fighter-bombers and tomahawk missiles of only uncertain effectiveness when you could drop a nuke and end it?

Because you get a level of control with fighter bomber you don't get with nukes. The Death Star sole purpose is to blow up planets. If a KKV could do it at a fraction of the cost they'd use that. In a world with KKV, the Death Star would be the equivalent of designing an gigantic airship that can litterally drop a million tons of TNT on your target so you get the effect of a nuke without a nuke.

[BFEL]

I'm pretty sure the Empire would win simply by the fact the Star Wars Universe has had mass organized space warfare over the scale of a galaxy for what? several thousand years at least? and Star Trek has had it for a couple centuries on the scale of singular battles? I think the Federation might be a little screwed.

The Star Wars Universe has had ONE mass organized space war. The same one over and over. Jedi vs. Sith. Jedi vs. Sith. Rinse, repeat.
The entire galaxy has experience fighting ONE enemy, whereas in Star Trek the Federation has fought Klingons, Romulans, Borg, Dominion, Cardassians, Breen, NUMEROUS PHYSICAL GODS, etc. All of which fight in entirely different ways from each other.

Even if the Empire has fought for longer, it doesn't have anything close to the experience the Federation has, because its only had one experience, over and over.
Its like how the Aztecs only ever fought other light infantry units while Europe had cavalry, heavy armor, gunpowder, pike formations, etc. to deal with.
And we all know who won that fight.

[mainiac]

I would guess that flywheels don't like holding together under the centripetal/centrifugal force of rotational velocities near c, whereas a straight velocity doesn't inherently try to tear you apart.

They could make a "flywheel" that has a linear velocity and then trap it in a warp bubble to keep it in the ship.