SuperScaleConstruct wrote:In looking at the general consensus here about how superior Star Wars tech is compared to Star Trek tech, there is one major fallacy which everyone seems to buy into. It is this idea that the advancement of civilization and technological progress must be seen as a linear thing. It is not and generally has not been throughout human history.
Technology isn't completely linear, but it does follow a general trend.
for example the Roman Empire had running water and sewer systems which were not duplicated for 1200 years.
Good point on that.
Greek fire allowed naval superiority for ancient Greece and the chemical formulation of it is not understood to this day.
Yet modern day explosives are far more powerful than greek fire by several orders of magnitude.
What would happen if say, an army with Bronze weapons, horses and good hygiene and plenty of supplies went up against an army on foot with no medicine but had Steel weapons and armor? Do you see the point? It is simplistic to declare one thing utterly superior to the other when in reality there could be a 1001 differences which add complications.
That's a faulty analogy. Renaissance and beyond medicinal technology was superior to Classical era technology.
To put this back into a scifi scenario which always strikes me is this comparison of hyperdrive to warp. Hyperdrive is an order of magnitude faster then warp. Ok, thats fine, that is exactly what we see according to the plots in the cannon. But what else do we see that are the differences between them? It is funny how everyone ignores this part because there are other significant differences.
EMERGENCY!
Captain Picard "get us out of here, any heading, warp 9"! maximum 3 seconds for the ship to disappear
Han Solo "Chewie angle the deflectors while I make the calculations for the jump to light speed!" minimum 30 seconds of evasive maneuvers before the ship is prepared to jump
navigation:
"It is generally a good idea fly in a straight line at warp speed to avoid tearing the ship apart" however there are countless examples of course corrections at warp speed due to obstacles. Or even firing weapons and performing tactical maneuvers at warp speed.
Han Solo "These are the coordinates, but isn't here it is totally blown away! We flew right into an asteriod field, Alderran where dat?" every instance while in hyperspace the crew seems totally incommunicado with the outside world.
The advantages of warp over hyperdrive does not come near to making up for the advantages of hyperdrive over warp. It's like comparing a car to a horse (actually, that analogy is toned down; hyperdrive is hundreds of thousands of time faster than warp). A horse may have some advantages over a car, but in a war automobile based transports would give that side a HUGE logistical, strategic and tactical advantage over a side that still uses horses for transportation.
