Why does the SW vs ST debate still exist?

[Rama]

I've seen it recently and it did indeed only fire once.

Even though it was only fired once? Was he hoping that one shot would wipe them out? Besides, that plan clearly wasn't working once that Imperial fleet started losing.

*facepalm* How did i forget that one In any case the point still stands.

When your point is reliant on the sentiment that it only fired once (whereas we see it fire twice, with more shots occurring off-screen thanks to canon), it ceases to stand.

[the atom]

I've seen it recently and it did indeed only fire once.

Even though it was only fired once? Was he hoping that one shot would wipe them out? Besides, that plan clearly wasn't working once that Imperial fleet started losing.

*facepalm* How did i forget that one In any case the point still stands.

When your point is reliant on the sentiment that it only fired once (whereas we see it fire twice, with more shots occurring off-screen thanks to canon), it ceases to stand.

Interesting. I didn't know about those other shots. Alright conceded

[Student4Life1975]

Hello all. Rather new here, though some of you might know me from Spacebattles. I just have to ask one question: why, after all these years, does the SW vs. ST debate still persist? The horrific economic and brute force disparity has been settled time and time again. I've always loved Star Trek, yet when put on a strict versus debate with Star Wars, it just doesn't work. Why must the ST fans keep coming back for more punishment?

Well that's my existential rant for the day.

why does the creation vs evolution, or the gay rights to get married, or the abortion debate keep ongoing? its people's opinions, thats why, and they change every day. the star trek vs star wars topic is far from settled, just because people all decided their opinions were actual facts, and dont know the difference?

people are inclined to take whatever side based on which show they actually like more, but thats not a very constructive way to argue, and maybe some much needed unbiast point of view is in order.

what it really comes down to is this: is the size of the starships in starwars enough to overcome the obvoius technological advantages and the number of starships of the star trek universe? the borg alone had over 29,000 borg cubes! just one nearly wiped out the entire federation fleet.

[Big Phil]

Hello all. Rather new here, though some of you might know me from Spacebattles. I just have to ask one question: why, after all these years, does the SW vs. ST debate still persist? The horrific economic and brute force disparity has been settled time and time again. I've always loved Star Trek, yet when put on a strict versus debate with Star Wars, it just doesn't work. Why must the ST fans keep coming back for more punishment?

Well that's my existential rant for the day.

why does the creation vs evolution, or the gay rights to get married, or the abortion debate keep ongoing? its people's opinions, thats why, and they change every day. the star trek vs star wars topic is far from settled, just because people all decided their opinions were actual facts, and dont know the difference?

people are inclined to take whatever side based on which show they actually like more, but thats not a very constructive way to argue, and maybe some much needed unbiast point of view is in order.

what it really comes down to is this: is the size of the starships in starwars enough to overcome the obvoius technological advantages and the number of starships of the star trek universe? the borg alone had over 29,000 borg cubes! just one nearly wiped out the entire federation fleet.

Dorkstar, is that you?

[HMS Sophia]

obvoius technological advantages

Like what?

the number of starships

How many?

over 29,000 borg cubes

The GE has 25,000 ISD's, and numerous other war ships as well. One of them could easily destroy the Federation fleet along with the borg fleet. Do you wanna maybe back up your arguments?

Dorkstar, is that you?

It would make me laugh.

[Lagmonster]

Dorkstar, is that you?

Make a coherent argument, or get the fuck out.

[Ryag Han]

29,000 borg cubes!

where did you pull that number out of? seriously, WHERE?

[Ryag Han]

One of them could easily destroy the Federation fleet along with the borg fleet.

Prove it.

well ONE wouldn't do much. that much can be settled. it could take out a bunch of fed ships, a cube or two, but a FLEET is way off.

[HMS Sophia]

One of them could easily destroy the Federation fleet along with the borg fleet.

Prove it.

Sorry. Exaggeration due to irritation. I will go more with "an ISD can happily engage several federation ships without being threatened by return fire?"

[Eternal_Freedom]

Certainly, a single ISD can e considered a serious threat to a Federation task force. From what I can recall of the versus debates I have seen, an ISD is generally accepted to be more dangerous than a Borg Cube. I won't delve into how much, but suffice to say ISD>Borg cube.

Now, we saw on no less than two occasions that a single Borg Cube was a major threat to an entire Federation battlegroup. So, from that reasoning you can comfortably say that ISD>Federation task force.

[Big Phil]

Dorkstar, is that you?

Make a coherent argument, or get the fuck out.

You're on my ass for this post while ignoring the blatant appeal to popularity fallacy to which I responded? In a thread you haven't been participating in, and in a forum you don't moderate. Are you for real?

[Darth Tedious]

what it really comes down to is this: is the size of the starships in starwars enough to overcome the obvoius technological advantages and the number of starships of the star trek universe?

Size has little to do with it. Borg ships are considerably larger than ISDs.
Speed is more of an issue...

[Eternal_Freedom]

If nothing else, an ISD is more dangerous because of it's FTL speed. Even if we accept the Borg Cube has equal firepower, shielding, power generation and so on (which I don't) the ISD can still get around the galaxy faster, hence it is more dangerous.

At any rate, we can say that it is at least as threatening to Imperial ships as a Borg Cube, and one cube tore through 39 of the Federation's finest without apparent difficulty. (Yes, they had Picard's knowledge, but even later at Earth in STFC the Borg were ripping the fleet a new one.)

So the conclusion that a single ISD is a serious threat to a Federation taskforce (a relatively large one too) is valid I think.

On a side note, I find it slightly amusing that in the two major Starfleet vs Borg engagements, the side that won had inside knowledge of the opponent. Both times it came from Picard.

[Dalton]

You're on my ass for this post while ignoring the blatant appeal to popularity fallacy to which I responded? In a thread you haven't been participating in, and in a forum you don't moderate. Are you for real?

Lagmonster is a supermoderator and has authority in ALL forums. If you don't like it, you can get the fuck out. If you have a problem with his actions, you can take it up with me. And if you pull this shit again I will personally ban your ass, Sanchez.

[Lagmonster]

Dorkstar, is that you?

Make a coherent argument, or get the fuck out.

You're on my ass for this post while ignoring the blatant appeal to popularity fallacy to which I responded? In a thread you haven't been participating in, and in a forum you don't moderate. Are you for real?

The new kid made a lazy, factless argument. You made NO argument. In my book, that means that he's retarded, but you're the one who failed Content Posting 101.

Make no mistake: I don't give a shit about the VS debate. But I do give a shit about people who still give a shit, and I'm not about to let them act like children. Also, I'm one of the staff's senior supermoderators. That means that despite my specific responsibilities, I have authority in all forums. I realize it may not look that way, but I'd be happy to demonstrate if it'll help get the point across.

[Connor MacLeod]

I really don't think that's the case either. In the shields thread, I asked if peak shielding might mean wattage, and pointed out that wattage can be a lot higher than joules.

Real life nuclear bombs have the energy released in a tiny fraction of a second. The wattage of a nuclear explosion can be in the same ballpark of the whole sun's output - great enough to beat the ICS peak shielding number. (see the other thread for piles of speculation on what else this could mean though)

Photon torpedoes are surely as fast as nuclear bombs - if they didn't release the energy fast, the bomb would blow itself apart without reacting all the fuel.

yeah and I pointed out this logic has been tried before - we really dont know enough to say it can or can't be so, but even if it can be so it doesn't acknowledge the heat sink issue.

The only possible relevant situation I can think of that isn't vaguely worded would be a case where Imperial naval ships invaded a world that tried tossing surface-to-orbit nukes (fission or fusion, I don't remember) at the fleet, and did fuck all to the ships (except provide the shields a source of energy to replenish energy stockpiles. don't ask me how that works. I could also mention "continent destroying energy weapons" on the Imperial ships in the same page, so that implies the total energy stockpiles involved would be significant even if the weapons are significantly less than "continent destroying")

Thus, it's possible that a single photorp could cause bleed-through damage, or maybe even collapse the shield briefly, letting a second weapon hit the hull and cause direct damage. (again in the other thread we briefly discussed how starfighters can take shields down briefly, letting bigger ships hit the temporarily vulnerable ships with more bigger guns).

And how close to the shields and starship will the torpedoes have to get to do what you propose? How are these torpedoes configured? I can think of alot of little holes in your proposition that make it harder - for example what if the shields are projected out to some distance from the hull rather than skintight? The second and most obvious problem is the ray/particle shield duality to deflectors are you talking about penetrating particle shields with a photorp or ray shields? That's two entirely separate questions right there that introduce a whole mess of complication to your idea.

Also, while the ICS firepower seems to be 1000x higher than photorp numbers, typical SW shots are closer to the same. We've seen SW hulls damaged by light weapons - the globe in ROTJ taken down by a fighter, DS internal damage by fighter shots in ANH.

That depends entirely on what you define those "globes" to work as. If they're sensors for example, then they may not be as well armored or shielded against attack as the general hull.

I'm not even going to touch on the Deaht Star becuase we dont even know what was hit/damaged to begin with, or to quantify/analyze it. Starships are not exactly inert targets (which was IIRC a complaint you made against Mike WRT laser cannon firepower based on striking the Death STar's hull, was it not?)

They are apparently vulnerable to much weaker hits than the maximum they can dish out.

It's been explicitly stated in novels that fighter grade laser cannons do fuck all to Star Destroyeres (Shadows of the Empire being a notable example) other than doing "soft kill" type damage - which is basically what we saw in ANH.

We've also seen them hurt by impacts, like asteroids in ESB or Piett in ROTJ. If a desperate captain decided to order ramming speed, could it take out an imperial ship too?

How are they ramming? Stuff like Mass lightening makes this a real problem to deal with. Is it possible for Trek to even match the mass/momentum of the asteroid as calced?

It looks very likely that Fed ships can threaten ISDs. Maybe they'd lose one on one, but it definitely looks like a fight is possible there. If they foolishly rush into one vs fleet, they may be very much surprised. And dead.

If we're going to go outside the box so to speak, there's lots of ways the Fed can threaten any Imperial starship. Of course there's lots of ways the Empire can do that as well, and the only way parity will be maintained is if the Empire doesn't bother putting significant resources into it.

One of the biggest things the ISD seems to have an edge on is redundancy. You can really hurt a star destroyer, but it can still fight.

Borg ships are like that too though.

Actually we've seen ISDs taken out by single hits from heavy weapons before, so I'm not sure how likely that assessment is.

[the atom]

What type of heavy weapon? It all depends on where it's hit, just like anything else. His point is somewhat correct though. While an ISD could stand to lose a total of a total of 100m squared worth of material from different areas, not many federation ships could do the same.

[mutanthamster]

In the SW vs ST debate, I have to side with ST. I wrote this years ago, before STTNG, but I think it still stands scrutiny.

The Empire vs The Federation

Space travel:
Both space fleets have faster-than-light travel. The Empire has hyperdrive which works by entering hyperspace in which faster than light speeds are possible and the Federation has warp drive with which the ship remains in normal space, but creating a space warp that allows it to move through space at faster than light.
Hyperdrive clearly gives the impression of being capable of traveling further in a short time than warp drive. This gives the Imperial Fleet a big advantage in being able to move its fleets to an advantageous position with Star Fleet struggling to keep up.
Advantage - the Empire

Space weapons:
The Empire has blasters and the Federation has phasers. The powerfulness of both seems to depend on the size of the ship. Both are capable of damaging large, heavily defended space craft.
The Federation has another weapon; photon torpedoes The photon torpedo is depicted as enormously powerful with blasts that effect vast areas of space. Hitting another space craft, even if it is heavily shielded, will cause it crippling damage.
Advantage - the Federation

Defences:
The Imperial ships are seen taking damage even from fighters and substantial damage from collision. Star Fleet on the other hand has shields, i.e. force fields, that must be overcome before the ship takes structural damage.
Advantage - the Federation

Targeting systems:
In Star Wars, guns are mounted in turrets that physically turn to bear on target. The films depict these guns firing and missing a great deal.
In Star Trek, phasers are able to fire instantaneously at any angle. Federation ships hit their targets most of the time and only have difficulty against warp driven targets. Against sublight targets they never miss.
Advantage - the Federation

Battle Speed:
In Star Wars ships travel at hyper speed, but drop out of hyperspace for battle. No battles take place in hyperspace. Star ships on the other hand fight at warp speeds.
In a space battle, sublight Imperial ships would be up against superlight speed Star Fleet ships. Regardless of all of the advantages and disadvantages of weapons, defences and targeting, the ability of Star Fleet ships to fight at superlight speed when Imperial ships cannot would give them a big advantage in combat.
Advantage - the Federation

Space battle doctrine:
The Imperial Fleet has destroyers carrying a large number of smaller fighters, like an aircraft carrier. The fighters fight against the other sides fighters and try to break through to attack the capital ships. The capital ships have large weapons plus a large number of small weapons in gun turrets to defend against the fighters.
The Imperial fighters do not seem to have especially powerful weapons to be able to threaten Star Fleets ships, and Star Fleet phasers seem to be powerful and accurate enough to easily deal with fighters, but a swarm of fighters attacking a Star Fleet ship might cause it some damage sufficient to limit its effectiveness against the Imperial cruisers. However, this fighting is done when the fleet comes out of hyperspace and fights at sublight speed.
The Federation ships do not carry fighters, only shuttle craft which are not used for battle, only transport. Federation ships fight more like a submarine, maneuvering into position to be able to fire its weapons in a devastating attack.
Advantage - the Empire

Size of space fleets
No size is given for the size of the Imperial space fleet, but from the films it is clear that Imperial destroyers travel in small groups, giving the impression of a large number of vessels.
Star Fleet on the other hand has only 12 starships, which rarely come together, giving the impression of a small number of extremely powerful ships.
The larger number of ships in the Imperial fleet would give it more flexibility, especially if the fleet split up and used the advantages of hyperdrive to attack multiple targets. Although a starship would be more than a match for an individual Imperial destroyer, they could not defend enough targets at once to defend against the multiple attacks of the Imperial fleet
Advantage - the Empire

Super weapons:
Obviously for the Empire this is the Death Star. A hugely powerful planet-destroyer.
The Federation has nothing comparable. It does has 12 Star Ships and in the TV series a star ship is capable of laying waste to a planet with its phasers. However, this is never done. Judging by the seeming powerfulness of photon torpedoes you would think one of those could destroy a planet in its entirety, but this is never mentioned. Perhaps because the Federation is just far to decent for such behavior.
Advantage - the Empire

Individual weapons:
The Empire has blasters. Storm troopers wear armor, which seems to give them little or no protection. As depicted in the films, storm troopers’ blasters are not that accurate and storm troopers blast away at Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia at a short range and miss.
Star Fleet phasers on the other hand seem almost incapable of missing. In addition, phasers are so powerful that if they can disintegrate large solid objects.
Advantage - the Federation

Heroes / Villains:
The Empire of course has Darth Vader, able to command the Force and wield the deadly light sabre. The Federation has Kirk who is part of Star Fleet which is an elite, but this is hardly the same as a Sith with supernatural powers. In a confrontation between Kirk and Vader it is clear that Darth Vader has all the advantages in a hand to hand struggle.
Advantage - the Empire

Ground or onboard-ship battles:
The Empire storm troopers are used to board ships and on land planets. The Federation does not have soldiers. The most it has is a small team to explore and are not expected to engage in heavy combat. If Star Fleet crew met with storm troopers on the ground their superior phasers would be more than a match for the storm troopers and if they did run into trouble they could use transporters to beam up to safety with no way for the storm troopers to follow them.
The Empire may try to use storm troopers to board Star Fleet vessels, but their transports would not be able to match the speed of warp driven Star Fleet ships and would be easily targeted by phasers and destroyed before they could board. However, the Empire could use its storm troopers to invade and capture Federation planets gaining control of them and their resources. The Federation lacks this capacity.
Advantage - the Empire

Esprit de corps:
In the Imperial Fleet, there is obviously a climate of fear. Darth Vader tortures a comrade merely for doubting the Force, drives his men on with threats, and summarily executes a senior officer for a single mistake. The Empire is a tyranny, hated by many, and facing open rebellion.
Star Fleet is driven by the highest ideals of service and self sacrifice. The Federation of Planets has many different sentient species coming together voluntarily for the common good. There is no enemy within to weaken the Federation. Also, the Federation can commit all of its resources to the war, whereas the Empire cannot without weakening itself towards the Rebellion.
Advantage - the Federation

Good vs Evil
This last consideration is the most decisive. Despite all the advantages one side may have over the other in its technology, the outcome of the battle will come down to this. Star Wars and Star Trek are different in many ways, but in one way they are similar. In both, there is a simple law. Good will always triumph over evil. In Star Wars the Empire is evil, and so must ultimately lose. The Federation on the other hand is good, and so must ultimately win.

Conclusion:
In a war between the Empire and the Federation the Imperial ships would be able to travel faster than the Federation’s ships and with a numerical advantage attack more planets than Star Fleet could defend. Also the Death Star would destroy Federation planets and the Imperial Fleet would use its storm troopers to capture it and gain access to the Federation’s resources.
However, if the Federation would hang in, its commitment to high ideals and the common good would give it greater resilience than the Empire. It would intercept Imperial ships and engage them in space combat, its warp drive, superior targeting and photon torpedoes would give it victory in space battles.
Eventually it would come down to a confrontation between the two main protagonists, Darth Vader and Kirk, and despite all of Darth Vader’s obvious advantages, Kirk would find some way to defeat him in a final confrontation.
Final victory - the Federation

[Batman]

In the SW vs ST debate, I have to side with ST. I wrote this years ago, before STTNG, but I think it still stands scrutiny.
The Empire vs The Federation
Space travel:
Both space fleets have faster-than-light travel. The Empire has hyperdrive which works by entering hyperspace in which faster than light speeds are possible and the Federation has warp drive with which the ship remains in normal space, but creating a space warp that allows it to move through space at faster than light.
Hyperdrive clearly gives the impression of being capable of traveling further in a short time than warp drive. This gives the Imperial Fleet a big advantage in being able to move its fleets to an advantageous position with Star Fleet struggling to keep up.
Advantage - the Empire

No kidding.

Space weapons:
The Empire has blasters and the Federation has phasers. The powerfulness of both seems to depend on the size of the ship. Both are capable of damaging large, heavily defended space craft.
The Federation has another weapon; photon torpedoes The photon torpedo is depicted as enormously powerful with blasts that effect vast areas of space. Hitting another space craft, even if it is heavily shielded, will cause it crippling damage.

Why? Because you say so? The torpedoes shown on TV and in the movies range from negative yield to maybe MT level and even the never seen on screen never stated in the TM to be 64MT torpedoes are...64MT. ISD LTLs are in the single figure MT range and are so tiny that they dissapear against the trench background (at least from what I recall in the movies, are they actually visible on the model?)

Advantage - the Federation

Only if you happily ignore math. 'Powerful blasts that affect vast areas of space' tells us-nothing, essentially. without knowing how powerful over what areas of space.

Defences:
The Imperial ships are seen taking damage even from fighters and substantial damage from collision.

Um-the only damage I recall from the movies was that A-Wing crashing into the Executor's bridge, which-destroyed the bridge. The ship remained fully intact until it crashed into the Death Star. There's zero evidence for fighters doing more than superficial if any damage to a capital ship unless they are/can reach the insides of it. If you're talking about the asteroid hit in ESB, we have no clue if that ISD was even damaged at all-all we know is it lost holocom fir a while.

Star Fleet on the other hand has shields, i.e. force fields, that must be overcome before the ship takes structural damage.

Yeah. Nobody ever mentions shields in Star Wars at all, ever. It especially wasn't in ROTJ, where there was no shield around Endor and the DS2 so Han could land and the Rebels could move in with impunity, and neither was their any mention of the Executor's bridge deflectors being down when that A-Wing Kamikaze happened. And nobody mentioned shields in the series ever before and we totally didn't see any in, say, TPM.
And if the Federation's oh so powerful shields are that resilient, why did a measly 400GW particle beam bring down those of the very Federation Flagship, why are they routinely in danger from their own damned torpedoes if they have to use them at short range, and if they're so impervious to kinetic impacts, what do they need the main navigation deflector for and why do ramming attacks work quite well against them?

Advantage - the Federation

I'd think the issue over if I were you.

Targeting systems:
In Star Wars, guns are mounted in turrets that physically turn to bear on target. The films depict these guns firing and missing a great deal.
In Star Trek, phasers are able to fire instantaneously at any angle. Federation ships hit their targets most of the time and only have difficulty against warp driven targets. Against sublight targets they never miss.

Blatant lie. They routinely miss capital ships inside Sidewinder range. Capital ships essentially sitting still. If you're referring to those turrets in ANH, thank you for intentionally ignoring those were capital ship guns firing at fighters.

Advantage - the Federation

Yeah, if you ignore all available evidence.

Battle Speed:
In Star Wars ships travel at hyper speed, but drop out of hyperspace for battle. No battles take place in hyperspace. Star ships on the other hand fight at warp speeds.

No they don't They fight while under Warp drive. Not quite the same thing.

In a space battle, sublight Imperial ships would be up against superlight speed Star Fleet ships.

No they wouldn't, as there is exactly zero evidence for that tactic having ever been used. At best, they chase each other at Warp with decidely superluminal relative velocities.

Regardless of all of the advantages and disadvantages of weapons, defences and targeting, the ability of Star Fleet ships to fight at superlight speed when Imperial ships cannot would give them a big advantage in combat.

One wonders why they never do that then. Oh wait-they can't. They can duke it out FTL when they're chasing each other, nothing more. Relative velocities are still STL.

Advantage - the Federation

Only in your fevered imagination. Oh and by they, why don't you compute the time you have to aquire the target, get a firing solution, and fire if you're passing the target at a 100 c.

Space battle doctrine:
The Imperial Fleet has destroyers carrying a large number of smaller fighters, like an aircraft carrier. The fighters fight against the other sides fighters and try to break through to attack the capital ships. The capital ships have large weapons plus a large number of small weapons in gun turrets to defend against the fighters.
The Imperial fighters do not seem to have especially powerful weapons to be able to threaten Star Fleets ships, and Star Fleet phasers seem to be powerful and accurate enough to easily deal with fighters

Oh please. They can barely keep up with their own ships, which essentially sit still, move in a straight line, or maybe make wide sweeping turns, but you expect them to hit a Wars fighter the appromiate zie of a WW Spitfire?

, but a swarm of fighters attacking a Star Fleet ship might cause it some damage sufficient to limit its effectiveness against the Imperial cruisers.

In sufficient numbers, they could kill Starfleet ships at their leasure because they have virtually no defenses against them. Sure, their shields are going to take a while to batter down but there's plenty of fighters and there's going to be very few phaser hits. And that's excluding proton torpedoes.

However, this fighting is done when the fleet comes out of hyperspace and fights at sublight speed.

That, at least, ist correct. The Feds either run away into Warp or get annihilated.

The Federation ships do not carry fighters, only shuttle craft which are not used for battle, only transport. Federation ships fight more like a submarine, maneuvering into position to be able to fire its weapons in a devastating attack.
Advantage - the Empire

Their lack of fighters is actually pretty incosequential given the firepower and resilience difference.

Size of space fleets
No size is given for the size of the Imperial space fleet, but from the films it is clear that Imperial destroyers travel in small groups, giving the impression of a large number of vessels.

Um-we saw a pretty largish battle group at Endor you know.

Star Fleet on the other hand has only 12 starships, which rarely come together, giving the impression of a small number of extremely powerful ships.

Um-we actually know that by the time of the Dominion war, it had several thousand ships, thank you very much. And even TOS Starfleet had more than twelve, that was the number of Constitutions at the time.

The larger number of ships in the Imperial fleet would give it more flexibility, especially if the fleet split up and used the advantages of hyperdrive to attack multiple targets. Although a starship would be more than a match for an individual Imperial destroyer,

I like how have shown the math behind that. You know, firepower of the ISD vs firepower of the Connie, relative shield resilience, all that.

Super weapons:
Obviously for the Empire this is the Death Star. A hugely powerful planet-destroyer.
The Federation has nothing comparable. It does has 12 Star Ships and in the TV series a star ship is capable of laying waste to a planet with its phasers. However, this is never done. Judging by the seeming powerfulness of photon torpedoes you would think one of those could destroy a planet in its entirety,

As evidenced by what, exactly? Show me the math. Hint: They are M/AM weapons. Wait. Were they back in TOS? I don't think that was ever mentioned. Anyway, assuming they were even back then, DS'ing a planet would require a torpedo to mass 1.11E14 tons. Um-no. Especially as apparently overloading the Constellation's impulse drive (with a yield of some 97 megatons) was obviously more than the E-Nil's entire photon torpedo complement could provide.

but this is never mentioned. Perhaps because the Federation is just far to decent for such behavior.

Or maybe they simply don't have the firepower.

Individual weapons:
The Empire has blasters. Storm troopers wear armor, which seems to give them little or no protection. As depicted in the films, storm troopers’ blasters are not that accurate and storm troopers blast away at Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia at a short range and miss.

Which has nothing (necessarily) to do with the weapon and a lot with the accuracy of the user, and you do remember that during the escape sequence on the DS in ANH the troopers were shooting to miss, right?

Star Fleet phasers on the other hand seem almost incapable of missing. In addition, phasers are so powerful that if they can disintegrate large solid objects.
Advantage - the Federation

You do know Starfleet phasers routinely do miss, their disintegration says nothing about their power because it works on magic and if I do remember my TOS correctly they where virtually always used at point blank range.

[Batman]

but I think it still stands scrutiny.

Which it didn't even during the TV TOS era (I pointed out where he was wrong) and not a comment you should make if you have no clue what has been going on since then. If he thinks it still stands scrutiny, then yes, he'd better be able to explain how it does in light of the later developments in the series. Unless he wants to say 'well it would stand scrutiny if Trek had stopped there' which still wouldn't work but to me, 'it still stands scrutiny' means 'even including what happened in the franchise since way back then'.

[Batman]

"hey can barely keep up with their own ships, which essentially sit still, move in a straight line, or maybe make wide sweeping turns, but you expect them to hit a Wars fighter the appromiate zie of a WW Spitfire?"
Breaking the rules for a minute here, but TNG has several instances of phasers effortlessly hitting smaller and faster targets.
"Conundrum" has them smacking down some defense drones with ease.

And the drones were what size and manouvering in which way at which range?

"Best of Both Worlds part 2" has the Borg swatting flies

Not that I see how that figures into Fed capabilities, but you know the size of those defense whatevers because why exactly? Also, they were sort of going in a straight line. I guess the Borg can at least do better than the Federation.

and "The Price" has the Enterprise blasting a Ferengi missile out of the sky in just a few seconds. On screen, we saw two beams fired, so perhaps the first one missed.

At a range of, with the missile doing what exactly? The fact remains that most of the time, Federation (or any other AQ ships, for that matter) CAN hit the broad side of a barn at point blank range-barely.

"The Price" just pisses me off even more at Star Trek Generations. 13 seconds to shoot down Soran's probe with advance warning when they took out this surprise missile in a fraction of that time. Ugh. I know Ron Moore and Brannon Braga watched the show and had some talent... but lazy and inconsistent, that movie was.

Who cares about the probe? Soren can apparently track the path of the wave. Just park yourself in a starship in its way and presto-you're back in Limbo. There was absolutely no need to start blowing up stars to get back into it.

[Stofsk]

No they wouldn't, as there is exactly zero evidence for that tactic having ever been used. At best, they chase each other at Warp with decidely superluminal relative velocities.

Actually there is evidence that warp strafing occurs and is a viable tactic - 'Elaan of Troyius'.

[Batman]

In Star Wars, the fighters almost always go in straight lines at very short range, too.
So, even if the drones were moving in slow, straight lines at short range... that's plenty good enough to swat down X-Wings and TIEs like the waste of manpower that they are.

I note a complete and utter lack of quantification about the size of the drones, the speed they were going at, and how far they were from the ship, leave alone the direction. Also, blatant lie-the fighters in the OT (leave alone the PT) maneuvered all over the place (if not particularly quickly as per ANH) before they got into the shaft (where there wasn't room to maneuver). And if phasers are oh so accurate how do capital ships keep missing each other at spitball ranges? Routinely? How do Jem'Haddar bugs live long enough to successfully ram Federation ships?
TIEs are a reasonable threat to Fed capital ships even leaving out the Bombers. Also, if phasers are oh so incredibly accurate, how come they never, ever shoot down the slow as molasses photon torpedoes in the TNG+ era?

[CrateriaA]

In Star Wars, the fighters almost always go in straight lines at very short range, too.

So, even if the drones were moving in slow, straight lines at short range... that's plenty good enough to swat down X-Wings and TIEs like the waste of manpower that they are.

The Battle of Endor had various Imperial and Rebel fighters swooping around the dueling armadas trying to both engage and evade the other.

[Batman]

No they wouldn't, as there is exactly zero evidence for that tactic having ever been used. At best, they chase each other at Warp with decidely superluminal relative velocities.

Actually there is evidence that warp strafing occurs and is a viable tactic - 'Elaan of Troyius'.

Is it? Or is it merely evidence for Picard being a copycat with his Picard Maneuvre? Because all the visuals I've been able to find so far very much hint at the Klingons Warping in, firing, and Warping out.