What do you consider the higher-end SF universes?

[Q99]

The various godlike entities of the Three Body 'verse are on the higher end.
Spoiler

One of their favourite tricks is redefining space to have a lower number of dimensions, causing everything within to cease to function/exist as it previously relied on having N not N-1 dimensions and now a different set of physical laws apply. It is implied that the current three dimensional universe is the blasted wreckage of what once existed before they started all this, and there is basically no way back other than waiting for the big crunch and a new universe.

Hah, that's nice

[Andras]

The culminating act of large-scale 'kaboom' involves an attack on an entire galaxy dominated by a species of hostile chlorine-breathers, extensively colonized by fortified planets who have their own intergalactic-range weaponry. The mode of attack involves teleporting planets around.

They teleported stars along with planets.

Stars from Galaxy A were sent to merge with the stars around hostile planets on Galaxy C, while the planets in A and C with oxygen breathers were simultaneously teleported to Galaxy B. This left Galaxy A a depleted wasteland with few stars, Galaxy C a mess of exploding Super Novas, and all the oxygen breathers from Galaxies A and C in Galaxy B. As for scale, "more then 50,000 million stars" were teleported.

Oh, and the main bad guy in the whole series had the heros at his mercy after the big kablooie, and said Screw this, I'm outta here and took off for a Galaxy at the very edge of the universe where he would rule.

"Remember, that time on XWorld, what I told you to do with that kind
of crap! That still goes," and he had taken off at full touring drive on
course one seven five Universal. This course, which would give the
First Galaxy a near miss, was the most direct route to a galaxy that
was distant indeed; the galaxy lying on the extreme southern rim of
the First Universe; the galaxy in which the DQ had been built; the
galaxy that DuQuesne had surveyed so thoroughly and which he
intended to rule.
...
"You're a precisionist; that's my idea exactly. To pick out a few
hundred people-we won't need many, as there are billions already
where we're going-as much as possible like us, and build a
civilization that will be what a civilization ought to be."

The girl gasped, but her eyes began to sparkle. "'In a distant galaxy',
as Ravindau said?"

"Very distant. Clear out on the rim of this universe. The last galaxy
out on the rim, in fact; five degrees east of Universal south."

[Q99]

Of course, for a 'reasonably high end,' but not one of the big universal ones, Schlock Mercenary currently has a war between galaxies, with each side turning their core into a generator, and with an attempt to devour one of the galaxies with a baby universe via self-destructing said generator at startup thwarted.

Plus just conventionally, their ships are pretty sweet.

[Starglider]

Plus just conventionally, their ships are pretty sweet.

Schlock Mercenary gravitic weaponry will most likely dominate all low to medium tier settings; it can crush opposing ships into neutronium pellets, and the only defence against it is another high-powered gravity generator. Their FTL is instant teleport to anywhere in the same galaxy, jammable but most non-peer opponents won't know how to do that. Teraton yield warheads are common; sheilds, hull material strength and AI technology are quite competitive as well. However they will still lose to Culture and up.

[LadyTevar]

Of course, for a 'reasonably high end,' but not one of the big universal ones, Schlock Mercenary currently has a war between galaxies, with each side turning their core into a generator, and with an attempt to devour one of the galaxies with a baby universe via self-destructing said generator at startup thwarted.

Plus just conventionally, their ships are pretty sweet.

Don't forget that they now have the Immortality Formula

[Q99]

Oh, that reminds me- one that's high in capability, though not scale- Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

By the end game, anti-matter is militarily obsolete. Singularity weapons eventually get replaced by String Disruptors. Stasis fields are the best defense, having outpaced things like neutronium plate and probability fields. Immortality has been around for a long time, matter can be edited, and one of the outcomes is a godlike planetary hive mind (that in the epilogue, goes around and colonizes other worlds).

[SolarpunkFan]

The Hypotheticals from the Spin trilogy were pretty damn powerful as well. Being able to trap planets in a time dilation field, being able to protect planets from red giant stars using said field and creating massive interstellar transportation systems.
Spoiler

But their full abilities weren't unleashed until Isaac, a Hypothetical/Human hybrid, interfaced with a large conglomeration of Hypotheticals. When that occurred he was able to use the space-time altering system the Hypotheticals had to transport two Humans to another stellar system. He was was also able to survive the crumbling of the Universe long enough to see Humanity's exodus from our Universe. Not to mention he had reached back in time to communicate with a mid-to-late 21st century child.

The reason it took Isaac to do this was because the Hypotheticals were a mindless ecology of von Neumann machines whose programming accidentally mutated to harvest civilizations for their technology. With said civilizations usually being driven extinct by said harvesting. The fact that they transported worlds into the future and provided them with a system allowing for interstellar colonization was completely accidental.

[Q99]

The Five Galaxies from the Uplift series might not be the highest end, but they certainly are among the most populated! With five galaxies described as just packed with life, multiple orders of intelligent life co-existing in the galaxy, and additionally, a ton of exotic abilities as technology gets accumulated after hundreds of millions of years of history- indeed, most species don't invent, but use The Library (the database of known scientific knowledge) to gradually tech up, and it's not rare for a hax tech to be pulled from the depth of the library, until someone finds the counter, the hax tech becomes useless, gets forgotten as other techs are used to gain advantage, then eventually some other newbie race pulls out the hax one. An example of this is a ship's armor that dumps energy into hyperspace, making it nigh-invulnerable to normal fire (until one learns the trick and makes it backfire).

Humans evolved to intelligence naturally due to some unusual circumstances causing Earth to be left un-checked-on for tens of millions of years longer than normal, but it's far more common to take something more primitive like a monkey or dolphin and uplift them to intelligence- so common, in fact, that none of the currently living races had heard of it happening before, and assume that humans were some illegally uploaded-then-abandoned species. Which says something about how thorough the inhabitants are, if naturally occurring intelligence simply doesn't get the opportunity to reach the level on it's own before being snagged at a much lower level.

[HortonX25]

How powerful is Q anyway? As I've had people claim he's anywhere from the level of something like The Presence from DC (lol) to being defeated by Sisko's punch, which I suspect was just him letting his guard down. As I'm pretty sure he's incorporeal.

[Lord Revan]

How powerful is Q anyway? As I've had people claim he's anywhere from the level of something like The Presence from DC (lol) to being defeated by Sisko's punch, which I suspect was just him letting his guard down. As I'm pretty sure he's incorporeal.

Impossible to say, apart from "powerful then the Federation", we don't even know for sure if said species abilities come from really advanced tech or are something inherent to the species.

[HortonX25]

How powerful is Q anyway? As I've had people claim he's anywhere from the level of something like The Presence from DC (lol) to being defeated by Sisko's punch, which I suspect was just him letting his guard down. As I'm pretty sure he's incorporeal.

Impossible to say, apart from "powerful then the Federation", we don't even know for sure if said species abilities come from really advanced tech or are something inherent to the species.

From Amanda Rogers, I imagine it's very much inherent based on that.

[Batman]

We don't know that. All we know from Amanda is that access to Q powers is inheritable. SG franchise. Ancient gene.

[Q99]

How powerful is Q anyway? As I've had people claim he's anywhere from the level of something like The Presence from DC (lol) to being defeated by Sisko's punch, which I suspect was just him letting his guard down. As I'm pretty sure he's incorporeal.

Very powerful. When depowered he wondered at one point why the crew didn't change the gravitational constant of the universe to solve a problem. He can also hang out in the big bang and shrink to subatomic scale. Time travel at very high levels too.

Plus the Q civil war threatened to shatter 'subspace' beyond repair... and that's pretty much the trek name for the multiverse, alt universes are subspace domains. Even what we saw, their weapons being fired in the continuum was causing mass supernovae in our universe due to subspace damage.

There are a lot of powerful energy beings in Trek but Q casually dwarf all the rest combined.

[jwl]

Edit: And yes, I see that the OP mentions Who, but its not quite clear to me weather they're giving it as an example of high-end or not.

I'd certainly say it qualifies, due to the presence of multiple major factions that can semi-casually rewrite reality.

Doctor Who is always an odd case for me- because on the one hand they have truly impressive stuff like altering physics to eliminate magic, a few transcendantly powerful beings, and multiverse bombs- and all the EU stuff from the novels, war TARDISes etc. all.

On the other hand, the actual battles we see (of space and similar variety) are pew-pew with flying saucers and continent-busting attacks.

I personally put it as high end with an asterisk.

It really depends on what you mean by high-end universes. If we want raw firepower and/or speed and/or civilisation size, the yes the Time Lords will lose out, but that's mainly because their many "I win" buttons don't need firewpoer or speed or size. Why need a universe-spanning network of outposts when your small, bigger on the inside capsules can go anywhere and anywhen?

Why bother engaging in a massive battle when you can go back and rewrite history to be a curbstomp win for your side? Hell, why even bother getting involved, when you're going to outlive and outlast all these lesser races anyway?

I dunno, the Ultimate Sanction and the Dalek's reality bomb are quite big on raw power.

[Q99]

I dunno, the Ultimate Sanction and the Dalek's reality bomb are quite big on raw power.

Those two devices are big on raw power in exceeding specific ways only used as last resorts.

[Tribble]

I dunno, the Ultimate Sanction and the Dalek's reality bomb are quite big on raw power.

Those two devices are big on raw power in exceeding specific ways only used as last resorts.

Point being that the Time Lords and Daleks are fully capable of destroying all of space/time and surviving to remake the whole thing in their own image. The only reason they haven't succeeded is because the Doctor is there to stop them.

[Q99]

Oh, one powerful one- the Xenosaga universe.

Humans are the only species and very spread out, with at least 500,000 worlds. Planet destroying is *uncommon*, but when one goes missing, the reaction of the authorities is 'how did that happen without leaving rubble?' rather than 'OMG planet gone.' Ships (-slash-mobile-colonies) can get 1000km long, and the Dammerung, the biggest ship, has firepower equal to the defense fleets of *one* of the most militarized systems.

Ships have tremendous power because they use phase transfer, a way to teleport matter and energy (but not living people- person goes in, corpse comes out, forcing people to use slower FTL) instantly. So they put huge anti-matter production facilities on planets or bases, then phase-transfer the AM to the ships as needed, so a ship doesn't have to worry about fuel, it can use up anti-matter as fast as it can use it.

There's also rarer special weapons like Phase Transfer Cannons, which can kill stars.

That's what the Galaxy Federation civilization can do. Then beyond that, there's the bigger cosmic stuff. Most notably, Zohar, which taps energy from U-DO, outside our direction, a source of infinite energy (and an attempt to use it caused Earth to vanish- it's pretty dangerous stuff). One vision of a possible-timeline showed a character tapping into Zohar and creating an explosion that destroys a significant amount of the local group of galaxies. Also, Zohar's been used in initiating the big crunch and re-starting the universe an unknown but large number of times.

It's an impressive setting.