Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba wrote:The Illithid Empire has naval weapons that range from 60 Gigatons with a 1-second refire rate, to 1 Teraton main guns, and engage at ranges of a few hundred kilometres normally.("The Warrior, the Pawn, Vol. 1").
Star Wars level.
They have fast enough FTL to cross the Milky Way in six months("Stryker's Standoff"), but the new Wormhole Network within their territory allows travel between any core worlds and many colony-worlds within minutes("The Warrior, the Pawn, Vol. 2").
Slower than Star Wars by a factor of 200, except for the wormhole network, which is faster - but only on home ground. Each will have a significant speed advantage on home ground, enough to interdict enemy fleets, assuming they can detect them, or if the planets can hold out/prevent a landing until help arrives.
They have in the hundreds of thousands of vessels, the industrial capacity to build 3,000 ships in about 4 months during wartime even while repairing other fleets, and between 20 and 50 thousand planets.("The Warrior, the Pawn, Vol. 2")
Fewer planets by an order of 1000:1. This is a significant edge in favour of the SW Empire.
n*1e5 vessels vs 25000 ISDs + umpteen lighter vessels for each ISD. I'll hazard a rough parity here.
A DS2 can be built in 10 months, and in secret. I do beleive that the construction time for an ISD was stated somewhere in an earlier thread (regarding SSD vs it's cost in ISDs... I think) but I don't know if we have the number of shipyards... I'll hazard an edge to the Empire here...
Their STL drives csan actually accelerate in FTL, twice the speed of light.("Stryker's Gambit")
Accellerate to 2c with STL?
In addition, they have excellent ground combat technology, above Star Wars, with hordes of genetically-engineered, perfectly loyal warriors who can survive kiloton-level explosions a couple hundred yards away, and super-soldiers capable of recovering from direct megaton-level explosions and be at full combat efficiency within hours.("Skirmish")
They are all incredibally intelligent, with the retarded miner smarter than most humans, and natural psychic powers good enough to control most peoples' minds, levitate, and stun creatures near them(Generic canonical information).
Very impressive.
All this leads me to beleive that in space, the Illithid Empire would have parity with the SW Empire initially and on a tactical level, though it would lack the SW Empire's staying power and lack it's rapid retalliation speed (due to the slower speed out of the wormhole network): Basically each of them can interdict the other's fleets, but the Illithids would be at a disadvantage when it came to striking back at strategic targets quickly. Note that the time it takes for the Illithids to cross the galaxy is almost as long as it takes to build a DS2 in secret. Also, they cannot afford to lose as many planets.
The superior ground combat abilities would migitate this to an extent, but as the Japanese learned in WW2, tactical advantages are outweighed by strategic/economic clout in long term engagements. In short term engagements the SW Empire is the one doing the attacking.
So: win = Star Wars, overall although I deem that the Illithids will certainly outclass the Vong. The others you mentioned would follow in the appiccable order.
Qualifiers:
* Will the Star Wars Empire be smart enough to build full planetary shields to prevent landings after the see how powerful the Illithid ground forces are? Probably, IMO, though not for every hicksville planet.
* Can the SW Empire detect the Illithid ships in transit? If so, the Illithid ground forces would never get to shine as the SW Empire would always have a sufficiently fleet waiting for the invasion force, preventing a landing (due to the 200:1 disparity in FTL speed on the SW homeground).
* Do the Illithids have planetary shields? With planetary shields the SW galaxy doesn't really need to detect the Illithid ships in transit; all the truly valuable worlds have them and their ships will arrive before the shields give out (since SW and Illithid ship weapons are of the same order of magnitude in firepower). If the Illithids have no planetary shields, they will be at a greater disadvantage, unless they can detect SW ships in transit (which is rather unlikely).
As for the Noah-verse and New World, the Noah-verse has lightminute-sized ships, the strength to destroy and build stars as a mundane task, galaxy-destroying superweapons, and quadrillions of ships which can survive indefinitely within the heart of a star and can fire at eachother from different galaxies.
This wankery sounds like they are between the Culture and the Xeelee.
The New World-trilogy humanity has about 100 ships with kiloton-level nukes, multi-gigawatt X-Ray lasers, and though they have only just reverse-engineered FTL tech, it seems to be able to travel 1 lightyear per minute. They engage at the range of a few kilometres. Their current flagship has a main gun which converts 750 grams of matter and anti-matter into energy with 99.999% efficiency. Their enemies, the Rajha, are more advanced, but their industrial capacity, territory, ship-count, etc. are unknown so I can't really include them.
Unquestionably below Star Trek. Somewhere below B5, in fact.
-- Asuka
