Methinks you overrate the Go'auld and the B5 big boys, but otherwise, fine.
The Go'auld struck me as a bit incompetent more than anything else. The Kilrathi/TC could probably take them. But what else is there to overrate? The Dune Imperium is feeble. As for the Cylons... Retro Cylons, or Gooey Cylons?
The Go'auld empire is of course highly feudal, which limits their ability to project power effectively, but in all fairness that should be taken into account. Their Motherships can carry 2000 troops, although more can obviously be gated in if a gate is being carried by the ship. I understand they had 400 such ships.
I seem to recall thir FTL and firepower is fairly impressive overall, though.
Basically their MO is more geared to terror and intimidation than war. Notice the staff weapons lack of utility in combat.
CotK <mew> | HAB | JL | MM | TTC | Cybertron
TAX THE CHURCHES! - Lord Zentei TTC Supreme Grand Prophet
And the LORD said, Let there be Bosons! Yea and let there be Bosoms too!
I'd rather be the great great grandson of a demon ninja than some jackass who grew potatos. -- Covenant
Dead cows don't fart. -- CJvR
...and I like strudel! -- Asuka
Thirdfain wrote:Why is the Aliens universe lower than the SST movie?
Tech levels. Colonial Marines have far superior tactics and training,but SST movie Federation has faster FTL and probably overall (they patched up Rico after all).
Thirdfain wrote:Why is the Aliens universe lower than the SST movie?
Their slow space travel amongst other things. First babysteps into the cosmos, that sort of thing. Obviously, this was a deliberate decision by the writers to enhance the sense of isolation.
CotK <mew> | HAB | JL | MM | TTC | Cybertron
TAX THE CHURCHES! - Lord Zentei TTC Supreme Grand Prophet
And the LORD said, Let there be Bosons! Yea and let there be Bosoms too!
I'd rather be the great great grandson of a demon ninja than some jackass who grew potatos. -- Covenant
Dead cows don't fart. -- CJvR
...and I like strudel! -- Asuka
Since things wouldn't be scary at all if you had a galaxy full of colonies, or the life support capacity to hold more than a few dozen people on superlong journeys. By the way.. why the heck did they send only a single platoon in a ship at least cruiser size?
Nephtys wrote:Since things wouldn't be scary at all if you had a galaxy full of colonies, or the life support capacity to hold more than a few dozen people on superlong journeys. By the way.. why the heck did they send only a single platoon in a ship at least cruiser size?
Never the company's intention of actually saving anything. Just get a sample and get out. Less men equals less chance of FUBARing the whole thing and killing the Xenomorphs.
MM /CF/WG/BOTM/JL/Original Warsie/ACPATHNTDWATGODW FOREVER!!
Sometimes we can choose the path we follow. Sometimes our choices are made for us. And sometimes we have no choice at all
Nephtys wrote:Since things wouldn't be scary at all if you had a galaxy full of colonies, or the life support capacity to hold more than a few dozen people on superlong journeys. By the way.. why the heck did they send only a single platoon in a ship at least cruiser size?
If the Colonial Marine Tech Manual is true, then the USN has a full fleet of warships, including transports capable of moving large numbers of troops into combat. In addition, unlike the movie SST, the Aliens warships are actually capable of fighting.
The Sulaco is a frigate, not a cruiser, IIRC.
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908 - )
Nephtys wrote:By the way.. why the heck did they send only a single platoon in a ship at least cruiser size?
The explanation given in the USCMC tech manual (IIRC anyhow) is that the Marine unit sent in was a light recon force, and they were sent in on the Sulaco because A) it was pretty old and as such could be spared, and B) if necessary they could haul the entire colony out on it.
"I do not say the French cannot come. I only say they cannot come by sea." - Admiral Lord St. Vincent, Royal Navy, during the Napoleonic Wars
"Show me a general who has made no mistakes and you speak of a general who has seldom waged war." - Marshal Turenne, 1641
If I may at this late date, I'd like to adress the absence of the Perryverse from this thread.
1) Few enough of us around here know it in the first place.
2) It's the next best thing to impossible to place. While most universes either have a few easily recognized primary players, the Perryverse is speckled with factions that range from 'may be beaten by modern-day Earth' to 'will likely eat the Culture for breakfast'. So its not all that easy to rank.
3) A lot of other universes either cover a rather limited timespan or are somewhat static where technology is converned. The Perryverse is neither. The technological capabilities of a lot of the involved parties (especially the Terrans) see-saw like nobody's business. What, pray tell, do you go by?
4) The Perryverse depends on Technobabble to an extent that makes Trek seem rational. It's saving grace (if any) is that it's technobabble is happily ouside modern science's purview in any way shape or form so the Trek problem of 'Err-that doesn't actually work' doesn't apply, but it DOES make it very hard to ascertain wether or not PR technology works on other universes'.
'Next time I let Superman take charge, just hit me. Real hard.'
'You're a princess from a society of immortal warriors. I'm a rich kid with issues. Lots of issues.'
'No. No dating for the Batman. It might cut into your brooding time.'
'Tactically we have multiple objectives. So we need to split into teams.'-'Dibs on the Amazon!'
'Hey, we both have a Martian's phone number on our speed dial. I think I deserve the benefit of the doubt.'
'You know, for a guy with like 50 different kinds of vision, you sure are blind.'
While I too think the Post_fall Eldar are too low I can see one potential reason for where they are placed...
Craftworlds... In the 40K verse where your enemy has a very restricted FTL system they work well, but in a place with a more reliable system they have the potential to be slow moving targets. A Craftworld on the one hand is a moving target with advantages of being hidden, but if they are discovered by a race of even close power, and enough ships, well we all saw what happened to one Craftworld when a Nid splinter group found them.
On the attack striking from a hidden location I'd move the Eldar up way high, but on the defensive from an enemy that has found them, well they are vulnerable.
From a review of the two Towers.... 'As for Gimli being comic relief, what if your comic relief had a huge axe and fells dozens of Orcs? That's a pretty cool comic relief. '
"Yeah, funny how that works - you giving hungry people food they vote for you. You give homeless people shelter they vote for you. You give the unemployed a job they vote for you.
Maybe if the conservative ideology put a roof overhead, food on the table, and employed the downtrodden the poor folk would be all for it, too". - Broomstick
Let’s add the ender-verse in. No FTL (well one ship had latter on in the series) Doctor Devise (makes matter fall apart and reaction spreads so long as there is matter) and a program to find tactical geniuses. It should be low on the list but still higher than modern earth.
Skelron wrote:While I too think the Post_fall Eldar are too low I can see one potential reason for where they are placed...
Craftworlds... In the 40K verse where your enemy has a very restricted FTL system they work well, but in a place with a more reliable system they have the potential to be slow moving targets. A Craftworld on the one hand is a moving target with advantages of being hidden, but if they are discovered by a race of even close power, and enough ships, well we all saw what happened to one Craftworld when a Nid splinter group found them.
On the attack striking from a hidden location I'd move the Eldar up way high, but on the defensive from an enemy that has found them, well they are vulnerable.
The same applies to your garden-variety planets, yes? Besides, the Craftworlds are hundreds of miles across - Deathstar sized colony ships. I'm not about to see the average Trek powers launch a credible attack against that.
CotK <mew> | HAB | JL | MM | TTC | Cybertron
TAX THE CHURCHES! - Lord Zentei TTC Supreme Grand Prophet
And the LORD said, Let there be Bosons! Yea and let there be Bosoms too!
I'd rather be the great great grandson of a demon ninja than some jackass who grew potatos. -- Covenant
Dead cows don't fart. -- CJvR
...and I like strudel! -- Asuka
All these Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy comercials got me wondering where the Krikkit might be in that list? I know the series is a parody and all, but just for the heck of it, where would you guys put them?
For reference:
Life, the Universe, and Everything wrote:Thousands and thousands of huge Krikkit warships had leapt suddenly out of hyperspace and simultaneously attacked thousands and thousands of major worlds, first seizing vital material supplies for building the next wave, and then calmly zapping those worlds out of existence...their thousands of spaceships, and their millions of lethal white robots... They were savage, single-minded flying battle machines. They wielded formidable multifunctional battleclubs which, brandished one way, would knock down buildings and, brandished another way, fired blistering Omni-Destructo Zap Rays and, brandished a third way, launched a hideous arsenal of grenades, ranging from minor incendiary devices to Maxi-Slorta Hypernuclear Devices which could take out a major sun. Simply striking the grenades with the battleclubs simultaneously primed them, and launched them with phenomenal accuracy over distances ranging from mere yards to hundreds of thousands of miles.
But they should be atleast beyond the Empire, better FTL, better warships, utterly unholy industrial base. (They held a galaxy to a stalemate for 2000 years)
According to wikipedia, "the Mohorovičić discontinuity is the boundary between the Earth's crust and the mantle."
According to Starbound, it's a problem solvable with enough combat drugs to turn you into the Incredible Hulk.
Note that that Krikkit wars happened about 10 billion years ago. We know that 20 billion years ago "when the Galaxy was young and fresh, and every idea worth fighting for was a new one." It was at this time that Hactar, a giant spaceborne computer made, very casually and easily it would appear, a device that: "...was a very, very small bomb which was simply a junction box in hyperspace that would, when activated, connect the heart of every major sun with the heart of every other major sun simultaneously and thus turn the entire Universe in to one gigantic hyperspatial supernova." So this galaxy is a tinge older than that of Star Wars (I seem to recall the number being somewhere in the tens of thousands of years old).
Thought that isn't completely relevant to the question where the Krikkit go in the scheme of things.
As the Krikkiters have the Unverse Ending Bomb, fairly high.
Their battleships are the size of 'a small Midlands industrial town' and capable of 'blowing a fair chunk off of a planet' with their main guns. So yeah. Above the Empire.
According to wikipedia, "the Mohorovičić discontinuity is the boundary between the Earth's crust and the mantle."
According to Starbound, it's a problem solvable with enough combat drugs to turn you into the Incredible Hulk.
IMO the Dune-verse Empire should rate pretty low. I've only read the original 4 books, but the highest technology I saw warfare-wise was lasguns and nuclear bombs; their shields are something, but obviously not that great. About the only way they're seriously comparable to most civilizations mentioned in this list is their space travel (the Guild Heighliners are mentioned as being HUGE).
They're advanced, yes, but not *that* much... of course, it's been a while since I read the books, but even then they didn't strike me as being that much more advanced than, say, the US in about 50, 100 years (shields and space travel excepted).
They've mostly gotten non-technological technology. If that's a way to describe it. Since in the past, machines totally destroyed most of human culture, so they refuse to use 'thinking machines'. This means all calculation must be done by trained humans. Everything in dune focuses on specially trained humans, so there's a sort of technological stagnation in place anyway. So yeah, they're pretty pathetic on absolute terms, especially against most other sci-fi.
The Dune universe is pretty weak, but their sheer size means it'd be difficult to conquer them and they have huge numbers to throw at any potential enemy. And in the original thread somebody brought up that they had bombs supposedly capable of destroying all life on a planet or something like that.
Two things to bear in mind, we need to remember total overall tech, not just ass-kicking military applications. The "Dune" universe seems really light on military tech in any form, but they still have Galaxy-spanning ships that cross the void without even a thought to how unusual that is. That's nothing to sneeze at.
And also, remember that cheesiness of plot, bad dialogue or writing does not detract from the tech. The Earth Fed in the Starship Troopers movie was pretty high, even if the writing was horrible.
As for the Gou'aould being given too much credit, I am also basing that on how they have managed to harness Ancient technology for themselves, and Ancient tech-- having StarGates that go to other Galaxies entirely-- is pretty hefty. They may not have invented it, but they have proven adaptable to it, and a single Lord can enslave entire systems of primitives and draw their resources, which is a powerful resource potential. The symbiote living, able to keep a human body alive for thousands of years and repair damage and aging, is also a good use of inborn ability.
The B5 big guys? I just think that they could stand toe-to-toe with Old Trek, at least, and give a good account for themselves. The B5'ers seem much more aware of things like politics and economics, whereas to me the Trek universe simply has higher tech overall.
Something about Libertarianism always bothered me. Then one day, I realized what it was:
Libertarian philosophy can be boiled down to the phrase, "Work Will Make You Free."
In Libertarianism, there is no Government, so the Bosses are free to exploit the Workers.
In Communism, there is no Government, so the Workers are free to exploit the Bosses.
So in Libertarianism, man exploits man, but in Communism, its the other way around! If all you want to do is have some harmless, mindless fun, go H3RE INST3ADZ0RZ!! Grrr! Fight my Brute, you pansy!
I think these rankings should be based soley on tech levels, not military might, size of an empire, etc. In one list, I saw the Dominion (I'm assuming Trek) just ahead of the Go'auld, which was far ahead of the Federation (Trek). Seems to me that the Dominion were only meagerly ahead of the Federation in terms of tech (I may be wrong, I haven't looked at any numbers). On another list, I saw the Feds and borg tied! The borg outclass Starfleet (and presumably the rest of the Federation) in every department. "3 trillion life-signs, all borg" on one planet, not to mention the other planets in that particular system as well as all the cubes. By this notion, the general flow of the list would be something like:
Star Wars
Borg
Go'auld
rest of Trek Universe
BSG Universe
modern Earth
with all the other societies which I'm not nearly familiar with enough to comment on.
BTW, where's all the delta quadrent Trek societies (namely Species 8472)
My brother and sister-in-law: "Do you know where milk comes from?"
My niece: "Yeah, from the fridge!"
S8472? The group so pathetic they can't destroy an Intrepid-class with their uberguns and retreat if they lose like twelve starships? Let's not waste bandwidth on Monsters Of The Week.
Manic Progressive: A liberal who violently swings from anger at politicos to despondency over them.
Out Of Context theatre: Ron Paul has repeatedly said he's not a racist. - Destructinator XIII on why Ron Paul isn't racist.
SirNitram wrote:S8472? The group so pathetic they can't destroy an Intrepid-class with their uberguns and retreat if they lose like twelve starships? Let's not waste bandwidth on Monsters Of The Week.
Weren't we supposed to be looking at overall tech, not competence in using it?
-- Asuka
