Borg vs. ISD

[Metahive]

But suffice it so say that apparently you have no grasp of what c, speed, armor or logic are.

I have to kindly ask where this comes from. Way back I proposed the rough outline of a scenario where an ISD is sucked through a transdimensional vortex and deposed in Borg space, having lost shields, weapons, propulsion and two thirds of the crew due the rough ride and coming under Borg attack just as the crew is coming back to its senses. I asked, several times how this scenario could be improved to make it believable. I talked about possible vectors of attack the Borg could use, including transporters. Norade then claimed that "everybody knows" that transporters can't pierce solid matter, and made a comparison of ISD armor equaling x meters of solid rock and that therefore transporting was completely out of the question. I tried to find examples of transporters seemingly going through that much rock and from there I had a heated discussion with Norade about it.

Where exactly have I demonstrated great ignorance of c, speed, armor or logic? Where have c and speed even been part of the argument I'm having?

If you wanted to ask "how many drones can a Stormtrooper kill before he runs out of ammo" then you should have asked that.

While I didn't ask it that directly, I did ask how the Imps would repel a potential boarding party of the Borg.

BTW, the "beam through shields" stuff is used only once. Never in Voyager against the crew. All of this tells us that it is either a tactic that can only kill a few people at a time or that it needs extraordinary circumstances to work.

Thanas, please, I have no idea why you think I'm proposing the Borg can beam through shields! I have nowhere made such a claim! Other people asked if the Borg ever demonstrated such abilities and I denied it!

I must say I feel treated unfairly because people keep accusing me of saying things I never did. Are you mixing up my points with Baffalo's? He proposed the Cube just ramming the ISD, something which I myself deemed unfeasible.

[Stofsk]

The Borg beamed through the Enterprise's shields in their very first encounter, back in 'QWho' (when the Borg were actually great villains). It's about 20 mins into the episode. They first encounter the Cube, Guinan sees it on her screen at Ten-Forward, and she tells Picard who they are and how they're a thread and she urges him to protect the ship. Riker then orders shields up, Worf says 'yo' and we then cut to Engineering and a Borg Drone beams into it. Of course in 'Best of Both Worlds part 1' the Borg only beamed onto the Enterprise's bridge after the shields failed, but they specifically mentioned how they were going through shield frequencies so that might have done a bit to delay the inevitable.

I'm not sure what other instances there are of Borg beaming through shields. I don't recall any in TNG though.

[Metahive]

Confirmed that example. The Borg had some wanky abilities in Q Who they didn't display later, like the special shield destroying charges they shoot at the Enterprise during the chase at the end. The episode however also showed that the Cube is barely armored as the Enterprise could easily blast holes into the ship the first time around, and they showed the weakness of being not quite able to multitask as they had to concentrate all efforts onto repairing the ship when it was damaged, for a while at least.

[Metahive]

Since a board official has come out and threatened me with HOSing for unworthy contributios, I feel I have to clarify my position, since it seems to be unclear and/or misunderstood what I was actually putting forward in this thread.

Thanas, there was a tangent earlier in the thread where Baffalo proposed that a Borg cube, which he presumed travelled at fractions of c, could severly damage an ISD by ramming it. I was not involved in that tangent beyond telling Baffalo that an undamaged ISD would shoot the Borg into pieces before it could come so far and, due to having the speed advantage, just easily evade any such attempts anyway. The discussion that followed, re: mass lightning and how it relates to speed and fractions of c I did not participate in at all. So please, do not accuse me of being ignorant in regards to c and speed since I didn't make any statements regarding those.

Now onto armor, Norade made an argument regarding ISD armor and I quote: "Assuming that most of the hull was clad in only 10m of armor we get a density of 191 tons per square meter that is 7.31 times more dense than limestone, and 9.54 times more dense than crushed gravel. Averaging the two means that transporting through an armored section of hull is near equivalent to transporting through 84.25m of earth and limestone."
I took these numbers and tried to find an occasion where transporters had to beam through meters upon meters of solid rock and chose the episode Dagger of the Mind, since we could roughly extrapolate from there the depth of the transport destination. My quarrel with Norade then mostly revolved around him claiming that the transporter beam wasn't aimed directly at the location, but through the elevator shaft, something which I found to be not in evidence in that episode.

I also never said anywhere that transporters are unfallible and that the Imps can't jam them should they find out what's going on. When Imperial proposed that leaking radiation from the damaged parts of the ISD could potentially prevent transports I agreed, I just cautioned that we don't have any exact values as to how much radiation it had to be to have those effects and how dangerous it could potentially be for the crew of the ISD.

As for beaming through shields, it seems you mistook me and Sanchez discussing an occurence in the episode Dark Frontier for me proposing that the Borg can regularly beam through shields. That isn't true. I was proposing that there's a precedent of the Borg beaming people off defeated enemy ships and directly into the assimilation chambers. I made clear that this would happen after the shields are down and I also took into consideration that they might not have used transporters but their cutting and tractor beams to scoop up the crews piecemeal, I just expressed that I consider this to be of lesser likelihood.

Until it has been decided whether or not my conduct has truly been lacking, I will recuse myself from this thread and await my judgement.

[harbringer]

Metahive if you wish to be treated as a 10yr old just say so Thanas did not threaten you he simply stated you cannot post like this in the forum he is a mod for. Lying about his conduct is foolish and stupid, further why make this post at all why try and take a ship to ship action and bend it in such a way?. Are you unable to deal with the simple fact a cube won't smash a star destroyer?, you have not proved the Borg are able to assimilate wars systems that may work on such foreign principals to their own. You cannot assume that it will be as easy as you seem to expect.

And how do you expect the crew being assimilated to help the collective they may be able to use the equipment on the star destroyer but have no idea on building it?.

You don't seem to have thought this through.

[Metahive]

I reply since I am directly addressed.

Metahive if you wish to be treated as a 10yr old just say so Thanas did not threaten you he simply stated you cannot post like this in the forum he is a mod for.

While accusing me of writing things I haven't. I never talked about c or speed here and I never said the Borg could regularly pierce shields with their transporters. I have honestly not the faintest clue where he got the idea to attribute those things to me. Excuse me for getting slightly unhinged when being accused for someone else's ideas.

Are you unable to deal with the simple fact a cube won't smash a star destroyer?, you have not proved the Borg are able to assimilate wars systems that may work on such foreign principals to their own. You cannot assume that it will be as easy as you seem to expect.

Are you mistaking me for the OP or someone else? What of my posts gave you the impression I wish to prove the Borg are superior and could destroy an ISD? I'm desperate because people keep misattributing things to me I didn't do or say and are cross at me for no reason!.
I said multiple times that in a straight confrontation, the Borg would lose. Where do people get the idea I'm here to wank the Borg out?

I proposed a rough outline of a scenario to give the Imps a challenge, I don't think of it as anything but a writing exercise.

you have not proved the Borg are able to assimilate wars systems that may work on such foreign principals to their own. You cannot assume that it will be as easy as you seem to expect.

Please quote me where I said that. Quote me where I said or implied it would be easy or even possible.

And how do you expect the crew being assimilated to help the collective they may be able to use the equipment on the star destroyer but have no idea on building it?

Quote me on that as well because I have no idea where you got that from.

You don't seem to have thought this through.

I really must now ask all the people who accuse me of things similar as above to quote where exactly I said anything to that effect. Goddamit! Are you people even reading my posts before burying me under flames and derision?

I am not the OP! Baffalo is the OP, he had ideas similar to the above. Just because I became the main contributor to this thread doesn't mean I immediately inherit also all of his bullshit and have to stand for it, right?

[Metahive]

Actually no, I concede everything, accept all the blame and apologize to everyone here for my misconduct, especially Norade and Stark. I promise it won't happen again.

[Norade]

Are you unable to deal with the simple fact a cube won't smash a star destroyer?, you have not proved the Borg are able to assimilate wars systems that may work on such foreign principals to their own. You cannot assume that it will be as easy as you seem to expect.

Are you mistaking me for the OP or someone else? What of my posts gave you the impression I wish to prove the Borg are superior and could destroy an ISD? I'm desperate because people keep misattributing things to me I didn't do or say and are cross at me for no reason!.
I said multiple times that in a straight confrontation, the Borg would lose. Where do people get the idea I'm here to wank the Borg out?

I proposed a rough outline of a scenario to give the Imps a challenge, I don't think of it as anything but a writing exercise.

This writing exercise fails because there is no balance point, with so much as a handful of support craft out and about the Borg become a triviality. With no shields and the Borg able to transport in at will the ISD will surely fall as they will not have the time to repair anything and if they get even one of the systems back online the Borg will once again stand no chance. Even the comparably meager power offered by the generator aboard the prefabricated base, if it could be tapped, would likely allow the Imperials to crush the Borg in one sided slaughter.

Lets us look at simple facts first.

If any of these conditions are true the Borg will lose or fail to capture the ISD:
-The ISD has shields online at nearly any capacity
-The ISD has point defense weapons or better online
-The ISD has ECM and ECCM operational
-The ISD has sublight engines working
-The ISD has a working hyperdrive
-The ISD has working repulsor drive and is within range of a gravity source
-The ISD has any support craft of higher fire power than a basic TIE fighter availible
-The ISD has multiple TIE's available

The points above are known to be 100% true, the ones below are open to debate.

If any of these conditions are true the Borg will lose or fail to capture the ISD:
-If the Borg cannot penetrate the hull with sensors or transporters
-If the crew of the ISD can get any single system listed above online before being overrun
-If the Prefabricated base can be used while aboard the ISD
-If the Borg cannot adapt and simply march into weapons emplacements
-If the Borg cannot assimilate the Imperial technology

Thus for the Borg to win the ISD must be a floating hulk with no means to defend itself beyond the crew armed with small arms and there must be no way to restore enough function to the ship before the crew succumbs. Even still the Borg may gain nothing as they likely can't assimilated the ship and with the crew depleted and the ship so damaged even using the memories of captured crew the ship may never be operational again. This answers the scenario.

If you wish to debate the transports through layers of Earth topic please make a new thread and I will answer as able. I'm in the final week of my college semester and I do not have as much time for idle debate as I otherwise would.

EDIT: That seems a cowards way out Metahive, though I disagree with many of your points and find some of your posts to be lacking I think Thanas came on a bit strongly and I'm not sure he took the time to read the thread closely enough to make a call either way. As I said above, I would like to continue the transports versus rock debate though that may proceed slowly.

[Metahive]

You might call it a coward's way out, but I honestly can't discuss this any further, this has debate has drained me mentally already way too much and I still need some for the next few days. To have a "realistic" Borg vs. Imps scenario, maybe a smaller ship is needed on the imperial side, something like a bulk freighter or cargo ferry. Yes, it's probably a testament to ST's weakness that even an unarmed cargo ship would pose a substantial challenge, but o well.

I thought about making a seperate thread about ST transporter capabilities in Pure ST but then discarded the idea. Feel free to make one yourself, you can quote the posts I made about it here, but I have important business to do in the next three days so I will only be available again from the weekend on.

Hope you accept my apology.

Buddies?

[Junghalli]

further why make this post at all why try and take a ship to ship action and bend it in such a way?. Are you unable to deal with the simple fact a cube won't smash a star destroyer?

I suspect it has less to do with being unable to deal with it and more to do with the fact that "lol Borg stand zero chance" just isn't a very interesting debate, but he nevertheless finds something potentially interesting in the scenario.

Honestly I can sort of see this. I'd find ST vs SW potentially interesting... if it didn't almost always come down to Wars pew pews are hundreds of times more powerful than Trek pew pews so Trek stands no chance. Personally I'd be more inclined to artificially balance the scenario by having the match take place in some alternate universe where both sides have roughly equal pound for pound firepower than by making a highly contrived scenario to cripple the SW side, but I think I can see where Metahive is coming from here.

Ironically in an equalized firepower scenario Stormtroopers would probably still own ST: FC zombie Borg, for exactly the sort of reasons I find interesting to think about; they're generally a better force even if they don't have overwhelmingly powerful pew pews and magic shields.

[Connor MacLeod]

I suspect it has less to do with being unable to deal with it and more to do with the fact that "lol Borg stand zero chance" just isn't a very interesting debate, but he nevertheless finds something potentially interesting in the scenario.

Some vs debates are just unbalanced to begin with. IF you tried pairing Star Wars against the Time Lords or the Culture or the Xeelee, there's no way you could make it interesting without crippling the latter to the point they no longer resemble their original incarnation.

Honestly I can sort of see this. I'd find ST vs SW potentially interesting... if it didn't almost always come down to Wars pew pews are hundreds of times more powerful than Trek pew pews so Trek stands no chance. Personally I'd be more inclined to artificially balance the scenario by having the match take place in some alternate universe where both sides have roughly equal pound for pound firepower than by making a highly contrived scenario to cripple the SW side, but I think I can see where Metahive is coming from here.

Not many scenarios could work, simply becuase you either have to bend over backwards to contrive them. Let's say that SW firepower IS exaggerated as claimed, the DS isn't really meaningful firepower wise (which is hard to believe, since even if we ignore the scaling argument, there is still the sheer mass/energy argument.) What is there left? SW still has a FTL advantage, so in any "goverment vs goverment" battle SW can still out-run the Federation and its contemporaries. Maybe it can't BDZ planets as rapidly anymore, but orbital bombardment is hardly the only "WMD" option star wars has or could employ. They also still have territorial size, industry, population.... the list goes on. Any one of those alone would guarantee a victory eventually.

So what about one on one scenarios? Well there's still problems. There is no real way to "equalize" forces from two different universes. Fairness in a vs debate only applies to the rules, not to the forces. "equalizing" is always either a contrivance or deliberately changing the force. Again, you can't make too many changes without destroying the whole purpose of the scenario to begin with. And even the firepower (the "pew pews" as you put it) still matter because the ability to hurt or destroy the enemy is crucial to any vs scenario, unless for some reason one side has the ability to respond at will that the other side cannot easily address (the so called "warp strafing" argument is often an attempt to do just this.)

Ground forces are a bit better, since there is more potential for parity, although this will invariably come down to equipment, which isn't going to be much better than the "pew pew" arguments you find distasteful. SW isn't exactly super competent modern warfare, but they DO have a better selection of vehicles, artillery, and suchnot that they can employ in combat. Trek is generally alot more limited in this unless you draw more heavily on peripheral material or jump off into interpretationland (maybe a dune buggy, some fixed artillery, etc.)

Which leads to another problem with the SW vs ST issue, in that more often than not Trek can only "compete" by using technobabble (which in Trek is basically magic handwaving with fancy technical sounding terms replacing incantation.) And the more rabid Trekkies tend to do just that, which is why it is common to see something reminsicent of a batman comic ("The Federation can just use phase cloaked trilituhum transwarp torpedoes to bypass all the dfneses and blow up the reactor!" or something like that. Or warp strafing. Or power armored federation troops. Or whatever their imaginations can come up with.) Which, I should point out, is hardly any better than the "pew pews" you complain about (frankly I find it worse, for the aforementioned "change it too much and the debate becomes pointless.")

I've come to realize SW vs ST is just a kind of perverse, fucked up sort of debate that has some other underlying reasons behind it other than "lets compare two other universes". Part of me suspects its the same stupidity that leads to stuff like "Deadliest Warrior", or that its just an excuse for flame wars or drama (kind of like some of the "Liberal vs conservative" debates in news and politics), or just because people get vicarious enjoyment from tribalism and/or seeing the "enemy" thrashed. It is also why I suspect most of the people I "knew" from the earlier days of this debate (preceding the prequels and the ICSes and stuff) pretty much moved on - they more or less "grew up" (although personally, even back then the folks I knew got involved mainly to deal with the rabid trekkie types with their comic book approaches, rather than trekkies in general. As we found out with the ICS era, most of the stable trekkies did the same thing the stable warsies did. moved on and found better things to do, and left the fanboys on both sides to slog it out in the mud.)

[Connor MacLeod]

as far as this particular scenario goes, as I've said before there are better ways to contrive it without bizarre cripplings.

Stuff like firepower and engine performance and evne the ability to jump to hyperspace can be curtailed by simply disabling the inertial dampers/acceleration compensators. Full output on an ISD's guns more or less corresponds to the max output of the reactor and max engine performance, which means that in order to fire the guns at or near max yield, you generally need the acceleratio ncompensators active to prevent the crew from turning to paste (either by running the engines or firing the guns.) without those devices, acceleration becomes much more limited (but is still there.) A precedent for this might be in that one Marvel SW comic Curtis noted where the ISD gets too close to the black hole - tensor fields and acceleration compensators/inertial dampers would be needed to protect the crews there, and could thus be potentially overloaded. If exposed to conditions similar (either of similar magnitude over a similar period of time, or perhaps lesser magnitude over a prolonged period, or whatever) could leave those devices crippled once the ship is depositied in the location the scenario deems.

On top of that, tensor fields seem quite likely needed for both acceleration and firing the guns (There's always been some doubt whether hull mateiral alone would be enough to deal with this, and SW warships seem to make extensive use of tensor field tech for that reason.) Tensor fields (at least per the ICS) are a related technology to the inertial dampers and basically do the same thing - protect the structure against the effect of violent forces/accelerations (smooth them out, reduce stress, and whatnot.) For much the same reason they could have been damaged/overloaded in the passage, and thus be offline until repaired. Which also means a degradation in ship performance.

Fighters and Shuttles. No way to realistically "cripple" them, but I am not sure we really need to. If a Borg Cube's weaponry cannot threaten or harm a shuttle or a fighter, then this debate is going to go nowhere period (and as the past has shown, "fighter" debates are highly variable already and can be modified as needed.)

Shielding is still a debatable issue, although I'm not sure how to handle it. Completely eliminating it (emitters getting damaged/destroyed in the technobabble transportation from one universe to another) but that also seems a bit unbalanced. Partial shielding perhaps (onyl able to fully cover some angles, or to provide near-total protection around the ship, save for holes that could be exploited.)

Obviously there is no reason or point to reducing the crew numbers, since that si basically what is being pitted against the borg, liekwise changing the ship structurally in any way should not matter.

As far as the borg side goes, I'd have them start some distance away approaching. Its reasonable to expect that the ISD, even if recovering from a violent passage as I contrive above, would detect an incoming starship (say minutes away) giving them time to think and prepare. It also seems plausible to conclude the Borg would not be so hasty in the destruction of the ISD. They would probably be more interested in capturing it first even if they end up taking attritional losses in the process (attrition seems to matter little to them, and cpature for information and possible tech matters alot, if 8472 is anything to go by.) so any "ram them til they give up" tactics seem improbable. More likely they'd just keep sending in troops until the ISD gets repaired and then blows them away/gets away, or until the defenders are overwhelmed.

[Purple]

What would be interesting is a scenario where the Borg are transported to the SW galaxy in the old republic era (say 100 years before episode 1). Have a cube crash land on a planet containing massive droid factories or find something like the Star Forge from KOTOR. Than, give them say 200 years to build up on it and see what happens.

[Connor MacLeod]

Except they're no longer the Borg we are familar with, or we see in the series. That runs into the problem of being such a change/contrivance that it becomes almost arbitrary. More to the point I'm not exactly sure such a thing is easy that a complete stranger oculd be dropped in and make it work (how much technical understanding of SW tech does it require? They need to at least understand SW languages to some dgree, if not the sciences behind it. THey also need to set up and establish some means of mining, materials refinement, etc.) And then there's the issue of how they stay isolated and undiscovered.

And even if you somehow manage to handwave that all away, there stands a good chance SW considers self replicating droid armies a WMD or terror weapon (a holdover from the Clone Wars) and thus anyone discovered attempting to use them is likely to be dealt with... harshly and with little restraint. Even with droid tech, the scale problem still applies (SW is just too big as a whole.)

If we're going to go with "likely" secnarios, then its more like something along the lines of commercial and economic ventures in another galaxy. How woudl smuggling and perhaps criminal cartels in SW influence Trek, how would technologies from both sides impact the other, etc. Besides, of any sort of "conflicts" you are likely to see SW and ST get into, economic is the most likely of the lot.

[Junghalli]

Not many scenarios could work, simply becuase you either have to bend over backwards to contrive them. Let's say that SW firepower IS exaggerated as claimed, the DS isn't really meaningful firepower wise (which is hard to believe, since even if we ignore the scaling argument, there is still the sheer mass/energy argument.) What is there left? SW still has a FTL advantage, so in any "goverment vs goverment" battle SW can still out-run the Federation and its contemporaries. Maybe it can't BDZ planets as rapidly anymore, but orbital bombardment is hardly the only "WMD" option star wars has or could employ. They also still have territorial size, industry, population.... the list goes on. Any one of those alone would guarantee a victory eventually.

Yeah, SW has advantages besides just firepower, but if you take away the assumption that SW ships would be some kind of invincible god-tech to Trek then they aren't guarenteed a complete walk-over 100% of the time.

Take something like this scenario for instance, sub a Star Destroyer for the Enterprise in Q Who. If the cube isn't a threat to the Star Destroyer, well, not much to discuss, except maybe for what they do now that they're stuck in ST. If you assume pound for pound equality it gets a lot more interesting - the Star Destroyer is bigger than the Enterprise and probably has more guns and armor and better internal security so it'll probably do better, but will it be enough? You can actually have a debate.

So what about one on one scenarios? Well there's still problems. There is no real way to "equalize" forces from two different universes. Fairness in a vs debate only applies to the rules, not to the forces. "equalizing" is always either a contrivance or deliberately changing the force. Again, you can't make too many changes without destroying the whole purpose of the scenario to begin with.

I'd agree with this to a certain extent, but I think there's pitting somewhat unequal forces against each other and there's pitting forces that don't belong in the same ring together against each other. A debate where one side has a clear advantage can still be interesting if there's at least a possibility that either side could win. It's when you get to the point where one side can't even touch the other that it gets boring.

Also, I'll admit there's a certain personal aspect to this - I've never really thought of the firepower differences as being essential to what Star Wars and Star Trek are. If you proposed a match-up between the Culture and SW where you strip the Culture of all its advantages I'd agree that's pretty weird because a lot of those advantages are based on central concepts of what the Culture is. But I've always thought of the difference between ST vs SW being more one of the age and scope of the civilization and themes and attitudes than one of how many gigatons each side has; Star Wars with weaker firepower still feels like Star Wars to me and Star Trek with more firepower still feels like Star Trek. I'll admit this is a totally subjective thing.

Which leads to another problem with the SW vs ST issue, in that more often than not Trek can only "compete" by using technobabble (which in Trek is basically magic handwaving with fancy technical sounding terms replacing incantation.) And the more rabid Trekkies tend to do just that, which is why it is common to see something reminsicent of a batman comic ("The Federation can just use phase cloaked trilituhum transwarp torpedoes to bypass all the dfneses and blow up the reactor!" or something like that. Or warp strafing. Or power armored federation troops. Or whatever their imaginations can come up with.) Which, I should point out, is hardly any better than the "pew pews" you complain about (frankly I find it worse, for the aforementioned "change it too much and the debate becomes pointless.")

Agreed.

I've come to realize SW vs ST is just a kind of perverse, fucked up sort of debate that has some other underlying reasons behind it other than "lets compare two other universes". Part of me suspects its the same stupidity that leads to stuff like "Deadliest Warrior", or that its just an excuse for flame wars or drama (kind of like some of the "Liberal vs conservative" debates in news and politics), or just because people get vicarious enjoyment from tribalism and/or seeing the "enemy" thrashed.

Yeah, that's kind of the feeling I have too.

[Connor MacLeod]

Yeah, SW has advantages besides just firepower, but if you take away the assumption that SW ships would be some kind of invincible god-tech to Trek then they aren't guarenteed a complete walk-over 100% of the time.

Take something like this scenario for instance, sub a Star Destroyer for the Enterprise in Q Who. If the cube isn't a threat to the Star Destroyer, well, not much to discuss, except maybe for what they do now that they're stuck in ST. If you assume pound for pound equality it gets a lot more interesting - the Star Destroyer is bigger than the Enterprise and probably has more guns and armor and better internal security so it'll probably do better, but will it be enough? You can actually have a debate.

Not much of one. I dont see much of a difference betwene a hyptoehtical "million to one" odds debate and say a "ten to one" odds. If the ISD had only a small edge in firepower (even just 50% more) its still going to beat the GCS. And if it turns out the GCS has the firepower advantage the same applies in reverse. What fan is going to be happier with "well we might beat you OCCASINALLY"

More to the point, taking away firepower solves nothing. The nitpicking will degenerate to things like acceleration, defenses, sensors, FTL capabilities, weapons range and so forth. As long as one side has the ability to hurt the other, any one of those being lopsided is going to fuck up a "proper" debate sa you seem to be picturing it, and you ge tthe same problem as you do with the lopsided "pew pew" firepower. And at that point, you just have to ask "where doy ou stop making the changes?"

Of course, you could just say "it all depends on the firepower, and calcs you accept" which is SB standard logic, but noone will ever agree on those so the issue will just become like the inevitable "canon" arguments which are so incredibly tiresome.

I'd agree with this to a certain extent, but I think there's pitting somewhat unequal forces against each other and there's pitting forces that don't belong in the same ring together against each other. A debate where one side has a clear advantage can still be interesting if there's at least a possibility that either side could win. It's when you get to the point where one side can't even touch the other that it gets boring.

It's only interesting if there is a fair bit of uncertainty in the issue. And for that to happen there cannot be a strong variation between capabilities in a general sense. That is VERY hard to achieve. I mean there are lots of universes that are either below SW or well above it, but almost none that get to even approximately equal. That means either contrivance or you accept a limited debate.

Also, I'll admit there's a certain personal aspect to this - I've never really thought of the firepower differences as being essential to what Star Wars and Star Trek are. If you proposed a match-up between the Culture and SW where you strip the Culture of all its advantages I'd agree that's pretty weird because a lot of those advantages are based on central concepts of what the Culture is. But I've always thought of the difference between ST vs SW being more one of the age and scope of the civilization and themes and attitudes than one of how many gigatons each side has; Star Wars with weaker firepower still feels like Star Wars to me and Star Trek with more firepower still feels like Star Trek. I'll admit this is a totally subjective thing.

I can understand an actual desire to debate as an intellectual exercise rather than just "hur hur" Sportsfan type "my team won" tribal BS. I like that myself. But its very, VERY rare, and few actual people want to do it, but are simply doing the tribal sports fan BS except in another venue because they hate calcs or they just hate big numbers. There are lots of people on SB who bemoan the whole "technology sucks, tactics are interesting" paradigm, and love to try to hand wave away the technical/firepower issues on that basis, but that just falls into the "contrivance" issue. For that matter that tends to drive the whole "hur hur everyone uses big numbers" idiocy you see parroted around on fact at SB. That sort of projecting becomes tiresome and idiotic, all the more because it is promulgated in what amounts to a textual echo chamber.
I dont see how you can divorce tech from these

When you get down to it its not the numbers or the tech or anything like that thats the problem, its the people involved in the debates and the culture/enviroment that the debates take place in that is the problem, but you cant MAKE people think intelligently if they dont want to. Which means the tribal "hur hur" bullshit will persist.

Then again there are always idiots on both sides too, and you can't eliminate those either.

[Norade]

Honestly, while comparing cultural factors between Star Wars and Star Trek is interesting, it's also sort of a goes nowhere topic as well. Star Wars has a larger variety of species, planets, government types, trade agreements, and whatever else you may wish so nearly anything that can be found in Trek will be found in larger numbers in Star Wars. You could argue Federation versus Empire, but aside from one having an evil leader and bad egg officers both are either evil, incompetent, or perfect depending on who's writing them. We also know a lot about the human portion of Starfleet and the Federation and little of anything else, where as, thanks to the inclusion of the EU we know a fair bit more about the society of Star Wars.

[Junghalli]

For that matter that tends to drive the whole "hur hur everyone uses big numbers" idiocy you see parroted around on fact at SB.

Heh, this reminds me of something I was thinking of earlier today.

I've talked a few times about what I like to call the self-nulling double bullshit effect in science fiction, where authors make technology super-good but then they want the effects of much less powerful tech so they use more magic to disable the super-tech. Ships have 9999 gigaton lasers (or whatever) but thanks to SHIELDS when they hit other ships with them it looks like WWII battleship guns, for instance. I tend to find this annoying, prefering that authors just make their technology as powerful or weak as it needs to be for the story instead of supercharging it just to create problems for themselves that they then have to invoke magic to solve. I suspect a lot of vs debaters love this kind of writing though because it makes their side more powerful in vs debates. This made me think if I ever were to end up writing SW EU or 40K novels or something I could easily see myself ending up as one of those minimalist authors the vs fans complain about, because where there was ambiguity I'd probably tend to go on the side of the technology just not being that great instead of the technology being super but magic cancels it out.

When you get down to it its not the numbers or the tech or anything like that thats the problem, its the people involved in the debates and the culture/enviroment that the debates take place in that is the problem, but you cant MAKE people think intelligently if they dont want to. Which means the tribal "hur hur" bullshit will persist.

Yeah, I have to pretty much agree with you there.

[Norade]

For that matter that tends to drive the whole "hur hur everyone uses big numbers" idiocy you see parroted around on fact at SB.

Heh, this reminds me of something I was thinking of earlier today.

I've talked a few times about what I like to call the self-nulling double bullshit effect in science fiction, where authors make technology super-good but then they want the effects of much less powerful tech so they use more magic to disable the super-tech. Ships have 9999 gigaton lasers (or whatever) but thanks to SHIELDS when they hit other ships with them it looks like WWII battleship guns, for instance. I tend to find this annoying, prefering that authors just make their technology as powerful or weak as it needs to be for the story instead of supercharging it just to create problems for themselves that they then have to invoke magic to solve. I suspect a lot of vs debaters love this kind of writing though because it makes their side more powerful in vs debates. This made me think if I ever were to end up writing SW EU or 40K novels or something I could easily see myself ending up as one of those minimalist authors the vs fans complain about, because where there was ambiguity I'd probably tend to go on the side of the technology just not being that great instead of the technology being super but magic cancels it out.

However for a universe like Star Wars the ability to destroy worlds and blast asteroids aside are presented right in the movies. The shields work as a great plot device, they allow you to have ships that can level cities yet can have a cinematic slugging match as well, they also allow the hero of the story to always have something nearly fail but hold long enough for him to get away. Besides without them when you have firepower like Wars needs you still end up with magic armor.

Just because you don't think the ability to destroy worlds with a single beam, to render them slag with many shots, or to casually swat aside asteroids is needed doesn't mean it doesn't fit with the setting that the author has created. You really come off like a butt hurt Trekie who thinks because asteroids can be a problem of the week for a TV show that a movie with a far larger scale should treat them the same way.

[Junghalli]

You really come off like a butt hurt Trekie who thinks because asteroids can be a problem of the week for a TV show that a movie with a far larger scale should treat them the same way.

I don't even know where you got this seeing as Trek does the exact same thing that I was complaining about. Incidentally, can we not bring tribalist appeals to motive into this, because they're rather tiresome and not at all conducive to reasonable debate.

There are other points where I disagree with your analysis too, but I fear trying to address them will just lead to a tiresome partisan slapfight as long as you're operating from this idea that my arguments stem from me secretly giving a fuck whether the Enterprise can beat up a Star Destroyer (FYI I really don't, and I'll happily admit that even with equalized firepower SW wins handily by virtue of superior FTL and numbers).

[Norade]

You really come off like a butt hurt Trekie who thinks because asteroids can be a problem of the week for a TV show that a movie with a far larger scale should treat them the same way.

I don't even know where you got this seeing as Trek does the exact same thing that I was complaining about. Incidentally, can we not bring tribalist appeals to motive into this, because they're rather tiresome and not at all conducive to reasonable debate.

There are other points where I disagree with your analysis too, but I fear trying to address them will just lead to a tiresome partisan slapfight as long as you're operating from this idea that my arguments stem from me secretly giving a fuck whether the Enterprise can beat up a Star Destroyer (FYI I really don't, and I'll happily admit that even with equalized firepower SW wins handily by virtue of superior FTL and numbers).

Sorry for the reaction, it's just how it seems to me.

Anyway, what points do you disagree with?

[Junghalli]

Sorry for the reaction, it's just how it seems to me.

Apology accepted.

Anyway, what points do you disagree with?

If you're interested:

However for a universe like Star Wars the ability to destroy worlds and blast asteroids aside are presented right in the movies.

First of all this seems somewhat circular. I complain about something writers do that I don't like and you defend it by ... pointing out that it's in the movie. That said the actual Star Wars movies really don't strike me as big offenders. If anything, I'd say Trek is a bigger offender, though more with the transporter than weapons (they created a technology that would easily get any away teams out of virtually any danger, so then they ended up contriving all sorts of problems with it so people could actually get in trouble away from the ship).

Second, I'd debate whether huge firepower is an essential plot point in the actual Star Wars movies. There's the Death Star, obviously, but it was presented as something special and you can't automatically extrapolate it down any more than you could extrapolate the yields of nukes down to those of hand grenades (keep in mind here, I'm just talking about the movies themselves). We see ISDs vaporize asteroids but we probably only get vaporization because a glowy cloud effect was cheap FX (I know this is an out-universe argument and therefore anethema to canon literalism, but I'm not a huge fan of strict canon literalism, and we're talking about how important it is to the plot not vs debating). If the asteroids were fragmented instead it would be a lot less impressive (kilotons, going by Mike's own asteroid destruction calculator) and make no difference to the plot whatsoever.

The shields work as a great plot device, they allow you to have ships that can level cities yet can have a cinematic slugging match as well, they also allow the hero of the story to always have something nearly fail but hold long enough for him to get away.

Personally I'd prefer the approach of just having ultra-heavy strategic weapons that aren't very practical in an actual battle if you want to be able to blow shit up on a really huge scale but have slugfest battles, but it's a matter of taste really. As, when you get right down to it, is my distaste for the whole self-nulling double bullshit effect dramatic device.

Just because you don't think the ability to destroy worlds with a single beam, to render them slag with many shots, or to casually swat aside asteroids is needed doesn't mean it doesn't fit with the setting that the author has created.

Sure, but then the same setting also has battles not be one hit one kill affairs. Personally I'd have just gone for powerful strategic weapons but weak ship to ship weapons if you want to have it that way, and I don't think this would have changed the movies in any meaningful way, but it's really a matter of personal taste.

[Imperial528]

I've never really had a problem with shields blocking gigaton-level blasts. However, what I don't like to see is that megaton and gigaton level weapons never look as such when used against a ship. To me, it's perfectly fine if your mile-long star dreadnought can take a dozen gigaton nuke to its shields and be perfectly intact afterwords, but the problem I have with such scenes is that the resulting explosion will be several times larger than the target, and all we see is a piddly little "poof". Now, back when TOS and SW were in production, it makes sense that we'd see that, because they didn't have the nice CGI we have today. Yet today, all we get is the same pathetic "poof", just in HD.

Just my two cents on the shielding topic.

[Ritterin Sophia]

I've never really had a problem with shields blocking gigaton-level blasts. However, what I don't like to see is that megaton and gigaton level weapons never look as such when used against a ship. To me, it's perfectly fine if your mile-long star dreadnought can take a dozen gigaton nuke to its shields and be perfectly intact afterwords, but the problem I have with such scenes is that the resulting explosion will be several times larger than the target, and all we see is a piddly little "poof". Now, back when TOS and SW were in production, it makes sense that we'd see that, because they didn't have the nice CGI we have today. Yet today, all we get is the same pathetic "poof", just in HD.

Just my two cents on the shielding topic.

What should gigaton-level directed energy weapons look like? And how should they react with exotic energy shields?

[Imperial528]

I don't know how they should, or for that matter, would. But I would be much better if they actually showed scale in such blasts. Even kiloton level blasts will produce an explosion of appreciable size, and anything in the high megatons or above could easily envelope a whole starship.

That is, unless shields are designed to absorb almost all of the incoming energy from an explosion, rather than just absorbing what actually hits the shields.