Fundamental differences

[Wyrm]

400 billion stars is within the probable range for the number of the stars of our own Milky Way galaxy. So no, Alien, the SW galaxy is not substantially bigger than ours. We can't even tell if it's a different size or not.

[Alien-Carrot]

For a difference factor of 1.44, putting the Milky was as being 5/7ths the size of the GFFA. I suggest you check your contempt until you master the ability to do 3rd grade mathematics.

um, what contempt. btw

(note: i did all this math on paper. if i made a mistake, please tell me.)

and

sorry i was going on memory. 15 years ago in highschool, they told us 75-85k ly

the first quote is self ex[planitory. as for the second, it shows that its been 15 years since i learned this shit, and i've never had to use it in all that time. so EXCUSE me for making a mistake.


and yes, i was using diamater in stead of radius, dumb mistake on my part.

But even this would be inaccurate because a galaxy is nearly all empty space. The actual resources are the star systems, so a better comparison would be their respective masses.

so theres absolutely no way a rebel fleet could hide somewhere that isnt in a star system eh? guess that scene at the end of ESB couldnt have happened. the one where they are floating outside the galaxy. not in any star system. my mistake for thinking a scene from the movie would be accurate.

oh, one more thing. Formless and Terra. Thank you for being nice and telling me what the formula was.

[Ghost Rider]

For a difference factor of 1.44, putting the Milky was as being 5/7ths the size of the GFFA. I suggest you check your contempt until you master the ability to do 3rd grade mathematics.

um, what contempt. btw

When using the icon? That's contempt you idiot.

the first quote is self ex[planitory. as for the second, it shows that its been 15 years since i learned this shit, and i've never had to use it in all that time. so EXCUSE me for making a mistake.


and yes, i was using diamater in stead of radius, dumb mistake on my part.

As well as this response. You were wrong and off. Your ego was bruised, you reacted like a five year old.

And last but not least try and fucking using the shift key because I really hate reading your half assed shit.

[Batman]

But even this would be inaccurate because a galaxy is nearly all empty space. The actual resources are the star systems, so a better comparison would be their respective masses.

so theres absolutely no way a rebel fleet could hide somewhere that isnt in a star system eh? guess that scene at the end of ESB couldnt have happened. the one where they are floating outside the galaxy. not in any star system. my mistake for thinking a scene from the movie would be accurate.

You mean the one with the visibly spinning spiral disc in the background? The one that would have needed to cover a couple million years for this to actually be the galaxy?

[Ender]

For a difference factor of 1.44, putting the Milky was as being 5/7ths the size of the GFFA. I suggest you check your contempt until you master the ability to do 3rd grade mathematics.

um, what contempt. btw

From the previous post

so about 1/4 again as large. nope no substantial difference at all

(note: i did all this math on paper. if i made a mistake, please tell me.)

and

sorry i was going on memory. 15 years ago in highschool, they told us 75-85k ly

the first quote is self ex[planitory. as for the second, it shows that its been 15 years since i learned this shit, and i've never had to use it in all that time. so EXCUSE me for making a mistake.

And you continue the arrogant tempter tantrum here as well. So despite the fact that you knew that you couldn't do it right, you decided to exercise a huge chip on your shoulder and talk down to me. And that would be if we took those excuses as valid, when there is no reason we should. Google allows you to check the formula and numbers in a matter of seconds, and the diameter of the Milky Way had already been corrected before you demonstrated your incompetence at elementary geometry.

and yes, i was using diamater in stead of radius, dumb mistake on my part.

And yet you continue to talk down to us in this post after you have been corrected.

so theres absolutely no way a rebel fleet could hide somewhere that isnt in a star system eh?

Not for any substantial period of time, no. They need infrastructure and resources to maintain themselves. This will be found in a star system.

guess that scene at the end of ESB couldnt have happened. the one where they are floating outside the galaxy. not in any star system. my mistake for thinking a scene from the movie would be accurate.

If that was a galaxy then the starts in it were going faster then the speed of light. It was in all probability an accretion disc of some sort - perhaps either of a protostar or a black hole. But no, it couldn't be a galaxy.

[Wyrm]

guess that scene at the end of ESB couldnt have happened. the one where they are floating outside the galaxy. not in any star system. my mistake for thinking a scene from the movie would be accurate.

If that was a galaxy then the starts in it were going faster then the speed of light. It was in all probability an accretion disc of some sort - perhaps either of a protostar or a black hole. But no, it couldn't be a galaxy.

That seems to have been fixed in the Special Edition. That feature in the background no longer visibly spins. It could very well be in a galaxy, though depending on its size an accretion disk could turn very slowly too.

That said, there are stars outside of galaxies. They get slingshotted out of their parent galaxies by gravitational interactions, such as during galactic collisions (like the Antenna galaxy — further, our own galaxy is munching down several others). So the observation that the Rebel fleet was outside the galaxy doesn't mean that they're not near a star. It also doesn't mean that the fleet's not near a system in a satellite galaxy (and we know the SW galaxy has several satillites).

[Alien-Carrot]

I would like to apologize for my earlier posts. I was running on 36 hours with no sleep, and more importantly, no caffeine.

I still stand by my basic arguements.

1) The Wars galaxy is bigger than the trek galaxy.

2) It is possible to hide a fleet of ships between star systems.

3) Treknology is does incorporate anti-gravity.

4) Wars tech is no solely based on anti-gravity.


And as per Ghost Rider's suggestion, I have now implimented the use of the shift key.

[Wyrm]

I still stand by my basic arguements.

1) The Wars galaxy is bigger than the trek galaxy.

Why? Please keep in mind that the methods we use to find the size of our own galaxy have quite substantial error bars. The oft-stated 100 kly figure is perhaps as much as 26% percent off.

2) It is possible to hide a fleet of ships between star systems.

Why? What makes you think that anyone in SW has even bothered to do so? Furthermore, why would they bother?

3) Treknology is does incorporate anti-gravity.

4) Wars tech is no solely based on anti-gravity.

Has anyone been arguing otherwise, other than the OP?

[Kartr_Kana]

2) It is possible to hide a fleet of ships between star systems.

Why? What makes you think that anyone in SW has even bothered to do so? Furthermore, why would they bother?

I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 200... That's right!! you guessed it 200 Rendalii StarDrive Dreadnaughts, lost between stars for decades!! Now true they probably weren't hidden on purpose unless someone held on to their sanity long enough to jump the fleet to keep the ships and their diseased crew from civilization. Fact is it was hidden between systems for decades and seeing as how vast space is anyways it's common sense that you could hid between stars.

[Ender]

2) It is possible to hide a fleet of ships between star systems.

Why? What makes you think that anyone in SW has even bothered to do so? Furthermore, why would they bother?

I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 200... That's right!! you guessed it 200 Rendalii StarDrive Dreadnaughts, lost between stars for decades!! Now true they probably weren't hidden on purpose unless someone held on to their sanity long enough to jump the fleet to keep the ships and their diseased crew from civilization. Fact is it was hidden between systems for decades and seeing as how vast space is anyways it's common sense that you could hid between stars.

You seriously think there is no difference between letting 200 shut down derelicts drift there and basing an active, engaging fleet there?

[Kartr_Kana]

Basing no because your traffic to and from the area would eventually get noticed. Jumping out there and hiding i.e. low power minimal to no incoming or outgoing traffic then yes.

[Wyrm]

Basing no because your traffic to and from the area would eventually get noticed. Jumping out there and hiding i.e. low power minimal to no incoming or outgoing traffic then yes.

You realize that a fleet of active warships is going to be the former, and not the latter. A fleet of warships is either moving, attacking or preparing to attack or move. That preparation itself requires traffic — logistics. Otherwise, it is using up consumables and degrading its performance. You only gather at places away from any source of resupply to regroup, and you don't stay long.

Even a fleet in retreat is going to be the former. You're going to be gathering your resources, visiting your allies and resupplying. If the Empire can't track you through a jump, then it doesn't make sense to go out into the middle of nowhere to hide; you can just lose the pursuit and go back to gathering your strength. If the Empire can track you through a jump, then it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference if you hide inside a system our outside one — they'll get you either way.

There's also the not insignificant fact that there's a quite a bit of junk in an average system you can masquerade as should a patrol stumble onto you, whereas you'll stick out like a sore thumb outside a system, even if you dial down your reactors to levels compatible with human life.

[Kartr_Kana]

I completely agree Wyrm I was thinking more as a rendezvous point as in ESB where everyone jumps out on different vectors make some evasive jumps and then heads to the deep space rally point. Once you have accountability for everyone you move to a new base and start preping for your next mission. Or as a final jumping off point for an attack, like an attack position before your assault on the objective. Get into battle formation preform last minute system checks and load the fighters and bombers with their munitions.

[Swindle1984]

I completely agree Wyrm I was thinking more as a rendezvous point as in ESB where everyone jumps out on different vectors make some evasive jumps and then heads to the deep space rally point. Once you have accountability for everyone you move to a new base and start preping for your next mission. Or as a final jumping off point for an attack, like an attack position before your assault on the objective. Get into battle formation preform last minute system checks and load the fighters and bombers with their munitions.

So far as I know, the closest we get to that is what the Empire started doing under Thrawn: stop just outside the target system to scan it and make sure every ship in your command is where it should be, then jump in simultaneously and attack. It's clearly stated that that was very unusual prior to Thrawn taking over, but it became standard procedure once he did. No idea if the Imperial Remnant kept that up after Thrawn died, and no idea if anyone else does it.

[Batman]

Um-we saw the Rebel fleet do exactly that at Sullust in ROTJ. What was unusual about Thrawn's tactics wasn't him using final jumping off points, it was using ones so close to the target system.

[Wyrm]

The Rebs didn't do it at the end of ESB, either. You'll notice in the film (even the SE one), the ships are all illuminated from one side. That indicates a distant, yet relatively luminous point source. That is, a nearby star. So they rendezvoused in a system.

[SuperScaleConstruct]

There too much to respond to, just a few things.

Some of you are rediculous. Even when I say something which agrees with the FAQ and analysis on this site, you still disagree because it doesnt match your assumptions. If Phasers convert matter into energy then calculations about how much energy it takes to vaporize a rock are totally irrelevant to figuring out how much energy a phaser uses/outputs. This is what I am talking about when I said you guys are like mathmeticians who can not properly put the word problem into a math equation to be solved.

Does it take the same amount of energy to melt a block of iron in equal size, in Star Trek and in reality? Yea or nay?

It takes the same amount of energy to melt it. Your question implies that you have missed the point that in ST they have the capability of converting it completly from mass into energy and actually gaining energy from that process. That is a vital point if you are going to compare energy levels, one which many seem to overlook intentionally.

So you decide to assume they're magically different techs working on different laws of physics.. because you say so?

Have you ever actually watched ST or SW or do you just argue on the board? I dont have to assume they are different tech. They are shown working differently. The laws of physics are not different, I am explaining how the 2 things can be within the same laws and and yet we see them work differently and have different results. The only alternative is to assume they work the same, in which case the differences can only be the result of orders of magnitute differences in energy output. That is the intellectually lazy solution many want to take.

What Starfleet does or does not call it's ships is irrelevant. They're warships. They have to be. In case you haven't noticed, the Federation is surrounded by hostile, warlike empires. Do you think the Romulans make purposefully weak exploration ships?
The TNG era Galaxy class may have been mired by hideous design flaws and useless baggage (lolfamilies) but it was still a warship. It was sent to patrol war zones, perform peacekeeping and to project power.
To claim that Federation ships are purposefully less than they could be is ludicrous.

The Federation is crippled by political correctness and its own naivety. It is a mistake to ever assume that when these limitations manifest themselves that is somehow a technical limitation. Look at the starship Defiant. It had the firepower of ships 10X its size, was armored to withstand point blank full power blasts from warships even without its shields on. Why is different then the Galaxy class? politics, political correctness - had nothing to do with technical limits

You don't get it do you? The conclusions that SW vessels produce vastly more energy than their ST counterparts isn't a conclusion based on how well the fucking things float in the air, it is based on how well the fucking things blow shit up and how well they resist having their shit blown up in turn.

Except observed effects of Federation weaponry and calculations regarding those weapons most definitively put its output vastly lower than what an ISD is capable of.

Against known military threats. When NEITHER limited by defenders with similiar technology as them NOR when bound by political correctness and diplomacy and actually firing at full strength, what happens THEN? When firing against an unshielded Borg cube a couple simple phaser shots disintigrated what must have been as much mass as 5 Enterprises. Star Wars asssaults break, batter and cause explosions in enemy ships, but never disintigrating in such a way. The Hoth asteroids vaporized were relatively smaller then the ships themselves. We certainly didnt see the Falcon vaporizing anything bigger then itself. The impereal bombers did jack to the asteroids but get themselves disintigrated.

Which wasn't even destroyed, mind you. Only losing it's bridge in the direct hit.
Meanwhile the Enterprise-D was completely destroyed (in a reset button timeloop of course) after having it's warp nacelle grazed by a passing starship.

The idea the asteroid was some kind of a lucky shot is grasping at straws. It is clear the entire fleet, not just one ship, was sustaining massive damage with all of its shields and weapons having been in use.

Once again that isnt a technical limitation so much as philosophical one. Why arent the Enterprise nacelles armored like on the Defiant? That is a problem for ST vs SW, but it is not an automatic innate technical superiority.

There's no argument over whether the Empire has the technology to control gravity, but that doesn't make it the "basis" of their technological system. There's also no question that the Federation has matter-antimatter reaction fuel systems, but that doesn't give them a "get out of Conservation of Energy free" card.

Basic artificial gravity on Federation starships is integral to their operation, too. People walk around those corridors assuming it is there and working in every single TV episode and movie.

There is a difference between a game changing fundamental technolgy and things that are just derivative of it. I fear many of you can not see this.

Control of gravity is most definately NOT a fundamental aspect of Federation tech. They use thrusters to power thier ships. They expend energy in a newtonian way to move objects such as a tractor beam or artificial grav on board ship. Any counter to gravity is always mentioned as using up energy or being a resource drain. What the Federation has is a different tech, having nothing to do with gravity (matter/energy conversions), which grants them enough energy and resources to be able to counter gravity.

Compare to Star wars. Countering gravity has a near zero difficulty or energy output. I disagree that this simply means they have more energy to output - especially since SW specifically lacks the matter/energy power source of ST. What they have is the elegant ability to manipulate gravity. Once we know that it is almost silly to assume that cant be used as a thier primary power source. If you have control over gravity as shown throughout the movies then perprtual motion type machines become possible. I'm sure everyone in the Star Wars galaxy has just ignored this and found some other inexplicable technology to power thier ships.

I don't see how any of these possibilities have any merit. The Empire has advanced, efficient technology for controlling gravity. So what? That does not mean it has to be the basis of their interstellar propulsion technology, their power technology, their computer technology, their weapon technology, or anything else.

It is the most powerful technology shown in Star Wars and is shown to be an integral part of all society of which most other things can be explained as a derivative. We are talking about control over one of the fundamental forces of the universe here and you want to dismiss it and say they must have some other tech that is powering thier society? Why? How? Good luck even formulating what it might be.

But antimatter is not something found in nature; the Federation has to make it by using other power sources (solar power or fusion, most of the time), and inefficiencies in such processes mean that the amount of energy used to make a given amount of fuel is more than you will actually get back when you use that fuel. Merely possessing the technology to make antimatter and use it as fuel is not a "get out of Conservation of Energy free" card.

That just tells us thier main reactor is really more of a battery then is it actually generating energy. So what? They DO have the ability to convert matter directly into energy. Evidently they just dont use it on the fly, perhaps for reliabilty reasons since it no doubt takes energy to start the reaction. Antimatter as a battery essentially has energy to begin with. This explains why a starship core breach seems orders of magnitude more powerful then does simple weapon fire (or the destruction of ships in SW). Why don't they craft antimatter bombs with the strenth of a starship core then? Once again it seems political and ethical and NOT a technical limitation at all.

Transporters and replicators appear to work by rearranging matter, not by converting it into energy and back. Everything we know about replicators indicates that they rearrange atoms stored on the ship into a desired pattern, not that they create objects from pure energy.

It would be a massive energy drain to create matter so of course it makes sense to have stored mass that is reconfigured, more like a transporter. Again that would be like a battery. There is no reason to believe they couldnt do only half of the procedure when they choose - that would be a silly assumption. Perhaps there are questions about efficiency or reliability which discourage powering the ship that way outright.

If a phaser were to actually convert a human body into energy, you would get an explosion comparable to over a thousand tons of TNT going off. We don't see such a blast, so we know a phaser doesn't convert a body into energy; it must convert a body into something else.

Who said it had to be a 100% conversion to energy? It could be a reaction that converts some percentage of the atoms into energy. The destructive effective might depend entirely on what was hit and what settings on the weapon were used and not be a fixed value at all. Maybe you could call that a weakness. On the other hand it makes the calculations of relative strength of a turbolaser to a phaser that have been done totally meaningless. Why do I care if my beam weapon has an order of magnitute less power output if it produces a chain reaction in the target. That makes it more advanced and efficient, not less.

I actually just noticed the main thrust of his analysis while reading the responses of others. He's saying that the Empire has only xyz, and the Feds have only abc, and QED these single elements are the basis of their entire technology base, because they don't have the other thing. He's seriously saying SW techology is hinged on gravitics alone, using the evidence that THEY DON'T HAVE TRANSPORTERS FROM ST. I mean, bugger the rest of the SW techbase right? Each faction has unique technologies like in Starcraft! Thus, the Empire's 'gimmick' is gravitics and with tier 3 grav-turbolasers can defeat the Federation's tri-annihilation torpedos!

If this is really how he's thinking, by comparing factions across separate universes and then declaring that this defines them more than the content of their own techbases, that's a very special kind of crazy. I've never seen it before.

Despite your derision, this is sort of correct. I'm going by what is seen in the movies and TV shows and this is not far fetched at all. Occams razor. Terrible assumption to say there are many technogies we dont understand when one overiding one could explain it instead. What is happening here is people are measuring how well the empire does XYZ, the Fed sucks at those and so we conclude the Empire is orders of magnitude more advances. Well Duh, frame the argument better! How well does the empire do ABC? They dont at all in the movies. Predicting how well ABC interacts with XYZ is conjecture. It could be an interesting conversation but no one is interested in that. The Federation cant do XYZ they lose QED


The thing about Tantoonine is a bit of a tangent, but it makes no sense plotwise or with what we see in EP4 that the empire controlled it prior to arriving.
-Kenobi would have left
-Vaders relatives would have left
-Han would not be surprised to see ISD in orbit or Stormtoopers on the ground
-stormtroopers would not just be setting checkpoints right as Luke arrives, they would have a base
-Hutt controls the spaceport and would not still be in charge in EP 5

If a story writer for something besides the movie wrote they controlled it that was dumb and doesnt fit. Next you will tell me the empire controlled Cloud city prior to EP5? These forces arrived with Vader - as happens in a military dictatorship. You guys have it all wrong, the Empire is NOT all powerful and everpresent. It isn't like that at all. The empire is more akin to the Spanish conquistadors with Vader playing as Cortez. Just because they setup ports and bases in the far reaches and no one has the power to confront thier fleet, it doesnt mean they controll everything or are even competent at subjugating the far reaches.

[Wyrm]

There too much to respond to, just a few things.

Some of you are rediculous. Even when I say something which agrees with the FAQ and analysis on this site, you still disagree because it doesnt match your assumptions. If Phasers convert matter into energy then calculations about how much energy it takes to vaporize a rock are totally irrelevant to figuring out how much energy a phaser uses/outputs.

Which is precisely why trektards' arguments for the high power of the phaser effect is bollocks. They use the energy to take some lump of matter to vapor, when the requisite vapor is lacking.

This is what I am talking about when I said you guys are like mathmeticians who can not properly put the word problem into a math equation to be solved.

Except no one here has done that. The change in physical state in the phaser effect is unknown: we go from a defined state to an undefined state, which makes that kind of analysis impossible. However, that doesn't mean we cannot say a few things about the energy involved in the phaser effect.

First off, nothing converts matter to energy. Only mass gets converted to energy, and that's done by converting the matter into particles of lesser mass. The defect in mass shows up as a quantity of energy, in the form of various particles such as gamma rays. A victim of the phaser effect would deliver a lethal dose of gammas to everyone near him. This does not happen; like the matter it came from, the energy involved simply vanishes without trace.

Secondly, we know that the phaser effect is a chain reaction. The phaser effect continues in the absence of any more energy input from a phaser beam, on the order of seconds. The phaser chain reaction, as implemented in hand weapons, also does not propagate through Federation carpetry, even when set to disintegrate. It has similar trouble through floors of all kinds, as demonstrated in "The Vengence Factor" as Yuta was disintegrated on a maximum setting of 16, yet the entire cavern was not swept up in the phaser effect.

This should not be surprising, as chain reactions are very reactant-dependent. When an insuitible material is reached, the chain reaction collapses and turns into ordinary heat. That the Enterprise's carpet is not singed in these events indicates that the energy involved in propagating the chain reaction is low. If the energy of propagation is low, then the energy for starting it is low.

From these facts, we can confidently say that the SW hand blaster involves much higher energy than the ST hand phaser.

Does it take the same amount of energy to melt a block of iron in equal size, in Star Trek and in reality? Yea or nay?

It takes the same amount of energy to melt it. Your question implies that you have missed the point that in ST they have the capability of converting it completly from mass into energy and actually gaining energy from that process. That is a vital point if you are going to compare energy levels, one which many seem to overlook intentionally.

Quite. But you seem to not realize that your "matter to energy" (AKA, total conversion) process involves precisely the kind of analysis that you claim is impossible — a total conversion transforms matter of one known state into another known state. That's what allows you to say that there is a net energy gain. Since you have denied the possibility of a known final state, your assertion that phaser reactions involve total conversion of matter (and therefore gain of energy) cannot be substantiated.

The low energy of the phaser reaction comes from other evidence. Numerous pieces of evidence that clearly points out that when the phaser chain reaction ceases, the residual energy quickly dissipates harmlessly.

Also, you are using "matter" and "mass" interchangably. They are not synonyms.

So you decide to assume they're magically different techs working on different laws of physics.. because you say so?

Have you ever actually watched ST or SW or do you just argue on the board? I dont have to assume they are different tech. They are shown working differently. The laws of physics are not different, I am explaining how the 2 things can be within the same laws and and yet we see them work differently and have different results. The only alternative is to assume they work the same, in which case the differences can only be the result of orders of magnitute differences in energy output. That is the intellectually lazy solution many want to take.

Wrong. What's intellectually lazy is to throw up one's hands and say that the two sides are incomparable because of the different tech bases. What you're missing is that there is a common element in both universes which we may use to deduce the properties of the two sides' technologies, whatever their bases: the natural world. A weapon is simply a means to tear up the other fellow, so we can guage its performance by seeing how well it tears up a natural object, whose properties we can estimate. A shield is simply a protection against being torn up, so we can guage its performance by seeing how well it fares against natural phenomena, or against the weapons we just guaged the performance of. Hyperdrive and hyperwave are still both faster than warp drive and subspace radio. The difference in tech bases are ignored on account that they're irrelevant, not on account of intellectual laziness.

The Federation is crippled by political correctness and its own naivety. It is a mistake to ever assume that when these limitations manifest themselves that is somehow a technical limitation. Look at the starship Defiant. It had the firepower of ships 10X its size, was armored to withstand point blank full power blasts from warships even without its shields on. Why is different then the Galaxy class? politics, political correctness - had nothing to do with technical limits

And even when they're pulling out all the stops against the now nerfed Borg, the Defiant still got it's little ass kicked by a small squad of Jem Hadar ships. This is the best the Federation has to offer, people.

Against known military threats.

And natural objects.

When NEITHER limited by defenders with similiar technology as them NOR when bound by political correctness and diplomacy and actually firing at full strength, what happens THEN? When firing against an unshielded Borg cube a couple simple phaser shots disintigrated what must have been as much mass as 5 Enterprises.

The force of this argument assumes that the Borg would not be blown away by a single shot from an ISD's heavy turbolaser.

Star Wars asssaults break, batter and cause explosions in enemy ships, but never disintigrating in such a way.

The force of this argument assumes that SW ships are made out of the same tissue paper ST ships are.

The Hoth asteroids vaporized were relatively smaller then the ships themselves.

The force of this argument assumes that ST ships have vaporizes asteroids on the order of their own size. It also assumes that the shots that vaporized the asteroids only barely vaporized the asteroids. It also assumes that the light turbolasers were firing full power and were the heaviest guns mounted on the SD.

We certainly didnt see the Falcon vaporizing anything bigger then itself.

The force of this argument assumes that the Falcon is a warship.

The impereal bombers did jack to the asteroids but get themselves disintigrated.

The force of this argument assumes that the bombers represent the greatest firepower that may be brought to bear against the asteroid. It also assumes that the bombers were trying to destroy the asteroid with the Falcon in it. It also assumes that a ST ship would survive such an encounter.

Of course, we know each of these assumptions are false.

Which wasn't even destroyed, mind you. Only losing it's bridge in the direct hit.
Meanwhile the Enterprise-D was completely destroyed (in a reset button timeloop of course) after having it's warp nacelle grazed by a passing starship.

The idea the asteroid was some kind of a lucky shot is grasping at straws. It is clear the entire fleet, not just one ship, was sustaining massive damage with all of its shields and weapons having been in use.

"Massive damage"? Dispite this "massive damage," the ISDs were almost all perfectly serviceable when they came out of the asteroid field, no matter how battered up they were. A very dense and violent asteroid field, more violent and dense than anything we've seen in ST.

As to the lucky shot, we don't even know if the bridge was destroyed in that encounter, as the requisite bridge debris were not there, we saw no big chunk of bridge flying away, and furthermore we still saw the silhouette of the bridge occluding the Executor in the background. The only definite damage we see is that the coms were distrupted and one of the sensor globes was taken out.

Once again that isnt a technical limitation so much as philosophical one. Why arent the Enterprise nacelles armored like on the Defiant? That is a problem for ST vs SW, but it is not an automatic innate technical superiority.

We saw the effect Federation armor has on their combat effectiveness. The Defiant still couldn't beat a squad of Jem Hadars.

I'll continue the rest of this later. I have an appointment to keep.

[Kartr_Kana]

First off, nothing converts matter to energy. Only mass gets converted to energy, and that's done by converting the matter into particles of lesser mass. The defect in mass shows up as a quantity of energy, in the form of various particles such as gamma rays. A victim of the phaser effect would deliver a lethal dose of gammas to everyone near him. This does not happen; like the matter it came from, the energy involved simply vanishes without trace.

Lets not forget the massive explosion resulting from converting roughly 70kg into energy. Only ~1 gram of the Fat Man atomic bomb was converted and released a 21kT blast. I'm no math mathematician and I'm not real good with physics (had to look up the A-bomb and how it worked on wikipedia) but if you convert 70,000 times the mass into energy shouldn't you get an explosion 70,000 times more powerful?

[Ender]

First off, nothing converts matter to energy. Only mass gets converted to energy, and that's done by converting the matter into particles of lesser mass. The defect in mass shows up as a quantity of energy, in the form of various particles such as gamma rays. A victim of the phaser effect would deliver a lethal dose of gammas to everyone near him. This does not happen; like the matter it came from, the energy involved simply vanishes without trace.

Lets not forget the massive explosion resulting from converting roughly 70kg into energy. Only ~1 gram of the Fat Man atomic bomb was converted and released a 21kT blast. I'm no math mathematician and I'm not real good with physics (had to look up the A-bomb and how it worked on wikipedia) but if you convert 70,000 times the mass into energy shouldn't you get an explosion 70,000 times more powerful?

Not exactly. Fission is a much less energetic reaction than fusion, which is itself far less efficient than annihilation. So E=mc^2, you'd get something about 70,000,000 times more powerful (BOTE)

Of course, depending on the material, fission or fusion can be such that it requires more energy to do than you get out of it.

[Kartr_Kana]

But either way if phasers were "vapourizing" people the resulting blast would almost as powerful as a turbolaser?

Your question implies that you have missed the point that in ST they have the capability of converting it completly from mass into energy and actually gaining energy from that process. That is a vital point if you are going to compare energy levels, one which many seem to overlook intentionally.

So SSC is claiming that a hand phaser not only does as much damage as a turbolaser, but also gains all that energy back plus some? Please tell me that I'm reading this wrong!

[Batman]

Oh what the hell. Wyrm already dealt with most of this but I am sort of bored at the moment.

There too much to respond to, just a few things.
If Phasers convert matter into energy then calculations about how much energy it takes to vaporize a rock are totally irrelevant to figuring out how much energy a phaser uses/outputs.

Quite correct. That's why nobody is doing that. That is, nobody on the Wars side of the debate. We are quite aware that no phaser ever verifiably vapourized anything.
Not that phasers were ever shown to convert matter into energy, of course. If they DO they do so with an efficiency below that of a simple wood fire. Those at least scorch the carpet.

Does it take the same amount of energy to melt a block of iron in equal size, in Star Trek and in reality? Yea or nay?

It takes the same amount of energy to melt it. Your question implies that you have missed the point that in ST they have the capability of converting it completly from mass into energy

As evidenced by-what, exactly? Definitely not phasers, as evidenced by the complete lack of massive energy release effects every time a person is phaserized.

and actually gaining energy from that process. That is a vital point if you are going to compare energy levels, one which many seem to overlook intentionally.

That's because that point not only doesn't actually exist, as evidenced by phasers not releasing GT level amounts of energy when they make people disappear so they clearly do NOT completely convert the target matter into energy, but it's IRRELEVANT even if true (which it isn't) the moment phasers cannot INTERACT with the target matter. I.e. when there's a shield in the way. So YOUR preferred method of determining how much energy a phaser applies to a shield would be...?

So you decide to assume they're magically different techs working on different laws of physics.. because you say so?

Have you ever actually watched ST or SW or do you just argue on the board? I dont have to assume they are different tech. They are shown working differently.

Which has what bearing, exactly, on the effects they achieve? The stuff all the number crunching is all about?

The laws of physics are not different, I am explaining how the 2 things can be within the same laws and and yet we see them work differently and have different results.The only alternative is to assume they work the same, in which case the differences can only be the result of orders of magnitute differences in energy output. That is the intellectually lazy solution many want to take.

Bzzt. Wrong. If they use the same laws then they DO work the same. If both universes use the same laws of physics then a gigaton is a gigaton is a gigaton. And if one universe displays that kind of yield while the other does NOT then yes, there IS an orders of magnitude difference in energy output, especially as we know Trek already cheats to get the results they do (phaser NDF/AMRE).

The Federation is crippled by political correctness and its own naivety. It is a mistake to ever assume that when these limitations manifest themselves that is somehow a technical limitation. Look at the starship Defiant. It had the firepower of ships 10X its size, was armored to withstand point blank full power blasts from warships even without its shields on. Why is different then the Galaxy class? politics, political correctness - had nothing to do with technical limits.

Except it ISN'T different from the Galaxy class, at least not by much. It still uses M/AM for power, main weapons are still phasers and photon torpedoes, propulsion is still impulse STL and Warp FTL (and if memory serves the Defiant was actually SLOWER than most other Starfleet ships under Warp due to the internal nacelles or something), and the hull is still fragile enough that they need the SIF to keep the thing in one piece if actually stressed (this one is from memory so I might be wrong).

Except observed effects of Federation weaponry and calculations regarding those weapons most definitively put its output vastly lower than what an ISD is capable of.

Against known military threats. When NEITHER limited by defenders with similiar technology as them NOR when bound by political correctness and diplomacy and actually firing at full strength, what happens THEN?

Defiant. Which is still outgunned by just about everything Skipray and up, since it is still in danger from Federation capital ships.

When firing against an unshielded Borg cube a couple simple phaser shots disintigrated what must have been as much mass as 5 Enterprises.

Via the funky phaser chain reaction which AS YOU CLAIMED YOURSELF EARLIER is useless for determining phaser firepower.

Star Wars asssaults break, batter and cause explosions in enemy ships, but never disintigrating in such a way.

Which is what makes them actually quantifiable.

The Hoth asteroids vaporized were relatively smaller then the ships themselves.

Which changes what, exactly, about the energy required to do that?

We certainly didnt see the Falcon vaporizing anything bigger then itself.

Which says what, exactly, about ISD light turbolaser firepower? And at least we actually SAW them vapourize those asteroids. We have yet to see phasers actually vapourize ANYTHING.

The impereal bombers did jack to the asteroids but get themselves disintigrated.

I can't recall a single TIE bomber dying in TESB really and you DID notice they weren't actually trying to destroy those asteroids to begin with, right?

Which wasn't even destroyed, mind you. Only losing it's bridge in the direct hit.
Meanwhile the Enterprise-D was completely destroyed (in a reset button timeloop of course) after having it's warp nacelle grazed by a passing starship.

The idea the asteroid was some kind of a lucky shot is grasping at straws. It is clear the entire fleet, not just one ship, was sustaining massive damage with all of its shields and weapons having been in use.

As evidenced by-you saying so. The ONLY damage actually SHOWN in TESB is-that single Star Destroyer losing communications for the time being.

Once again that isnt a technical limitation so much as philosophical one. Why arent the Enterprise nacelles armored like on the Defiant? That is a problem for ST vs SW, but it is not an automatic innate technical superiority.

It is when one side can basically ignore an asteroid smashing into their bridge while the other goes kablooey over a love tap. As for Defiant's armour being oh so superior to standard Starfleet building materials, 'Starship Mine'. A blunt 36kph penetrator managed to smash through it
(url=https://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic ... 2&t=117418]as discussed here, thanks Vympel[/url]

There's no argument over whether the Empire has the technology to control gravity, but that doesn't make it the "basis" of their technological system. There's also no question that the Federation has matter-antimatter reaction fuel systems, but that doesn't give them a "get out of Conservation of Energy free" card.
Basic artificial gravity on Federation starships is integral to their operation, too. People walk around those corridors assuming it is there and working in every single TV episode and movie.

Control of gravity is most definately NOT a fundamental aspect of Federation tech.

Nobody ever said it was.

They use thrusters to power thier ships.

No they don't. They use Warp cores and fusion reactors to power their ships. They use thrusters to MOVE them.

They expend energy in a newtonian way to move objects such as a tractor beam or artificial grav on board ship.

What has Newton got to do with spending energy? Anybody know what this guy is talking about?

Any counter to gravity is always mentioned as using up energy or being a resource drain.

I still don't see what this has got to do with Newton but so what? Wars artificial gravity uses up energy, too. How does this mean artificial gravity is at the core of the Wars' tech base?

What the Federation has is a different tech, having nothing to do with gravity (matter/energy conversions),

A simple fire is matter/energy conversion, genius. I'm still waiting for you to show how Wars power plants are based on gravity control or how that changes the fact that they're millions of times more powerful than Warp cores.

which grants them enough energy and resources to be able to counter gravity.

I'm countering gravity right here and now without expending any energy whatsoever. It's called 'sitting in a chair'. Anyway, this is relevant to Wars power generation being way in excess of Trek power generation how?

Compare to Star wars. Countering gravity has a near zero difficulty or energy output.

You can counter gravity with zero energy output in the real world too and your evidence for Wars antigravity NOT using energy would be?

I disagree that this simply means they have more energy to output

I agree, as you have yet to show that's actually the case.

-especially since SW specifically lacks the matter/energy power source of ST.

That is correct. They merely have something infinitely more powerful.

What they have is the elegant ability to manipulate gravity.

So how, pray tell, does gravity manipulation give them the ability to (repeatedly) generate 1E38 Joule blasts out of something as comparatively tiny as the Death Star? And if it does, how does that change the fact that they CAN (repeatedly) generate 1E38 Joule blasts from something as comparatively tiny as the Death Star?

Once we know that it is almost silly to assume that cant be used as a thier primary power source.

It is most certainly not as you have yet to show how that is supposed to work to begin with.

If you have control over gravity as shown throughout the movies then perprtual motion type machines become possible.

DO elaborate. ALL control over gravity means you have control over gravity (within limits). This makes for a perpetuum mobile-how, exactly?

I'm sure everyone in the Star Wars galaxy has just ignored this and found some other inexplicable technology to power thier ships.

They did, on account of artificial gravity (which Star Trek has too, in the exact same fashion Wars does) NOT being a free power source.
It's called hypermatter.

I don't see how any of these possibilities have any merit. The Empire has advanced, efficient technology for controlling gravity. So what? That does not mean it has to be the basis of their interstellar propulsion technology, their power technology, their computer technology, their weapon technology, or anything else.

It is the most powerful technology shown in Star Wars

No. That'd be the Death Star (or for the EU, possibly the Sun Crusher or Centerpoint Station).

and is shown to be an integral part of all society

Integral, yes, dominating, no. By your reasoning since the internal combustion engine is an integral part of modern society all our technology must be based off it. The term 'No' comes to mind.

of which most other things can be explained as a derivative.

And no. Please explain how artificial gravity factors into blasters/turbolasers, ion engines, hyperdrive, hypermatter reactors, sentient AIs, and material sciences.

We are talking about control over one of the fundamental forces of the universe here and you want to dismiss it and say they must have some other tech that is powering thier society?

That'd be the part where gravity control does not equal free energy production. Well and the part where you never showed a shred of evidence supporting your assertion to begin with.

Why? How? Good luck even formulating what it might be.

Hypermatter. No, we don't know how it works. We don't NEED to. We know what it DOES. That's quite enough.

But antimatter is not something found in nature; the Federation has to make it by using other power sources (solar power or fusion, most of the time), and inefficiencies in such processes mean that the amount of energy used to make a given amount of fuel is more than you will actually get back when you use that fuel. Merely possessing the technology to make antimatter and use it as fuel is not a "get out of Conservation of Energy free" card.

That just tells us thier main reactor is really more of a battery then is it actually generating energy. So what? They DO have the ability to convert matter directly into energy.

So did the Stone Age cavemen. 'Fire', remember? The Federation (and assorted powers) can evidently do so a hell of a lot more EFFICIENTLY.
That changes the fact that there's limits to just HOW MUCH energy they can get out of that how exactly?

Evidently they just dont use it on the fly

Um yes they do. It's called a Warp core.

Why don't they craft antimatter bombs with the strenth of a starship core then? Once again it seems political and ethical and NOT a technical limitation at all.

Or maybe because they don't NEED them, and despite their general stupidity realize that maybe storing that much antimatter in one place is a BAD THING. No point in making GT torpedoes when your enemies can be defeated with KT ones. Especially as the torpedoes are highly volatile to begin with.

Transporters and replicators appear to work by rearranging matter, not by converting it into energy and back. Everything we know about replicators indicates that they rearrange atoms stored on the ship into a desired pattern, not that they create objects from pure energy.

It would be a massive energy drain to create matter so of course it makes sense to have stored mass that is reconfigured, more like a transporter. Again that would be like a battery. There is no reason to believe they couldnt do only half of the procedure when they choose - that would be a silly assumption.

The silly assumption is that transporters convert matter to energy to begin with, when virtually all the evidence says that WHATEVER they do, that's not it.

If a phaser were to actually convert a human body into energy, you would get an explosion comparable to over a thousand tons of TNT going off. We don't see such a blast, so we know a phaser doesn't convert a body into energy; it must convert a body into something else.

Who said it had to be a 100% conversion to energy? It could be a reaction that converts some percentage of the atoms into energy.

A really really really really TINY fraction what with total conversion resulting in a GT level event.

The destructive effective might depend entirely on what was hit and what settings on the weapon were used and not be a fixed value at all. Maybe you could call that a weakness. On the other hand it makes the calculations of relative strength of a turbolaser to a phaser that have been done totally meaningless.

It most certainly does NOT. Accie MTLs are 200GT no matter what. ISD LTLs are 60MT (or some such as per the asteroid vapourizations in ESB). Phaser firepower even ignoring it works mostly on NDF, not brute force is way below that so them NOT working on brute force merely means their actual firepower is even lower.

Why do I care if my beam weapon has an order of magnitute less power output if it produces a chain reaction in the target.

Given that phasers have a nasty tendency of NOT doing that, I would. And that's assuming you can actually HIT the target. Put a shield in the way and you're reduced to the base energy input you fed into the phaser. You know, like in space combat.

That makes it more advanced and efficient, not less.

Doesn't change the fact that WITHOUT the chain reaction (which isn't going to happen if the target is shielded and seems to be not all that reliable to begin with), you're reduced to whatever power you fed into the phaser. Which, compared to Wars, is nothing much.

SNIPPY for length

Despite your derision, this is sort of correct. I'm going by what is seen in the movies and TV shows and this is not far fetched at all. Occams razor.

Make up your mind. You're either using Occam's Razor or you're going by what we actually see in the shows. You can't have both. Because what we actually see in the shows is KT level starfighter guns and 60MT LTLs for Wars vs maybe-MT photorps for Trek.

Terrible assumption to say there are many technogies we dont understand when one overiding one could explain it instead.

Okay, I have officially no clue what you're trying to say.

What is happening here is people are measuring how well the empire does XYZ, the Fed sucks at those and so we conclude the Empire is orders of magnitude more advances. Well Duh, frame the argument better! How well does the empire do ABC? They dont at all in the movies. Predicting how well ABC interacts with XYZ is conjecture.

It is most certainly not, as XYZ and ABC are the same. Both Wars and Trek blow stuff up, move their starships around at a given acceleration, have said starships exposed to given amounts of hurt, have them travel certain distances in a certain time. HOW they manage to do that is IRRELEVANT. I don't care if one side uses pixie dust while the other uses an Alcubierre Warp drive, if the pixie dust side can travel 70,000 lightyears in 8 hours while the Alcubierre side takes 70 years to do that, the pixie dust side is WAY FASTER.

[Batman]

Ghetto edit: You either use Occam's Razor AND go by what we actually see in the shows OR you blithely assume that a GT in Trek is not the same as a GT in Wars.

[Wyrm]

Here's the rest:

There is a difference between a game changing fundamental technolgy and things that are just derivative of it. I fear many of you can not see this.

Control of gravity is most definately NOT a fundamental aspect of Federation tech. They use thrusters to power thier ships. They expend energy in a newtonian way to move objects such as a tractor beam or artificial grav on board ship. Any counter to gravity is always mentioned as using up energy or being a resource drain. What the Federation has is a different tech, having nothing to do with gravity (matter/energy conversions), which grants them enough energy and resources to be able to counter gravity.

Compare to Star wars. Countering gravity has a near zero difficulty or energy output. I disagree that this simply means they have more energy to output - especially since SW specifically lacks the matter/energy power source of ST.

Do you actually understand physics? Do you actually understand that to keep an object static in a gravitational field takes NO energy whatsoever? That's why a car can keep its chasis above the road with no input of energy, through this amazingly advanced piece of human technology called the "wheel." The only reason why an antigravity technology would require power to remain static within a gravity field is due to the inefficiencies of the technology.

That SW tech can do this without much input of power (a claim which you haven't substatiated either), simply means it's more efficient, not that their tech is "based" on anything.

What they have is the elegant ability to manipulate gravity. Once we know that it is almost silly to assume that cant be used as a thier primary power source. If you have control over gravity as shown throughout the movies then perprtual motion type machines become possible. I'm sure everyone in the Star Wars galaxy has just ignored this and found some other inexplicable technology to power thier ships.

Only because you don't know physics. It doesn't matter how subtly you manipulate gravity, that ability will absolutely not allow you to conjure energy out of nothing. Conservation of energy is not predicated on anything further than the guarantee that the same physics at work today is the same physics that worked yesterday and will work tomorrow. Gravity obeys this symmetry, and therefore conserves energy, and therefore you can't use it to create perpetual motion.

I don't see how any of these possibilities have any merit. The Empire has advanced, efficient technology for controlling gravity. So what? That does not mean it has to be the basis of their interstellar propulsion technology, their power technology, their computer technology, their weapon technology, or anything else.

It is the most powerful technology shown in Star Wars and is shown to be an integral part of all society of which most other things can be explained as a derivative. We are talking about control over one of the fundamental forces of the universe here and you want to dismiss it and say they must have some other tech that is powering thier society? Why? How? Good luck even formulating what it might be.

So SW society has widespread antigrav technology. So what? Any well-developed, useful and safe technology will find civilian applications and integrate themselves into society. Yet you claim that this one amazing techonolgy is somehow the "basis" of SW technology. Why not nanotechnology? Droids are found everywhere in SW, and you can't get droids of human-like intelligence in a brain-sized space without very fine control of matter. What about metallurgy? Building 900+ km spacecraft is nothing to sneeze at.

Humans will use ANY technology they get their hands on, cupcake. That's why this "different technological basis" nonsense of yours is a non-starter.

That just tells us thier main reactor is really more of a battery then is it actually generating energy. So what? They DO have the ability to convert matter directly into energy.

So do we. We call them "nuclear power plants". We turn mass directly into energy; the daughter nuclei have lesser mass than the parent — that's where the energy comes from.

Evidently they just dont use it on the fly, perhaps for reliabilty reasons since it no doubt takes energy to start the reaction. Antimatter as a battery essentially has energy to begin with. This explains why a starship core breach seems orders of magnitude more powerful then does simple weapon fire (or the destruction of ships in SW).

No, that's simply dumb reactor design on the part of the warp core. A typical pressurized water reactor can have somewhere between 80-100 tonnes of 4% enriched uranium, which translates to 3.5-4.4 tonnes of weapon-grade uranium, or enough to make 70 Little Boy 15-18 kt bombs. Yet even the most pessimistic failure modes of a PWR does not include an nuclear detonation of over a megaton.

The Death Stars exploded with energies a tiny fraction of their reactors' total yield (which can destroy planets, if you remember), which is what you want in a reactor, as opposed to a bomb.

That said, it doesn't indicate that the warp core breeches are particularly powerful. Catastrophic containment failure would also include a lot of anitmatter spillage from those storage pods.

Why don't they craft antimatter bombs with the strenth of a starship core then? Once again it seems political and ethical and NOT a technical limitation at all.

Maybe because warp cores are bombs waiting to go off? Why pay all of the energy cost of destroying a ship when you can just knock it hard enough to breech their warp core and let that finish the job?

It would be a massive energy drain to create matter so of course it makes sense to have stored mass that is reconfigured, more like a transporter. Again that would be like a battery. There is no reason to believe they couldnt do only half of the procedure when they choose - that would be a silly assumption.

That's predicated on the assumption that transporters actually achieve total conversion, rather than simply breaking down the subject finely enough to beam him to a remote place. You (indeed, every trektard we have encountered) have yet to substantiate the ability in the first place.

Perhaps there are questions about efficiency or reliability which discourage powering the ship that way outright.

Or maybe they just plain can't do it. Using antimatter automatically introduces a certain amount of inefficiency into the process of converting mass to usable energy at cite. Just about its only advantage is that it is a very compact secondary fuel.

If a phaser were to actually convert a human body into energy, you would get an explosion comparable to over a thousand tons of TNT going off. We don't see such a blast, so we know a phaser doesn't convert a body into energy; it must convert a body into something else.

Who said it had to be a 100% conversion to energy? It could be a reaction that converts some percentage of the atoms into energy. The destructive effective might depend entirely on what was hit and what settings on the weapon were used and not be a fixed value at all.

A substantial portion of the person disappears without trace, not even converting into energy. A large fraction of the matter of the person is simply not there after phasering. Yet if all but the tinest fraction of the mass of the person was converted into energy, it would turn into a lethal burst of radiation and an explosion of many kilotons of TNT going off. Crissakes, cupcake, the amount of energy liberated by the phaser effect is less than the chemical potential energy of the person — you get more energy out of the person by burning him than by phasering him!

No wonder ST tech doesn't use total conversion for power! It would literally be more effective to throw bodies into a furnace than the "matter to energy processes" you describe!

Maybe you could call that a weakness. On the other hand it makes the calculations of relative strength of a turbolaser to a phaser that have been done totally meaningless. Why do I care if my beam weapon has an order of magnitute less power output if it produces a chain reaction in the target. That makes it more advanced and efficient, not less.

Well, that would be true, if it weren't for the annoying little fact that a stack of packing crates constitutes adequate cover for phaser fire. The thing about chain reactions is that the reaction rate is very sensitive to the material it goes through. I could make armor out of this packing crate material and I'd be a fucking juggernaut.

The thing about brute force is that it works on everything. The only way to defend against it is with genuinely tough armor. Defenders are forced to make tradeoffs between the amount of protection you have vs. other concerns like weight and maneuverability. Brute Force: Accept no substitutes!

I actually just noticed the main thrust of his analysis while reading the responses of others. He's saying that the Empire has only xyz, and the Feds have only abc, and QED these single elements are the basis of their entire technology base, because they don't have the other thing. He's seriously saying SW techology is hinged on gravitics alone, using the evidence that THEY DON'T HAVE TRANSPORTERS FROM ST. I mean, bugger the rest of the SW techbase right? Each faction has unique technologies like in Starcraft! Thus, the Empire's 'gimmick' is gravitics and with tier 3 grav-turbolasers can defeat the Federation's tri-annihilation torpedos!

If this is really how he's thinking, by comparing factions across separate universes and then declaring that this defines them more than the content of their own techbases, that's a very special kind of crazy. I've never seen it before.

Despite your derision, this is sort of correct. I'm going by what is seen in the movies and TV shows and this is not far fetched at all. Occams razor.

Children should stay away from sharp things, cupcake.

Terrible assumption to say there are many technogies we dont understand when one overiding one could explain it instead. What is happening here is people are measuring how well the empire does XYZ, the Fed sucks at those and so we conclude the Empire is orders of magnitude more advances.

That a civilization uses all the modes of technology it has availible to accomplish tasks it wants accomplished is hardly a radical notion. Simple observation reveals this to be true: we still use the truly ancient technology of the wheel. Sure, it's more sophisticated than the Egyptian iteration, but it's still the same basic idea.

Furthermore, if a piece of SW technology outperforms a piece of ST technology, then, yes, it is more advanced, because the reason you use technology is to get something done. Idiot.

Well Duh, frame the argument better! How well does the empire do ABC? They dont at all in the movies. Predicting how well ABC interacts with XYZ is conjecture. It could be an interesting conversation but no one is interested in that. The Federation cant do XYZ they lose QED

A strawman of the real situation. We know how SW's XYZ interacts with ST's ABC, because we know what effect XYZ has on natural object QRS, that helps us judge the capability of XYZ, and we know how natural object LMN interacts with ABC, and lets us judge it's capability, and put those facts together.

The thing about Tantoonine is a bit of a tangent, but it makes no sense plotwise or with what we see in EP4 that the empire controlled it prior to arriving.
-Kenobi would have left

Why? Tatooine may have been under Imperial control, but obviously not very tight control. If anything, leaving would have called attention to himself.

-Vaders relatives would have left

Why? No one knew Darth Vader was Aniken Skywalker.

-Han would not be surprised to see ISD in orbit or Stormtoopers on the ground

What makes you think he was surprised by either? Chrissakes, Ben told Han that he wanted to avoid "Imperial entanglements" when they were negotiating a trip. His only comment with regards to the Empire was that his two passengers were so wanted by the Empire.

-stormtroopers would not just be setting checkpoints right as Luke arrives, they would have a base

What makes you think that they didn't have a base on Tatooine? That there wasn't one at Mos Eisely? Fucksake, they can't put a base everywhere!

-Hutt controls the spaceport and would not still be in charge in EP 5

Why? Because you say so? The Hutts are part of the unseemly underbelly of the Old Republic and Empire. Every other society has had a unseemly underworld. Why should the Empire be any different?

If a story writer for something besides the movie wrote they controlled it that was dumb and doesnt fit. Next you will tell me the empire controlled Cloud city prior to EP5? These forces arrived with Vader - as happens in a military dictatorship. You guys have it all wrong, the Empire is NOT all powerful and everpresent. It isn't like that at all.

No one has claimed such. That is a strawman you came up with all on your own.

The empire is more akin to the Spanish conquistadors with Vader playing as Cortez. Just because they setup ports and bases in the far reaches and no one has the power to confront thier fleet, it doesnt mean they controll everything or are even competent at subjugating the far reaches.

No government does have complete control of everything, cupcake. Nevertheless, the Empire does have a significant presence on Tatooine, and Tatooine considers itself part of the Empire, although a very peripheral part of it. Luke Skywalker, after all, was all hot about getting into the Academy — the IMPERIAL ACADEMY — at the beginning of ANH. If Tatooine wasn't part of the Empire, why would Luke want to become a cog in the machinery of a foreign government?

You're the one who needs to think, dearheart.

[Kartr_Kana]

-stormtroopers would not just be setting checkpoints right as Luke arrives, they would have a base

I don't remember a checkpoint, it looked more like a squad on patrol stopping random vehicles. A check point would have had barriers, overwatch and search area's. It's like the US Military in Iraq, we set up a base in a certain area and go out on foot and vehicle mobile patrols. When we see a car or truck we stop them search the car and ask them questions. You don't see bunkers, concertina wire and machine-gun posts ever where. In fact you won't see any unless you drive pass a base. Same thing in the States, you drive around and don't see massive signs of military presence despite the fact that we have the largest and most sophisticated military in world.

As for using gravity as a power source there's only one group in either fiction that does that. The Romulan D'deridex-class Warbird which uses a "quantum singularity" black hole for it's power source.

Sorry for the multiple posts in reply but I keep thinking of new shit as the day goes by.