Darth Tedious wrote:I've been debating with a few Trek fanboys over the last week or so, and have come across some absolutely outrageous stuff.
There are more, but I think this is a good place to start...
Thoughts, anyone?
As Stofsk pointed out this really has been done to death. Just point the Trekkie to the main site and be done with it. Also, learn to use the search feature, you can probably find an answer to anything that person seeks to throw at you between the main site and the SWvsST sub-forum. Still, if you really want thoughts and to take it to him...
No contest, the Death Star couldn't possibly rotate fast enough to keep a Borg cube targeted. The Borg would warp in, cut holes in the Death Star's hull, then begin transporting over to assimilate its surviving crew.
As to the DS being able to rotate fast enough, maybe, maybe not. However, Purple already pointed out that the DS is covered in anti-capship scale turbolasers that would rip that Cube apart, the DS was designed to hold off a fleet-scale assault on itself after all. I would point out though that the Borg deciding the revolve around the DS pre-supposes a level of tactical ability in ship-to-ship combat thus far unscene in any Borg encounter. Look at every episode of TNG, First Contact, and most of VOY. When the Borg come to fight they fly in a straight line to their target and then park themselves near it (tractor beam range for a ship, geo-stationary orbit for a planet) and go with the pew-pew. The only consistent level of deviation from this is making course corrections to match the target's movements (something they won't have to do against the DS). The exceptions in VOY come from stuff like the Unimatrix Zero arc where it was free Borg controlling the ships. The person you are debating will of course be more than happy to provide instances of the Borg using tactical manuvering in combat situations.
Pulse cannon, ion weapons and any kind of laser are way outdated by Federation standards, not to mention the Borg...
Please, an essentially "Oh, Science!" rail gun was considered top of the line tech as of VOY (see the episode "Retrospect" for the isokinetic cannon in like the first minute of the episode) and to top it all off, as being vastly more powerful than anything Voyager had in its arsenal. Now then, a point by point rebuttal.
Pulse cannon
False, Pulse cannons are still considered usable weapons, see DS9 episodes concerning the birth of the Maquis. As far as its relation to SW goes, umm, what type of pulse cannon are you guys discussing?
Ion weapons
Debatable, Data used an improved ion weapon via everyone's favorite Swiss Army Knife the deflector dish on a Bird of Prey in Generations. Now this was to attack a known weakness but it does show that preventing these kinds of attacks is a concern. Next, an ion weapon is essentially a particle beam weapon, something that still has its place in ST, they are used to trigger solar flare (TNG "Descent, Part II"), slag asteroids (TNG "The Cost of Living") and disable ship shields (DS9 "For The Uniform"). Finally, it's not like they are immune. Ships suffer damage from "ion storms" depending on intensity, even Borg ships (see VOY "Dark Frontier") and its believable for ships to die in them (DS9 "Who Mourns for Morn?"). Now Starfleet has a handy classification system, because apparently ion storms are simply tornadoes IN SPAAAACCCCEEEE! They even use the F# designation system except instead of F1-5 they go F1-8+ The issue is whether or not SW ion cannons are of sufficient intensity to cause damage. Now anyone familar with the power disparity between ST and SW would say yes, but I imagine this fellow would not. Look
here for some discussion on how's and why's
Laser
First off, ummm, No Limits Fallacy much? The power behind something matters, look at the asteroid field chase scene in TESB, the Star Destroyers are vaporizing asteroids left and right with single TL bolts. Even if you want to say "ST can do that too" consider the time difference. A phaser beam needs to stay on the target for an extended length of time, or in the case of pulse phaser be fired repeatedly, to produce a similar effect. Secondly, good thing turbolasers are lasers. When was the last time you saw a laser beam interact with another the way the DS Superlaser beams do? It's actually (simply via effect) more akin to the S8472 planet buster weapon and we all know that thing can slag Borg ships (more than one in fact) and TL technology, whether Superlaser or other all share a common tech base so yeah... Borg die, a lot.
But what of the Defiant? She can cloak and get in and their sensors are more advanced so they would probably find the weakness.
sensors are more advanced
Your opponent will of course be happy to provide instances showing this superiority of ST sensors vs SW sensors, especially in an environment like that around the DS where the jamming was so potent that it affected the fabric of space-time.
She can cloak
Your opponent will of course also be happy to provide some measure of proof (fits in quite nicely with the sensors issue) that ST cloaks are effective against SW sensors. Besides, SW has senors to detect cloaked vessels, they're called Crystal Gravfield Traps. However, these are rare and one might not be on the DS, that's fine though. Luckily for SW, ST cloaked ships can also be detected with tachyon based sensors (no mention of such a weakness has ever occurred with SW ships that I am aware of) as seen in TNG "Redemption II" and DS9 "Once More Unto the Breach." Well considering an A-wing has a
tachyon based sensor system I'm fairly confident a small moon sized top-of-the-line battle station will have something comparable, although obviously scaled up.