# Star Trek vs. Babylon 5



## uv23 (Dec 13, 2003)

http://www.starwreck.com/
watch the trailer


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## uv23 (Dec 13, 2003)

54 views and no comments? You'd think someone would have somethign to say about seeing Star Fleet go up against Earth Aliance and the Minbari.


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## NeuroZombie (Dec 13, 2003)

I think the problem is the fact that the thing is taking forever to load, and I'm on cable even.  

 Well, just loaded.... gimme a minute


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## Turlogh (Dec 13, 2003)

Watched it and was amused but couldn't help thinking that Star Fleet would annihilate Babylon 5 pretty easily (I could be wrong as I'm not a big fan). The subtitles were a little strange ("Full twist, now!", Charge up the twinklers").
Would like to see the whole movie.


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## Orius (Dec 13, 2003)

uv23 said:
			
		

> 54 views and no comments? You'd think someone would have somethign to say about seeing Star Fleet go up against Earth Aliance and the Minbari.




Starfleet vs. Earth Alliance and Minbari?  That's easy to call.  B5.

Earth Force after all, is unbashedly military.  Starfleet still hasn't made up its mind.  

And then when you throw in Minbari, Starfleet is screwed.  Their targeting sensors wouldn't lock on to the Minbari ships after all,  and the Minbari warrior caste kicks ass.

And were're not even talking Rangers here.  Rangers would definitely maul Starfleet.


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## Maxwell's Demon (Dec 13, 2003)

As much as I would prefer for B5 to win, they really wouldn't stand a chance.  The tech differential is just too great.  Speed, maneuverability, energy shields, the ability to fight while moving at warp speeds all make the Federation the obvious winner.  B5 is cooler, but they would still loose.  Alot.


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## s/LaSH (Dec 14, 2003)

I don't know if I'd say the Feds have all the advantages... to memory, Earthforce has things like point defence (whups, there go the quantum torps) and _really big warships_; according to the starship dimensions page, more specifically the 2m per pixel section, Earthforce destroyers are much bigger (750m) than even Sovereign-class vessels (almost 350m total). Looking at the comparison, you could fit one of the Sovereign's nacelles into the muzzle (15m - that's pretty big) of the EA Omega Destroyer's main particle cannon. A Sovereign's saucer is about as wide (160m) as the length of the sensor array on the front of an Omega. I wouldn't say that gives the B5 guys an overwhelming advantage, but if they can overcome their inferior maneuverability to get the Sovereign in its sights (perhaps by being a fair distance away), or just use their many turrets, they're in with a chance, 'cause they're bigger and more focused on weapons.

To say nothing of the vastly superior Minbari warships, of course.

Anyway, presumably more comments once I've DLed the trailer...


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## Staffan (Dec 14, 2003)

I like B5 too, but Earthforce wouldn't stand a chance against Starfleet (barring deviousness). Earthforce doesn't have shields, so a Trek vessel could just beam a photon/quantum torpedo inside their ships, and BOOM.


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## DMScott (Dec 14, 2003)

Under Trek physics (i.e., magic), Starfleet wins. Otherwise, it'd be the B5 fleet of your choice. The two settings are so dissimilar in terms of what's allowed technologically that you can't really make a meaningful comparison of capabilities (not that that'll stop folks from trying  ).


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## s/LaSH (Dec 14, 2003)

OK, trailer acquired. Wow, that looks pretty cool. If occasionally cheesy. I'm suddenly reminded of why I love Finland, despite having never left the South Seas in my life.

But really, why does the Excalibur not utterly obliterate the Sovereign when it fires the main gun? Anyone? That thing's supposed to be something like 15 times bigger than a Sovereign (3 miles stem to stern), and shut down after firing, it's so powerful... I dunno, I'm just nitpicking.

Re the whole 'beam a torp on board' thing: Sure, I guess they could - but a missile or particle beam hit on an EA destroyer will do similar damage, and not put it out of the fight. Those things are tough. Plus I think they've actually got ECM to stop people scanning for vulnerable subsystems. Plus I'm not sure how easy it is to get a lock when you're flying evasive maneuvers in space. Plus there's probably a maximum range on transporters, and I don't know how that compares to weapons envelopes. Plus a thin layer of ore can stop transporter locks; I reckon starship armour would probably put a dampener on that, especially on purpose-made warships that have to take tons of damage.

Is that enough to stop the teletorp from working for real? I don't know. But it's technobabblish enough to work, right?

We'll see how Star Wreck deals with these issues...


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## Tsyr (Dec 14, 2003)

s/LaSH said:
			
		

> Plus I'm not sure how easy it is to get a lock when you're flying evasive maneuvers in space.




Do-able. And remember, to beam something in is a lot easier than beaming something out.



			
				s/LaSH said:
			
		

> Plus there's probably a maximum range on transporters, and I don't know how that compares to weapons envelopes.




Longer. 



			
				s/LaSH said:
			
		

> Plus a thin layer of ore can stop transporter locks; I reckon starship armour would probably put a dampener on that, especially on purpose-made warships that have to take tons of damage.




"A thin layer of ore" only works if it's the right type of ore. Transporters beam underground on a regular basis. Transporters can beam deep into the heart of a borg cube from the dinky little transporter units on board a shuttlecraft, I think a starships can handle a warship. 



			
				s/LaSH said:
			
		

> Is that enough to stop the teletorp from working for real? I don't know. But it's technobabblish enough to work, right?




No. Star Trek can always out-babble anything.

Besides, if the fight started to go badly, Geordie would just reverse the polarity on something and reroute something else, and the enterprise would suddenly win. Those are the two standbys in Star Trek that can accomplish anything.


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## Halivar (Dec 14, 2003)

Easy. Star Trek wins. It all looks very bleak for Starfleet at first, having all those ships (shields and all) obliterated in single-shots from B5 cannons twice the ship's size.

 The differential that tips everything towards Starfleet is Geordie LaForge and/or Wesley Crusher. Halfway through the battle they'll figure out that they can reverse charge the anti-quark sub-protonic relay capacitors to the temporal quantum stabilers, thus creating a highly charged positronic energy field that... oh... you get the picture. Throw in a few more random physics terms and you have Star Trek's _real_ power. Pull-it-out-of-your-### magic.

   Tsyr: You may have beaten me _this_ time, but I'll be back! Just you wait and see! I'll _bide my time_....


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## Darrin Drader (Dec 14, 2003)

Just so we're clear on this, the Minbari would totally kick the $#!^ out of starfleet. The Earth Alliance might not hold up so well, but the Minbari have had more than a thousand years to develop and improve their technology and they've survived one shadow war (2 by the end of the series). The Shadows would own the borg. 

Aside from that, they don't go mucking about at warp speed, they go to hyperspace, which makes faster than light travel pointless. Also, rather than using the highly unstable anti-matter propulsion systems, the minbari use gravitational propulsion, which is both more reliable and has fewer glitches in the system.


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## Crothian (Dec 14, 2003)

It really depends on when in each series the Tech level is.  Is it at the time of Crusade for B5?  What about at the end of Voager when Janeway has come back with all that future technology?  

Starfleet has an advantage with warp engines.  They can travel faster then light anywhere.  The B5 people can only go where the jumpgates are, and they would not be hard to destroy or to lay a cloaked, reproducing mine field around.  

But I'm not saying that one has an advantage over the other.  It's apples and oragnes.


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## Darrin Drader (Dec 14, 2003)

Crothian said:
			
		

> It really depends on when in each series the Tech level is.  Is it at the time of Crusade for B5?  What about at the end of Voager when Janeway has come back with all that future technology?




Oh yippee, Janeway and her batmobile unrealistic armor. Blech. If they struck that show from Trek canon and then took it out of syndication, it would go a long way to reviving the franchise (its doomed! Doomed I say! Doomed!)

As for B5 tech, only Earth's tech really increased due to the shadow war. Minbari tech is still better than EA tech, and it really didn't increase 



> Starfleet has an advantage with warp engines.  They can travel faster then light anywhere.  The B5 people can only go where the jumpgates are, and they would not be hard to destroy or to lay a cloaked, reproducing mine field around.




Ugh, see what happens when you let AI loose on messageboards? OK, look, the only race that is limited by jump gates are the humans. And that's not even true 100% of the time. The advanced ships, the military vessles, and sometimes even the pirate ships could make their own jump points. Often times alien ships capable of creating their own jump points would come in through the jump gates as a courtesy since it gives B5 all their relevant info before they come through. The shadows can exist in both normal and hyperspace simultaneously.



> But I'm not saying that one has an advantage over the other.  It's apples and oragnes.




I disagree. The major alien races in B5 clearly have the advantage over virtually every major race in Trek.


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## Volaran (Dec 14, 2003)

Thanks for the link uv23.   It looked fairly amusing, and after following the website to some of the previous  films, was even funnier when things were in context.  I'll look forward to the completed movie.


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## Mark (Dec 14, 2003)

Earth Alliance and the Minbari?  My how confidence is lacking with the b5-ites!

I suppose you would have to allow SF allies from the United Federation of Planets, but let's just say SF had to clean up this rabble on their own.  Not much of a problem.

Hard to target Minbari ships? HAH!  I think not!

Simply vent some warp plasma from the port nacels, charge it with a wide burst photon torpedo spread, then tie in the sensors to the deflector dish so the minimumbari ships can be targetted manually!

Semantically no challenge whatsoever...


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## Tsyr (Dec 14, 2003)

Baraendur said:
			
		

> Also, rather than using the highly unstable anti-matter propulsion systems, the minbari use gravitational propulsion, which is both more reliable and has fewer glitches in the system.




Now, see, what universe are we going by? In the Star Trek canon, Romulans use a gravitational singularity as their energy source, and it has a number of rather signifigant problems... The biggest one being, if something goes wrong, your screwed. You can't turn it off.


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## Tsyr (Dec 14, 2003)

Also, here is an important question: Not just tech level, but what experimental technologies is the federation allowed to use?

For example, the phase-cloak. They can't use it due to treaties with the Romulans (The Defiant and similar ships are a specific exception, and even there, they don't use the phase-cloak), but they do have it, and had (most of) the bugs worked out of it. 

Personally, I'd allow any tech up to the end of DS9 (That's where the show really jumped the shark... DS9 was alright, but after that...), and not all of what came before TnG (Because before TNG, we had an established method of time travel, which is really sad...


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## Hand of Evil (Dec 14, 2003)

B5, the writing was better and they would pull off a better final! 

Bester would also have StarFleet eating out of his hand!


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## uv23 (Dec 14, 2003)

Volaran said:
			
		

> Thanks for the link uv23.   It looked fairly amusing, and after following the website to some of the previous  films, was even funnier when things were in context.  I'll look forward to the completed movie.



Indeed.  I knew this thread would eventually get rolling!


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## clark411 (Dec 14, 2003)

Babylon 5 ships have the great advantage over ST ships in their ability to use hyperspace.  While we talk about ST ships running circles around B5 ships in actual combat, B5 ships will never be interdicted by a ST fleet.  A fleet of jump-capable ships could fly across ST borders, pop out of hyperspace half a dozen meters from their target and boom, game over.  I don't care if DS9 has 6,000 quantum torpedos, when a half dozen jump vortexes appear, some inside it, it goes boom.

From a strategy standpoint, by the time that ST's WWIIish "Fleets and Frontlines" doctrine of combat compensated, I figure most of it's infrastructure would be ruin.  Then again, ST seems to have a much larger scope than B5, so maybe just the sheer numbers of the Feddies being a couple hundred planets would keep em from folding rapidly.


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## Tsyr (Dec 14, 2003)

Once.

Lets face it: If nothing else, Starfleet adapts. Quick.


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## clark411 (Dec 14, 2003)

Fortunately for B5 however, you only have to blow up a starbase once to do the job. ^_^

Unfortunately, I do have to concur that the biggest gun in Star Trek's arsenal is it's style of fiction.  ST wins because it adapts and makes technological leaps that defy the realism of it's setting, while B5 wins because it endures despite technological inferiority.


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## Silver Moon (Dec 14, 2003)

Couldn't get it to download.   The thread title alone reminded me of a comment a while back from one of my players, who wasn't a fan of either series.  He made reference to the shows as "The spacestation where everyone has funny hair and nothing happens vs. the spacestation where everyone has funny noses and nothing happens."


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## Gnarlo (Dec 14, 2003)

If we are talking New Generation and later, B5 wins, no questions. The trekkies have to worry about Prime Directives and Counselors having a bad hair day and countermanding decisions to invade because the aliens might be all cute and fuzzy and stuff. Babylon 5 definitely believes in shoot first and let the Vorlons sort them out.

Now, if we are talking about James Tiberius Kirk, all bets are off


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## Darrin Drader (Dec 14, 2003)

Silver Moon said:
			
		

> He made reference to the shows as "The spacestation where everyone has funny hair and nothing happens vs. the spacestation where everyone has funny noses and nothing happens."




Oh, I beg to differ with those assertions. In Babylon 5, Garibaldi went from receeding hairline to sheer bald while captain Sisko lost the rug and grew the _Spencer for Hire_ Hawk goutee. So you see, you can't say that B5 was the only one with funny hair.


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## s/LaSH (Dec 14, 2003)

Well, if we're going to allow Geordi and Wesley on Starfleet's side, we have to include some of the more useful personalities available to B5. It's only fair, right?

So we're probably looking at a nuclear minefield through G'Kar's connections to Narn weapon caches; Sheridan's tactical and pull-a-victory-out-of-thin-air ability (which often works within minutes and has been planned for months, as opposed to the Starfleet half-an-episode-to-fix-transporters methodology); some guy called Kosh who walks through a literal hail of energy weapons fire without noticing; and Ivanova, who I'm guessing could make Klingons blush.

So here's my perception of how it would go if they had to fight:

Starfleet vessel meets Earth Alliance vessel. Earth Alliance vessel is better in combat, and causes hull breaches on decks 8 through 14 before Starfleet engineers figure out that there's a vulnerable plasma conduit feeding the main reactor on the destroyer, and use a reversed tachyon pulse to destabilise it, blowing up the vessel. Starfleet emerges victorious.

Sheridan hears of this and launches a lightning strike in two parts: travelling through hyperspace to avoid Federation sensors ("Sir! There's a subspace resonance anomaly!" "What is it?" "Let me recalibrate the HULL BREACHES ON DECKS X THRU Y!"), they strike first at the Utopia Planetia shipyards, then jump out before any coordinated response and head for Earth, thus crippling both the production and command structure of Starfleet.

If this carries on, Starfleet no doubt assembles a fleet from the far corners of Federation territory, but it takes them a couple of months (see DS9) and only a single ship will make it through the enemy battle wall (again, see DS9). That one ship, if it attacks B5, will no doubt be surprised at how well defended the station is, but presumably cause some sort of victory disproportionate to its size. The Feds probably take B5.

Maybe they use DS9 as a collar. I don't know if it would fit over B5, though.

The only way for Babylon 5 to resolve this is with a years-long story arc in which, while running from sanctuary to sanctuary, they rebuild their tattered fleets, alliances, and command structures, and eventually snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Starfleet doesn't have the longterm narrative support to do this, so in the end, B5 would have to win. It would, of course, be a bittersweet victory.

So that's my half-realistic, half-narrative reason why B5 has to win. Eventually.


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## Halivar (Dec 15, 2003)

In any event, B5 and SF are gonna really hurt on each other for a long time, but my vote definitely goes to that fleet of Imperial Dest Star Destroyers that jumps both of them halfway through the battle. Nobody builds 'em like Sierra Fleet Systems, yeah, baby.

 EDIT: I can't believe I posted this. I am such a nerd.


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## s/LaSH (Dec 16, 2003)

Halivar said:
			
		

> In any event, B5 and SF are gonna really hurt on each other for a long time, but my vote definitely goes to that fleet of Imperial Dest Star Destroyers that jumps both of them halfway through the battle. Nobody builds 'em like Sierra Fleet Systems, yeah, baby.
> 
> EDIT: I can't believe I posted this. I am such a nerd.




Good on ya mate. Revel in your nerdity. Join us. Hhhh... hhh...

I'd imagine that a full fleet of SDDs would be pretty nasty, indeed. _Especially_ if they had an SSD with them, which is officially longer than B5 itself and well-shielded. (Just how long is unknown; argument persists over the ratio between SSDs and SDDs, and furthermore, the length of the original SDDs is unknown, put at either 1 or 6 miles; in the latter case, the SDD exceeds B5's 5 mile length and dwarfs everything Starfleet or the B5 universe can offer, while the SSD can be argued at over 100km in length.)

But it is called 'Star Wars' for a reason - the military tech is expected to be better. They also don't suffer any of the unfortunate slowness of Trek warp drive - hopping around the Star Wars galaxy takes weeks if not days, so response time in the comparatively tiny regions of the Federation and B5 known space would be practically immeasurable. I don't know how Imperial interdictor-class SDDs would work on B5 and Trek FTL drives; I suspect they'd be able to force warp drive offline, but B5's hyperspace shows no signs of limitation in gravity wells (see the Titan incident, where they jumped from within Jupiter's atmosphere) so would probably remain uninterdicted.

I'm now going to do an amateur comparison, picking out a few elements which I think would make good benchmarks.

Weapons comparison? B5 and SW beams are capable of orbital bombardment (in the cases of the siege of Centauri Prime, and an incident involving Grand Admiral Thrawn), while Trek vessels generally aren't (notable exception: torpedoes seem to have both the range and the cohesion to get through planetary atmosphere, as seen in First Contact, although these were superior Borg weapons). I'd give the total firepower advantage to SW, because of all the fire a star destroyer can punch out in all directions, but the sustained firepower advantage to B5, because of the axial cannons. Trek, by comparison, is either really wussy or just likes to engage at stupidly close range (I can never recall an episode of Voyager when they fired phasers at planetary targets without first passing through an unnaturally dense and turbulent cloud layer, and _Intrepid_-class vessels are (or were, 7 years before their return, which is no time in technological advancement) pretty top-of-the-line for the Feds).

Defensive comparison? B5 has no shields. Shields can exist (see Thirdspace), but they don't have them. Instead, they rely on armour (self-regenerating bioarmour in the case of the advanced White Star fleet). The armour seems to hold up pretty well against the weapons of the setting, which we've established are probably the most powerful of the three settings. Star Wars has shields, but their effectiveness is limited - everyone knows that you aim for the generators on a star destroyer first, which indicates it's quite easy to punch through them. Star Trek has the best shields, which can take a few hits from their inferior weapons. Overall, I'd say that Trek and B5 have the best endurance in a fight.

Is this accurate? Who knows, but it's fun!


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## Halivar (Dec 16, 2003)

Nice comparison, s/LaSH, but you did miss something that might make the fight a little mroe interesting.

 Put a couple Sith Jedi on that SSD (yeah, movie vs. book vs. game canon, and all that, I know...).


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## Orius (Dec 16, 2003)

Staffan said:
			
		

> I like B5 too, but Earthforce wouldn't stand a chance against Starfleet (barring deviousness). Earthforce doesn't have shields, so a Trek vessel could just beam a photon/quantum torpedo inside their ships, and BOOM.




More like when the Starfleet vessels _lower their shields_ to beam over the torpedos, Earthforce kicks the crap out of them.


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## Orius (Dec 16, 2003)

Gnarlo said:
			
		

> If we are talking New Generation and later, B5 wins, no questions. The trekkies have to worry about Prime Directives and Counselors having a bad hair day and countermanding decisions to invade because the aliens might be all cute and fuzzy and stuff. Babylon 5 definitely believes in shoot first and let the Vorlons sort them out.




And their shields fail ALL THE TIME.   After 3 hits.  No problem for Earthforce.


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## TheAuldGrump (Dec 16, 2003)

Not to mention any shield that can be breached by 'matching frequencies' is a poor investment...

As for ground battles... Does the Federation have the first clue about such, the few battles on the ground that I have seen for _any_ Trek seems to indicate that they can be out maneuvered by Boy Scouts armed with water balloons...

The Auld Grump, of course SF can always used their technobabble enhancers... B5 is limited by trying to make their tech speech make sense...


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## s/LaSH (Dec 16, 2003)

Halivar said:
			
		

> Nice comparison, s/LaSH, but you did miss something that might make the fight a little mroe interesting.
> 
> Put a couple Sith Jedi on that SSD (yeah, movie vs. book vs. game canon, and all that, I know...).




If we're going to go down that route, B5 gets Lyta and Kosh, while Star Trek gets...

uh...

Help me out here, people.

Oh, I just thought of one. Bashir, who's so genetically superior he needs to cheat at darts to lose. Um. Not a very good supercharacter, for all that I love DS9.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Dec 16, 2003)

Well, maybe they can get Odo or Data (I admit, they are probably unaivailable, but usually, Sith Lords and Jedi are this, too)

Startrek Ships are capable of planetary bombardment - the combined Cardassian/Romulan army completely and utterly destroyed the old home planet of the Founders (I admit, it didn`t explode). Sisko once threatened to destroy a planet using "tricobalt" torpedos or something like that. 

The main problem probably is that all three universes have their own rules - Lasers are primitive weapon in Startrek (unable to penetrate even the navigational deflectores of the Enterprise D, as told in one episode), but high-end weapon in Starwars. 
Each of the three universes has its own rules for FTL travel, sublight travel, weapons technology and so on.

All these things aside, my bets are still on the side of Starfleet. 
Even their biggest ship are extremely fast and maneuverable (Impuls engines allow flying at up to 0.9 c), and all of the ships (even the smallest shuttle) have shields. They use weapon based on Antimatter/Matter Anhilation (Photon & Quantum Torpedos) that can fly at similar speed (torpedos can even be fired at warp speed) as the ships themselves, and their weapons have great ranges. (300.000 km for Phasers and 1.500.000 Km for Torpedos). 

But I admit, the Defiant Class ships and Whitestar ships look equal in combat abilities.


I think a fight Starwars units vs. Babylon 5 units might be fairer and be more easier to adjucate, because the combat has the same scale.
Big, slow capital ships and many fast and small fighters.

Starwars has its shields, which might prove as an advantage, but Starfuries seem to be much more maneuverable (well, they use real-life physics, X-Wing & co use cinematic aeriel physic) than similar Starwars units. 
I think Babylon 5 starcruisers might have an advantage, because their weapons seem to have higher range and they have more concentrated firepower (I guess it would be little problem to destroy the star destroyers shield generator with the Earthforce Cruisers weapons, without having to rely on starfighters)

Mustrum Ridcully


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## s/LaSH (Dec 16, 2003)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> <snipped to ribbons>
> Well, maybe they can get Odo or Data (I admit, they are probably unaivailable, but usually, Sith Lords and Jedi are this, too)




OK, fair enough. Those two are going to be fairly effective (even though lightsabers have a fairly good track record against mechanical entities).



> Startrek Ships are capable of planetary bombardment - the combined Cardassian/Romulan army completely and utterly destroyed the old home planet of the Founders (I admit, it didn`t explode). Sisko once threatened to destroy a planet using "tricobalt" torpedos or something like that.




Again, I'm led to question whether that's due to torpedoes or phasers/disruptors.

And Sisko? To _memory_, he actually used the torps, but they were laced with a biohazard lethal to certain races, not planetbusters. That was when I decided Sisko was the coolest Trek captain.



> All these things aside, my bets are still on the side of Starfleet.
> Even their biggest ship are extremely fast and maneuverable (Impuls engines allow flying at up to 0.9 c), and all of the ships (even the smallest shuttle) have shields. They use weapon based on Antimatter/Matter Anhilation (Photon & Quantum Torpedos) that can fly at similar speed (torpedos can even be fired at warp speed) as the ships themselves, and their weapons have great ranges. (300.000 km for Phasers and 1.500.000 Km for Torpedos).
> 
> But I admit, the Defiant Class ships and Whitestar ships look equal in combat abilities.




Torps can be fired at warp, but I don't think they can engage other vessels that aren't at warp. Apparently, the spacetime corridor that's created by a warp drive creates a region of space that's just like normal space in relation to itself, but crossing the velocity barriers is impossible. As vague justification, I present the DS9 ep where Dominion agents plotted to fly a shuttle containing a really big bomb into Bajor's sun, and thus destroy everything in the solar system. The Defiant pursued at warp speeds but dropped out in order to tractor the shuttle. I don't know whether they were simply too imprecise at warp or not, but there it is.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Dec 17, 2003)

According to the visual effects in the show (it is currently rerunning in Germany, and I try to catch up all episodes), both Phasers and Torpedos were able to damage the planetary surface. (300.000 km of range should be sufficient to reach the surface, anyway  )

(Just to show another proof of my geekiness): 
I own the Technical Manual of the Enterprise, and they don`t mention there would be any problems firing torpeods at warp speed against targets at sublight speed. (The torpedos are capable of causing their own warp field, by the way, though longer flights use some of the antimatter for propelling instead of exploding)

Tractor emitters and Phasers are something different, they don`t work at warp speed. (And transporter use is very dangerous)
When they rerun the episode with the agents, I will check why they rely on tractor beam and not on torpedos to "stop" the shuttle. (Maybe they didn`t want to destroy it, unless neccessary? Or maybe it was some kind of sabotage)

Mustrum Ridcully


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## Orius (Dec 17, 2003)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> I own the Technical Manual of the Enterprise, and they don`t mention there would be any problems firing torpeods at warp speed against targets at sublight speed.  [snip]  Tractor emitters and Phasers are something different, they don`t work at warp speed.




Theoretically, that might be how it's _supposed_ to work, but in practice, how the weapons work vary from episode to episode on how they're used.  It's more of matter of what's required for the plot.  I _know_ I've seen episodes where ships fired phasers or disruptors at warp.  It's really another case of the technology being a plot devive.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Dec 17, 2003)

Orius said:
			
		

> Theoretically, that might be how it's _supposed_ to work, but in practice, how the weapons work vary from episode to episode on how they're used.  It's more of matter of what's required for the plot.  I _know_ I've seen episodes where ships fired phasers or disruptors at warp.  It's really another case of the technology being a plot devive.



Actually, they seem to have been pretty consistent in some of these aspects. I can`t remember Starfleet ships firing phasers at Warp speed, at least not without them having to rely on some techbabble to first make it work. But I remember that this doesn`t apply for the new series Enterprise. Maybe this can be handwaved away with it not being "real phasers" but some kind of "phase cannons" that work not identically to phasers. 
But you are probably right when you say that sometimes they seem to ignore some facts from the book. (Though I can`t name any scene now where I really saw this kind of inconsistency)

Oh, but just some corrections and additional data from the book: 
Torpedos have a range of 3,500,000 km (not 1,500,000 as I wrote earlier), and it can be increased if the antimatter/matter onboard is used for the engines instead of the final explosion. The typical warhead yields 1.5 kg antimatter (the explosion should be comparable to at least some tactical nuclear warheads. Unfortunately, I don`t know how much nuclear material is used with this kind of weapons, and how much mass is actually converted to energy).

The shields seem to be able to hold of 2.688 MW (Megawatt). 
One Phaser Emitter (a phaser bank contains of several of them, but I don`t know how or if this adds up) can emit 5.1 MW (maybe someone has some comparitive figures from Babylon 5 or Starwars- Fiction, technical manuals, scenes from the show?)

Mustrum Ridcully


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## buzzard (Dec 17, 2003)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> Oh, but just some corrections and additional data from the book:
> Torpedos have a range of 3,500,000 km (not 1,500,000 as I wrote earlier), and it can be increased if the antimatter/matter onboard is used for the engines instead of the final explosion. The typical warhead yields 1.5 kg antimatter (the explosion should be comparable to at least some tactical nuclear warheads. Unfortunately, I don`t know how much nuclear material is used with this kind of weapons, and how much mass is actually converted to energy).
> 
> The shields seem to be able to hold of 2.688 MW (Megawatt).
> ...




If there is 1.5 kg of antimatter on a photon torpedo, they should be able to varporize pretty much any ship they hit. If we assume full conversion of matter into energy, we're talking 2.7 x10^17 joules of energy. Nukes are only very mildly efficient in terms of the amount of matter transformed into energy (as in fractions of a percent, and not a real big fraction). Of course Star Trek doesn't have them work out to be that powerful, so this doesn't provide us with much of a basis for comparison. If a phaser only emits 5.1 MW of energy, that's pretty ho-hum. I'd say a round from a M1A1 tank delivers on the order of that much energy. We certainly have chemical lasers which are around that right now. The ABL program says it gets multimegawatt beams right launched from a 747. Honestly I do remember from reading a roomate's ST technical book that I was completely underwhelmed by the numbers they claimed. Though the photon torpedo number is pretty crazy. I guess the author didn't bother to apply e= mc^2 and see the result. 

buzzard


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Dec 17, 2003)

buzzard said:
			
		

> If there is 1.5 kg of antimatter on a photon torpedo, they should be able to varporize pretty much any ship they hit. If we assume full conversion of matter into energy, we're talking 2.7 x10^17 joules of energy. Nukes are only very mildly efficient in terms of the amount of matter transformed into energy (as in fractions of a percent, and not a real big fraction). Of course Star Trek doesn't have them work out to be that powerful, so this doesn't provide us with much of a basis for comparison. If a phaser only emits 5.1 MW of energy, that's pretty ho-hum. I'd say a round from a M1A1 tank delivers on the order of that much energy. We certainly have chemical lasers which are around that right now. The ABL program says it gets multimegawatt beams right launched from a 747. Honestly I do remember from reading a roomate's ST technical book that I was completely underwhelmed by the numbers they claimed. Though the photon torpedo number is pretty crazy. I guess the author didn't bother to apply e= mc^2 and see the result.
> 
> buzzard



I wondered about the torpedo figures myself. I made some similar calculations a few years ago when I read a book (also Startrek) about an antimatter bomb used on a planet that only contained a few gramms of antimatter. Unfortunately at that time I hadn`t any access to internet, and I didn`t find any comparable data... 

I am somehow surprised about these inconsistencies, since I know from the writers (Rick Sternback and Micheal Okuda) that they have some knowledge in these fields, even if it might not be much more than hobby level. 
But on the other hand - Charles Ryan and Mike Mulhilvill both claim to have knowledge in the fields of modern firearms, but our own "weapon-guru" always finds (both minor and major) mistakes in their products.

Mustrum "Geek researchs" Ridcully


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## s/LaSH (Dec 17, 2003)

1.5kg is equal to a truly massive explosion, one the biggest fusion bombs would possibly rival. A single gram of AM would obliterate whole suburbs with the explosion.

However, when you're talking space battles, there's no atmosphere to conduct a shockwave. Your only concern is a blast of photons (light, heat, exotic particles...). At ground zero, that's going to be pretty intense. But it will fall off dramatically with distance (the square of the distance? Not sure), thus meaning that a near miss with a torp would do almost no damage unless it was really heavy.

Star Trek space battles always seem to be scaled up by a factor of a few thousand or so, so the ships are simultaneously visible to the naked eye. Assuming that, is it so hard to believe that those photon torpedoes explode within a hundred km of the target and do damage that way, instead of impacting directly on the ship's shields? An actual direct hit would probably rupture everything.

Speculation...


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## buzzard (Dec 17, 2003)

s/LaSH said:
			
		

> 1.5kg is equal to a truly massive explosion, one the biggest fusion bombs would possibly rival. A single gram of AM would obliterate whole suburbs with the explosion.




I'm pretty sure that 1.5 kg of antimatter completely dwarfs the biggest fusion bomb ever popped off. I mean by many orders of magnitude. The efficiently on fusion bombs is so much lower that it isn't even funny. Of course the lack of a conductive medium would work as you say, but that quantity of energy it truly mind boggling. 

buzzard


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Dec 18, 2003)

s/LaSH said:
			
		

> 1.5kg is equal to a truly massive explosion, one the biggest fusion bombs would possibly rival. A single gram of AM would obliterate whole suburbs with the explosion.
> 
> However, when you're talking space battles, there's no atmosphere to conduct a shockwave. Your only concern is a blast of photons (light, heat, exotic particles...). At ground zero, that's going to be pretty intense. But it will fall off dramatically with distance (the square of the distance? Not sure), thus meaning that a near miss with a torp would do almost no damage unless it was really heavy.
> 
> ...





According to the book, if a torpedo is able to penetrate the shields of the target, and explodes within the shields, it usually tends more to vaporize it than to "break" it. 
For the phaser output: There are three sample battles that come from the Starfleet database in the book (somehow, this sounds ridicilous  ). One of them describes a combat between a Galaxy class starship and a Romulan Warbird. The Warbid fires Phasers with 20 GW (Gigawatt). Since Warbirds and Galaxy class starships are considered (in Startrek Canon) to be similar in firepower, I assume that the Phaser Emitters of a Phaser bank must add up somehow. (And even a Ferengi Marauder fires 500 MW weapons)

Mustrum Ridcully


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## Umbran (Dec 18, 2003)

s/LaSH said:
			
		

> Again, I'm led to question whether that's due to torpedoes or phasers/disruptors.




Oh, the phasers will do just fine from orbit.  Over the course of the series, the Enterprise D repeatedly used phasers to dig into planetary cores to relieve pressure and whatnot.  Even in the current _Enterprise_ series, the Xindi use beam-weapons to kill millions of people on Earth.  There's no problem at all with the phasers, I assure you 

There's one thing going for Star Trek in this face off - exotic technology.  Both Star Wars and B5 are limited in the variety of tech they can apply - blasters and shields and that's about it.  These space operas weren't particuarly interested in investigating neato science and technology.  Trek, in trying to appeal to more full-fledged geeks, has computer's who's processors carry impulses that move faster than light, easily adaptable nanotechnology, and readily acessible time travel.

Imagine if you will...

"Babylon 5 Station, this is Jean Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise.  We have scanned and read your databases, and are aware of the alien plague currently affecting your homeworld.  We are in possession of advanced nanotechnology that should be able to fix the problem in about a week.  Stand down so that we may negotiate..."


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## Storm Raven (Dec 18, 2003)

Umbran said:
			
		

> "Babylon 5 Station, this is Jean Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise.  We have scanned and read your databases, and are aware of the alien plague currently affecting your homeworld.  We are in possession of advanced nanotechnology that should be able to fix the problem in about a week.  Stand down so that we may negotiate..."




A week? Standard Star Trek level miracle technology should be able to resolve any problem like that in ten minutes or so. Usually the last ten minutes of an episode.


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## s/LaSH (Dec 19, 2003)

Umbran said:
			
		

> There's one thing going for Star Trek in this face off - exotic technology.  Both Star Wars and B5 are limited in the variety of tech they can apply - blasters and shields and that's about it.  These space operas weren't particuarly interested in investigating neato science and technology.  Trek, in trying to appeal to more full-fledged geeks, has computer's who's processors carry impulses that move faster than light, easily adaptable nanotechnology, and readily acessible time travel.




Oh, I don't know... B5's Earthforce uses missiles with fairly fearsome destructive ability (see the season 4 culmination where one missile-equipped satellite prepares to destroy the eastern seaboard of America), and there are about a kajillion different types of weapon listed in the B5 d20 rulebook, ranging from lasers to particle beams to Minbari fusion cannon (which aren't powered by fusion, it's what they do to the target) to various antimatter cannon to the feared neutron laser, which I have no concept of operational theory, but sounds cool, just like phasers. Hardly 'just blasters'. The Drakh Plague that overran Earth was nanotech, and not the nano of any mere galactic scourge such as the Borg, but nano derived from the science of a race so ancient they keep the first lifeform of our Universe in their basement.

And Star Wars is riddled with tech if you know where to look. I've already mentioned Interdictor Cruisers and wondered about their effects on warp corridors, seeing as they're intended to disrupt a parallel continuum and Trek ships still travel within 'real' space. There's also bacta (not as effective as dermal regenerators, but hey), droids that manage to both have intelligent personalities and not create an android army to destroy mankind (let me check, how many AI-enabled robots are there in Trek? Hm, two. And one of them's an Evil Twin TM. The record for Giant Computers is even worse, they're all machine supremacists), and cloning. Plus you can do nearly anything with the Force.

I'm not saying Trek is surpassed by any of this. In fact, it's still about the most tech-saturated thing on TV, and still has the awesome Transporter. It's just that there is a fair amount more than just blasters and shields to B5 and SW.


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## danzig138 (Dec 19, 2003)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> Impuls engines allow flying at up to 0.9 c



I thought impulse only went up to .25 c max?


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## Green Knight (Dec 20, 2003)

Personally I think Earthforce alone can beat Starfleet. 

First off, the speed issue. As has been pointed out, they can't fight at Warp speed. And even if they could, what're they gonna do? Go to warp and pop off one shot in the fraction of a second the warp engine will take them out of range? Besides, jump tech is superior to warp drive. As far as I can tell, people can get farther with jump engines then they can with warp drive. There's also the advantage of being able to exit normal space. Let's say you're the Enterprise on some mission to study some spacial anomaly or another. While your guard is down, a jump point opens and out comes an Earthforce Omega-Class Destroyer. Before you have a chance to raise shields and arm phasers and photon torpedos, the Earthforce ship has blown you away. 

Second, Earthforce Destroyers carry fighters. So a starfleet ship won't just have to face a destroyer, but a small fleet of fightercraft. And fact is, Starfleet ships don't fire fast enough to take down so many aircraft. The Defiant is pretty much the only ship with a quick enough rate of fire, but it suffers from only being able to shoot what's in front of it. 

Third, while Earthforce ships don't have shields, they don't really need them. As has been pointed out, they don't really have to worry about the Transport-A-Weapon thing, since the Starfleet ship would have to bring down shields, at which point the combined firepower of the Earthforce ship and fighters would bring it down. Second, they're so big that they can shrug off several impacts from even photon torpedos and phaser blasts. B5 ships didn't instantly explode upon the first hit, after all. They were tough ships, even without shields. Those Omegas were able to stand up to a lot of damage dished out by ships more powerful than Starfleet ships. Also, unlike Starfleet ships, they have the capability to intercept incoming fire. So while they'll probably eat each and every phaser blast, they have a good shot at bringing down a large percentage of any photon torpedoes fired their way. 

All those facts taken together lead me to believe that an Omega-Class Destroyer can defeat even a Sovereign Class Starship. And that's not even counting the latest ship in the Earthforce fleet, the* Warlock Class Destroyer*. 







That thing's a veritable monster, and from what I understand, is nearly a match for a Minbari cruiser! It'd eat the Enterprise alive and THEN some! 

As for a war between the Federation and the Earth Alliance, again, I say the Earth Alliance wins. The Federation is only about 150 planets, not "hundreds" of worlds. Also, the Federation fleet isn't that big, whereas Earthforce has a massive fleet in Omega Class Destroyers, alone. Nevermind ground troops! For cripes sake, Federation ground soldiers go into battle wearing the standard Starfleet uniforms! You've got to be kidding me! The guys that're slogging through the deserts and the jungles are wearing the same uniform that Picard and Sisko wear on the bridge? Hasn't the Federation ever heard of BDU's? Nevermind that Earthforce has heard of a little thing called BODY ARMOR. 

Earthforce wins this one, hands down. I'm not even gonna MENTION what the Minbari would do to them!


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## Darrin Drader (Dec 20, 2003)

Dear lord, this thread has dragged Star Wars into it too. I declare that the shark has been jumped. I'm moving along to greener pastures.


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## paulewaug (Dec 21, 2003)

Jumped the shark?!
Dude! Let's jump the whale!!

For your considreation I introduce....

Farscape
and
Battlestar Galactica (new and/or old )


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Dec 22, 2003)

Green Knight said:
			
		

> Personally I think Earthforce alone can beat Starfleet.
> 
> First off, the speed issue. As has been pointed out, they can't fight at Warp speed. And even if they could, what're they gonna do? Go to warp and pop off one shot in the fraction of a second the warp engine will take them out of range? Besides, jump tech is superior to warp drive. As far as I can tell, people can get farther with jump engines then they can with warp drive. There's also the advantage of being able to exit normal space. Let's say you're the Enterprise on some mission to study some spacial anomaly or another. While your guard is down, a jump point opens and out comes an Earthforce Omega-Class Destroyer. Before you have a chance to raise shields and arm phasers and photon torpedos, the Earthforce ship has blown you away.



Well, surprise attack always are in benefit of the attacker, but some notes:
The Destroyer would have to come out of Hyperspace very near to the Enterprise and know where to shoot them. I am not sure if the Earthforce targeting is that fast, but it is certainly a possibility. But the hyperspace "gate" has first to open and let the ship through - I think it would be little problem for Starfleet sensors to detect this build up. (Though if this is the first EA/Starfleet contact, possibly nobody knows how to react to it.)


> Second, Earthforce Destroyers carry fighters. So a starfleet ship won't just have to face a destroyer, but a small fleet of fightercraft. And fact is, Starfleet ships don't fire fast enough to take down so many aircraft. The Defiant is pretty much the only ship with a quick enough rate of fire, but it suffers from only being able to shoot what's in front of it.



Small fighters only have small firepower. I think there is a reason why nobody in the Startrek Universe relies on small fighters. Except for the Defiant, bigger usually means better. Starfleet Ships actually can fire really fast, but against shields, long, continous beams usually prove better than short bursts (at least according to the Technical Manual). An important, additional factor: Starfleet weapons are extremely precise and seem never to miss (at least Phasers). 



> Third, while Earthforce ships don't have shields, they don't really need them. As has been pointed out, they don't really have to worry about the Transport-A-Weapon thing, since the Starfleet ship would have to bring down shields, at which point the combined firepower of the Earthforce ship and fighters would bring it down. Second, they're so big that they can shrug off several impacts from even photon torpedos and phaser blasts. B5 ships didn't instantly explode upon the first hit, after all. They were tough ships, even without shields. Those Omegas were able to stand up to a lot of damage dished out by ships more powerful than Starfleet ships. Also, unlike Starfleet ships, they have the capability to intercept incoming fire. So while they'll probably eat each and every phaser blast, they have a good shot at bringing down a large percentage of any photon torpedoes fired their way.



I am not sure, but I believe in the later series the issue with beaming through their own shields seems to be no problem (but that might only be some inconsistencies). 
Torpedos can be intercepted, that is true, but it is seldomly used in the show. (I can only remember one incident, and it weren`t even real torpeods then, I believe). According to the Tech manual, the tactical systems of the ship might in fact be able to counter these counter-measures, though I never saw a torpedo making evasive maneuvers. 
An interesting question: Are B5 ships tough, or are the B5 weapons weak? I always assumed the latter, especially because of the fact that Startrek ships have shields, and use antimatter weapons. 
Anyway, the Starfleet ships are tougher than you might think - in the first combats against the Dominon, the Jem`Hardar cruisers were able to penetrate Federation shields. This proved disastrous, but even then, the ship was able to stand up for a while. It was not destroyed by ordinary fire, but when one of the Jem`Hardar ship made a kamikaze attack. (But the Starfleet ship - galaxy class, by the way - was already retreating at that moment, and had taken severe damage. The attack was only to make a point...)



> As for a war between the Federation and the Earth Alliance, again, I say the Earth Alliance wins. The Federation is only about 150 planets, not "hundreds" of worlds. Also, the Federation fleet isn't that big, whereas Earthforce has a massive fleet in Omega Class Destroyers, alone. Nevermind ground troops! For cripes sake, Federation ground soldiers go into battle wearing the standard Starfleet uniforms! You've got to be kidding me! The guys that're slogging through the deserts and the jungles are wearing the same uniform that Picard and Sisko wear on the bridge? Hasn't the Federation ever heard of BDU's? Nevermind that Earthforce has heard of a little thing called BODY ARMOR.
> 
> Earthforce wins this one, hands down. I'm not even gonna MENTION what the Minbari would do to them!




I agree, the ground combat of Startrek and Starfleet is really lacking. (they should have invested a bit more in some props for this.) Well, at least Phasers are extremely powerful weapons, so maybe the body armor wouldn`t help. (but Klingon warriors would have trouble against it, I guess.)
But I believe you overestimate the size of the Earth Alliance - Earth Alliance is not equal to the Interestellar Alliance. 
And you underestimate the Startrek fleet. During the Dominion wars, it proved much bigger then I ever expected (with several "fleets" of dozens of ships engaged during the war). At Wolf 359, over 40 ships fought against the Borg. They were all destroyed, but none of the powerful enemies of the Federation seemed to the this as an oppertunity to attack it, which might show that, while a severe loss, it did not cripple the fleet (which was assembled in a rush, by the way - the borg threat was a surprise attack, not a full fledged war like the Dominon War)



			
				paulewaug said:
			
		

> Jumped the shark?!
> Dude! Let's jump the whale!!
> 
> For your considreation I introduce....
> ...




I would add Space: Above and Beyond into this mix.: )

I would compare Battlestar Galactica and Sace with Starwars and Babylon 5 Tech, and Farspace seems to go more into the Startrek Technology type, though there are some aspects more resembling B5 or SW. 
(with Technology in this case I don`t neccessarily talk about superiority and similar aspects, it`s more the "feel" these shows give)

Mustrum Ridcully


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## s/LaSH (Dec 23, 2003)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> Well, surprise attack always are in benefit of the attacker, but some notes:
> The Destroyer would have to come out of Hyperspace very near to the Enterprise and know where to shoot them...




Read the following lines out loud, simultaneously.

"Sir! I'm picking up a subspace distortion!" "Onscreen." "Analysis, Number One?"
VWEEEERRRRR WHOOOMMM "Target within range, Captain." "Fire." VWRRRRBOOOM

This is the narrative method of prediction.



> Small fighters only have small firepower. I think there is a reason why nobody in the Startrek Universe relies on small fighters. Except for the Defiant, bigger usually means better. Starfleet Ships actually can fire really fast, but against shields, long, continous beams usually prove better than short bursts (at least according to the Technical Manual). An important, additional factor: Starfleet weapons are extremely precise and seem never to miss (at least Phasers).




Fighters are fragile, but maneuverable. Especially EA Starfuries, which take the X-wing design and make it sing. Is that enough to counter Trek targeting? It is if you've damaged targeting systems and forced Worf to go to manual targeting. Also, if you can use Starfury fighters, you can probably use Starfury bombers (as seen in the 'suppression' of the Martian riots).



> I am not sure, but I believe in the later series the issue with beaming through their own shields seems to be no problem (but that might only be some inconsistencies).




Voyager certainly had no way to beam through shields, although the Borg did and the Janeway time travel incident might have introduced further technology. And the Enterprise NX-01 has no shields, just an advanced form of that British high-energy armour technology. I don't really know, however.



> Torpedos can be intercepted, that is true, but it is seldomly used in the show. (I can only remember one incident, and it weren`t even real torpeods then, I believe). According to the Tech manual, the tactical systems of the ship might in fact be able to counter these counter-measures, though I never saw a torpedo making evasive maneuvers.




EA ships don't mess around when it comes to point defence. Interceptors, Mk I and Mk II. They can shoot down fighters, intercept particle weapons, and create a localised effect similar to shields. It's not exactly a countermeasure if it's shooting at you from six directions at once. Torps aren't as big as fighters (there was one episode of DS9 when a dud torp hit the Defiant and Quark tried to salvage it for sale; it was huge, but not as massive as a Starfury), so that might help... but maybe not.



> An interesting question: Are B5 ships tough, or are the B5 weapons weak? I always assumed the latter, especially because of the fact that Startrek ships have shields, and use antimatter weapons.




Antimatter torps. Yes. By comparison, the Vree of B5 are developing a third generation antimatter 'beam' weapon, to replace their antiproton and superior antimatter cannons. It's not much deadlier than any of the other weapons of the B5 universe, although the new generation is supposed to support a withering rate of fire.



> Anyway, the Starfleet ships are tougher than you might think - in the first combats against the Dominon, the Jem`Hardar cruisers were able to penetrate Federation shields. This proved disastrous, but even then, the ship was able to stand up for a while. It was not destroyed by ordinary fire, but when one of the Jem`Hardar ship made a kamikaze attack. (But the Starfleet ship - galaxy class, by the way - was already retreating at that moment, and had taken severe damage. The attack was only to make a point...)




True. It's always 'Hull breaches on decks 1 thru 12, power out to hydroponics, sensors offline', never 'We're doomed'. Heck, look at the Defiant. She got hammered really badly at the Borg battle in Earth orbit, and hung together to be destroyed later in a pivotal battle on DS9.

Then again, I've seen EA destroyers take a nuke up the nose point-blank and stay intact. So I wouldn't say Trek ships are tougher. They are, however, contenders.



> I agree, the ground combat of Startrek and Starfleet is really lacking. (they should have invested a bit more in some props for this.) Well, at least Phasers are extremely powerful weapons, so maybe the body armor wouldn`t help. (but Klingon warriors would have trouble against it, I guess.)




Klingons aren't entirely stupid; they'd be quite happy blasting away with disruptors. "There is no honour in defeat," as was spoken during the Dominion War.

However, I'd give the edge here to the automatic PPG rifles that EA gropos carry. They can saw through a bulkhead like nobody's business.



> But I believe you overestimate the size of the Earth Alliance - Earth Alliance is not equal to the Interestellar Alliance.
> And you underestimate the Startrek fleet. During the Dominion wars, it proved much bigger then I ever expected (with several "fleets" of dozens of ships engaged during the war). At Wolf 359, over 40 ships fought against the Borg. They were all destroyed, but none of the powerful enemies of the Federation seemed to the this as an oppertunity to attack it, which might show that, while a severe loss, it did not cripple the fleet (which was assembled in a rush, by the way - the borg threat was a surprise attack, not a full fledged war like the Dominon War)




This is entirely true. EA couldn't field more than a couple dozen capital ships, in my estimation, whereas Starfleet is hugeous.

Throw the might of the Interstellar Alliance behind EA, however, and you're talking a whole different kettle of fish... and if you want, we can do Shadows versus Borg.

"No! You can't assimillate that planet!"
"Why not?"
"Because it's not there any more."


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## Green Knight (Dec 23, 2003)

> This is entirely true. EA couldn't field more than a couple dozen capital ships, in my estimation, whereas Starfleet is hugeous.




Huh? Did you miss the Earth Civil War? How about the Drakh attack on Earth? During the Earth Civil War, in Mars orbit alone, there was a fleet of 30 Omega Class Destroyers that Sheridan and co. had to find a way to disable. Those ships alone account for your couple dozen figure. Then there's all those numerous battles that they engaged in with the White Stars, the ships that defected to Sheridan, the ships on patrol, the ships protecting Earth, etc. 

Here's an interesting link regarding the size of the Earth Alliance fleet. 

http://www.b5tech.com/science/misc/fleetsize/earthfleetsize.html 

As noted there, the novelization of "In The Beginning" states that at that time Earth Force had a fleet of* 50,000* star ships. And that was at the time of the Earth/Minbari war. The fleet has undoubtedly grown since then, and of course, the Omega was introduced soon after that war. Here's an interesting paragraph from that page. 



> All in all, at present, Earth likely has a fleet consisting of some 20,000 capital scale vessels.  Of these, roughly 900 to 1,400 likely fall into the Omega classification.* Those who doubt this figure, please note that in the TNT movie "A Call to Arms" some 212 Omega class Destroyers were blown out of the night and, while a seizable number, this loss was not significant enough to cripple the whole of the Earth fleet; we know from Gideon's arrival that many ships were still in rout to Earth during the battle.*




I had forgotten the number mentioned in the Crusade pilot, but I knew that the number of Omega Class Destroyers blown away in the Drakh attack was in the hundreds. And as was pointed out there, that loss didn't phase Earth Alliance. So no, Earth Force isn't exactly a pushover as far as when it comes to capital scale ships.


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## Green Knight (Dec 23, 2003)

> Small fighters only have small firepower. I think there is a reason why nobody in the Startrek Universe relies on small fighters. Except for the Defiant, bigger usually means better. Starfleet Ships actually can fire really fast, but against shields, long, continous beams usually prove better than short bursts (at least according to the Technical Manual). An important, additional factor: Starfleet weapons are extremely precise and seem never to miss (at least Phasers).




Even the big honking ships they miss from time to time, so starfleet weapons aren't THAT precise. Nevermind the tiny and agile Starfuries. And that small firepower adds up to a lot of damage pretty quickly. I remember an ep of B5 when the fighters had the run of the field without fighter opposition and roasted a battle cruiser. But anyway, as fast as Starfleet ships can fire, they can't fire fast enough nor accurately enough to hit so many small, fast-moving targets. And if they're wasting their shots on trying to take down fighters, then that's less shots being targeted at the capital ship. See the point? Also, however much firepower, say, a Sovereign Class can put out, that doesn't compare to what a Warlock can put out. Check it out. 

12 Large missile silos 
16 Small missile silos 
2 Heavy Particle Beam cannons 
9 Heavy Pulse Cannon turrets 
3 Heavy railgun turrets 
4 Medium Pulse Cannon turrets 
9 Light Pulse Cannon Turrets 
16 short range PP turrets 
??? number of various small calibre energy and projective AA placements * 

That's not even mentioning the 42 Starfuries that it carries. Nevermind the 80,000 troops aboard. Something tells me those Warlocks carry plenty of boarding pods. Once a couple of those babies latch onto the Enterprise, it's all over. 



> I am not sure, but I believe in the later series the issue with beaming through their own shields seems to be no problem (but that might only be some inconsistencies).




Nope. Still can't beam through shields. Not even Voyager cheesed past that element of Trek canon. 



> Torpedos can be intercepted, that is true, but it is seldomly used in the show. (I can only remember one incident, and it weren`t even real torpeods then, I believe).




Which show are you talking about? Star Trek or B5? Because in B5, interception of incoming fire happens all the time. It doesn't happen in Star Trek because everything's focused on shields. Nobody in Star Trek has the point defense systems that Earth Alliance has. Hell, most races in B5 aren't quite as good in that area as Earth Alliance is. Earth Force tech in that field is superior even to Minbari tech in that field. It was Earth Alliance who provided that bit of technology to the contruction of the Interstellar Alliance's Victory Class Destroyers (You know, the Excalibur). 



> According to the Tech manual, the tactical systems of the ship might in fact be able to counter these counter-measures, though I never saw a torpedo making evasive maneuvers.




Lot's of missiles in B5, so I doubt they'd be unprepared for any maneuvers a photon torpedo might employ. 



> An interesting question: Are B5 ships tough, or are the B5 weapons weak? I always assumed the latter, especially because of the fact that Startrek ships have shields, and use antimatter weapons.




I doubt B5 weapons are weak. They've gone toe-to-toe with races that clearly dwarf the Federation (Shadows, Vorlons, etc) and have done pretty well for themselves. So unless someone wants to make the claim that Starfleet can beat the Shadows and/or the Vorlons, then I don't think they're weak. 



> Anyway, the Starfleet ships are tougher than you might think - in the first combats against the Dominon, the Jem`Hardar cruisers were able to penetrate Federation shields. This proved disastrous, but even then, the ship was able to stand up for a while. It was not destroyed by ordinary fire, but when one of the Jem`Hardar ship made a kamikaze attack. (But the Starfleet ship - galaxy class, by the way - was already retreating at that moment, and had taken severe damage. The attack was only to make a point...)




I remember that episode. The Odyssey was an utter wreck inside of 2 minutes. I have NEVER seen a Galaxy class ship THAT badly damaged so quickly, before. Yeah, it wasn't destroyed, but the ship was practically gutted before the Jem'Hadar kamikazi'd it. Something which they probably only did because it was about to escape through the wormhole. Had they had their way for another minute or so, the Odyssey would've been creamed either way. Even with the worst poundings, Earth Force ships tent to last a little bit longer than that. 



> I agree, the ground combat of Startrek and Starfleet is really lacking. (they should have invested a bit more in some props for this.) Well, at least Phasers are extremely powerful weapons, so maybe the body armor wouldn`t help. (but Klingon warriors would have trouble against it, I guess.)




Well, the thing with the Phasers is that if you go for the higher powered shots, you get less shots total. For instance, in a Star Trek book I read a while back, Vendetta, you only get like a dozen shots at setting 16. And even then, we're talking phasers. As powerful as the blasts are, we're not talking machine-gun fire, here. Nevermind that ordinary cover doesn't seem to have a problem in stopping your average phaser blast. In which case the Earth Force body armor has a chance of protecting a guy. OTOH, Earth Force has a lot of neat guns with high rates of fire they lug around. And while it's debateable whether those weapons are more powerful or less powerful than phasers, it doesn't really matter since Fed ground troops wear NO protection at all. So they're still just as dead. But with their guns that have a higher rate of fire, the GROPOS will be able to kill a lot more Fed troops than the Fed would be able to kill with their "One Squeeze, One Long Shot" phasers. Especially if the Earth Force body armor can protect them from some of the damage inflicted by phasers. 



> But I believe you overestimate the size of the Earth Alliance - Earth Alliance is not equal to the Interestellar Alliance.




I never said Earth Force was the size of the Interstellar Alliance. But you're  making the assumption that Interstellar Alliance is the same size as the Federation. It's not. Let me illustrate: 

In Star Trek, only about a quarter of the galaxy is explored. Out of that quarter, the Federation makes up one of MANY interstellar nations. It's one of the biggest, certainly, but there're NUMEROUS other nations as big if not bigger than the Federation. 

In B5, about 25% of the galaxy is explored. Nearly ALL of that is part of the Interstellar Alliance (Although to be fair, the IA isn't really a government like the Federation). 

Earth Alliance is probably, territory-wise, about a third the size of the Federation. But that doesn't mean that their fleet isn't enormous. 



> And you underestimate the Startrek fleet. During the Dominion wars, it proved much bigger then I ever expected (with several "fleets" of dozens of ships engaged during the war). At Wolf 359, over 40 ships fought against the Borg. They were all destroyed, but none of the powerful enemies of the Federation seemed to the this as an oppertunity to attack it, which might show that, while a severe loss, it did not cripple the fleet (which was assembled in a rush, by the way - the borg threat was a surprise attack, not a full fledged war like the Dominon War)




Well, considering that every other major power in the Alpha Quadrant got flattened right along with the Federation by the Dominion (Romulans, Klingons, Cardassians, Breen, etc), I don't see how anybody can take advantage. But they probably were pretty badly hurt, considering that the Federation nearly lost that war. If they could've thrown more ships into the fight, something tells me they would have. 

Damn, now I've got a huge urge to go out and buy all the B5 DVD sets and play the new B5 RPG!


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## clark411 (Dec 23, 2003)

Well, the first point of contention I have between comparing SF and EA fleet size is that the huge numbers spouted by Deep Space 9 were mostly Peregrin Class fighters and small "destroyer / escort" ships (smaller than the Akira Class) not far off of Keldon Class Cardassian ships.  The point of post DS9 combat was to lay down as many photon and quantum torpedoes as possible from far range and then cut to close range for fly by cinematic shots that we dorks can frame-by-frame on DVD (personally have yet to do it but.. one day..) heh.

The EA forces on the other hand are primarily cap ships and carriers.  SF wouldn't know an actual capital ship if it bit them in the rear... actually they would, the Dominion had them, and did bite them in the rear quite handily.  We never saw the bigger vessels, like the Galaxy, go down rapidly in the war simply because the Galaxy wasn't huge news post ST:Generations.  The prelude to war, if we look back, did actually have a Galaxy blow up within moments of an engagement as a Dominion "bug" ship rammed it just upwards of the deflection dish.  The secondary hull, mind you, is supposedly the "battle section" of the Galaxy.  

A large part of the DS9+ series' tropes suggest that Starfleet was composed primarily of overly-expensive, weak, oversized vessels that were unable to cope with the realities of the, well, late 1990's-early 0's viewer who enjoyed watching the idealism replaced with conquest, danger, and CGI space battles.  If we're going to cling to the ideas that SF is about last minute solutions, teflon protagonists, and invincible ships (You can't blow up the Enterprise!  The show is *called* Enterprise!) lets also acknowledge the idea that SF, on the whole, is crap and struggling to redefine itself well into the Batmovoyager series that most cringed at. 

An EF cap ship hull on the other hand, would most likely take a punch like that and smile.  Even if it did happen to explode, no worries- there are dozens upon dozens more.  There were only 6 or so Galaxy sister ships originally commissioned and they took years to develop and produce, and they were avoided due to their disgusting cost after that.  Every capital-equivalent ship that Starfleet produces seems to be a huge investment, while B5 tends to suggest an infrastructure that can handle a dozen or so major ships lost in engagements without immediate concern.

On the whole, the bulk of SF ships are either fragile, or small.  They depend upon range to lay fire down range, and use phasers primarily to disable weapons etc or, if the shields are down, "aim at the warp core" to prove just how fragile ST technology tends to be with it's We Move Fast and Blow Up Faster engines.  B5 ships however, are lightning strike ships that lack weaknesses like 5 meter thick nacelles, blatently placed bridges, easy boom engines, and phasers that tend to scorch more than slice.

My other point of "Hey I disagree"ness comes from the statement that Starfleet ships would be targeting B5 ships as they came out of jump, while B5 ships would be slower to engage.  That kind of sentiment is disproved repeatedly through the B5 series.  More often than not, ships come out of jump with their guns blazing.  The only time I can recall a hostile ship not opening fire immediately was when a Narn cap ship on autopilot and full of explosives attempted to ram B5.

... has anyone else finished a post and suddenly felt this deep "Oh no, you're arguing about Star Trek and Babylon 5 on the internet!" sensation?


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## s/LaSH (Dec 23, 2003)

clark411 said:
			
		

> ... has anyone else finished a post and suddenly felt this deep "Oh no, you're arguing about Star Trek and Babylon 5 on the internet!" sensation?




I'm so proud... *sniff* It's an experience my geekhood has not yet included.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Dec 24, 2003)

> ... has anyone else finished a post and suddenly felt this deep "Oh no, you're arguing about Star Trek and Babylon 5 on the internet!" sensation?





			
				s/LaSH said:
			
		

> I'm so proud... *sniff* It's an experience my geekhood has not yet included.




 I had the same sensations. 

For the rest - I guess some of us have to agree to disagree in their opinions which fleet will succeed. 
I guess, eventually the winning fleet is whatever the author prefers.

Maybe I will come up with some other arguments why the Starfleet is superior to the EA fleet (I think I found somewhere some links about Babylon 5 starships and weapons, maybe I can use some of it for some pseudotechnical and pseudoscientific analyzes), but for now, I wish everyone a Merry Christmas. 

Mustrum Ridcully


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## s/LaSH (Dec 24, 2003)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> I wish everyone a Merry Christmas.




We can have Q dressed up as Santa, a big party on B5 where Londo mistakenly believes he's at a funeral until G'kar tires of the joke, and massive CG celebrations in the streets of Coruscant where nobody knows what they're celebrating because it hasn't happened yet.

Merry Christmas.


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## RangerWickett (Dec 27, 2003)

Guys, you're missing the obvious.

Babylon 5 has an actual interconnected plot, where things from one episode affect those later.

Star Trek wraps things up in an hour.

Babylon 5 would show up, and Sheridan would start discussing with everyone how they could face this new threat.  Their plan would have several stages, and would take maybe a month to set into motion.

Meanwhile, Geordi and Wesley (as much fun as Wil Wheaton is, I can't stand the character) would bounce a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish, and then recalibrate the shield harmonics, adjust the matter/antimatter ratio, and finally stand up and adjust their shirts, which would blow up B5 in about 5 minutes.

But the explosion would rip the fabric of space-time, and everything would go back to normal, so that none of it would have happened.


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## Salthanas (Dec 27, 2003)

Although I'm no expert in the techno jaron of B5 and trek I'd put my money on starfleet purely because the level of tech seems way above B5. In Trek 2 you had terra forming Genisis devices that could easily be adapted to weapons of mass destruction and then in Trek 6 you had missiles capable of causing chain reactions in stars. If Starfleet really cut loose with some of that tech I think Earthfleet would be pretty much doomed without much of a contest.


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## Orius (Dec 27, 2003)

s/LaSH said:
			
		

> Fighters are fragile, but maneuverable. Especially EA Starfuries, which take the X-wing design and make it sing. Is that enough to counter Trek targeting? It is if you've damaged targeting systems and forced Worf to go to manual targeting. Also, if you can use Starfury fighters, you can probably use Starfury bombers (as seen in the 'suppression' of the Martian riots).




If Worf has to go manual targeting, then Starfleet gets its ass handed to it.  Worf can't aim worth a damn.

Starfury bombers are somewhat pointless in a space battle, wouldn't you say?



> This is entirely true. EA couldn't field more than a couple dozen capital ships, in my estimation, whereas Starfleet is hugeous.




Starfleet _might_ be big, but how many episode has the Enterprise been the only Starfleet vessel in the sector/quadrant that was in range?  Even if Starfleet has more ships, their wacky deployments pretty much screw that advantage.



> if you want, we can do Shadows versus Borg.




Shadows, definitely.  I'd say the Shadows have individual intelligence, where the Borg don't.  They're more capable of independant thinking.  It's possible the Borg might be able to adapt to the Shadows' weapons of course, but over the long run I'd say their cunning gives them the edge over the Borg.


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## MrFilthyIke (Dec 27, 2003)

I feel as those I stumbled into the Geekiest. Thread. Ever.

Thanks guys, you made work go SO much quicker today.


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## Ankh-Morpork Guard (Dec 27, 2003)

I have to say, its WONDERFUL to see something 'vs. Star Trek' that isn't Star Wars for once.


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## s/LaSH (Dec 27, 2003)

Grr. Network ate my post. Retyping.



			
				Orius said:
			
		

> Starfury bombers are somewhat pointless in a space battle, wouldn't you say?




Not so. Bombers have historically been useful in naval engagements. I'd cite examples if I knew the names of the battles... the primary difference between a bomber heading for your ship and a fighter heading for your ship is that the bomber can carry a much larger quantity of explosives.



> Starfleet _might_ be big, but how many episode has the Enterprise been the only Starfleet vessel in the sector/quadrant that was in range?  Even if Starfleet has more ships, their wacky deployments pretty much screw that advantage.




See above for correction of my misestimate of Earthforce's size. But yes - Starfleet is really slow compared to Earthforce's hyperspace transit systems (6 months to cross the Federation, a few hours or days for B5 ships), so EF will have response and strike capabilities far in excess of Starfleet.



> Shadows, definitely.  I'd say the Shadows have individual intelligence, where the Borg don't.  They're more capable of independant thinking.  It's possible the Borg might be able to adapt to the Shadows' weapons of course, but over the long run I'd say their cunning gives them the edge over the Borg.




This was the meat of my previous post attempt. I'll sum up my points:

- Shadow co-opter parasites (see modern Centauri politics).
- Shadow cyberaffinitive human slaves (used in Sheridan's Battle of Mars); the equivalent of Trek's 'this virus will finish the Borg once and for all, no really'?
- Shadow proficiency with nanotech (Drakh Plague).
- Shadow planetbuster technology that they break out when things get serious (Borg seem to need planets, what happens if they lose those planets?)
- Shadow cutter beams. Borg assimilate energy weapons, but (as First Contact demonstrated) not physical assault. Many B5 weapons are particles of some kind (Vree antiproton cannons, the more traditional particle beams, etc etc). I don't know whether Shadow cutter beams are particulate or not, but even if they aren't, they're the kind of thing that cuts a Minbari Sharlin cruiser in half with one pulse. Something the Federation-rivalling weapons of the B5 'young races' could never hope to do - and if those weapons rival the Federation, and the Federation can damage Borg cubes, imagine what the superior Shadow weapons can do.
- Shadow hyperspace/realspace cohabitation. Supreme control over this ability means Shadows are only there when they want to be, but can see you at all times. Borg hyperdimensional architecture and transwarp tech doesn't compare.
- Finally, the Borg have one advantage: massive, massive population. (All of whom, seemingly, can mature into a Borg Queen if she's been blown up or melted this week and is thus otherwise unavailable.) This huge population (space cities in the trillions) could tip the scales the other way, as Shadows are by no means invulnerable...


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## Darrin Drader (Dec 28, 2003)

RangerWickett said:
			
		

> Meanwhile, Geordi and Wesley (as much fun as Wil Wheaton is, I can't stand the character) would bounce a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish, and then recalibrate the shield harmonics, adjust the matter/antimatter ratio, and finally stand up and adjust their shirts, which would blow up B5 in about 5 minutes.




No, no, you've got it all wrong. Wesley Crusher, now an adult, would use his traveler powers to become a native of the B5 universe where he becomes an awesome character that everyone likes (a la Bill Mumy, AKA Lennier, AKA Wil Robinson (Danger Wil Robinson!)). Now in the B5 universe, Wesley's raw intelligence outwieghs Geordi's lifetime worth of tech knowlege, and the entire Trek universe disappears in a thought bubble (since the power of thought is the most powerful force in the universe, you know!). 

Meanwhile, now safe from the incursion of the horrid writers, Wil Wheaton has a regular acting job again and B5 gets another long-running TV series.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Dec 29, 2003)

> Shadow cutter beams. Borg assimilate energy weapons, but (as First Contact demonstrated) not physical assault




I am not sure if this is entirely correct, if you are talking to the Holodeck scene when Picard shoots them down with a Machine Pistol. As it seems, it takes the Borg always some time to adapt to a certain weapon technology, regardless how often they encountered it. (Maybe they have to download the technical data from the collective or what ever Techbabble we want to use  ). 
Since only a few Borg are shot on the holodeck scene, it might be that they were just caught flatfooted (so to speak) and unable to adapt.

They seem to have trouble with slower moving physical attacks (like fists and swords), but they can take some punishment. (It seems as if only Data and Worf - both known for a high strength - can harm the Borg really fast.)

There is also another incident that the Borg have no real trouble with physical weapons - Photon and Quantum Torpedos are projectile weapons, and the first contact between Starfleet and Borg did prove that at least Photon tprpedos have little effect on a Cube.

Just another thing about beaming through shields: 
I rewatched the Borg Assault on the Starfleet in Startrek VIII, and it seems as if the Enterprise did not have to lower its shield to beam the Defiant survivors aboard (the Enterprise was under attack during that scene and shielded the Defiant against the Borg). They are probably still incapable of beaming through enemy shields, but their own ones pose no problems (or they can lower them partially or fast enough to not pose any threats.)

More geek-knowledge later... 

Mustrum Ridcully


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## s/LaSH (Dec 30, 2003)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:
			
		

> They seem to have trouble with slower moving physical attacks (like fists and swords), but they can take some punishment. (It seems as if only Data and Worf - both known for a high strength - can harm the Borg really fast.)




This could indeed be the case. I do not know.



> There is also another incident that the Borg have no real trouble with physical weapons - Photon and Quantum Torpedos are projectile weapons, and the first contact between Starfleet and Borg did prove that at least Photon tprpedos have little effect on a Cube.




Of course, torps do most of their damage through radiation release (as discussed above, with reference to antimatter and engagement ranges). If one were to actually _hit_ a cube... well, it'd probably breach a couple of compartments before the energy wave hit an internal forcefield. The Borg love those things. It probably accounts for half the reason their ships are so tough and weathered-looking.



> Just another thing about beaming through shields:
> I rewatched the Borg Assault on the Starfleet in Startrek VIII, and it seems as if the Enterprise did not have to lower its shield to beam the Defiant survivors aboard (the Enterprise was under attack during that scene and shielded the Defiant against the Borg). They are probably still incapable of beaming through enemy shields, but their own ones pose no problems (or they can lower them partially or fast enough to not pose any threats.)




I guess Sovereign-class vessels might have a few sophistications. They're just about the newest class in Starfleet, though, right?


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## Creamsteak (Dec 30, 2003)

Minor thing that hasn't been mentions (I think) is that the Federation (and Imperial ships in Star Wars) are built with the bridge on "top". The only reason to do this has to be for show, because logically you'd put the bridge as deep in the ship as possible. It's a minor weakness with shields being the primary defense, but at least the Minbari cruisers and such place important systems in areas that aren't so easy to blast.


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## hong (Dec 30, 2003)

Ankh-Morpork Guard said:
			
		

> I have to say, its WONDERFUL to see something 'vs. Star Trek' that isn't Star Wars for once.



I thought threads like this were an urban myth.


Hong "not posting to this thread, nope" Ooi


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## Michael Morris (Dec 30, 2003)

Quiet

Q wins.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Dec 30, 2003)

Creamsteak said:
			
		

> Minor thing that hasn't been mentions (I think) is that the Federation (and Imperial ships in Star Wars) are built with the bridge on "top". The only reason to do this has to be for show, because logically you'd put the bridge as deep in the ship as possible. It's a minor weakness with shields being the primary defense, but at least the Minbari cruisers and such place important systems in areas that aren't so easy to blast.



This might be true for the older Minbari Cruisers, but both the Whitestar ships and the Earth Alliance ships (and Babylon 5 itself) seemed to have windows on their bridge (not only monitors or screens). 

Regarding beaming through shields:
There was also an incident where even Enterprise D could beam through shields. They used a weakness in the Shields due to some "Sensor Cycle" to transport Chief O' brien aboard the ship.

I investigated some more links about Startrek and Babylon 5 tech.
They can be found here: 
http://www.merzo.net/links.htm

(I used merzo`s site as a starting point, since he has Starships from nearly all "Sci Fi universes" on his site)

I think the main problem is that all series have shown various inconsistencies that make it hard to assess many aspects that are interesting in regards to Firepower, Technology and size.

Size: 
As it seems, the Earth Alliance nor the ISA fill the whole B5 galaxy. Many incidents indicate a quite small region of maybe a few hundred lightyears.
Similar observations in Startrek seem to indicate that the Federation isn´t as big as sometimes believed. (Some figures would indicate that even the fastest Startrek ship would need 7 years to cross Federation space, while the Enterprise D and the Defiant were able to travel between the various borders, Earth and DS9 within no more than 2 days...)

The size of EarthForce fleet seemed to be around 50.000+ ships. I don`t know if these all are Capital ship, but they aren`t definitely all Omega class destroyers...

The size of Starfleet is much more difficult to guess. 
Starfleet seems to have divided its ship into several subfleets. I don`t know how many of them exist, but the numbers indicate at least something in the double digits.
As the Galaxy Class was first designed and constructed, there were plans to have 12 ships of this class. Approximately 10 years later, during the Dominion wars, there were entire "Galaxy wings" (obviously a notion for us Startrek geeks  ), which probably should mean more than one galaxy ship per wing. I would assume 6 to 12 ships per wing. The Galaxy probably was the second largest and strongest ship of Starfleet. There are much more Starship types existing in Starfleet than the Galaxy ship, in service are at least the following established and older classes, most of the capable of independent operation: Akira, Ambassador, Steamrunner, Defiant, Excelsior, Intrepid, Mirinda, Nebula, Nova Peregrime, Cheyenne, New Orleans. Missing here are newer and experimental classes like the Prometheus and the New Sovereign, and there seem to be much more classes than this.
If we assume that each of the "subfleets" consists of a wing (6+) of each ship class, and we expect to have 50 of these fleets, this would make the fleet as large as 3.600 ships. (it would be 14.000 if there were 100 fleets and 12 ships in each wing)
This is significantly smaller than the size of the Earthforce fleet, which is a bit surprising (and a bit disappointing for a Startrek Fan like me) , since the Federation does not consisists of a few colonies but several independent races. 
The B5 tech definitely can produce ships much faster than the Starfleet tech. 

Weapons Tech: 
The B5 sites I checked used on-screen "evidence" (as far as we can call it this) to calculate the energy outputs of the weapons an scientific bases. I actually cannot test if these calculations are valid, but if we assume they are, the B5 weapons are superior the Phaser weapons of Startrek ships as they are described in the Technical Manual of the USS Enterprise - this does change if we compare it to the potential output of the photon torpedos, making the Startrek figures quite inconsistent (Either Phasers would be absolutely useless in ship to ship combat, or Photon Torpedos would be severely overpowered). 
But there are also onconsistencies in Babylon 5 - Minbari Capital Ships seem to be destructable by some bombs which have a much lower damage output. 
You can reread most of this in the links...

If we`d use on-screen evidence, the weapons effect of both ships seem to be similar against standard ship hulls and also asteroids, but not in the case of planetary bombardment. While the Centauri fleet needs 4 days to waste Narn (and it is even still habitable after that), while a combined Cardassian/Romulan Task Force destroys the whole surface of a planet using phasers/disruptors and photon torpedos within a few minutes. 

Earthforce Interceptor Weapon Technology might make it difficult for Starfleet ot use its own torpedos, but torpedos seem to be capable of countering this (if we now use the Technical manual description). Since we never see someone using active torpedo measures, we have no real way to determine if this is "true".

The range of Starfleet weapons seems to be much greater than that of Eartforce (or other races in the same universe). We usually see very close encounters around starships, and some quotes on the websites about the Excalibur seem to prove that B5 weapons indeed have a lower range. 
Starfleet beam and torpedo weapons are capable of firing in all directions, while the more powerful turrets of the B5 ships are stationary. 
The B5 ships seem not be able to contain their firepower for long, while according to the technical manual, the Phasers can rapidly fire for 21 minutes with reload times below 0.5 seconds. 

If we use this on screen evidence, Starfleet seems to win, since they still have shields in addition to their hull. If we use on-screen evidence with Bab5 and the Technical Manual for Startrek, the Earthforce is probably superior (especially if they usually can intercept all torpedos), since they simply deal more damage and their hull can absorb much more damage than a Starfleet ship might be able to inflict.  

Faster Than Light Travel: 
Hyperspace Jumps seem to allow much faster speed (or at least shorter travelling times) than Warp Engines, so this is clearly a superior technology. It has one weakness, though:
Navigating Hyperspace is difficult and it seems only to work so well because of the many Jump Gates and their broadcasts. It seems as if only deep space explorers are capable of safely jumping into unchartered terretory (and returning home). An invasion in Starfleet Space might be difficult if Earthforce is unable to build hyperspace gates, while an invasion of Starfleet in Earthforce space would probably require them to destroy or conquor hyperspace gates (the former one would be considered an attack on all races in B5 and would be very unwise).
Maybe modern Starfleet Sensor technology would be able to easy navigating in hyperspace, but withouth the appropriate engines or gates, this would be useless. 
An important advantage of Warpengines seem to be the possiblity of using them during normal combat maneuvers, greatly increasing the effectice combat range and the maneuverability of Starfleet ships. 
This also poses the question if Babylon 5 technology allows FTL sensors. 
The "Picard maneuver" does, as an example, work only against enemies without them. The ship basically is faster than its own light, thus making it appear to be at multiple positions at the same time (sciencetifically, this is quite doubtful, but so is the whole warpengine and subspace theory anyway). This could be a real problem for Earthforce technology (like interception a full salvo of photon torpedos at Warp speed)

Standard Engines: 
There are inconsistent figures regarding this. The Whitestar ships and the Shadows seem to be REALLY fast. But on the other hand, the battles around Babylon 5 stay in quite enclosed regions, and the Starfuries are said to have an maximum acceleration of 1km/sec^2 (while the whitestars seem to have some in 1.000 km/sec^2). The starfuries are clearly very maneuverable, which doesn`t apply for the Capital ships.
According to the manual (and also as it seems in the series), the Impuls Engine is capable of fast sublight speeds. (0.25c is the usual speed, but speeds of 0.75c are possible, even if not recommended due to the relativisit effects), and the old Ambassador Class (the Enterprise C was of this type) was designed to have an acceleration of 10 km/sec^2. (Which was only achieved due to using a weak subspace generator, similar to the one used Warp Engines).
Startrek ships seem to be very maneuverable for their size, and are capable of "full stops" and "reverse thrust". 

Energy production: 
Starfleet ships use Matter/Antimatter reaction and fusion reactors. The former are shown superior and are needed for warp speed, while the latter seems sufficient for all the rest of the ship - shields, weapons, impuls engine, life support (which makes me wonder what they do with all the M/AM Energy, but this can probably simply answered: They spare their AM resources when not flying at warp speed).
Earthforce ships "only" use Fusion reactors for all systems. 
The Antimatter system seems to be both a strength and a weakness - it allows much more energy to be produced, but if the "Warp Core" breaches, the ship is utterly destroyed. (We have seen this so many times in TV). If Starfleet ships have an achilles heel, its this system. 

Ground Combat: 
I think Hand Phasers and PPGs are mostly equivalent. They will kill or stun the intended target once it hits them. Body armor might be able to hold of some shots of weaker phaser levels, but at higher levels, even this should be no problem (though this means fast discharging of phaser - simple hand-held phasers can fire approximately 3 charges on highest setting, while the rifles are capable of more shots). PPGs do fire faster than Phasers (not counting longer phaser beams), so it might be easier to give cover and supress enemy activies with them.
Federation defensive tech aboard their space ships is impressive. All modern ships and installiation seem to have several force field projectors that allow to seal of any intruders. Transporter technology might be capable of simply transfering intruders into the brig, back to their carrier, or into open space. 
The Life support system could also be used against intruders (either by using sleep gas, or by venting the area). 
It seems as if the Earthforce could have some serious trouble on Starfleet installations, especialy since, unlike Jem`Hardar or Klingon troups they can`t beam directly into a vital area but have to fight to it.

Conclusion:
Actually, I can`t make a real conclusion, since there are to many inconsistencies in both universes to make a fair comparision. 
One of the possible scenario:
Earthforce ship leave hyperspace at close range to Starfleet ship and immediately attack surprised Starfleet ship. The whole weapons energy hits the unprotected hull and shortly thereafter the ship blows up.
Another: 
Starfleet ship launches hit and run attack using both Impulse and Warp Engine to hit Earthforce ship from long range. Annoyed (but not terribly damaged), the ship leaves to Hyperspace. 
Yet Another:
Earthforce Ship attacks Starfleet ships and damages its hull severely, but it can raise its shield and buy some time and start evasive maneuvers. It returns fire with Phasers and destroys the Earthforce ship main weapon system or the Starfuries (which ever seem more dangerous.

Mustrum Ridcully


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