By the why I hope that all of you are taking this as good old fashion fun……Personally I like both, but I enjoy SW a little more.
Well with that said let us have a little more fun……………………….
Let us simply grab figures from the official publications, shall we. Of all the voluminous Star Wars and Star Trek publications out there, only one for each series gives meaningful specifications in real-world units: Star Wars Episode II Incredible Cross-Sections (SW2ICS) and the Star Trek Next Generation Technical Manual (TNG TM).
Star Wars Cruiser vs Enterprise ”D”
Star Wars-01:
Light guns: 300 million GW (6 megatons per shot, 24 guns, assume 1 shot every 2 seconds for time-averaged power output rather than peak output).
Star Trek-01:
Main phasers: 3.6 GW (5.1 MW per emitter, 200 emitters in the main phaser array, 2 full-sized saucer arrays and 3 smaller roughly half-size arrays on the stardrive section, p.123). Note that phasers appear to have a chain-reaction effect so their raw power output may be deceptively low.
Star Wars-02:
Main guns: 64000 GW (2 kilotons per shot, 480 rpm firing rate onscreen in AOTC for time-averaged power output rather than peak output)
Star Trek-02:
Main phasers: 3.6 GW . See above.
Star Wars-03:
Asteroid destruction: seismic charges destroy asteroids in a radius of 5-10 km in AOTC, 190 megatons.
Star Trek-03:
Asteroid destruction: according to Riker, it would take the entire photon torpedo payload to destroy a single 5km wide hollow asteroid in "Pegasus". In other words, it would take the entire payload of the Enterprise-D (a capital warship with a crew of a thousand) to equal just one of Jango Fett's seismic charges (a bounty hunter's weapon).Photon torpedoes: 64 megatons max theoretical (based on 1.5 kg antimatter payload, p.129)
Star Wars-04:
Reactor power: has power output of 7 billion GW max.
Star Trek-04:
Reactor power: ~4 billion GW at max warp 9.6
Star Wars-05:
Combat range: in ROTJ, combat initially occurs at ranges of a few thousands kilometres, eventually closing to a few hundred kilometres ("point blank" according to Lando) until Rebel ships are within a few dozen kilometres of the Executor.
Star Trek-05:
Combat range: fleet actions in DS9 uniformly feature engagements at ranges of 5 km or less, just as they do in TNG's Klingon wars or Borg engagements. In "The Die is Cast", Sisko actually orders the Defiant to approach to 500 metres (while taking fire) before shooting at a Jem'Hadar attack ship, presumably due to some disadvantage incurred at longer range. The only long-ranged incidents involve stationary or near-stationary targets. Not very good BVR systems!
Star Wars-06:
Speed: travel from galactic core systems to outer rim systems ("halfway across the galaxy" as Amidala put it) is shown repeatedly in ANH, TPM, and AOTC. It is invariably same-day traffic, typically a few hours.
Star Trek-06:
Speed: Voyager took 7 years to crawl across part of one quadrant of the galaxy, even with repeated assists from alien races, stolen technology, and even the occasional shove from a godlike being. Not hours ... years.
Star Wars-07:
Sublight acceleration: 3500G.
Star Trek-07:
Sublight acceleration: 1000G (design goal, p.75)
Star Wars-08:
Operational range: 250,000 light-years (before refueling).
Star Trek-08:
Operational range: 2750 light-years (7 years at warp 6 before refueling, p.3)
Star Wars-09:
Shield heat dissipation: 70 trillion GW peak
Star Trek-09:
Shield heat dissipation: 3311 GW peak (473 GW per generator x 7 generators, p.138)
Star Wars-10:
Reactor power: 200 trillion GW max
Star Trek-10:
Reactor power: ~4 billion GW at max warp 9.6 (scaled from the warp power chart on p.55 which uses units of joules for power; we assume this is a simple mistake). From the chart, their fuel supply for 7 years of warp 6 cruising would be roughly 2E23 J (enough to run an Acclamator's reactor at full power for just 1 second).
Star Wars-11:
Max hyperspace speed: not stated (however, the ability to travel "halfway across the galaxy" in a matter of hours as demonstrated in ANH, TPM, and AOTC requires speeds in the range of 10 million to 100 million times c).
Star Trek-11:
Max warp speed: ~2000c (warp 9.6), sustainable 12 hours for a single sprint of roughly 3 light-years. This appears to have increased to roughly 3000c for newer ships such as the Intrepid-class.
Conclusions:
In a straight-up fight, the Empire squashes the Federation like a bug. Even with its numerical advantage removed, the Empire would still squash the Federation like a bug. Accept it.
Additionally I can’t believe I work this much time on this particular post………………..May the Force be with you.
Face it, we are nerds to the power of ‘n’. Let us save our energy and focus and the real enemy.
Serenity and Babylon 5 fans
