My favorite Enterprise vs Star Wars ship that I've seen
My favorite Enterprise vs Star Wars ship that I've seen
96 comments
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"Science Ship" sure buddy, operating independently in remote locations with light to medium intensity combat situations is a mere science ship.
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We do what we must, because we can
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For the ones who are still alive
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light to medium intensity combat situations
Are you kidding me? The Enterprise encounters god-like beings on a regular basis, and still manages to subsist after all those episodes, only having lost a very large bunch of its low-ranked crew members. The death star would easily be dealt with in a single episode (but if possible without killing all the people living on the death star, as that would be super cruel).
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Larry Niven subtweeted this in some Known Space books. The protagonists' ship in Ringworld has a wide variety of tools and equipment that are not technically weapons. Including a mining laser that once punched a hole so deep into a moon that it developed a stable atmosphere. Accordingly, the main character christens it the Lying Bastard.
It spends the whole first novel upside-down in a ditch.
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Who would win, a B-17 Flying Fortress with no bombs, or the USS Missouri?
Edit: Also the Missouri can fly too, but it's a little less maneuverable, usually
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Which, why doesnt it have bombs? I know the Falcon isn't a warship, but I like to think that if I were in Han Solo's position, I would keep at least one bomb around just for leverage.
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He dumped those for smuggling room.
Lando had missiles loaded on his version of the falcon, and missiles were used in combat in the older books. But I believe it was referenced at some point that Han dumped the missiles for more room.
The empire also specifically outlawed certain weapons on ships to make civilians more reliant on the imperial navy, mearning heavier lasers and the more capable missles were never legally a viable option. Normally not an issue to a smuggler, but as Han stated, even he gets boarded sometimes.
But yes, the Falcon has missile hard points and can function as a light blockade runner for military purposes.
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Two things: crew size and phasers.
The Aluminum Falcon can be operated by a crew of 2. If you want both turrets being operated, it's 4. The enterprise has a crew of hundreds. That gives an idea of the size difference between the two, and the difference in capabilities. If the Falcon takes damage, one of the crew has to go and do repairs, reducing the effective crew to 1 or 3. If someone is injured (say by an exploding panel) it's 1 person down, and another to provide first aid, so either autopilot (crew of 2) or one of the turrets is no longer manned (crew of 4). Meanwhile, on the Enterprise, all that happens is that the junior X steps up while the senior X is taken to sick bay and treated by the dedicated medical crew.
Then there are phasers. In Star Wars, the main ship-to-ship weaponry seems to be "laser" cannons, that shoot significantly slower than light-speed projectiles. The things are even slow compared to 2020s bullets, as you can actually follow their path through space. In addition, the weapons are either aimed with manned turrets or are boresight weapons, firing directly forwards (X-Wings, TIE fighters, etc.) Meanwhile, the Enterprise uses phasers, which seem to be close to light speed, and more importantly seem to be something you can aim using a computer and just come out of the front of the ship in whatever direction they're aimed. They very rarely seem to miss. It's just a question of whether or not the target's shields hold. In this case, they're aiming at a small smuggler's ship. They might miss, but if they hit it's unlikely the shields would hold out for very long against weapons that were designed to take on other 100-crew starships.
Star Destroyer vs. Enterprise might be interesting. Or, Delta Flyer vs. Falcon. Or a DS9 "Runabout" vs. the Falcon. But, Falcon vs. Enterprise is not a fair fight. No question the Enterprise would crush it.
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Size comparisons aren't particularly useful when the tech gap is so large. A single relatively small Culture ship would annihilate the Empire and have a grand old time doing it. Going by supplemental technical books from both franchises, Star Wars is insanely, hilariously, beyond the Federation in the ability to project energy. The printed values for Star Wars are frankly absurd and make very little sense, but if we took them at face value the Falcon would be a nigh unstoppable menace. Like throwing some AA guns on a tugboat and harassing some previously uncontacted tribes in the Pacific.
Using estimates from what we see on screen lessens the gap considerably, but still puts Star Wars in general on a higher rung of the Kardeshev scale. I don't know if it still exists, but stardestroyer.net used to have some great calculations of blaster energy levels based entirely from OT footage, with full breakdowns of their math and estimations. As for the "lasers," that's just old nomenclature from long since outdated weapons, blaster tech drives the vast majority of Star Wars weaponry. In new canon, they're plasma weapons. In old canon, there were several flavors, including plasma, but most were particle weapons that used some very exotic fictional particles that didn't interact much with normal matter except thermally, like how dark matter doesn't react much except gravitationally.
And really. It just makes sense. Star Wars technologically plateaued ages ago. The invention of FTL tech is prehistory. Star Trek is only a couple centuries ahead of us.
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Star Wars technologically plateaued ages ago
And yet, they don't have computer-aimed turrets. They still rely on people getting into turrets and aiming at their targets using some kind of low-fi 1970s era CRT to assist them. They may have plateaued ages ago, but it seems like their plateau was pretty low. They never developed transporters, they never developed replicators, AFAIK they don't have cloaking devices. They have robots, but the robots seem pretty primitive in a number of ways -- certainly they don't have any robots that are advanced enough to be mistaken for humans / humanoids.
It's also hard to estimate the power of "laser" cannons based on what you see on screen.
On one hand, a specialty space station was created that was powerful enough to blow up an entire planet in the matter of seconds. Even if the weapons they use for ship-to-ship fire are 1000x less powerful, 1/1000th of the power needed to destroy a planet is absurdly huge. Maybe the weapons are incredibly powerful, but we don't know because the shields are also incredibly powerful.
Meanwhile, the Star Trek world only got warp drive recently, so recently that the individual who created it is still in living memory. But, just because it's recent doesn't mean they're not even more technologically advanced. Everything we see in Star Trek suggests that they blew past the plateau that Star Wars hit, and kept going. Transporter beams, replicators, holodecks, limited time travel, androids with positronic brains that can pass for humans, artificial intelligence both at an individual scale (robots and sentient robotic aliens) but also at larger scales, like the ship's computers.
Maybe in Star Wars world, there are no really advanced aliens, so all the alien races got brought into the same empire. Since there's no outside influence creating pressure to come up with new technologies, there's technological stagnation. In Star Trek's universe, they keep finding new aliens, many of whom are so advanced they're godlike. That has to keep inspiring inventors. In addition, instead of one giant empire, there are multiple empires, many of whom are hostile to one-another. One thing that tends to result in technological development is arms races against aggressive neighbors.
I tend to ignore what they say at places like stardestroyer.net because the more you look into these Sci Fi universes (and probably the George Lucasverse more than most) the more contradictions and paradoxes you see. I find I can enjoy them more if I just let my imagination fill in the details, based on what I see on-screen.
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Meanwhile, the Enterprise uses phasers, which seem to be close to light speed
A phaser beam is made up of nadion particles, which to my eyes seems to move through space at about the same speed as a Star Wars laser bolt.
I think a more fair fight would be a Danube runabout vs. the Falcon, but my money is still on the Starfleet ship.
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In Star Trek, photon torpedoes seem to go about as fast as "laser" cannons in Star Wars:
https://youtu.be/j2DEo305CXk?t=35
Phasers are "nearly instantaneous", which is slow compared to light speed, but means there's maybe one video frame where the phaser has been fired and it hasn't yet hit.
https://youtu.be/j2DEo305CXk?t=346
In Star Wars, the "laser" cannons are slow enough that you can see individual bursts flying through the air at once. To me, that suggests it's even slower than 2020s bullet speeds.
https://youtu.be/LVHnyqhl3Bk?t=28
Anyhow, my money is always on the Star Trek ships. The Star Wars universe still seems to use human aiming most of the time, where the Star Trek universe uses computer targeting and target locks. It's basically 1950s tech but with "lasers" vs 2020s tech but with "phasers".
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The Enterprise and Millennium Falcon should put aside their differences and sloppy kiss, boobs pressed together, etc.
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Starfleet shields are impervious to laser-based weapons. The Millennium Falcon would get curb stomped.
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This was much longer and much funnier than anticipated
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From TNG, "Conundrum":
PICARD: Tactical analysis, Mister Data.
DATA: The pods are equipped with fusion-generated pulse lasers and minimal shielding.
RIKER: Not much power there.
PICARD: Forward shields to maximum. Lock phasers on the sentry pods. Prepare to return fire.
WORF: Shields up. Phasers locked on targets.
PICARD: Full impulse. Take us straight through them.
DATA: We are through the perimeter, sir.
RIKER: That was too easy.
WORF: We have yet to encounter any battleships. They may lie ahead.
PICARD: Load all torpedo bays. Ready phasers.
WORF: Aye, sir.
MACDUFF: Approaching Central Command.
PICARD: Mister Data, scan for defences.
DATA: I am picking up no vessels, no additional sentry pods.
RIKER: Optimal firing range in fifty five seconds.
MACDUFF: Phaser banks ready. Loading torpedoes.
PICARD: What are the defensive capabilities of the Central Command?
DATA: Armaments consist of four laser cannons and thirty nine cobalt fusion warheads with magnetic propulsion. Defensive shield output is four point three kilojoules.
RIKER: One photon torpedo ought to do it.
TROI: Data, how many people on that station?
DATA: Fifteen thousand, three hundred eleven.
MACDUFF: We're within range, Captain.
PICARD: Stand by.
MACDUFF: Waiting for your order, sir.
TROI: Captain, this isn't right.
MACDUFF: The rest of our forces are depending on us.
RIKER: How can our mortal enemy be over a hundred years behind us in weapons technology?
...and in "The Outrageous Okana":
WORF: Still no response. Captain, they are now locking lasers on us.
RIKER: Lasers?
WORF: Yes, sir.
PICARD: Lasers can't even penetrate our navigation shields. Don't they know that?
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RIKER: How can our mortal enemy be over a hundred years behind us in weapons technology?
I see they have met the Russians too...
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Wtf are even "navigation shields?" They need shields to figure out what direction they're going? They may as well have said "Lasers can't even penetrate our compass!"
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Navigational shields deflect bits of dust and micrometeors away from the ship so that the hull isn't constantly being bombarded by interstellar debris so small that it doesn't merit navigating around or pushing out of the way with a tractor beam. Essentially, they are the absolute weakest form of ship defense, and the laser weapons described don't even pose a threat to them, let alone the actual defensive shields intended for use in combat.
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The worst "vs" arguments are the ones that invoke, say, Q, and how he'd instantly kill everyone in the Star Wars universe.
WHY WOULD HE?
HE PROBABLY STARTED THE FIGHT SO HE CAN WATCH, YOU NERDS.
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Ok but now I want to see Q and Yoda hanging out to see which one gets sick of the other one first
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Tumblr's gone plaid.
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I'd like to think I chose the best time to start watching TOS and become a fan.
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I dunno who would win. Did engineering install the remotely activated self-destruct switch on Enterprise already?
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_OJPgZSGKA
This has everything you need to know-
The range thing is also a huge factor. Federation photon torpedos have a range of 300,000 kilometers. Star Wars is pretty inconsistent, but depending on the ship range seems to be maxed out at hundreds of kilometers. They also seem to have poor sensors.
In Star Wars the Scimitar is considered a fast ship, it's top speed is apparently 1200km/h in atmosphere. IRC that's half as slow as a present day SR71 blackbird. Trek is inconsistent, but the TNG technical manual says that impulse can reach 0.75c but is usually limited to 0.25c to avoid time dilation issues. C being light speed. So that's roughly 150 million kms an hour except in emergencies when it's more than that.
So basically, ships from the star trek universe could simply keep a safe distance, safe in the knowledge the empire's ships are far too slow to ever catch up conventionally.
As your video points out, trek ships are also shielded. But so are photon torpedos, which at one point allows a photon torpedo to burrow into the stellar core of a sun. So the Death Star isn't an issue. Just fire a few photon torpedos at it. Apparently the Death Star only had shields to protect against energy weapons, not kinetic shields because that would block heat escaping the exhaust ports.
Then there's the whole teleportation thing.
And replicators.
And cloaking.
And red matter.
...
The longer you think about it, the sillier the comparison gets basically.
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The star wars universe is intentionally "post-apocalyptic" "star-punk". The star trek universe is post scarcity utopia. Hmmm. I wonder which one has better tech?
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I agree that Star Trek is on a completely different power scale than Star Wars, but comparing an in-atmosphere flight speed to interplanetary impulse speed is pretty disingenuous. Obviously there are physical factors that limit one of those but not the other.
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I agree with you on almost all points. However, I think Star Wars ships are faster over long distances than any non Borg ship or Discovery. It seems like no time to jump from the Outer Rim to the Core world while Voyager was lucky to cross the galaxy in 7 years.
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Milenium falcon for sure, if there's one thing thats constant throughout all the (startrek) series its that larger ships routinely get their asses handed over to them by far smaller vessels including somehow their own shuttle craft.
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I still think the SW universe has some completely different physics than ours. Speed of light, time, stuff like that just don't work the same way. I think it's some sort of microscopic fluidic space equivalent to a much younger our universe. After all, it occurs "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away".
Now, Starfleet crews commonly deal with all kinds of alternate universes and they tend to survive (at least if they have a show about them), so I'd still give Starfleet an edge. People im the SW universe get screwed way more often - unknown regions, hyperspace, galactic barrier... Everything we've seen Trek crews survive.
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The millennium falcon would win because it would make a better story and it has a history of assisting small ships destroying large space bases.
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The Millennium Falcon would destroy the Enterprise somehow. Then Kirk and crew would be stranded on a planet until they find a way to get aboard and commandeer the Falcon. Ultimately they would use it to go back in time and save the whales or something
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Now compare a Star Destroyer to The Defiant.
96 comments
Why does everyone fucking censor fucking fuck words now?
Fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck
How do you know it said fucking? Might have said Knob-gobbling Enterprise and Cunty Millennium Falcon.
We can fill in our own expletivesa and send it back to whichever sanatised and sterile commercial place it came from.
It contained personal information
Yeah this makes sense to you? No it >!John!< doesn't
His name is “Fuck”?
Is that what’s going on?! I thought there were alignment problems or something. Those texts were really confusing.
genitals
F
U
Because the big corporate platform may use OCR to determine whether an image is advertiser friendly and may limit it's exposure. Or the poster is uncomfortable with swearing. Or it was intended to be shared with the youngins.
Nonetheless, it's fucking awful and need to go away.