Surprised this thread is still going.

Pretty much have to agree with Whiskey, except on the Feds and Rebels not allying. The rebels would pretty much ally with anybody with similar morals. Then again, it wouldn't really prevent the Empire from crushing the Feds.

 

One thing to consider: Using very conservative numbers, the Empire is quite capable of building and crewing eight hundred Imperial Star Destroyers per year. So even if the Feds somehow even it to 1:1 attrition ratios, they're still horribly outmatched. That is also ignoring the entire rest of the Imperial fleet, as there's quite a lot of different ship types.

But yes, the Empire should be the 'fewer numbers' in a mod.

 

I'm quite surprised that you'd be knowledgeable about this Kitkun; you never struck me as the type that'd be into scifi versus debating.

Anyways, on the topic of Feds&Rebels allying, I maintain that they wouldn't based on the logistics of the issue; each group is in an entirely separate galaxy from the other. It's simply too great a distance, especially if the Empire alone controls the wormhole terminii.

That's quite possibly more people than have ever lived on Earth. By several orders of magnitude, to boot.

I'm not sure about that; not that they couldn't, we know they can. Just that they would or do. The Empire's already stated as having 25,000 ISDs, and thanks to hyperdrive's WTF-pwning speed, said ISDs can comfortably handle the majority of threats that smaller star destroyers, or the even smaller corvettes and frigates, might not be able to. Consider that the Empire is a police state, and is going to need more small ships than large craft, with ISDs straddling the middle, somewhat.

I'm interested in where you found this wiki page.

For the most part, it's because there's a few batshit-insane people who refuse to listen to reason in that the Empire squishes the Federation like a bug. Robert Scott Anderson, AKA Darkstar/RSA/"Scooter", is one of those people. The main reason why Mike Wong, the quoted individual in that passage, does such analyses is that people like Darkstar pull every one-episode wonder (of which Trek has many) and say "this technology=Federation win", when it doesn't.

Ignoring the fanboy jab, I fail to see why the Metaphasic Cloak is a credible threat. ST ships still cannot hurt SW ships, it's likely that they still interact with gravity, which Crystal Grav-Trap sensors employ for detection, and it's also, IIRC, pretty clear that a phase-cloaked ship cannot fire weapons which will cause an effect-on-target.

Note that Mike Wong's analyses of such devices typically involve short snippets on the feasibility/realism of such devices by the standards of known science. Further, "cloaking" in the sense of most science fiction media isn't something we know how to do, or it wouldn't be applicable in space (285 Kelvin habitat module against the 3 Kelvin background of SPAAACE!). Most of the "cloaking" devices we have today are more analogous to complex projection and camera systems than a magitech cloaking device.

I'll further note that the phase cloak in the episode was mentioned to make whatever was "phase cloaked" non-interactive with normal non-phase-cloaked objects. A great deal of the things that Geordi and Laren did would have required whatever objects the interacted with to also be phase cloaked, which they were not.

Out-of-universe, it's a case of the writers being schizo and inconsistent with the technologies.

The problem with your analogy is that Star Trek tries to present itself as a somewhat believable setting. In other words, it tries to present itself in such a way as to allow the viewer to think "yeah, this could totally be the future". Sadly, a part of this presentation is through the (often incorrect) usage of scientific terms and "buzzwords", to make technology sound plausible. Star Treks technobabble levels, when taken as a whole, are often mindbogglingly high. Additionally, the series overseen by Gene Rodenberry tended to have a message of some sort; this was usually more prevalent in TNG than TOS. DS9 and VOY simply went downhill; they'd get quite preachy at you.

I'm rather glad I never noticed the preachyness of DS9 when I watched it, because the memories are left unspoiled that way.

I will further note that Star Wars never tries to present itself as a plausible future, or as anything that's scientifically plausible. It also gets bonus points for never trying to bog down the viewer/reader in technical details (unless its an ICS, in which case that's the point), and also using very little technobabble. For the most part, technology used by characters in Star Wars just works; the characters don't bother to explain it, they don't bother to chat about how stuff works, it just does. In contrast, in Star Trek the characters often explain minor details of whatever solution-of-the-week they've cooked up, though they are always talking to each other, so that helps prevent breakage of the fourth wall.

That's really the difference between ST and SW; ST tries to present itself somewhat scientifically plausible, and SW never does.

The debunking-ST bit is, IMO, mostly because the maintainer of that site gets a lot of emails from high-schoolers and "TREK=GOD" people who say "[Treknology] is totally plausible and realistic!", when it's really not. It goes back to the people who take one-episode wonders and call them war-winners.

That's the thing though; TNG-onward, Trek tried to be somewhat scientific and failed, and ended up coming off as a bit pretentious. SW never did that; it was all to tell a story. Most of the technical data that's come out for it has all been because there's been SW fans who've been "well, just how much damage/acceleration/power generation does [whatever] have?" AFAIK, there's not been anyone who seriously works that who's gone, "yeah man, lightsabers are totally plausible and realistic".

Fairly certain that most of that was just natural progression and had nothing to do with ST.

I'd say that SW's potential scientific legacy is that it would encourage people to dream big. Why can't we have galaxy-spanning empires, faster-than-light travel for the masses, and an economy that's borderline post-scarcity?*

I would argue the inverse WRT cultural detail; there's probably a lot more people who know what Star Wars is and has seen at least one SW film, than people that know about ST and have seen at least one ST show. OTOH, both do have cultural permeation; "warp speed" is somewhat of a colloquialism for "go really fast", while there seems to be a lot more fan-made media around SW than ST.

And I would argue that that's the pitfall Trek fell into; it tried to have it's cake and eat it too. I think it's perfectly possible to have science in a show, and tell a story. The trick is doing it well, and not screwing up and looking pretentious in the end.

*Just to cover my bases, the Federation is far from post-scarcity. It's simply communist instead.

On the technology thing, there actually are people who have engineered things--the flip phone was specifically inspired by ST.  Look for a series called "How Star Trek Changed the World" and you'll see interviews with several of them.

Yes--natural progression but would it have progressed that way without the inspiration? 

Sort of like changing the past and wondering how the future would have differed if you hadn't.

Believe it or not, I'm a really big fan of both SW and ST. I'm really like the uber-nerd.

Which I will now show off by interjecting some of my own commentary.

 

Star Wars also has cloaking technology, equally implausible as the 'standard' ST cloak. The phase cloak, however, just doesn't make sense at all. (Why don't they fall through the floor?) The only plausible-sounding 'cloaking' I've seen is in Mass Effect. And even that required an engine that could move you without any sort of emission whatsoever to not be stuck on a straight line.

 

Both have their share of absurdities, though ST has a particular problem with technobabble and contradicting itself.

Actually, it's a bit less than what the Empire's production averaged out to, assuming that the 25,000 number is total ISDs built between their introduction and the capture of Kuat.

ISDs aren't really straddling the middle. Everything bigger has a production run that barely reaches a dozen in the best cases. The ISD is the largest, and toughest, single opponent before you get into the extremely rare ships.

Canon, on both sides, has areas that are pants-on-head stupid. Likewise, SW 'canon' has a combat ship that's 600 meters long and is armed with... 6 lasers. Less firepower than an X-Wing. (Nevermind, someone finally noticed how dumb that was and revised it to a 250 meter ship armed with 20 lasers. Still absurdly bad, though.)

 

Well lets stop talking about it and give me a hand in making the bloody thing!

Great Vid, how would you get that into the game as the opening video.

Actually we would need a video with Star Wars Vs Star Trek Vs Stargate Vs Battlestar G Vs Babylon 5, with the borg chucked in. I've got the Youtube downloader, i might give it a go. What format does it have to be in for sins to read it? I need a break from all this code i'm trying to understand.

Now that i'm thinking aloud, what do i need to take a video of an in game battle. I've just watched a great battle between Daedalus Class Vs the Defiant. I've got most of the weapons changed over apart from the defiant which fires LRM missiles.

 

Theo

 

Probably, though I'd say it'd be more likely that slider-phones and Blackberry-styled phones would be the far more common type.

Have I said it's invalid? Nope. I've said that it's scientifically ridiculous, but not invalid.

1. Provide evidence that the Federation has a working example of the metaphasic cloak, since, IIRC, they broke the damn thing.

2. Provide evidence that the Federation can rapidly manufacture and field metaphasic cloaks on shuttles, that can then be used as suicide bomber craft.

3. Provide evidence that the Federation has the industrial capacity to keep up with the fact that the Empire can replace warships faster than the Federation can blow them up.

I'll end with the fact that an internal explosion bloody well isn't the same as an external weapons strike, because the armor is designed to take external weapons strikes, not internal explosions.

1. It's "Geordi".

2. Why are these two people, one of which is a one-off example of exceptional miniaturization, a danger to the Empire?

Gotcha.

Absolutely. I probably should have mentioned that SW cloaks are equally implausible. Though I do agree; the phase cloak doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

WRT Mass Effect cloaks, it's plausible sounding, but I'm pretty sure that it'd be impossible. Too much heat to sink, and the stuff inside your ship is just too hot to keep the exterior cool like that for a long time.

The funny thing is that I see a definite similarity between the ME-verse stealth system and Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space series stealth system. The difference being that Reynolds outright says "yeah, this violates thermodynamics locally", instead of coming up with a plausible explanation. OTOH, said devices only locally violate thermodynamics, and even then, only when a particular algorithm is run.

Definitely true; though there are obviously some contradictions in SW canon, though the continuity system that SW has set up pretty much makes that a non-issue.

Did not know that. Learn at least 2-3 new things every day.

Kinda why I said "somewhat"; everything bigger than an ISD isn't produced in large numbers, while everything smaller is generally incapable of matching it. Though, I think that the Venator-class could probably match an Imperial-class, despite being quite a bit smaller, but it's more due to the fact that the Venator has a much larger proportion of internal volume apportioned to a reactor, and has comparable heavy gun armament to an ISD-I.

Oh, absolutely. Some of those examples are the kind of thing where you look at it and you want to bang your head into a wall.

Did either myself or Kitkun every say that? No. She simply acknowledged that there's parts in both series of head-banging stupidity.

Fix'd. Seriously though, the idea is pretty ridiculous, because:

1. The most common scientific uses of "dimension" refer to the 4 that we experience; forward/backward, left/right, up/down, and time. Can't really slip into only one of them can you?

2. In the more theoretical usage, i.e. a region that we cannot experience, who's to say:

i) This dimension's laws of physics are the same?
ii) This dimension's laws of physics are or are not inimical to human life?
iii) That the energy requirements of moving into this dimension are even theoretically feasible?

3. As a scientific concept, it's bollocks. As a scifi concept, it depends on the relative setting. In ST? You could probably run with it (they did, after all). Most others? Doubt it. As a fantastical concept? Fine.

 

Key words: may, theorized, appears, potential. Oh yeah, and dark matter/energy.

1. Bringing in scientific hypotheses to prove the scientific plausibility of the phase cloak is daft, since the device's name suggests that it is "out of phase" with the rest of the universe (which is scientifically retarded), and not halfway into another universe.

2. We're not sure if dark matter and/or energy even exists.

3. This part of your post is a total sine qua non. The name of the phase cloak, and its operational characteristics, suggest that the writers intended for it to be a device which places the user "out-of-phase" with the rest of the universe. Not something that dipped them halfway into another 'verse.

This is another case of you not knowing what you're talking about. Materials science in Star Wars is obviously millenia (at least!) ahead of what current science even thinks is possible. It's also known that then neutronium in SW armor is in "nodules"/"modules", where it's basically an injected material; it doesn't compose entire layers, it's a structural reinforcing material. Toss in the tensor fields (comparable to ST structural-integrity fields), and you have crazy-ass materials strength.

The other problem is that, even assuming the phase cloak works, and that it works by dumping you partially into another universe, then gravity still works on you, which means that a Crystal Grav-Trap sensor (CGT), which detects using gravity, will still see you. There goes your suicide bomber craft plan.

Which is still quite scientifically implausible. I've considered meson-based weapons, but have decided that the particles would be too difficult to generate and control for it to be worthwhile. A pity, since "meson cannon" sounds cool.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Yes, it takes ridiculous amounts of energy for SW ships to manage what they can do. But it's SW-canon that they have such energy available. The ISD's reactor is stated as producing as much energy as a small star.

Getting back to most of what you're saying here, I'm going to guess that you're taking issue with my versus debate posts WRT mod balance. Which they were never meant to address. If you'll, you know, pay attention, then you'll notice that I have never advocated a balance that would approximate the actual wartime situation between the Empire and Federation. I've always advocated that the Empire have fewer, more powerful ships (they're not going to detach anything more than a sector fleet to take care of something as piddly as the Alpha Quadrant), with the Federation effectively having "local" numerical superiority. This is countered by the fact that the Empire would have researchable upgrades to decrease production time of all ship types, and the resource costs of said ship types.

It would help if you put up a new thread for the mod, instead of using this one. It would also serve as better advertising.

Lol--of course its a fantastical concept--it is science fiction.  Goes right along with phase engines and wormhole travel.  Straining at thermodynamics in an extra-dimensional environment while unhesitatingly accepting travelling through wormholes is a bit silly.  They are both on par for absurdity. 

There are tons of issues for getting anything through a wormhole and getting large material objects through one is the most improbable of all.  They are a great game and fiction device though.

As to dimensions--those are pretty fixed in number (10 or 11--I lean to M-theory with 11) as we understand it currently but universes appear ad infinitum.

Universes penetrate and are penetrated by various dimensions--with effects we really don't understand well at present.  A clumsy analogy is that dimensions are the random seeds (a la graphics fractal generators) for universes.  Universes get their properties from dimensions they abut or are intersected by/with.

So if you are joined firmly with dimension 1, 2, 3 you may have a universe completely alien to one that abuts 5 and 9.  When universes intersect one another (note I'm avoiding talking about branes and the like--this is just general speculation) there's the possibility that they can leak or leech traits from one another to some degree (like the gravity example I gave).

So where that could lead is that something ridiculously implausible in universe "A" because of its dimensional geometry becomes possible because it intersects universe "B" with dimensional connections that allow "the impossible".

At present, the only possible known examples we have of this is gravity and the big bang.  It's hard to speculate far because we can't "see" into these other realities--just glimpses with mathematics but as Hawkings has expressed, random chance explains infinite variation.  Essentially, anything is possible--it just depends on your position and chance.

Science fiction essentially relies on this premise so it's really the core of what you do in it.  It isn't a question of "how absurd" a concept is...it's a question of how can well you can make it an element of your story or game.  So taking a science fiction plot device that's no more or less absurd than another and saying, that one seems more possible than this one--wormholes...extradimensional location..same thing, different metaphors.

And you can actually alter and travel in dimensions.  We do it all the time.  One is time, another is space--and these are actual dimensions. The thing that makes most theoretical physicists say FTL travel will probably never happen is that to travel faster than the speed of light is to effectively bend time and the universe and those are things current science will tell you would require scales of magnitude beyond our conception...yet we do it routinely in the game settings.

And why is there no spell check for "Geordie"!?

The Venator can indeed take on an ISD, but in the exact opposite way: Although the primary armament compares to the Imperial-I, the Venator has only point defense after that, while the ISD's secondary armament is actually quite a bit more fearsome than the primary. However, the Venator is almost entirely one massive hangar. It will win as long as it stays way away from an ISD and lets it's massive complement of fighters and bombers fight.

Of course, the Venator is pretty much the only smaller ship capable of besting an ISD one-on-one.

 

Agree with the first paragraph, though its also worth pointing out that an ISD would have better shield and power system. An ISD had a power output roughly twice that of the Venator, which only had the shields of a Victory Star Destroyer. Thus in turbolaser fight the ISD is going to win every single time. Its fighter compliment is its only advantage, which might not even matter unless it has a decent speed advantage (can't find any numbers for the Venator), as the ISD would just close the distance and finish it off.

 

And the Sun Crusher, I'm pretty sure a near-invincible fighter could destroy an ISD quite easily.

Then my numbers disagree with yours. Granted mine are just from Wookiepedia, but it puts total power generation of the Venator at 3.6 × 10²⁴ W, while the ISD has 7.73 × 10²⁴ W. Perhaps the difference is just from secondaries, but considering the larger area of the ISD's generator, I'd doubt it. Regardless its an advantage that should not be ignored.