Could the Federation defeat Star Wars' Empire in an all-out war?
Could the Federation defeat Star Wars' Empire in an all-out war?
Would a Federation warship like the Defiant out gun a Star Wars Star Destroyer? Who has a bigger armada? Who has the tactical advantage? Don't forget that The Federation includes the Klingons, who love warfare and have fast, agile, heavily armed ships, with cloaking devices, and the Vulcans with superior logic and tactical planning.
we talking cross universe or cross galaxy fight? Q likely takes issue with someone coming into his playground if we're universe hopping. Galaxy to galaxy it's carnage. As the thread here points out, both can destroy whole solar systems. Sure the federation would be slow to start doing so unless Janeway is still around. But they'd get there. Cloaking and transporter tech can make up for a fair amount of the federation being massively outnumbered. If the empire has to gind through borg territory before reaching federation space, that would balance things out. But really Trek time travels more often than stargate so who knows what madness that leads too. We may discover Sisko founds the jedi, while O'Brian finally snaps and founds the sith after being tortured for the 10,000th time.
Star Trek has vastly better sensors, shielding, weapons and science.
Sensors: they can detect the atmosphere and cargo inside a ship as well as how many individuals are in it. SW can't detect when an entire ship has docked to the hull.
Science: and then they can beam a person out of it. They can screw with any technology while transporting too.
Shielding: ISDs and Death Star can't keep fighter and the millennium falcon from running around inside their shield envelope. Federation shields give them the option to block crafting from passing.
Weapons: They made bombs that break space itself, and then apparently almost everyone agreed to ban them because its a stupidly dangerous idea.
Science 3: Genesis Device. Oh great you can destroy a planet. The Federation can create an entire solar system with a bomb.
Science 4: Federation developed a matter phasing cloak. Romulans made personal cloaks.
The only advantage the Empire has is numbers of ISDs. Even then, if the empire makes the wrong move they'll piss off the Dominion or the Borg, and the empire literally can't touch the borg.
I think Trek has better weapons, do they not? I'm not a Wars fan (have seen them each once and "meh").
From what I do remember, It took an entire Death Star the size of a small moon to destroy a planet. Don't most federation ships carry enough armament to easily do the same?
AFAIK (again, not a Wars fan/expert) but don't they use mostly laser weapons which are primitive and easily shrugged off by 24th century shields?
Assuming my memory is correct, then I'm going to say the Defiant itself could probably take out most of the Empire single handedly.
It depends on whether you are approaching the question from a narrative perspective or an empirical perspective.
Narrative: The Federation wins because the Federation are The Good Guys™ and the Empire are The Bad Guys™. The Federation starts out on the back foot and it looks pretty grim in the middle, but ultimately they eke out a win. If this is a TNG two-parter it plays out the way "The Best of Both Worlds" did: engineering prowess combined with timely application of the human factor wins the day. If this is a DS9 arc or Discovery season, then Section 31 does what needs to be done.
Empirical: The Empire crushes the Federation like a bug. The Imperial industrial base is enormous and their power generation capabilities vastly surpass anything the 24th century Federation can muster:
- The Death Star could violently destroy an entire planet, reducing it to asteroids. In "The Die Is Cast," a combined Romulan-Cardassian fleet requires multiple volleys to simply glass the surface of a planet.
- The Millennium Falcon—a ship a little larger than a runabout—could cross the known galaxy (Tatooine on the rim, Alderaan in the core) in a day. Voyager estimated a similar journey would take 70 years at maximum cruising speed.
- In the 2360's the Federation built six Galaxy-class ships and maybe a few dozen more throughout the course of the Dominion war. These are among the largest, most powerful, most advanced ships the Federation can build, yet they are dwarfed by an Imperial II-class Star Destroyer and the Empire built hundreds of these in the mere two decades it existed.
It you could somehow snap these two spacefaring nations into existence and pit them against each other, it would be like late-WWII United States facing off against Napoleonic France. It's a blowout.
I highly doubt it.
Tech wise, they would be on par, but Empire forces would FAR outnumber federation forces.
Place the skirmish in the Star Wars galaxy, and Sith enter chat, who would absolutely slaughter federation officers after boarding.
Place it outside their galaxy and odds would slightly improve, but not much.
The Star Wars galaxy is full of infinite resource mechanisms like the Starforge and cloning/droid programs for troops.
Star Trek universe has finite resources.
Also, as far as the Klingons and Vulkans argument, the Star Wars universe literally, according to descriptions of the senate, thousands over thousands of species, all with their own advantages and usually minimal disadvantages.
The only real thing that tilts it for me is if Q enters chat.
Edit: I love this thread, and am having a ball geek debating, but I am pretty firmly set that at best we have a Battle of Thermopylae situation here.
The Federation could put up a valiant fight, but they can't get anywhere with Romulans or Cardacians, respectively 1 planet of adversaries each. They certainly could not defeat 1/3rd of the entire Star Wars core galaxy without an OBSCENE amount of plot armor.
Star Wars seems oddly backwards for a sci-fi universe (it's more a fantasy setting with sci-fi trappings), even though knowledge of space travel is as common as knowing about plumbing, technological innovation doesn't seem to really develop that much, although I guess they did go from starting construction on the Death Star to Star Killer base in the span of ~53 years, which seems like a massive leap (blow up one planet locally (from 77k km) to blowing up multiple planets across hundreds of light years). Otherwise though, had the Republic really developed that much technologically for those tens of thousands of years that they were in existence?
I feel like the Federation's shield and transporter technology would give them a huge advantage over the Empire, though obviously space wizards with laser swords and techno-bass bombs would seem to be powerful weapons in the Empire's favor as well, though the Empire itself only has two space wizards, not counting Inquisitors. I think overall, the Empire may have access to more resources and could overwhelm the Federation via a Zerg rush, similar to what we're seeing in Ukraine with Russia. Even though Russians are pulling out shitty 50-year old Cold war weapons that belong in museums, but just based on sheer numbers they're maintaining their advantage.
It would not be close. Just from a logistics and industrial capacity standpoint. The Federation has around 150 member worlds while the Empire holds more than 1 million inhabited systems. No technical advantage could make up for that discrepancy. The Empire could lose 100:1 and still easily crush the Federation.
All I know is neither stand a chance against the formidable 'shuttles' of the Stargate SG-1 series
I would say yes, since the technology demonstrated in Star Trek seems way more advanced than the technology demonstrated in Star Wars. Even Jedi powers don't seem particularly strong compared to just the natural abilities of many species that are part of the Federation (and if they seek help outside the Federation, they could potentially have literal gods on their side).
However, in another thread today I saw a comment saying that hyperdrives are faster than warp drives, and allow people in Star Wars to traverse the entire galaxy in a day or two. Star Trek ain't that fast so it might be hard to stop a Death Star obliterating all the planets before they can get there and stop it. 🤔 I don't know how true that statement is though; I'm not nearly as well versed in Star Wars as I am in Trek.
Cerritos makes any argument moot.
Self-aware beats in-universe every time.
100% Empire. Star Wars ships with hyper drivers are so much faster than Warp Drives. It takes the Millennium Falcon hours or a day to get across the galaxy. It takes Voyager 80+ years. It takes weeks to traverse the Federation alone. If the Empire was completely out classed in combat by Federation technology, and that's a big if, the Empire would have zero issues just glassing every planet while the Federation would take days to respond.
Yes and also no depending on who you ask and what they decide about power levels that are never compared in either universe.
Empire subjugates the Federation, then the Borg assimilate the Empire, circle of life.
There's a fan fic about exactly this question, written by Graham Kennedy (of the Daystrom Institute Technical Library website.)
https://www.ditl.org/portal-chapter1.php
tl;dr: Federation shields, weapons, engines, and tactics are vastly superior, and they are nearly impervious to the Force. But the Empire has a huge numerical advantage.
spoiler
The Federation wins, but not easily. Mars is destroyed by the Death Star.
No. The federation has at most hundreds of years experience with space technologies. In the Star Wars universe they have tens of thousands of years. It’s no competition.
