Star Wars vs Star Trek

Technology:

The first argument I always hear when I bring up this question, is "But the Federation has so much advanced technology, the Empire couldn't possibly win!" I will attempt to redress this belief. Since both universes are fictional, and only loosely based on reality, it is difficult to make a direct comparison. However, this is all in good fun, so I'll make a go at it.

Combat Systems:

Phasers vs Lasers:
The Star Trek TNG Technical Manual states that phasers are an advanced form of laser, and thus, obviously superior to the lasers and turbolasers mounted on most Imperial warships. Also, in an episode of TNG, Worf expresses his disdain for the laser. (Don't know the episode name, but it involved the stereo-typical feuding families whose children get involved romantically) He states "their ships are armed with lasers only" in a derisive tone. Captain Picard seems quite amused by this.

I make the inference that lasers are either incapable of causing damage to a Federation warship, or that they are so technically obsolete that they pose little or no real threat. However, after perusing the same Technical Manual, I read more about the phasers. The text was technical, but my interpretation (I am pursuing a physics degree at Caltech) was that they were merely a "glorified" laser. In fact, many of the statistics listed for the average Type X phaser banks were unimpressive compared with modern industrial lasers. (Type X phaser banks are the largest available for a warship) Granted, most modern industrial lasers have a range of about a foot at this power, while phasers seem to have a much greater range. This leads me to the conclusion that either the phasers are not as advanced as purported, or that the technical manual is wrong.

In the Star Wars universe, it is more difficult to draw a direct numerical estimate. Since Star Wars is a science fantasy, rather than science fiction (a la ST), concrete numbers are not provided. However, since the analysis of the "phaser" doesn't seem to imply any decided advantage, I offer the following advantage ratios (to be used later in a direct side by side comparison) Being generous to ST, the ratio is about 10 to 1, or that phasers are ten times more powerful than a laser. Being generous to SW, the ratio would be closer to 1 to 1.

Photon Torpedoes Vs Proton Torpedoes:
The similarity of the name is more a coincidence than anything else. Basically, the photon torpedo (ST) is based on a matter/anti-matter reaction. Though specific data on the proton torpedo is unavailable, it seems logical to assume that it operates on a similar basis. Thus, the true defining characteristic would be how big they are. The average photon torpedo (seen in several ST episodes/movies) is about the same size as would be expected for a proton torpedo (calculated from the size of the torpedoes vs the size of the exhaust port in SW). Thus, the ratio in this case would be a direct 1 to 1.

Shielding:
Both ST and SW use defensive shielding as a means to avoid direct damage to their ships. In ST and in the SW computer games, the shielding systems are almost identical, thus, it seems safe to assume that the shielding is of sufficient strength to defend against the relevant weaponry. So, I will add in the ratio for weaponry once again. That is, 10 to 1 and 1 to 1.

Sublight Maneuverability:
It is obvious from watching both shows that the Star Trek ships are substantially more maneuverable at sublight speeds. They are capable of rapid turns and sharp accelerations. The comparable ships in Star Wars seem plodding and slow by comparison. (The fighter craft are an exception) Now, the question is, does is this perceived maneuverability an effect of cinematography, or an actual fact.

Note, that in Star Trek, every single ship seems capable of exactly the same maneuvers, whether it be a the flagship of the Federation (Enterprise) or the lowliest shuttle craft. Unless the Federation has some way to defy the laws of physics (in which case all their science is pointless anyway) this is clearly an impossibility. Larger ships are by their very nature harder to accelerate and maneuver.

We can also go back to relative "special effects." Star Wars: A New Hope was released in 1977, and in a certain scene, Han Solo states that he knows a few maneuvers, and that he can evade the Star Destroyer that is chasing him. The shot is rather unspectacular, as the Millenium Falcon flies in a straight and level path away from the Star Destroyer. Then, in the second film, Empire Strikes Back, a similar event occurs, in which the Falcon is again being chased by a Star Destroyer, and Han claims that they can still out-maneuver them. The resulting shot is quite gripping, as the Falcon dives away from the Star Destroyer and executes a number of evasive spins and rolls. Obviously, modeling technology can come a long way in three years.

So, the only way to truly compare the maneuverability of the large ships is to compare ST and SW at comparable levels of movie making technology. Fortunately, such a parallel exists between Return of the Jedi and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, both released in 1983. In this comparison, the ships are approximately evenly matched, or SW has a slight lead. Since the Federation would have made a number of technological improvements over the period between ST2 and TNG, I will give the ST generous ratio at 2 to 1, and the SW generous at 1 to 1.

Faster than Light Travel:
Since neither system is currently physically feasible, it comes down to a comparison between the strategic values of each system, and also to the relative ranges.

First, the Warp Drive from ST. It is capable of rapid movements through normal space, and as such would be extremely useful on a tactical level. (e.g. combat maneuvers like the Picard Maneuver would be possible) However, the ability to track ships in normal space would limit their usefulness on a strategic level. The enemy would be able to move ships to intercept, or leave an intended point of contact. Also, as is clearly demonstrated in the various shows, even travelling at maximum warp, it would take literally decades to cross the entire galaxy. The one exception to this rule seems to be Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. However, if there is any ST fan out there who believes that ST5 is the defining example of the ST universe, you've proved my point more completely than I ever could.

Now, by contrast, the hyperdrive of SW also has its ups and downs. It is almost useless as a tactical drive, since it requires several moments to calculate a jump through hyperspace, but as a strategic engine, it is easily superior. First, it is untrackable. On numerous occasions, Rebel ships evade capture or pursuit by escaping into hyperspace. Therefore, it is possible for a ship or fleet to enter hyperspace, and appear with little or no warning at its target. The hyperdrive also has a much greater range than the average warp-capable ship. In the SW Sourcebook, it states that a standard hyperdrive capable ship can cross the galaxy in a matter of weeks. Thus, a hyperspace capable fleet would have much greater striking power than an equivalent fleet equipped with warp drives. It could be present at more confrontations with less advance notice, a key to winning battles. On the basis of this information, I estimate that the ST generous estimate might be as much as 3 to 1, while the SW generous number could easily reverse that.

Other Technical Areas:

Artificial Intelligence:
In TNG, there is a single sentient robot/android, Commander Data. (Actually two, but they are pretty much unique) On numerous occasions, it is stressed that Data (and Lore, by extension) are the only two of their kind. Contrast with SW where sentient robots, such as R2-D2 and C-3PO, are manufactured on a grand scale. Granted, compared to Cmdr Data, C-3PO seems a poor combatant, but it seems logical to assume that other droids of equal or greater caliber could be created. As an example, take the obscure IG-88, an assassin droid whose reputation as a bounty hunter is second only to Boba Fett. I won't make a ratio comparison on this example, since I don't think it makes a substantial difference in the overall question. However, it does seem to indicate a technical superiority for the SW universe.

Does Size Really Matter?:
This brings us to the 'big' question, does the fact that the Empire can build bigger ships imply that it is actually technically superior? As an example, the Enterprise, the flagship (and thus, likely the largest) of the Federation fleet, is approximately 500 meters in length. By contrast, the Imperial Class Star Destroyer, a basic ship-of-the-line, is 1600 meters in length. Even discarding the super-huge ships built in the Dark Empire comics, the largest Imperial warship, the Executor, is listed as 8000 meters in length. That is 16 times the size of the Enterprise. As a rudimentary graphical display:

-----	(Enterprise-D)
----------------	(Imperial Class Destroyer)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Executor)

Also, the relative crew sizes must come into play. The Enterprise has a crew of approximately 1,000. The crew of the Executor is almost 300,000. How is it that a technically "backward" society is capable of such incredible achievements? And we're not even considering the case of the Death Star, which is 20 times the size of the Executor.

The Fused Matrix Inverter, and other Conundrums:
Despite its much praised technical reputation, ST does have a shocking number of "glitches." My favorite is the unbelievable frequency of the "fused matrix inverter," which causes the whole ship to break down and not function. For the information of those unacquainted with matrices, they are simply groups of numbers arranged into rows and columns, and inverting the matrix involves some tedious algebra. However, every average computer and most scientific calculators are quite efficient at this process.

Another interesting tidbit is from a specific TNG episode. The Enterprise must be cleared for a baryon sweep, during which a covert group attempts to steal the ship. The backstory, after a certain time in space, baryons collect on the ship's hull and must be cleared away, a high-tech parable to the barnacles of our own era. What they don't tell you is that baryons are basic elementary particles, protons and neutron included. If this baryon sweep did actually clear away all the baryons, the ship would be completely obliterated.

You will notice that throughout this section, I assigned substantial benefits to the Federation. In my most honest opinion, most of these estimates are exaggerated, however, it is not in the area of technology that I believe the conflict will be decided.

Unless the conflict is incredibly short, the technology will diffuse between the two cultures, bringing them quickly to equilibrium. Only in the case that one side or the other can inflict an immediate and crushing defeat will technology play a substantial role. This has been true throughout history, and will continue to be so.

Government:

The relative governments are very relevant to the overall war picture. The United Federation of Planets prides itself on equality for all races, and many other very noble aspects. This is wonderful for a peacetime government, and I am personally very happy that I live in a country founded on the same principles. It does not, however, translate quite as well to wartime efficiency. As a hypothetical example, do you think the Federation would intentionally use the Genesis device, (ST2,3) a weapon capable of destroying all life on a planet? Unless they were forced into a totally indefensible position, or if political image no longer mattered, I cannot imagine that happening. On the other hand, the Galactic Empire obliterated the planet of Alderaan, merely to demonstrate the effectiveness of the Death Star Battle Station. While the Federation might gain some sort of support from small resistance groups within the Empire, it seems unlikely that this aid will be substantial. Any being who chooses to side against the Empire risks his life, while submission will most likely lead to a long, if unpleasant and restricted, life. As a contemporary example, look at the Gulf War. Despite the fact that the Iraqis are living under truly deplorable conditions (by our standards), they are still very loyal to Saddam Hussein. Even if the Federation decides to circumvent political image, it is still harmful to their war effort, since then their own citizens will begin wondering whether victory is really worth the price.

Leadership:

This is another area where ST fans often claim superiority. The theory is that people like Picard, Kirk, et al. will win even when grossly outnumbered. Granted, this is probably true, but are people like Picard and Kirk the exception or the rule? If they are the exception (which I believe) then there are only a few really brilliant commanders in the Federation, which won't give them much advantage. Then we look at who the SW universe has to offer. Vader, though his methods are typically heavy-handed, was an incredibly gifted commander. And anyone who has read the Timothy Zahn trilogy knows of Grand Admiral Thrawn, who defeats seemingly unstoppable forces with the greatest of ease. So, leadership is about on par between the two universes, so the ratio is about 1 to 1.

Numbers:

Throughout the rest of the sections, the Federation has maintained an advantage over the Empire. In fact, the overall ratio sits at 600 to 1 in favor of the Federation using the favorable estimates. The Empire comes out at 3 to 1 with their favorable estimates. So, assuming that everything above is reasonably accurate, unless the Empire outnumbers the Federation by more than six hundred to one, it should be doomed to defeat.

Now, the Federation was originally composed of 40 member worlds (Old series). Though there are no numbers for the TNG time period, I'll assume that a phenomenal growth has occurred, and there are now 4,000 member worlds. (That is 10,000% growth over a little less than a century, most impressive...) Assuming a population of about 5 billion per planet, that makes 20 trillion people in the Federation.

As for military strength, the Star Trek Technical Manual states that there are six Galaxy-class starships in service, with six more mothballed around Federation space. Since the Galaxy class is the most powerful ship in the Federation fleet, I'll use it for a reference point. I'll assume that all of the other ships in the Federation constitute another 388, giving a nice round number of 400 Galaxy-class-equivalent starships in the Federation Fleet.

Assuming a commensurate number of crew to go with the starships, multiply by ten for bureaucratic planet-based positions, security forces, army troops, and other military positions, and you have about 4,000,000 beings in Starfleet. This seems to be an incredibly small percentage of military personnel for the size of the Federation, so I'll assume that the actual percentage is closer to about .1%, or 200 billion. (This is a very small percentage, which means that at least one of my estimates is grossly off, most likely the number of member worlds)

Note, almost all of these estimates are drawn from inferences on the Best of Both Worlds Part II TNG episode. In that episode, a single Borg cube fought the Enterprise to a standstill, working its way towards earth. Then, after the Enterprise was forced to give up the pursuit, the cube was met by a "large" fleet of Federation warships, approximately 40 to 60 ships, at the Wolf 359 system. From this, I infer that between 10% and 20% of the Federation's entire military capacity was put into this battle, leaving plenty to maintain surveillance along any borders, and also leaving out those ships too far away to reach the rendezvous. It seems likely that this estimate is correct, since the destruction of this force doesn't appreciably change the Federation's ability to defend itself.

Now, with that information established, I will do a point by point comparison of forces:

Ships:
Now, for the Galactic Empire. Almost all of this information is drawn from the Imperial Sourcebook, which details the Empire's military strength just before the major military upscale following the destruction of the first Death Star. (So many of these numerical estimates will be low).

From the description of the "average" sector, a sector group consists of at least 24 Star Destroyers, along with nearly 1000 vessels of smaller stature. For estimation purposes, we will ignore all of these lesser vessels. Now, from a line at the beginning of the book, the Galactic Empire, like the Old Republic before it, consisted of thousands upon thousands of sectors. For simplicity's sake, I'll consider this to be exactly one million sectors.

This means that there are approximately 24 million Imperial-class Star Destroyers in current service. Assume that before modifications from technology a Star Destroyer is the equivalent of a Galaxy class starship. (This is actually a generous assumption, since a Star Destroyer is three times the size of a Galaxy class ship, all other technology aside) Now, after the technology modifier, that means that a single Galaxy class ship can destroy 600 Star Destroyers at the cost of its own life.

Therefore, given the estimates above, in a straight out grudge match, fleet against fleet, the Federation would be capable of destroying 240,000 Star Destroyers. This is about 1% of the Star Destroyers in service. Note, this estimate is made with the most favorable conditions for the Federation, giving every possible advantage, and discounting a number of the Empire's strengths.

Military Personnel:
Every Imperial class Star Destroyer has an army complement of 38,000. Now, under the assumption that the only military personnel in the Empire are based SOLELY aboard Imperial Star Destroyers, and that the only military personnel of any note are these army troops, that means that there are 912 billion people in the Imperial military.

Even with the gross overestimate of the Federation's military strength, the Empire outnumbers the Federation more than 5 to 1. Taking into account the true crew size of a Star Destroyer, and the fact that the average Sector Army is composed of appone million troops, gives an estimate of 8.2 million per sector. Multiplied by the hypothetical million sectors yields an estimate of 8.2 trillion, almost 40 times the overestimate of the Federation military.

Sheer Number of Planets:
This is a real kicker. The Empire is composed of literally BILLIONS of worlds. This means that even if the Federation is capable of conquering one planet every second, it would take more than 33 years to complete the conquest of the galaxy. This rate also implies that the Empire never conquers a single planet, and that the Federation is capable of holding every planet that they conquer. Assuming that the SW galaxy consists of only one billion planets, unless Starfleet grows incredibly in size, each planet will be garrisoned by a paltry 200 troops, leaving absolutely no troops for further operations. On the other hand, with their superior numbers, the Imperial troops could easily garrison and occupy the entire Federation without a significant strain on resources.

Manufacturing Capability:
From the description of the construction and commissioning of the Enterprise, a process taking about five years, it seems reasonable to assume that this is a standard amount of time for the Federation to produce one basic warship under normal conditions. I'll make the assumption that they could cut that time to one tenth in time of extreme emergency. Now, I'll assume that they can make 100 of these ships at any given time. (which is most definitely an overestimate, but let's see what happens...)

This means that the Federation can produce 100 Galaxy class starships in about six months. Now, the Imperial class Star Destroyer design has only been around for the last ten or fifteen years. We'll say fifteen. That means that 24 million Star Destroyers were built in the space of fifteen years, or about 800,000 Star Destroyers every six months. Even after the 600 to 1 modifier for technology, that are still more than 10 Star Destroyers for every Galaxy class ship created!

Conclusion:

So, even with a substantial amount of favoritism shown to the Federation, the numbers just don't work. The Empire has a ten to one or greater advantage in every area. Now, obviously, if you don't believe that numbers are important, you won't agree with my assessment of the situation. So, I'll leave you with another example to consider:

One guy with an M-16 assault rifle, full body armor, and every other conceivable modern weapon faces a force of 10,000 naked barbarians armed only with spoons. Now, you're saying that such a contest would be decided from the beginning, there is no way naked barbarians with spoons are going to be able to kill a guy with an M-16! But what happens when the guy with the M-16 has to sleep, or he runs out of ammo, or any of a number of other possible problems? There is no way that I can think of that one guy, even armed to the teeth with the latest weapons, is going to be able to kill 10,000 people before they can take him down. If you disagree, well, I'm not going to be able to convince you otherwise.

This document does not necessarily imply a superiority of one fictional universe over another. I am quite fond of both fictional worlds, and I believe that each has its place. This is merely an interesting thought experiment, and a simple, intriguing application of the theory of large numbers.