Star Wars vs. Star Trek [Ship Size Contest]

[Ragnar]

Hi guys,

 

You know, there was a game about 10 years ago, VGA planets, that put "races" of just about every major SF genre in the same game. You had Feds, Klingons, Borg, Empire, Rebels, Robots, Colonies and about as many others from either of these 3 series/films, but they where a little more obscure.

 

The thing is, that the Robots/Colonies/Empire/Rebels where the so-called "fighter-races" this was because they all had cheap fighters and carriers and a lot of them. Lotsa fighters usually kicked almost anything else to smithereens. It was only a game, off course.

 

The thing about fighters is that you could do without them, but not without a way to stop them. I think the only reason ST:NG has no fighters is because ST:TOS had none and the latter had none because that would have made the special effects too expensive at the time.

 

Off course, another theory is that you can't fit a warpfield on something smaller than a Runabout. But I doubt it. Look at the first warpdrive in ST, as seen in the movie "First Contact" Hardly very large and that was a prototype! And another thing.. since they never use warpfields as weapons.. the things cannot be hard to disrupt.. so why don't they??

 

Just ranting on.. for the record, my vote is with Star Wars.

 

best,

Ragnar

[Stellar_Magic]

I just finished my own version of Brdige Commander's Victory Star Destroyer, it didn't take long so I put it up against a Galaxy Class from Star Trek and here's the results.

 

The VSD opens up with a full barrage from its forward batteries and pummels the shields of the Galaxy. Their forward shields go down bu the ship slips behind the VSD and starts loosing volleys of torpedoes and sure enough the VSD's lack of manueverablility begins to show. The Galaxy's Phasers begin to do damage to the rear shields.

 

The VSD replies by firing its rear batteries and all eight of the Concussion Missile Batteries. The Missiles streak through the shields and uttery demolish the saucer section of the ship and disable the impulse drive. The Galaxy class is dead in the water. Mission Accomplished.

 

Next I tried it against that darn ship the Defiant. The Defiant screams in and hammers the rear shields of the VSD. It dumps a pair of antimatter mines onto the VSD. No more VSD .

 

I found that three Bird of Prey can take on a VSD and a VSD can destroy the Sovereign (The newest version of the Enterprise). If I added fighters maybe it would keep a Defiant or Bird of Prey busy enough for me to destroy it. Still Star Wars verses Star Trek is fun. In average one on one ship to ship combat it will be Star Wars because of just how much more firepower they have.

[SPARTIAN300]

I agree with Stellar_Magic. I also thought of this Cain after reading what u have written. Darth Vader would sense that ST vessels were approaching and have his fleet ready. Fighter ships at the ready. If anyone was about to teleport or bombs teleporting, he would sense this disturbance and choke the teleporter or use mind control to make them blow up there own ship. If you remember from Empire Strikes Back he was able to choke one of his generals from space. The general was on Hoth. If a bunch of kids can take over the Enterprise, imagine what Vader could do with the force. I also think the fighter ships would be an advantage because Vader would send them on suicide missons. He would sacrifice a 100 just to take out one ship. I don't think the phaser man could keep up with this many attacks. This would be a good stellar battle and worth seeing the outcome.

[Cain]

I just finished my own version of Brdige Commander's Victory Star Destroyer, it didn't take long so I put it up against a Galaxy Class from Star Trek and here's the results.

 

Btw can you put it up as a downlaod also here ?!....do you have space to host it someware ?...after you put it on a server submit here the link

 

 

Spartian300 ...do you think Vader can be all over the galaxy ?! .... and how many phaser treky dudes he can choke at one time .....he didn't know where Luke was (Hoth) without probe scanning .....if he doesn't know where to focus he can't see

 

 

Dudes you have the same face :)....look up and see the forum profile option ..there and only there you can edit the link for the costum avatar

 

EDIT

 

For down.....Yes but how close needed Vader to be to sense Luke ?!....and if the Star treky invade in two directions or three ?! What then ? ....ahhh...btw.... a jedi will make the ST cloking useless ....he will sense them where they are

Edited May 4, 2004 by Cain

[SPARTIAN300]

Cain Vader sensed Luke on Endor. When Luke surrendered to Vader, he said he was by himself but Vader sent troopers to go hunt the Rebels. Also Han and bunch ran into a trap that Vader set when they first tried to blow up the shield generator. As far as Vader being everywhere in the galaxy. He would be where he is needed most. He seemed to be everywhere in all the SW movies so far.

[Lord_La_forge]

Umm...Since Cain keeps bugging me to reply here, so... umm... err....

 

Well Star Wars ships suck!

[Cain]

[the_mask]

*gulp*

 

You don't mean 'Wars' now, doncha ?

[Stellar_Magic]

Okay first off I'm doing this just for the sake of argument

 

Star Wars Ships are slower (At Sublight Speeds), less manueverable, and less effective against smaller ships.

 

Star Trek Ships are death to smaller vessels because there is almost no way for a phaser shot to miss a starfighter But they can't deliver enough force to beat a heavier ship. So....

 

ISD vs Enterprise: ISD Wins.

 

Escort Carrier + full force of TIEs vs Enterprise: Enterprise wins. The Phasers destroy the ties within just a few minutes and a volley photon torpedoes beats up on the escort carrier. Oh well.

 

What can I say, there is a reason there are no starfighters in Star Trek!

[DarthFelth]

id say if they are missile boats or tie bombers, torps from the fighting make the enterpris look like a cheese grater or they could just ram it to death

[Lord_La_forge]

I just wanted to flame up things here. I think this topic doesn't make much sense, they can't be compared. Just a minor thought: ST's universe and it's science is far more detailed and logical than SW's. SW is not really a SciFi in this way, it's much more like a fairy tale. I think building a Star Destroyer is absolutely weird. An SSD is more crazier, and thinking about a DS...well. Lucas never really cared to make realistic ship sizes (and that's ok for SW), he only wanted to impress us, costumers. Could be, that a STD would wipe out the Enterprise, but this is like you would say, that Godzilla could beat King Kong. The situation in general is hard to imagine.

[Cain]

http://us.a1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/a/1-/java/promotions/universal/040505/w1.jpg

 

La_Forge you missed the first page ....compare for your self....

 

 

http://www.midwestlp.com/todd/3dcomparison.jpg

http://www.midwestlp.com/todd/3dcomparison2.jpg

http://www.midwestlp.com/todd/3dcomparison3.jpg

http://www.midwestlp.com/todd/comparison.jpg

 

 

...maybe this will help decide that the SW have the best hulls and the ST the best weapons

[Hitomi]

Star Wars versus Star Trek is a debate that is very old.

The two universes are easily comparable as well. We have quantifiable situations from both universes, which define weapons power, shield power, FTL capabilities, and STL capabilities.

 

Also, when it comes to Star Wars the Expanded Universe novels are admissible as evidence as long as they do not contradict the movies. In the Star Trek universe the canon rules determine that only the shows and movies are admissible.

 

Knowing this we can find values for weapons power, shield strength, FTL capability, etc and compare the two universes.

 

When this is done we find Star Wars overmatches Trek in almost every category.

High-end accounts of the two universes are as follows.

 

Star Wars vs Star Trek

 

Weapons:

200 GT HTL vs ~ 200 MT Quantum Torpedoes

Shields:

In excess if 1 TT Shields vs ~ ½ GT Shields

FTL:

Over 1,000,000c vs under 7,000c

Fleet Sizes:

25,000 ISD vs hundreds of Federation ships

 

I can detail further the matches later, if anyone so wishes.

 

By the way, Enterprise vs Escort Carrier, Enterprise dies.

The Shields of the Carrier could withstand salvos of Quantum torpedoes, and if the Tie’s carry any missiles the Enterprise dies fast!!!!

[Stellar_Magic]

A Galaxy class a.ka. Enterpise (Next Generation Series) has 16 Phaser banks which can be individually targeted. Lets see 1/2 second burst for each TIE/In so 72/16*.5=between 2-3 seconds to kill all the TIEs!!! Then the Galaxy which is faster and more manueverable sneaks into the blind arc directly behind the carrier and sits there firing for a while, end of story. Also Phasers can be used to blast any missiles launched at the Galaxy. Thats what the real project codenamed (Ironic ) Star Wars was all about, using lasers to destroy missiles. Come on!

[Hitomi]

I do not wish to seem as though I am pulling numbers out of thin air here, so I shall detail my reasoning here.

 

In the Empire Strikes Back we see an Imperial-class Star Destroyer clearing a path through the Hoth asteroid field. The Destroyer was utilizing its Light Turbolaser cannons in order to do this. The asteroids themselves, when hit, completely vaporized in approximately 1/15th of a second. At least on asteroid the size of the Millennium Falcon was completely vaporized in this manner. The Falcon, contrary to popular misconception, was defined as roughly 50 meters ling and 40 meter wide in a later scene. It had roughly the same diameter as the Destroyer’s Sensor Globes, which are scaled to 40 meters.

 

That is a roughly spherical asteroid the length of the Millennium Falcon was vaporized by a Light Turbolaser in 1/15th of a second. Assuming the asteroid was of iron composition the power required to do this job is on the order of 2,100 Terajoules in 1/15th of a second.

Therefore a Light Turbolaser unleashes the power of 31,500 Terawatts or 7.5 MT, onto a target.

 

Incidentally in Bloodlines, a Next Generation Episode, it took the Enterprise 13 seconds to drill a 1.6 Kilometer deep hole into a planetary body. Screenshots from the episode place the diameter of the hole drilled with an upper limit of roughly 70 meters.

That comes out to about 7 MT/sec for the Main Dorsal Phaser Array.

The main array on the top of the Enterprise is somewhat longer than the dorsal array, which would point to an increased number of emitters and a power output of roughly 9 MT/sec if I did my math correctly.

 

So, the lightest capital ship weapons in Star Wars are roughly equal to the most power Galaxy-class Phaser Arrays.

 

Galaxy-class vessel’s have 10 Phaser arrays capable of being used while the Saucer is attached, and the two most powerful arrays are the one’s already listed here. The other two arrays are useable only with saucer separation, as they are on the drive section of the vessel.

 

As for the Galaxy-class versus Escort Carrier argument, there are some problems to your assessment.

 

First, the Escort Carrier has no big blind spot to the aft sections, the drive sections are covered by Light Turbolaser batteries, the same batteries equal to the Galaxy’s own Phaser Banks.

 

Second, Phasers do not have 100% accuracy, especially not against small fast moving objects.

To my knowledge no Federation vessel in TNG or DS9 has ever intercepted a Photon Torpedo with Phaser fire, although it would be nice if you had any examples of such happening.

 

If the Escort Carrier has at least one Tie Bomber Squadron then the Galaxy is in a lot of trouble. Curtis Saxton has rated proton Torpedoes and Concussion Missiles, those carried by the Bombers, all the way up to 150 MT in the Incredible Cross Sections book based on Episode II scenes over Geonosis and other data.

 

I wonder if the Galaxy could intercept 24 torpedoes, each more powerful than a Photon Torpedo and much smaller, while at the same time fending off attacks from the Escort Carrier’s Turbolaser batteries and any accompanying Tie Fighters with weapons rated around 1 KT per shot and a fire rate of roughly 4 shots every second.

 

The Galaxy-class Shields fail when hit by salvos of Photon Torpedoes, placing an upper limit of its shield array around 500-750 MT. (This is me being nice, as Episodes like Relics establish Shield Strength around 12-30 MT)

 

It would take 1 Light Turbolaser 100 seconds to down the shields, it would take 72 Tie Fighters roughly 2,605 seconds to down the shields, and based on the presence of any Tie Bombers only 1 to 3 salvos of torpedoes depending on type.

 

Escort Carriers on the other hand can last a few seconds under fire from Imperial Capital ships. I don’t remember how long from the games and books, but they do last longer than a single volley of LTL fire. Their shields are at low-end equal to the galaxy-class.

 

 

And btw, Phaser should be able to destroy fighters no problem, while concurrently Light Turbolaser batteries capable of shooting down maneuvering A-Wings at 9 meters long should have no problem with shooting down linear path photon torpedoes.

 

J

[Stellar_Magic]

Maybe an alliance escort carrier has no problem with rear defense but an imperial does. Play X-wing alliance and get directly behind the engines. There is no enemy fire except from the lonely concussion missile battery directly above and behind the engines.

 

Also a light turbolaser battery isn't able to down a manuevering A-wing all the time. A-wings, X-wings, Y-wings, and B-wings, all can dodge light turbolaser fire and their relatively large when you compare them to a missile. Laser cannons can destroy such small craft but not turbolasers. Thats the entire reason that the empire has the lancer frigate. While I will admit that a star destroyer will make short work out of a galaxy, in fact I think you may have dramatically undergunned the ISD. The essential guide to vehicles and vessesl says Sixty turbolaser BATTERIES wiith an additional sixty heavy turbolaser BATTERIES, and sixty ion cannon (batteries I'd think). Now in military lingo a batteries is between six to eight guns so at the low end an ISD has.

 

Turbolasers: 360

Heavy Turbolasers: 360

Ion Cannons: 360

 

The technical term for a laser that is designed to destroy missiles is called a Point defense Phaser. If you want to see a nebula class destroy incoming torpedoes just watch the intro to Star Trek Armada. (In the game only Nebula class ships can do this but its quite logical that other ships could be outfitted to do it and the Nebula is really a scaled back Galaxy.) Yes it's possible for a flight of Tie Bombers to deliver an overwhelming volley of torpedoes, but it takes around three seconds for a bomber to get a lock on even the largest of target -Play the X-wing series- and check it out.

 

You've dramatically underestimatted the strength of Federation vessels. A Galaxy class ship can actually deliver a vollley of twenty four torpedoes in about one second. There are six tubes on a galxy each can be loaded with up to four torpedoes and emptied within that one second period. The blast of a trekkie torpedo is measured in isotons. An isoton is exponentially larger in yield then a Mega Ton. I assume MT stands for mega ton. Remember star trek torpedoes rely on antimatter which is known to be the most explosive and dangerous substance in the universe.

Oh and the names photon and quantum don't define their explosive ingrediants its the type of onboard computer they use.

 

Star Wars projectiles on the other hand are much different. For example a concussion missile contains basically the same compouinds as real life modern missiles do. It is almost completely reliant in atmosphere on the shock wave created by its detonation the concussion if you will. Proton torpedoes rely on the release of protons into their target. This causes a miniature nuclear explosion and by miniature I do mean miniature. If you place a one Kiloton nuclear bomb in an ISDs hangar bay...well no more hanger bay and perhaps no more star destroyer.

 

A Star Destroyer pursues a Galaxy and destroys it quite easily. A Dreadnaught iffy. A lancer frigate...dead frigate. A carrak cruiser, comes down to commanders but Star Trek tends to have better tacticians. An escort carrier, with the fighters neutralized, a cake walk. A corellian corvette may actually cause some trouble for a Galaxy because of its manueverability. But a Galaxy could still kill a fully loaded Imperial escort carrier of that I am sure.

 

The truth speaks for itself- all out war Star Wars dominates.

 

Oh and I'm not a hard core trekkie so I say Trekkie games are admissable!!

[Cain]

Some new SW stuff >>>

http://www.lucasarts.com/insider/images/misc/050304_kotor2_se.jpg

 

 

I just hope that the SW weapons in here will more real (the lightsabers for ex.)

 

 

Still it seems to me that the Treky tehnology is more advanced

Edited May 6, 2004 by Cain

[Trejiuvanat]

I don't think that ST can destroy planets, nor stars. They don't have lightsabers, I don't really think their technology is more advanced than SW.

[Cain]

They can destroy planets Trej.....remember the genesis project...or the movie where a star is destroyed ...etc. About the lightsaber ..... hmmm.....you are right ...still theyr tehnology seems cooler

[Hitomi]

Thanks for the reply.

 

 

No, Light Turbolasers do not have 100% accuracy against light, fast moving objects. However, they do have a great deal of success as seen at the two Death Star battles.

Federation Phasers should have an easier time taking down fighters than Turbolasers, however they also have trouble with fast moving objects throughout the series.

Neither weapon systems has 100% accuracy, though Phasers do have a better hit to fire ratio.

 

The Essential Guide is quite frankly useless unfortunately. The number of errors is terrible.

 

They place the Executor at 8 KM when it is already established at 17.6 KM by the movies.

The Diameter of the second death star is way off, by a couple dozen if not hundred of km.

They state the MF at 20 meters when it is established at 51 meters in the movies.

They miscalculate the Executor’s weapons systems, vastly under arming it.

They do horrible with the Imperial Star Destroyer’s weapons as well.

 

The actual, cannon, assessment of Star Destroyer weaponry is as follows.

 

Imperial-class I

12 Heavy Turbolasers in 6 turrets with Dual cannons flanking the superstructure.

2 Quad Medium Turbolaser cannons in the trenches, with perhaps more on the dorsal surface.

120 Light Turbolasers along the hull set in dual weapons mounts.

4 Heavy Ion Cannons in 2 turrets with dual cannons flanking the superstructure behind the HTL.

 

Also, do not use the games as a source. They are ok if we are talking about storylines and characters, but are not accurate when it comes to game play. Balanced game play was thrown out of the window for the games so that the player could be a hotshot fighter pilot. In the game a couple of minutes of Laser Fire from a Tie could destroy a Mc80, however in truth it would take days to simply drop the shields if not months.

 

I have actually overestimated the strength of Federation vessels sorry to say.

 

Relics places Galaxy-class Shield strength with an upper limit of 30 MT.

The Enterprise has lost shields to 800 GW weapons, that is 0.019 % of 1 MT.

It has been stated that 1 Terawatt (~1/4 MT) is more power than the Enterprise could ever generate.

Other calculations place Phaser strength around 5-10 KT and Photon Torpedoes around 100 KT.

 

The list goes on, and quite frankly it gets to a point that the Federation can’t even take on Earth Force from B5.

 

Galaxy-class Vessels have never once in any movie or episode fired more than 8 torpedoes at a time. They have two main torpedo launch sites. The aft fire maybe 4 per salvo, and the fore fires maybe 8, usually 5.

I have no idea where you came up with the 26 figure.

 

Photon Torpedoes use 1.5 Kg of Matter and Antimatter for explosive power.

 

At 100% efficiency that comes out to 64.4 MT, in an unshaped charge sending at very most 50% of the energy into a target, that is 32.2 MT.

 

A rough estimate for Star Wars Weapons power based on the ESB scene is as follows.

 

LTL = 8 MT

MTL = 80 MT – 160 MT

HTL = 2 GT

 

If we were to accept the BDZ function as stated in the EU as well as the cannon status of Curtis Saxton’s book we have…

 

LTL = 8 MT

MTL = 150 MT

HTL = 200 GT

 

Carrack Cruiser’s carry 10 Heavy Turbolasers as do Dreadnoughts.

Corellian Corvettes have 2 Dual Medium Turbolasers and 4 Light Turbolasers.

Escort Carriers have a few double Turbolasers, perhaps Medium as well, we are not sure.

 

 

 

Star Wars Torpedoes are extremely powerful weapons.

It requires at most 72 to drop the shields of a Victory-class Star Destroyer. These vessels can go toe to toe with Heavy Turbolasers.

Proton Torpedoes have yields in the hundreds of Megatons based on shield calcs.

Concussion Missiles are similar, but are meant to pierce the hull before explosion.

 

1 KT would do little damage to anything but the fighters stored in the Destroyer hangar. It would take hundreds of Megatons at the lowest of calculations to destroy it from the inside out.

 

BTW, I agree, Star Wars dominates Trek without effort.

 

The difference however is measured in orders of magnitudes!!

[Lord_La_forge]

Maaan This trhead is quite amusing!

You guys really want to decide this? Ok, I mean in the ship size contest (I think there is no contest here however), it's certain, that the SW ships and Death Stars and other HUGE things are bigger , than the ships in ST. I can't really see, why this enlightment should mean, that SW is better or cooler.

 

Destroying a planet with the DS We had a discussion here ages ago, that a "super laser" is simply dumb. Biological warfare is much cheaper, and easier. And more horroristic. But hey! The DS is good for our child in us. As we saw that HUUUGE "thing" floating on the screen, we just said WOOOOW! Incredible *gulp*. Now that's what the DS is for. Not for destroying planets. Simply dumb, yet very amusing idea. And dramatic too!

 

"Still it seems to me that the Treky tehnology is more advanced"

 

No. It's just more thinked over and logical. But the SW fans are working very hard to rationalize GL's fantasies.

...whatever...

[Soltaris]

Hehe, I don't think there is always a rationalization for everything. Goodness knows ST isn't very reallistic with stuff either. If they showed a technology to overcome a situation in one episode, why didn't they use it in to good effect in another. Why is it ppl without security clearance can walk right into engineering without any security sensor going off and force fields errected? Why is it Federation starships don't carry large boarding parties during times of war even though a good portion of the battles ships will always have a downed shield? And a 100 other whys...

 

I think it comes down to this. Lucas isn't in a realism contest with ST. You just need to ask yourself which looks cooler on the big screen? Dropping some cannisters into the ocean on a planet, or blowing up the planet with a beam from a superweapon?

[Stellar_Magic]

Okay both universes are fantasies and therefore not always the most logical of things. Of course both sides are guilty of this and its kind of ironic when both sides have a technology thats named the same but completely different.

 

In Star Trek Disruptors are a weapon in which a large amount of sound is projected into a gas and fired. In Star Wars a disruptor fires a bolt of high intensity gas that rips apart organic material because of its intense heat. Some weapons on both sides completely don't add up even comparaded with other weapons, Laser Cannons take time to hit a target and fire a blast or bolt but a superlaser delivers a constant stream.

 

In Star Trek if you know anything there are tons of bad jokes, their EPS system or Electrical Power System, is Trekkie speak for the plug in the wall for everything in your house. Klingons are based on Samurai, Ferengi on American Tradesmen in the 18th Century, Romulans from Rome (DUH), Bajorans from Arabs, and on and on and on....

 

Star Wars is Lucas's child and it shows that his understanding of technology and science is limited. The laser cannons are visible and take time to reach their targets, Blasters are the only thing close to a real name for the weapons of Star Wars, and having all the ships use ion engines, grrr....

 

Another example is the battle in Episode II Geonosian fighters fire a form of blaster and it magically explodes close to a target. What is it there is no projectile except for gas so there is nothing to explode. Turbolasers do the same thing, I think Lucas watched to many old WWII films with Flak and AAA before he wrote the things.

 

I've based my assessment of the capabilities of Star Wars weaponary on the X-wing novels. Yes a proton torpedo barrage can take down one of the 6 vectors of shield systems but on several occasions the Rogues use Proton torpedoes to take out individual buildings, if they were nearly as powerful as you suggest there would be no city instead there is no building. Concussion Missiles are also very underpowered, for much any damage to be done in space they must detonate within a very small radius of the target. In atmosphere the concussion missiles explosives make it able to take out buidlings because of the compression wave unleashed by their detonation. But even then they aren't very effective. Corran horn nailed power conduit under a statue and all he got was a broken statue with a pair of shots from them.

 

The abilities of Star Trek weaponary is also based on some things I've seen. I remember an epside (Don't remember the name) where the enterprise was confronted by a borg cube (3Km x 3Km x 3Km) it was rather far into the series and Picard says something about the upgrades the ships goen through. The enterprise fires three torpedoes and about a fourth of the cube is just plain GONE . Of course being a cube it would come back and beat up on the enterprise but a fourth of a cube from three torps is about half an Imperial Star Destroyer with three torpedoes. A full spread would complete destroy an Imperial Star Destroyer without shields. With shields the Imperial Star Destroyer would be able to pulverize the Galaxy before then but it shows just how much damage those torpedoes can do.

 

At least the writers in Star Trek try and make a logical explanantion, does it always work, no, but at least they try.

[Jahled]

Soltaris, you have one of the best Avatars to grace these forums...

[Hitomi]

I was hoping that you wouldn’t bring up the Rouge/Wraith novels.

Those books were inspired by the X-Wing games and are ridden with problems on a whole. While I do enjoy them, and some of their stuff is pretty cool, they have contradictions in themselves. What you pointed out for the Proton Torpedoes about the atmosphere detonations is true. In space, against Destroyers, Proton Torpedoes range in the megaton range, but in the atmosphere they rate in the tones range. Inherent contradictions, always a pain the rear.

 

As for the Star Wars weapon systems; there has been a good deal of debate about this.

The last theory I knew about the Turbolaser was that it was some sort of “bottled” plasma encased in some sort of energy shell. The shell would release the plasma on impact with a target, throwing all of the energy forward into a target. The flak cannon configuration was theorized as having the energy shell dissipate completely around a target to release all of the energy into a spherical pattern. This could be used to throw a lot of power into the middle of a star fighter formation, or allow near misses to impart at least some damage onto a vessel’s shields, slowly batting them down, just as was done with the Falcon.

 

Lucas did get his ideas for the Flak Bursts and the dogfights from World War Two footage, yes.

 

The episode you are referring to is known to me yes, but a fourth of the cube was not vaporized. Data stated that 23% of the Cube was destroyed, even though we saw the vast majority of it intact after the torpedo salvo. My thinking was that the photons had penetrated the ship and blown the crap out of a great deal of the innards, as the outer hull was more than 75% intact.

I will try to hunt down a screen cap.

 

Also, remember how big the Borg Cube is, and based off of the Best of Both Worlds episode how much of the interior is empty space, over 90% of the cube is air, even less is armor plating.

 

As far as we can tell Star Destroyers have quite thick hull plating, some of which is purported to be Neutrionum, a substance that gives Phasers major problems.

 

Photon Torpedoes would impart at most 64.4 MT to an unshielded Star Destroyer each. That would be like hitting the hull with 8 Light Turbolaser’s for every Photon strike. It takes heavy Turbolasers, those in the multi-gigaton range, to go through Destroyer hull armor and destroy the vessel.

 

We’ve seen Star Destroyers absorb Light Turbolasers with impunity with their shields up throughout ROTJ, and it was not until Heavy Turbolasers were used that Imperial Shields began to fall and strikes began to penetrate hulls. Even then it takes a couple of barrages to wipe out a Destroyer’s armor.

 

It would take 31 Photon Torpedoes to match the firepower of one low-end Heavy Turbolaser. That is 4 salvos of torpedoes to match 1 Heavy Weapon. It takes multiple heavy weapon to get through the armor of a Destroyer.

 

It takes at least one broadside to seriously slag or melt a side of a Star Destroyer’s armor. At 6 Heavy Guns a broadside that would add up to 12 GT low-end.

 

It would require 187 Photon Torpedoes to do the same damage. That is over 23 salvos from the main arc, assuming the upper-limit of 8 Photon’s per strike. Between reload times and firing time that would amount to about 1 minute of straight firing and no misses to do the same amount of damage.

 

Throughout the books Star Destroyer’s have taken multiple broadsides.

 

The only way a Galaxy-class can kill a defenseless Star Destroyer is if we assume bare minimum firepower for Star Wars weaponry and fire rates.

 

In other words, Star Trek cannot compete with Star Wars unless the later is seriously handicapped to favor Star Terk in every way.