re: Star Wars vs. Star Trek in a battle for all the marbles...who wins?

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This is not a close fight. Despite the desires of the many fans, the Star Trek universe is rife with economic, tactical, social, and technological superiority. Claims of Star Wars victories all seem to echo the Stalin-esque view that "Quantity has a Quality all its own." But this is profoundly misguided.

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The greatest advantage of the Empire is size. But the small, highly integrated and economically more advanced Federation is similar to the inequality many leading nations in Earth's history have held over their more numerous adversaries. Numbers alone cannot determine the issue.

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A careful, adaptive, and strategic mindset is universally depicted with the Federation routinely tackling better armed and more numerous adversaries.

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Detection, Evasion, Range. These three elements spell the doom of the Empire. The sensors in Star Trek can discern the individual cellular make up of individuals on a planet from orbit, can detect ships from trillions of kilometers away (in other sectors) and can track and successfully target objects at ranges of hundred of thousands of kilometers in space.

By contrast, sensors on a Star Destroyer cannot even detect droids in a unshielded pod. They cannot track down individual aliens (say, Wookie) on a planet, and most combat occurs at visual range with a remarkable rate of misses.

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Weapon tech is also no contest. Photon torpedoes travel at warp speed. This means that they are unblockable by Star Wars vessels whose reaction time is such that skilled humans can provide superior guidance as compared to their computers. Photon torpedoes are matter/antimatter devices whose yields have been described as being able to wipe out cities with a single torpedo. Proton torpedoes are sublight (and slow) missiles that can destroy city blocks. Given that several laser shots and the impact of a vessel traveling at sublight was sufficient to destroy the shield generators on an Executor Class vessel, it is perfectly possible for Star Trek ships to target the shield of Star Destroyers from ranges well beyond the detection range of those ships—and then bombard them with impunity

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On this note, much is made of the lack of fighters in Trek. One simple explanation is that such craft simply cannot survive when pitted against capital ship level phasers targeted by near-AI level computer and tracking systems. Put simply, what Trek ships aim at they hit. Nearly always. Small ships simply do not challenge large ships in Trek and with good reason.

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