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

Solid Article that breaks this down

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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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This is not a close fight.

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Anyone bring up the fact that Star Trek has the ability to cloak their ships?

Star Wars is notorious for missing even when sending thousands of shots at a ship. Star Trek has the technology to appear at the right position and moment to make the most effective hit on a star destroyer.

Now, I do agree that eventually, Star Wars would win. Too many power hitters that could damage star bases, starships, and even planets.

I would like to see an action scene like the one at the end of Rogue One where Vader arrives on the bridge of the Enterprise and rolls through everyone on board.

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I also believe that the superior technology overall would put Star Trek over the top evenually. Shields, transporters, cloaking, photon and quantum torpedoes, mobile hologram emitters, self-replicating mines, the tantalus device, the genesis device. Then we have The Traveler, The Guardian of Forever, Q, The Prophets.

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This . . .

My mind has changed to Trek ultimately winning in the long run.

Well let's see. If it is DUring the TNG then Star Trek. Difference in power?

SW: NEed a moon size base to destroy a planet.

ST: Can ignite the sun and just wipe out a solar system.

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Not only that, but Starfleet itself is small. In Kirk's era, he said there were only 12 "starships" - ships like the Enterprise - and they are widely scattered. In Star Trek The Motion Picture and The Final Frontier, the Enterprise was the only earth ship that could be spared for the mission. In the Search For Spock, the Excelsior was the only earth ship the Enterprise had to worry about escaping.

Even in the TNG era, it was rare to see ships as advanced as the Galaxy class Enterprise. Most were movie era ships, which would have been close to a century old.

In First Contact, the Federation musters a fleet of a dozen or so ships against the invading Borg. I just don't think the Federation has what it takes with withstand an Imperial fleet.

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Actually StarFleet is quite large. In TNG era, they can field over 3600 Starship. This is not counting Ships from planetary defenses and colonies. We are talking about ship of the line. They also got quite a few Galaxy Class Ship in service.

How? The dominion war.

The dominon war showed how the federation field two single fleet which put their ships up at 600 vs the 1200 the Dominion had. The Federation wanted to get three fleet, which would have put them at 900 ships plus whatever the Klingons at the time wanted to throw into tip the scale.

Keep in mind this was fleets the Federation was willing to part with without compromising their entire defensive line.

Watch Deep Space Nine and you will see well over 600 federation ship slugging it out, with some fighter escort really. The majority is capital ships fighting.

Now, I hate to stay this but even during the final battle of Endor, they didn't seem to field that much ships. Even during the battle over Curosant didn't appear to field that many ship.

What happened in First Contact was all the ships that was available gathered at a single point to stop the borg.

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Star Wars the ships can go from one side of the galaxy to the other in days/weeks.

Voyager originally needed more than 70 years in warp to do the same thing.

Also, as far as I know, only Star Wars had any kind of conflict outside the galaxy.

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THis right here is the major advantage the SW universe have over the ST one. The speed of their ships the later generation of Star Trek which is Online fixed that problem to some extend.

HOwever slugging it out, is a whole different story.

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Star Wars:
- superior ship numbers
- superior maneuverability
- MUCH faster galactic travel
- superior ground armor
- superior troop numbers

Star Trek:
- superior ship-based shield technology
- transporters
- superior phaser targeting
- cloaking


Each have unique tactical and strategic advantages.

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Also I give the edge to SW as well because of starfighters. You can destroy capital ships with Y-wing bombing runs for instance.

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- superior maneuverability

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I dunno, the Capital ships seem to slowly slug it out. If anything the way the Starfleet ship move is more maneuverable, it's like capital ship dog fighting.

- Have their ever been hard concrete ship numbers given in Star Wars?

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I dunno, the Capital ships seem to slowly slug it out. If anything the way the Starfleet ship move is more maneuverable, it's like capital ship dog fighting.

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I was more talking the huge numbers of highly maneuverable small fighters and bombers. Now whether their weapons can harm Starfleet shields is another question.