Imperium of Man Vs. The United Federation of Planets

[Chase]

This probably doesn't belong here, but it's my board so... whatever.

So I saw this on another forum.  What do you guys think?  I should expect a strong degree of bias but I know there's plenty of Trekkies out there.

Fight it out.

Who wins?  Why?

[skavengear]

Death to the false emperor! TUFP FTW!

[the_trooper]

Warhammer 40,000 is 38,000 years in our future in a "dark age".

Star Trek: The Next Generation is 300-400 years in our future in a "golden age".

We will use ST:TNG because the rest of the series sucked.  This is an objective fact.

UFP: Has basic las weaponry.
IoM: Has high end mobile las weaponry and plasma and the good old bolt weapons

UFP: stun batons
IoM: chainsaw-swords

UFP: enlightenment and acceptance of people and cultures
IoM: hatred and xenophobia

UFP: transporter technology
IoM: Deepstriking technology (same)

UFP: Warp travel that is pretty benign
IoM: Warp travel that will eat your mind, body and soul if you have a crack in your shields.

UFP: Crappy armor and pajama like uniforms
IoM: Power armor and tactical dreadnought armor

I would love to live in the UFP (even as opposed to now) and IoM is like Richard Falwell's wet dream.  In the end, it's technology and angry roid raging knights with fully automatic missile launcher guns that are 10 feet tall vs. a redshirt.  Maybe BFG and ST:TNG ships would be different but I would bet the lack of fighters would hurt the UFP.

Not even Riker can save the day with a cool deflector shield trick.

Now Borg vs. IoM would be a different story.



There should have been a disclaimer on how much nerd would erupt from this thread.

[DarkAngelsGuy]

I'm with Trooper on this one. There is no comparison and The Federation doesn't have shit on the Imperial Fleet. The ambassador class is mere 564m, the Galaxy somewhere around 643m..... The Sovereign 665m maybe? Basic weaponary and their shields are constantly shitting the bed - their hull structure doesn't seem all that strong either... but they manage.

Lets compare it to the Imperium Battleships - Potent void shields with heavily reinforced adamendium hull structures (3) dozens of meters thick, heavy lance batteries, enormous broadside capability, nova cannons, and of course plenty of torpedos. They've warp drives and fusion based plasma drives.  Oh and they range about 8 kilometers in length.

Or we can take it down a notch to the smaller grand cruiser and cruisers. OR even the escort ships of the Destoyers and Frigates being about 750m to 1.5km traveling in wolf packs of 2-6 ships. Special capabilities including Cobra class torpedo boat destroyers or Firestorm class with its armor-peircing, prow-mounted lance.


I won't knock the Federation much more, but if they ever enter a black hole that shoots them into year 40,000 - and I was the commander of a fleet. Well, I guess I'd have a shiny, vintage "Enterprise" hood ornament for my Battlecruiser ^^

[Chase]

When I'm not tired I'll steal responses from somewhere else and post them here as my own points.

Truth be told, I know next to nothing about either universe but I think this is a pretty cool topic of debate.

[Commissar Grey]

  IoM all the way!!

[tyranid warlord]

I agree with Trooper in all but the federation does have some real good fighters that
shoot both torpedos and beams and has great shields. And deep space nine kicked butt
the last few seasons

[Chase]

Federation Officers, or even enlisted servicemen rank chief or above, have a supernatural nack for finding ways to win impossible situations using some form of techno-miracle, while the imperium doesn't even know how their own technology works. Even if all hope appeared lost, I would bet solidly on the federation inverting their dilithium phase shield thruster deflectors and beating the shit out of the entire imperium in the last 2 minutes of the show, without losing any main characters but merely a few handfuls of no-names in red shirts.

[Chase]

The Federation's technology is so advanced the Imperium would not stand a chance. The ships of the Imperium would not even be able to respond in a space battle let alone win. The effective ranges of the Imperiums weapons is a fraction of the Federations. Any possible technological edge the Imperium had would quickly be reverse engineered by the Federation.

I mean Imperium has 10's of thousands of slaves manually firing and reloading weapons. In space vessels that still fight using firing arcs of manually operated weapons. At ranges of measured in 10's or 100's of KM's. The Imperium cannot effectively communicate, many of their weapons are inferior to present day standards, let alone the Federations.

[Jess]

Don't knock Deep Space nine out of the running, Captain Sisko wouldn't put up with any space marines. He puched Q in the face. Picard would be too busy stuck in the holo deck playing Sherlock Holmes (seriously why do they keep going in there?). Original ST could fill the ships with tribbles and green ladies. Seeing as there are no female space marines they may be distracted.
At the end of it all no federation ship has to extend a giant ruler to see if they are within range.

[DarkAngelsGuy]

Even with all being said, it would most likely boil down to a numbers game. IoM has resources, man power, and better tech across the board. There is no comparison my friends. The Federation could run, but how far and for how long. They would have to find a way to put together a worthy fleet to battle the Emperor which I highly doubt would happen in a lifetime.

Their best bet? Give their minds to the Chaos and stand a fighting chance as peons to the dark void.

[blantyr]

To me, the question is whether you are talking the Star Trek shown in the TV and movie special effects, or the Star Trek of the technical manuals.  In the movies, you would think the weapons range of a starship is measured in hundreds of yards.  To make the battle scenes interesting, the Star Trek directors show both sides in rifle range of one another.  In the technical manuals, Star Trek photon torpedos travel thousands of times the speed of light, and have matter-antimatter warheads...  much much more powerful than nukes.

Another big difference is that Star Trek ships can use sensors and fire weapons while traveling faster than light.  The Imperium can't.  40K battles, with the exception of demons trying to board through Gellar fields, can only fight in normal space.  Beam weapons are speed of light, and just can't hit a ship traveling at warp speeds.  The ship is faster than the beam weapon.

To me, it would be like the Red Baron having a vast superiority in the number of Focker Triplanes, having Pappy Boyington's World War II Corsairs vastly outnumbered.  The speed, range, altitude, armor and maneuverability advantages would be so great that numbers would hardly matter.  It would be like killing baby seals.  Face it, 40K is steam-punk while Star Trek is futuristic science fiction.  Ships designed and styled to be reminiscent of World War I battleships ought to be kludgy hulking leviathans.  They wouldn't and shouldn't hack it in a true futuristic environment.

But that would be by the tech manual, not by by the special effects.  It's also a question of what a fan might want to believe.  Which is a fan's favorite franchise?