Size comparisons aren’t particularly useful when the tech gap is so large. A single relatively small Culture ship would annihilate the Empire and have a grand old time doing it. Going by supplemental technical books from both franchises, Star Wars is insanely, hilariously, beyond the Federation in the ability to project energy. The printed values for Star Wars are frankly absurd and make very little sense, but if we took them at face value the Falcon would be a nigh unstoppable menace. Like throwing some AA guns on a tugboat and harassing some previously uncontacted tribes in the Pacific.
Using estimates from what we see on screen lessens the gap considerably, but still puts Star Wars in general on a higher rung of the Kardeshev scale. I don’t know if it still exists, but stardestroyer.net used to have some great calculations of blaster energy levels based entirely from OT footage, with full breakdowns of their math and estimations. As for the “lasers,” that’s just old nomenclature from long since outdated weapons, blaster tech drives the vast majority of Star Wars weaponry. In new canon, they’re plasma weapons. In old canon, there were several flavors, including plasma, but most were particle weapons that used some very exotic fictional particles that didn’t interact much with normal matter except thermally, like how dark matter doesn’t react much except gravitationally.
And really. It just makes sense. Star Wars technologically plateaued ages ago. The invention of FTL tech is prehistory. Star Trek is only a couple centuries ahead of us.
And yet, they don’t have computer-aimed turrets. They still rely on people getting into turrets and aiming at their targets using some kind of low-fi 1970s era CRT to assist them. They may have plateaued ages ago, but it seems like their plateau was pretty low. They never developed transporters, they never developed replicators, AFAIK they don’t have cloaking devices. They have robots, but the robots seem pretty primitive in a number of ways – certainly they don’t have any robots that are advanced enough to be mistaken for humans / humanoids.
It’s also hard to estimate the power of “laser” cannons based on what you see on screen.
On one hand, a specialty space station was created that was powerful enough to blow up an entire planet in the matter of seconds. Even if the weapons they use for ship-to-ship fire are 1000x less powerful, 1/1000th of the power needed to destroy a planet is absurdly huge. Maybe the weapons are incredibly powerful, but we don’t know because the shields are also incredibly powerful.
Meanwhile, the Star Trek world only got warp drive recently, so recently that the individual who created it is still in living memory. But, just because it’s recent doesn’t mean they’re not even more technologically advanced. Everything we see in Star Trek suggests that they blew past the plateau that Star Wars hit, and kept going. Transporter beams, replicators, holodecks, limited time travel, androids with positronic brains that can pass for humans, artificial intelligence both at an individual scale (robots and sentient robotic aliens) but also at larger scales, like the ship’s computers.
Maybe in Star Wars world, there are no really advanced aliens, so all the alien races got brought into the same empire. Since there’s no outside influence creating pressure to come up with new technologies, there’s technological stagnation. In Star Trek’s universe, they keep finding new aliens, many of whom are so advanced they’re godlike. That has to keep inspiring inventors. In addition, instead of one giant empire, there are multiple empires, many of whom are hostile to one-another. One thing that tends to result in technological development is arms races against aggressive neighbors.
I tend to ignore what they say at places like stardestroyer.net because the more you look into these Sci Fi universes (and probably the George Lucasverse more than most) the more contradictions and paradoxes you see. I find I can enjoy them more if I just let my imagination fill in the details, based on what I see on-screen.
Size comparisons aren’t particularly useful when the tech gap is so large. A single relatively small Culture ship would annihilate the Empire and have a grand old time doing it. Going by supplemental technical books from both franchises, Star Wars is insanely, hilariously, beyond the Federation in the ability to project energy. The printed values for Star Wars are frankly absurd and make very little sense, but if we took them at face value the Falcon would be a nigh unstoppable menace. Like throwing some AA guns on a tugboat and harassing some previously uncontacted tribes in the Pacific.
Using estimates from what we see on screen lessens the gap considerably, but still puts Star Wars in general on a higher rung of the Kardeshev scale. I don’t know if it still exists, but stardestroyer.net used to have some great calculations of blaster energy levels based entirely from OT footage, with full breakdowns of their math and estimations. As for the “lasers,” that’s just old nomenclature from long since outdated weapons, blaster tech drives the vast majority of Star Wars weaponry. In new canon, they’re plasma weapons. In old canon, there were several flavors, including plasma, but most were particle weapons that used some very exotic fictional particles that didn’t interact much with normal matter except thermally, like how dark matter doesn’t react much except gravitationally.
And really. It just makes sense. Star Wars technologically plateaued ages ago. The invention of FTL tech is prehistory. Star Trek is only a couple centuries ahead of us.
And yet, they don’t have computer-aimed turrets. They still rely on people getting into turrets and aiming at their targets using some kind of low-fi 1970s era CRT to assist them. They may have plateaued ages ago, but it seems like their plateau was pretty low. They never developed transporters, they never developed replicators, AFAIK they don’t have cloaking devices. They have robots, but the robots seem pretty primitive in a number of ways – certainly they don’t have any robots that are advanced enough to be mistaken for humans / humanoids.
It’s also hard to estimate the power of “laser” cannons based on what you see on screen.
On one hand, a specialty space station was created that was powerful enough to blow up an entire planet in the matter of seconds. Even if the weapons they use for ship-to-ship fire are 1000x less powerful, 1/1000th of the power needed to destroy a planet is absurdly huge. Maybe the weapons are incredibly powerful, but we don’t know because the shields are also incredibly powerful.
Meanwhile, the Star Trek world only got warp drive recently, so recently that the individual who created it is still in living memory. But, just because it’s recent doesn’t mean they’re not even more technologically advanced. Everything we see in Star Trek suggests that they blew past the plateau that Star Wars hit, and kept going. Transporter beams, replicators, holodecks, limited time travel, androids with positronic brains that can pass for humans, artificial intelligence both at an individual scale (robots and sentient robotic aliens) but also at larger scales, like the ship’s computers.
Maybe in Star Wars world, there are no really advanced aliens, so all the alien races got brought into the same empire. Since there’s no outside influence creating pressure to come up with new technologies, there’s technological stagnation. In Star Trek’s universe, they keep finding new aliens, many of whom are so advanced they’re godlike. That has to keep inspiring inventors. In addition, instead of one giant empire, there are multiple empires, many of whom are hostile to one-another. One thing that tends to result in technological development is arms races against aggressive neighbors.
I tend to ignore what they say at places like stardestroyer.net because the more you look into these Sci Fi universes (and probably the George Lucasverse more than most) the more contradictions and paradoxes you see. I find I can enjoy them more if I just let my imagination fill in the details, based on what I see on-screen.