Star Trek vs. Babylon 5

[hong]

I have to say, its WONDERFUL to see something 'vs. Star Trek' that isn't Star Wars for once.

I thought threads like this were an urban myth.


Hong "not posting to this thread, nope" Ooi

 

[Michael Morris]

Quiet

Q wins.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Minor thing that hasn't been mentions (I think) is that the Federation (and Imperial ships in Star Wars) are built with the bridge on "top". The only reason to do this has to be for show, because logically you'd put the bridge as deep in the ship as possible. It's a minor weakness with shields being the primary defense, but at least the Minbari cruisers and such place important systems in areas that aren't so easy to blast.

This might be true for the older Minbari Cruisers, but both the Whitestar ships and the Earth Alliance ships (and Babylon 5 itself) seemed to have windows on their bridge (not only monitors or screens).

Regarding beaming through shields:
There was also an incident where even Enterprise D could beam through shields. They used a weakness in the Shields due to some "Sensor Cycle" to transport Chief O' brien aboard the ship.

I investigated some more links about Startrek and Babylon 5 tech.
They can be found here:
http://www.merzo.net/links.htm

(I used merzo`s site as a starting point, since he has Starships from nearly all "Sci Fi universes" on his site)

I think the main problem is that all series have shown various inconsistencies that make it hard to assess many aspects that are interesting in regards to Firepower, Technology and size.

Size:
As it seems, the Earth Alliance nor the ISA fill the whole B5 galaxy. Many incidents indicate a quite small region of maybe a few hundred lightyears.
Similar observations in Startrek seem to indicate that the Federation isn´t as big as sometimes believed. (Some figures would indicate that even the fastest Startrek ship would need 7 years to cross Federation space, while the Enterprise D and the Defiant were able to travel between the various borders, Earth and DS9 within no more than 2 days...)

The size of EarthForce fleet seemed to be around 50.000+ ships. I don`t know if these all are Capital ship, but they aren`t definitely all Omega class destroyers...

The size of Starfleet is much more difficult to guess.
Starfleet seems to have divided its ship into several subfleets. I don`t know how many of them exist, but the numbers indicate at least something in the double digits.
As the Galaxy Class was first designed and constructed, there were plans to have 12 ships of this class. Approximately 10 years later, during the Dominion wars, there were entire "Galaxy wings" (obviously a notion for us Startrek geeks ), which probably should mean more than one galaxy ship per wing. I would assume 6 to 12 ships per wing. The Galaxy probably was the second largest and strongest ship of Starfleet. There are much more Starship types existing in Starfleet than the Galaxy ship, in service are at least the following established and older classes, most of the capable of independent operation: Akira, Ambassador, Steamrunner, Defiant, Excelsior, Intrepid, Mirinda, Nebula, Nova Peregrime, Cheyenne, New Orleans. Missing here are newer and experimental classes like the Prometheus and the New Sovereign, and there seem to be much more classes than this.
If we assume that each of the "subfleets" consists of a wing (6+) of each ship class, and we expect to have 50 of these fleets, this would make the fleet as large as 3.600 ships. (it would be 14.000 if there were 100 fleets and 12 ships in each wing)
This is significantly smaller than the size of the Earthforce fleet, which is a bit surprising (and a bit disappointing for a Startrek Fan like me) , since the Federation does not consisists of a few colonies but several independent races.
The B5 tech definitely can produce ships much faster than the Starfleet tech.

Weapons Tech:
The B5 sites I checked used on-screen "evidence" (as far as we can call it this) to calculate the energy outputs of the weapons an scientific bases. I actually cannot test if these calculations are valid, but if we assume they are, the B5 weapons are superior the Phaser weapons of Startrek ships as they are described in the Technical Manual of the USS Enterprise - this does change if we compare it to the potential output of the photon torpedos, making the Startrek figures quite inconsistent (Either Phasers would be absolutely useless in ship to ship combat, or Photon Torpedos would be severely overpowered).
But there are also onconsistencies in Babylon 5 - Minbari Capital Ships seem to be destructable by some bombs which have a much lower damage output.
You can reread most of this in the links...

If we`d use on-screen evidence, the weapons effect of both ships seem to be similar against standard ship hulls and also asteroids, but not in the case of planetary bombardment. While the Centauri fleet needs 4 days to waste Narn (and it is even still habitable after that), while a combined Cardassian/Romulan Task Force destroys the whole surface of a planet using phasers/disruptors and photon torpedos within a few minutes.

Earthforce Interceptor Weapon Technology might make it difficult for Starfleet ot use its own torpedos, but torpedos seem to be capable of countering this (if we now use the Technical manual description). Since we never see someone using active torpedo measures, we have no real way to determine if this is "true".

The range of Starfleet weapons seems to be much greater than that of Eartforce (or other races in the same universe). We usually see very close encounters around starships, and some quotes on the websites about the Excalibur seem to prove that B5 weapons indeed have a lower range.
Starfleet beam and torpedo weapons are capable of firing in all directions, while the more powerful turrets of the B5 ships are stationary.
The B5 ships seem not be able to contain their firepower for long, while according to the technical manual, the Phasers can rapidly fire for 21 minutes with reload times below 0.5 seconds.

If we use this on screen evidence, Starfleet seems to win, since they still have shields in addition to their hull. If we use on-screen evidence with Bab5 and the Technical Manual for Startrek, the Earthforce is probably superior (especially if they usually can intercept all torpedos), since they simply deal more damage and their hull can absorb much more damage than a Starfleet ship might be able to inflict.

Faster Than Light Travel:
Hyperspace Jumps seem to allow much faster speed (or at least shorter travelling times) than Warp Engines, so this is clearly a superior technology. It has one weakness, though:
Navigating Hyperspace is difficult and it seems only to work so well because of the many Jump Gates and their broadcasts. It seems as if only deep space explorers are capable of safely jumping into unchartered terretory (and returning home). An invasion in Starfleet Space might be difficult if Earthforce is unable to build hyperspace gates, while an invasion of Starfleet in Earthforce space would probably require them to destroy or conquor hyperspace gates (the former one would be considered an attack on all races in B5 and would be very unwise).
Maybe modern Starfleet Sensor technology would be able to easy navigating in hyperspace, but withouth the appropriate engines or gates, this would be useless.
An important advantage of Warpengines seem to be the possiblity of using them during normal combat maneuvers, greatly increasing the effectice combat range and the maneuverability of Starfleet ships.
This also poses the question if Babylon 5 technology allows FTL sensors.
The "Picard maneuver" does, as an example, work only against enemies without them. The ship basically is faster than its own light, thus making it appear to be at multiple positions at the same time (sciencetifically, this is quite doubtful, but so is the whole warpengine and subspace theory anyway). This could be a real problem for Earthforce technology (like interception a full salvo of photon torpedos at Warp speed)

Standard Engines:
There are inconsistent figures regarding this. The Whitestar ships and the Shadows seem to be REALLY fast. But on the other hand, the battles around Babylon 5 stay in quite enclosed regions, and the Starfuries are said to have an maximum acceleration of 1km/sec^2 (while the whitestars seem to have some in 1.000 km/sec^2). The starfuries are clearly very maneuverable, which doesn`t apply for the Capital ships.
According to the manual (and also as it seems in the series), the Impuls Engine is capable of fast sublight speeds. (0.25c is the usual speed, but speeds of 0.75c are possible, even if not recommended due to the relativisit effects), and the old Ambassador Class (the Enterprise C was of this type) was designed to have an acceleration of 10 km/sec^2. (Which was only achieved due to using a weak subspace generator, similar to the one used Warp Engines).
Startrek ships seem to be very maneuverable for their size, and are capable of "full stops" and "reverse thrust".

Energy production:
Starfleet ships use Matter/Antimatter reaction and fusion reactors. The former are shown superior and are needed for warp speed, while the latter seems sufficient for all the rest of the ship - shields, weapons, impuls engine, life support (which makes me wonder what they do with all the M/AM Energy, but this can probably simply answered: They spare their AM resources when not flying at warp speed).
Earthforce ships "only" use Fusion reactors for all systems.
The Antimatter system seems to be both a strength and a weakness - it allows much more energy to be produced, but if the "Warp Core" breaches, the ship is utterly destroyed. (We have seen this so many times in TV). If Starfleet ships have an achilles heel, its this system.

Ground Combat:
I think Hand Phasers and PPGs are mostly equivalent. They will kill or stun the intended target once it hits them. Body armor might be able to hold of some shots of weaker phaser levels, but at higher levels, even this should be no problem (though this means fast discharging of phaser - simple hand-held phasers can fire approximately 3 charges on highest setting, while the rifles are capable of more shots). PPGs do fire faster than Phasers (not counting longer phaser beams), so it might be easier to give cover and supress enemy activies with them.
Federation defensive tech aboard their space ships is impressive. All modern ships and installiation seem to have several force field projectors that allow to seal of any intruders. Transporter technology might be capable of simply transfering intruders into the brig, back to their carrier, or into open space.
The Life support system could also be used against intruders (either by using sleep gas, or by venting the area).
It seems as if the Earthforce could have some serious trouble on Starfleet installations, especialy since, unlike Jem`Hardar or Klingon troups they can`t beam directly into a vital area but have to fight to it.

Conclusion:
Actually, I can`t make a real conclusion, since there are to many inconsistencies in both universes to make a fair comparision.
One of the possible scenario:
Earthforce ship leave hyperspace at close range to Starfleet ship and immediately attack surprised Starfleet ship. The whole weapons energy hits the unprotected hull and shortly thereafter the ship blows up.
Another:
Starfleet ship launches hit and run attack using both Impulse and Warp Engine to hit Earthforce ship from long range. Annoyed (but not terribly damaged), the ship leaves to Hyperspace.
Yet Another:
Earthforce Ship attacks Starfleet ships and damages its hull severely, but it can raise its shield and buy some time and start evasive maneuvers. It returns fire with Phasers and destroys the Earthforce ship main weapon system or the Starfuries (which ever seem more dangerous.

Mustrum Ridcully