Galactic Empire vs. Sith Empire (The Old Republic-era)

I was highly entertained by a similar thread on another website; let's see what our resident Viners have to say. I'm especially looking forward to responses from @Silver2467 and @reikai; hopefully theirs will be a glorious clash of perspectives.

I haven't trekked much through The Old Republic, but I am given to believe its overall state fluctuates with the events of each class's story line. For simplicity's sake, we'll assume the Sith Empire exists as it does at the moment of The Old Republic's opening cutscene/s. The Galactic Empire exists as it did as of the opening crawl of Return of the Jedi.

Debaters may draw on depictions of each empire in chronologically-relevant EU. Debaters may not draw upon resources that did not exist as of the specified time frame (e.g., no Galaxy Gun). Debaters may argue industrial capability for either faction (e.g., the first Death Star was destroyed in A New Hope, but the Empire has the resources and technology to build another).

To defeat the opposing side, a faction must conquer the enemy capital (Dromund Kaas & Korriban; Coruscant & Byss), kill the enemy ruler (Vitiate, Sidious; remember their "immortality"), and eliminate the primary leadership (Dark Council, Scourge; Pestage, Vader, the Ruling Council).

Assume the Sith Empire has control of the territory allotted to it at the game's beginning and that the Galactic Empire controls the territory of the Old Republic.

GE has more resources, and has more advanced tech (since it's from later in the timeline)which would be a nice advantage for GE. Sith Empire obviously gets an edge due to number of force users (GE had Vader, Sidious, and some dark jedi). I'm gonna give it to GE, since its essentially the successful version of the Sith Empire, but I could be convinced to vote the other way.

No ur right, the sith empire is no where as big, as resouceful, as powerful for weapons and tech, and lacks the man power to stand up to the GE.

@killerwasp: @oboga: The only thing GE has is the size of its domain. That's all. There is no tech advantage for them, because tech in SW has never evolved passed a certain point. Constant wars kept dragging them back centuries, even millennia, eliminating any and all progress that'd been made, and forcing them to dig up weapons and tech from centuries before the last war, even a thousand years or more, just to re-learn things they've lost how to do.

In fact, the Sith Empire has greater tech overall. They have various artifacts and tech taken from Gree and Rakata, and developed in areas that're not seen during the GE era. Such as the self-regenerating cybernetics being researched in Grathan's estate on Dromund Kaas. There's also the Silencer Fleet Killers, the Gauntlet, the Planet Prison, and various other super weapons. Plus the Sun Razor, which is an adaptation of the Star Forge, that can create ships from nothing by the energy drained from a star and can manufacture 2-3 Super Weapons a year while building Capital Ships all the while.

The Gauntlet could target and destroy anything traveling in hyperspace. It could cripple or even destroy the Death Star, since it needs to travel through hyperspace as well to get around using, I believe, nine separate Hyperspace Engines.

There's also the Ascendent Spear, a Terminus-Class destroyer, with an experimental design and weaponry created by Darth Mekhis and controlled by Darth Karrid through uniquely crafted and grafted cybernetic implants, allowing Karrid to control the ship and its functions directly, giving her a sensory range over a whole system and extending the firing range of its weapons to twice that of any other vessel. By itself it was capable of wiping out entire fleets without a scratch.

There's also the fact that GE has 2 sith, a handful of secret apprentices and the Imperial Guard. While the Sith Empire has many thousands upon thousands of Sith, the Dark Council, the Dread Masters, Emperor Vitiate, the Hand, the Wrath, and the Imperial Guard.

Also, the Emperor is a baws.

@reikai: Nvm scratch all that, unless he says the imperial fleet is literally transferred over there, it could go either way now, i didnt realize he replaced the GE with the Old republic.

@killerwasp: *sigh* Clone Wars didn't show anything. Their weapons were crap and no better than what the Republic had in SWTOR. Stormtrooper armor is supposedly 'better' and it gets riddled with arrows by teddy bears. Their armor is completely worthless.

Star Destroyers aren't nearly as dangerous as the Ascendent Spear, nor do their fleets matter. It wouldn't matter if GE has bigger fleets, when one shot from a Silencer can obliterate an entire fleet. And the SE has more than a few of them. And as I said, the Death Star needs to travel through hyperspace to move. Making it a laughably easy target for the Gauntlet.

Saying Vader is better than every sith in the SE is just laughable. Malgus alone is his equal or better, nvm the Wrath, the Heir of Kallig and other members of the Dark Council. Frankly if you believe Vader can take on any of these figures, much less scores more Sith, then yer just kidding yourself.

You can claim that Space Battles only matter with sheer numbers, but they don't when 1 SE ship can wipe out dozens of GE ships thanks to things like the Silencer and Ascendent Spear, and numerous other super weapons that're far more effective and useful in such battles than the Death Star ever was. And the Sun Razers don't require planets for resources. They generate them from stars and create ships without the need for strip-mining planets. The SE also has several exotic power sources, not the least of which is Isotope-5 which can't be found anywhere else in the galaxy except Makeb.

And Sid ain't stomping Vitiate. Vitiate's awakening on Yavin-4 killed the soldiers surrounding the temple as a side-effect. All that died become food for him. The war itself feeds his hunger and makes him stronger. In the Pub ending Darth Marr states; "He did not assume a physical form or possess a body, and he left as soon as he appeared! None of it makes sense!" and before that Revan stated that the Ritual hadn't even begun yet, so the Emperor shouldn't have manifested. Yet he did.

Sid has no idea what he's up against here, and all Vitiate needs to do is complete the plan he started before on Belsavis. Vitiate has a ritual that, once completed with the necessary requirements, will kill everything in the Entire Galaxy. Without exception. It will feed and become a part of Vitiate and transform him into a God. That was his goal. To become an actual deity at the cost of the whole galaxy and roam the cosmos for eternity.

What was Palpy's goal? Oh yeah; live forever, rule the galaxy and beat back the Yuuzon-Vong with the Death Star that those discourteous kids keep blowing up.

@reikai: Actually if u watched it and paid attention it did, however as i said none of it matters because i didn't read the terms correctly.

@killerwasp: Either/or, the SE just has more going for it. Plus, as I said, Vitiate could end everything.

@reikai: Are you saying Vitiate himself would beat sidious especially in the GE time period?

@killerwasp: I'm not saying anything solidly until we get the end of his story. As it stands, all six Dread Masters are nothing next to him, and no one has ever faced him at his full strength.

I am saying, that if Vitiate completes his plan, there's nothing Sid would be able to do from becoming part of the food chain. It's the end of the prophecy indicated by the Force Spirit of Meetra Surik.

3min in

@reikai: Mhh okay, just curious.

galactic empire

Bah I had this huge post, but forget it. GE have it, the SE while they have super weapons...not like they can't be taken out, with GE I.I, they will be found and destroyed.

@wolfrazer: yeah an how would they go about it? I know, the same way they go after everything else; send a fleet of ships at it. Cause that $hit always works. Except when several of these weapons can wipe them out in transit or smoke whole fleets with single shots. Kinda takes the fight out of GE when a smaller force is annihilating their larger numbers.

Nvm that the Dread Masters can crush whole fleets through mental domination.

@reikai: They have Special Forces ya know, can take em out that way. It's not rocket science. When word comes of the other side having super weapons, they'll come up with a way to take them out. They're not stupid.

@reikai: good point with the tech thing... but Sidious could probably beat Vitiate.

@wolfrazer: Pubs had SIS and SpecOps and that was part of plot. GE spies weren't nearly as effective since Sid himself has to get involved for them to get anywhere.

I mean for eff's sake, he was the one who let the Rebels get the Death Star plans just so he could track them covertly to their base and wipe them out. It wasn't a plan by his intelligence network. They never got anywhere. Neither did Tarkin. All he knows how to do is throw bodies at a problem and hope it suffocates under all the corpses.

Sith Empire had Imperial Intelligence and these guys got $hit done. Hell even Vitiate had deep-seeded plans with Sith Infiltrators in the Jedi Order for centuries. And there were several Generals and Moffs in the SE who made the Republic class figures look like absolute fools during their story campaigns. We had one guy manipulating the entire criminal underworld.

And let's not forget that Republic SIS of the time had agents like Theron Shan, as well as a number of Jedi working directly for the SIS as well, as well as a part of a group of Shadow Operatives. These people were better at intelligence gathering than anyone in Sid's empire.

GE crushes them, Sidious makes a handpuppet ot of Vitiate, and then the Stormies invade Bioware and destroy their studio for coming up with the garbage that is TOR

@reikai: Sidious doesn't need to get involved all the time, the GE I.I is vastly capable and has great amount of resources along with their own highly trained agents.

..../Sigh...

Rei you just...vastly underestimate the GE, they do more than just throw bodies at things....and they got stuff done too.

But I'm not in the mood to argue right now or for the next 4 days due to RL stuff, I gave my opinion, ending with it. Besides I'm not one to go for a 3 year old thread.

EPIC BUMP! @shootingniva: @i_like_swords: @dondave: @sirfizzwhizz: @jedixman:

The Galactic Empire is bigger.

You also have to consider, with Sidious’ power it wouldn’t be an issue turning a lot of the SE’s Sith to his side; that and he would no doubt train the Inquisitors as fully fledged Sith Lords to be better than most of the SE’s Sith, without that training they are already above average for Sith Assassins.

The GE's war machine is unparalleled, the amount of current resources at their disposal and their production rate is staggering, as well as their entire army and of course there would be Cloning if they needed an extremely skilled army or instant one (Spartii).

Also, the GE has Thrawn at their disposal. I don’t care what the SE have, Thrawn is one of the ultimate weapons in the SW universe.

@g1d3on You say we may not use resources that neither Empire had at their respective times, but what about them acquiring them? After all, it wasn't so long after the New Republic was founded that the Emperor used the GG, and with as threat such as the SE he would hasten its production.

This didn't need to be bumped, it's a horrible mismatch in drastic favor to the Empire.

The major problems the SE is gonan run into? Palpatine.

If he suddenly finds himself facing the ancient Sith empire all he's gonna see is a chance to get the knowledge the Modern Sith lost back.

He mind rapes a coupe Sith Lords, then mind controls Vitiate and has the SE rip itself apart.

@chaos239: lol at Sidious mind controlling Vitiate when the latters TP feats are better.

@hittheassasin: id love to see these TP feats please

It's more like the major problems are going to be everything, not just Sidious.

Galactic Empire.

The Sith Empire can't hide. Sidious will feel their combined dark side presence. The Death Star is spammed on the Sith homeworld, blowing them up. The Empire could lose in a ground battle, because the Sith would take out the Stormtroopers (obviously) but Vader could stomp the weaker Sith, and ROTJ Sidious pretty much can stomp groups of Sith. And there are peeps like Jerec/Dark Jedi/Inquisitors. But a ground assault is not necessary. Orbital bombardment/Death Star FTW. And Sidious will resist any attempt from Valkorion to possess him. And can expel his spirit in case Valk possesses Vader. Which is unlikely.

@wolfrazer: Not really. GE's only big advantages are numbers and resources. SE has by far and large a greater number and variety of Force users and more than a few Super Weapons. Sid an Vader are the only two who can compete Force wise. Sid's dark acolytes and Vader's Inquisitors are next to useless are next two useless against these far more well trained and experienced Sith. Nvm the fact that the GE team is vastly outnumbered in the Force user category.

GE also has a lot more internal problems because Sid has spent the last 20yrs restructuring the economic and political state of the Republic into a consolidated Empire. He was still trying to dissolve the Senate even up to the first Death Star being destroyed. The SE doesn't have that problem.

@reikai: The SE has a ton of infighting and internal problems, where are you getting that they don't? Plus not sure what the latter is suppose to mean, the Senate was dissolved by ANH, here it's the GE as of ROTJ.

Number of Force Users don't win wars, if that were so then nothing else would matter. Yet clearly everything does matter.

But I don't really wanna get into this again.

SE suffered internal fighting primarily due to peace time after the Treaty of Coruscant. And number of Force users did help win wars and battles. The issue then was that both Jedi and Sith at the time had tens of thousands on each side. Darth Lachris noted that the Republic had taken whole planets by assigning one Jedi per squad in strategic attacks during the war.

@reikai: That's not to say they wouldn't still have infighting, they're Sith backstabbing and fighting among one another is kinda a thing. Regardless though this is moot to bring up anyway, both ran well anyhow.

Yeah? Well here's the thing the GE doesn't need the same amount of Force Users because they have as you said more resources, more space, better logistics, they have more manpower, the biggest Navy in history. So on and so forth. They also do have means of fighting Force Users.

Space battles alone would be difficult for the SE to do anything ground wise.

To say that just because the GE has lesser Force Users = they lose, when they have all these other advantages is kinda wrong.

But seeing as we never get anywhere here, let's just agree to disagree.

@wolfrazer: The Republic had more soldiers, more territory and more resources. They were still losing the initial war, despite also having Jedi. Even assuming GE had twice what TOR had, it's still lacking any viable contingent of Force users to counter the Sith. You can't pretend that's not a huge factor in this.

Also there was far less Sith backstabbing than you'd think. As Darth Marr pointed out, when the Sith have an enemy and a goal, they are united. The war itself would keep the vast majority of Sith focused on destroying the GE first and foremost.

As for Space battles, SE had far more super weapons in that regard, and the Sun Razors. Which were like mini Star Forges.

The ge obviously.

I'm feeling the Sith Empire. Storm troopers are probably a little better than the standard Sith trooper, but they also have plenty of war droids... and a single Dark Jedi could still probably take many troopers down. And there are thousands of Dark Jedi.

Also, the GE is limited to Sidious and Vader as its prime fighters. The SE has Vitiate, the Dread Masters, Darth Malgus, the Dark Council (Darth Jadus, Darth Marr, etc.), Darth Nox, and the Second Emperor's Wrath. They're all powerful in their own right and could easily take town armies of storm troopers.

Don't know if the SE has access to the Foundry in this, but that would help a lot too.

@reikai: I had a post set, but F it, this won't go anywhere and the GE does have superweapons more than just the DS during the GCW and the OR doesn't compare to the GE taking away the Force Users for a moment. Also I'm not saying the SE having Force Users isn't an advantage, but it's not gonna solely win them the war when the GE has everything more than the OR or SE did in terms of well nearly everything.

But anyway, lets just agree to disagree here.

i just want to say swtor is more advanced then the empire there was a dark age where tech regressed the empire is still behind on in resource are they ahead if we use the land you give us

@scythus: Prove it, because they arent more technological advanced.

I'm left in awe at the sheer firepower of the Sith Empire Capital Ships......

Oddly, it is almost as if 300 years were not enough to advance the firepower of their weapons:

You can even argue it got worse.. but, I'll allow room for unknown Rakata building structure to make sense of how little damage the Sith Capital Ship was doing.

Much firepower. Much Wow... Wait.. no... no.. it isn't.

ISDs eat Sith Empire Fleets for breakfast and wonder what backwards sector these rednecks come from.

@wut: so the take away here is that EA killed the Dakka?

@thekillerklok: Yup.

But even the comics support their ships having less firepower. In the GE, when they BDZ, their ISDs pack more then enough power to do this. In the Old Republic, the Mando's used nukes because they were far superior for orbital bombardment then their turbolasers.

@wut: I am pretty solidly in agreement there, Most properly equipped star Destroyer should be able to replicate the KOTOR feat, I am ignoring that first video you showed and refusing to acknowledge any EA touches as cannon.

(The relevence of that statment is that I think something smaller then a Imperator class Star destroyer should be able to output the same raw damage, if less dakka.

@thekillerklok: Lol well, I am not talking replicate, I am talking blowing out of the water. ISDs, when they BDZ, are supposed to be meant to blow down below the crust to get those pesky bunkers. All the bombardment of Taris did was destroy the megacity, it didn't cause much, if any, damage to the land underneath besides the collapsing of said megacity on top of it.

The firepower displayed is.. verrryyyy bad. XD

The Mandos using Nukes were more to show that while, yes, you could pull a Malak, it was a massive waste of time and energy as it would take a very long time to even destroy stuff on the surface to any real degree, the damage isn't all that impressive compared to Nukes, at that time period, being far more effective against land targets compared to say, GE, where the ISD packs more then enough firepower to make using Nukes a waste of cargo space.

XD Or, you know, get wrecked Sith Empire, tis what happens when your ships pack much less of a punch.

@wut: eh, I used Star destroyer there, not specifically referencing the ISP, for Example An eradicator class or a victory class. Also all this talk about ships is making me miss Star wars Galaxies.

@thekillerklok: Oh, the little ones like the Gladiators and what not.

@wut: Yep, I'm assuming capacitor limitations on the smaller ones, vs the overkill spam of turbolasers an ISD can dish out. and let's not go into Super star destroyers.

I mean the only half decent tactic for the Sith empire here is boarding/commandeering ships.

and An overt operation is pretty much doomed.

The GE still take this, they have the largest fleet ever made in history. The days of the Old Republic, both the Republic and Sith only had a mere fraction of ships that the Empire had.

The Sith have who has military commanders? Lets see...

Grand Moff Kilran

The Voidwolf

General Rakton

Grand Moff Zellos

These really are the only big noted SE Commanders of both fleet and ground forces that I've found to have done anything. Everyone else just doesn't have anything really that puts them in any real high standing.

You may as well scratch out Zellos as he's a complete dumb*** thanks to the Battle of Bothawui.

Now lets see the commanders for the GE.

Darth Vader

General Veers

Grand Admiral Thrawn

The other 12 Grand Admirals(literally any SE fleet that comes across these guys, are immediately screwed.)

Captain Gilad Pellaeon

A ton of other established/esteemed commanders who I can't bother to name because there's too many. Now I won't say the GE doesn't have its fair share of morons, but I can name a hell of a lot more competent officers than not.

Ok so lets have a look see at their fleet compositions.

The SE Harrower Dreadnought, 2,300 crew, 7,300 troops, 95 starfighters and 32 bombers with 35 shuttles

Terminus-class Destroyer, 530 crew, 285 troops, 14 starfighters, 2 bombers with 3 shuttles

Mark Supremacy VI class starfighter and B28 Extinction class bombers.

Total= 109 starfighters, 34 bombers

Alright, fair.

Now lets look at a GE fleet composition.

The GE ISD, 30k+ crew, 9,700 troops, 72 TIE Fighters/Interceptors/Bombers(mixed bag), 6 gunboats and other vessels(variable number of Skipray Blastboats).

Victory-class Destroyer, between 5,000-6,000 crew, over 2,000 troops, 24 TIE fighters

Total= 96 Fighters/Bombers, 6 gunboats and variable Skiprays.

This is just between these two ships, the SE has a slight advantage with starfighters...but honestly that isn't even enough, the GE has more versatility with the Blastboats and Interceptors along with the standard TIE Fighter. This isn't even taking into account that certain Imperial fleets could have the TIE Advances or TIE Phantoms, TIE Defenders etc and so on.

I didn't even get into the support frigates/ships that the GE fleets could have, meanwhile it appears the SE only has Harrowers and Terminus class with anything of note to them, anything else they have there's nothing for info.

Pilots?....

Hell I don't think the Sith Empire even has any notable Navy pilots.

Meanwhile the GE has Soontir Fel, Maarek Stele, Trel Skutu(not really established, but he's at least a noted veteran pilot) The Imperial Ace and probably more I'm forgetting.

The standard TIE pilot even has more info and showings than the SE's standard pilot.

Ground forces, ok the SE has the Force User edge but that's not enough.

I didn't really wanna get back into this, but the GE just has more going for it than the SE does.

Excluding any mega super weapons(and of course the Sith Emperor and Palpatine),the GE is bigger, however the manpower of the SE is vastly, vastly superior, given that there are over tens of millions of Sith Lords alive at the time. In conventional ground warfare, the SE slaughters. In fleet warfare, the SE brings in the Dread Masters who solo with TP.

All-in-all, the better numbers, superior tech, heavier cannonry, and larger fleet of the GE will be completely outclassed by the sheer amount of Sith Lords fighting(not to mention the vast gallery of powerful artifacts, cybernetic enhancements, the creations of Sith alchemy and the like), especially given that large chunks of these Sith are actually in the upper tiers.

You simply cannot get around the mass amounts of Sith around.

@lord_tenebrous: 1. Those tens of millions of sith got solid by normal troopers. Palpatine used telepathy on the empire constantly good luck matching that

2. Those sith were stalemated by a weaker Republic and some of lower tier jedi