Fantasy Matchup: Kirk vs. Picard vs. Janeway - Who would win?

[MissKittyFantastico]

Thanks Asvarduil

I feel it's difficult to draw too many inferences from Defiant vs Lakota - the Lakota's phasers (and other systems?) were upgraded beyond what O'Brien expected from an Excelsior, they were allowed to take their opening shots unopposed (Defiant had shields up, but in other respects they just sailed into Lakota's crosshairs), and when things finally kicked off neither side was going for the kill, only to disable. I feel maybe that hampered the Defiant more, that perhaps the Lakota is more balanced in a measures attack-and-defend fight, whereas the Defiant's all about bringing the hammer down right up front and never letting up. I don't think a standard Excelsior, even the models still in service in the 24th Century, would fare so well, and I'd hazard a guess that if Worf had come in with blood in his eye, the opening salvo would've crippled Lakota beyond all hope of victory; best case, they inflict enough damage on Defiant before they're hulled that it's in no state to get into another fight right away afterwards.

There's also Mirror Defiant vs Mirror Negh'Var - the little guy, already damaged from blowing away Birds of Prey, took on the Regent's ship (several times the size of 'our' Negh'Var) and made mincemeat of it. Granted the mirror universe is as soft as sci-fi gets in Star Trek, and besides that I can see an argument that the flagship might not be a balanced combatant, given Sisko was able to essentially attack with impunity by staying too close to it to target; it's very in-character for the mirror Klingons to have followed the Death Star's example in designing their defences around large-scale assault, not 'fighters' (the Valiant assumed the same fault in the equally colossal Dominion battleship in their opening strafing run, and even though things only went properly ploin-shaped later, they didn't seem to be entirely correct in that either). Overall though, I'd call the Defiant a 50/50 match for the Enterprise E; I just don't feel like the D, lacking the assumed Dominion War upgrades on the Venture types, could withstand the Defiant's murderous weight of fire early on well enough to match it in the long run.

A possibility occurs to me though - make it The Sisko versus everyone else, by using one of those Delta Quadrant orchids to transporter-merge the other three into a single captain with the out-of-the-box thinking of Kirk, the measured subtlety of Picard, and the bloody-minded endurance of Janeway (I think I just described Chrisjen Avasarala), and then give her command of the Enterprise E with Voyager's Borg upgrades and Scotty down in engineering working his miracles. Sisko gets DS9 with all its Way of the Warrior upgrades, and the Defiant as mobile defence with Worf commanding and Jadzia at the helm, making a pretty fearsome anvil and hammer respectively. I'd be interested to see whether even Voyager's magitek armour could keep a single ship without fleet support intact long enough to batter their way through all that.

[The Romulan Republic]

Reg. the Lakota:

Maybe, but there's probably a limit to how far you can upgrade a decades-old design. And at best, it would presumably only be on par with contemporary designs in its weight class (that is, smaller and less powerful than a Galaxy or Sovereign class ship like the E-D/E-E).

Also, I don't know how significant the fact that they were holding back is, because both sides were doing so.

I did think of the Neg'var, but I'm not sure how Mirror Universe Neg'vars and Defiants stack up to main timeline ones. I’ve also noticed that Klingon ships, like Romulan ships, seem to tend to be based around more or less fixed forward firepower- they’re designed, in other words, for ambushes (using cloaks) or bombardment, not dog-fighting agile opponents.

[FuelDrop]

While I would not go so far as to say that it is clear one way or the other, let us examine this from a wargamer's point of view.

Ships:
While it varies based on the circumstances of the conflict, I believe that for alpha strike potential Kirk is definitely the winner. While his tech is not as advanced as the others, an anti-matter warhead is still an anti-matter warhead no matter the era and Kirk would be the first to open fire, barring Janeway listening to Shoulder Spider and trying to eat the other captains.

Then we look at durability. Janeway is out on this one if the fight takes place pre-seven, since her previous chief engineer could literally not identify crap. Add to that the fact that her ship is the non-capital ship of the three and, barring batman armour, she loses this part of the battle. Then we have Kirk vs Picard, and as much as I love Kirk and Scotty, even their combined awesomeness is no match for centuries of technological progress.

Note: This is incredibly cynical, but Kirk's ship is established to have an extremely large crew complement for its size compared to next gen era ships, and they are CREW, not civilians. That means that Kirk can afford to take a far heavier loss of life before he finds himself running out of personnel, which may prove to be important and means that Kirk's ship is least vulnerable to boarding actions and, inversely, can most afford to beam over excess crew onto an enemy ship if their shields drop in the form of boarding parties.

Now, let us look at tactical experience. Kirk clearly has the edge here, with Janeway taking second place and Picard dragging in dead last.

Finally, let us look at technobabble. Janeway, as a mad scientist par excellence, is far and away the most likely to come up with some cunning way to negate the enemy's advantages, though the other ships' excellent chief engineers are something of a mitigating factor. Picard himself is less likely to come up with a tech tech solution but with Data on the bridge help is close at hand on that front. No offence to Spock, but he and Kirk are not likely to outdo their TNG era counterparts with technical solutions.

In the end... in a one-on-one, Kirk has a shot despite outdated tech. Alpha strike to take down the shields of his target, then beam in a small army of redshirts to distract the gold shirts while Kirk's spare engineers disable the enemy ship from the inside, while sheer number of crew render his vessel more or less immune to someone else trying the same tactics. If his alpha strike doesn't pay off and get the shields down long enough for his boarding party though, Kirk is in serious trouble. His shields are laughably out of date by the time of TNG so it seems unlikely they will be able to hold up.

Janeway would struggle to win a quick skirmish due to her ship being a non-capital vessel and thus out of its weight class against Picard, though against Kirk her advanced tech evens the odds provided the ship doesn't get food poisoning or the flu. In a running battle on the other hand, Janeway's mad scientist tenancies make her a sure bet.

Picard is not in his heart a warrior, but with the biggest, toughest ship in the contest he doesn't really need to be. The Ent D wins a straight up fight against the other two, with the exception of Kirk's Alpha strike paying off or Janeway concocting a cunning plan. It just has much more firepower and durability, and in the case of the Ent A is orders of magnitude faster too.

Note that I am ignoring using the environment to the captains advantage, as all three captains are well known for pulling cunning tricks like that and countering them.

On the ground:

Kirk is the scrapper of the three, and has the greatest skill with improvised and primitive weapons. Indeed, while the others are busy looking down on primitive gunpowder weapons, Kirk has cooked up an improvised cannon.

Janeway is devious. While not a match for Kirk in a straight up fight, Janeway would ensure that the fight was anything but straight up. Ambushes, fighting dirty, improvised alliances... Janeway is good at cooking up force multipliers on the ground.

Picard... Much as we love him, Picard is not in the same league as Kirk in a fight or as Janeway at asymetric thinking. What he is good at is diplomacy, and if he gets a chance to open his mouth he could plausibly de-escalate a conflict with Kirk. Talking down Janeway... is harder to see happening.

In the end: Kirk hands down wins a straight fight. Both brute force and ingenuity are on his side here. Once again, if the fight becomes mobile Janeway's cunning and underhandedness hand her the win with no questions asked. Kirk has been ambushed enough to make it clear that a master like Janeway would be able to pull it off, and she would make that first shot count.

Picard could not win a battle of fists, but he can change the battlefield in a different way by making it one of words. Once conversation begins, Picard becomes the clear favorite.

[King Green]

Considering we may use Chuck's parody characters here, I can see Kirk attempting to woo Janeway but as Chuck would say "she is the living embodiment of something God forgot to flush down his toilet", Kirk is screaming in inhuman agony as Janeway forces Kirk to taste "her muffin" and his Holy Face melts off, thus killing him.

Now Picard, that's a tough one since anytime Janeway call him he's hiding in his presence-proof bunker with Worf and Data patrolling and pissing on any territory they claim (except the bunker because its in the name PRESENCE-PROOF BUNKER) for themselves. Picard hold out for 2 years on nothing but Earl-Grey tea and professional-pride of Starfleet, but Janeway tricks Picard by coming out of his Earl-Grey stash crate and kills him by telling him of how his 'Federation' is a back-washed, arrogant, tech-taking lazy-boy, hating the higher-powers faction... and she was the one who dipped her toes in his first taste of Earl-Grey tea. With this horror Picard fundamentally starts turning to stone and Janeway breaks-off pieces of Picard and reforms him into her Throne, with his face towards Janeway's un-bathed lower backside to look and smell for all eternity.

And Janeway's laugh bring more hell into the universe.

Winner: Janeway, the Sh*t of God.
(BTW the type of shit was Lasagna-Tuesday with God re-watching Raiders of the Lost Ark on the Ark opening scene. God:Oh me, that was messed up, while I can do that I'm not that savage. Offph, that went down the wrong pipe.)

[King Green]

Sorry for the new nightmares Chuck