Would a Federation warship like the Defiant out gun a Star Wars Star Destroyer? Who has a bigger armada? Who has the tactical advantage? Don’t forget that The Federation includes the Klingons, who love warfare and have fast, agile, heavily armed ships, with cloaking devices, and the Vulcans with superior logic and tactical planning.
It would not be close. Just from a logistics and industrial capacity standpoint. The Federation has around 150 member worlds while the Empire holds more than 1 million inhabited systems. No technical advantage could make up for that discrepancy. The Empire could lose 100:1 and still easily crush the Federation.
I don’t buy it.
Who would win, a star destroyer with laser like weapons that need to be manually aimed, or a ship with a shield, a battery of highly powered missiles and phasers that auto fire at targets?
Who would win, 100 tie fighters with no shielding that need to be facing the target to shoot, or a few shuttles with shields and phasers that auto fire in almost any direction?
Shields change the game, also having ships you don’t need to directly face the enemy with to shoot, or manually aim with, makes the empire look like chumps.
I don’t think you are grasping the difference in scale here. Even if you grant the Federation absolute technological supremacy (which is debatable, but ultimately doesn’t matter). The Galactic Empire at its peak has effectively unlimited resources and the logistical capability to build at unimaginable scale. They could park a fleet the size of the entirety of Starfleet over every Federation world at the same time. Even without superweapons they could devastate all those worlds, lose every single ship in the process and still be able to project power.
Wars are won with industrial capacity and the ability to leverage that capacity. The Empire is perfectly configured to conquer. Their weakness is asymmetrical war from within their infrastructure. The Federation could fight this way, surrender while hiding or scuttling their capital ships, join the Rebellion while bringing significant engineering and technology to bear from within the Empire. That would work.
But a straight-up conflict? No. It’s not a fair fight when one side can absorb losses of any amount and the other side can’t.