Irkens are also able to produce fast, having production areas just like gems, even being born to speak right from birth. Irkens wouldn't care about the height of the diamonds, most races are taller than Irkens but because they aren't irkens it doesn't matter, they've taken over and enslaved many planets with taller species. Not all irkens base their ranking on height, there's irkens just as tall as the tallest that are just mere fry cooks. While Irkens would have trouble taking down other planets controlled by the gems they would have no problem if they just started with home world simply using a fast array of lasers on it and be done
Gem Empire vs Irken Empire
Jordan Jackson
Grayson Gray
Alright thanks for the info mt knowledge of Invader Zim isnt as fast as my knowledge of SU. I doubt just going to homeworld and blasting it would help then much. First the diamonds would just evacuate and as long as they're around the gems always have a fighting chance and they would also have to defend from a barrage from hand ships. There's also the fact that the moment a gem soldier manages to infiltrate the ship or get close to its leaders the fight might as well be over. The tallest can be pretty easily held captive while the diamonds are so strong alone they could take on an armies worth of irkens. Irkens real downfall here is they just don't have the physical abilities or knowledge of gems to properlly protect themselves if they have to go hand to hand with sone quartz soldiers.
Jonathan James
Irkins. The Massive just flies through space one-shotting planets en-masse, the Irkins expending no effort or resources in doing this and they have access to toon-force tier technology.
The only Irkin we really see in detail is Zim and he is both incompetent and insane, and yet is still extremely dangerous. The Irkins are otherwise rampaging across the Galaxy suffering little if any losses we know of. A single Irkin is often capable of conquering an entire planet.
Josiah Diaz
Diamonds are taller.
Jacob Rogers
Henry Jackson
Irkens obviously. The two intergalactic forces are meant for entirely different types of narratives and tooled as such.
Irkens are meant to be a major galactic force that subjugates other species but which as a whole is kind of irrelevant to the stories Invader Zim tells, namely Zim doing weird shit and battling Dib while annoying people. You could theoretically remove the Irkens as a major galactic force from Invader Zim and keep the story essentially the same, that is to say Zim doing weird shit and battling Dib while annoying people. The Irken race is in effect the most powerful race in its universe and is a major threat to all because of their aggression, but Invader Zim's focus IMO doesn't hinge on the Irkens doing this or that, since more often than not Zim is what carries the story forward.
Gems are a major galactic force primarily because they're about the only known intelligent species we see that is not humans period. However, unlike Irkens they can't really be changed much or removed without changing a lot of Steven Universe as a show. Since SU's overarching narrative involves the direct consequences of the Gempire's behavior, past actions, and leaders' connections to the main characters, you can't really change the Gempire without changing Steven Universe as a show on some fundamental level. They can afford to be powerlevel weak, since their narrative role is to be a force the main characters have no hope of overturning by conventional means whilst also being a major part of the main characters' story.
TL;DR Irkens are powerful but aren't a big story piece, Gems are weak but are more story-important.
Christopher Rogers
If the diamonds can evacuate fast enough sure, but that doesn't mean Irkens can't just go from planet to planet after their homeworld is destroyed thus having no where else to go to. I'm sure the tallests are defended well enough by the numerous irken ships that constantly surround The Massive. And even if gems were able to get into the massive hundreds of irkens are always inside the massive ready to protect their Tallests. But still without their tallests I'm sure the irkens would be able to function
Isaac Cruz
Irkens have never ever faced an outside force that was a danger to them, once a irken infiltrated a race of rock people when hus disguise was pic related, they are unmached in the universe, but everything in their universe is a complete retard. I give it to the gems simply because they fought in wars and stuff, Irkens barely have to fight ever.
Also
Austin Bailey
Irkens stomp easily
Sebastian Young
>intergalactic
Just so you know this means travel between galaxies. People often confuse interstellar with intergalactic. Travelling at the speed of light it would take 200,000 years to go from one end of the milky way to the other. Travelling millions of times the speed of light would take us hundreds of millions of years to reach another galaxy. Settings that have intergalactic travel often do not contemplate or understand the ramifications and scope of such travel.