Star Wars: Fighters vs Capital Ships revisited

[Dragoon]

About the Death Star's surface explosion from Luke's shots, the ANH novel states that Luke has hit a power conduit.

I'll see if I can find the novel in my local library...

[Praeothmin]

But if you choose the third possibility, you should give some reasons.

Unless there is a fourth:
He is biased... which is the one I go for... :)

As for the name calling, saying someone is a liar or incompetent is what I call name calling.
But that's just me... ;)

[watchdog]

I prefer not to call him or anyone else names, heck if I thought that calling him MW offended him I would stop.
As for his ideas, I gave his web site to one of my sergents who savaged his tactical ideas, telling me that he approached all of his tactics from an engeneering perspective only. Indeed I myself have found much wrong with some of his ideas about naval combat where he compares trek and wars to real life naval battles.
I dont know who he had talked to originally but whomever it was seems to have convinced him that tactics of maneuver were a rarety in modern naval warfare even though tactics of maneuver were widely used in the two biggest naval engagements in history; Jutland and Leyte Gulf.
I wrote myself a little essay picking apart various arguments of his that I found poorly thought out, mostly on tactics. I think that you can never make a bigger tactical error than to assume that you foe can never hurt you no matter what. That is the Empires weakness, as Luke told the Emperor himself; your overconfidence is your weakness. My sergent suggested that the Federations biggest strength is its adaptability (which has led to success against the Borg and is something they stress here in the Army).

[Dartan]

I prefer not to call him or anyone else names, heck if I thought that calling him MW offended him I would stop.
As for his ideas, I gave his web site to one of my sergents who savaged his tactical ideas, telling me that he approached all of his tactics from an engeneering perspective only. Indeed I myself have found much wrong with some of his ideas about naval combat where he compares trek and wars to real life naval battles.
I dont know who he had talked to originally but whomever it was seems to have convinced him that tactics of maneuver were a rarety in modern naval warfare even though tactics of maneuver were widely used in the two biggest naval engagements in history; Jutland and Leyte Gulf.
I wrote myself a little essay picking apart various arguments of his that I found poorly thought out, mostly on tactics. I think that you can never make a bigger tactical error than to assume that you foe can never hurt you no matter what. That is the Empires weakness, as Luke told the Emperor himself; your overconfidence is your weakness. My sergent suggested that the Federations biggest strength is its adaptability (which has led to success against the Borg and is something they stress here in the Army).

That my problem with SDN. While I do think the Empire would beat the snot out of the Fed in a long term war, Wong typically assumes that the Fed is either incompetent or unable to adapt.

[Jedi Master Spock]

About the Death Star's surface explosion from Luke's shots, the ANH novel states that Luke has hit a power conduit.

I'll see if I can find the novel in my local library...

I found several passages in the novelization about Rebel fighters hitting the Death Star. One involved a power terminal and then subsequently cuts to the Death Star interior and describes the damage inside, but does not mention Luke.

Power terminal - two unidentified Rebel fighters:

Energy bolts and sun-bright beams continued to create a chromatic maze in the space above the station as the Rebel fighters crisscrossed back and forth over its surface, firing at whatever looked like a decent target. Two of the tiny craft concentrated on a power terminal. It blew up, sending lightning-sized electric arcs from the station's innards.

Inside, troopers, mechanicals, and equipment were blown in all directions by subsidiary explosions as the effects of the blast traveled back down various conduits and cables. Where the explosion had hulled the station, escaping atmosphere sucked helpless soldiers and droids out into a bottomless black tomb.

Luke:

"I'm on it, don't worry," Luke responded confidently.
Putting his fighter into a twisting dive, he sliced once more across metal horizons. Antennae and small protruding emplacements burst into transitory flame as bolts from his wingtips strung with deadly accuracy.

Luke again:

"I've picked what looks like a lateral stabilizer," Luke replied. "I'm going to try for it."
"Watch yourself, Blue Five. Heavy fire in the area."
Luke ignored the warning as he headed the fighter straight toward the oddly shaped protruberance. His determination was rewarded when, after saturating it with fire, he saw it erupt in a ball of spectacular superhot gas.

Biggs:

Biggs leveled off, then let go with full weaponry. No one ever decided exactly what it was he hit, but the small tower that blew up under his energy bolts was obviously more important than it looked.
A series of sequential explosions hopscotched across a large section of the battle station's surface, leaping from one terminal to the next. Biggs had already shot past the area of disturbance, but his companion, following slightly behind, received a full dose of whatever energy was running wild down there.

[Who is like God arbour]

Unless there is a fourth:
He is biased... which is the one I go for... :)

I think, to be unconsciously biased is a sign of incompetence.

As an engineer, he should be able to analyze objective and with scientifical methods.

That is at least, what he claims to do.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Has anyone proved that those N-1 managed to take down the big dish on the Trade Federation droid control ship?

[watchdog]

That my problem with SDN. While I do think the Empire would beat the snot out of the Fed in a long term war, Wong typically assumes that the Fed is either incompetent or unable to adapt.

Well Mr. Wong as I mentioned comes at the entire debate completely from an engineers point of view, if you read his tactics or strategy, much of it is not grounded in proper military thinking (which is funny considering he likes to quote from Sun Tzu's the art of war alot).
Part of the adaptability of Trek is the technobabble theory which he rejects. He rejects it because it's too easy to pull out all kinds of funky treknology as a get out of jail free card (I blame Voyager for that), I would partially agree with him on that point but you can't simply dismiss the practice out of hand, its one of Starfleets main strengths as well as a probable weakness (just like the Empires overconfidence can also be a minor strength in giving Imperial personel a high level of moral).
Neither side is very good in a military sense, I think that he assumes the Empire to be better militarily strictly because they have a larger variety of weapons.

[Mr. Oragahn]

That my problem with SDN. While I do think the Empire would beat the snot out of the Fed in a long term war, Wong typically assumes that the Fed is either incompetent or unable to adapt.

Well Mr. Wong as I mentioned comes at the entire debate completely from an engineers point of view, if you read his tactics or strategy, much of it is not grounded in proper military thinking (which is funny considering he likes to quote from Sun Tzu's the art of war alot).
Part of the adaptability of Trek is the technobabble theory which he rejects. He rejects it because it's too easy to pull out all kinds of funky treknology as a get out of jail free card (I blame Voyager for that), I would partially agree with him on that point but you can't simply dismiss the practice out of hand, its one of Starfleets main strengths as well as a probable weakness (just like the Empires overconfidence can also be a minor strength in giving Imperial personel a high level of moral).
Neither side is very good in a military sense, I think that he assumes the Empire to be better militarily strictly because they have a larger variety of weapons.

I actually have to see any strategy applied to the large scale battles in Star Wars films that does make complete sense.

The biggest ones, Naboo, Hoth, Geonosis, Kashyyyk, Yavin and Endor are ridden with enormous flaws.

[AnonymousRedShirtEnsign]

I just goes to show that George Lucas doesn't know any more about the real military than Trek writers and directors; and apparently, neither do most of his fans. I find it amusing that most SW ground battles basically involve two armies that face each other and then charge. In RotS, soldiers in trenches got out of the trenches to charge the beach landing, D-Day would have been so much easier for the Allies if the Nazis had gotten out of their pill boxes and charged. I guess when it comes down to it Hoth is the least bad example of tactics in all of SW.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Has anyone yet confirmed that the N-1 destroyed one of the droid control ship's big sensor dishes during the battle of Naboo?

[GStone]

I remember 2 N-1s flying towards an enormous dish on the Trade Fed ship and blowing it up. I think one got caught in the explosion.

If you were gonna create a 'dead man's switch', the best you should hope to get is a series of generators hooked into field projectors to either entirely block or minimize the damage caused by a warp core breach in engineering. There would also be collector spots to draw in the energy and convert it/expel it from the ship. Once the damage is over, the fields come down and the ship runs off these generators till the warp core is back on line.

I had an old lawn mower with a dead man switch that was a handle you kept held back to another handle, as you pushed it along. I could still breath when I let it go.

Sun Tzu can be used in the battle field, in politics, business. As was said, he probably reads it in the narrow field of engineering. How can you beat a previous design? The idea of adding a dead man's switch to a starship is the ultimate fight -- how would you build something to beat yourself and while convincing yourself that it is actually a good idea to get in one of those ships that has one?

Edit: I just took a once over of the engineering page Wong has and he derides Trek for not having dead man switches, even though he quotes Geordie saying they've got one:

"Laforge: In the event of a breach of seal integrity there is an emergency release system which dumps the antimatter."

That's a dead man switch. We don't have 'em because we don't have warp cores.

In the 'Other Affronts' section, he speaks of not seeing buckets or screws. We've seen containers. They don't have to be thin and metal. Second, we saw a real close up of some of the innards of the Defiant when Dax, Bashir and O'Brien were shrunk, while the Jem' Hadar were on board. There weren't any screws or nuts. Since they replicate parts, they probably add in toggle latches and switches that hook things together or magnetic seals. There are also all those times when we see people working on areas of stations and ships. No nuts or bolts or anything else you'd need a wrench or a screwdriver for. No worry about hammers dropping on feet.

[Who is like God arbour]

If you were gonna create a 'dead man's switch', the best you should hope to get is a series of generators hooked into field projectors to either entirely block or minimize the damage caused by a warp core breach in engineering. There would also be collector spots to draw in the energy and convert it/expel it from the ship. Once the damage is over, the fields come down and the ship runs off these generators till the warp core is back on line.

I had an old lawn mower with a dead man switch that was a handle you kept held back to another handle, as you pushed it along. I could still breath when I let it go.

Sun Tzu can be used in the battle field, in politics, business. As was said, he probably reads it in the narrow field of engineering. How can you beat a previous design? The idea of adding a dead man's switch to a starship is the ultimate fight -- how would you build something to beat yourself and while convincing yourself that it is actually a good idea to get in one of those ships that has one?

Häh...???

[GStone]

If the hah is for the field generators, I was just saying a possible safety measure.

If it's about the Sun Tzu part, it was a way of saying he has convinced himself that engineering training would tell him is hazardous, which would override his sense of self-preservation, which is very hard to overcome.

He has taken Sun Tzu's lessons to heart and killed himself. Sun Tzu would not be proud.

[l33telboi]

Wow. This is amazing. I found a nice little post, thought i'd make my contribution, but then i notice that there's been a 12 page debate already. So i have to sift through all that in order to see if someone's already said what i was about to. Turns out no one has. A lot of interesting points though.

Though i have to agree with Gandalf on the whole obsession with SDN being a bit creepy. Sniping at them from afar comes of as a bit childish and immature. Sure you might have issues with, so do i, but at least have the decency to not bring up totally irrelevant things like that in totally unrelated threads.

Has anyone proved that those N-1 managed to take down the big dish on the Trade Federation droid control ship?

I've been laughing my ass of here, i saw this a couple of pages back already and found myself greatly interested, yet nobody seems to pay any interest to it at all. I'll check it later on, right now i haven't got the time though.

In any case, on to the point i was about to bring up. It might be minor and insignificant. But in Knights of the Old Republic a group of fighters manage to bring down what seemed like the standard Republic warship of that time. Said fighters did not seem to have any support from capital-class ships either.