14 days now.StarWarsStarTrek wrote:I'll respond to JMS's response asap...
Well, it's understandable that, given how much hostility that's been directed his way, he might decide to quit SFJ. Most people do have limits when it comes to how much hatred they're willing to put up with.mojo wrote:14 days now.StarWarsStarTrek wrote:I'll respond to JMS's response asap...
2 weeks.
some of the members are saying you have no response for jms and are hoping everyone forgets about it. they say that you have done this a thousand times before.
i know that you're punishing them by making them wait to be enlightened and awed by your massive brain, but surely 2 weeks is long enough. it's time to unleash your incredible logic and wit on jms's post!
SWST may be easily startled, but he'll be back, and with greater obstinacy than before.Jedi Master Spock wrote:Well, it's understandable that, given how much hostility that's been directed his way, he might decide to quit SFJ. Most people do have limits when it comes to how much hatred they're willing to put up with.
did anybody else just hear breetai's heartbroken scream? the volume actually shook my house from a thousand miles away and all my china just exploded into a billion pieces. my cat was stuck at the top of a tree 40 ft tall and when the shockwave hit it blasted her straight up into the sky and into a low orbit around the earth. CALM DOWN MAN. i don't want to see my cat flying head over heels up into the night sky, ok? i like my cat. how am i supposed to get her back down now? she's stuck on the damned international space station and it turns out that fire trucks are not equipped with ladders that can reach INTO SPACE.Mike DiCenso wrote:SWST may be easily startled, but he'll be back, and with greater obstinacy than before.Jedi Master Spock wrote:Well, it's understandable that, given how much hostility that's been directed his way, he might decide to quit SFJ. Most people do have limits when it comes to how much hatred they're willing to put up with.
-Mike
Wait and look for a meowing falling star?mojo wrote:did anybody else just hear breetai's heartbroken scream? the volume actually shook my house from a thousand miles away and all my china just exploded into a billion pieces. my cat was stuck at the top of a tree 40 ft tall and when the shockwave hit it blasted her straight up into the sky and into a low orbit around the earth. CALM DOWN MAN. i don't want to see my cat flying head over heels up into the night sky, ok?
Probably. KJA wrote a ton of stuff, but none of the X-wing series.Praeothmin wrote:I do believe it was from the X-Wing novels...
Am I confusing Mike Stackpole with KJA?
He's absurdly minimalist by any sane standard and thinks among other things, that the same Empire that built Death Stars in secret was almost bankrupted by building a single Super Star Destroyer (Vader's flagship -- reference Darksaber, that awesomely awful tome). You can talk about power levels and whatnots, but that's just stupid. You don't have to be a Warsie to see how that doesn't make sense.mojo wrote:forgive me for going a little off-topic here, but i don't really understand the kja hatred. i fully admit that i am pretty much willing to read anything put in front of me regardless of value, cereal boxes, mein kampf, the satanic verses, kja star wars novels.. but i have for the most part enjoyed his star wars stuff and find it to be about the same quality as all the rest. excepting zahn, of course. is this a storytelling thing, a not-understanding-power-level averages thing, what?
All of the various planets to molten slag quotes (I guess that they all just happen to be "figurative" and "non-literal", eh?)Jedi Master Spock wrote: Up to you, but there really isn't much that supports the ICS on weapon power,
Hyperdrive vs energy used by nations quotereactor power,
YV worldship hit from across the star systemor range.
It's funny how, whenever I come up with a quote from a 3rd party source that you cannot rationalize, you dismiss it as "just one source".Slave Ship is so far the only source that I'm aware of which is independent of Saxton and which actually, on close examination, implies anything resembling the Saxtonite model - and it's quite vague in and of itself. There's the well-known "gigatonnage" line, and the rather murky ocean-stripping example you've brought up.
I guess that those officers watching the giant fireballs from orbit are on drugs then.Depends on the situation, doesn't it? If the fleet is specifically targeting the Massassi temples, guess what? The lack of truly heavy bolts landing on the target zone implies they simply don't exist.
Yet if you for some reason actually want to take comic panel visuals literally, you have to rationalize things, don't you?
Concluding that comic authors are too stupid to scale shots is right up there with concluding that VFX specialists working in 1977 had no idea what an explosion in space actually looked like, or that an asteroid no more than a few tens of kilometers across shouldn't really support a breathable atmosphere - i.e., perfectly reasonable - but it's not even stupidity. It's dramatic effect. It works to communicate the idea that these bolts are actually hurting things on the planet below.
They do carry turbolasers, actually, but we don't see them firing at the planet (if we did, they'd obviously be distinguishable from the "quad laser cannons").I doubt it. See, even the medium turbolaser cannons on the Acclamator are virtually invisible. The Leviathan is an Interdictor-class cruiser. Guess what they're supposed to carry?
Again, it can obviously be seen that those red laser cannons are...well, laser cannons. Why we don't see the turbolasers fire is beyond me, but you can't deny that we don't see them fire! Maybe they were offline?5 medium turbolaser batteries. Not medium quad mounts; batteries. It also mounts point defense weapons. And it is supposed to be comparable to a Victory Star Destroyer in power - a ship that could positively shred an Acclamator. I'm afraid your attempt at excusing this falls flat.
Good point. The text actually sort of does imply diameter (but not definitively), which means that the improvised bomb was around 1 to 2 megatons.See my post replying to Oragahn and Donner; I advise that you not confuse "radius" and "diameter."
Excuse me? The quote was claiming that just proton torpedos were able to reduce Grand Isle into a mass of molten rock, not including strafing with beam weapons or to just "flatten" it.The Aleutian Islands combined. Grand Isle has a single volcano on it, with a single crater. Even Hawaii's Big Island is formed by five separate shield volcanos. Grand Isle is most likely no bigger than Maui (the second island, about one fifth the size of Big Island).
If you peppered an island with 200 10-terajoule devices, it would provide you with about 600 square kilometers of lethal destruction - which actually wouldn't be a totally unreasonable size for Grand Isle. Factor in strafing with beam weapons - which is going to be more efficient - and we see that overblown calculations about what sort of yield is being discussed are just overblown. The idea that two squadrons of Y-Wings can flatten an island whose central feature is a single volcanic crater, rimmed by small mountains? It fits perfectly with my model of the Star Wars universe.
An Acclamator has several big guns, and diverts less of its power to maneuver. The laser cannons on the starfighter are designed to combat other starfighters that do not require large amounts of overkill, and it does not have any heavy munitions such as proton torpedoes! A better comparison would be:Actually, I was being very generous to Saxton when I said that under the ICS paradigm, power scales with volume. I keep forgetting just how absurd the ICS is. See, the Jedi Starfighter is almost exactly 1/1,000,000th the size of the Republic Assault Ship - wedge-shaped, 8m vs 752m - and yet it has a maximum broadside of 2 kilotons vs 2.4 teratons, a factor of a billion. Saxton is actually asserting that between a bare-bones compact fighter and a "transport," the large transport has close to 1,000x the broadside/volume ratio. The Jedi Starfighter is supposed to be able to fire shots much more quickly, so using realistic rates of fire, we're really more talking about something like 50x the firepower/volume ratio, but Saxton does actually give the advantage to capital ships in power per unit volume. (At least, the wedge-shaped capital ships.)
Those red fragments disappear shortly after.Obvious? Why? How? In fact, we see for the first asteroid shot a clear remnant field of red glowing bits 5:36 here - red-hot temperatures are well below the vaporization temperatures for any type of rock. The fragments may in some cases be either too small or too fast to be seen, but to assert that they are "intended to be absent" is something that requires substantial proof.
Some of the bolts do seem to be from the MTL's, but others came from LTL's or even from places where there aren't any turbolasers, and therefore may possibly be just from small laser cannons.I am perfectly willing to accept the possibility of vaporization, and it is consistent with my range of figures for SW capital ships' firepower. However, it's worth noting that in addition to the fact that these are medium-sized bolts being used to blow up asteroids - i.e., not the lightest point-defense weapons - the size of the asteroids is also not what Brian Young claims. Asserting 100% vaporization of a 40m solid nickel-iron asteroid by light point-defense turbolasers is questionable on four accounts - method of destruction, size, composition, and weapon used.
He quotes Saxton on his page for the text I was referencing.I'm afraid that's not even an adept appeal to authority; the TLC were produced by Brian Young, not Saxton.
Actually, Saxton's entire premise was that the vaporization was supersonic. Indeed, from what I can remember the asteroid did shatter/melt within a frame or two, but took longer to vaporize.Saxton simply ran with the figures when he should have known better. I know enough about science to know if you deposit multiple megatons of energy at a point, what we see 1/30th of a second later is going to be a rather large spread of incandescent FWOOSH. Even ordinary sonic shock would be transmitted across a 40m solid rock in less than a single frame; the speed of sound in rock is generally >1200 m/s (in particular, is generally 4.8+ km/s).
Will do. Fighters use torpedos and missiles, not laser cannons, to destroy capital ships. And even then, most of the time fighters alone aren't enough; they're typically supported by larger ship classes.Except in all the EU sources I've mentioned in which fighters do. Again, remember, this thread is primarily about the EU. Please proceed here to continue the discussion of the fighters in the film.
Books and sources, please.Unfortunately, most of the cases do not involve a handicapped Star Destroyer. To be fair, it's more often a Victory Star Destroyer, but we also have the demolition of the Lusyanka to keep in mind.
Sure, there are plenty. That volume can pack stuff other than explosives. Hint: what would it need more of to take out starfighter sized craft?There is no reason for his guided missile to be massively larger than a proton torpedo if it isn't massively more powerful.
Nice contradiction there. Darkstar's and your calcs are very, very, very close, just like Saxton's and Wong's.I think that's a bit of fanon. I don't recall seeing it in an actual source.Why is it that you try and dismiss the ICS by incredibly sketchy "it doesn't make sense!" complaints, only to turn around and take far more ridiculous claims from other sources.It's pretty straightforward:
The term "capital ship" refers to any military starship 100 meters or more in length. -Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels.
It was designed to take on much larger Imperial capital ships, thus providing the Alliance with the punch of capital ships with a fraction of the cost. Although only about four meters longer than the famed X-Wing, the B-wing had more firepower than many Imperial patrol ships. -Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels.
Since the EGVV defines capital ship as 100+m in length, yes, the B-Wing was designed to take on ships literally hundreds of times its size.
If you want a more recent source than the EGVV(1996), there is Starships of the Galaxy (2007), which, incidentally, confirms the deleted scene I mentioned earlier, in which a B-Wing squadron was supposed to take out an ISD all by itself:
Capital ships often find the B-Wing an extremely dangerous opponent. Particularly fearsome are the proton torpedoes, which can be brought to bear against a starship with devastating results. In fact, a squadron of B-Wing fighters was responsible for destroying an Imperial Star Destroyer at the Battle of Endor, a feat that no other fighter type could claim at the battle.
On a similar note, as Donner reminds me, the Empire has the Skipray Blastboat, although they declined to purchase it in large numbers, which is described quite similarly - as capital-ship grade firepower squeezed onto the hull of a heavy fighter.
Because many EU authors are idiots, and they forget the difference between length and volume. Saxton does not make this mistake, yet you still decide to take all of the idiot authors over the one who does analyze sizes more correctly for no objective reason at all.It's actually very visible throughout the EU that the larger a ship is, the less efficient it is in terms of a ratio of size to firepower. Overall capability actually seems to correlate with length rather than volume, in fact - yet another one of the various indicators that says that something like an ISD is only around a hundred times as powerful as a fighter. It's obviously just a correlation, and not a hard and fast rule, but there it is, and the ICS figures assume that firepower correlates to volume.
Overestimation? The ICS doesn't estimate how powerful ships are; it states how powerful ships are, and Lucasarts give it the approval figurative stamp, and then it's canon.It's true that the ICS overestimates the firepower of small ships as well - the Slave I being a perfect example - but the ICS's systematic overestimation of the capabilities of large ships compared to small ships is an even more important component of its overestimation of the capabilities of large ships.
You never use "estimation" to describe the statements of other authors and other sourcebooks and guides.
As far as I recall, most Rebel ships don't even have medium turbolasers. Are you sure that there were varying bolt sizes in the battle?For the entire ship, we see medium-large bolts every 2 seconds or so. The very largest of the large bolts we see only very rarely.
And that would be wrong.
I'm not Darkstar. I have my own figures. You can take that up with him if you want.
Lets see them.StarWarsStarTrek wrote: All of the various planets to molten slag quotes (I guess that they all just happen to be "figurative" and "non-literal", eh?)
That is your problem then because a planets atmosphere blasted off does not "drift away" at all and a planet that had been subjected to enough of a bombardment would not be merely cratered.Dankayo (I can hardly imagine how ALL of the atmosphere of a self-contained base could drift away without being replaced by outside air)
Find it.Continent destroying weapons mentioned in one of the Lando weapons (I don't have the quote, but it's all other the web xd)
No, it doesn't, has AotC and TCW haver shown, and as was told to you, in multiple threads, by many people before, which you still ignore... :)SWST wrote:An Acclamator has several big guns, and diverts less of its power to maneuver.
I believe he's referring to these:Kor_Dahar_Master wrote:Find it.StarWarsStarTrek wrote:Continent destroying weapons mentioned in one of the Lando weapons (I don't have the quote, but it's all other the web xd)
Lando Calrissian and the Flamewind of Oseon wrote:[T]he cruiser Wennis, a decomissioned, obsolete, and thoroughly effective instrument of pitiless warfare, being refitted to her master's precise specifications. Her crew was an odd but deliberate mixture of the cream of the galaxy's technical and military elite and its dregs, often represented in the same individual. Her weaponry and defenses ran the gamut from continent-destroying hell projectors to small teams of unarmed combat experts. She had been a gift of prudence from the highest and consequently most vulnerable of sources in the galaxy.
It's actually two from two different books, both in the same series ("The Lando Calrissian Adventures" -- a set of goofy prequel stories published sometime in the 80s) and both by the same author, L. Neil Smith. IMHO it's rather vague what they're actually saying ... but they've been quoted by Warsies as more EU evidence for EU firepower at least since the early 2000s.Lando Calrissian and the StarCave of ThonBoka wrote:The next few days were bedlam, exactly as Whett had expected. The navy appeared at the fringes of the system, close enough to be fully detectable by the Renatasian defense sensors. They even let the local military lob a few primitive thermonuclear weapons at them to demonstrate the utter futility of resistance. The fleet's shields glowed briefly, restoring energy consumed by the Voyage out, and that was that. Almost.
Unfortunately for the Navy and high-technology aggressors everywhere in space and time, invasions cannot be conducted with continent destroying weapons or from behind shields. Not unless you're willing to oblieterate the enemy, and not at all if you're interested in taking what the enemy has: raw materials, agricultural products, certain manufactured goods, and the potential labor of her citizens.
Very much so. And in particular, extremely loose terminology. It's not that talking about turning an inhabited planet into slag contradicts the ICS, but we could throw around the same phrase for anything in a range of 12 orders of magnitude or so.StarWarsStarTrek wrote:All of the various planets to molten slag quotes (I guess that they all just happen to be "figurative" and "non-literal", eh?)Jedi Master Spock wrote: Up to you, but there really isn't much that supports the ICS on weapon power,
Interestingly, the fact that they landed stormtroopers as part of the cleanup contradicts the use of ICS level yields. As Mike said earlier:Dankayo (I can hardly imagine how ALL of the atmosphere of a self-contained base could drift away without being replaced by outside air)
More likely, if atmosphere was drifting away, it's because it was a small moon with little to no atmosphere of its own.Mike DiCenso wrote:The problem with Dankayo and "Scavenger Hunt" in general is that the flavor text descriptions aren't accurate scientifically to what happened. We know the orders for the three ISDs was to slag the Rebel base on the planet, but large portions of the base itself survived the assault. If we were talking ICS-level firepower, a single heavy turbolaser hit would have obliterated the base into super-heated plasma, and left a massive molten crater in it's place. Yet not only does the base survive in such a way that large amounts of wreckage can salvaged from it, but the Rebel observer ZNT-8 survived in a shelter and was able to exit it, get a message off, and try to stop the Imperial troops scouring through the Dankayo base's remains. The evenly cratered planet's surface is also peculiar since ICS-level or planetary atmosphere-removing firepower would leave the crust not only molten, but likely shattered. We don't see any of that.
-Mike
I'm afraid you're going to have to actually dig it up. Having an arsenal that could wipe out civilization on a continent ("continent-destroying" in the loose sense) wouldn't be enough to actually support the ICS. Actually physically destroying a continent would work.Continent destroying weapons mentioned in one of the Lando weapons (I don't have the quote, but it's all other the web xd)
That is, unfortunately, nowhere near the ICS level; especially when we consider smaller and less energetic civilizations such as are commonly found in the more rural Star Wars planets. (Tatooine, for example). A smaller world-spanning civilization may easily consume less than 1e23 joules in the course of its existence; and the ICS requires that an Imperial Star Destroyer is capable of producing around 1e25 watts, constantly.Hyperdrive vs energy used by nations quote
Are these quotes from Saxton-authored works? Be specific, please. I suspect those phrases originate with Saxton.Medium star shields for Executor
Several hundred super-giant stars for Death Star
In an exceptional case, a 100+ kilometer non-maneuvering object is hit, using special weapons, from a range that the ICS consider perfectly normal for ships trying to hit perfectly normal targets.YV worldship hit from across the star system
Both of those are ICS-contradicting, rather than ICS-supporting, ranges."only" 600 klicks away (SW: Death Star)
Hundreds of kilometers range (Star by Star)
Given that there's only that "one source" - Slave Ship - that you've been able to come up with, yes, I will dismiss it as "just one source."It's funny how, whenever I come up with a quote from a 3rd party source that you cannot rationalize, you dismiss it as "just one source".
Read the description. It's not giant fireballs; it's burning forest.I guess that those officers watching the giant fireballs from orbit are on drugs then.
You have to rationalize everything if you want to take comic panel visuals literally. Including some particularly absurd things.Yet if you for some reason actually want to take comic panel visuals literally, you have to rationalize things, don't you?
Or distinguishable from anything?They do carry turbolasers, actually, but we don't see them firing at the planet (if we did, they'd obviously be distinguishable from the "quad laser cannons").
Bolt color isn't going to excuse you here.Again, it can obviously be seen that those red laser cannons are...well, laser cannons. Why we don't see the turbolasers fire is beyond me, but you can't deny that we don't see them fire! Maybe they were offline?
Nope. I'm afraid you can't get that specific with what was actually said:Excuse me? The quote was claiming that just proton torpedos were able to reduce Grand Isle into a mass of molten rock, not including strafing with beam weapons or to just "flatten" it.
It's implied that the proton torpedo load is important, but it's not necessarily the whole of the "enough firepower" in question. Saying it is goes well beyond what's actually said in the novel; and because low-yield weapons, like laser cannons, are very good for filling in the gaps between high-yield weapons, that reduces the required firepower substantially.Rogue Squadron wrote:Grand Isle would be no match for two squadrons of Y-wings. In addition to two laser cannons, the Y-wings sported twin ion cannons and two proton torpedo launchers. Each ship carried eight torpedoes, which meant either of the squadrons packed enough firepower to turn the lush, verdant landscape of Grand Isle into a black, smoking mass of liquid rock.
Or nuclear powered aircraft carriers, though they use a power source that could provide much more energy, don't actually put out much more raw power than diesel powered ones, and their firepower has nothing to do with their reactor power.I guess that only nuclear powered aircraft carriers can fight competitively with nuclear carriers then.
Not engineering-wise. The main weapons are drawing on the reactor (according to the ICS).An Acclamator has several big guns, and diverts less of its power to maneuver. The laser cannons on the starfighter are designed to combat other starfighters that do not require large amounts of overkill, and it does not have any heavy munitions such as proton torpedoes! A better comparison would be:
Jedi starfighter vs Acclamator's point defense lasers
or
X wing (with proton torpedos) vs Acclamator
I reiterate:Those red fragments disappear shortly after.Obvious? Why? How? In fact, we see for the first asteroid shot a clear remnant field of red glowing bits 5:36 here - red-hot temperatures are well below the vaporization temperatures for any type of rock. The fragments may in some cases be either too small or too fast to be seen, but to assert that they are "intended to be absent" is something that requires substantial proof.
"May." But not "definitely." A more reliable indicator of what type of bolt is being fired would be bolt size. In Star Trek, we sometimes see torpedoes fired from a phaser array, or phasers from a torpedo launcher. It's best to ignore those cases.Some of the bolts do seem to be from the MTL's, but others came from LTL's or even from places where there aren't any turbolasers, and therefore may possibly be just from small laser cannons.I am perfectly willing to accept the possibility of vaporization, and it is consistent with my range of figures for SW capital ships' firepower. However, it's worth noting that in addition to the fact that these are medium-sized bolts being used to blow up asteroids - i.e., not the lightest point-defense weapons - the size of the asteroids is also not what Brian Young claims. Asserting 100% vaporization of a 40m solid nickel-iron asteroid by light point-defense turbolasers is questionable on four accounts - method of destruction, size, composition, and weapon used.
The problem is that "supersonic" means "in much much less than one frame" when it comes to a 40m hunk of iron, like he's assuming.Actually, Saxton's entire premise was that the vaporization was supersonic. Indeed, from what I can remember the asteroid did shatter/melt within a frame or two, but took longer to vaporize.
There's a whole list at the start of this thread. Several such are quoted in this list, such as the Lusankya and a couple VSDs.Books and sources, please.
Well, given that proton torpedoes can maneuver fairly sharply and hit a target the size of a womp rat, nothing more is required. You have speed, maneuverability, and targeting.Sure, there are plenty. That volume can pack stuff other than explosives. Hint: what would it need more of to take out starfighter sized craft?
They aren't "far more ridiculous." And the fact that they're echoed in so many other sources makes them more credible. Take the point about a squadron of B-Wings being able to take out an ISD - we have a deleted scene that's the origin of it, and it's echoed in numerous other works new and old, with the EGVV talking about how B-Wings can take on capital ships and SOTG saying that the take-down that was deleted from ROTJ really happened.Why is it that you try and dismiss the ICS by incredibly sketchy "it doesn't make sense!" complaints, only to turn around and take far more ridiculous claims from other sources.
Actually, there are good objective reasons to assume that a ship's raw capabilities do not scale directly with volume. Shield area, sharply increased moment of inertia (and therefore substantial increases in drive power expenditures and hull reinforcement), and intended duration of combat missions are three very important reasons.Because many EU authors are idiots, and they forget the difference between length and volume. Saxton does not make this mistake, yet you still decide to take all of the idiot authors over the one who does analyze sizes more correctly for no objective reason at all.
That would be because other sourcebooks and guides don't tend to be explicitly state figures that are clearly incorrect, and because "overestimation" is a much kinder word to use than "egregiously wrong fabrication that slipped by the editors only because the editors didn't know what they were looking at."Overestimation? The ICS doesn't estimate how powerful ships are; it states how powerful ships are, and Lucasarts give it the approval figurative stamp, and then it's canon.
You never use "estimation" to describe the statements of other authors and other sourcebooks and guides.
Young is as well. Did you get to that part of his TLC?As far as I recall, most Rebel ships don't even have medium turbolasers. Are you sure that there were varying bolt sizes in the battle?
Actually, they aren't very, very close.Nice contradiction there. Darkstar's and your calcs are very, very, very close, just like Saxton's and Wong's.
Turning a planet to molten slag is hardly a common idiom, JMS. When several independent authors use that same term; some more explicitly than others, you can be pretty sure that they aren’t all using figurative language.Very much so. And in particular, extremely loose terminology. It's not that talking about turning an inhabited planet into slag contradicts the ICS, but we could throw around the same phrase for anything in a range of 12 orders of magnitude or so.
The fact that a Rebel base of unknown size with unknown durability and defense systems somewhat survived doesn’t change the fact that the far more quantifiable atmosphere was blown away. You’re using circular reasoning to calculate the firepower of ISD’s based on the ambiguous durability of Star Wars military bases, instead of the far more quantifiable “atmosphere drifted away” part.
Interestingly, the fact that they landed stormtroopers as part of the cleanup contradicts the use of ICS level yields. As Mike said earlier:
Mike DiCenso wrote:
The problem with Dankayo and "Scavenger Hunt" in general is that the flavor text descriptions aren't accurate scientifically to what happened. We know the orders for the three ISDs was to slag the Rebel base on the planet, but large portions of the base itself survived the assault. If we were talking ICS-level firepower, a single heavy turbolaser hit would have obliterated the base into super-heated plasma, and left a massive molten crater in it's place. Yet not only does the base survive in such a way that large amounts of wreckage can salvaged from it, but the Rebel observer ZNT-8 survived in a shelter and was able to exit it, get a message off, and try to stop the Imperial troops scouring through the Dankayo base's remains. The evenly cratered planet's surface is also peculiar since ICS-level or planetary atmosphere-removing firepower would leave the crust not only molten, but likely shattered. We don't see any of that.
-Mike
Dankayo was an inhabited colony. Even if it didn’t have an atmosphere at first, it would have been added (we know that Star Wars has the technology to ship planet-encircling oceans, so shipping air shouldn’t be that much of a problem. How else was the Death Star built?)More likely, if atmosphere was drifting away, it's because it was a small moon with little to no atmosphere of its own.
http://www.theforce.net/books/story/top ... 111631.asp
I'm afraid you're going to have to actually dig it up. Having an arsenal that could wipe out civilization on a continent ("continent-destroying" in the loose sense) wouldn't be enough to actually support the ICS. Actually physically destroying a continent would work.
Last time I checked, mounting mini-superlasers on SSD’s were already a big and glitch filled challenge. Miniaturizing it even more would have been mentioned. No superlaser was mentioned, so unless if you have evidence, we can assume that it’s DET.Except if it's a smaller superlaser; actually destroying a continent wouldn't count as support there. Those cases actually contradict the Saxtonite model, in fact, by contradicting the idea that the superlasers are DET weapons, as those lesser superlasers are generally described as being a significant fraction of the original Death Star's power level. This then demonstrates a chain-reaction in the target's matter - impressively destructive, but not actually part of the Saxtonite model.
The average population of a developed planet would appear to be 50 billion (100 quadrillion people in galaxy / 1 million plantes) or even more, and would consume far more energy per person than a modern nation. Your estimate is very low end (hence saying that it contradicts Saxton is faulty), but even using the statistics for the United States over 10,000 years (The Galactic Republic existed for 10,000, and the quote used future tense), you get e21 joules for a single hyperspace jump, more than the reactor power of the Enterprise.That is, unfortunately, nowhere near the ICS level; especially when we consider smaller and less energetic civilizations such as are commonly found in the more rural Star Wars planets. (Tatooine, for example). A smaller world-spanning civilization may easily consume less than 1e23 joules in the course of its existence; and the ICS requires that an Imperial Star Destroyer is capable of producing around 1e25 watts, constantly.
Saxton advised works. There’s an important different. Whoever the author was approved of the advice.
Several hundred super-giant stars for Death Star
Are these quotes from Saxton-authored works? Be specific, please. I suspect those phrases originate with Saxton.
Who says that the feat was exceptional? The exceptional part was the elaborate trick, do you think that the turbolaser gunner had a magical moment of clarity? Or that the New Republic leaders would initiate an elaborate plan while knowing that the turbolaser only might hit?
In an exceptional case,
Since when does the ICS deem it normal, when 8 light minutes was stated to be the maximum range?a 100+ kilometer non-maneuvering object is hit, using special weapons, from a range that the ICS consider perfectly normal for ships trying to hit perfectly normal targets.
No, according to the ICS turbolasers can hit stuff from 8 light minutes away, but you can easily figure out that a moving target could just dodge it.
This is, so to speak, the exception that proves the rule. According to the ICS, this is a commonplace capability. According to the actual description of the incident in question, it was a remarkable and incredible feat that required truly exceptional preparations.
Please check the difference between maximum and effective range. Turbolasers could have perfect accuracy and extreme beam coherence and 8 light minutes still wouldn’t make a good effective range unless if it were very FTL.
Both of those are ICS-contradicting, rather than ICS-supporting, ranges.
See above. And by Saxton calcs, I am referring to the broad category of high end calcs from the pro Wars side.
Given that there's only that "one source" - Slave Ship - that you've been able to come up with, yes, I will dismiss it as "just one source."
Everything else you have sourced falls into three categories when it comes to supporting the ICS:
First, it actually contradicts the ICS, as in the case of hundred-kilometer combat ranges.
I would be interested in hearing a quote claiming that. Actually, I would like to hear several different parties making that claim, all using the word slag – oh no, you can’t do it, because the USSR couldn’t.Second, it fails to be anywhere near specific enough to count as any real support - e.g., we could say that the USSR had the power to turn a civilized world into slag without being the least bit sarcastic - and thus doesn't distinguish between Saxtonite and non-Saxtonite models of Star Wars.
Saxton’s advice being approved by the book’s author.Third, it's actually Saxton that you're citing as support for Saxton.
I was referring to the various turbolaser showings in comics with out of scale depictions from land and from space. Your idea of rationalizing it was to say that the far away panel shots were wrong and that the officers were hallucinating.
Read the description. It's not giant fireballs; it's burning forest.
Thank you then. Why were you arguing with me if you agreed that the source was unreliable, just like I said?
You have to rationalize everything if you want to take comic panel visuals literally. Including some particularly absurd things.
It's much wiser to take cartoon art as a cartoonish depiction - qualitatively correct, but not quantitatively correct. Seriously.
Turbolasers would be bigger than laser cannons. Duh, or at least look different, like, you know, they do everywhere else. You see all the same weapon being fired at the planet. Why? Who knows, but you’re trying to deny set in stone visuals. It may be stupid of them to not use their turbolasers, but that doesn’t invalidate what irrefutably happened.
Or distinguishable from anything?
The ship is bombarding the planet; it doesn't have a reason to be pulling its punches; it has full capital-grade turbolasers. Logically speaking, we have a contradiction.
Bolt color isn't going to excuse you here.
Oh please. The quote does not exclude the possibility that laser cannons would be used as well, but it does heavily imply that proton torpedos were the major damage dealer, and whether they shot a few laser cannons too is irrelevant…unless if you agree that their laser cannons would contribute jack to turning an island into molten slag, in which case you’d be agreeing with kiloton level laser cannons.
Nope. I'm afraid you can't get that specific with what was actually said:
Rogue Squadron wrote:
Grand Isle would be no match for two squadrons of Y-wings. In addition to two laser cannons, the Y-wings sported twin ion cannons and two proton torpedo launchers. Each ship carried eight torpedoes, which meant either of the squadrons packed enough firepower to turn the lush, verdant landscape of Grand Isle into a black, smoking mass of liquid rock.
It's implied that the proton torpedo load is important, but it's not necessarily the whole of the "enough firepower" in question. Saying it is goes well beyond what's actually said in the novel; and because low-yield weapons, like laser cannons, are very good for filling in the gaps between high-yield weapons, that reduces the required firepower substantially.
It’s a mountain chain, not a single volcano.Saying Grand Isle is actually big as far as islands go goes one step further, contradicting what the novel implies (i.e., the whole island - the ring of peaks and the valley in the middle - is one single volcano with one simple crater).
And the primary anti ship weapons used on starfighters, proton torpedos, aren’t reactor powered either, so the analogy works fine.
Or nuclear powered aircraft carriers, though they use a power source that could provide much more energy, don't actually put out much more raw power than diesel powered ones, and their firepower has nothing to do with their reactor power.
Which explicitly isn’t the case in Star Wars. Star Wars: Death Star explicitly states that hypermatter has more energy potential than M/AM conversion.Coincidentally, this is almost exactly what is the case in reality, and what I was describing. The fission reactors used by nuclear cruisers and nuclear carriers don't actually put out much, if any, more power than the diesel engines used by similarly sized ships several generations ago.
They are using superior technology, but that superior technology isn't letting them move faster or carry much more payload, so "inferior" diesel-powered warships can actually compete on the tactical scale.
But they draw different percentages of the main reactor’s power, because one belongs to large ships that rely less on maneuvering and twisting like the smaller one does. An Acclamator is going to have more power diverted to the main guns than a small starfighter whose “main guns” are anti-starfighter, and of whose reactor will largely be used to power the maneuvering thrusters. A starfighter will proportionally rely more on maneuvering thrusters than a star destroyer would.
Not engineering-wise. The main weapons are drawing on the reactor (according to the ICS).
Because they were clearly visible right after (or before, if you take the invisible beam portion theory) the turbolaser striked, but then disappear as the reaction took place. I wonder what that could mean, eh?
I reiterate:
The fragments may in some cases be either too small or too fast to be seen, but to assert that they are "intended to be absent" is something that requires substantial proof.
Why are you assuming that Star Wars filmmakers make the exact same mistakes as Star Trek filmmakers?
"May." But not "definitely." A more reliable indicator of what type of bolt is being fired would be bolt size. In Star Trek, we sometimes see torpedoes fired from a phaser array, or phasers from a torpedo launcher. It's best to ignore those cases.
In Star Wars, when we're not sure what gun fired a bolt, it's best to presume nothing about which gun was actually responsible.
Except that the asteroid was being affected in less than a frame after the turbolaser hit. What I don’t understand is why you seem to think that the sonic shock as you call it of a turbolaser would be any significant damaging component when turbolasers are thermal based. Did you expect for the asteroid to shatter from what essentially amounts to sound waves? The turbolaser’s impact would be damaging because of its thermal energy.
The problem is that "supersonic" means "in much much less than one frame" when it comes to a 40m hunk of iron, like he's assuming.
Alone? Were the X wings unsupported by capital ships and fighting against a full strength enemy? There are several factors that you are failing to recognize:
There's a whole list at the start of this thread. Several such are quoted in this list, such as the Lusankya and a couple VSDs.
Since when? The proton torpedos we saw that could make 70,000 G turns (by the way, ever calculate the energy needed to do that, and scaled it up to a star destroyer?) were not high yield, capital ship busting ones, so they’re comparable to Jango Fett’s missile. Your comparison falls short.
Well, given that proton torpedoes can maneuver fairly sharply and hit a target the size of a womp rat, nothing more is required. You have speed, maneuverability, and targeting.
True, but what’s your point exactly? You tried to claim that Slave 1’s missiles and their size proved that proton torpedos used to bust capital ships were that powerful, because the missiles were just as big as proton torpedos, or actually larger. Problem is that those proton torpedos you saw were anti-starfighter, and even if the capital ship busting ones were the same size, they’d have more of the size devoted to blowing stuff up than maneuvering. You counter by saying that they can already maneuver fine…and cite examples of non-capital ship busting torpedos being used, as if it somehow shows that capital ship busting torpedos are maneuverable. Truth is we haven’t actually seen capital ship busting torpedos on screen, because they’re an EU invention. In the movies, starfighters aren’t a major threat to capital ships.The droids fired in the ROTS battle scene demonstrate how successful SW is at building anti-fighter missiles that can deliver a proton-torpedo-sized payload to a fighter target. If they carried actual warheads instead of saboteur droids, they would be very effective anti-fighter missiles.
Your quote claimed that a B-Wing, a starfighter maybe 10 meters in length had firepower on par with a capital ship, or a ship 100+ meters in length. And you call the ICS disproportional?
They aren't "far more ridiculous." And the fact that they're echoed in so many other sources makes them more credible. Take the point about a squadron of B-Wings being able to take out an ISD - we have a deleted scene that's the origin of it, and it's echoed in numerous other works new and old, with the EGVV talking about how B-Wings can take on capital ships and SOTG saying that the take-down that was deleted from ROTJ really happened.
If not volume, than surface area. Length has no relevance to raw capabilities of starships, but EU authors are too stupid to realize that. Volume is far more relevant, and Saxton knows it. But you decide to take the word of idiot authors over a smarter one, because you seem to take quotes that support your side more as more credible just because…well, they support your side more. That’s not an objective way of analyzing things.
Actually, there are good objective reasons to assume that a ship's raw capabilities do not scale directly with volume.
Surface area, not length, and the reactor powering the shields is volume scaled.Shield area,
Very minor, so don’t use substantial to describe it. Justifying proportional power levels solely on this single factor (the others are bogus) would require that you dismiss every other factor that is surface area, volume and mass based, and I’d remind you that mass correlates with surface area in the case of similarly constructed starships. The fact that one factor has something to do with length (and more, actually, with mass, which correlates in starship classes with volume) isn’t an excuse for solely scaling on length.sharply increased moment of inertia (and therefore substantial increases in drive power expenditures and hull reinforcement),
How is intended duration of combat missions relevant to length at all? If anything, it’s related to mass and volume, ie the amount of supplies it can carry.and intended duration of combat missions are three very important reasons.
There you go with your cleverly disguised double standard again. You admit that EU authors not only write something ridiculous scientifically, but something ridiculous mathematically and logically, yet you accept it as fact. Yet when Saxton writes something far less blatantly stupid, you decide to dismiss it on the basis of not making sense. Why are you so obsessed with exalting a stupider model of Star Wars over a more rational one?I don't think that many EU authors did keep straight the difference between length and size, and I can believe that's how this got started - but they are consistent about it, which means that if you want to treat the Star Wars EU as canon, length clearly correlates more closely with combat capability than volume.
Several problems with this, most notably that you’re wrong in that other sourcebooks and guides do say stuff that’s clearly incorrect, and also that you’re dropping in some circular reasoning by saying that Saxton’s work is “clearly incorrect”.
That would be because other sourcebooks and guides don't tend to be explicitly state figures that are clearly incorrect,
Why don’t you use “over exaggerated” or “overstated”?and because "overestimation" is a much kinder word to use than "egregiously wrong fabrication that slipped by the editors only because the editors didn't know what they were looking at."
No actually, I didn’t. Where exactly did Brian Young state this?
Young is as well. Did you get to that part of his TLC?
Yes they are, in a similar fashion in which Wong and Saxton’s calculations are very very close, if not the same.
Actually, they aren't very, very close.
You’re serious? You think that it’s “about an exawatt”, which is e18 watts, ie just 1 order of magnitude less (very well within the standard error of deviation for fan-calculations, as your comparison with darkstar proves) than the highest stated power generation figure for the Enterprise (and that’s assuming that Data was about to say “second”, and the ST scripts aren’t canon) and about the same as the power level stated in the Technical Journel, which, while not technically canon, was stated to be official and “pretty accurate”.ST-v-SW.net pegs ISD reactor output at 500 terawatts at the absolute most, and probably less I say it's about an exawatt (though I don't believe the weapons put out anywhere near that much; it's drive systems that are more important in determining overall power output).
You’re well aware that the OOM variation increases as the figures grow. A kilojoule vs a megajoule for a hand weapon would probably equal the two opposite sides of a debate, but 10^24 joules and 10^27 joules would simply be a margin of error for one side of a debate.The difference between e14 and e18 is about as large as the difference between the yield the AOTC ICS claims for the Slave I's guns, and the yield they actually exhibit in the AOTC asteroid chase scene.
Oh, there are diversities, but you all seem to agree that everybody else’s (everybody on your side) calculations are completely plausible. Otherwise, you wouldn’t jump to defending darkstar like you typically do. Then, on occasions of your choosing you suddenly turn around and disassociate from him.
There's actually quite a bit of diversity of opinion among SFJ residents when you start asking quantitative questions about Star Wars. A majority of us believe that the ICS figures are absurd, but once you get past that, you still have many orders of magnitude to play around in.
It is a pretty far-ranging discussion. Should I split SWST and I's replies to each other into a new thread?Mr. Oragahn wrote:Guys. We ALREADY have a BDZ thread.
Is it too much to ask that you post your stuff over there instead?
