Star Wars: The Clone Wars CGI Season 2

[2046]

I only caught the last part of the second episode (they showed two back-to-back as the season premiere), but it looked interesting and heavy on tech stuff.

1. AT-TE tanks were used as ghetto boarding craft, and fought droids on the surface of a Munificent. Which is odd and indicative of dialled-down firepower, since last time we saw them firing in the vicinity of a Munificent it was to blast them to smithereens.

2. Munificents seem to have the broadside shell-based cannons exactly like the Invisible Hand did, indicative of very low range combat. The shells are very susceptible to exploding by fire.

3. Jedi got nerfed again in favor of a bounty hunter. The only Jedi able to deflect a bolt back at him was Ahsoka, and she only winged him. Then he played pansy/hurt and used a contact stun doodad to knock her out.

4. Munificents have a self-destruct, but it didn't seem to do much of anything except maybe blow an engine. The ship was only rendered uninhabitable as a result of the onboard combat and aforementioned shell explosions.

5. Holocrons are now a part of the SW canon, beyond the RotS novelization, though they seem to simply be portable hard drives that require a Jedi telekinetic USB connection to unlock. After that they're good to go, somehow or other.

6. The character models have been upgraded. Honestly, I'm not sure I like it. Admiral Yularen looks mean, rather than his usual aloof but affable appearance.

More later.

[l33telboi]

3. Jedi got nerfed again in favor of a bounty hunter. The only Jedi able to deflect a bolt back at him was Ahsoka, and she only winged him. Then he played pansy/hurt and used a contact stun doodad to knock her out.

The whole infiltration of the Jedi temple thing was somewhat amusing. We've got a building full of the best Jedi in the galaxy and they're on high-alert. But they can't seem to capture two bounty-hunters and a droid before it's too late.

4. Munificents have a self-destruct, but it didn't seem to do much of anything except maybe blow an engine. The ship was only rendered uninhabitable as a result of the onboard combat and aforementioned shell explosions.

The episode guide says that the exploding shells made the power core of the ship go boom as well. There just didn't seem to be that much boom. And that black stuff was indicated to be fuel for the ship.

[2046]

I'm not paying much attention to the episode guides, except for spelling help. The black flammable liquid with a high surface tension acts and looks more like R2's oil from RotS, so that's what I'm calling it.

Here's more on the first episode from NoLettersHome:

Defense Systems
Cloaking technology is mentioned but not seen (no pun intended) in the episode.
Stratego-Tactical
The conflict on Felucia seems to be the reverse of the Ryloth trilogy of episodes . . . in this case the Separatists have space superiority.

Plo Koon leads the Felucia rescue group right through the blockade by going right alongside a Munificent, dozens of meters from her hull.

Obi-Wan describes the setback at Felucia as affecting their efforts in the entire sector, and is interrupted when he's explaining that it would take weeks to . . . (presumably recover from the setback, or retake the areas of Felucia, or some other such statement).
Warships and Spacecraft
Republic Gunships, traditionally seen as ground vehicles, are here shown to most definitely have space capability. This has been implied elsewhere but not definitively shown until now. Oftentimes they're shown as simply dropped from a ship which itself has entered the atmosphere already, leaving the issue open to debate for the casual observer. However, the gunships never fired their weapons while in space.

Vulture droids are observed doing a lot of spinning. Apparently they've been watching Anakin too much.

One Munificent loses an entire huge plate off of its forward armor-wings. Another Munificent falls completely apart in combat, breaking in half.

Vulture droids appear to make use of the cannons vertically between their split wings in flight in this episode, rather than the ones near their head. Those are made use of exclusively in walker mode in this episode, whereas in other episodes they have used those for space combat as well.

Plo Koon defeats a pair of Vulture droids in Felucia's atmosphere. The one in front is explosively disassembled by weapons fire, with the one behind apparently striking a chunk of the first and thus disabling itself, crashing into the ground and sliding into the top of a Republic tank. The tank is knocked over, but no other significant damage is apparent, though at that point we can only see the bottom. Half of the fighter emerges from the destruction, but the other half is nowhere to be seen.

Bane requests a Rogue Class starfighter with a cloaking device. We never see the vessel or the cloak in operation.
Weapons - General
The blockading Separatist ships are not seen to fire frequently against Republic ships above Felucia. Whether this is merely a question of maneuvering or some technological 'battle fatigue' (e.g. lacking ammo, energy, power system damage, damaged droid gunners, or what) is unclear.
Weapons - Firepower
One to two blaster bolt pairs from Plo Koon's fighter were sufficient to cause Vulture droids to explode in a head-on confrontation.

We get excellent scenes of Vulture droid versus V-19 combat (e.g. the "M-wing", though officially not called that). Missed Vulture droid shots strike the ground, causing no huge blasts or craters, though it does appear that bush-sized puffs of displaced earth were animated in.
Weapons - Range
The capital ship fight in orbit of Felucia occurs at standard Star Wars ranges, and fighters fight in space and in atmosphere at standard ranges.

Ground Notes

Communications
Cad Bane uses ear commlinks for the intrusion mission. The units are about the size of an older Bluetooth earpiece, and enable communication within the Jedi Temple undetected by any temple sensors.

Jedi have special transmitter codes, purpose unclear.

Jedi Bolla Ropal is out of contact on the Devaron system, per Mace Windu. The reason for this is not specified, but it requires that a ship be dispatched to get a message to him.
Defense Systems and Security
Interestingly, the changeling's clothing appears to be holographic. After becoming the dead Jedi, for instance, the clothing (but only the clothing) flickers with the usual hologram scan lines before resolving into a solid-looking cloth surface.

Despite advance warning from Yoda's precognition, the Jedi Temple cannot be completely secured. A weak point is found in the shielding around the temple's upper air shafts (implying that the shielding allows airflow but not anything else). With the Temple scanners in the process of being jammed, the weak point is exploited and intruders make entry.

Jedi Temple perimeter defense can be monitored from the Temple's central security station.

Jedi Temple security systems (including perimeter defense) can be accessed and disabled from the library terminals in the Archive, a rather peculiar security hole.

Jedi have special locking mechanisms that may require Force use to unlock, though it's possible some sort of identifying application (e.g. a midichlorian sensor) is used. The Jedi unlock them by waving their hands over, causing the "Jedi keypad" parts to move and unlock the desired locked object. Bane tried unsuccessfully to use some sort of zappy electrical-arc beam device to defeat one, but could not do so without more information or a diagram of the unit.

The Archive's Holocron vault access portal has laser sensors. Most could be disabled remotely, but a final set of lasers had to be disabled by Bane's droid using some sort of zappy beam device on its fingers. The vault's door was protected by one of the Jedi keypads, and Bane was not able to defeat it. However, using one of his 'USB bombs', he was able to destroy the keypad and thus cause the door to fall half-open. A simple pull opened it the rest of the way.

Cad Bane, wearing a Jedi-style hooded robe, walks out of the Archives and presumably the Temple itself while holding a holocron in his hands, in plain sight.
Droids
Cad Bane's small helper droid Todo 360("I am a techno-service droid!") has rocket feet, similar to R2's thruster assembly. The droid is also equipped with a simple torch-like cutting device, allowing a slow-but-effective cut through a metal wall as opposed to, say, a lightsaber.

Todo also has a device akin to the shield penetrator from AotC, though whereas the AotC device involved what appeared to be an active system, the droid's penetrator simply involved a touch followed by a hole in the shield of long duration. The droid was programmed with the information about the Temple that Darth Sidious provided, presumably explaining some of its ease of defeating Temple systems. However, the droid did completely miss some sensors in the vertical air shaft, even after the Clawdite infiltrator advised the droid of them, implying that its information was incomplete.
Facilities
A false ground level is seen on Coruscant as we observe the exterior of Bane's apartment. The area looks like a courtyard of sorts, but the fact that it is not a real ground level is made apparent by the skyscraper windows at the top of the screen, indicating more height. The alternative is that those windows are a reflection off of a mirrored or wet surface, but we have no other indication of that.

The communications center at the east tower of the Jedi Temple houses troop information and Jedi transmitter codes, making it a vital spot. The holocron vault backs up to the communication center. A peculiar shaft covered by a wall allows access directly from the vault foyer to the communication center.

The Jedi Temple is largely empty of personnel. When on high alert, for instance, Obi-Wan calls to the communication center and asks Yoda if they're detecting any other lifesigns in this quadrant. Given the frequent reference to east tower, south tower, and so on (the latter of which explicitly refers to a part of the main cube of the building), the use of the term quadrant is suggestive of the notion that there's literally almost nobody home. Given the Jedi being spread thin throughout the war's fronts, this makes sense.
Sensors
Ahsoka's Republic AT-TEs and turbo tank are unable to detect the surrounding droids. Ahsoka was charging into her own Little Big Horn, ridiculously outnumbered and surrounded, without warning. This fact only became apparent when airborne.

The Jedi Temple's sensors are apparently all on the inside, as they do not detect the fact that Cad Bane and a helper droid land via jetboot on the ledge of the Temple. Only later do they detect that there is a disturbance of some kind in the air shafts, presumably due to the external cover being pulled off as shown a moment later.

The sensor suite of the Temple goes down when recycled, and recycling is not an uncommon occurrence from the context. The effect also occurs when the scanners are jammed, the true cause of the system failure in this case.

The internal sensors (as accessed from the library terminal) are able to show Obi-Wan and Anakin moving within the air shafts of the Temple. The Clawdite feeds this data to Bane.
Stratego-Tactical
As we join the Felucia battle, Anakin and Obi-Wan's troops have "circled the wagons", forming a square defensive perimeter with their tanks.

The Republic's full retreat involves leaving behind half a dozen AT-TEs and one turbo tank.

The Jedi, despite being told that the Holocrons are the target, are insistent that the target must be the communications center data. In a move more fitting for a "shiny", Obi-Wan and Anakin even head to the communications center . . . a room with several Jedi in it already . . . while staring right at the newly-opened door to the holocron vault, which is empty and unprotected.

Clawdites seem more than willing to give up information if captured, perhaps due to a cultural similarity with the Japanese in WW2. This is presumably why Jango Fett killed the assassin on Coruscant in AotC, and why the Clawdite in this episode is so forthcoming with the name of the Jedi that Cad Bane is going after.

The Kyber Crystal, considered a repository of the future of the Jedi Order, is sent along with its Jedi keeper into combat on faraway worlds. This seems a capital mistake, on general principle.
Weapons - General
Bane uses very small bombs, approximately the size of a USB thumb drive, but with remarkable yield. Russian thermobarics manufacturers would be proud.
Weapons - Range
Combat range is again seen to be limited to about a kilometer between the troops of both sides, though miss rates seem a little improved.
Vehicles - Armored
Apparently Republic AT-TE tanks cannot be made to rest their bellies on the ground, as the circling-the-wagons maneuver might've been been served by such.

An AT-TE is knocked over by a fighter laterally crashing into its upper side at high velocity. This implies a heavier construction than the Vulture droid (which ought to itself be a fairly heavy fighter, given its transformer-esque nature), but not by orders of magnitude.

We get what I believe is our first glimpse of a Republic Turbo Tank in TCW, the large boxy big-wheeled vehicle. However, they don't seem as monstrously huge in TCW.

The turbo tank head section is blown off while the Republic forces are still within line of sight during their retreat, and the two nearby AT-TEs are knocked over by the blast. There is a dusty blast wave that radiates out a short distance and the ground itself cracks around the turbo tank blast, but interestingly nearby battle droids are not knocked over as the AT-TE tanks were. This implies a large but not supremely large explosion, and that AT-TEs receiving that amount of blast broadside are not terribly stable.
Other Republic Gear
The Kyber Crystal, containing a list of force-sensitive children across the Republic, is a small data crystal that can only be read by a Holocron. The Holocron, then, is suggested to be a special data reader, though it is generally assumed that they have onboard storage.
Other
Cad Bane has small thrusters on his boots. As observed, there appears to also be an antigrav belt or some other similar technology in play, given that he occasionally seems to enjoy lateral flight or hovering without his thrust vector and velocity being correct for such an occurrence.
Other Notes
Kenobi is already on the Jedi Council, as he will be in Episode III but was not in Episode II.

Yoda's precognition is able to discern the presence of intruders at the temple well before their entry.

The changeling shifts forms after touching the form it intends to become. This process seems to be like a scan, as even the voice of a dead Jedi is replicated after the touch. The voice is so good that even a Jedi friend is fooled. However, this could be a result of another system akin to the holographic clothing system . . . e.g. a voice duplicator that has scanned the vocal cords and related parts of the target. However, the idea that the maneuver was technological in origin stretches credibility, given the replication of inflections and accent and such . . . at that point a brain download seems required.

Obi-Wan and Skywalker use a Batman-esque line system to drop down a large ventilation shaft. This was probably a safety precaution, given the possibility of fan engagement. After all, we've seen the Jedi fall a great distance to a controlled and non-lethal landing before, such as in the Coruscant car chases of AotC.

Jocasta Nu had never met Ahsoka Tano . . . odd that the Jedi Archives are apparently never visited by youngling padawans. Anakin did not know who Bolla Ropal was. Given that there are only thousands of Jedi, and that they are all raised almost from birth in a single building, it seems peculiar that they are all so unfamiliar with each other.

Cad Bane, wearing a Jedi-style hooded robe, walks out of the Archives and presumably the Temple itself while holding a holocron in his hands, in plain sight, with no apparent Jedi intervention.

Cad Bane is aware he is working for a Sith Lord. While he may not be fully cognizant of what that means, it does imply that Palpatine was a bit more open with the true nature of Darth Sidious than we might've otherwise suspected.

[2046]

Another note regarding "Cargo of Doom", the second episode:

A Munificent loses one of its three primary engines due to a Venator cannonade intended to target its hyperdrive. When the engine explodes, a droid chases Bane and reports that the Venator has "hit the power converter so we can't go into hyperspace". Thus, on a Munificent, a hit to the power converter (presumably a result of the exploded engine) disables the hyperdrive, and seemingly all tactical systems as well. The vessel is not even seen to maneuver after that incident, implying that it has something of a glass jaw in regards to the starboard primary engine.

[Mike DiCenso]

The episode guide says that the exploding shells made the power core of the ship go boom as well. There just didn't seem to be that much boom. And that black stuff was indicated to be fuel for the ship.

Black liquid that's fuel for the ship? Ha! If that's correct, then JMS' "Diesel Fuel" theory isn't all that far-fetched after all...
-Mike

[2046]

The episode guide says that the exploding shells made the power core of the ship go boom as well. There just didn't seem to be that much boom. And that black stuff was indicated to be fuel for the ship.

Black liquid that's fuel for the ship? Ha! If that's correct, then JMS' "Diesel Fuel" theory isn't all that far-fetched after all...
-Mike

The thing is, that runs a bit contrary to the clear liquid (portrayed by water) one could swim through without eyes burning to hell and gone in the deleted Ep3 scenes. Not hardcore-contrary, of course, but more than a little. Hence my preference for simply calling it oil, since were the scene to be re-rendered in live-action CGI (lol) the substance would be portrayed best by . . . oil.

[Mike DiCenso]

Maybe it's really hypermatter oil (snicker).
-Mike

[Praeothmin]

Or Canola oil.
That thing's pretty useful in any endeavour... :)

[2046]

Maybe it's really hypermatter oil (snicker).
-Mike

Not only does it lubricate, but it also mass-lightens (I imagine)!

Good lord, all we need now is the freaky creepy Sham-Wow alien hawking it.

[Mike DiCenso]

Maybe it's really hypermatter oil (snicker).
-Mike

Not only does it lubricate, but it also mass-lightens (I imagine)!

Good lord, all we need now is the freaky creepy Sham-Wow alien hawking it.

Or Watto could. Seriously, in a as-filmed (televised) canon portrayal versus an unfinished and deleted scene, I'll take the as-filmed scene first. But most importantly, once you get past the minor details, they both agree that large SW starships run off some kind of highly flammable room-temperature liquid. And the EU is even in some agreement since the Death Star novel states clearly that hypermatter reactors cannot be scaled down to star destroyer sizes. That leaves fusion or antimatter-matter reactions.
-Mike

[2046]

And the EU is even in some agreement since the Death Star novel states clearly that hypermatter reactors cannot be scaled down to star destroyer sizes. That leaves fusion or antimatter-matter reactions.
-Mike

:-O

I never heard that before! That's awesome. I wonder what sort of imaginative cognitive dissonance the Wong/Saxtonians are coming up with to try to rationalize that!

[Mike DiCenso]

Here's one of the DS novel quotes on the catastrophe that occured in placing a hypermatter reactor on a Type-II ISD:

The Battle Lance.

His nephew, Hora Graneet, had been a navy spacer on the Imperial-class Star Destroyer Mark II class vessel, which had been selected for a shakedown cruise testing one of the improved prototype hypermatter reactors. Tenn didn't know the specifics of what had happened, and didn't have anything close to the math needed to understand it anyway. He knew that hypermatter existed only in hyperspace, that it was composed of tachyonic particles, and that charged tachyons, when constrained by the lower dimensions of realspace, produced near-limitless energy. How this "null-point energy" had become unstable he didn't know. He only knew it had been powerful enough to turn an ISD-II and its crew of thirty-seven thousand people into floating wisps of ionized gas in a microsecond.

I'am providing a link here to the search options that link back to the heated discussions in the Death Star novel-related threads, which also includes the references to ISDs and hypermatter reactors. So in essence, if you put a hypermatter reactor on something at least as "small" as an ISD, you get a big BOOM because the tachyonic particles in realspace become too constrained.
-Mike

[2046]

Here's one of the DS novel quotes on the catastrophe that occured in placing a hypermatter reactor on a Type-II ISD:

Hate to say it, but I don't see where that quote is indicating that a hypermatter reactor can't be squeezed into an ISD. It suggests that an improved prototype went kablooey during a test, but there's no indication of size being the problem that I'm seeing . . . just poor Imperial engineering. From the quote, it seems as if older, non-"improved" hypermatter reactors could be mounted on the parallel universe ISDs.

Was there something else I was missing?

[Mike DiCenso]

That was just what I found off the top of my search, and why I posted the search links. The poor Imp engineering is certainly a factor, but what's interesting is that they had up to at least ISD Type-I's out there without hypermatter reactors, possibly some Type-IIs. This means the Acclamators and Venators most certainly did not have them, thus it is still a clear contradiction to the ICS power numbers assuming no other quotes beyond this.
-Mike

[l33telboi]

In addition, the Force Unleashed databank is pretty specific on the fact that Stardestroyers use Solar Ionization reactors, and that they're a lot better then whatever came before.