Star Wars: The Clone Wars CGI Season 2

[The Dude]

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.

What the heck is a Solar Ionization reactor?

[Mike DiCenso]

It's some from of a power generating reactor in the SW EU. But what the exact nature of it is, there's not much to go on. Some sources suggest that it might be a kind of fusion reactor, while the few ICS-influenced ones suggest hypermatter.
-Mike

[2046]

A few quick notes on "Landing at Point Rain":

1. Droideka shields are again proven to be non-resistant to physical penetration. That is, a clone snuck up behind one, entered its shield, and shot it in the head. Anakin does something similar from the front, sliding along the ground beneath it and gutting it with his lightsaber.

2. Accuracy seems better in this episode . . . a fight between droids atop a dam-like structure and clones takes place at significant range, and both sides were much more accurate than they have been before.

3. Geonosis, receiving the largest Republic invasion fleet yet seen (numbering as many as two dozen ships), readily found itself with ships entering the atmosphere. This suggests a lack of shielding. Republic warships had good information on Geonosian ground positions, but were apparently unable to do any damage (even to the aforemented dam-like wall structure) from orbit, or even approach for closer bombardment due to local gun emplacements.

3A. The entire combat sequence occurs within a very small area. Republic warships were literally within sight of the ray shield and at very low altitude when they dropped off the various gunships and tank carriers. Why not simply park a Venator over the combat area and shoot anything that moved? Instead they sent in the tiny vehicles ready to be shot down.

3B. The entire landing is a tactical mess. Despite having frontline warships mere kilometers away, the Republic forces fail to secure air superiority and are surprised by the ground forces (with ground to air capability, including at least one gun that appeared to be a Separatist ship-mounted broadside gun as seen on Ryloth, capable of shooting down Acclamators). They are also seemingly surprised by fighters, bumbling landing vehicles into what seems a previously-unknown shooting gallery. Numerous personnel are thus lost before the Republic landing forces even make it to the intended landing zone.

(If the Republic knew the broadside guns were there then yes, parking a Venator over the area was a bad idea. But if they knew that, then they should've sent in the Y-Wings alone to take them out and establish air superiority, enabling the Venators (or more Y-Wings) to come in and pop anything that didn't look right. Then the landing could occur. Instead they tried to land at the same time as they tried to establish air superiority, using the loaded gunships for that role.

In short, losses could've been far more restricted if there had been a delay in either sending out the gunships or (if they were needed for air superiority maneuvers) loading them with clones.

4. Pink ray shields of the type seen at Christophsis are again shown to be physically penetrable, this time by running clones and a Jedi with a lit lightsaber.

5. Droid poppers are seen to be able to knock out even droid walker-tanks, but it is only temporary.

6. The main structure of the gunships appears quite sturdy, what with several hard crash landings failing to result in the complete destruction of the fuselage. Indeed, the doors usually seemed to be able to be opened via the normal sliding apparatus, which would be quite unlikely for even a gently-wrecked modern minivan (and in some cases even a fully intact one!).

7. Communications were rusty at best. Indeed, at one point a Jedi enters a cave structure and is cut off from communications.

8. A downed gunship is said to be "five clicks east" (I would say "klicks" but that might be confusing, as I'm about to point out). The downed gunship is actually within sight of the person saying that, and visibly no further than half a kilometer. This holds across several scenes. Either clicks aren't kilometers or there was a missed "point", as in "point-five."

9. Flamethrowers! Holy crap. Geonosians burning to death. Wow.

More later.

[Mith]

Anyone else notice that the Y-Wings were using proton torpedoes?

[Mike DiCenso]

It should not be too terribly suprising to see Y-wings in the Clone Wars using proton torpedoes given what was established in Star Wars: A New Hope with the Y-wings of Gold squadron attempting to make the first trench run to the thermal exaust port.
-Mike

[Trinoya]

While the battle was a big blunder, I did believe it was better tactically than some of the other things we've seen (at least once they got on the ground that is).

Of interesting note, one of the troopers wearing the odd helmet said, "I sense wind vibration ahead." indicating a sensor package.

[Mike DiCenso]

As has been discussed in other threads, even the trench runs of the Battle of Yavin were poorly handled. Too few rebel starfighters, no real coordination of attacking the guns located about the target area by some of the rebel craft, which also provide cover against enemy fighters, and no one least of all did anything to get behind Vader and his wingmen to try and take them out or distract them. Also, it's been clearly established now that Y-wings are 2-man fighters, and having a pilot to man the gunner's position and use that gun to try and hold off enemy starfighters is a blatant oversight.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

9. Flamethrowers! Holy crap. Geonosians burning to death. Wow.

So much for the "kiddie show" aspect of it. ;-)
-Mike

[2046]

I think Mith's point was in regards to the Y-wings firing proton torpedoes which were approximately as destructive as a Javelin missile, give or take. But, that fails to take into account the Separatist gun's ammo supplies going up as well (it was the ground version of the broadside guns, and thus shell-fed), so I'd have to call it definitely less powerful.

Note that the Javelin warhead is about 20lbs of shaped-charge high explosives (and technically it's two warheads, but whatever). I'm not sure of the precise TNT equivalence, but it's not like a 500lb bomb or anything.

And yes, the trooper noting wing vibration did have a special corded doodad in his hand that looked sort of like a big microphone, and the cord appeared to be connected to his unique-looking backpack. The output from the device appeared to come over his helmet speaker, given that he holds his ear region when he's detecting the vibration. So basically, I'm thinking he was wearing a huge version of the Whisper 2000.

In any case, they aren't completely ignorant of scanning equipment . . . it's just big bulky crap. Or "battlefield ruggedized", perhaps, if you prefer . . . even for those two scanning techs who had to carry a huge-mongous box of gear aboard the Falcon.

[Mike DiCenso]

You know, speaking of the scanning techs going aboard the Falcon, why didn't they go in with an escort... you know... just in case there might be someone or something dangerous still aboard. And mind you, this was still well before Vader and Tarkin's plan to let them escape in order to follow them (hopefully) to the hidden Rebel base.
-Mike

[Mith]

I think Mith's point was in regards to the Y-wings firing proton torpedoes which were approximately as destructive as a Javelin missile, give or take. But, that fails to take into account the Separatist gun's ammo supplies going up as well (it was the ground version of the broadside guns, and thus shell-fed), so I'd have to call it definitely less powerful.

Hit the nail on the head. Voyager's shuttles would be more devistating in combat than that and these were the torpedoes that were able to damage the Malevolence and expected to take out the bridge (which I note, none of the Venators could do--let alone hit).

Note that the Javelin warhead is about 20lbs of shaped-charge high explosives (and technically it's two warheads, but whatever). I'm not sure of the precise TNT equivalence, but it's not like a 500lb bomb or anything.

Interestingly enough, me and my girlfriend were playing an old Star Wars RPG with her brother. At one point we use a Y-Wing to give air support to some resistance fighters. My girlfriend did about the same sort of damage that you'd expect with that type of torpedo.

Also, Imperial aim is pretty poor; first the guys bombarding the rebel based missed so badly that they hit a town about a fifteen day walk away and then when firing at farmers with the odds being 20 to 6 it ended with three farmers standing and all the stormtroopers lying down in the dirt. :p

But it was really, really fun.

And yes, the trooper noting wing vibration did have a special corded doodad in his hand that looked sort of like a big microphone, and the cord appeared to be connected to his unique-looking backpack. The output from the device appeared to come over his helmet speaker, given that he holds his ear region when he's detecting the vibration. So basically, I'm thinking he was wearing a huge version of the Whisper 2000.

In any case, they aren't completely ignorant of scanning equipment . . . it's just big bulky crap. Or "battlefield ruggedized", perhaps, if you prefer . . . even for those two scanning techs who had to carry a huge-mongous box of gear aboard the Falcon.

On another note those new (expensive) tanks are rather impressive. Unfortuantely, they also seem to have more protection than CIS warships...

[The Dude]

9. Flamethrowers! Holy crap. Geonosians burning to death. Wow.

So much for the "kiddie show" aspect of it. ;-)
-Mike

I heard about that, executing the survivors as well. Pretty brutal, not that it never happened in RL but it's not something one usually sees on TV.

[Mike DiCenso]

This and Karen Traviss' comments are pretty well proof enough that for better or worse (depending on your point of view), the TCW cannot be hand-waved away as it is not simply a "kiddie show" (like that ever stopped the pro-Wars camp from borrowing things like that to wank with in the past), and it is of a high enough canon standing as far as LFL is concerned for Traviss to just give up and quit writing her last SW novel for the EU. She paid little or no attention to the ICS books as far as her stories were concerned, but she did pay real serious attention to what TCW had to say about Mandalore. Hmmmm.
-Mike

[2046]

So I was watching "Legacy of Terror" the other day and noticed that while on the ground Luminara's clone refers to the course of a hovertank as something like "11-mark-82".

Star Trek uses such course notation to refer to a bearing, and I think someone's worked up a way for that to refer to a galactic course as well (always in reference to the center of the galaxy as local "north" or zero degrees). But I can't think of any obvious way for such a system to refer to two-dimensional heading. A coordinate system, sure, but a heading?

In other news, episode 9 (and 10 to some extent) are both quite tech-heavy.

A few quickie notes:

Two Consulars in the midst of the battle fly over the docked ships in a brief scene after the rescue of Koth. Rough estimation puts their speed at half their length (or about 60 meters) per frame, which for my framecount works out to about 1440 meters per second. I believe this is the first time we've ever seen anything other than a fighter move that fast relative to other ships in combat, which looked a little weird and un-Star-Wars to me. The Seppies were unable to hit them, though, so I guess it worked. But given the usual velocities of Consulars, I wonder how long it took them to turn around!

Commando droid swords were used against Jedi, but the Jedi always dodged and never parried with the lightsaber. Presumably they could've cut through, but at the expense of having a heavy blade with one hot end and one sharp end coming toward them still.

The ship classification got more complicated again. Despite Leia's ship being called a Galactic Cruiser, here we get a distinction between the Venator "cruisers" and the other ships, referred to as "escorts". This includes a wonderful small vessel that looks to be the love-child of a Consular and Venator. Eyeball estimation of its size puts it at or just over 200 meters, but the Sep droid calls it an escort.

Shields of the Recusant variant are penetrated by a shuttle in this episode, allowing direct contact with the hull despite no apparent damage on the vessel. Though this is consistent with other examples it is still perplexing. We are led to assume the shields were still up since earlier in the episode we saw Koth's Venator seemingly cause damage to the Recusant's hull as the docking procedure occurred. However, a powerful tractor beam was in use at the time, which might have meant that shields had to be down.

After the shuttle powers down, we see the other Jedi's alien dreadlock-pod thingies on her head hanging as if gravity has inverted. Given that they were upside-down against the Recusant's docking port, this suggests that when they powered down they terminated shuttle gravity and the Recusant's gravity field extended outside the ship. The alternative is that they inverted the shuttle's gravity field intentionally, but this makes little sense. And, if you'll recall Grievous jumped down into the escape pod in RotS, so the idea of external field bleed seems accurate.

The Magna-Guard staffs (in the non-glowy-bit areas) are cut through by Grievous with his lightsabers. This is interesting, since previously they have been seen to be lightsaber resistant. (The TCW movie has Tano parrying with her lightsaber against the handle in multiple instances, and the same thing happens dead-center on the staff in RotS by Anakin and Obi-Wan on separate occasions.) Apparently the staffs are lightsaber-resistant, but not lightsaber-proof, provided one swings with sufficient force . . . though one would also think that this level of force would've meant it would've been knocked from Obi-Wan's hand altogether.

The shock treatment given to Koth by the tactical droid resulted in a skull glow incident similar to that seen when Vader saved Luke. Given that Koth was in one of those floating forcefields that is capable of holding Jedi, one wonders just what was involved there.

More later.

[2046]

Oh yeah, and the Consulars never obviously damaged any of the Munificents, though we know that Y-Wings can do so.