Validity of the ICS

[Kazeite]

And, of course, this whole invisible lightspeed beam with slower tracer idea is contradicted by the movies :)

[Praeothmin]

Quote:

US army didn't demonstrate even low kiloton yields during the entire Vietnam war in which it lost 58,000 people AND the war. Does that mean they didn't have mulitimegaton bombs at their disposal? Of course not. There were some political/tactical reasons such yields were not used which are not immediately apparent.

The Nuclear bombs of the US army would be, in this case, comparable to the Death Star, or at least to ship grade weaponry.

What you fail to mention is that the US army did employ the most devastating weapon they had on many occasions:
Napalm.

Napalm bombs were the most devastating weapon the army had for those fighting conditions.
It's range was limited, by boy could one or two of those bombs clean out an area.
Even villages with innocent civilians.

So yes, even in the real world, we have many examples of using the most powerful weapons one as to do the job.

See also Hiroshima and Nagazaki.

Quote:

First I would say that generator destruction does reach kiloton level but more importantly just because a civilization posseses weapons of mass destruction that doesn't mean it will decide to use them at every turn just like today's countries don't.

I would say that if it is Kiloton, it is a very low yield.
And also a yield attained by the generator exploding, and not the firepower of the AT-AT.
Look at the sequence of events once more.
We clearly see two exlosions. The first one by the blasters on the AT-AT (a small one), and the second, biggest one by the generator overloading.

So once again, this proves that even at maximum fire power, AT-AT's weapons are not kiloton level...[/quote]

[Mr. Oragahn]

It's formidable how the rule not to use exlposion of artificial structures which contain powerful energy reactors, is completely dismissed when it comes to the estimate the firepower of the AT-AT.

"See, it fires at this big station, and this generates a very big explosion, so it must come from the AT-AT's firepower."

Actually, if they think about it, they do not want to use that kind of evidence.

What to think about the idea of breaching reactors which, at that time, were containing energies necessary to generate a theater shield, to protect Echo base from Death Squadron?

[Kane Starkiller]

Actually, those are not lower limits. They are reasonably accurate estimates based on effect - i.e., estimates within a reasonable MOE of both lower and upper limits on the actual effect of the seismic charge.

I'm sure better estimates can be made, but any energy in excess of (say) 10 MT is clearly not actually applied to targets in the area of effect - i.e., is not part of the effective yield.

Except seismic charges do not produce electromagnetic radiation but rather some kind of blue forcefield that behaves like a solid object.

You may wish to read through the ROTS novelization quote he posted.

I did. And the part it said what type and what power level the weapons used were?

The only thing dramatic enough to suggest strongly more powerful reactors is the superlaser.

From the movies yes and that's enough. But there are also various EU quotes.

Because that doesn't made sense. The shields are there to protect the ship. They have to take the brunt of an attack. That's why they should be usually the first main system on board of a ship that gets destroyed. They would be nearly useless if they let destructive energy through in an extent that makes the ship to a shell or hulk and kills the crew.

You do realize there is a difference between shields and shield generator right? A shield is an outer energy barrier while the shield generator is a piece of equipement somewhere inside a ship. If the energy bleeds through shields (shields as in energy barrier around the ship) there is no reason to assume it will hit the shield generator is there?

Furthermore, the shields are needing energy. These has to be produced in the reactor and conducted to the shield generators. From a certain extent of damages, that couldn't happen anymore. And as long as the Invisible Hand if firing uninterrupted on these ships, the damage gets more and more and even if there would have been shield strength remaining, it would be exhausted rather quickly.

I don't quite get what are you saying here. Starship is a complex thing. Once the energy bleeds through there is no telling where exactly it will strike and what piece of equipment or what power line will be destroyed.

Besides both terms - shell and hulk - as I understand it both from their official meaning as well as from the context - imply that the shields are destroyed too:
<snip huge dictionary quote>

Interestingly it doesn't say anywhere that shell or hulk mean that ship doesn't still have shields does it? Therefore you are just interpreting vauge descriptions whichever way you like and then claim that contradicts ICS.

There is nothing that indicates that the shields are still up. The most obvious interpretation is that these ships are as good as dead.

There is nothing to indicate shields are down either. And as you said it yourself: that they are down is nothing but your interpretation of a vague quote. That's not good enough to disprove the ICS.

Another interpretation seems far-fetched if there are no additional convincing explanations why it should be plausible.

For example, do you know one single event (from the EU or any other science fiction series or movies - I don't care for that example) in which a ship was in a battle so heavily damaged that most of its crew was killed and it could only be described as a shell or a hulk - but its shields were still up?

If you have no plausible reason, why one should assume that - although there is no indication for that, your explanation - although maybe possible - would appear as the effort to retcon the plot.

Many things are possible. The question only is, are they probable and thus plausible or are they indeed possible but totally far-fetched and not convincing.

And one should always consider that an explanation should also be convincing for those who don't know the EU and have only seen the movies and read their novelizations.

Why do you beat up on one point for so long? It makes the thread balloon very quickly and you added no substance.
Again you ask me to provide a "plausible reason" that the shields are up. Why don't you provide evidence that they are down instead? You are the one trying to disprove the ICS. To use a judicial analogy you are the one trying to prove that ICS is "guilty" on the charge of contradicting the movies and since the burden of proof is on prosecution that means you need to come up with evidence.

The problem with that reasoning is, that we never see how a capital ship or a starfighter is vaporized - although it is known that they aren't ptotected by shields (anymore).

Actually there is a scene in ROTJ where an ISD gets hit by a turbolaser and could be entirely vaporized.

That the cockpit glass and those thin antennae at the back remained untouched could have been because they were protected by the main body of the Invisible Hand that has taken the brunt of the atmospheric friction the same way a space shuttle re-enters atmosphere. The windows of the space shuttle are not more resistant against heat than the tiles of the heat shield.

And yet in the movie screenshots you provided to try and prove that hull was vaporized by the reentry we see that fires are burning on top don't we? So how can you claim that dorsal surface was vaporized and at the same time claim that antennae and windows were somehow protected? Secondly in the screenshots you provided we can also see that "atmospheric fins" to the port are also undamaged. How can you claim that main hull was vaporized while those thin fins survived? The parts that flew off during the reentry were obviously already damaged by weapons fire and internal explosions.

Ah - he has dialed the power down to less than a hundred-thousandth of the nominal weapons output. By the way, that was sarcasm.

Who even said he fired with main turbolasers? In any case it will take more than your incredulity to disprove the ICS.

Besides, the most obvious interpretation is that Needa has not bluffed.

Here you go again with your interpretations and assumptions. Again you are trying to PROVE the ICS guilty don't you? This doesn't cut it.

After Grievous was not able to show the Chancellor, there was no reason to assume that he was still alive.

Now you are claiming to have insight in Needa's state of mind at that time. You don't.

If you have no plausible reason, why one should assume that Needa has only bluffed - although there is no indication for that, your explanation - although maybe possible - would appear as the effort to retcon the plot.

Except for the attempted rescue of course. Not that it matters since it is up to you to prove that he didn't bluff in the first place.

Many things are possible. The question only is, are they probable and thus plausible or are they indeed possible but totally far-fetched and not convincing.

You haven't shown that refraining from using full power on an already near dead ship when you don't know whether your commander in chief is alive on that ship is far fetched.

And one should always consider that an explanation should also be convincing for those who don't know the EU and have only seen the movies and read their novelizations.

And why should that explanation be unconvincing for people who haven't read EU?

But I've updated the thread and actually came with what I consider an already too generous high end, of roughly 3.3 megatons.

Except you completely disregarded the fact the shockwave behaves like a solid object and therefore won't vaporize the asteroids. You provided no proof as to how long the shockwaves last.

You mean... Dankayo? That is one incident, not multiple ones, and this level of firepower hardly meshes with the end results, reported by someone less than one month ago, on this forum, when Dankayo surface again.

If it's not about Dankayo, then make it clear please.

Really what end results are that?

The validity of the ICS is about the validity of its content.
It's funny how before the AOTC:ICS, it wasn't such an heresy to question figures from EU books, notably WEG guides.

But tell me, what is the evidence Saxton used to come with so many high figures?

Because, you know, the point of guides is to actually explain what's on screen. Match what's on screen. Not come with content that is by default, indirectly unsupported at best, directly contradicted at worst.

By all means question the figures. The trouble is you want to discard the entire ICS if there is but a single incorrect number.
As for evidence believe it or not Saxton doesn't let me go through his personal stuff so I honestly don't know how he calculated the stuff he did. The point is it is now official and part of EU.

I find it dubious that the ICS has no stuff about the LAAT, considering that it features one of the cover.
Even more, the novelisation says they have shields.

If it has I don't know about it. And yes I know novelization states that they have shields. So?

So you admit that the fighters, transfering the power from their core to their weapons, makes them a significant and relevant menace against capital ships.

Under right circumstances yes. They certainly can't do it alone as witnessed in TPM but in conjunction with capital ships they can make a difference.

Yes, I heard about it, but it does not apply very well when the book says that fusion cores power everything. Of course, if annihilation cores were used by all capships, as the ICS implies, the tales would be much different.

It said it powers everything from "pod racers" to "starships" thus including every CLASS of vehicle not every INSTANCE of a vehicle. Diesel engine powers everything from a motorcycle to a ship. That doesn't mean that there are no other types of engines. And it still doesn't change the fact it's a kid story.

Pay attention to how your word it. You say "neccesary power to blow up the planet". Depending on what power means, yes, the Death Star has the power to blow planets up.

That said, does the Death Star achieve this by firing a pure and raw energy beam at a planet?

Not exactly.

How exactly does it do it then?

Please. Curtis Saxton was coauthor on Inside the Worlds of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, and probably dropped a few things or two in the following book.

I'm really not interested in your slanders which you have no way of backing up.

As for the rest of the EU, who gives? We know that when this claim was made by an EU source, it was during a period when people didn't spent that much time on theories and analysing stuff in detail.
I don't care if an EU source claims that it's a raw laser weapon. A raw laser weapon doesn't only scorch the hemisphere of planet, to let the planet explode on its own a second later.

Excuse me? The planet started expanding two frames after it was hit and up to five frames later the green beam is still visible thus superlaser is STILL in the process of dumping the energy into the planer. "On it's own" yeah sure.

I don't remember seeing you provide any calculations.

Besides, looking at the film is simple to reveal that's just the fluke of a weird cut. When Dooku leaves the cave, Amidala and clonetroopers fire at his ship.
The camera then moves to Dooku's ship, filming the cockpit's portside. The blaster bolts catch it up and even largely doubletake the vessel. We can also see the background moving behind, at speeds which are simply too low to be anything close to your claim.
Finally, there's the simple fact that Dooku's ship doesn't zap in front of the core ships when it reaches space.

And this proves that the scene is a fluke how exactly? The ship simply accelerated between the time Amidala's shots passed it by and by the time the scene cuts to space. As for the ship not "zapping by" the core ships how do you know what was the relative speed between the Core ships and the planet? And furthermore even if you do that only means that Dooku's ship actually decelerated for some reason which makes his acceleration capabilities even greater. In any case you don't get special privileges to discard any evidence you don't like.

The same scene where the Death Star appears significantly bigger than during the whole rest of the film?
Sketchy evidence, at best. People chalk it up to hyperspace distorsion.

It cannot be hyperspace distortion since we have OBSERVED the fleet dropping out of hyperspace. Secondly I could just as easily claim that Death Star appears smaller in other scenes. Not to mention that even if we use 160km DS2 it is still possible to explain it by Death Star moving closer to the planet WITHOUT discarding canon films. What is it with you and casually discarding canon material you don't like anyway?

Stop with your red herrings.

Saxton's explanation for how the weapons work is stupid, because military wise it makes no sense.

What does military have to do with anything? We are talking about PHYSICAL MECHANISM which has nothing to do with military.

The Death Star's mechanism is a whole different, because we're not denying the end result, that is, the planet blowing up. We're denying that claim that is just a raw beam.

You, despite the time we've talked about the Death Star, kept dodging the "delay element", the dreadful symptom that all Wongies hate like pox and ignore at will.
Will you prove better, or just glaringly dismiss it like SDN crowds have been for quite some time now?

"Deradful symptom". Oh my god there was a half-second delay on a planetary scale! It is clear that only fanatics interested in reducing the Death Star's power will make out anything out of it. It is funny how you declare entire film scenes invalid when it doesn't suit your purpose but now you just can't get over several frames of film huh?
In any case it is irrelevant. One possible explanation is that the superlaser did not have uniform power along it's length and that there was a spike somewhere along the half. Perhaps the reactors can't go to full strength immediately. Whatever the case the fact there was a secondary explosion after the planet doubled in diameter only proves it was no chain reaction since chain reactions would loose their intensity as planetary material disperses rather than suddenly kicking in.

Then please explain this:

Energy Weapons
Energy weapons fire invisible energy beams at lightspeed. The visible "bolt"
is a glowing pulse that travels along the beam at less than lightspeed...The
light given off by visible bolts depletes the overall energy content of a
beam, limiting its range. Turbolasers gain a longer range by spinning the
energy beam, which reduces waste glow.

Why even at very close ranges, the bolts still travel at much less than c, and explosions don't occur immediately.
Why bolts fired at long ranges (TPM: core ship vs Naboo yatch) are as glowy as the bolt fired by the same cannons, against nearby N-1 fighters.
If they're just firing nothing more than energy beams, then how can some warsies still pretend that the coreship in AOTC, downed by SPHA-Ts, has an uber armour, while obviously the blue energy beams didn't bleed that much energy into the atmosphere?

Is this from ICS? Did it say the beam always travels at the speed of light? We have seen that the speed of turbolasers varies. And who exactly claims that Core ships have uber armor. In SWTC Saxton merely states that IF the shields are up then the beam should have the firepower of 10^23W.

No. Otherwise, please explain how it makes sense to critically reduce the speed of bolts or beams to gain greater range, when what matters in space, is above all the speed at which your projectile/bolt/whatever will travel to your target.

Please explain, or just admit it's a stupid theory, military wise.

You just don't get it do you? If the beam bleeds the energy than YOU HAVE NO CHOICE. If you don't reduce the energy bleed the weapons will never reach the target in the first place. So this could be useful at striking fixed installations at extremely long range. No one ever said ISDs can hit an X-win from 10,000km.

Oh yes. Weapons can fire lasers in the teraton/gigaton whatelse, but instead of firing them at c, like normal lasers, they, huh, reduce their speed to gain range. So then, they're sure that the targets will easily evade the fire.
I'm not specifically talking about the Vector Prime incident, since they used plasma-like stuff, and still won battles against capital ships apparently able to move at thousand of gees and strike over lightminutes *sigh*. I'm also talking about the "weapon range" from the TESB novel, which in concordance with the film, clearly show that the lightminute claim is incorrect.

Who ever claimed Imperial ships can hit moving targets at light minute? There is a theorethical range and then there is practical range. In practice SW ships battle at roughly the same range as Federation ships and I don't think you'll find anyone who will argue that Impearial ships will just pick the Feds from light minutes or whatever.

The movie says they didn't. We see these ships fighting in the background, clearly in reasonable condition, we see that they are not returning gigaton fire power to their enemies. A decidedly stupid tactic when they are not the ones who have to be concerned about keeping anyone alive.

And how exactly can you tell they are not using gigaton level firepower?

They were given direct orders to defeat the Gungans. These are some very poor tacticians to not even use a 10 ton bomb (which would have also put the battle to a stop before it even began).

Or, perhaps, being a civilian organization they were reluctant to commit mass murders.

We see direct capital ship fire that ultimately results in the destruction of a star destroyer. That said, the shots had no visible high end yield effects. We see two ships, a star destroyer and a frigate exchange fire within several hundred yards of one another, the fire power demonstrated is decidedly sub kiloton. This was a battle for their lives, a battle to defeat the empire, and a battle where everything, EVERYTHING, was on the line, I'm reasonably sure they would have dialed those weapons up to full power. We also see projectile impacts on star destroyer shields with, noticeably, less than kiloton effects.

How do you know that there were sub-kiloton? Because there were no bright flashes? If that is the argument then the same goes for almost any sci-fi series including Star Trek.

The US army is irrelevant as it had citizens, its own men, and a political climate at home to worry about. In fact many generals argued for the use of its 11 ton bombs on targets, as opposed to just making helicopter landing zones with them...

At the battle in question, the Separatists are suddenly in a tactically poor position, desperately attempting a fighting retreat, a position that would have been IMMEDIATELY rectified with a single kiloton shot. No one knew about this 'clone army' no one cares about battle droids, and the battle is far enough away from the tower that a single kiloton would have hardly endangered the populace of the planet. It would have, however, eliminated a lot of jedi, thousands of clones, and bought them the time they needed to get off the planet. The republic could not have afforded to do the same as they wanted to rescue the jedi.

US army is not irrelevant as it clearly shows that even if the military posseses certain destructive weapon it might not use it. Secondly you claim that US had a political climate to worry about. And Republic didn't? This was a civil war remember.
US army was also retreating from Vietnam. Why didn't it use it's own nuclear weapons to stop the Vietkong?

I easily agree with the generator as I did say repeated shots (though some can argue the generator itself contributed to that explosion). That said, a single kiloton shot at the launching area would have prevented any more rebels from escaping. A single kiloton shot into the trenches would eliminate the rebels there. Hoth is not an inhabitied world and the only consideration anyone has is that Luke could be in the battle, and knowing that they STILL opened fire on the snow speeders, where he was most likely to be.

This is either a case of, "we don't have it" or, "were too dumb to use it."

So US was dumb for not using kiloton nukes in Afghanistan mountains? Why use a sledgehammer to swat a fly? Secondly Vader wanted Luke and by using weapons of mass destruction he would reduce the chances of finding him alive.

Answer: They wouldn't if they truly had the fire power to stop it.

On a side note: This is actually a moot point, as before hand the republic did not have an army to stop such activities. I shall drop this one in retrospect and readdress it later with a new point (a friend of mine just pointed it out). Therefore, the republic couldn't have policed it before, it didn't have the capability.

The Republic did in fact had a military. TPM novel has a man telling how he once flew a Republic cruiser filled with Jedi during some rebellion. It just didn't have an army. Navy was there.

The most netorious examples of fighter vs capital ship issues: The alliance frigate, the Star Destroyer Dome, the A-Wing crashing through the windows, the destruction of various pieces of the death star (deflection tower comes to mind), the destruction of the shield mechanism in ROTS, damage to a star destroyers with laser fire, and the dedicated use of fighters against capital ships seen in episode 1, 3, 4, and 6 as a viable tactic.]

The alliance frigate was undamaged, the pilots were worried since the ships could've been carrying missiles. SSD was the target of concentrated fleet fire as ordered by Ackbar and Invisible Hand was already in battle for some time with unknown shield status. When it is pure fighters vs capital ships TPM demonstrates just how useless they are.

The Nuclear bombs of the US army would be, in this case, comparable to the Death Star, or at least to ship grade weaponry.

Why? Nuclear bombs go from single kiloton to multiple launches from multimegaton bombs.

What you fail to mention is that the US army did employ the most devastating weapon they had on many occasions:
Napalm.

Napalm bombs were the most devastating weapon the army had for those fighting conditions.
It's range was limited, by boy could one or two of those bombs clean out an area.
Even villages with innocent civilians.

So yes, even in the real world, we have many examples of using the most powerful weapons one as to do the job.

No it wasn't. Nuclear bombs were the most devastating weapons and no napalm bombs can't be compared to them. And they DIDN'T do the job did they? US lost.

See also Hiroshima and Nagazaki.

How does this refute my point that militaries won't ALWAYS use their most devastating weapon? I never said they will NEVER use them: sometimes they will sometimes not.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Actually, those are not lower limits. They are reasonably accurate estimates based on effect - i.e., estimates within a reasonable MOE of both lower and upper limits on the actual effect of the seismic charge.

I'm sure better estimates can be made, but any energy in excess of (say) 10 MT is clearly not actually applied to targets in the area of effect - i.e., is not part of the effective yield.

Except seismic charges do not produce electromagnetic radiation but rather some kind of blue forcefield that behaves like a solid object.

So? Whether EM radiation or a "solid-like" force field, it still doesn't actually apply this presumed additional energy to the targets in its radius of effect.

I did. And the part it said what type and what power level the weapons used were?

Slightly different point, actually, although one of them has a more direct bearing on power levels than the other. The two most critical lines, in my opinion, are thus:

"I have a counteroffer. Maintain your ease-fire, move that hulk Indomitable out of my way, and withdraw to a minimum range of fifty kilometers until this ship achieves hyperspace jump."

A line which does not make sense under the ICS paradigm of lightspeed, light minute range, teraton-per-second firepower. It does not say anything about the power of the weapons.

a pause in the combat would allow Invisible Hand's turbolaser batteries to cool,

This gives us a critical piece of information: That the Invisible Hand was operating at its maximum sustained firing rate - and perhaps then some. This is particularly critical when we consider this line:

Mas Ramdar had sustained so much damage already that it was little more than a target to absorb the Hand's return fire, and Indomitable was only a shell, most of its crew dead or evacuated, being run remotely by its commander and bridge crew.

... which in turn tells us what that maximum sustained firing rate was actually doing.

From the movies yes and that's enough. But there are also various EU quotes.

Given the actual effect of the Death Star, and the probability of it having a unique reactor per the description of its destruction? No, and if we're going to bring in the EU, we'll find some incidents that strongly suggest lower power as well.

[Kane Starkiller]

So? Whether EM radiation or a "solid-like" force field, it still doesn't actually apply this presumed additional energy to the targets in its radius of effect.

How can you make this determination without the total radius of the weapon? A colission with a solid won't vaporize the asteroid merely shatter it which it did.

"I have a counteroffer. Maintain your ease-fire, move that hulk Indomitable out of my way, and withdraw to a minimum range of fifty kilometers until this ship achieves hyperspace jump."

A line which does not make sense under the ICS paradigm of lightspeed, light minute range, teraton-per-second firepower. It does not say anything about the power of the weapons.

By all means elaborate why it doesn't make sense under light speed weapons and teraton-per-second firepower? No one ever claimed light minute is a practical engagement range let me remind you again.

This gives us a critical piece of information: That the Invisible Hand was operating at its maximum sustained firing rate - and perhaps then some. This is particularly critical when we consider this line:

A line which says nothing about the operation of it's shields as I already explained to Who is like God arbour.

Given the actual effect of the Death Star, and the probability of it having a unique reactor per the description of its destruction? No, and if we're going to bring in the EU, we'll find some incidents that strongly suggest lower power as well.

Nothing in the effect of Death Star suggests that Death Star didn't need to impart the energy to the planet. None of you certainly showed any reasoning how some unexpected effects point to it anyway. EU is part of SW as Lucas himself demonstrates when he declared in ROTS commentaries that Anakin's scar will be explained in the EU.
By all means bring those lower level examples and we'll see how they hold out against other examples.

[Who is like God arbour]

Kane Starkiller, it is obviously that you don't interpret these lines rational.

I won't start to teach you exegesis. But it should be obviously even to you, that exegesis is more than only semantics.
As I have said, the term shell or hulk don't expressis verbis exclude the possibility that shields are still up. But that seems to be the least likely interpretation. If you really want to believe, that these lines are describing two ships, which crews are dead, which are described as hulk and shell, but which shields are still up regardless all the damages the ships have already taken, you can do it.
I think, that nobody with common sense would understand these lines in such a peculiar way. And - to be honest - I don't really believe, that you really think that these lines are to understand that way. I think you are whoring with semantics to prove your point although you know that you are bringing forward arguments that aren't convincing.

You choose the least plausible interpretation to uphold the ICS while the most plausible interpretation clearly contradicts the ICS. If that is satisfying for you - get lucky. With that attitude you can beliefe in all nonsense too as long as there is no clear proof for the contrary.
But you hopefully understand that people with common sense can't accept that unplausible explanations are used to confirm figures that were never shown in the first place.

It's always possible to find an explanation that fits to the few known facts. That's not difficult. You should hear all the defensive lies of criminals. The most of them are quite possible but totally absurd that nobody beliefs them. And although their defensive lies are quite possible, they get convicted because the judges don't believe them. Why do you think, is that so?

[Kane Starkiller]

Exegesis? An interpretation of text you mean? What was I saying all along? I'd rather have scientific method thanks.
By the way it is extremely hilarious how you use words like "hulk" and "shell" to back up your claims that shields are down even though their dictionary definitions give no clarification on the subject and then turn around accuse me of semantics whoring.
Sorry but I'm not the one trying to use vague descriptions as evidence.

[Jedi Master Spock]

How can you make this determination without the total radius of the weapon? A colission with a solid won't vaporize the asteroid merely shatter it which it did.

We have the radius ballparked fairly well, actually.

By all means elaborate why it doesn't make sense under light speed weapons and teraton-per-second firepower? No one ever claimed light minute is a practical engagement range let me remind you again.

The ICS has listed the range in the light minute order.

Now, assuming light speed propagation of the weapon, uncertainty in the position of the Invisible Hand is negligible (t=firing sequence delay + 50/3e8 s, maneuvering of Invisible Hand at this point in time negligible), meaning that the primary variable is angular control.

For most cross-sections of the Invisible Hand, a 100 m error from a shot centered on the ship will almost always (90+% of the time) still graze/hit the ship. If the CEP of your weapon is 100m, in other words, a majority of shots will hit.

At 50 km, this is an angular error of 0.1 degrees... in other words, a target about a fifth the apparent size of the moon viewed from Earth.

A line which says nothing about the operation of it's shields as I already explained to Who is like God arbour.

Says nothing directly. Says, however, by implication, and we can readily see that the Republic ships pound back at a similar rate against the sometimes-known-to-be-unshielded Hand.

Nothing in the effect of Death Star suggests that Death Star didn't need to impart the energy to the planet.

Actually, plenty in the effect does, as has been explained at length before. Alan Dean Foster's description of the dying reactor is also remarkable; that alone indicates the Death Star to be unique.

By all means bring those lower level examples and we'll see how they hold out against other examples.

They contradict. That's how well they hold out.

[Kane Starkiller]

We have the radius ballparked fairly well, actually.

No you don't. You have no idea how much time is omitted by the cuts between various external views and internal shots of cockpit. All you have is total screen time which is a LOWER limit.

The ICS has listed the range in the light minute order.

Now, assuming light speed propagation of the weapon, uncertainty in the position of the Invisible Hand is negligible (t=firing sequence delay + 50/3e8 s, maneuvering of Invisible Hand at this point in time negligible), meaning that the primary variable is angular control.

For most cross-sections of the Invisible Hand, a 100 m error from a shot centered on t
he ship will almost always (90+% of the time) still graze/hit the ship. If the CEP of your weapon is 100m, in other words, a majority of shots will hit.

At 50 km, this is an angular error of 0.1 degrees... in other words, a target about a fifth the apparent size of the moon viewed from Earth.

Who ever said it had to do with weapon accuracy? There are other reasons to distance yourself from an attacker like getting out of range of it's tractor beams and interdiction fields so you can escape into hyperspace. You are making unsupported assumptions and ascribing arbitrary motives to character's actions and then claim that somehow contradicts ICS. I don't think so.

Says nothing directly. Says, however, by implication, and we can readily see that the Republic ships pound back at a similar rate against the sometimes-known-to-be-unshielded Hand.

How does it say, by implication exactly? How many times do I need to say that Chancellor was on board Invisible Hand and the fact Republic ships were pounded still doesn't mean they were willing to kill Palpatine.

Actually, plenty in the effect does, as has been explained at length before. Alan Dean Foster's description of the dying reactor is also remarkable; that alone indicates the Death Star to be unique.

See just like I said. You have it backwards: you search through novels snippets find a vague poetic quote and then pretend it somehow trumps observation. All the novel stated that an energy of a "small artificial sun" was released but since "sun" means "luminous celestial body" that gives us nothing about it's internal mechanism does it? All your attacks from "shell", "hulk", "dragons inside fusion furnaces" to "sun" boil down to desperate semantics.

They contradict. That's how well they hold out.

Show me. By the way why should we automatically accept lower examples in case of contradiction? Are they absolutely irreconcilable? Or are you so keen on lowering SW power level that any quote suggesting lower firepower is automatically used?

[Mr. Oragahn]

But I've updated the thread and actually came with what I consider an already too generous high end, of roughly 3.3 megatons.

Except you completely disregarded the fact the shockwave behaves like a solid object and therefore won't vaporize the asteroids. You provided no proof as to how long the shockwaves last.

It could be acting like a solid object. You'll notice that I didn't exclude the idea of kind of forcefield, used in conjunction with magnetosonic waves.

However, as a solid object, coming into contact with obstacles would slow it down.
This weapon is extremely exotic, but the energy levels observed, and speed of propagation, we know how far it can range within a given time.

You are free to argue that the shockwaves would have hit Geonosis, but it's simply illogical to have a very likely over complex ground device with range which compete with planetary diameters.

Besides, no where in the film remains any evidence that the discs go that far. You are, again, free to debate that point in the appropriate thread. I won't discuss it any longer here.

You mean... Dankayo? That is one incident, not multiple ones, and this level of firepower hardly meshes with the end results, reported by someone less than one month ago, on this forum, when Dankayo surface again.

If it's not about Dankayo, then make it clear please.

Really what end results are that?

The survival of structures, documents and one guy, at least. You can get more info on google or even using the search button for this forum.

The validity of the ICS is about the validity of its content.
It's funny how before the AOTC:ICS, it wasn't such an heresy to question figures from EU books, notably WEG guides.

But tell me, what is the evidence Saxton used to come with so many high figures?

Because, you know, the point of guides is to actually explain what's on screen. Match what's on screen. Not come with content that is by default, indirectly unsupported at best, directly contradicted at worst.

By all means question the figures.

That's what we're doing.

The trouble is you want to discard the entire ICS if there is but a single incorrect number.

I can understand that it is a problem to you, but we all know that firepower and shiel or armour rating are all related, and proportional. Simply put, it would make no sense to have starfighters rated with weapons in the kiloton range, and see troop transports unable to cope with kilograms of TNT. Which we have shown, based on simple movie observation of the events on Geonosis.
Same for starships. It would not stand to claim super strong armour blocking gigatons of energy, when a star destroyed sees a large chunk of its structure utterly blasted apart by a moderate kiloton level kinetic impact at a sloped angle, due to an asteroid that is around 50 meters wide. As proven in TESB.

As for evidence believe it or not Saxton doesn't let me go through his personal stuff so I honestly don't know how he calculated the stuff he did. The point is it is now official and part of EU.

That we understand. But being official never meant being essentially correct.

I find it dubious that the ICS has no stuff about the LAAT, considering that it features one of the cover.
Even more, the novelisation says they have shields.

If it has I don't know about it. And yes I know novelization states that they have shields. So?

So you do the maths. A ship as big as a troop transport, armed to the chin, can't come with a shield that can conveniently protect its troops from very very low level of firepower from enemy fighters, both built by war industries.
How could other fighters suddenly have kiloton levels weapons, and shields able to deal with a number of such direct shots?
Answer: it could not.

So you admit that the fighters, transfering the power from their core to their weapons, makes them a significant and relevant menace against capital ships.

Under right circumstances yes. They certainly can't do it alone as witnessed in TPM but in conjunction with capital ships they can make a difference.

Absurd, in the light of yields claimed. The C'baoth trilogy had a wing of fighters engaging an ISD and poking a hole in the belly's shield, with no noticable help from any capital ship firing at the same spot, as far as I can remember (Katana fleet battle).
Kilotons of energy would not make a difference with shields which can deal with teratons of energy per second.
Which again proves just how Saxton ignored much of the EU to introduce his fanwank, poor EU consistency be ever more damned than before.

Yes, I heard about it, but it does not apply very well when the book says that fusion cores power everything. Of course, if annihilation cores were used by all capships, as the ICS implies, the tales would be much different.

It said it powers everything from "pod racers" to "starships" thus including every CLASS of vehicle not every INSTANCE of a vehicle. Diesel engine powers everything from a motorcycle to a ship. That doesn't mean that there are no other types of engines. And it still doesn't change the fact it's a kid story.

Nice spin.

Diesel engines can power everything. But they do not power everything.

A folklore story which never mentions annihilation cores. Quite a feat for an universe where, according to Saxton, most starships are powered by annihilation cores. Dismissing them as kid story doesn't negate the fact that you can't wrap your head around that there's no reason for Tatooinian folklore to be completely devoid of one single reference to annihilation cores powering even one single type of system.

Pay attention to how your word it. You say "neccesary power to blow up the planet". Depending on what power means, yes, the Death Star has the power to blow planets up.

That said, does the Death Star achieve this by firing a pure and raw energy beam at a planet?

Not exactly.

How exactly does it do it then?

If we had an answer, it would be an easy thing. One thing for sure is that it has little to do with uniquely using a beam of hyper energetic particles, because those things don't *pause* when they blow things up.

Explain the pause in Alderaan's destruction, or concede and serve as an example.

Yes, I'm direct, but I'm tired of your appeal to ignorance and repeated dodges.

Please. Curtis Saxton was coauthor on Inside the Worlds of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, and probably dropped a few things or two in the following book.

I'm really not interested in your slanders which you have no way of backing up.

Hey, care to read? He was co-author. It's like using bits of the bible to back up the bible. It's circular.

As for the rest of the EU, who gives? We know that when this claim was made by an EU source, it was during a period when people didn't spent that much time on theories and analysing stuff in detail.
I don't care if an EU source claims that it's a raw laser weapon. A raw laser weapon doesn't only scorch the hemisphere of planet, to let the planet explode on its own a second later.

Excuse me? The planet started expanding two frames after it was hit and up to five frames later the green beam is still visible thus superlaser is STILL in the process of dumping the energy into the planer. "On it's own" yeah sure.

Are you making it on purpose or what? Are you claiming that you never noticed the pause in the destruction, which can be easily noticed without going frame by frame?
You know what I'm talking about.

The real explosion, the one that blasts Alderaan to smitherens, happens after a pause, frames after the beam has stopped hitting the planet, and I think even at a time when the former explosion is already slowing down.

Now answer the orange coloured question above or concede.

I don't remember seeing you provide any calculations.

Besides, looking at the film is simple to reveal that's just the fluke of a weird cut. When Dooku leaves the cave, Amidala and clonetroopers fire at his ship.
The camera then moves to Dooku's ship, filming the cockpit's portside. The blaster bolts catch it up and even largely doubletake the vessel. We can also see the background moving behind, at speeds which are simply too low to be anything close to your claim.
Finally, there's the simple fact that Dooku's ship doesn't zap in front of the core ships when it reaches space.

And this proves that the scene is a fluke how exactly? The ship simply accelerated between the time Amidala's shots passed it by and by the time the scene cuts to space.

Admirable. So your claim is simple: the ship accelerated, and massively decelerated, within the cut.
Pink unicorn.

As for the ship not "zapping by" the core ships how do you know what was the relative speed between the Core ships and the planet?

Probably because we see Dooku coming from the planet, and the core ships orbiting around, and Dooku's ship is hardly zapping like a bullet like it would if it had been pushing the gas pedal like you claim, with god knows how many gees worth of thrust.

And furthermore even if you do that only means that Dooku's ship actually decelerated for some reason which makes his acceleration capabilities even greater. In any case you don't get special privileges to discard any evidence you don't like.

There's no evidence. We see him going slow on screen. You say he was going fast. Very fast. Off screen. Between the glued two sequences when we see him going slow.
No, you see, that it means you fail proving he was going fast.

The same scene where the Death Star appears significantly bigger than during the whole rest of the film?
Sketchy evidence, at best. People chalk it up to hyperspace distorsion.

It cannot be hyperspace distortion since we have OBSERVED the fleet dropping out of hyperspace.

People described it as an after effect. We know that getting out of hyperspace leaves particles, in the EU. Some crono traces or whatever. I suppose, that if I had to craft an EU friendly theory, a massive concentration of such particles would provoke distorsion effects.
It's a bit like the rotating space background when a ship goes into hyperspace in the OT. I think.
Well, anyway, I say it's a blooper. It's a minor piece of evidence, again much more evidence that the DS2 is not that large.

Secondly I could just as easily claim that Death Star appears smaller in other scenes.

Yes, you could.

Not to mention that even if we use 160km DS2 it is still possible to explain it by Death Star moving closer to the planet WITHOUT discarding canon films. What is it with you and casually discarding canon material you don't like anyway?

I hardly see why you bother coming with the idea of the DS2 coming closer to Endor. Sorry if I'm missing something, but is that relevant, somehow?

Stop with your red herrings.

Saxton's explanation for how the weapons work is stupid, because military wise it makes no sense.

What does military have to do with anything? We are talking about PHYSICAL MECHANISM which has nothing to do with military.

Please, this would have us to believe that the weapons dissipate too fast and so soon after leaving the barrel that this method to keep them coherent is still necessary even at very close ranges.
Indeed, all engagements we see display weapons which dramatically cross spaces at low speeds, nevermind if the target is just one or two kilometers ahead. The battle in ROTS and ROTJ show this.

If you want to defend Saxton's absurd claim, you can do it in the appropriate thread which I have bumped.

The Death Star's mechanism is a whole different, because we're not denying the end result, that is, the planet blowing up. We're denying that claim that is just a raw beam.

You, despite the time we've talked about the Death Star, kept dodging the "delay element", the dreadful symptom that all Wongies hate like pox and ignore at will.
Will you prove better, or just glaringly dismiss it like SDN crowds have been for quite some time now?

"Deradful symptom". Oh my god there was a half-second delay on a planetary scale!

The scale is not relevant. There should not be a delay of that magnitude with a continuous beam, especially after the beam has actually stopped hitting the planet.

It just shows how much objectivity and care you're willing to put into an honest observation of this sequence. Keep going on with ignorance. They all do it, why not you?
Or maybe... you'd like to prove you're different than all those other people who are cherry picking evidence?

Orange question is waiting for you.

It is clear that only fanatics interested in reducing the Death Star's power will make out anything out of it.

That is absurd. You're not understanding anything. We're not doubting the power to destroy plants.
We're doubting the way it does.
We know why the likes of you are so concerned about making it a mere turbolaser on steroids: Downscaling argument, and no despised technobabble.

It is funny how you declare entire film scenes invalid when it doesn't suit your purpose but now you just can't get over several frames of film huh?

Ah. I have declared the whole scene invalid? You are sure you understand what we're talking about?

In any case it is irrelevant. One possible explanation is that the superlaser did not have uniform power along it's length and that there was a spike somewhere along the half.
Perhaps the reactors can't go to full strength immediately. Whatever the case the fact there was a secondary explosion after the planet doubled in diameter only proves it was no chain reaction since chain reactions would loose their intensity as planetary material disperses rather than suddenly kicking in.

Wrong. Uniform power doesn't expain the secondary explosion that occurs frames after the beam has finished hitting the planet.
Even if the maximum power was, for some reason, in the tail - while the beam is uniform, but nevermind - the end result would be that the secondary more massive explosion would immediately occur as that "tail" hits the planet.

Not 18 frames[/frames] after the tail has finally reached the planet.

You just don't get it do you? If the beam bleeds the energy than YOU HAVE NO CHOICE. If you don't reduce the energy bleed the weapons will never reach the target in the first place. So this could be useful at striking fixed installations at extremely long range. No one ever said ISDs can hit an X-win from 10,000km.

Oh, that's nice. So you have a weapon that travels at c, but apparently it bleeds so fast that it's better to slow it down to low fractions of c.

Why not simply say that they have a weapon thay sprays at c? :|

And yes, lasers are lame, so we have to go with a complicated nonsense. I mean, why use lasers, which could very powerful and remain coherent, and tactically wise, truly travel at c in a straight path, when you have turbolasers that deplete so fast that you need to reduce their speed so even ships could evade them, even when firing at a ranges under a few kilometers?

Really.

Oh yes. Weapons can fire lasers in the teraton/gigaton whatelse, but instead of firing them at c, like normal lasers, they, huh, reduce their speed to gain range. So then, they're sure that the targets will easily evade the fire.
I'm not specifically talking about the Vector Prime incident, since they used plasma-like stuff, and still won battles against capital ships apparently able to move at thousand of gees and strike over lightminutes *sigh*. I'm also talking about the "weapon range" from the TESB novel, which in concordance with the film, clearly show that the lightminute claim is incorrect.

Who ever claimed Imperial ships can hit moving targets at light minute?

Moving targets is vague. At best, and that's the only acceptable idea we could start to agree on, is that they have such a great range when firing against standing still targets.

ROTS ICS gives 10 lightminutes ranges for Venators. And that's for effective range. Yet in ROTJ, the spaceships were fighting hundreds of kilometers apart from each other.

There is a theorethical range and then there is practical range. In practice SW ships battle at roughly the same range as Federation ships and I don't think you'll find anyone who will argue that Impearial ships will just pick the Feds from light minutes or whatever.

The mentions are practical ranges.
We also get a NJO reference, with an imperial ship firing at a vong worldship ship from outside a star system and hitting it.
Besides, all planetary bombardments I've seen from the EU involve close orbit.

[Jedi Master Spock]

No you don't. You have no idea how much time is omitted by the cuts between various external views and internal shots of cockpit. All you have is total screen time which is a LOWER limit.

Actually, we do have a pretty good idea how much time is omitted. Remember, when I'm talking "ballpark," I'm talking orders of magnitude, and when I'm saying up to 10 MT, I'm being quite generous in allowing for lots of hang time. How much radius is reasonable - and how much is required to reach the ICS's yield figures - is discussed some here and in a few other threads.

Suffice it to say that even assuming minutes of cut time - let alone hours - between the seismic mine's last visible image and the next scene showing no ring in the field is not at all reasonable in a live dogfight. Is the total affected radius it between 2 and 20 km?

Yes. All indications add up to greater than 90% confidence in that ballpark. There is no cause to conclude the shockwave lasts for minutes on end, propagating seemingly endlessly with no loss of destructive effect as the ring expands.

Who ever said it had to do with weapon accuracy? There are other reasons to distance yourself from an attacker like getting out of range of it's tractor beams and interdiction fields so you can escape into hyperspace. You are making unsupported assumptions and ascribing arbitrary motives to character's actions and then claim that somehow contradicts ICS. I don't think so.

What tractor beams and interdictor fields? As such are not mentioned anywhere in the passage, unlike the weapons fire, it is not reasonable to invoke them as a creative explanation for the given facts.

Grievous wants (a) them to stop shooting ("ease fire") and (b) move to a range where they will not be able to blow him up.

First - according to all the EU sources which mention interdictor fields - 50 kilometers is unlikely to be far enough to get outside of an interdiction field. Second, tractor beams demonstrably can operate at long range and high accuracy; the Death Star tractors in the Falcon from substantially further. Repulsors - the inverse of tractors - can push a ship all the way into orbit.

Perhaps the Invisible Hand is too large to be affected by a regular tractor beam; perhaps there simply aren't interdictors in this time and place; whatever the cause, however, it's quite crystal clear that weapons fire, not tractors and interdictors, are the main points of concern.

At that level of angular accuracy (roughly four times that of unguided long-range naval artillery fired through normal atmospheric conditions, and roughly a tenth as accurate as a marksman with a rifle on the range), a planet is a small target at ten light seconds or more... meaning that you would be basically unable to score hits on a planet at a light minute.

How does it say, by implication exactly? How many times do I need to say that Chancellor was on board Invisible Hand and the fact Republic ships were pounded still doesn't mean they were willing to kill Palpatine.

And how many times does WILGA have to point out that the Republic fleet did not believe the Chancellor to be alive at that point?

See just like I said. You have it backwards: you search through novels snippets find a vague poetic quote and then pretend it somehow trumps observation.

"Vague and poetic quote"? Alan Dean Foster spends the better part of a page describing the death of the Death Star. It isn't particularly vague; he actually gives lots of specific pieces in that passage, more than average for Star Wars writing. I recommend you read it, and particularly take note of how neither Alan Dean Foster nor any edition of the film provide for a similar description for the death of any ship.

All the novel stated that an energy of a "small artificial sun" was released but since "sun" means "luminous celestial body" that gives us nothing about it's internal mechanism does it? All your attacks from "shell", "hulk", "dragons inside fusion furnaces" to "sun" boil down to desperate semantics.

"Desperate semantics?" Try "the only reasonable interpretation."

Show me.

Darksaber. Thrawn Trilogy. X-Wing. Reiterate.

For every example you can come up with that suggests higher-than-fusion power levels, I can come up with one that suggests lower-than-fusion (or very-small-fusion-plant) power levels. In the mean time, since you haven't actually detailed the examples, and the question of whether or not some very small fraction of the SW EU suggests higher-than-fusion power levels isn't particularly important, I think it's better that we concentrate on the issues of the Battle of Coruscant.

By the way why should we automatically accept lower examples in case of contradiction?

We shouldn't. Nor should we automatically accept higher examples in the event of contradiction by reasoning (fallaciously) that they are "minimums" somehow.

Are they absolutely irreconcilable?

Kane, I've been over this before. Nothing in a descriptive narrative of a fictional universe is going to be absolutely irreconcilable...

... simply not reconcilable assuming the universe behaves in a consistent and semi-reasonable fashion.

[Who is like God arbour]

I don't know how I should express my thoughts about Kane Starkiller without violating the rule that demands polite and reasoned discussions.

I don't see that it is sensible to continue a debate with him.

If he choose again and again the obviously less plausible or less likely possibility, he is either dishonest or is not able to see that his choice is absurd.

One can't interpret a text only with semantics. One has to consider the grammatic, the context, the history, the systematic, the indent of the author, what the author has said at other text passages, what words he has used and why he would have used such words. There are stylistic devices and figures of speech to consider. Not every word means what it means usually. One has to consider on the one sider the author and on the other side the reader on which he has thought while writting. What would the reader think if it is reading his writting?

But his understanding of the quoted lines is showing that he isn't really interpreting them - or tries to decieve us.

[Praeothmin]

Kane Starkiller wrote:

No it wasn't. Nuclear bombs were the most devastating weapons and no napalm bombs can't be compared to them. And they DIDN'T do the job did they? US lost.

Which is why I chose to compare them to the Death Star.
Just like our Nuclear Weapons were our most potent weapon, the Death Star is the Empire's most potent weapon.

And US losing has nothing to do with the lack of potency of its weapons, but more with the underestimation of their opponents and lack of comittment of their troops.
Kinda like Iraq...

How does this refute my point that militaries won't ALWAYS use their most devastating weapon? I never said they will NEVER use them: sometimes they will sometimes not.

It doesn't!
I'm not refuting your point, just reorienting your misinterpretation.
Using Turbolasers to their supposedly highest yields would be effective and logical in many instances, yet we never once saw, in the movies (the highest canon), the Empire shooting with their 200 gigatons weapons.
Just like in Vietnam, aside from the Nuclear Weapons, the greatest american weapon for the Vietnam war was the Napalm bombs, and they used them...

[Kane Starkiller]

However, as a solid object, coming into contact with obstacles would slow it down.
This weapon is extremely exotic, but the energy levels observed, and speed of propagation, we know how far it can range within a given time.

You are free to argue that the shockwaves would have hit Geonosis, but it's simply illogical to have a very likely over complex ground device with range which compete with planetary diameters.

Besides, no where in the film remains any evidence that the discs go that far. You are, again, free to debate that point in the appropriate thread. I won't discuss it any longer here.

Starwman. I simply said that we don't know what range the seismic charge has not that it will continue to expand for 10,000km. In any case it shattered every asteroid it encountered never loosing integrity or slowing down. No upper limits can be derived.

The survival of structures, documents and one guy, at least. You can get more info on google or even using the search button for this forum.

As instructed, I have remained behind until the last of our transports departed safely into hyperspace. Imperial Star Destroyers have so thoroughly blasted Dankayo that I fear for my safety, even in this deep-planet survival shelter.

As you can see the guy who survived did so because he was in deep-planet survival shelter. And he still feared for his life.

I can understand that it is a problem to you, but we all know that firepower and shiel or armour rating are all related, and proportional. Simply put, it would make no sense to have starfighters rated with weapons in the kiloton range, and see troop transports unable to cope with kilograms of TNT. Which we have shown, based on simple movie observation of the events on Geonosis.
Same for starships. It would not stand to claim super strong armour blocking gigatons of energy, when a star destroyed sees a large chunk of its structure utterly blasted apart by a moderate kiloton level kinetic impact at a sloped angle, due to an asteroid that is around 50 meters wide. As proven in TESB.

You haven't shown that shields and armamanet energy are in disagreement. You ignore the fact that ISDs were in a dense asteroid field where even Millenium Falcon and TIE fighters had great difficulties evading the asteroids and ISDs were being hit by roughly 1 asteroid per second. How many asteroids hit it before shield failure?

So you do the maths. A ship as big as a troop transport, armed to the chin, can't come with a shield that can conveniently protect its troops from very very low level of firepower from enemy fighters, both built by war industries.
How could other fighters suddenly have kiloton levels weapons, and shields able to deal with a number of such direct shots?
Answer: it could not.

Again who said that troop transports and fighters have the same level of shielding? Secondly how many fighter level hits can an average fighter take? I seem to recall that when hit by enemy fire fighters explode almost instantly.

Absurd, in the light of yields claimed. The C'baoth trilogy had a wing of fighters engaging an ISD and poking a hole in the belly's shield, with no noticable help from any capital ship firing at the same spot, as far as I can remember (Katana fleet battle).
Kilotons of energy would not make a difference with shields which can deal with teratons of energy per second.
Which again proves just how Saxton ignored much of the EU to introduce his fanwank, poor EU consistency be ever more damned than before.

To use your favorite line: Films trump EU. In films fighters by themselves are COMPLETELY useless as proven by TPM battle.

Nice spin.

Diesel engines can power everything. But they do not power everything.

A folklore story which never mentions annihilation cores. Quite a feat for an universe where, according to Saxton, most starships are powered by annihilation cores. Dismissing them as kid story doesn't negate the fact that you can't wrap your head around that there's no reason for Tatooinian folklore to be completely devoid of one single reference to annihilation cores powering even one single type of system.

There is also no reason why kid's stories SHOULD make references to annihilation cores is there? Are there any Earth folklore stories concerning nuclear reactors or electric engines? Or even diesel engines?

If we had an answer, it would be an easy thing. One thing for sure is that it has little to do with uniquely using a beam of hyper energetic particles, because those things don't *pause* when they blow things up.

Explain the pause in Alderaan's destruction, or concede and serve as an example.

Yes, I'm direct, but I'm tired of your appeal to ignorance and repeated dodges.

First of all you are lying.
There is no pause in Alderaan's destruction: at no point does the explosion stop, wait for a second and then continues.
There is only a secondary explosion that overtakes the first one, NO PAUSES.
You also admit you don't have an answer but then demand in yellow text that I provide explanations or concede. How nice. You get to claim chain reactions without any explanation or backup but I must explain everything right?
But fine let's see what we know.
1. We know that superlaser can be set to various yields ranging from ship destroying bursts to planetary destruction yields.
2. We know that superlaser has variable speeds. It traveled at speeds of 100,000km/s when it destroyed Alderaan and at perhaps 100km/s when it was fired against ships in ROTJ.
Thus, as I said, the superlaser might not have equal energy content along it's beam and slowed down as it vanished from camera's view. Therefore when the energy spike in energy content reached the expanding planetary matter a larger explosion was created.

Now I have provided a theory that while not perfect does not contradict anything we have seen in the films and does not introduce ANY NEW mechanism to the superlaser that we have not already seen in the films.

As for you you IGNORED my point that diminishing concentration of planetary matter as it expanded would decrease any chain reaction hence the secondary explosion PROVES it is not a chain reaction.

Now I am asking you.
Will you FINALLY PROVIDE any explanation as to why secondary explosion points to a chain reaction and provide a hypothesis, a physically sound one, as to why there was a secondary blast. If you don't do that then concede and serve as an example.

Hey, care to read? He was co-author. It's like using bits of the bible to back up the bible. It's circular.

Flawed analogy. Inside the Worlds and ICS are NOT one and the same book unlike the Bible. Therefore there is nothing circular about it. But there is also SW official page that states that "The Death Star's prime weapon unleashed unthinkable levels of raw energy capable of tearing apart entire worlds."

Admirable. So your claim is simple: the ship accelerated, and massively decelerated, within the cut.
Pink unicorn.

You know when I first read this I laughed my ass off and almost decided not to reply anymore because really this is a new low.
So ship being able to decelerate is "pink unicorn" now?
Suppose you are walking down the street, turn around and there is a guy 100m behind you. You turn front and keep walking and 10 seconds later you turn around again and the guy is right behind you. What is your conclusion? Do you conclude that the guy simply ran thus "accelerating" and then "decelerated" behind you? Or do you run away screaming that the reality is "wrong"? I wonder which explanation is a "pink unicorn".
I invented nothing: we know that ships can accelerate and decelarate and routinely do so. My theory also doesn't contradict the observed events. Your theory on the other hand requires breaking the Suspension of Disbelief and thus is equivalent to that guy screaming that "reality is wrong".
Finally I never said this is DEFINATELY what happened, merely a possible explanation that reconciles the OBSERVED high acceleration of the ship WITHOUT breaking SoD.
I don't like to expand upon a single line because a thread balloons to gigantic size but this is just ridiculous.

Probably because we see Dooku coming from the planet, and the core ships orbiting around, and Dooku's ship is hardly zapping like a bullet like it would if it had been pushing the gas pedal like you claim, with god knows how many gees worth of thrust.

Where do you get that core ships were "orbiting around"? Have you watched the films? The Trade Federation was RUNNING AWAY. Thus their ships would logically be ACCELERATING away from the planet as fast as they could. Secondly do you know whether Dooku's ship was still accelerating when it reached the ships? You know nothing: Core's ship current acceleration, Core's ship current relative velocity with the planet, Dooku's ship current acceleration, Dooku's ship current relative velocity with the planet. So where do you get off making contradiction claims?

There's no evidence. We see him going slow on screen. You say he was going fast. Very fast. Off screen. Between the glued two sequences when we see him going slow.
No, you see, that it means you fail proving he was going fast.

Hello anybody home? Slow RELATIVE TO WHAT? Core ships? Look above. How fast were they moving relative to the planet, what was their acceleration rate.

People described it as an after effect. We know that getting out of hyperspace leaves particles, in the EU. Some crono traces or whatever. I suppose, that if I had to craft an EU friendly theory, a massive concentration of such particles would provoke distorsion effects.
It's a bit like the rotating space background when a ship goes into hyperspace in the OT. I think.
Well, anyway, I say it's a blooper. It's a minor piece of evidence, again much more evidence that the DS2 is not that large.

Yet no such distortions were ever seen anywhere else in the films. Funny that. Oh but you have an explanation "some crono traces or whatever". Yeah I think I'm gonna stick with canon OBSERVATION thanks.

I hardly see why you bother coming with the idea of the DS2 coming closer to Endor. Sorry if I'm missing something, but is that relevant, somehow?

It would explain why the Death Star looked bigger relative to Endor.

Please, this would have us to believe that the weapons dissipate too fast and so soon after leaving the barrel that this method to keep them coherent is still necessary even at very close ranges.
Indeed, all engagements we see display weapons which dramatically cross spaces at low speeds, nevermind if the target is just one or two kilometers ahead. The battle in ROTS and ROTJ show this.

If you want to defend Saxton's absurd claim, you can do it in the appropriate thread which I have bumped.

What you believe is irrelevant.

And yes, lasers are lame, so we have to go with a complicated nonsense. I mean, why use lasers, which could very powerful and remain coherent, and tactically wise, truly travel at c in a straight path, when you have turbolasers that deplete so fast that you need to reduce their speed so even ships could evade them, even when firing at a ranges under a few kilometers?

Really.

Do you have anything else to offer other than your incredulity? Did you ever see a capital ship evading turbolaser fire? No? Then what's the point of bumping up the speed if it causes energy bleed.

Actually, we do have a pretty good idea how much time is omitted. Remember, when I'm talking "ballpark," I'm talking orders of magnitude, and when I'm saying up to 10 MT, I'm being quite generous in allowing for lots of hang time. How much radius is reasonable - and how much is required to reach the ICS's yield figures - is discussed some here and in a few other threads.

Suffice it to say that even assuming minutes of cut time - let alone hours - between the seismic mine's last visible image and the next scene showing no ring in the field is not at all reasonable in a live dogfight. Is the total affected radius it between 2 and 20 km?

Yes. All indications add up to greater than 90% confidence in that ballpark. There is no cause to conclude the shockwave lasts for minutes on end, propagating seemingly endlessly with no loss of destructive effect as the ring expands.

Except you disregard the fact that shockwave pulverized the asteroids without SLOWING DOWN OR EVEN LOOSING ANY INTENSITY. Thus it is at least order of magnitude above the neccesary energy to simply pulverize the asteroid. Secondly how does the ring loose intensity? Like EM radiation or is there a more abrupt stop as forcefield looses it's cohesion?
What you consider a generous amount of time is irrelevant. You don't know how much time elapsed and that's it.

What tractor beams and interdictor fields? As such are not mentioned anywhere in the passage, unlike the weapons fire, it is not reasonable to invoke them as a creative explanation for the given facts.

Except weapon accuracy and range being the reason for 50km distance is not a fact is it? It just an assumption on you part isn't it? And we do know that when you want to escape it is tractor beams and not weapons that make the difference.

Grievous wants (a) them to stop shooting ("ease fire") and (b) move to a range where they will not be able to blow him up.

(b) is nothing but your assumption. Your assumptions don't trump official (and canon I might add) texts.

First - according to all the EU sources which mention interdictor fields - 50 kilometers is unlikely to be far enough to get outside of an interdiction field. Second, tractor beams demonstrably can operate at long range and high accuracy; the Death Star tractors in the Falcon from substantially further. Repulsors - the inverse of tractors - can push a ship all the way into orbit.

Yes a 160km Death Star tractored in a 30 meter "piece of junk". How does this translate into Venator being able to tractor or interdict a ship of similar size at that range? Repulsors push sip from a 1g gravity. How focused and strong is a tractor beam?

Perhaps the Invisible Hand is too large to be affected by a regular tractor beam; perhaps there simply aren't interdictors in this time and place; whatever the cause, however, it's quite crystal clear that weapons fire, not tractors and interdictors, are the main points of concern.

I would sure like to know how is it "crystal clear" that it is specifically weapons that are the reason for 50km distance. Especially since we know Trade Federation battleship fired at Naboo yacht at that range and scored hits. Invisible Hand would have no chance of evading fire. It was obviously not about accuracy or weapon range.

And how many times does WILGA have to point out that the Republic fleet did not believe the Chancellor to be alive at that point?

There is nothing in the novels that states so. He claimed it when talking to Grevious but we can hardly take his word when he is negotiating with the enemy.

"Vague and poetic quote"? Alan Dean Foster spends the better part of a page describing the death of the Death Star. It isn't particularly vague; he actually gives lots of specific pieces in that passage, more than average for Star Wars writing. I recommend you read it, and particularly take note of how neither Alan Dean Foster nor any edition of the film provide for a similar description for the death of any ship.

By all means provide quotes which demonstrate some strange chain reaction is taking place.

"Desperate semantics?" Try "the only reasonable interpretation."

So you claim. But since we are talking about semantics you have no evidence do you? Which is exactly the problem. You can claim whatever you want.

If he choose again and again the obviously less plausible or less likely possibility, he is either dishonest or is not able to see that his choice is absurd.

You decided to PROVE that ICS is wrong. So the PROVE it. And to do that you need EVIDENCE. And interpretation of non explicit text is not EVIDENCE. Try to wrap your head around that.

One can't interpret a text only with semantics. One has to consider the grammatic, the context, the history, the systematic, the indent of the author, what the author has said at other text passages, what words he has used and why he would have used such words. There are stylistic devices and figures of speech to consider. Not every word means what it means usually. One has to consider on the one sider the author and on the other side the reader on which he has thought while writting. What would the reader think if it is reading his writting?

Marvelous. A heap of subjective extrapolations. And this is supposed to be used as some kind of evidence against ICS which EXPLICITLY states numbers? Yeah sure.

Which is why I chose to compare them to the Death Star.
Just like our Nuclear Weapons were our most potent weapon, the Death Star is the Empire's most potent weapon.

Except there is an entire range of nuclear options: ranging from dropping a single kiloton bomb to carpet bombing with multimegaton nukes. That range can be applied to heavy turbolasers up to Death Star's main weapon.

And US losing has nothing to do with the lack of potency of its weapons, but more with the underestimation of their opponents and lack of comittment of their troops.
Kinda like Iraq...

And Republic which fights it's own citizens won't have second thoughts about laying down with weapons of mass destruction?

It doesn't!
I'm not refuting your point, just reorienting your misinterpretation.
Using Turbolasers to their supposedly highest yields would be effective and logical in many instances, yet we never once saw, in the movies (the highest canon), the Empire shooting with their 200 gigatons weapons.
Just like in Vietnam, aside from the Nuclear Weapons, the greatest american weapon for the Vietnam war was the Napalm bombs, and they used them...

What is "the greatest" weapon? We are talking about POWER now. US didn't use their MOST POWERFUL weapons that's the point. Even when they were loosing they didn't use them. Battle of Geonosis was basically a rescue operation commanded by Yoda of all people. Why do you think he would immediately decide to lay it down with heavy turbolasers?