There's that claim on page 21.
Ladies and gentlemen. Let's breathe and assimilate those words.JC, Interrupted wrote:LAATs are definitely shielded; you see plenty of shield flashes when Dooku's escorts are shooting at the LAAT in Episode 2.
Ok.
I'm just plain tired of that BS, of people pointing at flak bursts and claiming - with a straight face - that those are shield glares.
Of course, supported by another expected resident warsie, and probably silently approved by the whole classical wagon you certainly know.
Aren't they realizing that those explosions occur at non constant distances from the hull, sometimes very close, sometimes meters away from the ship?
We've seen similar explosions occuring tens of meters away from LAAT formations when the CIS droids were firing from the ground. Same explosions sometimes occuring deadly close to the troop nacelles, sometimes so far that you wondered what happened to the bolt in question. I mean, they actually poped everywhere, rather randomly, with a great magnitude of variance in the distances between said explosions and the closest republican ships.
There was that same issue with the case of the Trade Federation warship firing at Padmé's ship, years earlier.
I suppose that these droids in TMP were blown away by shield flares, because you know, the ship's shield just happened to be hugging the droids when they were hit. I mean, sure, it's not like there's been bolts literally missing the hull by a few millimeters, while others happily exploding around a damn bus away from the yatch! Back and forth.
Oh, btw, those droids were obviously vaporized (?) by kiloton level shots. Huh, I don't know, I'm just looking at the size of the TF cannons firing at the nubian ship after all. They're quite big, and the Neimoidians clearly wanted to destroy that ship.
Ah, wait, those droids had kiloton level shields. Stupid me. Not strong enough though. Too bad.
Or, better, now they'll quickly modify their favorite theory so a bolt can hit a shield, but not be totally absorbed. Like a varying small fraction of the bolt will still pass through. Of course! A modification that they will probably forget as soon as necessary when facing evidence of bolts stopped dead, or when dealing with ships which pack some nasty firepower.
Well, that's not very new in fact, we probably heard that one like a million times before. But you got to wonder how it can fit with their sink tank model. They'll gladly remind you that unless you've completely filled a shield's "tank", it will still function perfectly. That's part of the uber nature of their shields. Which doesn't scheme well with all that shit above.
So what? those shields have a non defined volume that constantly changes rather randomly multiple times within a second, so one bolt can brush against the hull and continue on its trajectory, unhampered, and be lost in the confines of space until it dissipates, when another one can fly meters away from the hull and suddenly explode for no apparent reason (and let's not get started on what creates those explosions in space).
Needless to say that this is arguing for such a poor shield design, that stops much more fire than necessary, but that is not even constant at it, as shield range jumps from largely overgenerous to murderously close, say totally absent, within a microsecond. :rolleyes:
Ah, maybe that's the fabulous *** volumetric shields ***.
Isn't it easier to say that it's just a timed explosion and that the weapon can deal damage via concussion? Like, flak?
It's just the most simple explanation over that hazardous shapeshifting vibrating shield after all, and Occam would be happy at it.
The answer is probably simple. Those flak bursts are just too damn weak for their kiloton level cannons I suppose. So it's better to brush the whole thing away with magical shields that absorb unseen energy and ditch it once more with a fancy invisible trick of the same vein. Nevermind evidence and logic, of course. Be they damned.
Besides - the second point - the LAAT's supposedly "strong" shields (not disputing the existence of shields, just their power) have been downed by the geonosian fighter's water cannons (look at the damage done at the sand dunes or the rocky cliffs to see what I mean).
Since this already discounts even 1-ton-of-TNT level weaponry, this can only leave the superb following theory:
The LAAT's shields were already left at 0.00000001% when the firing started.
Oh, wait, considering that they work on the sink tank model, and since they were visibly not hit since several seconds, if not minutes, and considering the rates at which they supposedly bleed off energy (I mean, like hundreds of kilotons per second, if not megatons per second), what's the excuse that says that the shields were so weak when *cough* hit *cough* by those geonosian firecrackers?
It should be time one of them actually accepts to honestly defend those funny claims, by providing logical arguments.