sonofccn wrote:Mr. Oragahn wrote:Perhaps, but ST definitely has proof in script of longer ranges measured in thousands of km for weapons such as phasers, and uses torpedoes too which have no reason to lose their targeting capacity against SW's warships, and ought to be just as great as for phasers, if not much better because they're guided.
On the other hand, at best you get 100 KM for Venators' turbolasers iirc from the ROTS novelization, and a very large and immobile ion cannon capable of hitting at ranges of thousands of km rather large ships with the agility of beached whales. Once might confer a semi-ability at homing to the ion projectiles that may explain their capacity to hit at such ranges despite their overall low speed.
Well that is a big "perhaps". Again, trying to be impartial and objective, it seems unfair to assume the Federation is going to something contrary to how they behave a good percentage of the time. They like getting up close and personal.
Are we talking about the artistic liberties taken for the sake of entertainment? Space battle ranges probably are the first things that get sacrificed on the altar of watchable fun, followed by real explosions, real lasers and momentum.
The point also is that ST clearly highlights the existence of this internal issues through production-side decisions and resulting contradictions between visual ranges and stated ones. I'm also fairly sure that Trek does have a couple examples of ships firing torpedoes from orbit and hitting ground targets squarely, evnei f they're quite small. Then, one remembers that warships in SW are of the big and sluggish variety. Which is a disadvantage here, making them similar to the aforementioned ground targets.
All in all, the stated ranges are indisputably superior by at least one order of magnitude, and not just for torpedoes. In the case both sides should be allowed more realistic rules of engagements and free to exploit their tech the way it should be done, ST has the advantage right there.
In terms of good examples of range For Star Wars, assuming you fly on a predictable path, we have TPM and the royal ship escaping Naboo, flying through a hail of red death at an impressive range, especially for the size of that craft. Although one could easily condemn the stupidity of Rick Olie for continuing to fly in a straight line. :/
I'd say the range was quite remarkable but at the same time the firepower was clearly capped at anti-fighter level, as evidence by the damage taken by droids hit by the bolts.
The paradigm in SW could be that you may trade range for firepower, perhaps because packing a bolt containing far more energy makes it less stable, harder to guide through the cannon and harder to maintain on a course, and perhaps that the bolt itself might explode sooner.
Mr. Oragahn wrote:How so? At 420 TW you'd be getting your 100 KT of energy per second. Wait ten seconds and there is your megaton.
In a ten second time span an ISD should be able to shell tens of turbolaser bolts down range. Assume each one is only "moderate kilotons" and it still adds up fairly quickly. In fact it likely would be hard to create a paradigm where the ISD isn't shelling hundreds of kilotons every ten seconds.
I find it very easy, on the contrary. Their heaviest cannons ought to have such low firepower based on overall evidence; I don't peg it at more than a couple kilotons based on everything we've seen. It wouldn't feel right at the moment to claim yields in the Hiroshima level since there is zero support for that aside from flowery language from a lower source such as the new E7:ICS.
In fact, a one kiloton explosion wouldn't necessarily be too impressive (and a even less if non-nuclear), including part of the yield perhaps absorbed (although shields in SW seem to be deflecting more than anything else, despite the popular claims of super absorption that were running rampant a decade ago). It isn't as impressive as some may think. We even shared a video a while back of such a firing test on a target, drawn on the dirt in some desert. It's still a big boom, one we're yet to see any SW heavy weapon achieve btw.
1 KT test, air blast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSi2IRXrhSo,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=351zid4NHKI (shots 1 & 2),
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0r_4v2hA5c.
Then there's the issue that if a 100 kiloton per second beam can make the ship shudder something rated
rated from 400 to 1500 kilotons delivered across a comparable time frame should make them sit up and take notice.
Where does the 100 KT figure come from?
Let's also remember that G2K's calc veers on the higher side. A low kiloton shot landing on a small town would also totally vaporize it. It's good English too.
Mr. Oragahn wrote:This is the high end interpretation of the highest most impressive description of firepower from a conventional heavy energy weapon in SW.
Applying the same degree of generosity to ST would largely give it the upper hand.
Its hardly a "high end interpretation" unless your going to argue we should ignore the word "vaporize", which would hardly be fair or impartial, and there are so few explicit firepower figures for Wars. At least for the live action films. It would be hard to build a case where, for instance, 400 kilotons is just too crazy high of an outlier.
There is absolutely nothing unfair there, because again,
to vaporize in the sense of
leveling a place is also a common way to use the verb. It does not require sophistical gymnastics in the slightest way.
Lastly Trek's in a bit of a glass house concerning weak sauce firepower visuals. There's little we get in Wars that you wouldn't get in say any fleet battle in DS9 for instance. If one demands "moderate kilotons" even at the expense of higher, more explicit figures then so does the other.
How so? Wars is so devoid of any solid demonstration of
impressive firepower from heavy weapons that it cannot even provide anything remotely similar to ENT's NX-01 crew testing her phase cannons against the tip of some kind of geological residue found within a crater, at a time when said ship was tossing near terawatt-level shots.
At best we have countless cases of TL cannons firing at snubfighters and not even flash boiling them in one shot. Dialed down yields? Perhaps, but that's about how far we can go in terms of evidence.
It has nothing coming even close to
normal asteroids being rapidly destroyed by either phasers or torpedoes. And since scaling up from infantry weapon seems a straight forward way to guess the yields of bigger weapons, TNG Trek and beyond have secured solid figures for hand phasers and lightweight rifles, making them capable of reaching the low megawatt level for prolonged outputs, a thing that would be hard to find in Wars. At best, the E-web that was about to be used against the MF at Hoth was said, in the novelization, to be capable of putting holes in the hull of the small freighter. One would be expecting near bazooka-levels of firepower for that weapon at most... although repeated fire on the same spot would also manage to damage the hull so we don't even need to argue for each bolt to carry enough energy to gouge a gaping hole on its own out of said hull. Plus it was big and needed its own large power pack.
There's practically always a gap of one order of magnitude if not more in favour of Trek. Not my fault, it's the way it goes.