SBC: Weapon types and power figures (original thread closed)

[Mr. Oragahn]

This is a continuation of this thread, prematuredly closed, just because it had ICS related stuff inside.
I take the oportunity to continue this discussion to look at another problem regarding the figures.

Where in the ICS does it say Acclamators have HTL's? The 200 GT figure was for it's MTL's and the MT-ranged ones was for its LTL's. I've never heard the Acclamator described with Heavy Turbolasers.

My apologies. I was under the impression that the 200 GT were the yields of heavy artillery.

First, the book is open ended on the interpretation, until I stumble over other elements which help to refine the vision of the author.
My point precisely was that it's a possibility that the prototypes were a new form of hypermatter reactors, not just downright a totally new technology based on hypermatter.
That's what I'm saying, I don't know why you get so hotty.

And my point was given the totality of the evidence and the absolutely threadbare nature of your above reasoning (as my analogy indicates) is that it's a pretty blindingly obvious that the "improved prototype hypermatter reactor" the ISD Mk II was testing was just that.

You are correct, I forgot the "improved" part. However, it's rather bad publicity for a technology when just improving it a tad suddenly turns your new model into such an unpredictable bomb.
Do nuclear plants explode everytime an improvement is done on a new model?

Both books being the latest two ICSes? Topic aside, you formulated a circular reasoning then.
It's rather obvious that we expect the content of those two books to be coherent, instead of being self contradictory.

Yes, citing canon evidence that has something to say on the matter is "circular reasoning". There's no contradiction, and there doesn't need to be.

It's a circular reasoning.
The part of your post, which I quoted here, had only been about the two ICSes.

What is interesting about the Venator and ICS' claim of 12 heavy turbolasers (4 cannons of 50 GT each), is that noticeable medium or heavy turbolaser structures can't be seen on the Acclamators, which makes me think that the Acclamators were nothing more than super carriers with, at best, light to medium weapons and probably tough shields.

The AotC ICS doesn't say the Acclamator has HTLs. It's "quad turbolasers" are smaller than that. Its guns are like the quad turbolasers outside the hangar of the Invisible Hand, and as such I don't expect to be able to see them in the few shots of them we have in AotC. Much as we can't see the quad TLs on the Invisible Hand until close-up fly-by shots, or those on the ISD Mk I in ANH. The quad turbolasers on the Trade Federation Battleships are also hard to make out except in the close-by fly shots. They are nothing like the huge structures on either the Venator or Imperator designs.

Republic Commando, Acclamator level, one of the quad turbolaser stations

2

Acclamator battling a RotS-style TF Battleship

I also note that my aversion to clicking on SFJ threads is once again confirmed - it's nice to see what crapola people can come up with if they don't actually read the books they purport to pontificate on, and so spin a load of nonsense on the presumption that any source says the Acclamator has huge Venator/ISD style HTLs .

It is amusing though "who is god like" whatever saw fit to post all manner of vague EU shots along with a single hi-res shot of an Acclamator from a pretty useless angle and in poor light (hence my posting of Republic Commando, which is the closest look you'll ever get in the EU, I bet) - the NEGVV drawing of the Acclamator, however, kinda approximates the size of the main quad TL emplacements with the three small bumps it places on the flanks of the elevated structure leading up to the tower - typically abstract for the NEGVV illustrations, though.

There's a problem with that.

First, it's EU, against higher canon. If the EU has issues to fit with the movies, it's not my problem. It's yours.

Secondly, the model shows no visual trace of any weapon of any kind. If anything is present, it has to be particularily small, way smaller than the lucrehulk's quad turbolaser cannons, as they were by TPM era.

For the note, these quad TL cannons were particularily bigger than the Naboo yatch from TPM.
Such quad TL cannons could not be unnoticeable, if they were present on a ship such as the Acclamator.

So the quad TLs mentionned by the ICS have to be particularily small.

That's where your pictures are interesting.

It shows two Acclamators dealing with at least one Clone Wars era lucruhulk battleship.

For the record, some of the stats:

Armament

Pre-Clone Wars refitting:

• Quad turbolaser batteries (42)
  
  Clone Wars refitting:
  • Ring carrier:
  • Point-defense quad laser batteries (164)
  • Assault laser cannons (472)
  • Turbolasers (48)
  • Core ship:
  • Point-defense quad laser batteries (21)
  • Assault laser cannons (48)
  • Turbolasers (3)

It's interesting that a ship which has been retrofitted with much more weapons on its ring, is still menaced and unable to get rid of an Acclamator equipped with weapons of considerably smaller calibre.

The third picture shows the top of a defense turret, in front of the window. Looking at the size of the turret, it can only be some small stuff. And this small stuff is precisely was is reactivated as a measure of defense against the lucrehulk.
For the record, the small stuff is, at best, medium weapons, at worst, the light weapons.
However, it does not add up.

The core ship, alone, has a shield rating of 600 zettawatts (600 e21 W), which means 143.4 teratons per second. This is not counting the power provided by the ring section.
You don't think there's a little problem here, with these 200 gigatons cannons?

You have two Acclamators, surviving and engaging a lucrehulk - a ship which actually holds well against the Venators and their teratons of firepower - for quite some time...

Or what about the Rendili battle, where once again, Acclamators are apparently capable of dealing severe damage to lucrehulks freshly arrived?



Oh, you're surely thinking about spinning these numbers to cover this nonsense, just in a way to turn those 200 gigatons per bolt (energy) into something like 20 petatons per second (power), because shields are rated in power.

The question would be: if a bolt is rated at, say, 1000 teratons per second of power, does it have an energy in the low teraton or gigaton range, or is it near 1000 teratons?

The time needed to fire bolts is generally one frame. Same when a bolt impacts. It takes one frame to deliver the energy.
You can't pump up power that much, and certainly not add fancyful garland of zeros to match the shield figures, unless you pretend that one frame is still too long to show how fast the energy is delivered (though we could still compare the lenght of a bolt and its velocity to determine how much energy is delivered per frame, but it becomes problematic with the invisible beam theory).

However, in that case, the ICS' beam theory would not help to argue for high power figures, because with a beam that's fired for such a long time, those 200 GT of energy (836.8 e18 J) would be actually delivered over the course of several frames. Which means that the energy to power factor could never even exceed the number of frames of the video. Even with 25 frames (1 frame = 0.04 s), you'd only reach 20,920 e18 W. Which means no chance to ever even hope approaching the shield's bleed off rate (600,000 e18 W), which is a prerequisite to threaten shielded ships.

So simply put, to have 836.8 e18 J (200 GT) threaten a shield rated in the 600 e21 W, you have to consider the ICS' continuous beam theory partially or totally invalid, and thus claim that a bolt delivers its energy over a hundredth of a second... much faster than how a visible bolt would seem to deliver its energy.

So you're going to have to argue that Acclamators' weapons have an energy to power factor around 100.

But what about the Munificent-class star frigates (say again?)? They're said to be able, in one shot from their double barreled main gun, to melt the entirety of a 1000 km wide ice moon (this comes from the ROTS:ICS).

Using Mike's calculator, and of course, assuming the detonation occurs from the inside, we already get: 66.2 petatons.
That's 276.9808 Yottajoules (276.9808 e24 J).

No cheating here, we're talking about an energy that's inferior, anyway, to what the gun is capable of since the energy will be deposited at the surface of the ice moon, not in its center, and since it will be entirely melted (at least, since with such energies, a great deal of the moon will be vapourized), the energy is likely going to be a few orders of magnitude superior, since it has to be done before it even has time to crack.

However, the ship is only listed with a power output of 2.1 e23 W. Which of course, doesn't line up with the mentionned ability.

Therfore, two solutions.

1. Enters more wank. The ship has capacitors which can be charged during 131895.619 seconds (assuming all the reactor's power can be dumped into the capacitor), and then fire the energy.
   Of course, we'd already wonder the point of a Death Star when ships can fire, supposedly, 200 GT of energy from their medium TLs. But there... even retarded wouldn't be enough of a description.
   Besides, I didn't account for the bolt's energy delivery speed. Again, the power would be around 100 times the energy number it corresponds to, or at least 25 times the energy figure.
   Needless to say, even a e-5~e-6 of that power would be far enough to one-shot the sturdiest ships of that era, on both sides. Even the likes of Executors would eat their pants.
   And again, that's based on a firepower figure which is much inferior to what would be needed.
2. Extremely low power: ICS beam theory, zealot mode. The beam is fired during more than 131895.619 seconds (since, obviously, the deliver system is not perfect anyway, and we're assuming that all the energy can be channeled into the gun, continuously, for such an amount of time, at max power). That's more than 36.637 hours, at peak power. Which is problematic, as I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to find a note, perhaps even in the ROTS novelization, that even Venators can't keep firing for so long and guns have to cool down.

More funny, from wookieepedia:

"The two main reactors of a Munificent-class star frigate could together annihilate up to 2,300 tons of fuel per second. If one reactor failed, the other could power the ship on its own."

That's peak power. Compared to the Venator's 40,000 tons of fuel per second, it's ridiculous. And of course, the Venator's said to be able to put nearly all of its power output into its guns.

In conjunction with point 2, the Munificent ship, melting the moon with its two cannons gun, firing continuously, at peak power from the two reactor cores, would then burn a total 303,359,923.81 tons of fuel.



You may wish to roll a pair of eyes here.

[Praeothmin]

You may wish to roll a pair of eyes here.

I've been rolling my eyes to SW' inconsistant wank for quite some time now, as well as doing multiple facepalms... :)

[Kane Starkiller]

Sooo you find a single comic book shot and that's it! ICS is wrong and should be discarded. Even if there is no resolution to this seeming contradiction tell me why shouldn't we choose ICS over the other source?

Enters more wank. The ship has capacitors which can be charged during 131895.619 seconds (assuming all the reactor's power can be dumped into the capacitor), and then fire the energy.

Excuse me but 277*10^24 divided by 2.1*10^23 is 1319 seconds or 22 minutes. Not exactly an unreasonable recharge time.
Generally if you wish to discredit a book written by a Ph.D in astrophysics it is recommended that you at least master basic division.

Of course, we'd already wonder the point of a Death Star when ships can fire, supposedly, 200 GT of energy from their medium TLs.

Planetary shields. Oh yes yes I remember now: THERE ARE NO PLANETARY SHIELDS IN STAR WARS. FORGET. FORGET.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Sooo you find a single comic book shot and that's it! ICS is wrong and should be discarded. Even if there is no resolution to this seeming contradiction tell me why shouldn't we choose ICS over the other source?

In essence, the ICS is also a single source. It's no better. But it's not all. Actually, my point is even the ICS isn't self consistent.
The choice? We have two sources of strictly equal level. You're stuck. So you try to find support from other sources, and the majority wins. I have the funny feeling that the last 2 ICSes are not the majority.

Enters more wank. The ship has capacitors which can be charged during 131895.619 seconds (assuming all the reactor's power can be dumped into the capacitor), and then fire the energy.

Excuse me but 277*10^24 divided by 2.1*10^23 is 1319 seconds or 22 minutes. Not exactly an unreasonable recharge time.

Exact, I made as an error as I worked from e18 instead of e21, because if you had noticed, your value is roughly the same, with a difference of three OOMs.

Generally if you wish to discredit a book written by a Ph.D in astrophysics it is recommended that you at least master basic division.

Big deal, really. I suppose all of what I've wrote can be ignored now, just because in a haste, I worked from a figure that was three orders of magnitude inferior to the correct number.
Way to go. It doesn't surprise me that you'd base your whole defense on this singular minor mistake though.

Besides, his Ph.D has really little to do with this. The books are based on faulty premises, not faulty calculations. If his Ph.D is what gave him the idea of some cloud that arbitrarily sucks up energy from around a shielded ship, I'd have to wonder who gave him this Ph.D then, because that person would seriously suffer from a lack of common sense.

Of course, we'd already wonder the point of a Death Star when ships can fire, supposedly, 200 GT of energy from their medium TLs.

Planetary shields. Oh yes yes I remember now: THERE ARE NO PLANETARY SHIELDS IN STAR WARS. FORGET. FORGET.

Not in the films as far as I know. Even the Death Star novel apparently didn't seem it worth mentionning the shield supposedly protecting Alderaan, despite how the book is littered with technical minutia. You're still welcome to defend those claims here.
Besides, not all worlds have them.

That is, it's a great luck for you I made one mistake (the total fuel consumption figure depends on the charge time, so it needs to be cut by e3 as well), so you can surely ignore the problem about those 200 GT cannons being a danger to shields rated in 600 zettawatts, and then serves as a good excuse to ignore the problem I outlined.

Thus far, the other parts remain correct. I suppose you didn't adress them because you didn't have anything worth to counter them. So you had to resort on some appeal to ridicule and a veiled personnal attack.

But let's continue...

First, where is it ever quantified how much energy the sink tanks can take before overloading?
Well, obviously, if an Acclamator and its 200 GT cannons can fill the sink tank of a core ship (and that's assuming the 12 of them can all be fired on the same target, at the same time, at max yield), they can't be that high, and would be pathetically overwhelmed in single shots by ships able to generate 3.6 e24 W for their weapons, especially since it appears that weapons can be charged.

See, say, again, that 12 quad MTLs can all fire their cannons at full yield (200 GT). That's 2.4 teratons in a theoretical super salvo - which of course has no chance to ever happen, but nevermind.
Now say that the ship can fire so much energy every single second. Again, never seen, and unlikely, considering the firing rates seen in SW films.

Let's say that the Acclamator fires at its target for a full hour. That's rather absurd setting, since such long battle periods correspond to scenarii which involve far more forces, and are more complex than ship A vs ship B.
Yet, that's still 3600 seconds. (Oh, see, I can make a multiplication! unbelievable!).

That's a total of 8,640 teratons. This could be your over the top core ship shield's sink tank max capacity. That's of course, assuming that the coreship's shields with zero radiation: all the energy dumped by weapons is automatically stored and never radiated.

With the neutrino radiation, it would logically be lower than that. But we're looking for the absolute nonsensical high end here anyway.

Now let's look at the Venator again.

Power: 3.6 e24 W. 860.42 teratons per second.

Compared to the total firepower of MTLs from the Acclamator, over one hour, that's only worth ten seconds of a Venator's reactor output. Round that to 11 seconds for good measure.

11 seconds. That is not even counting the fact, anyway, that the Acclamator's weapons would need to have a multiplying "energy to power" factor of 100, to stand a chance starting filling the sink tank.
Of course, if you applied that same factor to the Venator, it wouldn't even be funny. Poor core ship. :|

Yes, that so fits with Star Wars battles. Even if the energy from the Venator's reactor core was split in two, both for weapons and shields - and that's not even documented in the ICS as far as I know - you'd just have to double the time. Making it 22 seconds in our exercise above.

It is rather simple to see that the whole system presented by Saxton doesn't fit with the dogma of the films, since all ships would rather come with a very few but powerful anti capital ship cannons, and be essentially one giant gun, in fact, and concentrate their energy to release it in massive bursts. Certainly not fire plenty of salvos repeatedly like it happens in the films, with a multitude of turrets.

The concentration and frequency of bolts in the film, in fact, show that the weapons can't be charged up that much, and that it's still relevant to fire plenty of salvos very rapidly, which pretty much nixes the concept of shields working with dissipation rates, simply because there's no point stretching the firepower over plenty of volleys, over a non stop bombardment, when powers matters even more than the energy in fact, since such tactics would dramatically lower the overall power, and make them uneffective against watt shields.

Basically, all this nonsense from Saxton falls flat.

What I find amusing as well, is how a group being particularily anal about the meaning of laser weapons, will craft such complicated and nonsensical theories to actually make the laser bit fit (without actually exploring all the other possibilities which could refer to the laser part, and of course, only focusing on the theory that conveniently makes SW weapons lightspeed weapons), and yet won't bother doing the same for deflector shields, where the proposed system has nothing of a deflector at all... nevermind the shields stopping objects and explosions dead stop, or making bolts spreading over them or even bouncing off.

But let's not stop there.

What's particularily class with the "neutrino radiator + much necessary sink tank" model, is that once the sink tank is full of energy, it overloads... so that energy has to go *somewhere*.
Since the ship is destroyed, and since the neutrino radiator system is screwed, it's basically free & wild energy galore here.

Then, you think of the kilotons of firepower attributed to fighters, which means kilotons of energy needed to get their shields down, and look at the films and the EU, and then you ask yourself... where the hell did all those kilotons energy go when the shielded fighters blew up in the sky?
I can keep looking at Star Wars's battles, particularily those in atmospheres, where shielded fighters get downed, and yet, I can't see any Hiroshima occuring.

I'm pretty sure there are plenty of examples in the EU where ships exploding because of their shields being overwhelmed don't turn out to be weapons of mass destruction for any structure, element or lifeform located in the nearby region (kilotons of energy for fithers, megatons of energy for medium cargos, gigatons of energy for heavy cargos, teratons/petatons of energy for warships, etc.).

[Jedi Master Spock]

You may wish to roll a pair of eyes here.

I've been rolling my eyes to SW' inconsistant wank for quite some time now, as well as doing multiple facepalms... :)

This is not SB.com - don't bait the Star Wars fans, please.

[Praeothmin]

I'm sorry if it was perceived as baiting.

I guess that's what it looked like, even if it was just a way of saying that I agreed with Mr. Oragahn on the amount of SW wank.

Although I must admit, I also roll my eyes when I read something like:
"But the deflector fields are immune to all lasers!"

I guess I just like to roll my eyes a lot... :)

[l33telboi]

I guess I just like to roll my eyes a lot... :)

*Rolls Praeothmin's eyes*

SNAKE EYES! :O