Praeothmin wrote:mojo wrote:
What about the idea that the weapons in the movies aren't firing at full power? Over and over I read that they most likely are able to set the weapons to fire at whatever levels of power they want, and that they never in the films had any reason to use that level of power. It seems to me that could be a possibility, I mean I can't see any reason to assume that's impossible.
Why woudln't they?
Sure, all the instances we see someone firing under orders to "let them escape", we can (and I do) believe that they do fire at less than maximum fire power.
But what about all the tims they were at war?
Like on Endor, Geonosis, etc...
Don't forget that the AOTC:ICS states that Starfighters have weapons in the
kiloton range, and Slave-1 in the
high kiloton.
Why then, when Jango is firing at Obi-wan, do we not see this kiloton-level firepower at work?
Why, on Geonosis, when you know you can fire a one kiloton shot that would eliminate half of the opposing infantry, do you fire multiple lower yield shots that allow the enemy to kill a lot of your men?
Why have infantry, and infantry support, if the infantry suppot vehicules could fire at such yields?
There is no logic in that, so this is why the firepower figures in the ICS are in dispute.
In addition, many of the shots fired by the kiloton-capable vehicules would need to be
1 thousand times more powerful to equal a kiloton.
Alright, against my own better judgement I'm going to enter the debate with my own opinions rather than something I read somewhere else for once.
In the case of Jango Fett, at least, I think it is possible to debate out of that hole. We already know that Jango takes on more business than he can handle, otherwise he wouldn't have sub-contracted the important contract on Padme to that crazy shapeshifter. Obviously he is a man who appreciates the value of a dollar. Isn't it at least possible that he was attempting to stop Obi-Wan without obliterating his ship completely? I'm sure a Jedi Starfighter would be worth at least a little money. Once he had the Starfighter, surely there would also be some kind of tracking device that would let him know where that crazy hyperspace donut was as well. A hyperspace drive should be worth some money, you'd think. I think it's worth pointing out that even though they were fighting, right from the start Jango seemed to be a lot more interested in escaping than killing Obi-Wan. I never got the impression that Jango was a truly evil person, just a mercenary. It's possible that he farmed out the Amidala contract because he didn't have the stomach for it himself. Maybe he simply wanted to disable Obi-Wan's ship so that he could get away.
I'm not saying I believe any of those things are true, but I don't think they are completely outside the realm of possibility, either. If there is evidence to the contrary, obviously, school me. Like I said before, I'm brand new to this, and just kicking in my two cents for fun.
On Geonosis, if you're talking about the battle that took place in AotC, wouldn't they have surely killed Jedi and Clone Troopers if they'd used massive-scale firepower? I mean, if we're talking about city-destroying Hiroshima scale explosions, that'd be insane! That's like asking why we don't stop the Iraqi insurgents with nuclear weapons. We'd just kill loads of our own people as well. I could be thinking of the wrong battle, or just missing something. Probably the latter. But right off the top of my head, that'd be why you wouldn't fire a one kiloton shot on Geonosis.
You have infantry and infantry support because massive firepower aren't always the best option and certainly aren't always the most humane option. You don't blow someone's head off with a shotgun when you can stop them by smacking them on the hand. America has nuclear weapons, but also an army, because we can't win every war with nukes. Well, I mean I guess we could, technically, but pretty soon we'd be real, real lonely.
Now while I agree that it's unlikely that a weapon would be configurable to the point of firing at only 1/1000th of it's maximum strength, I have to say again that for the sake of argument it's not completely outside the realm of possibility. If we are willing to accept the idea of FTL travel, surely we can agree that insanely configurable weapons are a possibility.
Before I finish I do want to apologize if all of those arguments are things that have been said a thousand times. I'm new, so I haven't read them yet. My apologies if I'm reinventing tired old wheels here. Right now I'm that guy who walks into a theater for the last act and sits there going 'Why's that guy mad at that guy? Why'd they kill him? Who's she?', and I'm not caught up yet. Normally I would have just sat this one out, thinking I'd better wait until I'd read more, but since you directly asked me, I replied. I find this all extremely interesting though, and I'm beginning to be very glad I chose a forum that seems to be mostly pro-trek, because it means I'll never be at a loss for opposing viewpoints..
Thanks for taking my question seriously enough to ask such interesting questions. I'll be sitting on my hands waiting for your response.