Some Observations from Episodes 2 & 3

[Flectarn]

So I was just watching AtoC and RotS on Spike and made a few observations that I thought I'd share.

1. The big Hulking battle droids that look like cylon centurions can apparently be brought down by burning what appears to be motor oil. These same droids can take several blaster hits...

2. How the devil does Dooku get from Gennosis to Corusascant with that little solar sail in any kind of reasonable time frame?

3. The generally terrestrial yields seen in all ground combat in star wars, nothing appears to do more damage than you'd expect from a contemporary military's conventional forces.

probably nothing new to any one, but since they were fresh on my mind...

[CrippledVulture]

It is possible that the "solar sail" is just the vessel's slower-than-light propulsion system. Small ships can have hyperdrives, so there's no reason that weird sail has to be the ship's only engine.

[Flectarn]

Yeah, I guess he just went to hyperspace off screen.

[l33telboi]

3. The generally terrestrial yields seen in all ground combat in star wars, nothing appears to do more damage than you'd expect from a contemporary military's conventional forces.

It's actually one of the biggest problems when it comes to quantifying SW, IMO. Whenever beams/bolts hit the ground or something similar they don't do a whole lot, but as soon as they hit something like an enemy unit or vehicle those tend to explode violently. Now granted it's not impossible that the weapons are really that weak, it'd mean that vehicles and firearms in SW are roughly on par with modern day stuff, but to me that doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense.

I can’t really offer any other explanation either, barring superphysics and technobabble weapons.

[Mr. Oragahn]

So I was just watching AtoC and RotS on Spike and made a few observations that I thought I'd share.

1. The big Hulking battle droids that look like cylon centurions can apparently be brought down by burning what appears to be motor oil. These same droids can take several blaster hits...

2. How the devil does Dooku get from Gennosis to Corusascant with that little solar sail in any kind of reasonable time frame?

3. The generally terrestrial yields seen in all ground combat in star wars, nothing appears to do more damage than you'd expect from a contemporary military's conventional forces.

probably nothing new to any one, but since they were fresh on my mind...

1. There's been a post on that here. What would be worth an analysis is how does the armour reacts during the explosion. Let's imagine that the internal components are not particularily well sealed, and that the droids are meant to fight on ground, never get a bath, or at least they wouldn't expect water to damage their internal components, as they'd get wet.
That's like having a knight walk in a river. His chainmail and armoured shoulder plating would be good protection against swords, his clothes would get wet, but he wouldn't die of that.
However, if he walked in a pool of oil, and then said pool was put on fire, the story would be different. He'd die.

So I think seeing the super battle droids with non-air tight armour, like knights, is a good analogy. It wouldn't mean the armour can be destroyed by oil on fire.

2. His ship has FTL drives.

3. Because Star Wars is BSG75 with lasers? :)

[Mr. Oragahn]

3. The generally terrestrial yields seen in all ground combat in star wars, nothing appears to do more damage than you'd expect from a contemporary military's conventional forces.

It's actually one of the biggest problems when it comes to quantifying SW, IMO. Whenever beams/bolts hit the ground or something similar they don't do a whole lot, but as soon as they hit something like an enemy unit or vehicle those tend to explode violently. Now granted it's not impossible that the weapons are really that weak, it'd mean that vehicles and firearms in SW are roughly on par with modern day stuff, but to me that doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense.

I can’t really offer any other explanation either, barring superphysics and technobabble weapons.

*

Maybe because they don't use nukes on the ground, and for some reason settle for weapons a tad superior to our contemporary ones in terms of firepower.
When you check the ground battles, all bolts and missiles have yields worth of contemporary weapons.
The only difference can come in the energy weapons (cannons, rifles, blasters) which might be dialed up or down.
However, what we see is that it's not the case at all. No trooper puts his rifle on superboom and delivers bolts that take down three or four droids by area damage when hitting the ground in the middle of a formation, notably because those area effects are executed with heavier weapons.

As I said here, where Star Wars really kicks our militaries is about how it can travel between stars, displace behemoth ships, have shields (of very moderate capacity in fact) and same for weapons.
Above all, they do stuff big, weapons have a lot of ammo in general, and the industries are massive and all advanced technologies rather common.

See, the power of Star Wars, to me, was not in super yields or whatever, but in how it could produce a lot and how any basic citizen could have access to droids and small fusion cores.

Then of course, there's the vision held by other people, namely SDN, where the Galactic Empire is so powerful that it could reasonnably go head to head against forces such as the Imperium of Man and win, which is absolutely laughable to the extreme.

[Flectarn]

1. There's been a post on that here. What would be worth an analysis is how does the armour reacts during the explosion. Let's imagine that the internal components are not particularily well sealed, and that the droids are meant to fight on ground, never get a bath, or at least they wouldn't expect water to damage their internal components, as they'd get wet.
That's like having a knight walk in a river. His chainmail and armoured shoulder plating would be good protection against swords, his clothes would get wet, but he wouldn't die of that.
However, if he walked in a pool of oil, and then said pool was put on fire, the story would be different. He'd die.

So I think seeing the super battle droids with non-air tight armour, like knights, is a good analogy. It wouldn't mean the armour can be destroyed by oil on fire.



3. Because Star Wars is BSG75 with lasers? :)

1. I'll have to look at the scene more closely, but it looked like some of the armor was popping off. It's also note worthy that the oil was an inch or less deep, it having been sprayed out of R2-D2 as a defense mechanism.

3. actualy it's the other way around, BSG79 was specificly designed to play off the poplualrity of of Star Wars, at least from the networks point of view.

[Mr. Oragahn]

1. I'll have to look at the scene more closely, but it looked like some of the armor was popping off. It's also note worthy that the oil was an inch or less deep, it having been sprayed out of R2-D2 as a defense mechanism.

Funny that the droid actually has such a flammable oil. What's its use?

3. actualy it's the other way around, BSG79 was specificly designed to play off the poplualrity of of Star Wars, at least from the networks point of view.

BSG75 = teh n3w 1. ;)

[Mike DiCenso]

3. Because Star Wars is BSG75 with lasers? :)

...And projected energy shield/force field defenses... and energy "laser" swords... and magic wizardry (the Force)... and planet busting planetoid-sized weapons.... ;-)
-Mike

[Flectarn]

BSG75 = teh n3w 1. ;)

Oh, I usually see it as BSG2003 (or more rarely 2004)

.....

I'd assume the oil is doing just what you'd expect oil to do, act as a lubricant, but then it's star wars so you never know... maybe it's the hypermatter for R2's uber-reactor ;)