Starfleet Jedi

At least, the Grand Emperor of the Warsies does (this from SDN):

There's this on the beam weapons page (link to page):


Mike Wong wrote:
Turbolaser bolts are capable of detonating with a "flak effect" at a predetermined range, as demonstrated by ISD fire in TESB (against the Falcon) and AT-AT anti-aircraft fire.

They can no longer deny it... :)

It's only his opinion.

Even acknowledging the flak doesn't solve all issues.

We're basically saying that bolts, although containing matter, happily ignore gravity; which if there were no accuracy issues, would make them great weapons in ground combat, as what you target is what you hit.

So as they ignore gravity (beware the technobabble) you can pretend that they are some form of mass lightening or something related to space time, and just before the bolt explodes, the effect stops and this almost entirely returns the bolt to its true mass, and due to some bizarre synchronization paradox, as the energy remains the same, if mass increases, speed decreases. Poof, the bolt kinda stops there.

Well... don't ask.

Then there are other points to look at.

As I said in the loooooong ICS thread at SBC, it is important to consider that it could very well be possible to set guns on flak mode, and also fix the lifespan of a bolt as an exotic form of energy shell.
Ideally, the lifespan will be based on the distance between the target and the shooter, and their respective velocities.

With guns fired at high rates and heating up, and when considering other possible mechanical defects, bolts could sometimes, in a sample of X bolts, explode sooner or later than wanted.

It is also necessary to consider the ratios of flak vs. non flak. The ratio should be left to the pilot's or gunner's appreciation.

There will probably also be different designs. For example, only Geonosian weapons fire those bolts which flak but still have that luminous segment going on. That's why I suggested a form of residue. Arguable, we didn't see any residue cause much destruction once the burst occurred.

The other element to consider is the invisible bolts, and we're looking at non visible matter, radiating energy outside of the visible spectrum. This is not bad science, it happens all the day. Eventually, it could even explain bolts dealing damage before the visual segment hits.

The idea of a marker was an obvious candidate, and although it doesn't make sense to have markers in combat assisted by computers, there's that big WWII thing going on.

Another suggestion could be that invisible bolts are less powerful, or possibly terribly short lived, and only possible for close ranges.

One could even say that a visible bolt may, sometimes, have an invisible "head" (and maybe a "tail") that preceeds the visible bolt.

This is globally a whole new set of elements which would probably poop on a good hundred of EU books, and the example of invisible bolts that sticks in my mind is in Zahn's duology (damn that one was painful to read) and how making a sniper rifle fire invisible bolts was actually hard and rare.

It was a joke...

Warsies've been saying its impossible for so long, or simply ignoring it, while the head-Warsie thinks it's possible.

I just thought it was funny... :)

Praeothmin wrote:It was a joke...

Warsies've been saying its impossible for so long, or simply ignoring it, while the head-Warsie thinks it's possible.

I just thought it was funny... :)

I didn't, and I just don't laugh. I don't like to, because it hurts, it's bad for the body. No more jokes, thank you.

I don't think that the pro-Wars faction has ever really denied the existence of turbolaser flak bolts, even though the description of such is largely, if not completely missing from Brian Young's Turbolaster Commentaries Characteristicspage. Which only goes to illustrate, among other things, why his TLC pages are becoming increasingly outdated. The description of the TL bolts as sabot-shaped, for example, is absolutely ridiculous when you can simply explain away the shape as an illusion caused by perspective, especially in light of the fact that every single TL bolt observed directly from the side has an overall uniform shape to it.
-Mike