Alderaan had no shields...

[Praeothmin]

This, from this thread:

This is taken from the game notes in the DE:S, so it's most likely pure game mechanics without going into the needless meddling regarding the shunting mechanics of the Death Star operating at full power (the page discusses dice rolls and armor rating for planetary shields relative to the Death Star, 20D).

Notes On Planets: A typical habitable planet has a structural rating of 10D-20D (Death Star scale). Alderaan had no shields of any kind, so it was utterly vaporized. A shielded planet that is overcome by a superlaser may "merely" have its entire surface burned off or split into several pieces. Note that planets don't have to be destroyed to be rendered uninhabitable.

So there is a direct statement from an EU source saying Alderan had no shields... :)

[Mr. Oragahn]

This, from this thread:

This is taken from the game notes in the DE:S, so it's most likely pure game mechanics without going into the needless meddling regarding the shunting mechanics of the Death Star operating at full power (the page discusses dice rolls and armor rating for planetary shields relative to the Death Star, 20D).

Notes On Planets: A typical habitable planet has a structural rating of 10D-20D (Death Star scale). Alderaan had no shields of any kind, so it was utterly vaporized. A shielded planet that is overcome by a superlaser may "merely" have its entire surface burned off or split into several pieces. Note that planets don't have to be destroyed to be rendered uninhabitable.

So there is a direct statement from an EU source saying Alderan had no shields... :)

Oi! SEARCH FUNCTION you fuc... oh, sorry, ain't spacebattles.
o_o'

Waaaaaaait a sec. Did I just see Rama try to label as game mechs a very obvious fluff element there?

Wouldn't you have a link to that thread by chance?

[Praeothmin]

The link is contained in the third and fourth word of my post... :)

And I had not remembered your mentioning of the DE:S statement, only that the novel DS did not mention anything about them...

[Mr. Oragahn]

The link is contained in the third and fourth word of my post... :)

You edited your post damn bastard!
I'll sue you and your cat!

And I had not remembered your mentioning of the DE:S statement, only that the novel DS did not mention anything about them...

Your faulty memory is no excuse to your incompetence. You will capture the Rebels. I won't accept any other failure. Is that understood?

[Praeothmin]

There's no edit tag on my post... :)

Your faulty memory is no excuse to your incompetence. You will capture the Rebels. I won't accept any other failure. Is that understood?

Sir, yes Sir!

[Enterprise E]

What sources did the Star Wars side of the debate use for the belief that Alderaan had planetary shields up at the time of its destruction to begin with? I've never heard of a G-level canon source that said such, and we already have an EU, thus C-level canon source that directly states that Alderaan did not have any shields, or if they did, they were not up at the time of its destruction.

[Praeothmin]

I believe it was the ANH novelization stating that Alderan's defenses "were as strong as any planet in the Empire", and since Coruscant had shields in the EU, then so did Alderan...

[General Donner]

More specifically, since Alderaan was stated in multitudinous fluff texts to be without weapons, it was inferred that the strong defenses must be powerful planetary shields.

I believe the idea, however, originated with film visuals. While they were never explicitly said to be there, the old SFX shot of the superlaser in action was felt to necessitate them in Warsie quarters.


On topic of the fluff text quoted here, while it seems quite clear on the issue of shields, it would also seem to contradict Death Star on the mechanism of destruction. Unless "vaporized" is taken to be used in a Star Trek-ish sense.

[Picard]

Except for utter lack of planet-encasing shields in canon only shows opposite. Coruscant had no shields, Hoth base had theater shielding, Endor base projected shield that covered Death Star and base itself, but not moon, Yavin IV had no shields that we know of... of course, EU-philes just tend to handwave all of that away.

[Praeothmin]

Unless "vaporized" is taken to be used in a Star Trek-ish sense.

Well, seeing as how "slagged" is used very liberally and clearly in a hyperbolic fashion, then I would conclude it is also the case with the word "vaporize"...

[General Donner]

Except for utter lack of planet-encasing shields in canon only shows opposite. Coruscant had no shields, Hoth base had theater shielding, Endor base projected shield that covered Death Star and base itself, but not moon, Yavin IV had no shields that we know of... of course, EU-philes just tend to handwave all of that away.

I wouldn't say the lack of planetary shields in the films is in and of itself a contradiction of the fact that they exist at all in the universe. The EU is supposed to be canon unless contradicted, after all. And with the exception of Coruscant (and Alderaan, with the new visuals) none of the other worlds in consideration were the rich and powerful kind that would be expected to have the best defenses.

If they can build shields that can protect a small moon as no big deal, it's not too far out there to imagine they can do it on a planetary scale.

Well, seeing as how "slagged" is used very liberally and clearly in a hyperbolic fashion, then I would conclude it is also the case with the word "vaporize"...

I'll grant, they do throw around a lot of hyperbole. Still, for all that the "slagging" isn't quite literal, it still denotes conventional firepower rather than technobabble "tricks" like the Death Star has been portrayed like as of late.

[Praeothmin]

rather than technobabble "tricks" like the Death Star has been portrayed like as of late.

My understanding of the DS lately was that it was still hellaciously powerful, much, much more than the entire fleet in terms of raw Firepower, but it also had a Hyperspace CR element that made Alderan's destruction part DE and part CR...

[Mr. Oragahn]

I believe it was the ANH novelization stating that Alderan's defenses "were as strong as any planet in the Empire", and since Coruscant had shields in the EU, then so did Alderan...

That being nothing more than a piece of the whole text. In the book, it first started with Leia saying that Alderaan had no weapons whatsoever or something of that flavour, and then we got into Vader's head, musing that contrary to her claims, he knew that Alderaan had defenses has good as any other planet in the Empire.

No matter how simple that was written, warsies were literally incapable of understanding a simple grammatical structure of that vein, so much that RSA literally had to start using a basic logical and mathematical model to explain why the conclusion was that Alderaan did actually have weapons, and that planetary shields never entered the equation at all.

On topic of the fluff text quoted here, while it seems quite clear on the issue of shields, it would also seem to contradict Death Star on the mechanism of destruction. Unless "vaporized" is taken to be used in a Star Trek-ish sense.

Or just a way to say reduced to glowing pebbles. It's clear that if it had been vaporized, it would have glowed quite a bit more than that.

[2046]

Unless "vaporized" is taken to be used in a Star Trek-ish sense.

Ugh.

Pretty much no one in common or semi-common parlance uses "vaporized" to refer strictly to applying energy until you reach the proper enthalpy of vaporization. That would be weird.

The very notion that people are supposed to use it that way is pure invention on the part of wankerous geeks who want to pretend that their universe does. But it doesn't, whether it's Wars or Trek, and shouldn't be assumed to do so unless there is very good evidence pointing to that definition rather than the normal one. (For an example of very good evidence, see "Rise"[VOY]).

With that in mind, for you to declare the common connotation as a "Star Trek-ish sense" like some sort of pejorative is annoying.

But I digress . . .

I note the fact that my loyal opposition is once again forced to fight their own beloved EU in their desperate attempt to maintain even cursory plausibility of their foolish superlaser argument. A closer analysis of the Lucas canon years ago embarrassed them. The novel Death Star betrayed them. And every so often, little things like this remind them of the failure of their old claim, rubbing their proverbial noses in it all over again.

Were they better-behaved I would pity them.

[General Donner]

Pretty much no one in common or semi-common parlance uses "vaporized" to refer strictly to applying energy until you reach the proper enthalpy of vaporization. That would be weird.

The very notion that people are supposed to use it that way is pure invention on the part of wankerous geeks who want to pretend that their universe does. But it doesn't, whether it's Wars or Trek, and shouldn't be assumed to do so unless there is very good evidence pointing to that definition rather than the normal one. (For an example of very good evidence, see "Rise"[VOY]).

With that in mind, for you to declare the common connotation as a "Star Trek-ish sense" like some sort of pejorative is annoying.

I'd beg to differ. While, yes, vaporization (and similarly also atomization, obliteration, incineration, boiling...) is a word commonly used hyperbolically in science fiction -- especially in dialogue -- the wording will, as noted, still tend to speak of conventional firepower rather than exotic effects. (In my knowledge, at least.) Technobabblish effects that make things magically disappear like old-style beam weapon FX often worked are less commonly described that way. (Although it does happen.) Then it's more common to speak of "disintegration" or the like.

"Star Trek-ish sense" was quite deliberate in that regard. Not necessarily pejorative, however, but noting a non-standard usage and explaining it by example.

Adding to that, many sci-fi authors and universes do make literal use of "vaporize" and the like. Particularly in the narration. BattleTech, for example, will quite consistently mention armor being melted, vaporized, boiled off, etc by lasers and other energy weapons, in contexts that don't imply hyperbole or nontechnical usage. Along with describing the effects we'd expect from the same: glowing clouds of vapor, molten rivulets of metal, gobbets of white-hot armor, and so on.

I'm not arguing "vaporize" should always be taken literally. That way lies insanity. But I'd question whether it should always be written off as hyperbole, either. That's something that should be decided on a case by case basis, series by series and author by author.