Damn, I had this post rotting in my folder for a while. Time to publish it at once!
Lucky wrote: http://starwars.com/explore/encyclopedia/technology/blasters/ wrote: DESCRIPTION
The standard ranged weapon of both military personnel and civilians in the galaxy, the blaster pistol fires cohesive bursts of light-based energy called bolts. Blasters come in a variety of shapes and sizes, delivering a wide range of damage capability. Many blaster pistols have stun settings that incapacitate a target, rather than inflicting physical damage. While blasters do deliver a searing concussive blast, they can be foiled by magnetic seals and deflector shields.
STATS
Type
Ranged energized particle weaponry
So blasters fire cohesive bursts of light based energy, but are referred to as energized particle weapons in the same article? In the real world we have things called
light/photonic molecules, or it may mean some sort of containment shield is involved, but not being simple laser or particle beams certainly explains why they explode even when they cause no damage to what they hit.
It does look like they say the photons are indeed bottled inside a milieu that is, itself, some kind of hermetic container for the photon "molecules".
So blasters sort of shoot "bottles" that do contain photons. Therefore, what interacts with magnetic fields are those containment-field projectiles. I guess in SW, various advanced behaviours could be applied to these weird bottles. When they'd break, their shards (more like drops of fluid) would splash and deliver their energy to whatever they come in contact with.
The system would be efficient enough to cage in light, but not perfect as light would still manage to leave the containment, hence the visible bolt. Only more complex and refined containment methods, perhaps requiring much more power, would allow a massive reduction of leak. We'd be talking about reinforced containment fields. It would also mean that they'd handle structural strain much better. As a construct, such a bolt would be subjected to massive forces once accelerated and expelled from a barrel, and how much it would fare and survive would largely influence its speed and range: if you want to make it faster, you have to accelerate it more, but then you need to reinforce the field more beforehand.
The basic question would be why not use plain lasers then? Well, once you master a technology that lets you literally build and cast fields of various shapes and form that can contain light, the anciliary attribute of those constructs is a capacity to deflect light.
Eventually, strong enough, those fields might have had the ability to act like mirrors that could recharge/rejuvenate, therefore making it hard for laser weapons to poke holes into them.
Plus a field that would be rather static (as cast around a ship, and the slower the ship the better for the shield), it would be at an advantage against a projectile which was to be built to withstand a whole lot of problems like stress due to acceleration and simply surviving long enough across space to reach a target.
Eventually, the bolts themselves could be plasma that contain photons. They are looped quantum circuits.
It is not exactly too different from Saxton's model of tubes of whatever fired ahead of photons made to follow an hellecoidal course within those tubes, but more than a tube, what was really needed was to stick to the idea of a discrete "transportation vehicle", a projectile in other words.
http://starwars.com/explore/encyclopedia/technology/gungantech/ wrote: DESCRIPTION
The Gungans have adapted their unique organic technology to the defense of their underwater homes and their sacred lands. They employed a variety of muscle-powered weaponry to deliver a specialized payload to their targets. Using the plasmic energy found deep in Naboo's porous crust, the Gungans have crafted a spherical grenade-type weapon they call a "booma," or boomer. These grenades are either thrown by hand, sling, atalatl, cesta or catapult. When they hit their target, their protective shells burst, releasing the liquid-like plasma and a powerful electric shock.
In addition to their boomers, Gungans also carry spears and lances called electropoles. This polearms can be used as missile weapons, or can be used as contact weapons that deliver an electric jolt. For defensive purposes, the Gungans have adapted their hydrostatic bubble technology to form hand-held personal shields. These ovoid frames project a defensive screen of shield energy capable of deflecting blaster bolts back at the firer.
Gungan weapons are seemingly a "plasma" stuffed in a hydrostatic bubble. Gungan weapons are shield technology used to contain energy, and then explode.
Yes, it is not the same as for the blasters, but we find the same idea of containment here. They use the plasma because it's incredibly cheap to them, as innate to their homeworld.
Energy torpedo would imply a weapon that shoots "torpedos" made of things like plasma and what ever shields are made of, and Legends level material would back this up. It sounds like what I heard Photon Torpedos of Star Trek were originally.
Energy Shell projector again seems to be a weapon that fires an explosive sell made from "energy".
This is a major and interesting shift in SW lore regarding once were thought to be solid weapons.
They simply don't use hard shell projectiles anymore (mundane missiles and torpedoes) but complete constructs, which we should believe provide a whole range of advantages that surpass that of normal missiles.
Therefore the question of the almost non use of missiles is somehow oddly solved by now being told that basically everything is fields containing energy. And so, those fields are so advanced that they can literally work like torpedoes and expell matter for motion.
Now, let's just say this is the website, which I'm fairly sure still ranks very low in canon, but it's a massive change of paradigm nonetheless regarding technology and weaponry in particular.
It's not a stupid idea per se, but in SW it opens a huge can of worms. It's just a very complex form of complicated of made-up projectile.
A main grief against that is that we've seen normal projectiles to be considerably effective against advanced war vehicles. Why the complicated use of "energy"
guided projectiles?
Visually, it does work. However, did the trooper-level proton torpedo that hunted Jar Jar in the CGI show appear to be only energy made, or could we see some real solid cased simply being surrounded by some particle field?
All in all, if these energy missiles were that cheap to produce and use, all battles would involve a spam of them instead of barrages of turbolaser fire.
It is very possible that each missile can only be created by consuming the reactants and the programmation system inside a "round", perhaps even a caseless round of some kind.
On another note, didn't they say anything about the projectiles fired by the Venator and Invisible Hand in ROTS?
If they were some kind of advanced disintegrator-coated guided missile, it would make plenty of sense: they cut through armour like if there was nothing despite their slow speed, and at least, the fixed mounts would not be a problem anymore, because in other conditions we'd expect those projectile to be capable of tracking a target to some degree, even if it ranges from a small to medium sized transport.
