Star Wars: Rebels Season Two Trailer

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Star Wars: Rebels Season Two Trailer

Post by 359 » Wed Oct 14, 2015 7:07 am

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfeWNZqVYsE

A blockade runner being yoinked out of hyperspace by an Interdictor class cruiser, a b-wing with some sort of converging super-laser like weapon, star destroyer fire striking a town, and a hole being knocked in the side of an AT-AT, this looks to be an informative season. Although I can't say I'm looking forward to the return of the clones. Gregor should have remained dead, bringing him back just ruins the good episode ending he gave to an otherwise poor sorry arc.

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Re: Star Wars: Rebels Season Two Trailer

Post by Mike DiCenso » Sat Oct 17, 2015 5:09 pm

I kind of raised an eyebrow at the Interdictor scene since that is very much a thing of the Classic EU material, and after all the intense discussion we've had here of the possibility of the EU being resurrected, I have to wonder if maybe this is an attempt towards that. The upside is that it is a reintroduced weakness for SW tech since it means that anyone can yank an SW ship out of hyperspace, if you have the proper gravity generation tech. Let's say... someone dumping some red matter in the hyper lane routes to cripple hyperspace travel in the Star Wars Galaxy.

The ISDs hovering above a city and shooting individual buildings is rather interesting, but I would like to see the whole context for this operation rather than try to draw too many conclusions for range, firepower, etc from this. However I will say at this point that turns out to be the best that ISD turbolasers can do under the circumstances, then it will be another huge blow to the Saxtonian/Wongian/Young model of Star Wars tech with light and medium TLs unable to outright vaporize modest-sized buildings.
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Re: Star Wars: Rebels Season Two Trailer

Post by 359 » Mon Oct 19, 2015 4:49 pm

While the Interdictor is very much an EU concept, it doesn't really mean there will be a large influx any time soon. Throughout the prequels and the Clone Wars elements of the EU have been borrowed from. And that's exactly what the new canon system states, the material doesn't exist, but it is open for use. And the interdictor is an interesting idea, I'm happy about its inclusion. This adds a whole new tactical layer to Star Wars.

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Re: Star Wars: Rebels Season Two Trailer

Post by Mike DiCenso » Fri Oct 23, 2015 6:39 pm

While that is true to some extent, 359, I can't think of a more blatant example of it than this one. See, in the other "borrowed" elements, like say the Twil'lek homeworld's name of Ryloth was lifted from the EU, Ryloth's appearance and characteristics was very different from the tidally locked world were the Twil'lek's and other lifeforms barely eke out an existence in the harsh twilight between the day and night sides of the planet, but rather is a normally rotating Earth-like planet, abeit with jungles, mesas, valleys and arid deserts.

Or Mandalore, which went from a multi-species world of warriors to a world of single species (human) pacificists with only a handful of rogue warriors. Same with Death Watch, another EU-borrowed name, but the depiction in TCW was very different.

The Interdictor on the other hand, is shown exactly the way it is portrayed in the old EU, no if and or buts about it. It is not simply a name borrowed, and then cut and pasted onto an almost completely different ship concept.
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Re: Star Wars: Rebels Season Two Trailer

Post by Jedi Master Spock » Sun Nov 01, 2015 8:56 pm

Mike DiCenso wrote:While that is true to some extent, 359, I can't think of a more blatant example of it than this one. See, in the other "borrowed" elements, like say the Twil'lek homeworld's name of Ryloth was lifted from the EU, Ryloth's appearance and characteristics was very different from the tidally locked world were the Twil'lek's and other lifeforms barely eke out an existence in the harsh twilight between the day and night sides of the planet, but rather is a normally rotating Earth-like planet, abeit with jungles, mesas, valleys and arid deserts.

Or Mandalore, which went from a multi-species world of warriors to a world of single species (human) pacificists with only a handful of rogue warriors. Same with Death Watch, another EU-borrowed name, but the depiction in TCW was very different.

The Interdictor on the other hand, is shown exactly the way it is portrayed in the old EU, no if and or buts about it. It is not simply a name borrowed, and then cut and pasted onto an almost completely different ship concept.
-Mike
Coruscant, perhaps? How it actually shows up in the prequels has a lot in common with the EU portrayals.

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Re: Star Wars: Rebels Season Two Trailer

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Tue Nov 03, 2015 11:58 pm

Even before the prequels, but unnamed, Coruscant was added at the new end of ROTJ in the Special Edition.
The name was officially pronounced in TPM though.
On the same note, we have an imperial troop transport take off in the background of the sand dunes while troopers are mopping up the crash site of the drop pod from where the two droids emerged, and an Outrider-like ship taking off from Mos Eisley, all in the Special Edition of ANH.

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Re: Star Wars: Rebels Season Two Trailer

Post by Mike DiCenso » Sat Nov 07, 2015 11:28 am

Actually, Lucas always intended what became known as Coruscant to be a city-covered planet, mostly as a tribute to Issac Asimov's Trantor from the Empire and Foundation series of stories. The only thing Lucas borrowed from the EU is the name, and then only after he had been considering other names.
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Re: Star Wars: Rebels Season Two Trailer

Post by 2046 » Wed Nov 25, 2015 2:30 am

One, as noted at Canon Wars, was "Jhantor", a clear reference to Trantor.

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Re: Star Wars: Rebels Season Two Trailer

Post by Mike DiCenso » Sat Nov 28, 2015 5:36 am

Yes, Jhantor, but that was just one of several. Adabaddon being another name Lucas was considering. But in any case, Lucas didn't even know about Timothy Zahn's name for the planet until someone brought it to his attention, and he decided it was a cool enough name that he made the exception for it.
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Re: Star Wars: Rebels Season Two Trailer

Post by 359 » Wed Dec 16, 2015 7:13 pm

Well, all of the events mentioned in the OP have come to pass. So here's what we've learned:

Interdictor cruiser – A prototype warship armed with gravity well projectors can pull a ship out of hyperspace. When overloaded the projectors are powerful enough to pull in nearby ships and crash them into the cruiser. By the looks of it, I haven't done a detailed analysis, the generators overpowered the support cruiser's station keeping by about 1 g. This caused the two craft to crash into the interdictor at maybe a couple hundred meters per second, which was sufficient to breach the hull and actually rip off the hull and all its armor.

We also learned that, according to Rex, Stormtrooper armor is vastly inferior to clone armor both in visibility and protection, failing to do anything against even a weak stun blast. In fact it goes as far as to hinder aim causing him to throw off his helmet, at which point his shooting improved. Ah... bureaucratic gear at its finest.

However we do know blaster resistant armor can be made because both Sabine and agent Kallos both have survived direct hits due to their armor, and in Sabine's case it was a headshot.


B-Wing – A new heavy assault fighter that was developed by a secluded engineer residing on a planet that rendered most ships unflyable. The ship possesses speed, maneuverability, and firepower. Using its main multi canon (a silly concept in my book, but whatever) it was able to breach the hull of an imperial cruiser and destroy it with two shots. We also see this weapon fired at a ship crashed in a rock face. The ship was almost totally destroyed and large sections of rock were blasted off the side.


Stardestroyers striking a town – We see a targeted imperial strike against the rebel forces hiding on Garel. The fire seems to be low-key attempts to scare the rebels from hiding, not to actually cause significant damage.

In other news when seeing Garel from orbit it is clearly a heavily populated planet, probably similar to earth based on city lights.


AT-AT – We learn that the main cannon from an AT-TE can not penetrate the heavy armor of an AT-AT, but the cannons on an AT-AT can do heavy damage to an AT-TE. Although the AT-ATs do have one weak point in their neck where the cannon can one-shot the walker. AT-AT cannons, however, are able to penetrate their own armor after a couple of hits.

Another useful piece of information is that a simple dust storm was enough to jam all scopes and communications. Although the AT-ATs could apparently still communicate with each other, but could not reach the star destroyer in orbit.

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Re: Star Wars: Rebels Season Two Trailer

Post by Mike DiCenso » Thu Dec 17, 2015 10:37 pm

359 wrote:Interdictor cruiser – A prototype warship armed with gravity well projectors can pull a ship out of hyperspace. When overloaded the projectors are powerful enough to pull in nearby ships and crash them into the cruiser. By the looks of it, I haven't done a detailed analysis, the generators overpowered the support cruiser's station keeping by about 1 g. This caused the two craft to crash into the interdictor at maybe a couple hundred meters per second, which was sufficient to breach the hull and actually rip off the hull and all its armor.
Now that is very interesting. A big blow to the Saxtonian portrayal of Star Wars capital ship armor being made out of super-dense neutronium that would not only absorb weapons fire easily, but also bounce all but high KE impacts.

I haven't seen the episode, but was there any indication that the ships had shields up at the time?

359 wrote:We also learned that, according to Rex, Stormtrooper armor is vastly inferior to clone armor both in visibility and protection, failing to do anything against even a weak stun blast. In fact it goes as far as to hinder aim causing him to throw off his helmet, at which point his shooting improved. Ah... bureaucratic gear at its finest.

However we do know blaster resistant armor can be made because both Sabine and agent Kallos both have survived direct hits due to their armor, and in Sabine's case it was a headshot.
Well so much again for the Wongian/Saxtonian/Young view of Stormtrooper armor being super tough stuff that they try to explain away the Ewoks' success with spears, bow and arrow, and cludgels is due to the Ewoks having chimpanzee-like muscles, or the arrows hit gaps in the armor, etc.

359 wrote:Stardestroyers striking a town – We see a targeted imperial strike against the rebel forces hiding on Garel. The fire seems to be low-key attempts to scare the rebels from hiding, not to actually cause significant damage.

In other news when seeing Garel from orbit it is clearly a heavily populated planet, probably similar to earth based on city lights.
Glad I held off on making too much out of this, then. So higher firepower numbers ranges are still possible.
359 wrote:AT-AT – We learn that the main cannon from an AT-TE can not penetrate the heavy armor of an AT-AT, but the cannons on an AT-AT can do heavy damage to an AT-TE. Although the AT-ATs do have one weak point in their neck where the cannon can one-shot the walker. AT-AT cannons, however, are able to penetrate their own armor after a couple of hits.
Nice shout out to TESB with the snow speeders hitting the same spot on one that was brought down by a speeder tow cable. This very good to hear as means the writers and CGI artists are paying attention to continuity. Also interesting in that AT-ATs can blast through another's armor.
359 wrote:Another useful piece of information is that a simple dust storm was enough to jam all scopes and communications. Although the AT-ATs could apparently still communicate with each other, but could not reach the star destroyer in orbit.
This is so pathetic that I'm almost willing to discard it as a bad outlier, unless there was something specifically stated, like magnetized dust particles, or some fictional phenomena involved beyond just simple dust being blown around.
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Re: Star Wars: Rebels Season Two Trailer

Post by SpacePaladin » Fri Dec 18, 2015 12:31 am

359 wrote:We also learned that, according to Rex, Stormtrooper armor is vastly inferior to clone armor both in visibility and protection, failing to do anything against even a weak stun blast. In fact it goes as far as to hinder aim causing him to throw off his helmet, at which point his shooting improved. Ah... bureaucratic gear at its finest.
Storm Trooper Armour is all over the place. People wearing it can survive explosions that take out TIE fighters but get taken out by getting clubbed and conked in the face with a helmet.

Can you make armour that's reactive? Like, in Dune, shields could protect against a lot, but if you moved slow enough, you could pierce the shield and stab the person using it. Could Storm Trooper armour be like that? Its best protection won't activate below a certain threshold (perhaps upgrading the explosion-resistant material to activate below the normal threshold is too expensive).

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Re: Star Wars: Rebels Season Two Trailer

Post by 359 » Fri Dec 18, 2015 12:12 pm

I assume you are referring to the explosions in the "Art Attack" short where troopers survive one such blast, because I can't think of any other instances off the top of my head. And that would indicate that the armor is good at resisting concussive blasts, but we regularly see troopers taken out in hand-to-hand combat which wouldn't be possible if their armor offered that level of blast protection. Zeb's signature helmet bash simply wouldn't work at all. Also we have seen similar grenades used to outright kill troopers in armor. In TCW: "Supply Lines" a droid throws a grenade taking out several nearby clone troopers wearing their superior armor, one clone did survive but he was further away. So the "Art Attack" incident seems to be more an exception than a rule.

But let's say that the armor does offer blast protection, and as you suggested it satisfied all these requirements by being made out of a smart material that became more resistant when the impulse crossed a certain threshold. If it were simply stabbing with arrows vs concussion survival then it would just be something similar to modern kevlar, which is strong against "blunt" impacts such as bullets and hammers (although it won't really help the wearer from the latter, but the material itself will be fine), but offers relatively little resistance to something like a knife. But in this case we're dealing with an armor that is supposed to protect from high force blunt impact but not from low force blunt impact. This is similar to a non-newtonian fluid where the material's viscosity is proportional to the applied impulse.

But since we see directly opposing information in the form of lethal grenades this seems unlikely to be the case. Again, I would go with the TIE incident being more of an outlier than a concrete example of strength.

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Re: Star Wars: Rebels Season Two Trailer

Post by 2046 » Thu Dec 31, 2015 10:38 am

I simply view the kiddie-fied Rebels no-deaths-ever policy in which even the deadest troopers keep wiggling to negate any analysis, even if Rebels and TCW did inhabit the same universe.

I mean, sure, we could say the same in regards to the lack of gory eviscerations or dismemberments in the live-action stuff (be it via lightsaber or bat'leth), but there's gotta be a limit.

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Re: Star Wars: Rebels Season Two Trailer

Post by Mike DiCenso » Thu Dec 31, 2015 9:51 pm

Never kill anyone, huh? I think Aresko and Grint only wish that was the case. Minister Maketh Tua probably also does as well.
-Mike

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