Another nerf for SW firepower...

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by Darth Spock » Sun Apr 02, 2017 5:06 am

SpacePaladin wrote:What does this have to do with Star Wars?
Khas wrote:Aw shit, wrong link. Let me fix that.
Mike DiCenso wrote:I was beginning to wonder myself, other than it was interesting to hear the dialog about the metals in the surrounding rock on the very planet that later gets a heavy bombardment in TDiC.
-Mike
Well, I'm curious now, what was the original link?
Mike DiCenso wrote:
359 wrote:As for the torbolaser bolts striking near Kanan, I think we can chuck those into the "Too stupidly low" bin along with things like VOY: "Alliances". Additionally we see significantly greater, but still not great, levels of damage after the bombardment than could have been caused by the mere blasts that were shown near Kanan. However this episode does clearly suggest that a single turbolaser bolt does not reach WMD status.

The problem is that this is pretty much what we've come to see and expect from SW firepower as it has been shown so far in Rebels and even in TCW. For example, the pathetic showing from the light cruiser in "Ghosts of Geonosis" or the B-wing weapons test in "Wings of the Master".


At least in contrast to VOY's "Alliances", we have many other showings of very high firepower and we also have clear cut statements that a photon torpedo and its predecessor the photonic torpedo, can be dialed in yield across very extreme ranges.
-Mike
Something I'd add to this, is that while there isn't anything drastically better immediately available in SW, the very examples mentioned, like the medium guns on the LC in "Ghosts of Geonosis," or the shots from the small ISD belly guns in Rebels "Legacy" do already show far superior firepower from much smaller weapons. I know I'm certainly closer than ever to jumping fence to 'Trek dominating in a showdown, but I think I'd rather wait and see what else comes down the pike first. Like already mentioned, it's not as though 'Trek hasn't suffered through numerous such debacles as well.

Also, while the first real example of the ISD's main guns was particularly underwhelming, it's pretty clearly established in the episode that Thrawn had no intention of killing anyone in a bombardment, the objective was the capture of the Rebel leadership all along. He accomplished exactly what he wanted, straining the rebel's salvaged shield to the edge, and psyching the defenders out before launching a ground assault. As for the sad impacts next to Kanan's bike, welllllll, the sorry firepower wasn't the only odd thing I noticed about that. Anyone else notice those shots didn't exactly look random? There was a significant lack of turbolaser strikes anywhere in the observable foreground, background and to both sides. I like the idea of the Empire redeeming its reputation for poor marksmanship, but that kind of precision, from orbit, in Star Wars?! That's about as nutty as the observed firepower from the supposedly big guns.

Besides, the "vaporize a small town" bit pretty much requires deep terajoules to be valid, and stands under Lucas canon. I'm a little fuzzy on the canonicity of the old film novelizations under Disney, but even there, Like I said before, I think I'll wait a bit longer and see what else turns up in future installments before I turn face and slap a "can't even break a GJ with heavy guns wimps" label on the poor ISD's! ;)

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by Darth Spock » Sun Apr 02, 2017 5:27 am

On the ramming scene, wow, this was not a good year for Star Wars and rammings. The Rogue One example is just bizarre, and here Sato slices an Interdictor up the middle by ramming the pointy part of his ship into the pointy tip of the enemy ship? What is with the logic going on here? They were more straight forward and made more sense way back in the very first season of TCW.
2046 wrote:The Interdictor is significantly smaller than an ISD, so those figures are much too high.

See: http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/sta ... 0325092432

Assuming that's what they're using for scale on Rebels, you're looking at a mass perhaps one-tenth of the ISD at best, and probably even less, and a massive reduction in velocity to match.
Just to note, that is from the old EU, like 359 noted about the relative size of the docking bay compared to the corvette and the ISD, I'd estimate they're at least as big as a Venator, my quicky scaling estimates kept landing between 1200-1400 meters in length, using the docking bay as a guide. Also, the Flurry, or whatever name they call Sato's carrier thing now, I believe is supposed to be about 300-350 meters in length, and indeed it looked to me to only be about 1/3 to 1/4 the length of the Interdictor.

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by Mike DiCenso » Tue Apr 04, 2017 3:45 am

Darth Spock wrote:Well, I'm curious now, what was the original link?
It was just showing a scene from DS9's "The Search, Part 2".

Darth Spock wrote:Something I'd add to this, is that while there isn't anything drastically better immediately available in SW, the very examples mentioned, like the medium guns on the LC in "Ghosts of Geonosis," or the shots from the small ISD belly guns in Rebels "Legacy" do already show far superior firepower from much smaller weapons. I know I'm certainly closer than ever to jumping fence to 'Trek dominating in a showdown, but I think I'd rather wait and see what else comes down the pike first. Like already mentioned, it's not as though 'Trek hasn't suffered through numerous such debacles as well.
The problem with what you are saying there is that the example given in "Ghosts of Geonosis" (GoG) shows the light cruiser having to fly to within a hundred meters to get the effects you are describing. It would be one thing if the light cruiser was at the same altitude as the ISD and Interdictor fleet was, but no, it was literally point blank range to achieve the effect it did.

Darth Spock wrote:Also, while the first real example of the ISD's main guns was particularly underwhelming, it's pretty clearly established in the episode that Thrawn had no intention of killing anyone in a bombardment, the objective was the capture of the Rebel leadership all along. He accomplished exactly what he wanted, straining the rebel's salvaged shield to the edge, and psyching the defenders out before launching a ground assault.
While under other circumstances that excuse might have held up, we have other examples, as given already, that support that that was about the best those ships could have done and no where do I know of indicates that Thrawn had any intelligence on the capabilities of the Rebel's salvaged shields, beyond what he could see from scans provided to him from orbit. If you know of any information that says otherwise, I be happy to hear the source and quotes.

Darth Spock wrote:Besides, the "vaporize a small town" bit pretty much requires deep terajoules to be valid, and stands under Lucas canon. I'm a little fuzzy on the canonicity of the old film novelizations under Disney, but even there, Like I said before, I think I'll wait a bit longer and see what else turns up in future installments before I turn face and slap a "can't even break a GJ with heavy guns wimps" label on the poor ISD's! ;)
Not necessarily. The assumptions made in Robert Scott Anderson's calcs assumes a certain size town (Bastrop, Texas), and let us remember that the definitions of what constitutes a "small town" are all over the place. If he'd used an in-universe small town like Tatooine's Mos Espa or Anchorhead, the results would have been an even bigger nerfing for SW firepower.

Flavor text, in this case, like that from the infamous "Scavenger Hunt" Base Delta Zero operation that used the term "slag", and was for many years the basis for the "melt the entire crust" 200 gigaton firepower fallacy,but turned out to be something completely different when people finally obtained the materials and examined it. Besides which, we see in the RoTS film itself substantially less firepower in play.
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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by Darth Spock » Sat Apr 08, 2017 1:17 am

Mike DiCenso wrote:
Darth Spock wrote:Well, I'm curious now, what was the original link?
It was just showing a scene from DS9's "The Search, Part 2".
Ah, I see, thanks.


The problem with what you are saying there is that the example given in "Ghosts of Geonosis" (GoG) shows the light cruiser having to fly to within a hundred meters to get the effects you are describing. It would be one thing if the light cruiser was at the same altitude as the ISD and Interdictor fleet was, but no, it was literally point blank range to achieve the effect it did.
I'm not sure where the idea that these ships had to close in to a hundred meters comes from, other than that being the most obvious physical difference between these shots. I should acknowledge that I have missed almost all of Rebels season 2, and it'll take a while to get caught up, so maybe there's a clue in there I'm missing. Barring that however, in the case of GoG, the LC captain lost track of the Ghost when they went under ground and moved in to confirm their location. At that point they deployed jetpacked stormtroopers, presumably to capture the ship and crew, (a recurring Imperial theme, and admittedly a plot device that SW will wear thin if they keep it up). After losing all the rocket troopers, they move the LC into "firing position," after which the Imperial crewman reports: "We are in position over the opening, but there's no sign of the enemy ship. They must have descended deeper into the planet." It is at that point the captain gives the order to "Bury the rebels alive!" They also attempt to obstruct the opening with their own ship, which proves their undoing. So this appears to be a case of the Imperials having already pursued the rebels to the surface, rather than having to get close enough for their guns to work.

It's no where as clear or organized as Chakoteya is for Star Trek, but a transcript for the episode can be found here:
http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk ... ode=s03e12

Darth Spock wrote:Also, while the first real example of the ISD's main guns was particularly underwhelming, it's pretty clearly established in the episode that Thrawn had no intention of killing anyone in a bombardment, the objective was the capture of the Rebel leadership all along. He accomplished exactly what he wanted, straining the rebel's salvaged shield to the edge, and psyching the defenders out before launching a ground assault.
While under other circumstances that excuse might have held up, we have other examples, as given already, that support that that was about the best those ships could have done and no where do I know of indicates that Thrawn had any intelligence on the capabilities of the Rebel's salvaged shields, beyond what he could see from scans provided to him from orbit. If you know of any information that says otherwise, I be happy to hear the source and quotes.
You're right, the only intel Thrawn likely had on the shield was via scanners, but the same basic sensor tech in ESB allowed the Imperials to determine the Hoth shield was too strong to bombard, so their scopes evidentially are able to determine the relative strength of such shields. It's also possible that the shield generator's overheating may have shown up on their sensors as well.
As noted before, Thrawn's orders from Tarkin were specifically to capture the rebel leadership, not simply wipe them out. That point comes up more than once in the episode, so either Thrawn is a very reckless commander, randomly firing on the shield from orbit for no good reason and then stopping after an arbitrary time, or he knew about how much strain it could take and called off the strike moments before the soft, squishy targets standing exposed under the shield were subjected to weapons fire, while still letting the rebels know he could kill them all any time he wanted.

Darth Spock wrote:Besides, the "vaporize a small town" bit pretty much requires deep terajoules to be valid, and stands under Lucas canon. I'm a little fuzzy on the canonicity of the old film novelizations under Disney, but even there, Like I said before, I think I'll wait a bit longer and see what else turns up in future installments before I turn face and slap a "can't even break a GJ with heavy guns wimps" label on the poor ISD's! ;)
Not necessarily. The assumptions made in Robert Scott Anderson's calcs assumes a certain size town (Bastrop, Texas), and let us remmber that the definitions of what constitutes a "small town" are all over the place. If he'd used an in-universe small town like Tatooine's Mos Espa or Anchorhead, the results would have been an even bigger nerfing for SW firepower.

Flavor text, in this case, like that from the infamous "Scavenger Hunt" Base Delta Zero operation that used the term "slag", and was for many years the basis for the "melt the entire crust" 200 gigaton firepower fallacy,but turned out to be something completely different when people finally obtained the materials and examined it. Besides which, we see in the RoTS film itself substantially less firepower in play.
-Mike
Well, one of the first things I encountered in the versus community was a general tendency not to include weapon interactions with star ships, such as was seen in ROTS. The idea being, I gather, that shields and *magic* advanced armor would muck it up. Using similar comparisons in 'Trek yields similar results, it's the narrative spirit that mainly boosts the weapons into WMD territory. Enter the narrative from RotS.
2046's calcs are plenty high enough, over a petajoule in fact. Of course, depending on how one wants to interpret the passage, I could even get it below 100 GJ, assuming the weapons are powerful enough only to theoretically vaporize just the water content of a very small population of a few hundred people. But taking the most straightforward interpretation of the line pretty much requires no less than a dozen kilotons, or many tens of terajoules.

Of course, it is entirely possible that you are right, and that if the Empire seriously wants to hammer a planet from orbit, they may need to use specialized ordinance, like the seismic charges from AotC, or the gas canisters seen in GoG. My argument here isn't to claim that SW is proven to have kiloton-megaton cannons with the evidence available, rather that the nerfing observed in the season 3 finale of Rebels isn't as conclusively cut and dried so as to provide the final word in SW firepower. Thus my comment that I personally would rather wait and see what else comes up in future installments of the franchise.

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by Mike DiCenso » Sat Apr 08, 2017 8:33 pm

Darth Spock wrote:I'm not sure where the idea that these ships had to close in to a hundred meters comes from, other than that being the most obvious physical difference between these shots. I should acknowledge that I have missed almost all of Rebels season 2, and it'll take a while to get caught up, so maybe there's a clue in there I'm missing. Barring that however, in the case of GoG, the LC captain lost track of the Ghost when they went under ground and moved in to confirm their location. At that point they deployed jetpacked stormtroopers, presumably to capture the ship and crew, (a recurring Imperial theme, and admittedly a plot device that SW will wear thin if they keep it up). After losing all the rocket troopers, they move the LC into "firing position," after which the Imperial crewman reports: "We are in position over the opening, but there's no sign of the enemy ship. They must have descended deeper into the planet." It is at that point the captain gives the order to "Bury the rebels alive!" They also attempt to obstruct the opening with their own ship, which proves their undoing. So this appears to be a case of the Imperials having already pursued the rebels to the surface, rather than having to get close enough for their guns to work.

Well, if you only look at that as the single point of evidence, you might be right with that. However, taken in the larger body of evidence available to us, it seems that it is indeed what that ship had to do in order to get that kind of firepower in that situation. Otherwise the captain could have just ordered the light cruiser after the rocket troopers' defeat to a far higher altitude or as pointed out earlier in this thread, to a high orbit and then fired down on the shaft. You can possibly chalk it up to an incompetent and overeager captain, but that then gets into a slippery slope of just declaring Imperial officers in general as being stupid and incompetent, which I'm not willing to fall back on just yet.
Darth Spock wrote:You're right, the only intel Thrawn likely had on the shield was via scanners, but the same basic sensor tech in ESB allowed the Imperials to determine the Hoth shield was too strong to bombard, so their scopes evidentially are able to determine the relative strength of such shields. It's also possible that the shield generator's overheating may have shown up on their sensors as well.

As noted before, Thrawn's orders from Tarkin were specifically to capture the rebel leadership, not simply wipe them out. That point comes up more than once in the episode, so either Thrawn is a very reckless commander, randomly firing on the shield from orbit for no good reason and then stopping after an arbitrary time, or he knew about how much strain it could take and called off the strike moments before the soft, squishy targets standing exposed under the shield were subjected to weapons fire, while still letting the rebels know he could kill them all any time he wanted.
Yes, Tarkin's order to Thrawn are about the only possible save that could be made for Imperial firepower in this instance.... if we didn't already have many other examples of firepower to look at that says that the Imperials couldn't do much better than they were. See, we have to take into account the variables that sets the Thrawn bombardment apart from the others:


* Range. The bombardment is the longest range known range yet shown as far as I can tell. In the hundreds of kilometers easily based on how much of the screen that the planet subtends as the view and likely is further in range than what General Grievious' fleet pulled off in TCW (approximately 200 km).

* The demonstrated firepower is at most a couple orders of magnitude less than other examples, the exception being the TESB asteroid "vaporization" firepower, which really is in the single-digit to low double-digit terajoule range. Assuming of course that those asteroids weren't really prone to being naturally explody.

* Despite Thrawn's marching order from Tarkin, why then use the heavy guns for the bombardment, if medium and light TLs would have sufficed?

Darth Spock wrote:Well, one of the first things I encountered in the versus community was a general tendency not to include weapon interactions with star ships, such as was seen in ROTS. The idea being, I gather, that shields and *magic* advanced armor would muck it up. Using similar comparisons in 'Trek yields similar results, it's the narrative spirit that mainly boosts the weapons into WMD territory. Enter the narrative from RotS.

2046's calcs are plenty high enough, over a petajoule in fact. Of course, depending on how one wants to interpret the passage, I could even get it below 100 GJ, assuming the weapons are powerful enough only to theoretically vaporize just the water content of a very small population of a few hundred people. But taking the most straightforward interpretation of the line pretty much requires no less than a dozen kilotons, or many tens of terajoules.
Yes, that has generally been the case, because we don't often have information what the materials or other super science that exists in these universes' technology bags can field that would significantly alter the numbers one way or another. But that being said, what do see being done to ships is largely consistent with the recently range of visuals of attacks on known things like unshielded rock, etc, as well as other information about the use of steel or steel alloy metals in SW ships. So taken piecemeal, yes, you'd be absolutely right, but taken all together, well, it's not looking so good for Star Wars right now.

To try and salvage something for Star Wars, I'd hypothesize that at point-blank range, those big guns might be able to manage terajoule-range firepower, but at the ranges used during the orbital bombardment, they lose enough energy in transit that they wind up at megajoule-range at impact.
-Mike

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by 2046 » Sat Apr 08, 2017 11:09 pm

In support of the loss-in-transit argument are the lines from the RotS novelization about the fading of the galvening of the galvened particle beam of blasters, resulting in a radioactive fog, as well as a line I will have to find about a bolt coming so close a fighter "rang", as I recall, suggesting a leaking of something, be it particles or some field energy.

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by Mike DiCenso » Sat Apr 08, 2017 11:52 pm

Well, unless physics is really out of wack in the SW-verse, I'd say that at least some energy loss occurs with blaster bolts and turbolasers, since we can actually see them glow. Even phasers seem to work the same way as the slight brushing of the Reliant by the Enterprise's phasers caused her to rock significantly.
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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by Darth Spock » Thu Apr 13, 2017 5:01 am

Mike DiCenso wrote: Well, if you only look at that as the single point of evidence, you might be right with that. However, taken in the larger body of evidence available to us, it seems that it is indeed what that ship had to do in order to get that kind of firepower in that situation. Otherwise the captain could have just ordered the light cruiser after the rocket troopers' defeat to a far higher altitude or as pointed out earlier in this thread, to a high orbit and then fired down on the shaft. You can possibly chalk it up to an incompetent and overeager captain, but that then gets into a slippery slope of just declaring Imperial officers in general as being stupid and incompetent, which I'm not willing to fall back on just yet.
I'm not sure why she'd go to the trouble of getting further away from the target once they're already practically on top of the hole. Blaming too much on convenient incompetence is a bad habit, but it seems to fit here. The Imperial captain started out bored and wanting to get a false alarm over with, to seeing an opportunity for promotion, to having Hera point blank say the captain was showing her inexperience. This example could fly either way with regard to maximum range.

Yes, Tarkin's order to Thrawn are about the only possible save that could be made for Imperial firepower in this instance.... if we didn't already have many other examples of firepower to look at that says that the Imperials couldn't do much better than they were. See, we have to take into account the variables that sets the Thrawn bombardment apart from the others:


* Range. The bombardment is the longest range known range yet shown as far as I can tell. In the hundreds of kilometers easily based on how much of the screen that the planet subtends as the view and likely is further in range than what General Grievious' fleet pulled off in TCW (approximately 200 km).

* The demonstrated firepower is at most a couple orders of magnitude less than other examples, the exception being the TESB asteroid "vaporization" firepower, which really is in the single-digit to low double-digit terajoule range. Assuming of course that those asteroids weren't really prone to being naturally explody.

* Despite Thrawn's marching order from Tarkin, why then use the heavy guns for the bombardment, if medium and light TLs would have sufficed?
Regarding the range, yes, this is by far the longest range engagement seen so far. I don't like to rely on the ESB asteroids either, what with such similar "explosions" from comparatively slow collisions in the same field. The only thing the scene really does is not prove that they can't vaporize such asteroids.

As for why they would use the heavy guns to produce such weak firepower, well, honestly I think the folks behind the scenes finally got the big guns rigged and/or got final approval for their use on the show and were chomping at the bit to play with their new toys. Basically turning the ISDs into Mk.2 Venators that use the jumbo cannons for everything. That likely being the same reason they suddenly lost all their small guns and used those same brutes to fire on snub fighters after the OT made such extensive use of smaller emplacements. Yeah, that's a sad, out of universe explanation, I know.

Another point I mentioned earlier though, is that the only really good shots we saw of the TL impacts were those tracking in on Kanan on his bike, and they did not appear random. Personally, I wouldn't discount the possibility of those not being spill over from the primary bombardment on the shield, but a smaller emplacement tracking a target of opportunity. If those bolts were the product of the heavy batteries, it would imply one of the heavy emplacements had abandoned its assigned target and was instead trying to pick off a guy on a bike. The bombardment scene has its oddities from any perspective.
And of course, there is still the very explicit point that prisoners were a priority, whether this was the best they could muster or not, this bombardment (really the only one so far), already has its nerfing write off built in, no mental gymnastics required to reconcile a contradiction with higher firepower. Whether a higher example will come along or not is the question.

The idea that those big guns have superior range certainly makes sense though. Still, while I don't see this massive energy loss at range providing an all encompassing explanation for everything we see, I can think of nothing that would specifically discount it either. And in addition to the "fading of the galvening" and that fighter that "rang" from a near miss 2046 pointed out, the ESB asteroid scene had an asteroid "ignite" from a near miss from a TL bolt too, so the idea of significant leakage might work.

Darth Spock wrote:Well, one of the first things I encountered in the versus community was a general tendency not to include weapon interactions with star ships, such as was seen in ROTS. The idea being, I gather, that shields and *magic* advanced armor would muck it up. Using similar comparisons in 'Trek yields similar results, it's the narrative spirit that mainly boosts the weapons into WMD territory. Enter the narrative from RotS.

2046's calcs are plenty high enough, over a petajoule in fact. Of course, depending on how one wants to interpret the passage, I could even get it below 100 GJ, assuming the weapons are powerful enough only to theoretically vaporize just the water content of a very small population of a few hundred people. But taking the most straightforward interpretation of the line pretty much requires no less than a dozen kilotons, or many tens of terajoules.
Yes, that has generally been the case, because we don't often have information what the materials or other super science that exists in these universes' technology bags can field that would significantly alter the numbers one way or another. But that being said, what do see being done to ships is largely consistent with the recently range of visuals of attacks on known things like unshielded rock, etc, as well as other information about the use of steel or steel alloy metals in SW ships. So taken piecemeal, yes, you'd be absolutely right, but taken all together, well, it's not looking so good for Star Wars right now.

To try and salvage something for Star Wars, I'd hypothesize that at point-blank range, those big guns might be able to manage terajoule-range firepower, but at the ranges used during the orbital bombardment, they lose enough energy in transit that they wind up at megajoule-range at impact.
-Mike
All in all, your hypothesis manages to fit all the factors without direct contradiction, and is completely in keeping with observed effects. On a side note, I think versus analysis does have a tendency to jade its participants with notions of WMDs or bust. A space ship able to throw out a steady stream of GJ-TJ fire, even if it deteriorates to MJ after several hundred or a few thousand km is well beyond modern tech and at home in scifi.

I have mentioned before that I suspect lower powered weapons may intentionally be used en masse, with the idea that the quantity and specific nature of weapon delivery might be more useful than simply upping the yield on the ordinance. If indeed this is the "best they can do" however, then the tactics employed in Star Wars raises some real questions. If some well placed MJ-GJ shots is really all it takes to severely damage a vessel despite it's defenses, then nuclear warhead missile drones should be dominating space combat, much the way missile destroyers have replaced heavy cannons in modern warfare. The usual limitations to such weapons are already nullified by SW canon, point defenses repeatedly allow fighters to close, and fusion technology is mature and commonplace, there's nothing stopping the use of multimegaton "cruise missiles" or even fighter/bombers launching multiple bombs in the 100's of KT against capitol ships, despite their depiction in the traditional Hollywood manner so far. Realistically, those would generate quick kills against vessels straining to throw (and absorb) low kilotons at each other at the absolute best. Then again, the Rebels episodes "Homecoming" and "Iron Squadron" have come very close to doing just that, though again under somewhat unusual circumstances, and with lowball Hollywood effects.

Again, technical limitations don't suffice to explain such an absence, that kind of firepower was available 60 years ago in the real world. There have been hints of odd political limitations, but that doesn't adequately explain such restraint in deep space, especially from the unscrupulous Empire, or the desperate and often equally aggressive rebels, such as Saw Gerrera. As I alluded to earlier, allowances for "Hollywood firepower" are required in pretty much all franchises, including 'Trek, in order to balance everything from the Borg bombardment in ST:FC to the TDiC bombardment, and all in between. In short, while suspension of disbelief and canon may trump common sense, the ultimate nature of SW weapons is still floating in a somewhat vague territory. I'd say ICS gigatons can be neatly discarded with high canon evidence now, but a certain level of firepower is required for certain feats, such as implied in the RotS novel. Personally, I'll feel better accepting a conclusion one way or the other once the line has been drawn a little more clearly as to what exactly turbo lasers can or can't do. (And preferably not provided through vague text or some bottom rung Disney "canon" source like a comic or a game's flavor text.)

Sorry about getting so long winded, but the thought processes behind my rationale run a circuitous route, which is partly why I have difficulty looking at the bombardment in the Rebels season 3 finale and calling it a day.

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sun Apr 16, 2017 1:27 am

Mike DiCenso wrote: * Despite Thrawn's marching order from Tarkin, why then use the heavy guns for the bombardment, if medium and light TLs would have sufficed?
Effective range (reliable accuracy). SW is ripe with heavy TLs being dialed down and also used against small targets.
Like the super big guns on the Trade Federation Droid Control Ship that had a good range and were used against N-1s, with a very low display of firepower.
Or the TLs dotting the DS' surface, blowing up Rebel fighters but not exactly flash-vapourizing them in one shot.

Yes, that has generally been the case, because we don't often have information what the materials or other super science that exists in these universes' technology bags can field that would significantly alter the numbers one way or another. But that being said, what do see being done to ships is largely consistent with the recently range of visuals of attacks on known things like unshielded rock, etc, as well as other information about the use of steel or steel alloy metals in SW ships. So taken piecemeal, yes, you'd be absolutely right, but taken all together, well, it's not looking so good for Star Wars right now.

To try and salvage something for Star Wars, I'd hypothesize that at point-blank range, those big guns might be able to manage terajoule-range firepower, but at the ranges used during the orbital bombardment, they lose enough energy in transit that they wind up at megajoule-range at impact.
-Mike
We still have those videos of firing tests for very small kiloton yield nuclear devices and the explosions rather fit a lot with many background explosions seen across the entirety of the SW material.
SW ships have a high rate of fire so being able to pepper a surface with a rain of shots rating at even 1 KT a bolt isn't something to scoff at.

The problem remains that if they have fusion cores, they obviously master the crudest forms of fusion explosives. The warships would be expected to routinely fire weapons in the high terajoule, low petajoule range.
Starfighters would only be relevant to:
1. protect bombers.
2. shoot fusion warheads at warships.
3. harass unshielded warships.

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by 2046 » Sun Apr 16, 2017 6:43 pm

Mr. Oragahn wrote: We still have those videos of firing tests for very small kiloton yield nuclear devices and the explosions rather fit a lot with many background explosions seen across the entirety of the SW material.


Examples, please. I'd love to have lots of kiloton examples to make my small town page less of a northerly outlier.

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Mon Apr 17, 2017 10:29 pm

There you go.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSi2IRXrhSo, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=351zid4NHKI
SW heavy shots seem to hit a roof around .5~1 KT if we were to use in-atmosphere visuals and assuming a rather nuclear type of reaction.
Now, weapons with slower reactions (possibly relying on highly advanced chemical compounds) such as what TL bolts might be would logically produce much less flash-blinding fireballs because of the lower power release.
Besides, considering the speed of a bolt and its length, it would already take several large fractions of a second for the entire bolt to hit its intended target, which would even more reduce the rate of release of energy of such an exploding projectile (bolts in SW largely share an explosive behaviour). Effects would be much more thermal than hyper-explosive, and thus have tamer blasts than the nuclear-type blast.

In TCWS, the shells used by a few CIS ground batteries to shoot at Acclamators looming like two kilometers above them seemed to produce explosions in that low-KT range.
In AOTC, the explosions produced by the impact of the continuous SPHA-T's fire against the core ship on Geonosis would probably be worth a total of a few kilotons, released in a rather very slow fashion, less blasty, more diggy. All explosions were of a similar size regardless of where the beams landed on the ship's hull so it seems fair to assume most of the energy came from the beams, not some sensitive and explosive stuff hidden behind every single hull panel hit by these weapons.

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by 2046 » Tue Apr 18, 2017 2:17 am

You could've simply said you didn't have any, to save time.

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by Mike DiCenso » Tue Apr 18, 2017 2:53 am

For a different comparison, the 11 ton yield GBU-43/MOAB used recently in Afghanistan produced similar-looking effects to the blaster and turblaser explosions seen in the above-mentioned examples of higher-end firepower.
-Mike

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Tue Apr 18, 2017 7:12 am

2046 wrote:You could've simply said you didn't have any, to save time.
What? Those two youtube links I posted, they lead to videos of detonation tests of low kiloton nuclear devices I talked about.

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Re: Another nerf for SW firepower...

Post by 2046 » Tue Apr 18, 2017 10:29 am

Mike DiCenso wrote:For a different comparison, the 11 ton yield GBU-43/MOAB used recently in Afghanistan produced similar-looking effects to the blaster and turblaser explosions seen in the above-mentioned examples of higher-end firepower.
-Mike
That's definitely a much closer match in scale and appearance to the Separatist flak cannons at Ryloth compared to nuke videos, low yield or otherwise.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/File:Acc ... Ryloth.png

Video: https://youtu.be/q-gaCrrz-9M

That said, the smoky bursts, there at something like fifty meters size, are not very much bigger than the ~15m smoky bursts of German flak in WW2:

https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/ ... on_headon/

The most common German flak cannon was the 8.8cm cannon which fired a shell with a yield measured in low-double-digit kilograms at normal best. Compare that to various explosion videos online and I can scarcely imagine the cannons at Ryloth cracking a ton, much less "that low-KT range".

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