List of expanded universe sources incompatible with ICS

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Mr. Oragahn
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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sat Mar 28, 2009 5:22 pm

WEG's Death Star guide was an exhaustive source of details at that time, and actually contains even more information than any ICS, including a good number of schematics of typical rooms and sectors.
What I find funny is that while they would pick material from WEG's Scavenger Hunt to favour the gross exaggeration of the Bade Delta Zero order, they literally omitted to look in this Death Star guide.
The guide in question said that the habitable zone of the Death Star was actually located in the 2-4 km thick crust of the battle station.
It only had 7200 TIEs and two full legions of stormtroopers, along other DS troopers. The total didn't even cross half a million, with people often gathering in smallish and numerous city sprawls on the surface.

The WEG actually gave the battle station a crew number of 265,675, including 57,276 gunners.
607,360 troops, 25,984 stormtroopers (largely acting in a milice way to keep an eye on everything and impersonate the Emperor's fist), 42,782 starship support staff, 167,216 support ships pilots and crew.

Now, the pop number was revisited in the novel Death Star, but with little change to some statistics, less than we may think:
Death Star, p.8 wrote: True, as worlds went, what was taking form three hundred kilometers from his flagship would not be quite as imposing as Imperial Center, say, or Alderaan. But when finished, it would be larger than two of the satellites of his own planet Eriadu, and it would be home to well over a million beings.
Death Star, p.10 wrote: Aside from the fearsome, world-destroying "superlaser" itself-which was based upon the Hammertong Project and used a power source secretly taken by the 501st Stormtrooper Legion on Mygeeto during the Clone Wars-the station would mount a complement of craft, both space and ground, equal to a large planetside base: four capital ships, a hundred TIE/In starfighters, plus assault shuttles, blastboats, drop ships, support craft, and land vehicles, all ultimately totaling in the tens of thousands. It would have an operational crew numbering more than a quarter million, including nearly sixty thousand gunners alone. The vessel could easily transport more than half a million fully outfitted troops, and the support staff-pilots, crew, and other workers-would be half that number. The logistics of it all were staggering. Oh, it would be a fearsome monster indeed. But a monster tamed and under Tarkin's control; a monster sheathed in quadanium steel plating, invulnerable and impervious.
The "troops" being both DS troopers and stormtroopers (including specialized squads).
As we can see, the population number is actually a direct port from WEG's figures.
WEG's guide says that most of the DS' structure was devoted to machinery.
More than likely largely automatized and maintained by legions of droids.

On another note, both WEG and the ICS, although disagreeing on the real shape of the power core, agreed that it was massive and took a lot of room, both upwards and sideways.
Which makes wonder if, in light of the size of the DSII's core, if the DSII was really more powerful.

On another note, it also explains, via a note from Tarkin to Palpatine, that Oversectors should be primarily created to encompass several problematic sectors.

Others details were open to retcon.

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Re: List of expanded universe sources incompatible with ICS

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sun Aug 09, 2009 4:35 pm

You can count Allegiance, in the firepower category.
End of Chapter Five wrote: Mara smiled grimly. Did Caaldra really think he could escape her by ducking down an old survey tunnel? The Force was Mara's servant, and no matter how twisty or tangled the tunnels might be, she would have no trouble tracking Caaldra through them.
She started toward the closest of the pits; and as she did so, out of the corner of her eye she saw a flash of brilliant green through the skylight.
And suddenly the entire building shook as the thunderclap of a distant explosion ripped through the air. Reflexively, Mara threw herself into a crouch beside the nearest ground-mover. Another flash of green fire fell from the sky, and a second explosion scattered the dust around her. The pirate base was under attack.
Chapter Six wrote: "Here we go," Quiller murmured, getting a grip on the hyperspace levers and pulling. The star lines faded into stars, and stretched out below them Larone saw the dark shadow that was the planet Gepparin.
He frowned. Directly ahead on the surface, the planet's nighttime darkness had been broken by a tight cluster of brightly glowing reddish yellow spots. "What's that?" he asked, starting to lift a hand to point.
And as he did so, a brilliant flash of green light slashed across his view, stabbing down into the landscape below and adding another glowing spot to the cluster already there.
"What the--?" Macross bit out.
"Oh, fuss..." Quiller snarled, throwing the Suwantek up and to the side in a tight spiraling curve, turning them back the way they'd come. From above another cluster of green turbolaser bolts flashed out and downward.
Lit briefly by the reflection of that fire, the wedge shape of an Imperial Star Destroyer appeared in the distance. "It can't be," Larone breathed.
"It is," Quiller confirmed grimly. "It's the Reprisal. They've found us."
The planet Gepparin was attacked. It was the location of a base of pirates, and Ozzel used his ship to blast it out as Mara went down as part of her true mission.
Ozzel, though, was convinced that Mara was sent for other motives.

As per Wookieepedia's Allegiance page:
Mara, on the other hand, boards a pirate ship and kills or subdues its crew as it attacks a military transport. Calling for help from the Reprisal, she boards the Star Destroyer and borrows two ISB stormtroopers to help her pilot the military transport back to the pirate base on Gepparin. Captain Ozzel, thinking she is onto him due to the five deserters, aids her, but also takes the Reprisal to Gepparin to attack the base. Mara had infiltrated the pirate base when her ISB stormtroopers betray her, causing the whole base to also attack her. Just as she defeats most of the pirates who haven't fled, the Reprisal attempts to kill her by blasting the base.
Ozzel would obviously take his best shot to get rid of Jade.

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Re: List of expanded universe sources incompatible with ICS

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Fri Sep 11, 2009 11:27 pm

In Dark Apprentice, Daala sends an Imperial commander on a mission to some backwater planet, with the goal to kill and destroy pathetic targets, with orbital shots from the one ISD and two cruisers, and six walkers down on Dantooine.
From the remains of the destroyed Rebel base, walkers approach a camp of refugees and start firing at them and their huts:
As the ruins of the base continued to crackle and steam, and fires spread across the dry savannas, Warton heard a pulsating, low-pitched sound: the humming of massive engines, the clanking of metal, thunderous footfalls.
He squinted into the brightening morning, still dazzled from the green laser bolts, until he could discern the monstrous silhouettes of gigantic walking machines. Four-legged and camel like, the Imperial walkers--All Terrain Armored Transports--strode from their smoldering landing sites and marched in hulking formation across the savanna.
The cockpit "heads" of the attacking AT-AT'S bent lower to aim banks of laser cannons. Precision bolts of green and red fire shot down. The ancient swollen blba trees erupted into flames that spread out in concentric circles across the dry grasses. Greasy smoke curled up, carrying the stench of burning wet vegetation and roasted small animals.
Warton shouted, "Run everyone! Get away from the dwellings. They will target them first."
The refugees from Eol Sha waded across the tall grasses as Imperial walkers plodded forward. The AT-AT'S covered more distance with each step than a human could run in half a minute. The walkers took aim at the fleeing colonists, striking each individual with enough firepower to destroy a small fighter ship.
Glena yanked her hand away from Warton and shouted at him, "Wait!" She turned around to run back toward their small dwelling.
"No!" he yelled, unable to imagine anything that would cause her to turn and run into the attack.
Before she could say another word, a blinding lance of turbolaser fire exploded full in her chest, and Warton watched in utter horror as Glena vanished in a blazing, sizzling cloud of red steam.

[...]

"I wish he'd move," the gunner said.
Kratas looked down to see a single man standing among the wreckage, motionless and staring.
"It's not much of a challenge to hit a stationary target," the gunner said, lifting the visor of his black helmet. "If he'd run, I could get better practice."
Kratas surveyed the devastation and the black smoke curling up from a thousand different fires. Their job here was done. "Take him out anyway," Kratas said. "We don't have time to play games."
The gunner squeezed his firing buttons, and the lone surviving man vanished in a flare of green fire.
Commander Kratas signaled the flagship, and he nodded to Daala's tiny shimmering form on the transmitter platform. "The mission is a complete success, Admiral. No casualties on our part, very minor damage to one AT-AT."
"You're sure nothing is left alive down there?" Daala said.
"Nothing, Admiral. No structure is left standing. The place is a wasteland."
There are not many AT-AT references presented in vs debates. This one is interesting for the parallel between what it takes to destroy a small fighter ship and how people died.

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Re: List of expanded universe sources incompatible with ICS

Post by Roondar » Mon Sep 14, 2009 11:34 am

Seems to be less than vaporizing someone outright, but more than just burning?

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Re: List of expanded universe sources incompatible with ICS

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Mon Sep 14, 2009 10:01 pm

Roondar wrote:Seems to be less than vaporizing someone outright, but more than just burning?
Right. The bolts were green, but the result is a blooming mist of red vapour:

"Before she could say another word, a blinding lance of turbolaser fire exploded full in her chest, and Warton watched in utter horror as Glena vanished in a blazing, sizzling cloud of red steam."

That's in the megajoule range, 250 MJ if you want a nice amount of wasted energy I'd say (150-160 MJ to vapourize the whole water content of a human I think, doing it properly). Since the most striking part of this is not the fireball but the red cloud (blood), it could be lower, and very close to the AT-ST bolt in ROTJ that partially blew the trunk of a tree.

Perhaps it doesn't include shields. In general, shielded ships fare barely better than the so-called shieldless TIEs, allowing five or six direct hits. Anakin's shielded N-1 took like three hits and became uncontrollable. Obi-Wan took approximately the same number of direct hits ... although Jango's bolts previously were flaking all around, sometimes close --but that would represent only a fraction of the bolt's power.

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Re: List of expanded universe sources incompatible with ICS

Post by Mike DiCenso » Mon Sep 14, 2009 10:40 pm

What's fustrating and interesting at the same time is that there aren't very many good descriptions of what happens as secondary effects around the people hit, beyond the "red steam". In other words, not a lot of excess energy beyond what is required to aerosol a human(oid) woman.
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Re: List of expanded universe sources incompatible with ICS

Post by l33telboi » Tue Sep 15, 2009 1:09 pm

A random question here: Doesn't it seem a little odd to other people that vaporized blood would be red? If it's red then it implies part of what we're seeing is still in liquid form. In fact, pretty much all of it has to be in liquid form. What you have there is an author's way of simply saying: "Person A exploded violently".

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Re: List of expanded universe sources incompatible with ICS

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Tue Sep 15, 2009 4:20 pm

l33telboi wrote:A random question here: Doesn't it seem a little odd to other people that vaporized blood would be red? If it's red then it implies part of what we're seeing is still in liquid form. In fact, pretty much all of it has to be in liquid form. What you have there is an author's way of simply saying: "Person A exploded violently".
I went for the high end barely acceptable interpretation. Clearly, most of the body is ripped apart by an explosion, spilling those five liters of blood left and right, with only a small portion of the body that's blown up.
In reality I think you'd probably be looking for tens of megajoules, if you wanted to be reasonable and be more faithful to the data at hand.

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Re: List of expanded universe sources incompatible with ICS

Post by Mike DiCenso » Tue Sep 15, 2009 8:35 pm

The key here is the lack of secondary effects, the red cloud indicating more of an aerosoling of the victim, not so much vaporization.
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Re: List of expanded universe sources incompatible with ICS

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Wed Sep 16, 2009 2:57 am

It still was "blazing" though, so it cannot be pulled down to an absurd low end imho.

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Re: List of expanded universe sources incompatible with ICS

Post by Roondar » Wed Sep 16, 2009 8:49 am

Even the 250 MJ (~60 KG of TNT) you mentioned is pretty tame though.

Remember, the blasts are supposed to be capable of taking out fighters. You know, the things that the ICS states fire kiloton level shots. And can take them.

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Re: List of expanded universe sources incompatible with ICS

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu Sep 17, 2009 2:04 pm

Indeed, but it's confirmed by the effect of Slave-I's bolts on the small asteroids that point to subgigajoule yields anyway.

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Re: List of expanded universe sources incompatible with ICS

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Fri Feb 19, 2010 3:06 am

Just seen at SBC:
Tales of the Bounty Hunters, p.102 wrote:
Solo's last maneuver had been to strafe the Star Destroyer. Then he'd gone off the scopes. Dengar figured Solo must have gone back into the asteroid field. Perhaps Solo had shut down systems for a bit, so that his own ship seemed no more than an asteroid, but as Dengar sped into the asteroid field himself, he saw that even Solo himself wasn't crazy enough to risk such a maneuver. Rocks the size of his ship hurtled toward him, and these weren't the soft carbonaceous chrondites that his weapons might punch a hole through- these were nickel-iron rocks that could smash him to pieces.
The MF's shields couldn't withstand an impact with a ~30 meters wide nickel-iron asteroid. This contradicts the shield ratings of ships such as Padmé's Yatch, rated at 2 e12 megawatts (peak).
Plus the weapons on Dengar's ship, likely boosted like they usually are on the ship of any high profile and self respected bounty hunter, might punch through an asteroid of that size if it had been carbonaceous.
This ship, the Punishing One, came with quad laser cannons and proton torpedoes.

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Re: List of expanded universe sources incompatible with ICS

Post by Mike DiCenso » Fri Feb 19, 2010 6:57 pm

Good catch there! I've often heard this passage cited by Warsies as proof iron asteroids in the Hoth belt, but I never was able to find it. If this quote is accurate, it is another example of their cherry picking information as while it establishes iron asteroids (good for ISD firepower estimates), it more than hurts SW by demonstrating weak shields against KE (a ship not having been in any combat or apparently previous entry into the asteroid field) and that 20 meter class starships are not remotely as powerful firepower-wise as they would have everyone believe. Kiloton level firepower would more than be sufficent to shatter solid iron, never mind carbonacious chondrite asteroids.

I'm now really curious as to the thread this came from on SB.com and what the response to it has been.
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Re: List of expanded universe sources incompatible with ICS

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Fri Feb 19, 2010 11:02 pm

Mike DiCenso wrote:Good catch there! I've often heard this passage cited by Warsies as proof iron asteroids in the Hoth belt, but I never was able to find it. If this quote is accurate, it is another example of their cherry picking information as while it establishes iron asteroids (good for ISD firepower estimates), it more than hurts SW by demonstrating weak shields against KE (a ship not having been in any combat or apparently previous entry into the asteroid field) and that 20 meter class starships are not remotely as powerful firepower-wise as they would have everyone believe. Kiloton level firepower would more than be sufficent to shatter solid iron, never mind carbonacious chondrite asteroids.

I'm now really curious as to the thread this came from on SB.com and what the response to it has been.
-Mike
Cherry picking? How dare you!

The thread is here, Mass Effect's Sovereign vs. an ISD, and it didn't really trigger any torrent of indignation or else. The pro-ICS side wasn't particularly vocal and any attempt to shove it down people's throats was rather quickly limited by the indication of other facts from the EU and T-canon, ranging from kiloton at best (generally because of the new Clone Wars stuff) and for example, that old reference about two multi-megaton concussion shocks against ISD shields (the scene from TESB retold from another perspective sort of things you know). Besides the debate quickly focused on more Mass Effect relevant topics and other irrelevancies. The thread in question will probably serve as a future reference for Mass Effect related versus debates.

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