The Death Star's power output confirmed!

[StarWarsStarTrek]

7. Praeothmin, blasters don't use hypermatter, so your analogy is invalid.

Ah, but neither do Turbolasers, because as stated here, TLs and Blasters are the same technology, unlike the DS's superlaser, so YOUR analogy is invalid...

I don't think you understand what hypermatter is supposed to be. It's an energy source. Turbolasers are powered by hypermatter reactors. Blasters are not.

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

I don't think you understand what hypermatter is supposed to be. It's an energy source. Turbolasers are powered by hypermatter reactors. Blasters are not.

Turbolasers are powered by fusion according to G canon and while the ICS tried to twist G canon to suit the bias of the author it failed and just looked stupid.

It was a total grasping at straws and failing moment claiming that fusion reactors (that can only generate a tiny fraction of the power a hypermatter reactor can allegedly produce) are used to "confine" the hypermatter cores. I may not be a physicist like the fanboi author but im pretty sure that if i need power to "confine" energy the confinement field requires more energy than i am producing.

Still that is what happens when you are a desperate fanboi trying weasel your way around a inconvienient fact.

[Mr. Oragahn]

7. Praeothmin, blasters don't use hypermatter, so your analogy is invalid.

Ah, but neither do Turbolasers, because as stated here, TLs and Blasters are the same technology, unlike the DS's superlaser, so YOUR analogy is invalid...

Huh? That doesn't mean they can't get their energy from different source types.

[StarWarsStarTrek]

I don't think you understand what hypermatter is supposed to be. It's an energy source. Turbolasers are powered by hypermatter reactors. Blasters are not.

Turbolasers are powered by fusion according to G canon and while the ICS tried to twist G canon to suit the bias of the author it failed and just looked stupid.

It was a total grasping at straws and failing moment claiming that fusion reactors (that can only generate a tiny fraction of the power a hypermatter reactor can allegedly produce) are used to "confine" the hypermatter cores. I may not be a physicist like the fanboi author but im pretty sure that if i need power to "confine" energy the confinement field requires more energy than i am producing.

Still that is what happens when you are a desperate fanboi trying weasel your way around a inconvienient fact.

Stop dismissing canon just because you don't like it. Hypermatter is canon, and you can try to whine about it, but it's still canon. Gosh. Denying canon for the sole reason of it being inconvenient for your side is dishonest.

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

Stop dismissing canon just because you don't like it. Hypermatter is canon, and you can try to whine about it, but it's still canon. Gosh. Denying canon for the sole reason of it being inconvenient for your side is dishonest.

It is directly contradicted by G canon as well as simple logic and physics for that matter, so no it is not canon.

[Lucky]

I don't see a need to create this hypermatter stuff. It's not like Star Wars is a hard scifi setting, and beside in Star Trek the United federation of planets uses hamsters running on wheels to power their ships according to some bits of canon.

[Praeothmin]

I don't think you understand what hypermatter is supposed to be. It's an energy source. Turbolasers are powered by hypermatter reactors. Blasters are not.

I don't think you understand that Hypermatter may power the TLs, but they are not, in any way, Hypermatter cannons.
They use Tibanna Gas, just like Blasters, and while blasters use power packs, TLs on an ISD may use Hypermatter reactors.

The turbolaser was a heavy laser cannon equipped with large banks of capacitors, allowing them to build up and store far more powerful energy bursts than standard cannons. These capacitors gave huge energy bursts to the beam, greatly increasing its power over standard laser cannons. They also helped power the galven coils in the barrels of turbolasers. First, a particle beam was generated in the manner standard of blasters and laser cannons. Then even more power was achieved by guiding this laser cannon particle-beam through another stream of energized Tibanna Gas (besides the one used in generating the initial beam, since laser cannons work on the same principle as blasters) to increase its power. The extra capacitors in a turbolaser that store huge amounts of raw energy then contributed to the beam by energizing it even further as it moved to the turbolaser's barrel. The resulting beam carried roughly three or more times the energy of a standard laser cannon beam.

I have no problem with that, but what you seem to fail to understand, is that just because the power generator is much bigger, this doesn't automatically mean more power to the guns...
Every circuit has a limit on how much power it will take, and even a big gun like an HTL will not be able to take all the power the Hypermatter reactor can produce.
also, don't forget the reactor has to produce energy for the engines, shields, life support, so not all it's power can go to the guns...

I'm not disputing the Hypermatter reactor, I'm disputing the fact you are trying to scale two very different types of weapons' firepower through their reactor sizes...

[StarWarsStarTrek]

I don't think you understand what hypermatter is supposed to be. It's an energy source. Turbolasers are powered by hypermatter reactors. Blasters are not.

I don't think you understand that Hypermatter may power the TLs, but they are not, in any way, Hypermatter cannons.

...that's exactly what I said. The problem with your scaling is that it only takes into account the nature of the weapon, not the power source powering it. In other words, an example of schematics over practicality. A laser pointer and a laser mounted on a hypothetical starship are both lasers, but one would be far more powerful due to having a far larger energy source, also having faster cooling systems and such. It doesn't always scale linearly either. The turbolasers are using more efficient and higher energy density sources, so their energy per volume would be higher than a blaster, thus making them more powerful even when scaled.

[Praeothmin]

I don't think you understand what hypermatter is supposed to be. It's an energy source. Turbolasers are powered by hypermatter reactors. Blasters are not.

I don't think you understand that Hypermatter may power the TLs, but they are not, in any way, Hypermatter cannons.

...that's exactly what I said. The problem with your scaling is that it only takes into account the nature of the weapon, not the power source powering it. In other words, an example of schematics over practicality. A laser pointer and a laser mounted on a hypothetical starship are both lasers, but one would be far more powerful due to having a far larger energy source, also having faster cooling systems and such. It doesn't always scale linearly either. The turbolasers are using more efficient and higher energy density sources, so their energy per volume would be higher than a blaster, thus making them more powerful even when scaled.

Agreed (and nice argument by the way), but that still doesn't mean HTLs in the GT range, or that scaling down the DS's reactor will yield valid firepower results for an ISD's HTL.
Thus, you have to rely on actual showings in the movies.
The only really quantifiable example we have in movie for an ISD is the TESB asteroid scene, which yields, if we are generous with the asteroid sizes, high KTs for MTLs and HTLs (some shots were fired from the dorsal guns, which all sources say are HTLs)...
While TESB and RotJ also state quite clearly that they have adjustable weapons' yields, I cannot believe that an HTL capable of firing GT to TT will be fired at 0.001% of total power...

[StarWarsStarTrek]

Agreed (and nice argument by the way), but that still doesn't mean HTLs in the GT range, or that scaling down the DS's reactor will yield valid firepower results for an ISD's HTL.
Thus, you have to rely on actual showings in the movies.
The only really quantifiable example we have in movie for an ISD is the TESB asteroid scene, which yields, if we are generous with the asteroid sizes, high KTs for MTLs and HTLs (some shots were fired from the dorsal guns, which all sources say are HTLs)...
While TESB and RotJ also state quite clearly that they have adjustable weapons' yields, I cannot believe that an HTL capable of firing GT to TT will be fired at 0.001% of total power...

Sorry, but you still don't get it. I'm not scaling the firepower of the Death Star; I'm scaling its power generation. This is valid because both the Death Star and star destroyers use similar power sources; the same actually, either hypermatter or fusion to those that seriously think that fusion could power the Death Star.

As much as a lot of you guys dislike Mike Wong, his raw math is almost never wrong. The Death Star was moving at 670 km/sec; which it would have to be on average to reach close to Yavin as ridiculously fast as it did; based on low end estimations of the Death Star's mass by comparing it to a GCS, that's 2.2E29 joules.

If you don't agree with that, then let's examine this thread's topic. On low end, it's about e28 joules even if we assume that the main sequence stars are red dwarfs. Surprisingly, that's within an order of magnitude of Wong's estimates. Pretty big coincidence, eh? G canon and C canon both seem to support this. In fact, the Star Wars website confirms that the Death Star has enough raw power to destroy a planet; keyword raw, since that rules out the chain reaction theory.

Either way, the Death Star's hypermatter reactor is 16 kms in diameter. A star destroyer's is about 140 meters. That's a volume difference of about a million times. e28 joules divided by e6 joules is e22 joules. In comparison, the power generation of the Enterprise is about 12 billion gigawatts, aka e19 joules. That's a difference of a thousand times. This means that a star destroyer's low end calculations for power generation is a thousand times larger than that of the Enterprise.

Unlike the turbolaser to blaster analogy, this is valid because they both use the same type of energy source at the same technology level, so the energy efficiency and energy per volume would be about equal. You might argue that the Enterprise is smaller than a star destroyer, but it's not a thousand times smaller. Using the higher end calculations, a star destroyer's power generation would be around e24 joules per second, which is surprisingly what the ICS states.

You might be wondering why this matters. It validates the 200 gigaton claim. The main challenges of making a turbolaser that powerful would be energy, heat and recoil. With the power generation of a star destroyer confirmed, energy is no longer a big problem. Heat can be explained by shields, which are implied in some novels to dissipate away excess energy. Since star destroyers can take turbolaser blasts, their shields would have to be able to take 200 gigaton blasts, validating the ICS figures for shield disspation, because star destroyers have enough energy to generate that level of shielding. Recoil is explained in the novel Star Wars Slave Ship; there are recoil dampeners or something like that which can take such recoil without blowing the ship in half.

Therefore, the 3 main problems of a 200 gigaton turbolaser are solved. Because of that, there is nothing ridiculous about it, and the claim seems entirely reasonable, and supported by C canon.

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

Sorry, but you still don't get it. I'm not scaling the firepower of the Death Star; I'm scaling its power generation. This is valid because both the Death Star and star destroyers use similar power sources; the same actually, either hypermatter or fusion to those that seriously think that fusion could power the Death Star.

G canon says it does so suck it up.

As much as a lot of you guys dislike Mike Wong, his raw math is almost never wrong. The Death Star was moving at 670 km/sec; which it would have to be on average to reach close to Yavin as ridiculously fast as it did; based on low end estimations of the Death Star's mass by comparing it to a GCS, that's 2.2E29 joules.

Raw math based on bullshit = just more bullshit.

And the DS has mass lightening as well as inertial dampeners so as far as anybody can say it could be moved with the slightest of force, not only that but without those two things it would rip itself apar as soon as it started to accelerate.

In comparison, the power generation of the Enterprise is about 12 billion gigawatts, aka e19 joules.

The E-D arp core was generating that much while sitting in orbit ticking over and we know for a fact that it can be increased by many orders of magnitude to go into warp or to give extra power to the phasers.

[Praeothmin]

Sorry, but you still don't get it. I'm not scaling the firepower of the Death Star; I'm scaling its power generation.

I get that, what you don't get is that while the power generation may scale down, you are:
1- Comparing two different types of weapons for which the only similarity is the source of their power;
2- Failing to understand that both the DS and the ISD's power generators are not directly powering their weapons, they are powering their respective systems, which in turn will power their weapons;
3-Ignoring that any system will have limits on the actual power it can channel;
4-Ignoring that in G and T-Canon (higher than C), no ships ever demonstrated these 200GT anywhere, at anytime. In fact, the 200GT guns don't even exist, according to G and T-Canon;
5-Ignoring the fact that AT-TE guns, rated not even at 1KT in the AotC ICS, are powerful enough to heavily damage Trade Federation ships, in fact they are as efficient as Venator's main guns...
6-Ignoring the fact that TESB is at best mid-range to high KT, and we need to be extremly generous to give MT, which means that the HTLs on the ISD fired at either 0.01% full power (if TESB yields single digit MTs), or 0.001% (if we use the triple digit KT)...
7-Slave 1's guns are rated at 1KT, yet never, ever display anything near this when shooting at asteroids, even when firing at Obi-Wan with the intention of killing him. Again, in the asteroid fight scene, according to the ICS, Slave 1 was firing at 0.1% full power to destroy his enemy...

And these are just a few of the things your argument ignores...

So you see, to accept the ICS and it's absurd figure of 200GT, we need to accept that G and T-Canon are wrong, and the problem with that is , that they are the level of Canon in which we obtain the best and most consistent examples of SW firepower...

And again, if you wish to use the ICS's firepower figures, than we will use the TiDC ones, since they are Canon as well...

[Picard]

5-Ignoring the fact that AT-TE guns, rated not even at 1KT in the AotC ICS, are powerful enough to heavily damage Trade Federation ships, in fact they are as efficient as Venator's main guns...

It might be due to starship having more power at disposal. But even 1 kiloton guns should be able to destroy unshielded ship, considering they use steel as armor.

Sorry, but you still don't get it. I'm not scaling the firepower of the Death Star; I'm scaling its power generation.

Superlaser is not DET so only power generation scaling you might do is from ISD's reactor. ISD can produce1255 TW of power max.

[StarWarsStarTrek]

Sorry, but you still don't get it. I'm not scaling the firepower of the Death Star; I'm scaling its power generation.

I get that, what you don't get is that while the power generation may scale down, you are:
1- Comparing two different types of weapons for which the only similarity is the source of their power;

I'm not comparing their weapons. I'm comparing their power generation.

2- Failing to understand that both the DS and the ISD's power generators are not directly powering their weapons, they are powering their respective systems, which in turn will power their weapons;

How is this relevant?

3-Ignoring that any system will have limits on the actual power it can channel;

This is already taken into account, as I was using demonstrated feats, which would not include waste energy.

4-Ignoring that in G and T-Canon (higher than C), no ships ever demonstrated these 200GT anywhere, at anytime. In fact, the 200GT guns don't even exist, according to G and T-Canon;

Nor do they contradict it, and I'm not comparing their weapons.

5-Ignoring the fact that AT-TE guns, rated not even at 1KT in the AotC ICS, are powerful enough to heavily damage Trade Federation ships, in fact they are as efficient as Venator's main guns...

AT-TEs don't use hypermatter, so what's your point?

6-Ignoring the fact that TESB is at best mid-range to high KT, and we need to be extremly generous to give MT, which means that the HTLs on the ISD fired at either 0.01% full power (if TESB yields single digit MTs), or 0.001% (if we use the triple digit KT)...

Do you understand what lower limits are? If you saw a bullet going through glass, would you conclude that it could only go through glass? No! That's simply a lower limit.

7-Slave 1's guns are rated at 1KT, yet never, ever display anything near this when shooting at asteroids, even when firing at Obi-Wan with the intention of killing him. Again, in the asteroid fight scene, according to the ICS, Slave 1 was firing at 0.1% full power to destroy his enemy...

It's called rapid fire for the purposes of energy and cooling systems.

And these are just a few of the things your argument ignores...

So you see, to accept the ICS and it's absurd figure of 200GT, we need to accept that G and T-Canon are wrong, and the problem with that is , that they are the level of Canon in which we obtain the best and most consistent examples of SW firepower...

And again, if you wish to use the ICS's firepower figures, than we will use the TiDC ones, since they are Canon as well...

Absurd? I've proven that star destroyers have power generation figures in excess of 10^22 watts, so what's so absurd about a 200 gigaton weapon?

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

Absurd? I've proven that star destroyers have power generation figures in excess of 10^22 watts, so what's so absurd about a 200 gigaton weapon?

Actually you made the claim you far from proved it.

However in regards to turbolasers im sure it was mentioned in a description that they are just a more powerful type of laser cannon because of the use of some sort of gas AND because they have larger capacitors so can store up energy for more powerful shots.

So while energy generation is required the fact they have large capacitors and use them to fire their more powerful shots shows that the energy generation on the ship is not up to the task of supplying enough energy for higher powered shots and thus again supports the G canon fusion power generators for SW ships.