List of expanded universe sources incompatible with ICS

[Trinoya]

I would, might keep it less hectic in this thread.

[Mike DiCenso]

The fact that a Rebel base of unknown size with unknown durability and defense systems somewhat survived doesn’t change the fact that the far more quantifiable atmosphere was blown away. You’re using circular reasoning to calculate the firepower of ISD’s based on the ambiguous durability of Star Wars military bases, instead of the far more quantifiable “atmosphere drifted away” part.

If anything, the ability of the Rebel base to survive is a testament to its durability, not the other way around.

No, now that is circular logic. We're not talking about the unusually dense stone of the Yavin IV rebel base here, and nothing was ever stated anywhere about the base being exceptionally tough on Dankayo. If Hoth is anything to go by, the actual base itself is hardly all that tough, especially since megajoule to gigajoule-range AT-AT bolts were able to shake it, and cause signficant cave-ins.

Dankayo was an inhabited colony. Even if it didn’t have an atmosphere at first, it would have been added (we know that Star Wars has the technology to ship planet-encircling oceans, so shipping air shouldn’t be that much of a problem. How else was the Death Star built?)

Proof that anyone bothered to attempt teraforming? All I see is handwaving speculation with little in the way of facts. What we do know is the context of the statement. The orders were to go slag the Rebel base, and the next following sentence talks about atmosphere drifting away. It is just as likely that the base's atmosphere was escaping.

By the way, you also forgot about the fact that Dankayo’s topsoil was “atomized”.

What about that? There is nothing to indicate that the topsoil is anything special. Even on Mars or the Moon there is topsoil, just not the organic composition like on Earth. Furthermore, the topsoil was not being blown off as ejecta into deep space as super-heated plasma, which is what would happen, were ICS-level firepower used here.

The fact is that Dankayo is not the ICS-level event you wish it to be. It took three ISDs to carry out, and only evenly cratered the planet, not turned it into molten lava and with shattered pieces of crust floating about. Thus it still contradicts ICS, and still belongs as a major example of sub-ICS levels of firepower in the EU.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

He keeps bringing the BDZ crap always. Better keep that constrained to one thread. At least we know where to dump the junk. Besides, when he won't be allowed to reboot his arguments here and there, he'll either have to defend them for once, or just quit. That will spare the forum some annoying pollution with his broken record tactics.

[StarWarsStarTrek]

No, now that is circular logic. We're not talking about the unusually dense stone of the Yavin IV rebel base here, and nothing was ever stated anywhere about the base being exceptionally tough on Dankayo. If Hoth is anything to go by, the actual base itself is hardly all that tough, especially since megajoule to gigajoule-range AT-AT bolts were able to shake it, and cause signficant cave-ins.

Whoever said that it was "exceptionally" tough by Star Wars standards? We can't agree on what "Star Wars standards" are, but we can agree on the energy needed to remove the atmosphere from a planet (well, roughly at least).

Therefore, trying to use the former as a benchmark for the latter (even though the latter is completely quantifiable purely on real life physics) is similar to, if the Enterprise sitting on a 100 meter asteroid took a hit from a Death-Ray that pulverized the asteroid, saying that the Death-Ray must be weak because it failed to destroy the Enterprise, instead of calculating using the far more quantifiable-in-real-life 100 meter asteroid.

Proof that anyone bothered to attempt teraforming? All I see is handwaving speculation with little in the way of facts. What we do know is the context of the statement. The orders were to go slag the Rebel base, and the next following sentence talks about atmosphere drifting away. It is just as likely that the base's atmosphere was escaping.

Oh no, an inhabited colony would not bother with terraforming. Who would want to have air?

And if it were merely the base's atmosphere escaping, why is it that the "last of it" drifted away after the planet's surface was evenly cratered and the planet's topsoil atomized? Wouldn't the base's atmosphere drifting away be one of the first things to occur?

What about that? There is nothing to indicate that the topsoil is anything special. Even on Mars or the Moon there is topsoil, just not the organic composition like on Earth. Furthermore, the topsoil was not being blown off as ejecta into deep space as super-heated plasma, which is what would happen, were ICS-level firepower used here.

Well, depending on what definition you use, soil has organic components to it.

The fact is that Dankayo is not the ICS-level event you wish it to be. It took three ISDs to carry out, and only evenly cratered the planet, not turned it into molten lava and with shattered pieces of crust floating about. Thus it still contradicts ICS, and still belongs as a major example of sub-ICS levels of firepower in the EU.
-Mike

No, it blew the atmosphere away. Again, if it were only the base's self contained atmosphere, not only would be hardly be worth mentioning in the same context as the topsoil being atomized and the planet's surface being cratered, but that would be among the first events to occur, taking little more than a one millimeter hole to occur (I'd also like to point out that, if the atmosphere were that of a military base, it would likely have backup failsafes to prevent the atmosphere from venting, especially if it were in the middle of a no-atmosphere moon.)

What probably happened is that the imperials removed the atmosphere from the planet to prevent Rebels from getting far on foot.

[Praeothmin]

but we can agree on the energy needed to remove the atmosphere from a planet (well, roughly at least).

And we can agree that any attack powerful enough to do so would not leave a surface "evenly cratered" or require "mop-up" operations...
Give it up already, the Dankayo attack's description leaves to much open to interpretation, and very contradicting descriptions...
It only works if you ignore the complete description and events that happened after the attack, and you concentrate only on one description, as you do...

the planet's topsoil atomized?

In evenly distributed craters...

[StarWarsStarTrek]

And we can agree that any attack powerful enough to do so would not leave a surface "evenly cratered" or require "mop-up" operations...

Depends on how they do it. It's likely that they used plenty of airbursts and other methods to remove the atmosphere while allowing for troops to land in mostly solid ground.

Give it up already, the Dankayo attack's description leaves to much open to interpretation, and very contradicting descriptions...

There are plenty of interpretations, but some are better than others. Your interpretation just doesn't fit with the facts.

It only works if you ignore the complete description and events that happened after the attack, and you concentrate only on one description, as you do...

It's the most quantifiable description. The rest aren't; we aren't told how big the craters were, or how large Dankayo is for that matter.

In evenly distributed craters...

Which you can't quantify, so what's your point?

You've abandoned trying to argue against my interpretation, and now you're implying that the quote should simply be dismissed out of being to self-contradicting. In other words, you're backtracking.

[Praeothmin]

Depends on how they do it. It's likely that they used plenty of airbursts and other methods to remove the atmosphere while allowing for troops to land in mostly solid ground.

Please, enlighten us with calculations and explanations about how explosions powerful enough to strip the atmosphere off a planet does not leave the surface a molten pool of magma?
Then, I will accept that the Dankayo incident backs up the ICS...

Your interpretation just doesn't fit with the facts.

Neither does yours...

It's the most quantifiable description.

And does not fit with the rest of the descriptions...

[Jedi Master Spock]

Turning a planet to molten slag is hardly a common idiom, JMS. When several independent authors use that same term; some more explicitly than others, you can be pretty sure that they aren’t all using figurative language.

And even if your opinion is that the term is used figuratively (although in Crimson Empire the term is used quite explicitly and literally, albeit only to describe one city), Saxton’s interpretation is different, and his is canon. Trying to counter his literal interpretation with your figurative interpretation isn’t going to work. The molten slag quotes support Saxton if taken literally, but if taken figuratively they support nothing. You still don’t seem to understand burden of proof in relation to the ICS.

Phrases like that actually are common idiom. Words like "glass," "slag," "vaporize," and "destroy" are commonly used loosely. E.g., we might say that the USA and USSR have the ability to destroy the world, between their two nuclear arsenals. For several decades, in fact, the phrase "destroy the world" was common currency. People talked about "glassing" or "slagging" countries or regions all the time.

This did not mean that the USA and USSR actually had the ability to turn countries into glass. They had the capability to effectively destroy a nation, but only a small fraction of that nation's surface would be melted. 100 gigatons divided among 100,000,000 single-kiloton devices is enough to create a lethal destructive effect on every square inch of an Earth-sized globe.

The fact that a Rebel base of unknown size with unknown durability and defense systems somewhat survived doesn’t change the fact that the far more quantifiable atmosphere was blown away. You’re using circular reasoning to calculate the firepower of ISD’s based on the ambiguous durability of Star Wars military bases, instead of the far more quantifiable “atmosphere drifted away” part.

If anything, the ability of the Rebel base to survive is a testament to its durability, not the other way around.

Was there any atmosphere other than what was contained in the Rebel base?

Dankayo was an inhabited colony. Even if it didn’t have an atmosphere at first, it would have been added (we know that Star Wars has the technology to ship planet-encircling oceans, so shipping air shouldn’t be that much of a problem. How else was the Death Star built?)

By the way, you also forgot about the fact that Dankayo’s topsoil was “atomized”.

And how much "topsoil" was that? Dankayo's surface was also cold enough for stormtroopers to walk around on it no more than a few hours later. As I've said, others have discussed this incident in great detail and found that, while it describes a destructive event, it does not require, or even suggest, anything near what the ICS does. It's in the first category - when you look at the details, such as the fact that several ISDs were required to obliterate the small Rebel base and turned out to do sub-ICS levels of destruction after dumping all the firepower they could on the planet.

http://www.theforce.net/books/story/top ... 111631.asp

Search for continent-destroying hell projectors

Donner has provided the quote in context:

[T]he cruiser Wennis, a decomissioned, obsolete, and thoroughly effective instrument of pitiless warfare, being refitted to her master's precise specifications. Her crew was an odd but deliberate mixture of the cream of the galaxy's technical and military elite and its dregs, often represented in the same individual. Her weaponry and defenses ran the gamut from continent-destroying hell projectors to small teams of unarmed combat experts. She had been a gift of prudence from the highest and consequently most vulnerable of sources in the galaxy.

Note the lack of anything specific about the sense of "destroy." More likely, this is meant in the sense of "world-destroying nuclear arsenal," a phrase whose top hit on Google is a serious review of a book on the cold war.

Second category - so non-specific it "supports" nearly any interpretation equally well.

The average population of a developed planet would appear to be 50 billion (100 quadrillion people in galaxy / 1 million plantes) or even more, and would consume far more energy per person than a modern nation. Your estimate is very low end (hence saying that it contradicts Saxton is faulty), but even using the statistics for the United States over 10,000 years (The Galactic Republic existed for 10,000, and the quote used future tense), you get e21 joules for a single hyperspace jump, more than the reactor power of the Enterprise.

Be consistent, please. Sources which describe the galactic population as 100 quadrillion generally say it has more than a million inhabited planets. The Empire doesn't rule every world in the galaxy; indeed, many inhabited worlds don't have a space-faring population. If you consult Wookieepedia, for example, it will tell you that an estimated 20 million sentient species live in the Star Wars galaxy. The EU sources that suggest 100 quadrillion beings as the population of the Star Wars galaxy do so with a substantially larger number of worlds than the 1 million that make up the Empire. (Notoriously, a number of sources ascribe a higher number of systems to the Empire, say 50 million assorted colonies, protectorates, and other minor possessions). Thus, the mean planetary population, according to EU sources, isn't more than a billion or so.

Moreover, the distribution is skewed. A significant portion of the galactic population is concentrated in a few heavily populated systems, e.g., Coruscant.

Thus, the median planetary population is actually closer to the size of the modern US, something that is actually more or less visible on the Essential Atlas's population density map (colored by average population per inhabited system). Thus, we do end up with realistic figures of e20-e22 joules.

This is no more than a millisecond of peak power production of an ISD according to the Saxtonite model.

Again, second category. It fails to contradict the ICS, but neither does it actually require anything anywhere near to what the ICS states.

Saxton advised works. There’s an important different. Whoever the author was approved of the advice.

Actually, I don't think it's an important difference. Saxton is the origin of the figure in either case.

Who says that the feat was exceptional?

The novel in context.

Since when does the ICS deem it normal, when 8 light minutes was stated to be the maximum range?

The ICS states "The DBY-827's precise, long-range tracking mode enables it to hit a target vessel at distances of over ten light minutes," i.e., it says such distances are within effective normal range.

Which is patently absurd.

No, according to the ICS turbolasers can hit stuff from 8 light minutes away, but you can easily figure out that a moving target could just dodge it.

Most moving targets would accidentally dodge it, if moving under power.

Please check the difference between maximum and effective range. Turbolasers could have perfect accuracy and extreme beam coherence and 8 light minutes still wouldn’t make a good effective range unless if it were very FTL.

Given the tracking accuracy necessary to actually hit a target vessel at 10 light minutes (i.e., extremely small angular precision) and light-speed propagation (also part of the Saxtonite model) hundred kilometer ranges are utterly absurd to fight at. I.e., it's on the balance of contradicting the ICS - not supporting it. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

See above. And by Saxton calcs, I am referring to the broad category of high end calcs from the pro Wars side.

Well, I'm specifically referring to the coherent Saxtonite model, outlined by the ICSes, which has some details filled in on the SWTC. I like being specific.

I would be interested in hearing a quote claiming that. Actually, I would like to hear several different parties making that claim, all using the word slag – oh no, you can’t do it, because the USSR couldn’t.

Are you seriously arguing that people don't refer to the USSR / USA "slagging" countries/the world?

People use such all the time.

I was referring to the various turbolaser showings in comics with out of scale depictions from land and from space. Your idea of rationalizing it was to say that the far away panel shots were wrong and that the officers were hallucinating.

I would refer you again to the inherently inaccurate nature of comic book visuals.

Thank you then. Why were you arguing with me if you agreed that the source was unreliable, just like I said?

I don't "agree the source is unreliable." I say the medium is limited[/url] and that the literal visual depiction is unreliable.

We don't know that X explosion is really Y meters across. We just know that it's there, and we happen to know that there are people running around on the surface during these bombardments in the middle of the target zones, mysteriously not demolished; that random critters and plants survived the bombardment and are wandering around looking sad afterwards. These qualitative pieces of information, which are not subject to the distortions of the media being used, are what provide a contradiction to the ICS; thus, the problem of comic book visuals being exaggerated, cartoonish, and non-literal do not suffice to eliminate the contradiction. If you are following an EU completist canon policy, you don't have grounds to throw out that information.

Turbolasers would be bigger than laser cannons. Duh, or at least look different, like, you know, they do everywhere else. You see all the same weapon being fired at the planet. Why? Who knows, but you’re trying to deny set in stone visuals. It may be stupid of them to not use their turbolasers, but that doesn’t invalidate what irrefutably happened.

I'm not trying to deny "set in stone visuals." I'm pointing out that those visuals show something that does not and cannot reasonably fit with the ICS.

Oh please. The quote does not exclude the possibility that laser cannons would be used as well, but it does heavily imply that proton torpedos were the major damage dealer, and whether they shot a few laser cannons too is irrelevant…unless if you agree that their laser cannons would contribute jack to turning an island into molten slag, in which case you’d be agreeing with kiloton level laser cannons.

Do you know how many shots a laser cannon can make? Presumably, hundreds or thousands during a mission.

With kiloton level proton torpedoes, multi-gigajoule laser bolts are highly relevant to being able to make the whole island a smoking ruin.

It’s a mountain chain, not a single volcano.

Emphasis added to your claim to highlight a very direct contradiction. The description is perfectly clear:
Salm reached out and touched the holographic world. The island he selected grew up in place of the world of which it was part. As the image expanded, the computer added buildings, mountains, ion-cannon batteries, and other details of military importance. Two steep mountain chains - the edges of an extinct Volcano's crater - enclosed the base like parentheses.
And then:
"The island, you see, is part of an old Volcano. The generators are geothermal and old and not up to the strain of raising the shield and powering the ion cannons."

"And if they choose to go turtle instead of trying to shoot?"

"The bomber pilot traced a circle around what would have originally been the edge of the crater. To the south the wall had broken down almost completely and much of the base had been built on the flat stretch of land that linked the volcano and the bay. On the north side of the crater the wall had begun to erode,but it was just a small divot compared to the gap in the south.

"The shield has to cover everything from the beach to the tops of the mountains. On the North side it should be possible to blast through the mountain and open up enough of a gap to let our bombers in. Once we're under the shield, the generators go and its over."

Grand isle is a volcanic island, produced by a single volcano, which has since subsided into dormancy. The "mountain chains" are the two rings of small peaks surrounding the volcanic crater.

And the primary anti ship weapons used on starfighters, proton torpedos, aren’t reactor powered either, so the analogy works fine.

In order for that analogy to continue neatly, you also need to have the reactors of the star destroyers not powering their weapons.

Which is fine by me. The reasons that nuclear warships and diesel warships can fight on near-level playing fields are much the same reasons that hypermatter-powered and fusion-powered ships in the Star Wars EU fight on near-level playing fields. Whatever the ultimate potentials of hypermatter, it is not being used to create obscene shield strengths and firepower densities not achievable with fusion - not on the capital ships that Saxton intends to have such a massive pound-for-pound advantage over fighters.

Which explicitly isn’t the case in Star Wars. Star Wars: Death Star explicitly states that hypermatter has more energy potential than M/AM conversion.

I might also question why you think that the fusion reactors in Star Wars use nuclear fusion, when it is stated in EGWT that SW fusion reactors can fuse “virtually any substance” including heavy metals, which nuclear fusion can’t do.

"Virtually any substance" can generate energy by being retconfigured into a lower-energy nuclear state. The fact that "fusion" in fact means "fusion" is underlined pretty heavily by the novels, particularly the ROTJ novel ("thermonuclear fireworks") and the ROTS novel (lengthy "sun dragon" passage).

This is, of course, light years beyond our modern technology, but I'm afraid you need to have some advanced technology in order to have a galactic civilization. Hypermatter reactors, however, are a peculiarly Saxtonite oddity that he introduced; and although other EU sources have adopted hypermatter reactors, they show no indications at all that fighters and older capital ships, powered by fusion, are substantially outclassed on a pound-for-pound basis by hypermatter-powered capital ships.

Not engineering-wise. The main weapons are drawing on the reactor (according to the ICS).

According to the ICS. But is that what George Lucas was thinking?

But they draw different percentages of the main reactor’s power, because one belongs to large ships that rely less on maneuvering and twisting like the smaller one does. An Acclamator is going to have more power diverted to the main guns than a small starfighter whose “main guns” are anti-starfighter, and of whose reactor will largely be used to power the maneuvering thrusters. A starfighter will proportionally rely more on maneuvering thrusters than a star destroyer would.

Very minor, so don’t use substantial to describe it. Justifying proportional power levels solely on this single factor (the others are bogus) would require that you dismiss every other factor that is surface area, volume and mass based, and I’d remind you that mass correlates with surface area in the case of similarly constructed starships. The fact that one factor has something to do with length (and more, actually, with mass, which correlates in starship classes with volume) isn’t an excuse for solely scaling on length.

I disagree. The moment of inertia of a ship scales with mass and the square of dimension. A 1600m vessel has 10,000,000,000 times the moment of inertia of a similarly constructed 16m ship, but only has 1,000,000 times the reactor size. Proportionately, it's 10,000 times as hard to turn it around.

Now, it's true that capital ships have more geometrically compact forms than fighters, on average, and fighters do turn much more quickly; but a larger ship, even turning more slowly, experiences more torque, and as we saw in the TESB chase, the linear acceleration of an ISD isn't appreciably less than the linear acceleration of the "fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy."


Proportionately, in other words, an ISD requires more investment in maneuvering capability than a TIE fighter - just to turn like a slug in comparison.

That's the problem with being big.

I reiterate:
The fragments may in some cases be either too small or too fast to be seen, but to assert that they are "intended to be absent" is something that requires substantial proof.

Because they were clearly visible right after (or before, if you take the invisible beam portion theory) the turbolaser striked, but then disappear as the reaction took place. I wonder what that could mean, eh?

Given the fragments that were visible were glowing a dim ruddy color, that means that they already cooled below incandescent temperatures.

"May." But not "definitely." A more reliable indicator of what type of bolt is being fired would be bolt size. In Star Trek, we sometimes see torpedoes fired from a phaser array, or phasers from a torpedo launcher. It's best to ignore those cases.

In Star Wars, when we're not sure what gun fired a bolt, it's best to presume nothing about which gun was actually responsible.

Why are you assuming that Star Wars filmmakers make the exact same mistakes as Star Trek filmmakers?

Why are you assuming that they're infallible, rather than concluding that bolts fired from no apparent gun, of a size no different from those fired by visible guns on the model, are fired by invisibly small guns that are not actually present on the model?

The problem is that "supersonic" means "in much much less than one frame" when it comes to a 40m hunk of iron, like he's assuming.

Except that the asteroid was being affected in less than a frame after the turbolaser hit. What I don’t understand is why you seem to think that the sonic shock as you call it of a turbolaser would be any significant damaging component when turbolasers are thermal based. Did you expect for the asteroid to shatter from what essentially amounts to sound waves? The turbolaser’s impact would be damaging because of its thermal energy.

You clearly don't understand.

A shock - you can call a "blast wave" a sound wave if you like, it's basically the same sort of thing - is ordinarily transmitted at the speed of sound. When it's very high energy, it travels faster than the speed of sound - hence "supersonic." But the speed of sound in rock is several kilometers per second. That means that the physical shock from the strike - much like the blast wave of a nuclear bomb - would travel at multiple kilometers per second. Yes, that means that the asteroid would be already shattered and scattered in the very frame of impact if the TLC yields were correct.

Alone? Were the X wings unsupported by capital ships and fighting against a full strength enemy?

In many cases, yes.

There are several factors that you are failing to recognize:

1. That most of those occurrences involve Rogue Squadron, who became famous largely because of their success against capital ships. It isn’t common.

Sort of like that pilot that shot down a jet fighter in a bi-plane. In Fate of the Jedi: Conviction, a heavily fortified planet with a starfighter wing didn’t even bother to launch when a non-friendly star destroyer appeared out of nowhere, because it was stated that trying to take it on was suicidal. Why?

Because Rogue Squadron wasn’t there, nor were superhuman Jedi in Stealth X’s.

Nobody is going to pretend that it doesn't take an elite fighter squadron to take down a Star Destroyer with nothing more than X-Wings. If nothing else, a Star Destroyer carries its own fighter complement.

I'm not saying that a single fighter squadron carries more firepower than an entire Star Destroyer. I'm saying that a single fighter squadron carries just enough firepower to disable a Star Destroyer, if applied just right - a VSD, at least, for X-Wings, and a full-size ISD for B-Wings.

2. Like the above, you can see in TPM and RotJ that fighters typically do jack to star destroyers. Citing a few instances of the best squadron

in the galaxy taking out an outdated star destroyer is citing exceptions, not the norm.

ROTS and ROTJ both prove otherwise, as does TESB - a ramming attack from the Falcon could have been as deadly to the ISD as the ROTJ A-Wing's ramming attack on the SSD.

Note that the fighter horde tasked to take out the Lusyanka consisted of several hundred craft, and was not by any measure an elite unit; just one well supplied with proton torpedoes.

3. What does this prove? That starfighters are exceptionally powerful? There you are with your circular reasoning; establishing your own calculations for starfighters and then scaling them to star destroyers. The problem is that your own established calculations for starfighters are just as much in dispute as yours for star destroyers. I could just as easily say that starfighters being able to take on capital ships merely means that starfighters are very powerful and that proton torpedos can be gigaton level, not the opposite.

Starfighters are less controversial. Very few people [i.e., only Saxtonites] put proton torpedoes at more than the kiloton range. Very few people put them under the ton range. Compare with SDs, where the non-Saxtonite range is about nine orders of magnitude below the Saxtonite range.

Also, the relationships between starfighters and capital ships are extensively explored in the EU - and clearly contradicts Saxton's model.

Since when? The proton torpedos we saw that could make 70,000 G turns (by the way, ever calculate the energy needed to do that, and scaled it up to a star destroyer?) were not high yield, capital ship busting ones, so they’re comparable to Jango Fett’s missile. Your comparison falls short.

True, but what’s your point exactly? You tried to claim that Slave 1’s missiles and their size proved that proton torpedos used to bust capital ships were that powerful, because the missiles were just as big as proton torpedos, or actually larger. Problem is that those proton torpedos you saw were anti-starfighter, and even if the capital ship busting ones were the same size, they’d have more of the size devoted to blowing stuff up than maneuvering. You counter by saying that they can already maneuver fine…and cite examples of non-capital ship busting torpedos being used, as if it somehow shows that capital ship busting torpedos are maneuverable. Truth is we haven’t actually seen capital ship busting torpedos on screen, because they’re an EU invention. In the movies, starfighters aren’t a major threat to capital ships.

70,000 g is a bad figure. It's not what we actually see in the film.

Now, it's funny that you should mention that the proton torpedoes we saw making that turn and what sort of target they were intended for. Those were the torpedoes that blew up the Death Star, launched from ships who were on a mission to destroy the Death Star, which were supplied specifically for the task of blowing up the Death Star. Yet they display every ounce of maneuverability that the anti-fighter missiles in ROTS display.

Remember, you said:

Sure, there are plenty. That volume can pack stuff other than explosives. Hint: what would it need more of to take out starfighter sized craft?

So. Proton torpedoes have the yield to take out small craft. This is not under dispute. Proton torpedoes also clearly have the maneuverability needed to take out small craft - the ones Luke shoots off in ANH are no less maneuverable than the ones fired at Obi and Ani in ROTS. And if you were treating the EU consistently, you'd respect the fact that they actually DO take out small craft on a regular basis in the EU.

There is absolutely no reason for Jango's missile to be at the same time grossly larger than a proton torpedo (obvious from its use in AOTC), less powerful than a proton torpedo, and less maneuverable than a proton torpedo (obvious from its use in AOTC). The logical conclusion is that it's more powerful than a proton torpedo. In exchange, it is larger and less maneuverable. The only problem is that if you're trying to reconcile the ICS with Rogue Squadron type incidents, you need to suddenly come up with gigaton proton torpedoes, and the AOTC missile isn't even near the 190 megatons that the ICS claims for it.

I will note that the Death Star is larger than anything Jango Fett would reasonably expect to target with his missile. And I'm going to underline just how much bigger Jango's torpedo is. It's so much bigger that you could remove less than one tenth of its fuel and maneuvering thrusters and fit a pair of any proton torpedo seeker heads in there in addition to its current warhead. There's no logical reason whatsoever for Jango's missile to be a lower-yield weapon than any proton torpedo; it should have a payload larger than the entire proton torpedo [the part that actually gets fired at a target, anyway]. That's my point; and what you objected to.

Your quote claimed that a B-Wing, a starfighter maybe 10 meters in length had firepower on par with a capital ship, or a ship 100+ meters in length.

And you call the ICS disproportional?

It's perfectly understandable - once we understand that the B-Wing is advanced, unusually heavily armed for its size, and designed to unload its firepower in a hurry. Something like a customs corvette needs to carry confiscated cargo and prisoners, several shifts' worth of crew, Stormtroopers, fuel supplies for extended travel, et cetera. That means that most of its mass is devoted to carrying stuff.

If not volume, than surface area. Length has no relevance to raw capabilities of starships, but EU authors are too stupid to realize that. Volume is far more relevant, and Saxton knows it. But you decide to take the word of idiot authors over a smarter one, because you seem to take quotes that support your side more as more credible just because…well, they support your side more. That’s not an objective way of analyzing things.

Surface area, not length, and the reactor powering the shields is volume scaled.

How is intended duration of combat missions relevant to length at all? If anything, it’s related to mass and volume, ie the amount of supplies it can carry.

There you go with your cleverly disguised double standard again. You admit that EU authors not only write something ridiculous scientifically, but something ridiculous mathematically and logically, yet you accept it as fact. Yet when Saxton writes something far less blatantly stupid, you decide to dismiss it on the basis of not making sense. Why are you so obsessed with exalting a stupider model of Star Wars over a more rational one?

Divide volume by surface area and you get (on average) length. This is what happens if shield strength scales with reactor size and inversely with the area protected. Actual length isn't necessarily important; it's just a rough proxy for use with similarly proportioned ships. It happens to be that Starships of the Galaxy (2007) provides exactly the relevant set of proportions in comparing a Strike Cruiser with a VSD: Similarly proportioned, but half the capabilities for one quarter of the price [and at 450m vs 900m, approximately one eighth the size].

Now, if you're intending to bring down ships smaller than you, which is the usual design requirement of something like an ISD, then you only need to match the shield capabilities of the enemy vessel with your firepower. If shield strength scales by volume divided by surface area, you only need to increase firepower by a similar factor [i.e., approximately with length] in order to compete. This leaves you with more space for transporting fighters, troops, and supplies, such as the fuel you would need to make an extended bombardment. A fighter might run dry after several hours of combat; but an ISD needs to carry fuel for its own fighters and its own capabilities for possibly dozens of combat missions in between resupply. It's painfully easy to come up with a good justification for why Star Wars ships' fighting abilities would scale roughly with the cube root of volume, or roughly with length.

This is nothing new to people who study actual military systems. The Arleigh Burke class destroyer carries as its main weapons payload a 96 cell missile system. 10,000 tons of warship and up to 150 tons of missiles, plus a few torpedoes, CIWS, and a 5" gun, bringing its total maximum payload of ordnance up to ... I believe 200 tons or so. 2% of its mass is devoted to the things that go bang when it fights other ships. Compare with the F-18 Super Hornet; it has a maximum takeoff weight of 30 tons, and can carry 8 tons of external ordnance - 27%. The difference? The F-18 is intended to go in and go out in a couple hours. The Arleigh Burke class is designed for missions that could last for months.

Several problems with this, most notably that you’re wrong in that other sourcebooks and guides do say stuff that’s clearly incorrect, and also that you’re dropping in some circular reasoning by saying that Saxton’s work is “clearly incorrect”.

Actually, Star Wars guides tend to avoid explicit yield figures. This is what was very unusual about the AOTC ICS.

No actually, I didn’t. Where exactly did Brian Young state this?

http://www.stardestroyer.net/tlc/Charac ... index.html

Yes they are, in a similar fashion in which Wong and Saxton’s calculations are very very close, if not the same.

No, they aren't. I gave you exact numbers as an example, so stp pretending ignorance.

You’re serious? You think that it’s “about an exawatt”, which is e18 watts, ie just 1 order of magnitude less (very well within the standard error of deviation for fan-calculations, as your comparison with darkstar proves) than the highest stated power generation figure for the Enterprise (and that’s assuming that Data was about to say “second”, and the ST scripts aren’t canon) and about the same as the power level stated in the Technical Journel, which, while not technically canon, was stated to be official and “pretty accurate”.

The TNGTM is horribly inaccurate when it comes to actual energy figures, but that's another topic for another time.

Yes, I believe that peak power consumption of an ISD is around an exawatt. Possibly several exawatts. This is solidly grounded in hyperdrive mechanics. I view conservation of energy as the best possible method of calculating peak power consumption; this is the same exact reason that GCS peak power consumption is clearly 400+ exawatts. What I find particularly neat about this method is that it can be used in the exact same manner for a GCS and ISD.

You’re well aware that the OOM variation increases as the figures grow.

A gigaton event is as distinct from a megaton event as a Hiroshima event from a daisy cutter event.

Where additional variation creeps is when things get more complicated, or more derived. Scaling issues, for example, crop up.

A kilojoule vs a megajoule for a hand weapon would probably equal the two opposite sides of a debate, but 10^24 joules and 10^27 joules would simply be a margin of error for one side of a debate.

If the hand weapon is a blaster carbine, yes.

If the hand weapon is a phaser, however, the figures range from kilojoules to gigajoules. Power consumption, for example, may be e18 watt for myself and e25 watt for Saxton, "only" seven orders of magnitude apart; but Saxton also believes the ISD has e25 watt sustained firepower, while I would pick the e16 watt range (EDIT: Well, really, e14-e16 watt sustained firepower, it is fairly hard to be too sure when it comes to sustained rates of fire, so I feel there's a large margin of error).

This is because in the Saxtonite model, firepower is limited by reactor power. In my model, reactor power is driven by the requirements of hyperdrive, and weapons may or may not even be integrated into the same power system.

Oh, there are diversities, but you all seem to agree that everybody else’s (everybody on your side) calculations are completely plausible. Otherwise, you wouldn’t jump to defending darkstar like you typically do. Then, on occasions of your choosing you suddenly turn around and disassociate from him.

I defend Darkstar's right to present his calculations; I feel they are "better" than the Saxtonite figures, relatively speaking, but that doesn't mean I think they're correct. If you read through the forum archives, you'll see that I have fairly intractable disagreements with many of our regular posters. We have respect for one another and understand why we come up with the figures that we do. Darkstar is a movie purist who applies a documentarian approach. I, however, prefer to take the movies as dramatic renditions rather than documentary evidence, and don't really care about the debate over what is and is not canon. As far as I'm concerned, any reasonable person attempting to include the EU will have to dispense with the ICS, just as any reasonable person attempting to make sense out of the movies will have to dispense with the ICS.

[General Donner]

Be consistent, please. Sources which describe the galactic population as 100 quadrillion generally say it has more than a million inhabited planets. The Empire doesn't rule every world in the galaxy; indeed, many inhabited worlds don't have a space-faring population. If you consult Wookieepedia, for example, it will tell you that an estimated 20 million sentient species live in the Star Wars galaxy. The EU sources that suggest 100 quadrillion beings as the population of the Star Wars galaxy do so with a substantially larger number of worlds than the 1 million that make up the Empire. (Notoriously, a number of sources ascribe a higher number of systems to the Empire, say 50 million assorted colonies, protectorates, and other minor possessions). Thus, the mean planetary population, according to EU sources, isn't more than a billion or so.

The 100 quadrillion number was for the territory controlled by the Republic, at least when it was originally given in the WEG books. Not the total galactic population, nor that of the Empire. The basic rulebook for 2nd edition WEG SWRPG:

Reaching out from what came to be known as the Core Worlds, the Republic eventually embraced over a million member worlds, and countless more colonies, protectorates and governorships. Nearly 100 quadrillion beings pledged allegiance to the Republic in nearly fifty million systems.

This still gives roughly the same numbers as you establish here. Just me being pedantic. ;)

[Mr. Oragahn]

A prequel comic gave the Republic an authority over 100,000 worlds. It's quite a stretch to have 400 quadrillion people spread over so few worlds.

[StarWarsStarTrek]

A prequel comic gave the Republic an authority over 100,000 worlds. It's quite a stretch to have 400 quadrillion people spread over so few worlds.

You mean 100 quadrillion, and it's still canon. In fact, the presence of quadrillions of people in the galaxy and trillions on Coruscant alone is confirmed in the RotS novelization.

In fact, the RotS novelization has plenty of high end feats for this debate. There's the vaporize a small town quote that's the most well known around here, but there's also the firing-weapons-at-near-light-speed, quadrillions-of-people-in-the-galaxy and shooting-hallfire-missiles-out-of-the-air-in-2.5-seconds.

[General Donner]

A prequel comic gave the Republic an authority over 100,000 worlds. It's quite a stretch to have 400 quadrillion people spread over so few worlds.

If you change the number of planets the Republic was supposed to control, then obviously population density goes up if you want to keep the total population figures. The WEG Republic was supposed to control the 50+ million planets the fan debate tends to ascribe to the Empire. I know that's been lowered somewhat since -- prequel novel "Shatterpoint" talked about roughly 1 million, and IIRC other books can mention even lower numbers at times.

[Mr. Oragahn]

There's also a map that shows population density across the galaxy, and it's more than obvious that there's just not enough of those super populated worlds to account for the higher number.
Coruscant itself is literally unique, as per some movie novelization.

Oh and SWST should really shut. I can't understand why he's allowed to reboot all discussions on and on. Everything about Dankayo has already been dealt with. Everything.
Same with the volcano base. JMS had even replied to SWST back on page 14, citing a post of mine from page 8.
This is ludicrous. If SWST can't be arsed to read and think, it's his problem. Let no him pollute this board. We all like debate and discussion and wouldn't mind more activity, but not if it comes at the price of quality and cohesion.

[General Donner]

There's also a map that shows population density across the galaxy, and it's more than obvious that there's just not enough of those super populated worlds to account for the higher number.

The Official Atlas map? I'm not sure I agree -- IIRC it lists only average-per-planet populations per sector, and none too exactly at that. Nothing solid on how many planets actually have huge (or small) populations, really.

Coruscant itself is literally unique, as per some movie novelization.

How specific was the phrasing in the novel? In the WEG books, Coruscant was the most heavily populated planet, but there were also many other ecumenopoleis completely covered with city and with lots of space stations. For example, "Dark Force Rising" Sourcebook:

Many of the galaxy's Core Worlds are totally urbanized, relying on the goods of other planets to supply the food and raw materials they need to keep going. These worlds are surrounded by system-wide networks of orbiting warehouses, storage holds, and docking stations through which food, fuel and other imported goods must pass on their way in from deep space.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Totally urbanized doesn't mean much. They could be totally Japanized for all we know. Japan is more than well urbanized and largely depends on external sources of food, its own production being too limited.
We've seen other city-planets in SW but even at 1 trillion people per world, you'd need an absurd amount of them to reach the high quadrillions, and we know SW is nowhere there.