Which universes can Star Wars actually beat?

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Which universes can Star Wars actually beat?

Post by Khas » Fri May 12, 2017 1:23 am

What with the new Disney canon in place and doing a severe nerfing of firepower, I can think of only a few sci-fi universes that SW could actually win against in ship-to-ship combat (not counting superweapons).

They are:
Firefly
Battlestar Galactica (new)
Babylon 5 (maybe)


Any others?

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Re: Which universes can Star Wars actually beat?

Post by Enterprise E » Fri May 12, 2017 1:18 pm

From what I've see, Star Wars can definitely beat Firefly. Shields may give it an edge against B5, though the Minbari stealth and the firepower of the beam weapons and the nukes may be issues for capital ships, assuming later sources don't give them better feats. However, numbers seem to favor Star Wars so I think that they should be able to pull off a win, but it will not be without cost. If properly utilized, the 500 megaton nukes should inflict devastating damage to Star Wars fleets. Nukes will also be an issue for dealing with new Battlestar Galactica, however, numbers should tell the tale for Star Wars in that scenario. Also, while I know that BSG's 50 megaton nukes were used against planets, I can't remember if such warheads were ever used against the ships, themselves. If so, then Star Wars has problems unless the Death Star comes into play. If not, though, conventional weapons and ships should be enough given Star Wars's significant numerical advantage.

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Re: Which universes can Star Wars actually beat?

Post by 2046 » Fri May 12, 2017 11:10 pm

Has there really been no wankery in the new novels and such? I was sure there was. Murkhana comes to mind from Tarkin, a planet that suffered massive cratering and ecological catastrophe from seas being boiled away or somesuch from bombardment during the Clone Wars.

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Re: Which universes can Star Wars actually beat?

Post by Khas » Sat May 13, 2017 12:05 am

The planet was bombarded, yes, but the damage was entirely to the planet's biosphere. The seas remained intact, but all animal life more complex than jellyfish in them was wiped out. If anything, a lot of the ecological damage was caused by toxins and radiation, IIRC.

EDIT: Just re-read the page. It said that it only became like that after years of orbital bombardment.

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Re: Which universes can Star Wars actually beat?

Post by 2046 » Sat May 13, 2017 1:30 am


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Re: Which universes can Star Wars actually beat?

Post by Iscander » Sat May 13, 2017 2:40 am

The crater sizes they mention in "Tarkin" suggest yields in the kiloton range. low double digit to low triple digit depending on some assumptions and what calculators you use.

To the original question:

The Expanse, since Firefly was already mentioned
Iron Sky, why not
Battlstar Galactica (1978) depending on how you feel about oBSGs firepower, fleet sizes were pretty small

Maybe some video game franchises.

Killzone
Halo, without getting all super wanky
Mass Effect might be fun, Poor kinetic protection with plasma weapons vs poor energy protection with slug throwers

For the ones already mentioned
Babylon 5, I would say depends on your scenario.

If the Empire can through its full weight against the younger races, no problem. Cripple the beacon network, blockade a world at a time Centauri style, overwhelming force when met with real resistance, and so on.

If there are still having to hold their own political situation together, then no. It would just leave them more spread out against the Rebels with actual militaries thrown in on top of it. That doesn't even involve wanky EU first ones needing to get involved.

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Re: Which universes can Star Wars actually beat?

Post by 2046 » Sat May 13, 2017 10:46 am

Well, 350m is the necessary crater radius. We also need that as depth, since it was "impossible to tell the bomb craters from the circular repulsorlift pits that had once functioned as service areas for the Separatists' spherical core ships", which in most cases seemed to be half-buried in the ground. With a surface burst I get five megatons at http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ to create a 330m crater radius, but it is only 500ft (a hundred and some-odd meters) deep. That calculator doesn't react to attempts to force subsurface detonations.

Also, I would pay real money to see The Expanse versus the new Battlestar Galactica. Both get whacked by the Empire, of course, with higher-g maneuvering and more powerful standard weapons besides nukes. That said, a fighter-delivered50MT device would ruin the Imperial day.

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Re: Which universes can Star Wars actually beat?

Post by Iscander » Sat May 13, 2017 2:29 pm

I wouldn't rule out higher yields, especially trying to hit the crater depth.

I found some information on buried nuclear tests.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedan_(nuclear_test)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagan_(nuclear_test)

And some information on high explosive cratering and scaling
http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRec ... =AD0263170

The low number, double digit kiloton comes from Wong's crater calculator
The low triple digit kiloton number was an estimate based on some of this testing and looks to be low

Using the test scaling pushes up the yield to about 500 - 600 kt, but that probably won't hit the crater depth.
Your mileage may vary based on what materials and conditions you assume.

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Re: Which universes can Star Wars actually beat?

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu Jul 27, 2017 5:00 pm

Enterprise E wrote:From what I've see, Star Wars can definitely beat Firefly. Shields may give it an edge against B5, though the Minbari stealth and the firepower of the beam weapons and the nukes may be issues for capital ships, assuming later sources don't give them better feats. However, numbers seem to favor Star Wars so I think that they should be able to pull off a win, but it will not be without cost. If properly utilized, the 500 megaton nukes should inflict devastating damage to Star Wars fleets. Nukes will also be an issue for dealing with new Battlestar Galactica, however, numbers should tell the tale for Star Wars in that scenario. Also, while I know that BSG's 50 megaton nukes were used against planets, I can't remember if such warheads were ever used against the ships, themselves. If so, then Star Wars has problems unless the Death Star comes into play. If not, though, conventional weapons and ships should be enough given Star Wars's significant numerical advantage.
Talking about nBSG.

Nuclear radiations could from time to time mess with the tylium's abilities to power FTL drives. Tylium is a made up element in the show that is used both for fuel, explosives such as mines and nuclear-like ordnance.
A fully armoured Battlestar could tank several nukes fired by several Basestars pounding it. It's hard to know how powerful these nukes could be. We've seen 50 KT ones fired by Cylon Raiders that seriously messed up the old, post-decomission Galactica.
Galactica as seen in the miniseries and the renewal show was shown to be a ghost of her former self.
Blood & Chrome revealed what she looked like when at full capacity (see here since the old wikia has been shut down), and she was a beast: full armour coverage, more guns and two operative and fully mechanized decks in the fighter bays.
Battlestar Pegasus' crew did take very seriously the one fired by another Raider during the holocaust on the colonies, which was probably a 50 KT one too, although during the series, the ship was seen tanking several nuclear shots from Basestars. These Cylon warships were known to carry anything from medium KT nukes to low to medium two-digits megaton nukes too.



In nBSG, Galactica was shown to have an array of nukes (many megatons per nuke considering the destruction they'd brought upon a planet, as per William0 Adama's words), but visibly not suited for ship to ship use; they were placed in silos such as those you'd find on nuclear submarines.
B&C did show a smaller Colonial warship with nuclear abilities and a capacity to fire at Basestars, although the ship had taken damage and couldn't fire the weapons so the captain had it sacrificed into the enemy's ship.


In firepower, warships seem to be even. Star Wars's heaviest warships seem to fit now in a range where their heavy weapons rain gigajoule bolts on their enemies, anything from low to high GJ. Their rate of fire seems higher than what nBSG ships ditch per second.
SW ships also rely on energy weapons to a large degree, which seem to require little to no ammunition to be stored, that for most of their heavy weapons.

Battlestars rely on heavy kinetic high-gigajoule penetrators and explosives over long-range, especially for the heavier ships, whilst the smaller ships (from not that small to much smaller) have been shown to come with a wide range of missile platforms. These weapons proved to be sufficient to damage Basestars which, in comparison, seem to be made of tissue paper; they're largely fitting the role of carriers, even if heavily armed, whilst Battlestars are multi-purpose'd "battleships".

As for fighters and bombers, Star Wars has a definitive edge when it comes to conventional weapons and shields that are relevant against such weapons.
However Colonial Vipers and Raptors carry much more potent explosives: Vipers are seen to use dialable conventional rockets that can go from simply killing a duo of Cylon Centurions and destroying a feeble prison camp's gate to literally gutting a multi-dozen meters wide asteroid into hot debris. Vipers, but above all Raptors, can be fitted with an obscene amount of nuclear missiles.
Colonial fighters would stand very little chances and would be forced to rely on missiles. Otherwise it would be ID4 all over again.


Star Wars portrays galactic powers which are simply too large, with too many redudancies to be threatened by the Twelve Colonies or even the secret Cylon Colony.

However, it all depends on how much the political entity you're interested in is ready to allot to fighting a group of worlds that are well united and coordinated.
Each Battlestar group is headed by a Battlestar battleship and its warship escorts in normal times, like a typical naval formation.

With a total of 120 Battlestar groups, plus ground defenses, this makes for a very large total fleet for such a small sector. In fact, it's a concentration of ships per world that largely surpasses anything we've seen in SW, aside from the battle above Coruscant that basically pitted the vast majority of both Republican and Confederational fleets.

Attacking the Twelve Colonies will still require the use of a significant fleet, most likely on par with what the Galactic Empire used at Endor, or even greater.
That Empire was about ten times bigger than the Republic and had an operational Death Star too at some point.
So basically, at best the 12C would be an irritating local problem against a pissed off Empire resolute in using the DS. Minus the DS, the story is quite different.
The Colonials' rather sluggish range of their FTL drives would really limit them to a defensive role. Even networked computers couldn't provide the sorts of speeds the SW forces tend to enjoy, although they seem largely due to the use of trade roads.
Against a force located in an uncharted territory, both sides would be probably be reduced to a crawl.

As for the Cylons, it's trickier. Their Colony can easily remain hidden and the Cylons would plot a lot. However, they may never build enough ships to endanger either the CIS, the Republic or the entire GE.
OTOH, the introduction of capable fighting machines on the ground during the Clone Wars would make for an interesting turn of events, since they Cylon Centurions are more than capable of using any kind of rifle and therefore blasters.
Although droids were designed to suck iirc, at suffering so many failures and waste during ground battles, the arrival of the Cylons would be rather interesting. Not only the Cylons could propose to serve the CIS, which seems eager to rely on machines, they'd also prove more efficient and probably cost nothing to the CIS since the Cylons would be making all the industrial work.
The CIS may allow the Cylons to grow in numbers by having access to greater manufactural power.
Now severely outmatched both in numbers and efficiency, Clone Troopers would be totally insufficient and even Jedi would be brought to their knees. Dooku would have a hard time keeping control of the Cylon faction, Palpatine would see his plan utterly ruined, the republic would be absolutely owned and then all the Cylons would need to do, with so many assets at their disposal, would be to turn their guns against the CIS too.
In the end, their new Basestars would have the best of both worlds, biomechanical regeneration mixed to shields, and weapons would actually be adequately balanced between energy weapons and missiles.


EDIT: SW's over reliance on very-low-blast and highly thermal beam weapons isn't going to play in favour of any SW faction.
Battlestars' ability to tank nuclear attacks from Cylon fighters gives them a high tolerance against high-power thermal weapons (nukes release their enegy within small microseconds).
Meanwhile, ISDs have recently been shown to be rather disadvantaged against sudden material stress induced by ship to ship impacts.
And even my most generous take on the CW series' battle of Ryloth has an Acclamator downed in one shot by a low KT nuclear-type of weapon.

The VS scenario doesn't disclose how the out-of-universe opposite force would be facing the Star Wars one. Generally the easier plot is just two fleets against each other. Colonials would still go down imho but it wouldn't be without incuring huge losses on the Wars side, regardless of the chosen time period.
Fully prepared fleets means the Colonials are packed with nukes, for all ranges of ships from Vipers and Raptors up to Battlestars and their escort ships, and these nukes will easily one-shot even the heaviest warsian ships.
Last edited by Mr. Oragahn on Thu Jul 27, 2017 5:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Which universes can Star Wars actually beat?

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu Jul 27, 2017 5:10 pm

Star Wars would largely dominate the human worlds from the Halo universe before any major upgrade due to several years of combat against the Covenant.

Aside from the silly wankery which was all the rage at the beginning of the series, later cutscenes provided more than enough evidence that even Covenant ships, at least the lightest warships such as corvettes, could be taken down by the firepower demonstrated by SW warships in the latest canonical material.
Sheer numbers, assuming the Empire could quickly assemble flotilla in relevant sectors, may be enough to compensate for the seemingly weaker firepower and defensive shields their ships rely on.

That said, the Forerunners were depicted in the literature as a very powerful and advanced civilization, but the final Halo game nerfed them so much that even they are not above being hurtfully bruised by a force such as the Galactic Empire.

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Re: Which universes can Star Wars actually beat?

Post by sonofccn » Fri Sep 29, 2017 5:14 am

Honestly in my opinion it really depends on what figures you want to run with. Rebels certainly lowballs Star Wars. Too much in my personal opinion where an ISD's HTLs are dangerous close to the vastly smaller Slave One's performance in the asteroid scene from AOTC.

On the other side of the ledger we have the Tarkin novel already mentioned where "years of orbital bombardment" had raised the temperature of the world's seas and left blast craters large enough to house the Separatists "spherical core ships". We have the vaporized a small town quote and "thermonuclear fireworks" from the ROTS and ROTJ novelizations respectively. From the Clone Wars we have a 100 megaton missile apparently being employed as a ground weapon albeit offscreen.

My thoughts at least.
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Re: Which universes can Star Wars actually beat?

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Wed Oct 04, 2017 7:44 pm

sonofccn wrote:Honestly in my opinion it really depends on what figures you want to run with. Rebels certainly lowballs Star Wars. Too much in my personal opinion where an ISD's HTLs are dangerous close to the vastly smaller Slave One's performance in the asteroid scene from AOTC.

On the other side of the ledger we have the Tarkin novel already mentioned where "years of orbital bombardment" had raised the temperature of the world's seas and left blast craters large enough to house the Separatists "spherical core ships". We have the vaporized a small town quote and "thermonuclear fireworks" from the ROTS and ROTJ novelizations respectively. From the Clone Wars we have a 100 megaton missile apparently being employed as a ground weapon albeit offscreen.

My thoughts at least.
-Respectfully, Sonofccn
Wasn't the 100 megatons bomb thingy presented as some really unusually powerful device? Nonetheless, in SW such power would be a piece of cake to bring to a battlefield, by "just" building devices similar to fusion reactors but not meant to be sustainable at all.
Still, from the other higher numbers that seem to sit in the high kilotons and perhaps protrude into the megaton range, and the low end numbers looking like barely scratching the gigagoule range (as per your description of the effects against asteroids), an average would peg HTLs into the low kiloton range, which accounted for the sheer rate of fire of the warships would still be enough to inflict serious damage to Halo's ships.
That said, the humans largely made use of impactors and mass drivers, which don't need to be fast but actually very dense and heavy to deal a great deal of damage. Momentum matters more than kinetic energy in this case, since you want the mass of the projectile to sort of carry enough inertia has to punch hard and deep through the hull, whereas anything lighter and faster would surely bring more KE to the table but end pulverized on the surface.
Star Wars' weapons have about shit as momentum and their main conventional weapons, (heavy) turbolasers don't even display any impressive explosive property on the range of nuclear devices : they're essentially low-power thermal weapons with *some* explosive and blast abilities that are on par with tame chemical explosives (in many cases they don't even seem to reach the detonation threshold at all).

SW shields don't like they're designed with mass drivers in mind. The warfare hinges on totally different weapon types. This would give an advantage to Halo ships for some time but unfortunately for them, their most potent weapons are far in between and require the entire ship to be pointed at the target since they're essentially giant rifle guns.
OTOH SW ships can strafe their targets and just need to swivel their turrets.
Halo ships have missiles a plenty though and I remember some quotations from older books referencing some cases of nuclear ordnance being used, but that's very thermal in space with little blast ability at all unless the nuke is heavily encased which isn't the case : their missiles (not particularly big nor massive IIRC) seem to be just good enough to defeat other human ships and probably sit in a more conventional range.

A square shot into a SW warship from a heavy railgun could really gut it but I'm not sure it would be enough to disable the Imperial target.
Meanwhile a rain of dozens of terajoules of thermal energy would certainly gouge out considerable amounts of hull layers over time. Covenant plasma weapons were very potent but they tended to be weird too in some cases (in earlier books they had both homing and metal-dissolving abilities).

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Re: Which universes can Star Wars actually beat?

Post by sonofccn » Mon Oct 09, 2017 4:19 am

Mr. Oragahn wrote:Wasn't the 100 megatons bomb thingy presented as some really unusually powerful device? Nonetheless, in SW such power would be a piece of cake to bring to a battlefield, by "just" building devices similar to fusion reactors but not meant to be sustainable at all.
No more or less than anything else in the Umbaran arsenal. Nor within the context, as you noted, of a universe where fusion powers everything from "starships to podracers".
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Still, from the other higher numbers that seem to sit in the high kilotons and perhaps protrude into the megaton range, and the low end numbers looking like barely scratching the gigagoule range (as per your description of the effects against asteroids), an average would peg HTLs into the low kiloton range, which accounted for the sheer rate of fire of the warships would still be enough to inflict serious damage to Halo's ships.
The problem is the asteroids in question would suggest gigajoule firepower in the range of a large fighter/small starship which an ISD should be more powerful than. Same as the Enterprise-E should be more powerful than a Runabout. Self-contained explosives excluded of course, like Jango's seismic depth charge thing.
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Star Wars' weapons have about shit as momentum and their main conventional weapons, (heavy) turbolasers don't even display any impressive explosive property on the range of nuclear devices : they're essentially low-power thermal weapons with *some* explosive and blast abilities that are on par with tame chemical explosives (in many cases they don't even seem to reach the detonation threshold at all).
So, if I understand you, you are saying turbolasers are low-wattage weapons. Or in other words a turbolaser bolt may be many terajoules but transfers them relatively slowly over the duration of time as compared to a nuclear blast leading to a smaller "boom" than we might otherwise expect?
Mr. Oragahn wrote:SW shields don't like they're designed with mass drivers in mind. The warfare hinges on totally different weapon types. This would give an advantage to Halo ships for some time but unfortunately for them, their most potent weapons are far in between and require the entire ship to be pointed at the target since they're essentially giant rifle guns.
OTOH SW ships can strafe their targets and just need to swivel their turrets.
Halo ships have missiles a plenty though and I remember some quotations from older books referencing some cases of nuclear ordnance being used, but that's very thermal in space with little blast ability at all unless the nuke is heavily encased which isn't the case : their missiles (not particularly big nor massive IIRC) seem to be just good enough to defeat other human ships and probably sit in a more conventional range.
SW ships don't seem to do particularly well against kinetic impacters period. Nor do, most of them, seem the type to strafe. ISDs seem to be space whales who are designed to tank damage and dish it out. If a relatively anemic asteroid can snap the bridge tower off like a toothpick then a far more concentrated projectile slug isn't going to do an ISD any favors.

That said, in addition to likely being able to field a far larger force than the UNSC, ISDs have a respectable rate of fire and with bolts in the Terajoule to Petajoule range they'll be able to give out just as much damage in return chewing up ships almost as fast as they can turn guns on them.

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Re: Which universes can Star Wars actually beat?

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Fri Oct 13, 2017 11:47 am

sonofccn wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Wasn't the 100 megatons bomb thingy presented as some really unusually powerful device? Nonetheless, in SW such power would be a piece of cake to bring to a battlefield, by "just" building devices similar to fusion reactors but not meant to be sustainable at all.
No more or less than anything else in the Umbaran arsenal. Nor within the context, as you noted, of a universe where fusion powers everything from "starships to podracers".
I suppose that the fusion plants are complex system that cannot provide insane amounts of power either.
In order for a power core to actually turn into an impressive fusion bomb, it could only count on its artificial sun to deal damage and release the energy at once.
The other reactants would simply be irrelevant as they'd not be exposed to temperature and pressure levels sufficient to trigger the fusion. Eventually if these reactants and some kind of flammability or could even explode like kerozene, then they'd add to the explosion.

We still hit the problem that these devices are largely absent from battlefields, although references to nuclear explosions were made in the ROTJ novelization regarding the space battle.
In the Starship Troopers movie, troopers did carry smart-guided nuclear warheads they could mount on their rocket launchers and they packed a lot of power!
Judging SW from what we saw in AOTC is quite bad because the Clone Wars was totally phony. One side was building shitty droids whilst the other had troopers which would then double as enforcers of political power in controlled territories. Spaceships on both sides could have used their guns to blast troops and vehicles on the ground very easily. Worse case scenario, in order to free a planet or city, most of the buildings could be destroyed by conventional firepower because the enemy would have been deeply entrenched: same scenario used in WW2 which left so many cities in France in complete ruins after the Allies had to be bombard them (and same thing in Russia when the German forces pushed forward). Of course they didn't have anything like nukes or MOABs back then so who knows.
In Star Wars, the Republic still needed support from the Senate to some degree and had to send "freedom" troops: clonetroopers.
Turns out that when the Empire was in place, a more indiscriminate use of firepower was a realistic option under the Base Delta Zero protocol.
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Still, from the other higher numbers that seem to sit in the high kilotons and perhaps protrude into the megaton range, and the low end numbers looking like barely scratching the gigagoule range (as per your description of the effects against asteroids), an average would peg HTLs into the low kiloton range, which accounted for the sheer rate of fire of the warships would still be enough to inflict serious damage to Halo's ships.
The problem is the asteroids in question would suggest gigajoule firepower in the range of a large fighter/small starship which an ISD should be more powerful than. Same as the Enterprise-E should be more powerful than a Runabout. Self-contained explosives excluded of course, like Jango's seismic depth charge thing.
Well, AOTC put quite a solid cap on what a big fighter-sized ship can do to asteroids with conventional guns. Aside from some weird semi-drillign ability, we're looking at very low multiples of what modern tanks can deliver. But then again tanks shoot heavy projectiles with considerable explosive ability, so since the blasting ability of SW weapons is quite small, I suppose the overall energetic yield would be very high: in ordere to be able to blast a rock like a tank does, you'd need a thermal projectile with much, much more total energy. But then we'd probably see high levels of material heating too if it were true, however the asteroids damaged by the Slave-I guns were only partially broken and the debris were hardly sent away at high speed.
Mr. Oragahn wrote:Star Wars' weapons have about shit as momentum and their main conventional weapons, (heavy) turbolasers don't even display any impressive explosive property on the range of nuclear devices : they're essentially low-power thermal weapons with *some* explosive and blast abilities that are on par with tame chemical explosives (in many cases they don't even seem to reach the detonation threshold at all).
So, if I understand you, you are saying turbolasers are low-wattage weapons. Or in other words a turbolaser bolt may be many terajoules but transfers them relatively slowly over the duration of time as compared to a nuclear blast leading to a smaller "boom" than we might otherwise expect?
There's a limit to how I can push this idea because we know Hollywood likes its gazoline explosions: explosions which are rather weak in terms of overpressure, but that's the thing. When you compare with real bombs, missiles, IEDs, you see what kind of blast effects should be observed. However, these weapons have little thermal ability at all; meanwhile, "laser" weapons may still ow their design to an initial idea of prolongated laser firing which, one day, some engineers managed to find a way to bottle inside some kind of sheet that also proved to have some moderate blast effect.

TLDR; yes, I think SW weapons such as laser cannons and turbolaser cannons have low blast abilities and high thermal properties. The closest analogy I could pull right now is that they might be extremely watered down nuclear blasts: they'd still generate large amounts of heat, able to even vaporize some material at the point of impact, but not enough to create a massive overpressure. For that, they still use torpedoes and missiles.
Now, it may be possible for ships to swap modes and have projectiles with a bit more blast ability, therefore allowing them to use their turrets as thermal flak.
Mr. Oragahn wrote:SW shields don't like they're designed with mass drivers in mind. The warfare hinges on totally different weapon types. This would give an advantage to Halo ships for some time but unfortunately for them, their most potent weapons are far in between and require the entire ship to be pointed at the target since they're essentially giant rifle guns.
OTOH SW ships can strafe their targets and just need to swivel their turrets.
Halo ships have missiles a plenty though and I remember some quotations from older books referencing some cases of nuclear ordnance being used, but that's very thermal in space with little blast ability at all unless the nuke is heavily encased which isn't the case : their missiles (not particularly big nor massive IIRC) seem to be just good enough to defeat other human ships and probably sit in a more conventional range.
SW ships don't seem to do particularly well against kinetic impacters period. Nor do, most of them, seem the type to strafe. ISDs seem to be space whales who are designed to tank damage and dish it out. If a relatively anemic asteroid can snap the bridge tower off like a toothpick then a far more concentrated projectile slug isn't going to do an ISD any favors.
Indeed, although I think aiming for the ventral bulb is far more effective. The bridge may be lost but that shouldn't prevent the distant heavy batteries from firing.
The problem of Halo ships is that they're essentially snipers. If they get entangled into a close range battle, they'll get mowed down. Not to say that a single impact from a HTL ought to deal massive damage to Halo ships' hulls, which for most of the war were not particularly advanced nor even shielded iirc. Which also seriously exposes them to Imperial fighters and bombers. I don't recall UNSC ships for example having point defense capable of dealing damage that would threaten anything like the shields of a Jedi's aethersprite starfighter.

Also, the asteroid carried an insane amount of momentum, something no UNSC ship could ever reproduce with its guns. They put everything on the principle of very fast projectiles, counting on the kinetic energy of the rounds to gouge massive holes in a hull. However, they'd be pulverized on contact.
ISDs are voluminous objects. When you watch TESB or SW:RO, you see that you actually need a lot of material pushed into an ISD's own superstructure to deal deep damage.
That said, in addition to likely being able to field a far larger force than the UNSC, ISDs have a respectable rate of fire and with bolts in the Terajoule to Petajoule range they'll be able to give out just as much damage in return chewing up ships almost as fast as they can turn guns on them.
The sheer number of cannons, the size of ISDs and their ability to be rotated to cover many forward angles gives them a serious edge over the UNSC ships which must be aimed like rifles and manage to strike vital areas. I'm not sure their conventional missiles would provide more than just a supplementary yet weaker source of firepower.
Add to that the quantity of ships the Empire has at its disposal and it's imho a foregone conclusion that the UNSC is in for a bad day.

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