An EU collection of planetary bombardments

[watchdog]

At last difinitive planetary bombardment with the full intent to destroy, I got this from the latest comic; Star Wars Rebellion #10.

For more contrasts I also present some of my other images that I have posted before;




Any thoughts?

[watchdog]

Not a single comment, Im sorry if this is of no interest to anyone.

[Jedi Master Spock]

It's actually quite interesting - but what is there left to say? A picture is worth a thousand words, and you've posted a novella that stands quite well on its own.

[Mr. Oragahn]

This one is clearly said to be a bombardment with the goal to destroy everything?

From the surface, the impacts are not even of kiloton level, and a rain of TLs is needed to get rid of the structures, but from space, the amalgam of fireballs would suggest many megatons.

In the end, at least 4 if not 9 orders of magnitude below ICS claims.

[Mike DiCenso]

Not all of the bombardment scenes are ones of ordered total destruction, though some of the others do indeed appear less-than-spectacular in their yeild. Most of the examples fall under the same catagory as the pathetic performance of the SSD Knight Hammer from the EU novel Darksaber.
-Mike

[TheRedFear]

Not all of the bombardment scenes are ones of ordered total destruction, though some of the others do indeed appear less-than-spectacular in their yeild. Most of the examples fall under the same catagory as the pathetic performance of the SSD Knight Hammer from the EU novel Darksaber.
-Mike

And what category is that?

[Mike DiCenso]

Pathetic. Turbolasers from an SSD cannot do more on full power than start some forest fires on Yavin:

http://www.st-v-sw.net/Obsidian/STSWObsid-Order.html

Click on the Obsidian Order link to "Large Energy beam Weapons" to read a very interesting collection of many of the SW EU's "finest" firepower and other technological moments. In Darksaber, we read of individual TL bolts from the Knight Hammer being unable to to do more than obliterate an acre's worth of old-growth forest.
-Mike

[l33telboi]

I suppose you could add the Taris bombardment to all this, since it is a thread about EU bombardments.

There's also the Telos bombardment, where the bulk of the Sith fleet bomb a planet for an unspecified time, yet Carth goes down to the planet afterwards to look for survivors. His wife dies in his arms or some such as well. So we're clearly talking about something not managing to kill off all the life on the planet. Afterwards however the atmosphere becomes to toxic for life to be sustained.

Links:

1 2 3

[watchdog]

I suppose you could add the Taris bombardment to all this, since it is a thread about EU bombardments.

There's also the Telos bombardment, where the bulk of the Sith fleet bomb a planet for an unspecified time, yet Carth goes down to the planet afterwards to look for survivors. His wife dies in his arms or some such as well. So we're clearly talking about something not managing to kill off all the life on the planet. Afterwards however the atmosphere becomes to toxic for life to be sustained.

Links:

1 2 3

Well, considering the fact that many of the warsies seem to think that star wars has always had the same level of firepower (at least for the past 4,000 years), those videos speak volumes. And considering this is a recent game that Lucas probably would hve had influence over, I think we have an idea of what a planetary bombardment would have looked like in the movies.
In fact the more I really think about it the more I realize that the only evidence for high fire power comes from playing with the dubious calculations based off of the asteroid destruction scene. there is nothing else in official canon or EU sources that really support their ideas. Beyond the asteroid scene they cannot point to any other scene in any movie or cartoon even that supports their high end figures, everything is all circumstantial. Questionable quotes about slaging the surface of a world, claims that turbolasers have braces capable of handling gigatons of recoil, but absolutely no concreate evidence of actual firepower. All they can do is cry 'ICS,ICS,ICS!' as if that proves something.

[Mike DiCenso]

When that point gets brought up, Watchdog, Warsies cite Commander Thelea's "calculations" or some other thing to show that even before ICS, SW firepower was in the gigaton range. Often the circular reasoning went that since General Dodonna in ANH said that the DS firepower was equal to half the starfleet (firepower in this case meaning the DS superlaser's firepower and the Wars interpretation of it being a 1e38j DET beam weapon), it must therefore follow that either the Galactic Empire must either have billions of capital ships, or have enourmous firepower.

However this false-dilemma fallacy assumes that there were no other possible reasonable explanations for what Dodonna ment, such as anti-capital ship and starfighter surface turbolaser batteries. A possibility very strongly made in the second-order canon of the novelization.
-Mike

[Praeothmin]

However this false-dilemma fallacy assumes that there were no other possible reasonable explanations for what Dodonna ment, such as anti-capital ship and starfighter surface turbolaser batteries. A possibility very strongly made in the second-order canon of the novelization.

Which always makes me laugh, considering they're the first ones to chant "Visuals trump dialogue, wisuals trump dialogue" whenever someone tries to bring up TIDC in the discussion.

I guess it just doesn't apply to SW... :)

[watchdog]

However this false-dilemma fallacy assumes that there were no other possible reasonable explanations for what Dodonna ment, such as anti-capital ship and starfighter surface turbolaser batteries. A possibility very strongly made in the second-order canon of the novelization.

Which always makes me laugh, considering they're the first ones to chant "Visuals trump dialogue, wisuals trump dialogue" whenever someone tries to bring up TIDC in the discussion.

I guess it just doesn't apply to SW... :)

Ah yes, hypocrisy at its finest.

[Mr. Oragahn]

• The Sith fleet destroyed the upper levels of Taris' city. Likely, the structures collapsed on themselves, finishing off the rest.
• The wikipedia had an article about the Sith Interdictors. Well I think they got renamed after that, in 2006 or 2007, during that attempt at creating new class names I think.
  Before beign edited out, it said, without citing the source, that the Sith Interdictor could compete, in terms of firepower, with Interdictor ships from the GE era.
  This was in direct opposition to the idea that standard weaponry saw yields increasing in firepower.
  
  Globally, we can ponder the exactness of such a claim, easily found on SDN and accesorily on SB.com, since all the weapons, from blasters to starfighter cannons, never displayed inferior firepower back then, notably in KOTOR or other iterations of the Old Era.
  Lightsabres were equally powerful as well.
  
  The idea that for some obscure reason, the firepower increased leaps and bounds up to hundreds of gigatons, and then teraton levels, is most dubious.
• As for the ICS, as an EU source, it's, by its very existence, enough for them to defend their claims. It's a piece of canon, so ICS claims are correct because they come from the ICS, which is canon (EU policy that is).
  But it also completely ignores the rest of the EU. But somehow, in their twisted minds, the ICS' material takes precedence over anything else. Most stupid.
• As for the calcs in the gigaton range, it's very funny to browse the archives at SB.com.
  I remember reading that topic where Alyeska argued, against His Divine Shadow I think, that the 2 GT (1.95 GT in fact) was never presented by the warsies as a low end, contrary to his oponent's claims. Alyeska said that for the whole time, if that was a low end, they kept it for themselves, and accepted to present it as a high end - because apparently, according to HDS, this would not be accepted by the crowds (well, no surprise really, the numbers are absurd).
  
  More recently, I found another interested archived thread.
  Read:
  
  http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=7694
  
  Back in 2001, people were already disputing the asteroid scalings made by Wongies.
  
  E1701 (again, notice how the usual SDN people never jumped at his throat like they usually do with other people) notably claimed that the asteroids could actually be mesured as being 10 meters wide, more or less.
  It seems that back then, Wong was already considering wars weapons as beam weapons. The whole watt vs. energy reveals that. People got confused, and in the end, when you look at the ICS figures, which rate weapons in gigatons (AOTC), the unit of time is gone.
  However, notice that while with a beam weapons fired over a long period, this would tend to provide a lower power, in Star Wars, when hits occur within a few frames only, this actually hugely increases power.
  
  It seems we can even learn where this 1.95 GT figures comes from:
  

  Are you blind? Mikes 1.95GT estimate (its not 2) comes from Essential guides to weapons and technology. Its based on a PTL putting out enough energy to power a large city for a day.
  Then who exactly uses Mike's 2.8 million TW figure and mistakely converts it straight to MT?

  I can't know what a PTL, neither what figure he based his calcs on. Back then, peak consumptions for the state of New York were high, and there was a program to bring it down to 200 MW for 2010.
  With 86,400 seconds per day, we'd get 17.28 TW/d.
  
  Besides, here's something about self consistency, when looking at the ICS.
  
  It says that the Republic cruiser has a peak shielding capacity of 7 e22 watts.
  That translates as 70 zettawatts, or 16.73 teratons/second.
  
  As for the weapons, there are 12 quad TLs, 200 GT per shot each, and 24 laser cannons, with 6 megatons per shot.
  
  The video plays at 25 fps, or 0.04s per frame.
  
  As we can see in films, once a flash appears, due to the projectile of a high caliber weapon hitting a target, the explosion immediately starts to fan out the following frame, so we can see that the energy is provided within one frame (or eventually two, at best), and thusly, the real power of a beam is around 1-2 fps.
  With 1 fps, that would be 200 GT / 0.04s.
  Or 5,000 GT/s.
  
  Say they can bring 3 quad TLs to bare at the same time, on the same target. Say a republic cruiser against a republic cruiser.
  Multiplied by 3, we get 15 teratons/s.
  So we can see that with 3 quad cannons firing at the same time, the shields are near down. And that's for peak shielding.
  
  Which simply means that battles between capital ships, in Starwars, wouldn't last longer than a couple of seconds, likely less than what is necessary to recharge a TL, which happens very fast if we look at the films, this can be done under 3 seconds or less.
  
  All in all, 10 seconds top is the longest possible duration of a battle in Star Wars.
  
  I mean... in their Star Wars.

[watchdog]

I remember many of those arguments, then and now many of those figures you just went over went right over my head, although I have a slightly better undersatnding of their meaning now.
I think the main reason everyone still seemed so civil was because this was before the ep II ICS came out and things were still up in the air. After it was released the warsies figured that it gave them the final edge and won the debate for them without thinking it through. From my perspective their entire argument hinged on their interpretation of the asteroid scene peppered with a few bits and pieces of info from various EU sources. Then along came the big juicy bone of the ICS to help put them over the top, never mind that there is no supporting evidence for the books claims, it's based on the movies so its canon no more thinking will be allowed. Well I am thinking, and I dont take the ICS at face value because I've yet to see any supporting evidence that would make its wild claims true, in fact I've seen just the opposite.
The way all the weapons that I've seen in star wars behave is no different than the way I see the weapons in star trek behave (save for that disintegration thing). My God these people are overly impressed by an oversized weapons platform and a few space rocks being destroyed and they base all of their ideas on that!
Also, Mr. Oragahn the 1.95 gt figure that MW came up with probably started with New York as a base but then grew it up to a huge size because MW apparently thinks all large cities in star wars are like Coruscant and cover whole chunks of continents.

[Praeothmin]

it's based on the movies so its canon no more thinking will be allowed.

While in actuality, it is based off of production designs, unfinished special effects shots, and a half-completed movie.
Curtis saxton himself says so in an interview posted on TF.net...