Vince

As for the million metric tons, that's being pretty fucking generous. Considering that the ROTS novelization says that starship hulls are largely made of hydrofoamed permacrete (Pg. 74 and 86), the debris was probably much lighter. Factor in the fact that if it was made of durasteel, it would still be pretty light, as durasteel was described as being "ultra-lightweight."

Quote required. They look like metal to me. Everything else says their metal or durasteel. Are you sure that this "hydrofoamed permacrete" isnt some very light but very strong ["perma] for of concrete which is used for construction purposes on planets....

You are aware that the script for ANH states that the turbolasers use turbines to generate power, right?

INT. DEATH STAR

 

Smoke belches from the giant laser guns as they wind up their

turbine generators to create sufficient power. The crew rushes

about preparing for another blast. Even the troopers head

gear is not adequate to protect them from the overwhelming

noise of the monstrous weapon. One troopers bangs his helmet

with his hand in an attempt to stop the ringing.

And it don't matter HOW they do it, because they DO, do it. Guns to small to see firing massless beams shaking the Falcon around = several megatons per shot, consistent with the highest figures ICS gave for point defense. Cheer for consistency!

EDIT; thus because it is lubricious that turbolasers that require petawatts of power are powered by turbines, I would reconcile or throw out this quote in favour of ones which make more sense, like the weapons being powered by the main hypermatter reactor with the turbines being a catylist or some such . Obviously it is clear this quote intends them to be turbine powered, but it is completely implausible to have petawatt or (zetawatt in the case of heavy tl) level weaponry powered by such things when it should be impossible, especially when your main reactor is generating power in the same magnitude of our sun!

Nothin you said matters. We still saw guns to small to see vaporize asteroids and smack the Falcon around [low megatons in the films]. And we still see the Death Star in the films blow up a planet a million times over, and we still see ships with all that lofty thousands G acceleration in the films [and EU] requiring petatons of power output a second for an ISD.

The ATAT lasers hit something at over 17Km with out any arching, massless beams. The shots you showed from the tanks, they arched, so were not massless but in fact projectiles.

There isn't much you can do really. We see tens of kiltons to several megatons from invisible point defense, we see kilotons from fighters which can't scratch main armour on a battleship. Why don'y you accept this and try to reconcile other sources? Theres no point in arguing for the sake of arguing. Lets try to be constructive.

Was reading some inverse square derived math involving the e38 DS calc on spacebattles, which suggest that the Death Star would in fact scour the entire solar system of life, not just the planet it annihilates. Planets would be punished by many kilotons up to many teratons per square meter, depending on how far away they were. Thats pretty mental.

EDIT: going by the conclusions there anyway.

Yes which in a couple of ways is supported by the movies. We have it shunted backwards from what must be some of the DET by literally its own radius, before being destroyed. The "chain reaction" must occur after this, when the shields fail, and the beam gets to interact with the amazingly still intact planet underneath, because even te prior forces sending it back excess the energy required to mass-scatter a world. But ultimately, we got a pretty good idea on power output from bot the highest canon and the Death Star novel. The technobabble is interesting so far as it may explain the planar shock wave and seemingly still solid mountain and continent sized fragments of planet.

There is more going for the lower end ranges regarding ship on ship combat agreed. Highest figures mentioned seem to be <2000Km it seems? But at least dozens.

The percentages of the Death Stars firepower always are so very skewed, weather their comparing wat the eclipse can do, or what low power shots can do. You gave another percent anoter time, 2 i think. So one fifteenth the energy required to boil of the ocean are 1000 petatons for Terra. If this planet had one thousanth the oceanic mass, it would be 1000 teratons. These figures would result in figures between 66 teratons and 66 petatons for the energy required to vaporize a droid control ship. The latter is more consistent with movie based calculations and quotes regarding specific firepower or shield magnitude [TK books mainly]. Even though it is consistent, it would still be iffy to use, because the percents are so messed up, so id ignore it in favour of other harder calcs regardless of its negative or positive consistency. They - the authors - wrote in the right sort of fluff regarding energy bursts and amounts of stars is it comparable to - but had no idea with the percents or if they would make any sense. Which they don't. Dealing with the upper limit on firepower [either on screen DET calcs OR DS multi star extracts] and upper limit on recharge [ue says full day 24s] tells us specific max [e38 firepower] and the magnitude of its power generation [excluding shields, propulsion, integrity, and gravity well generations].

Khas you might be right about what could be called tactical ranges, but perhaps the more uncomfortable figures could refer to planetary bombardment. A bit of math and high enough yield allows for some extraordinary upper limits on range, but maybe applicable only to planetoids on relatively predictable paths. Like massive planets, or more modest "Vong world ships". Keeping in mind it will take 10 or minutes for the beams to cover 10 light minutes, its is not going to be at all effective against any craft capable of even single G accelerations like 40K, because they will hae more than enough time to cruise thousands of miles out of the way.

"If it didn't work - well, the hypermatter reactor was capable of generating an energy burst equivalent to the total weekly output of several main-sequence stars; if anything went wonky, it wasn't likely he'd be around long enough to notice."

SW:Death Star also suggests yields consistent with pure DET theory e38J, despite any technobabble used.

Some interesting technical considerations from the films; the e38j required to mass-scatter the world with so much greater energy than is required to destroy it, yet there were visible fragments. It probably should have white-flashed out of existence, rather than being accelerated toward relativistic speeds in all direction. The minimal energy required to mass-scatter a world is greater than that required to vaporize one. Secondly of course we have that planar explosion. These are quite difficult to explain with science, and maybe the hypermatter conversion beamer hand waves both of these. But if hypermatter requires more energy to create than would a DET beam to mass scatter a world, it would still be a non-issue with concern toward power generation. Secondly, the same source that provides the technobbale which could be accountable for laying rest to two issues in the film, is also the one which confirms power generation extrapolated assuming DET from the films themselves.

Lastly if the DS beam is indeed mass-less like its turbolaser cousins, then wouldn't it require stupid-high energy to shunt the shielded [intact planet] backward like it did? Like with the droids/troopers. That is KE alone, prior to any technobabble antimatter conversion/raw firepower energy requirements. Its also indication of how strong the planetary shields were at Alderaan.

As for criteria, it all depends on whether or not it fits in with higher canon, if we see anything like it. If it doesn't flat out contradict anything, I'll let it in. If there is a contradiction, out it goes.

Brians videos are all about the "higher canon", and Curtis Saxton looked for benchmarks from the films, and seemingly wenth with EU examples which best fit with the higher canon. Such as ISD's being capable of melting upper planetary crusts in a matter of hours. Other examples may suggest lower firepower than such feats would imply, but at the same time end up orders of magnitude below what the movie accelerations tell us about power generation.

As I've decided to re-read the novel "Death Star", I've found some interesting facts. Here they are.

 

- An ISD can't destroy a large asteroid, because the size of the reactor needed to pull that off would be impractically huge. (Pg. 57)

- A leaky hypermatter valve is enough to vaporize an entire ISD. (Pg. 213)

Okay based on film evidence, the materials used to construct and armour an ISD would be many orders of magnitude more difficult to melt or vaporize than conventional metals, thus unless this asteroid was orders of magnitude larger than the ISD, it dosn't make any sense that it couldn't be vaporized by a small fraction ("leaky valve") of the reactors total output.

 

 

 

 

I'm not seeing anything that could possibly amount to a High-End Base Delta Zero.

Propulsion requires extreme power generation capabilities which suggests very high firepower. Weapons systems and engines are both powered by the main reactor. Besides which there are other examples in expanded canon that requires the high firepower. The in film asteroid examples sets only a lower limit.

It does require a lot of energy to heat up their hulls, they can withstand blaster fire taking no real damage.

I don't know where your getting those figures?

Yea that was discussed at length in te phaser thread. I was arguing that too, but could not do any math to demonstrate it. Eventually math was done to suggest the vapour would cool enough as to not be fatal, and for our heroes the temperature may briefly be comparable to that of an oven. The remaining bars were sagging and blackened. Even if it were melted, we would still be looking at over a hundred megajoules, which could seriously harm a conventional titanium plane. Probably take it down.

Considering I've seen Brian's points demolished before...

I have read the SFJ thread about his website..

 

When have we ever seen that in the movies?

The grate scene. And we could not *see forcefields* but considering we have accelerations performed by the executor that would require its hull to be thousands of times stronger than steel... X wings with their foward acceleration too, and the fact we might expect them to fare well vs blasters. But whatever, I'm going let you calm down for a while lol.

When have we seen an unshielded X-Wing do that?

This, and internal force fields might strengthen the hull making conventional materials more protective than you would first expect. A regular E-11 can vaporize a few dozen kilos of iron in one shot after all.

Mature.

No, the quote from the book states that they're in orbit of the planet.

 

Yes, the EU is wildly inconsistent, and yes, I hate a lot of it. However, a lot does not mean all.

Just like the bits that suggest low end firepower? Like turbolasers that pack as much punch as a hand grenade (like in the comic shots)? Or your multi hundred megaton kashyyyk example? Are you actually going to address anything anyone says?

It said veiwport, like the windows we see on the bridge of an ISD. It said that the TL bolts raced from the bow of the Anakin Solo right down to the planet. Also, see this:

http://forums.asvs.org/showthread.php/2321-TCW-Weapons-Ranges

 

Light-hours my ass.

 

That's T-Canon, by the way, which basically tells C-Canon that it has a "real purdy mouth" and then asks if it can squeal like a piggy. Considering that Ryloth got retconned big time by TCW, this wouldn't be the first thing.

Thats against targets with deflectors, which shunt off attacks. Then theres jamming, then theres the fact ships can move. The same tl's may have light hour minute/hour ranges against planets as EU suggests.

Now address the points in my post please.

You haven't addressed any of the points either...

Still, they are using their turbolasers at full power, and concentrating the blasts, no less.

Ultimately it is irrelevant, because a corvette would wield the sort of firepower demonstrated here [extrapolated from the movies]. I though you despised the EU for all its inconsistencies in the first place? Your not going to try an use this over higher canon are yoU?

Mainly to show what a mess C-Canon can be at times.

Ah okay. What do you make of all the screen evidence then?

If your going to justify lower firepower for SW, then your have to debunk each of the points, not just attack one or two of them.

Why bring it up then?

Second ICS video near the end i think, brian spends about 5 minutes going frame by frame through the scene pointing out vapoirzed ones, iirc the fighter even flies through a asteroid that was largely vaporized. Thats not the only scene taht suggests kiloton level firepower though. So does penetrating the armour on the external buildings of the DS1.