"Death Star" Technical Analyses

[Vince 520]

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.

[Khas 12,158]

Orbital bombardment might be right, because, hell, all you need to hit a planet is the right math. For ship-to-ship combat, though, especially considering we see gunnery crews on the turbolasers, we'd need lower ranges.

 

As for DET, well, DET would do far more damage to Despayre at 30% power than boil away the oceans and ignite the atmosphere.

[Vince 520]

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].

[Vince 520]

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.

[Khas 12,158]

2000 km was considered a tricky distance to hit a target at, even if it was 3 km wide.

[Khas 12,158]

As for the superlaser, a chain reaction was mentioned when it was used on Despayre. So, I'm guessing DET/Chain Reaction mix.

[Vince 520]

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.

[Tyralak 12,068]

The second we start invoking magic free energy explanations for things, we might as well call it a day and declare debating useless because we might as well be debating Gandalf versus Dumbledore for all the ability we have to understand what they are really capable of.

 

Clearly Gandalf. Dumbledore can't even respawn.

 

Instantaneous, clearly not, but fast nonetheless. Every use of FTL in the movies strongly imply same day travel from the core to the outer rim. No one ever changes clothes and in the case of the transit from Tattooine to Alderaan, everyone was exactly where we left them in the last scene when they arrive.

 

To be fair, I don't think any of them actually HAVE a change of clothes.

[enigma 521]

Facebook quotation strikes again!

[Tyralak 12,068]

Facebook quotation strikes again!

 

huh? If you've never heard that joke before, you're obviously not a Tolkien geek.

[enigma 521]

I know what you mean but at the same time there was a pic posted by Aggressive Comics in Facebook using that quote.

 

Edited December 30, 2012 by enigma

[Vince 520]

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.

[Tyralak 12,068]

I know what you mean but at the same time there was a pic posted by Aggressive Comics in Facebook using that quote.

 

Probably because that joke is as old as dirt. Those of us who are really into Tolkien usually look at Harry Potter the same way as Bram Stoker fans look at Twilight.