4-way dogfight

[Khas 12,158]

Alright, for this match, we're going to have a four-way dogfight between:

1 Danube-class Runabout

 

1 TIE Defender

 

1 Protoss Scout

 

1 Arwing

 

Which craft emerges victorious?

[Gunbird 519]

Umm.......F15?

[Praeothmin 532]

I don’t know about the last two, but the Runabout can tangle one on one with ST Capships, so it creams the Tie Defender...

[Captain Seafort 17]

1 hour ago, Praeothmin said:

I don’t know about the last two, but the Runabout can tangle one on one with ST Capships, so it creams the Tie Defender...

No they can't, any more than the Falcon can tangle with SW capships.  Runabouts can survive incidental fire, and their weapons have been seen to be powerful enough to destroy a Jem'hadar fighter (not exactly the most powerful ships around) if, and only if, they have detailed targeting advice from a senior Vorta.

Runabouts can be very badly damaged by low-GJ range weapons fire (from Battle Lines), and starfighter laser cannon are at least that powerful (from ANH).  As I said in the other thread, even small numbers of bog-standard TIEs  are a threat to the Falcon, which can withstand low megaton-range shots, so a Defender should be able to take on a runabout on at least even terms.

[Khas 12,158]

You mean THIS TIE Defender?

 

 

I'm pretty sure that this counts as megajoule, not megaton firepower.

[Praeothmin 532]

On 2018-01-06 at 8:26 AM, Captain Seafort said:

No they can't, any more than the Falcon can tangle with SW capships.  Runabouts can survive incidental fire, and their weapons have been seen to be powerful enough to destroy a Jem'hadar fighter (not exactly the most powerful ships around) if, and only if, they have detailed targeting advice from a senior Vorta.

Runabouts can be very badly damaged by low-GJ range weapons fire (from Battle Lines), and starfighter laser cannon are at least that powerful (from ANH).  As I said in the other thread, even small numbers of bog-standard TIEs  are a threat to the Falcon, which can withstand low megaton-range shots, so a Defender should be able to take on a runabout on at least even terms.

Yeah, should have replaced « tangle » by « can hang in there for a little while »...

By the way, where in Battle Lines is the weapons fire started to be GJ, and will we ignore that fighters in SW can be damaged by handheld weapons?

The Runabout still takes on the Defender and destroys it rather easily...

 

[Captain Seafort 17]

2 hours ago, Praeothmin said:

By the way, where in Battle Lines is the weapons fire started to be GJ

The satellite that shot down the Yangtzee Kiang went from dormant to high megawatt-range output in a few seconds, as did the one that destroyed the Rio Grande's probe.  It didn't have time to build up a charge of more than low GJ range before firing.

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will we ignore that fighters in SW can be damaged by handheld weapons?

ESB establishes that the Falcon can survive low megaton-range hits.  ANH establishes that TIEs are a threat to the Falcon after scoring dozens of hits.  Ergo, TIE laser fire is almost certainly low-mid kiloton range.

Quote

The Runabout still takes on the Defender and destroys it rather easily...

BS.  The runabout probably has the firepower to destroy a Defender, but that's far from cut-and-dried, and the reverse is certainly true.  I expect the battle would be won by whoever lands the first solid hit, and I expect that to be the Defender.  While the Danube-class are manoeuvrable, they aren't anywhere near as good as TIE fighters. Not surprising, given that their role is closer to Lambda-class than a TIE.

[Khas 12,158]

Now, as for the other two combatants, the Scout and the Arwing.

 

Protoss Scouts are armed with dual photon blasters and antimatter missiles.  Of course, Protoss "photon" weapons are photon weapons in the same way that photon torpedoes are - meaning, their named after the photons produced by a matter-antimatter reaction.  So, let me correct this misnomer.  Protoss photon cannons and photon blasters actually fire blobs of high-energy antimatter sheathed in a field of psychic energy.  Scouts are shielded, and they use gravitic engines for sublight travel.  They're powered by Khaydarin crystals, which focus psychic energy into a usable form.

 

As for Arwings, these fighters are armed with twin "laser" cannons (which are probably more like SW "laser" weapons, meaning "laser-induced plasma" weapons, for reasons that'll be explained below) and nova bombs/smart bombs.  The reason I say that their lasers are more likely plasma weapons is because of the fact that doing a barrel roll generates a magnetic field which deflects them.  And lasers aren't effected by magnetic fields, but plasma is.

[Khas 12,158]

1 hour ago, Captain Seafort said:

ESB establishes that the Falcon can survive low megaton-range hits.  ANH establishes that TIEs are a threat to the Falcon after scoring dozens of hits.  Ergo, TIE laser fire is almost certainly low-mid kiloton range.

Which is contradicted by TFA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sarFZJl3h0

[Captain Seafort 17]

1 hour ago, Khas said:

Which is contradicted by TFA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sarFZJl3h0

When you say "contradicted", do you mean that the Falcon cannot withstand megaton-range hits, or that TIEs do not pose a threat to the Falcon?  Both of these are clearly demonstrated in the films I referenced.

[Khas 12,158]

That the Falcon can withstand megaton hits, given that the TIEs that are attacking it - TIE/fo Fighters, which are shielded and more powerful than TIE/ln Fighters - aren't even dishing out kilotons worth of damage, and are still considered a threat to the Falcon.

[Captain Seafort 17]

55 minutes ago, Khas said:

That the Falcon can withstand megaton hits

Then how exactly do you explain the Falcon doing precisely that in ESB?  A figure that implies TIE firepower roughly equivalent to the multi-GJ bare minimum demonstrated by X-wings when strafing the first Death Star.

EDIT: Even if you only go by the asteroid vapourisation TL estimates, that still means the Falcon shrugged off hundreds of kilotons in that shot, which still implies kiloton-range TIE weapons .

[Khas 12,158]

Because that page uses outdated info, and going by the new canon, Turbolaser bolts are made of Tibanna plasma, which HAS mass.  So, there's some regular kinetic energy being delivered there.

[Captain Seafort 17]

47 minutes ago, Khas said:

Because that page uses outdated info, and going by the new canon, Turbolaser bolts are made of Tibanna plasma, which HAS mass.  So, there's some regular kinetic energy being delivered there.

Then we go back to the asteroid calcs, knock a zero off the Falcon's resilience, and are still left with kiloton-ish TIE lasers, a couple of orders of magnitude more than the shot that slapped the Yangtze Kiang silly in Battle Lines

[Praeothmin 532]

1 hour ago, Khas said:

Which is contradicted by TFA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sarFZJl3h0

And all of Rogue One’s land-based attacks, as the shots that destroyed Tie fighters or X-Wings in atmosphere on Scariff or Wobani, were not even close to be a Ton, much less a KT shot...

Funny thing is we see an AT-ST in Rogue One firing in a city with slightly more powerful shots than in RoTJ, so we can also think that starfighter weapons have equivalent weapons in all other movies...

Since TFA, RO, and TLJ all show us subton shots from fighters, even against each other, we can rule out KT level weaponry, and find an explanation for the apparent MT shot tanked by the MF in ESB, or treat it as an outlier...

Hell, even in TPM, we see Anakin fire the Naboo starfighter weapons in an atmosphere to decidedly subton shots, yet KT firepower will still be argued by Seafort...

Speaking of outliers, the GJ shot is not the norm, as in the first encounter with the Jem Hadar, when polaron beams went through shields easily, the two runabouts took unshielded hits from the same weapons that damaged the Odissey, and they did not get destroyed immediately:

 

So again, the Runabout eats the Tie Defender alive and spits out the remains...

[Khas 12,158]

So... how do the Scout and Arwing handle this?

[Darth Spock 0]

I'd like to call attention to the very last line on the stardestroyer.net page too: 

Quote

As an aside, the rotational kinetic energy of an object is 0.5Iw² at non-relativistic rotational speeds. Therefore, 3.902E8 joules of rotational kinetic energy were added to the Millenium Falcon. However, the physics of collisions involve conservation of linear or angular momentum rather than conservation of kinetic energy, which only happens in elastic collisions.

So the example there only really proves a shot in excess of ~ 390 MJ. Also, while I think the low GJ blast one-shotting a Danube in DS9 is quite relevant, that does involve one of the weakest examples of that ship from when it really was just a transport in season 1. IIRC they underwent a number of military upgrades in response to the Dominion threat as the show went on. The Danube's speed and maneuverability is debatable,  depending on whether we're using theoretical capabilities, or strictly visuals, but the huge firing arc provided by the front and rear emitters really work in 'Trek's favor. At worst, I suspect a Danube would match the Millennium Falcon for combat effectiveness, at best it wades through fighters like a miniature capital ship.

I don't know enough about Starcraft to even guess how well the Protoss would do. (It's on my to play list.)

The Arwing wins by spamming "barrel rolls!" Naw, it's a tough bugger, but it's hard to tell how tough do to the excess of video game logic. My gut tells me it's roughly on par with a Star Wars X-Wing, though it did *supposedly* fly much closer to a star than SW fighters came in the Rebels episode Secret Cargo, and for an extended period.

 

[IkaikaKekai 10,518]

I think it's hard to compare non Star Wars/Trek sci fi to either.  Movies, books, videogames and more have been made for both, you can tell me which company made the cannons on a an X-Wing, can you tell me the same for the Arwing?  You can tell me the armor thickness of a Yellowstone Class, can you tell me the same of the Protoss Scout?  There's so much cannon and 'possible' readouts for Trek?Wars.  Starfox and Starcraft has a couple of video games, Starcraft might have some cannon books?  We can apply Science to Wars and Trek (more so to Trek, let's face it).  We can look up at least the potential energy output for weapons in the Star Wars/Trek, where as if you do some digging 'The Protoss Scout does 7 DPS to air targets.'  How do you translate as something as vague as 'damage per second' into something more sciency?

[Khas 12,158]

Well, StarCraft DOES have canon novels that I can dig up for info - as well as a few comic books and a manga that I can dig through, since, well, they're also canon.

[Gunbird 519]

 

But do those book have info about their  "canons"?......

 

.........dont shoot me.