Turbolasers, the ICS, and strek-v-swars

[Augustus Caesar]

Just browsing through the stek-v-swars board, and saw this-

++http://www.strek-v-swars.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=409

I've heard lots of claims rattling around recently, choking up a number of threads. The claims revolve (as usual) around the ICS claims of 200 gigaton medium turbolasers... and trying to fit them into the ESB asteroid field via inaccurate or outright dishonest claims.

Let's review, shall we? I'm sure we're all familiar with the Turbolaser Commentaries. Although I will not comment on the actual content of the analysis of the TLC, there are several incidental points that I've pointed out before that deserve repeating which happen to be confirmed by this particular page.

First, there are a number of sizes of turbolaser bolts seen fired by ISDs. These include small bolts, mid-sized bolts, and large bolts; the firing rate is dependent on the type, as I have noted before. Peak firing rate, out of the entire trilogy, is ~5.4 bolts per second last time I checked. Typical rates of fire aren't any higher than 1 bolt per second.

Large bolts are fired at substantially lower rates, apparently only available overy few seconds.

Small bolts, as I have noted before, were not involved in any asteroid blasting. Asteroid blasting appears to have been the exclusive province of large and medium sized bolts, both of which are fired from the body of the ISD.

Small bolts are generally fired from the visible forward "nodes," and were not seen (in any case that I've examined) to have destroyed any asteroids. These nodes are visible on the plate (top/bottom) hull sections of the ISD. As Kane Starkiller pointed out here, we witnessed the location from which at least some of the ESB asteroid-blasting shots were fired: The trench, not far from the notches.

The TLC note: TLC wrote:
The smallest bolts are only a few meters long. They were witnessed in only two scenes: defeating the Falcon's shields in ESB, and firing on the Falcon as it was departing Tatooine.
TLC wrote:
The only time these bolts have been seen is the scene referenced above, the asteroid scene, and possibly when the Falcon "attacked" the ISD, as it was passing over the dorsal surface.
TLC wrote:
The bolts fired in the earliest asteroid-vape scene in film were mostly middle sized TL bolts (see Turbolaser Characteristics for more information about TL bolt sizes). Longer TL bolts were seen in this scenes as well, but were less frequent. The heavy dorsal turrets were never used.
Although I frankly have my doubts that the author of the TLC examined the ROTJ and ANH firing scenes in as good depth as the TESB asteroid scenes, it is perfectly clear that this much picked-over scene involves not light, but medium-grade bolts at a minimum. Light "anti-fighter" bolts used by ISDs are seen - and they, like fighter bolts, are much smaller.

These, then, are not light turbolasers.

Now, what about the 200 gigaton medium turbolasers? I'll put it bluntly: Look at the canon policy of these boards. Material from the ICS books are not admissible unless directly supported by the movies/novelizations/screenplays/scripts.

The ICS claims point defense (i.e., light) lasers at 6 megatons. We've seen medium grade turbolasers with a yield of up to 60-500 terajoules... substantially less, in other words. Outright contradicting the 200 gigaton yields, in fact.

If medium turbolasers fired 6 megaton bolts, the asteroids seen in the TESB blasting scene would be violet white single-frame flashes. We don't have that. We have white flares and chunky yellow-orange debris taking several frames to dissipate. If medium turbolasers fired 200 gigaton bolts, the Falcon would be buffeted by the shockwave.

So medium turbolasers in fact fire - as directly supported by the TESB asteroid field - somewhere in the neighborhood of 60-500 terajoules.

If a medium gun shoots 60-500 terajoules, 6 megatons is a possible yield for the main cannon. However, it's worth noting that the peak firing rate demonstrated in the films isn't any higher than 2700 terawatts, and the firing rate for "long" bolts is notably less than 1 per second. For the very heaviest bolts, we would expect to see one fired every 5-10 seconds... at most.

This is, incidentally, more or less par for the course in big-gun battleshipry. Lucas's battle scenes are quite reminiscent of WWII naval/air battles, so we should not feel in the slightest bit guilty for using straight analogy. The heavy guns should be 800-23,000 terajoules; given a total rate of fire for medium batteries of 5.4 per second, we should expect a peak main battery rate of fire of roughly 1 shot per 5 seconds, roughly consistent with the slower firing rates of the longer bolts seen. Yes, for the entire battery... representing a peak "main" battery power estimate of 4600 terawatts, 1.1 megatons per second.

In other words, a megaton per second is a high if reasonable estimate for overall ISD turbolaser output. 6 megatons per shot is not completely unreasonable - for the main battery.

200 gigatons per shot for the secondary battery is in no way reasonable, contradicting the movies; further, the ICS figures are not even admissible on these boards in the first place without direct support from the movies, novelizations, or scripts. The fact that the movies make this figure completely unreasonable means that no board placing the movies at the top of the heap in SW can conclude 200 gigaton medium turbolasers.

Is the evidence he's presenting that contradicts the ICS valid?

[Lord Revan]

it's very doutfull that's true, though they may accidently found out some real evindence to back their, but that's not in any way likely

[Dakarne]

Big Hairy Mountain Man speaks crap, and expects a "Double Standard" for every single debate we go into... in the favour of Trek...

He uses the Asteroid field at Hoth as an "Upper Limit" rather than a lower limit as it should be. I'd pay him no mind, but we're having to debate the idiot.

[Ghost Rider]

Both Greg Wilkens and Brian Young have gone through this.

I believe Cmdr Wilkens had in his sig the breakdown specifically about the ESB entry, so he is far more qualified.

And he does just have a few lies about rate of fire, and where the bolts have generated from. For a nice witty analysis of this and many more attached events

Go here. Wayne Poe goes into great detail of this stupidity and what's wrong with it.

So no, nothing he has done contradicts the ICS....except in his wanktastic world where only outight lying allows him to believe he's winning.

[Quadlok]

He's a jackass, who will accept no explanation for anything except that which makes wars look pathetic and trek look strong. Why were medium turbolaser shots seen to be used at Hoth? Perhaps the Imperial gunnery crews were practicing that ancient and arcane ritual known as target practice, and had toned down their weapons appropriately. In any case, his insistence that it should be used as an upper limit, when the Slave I displayed more firepower with its seismic charges in AOTC, it the height of absurdity.

[Imperial Overlord]

If medium turbolasers fired 6 megaton bolts, the asteroids seen in the TESB blasting scene would be violet white single-frame flashes. We don't have that. We have white flares and chunky yellow-orange debris taking several frames to dissipate. If medium turbolasers fired 200 gigaton bolts, the Falcon would be buffeted by the shockwave.

I particularily love this bit. It's space jack ass. No atmosphere, no shockwave.

[Solauren]

Or, if he insits on it; Obviously the Falcon's shield and stablizer technology is so powerful, despite being a 'flying bucket' of bolts, shockwaves from 200 Gigaton weapons are meaningless to it

[Mange]

Or, if he insits on it; Obviously the Falcon's shield and stablizer technology is so powerful, despite being a 'flying bucket' of bolts, shockwaves from 200 Gigaton weapons are meaningless to it.

I called him on Mike's Millennium Falcon Impact Analysis, this is what he came up with:

An analysis unfortunately predicated on questionable work, such as the assumption of turbolasers being light-speed massless weapons. E=pc only holds for massless light speed particles... and turbolasers are anything but lightspeed.

Why? The question of the momentum of a massless particle is a question of limits. The special case of the massless particle is a very special case in relativity. Particles can have energy without mass only if they propagate at the speed of light, and these particular particles have an energy E=pc.

Another slightly questionable assumption is that the visible temporary shift in the Falcon's attitude was due solely to transmitted momentum of the bolt, and not due to a flux of energy through the wrong conduit, triggering the systems ordinarily causing violent swings in the Falcon's attitude... or a last ditch attempt to "twist" out of the path of the turbolaser, made an instant too late. The Falcon demonstrated equally swift attitude changes under its own power during that chase scene, after all.

Tertiary to the theoretical flaws of the analysis and the causal difficulties, of course, there are the minor applied issues, such as the chronic overestimates endemic in Wong's work. For example, we've demonstrated on these boards numerous reasons for the Falcon to be 18-20 meters across instead of 27; as the usual dependence of energy on linear scaling is the fifth power, that probably accounts for a factor of 5-7 alone, leaving aside the more obvious problems.

Another issue arises when you ask any introductory physics student, freshly introduced to torque, to the problem of a projectile impacting at a steep angle with the specifications "reverse-engineered" by Wong on his page - with most of the turbolaser's momentum in the forward direction, the Falcon should be spinning far more than flipping. The Falcon noticably fails to spin at all.

Aside from these issues, you are very welcome to pursue this line of inquiry, which could prove very fruitful if approached correctly.

[Ghost Rider]

Wow, he actually uses two dollars words to show he violates basic logic on multiple levels.

After a while I just question why even go over there, that board is geared to their wanktastic fantasy and most of their other subject lines are sparse at best. They truly believe one day they will make Mike care enough to notice that they don't like his conclusions on a single subject that he particpates on a irregular basis. One small bit of proof against them is Mike's proof has stood the test of time, and while that means little...until they can come with calculations that aren't gross violations of logic, they aren't getting any more supporters then the one's already deluded enough to agree with them.

[Augustus Caesar]

I think the reason the people at strek-v-swars can get followers is that many people, such as myself don't have firm scientific grounding, and throwing big words around will convince some of them.

Every time anyone brings up Mike's pages BigHairy immediately says that he's refuted them and refuses to accept them as evidence that the UFP would recieve an ass-stomping.

[Ender]

Just browsing through the stek-v-swars board, and saw this-

++http://www.strek-v-swars.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=409

Is the evidence he's presenting that contradicts the ICS valid?

Short answer: No.

Long answer:

I've heard lots of claims rattling around recently, choking up a number of threads. The claims revolve (as usual) around the ICS claims of 200 gigaton medium turbolasers... and trying to fit them into the ESB asteroid field via inaccurate or outright dishonest claims.

No one has tried to fit them into the ESB field unless they are a fool. Yield roughly follows gun size and none o the guns fired where anywhere near big enough to track with those yields. 200 GT would be something like the dorsal trigun batteries.

Let's review, shall we? I'm sure we're all familiar with the Turbolaser Commentaries. Although I will not comment on the actual content of the analysis of the TLC, there are several incidental points that I've pointed out before that deserve repeating which happen to be confirmed by this particular page.

First, there are a number of sizes of turbolaser bolts seen fired by ISDs. These include small bolts, mid-sized bolts, and large bolts; the firing rate is dependent on the type, as I have noted before. Peak firing rate, out of the entire trilogy, is ~5.4 bolts per second last time I checked. Typical rates of fire aren't any higher than 1 bolt per second.

Checking again is indeed required. Connor McLeod times 12 bolts/s in ROTS from the Venator's heavy guns, including one barrel that lets off 3 bolts in under a second.

Large bolts are fired at substantially lower rates, apparently only available overy few seconds.

Funny how the largest bolts were not analyized at all on TLC. Both ROTJ and ROTS contradicts this claim.

Small bolts, as I have noted before, were not involved in any asteroid blasting. Asteroid blasting appears to have been the exclusive province of large and medium sized bolts, both of which are fired from the body of the ISD.

yes, notably not the heavy guns that fired the largest bolts.

Small bolts are generally fired from the visible forward "nodes," and were not seen (in any case that I've examined) to have destroyed any asteroids. These nodes are visible on the plate (top/bottom) hull sections of the ISD. As Kane Starkiller pointed out here, we witnessed the location from which at least some of the ESB asteroid-blasting shots were fired: The trench, not far from the notches.

The TLC note: TLC wrote:
The smallest bolts are only a few meters long. They were witnessed in only two scenes: defeating the Falcon's shields in ESB, and firing on the Falcon as it was departing Tatooine.
TLC wrote:
The only time these bolts have been seen is the scene referenced above, the asteroid scene, and possibly when the Falcon "attacked" the ISD, as it was passing over the dorsal surface.
TLC wrote:
The bolts fired in the earliest asteroid-vape scene in film were mostly middle sized TL bolts (see Turbolaser Characteristics for more information about TL bolt sizes). Longer TL bolts were seen in this scenes as well, but were less frequent. The heavy dorsal turrets were never used. [/quote]
Amaxing how this key point was just glossed over.

Although I frankly have my doubts that the author of the TLC examined the ROTJ and ANH firing scenes in as good depth as the TESB asteroid scenes, it is perfectly clear that this much picked-over scene involves not light, but medium-grade bolts at a minimum. Light "anti-fighter" bolts used by ISDs are seen - and they, like fighter bolts, are much smaller.

These, then, are not light turbolasers.

I would like proof that the medium sized bolts were not fired from light turbolasers. we have seen blasters and fighter weapons fire different sized bolts with correspondingly different velocities and different energies. There is the explicet note that the bolts did not come from the heavy emplacemetns, and the attacker himself notes that they came from the main body, and not the visable medium sized TLs on the dorsal ridge, and the Imperator 2 subtype lacks the trench mounted medium turbolaser cannons as any cursory examination of the model shows.

Now, what about the 200 gigaton medium turbolasers? I'll put it bluntly: Look at the canon policy of these boards. Material from the ICS books are not admissible unless directly supported by the movies/novelizations/screenplays/scripts.

Lovely. But there is thus far no proof that these guns are not supported by the higher canon.

The ICS claims point defense (i.e., light) lasers at 6 megatons. We've seen medium grade turbolasers with a yield of up to 60-500 terajoules... substantially less, in other words. Outright contradicting the 200 gigaton yields, in fact.

An outright lie.

The turbolaser commentaries firepower page cites examples of the vaporization of an asteroid 13 meters in diameter, 20 meters in diameter, 35 meters in diameter, 40 meters in diameter, 50 meters in diameter, 60 meters in diameter, 80 meters in diameter, and 100 meters in diameter. These correspond with energies of 69 terajoules; 251 terajoules; 1,343 terajoules; 2,005 terajoules; 3,917 terajoules; 6,768 terajoules; 16,043 terajoules; and 31,333 terajoules. It should be noted that these energies assume the asteroid was only heated to vaporization temperature, and ingores the time requirements and the fact that we observed bolts pass through asteroid they destroyed and remain coherent. In other words, this is so low end its should be inadmissable for barely representing the scenes in question.

If medium turbolasers fired 6 megaton bolts, the asteroids seen in the TESB blasting scene would be violet white single-frame flashes. We don't have that.

No. First off, scaling and calometrics show yields in excess of 7 Mt. Second, we see white flashes, but the idea that they would be gone in seconds ignores the basics of radiative heat transfer. With the energy applied, the only way for them to disappear that quickly requires the surrounding vacuum to be far colder then possible.

We have white flares and chunky yellow-orange debris taking several frames to dissipate. If medium turbolasers fired 200 gigaton bolts, the Falcon would be buffeted by the shockwave.

I would love to hear how a shockwave would propegate through a vacuum. Do tell.

So medium turbolasers in fact fire - as directly supported by the TESB asteroid field - somewhere in the neighborhood of 60-500 terajoules.

Only if the movie is ignored. Empire clearly shows higher yields.

If a medium gun shoots 60-500 terajoules, 6 megatons is a possible yield for the main cannon.

Unsupported conclusion based upon treating a contradicted lower limit as an upperlimit and wishful thinking.

However, it's worth noting that the peak firing rate demonstrated in the films isn't any higher than 2700 terawatts, and the firing rate for "long" bolts is notably less than 1 per second. For the very heaviest bolts, we would expect to see one fired every 5-10 seconds... at most.

It would be nice if some form of research had been performed instead of simply making wild and contradicted claims.

This is, incidentally, more or less par for the course in big-gun battleshipry. Lucas's battle scenes are quite reminiscent of WWII naval/air battles, so we should not feel in the slightest bit guilty for using straight analogy. The heavy guns should be 800-23,000 terajoules; given a total rate of fire for medium batteries of 5.4 per second, we should expect a peak main battery rate of fire of roughly 1 shot per 5 seconds, roughly consistent with the slower firing rates of the longer bolts seen. Yes, for the entire battery... representing a peak "main" battery power estimate of 4600 terawatts, 1.1 megatons per second.

Amazing that the Avenger did better then that repeatedly then, huh?

In other words, a megaton per second is a high if reasonable estimate for overall ISD turbolaser output. 6 megatons per shot is not completely unreasonable - for the main battery.

It is considering the fact that the movies show differently. The ESB scene shows single digit MT level small guns. The ROTS novewl suggests triple digit MT to single digit GT guns of indeterminate size. The ROTJ bombardment suggest triple digit GT. An analysis of the required energy for the reactor suggests teraton heavy weapons.

200 gigatons per shot for the secondary battery is in no way reasonable, contradicting the movies;

Really? Consider the energy required to move these ships as at a minimum, then imagine it channeled through the main guns. Treat the ISD as a cube with the density of ice. At roughtly 300 meters high, 800 meters wide, and 1600 meters long and 1000 kg/m^3 you get a mass of 3.84*10^11 kgs. This is ignoring the fuel it must carry, which would increase it by atleast an order of magnitude. ISDs are observed pulling 3,000 Gs over Endor, and their exhaust has a specific impulse of approx 30 million seconds. Thus they roughly correspond to a photon rocket (proof of exhaust velocity can be provided upon request). E=p*c, a reactor output of 3.4*10^24 watts is required. If this can be directed though the main guns (and the Death Star and common sense WRT design philosophy show this is the case) then the Heavy guns of the Imperator mark 2 must each fire a bolt corresponding to 12.6 teratons. Quie a far cry from a "generous" 1.1 MT.

further, the ICS figures are not even admissible on these boards in the first place without direct support from the movies, novelizations, or scripts. The fact that the movies make this figure completely unreasonable means that no board placing the movies at the top of the heap in SW can conclude 200 gigaton medium turbolasers.

To sum this up, he blusters, misrepresents TLC, lies about the energy shown in the films, bullshits about thermodynamics, blusters about a reasonable energy yield, and then claims it doesn't matter anyhow.

[Ender]

Or, if he insits on it; Obviously the Falcon's shield and stablizer technology is so powerful, despite being a 'flying bucket' of bolts, shockwaves from 200 Gigaton weapons are meaningless to it.

I called him on Mike's Millennium Falcon Impact Analysis, this is what he came up with:

An analysis unfortunately predicated on questionable work, such as the assumption of turbolasers being light-speed massless weapons. E=pc only holds for massless light speed particles... and turbolasers are anything but lightspeed.

AC: check the archives for the last few big TL blowouts, it got to the point where IP and Mad were proving massless Tls with the films alone. Easier to copy paste that then rehash it here.

Why? The question of the momentum of a massless particle is a question of limits. The special case of the massless particle is a very special case in relativity. Particles can have energy without mass only if they propagate at the speed of light, and these particular particles have an energy E=pc.

Another slightly questionable assumption is that the visible temporary shift in the Falcon's attitude was due solely to transmitted momentum of the bolt, and not due to a flux of energy through the wrong conduit, triggering the systems ordinarily causing violent swings in the Falcon's attitude... or a last ditch attempt to "twist" out of the path of the turbolaser, made an instant too late. The Falcon demonstrated equally swift attitude changes under its own power during that chase scene, after all.

There is no visable change in the Falcon's engine wash that corresponds with these other turns he mentions, and they are outside repulsor range. So these alternatives down't work.

Tertiary to the theoretical flaws of the analysis and the causal difficulties, of course, there are the minor applied issues, such as the chronic overestimates endemic in Wong's work. For example, we've demonstrated on these boards numerous reasons for the Falcon to be 18-20 meters across instead of 27; as the usual dependence of energy on linear scaling is the fifth power, that probably accounts for a factor of 5-7 alone, leaving aside the more obvious problems.

Funny how scaling shows the falcon at 50 meters then.

Another issue arises when you ask any introductory physics student, freshly introduced to torque, to the problem of a projectile impacting at a steep angle with the specifications "reverse-engineered" by Wong on his page - with most of the turbolaser's momentum in the forward direction, the Falcon should be spinning far more than flipping. The Falcon noticably fails to spin at all.

A point which shows how conservative this is moron - it shows that the falcon must be far more massive then he estimates it at. This would increase the energy yield.

Aside from these issues, you are very welcome to pursue this line of inquiry, which could prove very fruitful if approached correctly.

As an aside to all here: I did it and got about 170 MT when you correct for the scaling, dry mass, and fuel mass.

[Ender]

I think the reason the people at strek-v-swars can get followers is that many people, such as myself don't have firm scientific grounding, and throwing big words around will convince some of them.

Every time anyone brings up Mike's pages BigHairy immediately says that he's refuted them and refuses to accept them as evidence that the UFP would recieve an ass-stomping.

then it is a good thing my laptop has been repaired and is winging its way here to me. I did a lot of independent canon anaylsis. And while I still need to get a good copy of ROTS and work in that stuff, I can put some quick polish on the existing stuff and slap them up.

I intended it to be a teaching site, using movies to try and teach real science since a lot of people in the debates learned it that way. But apparently it's gonna get used as a vs thing.

"everytime you thinnk you are out, they pull you back in!"

[Ender]

Have you actually seen the model of the ISD-II, the ship in ESB? There are NO MTL Mounts anywhere near where the shots come from in the asteroid scene. There are only 10 Mounts that I have observed on the model that come even close to being MTL mounts and the are placed on the port and starboard superstructure about half way up from the main hull plating and the top plating of the superstructure. The only other visible mounts are the 8 HTL mounts which everyone should no where they are.

The area where the shots come from is a very "messy" area - the trench itself is filled with protrusions and various small details. A "medium" grade turbolaser mount could easily be hidden amidst the junk - or, for that matter, inset heavy turbolaser mounts equal in individual barrel size to the visible 8x8 battery of the ISDII.

That's right folks - there are HTLS there, we just can't see them! Of course, he can't prove their presence, but what the hey.

[Executor]

Have you actually seen the model of the ISD-II, the ship in ESB? There are NO MTL Mounts anywhere near where the shots come from in the asteroid scene. There are only 10 Mounts that I have observed on the model that come even close to being MTL mounts and the are placed on the port and starboard superstructure about half way up from the main hull plating and the top plating of the superstructure. The only other visible mounts are the 8 HTL mounts which everyone should no where they are.

The area where the shots come from is a very "messy" area - the trench itself is filled with protrusions and various small details. A "medium" grade turbolaser mount could easily be hidden amidst the junk - or, for that matter, inset heavy turbolaser mounts equal in individual barrel size to the visible 8x8 battery of the ISDII.

That's right folks - there are HTLS there, we just can't see them! Of course, he can't prove their presence, but what the hey.

Now they are guns that only slighly stick out of the main trench wall and have basically no firing arc, so infact they couldnt actually be the guns that fired at the asteriods as he claims since they dont have the angle. Hes pretty funny this guy

[Executor]

Have you actually seen the model of the ISD-II, the ship in ESB? There are NO MTL Mounts anywhere near where the shots come from in the asteroid scene. There are only 10 Mounts that I have observed on the model that come even close to being MTL mounts and the are placed on the port and starboard superstructure about half way up from the main hull plating and the top plating of the superstructure. The only other visible mounts are the 8 HTL mounts which everyone should no where they are.

The area where the shots come from is a very "messy" area - the trench itself is filled with protrusions and various small details. A "medium" grade turbolaser mount could easily be hidden amidst the junk - or, for that matter, inset heavy turbolaser mounts equal in individual barrel size to the visible 8x8 battery of the ISDII.

That's right folks - there are HTLS there, we just can't see them! Of course, he can't prove their presence, but what the hey.

Now they are guns that only slighly stick out of the main trench wall and have basically no firing arc, so infact they couldnt actually be the guns that fired at the asteriods as he claims since they dont have the angle. Hes pretty funny this guy

[RThurmont]

You know, that canon policy on the other site is moronic-if I recall correctly, the ICS books are considered extremely high level canon if memory serves, since they were created with such close cooperation with those inside Lucasfilm, and I was under the impression that they would trump other EU books. If I am correct, for that board to consider them invalid unless what they specify is backed up by cinematic or literary content elsewhere, is frankly, absurd.

[FedRebel]

You know, that canon policy on the other site is moronic-if I recall correctly, the ICS books are considered extremely high level canon if memory serves,

They are classified as "C level", which is the same levekl as EU

since they were created with such close cooperation with those inside Lucasfilm, and I was under the impression that they would trump other EU books.

If there is a conflict between two sources at the same level, the despute is resolved on a case by case basis, generally the work supported by more material wins the conflict.

If I am correct, for that board to consider them invalid unless what they specify is backed up by cinematic or literary content elsewhere, is frankly, absurd.

They want to do what they can to prove Trek superior, even if it involves deception.

[NRS Guardian]

According to Chee (maintainer of the Holocron) anything that has to do with the films and isn't contradicted by them is G-level which means most of the stuff in the ICSs and ITWs are G-level since they are directly tied to things in the movies.
Chee's example was the name of the fruit Anakin floated to Padme being named in the EU, since the fruit appeared in the movie the name of it is G-level canon, even though it first appears in the EU.

[Mange]

According to Chee (maintainer of the Holocron) anything that has to do with the films and isn't contradicted by them is G-level which means most of the stuff in the ICSs and ITWs are G-level since they are directly tied to things in the movies.
Chee's example was the name of the fruit Anakin floated to Padme being named in the EU, since the fruit appeared in the movie the name of it is G-level canon, even though it first appears in the EU.

Chee has stated that the contents of the ICS etc. are classified as C-level canon:
http://forums.starwars.com/thread.jspa? ... &start=120

However, they're canonical as far as LFL is concerned.

[apocolypse]

Yes, the ICS and DK books in general are C-level, however, when dealing with C-level canon also keep in mind the Sansweet/Cerasi quote of, "The further one branches away from the movies, the more interpretation and speculation come into play."

Basically, the way I've always seen it all interpreted is that while the DK books are C-level, they're a more valid or accurate source to use as they're directly tied into the movies themselves.


As far as the thread itself, the strek crowd is annoyingly predictable. I go there from time to time, but hardly ever post anymore. It's for the most part a complete waste.

[Lord Revan]

while the ICS and the Novelizations are C-level in holocron rating, they're highest possible source that's still C, BTW are the ICS books higher the the novelizations?

[Darth Servo]

First, there are a number of sizes of turbolaser bolts seen fired by ISDs. These include small bolts, mid-sized bolts, and large bolts; the firing rate is dependent on the type, as I have noted before. Peak firing rate, out of the entire trilogy, is ~5.4 bolts per second last time I checked. Typical rates of fire aren't any higher than 1 bolt per second.

Pure bullshit. The turrets in the trench on the DS 1 got off three shots in one second EACH. When the fighters first enter the trench, we see a single turret get off a set of three shots in half a second and then a moment later a group of four shots. And these were NOT light anti-starfighter guns.

Large bolts are fired at substantially lower rates, apparently only available overy few seconds.

See above.

Small bolts, as I have noted before, were not involved in any asteroid blasting. Asteroid blasting appears to have been the exclusive province of large and medium sized bolts, both of which are fired from the body of the ISD.

Out-right lie. The trench guns are the light and medium guns. THOSE are what destroyed the asteroids in TESB. The heavy guns weren't fired once in the film. And the bolts from the heavy guns seen in ROTJ were half the length of the ISD. The bolts in TESB weren't much longer than the 40 meter asteroids they vaporized.

Small bolts are generally fired from the visible forward "nodes," and were not seen (in any case that I've examined) to have destroyed any asteroids. These nodes are visible on the plate (top/bottom) hull sections of the ISD. As Kane Starkiller pointed out here, we witnessed the location from which at least some of the ESB asteroid-blasting shots were fired: The trench, not far from the notches.

Where the hell does he get the idea that small guns are ONLY on the forward "nodes" and not in the trench?

The TLC note: TLC wrote:
The smallest bolts are only a few meters long. They were witnessed in only two scenes: defeating the Falcon's shields in ESB, and firing on the Falcon as it was departing Tatooine.
TLC wrote:
The only time these bolts have been seen is the scene referenced above, the asteroid scene, and possibly when the Falcon "attacked" the ISD, as it was passing over the dorsal surface.

And where does it say that light guns ONLY fire those smallest bolts?

TLC wrote:
The bolts fired in the earliest asteroid-vape scene in film were mostly middle sized TL bolts (see Turbolaser Characteristics for more information about TL bolt sizes).

And the dishonest prick just ASSUMES that medium sized bolts MUST mean medium turbolasers.

Longer TL bolts were seen in this scenes as well, but were less frequent. The heavy dorsal turrets were never used.

So the asshole goes and quotes the TLC where it says straight out that heavy blts were NOT used in TESB in direct contradiction to his earlier claim that TESB was "exclusive province of large and medium sized bolts"

Although I frankly have my doubts that the author of the TLC examined the ROTJ and ANH firing scenes in as good depth as the TESB asteroid scenes,

The doubts of a dishonest jackass like BHMM are worth precisely jack squat.

it is perfectly clear that this much picked-over scene involves not light, but medium-grade bolts at a minimum.

Clear to a dishonest trektard that is.

Light "anti-fighter" bolts used by ISDs are seen - and they, like fighter bolts, are much smaller.

These, then, are not light turbolasers.

Who said light turrets are the smallest weapons on an ISD? Who said a TL turret ALWAYS fires the same size bolt?

Now, what about the 200 gigaton medium turbolasers? I'll put it bluntly: Look at the canon policy of these boards. Material from the ICS books are not admissible unless directly supported by the movies/novelizations/screenplays/scripts.

The canon policy that directly contradicts Lucasfilm's policy.

The ICS claims point defense (i.e., light) lasers at 6 megatons. We've seen medium grade turbolasers with a yield of up to 60-500 terajoules... substantially less, in other words. Outright contradicting the 200 gigaton yields, in fact.

Contradicted in the eyes of an idiot who thinks the TESB lower limit somehow is a maximum?:roll:

If medium turbolasers fired 6 megaton bolts, the asteroids seen in the TESB blasting scene would be violet white single-frame flashes.

White flashes? Yep. see the Steward at SDI debate.

We don't have that. We have white flares and chunky yellow-orange debris taking several frames to dissipate.

Why doesn't he prove that the yellow-orange debris is actually from the asteroid as opposed to the "plasma splash" proposed by the SW side years ago?

If medium turbolasers fired 200 gigaton bolts, the Falcon would be buffeted by the shockwave.

As others have pointed out: shockwaves in space? lol

So medium turbolasers in fact fire - as directly supported by the TESB asteroid field - somewhere in the neighborhood of 60-500 terajoules.

Repeating his earlier lie that a lower limit constitutes a benchmark.

If a medium gun shoots 60-500 terajoules, 6 megatons is a possible yield for the main cannon. However, it's worth noting that the peak firing rate demonstrated in the films isn't any higher than 2700 terawatts,

Again, repeating his lies about both fire rates AND misrepresenting lower limits as upper limits.

and the firing rate for "long" bolts is notably less than 1 per second. For the very heaviest bolts, we would expect to see one fired every 5-10 seconds... at most.

Except at the Battle of Yavin.

This is, incidentally, more or less par for the course in big-gun battleshipry. Lucas's battle scenes are quite reminiscent of WWII naval/air battles, so we should not feel in the slightest bit guilty for using straight analogy.

A civilization that can blow up planets shold be assumed to have starship weaponry on par with WW2 Earth? ROTFLMAO.

Trek combat with its transporting troops on board enemy ships and knife fights are reminiscent of 18th century naval tactics. Should we assume they have equivalent firepower?

The heavy guns should be 800-23,000 terajoules; given a total rate of fire for medium batteries of 5.4 per second, we should expect a peak main battery rate of fire of roughly 1 shot per 5 seconds, roughly consistent with the slower firing rates of the longer bolts seen. Yes, for the entire battery... representing a peak "main" battery power estimate of 4600 terawatts, 1.1 megatons per second.

In other words, a megaton per second is a high if reasonable estimate for overall ISD turbolaser output. 6 megatons per shot is not completely unreasonable - for the main battery.

He's just repeating his earlier BS here.

200 gigatons per shot for the secondary battery is in no way reasonable, contradicting the movies;

Where do the films show that an ISD can NOT produce 200 GT? THAT would be a contradiction. Even IF his analysis held any water, it would STILL only be a lower limit. NOT a contradiction of a higher figure.

further, the ICS figures are not even admissible on these boards in the first place without direct support from the movies, novelizations, or scripts.

Yes, debates are nice when you can make up your own rules and throw out anything you don't like, aren't they?

The fact that the movies make this figure completely unreasonable means that no board placing the movies at the top of the heap in SW can conclude 200 gigaton medium turbolasers.

And anyone takes this disciple of the Rabid Stupid Asshole seriously needs to have his head examined.

Is the evidence he's presenting that contradicts the ICS valid?

not even close.

[Vympel]

It's times like this that I resent not having the time or inclination while on my holiday to venture over there and engage. Did this debate continue or what?

[Hot Hands Harry]

Yeah, its continuing. BHMM is still insisting that only MTL fired in the TESB astrioid seen but refuses to show me where on the model they are. Plus he still has his upper and lower limits confused.