Playing Devil Advocate

[Luke Skywalker]

A type 3 civ would consistently churn out e38 watts or around that number. The most powerful weapon ever made in SW produced e38 watt bursts. Similarly, modern nuclear weapons can exceed type 1 civ projectione in a short burst, but we are not a type 1 civ.

Again, SW would need a hundred trillion ISD's running at full combat generation to match a type 3 in consistent power output.

[Norade]

A type 3 civ would consistently churn out e38 watts or around that number. The most powerful weapon ever made in SW produced e38 watt bursts. Similarly, modern nuclear weapons can exceed type 1 civ projectione in a short burst, but we are not a type 1 civ.

Again, SW would need a hundred trillion ISD's running at full combat generation to match a type 3 in consistent power output.

Funny, once you add in everything and include power generation for things such as planetary shields/defenses along with the fact that they can build the Death Star which was alone 4.184e+37 joules per shot for the original and at least the same for the DSII. The DSII could fire a shot every hour so that is 1.74e36 joules if you average that over 24 hours. So when a gang can build a unit capable of the same and a government can do that in six months I would say they could easily be type III if they cared to be.

Also, we know they have at least a million worlds and that they able to power shields of at least 1e26 watts. When you gather up the starships, and consider that they also control the output of their starts they pass your power requirements. You seem to forget that harnessing the power of stars, which Star Wars is known to do also counts.

[Darth Tedious]

A type 3 civ would consistently churn out e38 watts or around that number. The most powerful weapon ever made in SW produced e38 watt bursts. Similarly, modern nuclear weapons can exceed type 1 civ projectione in a short burst, but we are not a type 1 civ.

That analogy doesn't work. Modern nuclear weapons are self-powered, creating their bursts of energy as a one-time affair.
The Death Star's superlaser was powered by the DS's main reactor, which had to be capable of consistantly churning out (at minimum, based on the LL of 2.2E32J) ~2.5E27 Watts.

I must ask, why are you expressing the Death Star's power as 1E38 Watts? It should be Joules. You could calculate wattage by dividing 1E38J by the amount of time (in seconds) the beam was active for.

[Darth Tedious]

While you're at it, also note that IG-88 was responsible for the DSII's advanced targeting- without his corrections, the shots fired against Rebel Scum capships over Endor woud have all missed.

[Batman]

Oh frabjous day. As if the EU didn't suck enough as it is.

[Darth Tedious]

I actually quite like The Tale of IG-88...

Mind, in Death Star, it's mentioned that the DS1 had been test-fired (and used in combat) against capships.

/shrugs

Must have been the oblique firing they were having trouble aiming.

[Luke Skywalker]

Funny, once you add in everything and include power generation for things such as planetary shields/defenses

Right, because obviously those planetary shields will be up all the time. Yeah, they'd totally put up a giant shield so that any incoming passenger ships get vaporized upon contact.

along with the fact that they can build the Death Star which was alone 4.184e+37 joules per shot for the original and at least the same for the DSII. The DSII could fire a shot every hour so that is 1.74e36 joules if you average that over 24 hours. So when a gang can build a unit capable of the same and a government can do that in six months I would say they could easily be type III if they cared to be.

If they cared to be? Sure. We theoretically could find a loophole in the scale by stockpiling thermnonuclear weapons and detonating them constantly.

Also, we know they have at least a million worlds and that they able to power shields of at least 1e26 watts. When you gather up the starships, and consider that they also control the output of their starts they pass your power requirements. You seem to forget that harnessing the power of stars, which Star Wars is known to do also counts.

No, it isn't. It would take ten trillion ISD's on combat level power generation to make a type 3 civilization.

[dworkin]

Oh frabjous day. As if the EU didn't suck enough as it is.

So, the 'bit' of the EU that is good. 1 or 0?

[Connor MacLeod]

So to get this supposedly "back on topic" such as it is, I'll provide my own assessment of the OP:

In TPM, starship mounted laser cannons shows very sub kiloton yields when Anakin fired them.

You mean against like the droidekas before launching or something? That's not hard to rationalize. They simply didn't use maximum setting, which is what the kiloton range bolts are. Hell Slave-1's got guns that have "sub kiloton" as max yield, and the 2 kiloton lasers it does have are classified as HEAVY laser cannon. That suggests kt range weaponry (and settings) are rather on the high end at fighter scales. On the other scale "low" power cannon shots will merely vaporize/explode (depending on your interpretation and liberality/conservatism WRT sci fi) whole humans, which could be high kj/low mj easily and is still more than enough to take out battle droids. Either Anakin's force-talent magically reduced yield on the guns, or they may very well have been set to low power by default whilst in the hangar (It would be rather risky to have them set at MAX YIELD, now, wouldn't it?)

The same proton torpedos that were expected to at least have a chance of taking out a TF battleship were very sub kiloton when fired.

Please show the calculations that result in you deeming these things are "sub kiloton", along with your analysis of how proton torpedoes actually function and how this all is somehow a problem with what we see.

Queen Amidala's yacht was moving at only a few hundred meters per second.

I'm sure it did at various points in the movie, but what is this actually supposed to prove? We've also seen it break orbit in relatively short periods of time (seconds, IIRC the TPM novelization correctly, in the case of the first escape from Naboo.) Without knowing the specific incident and the circumstances surrounding it, I don't get what this is supposed to prove or be a problem, is there some law requiring all SW vessels MUST BE TRAVELING MUCH MUCH FASTER ALL THE TIME or something, even if uneeded or would be wasteful?

Maul engages Qui Gon on foot instead of hitting his general area with a proton torpedo or a laser cannon.

So Maul is an overconfident fool. This was well established several times in Darth Maul shadow Hunter. The guy is cool, but he's not fucking perfect. Again what this is supposed to prove in a larger context I don't know.

A Naboo starfighter is taken out by a very sub kiloton AAT bolt.

By being shot down when the bolt damages something on the fighter. Believe it or not, there's no reason to believe you actually NEED kiloton range bolts to take out fighters in every conceivable circumstance. Nevermind that not all fighters are built the same (to the same quality or standards, or with the same level of capabilities), that fighter shields (or SW shield in general) may not be some all encompassing, impenetrable bubble (EG there may be gaps), we don't even KNOW whether the shields were on or at what level (even when active, I doubt they just magically spring to full power instantly), and we dont know what sort of damage forced it down (taking out the repulsor emitters, which help keep an otherwise highly unaerodynamic craft aloft, probably would do that, as could damaging the engines.)

Again without more data, I fail to see what this proves.

The missile impacting at the beginning of AotC was very sub kiloton.

I have no idea what you're talking about. You know your attempt to play "Devil's Advocate" would be alot more convincing if you weren't so sparse on the details and made people guess like this.

The Jedi rescuing Obi Wan and Anakin had no fear that some random TF battleship could fire a turbolaser set at 0.000 000 001% power and kill them all.

Right. Because obliterating an ally's land and buildings makes absolute perfect sense, nevermind the risk involved to those nearby. I do like the implicit assumption that all turbolasers HAVE to be capable of this (some turbolsaers being capable, or designed to be able to do that is not the same thing as all of them are, at all times.) Hell, most SW craft make fighters, so it actually makes more sense to just make a strafing run anyhow.

No kiloton level effects were seen At Geonosis. The clones had to worry about collateral damage, but why such a false dilemma and underkill instead of near kiloton shots? And once the separatist leaders had escaped, why not have one TF battleship stay behind and broadcast a big fuck you while killing the clone army with one shot, while whiping out much of the Jedi Council?

Right. Because we know all wars should be fought at MAXIMUM FIREPOWER AND CAPABILITY regardless of the consequences. This is such an incredibly foolish oversimplification I don't know where to begin. The enviromental impacts of rampantly dumping huge quantities of energy into it. Collateral damage? The fact we dont know what sorts of limitations (political, technological, etc.) may limit rampant use of those sorts of weapons (They're MAXIMUM YIELD typically, at least for energy weapons, which tends to suggest they're not typical or average settings, and would have more extreme consequences for the weapon) - and on and on and on.

Nevermind that the implicit statement in all this is there are cases where we would EXPECT to see this, which means that someone, somewhere, did all the math and analysis to determine that an actual contradiction exists to begin with. At least, I'm hoping that, rather than someone assuming "look at these nukes" and then screeching. Then again some Trekkies endure that anytime Star Trek V or similar scenes involving photorps are involved, so maybe turnabout is fiar play

Why the age of sail tactics and low speeds in the Battle of Coriscant?

Because the Republic has to re-learn how to fight and they chose shitty instructors to teach them, much like with a good deal of the tactics in the Clone Wars.

Alternately, if "human stupidity" offends, you could just argue they were using tractor beams to immobilize ships, which may very well necessitate getting close. Some have argued various excuses like "to prevent the fleet from jumping to hyperspace" since they were trying to rescue the Chancellor. It may very well be they were trying to locate him and had to board multiple starships to do so even.

Why were spectators still watching the battle as claimed in the novel while the shields were clearly down, when they should be in a deep planetary bunker?

Which fucking battle? The Battle of Coruscant? Sometimes people are fucking idiots, including in real life. I've been in situations where a tornado warning is given and we're told we're supposed to go and stay in the tornado shelter, but people will wander off because they're bored, curious, or just want to fucking take pictures of cars being stuck in flooded areas or of the outside weather.

Why does the novel mention devastation done by falling debris and not by a single stray medium turbolaser bolt?

Is there a reason it should? Do we have a reason to believe there WAS a stray turbolaser bolt, and if so hwo would we recognize any of thise or the level of damage caused or anything else that matters that would make this a problem? That's why I really hate alot of these "what if" arguments, they're based on really vague or subjective ideas about 'what should be so' but they rarely are verry in depth or bother to account for all variables or possibilities. Some are even outright false dilemmas.

Why were super battle droids burned by orange color fire?

I don't see what the point of this is, or what bearing it can have on anything, other than to be needlessly nitpicky.

Why were laser cannons blasts used to kill Ploo Koon so weak? If they dialed the yield down by a million times, how would they do jack to he starfighter's shields?

More assumptions! I'm tired of assumptions. I want some FACTS to bite into. Is it too much to ask for actual facts rather than assumptions based on people's personal observations and interpretations? I'm tired of how things getting interpreted one way get passed off as "fact" like this, without allowance for any other alterantive.

Why was the AT TE's cannon so weak when fired at Obi Wan? A single kiloton hit; which a giant barrel should be able to have if smaller laser cannons of equal tech base can, would have wiped out Obi Wan, while the clone troopers...oh, well, at least a gigajoule hit.

Why do we need that much firepower to kill a jedi? They're not made of fucking iron. I'd also love to see the calcs that tell us what the actual yields involved were, nevermind what the glowy blue pulse we saw fired was actually supposed to represent as far as damage goes.

After Grevious is killed, why doesn't the droids space fleet just BDZ as much of Utapau as they can; especially where Grevious was reported to have been residing so they they kill Kenobi, and then run away? It's not as though they're worried about friendly fire.

Is there anyone around with enough authority to give that command? would the starships cooperate enough to do that? Did they have enough fuel? Were they undamaged enough to achieve that. What about the REpublic fleet in orbit (As I recall they had starships nearby.) What would the political fallout be over this, if any?

Why was durasteel melting in lava and ripping of and burning up in reentry?

The first part is too bloody vague, since we don't know what "durasteel" we're suppsoed to be worrying about, nevermind the properties of the steel in question or lava (its not like either is set in stone, for crying out loud.). As far as burning up on reentry, the question is so obviously silly given that the ship actually did not "burn up" on reentry, but some of its exterior was ripped away or "burned away", which isn't exactly the same thing. Considering it had been involved in a prolonged, close range battle PRIOR to atmospheric reentry and its descent, nevermind other possible factors involved with it, I don't see what the problem is. Especially since Separatist warships are, by nature, rather spindly and not terribly durable as it is. The Invisible Hand moreso, because it was converted into a command ship and carrier.

Most of these can be rationalized, but I'd like to see your opinions on it.

They're silly. Most of them lack any sort of real data on which to make conclusions, or observations, much less to determine something is wrong. It's basically someone going off personal observation, gut instinct, "common sense" or some other equally retarded pseudo-substitute for facts and data. It happens alot for SW, but a fair bit of it gets tossed in the direction of other universes too (see my aformentioned reference to ST5 and the god-killing photorp, or see the more recent discussion of TDiC, etc.)

That is not to say contradictions don't exist, but the whole "x is contradicted by y" tactic is an incredibly overused one, and it causes more problems than it solves by deliberately creating (and encouraging the creation of) inconisstencies in whatever fiction is being analysed, instead of trying to promote explanations to solve it and make it fit with a larger scale of things.

[Connor MacLeod]

Did you read the thread? I already talked about ships. The consistent aspect of the Kardashev scale is very important, since if you ignore it, today's America is type 2 already.

First off, I'm going to say this really isn't directed specifically at you D13, but more in general, but - why are people so caught up on using the "Kardeshev scale" at all to begin with? What is this really going to prove? What is it supposed to prove, and how are we exactly meant ot go about making these comparisons. I've known people to really make a big deal about it, casually make mention of it in various discussions and what not, and try to classify all manner of sci fi according to that scale, but my entirely superficial, uninformed, and quite possibly wrong impression is that its just a more highly publicised sort of Spacebattles.com "Force Chart' - which to me is an excuse to dumb down a debate into something decided by consensus and a few shallow assesssments of capabilities (or a general impression of "how powerful/advanced' a group/race/civilisation is.)

If that assessment is wrong, I would invite someone to explain to me what it actually is, how it is analyzed/measured, etc., and why some uneducated person such as myself should care about it at all.

[Norade]

Funny, once you add in everything and include power generation for things such as planetary shields/defenses

Right, because obviously those planetary shields will be up all the time. Yeah, they'd totally put up a giant shield so that any incoming passenger ships get vaporized upon contact.

They really don't need to keep them up if you have the capability to raise them at will while not straining the grid.

along with the fact that they can build the Death Star which was alone 4.184e+37 joules per shot for the original and at least the same for the DSII. The DSII could fire a shot every hour so that is 1.74e36 joules if you average that over 24 hours. So when a gang can build a unit capable of the same and a government can do that in six months I would say they could easily be type III if they cared to be.

If they cared to be? Sure. We theoretically could find a loophole in the scale by stockpiling thermnonuclear weapons and detonating them constantly.[/quote]

Not really the same, they've proven that they can build a weapon able to maintain an average of 1e37 joules and multiple groups were able to build these. This shows that they have all the technology and resource harvesting in place to be a type 3 civ by any scale.

You also keep missing the fact that any start or black hole that you mine from is counted in which raises the power level considerably.

[Darth Tedious]

We theoretically could find a loophole in the scale by stockpiling thermnonuclear weapons and detonating them constantly.

Would a nuclear detonation even count on Kardashev measurement? It isn't exactly harnessed energy. None of it goes to power supply of the civilisation in question.
The DS counts (or rather counted) because of its reactor core, not its superlaser.

omfg it's my hard sci fi agenda

He's got a hard-on for hard sci-fi...

I must ask, would a single system civilisation have the industrial base to hold off a galactic one* (at equal power generation)? Resources would be severely limited in terms of rarer elements...

*-Assumes a fight to the death.

[Connor MacLeod]

For me, I use it as a convenient way to remind people how massively huge our own solar system is.

A Kardashev 2 is something that has fully utilized a single solar system.

I gather that "fully utilized" of the mass/energy resources of a system is something of a requirement for the scale to be valid? Or does it make allowances for other capabilities/interpretations? That's largely where my concern lies.. the way i've seen the scale used, and the fact there are so few types, makes me fear it is far more dumbed down (meaning it can't provide very useful precise data) or that it is too narrowly specialized (meaning it won't apply across a broad cateogry - EG would it work with any sort of soft sci fi civ like Revelation Space? What about something like 40K?)

By making the comparison to show that your favorite galactic empire is actually very close to 2.0 on that scale, it's (from me) meant to show that all that fun stuff could exist in our very own solar system.

That's fine I suppose, but I don't think it really proves anything, unless we're swinging dicks or something.

There's no need for hyperdrives or warp drives to have these massive, high power, space opera like settings. Hell.... we could plausibly do it some day in the real world!

I guess that depends on the setting and your definition of "massive", but at least as far as Star Wars goes, I always figured "high output" tends to go with maximum performance (and maximum power draw.) Which makes it comparatively rare (I doubt many civilian starships routinely use hypermatter cores, or could even afford maintaining them, so they probably have to settle for much slower FTL speeds and reduced performance. I doubt having to take days or weeks to get to a destination instead of a couple of hours is going to kill your average vacationer, for example.)

Secondly, it's interesting because this implies a one-system civilization could conceivably give this galactic empire one hell of a fight, at least on the defense.

True, but you could just look up individual mass/energy figures on the solar system and tell that too. I don't think that needs a scale.
(of course you also need some pretty ferocious industrial technology to utilize all those assets efficiently and rapidly, unless for some reason we assume time is irrelevant.) Or you could just do as i did and read Redemption Ark

omfg it's my hard sci fi agenda

SENATOR WARSIE TO THE RESCUE! I OPPRESS YOU!

[Eternal_Freedom]

Quite simply, no they wouldn't. Your ships may be a million times more powerful, but if your outnumbered twenty million to one you will still lose.

[Luke Skywalker]

They really don't need to keep them up if you have the capability to raise them at will while not straining the grid.

That's...exactly...what I was saying. It's called sarcasm, bud.

Star Wars could be a type 3 civilization if it wanted to, but it isn't. In theory it could mass produce several Death Star's and then have them run on full power constantly.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I was responding to a post that apparently no longer exists. Someone asked if a galactic-scale sub-type II went to all out war with a single-star true type II civilisation.

The smaller one would have a boatload more power for the defense but they are far too small scale to be a credible threat to the larger society.

[ThomasP]

Secondly, it's interesting because this implies a one-system civilization could conceivably give this galactic empire one hell of a fight, at least on the defense.


omfg it's my hard sci fi agenda

If you haven't already, read Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained by Peter Hamilton.

[Connor MacLeod]

The scale is defined as using the full power available to a thing, rounded to certain values. Type 1 is defined as about the solar energy hitting the Earth, type 2 is all the solar energy, and type 3 is that times a hundred billion or so to account for the entire galaxy.

It tells absolutely nothing about individual units, since the most likely way to move up the scale is to grow your general population. Even increases in standard of living are unlikely to really crank your way up like population growth does.

Energy might work if you're dealing with an audience that has the education to understand what you're talking about and grasp the complexities that lie behind it, but a more causual audience (EG someone like me) wouldn't. And I can actually confirm this: for years I never bothered to consider anything BUT energy mattering in terms of firepower in weapons and such, which was patently silly. And those mistakes have persisted even until fairly recently (for which I thank Luke Campbell's existence, amongst others.)

The basic size thing could probably be applied across various sci fi things, though it might have different meanings.

Perhaps, but I'd think you'd be inventing more categories/sub-categories, which kinda defeats the purpose of "type1/2/3" broad classifications, unless you're trying to make an outline of things, and the general populace IMHO isn't patient enough for that sort of detail.

For "massive", I meant a wide, varied setting within reach of the characters. (the hard sf agenda again)

It's probably something I'm failing to grasp, but could you explain further?

Naturally, though if you're using it as part of your regular life, it might not be too hard; all the stuff exists, and you've just gotta redirect as much of it as is feasible. (Ration every one's use just a little and then take that excess into the war effort. 1% ration times one quadrillion juggawatts = holy shit yo. Of course, getting all that 1% together is probably a difficult feat.)

BTW what I really like most about the distributed setup is how hard it is to kill.... if I have one massive battlestation with insane power, some farmboy in a plane can blow it up real good. If I have a trillion small units that can all nevertheless work together, that farmboy can spend his whole life one hit killing them, and I'll just laugh it off.

This is the reasoning I use for SW v ST - the centralized power isn't as important as the sheer number of things that can be brought in.

If you get down to it, "MAXIMUM RESOURCE USAGE" could be overkill to stymie the Empire: I know of at least two (possibly exceptional?) example where Imperial conquest forces were stymied by a known and relatively small number of ships - the Hapes consortium (although they may actually have a sizable fleet realtivet to the territory they control, given events in NJO) and the Dornean Navy mentioned in the Black Fleet Crisis (single alien race, IIRC single system or at least a small coalition, and no more than 80 ships. The defence of their territory against conquest was considered a tremendous feat of tactical/strategic genius, IIRC) It really depends on how you contrive matters (political, economic, etc.) I mean hell, I've contrived a few ideas on how a plausible ST vs SW scenario could go simply by tossing out the "total WARRRRR" requirement. It's not as if the Empire's vast under-utilization of its resource/industrial potential is a groundbreaking revelation.

One system really isn't that important to something the scale of the Empire, no matter how large it is. More likely they would just blockade it or something and move onto other matters. If they really had to stop them I'd expec tthem to just chuck missiles at it or something.

[Whiskey144]

If you haven't already, read Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained by Peter Hamilton.

I've barely read anything, despite having a kinda big box of books, but this looks interesting too. Thanks!

If you like Hamilton, then I'll append ThomasP's suggestion with his (Hamilton's) Night's Dawn trilogy. I've read the first book, and am roughly a third of the way through the second, and loving every bit of it; it's also very well thought-out, and quite hard in several fashions- thought it's still rather operatic at its core.

[ThomasP]

If you haven't already, read Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained by Peter Hamilton.

I've barely read anything, despite having a kinda big box of books, but this looks interesting too. Thanks!

If you like Hamilton, then I'll append ThomasP's suggestion with his (Hamilton's) Night's Dawn trilogy. I've read the first book, and am roughly a third of the way through the second, and loving every bit of it; it's also very well thought-out, and quite hard in several fashions- thought it's still rather operatic at its core.

I was thinking more of DXIII's premise of having a more spread-out FTL civilization getting its clock cleaned by an opposing civilization which has only the resources of a single solar system. The Commonwealth books take that idea and run with it.

[Luke Skywalker]

The bottom line is number of systems is a misleading metric.

That's nice. So what anybody want to actually debate the original topic ?

[Darth Tedious]

The bottom line is number of systems is a misleading metric.

That's nice. So what anybody want to actually debate the original topic ?

You'll find things tend to meander a bit around here.

IMHO, you'd be best off going with Connor's advice and restating some of your points in more specific manner, so they can be better addressed.

[Luke Skywalker]

So to get this supposedly "back on topic" such as it is, I'll provide my own assessment of the OP:

Thank you. Note that I am a pro Wars debater; this is called "playing devil's advocate" for a reason.

You mean against like the droidekas before launching or something? That's not hard to rationalize. They simply didn't use maximum setting, which is what the kiloton range bolts are. Hell Slave-1's got guns that have "sub kiloton" as max yield, and the 2 kiloton lasers it does have are classified as HEAVY laser cannon. That suggests kt range weaponry (and settings) are rather on the high end at fighter scales. On the other scale "low" power cannon shots will merely vaporize/explode (depending on your interpretation and liberality/conservatism WRT sci fi) whole humans, which could be high kj/low mj easily and is still more than enough to take out battle droids. Either Anakin's force-talent magically reduced yield on the guns, or they may very well have been set to low power by default whilst in the hangar (It would be rather risky to have them set at MAX YIELD, now, wouldn't it?)

Fair enough. The TPM low laser cannon firepower is rather simple to rationalize. Others, however, are far trickier, such as Slave 1's firepower in the Geonosis belt chase, which was impressive but not impressive enough to conform with kiloton laser cannons.

Please show the calculations that result in you deeming these things are "sub kiloton", along with your analysis of how proton torpedoes actually function and how this all is somehow a problem with what we see.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZXcWV0S7fo

The blast radius is ridiculously small and far too short to be even as powerful as a MOAB.

I'm sure it did at various points in the movie, but what is this actually supposed to prove? We've also seen it break orbit in relatively short periods of time (seconds, IIRC the TPM novelization correctly, in the case of the first escape from Naboo.) Without knowing the specific incident and the circumstances surrounding it, I don't get what this is supposed to prove or be a problem, is there some law requiring all SW vessels MUST BE TRAVELING MUCH MUCH FASTER ALL THE TIME or something, even if uneeded or would be wasteful?

Oh, it's not supposed to "prove" anything. However, it is a valid contradiction to higher end speed showings, as the ship was trying to run a blockade.

So Maul is an overconfident fool. This was well established several times in Darth Maul shadow Hunter. The guy is cool, but he's not fucking perfect. Again what this is supposed to prove in a larger context I don't know.

Nitpick: Although Maul is overconfident, the TPM novelization makes it clear that he was no fool, as he was manipulating the two Jedi into a confined corridor where their Atari form would be disadvantaged.

By being shot down when the bolt damages something on the fighter.

Wouldn't the shields stop that?

Believe it or not, there's no reason to believe you actually NEED kiloton range bolts to take out fighters in every conceivable circumstance.

That would depend on your definition of "every conceivable circumstance". You'd expect for kiloton level shielding to be able to stop a hit from something that appears to be weaker than conventional artillery.

Nevermind that not all fighters are built the same (to the same quality or standards, or with the same level of capabilities),

So Naboo happened to design starfighters several thousand times weaker than, say, that of an X wing?

that fighter shields (or SW shield in general) may not be some all encompassing, impenetrable bubble (EG there may be gaps),

Why would there be gaps?

we don't even KNOW whether the shields were on or at what level (even when active, I doubt they just magically spring to full power instantly),

Decent rationalization.

and we dont know what sort of damage forced it down (taking out the repulsor emitters, which help keep an otherwise highly unaerodynamic craft aloft, probably would do that, as could damaging the engines.)

Again without more data, I fail to see what this proves.

[

Looking just at this example, it quite clearly supports very sub kiloton laser cannon yields. However, given the plethora of evidence supporting higher end yields, I suppose that we'd have to go with the rationalization that the shields were not fully charged yet.

I have no idea what you're talking about. You know your attempt to play "Devil's Advocate" would be alot more convincing if you weren't so sparse on the details and made people guess like this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_vDwNmL ... re=related

Hey, you know, Zam Weasel surely could have just parked a random armed fighter in the atmosphere and have launched a single laser cannon at Padme's Yacht, couldn't she? Or are you going to argue that she was worried about civilian casualties or something?

Right. Because obliterating an ally's land and buildings makes absolute perfect sense, nevermind the risk involved to those nearby. I do like the implicit assumption that all turbolasers HAVE to be capable of this (some turbolsaers being capable, or designed to be able to do that is not the same thing as all of them are, at all times.) Hell, most SW craft make fighters, so it actually makes more sense to just make a strafing run anyhow.

Because surely an execution arena that's actually very inefficient from a military perspective is too valuable to kill Mace Windu, essentially the entire Jedi Council and 200 Jedi.

Right. Because we know all wars should be fought at MAXIMUM FIREPOWER AND CAPABILITY regardless of the consequences.

What consequences did the droid army have to worry about once their core ships escapes or even got to raise their shields? Just fire a few laser cannons at the Clone Army and the idiots get killed.

This is such an incredibly foolish oversimplification I don't know where to begin. The enviromental impacts of rampantly dumping huge quantities of energy into it.

Because obviously the CIS would worry about the "environmental impact" on a single planet out of billions so much that they'd forfeit a chance to wipe out the Jedi and their new army in one strike.

Collateral damage? The fact we dont know what sorts of limitations (political, technological, etc.) may limit rampant use of those sorts of weapons (They're MAXIMUM YIELD typically, at least for energy weapons, which tends to suggest they're not typical or average settings, and would have more extreme consequences for the weapon) - and on and on and on.

Speculation. You're making up imaginary "political" limitations when Base Delta Zero's were used by the Republic during the war and Grevious was said to have burned entire worlds.

Nevermind that the implicit statement in all this is there are cases where we would EXPECT to see this, which means that someone, somewhere, did all the math and analysis to determine that an actual contradiction exists to begin with. At least, I'm hoping that, rather than someone assuming "look at these nukes" and then screeching. Then again some Trekkies endure that anytime Star Trek V or similar scenes involving photorps are involved, so maybe turnabout is fiar play

Oh, there are plenty Trek examples of this too.

Because the Republic has to re-learn how to fight and they chose shitty instructors to teach them, much like with a good deal of the tactics in the Clone Wars.

Um, they have already been at war for 3 years by now. If they're still relearning by then, they deserve to get conquered.

Alternately, if "human stupidity" offends, you could just argue they were using tractor beams to immobilize ships, which may very well necessitate getting close. Some have argued various excuses like "to prevent the fleet from jumping to hyperspace" since they were trying to rescue the Chancellor. It may very well be they were trying to locate him and had to board multiple starships to do so even.

The best rationalization would be that both fleets are severely crippled, while Grevious obviously had to move within close range of the Republic fleet in order to land ground troops in what was supposed to be a surprise attack.

Which fucking battle? The Battle of Coruscant? Sometimes people are fucking idiots, including in real life. I've been in situations where a tornado warning is given and we're told we're supposed to go and stay in the tornado shelter, but people will wander off because they're bored, curious, or just want to fucking take pictures of cars being stuck in flooded areas or of the outside weather.

Fair enough, although Coruscant really should have mandatory evacuation procedures.

Is there a reason it should? Do we have a reason to believe there WAS a stray turbolaser bolt, and if so hwo would we recognize any of thise or the level of damage caused or anything else that matters that would make this a problem? That's why I really hate alot of these "what if" arguments, they're based on really vague or subjective ideas about 'what should be so' but they rarely are verry in depth or bother to account for all variables or possibilities. Some are even outright false dilemmas.

So you're claiming that, out of the entire battle, not one turbolaser bolt missed and ruined somebody's day?

I don't see what the point of this is, or what bearing it can have on anything, other than to be needlessly nitpicky.

It's related to the durability of SBD's, which case take blaster fire and live.

More assumptions! I'm tired of assumptions. I want some FACTS to bite into. Is it too much to ask for actual facts rather than assumptions based on people's personal observations and interpretations? I'm tired of how things getting interpreted one way get passed off as "fact" like this, without allowance for any other alterantive.

How the fuck is it an assumption? We see laser cannons hit Ploo Koon's ship, we see no kiloton range effects, and we see Ploo Koon's ship get blown up by it.

Why do we need that much firepower to kill a jedi? They're not made of fucking iron. I'd also love to see the calcs that tell us what the actual yields involved were, nevermind what the glowy blue pulse we saw fired was actually supposed to represent as far as damage goes.

Because the shot that hit Obi Wan could have missed if it were off by a few meters, and is no guarantee to actually kill Obi Wan with anything less than a direct hit; in fact, it didn't.

And Cody simply said "blast him!", meaning that there was no time or motive to quickly dial down the yield.

Whereas with a higher powered shot, they would have killed Obi Wan even with just a proximity hit, and would have no fear of him happening to survive. Then, after he falls into the water, vaporize the freaking water.

Is there anyone around with enough authority to give that command? would the starships cooperate enough to do that? Did they have enough fuel? Were they undamaged enough to achieve that. What about the REpublic fleet in orbit (As I recall they had starships nearby.) What would the political fallout be over this, if any?

So there is no line if command of their general dies?

The first part is too bloody vague, since we don't know what "durasteel" we're suppsoed to be worrying about, nevermind the properties of the steel in question or lava (its not like either is set in stone, for crying out loud.).

Steel sort of melts in lava. Durasteel seen in Mustafar also melts in lava.

As far as burning up on reentry, the question is so obviously silly given that the ship actually did not "burn up" on reentry, but some of its exterior was ripped away or "burned away", which isn't exactly the same thing. Considering it had been involved in a prolonged, close range battle PRIOR to atmospheric reentry and its descent, nevermind other possible factors involved with it, I don't see what the problem is. Especially since Separatist warships are, by nature, rather spindly and not terribly durable as it is. The Invisible Hand moreso, because it was converted into a command ship and carrier.

[/quote]

Fair enough, but note that armor capable of taking fusion warheads on with little more than scorch marks really shouldn't be affected at all. I suppose that the metal falling off was already heavily crippled.

[Darth Tedious]

Just to clarify a couple of things...

The blast radius is ridiculously small and far too short to be even as powerful as a MOAB.

That was a ten minute video, could you be more specific about which blast you're referring to?

Because surely an execution arena that's actually very inefficient from a military perspective is too valuable to kill Mace Windu, essentially the entire Jedi Council and 200 Jedi.

Are we talking about the same arena that Count Dooku, Poggle the Lesser, Nute Gunray and the rest of the entire leadership of the CIS were standing in?

And a couple of points I find a little unrealistic...

Um, they have already been at war for 3 years by now. If they're still relearning by then, they deserve to get conquered.

So after a thousand years of peace, and with no military education whatsoever, you expect them to have developed proper tactics and strategies in three years?

Fair enough, although Coruscant really should have mandatory evacuation procedures.

Without even considering the absurd number of people involved (where the hell are you going to put all these trillions of people?) there is the issue of the battle happening above the planet. It would be safer to stay on the ground than to fly a ship through that shit.

There was a really interesting discussion about the idea of mass evacuation of Coruscant not too long ago (in the event of its sun being destroyed). The logistics are a scary prospect. Right here, if you want to check it out.

[Connor MacLeod]

Thank you. Note that I am a pro Wars debater; this is called "playing devil's advocate" for a reason.

Dude, I really don't care if your pro-wars, trek, B5, or pro-cthulhu. I'm as liable to yell at warsies as I am at trekkies or anyone else on this board. what bugs the hell out of me is tedious nitpicking and generally shallow, one-dimensional arguments, and this comes form having to deal with it for years (and figuring out WHY I hated it so much.) I'm trying to make a point here.

Fair enough. The TPM low laser cannon firepower is rather simple to rationalize. Others, however, are far trickier, such as Slave 1's firepower in the Geonosis belt chase, which was impressive but not impressive enough to conform with kiloton laser cannons.

You're assuming that Slave-1's "maximum firepower" mode have absolutely no drawbacks that would make lower settings useful or viable. Rate of fire, for example. Slave-1 fires at a much higher clip than the starfighters of the prequel movies (X-wings and TIEs rarely fired that fast.) which may be related to power settings (due to issues like cooldown, recharge, etc. It doesn't scale linearly with big starships.) The existence of the "stutter shot" modes from the NJO is a strong indicator of this, actually.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZXcWV0S7fo

The blast radius is ridiculously small and far too short to be even as powerful as a MOAB.

You completely ignored what I was asking for. I didn't ask for you to "dump a youtube vid on me and expect me to work it out" I expected you to provide the math and the quotes to back up your particular claim.

Example: Do blasters work as a purely thermal damage mechanism, are they explosive, or can they be both (either in some hybrid form, or an ability to alternate between the two?) Is it a single pulse or a train of pulses? Does it behave like a laser, a particle beam, a proejctile, or an explosive warhead? or perhaps some combination, or even none of the above? How exactly does a bomb relate to a beam weapon, and what evdience exists to support it.

THAT'S the kind of data you need to provide in order to make a point. Simply saying "sub kiloton" and pasting a youtube clip isn't going to make a point if (for example) your blaster is working like a heat ray (which many of them actually do in sci fi, inefficient as that can be.)

I'll also point out you completely ignored my demands that you provide evidence for how proton torpedoes work.

Nitpick: Although Maul is overconfident, the TPM novelization makes it clear that he was no fool, as he was manipulating the two Jedi into a confined corridor where their Atari form would be disadvantaged.

Right, because people are 100% perfect all of the time, and someone who sets up a clever plan can't fuck it up along the line with overconfidence. You claimed "maul didn't take out the area with a laser or torpedo strike" which would imply stupidity, unless you're trying to create a false dilemma demonstrating sub-kiloton yields again (which in point of fact is dishonest, since it assumes no other possible explanation could account for it, and that remains completely unproven as yet.)

It is equally possible that he simply was under orders not to draw too much attention. Strafing an area with a starship and laying waste to it is not exactly subtle.

Wouldn't the shields stop that?

Were the shields up? Do we know anything about the status of the shields? How were they angled/aligned (you do remember that Han said you can angle shields in ANH, and we know fighters could do that in ANH as well.)

That would depend on your definition of "every conceivable circumstance". You'd expect for kiloton level shielding to be able to stop a hit from something that appears to be weaker than conventional artillery.

Based on what, exactly?

So Naboo happened to design starfighters several thousand times weaker than, say, that of an X wing?

Who says its several thousand times weaker? Where do you pull this number from, assuming its not completely arbitrary? And its quite possible, given much of the same rationale applies to Separatist vs REpublic naval ships. Rather amazing what magic forcefields can accomplish.

Why would there be gaps?

Because its not an all encompassing bubble. Gaps are mentioned specifically in the Black fleet criss, as well as the Lando Calrissian novels. They come from having multiple shield generators/projectors creating multiple, overlapping shields on multiple arcs. Remember the aforementioend "shield angling" bit? That's a consequence of it, and it means parts of the hull can be left exposed.

Looking just at this example, it quite clearly supports very sub kiloton laser cannon yields. However, given the plethora of evidence supporting higher end yields, I suppose that we'd have to go with the rationalization that the shields were not fully charged yet.

How does it support sub kiloton yields? Are you claiming all laser cannons are "one setting only/one design only?" Even if I accepted your premise - DESPITE the fact you provided no evidence, no analysis, nothing - that just means the N-1 is packing subkiloton guns. Not really a shocking revelation, as I have expressly pointed out there's nothing requiring all SW laser cannons to be kiloton range even if we assume they can't adjust settings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_vDwNmL ... re=related

Hey, you know, Zam Weasel surely could have just parked a random armed fighter in the atmosphere and have launched a single laser cannon at Padme's Yacht, couldn't she? Or are you going to argue that she was worried about civilian casualties or something?

Are you seriously suggesting that Zam Wessel could get close enough to attack and destroy not only Padme's Yacht, but also the escorts, and manage to get away from Coruscant (the most important and secure world in the galaxy) completely unstopped? I suppose she just happens to have a cloaking device and invisible lasers lying around too huh?

Because surely an execution arena that's actually very inefficient from a military perspective is too valuable to kill Mace Windu, essentially the entire Jedi Council and 200 Jedi.

Uh yeah. If you did any research you'd realize the Geonosians are rather significant allies to the Separatist cause. You don't keep allies by blowing up huge chunks of the real estate. Secondly, you assume that the Separatist leadership is competent (which is of course, why they didn't need Grievous, oh wait..) For that matter, the same logic applies to the Republic (as in the Jedi are leading, and the Jedi aren't military genius)

And if THAT weren't enough, ITW:AOTc makes mention that trade federation core ships (and other separatist ships) carried no weapons, and relied on the droids for defense. It was expllicitly mentioned as well that defense shields and the need to take the droid facilities intact precluded the use of starship weaponry.

What consequences did the droid army have to worry about once their core ships escapes or even got to raise their shields? Just fire a few laser cannons at the Clone Army and the idiots get killed.

So by your logic, the US should just go in and bomb the shit out of any country that harbors our enemies, simply because that's the best way to do it? Because that's basically what it amounts to. Nevermind you're assuming that either side has a reaosn to think up this tactic to begin with.

Because obviously the CIS would worry about the "environmental impact" on a single planet out of billions so much that they'd forfeit a chance to wipe out the Jedi and their new army in one strike.

It's the Geonosian's home world, why the fuck would they NOT care? Do you seriously think Poggle the Lesser is going to shrug his shoulders and go "oh well, its for the best."

Speculation. You're making up imaginary "political" limitations when Base Delta Zero's were used by the Republic during the war and Grevious was said to have burned entire worlds.

Man, its hilarious how you're "presenting" and supposedly defending a series fo arguments that are shallowly contrived, poorly sourced, and utterly indefensible, yet you dare to accuse ME of speculating? REmember that you're the one insisting that a contradiction exists and that SUB KILOTON WEAPONS are the only answer. I'm simply saying we don't know. Burden of proof lies with the person making the definite claim, and you have utterly failed to make any sort of tangible argument.

Oh, there are plenty Trek examples of this too.

I told you, I don't give a shit about Trek. I don't give a shit about "everyone does it" arguments either, becuase that's no justification whatsoever. Some Trekkies and some warsies may do it, but that doesn't mean everybody does it, nor does it make it good logic or a valid argument. I've actually had quite a few intelligent and well-reaseond arguments with Trekkies over some of that stuff, and it didn't descend to this level of absurdity once (Cf D13 and I discussing TDiC)

Um, they have already been at war for 3 years by now. If they're still relearning by then, they deserve to get conquered.

What makes you think 3 years is enough to learn how to fight intelligently? Humans have been spending decades, if not centuries, learning how to fight and that's largely been an imperfect, trial-by-error process.

The best rationalization would be that both fleets are severely crippled, while Grevious obviously had to move within close range of the Republic fleet in order to land ground troops in what was supposed to be a surprise attack.

That is another possibility, yes. But I dont think it woul be the "best" rationalization. The best rationalization incorporates multiple separate ideas that mutually support each other. Not one single, all-encompassing idea that is forced to fit every inconsistency. "cornerstone" arguments are popular but they lack any real redundancy or versatility.

Fair enough, although Coruscant really should have mandatory evacuation procedures.

YEah so should some of the places I've worked in. There's lots of "should have' arguments one cna make in fiction and real life, but that doesn't make it reality. America "should have" a decently functioning health care and social system, but we have rampant capitalism instead.

So you're claiming that, out of the entire battle, not one turbolaser bolt missed and ruined somebody's day?

No I'm saying "we dont know", which makes your entire argument rather pointless. Why the fuck should we go out of our way to create contradictions on what amounts to imaginary, hypothetical evidence? Or do you have the evidence we need?

It's related to the durability of SBD's, which case take blaster fire and live.

Are you referring to Artoo spraying black gunk on them, the droids slipping in said gunk, and the gunk being ignited by his retro rockets? If so as I recall at no point did the battle droids actually witness the flames doing any external physical damage to the surface - they didnt even exhibit any obvious heating from proximity to the flame. If any damage was done, it likely came from the fluids getting inside the battle droids somehow.

How the fuck is it an assumption? We see laser cannons hit Ploo Koon's ship, we see no kiloton range effects, and we see Ploo Koon's ship get blown up by it.

You're making assumptions about the damage mechanisms of blasters and the nature of the target. If you HAD the evidence, you would have presented it, for fuck's sake. How is that hard to understand?

Because the shot that hit Obi Wan could have missed if it were off by a few meters, and is no guarantee to actually kill Obi Wan with anything less than a direct hit; in fact, it didn't.

Evidence onto the nature of the projectile fired, and its damage mechanism? All we see is a glowy blue pulse, and that's ALL we know.

And Cody simply said "blast him!", meaning that there was no time or motive to quickly dial down the yield.

Speculation. Funny how you mock me for supposedly "speculating" yet its perfectly alright for you to make up these elaborate scenarios that somehow force an either/or choice.

Whereas with a higher powered shot, they would have killed Obi Wan even with just a proximity hit, and would have no fear of him happening to survive. Then, after he falls into the water, vaporize the freaking water.

Proof?

So there is no line if command of their general dies?

Oh nice. I ask you to provide further clarification, and you decide all you have to do is ask more questions. Good job shifting burden of proof.

Steel sort of melts in lava. Durasteel seen in Mustafar also melts in lava.

"sort of?" Let's see some evidence, kid.

Fair enough, but note that armor capable of taking fusion warheads on with little more than scorch marks really shouldn't be affected at all. I suppose that the metal falling off was already heavily crippled.

You're confusing republic warships with separatist warships. They aren't the same or even of the same durability. This was expreseely pointed out in the ROTS ICS. Sepratist warships aren't true warships, nor are they constructed as durably. The Separatists rely far more on force field technology for defense.