More random DS9 notes

[Danny]

A lot of people like the bad guys because they are far more interesting than the good ones. This is due to the fact that most "villains" usually start out as good guys, but experiences have hardened them to the point where they would rather be the wolf than the sheep. I dont think Dukat was always evil, or even evil when he first became procurator of Bajor. His first month he made significant changes to the way cardies treated bajorans- in a positive light. However repeated terrorist attacks made him a bitter SOB.

We can put ourselves in the position of the villain, and then we can see how and why they turned to "the dark side". If anything, its dang near tragic.

And in that episode where Sisko, Dax and Bashir are transported into the year 2024 during the bells riots got me thinking...were not so far from it.

[Azron_Stoma]

Firepower: Dukat fires a Federation type 2 phaser into an imaginary Weyoun. It blows a basket-ball sized chunk out of the rock behind there.

I don't know what kinds of basketballs you play with, but where I come from they are over 9 inches in diameter, the chunk was nowhere near that big, maybe baseball sized / 3 inches at best.

So much for the can't shoot through a packing crate myth: a gunshot blasts straight through the container Quark was hiding inside!

So we see one crate that isn't made out of whatever-type-of-weapon-that-was proof material out of dozens if not hundreds.

[StarSword]

I see a basketball-size explosion, sure.

[Azron_Stoma]

What are the Calcs if it was something like say, granite? I remember that episode and I was far from Impressed by Dukat's phaser shot.

[Azron_Stoma]

I don't think the effect was anywhere near as large as allot of the blaster fire I've seen.

[StarSword]

I don't think the effect was anywhere near as large as allot of the blaster fire I've seen.

Like for instance, the explosions set off in the hangar wall in ANH. And that's a pistol doing that kind of damage, not a rifle.

Then there's clone trooper rifle fire blowing a droideka in half with one shot in AotC despite said droid's armor, and all these other incidents.

[StarSword]

The majority of those are smaller than Dukat's blast.

Hell, the holes are about the same size on screen between this and the Cloud City ones.... but the camera is closer in ESB, meaning it's actually the smaller hole!

Sweet jesus, are you people all blinded by your biases? Or is a little flash and smoke that convincing to you despite the massive difference in observed damage?

Sure, a lot of those are smaller than Dukat's blast. But blasters do that kind of damage much more reliably than phasers. I can think of maybe two or three scenes where a phaser did that kind of damage, but the post by Vympel that I linked to barely scratches the surface.

[Stofsk]

No, Adam is right- you're letting your biases colour your thinking. Blasters in SW have high-end results like Han's blaster in Docking Bay 94, to Boba Fett's on Cloud City. But we've also seen blasters leave barely a scratch like in the Naboo Palace walls and columns during TPM, Luke got shot in the hand on Jabba's sail barge and all it did really was scratch his prosthetic (not even damaged it mind you, just burned the fake-skin off!) and Leia was shot in the upper arm at the end of RotJ and it was just a burn.

So basically blasters have a wide gap between their low-end observable effects and their high-end ones. Just like phasers. The only difference is that phasers are explicitly mentioned as having 16 different settings (TNG), whereas SW blasters are referred to only having at least two, though to account for the above discrepancies it's possible they have more than that or that different models of blasters have different firepower effects. Han's blaster for examples was customised to have heavy firepower in a small frame.

[StarSword]

No, Adam is right- you're letting your biases colour your thinking. Blasters in SW have high-end results like Han's blaster in Docking Bay 94, to Boba Fett's on Cloud City. But we've also seen blasters leave barely a scratch like in the Naboo Palace walls and columns during TPM, Luke got shot in the hand on Jabba's sail barge and all it did really was scratch his prosthetic (not even damaged it mind you, just burned the fake-skin off!) and Leia was shot in the upper arm at the end of RotJ and it was just a burn.

The TPM incident could be chalked up to the bolts striking solid stone (instead of what looked to be wood or fiberboard in Cloud City, or concrete in ANH). Also, those were standard pistols, not rifles or heavy pistols (lower power, in other words). Leia's arm? Two possible arguments: I saw a frame-by-frame once that indicated the blast hit the wall behind her, and she got a burn from the heat release. The Truce at Bakura posits that the shot just grazed her.

But as far as Luke's hand? ... I got nothing.

So basically blasters have a wide gap between their low-end observable effects and their high-end ones. Just like phasers. The only difference is that phasers are explicitly mentioned as having 16 different settings (TNG), whereas SW blasters are referred to only having at least two, though to account for the above discrepancies it's possible they have more than that or that different models of blasters have different firepower effects. Han's blaster for examples was customised to have heavy firepower in a small frame.

I believe I read somewhere (might've been one of the Weapons and Tech guides; I'm not sure) that some blasters have variable power settings, while others don't. Easily accounted for by this difference between universes: All Federation infantry phasers seem to be one of the same four models (type 1 mini-pistol, type 2 pistol, type three rifle, phase pulse rifle) from a single Federation defense contractor, whereas blasters come in thousands of models from dozens of manufacturers (understatement). And that's before you account for modified weapons like Han's, which is powerful even for a heavy blaster pistol.