Enterprise vs Millenium Falcon

[Eternal_Freedom]

I'd forgotten that one. Still, it'c clearly just a name added to them, since they clearly aren't lasers. I was curious as to where the "SW beam weapons are lasers" myth came from. Two remarks across three films seems an awful small base to work from.

[applejack]

I'd forgotten that one. Still, it'c clearly just a name added to them, since they clearly aren't lasers. I was curious as to where the "SW beam weapons are lasers" myth came from. Two remarks across three films seems an awful small base to work from.

I'm assuming it came from the versus debates with trekkies trying to get the upper hand over Star Wars ships by referring to that line from "The Outrageous Okona."

[Darth Nostril]

But a Borg cutting laser that goes right through the ship and out the other side gets ignored.

[Lord Revan]

I'd forgotten that one. Still, it'c clearly just a name added to them, since they clearly aren't lasers. I was curious as to where the "SW beam weapons are lasers" myth came from. Two remarks across three films seems an awful small base to work from.

I'm assuming it came from the versus debates with trekkies trying to get the upper hand over Star Wars ships by referring to that line from "The Outrageous Okona."

true and even that line isn't as clear as trekkies like to think.

[Captain Seafort]

But a Borg cutting laser that goes right through the ship and out the other side gets ignored.

Mainly because it's irrelevant to the discussion - the E-D's shields had already been disabled by the tractor beam before the laser opened fire. If you want an example of lasers being effective against Federation shields try Loud as a Whisper - Picard refused to take the E-D into an area of "localised but very intense" "laser activity" because he wasn't prepared to "endanger this ship".

[EnterpriseSovereign]

There's also the battle of Wolf 359 that shows laser-type weapons being employed: Wolf 359

As I've said for years now, turbolasers are visually similar to the disruptor bolts that Klingon ships are known to fire. You'd think that alone would settle the issue

[Simon_Jester]

If the EU were still canon, then one of the Falcon's later refits replaced the quads with light turbolasers, and those would be enough to hurt the E-D. But that's no longer canon.

Okay, LTL would probably have higher per-shot firepower and be more likely to inflict serious damage ot the shields. On the other hand, lower rate of fire, although Trek shields aren't particularly good at recharging fast enough to cope with sporadic fire from a high-energy weapon. If anything they're the opposite- better at resisting a sustained attack than at being shot two or three times with a single powerful weapon.

In any cae, I seriously doubt Han would ever be dumb enough to try a duel tot he death against what is (in SW terms) a large-ish frigate (about the same size as the EU Dreadnought cruisers IIRC). He would run, and if he absolutely can't run (which I doubt given the Falcon's speed) he'll hide, or he'll call up Picard and try to bluff his way out.

Agreed.

As evidence for this, they are not powerful enough to obliterate Vader's fighter with one shot

That's because they don't hit Vader's fighter, they take out one of his wingmen.
Vader gets knocked out of the fight by a collision when the other wingman panics.

Crap, you're right. Sorry.

That said, though- now that I review what happened, did Vader's wingman get blown away any more effectively than other fighters in the same battle hit by fighter-weight weapons?

[Borgholio]

That said, though- now that I review what happened, did Vader's wingman get blown away any more effectively than other fighters in the same battle hit by fighter-weight weapons?

No, both the X-wings and Falcon only really needed one or two good hits to take out a TIE.

[Simon_Jester]

Right.

Though it's not just that. It's that there's a wide range of "take out" possibilities. You can "take out" a fighter by blowing bits off the surface so shrapnel riddles it, resulting in a mostly intact, tumbling helpless, spacecraft. You can "take out" a fighter by blowing off a major structural component. You can "take out" a fighter by blasting it into bits of scrap iron. And you can "take out" a fighter by just going 'SWAT' with a huge energy beam that reduces the whole craft to a cloud of vapor.

Each of these damage levels reflects drastically different amounts of raw energy being delivered by the weapon in question.

[Borgholio]

At least in the OT, I don't recall any instances where pieces of a fighter were shot off. Every time they were hit it was either absorbed by the shields, caused it to go out of control and crash into something, or simply blow up.

[Darth Tanner]

At least in the OT, I don't recall any instances where pieces of a fighter were shot off. Every time they were hit it was either absorbed by the shields, caused it to go out of control and crash into something, or simply blow up.

Only examples I can think of are when Vader shot at Luke all he achieved was disabling R2 and when Anakin shot at Obiwan to get the buzz droids off him he shot off the entire wing assembly with no apparently loss of control to Obiwan.

[Typhonis 1]

One thing this may come down too is damage control and which Enterprise is doing the firing. Archers? TOS? Movie? Abrams Trek, TNG?

For the damage control aspect, Enterprise has a good sized crew that can jury rig or patch things while the fight is going on. Meanwhile, unless you have more people on board, Falcon only has Han and Chewie available to do the patchwork....and damage control can determine if a ship sinks or swims.

[Simon_Jester]

At least in the OT, I don't recall any instances where pieces of a fighter were shot off. Every time they were hit it was either absorbed by the shields, caused it to go out of control and crash into something, or simply blow up.

Vader (or one of his wingmen?) managed a glancing hit on Luke's X-Wing that damages Artoo, and another one that causes some kind of engine damage leading to "stabilizer's broken loose again, see if you can't lock it down." The effects of those hits may have been partially mitigated by shields, but they're clearly examples of the (relatively tough) X-Wing surviving hits in non-mission-critical components from the TIEs.

Conversely, TIEs generally just get blown the hell up when they're hit. From what I recall this was intentional on Lucas's part, in that he was trying to replicate the "Wildcats versus Zeroes" dynamic of the early part of the Pacific War, with Japan's highly maneuverable but fragile Zeroes pitted against the US's more rugged, better armed, but less agile Wildcat fighters.

The thing is, the only things we see X- and Y-Wings take hits from are fighter-caliber weapons on the one hand, and the Death Star's big honking turret guns on the other. There's not a lot of middle ground.

Conversely, we only see TIEs hit by X-Wings (and other comparable fighters) and by the Falcon's turret guns. While all these weapons are highly effective against the TIEs, it doesn't seem clear to me that any one of them is drastically more powerful than another. It's a pity we haven't seen them perform against a less vulnerable target that would give us a better idea of performance

[Lord Revan]

I think the important part here is that even when a TIE doesn't get blown to space dust they tend to be so badly damage that they're out of the fight anyway only rebel craft that's like that is the A-wing, based on the movies that is.

[Simon_Jester]

Yes- but if X-Wings put TIEs out of action by causing them to wheel away with important bits on fire, whereas the Falcon's guns just swatted them out of the sky and smashed them into glowing clouds of vapor, we'd have a basis for saying the Falcon's guns are of significantly greater firepower than an X-Wing's.

[guest]

Here's the thing, and I know Adam Savage said it already, but it bears saying again: the Enterprise is the Federation's equivalent of a battleship while the Millenium Falcon is a modified cargo/courier ship. Of course the enterprise would win in a stand-up fight, but does that matter? Outside of the most poorly written fan-fics why would the two be trying to destroy one another? Certainly Picard would try to negotiate and his standard tactic is always to lead by "targeting weapons and engines" Han would want to either talk, or sneak his way out of the situation if he couldn't run, because that's the kind of people they were.

This is kinda silly anyway. Who would win in a fight between Mr. Clipboard in Food fight and Woody from Toy Story? Probably Mr. Clipboard since he's a man-sized robot and Woody is a six inch tall toy. Doesn't make Food Fight a better film by any means.