Can Star Wars ships destroy Star Wars ships?

[Imperial528]

If it's any help, I have my ICS right with me. It states that the armament of the Slave I is as follows: Each blaster cannon is 6E+11 joules per shot laser cannons are 8E+12 joules per shot, missiles are 8E+17 joules each, and the mines are 5E+19 joules each.

[Imperial528]

I believe he only states the peak wattage when shield strength is labeled at all.

Although there are some interesting figures in there, the beam turrets aboard the LAAT are 1/2 the firepower of Slave I's main guns, and the missiles are the same firepower. Quite a bit of firepower for a gunship.

[dworkin]

I treat shields as any energy problem. That is, where does the energy go? Most of must be absorbed and quickly radiated away (somehow) by the shield but some isn't (nothing is 100%). Of that remainder some becomes the sound you hear if you're on the ship, some is flashes of light and some shakes the ship up a bit. Eventually, things start to give. Initially it is little things, hairline cracks, fuses blow, static discharges, but in time the little things add up to big things. Eventully bits of the superstruture break, electronics get fried, fires start and the ship starts to die. It's a death of a thousand cuts and when something happens that causes the shield to go completly it's a Bad Thing.

Shields also seem to be ablative thingys in most visual media, especially if the vehicle is piloted / crewed by main characters. In SW it appears that the big ships can blaze away for quite a while at each other which may help explain differences like four orders of magnitude. It really does take tens of thousands of shots to overload the shields of a big ship. However due to some damage aways leaking through, shield loss due to damage to the shield generator (like in TPM) is more likely.

[Ahriman238]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4aDeQS8 ... er&list=UL[/youtube]

Preliminary evidence says yes, yes they can.

How they can is a more interesting question. Shields wouldn't be of much use if they weren't SOME defense against common weapons. Which is not the same thing as a perfect defense.

If we draw on the EU and informational sources a bit, we see that there are independant shield systems for energy weapons and for physical impacts. It is also explained that the shields can absorb a considerable amount of energy, and disperse a bit more. The ship is only threatened when the incoming fire contains more energy than the shield is capable of absorbing at that time. Similar or greater amounts of energy over a longer timeframe would be easier to deal with.

For example, it is quite possible that a single gun on the Trade Federation Battleship could not harm Amidala's yacht, whether it got one shot or a thousand, it is simply incapable of firing fast enough to deliver the needed power at one time. Of course, it wouldn't be much of a Battleship if it couldn't take down a single yacht, so it has multiple weapons.

[dworkin]

From memory there was a X-Wing comic (Dark Horse, 90s) which showed Wedge and co. damaging an ISD by timing missile impacts. A (presumably) local shield can be briefly brought down quite easily and in that brief time the other missiles get through.

[Ahriman238]

From memory there was a X-Wing comic (Dark Horse, 90s) which showed Wedge and co. damaging an ISD by timing missile impacts. A (presumably) local shield can be briefly brought down quite easily and in that brief time the other missiles get through.

Quite, the same thing is done in 'the Bacta War.' A single squadron of X-wings carries enough torpedos to bring down a Star Destroyers shields, if they all hit the same side at more or less the same time. However, it will only bring down the shield on that side, and a competent commander will immediatly negate the threat with a sophisticated manuver known as "rolling the ship."

[Connor MacLeod]

I was just looking at these numbers on the 5 minutes page:

Main guns: 64000 GW

Shield heat dissipation: Amidala's personal yacht has shield dissipation of 2 billion GW peak


So, it dishes out 1e14 W, but can take 1e18 W, so how does it hurt itself? Is Slave-1's own guns too weak to defeat it's own shields?

Slave-1 has no shield rating. I doubt Amidala's yacht has any bearing on Slave-1.

What's the power on 200 gigatons over 1/10 of a second? About 1e22 W. So that'd easily blast through... but the Acclamator is said to have "peak shielding 7x10^22"... so does that mean only a full broadside of it's own guns can hurt it?

The Acclamator stats aren't for a warship. The Acclamator's guns are also mentioned in the NEGV&V to be designred more for planetary bombardment and less effective at engaging starhsips. It may have heavier shields simply to protect it against larger starships.

If the energy is delivered over a fraction of a second, the power gets higher, so maybe this is it.

On the main site, Mike and Brian Young put a turbolaser impact duration at about 1/15 of a second in the asteroid destruction scenes and got peak power of a shot from it.

Near as I can recall from Curtis' intent, yes the 1/15th figure was relevant to the shield wattage figure. Don't quote me on that though.

In the subject, I asked a seemingly nonsensical question. Of course they can destroy each other. But, how does that fit in with the ICS numbers? (before you remind everyone how much I hate those ics numbers, reread the above, I'm using ICS firepower numbers too!)

And remember I said that the ICS numbers leave out alot of details we need to know. It mentions shield heat sinks explicitly as well as the neutrino radiators, but we don't have any idea how those fit in with the established shield figures. I've been trying to play with the numbers for quite awhile and the conclusions can get quite.. interesting.

One of the interesting aspects I have heard once is that only wattage mattered to shields. Meaning that a megaton range explosion in microseconds (for example) could bypass shields. A valid interpretation, but it doesn't factor in the heat sinks, or that typically (especially in the novels) shields have to be battered down. They aren't "ignore but stay up" type defenses.

Is it actually the case that some of these ships can not penetrate their own shields? We see fighters take each other down, and I believe we see capships broadside each other down, but smaller ships do seem to have good survivability. The Falcon takes a lot of punishment and comes back for more. The Queen's silver ship takes a few hits without dying. And I don't think we saw any others fight...

For some ships? Quite possibily. I wouldn't assume this is the caes for all ships. The one thing you are forgetting however is that "energy/power is everything" - there's recoil and momentum issues (which shields won't stop), simple wear and tear (standing up to prolonged abuse - you have to take the shields down to fix them or let them recover at some point.) and coverage (shields have arcs, layers, and overlappign segments - witness in TESB and ROTJ when the theatre shields had to drop a section to let something pass through.) Even allowing for "indefinite shield dissipation" capability that doesn't address other possibilities.

So it's possible that they actually can take more than they can dish out. There's a part of me that likes this - intuitively, it seems like shields should be cheaper to power than weapons. Artistically, I sort of like the idea of groups having to get together to take someone down. No one ship can terrorize it's peers, so they have to form a coalition.

We dont know what shields require to generate power, because we dont know what mechanisms generate the shields. Shields probably aren't a CONSTANT power draw, but generating them or "repairing" them may require varying amounts of power. That actually brings up the issue of "how much power do maximum shields drain?"

I know there's some instances of X-Wings taking star destroyers down in the books. Did they use missiles? Lower yield missiles can nevertheless penetrate these peak shielding (maybe) because they put out the energy in a tiny fraction of a second. Real life nukes have had estimated power output of up to 10^24 W.

The common X-wing novel tactic was to coordinate near-simultaneous torpedo strikes on a single point with protorps and/or concussion missiles. This was analogous to the shield-penetrating tactics of Torpedo spheres (which used sophisticated sensors to locate weak points in shields, which then targeted a small area of the shield with a massive bombardment.) Bear in mind that according to various sources, proton torpedoes are both a.) directed yield/shaped charge type weapons and b.) purely physical/kinetic impactors, since they are only blocked by particle rather than ray shields (which stop lasers and ion cannons.)

If their lasers can punch through their own shields.... or hell, probably fun to talk about just for general knowledge... is what does "peak shielding" or "heat dissipation" actually mean? I've been treating them as the same thing ("peak shielding" is in the source I have - I suspect when Mike said heat dissipation, he was writing his own interpretation, maybe borrowing the TNG term, but I don't know. I haven't seen the original source he's referring to so maybe it differs from the pages I've read from the ICS.)

We don't know. As I vaguely recall the ICS shielding figures were for the rate that energy was disposed of, although whether this is from the radiators themselves out of the heat sink, or the energy that the shields supposedly can turn away before being absorbed, or whatever... I don't know. Again, there's alot we aren't told in the ICS.

I've been assuming that it means a laser of this power or less can be handled by the shields. Anything more will bleed through to the hull, causing damage.

Again as I had it tenatively explained to me long ago (and I think a few of those discussions were provided by Mike in past forum posts, although I can't remember exactly where) the peak shield figure is the energy that is dissipated/radiated away over a given timeframe. (which could be a full second or fraction of a second) Any fire that exceeds that threshhold gets dumped into the heat sinks, as I recall. Or something like that. I'd have to dig to find more specific.

I also vaguely recall a sink analogy being used (which is something I bleieve Mike used on the site as well) IIRC we know the size of the drain, but we don't know other details (EG how big the sink is, for example.)

But, there's actually problems with this interpretation. What if the same power is more or less concentrated across the shield? Is that handled the same way?

no idea. I vaguely recall localized burn-throughs are possible, but the reasons/circumstances for it I don't know. Maybe it has to do something with shield strength not being 100% or uniform or anything like that.

Though, if area matters, I'd expect it to be W / m^2. However, it's possible that the number given is W / m^2 * the surface area of the specific ship being discussed.

Since these ships are many many meters squared, that'd mean lasers, being a fraction of the surface area, could far more easily penetrate the shield than the numbers show. Slave-1 could indeed damage its peers.

This is a somewhat awkward number to use.... surely they are more concerned about lasers than something over the whole area... but, being a tech manual, maybe it is the result of a lab test, which can be multiplied over the whole thing.

It may matter. Again we're not told all the details we need to decide. I mean we don't even know how much stress or strain that the shield generator mountings could take recoil-wise for example. Shields are complex devices, and that means there could be lots of potential failure points.

Worse, I've considered that shields don't have to share all the same properties in the same degrees or ratios. you could have shields that have better heat sink capacities and shitty dissipation/absorption rates. Or you might have something like Gungan shields, which might be good at deflecting ro reflecting blaster fire away without neccesarily breaking it up.

The shields can take a lot of energy and power. It gets stored in a buffer. The number tells us how quickly the buffer bleeds that energy off.

This is what I think "heat dissipation" most likely means. As the energy is bled off the buffer, that's the shields regenerating - "shields down to 20%" means the buffer is 80% full. If they aren't hit again soon, the heat is dissipated into space, making room in the buffer for the next hit.

When I still had shields in my own setting, I used a number like this as the main shield number. In my little video game, it represented the shield recharge rate. If your recharge rate is higher than the other guy's weapon power, he essentially can't hurt you.

That sounds vaguely similar to what I was told WRT heat sinks and radiators.

I don't think this definition fits well to "peak shielding" though. It could be a "peak dissipation rate" (a hotter object loses heat faster to its environment than a cold object, so maybe a full buffer bleeds off heat faster than a low buffer too - this could explain why fights quickly get to 50% shields, but the next hit only brings them to 20% instead of wiping it out).

Everything else stats wise in the ICS is "peak" or "maximum performance". We're also told in the ROTS ICS that heavy warship guns (on actual warships, not converted) are designed to divert nearly all their power into the guns if need be. That doesn't mean they operate at those levels constantly - you could operate guns at max, but shields and engines probably would suffer. Likewise the max acceleration assumes all power is devoted to engines. It seems likely that the "peak shielding" may assume most if not all the power is diverted to shielding systems. In other words, shields like all other systems probably operate at far less than max performance.

It is worth noting that the Imperial Sourcebook long ago stated that 25% of reactor power is devoted to powering shields on most ships. Ironically the ICS figures betwene "peak dissipation rate" and "peak power output" of the reactors is within an order of magnitude (ususally the shield figure is like 1/3 or 1/4 the max power output.) It may be a correlation, or it could be purely accidental.

There are at least 4-5 differnet kinds of potential high-energy draw systems on a starship: hyperwave sensors and comms (which along with hyperdrive can consume considerable fractions of reactor power), shields, engines, and weapons.

But "peak shielding"... doesn't make a good fit. Shielding implies input, not output like this. I call it a maybe definition for the ICS number.

Also, it concerns me that it wouldn't address: a) buffer size, b) input rate, c) bleed-through before the buffer is full. I think these are just as important as the output rate. Of course, these questions can still be asked with any one number, though if peak shielding is input and output together - so there is no buffer - they are answered... but it opens a new question: why would the shields degrade if they can handle it as it comes?

Like I said, we aren't told alot. I imagine heat-sinks at least can endure one second or so worth of peak output, but that would be the only thing we can really say. Or, absorb 1/15th the wattage I guess.

Another possible meaning:

Maybe it is W/m^2 and it uses typical size of turbolaser impact for the m^2, or the units were sloppy.


I find this very unlikely. Different weapons have different sizes depending on where they are fired... it'd make more sense to actually say per square meter, and I rather doubt Dr. Saxton would make a sloppy units error.

It's possible it wasn't him. He can submit his work for review, but that doesn't mean its immune from rewrites or changes or alteration. The Aetherpsrite entry for example had some "meson waste dissipators" or some other device attached to the lasers, but he didnt know or remember what they were supposed to do.

[Eternal_Freedom]

On the question of only full broadsides hurting ships...in "X-Wing: Isard's Revenge" we see multiple capships fighting in two scenes; over Liinade III and Ciutric.

In both scenes ships were concentrating fire on other targets. Ackbar orders his 6 corvettes and 3 Nebulon-B's to swarm a VSD, causing damage by overwhelming shields.

Equally, we saw that an ISD shield can survive sustained fire from another ISD, but it can't, or is not expected to, be effective against a full broadside from an ISD.

At Liinade III the Swift Liberty, a rebel VSD, is attacked by a dreadnought. General Antilles describes in his thoughts how the ship normally would not be able to hurt the VSD, but because it's in close to the Vic's stern, ti can cripple her. Later we see weapons fire being dissiapated by the VSD shields, but we also get a description of damage around the engines.

Just my two cents there.

[Connor MacLeod]

Some other points I forgot to mention and I thought of a few other things:

Another factor I forgot to add in with regard to the ICS figures: Are the shield figures for each individual shield arc/generator/etc, or are they in totality for all such generators? If the latter, then we might expect each shield to be much less individually capable than the peak capability. At a minimum, we know there are shield generators for at least six arcs (fore, aft, port, starboard ventral and dorsal), so that means a potential 1/6 division. But what if there are multiple generators per arc? That could mean 1/12, 1/18th, etc.

(I'm sure someone will think this sounds odd, but remember that SW ships can redistribute and angle shields to maximize protection in a specific direction, which could logically include peak capabilities.)

This also plays into an earlier question I alluded to: is it possible to make localized burnthroughs of shields? Given the above, it's quite possible to locally overload a single generator with lower firepower without neccesarily overcoming the "peak" capacity. The capacity could even be arguably "diluted" more if we factor in individula projectors or relays (generators don't need to create it directly, but would be part of the network. )

The main complicating factor (and the thing I suspect that would limit the frequency of burnthroughs from concentrated fire) is that the shields are composed of multiple overlapping layers, sort of like scales or mail armor - that means that several individual shields could actually 'share' weapons fire and complicate penetration, especially if the shields are angled/reinforced.

Third, and also tying into above, there is the "bubble" formations vs skintight. We've seen SW ships employing both, but the advantages or reasons for that arne't really clarified. One of the ideas I know has been floated around on here is that SW shields have a volumetric component to how they work - a larger shield volume would give more of a dissipation medium through which blaster fire could be diffused and absorbed. The downside of course, is that the shields require more power be provided to maintain the same level of "density" as skintight shields, and the reduced "density" probably makes penetrating the shields easier and reduces the odds of deflection. Deflecting the shot is probably more efficient, but absorption is probably "safer". Either probably have their own bleedthrough issues - bublbe shields might not absorb or diffuse a sufficiently powerful bolt before they breach the shields, whilst skintight shields probably are interacting with the hull (and only a bit above it, in fact) meaning that the hull itself could suffer damage.

Another (minor) aspect is that shields may be optimized towards certain types of weaponry ove others. For example ray shields can block both photonic and charged particle radiation attacks, but both are different in nature and damage mechanism and would have to be handled differently (a ray shield configured to stop photons would not block charged particles, or vice versa.) Which could further complicate the level of absolute defense provided in some ways. A lesser known feature of shielding (mentioned first in the Lando Calrissian adventures novels, but probably exist elsewhere) is that shields can be "configured" into a stealth function (called "camouflage shields") - this probably involves both suppressing/redirecting a ship's own emissions via the shields, as well as absorbing/redirecting any emissions directed at the ship. Probably not "true" cloaking, but a close approximation. This ability existing I would put up to the "double blind" nature of shields - that is, in order for things to pass out or in (radiation, matter, etc.) they have to be lowered or otherwise "tuned" to allow it to pass in some manner. This may involve actually raising or lowering the shields (like we saw in TESB - this has actually been noted to be the case with regards to particle shields and firing missiles, I should note), or in some sort of "filtering" that allows some frequencies/radiations in but not others (the way shields allow visible light to pass in but not neccesarily other kinds.)

Oh and one other feature: some shields feature the ability to 'recycle' some portion of the energy they absorb in some manner (how we don't know, the capacity just exists.) The most extreme example being the Dark Empire 2 Viper Automadon war droids (supposedly nigh-immune to energy weapons), but capital ships have demonstrated the capability to some extent (again Lando Calrissian novels again.)

(see I can speculate too when I want to )

[Ahriman238]

Third, and also tying into above, there is the "bubble" formations vs skintight. We've seen SW ships employing both, but the advantages or reasons for that arne't really clarified. One of the ideas I know has been floated around on here is that SW shields have a volumetric component to how they work - a larger shield volume would give more of a dissipation medium through which blaster fire could be diffused and absorbed. The downside of course, is that the shields require more power be provided to maintain the same level of "density" as skintight shields, and the reduced "density" probably makes penetrating the shields easier and reduces the odds of deflection. Deflecting the shot is probably more efficient, but absorption is probably "safer". Either probably have their own bleedthrough issues - bublbe shields might not absorb or diffuse a sufficiently powerful bolt before they breach the shields, whilst skintight shields probably are interacting with the hull (and only a bit above it, in fact) meaning that the hull itself could suffer damage.

I doubt this will clear things up much but...

In the Lando prequel trilogy of books the Falcon's shields are at a default 1cm distance from the hull for purposes of conserving power. However, they are adjustable to an extent, and can be extended up to a full meter from the hull in all directions.

[Connor MacLeod]

Another point I forgot to add: the odd properties of shields and armor may actually be one reason why SW energy weapons appear to be so inefficient and energy-intensive (as opposed to a more efficient mechanical/explosive damage mechanism) - they can techncially accomplish it to some degree, but I suspect SW shields and armor hamper the effectiveness of such weapons (at least insofar as Luke Campbell defines them.)

The novel Shatterpoint, for example, had vibroshield weapons (large and heavy, but not so much that a strong human could not heft and wield them fairly well one handed.. or Mace Windu could throw them) that were made from starship hull material (or hull armor, I dont remember which). They had the interesting property of being more or less immune to causal blows from lightsabers (much like Mandalorian Iron), but lightsabers could melt them with prolonged contact (which, given the lightsaber performance on the blast door in ANH, is considerably absurd and far beyond real life materials.)

(and before the objections begin, I'm not saying that Campbell style "blaster" type weapons are totally useless or unable to do any damage whatsoever, I'm simply saying that they probably aren't practical at any reasonable range against an armored/shielded target. So the only way is to use a more inefficient and brute force attack.)

[Connor MacLeod]

yeah Lando used that in Flamewind of Oseon to crack apart some asteroid or something it was hiding on by expanding the shields. I also vaguely recall that in normal operations shields extended only a hsort distance from the hull, but actually extended at least a few millimeters under it as well (anchored perhaps.) The Essential Guide to weapons and technology notes the same thing, and that energy weapons striking the shield could leave some sort of scorch or scar across the surface of the material but little else (indicating some bleedthrough is possible, but not neccesarily anything seriously threatening in most cases.) Slave-1 was also noted as having 'contact' ray shields in/under its hull in addition to regular deflector shields. We know that particle shields exhibit some osrt of structurally augmenting/reinforcing properties as wlel (from the essential guide to W&T again)

Brian young also once suggested that hull armor acts as a sort of back up "heat sink" to shields, which is certainly possible and may justify the shield/armor interactions mentioned in a number of sources.

Edit: oh yeah and on the "filtering" aspect of shields, we can probably throw in the "ability for slow moving objects to pass inside shields" as one such factor - the mass/momentum/velocity/whatever threshold dictating that probably is variable.

[Ahriman238]

yeah Lando used that in Flamewind of Oseon to crack apart some asteroid or something it was hiding on by expanding the shields. I also vaguely recall that in normal operations shields extended only a hsort distance from the hull, but actually extended at least a few millimeters under it as well (anchored perhaps.)

Close. He used it as sort of an improvised anchor to hide in the asteroid. Flying into a crevice barely wider than the Falcon, than cranking up the shields to wedge the ship firmly into place. Suggests interesting things regarding the shield's interaction with ordinary matter.

[Eternal_Freedom]

@Connor, on the matter of localised shield breakthroughs, we see such a thing happen in "The Bacta War," where the torpedo volley fired at the Interdictor Aggregator (?) makes the shield fail, but it does so with holes opening inplaces, allowing the last four missiles to smack into the hull while the shields were still up elsewhere.

Also, localised shield breakthroughs are exactly what Torpedoe Spheres are designed for are they not? Overwhelm a section, then nail the generator through the gap.

[Connor MacLeod]

@Connor, on the matter of localised shield breakthroughs, we see such a thing happen in "The Bacta War," where the torpedo volley fired at the Interdictor Aggregator (?) makes the shield fail, but it does so with holes opening inplaces, allowing the last four missiles to smack into the hull while the shields were still up elsewhere.

Also, localised shield breakthroughs are exactly what Torpedoe Spheres are designed for are they not? Overwhelm a section, then nail the generator through the gap.

It happens a number of times in the X-wing novels.. they share firing data and then fire simultaneously or near-simultaneously - I remember it happening in the first novel, the third, a number of times in the fourth (against the Lusankya, the Interdictor, the VSD they took out..), and at least once in Isard's revenge against a Golan platform. What seems to be involved is coordinating a large (how large varies - of course we dont know yields involved so that complicates things somewhat) numbers of torpedoes striking more or less the same point at as close to the same time as possible, which yes does seem quite similar to Torpedo Spheres. The Spheres are actually more involved: They have to spend lots of time with specialized/dedicated scanning arrays to locate a weak point in planetary shielding, which they then target with a concentrated bombardment of some 500 proton torpedoes, all specially configured to be effective against shields. If successful, it opens a brief (sources state from micro/milliseconds to several seconds IIRC) hole in the shields which turbolasers are designed to fire through. If any part of that process fails, it all has to begin over again.

How much of that applies to the more generalized stuff we see Rogue Squadron do, we don't know, but it implies that while its possible to locally overwhelm the shields without battering them down (some sort of bleedthrough?) possibly involving lower yields than the shield as a whole needs, it does not seem to be a common or easily exploitable tactic - at least in Star Wars. We've only seen Rogue Squadron pulling it off to my memory, suggesting that only highly skilled human pilots (or a computer) could probably pull it off.

This doesn't rule out other factors - how does range play into this? Typically SW ships (especially fighters) get ludicrously close as far as interstellar ranges go - to pull this off - kilometers for the strafing runs. Torpedo spheres are also stationary platforms firing on a stationary target - it can't be easy for targets that can move to neccesarily be hit. Likewise, if we believe the Black Fleet crisis novels, shield gaps/weak points/interference zones may not be easily exploited (they had to use weapons fire to "light it up" so to speak, which may in part explain why the sophisticated shield system is needed for ) and they may not even be predictable.

As an aside, another potential quality I remembered being discussed by Curtis - et all WRT SW shielding is shield geometry and how it may matter (again the angling) as far as it's protective properties go. I believe its something akin to the use of sloped or angled armor in military vehicles nowadays.

Also another thing I didnt' comment more on was the double blind effect. Basically SW shields seem to be impervious to both incoming and outgoing things. That means to fire shields either have to be weakened or lowered or otherwise filtered to let the gunfire through, but this can also apply to sensors, deploying fighters, missiles, probes or any other physical object, and so on. lightspeed comms seem only partly effected, but FTL comms (both subspace and hyperwave) appear to be totally blocked by shields and they need to be lowered. Engine exhaust probably requires shields be lowered as well. Or at least configured so nozzels (or weapons barrels, or sensor antaennae) extend beyond the shield perimeter. However you do it, that leaves exploitable weaknesses, however temporary, which is something that even fighters can exploit in combat (as we saw in ANH, novels like the Bacta War, etc.)

[Connor MacLeod]

Also I decided to throw out a few novel quotes that might be useful, highlighting some of the stuff I mentioned already. I'm gonna try to dig up the torpedo sphere stuff, but I dont remember where all my books with that are.

Anyhow, regarding the superconducting armor from Shatterpoint: possibly less useful than I thought.

And the metal itself. well, that's an interesting story of its own. It seems to be an alloy that the fungi don't attack. It is extremely hard, and never loses its edge. Nor does it rust, or even tarnish.

It also seems to be a superconductor.

This is why my blade could not cut it: the entire shield is always the same temperature throughout. Even the energy of a lightsaber is instantly conducted away. Hold a blade against it long enough and the whole thing will melt, but it cannot be cut. Not by an energy blade.
...

The source of this metal is a mystery; though Kar never speaks of it to anyone, I believe I know what it
is.

Starship armor.

Thousands of years ago-before the Sith War-when shield generators were so massive that only the largest capital ships could carry them, smaller starships were armored with a mirrorlike superconducting alloy, which was sufficient to resist the low-fire-rate laser cannons of the day.

So its not necesarily "modern" armor, although from what I remember in the EGW&T and other sources, the "ancient" technology (at least of thousands of years back and that era) is generally antiquated, inefficeint, and overall much less powerful than modern stuff, so I don't think we can treat this as unusual/supertech that may be lost. It may or may not be widespread use - but given this is the "peaceful" Republic era that isn't saying much either.

Maybe at some later point I can pull out data on molecularly bonded armor, which is also "high end" SW armor and is technobabbled into super-strong materials.

Next one of the "coordinated torpedo salvo" instances mentioned in ISard's Revenge, describing in a bit of detail what supposedly is happening.

A battle station like the Golan sported very powerful shields and individually fired proton torpedoes would have been 'unable to pierce it. Eight torpedoes coming in at the same time, aiming for the same point, would overstress the shields, draining them of energy. This would create a critical time window in which the shields would be weakened, or would totally fail, and have to be regenerated.

Last quote is one I remembered today, from Shield of Lies, featuring the bomber mounted T-33 plasma torpedoes (which is one example of "shield disrupting/penetrating" torpedo type weaponry.

Each of the six bombers was carrying two fat T-33 plasma torpedoes, known among the crews as shield-busters or rotten eggs. Designed to
detonate at the shield perimeter rather than to penetrate it, the plasma warheads of the T-33s created the most intense radiation burst of any New Republic weapon, several times the output of a capital ship's ion cannon batteries.

The focused cone of radiation was designed to overload rayshielding generators, either burning them up with the feedback or pushing
them overlimit with the bounceback. Once even one generator was down, the towers for the particle shields would be vulnerable to the turbolaser turrets on the gun frigates. If everything went according to plan, the carriers, already falling back behind the cruiser screen, would never come close to engaging the enemy directly.

[Eternal_Freedom]

In later works, the NR does indeed focus on it's starfighter forces. Heavy vessels and force flagships are carriers not battleships, such as the fleet carriers Intrepid and Endurance (the latter of which proved why carriers do not fight dreadnoughts directly - it got obliterated by the SSD Reaper).

By the time of the Second Galactic Civil War, there are Mon Calamari "heavy carriers" like Blue Diver.

IMHO the NR's love of fighters comes from the fact that in their early days they did not, or could not count on, having ships that could counter ISD's one to one, but with much cheaper fighter squadrons they cu=ould inflict disproportionate damage.

Also, fighter squadrons alone can't really cause serious damage to capships. They can drop the shields, take out the bridge, damage weapons and so on, but not actually kill the thing. What they CAN do is drive off said capship, which from a Rebel point of view is almost a better option. That ship is now out of actio for repairs, and everyone can see what the Rebels have done.
Spoiler

(Heck, in the example from "The Bacta War" where the VSD Corrupter is destroyed, the X-Wings drop the shields but it is turbolaser fire from the War Frigate Valiant that really kills it. Antilles blows the bridge to pieces, and the crew abandons ship. The VSD drifts down into the Alderaan Graveyard and gets chewed up.

The problem with the fighter attacks on capships, or "Trench Run Diesease" as the Alliance pilots know it, is tht the careful timing leaves the fighters vulnerable to Imperial fighters. Agian in the case from "The Bacta War" Antilles and Co. can only do it because they have another squadron of fighters holding off the TIE's.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Generally, focus fire seems to be the way to go in sci fi. Each time you take out another guy's ship, that's a little less power he can do to you while you do the same to the others, so if you start with a small advantage, you can grow it quickly this way.

The important thing about this particular swarming attack was that whilst the corvette's and frigates could hurt the VSD, they did not cause enough damage to put it out of the fight. And later, one of the frigates and two corvettes are dead in space, another frigate and three corvettes are criplled/heavily damaged and the other ships are suffering.

I think that aptly shows that small ships, even en masse, can't be expected to slug it out with larger ships.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I think that aptly shows that small ships, even en masse, can't be expected to slug it out with larger ships.

Yes. It looks like the redundancy of big ships really helps here - take out one section, and its ok because the other sections can still fight as a single, slightly less effective, but still very deadly ship.

Indeed.

Let us suppose we have one large ship with twenty heavy turbolasers mounted on it. It is engaged in battle by twenty single ships, each of which can mount a single heavy gun and nothing else.

Now, clearly the two sides are evenly matched in firepower. But, if we also suppose that the small ships can be destroyed in five hits, and the bigger ship can be destroyed in two hundred because it has more power for shields or armour, the bigger ship is going to win.

Also, in this battle, taking a single hit for the smaller ships is a BIG deal. As in, "oh bollocks, we can't take another hit like that" kind of thing. On the big ship, it's "This could be a problem soon."

If anything, this makes sense if the SW combat is "age of sail" in space. In the age of sail, two frigates could carry the same number of guns as a capital ship, but had no place fighting line-of-battle ships. They could not withstand the heavier rounds, and their guns could not penetrate the sail-of-the-line's hull. Add the longer range of the capships guns and you get a recipe for a can of whoop-ass for the frigates.

[avatarxprime]

I just wanted to address a few points. I actually think your conclusion that the DS1 was considered invincible based on a combination of its offensive and defensive abilities is quite interesting.

f) The DS2 had a shield to stop ships from getting close, but it depended on a ground station. The DS1, even though complete, had nothing of the sort. Interestingly, in ESB, the Falcon was able to land on a star destroyer, despite it's shields probably being up. (it's been a while since I've seen the film, but the captain thought Han was actually going to attack, so surely he would have raised his shields)

From (f) it seems that they don't have the tech to stop objects from coming inside a mobile shield. Perhaps they can stop inert things, but something with it's own power at least can push through. (it might be like a repulsor beam - an inertial object hits it then slows down or bounces off. A thing with engines though slow down, then push themselves the rest of the way through anyway.)

I don't think you should use the DS2 shield situation for this, the DS2 was clearly unfinished and the remarks about it being "fully operational" seemed to revolve entirely around the fact that the Superlaser was in full working order. It's likely that once the station was complete it would be as self-sufficient in its defense as the DS1. It should also be noted that the DS2 was constructed to account for the weaknesses found in the DS1. As to the issue of physical shields, here the Executor took 3 ISDs slamming into it (by accident) and the shield held long enough to protect the ship. Obviously the shield is therefore capable of blocking physical impactors that have engines and the Executor shield should certainly count as mobile.


Also in regards to the Falcon, I'd wager the magnetic clamp could work through shields. It's likely similar to a tractor beam, which we know can work on a shielded object, we also know that ion beams can penetrate shields, so charged, magnetic particles can get past shields. Now obviously an ion cannon is far more powerful than the Falcon's magnetic clamp, but between tractor beams and ion cannons the possibility exists that the clamp can work through shields.

[Connor MacLeod]

Stuff I don't disagree with, have nothing to add to, or would just be repeating myself with I will skip over, just so we're clear I'm not trying to "ignore" something.

Here's something that I've been wondering for the last day:

Was the Death Star invincible due to it's shields or due to it's guns?

Why is it neccesarily either/or?

Let's list some facts:

a) It had some kind of shield that the X-wings passed through

The ANH novel says that they were outer shields they passed, and the "shields" apparnetly had gaps or weak points that could be slipped through - something I've mentioned before (hence the "tighter defense" IIRC the novel correctly.)

However, the radio drama, which is at least of same status as the novelization for ANH, mentions that the X-wings were specificalyl outfitted with countermeasures to enable them to bypass the so called "shields", which complicates any assumptions we make about shield permeability.

b) Once inside, they were able to shoot the surface to take out guns, cause internal explosions, etc.

We dont know what they were shooting at though, and how inert/volatile it was. I believe you in fact made this sort of objection to Mike's X-wing laser calcs based on vaporizing the Death STar hull at one point, did you not?

e) The Imperial guy was confident that the Rebels weren't a threat to the DS, though they could hurt the starfleet.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, context wise. "Starfleet" has variable connotations depending on your source, from meaning "the Imperial Navy as a whole" to "a small fleet/squadron/flotilla of warships." For example Vader's Death Squadron has been referred to as a "star fleet" in the TESB radio drama.

f) The DS2 had a shield to stop ships from getting close, but it depended on a ground station. The DS1, even though complete, had nothing of the sort. Interestingly, in ESB, the Falcon was able to land on a star destroyer, despite it's shields probably being up. (it's been a while since I've seen the film, but the captain thought Han was actually going to attack, so surely he would have raised his shields)

There's lots of problems I can think with this (Jedi not TK throwing shit through Droidekda shields in TPM if matter-stopping shields were rare, dropping rocks on the REbel base in TESB, etc.) I already pointed out the problems WRT x-wings bypassing the shields, nevermind that in TPM we know that slow moving objects CAN bypass shields without harm - how fast/slow were X-wings moving in ANH again?

And yes, Needa (IIRC it was him) ordered shields raised when he thought the Falcon was going to ram, but we dont know if the shields got up or not in time, and even if they did, it's probable they were only raising either forward shields, or they had shields angled forward to maximize protection against ramming, which might very well leave the rear section unprotected (This actually happened with the Executor in one of the SW comics - the same series avatarxprime mentions. Shields are directed forwards, and the Falcon hits something on the Executor which cripples its ability to manuver.)

There's also ROTJ when the Executor's bridge shields failed, and Piett ordered guns to intensify fire so nothing could "get through" - SW has never shown B5 interceptor technology to my knowledge, so that means physical objects.

From (f) it seems that they don't have the tech to stop objects from coming inside a mobile shield. Perhaps they can stop inert things, but something with it's own power at least can push through. (it might be like a repulsor beam - an inertial object hits it then slows down or bounces off. A thing with engines though slow down, then push themselves the rest of the way through anyway.)

This would be problematic WRT Piett and ROTJ as I outlined above. Besides which, how are we defining "mobile" anyhow? Its not like we see SW ships moving at high speeds all the time.

The TL;DR approach to your theory is to point out that the EU will certainly invalidate this, but that's too easy.

Next up, once inside the shield, they apparently don't help much - small fighter weapons were doing (localized) damage to the station. Only one special place couldn't be hit by the lasers.

We dont know enough to make this supposition. For all we know, ray and particle shields can be modified independently - that certainly seems to be the case based on ROTS on the invisible hand - the DS1 may have just had its particle shielding extended a significant distance away for whatever reason (better defleciton angles, more time to act on matter, or whatever.) and kept its ray shielding close to the hull.

Alternately those are separate, dedicated shield generators, which is not inconsistent with anything we know either (again IH example in ROTS would support that idea, as would the WEG idea thta Slave-1, Boba Fetts ship, had its own dedicated, surface-contact ray shield projectors augmenting the hull.)

I think the answer is getting such a large ship inside the shield is much easier said than done, especially if it's taking fire from 1000 turbolasers at once.

By this logic, it should be relatively easy to destroy the Star Destroyer with any sort of minefield (or at least, deny it the ability to get within range of the target) or any sort of deployable, stand off attack munition (if fighters can get close, a robot missile could eaisly get within range as well.)

[Connor MacLeod]

I stand by my belief that turbolasers and blasters have a physical component to them, and angling would definitely help bounce them off.

Blasters, lasers and turbolasers have been alternately described in or argued as projectiles or beam weapons of myriad types. I'm probably happier with projectile weapons ymself, but beam weapons would have their value too.

Extending stuff reminds me of a book I haven't actually read yet (heresay alert!): The Mote in God's Eye. The Langston fields blocked it all, so they actually used some kind of periscope! Me like.

I havent read Mote either, and that has occured to me, but I suspect Curtis was going more for an Asimov-type feel with his view on SW. I've noticeda lot of parallels between the two.

This is why I figure it's a little of both: enough wattage means you damage the inside a little, but they can also be battered down with just enough time.

Whether the battering is a heat sink filling up, or bleed through causing damage that eventually hits too much important, or plain wear and tear on the shield mechanism is unknown though.

What's interesting about bleedthrough though is it is non-deterministic; it's essentially random when your shields will fall. Each shot has a x% chance of hitting something important, and once y important things are hit, they are down.

Thus it's possible for a one hit kill on them, and it's possible to last for days... you'd model this as "odds of surviving for time T", that can even out to something on the large scale, so fleet engagements are probably the same ballpark of time (like how radioactive decay works).

Could be. We dont really even know what the heat sinks are for. They may not actually absorb/store the energy of gunfire, but simply keep the shield generators from overheating during operation - some sources as I've noted indicate that generating defensive shields is an energy-intensive process.

Aye. One thing I like here is firing might mean pausing shield regeneration, or better yet, aborting it.

I'm still thinking in terms of a video game where press that key and you defend yourself, but the timer starts over!

Most of the numbers given in the ICS material assume "maximum operation" - EG 200 GT turbolasers assumes the Turbolasers are fired at their peak capacity, reactor outputs are given as the maximum possible energy the reactor can put out, accelerations are given as the maximum the engines can push the ship at, etc. it seems likely that the shields are operating at their maximum capability as well, but operate at much lower levels (for whatever reason).

Maybe there is a 'cooldown time' which is what you are talking about, but I dont know. That sounds more like 40K void shields (they function to absrob a certain amount of punishment, go down, tehn have a brief cooloff period where they vent energy then go back up.) 40K ships though get around this by having multiple, redundant generators active forming layers/sections on the hull.

IThis is what I'm getting at with my listing of stats. Sure, you could think of shields as being a kind of "black box" that just work. But if you think of them as being made of individual parts, each of which with their own capabilities and drawbacks and each of them can fail - like a real machine - all kinds of fun come out of it.

Fun in discussing tactics, fun in engineeing discussions, fun for story ideas. (this btw is why I put hard/soft sf on a different axis than realistic/unrealistic. Soft sci-fi takes the black box approach. The tech just does it's job for the story and you leave it at that. Hard sci-fi gets into those details and lets them shape the story. The way I see it, whether the tech is realistic or not is a separate issue; you can have the spirit of hardness with pure fantasy tech!)

I understand and yeah, it can be fun. I got into vs debating mainly because I liked to do that kind of thing, but nto many people like to discuss or speculate about fictional technologies. Curtis I know likes to speculate about how SW tech works more than the vs debate angle, although he's got his own ideas *shrugs*

Sensors are one I often forget about, but yes big indeed. Especially with how active sensors scale - you've gotta power it to not just get to the object you're scanning, but the signal needs to get back to you too!

But, compared to SW weapons, I find it hard to see how these signals need to be that strong; I'd expect them to be moe like 1% than 20% of the total budget.

normal realspace sensors and comms probably only make up a marginal portion of the energy budget (I somehow doubt that the comms array would double as point defnese on a starship for exmaple) but the FTL sensors (and they have at least 2-3 diff types) and comms may be another story entirely.



well time to get back to work. I'll hopefully be back sooner than a week to continue next time![/quote]

[Darth Nostril]

Extending stuff reminds me of a book I haven't actually read yet (heresay alert!): The Mote in God's Eye. The Langston fields blocked it all, so they actually used some kind of periscope! Me like.

I havent read Mote either, and that has occured to me, but I suspect Curtis was going more for an Asimov-type feel with his view on SW. I've noticeda lot of parallels between the two.

It reads like Horatio Hornblower in space, I was expecting them to have a midshipman crawl out on the bow and lower a knotted rope to find out how many fathoms above the planet they were. The sequel, The Moat Around Murchesons Eye (published in the US as The Gripping Hand), is a lot more up to date.

[Scottish Ninja]

Here's something that I've been wondering for the last day:

Was the Death Star invincible due to it's shields or due to it's guns?

Let's list some facts:

a) It had some kind of shield that the X-wings passed through

b) Once inside, they were able to shoot the surface to take out guns, cause internal explosions, etc.

c) It did have ray shields on the exhaust port

d) The general said the DS' defenses were centered around large scale assaults

e) The Imperial guy was confident that the Rebels weren't a threat to the DS, though they could hurt the starfleet

f) The DS2 had a shield to stop ships from getting close, but it depended on a ground station. The DS1, even though complete, had nothing of the sort. Interestingly, in ESB, the Falcon was able to land on a star destroyer, despite it's shields probably being up. (it's been a while since I've seen the film, but the captain thought Han was actually going to attack, so surely he would have raised his shields)


I think that's everything relevant that we know.



Let's see about drawing some conclusions.

From (f) it seems that they don't have the tech to stop objects from coming inside a mobile shield. Perhaps they can stop inert things, but something with it's own power at least can push through. (it might be like a repulsor beam - an inertial object hits it then slows down or bounces off. A thing with engines though slow down, then push themselves the rest of the way through anyway.)

Though, regardless of if they can or not, the Death Star certainly didn't.



Next up, once inside the shield, they apparently don't help much - small fighter weapons were doing (localized) damage to the station. Only one special place couldn't be hit by the lasers.



So, what if a big ship like a Star Destroyer parked it's nose right inside the shield and opened up with 200 gigatons? It seems likely that the station would be destroyed in very short order.



This raises the question: why were they so confident it could fight off such an attack?



I think the answer is getting such a large ship inside the shield is much easier said than done, especially if it's taking fire from 1000 turbolasers at once.


Essentially, the armor doesn't help much. The shield protects it from long-range attacks, and it's the guns that ultimately give the real protection, by forcing the battles to stay at those long ranges.

It's a factor of both, really - I don't think it's fair to say that "the armor doesn't help much".

I think a useful comparison here is tank warfare, since I'd been explaining this to a friend recently.

The biggest advantage of having a tank with thicker armor is range: it gives a tank a larger window in which it can act without fear of enemy fire. In the case of a Tiger against an M4 Sherman, the Tiger, with its powerful gun, can reliably penetrate the Sherman's comparatively thinner armor at very long ranges. In return, the Sherman has to get relatively close to penetrate the Tiger's thicker armor with its weaker gun (especially in the case of the 75mm). So a Tiger can essentially knock out Shermans with impunity at ranges over roughly 500 meters. (Of course, there can be better ways to knock out Tigers besides rushing them on open ground from the front. Fighters with rockets, for example. Wait a minute...)

Without that armor - say, if the Tiger were replaced by a Nashorn tank destroyer - the Sherman suddenly has much better odds; though the Nashorn's gun can still penetrate the Sherman at long range, so too can the Sherman penetrate the thin armor of the Nashorn. The Sherman's effective range has just been lengthened, though its gun is still the same. Or if the swap went the other way - say the Tiger's gun is replaced with a 37mm gun, drastically reducing its effective range against the Sherman and allowing the Sherman to safely close to a range where it can penetrate the Tiger's armor.

I think you've recognized at least most, if not all of this, already, but it's clear to me that it's in the combination of firepower and armor that makes the Death Star so dangerous against fleets - in the time it takes for an attacking fleet to either hammer down the shields or close the range to get inside them, the Death Star's defensive armament will have inflicted significant losses on the attackers. Without either it would be massively more vulnerable.