Turbolaser Alternatives

[Jonen C]

Turbolasers.

Love 'em or Hate 'em - they're the weapon of choice of just about every combatant in SW that can fit and power them.

But there has to be alternatives, right? Not necessarily better alternatives - there is a reason they see such wide use, after all - but alternatives...

So what are the alternatives out there? In the movies, in the games, in the rest of the EU...
And what kind of alternatives can be derived by combining known systems into something that hasn't been seen yet?

And what are the weak points/strong points compared to regular TLs?

For example - would a warship armed with flak guns firing proton bomb warheads (and, of course, other - lesser or greater - warheads as available and need be) be a viable concept and if not, where does it fail?
An all missile/torpedo main armament on a capitol ship combatant?
Maybe missiles carrying bomb pumped Turbolasers? (Or... maybe not... Manticoran missile massacres do not in SW belong.)
Some sort of gravy guns derived from tractor beams and/or gravity well generators?

[The Romulan Republic]

Ion canons come to mind.

As for torpedos, I'm not sure why they're not used more as cap ship weapons? Can anyone enlighten me?

[Jonen C]

And why have Ion cannons not replaced TLs?
The only reason to mount them seems to be that you think you might want to capture or disable something without destroying it (which is, admittedly, something TLs cannot do).
Would it be possible to arm a ship with ICs and some sort of secondary armament for destroying disabled ships you do not want to capture? (Ignoring the fact that mounting TLs and destroying it directly would obviously be a better use of resources?)

Torpedoes, to my understanding, fall against the triad of ECM, PD and cost.
They can track a target, but the range is limited due to countermeasures. They can be shot down. And a single torpedo costs more than a single TL blast (even if the effect of a successful hit would be greater, which it might not be - I am uncertain).

[Captain Seafort]

Ion canons come to mind.

As for torpedos, I'm not sure why they're not used more as cap ship weapons? Can anyone enlighten me?

Problems with power generation maybe? As I recall, Wars ships generate power using tachyons, which release energy as they wizz round inside the reactor. This does not appear to be a method that can be easilly applied to a missile's warhead, which would therefore require M/AM warheads to equal the power density of a big ship's reactor. Antimatter isn't the sort of thing you'd want to lug around with you, especially in a warship - it's far to unstable.

[Darth Hoth]

And why have Ion cannons not replaced TLs?
The only reason to mount them seems to be that you think you might want to capture or disable something without destroying it (which is, admittedly, something TLs cannot do).
Would it be possible to arm a ship with ICs and some sort of secondary armament for destroying disabled ships you do not want to capture? (Ignoring the fact that mounting TLs and destroying it directly would obviously be a better use of resources?)

Torpedoes, to my understanding, fall against the triad of ECM, PD and cost.
They can track a target, but the range is limited due to countermeasures. They can be shot down. And a single torpedo costs more than a single TL blast (even if the effect of a successful hit would be greater, which it might not be - I am uncertain).

Turbolasers can cripple enemy ships without destroying them; this is merely a matter of applying the right amount of force with enough precision. (Such has been seen in several sources, though the one that comes to mind is the Empire comic that came up in the "Imperial atrocities" thread.) Of course, ion cannon are easier and safer to use for tasks of this nature.

[Illuminatus Primus]

We know hyperdrives can be miniaturized in unmanned craft the side of a probot. Therefore hypermatter can be contained in very small vessels.

[Jonen C]

Turbolasers can cripple enemy ships without destroying them; this is merely a matter of applying the right amount of force with enough precision. (Such has been seen in several sources, though the one that comes to mind is the Empire comic that came up in the "Imperial atrocities" thread.) Of course, ion cannon are easier and safer to use for tasks of this nature.

Of course.

We know hyperdrives can be miniaturized in unmanned craft the side of a probot. Therefore hypermatter can be contained in very small vessels.

Um, educate me - why would the ability to mount a hyperdrive equate the ability to mount a hypermatter power source?

[KhyronTheBackstabber]

Um, educate me - why would the ability to mount a hyperdrive equate the ability to mount a hypermatter power source?

Because hypermatter is what powers the hyperdrive.

[Dooey Jo]

Where is that established?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Where is that established?

In those books written by Saxton I think.

[Serafina]

Well, judging by various PC-games (i know, not the best source of canon ) there are other weapons in use.

Aside from Turbolasers and Ioncannons, there are also mass-drivers. While those can bypass shields to a degree (SW has seperate paricle and energy shielding).
Of course, they have some serious disadvantages compared to TLs and Ioncannons:
-Ammo: You need to carry more ammo for the bang. Thats especially bad for starships, where you do not want a long supply train.
-Maintenace: Propably way more maintenace is needed, compared to TLs.
-Turret capability: You need space to propell the projectile to high speeds. This will increase the weight of turrets, making them slower or entirely impractical.

While the ability to surpass "main shielding" (against energy) is an advantage, having far less shots, reduced accuracy/tracking and higher wear on your weapons is not something you want on your warships.

We only see mass drivers on the following occassions:
-On the AT-TEs in Ep II&III.
-On Zann Consortium ships: Essentially a crime organsiation with limited choice of weaponery (Emire at War game).

Proton torpedoes are just expensive, IIRC. Usefull to add a big bang on your fighter to take out big targets (lots of firepower in one shot and small space). But on a capship were you have lots of energy, lots of room and need weapons for sustained fire, they are just not worth it. They may be usefull to bring lots of firepower into a short timeframe (kinda like rocket artillery in comparsion to normal artillery), but too expensive for common use.

Btw, Star Destroyers are carrying a mixture of TLs and Ion cannons.

[Jonen C]

We only see mass drivers on the following occassions:
-On the AT-TEs in Ep II&III.
-On Zann Consortium ships: Essentially a crime organsiation with limited choice of weaponery (Emire at War game).

Do not the various models of LAAT gunships also fit mass drivers?
Or would those be classified as missile launchers (due to the fact that they fire missiles)?
Also - Flak guns (on at least a few CIS ships in Ep III). So they're probably closer to traditional cannons or coil guns than rail guns, but they are still mass drivers (or KEWs at any rate)...

I'd also think maintenance would be a great deal simpler/cheaper for KEWs than for TLs - if more time and manpower intensive...
The components, at least, should be easier to manufacture and replace, but they might wear out faster and need replacing - or at least thorough maintenance - more often?
Similarly - conventional ammo would probably be easier to acquire and restock while underway than hypermatter and proton warheads, depending on the nature of the guns.
The ammo should certainly be cheaper per shot - firing slugs and shells, at least - but you might get more bang for your buck with turbolasers.

Also - aside from the games - is there a better canon source stating the effectiveness of pure KEWs against shields?
And aside from this, any speculation on the effectiveness of a mass driver firing proton warheads (not proton torpedoes, that would be an upscaled proton torpedo tube, just a cannon firing high yield proton bombs instead of conventional explosive shells or slugs)?

Proton torpedoes are just expensive, IIRC. Usefull to add a big bang on your fighter to take out big targets (lots of firepower in one shot and small space). But on a capship were you have lots of energy, lots of room and need weapons for sustained fire, they are just not worth it. They may be usefull to bring lots of firepower into a short timeframe (kinda like rocket artillery in comparsion to normal artillery), but too expensive for common use.

As a point of personal interest, which part of the torpedo would be more expensive?
The warhead, the propulsion, the targeting computer?s

[Serafina]

There is no real source about mass drivers or proton torpedeos surpassing shields IIRC.
(Games do not count, as the "game mechanics" part is not canon. Story is, ships are, but not mechanics).

However, there are reasons to assume they do: We already know that different shields can hold back different stuff:
Hangar shields blocking air but nothing else. Gungan shields blocking energy and high-speed projectiles but not slow matter. Death Star I shield letting fighters pass. The Hoth shield blocking everything.

Reasonably, most warships would feature heavy energy shielding: After all, most weapons are energy weapons.
Therefore, if they are not required to feature full-strenght mass shields.

However, we HAVE G-level canon evidence that warships ARE carrying mass shields:
The Star Destroyers flying through the Hoth Asteroid field, the A-Wing smashing into the bridge of the Executor AFTER the shields failed (implying that, with shields, this would not have happened).

All events of G-level canon where mass IS surpassing shields on warships (opossed to primitive Gungan shields or hangar shields) are either really insane collisions (two stardestroyers colliding with each other, the Executor crashing into Death Star II) or holes in the shield design (Fighters surpassing Death Star I shield).

A specific G-level canon event may be the solution: Anakin and Obi-Wan landing on the Seperatist flagship in EP III.
They have to DISABLE the shields first. However, we are talking about a hangar shield - its supposed to let fighters through. Thus, there must be a way to reconfigure the shields: When you want to launch fighters, you set it to "let anything but air/energy pass through". When you do not want to do so, just set it to "block everything". Esecially after Anakin blowing up the trade federation ship in EP I that way, such a system would make sense.

Now, what about normal protective shields and solid projectiles?
Simple: Most shields can be reconfigured. When fighting other capships, it would make sense to set it to "maximum energy blocking, letting mass through (to safe energy). If you catch a ship with such settings with torpedeos/mass drivers, you can bypass its shields. Even if they use a safer setting, you may have a greater chance smashing through their shields with mass than with energy (you do not want to fully stop a fast, heavy projectile at all cost - it would drain your shields too heavily).

The existence of special "shield operators" indicates that they HAVE to be operated. Given that large ships may have dozens of them, they must have a more complex job than simply "all shields double front" - calculating/adjusting the best shield settings.

Before anyone objects, this is not like ST "shield modulation" - you do not have specific vulnerable frequencies, you simply decide what you want to block (say, by defining the maximal mass of particles your shields block).
This is usefull, as it may grant additional power against certain threaths (Turbolasers).


About the cost of proton torpedoes: The targeting should be the most expensive part - especially given the EXTREME mobility and the heavy usage of EW.

[Mad]

And why have Ion cannons not replaced TLs?
The only reason to mount them seems to be that you think you might want to capture or disable something without destroying it (which is, admittedly, something TLs cannot do).
Would it be possible to arm a ship with ICs and some sort of secondary armament for destroying disabled ships you do not want to capture? (Ignoring the fact that mounting TLs and destroying it directly would obviously be a better use of resources?)

Ion cannons are less effective against shields according to Rogue Squadron and I, Jedi. The Rogue Squadron book series has ion cannons and turbolasers being used simultaneously quite often. Their usage is probably implied in most circumstances.

[Serafina]

Well, Ion cannons do no lasting damage. You may take out some systems, but you will NOT destroy a ship.
And i think it is rather difficult for a ship to carry enough weapons to completly disable another ship of comparably size - the Hoth Ion cannon was HUGE and had a lot of power avaible.

Just "stunning" your opponent is not enough to win a fight.

Btw, werent Ion cannons MORE effective against shields? Kinda makes sense, them disrupting electronics and stuff?

[Crazedwraith]

If I recall the EpII ICS correctly doesn't Dooku's sail ship use offensive tractor beams as an alternative to Turbolasers?

[Batman]

Well, Ion cannons do no lasting damage. You may take out some systems, but you will NOT destroy a ship.
And i think it is rather difficult for a ship to carry enough weapons to completly disable another ship of comparable size - the Hoth Ion cannon was HUGE and had a lot of power avaible.
Just "stunning" your opponent is not enough to win a fight.

It most definitely is if you carry enough brute-force firepower do anihalate them while they ARE disabled. The question is how much ion firepower that requires. The ion cannon on Hoth, while definitely huge, was NOT so large it couldn't be mounted on something the size of a Star Destroyer.

Btw, werent Ion cannons MORE effective against shields? Kinda makes sense, them disrupting electronics and stuff?

Since the shields prevent them from ever HITTING the electronics and stuff, I'm not quite sure why you would thing that makes them any more effective against shields to begin with.

[Mad]

Well, Ion cannons do no lasting damage.

Yes, they can. Clearly, a large enough cannon can destroy a small enough ship. In fact, this happened: a shuttle was destroyed by a planetary ion cannon blast in Rogue Squadron. Also in the same book, an X-wing suffered internal damage from being hit by an ion cannon from a destroyer.

Most of the physical damage from ion cannons is to electrical systems, but there can be some physical damage to other things as well. The physical damage to armor is usually just negligible when the attacker and defender are at similar scales.

You may take out some systems, but you will NOT destroy a ship.

A big enough blast can destroy small enough ships. It's not efficient, but it has happened.

And i think it is rather difficult for a ship to carry enough weapons to completly disable another ship of comparably size - the Hoth Ion cannon was HUGE and had a lot of power avaible.

In I, Jedi, fighter craft can disable fighter craft relatively easily, but it's harder than just destroying them with lasers since it requires more hits.

As scales go up, it does get harder, though. In the battle at the end of The Bacta War, all the capital ships were using turbolasers and ion cannons against each other, but only one destroyer was actually completely disabled throughout the entire battle (and only temporarily at that). The other ships must've suffered systems failures and reduced effectiveness from disabled equipment (and destroyed equipment from other weapons), but they tended to remain operational and capable of fighting.

Btw, werent Ion cannons MORE effective against shields? Kinda makes sense, them disrupting electronics and stuff?

No, they were explicitly stated to be less effective in the sources I mentioned earlier. What does disrupting electronics have to do with being more effective against a force field, anyway?

[Swindle1984]

If I recall the EpII ICS correctly doesn't Dooku's sail ship use offensive tractor beams as an alternative to Turbolasers?

I don't know about Dooku's sail ship, but in the original Han Solo and Lando Calrissian books tractor beams are used as weapons ("compresser beams").

The fact that they're only mentioned as being in use in areas generally considered backwater may indicate that "gravy guns" aren't viable against modern Star Wars capital ships.

Didn't the Vong series feature an interdictor cruiser switching its grav-well projectors over to some sort of super tractor beam mode? What was the result of that?

[Serafina]

A big enough blast can destroy small enough ships. It's not efficient, but it has happened.

Well, thats my point - you want weapons that are usefull against EQUAL opponents, not harmless, smaller ships.

[Jonen C]

Okay, here's an attendant question - if Ion cannons and Gravity/Tractor based weapons aren't up to snuff for Big Gun equivalents to TLs, would they be up to snuff as point defense armament - aside from the fact that pound for pound / credit for credit LTLs would likely be superior for that job as well?
Basically, scale down capitol grade armaments for PD - what are the alternatives to TLs in this effect.

Maybe scale up a few PD armaments to capitol scale? Flak guns (I know I'm getting repetitive) for Anti capitol ship duties?

Additionally, I seem to recall reading somewhere (but darned if I remember where - ) that there were Ion warhead missiles of some sort - the missile carried the warhead inside a warships ray shields and when the warhead exploded it then fired an Ion blast that went through the particle shielding.
Aside from being prohibitively expensive (as we can assume any such contraption or shaped charge warhead is), would it be theoretically possible to make a variant that fires the equivalent of a high yield turbolaser blast instead (quite aside from the fact that the Ion charge warheads were designed with a specialized purpose in mind, and the fact that it would probably be better use of resources to make a turbolaser and a missile instead of a turbolaser missile)?
(Would probably be easier and more efficient to make a shaped charge proton warhead but hey...)

[Serafina]

Actually, IIRC, ion cannons aree used as point-defense guns quite often.

Why? Well, it is relative easy to disable a small fighter - and thats what point-defense guns are for, bringing down fighters.

Btw, the size of the Hoth ion cannon may be somewhat misleading - after all, it is about how much POWER you can put into it - and the cannon being based on a planet, you can bring a lot power to bear.

[Batman]

Okay, here's an attendant question - if Ion cannons and Gravity/Tractor based weapons aren't up to snuff for Big Gun equivalents to TLs, would they be up to snuff as point defense armament - aside from the fact that pound for pound / credit for credit LTLs would likely be superior for that job as well?
Basically, scale down capitol grade armaments for PD - what are the alternatives to TLs in this effect.

Unless ion cannon have a higher refire rate/tracking speed or considerably lower power draw I don't see why anyone would bother. When you're so low on resources that capturing enemy munitions/snubfighters intact becomes important enough for you to design your PD around you're in serious dire straits already.
Having a few for occasionally capturing fighters would be OK but overall I don't see it being worth it.
Tractor/pressor beams MIGHT be marginally better than LTLs in that at least to a degree they seem to be area effect weapons (at least that's the impression I got), but really, that's what dedicated flak guns are for. Might be worth having some if you can sufficiently increase the area of effect by dialing down the energy density.

Maybe scale up a few PD armaments to capital scale? Flak guns (I know I'm getting repetitive) for Anti capital ship duties?

Patently pointless. The very POINT of a flak gun is that it spreads its effect over a large volume of space. Nice for shooting down unshielded projectiles and lightly-if at all shielded snubfighters and small craft even with a near miss. Not so good against heavily shielded capital ships as even with a direct hit you're wasting a lot of your yield on empty space. Projectile weapons as such might work but there's apparently factors that speak against that (as has IIRC been mentioned recoil and ammunition storage are concerns).

Additionally, I seem to recall reading somewhere (but darned if I remember where - ) that there were Ion warhead missiles of some sort - the missile carried the warhead inside a warships ray shields and when the warhead exploded it then fired an Ion blast that went through the particle shielding.

That would require the ray shields to be a noticeable distance farther out than the particle shielding which I can't recall ever being mentioned (which is not to say it never happened). The only 'ion' projectiles I recall are the empion mines from Wraith Squadron and the MagPulse warheads from the games. (and just to nitpick, particle shields SHOULD block a true ion blast, what with ions being charged particles. Chances are ion blasts in Wars are a little more complicated than that.)

Aside from being prohibitively expensive (as we can assume any such contraption or shaped charge warhead is), would it be theoretically possible to make a variant that fires the equivalent of a high yield turbolaser blast instead (quite aside from the fact that the Ion charge warheads were designed with a specialized purpose in mind, and the fact that it would probably be better use of resources to make a turbolaser and a missile instead of a turbolaser missile)?

For something that's actually wort the effort? We're talking a missile that's bound to be the size range of a small freighter if not more. Have fun getting that through PD.