Darth Garden Gnome wrote:
They mention flak, and exploding Tls on the same page. Anyways an exploding TL bolt is the definiton of a flak burst is it not?
No, a TL bolt that releases its energy in an omnidirectional blast without the interference of any sort of forcefield or matter is a "flak burst". A TL can "explode" for various reasons. I might point out that I also provided a refernece where bolts "Exploded" against shields. Further the mention of "exploding bolts" and "flak" on the same page does not mean anything, unless they make a direct reference to the energy bolts being flak (you might REMEMBER there was more than one weapon on the DS firing at the Rebel fighters..)
Where were they refered to as seperate entities? I was under the impression that they were interchangable.
I said the page number above. It treats them as two different KINDS of weapons fire IN THE SAME SENTENCE! If "beams" and "bolts" were the same, using both to refer to the SAME WEAPON would be redundant.
I don't know about the Gungans per se, but the Naboo should be on par with other civs as far as shield tech is concerned.
They're also a very minor planet relative to places like Kuat or Sullust or Fondor or Alderaan.
Any ways, I don't see you coming up with any visual evidence of your theory.I might also add Droidekas usethe same type of shielding, adn the TFs armaments are very modern.
Really? The AOTC novelization describes the Gunships as having shields. Mike mentions shield/bolt interactions as being supplementary evidence for their existence in the movies in his AOTC analysis:
http://www.stardestroyer.net/AOTC/Revelations-2.html
[quote\="Mike Wong"]
This makes sense in light of the Geonosian fighter shot that knocked Amidala out the window; it was a direct hit from behind, but while it rocked the gunship, it did not cause any serious damage, and it "detonated" prematurely, before hitting the ship. Subsequent shots from the same fighters' weapons blasted the gunship to pieces after it dropped off Obi-Wan and Anakin at the hangar platform; a sudden increase in lethality which is not easily explained unless one postulates the presence of ray shields. The "flak bursts" around the gunships help substantiate the presence of ray shields; if a ray shield is a volumetric refraction/scattering phenomenon (as demonstrated by the Tantive IV in ANH) with a highly reflective boundary condition at the hull, near misses could potentially undergo a runaway scattering effect in which they disperse into showers of smaller bolts, which in turn disperse into yet smaller showers, thus giving the appearance of a "flak burst".
Active shielding would help explain their arena tactics. None of the gunships took even the slightest damage despite their large transparent cockpit windows and the fact that they deliberately put themselves in harm's way rather than firing on the arena droids from altitude (they literally swept across the arena floor only a few feet above the ground, blasting away at droids from point blank range). This seems somewhat implausible without shielding, but it makes perfect sense with shielding. Of course, this raises the question of how people could get in or out. There might have been a hole in the shield around the side hatch, or perhaps the shield is a pure ray shield which has no effect on matter. Since Mace Windu and other Jedi knights were blocking shots with their lightsabres while standing in the side hatches, I am inclined to lean toward the former possibility; the shield has a gap in that region, which presumably closes only when the doors close.
[/quote]
Not only this, Curtis Saxton goes rather in depth into the aspects of bolt/shield interactions on his own site:
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/preq/tpmtech.html#shields
Curtis Saxton wrote:
A blaster bolt striking ray shielding in empty space becomes divided into a shower of lesser daughter bolts which must radiate their energy as harmless light more rapidly because of the increased surface area. The daughter bolts are necessarily more susceptible to further decay, and when the shield is stronger than the bolt the shower decays into an almost indefinite cascade of branching splinters so that it is dissipated as a mere blink of light. (These effects are obvious in frame-by-frame inspections of the shot that incapacitated the Tantive IV and the superlaser striking Alderaan's global shield in A New Hope.) The presence of atmosphere when a bolt strikes a shield changes the manner of dissipation. Some of the cascade energy can interact with the gas molecules via the shield, as well as with the shield directly. This additional mechanism changes the visible characteristics of the bolt diffusion. This was seen when battle droids fired upon Anakin Skywalker's grounded N-1 Naboo starfighter inside the hangars of the droid control ship. The bolts were instantly converted into a flash of pearly airglow diffused across a shield contour.
These pretty effects are unlike the visible manifestations of shields in previous STAR WARS movies. However they are not inconsistent, because they are demonstrations of shield-atmosphere interactions, which were rarely seen before. Shields in space are always invisible, and their influence on shots from beam weaponry is to create either a visible bolt-shower or a tighter flash-like decay cascade. The N-1 fighters hit by enemy fire in space did not show a pearly glow, and the most powerful example of shielding in the movie, the shields of the Federation control ship, behaved the same as the shielding of large vessels in every other STAR WARS film.
A bit below, he adds some details about TESB and Bespin regarding the Falcon:
Curtis Saxton wrote:
In The Empire Strikes back the Millennium Falcon received enemy fire on its shields while in Bespin's atmosphere. None of the pearly glow effects were seen, which may say something about the power or concentration of the freighter's shields. Perhaps the difference occurs due to the absence of deflector shielding, which usually but not necessarily operates in conjuction with ray shielding. It is the deflector shields that interact directly with matter such as projectiles and air molecules. In one noteworthy instance, an enemy strike was dissipated at a point that was several metres from the freighter's hull. This must be the minimum extent of the freighter's ray shields, and it obviously isn't a tightly hull-hugging effect. These blossums of dissipated bolts are also seen in abundance in space battles throughout the STAR WARS movies. Each of these flashes can be understood as a bolt shower that is so heavily branched and rapidly diffused that it appears as a continuous blob of luminosity.
Also the Doroideka, and again, I don't see you presenting any visual evidence.
THe Empire Strikes Back: We never saw the "glow" of shields around the Falcon in the atmosphere, even though TIES were firing on it constantly. Also TPM we SAW Anakin's fighter INSIDE the TRade Federation starship and the shields weren't always visible AFTER he lited them.
There is also Geonosis, with the Republic gunships, and the TRade Federation core ships....
I thought we already came to the conclusion that directly imparting the energy of a blast unto a target would be more damaging than not.
Depends on the target and the weapon. The larger, more powerful guns of the Artillery (remember the SPHA-T?) - to say nothing of the Republic gunships and AT-TE's - would have been more than sufficient for wiping out battle droids and droidekas, if nothing else. Those droids were getting blasted apart by clonetrooper rifles, and the vehicle artillery is easily orders of magnitudes greater.
The bigger the blast, the less energy is released at the closer range. That was inportant. Firing freakishly powerful blasts that disapate their energy quickly at these fast moving snowspeeders would not have been the way to kill them.
A larger blast radius will result in lower intensity than a smaller blast radius, because the volume of the blast is substantially larger. But this only applies *IF* the energy output in both instances is equivalent. A substantially more powerful energy burst will carry far greater energy, and at equivalent blast radii, will have far greater intensity than a lower power burst. Especially since these so called "detonations" occured close to the speeders themselves - the effects would have been substantial for what an AT AT puts out (unless you think the Gigajoule-range output for AT-TE's is substantially greater than what an AT-AT is capable of)
Your second point is even more ludicrous. A more powerful burst will NOT dissipate more rapidly than a weaker one, since the former has far more energy to dissipate (it can go farther, unless you are arguing that dissipation rates for bigger weapons increases substantially) By this logic, blaster bolts should have greater range than a Superlaser.
And finally, a maximum power (like the ones they fired at the shield generators) would be teh IDEAL way to clear out snowspeeders. The so-called "flak burst" wouldn't require a direct hit (onlyt a close proximity hit) and a combined barrage from Several AT ATs during the snowspeeder's approach would have EASILY hit most if not all of the flight - remember that AT-ATs easily have a range in excess of 17 km. By all rights, the AT-ATs should have shot down the snowspeeders in the first few seconds of the engagement had they been able to flak-burst.
Again direct attack would have been more powerful than using flak bursts. Also flak bursting would have effected the terrain around it. It most likley would have been unwise to start mowing down trees that would fall on your head.
Since when do you need artillery-level fire to execute a single ewok? KJ-level energy should do it - and I dont recall seeing Imperial carbines having trouble killing Ewoks. A full power flak burst from the AT-ST's would have wiped out large concentrations of Ewoks, their artillery, etc.
Also why would the Empire give a flying fuck about the terrain? Blasting the terrain would have HELPED them. As for "friendly fire" accidents or knocking down trees - its not like they have to fire on targets that are immediately Adjacent to them (they could just step on them or let troopers handle them) - its not like the Ewoks were exactly huddling under teh walkers here.
And so have I. Either one is acceptable.
Don't think so. You haven't presented evidence that supports YOUR theory. The evidence you did provide is essentially ambiguous (it can support and work with my theory as well). Further, the theory I am defending is also supported by the work and opinions of both Curtis Saxton and Michael Wong. I think that says alot, dont you?
Perhaps on smaller ships wiht guns that can fire fast. But the big guns have a set fire rate. Which is why we see them using 'flak' because they cannot fire fast.
Disproven NJO novels (stutter fire for both fighters and capital ships for the latter. In fact in the Stackpole "Dark Tide" duology, the capital ship rates of fire were modifiable IN combat - they increased the power to the bolts). Blasters have variable rates of fire (semi auto or full auto) as well.
We also know that weapons output is variable from the SWTJ and the AOTC ICS (the use of "maximum output" for various weapons like the lasers on the Jedi STrafighter, the guns on the AT-TE, clonetrooper rifles, and the Trade Fed Core ship for the former) And observable evidence from the movies has shown that the DS TLs and Hoth ion cannon fired much faster than their EGW&T fire rates indicated. (in teh case of the DS TL, they fired once per second, where it was said that they needed at LEAST two seconds between shots in the EGW&T for the same guns) Star Destroyers in the movie have shown greater rates of fire than this as well.
The ion cannon at Hoth fired four bolts in a coupel of seconds, yet the EGW&T indicates its refire rate is one salvo per six seconds.)
So where's your proof that fire rates are fixed? Or is burden of proof yet again on my side?
Well in space there is no "horizon." And SW ships have powerful jamming sytems to block target-locking. Witness that throughtout the trilogy missles are fired at close range-thusly dumb-fired.
Missiles in teh trilogy were only fired a handful of times, and at stationary close range targets with either exceptionally powerful warheads, or after shields were knocked out. Besides which, in space, "flak bursts" are less than useless unless you have a vastly smaller target. Flak bursting against an ISD is going to be worse than useless unless you use ALOT of fire. You may not have noticed, but the bulk of weapons fire tends towards "concentrated fire, een with warheads - in order to get through shields. Deliberately "flak bursting" your weapon against shields only HELPS prevent penetration (since its already dispersing the energy over a larger surface area to begin with..)
Which brings up an interesting point with the TIE Fighter flak burst you used as evidence. TIEs are restricted to kiloton-level energy outputs. If they weren't getting through with direct hits (And the Falcon has been withstanding capital scale fire from at least one direct hit, if not others), how exaclty is a highly diffused flak burst (with reduced intensity compared to a concentrated bolt) going to get through the shields? And if they aren't getting through shields, whats the point in hitting them with flak bursts to begin with? Scare them into surrender by buffeting?
And anyhow, if your target is blocked, he's more than likely restricted in the same fashion you are.
Thus the only case where "indirect fire" becomes an issue is in ground combat. And we SAW on Geonosis that they have missiles for ground attack (Which was elaborated on to allow for over-the-horizon firing in both the AoTC ICS and the Rebel Sourcebook. For that matter, both books rather make it explicit that blaster weapons are "line of sight" only - and only projectile weapons can strike in a non-LOS manner. This sort of shoots down your little theory. IF you dont believe me, I suggest going to read your copy of the AOTC ICS and re-read the republic gunship entry in the upper left hand corner of the leftmost page - entitled "diverse ordnance.")
And since we DIDNT see flak bursting being used to any real effect in the aforementioned battles, that also shoots down the "delivering part of the energy to the target rather than the whole energy" theory where ground combat is concerned (if we disregarded shields, anyhow)
I didn't think this would be too relativent the discussion, but it was worth a shot right? And I believe the word "direct" was the key word. As in if that was a direct hit, the others weren't direct hits.
This basically describes your entire tactic up until this point. You throw up a huge wall of ambiguous and irrelevant quotes that you HOPE might prove your point, but you've apparently not really LOOKED at any of it, compared it to other sources, or made any attempt to discover if there are problems with them. Thus why I am repeatedly kicking your ass in this argument.
So now you're reduced to semantic nitpicking of the word "direct", which is rather absurd. Threepio says "one more direct hit on the back quarter and we're done for" (that might be a paraphrase, I'm going by whats in the novelization, which is roughly accurate to what was said in the movie.) Now "one more hit" without the shields indicates that their armor is incapable of withstanding TL fire the way their shields are. In fact, Threepio's statements can be interpreted to mean they HAVE been taking multiple direct hits (which we have also seen, including the bolt that leads to threepio's comment.) which lead to the shield loss.
