Reconsidering firepower for the neu-Canon

[Patroklos]

There has always been the assumption that the energy of the DS's beam was the only factor in its ability to destroy a planet. I am sure it is quite integral to the process, but there is nothing to say that the specific function of how that beam works has as much to do with it than anything else. I can take two bombs of equal explosive force but get wildly different results via shaping or timed delay detonation or using explosives with different burn rates, etc. etc. I can shoot a Kevlar vest for hours with a pellet gun until I exert the same energy in a .45 but I will never get the same result of that .45 round even if I have all those pellets hit the vest at once. For all we know the DS laser shots in stages even if it superficially looks the same to us. Maybe there is a raw power shield busting first state, then a drilling second stage that allows un unimpeded specially formed third stage to deliver a specially formulated energy dump to pop the planet. Who knows.

Now eventually we will reach the limit of a specific planetary body to absorb energy regardless of the form delivered without it being destroyed in some fashion, but it might not look the same depending in each instance.

[LaCroix]

The problem with Han's quote is that he stops.

There are so many possible ends for his sentences.
"It'd take a thousand ships with more firepower than I've seen on a Star Destroyer."
"It'd take a thousand ships with more firepower than I've seen on an Executor flagship to rip it apart this way."
"It'd take a thousand ships with more firepower than I've seen on Coruscant's orbital defense platforms."
"It'd take a thousand ships with more firepower than I've heard in *insert legend*."

Without it, it's just a shocked hyperbole...

[Simon_Jester]

Han's exact quote is: "The entire starfleet couldn't destroy the whole planet. It'd take a thousand ships with more firepower than I've..."

If we take Han's statement at face value then the entire Imperial starfleet is less than 1000 ships, regardless of anythign else. We are left with one of two possibilities. Either he is correct and the entire Imperial fleet is less than a thousand ships, or he is wrong and it is not impossible.

Uh... I don't think basic logic works that way. If Han asserts "The Empire doesn't have a thousand ships with more firepower than I've ever [seen/imagined/verbed]" that does not imply the Empire has less than one thousand ships. It means the Empire has less than a thousand ships which have the requisite firepower.

If, for example, blowing up a planet takes about 10^33 joules of energy, then for a thousand ships to destroy the planet would require each ship to deliver 10^30 joules of energy, over a reasonably short span of time. Doing it in a day would require each ship to deliver on the order of 10^25 joules of energy per second, which works out to about 2.5 petatons per second. Doing it in ten days, 250 teratons per second per ship.

(these are very rough numbers)

Now, if we assume Han knows fairly precisely how hard blowing up a planet is, he's asserting that the Empire doesn't have a huge number of ships that can keep up that volume of fire for that length of time. Maybe it has one or two, or even a dozen, but not hundreds or thousands.

If we assume his knowledge is less precise, then he's saying "blowing up a planet would be too hard. It'd take powerful ships, a huge swarm of them, each with unthinkably great firepower." In this context, "a thousand" is metonymy for "a huge number," not necessarily exactly one thousand- 999 would probably be enough.

The key point is the unthinkably great firepower. Han may be off by one or two orders of magnitude in his estimate of the ability of destroying a planet, but he's saying that all the Imperial fleet together couldn't blow up a planet. Even if they were numerous enough, their ships don't have the vast firepower it would take.

Another option is that he was not referring to an Imperial starfleet in absolute terms, that he was referring to a smaller body such as sector fleets. This idea fits with the reference to "your starfleet" by the Imperial officers around the Death Star table.

So would normal interservice rivalry- say, the commander of the Imperial Army garrison referring sneeringly to the Navy as "your" organization while speaking to navy men.

Han never actually says its impossible, just that he didn't see the Imperial fleet as being able to do it. If we go by the theory that planetary shielding is what prevents planetary destruction, then it would make sense that he would have considered it impossible in such a short time period.

He says nothing about the time period. If we were forced to accept that the Starfleet actually does have enough raw firepower to destroy the planet, then saying it couldn't happen that fast would be the best possible backup explanation.

But at the moment there is no concrete piece of canon that tells us that it must be possible for the regular starships of the Imperial fleet to blow up a planet by direct fire of conventional weapons in a reasonable span of time.

I should also point out that Obi-Wan, while he also had a warning from the Force, was hardly surprised that it had happened. I would expect a veteran of the Clone Wars would have a better understanding of the firepower that can be unleashed in Star Wars space combat than a smuggler who had likely only dealt with Imperial warships involved in policing.

Alternatively, Obi-Wan is as surprised as Luke and Han, but unlike them is a serene man who has decades of training and experience as a philosophically oriented Jedi who reacts to an unexpected event with calm observations rather than bluster?

It seems hard to believe that the Empire is 'balanced' by military threats so great that it cannot amass a majority of its own strength in one place for a single operation. If there were outside threats of that magnitude, one would expect them to be referenced somewhere in the movies, if only because the rebels would seek them out as allies... instead, the Empire is portrayed as the only significant military power in the galaxy.

The Empire being unwilling to deploy its entire fleet to one location hardly requires an equal threat. The Empire is fighting an insurgency. In counter-insurgency warfare, one of the key ideas is efficiency. The more resources used against a specific target, the less effective the occupying force will be. The US in Iraq also had massive military superiority, it didn't stop them from not having enough troops if things ever truly went badly.

Locally, at one instant in time, the US might not have enough troops. But if the US wanted to concentrate a mighty force in one place because it thought the situation merited it (e.g. Fallujah) they could, and did.

Star Wars hyperdrive is very mobile, and the only forces that would be needed to blow up a planet are precisely the big, bulky, capital ships that are least necessary for counter-insurgency warfare. So if the Empire really did want to use a large fraction of its total fleet for a single operation, I see no reason why they couldn't.

If the rate of fire is an issue, then the Death Star would be able to shoot a capital ship... once. Then wait an hour or three. Anyone mad enough to attack the Death Star would surely bring more than one ship. For purposes of fighting a serious naval battle, it would not be a very helpful weapon. Or at least there's no on-screen evidence of it.

If the ship it shot were something like the Executor, that would actually be quite useful. In any case, it would obviously require such a low power output to destroy a capital ship as opposed to a planet that there would be no need to recharge the superlaser first. If we use an estimate for an Imperial warship of 10^26 watts for its reactor, the Death Star's reactor at 10^33 watts(based on a recharge time of a day) would actually be able to fire nearly continuously as long as it had fuel as there would be no need to waste time recharging for a full power shot. Despite also being more powerful, this is clearly what the Second Death Star did at Endor.

At least, assuming there was no modification of the superlaser between the DS-I and -II, which is at least plausible so I will not dispute it.

However, I do not think it necessary to assume that Dodonna is counting the superlaser as part of the Death Star's firepower for purposes of describing it to the fighter pilots; the superlaser's ability to engage individual enemy ships is irrelevant to them. For that matter, Dodonna may not even know it; while R2-D2 gave him the plans to the Death Star, that doesn't mean the rebels have time to do anything more than count the turbolaser turrets and look for exposed reactor shafts.

But there is nothing that outright contradicts it either. That would be like seeing the first atomic bomb and declaring it impossible to equal with conventional firepower if one had never seen the firebombing efforts against Japan which actually did more damage than the two atomic bombs, though taking hundreds of planes instead of one. The fact that planetary destruction is a taboo among the various factions in most conflicts in Star Wars doesn't make it impossible.

I don't disagree, it's just that I don't think there's evidence for the high firepower either. Dodonna's quote is ambiguous because of the context, and the high firepower is not directly demonstrated in movie canon. It is demonstrated in EU canon, but that has now been spiked, so we're back to square one.

It's not obvious that the beam weapons on Republic gunships are the same type as the Death Star superlaser, even if they superficially appear to be of similar nature.

They appear to operate on exactly the same principle, using the same style of converging beams. Why would they be anything else but the same technology? By this logic we should assume that stormtrooper blasters and AT-AT blasters are fundamentally different.

Two things that look the same may not be the same in fact; a superlaser may have components other than just "converging beams" that make it far more efficient than a smaller converging beam weapon.

But, even conceding that you are right and they are the same technology, the LAAT composite beam weapons are (fifteen orders of magnitude) weaker than a proportional scaling-down from the Death Star would suggest. So there is no reason to assume that naval weapons are as powerful as such a proportional scaling-down would suggest.

If decreasing size by a factor of a quadrillion from the Death Star to the LAAT can decrease power output by a factor of a quadrillion quadrillions... we cannot assume that "only" decreasing size by a factor of a billion would "only" decrease power output by a factor of a billion.

As to the question of beam size and scaling, there are clearly two scales in planetary combat versus space combat. As no one is interested in killing their own troops or masses of enemy civilians, weapons used in planetary warfare are proportionally much weaker than those used in space. The one possible exception we see is the Republic's artillery on Geonosis, which was presumably designed with the role of mobile coastal gun in mind. Even they presumably drained their energy reserve shooting down a single TF battleship core. Another limiting factor on planetary weapons and vehicles might be the fact that they seem to only use stored power rather than having their own internal power generations. Though this would logically also limit starfighters which don't seem to have such limits, being designed to potentially go up against opposing capital ships.

There is nothing to suggest that capital ships don't scale linearly with reactor size.

Even so, one would expect beam weapons to be designed to be as powerful as feasible in light of the limits, and to have high-power settings capable of operating to the limits of the hardware in a pinch.

The massive disconnect between space and ground combat firepower in Star Wars is almost entirely a product of the assumption of teraton-level firepower on large starships. While this is amply supported by the old canon, it is at best an assumption, sketchily supported by a handful of debateably interpreted quotes, when regarded only in terms of the movie canon.

It seems far more plausible that the Death Stars (uniquely terrifying superweapons) possess an unusually high power density per ton compared to ordinary ships, than that all such ships have spectacularly high power density even in the complete absence of direct evidence of this power being used.

I'm not saying Han would know the details, but he'd probably have at least a rough clue what they can and cannot do. It's like, even a mildly knowledgeable person today might not know exactly what a B-52 is capable of, but they know that loaded with conventional bombs it can't flatten a whole state, but could probably flatten whole blocks of buildings. Or that a gun can kill a man but can't kill a tank, and would be gross overkill on a cockroach.

If someone knew that a single B-52 could level a city block and that generally they were used alone or in limited numbers, and then saw that all of Boston was leveled, their initial reaction might very well be that it seemed impossible.

Again, this is based on the assumption that Han reacted without thinking. There is no evidence for this.

Not if Alderaan was shielded. If the role of the Death Star was gross overkill for the purpose of cracking planetary shielding, then it would have a purpose even if the conventional Imperial fleet were easily capable of doing that level of damage to an unprotected world. Alderaan's shield lasted for 1/10th of a second against the Death Star. With that level of energy output, it would be quite difficult for the Imperial fleet to overcome Alderaan without a protracted bombardment.

If the Death Star's aggregate firepower is only, say, 2/3 of that of the starfleet, it would seem quite likely that they could bring down such a shield within minutes using only a small fraction of the starfleet's total strength.

Right. I would assume Dodonna was neither grossly exaggerating nor grossly understating the Death Star's firepower. But given that literally no other weapon in the Star Wars universe exhibits anything like the raw per-ton firepower of the Death Star, and that everyone is baffled as to how the Empire can blow up whole planets until they find out exactly what the Death Star is...

When would we see a canon example of Death Star level per ton firepower? The only cases of capital ships cutting loose are against each other, who clearly have shields roughly equivalent to their guns.

We know how heavy the Death Star is, and we know its power output. The Death star is a metal ball roughly 100-200 kilometers in radius, and thus has a volume on the order of 1-10 million cubic kilometers. It is thus something like one billion times the volume of a lone star destroyer, estimating very roughly.

But the demonstrated power output of the Death Star superlaser is far, far greater than one billion times that demonstrated by any star destroyer in the films. Thus, the Death Star can be said to have greater firepower per ton

It seems unlikely that the pre-Death Star Starfleet actually had the ability to totally obliterate planets and just chose not to use it for some reason.

Why? The United States has the ability to destroy most nations on Earth and hasn't since World War two. The fact that we have never seen anything that indicates that they have in the limited canon we see from the films, doesn't mean that they hadn't previously done so...

The very nature of the imperial order portrayed in the original movies suggests that had the Empire been able to do what the Death Star did, before building the Death Star, it would have done what the Death Star did.

The 'planetary shields' argument holds, but it is based largely on EU content that is now decanonized, plus a couple of frames of Alderaan glowing on screen before exploding like a globe with a firecracker inside.

Are the films' novelizations still "canon"?

Both the Clone Wars and the ROTS novelization can't possible be canon as the novelization is full of references to things from the original Clone Wars continuity like Labyrinth of Evil. The novelization explicitly is contradicted by the series in that the novelization claimed that Obi-Wan and Grievous had never fought and that Obi-Wan and Anakin never had any experience with fighting Magnaguards, both of which happened repeatedly in the series.

Then, given the statements we have, the novelization is canon where it does not conflict the TV series, and noncanon where it does.

If we take Han's statement at face value then the entire Imperial starfleet is less than 1000 ships, regardless of anythign else. We are left with one of two possibilities. Either he is correct and the entire Imperial fleet is less than a thousand ships, or he is wrong and it is not impossible

Ok here's my take on the matter. To destroy a planet, we know we need a certain amount of energy applied to the planet within a short enough time for it to explode, as opposed to simply melt.

If starship turbolasers inflict teraton-level damage, they are powerful enough to cause extensive localized 'shattering' and blow large amounts of ejecta into space. The cumulative effect (especially with good shot placement) would indeed be to blast the planet apart and fling the fragments into space, or failing that to vaporize them.

The Death Star does this in one shot of course, since that's what it's designed to do. But with the standard Imperial starfleet, the largest ships are the Executors (and we only ever see one on film so we have no idea how many more there are). To impart enough energy into a planet to destroy it with starships, you'd need to have a lot of ships targeting the same spot on the planet and all pummeling it down to the core with every weapon they have with enough force to break it apart entirely. So you would need a thousand ships the size of the Executor with way more power than they are capable of projecting. Han's statement may be off-hand, but it makes sense. Even if you take tens of thousands of normal Stardestroyers, they would be unable to concentrate their fire enough to blast the entire planet apart due to the "relatively" low output of each ship and the sheer number of ships needed.

That interpretation COULD be valid, but in my honest opinion, larger numbers of smaller ships could shatter a planet given Star Wars level energies.

To invoke the EU, there was a new class of Super Stardestroyer called the Eclipse. It was armed with a mini-superlaser capable of shattering a continent or a small moon, but not an entire world. Even something as massive as that, you'd need dozens of them to destroy an Earth-sized world. So you'd need dozens of a kind of ship that simply didn't exist in the OT, or a thousand of the kind of ship that we only ever see one of, armed with a scale of weaponry that we never see.

Now that is closely aligned to my point. When Han is told "the planet has been destroyed" and tries to visualize what it would take to make that happen, he says it's impossible because it would take vast numbers of unprecedentedly large ships. Maybe he believes such ships could exist, or that a few of them exist, but nowhere near enough of them, and nowhere near well-armed enough, to destroy a whole planet.

There has always been the assumption that the energy of the DS's beam was the only factor in its ability to destroy a planet. I am sure it is quite integral to the process, but there is nothing to say that the specific function of how that beam works has as much to do with it than anything else. I can take two bombs of equal explosive force but get wildly different results via shaping or timed delay detonation or using explosives with different burn rates, etc. etc. I can shoot a Kevlar vest for hours with a pellet gun until I exert the same energy in a .45 but I will never get the same result of that .45 round even if I have all those pellets hit the vest at once. For all we know the DS laser shots in stages even if it superficially looks the same to us. Maybe there is a raw power shield busting first state, then a drilling second stage that allows un unimpeded specially formed third stage to deliver a specially formulated energy dump to pop the planet. Who knows.

Now eventually we will reach the limit of a specific planetary body to absorb energy regardless of the form delivered without it being destroyed in some fashion, but it might not look the same depending in each instance.

Since the energy imparted to the planet is the same regardless, and vastly exceeds the gravitational binding energy of the planet...

Honestly, there is NO way you could deliver that much energy to a planet without blowing it up, which is all Han knows has happened to Alderaan. So I think we're still well grounded in saying that Han's quote suggests that Han believes that with Star Wars technology and a fleet the size the Empire owns, physically destroying an entire planet would be effectively impossible.

The problem with Han's quote is that he stops.

There are so many possible ends for his sentences.
"It'd take a thousand ships with more firepower than I've seen on a Star Destroyer."
"It'd take a thousand ships with more firepower than I've seen on an Executor flagship to rip it apart this way."
"It'd take a thousand ships with more firepower than I've seen on Coruscant's orbital defense platforms."
"It'd take a thousand ships with more firepower than I've heard in *insert legend*."

Without it, it's just a shocked hyperbole...

Arguably true, but I think the meaning is clear in context- the incredulity suggests that he's going to end the sentence with an absolute denial- either such large ships do not exist anywhere he knows, or exist in numbers far too small to do the job.

[DarthPooky]

I personally wouldn't discount the ICS. from what I now (and feel free to correct me if im wrong) but Curtis Saxton got his stats from the movies and gorge Lucas had some limited involvement as well In the form of passing notes back and forth to get Lucas's approval. Wouldn't that still make the ICS canon. at least canon to a lesser extant like how we still use the TM just not as a first and definite example and if there are any inconsistences the movies take precedence.

[Adam Reynolds]

I personally wouldn't discount the ICS. from what I now (and feel free to correct me if im wrong) but Curtis Saxton got his stats from the movies and gorge Lucas had some limited involvement as well In the form of passing notes back and forth to get Lucas's approval. Wouldn't that still make the ICS canon. at least canon to a lesser extant like how we still use the TM just not as a first and definite example and if there are any inconsistences the movies take precedence.

What really hurts the ICS is that the latest version has no numbers at all. As for Lucas's involvement, I highly doubt he cares at all. He is a storyteller who likely doesn't care at all about how large the universe he created really is. The numbers problem is that we never see numbers in line with what is implied there*. While it doesn't disprove the presence of such numbers, the fact that the higher canon never properly implies it is problematic.
* apart from the Death Star which was the whole debate between me and Simon. My guess is that this was primarily how Saxton scaled things.

Though one possible explanation for such high end numbers could be that while peak reactor output is quite high, it massively reduces endurance to the point at which hardly anyone ever cranks things up. This might explain how the Rebel fleet at Endor was so successful despite being outgunned, after the Death Star began firing, they were willing to overclock their vessels in order for short term effectiveness at the expense of long term staying power. Knowing that the Death Star largely prevented them from escaping they would have been desperate while the Imperial fleet followed the orthodoxy and took longer to change things, by which it was too late.

[Simon_Jester]

If the difference between "high power" and "normal power" is less than or equal to, say, one order of magnitude... it's not enough to explain the disparities between the high-end and low-end numbers.

If the difference is several orders of magnitude... well, the Rebel ships at Endor were smaller than their Imperial counterparts, and I believe less numerous, but not that much smaller and less numerous. If they were overclocking their weapons and achieving, say, 1000 times the output firepower per ton of their Imperial counterparts... they should have blown through the Imperial blockade fleet like a shotgun through tissue paper.

[Mange]

I personally wouldn't discount the ICS. from what I now (and feel free to correct me if im wrong) but Curtis Saxton got his stats from the movies and gorge Lucas had some limited involvement as well In the form of passing notes back and forth to get Lucas's approval. Wouldn't that still make the ICS canon. at least canon to a lesser extant like how we still use the TM just not as a first and definite example and if there are any inconsistences the movies take precedence.

What really hurts the ICS is that the latest version has no numbers at all.

Wrong. The latest version (released July 2013) does have all the numbers intact, but they've shoved them to the end of the book. I'd agree that the primary sources for the ICS are the movies themselves, but that doesn't make the ICS officially canon I'm afraid. Nowadays it's mostly Fry that seems to get to write that kind of material and I find myself not often agreeing with his conclusions.

[DarthPooky]

What really hurts the ICS is that the latest version has no numbers at all. As for Lucas's involvement, I highly doubt he cares at all. He is a storyteller who likely doesn't care at all about how large the universe he created really is.

What dose it matter if Lukas cares or not. Doesn't the fact that he aprooved Curtis Saxtons stats make them canon.?

Wrong. The latest version (released July 2013) does have all the numbers intact, but they've shoved them to the end of the book. I'd agree that the primary sources for the ICS are the movies themselves, but that doesn't make the ICS officially canon I'm afraid. Nowadays it's mostly Fry that seems to get to write that kind of material and I find myself not often agreeing with his conclusions.

As I said before that we should not discount the ICS Entirely but put it in the same category as the TNG TM because it still deals with canon vehicles.

[jwl]

I'll just drop this here. It's mostly character stuff rather than tech stuff, and this site is much more conservative than NF, but here it is anyway.

[Havok]

Look, blasters can't penetrate ice. Nuff said, Trek wins.

[Adam Reynolds]

Wrong. The latest version (released July 2013) does have all the numbers intact, but they've shoved them to the end of the book. I'd agree that the primary sources for the ICS are the movies themselves, but that doesn't make the ICS officially canon I'm afraid. Nowadays it's mostly Fry that seems to get to write that kind of material and I find myself not often agreeing with his conclusions.

The worst part is that his galactic map completely fails to match that shown in AOTC with satellite galaxies. It's again the problem of putting the EU over the films.

[ray245]

Has there been anyone who make an attempt to gauge the fire-power SW weapons solely based on the TCW series alone? Since this is where the bulk of cannon is going to come from since most of the EU is de-canonised. If what is shown on TCW conflicts with what is shown in the movies, which should take the priority since officially, they are of the same canon status now?

[RogueIce]

If what is shown on TCW conflicts with what is shown in the movies, which should take the priority since officially, they are of the same canon status now?

If you want to get pedantic about it (and this is SDN, so of course we will ) we never see Acclamators fire in the movies, and AFAIK the only thing the Venators shoot at is other starships, which you can only kind of guess from since we don't know what kind of Space Metal they're using, and possibly shields and stuff. Since the OT only has ISDs, TCW never showed ISDs and the ISDs in Rebels apparently charge by the turbolaser bolt or something and never want to fire, you can just go with "different ships, different weapons, different firepower" as your explanation.

[Adam Reynolds]

If you want to get pedantic about it (and this is SDN, so of course we will ) we never see Acclamators fire in the movies, and AFAIK the only thing the Venators shoot at is other starships, which you can only kind of guess from since we don't know what kind of Space Metal they're using, and possibly shields and stuff. Since the OT only has ISDs, TCW never showed ISDs and the ISDs in Rebels apparently charge by the turbolaser bolt or something and never want to fire, you can just go with "different ships, different weapons, different firepower" as your explanation.

The problem is that they are visually inconsistent in weird ways that are hard to reconcile beyond simple firepower comparisons. In Clone Wars Venators literally only ever use their heavy turbolasers, even against fighters. In ROTS we never actually see the heavy turbolasers fire at all, except presumably in distance shots. There is also the way damage is animated. When starfighters ram capital ships, they produce somewhat small explosions that appear to do no serious damage. When those same ships are then seen at a distance they are in flames.

As I have said before, I fail to see why a limited budget cartoon series should be held as visually canon in the same sense as the films.

[ray245]

As I have said before, I fail to see why a limited budget cartoon series should be held as visually canon in the same sense as the films.

The problem is Disney do not see the films as being more canon than the cartoon series thanks to their new canon policy. While we can personally rank canon level on our own, it's not going to be official in the eyes of everyone else. If the maximum firepower of a turbo laser shown on the cartoon is less than 200 GT, there isn't anything we can do about it.

[Patroklos]

I don't think its necessarily ranking of cannon to cannon, just judging the accuracy of the medium of recording. I can have a video of a courtroom proceeding and a artists sketch. Both can be the same level of official, one is simple more accurate and we can say so. There are quirks to film that we can also take into account when observing footage as well. Lens flares for instance (though they are rarely real these days) don't have to be assumed to be giant energy rings pulsing out of the sun, we say they are lens flares and chock it up to the limits of the media used.

[Alyrium Denryle]

There has always been the assumption that the energy of the DS's beam was the only factor in its ability to destroy a planet. I am sure it is quite integral to the process, but there is nothing to say that the specific function of how that beam works has as much to do with it than anything else. I can take two bombs of equal explosive force but get wildly different results via shaping or timed delay detonation or using explosives with different burn rates, etc. etc. I can shoot a Kevlar vest for hours with a pellet gun until I exert the same energy in a .45 but I will never get the same result of that .45 round even if I have all those pellets hit the vest at once. For all we know the DS laser shots in stages even if it superficially looks the same to us. Maybe there is a raw power shield busting first state, then a drilling second stage that allows un unimpeded specially formed third stage to deliver a specially formulated energy dump to pop the planet. Who knows.

Now eventually we will reach the limit of a specific planetary body to absorb energy regardless of the form delivered without it being destroyed in some fashion, but it might not look the same depending in each instance.

That is why, when we do the yield calculations, we only consider what it would take to overcome the gravitational binding energy of the planet and cause it to fragment and cascade out into space in an ever-expanding sea of tiny asteroids. It is the absolute minimum required to perform the effect, and unless one pulls exotic (read: bullshit) physics out a rectal space, there is no way around that minimum. Large portions of the planet vaporize, or maybe the weapon does operate in stages etc, but they all increase the energy required, not reduce it.

The problem is Disney do not see the films as being more canon than the cartoon series thanks to their new canon policy. While we can personally rank canon level on our own, it's not going to be official in the eyes of everyone else. If the maximum firepower of a turbo laser shown on the cartoon is less than 200 GT, there isn't anything we can do about it.

Sure there is. We dont have to "rank" canon. We consider the limits of the medium being employed and to what effect the weapon systems are being employed. Take an SPHAT, it has a turbolaser. A turbolaser that works just as well against ground targets as it does against space targets. In a ground battle, you dont want a multi-gigaton turbolaser blast because that will make the continental shelf have a Really Bad Day. So you dial down the power setting. Against a spaceship, you want every joule of energy you can get, but this is a directed energy weapon, it does not behave like a nuke. It will slam into hull plating and start vaporizing, but the particle shields molecularly bond the hull together and said hull is made from what amounts to unobtanium with truly insane thermal properties. We wont see what we expect a 200 gt nuke to look like, as most of the energy will be absorbed and conducted away by the hull material.

You cannot just observe. You have to critically analyze. For example, trying to calculate the maximum acceleration of an X wing from visuals is always going to be folly. Instead, you use time elapsed to traverse a known or readily assumed distance, with a set of assumptions that is as conservative as possible. For example, the rebel fighter swarm in ANH had to get from side of a gas giant to the other in under 10 minutes. If you assume Yavin 4's orbital distance from the gas giant as the same orbit they used, and assume they are like, Io's orbital distance from jupiter (and assume Yavin itself is Jupiter sized) you can get a rough estimate of the acceleration required to transit that distance in 10 minutes.

[Metahive]

The problem with Han's quote is that he stops.

There are so many possible ends for his sentences.
"It'd take a thousand ships with more firepower than I've seen on a Star Destroyer."
"It'd take a thousand ships with more firepower than I've seen on an Executor flagship to rip it apart this way."
"It'd take a thousand ships with more firepower than I've seen on Coruscant's orbital defense platforms."
"It'd take a thousand ships with more firepower than I've heard in *insert legend*."

Without it, it's just a shocked hyperbole...

The even bigger problem is that Han's a guy who thinks 1.5c is impressively fast, so not really a someone known for making accurate assessments.

[Batman]

Han never said 1.5c outside the german dub. He said 'point five past lightspeed' which can mean pretty much anything.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Han never said 1.5c outside the german dub. He said 'point five past lightspeed' which can mean pretty much anything.

It is generally taken to mean hyperdrive classes, with lower numbers being good. Its the only way one can make sense of the data. Halfway across the galaxy in less than a day, and all that.

[Metahive]

Han never said 1.5c outside the german dub. He said 'point five past lightspeed' which can mean pretty much anything.

You seriously sound like a theologian now. And that's not a compliment.

[Borgholio]

Well lightspeed clearly doesn't mean "Speed of Light" in the SW universe. It is slang for hyperspace. Otherwise, why would a senior Imperial Admiral say that they can get across the galaxy in a matter of hours if they're limited to c?

[Alyrium Denryle]

Well lightspeed clearly doesn't mean "Speed of Light" in the SW universe. It is slang for hyperspace. Otherwise, why would a senior Imperial Admiral say that they can get across the galaxy in a matter of hours if they're limited to c?

Statements dont mean a great deal most of the time. "Halfway across the galaxy" could just as easily be a figure of speech. No no. Just go with observed time lapse. TPM, Darth Maul. Coruscant near the galactic core to tatooine in the outer rim. ~30k ly in less than 24 hours. 48 at the most.

[Batman]

Han never said 1.5c outside the german dub. He said 'point five past lightspeed' which can mean pretty much anything.

You seriously sound like a theologian now. And that's not a compliment.

I fail to see what me having studied theology (which given I've apparently studied pretty much everything if the comics are to be believed might very well be correct) has got to do with me understanding that '.5 past lightspeed' is not the same as 1.5c. It's not my fault that german SciFi translators know even less about science than the people creating the source material.

And why the hell would lightspeed not mean lightspeed in Star Wars? Yes, it's obviously used as a synonym for 'going to hyperspace' too. Guess what? Massive objects can't go lightspeed in realspace so naturally going to lightspeed would require going to hyperspace (whatever that may be these days). That doesn't mean they'd be limited to lightspeed in hyperspace.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I fail to see what me having studied theology (which given I've apparently studied pretty much everything if the comics are to be believed might very well be correct)

You realize when you say things like this, it makes everyone who reads your posts think you are either insane, or as stupid as a tree-stump, right?