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Can starship HTL batteries and cannons target and shoot down small and fast moving fighters as the X-Wing or are they just meant for capital ships?
Or do they need the standard laser batteries for that purpose?

Dark Primus wrote:Can starship HTL batteries and cannons target and shoot down small and fast moving fighters as the X-Wing or are they just meant for capital ships?

They're meant for capital ships, but they can destroy a fighter if it presents a co-operative target. The "predictors" (turbolaser fire control system component, ANH novel) had an easy job of shooting down Porkins over the Death Star when his fighter instruments went haywire in ANH.

Well, yes and no.


A heavy turbolaser shot can definitely more than vaporize a starfighter into its constituent particles many times over, if it hits.


However, a heavy turbolaser cannon is a very large and massive structure. This high mass also means that it has a very large amount of inertia. As such, traversing and elevating the turbolaser (or more likely, assembly of multiple tubolasers, i.e. battery) requires a large amount of torque to accelerate it, and give it angular momentum.. then an equal amount of torque to slow it down again, before it can be brought in line with a target.
In other words, they're very heavy and cumbersome.

As Vympel has noted, a target as small and fast as a starfighter travelling at relatively close range is crossing a very large angular distance from the point of view of the turbolaser. The battery simply isn't capable of tracking to follow the target; it's capable of following neither the all-out rate of change, nor acceleration, of angular position/aim. Thus (as described in ANH), the fire control computers attempt to predict where the fighter will be based on its current trajectory. It points at where the fighter is going to be, then when (if!) the fighter crosses that point, it fires.

This would work great if the starfighters travelled in straight linear lines, or at least with predictable acceleration, or predictable rate of change of acceleration. However, any starfighter pilot is going to randomize the movement of his fighter, and any good pilot is going to deliberately travel past the turbolaser battery so it's unable to turn around quickly enough to track his fighter (also described in ANH, I believe).

Thus, for practical considerations, you'll need lighter turbolaser/blaster/laser cannons to shoot down starfighters; fortunately, most capital ships have arrays of these, referred to as "point-defense weapons".

Note: Porkins' fighter was damaged, so he was unable to maneuver properly. His fighter ended up travelling in a predictable manner, and was vaporized within seconds of his avionics instrumentation failure.


EDIT - Meh, y'know, I think this is similar in a manner to a WW2 battleship trying to kill even a prop fighter with its 8-inch caliber guns. It's possible, but so unlikely that it isn't practical.

The "Dozens" (Sixty presumed, or 180 to 300, depending on your source) of turbolaser batteriess and ion cannons an ISD is supposed to mount are supposed to be designed for anti-cap ship as well as anti-fighter/torpedo roles in addition to the dedicated point defense guns. But those really aren't true "heavy" mounts (they're heavy enough, though for most medium and small warships, and can take out a bigger warship with combined volley fire.) they're more like "dual purpose" medium/secondary batteries on some older WW2-era ships (like battleships.)

They're probably designed to engage targets much farther away though, since they're tracking is going to be alot slower than a dedicated point defense gun (like we see in ANH) against fighters and torpedoes. If you really were desperate, you probably COULD use the heavy broadsiide turrets in a similar capacity at very long ranges, but it would almost certainly be pointless since they aren't positioned for very effective coverage.