StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Hi, haven't been here for a while because I was an idiot when I first came here and lost interest.

Anyway, I've been hearing various things about Ion cannons which conflict, and I was wondering which was correct:

1. They go right through shields, ignoring them (which I find unlikely)

or

2. They do more damage to shields than turbolasers.

or

3. They do less damage to shields than turbolasers.

So which is right, or are none of them correct?

Alexus wrote:1. They go right through shields, ignoring them (which I find unlikely)

This is a somewhat common misconception, which I believe was started by the EGWT's odd wording in regards to ion cannons. However, you're correct, it doesn't appear to be right given the differing EU references to ion cannons impacting shields and the ICS stating the Hoth cannon overpowered the ISD's shields allowing penetration. I know Mike has a page concerning the EGWT's entry on the main site under ion cannons, it should help.

Imho, it would appear that of the choices, 3 would be the most correct.

I always figured they fired some form of energy, I guess Ions, meant to overload critical systems.

Wow, you think?

I doubt we have enough information to conclude what (if any) discrepancy there is in firepower and/or effectiveness against shields between lasers/turbolasers and ion cannon. The ability of the Hoth KDY-150 to take out the ISD with a few shots is easily explained by it being a big honking motherfucker and blowing through the shields by sheer brute force. The EU depicts the ion cannon as having to whittle down shields the same way TLs do.
Wether they have an easier or harder time of doing so, and wether that's an inherent characteristic of ion cannon or due to calibre differences is AFAIK not elaborated upon.

IIRC, in X-Wing: Rogue Squadron, an orbital bombardment of a shielded area of Borleias involved turbolasers and ion cannons. As the shields weakened, the aggressors stopped firing the turbolasers and only used ion cannons. The ion cannons were expected to do less damage to the shields, but they wanted the installation intact if the shields were to fail unexpectedly.

Confirmed. Unfortunately what they don't tell us is wether that was due to ion cannon being inherently weaker or the ISD's ion cannon simply being of smaller calibre.

Batman wrote:Confirmed. Unfortunately what they don't tell us is wether that was due to ion cannon being inherently weaker or the ISD's ion cannon simply being of smaller calibre.

If the Ion Cannon wasn't inherently weaker, wouldn't it be used as a primary weapon in place of blasters and turbolasers, instead of the special-purpose use that it's currently in?

In Rogue Leader, Rogue Squadron II, the Y-Wing had an ion cannon as a secondary weapon, but it functioned more as an EMP, knocking out the enemy ships' systems but leaving the ship itself intact.

?

Yeah, the EU has many fighters carrying weapons for harmlessly disabling enemy ships.

Cos Dashit wrote:In Rogue Leader, Rogue Squadron II, the Y-Wing had an ion cannon as a secondary weapon, but it functioned more as an EMP, knocking out the enemy ships' systems but leaving the ship itself intact.

?

Isn't that kind of what happened to the ISD in ESB, got hit and kinda shut down.

It got seriously crippled and got engine misfires and some kind of arcing over it's surface, not 'magic disable-gun' like in game and the EU. Whatever it did, it sure looked like it did it by fucking the ship right up.

Stark wrote:It got seriously crippled and got engine misfires and some kind of arcing over it's surface, not 'magic disable-gun' like in game and the EU. Whatever it did, it sure looked like it did it by fucking the ship right up.

Mmm... Did it go through the shields and hit the systems, or did it hit the shields until they were gone, and then hit the systems?

1) who cares and 2) EU ion cannons don't ignore shields either. I'm just saying the game/EU idea of blue bolts of 'make the ship stop and not do anything' are rubbish, as the only ion cannon hit seen fucked a ship up and knocked it out of control, not harmlessly disabled it.

So the ion cannon in ESB knocked out the shields first, then crippled the ISD.

...

You know, I didn't say that. Are you reading the posts I'm writing? Of course *I* don't think they bypass shields (that'd be pretty strange since they're used once in six movies) but I didn't say anything one way or the other in my post.

More likely, it penetrated the shield without severely taxing the overall shield grid, probably blowing out a projector at most. Were these turbolaser shots, they would have done significant hull damage, but follow up shots would still be partially deflected by the shield. The ion cannon, however, may well have damaged generator or control systems vital to the whole shield grid, at least temporarily.

Perhaps more relevant to Hoth, even a massively damaged ISD (had they had a planet based turbolaser) could still shoot back at the escaping Rebel's, however, with the aforementioned screw over of the ISD via Ion Cannon, it wasn't going to be doing anything.

Darwin wrote:

Batman wrote:Confirmed. Unfortunately what they don't tell us is wether that was due to ion cannon being inherently weaker or the ISD's ion cannon simply being of smaller calibre.

If the Ion Cannon wasn't inherently weaker, wouldn't it be used as a primary weapon in place of blasters and turbolasers, instead of the special-purpose use that it's currently in?

No? For starters, ion cannon would be completely useless against inert targets, they are apparently incapable of outright destroying even susceptible targets in the first place (the ISD from TESB was apparently at least somewhat up and running a while later) and DO tell me how you DBZ a planet with ion cannon.

Batman wrote:No? For starters, ion cannon would be completely useless against inert targets, they are apparently incapable of outright destroying even susceptible targets in the first place (the ISD from TESB was apparently at least somewhat up and running a while later) and DO tell me how you DBZ a planet with ion cannon.

Ion cannons shots seem to cause more system failures than an equivalent number of turbolaser shots (at similar weapons classes). Although that is a bit subjective since the X-Wing series of books tended to have capital ships fire both turbolasers and ion cannons at the same time. (Which only makes sense: you want to cripple your enemy as quickly as possible.)

The hard data we do have does tell us some important things, though. (This is from memory, unfortunately, since I don't currently have access to my sources.)

First, ion cannons can destroy electronic systems. Corran's X-wing needed repair and replacement parts after being hit by ion cannon fire before it could be operational again because circuits were fused together (I hope I'm not confusing this with the EMP pulse in Wraith Squadron). His R2 unit would have been killed had it not shut down. (Bigger ships have crews and replacement parts to help bring the ship back online as best they can.)

Second, ion cannons can destroy ships. The Borleias planetary ion cannon destroyed a shuttle and/or fighter. The surprise factor of a planetary weapon obliterating a small shuttle-sized target is about zero, but it does show that ion cannons do cause some physical damage.

Third, ion cannons are less effective in combat than lasers, at least on fighters. In I, Jedi, pilots complained about being given orders to only engage using ion cannons because it was harder for them to defeat their enemies. (Evidently requiring more shots to disable an enemy fighter with ion cannons than to destroy it with lasers.) (I'm not sure how well this would scale up to capital-level weapons. The SSD Lusankya disabled an enemy ISD very quickly with full ion cannon barrages in The Bacta War. I don't know what would have happened if the Lusankya used full barrages of turbolasers instead.)

An ion cannon will impart some level of energy to the target; while it is presumably much less than a turbolaser of equivalent "input energy", it still needs to be enough to eventually cause local shield failure. Presumably, given the jamming present in a battle (see the Battle of Endor), there's no way to determine if an enemy ship's shields are still up, which could explain why ion cannons are used even though they're slower to take down enemy ships: if one accidentally uses a strong turbolaser and some of the blast gets through the shield, it could cause undesirable damage.

The primary damage mechanism of an ion cannon appears to be a power surge (perhaps by making use of conductive qualities of the hull material as it dissipates blasts which have penetrated the shields?); this power surge could be destructive in its own right if it damages failsafe equipment, in turn causing a weapon capacitor to overload or damages reactor containment or regulation equipment.

Alexus wrote:Hi, haven't been here for a while because I was an idiot when I first came here and lost interest.

Anyway, I've been hearing various things about Ion cannons which conflict, and I was wondering which was correct:

1. They go right through shields, ignoring them (which I find unlikely)

or

They don't go through shields. Aside from various EU examples of them not passing through shields (IE rogue squadron novels) the TESB radio drama makes it explicitly clear the Hoth Ion cannon bombardments knocked out ISD shielding before knocking out the ships themselves.

the EGW&T explains that ion fire can penetrate certain kinds of shields, just as projectile weapons or warheads are unaffected by ray or energy shields. Deflector shields, however, are composed of multipe kinds of shielding to protect against multiple k inds of weapons.

2. They do more damage to shields than turbolasers.

or

3. They do less damage to shields than turbolasers.

So which is right, or are none of them correct?

It depends on the exact model of ion cannon versus the exact model of turbolaser. In general, a TL bolt is more powerful than an ion blast (Although there might be other factors affecting this where shielding is concerned, such as wattage, or massless beams vs particle beams, particle vs ray shields, etc.)

Remember that an ion cannon burst DOES have mass and velocity, so it naturally has kinetic energy (and it is capable of damaging/destroying targets, as per the TESB novelization.) In theory, there is no reason why an ion cannon burst cannot be as damaging (in terms of potential energy, at least) than a turbolaser, but various practical aspects (not wanting to destroy the target, barrel lenght/beam acceleration issues, etc.) may limit the possible damage.

Batman wrote:Confirmed. Unfortunately what they don't tell us is wether that was due to ion cannon being inherently weaker or the ISD's ion cannon simply being of smaller calibre.

Ion cannons necessarily are probably disrupted by planetary magnetics and thick atmospheres a lot more than massless turbolasers. Planetary ion cannons may involve high-powered lasers that open low-density "channels" in the atmosphere through which the stream of ions can be fired; remember they intentionally did not want to damage the base. If starship ion cannons contain such components, presumably they intentionally deactivated them.

Turbolasers are necessarily more efficient at delivering all their energy to the target; ion cannons' charged particles may deliver all their kinetic energy, but any deflected/splashed/bounced-off charged particles are lost to the attack and their rest mass did not contribute to the damage, even though it did contribute to the energy cost of accelerating the stream. In massless beams, there is no distinction between rest mass-energy and kinetic-energy. They're all the same. Reflected massless beams, like light, are not reflected akin to massive particles; in quantum physics they are always described as being absorbed and reemitted.