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When long range turbolasers were first mentioned in ?Dark nest trilogy/legacy? I wrote it off as 'incrementally more accurate at long range'/'more able to deliver total output to a small target at long range'

In terms of watts it is arguably an advantage to decrease small angular displacement inaccuracy, energy dispersion of the projectile and total energy delivered to a set target area at extreme range.

That all made sense as an 'advantage' until the latest set of planetary bombardment nonsense in inferno. Not only do we see ISD volleys from orbit barely 'igniting' 1 km of surface per strike (completely not within the energy envelope unless they were firing at stupidly reduced power or trainer shots) we are told that the long range turbolasers are advantageous because they can allow the ship to sit in the middle of a protective formation and still bombard...

remember the venstar is described as having a 10 light second range (and hitting a planet should actually be pretty hard at that point given the angular precision of the mechanical and beam focusing parts of the weapon) so I'm confused at how 'long range' turbolasers can benefit blindly trying to hit a planet that is very close, enough that the surface details of the explosions and resultant fires are clearly distinguishable from each other.

to the authors credit, the distance between ships in the battle is described as maximum visual range or at least described suggesting that there are at least 100's if not 1000's of km between ships, but the bombardment use seems to not only be pathetic but not make a lot of sense.

thoughts on the utility of these 'long range' turbolasers?

Can't you write it off as either a targetting issue, or the EU being retarded? The EU does have a history of being cataclysmically retarded.

Although I'm not sure what you're talking about, specifically. Is the source saying that an ISD with special 'long range' variant guns has the new advantage of being able to bombard from high orbit? If it's a precision strike and the guns are very accurate, perhaps, but if all they're doing is pasting a planet that's pretty retarded.

I'm not familiar with the source you're talking about, so could you please post it? From what I gather, though, perhaps the a turbolaser is "long-range" when it will not attenuate X% over Y distance -- so obviously long-range turbolasers would be better for indiscriminate orbital bombardments because they're more powerful.

Well you can always write off EU as being retarded, but in this case it was inconsistent on the same page and retarded, therefore bringing it into the realm of questioning.

The ISD II in question supposedly has 4 turret mounts fitted with these long range guns, a number of Commenor vessels were also fitted with these weapons after the tech was 'stolen' (however great care was taken to ensure that the long range guns were discussed at length as being of some tactical importance)

and yes the guns were being used in a mock BDZ capability to cause as much havoc as possible on the surface.

The new books have basically written off any pretense of really being legitimate Star Wars; I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Could you please post an excerpt, preferably with a few paragraphs of surrounding context, so that people can discuss this properly?

10 light second range being too far to hit a planet just due to mechanical limits on precision? Hardly.

The circumference of the Earth is 1/7 of one light second or so. So that's around 1/20 of a light second
That gives an angular width of 0.005 radians, or 0.28 degrees. That's 17 arc-minutes.
That's on the order of the limit of present-day purely mechanical aiming devices.

If you then consider the great likelihood that the beam is guided by an electrical, magnetic, or other field (which is created by the barrel but has some wiggle room within the barrel's constraint), the precision becomes much much better.

A few-decades old electron gun I use is perfectly capable of focusing an intense electron beam down to a circle around a dozen nanometers across, from a distance of a few centimeters away, and it can reposition said dot arbitrarily within a range of a few microns.
That's several orders of magnitude better than the feat in question here -- 10^-6 radians, instead of 10^-2.
With just that degree of precision, 10 light seconds away one could hit with about three kilometer accuracy.

To say nothing of when the typically armed Republic warship in Allston's NJO duology hit a Yuuzhan Vong warship in static orbit around an Earthlike planet from at least Kuiper Belt range.

It was ten light-minutes in the ROTS:ICS.

I thought the apparently negligible effects on Kashyyk was due to Jacen Solo not wanting to completely burn the planet to the ground.

Long range turbolasers would be useful in attacking stationary targets like battle stations. One could theoretically fire salvos at the stationary/non maneuverable battle station at long range and then use FTL sensors to determine the direction of the battle station's counterfire, then moving out of that counter fire, which most battle stations are not capable of doing. That's just some theory of mine, and probably a few holes in the logic that I haven't caught.

Yes they'd be useful, but Illuminatus' point makes them seem kinda pointless if you can shoot from that range IMHO...

I'll post context soon.

I would imagine battlestations would have hefty maneuvering thrusters to avoid/intercept, since they never have to devote power to reaching high velocity or HS jumps, just shields, shields, shields and weapons. Unless of course the intent of battle stations are to survive long enough to prevent planetary landings.

these are thoise supposedly new technology, "longer ranged" super turbolasers Jaceen started using on his personal warships back on Denning's book (the third LOTF novel), right?

Unless they managed to find a way to miniaturize centerpoint station and produce a FTL beam weapon or they are using some sort of guided projectile, there's no way a TLs going to be vey much longer ranged than most sources implie (which is around several light seconds easily.)

From what I vaguely gather their "longer ranged" nature is that its basically just a really big, really powerful turbolaser (it had a bigger power draw) and IIRC it might have been bulkier. In that context I gneerally figured they just fired fewer but more powerful bolts: the "logner range" comes mainly from the fact they have grreater overall energy content and probably lose energy more slowly, thereby retaining far greater punch over longer range. The only othter factors would be targeting system considerations, not the actual turbolaser hardware itself. Otherwise it would have to be like I said (guided projectile or FTL beam.)

The whole idea that technology is still significantly advancing in just a few decades' time after tens of thousands of years of space exploration strikes me as silly. These "new technology" turbolasers would just represent a different set of engineering trade-offs, not "new technology". They're probably trading off very high targeting precision for something else, like yield, warmup time, cool-down time, turret traversal speed, etc.

Everything in engineering is always a trade-off. You've always got a $150 shopping list and $100 to spend.

Darth Wong wrote:The whole idea that technology is still significantly advancing in just a few decades' time after tens of thousands of years of space exploration strikes me as silly. These "new technology" turbolasers would just represent a different set of engineering trade-offs, not "new technology". They're probably trading off very high targeting precision for something else, like yield, warmup time, cool-down time, turret traversal speed, etc.

Everything in engineering is always a trade-off. You've always got a $150 shopping list and $100 to spend.

They represented it as a "new technology" in the books, even though it mad eno fucking sense, but then again they've been doing that with SW tech in the EU for ages now.

Edit: I fully admit its stupid since it ignores existing weapons ranges and commons ense for a wepaon, but the OP asked to make sense of it, so that's what I'm trying to do.

Besides didn't Curtis try to retcon the whole "technological progress" basically as making a bunch of tradeoffs in design?

If you know how the beam propogates, and your targets are static and predictable, why would a TL beam not be able to hit stationary targets from further than a few light-seconds?

It is a relatively simple explanation - the 10 light minute range for the Venator is for their Heavy Turbolasers. These new "long range" turbolasers that the Anakin Solo mounts are no where near that power level - when they shot the Falcon with them it punched a hole straight through the turret ladder, rather then turning Han and Leia into stray atoms. These are PD or very light TLs at best - note that the descriptions in Inferno have him burning the forests rather then glassing the planetary surface.

Range appears to be proportional to barrel length, so all this is is the technology for the HTLs being brought down to the little ones. THe longer barrel would make them more bulky, so they would be slower to transverse and such, so there are your tradeoffs. These are only really good for precision light work, and that has how they have been portrayed.

I really need to type up the relevant passages, however Inferno describes Luke as disabling the power conduits for the turrets (no real description of how he did it) and implies the main batteries given the location of where Jacen secret room of nasties is placed as well as the threat to the ship from internal detonations. So I think it's the author that is understating the power of the main batteries and not that they are PD guns.

The HTLs on the Venator could be used in a fast tracking mode and had variable power output. I see no reason that the 'Long range' guns here weren't used with restraint or in a fast tracking mode to hit a small/ maneuverable target with a hero shield.

If the Anakin Solo is simply a modified ISD II as described, how do the main batteries stack up to the Venstar guns? ( I would hope the vastly larger main reactor, and bulkier mounts actually mean something)

Ender wrote:It is a relatively simple explanation - the 10 light minute range for the Venator is for their Heavy Turbolasers. These new "long range" turbolasers that the Anakin Solo mounts are no where near that power level - when they shot the Falcon with them it punched a hole straight through the turret ladder, rather then turning Han and Leia into stray atoms. These are PD or very light TLs at best - note that the descriptions in Inferno have him burning the forests rather then glassing the planetary surface.

Except back in Tempest they were specified as being extraordinarily high-power draw devicees (which is in and of itself pretty idiotic given the ROTS ICS, but hey..)

A few moments later the Anakin's long-range turbo-laser batteries unleashed a salvo, causing the lights to flicker and the ventilation fans to slow. In less critical parts of the ship, the effects would be even worse, plunging corridors into temporary darkness and forcing electronic systems to switch to battery power. The new turbolasers were cutting-edge technology, but they required so much power that they were unlikely to become standard armament anytime soon.

I doubt "light" TLs would do that. Best compromise I can come up with is that they turned down the yield to fire on the Falcon (tracking issue due to recoil, maybe.)

Range appears to be proportional to barrel length, so all this is is the technology for the HTLs being brought down to the little ones. The longer barrel would make them more bulky, so they would be slower to transverse and such, so there are your tradeoffs. These are only really good for precision light work, and that has how they have been portrayed.

That could be part of it, ,yes, but it still wouldn't explain the "exceptional" power draw.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:If you know how the beam propogates, and your targets are static and predictable, why would a TL beam not be able to hit stationary targets from further than a few light-seconds?

Maybe I should have been more specific. We're not talking stationary targets, we're talking moving targets (like the Falcon, as Ender mentions.).
I am more than well aware that the problems facing a mobile target do not matter for a stationary one (Since you already made a reference to Rebel Stand, where a modified TL battey fired on a a Vong Worldship in orbit around Coruscant from the edge of the system, though there was also TESB demonstrating similar capability. I think there might be others, ,but those are the two immediate examples.)

Hell, if you want to get pedantic, Curtis calced the range of TLs based on the dissipation of the beam as being longer than a star system, so hitting a stationary target wouldn't be an exceptionally difficult feat (and that pretty much shoots a hole in my theory behind the new TLs on top of it.)