StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Is there any data on how much energy can the shields on starfighters take, we know that in general starfighters cannot survive a direct hit from another starfighter.


As starfighter cannons range from 6E11 to 1E13 (from AOTC:ICS), there's some values there, but is there any official values for fighter shield strenght?

As far as I can recall, there was an instance in Wraith Squadron, during the book's climactic battle, of an X-Wing being completely vaporized by a blast from one of the Star Destroyer Implacable's turbolaser batteries.

When the Kenner toys were released the datafacts that came with the ARC-170 gave it a shield strength of 5*10^16 watts. That's about all we know in terms of hard facts. Estimates, small fighter shields probably have a dissipation rate in the 10^14, 10^15 watt range, but with a much much smaller absorption capacity.

Maxentius wrote:As far as I can recall, there was an instance in Wraith Squadron, during the book's climactic battle, of an X-Wing being completely vaporized by a blast from one of the Star Destroyer Implacable's turbolaser batteries.

If I recall correctly, Grinder's shields weren't on at the time, as he had had to turn them off when he was flying around inside the power cells of the Implacable, but I'm by no means certain.

Maxentius wrote:As far as I can recall, there was an instance in Wraith Squadron, during the book's climactic battle, of an X-Wing being completely vaporized by a blast from one of the Star Destroyer Implacable's turbolaser batteries.

I thought that book (well one of the Rogue Squadron books) said that starfighters can be shredded by turbolasers and the turbolaser blast doesn't slow down or anything and keeps going on as if it never hit the fighter.

The energy of a capital grade TL means that shields or no shields that fighter should be gone.

From the X-Wing books(Aside from all the "Shield Globes") idiocy matches the plays and the movies. At best an X-wing can take two solid hits before it loses shields and normally the second solid hit can cause some bleed through damage. Running double front forward it seems that X-Wings can take half a dozen.

The books are inconsistent on hits(Most describing combat scenes that's to be expected) but the general description is that you can take a hit, then take a hit twenty or so seconds later and be fine, but take two hits in quick success and your shields are down and dead at least a full minute or more.

At some point, the small mass of the ship has to present a rather serious problem when we're talking about withstanding direct hits from energy weapons. Let's say we're talking about a completely massless weapon like a laser: a 1 megaton blast would have momentum of 14E6 kg*m/s. If the spacecraft has a mass of, say, 35 metric tons, like certain modern military planes, then we're talking about 14E6 kg*m/s of momentum being applied to an object massing 35000 kg. In other words, it would be abruptly accelerated to 400 m/s in the direction of the beam, which is a pretty damned good kick in the ass.

Those high wattage figures must be for very short-duration bursts.

400g over 1/15 second, the most common stated time for turbolaser discharges in "Turbolaser Commentaries," should be easy enough to withstand given the acceleration ability, and inferred g force compensation, seen in the movies. Still a hell of a kick. If the bolt has mass, as seems reasonable from the various references to "blaster gas" and "Tibanna," then all bets are off. If you set the lower limit of antifighter LTLs around 5MT for something like a Lancer, a fighter's only advantages are numbers and maneuverability.

My guess is every X-wing video game ever made, or ever to be made, is Mary-Sue wankism for the sake of gameplay.

Count Chocula wrote:400g over 1/15 second, the most common stated time for turbolaser discharges in "Turbolaser Commentaries," should be easy enough to withstand given the acceleration ability, and inferred g force compensation, seen in the movies. Still a hell of a kick. If the bolt has mass, as seems reasonable from the various references to "blaster gas" and "Tibanna," then all bets are off. If you set the lower limit of antifighter LTLs around 5MT for something like a Lancer, a fighter's only advantages are numbers and maneuverability.

My guess is every X-wing video game ever made, or ever to be made, is Mary-Sue wankism for the sake of gameplay.

It isn't 400g if you are accelerated by 400m/s over 1/15 of a second, its a bit over 600g, and theres a significant difference between being accelerated by your own engines and being accelerated by an external force. The ships are designed to handle the thrust the engines produce by having them connected to the strongest bits of the structure, wheras if those same forces are applied elsewhere there would be disasterous consequences.