X Wing Proton Torpedoes and you

[slicktyler]

So I got in a disscusion about X wing Proton Torpedoes and their yield on youtube. Anyhow the two people claim up and down that Proton Torpedoes have a 192 megaton yield. When I asked for a specific book or reference for that number they could not produce one but came to that number in a really random round about way. I pointed to the film evidence that you never see a x-wing proton torp do much damage.

Any how any thoughts?

Oh also there was another disscusion about how much money the Rebels had. I was always under the impression that the Rebels had very little. The idea that they where this small group with almost minimal funding and supplies fighting this galactic empire. Where as he thinks they are a well funded group able to aford any ship they want.

Well any clearificaton on these subjects would be apreciated.

[BLACKSUN2000]

You STUPID mother fucker You must get off on getting abused.

Sorry folks, long time lurker here, I've actually been visiting SDN since right after RSA was banned. It looks like this needs a backround story.

This Argument was started on I warn you the stupid burns

I seriously hope that came out right.

A few of us pointed out to this moron that proton torpedoes should've had a yield of at least 191.2 Megatons or higher. The ICS book clearly says that Jango's slave 1 missles were around 191.2 megatons. On page 52, it states "missile-launcher (8x10^17 joules per shot)" that = 191.2 megatons.

You would think that would be enough to get him to concede his point. Obviously he hasn't.

[Lord Revan]

I dunno about the proton torp yields (though unlike turbolasers, I don't seem to recall any torps being launched at objects not built to resist them (like starships)).

As for the funding for the rebels IIRC it wasn't that big at least pre-Yavin and it certainly wasn't "can buy and maintain any ship they want" pre-Endor, that said rebels did have quite a few mid-sized capships there's a major difference being able to afford mon-cal cruisers and/or outdated old republic designs in small numbers (and IIRC the Rebel Alliance never wielded anything approaching an Executor-class in size or power(New Republic is another story all together)).

Truth is probably somewhere between your points (at least during the post-Yavin era) as rebels did have caps ships (including ex-CIS ships they had "liberated" from the empire) so their budget wasn't exactly shoestring level but on the otherhand it wasn't anything close to what the empire had and there was limits how many mid-sized capships they could field (and losing 1 was a major deal not some slight inconvience it would for the empire (founding wise))

[BLACKSUN2000]

What the hell I already replied what happened to my posts?

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

On the front page of the main site, just after you click to enter, there's an option for science fiction resource pages, follow that to Science(under construction), and from there to Explosives.
Or, http://www.stardestroyer.net/Resources/ ... sives.html

Basically, melting things is a lousy way to make them go away, and in order to actually get a decent kaboom with a ray gun you have to make a pressure wave by heating the target to vapour and getting a powerful enough shockwave out of the vapour to do damage- which means dumping a hell of a lot of heat into it.

How much wattage do you think it would take to do a blast furnace's job in a hundredth of a second?

The other side of your question is that the megatonnage in question is megatons worth of energy. For many rasons most of them having to do with explosives variety and quality, a megaton of TNT was standardised as 4.184E15 joules- and wattage, power, is joules, energy, divided by time in seconds. In example, a hundred joules in a thousandth of a second=100,000 watts, which sounds impressive but really isn't.

There are petawatt- class lasers operating now; the NIF has one. It shoots at extremely small targets for exremely short periods of time- nanosecond pulses- and it's the size of a building.

Nuclear bombs, which are the megatonnage you're thinking of, are very good at making pressure waves because they're usually surrounded by atmosphere, they release a lot of energy in wavelengths that are atmosphere opaque and heat it drastically, causing it to expand and there you have a blast wave. In space, all predictions are that they won't work nearly as well.

Multiply the huge amount of power needed to get the vapor up to enough temperature to expand rapidly by the amount of material you need vapourised, and the numbers do get to be bogglingly big.

You need such a huge amount of raw energy to get a decent looking explosion that, well, I've found the source of that number; it's in the Episode II Cross-Sections book, for a comparable round- Slave One's missiles- and was written by an astrophysicist who happens to be a Star Wars fan.

Respectable damage, huge inefficiencies- massive input of energy required. Simple as that.


The Alliance and funding, not sure if there is a canonical answer, the subject's been debated round and round the mulberry bush, but think about the Tarkin Doctrine for a second. Rule by fear, or a government terrorising it's own people if you want to put it like that.

The world's history is full of ridiculously evil bastards who remained and who do remain in power with policies and human rights records like that, so I'm not going to state the obvious; but the Empire did give the citizens of the galaxy, who had mostly not previously been oppressed much, a large and increasing amount of things to rebel against.

I reckon there was a real groundswell against the Empire, but turning that into effective resistance was difficult. Spies and footsoldiers and private donations, the Alliance probably had, but the heavy metal to openly stand up to the Empire it had not.

[PainRack]

As for the funding for the rebels IIRC it wasn't that big at least pre-Yavin and it certainly wasn't "can buy and maintain any ship they want" pre-Endor, that said rebels did have quite a few mid-sized capships there's a major difference being able to afford mon-cal cruisers and/or outdated old republic designs in small numbers (and IIRC the Rebel Alliance never wielded anything approaching an Executor-class in size or power(New Republic is another story all together)).

Truth is probably somewhere between your points (at least during the post-Yavin era) as rebels did have caps ships (including ex-CIS ships they had "liberated" from the empire) so their budget wasn't exactly shoestring level but on the otherhand it wasn't anything close to what the empire had and there was limits how many mid-sized capships they could field (and losing 1 was a major deal not some slight inconvience it would for the empire (founding wise))

One should note that minus the Mon Cal cruisers, pirate bands could also come up with equivalent numbers of warships. Bria Tharen Red Hand Squadron wasn't that much better equipped than a routine pirate band. The RAS also notes the successful use of privateers in their campaign against the Empire.

They may very well be shoestring level and be capable of fielding warships.

As a counterpoint however, there's always the Death Star brieffing by Admiral Tagge, where the Rebels were supposedly well motivated, well trained and had a base to field their ships, although the briefing glorified pilots.

[slicktyler]

true but as far as the well trained I always figured that is because all the pilots were in the acadamy and that is where they got their training.

The ships I figure they either stole or salvaged and rebuilt. I mean even if the Rebels had a ton of money it's not like they could go around buying up stuff. It would attract to much attention. But yeah they defently gain more steam as the trilogy goes on. You can see that they have more ships in empire and even more in RotJ. Of course I always had the feeling they where still lacking money and gear in Empire as they where hiding out in the ass end of the galaxy and were only able to provide 2 fighters per ship as they escape.

As far as Saxton's numbers. I understand where he gets the numbers for the TL and void charges but I don't really see where he could get the numbers from the concusion missles for Fett's ship. We only see concusion missles once that I can think of when they are in RoTJ and the MF fires a couple at the Death Star 2's reactor.


thanks for your guys help so far any other thoughts?

[Vympel]

As far as Saxton's numbers. I understand where he gets the numbers for the TL and void charges but I don't really see where he could get the numbers from the concusion missles for Fett's ship. We only see concusion missles once that I can think of when they are in RoTJ and the MF fires a couple at the Death Star 2's reactor.

Thats not how canon works. If a source says the ships' weapons have 'x' firepower, then they have 'x' firepower. Neither Dr. Saxton nor any other author needs somewhere to 'get' those numbers from. However, there are sources that vaguely point to the capability of warheads in Star Wars, for example the ability of a squadron of Y-Wings to turn an entire island (quite a large one, with a mountain chain) to slag with their proton torpedo loads.

That's not to say the sources shouldn't match the movies (i.e. the Executor was always ~17-19km long going from the films, but the EU was only recently changed in the last couple of years to reflect that fact). That said:-

I pointed to the film evidence that you never see a x-wing proton torp do much damage.

And how would you define 'that much damage' against the armored surface of the Death Star in a vacuum?

You STUPID mother fucker You must get off on getting abused.

Sorry folks, long time lurker here, I've actually been visiting SDN since right after RSA was banned. It looks like this needs a backround story.

This Argument was started on I warn you the stupid burns

I seriously hope that came out right.

A few of us pointed out to this moron that proton torpedoes should've had a yield of at least 191.2 Megatons or higher. The ICS book clearly says that Jango's slave 1 missles were around 191.2 megatons. On page 52, it states "missile-launcher (8x10^17 joules per shot)" that = 191.2 megatons.

You would think that would be enough to get him to concede his point. Obviously he hasn't.

Cool video (though the presence of nBSG style missiles amongst oBSG style ships - nevermind ISDs - was ... puzzling), but why get embroiled in an argument on youtube? It's a cesspool of utter morons. Simply seeing one idiot saying that Star Destroyers had 'minimal shielding' and 'no armor' was enough to ascertain that.

[lord Martiya]

For the proton torpedo yield, it depends. As far I know there are at least three versions, the MG1-A employed during the Clone Wars, the MG7-A used against the first Death Star and a third version used against the unshielded Iron Fist, and the third version was said to be significantly more powerful than normal torpedoes.
For the numbers, the only facts I know are that the Empire badly outnumbered them, the Rebel fleet was originally composed by a few dozens ships between converted freighters, old CIS ships and Imperial deserters, and only after the Mon Calamari joined the Alliance with their converted cruisers they started to be a credible opposition to the Empire, but there's people who can tell this better than me.

[Batman]

192 MT is actually pretty low end given that starfighters CAN be a threat to at least small 'capital' ships in not-completely-ridiculous numbers.
Besides, as Vympel said if there is a canon source saying 192MT, unless higher canon DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS it, the figure stands.

[slicktyler]

Thats not how canon works. If a source says the ships' weapons have 'x' firepower, then they have 'x' firepower. Neither Dr. Saxton nor any other author needs somewhere to 'get' those numbers from. However, there are sources that vaguely point to the capability of warheads in Star Wars, for example the ability of a squadron of Y-Wings to turn an entire island (quite a large one, with a mountain chain) to slag with their proton torpedo loads.

That's not to say the sources shouldn't match the movies (i.e. the Executor was always ~17-19km long going from the films, but the EU was only recently changed in the last couple of years to reflect that fact). That said:-

I pointed to the film evidence that you never see a x-wing proton torp do much damage.

And how would you define 'that much damage' against the armored surface of the Death Star in a vacuum?

that is where Star Wars canon gets tricky. Because some novels say things that sort of go against canon like Han Solo coming from a planet that already has a space station larger then the Death Star and things like that. So there are somethings in the novels you have to take with a grain of salt. For example the Xwing novels you speak of came out in 1996 long before they decided to create the Holocron came into existance.

As for film evidence in ANH I belelive that you would be able to see some scorch marks at the very least on the death star. The other time you see them use it is in RoTJ where they hit the power regulator on the Death Stars reactor and it just kind of hits it and causes a chain reaction.

I did get trolled into this arguement with him on youtube. Him or his friend said that they had 190 megaton proton torps on the xwing I asked where his source was and well here we are.

Thanks for your help so far in figuring this out.

192 MT is actually pretty low end given that starfighters CAN be a threat to at least small 'capital' ships in not-completely-ridiculous numbers.
Besides, as Vympel said if there is a canon source saying 192MT, unless higher canon DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS it, the figure stands.

that's the thing I haven't been able to find a canon source that says 192 MT

[Batman]

that is where Star Wars canon gets tricky. Because some novels say things that sort of go against canon like Han Solo coming from a planet that already has a space station larger then the Death Star and things like that. So there are somethings in the novels you have to take with a grain of salt. For example the Xwing novels you speak of came out in 1996 long before they decided to create the Holocron came into existance.[/quote]
Err no it doesn't. There IS an explicit canon policy you know. Is there higher canon contradicting it? No? Then it IS canon.

As for film evidence in ANH I believe that you would be able to see some scorch marks at the very least on the death star.

On the armour of the Death Star the resilience of which you have completely failed to determine?
And on a slightly unrelated note, would there be any scorching in a vacuum to begin with? I honestly don't know.

The other time you see them use it is in RoTJ where they hit the power regulator on the Death Stars reactor and it just kind of hits it and causes a chain reaction.

Um no you don't. You see the MF's concussion missiles doing that.

I did get trolled into this arguement with him on youtube. Him or his friend said that they had 190 megaton proton torps on the xwing I asked where his source was and well here we are.

192 MT is actually pretty low end given that starfighters CAN be a threat to at least small 'capital' ships in not-completely-ridiculous numbers.
Besides, as Vympel said if there is a canon source saying 192MT, unless higher canon DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS it, the figure stands.

that's the thing I haven't been able to find a canon source that says 192 MT

We have a canon source saying seismic charges (which aren't all that noticeably larger) being 2 GT, and we have canon sources saying fighters are a credible threat to at least minor capital ships.

[slicktyler]

that is where Star Wars canon gets tricky. Because some novels say things that sort of go against canon like Han Solo coming from a planet that already has a space station larger then the Death Star and things like that. So there are somethings in the novels you have to take with a grain of salt. For example the Xwing novels you speak of came out in 1996 long before they decided to create the Holocron came into existance.

Err no it doesn't. There IS an explicit canon policy you know. Is there higher canon contradicting it? No? Then it IS canon.

As for film evidence in ANH I believe that you would be able to see some scorch marks at the very least on the death star.

On the armour of the Death Star the resilience of which you have completely failed to determine?
And on a slightly unrelated note, would there be any scorching in a vacuum to begin with? I honestly don't know.

The other time you see them use it is in RoTJ where they hit the power regulator on the Death Stars reactor and it just kind of hits it and causes a chain reaction.

Um no you don't. You see the MF's concussion missiles doing that.

I did get trolled into this arguement with him on youtube. Him or his friend said that they had 190 megaton proton torps on the xwing I asked where his source was and well here we are.

192 MT is actually pretty low end given that starfighters CAN be a threat to at least small 'capital' ships in not-completely-ridiculous numbers.
Besides, as Vympel said if there is a canon source saying 192MT, unless higher canon DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS it, the figure stands.

that's the thing I haven't been able to find a canon source that says 192 MT

We have a canon source saying seismic charges (which aren't all that noticeably larger) being 2 GT, and we have canon sources saying fighters are a credible threat to at least minor capital ships.

[/quote]


remember Wedge fires proton torpedoes at the north power regulator and the MF fires concusion missles at the other side.

How do you figure Seismic charges aren't noticieably larger? Do you mean the void charges Jango Fett uses? Because those things are much larger then what we see proton torpedoes do.

On the scorching on the DS from a proton torpedo. It doesn't have to be scourching but you would think that it would leave some kind of dent or mark on it.

about canon we have Leland Chee saying this
"Film+EU continuity. Anything not in the current version of the films is irrelevant to Film only continuity."

and this

""The only relevant official continuities are the current versions of the films alone, and the combined current version of the films along with whatever else we've got in the Holocron. You're never going to know what George's view of the universe beyond the films at any given time because it is constantly evolving."

and George Lucas saying this
"There are two worlds here," explained Lucas. "There’s my world, which is the movies, and there’s this other world that has been created, which I say is the parallel universe – the licensing world of the books, games and comic books. They don’t intrude on my world, which is a select period of time, [but] they do intrude in between the movies. I don’t get too involved in the parallel universe."

[slicktyler]

hmm won't let me edit this into my last post so here you go.



here it is you can see Wedge fire the Proton torpedoes at the power regulator on the north tower North Tower. My god that is just one beautiful battle. I can't think of a single battle in any sci fi movie that tops it.

[Vympel]

remember Wedge fires proton torpedoes at the north power regulator and the MF fires concusion missles at the other side.

How do you figure Seismic charges aren't noticieably larger? Do you mean the void charges Jango Fett uses? Because those things are much larger then what we see proton torpedoes do.

On the scorching on the DS from a proton torpedo. It doesn't have to be scourching but you would think that it would leave some kind of dent or mark on it.

about canon we have Leland Chee saying this
"Film+EU continuity. Anything not in the current version of the films is irrelevant to Film only continuity."

and this

""The only relevant official continuities are the current versions of the films alone, and the combined current version of the films along with whatever else we've got in the Holocron. You're never going to know what George's view of the universe beyond the films at any given time because it is constantly evolving."

and George Lucas saying this
"There are two worlds here," explained Lucas. "There’s my world, which is the movies, and there’s this other world that has been created, which I say is the parallel universe – the licensing world of the books, games and comic books. They don’t intrude on my world, which is a select period of time, [but] they do intrude in between the movies. I don’t get too involved in the parallel universe."

First, the canon policy followed by this forum is film+EU continuity. Not film only. Period.

Third, your subjective appeals to what you think the effects of proton torpedoes on armored (and unarmored, it really makes no difference) targets in vacuum are / should be are meaningless. There's not going to be some sort of gigantic explosion.

that's the thing I haven't been able to find a canon source that says 192 MT

Episode II ICS, for Slave I's torpedoes. This doesn't mean X-Wing's torpedoes are the same, however.

[Connor MacLeod]

There is no single stated yield for proton torpedoesThe AOTC ICS gives concussion missiles a yield of ~192 megatons. If we assume these missiles are similar to the Arakyd ones the Falcon is mentioend to carry in the EGW&T, they would roughly correspond to a torpedo (both these and the Arakyd missiles look to be roughly the same size). The only other source giving a yield was ~1 kiloton from the old Star Wars technical journal, and that was an omnidirectional blast (whereas the ICS mentions shaped charge weapons.)

Like real life munitions, SW munitions would vary on yield as well. Example: TPM makes it celar that the Naboo proton torpedoes sucked at penetrating the shields and hull of the Tradefed battleship. Shadows of the Empire mentions "fighter scale" proton torpedoes that wouldnt do damage to ISDs, wheras by contrast we have lots of examples form the Xwing novels and comics showing other kinds of protorps damaging starships. There may even be a "dial a yield" effect - real life nuclear warheads have that.

We also dont know what "role" the 192 MT CMs were for anyhow. 192 MT is generally overkill for fighters (GJ/TJ/kt range lasers remember - fighters shrug off a handful of shots at best on shields, not hundreds) but is arguably not meant for dedicated anti-capship work (the minelayer slave-1 had was off a capital ship IIRC and it was in the gigaton range) MT range would probably be for transports nad freighters or intermediate type craft (patrol ships or smuggler vessels) That said, I'm not too terribly worried about yield vs capital ships - given the way the military is in star wars its not inconceivable for MT or Gt range weapons (as opposed for Teratons) to be deployed in a battle or possibly to attack opponents, although I tend to personally lean towards GT range as likely (Mt range would have to be Anakin/Luke lucky to do serious damage). To say nothing about the differences in the way in which weapons might be employed.

[Lord Pounder]

I've always assumed that Proton Torpedoes came in different yields. I've heard the theory that in the X-Wing books Rogue Squadron got capital ship killers because they where an elite squadron with a commander balls enough to go after cap ships. It was good propaganda for the Rebels for Rogue Squadron to be killing capital ships and therefore they got the best equipment.

[Vympel]

Yeah, there's no question proton torpedoes have multiple yields. There's a reference to fighter "high-yield" proton torpedoes in either Dark Lord or Labyrinth of Evil (I forget which) - there'd be no need to put that descriptor there if there was only one type.

[Simon_Jester]

I reckon there was a real groundswell against the Empire, but turning that into effective resistance was difficult. Spies and footsoldiers and private donations, the Alliance probably had, but the heavy metal to openly stand up to the Empire it had not.

Yes. On the other hand, that kind of thing can add up to a truly impressive absolute budget when multiplies across a galaxy worth of rebel sympathizers. Remember Leia's remark about star systems slipping through the Empire's fingers. If that's not just rhetoric, she's talking about entire planets are going over to the Rebels. In that context you'd at least expect some of them to help to the limited extent of letting their industrial base be used to build hidden facilities around remote stars. That makes the creation of a heavy metal core for the Rebel fleet becomes a bit more practical. Obviously not on anything like the scale the Imperials have, since they still control the vast majority of the heavy industry, but enough to be relevant in specific battles where the Rebels put out maximum effort while the Empire is committing, say, 0.1% of its overall fleet strength.

that is where Star Wars canon gets tricky. Because some novels say things that sort of go against canon like Han Solo coming from a planet that already has a space station larger then the Death Star and things like that. So there are somethings in the novels you have to take with a grain of salt. For example the Xwing novels you speak of came out in 1996 long before they decided to create the Holocron came into existance.

Err no it doesn't. There IS an explicit canon policy you know. Is there higher canon contradicting it? No? Then it IS canon.

Yes, but the tricky bit is to figure out what "contradict" means in context. For instance, claiming that the Republic won the Clone Wars using a force of three million individual clones seems insane; it is hard to imagine that they could win a war against a galaxy-sized opponent with so llittle manpower, no matter how talented that manpower may be. So the very fact that the Republic canonically won the war in the movies is pretty strong evidence that they needed more than three million men to do it.

Does that mean that a claim in an EU novel that there were only three million clones is "contradicted by higher canon?" Are the logical implications of high-level canon on par with the canon itself?

On the armour of the Death Star the resilience of which you have completely failed to determine?
And on a slightly unrelated note, would there be any scorching in a vacuum to begin with? I honestly don't know.

From personal experience, I can tell you that some materials will scorch in a vacuum under certain conditions- electric arcing that vaporizes material off of one surface and deposits it on another, for instance. Whether that could happen in this context is a whole different question, of course.

We also dont know what "role" the 192 MT CMs were for anyhow. 192 MT is generally overkill for fighters (GJ/TJ/kt range lasers remember - fighters shrug off a handful of shots at best on shields, not hundreds)

Not necessarily; you may want to be able to set the missile with a proximity fuze and still have it blow up a fighter if it misses by some distance, the way real life air to air missiles can. That requires much higher yields.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Well, we also have super large proton torpedoes several times the size of starfighters aboard ships dedicated to orbital bombardment, like the Acclaimator II. So it's not too far fetched that there are many yields of proton torpedoes around.

[bz249]

We also dont know what "role" the 192 MT CMs were for anyhow. 192 MT is generally overkill for fighters (GJ/TJ/kt range lasers remember - fighters shrug off a handful of shots at best on shields, not hundreds) but is arguably not meant for dedicated anti-capship work (the minelayer slave-1 had was off a capital ship IIRC and it was in the gigaton range) MT range would probably be for transports nad freighters or intermediate type craft (patrol ships or smuggler vessels) That said, I'm not too terribly worried about yield vs capital ships - given the way the military is in star wars its not inconceivable for MT or Gt range weapons (as opposed for Teratons) to be deployed in a battle or possibly to attack opponents, although I tend to personally lean towards GT range as likely (Mt range would have to be Anakin/Luke lucky to do serious damage). To say nothing about the differences in the way in which weapons might be employed.

Capship killing proton torpedoes does not neccesarily need to be nearly as powerful as capship killing turbolaser bolts while they could have different destructive mechanism. And since the main threat to capital ships are energy weapons, their defenses are optimized to deal with those kind of attacks. Proton torpedo attacks are less frequent and there is also the point defense to kill incoming missiles so the passive defense against such weapons could be orders of magnitude weaker.

Having the right way to destroy a thing can save a lot of energy, just like RL anti tank munitions have very limited destructive power compared to a HE shell of the same size yet they are more capable of knocking out a tank than the supposedly more powerful HE shell.

[Connor MacLeod]

Not necessarily; you may want to be able to set the missile with a proximity fuze and still have it blow up a fighter if it misses by some distance, the way real life air to air missiles can. That requires much higher yields.

Except:

1.) We've rarely, if ever, seen proton torpedoes used as proximity kill weapons. They are as a rule "detonate on impact" weapons, particularily in the X-wing novels (though they are definitely overkill there.) There's also Slave-1 from AOTC - the missile clearly wasn't a proximity detonation - 192 MT at the range it was chasing Obi-Wans' fighter ought to have obliterated it (of course, I'm not sure it had multimegaton missiles there anyhow.)

2.) At the combat ranges we typically see in the movies and EU material (single/double digit KM, which is roughly visual range) any sort of proximity detonation is likely to be as hazardous to your comrades as it is to the enemy (say a few km) unless its very very close (say a few hundred meters), in which case 192 MT is still overkill.

Capship killing proton torpedoes does not neccesarily need to be nearly as powerful as capship killing turbolaser bolts while
they could have different destructive mechanism.

That was one idea, yes. Proton torpedoes and concussion misisles are stopped by "particle" shields - which argues that they behave more like physical impactors or "blast" wepaons - the specified damage mechanisms for concussion missiles and the seismic charges definitely suggest a non-thermal dmaage mechanism, and proton torpedoes are either a shaped-charge stream of proton particles or a plasma jet, either of which could behave lmore like a kinetic impact.

And since the main threat to capital ships are energy weapons, their defenses are optimized to deal with those kind of attacks. Proton torpedo attacks are less frequent and there is also the point defense to kill incoming missiles so the passive defense against such weapons could be orders of magnitude weaker.

Who says energy weapons are the main threat? We have enough implications of physical weapons used, the main limitation is that they require getting closer to do so - point defense being one such limitation. Limited ammo is another, and jamming yet another. But they carry other advantages.

Having the right way to destroy a thing can save a lot of energy, just like RL anti tank munitions have very limited destructive power compared to a HE shell of the same size yet they are more capable of knocking out a tank than the supposedly more powerful HE shell.

HEAT rounds do so with a shaped charge, while APFSDS rounds do so via high velocity and a high density, highly concentrated penetrator - neither of which is strictly "thermal", wheras a HE round is basically ominidrectional blast (or maybe athe frag warheads fighters use) - SW antiship munitions and beams are both focused weapons, so the analogy doesn't quite work.

My main point anyhow was just in differences in the way an attack might be applied or "over optimization" - it was pointing out that the qualitative abilities of warships could conceivably vary depending on who builds it and for whom it is built. Star Wars is a galactic civilization with relatively little large scale war. Both the Republic and Empire really had no "serious" threats to it that required a "full scale" mobilization mentality - the military was more of a political or economic tool than anything else (much like with the US military today). Why does a local military force neccesarily need multi-PT or TT weaponry on local defense ships or cruisers, per se? Who says that anyone needs such weapons as a rule? Other factors like materials availability, cost, or maintenance may dictate warship designs that are of "lesser" quality than say what a VEnator or ISD could put out (high end turbolasers or hypermatter weapons may be hard to build or maintain for all we know) Alternately, warship design parameters could be highly variable - firepower might be reduced to allow for greater defense, or engine power/acceleration traded for higher armor, or something like that (they can't hit as hard, but they are tougher to kill and could therefore survive in a prolonged battle.)

I can think of LOTs of examples (Imperial warlord ship designs, Separatist ship designs, others) that would support that idea.

[bz249]

HEAT rounds do so with a shaped charge, while APFSDS rounds do so via high velocity and a high density, highly concentrated penetrator - neither of which is strictly "thermal", wheras a HE round is basically ominidrectional blast (or maybe athe frag warheads fighters use) - SW antiship munitions and beams are both focused weapons, so the analogy doesn't quite work.

My main point anyhow was just in differences in the way an attack might be applied or "over optimization" - it was pointing out that the qualitative abilities of warships could conceivably vary depending on who builds it and for whom it is built. Star Wars is a galactic civilization with relatively little large scale war. Both the Republic and Empire really had no "serious" threats to it that required a "full scale" mobilization mentality - the military was more of a political or economic tool than anything else (much like with the US military today). Why does a local military force neccesarily need multi-PT or TT weaponry on local defense ships or cruisers, per se? Who says that anyone needs such weapons as a rule? Other factors like materials availability, cost, or maintenance may dictate warship designs that are of "lesser" quality than say what a VEnator or ISD could put out (high end turbolasers or hypermatter weapons may be hard to build or maintain for all we know) Alternately, warship design parameters could be highly variable - firepower might be reduced to allow for greater defense, or engine power/acceleration traded for higher armor, or something like that (they can't hit as hard, but they are tougher to kill and could therefore survive in a prolonged battle.)

I can think of LOTs of examples (Imperial warlord ship designs, Separatist ship designs, others) that would support that idea.

The analogy works in some respect: do the damage via energy (power) or momentum (force, stress). Particle weapons carry more momentum for the same amount of energy as ray weapons so can do more damage via stress (a much more energy efficient way then melting/vaporizing something)... but since we do not have a fundamental disagreement, I think it does not worth arguing over fine details.

[slicktyler]

so I am getting that the general consensus is that there is no canonical evidence of the x wings proton torpedoes strength.

[DrStrangelove]

so I am getting that the general consensus is that there is no canonical evidence of the x wings proton torpedoes strength.

On x-wings specifically nothing other than the old SW technical journal.