Tantive v Devastator: why did it even bother?

[pellaeons_scion]

Was watching ANH today and was having an idle thought. There has been much discussion on TL’s there capabilities and stuff. Also a great deal has been talked about the shields of capital scale vessels. With this in mind I was curious to watch the battle between the TantiveVI and Devastator.

A couple of things occurred to me. If the ISD’s shields are that strong, and can refresh reasonably fast, why would Tantive even bothered firing at her? If an ISD’s shields can only be brought down by massive HTL assault, what is a LTL/MTL going to do? Waste of energy it seems. Even if the MTL’s could somehow keep placing shots exactly at one point, it still wouldn’t be very effective. Or, can they do a limited amount of damage to the surface of the vessel. However that theory doesn’t seem to hold as it has been discussed that until the energy threshold of the shields has been reached the blasts do nothing and get radiated away as waste heat. Maybe with each shot that doesn’t pass through the shields chips away at its total strength, hence making any attack not completely hopeless.

I just feel that the weaponry of a ship should at least be able to do something to another ship no matter how powerful it is. If it couldn’t then every time a smaller ship meets a bigger one, it should just surrender as it would be futile to even attempt to resist.

I guess the other thing was the targeting of SW energy weapons. With weapons that move supposedly at C and high powered targeting computers it would seem that almost shot would hit at least somewhere on a target. They may not hit precisely where they were fired, but they at least hit somewhere. Even with heavy jamming and Ecm flooding the battlezone, it would seem to me that hit rates of SW vessels would be very high, and that the minute a battle is commenced the target ships are under a continuous assault. No ranging shots would realistically be needed, neither would bracketing be required. Or do TL gunners have to calculate how much energy will be needed for a specific distance, and jamming screws up scanners enough so that it’s a bit of a guessing game to determine optimum power levels at what range to cause the most damage? Or is jamming that intense that most of the time they are firing at sensor ghosts, requiring manual corrections by human crews?

Thoughts, ideas, flames welcome

[Joe]

The same reason Capt. John Miller, Tom Hanks' character in Saving Private Ryan, fired at a tank with a handgun at the end of the movie after being mortally wounded. Might as well, you're screwed anyway.

[Darth Wong]

Was watching ANH today and was having an idle thought. There has been much discussion on TL’s there capabilities and stuff. Also a great deal has been talked about the shields of capital scale vessels. With this in mind I was curious to watch the battle between the TantiveVI and Devastator.

A couple of things occurred to me. If the ISD’s shields are that strong, and can refresh reasonably fast, why would Tantive even bothered firing at her? If an ISD’s shields can only be brought down by massive HTL assault, what is a LTL/MTL going to do? Waste of energy it seems. Even if the MTL’s could somehow keep placing shots exactly at one point, it still wouldn’t be very effective. Or, can they do a limited amount of damage to the surface of the vessel. However that theory doesn’t seem to hold as it has been discussed that until the energy threshold of the shields has been reached the blasts do nothing and get radiated away as waste heat. Maybe with each shot that doesn’t pass through the shields chips away at its total strength, hence making any attack not completely hopeless.

In Saving Private Ryan, why did Captain Miller shoot his sidearm at a tank? If you've got no chance and you have a weapon, even if it's probably useless, you're probably going to fire the thing.

I just feel that the weaponry of a ship should at least be able to do something to another ship no matter how powerful it is.

You've been playing too much C&C.

If it couldn’t then every time a smaller ship meets a bigger one, it should just surrender as it would be futile to even attempt to resist.

That's why it was RUNNING AWAY. Duh.

I guess the other thing was the targeting of SW energy weapons. With weapons that move supposedly at C and high powered targeting computers it would seem that almost shot would hit at least somewhere on a target. They may not hit precisely where they were fired, but they at least hit somewhere. Even with heavy jamming and Ecm flooding the battlezone, it would seem to me that hit rates of SW vessels would be very high, and that the minute a battle is commenced the target ships are under a continuous assault. No ranging shots would realistically be needed, neither would bracketing be required. Or do TL gunners have to calculate how much energy will be needed for a specific distance, and jamming screws up scanners enough so that it’s a bit of a guessing game to determine optimum power levels at what range to cause the most damage? Or is jamming that intense that most of the time they are firing at sensor ghosts, requiring manual corrections by human crews?

They never miss capships, but they miss fighters. Missing a fighter is not unreasonable if you're using large turrets. The large mass presents a substantial inertia and makes it difficult to accurately track any target which requires a high rotation rate for the turret. Also, the jamming is severe; pilots at Yavin had to use the naked eye to pick up TIE fighters because their scanners were basically blind in the interference, and they didn't even have full maneuverability because the scanners were producing distortion fields.

[Darth Wong]

The same reason Capt. John Miller, Tom Hanks' character in Saving Private Ryan, fired at a tank with a handgun at the end of the movie after being mortally wounded. Might as well, you're screwed anyway.

You beat me to it! AAAAARRRRRGHHHHH!!!!!

[Joe]

The same reason Capt. John Miller, Tom Hanks' character in Saving Private Ryan, fired at a tank with a handgun at the end of the movie after being mortally wounded. Might as well, you're screwed anyway.

You beat me to it! AAAAARRRRRGHHHHH!!!!!

Haha, LOL!

[pellaeons_scion]

In Saving Private Ryan, why did Captain Miller shoot his sidearm at a tank? If you've got no chance and you have a weapon, even if it's probably useless, you're probably going to fire the thing.

ahh its a desperation thing. Thats cool. I can go with that

so with capship/capship battle there is no missing, shots hit easily, and its more a battle of who's shields can hold the longest, or at least whose shield operators are skilled enough to anticipate where the heaviest attacks will hit.

[Stormbringer]

so with capship/capship battle there is no missing, shots hit easily, and its more a battle of who's shields can hold the longest, or at least whose shield operators are skilled enough to anticipate where the heaviest attacks will hit.

Most combat at closer ranges does come down to postioning your ship for best advantage and then pounding away. Misses would of course be exceptionally rare at close range and the battle decided by N-Squared and sheer staying power.

[pellaeons_scion]

So when you say best advantage, would that generally mean bring your best/heaviest guns to bear on a single shield facing and pouding away trying to bring it down to destroy the weapons on that facing?

erm, whats the N squared law?

[Master of Ossus]

A young man on the Battleship Bismark reported firing his anti-aircraft gun at British battleships during the final battle off the coast of France. When you're desperate, you'll do some things even if they appear to be hopeless. In any case, they prevented the ISD from launching its starfighters, or might have discouraged them from doing so. The fighters would have been more easily able to overtake the Tantive IV.

[Darth Wong]

The Devastator had a trickier problem in some ways, since they wanted to disable the Tantive IV rather than destroying it. That's why they were shooting around the periphery of the ship.

[pellaeons_scion]

got a link to that story MoO? Id like to read it.
I can see the usefulness of harrasing fire from tantive to try and keep fighters or assault vessels from launching.

[Stormbringer]

So when you say best advantage, would that generally mean bring your best/heaviest guns to bear on a single shield facing and pouding away trying to bring it down to destroy the weapons on that facing?

Best advantage would mean just that. Generally that'd mean positioning your ship so as to maximize damage while minimizing the return fire. A different task would/could dictate a different sort of engagement to be "best advantage".

It's not always going to be bring the most heavy guns to bear here. You could fighting a trio of dreadnaughts so best advantage would mean something different than a pounding match with a Mon Cal cruiser.

erm, whats the N squared law?

It's basically a shorthand way of saying that the first person to fire (assuming you can do appreciable damage) has something of and advantage as damage compounds itself.

[Darth Wong]

The N-squared law is basically the idea that a numerical advantage will have an exponential effect on the battle performance of a fleet, assuming all other factors are equal and the weapons are powerful enough and long-ranged enough that the whole fleet can concentrate its fire on one target.

Take 50 ships versus 25, and let's say it takes 10 hits to destroy a ship and each ship can fire once per unit time. In the first turn, the first fleet can destroy 4 ships, while the second can destroy 2 and damage a third. In the second turn, the first fleet (now down to 47 healthy ships) can destroy 3 ships and heavily damage a fourth, while the second fleet (now down to 21) can finish off the wounded ship, destroy one more, and damage one more. In the third round, the first fleet (now down to 45 healthy ships) can destroy 3 more ships and finish off the damaged one from round two, while the second fleet (now down to 17) can finish off the wounded ship and kill one more.

At this time (and yes, I know, I'm oversimplifying, but this is a thought experiment), the first fleet has lost 6 ships out of 50, while the second fleet has lost 11 ships out of 25. In other words, a 25-ship fleet will not kill half of a 50-ship fleet before succumbing; it will do much worse than that. And that's the N-squared law.

You can experiment with this in a game like C&C by collecting a group of tanks and attacking a smaller group with focused fire on one target after another. You will find that the smaller group does not come anywhere close to taking out one of your tanks for every one of theirs that dies.

[Master of Ossus]

got a link to that story MoO? Id like to read it.
I can see the usefulness of harrasing fire from tantive to try and keep fighters or assault vessels from launching.

I actually got it from a book that Doctor Ballard wrote about the Bismark after he discovered the ship, and I'm not sure that it's anywhere on the internet. You're welcome to look for the book, which should be pretty easy to spot in the library, though.

[Kuja]

got a link to that story MoO? Id like to read it.
I can see the usefulness of harrasing fire from tantive to try and keep fighters or assault vessels from launching.

I actually got it from a book that Doctor Ballard wrote about the Bismark after he discovered the ship, and I'm not sure that it's anywhere on the internet. You're welcome to look for the book, which should be pretty easy to spot in the library, though.

I read it. The name of the book is BISMARK (pretty original title there huh?)

[pellaeons_scion]

Sounds like a good book. Ill have to get it.

As for the CnC experiment, I think Ill give it a shot. Gives me a good excuse to play it again anyway

so SW warfare at its simplest level is in numbers, without taking into account tactics etc. He with the greatest amount of ships wins. Nice and simple

[Kuja]

so SW warfare at its simplest level is in numbers, without taking into account tactics etc. He with the greatest amount of ships wins. Nice and simple

Not quite. Having a larger number of ships is a great boost, but having a superior position helps as well.

For example, a Dreadnought in the aft arc of a VicStar has the ability to pound away at the VSDs shields until they fall, then can hammer away at the engines. The Dreadnaught would win, even though its a smaller ship and the VSD carries more fighters (I think).

[Cal Wright]

The N-squared law is basically the idea that a numerical advantage will have an exponential effect on the battle performance of a fleet, assuming all other factors are equal and the weapons are powerful enough and long-ranged enough that the whole fleet can concentrate its fire on one target.

Take 50 ships versus 25, and let's say it takes 10 hits to destroy a ship and each ship can fire once per unit time. In the first turn, the first fleet can destroy 4 ships, while the second can destroy 2 and damage a third. In the second turn, the first fleet (now down to 47 healthy ships) can destroy 3 ships and heavily damage a fourth, while the second fleet (now down to 21) can finish off the wounded ship, destroy one more, and damage one more. In the third round, the first fleet (now down to 45 healthy ships) can destroy 3 more ships and finish off the damaged one from round two, while the second fleet (now down to 17) can finish off the wounded ship and kill one more.

At this time (and yes, I know, I'm oversimplifying, but this is a thought experiment), the first fleet has lost 6 ships out of 50, while the second fleet has lost 11 ships out of 25. In other words, a 25-ship fleet will not kill half of a 50-ship fleet before succumbing; it will do much worse than that. And that's the N-squared law.

You can experiment with this in a game like C&C by collecting a group of tanks and attacking a smaller group with focused fire on one target after another. You will find that the smaller group does not come anywhere close to taking out one of your tanks for every one of theirs that dies.

That's the kind of strategy used in Galactic Battlegrounds. A LOT. Case in point, in one game my cousin rampaged over some workers I had with a group of 8 AT-ATs. Once I found out I sent in some 30 AT-ATs. When they arrived I made them concentrate fire on ONE target. So while his were hitting individual walkers, I was pounding down on his easily. One salvo, an done goes down. I needed only 8 salvos, while he was going to need well over 30 with the tactic he was using. Funny using some over exagerated strategy game to make a point. LoL!!!

[weemadando]

In Saving Private Ryan, why did Captain Miller shoot his sidearm at a tank? If you've got no chance and you have a weapon, even if it's probably useless, you're probably going to fire the thing.

ahh its a desperation thing. Thats cool. I can go with that

so with capship/capship battle there is no missing, shots hit easily, and its more a battle of who's shields can hold the longest, or at least whose shield operators are skilled enough to anticipate where the heaviest attacks will hit.

One that you're all overlooking - the crew of the Tantive KNEW that the Devastator NEEDED to CAPTURE them. They knew that they could fire back with impunity in the hope of a golden BB event.

[Admiral Johnason]

It was supposed to be an act of diffiance in my opinion. Personally, I would have waited for them to tractor me in, then open up with all that I had left. I just hope my boys could overload that anti energy claw in the by with some technolobabble and then I could take them down with me. I need to stop listening to that one speech in Independence Day. That movie kicks ass!

[pellaeons_scion]

WTF are you going on about? Technobabble bullshit has no place in this discussion. Take them down with you? What drugs are you on. Corvette vs ISD...no contest. AFAIK there isnt a way to 'overload' a tractor beam in SW...sounds like a trekkie idea.

Bah, try thinking next time.

[Kuja]

It was supposed to be an act of diffiance in my opinion. Personally, I would have waited for them to tractor me in, then open up with all that I had left.

They'd sweep you with an Ion cannon long before puylling you into the bay.

I just hope my boys could overload that anti energy claw in the by with some technolobabble and then I could take them down with me. I need to stop listening to that one speech in Independence Day. That movie kicks ass!

-_-'

[Lord Pounder]

So when you say best advantage, would that generally mean bring your best/heaviest guns to bear on a single shield facing and pouding away trying to bring it down to destroy the weapons on that facing?

Best advantage would mean just that. Generally that'd mean positioning your ship so as to maximize damage while minimizing the return fire. A different task would/could dictate a different sort of engagement to be "best advantage".

It's not always going to be bring the most heavy guns to bear here. You could fighting a trio of dreadnaughts so best advantage would mean something different than a pounding match with a Mon Cal cruiser.

For an example of this in action read the last 2 Wraith Squadron books. the Solo -vs- Zsinji(sp) battles are full of references to positioning of the fleets, ect.

[Knife]

In a nutshell, I think it has been said. When in position, it comes down to raw firepower. But to get into position is where tactics comes into play.

Also, it is my opinion that the Tantive was firing on the Devistator for a couple reasons.

One- Desperation as had been mentioned already.

Two- We know that shield hits from weapons fire can distrupt visual and in some cases sensors (ref. Rouge Squadron series) so to fire on the Stardestroyer and on weapons stations at that, would disrupt some of the Imp's ability to fire at them or atleast acurately.

Three- Boxing in the fighters and/or bombers as already mentioned.

[Durandal]

It was supposed to be an act of diffiance in my opinion. Personally, I would have waited for them to tractor me in, then open up with all that I had left. I just hope my boys could overload that anti energy claw in the by with some technolobabble and then I could take them down with me. I need to stop listening to that one speech in Independence Day. That movie kicks ass!

Yeah, and kill Princess Leia while she was trying to contact Obi-Wan Kenobi. Fucking brilliant.