Fighters vs Shielded Capital Ships

[Ted C]

Has anyone here followed Brian's video regarding starfighters attacking capital ships in Star Wars?

http://www.scifights.net/starwarsshields3.mov

He makes a pretty good case, but I don't feel like its as open and shut as he does. There are definitely arguments for fighters being able to "get under the shields" of capships to do damage, but there are also arguments against it, like why couldn't the Naboo fighters damage the TradeFed control ship? Why haven't specialized missiles been designed to exploit such a weakness? etc.

[Captain Seafort]

Has anyone here followed Brian's video regarding starfighters attacking capital ships in Star Wars?

Yep

Frankly, I think he's handwaving away the RotJ quote as overridden by the movie, despite the fact that there's no direct contradiction.

[Brian Young]

It is overridden by the movie. But even if not, what about all the other examples? Executor is but one of nearly 50 examples. The argument does not hinge on whether Executor was overwhelmed by the relatively diminutive Rebel fleet or not. Can you "hand wave away" all those other examples, including the explanations given by Anakin and Dennis Muren? That is like saying "I have a problem with example number 17, therefore none of the other 45 examples are valid either."

[Captain Seafort]

It is overridden by the movie.

Where? Where does the movie state that "our fighters can penetrate their shields" or "knocking out their shields is not necessary for our fighters to stand a chance"?

Executor is but one of nearly 50 examples. The argument does not hinge on whether Executor was overwhelmed by the relatively diminutive Rebel fleet or not.

I'm not talking about Executor but the fact that Ackbar was explicit that knocking out the shields was a prerequisite. Your theory is an interesting one insomuch as the visuals support it in the absence of evidence to the contrary, but since such evidence does exist we have to go back to the drawing board to explain what's actually happening.

including the explanations given by Anakin and Dennis Muren

The explanation given included a reason for their permeability - to improve mobility. This does not apply to starships and I've never disputed the permeability of atmospheric shields.

[lPeregrine]

like why couldn't the Naboo fighters damage the TradeFed control ship?

I don't think this one really says very much either way, those fighters were a ceremonial police force thrown at the enemy in a desperation attack, so you could easily argue that they had limited weapons (no shield-piercing missiles) and/or didn't have the training to fly close enough to the hull to get inside the shield without crashing (so strafing runs from outside the shield only). Compare that to the rebels at Endor, veteran military pilots flying the best fighters the rebellion could provide.

Why haven't specialized missiles been designed to exploit such a weakness? etc.

IMO that's one of the best ways to justify the existence of fighters: bombers armed with specialized anti-capital missiles are capable of making precision shield-piercing attacks on critical systems (sensor arrays, gun turrets, etc) or even overwhelming a capital ship and destroying it entirely with sufficient numbers. You just have to assume that it doesn't scale up efficiently to capital ship levels, so capital ships prefer to just smash the shields out of the way with raw turbolaser firepower.

[Abacus]

Falcon part: I think that they are forgetting that Star Destroyers had more than a single shield. There are numerous examples in both the movies and the EU books of starships and Imperial cruisers: Thrawn used a tractor beam to place a wounded Republic ship on his SD's flank to cover a shield that failed in that sector, using it to protect his ship; the Executor lost its "bridge deflector shields" during the Battle of Endor, but no reference is made to the rest of the ship, though Admiral Piett takes it for granted that Rebel fighters might try to hit the bridge as a result of this with his famous last words "Increase forward fire power, I don't want anything to get through!"

As such I find it far more likely that the bridge deflector shield of Captain Needa's SD was simply not powered up in time before the Falcon managed to flip around and attach itself to the hull.

Second, I find that a lot of TCW footage seems to make it clear that a lot of Clone Wars ships didn't make much use of shields -- or at least relied more upon sheer armor.

Third, his explanation about Anakin and Obi-wan in Episode III with the Trade Fed ship and the shields being up -- that seems like a lot of wishful thinking in assuming what Obi-wan means by saying "You notice their shields are still up?"

Fourth, it is far more likely that "magnetic field" and "shields" are simply the same thing and that for large ships and installations there are multiple layers of shielding to protect the hangar bays.

Fifth, the Luke escaping the Death Star example was retarded because of the fact that the ship's power supply was destroyed already and therefore no one would be necessary to "lower the shields".

Sixth, Cad Bane's escape was made easy for the fact that they weren't thinking about killing him outright, but rather capturing him. When a fighter is being stolen, your first thought is to stop it and recapture the vehicle -- not destroy it. So that is, again, wishful thinking and construed musings.



...I could continue but its getting tiring.

[Abacus]

Back to the Falcon. It bugged me, so I actually went back to watch the footage and sequence the event as it happened.

1:07:42 -- Crewman flips a switch.
1:07:45 -- Falcon flies over the bridge section, Captain Needa and his First Officer duck.
1:07:47 -- Needa says "Track them, they may come around for another pass" at the same time which the Falcon "disappears"
1:07:51 -- Deck officer reports to Needa that the ship "no longer appears on our scopes."

It took 9 seconds for Han to fly the Falcon over the Star Destroyer, turn it on a dime, and plant it on the back section of the hull. Unless SD shield generators work instantaneously, I think its safe to assume that Han got there first.

[Connor MacLeod]

There are definitely arguments for fighters being able to "get under the shields" of capships to do damage, but there are also arguments against it, like why couldn't the Naboo fighters damage the TradeFed control ship?

Depends on how you figure the shields work. Are they a single all-encompassing bubble, are they 'segments' that overlap to form a shield 'wall/arc/whateever', do they project localized barriers to block attacks in a specific direction, etc.

Why haven't specialized missiles been designed to exploit such a weakness? etc.

Who says they haven't? If you go by the novels and related fluff, there's plenty of examples of munitions that specifically are designed to target shields and/or make warheads more effective against them, or tactics designed to exploit that (coordinated simultaneous strikes on a single point.) 'exploiting' a weakness does not neccesarily mean its an either/or thing, it can be a matter of degree.

The problem with discussing or debating something like this is that a.) it depends entirely on the premise and assumptions you start with: how shields work, how weapons work, things like that and b.) what sort of evidence you're going to accept or toss out (since not everyone interprets evidence the same way, or accepts the same things as evidence.) If you can't reach some kind of agreement about those two points, discussions will break down entirely over whose point of view is more 'right.'

[Ahriman238]

The Rogue Squadron books were pretty clear on how it worked, and that's more or less how I imagined it for all SW material.

To conserve power and maximize strength, shields are normally projected just a few millimeters away from the hull, but at need an X-wing can make a shield bubble a meter away. Shields are normally divided into 6 areas: fore, rear, port, starboard, dorsal and ventral. Each area can be knocked down individually, and the ship is vulnerable on that side, but officers are trained to roll the ship to protect unshielded areas. Fighters can't fly inside shields, but are better able to maneuver around a ship and attack unshielded areas the ship's captain is facing away from capital ships. Also, mass torpedo attacks from fighters can cripple a shield area.

[Andras]

We also have the issue that ray shields don't stop protorps which will act against particle shields. They may be much weaker then ray shields meaning fighter level projectiles would be relatively more effective then their energy weapons.

It appears to me that while ray shields are projected into space (leading to the various fireballs and flak burst effects) the particle shields are hull hugging. Once a fighter can get close enough to the hull of a ship they can use energy weapons against point targets ignoring the energy shields (Luke's run on the 1st Deathstar)

If you go to the books, one of the early Lando Calrissian novels (Flamewind?) had the shields of the MF running just under the surface of the hull and it diverted some of the power absorbed back into the ship's systems.

If the energy shields projected into space to disrupt the energy of the bolt so that it bursts away from the hull, as shields are worn away the bolts start to hit the hull and do damage. IIRC, In TPM when the Royal Cruiser was running the blockade, they were taking damage to the hull before the shield's failed and Artoo had to fix them. Once the shields are down the bolts can skim so close to the hull they knock off the droids but don't burst at all.

[nightmare]

It is overridden by the movie.

No explicit contradiction, so it's not. Plus Ackbar states that the shields have to be knocked down, which is explicit evidence against semi-permeable shields.

But even if not, what about all the other examples? Executor is but one of nearly 50 examples. The argument does not hinge on whether Executor was overwhelmed by the relatively diminutive Rebel fleet or not. Can you "hand wave away" all those other examples, including the explanations given by Anakin and Dennis Muren? That is like saying "I have a problem with example number 17, therefore none of the other 45 examples are valid either."

First of all, it's not just the Executor. The number of examples from lower canon is rather irrelevant whether 3 or 3000. It's not the first time we've seen something fundamentally wrong repeated many times by lower canon. The most famous example is probably the 8-km Executor, but that's far from the only one. TIE fighter shields, ISD shield dome Achilles heels comes to mind.

Secondly, you've cherry picked your evidence. Maybe you have 45 something examples from TCW; how many examples are there of shields in TCW NOT being permeable? At the very most you're proving that some shields in the Clone Wars era are permeable.

ANH: Death Star 1 has a non-permeable hangar shield that you have to open up in order to land. The same ship also has 'defences' which aren't tight enough so a one-man fighter can slip through it. Obviously it has shields of both types. It also specifically has a port ray shield which protects against energy attacks but not physical ones. That's at least three types and only one applies to your argument.

TESB: Ships take hits from asteroids directly on the armor without noticeable damage or visible shields while one asteroid hits the conning tower on an ISD and damages it. Shields weren't visibly protecting the ship in either case, so it only proves that it didn't have any shields on that would protect against physical damage.

ROTJ: An ISD hit by a Y-Wing which vapourized. The DS2 shield projected from the Sanctuary Moon was also completely impregnable to ships of any kind; no attack is performed until the generator complex was sabotaged and the shuttle the commandos came in on had to have the shields lowered before they could land.

TPM: Trade Federation Droid Control Battleship's shields are utterly impregnable to the N-1 Naboo fighters although the fireballs around it measure up to 200 m in diameter (whether from the fighters or from the TF interception quad lasers). Vulture droid fighters fly out of the open hangar and instantly after Anakin fumbles into the ship. No evidence of any active shield there whether semi-permeable or not.

Obviously the Gungan shields are semi-permeable, but that's hardly galactic standard equipment. It only proves that the technology exists.

AOTC: Droideka shields were initially thought to be semi-permeable, that the droids literally stuck their guns out of their shields to fire. Secondary canon later made these into explicitly NON-permeable shields, which directly contradicts TCW (don't remember the source tho). Secondary canon later contradicted itself and said there's a weak spot on top of the shields which Jedi can penetrate with a lightsabre. However, that's not evidence for the shields being semi-permeable, it only proves that a weak spot on a shield is more easily penetrated by a sufficiently powerful weapon.

ROTS: The Invisible Hand's hangar is closed by a shield which is NOT semi-permeable.
In other canon, the Buzz droids have 'shield penetration technology'. That's probably a fumble in canon assuming that Obi-Wans Delta-7 shields had to be penetrated before they could land, whereas we know since TESB that you can land on a ship that hasn't extended shields. In either case, it's a direct contradiction to 'semi-permeable shields'.

Summary of evidence for semi-permeable shields: Two, of which one is a single system out of several on a unique ship and the other belongs to a unique culture. Evidence against? Plenty and overriding secondary canon, not to mention that the evidence you brought up doesn't establish how common semi-permeable shields are even in the CW era.

Yep, I'm posting several months after the fact. I'm a busy guy with a family. Still, I don't like leaving things hanging if I can help it. Finally, I'd like to thank Brian Young for actually bringing a new take on old news, blowing some life into the by Internet standards ancient VS debate.