Ion Cannons

[Sarevok]

The yield of a heavy turbolaser is well known. But what about Ion cannons ? What do we know about them ?

[Spanky The Dolphin]

There's a website attached to this forum, you know...

[phongn]

And it doesn't say that much about ion cannons, either.

[Sea Skimmer]

And it doesn't say that much about ion cannons, either.

Because we don't know much. They target electronics and do in fact cause physical damage, ships have been broken up by there fire, the games are simply wrong. Other then that, well its all speculation pretty much.

[Darth Garden Gnome]

What we know about ion cannons can be summed up in a few sentences:

They disable electronics; they cause physical damage (ref: JAT); they are effected by shields, despite what the EU says (Mr. Brian Young's screen caps from the ion cannon's attack on the Avenger in TESB prove this); their colors vary from red to blue.

[Connor MacLeod]

The Radio Drama for TESB made it clear that ion cannons disrupt shields, and the TESB novel made it clear they inflict damage (aside from the fact you're basically dealing with a stream of relatavisticly-travelling charged particles.)

[Connor MacLeod]

And to establish an interesting comparison, planetary ion cannons are 1/4 the power of turbolasers (at least according to the EGW&T)

[The Silence and I]

The Radio Drama for TESB made it clear that ion cannons disrupt shields, and the TESB novel made it clear they inflict damage (aside from the fact you're basically dealing with a stream of relatavisticly-travelling charged particles.)

I'm going to have to nit-pick here: As seen in TESB ion cannon bolts most definately do not travel relatavisticaly--they only travel a few m/s faster than the transports they are covering, and those are shown to approach the ISD's at only a few hundred m/s or so (otherwise you would see little of the ISD's, the transports would pass them very quickly at anything near relevatistic velocities). Unfortunately I can add little else to their nature as a weapon

[Connor MacLeod]

I'm going to have to nit-pick here: As seen in TESB ion cannon bolts most definately do not travel relatavisticaly--they only travel a few m/s faster than the transports they are covering, and those are shown to approach the ISD's at only a few hundred m/s or so (otherwise you would see little of the ISD's, the transports would pass them very quickly at anything near relevatistic velocities). Unfortunately I can add little else to their nature as a weapon

They traveled at a minimum of escape velocity, else they would not have been able to reach orbit (and this *is* just a minimum)

They made it to orbit in only a few seconds, to hit a Star Destroyer thousands or tens of thousands of kilometers, despite the relative velocity to a set of transports whose velocity is not known. (more than a few seconds and the STar Destroyer would have easily been able to avoid the blasts.)

Technically, that qualifies as "relatavistic" - but even so, ground based ion cannons (which are known to have far shorter ranges than capital-equivalents) do not represent all vessels. And as a particle beam weapon, it is more than ca pable of having variable velocities (unless you can come up with proof that they cannot move at relatavistic speeds - we know the fighters themselves can, and ion engines also use relatavistic thrust streams to propel fighters - ref AOTC ICS.)

[The Silence and I]

Visuals say the bolts travelled a little faster than the transports, and the transports were at the time in visual range of the ISD's. Several seconds later they had not even passed the blocade, so unless the ISD's were moving away from planet at similar relavatistic speeds the transports could not have been and same for the bolts...simple as that.

The velocity of these bolts is unknown, but it is only a few hundred meters per second faster than the transport's current velocity. It is definitely traveling at low sublight speeds

-Brian Young, if you wont take my word for it
I will concede the bolts initially travelled very quickly, but they must then have slowed down. I see two simple reasons:
1) The planet's gravity slowed them down. By the time they hit the ISD they had slowed to low sublight speeds. This is the simpler of the two.
2) The bolt is a projectile encased in an energy field, and slowed down to home in on the ISD, possible for course correction.

Note* it is concievable both are true, the visuals suggest some kind of projectile in the nose of the bolt, and it may well be affected by gravity.

EDIT:
It has occured to me I have no idea what kind of gravity field would be needed to slow the bolt like that, I would have to find its final velocity and time to impact (which it seems will not coincide ). So I may well find it would require a vastly powerful gravity field, thus throwing that idea out the proverbial window.