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Can I safely assume that the color of a blaster bolt has no or little effect on the damage done by the bolt? Could you maybe modify a blaster so that the frequency light emitted by it is shifted into the invisible range (UV or IR)?
This could be useful in sniping, because the bolt gives away your position quite readily.

GySgt. Hartman wrote:Can I safely assume that the color of a blaster bolt has no or little effect on the damage done by the bolt? Could you maybe modify a blaster so that the frequency light emitted by it is shifted into the invisible range (UV or IR)?
This could be useful in sniping, because the bolt gives away your position quite readily.

*tries to think of instance of blaster bolts being anything but red*

Lazy Raptor wrote:

GySgt. Hartman wrote:Can I safely assume that the color of a blaster bolt has no or little effect on the damage done by the bolt? Could you maybe modify a blaster so that the frequency light emitted by it is shifted into the invisible range (UV or IR)?
This could be useful in sniping, because the bolt gives away your position quite readily.

*tries to think of instance of blaster bolts being anything but red*

** reminds Raptor of the green bolts of the weapons used by the Naboo security volunteers

***edit: and almost forgot about the blue-white bolts fired from clonetrooper rifles

Curse my faulty memory of course!

Have no idea what causes the variation (power source, blaster gas?), although I doubt you could make a "clear" bolt.

GySgt. Hartman wrote:Can I safely assume that the color of a blaster bolt has no or little effect on the damage done by the bolt? Could you maybe modify a blaster so that the frequency light emitted by it is shifted into the invisible range (UV or IR)?
This could be useful in sniping, because the bolt gives away your position quite readily.

Blaster bolts cannot be invisble unless fired by an extremely specialised weapon ie) a xerrol nightstinger. This weapon need a very rare form of tabanna gas tha6 only olys half-a dozon shots per canister. Making it inferior in every way apart from the invisibillity factor.

Thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for.

GySgt. Hartman wrote:Can I safely assume that the color of a blaster bolt has no or little effect on the damage done by the bolt? Could you maybe modify a blaster so that the frequency light emitted by it is shifted into the invisible range (UV or IR)?
This could be useful in sniping, because the bolt gives away your position quite readily.

In a recent Star Wars RTS (I forgot the name right now...), the different blaster bolt colors were highly effective against different things; Red against Troops, Green against Structures, and Blue against droids. I guess Lucasarts and ILM have been talking quite a bit...

A number of canon incidents hint at the visible component having little to no effect on the damaging element (regardless of whether its massless or massive.) - aside from the numerous "damage before contact" incidents, there is the fact the visible portion passed harmlessly through an A-wing in ROTJ, and that in ROTJ we see a visible bolt "emerge" from Han's blaster after the rcoil starts lifting the barrel in TESB (when Han fires on Vader at Cloud City.)

Officially and in second-tier canon, its been treated in various ways - a "side effect" of the decay of the massless particles into visible light (AOTC ICS), a tracer (Shadows of the Empire), and as a "harmless by product" (EGW&T.) which is consistent with the aforementioned observed behaivour.

Xenophobe3691 wrote: In a recent Star Wars RTS (I forgot the name right now...),

RTS? I know there is a thread on abbreviations somewhere out there, but I haven't been able to find it.

the different blaster bolt colors were highly effective against different things; Red against Troops, Green against Structures, and Blue against droids.

Why would the Naboo volunteers use blasters with green bolts against troops then? If they want to inflict less damage, they could just use a less poerful blaster. Plus, I don't understand why there would be a difference between a metallic structure and a metallic android.

GySgt. Hartman wrote:RTS? I know there is a thread on abbreviations somewhere out there, but I haven't been able to find it.

Real time strategy. Game type.

GySgt. Hartman wrote:

the different blaster bolt colors were highly effective against different things; Red against Troops, Green against Structures, and Blue against droids.

Why would the Naboo volunteers use blasters with green bolts against troops then? If they want to inflict less damage, they could just use a less poerful blaster. Plus, I don't understand why there would be a difference between a metallic structure and a metallic android.

Those are game mechanics, which are ignored because they're apocryphal.

In reality, beam colour has no correlation with damage output.

In a recent Star Wars RTS (I forgot the name right now...), the different blaster bolt colors were highly effective against different things; Red against Troops, Green against Structures, and Blue against droids. I guess Lucasarts and ILM have been talking quite a bit...

That was probobly Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds.

the beam color is simply dependent upon the color of the crystal, iirc. maybe they simply chose the color of the crystal depending on what precise use the blaster type was for.

That's for lightsabres.

Then there's the only canonical "stun blast" we've seen, the blue Stormtrooper shot used on Leia in ANH.

Then there's the 'beam type' super lasers used by LAATs and those tanks in AOTC and the Death Star shots...

The other ship weapons seem to be all red, except for those used by the Empire (green) and the Geonosian fighters (purple/pink) in AOTC.

And finally...

Maybe this will offend some (dredging up the whole "nature of turbo lasers" debate can of worms) but why can't we postulate that the whole "damage before the physical bolt hits/recoil before the bolt emerges" is just SFX glitches?

They are the kind of thing you aren't going to notice without frame by frame analysis anyway, and most movies have these sorts of things.

For example in Pulp Fiction we have bullet holes appearing before bullets are actually fired, etc. That's because in movies they use squibs and visual effects to simulate bullet hits and it's almost never perfect, just "good enough" so that folks in the theater can accept it.

Or is this theory somehow "necessary" to vs. debates? Anyway, sorry to get off topic, but that's been bugging me lately...

Xenophobe3691 wrote:

GySgt. Hartman wrote:Can I safely assume that the color of a blaster bolt has no or little effect on the damage done by the bolt? Could you maybe modify a blaster so that the frequency light emitted by it is shifted into the invisible range (UV or IR)?
This could be useful in sniping, because the bolt gives away your position quite readily.

In a recent Star Wars RTS (I forgot the name right now...), the different blaster bolt colors were highly effective against different things; Red against Troops, Green against Structures, and Blue against droids. I guess Lucasarts and ILM have been talking quite a bit...

I think thats more due to the game engine than anything else. Rather than have "Rebel Turbolaser Bolt Sprite", "Imperial Turbolaser Bolt Sprite" etc, they just made "Turbolaser Bolt Sprite", and used it for all factions weapons blasts of that type. Hence, why all factions weapons shots look the same for that type. With the actual colour, its just to make it easier to distinguish.

GySgt. Hartman wrote:Could you maybe modify a blaster so that the frequency light emitted by it is shifted into the invisible range (UV or IR)?
This could be useful in sniping, because the bolt gives away your position quite readily.

Xerol Nightstinger. The blaster equivalent of a sniper rifle, there's no visible compenent. I'm not sure if it simply has none or it's not in the visible spectrum.

Kurgan wrote:*snip*

To have any good reason to do this, against the second-tier and official sources cited by Connor, and in violation of Suspension of Disbelief?

IP, does Saxton's ICS say that Turbolasers are actually FTL (or lightspeed) invisible "laser beams" with a visual tracer round on them, and the damage ramps up as they target?


Because if so then that's the "official" explanation. The only thing of course is that are we allowed to question official sources?


Another thing that gets me is the idea of "flack bursts" used on Turbolasers. I always figured the LAAT's in AOTC had shields and those were just the shields taking the hits from Trade Fed/Geonosian vehicles and not "flak bursts."

Some of these theories are interesting, but I don't buy them.

How much is suspension of disbelief? I have heard the arguments, but it seems to me its just a way to explain away SFX glitches.

IE: I'm not saying that you guys are LIARS, just that I have a hard time accepting it when it seems like a simpler explanation. Especially considering how we don't try to incorporate other SFX glitches into analysis. Or are we assuming that because these ideas are approved by Lucas and therefore correct? (sort of like the old wrong sized SSD and other approved mistakes that were later corrected)

Saxton says in the ICS2 that turbolasers are invisible massless particles that travel at lightspeed, with a STL visible tracer element.

Ok, so it's "official" then (regardless of it it jibes with the rest of the EU, since many here consider Saxton to be a hair below canon).


My next question is... are blasters the same as Turbolasers?

Ie: Do they use the same mechanism? (Are they also invisible massless lightspeed beams)

ICS2 is Canon, you purist.

Balsters: As far as I know, yes. They're the same basic weapon type, just a smaller scale. Blaster cannons, lasers, and turbolasers are all the same, just different scales.

Kurgan wrote:My next question is... are blasters the same as Turbolasers?

Ie: Do they use the same mechanism? (Are they also invisible massless lightspeed beams)

They are similar, and rely on similar principles. But evidence suggests there are differences.

Turbolasers have shown bolt redirection in midflight, which is much more easily explained with the lightspeed theories than with STL theories. Blasters have not, to my knowledge. Blasters also show STL behavior in how they react to being deflected by lightsabers or trash compactor walls.

"Here we go again..."



Honestly, though, I do think Kurgan raises a very valid point. Stand back rom SoD for a second and realize: these are VFX mistakes, or more likely, shortcuts. I mean, if you apply SoD as stringently to his cited example of Pulp Fiction, are you going to suggest that they're using some kind of bullet that has an invisible element? I think there's a line, guys...

*sighs expectantly, awaiting the predictable reaction*

No, you accept in Pulp Fiction under SoD that there is a discontinuity or error in the available scientific data in question, because you can compare it to the behavior of the in-fiction weapon, which we posess: the M1911A1 Colt .45. Therefore we know that these outliers must be errors or somesort of failure in the medium. (Basically, you have a graph of expected behaviors in science, and you dismiss a handful of drastically incorrect values as instrumentation or experimental error).

Basically the reason you know this is absurd is because we have a body of data regarding the phenomenon in question already in RL.

In Star Wars, you have a superphysical technological base with consistent weapons affects across twenty years of different sets of data appearing. Quite frankly you have no real reason to assume weapons are not supposed to behave that way in SW, and have no RL body of data to show it as somehow erroneous.

People seem to think that Suspension of Disbelief goes out the window with one inconsistency or glitch or error. That's not how science and empirical analysis works.

EDIT: McC, stop being a whiny drama queen.