StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I read this and I thought it would be interesting.
From: The Computers of Star Trek
Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg

Remember the stirring space battle scene right after the Millenium Falcon escapes from the Death Star? The fast-paced episode whre Luke and Han destroy several attacking enemy fighters? We're looking at a level of technology not too different from Star Trek, so it's reasonable to suppose the attackers are flying at roughly impulse speed somewhere in the neighborhood of 75,000 kilometers per second. Their ray guns are firing some type of energy beam that travels at 300,000 kilometers per second. Yet Luke and Han are swinging their futuristic ack-ack gunswith human reflexes, using human eyes, squeezing the triggers with fingers that operate on millisecond, not nanosecond timescales. This fight, shown at aerial dogfight speeds, could never happen in outer space.

Why is Luke piloting the ship and firing the guns, instead of R2-D2?

More to the point, exactly how long does Luke spend flying in that trench leading to the access tunnel? Some minutes, that's for sure, based on the number of conversations he has had with Han Solo and Obi Wan Kenobi. The Death Star has been described as being the size of a small moon. At most, it has a radius of 2,000 kilometers.Giving it a maximum circumfrence of somewhat over 12,000 kilometers. If Luke's flying at 75,000 per second, he'd circle the Death Star six times every second. Obviously he's traveling a lot slower. But then how does he dodge those ray cannons shooting laser beams that travel at light speed? The Universe of Star Wars is even less logical than the Universe of Star Trek.

(Excerpts of this section, pages 84 and 85)

Rommie

1. They were not moving at their max speed. Do you think F-16s go Mach 2 when they attack?

2. They dodged the beams before they fired. They couldn't track them fast enough.

If Luke's flying at 75,000 per second, he'd circle the Death Star six times every second. Obviously he's traveling a lot slower. But then how does he dodge those ray cannons shooting laser beams that travel at light speed? The Universe of Star Wars is even less logical than the Universe of Star Trek.

how did WWI biplanes dodge machine gun bullets traveling faster than the speed of sound?

how did fighters in WWII dodge those same bullets?

and jets do not travel at their top speeds when in combat, they would run into their own bullets, and missiles!

Even if the ships are moving at phenomenally high rates of speed relative to nearby planetary bodies, that does not necessarily mean that their relative speeds are very high. R2 may have been incapable of using the guns, and the velocity of the fighters may not have been that high while they were traveling in the trench. As an aside, I have never yet seen a SF ship move at anywhere near the relativistic speeds that you are talking about. You must be mistaken.

NM the fact that the Empire's technology is clearly FAR superior to the ships of SF and most of the AQ.

Its not THAT superior. They both have FTL Drive. One is very much faster. THey both have weapons. One chooses to have less per ship than the other.

I think that they both have the same technological prowess, it's just one puts its ships more so to diplomatic missions and scientific missions, rather than to battleships and conquering worlds. Hence why they don't have 100 Phaser banks on an Excelsior. I know thats an exaggeration, but you know what I mean. And Warp Drive v.s. Hyperdrive...Hey, at least they both go Faster than Light. Hyperdrive is faster than warp however, you have to have an exact, precise calculation so you don't just run into something.
Warp is slower than Hyperdrive, however their sensors work just as normal as they would if they were at Impulse.

If I'm not making any sense, I'm sorry. I'm trying to eat and type and watch tv at the same time. Multitasker!!!

Rommie

Romulan_nemesis wrote:Its not THAT superior. They both have FTL Drive. One is very much faster. THey both have weapons. One chooses to have less per ship than the other.

I think that they both have the same technological prowess, it's just one puts its ships more so to diplomatic missions and scientific missions, rather than to battleships and conquering worlds. Hence why they don't have 100 Phaser banks on an Excelsior. I know thats an exaggeration, but you know what I mean. And Warp Drive v.s. Hyperdrive...Hey, at least they both go Faster than Light. Hyperdrive is faster than warp however, you have to have an exact, precise calculation so you don't just run into something.
Warp is slower than Hyperdrive, however their sensors work just as normal as they would if they were at Impulse.

If I'm not making any sense, I'm sorry. I'm trying to eat and type and watch tv at the same time. Multitasker!!!

Rommie

Ah, shit. Now you've done it. Now we have to point out examples of why the Empire is more technologically developed than the Federations. I won't bother, so you should just go to Equal Forces or one of the similar threads on this site.

BTW, do you have any examples of when a SF ship has moved at anywhere NEAR that velocity?

It seems to me that the authors of the article that Romie qouted are quite unfamiliar with Star Wars.

The Death Star was 160 km in diameter, not up to 4000 km. And there arte several examples of them using poor logic, such as asuming they were traveling at top speed during the entire Battle of Yavin.

Morons.

No one travels at topspeed during a battle. You wouldn't be able to hit anything, since people are flying and shooting, and you can only go so fast before the human reflexes become worse than a joke.

Romulan_nemesis wrote:Its not THAT superior. They both have FTL Drive. One is very much faster. THey both have weapons. One chooses to have less per ship than the other.

I think that they both have the same technological prowess, it's just one puts its ships more so to diplomatic missions and scientific missions, rather than to battleships and conquering worlds. Hence why they don't have 100 Phaser banks on an Excelsior. I know thats an exaggeration, but you know what I mean. And Warp Drive v.s. Hyperdrive...Hey, at least they both go Faster than Light. Hyperdrive is faster than warp however, you have to have an exact, precise calculation so you don't just run into something.
Warp is slower than Hyperdrive, however their sensors work just as normal as they would if they were at Impulse.

hmmm..... I wonder if he has read the site that these boards are attached to yet?

Trying to criticize Star Wars for its vessels not moving at maximum speed in combat seems somewhat odd, in that it displays ignorance on several levels.

Firstly, as has been mentioned before, even in real world scenarios combat vehicles do not move at maximum speed in combat except under very particular circumstances, such as when they are trying to leave a danger zone or directly pursuing a target vehicle. The faster a vehicle moves, the lower its agility as well as its stability as a firing platform.

Star Trek adheres to these rules even more so than Star Wars. Why else would ships supposedly capable of firing their beam weapons at ranges of 300,000 kilometers, of firing their missile weapons at some multiple of that, and of travelling at relativistic speeds buzz around a smallish space station at a speed reminiscent of Sopwith Camels trying to put bullets in a Zeppelin? Why else would these same ships close to virtual fistfight range with their opponents and slow to a near stop relative to their opponents before firing? Instances of starships battling at ranges of more than a few kilometers are rare enough to count on the fingers of one hand and be confident of having one or two fingers left over. Not all of that can possibly be attributed to jamming, especially in incidents involving two ships duking it out.

Romulan_nemesis wrote:Its not THAT superior. They both have FTL Drive. One is very much faster. THey both have weapons. One chooses to have less per ship than the other.

Actually, it's much much more superior in every concievable way.
And as for your ship to ship analog, it makes no sense, your saying that the Enterprise-D is on purpose built to only be 0.0001% effective?

Then why is the Enterprise-D a match for combat ships from the Romulan and Klingon Empire, their best ships are about equal to a Galaxy Class.

No, thats the Federations best and a single TL blast would obliterate it.

Romulan_nemesis wrote: Why is Luke piloting the ship and firing the guns, instead of R2-D2?

R2 does not have the capabilities to fly a starship. Only a select few droids have the programming (and appropriate safety measures) to pilot a starship, and astromechs are not one of those. An astromechs job is to compute hyperspace jumps and also to perform basic repairs.
However it is possible for a droid to do some VERY basic flying and by that I mean programming a course into an auto pilot (Ref. X-Wing: Wraith Squad. - "the runaway droid ride"),hold a ship in orbit (ref. Crimson Empire) or taxi a ship into a hangar (Ref on of the x-wing books possibly Wedges Gamble, might be the same as autopilot)
However in NJO: Rebel Stand R2D2 does pilot the Mil. Falcon. whether this is because:

A) he programmed the autopilot
or
B) he has had an upgrade to his programming.

is not known, but this seems to be the only official contradiction to the fact that only specific droids can pilot starships.

Off the top of my head i cannot think of any incident where a droid, apart form war/assassin droids, used weapons on another living being. Only war/assassin droids have the ability to harm living organisms as all other droids have safeties included.
Some people may argue that Squeky caused harm to living organisms in X-Wing: Solo Command as he "fired" a bomb at a dreadnaught. However, Squeky was just told by Chewie to pull the lever to detach the from end of the Millenium Falsehood. He had know idea at the time that it was a bomb, and he states this later on when he berates Chewie, saying that it against his programming to harm living things.

2000AD wrote:R2 does not have the capabilities to fly a starship. Only a select few droids have the programming (and appropriate safety measures) to pilot a starship, and astromechs are not one of those. An astromechs job is to compute hyperspace jumps and also to perform basic repairs.

R2 can and did fly the Millenium Falcon in Rebel Stand.

The real reason is that droids simply are too predictable and uncreative, any real pilot can could guess their moves and hence they wouldn't be very effective.

2000AD wrote:R2 does not have the capabilities to fly a starship. Only a select few droids have the programming (and appropriate safety measures) to pilot a starship, and astromechs are not one of those. An astromechs job is to compute hyperspace jumps and also to perform basic repairs.

Most droids don't have the initiative, considering R2-D2 probably hasn't had a memory wipe in at least 30 years. Most are supposed to get one every 6 months, I think (ref. Heir to the Empire).

Because people kinda fear them
Witness what happened when IG-88 become sentient

First though?
Protect myself
Things Threating him?
Everyone
Course of Action
GOTA KILL EM ALL!

So smart thinking creative droids maybe no so good

That's why in Star Wars they have a technological marvel called the restraining bolt.

His Divine Shadow wrote:

2000AD wrote:R2 does not have the capabilities to fly a starship. Only a select few droids have the programming (and appropriate safety measures) to pilot a starship, and astromechs are not one of those. An astromechs job is to compute hyperspace jumps and also to perform basic repairs.

R2 can and did fly the Millenium Falcon in Rebel Stand.

I pointed this out in my post. It is, to my knowledge, the only incident in SW where a droid which is not specifically a pilot droid has piloted a starcraft.

Didn't Artoo also pilot the Falcon a little in Shadows of the Empire?

Not really, C-3PO was the one manipulating the controls, and that didn't turn out too well.

can't remember that. But that just jogged my memory. Didn't Janson's R2 get re-programmed to take control of his X-wing and try to kill Luke?
Going by my theory the R2 would have to have been given some specific programming and also have it's safeties relaxed.

2000AD wrote:can't remember that. But that just jogged my memory. Didn't Janson's R2 get re-programmed to take control of his X-wing and try to kill Luke?
Going by my theory the R2 would have to have been given some specific programming and also have it's safeties relaxed.

Yeah I think it probably had the safties scrapped.

That was when they'd rescued Leia, and Lando had dropped the detonator into the garbage chute. R2 and C-3PO stayed behind at the Falcon, and they had to pick everyone up before the Xizor's palace went up.

Darth Yoshi wrote:That was when they'd rescued Leia, and Lando had dropped the detonator into the garbage chute. R2 and C-3PO stayed behind at the Falcon, and they had to pick everyone up before the Xizor's palace went up.

I remember they crashed into a lot of stuff.