What if the Empire invaded modern day Earth?

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

Then why would Jango have an anti-fighter missile which is capable of accelerations a tiny fraction of other anti-fighter missiles, or which would literally be incapable of catching a fighter pulling its full acceleration? I mean if it was some down-on-their-luck cash-strapped wannabe, then maybe I could accept them just being really awful missiles, but this is Jango Fett. I don't know, it just seems a little, well, silly that he would actually own missiles which Slave 1 could actually outrun with a fraction of its engine power, you know? Especially seeing that by his attitude when firing it he seriously thought Obi-Wan was screwed, so unless it was a very specific missile for fighting in asteroid fields where everyone has to fly really slowly ... I'm sure you get my gist.

I'm trying to think of a way to reconcile it similarly to the "engine lag" idea discussed earlier about starship acceleration. However, this gives you missiles that lose most of their effectiveness if the target is at all maneouvering, and if they're only good against easy targets why waste expensive munitions when you can just use the guns? The only idea I can think of is that missiles as anti-fighter weapons are mainly used as a way to engage a fighter far away from you without heading over there yourself. Fire the missile in the general direction of the target, it travels quickly and then slows down to start actively seeking. As to why they don't invest in a better engine so that it can outspeed fighters even while maneouvering, I dunno. Maybe the engine lag is a hard limit in the compact engines in Star Wars, or maybe it's a cost issue? Not that this is an airtight idea anyway.

Then again I'm not a fan of missiles in shows that can't outrace the target fighters in general, regardless of how many zeros the acceleration has.

[Junghalli]

Then why would Jango have an anti-fighter missile which is capable of accelerations a tiny fraction of other anti-fighter missiles, or which would literally be incapable of catching a fighter pulling its full acceleration? I mean if it was some down-on-their-luck cash-strapped wannabe, then maybe I could accept them just being really awful missiles, but this is Jango Fett. I don't know, it just seems a little, well, silly that he would actually own missiles which Slave 1 could actually outrun with a fraction of its engine power, you know? Especially seeing that by his attitude when firing it he seriously thought Obi-Wan was screwed, so unless it was a very specific missile for fighting in asteroid fields where everyone has to fly really slowly ... I'm sure you get my gist.

Maybe whoever sold him those missiles just screwed him and gave him malfunctioning lemons?

[Jake]

I found another example that seems to disprove gigajoule level firepower for fighters here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwwmKv5UR44. At 2:09, a laser cannon from a droid gunship hits the wooden outpost near yoda and does a relatively unimpressive amount of damage. I highly doubt they would have powered down that weapon either, considering if they really had GJ level weapons and used them, they could have taken out the clone commander, wookie chieftan, and possibly the Jedi Grandmasterin one shot...

[PeZook]

@PeZook:

In case if you missed it, I responded to your rebuttal.

I concede all points.

[Sinanju]

And you don't understand what a simpler explanation is either. That simple explanation must also explain all the observations. If there's a hole burnt out... there needs to be a hole burnt out. There is not a hole burnt out (at least not big enough to explain all the smoke).

You, uhm, you are aware that gases expand right? Especially when heated? Let's take a very tiny 1-cm^3 cube of iron weighing 7.87 grams or about .1409 moles. Iron boils at 3134K. We assume it's in an ordinary room, so it has normal pressure (100 kPa). Under the ideal gas law, this would lead to a volume of (.1409) * (8.314) * (3134) / 100 which works out to around 40 cubic meters of gas. Of course, this is assuming all of it converts to gas...

Therefore, the smoke must be something else. That smoke is uniform in all cases of blaster/laser cannon firing, despite different environments. It is logical to conclude it is a property of the blaster technology.

Actually, this thread has quite a few pictures of the effects of hand blasters. You'll notice we see several different colors of sparks and gas produced as blasters hit the walls of the Tantive IV, or Greedo, or...well, you get the picture. We also see in your own screenshots a different color of smoke from X-Wing blasters striking the Death Star aaaand of course there's this.

If your theory is that whatever makes up the bolt is 'splashing' or dissipating or whatever then why does a green turbolaser bolt create a burst of red-orange light? Hmmm, it's almost like the bolt is vaporizing the asteroid but that would make too much sense.

This argument sounds suspiciously similar to that old canard about how the Death Star clearly used technobabble to destroy Alderaan when 'really big laser shoots planet' is a much simpler and logical explanation.

What I have, and still am, contesting is the belief that Star Wars missiles are generally capable of making those kinds of turns. You have one example of an agile weapon (and for all we know, it could only make the single turn, explaining why it doesn't dominate starfighter combat, even if it is common and cheap like you assert, despite the canon evidence).

This thread has also demonstrated two separate missiles that couldn't close a distance of <10 meters, despite the target having an acceleration of no more than 3g.

See, here's my problem. That's actually a reasonably nuanced stance and something that can actually be discussed. Too bad it took you god only knows how many pages to get to it considering you came in blustering about "all Star Wars missiles" which was an incredibly, incredibly easy bubble to pop. I'm sure I've said it before but if you stopped making hysterical overgeneralizations you could probably get your points across a lot more clearly. You'd also look smarter, and you need all the help you can get.

Incidentally, let's discuss it! You do remember where we left off on the discussion of Obi-Wan's fighter, I assume? Where I pointed out that using a damaged and potentially out of control fighter as an example doesn't really prove much of anything? Where I pointed out that it was clearly travelling slower than it was previously? That discussion?

You kept saying you were using it as an example and not a limit, but just in case anybody forgets you're a bullshitter there you go again. When you say a fighter "can't" do something that's attempting to set a limit on its abilities you ignorant cretin.

Oh, and one more thing: the missiles do overtake Obi-Wan's fighter, while we're at it:




Hm, yet again actually watching the movies without Destructovision on torpedos one of your arguments.

"but but the scene cuts and they are magically in space 6 seconds later!!111!11!!1" yeah the scene cuts. Movies do that for many reasons, including skipping boring stuff that isn't interesting to the viewer, you know, like a several minute long space launch.

Here we go again with you presenting assumptions as facts. It's 'megajoules' all over again! What if I just assumed it took 2 seconds and they used the extra 4 to adjust their helmets?

In the Empire Strikes Back, the first transport has some 30 seconds on screen, and that includes 2 scene cuts, one of which included the time for an Imperial officer to spot them and join his captain on the top side to report to him (at least). Apparently they can't do 6 second launches; if they could, why not? Maybe they wanted to play chicken with those Star Destroyers.

Are those transports just slow compared to the Falcon? Nope, also in Empire Strikes Back, Han says "punch it!" to escape stormtroopers and we follow the ship launch, and a nice, leisurely pace. 18 seconds later, of us following it, he is still low enough to the ground for Luke Skywalker to clearly make out the ship; it hasn't even risen above the cloud deck yet.

You, uh, do remember there were Imperial Star Destroyers in orbit, right? If everybody had gone straight up from Echo Base like rats bolting from a hole it would have been a massacre. It would make much more sense to stay low and then scatter. And, sure enough, actually watching the movie shows that after takeoff the Falcon is moving low enough that it just barely crests a hill.

[Sinanju]

Oh, if only it worked out that way! But, you missed three zeros. 100 kPa is 100,000 Pa, not 100.

(When doing calcs, always remember your units. Dimensional analysis catches mistakes like this.)

Div 1000 and get 0.037 m^3, or round it to 0.04 m^3.


It sure would be hilarious of you didn't make that mistake though. It would show the X-Wing could be completely enveloped by a mere 20 grams of iron! Of course, as it is, a cubic meter of solid iron - over 7 tons - is far more than required to envelop it anyway...


Also, you might know this, but also remember that the boiling point changes as pressure decreases. So if redoing the same thing in space, the temperature might be as low as ~1812K, right over the melting point, and it would still evaporate. (Of course, with temperature that "low", it will quickly radiate the heat and drop back down, wanting to immediately shed its latent heat of fusion and resolidify. So while it is strictly a lower limit, it is probably better to go higher anyway.)

Well, I guess that's what I get for trying to do calcs on four hours of sleep. Bleh. Okay, so it was more like 4 times the volume. But wait!

You immediately shift to outer space, to get a lower temperature (because you like bullshitting smaller numbers however you can)...while forgetting that the pressure drops too. Or just ignoring it because you like your small numbers and fuck honesty.

I can't find anything on the boiling point of iron in vacuum, and I'm guessing you couldn't either since you were saying things like "might be" and "around", but let's go with that. So, we change the temperature to 1812K and the pressure to 1 Pa. This gets us (.1409) * (8.314) * (1812) / 1 or around 2000 cubic meters. So it would create a cloud of gas around 2000 times its solid volume.

Remind me again how blasters don't create holes big enough to explain all the smoke?

It is all very close to alike, though, in every case we can see the white vapor on the edges. There is sometimes the red stuff dominating it too though. You'll note that my position is not that all the gas is from the bolt, just that some of it is. There's surely a combination of factors.

....


But, wait a minute. Where the hell did 7 liters of liquid water come from in that scene?

...

What we see is almost certainly water vapor, and it has no apparent source.

Rupturing a pipe is the only way to account for it. Every fucktard who has used that scene to do firepower calcs betrays his lack of knowledge in high school chemistry.

Wait, you're going to argue that every blaster impact creates "identical" smoke and then you're going to turn around and argue that one of those incidents was water vapor? Can you even try to make a logically-consistent argument?

Rofl, there's an effects mistake in that first frame. But yeah, Curtis Saxton estimates on the order of 10^14 J for that. Quite a lot, certainly. Is it inconsistent with everything else?

In a sense, yes - it implies a difference of a million times between fighters and star destroyers. What good are fighters against that? The best explanation is they have to use missiles and bombs to bring down an ISD. Saxton says a game claims it would take several dozen proton torpedoes to take the shields down.

A 10^14 J asteroid hit destroys the bridge on one asteroid, according to him. He puts the shields at about 10^16 J total, which means it would fall under a few minutes sustained fire of their own weapons. Less, if they can get a full broadside.

This all actually makes sense. His numbers make well enough sense and the result is amazingly consistent. A star destroyer is some million times bigger than a starfighter, if we assume linear scaling (which does apply to real life, and most Warsies assume it applies to SW too), this is also consistent with the observed megajoule range output on them.

Star Destroyers have pretty impressive power. We'd have to nuke the living piss out of one of them to take it down, which is much easier said than done. Luckily, the OP doesn't include Star Destroyers.

tl;dr: I don't want to answer how this pokes holes in my Tibanna gas theory so I'm just going to try and start another argument to spread things even further.

A big reason this takes so many pages is that you keep repeating the same shit. I've never claimed proton torpedoes couldn't make that turn and have brought up several theories that explain all the available evidence. You keep focusing on a literal interpretation of a fragment of the whole.

Step back and look at the big picture.

Would you like for me to quote you on saying "Star Wars missiles" "can't" outperform modern missiles? You did claim it, you were called on it, now you're trying to pretend you never made the claim in the first place.

Oh, you mean where you thought an 8g turn at 100 m/s was a display of hyperadvanced maneuverability?

Yeah, good times.

Because you were pretending Star Wars fighters don't ever do things more advanced than 'fly in straight lines lol'? Like I said, it wouldn't be so easy to poke holes in your arguments if you didn't make them so hilariously overgeneralized.

Yeah, and you'll recall that makes sense too: he slowed down to see what he was coming up on, and sped back up when he realized what it was. We saw the acceleration he was doing when the buzz droids were on his ship, which does two things: A) shows his acceleration at that point and, perhaps more importantly, B) shows the fleet itself wasn't undergoing mass acceleration, so you can't hide behind "relative!!1" when the rest of the scenes fail to show high acceleration.

Except you're assuming he was going at his full acceleration. Perhaps he was accelerating. Was he going full-out? Considering he wasn't in full control of his fighter, why should we buy that assumption?

I'll note that you still haven't provided a single example of a fighter doing acceleration > 8g (that one turn).

Would you like for me to quote the ICS? It is canon, you know. You can bitch about it if you like, but I'm going to be honest: if you don't like Lucasfilm's canon policy maybe you should just give up and stop debating in that universe. You don't get to declare your own canon policy.

...eh, screw it. I'll get to the rest of this post after dinner.

[Lord Insanity]

And the fighters that were following them? The only one in a position to take the chance versus just the towers was Luke, and he had the magic powers so it doesn't really matter.

Have the wingmen come in from other angles and shoot those guys. In the movies, the wingmen just flew behind the leader, and bought him a few seconds with their lives.

With 3000g, they could have zoomed ahead, looped back, and taken on the enemy fighters head to head. With a bigger team - 5 instead of 3 - they could still have wingmen staying with the leaders, and people protecting them from the other side. Like how Luke saved Biggs earlier.

Maybe the Rebel wingmen didn't break off because the Imperial wingmen would have just followed them. In fact Darth Vader being a marginally competent commander told his wingmen to let Wedge go stay on the leader. Obviously Vader realized that fighter was breaking off due to damage and not intending to come around at the TIEs. Of course Vader is only marginally competent because he should have had one of his now extra wingmen do something like what you suggest. There is that matter of heavy jamming making instruments unreliable though. So maybe relying on them for accelerations faster than what can be done with mk1 eyeballs is a bad idea when being off slightly can make you go splat. The bigger team thing wouldn't work for the Rebels because their other fighters were busy keeping most of the TIEs busy dog-fighting to cover the trench runs. Tarkin's failure to launch more that a handful of fighters give him a 10 out of 10 for balls, but a -1,000,000 for good thinking.

[Sinanju]

Alright, I'm back. Well, this became pretty simple. I'll make this quick:

I'm agreeing with Saxton's results, you illiterate moron. Then, I elaborated on how Saxton's results also are consistent with my own. Of course, you don't want to admit that, so you get snippy instead.

When I post the picture and cite it as an example of how your silly Tibanna gas theory falls apart (remember what I was saying, about how you would expect splashing gas/plasma whatever to glow the same color it was a second ago?), and you start blithering on about firepower that's a topic change you illiterate fool.

My argument isn't about the canon. It is merely that there is no evidence whatsoever for those numbers in the movies. If you agree to this, we're done; I can't change your faith.

If you aren't arguing about the numbers being canon then everything you've said in this thread is a complete and utter waste of everybody's time. You may not like that they're canon, and if that's so you might just ignore vs. threads where Star Wars comes up.

I mean, I think the Drakaverse books are pretty stupid, but if I came into a thread and started saying 'they can't do this' or 'they can't do that' when they did, that doesn't mean shit. It doesn't matter whether I think it was bullshit or feel like the numbers are wrong, that's what I was given to work with. I'm not Stirling, and you're not Lucasfilm.

So, since you're so gracious as to admit those numbers are canon I think we're done here. Connor, you can hop back in if you like. Now where was I?

Oh yeah. Korgeta, still with us?

Don't forget other countries will try to create their own varation such as china, who proarbly are not only making their own version but may be able to make more of it, as well receiving the ones made by India and Russia. Then we have the USA with it's X-51 Hypersonic cruise missile with a speed of 5.1 mach and can strike anywhere on the world within an hour. Still being tested, but you can bet one or two are already operational in waiting for deployment (unofficially) Unless there are star destroyers in orbit and with more tie fighters then a 100 won't be effective especially as their speed is not enough and that there is too low a number to deal with the world against them.

Uh...not as such. Once you've designed a missile, and tested it? Then the fun starts. Now you need to build it. First you need to find a factory with the right equipment and expertise to build it, and if you can't find such a factory you need to design and build it. Then you need to build the tooling. Then you need to build the missiles, and because they're new you have to build up a bit of a stockpile because at bare minimum you need enough to equip all of your launchers. And enough to have reloads.

You can actually see this with your example of the BrahMos. There were three reported test-firings, the last in 2002, and the first missiles were delivered in 2007.

Now, you can rush this in wartime by conscripting factories, but this requires that you're building something relatively similar to what they already were (such as Sherman tanks being built by a locomotive factory).

[Lord Insanity]

Just as a general observation regarding the discussion about time passage during scene cuts. It should be noted that sometimes SW cuts to a scene that occurs simultaneously as the previous scene. Off the top of my head, in Episode 1 when a Naboo pilot shouts "Look, one of ours out of the main hold." and the scene cuts and we actually see presumably what the pilot saw. That could be a rather bad tangled mess to get any sort of time reference from so I am staying out of that.

[Junghalli]

If you aren't arguing about the numbers being canon then everything you've said in this thread is a complete and utter waste of everybody's time.

I beg to differ. This is one of the most interesting Star Wars related arguments I can remember seeing here.

[Junghalli]

I'm curious: did you actually understand the equations in that last post? Do you see what you did wrong (either scientifically or debate tactical error) by bitching about neglecting the pressure?

I was admiring the artistry of a bunch of totally incomprehensible equations with "you blithering retard" at the bottom.

[Batman]

I'm curious: did you actually understand the equations in that last post? Do you see what you did wrong (either scientifically or debate tactical error) by bitching about neglecting the pressure?

I was admiring the artistry of a bunch of totally incomprehensible equations with "you blithering retard" at the bottom.

I think he was talking to Sinanju who is RIGHT, at least for the purposes of this thread (as opposed to the purpose of amusing the people READING it, which apparently worked for YOU if nothing else )
If Adam ISN'T doubting the canon numbers he IS wasting everybody's time because those numbers are there for everybody to look up, and have been posted repeatedly in this thread. And those numbers mean Earth gets reamed. Now Adam obviously doesn't LIKE those numbers. That's his prerogative. I don't particularly like the existence of VOY or ENT either. That doesn't mean I get to ignore them in a Vs debate involving Trek. Adam can either show the ICS numbers to be WRONG, which he himself claimed is IMPOSSIBLE, ACCEPT those numbers and work with them (which he clearly is unwilling to do-which again, is his prerogative OUTSIDE a Vs debate) or just fucking stay out of it.
If he wants to argue LFL's numbers are full of it he can do that in PSW. UNTIL AND UNLESS he can show the ICS numbers to be WRONG they STAND.
4 figure g accelerations for pretty much EVERYTHING military spacegoing are canon. KT level fighter weapon yields are. TT level firepower for a troop transport is. (I still don't see what your problem with that is BTW as EVEN MASSIVELY OVERCOMPENSATING FOR THE TECHNOLOGY NOT SCALING DOWN LINEARLY downscaling from the DS1 gets you far more that the official numbers.)
Oh, and if you try to bring the 'if the numbers are true Wars characters are stupid' idea again-the only Wars character from the movies (you see, this ISN'T OT Wars, this is just Wars) is VADER. I'll gladly use every stupid military commander in Earth's history on the human side when you have so far completely failed to show the Imperials WERE that stupid in the movies (and as usual completely ignore the EU despite the fact that it IS canon, and these days provides the vast majority of evidence where Wars is concerned).

[Batman]

Come to think of it, a valid interpretation of the ICS would be that g means something different in the Star Wars universe than it does in ours. That is used to rectify the use of 'laser' for something that is nothing like a real life laser. Why not here?

I rest my case.

[Batman]

We MUST accept Star Wars lasers as NOT real world lasers because they CAN'T be. Nothing like this go the acceleration figures.
Oh, just for fun, at your alleged 2 gs, the speeds we canonically see in the NJO would take them HALF A YEAR to get up to. Yet they're reasonably easily achieved in combat situations.

Even if the distance the X-Wings had to travel from Yavin IV to the Death Star were a measly 250,000 kilometres, at 2gs a turnover course would have taken them 20 minutes. Pretty much EVERYTHING spacegoing in Wars can go escape velocity in under a minute. That's 15 gs bare bones minimum right there.

And there's nothing random about my capitalization. I do it for EMPHASIS. I'm also reasonably certain I'm not your son.

And you are NOT trying to consolidate for maximum consistency, you're trying to throw out the examples you don't like. There's exactly ZERO evidence for the acelerration figure g meaning anything different in Wars than it does in the real world.
How, pray tell, WOULD you go for maximum consistency as by YOUR OWN ADMISSION you don't KNOW the vast majority of the available evidence?

[D.Turtle]

One piece of evidence that turbolaser's damaging part is not the bolt itself:

There is another picture (can't be arsed to find it ATM) that shows a bolt going through a fighter without damaging it.

Turbolasers are a lightspeed weapon that has a visible tracer (the bolt) moving along its path. This is well established since the AOTC ICS.

[Ford Prefect]

And there's nothing random about my capitalization. I do it for EMPHASIS.

And it would be really nice if you would stop. Your posts would be instantly more readable, and to be honest it's no different from shouting, and shouting doesn't make your arguments better.

[Bounty]

Turbolasers are a lightspeed weapon that has a visible tracer (the bolt) moving along its path. This is well established since the AOTC ICS.

How do you reconcile that with instances where a weapon is fired and the damage is done at the point of impact of the less-than-c visible portion? Of the top of my head, most blaster fire would qualify here.

[Aaron]

We MUST accept Star Wars lasers as NOT real world lasers because they CAN'T be. Nothing like this go the acceleration figures.
Oh, just for fun, at your alleged 2 gs, the speeds we canonically see in the NJO would take them HALF A YEAR to get up to. Yet they're reasonably easily achieved in combat situations.

Even if the distance the X-Wings had to travel from Yavin IV to the Death Star were a measly 250,000 kilometres, at 2gs a turnover course would have taken them 20 minutes. Pretty much EVERYTHING spacegoing in Wars can go escape velocity in under a minute. That's 15 gs bare bones minimum right there.

And there's nothing random about my capitalization. I do it for EMPHASIS. I'm also reasonably certain I'm not your son.

And you are NOT trying to consolidate for maximum consistency, you're trying to throw out the examples you don't like. There's exactly ZERO evidence for the acelerration figure g meaning anything different in Wars than it does in the real world.
How, pray tell, WOULD you go for maximum consistency as by YOUR OWN ADMISSION you don't KNOW the vast majority of the available evidence?

Dude, the forum has a tonne of different options for formatting your post without it looking like your hollering.

[Darth Hoth]

Turbolasers are a lightspeed weapon that has a visible tracer (the bolt) moving along its path. This is well established since the AOTC ICS.

How do you reconcile that with instances where a weapon is fired and the damage is done at the point of impact of the less-than-c visible portion? Of the top of my head, most blaster fire would qualify here.

Notice how he said turbolasers, not blasters. Why do these necessarily use the same mechanism?

Of course, if the visible tracer "bolt" is the cause of the damage, then that completely fails to explain instances like the one quoted above.

Apparent damage on impact by the tracers can perhaps be explained by differences in power setting and/or the thermal properties of the material hit; i.e., it depends on how long it takes to heat the material to such an extent that visible damage is caused. Although I have not done any frame-by-frame analysis on this, myself, so that would just be guesswork on my part.

[Bounty]

Notice how he said turbolasers, not blasters. Why do these necessarily use the same mechanism?

Is there any indication that they don't? If they have identical effects bar one, and that one non-identical effect is intermittent, I think it's safe to say that they can be assumed to operate along similar principles.

Is there another occasion where this effect happens or is it just the one FX goof?

[Bounty]

RE: the Death Star approach, if you accept that the DS's arrival in the system happens before the fighters' launch, it puts a 15 minute hard limit on their travel time.

[D.Turtle]

How do you reconcile that with instances where a weapon is fired and the damage is done at the point of impact of the less-than-c visible portion? Of the top of my head, most blaster fire would qualify here.

If the tracer bolt arrives at precisely the same time that the damaging part arrives, then the tracer did its job.

IIRC, what fits pretty much all cases of turbolaser fire, is that there is first a low power beam of some kind, along which the tracer moves, until the lightspeed damaging part is fired. The tracer has variable speed and is presumably to increase accuracy for the guns (I'd guess for some last second adjustments in a jamming heavy environment).

This fits with cases where something is damaged before the "bolt" reaches the target, cases where the "bolt" and damage arrive simultaneously, and cases where a "bolt" moves through a target without damaging it.

[D.Turtle]

The ICS says that turbolasers are a lightspeed weapon with a STL tracer moving along the beam. This description fits all movie scenes.

This does not hold true for a pure STL bolt interpretation.

Edit: Forgot another one: bolts changing direction while traveling.

[Bounty]

If the tracer bolt arrives at precisely the same time that the damaging part arrives, then the tracer did its job.

With such a speed difference we should be seeing damage before tracer impacts, even with the naked eye, in pretty much every vehicle encounter. Yet that does not happen, and even a cursory glance at the DS attack - which conveniently shows quite a few shots almost barrel-to-impact - clearly shows that damaging portion of whatever mechanism turbolasers coincides perfectly with the impact of the visible, STL bolt. If that was launched simultaneously with an invisible FTL bolt the damage would occur before the visible bolt hit, and consistently at that.

What the ICS offers is an explanation that works for the exception and then requires a massive heap of coincidences for it to work in any situation that isn't one of those exceptions. And in doing so it contradicts the movies it's claiming to explain.

Edit: Forgot another one: bolts changing direction while traveling.

Where does that help either theory?

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

A big problem with the lightspeed turbolaser idea (as much as I like it) is that the recoil on the guns invariably occurs when the visible bolt ("tracer") appears and not when the damage occurs, which is the moment the actual shot is supposed to be fired. Unless the guns on the Death Star and Falcon (and any other cases where we see recoil) are different somehow, I find this hard to reconcile.

The aspect of the idea that first sold me on it was that it explained why turbolaser bolts always seemed to take about the same time to reach the target, regardless of distance. Has there been any examination on the issue close enough to see if it actually holds?