Space Battleship Yamato VS. Executor class Star Destroyer

[Patrick Degan]

Wave motion guns are not effective against shielding unless multiple ships are involved in massing their firepower, as was the case when the Earth Defence Fleet at Saturn attempted to destroy the White Comet, and then only succeeded in blasting away the outer shielding/cometary matter envelope surrounding the main asteroid city structure.

At the end of the Quest for Iscandar, the charge of the Desslok Gun, a weapon of similar design principle and comparable firepower to a WMG, was reflected back upon Desslok's flagship by a forcefield devised by Sandor and based on the Gamilon Reflex Gun forcefield used at Pluto. This incident, BTW, was the only usage of any sort of energy forcefield defence for the battleship and was never employed again nor incorporated into the defence systems of any future EDF warship. In any case, these are at least two canon examples that WMG fire is not effective against energy shielding and it is established that Earth warships do not have energy shielding of any sort.

[Connor MacLeod]

It'd take all of about fifteen seconds to reduce the Yamato to free floating micro sized chunks. I don't think, somehow, that power drain is going to be a terribly pressing issue.

That depends entirely on the calcs you use.

Remember; the Yamato, effectively, has absolutely no shielding of any kind at all and it's construction materials are not known for it's damage absorption/reduction abilities. While it has taken a hell of a beating and kept on trucking on numerous occasions, that won't help it after a turbolaser salvo has obliterated it.

Bull. Given what I saw in those clips, there is AMPLE reason to believe there are forcefield devices of some kind or another. Simply transferring the energy from the engines to the gun (nevermind the recoil of the gun itself implied) is going to require some fancy forcefield stuff to handle (or really high end hull materials.) This is basically Death STar level analysis. More to the point, and I suppose someone who has seen the series confirm, I'm pretty sure we saw it near the surface of the star (not unlike LOGH, really.)

Alternately, you just say 'we can't be sure' and then leave it at that. 'I can't provide the numbers but my gut instinct says Yamato is fucked' is an opinion, not fact.

Trying to apply hard (or even vague) numbers to Yamato-tech is impossible since ... well, some of the stuff in the series just doesn't make sense and changes from episode to episode.

Thus, you can only speak in generalisations.

Then you can only go by personal opinion. (Or as Bakustra did, thematic ideas work too.) "Speaking in generalizations" is about as useful as saying we apply 'common sense' to the problem.

Frankly I saw nothing in the clips presented on page one that was problematic. AT least no more or so than interpreting the 'special effects' in SW and they got calced, didn't they? And saying 'it changes from episode to episode' doesn't help.

We know the energy output of a Star Destroyers' Turbolaser. We know how many turbolasers they can bring to bear on any particular target.

Depends on which source you use. We actually do not HAVE literal, stated numbers for the ISD. funny enough it can range from "max output of the reactor through heavy guns" on one end to the asteorid vape calcs in TESB for another (that's not even the lowest end, but its one of the lower oens that immediately comes to mind.) Same with gun numbers (60 TLs, 60 5 gun batteries, 12 5-gun batteries, 6 heavy TL turrets, etc.)

We can INFER from certain sources (EG like the 'true warships diverting max reactor power to main guns', or the 15/1 TT quad guns on the IH, or the 200 GT TLs on the acclamator) but that remains an inference. Or we can calc them from various events (as has been done since the dawn of time.) to various degrees of reliability. Nothing different here compared to with Yamato.

Besides which, factors more than 'raw firepower' matter. Firepower and defenses may be a MAJOR one, but its not neccesarily decisive.

We saw throughout the various Yamato series that the ship can take a lot of damage and keep functioning but is NOT very good at deflecting/reducing damage. Enemy fighter craft can damage her easily enough, capital ship fire tears right through the Yamato like any other ship. Estimating (and yes, it has to be a very loose estimation due to the nature of the show and complete lack of consistency) the range of firepower that the Yamato-verse ships throw around...

And what are the yields on those weapons? We see similar stuff in the STar Wars series, which has been interpreted in various ways (see aformentioned 'A-wing through bridge tower' example.)

Let's make a truly massive concession and say that one of the Yamato's shock cannons is equivalent in damage output to a Heavy Turbolaser (it's nowhere close but let's roll with it anyhow). That means Gamilon shock cannons is about the same - and we saw that damage the Yamato easily enough countless times. Now what we have now is a shielded ship that we know can absorb a LOT of a turbolaser fire and has a LOT of a guns vs a ship with half a dozen guns and no shields.

How a weapon can damage a target matters too. Mechanical vs thermal damage. Or even technobabble damage mechanisms (note that 'technobabble' does not neccesarily equate 'zero energy' despite what is often assumed.. technobabble affects the MANNER in which energy is used and impacts the enviroment. a Phaser may disintegrate the target rather than vaporize, and it may have no collateral effects, but that doesnt mean it doesn't do work. Hell the fact of the 'recoil' proves that, as do the cases of burns/fires caused by phasers.)

So even making the huge concession, just for the sake of simplicity, that firepower for individual guns is equal ... the Yamato still has no chance at all.

And yes, I'm ignoring the Wave Motion Gun simply because it takes so much time to charge up and fire that it's pretty much a null factor.

Yeah and? How fast do TL bolts travel? What nature of weapon are they? Are we talking massleess beams, projectiles, particle/plasma weapons, or some combination? They can be any of the above or all of the above depending on sources and context. I mean if we go with strict canon we see blasters ejecting casings (EG TESB) so that would mean projectile weapons. So speed vs range matters, and depending on how fast Yamato is, it may be able to dodge the weapons fire or minimize the number of hits it takes.

Hell, if the Yamato can simply stay out of lethal range (but close enough to prevent microjumps) or get the Executor to spray off gunfire at it and miss, it may be able to bleed it dry of fuel - the Executor does not have vast fuel reserves any more than any other SW ship does and it has to husband those carefully if it wants to win. If it runs out of the SUPER-ICS grade fuel, it's super abilities go with it.

[Connor MacLeod]

Wave motion guns are not effective against shielding unless multiple ships are involved in massing their firepower, as was the case when the Earth Defence Fleet at Saturn attempted to destroy the White Comet, and then only succeeded in blasting away the outer shielding/cometary matter envelope surrounding the main asteroid city structure.

At the end of the Quest for Iscandar, the charge of the Desslok Gun, a weapon of similar design principle and comparable firepower to a WMG, was reflected back upon Desslok's flagship by a forcefield devised by Sandor and based on the Gamilon Reflex Gun forcefield used at Pluto. This incident, BTW, was the only usage of any sort of energy forcefield defence for the battleship and was never employed again nor incorporated into the defence systems of any future EDF warship. In any case, these are at least two canon examples that WMG fire is not effective against energy shielding and it is established that Earth warships do not have energy shielding of any sort.

First off, what sort of comparisons between such 'forcefields' and SW deflector shields can be made? Similarities, differences? Are we saying (for example) that the forcefields must incorporate energy absorption/reradiation tech like SW is supposed to? In what manner does it do so?

Also, how POSITIVE are we such forcefields are rare/unused? That they exist is telling in and of itself. Just because we don't see/hear mention of it again doesn't mean it got ignored completely, and 'deduction by inference' is not limited to STar Wars alone.

[Batman]

So how close a look do we get at the ejected objects (WRT hand blasters) in the movies? For all we know those are spent batteries or tibanna gas cartdridges

[Sea Skimmer]

Not very close and you basically even with frame by frame can only see it bouncing off the guy on the lefts arm and then come to a stop. Ejection is never clearly seen in this shot; I don't recall if any other shots had visible cartridge cases or not.

[Patrick Degan]

Wave motion guns are not effective against shielding unless multiple ships are involved in massing their firepower, as was the case when the Earth Defence Fleet at Saturn attempted to destroy the White Comet, and then only succeeded in blasting away the outer shielding/cometary matter envelope surrounding the main asteroid city structure.

At the end of the Quest for Iscandar, the charge of the Desslok Gun, a weapon of similar design principle and comparable firepower to a WMG, was reflected back upon Desslok's flagship by a forcefield devised by Sandor and based on the Gamilon Reflex Gun forcefield used at Pluto. This incident, BTW, was the only usage of any sort of energy forcefield defence for the battleship and was never employed again nor incorporated into the defence systems of any future EDF warship. In any case, these are at least two canon examples that WMG fire is not effective against energy shielding and it is established that Earth warships do not have energy shielding of any sort.

First off, what sort of comparisons between such 'forcefields' and SW deflector shields can be made? Similarities, differences? Are we saying (for example) that the forcefields must incorporate energy absorption/reradiation tech like SW is supposed to? In what manner does it do so?

The White Comet forcefield/outer material envelope would have been maintained by some sort of circulating energy current, likely electromagnetic in nature and extended from the perimetre of the central city asteroid. This envelope must have been kilometres in diametre, given the size of Zordar's supership that launched itself from the disintegrating ruins of the city asteroid and which dwarfed the Argo. It took the combined firepower of all the wave-motion guns of Capt. Gideon's fleet to blast this envelope away to uncover the city asteroid, which afterward was able to generate a new defensive envelope to protect the upper city structure from shock-cannon fire.

The Reflex Gun forcefield was able to reflect the full charge of both the Reflex Gun and a Desslok Gun.

Star Wars deflectors incorporate both ray and particle shielding: this suggests an interlacing web of energy beams to block energy weapons and the circulation of, perhaps, a particle-cloud to ward off missile assault and kinetic impactors. The latter seems to have some commonality to the White Comet system while the former may be closer to the Reflex Gun reflector forcefield —and reflective forcefields were seen in operation in the Death Star trash compactor. But little in the way of technical details of either system seen in SBY/SB was ever given in series and the available literature is not very illuminating on the subject.

Also, how POSITIVE are we such forcefields are rare/unused? That they exist is telling in and of itself. Just because we don't see/hear mention of it again doesn't mean it got ignored completely, and 'deduction by inference' is not limited to Star Wars alone.

The Reflex Gun forcefield was never used again past the concluding episode of the Quest For Iscandar season. No such energy defence is installed aboard the Argo, aboard any warship of the Earth Defence Force, aboard any Gamilon or Comet Empire warship, or aboard any warship of any of the other powers depicted in later seasons and movies. All relied on their armour to provide protection and all took heavy weapon damage and were destroyed when hit with enough firepower. The forcefield is never even mentioned again in series, except in flashback during the Comet Empire season. For whatever reason, this system was not seen as practical to be mounted on starships, despite its apparent utility. Perhaps, to make it work the one time they needed it, Sandor and the engineers had to hook the system into the power leads for the wave-motion gun, which would deprive them of their main weapon. Also, like the WMG, when the forcefield was charging up, all other systems appeared to be suppressed due to the power draw. Also, the forcefield would equally block their own weapons as well as weapon fire from enemy ships, so while the defence is up, you cannot fire your own guns or missiles. This might have contributed to a decision to not adapt this forcefield system as a regular defensive component.

[Aaron MkII]

I recall seeing casings briefly in ANH during the scenes with luke and leia, the bridge and the bottomless pit.

[lord Martiya]

The Reflex Gun forcefield was never used again past the concluding episode of the Quest For Iscandar season. No such energy defence is installed aboard the Argo, aboard any warship of the Earth Defence Force, aboard any Gamilon or Comet Empire warship, or aboard any warship of any of the other powers depicted in later seasons and movies. All relied on their armour to provide protection and all took heavy weapon damage and were destroyed when hit with enough firepower. The forcefield is never even mentioned again in series, except in flashback during the Comet Empire season. For whatever reason, this system was not seen as practical to be mounted on starships, despite its apparent utility. Perhaps, to make it work the one time they needed it, Sandor and the engineers had to hook the system into the power leads for the wave-motion gun, which would deprive them of their main weapon. Also, like the WMG, when the forcefield was charging up, all other systems appeared to be suppressed due to the power draw. Also, the forcefield would equally block their own weapons as well as weapon fire from enemy ships, so while the defence is up, you cannot fire your own guns or missiles. This might have contributed to a decision to not adapt this forcefield system as a regular defensive component.

Maybe it worked only on the WMG and the Reflex Gun (in fact, as the Reflex Gun was supposed to be more powerful than the Yamato's own WMG, even if its placement meant it bled a lot of power to just melt through its icy cover, it could have been just a ground-based wave motion gun that sacrificed range for power), and the only reason we didn't see it again was that Deslar knew it and went at absurd lengths to counter it (instead of just blasting the Yamato apart with the normal guns of his fleet).
In fact, the third season actually showed another possible application of the technology: when the Yamato was trapped inside one of Galmann's space stations, they didn't just WMGed their way out because they saw that the hangar was shielded and would have just reflected the shot back at them.

[Vympel]

Oh spacebattles, please hurry up and switch to xenforo. In the meantime - necro!

The Executor does like nothing this entire fight and dies.

Yeah, totally, in contrast to all the other awesome capital ship action all over the Battle of Endor. Not like they were immobile props in the background seen in fleeting fighter-centric sequences of a few seconds each or anything.

Spinning A-wing is impossible to stop with all our lasers. What an awesome sight.

If only the Yamato was a spinning A-Wing!

You know watching it again, all that 'the spheres on top of the bridge aren't shield generators, they're sensor domes' stuff is really clearly bullshit. The fighters blow up the Executor's dome and it immediately loses shield power around the bridge - like that's the narrative flow of the scene. Straight from the movie.

Unproveable assertions about "narrative flow" can't contradict canon evidence. The Complete Locations says they're filled with sensor equipment, not shield generators.

But what do the people who actually worked on the movie say about the narrative, while we're at it:-

We're also still working on the sequence where Mad Max crashes his A-wing into Vader's ship and causes the star destroyer to lose control and crash into the Deathstar. The penetration shot with the mushroom-cloud explosion we've had for some time, and we've got the shot where the ship's been hit and is starting to heel over. A very large explosion is coming out of the bridge area and it's causing several others to go as well; and one of the big radar domes up on top has been blown away, and that's spewing flames. It's pretty spectacular. Between that sort of closeup of the bridge section and the long-shot of the surface, we need two more cuts of the ship continuing to heel over and dropping towards the Deathstar like an arrow. We've shot a number of elements on those - explosions and things that have to be projected onto the miniatures - and so they're pretty much ready to go. Don Dow will be shooting those tomorrow.

I have always railed against the bullshit "canon" Star Wars pulls for it's "numbers" and the off screen bullshit too.
Blasters have the megajules, but yet... can't seem to penetrate ice or do more than splinter wood.

Yeah. It really does seem like Saxton and guys like him are watching completely different films than the rest of us sometimes.

Mmm, yes. Like, in the films you watched, blasters can't penetrate ice or splinter wood. In the films I watched, blasters did varying levels of damage to many different objects throughout many different scenes. I mean, wow - its almost like their firepower varies. But that's just, you know - observation. It can be real difficult.

I think the combined fleet bombardment is a regular Gulf of Tonkin incident - it never actually happened.

Unfortuantely for your argument we have multiple canon sources saying it did. So it happened.

At Endor, pounded mercilessly by the capital ships of the Rebel Alliance flotilla, the ship's shields fail. At that moment, the Rebels are able to strafe the command tower - and with the Executor's navigation suite in ruins and defensive guns losing coordination, a careening A-Wing destroys the bridge.

The destruction of the Executor came at the Battle of Endor, when Admiral Ackbar had the entire firepower of the Rebel fleet directed at the Executor alone. Although that assault managed to breach the Executor's shields, the ship survived even that apocalypse in functional condition. It was not until an A-Wing fighter smashed into the Executor's bridge that the ship lost functional control. It fell into the second Death Star and was destroyed on impact.

"Forward ships have made contact with the Imperial fleet, sir."

"Concentrate your fire on their power generators. If we can knock out their shields, our fighters might stand a chance against them."

The Falcon plunged to the surface of the Death Star, followed by a horde of Rebel fighters, followed by a still massing but disorganized array of Imperial TIE fighters- while three Rebel Star Cruisers headed for the huge Imperial Super Star Destroyer, Vader's flagship, which seemed to be having difficulties with its guidance system.

Over the course of like ten seconds,

Totally irrelevant.

Like A, B, C, it just happens very quickly, one thing after the next. The position that there was a bombardment we never saw that took down a shield generator or any other piece of equipment we never saw that coincidentally took place at the exact same time as the attack and damage we did see is kinda ridiculous.

Funnily enough, the novel has the ship under attack from Rebel ships well before Ackbar gave his order, dovetailing quite nicely with Ackbar's order for the fleet to attack the enemy capital ship's power generators to knock down their shields at the start of the battle.

A boredom cut is a possibility, but there's really no need to introduce these extra terms to the equation without some hard evidence.

Fortunately we have hard evidence. Refer above.

Now, there are a few flames apparently coming from nowhere on the ship, on the side and back of the tower, and later on the rear of the ship - 6:07 of that youtube. But, they apparently come from nowhere - there's no lasers that hit the ship on the outside. Looks like that fire comes from the inside.

So if you didn't see the Executor under attack from any other ships, it mustn't have happened? Leaving aside that canon sources say it did - which is the end of it - your belief it didn't happen is based on a single tight shot of one tiny point of view of a distinct part of a 19km long warship.