ESB Asteroid vs ISD.

[Rampage]

Looking for a little bit of insight here, mostly for debate purposes.

I'm sure you're all aware of the scene where an asteroid liberates an Imperator of it's command tower..

Yet, the Avenger takes many such hits..One large one even to it's trench, where one would think the armour was thinner. The novel says that the Avenger was undaunted by 'a rain of asteroids' that slammed against it's hull. And yet it took no damage.

And, Needa didn't order the shields raised until the Falcon was headed for the bridge..so the shields were down..Every hit was a hull strike.

My best guess is that the asteroid was mined..Nothing else makes sense.

Anyone else got any word on this particular scene? Something I may have overlooked?

[Kenoshi]

The asteroid that hit the ISD's conning tower was huge in comparison to the ones pelting the other destroyers....it was a big as the conning tower itself so it just plowed on through.

[Havok]

That is a great scene. Love how Vader doesn't even bat an eye.
That asteroid was pretty fucking big, if it didn't just plow right through like Kenoshi said, it at least did a whole crap load of damage.

I'm not up on the technical side of things like everyone else seems to be, but wouldn't the navigation shields always be up and able to deflect the smaller asteroids? And the shields they raise when the Falcon is attacking are combat rated shields?

[Kenoshi]

I would think that the Star Destroyers' shields were up....that's why all those little asteroid impacts weren't making holes in their hulls. When the Falcon charged Needa's destroyer they had all left the asteroid field so maybe the destroyer's shields did not have to be up full power.

[Rampage]

Wars ships have, as a standard, two types of shielding. Ray and partical shielding. Needa just said 'Shields up!'. The partical shielding may have already been up to deflect the asteroids, and Needa ordered the ray shielding up to prevent quad-laser fire from inflicting any damage.

But, the novel says:

Undaunted by the steady rain of asteroids on its massive hull, the Star Destroyer relentlessly followed the smaller ship.

And

A small freighter could not do much damage if it collided against a Star Destroyer's hull, but if it smashed through the bridge windows, the control deck would be littered with corpses.

Which would indicate that NO shielding was active aboard the Avenger.

[Kenoshi]

Haven't read the novelization in a loooong time but what I recall from the movie is that after escaping the space slug the Falcon cleared the asteroid field so it could try to jump to hyperspace, and the ISDs were in close pursuit (hence C3P0's comically timed remark about how relieved he was to be free of the asteroids even as the Falcon was being pelted by turbolasers). So in that phase of the pursuit, at least in the movie, everyone was clear of the asteroids so the ISDs would not feel the need to have their shields up.