Shells or TL poop! WTF are these things?

[PunkMaister]

As many of you I have obtained a DVD copy of ROTS and found a particular scene inside Grievious ship after the chancillor is rescued a republic ship gets near it and begins blasting at it. and there's an scnene where you see something like shells being discarded from the back of the cannons and and being automatically repaced by a rail system.


Look at it!
And this:


Then the chain reaction that follows a blast also caught my eye as well:
There's a huge fireball just like it would be on a regular big cannon as seen above and then is followed by an intense energy beam... I think!


But it does not stop there! Then there is this power surge steming from the staff-like rod on the cannon it travels all along that rod as seeen in this sequence:




Then another smaller bright beam comes out as seen in this last sequence:



Anyhow does anyone know what those shell like things are?
More importantly if they are indeed shells how can it be so?
Isn't Turbolasers supposed to be Energy weapons?

Could anybody please answer this questions?

[Darwin]

Could be a number of things.. first off.. your last four pictures, that's just fire from other guns/ships.

As far as the huge shells, this could be a projectile gun of some sort, or a warhead launcher, as protorps and the like end up looking like energy beams too. Most likely?

single-use capacitors to power a turbolaser rated much, much higher than the output of a converted merchant ship like that could normally support. This way, you can just bolt the turbolaser in anywhere without having to put in a new reactor and rewire the entire damn ship.

<edit for my sucky typing>

[Spanky The Dolphin]

Jesus, could you seriously have asked this question in a worse way, Punky Brewster?

Since they're using SHELLS, the first obvious conclusion should be that they aren't turbolasers and some sort of solid projectile.

I mean, really...

EDIT: Didn't most of us long ago decide that they were torpedo launchers or such?

[Noble Ire]

Jesus, could you seriously have asked this question in a worse way, Punky Brewster?

Since they're using SHELLS, the first obvious conclusion should be that they aren't turbolasers and some sort of solid projectile.

I mean, really...

EDIT: Didn't most of us long ago decide that they were torpedo launchers or such?

I believe that much is stated in the ICS. Proton Torpedoes.

[KhyronTheBackstabber]

In the RotS Visual Dictionary, they call it a Deck Cannon. It appears to be a mass-driver (After all it points to the barrel, and says "Mass-driver barrel")

Also, the "staff-like rod" is an ion cannon.

[PunkMaister]

In the RotS Visual Dictionary, they call it a Deck Cannon. It appears to be a mass-driver (After all it points to the barrel, and says "Mass-driver barrel")

Also, the "staff-like rod" is an ion cannon.

Thanks for the info... Much apreciated!

[dragon]

In the RotS Visual Dictionary, they call it a Deck Cannon. It appears to be a mass-driver (After all it points to the barrel, and says "Mass-driver barrel")

Also, the "staff-like rod" is an ion cannon.

Thanks for the info... Much apreciated!

Ok if its a mass driver what kind of damage potential are we talking as compared to a regular TL.

[18-Till-I-Die]

Probably a mass driver used to fire proton torps, which IIRC can range into the gigatons. So probably slightly less than a TL, but on the other hand possibly, i would imagine, less energy intensive so you can have a gazillion of them and thus a roughly equal firepower to a TL armed ship but with more energy for shields.

Of course thats all speculation on my part but its the only reason i can think of using projectile weapons when you have something like a turbolaser as well.

[Hedgehog's Roommate]

In the AOTC:ICS it states that the reason blaster weapons were used instead of projectile weapons for clonetroopers was that blaster "ammo" takes less space. Seems to imply that projectile weapons are potentially as destructive as blasters. I would think the main difference though would be in how that power got there. Projectile weapons ought to have more KE than energy weapons, but the energy weapons are probably going to overload a sheild faster.

[Alan Bolte]

The ICS makes no specific mention of mass drivers, and is not quite enlightening about these weapons. There is a line pointing in the general direction of the cannons and ending in the trench below which indicates a 4.8 MT point-defense ion cannon. It has been argued that it may be referring to a gun in the trench, but given that no gun is visible and the ICS is a very visual document (as opposed to, say, the EGVV), I find this a bit hard to believe. Add to that, there are 12 of these weapons, and exactly 12 ion cannons are listed in the data box. Additionally, there is no obvious way to account for all the torpedo launchers listed in the data box, so these cannons could be those as well. This potentially fits with the VD, which indicates both an ion cannon and a mass driver.

[VT-16]

The VD shows a profile pic of the Separatist deck cannon with an ordinance belt attached. This projectile-cannon also has a thin ion cannon on top of it.

It's the same as the ones pictured here.