Fighters switching shields for diamond-boron-armour.

FTeik · Post by **FTeik** » 2006-03-02 04:10pm

Diamond-boron-armour was introduced in "Shadows of the Empire" and recently made a comeback with the so-called Broadside-frigate from "Empire at War".

Basically this armour was used by the empire to protect its missiles against point-defence-cannons.

I don't think, that this kind of armour would be useful against PDCs of capital-ships, which can have firepower in the megaton-range, but the same is true for fighter-shields. Against the kiloton-strong figher-weapons the armour should offer sufficent protection.

Do you think such a change would make sense, if the weight of the armour doesn't surpass the weight of shield-generator/projector and the fuel used to power the shield?

Lazarus · Post by **Lazarus** » 2006-03-02 04:21pm

I would expect that it depends on the cost, the impression I got was that Diamond-Boran armour plating is too expensive for widespread use. Its deployment in Empire at War is just a game mechanic used to give that particular unit a special ability. If it were that defensively capable, wouldn't it be deployed on all hulls?

Cos Dashit · Post by **Cos Dashit** » 2006-03-02 06:17pm

How thick would the diamond/boron armor be? Just a coating or a few feet? Can a, say, 36-megaton nuclear bomb damage a diamond in any way? Granted, the diamond would be spread out over a large surface area, making it easier to damage, dent, etc.

Einhander Sn0m4n · Post by **Einhander Sn0m4n** » 2006-03-02 07:59pm

Cos Dashit wrote:
Einhander Sn0m4n wrote:
Cos Dashit wrote:How thick would the diamond/boron armor be?
On a fighter, I'd imagine a few centimeters
Cos DaSHIT wrote:Just a coating or a few feet?
You really are bloody thick, aren't you? A coating would do naught but confer scratch resistance. A few feet would leave NO ROOM WHATSOEVER for anything a fighter is made of.
We were talking about a frigate, which would probably have a thicker coating than a few centimeters.

And when I said a coating, I meant about one centimeter.

Okay, the OP and every other one (save for IP's completely non-contributing-as-per-usual post

, which I'll deal with later) led me to think we were dealing with fighters, because I didn't see the Broadside-frigate mention in FTeik's post. A 'coating' of one centimeter or a later a meter thick is much more reasonable for a frigate or larger vessel. You simply didn't specify whether it was a fighter or a frigate you were asking about.

Lone_Prodigy · Post by **Lone_Prodigy** » 2006-03-02 08:05pm

Either way, this armor must be an ineffective replacement for whatever reason, considering how the only proliferation of it seems to be armoring missiles and a game mechanic (similar to gaining a very powerful rifle with three-shot bursts of purple energy in Battlefront 2 after ~12 kills?).

Most likely the armor is either ineffective against something that usually won't affect missiles or it is far too expensive to be used en masse. Maybe it easily shatters on collision with a hard surface (a non-issue for a missile) or maybe coating a TIE fighter with it would cost as much as another 10 TIEs.

Did Empire at War provide any more information about its limitations?

Chris OFarrell · Post by **Chris OFarrell** » 2006-03-02 09:12pm

For the record people, the Diamond-Boren is a covering on missiles, NOT ships. In Shadows of the Empire, the Freighter/Q-Ship Suprosa fired the missiles at a pack of Y-Wings in close formation. Dash Render tried to shoot the missile down and his Quad lasers did keep on hitting it, but they were ineffective and the missile detonated in the middle of a flight of Y-Wings, killing them all.

The ship in Empires at War (specificly the Maurder Corvette) is NOT armored with Diamond Boren, it FIRES salvos of these missiles. It's a long range fire support ship, kinda like the Steamrunner class in ST Armarda.

And if Dahs's quad lasers can't take out the missiles with repeated hits, I don't think the point defence weapons on capital ships would have much of a better chance, the quad lasers being equal to the Falcons, which in turn are more or less the same deal.
In all probability you would need Turbolasers.

Cykeisme · Post by **Cykeisme** » 2006-03-02 10:30pm

Perhaps slugthrowing (physical kinetic energy projectiles) weapons would fare better against this wankish missile armor?

Anyway, would I be wrong in saying that the Y-Wings were only it because they didn't take evasive action, due to expecting the missile to be shot down? Once they know about those missiles, they can deploy jamming, countermeasures and/or evasive maneuvers.

If those armored missiles are very expensive, it would ruin their cost effectiveness if they were defeated through evasion as easily missiles without the diamond-boron plating.

Connor MacLeod · Post by **Connor MacLeod** » 2006-03-03 12:19am

Chris hit the nail on the head, pretty much. According to the EGW&T turbolasers can take out a DBM, but most have trouble tracking that kind of target. However, I should point out that they do say that the weapons are "almost" impervious to starfighter lasers, meaning that they probably CAN be breached, eventually (capital scale lasers? your guess is as good as mine.) It is quite possible, note, that Render's ship was not consistently scoring direct hits on the missile (its got higher acceleration and drive endurance than most concussion missiles and proton torpedoes, meaning it probably can be much harder to track.)

And, as Lazarus and Lone_Prodigy mentioned, it was expensive armoring. The Rebels probably couldn't afford it (assuming they had access to it) and the Empire wouldn't bother, since starfighters were largely support craft to begin with.

That said, you probably could stick the armor on a fighter and it would behave like Fteik asked, at least by what little we know. What we don''t know is of any tradeoffs (such as: is it heavy? Its possible that its weight is not a factor at that scale, given the apparently more powerful drive system the DBM employs to begin with. Also, does the armor favor higher thermal resistance at the expense of being more easily damaged by physical impactors, as Cykeisme mentioned.) There could be other reasons why its not used (aside from cost) that limit its effectiveness in larger applications.

Oh yeah, Primey and Einy: While watching you two duke it out is as amusing as watching a cripple fight, and as humorous as it is to see Ein jump on someone with no good reason (and Primey hypocritically criticizing Ein for trying to "act like Mike"), would you two shut it and take it out of the thread? I'm not really in a mood right now to watch that go on until it gets split and sent off to the Hos because two people have bruised egos.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-03 01:18am

Chris OFarrell wrote:

For the record people, the Diamond-Boren is a covering on missiles, NOT ships. In Shadows of the Empire, the Freighter/Q-Ship Suprosa fired the missiles at a pack of Y-Wings in close formation. Dash Render tried to shoot the missile down and his Quad lasers did keep on hitting it, but they were ineffective and the missile detonated in the middle of a flight of Y-Wings, killing them all.

The ship in Empires at War (specificly the Maurder Corvette) is NOT armored with Diamond Boren, it FIRES salvos of these missiles. It's a long range fire support ship, kinda like the Steamrunner class in ST Armarda.

And if Dahs's quad lasers can't take out the missiles with repeated hits, I don't think the point defence weapons on capital ships would have much of a better chance, the quad lasers being equal to the Falcons, which in turn are more or less the same deal.
In all probability you would need Turbolasers.

I was under the impression all ISD-level point defence was handled by small TLs, not starfighter-level 'laser cannons'.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-03-03 01:38am

The point-defense guns on warships are orders of magnitude more powerful than fighter guns, although they can be dialed down if necessary.

FTeik · Post by **FTeik** » 2006-03-03 09:23am

Since the DBM was only deployed shortly before ROTJ, i would have blamed the fall-out of the battle of Endor and not necessarily the costs for the DBM not seeing wide-spread use (similar to what happened to TIE-Avenger and TIE-Defender).

I mean, if the stuff is used on missiles, that are only used once and then go boom ...

So would it make sense to switch shields against this kind of armour, if it doesn't add additional weight to the fighter (as already stated in the OP)?

To make fighters more stealthy, less maintainance-heavy or give them longer periods of time, where they can be active (since they don't have to spent fuel to power shields)?

Shroom Man 777 · Post by **Shroom Man 777** » 2006-03-03 10:36am

Diamond boron? Withstanding something that yields in the kilotons? Isn't that kind of stupid? Seeing as how both diamond and boron ain't fancy dancy unobtanium substances. Last time I check, neither diamond nor boron could withstand anything remotely near a KT.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-03-03 11:00am

Shroom Man 777 wrote:Diamond boron? Withstanding something that yields in the kilotons? Isn't that kind of stupid? Seeing as how both diamond and boron ain't fancy dancy unobtanium substances. Last time I check, neither diamond nor boron could withstand anything remotely near a KT.

Nor would they even withstand mild shocks, being rather brittle. But then again, the concept of "diamond boron" doesn't even make any sense, since diamond is a particular form of carbon and there's no room for boron in that structure.

FTeik · Post by **FTeik** » 2006-03-03 03:25pm

I'll complain about it to Steve Perry the next time i talk to him.

For the sake of discussion, can we pretend, that "diamond-boron" is a mis-nomer to confuse spies?

Noble Ire · Post by **Noble Ire** » 2006-03-03 03:32pm

FTeik wrote:I'll complain about it to Steve Perry the next time i talk to him.

For the sake of discussion, can we pretend, that "diamond-boron" is a mis-nomer to confuse spies?

That's hardly necessary, unless you think the term "turbolaser cannon" is was circulated by Imperial Intel to trick the Rebels into thinking that ISDs were armed with some sort of laser-guided, fuse-ignited projectile weapon.

More than likely, its simply a layman's term for a far more complicated structure, or perhaps a holdover from a predecessor of the armor.

nightmare · Post by **nightmare** » 2006-03-03 03:57pm

One could say that it's boron reshaped into something that simply looks like diamond, for example, and there's actually no carbon involved.

Or "boron" happens to be a short form trade name for a substance that may or may not contain boron, and the new "diamond boron" version is just a marketing name to show how supposedly much more awesome it is, so you have to buy the new type if you want to stay on top.

The simple fact that neither diamond or boron would make good armour, or let themselves to be easily combined into anything useful, strongly hints at a non-literal explanation.

The Dark · Post by **The Dark** » 2006-03-03 05:33pm

Darth Wong wrote:the concept of "diamond boron" doesn't even make any sense, since diamond is a particular form of carbon and there's no room for boron in that structure.

I know there are diamond-boron-diamond matrices, as well as diamond-boron carbides, and also boron doped diamonds for use in LEDs, but I don't know much about the physical properties of any of these.

Diamond boron is also an old (19th century American) term for borax, although I highly doubt borax has any wonderful armor properties

.

Cos Dashit · Post by **Cos Dashit** » 2006-03-03 05:51pm

The Dark wrote:I know there are diamond-boron-diamond matrices, as well as diamond-boron carbides, and also boron doped diamonds for use in LEDs, but I don't know much about the physical properties of any of these.

I'm looking at the Periodic Table of the Elements and wondering how carbon and boron can form an isotope together. It looks like they both need to acquire electrons in order to form a stable bond together.

Perhaps they threw in additional elements to stabalize the compound? Any information would be great.

An Ancient · Post by **An Ancient** » 2006-03-03 05:57pm

The Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology says the following on the missiles;

At nearly twenty thousand credits each, they are prohibitively expensive compared to laser cannons and turbolasers, which can be used indefinitely. The missile's reputation has been further tarnished by incidents in which faulty warheads have exploded while in storage.

So it would appear that this stuff is expensive, given a concussion missile is only 750 credits, I'm imagining a lot of this cost is the armour.

Jim Raynor · Post by **Jim Raynor** » 2006-03-03 08:11pm

The new Databank entry on the Broadside-class cruiser also says that these diamond boron missiles are expensive, and that later Broadsides used cheaper concussion missiles.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-03 09:42pm

So whats the point? Is it just a handwave to allow long-range missiles in a game where really they should be shot down with point defence? Need I point out that the game features torpedoes and smaller missiles with run times approaching ten seconds that aren't shot down? It doesn't make much sense to me.

Winston Blake · Post by **Winston Blake** » 2006-03-04 04:25am

Cos Dashit wrote:
The Dark wrote:I know there are diamond-boron-diamond matrices, as well as diamond-boron carbides, and also boron doped diamonds for use in LEDs, but I don't know much about the physical properties of any of these.
I'm looking at the Periodic Table of the Elements and wondering how carbon and boron can form an isotope together. It looks like they both need to acquire electrons in order to form a stable bond together.

Perhaps they threw in additional elements to stabalize the compound? Any information would be great.

Isotope
Boron Carbide

FTeik · Post by **FTeik** » 2006-03-04 05:46am

Can we now go back to the discussion, if using this kind of armour (independant from the question, if the name makes sense in real life or if it is just a mis-nomer) instead of shields would make sense/would be a good idea under certain circumstances.

nightmare · Post by **nightmare** » 2006-03-04 06:20am

The answer would be "no", since the Empire stopped using them. Though, the effect of the armor appears, possibly, to be superior to shields. Fighter shields just take a few hits. However, these D-B missiles are capital scale, though we don't really know the size. They may be larger than fighters and could as such have stronger shields. Optimally, you'd use both... which is an uncovered possibility. Obviously a missile with shields and D-B armor would be stronger than one just with shields.

FTeik · Post by **FTeik** » 2006-03-04 04:15pm

There were shields on the DBM? You're sure you don't confuse them with the missiles of the galaxy-gun?

As for "the empire stopped using them":

FTeik wrote:Since the DBM was only deployed shortly before ROTJ, i would have blamed the fall-out of the battle of Endor and not necessarily the costs for the DBM not seeing wide-spread use (similar to what happened to TIE-Avenger and TIE-Defender).

Seriously, how often do we see capital-missile-use by the empire in the post-ROTJ-era to be able to claim, that the empire stopped using them?