SW Fighter craft tech questions

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-05-20 02:52am

If you're saying Xwing cannon are useful against a fully shielded ISD, you're just being silly.

PS, try punctuation. Like this. And, also, this!

Hawkwings · Post by **Hawkwings** » 2006-05-20 02:56am

X-wings cannot damage shielded ISDs. At all. Period. The ISD's shields are too strong, and any enegy expended to breaking them would get disappated far faster than the X-wing could throw it out.

BTW, Skipray Blastboat > B-wing

In fact, Skipray > pretty much any other subcapital ship in SW.

Jim Raynor · Post by **Jim Raynor** » 2006-05-20 02:57am

evangelion1 wrote:what makes you think Xwing guns are useless against a star destroyer and whatnot think about it if they could sustain a burst of fire long enough then they might be able to break through the shields and damage the hull however i do admit that it would be almost impossible for a Xwing to open fire on a star destroyer and not get blown to pieces by the enemy ships guns and fighters and it would most likely take a few weeks to do so but it could be done

Medium sized turbolasers on an Acclamator transport have been rated at 200 gigatons per shot. The ICS books put fighter cannons at 1-2 kilotons. Do the math.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-05-20 02:58am

Actually, things like the Blastboat are much more sensible for Bwing-esque superfighters. They're larger, pack proper weapons, have space for respectable powerplants etc. Not a pair of chopsticks with a cockpit.

EDIT - It turns out the blastboat isn't as large as I thought. Still.

lPeregrine · Post by **lPeregrine** » 2006-05-20 07:29pm

Stark wrote:Of course, I bet you call TIE-D guns small and weak then consider the Bwing guns full power? Not that it really makes any difference, since TIE guns are quite fine at killing fighters, the rate of fire is excellent, and Xwing guns are still worthless against anything serious. I just want to know if that's what you think.

The B-Wing isn't as tiny as a TIE-D's ball. I'm just saying they're probably relatively weak for starfighter guns. The TIE-D's huge list of weapons looks a lot less absurd if you just say it has slightly more total firepower than other similarly-sized ships, but divided up among more guns.

I actually didn't even say anything about the B-Wing, my comment was only aimed at rationalizing the TIE-D's game statistics that were mentioned.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-05-20 07:36pm

The TIE-Ds guns are similar in size to TIE guns... so what's the problem? We already know that very effective weapons can be fit into that small a design. Saying 'lolz game balance, rapid fire=weak' is just bullshit. Those 'weak' guns could kill the Falcon, for fucks sake! TIE guns are just better/more advanced/more expensive than the crappy rebel guns, the end.

lPeregrine · Post by **lPeregrine** » 2006-05-20 08:48pm

Stark wrote:The TIE-Ds guns are similar in size to TIE guns... so what's the problem? We already know that very effective weapons can be fit into that small a design. Saying 'lolz game balance, rapid fire=weak' is just bullshit. Those 'weak' guns could kill the Falcon, for fucks sake! TIE guns are just better/more advanced/more expensive than the crappy rebel guns, the end.

Err, I'm not quite sure what you're arguing with me about? If anything, your arguments are in complete agreement with mine. The TIE-D is not an impossible uber-ship unless you start with the assumption that it is.

My point with that statement was addressing the assumption that the TIE-D is an insane fanboy design with absurd video-game ubership roots. They keep quoting "OMG FOUR LASERS + IONS!!!", making the assumption that this is an unrealistic number. But as I explained, it isn't. The fatal flaw in the argument is that they assume all laser cannons are equal in power, TIE-fighter = 2, X-Wing = 4, TIE-D = 6, etc.

The TIE-Defender's design works just fine if you assume that each of its 6 guns have (for example) half the firepower of a TIE-fighter's. So you get a ship with 50% more firepower and better rate of fire/weapon spread. Better as an advanced design should be, but not so impossibly advanced that we have to throw the entire TIE-D design out as a video-game mistake.

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2006-05-20 09:05pm

lPeregrine wrote:
Stark wrote:The TIE-Ds guns are similar in size to TIE guns... so what's the problem? We already know that very effective weapons can be fit into that small a design. Saying 'lolz game balance, rapid fire=weak' is just bullshit. Those 'weak' guns could kill the Falcon, for fucks sake! TIE guns are just better/more advanced/more expensive than the crappy rebel guns, the end.
Err, I'm not quite sure what you're arguing with me about? If anything, your arguments are in complete agreement with mine. The TIE-D is not an impossible uber-ship unless you start with the assumption that it is.

My point with that statement was addressing the assumption that the TIE-D is an insane fanboy design with absurd video-game ubership roots. They keep quoting "OMG FOUR LASERS + IONS!!!", making the assumption that this is an unrealistic number. But as I explained, it isn't. The fatal flaw in the argument is that they assume all laser cannons are equal in power, TIE-fighter = 2, X-Wing = 4, TIE-D = 6, etc.

The TIE-Defender's design works just fine if you assume that each of its 6 guns have (for example) half the firepower of a TIE-fighter's. So you get a ship with 50% more firepower and better rate of fire/weapon spread. Better as an advanced design should be, but not so impossibly advanced that we have to throw the entire TIE-D design out as a video-game mistake.

Really, the major advancement of the TIE-D was the addition of ion cannons to a nimble TIE base. TIE Interceptors had 4 wing-mounted cannons and the TIE-Avenger (the game's upgraded version of Vader's two-gun TIE-Advance) had four as well, plus launchers. The defender was stated, often, as an admission that the Rebels were onto something with their use of fighters. It's best to consider it an enhanced-durability TIE-Interceptor with some extra bells and whistles.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-05-20 09:12pm

lPeregrine wrote:Err, I'm not quite sure what you're arguing with me about? If anything, your arguments are in complete agreement with mine. The TIE-D is not an impossible uber-ship unless you start with the assumption that it is.

My point with that statement was addressing the assumption that the TIE-D is an insane fanboy design with absurd video-game ubership roots. They keep quoting "OMG FOUR LASERS + IONS!!!", making the assumption that this is an unrealistic number. But as I explained, it isn't. The fatal flaw in the argument is that they assume all laser cannons are equal in power, TIE-fighter = 2, X-Wing = 4, TIE-D = 6, etc.

The TIE-Defender's design works just fine if you assume that each of its 6 guns have (for example) half the firepower of a TIE-fighter's. So you get a ship with 50% more firepower and better rate of fire/weapon spread. Better as an advanced design should be, but not so impossibly advanced that we have to throw the entire TIE-D design out as a video-game mistake.

Oh. I'm in agreement with your premise, but I don't see why the TIE-D guns necessarily need to be weaker than the TIEs, since the TIE-D has more room for powerplant (I think, I've seen many different pictures of TIE-Ds). TIE-Is have wingtip guns, too.

NRS Guardian · Post by **NRS Guardian** » 2006-05-20 09:58pm

When I said ARCs have megaton resistant shielding I meant its shields are probably better than B-wing shields. Also, ARCs probably carry 6 torpedoes that are larger than the standard fighter-mounted torpedoes since they have that big bomb bay in the fuselage. Furthermore the ARC is probably equal if not superior to the B-wing especially since it carries those two big cannons. X-wings are supposedly capable of carrying 6 anti-capship torpedoes so a B-wing carrying twice as many isn't that far-fetched.
All I was saying was that the ARC is a long-range scout/fighter-bomber while the B-wing was designed as a heavy assault fighter so the B-wing might only carry what is absolutely necessary for its role. Also, I always figured you'd need at least a squadron of B-wings to knock out an N-B and that against an ISD B-wings are pretty much screwed unless there's capship support or hundreds of them.
Besides where are you getting this notion that the B-wing is some uber-bomber of doom that kills ISDs single-handedly and has shields, guns, and torpedoes capable of making it a threat to anything more than the smallest capital ships? If it's just based on game mechanics than those can be ignored.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-05-20 11:49pm

TIE-Is have TEN guns, Covenant. Five pairs of TIE-esque guns. Having many guns is not unusual, although it's not clear what the actual advantage is. And I've never heard a plausible reason to put ion cannons on fighters - particularly since I'm a movie purist and the movies have ships being crippled by precision turbo fire, not 'magic disabling ion cannon'.

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2006-05-21 01:52am

Stark wrote:TIE-Is have TEN guns, Covenant. Five pairs of TIE-esque guns. Having many guns is not unusual, although it's not clear what the actual advantage is. And I've never heard a plausible reason to put ion cannons on fighters - particularly since I'm a movie purist and the movies have ships being crippled by precision turbo fire, not 'magic disabling ion cannon'.

Whoah, ten? Where's the fifth set go? Also, my essential guide to vehicles and crap is old, but it says four. So... TEN? Yeesh. That's pretty crazy--is that to increase their ROF? Or can they alpha-strike all ten?

I think you might be calling the two nodes on the ball a pair of guns. My material here shows those two things on both the TIE-Interceptors and Defenders as missile launchers while the sticky-outie ones on the wings as guns. What we need is some screenshots--weren't they used in ROTJ's SE?

As for ions, I always got the feeling that they were useful against big ships because of the way they disrupted systems. We see in the Hoth battle that the big planetary Ion could mess with an ISD for at least a few seconds after a pair of hits or so. And didn't that cannon suppress a few ISD's at least during that battle, or weren't there a bunch?

Anyway, the Y-Wing had Ions and was a sorta bombery craft. The B-Wing had Ions too, and it was talked about as if it were a bomber. Now, maybe both torps and ions are only really useful against an unshielded ship (except in the case of massive ground-based facilities), and it would let them disable a few specific systems rather than just blow the ship up with torps.

Also, doesn't an ISD have ions? Do we ever see them fire? Do Venators have ions? I always see precision TL fire, as you said, being used to knock out systems. Do we actually have any film evidence or reference for ions being fired from a fighter? I think I may have seen a Y-Wing shoot them once but I can't recall. Quite likely just my imagination.

Furthermore, what is an ion cannon good for anyway? If they were the insta-kill against systems and droids that games and some EU stuff seems to tell us they are, why do the clonetroopers not carry a lot of Ion weapons? They could fire indiscriminately into crowds without much risk of hurting people, couldn't they? Or are they some sort of dedicated electrical arcing round? Is it at all possible that the 'stun' setting of a blaster is similar to an ion shot? Seems odd that we never see hardly any evidence for any ion cannons being used despite how insanely powerful they're said to be, or how often we see them in the movies wanting to disable things.

Amidala's craft escaping? Zing them with an ion! Jedi Starfighter getting away? A few ion rounds and Obi-Wan's dead in the water! Blockade Runner running? Ions instead of TL's. Aluminum Falcons giving you trouble across three whole movies? Ions, ions, ions!

Where are the ions? ;p I think the only ion we ever really see is R2 getting shot by a Jawa, if even that.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-05-21 01:54am

Frankly, I'm a crazy coot who thinks yield is more important than 'ionness' or 'turbotude'. The whole blue ion cannon of disabling is an EU invention, and it can fuck off and die.

The ISD etc is supposed to have ions - but no, we never see them fire, and in all the movies ships are ALWAYS disabled by precision, carefully modulated turbo fire. Ions as disabling = brainbug, stupid, I hate it.

TIE-Is have four wingtip guns, each win hub has another pair, and it's still got the regular two in the ball. God knows why, since a pair can kill ships as large as the Falcon.

Post by **Ghost Rider** » 2006-05-21 02:05am

There's really only one reason the whole Ion=disabling ship came from, and that's from one movie, and two shots from a PLANETARY version.

Jim Raynor · Post by **Jim Raynor** » 2006-05-21 02:07am

Well, to be fair there was the big planetary ion cannon on Hoth. However there was no explicit evidence of ion cannons on an ISD in the OT.

Someone else once brought up a good point though. Ion cannons = blue is definately an EU invention. A Venator's regular turbolasers are blue. It could very well be that a lot of those green shots in the OT were ion blasts.

Noble Ire · Post by **Noble Ire** » 2006-05-21 02:08am

Frankly, I'm a crazy coot who thinks yield is more important than 'ionness' or 'turbotude'. The whole blue ion cannon of disabling is an EU invention, and it can fuck off and die. The ISD etc is supposed to have ions - but no, we never see them fire, and in all the movies ships are ALWAYS disabled by precision, carefully modulated turbo fire. Ions as disabling = brainbug, stupid, I hate it.

If that was the case, then why didn't the Hoth planetary battery simply blow a hole in the blockading Star Destroyer, or at least do more visible damage? I've always seen that as an obvious demonstration of the weapon's ability to simply sew massive interal chaos; how could a simple precision turbolaser hit make the ISD's drives go haywire and knock out its targeting systems, all without visibly penetrating the armor plate?

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-05-21 02:14am

On the flip side, do you think a turbolaser of similar power would have blown through the shields and killed the ship? Either you do, and the ion cannon is nothing special, or you don't, and you think ion cannons can inflict damage through shields... something that is never, ever seen again. If they're magic disable guns, WHY NOT EVER USE THEM EVER EVER AGAIN EVER? Sorry, but any explanation for the Hoth cannon effects that DOESN'T require us to assume all ion cannons in all the movies were mysteriously broken beats the current 'EU is right' situation.

Ion cannons have been placed in the armament of almost every type of SW ship... and never been SEEN on any of them. I'm not opposed to non-TL weapons in SW: they fire shells too, and I don't care. I'm opposed to the idea of a magic disable gun that nobody ever uses, but is all over the EU. It's a gameplay mechanic that's grown and become accepted - but that's all it is. Game bullshit. Every time someone tries to disable a ship in the movies by carefully breaking bits of it, it blows away the EU idea of ion cannons and their operation.

PS, it didn't even HIT armour plate. I thought both shots struct the exposed superstructure?

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2006-05-21 02:20am

Noble Ire wrote:
Frankly, I'm a crazy coot who thinks yield is more important than 'ionness' or 'turbotude'. The whole blue ion cannon of disabling is an EU invention, and it can fuck off and die. The ISD etc is supposed to have ions - but no, we never see them fire, and in all the movies ships are ALWAYS disabled by precision, carefully modulated turbo fire. Ions as disabling = brainbug, stupid, I hate it.
If that was the case, then why didn't the Hoth planetary battery simply blow a hole in the blockading Star Destroyer, or at least do more visible damage? I've always seen that as an obvious demonstration of the weapon's ability to simply sew massive interal chaos; how could a simple precision turbolaser hit make the ISD's drives go haywire and knock out its targeting systems, all without visibly penetrating the armor plate?

We also had all sorts of arcing all over the ISD's hull. Thing is though, that planetary ion cannon's shot was red.

http://www.stardestroyer.net/tlc/Ion/index.html

So... blue rays disabling shields and systems? Seems more likely that the jawa gun was just described as a sort of electrical short-circuting 'ion' static zappy gun. And like the Emperor's lightning, the FX team went with blue.

Also also, I think that yield is still important with ions. Even if their effect is different, I believe they still need a gigantic planetary emplacement to slap an ISD around long enough for their ships to escape. As for why they didn't just make a giant planetary TL... it's a good question. It seems to penetrate the shields. Remember though that shields are primarily just below the first few layers of hull. They are essentially projected through the hull. If ion effects penetrate somewhat, or are even conducted by shields, it would support the theory that they can mess with a shielded ship, but that firepower (and shield penetration capacity) is important if you want to do more than mess up a few surface systems.

Noble Ire · Post by **Noble Ire** » 2006-05-21 02:23am

On the flip side, do you think a turbolaser of similar power would have blown through the shields and killed the ship? Either you do, and the ion cannon is nothing special, or you don't, and you think ion cannons can inflict damage through shields... something that is never, ever seen again. If they're magic disable guns, WHY NOT EVER USE THEM EVER EVER AGAIN EVER? Sorry, but any explanation for the Hoth cannon effects that DOESN'T require us to assume all ion cannons in all the movies were mysteriously broken beats the current 'EU is right' situation.

Ion cannons have been placed in the armament of almost every type of SW ship... and never been SEEN on any of them. I'm not opposed to non-TL weapons in SW: they fire shells too, and I don't care. I'm opposed to the idea of a magic disable gun that nobody ever uses, but is all over the EU. It's a gameplay mechanic that's grown and become accepted - but that's all it is. Game bullshit. Every time someone tries to disable a ship in the movies by carefully breaking bits of it, it blows away the EU idea of ion cannons and their operation.

You have a point; I still stand by my explanation for the planetary Ion cannon, but their prevelance on starships and lack of usage is troubling. Even if shipboard ones were only effective on ships that were already stripped of shields, they would be used more. The EU description of them is highly suspect; I can see them in for usage in capturing probes, fighters, and shuttles, but that wouldn't explain why a ship like an ISD would have so many.

PS, it didn't even HIT armour plate. I thought both shots struct the exposed superstructure?

I would imagine that even those areas would have a degree of armor; they are rather large to be completely devoid of protection.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-05-21 02:26am

Really, I would have expected more analysis into this. We see the ion cannon disable - in the REAL meaning of disable, not the game 'disable' - an ISD with a few shots. However, even ISDs chasing corvettes don't use ion guns - and they've apparently got mid-sized ones all over. The tradefed didn't use ions either. Surely there's a rationale here? It can't be disparity of power, because even if the ground cannon is very much stronger than an ISD, the ISD is very much more powerful than a corvette.

My preferred explanation is that it just doesn't scale. You can't make small ion guns. The ISD has heavy ions at the back of it's gundeck - so be it. They could be used to knock smaller ships out. The idea of FIGHTER ions, disabling other fighters or - fuck me - capital ships is silly.

EDIT - If I remember right, the shots miss the main armour. The other areas might be armoured, but the ion cannon was huge and a TL that size should have gutted the ship.

Noble Ire · Post by **Noble Ire** » 2006-05-21 02:32am

If I remember right, the shots miss the main armour. The other areas might be armoured, but the ion cannon was huge and a TL that size should have gutted the ship.

It does indeed miss the main armor; IIRC, it impacts on one of the elevated areas between "levels" on the ship's bow. And a turbolaser blast that size likely would have blown the ship in half; planetary turbolaser of a similar size as the Ion projector are noted as being able to destroy ISDs in two or three hits. As such, it must have been a non-direct damage weapon (at least for the most part), although I would imagine anything with a smaller powerplant behind it would have been ineffective.

Covenant · Post by **Covenant** » 2006-05-21 02:33am

Stark wrote:Really, I would have expected more analysis into this. We see the ion cannon disable - in the REAL meaning of disable, not the game 'disable' - an ISD with a few shots. However, even ISDs chasing corvettes don't use ion guns - and they've apparently got mid-sized ones all over. The tradefed didn't use ions either. Surely there's a rationale here? It can't be disparity of power, because even if the ground cannon is very much stronger than an ISD, the ISD is very much more powerful than a corvette.

My preferred explanation is that it just doesn't scale. You can't make small ion guns. The ISD has heavy ions at the back of it's gundeck - so be it. They could be used to knock smaller ships out. The idea of FIGHTER ions, disabling other fighters or - fuck me - capital ships is silly.

EDIT - If I remember right, the shots miss the main armour. The other areas might be armoured, but the ion cannon was huge and a TL that size should have gutted the ship.

The lack of scalability might also explain why Ion cannons are only seen, definitively, inside of a gigantic sphere--a shape I can't imagine designing intentionally as a hardened bunker surface. Or it may be that Ion cannons are in general short range weapons. We know TL's can be fired from a long way away, but that this cannon never really fired out of orbit to hit things. If a single cannon could mess up an ISD with a mere two shots fired in such quick succession, couldn't a planet like coruscant be counted upon to have MASSIVE counterbattery fire from similar systems? Yet we certainly never see those used in ROTS or any of the other planetary sieges in the movies. Those guns don't exactly look easy to move and assemble afterall--I doubt the rebels are the only ones who have one.

Anyway, my point is, if ions are a) difficult to miniturize and b) naturally short-ranged, it may be that a giant planetary version only has a range similar to planet-to-ISD as a maximum effective range... and that smaller ones are nearly point-blank weapons, difficult to maneuver against a non-stationary ship, and generally unnecessary given the relative durability of most ships. A light TL can knock out chunks of one and it won't crumple, so they may just not need to use Ion cannons at all, if they even do mount them.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-05-21 02:35am

That's my assumption - I've just reviewed the TC and SWTC, and there's not much you can learn from the ESB sequence. Given it's (apparently) non-lethal effects, maybe it's like the explosive solids - some kind of missile or submunition. Or maybe it's thousands of those little drill robots from ROTS.

Doesn't explain why it's not used more - but perhaps it's such a niche gun (after all, TLs can do the same thing) it was just a Rebel ace-in-the-hole.

Fingolfin_Noldor · Post by **Fingolfin_Noldor** » 2006-05-21 03:43am

There is the planetary turbolasers, which reputedly can rip apart an ISD with a few shots.

As for an ISD, I think ICS points 2 ion cannon turrets?

But yeah, there seems to be a remarkable lack of use of those weapons. In theory, precision shots by a turbolaser cannons could disable a ship.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-05-21 03:55am

No theory required - ANH *starts* with just that happening, and the TradeFed try it in TPM.