Blaster fire in ANH

[Admiral Johnason]

I was watching ANH the other day and I saw something interesting in the detention block scene. When Leia bplows up the grating, show blows a pretty big hole and the metal arounf the hole shows serious melting.

My question is this. Just how powerful are Imperial blasters and why don't we see bigger holes in people when they are shot?

[Surlethe]

My question is this. Just how powerful are Imperial blasters and why don't we see bigger holes in people when they are shot?

We mostly see stormtroopers being shot; it's a testament to the strength of Imperial armor that stormtroopers go down with small holes. I'm willing to bet the soldier who shot Leia was either running low on ammunition or was simply shooting to wound, since the one who came up a minute later was taking them prisoner instead of shooting them on sight.

I'm also fairly certain somebody's done analysis on how powerful the blasters are from the vaporized concrete in ANH when the stormtroopers try to detain Han Solo before he blasts off from Mos Eisley.

[Admiral Johnason]

When Rebels get hit, they just fall to the ground and look like they were shot with a normal handgun. The Imperial blaster blew a hole in the metal grating big enough for a wookie to fit through. Has this discrepency ever been explained.

[Stark]

Get this - maybe she upped the power setting. Shit, that was hard!

[AK_Jedi]

In the opening scene of ANH, the stormtroopers are boarding a spaceship, which they probably don't want to blow huge holes in. The shots they used were sufficient to kill, but not to cause tons of collateral damage.

[Admiral Johnason]

Get this - maybe she upped the power setting. Shit, that was hard!

Okay, so there is a super power setting that allows someone to blow through solid metal. I always thought that it had only one setting. They seem to have heavier weapons and grenades to handle harder targets. i was just wondering about this discrepency.

[Stark]

If you thought there was only one setting, you were wrong. They blow open doors with those guns, they blow huge chunks of concrete out with those guns, and they put tiny holes in rebel shirts with those guns. Sounds like power settings to me.

[DesertFly]

It's already been shown that "normal" blasters have at least a stun setting (ref. the beginning of ANH). It's certainly not a stretch to assume that they have more than just "stun" and "kill."

[Admiral Johnason]

It's already been shown that "normal" blasters have at least a stun setting (ref. the beginning of ANH). It's certainly not a stretch to assume that they have more than just "stun" and "kill."

But a grenade mode. It seems like a regular trooper doesn't need that much power.

[Connor MacLeod]

Get this - maybe she upped the power setting. Shit, that was hard!

Okay, so there is a super power setting that allows someone to blow through solid metal. I always thought that it had only one setting. They seem to have heavier weapons and grenades to handle harder targets. i was just wondering about this discrepency.

Multiple settings for blasters were specified in the ANH novelization. WEG and other sources like the SWTJ only reinforced the "variable settings" capability.

As far as firepower is concerned, you don't need the "blow huge holes in shit" level firepower to kill a person, even with an energy weapon. Kilojoule range outputs can do that just fine. It would be needlessly wasteful to use a larger amount of firepower when a smaller amount will get the job done (And as to why the power output should matter, consider cooling issues and conserving ammo in the powerpack.)

[DesertFly]

Get this - maybe she upped the power setting. Shit, that was hard!

Okay, so there is a super power setting that allows someone to blow through solid metal. I always thought that it had only one setting. They seem to have heavier weapons and grenades to handle harder targets. i was just wondering about this discrepency.

Multiple settings for blasters were specified in the ANH novelization. WEG and other sources like the SWTJ only reinforced the "variable settings" capability.

As far as firepower is concerned, you don't need the "blow huge holes in shit" level firepower to kill a person, even with an energy weapon. Kilojoule range outputs can do that just fine. It would be needlessly wasteful to use a larger amount of firepower when a smaller amount will get the job done (And as to why the power output should matter, consider cooling issues and conserving ammo in the powerpack.)

That would also make sense as to why Han would have "blow huge holes in shit" set on his blaster by default. He lives by the seat of his pants, and would never know when he was going to have to blast his way out of a situation. Stormtroopers and army troopers would probably be constrained by policy to only use as much power as absolutely necessary to complete their objective, but Han would be more concerned with living to figure out how much ammo he had used.

[Admiral Johnason]

Okay, I understand now.

[Darth Wong]

I covered this on my Ground Combat page. Real-life soldiers are trained to fight large numbers of enemies, hence they try to conserve ammo by default unless there is some particular reason to do otherwise. Therefore, stormtroopers would logically use the lowest setting on their blasters that can still reliably kill someone, so they can get more shots out of an ammo pack.

Criminals, on the other hand, generally don't get into the kind of combat that soldiers do, and they'll prefer something that has a lot of stopping power and dick-waving appeal.

[nightmare]

I was watching ANH the other day and I saw something interesting in the detention block scene. When Leia bplows up the grating, show blows a pretty big hole and the metal arounf the hole shows serious melting.

My question is this. Just how powerful are Imperial blasters and why don't we see bigger holes in people when they are shot?

Congrats, you have discovered what 99% of all people miss: blasters are powerful. There's plenty of more examples if you start looking.

Now, answer: blasters have more than one setting. Some of them have a lot of settings, some only a few. Single, burst, multifire, autofire, etc, and of course, full variation of power. Shouldn't be hard with an energy weapon, wouldn't you say?

[Tychu]

i have a feeling that the more power you have on the less amunition you are going to get out of the gun

like say a blaster has 10 power....things

stun uses 1 blob
tiny hole in shirt uses 2 blobs
hole in shirt uses 3 blobs
firey hole in shirt uses 4 blobs
normal setting = 5 blobs
high uses 6 blobs
and grenade uses 7 blobs

so if a trooper has a limited amount of blobs in their gun and they have a afeeling that its going to be a long battle im sure they are using the lower settings

[Knife]

i have a feeling that the more power you have on the less amunition you are going to get out of the gun

like say a blaster has 10 power....things

stun uses 1 blob
tiny hole in shirt uses 2 blobs
hole in shirt uses 3 blobs
firey hole in shirt uses 4 blobs
normal setting = 5 blobs
high uses 6 blobs
and grenade uses 7 blobs

so if a trooper has a limited amount of blobs in their gun and they have a afeeling that its going to be a long battle im sure they are using the lower settings

I would concur except for the 'stun' setting. It visually expands quite a bit and is still effective. Just because it doesn't kill doesn't necessarily mean it uses less energy in what ever mechinism that creats the effect.

[Tychu]

yes thank you for seeing the point the only thing i always thought the stun was a lower or lowest setting cause i always saw it as using just the static discharge thats left over from what results of a blaster shot at any of the higher settings

ie same as some soldier throwing a used clip at an enemies head and knocking him out

[Drooling Iguana]

Do the stun rings actually expand, or did it just seem like that because it was fired almost directly at the camera?

[Batman]

Do the stun rings actually expand, or did it just seem like that because it was fired almost directly at the camera?

This is from memory but I think the rings expanded too rapidly for that.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Do the stun rings actually expand, or did it just seem like that because it was fired almost directly at the camera?

This is from memory but I think the rings expanded too rapidly for that.

They do expand both on screen and it's explicitly stated in the EU (The JA Academy trilogy where Daala blasts Callista with them and she gets nailed due to being unable to deflect them)

[Pint0 Xtreme]

Actually, when Han shot Greedo, he turned that Rodian into barbeque that was beyond well done. I'd imagine that if stormtroopers set their blaster power to higher settings, you would get the same result. In TESB, there is a scene or two where Leia shoots a stormtrooper and it creates a large fiery hole in the stormtrooper's chest.

[Cykeisme]

Most of the people we see taking blaster hits are armored stromtroopers. It's possible that the armor they wear reduces the effects of what would normally be "barbecue" setting to "hole in shirt" or "fiery hole in shirt".

If so, this could lead tothe impression that blasters aren't as powerful as they really are; a significant amount of energy is used to ablate the armor in the blaster bolt entry path.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

Do the stun rings actually expand, or did it just seem like that because it was fired almost directly at the camera?

IIRC, someone showed pictures of the fact that the rings looked to condense almost to a point when they hit Leia. However, this too is just from a (sometimes faulty) memory.

[Winston Blake]

Do the stun rings actually expand, or did it just seem like that because it was fired almost directly at the camera?

IIRC, someone showed pictures of the fact that the rings looked to condense almost to a point when they hit Leia. However, this too is just from a (sometimes faulty) memory.

My memory of this scene is the same. The rings appear to expand radially across the camera, then when the shot reverses they collapse to hit a point on Leia. Further, the blaster shots toward the camera in that scene look like rapidly expanding red-orange circles. I think the EU took the expanding thing at face value, so now we have two stun bolt behaviours.