Turbolasers as physical shells

[Teleros]

I think he means the way the beam (well, bolt) would follow the barrel of the gun, like the superlasers on those AOTC gunships.

[Batman]

I think he means the way the beam (well, bolt) would follow the barrel of the gun, like the superlasers on those AOTC gunships.

OK, so what? As we know from ANH that laser cannon can fire off-axis even assuming there are examples of blaster barrels not being properly aligned with still flying bolts I fail to see the problem.

[Teleros]

Exactly my point - if you use the idea of an invisible beam doing the damage and the glowing bolt being little more than a glorified sub-C tracer it would be expected to be improperly aligned on occasion: by the time the bolt has travelled so many kilometres then the ship firing may well have moved.
The problem is when you try giving the bolts other properties, like being actual lasers or something (answer: don't ).

[The Silence and I]

Ah, I see you've decided to resort to "smarmy asshole" debate technique. OK, fine. Let's play it that way.

Sorry, it’s how I type. I could toss in direct insults or remove all insults and smarmy tones, but it wouldn’t reflect how I feel about this. Honestly it’s as much frustration with realizing how much ground I’m going to have to cover as anything else.

And do you not realize that your own theory requires some sort of exotic "energy that is not normal energy" around the projectile?

Yes, but I consider it fundamentally related to shield technology, which is already established as weird. Anyway, see above.

I see, so "established as weird" means "I can say it does whatever I want". Nice excuse for bullshit.

Well you can call it that. I mean it to mean that shields already require these exotic things so I am not adding anything.

Then why don't turbolasers act like guided missiles? You'd think that if you design these things with course correction capabilities and guidance systems, you'd make them actually try to hit stuff.

You're not going to like the answer, but it could simply be that the guidance system is only good enough to stabilize a given course (star position tracking for example).

So on one hand, your argument is that turbolasers can't possibly be energy weapons because ISD PD guns miss and a super-advanced society can be presumed to have perfect targeting, and then you turn around and argue that they can't build a guidance system that can do anything better than go straight? Your argument is about as consistent as a politician's rhetoric.

When you strawman an argument it is much easier to defeat, yes we all know this already.

I argued the servos were capable of keeping pace with the relatively large and sedentary starfighters, targeting is something else entirely, and so is effective accuracy.
The failures of any possible guidance system could be many and diverse. Such as space being a premium on a small shell packed with shield generators and energy cells, or sensors being impaired by viewing through an intense localized shield. Please don’t insult yourself by limiting the possibilities so.

You know, until you mentioned this I forgot the shaft faced away from the station's surface. So much for that idea.

So the point about the ray shields still needs to be answered, then. What's your answer?

Honestly, no I don't care for Occam's Razor much. It does not necessarily determine the truth. However I recognize its value in debate.

It is not just a debate tool, fucktard. It describes whether ideas logically follow from observations. You can use creationist debate tactics and argue that logic itself does not "necessarily determine the truth", which is a tactic I've seen far too often, but the fact remains that if you disregard Occam's Razor, you are disregarding logic. Ergo, your argument is irrational.

As I understand Occam’s Razor the idea is you favor the simpler explanation, not the true explanation. In other words theory A and theory B both work, but A has extra, unneeded elements, and so parsimony tells us to accept B. That does not mean B is correct, while it works it is possible A – which also works – could be correct. Feel free to correct me if I am mistaken.

I would argue that accuracy is poor enough against something as large as a star fighter that trying to intercept a turbolaser is an exercise in futility.

What happened to your "super advanced sci-fi society should be able to achieve any arbitrary accuracy I want" assumption? It only comes out when convenient?

It never came out at all. All I ever claimed was that the servos on a PD gun ought to have no trouble tracking a snub fighter. The SERVOS. I made no claims about the computer, the gunner or anything else. Just the SERVOS. A professional power lifter with his large muscles ought to find it easier to hit a baseball than a desk jockey because he can accelerate the bat more easily. But that does not mean he will be any good at it unless he practices. Clear now?

As for the existence of shields, it is my method for explaining the often very low velocities observed in turbolaser bolts. Obviously an energy weapon cannot travel at sub c in vacuum, and it especially cannot have arbitrary velocity, so either you don't have an energy weapon or you have one masquerading as something else.

You know perfectly well that the ramp-up delay is the current explanation for this. You say you don't like it, but that is no reason to say it doesn't work, especially when your own explanation for the mysterious "speed varies to produce the same propagation delay regardless of distance" argument is no better. I have never said that the current explanation is perfect, but yours appears riddled with far more holes than the current explanation.

It looks like I need to cover more reasons I don’t buy the energy beam idea. I didn’t intend this to become a physical vs energy debate (I hoped for a discussion of the merits of a physical explanation independent of the energy beam explanation) but come what will. See the bottom of this post.

I am exploring the case where it is not an energy weapon. If I pursue that then it must be physical. The problem then is how a slow moving physical object damages a target without an apparent warhead. Since it glows the glow might be important, it could be a damaging energy field.

What exactly is an "energy field", apart from a term you hear on sci-fi far too often? Are we talking about some kind of forcefield, like an electromagnetic or gravitational forcefield? If so, why must it glow so brightly and give away your location? It seems to me that you're just using "energy field" because you know it doesn't mean anything, so you can just make up whatever characteristics you want. Why not just say that the turbolaser bolt is entirely made up of this fantastic "energy field" goo of yours, since you have already argued that it persists, glows, and propagates in coherent pieces after the generating mechanism is destroyed?

I use energy field because it is so often used, not because I think it means anything. It clearly isn’t EM or gravitational forcefield and neither are defensive starship shields. I can only provide properties needed to make the idea work, I can’t begin to describe their operation or the physics of them. Call it goo like you have been if you like, I don’t care what you call it.

In other words, after saying that you dislike turbolasers as an energy weapon because of the need for exotic particles (despite the fact that superlasers necessitate these anyway), you go on to concoct a theory which requires some kind of exotic magic mass-energy-field goo?

I wish you wouldn't latch onto the exotic particles thing after I admitted that is no longer relevant and offered another reason. I find it dishonest.

How the fuck is it dishonest, asshole? Even if you no longer use it as your argument, the fact remains that you initially thought it was perfectly reasonable to denigrate a theory on the basis of requiring exotic particles at one time, yet your own theory requires something far more exotic: an "energy field" which not only persists after its generating mechanism is destroyed, but fragments into pieces that all persists, glow, and continue to propagate. At least a freaky particle is not as crazy as an "energy field" that is self-sustaining.

You already pointed out my earlier mistake. Continuing to do so is pointless.

Why don't you try taking a laser pointer out to the woods and then try picking off targets by flipping the pointer on and off, while someone is shooting paintballs at you? Note: do not drag the pointer onto target: snap-shots only.

Two things:
a) in this case my accuracy - assuming an ergonomic laser pointer and equal skill - will not be better than the paintball toting person’s.
b) you admit tacitly that a beam weapon has an inherent accuracy advantage over a pulse weapon.

a) Red herring. The paintball toting person is not comparing his accuracy to yours. He is distracting you.
b) Red herring. This has nothing to do with the subject under discussion. If you want to change the subject to a general discussion of the virtues of beam weapons vs pulse weapons, start a new thread.

Stop being evasive and answer the point.

My mistake, I mistook your meaning. I thought you wanted me to consider whether a light speed weapon has a meaningful accuracy advantage over a slower than light weapon at ranges and relative speeds which are small.

To re-answer you, yes I will be distracted and my accuracy will suffer.

A pilot does not actively dodge a turbolaser, but rather makes continuous small course changes in an attempt to avoid getting hit. Bob the gunner gets Stan the pilot in his sights, leads appropriately etc and fires. 1/6 of a second later his shot arrives where he expected Stan to be, but Stan had made a small random course change during that time and as a consequence Bob misses. Stan did not dodge the shot actively, but he maintained random movement and so avoided Bob's shot. I trust you can see the difference now?

Oh, I thought you were a "movie purist". You see, in the movies, we never see the fighters making such wild course changes that a 1/6-second delay would allow the guns to miss by such a large margin, especially in the Battle of Yavin which you were quoting. So your argument has no observational support whatsoever.

Specifically regarding Yavin those guns were hardly point defense weapons and I never claimed THEY should easily track a snub fighter. IIRC as soon as one pilot suffers damage and flies in a straight line for a couple seconds a tower scores a solid hit. That could have been well timed luck, but it could suggest the towers don’t have a problem pointing at a target so much as anticipating a target, and keeping up with a moving target.

And again I never claimed targeting is perfect – I make a habit of lambasting Star Wars targeting, one of the funnier things to read is serious fans going on and on about PD guns picking proton torpedo waves by the dozens at hundreds of km! I only claimed the mechanical parts of the PD gun should be up to the task of tracking a fighter.

If I made a mistake it was to fail to mention bad aim while I was listing excuses in my previous post. I don’t think of that as an excuse: “sorry sir, it wasn’t my fault I just can’t aim this thing properly!” doesn’t fly for me.

No it's not. By your logic, if I'm an expert marksman and I fire an M-16 at you from 200 metres away, you can evade the fucking bullet. Good luck with that, Neo.

Does not apply to my position, see above.

Yes it does, provided the target is running around.

I see what you mean. It is unlikely the Falcon for example can accelerate so much that a center of mass shot would be made to miss in only 1/6 of a second. A less perfectly lined up shot might be a very different story. I need to wrap this up for class, but I’ll see about some calculation tonight.

Correct I never took it. I am however familiar with the concept and not clueless. I would be really interested to hear how you think it is a no limits fallacy to consider a society capable of building highly maneuverable 17 km long starships also capable of providing its point defense weapons servos adequate for the job of accurately tracking objects the size of modern jet fighters when the relative velocities are no greater than those found in modern dog fighting. I honestly do not see the stretch here, it is not as if I am talking about heavy turrets pegging strafing A-Wings.

What part of large yields do you not get, exactly? Even their so-called "point-defense guns" (a description taken from the EU which also says they have 6 megaton yield, despite your "movie purist" self-description) were probably meant to dice with small warships, not fighters. Consider the fact that apart from these "point defense guns", an ISD's only apparent armament is the huge topside turrets which are definitely very slow to rotate. If all it has is monster guns and pinprick guns, it will have a serious gap in its armament. Those "point defense" guns are in the middle, which means their mechanisms must be fairly large, much larger than a fighter's guns. And that, in turn, means that they cannot rotate at any arbitrary speed while maintaining accuracy. Simply saying "advanced sci-fi, rar" does not resolve this problem.

The point was only this: any jamming equipment the yacht may have had should have been entirely incapable of interfering with the battleships.

Why?

I can’t prove it to you but it seems insane that such a small vessel could interfere significantly with a state of the art warship, and not just one. Modern day sensor systems can be linked up it would be counter intuitive to suggest the various battleships in sight were not linked in a similar manner. But I concede I cannot prove this if proof is what you want.

Mostly it's wrong.
a) small point defense weapons most clearly exist on stardestroyers, we see their bolts and we see the guns from inside.

We have never seen a point-defense gun from the inside of an ISD. We don't know how big it is.

What was that thing we see when R2D2 and C3P0’s escape pod fires off? It looked like a small cannot to me. Then there are the small class of turbolaser bolts used against the Falcon while escaping to Alderaan in A New Hope.

b) even if the fighter screen is the first line of defense against fighters (reasonable enough, just because ISDs have small guns doesn't mean they have a lot of them) it still could barely score hits on a ship over 60 meters long.

Which 60 metre long ship are you talking about? The Falcon is nowhere near 60 metres long, and if you're talking about the yacht, they hit it early.

Brian Young’s turbolaser commentaries, hosted on your website, scale the Falcon to ~60 meters long. As a scaling picture it was about as good as they get, with the Falcon touching the reference object. It is common knowledge the shooting set was incorrect.

c) a 1/6 second delay absolutely can explain this. Han cannot actively dodge weapon fire, but if every shot is taking around 1/6 of a second to arrive he has enough time to make course changes small and large and so avoid much of the fire.

(sigh) the fact that a soldier has trouble shooting people at 200 metres is due to the limitations of his accuracy, not the fact that the bullet takes more than 1/6 second to get there. People just don't move that fast or unpredictably.

Yes, but small starships might. I will need to calculate it though so hold that thought.

Just curious here, but doesn't the ANH novelization say the one thing jammers cannot fool is the MK1 Eyeball?

I don't recall, but that doesn't mean spacetime distortions will have no effect on targeting accuracy. It only means that you can visually get a pretty good idea where your target is and what kind of target it is, despite jamming. Remember that one of the functions of real-life radar jamming is to obscure what kind of target you're looking at, and also to obscure the existence of other targets near the craft with the jammer. It doesn't actually make the ship with the jammer invisible or un-targetable (in fact, you can identify his location by simply triangulating on the jamming signals).

Fair enough, but I am not sure if this can be assumed for the movies only.

Ooh the dreaded creationist card. Scary.

You can be as smarmy as you like, but the accusation is correct. Your logic relies on two central pillars of creationist thought:

1) Occam's Razor is not important.
2) If I can't make an idea work myself, despite not making much of an effort to do so, then the idea "fails" and my alternate idea must be right.

I cannot make the energy beam idea work for me, so I ditch the energy weapon idea. On that part you are right. But I don’t assume my projectile idea is the only possible other answer – this is not a case ofe’either evolution is right or creationism is,’ this is a case of ‘energy weapons completely fail to satisfy me, how about I look at projectiles and see how that goes?’ I am open to other explanations, an improved projectile theory for example. Or something nonphysical and exotic but which does not require a continuous c beam of energy.




Sorry, class sneaks up. Tonight I'll see to those examples and calculations.

[Teleros]

I argued the servos were capable of keeping pace with the relatively large and sedentary starfighters

*Points to destruction of first Death Star* Hmm...

In other words theory A and theory B both work, but A has extra, unneeded elements, and so parsimony tells us to accept B. That does not mean B is correct, while it works it is possible A – which also works – could be correct. Feel free to correct me if I am mistaken.

Whilst you're right that "A" could also be correct, accepting such an argument in any debate opens the floodgates to god-only-knows how many frankly ridiculous arguments, hence why people tend to use Occam's Razor. After all, if we dispense with it I could say the turbolaser shots are a load of treknobabble .

A professional power lifter with his large muscles ought to find it easier to hit a baseball than a desk jockey because he can accelerate the bat more easily. But that does not mean he will be any good at it unless he practices. Clear now?

Poor example. When that turret starts moving it builds up momentum, which will lead to inaccuracies. To modify your example, a power lifter with his large muscles might find it harder to swing the bat a set distance because his strength imparts additional momentum which he then has to counter.

Specifically regarding Yavin those guns were hardly point defense weapons

They weren't? They certainly looked better suited to shooting down those X-Wings than trading fire with a warship mounting say an ISD's HTL cannons. I admit might well be wrong on this - anyone who knows more about this care to comment?

I can’t prove it to you but it seems insane that such a small vessel could interfere significantly with a state of the art warship

On the other hand, was the yacht not the transport of a rather important member of government, and thus likely to be protected by better-than-average (or even military-grade) jamming?

Yes, but small starships might.

Even if they move fast enough are they unpredictable enough? Most of the shots of fighters I see in the movies involves relatively little sudden speed changes or course changes unless there's an immediate threat (ie "incoming TIEs" not "I wonder if that ISD over there tracking me").

which does not require a continuous c beam of energy.

Why not? There's enough proof that damage occurs before the glowing bolt hits; an invisible, C-speed beam explains this with practically no need for anything fancy (if anything the fancy bit is the glowing bolt); and if we're going to have an intelligent analysis of both this idea and others you've pretty much got to have Occam's Razor to prune away the garbage.

[Stark]

I believe Silence has openly disregarded Occams Razor before. It shouldn't be surprising, since he often works backwards by contorting evidence to fit his conclusion (instead of vice versa). Look up his Star Trek debates, if you're interested.

[Ender]

I believe Silence has openly disregarded Occams Razor before. It shouldn't be surprising, since he often works backwards by contorting evidence to fit his conclusion (instead of vice versa). Look up his Star Trek debates, if you're interested.

Yes, I recall it vividly in his last attempt to come up with brand new bullshit mechanisms for star wars: His siesmic charges that worked by spinning "super-sciency" material really fast. His term, not mine.

Let's see if he gets to the point where he flat out denies things in screen caps, like he will in the Trek debates.

[The Silence and I]

I believe Silence has openly disregarded Occams Razor before. It shouldn't be surprising, since he often works backwards by contorting evidence to fit his conclusion (instead of vice versa). Look up his Star Trek debates, if you're interested.

You are correct Stark. I do work backwards in Star Trek, because it is more interesting. If you start with the evidence in Star Trek and try to work forwards you find quickly you can't go very far. The only way I've found to make an analysis of Star Trek interesting is by working backwards.

Star Wars (even with a magic morphing Millennium Falcon) is incomparably more internally consistent than Star Trek and lends itself to conventional analysis. In this case however I did in fact start backwards. I began by assuming turbolasers are not energy beams, and then tried to work forwards on an alternative idea. Occam's Razor might say an energy beam is simpler, it might not. I really haven't pursued that very far yet. But my intention wasn't to pursue a comparison at all. Past tense. It looks like I need to go down that road properly now.

I'll answer some of the posts I missed now, before moving on.

If the shaft wasn't protected by a ray shield then starfighters could have flown straight to the shaft, dived directly at it and attacked it head on, with the idea of pouring fire down the shaft, with a few torps thrown if the fighter got a good lock. The fighters wouldn't have to be exposed for very long as they could pop up, dive on the port, blast away then evade. There would have been casualties, but not much more than what Red and Gold suffered fighting above the trench before the TIEs showed up. But because of said ray shield, the port had to be hit presicsly with torps, meaning a run down the trench to buy time for the targeting comp to lock up.

Sorry I forgot to give you credit for pointing this out first, I did reply when Wong mentioned it.

This is to say nothing of where the ammo for starfighter cannons are stored. Where's the ammo for the Falcon's guns stored, or a TIEs? As far as I know, all "laser" weapons are the same, just different scales, from the hand blaster to the DS gun.

The shells would have to be small, this can be seen from observing the holes on the ends of most lasers and the like. Blasters are their own problem, if I only make one victory in this thread it will be having people agree blasters need to be some kind of projectile, or at least pulse, weapon, as this has been a loose consensus in the past.

Besides all that has been stated, if Turbolasers were in fact projectile based, would we not see ammo casings comming out of the Turbolasers on the Death Star(In A New Hope we see bits and pieces of soldiers sitting in chairs firing large weapons). Even if the Turbolasers were infact Caseless, would we not see some sort of large feeder into the weapons?

I would be surprised to find ammo casings. Since the velocity of the shots under my idea various greatly it makes little sense to assume they are fired like modern guns, but some manner of rail gun or mass driver fits. As for ammo feeders, they can be hidden easily along with the rest of the works, and the ammo couldn’t be very large anyway.

You could make a better argument for some varieties of hand blaster being projectile weapons than the big shipboard weapons, although the lack of gravity drop is still a serious problem.

Several times hand blaster bolts are somewhat transparent, which also makes an actual solid projectile pretty hard to fit.

I can think of two ways to counter gravity drop: an active propulsion system, or very small antigravity technology. I am not sure which I prefer, but small thrusters are probably far more realistic than a similarly sized anti gravity generator. Maybe. I don’t know.
Just as some blaster bolts are translucent, others are entirely opaque. Neither is ideal for any explanation out there I’ve heard, especially as the opaque ones are usually not bright enough to claim they simply wash out the background and are otherwise translucent.

Several times hand blaster bolts are somewhat transparent, which also makes an actual solid projectile pretty hard to fit.

Indeed. However they always fly at sublight and sometimes reflect. If they are not projectiles of some kind, what are they? AOTC nov. says blasters are projectile weapons.

They don’t just reflect sometimes off hard or shiny surfaces. They even reflect off of grass at times.

Ammo. The rifles have no clips. The ammount of shots we see fly out of a single trooper's rifle is staggering, and yet we do not see clips of ammo.

Because they fly at sublight speed = Solid object why?

It could be a liquid, gas or plasma as well, generally (or something really exotic). But if it is in fact sub c then it cannot be pure energy, because that always travels at c in vacuum and damn close in atmosphere.

What is the solution to blaster problems? They don't move at C as some beam weapons do; they constantly move below C.

The (invisible) damaging portion of the shot moves at C, the tracer moves below C, as DW & Saxton are saying.

Speaking just about blasters now, this is impossible to force onto the visual evidence.

Blasters are observed firing at rates high enough that a second or sometimes third shot will be in the air before or as the first shot strikes something, and with all of one exception I know of the visible bolt always matches up with the area damaged. The c beam idea requires a rate of fire that is always less than the time it takes the tracer shot to reach the target.

Think about it, if you can only have one beam at a time, but there are 2 or three bolts in the air--all from your gun and all pointing in slightly different directions—how can your single beam give each of those bolts a damaging component?

They don't "trace" after the gun movement (something large laser guns do, E IV the TIE and E V the snowspeeder).

They wouldn't with the above method.

They would, absolutely, they must. The damage lines up with the individual visible bolts, always (the only exception I know of has Luke’s wrist get damaged just before the visible bolt hits, and this does not apply to this tracing point). This means that each bolt contains something damaging.

I think he means the way the beam (well, bolt) would follow the barrel of the gun, like the superlasers on those AOTC gunships.

OK, so what? As we know from ANH that laser cannon can fire off-axis even assuming there are examples of blaster barrels not being properly aligned with still flying bolts I fail to see the problem.

This is what I refer to:
I forget who put this together…
TIE fighter weapons do something similar at times. This is not simply tracers doing whacky things, or off axis fire.

Exactly my point - if you use the idea of an invisible beam doing the damage and the glowing bolt being little more than a glorified sub-C tracer it would be expected to be improperly aligned on occasion: by the time the bolt has travelled so many kilometres then the ship firing may well have moved.
The problem is when you try giving the bolts other properties, like being actual lasers or something (answer: don't ).

It would be expected to never align if the beam was swept at all—how should the tracer follow the beam? Yet the tracer does follow… something.

*Points to destruction of first Death Star* Hmm...

I don't know how much you have read but I did specifically point out I don't consider these weapons suitable for engaging star fighters. I also pointed out the difference between being capable of moving a turret with great speed and accuracy and being able to target and hit something.

Poor example. When that turret starts moving it builds up momentum, which will lead to inaccuracies. To modify your example, a power lifter with his large muscles might find it harder to swing the bat a set distance because his strength imparts additional momentum which he then has to counter.

Check your thinking. The power lifter does not have to swing at full strength. Let me put it like this: how fast can a desk jockey swing a bat and control it? How fast can a power lifter swing the same bat with the same control? Of course the power lifter can swing the bat faster than the desk jockey can before he looses control.

They weren't? They certainly looked better suited to shooting down those X-Wings than trading fire with a warship mounting say an ISD's HTL cannons. I admit might well be wrong on this - anyone who knows more about this care to comment?

Those weapon towers were larger than any twenty X-Wings, the death star was stated to have poor defenses against star fighters, and surely there are a plethora of star ships between an X-Wing and a mile long ISD out there.

On the other hand, was the yacht not the transport of a rather important member of government, and thus likely to be protected by better-than-average (or even military-grade) jamming?

Of course it could be. But it is a tiny craft, facing a craft which dwarfs an ISD and which also has military grade ECM and sensors. More and more sensitive sensors, more and more powerful active scanners, and no reason to avoid burning through the yacht's ECM--it isn't trying to be hard to target.

Even if they move fast enough are they unpredictable enough? Most of the shots of fighters I see in the movies involves relatively little sudden speed changes or course changes unless there's an immediate threat (ie "incoming TIEs" not "I wonder if that ISD over there tracking me").

Without going into a screen shot fest I have no time for I cannot say with certainty, but I have done some back of the envelope calculations and tend to agree with you. Smaller fighters and the Falcon are capable of shifting perhaps as much as five meters in the time it takes an average turbolaser bolt to arrive, give or take rather a lot. Shifting 5 meters in 1/6 of a second requires an acceleration of about 36 gravities, which is IMO greater than usually observed in battle. On the other end, I'm reasonably sure 8 gravities is reasonable, and that can grant about a 1 meter shift. This is enough for a snub fighter to avoid many shots, but the more important question is if they are moving like this often enough. Maybe they are, maybe they are not.

Now, I haven't measured the actual frame times for most turbolaser shots, for example I see five frames in the .gif I posted, and the way acceleration works small increased in time allow large increases in shift distance. If the average travel time is even a little higher than 1/6 second it matters a lot. That said, the ships might not move around enough often enough to apply this generally.

Why not? There's enough proof that damage occurs before the glowing bolt hits; an invisible, C-speed beam explains this with practically no need for anything fancy (if anything the fancy bit is the glowing bolt); and if we're going to have an intelligent analysis of both this idea and others you've pretty much got to have Occam's Razor to prune away the garbage.

The fancy bit is indeed the glowing bolt part. If it is a separate tracer shot why does it track with the invisible beam? If it is a decay wave traveling backwards along the beam why does that wave change velocity so deliberately? I cannot think of a mechanism for this.

[The Silence and I]

I believe Silence has openly disregarded Occams Razor before. It shouldn't be surprising, since he often works backwards by contorting evidence to fit his conclusion (instead of vice versa). Look up his Star Trek debates, if you're interested.

Yes, I recall it vividly in his last attempt to come up with brand new bullshit mechanisms for star wars: His siesmic charges that worked by spinning "super-sciency" material really fast. His term, not mine.

Your vivid memory is more a vivid imagination. I just ran a search for all posts by me with the word "seismic" in them. I found this thread.

In it I point out I think seismic charges look like they cut objects more than burn them. Woooo trippy idea that one. If it helps I recall the claim that they were spinning super-sciency stuff but that was not me what said it.

Let's see if he gets to the point where he flat out denies things in screen caps, like he will in the Trek debates.

Funny man, this is Star Wars, not Star Trek. Lucas had standards with his visuals.

[Kartr_Kana]

The reason for Chewie being able to fire what looked like a blaster from his bowcaster is that his was modified to have blaster under the main "bolt" barrel. He could fire either, bolts come in two types, explosive and plain. explosive ones are encased in an energy sheath which makes them apear much like blaster bolts. the plain ones are merely, plain wood, maybe metal whatevers handy to fashion them from.

[The Silence and I]

Problems I think exist with the energy beam idea

Extra exotic particles

This was shot down. Actually it may have been still-born, although I’m not sold on that point yet.

Accuracy

This idea may or may not hold up under close observation. It may be that fighters are simply too slow to successfully evade most shots. Possible exceptional cases exist, for example in the trench run I think many of the shots coming from distant towers were on route for much more than 5 frames, possibly nearly half a second, and those X-Wings were shifting actively. There may be others too. The more I think about it the more I realize 1/6 of a second is really short, and—wait, I’m rambling. Unless I get to the screen shots (uhg) this won’t get much further.

Bolt sweeping

If the visible bolt is a separate tracer shot, how does it sweep with the beam?
If the visible bolt is not separate, but some kind of decay wave moving backwards up the beam, how is it timed so well so that it takes a similar time to travel 80 km or 20 meters?
If the beam can sweep, why not track targets with it? You’ve got a fraction of a second to aim what is essentially a laser pointer before the big bang goes off, yet we don’t often see curving shots (TIEs do this semi regularly, but I think that’s about it). Before you ask, yes I can explain why shells don’t track much despite having the ability: it is not reliable in a battlefield situation with jamming, debris and confusion. Keep in mind my idea for shell sweeping has the shell follow a laser pointed at either it or the target like we do today. But the shell is mostly blind because of its size and the nature of its shields.

Warm up time

Why is the warm up time the same for all classes of weapon? Except it isn’t the same, it is just close. If it was always the same it could be a fundamental property of the weapon’s technology, but some bolts travel for 2 frames, some for large chunks of a second. If the warm up time can be as low as 1/12 a second why ever wait so long as 1/5 seconds or more? Why don’t PD guns use a fast warm up time to improve re-fire rates (the way this theory works any given gun can only support one bolt at a time) and so put more fire out there? They could use the accuracy (per unit time) boost. Or why not make the damaging pulse longer, and sweep the beam into the target and improve accuracy that way (LAAT style—or just use weapons like those?)?

Blasters

How can the energy beam theory explain blasters that fire rapidly enough to put several bolts into the air before the first contacts, and have each one produce a damaging effect, at the point of contact? If these cannot be energy beams, yet ignore gravity, glow, have highly variable bolt speed, cause damage thermally, and in every other way resemble turbolasers (even to the point that some have pulses along their bolt length), why is it such a stretch to propose turbolasers, like blasters, are not energy beams?

Furthur, what if someone finds turbolasers which fire too quickly, like certain blasters do? TIEs might fire quickly enough to qualify, and several weapons in the prequels might.

Superlasers

Superlasers clearly are neither solid projectiles nor normal energy beams. They also don’t fit in the normal turbolaser energy beam theory IMO in the following ways. They also don’t fit in my idea, so don’t put words into my mouth.

If these are light speed weapons, then they need to have a sub light visible beam, like turbolasers supposedly do, as the visible beam is distinctly sub light. But why have this component? Do the death star gunners aim by sight, and if they miss the tracer component will let them adjust their aim for their second shot – in an hour or so? To hit a planet?

If the visible part is actually a tracer, then how does it follow the sub beams to a single point and then stop, before continuing again? Never mind how a pure energy beam does this… (or how anything does this, I’m not saying I can explain it).


I don't promise I won't think of or remember something else later

[Ghost Rider]

And maybe...just maybe he'll actually present evidence to support his theory.

I'll give him a post before locking this for near outright spam.

[AidanMcfay]

It could be a liquid, gas or plasma as well, generally (or something really exotic). But if it is in fact sub c then it cannot be pure energy, because that always travels at c in vacuum and damn close in atmosphere.

If its liguid, how can it be kept from vaporizing? I really dont feel like even getting into plasma, if im not mistaken there is an intire section on this website about plasma and "plasma based weapons" also if im not mistaken its making fun of shows that have plamas based weapons. The bit about gas, is actualy mentioned in the EU, Tibanna Gas is used in turbolasers and starfighter lasers(IIRC). But its turned into energy then projected.

[AidanMcfay]

Blasters

How can the energy beam theory explain blasters that fire rapidly enough to put several bolts into the air before the first contacts, and have each one produce a damaging effect, at the point of contact? If these cannot be energy beams, yet ignore gravity, glow, have highly variable bolt speed, cause damage thermally, and in every other way resemble turbolasers (even to the point that some have pulses along their bolt length), why is it such a stretch to propose turbolasers, like blasters, are not energy beams?

Furthur, what if someone finds turbolasers which fire too quickly, like certain blasters do? TIEs might fire quickly enough to qualify, and several weapons in the prequels might.

Show me proof, or state a source where it has been said blasters are not energy? Adding engines and anti gravity to the "energy projectile thingy majig" does not count.

[Stark]

The reason for Chewie being able to fire what looked like a blaster from his bowcaster is that his was modified to have blaster under the main "bolt" barrel. He could fire either, bolts come in two types, explosive and plain. explosive ones are encased in an energy sheath which makes them apear much like blaster bolts. the plain ones are merely, plain wood, maybe metal whatevers handy to fashion them from.

Can you show me a picture of this underbarrel blaster? This strikes me as a lame retcon retcon retcon of a stupid EU thing. You know they made up the 'bolts look like blaster bolts' thing because someone realised the bowcaster only ever fired blaster bolts, right? So they said 'lol magic blaster-like crossbow bolts, solved!'

[Connor MacLeod]

We've actually seen evidence for projectile weapons that look like blaster bolts (or "projectile" type blasters - ie HAn's blaster firing on Vader in TESB, Zam Wessel's rifle in AOTC, etc. The AOTC novel, btw, specifies hand blasters as projectile weaponry.)

Larger weapons too (AT-TE guns are supposed to be mass drivers IIRC the ICS, for example) and capital ships (the Separatist warships carrying "mass drivers", as well as the small internally mounted deck guns on Venator's displaying odd curving trajectories.) But I doubt they'd behave like Silence claims (They'd probably be more akin to proton torpedoes or concussion missiles, which I should also add to the precedence of "warheads looking like energy beams." There's also a distinct possibility the ion cannon shots in TESB would be more appropriate to projectiles than a chargged particle beam, for example.)

But even if the projectiles existed, they don't match all of the cases (there are ample examples of "beam like" behaviour from ISD TLs, even aside from the "damage before impact" - they shift and track.) And of course, there are the aforementioned "sustained" versions. And even if we totally dismissed the concept of "massless" TLs (or even particle beam turbolasers) in the movies (which we don't, given the preivously mentioned non-projectile examples), its still admissible under canon (and thus lightspeed/near-c TLs would still exist.)

It was determined long ago that lightspeed turbolasers don't quite work in every circumstance in the movies, but its equally true that "all projectile" do not work in all cases either, and that was before the stuff in ROTS.

Edit: I do believe it IS possible for a warhead to be "dial a yield" - there are nuclear warheads that are vairable yield that I recall, at least. Without knowing the exact mechanism behind the "explosive" it would be anyone's guess.

And the ANH novelization DOES refer to the trench-mounted guns (and ventral ones) the ISD fires on the Tantive IV as "heavy" emplacements (and the bolts are IIRC much bigger than the smaller bolts fired on lighter craft like hte Falcon as well.) According to the novel there were "dozens" of such emplacements - logically they are probably smaller, more numerous anti-ship guns designed to complement the primary dorsal turrets (for engaging escorts and smaller targets like the Tantive IV) This would also explain the "wedge-shape" and its supposed benefits in directing firepower, I might add.

Double edit: And as for bowcasters, the "blaster/bowcaster" combo was described in the ROTS VD I believe, including the cutaways (which I bleieve was done by ILM - I forget how they did the prop stuff though)

[Ender]

If these are light speed weapons, then they need to have a sub light visible beam, like turbolasers supposedly do, as the visible beam is distinctly sub light.

There we go! I KNEW you could find a way to flat out deny what we see on screen. I knew you had it in you! Good job Bobby, keep it up. Keep insisting that the canon visuals are wrong in favor if your own preconcieved notions!

[Stark]

He admitted he works backwards (set conclusion, contorting evidence) because it's more 'interesting'. How anyone can take him seriously is beyond me.

Nobody cares what he finds 'interesting'. We're interested in the application of logic an analysis, not inventing contrived rules based on nothing but preconcieved notions to create the most 'interesting' result. His approach is fundamentally flawed and stupid.

[Ritterin Sophia]

He admitted he works backwards (set conclusion, contorting evidence) because it's more 'interesting'. How anyone can take him seriously is beyond me.

Well, to tell you the truth, I take neither half the EU nor any Movie Purist seriously, not even you Stark, but I learned that you don't just hate the EU, you hate EVERYTHING equally.

[Stark]

Well, to tell you the truth, I take neither half the EU nor any Movie Purist seriously, not even you Stark, but I learned that you don't just hate the EU, you hate EVERYTHING equally.

Dismissing arguments based on who said them or what they believe outside the argument is just as stupid as inventing your own rules and ignoring logic. You even sound like some kind of golden mean person: you throw out half the EU but movie purists are bad!

I'm not going to respond to your ridiculous well-poisoning - anyone who can read can see that I *don't* hate everything and you're just being a wanker. Remember, not liking your precious EU makes me as ignorable as ass-backwards Silence here. If only we had a rule about that sort of thing...

[Ritterin Sophia]

Dismissing arguments based on who said them or what they believe outside the argument is just as stupid as inventing your own rules and ignoring logic. You even sound like some kind of golden mean person: you throw out half the EU but movie purists are bad!

I'm not going to respond to your ridiculous well-poisoning - anyone who can read can see that I *don't* hate everything and you're just being a wanker. Remember, not liking your precious EU makes me as ignorable as ass-backwards Silence here. If only we had a rule about that sort of thing...

Well, naturally I was ribbing you... but I can't tell if you've turned my own joke around on me or you actually believed it, either way, touche!

[glass]

Check your thinking. The power lifter does not have to swing at full strength. Let me put it like this: how fast can a desk jockey swing a bat and control it? How fast can a power lifter swing the same bat with the same control? Of course the power lifter can swing the bat faster than the desk jockey can before he looses control.

Your analogy is flawed. More powerful weapons can be presumed to be much bigger and heavier; analogous to a heavier bat. Since momentum is proportional to mass, which is proportional to the third power of length. The strength of someones arm is proportional to the second power of length, so if things scale proportionately with length the bigger guy will actually have more difficulty controlling his bigger bat.

I don't know how servo power scales, but I doubt it is with volume, so the same, so my (grossly simplified) version of your analogy still holds.


glass.

[Mad]

I say this much here and now: I do not find an energy beam and tracer shot combination a satisfactory explanation of the above observations, with the exceptions of [4] and [7]. I will attempt to provide my own interpretation below.

Why isn't it satisfactory? Because you say so? The ramp-up model does a far better job of matching these observations than your projectile theory does. (And that's not even going into how your model ignores superlaser-type beam weaponry.)

[1] Bolts are visible to the eye and come in shades of red, green and blue. Possibly violet if Geonosian fighter weapons count.

What's wrong with the ramp-up model's explanation? When the exotic particles react/decay into photons, the energy level of the photons will depend on the energy level of the original luxons.

What gives your exotic glowy "energy" its color? If it's an energy field, then why is it generating photons?

[2] Bolts assume varied shapes. Some are unremarkable rounded rectangles in cross section, many have points on the leading end and taper toward the trailing end. Some also have bulges along their length.

The "shape" of the light emitted as a result of the chain reaction could be affected by the conditions that started the reaction.

[3] Bolts of all calibers possess wildly varying propagation speeds. In general any given bolt will take 3 to 4 frames to travel to a given target, with no regard given to the distance.

How, exactly, does the ramp-up model not explain this one? If the ramp-up time is consistent, then one would expect the time between initiation and damage to be consistent.

Your "contact time" idea makes no sense. Why would a slow-moving energy field be able to penetrate a stronger energy field more easily? A longer contact time would allow the defense shields more time to disrupt the smaller field.

[5] Upon impact with defensive shielding some bolts will seem to fragment or splinter into many glowing shards which further break apart and disappear with a flash.

A deflector shield actually deflecting an incoming energy beam--and thus the photons resulting from the decay process!? Say it ain't so!

Again, I must ask: how is this not satisfactorily explained under the ramp-up model?

[6] Many bolts have been observed exploding around intended targets, not usually with tremendous effect.

Shield interactions (or other interactions) that disrupt the bolt, causing it to disperse. The majority of the energy is contained in the beam, so the bolt disruption doesn't release much energy.

Due to the (assumed) nature of defensive shielding unprotected physical contact with an outer defensive layer ('ray' shields) results in rapid melting or vaporization of any relatively small object. Energy imparted by this shielding layer is a function of time. A second (assumed) layer of defensive shielding ('particle' or deflector shields) serves to physically repel resulting gases, liquids and residual fragments. Contact time has no effect on energy imparted by this shield layer, it applies a force over its distance and can retard a certain maximum amount of kinetic energy.

That's backwards. If a nuclear warhead is approaching, you'd want your particle shields as your outer shields and the ray shields as the inner shields. The nuke can then, at best, detonate on impact with the particle shields. The gamma radiation will be blocked by the inner ray shields, and all released massive particles will never get past the particle shields. If the ray shields are the outer shields, then the weapon detonates inside the ray shields and the energy release damages your hull.

The reason has to do with the inner shield layer. The shell generates a visible energy field which protects itself from the outer shield layer, and which also aids penetration of the inner shield layer. The method by which the shell's energy field penetrates this shield layer depends on the relative strengths of the energy field and the shield, and also on contact time. A longer contact time results in a greater penetration of the shield layer and for this reason slower shell velocities are preferred.

That's also backwards. A longer contact time should use more energy by sustaining the bolt's shielding, and thus reduce its effectiveness. You'd want to penetrate as quickly as possible so that you can deliver more energy to the target. (And so that the much, much more powerful defensive shields don't burn out the bolt's shield generator.)

The shells would have to be small, this can be seen from observing the holes on the ends of most lasers and the like. Blasters are their own problem, if I only make one victory in this thread it will be having people agree blasters need to be some kind of projectile, or at least pulse, weapon, as this has been a loose consensus in the past.

It's not a victory when the consensus was already there, y'know.

Problems I think exist with the energy beam idea

Extra exotic particles

This was shot down. Actually it may have been still-born, although I’m not sold on that point yet.

Oh, it's definitely stillborn, simply because you require even more exotic energy fields.

Accuracy

This idea may or may not hold up under close observation. It may be that fighters are simply too slow to successfully evade most shots. Possible exceptional cases exist, for example in the trench run I think many of the shots coming from distant towers were on route for much more than 5 frames, possibly nearly half a second, and those X-Wings were shifting actively. There may be others too. The more I think about it the more I realize 1/6 of a second is really short, and—wait, I’m rambling. Unless I get to the screen shots (uhg) this won’t get much further.

It doesn't matter if the reason for a nearly constant 1/6 s (or any duration) impact time is because it's a projectile or because it takes that long to ramp up enough power to be destructive, then what's the difference? The expected delay is still the same, and thus accuracy shouldn't differ. Accuracy is a red herring here.

Bolt sweeping

If the visible bolt is a separate tracer shot, how does it sweep with the beam?
If the visible bolt is not separate, but some kind of decay wave moving backwards up the beam, how is it timed so well so that it takes a similar time to travel 80 km or 20 meters?

Because it's designed to (for tracking purposes) and the targeting computer knows how far away its target is.

If the beam can sweep, why not track targets with it? You’ve got a fraction of a second to aim what is essentially a laser pointer before the big bang goes off, yet we don’t often see curving shots (TIEs do this semi regularly, but I think that’s about it).

The ISD firing at the asteroid you linked to did exactly that. Also, Wedge's X-wing tracked a TIE to its doom in RotJ. (The X-wing was pulling up the entire time, yet the bolts stayed directly in front of his fighter and destroyed the TIE.)

So, um, yeah... it does happen.

And big guns like we saw at the Battle of Yavin are too unwieldy to track much while firing.

Before you ask, yes I can explain why shells don’t track much despite having the ability: it is not reliable in a battlefield situation with jamming, debris and confusion. Keep in mind my idea for shell sweeping has the shell follow a laser pointed at either it or the target like we do today. But the shell is mostly blind because of its size and the nature of its shields.

How does it track when your laser beam isn't pointed at anything? (IIRC, the TIEs firing at the Falcon when it was escaping the first Death Star exhibited tracking bolts even when the guns weren't facing anything.)

Warm up time

Why is the warm up time the same for all classes of weapon? Except it isn’t the same, it is just close. If it was always the same it could be a fundamental property of the weapon’s technology, but some bolts travel for 2 frames, some for large chunks of a second. If the warm up time can be as low as 1/12 a second why ever wait so long as 1/5 seconds or more? Why don’t PD guns use a fast warm up time to improve re-fire rates (the way this theory works any given gun can only support one bolt at a time) and so put more fire out there? They could use the accuracy (per unit time) boost. Or why not make the damaging pulse longer, and sweep the beam into the target and improve accuracy that way (LAAT style—or just use weapons like those?)?

Ramp up time would probably be related to the destructive settings for the weapon as well as the internal design of the gun. A big gun may have longer ramp up time even at lower settings because it was designed to use more powerful shots, for instance.

And why can't a single port have multiple internal emitters to allow for multiple beams warming up simultaneously? The TIEs exhibiting tracking behavior when attacking the Falcon had multiple bolts in-flight at the same time, for example.

Blasters

How can the energy beam theory explain blasters that fire rapidly enough to put several bolts into the air before the first contacts, and have each one produce a damaging effect, at the point of contact? If these cannot be energy beams, yet ignore gravity, glow, have highly variable bolt speed, cause damage thermally, and in every other way resemble turbolasers (even to the point that some have pulses along their bolt length), why is it such a stretch to propose turbolasers, like blasters, are not energy beams?

Turbolasers and blasters each show characteristics the other type doesn't show. Turbolasers can track their target, blasters don't. Blasters can bounce off of objects and shielding, turbolasers don't.

Your projectile model doesn't explain why blaster bolts have highly variable velocity, either. Your projectile model [clumsily] explains it as a way to effectively get past shields, a barrier that isn't present in the vast majority of blaster targets.

Furthur, what if someone finds turbolasers which fire too quickly, like certain blasters do? TIEs might fire quickly enough to qualify, and several weapons in the prequels might.

This has already been found, and the possibility of multiple emitters housed inside a gun port means it isn't a fatal discovery.

Superlasers

Superlasers clearly are neither solid projectiles nor normal energy beams. They also don’t fit in the normal turbolaser energy beam theory IMO in the following ways. They also don’t fit in my idea, so don’t put words into my mouth.

If these are light speed weapons, then they need to have a sub light visible beam, like turbolasers supposedly do, as the visible beam is distinctly sub light. But why have this component? Do the death star gunners aim by sight, and if they miss the tracer component will let them adjust their aim for their second shot – in an hour or so? To hit a planet?

The decay could be inherent to either the luxons in use or to the method used to create the energy beam.

[AidanMcfay]

We've actually seen evidence for projectile weapons that look like blaster bolts (or "projectile" type blasters - ie HAn's blaster firing on Vader in TESB, Zam Wessel's rifle in AOTC, etc. The AOTC novel, btw, specifies hand blasters as projectile weaponry.)

How is Han's pistol like a projectile weapon, other then the fact that energy was projected from the barrel? As far as Zam Wessel's rifle, it could be a type of slug thrower.

[Aquatain]

Is this entire topic made only to kill time?