Do Ion Cannons realy just disable ships?

[Darth Servo]

IIRC, in the original X-wing game, using ion cannons on a standard TIE, TIE bomber or TIE interceptor blew the thing up. On heavier fighters (Assault Gunboat) and cap ships it didn't damage the hull at all.

[Chris OFarrell]

Yeah and then in the game if your OBJECTIVE was to destroy TIE's, the game didn't recognize that they in fact had blown up...and insisted they were disabled...and you lost the mission

TIE fighter fixed THAT thank God.

I do remember one of the B-Wing missions, the one where you have to fly the prototype to safety, a dozen or more transports try to disable your ship.

I had never been IN that situation before in X-Wing, so the second time I played it I let them catch up and disable me.

In the game all it did was destroy all your subsystems (but not damage the hull integirty) then your repair systems could get back to work...and the second your engines and maneuvering thrusters came back on line....run.....cause the Transports instantly swing around and start attacking again

Back OT, when i saw TESB as a kid, I also thought it was some kind of disabling weapon. The impacts didn't blow chunks out of the hull or anything, but they did send electricity skittering all over the hull and the ISD into a flat spin, completely unable to fire a weapon at the rebel ships as they flew past.

As like a 10 year old kid I thought of the thing as some kind of massive EMP gun, having learned THAT from another TV show which shall remain nameless.

[Stark]

[Taking on cap ships would be silly yes, but having Ion weapons on fighters would make sense for caturing small ships and would be feasable as they can be made small enough to be carried by Jawas after all. Of course we again run into the fact the emipre never did that, instead using laser armed TIEs.

Sorry, I don't see how ion guns and that Jawa gun are similar at all. They look different and do different things (ie, the Jawa gun turns off droids without blowing the shit out of it's computers or damaging it's memory). Using the Jawa gun in a discussion about ion guns seems dodgey.

[PayBack]

Well neither do any obvious physical damage and they both disable electronics (or the ST equivalent). They both send flashes of light or electricity zipping around the surface of the target while making a crackling electricity like sound. It's also not surprising the hand weapon and capital ship sized weapon look different or the external effect looks slightly dissimilar between a droid in atmosphere and a shielded warship in space.

[Knife]

The EU, as usual, took something from the movies and blew it out of proportion. In the movies, the ion cannon fires an orange-red bolt which causes light physical damage but has a strong disabling effect. The EU exaggerated this to almost pure electronic damage and no physical damage, due in part to the X-Wing games.

Oddly enough in the opening movie of X-wing Alliance, the Hoth Ion Cannon fires on another ISD and one of the blasts destroys one of dome's ontop the conning tower, along with standard ion cannon like effects to the ship.

[Stark]

Well neither do any obvious physical damage and they both disable electronics (or the ST equivalent). They both send flashes of light or electricity zipping around the surface of the target while making a crackling electricity like sound. It's also not surprising the hand weapon and capital ship sized weapon look different or the external effect looks slightly dissimilar between a droid in atmosphere and a shielded warship in space.

While I don't want to give you any attitude, you have to establish a link, not just say 'it's a bit similar' and 'oh it's not surprising they are different even if they're the same'. I say again - they look different, use different mechanisms, and do different things. Was R2 sent out of control? No, he was safely deactivated with no damage to his sensitive internal systems. It wouldn't be a very good droid-deactivator if it fucked the computers every time, would it? 'Flashes of light or electricity'? You mean, ONE does light the OTHER does electricity, right? And do you REALLY think the ion effect sounds like the Jawa gun? Why did the Jawa gun need physical contact?

[PayBack]

I appreciate you not giving an attitude. I'm not trying to say this is fact, just my belief (though certainly not only mine) and I'm just explaining why I hold this belief. If you want concrete proof I'm screwed because AFAIK there's not enough detail on both systems.

Well again at the risk of being accused of using broken record arguments. Of course a hand weapon and a main gun on a capital ship look different so I don't think that's proof of anything. My HK USP .45 looks nothing like the 5" gun on a frigate.

I'm not sure what you mean by then using different mechanisms?

I don't see how they do different things. From what I saw they both knocked out power systems and/or electronics.

R2 not going out of control doesn't mean much. IIRC the ISD went out of control purely because the left engine died before the right one. Both R2's wheels may be powered by the same source or ion weapons very well work faster and more efficiently on a 2 foot droid than on a mile long destroyer. Also R2 wasn't moving at the time so losing power to one wheel before the other wouldn't send him out of control anyway.

Yes the effects of the ion cannon on the ISD do sound like the effects on R2. Both cause a crackling electricity type sound.

Contact? The Jawa weapon didn't require contact. The jawa were like 5 feet from R2 when they shot him.