Moderator: Vympel
I NEVER EVER said reasonable and intelligent, I said TREKTARDS. I hope someone from that site sees this message, because I certainly do NOT like being misquoted.So, does that mean that reasonable and intelligent Star Trek fans like JMSpock
Their board is Net Nannified to turn insults into really stupid shit, I wouldn't doubt if they modified the software to make it do that.Darth Ruinus wrote:Hey guys, not to take away from this debate, but, I was checking starfleetjedi, and this "Who is God like arbour" guy quoted me as saying
I NEVER EVER said reasonable and intelligent, I said TREKTARDS. I hope someone from that site sees this message, because I certainly do NOT like being misquoted.So, does that mean that reasonable and intelligent Star Trek fans like JMSpock
Sorry, but it really got me mad.
You know, the ring might just be the effect of a massive discharge of energy. Hyperspace is very exotic, and maybe the combined output of serveral stars is enough to break the laws of physics and temporarily create regions where it intersects with reality. No way to tell what happens then.Ender wrote:Here's the odd thing about the hyperspace energy thing - the reactors are still credited with being incredibly powerful. the HM reactor on the Death Star is stated to be as powerful as a weeks output of several main sequence stars. A single G-1 star for a week is 1.8*10^32, so several of them would be the 10^33 the main reactor is usually put at. They have the power, but have the weapon draw more from hyperspace anyways.
IIRC, the upperlimit on the beam, based off some of the fluff, is 10^41 joules. So I guess the "punching a hole to hyperspace" bit doesn't contradict the momentum shift we see in Alderaan. And I admit, tying the wake we see when ships jump to hyperspace with the ring is interesting. BUt still, it is a total disconnect for me.
Commander of the MFS Darwinian Selection Method (sexual)
I just picked up the novel. My reading is that for some reason, they just decided that a large amount of the planet's mass was accelerated into hyperspace (maybe there is a lack of debris, I don't know.)Ender wrote:Here's the odd thing about the hyperspace energy thing - the reactors are still credited with being incredibly powerful. the HM reactor on the Death Star is stated to be as powerful as a weeks output of several main sequence stars. A single G-1 star for a week is 1.8*10^32, so several of them would be the 10^33 the main reactor is usually put at. They have the power, but have the weapon draw more from hyperspace anyways.
IIRC, the upperlimit on the beam, based off some of the fluff, is 10^41 joules. So I guess the "punching a hole to hyperspace" bit doesn't contradict the momentum shift we see in Alderaan. And I admit, tying the wake we see when ships jump to hyperspace with the ring is interesting. BUt still, it is a total disconnect for me.
You're feeling is probably wrong then. They portray the hyperspace effect as being a parrt of the destructive effects of the superlaser on Alderaan. Moreover, its not making a wormhole (where the fuck would Alderaan come out?), its just dumping a fuckload of the mass (unprotected) into hyperspace, which is goign to be pretty destructive regardless (and why would you deliberately shield something you're trying to destroy anyhow?)Lord Poe wrote:Sigh... I have a shitty feeling this "hyperspace energy transfer" thing was put in to justify the "Glove Of Darth Vader" wormhole.
I'm actually kinda hoping not. I don't think he'd be too happy with some of the conclusions. There is some stuff he'd like in there though (They didn't recycle the WEG ISD armament figures, for example. They also made extensive mention of the Death Star being connected ot the "Great Weapon", and that there were numerous setbacks and problems plaguing the project - up to the point they actually relocated the entire thing more than once to avoid the Rebels. There's a 3 km rebel "Carrier" holding IIRC hundreds of fighters, there's mention of ISDs using a hypermatter reactor, etc..)I wonder if Curtis has time to read this?
QuentinGeorge wrote:
Perry also did Shadows of the Empire, for what it's worth.
SWTC wrote:Possible fuels might include:
* hypermatter, consisting of intrinsically faster-than-light subatomic particles, which must release all of their mass-energy as they accelerate towards infinite speed;
I figure the authors have read up on DS theories such as these and tried to explain the otherwise unexplainable ring explosion. They were also smart enough to leave ambiguity when writing about a subject they don't know about scientifically, at least that's what it seems like. Actual quotes will perchance allow for a better conclusion of what it means.sd.net wrote:The Death Star requires no onboard fuel." This theory would require that it can somehow draw mass/energy from a source outside of itself, such as the theoretical vacuum zero-point energy of the universe, a source of mass/energy in hyperspace, or a distant source such as a quasar or black hole (presumably connected to the Death Star's hypermatter reactor through some kind of wormhole).
Ok, Im a little confused, so Curtis' envision is the correct version of hyperspace, or the most credible one or?Connor MacLeod wrote:the idea that hyperspace is multi-dimensional (as in being like B5 hyperspace, a separate "dimension") is something that features in this book. It is also a longtime holdover from WEG and something that appears commonly in different novels (EG Black Fleet Crisis.)
It should be noted this is NOT how Curtis envisioned hyperspace as per the movies. The only author I can even vaguely remember following his idea of hyperspace might have been Denning circa Star By Star/Tattooine Ghost.
Edit: Sw shields would not be "multi-dimensional" as per how Curttis envisions it, sincee hyperspace isn't a dimension. By the "popular" (IE WEG inspired) approach (disregarding problemsl ike how objects in another dimension interact with realspace), it would be possible. I simply mentioned it as a possible consequencee of the whole "Hyperspace component" to the superlaser, if the trektards try to argue that its a magical shortcut like phasers have (and Scooter pretends exists.)
the WEG interpretation is the "official" one insofar as the novels and the like go, and probably what most people (like the fanboys on TFN or SW.com) believe.Darth Ruinus wrote:Ok, Im a little confused, so Curtis' envision is the correct version of hyperspace, or the most credible one or?
From your comment, I got the idea that more people support the hyperspace is an alternate dimension idea, clarification please?
Mmmh, that actually makes more sense than the alternate dimesion thing, since I always wondered why objects like planets and such could interact with hypertravelling objects.Connor MacLeod wrote:the WEG interpretation is the "official" one insofar as the novels and the like go, and probably what most people (like the fanboys on TFN or SW.com) believe.Darth Ruinus wrote:Ok, Im a little confused, so Curtis' envision is the correct version of hyperspace, or the most credible one or?
From your comment, I got the idea that more people support the hyperspace is an alternate dimension idea, clarification please?
There are, ,as I said, problems with the WEG interpretation, however. Curtis's obsevations and interpretations from the movie are that Hyperspace is not a "dimension", its just the way people view realspace while traveling FTL (In other words, you're traveling FTL in realspace.) which allows for the sots of collisions and impacts talked about in ANH. This is very rarely considered or discussed in the EU, if ever. Most people (around here) tend to consider it the more consistent theory because it is.
- Imperial TIE fighters are completely standardized.Command always said it didn't matter which unit you got. TIE fighters were all the same, down to the last nut and bolt, but even so, every pilot had his or her favorite ship. You weren't supposed to personalize them, of course...
- Self-explanatory. It seems to be implied that all the clone pilots are gone by the time of A New Hope.The Empire was determined to erase all signs of individuality in its pilots, on the absurd theory that nameless, faceless operators were somehow more effective. Thus the classification numbers, the anonymous flight suits and helmets, and the random rotation of spacecraft. The standardizing approach had worked reasonably well in the Clone Wars, but there was one important difference here: neither Vil nor any of the other TIE pilots he knew of was a clone.
- Self-explanatoryIMSLO stood for "Imperial Military Stop Loss Order." Too many skilled people who'd been drafted had had enough of the military after the Clone Wars, and when their compulsory service ended, wanted nothing more than to go home. With the action against the Rebels heating up, the Empire couldn't allow that. Doctors, in particular, were in short supply; hence, IMSLO. A retroactive order mandating that, no matter when you'd been conscripted, you were in for as long as they wanted you - or until you got killed. Either way, it was kiss your planned life goodbye.
- An interesting description of a "smart bomb", of sorts.If you took a guard hostage and tried to use him or her or it for leverage, it got you and the guard and anybody within a hundred meters turned into a smoking crater. No negotiation, no compromise, just a big, sleek thermal bomb arcing out of the compound and onto your position. You couldn't hide, because the bomb zeroed in on the guard's implant, which couldn't be turned off or destroyed unless you knew exactly where it was, and that location was different for every guard on the planet.
- Apparently, species-related bias doesn't apply to those species with super-human abilities.Only a few dozen Givins had been conscripted, but their ability to survive for short periods, unsuited, in hard vacuum, even more than their aptitude for juggling integers, had resulted in more favored treatment than most other nonhumanoids got from the Empire.
- Self-explanatory.Lemelisk had disappointed him in that instance. The greatest challenge in designing the battle station, he had said, was not creating a beam cannon big enough to destroy a planet, nor was it building a moon-sized station that would be driven by a Class Three hyperdrive. The greatest challenge was powering both of them. There must be trade-offs, he had said. In order to mount a weapon of mundicidal means, shielding capabilities would have to be downgraded to a rudimentary level. Power, Bevel said, was not infinite, not even on a station this size, fueled by the largest hypermatter reactor ever built. However, given the surface-to-vacuum defenses, the number of fighters, turbolaser batteries, charged-particle blasters, magnetic railguns, proton torpedo banks, ion cannons, and a host of other protective devices, no naval ship of any size would be even a remote thread.
- Can anybody calc this?Spice smuggling by itself usually wasn't enough to rate a trip to the prison planet for a life sentence, but Balahteez had been involved in an unfortunate accident while being pursued by an Imperial patrol near the Zharan moon Gall. Realizing that his ship would soon be overtaken by the navy gunboat chasing him, Balahteez had jettisoned his illegal cargo. The drug, packed securely in a block of carbonite the size of a luggage trunk, had hurtled down Gall's gravity well and punched a large hole in the outer hull of a barracks housing a large unit of TIE fighter mechanics. The hole was big enough that thirty of the hapless mechanics had been blown through it and into vacuum by the explosive decompression, and a dozen more had run out of air before the emergency and repair droids could reseal the compartment. Not to mention the other fifty or so who had died immediately from the impact; the carbonite block had been traveling at about two kilometers a second and had left a crater thirty meters in diameter.
- This quote will no doubt prove controversial, although, again, it's quite hard to say what by 'large asteroid' is meant in this context, especially when Balahteez goes to to say..."... Beams of coherent particles, such as electrons, positrons, and the like, as well as amplified photon emissions, are often focused with large magnetic rings. Let us postulate that one could, in this fashion, generate a weaponized beam with enough force to blow a large asteroid apart with a single blast."
"Is there such a thing?"
"In theory, yes, though it requires a power source so large as to be impractical to perambulate, even on a Star Destroyer. But," Balahteez continued, raising one phalange in emphasis, "aboard something the size of, say, a small moon, one could easily install and house such a mechanism."
Here it is obvious that he speaks of the Death Star's tributary beams, and consequentially by 'large asteroid' must mean something dozens or hundreds of kilometers in diameter.Let us say, for the sake of argument, that the battle station under construction is large enough to hold, oh, six or eight such weapons, as well as a hypermatter reactor that could power a small planet. And that it is possible to focus all of this energy into a single beam - by the largest and most powerful magnetic ring every made."
- Self-explanatory.As the commander of such a vessel, he would, perforce, be the most powerful man in the galaxy. The thought had certainly occurred to him that not even the Emperor could stand before him, did he choose to challenge Palpatine's rule. Then again, Tarkin knew the Emperor. If their positions were reversed, he knew that there was no possible way he would sanction anyone having such power - not without some kind of fail-safe.
- A clarification of their relationship.Vader, unfortunately, was beyond Tarkin's command...
- Apparently the Emperor isn't as secluded in this time period as we might have thought if he himself ordered this trial.Her "crime" had been simply to back the wrong political candidate on a planetwide election on her world. The Emperor had decided that the man running for office was a traitor, as were his most influential supporters. He had thus ordered a score of well-to-do Mirialans to be rounded up, given a speedy "trial," and convicted of treason. Given the public outrage over this travesty of justice, it had been deemed politically expedient to execute them then and there, and so Teela and her compatriots had been shipped off to die on a world many light-years away.
- Even as early as A New Hope the Rebellion was more advanced than many Trekkies like to portray them. This is doubly enlightening coming from Lord Vader himself.Vader felt a small ember of satisfaction glow within him. He had known for some time that the malcontents were growing both in organization and power. They had staged guerrilla raids on space stations and supply depots, had managed to obtain military matériel and warcraft from sympathetic industrial and shipyard designers, and had allied themselves with many alien species, playing upon the latters' resentment at being reduced to inferior status in the eyes of the New Order. They were more than just a motley collection of wild-eyed idealists; they now numbered among their ranks former Imperial strategists, programmers, and technicians, and their network of spies was growing more intricate daily. They were scum, true enough, but enough scum could clog any system, even one as complex and pristine as the Empire.
- The history of the Death StarIt had been nearly three decades since Raith Sienar had first made Tarkin privy to the concept of the "battle station planetoid," and it had taken almost a decade to get the idea through the snarls of red tape and bring the Geonosians on board to improve and implement the designs. The project had been known by various code names - such as the Great Weapon - and the original plans had been much improved by the Geonosian leader Poggle the Lesser. But it had taken years for the concept to be stewarded through the torturous maze of government bureaucracy before construction was finally ordered to begin. There were still flaws in the original plan, but many of them had been addressed during the building of the proof-of-concept prototype in the Maw Installation, and others were being corrected as they were uncovered. The greatest minds in the galaxy had been recruited or drafted to lend their expertise to the building of the ultimate weapon. The brilliant Dr. Ohran Keldor, the mad weapons master Umak Leth, the young but nevertheless laser-sharp Omwati prodigy Qwi Xux, the Twi'lek administrator Tol Sivron - they, and many others of the like stripe, had been investigated and approved by Tarkin himself.
- New canonical size for the Death Star.It wasn't even a complete skeleton yet. When done, however, the battle station would be 160 kilometers in diameter.
- The Death Star's complement.... the station would mount a complement of craft, both station and ground, equal to a large planetside base: four capital ships, a hundred TIE/In starfighters, plus assault shuttles, blastboats, drop ships, support craft, and land vehicles, all ultimately totaling in the tens of thousands. It would have an operational crew numbering more than a quarter million, including nearly sixty thousand gunners alone. The vessel could easily transport more than half a million fully outfitted troops, and the support craft - pilots, crew, and other workers - would be half that number. The logistics of it all were staggering.
- the Death Star's construction.On a project this size there was no way to complete the entire hull, pressurize it all, and then start building the interior - the amount of air necessary wold be tremendous. Once the vessel was functional, then the multitude of converters installed in every sector could easily handle the task, but until those were online, air would have to be sucked from a planetary atmosphere and hauled up out of the gravity well by cargo ship - either that, or build a huge conversion plant in space and truck water to that, which would be even harder. A tanker full of water was more unwieldy than one full of air bottles, and without proper heat it just turned into blocks of ice when you unloaded it, which in turn resulted in problems with increased volume. The sheer magnitude of the project wouldn't allow a full exterior hull construction first.
Thus it had been reasoned early on that, while the hull was being laid, individual sectors would be built and sealed...
The hull-plate extruders were only a few hundred kilometers away, hung at a fixed orbital point where the gravitational forces of the prison planet and the raw-material asteroids being towed to the gigantic masticators all balanced. The process was simple enough. An asteroid sufficiently high in nickel-iron content was hauled from the outlying belt to the masticators and fed into a maw; the whirling durasteel teeth chewed the asteroids into tiny bits and mixed them with alloy ores mined and brought up from Despayre, including quadanium. The resulting gravel had water added and was put under high pressure to form a slurry, then fed into pipelines that led to the smelters. These were essentially huge melting pots that refined the mix, burning off impurities. The resulting scarified ore was conveyed to extruders that pressed out the hull plate, rather like food paste from a squeezed tube. There was still a lot of slag left over, but this was just gathered together, pointed at the local star, and given a hard push. Months later, these slag-rafts would fall into the sun and be burnt up.
- the station's layout.It was hard to visualize the scope of the whole orb. Big didn't do it justice. The habitable crust alone was two kilometers thick, and included in it the surface city sprawls, armory, hangar bays, command center, technical areas, and living quarters. Below that would be the hyperdrive, reactor core, and secondary power sources.
- Confirmation from Lord Vader himself as to the Emperor's status.The Rebels were turning out to be more troublesome than many had expected. The Emperor had known it would be thus, of course; the resistance had not been a surprise to him. The Emperor was completely in concert with the dark side of the Force. He was the most powerful Sith who had ever existed.
As would Vader be, someday.
- Interestingly, it appears that Vader isn't as well-known among the rank-and-file as I had originally imagined."ADO," Vil said as he approached. "What's flyin'?"
"You and your squad, among nine others," the AOD said. He kept waving at the still-approaching pilots, down now only to a handful. "VIP escort for the Imperial-class Destroyer Devastator."
Vil blinked. "We got a rainbow-jacket admiral? A Moff?"
"Not exactly. The guy running this ship is more of a monotone," said the ADO. Noting Vil's blank look, he added, "All black."
Vil got it then. "Darth Vader?"
"Friend of yours?"
- A nice little device here; if a prisoner can get his hands on one, there's no reason for the Empire not to employ them.With a spy-killer installed, Brun didn't need to worry much about Ratua ratting him out if he were caught. The embed unit, about the size of a baby's fingernail, would sit harmlessly in Ratua's skull for the rest of his life. But it would be tuned to a certain word, and if that word were spoken by Ratua, and only Ratua, the device would explode. Not much of an explosion - just enough to fry his brain up nice and crispy.
Those seem too low. Can these be taken as the bare minimums?ArcturusMengsk wrote:- The Death Star's complement.... the station would mount a complement of craft, both station and ground, equal to a large planetside base: four capital ships, a hundred TIE/In starfighters, plus assault shuttles, blastboats, drop ships, support craft, and land vehicles, all ultimately totaling in the tens of thousands. It would have an operational crew numbering more than a quarter million, including nearly sixty thousand gunners alone. The vessel could easily transport more than half a million fully outfitted troops, and the support craft - pilots, crew, and other workers - would be half that number. The logistics of it all were staggering.
From my interpretation of the passage in question, probably not. Tarkin would know fully well how many vessels were assigned to the Death Star. The station could, undoubtedly, hold many more, given its vast size - but why assign so many vessels to an 'impervious' battle station?havokeff wrote:Those seem too low. Can these be taken as the bare minimums?ArcturusMengsk wrote:- The Death Star's complement.... the station would mount a complement of craft, both station and ground, equal to a large planetside base: four capital ships, a hundred TIE/In starfighters, plus assault shuttles, blastboats, drop ships, support craft, and land vehicles, all ultimately totaling in the tens of thousands. It would have an operational crew numbering more than a quarter million, including nearly sixty thousand gunners alone. The vessel could easily transport more than half a million fully outfitted troops, and the support craft - pilots, crew, and other workers - would be half that number. The logistics of it all were staggering.
Those numbers seem like they're taken right from the minimalistic EGTVV. And I hope that's a misquote, and that it's actually "a hundred wings of TIE/ln starfighters" (the old number, which is still too small). 100 TIEs on the entire Death Star is absurd even by WEG standards.havokeff wrote:Those seem too low. Can these be taken as the bare minimums?ArcturusMengsk wrote:- The Death Star's complement.... the station would mount a complement of craft, both station and ground, equal to a large planetside base: four capital ships, a hundred TIE/In starfighters, plus assault shuttles, blastboats, drop ships, support craft, and land vehicles, all ultimately totaling in the tens of thousands. It would have an operational crew numbering more than a quarter million, including nearly sixty thousand gunners alone. The vessel could easily transport more than half a million fully outfitted troops, and the support craft - pilots, crew, and other workers - would be half that number. The logistics of it all were staggering.
It is not. I am looking at the page, 14, as we speak. Second paragraph down. The full paragraph is as follows.Jim Raynor wrote:And I hope that's a misquotehavokeff wrote:Those seem too low. Can these be taken as the bare minimums?ArcturusMengsk wrote: - The Death Star's complement.
It is not a misquote. I invite anyone with a copy to turn to page fourteen and see for yourself.Aside from the fearsome, world-destroying "superlaser" itself - which was based upon the Hammertong Project and used a power source secretly taken by the 501st Stormtrooper Legion on Mygeeto during the Clone Wars - the station would mount a complement of craft, both space and ground, equal to a large planetside base: four capital ships, a hundred TIE/IN starfighters, plus assault shuttles, blastboats, drop ships, support craft, and land vehicles, all ultimately totaling in the tens of thousands. It would have an operational crew numbering more than a quarter million, including nearly sixty thousand gunners alone. The vessel could easily transport more than half a million fully outfitted troops, and the support staff - pilots, crew, and other workers - would be half that number. The logistics of it all were staggering. Oh, it would be a fearsome monster indeed. But a monster tamed and under Tarkin's control; a monster sheathed in quadanium steel plating, invulnerable and impervious.
