Superlasers - Why so rare?

[Darth Hoth]

To the last query: yes. According to the ROTS ICS, true warships can focus 100% of their reactor output through their weapons systems; furthermore, the EGtV&S informs us that the Death Star I took a day's worth of capacitor charging to fire the prime weapon; this probably means the reactor had to run at near 100% for that long to build a planet-obliterating blast. If it was only a small fraction, why not just dedicate the reactor directly and have it only take a minute or less? Furthermore, the laws of thermodynamics dictate that heat must be radiated; when a starship is moving most of its heat is being carried away by exhaust - when it is firing, its being carried away by weapons' fire. The Death Star cannot be running at full-intensity all the time, and there's nothing to suggest the myriad shielding and drives and small weapons require constant power output, otherwise we'd be able to see many times the energy content of the Alderaan blast being emitted from the Death Star: it should glow white.

While this seems reasonable, it possibly contrasts with the depiction of the prototype Death Star shown in the Jedi Academy Trilogy, which could recharge its capacitors from a moon-shattering blast in at most a few hours (Champions of the Force) and recharge half power in fiften minutes. This station lacked all shielding etc, so those may take up a greater continuous energy than it seems.

(OTOH, I seem to recall that beam being distinctly weaker than that of the original DS, but it could still cause fragments of the moon to disperse at Alderaan-like speeds.)

Yeah, and you don't think the quantity of energy matters? Have you taken physics? The Alderaani shield safely absorbed a 1e22 megaton beam for a few fractions of a second before failing and the planet being destroyed. A SSD cannot hope to generate anything close to that wattage; so it should be easily dissipated.

How do we then explain the Eclipse's shield-breaking capabilities?

Do you think aircraft carriers are radical, cutting-edge technological applications? Because the USN is the only naval force on the planet which has successfully consistently deployed CTOL nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. The French have modern warships, nuclear power, nuclear weapons, etc.; and their CVN is a big headache. Engineers are not magicians; they require technical data and so on and so forth. If New Republic data security is so porus and shitty that rat-like creatures can run through ducts to access it from diplomatic reception halls, if you were Bevel Lemilisk, would not you request such immensely useful data at such relatively ridiculously low cost?

Yes, but would Durga agree? That single instance was the moment his plan came the closest to unravelling; had the NR suspected anything (which any reasonable estimate would say they should), his plans to build the weapon in secret would be irreparably shattered. That he was willing to take such a risk, even assuming he was aware of the KJA-freakishly incompetent security, seems to imply that there was some very real gain involved in obtaining the data; even if Lemelisk was able to recreate his research, it would perhaps have been ridiculously expensive or somesuch.

Or you do not waste millions-of-ISDs worth of materials and construction infrastructure on single white elephant projects in the midst of civil war and disintegration of the state apparatus. That comes with a heavy opportunity cost. Its simply less useful and more risky to engage in than dedicating the same resources to conventional military build-up. That is assuming that building Death Star-capable superlasers was possible given the effect wholesale disintegration of the Empire would have on delicate economies of scale. The Tarkin was a superlaser test bed; there is no evidence that its firepower would be sufficient to overpower Alderaan-level shields, and therefore, it would fail to serve in the same role and effectiveness as a Death Star. Not to mention, the logistics sink and risky supply tail of such a vessel while you cannot even trust your fleet commanders to stay loyal argues against its deployment.

That's also a possibility, but given the mindset and delusions of grandeur of the various warlords, wouldn't at least one of them at least attempt to build a superlaser weapon if he had the technology available? There's no evidence you need monstrous (by SW standards) resources to build one; the fact that the NR genuinely believed Admiral Krennel's small polity could build one shortly after the Thrawn campaign speaks against such ideas.

Wrong. We see intermediates between "pulse" turbolasers and superlasers such as the SPHA-T, we see blaster-equivalents of the superlaser in the composite beam turrets, we see superlaser utilized for civilian purposes and called such. There is no evidence that they are purely unique aside from scale and firepower. There's plenty of evidence to suggest that the superlaser is just an unusually massive-scale application of given technology, and you need to disprove that. By relying on your interpretation under the cover of "no evidence either way" (which is untrue), is an argument of ignorance.

What is the evidence for calling SPHA-T beam weapons, etc, superlasers?

Why would these require 100% reactor output at all times? Why would shields, weapons, propulsion etc. require reactor output when idle? Why would life support require anything close to the power required to relativistically scatter a shielded planet? How come we do not see that constant reactor output emitted thermodynamically?

Not one hundred percent, but some percentage. As per the DS prototype.

The Eclipse's reactor is much smaller than the DS2's.

So is the ship and superlaser it has to support.

Cite your sources clearly, please. And the rational conclusion from the evidence and political stasis of the GFFA is that there has been relatively static technological/scientific progress.

OK. In DE, the narration talks about "a new generation of AT-ATs equipped with the most advanced Imperial turbolasers". Han says, "Those things are employing the new X-80 power cells we heard about". So there appears to have been some improvement in power generation/storage since Hoth, although how applicable that would be on larger scales is anyone's guess. I just mentioned it since it's a possibility.

Since we do not know the output of the technobabble beams, or the mechanism by which the final 1e22 beam is generated from them, this is a meaningless standard. Meanwhile, the physical damage description is much more subjective and suggests a hundred billionth output compared to the DS1.

I somehow assumed the power output of the final composite beam would be as large as the sum total of the contributing ones; if anything, energy should be lost in the transfer, not gained. So that should be about 2/3rds of 1/8th of the final beam.

Firstly, the Eclipse is a gigantic glorified Imperial yacht. Secondly, you're relying on an assumption of individual parity in weapons, when we know the Executor visually does not boast many weapons larger than that of an ISD, yet much larger more powerful weapons are known to exist. Unwarranted assumption.

Do we see very large weapons on the Eclipse (apart from the superlaser)?

This is unrealistic; overwhelming a shield is based on intensity of power-delivered, not the name of the weapon delivering it. Furthermore, it asserts an impossibly retarded wastefulness and incompetence on the part of the Empire, building a weapon as large as the Death Star to deliver 1e22 megaton firepower when the Alderaani shield, according to you, was not merely so strong it could dissipate the 1e22 megaton beam for a fraction of a second but not longer, but rather because it was called a superlaser and they have "roll d6 for shield penetration magic."

Remember, secondary sources also claimed that ion cannons could insta-penetrate any shield, and this is totally misinformed. The Death Star superlaser can be visually CONFIRMED to not magically penetrate the shield; rather it was held off for some time before being overwhelmed and failing.

I was contemplating standing by a technobabble argument and explaining away the film with special effects problems or somesuch, but the ion cannon thing makes that difficult. OK, you're presenting a convincing problem here.

No, they are not. Most turbolaser/laser weapons are c-propogating beams with a visible "tracer" pulse. The Death Star superlaser is a c-propogating beam. "Plasma" mechanisms make no sense for any evidence presented in the films. The only apparent difference is composite-beam weapons' beams are visible along their entire length, rather than a particular isolated tracer component.

That contradicts most of the data on blasters I'm familiar with.

The shield heat sink capacity and heat dissipation ceilings are not attributed, so we have no way of comparing results. Not all deflector shields are created equally. You're relying on name-game argument again. Alderaan had a high-performance shield that could safely absorb/dissipate a 1e22 megaton Death Star beam for a fraction of a second. The (apparently low-performance) Coruscanti shield in The Krytos Trap could be defeated from underneath by salvos from HIMS Lusankya. We should assume defeating shields is a matter of conventional overwhelming of capacity unless proved otherwise. We should not arbitrarily invent magic technobabble, and certainly not on the basis of name games.

Hadn't the Coruscant shields been recently sabotaged, and might that not explain their poor performance?

Furthermore, the idea the Eclipse could punch out shields is retarded in of itself, because it renders the Death Star obsolescent after only a decade of progress in a technologically static galaxy.

SW technology is remarkably inconsistent; in the Great Hyperspace War, ground combat was fought with spears, but FTL space travel had been around for millennia already. Sometimes it feels like it isn't supposed to make sense

I think you're a tad bit undereducated in physics (particularly thermodynamics), and a bit rusty on the scientific method. We do not ignorantly accept secondary sources technological/physical claims if they are not reasonably consistent scientifically and observably with the filmic canon or in outright defiance of common sense.

I'll concede I'm no physicist, but as I mentioned, SW isn't always that commonsensical, and since there doesn't appear to be conclusive evidence against the Eclipse's capabilities, aren't we somehow forced to accept them as canon?

Still, I see where you're coming from.

[VT-16]

Sometimes it feels like it isn't supposed to make sense Wink

Don't try that as a copout.

We know from just about every source that Torpedo Spheres were made to find weaknesses in shields and exploit them. For all we know the Eclipse and Sovereigns were meant to do the same thing as well as fight other warships, a feat they were unmatched in, which necessitated unconventional tactics to bring one down, according to SOTG07. The Acclamator-II of the CW also functioned as a forerunner to the Torpedo Sphere, so this kind of shield-penetrating tactic by vessels much smaller than a DS, existed long before the DS was finished. We have to remember the superlaser beam was not just meant to penetrate a shield, but do so on a large scale and destroy the planet underneath.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

If I can suggest a pet theory?

Shields basically get in the way of incoming fire, convert the energy in the beam into heat, which is disposed of as neutrinos by the linked radiators, as I understand it.

Conventional turbolasers hit, and if we accept the ramp-up theory give some warning of the main charge incoming, a point- but a salvo isn't going to be that precisely controlled.
Even if it's only centimetres, a broadside is not going to hit the same exact point. It'll be the total load on the shield generator that matters.

A single superlaser beam is going to hit a single point. There's no reason to assume it doesn't ramp up, but it'll threaten the surge capacity of the shields, not the total heat transfer. There's no spreading of the load, it can burn through much more directly. (The basic assumption here is that the surge capacity is much lower.)

I put this forward as a tentative explanation of why a superlaser is more effective a shield- breaking weapon than even the equivalent total yield of standard turbolaser fire.

The Eclipse prototype was extensively amended during construction, according to the DESB; being a full kilometre and a half longer than the production version of the same design.
At any event, there's only 100m length in it with an Executor-class, the difference is in beam and depth of hull; less than an order of magnitude certainly, is there an accurate estimate of the volume of each ship? Scaling from that to the Death Star would be a better estimate of the power output of it's main gun than going with the hyperbole in the DESB, I reckon.


Smaller composite-beam weapons, the SPHA-Ts I'll have to think about some more, but try this as an argument; the ball turrets on the LAAT were intended as landing zone clearance weaponry.
Any very large target could be taken on by the missiles, they were for the intermediate class, dwarf spider and destroyer droids, to saw through them, and light emplacement weapons.

Now, no subsequent class of Imperial assault ship or landing barge that I know of carries composite beam weapons. Out of universe, that may have been because for twenty-plus years no-one knew that was going to be the armament of Republic assault landers, but in universe?

Is there a potential answer in the idea that they turned out to be more trouble than they were worth? Peacetime-trained crews, all the time and money they could want lavished on the systems and their support personnel to begin with, but later on with manufacturing and training time a critical factor, that performance may have come at too high a price.

They are obviously not too difficult to do at all, but they probably violate 'keep it simple, stupid'. The empire discontinued their use because they're expanding too fast to maintain the skill base to equip all it's small craft with them.

An aside; warhead fratricide and the Torpedo Sphere, how does that work? Does it lay down a series of mutually reinforcing blast patterns, or something? There's no way it can detonate five hundred torpedoes on the same meter square spot.

[VT-16]

The TIE-derived Lancet Aerial Artillery carries as its main weapon a small proton beam cannon. Then there's the SPMA walker, with the same kind of weapons-configurations as the SPHA.

[Illuminatus Primus]

While this seems reasonable, it possibly contrasts with the depiction of the prototype Death Star shown in the Jedi Academy Trilogy, which could recharge its capacitors from a moon-shattering blast in at most a few hours (Champions of the Force) and recharge half power in fiften minutes. This station lacked all shielding etc, so those may take up a greater continuous energy than it seems.

Some moons are tiny asteroids; we have nothing on the firepower required to scatter this unshielded garrison moon of Kessel. More no-numbers, "similarity-in-kind" arguments?

(OTOH, I seem to recall that beam being distinctly weaker than that of the original DS, but it could still cause fragments of the moon to disperse at Alderaan-like speeds.)

Yeah, and Kessel is shaped like a potato, which puts very unfavorable limits on its maximum size, and if the garrison moon is yet much smaller and doubtfully shielded as well as Alderaan... You realize that volume increases with the cube of radius, right? The second Death Star was a 180 times the volume of the first, even though it was only five times as wide? The moon's mass is MUCH MUCH less than that of Alderaan, it was not shielded like Alderaan, and it requires proportionally less power even for its size because the apparent explosion will be much faster compared to so much smaller an area and the lower gravity of the moon.

How do we then explain the Eclipse's shield-breaking capabilities?

Ignore them (the "coupled neutrino charge" nonsense attributed to superlasers is internally inconsistent and incoherent), or attribute it to more or less conventional penetration. You're exercising a no-limits fallacy; there's no reason it cannot punch through the same low-performance shields we have seen buckle under conventional shelling such as the Coruscant shield in The Krytos Trap, while still being unable to challenge more formidable, high-performance shields.

If I call something an armor-penetrating warhead on a real-world ATGM, do you assume that any armor, regardless of strength or thickness, is invulnerable? This is simplistic, name-based, no-limits reasoning.

Yes, but would Durga agree? That single instance was the moment his plan came the closest to unravelling; had the NR suspected anything (which any reasonable estimate would say they should), his plans to build the weapon in secret would be irreparably shattered.

Had they caught him trying to spy on them, they might be irritated and diplomatically rebuke him, but they would not necessary know what he wanted and that is not an instakill; today as in the past, even allies spy on each other all the time.

That he was willing to take such a risk, even assuming he was aware of the KJA-freakishly incompetent security, seems to imply that there was some very real gain involved in obtaining the data; even if Lemelisk was able to recreate his research, it would perhaps have been ridiculously expensive or somesuch.

If he knew fucking rat-things could penetrate the data center by virtue of NR's apparently epic incompetence, I'm sure he felt secure in his gambit.

That's also a possibility, but given the mindset and delusions of grandeur of the various warlords, wouldn't at least one of them at least attempt to build a superlaser weapon if he had the technology available?

Uh, as you said, Krennel was suspected. But they were often reduced to raiding to maintain their economies and war industry; they were rarely in any shape for singular, long-duration, highly-vulnerable, extremely-high-cost projects at the expense of conventional arms build-up. Grand Moff Ardus Kaine had much of the Outer Rim (the Oversector Outer) to claim as his personal warlord's fiefdom, and he constructed minimalist Enforcer-class pickets derived from the spaceframe of the Immobilizer 418 in lieu of the proper and previously ubiquituous commonest Star Destroyers. You are asserting some need and ability MUST have been there. There is plenty of circumstancial evidence to suggest neither ever were; you must substantiate your claims. I am not going to swat down every idle conjecture you conjure up: claims must be supported by evidence.

There's no evidence you need monstrous (by SW standards) resources to build one; the fact that the NR genuinely believed Admiral Krennel's small polity could build one shortly after the Thrawn campaign speaks against such ideas.

The Pulsar Station never existed, so we will never know of its definitive realism as a concept; afterall, the U.S. intelligence community swallowed trailer-campers converted to super-duper mobile biological weapons plants. Should we accept such a concept as objectively reasonable? Sometimes intelligence is conjecture and follows what is known because that's where it leads you, even if there are things about which apparently do not make sense at the time.

And of course, your no-limits, "similiarity-in-kind means similarity-in-ability" fallacious argument returns: there is nothing to suggest the Pulsar Station was at all capable of serving the Death Star's primary tactical role, which was the complete destruction of the most fortified and defended planets. Its really a huge, autonomous siege gun.

What is the evidence for calling SPHA-T beam weapons, etc, superlasers?

So if they're not called the same, they just are not? I see you're ignoring the superlaser called a superlaser in the Geonosian ore smelter. They operate on the same observable principles, they look the same, they move the same. Do you think GL did not notice the significance or similarity in his own visual F/X?

Not one hundred percent, but some percentage. As per the DS prototype.

Arguments from ignorance. Why should drives have a 100% duty cycle? Or shields? Why would shields take up energy comparable to blowing up planets? Why would their minimum energy requirement - or even maximum - be anywhere near the max output of the reactor?

So is the ship and superlaser it has to support.

Han Solo's blaster pistol's cell is probably proportionally larger compared to the gun it must support, are you arguing its more powerful? The simple fact is the reactor is too small without stupendously greater energy density to deliver the Death Star blast or anything like it in a realistic timeframe.

OK. In DE, the narration talks about "a new generation of AT-ATs equipped with the most advanced Imperial turbolasers". Han says, "Those things are employing the new X-80 power cells we heard about". So there appears to have been some improvement in power generation/storage since Hoth, although how applicable that would be on larger scales is anyone's guess. I just mentioned it since it's a possibility.

And maybe...maybe this came at the expense of some trade-off? Do you know anything about engineering principles? Just because they had "new power cells" does not mean they were more powerful with not commiserate cost or drawback.

I somehow assumed the power output of the final composite beam would be as large as the sum total of the contributing ones; if anything, energy should be lost in the transfer, not gained. So that should be about 2/3rds of 1/8th of the final beam.

Please show me the physics you used to model the interaction and derive its energy requirements. "If anything"? Why, because you say-so? Let's see some math or physics for once, no more handwaving.

Do we see very large weapons on the Eclipse (apart from the superlaser)?

We can never get a detailed-enough look to rule out turrets larger than those on the ISD. Although you're being amusing here: the Eclipse of course cannot have firepower like Lady Ex because her guns are NOT QUITE as big, but yet the Eclipse's magical superlaser is permitted by your argument commiserate firepower to the Death Star superlaser despite being IMMENSELY smaller. Furthermore, your reasoning is based on the absurd logic that the conventional guns must be powered at all times in addition to the superlaser; why not have a large constellation of guns (after all, according to ROTS ICS, real warships can put 100% reactor power to the main battery) AND a superlaser, each which can use 100% reactor power, but just not at the same time? Why does every system according to you draw power all the time? Do you think the reactor runs at full capacity or even half capacity all the time?

That contradicts most of the data on blasters I'm familiar with.

You're assuming personal arms and surface based artillery "called" blasters must be the same as turbolasers. Why is that? Yet my casual observations on the obvious similarity between the SPHA-T, the LAAT/i's composite-beam turrets, the Geonosian ore smelter-superlaser, and the large superlasers of the battlestations gets waved off by you? In the blaster/turbolaser dichotomy, we at least can observe different dynamics and we have two sets of canon operating mechanisms, so there is a good reason to ignore the apparent similarities in favor of different essential weaponry; yet you have not offered any evidence why the apparent similarities described above are not compelling - rather, you hold yourself to a looser standard when your argument benefits here. That is unfair.

Hadn't the Coruscant shields been recently sabotaged, and might that not explain their poor performance?

It had been months; I think it more likely the NR simply installed a quick-replace low-performance shield. Of course, its hardly the sole example of planetary shields being buckled by conventional shelling. And even without the evidence, there is no reason to believe all planetary shields are created equal, and therefore that the Eclipse can penetrate some means its penetration capability is comparable to that of the Death Star.

SW technology is remarkably inconsistent; in the Great Hyperspace War, ground combat was fought with spears, but FTL space travel had been around for millennia already. Sometimes it feels like it isn't supposed to make sense

If you are going to cop-out with examples you yourself think ridiculous and discard as incoherent in light of the greater body of evidence by saying the analyzed medium does not make any intrinsic sense, why are you trying to come to rational conclusions from analysis of it? The most coherent explanation of SW is that its civilization has been roughly technologically static for millennia.

I'll concede I'm no physicist, but as I mentioned, SW isn't always that commonsensical, and since there doesn't appear to be conclusive evidence against the Eclipse's capabilities, aren't we somehow forced to accept them as canon?

I see, you're willing to toss out logical consistency, basic scientific principles, and demand that we retain all canon by the standard it does not contradict itself or higher canon? How can we even reach that standard if we discard internal consistency and rational, scientific analysis, by far the only objective method?

What we do is try to come up with the most inclusive, holistically consistent, and rational explanation - and we discard outliers. I think that the Death Star was as big as it was because that is bulk required to fire blasts that big compared to the bulk of say - a Star Destroyer relative to its main guns, is a pretty face-value, and basic conclusion. It requires a good reason to overturn. I suggest you look up power generation in this forum, specifically Ender's posts and Darth Wong's. I suggest you look up the Death Star and shielding as well. This topics have been discussed at length. The Death Star's firepower (divided by the one-blast/day charge-up time) actually lies on a pretty well-defined function of max reactor output versus reactor volume that can be pegged from the Acclamator-class and the ISD all the way up.

[Stark]

What kind of example charges to 'half power' in fifteen minutes but requires 'hours' to charge a 'moon shattering' blast?

The ROTS ICS has extremely short numbers for full-power fuel endurance, doesn't it? Is that the source that demonstrates SW ships can only run at maximum output for some hours before exhausting their fuel supply? That skuppers his ridiculous 'every watt only goes to one system/everything is powered at once' idea.

[Darth Hoth]

Yeah, and Kessel is shaped like a potato, which puts very unfavorable limits on its maximum size, and if the garrison moon is yet much smaller and doubtfully shielded as well as Alderaan... You realize that volume increases with the cube of radius, right? The second Death Star was a 180 times the volume of the first, even though it was only five times as wide? The moon's mass is MUCH MUCH less than that of Alderaan, it was not shielded like Alderaan, and it requires proportionally less power even for its size because the apparent explosion will be much faster compared to so much smaller an area and the lower gravity of the moon.

Though not a physicist, I am not entirely ignorant of basic mathematics. I might also point out that since the Death Star prototype was at the time piloted by raving incompetents, who actually used the superlaser beam against fighters, its use against the moon was likely gross overkill as well. But I'm beginning to get it: an argument must be substantiated by numbers. I will refrain from references without such in the future.

Ignore them (the "coupled neutrino charge" nonsense attributed to superlasers is internally inconsistent and incoherent), or attribute it to more or less conventional penetration. You're exercising a no-limits fallacy; there's no reason it cannot punch through the same low-performance shields we have seen buckle under conventional shelling such as the Coruscant shield in The Krytos Trap, while still being unable to challenge more formidable, high-performance shields.

However, if it cannot do better than what standard armaments can, then what's the point with it? That makes even less sense from an Imperial POV than it having those abilities.

If I call something an armor-penetrating warhead on a real-world ATGM, do you assume that any armor, regardless of strength or thickness, is invulnerable? This is simplistic, name-based, no-limits reasoning.

No, but since it specifically mentioned planetary-grade shielding, I assumed that to be the case. If you said a particular sniper rifle with armour-piercing bullets could penetrate any body armour, I'd perhaps believe that.

Had they caught him trying to spy on them, they might be irritated and diplomatically rebuke him, but they would not necessary know what he wanted and that is not an instakill; today as in the past, even allies spy on each other all the time.

Point conceded.

If he knew fucking rat-things could penetrate the data center by virtue of NR's apparently epic incompetence, I'm sure he felt secure in his gambit.

Re-reading the appropriate passage... I'll grant you're probably right there as well.

Uh, as you said, Krennel was suspected. But they were often reduced to raiding to maintain their economies and war industry; they were rarely in any shape for singular, long-duration, highly-vulnerable, extremely-high-cost projects at the expense of conventional arms build-up. Grand Moff Ardus Kaine had much of the Outer Rim (the Oversector Outer) to claim as his personal warlord's fiefdom, and he constructed minimalist Enforcer-class pickets derived from the spaceframe of the Immobilizer 418 in lieu of the proper and previously ubiquituous commonest Star Destroyers. You are asserting some need and ability MUST have been there. There is plenty of circumstancial evidence to suggest neither ever were; you must substantiate your claims. I am not going to swat down every idle conjecture you conjure up: claims must be supported by evidence.

Seeing as the Hutts could build a Darksaber with their resources, and apparently do so within a few months (even if it failed), I see no reason why Kaine, or Zsinj (1/3rd of the Empire for a couple of years), or Thrawn (1/4th of the Empire IIRC from TTT) or perhaps a couple of others should be able to do so in purely economic terms. Is it idle conjecture that they all had resources at least comparable to those of a crimelord (albeit a major one)? There should reasonably have to be some other inhibiting factor to make them all just refrain from it. Especially if we recall that there are two near-completed gargantuan "habitation spheres" around; not finishing them would be the grossest mismanagement.

The Pulsar Station never existed, so we will never know of its definitive realism as a concept; afterall, the U.S. intelligence community swallowed trailer-campers converted to super-duper mobile biological weapons plants. Should we accept such a concept as objectively reasonable? Sometimes intelligence is conjecture and follows what is known because that's where it leads you, even if there are things about which apparently do not make sense at the time.

Well, but they did not dismiss it as outrageous right from the start. I might be getting you wrong, but it sounds like you're making the case that you need a galaxy's resources to build a Death Star. Would not the claim that one system was doing just that then be something like one that I am personally constructing ICBMs in my backyard?

And of course, your no-limits, "similiarity-in-kind means similarity-in-ability" fallacious argument returns: there is nothing to suggest the Pulsar Station was at all capable of serving the Death Star's primary tactical role, which was the complete destruction of the most fortified and defended planets. Its really a huge, autonomous siege gun.

No, and I do not recall suggesting that. The point was that they were (supposedly) building a battle planetoid with superlaser technology, at expense that should not be lower by orders of magnitude. The example was there illustrating the economic argument.

So if they're not called the same, they just are not? I see you're ignoring the superlaser called a superlaser in the Geonosian ore smelter. They operate on the same observable principles, they look the same, they move the same. Do you think GL did not notice the significance or similarity in his own visual F/X?

I was not aware there was a named superlaser in the prequels. Is that something from one of the ICSs? (Sadly, I don't have any of those.)

My opinion of GL is not very high after the prequels and screwing up KotOR, and I honestly don't think he cares much as long as it "looks cool". Point notwithstanding, author intent is not canon. And just because two things look similar doesn't mean they are the same. That's speculation, not evidence.

Arguments from ignorance. Why should drives have a 100% duty cycle? Or shields? Why would shields take up energy comparable to blowing up planets? Why would their minimum energy requirement - or even maximum - be anywhere near the max output of the reactor?

Don't shields require continuous maintenance? And doesn't the Death Star have planetary-grade shields?

I will concede, though, that the technical debate is not my area of expertise. Since I cannot disprove you, I guess I would have to agree.

And maybe...maybe this came at the expense of some trade-off? Do you know anything about engineering principles? Just because they had "new power cells" does not mean they were more powerful with not commiserate cost or drawback.

Since the machines outfitted with the technology were considered a new generation and the Empire's most advanced, it appears the Imperials thought them an overall improvement.

Please show me the physics you used to model the interaction and derive its energy requirements. "If anything"? Why, because you say-so? Let's see some math or physics for once, no more handwaving.

Is there not some law of physics that assumes that in every transmission/conversion process, power is lost? And I am almost certain energy cannot come out of nothing. What would contribute energy to the reaction other than the tributary proton beams?

We can never get a detailed-enough look to rule out turrets larger than those on the ISD. Although you're being amusing here: the Eclipse of course cannot have firepower like Lady Ex because her guns are NOT QUITE as big, but yet the Eclipse's magical superlaser is permitted by your argument commiserate firepower to the Death Star superlaser despite being IMMENSELY smaller.

If the Eclipse is built for anything approaching the same duties as the Executor (command ship/battlecruiser), shouldn't its armaments be similar to reflect that? What would be the point with a few large batteries instead of many smaller if the power output through them can apparently still be the same?

You're assuming personal arms and surface based artillery "called" blasters must be the same as turbolasers. Why is that? Yet my casual observations on the obvious similarity between the SPHA-T, the LAAT/i's composite-beam turrets, the Geonosian ore smelter-superlaser, and the large superlasers of the battlestations gets waved off by you? In the blaster/turbolaser dichotomy, we at least can observe different dynamics and we have two sets of canon operating mechanisms, so there is a good reason to ignore the apparent similarities in favor of different essential weaponry; yet you have not offered any evidence why the apparent similarities described above are not compelling - rather, you hold yourself to a looser standard when your argument benefits here. That is unfair.

Every source I can remember off the top of my head has discussed turbolasers/laser cannon/blasters as if the operating mechanism was basically the same, namely supercharged plasma; unfortunately, the Visual Dictionary is the only one I can name tonight. (For what it's worth, Wookiee seems to agree, though I won't quote them as a source.) Is this light-based mechanism a Saxton invention? Meanwhile, superlasers are said to work by other means ("proton beams").

It had been months; I think it more likely the NR simply installed a quick-replace low-performance shield. Of course, its hardly the sole example of planetary shields being buckled by conventional shelling. And even without the evidence, there is no reason to believe all planetary shields are created equal, and therefore that the Eclipse can penetrate some means its penetration capability is comparable to that of the Death Star.

You are correct on the timeframe, of course, and your explanation seems better. But if the statement on the Eclipse concerns planetary shields in general, should that not be considered applicable?

If you are going to cop-out with examples you yourself think ridiculous and discard as incoherent in light of the greater body of evidence by saying the analyzed medium does not make any intrinsic sense, why are you trying to come to rational conclusions from analysis of it? The most coherent explanation of SW is that its civilization has been roughly technologically static for millennia.

I am trying to rationally analyse it, but sometimes canon itself makes that more or less impossible. The point was to illustrate that. In those cases we can either stick with canon, or devise our own ideas on what things should be like. My stance has until recently been that canon is always right. Karen Traviss changed that, though, so now I am wavering a little.

Still, I feel I have to point out that technological development seems to have been far more vigorous in the Empire/New Republic era than at any other point in SW history. We have HRDs, molecular shielding, various superweapons and improvements...

I see, you're willing to toss out logical consistency, basic scientific principles, and demand that we retain all canon by the standard it does not contradict itself or higher canon? How can we even reach that standard if we discard internal consistency and rational, scientific analysis, by far the only objective method?

What we do is try to come up with the most inclusive, holistically consistent, and rational explanation - and we discard outliers. I think that the Death Star was as big as it was because that is bulk required to fire blasts that big compared to the bulk of say - a Star Destroyer relative to its main guns, is a pretty face-value, and basic conclusion. It requires a good reason to overturn.

All of this seems to be making sense.

I suggest you look up power generation in this forum, specifically Ender's posts and Darth Wong's. I suggest you look up the Death Star and shielding as well. This topics have been discussed at length. The Death Star's firepower (divided by the one-blast/day charge-up time) actually lies on a pretty well-defined function of max reactor output versus reactor volume that can be pegged from the Acclamator-class and the ISD all the way up.

Alright, you've got me. I won't argue shield-breaking technology further, since I apparently do not have the evidence to support my stance. You've convinced me. I still wonder what a dedicated superlaser is then good for, though.

[Darth Hoth]

What kind of example charges to 'half power' in fifteen minutes but requires 'hours' to charge a 'moon shattering' blast?

The ROTS ICS has extremely short numbers for full-power fuel endurance, doesn't it? Is that the source that demonstrates SW ships can only run at maximum output for some hours before exhausting their fuel supply? That skuppers his ridiculous 'every watt only goes to one system/everything is powered at once' idea.

It's from Champions of the Force, the third Jedi Academy book, more specifically Tol Sivron and his goons in the Battle of Kessel.

They initially fired a blast to destroy Kessel, but as the incompetents they were they instead hit its garrison moon instead, turning it into "fragmented rubble".

They then use the superlaser on the smuggler fighters that attack them:

"Well, then fire again with our laser," Tol Sivron said. "Maybe we can hit one of them this time."
"The power core is only half-charged," Doxin pointed out.
Sivron swirled and parted his lips to show pointed teeth. "Isn't that good enough to knock out a few little ships?"
Doxin blinked his piggish eyes as if he hadn't considered the possibility. "Why, yes, sir - yes, it is. Ready to fire."

As is apparent from the text, they don't have the slightest idea what they're doing. The time frame is not given, but since this is during the same battle and they have yet to engage the enemy, it cannot be more than an hour before the capacitors are half charged, and it is probably less.

It becomes clearer on the next page:

"Did you see that?" Doxin said with obvious pleasure. "We hit one!"
"Hooray," Golanda said sourly from her seat. Her voice carried absolutely no enthusiasm. "Only about forty more to go, and you can't even fire the superlaser again for fifteen minutes."

I might be making too much of the quote by thinking fifteen minutes means recharging to half strength, but that seems at least to me to be the minimum these crazy scientists deem necessary to use the beam. They have no grasp whatsoever of combat, but the power levels are easily readable, so those measurements should be accurate.

[Stark]

So... if they're so stupid... why can we believe anything they say? Really, all it shows is that they need a 15m charge to even use the weapon, it's not showing how long it takes to charge for a planet-smasher at all (or whatever pussy 'planet smasher' it's capable of). Dialogue is useless evidence.

[Darth Hoth]

As I said, it is open to some interpretation. To me, it seems as if their stupidity is the reason to make the assumption (since they are evidently too inept to consider using lower power settings).

[Stark]

'Open to some interpretation'? They're firing with far less than the 'hours' of charge for a full power blast, right?

So they ARE using lower power settings.

[Darth Hoth]

Well, assuming the process is uniform in speed throughout and cannot be accelerated or somesuch, I guess you're right.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Though not a physicist, I am not entirely ignorant of basic mathematics. I might also point out that since the Death Star prototype was at the time piloted by raving incompetents, who actually used the superlaser beam against fighters, its use against the moon was likely gross overkill as well. But I'm beginning to get it: an argument must be substantiated by numbers. I will refrain from references withoutsuch in the future.

Its very good and well to say that it may have been overkill. That scattering the moon may have been comparable to the Alderaan event. But what may be possible is not necessarily what is so. There are also important factors to consider: the Death Star prototype is a mere 120 kilometers in diameter, it is also merely a skeletal frame. The Death Star prototype is attributed in the EGtVV only the ability to render a planet "uninhabitable" - far beneath the threshold of the Death Star. The missing volume may cost fuel mass, heat sink for waste heat for the prime weapon, capacitors, etc. All of these would prevent the Death Star prototype from boasting a firepower comparable to the genuine article. There is no reason to imagine them comparable other than supposition and there is plenty of common sense why they should not be comparable.

However, if it cannot do better than what standard armaments can, then what's the point with it? That makes even less sense from an Imperial POV than it having those abilities.

Even if its firepower is mundane and equivalent to a constellation of conventional artillery, delivering that firepower along a single vector provides much more intensity. Your skin can stand to absorb a great of light and heat across its entire area, and reemit it into the environment. But focusing it with a magnifying glass into a small area, and it'd burn you. It not just sheer energy (in joules), or sheer power (in joules/seconds), but also the intensity at which it is delivered (joules/second/area).

No, but since it specifically mentioned planetary-grade shielding, I assumed that to be the case. If you said a particular sniper rifle with armour-piercing bullets could penetrate any body armour, I'd perhaps believe that.

Again, ATGMs penetrate tank armor, but they cannot do so without limit. Again, the Eclipse example fails because the mechanism provided is deficient and we have observed shields which can momentarily diffuse unspeakably greater yields.

Seeing as the Hutts could build a Darksaber with their resources, and apparently do so within a few months (even if it failed), I see no reason why Kaine, or Zsinj (1/3rd of the Empire for a couple of years), or Thrawn (1/4th of the Empire IIRC from TTT) or perhaps a couple of others should be able to do so in purely economic terms.

The Darksaber did not even function once. There is no evidence it would have been some grave, strategic-balance shifting weapon such that it would make sense for the aforementioned to bother trying. As you yourself admit, the assignment of resources by Durga was DEFICIENT to field a working weapon. And again, how do we know the Darksaber could deliver firepower at the same magnitude of the Death Star? And being much less able to defend itself, how could it hope to function in the same role? And just because Lemilisk did what he was paid for and chopped it down until Durga was happy (and cut corners, and saved costs - which he ultimately did not trust to be reliable), does not mean that the bulk to the Death Star was inert and useless for it accomplishing its primary mission.

Is it idle conjecture that they all had resources at least comparable to those of a crimelord (albeit a major one)? There should reasonably have to be some other inhibiting factor to make them all just refrain from it. Especially if we recall that there are two near-completed gargantuan "habitation spheres" around; not finishing them would be the grossest mismanagement.

Not if the security advantages afforded by dedicated the same resources to conventional arms-build-up. Are you familiar with economics? Building those COSTS the Empire other stuff which could be more effective and more available sooner and more distributed and less vulnerable, etc.

Well, but they did not dismiss it as outrageous right from the start. I might be getting you wrong, but it sounds like you're making the case that you need a galaxy's resources to build a Death Star. Would not the claim that one system was doing just that then be something like one that I am personally constructing ICBMs in my backyard?

A Death Star is equal to on the order of tens of millions of Star Destroyers. Given the difficulty with which they have fielding scale appropriate navies, I do not think it is irrelevantly easy. Granted, this is because SW authors are simplistic and stupid and think building a Death Star means "roll d6 for casting SUPER BIG MOON STATION THINGY", rather and in terms of industrial capacity and opportunity cost. Furthermore, the Cuitric Hegemony is not a single system. And nonetheless, conjecture based on limited intelligence does not mean it was actually credible, and even if it was, that does not translate into it being advantageous to build Death Stars, because the Pulsar Station was not comparable to a Death Star in role.

No, and I do not recall suggesting that. The point was that they were (supposedly) building a battle planetoid with superlaser technology, at expense that should not be lower by orders of magnitude. The example was there illustrating the economic argument.

Why not much lower expense? The firepower of the station was greatly less than that implied by its size; on the order of a mere dozen or so anti-SSD scale superlasers. That is not comparable to the firepower of even the Death Star prototype, much less the Death Star. Moreover, we do not know if this prospective, nonexistent weapon could even be deployed over galactic ranges, what its endurance would be, etc., etc. Remember the NR believes the Death Star to have been built by some unitary unique shipyard, and thought perhaps Krennel inherited it. They were operating on highly idiosyncratic and misinformed premises (actually built from self-replicating construction droids).

I was not aware there was a named superlaser in the prequels. Is that something from one of the ICSs? (Sadly, I don't have any of those.)

Inside the Worlds of Attack of the Clones.

My opinion of GL is not very high after the prequels and screwing up KotOR, and I honestly don't think he cares much as long as it "looks cool". Point notwithstanding, author intent is not canon. And just because two things look similar doesn't mean they are the same. That's speculation, not evidence.

How did GL screw up KoTOR? And furthermore, there is an obvious relationship between these weapon systems, and no evidence to refute it. Yet you're willing to treat blasters and turbolasers later in your previous post as equivalent based on what? Appearance.

Don't shields require continuous maintenance? And doesn't the Death Star have planetary-grade shields?

Why would maintenance require anything close to the Death Star's reactor output? This is not Star Trek, you don't need "equal energy" constantly flowing through the shields to "beat back" fire with fire. Its an extremely naive magic-like conception of shielding and thermodynamically unrealistic (where is all this heat going?).

I will concede, though, that the technical debate is not my area of expertise. Since I cannot disprove you, I guess I would have to agree.

Since the machines outfitted with the technology were considered a new generation and the Empire's most advanced, it appears the Imperials thought them an overall improvement.

Really? How is it that previous generations of aircraft were much more capable than modern ones in the USAF? The SR-71? The B-70? These are much faster than the B-1B. Militaries upgrade based on strategic necessity and the opposition.

Is there not some law of physics that assumes that in every transmission/conversion process, power is lost? And I am almost certain energy cannot come out of nothing. What would contribute energy to the reaction other than the tributary proton beams?

Turbolaser/superlaser quanta are invisible, my friend. And there are beam-generating components in the "eye" of the superlaser. Also, it is not merely an interaction of the composite beams, as they focus together for some time without emitting a beam, which contradicts conservation of momentum. There are invisible dynamics there.

If the Eclipse is built for anything approaching the same duties as the Executor (command ship/battlecruiser), shouldn't its armaments be similar to reflect that? What would be the point with a few large batteries instead of many smaller if the power output through them can apparently still be the same?

Dickwaving? The Eclipse is not a straight-forward design, it hosts all kinds of compromises to Palpatine's specifications.

Every source I can remember off the top of my head has discussed turbolasers/laser cannon/blasters as if the operating mechanism was basically the same, namely supercharged plasma; unfortunately, the Visual Dictionary is the only one I can name tonight. (For what it's worth, Wookiee seems to agree, though I won't quote them as a source.) Is this light-based mechanism a Saxton invention? Meanwhile, superlasers are said to work by other means ("proton beams").

Given that the superlaser is obviously not (visual inconsistency - proton beams do NOT look like that) a proton beam weapon, I think we can discard that technobabble. AOTC ICS states that lasers and turbolasers are all c-propogating beams with a visible tracer pulse. This is consistent with the bolts tracking as if along an invisible beam and disobeying conservation of momentum (if discrete components).

You are correct on the timeframe, of course, and your explanation seems better. But if the statement on the Eclipse concerns planetary shields in general, should that not be considered applicable?

Do we know anything about the average planetary shield? The average tank armor maybe easily cracked by last generation ATGMs, while the most expensive - and the vast minority of the gross sum - U.S. armor is impervious.

I am trying to rationally analyse it, but sometimes canon itself makes that more or less impossible. The point was to illustrate that. In those cases we can either stick with canon, or devise our own ideas on what things should be like. My stance has until recently been that canon is always right. Karen Traviss changed that, though, so now I am wavering a little.

You discard incorrect canon. The canon ought to be coherent before it is complete. A more inclusionist canon that its totally internally inconsistent is better how? Are you from theForce.net or sw.com?

Still, I feel I have to point out that technological development seems to have been far more vigorous in the Empire/New Republic era than at any other point in SW history. We have HRDs, molecular shielding, various superweapons and improvements...

Those are not necessarily breakthroughs, they could easily be new applications, or simply technologies which were considered cost prohibitive in an era without the economic incentives of total war. Thousands of years is a long time for an institution to survive, especially politically, if there are major technological changes. Not to mention geometric growth over that timeframe would produce a result inconsistent with what we observe by ANH.

Alright, you've got me. I won't argue shield-breaking technology further, since I apparently do not have the evidence to support my stance. You've convinced me. I still wonder what a dedicated superlaser is then good for, though.

As I said, it seems to be a good solution for mass firepower applications. Traditional turbolasers mounted on turrets are not effective. They are capable of delivering high-intensity firepower in lieu of large numbers of conventional guns.

We just had a discussion on shielding, I suggest you search it, its pretty good.

[Darth Hoth]

As I conceded on the Eclipse debate, I'll only take up the other points that came up during the course of the discussion.

Even if its firepower is mundane and equivalent to a constellation of conventional artillery, delivering that firepower along a single vector provides much more intensity. Your skin can stand to absorb a great of light and heat across its entire area, and reemit it into the environment. But focusing it with a magnifying glass into a small area, and it'd burn you. It not just sheer energy (in joules), or sheer power (in joules/seconds), but also the intensity at which it is delivered (joules/second/area).

But if a ship can deliver 100 % of reactor output through a single battery, should that not then have a more or less similar effect?

The Darksaber did not even function once. There is no evidence it would have been some grave, strategic-balance shifting weapon such that it would make sense for the aforementioned to bother trying. As you yourself admit, the assignment of resources by Durga was DEFICIENT to field a working weapon. And again, how do we know the Darksaber could deliver firepower at the same magnitude of the Death Star? And being much less able to defend itself, how could it hope to function in the same role? And just because Lemilisk did what he was paid for and chopped it down until Durga was happy (and cut corners, and saved costs - which he ultimately did not trust to be reliable), does not mean that the bulk to the Death Star was inert and useless for it accomplishing its primary mission.

And isn't that retarded... committing the resources, acquiring the expertise, stealing top secret plans... and then letting some incompetent hive rats screw up the construction.

Still, the Hutt plan was to use the weapon as a planet-crusher, and Lemelisk, who did what he was paid for, constructed exactly that. I find it improbable he would build a weapons design that he knew would not work. IMHO, its deficiency was far more due to the Taurill incompetence and the inferior materials he was given.

Of course, a weapon such as the Darksaber would be (and was) essentially defenceless in conventional combat, so it would be at best a terror weapon.

Not if the security advantages afforded by dedicated the same resources to conventional arms-build-up. Are you familiar with economics? Building those COSTS the Empire other stuff which could be more effective and more available sooner and more distributed and less vulnerable, etc.

Absolutely, but those were nearly completed and just lying about. Installing weapons and the Superlaser would have been enormously cheaper than building the superstructure, and not completing it would be a waste of the vast resources that had already gone into them. That would not make sense.

And as said before, given the average warlord's megalomania, I doubt it they would have refrained from developing such weapons if they could.

A Death Star is equal to on the order of tens of millions of Star Destroyers. Given the difficulty with which they have fielding scale appropriate navies, I do not think it is irrelevantly easy. Granted, this is because SW authors are simplistic and stupid and think building a Death Star means "roll d6 for casting SUPER BIG MOON STATION THINGY", rather and in terms of industrial capacity and opportunity cost.

Agreed.

Furthermore, the Cuitric Hegemony is not a single system. And nonetheless, conjecture based on limited intelligence does not mean it was actually credible, and even if it was, that does not translate into it being advantageous to build Death Stars, because the Pulsar Station was not comparable to a Death Star in role.

No, OK, my bad, it is, what, twenty-five worlds? But does that really make that much of a difference? It is still a far cry from a vast empire.

Why not much lower expense? The firepower of the station was greatly less than that implied by its size; on the order of a mere dozen or so anti-SSD scale superlasers. That is not comparable to the firepower of even the Death Star prototype, much less the Death Star.

I seem to recall the NR saying that the station's stated purpose (anti-ship battlemoon) was a gross misuse of the power it produced. But then again, I guess we have to make allowances that they are the NR, after all...

Moreover, we do not know if this prospective, nonexistent weapon could even be deployed over galactic ranges, what its endurance would be, etc., etc. Remember the NR believes the Death Star to have been built by some unitary unique shipyard, and thought perhaps Krennel inherited it. They were operating on highly idiosyncratic and misinformed premises (actually built from self-replicating construction droids).

Every new book that reflects on them somehow seems to make the NR seem more incompetent. As for the PS, I automatically assumed it to be hyperspace capable etc. Now when reading Isard's Revenge again, I see that that might be an unwarranted assumption, given that Krennel's policy was purely defensive.

Inside the Worlds of Attack of the Clones.

OK, thanks.

How did GL screw up KoTOR?

By implanting his uninformed post-Ruusan views of the Jedi in a story set in what should reasonably have been the TotJ era. The same problem as always when he is involved - he does not bother about checking the EU or keeping canon even slightly consistent.

And furthermore, there is an obvious relationship between these weapon systems, and no evidence to refute it. Yet you're willing to treat blasters and turbolasers later in your previous post as equivalent based on what? Appearance.

No, on what is explicitly described in canon sources. It is stated more than once that turbolasers and laser cannon and blasters work along the same principles. That is why I think they are equivalent, except in scale and strength.

Why would maintenance require anything close to the Death Star's reactor output? This is not Star Trek, you don't need "equal energy" constantly flowing through the shields to "beat back" fire with fire. Its an extremely naive magic-like conception of shielding and thermodynamically unrealistic (where is all this heat going?).

I will look up the shields thread.

Really? How is it that previous generations of aircraft were much more capable than modern ones in the USAF? The SR-71? The B-70? These are much faster than the B-1B. Militaries upgrade based on strategic necessity and the opposition.

The examples are clearly not comparable; the SR-71 was a reconnaissance aircraft, the B-70 a cancelled experimental project, neither of which are comparable to a working strategic bomber. Furthermore, the issue was not a radical new design, but simply improved power cells, perhaps more akin to, say, new munitions for a bomber.

Turbolaser/superlaser quanta are invisible, my friend. And there are beam-generating components in the "eye" of the superlaser. Also, it is not merely an interaction of the composite beams, as they focus together for some time without emitting a beam, which contradicts conservation of momentum. There are invisible dynamics there.

I shall have to check the film again.

Given that the superlaser is obviously not (visual inconsistency - proton beams do NOT look like that) a proton beam weapon, I think we can discard that technobabble. AOTC ICS states that lasers and turbolasers are all c-propogating beams with a visible tracer pulse. This is consistent with the bolts tracking as if along an invisible beam and disobeying conservation of momentum (if discrete components).

Then Saxton goes against more or less all established canon on the subject. How is this all to be reconciled?

You discard incorrect canon. The canon ought to be coherent before it is complete. A more inclusionist canon that its totally internally inconsistent is better how? Are you from theForce.net or sw.com?

To answer the question, no, just an independent inclusionist. Various things lately, such as Ewoks, Marvel Star Wars and Karen Traviss are beginning to force me over on your side, however.

Those are not necessarily breakthroughs, they could easily be new applications, or simply technologies which were considered cost prohibitive in an era without the economic incentives of total war. Thousands of years is a long time for an institution to survive, especially politically, if there are major technological changes. Not to mention geometric growth over that timeframe would produce a result inconsistent with what we observe by ANH.

SW tech is hard to quantify; apparently long periods pass with little or no development at all, followed by very short periods of intense growth. I do not know how to explain it; perhaps research in this high-tech galaxy has become so expensive that only scientists supported by the major governments can produce new results? The explanation would then be that the Empire (and possibly late Republic) promoted research much more intensely than earlier governments. But that is only vague conjecture, of course.

As I said, it seems to be a good solution for mass firepower applications. Traditional turbolasers mounted on turrets are not effective. They are capable of delivering high-intensity firepower in lieu of large numbers of conventional guns.

We just had a discussion on shielding, I suggest you search it, its pretty good.

I will do that.

[NecronLord]

The established canon isn't that incompatible with the ICS turbolaser theory, which includes 'tracers' and tibanna gas coolant (presumably also used in the tracers). The Sexton thehory just adds an invisible element, and the capability to move at c.

Of course, it's probably impossible to get a perfect explanation that models all the behaviour, because the scenes aren't actually made with much consistancy in mind, other than 'glowy bolts do damage.'

[Illuminatus Primus]

But if a ship can deliver 100 % of reactor output through a single battery, should that not then have a more or less similar effect?

Temperature is equal to energy times the specific heat times the mass of the object; a proportionally larger weapon can manage the same waste heat as a smaller weapon but maintain lower temperatures (less dangerous, lower chance of delicate component damage, etc.) and more easily dissipate it due to greater surface area (greater refire rate). Size matters. A blaster hooked up to an ISD core could not fire turbolaser blasts. Not to mention there is probably a case of diminishing returns and marginally increasing cost with delicate conventional turret mechanisms as gun mass and recoil (due to firepower, in this case the momentum is equal to the energy of the blast in joules divided by c).

And isn't that retarded... committing the resources, acquiring the expertise, stealing top secret plans... and then letting some incompetent hive rats screw up the construction.

It is a KJA plot, after all.

Still, the Hutt plan was to use the weapon as a planet-crusher, and Lemelisk, who did what he was paid for, constructed exactly that. I find it improbable he would build a weapons design that he knew would not work. IMHO, its deficiency was far more due to the Taurill incompetence and the inferior materials he was given.

You do realize the Death Star I's prime weapon exceeded the threshold for destroying a planet no less than 200,000 times, right? Simply because someone says "destroy a planet" does not mean it necessarily can punch through an Alderaan-grade shield and scatter its mass at relativistic velocity.

Of course, a weapon such as the Darksaber would be (and was) essentially defenceless in conventional combat, so it would be at best a terror weapon.

Which of course nerfs its tactical niche; the Death Star was shielded, armored, and covered with conventional weapons for a reason. Durga was a megalomaniacal moron.

Absolutely, but those were nearly completed and just lying about. Installing weapons and the Superlaser would have been enormously cheaper than building the superstructure, and not completing it would be a waste of the vast resources that had already gone into them. That would not make sense.

You continue to act like most of the sphere's volume is inert mass and that superstructure does not serve vital tactical functions in a modern or theoretical warship. Its ability to defend itself and its heat capacity and fuel capacity should be greatly diminished.

And as said before, given the average warlord's megalomania, I doubt it they would have refrained from developing such weapons if they could.

Yeah, and subsequently got rolled over by the New Republic, another warlord, or the Empire while they sapped their conventional war economy to build a white elephant. Not to mention the logistical cost of supporting such a single weapon would be comparable to galactic naval forces. You act like once its built its right as rain and invulnerable. SW ships cannot maintain maximum core output for more than some hours or few days.

No, OK, my bad, it is, what, twenty-five worlds? But does that really make that much of a difference? It is still a far cry from a vast empire.

Twenty-five major worlds maybe (I'd appreciate a citation); it was at least a sector given that it is priorly described as a small region. A sector can contain 36 fully-enfranchised settled worlds and 30,000 dependencies with a full 30 million or so barren stars, according to AOTC ICS.

I seem to recall the NR saying that the station's stated purpose (anti-ship battlemoon) was a gross misuse of the power it produced. But then again, I guess we have to make allowances that they are the NR, after all...

Well the design may have had more potential, but potential is not capability. Why would the reactor be able to perform above the threshold of all of its armaments' and other systems' output. If so, then it performs at some billions or more times less than the DS1. Not comparable.

Every new book that reflects on them somehow seems to make the NR seem more incompetent. As for the PS, I automatically assumed it to be hyperspace capable etc. Now when reading Isard's Revenge again, I see that that might be an unwarranted assumption, given that Krennel's policy was purely defensive.

Not all hyperdrives are pan-galactic range. See AOTC and ROTS ICS. That comes at a design cost like everything else.

By implanting his uninformed post-Ruusan views of the Jedi in a story set in what should reasonably have been the TotJ era. The same problem as always when he is involved - he does not bother about checking the EU or keeping canon even slightly consistent.

He was involved with KoTOR. You sound suspiciously like a TFN JC Lit EU supremacist/completist. Quite frankly, there is no more meaningful objective standard of "informed" on SW than whatever George Lucas thinks SW is. And if he finds TotJ idiosyncratic and not well representative of what the Sith ought to be, its Tom Vietch and KJA which made a mistake, not he. By any established standard of intellectual property and creative control, he ought to have the say.

Quite frankly, they (or at least KJA) gave us the retardfest that was the Great Hyperspace War. And magical beasts et al in the Qel-Droma arc.

No, on what is explicitly described in canon sources. It is stated more than once that turbolasers and laser cannon and blasters work along the same principles. That is why I think they are equivalent, except in scale and strength.

Well they exhibit different visible properties, so it would be absurd to assume they are mechanistically identical. Turbolasers are predominantly c-propagating invisible beam weapons.

The examples are clearly not comparable; the SR-71 was a reconnaissance aircraft, the B-70 a cancelled experimental project, neither of which are comparable to a working strategic bomber.

Actually, the B-70 was at the threshold of deployable status, so it is comparable. And if you think differently look up "Stuart"; he's a defense analyst with decades experience - his job is to evaluate strategic weapons systems and strategies and he is extremely well-acquainted with the B-70 and its brethren. In fact, he penned/is penning a good fiction series based on the premise that the U.S. stayed with a massive retaliation/SAC dominated defense posture.

Furthermore, the issue was not a radical new design, but simply improved power cells, perhaps more akin to, say, new munitions for a bomber.

Right. And saying they simply are "better" is hopelessly simplistic. In the 1950s, munitions expected to be delivered in wartime were nuclear weapons. Modern munitions are VASTLY less powerful, but more useful in other ways. None of this contradicts the general reasons why technological development must be generally static and at best very very slowly improving. Don't get me wrong, a lot of retard authors apparently think that 20th century-type technological development is the basic state of any society. But this that makes no sense, we may ignore them.

I shall have to check the film again.

There are gifs and other displays available if you search on the subject. The theory was came up by "Mad" and he called it the "ramp-up" theory. The most obvious example is the ISD in TESB firing on asteroids (the bolt begins traveling in a line below that of the asteroid and tracks up without turning - as if on an invisible beam - to intercept the asteroid) and Wedge killing a squint in ROTJ - "cut to the left, I'll take the leader" (notice he is pulling up while pursuing the TIE, yet when he fires, the bolts do not trail beneath the fighter the way they would if they were discrete bolts).

Then Saxton goes against more or less all established canon on the subject. How is this all to be reconciled?

Well its totally imbecilic to imagine SW ships truly fight with fire that slower than modern munitions in space. And they do not have ballistic arcs in gravity, they glow green - which no plasma does -, and damage is often incurred before the bolt strikes the target. The visual evidence supports his theory more than that of magic plasmoids, so we throw out the latter. Again, do we have a more complete canon, or a coherent one? It may seem superficially satisfying to you that they are called magic plasmoids, but to the scientifically discerning or otherwise educated, that's totally imbecilic and a completely not credible claim. Which bends? The EU books or the visual evidence of the films?

To answer the question, no, just an independent inclusionist. Various things lately, such as Ewoks, Marvel Star Wars and Karen Traviss are beginning to force me over on your side, however.

Well I am not an eager exclusionist; many others are. I'm most exclusionist in the technological side of analysis because so much EU claims are just ridiculous fanboy garbage by hack authors. But since it rarely impacts the actual content of the narrative, it is not so bad.

SW tech is hard to quantify; apparently long periods pass with little or no development at all, followed by very short periods of intense growth. I do not know how to explain it; perhaps research in this high-tech galaxy has become so expensive that only scientists supported by the major governments can produce new results? The explanation would then be that the Empire (and possibly late Republic) promoted research much more intensely than earlier governments. But that is only vague conjecture, of course.

War economies would explain the development of suddenly unexpected technologies. The basic science and even civilian application could've been present for 10,000 years, but without general war - what incentive is there for the massive capital investment for secretive war development? Likewise, long periods of peace mean economic stagnation, technological decay, and the rise of idiosyncrasies. Without the pressure of war to maintain empirical standards, idiosyncratic theories of war or purely ceremonial equipment and techniques may develop (think the Swiss Guards).

[Illuminatus Primus]

The established canon isn't that incompatible with the ICS turbolaser theory, which includes 'tracers' and tibanna gas coolant (presumably also used in the tracers). The Sexton thehory just adds an invisible element, and the capability to move at c.

Of course, it's probably impossible to get a perfect explanation that models all the behaviour, because the scenes aren't actually made with much consistancy in mind, other than 'glowy bolts do damage.'

The best model is to assume that not all "blasters" and "blaster"-lookalikes operate on the same principles. Thankfully, there is a lot of EU (bowcasters [EGtW&T], Death Star "flak", "explosive solids" [ANH novelisation], blasters as "projectile weapons" [AOTC novelisation]) and filmic (Invisible Hand deck guns [ROTS]) precedent for that. But it does seem clear the larger and space-based weapons do exhibit behavior consistent with the c-propagating "ramp-up" theory developed from AOTC ICS by Mad.

[Darth Wong]

A compound-beam weapon is obviously a more maintenance-intensive device than a single-beam weapon, because you have to periodically ensure that the beam projectors are still properly aligned. That right there is a perfectly good reason why you wouldn't make every mounted weapon into a compound-beam weapon.

It may be that they deployed them on the LAATs for greater firepower against hardened targets without using huge emitters, and discovered that the maintenance requirements were just too onerous, with too many misfires, which is why they stopped using them in later designs.

[Connor MacLeod]

Just to address a few more points:

- Tech "Development" can be argued to occur (Death Star is a good example, as it outgrew from the research of the Separatists), but in virtually every case the development is incremental/minor at best, rather than massive leaps and bounds. A good example of this would be the "New Class" project: the New REpublic tried to build smaller Star Destroyers that were to be the equal of ISDs, and yet the new class didn't live up to expectations in the BFC against Imperial models the Yevethans used - more to the point, the "New Class" had as much to do with specialized designs (as opposed to "general purpose" ISDS) and a number of design tradeoffs as it did to outrigth advancement.

And, as we know, by the time of the NJO the NR had gone back to building bigger ships.

- If you look at alot of the evidene about the Eclipse's superlaser (the old and new vehicle and vessels Guide, the DE sourcebook, the WOTC eclipse stuff, etc.) the consensus is largely that the superlaser does not mass-scatter planets, but rather redners them uninhabitable in an immediate and rather messy way (burning all life off the surface, vaporising/burning off continents, cracking the crust/partial disruption, etc.) In fact, the DESB rather directly indicates that it cannot "mass scatter" a planet except maybe by implication. The old EGV&V had the 2/3 strength quote,but it was both open to interpretation (ie its not "2/3 of max power") and it also contradicted by the fact the same guide indicated the Eclipse could not mass-scatter a planet, it merely "cracked" its crust or something to that effect - again partial mass scattering at best. to say nothing of the fact the NEGV&V did away with the 2/3 power bit as well, which could be argued as a retcon.)

The DE sourceobook, btw, also indicates that the Eclipse's "shield piercing" properties might also have something to do with raw power, as it is stated to ahave a superlaser powerfup enough to "shatter" planetary shields- it also is said to overcome shields quite differently frm torpedo spheres.

[Connor MacLeod]

Oh, and Hoth? Stop pretending that "blaster, laser, and turbolaser" are somehow specific terms applying to a specific weapon. By this time in the EU the terms have been abused and mutilated to the point where precision is not neccesarily guaranteed.

EX: The AOTC novelization refers to blaster weapons as "projectiles", whereas the Medstar novels refer to blasters as lightspeed weapons. Old WEG data also described blasters as firing "light based" energy, which was followed by other weapons. "Lightspeed" weaponry has been mentioned in the Allston novels (Iron Fist, Rebel Stand and Destiny's Way.) and the "light based energy" references have cropped up in novels (such as Cloak of Deception, but IIRC also The Approaching Storm.)

One oculd also point out the "Visual dictionary" plasma references, which aren't going to be literally the same thing as a proton beam.

EX2: Proton torpedoes are described as firing bursts of protons (WOTC material and the complete ICS, IIRC.), making it some sort of shaped-charge particel beam explosive (Basically) In the EU proton torpedoes aren't affected by ray shields but blocked by particle shields. Turbolasers ae the exact opposite. How can they be proton beams if particle shields do not block them?

EX3: charged particle beam weapons have had numerous references (the EGW&T and NEGW&T), the recent "Death STar" novel, the ROTS novelization, Shadows of the Empire, Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter, etc. They have alteranteively also been described as being similar to blaster/laser weaponry(Darth Maul:S hadow Hunter, ROTS novel), and also distinct from it (Death Star novel, SOTE, etc.)

If that's not enough, I should actually note that the EGW&T (and now that I think about it, the Star Wars technical journal) went with a "Hybrid" laser/particle beam weapon (IE a massless component plus a particle beam component.) which only adds further complication to the issue.

Edit: I won't even add the numerous cases of blasters ejecting casings, since a particle beam won't do that. The point is, stop pretending Curtis (or anyone else) is "ignoring canon" because they advocate the existence of massless TLs/lasers/blastes.

[Darth Hoth]

Temperature is equal to energy times the specific heat times the mass of the object; a proportionally larger weapon can manage the same waste heat as a smaller weapon but maintain lower temperatures (less dangerous, lower chance of delicate component damage, etc.) and more easily dissipate it due to greater surface area (greater refire rate). Size matters. A blaster hooked up to an ISD core could not fire turbolaser blasts. Not to mention there is probably a case of diminishing returns and marginally increasing cost with delicate conventional turret mechanisms as gun mass and recoil (due to firepower, in this case the momentum is equal to the energy of the blast in joules divided by c).

OK, that sounds about right.

It is a KJA plot, after all.

True enough.

You do realize the Death Star I's prime weapon exceeded the threshold for destroying a planet no less than 200,000 times, right? Simply because someone says "destroy a planet" does not mean it necessarily can punch through an Alderaan-grade shield and scatter its mass at relativistic velocity.

Its power might be inferior, but what use would it be to the Hutts if they could not use it to attack any but the shieldless worlds, the poorest, least defended of all?

Which of course nerfs its tactical niche; the Death Star was shielded, armored, and covered with conventional weapons for a reason. Durga was a megalomaniacal moron.

I do find it difficult to see how the Hutts would defend it against the retaliation that would undoubtedly be coming if they ever used it. Still, an Imperial commander with conventional fleets to support it might do better.

You continue to act like most of the sphere's volume is inert mass and that superstructure does not serve vital tactical functions in a modern or theoretical warship. Its ability to defend itself and its heat capacity and fuel capacity should be greatly diminished.

Excuse me, what are we talking about? Are "habitation sphere" Death Star shells of vastly smaller volume than a Death Star?

Yeah, and subsequently got rolled over by the New Republic, another warlord, or the Empire while they sapped their conventional war economy to build a white elephant. Not to mention the logistical cost of supporting such a single weapon would be comparable to galactic naval forces. You act like once its built its right as rain and invulnerable. SW ships cannot maintain maximum core output for more than some hours or few days.

ICS data on how often the ships must be refuelled?

Even a stationary sphere, which would then presumably not drain huge resources, might be a powerful deterrent to the New Republic; alternately, for the larger polities, the logistics capacity required might still be achievable. Finally, its construction would not have to make military sense; most warlords seem to have lacked that quality.

Twenty-five major worlds maybe (I'd appreciate a citation); it was at least a sector given that it is priorly described as a small region. A sector can contain 36 fully-enfranchised settled worlds and 30,000 dependencies with a full 30 million or so barren stars, according to AOTC ICS.

It was from the X-wing comics (specifically, Masquerade). Leia negotiates with Sate Pestage on how many worlds he can retain after defecting from the Empire: "You get ten, four [of his friends] get fifteen." Later, in Mandatory Retirement, Krennel, shortly before killing Pestage (or if that was his clone), confirms that he has "over a dozen worlds", which would be in keeping with this number.

However, in Isard's Revenge, Krennel himself muses that he succeded in "holding the dozen worlds of the Ciutric Hegemony together through the turbulent times that followed as the New Republic took Imperial Center and even crushed Warlord Zsinj." (p.29). This would imply either that the polity lost some of its worlds in the years before the Battle of Coruscant or, more likely (since Krennel never mentions any losses) that it only held a dozen or so to begin with. Twenty-five worlds is the most generous estimate, although that can probably also be taken to mean inhabited worlds, or simply those directly controlled by a capital that held indirect influence over a larger area.

Well the design may have had more potential, but potential is not capability. Why would the reactor be able to perform above the threshold of all of its armaments' and other systems' output. If so, then it performs at some billions or more times less than the DS1. Not comparable.

OK.

Not all hyperdrives are pan-galactic range. See AOTC and ROTS ICS. That comes at a design cost like everything else.

I really need to get those.

He was involved with KoTOR. You sound suspiciously like a TFN JC Lit EU supremacist/completist.

I have never posted at the Jedi Council forums, or even read anything there but a few KT-related threads to form an opinion on that debate. I am unfamiliar with the term EU supremacist/completist.

Quite frankly, there is no more meaningful objective standard of "informed" on SW than whatever George Lucas thinks SW is. And if he finds TotJ idiosyncratic and not well representative of what the Sith ought to be, its Tom Vietch and KJA which made a mistake, not he. By any established standard of intellectual property and creative control, he ought to have the say.

Yes, and I do not dispute his every legal right to trample any canon he sees fit. In spite of that, I find his utter disregard for the EU distasteful. I know he is happy with it and does not care as long as he can make films and cash in on the other merchandise; still, can I not wish against hope for better?

Quite frankly, they (or at least KJA) gave us the retardfest that was the Great Hyperspace War. And magical beasts et al in the Qel-Droma arc.

While GAS and FSE were terrible, I rather enjoyed Dark Lords of the Sith. Still, once more it is a matter of consistency, not like or dislike. The Jedi Code changing dramatically over a few decades for no particular reason while being stagnant for millennia both before and after is irritating - especially since the Ruusan Reformation had already been produced to account for exactly such changes.

Actually, the B-70 was at the threshold of deployable status, so it is comparable. And if you think differently look up "Stuart"; he's a defense analyst with decades experience - his job is to evaluate strategic weapons systems and strategies and he is extremely well-acquainted with the B-70 and its brethren. In fact, he penned/is penning a good fiction series based on the premise that the U.S. stayed with a massive retaliation/SAC dominated defense posture.

OK, I will agree that is true. Still, the planes were designed for very different times and strategies, while nothing apparently changed in the Walkers' role.

Right. And saying they simply are "better" is hopelessly simplistic. In the 1950s, munitions expected to be delivered in wartime were nuclear weapons. Modern munitions are VASTLY less powerful, but more useful in other ways. None of this contradicts the general reasons why technological development must be generally static and at best very very slowly improving. Don't get me wrong, a lot of retard authors apparently think that 20th century-type technological development is the basic state of any society. But this that makes no sense, we may ignore them.

I still have an inclusionist reflex against simply ignoring evidence. But once again, your argument appears to make sense.

There are gifs and other displays available if you search on the subject. The theory was came up by "Mad" and he called it the "ramp-up" theory. The most obvious example is the ISD in TESB firing on asteroids (the bolt begins traveling in a line below that of the asteroid and tracks up without turning - as if on an invisible beam - to intercept the asteroid) and Wedge killing a squint in ROTJ - "cut to the left, I'll take the leader" (notice he is pulling up while pursuing the TIE, yet when he fires, the bolts do not trail beneath the fighter the way they would if they were discrete bolts).

Regrettably, my Internet connection is not good enough to display most videos. It is easier to just watch the appropriate film passages. My thanks for the suggestions.

Well its totally imbecilic to imagine SW ships truly fight with fire that slower than modern munitions in space. And they do not have ballistic arcs in gravity, they glow green - which no plasma does -, and damage is often incurred before the bolt strikes the target. The visual evidence supports his theory more than that of magic plasmoids, so we throw out the latter. Again, do we have a more complete canon, or a coherent one? It may seem superficially satisfying to you that they are called magic plasmoids, but to the scientifically discerning or otherwise educated, that's totally imbecilic and a completely not credible claim. Which bends? The EU books or the visual evidence of the films?

In a universe with the Force, hand-to-hand ground battles out of The Lord of the Rings in the era of FTL, Aztec-fundie biowanks, green, talking rabbits and retarded KJA plots, many things have made less sense than magical plasmoids. Space combat in general has not been very realistically depicted. Still, scientific consistency and a semblance of realism are desirable ends.

However, can visual evidence always be trusted down to the last micron? What about special effects mistakes? The old question of RotJ Imperial rank insignia?

War economies would explain the development of suddenly unexpected technologies. The basic science and even civilian application could've been present for 10,000 years, but without general war - what incentive is there for the massive capital investment for secretive war development? Likewise, long periods of peace mean economic stagnation, technological decay, and the rise of idiosyncrasies. Without the pressure of war to maintain empirical standards, idiosyncratic theories of war or purely ceremonial equipment and techniques may develop (think the Swiss Guards).

Once again, that appears reasonable.

[Darth Hoth]

Oh, and Hoth? Stop pretending that "blaster, laser, and turbolaser" are somehow specific terms applying to a specific weapon. By this time in the EU the terms have been abused and mutilated to the point where precision is not neccesarily guaranteed.

EX: The AOTC novelization refers to blaster weapons as "projectiles", whereas the Medstar novels refer to blasters as lightspeed weapons. Old WEG data also described blasters as firing "light based" energy, which was followed by other weapons. "Lightspeed" weaponry has been mentioned in the Allston novels (Iron Fist, Rebel Stand and Destiny's Way.) and the "light based energy" references have cropped up in novels (such as Cloak of Deception, but IIRC also The Approaching Storm.)

One oculd also point out the "Visual dictionary" plasma references, which aren't going to be literally the same thing as a proton beam.

EX2: Proton torpedoes are described as firing bursts of protons (WOTC material and the complete ICS, IIRC.), making it some sort of shaped-charge particel beam explosive (Basically) In the EU proton torpedoes aren't affected by ray shields but blocked by particle shields. Turbolasers ae the exact opposite. How can they be proton beams if particle shields do not block them?

EX3: charged particle beam weapons have had numerous references (the EGW&T and NEGW&T), the recent "Death STar" novel, the ROTS novelization, Shadows of the Empire, Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter, etc. They have alteranteively also been described as being similar to blaster/laser weaponry(Darth Maul:S hadow Hunter, ROTS novel), and also distinct from it (Death Star novel, SOTE, etc.)

If that's not enough, I should actually note that the EGW&T (and now that I think about it, the Star Wars technical journal) went with a "Hybrid" laser/particle beam weapon (IE a massless component plus a particle beam component.) which only adds further complication to the issue.

Edit: I won't even add the numerous cases of blasters ejecting casings, since a particle beam won't do that. The point is, stop pretending Curtis (or anyone else) is "ignoring canon" because they advocate the existence of massless TLs/lasers/blastes.

Faced with the overwhelming evidence, I withdraw all claims. I do believe there has been some misunderstanding, however; I never intentionally claimed that turbolasers use proton beams, merely that the Death Star superlaser did. If any of my posts says anything else, it is a mistake.