Clone Wars series (SPOILERS)

[charlemagne]

The references to the movies with lines like that is getting very old fast, yes.

Indeed, and it didn't even make sense in this episode, because Anakin's fighter already was shot at and damaged. "Traditionally" the line was used before something bad happened.

[VT-16]

I like how Ron Perlman didn't sound like Ron Perlman for once. Almost forgot the guy can sound differently.

[Havok]

*ugh*

I'm starting to sour on this show real quick. Everything's just starting to appear so derivative and lame.

Why must some character say "I have a bad feeling about this" every motherfucking EPISODE?

It's not funny. It's fucking lame. Give it a rest. The line would usually get uttered, what, once per movie? Now they're spewing it out once per fucking episode? ENOUGH.

It was said every movie, why IS it surprising you that it was said every episode?

And this shit with Grievous? Every episode he's going to get away? Here's an idea - why not put in a different antagonist?

Isn't that the point of Grievous? The movies made it clear that Grievous was notoriously hard to capture and that he continually got away. If there was another antagonist and he got away more than once I can imagine people complaining about another character that can go toe to toe with the Jedi, or the fact that he shouldn't have been able to get away. Unless you are suggesting a new character that they then kill or capture and who doesn't escape, but then you get to hear the same people that were complaining about all the new characters in the prequels, complain about that.

And what's with the Munificent's being the line Separatist warship every damn episode? Can we see another ship do something?

Do what? Raise it's shields, fire it's turbo lasers. launch it's fighters? They all DO the same thing. A new design is all fine and dandy, but what purpose does it actually serve other than to just have something new visually to look at? In the context of the situation, having only a few ships makes far more sense than having a wide variety. The only reason we got to see so many ship designs from the Rebel fleet in the movies, was because it was a Rebel fleet. It was a rag tag group, that I'm sure the Alliance leaders would have LOVED to have traded in for uniform line ships.

[evillejedi]

I'd at least like to see the Munis in conjunction with recusant patrol destroyers as a screen. Heck we did see acclamators in formation with the Venstars and radiant corvettes on the Republic side. We were sold the Muni's as a communications relay with a really big gun, but too weak to engage most capital ships alone, I like the wolfpacks, but some force variety would be nice.

[Old Plympto]

There was that flotilla made up of Munificents and Lucrehulks in the previous episode. But I think that's it in terms of diversity.

However, the episode guide on Star Wars site did read:

This was the second Clone Wars episode produced. Given that the first episode became part of the Clone Wars movie, this now represents the earliest animation that will be seen as part of the series.

Perhaps they haven't created the Lucrehulk model for the series when they produced this episode. Hopefully as the series progresses we see more and more ship types. I'd like to see the smaller AOTC Separatist ships most of which weren't onscreen for some reason.

[NecronLord]

I'd at least like to see the Munis in conjunction with recusant patrol destroyers as a screen.

Recusants have bigger reactors, and are generally tougher.

Presumably the munificents here had those enormous fore guns pre-charged though...

[Darksider]

Presumably the munificents here had those enormous fore guns pre-charged though...

Weren't the pre-charged shots from a munificent's main cannon calc'ed at like 5 petatons or something?

I don't think a Venator could withstand that much firepower

[Braedley]

^One of them didn't! One went down pretty fast as the other two started to open fire.

[seanrobertson]

Presumably the munificents here had those enormous fore guns pre-charged though...

Weren't the pre-charged shots from a munificent's main cannon calc'ed at like 5 petatons or something?

I'm not sure about that figure. Melting a 1,000 km-wide body of ice would require more like 60 petatons according to my figures, but I don't recall the exact text of the ICS; all I recall is the diameter, ice and "blast-melting" parts.

I don't think a Venator could withstand that much firepower

With all due respect, why not?

In the episode in question, Anakin's three-strong Venstar fleet was outnumbered 2-1, and it took the Seps 23 seconds of shooting to send only one Venstar veering slightly off-course.

The Munificents easilygot off a good 2-4 shots/second; thus, assuming pairs of them concentrated fire on a given Venstar, that's upwards of 46 hits -- 230 petatons -- to give a Venstar trouble.

Of course, the Sep ships' might only have enough juice to fire an initial shot or few at the "overpowered" level; after that, the prow cannons' outputs could decline rapidly and, of course, the aforementioned Venstar shield value might be inflated as a result.

P.S. -- I also think it's telling that three or four Munificents were required to outgun a Venstar per the "Clone Wars" movie (or so I'm told ... I wanted to see it at theatres but couldn't find anyone who'd go to see it with me *mock-sniff* ).

[seanrobertson]

*ugh*

I'm starting to sour on this show real quick. Everything's just starting to appear so derivative and lame.

Why must some character say "I have a bad feeling about this" every motherfucking EPISODE?

Agreed: it's just not funny in every episode. Here and there, it can be cute; but when you're just ticking off the seconds 'til it's uttered in a ~20 minute show, it's too much.

A perfect example of a not-overused, in-continuity line would be a couple episodes back, when Gen. Grievous said, "Hello there!" That was apropos and hilarious IMO

It's not funny. It's fucking lame. Give it a rest. The line would usually get uttered, what, once per movie? Now they're spewing it out once per fucking episode? ENOUGH.

And this shit with Grievous? Every episode he's going to get away? Here's an idea - why not put in a different antagonist?

Big Havokeff made a good point inasmuch as Grievous was a slippery fuck, constantly evading capture. And I, for one, have enjoyed seeing the General "fleshed" (haha) out a bit. I've not read any EU about him, so I've only "ROTS" and his appearances in the Samurai Jack Wars toon, which were pure wank, to go by.

And what's with the Munificent's being the line Separatist warship every damn episode? Can we see another ship do something?

Heartily agreed.

Not to speak out of line, but I know one of Curtis's gripes with SW fleet actions in general is the uniformity of fleets we see: all Acclamators, all Venators, all ISDs, etc.

That bugs me, too. Even the fucking Klingon Empire had at least three ship types in major battles: a heavy destroyer in the Bird-of-Prey, a light cruiser in the K'T'inga and a battlecruiser in the Vor'Cha (and, if Negh'Var was present, a battleship to boot). Many SW battles seem to take a decisively Trek cue, and from the Romulans no less: barring your occasional Super Star Destroyer or Maleovence, every other ship is a big, bruising Warbird :-\

[VT-16]

So far, we've seen two types of frigates, both armed, one type of destroyer and one type of assault ship on the Republic side, one type of frigate, and two types of battleships on the Confederate side. I'm not disappointed, I just hope we get more after the intial batch of episodes.

[TheSpaceman?]

Hmmm, is anyone else not really considered with the continuity flubs in this series? In fact, I like this better in some ways. Rather than having Anakin as a Padawan for most of the Clone Wars, the ships, vehicles, and armor all being AotC-based, and the Clone Commanders being nameless and drone-like, then having that all change over the course of a month or so(which never really sat well with me), we've got gradual changes and a combination of AotC and RotS elements. I always thought that the Clone Wars-based EU could have benefited from knowing what was coming, so it's nice to see someone take a crack at truly bridging that gap now.

Basically, I enjoy this mix-and-match of AotC and RotS tech much more than the huge pre- and post-30th month of the Clone Wars division there used to be. And most of the non-Anakin and Obi Wan stories seem to work with minimal retcons anyway. I may be wrong about some of the details because my knowledge of the EU is fairly limited in comparison to others, but I personally enjoy the fact that they're having Venators fighting alongside V-19's and Delta-7's more than I enjoy the divided stuff we've seen previously.

[The Romulan Republic]

Not to speak out of line, but I know one of Curtis's gripes with SW fleet actions in general is the uniformity of fleets we see: all Acclamators, all Venators, all ISDs, etc.

Not so sure about the Clone Wars series, but the two big movie actions (Battle of Coruscant and Battle of Endor) both had quite diverse fleets.

[Connor MacLeod]

No they didn't: ROTJ on the Rebel side is the most diverse, followed by ROTS with the separatists. For some reason the Empire (and the REpublic) went with uniformity.

I'm guessing there was some stylistic bullshit behind that (The Evil Empire or Corrupt Republic Becoming The Empire both featuring uniformity and repetition, while the "good guys" IE the REbellion, feature alot more individuality and diversity.)

Of course in the CGI era we've seen that cloning large numbers of the same ships is a cheap way to make large fleet battles (B5 did it - you always saw one or two kinds of Minbari cruiser tops, one or two kinds of Narn ship, one or two kinds of Centauri ship, etc. Only EA was the most diverse, and I'm betting that was accidental. From what I've watched ot Stargate they tend to do that as well.) So its really no surprise that the Clone Wars movie and ROTS movies both did this. If anything though, its more forgiving in a TV show than it is in a big-budget movie.

[seanrobertson]

Not to speak out of line, but I know one of Curtis's gripes with SW fleet actions in general is the uniformity of fleets we see: all Acclamators, all Venators, all ISDs, etc.

Not so sure about the Clone Wars series, but the two big movie actions (Battle of Coruscant and Battle of Endor) both had quite diverse fleets.

The Rebels had a diverse fleet in the latter conflict, but largely due to necessity.

The Imperials ... Executor, a bunch of ISDs, a Tector and as-of-yet still largely unknown communications ship -- well. That's not much diversity when we consider the Tector is just a hangarless ISD.

For that matter, what all did the Republic field at the Battle of Coruscant? I remember seeing lots of Venstars but that's about it.

[The Romulan Republic]

Not to speak out of line, but I know one of Curtis's gripes with SW fleet actions in general is the uniformity of fleets we see: all Acclamators, all Venators, all ISDs, etc.

Not so sure about the Clone Wars series, but the two big movie actions (Battle of Coruscant and Battle of Endor) both had quite diverse fleets.

The Rebels had a diverse fleet in the latter conflict, but largely due to necessity.

The Imperials ... Executor, a bunch of ISDs, a Tector and as-of-yet still largely unknown communications ship -- well. That's not much diversity when we consider the Tector is just a hangarless ISD.

The Executor (Command ship/Dreadnaught), at least two types of ISDs (Destroyer escorts or cruiser level), the Tector (superficially similar but seemingly altered to a design more dedicated to ship to ship combat; removing the hangers is a major structural change), the Communications destroyer, I believe there's also a ship with a suspiciously interdictor-like bulge in its hull, though I may be wrong. So that's 1 Dreadnaught, 2 classes of Cruiser or Destroyer plus a sub-class, a dedicated communications ship, and a possible dedicated interdictor. Might be others to but I'm not sure.

For that matter, what all did the Republic field at the Battle of Coruscant? I remember seeing lots of Venstars but that's about it.

No argument here. I wouldn't be suprised if there were other types in the background, but the only ones I recall were those Arc fighters and Venators. When I referred to Coruscant I was thinking of the CIS fleet, which had the at least three or four types of large warship clearly visible.

[Darksider]

With all due respect, why not?

In the episode in question, Anakin's three-strong Venstar fleet was outnumbered 2-1, and it took the Seps 23 seconds of shooting to send only one Venstar veering slightly off-course.

The Munificents easilygot off a good 2-4 shots/second; thus, assuming pairs of them concentrated fire on a given Venstar, that's upwards of 46 hits -- 230 petatons -- to give a Venstar trouble.

Of course, the Sep ships' might only have enough juice to fire an initial shot or few at the "overpowered" level; after that, the prow cannons' outputs could decline rapidly and, of course, the aforementioned Venstar shield value might be inflated as a result.

P.S. -- I also think it's telling that three or four Munificents were required to outgun a Venstar per the "Clone Wars" movie (or so I'm told ... I wanted to see it at theatres but couldn't find anyone who'd go to see it with me *mock-sniff* ).

If a Venator can sustain multiple hits from 60-petaton prow turbolasers on the Munificents, and indeed sustain 230 petatons worth of firepower before they "have trouble" then shouldn't triple digit gigaton and single digit teraton level weapons bounce off their shields like a summer rain?
a single shot from a fully-charged prow turbolaser is roughly equal to 6000 shots from one of the heavy turbolasers on the venators and ISDs (and that's rounding up) do we know how many shots it takes for those guns to take a Venator apart?

[NecronLord]

Weren't the pre-charged shots from a munificent's main cannon calc'ed at like 5 petatons or something?

I don't think a Venator could withstand that much firepower

I was assuming they were running it off the capacitors, rather than saying that they were firing full power shots. There's certainly no evidence for that - if a single shot could pierce the shields of a 10Km wide battle-station, it could surely one shot a puny little Venator. However, my idea was that the performance of relatively small Munificents against larger Venators here could be explained with reference to the capacitance they must obviously have for those guns. Rather than positing that they were firing fully-charged battle-station killing multi-petaton shots at the Venators.

[VT-16]

If we go by movies and the TV show, we have so far for the four main factions:

Republic: CR70 corvettes, Consular-class frigates, medical frigates, Venator-class star destroyers, Acclamator-class assault ships, one medical space station
Confederacy: Recusant-class light destroyers, Providence-class carrier/destroyers, Munificent-class star frigates, Lucrehulk-class core ships, Lucrehulk-class battleships, the battleship Malevolence, Skytop Station
Rebels: CR90 corvettes, GR-75 transports, Braha'tok-class gunships, EF76 Nebulon-B escort frigates, MC80 Liberty type star cruisers, MC80 Home One type star cruisers
Empire: CR90 corvettes, Imperial I-class star destroyers, Imperial II-class star destroyers, Tector-class star destroyers, one communications ship, Executor-class star dreadnaughts, two battle stations

That's not too shabby. I'm waiting for more models, though. Both in this show and the live-action one.

[FSTargetDrone]

Whoops, forgot to come back here...

The old republic jedi armor that Anakin and Obi-Wan have been wearing may well be functional as a spacesuit if a helmet was attached. Ejection seat though is going to have to contain a personal particle shield generator to keep the air in.

I... suppose. I just hate how in SF in general, force fields are sometimes used (presumably) when a fully sealed helmet makes so much more sense. Better hope the power never fails... In ROTS, we saw those crew members in the ARC-170s wearing unsealed helmets. Cinematically, it's obviously to show the audience what character it's seeing, but since we have to justify it in-universe somehow, I guess we'll have to go with particle fields.

Grievous mentioned something about his trap, right now I think that R3/Goldy/Stubby is a spy/saobteur.

Agreed. Unless they (show producers) are headed in a direction of some sort of Brave Little Droid's Self-Sacrifice In The End To Atone For Poor Behavior, I am leaning towards what you suggest.

[Connor MacLeod]

The ships firing on the Venators weren't using full powered shots. You'd need minutes (15-20 min IIRC) to charge up to that level, and even then you'd only get a few max-powered shots per frigate. The rates of fire we observed were much too high for the shots to have charged for very long.

[Darwin]

Grievous mentioned something about his trap, right now I think that R3/Goldy/Stubby is a spy/saobteur.

Agreed. Unless they (show producers) are headed in a direction of some sort of Brave Little Droid's Self-Sacrifice In The End To Atone For Poor Behavior, I am leaning towards what you suggest.

There's poor behavior, and there's Stubby, who seems to be actively trying to get Anakin killed.

[Braedley]

Agreed. It's one thing to activate one system instead of another once, but to do that 3 or 4 times, you've got it out for the guy.

[Count Chocula]

Ahsoka ran from Grievous, more than once. Smartest thing I've seen Mary Sue do.

I'm liking this series more and more, to my surprise.

[Darksider]

Did anyone else not expect grevious to actually kill that smuggler-guy? I mean, I knew he had something bad coming for trying to scam a bonus out of a fucking monster-robo-general, but I didn't expect them to show him die.

Also Re: R2 pwnzred R3 Best. Sidekick. ever.

*watches preview for next episode*

oh please god no.....