B1 Droid AI and Starfighters vs. Capital ships

[Darth Ruinus]

I know rail guns exist in Star Wars but do they have special shield penetrating bullets? That might not be as expensive as dedicated anti-ship missiles, since they don't require specialized targeting and guidance systems.

[Master_Baerne]

I know rail guns exist in Star Wars but do they have special shield penetrating bullets? That might not be as expensive as dedicated anti-ship missiles, since they don't require specialized targeting and guidance systems.

The Episode III Visual Dictionary had a railgun with an ion cannon attached; the ion cannon would fire a microsecond before the railgun, taking down that section of the shield long enough for the railgun to hit..

[Kartr_Kana]

Ok Mad I understand the whole volumetric bit now. I knew that the shimmer was atmospheric interaction with the forcefield and I know shields are three dimensional, I'd just never heard the term "volumetric" used in reference to them.

That would depend on the distance from the ship when it begins rolling and on how long the shields are down (which apparently isn't long at all). The point of the scene I described from The Bacta War from the Rogue Squadron series of books was that going up against a Victory would be futile for the Rogues without support from a bigger ship, even if they could momentarily bring the shields down.

I remember the book, but not details about their attack on the VSD. Now I'm not disagreeing that a squadron of X-wings isn't going to be able to "single" handedly take down a VSD. What I am saying is that if, if a squadron could bring down the shields with a torpedo salvo, they'd have to be close enough to the ship itself as to where the counter missile batteries wouldn't have time to do their job. Those ranges should mean that the squadron could split into two elements after firing their torpedos, with one element going over the "top" and the other going under the "bottom" one of them will end up flying counter to the ships rotation and should be able to get into position for a run at the unshielded section.

The Episode III Visual Dictionary had a railgun with an ion cannon attached; the ion cannon would fire a microsecond before the railgun, taking down that section of the shield long enough for the railgun to hit.

Which ship was this Master_Baerne?

[Mad]

I remember the book, but not details about their attack on the VSD. Now I'm not disagreeing that a squadron of X-wings isn't going to be able to "single" handedly take down a VSD. What I am saying is that if, if a squadron could bring down the shields with a torpedo salvo, they'd have to be close enough to the ship itself as to where the counter missile batteries wouldn't have time to do their job. Those ranges should mean that the squadron could split into two elements after firing their torpedos, with one element going over the "top" and the other going under the "bottom" one of them will end up flying counter to the ships rotation and should be able to get into position for a run at the unshielded section.

And do what? Make random potholes over the surface of the ship? They need to make another coordinated strike to do internal damage to stand a chance of doing anything.

[Kartr_Kana]

I was thinking more along the lines of pot holes in the shield projectors, anything to hold the capship in place long enough for something capable of killing it to come along.

[Mad]

I was thinking more along the lines of pot holes in the shield projectors, anything to hold the capship in place long enough for something capable of killing it to come along.

I reread the sequence; there were still enemy fighters around, and they had no reason to expect backup to arrive. Wedge's plan was to hope they could get the final two torpedo volleys off before the downed shields came back online, and he was immediately attempting a second torpedo run.

It seems it would've taken longer for some of the Rogues to get to the other side of the VSD with enemy fighters gunning for them and start targeting subsystems than it would for them to just fire two more coordinated volleys as quickly as possible.

[Kartr_Kana]

Makes sense as long as the ship wasn't able to roll before they fired.

[Seydlitz_k]

What I'm still not entirely convinced about is that missiles are expensive. I understand why they are less cost effective than 'laser' weapons , but to me it dosn't make sense why they'd be more costly in the SW universe.

Afterall, a missile is basically a droid brain, a warhead and some propellant. You wouldn't even need much propellant, just enough to accelerate the missile away from the starfighter, and to adjust the path of the missile. a simple droid brain is probably not hard to make or find, if you look at how many a single group of Jawas could scanvenge on a desert planet. The only difficulty I think would be finding an explosive charge for the warhead. Explosives aren't hard to make now a days, but making explosives powerful enough to pierce capital ship armour might be well beyond the capability of most technicians. Do we know what they use in the SW galaxy to make explosives?

...I guess that might be an answer to my own question. Starfighter missiles are expensive, because it's a difficult task making a powerful enough warhead on such a small scale.

Oh and militaries are constrained by a budget and usually go with the lowest bidder. Just ask anyone who's served in the armed forces.

You are right, but I was thinking more in the vein of the navy or the airforce. I don't think the US Navy would go "oops, sidewinders are too expensive so we didn't load any onto the aircraft carrier guys. You'll have to find your way around it." Starfighters are expensive as well, and I would think they would want to protect and take advantage of their investment.

To be fair, you almost always have a missile armament in the X-Wing series when flying Rebel missions. Probably the most simple answer as to why we don't see missiles being used much, is that they use them off screen in the movies, or they've expended them all.

And I defintley agree that TIE=shitty is a brain bug. After playing TIE Fighter, and using only TIE fighters in the X-Wing alliance simulator room, I couldn't get over how annoying it was being in a slow, not very manouverable X-Wing when I went to play the X-Wing Alliance campaign again.

[Kartr_Kana]

I wouldn't compare SW torps/missiles to sidewinders they'd be more like a multi-purpose, multi-role munition which can target "air" and ground with equal easy and effectiveness quite an order more sophisticated and seeing how effective lasers and turbolasers are it'd probably more efficient and cost effective to only use them in situations where lasers can't work. Perhaps they're not as expensive as the EGWT would like us to believe, but for the Rebels at least and civilians, planetary governments and private armies are concerned the money can be better used else where. Similar reasoning goes for the government penny pinchers would probably prefer to let multi-role "cheap" weapons do the work in most situations and save the torps for special situations.