Azron_Stoma wrote:another question regarding the little ship that made a big impact on the vs debate, all sources say that it is 200 gigatons per shot, but since this weapon has 4 barrels, would it mean that each barrel fires 200 gigatons? or does each barrel fire only 50 gigatons?
Good question. We don't know. We know that they weapon placement can fire 200 gigatons per shot. Conservatively, we should assume each quintuple emplacement can fire a salvo of 200 megatons at maximum intensity. But of course, that could be different, as you point out. We don't know the rate of fire, we don't know how rate of fire relates to emission intensity (i.e., you'd expect that you could cycle the weapon more rapidly if the firepower was lower, but whether this is true and to what extent is not known).
Azron_Stoma wrote:I started thinking the 50 to maintain a conservative estimate, but after looking at the shield strength able to withstand 16,730,401 megatons per second (I now understand the difference between a watt and a joule
) that suggests that even an Acclamators full 12 turrets, with 200 gigatons each, firing 1 shot every 2 seconds, would only be 12,000 gigatons per second,
Of course, most SW weapons display higher rates of fire than once every two seconds. On the other hand, the
Acclamator-class is an armed and armored amphibious landing platform. Depending on how vessels like the
Acclamator are actually expected to function operationally, it may not be controversial at all that it lacks the firepower to effectively combat other ships in its class, being expected to use relatively light fire in support of amphibious operations while being protected against heavier firepower from dedicated anti-ship weapons systems. As a very general analogy, I'm sure some classes of Coast Guard cutter equipped with machine guns and light cannon may have trouble sinking ships of similar class.
Azron_Stoma wrote:this brings up an interesting question regarding shielding strengths and how the shields react to damage and how the numbers come into play, it was my interpritation that star wars shields function largely the way they do in most of the games like empire at war and galaxies (minus the whole solid-objects-go-through-starship-shielding bs that EAW has)
This I doubt, their mechanisms are very simplistic. Rather I should say the assumption should be that the game mechanics share a similar relationship as combat games set in a modern day "realistic" setting are to real life: not much.
Azron_Stoma wrote:in that they have a set charge that drains but recharge at a certain rate, I would have expected to see both a Joule rating and a Watt rating, the joule being, in video game terms the "HP" of the shields, while the Watt rating being the "recovery rate" of the shields.
Generally my hypothesis, that I detailed with Mad
here is the following (itself a simplification):
You have the shield itself, composed of exotic force fields, some invisible cloud of exotic superconducting matter, or some combination or hybrid. The shield itself deflects and re-radiates absorbed energy where possible, otherwise it is absorbed and then channeled into heat sinks which store the waste heat until the radiator systems can dump it. So the heat transfer between the shield and the heat sinks probably has sustainable maximum wattage and specific heat. The heat sinks have a maximum heat capacity, and the radiators have a limit on how fast they can dump waste heat. Any part along this is susceptible to failure.
Azron_Stoma wrote:the ICS book having only a watt rating initially suggested to me that the shields are an all or nothing affair, that nothing below that rating can penetrate but anything above it can.
Of course I think it goes without saying that even if the wattage is arbitrarily high but the total energy content is very low, the heat capacity of the system can simply absorb it (especially the heat sinks) even if it cannot be radiated away as fast.
Azron_Stoma wrote:Aside from just how arbitrary that seems, the fact that it refers to it as "peak" shielding suggests that it can be whittled down and overwhelmed, if anyone can give a description of how this works? There are scenes in the films where the shields take damage over time, but the ship itself doesn't until the shields fail, like how the Falcon didn't take any damage from the fighters until the warnings went off that they were losing shields. if the TIE fighters can only dish out 2 kilotons per shot, and padme's ship shields have a peak of 478 megatons per second, how could 4 fighters bring the shields on the falcon down so fast if they can only dish out 16 kilotons per second?
We don't know what the TIE maximum fire rate and maximum firepower is. The heat sinks will have to be filled first. And of course the shielding systems could be vulnerable to simple fatigue failure rather than be instantaneously overwhelmed. We don't know the exact mechanics of shields. They do have "seams" and "thickness" and must be "angled". Presumably different types, angles, and volumes of fire may stand a chance at penetrating without being fully absorbed by the shields. And I don't remember the Falcon ever being about to be destroyed by TIEs, only Star Destroyers.
I hope this was helpful, if complexifying and complicating.
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