What if the Empire invaded modern day Earth?

[Star Wars 888]

Because-you say so. You have been provided with a canon source that says they can, AND with a canon source that says the not all that much more aerodynamic ARC-170 can move at MACH 40. You have to show the movies CONTRADICTING this. And not only do I doubt you have done any analysis of TIE fighter in-atmosphere speeds worthy of the name, even IF they never move faster than Mach1 THAT IS NOT A CONTRADICTION OVERRIDING LOWER CANON.

[\quote]

pay attention. I side in the atmosphere according to that guide to vehicles in starships.

Do you have a source putting the tie fighters' laser cannons at 1 KT?
Thank you for having neither read the main site NOR this thread where the relevant portions OF the main site were quoted. (The first one is a rules violation, BTW).

iirc Mike talked about other laser cannons but not tie fighters. Either way tie fighters had limited fuel and were made to be dependan on star destroyers. Once they run out of fuel having kt weapons won't mean shit.

Are you really this abysmally stupid? They can casually build things that ar so far outside our
enginerring capabilities they might as well be magic but they don't know how to build
something mankind figured out 10,000 years ago? Blatant lie or ignorance to boot because
there's PLENTY of naval vessels in the Star Wars universe.

. They can with Star Wars era ship yards, skilled engineers, a labor force and tech
such as durasteel and hypermatter. They get none of that here.

The same way we do build those ships? Assuming they HAVE to to begin with, given that we have plenty of those ships as it is and there's little we can do to stop tthem intact (especially
as most of those ships are civilian so I SERIOUSLY doubt anybody has the means nor the will to blow them up rather than have the Imperials use them)

civilian ships cannot carry at ats and would get blown to bits by military ships by some of the countries with less reservations. Trying to make ships that can hold at ats and stand up to aircraft carriers would require an Industrial base that the invaders lack.

When the at ats and such run out of fuel they are screwed cause they don't run on anything on Earth. Having kt weapons won't change that.

Sorry, more will come on a later post, iPod touches can be hard to type on.
I keep forgetting modern forces having speeds that can reach mine in less then the minutes it takes mine to cover planetary distances. Again show proof that my TIEs are slower or demonstrate the F22 can do the speeds shown of Yavin to the Death Star. I want to see this.

Tie fighters have an atmospheric speed of about 1000 kmh. F22s are over twice that fast.[/quote]
TIE Fighters have an atmospheric speed of Mach 9 low end until and unless you show movie evidence to the contrary.

Read the OP. Humanity is united in this scenario, and quite frankly any world power could solo.

Against a force that can quite franky ignore their air power in the air because its fighters are effectively invulnerable, its infantry is to infantry weapons, and its heavy armour is invulnerable to anything nonnuclear.Err-no.

Answer my question. Eventually the AT-ATs, AT-STs and tie fighters would run out of fuel, and 500,000 stormtroopers would be left to combat the world's militaries and 6 billion civilians.

Assuming mankind is willing to absorb the casualties that'll happen in the meantime.
You do grasp the point of demonstrating the proof of this, correct?[/quote]

Tens of thousands of non nuclear ICBMS raining down on the invasion force would wipe out the entire force minus the AT-ATs and tie fighters.

A pity we don't have ANY non-nuclear ICBMs. AT ALL.

2 tie fighters couldn't hit the Millennium Falcon from a few feet away while moving at sub sonic speeds,

You will now provide evidence for this.

so don't come bullshitting about how their uber targeting systems would stop tens of thousands of ICBMS moving at several thousand miles per hour.

Yes they would, if we actually HAD that many ICBMs to begin with or ANY of them had conventional warheads to begin with. Oh, and let me introduce you to the concept of RELATIVE speed. I don't care how slow the Falcon was RELATIVE to the TIE fighters. If all involved parties are moving at nine billion c, the fact that the APPARENT speed differential is subsonic (which isn't a constant BTW) doesn't change that they're moving at 9 billion c (and no Wars speeds are nowhere that fast).

The invasion force is screwed due to limited logistical capabilities and limited anti air capabilities.

What limited antiair capabilities? They have 100 effectively invulnerable (in the air) fighters as long as their supplies last. Their problem is logistics because they don't have the numbers OR the supplies to conquer Earth.
If world domination is really required their best bet is the rest of the planet surrendering after they see what happened to the Americas.[/quote]

[Batman]

Because-you say so. You have been provided with a canon source that says they can, AND with a canon source that says the not all that much more aerodynamic ARC-170 can move at MACH 40. You have to show the movies CONTRADICTING this. And not only do I doubt you have done any analysis of TIE fighter in-atmosphere speeds worthy of the name, even IF they never move faster than Mach1 THAT IS NOT A CONTRADICTION OVERRIDING LOWER CANON.

pay attention. I side in the atmosphere according to that guide to vehicles in starships.

THOSE ARE their in atmosphere speeds you dolt. The ICSs override what I can only suppose you mean to be the EGVV.

Do you have a source putting the tie fighters' laser cannons at 1 KT?
Thank you for having neither read the main site NOR this thread where the relevant portions OF the main site were quoted. (The first one is a rules violation, BTW).

iirc Mike talked about other laser cannons but not tie fighters.

X-Wing laser cannon. Which curiously enough do NOT wipe the floor with TIE fighters thanks to massively superior firepower. Also, the smaller Delta 7 is explicitely credited with 1 KT per shout in the Ep 2 ICS.

Either way tie fighters had limited fuel and were made to be dependan on star destroyers. Once they run out of fuel having kt weapons won't mean shit.

You will now no doubt tell me the endurance of a TIE fighter on a single fuel load. Given starfighters can go to high relativistic speeds on a single fuel load, I doubt it's going to be something that limits them to a low number of single-digit KT shots. Also supposes they only HAVE a single fuel load.

Are you really this abysmally stupid? They can casually build things that ar so far outside our enginerring capabilities they might as well be magic but they don't know how to build something mankind figured out 10,000 years ago? Blatant lie or ignorance to boot because there's PLENTY of naval vessels in the Star Wars universe.

.They can with Star Wars era ship yards, skilled engineers, a labor force and tech
such as durasteel and hypermatter. They get none of that here.

Which they need to build ships that we can and HAVE build by the thousands already-why?

The same way we do build those ships? Assuming they HAVE to to begin with, given that we have plenty of those ships as it is and there's little we can do to stop tthem intact (especially as most of those ships are civilian so I SERIOUSLY doubt anybody has the means nor the will to blow them up rather than have the Imperials use them)

civilian ships cannot carry at ats

Really. And you've come to this conclusion because? AT-ATs exceed the several ten thousand ton cargo carrying capacity of modern day cargo ships? Wow. Those things are heavier than I thought.

and would get blown to bits by military ships by some of the countries with less reservations.

...if they ever got near them. Invulnerable air force with KT range weapons to the rescue (and it wouldn't surprise me if Wars had OTH shipkilling (for us) weapons on the infantry level as well).

Trying to make ships that can hold at ats and stand up to aircraft carriers would require an Industrial base that the invaders lack.

We have ships than can hold AT-ATs by the truckload already. They're called CARGO SHIPS. And they don't have to stand up to aircraft carriers any more than modern day troop transports do. That's what their escorts (in this case, TIE fighters primarily) are there for.

When the at ats and such run out of fuel they are screwed cause they don't run on anything on Earth. Having kt weapons won't change that.

Yep. And your evidence that that'll happen in time to matter, given that Wars starfighters can get up to and back down from high fractional c velocities on a single fuel load is...? Again presupposes they HAVE only a single fuel load.
Food for thought-Wars power generation seems to be largely limited by e=mc^2. So for over 200,000 iKT bolts they'd need...10 kilograms of hypermatter. Assuming they carry one ton of fuel and use 10 percent of that for their laser cannon at 1KT power levels, that's two million shots per TIE fighter.

[Solauren]

um, you're assuming Hypermatter follows E=mc(2) for storage.

I'd be willing to bet it's a multi-spatial dimensional (i.e length, width, height, and 'hyper') and holds more energy.

[Star Wars 888]

Because-you say so. You have been provided with a canon source that says they can, AND with a canon source that says the not all that much more aerodynamic ARC-170 can move at MACH 40. You have to show the movies CONTRADICTING this. And not only do I doubt you have done any analysis of TIE fighter in-atmosphere speeds worthy of the name, even IF they never move faster than Mach1 THAT IS NOT A CONTRADICTION OVERRIDING LOWER CANON.

pay attention. I side in the atmosphere according to that guide to vehicles in starships.

THOSE ARE their in atmosphere speeds you dolt. The ICSs override what I can only suppose you mean to be the EGVV.

[\quote]


Yet in fotj outcast Wedge stated in his thoughts that starfigters are not that much faster
than airspeeders in the atmosphere.

Sorry, typing on iPod touch and running out of battery, but in esb tie fighter missed falcon from few feet so they would not be able to stop mass missile strikes, screwing the stormtroopers and at sts. at ats would last for a few hundred miles and run out of fuel fossil fuel won't run it.

Tie fighters cause mayham for a while but can't take territory and would run out of fuel.

iirc Mike talked about other laser cannons but not tie fighters.

X-Wing laser cannon. Which curiously enough do NOT wipe the floor with TIE fighters thanks to massively superior firepower. Also, the smaller Delta 7 is explicitely credited with 1 KT per shout in the Ep 2 ICS.

Either way tie fighters had limited fuel and were made to be dependan on star destroyers. Once they run out of fuel having kt weapons won't mean shit.

You will now no doubt tell me the endurance of a TIE fighter on a single fuel load. Given starfighters can go to high relativistic speeds on a single fuel load, I doubt it's going to be something that limits them to a low number of single-digit KT shots. Also supposes they only HAVE a single fuel load.

Are you really this abysmally stupid? They can casually build things that ar so far outside our enginerring capabilities they might as well be magic but they don't know how to build something mankind figured out 10,000 years ago? Blatant lie or ignorance to boot because there's PLENTY of naval vessels in the Star Wars universe.

.They can with Star Wars era ship yards, skilled engineers, a labor force and tech
such as durasteel and hypermatter. They get none of that here.

Which they need to build ships that we can and HAVE build by the thousands already-why?

The same way we do build those ships? Assuming they HAVE to to begin with, given that we have plenty of those ships as it is and there's little we can do to stop tthem intact (especially as most of those ships are civilian so I SERIOUSLY doubt anybody has the means nor the will to blow them up rather than have the Imperials use them)

civilian ships cannot carry at ats

Really. And you've come to this conclusion because? AT-ATs exceed the several ten thousand ton cargo carrying capacity of modern day cargo ships? Wow. Those things are heavier than I thought.

and would get blown to bits by military ships by some of the countries with less reservations.

...if they ever got near them. Invulnerable air force with KT range weapons to the rescue (and it wouldn't surprise me if Wars had OTH shipkilling (for us) weapons on the infantry level as well).

Trying to make ships that can hold at ats and stand up to aircraft carriers would require an Industrial base that the invaders lack.

We have ships than can hold AT-ATs by the truckload already. They're called CARGO SHIPS. And they don't have to stand up to aircraft carriers any more than modern day troop transports do. That's what their escorts (in this case, TIE fighters primarily) are there for.

When the at ats and such run out of fuel they are screwed cause they don't run on anything on Earth. Having kt weapons won't change that.

Yep. And your evidence that that'll happen in time to matter, given that Wars starfighters can get up to and back down from high fractional c velocities on a single fuel load is...? Again presupposes they HAVE only a single fuel load.
Food for thought-Wars power generation seems to be largely limited by e=mc^2. So for over 200,000 iKT bolts they'd need...10 kilograms of hypermatter. Assuming they carry one ton of fuel and use 10 percent of that for their laser cannon at 1KT power levels, that's two million shots per TIE fighter.

[Star Wars 888]

Because-you say so. You have been provided with a canon source that says they can, AND with a canon source that says the not all that much more aerodynamic ARC-170 can move at MACH 40. You have to show the movies CONTRADICTING this. And not only do I doubt you have done (gag can't delete in time)





Yet in fotj outcast Wedge stated in his thoughts that starfigters are not that much faster
than airspeeders in the atmosphere.

Sorry, typing on iPod touch and running out of battery, but in esb tie fighter missed falcon from few feet so they would not be able to stop mass missile strikes, screwing the stormtroopers and at sts. at ats would last for a few hundred miles and run out of fuel fossil fuel won't run it.

Tie fighters cause mayham for a while but can't take territory and would run out of fuel.

[/quote]
iirc Mike talked about other laser cannons but not tie fighters.[/quote]
X-Wing laser cannon. Which curiously enough do NOT wipe the floor with TIE fighters thanks to massively superior firepower. Also, the smaller Delta 7 is explicitely credited with 1 KT per shout in the Ep 2 ICS.

Either way tie fighters had limited fuel and were made to be dependan on star destroyers. Once they run out of fuel having kt weapons won't mean shit.

You will now no doubt tell me the endurance of a TIE fighter on a single fuel load. Given starfighters can go to high relativistic speeds on a single fuel load, I doubt it's going to be something that limits them to a low number of single-digit KT shots. Also supposes they only HAVE a single fuel load.

Are you really this abysmally stupid? They can casually build things that ar so far outside our enginerring capabilities they might as well be magic but they don't know how to build something mankind figured out 10,000 years ago? Blatant lie or ignorance to boot because there's PLENTY of naval vessels in the Star Wars universe.

.They can with Star Wars era ship yards, skilled engineers, a labor force and tech
such as durasteel and hypermatter. They get none of that here.

Which they need to build ships that we can and HAVE build by the thousands already-why?

The same way we do build those ships? Assuming they HAVE to to begin with, given that we have plenty of those ships as it is and there's little we can do to stop tthem intact (especially as most of those ships are civilian so I SERIOUSLY doubt anybody has the means nor the will to blow them up rather than have the Imperials use them)

civilian ships cannot carry at ats

Really. And you've come to this conclusion because? AT-ATs exceed the several ten thousand ton cargo carrying capacity of modern day cargo ships? Wow. Those things are heavier than I thought.

and would get blown to bits by military ships by some of the countries with less reservations.

...if they ever got near them. Invulnerable air force with KT range weapons to the rescue (and it wouldn't surprise me if Wars had OTH shipkilling (for us) weapons on the infantry level as well).

Trying to make ships that can hold at ats and stand up to aircraft carriers would require an Industrial base that the invaders lack.

We have ships than can hold AT-ATs by the truckload already. They're called CARGO SHIPS. And they don't have to stand up to aircraft carriers any more than modern day troop transports do. That's what their escorts (in this case, TIE fighters primarily) are there for.

When the at ats and such run out of fuel they are screwed cause they don't run on anything on Earth. Having kt weapons won't change that.

Yep. And your evidence that that'll happen in time to matter, given that Wars starfighters can get up to and back down from high fractional c velocities on a single fuel load is...? Again presupposes they HAVE only a single fuel load.
Food for thought-Wars power generation seems to be largely limited by e=mc^2. So for over 200,000 iKT bolts they'd need...10 kilograms of hypermatter. Assuming they carry one ton of fuel and use 10 percent of that for their laser cannon at 1KT power levels, that's two million shots per TIE fighter.[/quote][/quote]

[Batman]

um, you're assuming Hypermatter follows E=mc(2) for storage.
I'd be willing to bet it's a multi-spatial dimensional (i.e length, width, height, and 'hyper') and holds more energy.

The reactor output of the Venator and its fuel consumption FOR that output are suspiciously close (one might almost say spot on) for e=mc^2

[Batman]

Because-you say so. You have been provided with a canon source that says they can, AND with a canon source that says the not all that much more aerodynamic ARC-170 can move at MACH 40. You have to show the movies CONTRADICTING this.

Yet in fotj outcast Wedge stated in his thoughts that starfigters are not that much faster
than airspeeders in the atmosphere.

Tough luck. Lower canon. Also, doesn't tell us beans without KNOWING the speed of airspeeders.

but in esb tie fighter missed falcon from few feet

Blatant lie. They were farther away, the Falcon was all over the place, they REPEATEDLY hit it, and they weren't shooting to kill.

so they would not be able to stop mass missile strikes

The mass missiles strikes by our inexistant conventional ICBMs that WILL be intercepted thanks to having ZERO ability to dodge (unlike the Falcon) and NO deflector shields (unlike the Falcon)?

at ats would last for a few hundred miles and run out of fuel fossil fuel won't run it.

Canon quote for the range of an AT-AT on internal fuel.

When the at ats and such run out of fuel they are screwed cause they don't run on anything on Earth. Having kt weapons won't change that.

Canon quote on the range of an AT-AT on internal fuel.

EDIT: As someone who's had his own feuds with the quote function in the past, I strongly urge you to EXTENSIVELY use the the preview function.

[Batman]

um, you're assuming Hypermatter follows E=mc(2) for storage.
I'd be willing to bet it's a multi-spatial dimensional (i.e length, width, height, and 'hyper') and holds more energy.

That's what I run with too. It does a decent job explaining why the Death Star is so much higher than even SDN's absurd numbers for star destroyers. If you take the volume difference and square it, you actually come pretty close to the power difference!

Um-downscaling from the DS1 gets you massively MORE firepower than what the canon numbers say you know, WITHOUT violating e=mc^2.

The reactor output of the Venator and its fuel consumption FOR that output are suspiciously close (one might almost say spot on) for e=mc^2

Have you ever faked a lab report in a science class? The simplest way is to run the formula from the reference book and write it down as "your" results. The teacher usually spots it since your results are a little too perfect (or if you try to fake it, the errors follow a pattern that is a little too regular).
The ICS is like that, with a big difference that the student's faked lab gives things that actually match real observations.

Feel free to show where the ICS numbers don't.

[Connor MacLeod]

And how do you explain that?

You could throw out empirical observations and furiously masturbate to the scaling number (omfg star destroyers have teh GIGATONZ!!11!11!11!!), or you could do the scientific thing and try to find an explanation that fits all the observations.

How can small things have pathetic firepower while something large have enormously huge firepower? Maybe Star Wars firepower doesn't scale linearly with volume.

Is there some overriding reason why the SW galaxy (empire, etc.) NEEDS a massive fleet of starships with the level of firepower implied by the Death Star just sitting around for no reason? Just because a potential capability exists does not mean it must be exploited (It would be costly for one thing, and there is no conceivable external threat to the Empire requiring it. If anything, you don't WANT such capabilities to be widespread.)

Actually, the Death Star bends e=mc^2 over and rapes it with a knife. A death star blast would require a sphere of antimatter bigger than the actual ship!

So? Should we start appealing to "mysterious unknown mechanisms" and technobabble simply to explain it? How is that any less absurd than "stupendously brute force firepower?"

Watch the movies.

Yes thats what your average sci fi fan says, and it remains as vague and unhelpful an analysis as it always does.

[Connor MacLeod]

As far as Atmosphere speeds go, did people spontaneously forget that SW ships tend to operate on dual drives (repulsorlifts and engines?) Some repulsorlifts require a separate engine system to move the ship, but not all and not in all ways (changes in alttitude, for example.)

Differences in speed could be due to differences in which engine is used (repuslors could allow a much lower overall top speed but considerably greater mobility, since it frrees a fighter to behave differently from a modern airplane) while ion engines allow another one.

On top of that I can think of more than a few considerations. ARmor and shielding represent an upper limit on atmospheric speed (If I remember the discussions behind the ICS atmospheric speeds correctly) due to friction. That is, the dfensive capabilities of shielding define just how fast a ship could move in the atmosphere (Although at which altitude I have no fricking clue.) It stands to reason, however, that hypersonic speeds in-atmosphere represent an undesirable strain on the shields whilst in combat and would reduce their ability to stand up to weapons fire, missiles, or whatnot. Besides, zipping around that fast is going to generate alot of excess heat in the atmsophere, and I doubt you want that happening over a battlefield (or in general without good reason.)

The falcon in "Tattooine Ghost", one should note, DID exceed its top airspeed as listed in WEG (creating fireballs in the process.) and fighter airspeeds in "Jedi Trial" were in teh tens of thousands of kph IIRC, so its not just the ICS putting those numbers out.

Likewise, I dont think it can be taken for granted that fighter firepower NEEDs to be in the TJ/kt range - that is merely the max output ( Slave-1's guns for example are like only hundreds of gigajoules per shot as I recall, as are the LAAT gunship's heavy guns.) Blasters don't always rely on just thermal effects for penetration or damage effects, so reducing the yield will not neccesarily degrade their destructive capabilities (And mechanical damage effects of blasters vs shields is not one area thta has really been covered in any detail.)

However, considering that the lowest power settings on fighter lasers (the infamous "splinter shot" settings from the NJO) not only horribly overpenetrate human bodies but reduce them to plasma (as seen in Rebel Dream, the Allston NJO Duology novel), its unlikely that fighter firepower is vastly below than GJ range either (lowest power shots do fuck all to fighters.)

[Batman]

Um-downscaling from the DS1 gets you massively MORE firepower than what the canon numbers say

And how do you explain that?

I don't need to.

You could throw out empirical observations and furiously masturbate to the scaling number (omfg star destroyers have teh GIGATONZ!!11!11!11!!), or you could do the scientific thing and try to find an explanation that fits all the observations.

Again, I don't need to. This is a Vs debate thus canon Wars firepower figures ARE.

How can small things have pathetic firepower while something large have enormously huge firepower? Maybe Star Wars firepower doesn't scale linearly with volume.

You mean like downscaling from the DS1 and allowing for a several orders of magnitude reduction in firerpower STILL gets us 200 GT for MTLs in an Acclamator?

you know, WITHOUT violating e=mc^2.

Actually, the Death Star bends e=mc^2 over and rapes it with a knife. A death star blast would require a sphere of antimatter bigger than the actual ship!

Yeah. Nobody here EVER commented on that. Oh wait.
Hypermatter. Feel free to find a source saying that the MASS of the fuel used in that event actually violates e=mc^2.

Feel free to show where the ICS numbers don't [match real observations]

Watch the movies.

I did. No contradiction.

[Aaron]

Does it really matter if the numbers are accurate or not? SW still rapes Trek by virtue of galaxy wide industry and FTL speed (does anyone with a brain buy RSA's bullshit about days on Endor?). Are we that insecure that we can't handle the thought that maybe the ships don't rape Trek a 100 times but maybe only ten?

[Formless]

The end result I get from all this is that analyzing Star Wars is pointless. The only explanation that makes sense is that it looks cool on screen so they did it.

Keep appealing to Authorial Intent there bub, its not like its COMPLETELY FUCKING IRRELEVANT to the question of how powerful the guns on a star destroyer or TIE fighter is.

[Formless]

Edit: wow, that's the first time I've ever double posted. Please ignore.

Edit #2: (because it was convenient)

Moreover, you are making another stupid mistake (typical of Warsies) by reversing the flow of logic. I'm saying "the firepower doesn't make sense, so we have to accept it is a movie and move on". Then you bitch that I'm saying the exact opposite: "it is a movie, therefore the firepower doesn't make sense". If I were saying the latter, you'd have a legitimate case for a fallacy. But I'm not. Order matters in logic.

And now you are a liar. You came into this thread for the explicit purpose of denying the firepower calcs are accurate, and then had the gall to act like "lol, watch the movie" as if it were an argument. In fact, it IS a fallicious argument that serves no putpose than to show that you have no spine when it comes to Star Wars or sci-fi analysis in general. THIS was the argument you were responding to:

Um-downscaling from the DS1 gets you massively MORE firepower than what the canon numbers say

Answer the damn argument, or shut the fuck up.

[Formless]

Ghetto Edit (for substance, and because I don't want to sound like I'm just dogpiling): what I find amazing is that you constantly act like you know how science works... yet when someone tries to apply the scientific method to a film OHS NOES we can't have that! We have a concordance of evidence IN THE FILMS (that thing you said to watch, remember?) that the Star Wars galaxy happens to have ridiculous, unexplainable firepower and energy generation ability, and for some reason it CAN'T be true! because of, um, cherrypicked data, of course. For instance, lets talk about the "lol, humans shouldn't be able to pilot TIE fighters at those speeds or fight in them" argument: if this were a hard sci-fi series you would be all "maybe they have a heavily automated cockpits like real life fighter jets do that handles most of the mundane stuff" or "maybe they are enhanced humans with cyborg enhancements or genetic alterations (technology we know they have in this universe)"-- you know, postulate on how they do it rather than say "well, they shouldn't be able to so maybe the film is un-analyzable". But nooooo. "This is STAR WARS, which isn't true sci-fi and therefor can safely be relegated to the absurd fantasy land, and everyone who disagrees with me is a wanker." You aren't getting any Testing Cred or Trekkie cred here, all you are doing is shooting any credibility you had in the foot.

[Batman]

I don't need to.

Typical Warsie. An observation questions your worldview? Ignore it!

Under SOD I GET to. You either show the firepower power generation etc figures for Wars are WRONG or you don't. As LONG as you don't, I use them.

Of course, I'll point out of power does scale non-linearly upward, it still leaves the question open of why the hell they use fighters. But linear scaling doesn't help with that either, given how much bigger capships are than the fighters - the laser cannons should be ineffective against the big shields.

They ARE. Feel free to point out a single example of capital ship shields being brought down by fighter cannons.

Note that firepower doesn't scale linearly in the real world's war equipment: the little guy can put out a lot more than his size implies, thanks to missiles. It is possible for a fighter jet to sink a carrier. If firepower worked in Star Wars the way Warsies fantasize that it does, fighters couldn't take a capship down unless they had, literally, a million to one numbers advantage.

Yeah. I mean there's TOTALLY no evidence for fighters having capship killer torpedoes in the EU where they STILL need serious numbers to take on a measly Victory.

(If a Star Destroyer can put out ten million terawatts and can fight another star destroyer, it means they can absorb ten million terawatts, too, more or less, for a little while at least. The completely unsubstantiated numbers on the main site call fighter shots one kiloton per shot.

The completely unsubsantiated numers on the main site for 1KT a shot ARE I'm afraid backed up by the undeniably canon Ep 2 ICS.

Yet, they launch fighters against capships without a million to one numbers advantage. Why do they do this? Are all Star Wars combatants just suicidally retarded?

Where, pray tell, do they use fighters to kill capships in the MOVIES? And I absolutely DON'T hate to tell you bu7t in the EU fighters DO have the means to kill capships in sufficient numbers via torpedoes.

Maybe, or, perhaps, the numbers given are bullshit.

Or maybe you're just whiny because all the stuff that IS canon for Star Wars violates your precious belief of what SHOULD be SciFi.

The end result I get from all this is that analyzing Star Wars is pointless. The only explanation that makes sense is that it looks cool on screen so they did it.

The end result I get is you are pissed because nobody else shares your distaste for Star Wars for refusing to be what you want to be Science Fiction.

[Bakustra]

The end result I get from all this is that analyzing Star Wars is pointless. The only explanation that makes sense is that it looks cool on screen so they did it.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. All analysis of this nature is ultimately pointless except for personal amusement. Star Wars isn't even all that inconsistent compared to, say, Sherlock Holmes, and analyzing Holmes in this manner is popular enough that FDR got involved in his private correspondence. Hell, in the case of Sherlock Holmes, people have been working out the dates of stories and his class schedules in college since before my parents were born. Looking cool as an explanation is hardly unique to Star Wars; indeed, if it makes Star Wars invalid for analysis, all that would be left to analyze is didactic/allegorical and hard sci-fi. Think of the future, man, the future! Do you really want to look at a future of nothing but Greg Bear and Margaret Atwood being analyzed?

Ghetto Edit (for substance, and because I don't want to sound like I'm just dogpiling): what I find amazing is that you constantly act like you know how science works... yet when someone tries to apply the scientific method to a film OHS NOES we can't have that! We have a concordance of evidence IN THE FILMS (that thing you said to watch, remember?) that the Star Wars galaxy happens to have ridiculous, unexplainable firepower and energy generation ability, and for some reason it CAN'T be true! because of, um, cherrypicked data, of course. For instance, lets talk about the "lol, humans shouldn't be able to pilot TIE fighters at those speeds or fight in them" argument: if this were a hard sci-fi series you would be all "maybe they have a heavily automated cockpits like real life fighter jets do that handles most of the mundane stuff" or "maybe they are enhanced humans with cyborg enhancements or genetic alterations"-- you know, postulate on how they do it rather than say "well, they shouldn't be able to so maybe the film is un-analyzable". But nooooo. "This is STAR WARS, which isn't true sci-fi and therefor can safely be relegated to the absurd fantasy land, and everyone who disagrees with me is a wanker." You aren't getting any Testing Cred or Trekkie cred here, all you are doing is shooting any credibility you had in the foot.

You are seriously overreacting, and more importantly, do yourself no credit. That's not really a behavior I have noted from him, especially in our private conversations. While the elitist attitude of some towards Star Wars is annoying, bringing it up here is akin to me bringing up slash-fanfiction writers. While both of us would probably agree on the annoyance involved, it is still a bizarre non-sequitur.

If you want to attack his examples, say, in the case of starfighter behavior, there are mitigating circumstances. Consider that escape velocity from the Death Star is likely minimal, and so fightercraft have a limit on their velocity to prevent a tangential departure. Similarly, in the Asteroid Belt, relative velocities are likely to be low in such a dangerous area, and this applies for the innards of the Second Death Star. Meanwhile, the opening of the battle of Endor shows high-relative velocity combat between the TIEs and the lead Rebel fighters. So you could argue from that that what we see is not a representative sample, and things could progress from there.

However, you will note that this argument does not rely on ancillary materials. The people arguing in this thread generally exclude them, for one reason or another. Destructionator operates on a principle of absolute film supremacy; it must be in the films to be in canon. So be it. I find this a little wrongheaded and agenda-driven, personally, but I still go along. The important thing to remember is that this is all a game, and games are generally the most fun when everybody agrees upon the rules.

[Formless]

You are seriously overreacting, and more importantly, do yourself no credit. That's not really a behavior I have noted from him, especially in our private conversations. While the elitist attitude of some towards Star Wars is annoying, bringing it up here is akin to me bringing up slash-fanfiction writers. While both of us would probably agree on the annoyance involved, it is still a bizarre non-sequitur.

Maybe you weren't around for this thread. Read the part where he re-defines sci-fi such as to dismiss soft-sci-fi? Yes, I know bringing up people's past history isn't normally kosher, but frankly I have been keeping watch, and I think a definite case can be made that his attitude about Star Wars does in fact seem connected to his attitudes about sci-fi in general.

(And by the way, don't talk about my tone, asshole. Find a different forum if that's where you want to take this.)

However, you will note that this argument does not rely on ancillary materials. The people arguing in this thread generally exclude them, for one reason or another. Destructionator operates on a principle of absolute film supremacy; it must be in the films to be in canon. So be it. I find this a little wrongheaded and agenda-driven, personally, but I still go along. The important thing to remember is that this is all a game, and games are generally the most fun when everybody agrees upon the rules.

Like the rules of the forum? Or the rules of Canon? I'm sorry, but letting him dictate the rules of debate isn't something I do.

[Formless]

It not being analyzed in universe means the best explanation left is that it looks cool out of universe.

That's not an explanation, and you know it. Furthermore, we aren't talking about something where the mechanism even matters. We're just here to calculate the firepower. The firepower which you dispute. Hmmm...

[Bakustra]

You are seriously overreacting, and more importantly, do yourself no credit. That's not really a behavior I have noted from him, especially in our private conversations. While the elitist attitude of some towards Star Wars is annoying, bringing it up here is akin to me bringing up slash-fanfiction writers. While both of us would probably agree on the annoyance involved, it is still a bizarre non-sequitur.

Maybe you weren't around for this thread. Read the part where he re-defines sci-fi such as to dismiss soft-sci-fi? Yes, I know bringing up people's past history isn't normally kosher, but frankly I have been keeping watch, and I think a definite case can be made that his attitude about Star Wars does in fact seem connected to his attitudes about sci-fi in general.

(And by the way, don't talk about my tone, asshole. Find a different forum if that's where you want to take this.)

I still don't quite see where you're getting dismissal from. That is an argument about an academic definition of sci-fi. Let me introduce to an amazing new concept. It is called (hold on to your socks, you're gonna love this) the legitimate difference of opinions. I disagree with him about a definition for sci-fi, as I believe the term is too vague to be used academically. But I can respect his opinion.

I'd like to turn the tables on you. It says a lot about you that you think that sci-fi must be exalted, I would say. I don't think that it necessarily diminishes Star Wars to make it part of a "sci-fantasy" or "space opera" genre, any more than it would exalt Ghostbusters to make it sci-fi. I ask you, why do you believe that sci-fi is better than fantasy, hmm?

Finally, I was unaware that "overreacting" was a tone, rather than being a mere description of fact. Saying you were being a shrill cretin, that would be talking about your tone. Saying that my previous sentence was oxymoronical would be simply mean.

However, you will note that this argument does not rely on ancillary materials. The people arguing in this thread generally exclude them, for one reason or another. Destructionator operates on a principle of absolute film supremacy; it must be in the films to be in canon. So be it. I find this a little wrongheaded and agenda-driven, personally, but I still go along. The important thing to remember is that this is all a game, and games are generally the most fun when everybody agrees upon the rules.

Like the rules of the forum? Or the rules of Canon? I'm sorry, but letting him dictate the rules of debate isn't something I do.

So complain to the mods, and see if anybody cares enough to oppress this thread for daring to deviate from the standard. Go ahead. I'm certainly not going to stop you. Any hesitancy as your cursor hovers over the PM button would be entirely you, and not at all the province of my dread and imaginary psionic powers. (It's not dictating the rules if you're willing to come halfway, either, but that is the province of Internet Arguing 102, and we are still in 101 territory, I think.)

I'm not sure what you mean by this. All analysis of this nature is ultimately pointless except for personal amusement.

Sure. What I'm saying here is we aren't going to find one explanation that fits everything (like we could in the real world). There are inconsistencies that can't be explained without resorting to either convoluted stupid bullshit (which introduces other problems, like idiot characters) or going with the out of universe reasoning.

At some point, you have to accept that logic can't explain everything.

Looking cool as an explanation is hardly unique to Star Wars; indeed, if it makes Star Wars invalid for analysis, all that would be left to analyze is didactic/allegorical and hard sci-fi.

You've got it backward: looking cool doesn't mean it can't be analyzed. It not being analyzed in universe means the best explanation left is that it looks cool out of universe.

looks cool -> unanalyzable (wrong!)
analysis fails -> it is in the movie because it looks cool (works)

That works, and I don't have a problem with it.

Consider that escape velocity from the Death Star is likely minimal, and so fightercraft have a limit on their velocity to prevent a tangential departure.

Relative velocity of the Death Star is really quite bizarre; given how low it is, it seems like that must have met it, then fired their retrorockets to match velocity with it, and then fired the forward rockets again to accelerate to attack speed! (And, naturally, keep the engine turned on to keep up with the Death Star's own acceleration, if any. Which is weird, since the acceleration direction would be perpendicular to their movement direction on that trench. This is an example of the above: no explanation is going to be fully satisfying here beyond saying the movie would have been really boring if the Death Star just body-slammed our heroes! Hilarious though.)

Somebody should do a cheesy, Thumb Wars-esque parody where all that happens. (The Death Star doesn't seem to be accelerating once it slides into orbit, though.)

However, you will note that this argument does not rely on ancillary materials. The people arguing in this thread generally exclude them, for one reason or another. Destructionator operates on a principle of absolute film supremacy; it must be in the films to be in canon.

I'll admit part of this is that I've never read any of the other material. I have a cool book laying around somewhere that has artwork of the worlds of Star Wars, but I only look at the pictures I read it only for the articles, honest!

That's a major barrier, I think, for a lot of people. It's too bad, in some ways, but good in others, considering the general quality of the books.

[Junghalli]

That's not an explanation, and you know it. Furthermore, we aren't talking about something where the mechanism even matters. We're just here to calculate the firepower. The firepower which you dispute. Hmmm...

That may be official board policy but personally I find Destructionator's arguments (and rebuttals to them) much more interesting than some lame discussion in which we speculate on whether the TIE fighters have enough juice in their nuclear level pew pew lasers to blow up human civilization and probably fail to come to any conclusion because it has never been quantified in canon or if it has nobody has read the appropriate technical manual/can remember what it says/can be arsed to look it up and post.

[Agent Sorchus]

That may be official board policy but personally I find Destructionator's arguments (and rebuttals to them) much more interesting than some lame discussion in which we speculate on whether the TIE fighters have enough juice in their nuclear level pew pew lasers to blow up human civilization and probably fail to come to any conclusion because it has never been quantified in canon or if it has nobody has read the appropriate technical manual/can remember what it says/can be arsed to look it up and post.

Junghalli, while I too think that the whole real world thing is stupid, I do not like Destructionator's non-arguments. Not because of what they are arguing (that SW has inflated calculations), but the fact that they are not really a full argument (ie we can't find a blaster's firepower when we don' know the mechanism). And yes Destructionator's idea that we can't analyze fiction is an appeal to ignorance. Just because we do not know a mechanism does not mean we cannot figure the degree of it's effect. Order of Magnitude is a wondrous thing to analyze, because it is far more important than strict exact figures. If one is within an order of Magnitude things such as morale specific tactics and logistics matter far more than if your gun has 10% more kick to it. Tactics are something that can be debated without ever reaching a conclussion, but a good OoM calculation is pretty good at settling an argument.

If Destructionator were to actually post an affirmative argument rather than negative arguments then we can get to a proper debate. So Destructionator what does your argument for star wars' firepower look like?

[Formless]

Maybe you weren't around for this thread. Read the part where he re-defines sci-fi such as to dismiss soft-sci-fi? Yes, I know bringing up people's past history isn't normally kosher, but frankly I have been keeping watch, and I think a definite case can be made that his attitude about Star Wars does in fact seem connected to his attitudes about sci-fi in general.

(And by the way, don't talk about my tone, asshole. Find a different forum if that's where you want to take this.)

I still don't quite see where you're getting dismissal from. That is an argument about an academic definition of sci-fi. Let me introduce to an amazing new concept. It is called (hold on to your socks, you're gonna love this) the legitimate difference of opinions. I disagree with him about a definition for sci-fi, as I believe the term is too vague to be used academically. But I can respect his opinion.

The problem is, there is no room for opinion in this debate. Its numbers, or fuck off, and it always has been around here. Seriously? You want to argue for sophism? Good luck with that. I'll be waiting for you to get a brain.

And therein lies the problem. D13 has no numbers, only an opinion and nitpicking. Has he ever provided alternative explanations for what we should accept as the firepower for a Star Destroyer or a TIE fighter? No. In fact, he's argued that we cannot analyze Star Wars at all. What justification does he give? None. I can only assume its because of his academic stance blatant bias about what sci-fi should be.

Like the rules of the forum? Or the rules of Canon? I'm sorry, but letting him dictate the rules of debate isn't something I do.

So complain to the mods, and see if anybody cares enough to oppress this thread for daring to deviate from the standard. Go ahead. I'm certainly not going to stop you. Any hesitancy as your cursor hovers over the PM button would be entirely you, and not at all the province of my dread and imaginary psionic powers. (It's not dictating the rules if you're willing to come halfway, either, but that is the province of Internet Arguing 102, and we are still in 101 territory, I think.)

Since when has it been wrong to call out someone's basic assumptions? See, this is a skill I think you lack. Technically, you and I are on the same page. And yet, here we are, debating the merits of our prospective methods of debate. It would be no different if you were arguing with a creationist and he said that in his opinion god is a real entity. You accept it for the sake of argument. Fine, there are arguments that can be had within that debate structure. Then he says that you must accept that Goddit is a valid argument and you accept that too. Then he says that his opinion, god is all powerful. You accept that that is his opinion, and try to argue within that framework. And we continue with this pattern... at some point, the rules of the debate become so rigged that at no point are you going to win that debate. Sometimes that approach is fruitless. So I step in and say "show me evidence of God's existence" and you leap on my throat for violating the unspoken rule that "everyone has an opinion". We're arguing for the same agenda, what the fuck is the matter with you? Oh, right. You allowed him to dictate the rules, and as a result you get walked all over. Just look at this mess:

That works, and I don't have a problem with it.

Why grant him that? Whenever we do scientific research we expect to see a few apparent inconsistencies. They are called outliers, and unless they reach critical mass (which they do not) we can still say that statistically the evidence concords to a certain range of values. As for his other argument, its irrelevant to the points actually being discussed. We do NOT need to magically know how a turbolaser works before we can find its power output. In some situations that might change things (like if there were evidence of a chain reaction, say), but all the evidence suggests in terms of how it deals damage it works on the same principles as any other weapon-- brute force energy transfer.

His standard for what it would take to make statements about Star Wars tech (logic must explain everything! Sorry, that's not how science works) are way too high, yet you refuse to call this out.

Somebody should do a cheesy, Thumb Wars-esque parody where all that happens. (The Death Star doesn't seem to be accelerating once it slides into orbit, though.)

Here, you don't even argue with him, choosing instead to make a lame joke. At no point do you mention that that attack vector, as... interesting... as it must be was obviously a practical move as it allowed the fighters to avoid the Anti-fighter guns.

I'll admit part of this is that I've never read any of the other material. I have a cool book laying around somewhere that has artwork of the worlds of Star Wars, but I only look at the pictures I read it only for the articles, honest!

That's a major barrier, I think, for a lot of people. It's too bad, in some ways, but good in others, considering the general quality of the books.

And yet, he never fixes that error or allow arguments from those books. Why? You never ask.

What the hell are you talking about? My problem is that people don't apply the scientific method, not that they do!

Then what is your alternative hypothesis? What other numbers are you willing to give, and justification for them? What is your method?

You are all bluster and no substance, and its time you got called out for that.

Because its not there. My criticisms of the main site's methods are all out in the open now, so I won't go over them again.

Are you referring to the argument you made that the calcs are not perfectly accurate? The one where you skipped over the fact that Mike up front admitted that they aren't perfectly accurate... and that thy STILL represent the conservative estimates?

Gee, I guess you weren't expecting someone to actually READ the pages you refer to, were you?

And that's just one issue I have with your "criticisms." Want to try another one? By the way, be more specific. I'm not hunting down quotes by you from other threads just to satisfy your ego.

Fixed that for you. I've never once said that, in fact, I have said the opposite multiple times: if they used automation or computer assistance, they should be doing a much better job. *snip robotics technobabble*

Why should this matter, outside of the land of personal preferrence? Obviously, GL didn't write the story like you would have. Boo fucking hoo. Now tell me why I should accept arguments that TIE's somehow aren't as effective as we see that they are.

Now, of course, if we saw them dodge weapons fire, or accurately predict complex math, I'd be the first to point to computer assistance, like I do in virtually Gundam thread that comes up. But we don't see those results, and we don't see those methods.

Did we even watch the same movies? They dodge weapons fire all the goddamn time. In fact, NOT hitting space fighters is the norm, not the rule. It happens so often I seriously don't see why I should even bother to post evidence ("Watch the movies" as you said). Although I'm sure you will now proceed to backtrack and claim its because the gunners are humans too, in your crusade against organics.

Anyway, if you plot it, you get a few numbers in one area, a bunch of dots pretty low (fighters), then a weird dot way up, considerably off the line. That hugely weird dot is the Death Star. Often, a weird value like that indicates experimental error, but the Death Star's effects are pretty explicit (the only thing we can fight over is recharge time, and it doesn't make much of a difference); it isn't error.

So, BDZ's don't exist now. Gotcha. Oh, not to mention the ICS. Oh, and lets ignore those pesky asteroid calcs you've never offered an alternative hypothesis for.

Right, not fooling anyone.

c) The out of universe reason: the Death Star did its job and the creators cared more about drama than hard consistency.

Does not apply/irrelevant to in universe speculation. To put it in logic terms, doing so would be a Borrowed Concept fallacy; two mutually exclusive concepts cannot be used in the same argument. The Star Wars Universe is either treated as real for the sake of argument, or its not. You cannot have it both ways.

The firepower numbers are all over the place, meaning analysis is going to hit a wall sooner or later. But, again, my specific, substantive criticisms are in the open a page or two back. You can answer them any time you like.

Uh, no. I'm not going through a morass of cherrypicking when Mike's calcs, the ICS, and the rest of Star Wars Canon are there for everyone to see that you are full of shit. The onus is on you now. Show me your numbers, give me your hypothesis, and tell me why I should accept them. I cannot prove negatives, and you cannot squirm out of this by saying "Star Wars is un-analyzable" because this position is simply wrong.

[Formless]

Of course, I attacked the asteroid calculations based on precision - they are too exact. If they were just order of magnitude estimates, they'd be a lot harder to attack. A power of ten is a lot of wiggle room for specifics, though it isn't unassailable either.

You are full of shit.

A Star Destroyer used its light trench-mounted guns to vaporize 40 metre wide asteroids in TESB with 1/15-second bursts (see Brian Young's Turbolaser Power page for more information), resulting in a lower limit of 22,500 TW for light turbolaser output. If the ratio of light to heavy turbolaser output is proportional to the size difference, then heavy turbolasers must therefore output roughly 2.8 million TW.

...

There is also significant evidence available which allows us to determine mean estimates rather than lower limits:

...

The above text indicates that the recoil alone from a turbolaser cannon is equivalent to the effect of a multi-gigaton direct hit, and that it would tear a Star Destroyer to pieces without massive and complex energy dissipation bracings and energy fields.

Therefore, this text supports the energy quantifications derived from BDZ and EGWT analyses. It adds yet another piece of supporting evidence that heavy turbolasers output energy in the gigaton range, if not much more.

...

We must stress the highly conservative nature of this estimate: the DS shell was constructed of heavy armor, and Imperial armor is far superior to simple iron. In The Stele Chronicles, a TIE fighter pilot deliberately flew his unshielded fighter into the atmosphere of a planet at high speed as an evasive maneuver. The unprotected armor and transparent front window of his fighter were totally unaffected by this event- an event that would easily push ordinary iron beyond its maximum service temperatures as the 20th century Space Shuttle's ceramic heat tiles demonstrate. Furthermore, Imperial dura-armor is made by "compressing and binding neutronium, lomite, and zersium molecules together through the process of matrix acceleration", according to the SWE. The use of neutronium micro-particles as interstitial alloying elements in dura-armor is strongly suggestive of extreme mechanical and thermal toughness.

...

The Death Star's massive firepower reinforces the firepower estimates for other Imperial weapons, since they all derive from the same technological base (this is one of the primary reasons that Federation cultists have desperately attempted to dispute Death Star firepower estimates).

No honest person can read that article, let alone the main site, and think that Mike wasn't trying to calculate the Order of Magnitude for Star Wars Vessles. A dishonest one with an agenda? That's possible.

[Formless]

Ghetto edit:

Are you referring to the argument you made that the calcs are not perfectly accurate? The one where you skipped over the fact that Mike up front admitted that they aren't perfectly accurate... and that thy STILL represent the conservative estimates?

I apologize for the Strawman, it seems I had the objection backwards. However, you are still quite wrong.