Why do people assume that the Empire has better tech?

[Captain Seafort]

17,000 whatevers is apparently a *lot* of money: Han was loading whole cases of shit on to the ship at the end, and he was ecstatic to have the offer - it'd pay off all his debts with money left over.

I got the impression that their offer would be like someone offering hundreds of thousands of dollars in today's terms.

While Luke was certainly saying more about Han's prices than starships, the related discussions seem to imply that starships are indeed relatively cheap. 17k was the final price they agreed on, up significantly from Han's demand of 10k, but with only 2k in advance. Luke was able to acquire most of this from selling his landspeeder, which wasn't exactly new or a Ferrari, and was a bit disappointed at the price he got for it. You could therefore "almost" by a starship for about 5 -10 times the second-hand cost of a teenager's mechanised mess tin. More like 10-20 grand at most than hundreds of thousands.

[Connor MacLeod]

Not really; AFAIK, there's not a single instance of a proper BDZ.

If by "proper" you mean observed, then no there isn't. But we know of at least one indicated one (Hutt Gambit, where according to the Essential Chronology the Inhabitable city-moon of Nar Shaddaa was to be reduced to molten slag.)

But, if we take the things that seem to be the same thing... indeed, we do see what happens. There's often survivors[1].

Depends on what you define "survivors" as.

The original land masses are still intact[2].

The only way they are not going to be "intact" is if you blow the crust entirely off the planet. That's beyond the scope of a defined BDZ.

In one instance, ground troopers landed shortly after the bombardment to mop up! (A task they failed, btw.) [3]

Dankayo was never called a BDZ. And the other case I am aware of (hutt gambit) was based on the fears and imaginations of Soontir Fel, who didn't WANT to do a BDZ, had never done one, and didnt know what it would entail. Hardly the most reliable source.

Moreover, the BDZ tells us that Star Wars spacecraft are quite rare. [4]

That doesn't work, considering they managed to amass scores (at least 100 or more as I recall from the novel) ships over a single planet just over a politicla issue. that wasn't even the sum total of the navies of all the member worlds/systems involved. I realize you're trying to do this whole "turnabout is fair play" attack because you're pissed off against what you see as warsie wank, but it's actually rather painful to see you try to pull this logic off seriously. I know you're capable of far better than that.

The Wongian/Saxton interpretation is directly contradicted by what we see.

[1] Camaas, according to a canon RPG sourcebook fluff and canon illustrations, had surviving vegetation, animals, and people.

Caamas was never defined as a BDZ. The acqual consquences have changed depending on the source as Hoth noted, with most of the changes coming from the WOTC material (and even within that they've changed their minds over time.) But in any event it still wasn't a BDZ.

If you want to debate Caamas though I will.

[2] No BDZ operation has ever done more than leaving a cratered surface with some atomized topsoil. If the planet's surface was indeed melted, not only would the landmasses likely not be recognizable, there probably wouldn't be any left at all! Look at projections of global warming on Earth and take that to 12. (it's one more than 11 lol)

Dankayo, as I noted, wasn't ever stated to be a BDZ. In any event we dont know enough about the nature of the planet to avoid unresolved arguments, although cratering the surface isn't the same thing as melting the crust to any significant depth in any case. The loss of atmosphere may be telling, but people will aruge that since we dont know whta kind of atmosphere.

[3] Danakyo not only had surviving rebels, but it had stormtroopers landing on the planet before it had cooled! Stormtrooper armor and other equipment could plausibly protect them from a nuclear wasteland. It's not believable that they landed on a liquid world to do a ground sweep for survivors...

The rebel as I recall was in some "deep shelter" of some kind, and explicitly made mention of fears for his own survival.

We dont know what kinds of stormtroopers (there's not just one kind, and many are designed for adverse conditions, although as we know from ROTS storm trooper armor can be designed to stand up to adverse heat conditions.) of course we also don't know how they deployed either... Again too much not known.

[4] The Bothawai mission was supposed to leave no survivors, but it's a city-world getting nailed by only three ships. Even with TIE screens, if civilian spacecraft were common, it'd be millions of ships vs maybe 1000 TIEs... something would surely slip through.

It also had a planetary shield up, minus one section. Its hard to evacuate when the shield is still up (and how long will it take to go down? another good question.) That doesn't specify how long they intended or needed to bombard, either, which rather dramatically affects the "how long it takes to get away". It's pretty damn silly to assume that civilians would be able to just jump in their starships and zip off into space at the drop of a hat. it'd be chaos. Besides it's quite possible and likely starships are kept at starports for various legitimate (legal) reasons.

In any event, this was never explicitly defined as a BDZ.

[Batman]

The Bothawui mission not only wasn't ever defined as a BDZ, it assumed the New Republic ships would do virtually all of the damage. The ISDs weren't expecting to have to do anything beyond mop up whoever survived that fleet battle. The point of that mission never was to destroy (leave alone BDZ) Bothawui, it was to spark a Civil War amongst the New Republic. Those ISDs were there to eliminate anybody who might be able to testify that there might have been outside influences that caused New Republic ships to open fire on Bothawui and each other, nothing more.

[Captain Seafort]

That mission, however, would have required them to BDZ Bothawui - they would have to have been utterly stupid to assume that the two fleets would do the job properly themselves. It was intended to be an extremely easy BDZ, with most of the job already done by the anti-Bothan fleet, but a BDZ nonetheless, going by the standard of "no survivors"

[Batman]

As evidenced by-what, exactly? They never even intended to bring down the planetary shield. 'No survivors' referred to whatever was left of the New Republic faction fleets, not the planet, so there would be nobody to question whether it was a New Republic faction that started it all. Laying waste to Bothawui was never part of the plan.

[Captain Seafort]

They never even intended to bring down the planetary shield.

The Imperial agents on the surface who aimed to do exactly that (and succeeded) disproves this handily.

'No survivors' referred to whatever was left of the New Republic faction fleets, not the planet, so there would be nobody to question whether it was a New Republic faction that started it all. Laying waste to Bothawui was never part of the plan.

And what exactly do you think would happen when telescopes and other sensors on Bothawaui recorded three ISDs decloaking and mopping up the survivors of the fleet?

[Batman]

They never even intended to bring down the planetary shield.

The Imperial agents on the surface who aimed to do exactly that (and succeeded) disproves this handily.

It would, if that had ever actually happened. It didn't, and never was meant to. All they ever tried to and all they ever succeeded in was bring down one section of the shield over one single city.

'No survivors' referred to whatever was left of the New Republic faction fleets, not the planet, so there would be nobody to question whether it was a New Republic faction that started it all. Laying waste to Bothawui was never part of the plan.

And what exactly do you think would happen when telescopes and other sensors on Bothawaui recorded three ISDs decloaking and mopping up the survivors of the fleet?

The Imperial Remnant stepped in to stop an attempted genocide, or at the very least an attempt at wide-scale destruction on Bothawui being carried out by New Republic faction forces? Seriously, have you read the books?

[Darth Tedious]

WRT spaceship ownership, a thought occurred:
While owning a landspeeder or airspeeder is analogous to owning a car in RL, having a ship is more akin to owning a truck. As DXIII pointed out, people don't tend to do it unless they plan to turn a profit with it.

WRT the ICS: As Bakustra said, it is implied that it would be G-level because it is an accompanying text to the movie, which would place it below the novelisation, but above all other levels of canon. However, this hasn't been clarified very well by Lucasfilm.
If it does indeed fall into a lower level of canon, wouldn't it be S-level rather than C-level?

[Mercenario]

@Destructionator XIII
Well, it depends on the photon torpedos.
I mean the theorethical max was 25 isotons, voyager was stocked with mark 6 loaded with 200 isotons.

Maybe they had some mark 7.

It is the curse of all TV Series.
The thing used in the new episode has to be better than the thing used in the last.
It makes me wonder, when we do need the discussion:
Could StarGate defeat StarWars and StarTrek all in one. (I would give it a year or two)

[Batman]

You do know the term 'isoton' is utterly completely meaningless without a way to quantify what an isoton actually amounts to. If we go with the original greek meaning of 'equal to', a 200 isoton torpedo has a firepower of ...200 tons of TNT. Not all that impressive even by real world standards.

[Batman]

"of TNT" is pure speculation.

Absolutely. As is everything else. The isoton as presented in Trek is completely unquantifiable.

[Stofsk]

Watching some ds9 in the background of work.

Apacolypse Rising

Damar: "A full spread of photon torpedoes would take out Gowron's headquarters and anyone else within a few hundred kilometers"


O'Brien says it's a bad plan: "You wouldn't be able launch one before they shot you down* and besides, even a dozen wouldn't pentrate the shield around it."

* We heard before that there are at least 30 warships there at all time.


Damar's statement is vaguely inline with the idea of dozens of megaton direct energy photorps (within an order of magnitude anyway).

(how does hundreds of kilometers scale so easily to wrecking the planet... sci fi writers have no sense of scale)

O'Brien's statement helps to explain why lone ships don't always end wars, despite their great power - they don't last long in a frontal assault like that and shields buy the defenders a little more time.

Remember though Damar is standing on the bridge of a captured Klingon Bird of Prey. What's a 'full spread of photon torpedoes' relative to what a Klingon BoP could deliver? Or maybe he's talking about a general spam of photorps? (the Enterprise can fire a dozen torps at once while BoPs seem to only be able to fire one torp at a time, maybe a couple. What could a Galor or Keldon class Cardassian ship deliver? Who knows)

The fleet in 'TDiC' numbered over 20 ships IIRC. They were spread out, included heavy hitters like Warbirds and Keldons, and also had phasers and disruptors to boot, all firing in sync. They would be firing a lot more torpedoes than a single BoP could in the above scenario as well.

or maybe damar is an idiot hurhur

[Stofsk]

My assumption was "full spread" means about 4 torps. Generally, when the Enterprise does a "full spread", three or four spam out of the tube at the same time. (sometimes they rapid fire all weapons, but Picard was usually more contrained with is orders)

Birds of Prey might be different, but it's surely close enough for the general idea.

We've seen the Enterprise fire big spreads before - season 1's 'Arsenal of Freedom', 'Survivors', even 'Yesterday's Enterprise', and 'Best of Both Worlds' showed rapid firing of photorps too rather than one big spread. Meanwhile I think every time we've seen Birds-of-Prey fire torpedoes, it's one at a time. TSfS, TUC are the obvious ones. But they might be able to fire rapidly, who knows?

Regardless, it is totally my assumption. In context, he was surely thinking of simply decloaking, firing off as much as they could, then cloaking again and getting the fuck out of there before the guarding ships realized what happend.

I agree.

btw on Damar, I loved the way he was introduced... just one of Dukat's random underlings. He had some brief characterization, but nothing near what you expect from a main character. Imagine watching the show for the first time... who would have thought he'd play such a big role in the end?

The actor who played him was pretty good in my opinion. I don't really agree with the direction DS9 took late season 6/all of season 7, but Damar was a decent bad guy's flunkie.

[Mercenario]

When does this happen? Not in movies for sure. Is this from the EU?

Well episode V during the walker Attack you get yourself a lot of Laser hits not ending in the hiroshima style. Be it from the A Wing or the Walker. In Episode II you got them shooting down spacecrafts with lasers quite bigger than any T-fighter. No annihilation of the scenery.
Shall I go on?

In Episode III you got space ship battles at the beginning with lasers hitting the interior. No complete annihilation there, while they seem to do damage to the hull.

[Metahive]

Well episode V during the walker Attack you get yourself a lot of Laser hits not ending in the hiroshima style. Be it from the A Wing or the Walker. In Episode II you got them shooting down spacecrafts with lasers quite bigger than any T-fighter. No annihilation of the scenery.

You mean that one battle where Darth Vader wants to capture a specific person and blowing the rebel base sky-high is therefore not an option? BTW, this was your initial scenario "Yes, you may take cover from a Tie fighter behind a tree or keep on running while plasts miss you for just a feed or so", so thank you for admitting you just made that one up.

In Episode III you got space ship battles at the beginning with lasers hitting the interior. No complete annihilation there, while they seem to do damage to the hull.

Yeah, I mean, it's not like there're important hostages, like say, the chancellor of the Republic, on that ship and therefore a good reason to skimp with the firepower.

Shall I go on?

By all means, yes, go on. A, also thanks for conceding the whole rest.

[Azron_Stoma]

Since when does an A-Wing




look like this?



Regardless the ICS describes the heat and energy being concentrated in a small area, so they don't create hiroshima style blasts but do carry similar levels of energy and heat. Ever heard of the Yamato Cannon in Starcraft?

As for the Episode II and III comments, it can easily be explained by the absorbent qualities of the armour and shielding on the vessels themselves, and has been in some detail in other threads.

[Darth Tedious]

Since when does an A-Wing [...] look like this?

They look super similar... same basic shape, similar paint job... it's quite possible a casual fan would mistake them as the same thing.

While quite true, this serves to demonstrate why casual fans shouldn't do versus debating- at least not here.

Regardless the ICS describes the heat and energy being concentrated in a small area, so they don't create hiroshima style blasts but do carry similar levels of energy and heat. Ever heard of the Yamato Cannon in Starcraft?

Wouldn't work that way - hiroshima had the heat and energy concentrated in a small area too (the bomb), but energy tends to spread out on it's own.

We've seen high levels of energy concentrated into tiny areas in Star Trek- the 10MJ phase pistol blast in ENT:'Regeneration' carries roughly the same energy as a modern hand grenade (the MK4A2 releases ~10.33448MJ) and didn't cause a grenade-like explosion.
In RL, the NIF's megajoule laser causes the target to implode- bearing very little resemblence to what a pound of TNT would do.

[Mercenario]

You mean that one battle where Darth Vader wants to capture a specific person and blowing the rebel base sky-high is therefore not an option?

No. But but having a Laser having the punch of several kg TNT would have been enough to take out the guys hiding in holes in Front of the base.

Yeah, I mean, it's not like there're important hostages, like say, the chancellor of the Republic, on that ship and therefore a good reason to skimp with the firepower.

And the other side was holding back, because? Jeah, they are stupid.

By all means, yes, go on. A, also thanks for conceding the whole rest.

In episode 3 is full of guys getting nearly hit with a laser and which are alive afterwards.


The tree example I do not know where I have it from. It might have been a book.
(In the forest the were just fighting against the walkers, which might have a bit less firepower. But they are still close to the size of an X-Wing.)

I really do not get the discussion George Lukas made perfectly clear what he considers his universe and what not.
So all I am saying is I like his and not the EU stuff and what some guys are trying to but into the "originial".
Because frankly I do not care who would win. I just do not get it how to rape a great story for the sake of having the bigger gun.

So yeah, I like a universe where Obi Wan is able to bend steel.
Yes I like a universe where you have to shoot the bad guy 4 times in the cheast so he is dead.
I do not care, that the "Lasers" tend to leave no mark on the ground.
I like a universe where the hereos can have bolts hitting right and left and still be up.
Frankly even if you would revisit the starwars weapon and come to the conclusion, that our current military would kick those guys asses, frankly I would not care.

Is it because this discussion was started with TOS and you just can't get over the fact, that StarTrek went on for another 200 Years?
Yeah, the TOS VS StarWars debate was quite fun as kids. (Because somehow they resembled each other)
But honestly StarWars VS TNG is just comparing apples to bananas.
Well, as I have seen my first StarWars movie, someone claimed that 1.5 lightspeed would be to slow to actually reacht anything. Yeah, in this universe. So what?

If first aked this question it seeme obvious to me. StarTrek has all the stuff, StarWars does not.
From Teleproters to replicators.
So, yeah you might go for the bigger gun stuff. Which is kind of silly to, since every of the new ships in StarTrek is quite capable of blowing several Planets to bit in a few seconds, because some guys did not pay much attention when wirting the scripts or it even was meant that way. I honestly do not know. (I found all of this during a 1 hour internet search yesterday. So I guess there is a lot more stuff out there.)
(And guess what: Thats the reason I just wateched a few episodes of voyager. Because I could not stand the power creep done there)
So excuse me if I can't tell much of the ships in neither StarWars not StarTrek.
But honestly it does not seem to matter anyway.

@Darth Tedious

We've seen high levels of energy concentrated into tiny areas in Star Trek- the 10MJ phase pistol blast in ENT:'Regeneration' carries roughly the same energy as a modern hand grenade (the MK4A2 releases ~10.33448MJ) and didn't cause a grenade-like explosion.
In RL, the NIF's megajoule laser causes the target to implode- bearing very little resemblence to what a pound of TNT would do.

The point is, the energy has to go somewhere. There where lasers in Total Annihilation (video game) having a real high power, which would in no way kill a human. (But they would shoot through Planets)
(Description, in game everything was quite a bit different. Since they did kill light units anyway)
StarWars "lasers" tend to explode. And they do not tend to get out the other side of an spacecraft, person whatever. So all their energy has to be transformed in heat, radiation and pressure. All of those are quite deadly, if you blow them up to hiroshima scale. That really simple physics.
Again: It would be no problem if they did not use FULL POWER every time. But they seem to use only 0.1-0.2% regulary (if even that much).
So in most cases they could really use one percent of their firepower.

StarTrek has the same Problem, but they found several ways around it. (StarWars did not, because the Problem does not exist in the original Version.)

[Connor MacLeod]

Hundreds is easy even with rare ships, especially since the hyperdrive means you can borrow ships from very far away and still have them home in time for dinner. Also, a whole planet can reach a hundred ships even if there's only one ship per million citizens.

Fine, but the novel itself still points out there was at least 25,000 STar Destroyers in the Empire, nevermind other assets. Lesser starships are going to be more numerous unless you'e going to tell me the Empire had nothing BUT Star Destroyers and a couple of SSDs. "Hundreds" doesn't even stand up to that. Hell the Imperial remnant (a mere 8 sectors) had 200 ISDs. The Hand of Thrawn reputedly had something like 30x that territory (and quite possibly more ships). The former wasn't considered a serious threat to the NR, the latter was. As I said, it doesn't make sense, and you dont even have to stary out of the confines of the duology to find that out.

(I think this could fit a no-survivor bdz to an order of magnitude because if they were surprised, not everyone may launch in time, and TIE fighters can keep the rest in.)

If we're goign to be pedantic alot of the "BDZ requirement" will ultimately depend on the weapon you use. Technically I don't think you're required to use energy weapons alone to do it, but the fact is most ISDs don't seem to carry bio weapons or billions of tons of conventional munitions or fission bombs anything "exotic". They do have beam weapons and proton torpedoes or concussion missiles (magic warheads basically.) There's still some wiggle room as to effects (using energy weapons as a heat ray type weapon will naturally be more energy intensive than if it behaves like an explosive)

I'm probably oversimplifying the matter (ignoring inefficiencies, timeframe, maintenance issues, etc.) but in general a beam weapon is the LEAST EFFICIENT way to do a BDZ you could imagine, but the Empire seems to have a fetish for doing things that way.

I did some math on this in the HoS thread too. IIRC blowing off Mars' atmosphere actually has an energy estimate within an order of magnitude to Mike's surface melting calcs!

Yeah, I've done my share of calcs like that, its pretty insane. It's actually even worse when you consider what I just said about beam weapons being inefficient - it would take stupidly huge amounts of energy to blow off the atmosphere with beam weapons (if you're fixed on doing it, airbursting bombs are your best bet), especially as water vapour and other particulate matter start to clog up the atmosphere and drive up the energy requirements. Imagine what energy it takes to blow off the atmosphere when a significant portion of an Earthlike planet's ocean is vaporised.

This is something that bugs me in general. In a lot of the hard sci fi threads, I mention my space habitat setting, which has privately owned space pods, shuttles, etc. They are free to do pretty much whatever they want.

People say "that's insane!". But, is it? How many cars are there in a big city like New York? They seem to get by pretty well with people being able to get in their cars and go anywhere whenever they feel like it. Yeah, they follow traffic rules to keep it sane, but the restrictions are pretty light.

SW tries to go with the idea that starship = cars, but that doesn't really work for a number of reasons. Smuggling and trade for one.
But even if we allow that analogy it can make sense. Lots of places around where I live make use of multi-level parking garages, especially for apartments and housing developments. It makes sense the same would be true for starships.

Starports would also be a centralized place for maintenance/mechanical assistance, and refuelling, and it makes it easier to control trade (and thus tax incoming cargoes.) Huge economic incentives there. Not to mention controls on dissident elements/terrorists (EG filthy rebels), crime in general, and general immigration (we can't forget the Empire has a fair amount of discrimination floating around)

A planet or space civilization is probably much less densely packed than a planet, and as a general rule, people don't need to go into space as often as they'd travel on a city road - there'd naturally be less traffic, n average.

Depends on the population size. The current numbers for the size of the GE range in something like 100 quadrillion (approximate) sentients and something like 70 million planets as I recall. Roughly speaking thats about 1-2 billion per planet on average. Not as densely packed as we are now, but its still pretty populous and we're likely dealing with "order of magnitude" population estimates anyhow.

While there's surely something similar to traffic laws, I don't think a prohibition of launching at the drop of a hat is a given. People won't necessarily have to file flight plans and be constantly watched by some kind of space traffic control.

I wonder how many air traffic problems occur in random flight. I'd guess not many... ATC is located at airports, because a lot of airplanes are all there at the same time. The requirement of a runway to land creates a kind of choke point there that needs controlling. (On the road, traffic lights are put in similar places - where there's a lot of cars converging at once.)

If a space ship can land just about anywhere, like Star Wars ships seem able to do, they wouldn't necessarily be funneled into one place. The whole planet can be used to spread them out.

On the other hand, in SW, there are spaceports where ships are normally docked. I think the main reason is most ships are actually pretty big - they fill the role of big trucks and ocean going ships, rather than personal cars.... basically the same as in the Star Trek universe.

Well its not just traffic laws. You have borders between states and countries - a car can't just drive over those. You also have the fact that whilst a car can go anywhere they're often required to drive along predefined routes (roads of some kind), and generally follow a strict pattern. You can be monitored by cameras, or by police in various ways (checkpoints, patrol cars, ambushes, etc.)

We see all that with both air traffic in general and (it seems) Space traffic in Star Wars. It might vary some from place to place (Tattooine Traffic control doesn't seem like it would be all that rigorous. But coruscant is probably different.)

[Connor MacLeod]

One other point. Regardless of where you think the acceleration values sit, its pretty obvious that SW drives are going to be a magic fusion torch (or within an OoM of one anyhow, even civilian ones) and that alone is a good enough reason (even a relatively "low power" one, nevermind the hundreds/thousands of gravities indicated in some sources) to exert control over starships.

Hell IRL CARS are fantastically dangerous and destructive weapons as they are, yet we never think about the fact we can let anyone buy and drive one with minimal control, despite the fact that someone could kill large numbers of people or destroy a whole house with one.

[Connor MacLeod]

Well episode V during the walker Attack you get yourself a lot of Laser hits not ending in the hiroshima style. Be it from the A Wing or the Walker. In Episode II you got them shooting down spacecrafts with lasers quite bigger than any T-fighter. No annihilation of the scenery.
Shall I go on?

They were fighting under a shield dome. As we have seen elsewhere, weird shit happens when you fight under a shield. (Hell, we've seen the same flashes that occur when you hit the At-AT hit the ground on speeder strafing runs. We know something more is going on. Snow does not briefly flash and glow when hit by large amounts of energy. It melts or evaporates and creates a large, noticable cloud of steam.

In Episode III you got space ship battles at the beginning with lasers hitting the interior. No complete annihilation there, while they seem to do damage to the hull.

Mind telling me what hull materials are made out of (and what this is based on) that we can do these sorts of calculations?

We've seen high levels of energy concentrated into tiny areas in Star Trek- the 10MJ phase pistol blast in ENT:'Regeneration' carries roughly the same energy as a modern hand grenade (the MK4A2 releases ~10.33448MJ) and didn't cause a grenade-like explosion.

10 MJ is going to be 2.5 kg of TNT, not 1 kg. Modern hand grenades carry the equivlanet of a quarter kilo of TNT. You're an order of magnitude off, nevermind the fact grenades are omnidirectional.

In RL, the NIF's megajoule laser causes the target to implode- bearing very little resemblence to what a pound of TNT would do.

Implosion and explosion aren't the same thing dude. I have no idea what you're talking about. Maybe you should provide a link?

Anyhow getting back to the whole "planet destroying" thing, I'm going to reiterate a rather important point - the fact of planetary destruction matters less than the implications that one tries to derive from it. Or rather, people on both sides tend to argue over the implied firepower - how quickly it is destroyed, by what methods, and what implications that has for other usage (like ship to ship combat.) TDiC and BDZ get decried by the vast majority of fans not because the planet is destroyed but because it is used to give one side or another a "game winning" advnatage.

It's frankly silly to assume ST can't render a planet inhabitable by brute force - there's no reason a ST ship can't load up a large number of megaton range photorps or fusion bombs (I DO believe they can deploy megaton range weapons.) and depopulate a world, especially if they get groups together.

It also annoys me that Its always assumed TL in star wars have only one setting - MAXIMUM FIREPOWER - by both those who argue for the high yield turbolasers and those who object to those yields. It's like saying the US can't have kiloton or megaton yield nuclear weapons simply because they use conventional warheads. Just because we know what the maximum POTENTIAL yield on the weaponry is, doesn't mean they routinely use it at that level - I guarantee you they wouldn't. In fact, there's plenty of evidence they don't (the Death STar's variable outputs can vary by millions, and more probably billions. How does that influence ISDs if we're going to scale down? Same applies if we apply the firepower difference between say a strategic nuke and conventional weapons.. There's nothing inconsistent with that as far as canon or EU evidence goes.)

Again its that "either/or" bullshit that is getting to me in this debate. Noone here is arguing for a SUPER POWERFUL INSTA WIN federation and NEVER has, so let's not act as if conceding that ST being capable of destroying planets is somehow violating canon.

(i'm not directing this last bit at anyone in particular, its just more a comment on the general direction of the thread. Or lack of direction.)

[Connor MacLeod]

Another fun example of "weirdly variable firepower" let's look at the AT-AT. Now, without getting too nitpicky, let's figure the maximum firepower is somewhere in the hundreds or thousands of tons (based on the first fireball. We can argue about the scaling but I dont think it will matter much as far as the argument goes.)

Now, in the movie and in the novels (where an officer gets torn apart by At-ta gunfire) one could argue that they showed "at most grenade level" yields when firing on the troops. Or if you prefer there's the yields for AT-ST guns from ROTJ. take your pick. Basically we have one example that is (maybe) 1-2 megajoules, or hundreds of kj. And another which is somewhere at the high GJ/low TJ range (maximum output for the guns.) Quite a wide disaparity in firepower there. And its rather obvious that "maximum firepower" is NOT the default setting either (as if we couldn't tell that from the Death STar)

[Mercenario]

Now, without getting too nitpicky, let's figure the maximum firepower is somewhere in the hundreds or thousands of tons (based on the first fireball. We can argue about the scaling but I dont think it will matter much as far as the argument goes.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHuOb3_WbfI
Thats a hundred tons.

Or if you prefer there's the yields for AT-ST guns from ROTJ. take your pick. Basically we have one example that is (maybe) 1-2 megajoules, or hundreds of kj. And another which is somewhere at the high GJ/low TJ range (maximum output for the guns.)

I do not know where you get the high power shot from. But the point is not, that they may be able to scale the power down. The point is they do, even if it is ineffient. (Aka: I could kill all the infantery or not. So they choose not)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWjj8EKTkWE
So this is the scene with the walkers I was refering too.
It says naturally nothing about beeing shielded, only about the armor beeing to strong.
Where to you see blast of magnitude of severel kT?

(the Death STar's variable outputs can vary by millions, and more probably billions. How does that influence ISDs if we're going to scale down? Same applies if we apply the firepower difference between say a strategic nuke and conventional weapons.. There's nothing inconsistent with that as far as canon or EU evidence goes.)

The point is, that if the death star is shooting a low power shot, it would not need to reload. So it could shoot a lot of low level shots. Quite fast, as a matter of fact. So the republic fleet would have been dealt with very quickly. (This could be met with increasing their shild, therefor you woul need to increase their weapon, therefor you woul need to increase the weapons of the fighters which would be again inconsistant with the planetary battles.
So why think of numbers if they do no mean anything?

It's frankly silly to assume ST can't render a planet inhabitable by brute force - there's no reason a ST ship can't load up a large number of megaton range photorps or fusion bombs (I DO believe they can deploy megaton range weapons.) and depopulate a world, especially if they get groups together.

As for canon, one fucking single ship would be able to do this with a hole solar system within a minute.
(It could even be argued it would be able to do it deathstar like)
And we are not talking about some galaxy class ship, we are talking about ships with a crew of 30 to 150.

Do I have to like that kind of things to write here?
Again I do not have a problem with a photon torpedo beeing as stronger than 10 Fusion bombs. But ripping planets apart one shot?
I do not have a problem with devices, which blow up suns. As long as they are hard to get quest devices.
The same may be said about StarWars. I am OK with the Deathstar blowing up a planet. (I do not actually care how. Of course I would prefere explaination putting the requiered energy on a lower level, because this would be more consistant with fighters penetrating his shields and the death star not beeing able to blast all the attack ships.)

@Darth Tedious

We've seen high levels of energy concentrated into tiny areas in Star Trek- the 10MJ phase pistol blast in ENT:'Regeneration' carries roughly the same energy as a modern hand grenade (the MK4A2 releases ~10.33448MJ) and didn't cause a grenade-like explosion.

I am not saying the blaster can't have more than 10^5 J. But it should not be higher by magnituedes. (If you look at the effects in the films they look like 1 to 10 kg of TNT it would be consistant with the effects shown. I do not mind 100kg (if you say it has to be scaled down on planets maybe because of the losses by the atmosphere.)
The point is: If I really start to think up numbers, I would like them to match to what is shown. (There are always some incidence where the numbers would be off. Thats the way in any SiFi series)

[Darth Tedious]

Connor, you were quite right, I was off by an order of magnitude. Fortunately for me, it actually strengthens the point I was (badly) attempting to make.
My point was that beam weapons (even in Trek) don't create explosions equivalent to the amount of energy they carry- they are concentrated into a very small area. So a 1MJ beam (i.e. phaser rifle on high setting) does not produce a grenade-sized explosion. The same applies at larger scales. A 15kT beam weapon won't create Hiroshima-style effects. Particularly not if it is impacting on armour such as Durasteel, which contains large amounts of neutronium, handwavium and fuckoffium.

The RL example I gave can be seen here, here or here, amongst other sources. It seems legit enough, given the number of different reports and coverage.
I brought it up because it actually demonstrates that lasers carrying energy equal to a grenade cause tiny implosions in the target, not explosions (yes, I am aware of the difference, that was my point ).

Overall, I think it's pretty fair to say that just because Beam Weapon X fires at Power Level Y, it is unrealistic to expect the result to be an explosion equivalent Power Level Y's worth of TNT.

[Mercenario]

Overall, I think it's pretty fair to say that just because Beam Weapon X fires at Power Level Y, it is unrealistic to expect the result to be an explosion equivalent Power Level Y's worth of TNT.

Yes but if weapon X has a mgnitude of 10 or even 100 times the power level of TNT Y, you should be able to see whre this energy is going.
The phaser/blaster/laser might hit through the target or exploder are something else.
You can't just state:
Thats 1000000000000000000000000TJ hit, but shown is a spaceship just crashing if hit with.
Or some tiny explosion on ground. (As I said, if the beam keeps going on, no problem. But StarWars beams do not act that way)