What is the actual weapons range of Millenium Falcon?

[Illuminatus Primus]

How can anyone think that ANYTHING is of the same catagory of canonocity as the films themselves?

[His Divine Shadow]

Aren't there other examples of this sort of jamming from the novels?

No other jamming device I know of has had the same effects of physically effecting things like this.

Then use a cruder electronic computer. Quantum computing is both over-complicated and unnecessary for this application. Further, if the flight controls can continue to work under jamming, and R2-D2 can continue to work under jamming, then a simpler targetting computer should be easily capable of continuing to work under jamming.

Maybe they do, maybe their efficency is still degraded? Who knows?
What do /you/ suggest?

[ClaysGhost]

No other jamming device I know of has had the same effects of physically effecting things like this.

I see.

Maybe they do, maybe their efficency is still degraded? Who knows?
What do /you/ suggest?

R2-D2 is efficient enough to effect repairs to Luke's X-wing (and bleep a bit) even under this jamming, and Luke can still use his targetting computer initially, even if he ends up using his spooky force powers instead.

I think that for whatever reason, either SW targetting computers are particularly useless examples of the breed or they have some sort of aversion to them. A) explains Blue leader's quote and the poor performance of SW anti-fighter weaponry during ANH and ROTJ but is probably unpalettable to most people here, B) is consistent with, er, well, it's another option.

If the eye can see it and the brain can process it, then a camera should see it and a computer should be able to process it, especially since we have seen examples of computers working under jamming in the films. And the Rebels should not be powerful enough to jam the sensors on something as kick-ass as the Deathstar, yet the Empire apparently resort to a bunch of people doing manual targetting in at least one ANH shot. With the inevitable result that they don't hit anything.

[His Divine Shadow]

The rebels never jammed anything on the DS, all the jamming there was on the part of the DS.

[His Divine Shadow]

R2-D2 is efficient enough to effect repairs to Luke's X-wing (and bleep a bit) even under this jamming, and Luke can still use his targetting computer initially, even if he ends up using his spooky force powers instead.

Well obviously there's some static and shit flying through the spectrum thats interfering, we see vaders targeting rectile fly all over the screen whilst seeing the ship infront of him not moving.
So they're obvoiusly doing something.

If they're jamming the computers themselves somehow, they might respond by having redundant systems cooperating to combat the effect, human brains might simply be better protected against this by design, even simpler electronic computers, or so I'd figure anyway, or atleast to the point that it doesn't really matter wheter you're targetting manually or not.

As for the manual targetting in the DS, I guess that uses a system similar to what one has in tanks and such today.[/b]

[ClaysGhost]

Well obviously there's some static and shit flying through the spectrum thats interfering, we see vaders targeting rectile fly all over the screen whilst seeing the ship infront of him not moving.
So they're obvoiusly doing something.

He can see the ship plainly. The computer can see the ship because it's outlined on the targetting display. It looks like he's lining up on it himself.

If they're jamming the computers themselves somehow, they might respond by having redundant systems cooperating to combat the effect, human brains might simply be better protected against this by design, even simpler electronic computers, or so I'd figure anyway, or atleast to the point that it doesn't really matter wheter you're targetting manually or not.

That has all the problems I stated before. R2D2, Luke's targetting computer, they're all working. Vader's computer can process an image to the point that the background has been removed and the X-wing is outlined on the display. The computer knows where the target is, it should be pin the tail on the donkey time even if blasters don't do c, since the range was miniscule in that scene.

As for the manual targetting in the DS, I guess that uses a system similar to what one has in tanks and such today.

It may be very good if the DS ever engaged tanks. Against starfighters it's useless, and there's no need for that to be so with 100,000 years (or however many it is) of technological advancement behind it.

[Kazeite]

For another example of technology unnafected by jamming, remember those fake "windows" in Vader's cockpit. You know, those behind him that simulate actual window in plain T/F

Looking at fight examples we can plainly see that they were indeed based on WW2 fighter combat. I know, this may be silly proof to some of you, but I think that suggest that SW fighters (and freighters) were not meant to have huge weapons range.

[His Divine Shadow]

Vader's computer can process an image to the point that the background has been removed and the X-wing is outlined on the display. The computer knows where the target is, it should be pin the tail on the donkey time even if blasters don't do c, since the range was miniscule in that scene

Then it would seem that it's purely a choice of the pilot since there is apparently no reason for it.
Ofcourse jamming still affects all instruments not operating in the visual spectrum.

So the original question still stands, why not use visual targetting?
Or they do, and thats what we saw when the guns where lining up in Vaders fighter.

It may be very good if the DS ever engaged tanks. Against starfighters it's useless, and there's no need for that to be so with 100,000 years (or however many it is) of technological advancement behind it.

Yes, it's useless against starfighters, since the DS had no real anti-SF guns but where to rely on it's thousands of TIE's for such work, those weapons are designed for long-range fire against large capital ships, they cannot keep up with the angular velocities required to accurately track fighters.

Against capital ships however, such a system is fine, the system targets and aids the gunner and the gunner fires when the system shows a good targetting solution.
There's also information to show that it can totally automated.

[Darth Wong]

I think that for whatever reason, either SW targetting computers are particularly useless examples of the breed or they have some sort of aversion to them. A) explains Blue leader's quote and the poor performance of SW anti-fighter weaponry during ANH and ROTJ but is probably unpalettable to most people here, B) is consistent with, er, well, it's another option.

You are assuming the weapons have zero mass and recoil for control-system purposes. Gee, why worry about the second-order control system function which is universal to all computer-controlled mechanical systems when you just assume it's PERFECT, with none of the usual problems even though it has to sling KILOTONS of energy around?

If the eye can see it and the brain can process it, then a camera should see it and a computer should be able to process it, especially since we have seen examples of computers working under jamming in the films.

And the leap in logic should be enough for you to assume that any gun, even if it must sling kilotons in order to be effective against shielded ships, can instantly re-align to any desired direction with zero error and no delay, right? Gee, if only control-system theory were as simple as you make it out to be!

And the Rebels should not be powerful enough to jam the sensors on something as kick-ass as the Deathstar, yet the Empire apparently resort to a bunch of people doing manual targetting in at least one ANH shot. With the inevitable result that they don't hit anything.

You assume they're doing manual targeting because there's a gunner? Wow, what a moronic leap in logic. By the way, those guns were designed to hit capital ships, not starfighters, and a heavy gun with huge recoil bracings will not swing around effortlessly to aim at any vector with zero positioning error and zero rise time (not to mention zero settling time, but it's already quite clear that you're thinking in extremely simplistic terms, with no recognition whatsoever for the complexities of control systems that move massive objects around). You're being an idiot.

PS. The jammers on the Death Star were so powerful that they limited starfighter maneuverability (see the canon ANH novelization). It's not hard to imagine that they would make targeting difficult, since blaster bolts probably didn't even fly perfectly straight in the face of that kind of distortion field. It only takes a minor curvature to miss a one-man fighter from range, not some insane obviously rippling distortion.

[Connor MacLeod]

I just don't see why the jamming by optical distortion (for which I can see no evidence in the films, which is surprising given that we saw two large battles) is going to prevent effective use of cameras but not of eyeballs.

The only way we are going to see distortions (if that is what you are going by in the movies) would happen is if the distortions are uneven (like a heat shimmer.) Volumetric and even distortions would not be easily noticible (except for say like a curvature in unexpected places.) And would it really take that much distortion to throw off targeting?

fighters do in fact use passive optics as a key factor in their short range targeting systems:

EGW&T page 114

" Electro-photo receptors, also known as EPRs, are short-range visual scanners that gather data provided by nromal light, infrared, and ultraviolet telescopes; they are also the primary sensors used in targeting computers."

And page 212:

"Imperial gunners use helmet visors that include computerized optical targeting displays. Those advanced motion sensor systems were linked directly into Imperial turbolasers, with long range-scopes that could track starships at the edge of visual sighting distance. The helmets noted the target's speed and anticipated its flight path."

We could thus infer that while they DO have such sensors for targeting purposes, they are, through some means either knonw or unknown (and not neccesarily through outright "jamming" the way you might jam other active or passive sensors) they can interfere with targeting so that only the eyeball is effective.

It affects the claim about the jammers in that if every SW ship can deploy these devices, they must all be able to support the power requirements, and if they can all support the power requirements, they should all be capable of running deathstar-like weapons.

According to the "Phantom Affair" X-wing graphic novels, Interdictors can interfere with the mobility of fighters and freighters (some much larger than an X-wing.)

And do such distortions all need to be unidirectional/large-volume effects of the magnitude of a Death Star? What about tractor beams or repulsors (which fighters can carry based on the computer games and the AOTC ICS) Acceleration compensators (which can affect a ship's momentum according to Tales of the Bounty Hunters - the IG-88 story)? There are lots of gravitic techs that can affect manuverability but don't require Death-Star scale power or capability - of course, they also dont neccesarily need to be AS effective or all-encompassing as the Death Star either.

In fighter/fighter combat they did, and as I recall one of the shots of the DS turrets shows a bunch of funky-dressing guys manually aiming the weapon.

So? The Death STar's weapons were designed - as Dodonna clearly stated - for large scale engagements. And those men need not have been "targeting" the weapon - we dont know exactly what their function was - they could be involved in weapons maintenance of some fashion.

And even if they were somehow involved in targeting, how exactly does this preclude any sort of computer assistance? The canon novelization for ANH repeatedly mentions electronic assistance in targeting for both the fighters and the surface guns.

Active sensing is far easier to jam! You just transmit a false signal, or arrange to scatter the incoming signal. The power requirements are far less than this semi-cloaking device that must work from sub-mm through UV.

Assuming we accept your power requirement figures as absolute - but I've already pointed out examples taht do not neccearily involve DS scale effects or power levels (do all the "distortions" have to have the same effect or same strength?) Targeting in ROTJ seems much better than in ANH (even though we have another DS involving more jamming, and an Imperial communications ship contributing additional jamming.)

Besides which is "blocking" the signal the only way they can affect targeting neccesarily? You seem to be operating in a very narrow mindset on the issue.

A battleship turret is very different from a TL, and is not a product of a supposedly advanced society of tens to hundreds of thousands of years standing. Consider the speed of a battleship shell - it may travel at, what, ~km/s speeds? And can successfully engage at km distances against large, slow targets. Lightspeed weapons travel a million times faster, but in SW they can still only engage at km (or even less) distances.

Red Herring. What does speed have to do with the quantity of energy the weapon must process through the guns? I specifically was dealing with the energy that a weapon must deal with in firing, not its nature once discharged. For a battleship gun, we're t alking MJ/GJ range (the KE of the projectile) versus the GJ-TJ range for a fighter-scale laser cannon.

That aside, correcting for misalignment and inaccuracy is something that a decent control system should provide for, if not by standard negative feedback techniques then at least by knowing the mechanical and thermal characteristics of the weapon (which is presumably made from the usual SW super-materials).

So perfect accuracy must be assumed for any weapon based solely on the performance of the targeting system, regardless of what the inherent limitations might be (we simply assume that a sufficiently advanced culture would somehow be able to ignore them?) I find that notion rather questionable.

Control system accuracy will always involve a balance between speed, power, weight and error. What you are doing in short is oversimplifying the case. You accept trade offs in some kinds of guns to make them effective in other cases (for example, anti fighter guns tend to be smaller, less powerful, but faster firing and more mobile. Large guns tend to be slower but more powerful.)

The energy concerned is a minor issue when the accelerative capabilities of the weapons platform is taken into account - there is no good reason why the system cannot align decently, especially when the weapon has a magic tracer. If the recoil really was a problem, then the power per shot could be lowered.

1.) Counter-acceleration generated by engines in no way negates the fact that a single turret must withstand the forces said gun generates when firing, and would suffer some effects to alignment accuracy as a result. The turret will still be moved regardless.

2.) Your concept of "reducing power to bolts to compensate" completely ignores the fact that shielding have a set reradiation rate that must be overcome in order to degrade shields or do damage. Reducing power is actually the worst thing you would want to do.

The logic would be that you could then hit your enemy further out and faster, and by the time their more powerful weapons were in range, they'd be dust. But even uncountered recoil could only be a fighter problem. The turrets on the DS and large SW warships should not have to have even a suggestion of engine control at all.

Control systems on a gun turret are irrelevant to engines. The rest has already been addressed above.

[Connor MacLeod]

For another example of technology unnafected by jamming, remember those fake "windows" in Vader's cockpit. You know, those behind him that simulate actual window in plain T/F

Drawing from the EU again I see They aren't linked up to a targeting computer tho. Thats basically an extenrally mounted camera or visual scanner linked to a monitor (much like any security camera.) Since they're still manually "Targeted", they would remain effectively unjammable save cloaking/camoflage.

Looking at fight examples we can plainly see that they were indeed based on WW2 fighter combat. I know, this may be silly proof to some of you, but I think that suggest that SW fighters (and freighters) were not meant to have huge weapons range.

It is a silly proof, and indicative of how utterly desperate you are in your lack of actual evidence.

[Connor MacLeod]

So, at this point discussion has migrated into personal attacks and insults. So, let me refrain from answering to them and instead focus on topic.

Syle over substance fallacy. Darkstar would be proud.

And Connor, I'm also curious how can you claim that "TLs and lasers are lightspeed weapons", since none of the bolts observed in movies was flying with such speed,

Try doing a search of the boards. The topic has been discussed plenty of times before, its not that difficult to discover.

[Kazeite]

Drawing from the EU again I see

Well, I'm just trying to lower myself to your level. Since you don't seem to understand that EU is not accurate in portraying SW universe, I may as well prove my point by using Eu evidence.

They aren't linked up to a targeting computer tho.

I know. They are simply yet "another example of technology unnafected by jamming."

It is a silly proof, and indicative of how utterly desperate you are in your lack of actual evidence.

If by the phrase "lack of actual evidence" you mean "lack of evidence that I'm not ignoring", then yes, I am desperate.

Try doing a search of the boards. The topic has been discussed plenty of times before, its not that difficult to discover.

And you suggest that final conclusion was that TL are indeed lightspeed weapons, in spite of movie evidence? My God...

PS. The jammers on the Death Star were so powerful that they limited starfighter maneuverability (see the canon ANH novelization).

I thought we already discussed that: Dodonna doesn't say that in the actual movie. Unless he said that when camera wasn't looking, this doesn't count as the proof for reduced mobility.

It only takes a minor curvature to miss a one-man fighter from range, not some insane obviously rippling distortion.

Since you have no doubt seen SW more times than I did, let me ask, when can we see those curved blaster blast?

[His Divine Shadow]

I know. They are simply yet "another example of technology unnafected by jamming."

No, they're simply protected behind the shields of the craft.

And you suggest that final conclusion was that TL are indeed lightspeed weapons, in spite of movie evidence? My God...

In spite off?
Isn't it rather because of that, that one would come to such a conclusion?

EDIT:
To elaborate, we have clear evidence from the movies that the visual bolt is clearly not the damaging part, most of the time it coincides with visual damage occuring, but we've seen damage occur before it being hit and we've seen the visual bolt harmlessly pass through a craft.

At the very least this indicates variable bolt speeds, upper limit is C, and following evidence from the movie on propagation speeds at various ranges, the propagation speed goes up when the range goes up, using the DS1 superlaser, which is essentially a big TL, they will pan out at C at a distance of ~75.000km.

This is supported by the long range fight in Destiny's Way, laser fire there was described as lances(long bright streaks, bolt lenght also seems to get longer the faster it goes) and travelling at C.

[ClaysGhost]

The only way we are going to see distortions (if that is what you are going by in the movies) would happen is if the distortions are uneven (like a heat shimmer.) Volumetric and even distortions would not be easily noticible (except for say like a curvature in unexpected places.) And would it really take that much distortion to throw off targeting?

Yes, it would take a lot. At 1 km, a 5m long TIE would subtend about 0.29 degrees. To significantly distort the image you are looking at about 10^38 J in gravitational field energy. 0.29 degrees may not sound like much but light is very, very difficult to bend without matter. A global distortion (a "shear") such as you are talking about should be easy to spot in the films - aspect ratios of objects should change. Further, accepting this kind of jamming means that the scaling of anything seen in a space battle in the films would become suspect.

fighters do in fact use passive optics as a key factor in their short range targeting systems:

Good!

We could thus infer that while they DO have such sensors for targeting purposes, they are, through some means either knonw or unknown (and not neccesarily through outright "jamming" the way you might jam other active or passive sensors) they can interfere with targeting so that only the eyeball is effective.

Bad. That doesn't make sense. The eyeball is a passive sensor. The eyeball should be jammed. If the jamming is against computer equipment, why could Vader's ship do image processing? Why was R2-D2 working? Why were the Rebel's targetting systems working in the trench?

According to the "Phantom Affair" X-wing graphic novels, Interdictors can interfere with the mobility of fighters and freighters (some much larger than an X-wing.)

So they have DS-like power generation abilities, then.

And do such distortions all need to be unidirectional/large-volume effects of the magnitude of a Death Star? What about tractor beams or repulsors (which fighters can carry based on the computer games and the AOTC ICS) Acceleration compensators (which can affect a ship's momentum according to Tales of the Bounty Hunters - the IG-88 story)? There are lots of gravitic techs that can affect manuverability but don't require Death-Star scale power or capability - of course, they also dont neccesarily need to be AS effective or all-encompassing as the Death Star either.

Fields confined to volumes are nonsense without media. It's the same problem as with the sharp-edged shield (ST) and the plasma-sword in magnetic field intepretation of lightsabres (SW). Discontinuities are unphysical. Aside from that, the simple analysis I did made no assumptions about the nature of the gravitational field, just the coupling constant and the parameters of the object it was supposed to interdict.

So? The Death STar's weapons were designed - as Dodonna clearly stated - for large scale engagements. And those men need not have been "targeting" the weapon - we dont know exactly what their function was - they could be involved in weapons maintenance of some fashion.

In the middle of combat? You consider that likely?

And even if they were somehow involved in targeting, how exactly does this preclude any sort of computer assistance? The canon novelization for ANH repeatedly mentions electronic assistance in targeting for both the fighters and the surface guns.

They were tracking the weapon by hand.

Assuming we accept your power requirement figures as absolute - but I've already pointed out examples taht do not neccearily involve DS scale effects or power levels (do all the "distortions" have to have the same effect or same strength?)

Yes. The calculation I made depends only on the results you want (an impaired X-wing) and the strength of the gravitational coupling constant, something that isn't amenable to change. If fighters mount these capabilities, then they have this level of power generation. But a reduction in capabilities by three orders of magnitude would still not make the power requirements sane.

Targeting in ROTJ seems much better than in ANH (even though we have another DS involving more jamming, and an Imperial communications ship contributing additional jamming.)

I can't remember, but I assume it's a simple product of there being more capital ships that we see engaged in ROTJ than ANH, so we see more successful kills. But those ships decided that fighting at what looks like ~ few tens of metres range would be sensible, so if the jamming is effective enough to hide a ~km long SD at ranges outside that, it should be easily visible.
Incidentally, why didn't they approach the exhaust port from above in ANH? The trench was heavily fortified, and there's plenty of shots showing X-wings not too far above the surface that aren't being engaged with (visible) TLs. They could dive on it.

Besides which is "blocking" the signal the only way they can affect targeting neccesarily? You seem to be operating in a very narrow mindset on the issue.

Provide alternative mechanisms, and I will consider them. So far, all I have is the magic eyeball

Red Herring. What does speed have to do with the quantity of energy the weapon must process through the guns? I specifically was dealing with the energy that a weapon must deal with in firing, not its nature once discharged. For a battleship gun, we're t alking MJ/GJ range (the KE of the projectile) versus the GJ-TJ range for a fighter-scale laser cannon.

SW materials are supposed to be a factor of what, more than a thousand times more mechanically desirable than conventional steel? Speed means that up to a point, range is irrelevant. And I don't think you're comparing like with like. If the TL truly is a lightspeed weapon capable of long-range attacks, it must be focussed and highly directional. There is no analogue of the hot gas propelling the shell out of the battleship turret and exerting radial stress on the barrel at the same time. Unless you propose that there is significant transverse radiation from the TL beam (inefficient) or that the tracer carries quite a lot of energy?

So perfect accuracy must be assumed for any weapon based solely on the performance of the targeting system, regardless of what the inherent limitations might be (we simply assume that a sufficiently advanced culture would somehow be able to ignore them?) I find that notion rather questionable.

It's worked for SW up to now, hasn't it? There is NO reason why a human can adapt to guns running like treacle after every shot but a decent computer of SW's level cannot. They can produce neurotic droids but they can't produce a targetting system superior to a human?

Control system accuracy will always involve a balance between speed, power, weight and error. What you are doing in short is oversimplifying the case. You accept trade offs in some kinds of guns to make them effective in other cases (for example, anti fighter guns tend to be smaller, less powerful, but faster firing and more mobile. Large guns tend to be slower but more powerful.)

I suggested back a few posts that if SW TL weapons were too powerful and slow to engage fighters, they should produce lighter weapons that can engage fighters effectively. Surely the DS having no anti-fighter capability is bizarre, if lighter TL weapons could do this.

1.) Counter-acceleration generated by engines in no way negates the fact that a single turret must withstand the forces said gun generates when firing, and would suffer some effects to alignment accuracy as a result. The turret will still be moved regardless.

SW materials should easily absorb kN-level forces with minimal distortion, such as could be expected from a lightspeed weapon operating with TJ-level output you gave earlier. Given the famous recoil bracing quote that gets brought out in connection with large TLs, I doubt materials are a problem. If SW weapons cannot consistently land fire on target at any significant range because the barrel deforms, I think that has certain implications for vs. debates, don't you?

2.) Your concept of "reducing power to bolts to compensate" completely ignores the fact that shielding have a set reradiation rate that must be overcome in order to degrade shields or do damage. Reducing power is actually the worst thing you would want to do.

The turrets landed, what, two shots on Luke during Yavin? How much worse than that can you get?

[ClaysGhost]

You are assuming the weapons have zero mass and recoil for control-system purposes. Gee, why worry about the second-order control system function which is universal to all computer-controlled mechanical systems when you just assume it's PERFECT, with none of the usual problems even though it has to sling KILOTONS of energy around?

All of which should be going into the target, not distorting the barrel, unless TLs do not work in the manner I've seen discussed. Any asymmetric force on the barrel should be an insignifcant problem if SW materials are half as sophisticated as is claimed. 10^4 newton recoils should not cause most shots fired by the weapon to disappear into nowhere away from the target. You are mistaking my "good enough" for perfect. SW turrets do not appear good enough.

And the leap in logic should be enough for you to assume that any gun, even if it must sling kilotons in order to be effective against shielded ships, can instantly re-align to any desired direction with zero error and no delay, right? Gee, if only control-system theory were as simple as you make it out to be!

Yeah, right, and a computer can be beaten by a human 100% of the time. You want to hit a target? Always use an eyeball!

You assume they're doing manual targeting because there's a gunner? Wow, what a moronic leap in logic.

In the particular scene I'm referring to, there is more than one "gunner". Why? They're handling the weapon. Why?

By the way, those guns were designed to hit capital ships, not starfighters, and a heavy gun with huge recoil bracings will not swing around effortlessly to aim at any vector with zero positioning error and zero rise time (not to mention zero settling time, but it's already quite clear that you're thinking in extremely simplistic terms, with no recognition whatsoever for the complexities of control systems that move massive objects around). You're being an idiot.

So the DS has no anti-fighter defences (with the exception of about ten TIES) to speak of, and even if they did fighters travelling at speeds less than a modern jet fighter give them severe problems because of kN-level recoil. And I'm sure I was reading about computer controlled anti-fighter turrets on modern cruisers the other day. THEL shoots down artillery shells and rockets now.

PS. The jammers on the Death Star were so powerful that they limited starfighter maneuverability (see the canon ANH novelization). It's not hard to imagine that they would make targeting difficult, since blaster bolts probably didn't even fly perfectly straight in the face of that kind of distortion field. It only takes a minor curvature to miss a one-man fighter from range, not some insane obviously rippling distortion.

Both concepts are daft. It requires a lot of energy to distort spacetime, which is what you need to do to bend light in vacuum. And the distortion *will* be apparent on the object, unless you have some magic way to eliminate shear over that kind of volume that I have not heard of. I never mentioned ripples at all.

[His Divine Shadow]

In the particular scene I'm referring to, there is more than one "gunner". Why? They're handling the weapon. Why?

Monitoring performance levels, ammunition/coolant, watching and determining computer aided firing solutions and whatnot.

A large SW weapon usually works so that the targetting computer gets a firing solution whilst the gunner fires, there are also other gunners there that monitor subsystems, like coolant feed, stress and all kinds of data, these are large systems.

So the DS has no anti-fighter defences (with the exception of about ten TIES) to speak of, and even if they did fighters travelling at speeds less than a modern jet fighter give them severe problems because of kN-level recoil. And I'm sure I was reading about computer controlled anti-fighter turrets on modern cruisers the other day. THEL shoots down artillery shells and rockets now

I wouldn't say that no.


Also, there might be a factor of prejudice involved, look at Han's comment here:

Pg. 285: HAN: I'd rather have live gunners in the turrets than trust computers.

(ref: Star Wars IV: A New Hope Novellization)

More info on targetting computers:

Pg. 80: integrated combat computers and turret servos automatically make minute adjustments to improve fire accuracy. In space combat there is nothing more deadly than a highly skilled gunner paired with a good targetting computer.

(ref: The Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology)

Pg. 128: During the Battle of Yavin, the Death Star's 220-SIG units interfered with the sensors and targeting computers aboard the Rebel Alliance's fighters, although they couldn't block Luke Skywalker who used only visual targeting and scored the vital hit that destroyed the Death Star

(ref: The Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology)

[ClaysGhost]

In the particular scene I'm referring to, there is more than one "gunner". Why? They're handling the weapon. Why?

Monitoring performance levels, ammunition/coolant, watching and determining computer aided firing solutions and whatnot.

Ammunition? For a TL? As for coolant, I thought all SW tech magically radiated away what must be vast quantities of heat through a neutrino mechanism, not a material coolant (since given the power output of these things even efficiencies of 99.999% should result in enough waste heat to fry the gunnery staff.

A large SW weapon usually works so that the targetting computer gets a firing solution whilst the gunner fires, there are also other gunners there that monitor subsystems, like coolant feed, stress and all kinds of data, these are large systems.

Why not have the computer fire as soon as it has a solution? And why do the gun crew have to be right next to the gun? If the gun's hit you lose trained personnel as well.

Also, there might be a factor of prejudice involved, look at Han's comment here:

Pg. 285: HAN: I'd rather have live gunners in the turrets than trust computers.

(ref: Star Wars IV: A New Hope Novellization)

Interesting. I have a far easier time believing that it's simple prejudice than the alternative I suggested earlier, that SW somehow cannot build reliable computers for gunnery work despite being a galaxy-spanning civilisation that can build (I assume) more complex devices such as droids.

Pg. 80: integrated combat computers and turret servos automatically make minute adjustments to improve fire accuracy. In space combat there is nothing more deadly than a highly skilled gunner paired with a good targetting computer.

(ref: The Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology)

That seems very reasonable. Is then the shitty accuracy at Yavin just because the DS didn't have dedicated anti-fighter weaponry?

Pg. 128: During the Battle of Yavin, the Death Star's 220-SIG units interfered with the sensors and targeting computers aboard the Rebel Alliance's fighters, although they couldn't block Luke Skywalker who used only visual targeting and scored the vital hit that destroyed the Death Star

(ref: The Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology)

That's the bit I don't understand. Why is the eyeball immune when an optical sensor is not? It seems intrinsically silly.

[Kazeite]

No, they're simply protected behind the shields of the craft.

And targeting computers aren't?

To elaborate, we have clear evidence from the movies that the visual bolt is clearly not the damaging part, most of the time it coincides with visual damage occuring, but we've seen damage occur before it being hit and we've seen the visual bolt harmlessly pass through a craft.

Agreed.

At the very least this indicates variable bolt speeds, upper limit is Cm and following evidence from the movie on propagation speeds at various ranges, the propagation speed goes up when the range goes up, using the DS1 superlaser, which is essentially a big TL

Oooh, I see... DS superlaser bolt doesn't look like turbolaser bolt, it doesn't behave like turbolaser bolt, it is generated in different manner than turbolaser bolt (by merging other bolts), creates different effects on target (especially those "mysterious" explosion rings) so it no doubt must be indeed just giant turbolaser bolt?

Also this seem to imply existence of some sort of mechanism that slows down speed of bolts, probably to give the opponent chance to evade that bolt at any range.

(And I fully acknowledge, that DS superlaser is 'faster than a speeding bullet )

[Darth Wong]

You are assuming the weapons have zero mass and recoil for control-system purposes. Gee, why worry about the second-order control system function which is universal to all computer-controlled mechanical systems when you just assume it's PERFECT, with none of the usual problems even though it has to sling KILOTONS of energy around?

All of which should be going into the target, not distorting the barrel, unless TLs do not work in the manner I've seen discussed. Any asymmetric force on the barrel should be an insignifcant problem if SW materials are half as sophisticated as is claimed. 10^4 newton recoils should not cause most shots fired by the weapon to disappear into nowhere away from the target. You are mistaking my "good enough" for perfect. SW turrets do not appear good enough.

At a range of 3 km with a target of, say, 5 metres width, you only need be off by 0.1 degrees, and these are fast-moving small targets being tracked by a heavy turret which was designed to hit much larger targets. And the recoil is not 1E4 Newtons. Let's take a 6 megaton TL blast (the kiloton blasts are from fighters, not DS turrets); the recoil is 8.4E7 kg*m/s, and the actual FORCE could be an order of magnitude higher, given the short duration of the pulse. You obviously took 1 kiloton, divided it by 3E8, and assumed that the answer in kg*m/s could be converted directly to Newtons; tsk tsk.

The DS turrets are NOT good enough to hit fighters; they were not DESIGNED for that purpose! Do you recognize the simple fact that engineered systems are made to meet spec, not to exceed them by orders of magnitude, thus causing the costs to skyrocket?

Yeah, right, and a computer can be beaten by a human 100% of the time. You want to hit a target? Always use an eyeball!

Wow, I guess you didn't notice the fact that X-Wings and TIE fighters DO, in fact, use targeting computers. I guess modern fighters must not have any targeting computers, since the pilots still use the naked eye through a transparent cockpit, and they can't hit arbitrary targets from arbitrary ranges

You assume they're doing manual targeting because there's a gunner? Wow, what a moronic leap in logic.

In the particular scene I'm referring to, there is more than one "gunner". Why? They're handling the weapon. Why?

Don't be an idiot. Does a battleship turret have just one crewman?

So the DS has no anti-fighter defences (with the exception of about ten TIES) to speak of, and even if they did fighters travelling at speeds less than a modern jet fighter give them severe problems because of kN-level recoil.

Yes, the DS has no anti-fighter defenses. Try watching ANH sometime before you spout your mouth off, dumb-ass. Dodonna said PRECISELY that during the fucking briefing! And as for kN-level recoil, I am not responsible for your erroneous numbers. Next time, try to be only one or two orders of magnitude off.

And I'm sure I was reading about computer controlled anti-fighter turrets on modern cruisers the other day. THEL shoots down artillery shells and rockets now.

THEL is not a huge system like a DS turret which is designed to fire bolts ranging from megatons to gigatons. The size of a system always affects the parameters of its mechanical control system. Duh.

PS. The jammers on the Death Star were so powerful that they limited starfighter maneuverability (see the canon ANH novelization). It's not hard to imagine that they would make targeting difficult, since blaster bolts probably didn't even fly perfectly straight in the face of that kind of distortion field. It only takes a minor curvature to miss a one-man fighter from range, not some insane obviously rippling distortion.

Both concepts are daft. It requires a lot of energy to distort spacetime, which is what you need to do to bend light in vacuum.

Duh. And a Death Star does not have access to a lot of energy, particularly when it has tractor beams and artificial-grav systems which obviously accomplish similar functions, albeit on a smaller scale?

And the distortion *will* be apparent on the object, unless you have some magic way to eliminate shear over that kind of volume that I have not heard of. I never mentioned ripples at all.

Enough curvature to bend something a fraction of a degree need not be visible. Do not exaggerate the situation. And the biggest single problem (the use of giant turrets which were designed to sling gigatons at capships against tiny one-man fighters) seems completely lost on you. Systems do what they're designed for; would you deride the Tomahawk missile as a useless piece of shit if it can't hit an F-16 in flight?

PS. You completely ignored the issue of the turret's enormous mass, as if the recoil is the only factor limiting turret control system rise time and positioning accuracy. In reality, the recoil does not affect the control system at all since it does not have any effect while the turret is rotating into position prior to firing, although it will have an indirect effect because of the massive reinforcing structures and much heavier turret bearing required in order to handle it; you obviously thought recoil would have a DIRECT effect on control system speed and accuracy . It would appear we've found yet another person who can babble quantum physics with confidence but doesn't understand the most elementary principles of high-school physics.

[Darth Wong]

Oooh, I see... DS superlaser bolt doesn't look like turbolaser bolt, it doesn't behave like turbolaser bolt, it is generated in different manner than turbolaser bolt (by merging other bolts), creates different effects on target (especially those "mysterious" explosion rings) so it no doubt must be indeed just giant turbolaser bolt?

Actually, the DS superlaser does look like a turbolaser bolt, only a much brighter one. You can even see brighter pulses along the dimmer beam, which is scalable down to the visible pulses on an invisible beam of a regular turbolaser. As for the merging effect, there is no reason to assume that this is impossible for normal turbolasers, and the "different effects on target" are highly questionable; we've seen miniature superlasers on the LAAT's and they create the same effects as any turbolaser when they hit stuff. As for the planar rings which no one can explain, you have yet to explain why they conclusively demonstrate one is different from the other, especially since superlaser hits do NOT always produce this ring (see LAAT and MC ships being hit by the DS2 superlaser).

Also this seem to imply existence of some sort of mechanism that slows down speed of bolts, probably to give the opponent chance to evade that bolt at any range.

Or the weapon has a non-square power waveform. Do I have to spell everything out for you kiddies? Didn't you ever think to ask why propagation DELAYS tend to be more consistent than propagation speed?

[His Divine Shadow]

Ammunition? For a TL? As for coolant, I thought all SW tech magically radiated away what must be vast quantities of heat through a neutrino mechanism, not a material coolant (since given the power output of these things even efficiencies of 99.999% should result in enough waste heat to fry the gunnery staff

This is not that large a weapon is it? This seems to be a lighter TL actually, MT range I'd guess.
Secondly we do not know enough about the weapon and the components that create it, and where they are(layout), the actual turret being manned here can just be a part of the whole weapon assembly that is in some sealed compartment, and likely, larger volume(easier cooling).

Why not have the computer fire as soon as it has a solution? And why do the gun crew have to be right next to the gun? If the gun's hit you lose trained personnel as well

There are those options, but there is also the option for the gunner to choose that, or choose a particular area say to target and hit.

That seems very reasonable. Is then the shitty accuracy at Yavin just because the DS didn't have dedicated anti-fighter weaponry?

Thats been the official line for a very long time, they where supposed to offset that with lots of TIE's, but they botched that too thanks to Tarkin's overconfidence.
========================
"A young pilot raised his hand as Wedge Antilles paused in his discussion of Imperial starfighter tactics employed at the Battle of Yavin. "Sir," the young pilot began, "if the Death Star carried so many TIE fighters, how did our side happen to win the battle?

Wedge smiled, unconsciously brushing his dark hair back with his hand. "That's a good question. To tell you the truth, we won because the Death Star never launched more than a squadron against us."

The room full of pilots gasped and immediately began talking among themselves. Wedge let them carry on for a few minutes, then he called the class back to order. "From our investigations, it appears that Grand Moff Tarkin never issued an order to launch his TIE fighters."
========================
-The Death Star Technical Manual

That's the bit I don't understand. Why is the eyeball immune when an optical sensor is not? It seems intrinsically silly

That is the crux of the matter.

[His Divine Shadow]

Or the weapon has a non-square power waveform. Do I have to spell everything out for you kiddies? Didn't you ever think to ask why propagation DELAYS tend to be more consistent than propagation speed?

You don't include me in that do you? I've noted before that there always seems to be 2-4(sometimes 6) frame delay until a shot hits it's intended target, nomatter the actual range.

[His Divine Shadow]

And targeting computers aren't?

They may be, but they may also not help since beyond visual scanning the shields are in the way, an external sensor must be somewhere, this would have to get through the shield, or be in a place where the shield intensity is weaker than normal, then it would naturally be more vulnerable to interference too.

[ClaysGhost]

... and the actual FORCE could be an order of magnitude higher, given the short duration of the pulse. You obviously took 1 kiloton, divided it by 3E8, and assumed that the answer in kg*m/s could be converted directly to Newtons; tsk tsk.

The pulse is not carrying all (or even a significant fraction of) the energy and therefore momentum of the weapon, as I understand it. Since I have no idea how long the invisible beam acts over (although it's longer than the pulse) I assumed 1 second.

The DS turrets are NOT good enough to hit fighters; they were not DESIGNED for that purpose! Do you recognize the simple fact that engineered systems are made to meet spec, not to exceed them by orders of magnitude, thus causing the costs to skyrocket?

Yes, I recognise it. I hadn't realised that somebody decided that a large target like the DS should have no significant anti-fighter capability.

Wow, I guess you didn't notice the fact that X-Wings and TIE fighters DO, in fact, use targeting computers. I guess modern fighters must not have any targeting computers, since the pilots still use the naked eye through a transparent cockpit, and they can't hit arbitrary targets from arbitrary ranges

What of the quote in which it's said "They can jam every sensor on your ship except your eyes"? What sort of targetting computers are these? And why are they engaging at ranges less than a modern missile?

Don't be an idiot. Does a battleship turret have just one crewman?

Yes, one to load the shell...oh, wait. What shell. And why does a society hundreds of thousands of years ahead of these battleships staff them the same way? You aren't going to argue that an 18th century frigate has the same crew as a 20th century frigate?

Yes, the DS has no anti-fighter defenses. Try watching ANH sometime before you spout your mouth off, dumb-ass. Dodonna said PRECISELY that during the fucking briefing!

Yes, I forgot that. Sorry.

Duh. And a Death Star does not have access to a lot of energy, particularly when it has tractor beams and artificial-grav systems which obviously accomplish similar functions, albeit on a smaller scale?

These jammers apparently exist on other ships too. As for artificial gravity, everyone from ST to B5 appear to be able to generate it. They must have access to DS-like energy resources, then.

Enough curvature to bend something a fraction of a degree need not be visible. Do not exaggerate the situation.

Prove that you'd get symmetrical shear from this sort of (necessarily very concentrated) gravitational field. Distortion isn't going to stop dead away from the ship.

PS. You completely ignored the issue of the turret's enormous mass, as if the recoil is the only factor limiting turret control system rise time and positioning accuracy. In reality, the recoil does not affect the control system at all since it does not have any effect while the turret is rotating into position prior to firing, although it will have an indirect effect because of the massive reinforcing structures and much heavier turret bearing required in order to handle it; you obviously thought recoil would have a DIRECT effect on control system speed and accuracy .

I've been discussing the recoil because that's what I was approached with as an objection to effective targetting computers on fighters by another poster, altering the alignment of the barrel. As for the mass, are you saying that SW cannot produce uprated turret motors/servos/magic to handle this? They routinely accelerate ships, people etc at thousands of g and up to objectionable velocities, but a large turret is beyond them? I can accept that the system is not designed to engage fighters, hence the poor performance against them. I can't believe that they'd find the extra mass anything but a trivial matter if they had to build a more power anti-fighter weapon.

It would appear we've found yet another person who can babble quantum physics with confidence but doesn't understand the most elementary principles of high-school physics.

The last time I remember discussing quantum physics here was during a thread in which people were talking rubbish about neutronium, and attempting to apply high-school physics to it (specifically, the periodic table). Personally, I'm not interested in it. It's very arcane.