Your opinions: Minimum phaser setting to affect a stormtrooper?

[Kojiro]

Well I'm certainly not claiming that armour=immunity. My perspective though, as a lacrosse player (in my youth) was that even an intentional two handed smack with a wooden stick (roughly the same dimensions as Innwe's) across the helmet was trivial to ignore. If any thing the sound hurt more than the blow. Personal anecdote sure, but it informs my view at least and I assume that Stormtrooper helmets offer at least as much protection as my lacrosse helmet.

[Lord Revan]

I dunno what Lacrosse stands for but if involved any sort of melee combat, it's not that hard to imagine that ST would be weaker in that respects.

Steel(or other modern) combat helmets aren't that good against high momentum impacts (like baseball bats or sticks). They're designed to block low momentum impacts (bullets may be fast but they aren't that heavy) and disperse the bullet impact over a wider area, it wouldn't surpriced me at all if Stormtrooper helms where designed to block shrapnel from near misses and low power blaster bolts but were not so good against melee weapons, after all not all armor are equal IIRC kevlar vests are next to useless against bats, clubs, knives or swords and getting hit with a stick wouldn't be that common in SW combat.

Also the question I posed previously if ST was so shit that you might as well be wearing nothing or actually worse then that, then why is it used at all, The empire has access to useful armor so it's not a question of not being able to replace it and the "they're just so stupid" is essentially saying you got nothing but are too proud to admit it.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

When discussing the effectiveness of armour vs energy weapons in ST I find myself looking at the performance of Klingon armour in "Way of the Warrior".

The Klingons board the station and it becomes immediately apparent their armour is totally useless against energy weapons- their troops are continually shown to be either stunned or killed with one shot. The armour is slightly better in melee combat, most of the casualties are dispatched by blows to the un-armoured head (that it offers exactly zero head protection doesn't seem to bother the Klingons, probably this is as much due to Klingon warrior culture as anything).

During a similar debate about this nearly ten years ago, the closest example anyone found of phasers disintegrating armour was a Cardassian at the hands of a Cardassian phaser (at least the script referred to it as such, as I recall it also described the event as "dematerialised", as opposed to "vaporised"). They found plenty of examples of other energy weapons doing the job, but because the question referred to phasers specifically, none of them counted. This was the same group that didn't understand the correlation between weapon size and power- you know you're dealing with morons when you find yourself explaining that large guns are more powerful than small guns!

[FaxModem1]

So, If a Klingon warrior was able to get within melee range of a Stormtrooper, could that one Klingon injure or kill the stormtrooper? A lot of Klingon warriors would obviously get gunned down because they love to scream as they approach the enemy. However, Dahar masters know how to sneak into a compound and interrogate an enemy for information.

As an example, watching Kor, Kang, and Koloth storm the detention cells of the Death Star to rescue Princess Leia. Would they be able to free her or be unable to make it past the guards?

[Lord Revan]

It's possible, Kor, Kang or Koloth would probably more capable at exploiting the choke points and such, the question is would they be able to get to the detention centre unnoticed or would their "warrior spirit" cause all the stormtroopers in the station to converge at their location.

After all neither Luke nor Han were really trained for the mission even if we assume Han's past as an ex-imperial from legendaries is also true in current canon, he was a pilot/naval officer not a commando and Luke was farmboy from middle of nowhere no military training there. On the other hand Han and Luke were able disguise themselves as Stormtroopers avoiding most the guards in the process, while an undisguised klingon would have to fight the whole way.

As would a Klingon warrior be able to hurt or kill a stormtrooper if the Klingon got into melee range, most certainly, the Stormtrooper armor would optimizied for shrapnel and blaster bolts not melee weapons while a bat'lekh would probably not cut thru a Stormtrooper armor easily at least the momentum from the swing would probably knock the wind out of the trooper, not mention if the klingon was at all intelligent he'd aim for the bodysuit rather then the armored bits.

[Lone Browncoat]

The TNG tech manual describes it as follows:

"Phaser" is an acronym for "phased energy rectification" – named for the process of turning stored energy into an energy beam without an intermediate transformation. Energetic plasma is pumped to a prefire chamber made out of a superconducting lithium-copper. There, it undergoes a rapid nadion effect in which strong nuclear forces are liberated. A protonic charge forms and is released in pulses to the emitter made out of the same superconductive crystal. A beam of electromagnetic energy is released from it, at the speed of light. On starships, energy for phasers originates from the EPS, while on hand units, the charge of energetic plasma is stored into sarium-krellide. This material is used because it can't accidentally release the charge of plasma.

I'm late again, but try to reference the original 'Making of Star Trek' non-fiction book. The definition is right there in the section where they're discussing draft scripts and admit they're too late to change the dialogue of "The Cage", acknowledging that 'by then' lasers would be obsolete or can't do that. Somewhere in the first third of the book, I don't recall exactly the location and my copy is still buried in a box somewhere thanks to the movers from hell. {though since they borrowed heavily from "Forbidden Planet", indeed, changing one line of Leslie Nielson's.} They could have used 'blaster' but IIRC didn't want conflict with MGM.

[Prometheus Unbound]

Phaser is a backronym anyway, they called them Phasers essentially because it sounds more ~~~SPACE~~~ than laser.

[Sea Skimmer]

Well I'm certainly not claiming that armour=immunity. My perspective though, as a lacrosse player (in my youth) was that even an intentional two handed smack with a wooden stick (roughly the same dimensions as Innwe's) across the helmet was trivial to ignore.

That's because it's made of wood. Steel is to the tune of 20 times harder, depending on what wood and steel you wish to compare a rather lot. Because a skull and a wood stick have relatively similar hardness the stick will never be efficient at transmitting shock energy. The wood will yield as much or more then the skull, and because both are yielding the peak shock intensity is reduced. Against a hard metal like iron that doesn't happen in any useful sense, all yielding is by the skull, and the weapon is radically more effective, even at the exact same energy range and impact velocity.

If any thing the sound hurt more than the blow. Personal anecdote sure, but it informs my view at least and I assume that Stormtrooper helmets offer at least as much protection as my lacrosse helmet.

The sound is the SAME concussive force as the blow, sound is a pressure wave! The reason the sound is so loud in cases like that is because your entire skull was being squished for a moment, and compressed your inner ear violently in the process. If this reaches the point of pain its also all but certain you have significant concussion damage to the brain, though in reality we know now that starts even before pain thresholds. Bouncing a soccer ball with your head, something which can be done without pain, being a prime example of this. Leaves a nice oval of micocontusions on the brain surface.

Against enough blunt force no helmet can help, and indeed explosive blasts can and do kill people right through concrete walls and AFV hulls they didn't breach as an extreme but common example of where this leads. It's just a matter of details. It's pretty clear medieval war hammers could kill through helmets, and they were generally not all that heavy, though of course for practical purposes simply knocking the other person out is good enough.

The problem with real life military helmets vs blunt force is the helmet needs to be hard as hell to have any chance of stopping fragmentation penetration like its supposed to, but that means it does very little to block or absorb low velocity shocks. And since a helmet only can be so bulky before it's not useful, and must stay on the head snugly, you don't have much margin for rattle space or shock absorbing materials as a liner. Nobody has a good solution to this at the moment, and we may never. Lot of money being thrown at it for a while now, NFL and the military have been teamed up for some time now with little progress except that a actual shock sensor has been fielded now so that we know when the threshold for concussion injury is reached, so we can at least try to mitigate the aftereffects with hospital care.

[Kojiro]

That's because it's made of wood. Steel is to the tune of 20 times harder, depending on what wood and steel you wish to compare a rather lot. Because a skull and a wood stick have relatively similar hardness the stick will never be efficient at transmitting shock energy. The wood will yield as much or more then the skull, and because both are yielding the peak shock intensity is reduced. Against a hard metal like iron that doesn't happen in any useful sense, all yielding is by the skull, and the weapon is radically more effective, even at the exact same energy range and impact velocity.

I'm not entirely sure what your point is here, relative to mine at least.

[Adam Reynolds]

That's because it's made of wood. Steel is to the tune of 20 times harder, depending on what wood and steel you wish to compare a rather lot. Because a skull and a wood stick have relatively similar hardness the stick will never be efficient at transmitting shock energy. The wood will yield as much or more then the skull, and because both are yielding the peak shock intensity is reduced. Against a hard metal like iron that doesn't happen in any useful sense, all yielding is by the skull, and the weapon is radically more effective, even at the exact same energy range and impact velocity.

I'm not entirely sure what your point is here, relative to mine at least.

I presume it is that Chirrut's staff is not made of wood, at least not the sort used in lacrosse sticks.

[Kojiro]

According the the visual guide (if they're canon) it's made of something called uneti-wood. What that means I don't know, perhaps it is as dense and strong as steel.

[Elheru Aran]

Any visual guide made after the change to canon is canon. So, yes, Chirrut's staff can be presumed to be made of some Star Wars wood, specifications unknown.

[Lord Revan]

We know that there's at least 1 species of trees that is source of wood that's as sturdy as metal (it was stated so in the Clone Wars series). Also those huge trees in kashyyk we see in ROTS would probably have to be quite sturdy to not collapse under their own weight.

So wood as strong as steel isn't unheard of in GFFA even in the new canon.

[Sea Skimmer]

I'm not entirely sure what your point is here, relative to mine at least.

Sorry that was missing an entire paragraph I no longer have, which is a byproduct of my using openoffice to type into while tried, because whoever made the spellcheck we now have on the forum seriously forgot half the words in the English language.

Yeah, the point was anything like real wood is implausible for knocking guys out with helmets, but metal or metal like materials would easily do so through a helmets that size, barring magic like shear thickening materials (some crazy stuff is on paper though..). You'd get very different effects at the same energy range; and of course since we SEE the hits instead of say reading about them we can't attribute the result to some super force velocity based blow. Which would otherwise be the answer I'd prefer since jedi are so painfully week so much of the time.

[Kojiro]

Ah that does make more sense.

And while there may be wood as strong as steel in the SW canon, this feels like backwards reasoning to cover what is more likely just rule of cool. A wooden stick shouldn't knock them out, but it does knock them out, therefore it's super wood. Like bullets shouldn't send people flying, but they do, therefore.. something something. I'm ok with simply determining the fake depiction of physics isn't accurate.

[Sea Skimmer]

Well if not for apparently some statement existing to say otherwise I would have just assumed it was a metal pole with some camouflage material on it, I did when I saw the movie. Stuff like that has been built in real life, and I mean yeah, for a covert jedi, that doesn't feel unreasonable at all in a universe where people walk around with explosives. He just wouldn't want a lightsaber because independent of his possibly limited ability to use it would give him away. A metal pole, nobody would ever care unless he tried to enter an Imperial Court building with a metal detector at the door.

People flying backwards from gunshot equivalent wounds is something Starwars has generally avoided thankfully, though ironically in sci fi terms as its a universe actually doesn't need too avoid it because the way say Hans blaster blew apart walls. That would would indicate blasters could have a major explosive effect that really could knock someone back independent of the firing KE.

Excessive attribution of results to fake physics would of course be contrary to the point of the forum. But sometimes you can't avoid it because of gross contradictions or lack of any useful evidence whatsoever. This is not really one of those cases. But sure if you want the real answer its because writers are morons and 99% of peoples conception of melee weapons and their purposes and historical environment is based off utter bullshit worse then typical understands of firearms. Sometimes I wish I could detonate a katana smashing bomb on the internet.

[Lord Revan]

Should be noted that Chirrut is not a jedi, he maybe a Low end Force user but it was made very in secondary material that he is no jedi, but rather member of an organization that was allied with jedi in the past.