Proton Torpedos

[consequences]

Or "Why Rogue Squadron is allowed to kick so much ass"

Basic shield theory, particle shielding and ray shielding. Presuming it is impossible for some reason to integrate the two, Ray shielding has to be outside particle shields, because ray shields would block the energy for the particle shields. Proton Torpedo passes ray shielding, and just before hitting particle shielding detonates sending a shaped charge effect of energy at an important target, most likely a shield generator.

Rogue Squadron is just lucky enough to come up against the worst point-defense gunners in the Imp fleet. Either that, or their writers leave out the 8 other squadrons who died to give them their shot in each battle.


Apologies if this theory or one similar has been advanced before.

[Mad]

Or "Why Rogue Squadron is allowed to kick so much ass"

Basic shield theory, particle shielding and ray shielding. Presuming it is impossible for some reason to integrate the two, Ray shielding has to be outside particle shields, because ray shields would block the energy for the particle shields. Proton Torpedo passes ray shielding, and just before hitting particle shielding detonates sending a shaped charge effect of energy at an important target, most likely a shield generator.

Rogue Squadron is just lucky enough to come up against the worst point-defense gunners in the Imp fleet. Either that, or their writers leave out the 8 other squadrons who died to give them their shot in each battle.


Apologies if this theory or one similar has been advanced before.

The other way around, actually. Under your theory, the torpedoes would slam into the particle shields, explode in a blast of gamma radiation and... fry the ship. Particle shielding would provide next to no defense against torpedo attacks under that model.

The particle shield should be on the outside, detonate the torpedo into a burst of gamma radiation which is absorbed by the energy shielding on the inside. Both shields would have to absorb a certain amount of energy from the attack.

Wattage issues are most likely the reason torpedoes are useful against shields. They probably release their energy much more quickly than energy weapons do, and so the shields have a tougher time handling it in a shorter time. This power idea idea has been discussed several times before, and can be searched for in previous proton torpedo threads.

[consequences]

The particle shield can not be on the outside, without opening a dngerous hole in your anti-ray defense. Any hole you can beam energy through can have energy put back through it.

[Ender]

As I'm the person who first advanced the wattage point, I'll cover it briefly:

As per the Nuclear FAQ (It isn't a milnet anymore, anyone have a copy of it?), an explosion releases 90% of it's energy in the first 1/1000th of a second, the remaining 10% over the rest of the second. Thus to convert the yield in Joules to watts, you must multiply the yield by 900.1.

As shields have dissapation wattage settings, the disproportionate wattage to energy release overwhelms them briefly. This makes them extremely good shield penetrators.

Think of the resulting scenario: Against an Acclamator, Rogue squadron fires off a volley of 24 torpedos.

An Acclamator has shields rated at 7E22 watts. However, this must be divided by 2 to account for the seperation in ray and particle shielding, and 6 to account for the seperate sections (port, stbd, dorsal, ventral, bridge, hange), so you get 5.8E21 watts for shields Now torpedos are fired with a split second variation in launch time so that the first takes out shields and the other penetrates, so 12 torpedos at 8E17 a pop times 900.1 for the wattage you get 8.6E21 watts. So those first 12 temporarily take out the shielding there. Then the other 12 hit bare hull, releasing ~2.3 GT agaisnt a very small area on your bare hull. That's alot of damage, expecially if the Rogues were smart enough to target a shield projector, meaning they just took out shields on that section. so the rest of the projectors have to expand to cover that side, weakening total shielding.

So that is why torps are a major threat.

[Sea Skimmer]

The particle shield can not be on the outside, without opening a dngerous hole in your anti-ray defense. Any hole you can beam energy through can have energy put back through it.

That assumes the hole is large enough to be a source of significant leakage

[Ender]

It also assumes the shields don't merge together to become one, like we saw the interlinked shields do in TPM

[Connor MacLeod]

Wattage only represents the instant "dissipation" capacity of shields - the amount they can get rid of at any instant. The heat sinks can absorb and "store" a greater amount of energy.

[Ender]

Wattage only represents the instant "dissipation" capacity of shields - the amount they can get rid of at any instant. The heat sinks can absorb and "store" a greater amount of energy.

That, and the rate at which they remocve energy from the heat sinks when the retransmission part comes into play. But yes, it's their burst capacity that the torps are overwhelming, not the actual total shields.

[Connor MacLeod]

Wattage only represents the instant "dissipation" capacity of shields - the amount they can get rid of at any instant. The heat sinks can absorb and "store" a greater amount of energy.

That, and the rate at which they remocve energy from the heat sinks when the retransmission part comes into play. But yes, it's their burst capacity that the torps are overwhelming, not the actual total shields.

Yes, and shields only go down when teh absorption capacity of the heat sinks are absorbed.

[Ender]

Wattage only represents the instant "dissipation" capacity of shields - the amount they can get rid of at any instant. The heat sinks can absorb and "store" a greater amount of energy.

That, and the rate at which they remocve energy from the heat sinks when the retransmission part comes into play. But yes, it's their burst capacity that the torps are overwhelming, not the actual total shields.

Yes, and shields only go down when teh absorption capacity of the heat sinks are absorbed.

When the threshold is overcome, yes. however they can also be worn down by a number of smaller hits, as each hit causes a heat spike in the generator (ref TPM VD), thus necessitating a cooling system (ref AOTC ICS). This shield burnout can be fixed on the fly, but does require time.

[consequences]

Fair enough, just a thought.
I still think the torps have to be hitting the generators themselves for the shields not to come back up in every single battle, as they should have done.

[Ender]

Fair enough, just a thought.
I still think the torps have to be hitting the generators themselves for the shields not to come back up in every single battle, as they should have done.

That is waht any intellegent commander would be targeting, yes. And the time delay in bringing shields back up would be from expanding the surounding shields, hence the need to roll the ship to protect that side from further attacks

I should really assemble the evidence about shielding and start a round table someday...

[Mad]

Fair enough, just a thought.
I still think the torps have to be hitting the generators themselves for the shields not to come back up in every single battle, as they should have done.

You mean the projectors? The generators are usually deep enough in the ship to make hitting them difficult. Shield projectors either burn out from overheating or they are destroyed. Burnt out ones can be replaced relatively quickly (probably by replacing certain parts), but destroyed ones likely can't be replaced in battle.

[consequences]

Sorry, projectors then.

[PainRack]

You know, I seem to recall someone compiling WEG rules for shielding and showing how it meant torpedoes was a threat.............

[The Cleric]

PT's fired in salvos are the only thaing that makes them so damn effective against cap ships. Singly, they aren't that much of a threat, so the Rouges always "ripple-fire" to puch through shields.