StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Lord Relvenous wrote:

Crazedwraith wrote:It was indeed Lorth Needa as a Lt. Commander in charge of a Carrack Cruiser.

What? I don't get how that relates to the discussion at all.

It doesn't. I some how managed to post a reply that should have gone in the 'The True Size Of The Clone Army' thread. I didn't noticed until way after the edit window had closed.

Knife wrote:Plus those in the defense always have the advantage and need less people to exploit it. Sure, attackers get to pick the time of engagement, but defenders get to bonus of covering the avenues of approach which takes less people to cover those area's. They also get the advantage of preparing the defense and putting together defense in depth for the attackers to have to over come further acting as a force multiplier. It gets to the point where ever defender is worth 10 attackers.

The inverse of course comes in the those who defend everywhere is weak everywhere.


Wasn't there a tactic suggesting that a strong "fortress" on a world would be an effective defence, given the possibility of reinforcement offworld?

It might, but it needs to be defended from orbital bombardment. I suggest a theatre shield in the fort itself, and maybe have some orbital based guns in orbit over the fort.

Unless the fortress projects control over certain vital areas it could simply be left alone by the invaders, could it not?

PainRack wrote:

Knife wrote:Plus those in the defense always have the advantage and need less people to exploit it. Sure, attackers get to pick the time of engagement, but defenders get to bonus of covering the avenues of approach which takes less people to cover those area's. They also get the advantage of preparing the defense and putting together defense in depth for the attackers to have to over come further acting as a force multiplier. It gets to the point where ever defender is worth 10 attackers.

The inverse of course comes in the those who defend everywhere is weak everywhere.


Wasn't there a tactic suggesting that a strong "fortress" on a world would be an effective defence, given the possibility of reinforcement offworld?

Er... that's fine but you don't protect everything. I was already assuming defenders would be defending tactical or strategic assets and not the barren dessert.

Knife wrote:Er... that's fine but you don't protect everything. I was already assuming defenders would be defending tactical or strategic assets and not the barren dessert.

Large planetary turbolasers perhaps - with the mass of the planet to absorb recoil and the mantle to dump waste heat into, they should be able to mount weapons large enough to deny freedom of action in local space.

Something like this perhaps?

A strongly fortified static antiaircraft position, which Allied aircraft essentially avoided. Couldn't warships just avoid the space within range of the heavy turbolasers? When the idea of a strong "fortress" came up I thought of these because they were pretty powerful against air targets and they did a good job defending against ground forces as well. If you built something like that into a mountain with a shield projector and lots of ground defenses it would be nearly impregnable, wouldn't it?

Yes, it would

recon20011 wrote:Couldn't warships just avoid the space within range of the heavy turbolasers?

They could, but that would mean avoiding the entire system, other than the bits on the lee side of the sun, planets and other major bodies, given the range of even ship-mounted weapons. In Enemy Lines, a NR ship hit a Vong worldship over Coruscant from the edge of the system (which presumably means the Kuiper Belt at the very least).

To be fair, it was firing at a big target so the odds of it missing were pretty slim

Night_stalker wrote:To be fair, it was firing at a big target so the odds of it missing were pretty slim

True, but I've yet to see any decent 'Wars ship that isn't a big target, and from the description given it was no glancing blow but a good solid hit.

So they got lucky, or maybe they had experience aiming at the proper weak points. What did they hit it with?

Night_stalker wrote:So they got lucky, or maybe they had experience aiming at the proper weak points. What did they hit it with?

No idea - it was described as a capital ship laser batter, and striking with the force of a turbolaser, but nothing more specific than that. It was able to punch a hole in a YV worldship before they could magic up a singularity to absorb it, but the damage was repairable within a day.

If they have the capability to build such a powerful planet-based weapon then why would you bother doing anything other than building a fortress or two on every planet and garrisoning it? It would probably be pretty cheap. Although I don't know if the shields could hold up to sustained bombardment.

They could for a time, depending on the firpower leved at it. A BDZ would mean the shields would drop pretty quickly however.

Night_stalker wrote:They could for a time, depending on the firpower leved at it. A BDZ would mean the shields would drop pretty quickly however.

The rebels were able to set up a tactical-level shield capable of repelling 'any bombardment' in TESB, on a shithole ice planet.

Night_stalker wrote:They could for a time, depending on the firpower leved at it. A BDZ would mean the shields would drop pretty quickly however.

Hoth's theatre shield was a piece of black-market junk, and Vader still expected it to prevent a "clean bombardment". Whether that meant it would hold up to Death Squadron's attack or simply that it would prevent them selectively taking out the generators from orbit with flattening the entire base is open to question.

More generally, the technology clearly exists to completely block all starship weapons short of a DS-scale superlaser, given the requirement for the weapon, but whether or not such defences exist for theatre shields is another matter. There's obviously no point discussing full planetary shields, as such defences would prevent a planetary assault outright

Srelex wrote:The rebels were able to set up a tactical-level shield capable of repelling 'any bombardment' in TESB, on a shithole ice planet.

There's obviously an implied "reasonable" in that statement. It isn't literally any bombardment, because otherwise the shield would have prevented the Imperials from landing ground troops. But reducing the rest of the planet to slag, while certainly a way to neutralize the Rebels, isn't what Vader wanted, since he was trying to capture Luke alive. He can't do that if he melts the planet beneath the base.

Darth Yoshi wrote:

Srelex wrote:The rebels were able to set up a tactical-level shield capable of repelling 'any bombardment' in TESB, on a shithole ice planet.

There's obviously an implied "reasonable" in that statement. It isn't literally any bombardment, because otherwise the shield would have prevented the Imperials from landing ground troops. But reducing the rest of the planet to slag, while certainly a way to neutralize the Rebels, isn't what Vader wanted, since he was trying to capture Luke alive. He can't do that if he melts the planet beneath the base.

But Death Squadron's capacity to bombard the shield had nothing to do with landing troops because it wasn't a planetary shield, it was a theater shield, thus it only covers a theater of planetary operations, not the whole planet. But you are right, he didn't want to take down the shield from orbit because he wanted to capture the Rebel VIPs.

Darth Yoshi wrote:There's obviously an implied "reasonable" in that statement. It isn't literally any bombardment, because otherwise the shield would have prevented the Imperials from landing ground troops. But reducing the rest of the planet to slag, while certainly a way to neutralize the Rebels, isn't what Vader wanted, since he was trying to capture Luke alive. He can't do that if he melts the planet beneath the base.

Well, to my knowledge how the Imperials got troops through the shield is something that hasn't been made clear in canon--I'm not sure if they didn't land outside it and then slowly bring the slowass AT-ATs through it. Either way, it's pretty much definite that theater shields in SW can take quite a beating, otherwise there'd be no need for Piett's comment on that.

recon20011 wrote: A strongly fortified static antiaircraft position, which Allied aircraft essentially avoided. Couldn't warships just avoid the space within range of the heavy turbolasers?

They could if you only had one installation. But you would not need many guns spread around a planet at all before no space in orbit was out of the line of fire. The flak guns the Germans put on flak towers did not have a large enough effective reach to defend an entire city with just 2-3 towers. However turbolasers can go thousands of kilometers, so coverage is purely a LOS issue.

In any case, if the enemy avoids the space above the turbolaser battery then he also can't use his own sensors to look down at the surface and figure out what the defenses look like. So it would be a stalemate, which the defender inherently wins.

recon20011 wrote:But Death Squadron's capacity to bombard the shield had nothing to do with landing troops because it wasn't a planetary shield, it was a theater shield, thus it only covers a theater of planetary operations, not the whole planet. But you are right, he didn't want to take down the shield from orbit because he wanted to capture the Rebel VIPs.

That's precisely my point. Because it's a theater shield, it didn't stop troops from landing. Ergo, the rest of the planet was unshielded, and so it's obviously not protected from literally any bombardment. After all, slagging the rest of the planet is a perfectly valid way to take care of the base. But that's not a good way to capture prisoners, so "reasonable" must have been implied.

Srelex wrote:Well, to my knowledge how the Imperials got troops through the shield is something that hasn't been made clear in canon--I'm not sure if they didn't land outside it and then slowly bring the slowass AT-ATs through it. Either way, it's pretty much definite that theater shields in SW can take quite a beating, otherwise there'd be no need for Piett's comment on that.

Again, it doesn't matter how powerful a theater shield is, because it doesn't protect the rest of the planet. You can have the best theater shield in the galaxy and still lose if the rest of the planet melts around you. If the shield were literally impervious to any bombardment, then by definition it has to protect the rest of the planet, which means that ground forces wouldn't be able to land. The fact that troops did land means that the entire planet wasn't protected, which means the base is vulnerable to a BDZ. But since Vader wanted to capture Luke alive, he obviously wasn't going to melt the planet around the base. Ergo, Piett wasn't being literal when he said "any," and was only referring to Death Squadron's ability to bring down the shield without killing everyone on the surface.