ARC-170: 5e16W shielding!

Post by **Vympel** » 2005-07-17 12:24am

http://www.starwars.com/collecting/news ... 50708.html

Where did this come from?

Grandmaster Jogurt · Post by **Grandmaster Jogurt** » 2005-07-17 12:28am

That's a little over 10 megatons per second, right? If this is true, the Tri-Fighters must have massive firepower

Utsanomiko · Post by **Utsanomiko** » 2005-07-17 02:29am

So explain to me why it's listed as 5000 times the output of a Geonosian fighter's laser-cannon turret? Or more importantly, why are we getting this juicy tidbit on a TOY?

Talk about left-field. If that's on the packaging I'll nearly piss my pants.

EDIT: Corrected remark about Geo fighter's output.

President Sharky · Post by **President Sharky** » 2005-07-17 02:32am

OMFG, Hasbro's gone nuts! This looks like some sort of bizzaro-WEG, with ultra maximalist stats! Praise!

Molyneux · Post by **Molyneux** » 2005-07-17 02:40am

On a side note, those die-cast toys are really pretty darn cool...I've got a die-cast Droid Fighter and Amidala's cruiser (from TPM) on my desk right now, and they're great to mess around with when I'm bored.

Mange · Post by **Mange** » 2005-07-17 03:00am

Perhaps that is a figure that wasn't included in the ROTS:ICS, but was left in notes or something?

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2005-07-17 03:09am

If so then it's kind of strange that this would be the first place such information turned up publically.

Jim Raynor · Post by **Jim Raynor** » 2005-07-17 03:43am

Holy shit, aren't fighter lasers only rated in the kiloton range? I agree, this is like a mirror-universe WEG, where everything is highly maximalist.

This gives us a whole new perspective on this quote from the ROTS ICS (emphasis mine):

+http://www.millenniumfalcon.com/phpbb/v ... php?t=3478

Robust armor, shields, and tail guns improve the odds of survival when the ship is surrounded by dozens or even hundreds of light, evasive droid fighters.

Remember Sansweet's (?) quote about everything having a "nugget of truth," and Chee's more recent quote about how EVERYTHING is canon. The fact that it comes from a mere toy doesn't matter.

Sarevok · Post by **Sarevok** » 2005-07-17 03:57am

With all that power generated by such a small craft would not the fighter be glowing like a fireball in the atmosphere as the excess heat comes in contact with surrounding air ? What about the pilot, there has to be some amazing insulator between him and the powerplanet.

ARC-170 pilot in Coruscant sky imitating the human torch : "Flame On !"

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2005-07-17 04:09am

The Shadow wrote:With all that power generated by such a small craft would not the fighter be glowing like a fireball in the atmosphere as the excess heat comes in contact with surrounding air ?

Most SW spacecraft convert sinked and vented heat into neutrinos.

The Grim Squeaker · Post by **The Grim Squeaker** » 2005-07-17 04:12am

On the plus side, it would explain why the buzz droids use a shield piercing drill rather than a small cannon or gun to destroy Kedi or ARC ships.

Alan Bolte · Post by **Alan Bolte** » 2005-07-17 04:19am

Well, lessee here. First off, this really isn't all that surprising given that this is a strike craft and point-defense cannons tend to top out in the megaton range. Secondly, this is almost certainly peak shielding; full power to shields would most likely be a significant fraction of the total reactor output. Perhaps as much as a quarter, or even more. An ARC-170 on its own that runs into a group of small fighters is most likely not in any real danger, but in a fleet battle like at Coruscant their heat sinks should be pretty full much of the time, from near-misses by PDBs, droid fighter guns, and ion propulsion streams. I am presently under the impression that except for temporary local shield instabilities (such as hits in rapid succession to the same location) and guns powerful enough to punch right through the ray shields, a ship is impregnible to laser fire until its heat sinks fill up, at which point excess energy can only be spread out by the shield onto a larger area of the armor, rather than being absorbed.

Similar could almost certainly be said for the X-Wings at Yavin: they were surrounded by shield flashes much of the time during the surface runs, and suffered shield hits multiple times from TIE Fighters before finally succumbing only to burst fire directly into their vulnerable rear fuel tanks (likely location, there is some slightly conflicting evidence). Many craft hit in other locations sufferred damage that would only have temporarily disabled them were they not surrounded by turbolasers and lots of stuff to crash into.

Kenoshi · Post by **Kenoshi** » 2005-07-17 04:50am

Or could it be that the designers are just pulling numbers out of their arses to make it sound cool? Like when Micro Machines was designing figurines of the Babylon 5 ships and they said that the B5 station had a power generator that produced power in the "Googol Watts"?

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2005-07-17 04:54am

Kenoshi wrote:Or could it be that the designers are just pulling numbers out of their arses to make it sound cool? Like when Micro Machines was designing figurines of the Babylon 5 ships and they said that the B5 station had a power generator that produced power in the "Googol Watts"?

No, because this is actually fairly consistant with SW numbers from the AotC ICS, as is it being listed in scientific notation. The only thing really remarkable about it other than its seeming appearence is that it's just slightly high, although rational for a heavy starfighter.

Sarevok · Post by **Sarevok** » 2005-07-17 05:08am

This particular figure seems too high. If that 5e16 W of power is put into the engines and assuming the engines convert it to forward motion with 100 % efficiency the fighter would accelerate at 2e11 gees ! In fraction of a second it would approach the speed of light. Way more then approximately 5000 gees cited for SW fighters.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2005-07-17 05:12am

What are you jabbering about? With that logic, you could say the same thing about most of the other ships just from either of their reactor or shield output levels.

Sarevok · Post by **Sarevok** » 2005-07-17 05:24am

After thinking about the big capships yes you are right. However the fantastic power output and not equaly fantasitc acceleration raises two issues.

Maybe it can be shown that the engines take a very small fraction of a crafts reactor's power output and putting a bigger reactor on a ship or fighter will not make it significantly better in terms of agility.

Secondly it is possible that whatever process SW ships use for thousand gee acceleration is horribly inefficient and requires a brute force approach.

Alan Bolte · Post by **Alan Bolte** » 2005-07-17 06:22am

Wait, what? I'm totally confused. We need to know the vessel's mass to figure out how fast it can accelerate based on power output, don't we? Or am I forgetting my physics? How did you arrive at that 2e11?

FTeik · Post by **FTeik** » 2005-07-17 08:07am

Hmm.

We would need 72 million of those ARC-170s to equal the reactor-output of a VenStar (assuming, that the entire reactor-output goes into the shields of the fighter).

How powerful would its cannons be? Keep in mind, that it can probably fire several times per second.

Sarevok · Post by **Sarevok** » 2005-07-17 08:32am

Alan Bolte wrote:Wait, what? I'm totally confused. We need to know the vessel's mass to figure out how fast it can accelerate based on power output, don't we? Or am I forgetting my physics? How did you arrive at that 2e11?

Sorry forgot to mention that in a hurry. The vessels mass was assumed to be 25000 KG .

Since Power = Work Done / Time.

Work Done = 5e16 * 1 = 5e16 J

Work Done = Mass * Distance moved

5e16 = 25000 * Distance moved

Distance moved = 2e12 m

So craft accelerates at 2e12 m / sec. In terms of gees it is about 2e11 gee.

Lord Revan · Post by **Lord Revan** » 2005-07-17 10:44am

ARC-170's mass could be almost anything and there's others limitations to accleration then just reactor output, so it's really hard to judge accleration from reactor output alone especially on craft that has other high power systems as well. Also this estimate was done from max shield power that can be higher then max reactor output as Naboo senatorial Barge had a Max reactor output of 3E12 Mw, but max shield power 6e12 Mw (from AOTC:ICS) that's twice the power then the main reactor is cabale of producing

FTeik · Post by **FTeik** » 2005-07-17 11:42am

Damn, i forget we just can't use maximum shield-power as bench-mark for lower reactor-output.

Crossroads Inc. · Post by **Crossroads Inc.** » 2005-07-17 12:10pm

Can Toy info be considered Canon?

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2005-07-17 01:55pm

The Shadow wrote:Maybe it can be shown that the engines take a very small fraction of a crafts reactor's power output and putting a bigger reactor on a ship or fighter will not make it significantly better in terms of agility.

Secondly it is possible that whatever process SW ships use for thousand gee acceleration is horribly inefficient and requires a brute force approach.

We already know that the shields do not require 1 watt from the reactor in order to protect against 1 watt. Not only would it make no sense to bother with shields if this were not the case, but Queen Amidala's transport in AotC was able to repel more firepower than the reactor of the ship. It is thus not surprising that other ships are incapable of accelerations on the order of their peak shielding, since the peak shielding allows them to take advantage of the efficiencies of such technology while the engines (efficient or inefficient as they may be) are probably not capable of using such "tricks."

apocolypse · Post by **apocolypse** » 2005-07-17 03:36pm

Interesting find Vympel. It's a shame it wasn't also listed in the ICS, but at the same time that would be consistent with the book itself. IIRC there weren't any figures given in the Datafiles for weapons or shields for the ships.