Hitomi

The movie will be out next month. The novel came out April 2 I believe. The Graphic Novel is already out as well. The game will come out May 5. Basically, as far as ROTS goes, anyone who has been plugged into the spoiler factory knows the entirty of the story. The only thing left is to see the movie and question Lucas's cutting room decisions. I always found the books to be superior to the movies to begin with, but Stover's Novel is good enough to be ranked up thier with Timothy Zahn, as is Luceno's Labyrinth of Evil. Both books are very well done.

The Expanded Universe is the future of the Star Wars franchise, sooooo… ALL HAIL C-LEVEL CANON!!!!!!!!!!!!! Lucas has finally cleared up the Canon issue. There are varying levels of canonicity now. G-Level Canon is the highest. Comprised of the movies themselves and everything Lucas determines personally to be G-Level. C-Level Canon, or Continuity Canon, is almost everything else. The books, games, comics, and the rest are in this cataegory. As long as C-Level does not contradict G-Level, it is assumed by Lucas to have actual canon status. Basically, the EU is canon until Lucas states otherwise. Saxton is one of the best Star Wars analysts ever to grace the pages of the Internet. His input on the ICS books and his personal site has cleared up a lot of contradictions in the Star Wars Universe. As for Palpatine’s usage of the Clones and the Military… Stover mentioned in the ROTS novel that Palpatine was just getting the major shipbuilders in the galaxy to ramp up production for a major military buildup. Palpatine was planning on using Grievous as a scapegoat with which to expand the Clone Wars so he could get more power. Once Grievous escaped from the attack on Coruscant Palpatine was basically able to seize direct control of Republic systems with his emergency powers. It is with these powers that he begins major build-ups of weapons and vessels. While the Clone Army is used to form the initial Imperial Armed forces, its dwindling numbers were soon replaced with unknown numbers of recruits. However, there are supposedly still some Clones serving in the Imperial military as of ANH. A prime example would be the one Stormtrooper who banged his head into a door on the Death Star. A trait he gained from good ole`Jango Fett.

I could never quite understand why people degraded the Prequel Movies, and I have yet to truly find a logical excuse from anyone. If five minutes of Ewoks, or Gungans, or a single child, can ruin an entire movie for someone, I begin to suspect they were searching for things to complain about in the first place. The Phantom Menace was weak in the same way that A New Hope was weak. The movie was forced to set the stage, introduce the characters, and find some way of starting a trilogy’s worth of plotline. I personally liked A New Hope the least from the OT and I like The Phantom Menace the least from the PT. There are reasons for Lucas’s choices. Anakin was introduced as a small child in TPM in order for The Prophecy to work, so that we can find out some important points about Qui Gon’s character, so we can see Anakin as an innocent kid, and so that his fall is drastically amplified. Episode II was a great Star Wars movie I think. Ranking second all time behind Return for me actually. It displays the Jedi’s weakening condition, the beginning of the Clone Wars, and we are finally able to discover why Yoda is such an esteemed Jedi Master. Revenge will more than likely become the stalwart chapter of the Star Wars saga however. Visually, the movie looks stunning at this point. The opening space battle promises to be astounding. The FIVE Lightsaber duels sound great. Anakin’s fall is fully explained, as is his relationship with Palpatine. The Force Ghost thing is explained, as something of a huge surprise for those that do not realize it. The beginning of the Rebellion is explained, with Bail and Mon Mothma playing major roles. The novel even mentioned Garm Bel Iblis as a founding member! We also find out why Bail was calling on Obi Wan in ANH, why Yoda sequestered himself away on Dagobah, and why Vader is filled with such rage. There are, I think, three major revelations in this movie. One of which opens a new dimension of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader. Personally, after having finished the novel, I think ROTS will be the best Star Wars story yet.

Run Penguin run!!!!! The 8km length isssue is a common error based off of WEG material, there are no Executor-class "Super" Destroyers at that length.

I found Malsar's new website, I've been sitting on it for a while, just forgot about it. It has some of the best scaling around for sci-fi vessels, with a few problems. Like the Whitestar's length, based off of incorrect, unoffical charts, created by one of the B5 guys. He used to have the caanon based sizes for the Executor-class and the Second Death Star, which was great. Untill he caved into e-mail and message board pressure to use the official lengths. I quess the people bugging him did not realize that caanon > official Oh well.... http://www.merzo.net

In conjunction with fast cruisers armed with heavy weapons fighters would be capable of turning the tide against a Destroyer. The problem is that the only fighters capable of carrying enough torpedoes to do the job are the slow and none to maneuverable B-wings and Y-wings. It would require a good deal of effort to protect the bombers long enough for them to deliver their payloads. It would take multiple salvos from a couple of squadrons to break through the shields and do enough damage to knock the vessel out. If all 72 Tie Fighters were in the field the attacking force would require a Lancer to protect itself from bombing and strafing runs. In the end it would seem to take multiple cruisers with heavy weapons to take down a Destroyer.

The Second Death Star was built in 3 years, and scaled to 900 km in Diameter. Its cinstruction was undertaken in secret, and did not noticeably impact the Imperial economy. You could build more than 1E12 Star Destroyers for that Death Star, that's over 40, million times the strength of the 25,000 Destroyer strong Imperial Navy. Comparatively Star Destroyers are really inexpensive. More later...

Federation transporters have shown an inability to transport through the shielding of other vessels, and I would see no reason to assume they could simply go through Wars shields. The weapon’s fired by the ATT Tanks in TPM were not Concussion Missiles, indeed they seemed like large blaster bolts to me, the weapons fired by the Millennium Falcon in the second Death Star were Concussion Missiles however. The Tanks used by the Separatists did not fire Concussion Missiles and neither did the Republic Gunships. They fires some sort of never seen before missile weapon that was comparable to modern day explosives. The most powerful weapons deployed in the ground battle were the Heavy Cannons used to bring down the Federation ship. Photon Torpedoes do not send a blast of antimatter at their target. They use 1.5 kg of Antimatter to react with 1.5 kg of Matter to create an explosion, which spreads thermal energy in every direction. Like most other weapons the Photons do their damage by melting and then vaporizing the armor of an enemy vessel. Besides, if the torpedoes did indeed spread the antimatter towards a target it would react with less than 750 grams of hull material, hardly a threat to a Star Destroyer. The Sun Crusher survived a glancing blow from the Death Star’s prototype super laser, and was considered impervious to fire by Admiral Daala’s Star Destroyer’s. The Sun Crusher also survived weeks at the center of a gas giant with no apparent damage whatsoever. It would take a direct hit from a Death Star Super Laser to take out the Sun Crusher, or you could simply throw it down a black hole. J The Cube situation is another example of the Visuals versus Dialog argument. Data stated that 23% of the Cube had been destroyed when the visuals established that over 90% of the Cube was still intact, directly after the attack. We can only reconcile the quote by Data by assuming the damage was internal and possibly spread to the “back” of the cube.

Throughout the Expanded Universe novels it has been shown that a great deal of maneuvering is involved in battles. When Grand Admiral Thrawn assaulted the shipyards in Bilbringi he maneuvered his fleet into a “bowl” formation that allowed him to take advantage of he Star Destroyer’s superior forward firepower, and protect the more vulnerable aft sections. Usually when an engagement begins between a Star Destroyer and an equal combatant, the Destroy employs rolling maneuvers to give them the upper hand. Destroyers roll towards an enemy vessel so that they can protect the hangar bay from assault while launching fighters and bombers. They roll their vessels so that damaged weapon systems and shield arrays can be protected and new weapons and full shields can be brought to a target. Star Destroyers do employ a good deal of ECM and countermeasures during battles as was already stated as well. One of the main reasons that Star Destroyers do not maneuver elaborately is because they have no real need to do so beyond damage control and squadron deployment. Star Destroyer’s have the most powerful weapons and shields of their time, and no other vessel can stand up to a slugging match with them. Destroyer’s need only to sit in one place and pummel enemy vessels into submission with their Heavy Turrets. Also, gun coverage on Star Destroyers is only poor in the aft sections. Destroyers have massive forward and broadside capabilities. Aft firing weapons are usually light Turbolaser batteries, and perhaps one or two medium turrets on the dorsal surface. The aft firing arcs are difficult to take advantage of however, due to the facts of the battle. Mon Calamari Star Cruisers are the only vessels with the firepower capable of brining down a Destroyer’s shields, but they are too large to hide behind a destroyer. Simple rolling maneuvers would bring the ships into each other’s heavy weapon’s arcs. Corvettes and Heavy Cruisers are small enough and fast enough to maneuver into the aft sections, but lack the firepower to bring down the Destroyer’s shields on their own. The aft firing arcs are a weakness yes, but almost impossible to utilize to one’s advantage.

I was hoping that you wouldn’t bring up the Rouge/Wraith novels. Those books were inspired by the X-Wing games and are ridden with problems on a whole. While I do enjoy them, and some of their stuff is pretty cool, they have contradictions in themselves. What you pointed out for the Proton Torpedoes about the atmosphere detonations is true. In space, against Destroyers, Proton Torpedoes range in the megaton range, but in the atmosphere they rate in the tones range. Inherent contradictions, always a pain the rear. As for the Star Wars weapon systems; there has been a good deal of debate about this. The last theory I knew about the Turbolaser was that it was some sort of “bottled” plasma encased in some sort of energy shell. The shell would release the plasma on impact with a target, throwing all of the energy forward into a target. The flak cannon configuration was theorized as having the energy shell dissipate completely around a target to release all of the energy into a spherical pattern. This could be used to throw a lot of power into the middle of a star fighter formation, or allow near misses to impart at least some damage onto a vessel’s shields, slowly batting them down, just as was done with the Falcon. Lucas did get his ideas for the Flak Bursts and the dogfights from World War Two footage, yes. The episode you are referring to is known to me yes, but a fourth of the cube was not vaporized. Data stated that 23% of the Cube was destroyed, even though we saw the vast majority of it intact after the torpedo salvo. My thinking was that the photons had penetrated the ship and blown the crap out of a great deal of the innards, as the outer hull was more than 75% intact. I will try to hunt down a screen cap. Also, remember how big the Borg Cube is, and based off of the Best of Both Worlds episode how much of the interior is empty space, over 90% of the cube is air, even less is armor plating. As far as we can tell Star Destroyers have quite thick hull plating, some of which is purported to be Neutrionum, a substance that gives Phasers major problems. Photon Torpedoes would impart at most 64.4 MT to an unshielded Star Destroyer each. That would be like hitting the hull with 8 Light Turbolaser’s for every Photon strike. It takes heavy Turbolasers, those in the multi-gigaton range, to go through Destroyer hull armor and destroy the vessel. We’ve seen Star Destroyers absorb Light Turbolasers with impunity with their shields up throughout ROTJ, and it was not until Heavy Turbolasers were used that Imperial Shields began to fall and strikes began to penetrate hulls. Even then it takes a couple of barrages to wipe out a Destroyer’s armor. It would take 31 Photon Torpedoes to match the firepower of one low-end Heavy Turbolaser. That is 4 salvos of torpedoes to match 1 Heavy Weapon. It takes multiple heavy weapon to get through the armor of a Destroyer. It takes at least one broadside to seriously slag or melt a side of a Star Destroyer’s armor. At 6 Heavy Guns a broadside that would add up to 12 GT low-end. It would require 187 Photon Torpedoes to do the same damage. That is over 23 salvos from the main arc, assuming the upper-limit of 8 Photon’s per strike. Between reload times and firing time that would amount to about 1 minute of straight firing and no misses to do the same amount of damage. Throughout the books Star Destroyer’s have taken multiple broadsides. The only way a Galaxy-class can kill a defenseless Star Destroyer is if we assume bare minimum firepower for Star Wars weaponry and fire rates. In other words, Star Trek cannot compete with Star Wars unless the later is seriously handicapped to favor Star Terk in every way.

Thanks for the reply. No, Light Turbolasers do not have 100% accuracy against light, fast moving objects. However, they do have a great deal of success as seen at the two Death Star battles. Federation Phasers should have an easier time taking down fighters than Turbolasers, however they also have trouble with fast moving objects throughout the series. Neither weapon systems has 100% accuracy, though Phasers do have a better hit to fire ratio. The Essential Guide is quite frankly useless unfortunately. The number of errors is terrible. They place the Executor at 8 KM when it is already established at 17.6 KM by the movies. The Diameter of the second death star is way off, by a couple dozen if not hundred of km. They state the MF at 20 meters when it is established at 51 meters in the movies. They miscalculate the Executor’s weapons systems, vastly under arming it. They do horrible with the Imperial Star Destroyer’s weapons as well. The actual, cannon, assessment of Star Destroyer weaponry is as follows. Imperial-class I 12 Heavy Turbolasers in 6 turrets with Dual cannons flanking the superstructure. 2 Quad Medium Turbolaser cannons in the trenches, with perhaps more on the dorsal surface. 120 Light Turbolasers along the hull set in dual weapons mounts. 4 Heavy Ion Cannons in 2 turrets with dual cannons flanking the superstructure behind the HTL. Also, do not use the games as a source. They are ok if we are talking about storylines and characters, but are not accurate when it comes to game play. Balanced game play was thrown out of the window for the games so that the player could be a hotshot fighter pilot. In the game a couple of minutes of Laser Fire from a Tie could destroy a Mc80, however in truth it would take days to simply drop the shields if not months. I have actually overestimated the strength of Federation vessels sorry to say. Relics places Galaxy-class Shield strength with an upper limit of 30 MT. The Enterprise has lost shields to 800 GW weapons, that is 0.019 % of 1 MT. It has been stated that 1 Terawatt (~1/4 MT) is more power than the Enterprise could ever generate. Other calculations place Phaser strength around 5-10 KT and Photon Torpedoes around 100 KT. The list goes on, and quite frankly it gets to a point that the Federation can’t even take on Earth Force from B5. Galaxy-class Vessels have never once in any movie or episode fired more than 8 torpedoes at a time. They have two main torpedo launch sites. The aft fire maybe 4 per salvo, and the fore fires maybe 8, usually 5. I have no idea where you came up with the 26 figure. Photon Torpedoes use 1.5 Kg of Matter and Antimatter for explosive power. At 100% efficiency that comes out to 64.4 MT, in an unshaped charge sending at very most 50% of the energy into a target, that is 32.2 MT. A rough estimate for Star Wars Weapons power based on the ESB scene is as follows. LTL = 8 MT MTL = 80 MT – 160 MT HTL = 2 GT If we were to accept the BDZ function as stated in the EU as well as the cannon status of Curtis Saxton’s book we have… LTL = 8 MT MTL = 150 MT HTL = 200 GT Carrack Cruiser’s carry 10 Heavy Turbolasers as do Dreadnoughts. Corellian Corvettes have 2 Dual Medium Turbolasers and 4 Light Turbolasers. Escort Carriers have a few double Turbolasers, perhaps Medium as well, we are not sure. Star Wars Torpedoes are extremely powerful weapons. It requires at most 72 to drop the shields of a Victory-class Star Destroyer. These vessels can go toe to toe with Heavy Turbolasers. Proton Torpedoes have yields in the hundreds of Megatons based on shield calcs. Concussion Missiles are similar, but are meant to pierce the hull before explosion. 1 KT would do little damage to anything but the fighters stored in the Destroyer hangar. It would take hundreds of Megatons at the lowest of calculations to destroy it from the inside out. BTW, I agree, Star Wars dominates Trek without effort. The difference however is measured in orders of magnitudes!!

I do not wish to seem as though I am pulling numbers out of thin air here, so I shall detail my reasoning here. In the Empire Strikes Back we see an Imperial-class Star Destroyer clearing a path through the Hoth asteroid field. The Destroyer was utilizing its Light Turbolaser cannons in order to do this. The asteroids themselves, when hit, completely vaporized in approximately 1/15th of a second. At least on asteroid the size of the Millennium Falcon was completely vaporized in this manner. The Falcon, contrary to popular misconception, was defined as roughly 50 meters ling and 40 meter wide in a later scene. It had roughly the same diameter as the Destroyer’s Sensor Globes, which are scaled to 40 meters. That is a roughly spherical asteroid the length of the Millennium Falcon was vaporized by a Light Turbolaser in 1/15th of a second. Assuming the asteroid was of iron composition the power required to do this job is on the order of 2,100 Terajoules in 1/15th of a second. Therefore a Light Turbolaser unleashes the power of 31,500 Terawatts or 7.5 MT, onto a target. Incidentally in Bloodlines, a Next Generation Episode, it took the Enterprise 13 seconds to drill a 1.6 Kilometer deep hole into a planetary body. Screenshots from the episode place the diameter of the hole drilled with an upper limit of roughly 70 meters. That comes out to about 7 MT/sec for the Main Dorsal Phaser Array. The main array on the top of the Enterprise is somewhat longer than the dorsal array, which would point to an increased number of emitters and a power output of roughly 9 MT/sec if I did my math correctly. So, the lightest capital ship weapons in Star Wars are roughly equal to the most power Galaxy-class Phaser Arrays. Galaxy-class vessel’s have 10 Phaser arrays capable of being used while the Saucer is attached, and the two most powerful arrays are the one’s already listed here. The other two arrays are useable only with saucer separation, as they are on the drive section of the vessel. As for the Galaxy-class versus Escort Carrier argument, there are some problems to your assessment. First, the Escort Carrier has no big blind spot to the aft sections, the drive sections are covered by Light Turbolaser batteries, the same batteries equal to the Galaxy’s own Phaser Banks. Second, Phasers do not have 100% accuracy, especially not against small fast moving objects. To my knowledge no Federation vessel in TNG or DS9 has ever intercepted a Photon Torpedo with Phaser fire, although it would be nice if you had any examples of such happening. If the Escort Carrier has at least one Tie Bomber Squadron then the Galaxy is in a lot of trouble. Curtis Saxton has rated proton Torpedoes and Concussion Missiles, those carried by the Bombers, all the way up to 150 MT in the Incredible Cross Sections book based on Episode II scenes over Geonosis and other data. I wonder if the Galaxy could intercept 24 torpedoes, each more powerful than a Photon Torpedo and much smaller, while at the same time fending off attacks from the Escort Carrier’s Turbolaser batteries and any accompanying Tie Fighters with weapons rated around 1 KT per shot and a fire rate of roughly 4 shots every second. The Galaxy-class Shields fail when hit by salvos of Photon Torpedoes, placing an upper limit of its shield array around 500-750 MT. (This is me being nice, as Episodes like Relics establish Shield Strength around 12-30 MT) It would take 1 Light Turbolaser 100 seconds to down the shields, it would take 72 Tie Fighters roughly 2,605 seconds to down the shields, and based on the presence of any Tie Bombers only 1 to 3 salvos of torpedoes depending on type. Escort Carriers on the other hand can last a few seconds under fire from Imperial Capital ships. I don’t remember how long from the games and books, but they do last longer than a single volley of LTL fire. Their shields are at low-end equal to the galaxy-class. And btw, Phaser should be able to destroy fighters no problem, while concurrently Light Turbolaser batteries capable of shooting down maneuvering A-Wings at 9 meters long should have no problem with shooting down linear path photon torpedoes. J

Star Wars versus Star Trek is a debate that is very old. The two universes are easily comparable as well. We have quantifiable situations from both universes, which define weapons power, shield power, FTL capabilities, and STL capabilities. Also, when it comes to Star Wars the Expanded Universe novels are admissible as evidence as long as they do not contradict the movies. In the Star Trek universe the canon rules determine that only the shows and movies are admissible. Knowing this we can find values for weapons power, shield strength, FTL capability, etc and compare the two universes. When this is done we find Star Wars overmatches Trek in almost every category. High-end accounts of the two universes are as follows. Star Wars vs Star Trek Weapons: 200 GT HTL vs ~ 200 MT Quantum Torpedoes Shields: In excess if 1 TT Shields vs ~ ½ GT Shields FTL: Over 1,000,000c vs under 7,000c Fleet Sizes: 25,000 ISD vs hundreds of Federation ships I can detail further the matches later, if anyone so wishes. By the way, Enterprise vs Escort Carrier, Enterprise dies. The Shields of the Carrier could withstand salvos of Quantum torpedoes, and if the Tie’s carry any missiles the Enterprise dies fast!!!!

When we wish to evaluate the nature of the battle we must not simply look at Capital ship numbers. The Alliance’s fleet theory is based around their star fighters, and the strike capability of those fighters would have to play into the battle situation. Assuming the numbers for star fighters are correct as I have them above the majority of the 505 fighters would be X-Wings and Y-wings, with A-Wings and B-Wings being in the minority. An X-wing squadron would have 72 Proton Torpedoes, Y-Wing squadrons would carry 120, A-Wings would have 144 Concussion Missiles, and B-Wing squadrons would carry 144 Proton Torpedoes. In the Rouge Squadron novels, and throughout the EU, torpedo salvos numbering between 24 and 72 individual warheads were capable of brining down the shields of Star Destroyers. If we assumed that it took 72 Proton Torpedoes to drop a Star Destroyer’s shields, the upper limit from the novels, it would only take a single X-Wing squadron per Destroyer to render the vessels defenseless. X-Wings were making strafing runs on Imperial Star Destroyers, apparently getting through the shields on some occasions, as we saw a pair of X-Wings smash a Destroyer’s Sensor/Shield Globe. On top of that we also could see blue explosions on the Executor’s hull, and effect not made by Turbolaser, Laser, or Ion Cannon fire. It is possible that the effects were due to torpedo strikes on the shields.

Here are the fleet make-ups as far as I can tell from the various pictures and Saxton’s website. Imperial Fleet: Capital Ships 1 Executor-class Super Star Destroyer - - 12 Squadrons 24 Imperial-class Destroyers (I & II) - - 144 Squadrons · The Death Star is assumed to launch no fighters during the battle for a simple reason, Shield Physics. In order to launch any number of Tie Squadrons the Death Star would have to drop its Particle Shielding. That shield system was controlled by the facility on the moon, and stayed up the entire battle while under Imperial control. Imperial Fleet: Fighter Squadrons As we saw no Tie Bombers deployed in the battle, we must assume one of two things. First the Tie Bombers were never deployed because the Death Star trumped their strike capability, or second the Tie Bombers were simply not there. Either way, the lack of any Tie Bombers drops the possible number of Imperial Fighters by 26 Squadrons, one on each Destroyer, and two on the Executor. Maximum Deployed: 156 Squadrons - - 1,872 Fighters No Bombers Deployed: 130 Squadrons - - 1,560 Fighters Rebel Fleet: Capital Ships 1 Home One Cruiser - - 10 Squadrons 6 Mc80 Cruisers - - 18 Squadrons 7 Nebulon-B Frigates - - 14 Squadrons 2-5 Corvettes - - 0 Squadrons 2-5 Medium Transports - - 0 Squadrons 1 Y-Head Corvette - - ??? Squadrons (0) Rebel Fleet: Fighters Maximum Deployed: 42 Squadrons - - 504 Fighters Plus Millennium Falcon: 505 Fighters The Deployed Fighter Ratio, as far as I can tell, is 3.089 to 1.000 as far as I can tell. Also, the vessel behind Home One is to long and to shallow to be a Corvette. Due to its proximity to a Nebulon-B Frigate, and the fact that it is probably turning away from the Death Star, I would think that it is the Liberty. By turning towards Home One that vessel, if it is the Liberty, would come up along side a Frigate. The Liberty death scene shows the vessel near a Frigate and a pair of Transports. My money is on it being the sixth and final Mon Calamari Cruiser.