TL accuracy–not as bad as it seems?

[Carcharodon]

I'm not sure whether this post is more suited to the ST vs SW forum or to this forum. LordChaos, feel free to move this if you want.

Many people, in both vs debates and pure SW discussion, say that turbolasers are of questionable accuracy. This contention essentially stems from the poor performance of TLs in ANH against X-Wings and from scenes of the Falcon being shot at by Vader's squadron. Leaving out the fact that the former situation is like saying battleships are inaccurate because they can't hit sparrows with their big guns, that in the latter case they wanted glancing hits only, and moreover neglecting the factor of jamming, we still have one rarely-cited quote that would suggest otherwise.

From Dark Force Rising, page 196:

The Grand Admiral Studied her. "You shall have one anyways."
He touched his comlink again–and abruptly the interior of the dukha flashed with a blinding burst of green light.

Leia jerked her head back into Chewbacca's legs, squeezing her eyelids shut against the sudden searing pain ripping through her eyes and face. For a single, horrifying second she thought that the dukha had taken a direct hit, a turbolaser blast powerful enough to bring the whole structure down in flaming ruin around them. But the afterimage burned into her retina showed the Grand Admiral still standing proud and unmoved; and belatedly she understood.

I really like this quote, because it demonstrates two things. For one, it shows that turbolasers can be modulated in their intensity. A weapon of mass destruction was set to a power level probably no greater than a 1000 lb. bomb. This should come as no surprise after seeing the DSII in action, but for some people it probably will. It is significant because it lends support to the idea that the turbolaser shots in the asteroid chase were probably not max power shots, even for LTLs.

But more importantly, the quote reveals how accurate TLs can be–erring by no more than a couple of meters or so from high orbit. Against a largely stationary target, to be sure, but still impressive.[/b]

[LordChaos]

Only those who like to berate SW complain about TL accuracy. If you ONLY count shots that you can CONFIRM a hit or miss, and ignore all others, you get figures in the 60% range (going off memory of when I actualy did that) for capital ship engagements. Some of those "misses" can even be argued away by the creative.

No, TL accuracy is fairly good, and wouldn't be anything to complain too much about.

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

But then again, the DS turrets were for capital ship defense. Myths of lousy ISD turbolaser accuracy are refuted by the Executor hitting small fighters in ROTJ, and myths of perfect Starfleet accuracy are refuted in many episodes.

[Mr Bean]

plus that fun moview set to benny hill music of all the ST misses

[Master of Ossus]

I also like how many Trekkies claim that the Defiant, a Saber class ship, or a Peregrine could easily dodge turbolaser fire despite being far larger than snubfighters. It's just not logical.

No ship can easily avoid turbolaser fire from large ships, and a ship more than twenty or twenty-five meters long would essentially be a sitting duck for a SW capital ship.

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

You know what I love? People being so vague. Stormies always miss and are dumb, Imperials are stupid, TLs always miss, etc. No examples are ever given.

[SPOOFE]

Nor are circumstances mentioned. For the Stormtrooper issues, the most blatant case of poor individual stormie performance was aboard the DS1... where they were deliberately letting Han & Co. escape (on Endor, that was simply a matter of poor planning and troop arrangement... a sign of arrogance on the part of the Imperial commanders, which we've all known about).

For TL's, the majority of action we see is against starfighters... and they miss by very little (at very close range, which is detrimental to a turret). The simple fact that they miss 12-meter long fighters by less than a few meters simply indicates that against a 100-meter long target, moving at about the same speed, they'd have a much higher hit ratio.

Defiant doesn't stand a chance against a Star Destroyer.