Space Battleship Yamato VS. Executor class Star Destroyer

[takemeout_totheblack]

Does the SBY have FTL sensors? Because if it doesn't there's the not inconsiderable problem of SSDs having lighthour effective ranges...

The Yamato has sensors that can see through time (2-3 hours in the past) and they seem to be aware of ship movements on a galactic scale as of Season 2 when they're tracking Gatlantis and its fleet as they mosey their way to earth.

Also, what? The highest ranges I've heard for Star Wars was a ten lightminute figure for the Venator.

[Ellindsey]

Much like the original battleship Yamato, Space Battleship Yamato is really quite bad at defending itself against small fighters. It's basically dependent on the Cosmo Tigers to defend against attacking fighters and bombers. The ship's own AA guns do a very poor job of defending it from attack during the seasons of the show I've seen.

[Luke Skywalker]

Even assuming the Yamato's main gun (Note, never actually seen the show) could get through shields that can take three Imperial Star Destroyers coming out of hyperspace and slamming into it....

Is there any good example of Star Destroyer shields that isn't from some obscure comic nobody read?

For the Executor:

Star Wars: Inside the World of classic Star Wars

With its gleaming command walkway and two-meter (seven-feet)-tall transperisteel viewports, the Executer's bridge provides unobstructed views of quarries and kills. The ship's shielding - equivalent to the total power of a medium star - makes such displays of Imperial arrogance possible. Yet the vessel is not impregnable. At Endor, pounded mercilously by the capital ships of the Rebel Alliance flottilla, the ships shields fail. At that moment, the Rebels are able to strafe the command tower - and with the Executor's navigation suite in ruins and defensive guns loosing coordination, a careening A-Wing destroys the bridge."

[Rekkon]

How good is the Yamato's point defense? Could it handle the Executor's 144 fighter complement and the warheads they are sure to spam?

I dout the Executor would launch TIEs or use its warheads against something like the Yamato, a single TL bolt would severly damaged (probably outright destroy) the Yamato if what is implied is true and bulk of it hull is made of 1940s armor grade steel

Yes, I was merely curious since I am unfamilar with SBY. Namely, if, for the sake of arguement, we assumed that the Yamato could destroy the Executor, could do so before being destroyed herself, and that the Executor knew this, could the Star Wars captain deal with the problem by simply staying out of range and launching all his fighters?

[Darth Yoshi]

Does the SBY have FTL sensors? Because if it doesn't there's the not inconsiderable problem of SSDs having lighthour effective ranges...

The Yamato has sensors that can see through time (2-3 hours in the past) and they seem to be aware of ship movements on a galactic scale as of Season 2 when they're tracking Gatlantis and its fleet as they mosey their way to earth.

Also, what? The highest ranges I've heard for Star Wars was a ten lightminute figure for the Venator.

In the NJO duology Enemy Lines, a NR ship tags a Yuuzhan Vong worldship in orbit over Coruscant from outside the star system. Generalizing the size of the Coruscant system to be approximately the size of our own, without factoring in the Oort cloud (which extends to nearly a lightyear from the sun), the absolute range of turbolasers is at least ~39 AU, or ~5.5 lighthours.

Of course, the NR was only able to do this because the Yuuzhan Vong weren't expecting to get sniped from 5 hours ago, and thus the NR ship was able to calculate exactly where the worldship would be when the bolt reached it. The lightminute figure would likely be a more accurate estimate of the effective combat range.

[Lord Revan]

Much like the original battleship Yamato, Space Battleship Yamato is really quite bad at defending itself against small fighters. It's basically dependent on the Cosmo Tigers to defend against attacking fighters and bombers. The ship's own AA guns do a very poor job of defending it from attack during the seasons of the show I've seen.

the orginal Yamato had at least the excuse of being designed and built during an era when pretty much all nations thought battleships were the future and weren't aware of the destructive power of a carrier based air attack (only reason IIRC that the US did focus more on carriers was that for a good portion of WW2 they had no choice due to bulk of the battleships having been either sunk or disabled at Pearl Harbor), how ever from what little I can tell this isn't true for the SBY making the poor AA-capability much harder to explain, and even then there's no excuse for leaving the underside undefended.

[Batman]

Also, what? The highest ranges I've heard for Star Wars was a ten lightminute figure for the Venator.

In the NJO duology Enemy Lines, a NR ship tags a Yuuzhan Vong worldship in orbit over Coruscant from outside the star system. Generalizing the size of the Coruscant system to be approximately the size of our own, without factoring in the Oort cloud (which extends to nearly a lightyear from the sun), the absolute range of turbolasers is at least ~39 AU, or ~5.5 lighthours.
Of course, the NR was only able to do this because the Yuuzhan Vong weren't expecting to get sniped from 5 hours ago, and thus the NR ship was able to calculate exactly where the worldship would be when the bolt reached it. The lightminute figure would likely be a more accurate estimate of the effective combat range.

Even that won't work if the target knows it's being shot at unless we're talking about a very ponderous vessel. One measly tenth of a g of additional acceleration over 10 minutes means you're 180 kilometres from where they expected you to be, nevermind changing direction.
Those ranges work pretty much only on unaware targets on very predictable courses. Which starships often are going to be (you don't zig-zag all over the place for no reason if you're simply going from a to b), hence my question.

[Parallax]

The Yamato's firepower is impossible to quantify, simply because it changes so much throughout the show. They were obviously not going for consistency in figures.
That being said, there's obviously a massive jump in firepower from standard Earth space firepower to whatever the hell they put into the Yamato.

In the very first couple of episodes, Earth's space fleet has just gotten done getting completed done over by the Gammilons. The mightiest space battleships can't so much as dent a Gammilon cruiser, it would seem. One ship (iirc) makes it back to Earth after the battle, the rest were wiped out.

Yet as soon as the new Yamato launches (to the most kickass theme music ever, I need to note) it's able to shred enemy ships to pieces with it's cannons.

Meanwhile the Wave Motion Cannon seems to be powered directly by the power source known as WhateverTheHellThePlotNeedsium. Continent sized base? No problem. Solar system scale black hole? Sure.

[VF5SS]

And to counter the might of Space Japan, we have as many asspulls from the farthest reaches of canon to support a really big ship that barely does anything other than idle menacingly and die with an A-Wing in its face :3

[Parallax]

I still goddam love the Yamato theme music.

http://youtu.be/Na0-nuGIzh8

[Batman]

And to counter the might of Space Japan, we have as many asspulls from the farthest reaches of canon to support a really big ship that barely does anything other than idle menacingly and die with an A-Wing in its face :3

'Concentrate all firepower on that Super Star Destroyer.' Yep, definite asspull. Totally was never said by Ackbar in the actual movie or something.

[Enigma]

Hell, SBY would be screwed against any Enterprise of any other Fed ship just by range and warp strafing alone.

[VF5SS]

definite asspull. Totally was never said by Ackbar in the actual movie or something.

Yeah whatever. Crazy FTL combat ranges in books cuz some author was reading better sci-fi novels next to WW2 dogfights in the movies.

Concentrate all the fire off screen.

haha this is awesome

The Executor does like nothing this entire fight and dies. Spinning A-wing is impossible to stop with all our lasers. What an awesome sight.

[Bakustra]

The Executor probably isn't really that effective (than the basic Star Destroyer) anyhow from the perspective of artistic intent, much like how the second Death Star, despite having closing to 5 times the diameter (and thus 25 times the volume) isn't actually gigantically more powerful than the first. The point is to present a picture of the American Military-Industrial Complex, responding to failure by building more and bigger. So in that sense, the Executor, literally just a giant Star Destroyer, is probably singularly ineffective in combat because it is the product of both fascism and corporate vampirism (though the two go hand-in-hand most times) and thus grossly inefficient.

In another sense, the crew of the Yamato have the advantage in that they are fighting for a just regime, while those officers of the Executor who believe the Empire to be just are, like most convinced Fascists throughout history, blockheads. Those that aren't convinced of the Empire's justness must then face fighting for an unjust regime, something which has always weakened such states when their evils become apparent, and though they may indeed have established the cult of the soldier, even in Showa Japan, where the cult was instituted through shared suffering, the soldiery still maintained dissident thoughts and actions.

Of course, all the spirit in the world is as nothing if the disparity of materiel cannot be bridged, but there isn't all that much to suggest, oddly enough, that Star Wars ships are nigh-invincible to anything less than the entire nuclear arsenal of the Earth detonated against their shields. So the Yamato's Wave-Motion Cannon may well be able to hurt or even kill the Executor. There isn't really enough evidence from the basic material, but I am less familiar with SBY.

[Parallax]

I still see the Yamato far more on par with Babylon 5 level technology.

No shields but impressive (relatively speaking) firepower. Built in gravity, fighter support. FTL technology even if it does seem to take forever to plot and execute safely.

B5 has better FTL, standard weaponry I'd say is roughly equal, special weapons would be in the Yamato's favour (duh). EarthGov would want the gravity tech, certainly. The Yamato can also take a crap load of damage and still remain operational - case in point, in the first series it takes a huge missile to the rear end which blows a third or so of the ship apart. Most functions of the ship seemed to remain intact and the damage also seemed to be repaired insanely quickly.

[Ford Prefect]

haha this is awesome

You know watching it again, all that 'the spheres on top of the bridge aren't shield generators, they're sensor domes' stuff is really clearly bullshit. The fighters blow up the Executor's dome and it immediately loses shield power around the bridge - like that's the narrative flow of the scene. Straight from the movie.

[Stark]

There's wiggle room around what it covers, ie that the msu defended were down and that damage bought down the specific bridge defense.

And this is the ship where a fit fighter impacting results in a ninety degree turn in the only direction anything bad could happen ... So those explosions could have damaged stuff on te other side of the ship. :v

[Havok]

I have always railed against the bullshit "canon" Star Wars pulls for it's "numbers" and the off screen bullshit too.
Blasters have the megajules, but yet... can't seem to penetrate ice or do more than splinter wood.

[Darksider]

Aren't there flames coming out of the executor in the shot of it hitting the death star? It's possible that the combined rebel fleet bombardment inflicted additional damage as well, but it was the A-wing crashing into the bridge that delivered the final blow needed to make it crash. Perhaps SW ship control systems are vulnerable to damage. Grevious' ship did the same thing when it got fucked up in ROTS didn't it?

[Stofsk]

I have always railed against the bullshit "canon" Star Wars pulls for it's "numbers" and the off screen bullshit too.
Blasters have the megajules, but yet... can't seem to penetrate ice or do more than splinter wood.

Yeah. It really does seem like Saxton and guys like him are watching completely different films than the rest of us sometimes.

[Ford Prefect]

There's wiggle room around what it covers, ie that the msu defended were down and that damage bought down the specific bridge defense.

That's true, sure. It's a pity that there's basically no context surrounding the other bridge sphere which gets blown up by fighters a bit earlier in the battle, on a normal ISD. However regardless of other defenses surrounding them, that scene is definitely unambiguous about those spheres being connected to shielding for the bridge.

[Count Chocula]

The Yamato has sensors that can see through time (2-3 hours in the past) and they seem to be aware of ship movements on a galactic scale as of Season 2 when they're tracking Gatlantis and its fleet as they mosey their way to earth.

I too have a sensor that can see through time. Mine is puny and limited, and from my evil lair on Earth I can only see about 10 minutes into the past. It's called a telescope.

[Civil War Man]

Aren't there flames coming out of the executor in the shot of it hitting the death star? It's possible that the combined rebel fleet bombardment inflicted additional damage as well, but it was the A-wing crashing into the bridge that delivered the final blow needed to make it crash. Perhaps SW ship control systems are vulnerable to damage. Grevious' ship did the same thing when it got fucked up in ROTS didn't it?

Grevious's ship was flying around Coruscant, so it could be that part of SW ship control systems include some technology to keep them from turning into a meteorite when they are not moving fast enough to maintain a stable orbit or some bs like that.

I think that's the reasoning behind the Executor crashing.

Shields taken down -> A-wing crashes -> ship controls damaged -> Executor is not moving fast enough to maintain an orbit purely through momentum -> Executor gets sucked into Death Star's gravity well and crashes.

[takemeout_totheblack]

The Yamato has sensors that can see through time (2-3 hours in the past) and they seem to be aware of ship movements on a galactic scale as of Season 2 when they're tracking Gatlantis and its fleet as they mosey their way to earth.

I too have a sensor that can see through time. Mine is puny and limited, and from my evil lair on Earth I can only see about 10 minutes into the past. It's called a telescope.

Har har. It's more like a 'this is what happened in this area we are now in'. If memory serves they used it once to fail to avoid a trap.
Don't expect relativistic physics to be factored into SBY, they seem to operate on the 'shoot things until they explode' with all that 'lightspeed lag' stuff being for wussies who don't like getting into knife-fight range, must be the warrior cult thing Yamato always seems to push.

Edit: sloppy grammar

[Count Chocula]

Hey, looking into the light cone where you plan to be is just good tactics. I ain't saying I hate Blazers, quite the opposite, but expecting a 900 foot long ship (Frigate in SW parlance) with a magic gun to be a real threat to an armored 19km long behemoth is just as likely as that behemoth being indirectly destroyed by some small-ass out of control spess fighter.....

Oh I get it now the unreal is real! How silly of me. That A-Wing was the stone from David's sling, and Goliath was Executor. OK I think Yamato kicks Executor ass, it fits with the way the stories are supposed to end. Yay plucky underdog!