Star Wars firepower: embarrassingly bad, like their tactics

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Re: Star Wars firepower: embarrassingly bad, like their tact

Post by Panzersharkcat »

The first picture: What do you expect to happen going through thin leather wings?
The second picture: Fired from a holdout blaster pistol barely bigger than my hand. The grip of that pistol only accommodates two fingers. Similar to what Starsword noted, comparing that thing to an E-11 would be like comparing a Ruger MK II to a Mauser 98K.
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Re: Star Wars firepower: embarrassingly bad, like their tact

Post by StarSword »

First off, regarding the second image, I'm going to repost what I said in the other thread.
I wrote:@DX13 Re: The image you posted. That shot was fired by a hold-out blaster (I forget the make and model), which is what scout-troopers are canonically issued with. All blasters are not alike. Comparing a hold-out pistol to an E-11 rifle is like comparing a derringer to an AK-47. If it hits you somewhere vital, it'll still kill you, but its power and, more to the point, effective range, are far lower. That's why he missed*: he was firing from extreme range (for his weapon), based on where he popped up after the second scout-trooper snuck around and put his pistol to Leia's head.

* Despite the common trekkie line that stormtroopers can't hit the broad side of a barn, we have ample evidence that stormtroopers are actually very good shots, provided they're actually trying to hit you.
Destructionator XIII wrote:On my god, are you fucking kidding me? 1:43:13 on ROTJ 2004 DVD. The Ewoks are HOLDING A WALKER BACK WITH A FUCKING ROPE. Held in their bare hands. The walker kept going, but it was visibly slowed.
Not sure what you were trying to prove here, but I agree that incident was pretty stupid. Though not as stupid as an Ewok standing on said AT-ST's foot later on and banging on it with a hammer. (No idea what he was trying to achieve there.)
BTW, not a single one of these blaster shots in this battle are remotely close to megajoules. A small handful of the walker's shots approach, but the hand weapons aren't even scorching the landscape.

Yet, it's still taking stormtroopers down.
You clearly don't understand how little energy a megajoule actually is. I read somewhere in the canon database that the low megajoule-range starship weapons of another faction in TNG released the same amount of energy as burning a few gallons of gasoline.
Another thing: when the Rebels are heading toward the bunker... the troopers FUCKING IGNORE THEM and instead go into the woods. The Emperor's finest troops.
A brilliant deduction! Obviously the troops that did start shooting at the Rebels got confused and disobeyed orders.

No, you unrepentant idiot. The troops came under attack from an unexpected quarter, the Ewok archers. Some took off into the woods to hunt them down. Others stuck around at the bunker and tried (and failed) to kill the Rebels.
And LOL, they do some hand to hand combat instead of just SHOOTING PEOPLE. Fucking Viking hoard.
As I said, I was joking when I originally quoted that line. But think about it: would you rather kill somebody with a gun when he's twenty meters away, or when he's close enough that you can kill him with a sword? Assume he died either way. I'd rather he be dead over there than over here, because it lessens the chance that he could hurt me before I got him.
Ok, on to the boring space battle. "They're heading for the medical frigate." Why the fuck did they even bring a medical frigate here?
It's no stupider than Starfleet vessels' habit of bringing civilians, particularly children, on military missions. Also, despite being retrofitted as a hospital, the Redemption was still a capital ship armed with turbolasers, and the Rebels needed every ship they could get their hands on for Endor.
Back to the ground. R2 takes a direct hit. Not a mark on him, though it does overload his circuits or something.
I believe I read that Artoo's computer probe was shot off. That certainly qualifies as a mark, and might explain why he went haywire immediately afterwards.
So when they block the walker's vision, he tells the co pilot to get him off of there... he doesn't radio for infantry help.
That's something which is colloquially known as a "judgement call." The guy thought it was just an Ewok playing games, so he thought he could just pop the hatch and get rid of the Ewok himself. He had no idea there was a Wookiee involved.
I was wrong before when I said they got two kills before chewie - those came after, but were still pure ewok. Chewie's capture didn't really affect things physically that much - he shot one walker and some troopers, but most the work was still done by the ewoks. Maybe it was a morale thing.
Considering the Imps only had four AT-STs to begin with...
Then the one with the wobbly legs, wow, that's just embarrassing. And then it blows up from hitting it's head. Design flaw: the "engineer" who made that should be court-martialed.
Let's see you try to keep your footing with logs rolling around under your feet. I have, and it's not easy. That's one weakness, and a weakness that every creature (never mind machine) with legs possesses. Who are you going to prosecute? God?

The Galaxy-class cruiser has dozens of severe design flaws if TNG is to be believed, and dozens of people have been hurt or killed because of them.
Face it: the Emperor's finest troops lost to a stone age tribe, and Federation holdout weapons tend to be both more damaging and more generally useful than Imperial rifles.
They lost to a Stone Age tribe because said tribe had help from people who were decidedly not Stone Age, and because their supreme commander put together an insanely overcomplicated plan that gave almost every conceivable advantage to the Rebels. This plan also had no room for error, such as when help from an unexpected quarter fucked up the Rebel ground team's capture, or when Lando decided to use Death Squadron as cover from the superlaser. An old military adage states that "no battle plan survives contact with the enemy."

And while it's true that blasters have a wide range of effects, just like phasers, we arrive at the high end more consistently with blasters than with phasers.
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Re: Star Wars firepower: embarrassingly bad, like their tact

Post by Stark »

It's pretty hard to say that the battle is all-round pretty embarrassing, but the Imperials clearly had really bad coordination.
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Re: Star Wars firepower: embarrassingly bad, like their tact

Post by Darth Fanboy »

Destructionator XIII wrote: Ok, on to the boring space battle. "They're heading for the medical frigate." Why the fuck did they even bring a medical frigate here?
The Rebellion's Medical Frigates were very good at keeping their people alive. Given their limited pool of resources, especially trained combat personnel, it was imperative for them to be able to keep their pilots alive. Even if they didn't get back into the fight right away. Given the number of pilots concentrated in the battle and the number of high ranking officers that could have required medical attention, it would have been foolish for them not to bring one.
Back to the ground. R2 takes a direct hit. Not a mark on him, though it does overload his circuits or something.
Is this a knock against SW small arms firepower or a credit to R2-D2's design? He has survived quite a bit, especially the DS1 Trench Run in Episode IV.
Face it: the Emperor's finest troops lost to a stone age tribe, and Federation holdout weapons tend to be both more damaging and more generally useful than Imperial rifles.
Outnumbered and in unfamiliar terrain, and also caught by surprise. This does not excuse the mistakes they made, but I'll echo Stark's sentiment about using the land battle of Endor as the standard by which to judge SW ground forces.
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Re: Star Wars firepower: embarrassingly bad, like their tact

Post by Vympel »

This is just stupid - if you have a fiasco amongst a small unit in unfavorable terrain, this is clearly and indisputably the standard by which to judge an entire military in any situation and with any level of force. That's reasonable.

Excuse me while I now judge Starfleet solely on their inability to prevent the flagship of the Federation from being taken over by two BoPs full of Ferengi in TNG's "Rascals".
Face it: the Emperor's finest troops lost to a stone age tribe
That's simply not the case:-
RotJ DVD commentary, George Lucas wrote: "this was the part of the movie that was a real struggle in terms of believability. You know the style of Star Wars is a little bit light hearted and doesn't take itself too seriously, but at the same time it has to be believable and realistic. That these funny little bears with bows and arrows could actually you know confront Stormtroopers. It's a big challenge. You set yourself up for particular characters and when it comes time to the confrontation you hope you've given them enough stuff to make it work. In this particular case I think I established part of the credibility of the Ewoks by simply not having them win. I mean occasionally, toward the end, they start to win, but they lose so much in the beginning of this battle and what you think is going to happen actually does happen, which is that they're absolutely no match- that it makes it more believable then what happens later on is they do the same kind of thing and they start to get a little bit more successful at it but never do they actually overcome them. You know, it's really the battle in the sky, that is where the real battle is going on, this is really just the battle to get in to blow up the protective shield generator which means that all the Ewoks really have to do is distract the troops. Which is believable. Actually pull them away and engage them enough and keep them occupied while the generator is being blown up."
This is reflected in the chronology of the film for those who pay attention - the tide only turns after Chewie steals the AT-ST, and for all the Ewok's traps, it was Han's idea to get the Imperials to open the bunker door that handed them victory.

The Rebels won, the Ewoks helped.
and Federation holdout weapons tend to be both more damaging and more generally useful than Imperial rifles.
I guess that explains all those times that battles in close quarters devolve into poorly choreographed melee fights with flashing bath'leths and Kirk-fu chops and double-fist-punches, as opposed to using their superior holdout weapons to effortlessly annihilate the enemy, right? :lol:

For all the Imperial's obvious incompetence at the bunker battle (which you can easily write off as overconfidence- the Ewoks were after all considered "harmless non-belligerents" according to the RotJ novel), they at least had the excuse that they thought they had already won, they were grossly outnumbered, and in unfavorable terrain surrounded by almost all sides, with no prepared defences. What was the Federation excuse at AR-558? You know, where the the Federation troops were in prepared positions, the enemy was coming at them from a fixed choke point, announced their arrival well before they appeared, they all had Type 2 rifles, and somehow the battle still devolved into a fistfight?

Its the same story in Way of the Warrior, when the Klingons board DS9. Fistfights abound.

EDIT: I also like it how you refer to "Imperial rifles" yet your examples are a Scout trooper's ankle-holster blaster and an E-11 carbine. Rifles are more along the lines of these:-

Image - the Imperial equivalent of which we saw a lot of in A New Hope, on both Tatooine and the Death Star. For giggle's sake, I'll also just note that no phaser, of any size, ever, has ever been used at such a range (probably several hundred metres).

Of course, pistols can be plenty more powerful than your cherry-picked examples, as can carbines.
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Re: Star Wars firepower: embarrassingly bad, like their tact

Post by Darth Tedious »

StarSword wrote:You clearly don't understand how little energy a megajoule actually is. I read somewhere in the canon database that the low megajoule-range starship weapons of another faction in TNG released the same amount of energy as burning a few gallons of gasoline.
An MK2-A4 antipersonell hand grenade releases ~1MJ of energy (thanks to Connor for correcting me on my maths when I worked that one out). So it isn't exactly an energy level to be sneezed at, in the right context.

That said, phaser rifles are rated in megawatts, they usually fire half or full-second bursts, and they rarely have any impressive effect on the environment. Considering they are a chain-reaction based weapon, they should do a lot more.
I've actually said quite a few times before that energy level /= visual effect. We have megajoule lasers IRL, and they don't cause grenade-sized shit to happen.
Lightning bolts carry megajoules, and when they hit sand all you get is a little glass, not grenade-level KA-fucking-BLAMMO.
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Re: Star Wars firepower: embarrassingly bad, like their tact

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Destructionator XIII wrote:That'd be funny if people didn't actually do that.
Seriously? For me its the natural response to bring this up only in response to people who go on about Endor. In my experience, Endor is way more infamous than Star Trek examples. The continuous bringing up of Endor as the be-all-and-end-all of Imperial capabilities is a massive cliche. People ragging on Trek is more prevalent here though.

In my view, Imperial / Star Wars combat capability goes up the larger the forces involved are. Their strength is in huge set-piece battles with vehicles and shit and masses of men. Small unit engagements, its very very dicey and not really impressive in the least.
I discussed this in the post. Chewie's action represented a turning tide, but didn't seem to directly cause it. The other two walkers still went into Ewok traps, appaently on their own - Chewie didn't force them into it or anything like that. The troopers were still going away from the bunker without Chewie doing anything.
There's also Chewie blasting Imperial troops directly, and shooting another AT-ST, mind.
No, no, you don't understand. Kirk-fu is the superior holdout weapon!
Well I'm glad you can have fun with it :)
In "Rocks and Shoals" and "Shakaar" they were shooting from coming up on 100 meters.
I don't remember Shakaar (series), but I do remember Rocks & Shoals - 100m is probably about right, it is hard to gauge distance accurately because the lens of the camera can distort distance.
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Re: Star Wars firepower: embarrassingly bad, like their tact

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Destructionator XIII wrote: Yea, though the large engagements bother me too when people talk about firepower. Dial a yield small nukes would blast the crap out of those people, even if doing a single huge blast is not allowed for whatever reason.
This is why I don't think ground vehicles have nuclear level firepower. On the other hand, when people scoff at the firepower of AT-AT's at Hoth, they're not paying attention - the AT-AT's are shooting pot shots at the trenches, but their shots against the Rebel base buried under the mountain are making the base visibly shake. Its not small potatoes.

There's also the question of what is and isn't permissible - we have dial-a-yield nuclear weapons today, and their use is strictly verboten. Collateral damage etc and all that are still a factor, IMO. Especially when say the Jedi Knights are leading battles, and your nuclear weapons are inaccurate (dumb fire, line of sight) compared to a guided missile or bomb or artillery shell.
BTW something that bugs me is how those other rebel troopers kinda disappeared. We see them leaving the shuttle, and we see them in one of the surrenders, but otherwise they are a little too absent.
Have a look at Chewie's POV on Han from the top of the AT-ST - you'll see some dead Rebel troopers around the bunker (interesting how the Stormtroopers managed to kill them and not the named characters, lol). Also, something you may not have noticed - the Rebel soldier dressed as a scout trooper in the clearing (he took the captured scout's clothes), hands on head, when they're led out.
Embarrassing phaser example: "Conspiracy", when Picard literally ducks out of the way of the beam! If they all moved like that, phasers would have a range of single digit meters.... I think Kirk dodged a beam too, in "Wink of an Eye" if I recall correctly, but that was of course because the time was passingly slowly - but speaks to it not being lightspeed. (Dr. Lawrence Krauss mentioned this in his book, "The Physics of Star Trek", but I'm out of the house right now so don't have a page numer)

Another season 1 tng phaser that compares to Leia in ROTJ is... was it "Datalore"? The first time we see Lore, he shoots Crusher and sets her sleeve on fire! Though I wouldn't call that embarrassing, since that effect was pretty clearly intentional on Lore's part (and a good lol as he talked about burning her little man, hehe. I love Wesley though. I wish the other officers were more reliably his equal though, but unlike a lot of folks, I have no problem with his genius, knowledge, and talent.)
The thing that made Conspiracy completely comical was how obvious it was that they had sloowwwwwed down the beam so that Picard could credibly dodge it. The effect didn't work at all. Of course, same episode you've got the freaky aliens that explode when shot.
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Re: Star Wars firepower: embarrassingly bad, like their tact

Post by Jaevric »

Destructionator XIII wrote:What could these reasons be? Perhaps they simply can't fight vey well at those longer ranges. Near the start, that one guy did say "We won't last long against those Star Destroyers", implying they had better odds at the initial more open range than at the closer range.

I expect this is because of how bad their accuracy tends to be.
I saw this exchange as Lando pushing for the Rebels to accept the casualties they were going to take in a fleet engagement in exchange for the opportunity to destroy the Death Star. The Rebels felt if the Death Star became fully operational the Rebellion was effectively doomed anyway so it made sense to risk everything on the chance to destroy it.

Admiral Ackbar had called for a retreat as soon as he found out the Death Star weapon was operational and a significant Imperial fleet was present. Lando argued that this was their best shot at destroying the Death Star -- assuming the ground team could take out the shield generator, which may not be an option in a hypothetical future engagement. At that point Lando suggested they get in close and "...engage those Star Destroyers at point-blank range." Ackbar pointed out "We won't last long against those Star Destroyers," yes, but I'd argue that's because they were at a disadvantage in the actual fleet engagement regardless of the range and that's why Ackbar's initial response was to retreat. Lando is arguing that the Rebels need to get in close to the Star Destroyers to make it harder for the Death Star to take potshots with the superlaser, which will hopefully delay the fleet's destruction long enough for the ground team to knock the shield out -- at which point the fighter squadrons can at least try to blow up the Death Star and kill the Emperor.

The phrase "point-blank range" doesn't imply "we need to get this close so our crappy accuracy isn't an issue." It implies that's a range that normal fleet engagements wouldn't take place in because it's suicidally close -- no room to manuever and the possibility of limited engagement arcs for the weapons.

Think about the situation for a moment. If the Rebels retreat and the Death Star becomes operational, the Empire as the ability to destroy any world that supplies the Rebels with ships, troops or financial support despite the presence of planetary shields. The Rebellion is doomed, but it will potentially take a while and a lot of innocents may die if the Emperor starts blowing up planets in job lots.

If the Rebels don't retreat, accept massive casualties in a fleet engagement, and the ground team fails to knock out the shield generator, the Rebellion is doomed due to the loss of its fleet and military leadership. The rebelling planets may still be destroyed, but the Emperor may accept their surrender.

If the Rebels don't retreat, accept the casualties of a fleet engagement and the ground team succeeds in knocking out the shield generator, then the fighters successfully blow up the Death Star, they've destroyed the Empire's greatest weapon and killed the Emperor. The Rebellion may still get wiped out but the loss of the Emperor and DS2 may at least weaken the Empire enough and cause enough infighting that those worlds that have already gone over to the Rebellion may be able to maintain their independence. And as it turned out the loss of the Emperor caused the Imperial fleet present to fall apart and retreat, creating an overall victory for the Rebels.

The Rebellion was faced with options of a "slim chance at victory" and "no chance at victory." On those terms their tactics were quite acceptable for the fleet engagement.
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Re: Star Wars firepower: embarrassingly bad, like their tact

Post by Darth Tedious »

Sorry for the HUGENESS of the pictures, but just to illustrate the difference in the guns that has been mentioned a couple of times:

Here is an E-11 (standard Stormtrooper issue).
Image

And here is a Scout pistol.
Image

And for a bit of out-of-universe trivia, the E-11's were made by slightly modifying a WWII Sterling SMG, while the Scout pistol had to be scratch-built. The larger rifles some Stormtroopers are seen with are DLT-19's, which were made from MG-34's. There was also a Stormtrooper pistol, (called an SE-14R), but it only appeared in promo shots and was not used by Stormies in the films. It was however, used by the pig-nosed guy in the Mos Eisley cantina, with an extra scope slapped on it to make it look different.
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Re: Star Wars firepower: embarrassingly bad, like their tact

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Destructionator XIII wrote:
Panzersharkcat wrote:The Galaxy-class cruiser has dozens of severe design flaws if TNG is to be believed, and dozens of people have been hurt or killed because of them.
Name them.
"Dozens" is probably an exaggeration, but...
  • Emergency shut downs of the warp core consistently fail.
  • The warp core ejection system never works.
  • The antimatter storage pods have no automatic safety mechanism to eject them when containment failure is imminent.
  • All of the ship's weapon systems can fail at once due to a single combat hit that causes no visible damage.
  • Every transporter pad on the ship can fail due to a single system fault.
  • Any fault in the main computer is likely to cripple the ship, because the main computer runs everything with no backup.
  • There is no isolation of code in the computer, so a virus or other hostile code can easily invade all systems.
  • Information security on the ship is very poorly designed.
  • Manual overrides generally aren't manual, so they frequently fail when needed.
  • The holodeck safeties are extremely unreliable.
That's just what I can come up with off the top of my head.
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Re: Star Wars firepower: embarrassingly bad, like their tact

Post by Metahive »

For the pride of the Federation the Enterprise sure was at times quite a rickety old rustbucket, yet I think any failure coming about through deliberate hostile action should not be counted. They might have been exploiting little-known quirks and backdoors for it to work, and that's how most of Trek's weapons and other exotic doohickeys work anyway.
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Re: Star Wars firepower: embarrassingly bad, like their tact

Post by Eternal_Freedom »

While Ted included warp core failures and so on, I'll add another screamer from "Cause and Effect" - the poor design that allows a low-velocity glancing hit on the starboard nacelle to destroy the ship. (Even if the core shutdown/ejection worked, it would still have been crippling. That starboard nacelle was wrecked).

Also, a note on core ejection. If they plan to eject their main power source seconds before it explodes, surely that just leaves them with a super-size photon torpdeo beneath their ship with nothing to power the shields?
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Re: Star Wars firepower: embarrassingly bad, like their tact

Post by Purple »

What I find most jarring is the already mentioned manual overwrite or rather the fact that it is nothing of the sort. It has been consistently shown that the function is nothing more than a command to turn off the autopilot. And when all your controls are fly by wire than that is pretty much useless in an emergency. After all, the only reason why you would want to issue an emergency manual overwrite is becouse the computer systems that control the system have failed. And at that point you really want a system that will let you control the system without having to go through the computer whose failing made you engage the overwrite in the first place.

The more I watch star trek the more I get the feeling that the manual overwrite was newer designed for emergencies but instead for situations where everything is fine but the operator just wants to do it by hand for lulz. Like for example if someone wants to take a shuttle for a joy ride he flips the manual overwrite on and takes control him self for the fun of it.

Now this is all wild speculation. But I always had a feeling this was intentional, or rather that this showed a patten to the way their engineers think. They are so confident in their technology, so over the top sure that it's infallible that they don't expect their designs to fail ever and so they don't install actual safeguards. And those safeguards that are installed feel like they are nothing more than an afterthought. It's almost like their engineers are looking at the safety systems and thinking "Why am I even putting this thing in. Its never going to be used anyway. Let's just snap something together real quick get it over with."

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Re: Star Wars firepower: embarrassingly bad, like their tact

Post by Ted C »

Eternal_Freedom wrote:Also, a note on core ejection. If they plan to eject their main power source seconds before it explodes, surely that just leaves them with a super-size photon torpdeo beneath their ship with nothing to power the shields?
The would still have the fusion reactors in the impulse engines to power shields, and given the way shields seem to be degraded in combat over time even when main power is available, they may have some kind of independent battery or capacitor system running them.
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Re: Star Wars firepower: embarrassingly bad, like their tact

Post by Darth Fanboy »

Destructionator XIII wrote: I'm pretty ok with this, but how do they get their people to the frigate? Do they have shuttles picking people up from damaged ships or fried ships? If they are being shuttled to it anyway, couldn't the frigate keep it's distance via hyperdrive?

That's really what makes me feel weird about this. Of course, if it's a combatant too that gives a reason to get in there. I have some comments on range too for my next post.
EU Events show that Rebel Shuttles are used to recover pilots from damaged craft or pilots who have ejected. I believe those shuttles can tow escape pods but I believe it is reasonable to assume the pods capable of maneuvering would be able to head for the medical frigate. According to the Star Wars Technical Journal, The Medical Frigates were armed but had a reduced armament (little more than half of a fully armed Nebulon-B Frigate, which the medical frigate is a variant of).

I think that the reason it got so closely engaged in combat during the Battle of Endor was for its own protection. At a great range it would have been an easy target for the superlaser, and it did need to stay with the rest of the fleet. So when the fleet moved in, so did it. Keep in mind that the presence of the Imperial Fleet was not anticipated by the Rebel Fleet (It's a trap!) and the destruction of the DS2 was supposed to be up to the starfighters, with the capital ships creating a perimeter.

The entire Battle of Endor was an example of insufficient preparation on both sides. The Rebels didn't anticipate a space battle, the Empire didn't anticipate a significant ground battle, and the Empire certainly didn't expect the Emperor to die. Dumb as it may sound his presence was canonically having an effect on the battle, and his ridiculous plan hinges on his survival. The Death Star II Shield Generator will still be destroyed thanks to the combined Commando/Ewok effort on the ground, and it is possible the Death Star II is still destroyed, but even if the Death Star is destroyed, if the Emperor survives then the detrimental effects of his death do not occur and the Imperial fleet still has an opportunity to cripple the rebellion it would not have had, and despite massive collateral damage the objective is accomplished and Palpatine has all the time in the world to pursue his next agenda relatively unchallenged.
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Re: Star Wars firepower: embarrassingly bad, like their tact

Post by Darth Fanboy »

Destructionator XIII wrote:Ok, the other stuff:

Another thing I find weird about the space battle is how it got progressively closer to the Death Star, yet the ships remanded at the same short range they started at.

If their orders are to prevent escape, shouldn't they spread out to block more escape angles?
I do not recall if gravity well projectors were in use, or if the Death Star had them. But it is established that there is a lot of ECM jamming and other countermeasures of that type in use during SW space battles. Given the number of ships and the pre3sences of the Death Star, plus an enormous Shield Generator there could have been enough going on that the only reliable way to hit was to get that close.

Who was dictating the ranges? We know the Rebels wanted to be very close to the Imperials to make the Death Star less effective.

But, why did they both get closer to the Death Star?

If the Rebels were moving closer, I can understand that. They might want to get out of the superlaser's arc or give closer cover to the fighters.

But, why would the Imperials follow them at point blank range? Why not hang back to prevent escape angles while still shooting at them from longer ranges? If they did that, Executor might have survived the battle.
Perhaps the Empire wants to keep the Rebels at a distance where the Superlaser could come back into play, Ackbar doesn't think the Empire would fire that close with their own ships in play, but its directly under Palpatine's command and that regard for safety might be less of a factor than we would like to think.

OK, what if the Imperials were moving closer? Well, then the Rebels might want to stay close to still avoid the superlaser, so them following makes sense.

But, why would the Imps do that? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to keep the enemy ships away from the Death Star?

I think it makes the most sense that the Rebels were moving in, and the Imperials followed them for some reason.

What could these reasons be? Perhaps they simply can't fight vey well at those longer ranges. Near the start, that one guy did say "We won't last long against those Star Destroyers", implying they had better odds at the initial more open range than at the closer range.

I expect this is because of how bad their accuracy tends to be.
I think the Empire didn't care how close the Rebel got to the Death Star because they didn't expect the shield generator on the Forest Moon to go down, as long as the shield was up they had no chance of harming it. Closer to the Death Star, even without a shield generator, pins the Rebels between the Imperial Fleet and the Death Star itself, making escape less possible.
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Re: Star Wars firepower: embarrassingly bad, like their tact

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Eternal_Freedom wrote:Also, a note on core ejection. If they plan to eject their main power source seconds before it explodes, surely that just leaves them with a super-size photon torpdeo beneath their ship with nothing to power the shields?
I'm not sure, but I think the warp core just powers the warp drive. (I've heard conflicting data on this.)
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Re: Star Wars firepower: embarrassingly bad, like their tact

Post by Stofsk »

Ted C wrote:"Dozens" is probably an exaggeration, but...
Not to be a stick in the mud but can you provide more detail on each of those that you listed? It might be valuable to go through it and pick it apart and so on because there may be extenuating circumstances.

In any case, as I've said before in other threads, how come nobody ever talks about how resilient the Enterprise was in 'Best of Both Worlds' when it got the shit kicked out of it by the Borg cube?

A lot of the things on your list are bad, don't get me wrong. But a lot of them are as a result of stupid writers doing stupid things, like the 'Cause and Effect' example; basically Brannon Braga being 'cute' with a really stupid episode. If the Enterprise was really that easily destroyed I can't fathom how it stood up so well to the Borg. Besides which, Stark's post above can apply to this topic as well. If we cherry pick the low-end and ignore the high end, do we really learn anything? (and yes the reverse is true as well, but part of why I'm posting is because the reverse rarely gets a look at all, which bugs me. Too many people give the Enterprise-D an undeserved bad rap IMO) Many of the failures you list are basically a plot contrivance, without which the episode in question could not function. The example I am thinking of is the Moriarty episodes as they relate to the question of holodeck safety systems.
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Re: Star Wars firepower: embarrassingly bad, like their tact

Post by Ted C »

StarSword wrote:
Eternal_Freedom wrote:Also, a note on core ejection. If they plan to eject their main power source seconds before it explodes, surely that just leaves them with a super-size photon torpdeo beneath their ship with nothing to power the shields?
I'm not sure, but I think the warp core just powers the warp drive. (I've heard conflicting data on this.)
Supplying power to the warp drive is its main purpose, but power from the warp core can definitely be used by other systems.
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Re: Star Wars firepower: embarrassingly bad, like their tact

Post by Ted C »

Stofsk wrote:
Ted C wrote:"Dozens" is probably an exaggeration, but...
Not to be a stick in the mud but can you provide more detail on each of those that you listed? It might be valuable to go through it and pick it apart and so on because there may be extenuating circumstances.
Emergency shut downs of the warp core consistently fail.
In TNG "Cause and Effect", they tried to both shut down and eject the core, and both efforts failed, resulting in the destruction of the ship (repeatedly).

In Star Trek: Generations, damage to the ship caused reaction containment to start failing. Attempting to shut it down failed; ejecting it may or may not have been attempted (I don't recall it being specifically mentioned). They were eventually forced to evacuate the drive section and try to escape in the saucer before the warp core blew.

The warp core ejection system never works.
We know it works on Sovereign-class and Intrepid-class starships, but it has never been seen to work on a Galaxy-class starship. Granted, it's only been needed a few times, but it has never worked.

The antimatter storage pods have no automatic safety mechanism to eject them when containment failure is imminent.
TNG "Disaster" is the culprit here. They can tell from the bridge that the force-fields containing the antimatter are slowly failing, but they can't do anything from there to stop the decay. It's pretty obvious that nothing will happen automatically to eject the pods before it's too late, so the few people on the bridge end up debating whether to separate the saucer and flee or divert power to the control boards in engineering, hoping someone there will be able to correct the problem.

All of the ship's weapon systems can fail at once due to a single combat hit that causes no visible damage.
Every transporter pad on the ship can fail due to a single system fault.

TNG "Peak Performance" is a prime example. The Enterprise sustains a few hits from a Ferengi ship, and all of the weapons systems go down. This may be tied to having the controls for all of the ship's weapons integrated into a single console on the bridge; if something happens to the control linkage, every weapon on the ship is useless.

Any fault in the main computer is likely to cripple the ship, because the main computer runs everything with no backup.
TNG "Contagion" has a virus get loose in the computer and rapidly infect every system on the ship. The USS Yamato (another Galaxy-class starship) was destroyed when the virus shut off the containment field in the warp core.

There is no isolation of code in the computer, so a virus or other hostile code can easily invade all systems.
See the previous example. The Enterprise crew eventually had to shut off everything on the ship to purge the system.

Information security on the ship is very poorly designed.
Apparently anyone can walk up to a console and ask for restricted information and get it (TNG "The Drumhead"). The system will log the request, but it won't refuse the information or send an alert to security. A Klingon exchange officer got military information that way.

Similarly, in "The Hunted", escaped prisoner Roga Danar was able to deactivate security forcefields, access ship schematics, and control the power feed to the transporter system, all without legitimate credentials.

Manual overrides generally aren't manual, so they frequently fail when needed.
"Peak Performance" is also an example of the lack of manual backups. If weapons can't be fired from the tactical console on the bridge, there's no way for anyone stationed at a phaser bank to aim and fire the weapon manually.

Likewise, in "The Naked Now", when an intoxicated engineer removed control chips from a computer in engineering, there was no way to manually fire the engines to move the ship out of the path of an approaching chunk of stellar debris.

And, to my knowledge, it's generally impossible to get a door open if the power is off. I recall them trying to do that in a Voyager episode (can't remember the title), but the manual release failed.

The holodeck safeties are extremely unreliable.
Do I really need to list the assorted holodeck disasters?
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Re: Star Wars firepower: embarrassingly bad, like their tact

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Darth Fanboy wrote:Perhaps the Empire wants to keep the Rebels at a distance where the Superlaser could come back into play, Ackbar doesn't think the Empire would fire that close with their own ships in play, but its directly under Palpatine's command and that regard for safety might be less of a factor than we would like to think.
Recall the order Palpatine gave before the Death Star destroyed the Liberty: "Fire at will, Commander." This indicates the crew were in full control of the superlaser, and Imperial officers have often been more careful than their Sith overlords (for instance, Piett didn't want to pursue the Falcon into the Hoth System asteroid field, but Vader made him). And note that despite blasting two ships during the space battle (that we saw), after the Rebels engaged Death Squadron the Death Star didn't fire any more shots, indicating that Lando's gamble worked.

It also indicates that using the superlaser requires Palpatine's authorization (they didn't start firing until after Palpatine ordered them to), which speaks to the chain of command: a planetary depopulation event requires commands from on high.
Ted C wrote:The warp core ejection system never works.
We know it works on Sovereign-class and Intrepid-class starships, but it has never been seen to work on a Galaxy-class starship. Granted, it's only been needed a few times, but it has never worked.
If the '09 movie is any judge (and it might not be given the altered timeline), it also works on Constitution-class vessels, which predate the Galaxy-class by over a century.
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Re: Star Wars firepower: embarrassingly bad, like their tact

Post by Darth Fanboy »

StarSword wrote: Recall the order Palpatine gave before the Death Star destroyed the Liberty: "Fire at will, Commander." This indicates the crew were in full control of the superlaser,
No, it indicates that Palpatine enabled them to use their discretion. I doubt that the crew would have done anything without his specific say so.
and Imperial officers have often been more careful than their Sith overlords (for instance, Piett didn't want to pursue the Falcon into the Hoth System asteroid field, but Vader made him). And note that despite blasting two ships during the space battle (that we saw), after the Rebels engaged Death Squadron the Death Star didn't fire any more shots, indicating that Lando's gamble worked.
And if Palpatine calls them back up and says "start firing on the Rebel Fleet, I don't care who is in the way" do you think that some junior officer is going to say "Sorry Your Majesty I can't do that"?

It also indicates that using the superlaser requires Palpatine's authorization (they didn't start firing until after Palpatine ordered them to), which speaks to the chain of command: a planetary depopulation event requires commands from on high.
Does it indicate that the crew were in full control or does it indicate that Palpatine's authorization is required? Pick one you dumb fuck. Of course they didn't start firing until he told them to, the whole plan was his idea not just as a battle plan, but as a demonstration for Luke to try and turn him o the Dark Side. If someone started shooting too soon and cocked that up for the Emperor they wouldn't have lived very long.
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Re: Star Wars firepower: embarrassingly bad, like their tact

Post by Darth Fanboy »

D13 wrote:What "manual control" would mean for these fancy systems is simply an independent control path of the main computer, which may be operated from any number of locations.
Yes but that location is in a jefferies tube on the other end of the ship just barely wide enough for Data and Geordi to crawl through together while musing about human behavior ;-).
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