Who's afraid of a big bad rock?

SCVN 2812 · Post by **SCVN 2812** » 2002-07-23 12:59pm

According to the AOTC incredible cross sections the Acclamator has neutronium armor and shields able to take several terratons of damage. Since the Acclamator is a descendent of the Star Destroyers it's likely that future designs in this family would also have similar capabilities as far as armor and shielding go.

So, if you're an Imperial captain commanding a vessel able to withstand gigaton level punishment for as long as half an hour with neutronium hull armor, why be so anxious about taking your ship into an asteroid field where each asteroid could do at best a few megatons or gigatons of damage impacting on your shields and hull while the larger asteroids could be taken out with minimal effort? Well the asteroid field does appear to hinder electronics, although you'd think the product of thousands of years of engineering would not be all that effected by a little electro-magnetic interference from asteroids, certainly not enough to hinder communications. Typical Imperial arrogance and smug superior attitude would have this captain not worried at all about the asteroid field, but despite the technological terror at his command he's still nervous. Maybe he just has a phobia about asteroids, something to think about it.

Another thing I've thought about for a long time, why would anybody in their right mind design starfighters that can't even take any significant amount of punishment, not even from other fighter weapons or capital ship point defenses and who's effectiveness in the anti-capital ship role is minimal until the shields go down and they can move in closer and target weapon systems and other external stuff more accurate than their carrier could but also exposing themselves to point defense fire, even one shot could easily kill a fighter. If you've got the technology, why build such crappy fighters or bother with fighters in fleet combat at all? Seems to me like a waste of lives and resources when you could have pilots who are actually likely to survive large engagements and make a difference because their craft aren't going to explode the instant they take a direct hit from a fighter or point defense weapon? That's something that's always bothered me about Star Wars.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2002-07-23 01:20pm

First of all, Star Destroyers are descendents of Acclamators, not the other way around.

Second, starfighters use their speed and maneuverability to repeatedly damage capital ships. In order to give them dedicated shield generators powerful enough to stop capital ship turbolasers, one would have to sacrifice their speed and agility, and perhaps also their firepower. This is not a good tradeoff. Starfighters are often used because they are inexpensive, and they are extremely good for scouting out other targets. This is why they are used. Also, their torpedoes are powerful weapons, and can deal damage to specific areas (like hangars or bridges), sometimes ones that would be extremely difficult for other capital ships to attack. The DS was one such example of a target against which capital ships would not have been capable of attacking.

Also, not every part of a SD is covered with Neutronium armor (just as not every part of modern warships are protected). Many of their systems, like turbolasers and sensors, are still very vulnerable to asteroid impacts or starfighter weapons. That is why the Imperial officers hesitated to go into the asteroid field in ESB.

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2002-07-23 02:19pm

And the fact that star-fighters CAN carry heaver weapons

At least if the EU is to be belived

After all sure launching a Proton Torp aginst a ISD will do little damage and thus X-wing are terrible anti-captial ships, Thats like saying a Sparrow would do little damage aginst a American Destroyer therefor F-18s are terrible anit-ship fighters

Torp and Missiles Kill Fighters, Bombs and Heavy Torps can kill capitals

After all if you look at in this light that Proton torps come in various yields(Likley) then the X-Wing Series was not that unlikley

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2002-07-23 02:24pm

SCVN 2812 wrote:So, if you're an Imperial captain commanding a vessel able to withstand gigaton level punishment for as long as half an hour with neutronium hull armor, why be so anxious about taking your ship into an asteroid field where each asteroid could do at best a few megatons or gigatons of damage impacting on your shields and hull while the larger asteroids could be taken out with minimal effort?

Newton's Third Law. You supposedly learned it in high school. Physical impacts and energy weapons are different. If that's not enough to explain this to you, then surf to http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/Shields

why would anybody in their right mind design starfighters that can't even take any significant amount of punishment, not even from other fighter weapons or capital ship point defenses

Even starfighter weapons in Star Wars are more powerful than capital ship weapons in Star Trek. Need I remind you that any one of Slave-1's seismic charges would have destroyed the Pegasus asteroid, an act which would have required all of the E-D's photon torpedoes? Slave-1's payload is many times more destructive than the E-D's entire payload. Think about that.

Starfighters can't withstand multiple direct hits from each others' weapons or from capital ship weapons. This is not an indictment of their capabilities (as "crappy") unless you can show that the weaponry in question is weak, which you cannot.

If you've got the technology, why build such crappy fighters or bother with fighters in fleet combat at all? Seems to me like a waste of lives and resources when you could have pilots who are actually likely to survive large engagements and make a difference because their craft aren't going to explode the instant they take a direct hit from a fighter or point defense weapon?

Fighters force you to maintain full shields in all directions. Without them swarming around you (armed with very high-yield warheads if they were properly configured to attack capships; again I remind you of Slave-1), you could divert all your shields to the side facing an enemy capship. Moreover, they can get in there and make pinpoint strikes with physical impactor warheads once the shields go down, as we saw in ROTJ. A heavy ship's light guns aren't as powerful as the biggest fighter warheads, its shots don't generate the same kind of reaction forces as a physical impactor, and heavy guns are too ponderous to hit pinpoint targets.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2002-07-23 03:01pm

BTW, SCVN, you might not want to start any more threads saying that SW is weak because they used fighters. After all, you held the position that tanks are weak because they can lose to cavalry.

SCVN 2812 · Post by **SCVN 2812** » 2002-07-24 12:13am

I didn't say that in general tanks would lose to cavalry, I was pointing out that anybody with the right strategy and the capability to implement it can defeat a superior opponent and picked the wrong analogy in my haste to make a rebuttel.

And I wasn't trying to imply that SW was weak because of the use of fighters, I just have hard time wrapping my mind around the idea of widespread use of fighters with low endurance for punishment in some situations.

As for the asteroid thing, it simply seemed a bit of a contradiction for the commander of vessel capable of enduring such punishment to be overly concerned about entering an asteroid field when it seems like their ship should easily be up to task of remaining within an asteroid field with minimal damage.

Graeme Dice · Post by **Graeme Dice** » 2002-07-24 12:26am

SCVN 2812 wrote:And I wasn't trying to imply that SW was weak because of the use of fighters, I just have hard time wrapping my mind around the idea of widespread use of fighters with low endurance for punishment in some situations.

What, you mean like modern fighters? How dare the U.S. use fragile fighters.

omegaLancer · Post by **omegaLancer** » 2002-07-24 01:22am

Seem to me that other than from the series of novels that revolving around the Rogue Squadrons, Star fighters had a difficult time against capital ship...

First Most capital ship carry fighters of their own. Even a glancing hit or flank from a turbo laser is more than enought to destroy a fighter. While fighters need to score 48 hits all at once at the same point with Proton torps just to punch a temporary opening in a shield..

The fact that the Captain of the pursuing star destroyer was fearful show that he was very observance, he realized the high density of meteors and the fact that they were mostily iron... And that after pursuing the Falcon at full aceleration that the velocity of His ship would be extremily hi and any impact at this point with any meteor would be deadily.

Just think. The milleum Falcon was going full throttle after lifting off from Hoth, the At several point pursuing star destroyers had over haul the falcon. If the we assume that both the MF and pursuing ISD were pulling 3000 G, and that they chase up to the time they enter the Asteriod belt lasted 10 minutes
they would be going over 16000 KM/sec.

Other factor was the fact that figure given in SWIC AOC for the Assault transport listed PEAK, how long could such a output be maintain.. hours?

From the battle of Endor, shield failure began 15 minutes into the battle, could this be more due to the fact of level of operation place just as much strain on the unit as actual weapon strikes...

At lowest power lever the shield may be able to stay up indefinitily, but only hours at max performance, and maybe days at the level needed to deflect the constant rain of meteors....

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2002-07-24 02:04am

SCVN 2812 wrote:As for the asteroid thing, it simply seemed a bit of a contradiction for the commander of vessel capable of enduring such punishment to be overly concerned about entering an asteroid field when it seems like their ship should easily be up to task of remaining within an asteroid field with minimal damage.

Notice how he repeats his original point without modification, and completely ignores the rebuttal I made regarding Newton's Third Law. Of course, perhaps I'm being overly charitable by assuming he's dishonestly ignoring the rebuttal. It may be that he's simply too stupid to know what Newton's Third Law is.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2002-07-24 02:10am

Look, SCVN, your "right strategy" would have been utterly meaningless, anyway. I already finished talking about tactics and their importance with you. The point is that you still stated that you would take a horse and a sword up against a tank.

Also, we have given you examples now of when Star Fighers would be useful. Battleships from WWI were clearly more powerful in terms of firepower than the primitive airplanes available at the time, but they still carried sea-planes for scouting purposes. Starfighters happen to be much more powerful in terms of both ground-attack and attacking enemy capital ships than the old bi-planes were, but that does not eliminate the main point. Also, we have disproven your claim of inconsistency with regards to the SD's in the asteroid field. STOP TALKING.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2002-07-24 02:35am

By the way, I moved this thread to the Star Wars vs Star Trek forum. I know it's ostensibly a pure Star Wars thread, but this is one of the oldest "Star Wars vs Star Trek" topics in existence.

Admiral Piett · Post by **Admiral Piett** » 2002-07-24 11:19am

I do not know much about physics but I have been told that neutronium is not a stable material.As soon as is taken out from a neutron star it would expand immediately.So it would require very strong forcefields to be kept together.If you put a layer of it in the armor it would destroy the hull as soon as the forcefields decay,without mentioning the maintenance and construction problems.Thus it is not a great idea since a starship would be blown up as soon it loses the majority of its energy.Frankly I would put this at the same level of the infamous star trek exploding consolles.To be fair it would explain while the SSD and one SD exploded so violently at Endor,with flames ripping quickly trought the whole hull.More conventional
(but still very advanced) materials helped by forcefields, but in a manner that a starship can survive without them if she is not using the engines to accelerate/decelerate, are a much better idea.
Speaking about the conning tower I understand that mr Wong and others,watching a Iowa class battleship(especially a Iowa class),can believe that the bridge of a battleship is not very well protected.The problem is that bridge is the NAVIGATION bridge.When the ship goes in battle officers go in an armored conning tower.The armored conning tower is one of the best protected parts of the ship,whose armor thickness is rivaled only by the
barbettes,the belt and maybe the main turrets faces and the communication shaft.At Endor,where a major fleet engagement was expected,the imperials did not transfer the command in the battle bridge,so it is likely that a SSD/SD has only an auxiliary bridge but no true equivalent of a BB style battle bridge.
And in the ESB we have seen that SD conning tower,remeber that the asteroid did not enter from a window but hit a large surface, is not capable to withstand an asteroid impact which should not have damaged a neutronium reinforced armor.So we have only two options left:
1)No neutronium at all
2)Neutronium reinforced armor only in the hull(bad design).
Note that I am not saying that star trek(and many other scifi series) is better,since their bridges are placed OUTSIDE the hull,obscenely vulnerable,while at least the bridge of a star destroyer is at least partially protected by the bulk of the conning tower.
What I am saying is that probably star destroyers do not have neutronium armor and that their conning towers are surely bad designs for earth standards.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2002-07-24 11:40am

Either that or star wars engineers have a way of making nutronium reinforced hulls that we don't, kind of like their way of making weapons, and sheilds and drive systems, and power, and everything else on a star destroyer...

sarcasm off

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2002-07-24 11:46am

Still, the point of fighters is support mainly and they are not meant to soak up all the damage other fighters or cap ships can dish out. Just because real fighters today can attack SAM sites doesn't mean they have to take a barrage of missile from them or even flak.

Fighters are meant to evade weapons fire, not take it, which is better, sitting like a duck taking gigatons of energy or being as graceful as a butterfly in avoiding even the mopst poweful weapons?

I'd just like to note how much I deplore Trek "fighters" with their ideal touch screen console controls.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2002-07-24 01:04pm

Okay, SCVN, once again we have demonstrated that you are wrong. The fighter point is totally meaningless and, really, a waste of our time to talk about. The discussion about neutronium armor is more or less irrelevent. The captain of the said vessel who was hesitant to go into the field probably recognized that there would be some damage to some systems of his ship, or he was reluctant to go into combat again so soon after Hoth. It is also highly probable that he felt the task was meaningless since he felt that the Falcon had already been destroyed, or would be by the asteroids.

Admiral Piett · Post by **Admiral Piett** » 2002-07-24 01:30pm

[quote="NecronLord"]Either that or star wars engineers have a way of making nutronium reinforced hulls that we don't, kind of like their way of making weapons, and sheilds and drive systems, and power, and everything else on a star destroyer...

Neutronium is a know substance with its own properties which would make its use impractical for the reasons I have listed above.It is not like a turbolaser or an hyperdrive.If they have,and they probably in theory have, the forcefield technology to keep it stable and integrate it in the armor then they can probably use the same technology and energy to reinforce more mudane(but still advanced) materials,obtaining probably the same results but in a safer and cheaper way.
A minor point,but that is.

Devils Advocate · Post by **Devils Advocate** » 2002-07-24 04:17pm

Admiral Piett wrote:I do not know much about physics but I have been told that neutronium is not a stable material.

Isn't "Neutronium" in the SWU mined from planetoids or some other ridiculous source? Star Wars commonly misuses names (i.e. 'seismic' torpedos) so assuming that anything contains "neutronium" on a Star Wars ship in the literal sense is a rather large leap of faith.

Unless of course seismic charges can work in space and neutronium can be mined from planetoids.

Darth Yoshi · Post by **Darth Yoshi** » 2002-07-24 04:27pm

Right. The whole neutronium and seismic charge thing is like "Turbolasers aren't lasers even though they have the word 'laser' in the name." It could be leftover from a previous time, with a different meaning.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2002-07-24 04:30pm

Darth Yoshi wrote:Right. The whole neutronium and seismic charge thing is like "Turbolasers aren't lasers even though they have the word 'laser' in the name." It could be leftover from a previous time, with a different meaning.

Like the words, caliber, bullet, and cannon.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2002-07-24 04:32pm

What is the source for this claim that neutronium is always mined from planetoids? May I remind you that no one questions the existence of a neutronium "fragment" floating through space in Star Trek? Why couldn't small neutronium fragments from a pulverized neutron star (don't know how that happened, but no one seems to question it in TNG's "Masterpiece Society") be floating through space, and get mined for neutronium?

As for "seismic charges", there's nothing wrong with that name. The seismic charges of AOTC would have produced powerful localized seismic disturbances if detonated at ground level.

Admiral Piett · Post by **Admiral Piett** » 2002-07-24 04:46pm

Darth Wong wrote:What is the source for this claim that neutronium is always mined from planetoids? May I remind you that no one questions the existence of a neutronium "fragment" floating through space in Star Trek? Why couldn't small neutronium fragments from a pulverized neutron star (don't know how that happened, but no one seems to question it in TNG's "Masterpiece Society") be floating through space, and get mined for neutronium?

I am not saying that star destroyers cannot contain a conventional material called neutronium,maybe named so for itd toughness.But I find unlikely that it can be real neutronium because it would be an impractical way to plate a starship.

As for "seismic charges", there's nothing wrong with that name. The seismic charges of AOTC would have produced powerful localized seismic disturbances if detonated at ground level.

I councur

Conclusions? Maybe in both SW and ST neutronium is a name given to hard but conventional substances.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2002-07-24 04:48pm

Or it could be actual neutronium that has somehow been stabilized. In either case, it is clear that ISD's can take an amazing amount of punishment, even with their shields down.

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2002-07-24 04:54pm

Neutronium in ST and SW is different from RL neutronium, but appears to be the same material.

The neutronium component of Imperial armour may even be a result of some powerful, NDF-wielding foe in their ancient history. (Fanfic premise: 29th century Federation invades fledgling Galactic Republic?)

Devils Advocate · Post by **Devils Advocate** » 2002-07-24 05:06pm

Darth Wong wrote:What is the source for this claim that neutronium is always mined from planetoids? May I remind you that no one questions the existence of a neutronium "fragment" floating through space in Star Trek? Why couldn't small neutronium fragments from a pulverized neutron star (don't know how that happened, but no one seems to question it in TNG's "Masterpiece Society") be floating through space, and get mined for neutronium?

As for "seismic charges", there's nothing wrong with that name. The seismic charges of AOTC would have produced powerful localized seismic disturbances if detonated at ground level.

Did I even infer anything related to Trek? My comment was based upon Wars misuse of words which forgive me if I am mistaken is rather rampant.

The source of nuetronium being mined from a planetoid was from a novel IIRC. Perhaps another poster can shed light on this.

Exploding a neutron star is utterly ridiculous as is mining a 'fragment' that somehow escaped. Wars or Trek is irrelevant as the entire premise is silly.

Neutronium would have to be produced and not mined. Anyway, the point of my post is to provide evidence that Star Wars in fact uses names that do not mean exactly what they represent. Trek does it as well on many an occasion.

Patrick Ogaard · Post by **Patrick Ogaard** » 2002-07-24 05:13pm

The big thing about neutronium is the following: No one knows if all neutronium automatically expands into normal matter once pressure is released. It is entirely plausible that certain phases of neutronium may exist that are stable. The physics of superdense matter can't exactly be called something testable in a modern laboratory environment. It's at least as likely that no phase of neutronium is stable, but until someone actually gets a sample of neutronium ...

It would appear that, both in the SW and ST universes, certain phases of neutronium are definitely stable. For one thing, way back in TOS, the giant stalactite that chewed up worlds until an entire Constitution-class starship was stuffed down its throat had a hull composed of or at least clad with neutronium. Further, since the Attack of the Clones edition of the Star Wars Incredible Cross Sections books has official and effectively canon status, the presence of neutronium in the armor cladding of large combat vessels in Star Wars is conclusively established.

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Who's afraid of a big bad rock?

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