(RAR!) Star Wars, the Versus Edit

[Darth Lucifer]

By divine intervention/selling your soul to the devil/Q, you've been given the power to re-edit or change the Star Wars saga in order to prove once and for all time and without a shred of doubt in anyone's mind the superiority of Star Wars over Star Trek, even to Trektards like Darkstar. What kind of changes would you make to the saga in order to accomplish this?

The first thing that comes to my mind would be when Ackbar orders the ships of the fleet to concentrate all firepower on the SSD, I would put in a shot that actually shows the rebel capital ships doing such, complete with the imperials announcing shield failure BEFORE the A-Wings attacked the ship. End Result: No more "domes = shield generators" bullshit.

I know Lucas purposely avoids quantifying firepower and hard numbers on things, so I would insert small changes to the script like when Han says in reaction to the destrction of Alderaan:

HAN: "The entire starfleet couldn't destroy the whole planet. It'd take <<X Amount>> of firepower, not even a thousand ships could generate that kind of..."
A signal starts flashing on the control panel and a muffled alarm starts humming

I'd also magically turn the Ewoks into Wookies just so the "Empire got beat by Teddy Bears" argument would just fucking die.

What other things would you change?

[The Romulan Republic]

I probably wouldn't change a thing. I like the original trilogy at least pretty much as it is barring a handful of scenes, and the imballance in power between Trek and Wars is obvious enough already (leaving aside why I would even care enough to alter classic films to win a vs debate).

However, if one wished to alter Star Wars for such a purpose, I would think the following might warrant alteration:

First, don't show the X-wings blowing holes in the Death Star's outer hull in A New Hope. The casual viewer might get the impression it doesn't have shields.

Also, the three million number for the GAR will be wiped away, and an orbital bombardment sequence will be inserted somewhere (perhaps show some turbolasers leveling skyscrapers during the battle of Coruscant, or at least the after-effects of said damage.

[Darth Hoth]

My major edit will concern Jedi and Republic/Separatist organisation, combat and military tactics in the prequels. This will both eliminate a lot of extreme stupidity and wank, thereby improving the experience for the somewhat informed viewer, and remove some extreme stupidity and minimalism, thereby showing a more competitive galaxy.

Other, minor changes to the OT:

*Give Tarkin the line about a million systems in the film, rather than just the novel. Or, he could say "thousand million" just to be more impressive.

*Change the "thousands of probes" line.

*Subtly tweak dialogue to emphasise ECM at the Death Star.

[Ghost Rider]

Nothing.

When dealing with that level of retardation you could have the entire Federation destroyed by a garbage scow and there would be people making every claim of technobabble to illusions. They have already claimed both the Xeelee and the Culture would fall to the might of Trek. Nothing short of Darth Vader snuffing out of galaxy by twiddling his pinky would even give them pause let alone admit defeat.

[Rochey]

I agree. Nothing needs to be changed. Those with brains can see the power of the Empire from the films as they are now. The DS2 is an excellent example of the Empire's industrial strength, and the superlaser and asteroid-busting ISD guns (to say nothing of the seismic charges) already show a superiority in firepower. Other advantages, such as speed, are also obvious enough to observant viewers.

As of now, there are only really two types of people who still think Trek could win.

The first type consists of newcomers to the debate, who've never put much thought into it and just assumed that Trek would beat Wars because it's all nice and shiny. These ones are usualy easy enough to educate, and they quickly realise the truth. (Hell, I'll even hold my hand up and admit I used to be one of these lot until someone showed me how I was wrong)

The second type consists of those who are, for whatever reasons, in denial about it and continue to insist that the evidence presented proves nothing. Anything you change still wouldn't convince them, because they refuse to be convinced.

[Singular Intellect]

Quite frankly, why does the ignorance and stubbornness of a few fans of another popular franchaise warrant any consideration for altering the Star Wars Saga to 'defeat' objections to some hypothetical military matchup? Especially when it's already a closed argument?

Seriously, Trek arguments/opinions referenced out by the OP are already pathetic; suggesting one wastes effort on this endeavor implies these crackpot opinions are worthy of being acknowledged in the first place.

All this exercise does is make any pro-SW fan effort look pathetic in itself. "OMG I have to convince these people!". Please...

[Baffalo]

I agree. Nothing needs to be changed. Those with brains can see the power of the Empire from the films as they are now. The DS2 is an excellent example of the Empire's industrial strength, and the superlaser and asteroid-busting ISD guns (to say nothing of the seismic charges) already show a superiority in firepower. Other advantages, such as speed, are also obvious enough to observant viewers.

As of now, there are only really two types of people who still think Trek could win.

The first type consists of newcomers to the debate, who've never put much thought into it and just assumed that Trek would beat Wars because it's all nice and shiny. These ones are usualy easy enough to educate, and they quickly realise the truth. (Hell, I'll even hold my hand up and admit I used to be one of these lot until someone showed me how I was wrong)

The second type consists of those who are, for whatever reasons, in denial about it and continue to insist that the evidence presented proves nothing. Anything you change still wouldn't convince them, because they refuse to be convinced.

Alright, we know Star Wars is pretty much good to go as is. How about instead, what tweaks would you give to Trek to help alleviate some of the magical claims they propose? I'm not talking about giving them Star Wars tech or anything, I'm saying what would you change to make the technology seem more 'realistic'? An example would probably be something like the Tri-Cobalt torpedo, which many Trekkies insist is the equivalent of the Death Star (as insisted by a friend of mine on Second Life in our Star Trek group). Or the exponentially growing shock wave from Praxis in Undiscovered Country (see: Ninja Turtle here).

[Stark]

If by 'realistic' you mean 'consistent', you could just dump all the one-shot, one-episode wonders that were contrivances to create forced plots. Even without ironing out inconsistent weapons and shield strengths, removing the outliers would make it more consistent.

[Batman]

Alright, we know Star Wars is pretty much good to go as is. How about instead, what tweaks would you give to Trek to help alleviate some of the magical claims they propose? I'm not talking about giving them Star Wars tech or anything, I'm saying what would you change to make the technology seem more 'realistic'?

Impossible. At least from a current day POV Trek technology IS magic.

An example would probably be something like the Tri-Cobalt torpedo, which many Trekkies insist is the equivalent of the Death Star (as insisted by a friend of mine on Second Life in our Star Trek group).

The fact that it never managed to do anything even remotely comparable unsurprisingly notwithstanding.

Or the exponentially growing shock wave from Praxis in Undiscovered Country (see: Ninja Turtle here).

That's be the COMPLETELY UNDOCUMENTED TO BE ACTUALLY GROWING in anything but SIZE shockwave from TUC, yes?

[harbringer]

The only way to stop some people being ass hats and so on with the debate is a) for my sponser (q etc.) to make them all go "meh" and lose interest and obsess over ummn telegraph poles of the 20th century or b) give them a sudden desire to build a spaceship and travel to another world. Every trekkie comes up with ideas that are to them new but we have heard 1000 times, this is mainly due to star wars fans being active longer as they have a better position to argue from. I feel that most trekkies take it as an insult to their intelligence that we do not bow and scrape to their overwhelming argument that has been heard and refuted/holes poked in before. So unless they can all obsess over telegraph poles instead there is no change you can make to either franchise that will solve the problem (unless you gave them what they believed in which case we would have to give up ) as for making trek technology more "believable" that would fundamentally change what it is and im not sure the fans will thank you for it.

[Baffalo]

The only way to stop some people being ass hats and so on with the debate is a) for my sponser (q etc.) to make them all go "meh" and lose interest and obsess over ummn telegraph poles of the 20th century or b) give them a sudden desire to build a spaceship and travel to another world. Every trekkie comes up with ideas that are to them new but we have heard 1000 times, this is mainly due to star wars fans being active longer as they have a better position to argue from. I feel that most trekkies take it as an insult to their intelligence that we do not bow and scrape to their overwhelming argument that has been heard and refuted/holes poked in before. So unless they can all obsess over telegraph poles instead there is no change you can make to either franchise that will solve the problem (unless you gave them what they believed in which case we would have to give up ) as for making trek technology more "believable" that would fundamentally change what it is and im not sure the fans will thank you for it.

Oh that reminds me. Don't watch the Star Wars and Star Trek tech on History Channel. Total shit. They get the same dudes for both shows, but they're all trekkies so it's all "Star Trek is totally possible and believable while Star Wars is so wrong because Lucas used old war movies for inspiration" and shit like that. Totally biased towards Trek.

[Rochey]

Alright, we know Star Wars is pretty much good to go as is. How about instead, what tweaks would you give to Trek to help alleviate some of the magical claims they propose? I'm not talking about giving them Star Wars tech or anything, I'm saying what would you change to make the technology seem more 'realistic'? An example would probably be something like the Tri-Cobalt torpedo, which many Trekkies insist is the equivalent of the Death Star (as insisted by a friend of mine on Second Life in our Star Trek group). Or the exponentially growing shock wave from Praxis in Undiscovered Country (see: Ninja Turtle here).

Again, I see no need to change anything. Claims that Q or Random Spatial Anomaly #3296 will intervene and save the UFP are automatic admissions of the UFP's military inferiority to whatever is attacking them. Removing them serves no real purpose. Similarly, claims that the UFP suddenly starts mass-producing one-off technologies are also admissions that the standard UFP is inferior.

[Logos]

I can think of some changes. These wouldn't be so much to win a vs. argument with Trek, as to make the SW movie canon consistent with the idea of "a civil war in a society that can create Death Stars with ease, and civilian personal starships more powerful in every way than a UFP ship of the line."

1. Establish Stormtrooper Badassery

The Stormtrooper ineptitude we see throughout the movie canon gives Trekkies the impression that Kirk or Sisko or whoever could whup them without breaking a sweat. And so:

The first thing we should see coming out of the smoke as the Stormtroopers break into the Tantive IV is a volley of flashbang grenades. Then comes a phalanx of Stormtroopers with guns blazing--and hitting their targets. Their armor shrugs off shots from Rebel blaster pistols at least as well as modern SWAT gear withstands pistol rounds in our world, but probably better. Maybe some Rebels bring down a Stormtrooper by concentrating fire on him, or there's a crew using an E-Web. We see a Stormtrooper return fire, shooting the gunner through the eye socket, one shot, one kill.

Next scene: the Tantive crew is trying to rally. We hear someone shout "Aim for the eyes!" This establishes that Stormtrooper armor is actually formidable in combat.

Establishing Stormtrooper badassery yields the benefit that whenever Our Heroes are threatened by Stormtroopers, we have very good reason to fear for their lives, rather than expect them to just waltz through them, leaving piles of dead or unconscious Stormtroopers in their wake.

Nutshell: the defenders of the Tantive IV are a bunch of ship drivers with no armor (except maybe flak jackets) and pistols. Imperial Stormtroopers, being the Navy SEALS/Spetznaz/Waffen SS of an Empire that can pick the best troops from a million plus worlds should crush them like Terminators going through a kindergarten.

2. Defend Stormtrooper Badassery

There should be no Stormtroopers in most of the chase scenes on the DS1. Replace them with naval crewmen in black or gray. If we assume the Imperial forces on the DS1 were ordered to miss as part of the Imperial strategem (rather than the tracking device on the Millennium Falcon being a back-up option), it follows that the Rebels wouldn't believe the ruse if they spend an hour getting chased down long hallways by dozens of Stormtroopers and not get hit or even winged, once. Stormtrooper marksmanship is supposed to be legendary--and not for missing targets. Obi-Wan tells us that Stormtrooper fire is far more precise than that of Sand People--and in TPM we see Sand People sniping Pod Racers blasting by them at 800+ kph (Source: Wookiepedia entry, see also the Star Wars: Podracer game).

Since one of the Rebels on the DS1 is a Jedi, it would probably be a bad idea for the Imperials to give out a general order to all troops to miss any Rebels they shoot at. If Kenobi sensed that in their thoughts at any point, the ruse is up, the Rebels escape, transmit the DS plans to their base, and head off in some other direction. So it would make more sense for the Imps to keep their Stormtroopers in their barracks and leave the Rebel-chasing to troops who would probably have poor marksmanship anyway (like, say, the average Air Force technician whose exposure to firearms ended after a couple days at boot camp).

Nutshell: Establishing and defending Stormtrooper badassery makes the SW universe more consistent, eliminates the shock when somebody points out EU evidence for Stormtrooper armor being able to shrug off nuclear, chemical, biological, and primitive attack. In vs. terms, it makes what should be obvious obvious: that Trekkie ship drivers or Klingon sword-wielding berzerkers would stand no chance against the elite super-soldiers of a galaxy-spanning super-civilization.

Clarification: I am only talking about the Stormtroopers of the OT era. Clone Trooper badassery is pretty well established and defended in the PT, even if Slave 1 could have smeared all the armies on both sides of each battle in a second or two. Are there any Trektards who think UFP starship bridge crews could beat the Grand Army of the Republic?

3. Rewrite the Battle of Hoth

Slave 1 could have creamed the silly Rebel Maginot Line in one shot. The tactics and weapons systems used there make no sense given the power levels the Empire and Rebellion have. If Slave 1 has a tractor/repulsor beam comparable to its guns (IMO likely, since it's a bounty hunter's ship, so the ability to capture and hold other ships would be useful), it would have no trouble cow-tipping the AT-AT's. Or, just mount a pusher plate on the front and use engine thrust able to reach orbit in seconds to shove the things over. Or, just use those 2 KT/shot guns to shoot at the snow under them (assuming their armor is "too strong for blasters" and can't be destroyed directly), so that they're either knocked over by explosions of steam or by falling into the holes thus created.

4. Rewrite the Battle of Endor

Even with Wookies left in (or Ewoks as actual grizzly-sized BEARS instead of cute market-toys-to-kids ad placements) the ground fight in the Battle of Endor makes no sense.

"Base, this is Captain Tokona at the shield installation. We're under attack by natives from the jungle, and they may have Rebel support."

"Roger that Captain, pull your troops back to the installation. Air support is on the way."

Cue Ride of the Valkyries as the Slave 1 (or a T/I, whatever) comes over the forest blazing away with those high-powered guns. Within seconds, the jungle is turned into a firestorm. Meanwhile on the Death Star 2, Emperor Palpatine is saying "Ooooh, how unfortunate for your friends. I can almost smell the barbecue from here. All is as I have foreseen it. My Apprentice."

5. Much Bigger Space Battles

The Death Stars stand as a testament to Galactic industrial capacity. The Empire is able to create--and staff--not one, but two such battle stations without breaking a sweat. There's a post in another thread where the author shows that based on the rate of construction for the DS2, the Empire could churn out something like 2 million ISD's per second.1 Ordinarily, the Empire would have no need to...

But the Rebellion does have an incentive to produce as many ships with as much firepower as it can. The Rebellion is treated as an almost-peer-competitor for the Empire. While the Imperials are never truly worried about it, it does merit the sustained personal attention of the Imperial head of state and his foremost lieutenants (Vader and Tarkin), as opposed to some minor functionary in the Imperial Department of Homeland Security. It's worth building not one, but two Death Stars to defeat. Furthermore, after the death of Palpatine, the Rebellion goes on, over time, to establish the New Republic. IOW, it's not some Galactic Al-Qaida that is genuinely unable to conquer and rule the territory of its adversary.

This means that the Rebellion would have its own massive industrial capacity. Even if they only have 1% of the Empire's industrial and recruitment capacity, they should still have the ability to build something on the order of 20,000 Mon Cal Cruisers every second. And if they've got it, why not use it? They're in a fight for their lives. And if the Rebels are building at that rate, the Empire needs to equal or exceed that to keep from being overrun.

Since the Battle of Yavin and the Battle of Endor are both treated as existential struggles for the Rebellion (i.e, the Empire is expecting to wipe them out at a stroke), we should expect to see all the firepower the Rebels can bring to bear. This is especially the case at Endor since the Rebels are on the attack. And, since Palpatine intends for the Imperial fleet to close the door behind the Rebels while the Death Star blows them away, he should have an even larger force of ISD's handy.

NOTES:

1. http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 7&start=25 Aratech writes:

Take that number and divide it by a six month time period (182.5 days) and it equals out to... 20,345,584.32 ISDs per day. Or, if we really want to get nitpicky, 847,732.68 ISDs an hour, 14,128.878 ISDs a minute, or a whopping 235.4813 ISDs per second.

[Connor MacLeod]

Alot of the problem with the Sw vs ST debate was largely a matter of "my interpretation over others" and which ones were better founded. Another problem complicaitng that was that not everyone played by the same "rules" - ie you had alot of people like Mike and Curtis using SoD style analysis, while others were using something else. Some were more analytical than most, others were better debators, and some were just "average' or so. And of course there were some people (and to be blunt not just on the ST side either) who were just outright dishonest. Throw in some hangers on and synchophants or outright fanboys.

SW always had some "wiggle room" for doubt pre-ICS, even though now how people view that (and view how the ICS changed things) is debated. Some people believe the ICS merely clarified what we already knew. Others think the ICS simply put hard figures into canon and thus removing ambiguity (regardless of whether they think those figures existed before or not.) The reality has become that "Our" (to use the term loosely) interpretation became supported more or less beyond all doubt is all (to the majority, at least.)

The "rest" are those whose minds simply wouldn't change and will simply just change things to suit them, and still do. You get fans like that in all variations of sci fi (probably some in SW too) its not unique to Trek. You just gotta ignore those people, pure and simple. If you somehow got "canon" even more canonical (IE in the movies) they'd still find some way to ignore it - its all about interpretation.

[Serafina]

I agree with Logos about the Storm Troopers - but i do NOT agree about major changes to the Battles of Hoth and Endor.

Making the Battle of Hoth just a curb-stomp air assault would ruin the battle. I totally agree about his points - and i would not object about some strafing runs.
But up-close personal battles, ingenious last-resort actions (using the tow cables) and towering, unstoppable monstrosities leading to desperate, losing battles are just too strong an image to throw away.

But some changes about the Battle of Hoth would be nice:
- The Star Destroyers should try to blast through the shield at first - burning the non-protected areas of the planet at the edge of the shield to slag. This is an excellent possibility to establish BDZ firepower, including some great visuals, without changing the course of the battle - but in increasing the sense of the desparation for the rebels.
-The rebels should USE some other aircraft than just snow-gliders (X and Y-Wings). Again, they could show of their firepower against small targets, leaving the AT-ATs unscathed (or, at least, making them very hard to bring down).
The Snow Speeder trick could still be usedd - after all, employing unconventional tactics is typical for rebels.

About rewriting the Battle of Endor:
The garission on the planet was just plain stupid, no matter what. The only change needed is to SHOW this - lets include some overconfident lines from an imperial officer.

Also, Storm Troopers should not be as badass as described by Logos - their armor should take some blaster bolts, they should show some CLEARLY remarkable marksmanship (taking aim, hitting a distant, barely-visible target).
They already ARE expetional marksmen (shooting from the hip IS difficult), its just not clearly visible to some morons.

Other than that, the ruthlessness of the Empire should be shown - using chemical warfare is an exellent example for this.

[Diplomat]

By divine intervention/selling your soul to the devil/Q, you've been given the power to re-edit or change the Star Wars saga in order to prove once and for all time and without a shred of doubt in anyone's mind the superiority of Star Wars over Star Trek, even to Trektards like Darkstar. What kind of changes would you make to the saga in order to accomplish this?

Easy: Establish that all the the books are canon. Once you do that, all bets are off. Most of DS's case is built on claiming that the books aren't canon-- which I think he does pretty well, but others obviously claim otherwise (although only those who want SW to win).

So if the books were canon, then there's no doubt that DS would admit that SW was superior, 9 ways to Monday.

SW always had some "wiggle room" for doubt pre-ICS, even though now how people view that (and view how the ICS changed things) is debated. Some people believe the ICS merely clarified what we already knew. Others think the ICS simply put hard figures into canon and thus removing ambiguity (regardless of whether they think those figures existed before or not.)

If you readily accept that ICS itself is canon. I certainly don't-- neither does Lucas.

[Diplomat]

If by 'realistic' you mean 'consistent', you could just dump all the one-shot, one-episode wonders that were contrivances to create forced plots. Even without ironing out inconsistent weapons and shield strengths, removing the outliers would make it more consistent.

I'd be saddened indeed if they were that inconsistent-- and thus needless to say, I was saddened greatly by "The Wrath of Khan," and everything which followed. So I do have to agree with you there.

However one thing that isn't inconsistent, is the Federation's power of time-travel; that's not even just "infinite do-overs," but the ability to learn outcomes, technologies etc. and use them anytime you want. Unless the Empire had something similar, I couldn't tell you how they could win: we saw what Janeway did to the Borg, using future-tech just once, with just one ship; if the Fed used it with the whole fleet, and infinite number of times, then you do the math (not counting temporal whatchamacallits and Father-Timeouts). Just thinking about it is The Year of Hell.

[Batman]

By divine intervention/selling your soul to the devil/Q, you've been given the power to re-edit or change the Star Wars saga in order to prove once and for all time and without a shred of doubt in anyone's mind the superiority of Star Wars over Star Trek, even to Trektards like Darkstar. What kind of changes would you make to the saga in order to accomplish this?

Easy: Establish that all the the books are canon.

Um-most of them already ARE, and they generally draw DOWN the Star Wars power level. With the exception of a few outliers like possibly Centerpoint Station EU numbers routinely PALE compared to what we get from the movies.

Once you do that, all bets are off. Most of DS's case is built on claiming that the books aren't canon-- which I think he does pretty well, but others obviously claim otherwise (although only those who want SW to win).

He doesn't get to decide if the books are canon. LFL does.

So if the books were canon, then there's no doubt that DS would admit that SW was superior, 9 ways to Monday.

They are and no he wouldn't. He'd probably do his level best to take all the LOW-level stuff from the books (200 dreadnoughts deciding the war, blasters performing barely better than modern firearms, starfighters that can take 100s of gs of acceleration being killed by atmospheric friction etc) to support his delusion that Trek is superior while IGNORING the stuff that makes the Death Star look like a party candle.

SW always had some "wiggle room" for doubt pre-ICS, even though now how people view that (and view how the ICS changed things) is debated. Some people believe the ICS merely clarified what we already knew. Others think the ICS simply put hard figures into canon and thus removing ambiguity (regardless of whether they think those figures existed before or not.)

If you readily accept that ICS itself is canon. I certainly don't-- neither does Lucas.

Tough luck. LFL says they are and they're the ones that decide canon policy for Wars. Not that the ICSes show anything out of line with the movies.

[Darth Hoth]

While the ICS books do not "contradict" the films as some people claim, they do pump up Wars power beyond what we have demonstrated on-screen evidence for (e.g., the 10 light-minute effective range for medium turbolasers, confirming WEG data on Base Delta Zero). Which does not mean that film evidence is not still more than enough to establish superiority to Trek.

The novel/comic EU tends to weaken Wars (Zahn is probably among the worst at this, well regarded though he might be), but the WEG sourcebooks do not necessarily do so. Indeed, some of the high-end benchmarks (BDZ, billions of inhabited planets, extreme Force powers) come from there. Much as people deride the RPG, I have always felt that their writers did a much better job with scale than anyone else (which by the way includes George Lucas himself - although the films are obviously not minimalist overall, they are mightily inconsistent with regards to scale).

[Batman]

While the 200GT MTLs are indeed never seen on the silver screen that's considerably LESS than you can get by simply downscaling from the DS1. Sure, it's not EXACTLY the same technology, and scaling might not be linear, but that goes BOTH ways. Turbolaser technology might scale UP badly just as easily as scaling DOWN badly, so scaling down from the DS1 might give much too LOW numbers.
200GT MTLs are easily within the firepower range that can be inferred from ANH.
While we never see lightminute (or lightsecond, for that matter) TL ranges in the movies there IS no range limit in space other than by beam/bolt dispersal, which seems to be 'none noticeable' (over the admittedly rather short ranges seen on screen). A bloody blackpowder cannon would have effectively infinite range in space.

[Darth Hoth]

While the 200GT MTLs are indeed never seen on the silver screen that's considerably LESS than you can get by simply downscaling from the DS1. Sure, it's not EXACTLY the same technology, and scaling might not be linear, but that goes BOTH ways. Turbolaser technology might scale UP badly just as easily as scaling DOWN badly, so scaling down from the DS1 might give much too LOW numbers.

True. But the fact remains that without the ICS (or any of the other written material), we have no means of establishing a lower limit close to the same order of magnitude. It is not demonstrated, and we are left with maybes and guesswork.

200GT MTLs are easily within the firepower range that can be inferred from ANH.

From the dialogue, or from scaling of the DS-I? Both suffer from problems that render any conclusions ambiguous.

While we never see lightminute (or lightsecond, for that matter) TL ranges in the movies there IS no range limit in space other than by beam/bolt dispersal, which seems to be 'none noticeable' (over the admittedly rather short ranges seen on screen). A bloody blackpowder cannon would have effectively infinite range in space.

Theoretical ranges are likely to be vast. It does not automatically follow that effective ranges are.

[Batman]

While the 200GT MTLs are indeed never seen on the silver screen that's considerably LESS than you can get by simply downscaling from the DS1. Sure, it's not EXACTLY the same technology, and scaling might not be linear, but that goes BOTH ways. Turbolaser technology might scale UP badly just as easily as scaling DOWN badly, so scaling down from the DS1 might give much too LOW numbers.

True. But the fact remains that without the ICS (or any of the other written material), we have no means of establishing a lower limit close to the same order of magnitude. It is not demonstrated, and we are left with maybes and guesswork.

Of course we are. But it's maybes and guesswork perfectly in line with what the ICS' eventually showed AND what can be deduced from the movies.

200GT MTLs are easily within the firepower range that can be inferred from ANH.

From the dialogue, or from scaling of the DS-I? Both suffer from problems that render any conclusions ambiguous.

Scaling down from DS1. Which, scaling down to a 160m diameter ship with the same weapon-to-reactor-to-everything else ratio as the DS1, gets you 5 orders of magnitude MORE firepower than the Acclamator MTLs. I think we can safely call those 200GT MTLs believable.

While we never see lightminute (or lightsecond, for that matter) TL ranges in the movies there IS no range limit in space other than by beam/bolt dispersal, which seems to be 'none noticeable' (over the admittedly rather short ranges seen on screen). A bloody blackpowder cannon would have effectively infinite range in space.

Theoretical ranges are likely to be vast. It does not automatically follow that effective ranges are.

Yes it does, if you can arrange for the target to be in the same spot as the bolt when it gets there. Which is, of course, the heart of the problem. With lightspeed weapons and a target that has FTL sensors. the target is rather unlikely to STAY for your TL bolts to arrive.Eventually.
I agree that lightminute and up ranges in actual combat between ships are not going to happen, but against stationary/moving on highly predictable trajectories targets that can't or won't change course those ranges are perfectly achievable.

[Darth Hoth]

Of course we are. But it's maybes and guesswork perfectly in line with what the ICS' eventually showed AND what can be deduced from the movies.

I emphatically am not disputing the canonical ICS numbers, or claiming that they contradict the films. What I did say was, without the ICS we would have no way of establishing this lower limit. The pre-ICS debate was typically working with single or low double-digit gigatons, because those were the ones we conclusively could.

Scaling down from DS1. Which, scaling down to a 160m diameter ship with the same weapon-to-reactor-to-everything else ratio as the DS1, gets you 5 orders of magnitude MORE firepower than the Acclamator MTLs. I think we can safely call those 200GT MTLs believable.

I am aware of this. But there are enough uncertainties that we cannot establish such limits on ISD firepower from the film alone; the scaling may not be linear, and so on. Going only by demonstrated firepower onscreen, the best examples we have are from TESB.

Yes it does, if you can arrange for the target to be in the same spot as the bolt when it gets there. Which is, of course, the heart of the problem. With lightspeed weapons and a target that has FTL sensors. the target is rather unlikely to STAY for your TL bolts to arrive.Eventually.
I agree that lightminute and up ranges in actual combat between ships are not going to happen, but against stationary/moving on highly predictable trajectories targets that can't or won't change course those ranges are perfectly achievable.

Essentially, yes. But again, the films show no upper limit on combat ranges, so again we have no way of establishing those. We have lower limits of hundreds or thousands of kilometres, and can make sensible extrapolations and predictions, but here, too, that goes only so far. The ICS provides a limit, where otherwise the data would be ambiguous.

[Batman]

Oh I absolutely agree that none of it was actually SHOWN in the movies. I just think that downscaling from the DS1 leaves such enormous wiggle room for downscaling NOT to be linear yet easily achieve 200GT MTLs in an Acclamator that claiming the ICSes massively upped Wars firepower WRT what they COULD do (as opposed to what they were SHOWN to do, which before you mention it, was all you ever argued) is preposterous.

[Ghost Rider]

So you two can demonstrate that the variety of evidence was off their gourd and not actually taking evidence from the movie because...your personal miniscule knowledge? I mean for a time when Saxton made his findings, and moreso everyone within the whole of ASVS were not going off of the vast EU that wasn't there. They got their evidence from...the movies.

Really, I've seen the basis of where they got this information and I want to see if either of you can show that you're not being ignorant and just going supposition because neither can derive what they got.