Question about SW weapons

[Crossover_Maniac]

1). Do turbolaser bolts travel at c, not the visible bolt but the invisible beam.

2). Does jamming work both ways? That I mean if an ISD is jamming a ship's sensor, does it also cause interference on its own sensors.

[Howedar]

1). Do turbolaser bolts travel at c, not the visible bolt but the invisible beam.

I don't even think God knows. If He does, He's sure as hell not letting us know.

In all seriousness, there are several theories floating about, all supported by canon. Some have a lightspeed invisible portion, some have no invisible portion at all.

2). Does jamming work both ways? That I mean if an ISD is jamming a ship's sensor, does it also cause interference on its own sensors.

Nobody knows. Since both sides are engaging in jamming, it usually doesn't matter one way or the other.

[Crossover_Maniac]

1). Do turbolaser bolts travel at c, not the visible bolt but the invisible beam.

I don't even think God knows. If He does, He's sure as hell not letting us know.

In all seriousness, there are several theories floating about, all supported by canon. Some have a lightspeed invisible portion, some have no invisible portion at all. Nobody knows. Since both sides are engaging in jamming, it usually doesn't matter one way or the other.

Wouldn't jamming limit the effective range of turbolasers down to 1 to 2 light-seconds since if they were attacking anyone from, let's say 30 light-seconds away, they would only see the enemy where he was 30 seconds ago. Then, they have to guess where the enemy might be one minute in the future given the fact that the information of his position, velocity, and acceleration is 30 seconds old and it takes turbolasers at least 30 seconds to reach the target. Then have to wait 30 more seconds to see if they hit the target. Jamming forces battles to take place at distances of less than 600,000 km, and let's not forget SW accelerations of several thousand g's making them highly manueverable, and all that much harder to hit.

[omegaLancer]

first the invisible potion travel at C.... that from the SWIC for AOTC, and it the part that damage. the visible potion travel much slower, and is used as a tracer element, which answer the next questions.


Jamming works both way, but Tubro laser uses optical Methods to target. One of the sensor packages carried by SW ship are series of hi power CCD which feed information to targeting computers... Which then give a firing solution to gunner...

In the case of CW ( for fans of Andromeda) their optical sensor are good to 23 ls, SW are good for several light minutes...

jamming is SW is mostily used to confuse missiles, and also the more powerful units, like the one mounted of ISD and the DS can even distort space.

Also jamming can be burnt thru but that requires a ship to get in close ( why fighters mostily carry missiles) to achieve a lock on . but most fighters fire their missile load dumb ( without lock) to prevent the missile from locking on to a friendily by mistake ( since the Jammer on a capital ship are stronger and better than those on a fighter)..

[omegaLancer]

The time lag is also true for any sensor, other than faster than light...

the fact is that for long distant combat ( Longest range of a trbo laser is about a light minutes) is that have large number of battery, which allow you to fire a volley , combine with targeting computer ( to estimate and give you a firing pattern), hi fire rate ( at least one shot per gun every 2 seconds) and Turbo lasers can produce an explosive flack like effect. it would be similiar to an artillary barrage, filling a volum of space to buffer the enemy ships by a floor of explosive energy. It would be highily effective against inbound missiles and fighters. a little less against fleeing small ship ( but they have weak shield any way) and large capital ship would not be at all ( but would be sap some shield energy before closing)...

In the case of combating large capital ship, The targeting computer would also attempt to give you a predicted course of an enemy ship , giving you the most likily location.. it would be similiar to combat of large surface ship before radar, launching boardside in an attempt to score one or two hits as you close to short or killing ranges...

but this all depends on the targeting computer and the behavoir of the opponents. if they are going evasive and manueveing randomily at long ranges yo have to be lucky if they are attempting to incept or close you should be able to score a greater nmber of hits.. A good targeting computer with enought data would be able to direct a highily effective firing solution ( like Hub display of jet fighter cannon) leading the bolt to where the target would be when it arrives..

[His Divine Shadow]

Only my theory is supported by all the evidence

And whilst turbolasers propagate at C speeds they also dissipate, only the medium and bigger guns on ISD's have that kind of reach, the small weapons on corvettes and such are around <100.000km.
Fighters have atleast 30.000km ranges from SbS.

[His Divine Shadow]

first the invisible potion travel at C.... that from the SWIC for AOTC, and it the part that damage. the visible potion travel much slower, and is used as a tracer element, which answer the next questions.

I doubt, severly doubt it's intentional use is that, I think it's just a natural side effect and people thought "what the heck, works as a bad tracer atleast".

[omegaLancer]

I could not see why it a natural part of the actual bolt, but if the visual potion was a by product it is a useful one... Like incendary rounds also being natural tracers...

But the visual data provided by the Bolt, combine with the vast computer power available to SW ship ( hell just image the Computering power of a Protocol Droid ) would allow after several shot a targeting computer to a figure out a ship Vector and barrack it with a volley of turbo fires...

but then just viewing the ship should allow a target computer to plot course, speed and come up with a targeting solution..Being able to pour out a constant stream of fire also helps...

[His Divine Shadow]

I could not see why it a natural part of the actual bolt, but if the visual potion was a by product it is a useful one... Like incendary rounds also being natural tracers...

But the visual data provided by the Bolt, combine with the vast computer power available to SW ship ( hell just image the Computering power of a Protocol Droid ) would allow after several shot a targeting computer to a figure out a ship Vector and barrack it with a volley of turbo fires...

but then just viewing the ship should allow a target computer to plot course, speed and come up with a targeting solution..Being able to pour out a constant stream of fire also helps...

It's hardly that usefull, the beam moves at C, it's like throwing a baseball after a bullet.
And with such computer power, using the tracer is just ineffective.
I don't think it's effective and I don't think there is much they can do about it, personally I think that TL's are naturally the beam like weapons we see in AOTC, but in an attempt to minimize the loss of wasted energy they where able to shrink it down to a bolt instead of something that covered the entire beam.

[Crossover_Maniac]

Space combat with light-speed time delay

Targeting at long distance with visuals: even with ships as large as an ISD, a distance of a few light-seconds would make visual targeting a challenge. Let's take a hypothetical battle between a Mon Calamori cruiser and an ISD. The ISD is circling the Mon cruiser at a distance of 10 light-seconds mantaining a constant distance from its foe. Both ships are jamming each others FTL sensors forcing them to rely on visuals. The Mon cruiser targets the ISD with its turbolasers. At a distance of 3 million km, the ISD would have an apparent angle of 0.0000306 degrees. It's the same apparent angle that bacteria would have (1 micrometer in length) if you were observing it at about 5.89 meters away. In other words, trying to hit an ISD is like trying to target a single bacterium with laser beams with a beam width of 1/100th of an nanometer. Top it all off, let's say the ship starts to circle the Mon cruiser at 30km/s. It could change it's position at a rate of 5.73E-4 degrees/s if it kept the same distance from the cruiser. This is like the same baterium shifting its position by 0.019 mm/s or 19.1 times its length every second. And this doesn't take into account acceleration or vector changes in 3-dimensional space. Targeting cannot be done by hand. Human percision is not that good. And just being off by 0.1 arcseconds, will cause a turbolaser to be off by one mile. And you're not considering the implications of time delays. In the ten seconds it took light from that ship to reach the gunners and the ten seconds it takes for the turbolasers to reach their target, the ship could change position, velocity, and acceleration to avoid being hit. The use of turbolasers for distance greater than 2-3 light-seconds is almost impossible without FTL sensors or a 'spray and pray' tactic of desperation. This is why the Commonwealth rely so heavily on missiles that can adjust their course and on route and make up for any inaccuracies in targeting, and why the point defense lasers are only used for short range.

Turbolasers: massless or with mass
Normally, anything considered a 'laser' would fire massless particles (photons). I know, turbolasers aren't really lasers, but bare with me for a second. But lasers don't produce flak bursts. In fact, I can't see how any particle can 'burst' unless the particles underwent decay somewhere along its path. And massless particles can not decay. The reason why is explained right here:

7. Massless particles must travel at the speed of light, while other cannot reach this speed. Why are all massless particles stable? If evidence is found that neutrinos spontaneously decay into other particles, would this imply they have mass?

Massless particles are timeless. If you do some special relativity and look at the time dilation equation, you can show that the "proper time" of a lightspeed particle can be zero, even when the outside observer measures infinite time. (Strange but true.) Let's say that a massless particle, such as a photon, had some decay constant -- a length of time that passed before it was likely to decay. What does that mean to a photon? Nothing. If no time passes for a photon, it will never get to any kind of decay, no matter how short the decay constant is. Time, for a massless particle, is meaningless.

So, turbolaser bolts can not be composed of massless particles. However, if they were composed of a particles with a short rate of decay. The flak burst could be the bolt decaying into energetic particles with distructive energy. The distance for the turbolasers to flak could be set by varying the velocity of the turbolaser bolt. While a velocity increase from 0.9999 c to 0.999999 c wouldn't mean much to outside observer, the difference in time dilation effects are quite large. Time dilation at 0.9999c would be 0.014 allowing the turbolaser particles to exist 71 times longer than the same kind of particle that was stationary to an observer. And the time dilation at 0.999999 c would create a time diation effect of 0.0014 increasing the turbolaser rate of decay 700 times longer in relations to a stationary observer. This makes more sense than massless particles exploding in the middle of their path.

[His Divine Shadow]

Turbolasers are laser/particle hybrid weapons, and from all accounts, it seems the light part is the most damaging one.

[His Divine Shadow]

The particle portion could be the visible bolt, that would fit with my theory and the VFX shown would work as I predicted.

Bolt velocity variable though, no upper limit but from some of the books and the movies where TL's and laser cannons are used in beam modes, looks it can probably dry-hump the speed of light.

[Crossover_Maniac]

Turbolasers are laser/particle hybrid weapons, and from all accounts, it seems the light part is the most damaging one.

So, if you're near a 200 gigaton turbolaser bolt when it flak bursted, you only get a small fraction of the energy from the shot?

[Darth Garden Gnome]

Well some people try to explain the visible part of a laser blast as a harmless side effect of the bolt (ref EGWT), others as a tracer (ref I don't know, probably exsists), I'll tell the true reason for it. So we can all see it and say 'Ohhhhhhhhhh, ahhhhhhhhh.' I mean the movies would be kinda boring if we couldn't see the lasers, now wouldn't it?

I know this doesn't answer the SW universe's reason for it, so I'd say it's a side effect. It wouldn't be any good as a tracer.

[Crossover_Maniac]

The particle portion could be the visible bolt, that would fit with my theory and the VFX shown would work as I predicted.

Bolt velocity variable though, no upper limit but from some of the books and the movies where TL's and laser cannons are used in beam modes, looks it can probably dry-hump the speed of light.

Not the laser part though. Massless particles always travel at c.

[His Divine Shadow]

So, if you're near a 200 gigaton turbolaser bolt when it flak bursted, you only get a small fraction of the energy from the shot?

Unknown, a deliberate flakburst might be set up so that it first fires a weak beam, then when the bolt reaches it's preset destination a followup beam of much greater power is fired, injecting alot of energy into the bolt in a shor enough time to make it explode.

[His Divine Shadow]

Not the laser part though. Massless particles always travel at c.

I think thats what I said.

[Crossover_Maniac]

So, if you're near a 200 gigaton turbolaser bolt when it flak bursted, you only get a small fraction of the energy from the shot?

Unknown, a deliberate flakburst might be set up so that it first fires a weak beam, then when the bolt reaches it's preset destination a followup beam of much greater power is fired, injecting alot of energy into the bolt in a shor enough time to make it explode.

If you're shooting at a ball of plasma, most of the energy from the shot is going straight through, sort of like a bowling ball through fog.

[His Divine Shadow]

If you're shooting at a ball of plasma, most of the energy from the shot is going straight through, sort of like a bowling ball through fog.

Where's those yottaton calcs...

[omegaLancer]

why would visual targeting be any different than a radar or any other sensor ( ones that are not faster than light)

In all cases you are seeing radiation that has been emitted some time in the past, the greater the distant the longer the lag.

even a homing missile would need to be able to caluate the future position of it target, or it run out of fuel just making contant course correction...

If a target keep a constant Acceleration and after spending several second observing the target, any computer can give a likily future position of ship..

Even complex manuevering, a firing pattern can be created by a power ful enought computer that would allow a volley to intersect the most likily area of space that a ship may be entering...

Combine with the Flack effect ( I post in C.O.M forum on the nature of TL) would increase the likily hood of ship being expose to radiation of blast...

As for Turbo laser themselve. I think the Spinning of the Beam( as Saxon state in SWIC for AOTC), create a soliton . This is what allow for the increase range, and they can set it to disband at specific ranges causing the photons in the soliton to scatter in spherical pattern.. Like a bomb...

[Master of Ossus]

Mmmm... I see the spinning bolt as more of a system to avoid as much power loss as possible. It seems to me that a bolt that travels straight is merely releasing energy at a constant rate. I don't see how something can be fired with spin, preserving much of its energy, and then explode suddenly releasing most or all of it.

I am not sure how they perform the flak-burst, but it appears that it would only inflict some of its energy in damage to a ship nearby. The benefit is that against smaller ships the weapon would explode and help do some damage more often to a nearby ship (near-misses are now hits). That would be enough to do considerable damage to a starfighter. Against larger ships, it helps prevent wasted energy caused by firing straight through a target. Now, that energy is released explosively within the target capital ship, causing greater damage, instead of having some of the energy pass through the ship and become wasted.

[omegaLancer]

spinning should not effect the energy loss of the system, the energy a beam weapon suffer is usually do to the length of the focus of the beam, the lost of energy do to interacting with gas atoms( interstellar hydrogen)..

Even a laser that come close to being as parallel as possible would still lose energy as the beam expanse. The loss of Energy due to the interaction with instellar hydrogen should be very little.. So the Spinning most have to do with the shaping of the Wave function of the individual photons..

Creating a Standing wave, the photon will stay brunch together unless they meet a similar standing wave... So what must be done is the packet is not shape as a true soliton, but a packet of waves very close to being one, and like a giant particle it would decay, breaking into the individual photons and scattering them...

but it just a theory...

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

AFAIK, it doesn't really lose ENERGY - the total energy emitted is the same, even if it is just ordinary light. It is just that its intensity is reduced at the expense of affected area. Multiply intensity by affected area, and it should come out the same after minimal losses to interstellar gas.

[omegaLancer]

you are right what i meant to say was power/intensity... given a far enought distant a laser would be no more powerful than a flash light, but if you can create a soliton using the laser light it never would loose intensity...

The problem is making such an waveform, we cannot now, but it would exist in nature.. The best known example was water wave in canals, which lead to the discovery of soliton..

The most famous example of soliton ( but never seen) is magnetic monopoles, but any form of energy could be form into soliton. Gravity waves ( would appears like a black hole..) electron magnetic, sound, etc....

[omegaLancer]

found the exact model of TL flak attack
did some research on soliton theory, seem that light soliton are being research and are called light bullets, an unstable light bullet would break apart after traveling like an explosion. From the light bullet home page http://www.sfu.ca/~renns/lbullets.html

Unstable Halo States: One-Halo Simulation
In addition to the qualitatively similar Gaussian-like (approximately bell-curve shaped) solitary waves discussed so far, the governing equation also admits so-called "halo states" comprised of a bright central ball surrounded by a number of spherical shells. In analogy with the inverted pendulum mentioned earlier, these states are found to be unstable to propagation, the smallest amount of noise tickling the solution and causing it to decay into a number of "normal" light bullets. This first simulation depicts the propagation of the one-halo state. We have performed a somewhat complicated mathematical analysis that allows us to understand why the system initially decays into the tube and ball structure. In the final image, the front-most light bullet is seen to exit the computational mesh and reappear at the back wall.

go to http://www.sfu.ca/~renns/images/halo2.html to see the simulation and watch as the Light bullet explode into several smaller light bullets..