-AngelKnight
Note: this is my FIRST post on this website. Anyones comments would be appreciated but if you have nothing positive or useful to say dont say it.
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
Moderator: Vympel
Bzzt - do NOT do that on this website. While you are certianly right to ask for useful comments, you are WRONG to even try and discourage negative comments.Note: this is my FIRST post on this website. Anyones comments would be appreciated but if you have nothing positive or useful to say dont say it.
There is also the fact that the there is a good chance the Death Star's shields are too strong for the Eclipse to penetrate, given that it is stated to only be able to sear continents which would be below the minimum energy required to penetrate planetary shields as well as presumably the Death Star's shields.Serafina wrote: And of course the Death Star can be destroyed or at least stopped with sufficient firepower. However, even another Death Star is unlikey to survive a hit by a Death Star blast (given that it can blow up shielded planets). Hitting the dish is certainly a good way of disabling it's strongest weapon, but it still carries a lot of fighters and is armed to the teeth with other weapons, while being a substantial base for enemy operations even of the superlaser is disabled.
The problem is that the minimum energy required to destroy a planet is much less than the energy required to penetrate planetary shields given that Alderaan's shield was able to resist the Death Star's blast for a fraction of a second. If the Eclipse can penetrate planetary shields, then it can almost certainly destroy planets; it is impossible for it to be able to penetrate shields and not overcome the gravitational binding energy of a planet. See here: http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tec ... Beam2.html bottom of the page.AngelKnight wrote:The Eclipse's superlaser was capable of slashing through any planetary shield to crack open a planets crust and sear entire continental land-masses. And the Eclipse's superlaser has to my vast SW knowledge NEVER been fired at full power.
... or shields don't operate such that one joule must be output by the reactor for each joule that the laser fires. Shield physics are entirely unknown. If the eclipse could penetrate planetary shields but could not destroy a planet, this would be the obvious explanation - that it's not just a matter of firepower, that the DS was not purely DET or that the Eclipse was especially effective at penetrating shields for whatever reason.The problem is that the minimum energy required to destroy a planet is much less than the energy required to penetrate planetary shields given that Alderaan's shield was able to resist the Death Star's blast for a fraction of a second. If the Eclipse can penetrate planetary shields, then it can almost certainly destroy planets; it is impossible for it to be able to penetrate shields and not overcome the gravitational binding energy of a planet.
I haven't posted here in some time, and it's been even longer since I've read the X-Wing novels -- but I seem to recall that the shields were actually lowered for the Lusankya because the NR didn't want to deal with the catastrophic fallout of a Star Dreadnaught exploding inside the shields or starting to indiscriminately fire on the surface. In short, they let her go because the other alternative was having an Executor sitting pretty inside Coruscant's shield barriers.Eternal_Freedom wrote: But, the key point there, the dreadnought blew through two layers of what are apprently the best shields in the galaxy. Obviously they are less effective stopping stuff going out than in but it's still an impressive feat
I haven't posted here in some time, and it's been even longer since I've read the X-Wing novels -- but I seem to recall that the shields were actually lowered for the Lusankya because the NR didn't want to deal with the catastrophic fallout of a Star Dreadnaught exploding inside the shields or starting to indiscriminately fire on the surface. In short, they let her go because the other alternative was having an Executor sitting pretty inside Coruscant's shield barriers.[/quoteMaxentius wrote:Eternal_Freedom wrote: But, the key point there, the dreadnought blew through two layers of what are apprently the best shields in the galaxy. Obviously they are less effective stopping stuff going out than in but it's still an impressive feat
That very well could be -- so my mistake, in that case.Crazedwraith wrote:Just read the relevant section and there's no suggestion that this happens. It mentions twenty seconds of constant fire 'opened a hole' in the lower shield.
You may be getting confused with Star By Star, where Courscant's defences are lowered rather than let civilians ship to smash right into them.
The distance between Alderaan and DS during the planet's destruction is often stated to be around 100 000 km. With most of the 10^38 joules released into space, it should have been impacted with something like 2*10^31 joules - without anyone on the station so much as knocked down. I would say the Eclipse penetrating the shields is, indeed, no guarantee.Adamskywalker007 wrote:There is also the fact that the there is a good chance the Death Star's shields are too strong for the Eclipse to penetrate, given that it is stated to only be able to sear continents which would be below the minimum energy required to penetrate planetary shields as well as presumably the Death Star's shields.Serafina wrote: And of course the Death Star can be destroyed or at least stopped with sufficient firepower. However, even another Death Star is unlikey to survive a hit by a Death Star blast (given that it can blow up shielded planets). Hitting the dish is certainly a good way of disabling it's strongest weapon, but it still carries a lot of fighters and is armed to the teeth with other weapons, while being a substantial base for enemy operations even of the superlaser is disabled.
Not certain. SW beam weapons seem to have an invisible component, which is sometimes separate. In Alderaan's case, there was a secondary explosion, probably from that very component (the first explosion, for all we know, could be just the upper levels vaporizing) - and if we don't assume the invisible part carried most of the energy, we should assume (from the percentage of the visible beam absorbed) that the DS wasn't built with so much as a 100% overkill against existing shields - and no one will design an Ultimate Weapon that way. It must, after all, be capable of defeating not only existing shields, but any possible upgrades caused by its threat.Adamskywalker007 wrote:The problem is that the minimum energy required to destroy a planet is much less than the energy required to penetrate planetary shields given that Alderaan's shield was able to resist the Death Star's blast for a fraction of a second.
Eternal_Freedom wrote:Actually, the Lusankya[/] blasted it's way OUT of Coruscant's shields, both layers of them, after vaping a skyhook just to be evil and then trading broadsides with a Golan station.
But, the key point there, the dreadnought blew through two[/] layers of what are apprently the best shields in the galaxy. Obviously they are less effective stopping stuff going out than in but it's still an impressive feat
Could be both.Eternal_Freedom wrote:Good point.
Although, IIRC, the book describes turbolaser fire splashing across the shields
So looks like they didn't fire on ground stations at all. Although, it would also seem like she used her light or medium guns on targets of opportunity until it was ready to open her main guns on the shield. Hard to mesh with TESB though, since another SSD and its escorts couldn't smash the rebel theater shield, which should be less than a planetary shield, while the Lusankya could do it alone in 20 seconds.The Krytos Trap pg 323-324 wrote:With the prow stabbing up into the sky, the Lusankya's thrusters ignited. Searing blue plasma vaporized huge chunks of cityscape beneath the hip's aft end. The destroyer began to move forward and upward out of the column of smoke that marked its birth. A ship that boasts a crew of over a quarter of a million individuals mush have killed ten times that many lifting off.
The massive ship turned its attention on a skyhook floating off its starboard bow. Altering course slightly, the ship gave more of its turbolasers and ion cannons a chance to bear. A Super Star Destroyer possessed enough weaponry to reduce a city to rubble from an orbital assault. At point blank range, the weaponless skyhook offered the gunners a deliciously easy target.
The turbolaser batteries in the bow started firing at the skyhook as they came into range, then the broadside assault shifted to other weapons as the ship slid past. The verdant laser-bolts came so fast and so close that the whole sheets of energy seemed to pulse from the Lusankya to the skyhook. In seconds what had once been an elegant disk with an Ithorian jungle paradise at its heart became a melted demilune with a forest fire crashing into the mountain district's towers.
As the Lusankya picked up speed, the gunners shifted their aimpoints and began firing at the upper atmosphere. Their shots hit and splashed color into the lower of the two shield spheres encasing the planet. Created to stop starhip assaults from without, they proved just as powerful against an attack from within. Even so, after twenty seconds of the Lusankya's withering barrage, a hole opened in the lower shield.