40,000 Tons = 27.7 Kg.....

[Mange]

I have learnt over the last few mths, that indulging in such mind numbing crap helps shorten one's life span....

This however, takes the cake...

100 Megatons? THe SS-18 carried a 18 or so Megatonne warhead and that was meant to blow up a city only. Something 5 times that destroy the planet? Is he nuts?!! *head explodes*

But we ordinary mortals can't expect to understand him as he's "far more scientifically-minded than most".

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

**** that moron. The Tsar Bomba was rated a mere 100 MT and it was blown at half power. By his freaking assertion, we'd sooner have ISDs powered by Fission reactors and so forth. We could freaking achieve 100MT with modern tech alone.

My head hurts.

[Jim Raynor]

OK, I haven't commented on this issue, since I have not read much about what Saxton wrote on the topic, and quite frankly I'm not very interested in discussions about fuel. When I saw Sarli citing WEG game mechanics and counting fuel cells, I just stopped reading. But this Sarli guy is sounding like a moron. Too bad. Without knowing about his previous pseudoscientific attempts to refute Saxton's ideas with pseudoscience, I thought he was a pretty cool guy at first because of the way he got rid of that SSD crap.

Great, another idiot who doesn't know what the hell a gigaton is, and thinks something like a single nuclear bomb can destroy the world. What is it about SW rpg fanboys that make them all wank the universe DOWN? Seriously, SW is the only fictional universe I've ever seen where the serious fans all want to pussify it.

This is the reasoning I presented to Leeland Chee and his continuity minions over at LucasFilm when I submitted Jedi Counseling 94, and they approved it. I can only come to the conclusion that they agreed with my analysis of Saxton's assumptions and that my retroactive continuity provided sufficient means of reconciling the older sources on fuel with Saxton's numbers.

Is it just me, or is this guy starting to sound like Traviss? He's citing official approval (which we all know is perfect ) as if it means his ideas make sense. And what makes him think that Chee knows, understands, or even gives a crap about this minutia about fuel cells?

[Surlethe]

While his post was mind-numbingly stupid, the circle-jerk that followed it was just nauseating. I'm curious how he thinks 100 megatons can blow the atmosphere off a planet and atomize the topsoil.

[Meest]

In short, I find Sarli's reasoning to be a lot more consistent with what I would call "real person reasoning" than Saxton. Saxton is arguing from a pure physics point of view...

What is this crap. So if you don't use big physics words it makes more sense? How? This is like anti-technobable "He doesn't use quantum therefore I think this explaination is more reasonable. Why would I agree with pure physics."

[Mange]

In short, I find Sarli's reasoning to be a lot more consistent with what I would call "real person reasoning" than Saxton. Saxton is arguing from a pure physics point of view...

What is this crap. So if you don't use big physics words it makes more sense? How? This is like anti-technobable "He doesn't use quantum therefore I think this explaination is more reasonable. Why would I agree with pure physics."

The regular posters over there seems to be following the "party line", Sarli is right and Curtis Saxton is "inaccurate".

[K. A. Pital]

Okay. 100 megatons for BDZ? Is that what's he's implying? God... you never run out of retarded people. 100 megatons, the potential yield of a Tsar Bomb. Earth should've been half-destroyed by now, then, since we blew up 50 MT... and I wonder how many megatons have puny Earthlings blown up since 1945.

Just what the? Scientifically minded? More like technobabble-minded.

[Illuminatus Primus]

I love the part where he claims 100 megatons is enough to wreck the planet and cause nuclear winter, citing Carl Sagan.

Somebody should bitchslap him with that. And even Carl Sagan's fucked up nuclear winter scenario would not destroy all natural resources.

[nightmare]

I've seen this commented several times already, so I better kill it before it becomes a brain bug.

Gary M. Sarli did NOT "fix" the Executor's stats in the Star Wars Miniatures Starship Battles game. That was Sterling Hershey - although they probably had contact between each other since they had to come up with overall workable stats.

Today, we've got the first in a series of previews of the new miniatures. It all starts when Gary Sarli cruises up in the Viscount-class star defender, the largest ship of the Light Side faction. But Sterling Hershey revs up the Executor-class Super Star Destroyer, the largest Dark Side ship. These two capital ships are exclusive to the Starship Battles Starter Set.

[Mange]

I've seen this commented several times already, so I better kill it before it becomes a brain bug.

Gary M. Sarli did NOT "fix" the Executor's stats in the Star Wars Miniatures Starship Battles game. That was Sterling Hershey - although they probably had contact between each other since they had to come up with overall workable stats.

Today, we've got the first in a series of previews of the new miniatures. It all starts when Gary Sarli cruises up in the Viscount-class star defender, the largest ship of the Light Side faction. But Sterling Hershey revs up the Executor-class Super Star Destroyer, the largest Dark Side ship. These two capital ships are exclusive to the Starship Battles Starter Set.

Thank you for that.

[Ritterin Sophia]

and I wonder how many megatons have puny Earthlings blown up since 1945..

510.4 MT, since the original testing to the Nork Explosion.

Edit: I called the bastard on it, this is what I got:

First, saying I said something moronic would still be a CoC violation, so watch it.

Second, I'm far more scientifically-minded than most, and I have far more understanding of physics than you apparently believe. Many get caught up in individual numbers without considering the problem holistically -- this is the sort of thing that leads to people misunderstanding my arguments, because I only think holistically. (That's why I'm a game designer.)

Third, I'm beginning to get more than a little annoyed at the appeal to authority people do all the time, invoking Dr. Saxton'sname as if he outranks Lucas and God. He makes mistakes (sometimes big ones), and I doubt that he takes himself anywhere near as seriously as some of the fanboys out there. :rolleyes:


Now, I'm going to take time out of my busy schedule and working to meet deadlines to answer your questions. So if there are any stat block errors in the new book, it's your fault. (Don't think I won't put your name in the book as the source of the errors! I'll do it! )

Okay, let's start at the beginning ...

I stumbled across the Wookieepedia article when I was looking for something else, and I saw that someone was trying to figure out how to make the JC 94 and the Incredible Cross-Sections number match. I took the time out of my incredibly busy Saga Edition schedule to write a completely informal comment about where the numbers come from and how they are based on continuity sources that pre-date Saxton's ICS books for AotC and RotS. Saxton's numbers didn't match those previous sources, presumably because he wasn't aware of them; as Saxton notes on his website, he gives priority to older sources when settling canon disputes, so I can only assume this was a matter of ignorance and not intentional violation of continuity. (Note: "Ignorance" is meant in the literal sense of the word, not as an insult such as calling someone "ignorant" and so forth.)

However, given that I was aware of the apparent contradiction in numbers, it was up to me to come up with a means of addressing it. (That's one of our cardinal rules for SW continuity: If there is any way to make two apparently contradictory sources reconcile with one another through creative interpretation, then that interpretation must be used.) In the comments I sent to LucasFilm for approval on JC 94, I pointed out the discrepancy and noted that it would easily be explained away if there was some sort of "virtual" mass at work such that Saxton's numbers in ICS were technically true but still meshing with the "real" mass used in older sources on starship fuel. Given that Leeland Chee and his people approved the article, it stands to reason that they thought the argument and the solution was sound.

Keep in mind that I wasn't writing a dissertation on the subject; I was providing completely informal, behind-the-scenes insight into the reasoning that went into that article and how the contradiction was resolved. If you expect particularly high standards in such a simple comment, then you have unreasonable expectations of Star Wars professionals who have much more important things to do with their time.

Now, if you want to know why Saxton's numbers don't work, do the math. If you use his numbers and actually calculate the delta-v of a starship, it is completely incapable of performing the sort of maneuvers we see them perform on screen for any length of time. Go ahead, calculate it -- I have, and I'm pretty good at this stuff. (I find Saxton's lack of delta-v calculations to be a curious omission considering the other details he calculated on his website and in ICW; one might conclude either that he doesn't know how to do said calculations [very unlikely] or that he knew the numbers were a little hard to swallow [plausible].)

Finally, Saxton's numbers are based off of several sources wherein he attempts to calculate the energy required for a star destroyer to do what we see on screen: the comment that a SD uses more energy in a hyperspace jump than "some nations" use in their entire history (a quote originally from WEG's Imperial Sourcebook); the calculation of the energy that shields must be able to absord given observed asteroid impacts (in ESB); the calculation of energy required to vaporize an asteroid (again in ESB); and, finally, a calculation of how much energy it would take to perform a "Base Delta Zero" command. (For more information, read this article on Saxton's website -- I write this reply assuming that the reader is intimately familiar with the calculations and assumptions Saxton puts forth on that page.)

All the numbers are in the same ballpark except this last one, and those of us who know Star Wars really well can immediately spot the error: He decided that "Base Delta Zero" (the destruction of all "assets of production" including cities, mines, arable land, factories, sentients, and droids, according to its original source in WEG's Imperial Sourcebook) meant "total liquification of the entire surface of the planet to a depth of 1 meter." Needless to say, this is not necessary to fulfill the definition of a Base Delta Zero! Not by a long shot. It appears that Saxton interpreted the phrase "reduce a civilized world to slag" quite literally and, more importantly, assumed that this was a reference to Base Delta Zero (but it most certainly is not). The "slag" comment is another "flavor text" quote from WEG's Imperial Sourcebook, not a part of the Base Delta Zero definition or discussion -- Saxton unfortunately conflated the two concepts in addition to treating the word "slag" as absolutely literal instead of as hyperbole or an expression (much as how you or I might use the word "nuke" to refer to something other than a nuclear detonation, or how you might say that a military force "crushes" its opponent without literally referring to physical crushing).

To give you an idea: Saxton calculates that it would require over 400 million megatons of energy, equally distributed over the surface of a planet, to melt its entire crust to a depth of 1 meter. Now, as a comparison: 100 megatons is enough to wreck the Earth and cause nuclear winter (see Carl Sagan's "The Nuclear Winter"), and the total US and Soviet arsenals during the height of the Cold War was somewhere around 400,000 megatons (give or take a hundred thousand), enough to completely obliterate every human on the planet several hundred times over. Saxton, meanwhile, assumes that the Imperial Navy would choose to spend its time liquifying the surface of a planet for no good reason -- why keep shooting once everyone is dead and there's nothing left in a usable form? -- and thus he comes up with a number about 1,000 times more than the combined arsenals of our entire planet. (Another comparison: This is 8 times more than the energy that would be produced by a 6-mile asteroid or comet smashing into the Earth, the current likely suspect for killing the dinosaurs and almost all life on the planet other than the the smallest scavengers such as rodents and insects.)

Now, realistically, is that necessary to fulfill the definition of "destroying all assets of production"?

Also, Saxton assumes that a single Star Destroyer can do this in one hour (ostensibly to prevent the enemy from evacuating from the other side of the planet) -- I can only assume that he completely forgot that the definition of Base Delta Zero was given in the context of Imperial Navy support to an Imperial Army occupation of a planet, a mission that would normally require about a squadron of capital ships (described in the section on the Order of Battle just a few pages later in the Imperial Sourcebook). Thus, the Star Destroyer wouldn't be acting alone, so it need not have this capability all by itself, and it certainly wouldn't be necessary to do it in less than an hour because the Navy would have already established space superiority prior to the Army's pacification efforts -- thus, there wouldn't be anyone with any starships left who could evacuate. (And even if there were, the acceleration of a SD is thousands of G's -- it can circle a planet the size of Earth at an altitude of 1,000 km in 100 seconds, so the odds of being able to take off and get away before the SD shows up to annihilate you 50 seconds later are virtually nil.)

So, we have the following things that I, as a fellow scientist, can only characterize as erroneous assumptions:
* Overestimating the energy required for Base Delta Zero, by at least a factor of 1,000. (Note: Even at this reduced level, the surface would be "slagged" in the form of ejecta from the craters created from turbolaser blasts -- the liquified rock would essentially settle over the entire planet's surface to an average depth of approximately 1 mm, give or take depending on how much is blasted out of the planet's gravitational pull.)
* Underestimating the amount of time required for a Base Delta Zero, possibly by an order of magnitude or even more.
* Underestimating (again perhaps by an order of magnitude) the number of starships that would normally be involved in a Base Delta Zero.

Put all that together, and you get a completely inaccurate estimate of how much energy the turbolasers must be capable of projecting and, by extension, how much energy the reactors and engines must be capable of generating.

Saxton himself notes that this number was several orders of magnitude higher than any of the other calculations he'd made (hyperdrive, shields, vaporizing asteroids, etc.); now, rather than question these assumptions and ask if it's really reasonable to think that the ship needs to liquify the entire surface in 1 hour all by itself to fulfill its mission, he just uses with the higher numbers. To me, this is a serious mistake -- you should always be ready and even eager to challenge your starting assumptions, especially when dealing with so many unknowns.

As a result of this, he gets the unrealistic figures that he put in ICS -- complete annihilation of 40,000 tons of fuel every second at peak capacity. That's 857 million megatons of energy every second, by the way, considerably more than he himself calculated was necessary -- the ship would only need to produce 112,000 megatons of energy every second to get the grossly inflated numbers he calculated, so he's off by a factor of 7,600 even using his own numbers. (Oh, and the fuel consumption listed here is for a Venator-class star destroyer, considerably smaller than an Imperial-class, so its energy requirements should almost certainly not be higher than that of an ISD.)

Using more reasonable numbers (perhaps 1/1000th of that he calculated for Base Delta Zero, roughly equivalent to the real-world nuclear arsenal as well as his own estimates of the hyperdrive energy requirements), you'd only need to annihilate maybe 5 kilograms of fuel every second at peak combat performance. If you assume that a single jump to lightspeed requires as much energy as an hour of combat (AJ#6, JC#94) and that the transition to lightspeed takes 1 second, then the absolute highest peak energy production required would still only be the equivalent of annihilating less than 19 tons of fuel -- consumption during sustained operations would, as I described, be far less than this.

This, of course, leads to a problem with Saxton's unwillingness to use anything other than real-world propulsion -- even if reaction mass was accelerated nearly to the speed of light, this rate of consumption (< 5 kg/s) would only provide 1.5 x 10^9 N of thrust. Unless a Venator only weighs about 50 metric tons (comparison: this is something around the same as a main battle tank here on Earth), it would be impossible to reach the 3,000 Gs of acceleration established for the ship. Realistically, a Venator probably weighs maybe 1 to 10 million metric tons, but I could see it being as little as perhaps 100,000 tons (i.e. slightly more than a real-world aircraft carrier despite being substantially larger) if we assume that SW technology has incredibly light yet unbelievably strong materials with which to build. So that puts the "real physics" rate of thrust anywhere from 2,000 to 200,000 times too small for the Venator's performance. How much you get this extra thrust without using reaction mass and conventional physics? See below.

[indent] SIDE NOTE (something I pointed out on Wookieepedia): With this kind of energy consumption, a one-second burst from a ship's ion engines would immediately render a planet uninhabitable. (Crunch the numbers yourself -- if your calculator says anything other than "planet = nuked," you made a mistake.) I asked them why anyone would bother building a Death Star when any random schmuck can wreck a planet, but no one came up with a good answer before I stopped bothering to follow their comments.[/indent]

Now, do you see why I called his numbers "unreasonable"? He wasn't thinking of second-order interactions, and he certainly wasn't thinking about a military operation in the context of known military doctrine (even though the operation and the doctrine were both outlined in the same book just a few pages apart). Maybe my standards are too high on this subject because my PhD dissertation is on the subject of military doctrine, but I honestly expect more from a fellow SW author, particularly one who is also a fellow scientist. So, yeah, my standards are definitely too high.

Given that Saxton's energy calculations were off by a very wide margin, can you see any reason why his rates of energy consumption would have to be revised downward? And, given this, it would stand to reason that some means other than completely conventional rocketry must account for the maneuver characteristics we observe in SW starships? And, given that SW technology already includes methods of gravitational manipulation (which, by logical extension, requires manipulation of the spacetime continuum), that they might find a way to use this gravity-control technology to "get more bang for their buck" when using ion engines? Perhaps changing the relative inertia of the reaction mass at the moment it is propelled from the ion engines, thereby providing more thrust than that mass and speed would normally produce? (This is certainly plausible given that SW technology already includes "inertial compensators" that reduce inertia and the force exerted on a body within a limited space, so is it unreasonable to think that a technology that does the reverse is also within the grasp of SW technology?) And if we did this, using this gravity-manipulated "virtual mass" as a measurement for purposes of calculating thrust and delta-v, wouldn't this allow Saxton's numbers in ICS to match up with presumably "real mass" numbers used in older sources, such as WEG's Adventure Journal?

[indent]ANOTHER SIDE NOTE: A lot of people get caught up on the term "fuel cells" and attack that as being the source of confusion, but frankly this just illustrates the complete lack of understanding of the magnitude of the problems I just illustrated above. "Fuel cells" in JC 94 are abstract measurements of the amount of fuel required -- they aren't literally "fuel cells" in every case, but smaller ships such as X-wings and YT-1300's tend to use them. (Yes, X-wings have fuel cells -- the hoses in ANH are refilling them.) Still, even if larger ships use a completely different kind of fuel (and they do), is there some reason their fuel would be millions of times less efficient than the fuel used in X-wings and YT-1300s? Saxton's numbers would require that to be the case.[/indent]

This is the reasoning I presented to Leeland Chee and his continuity minions over at LucasFilm when I submitted Jedi Counseling 94, and they approved it. I can only come to the conclusion that they agreed with my analysis of Saxton's assumptions and that my retroactive continuity provided sufficient means of reconciling the older sources on fuel with Saxton's numbers.

If anyone disagrees after all that I have outlined above regarding Saxton's flawed assumptions and his unreasonable rates of fuel consumption and his inexplicable reluctance to allow SW technology to use different methods of acceleration than our own primitive rocketry uses ... well, tough poodoo for them. I get to write Star Wars and they don't.

[[EDIT: In response to darth_hideous's comment (post #50), I was to point out that the previous was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. I thought the smiley would convey that it was intended to be funny, not serious, but I probably should have laid it on a little thicker to make sure that came across on the screen. Apologies all around for any who perceived pompous conceit in this failed attempt at humor.]]

In the end, though, the whole thing is pretty dumb -- Lucas, special effects artists, and novel authors certainly weren't thinking in terms of real-world physics when they wrote this stuff ... they just wanted something that would look cool. So to try to put on the real-world-physics straightjacket and assume your way into a conceptual corner just to avoid using "balonium" is a bit silly. You have to be willing to assume that SW technology encompasses an understanding of physics far beyond our own -- otherwise, you get taken to a really sad and lonely place, and then the "normal" people laugh at our nerdly obsession. We owe it to our fandom to make the normals stop laughing!

Note that I said him making a statement without being able to show his calculations and expecting us to take it, was moronic.

[Batman]

Is there anything worth reading past his 'I see everything holistic' idiocy?

[Stark]

Ugh. Not only is it more EU bullshit... but when you're starting your post with 'don't flame me I'll ban you', that's a bad sign.

So how long until all of Dr Saxton's work is undone and buried under far more accurate RPG mechanics?

[Knife]

Pfft, I notice none of these asshats come here. You'd think, really, if they wanted to hash out their 'scientific numbers' they'd want the input of the fans who play with the numbers.


I, for one, would like to see Surlethe or such, fuck with em.

[Darth Wong]

Now, as a comparison: 100 megatons is enough to wreck the Earth and cause nuclear winter

What a fucking moron. The Soviets set off a 60 megaton blast back in the 1960s and it didn't do anything to the global environment. The K-T extinction asteroid was 100 million megatons. Anyone who performed even cursory investigations into the matter would know this; even Sagan never made such a preposterous claim despite this guy shamelessly appealing to Sagan's authority, and Sagan's work has been subsequently debunked.

This portion of his E-mail proves it: he's a blithering idiot whose claims of physics knowledge are entirely bullshit. I have reference sources that I cited on my website's pages regarding BDZ which completely demolish his claims, and it's quite clear that he is simply lying about his claims of physics expertise.

[Darth Wong]

The problem with Sarli is that he has delusions of scientific adequacy, and he is trying to spin his ignorant bullshit as if it's some kind of scientific improvement on top of what Dr. Saxton has done.

HE IS LYING. He doesn't know jack shit about physics, otherwise he wouldn't have made the horrifically stupid statement that 100 megatons could "wreck the Earth".

[K. A. Pital]

He doesn't know jack shit about physics, otherwise he wouldn't have made the horrifically stupid statement that 100 megatons could "wreck the Earth".

In a nuclear winter. Yeah.

the total US and Soviet arsenals during the height of the Cold War was somewhere around 400,000 megatons

Those arsenals never exceeded several thousand megatons (obivously nowhere close to 400 000). Can't he NOT lie for just a moment?

This is 8 times more than the energy that would be produced by a 6-mile asteroid or comet smashing into the Earth

No, it's not. Sarli is an idiot. 100 000 gigatons (KT asteroid) != 400 000 megatons.

The meteorite's estimated size was about 10 km (6 mi) in diameter, releasing an estimated 500 zetajoules (5.0×1023 joules) of energy, approximately 100,000 gigatons of TNT, on impact. By contrast, the most powerful explosive device ever detonated, the Tsar Bomba or Emperor Bomb, had a yield of only one-twentieth of a gigaton.

By contrast, the ravings of the moron:

This is 8 times more than the energy that would be produced by a 6-mile asteroid or comet smashing into the Earth, the current likely suspect for killing the dinosaurs and almost all life on the planet other than the the smallest scavengers such as rodents and insects.

So - 400 000 megatons is 8 times more than 100 000 gigatons.

P.S. Really, he should be called on it. Lying so badly should offense anyone with common sense abound.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Who here is Teethirtyfour and who's Xessmithia? I'm convinced it's two of you assholes! If everyone wants to see the thread I can pull it up.

Edit:Here

[K. A. Pital]

I'm no one. I stopped chatting with SW EU folks since that 3,000,000 clones for a Galactic war bullshit.

[Ritterin Sophia]

I called him on it for you, Stas.

[phongn]

Johnston's Archive has some good data on nuclear weapons stockpiles - the global arsenal appears to have peaked around 25GT in the mid 1970s.

[Jim Raynor]

One thing I would like to point out:

I keep seeing a lot of people around here defining Base Delta Zero as melting the surface of a planet. That IS what Saxton clarified it as in AOTC ICS, but when the issue is whether Saxton was correct in his analysis of SW firepower (before writing them into the ICS books), the minimalists will claim that you're wrong.

As defined in WEG sources, BDZ is the destruction of all natural resources, life, etc. on a planet. Melting the surface was not mentioned. Now, this does NOT mean that Saxton is wrong. Saxton's assumption that the top 1 meter of a planet's surface is melted in a BDZ is extremely conservative. After all, melting the surface to such a shallow depth will NOT eliminate all resources, nor would it wipe out entrenched armies.

The Imperial Sourcebook (among many other sources) also states quite plainly that an ISD can slag a world, and there is NO evidence that that's merely non-literal "flavor text" as Sarli and his fanboys would like to think. And when you throw in these other examples of gigaton-level firepower, it's evident that Saxton's calculations were in line with previous canon.

Really, all these minimalist complaints about BDZ are just semantic games. Regardless of what a BDZ operation is, SW ships have gigaton-level firepower. But even if you're right, and a BDZ would have to involve that kind of firepower, it would be helpful to "idiot proof" your arguments by not saying that BDZ is the melting a planet's surface, when discussing pre-ICS EU.

EDIT: spelling

[Jim Raynor]

On Saxton's "1 hour" BDZ assumption:

This is NOT the big deal that everyone from old-school Trektard whiners to currently Sarli is making it out to be. When you combine this with the ridiculously low assumption that the surface is only melted to a depth of 1 meter, it comes out that Saxton's turbolaser calculations are STILL conservative. Really, it could be that a BDZ takes 10 hours, and the surface is melted to a depth of several more meters. You would still get calculations in the same ballpark.

[K. A. Pital]

Good freaking god, does it really matter whether it's 1 hour or not, or one ship or three? If it's 24 hours, that's /24, if it's 3 Star Destroyers that's /3 (although clearly the thing is doable with 2 and 1 SDs as proven by quotes), but the magnitude of numbers stays THE SAME. Idiots. If you need 3 SDs to put out a planet, that means one SD still generates the aforementioned shitloads of energy.

[Xess]

Who here is Teethirtyfour and who's Xessmithia? I'm convinced it's two of you assholes!

Xessmithia is this particular asshole.

I can't believe how much Sarli likes his word games, and his not so subtle threats of banning.

"You used the wrong word, you will be banned if you do it again." Loser.