Lit Why people admire this much the Mandos (in universe)

Ridculously underpowered? Or ridiculously overpowered- given various scenes where fragments of the casing of a torpedo hit a ship, or where the effects, in atmosphere, are minimal?

 

Canderous in KOTOR 1: "When Mandalorians ride into battle we carry weapons large enough to level cities."

In the war, the planet Serroco was nuked so heavily that the horizon was a wall of flame.

 

boba fett didn't survive the sarlacc pit, i don't care what your stupid book says, once episode 7 comes out you'll see. honestly boba fett is the most overrated character in the history of anything. jango fett is awesome though.

 

Why would you come in here, on the board specifically devoted to EU discussion, just to trash what other people like?

 

Aye. In the Kotor comic, you could see that Mando nukes produce explosions so big you can see the mushroom cloud extend into space.

 

Hello there. This is the Literature forum. People come here to discuss the EU. If you don't care for the EU, that's fine. But there's no need to insult other users and be needlessly confrontational. Continued belligerent behavior will be viewed as trolling and treated accordingly...

 

Ever see Battlestar Galactica where Caprica is nuked by the Cylons?

Serroco was kinda like that.

 

How powerful a nuke does it take to level a city though?

I was wondering if they were multi-megaton rather than multi-gigaton- and thus, either much less powerful than turbolaser bolts, or, turbolaser bolts are not multi-gigaton.

 

The Little Boy Atomic Bomb had a yield of just 16 Kilotons, and that was enough to obliterate most of Hiroshima. I'm guessing that Mandalorian variants are in the megaton yields. Less than ideal to use in space combat, but the radioactive fallout in atmospheric combat would make them preferable to turbolasers.

We can assume that nuclear weaponry in Star Wars works along similar principles as their turbolasers, that they can be dialed to certain settings in order to limit collateral damage. In an episode of The Clone Wars, troops mention how Umbaran Starfighter's missile complements had 100 megaton yields. Now that would pretty much result in wiping out entire battalions with one launch, but when the missiles are launched, the actual damage is contained to a small area. Enough to blow the crap out of a droid battleship, but without the massive collateral damage.

It's like the bed of nails concept. The smaller the focal point, the more energy is applied. So rather than getting a carpet bombing effect, you have a high intensity explosion limited to one area. That's why Turbolaser bombardment on planets doesn't cause the gigantic explosions that a nuke would. They're built to punch through shields, so rather than carpet bombing a shield with shots, you have these focal points where the energy is focused to overload them and cause them to drop.

Mandalorian Nukes are used like conventional nukes however. High yield warheads that do blanket damage over large areas. In space, not the best idea. In atmosphere, utterly devastating.

 

The problem is that the multi-gigaton turbolasers were based on the presumption that each bolt could affect (melt) a huge area of planetary surface at a time. Maybe they can be set on "wide beam" and instances of them only affecting an acre-area per bolt, are "narrow beam"?

 

I was thinking beam intensity. Low intensity shots for fighter defense, like a flak cannon, and high intensity shots for shield bombardment.

 

The bombardment missiles they were using were in that range, not the ones on the fighters. Plus megatons of what? Kuati fruit pies? Why should anyone in the GFFA be using TNT for scaling.

 

Same reason that they speak english, audience convenience.

 

Rare bird eggs for the Easter Islanders is all I'm going to say.

 

This is consistent with some depictions of the thermal detonator, which have a precisely defined blast radius in which all matter is disintegrated.

 

Interesting question with some solid and intelligent discussion behind it. I for one have never been overly infatuated with the Mandos. I went the a period of loving them, but slowly became disenchanted as their overall culture of personality wore down on me, I think peoples main love for the Mandos is their attitude of doing whatever it takes to accomplish their goal. It is a culture heavily rooted in an element of tradition, and encases a huge amount of a brotherhood. In many ways Mandos are like one big family, and that has a certain appeal to it especially pending on your background.

My lack of enjoyment for them steadily decreased when their worship from others hit to much of an unrealistic level. I'm talking about worship from other characters rather than just general fan love. I think if I saw more characters be disenchanted with them I would have enjoyed them better Ironically. However, when Jedi leave the order to join the mandos who clearly have a ruthless view of the ends justify the means then I have a hard time swallowing it.

I totally get the love for them, but some of their flaws and lack of those flaws being called out in the literature drives me to not enjoy them as much. Flaws need to be acknowledged in your characters otherwise it comes across as though you endorse all those flaws. That is entirely my own opinion though.

 

I could see that applying to proton torpedoes and concussion missiles- both of which have baradium charges like the thermal detonator. Proton torpedo has a proton detonator on top of that, which releases a burst of protons that deplete the shields of a target.

Turbolasers it might be harder to justify such an effect for. Energy releases may be fairly similar at the high end of the scale.

If one were to fire an asteroid at a target (K.E. equivalent to 200 gigatons), detonate a nuclear bomb on another target (200 gigatons), fire a laser pulse at a third (energy equivalent to 200 gigatons) fire a burst of high energy particles at a fourth (equivalent to 200 gigatons)- observing all of them- just how different would each be?

 

I think that it's like the death star laser. They have recharge rates, so prolonged fights use lower intensity shots in order to not deplete their reserves before recharging.

As for your 200 Gigaton comparison, I have to ask: In vacuum or in atmosphere? Because that would have a major impact as well.

 

A sufficiently thick atmosphere might absorb energy from a beam (or cause an asteroid to break up before impact) it is true. Still, that much energy released all in a moment, will have a dramatic effect no matter what the source is.

 

Right, but the actual effects would be different. For one thing, the most destructive effect of a nuke is the kinetic shockwave, which is caused by traveling through atmosphere. The explosion itself is destructive yes, but it is the huge wave of force that pushes out from the initial explosion that wipes out most of the landscape. In a vacuum, you only have that initial explosion and whatever force the missile was traveling at when it struck its target.

An Asteroid would suffer similar problems. In atmosphere, yes it would be devastating, but in space not so much, since you aren't getting that shockwave.

 

True. Still, the books with "200 gigaton turbolasers" characterize it as 200 gigatons yield- implying the effects are similar to those of detonating 200 gigatons of bomb.

In the Millennium Falcon handbook, it states turbolasers, lasers, blasters, etc, are a beam of charged particles coupled with a burst of intense light (Apparently also, Han's blaster can be switched to produce only the light and not the particles, when he's practicing with remotes- so as to do no damage).

 

Indeed, Star Wars blasters and laser cannons aren't true lasers themselves, but particle beam weaponry adapted into bolts. I think that the big difference between the turbolaser and the nuke is that a turbolaser will have similar results in both atmosphere and vacuum, otherwise mounting laser cannons on AT-ATs would be like putting a destroyer gun battery on an M1 Abrams.

To bring this back into perspective with the thread, Mandalorians made effective use of whatever weaponry they had during the war. It would be easy enough to just level cities from orbit with turbolaser strikes, but they chose to nuke worlds instead. Extremely effective as terror weapons, and using their stockpile to its fullest potential. Save the lasers for spaceships while using nuclear weapons in the environment they were built for.

Also, we can assume that turbolasers became much stronger over time. The top of the line Interdictor Cruisers from the Mandalorian Wars took hours to destroy the planet Taris during the Jedi Civil War.

A modern Star Destroyer would be taking out entire blocks with single shots, compared to this thing chugging out massive amounts of laser fire and only whittling away individual buildings. So during the Mandalorian Wars, we can guess that nuclear weapons would have been and still are better suited to bombardment than turbolasers.

 

If you believe the "one Star Destroyer can take out the entire surface of a planet in one hour" claims- then it wouldn't be a block per shot- it would be more than a hundred square km per shot.

If you don't believe it (1 acre areas are seen being taken out with every shot, in the Darksaber novel, by shots from an Executor which has previously been ordered to fire at full power) then nukes might actually be better for wide-area devastation in more eras than the Mandalorian Wars.

 

In my opinion, the Mandalorians have become quite overrated.
Some sources depict them as the best warriors the Galaxy has ever seen.
They appear in almost every comic or book.

Don't get me wrong, I love the way the EU has expanded their story, but sometimes I feel they are being used too much.