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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Lit Complete Vehicles Rerelease: Lets dissect the Home One and Medical Frigate amongst other new stuff!

Discussion in 'Literature' started by CeiranHarmony, Jul 30, 2013.

  1. Mange

    Mange Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Jan 11, 2003
    Thanks!
     
  2. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

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    Sep 2, 2012
    I think it was Saga Edition's Starships of the Galaxy that implied it- saying that Star Destroyers, in groups, can perform orbital bombardments to destroy all factors of production, these are codenamed Base Delta Zero, and that "worlds such as Caamas have been devastated by such tactics".
     
  3. Gorefiend

    Gorefiend Chosen One star 5

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    Oct 23, 2004

    It just mentions Turbolaser strikes, how planet shielding saves world from it and that Caamas is a world devastated by a Turbolaser strike. It mentions BDZ in the paragraph above as a tactic to wipe out all life and industry (and by that leaving it open to be conducted in many ways, because they seem to actually have read up on it unlike a certain someone ;) )
     
  4. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

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    Sep 2, 2012
    Given that the ISD I has double-barrelled main turrets (in Complete Vehicles) and the ISD II octet turrets (in screenshots)- is it likely that the ISD II's turbolasers are individually less powerful than those of the ISD one, even if the total power is larger?

    Squeezing 8 guns into a turret slot that originally held 2, might require some compromises- like making those guns smaller.
     
  5. blackmyron

    blackmyron Chosen One star 7

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    Oct 29, 2005
    And that's puzzling, as it has been referenced elsewhere.

    Considering that nothing else was apparently changed or updated in the old material other this, I have to wonder if it just got lost in the shuffling.
     
  6. Gorefiend

    Gorefiend Chosen One star 5

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    Oct 23, 2004
    Wasn’t it also in one of those random lines pointing at random stuff? I am sure those can easily get lost.
     
  7. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

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    Sep 2, 2012
    A more detailed list of "Things left out" was given on the first page of the thread:
    I couldn't find any reference to the waste heat put out by an Invisible Hand ion cannon, either- which I've seen talked about before in the context of Complete Cross-Sections.
     
  8. FTeik

    FTeik Jedi Grand Master star 5

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    Nov 7, 2000
    Just that a certain someone doesn't even use Caamas as an example.

    Where SWTC gets its ideas on BaseDeltaZero:

    According to the ISB a star destroyer has "enough firepower to turn a civilized world to slag" and accordting to the SWTJ it can "reduce a planet surface to smoking debris in a matter of hours". ​
    That description would be pretty pointless, if it didn't also refer to planet-wide city worlds like Coruscant or civilized planets larger than the average terrestrial world (planets like Byss with 21,600 km diameter or Malastare with 18,880 km diameter).​
    According to ScavangerHunt a BDZ caused the surface of Dankayo to be "evenly cratered, the topsoil to be "atomized" and the atmosphere to have "drifted away". It also mentions mop-up operations conducted by TIE fighters and troops, most likely for the possible survivors within "deep-planet survival shelters". THAT is the part fighters and troops play in a BDZ, not the actual bombardement.​
     
  9. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

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    Sep 2, 2012
    The atmosphere of the moon? Or was it an airless moon, with an enclosed base- which was punctured, and the atmosphere of the base drifted away?

    As to mop up operations- a metre-deep layer of molten rock would take weeks to cool, or more- making it a bit problematic for those troops.
     
  10. blackmyron

    blackmyron Chosen One star 7

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    Oct 29, 2005
    Yeesh. I mean, what are we supposed to take away from this?

    I suppose we could ask Leland, although I know he gets tired of these types of questions... then again, maybe he'll be relieved it's not about Episode VII. [face_laugh]
     
  11. Gorefiend

    Gorefiend Chosen One star 5

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    Oct 23, 2004
    You are aware that stuff survived on Dankayo? The Empire even shuttled down to find pretty much fully intact Rebel underground base. The whole plot of that book is about that in fact. Also the book never once mentions the term BDZ, because it simply is not one.



    Nothing in that makes it only done via planetary bombardment and if you read the whole thing in a World to Conquer it can actually only be ordered by a ranking Army Officer. You might also want to read up on BDZ in Galaxy Guide 9 under the First Sun Mobile Regiment and what Captain Fel has to say in the Hutt Gambit Novel, as they make it clear it is something else. ;)
     
  12. King of Alsakan

    King of Alsakan Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Nov 25, 2007
    Just wanted to restate that I was wrong on that last bullet about NTB-620 naval Bomber, that guy is still there.

    I haven't had time to give it a really good look to see the differences between the editions. The Pammant one stood out on the Invisible Hand page, because it was a rather long comment in the original edition. I am guessing it was done for space considerations and nothing more.

    I am also guessing there are more on the Invisible Hand page that I didn't see at first glance.
     
  13. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

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    Sep 2, 2012
    The relevant quotes have been quoted a few times before:

    1.) If Army commanders deem the surface situation to be beyond hope of victory, or if the proper political authorities directly command it, the Navy is to execute a series of punitive attacks upon the target. The attacks are given code names which vary according to the mission and change frequently. The only code name which has not yet changed is "Base Delta Zero", the code for complete destruction of all "assets of production", including factories, arable land, mines, fisheries, and all sentient beings and Droids. The code name has not yet changed so there can be no possible confusion when a Base Delta Zero is ordered—The Imperial Sourcebook

    2.) The First Sun is a repulsorlift infantry regiment designed primarily to run search-and-destroy missions, which he troops of the unit jocularly refer to as SLAMs (Search, Locate, Annihilate mission). Indeed, the regiment often undertakes missions with the same objective as the "Base Delta Zero" command: the elimination of all assets of production, including factories, land, mines, fisheries, droids, and sapient beings (particularly any witnesses that may have seen atrocities being commited).—Galaxy Guide 9: Fragments from the Rim describes the First Sun Mobile Regiment

    Han swallowed, his mouth dry. Base Delta Zero was an order that called for the decimation of a world—all life, all vessels, all systems—even droids were to be captured or destroyed.
    ...
    The worst problem, as far as Fel was concerned, was implementing order Base Delta Zero on Nar Shaddaa. Fel knew that last wasn't Greelanx's fault. The Sector Moff had issued that order. But in the admiral's place, Fel would have at least tried to get Sam Shild to modify that instruction. The Emperor's directive had been to shut down the smuggling operations out of Nar Shaddaa and other smuggler nests, especially the gunrunners. The directive hadn't included anything about razing the entire moon.
    ...
    He knew images of the flaming buildings would haunt him, as he gave each order to fire. And afterward... they'd have to send down shuttles and ground troops to mop up, and he, Fel, being a conscientious commander, would have to oversee that operation. Visions of smoking rubble strewn with blackened corpses filled his mind, and Fel took a deep breath.--The Hutt Gambit

    most common counterargument in the case of Fel was "He's a starfighter pilot primarily- so he doesn't understand the true nature of such an operation".
     
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  14. Gorefiend

    Gorefiend Chosen One star 5

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    Oct 23, 2004

    Yeah sure, he is Captain of a Heavy Cruiser and an Officer of the Empire, he ought to know ;)
     
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  15. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

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    Sep 2, 2012
    True dat.
     
  16. Tzizvvt78

    Tzizvvt78 Jedi Grand Master star 5

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    Jun 12, 2009
    In order to even slag planets, the Star Destroyers and Super Star Destroyers need heavy firepower. In Slave Ship, by Kevin Wayne Jeter, there's the following passage: "the laser cannons being mounted into the open skeletal frames required bracing and recoil-dissipation casings that would have withstood explosions measured in the giga-tonnage range. Anything less, and a single shot fired in battle would rip a destroyer or battle cruiser in two, a victim of its own lethal strength".
     
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  17. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

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    Sep 2, 2012
    Which is odd, considering that turbolaser beams are supposedly massless (if you believe Saxton).
     
  18. blackmyron

    blackmyron Chosen One star 7

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    Oct 29, 2005
    One of the consequences in physics is that such beams still have momentum, and force. They can produce a kickback like a physical weapon would if enough energy is involved.
     
  19. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

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    Sep 2, 2012
    But gigatons? I think Jeter was overdoing things a bit there.

    There's also later sources that seemed to have moved away from the whole "massless" thing- The Essential Guide to Warfare, for example- seems to have gone with "bolt of glowing energy" rather than "invisible beam with the bolt as a negative side effect, weakening the strength of the beam."
    TEGTW Endnote on the subject:
    http://jasonfry.tumblr.com/post/20907109370/eg-to-warfare-endnotes-pt-2

    “Blaster technology is one of those things that really reveals Star Wars’s pulp-fiction credentials. Everyone knows what a blaster is — a gun that fires zippy glowing energy bullets. There’s also a well-established Expanded Universe vocabulary of “blaster gas" and “galven coils" to describe the bits of the guns. But serious attempts to describe a blaster in realistic terms are, as Jason Fry would say, pretzelly — not least because writers have, over the years, been working with at least two completely different concepts.
    “The first of these ideas originated in some of the earliest RPG material from West End Games, whose authors were evidently thinking of a chemical laser — a real-world device in which a laser beam is fired through a gas chamber that acts as a focusing lens. This has the advantage of being a bit of real science, but comes with the big drawback that chemical lasers don’t shoot glowing bullets like the weapons in the movies, and also means all the destructive firepower of the blaster has to come from the power pack, which has to be generating truly massive amounts of energy.
    “Pretty soon a new description of blaster technology emerged, in which the laser (if mentioned at all) simply acted as a trigger, a little like the gunpowder that fires a bullet, charging up a slug of “blaster gas," which gets packaged into a glowing bullet by the electromagnetic rifling in the barrel. Haden Blackman went all out with this interpretation. It describes what we see in the movies a lot better than the “chemical laser" version, and hints that the “blaster gas" (the stuff Lando mines on Bespin) has some weird unspecified properties that contribute significantly to the firepower of the weapon.
    “You can probably guess which of the two is my preferred interpretation of the tech, but I hope that the end result in Warfare is ambiguous enough to be read either way.”

    (turbolasers being described as scaled up laser cannon, and laser cannon being described as scaled up blasters, in Complete Vehicles, supports the notion that turbolasers also work this way).
     
  20. King of Alsakan

    King of Alsakan Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Nov 25, 2007
    Next thing you know they will have a story about a laser so powerful that it can annihilate entire worlds, ;), sorry couldn't resist

    I think that the Star Wars universe will always have a maximalist framework, but be minimalistic in its description. I also think no one minds on either side will ever be swayed :)
     
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  21. King of Alsakan

    King of Alsakan Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Nov 25, 2007
    I just took a pretty good look at the Invisible Hand page before and after the editing. The only other thing I saw changed, which may have been brought up earlier, was the inclusion of mass driver deck gun emplacements and the removal of the comment regarding 4.8 megaton point defense lasers.

    I will try and do a few other side by side comparisons tomorrow.
     
  22. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

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    Sep 2, 2012
    Slave Ship's figure was certainly a huge jump from the kind of energy figures given in books of the time:

    He tightened down on the trigger, pulsing kilojoules of scarlet energy into an eyeball's cockpit. (X-wing: The Krytos Trap page 54)

    Two New Republic Assault Frigates, the Tyrant's Bane and Liberty Star, cruised in toward the Golan station. Though each ship was less than a third as long as the station, they bristled with fifty laser cannons and poured terajoules of coherent light into the Golan. (X-Wing: Isard's Revenge page 7)
     
  23. FTeik

    FTeik Jedi Grand Master star 5

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    Nov 7, 2000
    What part of deep-planet survival shelter don't you understand? If it already takes some yotta-joule to melt a planetary surface only ONE meter deep, what do you think how much energy would be required to reach a deep-dug underground shelter?

    How else are they supposed to achive a level of destruction, that covers everything from population centres and resources? Resources, that would include deep underground ore mines or fisheries (Lando actually ownes an ore mine, which is underwater in HoT). Sent stormtroopers to shoot every fish individually? And the fighters and troopers Fel is thinking about are for mop-up-operations, just like the troops on Dankaya. In case somebody survived in a shelter located deeper than the bombardement went.
     
  24. FTeik

    FTeik Jedi Grand Master star 5

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    Nov 7, 2000
    I've come to the conclusion, that the term "blasters" and "turbolaser" have come to be overlapping terms for different things.
     
  25. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

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    Sep 2, 2012
    As far as I can tell, Complete Vehicles doesn't say that- in the glossary, it describes blasters, lasers, and turbolasers as different sizes of the same basic weapon type.