Saga Ever wondered how powerful blasters, laser cannons or death stars are?

Well I've catalogued some of the most impressive examples of star wars guns shooting at stuff and hosted them on a site, with some analysis. This site is largely inspired by Curtis's technical commentaries, but goes into more visual detail on blasters, the laser cannons on starfighters and tanks. And ofc has stuff from TCW too. It does/will cover other stuff too, like armour acceleration and power, number of planets and industrial capacity - not just guns.
http://www.imperialguidetowarfare.com/

The sites not very artistically wrote, just goes straight into the capabilities and stuff.

 

Some things from Technical Commentaries are in error- the 43m wide sensor domes, for example- it's based on the Imperial I - but the Imperial II's domes are smaller.

And other things based on that assumption- the 53m length of the Falcon, the sizes of the asteroids, etc, are also excessive as a result.

 

Yea - but to be fair these are very small errors. I mean the Falcons size being slightly smaller isn't going to change the results regarding the asteroids by more than ten times, and those calculations are somewhat conservative because they all assume 100% efficiency to be fair. I've not done a page on point defence yet, but I wont be using the 53 meter length for the falcon to scale the bolts or asteroids.

 

There's also the argument that shattering the asteroid into tiny fragments, rather than vaporising it into molecules, will produce roughly the same visual effect, at a fraction of the energy.

 

Indeed. I had considered this, but going frame by frame I noticed one asteroid was struck by a bolt and was disintegrating through the middle and white hot, indicating it was superheated all the way through. A larger asteroid was struck on one side with a white flash before the bolt was fully absorbed, and the side facing us showed signs of deforming due to heat, also indicating the asteroid was superheated throughout. Personally I think there is room for the asteroids being partly vaporized and partly melted, because some frames show them blue/white hot and some show them red hot (~7000 and 1000 degrees respectively).

 

Interestingly, the more recent books (Clone Wars: Incredible Vehicles, and Death Star Owners Workshop Manual) tend to contradict Saxton's books (the Incredible Cross Sections series) - at least when it comes to scale.

It appears that there may be a return to 120km Death Star and 160km Death Star II.

 

That is curious. Curtis went to some length scaling the size of the first Death Star, and the cross sections books were recently re-edited and re-released this year under the name "Complete Vehicles", which sticks with the 160Km figure. Does it really say 160 km DSII? Thats pretty bad.

 

It does. It even has a scale drawing in the back, using that scale.

Complete Vehicles reprints old errors, it must be said- like the 26m long Falcon (Millennium Falcon Owners Workshop Manual uses a more feasible 35m length).

 

So it does, thats a little disappointing, though Curtis didn't write the OT cross section book. It seems they've reprinted the old ill researched RPG stats about the scale of the Death Stars (i believe thats where they've been printed before, I'd have to check). Actual scalings from the movies suggest a 160ish km DS-I, and a >800 - 900ish kilometer DS-II.

 

There's a few problems with the 11.5:1 size ratio for Forest Moon to DS2. Most notably- that it doesn't match most of the screenshots.

Saxton's scaling estimates received more than a few criticisms. Though admittedly it was from people derided by the Stardestroyer.net fandom, perhaps unjustly.

The scaling diagrams use the correct scale for the Executor relative to the Imperial-class destroyer- so it's unlikely that it was purely recopied WEG material.

Maybe the same applies to the DS1-DS2- with reanalysis suggesting the old figures were right after all? (The Falcon got its size updated in its own Owners Workshop Manual, one must note).

 

"Saxton's scaling estimates received more than a few criticisms. Though admittedly it was from people derided by the Stardestroyer.net fandom, perhaps unjustly."
And thats the problem right there with Andersons site.

There are debateable variables in the scaling, but none of them get us down to a 160 kilometer DSII. Going by the EU diameter of Endor and the 11.5:1 ratio between itself and the DSII would equal a 426 kilometer wide vessel.

 

If you chuck out the 11.5:1 ratio, in favour of something much higher (and assume that the hologram in RoTJ, like the tactical display in ANH, is Not To Scale) - you can certainly get there though.

Anderson wasn't the only person to criticize- so did Gary Sarli, one of the Star Wars Roleplaying game writers.

Similarly, if you leave out the "super-trench" and assume that the painting was not canon, there's much less to constrain the size.

The Owners Workshop Manual seems pretty well researched to me, at least.

Given that Stardestroyer.net pretty much does everything you're trying to do- are you wanting to update its outdated information- maybe create a site that's based on all the most recent information- TCW included?

 

Yeah, obviously some of my work is going to double over with whats been done in past on the other websites, but I am including new canon material from TCW that simply didn't exist back then. There are examples of starfighter lasers, tanks laser cannons and blasters from TCW on the site already.

 

Best of luck.