Star Wars weapon yields and shield strength

Yeah, lol.

Turbolaser firepower and shield strength

G canon

ROTS movie - this is perhaps among the lowest showings of ship firepower. We see ships almost literally within spitting distance of eachother using weapons in the hundreds of tons of TNT range. However, there are multiple justifications for this clear contradiction of other sources:

1. There is evidence in various Star Wars novels that turbolasers are like artillery in that they have blind spots; they can't fire at something right next to them. Therefore, ships within that range would not be firing using ship to ship turbolasers.
2. They were actually within the atmosphere of Coruscant. If the Clones were to use their heavy turbolasers, it could possibly cause huge amounts of civilian casualties.
3. They were trying to rescue the chancellor. Therefore, they wouldn't be using shoot to kill weapons.

The close range combat is easily justified by the fact that the CIS was launching a land invasion of Coruscant relying on the element of surprise; staying several thousand KMs away would be counter intuitive to their objective.

ROTS novel - The ROTS novel talks about light scatter from turbolasers able to vaporize a small town. This shows that the ships were indeed fighting at longer ranges before the start of the ROTS movie, as the quote is from the perspective of Coruscant's citizens, and in order to see light scatter from turbolasers the ships would have to be a pretty decent distance away. Being able to vaporize a small town is ambiguous since we don't know how large a small town in Star Wars is. It can't be a small town from our world since Star Wars novels never break the fourth wall, except for during sections such as the "about the author" section. Using an average small town, the weapon yield would be about a megaton; however, Star Wars "small towns" would obviously be FAR larger than our small towns, as footage of Coruscant clearly shows.

ANH movie - The destruction of Alderaan puts the energy of the Death Star superlaser about >10^32 joules; that's a LOT, like about as much as the Sun produces for a week. If scaled down linearly to that of a star destroyer, the calculations are far too large to be true. Alderaan's planetary shield was able to withstand this for a split second - which would give it a HUGE amount of durability, enough to withstand practically any bombardment for a long time.

ESB movie/novelization - asteroid vaporization scenes put the firepower of turbolasers at at least tens of megatons, if not more. The fact that the star destroyers stayed in the asteroid field for at least a day while withstanding a "steady hail" (about 1 per second based on the movie) of "multi megaton compression bombs" (as in the asteroids), puts the lower limit of star destroyer shield strength at around 400 gigatons, which is strangely enough very similar to the calculations from the Battle of Endor if we assume merely megaton levels for turbolasers. The statement that the Rebel planetary shield could withstand "any bombardment" puts planetary shield strength in the millions of teratons or more.

ROTJ movie/novelization - Using the Battle of Endor and tens of megaton figures for turbolasers, we get a shield strength strangely enough on par with that of the asteroid field scene. Also, we see ships firing at each other from a range of thousands of KMs. Some maneuvers described in the book attribute to very high ship speeds.

Based on G canon alone, turbolaser strength is in the megatons while shield strength is about 400 gigatons.



T canon

Gah, this is debatable. The CWC obviously isn't that consistent with G canon or C canon. Although it shows very low weapon yields for star destroyers most of the time, they can be quite easily explained away for various reasons.

C canon

Star Wars: Slave Ship - mentions ships designed to withstand multi gigaton laser cannons.
Star Wars ICS - mention 200 gigaton turbolasers and 70 trillion gigawatt shield dissipation.

Also, the power generation of a Victory class star destroyer

 

bump?

 

anyone?

 

I haven't finished reading it yet, and I can't get all the sources to compare on short notice. Give me some time, GFFA!

Only thing I can comment on right now is that you turned BDZ (Base Delta Zero) into DBZ (Delta Base Zero). Minor nitpick only.