It's not an uncommon misconception that the Death Star was basically just a super-laser and nothing else, since this is the main way it is portrayed in the movie. But it's significance was much greater than that, it was basically a mobile army and air force all by itself. So, once an enemy planet surrenders, what then? How do you round up the rebel leaders? How do you confiscate weapons, sieze crops? Do you just keep saying, "oh, and polish my boots or I'll blow up the planet"? No, once the offending planet
lowered its planetary shield, the rest of the D* would come alive.
The D* contained squadrons of TIE bombers, At-Ats and At-Sts, legions of troopers, armouries, and so on. The surface is covered with weapons and tractor beams. And the whole thing is
ray shielded, which means that energy weapons will be practically useless. That's why they didn't risk their capital ships in the first movie, because they are totally useless against a D* once it is up and running. Sure you could keep firing torpedo after torpedo if you want, killing hundreds or thousands with each shot, but it would still be like picking up grains of sand one at a time on the beach. Which is why *both* attacks on the D*s revolved around getting small fighters (which are virtually impossible to hit with heavy weapons) close enough to fire explosive rounds into the reactor core itself. A construction of that scale is a mammoth undertaking, which is why it was only after conquering over
two thirds of an entire galaxy that the Empire had the funds necessary to build one. By contrast, the Federation spans something like a
quarter of a quarter of the galaxy.
It's now painfully obvious to the real "super geeks" on this board you haven't really read any source material about star wars, and are just guessing what goes on in between. In case anyone else is still on the fence though:
And yes it does take the same amount of energy to make a planet explode as it does to destroy the surface. All it takes to make a planet explode is a concentrated laser beam focused on a single spot for a looong time until the beam reaches the planet's core and boom!
This is B-grade sci-fi schlock. The surface of the Earth is something like 1% of it's radius, never mind that you really only need to knock off about 100 metres of top-soil and water to render a planet useless for another million years. Go to the nearest forest and find a boulder at least a metre wide covered in moss. I bet I can scrape all the moss off in about five minutes with my bare hands, so I'll happily give you
ten times that to smash the boulder with your hands instead.
it's the fact that they don't have good technology that made the stories so compelling.
No, it's the fact they were
severely outnumbered against the
bad guys that made them so compelling. It's a sci-fi alamo, or Biggles in Space if you prefer.
Take a look at the millenium falcon, only that tiny bubble in the front the two gunnery pods, and the connecting hallways are liveable areas of the ship, the rest is engine and crap.
Looking at my cross-section book right now I see several cargo areas, crew quarters, a small galley and the second docking area are all pressurized, explaining how it was possible for them to evacuate 100+ refugees from the doomed planet of Sernpidal.
The death star didn't move, it re-aimed. It was always at Yavin and amied at alderaan from there.
T: Tell me where the Rebel base is!
L: Never!
(an aide walks up)
A: Oh, sorry, did you want to know where the *Rebel* base is sir? I plain forgot it was right here in this system ever since we finished building the D*. We just figured that all those enemy ships building a base in our own backyard wasn't important.or:
flash back - the MF arrives in the Alderaan system, only to discover it has been destroyed. As they ponder this they are buzzed by a TIE.
O: ... It's only a short range fighter
and yet somehow, without jumping to light speed, they end up at the D*!Shields in SW are not uncommon, but a shield that covers anything sizeable is uncommon. Planetary shields are common-place on star trek.
I think that was the other way around. In the middle of being hunted by the entire Imperial fleet the rebels were able to cobble together enough parts to build a shield sufficiently strong to cover their entire base. Alderaan had a planetary shield, google for the frame-by-frames someone has done showing you the brief 0.1 seconds of glare you get against the superlaser as it initially is resisted by this shield. Thrawn needed to use a Jedi and a cloaking device to develop a ruse to get around the fact that the
agricultural planets he initially wanted to conquer all had planetary shields. Coruscant has never fallen to anything less than a massive incursion due to having
multiple planetary shields. All of the ship yards in SW have large shields protecting them from anything but a major fleet offensive.
Tractor beams can't be used on a ship when it's shields are up.
I'm not a Star Trek "super-geek" like you, but if that was the case why was it such a big deal when:
-
founder Bashir *edit - alien body snatcher had the real Bashir on a shuttle and was going to destroy the shuttle by deliberately jumping to warp
while tractor beamed- Picard gets crazied by a Feringi bauble, and since nobody wants to destroy the ship he is on Data works out how to tractor beam it
edit - that should read "Data works out how to get a tractor lock on it faster than it can get a weapons lock on the EnterpriseIf, as you claim, you can't tractor a shielded ship, in both cases they could have just beamed them off.
- And why did they Ent-D lower it's shields when fighting the Borg so that they could use their tractor + cutting beam to swipe a whole bunch of the Ent-D away??
When I meant fast, though, I meant fast while being able to navigate/fight. Star Wars ships jump, star trek ships to not.
Maybe the SW Admirals just aren't stupid enough to fight in empty space when they can very quickly move the fight to an area containing tactical obstacles each one can try and twist to their advantage?
Or something like that, I'm not smart enough to get it completely right.
And for the record, I *do* agree with that point.
Since the destortion for the bubble essentially puts anything inside it out of phaze with the rest of the universe it would be impossible for any of the SW ships to fire upon the enterprise while traveling. They'd just have to get in, blow it up, and get out.
- So the SW ships can't shoot at ST ships while they are at warp, and the ST ships can't shoot at the SW ships while they are jumping? Sounds even to me.
- The ST ships can maneuver, but the SW ships go faster. Sounds like it might be relatively even, since the ST ships may be able to out-flank a little better, but the SW ships can always call in re-enforcements much quicker.
Some edits not actually relevant to the discussion because I am a SW super-geek, not a ST one.
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Topic: USS Enterprise vs. Death Star (Read 5303 times)
