8 minutes ago, flyboymb said:

And that single fighter is not likely to shear off the entire bridge tower of the ISD unlike Thrawn's hastily caused chain reaction.

And I'd imagine that the smaller turbolasers would be quicker to fire due to having smaller capacitors to fire or smaller amounts of tibanna gas to infuse (or whatever these things do to 'reload') just as much as 40mm Bofors could more easily fire on targets than 16 in main guns. But perhaps those more forward guns would have to make more of a deflection shot than the main turrets further back.

The whole thing still once again makes Star Destroyers out to be made of Aluminum and with weapons weaker than the TIE Defender. This is honestly getting into the territory of when some mook decided that ISDs were destroyers in the line of battle instead of carrying a name that invoked the image that they had the power to destroy stars.

Yeah. It is really shameful. Even a lightly charged shot from capital grade weaponry should disintegrate a smaller craft. I mean, come on. Even if its an Ion shot, the fighter's systems would fry, because the overcharge caused permanent damage.

8 hours ago, RufusDaMan said:

The main defenses of an ISD against fighters (after TIEs) are the Shields. The Shields of a capital ship cannot be penetrated by fighters, unless massed.

But xwings carry torpedos that bypass Shields. That's scary. A well aimed torpedo can damage a capital ship. It won't go down due to sheer size, but it can disable a turbo laser turret for example.

So unless an extremely accurate shot with a turbo laser, a fighter can be threatening. But even then it may take a while. We are talking about a mile long ship!

Two citations needed for those claims.
I can only remember of one example that put this to the test and that would have been the X-Wing games, which are relegated to legends, and show that a X-Wing can one the "canon" mode hard, still wither down the shields of an ISD.

It takes some time because the shield regeneration of the ISD is almost as fast as energy for your lasers comes with with two pips to lasers, but you do have enough firepower to bring them down, kill the bridge shields domes afterwards and finish the job. Takes roughly 30 minutes … but turbolaser are ineffective against fighters and ISDs have large blind spots around their bridge towers. If you keep your torpedos for the job, you can quickly bring down the shields with 6 torpedo hits plus a few laser volleys, destroy the domes with lasers and afterwards need still quite some time to blow up bridge and other critical systems, but it is still a lot less painful than fighting against the shield regeneration of the ISD
I never did hear anyone stating that torpedos ignore conventional shields. Just ray shielding. Now the ability to ignore capital ships shields was a cool way to keep torpedos relevant in the wing commander universe, but I never did see something suggesting this would be the same for star wars.

12 minutes ago, RufusDaMan said:

Yeah. It is really shameful. Even a lightly charged shot from capital grade weaponry should disintegrate a smaller craft. I mean, come on. Even if its an Ion shot, the fighter's systems would fry, because the overcharge caused permanent damage.

They did reduce the firepower a lot recently, basically modern cruise missiles do more damage than proton torpedos, which do still more damage than turbolasers
The old power creep of legends has been removed and gone are the times of 5 giga ton turbolasers.

Okay, so, if we modeled this in Edge of the Empire, it's actually pretty close. An ISD is SIL 8, and the X-Wing SIL 3. So the gunners are rolling maximum difficulty dice on this, at least one setback for the X-Wing's shields, probably more because Hera is a good pilot. And more stuff for any other maneuvers Hera might be doing. I'd also as a GM argue that they get the upgrade to one red challenge die because their firing into Skerris' zone and DID roll a despair to hit him, but that's besides the point.

X-Wing has 10 Hull Threshold and an Armor of 3. A light Turbolaser has base damage 9 and Breach 2, so if it hits with one success (likely in this scenario) the X-wing will survive the hit. Medium and Heavy Turbolasers have more breach and higher base-damage, so it would not withstand and would likely just become disabled barring some additional abilities to keep it flying. The TIE/D is nominally in the same boat but the Elite's probably a little tougher. So this is roughly actually in the zone of our modern modeling abstraction of these ships.

Of course, if I was actually running this scenario i'd say it's far more likely the turbolaser did not "hit" persay to do damage, instead it was a glancing blow and ate the shields instead. Shields are about as useful in EotE as they are in Rebels except when we want to make the TIE/D look like a badass.

4 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Two citations needed for those claims.
I can only remember of one example that put this to the test and that would have been the X-Wing games, which are relegated to legends, and show that a X-Wing can one the "canon" mode hard, still wither down the shields of an ISD.

It takes some time because the shield regeneration of the ISD is almost as fast as energy for your lasers comes with with two pips to lasers, but you do have enough firepower to bring them down, kill the bridge shields domes afterwards and finish the job. Takes roughly 30 minutes … but turbolaser are ineffective against fighters and ISDs have large blind spots around their bridge towers. If you keep your torpedos for the job, you can quickly bring down the shields with 6 torpedo hits plus a few laser volleys, destroy the domes with lasers and afterwards need still quite some time to blow up bridge and other critical systems, but it is still a lot less painful than fighting against the shield regeneration of the ISD
I never did hear anyone stating that torpedos ignore conventional shields. Just ray shielding. Now the ability to ignore capital ships shields was a cool way to keep torpedos relevant in the wing commander universe, but I never did see something suggesting this would be the same for star wars.

They did reduce the firepower a lot recently, basically modern cruise missiles do more damage than proton torpedos, which do still more damage than turbolasers
The old power creep of legends has been removed and gone are the times of 5 giga ton turbolasers.

I mean. We can ignore the old legends powercreep, but that doesn't mean that we should extrapolate laser effectiveness from a kids show, or a game.

As far as I know, we don't have a canon source for capital ship firepower BUT logically it seems obvious that capital ship weaponry should be way more powerful than a fighter's weapons.

Look at the big *** lasers they have in the Clone Wars (when we see the capital ships in action, from up close). I really doubt those lasers have comparable power to small fighters', otherwise capital ships would just have tiny fighter weapons strapped on them

Some of it might be "AoE" for lack of a better term. Big stonking capital ship weapons cause noticeable and big explosions when they hit the ground, enough to knock people around even when they aren't directly hit. Starfighter weapons usually pop and fizz when they hit the ground, and can sometimes knock people around but also you can just brace - and they don't explode unless they hit something volatile.

Thrawn stands on his runway taking potshots at the TIE/D Elite as it gives him a pass. He's fine, but the when the heavy weapons of the Defender hit enemy ships, the control tower or cargo crates (probably filled with fuel or components or whatever) they explode or catch fire.

Not to get too real science-y on SW, but heat dissipation is very difficult in space - it may be that too much exposure to laser fire even from a fighter without shields (or too close the deflection can't do much?) causes the exterior plating to get too hot - and the only place for it to shed this heat is into neighboring components - which they probably do not like, and god forbid you hit a fuel line or the tibanna gas magazine or whatever space opera shenanigans we've got. This could explain why ships tend to pop and burn from even surface hits.

1 hour ago, RufusDaMan said:

I mean. We can ignore the old legends powercreep, but that doesn't mean that we should extrapolate laser effectiveness from a kids show, or a game.

I was referring to rogue one, showing less than kiloton proton torpedos.

Honestly, one of my biggest (and it's still small) gripe with Rebels is how weak Star Destroyers are. They are one of the most Badass ships in Star Wars, and before Rebels, I was under the Impression they were the end-all of capital ships (besides Executer, Eclipse, and other super ships).

On 2014-12-11 at 0:29 AM, Sithborg said:

It really enhances a lot of the saga, imo. Shows just how far Vader has fallen, pretty much confirms to Obi-wan that Vader can't be redeemed, and also highlights just how important Luke is to redeeming Vader. And depending on when you ask Lucas, shows why Luke is the chosen one.

And the haters get to relish in her death. Win-win.

IMO Luke is not the chosen one. Its always been Anakin, even when he was Vader. Balance doesnt not mean the end of the Dark or Light side. It means they are both close to equal. Before Vader the light side was OP... :-)

1 minute ago, Thormind said:

Before Vader the light side was OP... :-)

Or was it? I got taken down really easily...

14 hours ago, Sir Orrin said:

Honestly, one of my biggest (and it's still small) gripe with Rebels is how weak Star Destroyers are. They are one of the most Badass ships in Star Wars, and before Rebels, I was under the Impression they were the end-all of capital ships (besides Executer, Eclipse, and other super ships).

Rogue one showed that a single squadron of fighters can disable an ISD in a single bombing run.

The RotJ script had iirc a B-Wing squadron taking out a dozen ISDs during the battle of endor on their own. Showing how badass those B-Wings are, unfortunately those B-Wings were too hard and expensive to do for ILM and so their screen time was cut down significantly. Meanwhile the rebels B-Wing was only shooting at imperial light cruisers, magnitudes weaker targets.

Furthermore ISDs had always been multi-purpose ships, carrier, destroyer, cruiser, troop transport with hole grund bases in its cargo holds. Jack of all trades.

1 hour ago, RufusDaMan said:

I mean. We can ignore the old legends powercreep, but that doesn't mean that we should extrapolate laser effectiveness from a kids show, or a game.

The set the base for the X-Wing novels which in return set the base level for most of the pre-KJA legends stuff. Outside of Dark Empire naturally, which was mostly ignored by everyone else. Twin Ion Engine Crawler with Turbolasers … for real?

2 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Rogue one showed that a single squadron of fighters can disable an ISD in a single bombing run.

The RotJ script had iirc a B-Wing squadron taking out a dozen ISDs during the battle of endor on their own. Showing how badass those B-Wings are, unfortunately those B-WIngs were too hard and expensive to do for ILM and so their screen time was cut down significantly. Meanwhile the rebels B-Wing was only shooting at imperial light cruisers, magnitudes weaker targets.

Furthermore ISDs had always been multi-purpose ships, carrier, destroyer, cruiser, troop transport with hole grund bases in its cargo holds. Jack of all trades.

I think a concentrated attack from a fighter squadron hurting an ISD is fine, but Rebel's stretches it quite a bit. I have to run to class but i'll try and think of some examples.

9 hours ago, Sir Orrin said:

I think a concentrated attack from a fighter squadron hurting an ISD is fine, but Rebel's stretches it quite a bit. I have to run to class but i'll try and think of some examples.

No, need to run examples, I get what you mean. As mentioned before time constraints are a thing. As mentioned before, I am not a fan of that either, but I can understand why they make battles which should take longer into short bursts of action.
This still doesn't change the fact that the end results are in line with other canon. A CR90 gets into trouble from a single ace TIE/In and star destroyers can be taken down or significantly hurt by fighter attacks even without torpedo use, etc
What Rebels is guilty of is shorting down a battle which takes an hour down to 5 minutes.

Yeah, basically, if you want a "realistic" interpretation of Rebels, assume they cut down how long stuff actually takes by at least 50%, if not more.

Also most ISDs in Rebels are taken out in "catastrophic" events, like being blown up from the inside by probably chain reactions, or massive environmental explosions no ship is rated to survive. This is supported in the OT actually, Death squadron loses at least one ISD trying to follow the falcon into an asteroid thicket. We have yet to see one actually lose a slugging match.

Just now, UnitOmega said:

Yeah, basically, if you want a "realistic" interpretation of Rebels, assume they cut down how long stuff actually takes by at least 50%, if not more.

Also most ISDs in Rebels are taken out in "catastrophic" events, like being blown up from the inside by probably chain reactions, or massive environmental explosions no ship is rated to survive. This is supported in the OT actually, Death squadron loses at least one ISD trying to follow the falcon into an asteroid thicket. We have yet to see one actually lose a slugging match.

Looking at that incompetence, you kinda get Vader.

I mean... I used to get told off by my bosses for breaking a couple of shot glasses. Imagine the reductions you get for wrecking a company Star Destroyer. oh gawd.

Luckily that commander didn't seem to survive to feel Vader's wrath around his throat.

But, if Star Destroyers are indeed that vulnerable to fighter attacks, then why are they the central aspect of the Imperial Navy's doctrine? One would think that the Empire would realize that their massive and expensive ships were vulnerable to a single spread of ion torpedoes as soon as an escorted flight of Y-Wings or 2 managed to solo them. It would be just like how Earth moved away from battleships once they found that fighters had better range and damage capacity even without accounting for cost and manpower.

But the Empire instead doubled down and scrapped the Venator for the Victory and eventually the Imperial. Fighter screens were halved so that they could bring out some rather large amounts of dakka. And yet that overwhelming firepower is missing? Yes, we see the Devastator easily cutting through frigates and even beating a MC75 to a pulp without taking any noticeable damage, we see the same thing when the Imperials manage to maintain blockades. But a handful of fighters still manage to take them down.

On Earth, such stubbornness came from testing with the technology of the time. An old battleship was subjected to hours of first generation aircraft attack and only after multiple strikes did the massive craft finally get bored and sink. This prejudiced the British (and a lot of Europe) into believing that the battleship would continue to be the major force on the water in the interwar period setting up for the one sided deaths of the Prince of Wales, Yamato, Bismark, and the Pacific Fleet (although most of that was salvaged).

Maybe it is just Imperial ineptitude. Maybe they just blamed the captains for being incompetent for losing their ships. But at this point it honestly seems like an ISD is less of a threat to the Rebellion than 200 TIE Fighters and the Imperials at some point would have to be able to see that.

7 hours ago, flyboymb said:

Luckily that commander didn't seem to survive to feel Vader's wrath around his throat.

But, if Star Destroyers are indeed that vulnerable to fighter attacks, then why are they the central aspect of the Imperial Navy's doctrine? One would think that the Empire would realize that their massive and expensive ships were vulnerable to a single spread of ion torpedoes as soon as an escorted flight of Y-Wings or 2 managed to solo them. It would be just like how Earth moved away from battleships once they found that fighters had better range and damage capacity even without accounting for cost and manpower.

Orbital Bombardment. Troop transport is still needed. No sizeable fighter threats in the galaxy. Better force projection as operation range of fighters is limited. And lastly each ISD has still its own full wing of fighters. All task which will not work better, just because you outsource them to cheaper, smaller ships, which are even more vulnerable to fighters.

Lastly, one of the reasons why we see only fighters doing successful work against the empire is that those ships are superior platforms when it comes to taking down other capital ships. Those turbolasers are made to shred other capitals and ground targets to pieces and they are good at that job. The rebels don't even have the option to use larger ships much, simply because they can't and this is an important part of the imperial doctrine to keep millions of homeworlds in line. DBZ operations are part of their tasks.

7 hours ago, flyboymb said:

But, if Star Destroyers are indeed that vulnerable to fighter attacks, then why are they the central aspect of the Imperial Navy's doctrine? One would think that the Empire would realize that their massive and expensive ships were vulnerable to a single spread of ion torpedoes as soon as an escorted flight of Y-Wings or 2 managed to solo them. It would be just like how Earth moved away from battleships once they found that fighters had better range and damage capacity even without accounting for cost and manpower.

I think the Imperial Navy is designed to police a galaxy of pirates and maybe armed civilians, not for open war.
The Navy is a tool of repression and control, not a war machine. The Empire has not had real enemies since the end of the Clone Wars (you could say, technically it has never had any enemies since the Republic became the Empire).

In the same way policemen go around on not especially armored cars, wearing just uniforms, but we have them by tens of thousands, the Empire moves squadrons of unshielded TIEs on big carriers, that sometimes use for bombarding civilian settlements.
Their presence is usually enough to make pirates flee or to make revolting civilians surrender. They are space bullies.
That's why as soon as the rebels appear with actual warships and starfighters armed with torpedoes they make such a mess in Rogue One, to the point that the imperial high command at Tarkin's conference room are panicking about the rebels being much better armed than anyone expected.

Why are they so worried about a gang of rebels with a few starships, while they have the whole Imperial Navy? Because the whole Empire is founded on the saying "The weapon doesn't reach as far as the fear to the weapon."
Perhaps the Navy was once a war machine, just after the Clone Wars. But decades of "peace" have weakened it with incompetent officers that are there more because of corruption than because of their own merits. Also, it kind of died of success. Now they have an entire galaxy to keep under control, so they really need to spread their forces thin.

A star destroyer is no more and no less a symbol of this. A space bully that is often enough to terrify the civilians of the planet it is orbiting. But it cannot sustain a proper offensive. How else can we explain Endor? Sure, the Death Star II is destroyed. But how did the Rebels manage to destroy the whole imperial fleet or make it flee? Then again on Jakku.
I also used to think that an imperial star destroyer was a formidable war machine. But lately more and more it looks like it is just a clumsy behemoth, a huge shooting target with so many vulnerabilities that the Rebels are able to destroy at least one per episode.
At least that is the impression I have from the intentions of the showrunners and, in general, the new story team.

1 minute ago, Azrapse said:

I think the Imperial Navy is designed to police a galaxy of pirates and maybe armed civilians, not for open war.
The Navy is a tool of repression and control, not a war machine. The Empire has not had real enemies since the end of the Clone Wars (you could say, technically it has never had any enemies since the Republic became the Empire).

In the same way policemen go around on not especially armored cars, wearing just uniforms, but we have them by tens of thousands, the Empire moves squadrons of unshielded TIEs on big carriers, that sometimes use for bombarding civilian settlements.
Their presence is usually enough to make pirates flee or to make revolting civilians surrender. They are space bullies.
That's why as soon as the rebels appear with actual warships and starfighters armed with torpedoes they make such a mess in Rogue One, to the point that the imperial high command at Tarkin's conference room are panicking about the rebels being much better armed than anyone expected.

Why are they so worried about a gang of rebels with a few starships, while they have the whole Imperial Navy? Because the whole Empire is founded on the saying "The weapon doesn't reach as far as the fear to the weapon."
Perhaps the Navy was once a war machine, just after the Clone Wars. But decades of "peace" have weakened it with incompetent officers that are there more because of corruption than because of their own merits. Also, it kind of died of success. Now they have an entire galaxy to keep under control, so they really need to spread their forces thin.

A star destroyer is no more and no less a symbol of this. A space bully that is often enough to terrify the civilians of the planet it is orbiting. But it cannot sustain a proper offensive. How else can we explain Endor? Sure, the Death Star II is destroyed. But how did the Rebels manage to destroy the whole imperial fleet or make it flee? Then again on Jakku.
I also used to think that an imperial star destroyer was a formidable war machine. But lately more and more it looks like it is just a clumsy behemoth, a huge shooting target with so many vulnerabilities that the Rebels are able to destroy at least one per episode.
At least that is the impression I have from the intentions of the showrunners and, in general, the new story team.

Eh, I'm a bit leery of calling the ISD a paper tiger. It is made by the same folks who made the Venator which was a dedicated warship and was the spiritual (though not direct) successors to the Victory class. I find it rather hard to believe that such a thing would be chosen as the symbol of Imperial invincibility if it was the Star Wars equivalent of the Sovremennyy destroyer.

What we need is a full demonstration of what the Imperial Navy can do. Something akin to what the Devastator pulled at the end of RO. No more of these Star Destroyers just sitting around waiting to be blown up.

But alas, I believe that the ISD is just as much a victim of Disney as the lowly stormtrooper is. It is a big fat symbol of the bad guys that is now made to make the kiddies cheer when it blows up. The fact that the Empire has a near endless number of them just means the writers can blow up as many as coolness warrants without hamstringing things in the future.

I've always dogged Curtis Saxton for his gross overestimation of Star Wars weapon and armor, but I fear the pendulum has now swung too far in the opposite direction.

Azrapes

The ones at Endor were defeated due to overconfidence. First being told to not do anything by the emperor so he could have fun blowing them up with his super weapon, when they could of torn through them much earlier, but instead they were being taken down due to orders to hold back. Then you also have the emperors battle meld or whatever the force power he was using was called boosting the efficiency of the whole fleet like a super drug, the problem with that being when he was killed it would leave the fleet in a withdrawl state that left them weal and inefficient.

I'd say there was also the fact that the Imperial fleet was a giant wall of sorts that the Rebellion just punched through. They looked to be a screening effort against any potential escape into hyperspace (and undoubtedly there were Interdictors cleverly hidden just out of sight of the camera). Once the Rebels turned a 180 and punched into their lines, a move that I doubt they were expecting, they were in the undesirable position of having the Rebels in a place where they could fire in nearly any direction and hit an enemy whereas they had to be extremely careful of their fire in order to avoid accidentally hitting one of their own. One would think that Imperial gunnery would be able to hit a starship at close range, but then again gunnery wasn't 100% against the Tantive IV and it was moving in a straight line straight away from the ISD (one of the best positions for deflection gunning). You won't see an equivalent in surface fleet warfare, but I'd say it is the best position you could be in even in regards to crossing a T. A good deal of your enemy's batteries are blocked by friendly forces while your guns have free reign.

The Rebels had about half of the capital ships that the Empire had in terms of Mon Cal cruisers (slightly less after the Liberty and Nautilian bit it) but this numerical inferiority was more than made up by the above positional superiority. Add to that the Nebulon frigates, gunships, and even corvettes to take advantage of ships whose shields had dropped, and finally add the coup de grace of having the Imperial fleets coordination cut off with the destruction of the Executor, and it's no wonder the Empire lost 2/3 of their fleet in Legends. And that is before we get to the heavy hitter that was the B-Wing, any influence by Palps, or the demoralizing effect of the Death Star and Executor blowing up causing a rout.

The real reason that the Empire lost at Endor is because Lucas knew how to build the Empire up to this massive threat but not how to have the rebels defeat them. Hence the A wing blowing up the Executor.

The Battle of Endor though is still awesome and easily explained as a loss due to the Emperor's arrogance and strategic mistakes costing him dearly ala Hitler.

My problem with the new canon is that there doesnt seem to be any balance in the war post Endor and having Jakku a year out is a massive mistake.

I would've preferred a three year time span where the Empire pushed back and were actually winning but due to in fighting and Operation: Cinder the Rebels began to win until their ultimate victory over Jakku. How cool would that be? The Empire could still win but due to the Emperor not wishing for the Empire to outlive him he once again caused it's ultimate defeat not the Rebels.

8 hours ago, Forresto said:

The real reason that the Empire lost at Endor is because Lucas knew how to build the Empire up to this massive threat but not how to have the rebels defeat them. Hence the A wing blowing up the Executor.

The Battle of Endor though is still awesome and easily explained as a loss due to the Emperor's arrogance and strategic mistakes costing him dearly ala Hitler.

My problem with the new canon is that there doesnt seem to be any balance in the war post Endor and having Jakku a year out is a massive mistake.

I would've preferred a three year time span where the Empire pushed back and were actually winning but due to in fighting and Operation: Cinder the Rebels began to win until their ultimate victory over Jakku. How cool would that be? The Empire could still win but due to the Emperor not wishing for the Empire to outlive him he once again caused it's ultimate defeat not the Rebels.

It would be a odd concept, to invalidate the efforts of the "Good Guys".

It would make the entire tone of Star Wars much darker, if there's no real point to fighting the good fight.

Just saying, guys, that the ISD in Rogue One was disabled, specifically, by a heavy payload of Ion Bombs. No different from the Rebels' approach at Hoth.

Disabled, but not destroyed. We don't know how long an effect like that lasts, but the Star Destroyer isn't permanently taken out of the fight.