Plasma beams are an option - almost all energy weapons in Star Trek (and turbo lasers in Star Wars) fall into this category. The basic principle is firing a beam of superheated gas. The shear heat would melt through a vessel's armour. A good ammunition form for it would be hydrogen or deuterium gas, since that's what fusion reactors run off anyway and it's abundant in space. I think this is how Fusion beams in B5 functioned, by firing the plasma from the ship's fusion reactors at a target. Plasma was also the principle behind B5's pulse cannons.
The Omega-Class destroyers used Plasma Pulse Cannons and a high-powered X-Ray Laser for its main batteries, and the X-Ray was frequently shown to make a mess out of the armour of any ship it fired at. It depends on the firepower and wavelength of the laser.
There is the Plasma or Fusion Exhaust weapon which fires a superheated stream of material in an exited state or even undergoing nuclear fusion. Either one could be a ship's main or auxiliary drive. I always assume a forward facing mount is countered by a rear-facing engine of sufficient power to compensate, whether that engine is also a weapon or gravitic thrusters or whatever. While lacking direct hull penetration capacity, (it could melt its way through in time,) it would have the added benefit of creating massive doses of radiation which would require shielding to avoid damaging the crew.
Microwave weapons could be set in frequency and in harmonic resonance to penetrate most materials while reacting to others. Our kitchen microwaves are optimized to boil water, a setting which is incidentally fatal to most water-based life. One could be designed to react to hull armor, be adjustable to vary between invisible crew-killer and hull cutting-torch, or designed to interact with a ship's fuel supply. (Warm antimatter anyone?) It could also be used for extreme, (like to another star) long range communications. I would be a light-speed communication, so don't expect to hear back for a few years.
Overengineered, yes. Four German battlecruisers stood under the guns of the Grand Fleet while the main body of the High Seas Fleet withdrew, and three made it back to port. All of the Scouting Group I battlecruisers took massive hits and kept fighting, even pushing to within three miles of the Grand Fleet's battleships. The combined guns of the British fleet couldn't sink them until the next morning when Lutzow was scuttled to prevent its capture. It was badly damaged and too slow by then to keep up with the retreat.
See, hull tanking is a real thing! I wonder if Derflinger's Engineering BOff was a Miracle Worker specialist?
pick your favorite look and go with that - we won't know what a particle weapon firing looks like until someone actually successfully builds a functional particle weapon
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
So besides the Ion cannon or a mega Plasma cannon, is there anything else that comes to mind?
also what would the firing of said weapon look like?
Mass drivers are a possibility. Although, I doubt many ships or planets would be able to handle an asteroid travelling at 0.1c. Kamikaze Capital ships are also a possibility. I am surprised that it took this long for the Rebellion in Star Wars to use Kamikaze tactics.
you don't resort to kamikaze attacks as anything other than an EXTREME last resort unless you have the industrial base to support it...rebel movements often don't
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Twin Photon Beam Projector - One beam fires photons, the other fires anti-photons. Where they converge collisions happen, and you get mutual annihilation of photons for a big kick. This is a light-speed weapon. (Naturally.)
Image - unless you are in the path of the beams or there is material to occlude it, (dust or gas, or wreckage,) you see nothing. Except where the beams converge. At that point you see a brilliant nuclear explosion which flows in the path of the beams. As the focal point is adjusted the concentration of the explosion will move along this path. I imagine a good gunner will adjust the focal point continuously so the linear explosion appears to pulse up and down its length. Mass will block the path, but will also serve to backstop stray photons which would otherwise have scattered harmlessly into space to afford them the chance to react in the explosion, so impact sites on objects will blossom with larger explosions.
Positron Bolt Cannon - A focused beam of positrons impacts the target where it reacts with the electrons of the hull. Some of the collisions will result in the creation of deadly gamma rays, (which might create a crew of Incredible Hulks, but will more likely result in fatal cases of sunburn,) and some will result in the scattering of the electrons which bond the target material together. This weapon's effect is both to bypass armor and to drill holes in it. It also easily overloads electromagnetic-based shielding.
Image - the positrons will require something to travel along to reach their target, so a stream of cationic gas would be fired first, then a positron bolt would follow along the path like a static discharge or lightning bolt, producing photons, gamma rays, and lots of other interesting stuff along the path and at the impact site. While the bolt itself occurs at just under light-speed, the stream of ions along which it travels acts like the previously mentioned ion cannon. In this case, beam scattering would be an asset because the wider the dispersal, the more paths the anti-lightning bolt can travel, and the longer the static discharge can be sustained, (because, you know, that cationic gas along the path of the bolt is being destroyed by the discharge too.)
Anti-Particle Beam - This weapon uses a magnetic or gravitic linear accelerator to fire a stream of atom-sized antimatter bullets at a target, or predictable results. This weapon is dangerous because any streams of antimatter which miss the target will continue to fly through space until they hit something, at which point they will create an annihilation event. This is a slower than light weapon.
Image - You don't see anything unless there is dust or debris in the path of the stream with which it interacts. At the terminal annihilation site there is a nuclear fireball. Maybe the barrel of the gun glows red from heat or something.
you don't resort to kamikaze attacks as anything other than an EXTREME last resort unless you have the industrial base to support it...rebel movements often don't
The purpose of a kamikaze attack is destroying expensive enemy military resources at a far lower expense. If the rebel ships have a 5% or lower chance of surviving, then it is far more effective to take out a Star Destroyer by slamming a Corvette into it. Even slamming a Star Cruiser into a Star Destroyer would be effective since Imperial ships are more expensive to build than Rebel ships.
There are also meson weapons, which get used in a fair bit of Sci-Fi. Mesons are subatomic particles classified as hadrons, and are produced when two particles collide. They have almost no interaction with molecular matter, but due to their short lifespan produce large quantities of gamma radiation. That would make a meson weapon an excellent crew-killer, similar in concept to the neutron bomb during the '70s. Of course, because of their subatomic size, you also woudn't see a meson burst or pulse or beam.
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
you don't resort to kamikaze attacks as anything other than an EXTREME last resort unless you have the industrial base to support it...rebel movements often don't
The purpose of a kamikaze attack is destroying expensive enemy military resources at a far lower expense. If the rebel ships have a 5% or lower chance of surviving, then it is far more effective to take out a Star Destroyer by slamming a Corvette into it. Even slamming a Star Cruiser into a Star Destroyer would be effective since Imperial ships are more expensive to build than Rebel ships.
Assuming the rebellion could replace lost ships. The Empire had access to virtually every major shipyard and the combined resources of most of a galaxy. The rebellion had hand-me-downs, salvaged wrecks, fleeing cityships (in the case of the Mon Cal, according to the comics), and stolen Imperial equipment. In short, the Rebels would run out of corvettes before the Empire ran out of Star Destroyers.
Depends on the target. Launching an asteroid travelling at 0.1c at the Death Star or a planet would certainly do far more damage than a 20 kilo slug. Might not have a planet anymore if that asteroid hits its target while a 20 kilo slug travelling at 0.01c would destroy a city. Accelerating an asteroid to relativistic velocities is a planet destroyer weapon not something that is used in regular battles. After all, it is the futuristic version of a nuclear bomb.
Even tiny masses at huge velocities can be devastating, as I mentioned way back at the beginning of this topic. If you have a linear accelerator capable of muzzle velocities in the fractions of c range, your projectiles don't have to be very large to be incredibly powerful. Make your projectile out of some very dense, hard material so it resists ablation upon impact, and it's a penetration weapon. Make it out of an easily crushed material and it's an explosive weapon, but even at .1c it's going to hurt when it hits.
Depends on the target. Launching an asteroid travelling at 0.1c at the Death Star or a planet would certainly do far more damage than a 20 kilo slug. Might not have a planet anymore if that asteroid hits its target while a 20 kilo slug travelling at 0.01c would destroy a city. Accelerating an asteroid to relativistic velocities is a planet destroyer weapon not something that is used in regular battles. After all, it is the futuristic version of a nuclear bomb.
More mass is going to be more damaging at any velocity. Estimates are that the Chicxulub asteroid, the impactor that set off the K-T Event and led to the extinction of most of Earth's land-based life, impacted at about 20 kps (around 44,000 mph), far less than relativistic velocity. The main gun of an Everest-class fires a much smaller impactor - but at a much higher velocity. Trust me, at .013c, 20 kilos delivered every five seconds is going to give your Death Star pause - especially since those turbolasers are apparently not going to be capable of tracking and affecting the slugs (they were having a great deal of trouble tracking the snub fighters at the Battle of Yavin IV, and those were moving much more slowly).
I'd expect the Blueberries to use Ion weapons on 40K
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
you don't resort to kamikaze attacks as anything other than an EXTREME last resort unless you have the industrial base to support it...rebel movements often don't
The purpose of a kamikaze attack is destroying expensive enemy military resources at a far lower expense. If the rebel ships have a 5% or lower chance of surviving, then it is far more effective to take out a Star Destroyer by slamming a Corvette into it. Even slamming a Star Cruiser into a Star Destroyer would be effective since Imperial ships are more expensive to build than Rebel ships.
Assuming the rebellion could replace lost ships. The Empire had access to virtually every major shipyard and the combined resources of most of a galaxy. The rebellion had hand-me-downs, salvaged wrecks, fleeing cityships (in the case of the Mon Cal, according to the comics), and stolen Imperial equipment. In short, the Rebels would run out of corvettes before the Empire ran out of Star Destroyers.
I read somewhere that the RotJ novelization had the Rebels using those Gallofree Yards transports (the freighters they used to evacuate Hoth in the previous film) as ramships: they wouldn't be much use in a firefight and they were hopelessly outdated anyway. One of those hitting an ISD or VSD at sufficient velocity would probably wreck it, maybe even Executor, assuming it didn't miss (remember, space is big) or the Imps didn't blast it out of the sky short of its target.
Realism here: Less than 20% at most of Japanese kamikazes in World War II actually hit an enemy ship. That's hits, underline, not sinkings. That's still a higher hit/miss ratio than conventional weapons, but the Japanese really didn't have enough planes or pilots to waste them that way. And they were completely useless against Royal Navy carriers when the Brits were able to rejoin the Pacific War in '45: unlike wooden-decked American carriers, British flat-tops had armored decks and a plane that hit one would just bounce off (that happened a lot at Okinawa).
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
you don't resort to kamikaze attacks as anything other than an EXTREME last resort unless you have the industrial base to support it...rebel movements often don't
The purpose of a kamikaze attack is destroying expensive enemy military resources at a far lower expense. If the rebel ships have a 5% or lower chance of surviving, then it is far more effective to take out a Star Destroyer by slamming a Corvette into it. Even slamming a Star Cruiser into a Star Destroyer would be effective since Imperial ships are more expensive to build than Rebel ships.
Assuming the rebellion could replace lost ships. The Empire had access to virtually every major shipyard and the combined resources of most of a galaxy. The rebellion had hand-me-downs, salvaged wrecks, fleeing cityships (in the case of the Mon Cal, according to the comics), and stolen Imperial equipment. In short, the Rebels would run out of corvettes before the Empire ran out of Star Destroyers.
I read somewhere that the RotJ novelization had the Rebels using those Gallofree Yards transports (the freighters they used to evacuate Hoth in the previous film) as ramships: they wouldn't be much use in a firefight and they were hopelessly outdated anyway. One of those hitting an ISD or VSD at sufficient velocity would probably wreck it, maybe even Executor, assuming it didn't miss (remember, space is big) or the Imps didn't blast it out of the sky short of its target.
Realism here: Less than 20% at most of Japanese kamikazes in World War II actually hit an enemy ship. That's hits, underline, not sinkings. That's still a higher hit/miss ratio than conventional weapons, but the Japanese really didn't have enough planes or pilots to waste them that way. And they were completely useless against Royal Navy carriers when the Brits were able to rejoin the Pacific War in '45: unlike wooden-decked American carriers, British flat-tops had armored decks and a plane that hit one would just bounce off (that happened a lot at Okinawa).
The British carriers were built with more survivability in regards to dive bombers (They faced the Stukas in the Med)
Kamikaze tactics are just a pointless waste
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
well, we saw the level of damage an a-wing hitting the executor caused, so i would imagine something the size of a GR-75 transport would cause even more damage - especially if it hit the bridge tower like crynyd did
you'd think the empire would've learned from that and STOPPED PUTTING THEIR BRIDGES ON HUGE TOWERS! those things are even MORE of a massive bullseye than starfleet bridge domes
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
did they get firmly established as shield generators in disney-verse? because i remember in legends, there were huge arguments about whether those domes were sensors or shield generators...and frankly, i was kind of leaning toward senor myself - they look almost exactly like the radar dome from the old C&C red alert games, except full octagonal spheroids instead of half
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
They're deflector shield generators in both canon and legends
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
well, we saw the level of damage an a-wing hitting the executor caused, so i would imagine something the size of a GR-75 transport would cause even more damage - especially if it hit the bridge tower like crynyd did
you'd think the empire would've learned from that and STOPPED PUTTING THEIR BRIDGES ON HUGE TOWERS! those things are even MORE of a massive bullseye than starfleet bridge domes
That wouldn't have actually done anything permanent but for the sheer dumb luck that the Executor was pointed at the Death Star when the bridge was destroyed. The first officer would've been in the auxiliary bridge, the chief engineer would've been in the engine rooms, and either one of them could have regained control given sufficient time.
You still get the command disruption of losing Admiral Piett, but the chain of command also means that the next-most-senior admiral (likely a rear or vice admiral commanding one of the ISD squadrons) takes charge. In fact in Heir to the Empire, it's said that then-Captain Gilad Pellaeon first came to prominence by organizing an orderly retreat after the Death Star blew.
did they get firmly established as shield generators in disney-verse? because i remember in legends, there were huge arguments about whether those domes were sensors or shield generators...and frankly, i was kind of leaning toward senor myself - they look almost exactly like the radar dome from the old C&C red alert games, except full octagonal spheroids instead of half
The argument I saw stems from the novelization listing the events around the Executor's destruction slightly differently than the movie. In the film, the Rebels blow up the big metal ball, then the Imp officer announces to Piett that the bridge shields are down. In the novel, the Rebel capital ships concentrate fire on Executor and bring her shields down, then the fighters make their attack run and cripple the ship.
Of course, the novelization also has the wrong callsigns for the Rebel fighter squadrons. The problem is, it was written while the film was being made, with a slightly earlier version of the script.
For what it's worth, the only diagram I ever saw (The Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology IIRC) said they were sensor domes, but had shield projector vanes attached to them. Either way, blowing it up wouldn't be good for the shields.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
yeah, and organizing an orderly retreat when you lose one of your flag officers is difficult enough under the best of circumstances...but there were murmurings in some bits of legends that the emperor was using battle meditation during the entire battle, so when he died abruptly...everything was thrown into chaos
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
In fact, the film shows that the Executor was flying "level" in relation to the Death Star, then, after her bridge was destroyed, pitched "down" and nosed into the larger craft, either because it's big enough to have a significant gravitational field or because spaceships fall down when you kill them.
And executive officer on a secondary bridge? We don't do that in modern-day navies; why would that be done by a culture that builds massive chasms inside their mobile battle station, then puts an important control halfway across a bridge spanning such a chasm and doesn't even have a safety rail? (See Obi-wan disabling the tractor beam in the original movie.)
well, given the death star 2 was supposedly 900 km in diameter...yeah, i'd say it had a fairly large grabbity well - not enough to pull in a ship from over a hundred kilometers away, however; the battle wasn't THAT close to the death star
supposedly, to explain this, either piett or the officer that jumped into the pit with him hit a control for thrusters or something and THAT is what sent the executor careening into the DS2
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Comments
The Omega-Class destroyers used Plasma Pulse Cannons and a high-powered X-Ray Laser for its main batteries, and the X-Ray was frequently shown to make a mess out of the armour of any ship it fired at. It depends on the firepower and wavelength of the laser.
Trials of Blood and Fire
Moving On Parts 1-3 - Part 4
In Cold Blood
Microwave weapons could be set in frequency and in harmonic resonance to penetrate most materials while reacting to others. Our kitchen microwaves are optimized to boil water, a setting which is incidentally fatal to most water-based life. One could be designed to react to hull armor, be adjustable to vary between invisible crew-killer and hull cutting-torch, or designed to interact with a ship's fuel supply. (Warm antimatter anyone?) It could also be used for extreme, (like to another star) long range communications. I would be a light-speed communication, so don't expect to hear back for a few years.
Overengineered, yes. Four German battlecruisers stood under the guns of the Grand Fleet while the main body of the High Seas Fleet withdrew, and three made it back to port. All of the Scouting Group I battlecruisers took massive hits and kept fighting, even pushing to within three miles of the Grand Fleet's battleships. The combined guns of the British fleet couldn't sink them until the next morning when Lutzow was scuttled to prevent its capture. It was badly damaged and too slow by then to keep up with the retreat.
See, hull tanking is a real thing! I wonder if Derflinger's Engineering BOff was a Miracle Worker specialist?
also what would the firing of said weapon look like?
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Mass drivers are a possibility. Although, I doubt many ships or planets would be able to handle an asteroid travelling at 0.1c. Kamikaze Capital ships are also a possibility. I am surprised that it took this long for the Rebellion in Star Wars to use Kamikaze tactics.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Image - unless you are in the path of the beams or there is material to occlude it, (dust or gas, or wreckage,) you see nothing. Except where the beams converge. At that point you see a brilliant nuclear explosion which flows in the path of the beams. As the focal point is adjusted the concentration of the explosion will move along this path. I imagine a good gunner will adjust the focal point continuously so the linear explosion appears to pulse up and down its length. Mass will block the path, but will also serve to backstop stray photons which would otherwise have scattered harmlessly into space to afford them the chance to react in the explosion, so impact sites on objects will blossom with larger explosions.
Positron Bolt Cannon - A focused beam of positrons impacts the target where it reacts with the electrons of the hull. Some of the collisions will result in the creation of deadly gamma rays, (which might create a crew of Incredible Hulks, but will more likely result in fatal cases of sunburn,) and some will result in the scattering of the electrons which bond the target material together. This weapon's effect is both to bypass armor and to drill holes in it. It also easily overloads electromagnetic-based shielding.
Image - the positrons will require something to travel along to reach their target, so a stream of cationic gas would be fired first, then a positron bolt would follow along the path like a static discharge or lightning bolt, producing photons, gamma rays, and lots of other interesting stuff along the path and at the impact site. While the bolt itself occurs at just under light-speed, the stream of ions along which it travels acts like the previously mentioned ion cannon. In this case, beam scattering would be an asset because the wider the dispersal, the more paths the anti-lightning bolt can travel, and the longer the static discharge can be sustained, (because, you know, that cationic gas along the path of the bolt is being destroyed by the discharge too.)
Anti-Particle Beam - This weapon uses a magnetic or gravitic linear accelerator to fire a stream of atom-sized antimatter bullets at a target, or predictable results. This weapon is dangerous because any streams of antimatter which miss the target will continue to fly through space until they hit something, at which point they will create an annihilation event. This is a slower than light weapon.
Image - You don't see anything unless there is dust or debris in the path of the stream with which it interacts. At the terminal annihilation site there is a nuclear fireball. Maybe the barrel of the gun glows red from heat or something.
The purpose of a kamikaze attack is destroying expensive enemy military resources at a far lower expense. If the rebel ships have a 5% or lower chance of surviving, then it is far more effective to take out a Star Destroyer by slamming a Corvette into it. Even slamming a Star Cruiser into a Star Destroyer would be effective since Imperial ships are more expensive to build than Rebel ships.
Trials of Blood and Fire
Moving On Parts 1-3 - Part 4
In Cold Blood
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Assuming the rebellion could replace lost ships. The Empire had access to virtually every major shipyard and the combined resources of most of a galaxy. The rebellion had hand-me-downs, salvaged wrecks, fleeing cityships (in the case of the Mon Cal, according to the comics), and stolen Imperial equipment. In short, the Rebels would run out of corvettes before the Empire ran out of Star Destroyers.
Trials of Blood and Fire
Moving On Parts 1-3 - Part 4
In Cold Blood
Depends on the target. Launching an asteroid travelling at 0.1c at the Death Star or a planet would certainly do far more damage than a 20 kilo slug. Might not have a planet anymore if that asteroid hits its target while a 20 kilo slug travelling at 0.01c would destroy a city. Accelerating an asteroid to relativistic velocities is a planet destroyer weapon not something that is used in regular battles. After all, it is the futuristic version of a nuclear bomb.
Even tiny masses at huge velocities can be devastating, as I mentioned way back at the beginning of this topic. If you have a linear accelerator capable of muzzle velocities in the fractions of c range, your projectiles don't have to be very large to be incredibly powerful. Make your projectile out of some very dense, hard material so it resists ablation upon impact, and it's a penetration weapon. Make it out of an easily crushed material and it's an explosive weapon, but even at .1c it's going to hurt when it hits.
I'd expect the Blueberries to use Ion weapons on 40K
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
I read somewhere that the RotJ novelization had the Rebels using those Gallofree Yards transports (the freighters they used to evacuate Hoth in the previous film) as ramships: they wouldn't be much use in a firefight and they were hopelessly outdated anyway. One of those hitting an ISD or VSD at sufficient velocity would probably wreck it, maybe even Executor, assuming it didn't miss (remember, space is big) or the Imps didn't blast it out of the sky short of its target.
Realism here: Less than 20% at most of Japanese kamikazes in World War II actually hit an enemy ship. That's hits, underline, not sinkings. That's still a higher hit/miss ratio than conventional weapons, but the Japanese really didn't have enough planes or pilots to waste them that way. And they were completely useless against Royal Navy carriers when the Brits were able to rejoin the Pacific War in '45: unlike wooden-decked American carriers, British flat-tops had armored decks and a plane that hit one would just bounce off (that happened a lot at Okinawa).
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
The British carriers were built with more survivability in regards to dive bombers (They faced the Stukas in the Med)
Kamikaze tactics are just a pointless waste
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
you'd think the empire would've learned from that and STOPPED PUTTING THEIR BRIDGES ON HUGE TOWERS! those things are even MORE of a massive bullseye than starfleet bridge domes
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
That wouldn't have actually done anything permanent but for the sheer dumb luck that the Executor was pointed at the Death Star when the bridge was destroyed. The first officer would've been in the auxiliary bridge, the chief engineer would've been in the engine rooms, and either one of them could have regained control given sufficient time.
You still get the command disruption of losing Admiral Piett, but the chain of command also means that the next-most-senior admiral (likely a rear or vice admiral commanding one of the ISD squadrons) takes charge. In fact in Heir to the Empire, it's said that then-Captain Gilad Pellaeon first came to prominence by organizing an orderly retreat after the Death Star blew.
The argument I saw stems from the novelization listing the events around the Executor's destruction slightly differently than the movie. In the film, the Rebels blow up the big metal ball, then the Imp officer announces to Piett that the bridge shields are down. In the novel, the Rebel capital ships concentrate fire on Executor and bring her shields down, then the fighters make their attack run and cripple the ship.
Of course, the novelization also has the wrong callsigns for the Rebel fighter squadrons.
For what it's worth, the only diagram I ever saw (The Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology IIRC) said they were sensor domes, but had shield projector vanes attached to them. Either way, blowing it up wouldn't be good for the shields.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
And executive officer on a secondary bridge? We don't do that in modern-day navies; why would that be done by a culture that builds massive chasms inside their mobile battle station, then puts an important control halfway across a bridge spanning such a chasm and doesn't even have a safety rail? (See Obi-wan disabling the tractor beam in the original movie.)
supposedly, to explain this, either piett or the officer that jumped into the pit with him hit a control for thrusters or something and THAT is what sent the executor careening into the DS2
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"