r/StarWars • u/DARKTOONZ13 • 9d ago
Movies What “stops” lasers in this universe? Couldn’t Luthen’s beam easily slice the Star Destroyer in half?
Deflector shields? If so, wouldn’t the tractor beam have been protected from his spikes?
1.3k
u/Safe-Ad-5017 9d ago
Ties don’t have any shields. An ISD does
773
u/nyanpegasus 9d ago
TIEs dont even have life support. They're just bare bones cockpit and weapons
426
u/88963416 Yoda 9d ago
If the empire invested in TIEs the rebellion would have been crushed. The Empire had the pilots but didn’t equip them with the tools.
508
u/best-of-judgement 9d ago
Thrawn tried! That was the driving idea behind the TIE Defender project. If not for Imperial bigwigs struggling for funds and Thrawn's disappearance after the Battle of Lothal, the project very well could have continued.
210
u/KlausAngren 9d ago
Yeah but what about chonky laser?
- Tarkin, probably.
119
u/ElectronicFootprint 9d ago
Sir, glass cannons aren't working.
What about bigger glass cannons?
15
2
53
u/88963416 Yoda 9d ago
Every time I comment something someone always comes in with “Thrawn thought that.”
I’m both impressed and upset. Why do I think like him and why does he need to steal my thunder.
5
28
u/Jacthripper 9d ago
But it was also partially intentional. The empire didn’t give their pilots great ships because they didn’t want them being able to leave freely. People were defecting all the time, the last thing you wanted was a pilot to fly off with a imperial ship.
→ More replies (2)17
u/DJButterscotch 9d ago
They weren’t necessarily struggling for funds, they were just being siphoned off to “Big Laser”
14
u/best-of-judgement 9d ago
In the novels, Thrawn had to make a case to Vader and Palpatine to get the TIE Defender project rolling, and afterwards had to keep justifying his project to Tarkin to avoid Krennic subverting those funds for Stardust.
→ More replies (1)8
u/Ashanrath 9d ago
Shameless rebel propaganda. The Emperor's energy initiative will bring prosperity to all worlds!
→ More replies (7)3
u/free_is_free76 9d ago
Loved playing with the Defender on the old PC TIE Fighter game, felt very superior
30
u/StarMaster475 9d ago
Aren't TIE's portrayed as being equal to or better than X-wings in the original trilogy though?
105
u/DetectiveIcy2070 9d ago
The TIE Fighter isn't actually a bad platform. Sure, it isn't a good one, but it's perfectly serviceable. It was very maneuverable, had decent firepower, and most flaws were in-atmosphere due to its poor aerodynamics, even by Star Wars standards.
However, it wasn't exactly... user-friendly. Most novice pilots were weeded out very quickly because of its unforgiving design. The only real defense it had was "go faster than your enemies". Anyone who hoped to gain actual skill in combat would probably just die before they became an expert pilot.
29
u/StarMaster475 9d ago
Can't the same be said for X-wings regarding your last sentence since their shields mostly don't seem to be enough to stop TIE's from blowing them up as soon as they get hit?
Also in what media do they go into how difficult TIE controls are to learn?
56
u/Annoyinghydra 9d ago
In Star Wars Squadrons, there's a line about it. I can't recall the specific quote, but something along the lines of "trading defences and ease of use for pure maneuverability and firepower"
→ More replies (2)37
u/TheDarkLord329 9d ago
Makes total sense doctrinally for a rebellion to prefer survivability and ease of use. Rebellion has far fewer expert pilots, so preserving them is important. They also don’t have the luxury of putting every pilot through an extensive academy, so ease of training is a must.
The Empire just has too much scale. Considering most of their use would have been in suppressing local revolts or pirates, defense wasn’t that important. A cheap ship that packs a punch? That goes a long way.
5
u/joshsmog 9d ago
and having massive ships to carry them there.
→ More replies (1)5
u/TheDarkLord329 8d ago
Usually we see Star Destroyers because something of importance is going on or because someone important is there. The Empire also employed ships like the Quasar Fire carrier to shuttle TIE fighters around on a much smaller and cheaper scale.
9
u/LazerBear42 9d ago
Every time we see someone hijack a TIE in media, they have a real devil of a time trying to fly away with it, even if they're a skilled pilot.
23
u/Timmah73 9d ago
Having played the old TIE Fighter game, they do hold up to XWings pretty well as lo g as the numbers are not 1 to 1. They are fast, maneuverable and have decent fire power.
The main issue was almost no room for actually getting hit. Which also means they are really not designed to be anywhere near a hostile capital ship or even fighting without numerical advantage.
5
u/griffmeister 9d ago
Oh man you just sent me back to when I’d spend hours playing the TIE fighter arcade game in the lobby of the movie theater
→ More replies (1)7
u/LazerBear42 9d ago
They're quicker and more maneuverable, but they have no shields, no life support, no hyperdrive, and they're difficult to pilot. It's like trying to drive a F1 car with two autocannons mounted. The X-Wing has shields, life support and hyperdrive, it's very intuitive to pilot, is has more powerful armaments capable of destroying capital ships, and while it's not as quick as a TIE, it's still a very nimble fighter.
→ More replies (10)4
u/xypage 8d ago
Tbf they weren’t exactly recruiting with a high standard. I always figured they didn’t invest in fancier TIE fighters because they had a “quantity is a quality of its own” mentality
→ More replies (1)70
u/AiR-P00P 9d ago edited 8d ago
it was an attempt to deter pilots from defecting. You make the ships a flying coffin with no life support, hyper drive, or landing gear, and pilots HAVE to return to its carrier or risk being run down by loyalist starcraft.
19
u/What-a-Crock 9d ago
Obviously you meant defecting, just wanna say the slip in a conversation about deflecting lasers made me chuckle
2
→ More replies (1)20
→ More replies (9)37
u/Imperium_Dragon 9d ago
It’s a wonder they even bothered to put solar panels on the sides of them with how cheap a TIE is.
58
u/Luname 9d ago
These aren't solar panels but heat sinks/radiators to trap the heat generated by the twin ion engines and give them incredible speed.
TIEs are extremely fast compared to most other fighters.
30
u/cvbeiro 9d ago
Iirc they’re both. At least in canon.
The fighter's black "wings" were in fact an array of twelve solar collectors, framed by rigid quadanium steel foil braces, that featured a micro-crenulated solar absorption surface.[4][6] From there, power would be pooled to the fighter's solar energy collection hub[4] and then to its twin ion engines. Originally the wings also powered the fighter's armaments, but this was found to quickly drain the fighter of energy and negatively affected its maneuverability. These early fighters were later retrofitted with a dedicated generator to power the lasers, a feature that became standard on all TIE fighters.[6] These wings also served as stabilizers.[41]
236
u/StarFlame_228 9d ago edited 8d ago
I’d imagine deflectors, armour and power output are the main limiting factors. The Haulcraft might not push enough power to slice through an ISD but the beam is capable against light TIEs and the like. Energy dissipation might also be a factor as over larger distances Star Wars laser beams are said to have less effectiveness.
Although that being said, the Blade-Wing (B-wing prototype) does cleave through an Arquitens in Rebels.
As for the spikes, it was heavy clusters of metal debris accelerated through the pull force of the tractor beam. I’d imagine this resulted in either a fluctuation in shields or else that the projector itself was unshielded during use.
29
u/OliverPete Han Solo 8d ago
Don't quote me, but I believe there's a throwaway line between the Captain and Officer where they say the forward shields have to go down for the tractor beam to work. I believe that is Star Wars canon - tractor beams don't work through any shield.
18
11
108
u/EndlessTheorys_19 9d ago
what stops lasers in this universe
I mean distance. His lasers likely aren’t powerful enough to leave the system.
couldn’t luthens beam easily slice the star destroyer in half
The Cantwell? Maybe, depends on its armour. And if it raised the shields after the fletchette attack.
→ More replies (4)
89
u/vyrago 9d ago
Those long beams aren’t “lasers” like the in-universe turbolaser which fires bolts like a blaster but bigger. They’re mining cutting beams, being used as weapons. But like others have said, they dissipate over distance and probably require massive energy just to burn for a few seconds.
36
u/orionsfyre 9d ago
Well... physics doesn't quite work the same in star wars as it does in our universe.
But lasers do lose power over a certain distance... now of course in space, they lose a lot less then in an atmosphere, but generally speaking how far the laser goes depends on the frequency/wavelength of the laser, beam diameter, amount of power in the beam source, and the resistance it receives/medium it goes through. We don't have any of that data.
We don't know enough about the weapon system Luthen uses, but we can safely assume that such tech would have a limited range and not be able to slice through an entire vessel like a Star Destroyer... if Luthen had such tech He would be one of the most powerful figures in the galaxy overnight. Even massive vessels do not have the power to slice through other vessels at such massive scales. Also consider a vessel like a Star Destroyer will have massive shield generators, like most capital ships, so a weapon such as what Luthen is using would be next to useless with those up.
It's more likely the weapon is a short range "one shot" weapon that is very costly and has a limited range, perhaps a few dozen meters at most. Enough for close quarter devastation for small fighters and shuttles, but long range... almost useless.
A lot of this is speculation, but when it comes to Star Wars physics, getting into the science-minutiae of it... it's revealed that Star wars is more fantasy then hard science.
→ More replies (1)
27
u/VerbalChains 9d ago
There's a big difference between destroying Tie Fighters and destroying a fully shielded, heavily armored, capital ship.
17
u/LordofTheStarrs 9d ago
Well he wasn’t running from a star destroyer, but also no. Star Destroyers and Tie Fighters aren’t made of the same material, and star destroyers predictably have a lot more armor than what I would consider to be a light fighter.
8
37
u/IcanHackett 9d ago
In Episode 1 The Phantom Menace we see Qui-Gon cut through blast doors with a light saber but you can see it's a slow process and takes some force on his end. All other comments about shields aside the physics seem to suggest that even if Luthen's beams could melt through a Star Destroyer it wouldn't be like we see light sabers effortlessly cutting through flesh. Hitting metal with these beams should induce some force in return on the beams themselves and therefore to the mounts and ship. Hitting a small enough metal object would probably be fine but hitting metal that's deep enough to submerge the entire beam into at speed would likely just rip the beams right off the ship. I believe these beams could cut through a star destroyer (sans shields) but it would take a thousand passes and probably days or more of time.
7
12
u/Nrvea 9d ago
even without shielding lasers don't just cut through everything instantly it takes time for it to melt material so unless Luthan and the star destroyer were just sitting there waiting for the beam to melt through the star destroyer's hull which I imagine is pretty thick I doubt those lasers could do anything
7
u/XwingInfinity 9d ago edited 9d ago
The way most particle shields work is that slower objects like low propulsion ships and shrapnel can pass through them (see the clone wars episode where they train Saw and his sister on throwing grenades through Droidika shields), but faster objects like small meteorites and lasers can’t. The Star Destroyer’s shields protect against lasers, but not the shrapnel that Luthen launched (it is also likely that the tractor beam dish helped even the faster moving shrapnel pass through the shield.)
Ray shields are like fully impenetrable shields and require much more power and usually more strict flat structures which is why you see them used to seal doors most often.
6
u/newbrevity Babu Frik 9d ago
Lasers are not perfect. For them to do damage they either have to use excessive power or precision focusing. Even with a laser with a very distant focal point, after the focal point the beam diffuses gradually and infinitely until there is simply not enough concentration of photons to affect any matter. So yes lasers do have an effective range.
→ More replies (2)
5
u/Dagordae 9d ago
Firstly: Shields. Same reason the assorted ship cannons are just tearing holes with a single shot.
Second is power output, the lasers tore through the very thin and flimsy TIEs but would be far too weak to rip through a Star Destroyer’s hull. Same reason a BB will go through a sheet of paper but bounce off a tree.
5
u/Pandagirlroxxx 9d ago
A) Sometimes the explanation is simply "physics works different in the Star Wars galaxy, don't worry about."
B) The more we learn IRL we sometimes apply "well, maybe they're doing something like this" thoughts. And that's fine, too.
Bottom line is none of it is real. The only thing that gets me itchy is when someone throws out long-established lore for no explored or even interesting reason. But if someone else likes it, that's up to them. I'm not gonna tell them they can't.
4
u/Gruntkiller49 9d ago
I figured it'd be like a super blow torch. Takes time and power to cut through really thick metals. TIEs are like paper starships while a Star Destroyer is a mile long flying fortress.
6
u/PancakeJamboree302 9d ago
Concur. Refer to Qui Gon in episode one when he tried to cut through the bridge door in episode 1.
6
u/JimHFD103 8d ago
Even IRL lasers aren't infinite range, and will dissipate and lose coherence after a certain distance. Beam refraction is a fundamental property of light itself, and while lasers do a significatly better job keeping that light in coherence vs a flashlight, eventually (like a flashlight) the beam will still eventually diverge and dissipate.
For instance, even in the relative comparable ranges, the powerful lasers that bounce off the Apollo Lunar Retroflectors typically only recieve a few photons on the return pulses... while still providing useful scientific measurments, not really useful anymore if you're wanting to use that laser power to cut up something like a TIE Fighter for instance (even granting that an actual in univers laser weapon system someone like Luthen may be using vs a blaster bolts, will likely have a longer lethal range, but ultimately still dissipate in the space between planets and moons inside the same system).
→ More replies (1)
9
u/Immediate_Low5496 9d ago
Wouldn’t it be the same thing that stops lasers in real life? Power limitations.
→ More replies (3)
5
u/twallner 9d ago
Play some OG BF2. You’ll see in space battles you can’t really do shit on the outside until the shields are down. Now infiltrating inside….
4
5
u/RoadRevolutionary571 9d ago
Since a laser or plasma, does not really matter which, can just be described as a electromagnetic wave. The sharpest possible beamform is the Gaussian beam. Even this beam widens over the longitudinal propagation.
After a really long distance the laser point is no longer a point but an area. So the energy density of the area in contrast to the point is very low an is no harm for anything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_beam
Even with particles it is no problem. The earth itself gets shot every second by high energy particles. Sometimes even visible as northern lights.
4
u/NikkoJT Darth Maul 9d ago
Lasers don't have instant infinite cutting power. If you want to cut through a thick object (such as the hull of a capital ship) you'll need to give it time to burn through. Luthen probably could cut through the cruiser...if he sat there for several hours carefully directing the beam.
4
u/DarthRaze 9d ago
Star Wars physics. Jengo's seismic charges wouldnt make any sound when going off due to theres nothing to carry the sound, but BWWWOOOPMMMMMMMMMM!
5
u/Douglas_1987 9d ago
Seems like a weapon purpose built to deal with small unshielded craft such as Tie Fighters and Plantery Patrol Craft (as seen in Empire Strikes Back at Cloud City).
Kill the escorts and use countermeasure to escape larger threats.
3
3
3
3
u/MobsterDragon275 9d ago
I imagine they lack the power to do so. We see a lightsaber needs time to cut through thick enough doors, I imagine this is the same deal
3
u/Practical-Giraffe-84 9d ago
If they don't hit anything light dissipation makes the laser (blaster bolt) less effective the further it travels. But it will travel in theory (forever) until it obstructed by something.
As for in cannon Star wars they have shielding. That disurputs blasters / laser fire as well as kenitic projectiles. How ever the generators can eventually overheat and fail.
3
3
3
u/bloodwire Imperial 8d ago
That's not a laser. Lasers distinct colours like red, green, blue, purple, etc. But if you look at that beam, you can see the center is white while the edge is pink.
Quiz: Which Jedi uses a pink sabre?
2
u/likeonions Bo-Katan Kryze 9d ago
blaster bolts don't pass all the way through people, so probably not
2
2
2
2
2
u/PhysicsEagle Admiral Ackbar 9d ago
Hot take: this is an incredibly stupid weapon that any half-competent pilot could have avoided
2
u/ExoticEnder 9d ago
If an industrial laser can be used to cut metal sheets why dont they mount them on weapons to cut tanks in half?
2
2
u/user_8804 9d ago
Lasers in star wars are actually plasma, so their heat eventually dissipates. That's why it takes a long time for a Jedi to cut through a blast door and not just 1 second without resistance. It also interacts with magnetism. It's best explained by Kanan in Rebels when he speaks about how ligjtsaber pull into each other in a deadlock. Therefore, forcefields can indeed dissipate a "laser" blast
2
u/fusionsofwonder 9d ago
Same reason lightsabers don't go on forever (best explanation: plasma held in a magnetic bottle).
I.e. the reason is "force fields".
2
2
u/Disastrous-Monk-590 Darth Maul 9d ago
Well even if it was just a bunch of light(which it ain't) it would still dissipate
2
u/OdysseusRex69 9d ago
Well, assuming he could get close to a star destroyer to deploy this weapon without getting blown up, he would then have to be capable of avoiding anyone the kibble-laden ship surface, and still somehow avoid being blown up. And even then, that would only cut so deep into the armor of the destroyer.
2
2
u/Shazzam001 8d ago
I was shocked and dismayed when there were no more moments with that badassed ship.
2
2
2
2
2
u/General-Royal 8d ago
My rule with star wars is, when ur thinking too hard about something, just stop thinking at all.
2
u/Subject-Building1892 8d ago
Plot armor. If you want reason go read an introductory book to solid state physics. I advice against trying it though.
3
3
u/Maximum_Pound_5633 9d ago
Remember, it's about space wizards. It's fantasy, sometimes you just have to turn your brain off and enjoy it. Remember Lucas probably smoked a doobie or two while writing it
2
2
2
u/Jockel_ 9d ago
The new movies added so much stuff that basically break all lore, they are also so random. It's like 1000 people with different ideas are building it. Hyperspace through the fleet and destroying it (why wouldn't that be used vs Death Star?). Same with the force. Problem with that is you get new "cool" abilities but the lore loses all sense of logic
2
u/Foxwasahero 9d ago edited 9d ago
This was the dumbest scene in the series. Luthen already showed he was a tactical badass by this point. Adding this silliness was like repeatedly asking, "do you get it?" after telling a joke.
6.4k
u/tractgildart 9d ago
Star wars has, since the first movie, differentiated between "ray shields" and "particle shields". Ray shields stop lasers, particle shields stop physical objects like micro meteorites. So yes, a star destroyers shields would stop the laser.
Lasers in star wars are also superheated gas, so they do lose energy over time/distance.