Re: FB designs & fighters

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ryan M Gill" <rmgill@mindspring.com>
To: <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Cc: "Oerjan Ohlson" <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 14, 2002 11:55 AM
Subject: Re: FB designs & fighters

> At 7:44 PM +0200 5/14/02, Oerjan Ohlson wrote:
> >2) The Death Star's guns, like those on the various Star Destroyers
> >in the movies, were ship-killers, not fighter-killers, and rather
> >ineffective against fighters. I'd rate them as B1s at best, not as
> >PDS.

> Hmm. You mean just like where Massive SDNs with a few PDS are mobbed
> and killed by fighters?

The Death Star wasn't really "mobbed"... it was the equivalent of a
dreadplanet massing at _least_ in the tens of thousands, and was
attacked by
the equivalent of five or six fighter groups.  ("We count over thirty
Rebel
ships, Lord Vader...")	The Death Star also carried something to the
tune of
a thousand fighter groups itself, was armed with a main weapon that was
capable of shattering an entire planet, _and_ was defended by shielding
that
could survive being close to such a planet _while_ it was shattering. 
(This
last point is often overlooked, and is probably at least as miraculous
as
the actual planet destruction itself.)

However, the Death Star never got within range to use its
planet-destroying
laser, its shielding wasn't designed to prevent fighters from flying
close
to it, it didn't use its own fighters to full effectiveness in its own
defense, and its surface armaments were, as Oerjan said, designed to
fire at
shipping, not fighters.  (I agree with his B1 statement, and would
probably
add that the Death Star would follow the "segmented" rules in MT and not
be
permitted to fire more than a few of the B1s at a given squadron at a
time.)
And, as he said, it had a design flaw that allows needle beam fire at
its
power core, which was exploited by an Ace amongst the Rebel attackers at
great cost to their own fighters.

If the Death Star had known that a fighter assault could have destroyed
it
as such, and had _really_ wanted to stop it, it could have.  Very
easily.
It _did_ have the fighter materiel aboard to do so, but the commanders
on
board refused to use it, out of overconfidence.

E