*Nods to Captain Smith* Reapers at Hoth

[Sharpandpointies]

It starts the same.

Watching the Walkers come forward to the Rebel base, Luke says: OH, force, please send me some help.

Well, the Force was having an adult beverage and reached out and ...

This is where things change, and we get two different matches.

1. One Reaper Destroyer arrives in order to assist the Rebels. It starts on the planet.
2. One Reaper capital ship arrives in order to assist the Rebels. It starts on the planet.

The situation for each match remains exactly the same as in the movie - the Star Destoyers will not deploy TIE fighters, nor can they simply bombard the Reaper due to the planetary shield.

What happens?

Bonus Match: An equal number of Reapers capital ships - with their full compliment of fighters and such - to the Star Destroyers appears in orbit to try to clear out the Imperial forces, with three additional Reapers to balance out the SSD. What happens?

[big_adventure]

Any Reaper on the planet solos the Empire forces. Just turn, light up the supernastydeathray and everybody dies. The total lack of maneuverability of the walkers spells their doom.

In the capitol ship battle, man, it's hard to say. It took the whole ME unity fleet's combined fire to kill one reaper. But I'd posit that star destroyers have a significant fraction as much firepower as that whole fleet - each. Combined fire from one might do it. Combined fire from multiples definitely will.

[Sharpandpointies]

The Capital ships, the issue is that in-canon, Reaper Barriers aren't going to do a whole lot against laser weaponry. Which leads to 'how powerful are the Turbolasers on a Star Destroyer'?

Which is a big mess, as I recall.

[big_adventure]

The Capital ships, the issue is that in-canon, Reaper Barriers aren't going to do a whole lot against laser weaponry. Which leads to 'how powerful are the Turbolasers on a Star Destroyer'?

Which is a big mess, as I recall.

Yeah, I kind of figure that the SDs would have the edge here. Their downside is that their reactions are slow, and frankly, their weapons are slow. Turbolasers are just not lasers. They are some kind of souped-up blaster fire. The Reapers have actual laser weapons that seem to move that fast, and are probably strong enough to punch shields and dish actual hurt on the SDs, however, they are also explicitly slow to fire, and they are, very ID-alien-style, explicitly vulnerable when they are preparing to fire.

SDs are freaking huge - much larger than even the big Reapers, and are firing hundreds of rapid-fire blasters in a hail of fire. I figure that the fleets will approach, the SDs will fire out a crazy flood of TL shots, the Reapers will do their "open up my flower to you" shoot style, damage and even kill some SDs, but the hail of TL fire will hit their soft spots and end a huge amount of them pretty quickly. Once the numbers start to favor the SDs, they can start seriously concentrating fire and then it's all over.

Reapers, for all of their implied intelligence and mastery, also are extremely poor at acting in the interests of self-preservation. Once we've shown how we can kill them, they probably shouldn't keep doing the exact same thing until we chip away their health bar. But they do.

This ignores what indoctrination could accomplish, but that seems to take more time and proximity than the Reapers have here.

So, Reapers own Hoth, but get owned in the pitched space battle. Also, if this is in space and not in the Arena, the SW ships can just fly the hell away at their massively better interstellar travel speeds since there is no relay here, and come back with better stuff or more stuff or just for sniping runs over time, later.

[Harbinger19]

The Capital ships, the issue is that in-canon, Reaper Barriers aren't going to do a whole lot against laser weaponry. Which leads to 'how powerful are the Turbolasers on a Star Destroyer'?

Which is a big mess, as I recall.

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/.../Asteroid.html

I usually default to ESB asteroid destruction for current canon SW which Mike Wong (admittedly a biased source but from what I know having appropriate technical knowledge) conservatively estimated at 92 TJ or 22ish kilotons per shot. Notably an Imperial-II SD (the kind seen in ESB) has 60 of those smaller point-defense guns in current canon as well as 8 larger turrets.

So a Systems Alliance dreadnaught can fire at roughly 32 kilotons every 3 seconds in-lore and it takes about 3-4 dreadnaughts to overwhelm a Sovereign-class Reaper’s kinetic barriers IIRC according to the Codex. So roughly 128 kilotons every 3 seconds, 256 kilotons every 6 seconds.

The larger batteries (albeit on the older-model Imperial-I SDs) as seen in Thrawn’s orbital bombardment* in Rebels can roughly fire a 2-shot burst every 2 seconds or so (I counted roughly 11 shots in about 6 seconds from the port-side battery by slowing the clip to .25x speed.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ARR0RPrr_rg
8 batteries x 22 kilotons averaged over 11/6 = 322 kilotons in 6 seconds, comparable to about 5 Alliance dreadnaughts.

Notably, that is just the big guns, and that is assuming the big guns have THE EXACT SAME firepower as the small point-defense guns while also ignoring said 60 small turbolasers and the 60 ion cannons an Imperial-II is packing. And as you mentioned a Reaper’s shields may do less to stop turbolasers than pure kinetic weaponry.

By raw firepower alone, for my money a Sovereign-class Reaper wants none of even a Disney-canon ISD, to say nothing of the Executor-class SSD.

*Which it should be noted was not intended to be lethal as he had orders to capture the Rebel leadership, noted since the long-range firepower is clearly not kiloton range.

[Sharpandpointies]

I am honestly unsure about what kind of weaponry the SD have. If it's plasma-based, barriers will work against it (how well is open to discussion, but regardless it'll be better than nothing). The only thing I DO know about them is that they tend to be turreted, and not necessarily fixed-forward. So despite the SD's being lumbering hippos in space, they should be able to continuously fire on the Reapers.

*checks* Okay, it seems Turbolasers ARE actually blasters of a sort, firing plasma, as you say! We don't KNOW how well barriers protect against plasma (mainly because nobody is using such weapons in Mass Effect), but barriers protect against matter, so there will be SOME benefit.

Regarding Reaper main (and secondary) cannons - they are explicitly not energy weapons. Their main weapons consist of molten metal launched at a significant fraction of the speed of light - in effect, they're pretty close to plasma weapons themselves. Also, Reapers don't actually drop their barriers when firing, so if the SD's are firing plasma-type weapons rather than lasers, the Reapers should still be protected.

I think they have something similar to the GUARDIAN laser system for short-ranged, anti-fighter stuff, but whether they do or not it's unimportant to this kind of battle.

Re: Weak points. It's just the Destroyers that seem to have a weak point in their main cannon when firing; the Capital Ships don't display anything of the sort, and absently shrug off massed fire from a whole ton of ships shooting at them while burning other ships into pieces.

I don't really know what the capabilities are of the SD guns, though, which is the main problem here.

One thing the Reapers DO have is high maneuverability...and they are totally unconcerned with actually physically attacking enemy ships. It's something they're perfectly happy to do.

*checks* Well, ****. Star Destroyers are actually a little SMALLER than Reapers, which clock in at ~2Km in length (SD ~1.6Km). That doesn't bode well for the SD who get grabbed.

I'm edging toward the Reapers taking this now, barring people coming in with feats for SD firing stuff that's waaaay more powerful than anything the Reapers have casually shrugged off.

[Sharpandpointies]

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/.../Asteroid.html

I usually default to ESB asteroid destruction for current canon SW which Mike Wong (admittedly a biased source but from what I know having appropriate technical knowledge) conservatively estimated at 92 TJ or 22ish kilotons per shot. Notably an Imperial-II SD (the kind seen in ESB) has 60 of those smaller point-defense guns in current canon as well as 8 larger turrets.

So a Systems Alliance dreadnaught can fire at roughly 32 kilotons every 3 seconds in-lore and it takes about 3-4 dreadnaughts to overwhelm a Sovereign-class Reaper’s kinetic barriers IIRC according to the Codex. So roughly 128 kilotons every 3 seconds, 256 kilotons every 6 seconds.

The larger batteries (albeit on the older-model Imperial-I SDs) as seen in Thrawn’s orbital bombardment* in Rebels can roughly fire a 2-shot burst every 2 seconds or so (I counted roughly 11 shots in about 6 seconds from the port-side battery by slowing the clip to .25x speed.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ARR0RPrr_rg
8 batteries x 22 kilotons averaged over over 11/6 = 322 kilotons in 6 seconds, comparable to about 5 Alliance dreadnaughts.

Notably, that is just the big guns, and that is assuming the big guns have THE EXACT SAME firepower as the small point-defense guns while also ignoring said 60 small turbolasers and the 60 ion cannons an Imperial-II is packing. And as you mentioned a Reaper’s shields may do less to stop turbolasers than pure kinetic weaponry.

By raw firepower alone, for my money a Sovereign-class Reaper wants none of even a Disney-canon ISD, to say nothing of the Executor-class SSD.

*Which it should be noted was not intended to be lethal as he had orders to capture the Rebel leadership, noted since the long-range firepower is clearly not kiloton range.

Aaaand here's some of that right now.

Good information, this. Seems the SD have much higher sustained firepower than the Reapers, enough to seriously mess them up, assuming the math is correct.

It's interesting to note that the ME wiki (which gets most of its info from the Codex) notes the main gun of the Reapers puts out hundreds of KT per shot, itself, not counting the various weapons it carries on the tips of the tentacle-thingies. And it can actually PLAY the beam from the main cannon around like a hose for the few seconds it fires.

Even so, Reaper odds just dropped dramatically.

[Postmania]

Admiral Tarkin: Ah yes, "Reapers". We have dismissed that fleet.

[Anarchist]

The Executor Super Star Destroyer absolutely dwarfs any Reaper and would probably take out an entire fleet singlehandedly.

[Harbinger19]

Small correction; ME dreadnaughts fire at roughly 38 kilotons/shot, not 32 as I had in my above post.

I do not believe that 6 kilotons changes the substance much, but I wanted to be accurate.

[Anarchist]

Also, the Reaper weapon isn't a laser. It's a stream of molten metal fired at a fraction of lightspeed.

[big_adventure]

Mea Culpa for thinking their shots were lasers. That makes some difference, and proves that, while I've played the games, i didn't read the codex entries. :-)

[Anarchist]

Mea Culpa for thinking their shots were lasers. That makes some difference, and proves that, while I've played the games, i didn't read the codex entries. :-)

To be fair a lot of what the Lore states in ME is just needless distinction without a difference^^

Like how the Leviathan controlling it's subjects works. "It's not mind control bro, it's just conditioning through pain."

[big_adventure]

To be fair a lot of what the Lore states in ME is just needless distinction without a difference^^

Like how the Leviathan controlling it's subjects works. "It's not mind control bro, it's just conditioning through pain."

Yeah, I never noticed that I was missing anything. Everything I ever needed to know, I learned in interminable elevator rides.