Sorry the video was a bit more rambly than normal! Been busy lately. Follow on Twitter! twitter.com/eckhartsladder

Intensify forward firepower!

Because the rule of cool always prevails in Star Wars. And the word ‘turbolaser’ sounds badass. #gorollies

Isn't slow turning speed mainly a problem with the weapon mount rather than the weapon itself?

Remember that Turbolasers where never designed to be an AA battery. Theyre main goal was to take the hell out of capital ships and shore installations. And given how much Lucas was inspired by the second world war when making this universe we can easily see the reseamblance to heavy naval artillery here. they where neither meant to be AA guns despite the fact that some of the heavy cruisers guns could be used as both. Johan.

3:35 "Droid gunners seem to do a pretty poor job in actual combat roles" 3:41 (N-1 fighter explodes)

0:15 Oh my god! I forgot the game!!! (Runs to car)

2:11 When you think about it, having a power source for each turbolaser is a good idea. Just look at star trek where everything is so interconnected that a torpedo hitting one part of the ship, even while shields are up, can knock out weapons, impulse engines, and warp drive. The systems on Star Wars ships are more reliable.

Fire the Turbolasers!

I mean lasers in a science fantasy based on a war fought in the 1940's aren't going to be practical. Don't let it ruin your viewing experience

Can you do a video on why cybernetic enhancement was so rare in star wars? I know there is a lot of cybernetics as replacements but they usually only seem to reach the capabilities of organic parts and not exceed them. I also know that there are some enhancing cybernetics, especially in the old republic era, but it seems as though they largely became out of fashion by latest the clone wars.

5:45 I speculate that the “Venator style heavy laser” was a vehicle-mounted laser like the ones we saw on Geonosis shooting down capital ships that were trying to escape. Venators were not actually equipped with that weapon, but someone could have positioned that land vehicle in the hanger in such a way that they could shoot ships.

Honestly love it when Eck uses humour in his vids

Venator style heavy laser weapon? That wasn't a Venator's gun there Eck, that was an SPHA Walker in the Venator's hanger bay. Why those weapon systems aren't standard on the Venator is a good question though.

Because they couldn't destroy the shields in star wars force collection RIP star wars force collection

Best personal shield: Body shield, Dune; Spartan energy shield, Halo; Kinetic shield, Mass Effect; Shield belt, Star Wars

Its because of *PLOT*

If i had a drink for every time I saw the Force Unleashed 2 battle of Kamino cutscene on this channel...

6:12 that weapon was not mounted on the Venator. It was a Walker based weapon used in to take down the droid command ships in the first battle of Geonosis and also used to put the Zillo beast asleep in the Clone Wars.

PLEASE do T-70 X-Wing VS E-Wing OR Pellaon class Star Destroyer VS Nebula class Star Destroyer

I'd better have gotten here before justin y

Slow firing? i remember three munificents shooting the hell out of Aayla's venator on a clone wars episode, when the tactical droid orders full fire cadence, each cannon was firing one time in 3 seconds. That's a very impressive firepower for some slow charging, slow shooting guns!

Starship versus: Harrower class Dreadnaught vs Victory class Star Destroyer

'Reaches right arm back...flings it forward' "fire the ocutple barbettes, FULL POWER". 'Eckhartsladder vanishes in a cloud of ionized gas'

Turbolasers are a bunch of hocus pocus. I prefer a good old MAC gun and an array of archer missiles by my side.

Just want to say how much I love this channel, by far my favourite

Forget the big game, I can get more entertainment from binge-watching KZfaq videos (such as yours) than out of two teams running up and down a field. (Great video, I think what you said would make for a much more effective ship overall.)

At 6:00, that heavy laser coming out of the hanger of the Venator is not actually part of the Venator itself, but a Republic SPHA: the kind that were used on geonosis to bring down that coreship we see in the attack of the clones

If the rebels (the main threat to the empire) normally focused on fighters, why did they overlook fighter defence for the death star?

At least in the old fluff, turbolasers have teraton yields. Stupendous firepower, impenetrable shields. A few hundred teratons of kaboom (enough to vaporize a large country) covers many sins.

It’s always nice to watch a channel that’s so dedicated to what they do.

The Hapan Battle Dragon was one of the first ships that authors managed to develop to work around the weaknesses behind starship warfare in the Star Wars universe. They were circular, which meant that they could fire in all directions; their weapon emplacements were rotational, which meant that they could fire a constant stream; they had both ion cannons and proton torpedoes, which allowed them to break through capital ships easily.

#askeck .. so can you please explain why the turbolasers in TLJ had a parabolic trajectory? they behave like cannon balls in the film, and i haven't seen anyone address this! is this just the same flippant disregard and complete misunderstanding of established lore, lazy writing/ "subversion" or is there actually an in-universe explanation??

I've been thinking this for ages, The SPHA lasers are sooo underrated, if a faction really invested into these weapons they'd be so useful. I bet if the empire invested heavily into SPHA laser weapons that they could create really powerful ones that are quite compact, think of SPHA lasers as powerful as the ones used by the open circle fleet at coruscant mounted on turbo laser style turrets, the empire could do that in my opinion and they could do It well as shown by their advancements in laser based weaponry with the death star super lasers. If I was the emperor this is what I would have done with my navy, I would have invested heavily in SPHA lasers and faster more accurate turrets, invest in faster firing, faster moving and more accurate laser cannons and point defence lasers, invested heavily in starfighter technology (based on real life fighters cause the ones in star wars are stupid) and invested heavily in AI like the ones used by the UNSC in halo, the empire could follow and advance all these projects if they really wanted to, they definitely have the funding, resources and manpower to do so. You can also get ion based SPHA and Turbo laser based SPHA lasers so that's good. Think of how powerful the first order navy would be with the resurgent having over 1,500 SPHA lasers (ion and Turbo laser based) controlled by UNSC style AI and amazingly advanced star fighters. Then think of if the FO made the SPHA lasers Kyber powered, the finalizer would be unstoppable.

Wow, this is pretty helpful to me; I'm writing a Star Wars-based story where a scene involves an Old Republic Admiral who, frustrated at the poor designs focused on heavy weapons and large crews, sets out to design his own Destroyer. This has given me a few ideas on what to incorporate in this admiral's rant, particularly the obsession with bigger guns, mostly because this guy's skill was in precision strikes that would destroy ships by exploiting weak points and underlying flaws.

I honestly didn't know or care about Star Wars lore until I found this channel. Amazing.

I guess an advantage the turbolaser holds over any unguided mass based projectile is that their energy declines over time until they no longer are a threat. Hear me out on this one, since Eck usualy mentions this as a plus for the MAC: After a big fight in space, there is a LOT of debris that needs to be cleared out before you can travel that region savely again. Since most fights are held in proximity to a planet that problem is usually taken care of by the planets gravity. But in Star Wars, you don't have to worry about lasers flying around randomly hitting sh*t around ground zero (where the fighting took place), because they dissolve. With MACs, slugs and the whole other ammunition you have capital ship killers flying around in space virtually no decline in their energy and the result when they decide to hit a ship. Now you might say that ain't a problem, space is huge and the possibility of one of these things actually hitting something is pretty low. But in a galaxy like the one in Star Wars, how much of these things would be cruising around after, say, the Clone Wars plus the Civil War era? Maybe a dozen of slugs, fired with enough energy to pierce the shield of a capital ship, caught in a systems gravity field to come around once a decade? Maybe even a frequently traveled system, rising the chances of a civilian ship getting absolutely wrecked randomly 80 years in the future? With targeting systems like in the Star Wars galaxy, you'd have a LOT of these random shot cruising the space around important systems after bug battles, and since they'd be fired so the can't be tracked and dodged by the enemy, good luck catching all of them after the fight is over.

I always found it odd how much crew control some Star Wars weapons systems had, Where was the gunnery computer controlling the aim? Heck the Iowa Class battleship of reality had a computer of sorts that could aim the main battery using radar in WW2. An ISD cannot hit the broad side of a freighter drifting slightly to the left.

From the books I have read, the heavy guns used powerful lasers to energize and propel charges of electromagnetically contained tibanna gas down the barrels of the "laser" guns. In a sense, they were plasma weapons.

Can't remember how long ago this was, but this was a idea I had on your 'design a capital ship' video. Never commented on it, but my ship would have been a refit Lucrehulk that pretty much swapped out turbolasers for ion cannons, and added a large number of missile launchers/torpedo tubes to the outer ring. With quad railguns in a fused core section that ran all the way to the engines.

Because they don't fill any combat role? There is simply no range or target that justifies their use. They don't fit against anything. It's as if someone had "sawn off" the barrels on main batteries of irl battleship and left only 15% of the propellant in all the charges. Have fun with all the battleship firepower, but with slow ass velocity and less then a kilometer of range. _Very usefull_

SuperBowl Notification Squad

I'm definitely feeling what you said about alternative loadouts, especially on lighter ships.

Good video Eckhartsladder! :D.

*Laughs in impeller missile and broadside graser*

How powerful are turbolasers in actual hard canon? Star Destroyers destroy smaller ships and buildings with barrages of turbolaser fire in the movies, The Clone Wars and Rebels. Yet in the expanded universe a turbolaser apparently had 200 gigatons per shot.

I'm just posting to deeply thank you for staying in-universe with your approach rather than trying to hard Science it. Thank you so much for that.

The "Venator-style heavy laser" is just one of the walkers in the hangar bay firing. We see those heavy lasers take down a Lucrehulk core ship at Geonosis. As for the Hapan ships, they have an interesting counter to the cooling issues of turbolasers. Their cannons are in clusters of three on a swivel. One fires, the whole unit rapidly spins to bring another weapon to bear and fires that while the first is cooling, repeating the process until the weapon is ready to go. This allows Hapan ships to fire three times for every single shot of a turbolaser on a Star Destroyer.

I'd use ion weapons and railguns Did any faction in Star Wars factions focus on disabling and taking the opponent's equipment, ships included, for their own use afterwards? #AskEck

Best Energy Rifle: E-11 Blaster Rifle, Star Wars; Type-3 Phaser Rifle, Star Trek; PPG Rifle, Babylon 5; Type-25 Energy Rifle, Halo

7:12 Is that a Gladiator-Class Star Destroyer on the lower left? I love that ship design!

One good way to improve the turbolasers, in this case the batteries, will be make them automatic, that is to say than just two or three people will activate the batteries by a switch and the guns itself would target and shoot enemy vessels or proyectiles, along with this, as you say with the New Republic, the sensors of not just the batteries but the turbolasers in general (cannons and turrets) would also be improve to be more accurate in a way similar to the Mon Calamari sensors, but another big improve to make would be in the cooling system, making it more efficient and though against damage

#AskEck Can you talk about our lord and savior: The Halo Valiant class SuperHeavy Cruiser/BattleCruiser

Have you considered that turbolaser despite their many problems may be more efficient, especially energy efficient that the alternatives. A Thousand rounds from a turbo lasers may use less energy and cost less than 1000 rounds for a MAC canon when factoring in making the ammunition and transporting it to the ships.

Another great Video Eck

Where do you place Chiss "megamasers" (akka - more kinetic energy in particle bolts, less heat and plasma)

It’s all fun and games until some poor planet gets bombarded on accident. I can see it now, some random ghost complaining to himself. “‘Meteor showers’ they said. Definitely not solid rounds that missed their target they said.”

But that has nothing to do with the turbolasers themselves. its like comparing a 40mm Bofors to a 16in BB gun. They are suppose to do entirely different things. Furthermore considering the engagement distance in Star Wars compared to WW2 naval engagements a heavy priortiy on anti-ship weaponry seems viable.

Is there such thing as a hybrid turbolaser/ion weapon that melts hull while disabling the ship?

Is the video about different laser colours still in the works or did I somehow miss it? Nice channel.

*341* attempt at Forerunners vs. Warhammer 40k. For Thor's Hammer!!!

HELLO THERE

Turbolasers, as anti-capital ship weapons serve that purpose wonderfully. As planetary bombardment weapons, masterfully. As anti-starfighter, poorly. I agree that starfighters are capable of taking out a large capital ship, but that is rare and usually after those capital ships have taken a beating from other sources, or after lucky shots.

Loved the stream last night

What’s worse than having a Mac that takes forever to reload? Some laser guns who take forever to load and almost always misses.

Replicators vs a Unified Star Wars universe (446th try now, *_I._** WILL NEEEEVER EEEVER GIVE UP!!!)*

if I were using turbo lasers effectively like Eck said, then I would only have at most on my ships 20, 10 on top and 10 at the bottem, then the rest are in point defense, ion cannon's, rail gun's, and proton torpedos

I've often thought my dream imperial ship would have been an ISD mk2, with only 75% of the weapons emplacements of a stock ISD, but those batteries are all composite beam weapons a la the death star/clone gunships. In attack of the clones those beam turrets which were shown to be able to be mounted on a pod on a laac were extremely super effective against separatist forces. I figure you scale them up to replace Turbolasers and use the pod sized ones for point defense. Being they actually are real beams they travel at light speed and so are super accurate. In addition to that my ship has a salvaged Droid control brain deep in the ship that has one job... Coordinate between the turrets which are themselves run by individual Droid Gunner brains that's only job is to do the math needed to aim at enemy ships and then fire. These 2 changes would result in a ship capable against both large capital ships and fleets of smaller fighters. I welcome opinions on my theory. #askeck

Truth be told...using actual laser weapons would be a huge game changer for star wars factions. There exists no starfighter that can dodge a laser beam. Shields would still be weakened by lasers, and lasers are far more efficient and compact than turbo lasers. Then again, with the advent of hyperspace tracking and hyperspace ramming, the age of gigantic capital ships is effectively over. For one mega class star destroyer, I could build 100,000 interstellar missiles equipped with faster-than-light drives, multiple independently targetable warhead delivery vehicles equipped with modified faster than light drives that allow for high relativistic travel. Alternatively, I could build over a million Faster-than-light capable interstellar cruise missiles to target whole battlefleets and armadas from afar.

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I think Ion Cannons would be the best, but I don't know if it uses more power or not.

Do u still do the other videos that aren’t selected later down the line cause there have been suggestions that didn’t get picked that I’d like to see? Please reply!

It's called plot armor, nothing else. Somehow Palpatine outsmarted the whole galaxy, but his star DESTROYERS easily destroyed by some jihadi warriors, such a joke. Somehow number advantage against rebel x-wing pilots means nothing. Of course there are plenty of aces, but regular pilot can't win 2vs1 dogfight. Lol, even Long Night of Solace can single-handedly wiped out any star wars fleet.

You nerds just don't get it 😂 Coolness > effectiveness

In fairness to turbo lasers not being able to target small ships, a turbolaser is a capital ship weapon, meant for battling other capital ships or for orbital bombardment. That's like complaining that an Iowa-class battleships main 16- inch guns are not effective against fighters. They're not supposed to be used against fighter craft. The Tarkin "Big Gun" policy basically revolved around using capital ships to destroy other large targets, while using their own fighters to protect them from enemy fighters.

This video beats 13-1 in the content value. 👌🏽 this is perfect.

Monsters compare Godzilla Gamera Kong Scp 682

*Attempt 356* Do the Forerunners vs The Imperium of Man (Halo vs Warhammer 40k) please.

I feel I should point out that the Rebellion/New Republic found a lot of success in using missiles against capital ships, generally launched in volleys from starfighters, particularly proton torpedoes.

There are also a couple of mechanical issues with the fundamental way turbolasers go about producing their projectile that could be made better, firstly one of their major issues is how long it takes for them to charge, you could reduce it by starting the beam off from multiple small emitters, instead of one giant one have five smaller ones fire into some kind of collimating lens that focuses all of them together into a single big beam, using a physical collimator would also reduce the energy needed to hold the bolt together, since most of it's energy will already be headed in a straight line after leaving the collimator. It would also be better for turbolasers to have longer barrels with large radiator fins to dump excess heat, and capital ships could be build with sliding armor panels which could selectively expose large radiator surfaces that aren't exposed to enemy fire to further manage thermal load during combat.

Warhammer 40K has turbolasers, they are used for point defense.

*Attempt 354* Do the Forerunners vs The Imperium of Man (Halo vs Warhammer 40k) please.

Awesome ! I got my Star Wars fix. Now I can watch the game.

The Chiss were known to use Mazers as well i think. Several books mentioned how they were different.

always thought the turbolasers and Ion cannons were designed for anti Capital ship roles for star fighters a ships would rely on laser cannons and concussion missiles the venator had superb anti fighter capabilities, but the ISD was a move towards anti large ship/planetary bombardment they would rely on TIE fighters for protection from Snub fighters/smaller craft

MASS EFFECT! Coruascant defense fleet (Clone Wars era) vs the Reaper armada.

Hey Eck! Would you consider doing a T-70 Xwing vs E-Wing video?

#AskEck I have a question about space combat: how exactly do shields work? Because in some cases you have ships that are incredibly well shielded (like a Star Destroyer or Death Star), but yet pieces of the structure can be targeted and destroyed quite easily on a ship that's still shielded. You see it time and time again: 1) Luke blasting the crap out of the Death Star's gunners. 2) The A-Wings destroying the Executor's shield generator. Each got off 3 salvos, so a total of 12 hits took it out. (Were those missiles or lasers, by the way? Hard to tell in the movie). This was a ship that had its shields active until the generator was destroyed. 3) In almost every video game I've played, you can pick apart capital ships. This includes SWTOR, Rebel Assault, and the original Battlefront 2. In all 3 of these games, if there is a Star Destroyer, you can blast the turrets on it before dealing with the shields. 4) In TLJ, Poe makes a run on the Dreadnaught and takes out all of its cannons. (Although this movie plays fast and loose with the rules of Star Wars physics, this particular component is consistent with the other points above) Time and time again we see pieces of the ships destroyed when the shields are up. Is it that the shields don't cover the guns? Is it that the fighters are underneath the shield? How do they protect against missiles if that's the case?

00:18 I got a massive yet fleeting sense of nostalgia from the droid game. Was there something similar for old school Nintendo or Super Nintendo?

Eckhartsladder, do you play the Star Wars Tabletop games? Star Wars Armada / X-Wing / Legion?

"Echo Charlie Kilo Hotel Alpha Romeo Tango Sierra Lima Alpha Delta Echo Romeo" great video man

Hey Eck, just wanted to point out that the New Republic's advanced Turbolasers were likely developed in response to their experience fighting the Empire. They likely analyzed various battles throughout the war and realized "this is how we beat the Empire, so this is where we need to improve." I do also want to bring up a flaw with your personalized warship: all those different weapon system are going to have just as many, if not more maintenance problems as a ship with dedicated turbolaser armaments. It's also going to take much longer to repair do to all the complex systems in each weapon. In my opinion a better idea would be a dedicated fleet carrier with a large hanger bay, heavy shielding and point defense, and the best sensor and jamming arrays available. It would have to be supported by dedicated escort ships to keep it safe from enemy warships, or engage from outside of their combat range, but the lack of firepower is an acceptable trade-off in my opinion.

Best replacement: 48cm Positron Shock cannons and Wave-Motion Gun. (I hope I'm not alone in this.)

I REALLY like the ion cannon+railgun+proton torpedo idea.

Ion cannons and railguns eh? So basically if you play halo you hit them with the overcharged plasma pistol and then pop them a couple times with your CE magnum. Works beautifully

For Venator type starships (i.e. high capacity carriers), I would put the largest railguns on them since they're the ones I'd want to keep away from the front line anyway, then turbolasers on escort cruisers and destroyers, maybe with additional railguns on the latter.

I would use a mixture of Ion weapons, Laser cannons and kinetic weaponry. The ion technology (Cannons, Pulse) would disable some or all systems, at least for a short amount of time. In which I would use the laser cannons to act as anti-fighter screens or to target weak points (hangers, turrets, etc.). And Kinetic launchers (missile) launchers to target points with more Armour (Bridge, Engines, etc.)

Honestly wish we got to see more tacticians calling out these bad tactics in the films. Obviously the rule of cool takes precedent but I'd love to see a larger focus on ship design!

What about proton cannons? Like those we saw in the attack on ryloth in clone wars? They were punching through shields of Aclamators

What makes the Turbolaser and it's variants like octuple turbolaser batteries so terrifying is the sheer raw firepower they can output and the fact that they are all manned which means no hacking and you'll have to take out every last damned battery to disable the ship. Though they're no phaser they're still accelerated balls of super heated plasma with (potentially) gigatons of impact.