Repulsorlifts on Water?

[Yasriia]

Okay, the more I read through wookiepedia, the more I have the feeling it was all a hallucination. I thought, that I've read somewhere, that repulsorlifts (in vehicles, droids, whereever) doesn't work on water. But right now, I can't find a single clue about it. Maybe someone here has heard about it.

So, here's my question: do repulsorlifts work on water?
If they do, why are there special water-repulsorlifts (not the design)?
If not, at what depth do they stop working and how does this failure look like (do they simply sink)?

[Matthias777]

[S-Foil]

[Matthias777]

Actually, they are anti-ground devices. When you go off a cliff on repulsors only, you drop. Airspeeders don't have this problem (they use ion engines in conjunction with repulsorlift drives, generally), but landspeeders do (repulsorlift drives only). If you use your repulsors while in space, you can "kick" smaller objects (small asteroids, for example) away from you. One example I can recall off the top of my head is that Han Solo and Rogue Squadron used this tactic in an asteroid field against enemy TIEs.

I think that a body of water provides enough resistance to not part like the Red Sea, though. Re-reading the original question, I think the poster may have meant to ask if submersible vehicles can utilize repulsor technology IN water (beneath the surface), since he asked at what depth they would stop working. For the reasons above, and the fact that any submersible vehicles I can recall utilized other methods of propulsion, I would say that repulsors would not work underwater.
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Arek | Kage

[Bren]

[Fallon Kell]

I think it may have to do with bouyancy. A wide repulsor field could displace enough water to keep a heavy vehicle afloat where a narrow repulsor field with a heavy vehicle on top might sink through. This could be why special repulsor vehicles are built for water use.

Or it could just be that if a land repulsor vehicle breaks down over water, the occupants will be in serious trouble.
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Complete Starship Construction System

[Esoomian]

As far as I understand a repulsorlift vehicle reverses the local gravity but only to a degree and that is what gives it the flight ceiling however the problem with that interpretation is that a vehicle with a three metre flight ceiling would be unable to traverse a bridge that was more than three metres tall.

Probably best to assume they're anti-ground but based around anti-gravity so they won't function well without gravity.
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[Bren]

[Raven Redstar]

I would think that the fact that water is more "solid" than air would allow for a repulsorlift engine to keep it in maybe 1.5x or 2x their normal flight ceiling over depth of water.
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RR
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[Bren]

OK. I went back to the rulebook (2nd Edition R&E). Page 242 discusses Repulsorlift Technology.

[Matthias777]

Does anyone recall seeing the "anti-gravity" concept explained anywhere? I feel like I once read an explanation that likened it to the colloquial use of the word "laser", in that it didn't necessarily mean that it was a device that negated gravity, but rather was just one more method of counteracting the effects of gravity, and repulsorlifts literally "repulsed" (pushed away from) whatever the repulsor field came into contact with. It is maddening to not be able to recall a source. I want to say it was in a WEG-produced book, but it might have been the Technical Journal, or one of the Essential Guides. I can't remember. The Squib battering ram and the aforementioned use against speeder-sized asteroids in space shows this to be accurate, though; repulsor fields don't need gravity to push away from in order to function, and repulsor fields can be oriented in any direction. This makes the concept of underwater repulsorlift drives work, too; the repulsor field is not operating against gravity or keeping the submersible vessel off of the ocean floor, it's operating in place of a propeller or other drive mechanism.
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Arek | Kage

[S-Foil]

If you want to play repulsors as being like a hovercraft with some sort of bubble of anti-gravity replacing a plenum chamber that would allow them to push off of a surface whether that be water or solid ground.

That then brings up a questions of what happens to things underneath the repulsor field. Can you damage objects by running over them with a repulsorcraft? Does a road need to support a particular ground load in order for a repulsorlift vehicle to use it?

Airspeeders become problematic in this model. Coruscant has thousands of repulsorlift vehicles flying around at all times, are there points below them that are affected by their repulsorlift field? If someone flies over another craft is that one pushed down?

I think the best way to run repulsors is to decide on a rule (they do or don't work on water) and handwave away any and all attempts at explaining them. I think that works unless someone can find a very definitive explanation of how they work as presented in the films. Luke's landspeeder travels easily over rough desert terrain, the Millennium Falcon can hover gently over the landing pad at Cloud City and take off vertically from the landing pad at Mos Eisley, the Cloud Cars on Bespin can fly all over the place with impunity, and the Emperor's shuttle managed to land gently in the Death Star Hangar.

[Matthias777]

[Fallon Kell]

[S-Foil]