Turbolaser Rate of Fire

[Volar the Healer]

How fast does a single turbolaser aboard a Star Destroyer fire? Once every twenty seconds? thirty seconds? any ideas?
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[Ray]

Well, it can fire at least once per round (Which is 4-5 seconds)...

That gives it a Rate Of Fire of 12 Per Minute. Now, that's without worring about reloading the Blaster Gas, or the Guns Overheating... I figure you'd cut that rate by half for "Standard" action.

So, 6 Shots per minute (1 every ten seconds) for "Regular" work, and a Rapid Fire mode of 12 Shots per minute (1 every five seconds) with a total engagement time of... GMs discression. Me, I'd say two, maybe three minutes at most for heat, with a pause of one round each minute for Blaster Gas Reloads.

Cool down time depends on the situation with the Coolant System... If it's been filled properly, then it can start firing again in a minute or so... If not, then two minutes.

Gunnery Crews take CLOSE careful looks at Heat Systems all the time... Turbolasers have a tendency of blowing up quite spectacularily when they overheat.

Tramp Freighters having Turbolasers installed on them have a Fire Rate of 1/2 due to the lack of power required for them... They need to charge them up more. So cut everything in half for them, but you asked specifically for ImpStars, so, meh.

[Hellstorm]

According to " Star Wars : The Essential Guide To Weapons And Technology", turbolasers use a delay of at least two seconds between shots to allow the capacitors to build up an adequate shot.

so at best you could fire off 20 shots in a minute. so if a round is 4 to 5 second, you might be able to get 2 shots off in a round if your capacitors are already reloaded. 8)
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[Ray]

Hmmm... Don't have that book.

OK, slight revamp.

You have Normal Rate of Fire (1 shot every 2 Rounds/10 Seconds), Fast Rate of Fire (1 shot every round/5 Seconds), and "AW HELL!!!" Rate of Fire (2 shots every round/2.5 Seconds).

Normal: 6 Shots per Minute, with a pause every 2 minutes for Blaster Gas Reload, for as long as you like due to heat (The Cooling System is designed to handle this)

Fast: 12 Shots per Minute, with a pause every minute for Blaster Gas Reload, for Two or Three minutes due to heat, with a one minute cool down period.

"AW HELL!": 24 Shots per Minute, with a pause 30 seconds into the barrage for Blaster Gas Refill, for as long as it takes the gunnery crew to notice that the barrel is starting to glow red and the focusing crystals start to errode due to the stress (*MAYBE* one minute on VERY well maintained weapons). After that workout, they'll need a full overhaul, if not replacement. (At least the crystals will need to be replaced, the barrel checked for microfractures and warping, and the coolant system for undue stresses and degridation of Coolant.).

Gunnery Crews and Quartermasters really, really, really, *REALLY* hate the full firepower effect, and a Captain who orders it would have to have one *HELL* of a good reason for wasting so much war material and manpower.

"I had to shoot a Smuggler." would not cut it. "A Corvette was about to ram my ship, and I have the Sensor logs to prove it." would (Better to loose some guns, than the whole ship, eh?).

[Ragnar]

I don't think TurboLasers use "blastergas" because they are LASER cannons not BLASTER cannons so reloading wouldn't be an issue

[Son of Fire]

Actually I believe that they (Turbolasers) function the same as Blasters, just at a much bigger scale. The name has little or nothing to do with their operation, hence why they behave nothing like lasers (they are visible, travel in a “bolt” form rather than a beam, travel slower than light speed, and have a kinetic impactetc.). I think they are only called lasers because the bolt is generated through the use of lasers. Kind of like why we call modern long arms rifles, because they have been rifled.
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[Ragnar]

No, my point is that there is a difference between blaster cannons and laser cannons on a ship...in the books different ships are equipped with either, blaster cannons suck, thats why most ships have laser cannons, also I'm pretty sure that because they are LASER cannons they run off their of own power source on the ship, so they DO NOT use blaster gas. Not once have I heard of LASER cannons in WEG Star Wars needing to be reloaded.

[Phaedrus]

This is funny... I just had this argument with the guys I game with

I do believe that you are both right! There is no reloading of a turbolaser onboard a warship, but I think this has more to do with simplicity of game mechanics then anything else. On the otherhand, I do believe that TURBOLASER is a misnomer. A LASER is a steady beam of light (visable or not) that damages through extreme heat.

Now... of course I'm not a physics guy, but I think that pretty close.

Blasters are (supposedly) plasma (some sort of superheated gas... tabanna gas?) that is wraped in a magnetic sheath, hence giving it the bolt shape.

But I'm no expert... check out what these guys have to say about turbolasers

http://www.stardestroyer.net/tlc/

However you look at it, I do agree with Ragnar on one thing... ship mounted blaster cannons SUCK, no doubt about that. And secondly, the WEG system doesn't say exactly what a turbolaser is.

As for what I tell they guys I game with... Hey, is science FICTION... and not everything has to make sense... much like my post. 8)

Ciao
~ phaedrus
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[Ray]

Actually, Star Wars is Space Opera, which means that it has no relevence to science, mostly.

In addition, to the "Blasters" Vs. "Lasers" issue. Tramp Freighters specifically states that the term "Lasers" is due to frank lazyness and outdated tradition, as, at one time, Weapons systems on Ships *WERE* Lasers, but modern ones have, in fact, the same operation as Blasters.

In addition, there is rules for how *MUCH* blaster gas is used by Turbolasers in the Pirates and Privateers supplement. You get to see how costly it is for Turbolasers to fire.

I'm also going to point out that my estimates above do *NOT* reflect on those rules, and may have to be changed when referencing them (I don't own any Star Wars RPG books, and my GM is remiss to let any of them leave his home, for good reason.).

[Hellstorm]

[Hellstorm]

[Hellstorm]

[Son of Fire]

Well, that’s sorted now.

And Phae, I love the “Imperial Smackdown”, that was one of the first things that drew me to that site ages ago. Mike Wong and his gang don’t mess around when it comes to Star Wars that’s for sure.
Its great site for reference and information.
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"My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself." - George Bernard Shaw

[Volar the Healer]

None of which answer the question. How fast does a turbolaser fire?

In A New Hope, it appears a turbolaser aboard the death star fires only 2 or 3 times in a minute (I didn't actually time it) assuming this was the same weapon being shown.

In Return of the Jedi, a frigate broadsides a star destroyer, yet we see only a few bolts pass between them. If these weapons could fire 20+ times a minute with 30 (or so) weapons facing the frigate there would have been a hail of fire between these two ship. But there wasn't.

This makes me think considering the game mechanics is the wrong approach. Anyone bored enough to time these scenes? or perhaps another scene I didn't think of? What other scenes of star destroyers firing is there?
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[Son of Fire]

Well Volar, you could try the link that Phae posted, or this one. http://www.theforce.net/swtc/
Both of sites have exhaustive research into their respective topics (Turbolasers included), and in the case of the site I posted, they actually write for Lucas. So if anyplace were going to have timed it would be at one of the two sites.
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"My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself." - George Bernard Shaw