/sw/ - Star Wars

>>18770

Ffs anon

Lightsaber crystals are certain colors because they just grew that way, that's why the crystals on Ilum were blue and green. Sith synthetic crystals are red because it's a tradition of theirs, hurrikaine crystals are purple because they just are.

I get where you guys were going with this, but lightsabers are mechanical weapons with some mysticism surrounding them, they usually require a Force user to construct them, let's not add any Force shenanigans that aren't necessary to them, keep it simple.

Changing a crystal's color through the Force should be an incredibly difficult feat that displays a massive amount of either raw power or talent.

>>18763

>I felt really confined by the rules of fencing

Sounds like your problem is with the way fencing was being taught. There have to be some fencing teachers out there that throw out a lot of the junk and use a more practical approach. Seeing as Makashi is basically fencing with lightsabers, you should tell us what you think about that. Maybe you can create a new breed of fencer. I'd also be interested to hear your opinion on the above debate regarding Komari Vosa vs Coleman Trebor and their effectiveness against blaster wielding opponents. Of course that would require some knowledge of dual-wielded fencing swords, which I don't know if any fencing discipline actually uses.

>It seems that a large amount of Shii Cho relies on using the Force to amp it's relatively simple bladework

There doesn't seem to be much Force use in Shii-Cho, partly because it's the introductory form taught to beginning students who don't yet have a solid grasp of the Force. It should be noted that what I've been saying about pulling from Juyo to create a lightlance form is probably what makes it similar to Shii-Cho, because one way of thinking about Juyo is as a more refined and Force-intensive Shii-Cho. I also tried to pull from Form V, but I don't seem to have actually gotten much of that into the spear form.

It might also be possible to create an Ataru-like spear form that incorporates strategies to use in aerial dueling, but I probably wouldn't use that to any great extent both because it eats stamina quickly and because spending a lot of time jumping around will often expose you to additional attacks that staying on the ground wouldn't. Jumping should be used very situationally. There's also the question of the spear and shield, but that's something else altogether.

>>18771

>keep it simple.

>Changing a crystal's color through the Force should be an incredibly difficult feat that displays a massive amount of either raw power or talent.

I agree with both of these. and for the record, the nu-canon piffle about bleeding a crystal and turning it dark is nonsensical.

however, I think there is some merit to my idea. if the Jedi use the high frequency part of the color spectrum, it follows that Sith use the lower frequencies.

maybe synthetic crystals tend to be yellow/orange/red, while natural crystals tend to be green/blue/indigo/violet. and maybe one's connection to the force needs to correspond to the crystal in order to use the lightsaber effectively. this could work without overly complicating matters.

>>18775

Rapiers are inarguably one of the greatest weapons if you're trying to kill someone in a former duel, with two individuals of equal skill and experience but if one has a rapier and the other has a saber the rapier-wielder will come out on top 8/10 times in my personal experience and opinion.

Modern fencing tends be be overly focused on etiquette over function which, or at the very least everything I saw was that way.

Makashi though is awesome, an extremely minimalist form that is so optimized for dueling that it kind of eats shit in other regards, such as in group fights and against blaster wielding opponents.

However, as Dooku has proven, it's definitely possible to not only overcome these flaws but become one of the greatest fighters of all time despite developing those skills in an environment where it was shunned is extremely impressive.

I like Makashi, I'd probably call it my 3rd or 4th favorite form, despite my reservations about modern fencing.

I hate to bring up Kit Fisto again but he implies that the Force is as important to Shii Cho as it is in Niman, not in those words of course but the statement still applies.

He refers to the Force as a "howling demon" inside of his head that drives his martial skill, and given that the Form was designed to up nurture an initiate's connection to the Force I can definitely see this having a large effect if taken to the nth degree.

>however

If you were to say that this is an individual example of a Shii Cho specialist utilizing a personal application of the form opposed to a more standard application you'd be completely right.

>>18776

It definitely has merit anon, my issue is just that Red has always been synonymous with the Sith order as their special little tradition, and we've seen Jedi with yellow and orange lightsabers.

I also don't like the idea that a crystal's color "aligns" with the Force based on that merit alone, I think it should align with the Force because it was uniquely intended to be owned by a certain individual, Red crystals being synonymous with Sith is because in the EU when Sith made their crystals they essentially imbued themselves into it.

This dynamic fit very well with the Jedi being selected by the Force to have a certain crystal and Sith creating their own crystal for themselves, as it's something of a callback to their separate relationships with the Force.

>>18777

I would have thought Makashi would be higher than your 3rd or 4th favorite. How would you rank the styles and why?

Shii-Cho is kind of a minimalist form as well, but the more Force use you add to it, the closer it becomes to Juyo. Relying too much on bladework rather than the Force is what the Jedi are trying to avoid, but they also don't want to abuse the Force, which is why Vaapad is only taught to a handful of students. They're trying to find that balance, and Soresu is the midpoint between the two, with a relatively equal amount of swordsmanship technique and Force power. If you abuse the Force, you adopt the mindset of someone like the Emperor. Conversely, if you're just going to rely on bladework, what separates you from someone like General Grievous? Djem So is probably the closest thing to a maximalist style, and Shien can also be very fluid. I pulled some stuff from Shien to work with the spear, so if any Djem So is to be used, that's probably the best place to start incorporating it. Thinking that way might lead to the best real-world martial arts techniques to use for this. However, there's what you said about the two different types of Djem So to consider. I don't think the Wookieepedia article makes any of what you said clear enough, and we've seen several examples like that already.

>>18778

Interesting, I like how you're constructing a functional style for the lightlance, it shows a lot dedication man.

In terms of personal preference it goes

5>3>2>1>4>7>6

Not a big fan of Niman

In terms of which I think the best it goes

5>3=7>6>4

Soresu and Juyo are both the ultimate expressions of Offense and Defense, therefore they're interchangeable based on the situation.

Djem So/Shien together answer eachother very well, with the mobility and precision of Shien makes up for Djem So's relative lack of mobility while Djem So's complex nature fits with lots of situations very well.

>I don't think the Wookieepedia article makes any of what you said clear enough, and we've seen several examples like that already.

Take everything I said with a grain of salt, it's just an observation that I noticed about the form.

I just can't honestly accept that the same form that has the Fluid Riposte attributed to it, a maneuver prioritizing speed and precision built upon dexterous bladework, being attributed to a form that just swings around a lightsaber like a club trying to batter the opponent to the ground.

It just doesn't fit that the defend-counter-defend-counter rhythm of defensive Djem So can be paired with the crushing assault of offensive Djem So and both of those mentalities finding their foundations on strength and power alone.

>>18779

Soresu and Juyo are both the ultimate expressions of Offense and Defense respectively*

Oops

>>18779

>I like how you're constructing a functional style for the lightlance, it shows a lot dedication man.

I'm surprised a canon source hasn't done this already. I thought somebody should make it happen.

<5>3=7>6>4

I wouldn't put Soresu so high, and it's hard to know where to put Juyo since it's so Force-power reliant. Niman is even more minimalist than Shii-Cho, so I agree with putting it very low since it's so focused on the Force that to me it doesn't have enough bladework to even be called a lightsaber style. I'm not a fan of Makashi because of its weakness against blasters. Jumping is kind of a point of contention, which means I think Ataru is mostly pretty meh unless you're Yoda. Jumping can sometimes be okay in duels and it can work pretty well against blasters, but blasters aren't the only weapons out there. To me the styles that are really worth it are 1 and 5, which goes along with what I said about creating a lightsaber training program oriented around Juyo and the Form V styles. I notice you didn't include 2 or 1 in this ranking as well. My ranking of both personal preference and which form I think is the best would be something like this, with 7 omitted:

5>1>2>4>3>6

>I just can't honestly accept that the same form that has the Fluid Riposte attributed to it, a maneuver prioritizing speed and precision built upon dexterous bladework, being attributed to a form that just swings around a lightsaber like a club trying to batter the opponent to the ground.

This is a valid observation. It's pretty hard to make a move like that transition smoothly either to or from a bashing strike.

>>18777

I see what you mean, but giving every Sith a red saber seems confining, when the Jedi use the rest of the rainbow. I don't remember many orange sabers, although the Jedi Sentinels used yellow (as did a few others). ultimately it's not that big of a deal, just my personal view of things.

>>8673

I like the rare crystals more than just fucking mood ring crystals.

>>18804

red saber works as an intimation factor too. Sith are more of a exclusive secret club, only them using red sabers gives them that image too

>>18869

true. but what about non-Sith darksiders? I could see the red saber being an icon of the Sith, while others use orange etc.

>>18869

>>18873

I prefer Dark Jedi/pleb-tier non-Sith darksiders to use whatever lightsabers they feel like, Dark jedi using the one they had as a Jedi and non-sith either using Force-imbued weaponry like swords or focusing more on their Force powers like King Omin of Onderon.

Plo Koon in the Stark Hyperspace War used an orange/gold lightsaber, Farfalla used a ((((Gold)))) lightsaber that in all artwork attributed to him resembles and orange one, and orange lightsabers are repeatedly referred to as gold online

I always thought it'd be fun to have a blacklight saber. It looks awesome, and you could use it to find all those counterfeit bills and the spots where the drunk aliens from some previously unheard-of species puked mutagenic vomit on your carpet at the toga party last night. There are probably many applications for lightsaber technology other than fighting.

on a whim of nostalgia, I fired up jedi academy…somehow, the lightsaber combat, barring actual sith fights, seems to have gotten even better it hurts to know we'll never get another like it again

Why Anakin’s Lightsaber DIDN'T Turn RED After Killing Younglings

>>19047

The most succinct explanation for this is "that's fucking retarded." I did have a few ideas for actually useful color-changing lightsabers though. One of them is making a lightsaber crystal that works like Sting from Lord of the Rings. It'd start out as one color and then change to another whenever a certain type of enemy, like an enemy Force user, is nearby.

about the mood ring crystals, can't they just pop it in as it is and make a clear/white blade?

>>19047

Because he had a blue kyber crystal in the fucking thing?

I hope someone's been archiving this thread.

I know we haven't addressed aerial saber combat or physical shields in enough detail yet, and I haven't finished with the cross lance, but there's something else I thought we should talk about. It may have to wait until next thread though, and 500 posts is already pushing it as far as what aspiring fan authors who want to make alternatives to Disney's crap would be willing to read as a reference. But I started thinking about how all the tactics and weapons we've talked about in this thread would carry over to telekinetic lightsaber combat. Telekinesis lets you use techniques you could never do just holding a weapon in your hands. If anyone's interested in that, most of those will have to be made from scratch because obviously no real-world martial art includes them. But even in Star Wars there aren't too many who do this. Kreia was the most adept at it, but Wookieepedia lists some other users. It may be better to consider aerial saber combat a subtype of telekinetic saber combat since you need telekinesis to fly without a jetpack.

There's another possibility related to this, but more extreme since it uses teleportation. Teleportation barely exists in Star Wars, but a few outstanding Force users can do it. Naturally, it takes more effort and power to teleport a living being intact than it does to teleport cargo. A fighter who can teleport would be near unbeatable if their opponent can't also do it, but teleporting yourself isn't all you could do. You could teleport your weapons around instead of using telekinesis on them. You could even use teleportation to keep any weapon you like in reserve on your ship or at home and switch weapons easily in the middle of combat or even in the middle of a technique. No one in Star Wars and very few other characters period have ever demonstrated this. The best example is probably Noctis of Final Fantasy XV, but he can only fight Kreia-style and use unrestricted teleportation with his Armiger power, which recharges slowly and doesn't normally stay up for long. He mostly uses one weapon at a time and can only warp to wherever he can throw it. The Episode Duscae demo had him assign each weapon to a different attack button and materialize the weapon when the attack is used, but they changed that before release for some dumbass reason.

>>20819

What happened to the flags? I went to make a post the other day and found that the flag selector was missing. When I went to post this it came back, but now it's gone again.

But anyway, given the similarities between space combat and lightsaber combat that arise when you start looking at aerial lightsaber combat, it might be better to just make a thread about space combat tactics and apply its lessons to this one. I'm surprised nobody's done that yet, or even so much as made a general thread about your favorite ships. I've sometimes wondered why we don't see ships using tactical hyperspace jumps where they jump only a short distance and come out at a different spot in the same battlespace, effectively the same as teleporting. You might chalk that up to it requiring enormous fuel consumption, but it seems like an option that should still be there.

Also, as part of the next thread, we should look at making a new version of >>9609, >>9610, and other posts similar to them, because a lot has happened since they were written.

>>20820

Try tossing your cookies mate. Mine work just prim and proper.

>>9158

Yes. Darth Krayt used a green lightsaber, Exar Kun used blue. Luke had a red one after ROTJ too.

>>20826

I have cookies turned off.

>>20820

>I've sometimes wondered why we don't see ships using tactical hyperspace jumps where they jump only a short distance and come out at a different spot in the same battlespace, effectively the same as teleporting. You might chalk that up to it requiring enormous fuel consumption, but it seems like an option that should still be there.

That does happen.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Precision_hyperspace_jump

(I'm almost certain this happened during the Thrawn trilogy too, with Joruus C'baoth helping to coordinate it, but that's not listed under appearances and I don't feel like looking through my books at the moment)

>>20841

I don't know why you don't see this more. Is it possible that Force teleportation is just performing a hyperjump without a ship? If so, it'd be much easier to put constraints on teleporting lightsaber combat because the properties of hyperspace are well known, although other methods of FTL exist.

Here's something else we need another thread to answer. Given that lightsabers can reflect blaster bolts and shipboard laser cannons are just starship-sized blasters, why aren't there any capital ships or snubfighters that mount starship-sized lightsabers? You wouldn't necessarily have to make space-capable mecha to use them proficiently, but you could if you wanted to. You could just attach a robot arm to one part of the ship and mount a lightsaber-type weapon in it. But the Empire already has the tech to make AT-series units, so mecha aren't entirely unheard-of. The vehicle could use microjumps as teleportation as well, because the only thing more extreme than teleporting lightsaber duelists is teleporting giant robot lightsaber duelists.

>>20847

>Is it possible that Force teleportation is just performing a hyperjump without a ship?

Teleportation isn't limited by being in a gravity well, so I'm guessing not.

>>20853

Weren't there a few instances where a ship jumped to hyperspace inside a gravity well? Everything in the universe is under the influence of the gravity of everything else, so you're always in some kind of gravity well. Besides, Han says you can fly right through a star while in hyperspace, and a star has a much bigger gravity well than a planet. That makes it seem like the only reason ships come out of hyperspace if they get too close to a realspace gravity well is as a fail-safe to stop them from colliding with a planet or other major stellar body. Although the Aing-Tii use teleportation that's documented to be much faster than ordinary hyperspace travel. Some of the ancient races also built hypergates, and the reborn Emperor created hyperspace wormholes which can enable much faster travel than any ship.

>>20820

>>20841

It was in the Thrawn trilogy, but it's portrayed as something very risky tactically (it's imprecise and, according to the rest of the EU, ships have to reactivate their shields after exiting hyperspace so you could drop right in the middle of the enemy fire with no shields) unless you're using Interdictor to control exactly where your ships drop out (as Thrawn did).

>>19147

According ti nu-canon lightsaber colors are determined by how good or evil you are not on the innate crystal color.

>>20982

Seriously? I guess that means Mace Windu was part evil and why they even bothered to let him on the council. Also the whole "make your crystal cry and bleed" thing is stupid

>>20984

>I guess that means Mace Windu was part evil

Vaapad does involve coming close to the dark side. Nucanon crystals are dumb as shit though.

>>20987

>Nucanon crystals are dumb as shit though.

Especially since I always liked the idea of rare non darksiders using red lightsabers. Of course I consider the entirety of nu-canon to be shit and ignore it other than to laugh at it.

>>20995

This is why mood crystals are autistic and need to be ignored

Holy kark, we've just about got a full thread. I guess I'm going to have to put the cross lance writeup in the next one. Sadly it seems as if few of the fan projects I'd hoped for are actually making progress. Not making progress on a fan project is a pretty familiar story for me. I've managed to get the first three sections of the guide done, but there's still a lot of stuff to do.

>>21121

It's nice stuff, I for one appreciate your autism. There's a certain grace about blade-on-blade combat that does it for me, especially when it's all laid out in technical detail. (See pic in >>10607)

>>21124

It's graceful, true, but it has so much more than that. Using a lightsaber means having a higher skill level than most people and actually being rewarded for it. One of the worst things about modern society is that meritocracy is dead and has been for a long time. You can make the best movie, the best videogame, or the best of absolutely anything else and not get a damn bit of recognition because it doesn't go along with what the cultural gatekeepers want. Star Wars as a whole wasn't what they wanted even back when it was released. The suits thought the whole thing was going to end in failure, and they got blown the fuck out when George Lucas took a shoestring budget and made a worldwide phenomenon with it. Then Disney managed to get control of it, and they took a property that should have been a license to print money and shat the bed with it. All their money didn't save them from making bad movies. It turns out that the only thing that can save you from making bad movies is a real filmmaker with a real vision, and you can't just go out and buy one of those.

I have some sad news. I misidentified the name of the real weapon the one in >>16047 is based on. This would be a katakama yari. I don't know how I managed to fuck that up. I think one of the sites I was looking it up on confused the two, but it's been too long since that post for me to remember exactly. Then again, there have been a number of different variations on this concept with one or two crossblades as well as both curved and straight crossblades. Anyway, I'll make sure to correct this in the guide. It helps to actually learn something about the language of the place where the weapon or style you're looking at comes from. You'd think all that time spent watching anime would have helped.

Somehow I've actually gotten the lion's share of the cross lance guide done now. It went in a direction I didn't really expect, which is part of why it's taken so long. Beyond the prospect of aerial and teleporting lightsaber combat, there are also a few other (mostly ranged) weapons we have yet to talk about in detail here which are going to have to be saved for the next thread. Some of them have some pretty devastating prospects for most lightsaber users and may force a lot of changes to existing systems of lightsaber combat. That's probably going to require a serviceable knowledge of physics to suss out, or at least a serviceable knowledge of science fiction.

I hate to go and post four in a row, but I thought the thread should have a little update as to where I am right now with the cross lance guide because it's already been like 4 or 5 months that I've been working on it, which is obscene. It's actually ballooned to the point of being bigger than the first guide, which was unexpected to me. I know this isn't on a strict deadline or anything, but I wanted to include as much detail as I thought was necessary. I wish I had some artists to render this into the much more accessible form of pictures, because a picture has more power to convey the key points of the weapon. I'd say it's about 90% done at this point. The only thing the guide currently lacks is a sample kata. If anyone wants to help with that, it'd be appreciated. There are just so many spear kata out there that it's a chore to find one that accurately represents the fundamentals of the weapon, or even several that represent it when taken together, and that problem gets worse when you realize that almost none of the kata you're likely to find on random martial arts websites will tell you anything about what you should do with a crossguard.

>>21857

And I forgot to mention something important. Hooray. The guide includes a new custom lightsaber variant design that I thought was exceptionally well-suited to combat a spear, but unfortunately I have no idea how to correctly use it, so I'm going to have to call for help on that.

So something was briefly mentioned in this video that I didn't know about before–despite having no mass, lightsaber blades offer some amount of resistance due to a "gyroscopic effect." If this is true (I haven't read the source material), it could alter the manual of arms for lightsaber combat significantly.

>>21938

Some sources claim the lightsaber blade has no weight and mention nothing that would make it act as though it had weight, while others say the "gyroscopic effect" gives it the feeling of weight regardless. Calling the mechanism a gyroscopic effect gives the impression that it involves torque, which can be canceled by using an antitorque device like the tail rotor of a helicopter. The existence of a virtual weight effect may allow for adjustable blade weight, which would give the lightsaber the ability to flawlessly replicate any physical blade style, but there arguably isn't a real reason to bother with such a mechanic even if it exists because the lightsaber will still have the same damage characteristics regardless of what weight you choose.

>>21938

>>21994

I just figured out what could cause this. Too bad there's just one more post left in the thread after this to discuss it until we hit the bump limit, but it's probably about time for a new thread anyway. We can talk about this more there. We've got lots of other things to discuss anyway, and newcomers won't have to wade through 500 posts unless they really feel like it. Anyway, the blade of a lightsaber could be given an illusion of more substantial weight through relativistic mass dilation if it's truly a plasma-based weapon and the magnetic field that contains the plasma spins it up to relativistic velocity. I haven't done the math for this, but spinning it that fast would probably require so much torque that you'd need an anti-torque system just to avoid ripping your arms off with the counterforce, and you'd need so much power that I don't see how you could ever fit that into a normal lightsaber hilt even with Star Wars tech. You're probably going to need something that with today's technology couldn't be made smaller than a nuclear power plant, if even that. If someone aspiring to be the first one to build a real plasma sword was looking at this, this person would dismiss the mass dilation system without a second thought.

>>22005

>Anyway, the blade of a lightsaber could be given an illusion of more substantial weight through relativistic mass dilation if it's truly a plasma-based weapon and the magnetic field that contains the plasma spins it up to relativistic velocity.

You don't need to get up to mass-dilation speeds before you experience some torque, no? You'd need mass dilation to get the inertial mass of a gaseous blade up to that of a metal one, but we're not just dealing with linear inertia here, but also rotational inertia. Even at angular speeds far lower than relativistic, the mere fact that the plasma is rotating is going to provide resistance. Just picking up a spinning top and trying to pivot it perpendicular to the axis of rotation provides noticeable resistance, after all, and we don't have any data indicating the magnitude of this resistance, only that it's noticeable.

>>22012

Feel free to start a new thread by the way, this one's saved in an archive now.

>>22013

…which I didn't bother to include in my post, either. Good to see that flag-eating bug is still around, though

http://archive.is/pH0QD