So, there's a new Star Wars trailer...

[GhoulKaven]

Can't wait for it

[Rodin]

The actor playing Darth Maul had training in Shaolin Kung Fu, which inspired the fighting style.

As for which bladed martial art might best be adapted to light sabres, I don't think the foil is the best fit. For one thing, you can only hit with the point; for another, there are so many rules to fencing matches that it moves quite a long way away from genuine combat. The inspiration drawn from Kendo in the original movies is probably closer to realistic than foil fighting would be, but you could likely go a step further by looking to HEMA sword fighting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-eHZydEhJ4

Except, of course, that HEMA practitioners do not, to my knowledge, have force sensitivity, telekinesis, etc.

I think the inspiration would be more along the lines of dueling sword such as a rapier. Since no armor is effective, you're essentially trying to stick your opponent with the pointy end and/or slash the opponent with the sharpened edge. Longswords (and kendo blades/katana) both suffer from the same problem, which is that you are using two hands to exert additional force. This is a necessity when you're trying to force your way through armor and flesh, but is totally irrelevant to a light saber which just burns its way through like a hot knife through butter. Light sabers also have the advantage of being "sharp" on all sides including the point. As such, extending your reach via a one-handed dueling stance seems the best way to fight.

[Peelee]

Since no armor is effective

Spoiler: ESB disagrees

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[HMS Invincible]

Spoiler: ESB disagrees

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Agreed, nobody seems to remember the cortosis weave anymore.

[Fyraltari]

Spoiler: ESB disagrees

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The overall point that how much force you use seems irrelevant remains, though.

[The Glyphstone]

In TPM, the extra-thick blast doors of the Trade Federation ship seem to slow down Qui-gon's cutting, though not enough to stop him entirely. It does slow him enough to allow the destroyer droids to intervene though. Is cortosis something alloyable, where the relative cortosis content reduces lightsaber penetration proportionate to its cortosis %?

[Keltest]

In TPM, the extra-thick blast doors of the Trade Federation ship seem to slow down Qui-gon's cutting, though not enough to stop him entirely. It does slow him enough to allow the destroyer droids to intervene though. Is cortosis something alloyable, where the relative cortosis content reduces lightsaber penetration proportionate to its cortosis %?

In old canon at least, the only way to use cortosis at all was to alloy it. Depending on concentration, it could go so far as to deactivate lightsabers entirely on contact.

[Peelee]

The overall point that how much force you use seems irrelevant remains, though.

Not really, since the opposing saber can be used to parry and if not enough strength (I'm trying to avoid using "force" to avoid possible confusion) is being applied that could spell disaster.

In old canon at least, the only way to use cortosis at all was to alloy it. Depending on concentration, it could go so far as to deactivate lightsabers entirely on contact.

Old canon was all over the place on cortosis, though; in the Thrawn duology, it was so structurally weak that it would flake off in your hands, while Bane got physically huge due to mining it for starship hulls and other armors because of its huge structural strength.

[Keltest]

Not really, since the opposing saber can be used to parry and if not enough strength (I'm trying to avoid using "force" to avoid possible confusion) is being applied that could spell disaster.


Old canon was all over the place on cortosis, though; in the Thrawn duology, it was so structurally weak that it would flake off in your hands, while Bane got physically huge due to mining it for starship hulls and other armors because of its huge structural strength.

This is true, but I believe the alloy answer was specifically an attempt to resolve those contradictions. Raw cortosis was brittle and mostly useless, but when refined and alloyed correctly, you could get incredibly potent metals from it.

[The Glyphstone]

So Vader's armor must have had more cortosis than the blast doors, if it deflected saber strikes instead of just resisting them.

Why would the Federation have cortosis-infused blast doors anyways? It wasn't like they originally built their fleet for the purpose of fighting the Jedi.

[Keltest]

So Vader's armor must have had more cortosis than the blast doors, if it deflected saber strikes instead of just resisting them.

Why would the Federation have cortosis-infused blast doors anyways? It wasn't like they originally built their fleet for the purpose of fighting the Jedi.

It could just be the nature of the blow. Just enough resistance to stop the blow from cutting, and then physics did the rest.

[tyckspoon]

I think the inspiration would be more along the lines of dueling sword such as a rapier. Since no armor is effective, you're essentially trying to stick your opponent with the pointy end and/or slash the opponent with the sharpened edge. Longswords (and kendo blades/katana) both suffer from the same problem, which is that you are using two hands to exert additional force. This is a necessity when you're trying to force your way through armor and flesh, but is totally irrelevant to a light saber which just burns its way through like a hot knife through butter. Light sabers also have the advantage of being "sharp" on all sides including the point. As such, extending your reach via a one-handed dueling stance seems the best way to fight.

LARP/foam boffer combat sports might be the best analogue to this I can think of, actually. All edges and the point of the 'weapon' are equally effective striking edges, any reasonably noticeable contact makes for a lethal or disabling wound (including things that would be grazes or damaging but not deadly flesh injuries with live steel) and the resultant fighting style has a strong emphasis on dexterity and spacing control (not that this isn't part of basically all combat practices, but there's fairly few moves that rely on testing strength on strength and larger, slower weapons are often at a disadvantage to a more readily maneuverable one that only needs to block or redirect the bigger weapon for a very brief contact before making a killing blow.)

[Peelee]

So Vader's armor must have had more cortosis than the blast doors, if it deflected saber strikes instead of just resisting them.

Why would the Federation have cortosis-infused blast doors anyways? It wasn't like they originally built their fleet for the purpose of fighting the Jedi.

IIRC by that time, cortosis was much more rare and expensive than it was worth, so it wasn't as widely used anymore. The blast door was just super thick/dense and hard for the saber to get through.

[The Glyphstone]

IIRC by that time, cortosis was much more rare and expensive than it was worth, so it wasn't as widely used anymore. The blast door was just super thick/dense and hard for the saber to get through.

Wasn't this whole tangent kicked off by the supposition that no armor is effective unless it's made of cortosis, and otherwise is about as hard to cut through as tissue paper?

[Peelee]

Wasn't this whole tangent kicked off by the supposition that no armor is effective unless it's made of cortosis, and otherwise is about as hard to cut through as tissue paper?

Imean, if you want to wear blast doors as armor.... the marines don't get sent out with tank hulls on their chests, is what I'm saying.

[Sapphire Guard]

If there's one guy in the galaxy that has lightsabre resistant armour, it's probably DV. Not that it means he can't lose a hand, so it's not impregnable. Could be something like sloped armour so the sabre takes the path of least resistance.

Lightsabre styles is going to vary by circumstance, depending on what you're doing.

With a real sword, no human can cut through metal armour with a sword no matter how hard they swing it, fighting against armoured opponents is about finding the gaps.

Seems like sufficiently thick material can still impede lightsabre progress, though, even if not specifically designed for it.

Really, though 'no armour is effective' is good enough even if it's not strictly speaking technically true in every single instance of all the vast expanse of two massive star wars canons.

[Peelee]

Really, though 'no armour is effective' is good enough even if it's not strictly speaking technically true in every single instance of all the vast expanse of two massive star wars canons.

Which then goes back to "but if other lightsabers can parry then the amount of strength or leverage used can absolutely matter during fights."

[Mechalich]

Really, though 'no armour is effective' is good enough even if it's not strictly speaking technically true in every single instance of all the vast expanse of two massive star wars canons.

In the Legends canon though, quite a few forms of armor were effective against lightsabers, not just cortosis weaves. This included special Mandalorian Iron armor, armor made using the super-strong metal phirk, armor produced using sith alchemy (such as Darth Bane orbalisk armor), and in the KOTOR era even just conventional armors suitably designed to protect against lightsabers.

It was long possible to build armor that protected against lightsabers, and Star Wars melee weapons generally, it's just that in many eras there was little reason to do so. Producing armor with a high degree of melee weapon protection, and anti-lightsaber elements is only useful if you expect to fight an opponent wielding such weapons. If that's not going to happen you're better off optimizing against ranged weapons. In the movie eras, with very few Jedi and few members of other Force traditions active in the galaxy (and yes, 10,000 Jedi Knights is 'very few' at the scale of a Star Wars galaxy that has tens of millions of inhabited planets) it made little sense to incorporate such design elements and only rare individuals - such as Jango Fett - took that step.

Clone and Stormtrooper armor was optimized against the weapons they expected to encounter: blasters and explosives. It offered some measure of kinetic protection, in ROTJ Ewok stone weapons are shown to have little ability to penetrate trooper armor, but that was not it's primary purpose. In the KOTOR era Jedi and other Force users were orders of magnitude more common - in SWTOR Zakuul alone might have had more than 10000 knights - and design schemes, especially for elite units, incorporated anti-melee elements more prominently. This also makes sense given that the blasters of the time were supposedly proportionally much weaker.

[Battleship789]

In the Legends canon though, quite a few forms of armor were effective against lightsabers, not just cortosis weaves. This included special Mandalorian Iron armor, armor made using the super-strong metal phirk, armor produced using sith alchemy (such as Darth Bane orbalisk armor), and in the KOTOR era even just conventional armors suitably designed to protect against lightsabers.

It was long possible to build armor that protected against lightsabers, and Star Wars melee weapons generally, it's just that in many eras there was little reason to do so. Producing armor with a high degree of melee weapon protection, and anti-lightsaber elements is only useful if you expect to fight an opponent wielding such weapons. If that's not going to happen you're better off optimizing against ranged weapons. In the movie eras, with very few Jedi and few members of other Force traditions active in the galaxy (and yes, 10,000 Jedi Knights is 'very few' at the scale of a Star Wars galaxy that has tens of millions of inhabited planets) it made little sense to incorporate such design elements and only rare individuals - such as Jango Fett - took that step.

Clone and Stormtrooper armor was optimized against the weapons they expected to encounter: blasters and explosives. It offered some measure of kinetic protection, in ROTJ Ewok stone weapons are shown to have little ability to penetrate trooper armor, but that was not it's primary purpose. In the KOTOR era Jedi and other Force users were orders of magnitude more common - in SWTOR Zakuul alone might have had more than 10000 knights - and design schemes, especially for elite units, incorporated anti-melee elements more prominently. This also makes sense given that the blasters of the time were supposedly proportionally much weaker.

As a point of clarification, Darth Bane's orbalisk armor isn't Sith alchemy but a collection of small insects (the orbalisks) that have rooted themselves into his body (and happen to be basically invincible vs. lightsabers.)

[Dienekes]

Which then goes back to "but if other lightsabers can parry then the amount of strength or leverage used can absolutely matter during fights."

Eh. If you’re relying on arm strength to effectively parry, you’re bad at parrying. Footwork and positioning is more important. Which is part of why, in unarmored combat, rapiers overtook longswords. That you get more force with a two-handed blow doesn’t matter much when they can just redirect the energy away.

Mind you, steel swords slide, which aids that redirection. Lightsabers seem to slide or stick together based on pure randomness. I honestly don’t know how much that would change things. But without knowing, I’d definitely go for a one-handed method. Reach is king. Doubly so when all the weapon is deadly to the touch. And all else being equal having one hand on the blade allows for longer reach.

[Keltest]

Eh. If you’re relying on arm strength to effectively parry, you’re bad at parrying. Footwork and positioning is more important. Which is part of why, in unarmored combat, rapiers overtook longswords. That you get more force with a two-handed blow doesn’t matter much when they can just redirect the energy away.

Rapiers overtook longswords in unarmed combat because they were smaller and they looked cooler. Theyre the result of an age where one handed swords are a decorative gentleman's weapon rather than one designed to most efficiently kill your enemy. Which isn't to say you couldn't fight a longsword with a rapier, but they have no intrinsic advantage over them either. If you wanted a fighting man's sword, you picked up a claymore or zweihander or similarly large weapon.

A proper two handed longsword that wasn't a full on zweihander would still probably beat a rapier due to a reach advantage.

[Peelee]

Eh. If you’re relying on arm strength to effectively parry, you’re bad at parrying. Footwork and positioning is more important. Which is part of why, in unarmored combat, rapiers overtook longswords. That you get more force with a two-handed blow doesn’t matter much when they can just redirect the energy away.

Mind you, steel swords slide, which aids that redirection. Lightsabers seem to slide or stick together based on pure randomness. I honestly don’t know how much that would change things. But without knowing, I’d definitely go for a one-handed method. Reach is king. Doubly so when all the weapon is deadly to the touch. And all else being equal having one hand on the blade allows for longer reach.

With almost no knowledge of swords but some knowledge of physics, if a two-handed hard-swung heavy sword is coming at you in an arc and you deflect with a one-handed rapier, it really seems like you're about to have a very bad day. Not to mention that, yes, the lightsabers clash and stick fairly often,and all parts are deadly, so it seems like being able to keep the combined blades away from you would be fairly useful.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Old canon was all over the place on cortosis, though; in the Thrawn duology, it was so structurally weak that it would flake off in your hands, while Bane got physically huge due to mining it for starship hulls and other armors because of its huge structural strength.

This is true, but I believe the alloy answer was specifically an attempt to resolve those contradictions. Raw cortosis was brittle and mostly useless, but when refined and alloyed correctly, you could get incredibly potent metals from it.

It's not really a contradiction, I don't think. The Bane series is talking about rock with small amounts of cortosis in it:

Highly resistant to blaster bolts, cortosis alloys supposedly could withstand even the blade of a lightsaber. Unfortunately, the very properties that made it so valuable also made it extremely difficult to mine. Plasma torches were virtually useless; it would take days to burn away even a small section of cortosis-laced rock. The only effective way to mine it was through the brute force of hydraulic jacks pounding relentlessly away at a vein, chipping the cortosis free bit by bit.

Cortosis was one of the hardest materials in the galaxy. The force of the pounding quickly wore down the head of a jack, blunting it until it became almost useless. The dust clogged the hydraulic pistons, making them jam. Mining cortosis was hard on the equipment...and even harder on the miners.

...while the Thrawn duology implies it's talking about slabs of close-to-pure cortosis:

“I’ll bet,” Mara said, a memory of her own drifting up. “So that’s what the slab of rock was Palpatine had between the double walls of his private residence.”

Luke lifted an eyebrow. “He had cortosis ore around his residence?”

“And around some of his other offices and throne rooms, too, I think,” Mara said.

“I never knew the proper name for the stuff. From what he told me, I gather that if your lightsaber has dimetris circuits anywhere in the activation loop, hitting the rock starts a feedback crash running through the system that takes only a fraction of a second to shut the whole thing down. A little something extra to slow down any stray Jedi who might come after him.”

“The things you learn as Emperor’s Hand,” Luke murmured. “Do you know if there’s any way to cut it?”

“Oh, sure--hundreds of them,” Mara assured him, slipping her pack onto the ground. “Aside from the lightsaber thing, the stuff’s basically useless. It’s too weak and crumbly to build with.”

So it basically sounds like tungsten: hard but brittle, difficult to work, and most useful when alloyed in small amounts with other metals. Nothing too out of the ordinary there, aside from the ridiculously good energy conduction.

[Dienekes]

Rapiers overtook longswords in unarmed combat because they were smaller and they looked cooler. Theyre the result of an age where one handed swords are a decorative gentleman's weapon rather than one designed to most efficiently kill your enemy. Which isn't to say you couldn't fight a longsword with a rapier, but they have no intrinsic advantage over them either. If you wanted a fighting man's sword, you picked up a claymore or zweihander or similarly large weapon.

A proper two handed longsword that wasn't a full on zweihander would still probably beat a rapier due to a reach advantage.

You're describing a smallsword. Smallswords overtook the rapier because they were smaller and less cumbersome.

A longsword's average blade length was around 33 to 43 inches (they varied wildly over time). A rapier's average blade length is 35 to 41 inches. The major difference in length comes from the grip. Longswords had a much longer grip than a rapier because, you know, it requires two hands. But that's actually a hindrance in reach advantage. If both hands are on the blade you can't thrust as far. Because actions like this:



Are impossible with both hands on the blade. Your shoulders have to square up a bit more, you can't extend as far.

Now, with armor. I'd go with with longsword, no contest. But duels in clothes is literally what the rapier was designed for.

With almost no knowledge of swords but some knowledge of physics, if a two-handed hard-swung heavy sword is coming at you in an arc and you deflect with a one-handed rapier, it really seems like you're about to have a very bad day. Not to mention that, yes, the lightsabers clash and stick fairly often,and all parts are deadly, so it seems like being able to keep the combined blades away from you would be fairly useful.

The thing is, a longsword is about 2.5 to 4 lbs. A rapier is about 1.5 to 3 lbs. So the mass of the attack isn't too much different. While two-handed weapons most certainly can create more force, the whole art of parrying is not to match your strength against the opponent's strength. All that would prove is who's stronger and the best swordsman would just be who can bench the most.

It's instead more about positioning your blade so that you either have the "weak" of their blade meet the "strong" of your blade, so your parry is in a better position regardless of your personal strength. Angling your blade so that the force of their weapon is directed away from your body (this usually requires the blade to slide off your weapon, which is why it might not work for lightsabers). Or stopping their attack before it can get momentum in the first place, which is easier to do when the weapon is already in a forward position as a rapier would be held.

Now all that said. Get someone with a big bidenhander in full armor. They can absolutely lift their weapon high and send it crushing down and any real attempt to stop the blow will plow right through. Unfortunately, doing that leaves you really open to attack. I actually saw this done in an armored duel a few months back, and the bidenhander bent the longsword that tried to block it.

But the longswordsmen already had time to strike the bidenhander twice across the chest before he even took up the guard. Not that those strikes would matter, because armor.

But that's why I said all else being equal. These are laser swords that all seem roughly the same length and don't seem to have any discernible mass.

[Peelee]

It's not really a contradiction, I don't think. The Bane series is talking about rock with small amounts of cortosis in it:



...while the Thrawn duology implies it's talking about slabs of close-to-pure cortosis:



So it basically sounds like tungsten: hard but brittle, difficult to work, and most useful when alloyed in small amounts with other metals. Nothing too out of the ordinary there, aside from the ridiculously good energy conduction.

That excerpt makes it sound like the cortosis, not the surrounding rock, was the extremely non-brittle part.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

That excerpt makes it sound like the cortosis, not the surrounding rock, was the extremely non-brittle part.

Right. The point is that in the former case the cortosis is in the form of small veins (coming in smaller chunks and potentially also being reinforced by the surrounding rock) and in the latter case there are big slabs of just cortosis, and small quantities of hard-but-brittle materials are proportionally more resilient than larger quantities.

Compare steel and tungsten, for instance. Say you have a 1-inch cube of steel, a 1-inch cube of tungsten, a paper-sized sheet of steel about 0.5 cm thick, and a paper-sized sheet of tungsten about 0.5 cm thick, and you fire a handgun at all four. With the steel, the small block will get a dent in it and the larger sheet will get a hole poked in it; with the tungsten, the small block will barely even take superficial damage, but the larger sheet of tungsten won't just have a hole in it but will actually shatter it into multiple pieces. So it makes sense that small bits of cortosis ore could resist a fair bit of force from jackhammering while a huge chunk of it can be chipped apart relatively easily with hammers or grenades or the like.

(Actually, now that I think about it, given that tungsten has the highest melting point of pure metals and so can absorb a ton of heat, and that tungsten fibers can be used to reinforce steel and other metals, one could make the argument that cortosis is kind of "sci-fi tungsten" in the same way that mithril is kind of "fantasy titanium." Probably a couple good plot hooks in there somewhere.)

[Peelee]

Right. The point is that in the former case the cortosis is in the form of small veins (coming in smaller chunks and potentially also being reinforced by the surrounding rock) and in the latter case there are big slabs of just cortosis, and small quantities of hard-but-brittle materials are proportionally more resilient than larger quantities.

Compare steel and tungsten, for instance. Say you have a 1-inch cube of steel, a 1-inch cube of tungsten, a paper-sized sheet of steel about 0.5 cm thick, and a paper-sized sheet of tungsten about 0.5 cm thick, and you fire a handgun at all four. With the steel, the small block will get a dent in it and the larger sheet will get a hole poked in it; with the tungsten, the small block will barely even take superficial damage, but the larger sheet of tungsten won't just have a hole in it but will actually shatter it into multiple pieces. So it makes sense that small bits of cortosis ore could resist a fair bit of force from jackhammering while a huge chunk of it can be chipped apart relatively easily with hammers or grenades or the like.

(Actually, now that I think about it, given that tungsten has the highest melting point of pure metals and so can absorb a ton of heat, and that tungsten fibers can be used to reinforce steel and other metals, one could make the argument that cortosis is kind of "sci-fi tungsten" in the same way that mithril is kind of "fantasy titanium." Probably a couple good plot hooks in there somewhere.)

Let me rephrase. That excerpt from the first Bane book makes it sound like cortosis was what made mining difficult; the properties that made it valuable also made it difficult to mine. Not that the surrounding rock made it difficult to mine, the properties of cortosis itself made mining cortosis difficult, and the cortosis, not the surrounding rock, broke the instruments constantly.

[Mechalich]

Now, with armor. I'd go with with longsword, no contest. But duels in clothes is literally what the rapier was designed for.

Lightsabers have to be capable of more than just 'duels in clothes' though. A Jedi needs to not only utilize their lightsaber against other lightsaber-wielding opponents, but also against droids, large and dangerous animals, aliens with unusual physiologies, armored vehicles, and even inanimate objects. They also need to be able to deflect ranged attacks and to face off with multiple opponents at once.

In fact, given the relative abundance of Force users compared to the overall population of the galaxy a melee battle with another force user may be among the least-likely events a Jedi would face in combat, and even in that case there's no guarantee that they'll be wielding a lightsaber (Nightsisters of Dathomir fight with blade and bow, the Knights of Zakuul utilize spear and shield, etc.). As a result, Jedi tended to develop combat skills for a wide range of situations (which, in the KOTOR era included armored opponents).

It's worth noting that Lightsaber Form II/Makashi, which was the form designed for lightsaber vs. lightsaber combat, does share much more commonality with fencing style techniques than other forms. The most prominent canon practitioner of this method was Count Dooku (and also his nominal students Grievous and Asajj Ventress), and in legends at least his choice is specifically called out as an anachronism because hardly anyone in the entire order had fought a lightsaber wielding opponent for a thousand years at that point.

[Peelee]

The most prominent canon practitioner of this method was Count Dooku (and also his nominal students Grievous and Asajj Ventress)

Spoiler: this will never stop being hilarious.

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[Rodin]

Spoiler: this will never stop being hilarious.

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I still can't forgive the grievous mis-use of Grievous in RotS. He got built up so well by Clone Wars, and then was utterly ruined by the movie.