I was in the SCa for a while, got a kick out of it for a short while, but ended up leaving due to what I called, Artistic differences.
but enough about the SCA.
there is a HUGE difference between live steel and boffer/boken style fighting. for one, live steel unless properly choreographed must be done at about half speed maximum, and the people participating must be very experienced. to be remotely safe.
I have been teaching sword and weapon styles for years now, from Katana to broadswords, to spears, and nunchaku.
To me live steel is more dramatic due to the slowed down movements, onlookers can actually see the moves and ooh and ahh like they should.
you also take less unreal risks with live steel. In boffer fights you know the worst you can get is a bruise, or in the extreme a broken bone. but with live steel even a sliver can be bad news if your hit by some jerk who doesn't maintain his blades, and you get tetenous.
One reason I left the SCA was due to the fact that is began dulling my real weapon combat senses a bit. for example, in the SCa you cannot use realistic techniques, only blocks and parries, it becomes a form of fencing... In real weapon combat, you don't limit yourself to using just the weapon. for example.
In the SCA you cannot knee, kick, punch, throw or otherwise use any part of your body against your enemy, you must only use your weapon. you Can't even shield check (which is "somewhat" intrinsic to using a shield, a shield that is just used for blocking is only being half used trust me).
thier rationale for this is sound, they want to keep everyone safe, since it is a big organization it's hard to do it without strict and narrow rules.
Another thing I disliked about the chapter I belonged to was they would not allow me to start with a two handed weapon, or any other form EXCEPT for sword and shield.
I am not horrible at this style, however, about 70% of the training I went through involved styles using dual weaponry or two handed style weapons. thus limiting me to that one style was like taking a Person skilled at a rifle and handing them a long bow. I could still do it, but I had to reteach myself a lot of things, it ended up being annoying. At least the guy in charge of the combat was cool and a good teacher, or I would never have stayed as long as I did.
As far as Saber combat goes, I would say it would be a cross between Using a katana, and a broadsword.
there is a web site I found somewhere, possibly the same one HBK found (I been there before you linked to it BTW and thought it was very cool good call on bringing this one up man I was gonna do it till I read yours
, that discusses how a saber might actually work and be used.
My only concern about the functionality of sabers is this. One of the most intrinsic parts of using a sword like weapon is the balance and wieght of the weapon.
If the saber is like a flashlight (the wieght is only in the hand/cylinder), it would never and I repeat NEVER be used like a swrod in any real way. Don't beleive me? go grab your flashlight, now assume the light beam instantly cuts through just about anything it touches. do you have to swing it hard at all? no... thus you don't have to wind up, you can simply twist your wrist and kill ten people if they are lined up.
So when watching the movies I decided that sabersblades have a wieght to them. Sure you could say they look that way because of what the prop was, but it goes beyond this, as I said in my opinion without a wieght to the blade, they would be too hard to use and saber fights would never happen the way they show. honestly, one guy would simply sit thier moving his wrist and arm as quickly as he could in a dizzying pattern, the other guy would be hard pressed to block anything! go take a yard stick and see how fast you can wing that around just using your wrist, imagine trying to block that, even WITH the power of the force behind you! They are not lasers, and are more than just tubes of forcefields filled with high energy plasma.
how might this work?
Well first off Lets assume saber technology uses a simlar but advanced form of the technology used by blasters.
A web site was up that looked at why blasters where developed, so I will simply cut to the chase, due to the technology at the time, solid progectile weapons lost most of their effectiveness, high density hard armor could now be made easily, which could more easily protect against things we would call machine guns ETC. (Thats why the repeater I always thought was kind of silly, no matter how cool it is).
So the blaster bolt was created.
it combines an energy weapon with some elements of mass drivers to create a weapon capable of punching through and burning through armor and whatever else.
Please note, that laser beams do not have a travel time so to speak, they would travel at the speed of light, and would look more or less like a phaser beam, not a tracer round. you wouldn't need to lead your target with a laser style weapon (think disruptor VS the e11 for example).
the blaster bolt, is:
a particle forcefield/shield surrounding a dense small bit of high energy psuedo plasma. somehow the creators found a way to give it enough inertia/mass to hit with force, and fly for long distances. Possibly by making the plasma dense (compressed into a small space, but still hot and energetic like plasma would be (plasma is the fourth state of mater, just above Vapor/gas).
this force shield is set to deteriorate as it passes through matter (this makes sense since avery atom and molecule which this bolt travels through would deenergize/strip off particles, weakening the field). the amount of matter it is set to penetrate can be set. for example, against heavier armor it might need to be set to penetrate after penetrating more mass.
this force filed is also set up so that matter can penetrate it more or less like a strainer. thus anything the bolt passes through comes into contact with the plasma. giving it greater damage and penetration power.
this technology would no doubt spring from the protective force fields created for ships ETC. the protective one would be set to have the highest ability to pass through matter, Ie pushing it away. the way force fields and particles in this state work theoretically can be made to have a certain charge to it, that repells like charges. OR more likely is set to use a sort of harmonic frequency. this would make it so that you could pass a ship through a field without problems, by having two identical frequencies. However these frequencies could be nearly infinately varied.
this principle is used for the hanger bays, allowing ships to pass through this barrier by having the force field merge with the fieild of the ship. Creating a bubble of sorts through wich the ship may pass, since the field blocks matter, or any kind of force field without the same frequency.
this leads us to the ability to make the following...
a hollow cylinder of force field energy, perhapse a centimeter in diameter, and up to a 2 feet or so long. this cyllinder would be used as the housing for the Dense high energy psuedo plasma in the light saber blade.
This field would allow matter to pass through it passing into and through the plasma stream vaporising it instantly, but keeping other force fields out, and since like charges repell eachother, it can even deflect that other field away to a degree. The plasma in the saber is kept in the field because the field has a specific charge to it, and plasma is VERY easily effected by magnetism and charge.
this would allow the saber blade to have Mass (due to the high density of the plasma), thus giving the saber a balance when lit. It would also allow for the saberist to deflect and block incoming attacks. by both blaster weapons solid rounds, and especialy light sabers. Since the frequency of the saber no doubt can be set by the user, and or randomized via a small simple computer function, no two sabers need ever/should ever have the same frequency.
This would mean that although you could simply wave it into something without any strength and destroy it, you would need to swing it with force to be sure the force field would pass through the material quickly and effectively in a fight. Since this force field would repell matter to a certain degree.
So lets assume that the water thing is Canon now, and say that lightsabers do not work under water. this can be made sensible in only one way. only IF a lit saber can function for a limited time underwater, but the power drain is VERY high, and the self recharging batterry/generator runs out too fast keeping the field stable and the plasma hot/intact.
However it would not be lightable under water, since the emitter would be exposed, not allowing the field to form properly.
In a way Lucas or whoever created the concept of the saber is a genius since theoretically the way they work in the movies IS accurate to the theoretical models. the blade WOULD no doubt spark as they are dragged acrss eachother due to particles being stripped away, and the charges reacting. they would flash when hitting another saber or balster bolt, for the same reasons as particles are thrown off from the force of the impact.
the color of the saber could easily be changes by changing the element used to create the plasma. each element when turned into plasma I think gives off a different color.
Perhaps the colors green, yellow, red, blue, and purple, indicate that only a few elements are suitable for use as saber plasma.
I thus implore people not to nescessarily subscribe to the Saber crystal theory, it's a nice thought and all, but it kind of sucks some of the possibilities out. Crystals MIGHT be important for some aspect, perhapse they focus the laser or whatever which creates the plasma? but as the sole reason why a saber works, it makes little real sense. It ends up being technobabble, basically like saying: well how did the torpedo's luke shot into the first death star go down the tubes like that? It was the force dude!
I guess it works, but it's nescessarily the best answer. heheh.
so if crystals ARe used to focus the laser or whatever that heats up the plasma so quickly then certainly it WOULd explain why a Jedi must construct his own Saber as part of his training. It would be a good test of the force to see if you can properly align the crystal to focus the beam properly, as well as selecting the right crystal in the first place with out any technological help.
Hope someone found this interesting
And yes Some of this I took from that web site I forgot the adress too, but incase your wondering I am this nuts, and do know what I am talking about to good degre... heheh Just about everything I said is theoretically possible.