Lit Fleet Junkie Flagship- The technical discussions of the GFFA (Capital Ships thread Mk. II)

Good catches. I am all for seeing more Bulk Cruisers & Dauntless-class cruisers in the Rebel Fleet. The former should actually be rather common, especially during the early years of the Rebellion. We rarely see them in the main fleet, which makes me wonder if Bulk Cruisers were more commonly found in Rebel Sector Forces, not the primary fleet. As for the Dauntless-class, I never imagined them as being very common. I like the idea of them being coverted at Dac and serving as part of the Rebel battle line assigned to protect the sector & the shipyards.

--Adm. Nick

 

If even the Defender class Star Destroyer (a design apparently rejected after a few were built in favor of the Nebula Class) and Republic Star Destroyer can show up with major roles in comics, why can't we have more ships from Rebellion like the Dauntless, Liberator, and Bulwark (mkIII)

 

Yeah, I would love to see some Liberator-class cruisers. They are probably (based on the fact it takes awhile to get them in game) something that SoroSuub produced for the Rebel Navy shortly after the Battle of Endor. In general, I would love to see more SoroSuub Rebel designs.

--Adm. Nick

 

From CBR's preview of Star Wars 7:

Spoiler

 

Hmm. From RotJ it sounded like the Emperor had not been to Endor previously.

Sentinel Landing Crafts! Nice. And is that a Victory class destroyer at the top left? Looks like it has wings on the midline, and a sensor spine from the tower, and seems to be lacking a large ventral reactor dome. Same with the ship just to the Left of Birra. Maybe artistic depiction, but there is no reason they can't be VSDs.

 

The "Endor" from CEIII was a Dauntless-class cruiser.

Was the Defender-SD really rejected in favour of the Nebula-class? I thought after several retcons they were supposed to be the same ship (although it could be possible, the DSD was extremely expansive and there might have been technical problems with its high performance based on its advanced reactor-design, which originated from Hethir's Worldship).

 

Sentinel landing-craft - good.

Victory-SDs - good, because they show some diversity, bad, because you wouldn't expect them as escorts for such a high-profile project and high-profile visitor.

TIE/lns - same as the Victories. It should have been Interceptors.

Moff Birra - what is a represantative of KDY doing at the DSII-project? According to BountyHunterWars KDY stayed away from the DS:

From Slave Ship, page 27-28:
"The much-vaunted Death Star hadn't been a Kuat Drive yards project — Kuat of Kuat himself had forbade the organisation from even making a bid on any of its subsystems — but the reasoning behind it had been understandable.
.... "Force and terror accomplish what reason and understanding cannot."
The Kuat family had been in business a long time, supplying instruments of force and terror. His reluctance to get involved with any aspect of the Death Star's construction hadn't been based on a moral objection, but purely practical. Kuat Drive Yards' wealth and power came from building warships, and the Death Star, if it had succeeded in the Imperial admirals' purposes, would have wiped out much of the need for such expensive — and profitable — craft. .... Speed was not so important as maneuverability; the Death Star's hyperspace capabilities had not been enough to outweigh other elements of military force, such as numerical superiority. No Death Star could be made so powerful and impervious to attack as to outweigh the loss of those factors"

 

Wookieepedia does say that they were retconned into being the same class.

The Defender carrier is a smaller ship- only 700 m long.

The Defender star destroyer ended up being delayed, and eventually released under the New Class program, as the Nebula- with the Endurance-class carrier as a variant.

 

The problem is that Invasion shows us a Star Destroyer named the Defender Class and appearing like the Defender class design from the Cracken Threat Dossier.


The Essential Guide for Warfare has the Nebula-class being a refined version of the Republic class and made part of the Defender Program, only to be returned to the Nebula-class name when the Defender Program was merged into the New Class program.

So the easiest solution is that the Defender-style and Nebula-style were competing designs for the Defender Program, but the Nebula-style won out and was renamed when the Defender program was integrated into the New Class program. The Defender-style retained the name and saw small sales to a handful of fleets, which is why we see some in service in Invasion.

At least that is my retcon for the situation.

 

They might just not have listed to him and simply not told him that they send an advisory team anyway, I mean the guy is hard to take serious even at his best , also afaik it is never said she is from Kuat Drive Yards, but as the Emperor points out, Kuat Drive Systems.

 

Even the Emperor makes mistakes from time to time and who would dare to correct him?

Otherwise we would have another subsidiary of KDY or would the reverse make more sense? KDS designing and developing the different ship-types and incorporating the technologies and KDY is then building them. We need an organigram for all the megacorporations.

 

Found something amusing on the Wookieepedia today, it's an image from WEG's Den of Spies adventure in Twin Stars of Kira.
The ship at the top looked somewhat familiar. If not an outright Bellator (given the lack of big engine banks underneath), then at least a good candidate for a Mandator retcon.

I know there's a possibility the ship could be similar to the organic-looking vessel underneath it, but the possibility that it was one of the Kalindan spaceships from the late Republic/early Imperial era would also make for an interesting story. Apparently, the local system navy intercepted and pushed out an Imperial taskforce consisting of several star destroyers, strike cruisers, frigates, corvettes and an escort carrier.

The battle had an after-action report by the NR intelligence, where they wondered how the Kalindans could have done so much damage to the Imperials. There's even a reference to a "Space Control Ship" on the Kalindan side, which could easily be a local military term for something like a SSD. The Kalindans could be one of those defense forces that eventually declared for the NR and used their own heavy ships in the fighting.

Unless the story itself actually states something to the contrary and all Kalindan ships were smaller than an ISD. Still could leave room for a SSD in a drydock...

 

Actually the Kalindans lost and the Empire occupied the planet.

The same reports mentioned that the Kalindans basically just kept ramming patrol boats, shuttles and fighters into the Imperial ships.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wdzre7co33x4drp/battletwinstars.png

 

Great story! I love that image, plus that whole exchange between the New Republic Sector Command staff is just pure vintage WEG goodness. I really wish we saw more of the various New Republic Sector Commands in the early days of the EU. their structure paralleled the NR High Command. Some general thoughts below:

Admiral Anton Standish? Awesome name. I want to learn more about this guy.

Kalindian warships appear to be very similar in design to Mon Calamari warships. Given that Corellian gunship, perhaps the Kalindians purchase their warships from various builders?

The upper right corner has what appears to be the remains of a B-wing. Perhaps more evidence that they purchase non-native designs for their Deep Space Fleet.

The 32nd Cruiser Squadron sounds awesome. I like the old WEG concept of squadrons, lines, and other old school naval formations. Also a reminder that the NRDF had additional sector forces outside of the Five Fleets.

That larger KDY style warship could be a good candidate for an unvisualized class, but I am not sure if it is a dreadnought. The description doesn't make either the Imperial or Kalindian fleets have ships that large at the battle. However, it could be the Space Control Ship.

Speaking of the Space Control Ship, I love that unique designation. Ties well with the stuff we see in the EGTW that various local forces kept their own designations.

--Adm. Nick

 

In World of Fire (a Star Wars Weekly comic strip arc republished in the first Wild Space Omnibus- we see an Imperial Light Cruiser that looks a bit like a Star Destroyer but with 3 domes. We also see a small experimental ship- the Staraker- with shielding comparable to a capital ship.

I'm wondering what class that light cruiser might be.

 

Personally, I am intrigued by the fact they had no less than 8 asteroid fortresses.

After getting into gundam, I think star wars needs more asteroid fortresses.


On the topic of the Space Control Ship - personally, the name sounds to me like it would be a command and communications vessel rather than a warship.

 

Alinda Solaris sound pretty epic as well and I am pretty sure Captain Slixike is meant to be an Alien.

Most Planetary Forces seem to, as few have their own ship building capacity.

Could of course also be an old Tempest Bomber, though after Endor many forces seemed to have gotten their hands on B-Wings. Doole's Kessel Defense Fleet had some as did the Pembric Militia for example.

Always was my guess as well, maybe some ancient refitted cruiser.

 

Well, if I was in charge of expanding on the story, I'd make that top ship an actual Mandator, but refitted and turned into a SCS and having had some of its Republic-era guns detached and placed on 8 asteroids as part of a planetary/system defense grid rather than put on a single ship meant to control a sector. That way, the battle could play out as WEG wrote it, yet still have a dreadnought. One that has little remaining of its original armaments, only its physical bulk.

 

Don't dreadnought-sized ships (Bellator, Vengeance, Assertor, Executor, etc) tend to have a lot of relatively small engines, rather than a few big ones?
If so- that ship might be a battlecruiser- perhaps a Procurator or something along those lines.

 

It depends, we also can't see if there's more engines to the sides, like on the Bellator. I'd just like WEG to get another heavy ship reference after the Battalion being retconned as a Praetor Mark II.

Plus, it'd be fun to have an actual Mandator shot be from an older source.

 

You mean Praetor II? That has been bugging me about Warfare, and I still haven't even got it or the Atlas yet.

 

It doesn't look like there's sides extending off-screen as far as I can tell- seems narrow enough at the edges to imply that this is all there is.

 

The original image that inspired the Bellator had some small parts that tapered off to the sides. The 3D model Hsiao made, had bigger engines and more of them.

What I'm saying is, the Mandators could look a bit different from the later Bellator design, but still retain this semi-rounded organic feature on the stern. Almost makes me want a design connection between them and the Strike-class, another organic-looking Imperial ship. Maybe they shared designers.

 

I think I saw speculation (possibly in the temp-forum thread?) that, during his time in the Empire's service, Mon Cal designer Terpfen may have been involved with the more curvy Imperial ships.

I'm guessing this image:

Spoiler

is the old Bellator- its engines don't look very small compared to those of Hsiao's- just fewer in number since his ship is thicker.

 

Interesting idea. A ship that size could serve as an excellent mobile base and command center, especially with all the space freed up by removing the weapons systems.

That said, wouldn't such a backwater planet have difficulty maintaining such a ship? And its weapon compliment is such that wouldn't the imperial fleet be horribly outgunned in this battle, meaning there would be no need for the suicidal tactics we see?