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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

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

Discussion in 'Literature' started by AdmiralWesJanson, Sep 12, 2005.

  1. blackmyron

    blackmyron Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Oct 29, 2005
    Right - SW, like many a space opera, is lousy with special minerals, plants, animals, resources etc. that can only be found on a small handful of worlds - or just one. Often, it's just a useful plot device - 'This is why we must capture this world at all cost' or 'This is why we have to stop off at this world to fix the engine' etc.

    Also, for some reason SW has to have SPACE VERSIONS of gold, bronze, etc.
     
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  2. Zeta1127

    Zeta1127 Jedi Grand Master star 5

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    Sep 2, 2012
    Nothing is as stupid as unobtanium...
     
  3. anotherdemon

    anotherdemon Jedi Knight star 2

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    Apr 29, 2013
    Yeah, and then you have the space sub in TCW that's only seen as anything special because it's so small, where cruisers were typical of cloaked ships (which Trench also fought before). Which you know, might be due to the amount of power needed to generate a cloaking field rather than a "crystal".

    Which also makes more sense, as if you needed a crystal, a smaller ship would benefit from it more than a large one (you'd just need a smaller one that way), which is entirely the opposite of what we hear on screen.

    TPM ICS talks of the "crystals", whereas TCW ICS mentions power being the primary concern. The latter seems the most logical.
     
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  4. Tzizvvt78

    Tzizvvt78 Jedi Grand Master star 5

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    Jun 12, 2009
    Not really, depending on what you think is "quickly". The civilizations of SW have had interstellar space travel and built planet-scale installations for thousands of years without noticeable shortage in raw materials. Which shouldn't surprise anyone who's ever studied astrophysics, since our own solar system could sustain trillions just from all the asteroid mining and agrocultural potential.

    The problem seems to be power requirements, as alluded to in both ESB and TCW. Why else would only a bigger ship be expected to pull off a cloaking device in the first place?
     
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  5. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

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    Sep 2, 2012
    I wonder how the TIE Phantoms handle the issue?

    Or soldiers with Personal Cloaking Devices, for that matter.
     
  6. Tzizvvt78

    Tzizvvt78 Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Jun 12, 2009
    In real life, cloaking devices cost a ton due to...

    ...power requirements!

    Power which even the simplest starfighter in SW should have access to, so I don't see why they always focus on the absolutely most complex version you can think of, when a simple visual cloak will go a long way.
     
  7. anotherdemon

    anotherdemon Jedi Knight star 2

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    Apr 29, 2013
    Barring beserker drones, galaxy eating space termites or some other fantastic construct, there'd be more than enough resources for humanoid inhabitants in a single galaxy.

    Pumping out a million Death Stars is thousands of times smaller than a drop of water on Dac compared to a galaxy (I'd be underestimating this). Now, being able to build that many (or wanting to in the first place), is the point, as is how much material a galaxy contains.

    Humans (humanoids) will tend to reach a point where they're happy for the most part, just as most biological entities will, and the Star Wars universe seems to have gotten pretty close to that point, where those whom aspire the most tend to be simply on the political scale (Palpatine wanting to rule), with the rest happy with their level of comfort (the very fact that they resort to clones and battle droids is more than evident of that).

    That'd be why you don't see thousands of Star Destroyers making up a single action group compared to the several we see. Though with saying that, I fully expect the CIS would have massively overtaken and crushed the Republic if it wasn't a phony war due to their greater reliance on automatons.
     
  8. anotherdemon

    anotherdemon Jedi Knight star 2

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    Apr 29, 2013
    Their sensors probably make simple visual distortion useless, not to mention the need to hide all of the waste heat to beat such, which would require a lot of power.
     
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  9. karilyan

    karilyan Jedi Knight

    Registered:
    Jan 8, 2014
    Anyone else posit that past galactic civilizations (Celestials, Rakata etc) stripped mined most of the Galaxy leaving the bare minimum for a Galactic Republic that more than occasionally has stretched its resources to create war material for galactic wide war?

    Or that Kuat, Fondor, Dac and etc would basically have a moratorium on mining their own worlds and only use exported materials?
     
  10. anotherdemon

    anotherdemon Jedi Knight star 2

    Registered:
    Apr 29, 2013
    The Star Wars Galaxy looks pretty crowded though, especially with the number of habitable planets and governed systems (they wouldn't exactly be living in mined out systems; though with saying that, Hyperspace might make that moot). Large companies would have an almost endless supply of moons and large asteroids to melt down IMO -- just have a look at Geonosis and how they built the Death Star from a portion of the asteroid ring. And that's just one planet.

    Most star systems will have one or more asteroid rings orbiting the sun at various distances, and these rings would provide more than enough raw materials to build the fleets of warships we've seen. And that's one system.

    A mined out galaxy will resemble...nothing but black holes and the voids between galaxies. "Nothing", in other words.
     
  11. Nobody145

    Nobody145 Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Feb 9, 2007
    Come to think of it, would the Rakata even need to strip-mine worlds eventually? At the height of their power they created the Star Forge, which drew on a sun to create warships and such. It led to their downfall eventually, but the technology is possible, so the even more advanced Celestials possibly would not even need to mine metals but just use starstuff as their raw materials. The True Sith Empire built their own weaker version, the Sun Razer, though that one destabilized a sun a lot faster, but that was due to the Sith not quite understanding what they were playing with (and not caring about collateral damage).

    Too bad we don't see much of the automatic ship building, though its mentioned here or there. I remember in Destiny's Way they mentioned that the New Republic war effort was finally really gearing up (build a machine that would build another machine that would build another machine that would then build war material), finally giving the New Republic a fighting chance. Even in modern OT times there's the occasional mention of recycling, though the most advanced version I can think of was on the World Devastators, and after that no one wanted anything to do with the tech due to the bad PR. Hm, wonder if there's a way to retcon the World Devastator tech (molecular furnaces, was it?) into being based on old Rakata tech from the Star Forge? Hm, nah, that's too outlandish.
     
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  12. Tzizvvt78

    Tzizvvt78 Jedi Grand Master star 5

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    Jun 12, 2009
    Crowded in the Core, but not outwards. The Outer Rim is simultaneously described as both the biggest region and the most sparcely populated (per planet, I assume).

    Yup. The Mining Guild has at least a billion young, resource-rich, lifeless planets with mining colonies.

    Plus, the Rakatan Empire had limited reach, with only a few hundred worlds (unless they only made out a core of the Empire, like the Chiss space having a lot more than 20-something worlds). The Celestials did a lot of stellar building, but we haven't seen much of resource-exploitation from them.
     
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  13. Gorefiend

    Gorefiend Chosen One star 5

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    Oct 23, 2004

    As you said you don't just need to build a hull, you need to build a hyperdrive, generators, subspace engines, sensors, highly advanced computers etc. none of this stuff just falls from trees and all of it is so far beyond us it would actually be much stranger to assume that the materials for it were easy to acquire or common.

    They are multi sector governments not something like the Sanitary Plumbing And Heating Corp. from New York ;)
     
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  14. King of Alsakan

    King of Alsakan Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Nov 25, 2007
    More automatic ship building would be nice to see. I would imagine as well the Galaxy has gotten pretty good at recycling and at being efficient with the raw materials at hand, especially considering the existence of city planets like Coruscant.

    Quite true, can't wait till our civilization reaches that point, slowly but surely.
     
  15. Cushing's Admirer

    Cushing's Admirer Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Jun 8, 2006
    Yet, you guys are proving my point. Your seeming unconcern about resources conveys it seems to me a lack of feasibility of raw materials. Many seem to think resources are nearly infinite unless it was replenished constantly that wouldn't be the case.We are running low on many of our resources the same would happen in SW unless they constantly replenish or create new sources merely for conviance (sp) which seems what they do.
     
  16. Gorefiend

    Gorefiend Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2004
    Yep especially under the Empire the resource drain seems to be so massive that they keep generating shortages of all kinds, whilst introduce massive taxes and were always on the lookout for worlds to strip mine or enslave for rare resources.
     
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  17. King of Alsakan

    King of Alsakan Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Nov 25, 2007
    It boils down to if you think the amount of resources are Galaxy has available is dictated by a more realistic approach, where even rarer materials should be found in a relatively great abundance. Also noting that a civilization such as this would probably be smart enough to use these resources at peak efficiency, and be able to come up with good alternatives if they are faced with shortages of some rare material.

    The Star Wars approach is indeed more fantasy based in that it does commonly have materials critical for advanced technology that are found on say a single world for the purposes of the story. In other words it basically comes down to a personal preference of what the story says it is vs what it could be if it was grounded in more reality.
     
  18. MercenaryAce

    MercenaryAce Chosen One star 6

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    Aug 10, 2005
    On the topic of cloaking devices - I find interesting that all the big projects about it seemed primarily concerned with miniaturizing it enough for use on starfighters. Cloaked capital ships are referred to in such an off hand way you think they would be common, yet I can't think of any outside of the Thrawn trilogy and X-Wing alliance. I mean, a cloaked warship or station could have all kinds of uses.
     
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  19. Tim Battershell

    Tim Battershell Jedi Master star 5

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    Sep 3, 2012
    Chimaera was fitted with a cloak (for testing a predictor) in the HoT duology, as were the three Impstars moored to the comet in Bothan space. All of those were of the double-blind type. Also a Golan Station had been fitted with one during (ISTR) one of the NJO Series books.
     
  20. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

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    Sep 2, 2012
  21. AdmiralWesJanson

    AdmiralWesJanson Force Ghost star 5

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    May 23, 2005
    As was an unnamed one at Fondor.
     
  22. Gamiel

    Gamiel Chosen One star 9

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    Dec 16, 2012
    Outside of the name, how was unobtanium stupid?
     
  23. King of Alsakan

    King of Alsakan Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 25, 2007
    With the background of it sounding like cloaking devices were fairly common at one point or another, I would think you would see them fitted on larger warships more often, like those two Executor-class dreadnoughts. SWTOR had the Emperor's Shadow, but no real specifics were given with respect to it being a ship or just a device that would be fitted on a ship. I guess in addition to the power concerns, the rarity of the Adegan and Stygium crystals put a severe damper on the spread and use of this technology.

    I did like the Republic stealth corvette a lot from TCW, providing a taste of some submarine-esque space combat.
     
  24. MercenaryAce

    MercenaryAce Chosen One star 6

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    Aug 10, 2005
    I said X-Wing alliance when I meant Rebel Assault 2. Doh.
     
  25. AdmiralWesJanson

    AdmiralWesJanson Force Ghost star 5

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    May 23, 2005
    Eh, both were fun games that could use a sequel.
     
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