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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. MercenaryAce

    MercenaryAce Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 10, 2005
    For whatever reason, I think planetary shields just don't work in space.

    Otherwise you could just strap a planetary shield generation on some engines, point at the enemy, and have a fleet destroying and planet devastating missile.

    Plus, the first Death Star didn't have a shield, and the second Death Star depended on a shield projected from a nearby planet rather than them putting said shield generator on the planet itself. I mean, there was plenty of room.
     
  2. Darth_Lilapso

    Darth_Lilapso Jedi Master star 1

    Registered:
    Jun 25, 2007
    Uuuh-gly! That's my first and continuing impression of any ship the Mon Calamari design. The Raddus - like all MC designs - looks like a flying-lumpy-metal-pickle-with-acne-problems. Why must Disney inflict more MC designs onto the New Galactic Republic and Resistance? They should have given us more Nadiri produced Starhawk Class Battleships and more ( liberated from Imperial service ) Quasar Fire Class Carriers...at least those Hammerhead Class Corvettes /Frigates/Light Cruisers fit the bill of the protagonists getting nicely angular conard-centric capital ships. I'm still holding out the hope that more Starhawks were being produced...just in case the Battle of Jakku turned out not to be the Imperial's last stand. There's still hope the Starhawk battleships and QF Carriers will show up in the growing Resistance fleet...PLEASE Disney? Oh and I'll cheer if the Raddus, Home One and every other MC ship gets reduced to atoms...
     
  3. AdmiralNick22

    AdmiralNick22 Retired Fleet Admiral star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    May 28, 2003
    Seriously... get some help. The level to which you dislike a fictional starship is starting to get distressing... ;)

    --Adm. Nick
     
  4. Vthuil

    Vthuil Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jan 3, 2013
    Like I've said before, I suspect he's really just a Jello. Especially with that avatar.
     
  5. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012

    Regarding planetary shields - Wookieepedia seems to be under the impression that the Shield Gate station projected the planetary shield - so, when the station was destroyed, the whole shield went down.

    But in the shots of the Tantive IV leaving the Profundity - the shield looks just fine.

    Maybe the Shield Gate Station only projected a small part of the shield - including the bit it was able to open and close?
     
  6. Star_Desperado

    Star_Desperado Jedi Knight star 3

    Registered:
    Mar 5, 2017
    I always thought that was just the atmosphere. It looks a lot like ISS photos of the earth's atmosphere, and even Endor and Hoth look similar, but I didn't think we were actually looking at their shields, I thought they were just invisible, like on ships. You see an obvious blue shield glow near the shield-gate aperture, but it disappears to full invisible transparency just a few meters beyond. And you don't really see any indication of it when you look at Scarif until the shield-gate is busted and it lets out that sick short-circuit aurora arc ripple effect. That was some pretty neat work from ILM
     
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  7. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012

    There's a rather strong blue glow - with black underneath it, and below that, the horizon and "normal" atmosphere glow, when you look at some planet shots.


    http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net...al_ship.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20170228041634

    Dig around a bit, and you'll find similar things.
     
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  8. Star_Desperado

    Star_Desperado Jedi Knight star 3

    Registered:
    Mar 5, 2017
    I was inclined to believe that until I saw Earth's "planetary shield." Either NASA has uncovered a conspiracy, or that's just a natural celestial phenomenon.

    [​IMG]
     
  9. JABoomer

    JABoomer Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2009

    I've never caught on this this until now, but do these shots of the Profundity not make it seem like the "collar" may be modular and not a permanently attached part of the ships' hull?

    Could it be that this is some sort of command and control collar that can be attached to any MC75 cruiser.

    Or maybe they were making these collars in the Telaris system and it's the attachment of the collar onto existing Mon Cal ships that forms a large part of their transformation into warships (ie. housing a lot of the required communication, sensors, and weapons that differentiate a warship from a space cruiser or city ship?
     
  10. AdmiralNick22

    AdmiralNick22 Retired Fleet Admiral star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    May 28, 2003
    Yeah, the collar seems like a very effective way of mass producing bolt on components to modify the city ships into warships. Note that a lot of the visible weapons batteries are part of the collar as well. There are obvious modifications to the main hull as well (cutting in a hangar bay, upgrading the engines to top of the line KDY models, etc), but I am definitely a fan of collars that are combination weapon/command & control modules.

    While this is important for the MC75-type (which I'm assuming is composed of former city ships), the various MC80-types were purpose built starships designed for deep space exploration or passenger liners. These cruisers would need less work, mostly adding armor, military grade shields, and weapons batteries.

    --Adm. Nick
     
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  11. Star_Desperado

    Star_Desperado Jedi Knight star 3

    Registered:
    Mar 5, 2017
    It might be permanently attached, but it definitely wasn't there originally. I wonder if the command stalk was there originally as part of the "building" and the weapons collar was just armored padding over it or if it the weapons collar included that whole extension added onto the ship.
     
  12. AdmiralNick22

    AdmiralNick22 Retired Fleet Admiral star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    May 28, 2003
    GUYS. FFG is releasing a TLJ expansion for X-wing, gives us the name for the Resistance bomber, the B/SF-17 heavy bomber!

    [​IMG]
    --Adm. Nick
     
  13. Star_Desperado

    Star_Desperado Jedi Knight star 3

    Registered:
    Mar 5, 2017
    On the one hand I'm bummed that AdmiralNick gets wind of these things before I do, but on the other I'm glad he's always there with good news to brighten my day.
     
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  14. Karl0413

    Karl0413 Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 11, 2015
    B/SF-17? World War II allusions intensify. :D
     
  15. Xael

    Xael Jedi Master star 3

    Registered:
    Feb 1, 2015
    Any word on the make of the ship? Corellian?

    Hmm A/SF-01 B-wing starfighter... I wonder...
     
  16. Star_Desperado

    Star_Desperado Jedi Knight star 3

    Registered:
    Mar 5, 2017
    Might be Slayn and Korpil. After all the A/SF-01 B-wing looks very similar.
     
  17. seeker_two

    seeker_two Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 3, 2003
    I'm with the Wook on this....the shield went down hard after the gate's destruction. It also explains why the Empire went with a planet-based shield in ROTJ.
     
  18. Star_Desperado

    Star_Desperado Jedi Knight star 3

    Registered:
    Mar 5, 2017
    It's just Occam's Razor. Rogue One's plot tells us they needed the shield down in order to transmit the plans. Bodhi said something to that effect. Since they only managed to get the plans through after blowing up the shield gate, logically the shield must have been down at that point, meaning the shield-gate must have been at least partly responsible for generating it. The StarWars.com databank also says that in their Hammerhead Corvette entry, but the Databank isn't always 100% reliable.

    Still that's what I'm inclined to believe, until someone at LSG goes out of their way to make it clear one way or the other.

    Speaking of shield-gates, does anybody else think the Fondor shipyards look cool as heck?
     
  19. MercenaryAce

    MercenaryAce Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 10, 2005
    The shield gate thing is a bit weird - the station seems to be hovering above the shield and not connected to it when it doesn't have the apertures open (and I wonder how the shield aperture works as well - special material? Some sort of Dune shield penetrating principle?) Yet it was clear that they believed that taking the gate station down would also bring down the shield.

    Also worth noting that in one clip we see X-Wings firing proton torpedoes directly at the shield and not the station, and exclaiming in disbelief about how much the shield was absorbing. Makes me wonder if fully planetary shields, or at least the ones that can repel whole fleets, are newish in the new canon, and maybe the rebels were hoping that a station crashing into the shield would bring it down. And if there was some kind of tech advancement between RO and ROTJ, since the shield gate, however it works, is a vulnerability that the Endor shield didn't have. (Main thing I can think of is if the Scarif shield took longer to turn on and off, and so would have been more vulnerable to a surprise attack without the gate)

    In any case, the fact that if the shield gate did project the planetary shield, that shield did not protect the station itself suggests even to me that planetary shields require atmospheres to function.
     
  20. Nobody145

    Nobody145 Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Feb 9, 2007
    Shields have always been a bit weird in Star Wars. Like X-wings could fly right up to the first Death Star, we see droids just walk through another kind of shield on Naboo, Echo Base had a powerful enough shield to resist Darth Vader's entire fleet yet the AT-ATs could just march right up to that one too, etc.

    At least the second Death Star's external shield can be explained as due to being incomplete and also that it was meant to be a tempting target for the Rebel fleet. Yet that shield was also enough to block the Rebel starfighters, they had to wait until the shield was down before Lando could begin his attack run. Although Dodonna mentioned the first Death Star's defenses were designed around capital ship assault, so that's partially a handwave for why Red Squadron could get to that trench run.

    Then there's warship shields, always hard to tell with them. Like we see A-wings blow up domes on the Executor, then on the bridge they say the bridge shields are down. Although might be due to the Rebel fleet bombardment opening up holes in the shields for the A-wings to sneak through. I think at Scarif an X-wing blew up a shield generator dome on one of the Star Destroyers, which might have allowed the Y-wings to then knock out the ship. Not sure I'm remembering that chain of events accurately though.

    The Scarif shield was powerful enough to resist bombardment (similar to Hoth, though the Rebel fleet was much smaller of course) but then a few capital ships crashing into the shield gate seemed to open the way. At Endor they didn't try that, but then maybe things weren't quite desperate enough for Ackbar to hurl cruisers at the shield.
     
  21. King of Alsakan

    King of Alsakan Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 25, 2007
    The shield gate was a bit weird in how it seemed to work, still very cool though. Only reason I might believe the shield was still up, outside of the aperture, and was not being projected by the gate was a line form the novelization regarding Tarkin's decision to use the Death Star:

    He could mean the planetary shield could be salvageable at that point, but could also mean it was still there and the maybe it could not repel firepower of that magnitude from the Death Star ;)

    I think it just depends on the plot of the story. Definitely seems to be no hard rule when shields can and can not stop physical objects or kinetic weapons.
     
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  22. comradepitrovsky

    comradepitrovsky Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 5, 2017
    [​IMG][​IMG]
    What are the lights on the lower left hand corner in this shot of Profundity? Engines?
     
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  23. comradepitrovsky

    comradepitrovsky Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 5, 2017
    Also: DESB mentions three other Sovereign class warships: Autarch, Despot, and Heresiarch. Did we ever learn what happened to them?
     
  24. AdmiralWesJanson

    AdmiralWesJanson Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    May 23, 2005
    Perhaps the generator is on the surface, but the controls for it were in the gateway station.
     
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  25. Star_Desperado

    Star_Desperado Jedi Knight star 3

    Registered:
    Mar 5, 2017
    DESB? Also it looks like one of your images is missing, but those lights are probably just visual clutter meant to look interesting. Greebles essentially. I don't think they're engines but they could perhaps be some heat-waste system.