ThrawnMcEwok posted: A Dreadnaught is a ship of the line because that's what all the sources say she is, outside the orbit of SWTC-inspired fanfic.
ThrawnMcEwok posted: SWTC's warship-designation arguments are not based on a lucid, judicious and even-handed use of information, but on selective presentation to fit uncanonical frameworks, peppered with high-profile howlers. This happens, it's human nature; I've done similar things myself, I've seen other people do it, and in this case, it shouldn't take away from Saxton's undoubted abilities or the overall scope and depth of SWTC. But when it happens, it needs to be pointed out, and (to use a word beloved of SWTC's fans) corrected.
ThrawnMcEwok posted: Now, because a lot of SWTC, probably the vast bulk of its content, is very good, and because most sane people can't be bothered to look into these arguments very deeply, Saxton has been able to become the living fanboy dream, and work on ICS and ItW; and as part and parcel of that, we get the Proccy, the Mandy, and the Mandy-II. Power to him - even with the superships, if that's what rocks his boat.
ThrawnMcEwok posted: But his canon work can't reinterpret the Dreadnaught directly without creating a fairly blatant continuity contradiction. So what we now have are 600m ships of the line, and unneccessary multi-mile behemoths whose rationale is unknown and whose usefulness is unclear.
ThrawnMcEwok posted: And if there has been peace for at least a thousand years, you could equally ask why Kuat is wasting its money on Mandator-class irrelevancies.
ThrawnMcEwok posted: Personally, I think that the excision of the term "Navy" from Prequel EU sources was unneccessary; but that cannot in itself undermine the idea that Judicial Forces, the Outland Regions Defence Force, and potentially other military units regarding themselves as federal forces, employed Dreadnaughts, or that Dreadnaughts were ships of the line.
ThrawnMcEwok posted: I know. But you did ask if I could "find justification for between 500 and 1000 2km+ ships in the entirety of the empire". I am, politely, sceptical of this, especially if you mean ships with a combat role, rather than support/transport ships, or ships built around large systems like superlasers, specialist communications equipment or big, fast engines. I simply don't see any reason or logic for these ships - they're expensive, complicated and unwieldy; nor do I see canon evidence for their existence...
ThrawnMcEwok posted: My preferred model is to imagine: A bracket of ~2km battlecruisers, comms. ships, etc.; not assigned to typical sector fleets, and not actually superior in firepower to "common" Star Destroyers - exactly how many, I don't know: dozens; hundreds; a thousand? An exponential leap from up to a very small handful of massive ships - Mandy-IIs, Eye of Palpatine, Giel's flagship, and then the SSDs; only with the Ex-class would such monsters appear in any great numbers; perhaps only with the Ex-class would the numbers in service ever hit double figures. Could you accept that as a plausible hypothesis; and if not, what are your criticisms?
ThrawnMcEwok posted: I know; you suggested bigger ships in standard sector fleets, "one heavy larger than an ISD per sector group". I pointed to a lack of evidence for this - the typical Sector Group stops at ImpStars.
ThrawnMcEwok posted: I never said that an SSD isn't obniouxously big for 99.9999% of any possible use. So we agree on that?
ThrawnMcEwok posted: In a way, I agree. I think that SSDs are useful. But I think that economies of scale are balanced, if not outweighed, by what you might call "vulnerabilities of complexity" - unless such a huge ship is crack-crewed, which requires an obnoxious investment in POs, WOs and deck officers, she's a fleet-sized disaster-waiting-to-happen - take all the problems of an ImpStar, and multiply them by something pushing 10,000%. And more to the point, while I do accept the utility of larger ships, I don't see how that needs to imply a distribution curve of classes of steadily increasing size and decreasing numbers between ImpStars and SSDs...
ThrawnMcEwok posted: Oh, we see the size of "common class" ships increase - VicStars give way to ImpStars, then the Allegiance type comes along.
ThrawnMcEwok posted: But we also see numbers increase, along with a rapid profusion of SSDs between Yavin and Endor. You could ask if the Empire's 25k Star Destroyers represented overwhelming, unprecedented numbers, far more than the combined resources of everyone else combined
ThrawnMcEwok posted: - and also if a lot of ImpStar-IIs were badly-built and hopelessly-crewed. Can we suggest, from the prominence of refit ImpStar-Is like Chimaera and Right to Rule, that these are simply much better-built ships?
ThrawnMcEwok posted: We should also distinguish between the Empire and other powers in terms of scale; people who can afford less ships might be inclined to go for larger individual units - consider than in rl, the largest individual pre-WWI Dreadnoughts were foreign orders for smaller navies that could only afford one or two...
McEwok posted: Nahh... I'll settle for reviews and criticism.
McEwok posted: True. But we don't see such ships in other battles - we see lots of ImpStars, and a very few much larger ships - typically, one Ex-class ship as a command-ship.
McEwok posted: Ships were withdrawn to Byss; but we don't actually know how many.
McEwok posted: Some vessels at Byss were front-line combatants withdrawn from elsewhere - which, and in what number, is unknown.
ThrawnMcEwok posted: Agreed, at least broadly speaking. But that doesn't mean that every SD taskforce has a massive command ship, does it, still less that the Ex-class didn't represent a massive rampup in both scale and number...
ThrawnMcEwok posted: Her bridge shields were already down. She'd been pwned by a couple of Mon Cal tiddlers and a concerted fighter attack. That's what happens to these ships....
ThrawnMcEwok posted: 900km is not the canonical size of DS2.
ThrawnMcEwok posted: Nor is it clear that DS2 was built in six months. Most of the material wasn't brought in by Xizor, but rather mined on-site from Dor and Eloggi.
ThrawnMcEwok posted: SWTC is trying to shore up the short-timeframe argument <http://theforce.net/swtc/ds/quotes.html>, but you could equally make a case from the evidence cited that the construction timeframe is unknown. What we see is: Before ANH: the testing of the superlaser prototype following the final completion of a practical superlaser design, showing that an upgraded DS2 is already in the works.
ThrawnMcEwok posted: Between ANH and ESB: some further improvements to the superlaser design, and replacement of the two-metre-wide exhaust-vent by "millions" of 1mm-wide vents; this seems like a lot, but 2m² is 4 million mm³ - this could be local modification of surface areas. The reference to the size-increase being part of this redesign work may reflect the bias or ignorance of the in-universe source, or even Palpatine's manipulation. A battlemoon with a habitable volume comparable to the populable levels of Coruscant is a lot more impressive if it's believed to be designed and built impossibly fast on the rebound from Yavin than if you admit it's been under development for thirty tumultuous years....
ThrawnMcEwok posted: During ESB: the need for the installation of the superlaser, along with a new computer core, and some "reinforcement girders", saying nothing about the actual structure, which is the time- and labour-intensive stuff, and even implying that it's mostly complete. Note that this is apparently mere days after Xizor is given his transport contract. A little over a month later, Jerjerrod is hassling these systems into place aboard a DS already well underway. In short, none of this says anything about anything except the redesign of the superlaser and the local structural modification required by that redesign. Nothing about the real construction timeframe.
ThrawnMcEwok posted: We know as Canonical Fact, thanks to Dark Empire, that Palpatine did commission the creation of mid-sized Star Destroyers that could serve as intermediaries between an Imperator and Executor. Or did he commission a new, larger "common class"? And, moreover, did he do so after RotJ?
ThrawnMcEwok posted: Alternatively, they could be new building?
ThrawnMcEwok posted: We can infer that, but purely as an argumentum ex nihilo. When we see the Battle of Endor fought with one SSD and ~20-40 ImpStars, the Coruscant Sector Fleet composed of one SSD and 24 ImpStars, and Josef Grunger making a play for the throne with one SSD and 30 ImpStars, we can also infer that such fleets are the strategic arbiters of the Galaxy...
ThrawnMcEwok posted: Also, their sudden disappearance into the Deep Core, and the effect their loss would have on the Imperial Navy helps to explain the Rebellion’s successes in fleet engagements after ROTJ. You don't think the Empire would notice it had lost most ships larger than pickets?
ThrawnMcEwok posted: What "strategic OOB"? This would include things like the Coruscant Sector Fleet, the "sector fleet" stationed in the system containing Byss, Grand Moff Tarkin's beefed-up personal "sector group" (ISB, p. 158)... sounds like the "strategic" forces are organized as... ah, sector groups...?
Senator_Cilghal posted:I must vote for: Pan-Era Omnigalactic Fleet Junkie Chamber of Madness, Mayhem, and Unmitigated Chaos Since I actually cam up with it:) Although its not what I originally voted for. ACE: The Yinchorri fighter is not on my list bc we don't know its manufacturer. The list only inc ships with a known manfuacturer (hence no Adz-class Patrol Destroyer either). The Gozanti Cruiser and Taylander shuttle are made by Brocklander, but both are civilian transports; the list is limited to military and paramilitary craft at the time. Vanguard-class Heavy Assault Gunship actually is on the list under CEC:)
