Lit Dreadnaughts in Thrawn Trilogy

I know I'm late to the party, but I just started the third book in the trilogy (please no open spoilers <frowns sardonically>). What I'm wondering is what in the hell was Zahn thinking when he decided Dreadnaughts not only take 2,000 men to operate, but before the ship was modified, they used to require 16,000 men??

Then, of course,

Spoiler

Han flies a dreadnaught into a star destroyer with a stickshift... from a totally different vessel

Overall pretty good books I think, just wanted to see what people think about this.

 

Well, the Imperial mark 2 Star Destroyer has a crew of 37,000.

16K is the crew to run everything effectively, shields, weapons, engines, life support, navigation, etc. 1 out of 200 ships in the Katana fleet stayed operational enough to move, and even then for only a few minutes.

 

Piloting a ship is very different from crewing it.

The average Aircraft carrier requires around 6000 crew. Of those, perhaps a half dozen are involved with piloting, navigation or related tasks at any given time.

For one person to be able to pilot a dreadnaught (even by remote) for a short distance isn't terribly unbelievable.

 

Ok, I guess I can see it. I suppose my idea of these ships sizes could be way off. I'll lay some blame on the movies and clone wars series, in which the bridge of huge starships have 30 people in it... or maybe just one mechanical general and a few droids...

 

I think it may have been West End Games sources that first stated those ships were 600 m in length.

 

In DFR, Luke observes they were over half a kilometre long, roughly cylindrical, and with a bow that looked like a "Clam with an overbite".

 

They would probably need a lot of people just to keep a thing like that clean at all times. A lot.

But seriously, how much crew is actually needed to keep big ships running, and what do most of those do (maybe control different areas just in case something goes wrong there)? Large crew sizes in SW mostly come with the reverse-logic of the things being big to be impressive on screen (or in the imagination), while the actual stuff that's shown really just needs a pilot and a button pusher for weapons or something like that. Something like Star Trek also really drives the idea home that you simply need a few specialized people based on the tasks (communication, weapons etc) and not based on the equipment, with a separate engine room where you get along with a few men as well.

This fictionionalized/dramatized approach really makes it plausible to go from one large Death Star battle station that seems to mostly fill its space with troops to a streamlined laser-only version to a starfighter that deals the same amount of destruction based on the basic concepts of "ship needs to be navigated, "fire weapons" button needs to be pushed".

 

Didn't TOS portray the Enterprise as having hundreds of people, and TNG the Enterprise-D about a thousand?

That said, the Enterprise D is comparable in length at least to a Dreadnought.

 

Zahn had a tendency to make ships high-maintenance and crew-intensive just to make things more difficult for his characters. It seems to be his thing as an author to handicap his protagonists with ridiculous stuff like ysalamiri and massively crew-intensive warships.

Anakin flies a Venator with just Artoo in TCW. He also lands the Invisible Hand with just Obi-Wan and Artoo in ROTS. So ships aren't that crew-intensive in the films.

 

Flying it's a different thing from fighting with it - firing all the guns, maneuvering, using the tractor beams, and so on, all at the same time.

Same applies to Star Trek - sure, a tiny crew can control it in The Search For Spock - but they're helpless in the face of a real threat - and the Enterprise ends up having to self-destruct.

I also think "crew-intensive" may have come from West End Games - Zahn only used their figures.

 

Funny, that quote still stands out in my mind after all these years. Ah, the simpler times of the early EU!

--Adm. Nick

 

If only he'd described Bothans that clearly.

 

I love the Dreadnaughts. They're the WWI-era cruisers in the midst of a WWII-era naval battle, a crew-intensive ship built during an era where having a lot of crew wasn't a problem, with outdated specifications and abilities, even for its size, aside from having a decent amount of raw fire power. Of all the ships from the EU, I want a Dreadnaught to show up in the new canon. It doesn't even have to be an Imperial ship of the line. Just make it a derelict or something. Non-EU fans will assume it's the Galactica, but those of us who know the truth will smile.

 

We got the Dreadnought-ish Providence class in ROTS (and its larger cousin, the Separatist Dreadnought. Underneath the pointy nose and other decorations, it looks very similar:

Dreadnought:


Providence-class:


Separatist Dreadnought:

 

It's not the same.

 

True enough. a "true Dreadnought" (with allusions to those other ones being derived from it) would be a big nod. And it's not like a canon source hasn't mentioned Republic Dreadnoughts - the ROTS novel does.

 

Stop being so cynical, Cheerful_Ben.

 

Captured Seppie-ships, perhaps?

 

It's escorted by at least one Carrack-class light cruiser - so I don't think "captured Providence" was Stover's intent.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mas_Ramdar

 

According to the novel there are three Carracks: Integrity, Indomitable and Perseverance, classified as three light cruisers and the Mas Ramdar, classified as Dreadnought. Nowhere in the novel is the Mas Ramdar identified as a heavy cruiser or a Rendili-dreadnought. Given the name-similarity to the VnSD Ro-Ti Mundi I wouldn't be surprised, if Mas_Ramdar was a ship of comparable tonnage.

 

I was reading the X-Wings books earlier this year and came upon the rumors of the Katana Fleet. Man I forgot how awesome that was. I hope we get something like that in the new books.

 

Yep Stover is to cool for it not be a real Dread

 

He also gave us the Geonosian Dreadnought.

 

That would be great - I was hoping to see them in the CW - perhaps them being retired as the new Venator class was being unveiled or something. I'm still holding out hope for this class of ship to appear in Rebels.

 

The Dreadnaughts were always one of my favorite designs. It's a big shame we only really saw them in the Rendili comic out of the entire Clone Wars run.