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

That said, in most cases where a ship jumps up or down, it's not a big jump.

900m Vicstar- 1000m Star Destroyer minimum
350m Carrack- 400m cruiser minimum
2200m Secutor- 2000m Star Destroyer maximum.

And so forth- typically, around 10% over or under.

A 1500m Mediator is 25% less than the normal battlecruiser minimum- would be one of the biggest "jumps".

 

Right, which is why I threw in the "even if". There's nothing to say the Mediator isn't anything other than a solid "Star Destroyer" equivalent in the Anaxes scale. The Mon Cals would never, ever use that term to describe a ship uniquely identified with them - so 'battle cruiser' would make sense in that context. (Republic-class SDs doesn't exactly count as being labelled a "Rendili" creation - even if inaccurate - and being based upon Blissex's VicStar design).

The Subjugator-class is called a "heavy cruiser" in WOTC's Clone Wars guide, but it's a dreadnaught in the Anaxes class. The Munificent "star frigate" is a heavy cruiser in the Anaxes scale. (In the latter case, the usage of "frigate" wasn't a good fit anyways).

 

2.5km is a bit high based on my reading of the text, but is does work. For what is it worth, I always assumed that the Mediator-class was between 1500-2000m. Making it a slightly bulkier design works for me, plus keeping it in the Anaxes Scale Star Destroyer range (upscaled to an Anaxes Scale battlecruiser) keep the vessel both a larger one AND something that would still fit as a successor to the MC80/MC90 series.

--Adm. Nick

 

Or Battlefleet Gothic

Because in a Galaxy of Millions upon Millions of Warships, only something like 50 ships were even build that are that big.

Some fans once build a mini, but I sadly can't find it at the moment.

 

Interesting mention of "heavy destroyers". Wonder if that term only applies to heavier models of Star Destroyers or signifies a separation between Star Destroyers and other types of destroyers we've seen, like the much smaller patrol destroyers, pursuit destroyers or even the destroyers of the Trade Federation and Confederacy?

Also, heavy destroyers and cruisers = Star Destroyers and Star Cruisers?

A "heavy Star Destroyer" of sorts, then.

Makes me wonder what we'll see in Star Wars Rebels. If they divide the forces like they did with the Republic (one big ship + several small support ships and one big support ship) and Confederacy (several big ships + several small and big support ships), the Rebels will get either one Calamari cruiser from the movies or a new design, while the Empire gets the ISD and several new cruiser or battlecruiser designs.

 

The Allegiance-class was at least colloquially referred to as the "heavy star destroyer"

It might be interesting to see what Rebel and New Republic ships were the approximate counterparts of what Imperial ships.

My guess:

MC80A, MC80B, Republic-class: Imperial I
MC90: Imperial II
Nebula-class, Mediator: Allegiance-class

(main reason for Nebula as counterpart to Allegiance- Starships of the Galaxy says it was made to take on Super Star Destroyers.)

That said, the Mediator seems to come out of the same school of design that inspired the Bellator- fast and lightly armoured compared to other ships of that scale.

 

Is Admiral Kendal Ozzel a Fleet Flunkie?!

 

EGtW wrote on page 166: “The first warship accorded the Anaxes War College designation Dreadnought was the eight kilometer long Mandator … .“

I don’t know about you, but if Mandator is the first of the Anaxes-scale Dreadnoughts, I would think it would be the bench-mark for everything, that comes after it.

None of which are mentioned by the EGtW, which makes battle cruisers and dreadnoughts in the post-Ruusan-times a pure KDY-thing: Procurator-BCs, Praetor I and II, Mandator I,II, III and Bellator as well as Executor, all of them KDY-products. No classes from other shipwrights or their names. Hell, even Humbarine, which according to AOTC:ICS had its own BC/DN-scale ships is reduced to a customer of KDY.

Great, now I have to dig out VP.

It says “improved, heavier armed and armoured version of the MonCal-starcruiser”, if I translated correctly. Pity it doesn’t tell us, which kind of star cruiser, since that covers everything from 500 meter long MC40 to the 3.2 klicks long HomeOne (EGtW also describes the Viscount-class as apogee of MC-star cruiser design).. Not to mention, that the same source is the origin of the Mediator being half as large as the Viscount. Why should that quote be wrong, but the other, earlier one accurate?

EgtW on page 33: “The system’s architects also adopted a shorthand for use during engagements, one that lumped warships of different classes together based on their size and capability. … and big ships of the line whose mere presence could change the course of a battle were referred to as battleships.”

In other words, when engagement-speech talks about battleships, it can mean anything from heavy cruiser over star destroyer up to battle cruiser and dreadnought. Mediator is a battle cruiser, even when people are not using engagement-speeck.

Looking at AoC: Heroe’s Trial on page 168, this is correct and wookieedia is wrong. However, once you read the actual battle, things aren’t so clear anymore:

-from page 180: “Dazed by the battle cruisers initial volley, a corvette sized pyramid of yorik corral dropped its guard momentarily. Slipping through vulnerable spots in the ship’s defenses, carefully placed proton torpedoes from a quartet of B-Wings detonated against the carbon black hull.” – one corvette down.

- from page 180: “A second Yuuzhan Vong corvette tried unsuccessfully to evade the barrage. Sieved by laser spears, it disappeared in an effulgent globe of fire.” – the second corvette is down, meaning there shouldn’t be any YV-covette present at the battle any more. Imagine my surprise, when

- from page 181: “Laser beams from a New Republic escort frigate skewered another Yuuzhan Vong corvette through its long axis … .”

So there are at least three corvettes, not two as initially detected by the Erinnic, so they might have overlooked the battleship, too, especially since the star destroyer was in hiding between Ord Mantell's two moons and only joining the fight, after the Mediator-class battle cruiser – who seemed to carry the brunt of the battle alone – was already out of the fight.

It also states, that the Mediator is larger than the warship-analog, on page 182 it says: “In midsystem the battle cruiser and warship analogue advanced on each other … . The Yuuzhan Vong vessel poured its most lethal fire into the larger ship and the cruiser replied with volley after volley of directed light.”

Also the warship-analogue is never identified as a Miid Ro’ik (and even if it were one, its volume would be comparable to 2-3 ISDs) and we do not have official stats for the Mediator, only guesswork, otherwise we wouldn’t have this debate. Official sources can’t even agree on the way the thing is armored. According to VP it is more heavily armored than previous MC-cruisers (see above), while EGtW describes it as too poorly armed to match YV-firepower.

 

When they started defining the categories- it may simply have been the first chronologically to qualify- not necessarily chosen to "set the minimum"

If the Anaxes War College started making the assessments in the aftermath of the Clone Wars- several post-Mandator I designs may have ended up being considered dreadnoughts despite being smaller- like the Malevolence.

TransGalMeg's Bulwark Mark III at least qualifies:


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

 

Hm, so if the warship, assuming it's a Miid Ro'ik at a mean average of 1,620 meters long and probably 2-3 times the volume/mass of the ISD, is attacking a "larger ship", then the Mediator-class can't be anything less than this. Very interesting.

 

"Half the size of the Viscount" may in this case mean half the volume.

If the Mediator was a scaled-down version of a 3km Viscount, one would expect it to be 2.4km.

If it has a more slender build, it could be even longer.

 

Here's to hoping that is indeed what it means, got to fill that bountiful Kuati warship catalogue somehow

Crushing my hopes and dreams

I will take the millions upon millions of warships, and add between 50-100 dreadnoughts during the Imperial era that we currently know of. Still don't know the production runs of all of the known Imperial designs and all of the contributions from the private/planetary navies.

Just because it does not mention other dreadnought designs in EGtW does not mean they couldn't exist. I was disappointed by the Humbarine fact in the EGtW, but again nothing precludes the fact that they could have made or purchased other dreadnought designs previous to the Clone Wars. There are more than a few well off planets that are prime candidates for making or purchasing dreadnoughts during this time period. As previously mentioned, we already have large warships in previous era's, and in my opinion it would be rather silly to assume the somehow the warships of the Imperial era dwarf the warships of the previous 25,000 years by such a large margin.

Unless they plan on releasing a Star Wars encyclopedia documenting all of this stuff in exhausting detail across every Era, I am more than happy to leave it up to imagination.

In EGtW does it give an exact date when the Anaxes system was adopted or was it just generalized to the Clone Wars? I can't remember.

 

That we know of...

When the second tof armada comes they will see thing that blows the scale!

 

Nooooo, that's not what I meant. In fact, that's exactly the thing I want to avoid. Retconning everything to be a KDY design.
I'm cool with the Allegiance-class being one of theirs, but other Star Cruisers should be made by other companies, imho.
Since Rendili is completely out of the loop within the Imperial era, we have other potential manufacturers to dig into, like Grizmallt and other nameless fleet manufacturers left over from the CW-era.

 

I actually want more Kuati frigates after all they build various versions of the Nebulon, Star Galleon and Lancer, as well as a few know precursors designs and with the Corona at least one follow up to the Nebulon, as well as those Ardent frigates for the Felpire.

Getting yourself something that big still seems utterly insane on planetary defense level, even the Super Star Destroyer precursors at least got explained as some kind of whole sector defense thing and mainly just for show.

It kind of hints at that it happens with the recreation of the Republic fleet.

Actually Unknown Region explained that they favor small raiding ships, though there is their 1.8 km command ship thing. If something on insane scale comes crawling from a strange direction I would actually blame it on the Gree as the Baran is already massive in size and yet apparently little more then a Transport.

 

Would appreciate it if you could post that next time you come across it, I've been looking for ages. Thanks!

 

My thing with the 'lack' of Dreadnought-scale ships is a bit in the middle of the minamalist and maximalist sides. Sure, we can assume that only the ships that have been confirmed were ever built. Or we could assume there are thousands of the things flying around and we just don't see (read about) them.

My personal view is that there are more than we see out there, but by no means swarms of the things. Maybe a couple hundred on the high end.

 

Again, there's nothing that says it has to mark the low end of the scale, especially if they thought it more likely that ships would be made under the size of the Mandator than over. Nor does it preclude other ship manufacturers making designs after Kuat but before the Clone Wars - more likely, though, that they would be no larger than battlecruisers, considering the first 'new' battlecruisers post-Ruusan were made two hundred years prior to the Clone Wars, but restricted only to the major ship manufacturers; the majority would probably fall in the 'heavy cruiser' or 'Star Destroyer' categories of the Anaxes system.

And? They were still in use at the time; and those are only two examples of pre-Ruusan ships outside of the Ruusan scale. I'm sure there were more legacy ships around that would've been included in the discussions leading to the creation of the Anaxes scale.

There were three sectors listed - Kuat, Humbarine and Corellia. Corellia wasn't listed as one of the Mandator purchasers, nor would I think that Corellian pride would accept anything other than Corellian-built ships to guard their own sector. In addition, Humbarine is only listed as purchasing a Mandator - hardly the 'many' ships mentioned in the ICS, nor does it say anywhere that Humbarine was 'reduced to a customer of KDY' - certainly they could be buying other ships from other manufacturers or making their own, considering the large industrial base in their sector. Also the EGTW implies a much wider scope: (p. 31) "shipyards across the galaxy began turning out new warship designs, some of massive scale.". Also on the same page, it's noted that "worlds such as Kuat began building new capital ships for their sector fleets, as did mercantile powers like the Trade Federation and the Banking Clan". We haven't really seen much of the production of other worlds, have we? Because they were mostly deployed by sectors that didn't need protection, and they were limited to sector-only range. But we have seen the latter two - while you've already dismissed the TF battleships, the Banking Clan's Munificents were pre-Clone Wars and outside the Ruusan scale, even before the official length was increased... and were around at least since about 65 BBY, according to Darth Plageius.
It does seem strange that you're arguing against having more of larger ship classes prior to the Clone Wars.

In other words, exactly as I stated. It's pretty clear to me what it means by "the MonCal-starcruiser", especially when written by someone with only a passing knowledge of Star Wars to begin with. In any case the EGTW makes it very clear: "Mediator-class battlecruisers were fast and powerful successors to the MC80".

You're missing the point - I could've used any number of different terms that the ISDs have been called over the years, or any number of ships - like the "star frigate" mentioned in a prior post. It doesn't mean that the ship's designation in the Anaxes scale is that - manufacturers can call a ship by whatever they wish. I've already addressed the point that the MonCals wouldn't want one of their ships called a "Star Destroyer" anyways - or that the flexibility of the Anaxes scale would allow a ship of smaller size to be moved up to the next bracket based on armament and armor.
But your focus on the term 'battleship' is certainly interesting in regards to the Battle of Ord Mantell, and the incorrect notion by Wookieepedia that there was one of the 2.2km YV ships there - see below.

Based on my analysis a few years back:

"Re-examining the battle, the mysterious 'third corvette' appears to just be an error - a specific YV force is mentioned, and no more ships are said to jump in. In addition, the NEGVV says specifically that there were two at the battle."

From the same post:

"Malik Carr is said to lead a 'fleet of battleships' to attack Ord Mantell, and his ship, the Yammka, is listed as a 'battleship'.
The only problem is that it doesn't match what happened in the novel - or other sources like the NEGVV, not to mention the Yammka is a 'warship analog' vessel in AOC2."

The source for the 'fleet of battleships' is the NJOSB - did they miss an entire 'fleet of battleships'? More likely - by reading through AOC1 - Malik Carr's forces are said to have a 'recently arrived' battleship that is visually defined as the 2.2km one in the NJOSB... after the Battle of Ord Mantell is already over. Not only that, but Carr is said to be in the command center of a 'smaller' ship - which, with the reference from AOC2, was most likely the warship Yammka.

In any case, the NEGVV calls the Miid Ro'ik a "rough analog to conventional capital battleships such as the Imperial Star Destroyer".

It is exactly identified as such in the NEGVV.

An exact length? No, but as the officially 3 km Viscount is officially almost twice the size of the Mediator. I doubt there is much of a volumetric ratio variance in generalized MonCal design.

They aren't contradictory statements; and the actual quote is "proved poorly armored in close-range battles with the Yuuzhan Vong.", an accurate summary of the Battle of Ord Mantell.

 

The mass/numbers ratio on the Technical Commentaries was a nice bit of reference for the amount of something in the Imperial Navy:

The Praetor Mark II ("Giel's battleship") could easily be in the 70s-80s given the Trade Federation built thousands of similarly-sized cargo freighters in the span of a few centuries. They were a regional power at most, the Empire has a galaxy's worth of materials and shipyards behind them. Even if the production stops after a few years due to a change in focus, it could still shape up to dozens of ships built within that time-frame. If the Empire can construct dozens of Executors just a few years later, with a much larger frame and needing a lot more materials, the battlecruiser lines should be relatively easier and quicker to finish. That's not even getting into the fact that Saxton estimated Giel's flagship as bigger than it turned out to be. Smaller frame = less materials = even faster construction times.

 

Sorry, but that's a rather simplistic view with the idea that there are unlimited resources, unlimited shipyards with no restrictions on ship size, no bottleneck technologies or unique materials for construction, that the maximum number of ships would be built without any political consideration, that the Empire was at its maximum influence and power over the period of construction etc. etc.
This is also taking that there are only three actual datapoints, everything else is estimated - and in the case of the Sovereign, wrong, considering that we don't even know if a single ship in its class ever left the shipyards. It also does not take into effect that the ISDs were produced 25,000 over a period of about 20 years; the Eclipses, 3 over a period of about 10 years. The initial run of Executors only produced five ships in about a five year period (excluding the prototype Sarlacc as an outlier)
And there's statements from the EGTW such as regarding the Praetor II class battlecruiser - "...the Empire commissioned relatively few of these ships, seeing them as more expensive and less versatile than Star Destroyers while not instilling the same terror as dreadnaughts". Or that the Executors made were "more than 20" with the number being higher and lower depending on factors such as (a) hidden Exes or (b) fake Ex construction used to divert funds or materials elsewhere. Otherwise, we only have 13 named, definitively Exes - 5 from the initial run (Aggressor, Executor, Luskanya, The Brawl/Iron Fist, Reaper), 5 made between Hoth and Endor (Annihilator, Vengeance, Guardian, Whelm, Terror), Two made after Endor (Knight Hammer, Intimidator) and one unfinished (Razor's Kiss). Only select shipyards could construct dreadnaughts as well.

 

Understood, but I'll take both, more KDY designs, and as you say the very very much needed large warship designs from other shipyards like some Corellian, Loronar or Rendili battleships. I was thinking the Praetor-class battlecruisers would have been Corellian for sure.

I can hope one day the resources will be a plenty and the dreadnoughts will flow

 

so are we certain Mandator-class is supposed to be humpbacked now? That would seem to invalidate most of the neat fan designs I've seen

 

It's described as a "humpbacked battleship" in the EGTW.

 

Then it turns into max/min debate to whether the information and examples you give are reasonable or make any sense at all. In my opinion these numbers are on the low end of the spectrum, and more than likely little or no thought was put into them when they were created. I 100% agree that shipbuilding capacity would be bounded by some of the factors listed above, but I think it would be a hell of lot better than the totals we are given.

Outside of my opinions,we do not know things like how many different classes of Star Destroyers, Battlecruisers, Dreadnoughts the Empire utilized? How many were built of each class? What sort of other ships were in the individual planetary navies at the time? How many total warships did the Empire have?


I think that it is a good thing that these questions exist, because it doesn't create pigeonholes and it leaves some amount of imagination in the hands of the reader.

 

So it's not a capital ship, but does anyone know of any fan art that depicts the K-wing as actually described in the BFC books?