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

"As far as the Corellians know, we're readying Centerpoint as a defensive weapon, in lieu of stationing a flotilla there." Jedi Eclipse pg 38
"...why would they waste valuable resources engaging a system that we essentially stripped of its defenses after the Centerpoint Crisis..." Jedi Eclipse pg 195
"Oh, the New Republic has seen fit to deploy three of our own Strident-class Star Defenders at Corellia, and the flotilla that has been safeguarding Duro has been pulled back to shore up the Outlier systems" Jedi Eclipse pg 242

 

"Essentially" is such a beautiful word clearly there is other stuff in system.

 

Sure, in the patrol craft/corvette/frigate range maybe.

 

Cruisers, Anti-Orbital Canons, Mine Fields, Planet shields, Battle Platforms, fleets of star fighters, back up from other System etc.

 

I am of course perefectly aware Yoda Chronicles = / = canon, however would anyone want to see the stealth fighter canonized ? a prototype predecessor to E-wing in the CW era?

 

I want that ship canonized now as well. I wouldn't mind Jek-14 getting canonized, either (not an army of Sith clones, though; maybe just the one).

 

Eighty ships during the time of the first corellian crisis. All mutineering.

Concerning Kuat's contribution to the war-effort they were among the shipyards expected to double their production of heavy cruisers in Hero's Trial, and later in Star by Star and Destiny's Way they contributed the mass-produced Republic-class cruiser (not to be confused with the Republic-class star destroyer).

 

Eighty ships during the time of the first corellian crisis. All mutineering.

Concerning Kuat's contribution to the war-effort they were among the shipyards expected to double their production of heavy cruisers in Hero's Trial, and later in Star by Star and Destiny's Way they contributed the mass-produced Republic-class cruiser (not to be confused with the Republic-class star destroyer).

 

Which would not fit with the comments that the system was essentially stripped of defenses, and that the NR planned to lure the Vong to Corellia. And especially what backup, when they had to pull forces from Duro to back up the Outlier systems?

 

As mentioned "essentially" is flexible enough and even heavy defenses can be useless if the attack force is determined and large enough, which especially the Vong have shown enough times.

Yep to have Centerpoint shoot them to pieces and then mob up the rest.

That very fleet for example, if the Vong pull units together to hit Corellia they will not be attacking the Outliers with those units.

 

So you are using the word "essentially" to twist the "stripped of defenses" to mean "rather heavily defended, but not enough to counter an armada"

A big point was made about activating Centerpoint and stationing a trio of Stridents in lieu of a "flotilla" or other defenses. But you are still pushing that Corellia was quite heavily defended with other things as well, despite the logical reading of the text?

 

No, just pointing out, that it means there clearly is other stuff in the system, which the Republic just seems to doubt will be effective in fighting of the Vong, which given what the Vong are able to do when their set to minds to it could mean pretty much anything, though I fully agree a big fleet seems unlikely.

 

The Problem is, if the Stridents are bigger than the Galactic-class, then the Kiris Dreadnaughts,which are described by Han as having twice the threat rating of an ImpStar Duce, would not be the game changer they are said to be, because the Corellians already have ships that are equal and/or bigger. However, the Kiris Dreadnaughts are heavily implied to be state of the art and extremely tough. Of course, it could also be that the Stridents are considered old or out of date by 40ABY, which would put them in the category of "rusted hulks". (also, how do ships rust in space?) This could also explain how the three Stridents are expected to defend Corellia, but are not treated as a threat in Betrayal. If Stridents were top of the line, massive battlecruisers during the Vong War, but outdated and "rusted hulks" by 40ABY, it would be like battleships in WWII big and dargerous but not suited for this type of war.

 

Correct me if I am wrong, but couldn't we read the New Republic deployment of three Strident-class Star Defenders to the Corellian system as a initial part of the plan to make Corellia look weak and invite a Vong attack, which ties into the plan to unleash the Centerpoint on them? Even if this isn't explicitly said in the text, it could be a good retcon.

Regardless of the Diktat and the status of Corellia proper, there is no doubt that the Corellian-in-exile government and many Corellians were core to the strength of the Rebel Alliance. The Rebel Corellian Sector Forces were a very powerful force in the Rebellion and one of the few sector forces that possessed credible naval forces that were not part of the Alliance Navy proper. When Corellia finally joins the New Republic and it's former exiles return home, there is no reason in my mind to doubt that the shipyards of CEC were not given naval contracts. Hell, there is also nothing that precludes the NRDF purchasing warships from CEC yards in other parts of the galaxy as well. Kuat has sub-yards all across the galaxy, so CEC may as well.

I actually think the Kuati get a bad reputation that isn't fair or deserved, mostly due to Senator Shesh. I have no doubt that the Kuati were loyal NR members and worked as diligently as the Mon Cals or Bothans to shore up the defenses of the galaxy. I may be a bit hazy in this recollection, but I believe that Thrawn McEwok told me during the draft phase of the EGTW that they briefly considered making the Republic-class cruiser a warship that used the Majestic-class hull but was them streamlined further and made cheaper to produce.

Two things, mainly. The first is that the MC90 cruiser has always been described as expensive and therefore the bulk of them are kept in the Galactic Core and only sent to the frontlines in case of a major threat. The Mediator-class battle cruiser, on the other hand, is seen deployed far out in the Rim and is, based on Hero's Trial, one of the most numerous capital ships in the NRDF. My assumption is that while the MC90 cruiser was the first purpose built battleship by Dac that the MBC is the first purpose built, easy to mass produce battleship built at the Mon Cal shipyards. I like the idea that the Mon Cals, who have been shown to be very adept and quick learners, took cues from Kuati or Corellian starshipwrights and started making their vessels more modular and quicker to produce. This trend has to start somewhere, because by 93 ABY the Mon Calamari are producing warships on a mass produced scale for the GADF. The Scythe-class and various supporting heavy frigates and escorts of this period are a huge jump from the old, artistic approach to building ships.

Yeah, I chalk up the reason we see so few MC90's in books to the fact that they are an early EU creation, which makes them easier to forget. Personally, I assume that most of the unclassified Mon Cal cruisers listed in the NJO or other post-DE sources are MC90 cruisers, as that was the primary warship that they apparently produced up until the MBC.

I am not sure if I shared this with you before, but when Destiny's Way came out, I asked Walter Jon Williams why he chose to use only MC80, MC80A, and MC80B cruisers, when more powerful ships like the MC90 and MBC existed. His answer was honest and in my opinion very telling. He basically said that all LFL provided him with was a copy of the first EGTVV, which only had entries for the MC80 and Mon Remonda. WJW went on to say that if he had been given a updated list of warships that he would of used later model Mon Cal warships. In fact, the EGTVV is the very reason he decided to create the Republic-class cruiser. Since the old EGTVV mentioned early Mon Cal cruisers being slow to build, he decided that the NRDF needed something that could be quickly and cheaply build to help flesh out the fleet until more Mon Cal cruisers were available.

I like to bring up this example because WJW, despite not having up to date sources, tried to come up with a logical ship to fill the production gap with. I know that you are not a big fan of the book, but I commend WJW for at least thinking outside the box in this case.

--Adm. Nick

 

I would hope that the Strident-class and the Corellian Dreadnought are both pretty large warships, unfortunately a rather simple issue has been somehow muddied by the authors yet again.

I guess it could also be possibility that the Kiris shipyards were producing other military designs to supplement Corellian forces at the time. I also would be very surprised if CEC proper wasn't producing a significant number of military designs in the New republic era and beyond.

 

Honestly, it isn't fair to blame the author in either of those cases. In regards to the Strident-class, it is possible that the author, like many fans, initially assumed that Star Defenders were +/- 3km, based on official lengths at the time for Mon Cal cruisers. We all can (and have!) argued whether than figure is right a million times over, but in this case I can't blame the author. Ditto for the Corellian Dreadnought, as Troy Denning intended it to be a vessel in the Star Destroyer size range, cause that is all he can imagine.

Wait, I will blame Troy for that one, cause by his own admission he has trouble visualizing warships that aren't based on an ISD or sized like one.

--Adm. Nick

 

So the Republic-class cruiser shouldn't even exist, especially if WJW hadn't been given outdated source material? Well, with that the Republic-class cruiser is actually the Republic-class Star Destroyer as far as I am concerned.

 

Ordo m-11:

While by now it should be well-known, that I don't hold LotF/FotJ in very high esteem, you might have a good argument with the Stridents being outdated. Problem is, SW-tech seems to have reached a plateau a long time ago, which means we have sources telling us there are ships in service for centuries, if not millenia (Invincible-class dreadnoughts, Dreadnought-class heavy cruisers, Imperial-class star destroyers).

So let me offer another hypothesis: Considering the sad state of the Corellia witnessed in the Corellia-trilogy and the implied consequences for the economy, tech-base and available workforce (the most skilled people were said to have left for greener hills), the Stridents might have been big and powerful warships when they were introduced, but revealed themselves within a few years to be shoddy constructions, suffering from what is in StarTrek the "warp-core-disease" and quickly falling apart. Comparable to the problems of the MilleniumFalcon, but orders of magnitude worse. In short a cost- and maintainance-nightmare, which prevented their wider proliferation and quick phasing out in favour of ships like the Kiris-dreadnoughts (by that time Corellia should have recovered enough, that the problems that plagued the Stridents should have disappeared).

AdmiralNick22:

It was never the plan to unleash Centerpoint on the YV as happened in Edge of Victory. The plan was to lure the YV to Corellia, activate the systems-wide interdiction-field to trap the Vong within and then jump in with the HSM-something equippted ships readied at Fondor and slaughter them. The three Stridents were supposed to hold the line at Corellia until that could happen.

Concerning the Corellians-in-Exile: You seem to forget, that of the three original core-founders of the Rebel-Alliance Alderaan, Chandrila and Corellia, the Corellians led by Bel Iblis left the Alliance some time after ANH (adding to the desperate state they were in until ROTJ) and only re-joined towards the end of the Thrawn-crisis. Also the political and economic state of Corellia and the description of events described in the Corellia-trilogy of what development lead to that state makes it highly unlikely, that the Corellians recieved any significant contracts for any time during the NR-era. Or can you name even one new class of NR-warship made by CEC?

About Kuat: Until Star by Star nobody in the NR has any idea, that Shesh is a traitor and afterwards the NR/GA has bigger problems and, as you said yourself, they contributed heavily with the Republic-class cruiser. Speaking of shipyards, IIRC the only shipyards the NR seemed to have lost are Fondor, Gyndine and Duros and of them only Fondor was a major military yard.

For a proper comparison between the MC90 and the Mediator-class battle cruiser we have to look at the circumstances of their introduction:

As the first proper warship designed and built by the MonCalamari post-Ruusan the MC90 probably suffered from increased design- and development cost, not to mention the modification of the existing infrastructure and production-facilities from building and transforming civilian vessels into warships, into streamlined facilities for the mass-production of proper warships. Increasing the relative costs in comparison to the MBC is the limited resource- and especially tax-base available to a young NewRepublic, that has only months ago recieved a major thrashing from Grand Admiral Thrawn and has lost most of its systems to the reconquest engineered by the reborn Palpatine, a situation that continues until at least the battle of Anx Minor seven years later (with the NR having 11,000 systems at the time of BFC and the NRDF needing to borrow ships from the Bakurans during the Centerpoint-crisis).

During those middle years much of the NR's naval power was also NOT diluted towards local planetary and systems defence-forces, which means compared to the total number of systems a larger - and consequently more expansive - central Navy.

Compared to that the MBC is introduced in a time of peace, when the NR controls most of the galaxy. The MonCalamari-shipyards have been building proper warships en masse for more than a decade, so they can build up on that experience and an already existing infrastructure, that hasn't to be set up first. Mon Calamari also had enough time to recover from the attacks by Thrawn, Palpatine and his World Devastators and finally Daala. Much of the policing and patrolling is done by the re-established sector-forces, so the remaining central NRDF is free to show their flag with their new toys even at sh..holes like Osarion and Rommamol.

That we see so few of the MC90 is not, that they are an early EU-creation, but that they appear in a time, where - as far as the GalacticCivilWar is concerned - little happens. The majority we see of the GCW is between ANH and Empire's End and the MC90 are introduced only a few months prior to the last. The MC90 do appear in the JAT, Darksaber and A New Rebellion, after all and those are - timewise - almost half of the Bantam-run post Empire's End.

Regarding Destiny's Way, who tells you I don't like the book?

It shows, what a society like the GFFA should be and is capable of with the self-replicating ship-factories and the events the novel describes work within the context of the story (even of the obvious drawbacks and implications like the morality of rigging an election are downplayed or ignored). It also has Fyor Rodan giving Luke Skywalker a much needed dressing down, pity the EU didn't build up on it.

The problem is what happens after, because much of the reason I purged the post-NJO-novels from my personal canon have their precedent in Destiny's Way - like the establishment of a bickering Jedi-council, the Jedi deciding who is fit to be head of state, those things ... .

If there is one thing I don't like about Destiny's Way it is the emasculation of Tsavong Lah. He turned from a fanatical, but strategic mastermind into a pure fanatic and died as such.

Aside from that I wouldn't mind if WJW would return to StarWars. I greatly enjoyed his DreadEmpire-trilogy and I doubt he can be worse than KJA, Denning and Traviss. The later two wrote initially above average good novels (Star by Star for Denning, Hard Contact for Traviss) and I often wonder, how authors, who started so promising could turn so aweful so quickly.

 

There is no indication that all Corellian Alliance members left with Bel Iblis; his faction seems rather small for that to have been the case anyways. The initial documentations for the NR indicate that the Corellians-in-exile still had representation within the Alliance.

The Ranger-class gunship.

 

They still have rather drastic changes in quality in between and keep innovating, otherwise they would not even be building new ships or keep upgrading the ones they use, but instead still be using the very same designs they started with ages ago.

 

The Hammerhead, Aurek fighter, and Invincible are probably the most glaring examples of 'long lived ships' I would imagine. Sure, the ISD is pushing 60 some-odd years now, but the three I mentioned all went thousands of years. That's part of my reasoning behind the drastic gap between TOTJ style, and pseudo-PT KOTOR style...Tales was at the end of their technological generation, while Knights was at the start of their (very long-lived) one. And with Ruusan killing the majority of the military, it makes sense that the Hammerhead and its ilk were finally put to rest, for the PT-style ships coming in.


At least, that's what I think.

 

Sure but even there it would just the design, as they would have kept upgrading them.

 

Oh I know, I'm just pointing out just how long a design can last in SW. Not saying it was the exact same (I'm fairly certain Ruusan-era Hammerheads are pretty different looking compared to KOTOR-era ones...though I would need to check).

 

Which was introduced close to the beginning of the YV-war. There is none, that I remember from the twenty years prior.

 

We also don't know that they were used continuously - they could've had a "jump" like the XS freighters to the YT freighters did.

You need to make it clearer, then - you said "New Republic". If you're talking about the period of time when CEC wasn't a member of the NR, no, there wasn't. Of course, that doesn't mean they didn't have them - how many new ships were introduced for the first time in the EGTW from the Rebellion Era/NR? It was mentioned that Subpro had a number of popular cruiser designs back in the original EGVV that we still haven't seen any specific examples of.