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

Yeah they must be some really fortified locations, 100 MT is quite the punch, at least by present day Earth standards. I was wondering about delivery as well, since it looks like something that would get pushed out the back of a C-130 here on Earth.

Was also thinking maybe is something the custom made by the Resistance. Maybe they don't have access to exotic materials like baradium, or other materials like we saw in the Legends universe, or they don't have access to the technology for miniaturization. Then again, wouldn't think WMD would be a Resistance priority, and this represents the largest "conventional" bomb they can get their hands on to take out those hardened targets.

 

It's tiny compared to the "200 gigaton" Legends Acclamator turbolaser bolt though - raising the possibility that the newcanon has dialled turbolaser power back a bit.

 

So I've been re-reading The Bacta War over the holidays, mainly to get a better idea of how Super Star Destroyers perform in combat in Legends. And I have to say, the circumstances by which the Lusankya goes down at Thyferra are a perfect storm of events that never happen again. Taking down an SSD like that isn't easy and required a lot of unique events taking place at once.

The main reason the Lusankya was defeated was because it had absolutely no support ships at Thyferra (the inept THDC notwithstanding). That's mainly due to Joak Drysso's sheer incompetence as a commander. The trap at Yag'Dhul is a rather brilliant one, but had Drysso bothered to have scout ships do a proper recon of the station, he would have quickly realized that the trap had no teeth. This oversight can be attributed to overconfidence from Drysso's command of what he thought was the most powerful warship in the Galaxy. But even then, once he's free of the tractor beams and away from the station and it's massive array of missile launchers, he doesn't bother to recall his TIE Fighters before fleeing the system. Once free of the station's tractor beams, the Lusankya was in absolutely no danger. What would it have cost Drysso, other than an additional ten minutes to recall his twelve squadrons of fighters before leaving the system?

Poor command decisions aside, let's look at the real battle above Thyferra. The Lusankya's inability to hit the enemy snubfighters is believable. But it's poor performance against the Freedom is a hard pill to swallow. One ISD-II, no matter how skilled it's crew and captain are, shouldn't be able to stand up to an SSD for more than a few minutes. At Kuat, Zsinj's Iron Fist makes quick work of a lone ISD, Mauler. The Freedom, no matter how canny it's commander was, shouldn't have been able to last more than a few minutes against the Lusankya. I can chalk part of that up the inexperience of Lusankya's crew, since that was the ship's first combat mission ever.

On a side note, how did Isard manage to crew that behemoth after it left Coruscant? It can't have had a full crew and complement while it was buried under the Coruscant cityscape for six years. It's commander came from one of the other Star Destroyers that joined Isard, so it can't have had a proper command crew prior to it's escape.

The final nail in the coffin that was Lusankya's defeat is the inexperience and overall ineptitude of it's crew.

1. Their gunnery officers couldn't find missile solutions for a single war cruiser that was attacking their stern
2. It's commander was too stubborn and bullheaded to realize he was in an unwinnable situation and retreat as ordered
3. The commander's aide had the guts to shoot his superior officer when he was going to crash the ship...and then surrendered!.

Let's just examine that last part for a moment. Drysso's aide, Waroen does the right thing when Drysso goes mad and decides to ram the Lusankya into Thyferra. He executes his insane commander and takes command. But instead of retreating and living to fight another day, which is exactly what he should do since his ship is still capable of fleeing, he gives up and surrenders a warship of incredible power to the enemy.

Playing Thrawn's Revenge on Empire at War has given me a new appreciation for just how powerful an SSD can be, in the right hands. The Lusankya wasn't in the right hands at Thyferra and it's new owners afterwards made much better use of it's overwhelming firepower. It would be interesting to examine how other Executor-class warships did in Legends. Iron Fist is an interesting one to consider, as we did see it in action several times in the X-Wing novels.

 

It could certainly be, though I think turbolaser yield will be something that thankfully stays vague permanently, but I will hold out hope for a proper BDZ one day

Don't know if it has come up officially in the new canon elsewhere as of yet, but the ICS seems to imply that turbolasers do lose their effectiveness when used from orbit. This is how the AT-M6 came into play, bringing that power to the surface of a planet to take out shielding. I know we had the orbital bombardment in that one Rebels episode with Thrawn, and Catalyst novel seemed to imply such even occurring as well, so how less effective they are will probably be left vague as well.

 

The named Executors didn't fare well at all - the Alliance/NR strategy appeared to be all about making sure that the SSD was isolated. The Battle of Nocto from the Balance of Power - which was canonized as an Alliance victory in the Atlas - had the Alliance campaign stripping the Imperial taskforce away before finally taking on the Vengeance directly. Ironically, the NR seemed to be better about using them, considering the Guardian was the only named ship to make it to the end of the NJO.

 

If they recanonized the E-wing I could forgive some things they've done.

 

Happy New Years Fleet Junkies.

 

Jumping back on the hyperspace ram talk a few pages ago, this isn't the first time we've seen a ship hit another object while jumping, it happened with a Separatist ship and a small moon in one of the Clone Wars Episodes.

 

Which moon? Dead moon of Antar (Inner Rim) or somewhere actually close to Kaliida Shoals (Outer Rim)?

 

What I don't get is why the Separatists decided to fill that Venator with Rhydonium to crash it into the Carida conference. They were going to blow it up anyway, why bother with all the fuss of making it look like it was being crewed with holographic clones when you could have just set it into hyperspace directly to the space station with all the Republic military bigwigs on it? Instead they go to the effort of bringing it out of hyperspace to then launch at it, conveniently giving everybody time to avert the disaster.

 

Because you can't actually interact with objects in realspace once you've fully entered hyperspace unless they have a huge mass. They would have had to have known the exact location of the space station in order to know the precise time to exit hyperspace, which isn't information they had.

And to be fair were it not for the droids actually on the Venator nobody would have escaped that disaster.

 

The Dead Moon of Antar.

Something similar also happened in legends with a damaged republic ship.

Edit: Oh I'm recounting how they destroyed the Malevolence and didn't even realize it. Lmao, shows how long it's been since I seen the episode.

 

It's weird how the Malevolence got from Kaliida Shoals in the Outer Rim to the Dead moon of Antar in the Inner Rim without a hyperdrive. Unless they managed to barely fix it shortly after escaping pursuit but it failed and thirty seconds later the Republic fleet followed them. But nothing in-universe explains it and whoever decided to identify the moon as it is really didn't understand that both systems are three regions apart from each other.

 

Legends wise, might be thinking about the Republic Battlecruiser Quaestor crashing into and destroying Pammant. Using hyperspace as a weapon also came up in a WotC Rulebook, only planetary shielding offered any sort of defense against such a cataclysm. There is also the Marvel comics where the Executor gets rammed by three Star Destroyers coming out of hyperspace, but survived due its shields.

 

I'm thinking the scarcity of hyperspace ram attacks has to be a cultural thing, rather than a technical one. Imagine an alien messageboard about Earth history, informed only by eight war movies. People would be very confused why we haven't ended more conflicts with nuclear weapons since WWII.

These two things have a lot in common. Both would be difficult to defend against if pursued with any real earnestness, and both are so effective and relatively cheap that they could render conventional warfare obsolete. Yet we haven't used a nuke since 1945. Even removing the threat of mutually assured destruction, nearly any uses of nuclear weapons would constitute a war crime. It's an immediate abdication of the moral high ground, and would open the attacker up to immediate, unlimited retaliation. If the same applies to lightspeed ramming, such escalation could create galactic horror on a scale not yet seen, as hyperspace rams burst even shielded planets if the attackers timed it right (like Han somehow did in TFA).

Of course, the Empire never showed much restraint when it came to planet killing. The Rebellion could never match them in indiscriminate violence if they wanted to have any claim to legitimacy when they finally got to make a new government. The Resistance, not being a government and having no political aspirations beyond stopping the First Order as yet, was not as tied by these constraints. Holdo also had the rare chance to ram an enemy ship when no friendly ships could have been caught in the wide and surprisingly devastating splash zone after impact.

Edit: Apologies if I've said all or most of this here before. Between here, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and real life, I have no idea what I've said to whom.

 

You're right of course Redblade, but on the other hand, humans have had nuclear weapons for about 70 years, Star Wars has had hyperspace for 25000. The real comparison here is between suicide attacks, which do go back at least 3000 years on earth.

 

Regarding the Resistance Navy, has anyone brought up the following points?

• According to the TLJ:ICS there are multiple Nebulon-Cs in Resistance hands. Is this really the case?
• According to the TLJ:ICS there Anodyne is fully armed, according to the TLJ:VD it is not.
• From Vice-Admiral Holdo, we learn that Resistance evacuation fleet has 400 souls after the loss of the Cargo Frigate. This is well below the skeleton crew of the Raddus alone. Did she mean 1400?
• Have Home One and Echo of Hope been retconned?
• What is the rationale behind 1500 weapon emplacements on a Resurgent Class and the mere dozens of guns on the MC85.
• What is a "point defense gun"? They seem to be huge on the Ninka and especially on the Fulminatrix.

 

#1 and #4 can be answered together: I think what we saw in the film was the main Resistance fleet, but not all of it. Other ships are presumably off pursuing other missions, like the Raddus battle group itself was during the events of TFA. Snap Wexely and Jess Pava are, theoretically, somewhere out there, doing something. We might have to wait until the next Battlefront II chapter comes out to learn more about the rest of the Resistance. We do, however, have Leia's logic for not calling them in during the fleet chase: they would make no military difference, and are doing their jobs best by keeping their crews alive to fight another day.

#2 No idea on this one, maybe @jasonfry can help. We never see the Anodyne launch fighters, but it's unclear if that's because it never carried any or if they all got killed during Poe's Grandstand. In the end, it's irrelevant: the Anodyne died running away, not fighting.

#3 The movie is always right.

#5 That Resurgent figure must include (#6) point-defense guns: smaller, faster-firing weapons emplacements meant to defend against fighters, missiles, and torpedoes rather than engage capital ships at range. The guns on the dorsal surface of the Fulminatrix fall into the point-defense category, though Poe was still able to outfly them. Generally, the films and the new-canon supporting material seems to be building a picture of Star Destroys throwing of TON of turbolaser fire at long range, but only having a few really big guns. Mon Cal ships, on the other hand, have a small number of really powerful turbolasers that can wreak havoc in a space-brawl. A real-world equivalent might be the carronade from the late Age of Sail.

 

I'm hoping we may see, presumably via the comics, a secondary Resistance fleet, which leaves D'Qar before the Raddus, led by Statura (plus Snap, Jess et al) aboard Home One, with Echo of Hope, Nebulon-Cs, and support craft including several GR-75s (as per TLJ:ICS). Leia presumably dispatches them to rally support from allies before the rest of the base is evacuated.

 

My thinking regarding the skeleton crews on the Resistance fleet is that a proper "skeleton" crew for a ship that size would be enough for it to be fully operational. The Resistance ships might have just enough folks onboard to run the basic functions (especially if much of the armament was stripped off when they were decommissioned), and perhaps some additional automated systems have been added. After all, we see that one person can apparently drive the ships from Point A to Point B without too much trouble.

That begs the question - why bother with large capital ships if you don't have the personnel? One possibility might be that the Resistance forces were intended to be the nucleus of a larger-scale New Republic militarization once they had convinced the Senate that the First Order was indeed a threat. During a full mobilization additional New Republic fleet crews could have been added to bring the Resistance's ships to full capacity, and the Resistance could have provided a training cadre of combat veterans with experience fighting the First Order's forces. That would fit with their ships apparently being captained by vice admirals and multiple flag officers being onboard the Raddus.

I've kind of been thinking about this sort of thing since I decided to try adapting a fanfic plot of mine from the Legends days to the current canon; in the Legends plot I had a disgruntled apprentice of Lumiya take her fleet (three ISDs, two Nebulon-Bs, and four CR90s) from her via mutiny around the early NJO timeframe. Problem was that made me think about logistics; counting troops that's somewhere around 140-145,000 mouths to feed, pay, and generally keep in line. One would have to become a very productive pirate or establish a not-insignificant nation-state complete with industry, agriculture, and trade holdings.

 

Excellent point, could very well be. With respect to the Legends universe, and in my own mind at least, I would think things like hyperspace weapons, kinetic energy weapons (Old Republic plant busting battleships, Planechanaga, etc..), and high yields bombs (baradium or other exotic materials) would be more prevalent. However, I would also think things like planetary shields, and other defenses, would be in existence to counter such weapons of mass destruction. Maybe for the hyperspace weapons, planetary level interdiction technology could stop such occurrences from happening, and it was not miniaturized for usage on ships until the Imperial era. To me it would make sense such defenses existed, since it would also make something like the Death Star that more threatening, with no available conventional counter.

I definitely think the cultural stigma would exist as you mention, and limit their usage for sure. A good example in Legends was in the Millennium Falcon novel, where Bail Organa was pushing for banning planet busting baradium fission bombs in the Imperial Senate.

 

I always figured that Griff's Star Destroyers were pretty much materialised the moment they hit the shields of the Executor so the reason they didn't tear the Super Star Destroyer to pieces in the transitioning to normal space was because they were out of hyperspace when the collision occurred. In my original Sci-Fi film idea, a heavy cruiser materialised out of hyperspace too close to a smaller star cruiser and simply collided with the ship, with the explosion of two power cores crippling one of the nearby cruisers and its support medium cruisers, frigates and gunships.

From what I can tell, the Raddus' entry point was plotted so close to the Supremacy that the transition pretty much negated the shields and with the possible overload from the Mon Calamari cruiser's hyperdrive transitioning too close to an object causing the effect we see on-screen.

Reason it isn't used, because Dooku and Grievous aren't that insane, neither was Palpatine (and whether Operation: Cinder was truly his thing or not is another question on his sanity). Why use hyperspace missiles to wipe out a planet you need in the future. The Sith could've done it centuries ago, don't forget the many species that still don't have their original homeworlds in canon (i.e. the Baragwin) but they are banned under every law, not to mention the risk that you could still transition at the wrong point - too early or too late.

Holdo was a genius according to the Leia: Princess of Alderaan novels, its clear she calculated it and pulled it off down to the second.

 

Apologies if this has been brought up somewhere before, but I was wondering about the TIE Fighter attack on the Raddus. It threw me on first viewing that those two missiles were able to knock out the bridge, but on subsequent viewings I caught Ackbar's line about diverting shield power to the rear (thereby possibly leaving the bow more vulnerable to attack). What are other people's takes on this?

I was also curious as to how Kylo's TIEs were able to cause so much damage in their initial attack run from the rear. It seems now, after reading VD and ICS, that it may have something to do with the Raddus's new shield tech projecting the protective field away from the ship - Kylo's fighters got "inside" the shield during their run. Did others have thoughts on this?

 

I see it that capital ships' shields are primarily to defend against bombardment from other capital ships - and the Raddus' shields performed admirably against the volleys laid down by the Supremacy, as intended. They deploy a starfighter screen or small anti-starfighter escort ships, such as corvettes, to deal with the likes of TIEs. Deflector shields stop lasers and possibly certain types of warheads, but not fighters. I assume that particle shields to defend against debris will be focused on the front of the ship, so if you can slip under them from behind, you're clear to do damage to the hull from within the shield envelope.

 

Are capital-ship-class missles and torpedoes still canon? If so, why didn't the Resistance use those to take down the Dreadnaught instead of those (totally useless and silly) Starfortress bombers?

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