What was the Katana Fleet created for?

I take that more as artistic lisence. The artist obviously decided to draw in a single large turbolaser.

The EGTVV says nothing of such uber cannon, nor does any other source.

This depiction is not contradicted by other illustrations of the Dreadnaught, and the EC illustrations are as valid a source as any other (especially over the pathetic NEGTVV), so the fact that those blisters house massive turbolasers stands. But for fun, let us bring up the WEG stats.

Model : Dreadnaught-class heavy cruiser
Designer/Manufacturer : Rendili StarDrive
Scale : Capital
Length : 600 Metres
Crew : Crew 16,113 + Gunners 97
Skeleton Crew : 9000
Sublight Speed : 4 Space Units
Hyperdrive Rating : Class 2
Hyperdrive Backup : Class 18
Atmospheric Speed : Cannot Enter Atmosphere
Manoeuvrability : 1D
Cargo Capacity : 9,000 Metric Tons
Consumables : 2 Years
Weapons :
10 Turbolaser Cannons (5 Left, 5 Right)
20 Quad Turbolaser Cannons (6 Front, 7 Left, 7 Right)
10 Turbolaser Batteries (5 Front, 5 Aft)

The stats claim that the Dreadnaught has 10 heavy turbolasers (turbolaser batteries). If this ship is supposed to be a "heavy cruiser" it is logical that it is equipped with guns big enough to threaten ships much larger than they are. The RPG stats do not exactly how big these guns are. If they are to be comparable to the heavy tubolasers on ISDs, they would have to be massive. The RPG description does indicate that the blisters house weaponry, and the EC supports this claim by showing us that the weapons are concealable.

Remember that the designator "heavy turbolaser" is a general term that encompasses guns from a wide size and firepower range. The massive weapons in the Dreadnaught's blisters definitley fall into this category.

 

The Katana fleet is more of a defensive fleet than anything else. Heavy cruisers aren't going make much of a dent on a fleet of Mandators or any heavy defensive fleet.

As for the Trade Federation Battleships, their weapon systems are far below that of a Victory class star destroyer and a Victory class will make short work of the vessel. And their poor design and the inability to lay down substantial heavy firepower further adds their list of weaknesses.

 

The Katana fleet is more of a defensive fleet

Defense against what?!

 

The Dreadnoughts in the Thrawn-comics don´t show those large guns.

And i fail to see, why a 600 meter long box should have larger weapons, than a ring with a diameter of two miles from the same time.

A TF-ship would be of little use, if it could be taken down by a ship at least ten times smaller, even if it is a pure military ship (and don´t forget the 1,500 droid-starfighters aboard - they are in enough numbers to count for something).

 

... pirates, the possible eventuality of Rebellion (imagine what happens if Kuat, with its Mandator Star Dreadnaughts rebels, or even if one of the ships' Captains gets funny ideas).

 

The Mandators probably got scrapped or dumped in the Deep Core or whereever when the Empire replaced the Old Republic.

I though that the Katana ships were just retrofitted Dreadnaughts instead of brand new warships?

 

Actually, do we know the specs of a Mandator? I do know that they are large warships with very little range, and maybe lacking a fast hyperdrive or something.

Also, how would they compare to ISDs?

 

Do you really think that Saxton was thinking of anything small in his mind's eye? With a ship that large, I'm not sure whether he's even going to impose a severe range limitation. It'd probably be close to ten miles long. They'd almost certainly blast an ISD to smithereens in moments.

Only thing is I'm not sure if those stupid WoTC (who replaced WEG) guys know it too. I can just see them making the Mandator 900m long, and Saxton will have a stroke.

 

FTeik:

The point to the Lucrehulk-class was that it was made largely in secret. Or at least in official secret. They're big and intimidating to the types of people that the bully on a regular basis, and they can be posessed legally without incurring the wrath of the powers that be.

Borleais:

The Madnator/Procurator ships are probably best left ambiguous... Dr. Saxton and his fans would be most nonplussed if the ships turned out to be less than X-kilometers long, and 'traditionalists' such as myself would be displeased if they were greater in size than the vessels that the Empire developed as relative superweapons early in their reign.

 

I can see it in my mind:

From WotC:

Praetor-Class-Battlecruiser
Scale: capital
Lenght: 800 meters
.
.
.

Question asked in a letter to WotC/SW.COM

"Isn´t the reactor of the Praetor supposed to generate more power, than that of the ISD?"

Answer:

"It is an experimental design."

 

Come on, I don't think the WoTC guys are like that, they just stick to already established figures. That's why their OT starship info comes straight from WEG and the PT starship info is from the new guides.

 

In WoTC parlance, a ship about 800m long is "Garguantuan." By the way, they've officially established which adjective is larger than which in Star Wars

Large-->Huge-->Garguantuan-->Colossal

Of course, Colossal becomes as useless as Super Star Destroyer as an adjective, because it spans anything from about 1000m long on up

And George, given my experience with those RPG companies, if they ever make any errors, they'd err on the small, for sure. Minimalists...

 

Let's think realistically.

1. Does KDY have sufficient resources to build a hulk the size of an SSD and maintain it?

2. Is the reactor technology good enough to power a ship like that?

Think about this, and you'd figure that it's probably close to impossible to have a colossal ship at that time. KDY is one company and not an empire.

 

First let's answer 2. I don't see why not. You must remember that Star Wars is in a state of relative technological stasis. Unlike with us, a 20 or even 50 year old warship is not totally obsolete. Technology simply hadn't advanced very far. Sure, maybe the Mandator won't be quite as swift footed as the Executor, but there is no apparent reason why it won't be possible to build a ship that big or close to it.

Now for one. It is not only KDY or Kuat (which is quite powerful in itself), but this is the sectorial fleet, with the power of the whole sector behind it. Besides, KDY is one of the foremost conglomerates in the SW galaxy, and the power of a powerful corporation in Star Wars can quite easily exceed a weaker planet's (see the Trade Federation's blockade). Remember how one company was responsible for delivering the construction supplies of the Death Star II, which is so many times larger than an Executor vessel it ain't funny. If that kind of premier sector with a premier company wants to build a couple of huge warships and a quartet of somewhat smaller ones, well, who's to stop them. And they would be good value for money - as I said, warships in Star Wars can be very durable.

Further remember that Death Star I took the resources of only 20 sector groups, of which most of the sectors aren't as powerful as something like Kuat or Corellia. And an Executor is but a tiny fraction of the size of the DSI. So sure, why not?
----
APPEND: Here's something else that might convince you about how many orders of magnitude more powerful KDY can be:

KDY is a Voting Sponsor of the CSA. To become a voting sponsor, you need to somehow puke up the sum of fifty quadrillion credits.

By the way, an Neb-B is worth 194 million credits. An ISD is supposedly worth under 20 times that, or under 3.88 billion credits. The Executor was supposed to cost 20 ISDs (at least those shrunk up WEG versions - no idea if they screwed up the cost along with the size and armament). That's under 78 billion credits. If we scale by volume, the Executor is more like 100 times bigger, so that's 388 billion credits.

50 quadrillion credits / 78 billion = over 641000 Executors.

50 quadrillion / 388 billion = almost 129000.

So you can see, the resource outlay for an Executor is but pocket change in the eyes of KDY. Kind of scary, isn't it

 

The big question is whether or not they had the cause to make such a thing in a era that was largely devoid of warfare. This is the part that seems starkly unlikely. The Old Republic had nowhere near the militaristic leanings of the Empire that followed it, so that severely castrates the 'big market' appeal. We also know that corporations were not allowed to operate genuine warships (or at least ones over a certain size--see the Lucrehulk-class). Outside of Kuat's own naval forces, there do not appear to be many potential buyers for such things.

I guess that's all a longwinded way of saying that I severely doubt that the things would be anywhere remotely near SSD-sized. I'd be shocked if they exceeded 2km in length. *shrugs*

I'm generally a traditionalist.

Certainly, they could have done it--after all, this is the company that would go on to build the Eclipse (or half of her, at least). So, from a certain point of view, they did. The question is simply one of when and to what extent.

 

Traditionalism is also minimalism

For one thing, Kuat is filthy rich. I just showed you how cheap an Executor is to them.

Imagine this as an scale-down analogy (assuming you are only middle or upper middle class, not insanely rich, OK?) I tell you, for about 5 dollars, I'd give you an Executor. For five dollars each year, I can easily provide you with the Executor complete with everything it needs to keep working. Interested? Even assuming you can't think of major uses for such a ship in your pocket just yet? How many do you want, Brett?

Corporations may not own genuine warships (and really, if KDY insisted on building a few Mandators for itself, I really doubt the weak OR government can do much, just like it can't do much to the Trade Federation in TPM - and I can see a lot of dead 600m Dreadnaught "cruisers" if they tried), but the sector fleet can. It is prestigious. Prestige for pocket change? Why the heck not? Just tough luck you little weenies out there can't afford what to me is pocket change.

Oh, by the way, if KDY built half an Eclipse, who built the other half? Just curious.

 

Keep also in mind, that KDY is a very old corporation.

It is entirely possible, that the people responsible for it haven´t forgotten the times of war from thousand years ago.

There wouldn´t also be problems with the central government, because KDY could either bribe enough officials or because large warships, that are limited to their own sector are not very offensive.

The VDs of TPM and AOTC also indicate, that many corporations and local governments were arming up and doing business in a more aggressive style.

If a group like the Trade-Federation could muster hundreds of warship-turned freighters wouldn´t you want at least a few dozen heavy hitters available, if you need them?

 

Well, I just wonder how much taxes does KDY have to pay yearly, or do they not pay a single cent? Bribes? Blackmail?

Also I wonder if the Mandators can match the firepower intensity. Maybe they used early versions of the Solar Ionisation core or something. I don't know. A ship of that size will need lots of power. And why do they need ships like that? All they need is a web of Golan platforms to serve whatever purpose they need.

Maybe we'll get to see Mandators in Ep 3... I mean they could be brought to Coruscant.

 

Brett_Bass:

Hundreds of converted freightors in orbit of a single planet.

Oh you mean like the converted luxury liners the MC80/80a/80B were? That are more volumnous than the ISD, and to boot can rival them or even exceed them in power. A fleet of the former incapacitated a Executor-class Star Dreadnought, and one of the latter outgunned one in the forward arc.

And there were tens of thousands of TF BBs, by the way.

Brett_Bass:

All of a sudden, two hundred heavy cruisers start looking all the more impressive...

Too bad the Trade Federation Battleship is far more massive, indicative of a much larger industrial-military complex and its capacity, and mounts far more guns than the Dreadnought CH.

Even if its guns are terrible (canon scaling argues that size does correlate to firepower in energy cannon), the reactor volume is so great that it should easily shrug off fire from all but much, much heavier craft than the Acclamator. And log-log reactor scaling is legit; the Death Star, Acclamator, ISD, and Core Ship all fall along a similar function between reactor volume and power output; it is implicitly canon.

But its funner to whore semantics than it is to due true analysis.

Brett_Bass:

Also, the capability to churn out endless streams of superlarge warships is simply assumed at this point. The Tehcnical Journal of the Imperial Forces seems to imply that the infrastructure requisite to building mass numbers of Imperial-class Star Destroyers was vitually nonexistant outside of Kuat Drive Yards' home facilities when the class was first proposed.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA....

Sometimes I wonder if anyone on TFN save for a tiny minority knows how to do High School geometry and feels like applying it, rather than aping and only aping sources which have been historically shown to not be so reliable.

Anyway, the Death Star II was assembled nearly 60% of its complete volume in the six months from XTS' beginning involvement.

XTS shipped raw materials to Endor. The Empire fabricated the Death Star II without preestablished and extensive shipyard and foundry facilities from raw materials on the spot.

In other words, raw metal or even ore straight to immense components which are assembled in place all right there on the construction surface of the Death Star II.

It is absolute canon fact the Empire has the industrial capacity to assemble the mass equivalent of hundreds of millions of ISDs in a matter of months from raw materials with zero industrial infrastructure support aside from shipping of those self-same raw materials. And without appreciably effecting the Imperial economy (which would have tipped off the Rebellion and blown the secret before the Suprosa was siezed.

So your source is irredeamably wrong. Like so often and almost universally, the SW EU gets a galactic scale civilization, and in particular, the canonical scale of that galactic civilization, totally wrong.

EDIT: And raw materials, Brett, means that industrial complexes and infrastructure is totally irrelevent. The Death Star II was built from scratch.

 

Gary Stu-ism.

 

I wonder if those Mandators remotely resembled Admiral Giel's flagship?

 

It is absolute canon fact the Empire has the industrial capacity to assemble the mass equivalent of hundreds of millions of ISDs in a matter of months from raw materials with zero industrial infrastructure support aside from shipping of those self-same raw materials.

Huh? Where'd you get that from? I'd sooner believe a fly can last longer than a picosecond in a Hutt's mouth.

Anyway, it's entirely possible the Emp removed all the construction spacedocks just prior to the Rebel arrival. So as not to get in the way of a good battle to come?

 

From "Shadows of the Empire".

XTS (XixorTransportSystems) was tasked six months before the battle of Endor to transport the raw-materials for DeathStarII to Endor.

The fact, that XTS had "only" some 1,000 ships suggests very big ships.

 

for that XTS quote. Or they won't buy it

 

Not neccesarily... they could have just made thousands of trips each ship, carrying small components at a time.