Lit Fleet Junkie Flagship- Enjoying time in dry dock!

@Zeta1127
Ooh, I didn't realize that.

I assume those would be in addition to the complementary number of boarding/anti-boarding teams the ship would have.

The New Class Modernization Program is another good example of variants built on the same space frame, with four keel lengths, consisting of a base design and a derivative for each keel length.

The Vindicator-class heavy cruiser and its derivatives are interesting, the Immobilizer 418 cruiser was an interdictor derived from the Vindicator-class, while the Enforcer-class picket cruiser was a picket cruiser, commonly used as a front-line warship by the Pentastar Alignment, derived from the Immobilizer 418 cruiser.

There is a lot going for there being a Super Transport VIII, with the escort carrier being a militarized variant. The escort carrier looks so similar to the best documented Super Transports, the Super Transport VII and the Super Transport XI. The escort carrier, at 500 meters, also fits perfectly between the Super Transport VII, at 280 meters, and the Super Transport XI, at 840 meters, in regards to keel length.

The design of the escort carrier also makes it a rather simple conversion. A freighter designed to haul large cargos will have a set strength of hull and engines, which when cargo is replaced with lighter but bulkier hangar spaces, means the ship will be somewhat overpowered, allowing it to keep up better with proper warships. The weapons loadout, multiple laser cannons and a few warhead launchers, are light, and do not require significant bracing. The mission requirements, to ferry fighters between locations, and especially travel with convoys to provide fighter cover, mean it is generally out of heavy combat, and does not need heavy armor. Development wise, it also fits with the development of the Nebulon-B, which was also a Kuat design for convoy escort. The Nebulon-B has rather good sensors and communications, designed for picket duty and convoy escort, but arguably minimal fighter capacity. The Escort Carrier would be a cheap accompaniment to provide that fighter support, while the Nebulon-B handled the larger threats.

Exactly, its the same scenario with the Quasar Fire-class bulk cruiser and the Alliance's escort carrier variant.

I was actually thinking about this just the other day. In the early New Republic period (notably, the X-Wing books), captured Imperial craft make up a major component of the Republic's fleet. While some surrender under...unusual circumstances (the Errant Venture) or outright defect (the Interdictor the Republic used at Coruscant - Corusca Rainbow?), presumably, some of these craft had be boarded and taken. Have we, however, actually seen a boarding action anywhere outside of the X-Wing and Battlefront games? I wouldn't necessarily count Sluis Van - that was more of a cutting-out action than anything else.

While boarding are possible, I image the majority of captured Imperial warships in the New Republic Navy were either vessels that surrendered during fleet engagements/disabled or donated to the New Republic by sector forces that defected from the Empire. Recall that the EGTW stated that the Defense Declarations that decreed all sector forces were once again under the control of local governments was a HUGE factor in getting sectors to leave the Empire. I imagine that many of these sectors, upon joining the New Republic formally, donated some of the former Imperial vessels to the NRDF as part of their obligations to help support a federal defense force.

--Adm. Nick

The only instance of a boarding I can think of off the top of my head is Han Solo & Judder Page capturing the Accuser during the Battle of Endor, although this way more an example of deception as opposed to boarding and fighting.

Recon & Report mentions the Imperial Moff of the Boeus sector, Darvon Jewett, leading his sector to defect to the New Republic and I think it mentioned him offering up ships. It's a real shame he never got cited much after that but personally I like to think that a number of Star Destroyers later fielded by the New Republic during its formative years came from him and others like him.

And I imagine that getting the maintenance costs for the bigger warships off the sector budget might have been an encouragement, too.

It does seem odd that a great many Imperial commanders effectively struck their colors during this period. Again, I wonder if this is a reflection of moral in the Fleet? At the very least, people seemed happy to leave Isard's service.

THAT SOUNDS AWESOME. Though how Han found time to find the time and energy Tydirium, go up-well, and board the ship when his actually mission assignment would have had him running the mop-up on the ground, I'll never know.

The story is detailed in the Truce at Bakura Sourcebook as part of an interview. Here's an exerpt to explain what you've mentioned:

.

Rebellion Comics has a pretty nice one, where the Rebels use modified Mining ships to burn straight through the bridge ceilings of Imperial freighters after X-Wings took care of the TIE escort. The first Han Solo books also had Pirates board a Luxury liner as, as did the second. Plus there is some nice background on boarding actions in the old Pirate Sourcebook by WEG and its FarOrbit add-on

Would be my guess as well, though navy troopers do seem to also get assigned other duties when not needed for such actions. WEG also mentioned that the lack of a bigger crew was a major problem with many IPVs because the crew would get tired and lazy way to quickly, certainly not helped by the relative mundane duty they had to conduct and of course the temptation of taking bribes. Large ships would be able to keep crew rotating in assignments and have more off time.

I really wish I could read some of these old sourcebooks. I've only seen a few quotes from that story on Wookieepedia. Something about Han dressing up in an Imp uniform and then basically marching on board and taking command, which sounds brilliant and something only someone like Han could pull off. The Wookiee article mentions the story was on Hyperspace, but that is long gone by now.

Hm, I can think of ship thefts more often than ship captures. Most are usually after surrendering- like when the Rogues kept throwing everything they had at the Lusankya until they gave up. The Sabertooth frigate in the Legacy comics was supposed to be designed for boarding actions too, if necessary- with Venom assault teams or something like that. Too bad we never got to see it used like that like though, especially given how desperate the Galactic Alliance Remnant/Core fleet was for ships. During the Clone Wars there were... droch-class (I think that was what they were called) boarding ships that basically just drilled into the side of ships and unloaded battle droids. But those were meant more for assault than capturing ships (not like the Confederacy didn't have enough ships).

Most captured ships I can think of were stolen too- like when Zsinj stole Razor's Kiss from Kuat or when Stazi stole the Imperious from the Mon Calamari shipyards, but those usually were when the ships were in shipyards and understaffed and it involved commandoes sneaking onboard and such. Stazi tried to capture a bunch of ships at Raltiir, involving overwhelming force and surrenders, but the Imperial commander messed up and they lost all those ships.

SWTOR has a missions that involve capturing a ship, but then in that game your player character can easily fight their way through armies. I know of at least two instances, maybe three, one works, the other didn't go so well (but I've only played through part of the game so far and trying to avoid too many spoilers). So in other instances, capturing a ship is usually pretty difficult given the normal size of the crew (thousands of crewers although not sure how many troops and guards) and getting anything other than a small team onboard is usually somewhat difficult. Or in at least some cases the crews just defected (like the Interdictor in the X-wing series, Yonka's Freedom and I think the Rand Ecliptic too). Although there are exceptions- I just remembered this one time in Wraith Squadron where Piggy had a starfighter cannon attached flew into a corvette's docking bay and just blasted his way straight through to the bridge. That was cool.

We keep seeing boarding action throughout the entire TCW tv show, so I assume it's not as uncommon after all.

Yeah, I always hoped for a GA centered issue showing those Sabertooth-class assault ships in action, capturing ships for Stazi's fleet. Both the Sabertooth-class and the ShaShore-class frigates were shown in sizable numbers in #20-22 and #36, but as the series approached the end we typically saw the GA fleet composed of Scythe-class battle cruisers (#41-42, #47, cover of #50, and all of WAR). Not that I am complaining about seeing more and more Scythe battle cruisers, but it was a bummer that the various GA support ships ended up appearing less and less.

My other regret was that we never saw the various "blade modules" for the ShaShore-class frigate. Sean Cooke designed some really cool modules, like a communication array, a sensor pod, and a missile battery. It would of been very cool to see a GA fleet with various frigate configurations, as opposed to always seeing the ShaShore in its standard configuration.

The capture of the Imperious was a special case, as you note in your post above, as it was still in the shipyard with a skeleton crew. In addition, it was stationed at a shipyard with long running ties to the Galactic Alliance, so Stazi's forces had that going for them as well. Ralltiir was supposed to me a more tradtional way of capturing warships- overwhlem with superior numbers, knock out some ships to make a point, and force the remaining ships to surrender. Obviously, Fenel screwed this up, but it would of otherwise been a excellent way of taking a large number of warships with relatively light losses on both sides.

On a similar tangent, I always wanted a story that showed Stazi raiding a deep space depot where GA ships captured during the Sith-Imperial War and the subsequent surrender at Caamas were stationed. Given that we see the Sith Empire only using Imperial designs, I imagine that a great deal of former GA capital ships were either mothballed at deep space depots or donated to sector forces.

--Adm. Nick

Reading through the section of the EGTW on Tarkin and the rise of the Militarists, we get a retcon for these ships and fighters. Heavy munitions cruisers and A-6 interceptors, respectively. Nice.

Don't forget the Vainglorious-class cruisers that are matched to the ships in Stark's fleet.

I always loved the design for the Trade Federation transports. I really wish we saw more of them, to be honest.

--Adm. Nick

@blackmyron
I thought those had been mentioned before in this thread, tbh. Wonder which were the Vainglorious cruisers and which were the Kaloth battlecruisers. I assume the elongated ships are the former and the stubbier ones are the latter. Minus the refitted claws, that is.

@AdmiralNick22
Wonder if the HMC was originally a transport like the Lucrehulk-class? They seem to be called freighters in the story...

The Kaloth, IIRC, has an illustration in the GG9(?), so we might be able to figure it out with the process of elimination (or I guess we could ask them )

Minus the arms, the Kaloth-class looks very bulky. I guess anything drawn like that in the comic on Stark's side would be a good candidate. Probably a lot of refits and reworkings in such a ragtag group, too. The ones that are more elongated with tanks on the ventral side, might be the Vainglorious-class.