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

So the TIE Fighter Owners' Workshop Manual states that 4.6 million TIE/In fighter were manufactured by the Empire. I feel like this is a good number for the maximalist fleet junkies like myself. If we assume the same formula as USAF fighter squadrons (25% for training, 5% for testing, 10% for backup inventory, and 10% for attrition reserve) that leaves 2,896,497 combat TIE/ln, enough to equip 40,229 fighter wings. Assuming that less than 10% of TIE/lns were destroyed prior to the Battle of Endor - less than the attrition reserve.

 

the jokes never ends...


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40,000 wings worth, or enough to give 4 squadrons to 60,000 wings. Easily enough for 25,000 ISDs, and scores of dreadnoughts, with tens of thousands of squadrons left over for smaller ships and bases.

 

Now, doesn't the empire have millions of worlds and colonies? That would leave a huge number of planets relying on PSFs, right?

 

So apparently, the TIE Echelon at Galaxy's Edge originated from Colin Trevorrow’s version of Episode 9
http://collider.com/star-wars-galaxys-edge-colin-trevorrow-episode-9/

 

And my theory is there would be a disparity in the size and strength of those PSFs. Corellia and Eriadu are going to be much better off that say Ryloth and Jelucan.

 

Surely. The old Legends numbers from the Atlas are: "The Galactic Empire's territory at its peak consisted of some one and a half million member and conquered worlds, as well as sixty-nine million colonies, protectorates and puppet states spread throughout the entire galaxy, stretching from the borders of the Deep Core to at least Wild Space."

That's a hefty set of PSFs, even for more meagre member worlds and colonies. If those numbers hold true in Canon, then we have about one TIE/ln for every eighteen inhabited worlds within the Empire's borders. Now I suppose Sienar could have built TIEs for PSFs too, but we've never seen that in principle. We do not that PSFs were nationalized--Virusanji is an example of that occurring. Supposing that every world had one lone fighter, they would outnumber the TIE/ln forces of the Imperial Navy nearly twenty-fold. That's the making of a Rebellion right there. If the Rebellion can just gain the confidence of the PSFs, it could really swing the tide, at least in terms of fighters.

 

I guess when Vader said "we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy" he wasn't kidding. The unrest and conflict spanned the galaxy, with a mix of local forces and central forces like the Imperial military and the Rebel Alliance. Maybe smaller-scale battles than the CW, but still the same overall area of combat. We know from Lucas's own productions that Imperial officials worried about local systems revolting without the Senate bureaucrats on hand to mediate and that there's "millions" of backwater systems that no one cares about, so they get easily occupied (from the Iego episode in TCW).

 

As to the TIE numbers, this is the sort of number that I like - large enough to satisfy the people who like an Empire with the old WEG number of 25,000 ISDs, and also complicated enough to satisfy those of us who think that's far too many top-end ships. We don't know what the rate of attrition and the number that ended up as parts caches was. We don't know how fast airframes were retired. We don't know just how practical the Empire found assigning TIEs to every single base and ship that could carry them. We don't know how many small detached flights like we see in Rebels there were.

*shrug*

Sorry, I wasn't clear - I was asking what the logic behind the new number was...?

Okay, so this means the Interceptor and the Advanced have pretty much the same ratio between window diameter and cockpit diameter, and one that corresponds adequately to the ratio between the viewport width and internal diameter on the cockpit set. The Rogue One version of the standard TIE Fighter has a viewport reduced in diameter proportional to the hull, which is odd.

I'm guessing the measures below are based on your re-measured TIE Bomber window size?

Okay, so I get these results for the pylon width:

The overall width of the Rogue One TIE Fighter is ~2.61 cockpit diameters.
The overall width of the TIE Interceptor is ~2.47 cockpit diameters.
The overall width of Vader's TIE Advanced is ~2.50 cockpit diameters.
The overall width of the Grand Inquisitor's TIE Fighter is ~2.25 cockpit diameters.

There's a noticeable difference between the width of the pylons on the TIE Fighter and the TIE Interceptor, but this is not that dramatic, and for practical purposes may represent the difference between CGI from Rogue One and REBELS.

The Interceptor and the Advanced are both pretty close to a width of 2.5 cockpit diameters (does this reflects that they're both REBELS CGI?). The Inquisitor's ship has shorter pylons, which is interesting (still not sure whether this has two or four "exhausts")...

The overall proportions of the TIE Bomber's wings are pretty close to those of the TIE Advanced - wing-length of ~1.53 wing-heights vs ~1.51 wing-heights, but the cockpit window is out-of-proportion, and as this gives the TIE Bomber significantly larger wings and a just-adequate 6-foot diameter on the cockpit tube; rescaling the TIE Bomber's wings to match those of the TIE Advanced would reduce the cockpit diameter to a rather tight ~1.56m, i.e. a little under 5ft 1½ inches.

If these are both REBELS CGI, did REBELS steal the TIE Advanced wings for the Bomber and then upscale them for an adequate cockpit size?

I'd be curious to know what the measured proportions on the original studio models might be...

No worries, I figured that out. Thanks!

- The Imperial Ewok

 

@Thrawn McEwok


These three ships deserve some love. Any hopes for the future?

 

This been posted here before?

Wild Karrde Development by RobCaswell

"For about five years my primary income came through illustration for the pen-and-paper RPG field, working mostly on sci-fi properties like Traveller, Star Trek, T.O.R.G., Space:1889, and lots others. A few of images have endured, but the one with the highest profile is probably my design for the Corellian Action VI Transport, which would later find itself cast as “The Wild Karrde”: a hero ship from Timothy Zahn’s original Star Wars novel trilogy.

As a rule RPG gaming illustration doesn’t pay hugely well, so artists have to shoot for volume work. I had no idea that this ship design – one of many done for West End Games’ “Rebel Alliance Sourcebook” would have any legs beyond a one-shot side view. I’m not sure if I ever got to illustrate the craft again, but what appeared as simple profile view in the publication was a fully fleshed out three-dimensional object in my head. However the artists who first got to show the ship in perspective views made their own interpretations. Thus the “established” design is considerably thinner than my initial concept (seen above in rough form), and a number of other details vary in shape and mass.

The ship didn’t start out as the Wild Karrde – or even as the Corellian Action VI. The original spec of the job called for a “Rebel Fleet Replenishment Vessel” – a type of Imperial standard bulk transport that could be captured and used to support the Rebel fleet. But by the time the manuscript was finished and illustration assets evaluated, it got slapped with the label of a Corellian Action VI Bulk Freighter. New name, but the ship function was largely the same. The only vestige of its original fleet support mission are (what were meant to be) fold-out umbilical booms at the mid-section, which would have allowed the craft to refuel/resupply other Rebel ships in flight.

As West End Games created the gaming supplements for Tim Zahn’s “Thrawn trilogy” novels, the designers decided that Talon Karrde’s ship would be a refitted Action VI, so suddenly the design had a new life – though I’m surprised it’s a design that’s still a remembered part of the mythos today.

The design of the Action VI derived from two sources. One is some unused ship sketches made by (I think) Joe Johnston which made their way into West End’s “Star Wars (RPG) Sourcebook”. I wanted to try and stay true to original ship design feel from the first films. The other influence was the Rebel Medical Frigate. In looking at the design it always struck me that they were probably inspired by an outboard boat engine, so I wanted to find a mundane object around my apartment that might serve a similar role of unlikely inspiration. I settled on an empty plastic spring water jug sitting on the floor. That’s where the “handle” shape comes from, and you can see my light sketch of the source shape.

Looking for another hallmark design characteristic, I came up with the “sails” projecting from either side of the aft. These were inspired by the sails/wings of Jabba’s barge and skiff, as well as some of the fins projecting from the aft of the Medical Transport.

The pictures above show my development sketches of the ship, along with the finished profile as it appeared in the “Rebel Alliance Sourcebook”. The first few just help come to the rough shape. After that some of the details start to fill in. The super-deformed Star Wars characters were never printed, but were in the margins of the finished work on this assignment. Other ships had other associated character doodles.

Man – that was twenty years ago, but it just feels like two decades…."

 

They should look thru the archives for stuff like this....the ships in the video for example...if that is what they look like as hinted at in the video....let a writer come up with info on it and drop the pic on twitter as "Hey...this is the New Republic ship such and such form my SW novel...." Or the top right of the sketch..."this is the Action III bulk freighter"

 

I assumed it had to do with the CGI, and physical models if any, created for Rogue One.

In Complete Vehicles, we first got the official figure for the TIE Bomber length of 7.8 m (and a statement that its cockpit window was bigger than that of a regular TIE).

Presumably whoever did the Rebels CGI was using that number. It appears to be the only TIE length from Complete Vehicles to survive unchanged.

 

I found it interesting that in the TIE Fighter Owners' Workshop Manual the TIE/rb and the TIE/sa both have a forward window in the port pod for an optionally manned gunner/bombardier. That's a first for me. Especially with the TIE/sa, I always assumed the "window" was the concussion missile launcher.

I think the TIE/mg built for the mining guild is the best example we have of this so far.

 

That was the idea in Legends, as portrayed in the cross sections book and a number of other sources. My impression is that it may have been a mistake, as the book only lists a single crew member in the "data page" while the Striker's lists the optional bombardier too.

EDIT: and speaking of the Legends cross sections books, I usually consider the drawings themselves to still be reliable. It's very unlikely that they'll be updated when the inevitable I-IX "complete vehicles" book will come out (like they were unchanged in the recent Complete Locations), and they are still used as a reference in major media. Notably, I recall an interview where it was said that the artists made sure that the scenes where the two ISDs crash with each other in Rogue One respected what was shown in the original cross-section.

 

I would agree. While I'm loving the book, it's riddled with details that just don't make sense.

 

Some of them have size issues. The TIE Fighter for example, was extremely cramped - because it was scaled to a 6.3m long TIE fighter.

Similarly, the Falcon was scaled at 26m or so - hence the newer books, with a 34+ m Falcon basically replacing the ICS version with a better scaled one.

 

Oh yeah, that's why I specified that the drawings are what I still consider canon, the text is defintively not if it contradicts newer sources. When the updated complete locations book was released much of the text was updated to reflect the changes in canon, with the R-22s and AT-ARs in the cross section pictures being retconned into Phoenix Squadron A-Wings and AT-DPs for example.
EDIT: never mind, just noticed you were talking about interior shots not data. In that case, I'm not really sure how they'd handle it, I would definitively welcome updated cross-sections.

 

Man, fascinating stuff - and I love it if we got some craft in the future that had the designs original role of fleet support and replenishment.

Also, I think some of the earlier designs got reused in other parts of Star Wars as well, particularly the imperial ore freighter from the Droids movie (apparently called the omega-class).

 

They should just release I-VI as the Volume I and then The Sequel Trilogy, R1, and Solo as Volume II

 

Not sure why you tagged me for this - I'm just here as a fanboy, simply because I'm still fascinated by this stuff...

But yes, those are completely awesome.

That second one immediately makes me think "Assault Frigate!", though - i.e. the re-engined Rebel version of the Dreadnought Cruiser - which makes me wonder if The Imperial Sourcebook had better ILM access than we ever realised...

My instinct would have been to scale this to 600m and use the kitbash forward hull to determine the canon structure of the Dreadnought's bow... and I'm also curious if the kitbash (which I think might be the stern of a 1:72-scale Royal Navy corvette model) was actually the same on both of them (note the basic conceptual resemblance of that second type to the Providence-class from Ep.III and REBELS, which is an Assault Frigate by any other name)...

That said, what this guy's done is superb, and I would have no problem with keeping the revised Dreadnaught as-is (however that is, considering that we see a "curvy" version concealed inside the Providence-class design ) and headcanoning these as smaller Rendilli-derived Mon Cal designs.

The fuel ship is awesome, too.

Not that I know, but that's brilliant too.

Really interested how this was repurposed from one role to another (and then picked up and run with because the design just works) - I wonder how many other WEG drawings went through reinterpretations like that.

I want to see the Rebellion using Action-series frighters as fuel carriers now - I'm imagining one of them alongside those twin-pod ships from ESB, as discussed in the previous post...

Yes, but why?

The TIE Fighter has a 1:1-scale cockpit set for which the plans are relatively easily available, and presumably all the more so for ILM. Calculating the "design" size of the fighter (a bit below 7m based on your measurements) should not be hard... so what's the rationale behind 7.24m?

That would certainly make sense, and shows that someone was at least paying attention to the cockpit viewport size. Was 7.8m ever the length of the TIE Advanced? And what was the length of the TIE Bomber before this?

Lots of questions to anwer...

Just for the record, the compact 26m Falcon from ANH remains my favourite version of the ship and my definitive headcanon. I'm convinced that the ship as depicted in ANH fits together with some minor squinting (most notably, the cockpit access is on the wrong section of the ring corridor). Also, the ramp design (actually a loading pallet which can drop vertically) is not bodged and will not break people's feet.

Getting back to TIEs, though, I'm not sure 6.3m is that cramped. The ~7.2m version from Rogue One was clearly upscaled - the cockpit window has been visibly reduced in size. Rescaling the overall width to match the Interceptor brings us to 6.65m, which is not that huge a difference. A lot depends on the actual width of the studio-model pylons - and if the is a little too large, that size could fit with the smaller wings of the REBELS version, too.

One interesting point that emerges, regardless, is that the "straight-wing" type is actually physically larger than most of the others...

Likewise - this was certainly the claim in the old Expanded Universe material, though I can understand the desire to rationalise the fitting as something that makes sense on a Boarding Craft...

Perhaps they were thinking about the Boarding Craft's rear gun, though...

I've said before that I think the 9.3m "WEG" A-wing and the physically much smaller (~5m) Return of the Jedi A-wing ought to be differentiated out as the RZ-1 and the R-22, thus explaining the contrasting 120MGLT and 150MGLT speed ratings. Up to you which is which.

The 7.68m "RZ-2" seen in The Last Jedi clearly corresponds to the "Mk. II A-wing" introduced in the novel The Bacta War, though.

The love-child of a Sentinel Shuttle and an AT-AT, cosplaying as Wild Karrde. The thing I love most about that design (and I probably love everything about that design) is that the cockpit corridor is a "reuse" of the detention-block corridor from ANH.

- The Imperial Ewok

 

That doesn't mean it's been upscaled much. Remember that the cockpit window is smaller than it "should" be - 1.15m instead of 1.22m - and there's a wide ring around the window, beyond the frame.

Increase the window's size (to 1.25m at least) and the ring disappears - turning it into the "regular" cockpit.

Hence the Mining Guild TIE having a bigger window and no ring, but being the same size as the regular TIE - just with pylon cutouts.

(The smaller solar panels on Imperial TIEs & Mining Guild TIEs in Rebels are considered Artistic Licence - it was later stated that Ultimate Star Wars saying that they were an earlier design was wrong - and the TIEs should be treated as "really" looking like regular ones. The Owner's Workshop Manual uses regular TIE panel proportions, rather than Rebels TIE panel proportions, for both the Imperial TIE and the Mining Guild TIE.)

 

You and @jasonfry are the closest I get to official Star Wars writers since I can't just run across you guys at conventions since I live in the land down under (Australia).

Just glad to get a reply regardless.

Maybe you guys will get the chance one day to do something with these ships in official works

 

That is kind where I am at on the 2nd ship...600m Dreadnought analog...on the 3rd I would say 850-900m Light Destroyer....just because there is that gap in the Rebel Fleet. It is either Mon Cal cruisers for frigates and corvettes.

 

Lot's of great Fleet Junkie goodness in Alphabet Squadron! Some of the best written, best executed starfighter battles I have read in ages. Seriously, top notch Stackpole/Allston-class stuff. A book that uses all five canonical Rebel/NR fighters from this period exceptionally well, showcasing their respective strengths and weaknesses. I'm particularly happy with how the B-wing was used, it always felt more like a tough fighter/bomber than some slow ordnance carrier.

As a fan of the Acclamator-class, it's nice to the see the NR utilize captured designs. Hera's flagship, the Lodestar, is a logical use for an old Republic design like that. I think what I appreciate most is that in this early period (+/- 2 months post-Endor), the NR is still basically fielding whatever it can get it's hands on. Those shiny new Starhawks and MC85 heavy cruisers are probably just going into production at this point. I was also pleased to the idea of captured NR Star Destroyers. The new canon went the opposite direction of the Legends, with the NR preferring to scrap most Imperial ships. However, few know at least a handful are in NR service at this point, crewed with defectors from the Empire who were appalled by Operation Cinder.

--Adm. Nick