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

As am I. The VenStar has long been my favourite of the dagger ships. I love the aesthetic - something about the "notches" on the sides, for lack of a better term, and its hybridization of Republic-era sleekness and Imperial-era ruggedness. I also like the thought that went into its role, with the design choices regarding the hangars, and its complementary relationship with the Acclamator (fighter carrier and troop carrier, but both able to hold their own ship-to-ship). The thing missing from the Republic's capital ship roster as shown on screen, in my opinion, is a dedicated large brawler with a focus on ship-to-ship combat, a role never really filled in the prequels or TCW. There was a fan-created ship I quite liked (I think it was called the Legacy-class or some such, if memory serves) that seemed designed with this in mind and looked aesthetically like a hybrid of VenStar and ImpStar.

 

I'm just upset we never saw any Victory-class Star Destroyers in ROTS or TCW.

 

And Gladiators....would have been interesting to see a fleet with Venators, Victorys, Gladiators and Acclamators.

 

Well I guess the Victory-class looks rather indistinguishable from the Imperial-class to the average moviegoer, and from the look of it George Lucas didn't want OT Imperial ships in ROTS. I wanted to see the Victory-class back then too, but I think I'm happy with what we got.

 

With all the recent prequel stuff, it would be nice if we got to see the Mandator-I, especially with IV in canon. Although certain comics are ripping off fan designs for a Mandator, so guess that counts (not in a good way unfortunately).

Its too bad RotS didn't have any Acclamators. I think? It seemed like the Republic had shifted over purely to Venators. Well, guess they'd rather focus on one model for filming rather than include Acclamators as well.

 

I guess I somehow hadn't consciously realized that there were no Acclamators in the Battle of Coruscant. On the other hand I kind of don't remember them too much in TCW but my daughters and I are doing a rewatch currently and, hey, there they are, side by side with Venators and Arquitens (Arquitenses?) all the time, so maybe over time my brain switched those two general playing fields around.

 

I think Acclamators were more common in the early seasons.

 

Acclamators do show up in Seasons 5 and 6, At least during the scenes on Coruscant at the big Republic Base and alongside resupplying Venators at Ringo Vinda.

 

Fair enough - it's been a couple of years since I watched much TCW.

 

I remember early on, during the Ryloth arc the Acclamators were part of the operation to free Ryloth. However TCW only used them as transport ships. There was one scene where they were trying to land but were shot down by enemy fire. That and occasional appearances as background in a fleet.

I remember the first Tartakovsky Clone Wars cartoon used them as warships, but then there wasn't that much other media back then. By the third season the cartoon used Venators too. Too bad we don't get cartoons like that anymore (even with the run-up to IX).

 

Found this neat little size comparison on Deviantart.

I've always wondered how the NSD's designers managed to pack ISD-rivaling firepower, armor and fighter complement onto such a compact hull; the best explanation I've heard was that it was a heavily combat-oriented ship, trading consumable and infantry capacity for heavy weapons, armor and shield generators. I assume this would have compromised versatility, while heavily restricting endurance to the point where NSDs required constant resupply when not in combat. Hence NSDs operated mainly as part of a larger fleet, while ISDs would often deploy alone.

 

I love the New Class ships but would love to see official art for the Sacheen-class light escort, Defender-class assault cruiser, Majestic-class heavy cruiser, Hajen-class fleet tender, Agave-class picket ship and Warrior-class gunship. Also want to know where the hell they were during the Yuuzhan Vong War!

 

(Wanders in like an old, aged Fleet Junkie)

You whippersnappers don't know how good you have it. In my day, crappy, low-res pics from Cracken's Threat Dossier were what we had.

(Wander back into room)

--Adm. Nick

 

You tell 'em Nick. That is even if they gave us a picture or them.

 

This is pretty much repeating what I've been saying, but I'm gonna have to say...versatility is bad. The Nebula would be a heck of a lot faster and more maneuverable than the ISD simply by dint of being smaller. Or alternatively, the ISD could be a whole lot deadlier if it weren't trying to pull double duty as a troop transport. If you need starfighter support, well that's what these things are for.

 

Not having art for the Ranger-class gunship, Mediator-class battle cruiser, Strident-class Star Defender, Proficient-class light cruiser, Republic-class cruiser, Marl-class heavy freighter or Rejuvenator-class Star Destroyer nor official art for the Galactic-class battle carrier and Mon Calamari heavy carrier bothers me as much as the naming practices of "cruiser", "carrier", "frigate", "corvette" or "gunship" throughout the Del Rey Legends timeline.

We Fleet Junkies are really put out.

To make matters worse, Canon is doing it -- Starhawk-class battleships, Corellian assault frigates, Sullustan ring-ships and Alderaanian escort frigates among the chief culprits at the moment.

 

I always wanted to see some good concept art for most of those ships ^

Also, no love for Bothan Assault Cruisers? Poor Bothans.

I kind of wanted to see like individual species navies being used more in the New Republic. Mon Cal, Bothan, Wookiee and other races vessels being shown alongside the NR Navy ships.

 

There is somewhat decent art for this on....
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bothan_Assault_Cruiser

 

I could also see the Nebulas being more efficient by dint of simply being newer, and perhaps designed with an emphasis on efficiency to save cost while the larger imperial military budget didn't mind a little pork spending.

As for versatility vs specialization - when operating as part of a larger fleet, specialization would definitely be better...but we see a fair bit of capital ships operating alone, Star Trek style, in which case overspecializing could lead to big vulnerabilities. This is a galactic government with more inhabited planets than big ships to control them, it might be expected for a single star destroyer to patrol a big stretch of space by itself and thus be ready for all kinds of mission types.

And I can see an argument for not putting all your eggs in one basket and having the fleet lose an entire military capability because one ship went down.

 

SW around that time tended to keep saying that new SD designs aimed for smaller ships yet still retaining the power of the ISD. To me, I always pictured it as simply newer tech and just leaving the large crew complement for planetary operations. Like in my head, I think from the NR angle they weren’t going to conquer planets and if troops were needed then dedicated troop ships were deployed and from the Empires angle they thought they didn’t have the vast Imperial war machine that they once did so why have a large troop compliment. Least that’s how I always thought of it. Like the Turbulent was meant to be smaller, wasn’t it? And the Pellaeon class I dont think was that much bigger either in the Legacy era.

Whereas the Sequel Trilogy for the FO went the other way. Everything got even bigger like the Resurgent.

 

Agreed.

Everything with art by Badeaux is brilliant - he just has this capacity to hit the right vibe for Star Wars comics, like a combination between Tom Jung's original ANH poster and Salvador Larroca....

Merging the exchange here into a single quote...

The one serious attempt to give a Venator something resembling the big capacity claimed in ICS comes in Battlefront, which depicts a T-shaped flight-deck linking the bow doors and side hatches, with a total of 35 hangar modules opening off (fourteen pairs flanking the main flight-deck in the forward hull, seven more opening aft behind the side hatches) - this creates a total of 378 deck-park slots for V-wings or Eta-2s (210 in the side hangars, 168 on the open deck), and at least one more deck-parking row towards the bows pushes the total count to within two slots of the 384 ships of this type allocated in ICS - but that is only a "fly-off" configuration that has no room for maintenance, and doesn't allow much room for heavy Incoms or for gunships. As a practical proposition with a deck park inside the hangars, 192 small fighters, or 36-40 gunships or big Incoms seems about plausible.

And this does not conform to the layout of the hangar seen in either Ep.III or The Clone Wars...

An alternative possibility is that the Venator has hold space for disassembled fighters.

Personally speaking, though, I'm very much in favour of the typical Venator having a considerably less fighters than ICS states (for one thing, we see multiple hull configurations - the TCW cartoon gives two successive version withs a full-length hangar, the first of which normally appears to carry around forty fighters, the second and more sophisticated version has precisely sixty slots, while the "movie" version from Ep.III has a third arrangement and may not have a full-length hangar bay at all - just eight side-bays are visible flanking a flight deck beneath a small topside hach, which can be tight-packed with V-wings or Eta-2s, slots for 48 of which are visible in the film, but only carry more modest numbers of the larger types).

I wonder if the Venator was vaguely intended as a Victory, but reinterpreted because the design ended up being so different - huge hull notches, twin command tower, four engines and an Acclamator-style hyperdrive vane.

The Acclamator has an angular and proportionally deep underside that is very much designed for troop-landing, and low-sitting sublight engines, which look a little odd in level flight, but give a real sense of "lift" while taking off - which is why I like to emphasie how much the character of the ship changes if you modify the hull into the classic keel-and-capture-bay configuration of Leveler (and in so doing, you probably need to lift the engines up to the centreline and a little outwards, too, because the "depth" below the centreline where they're installed disappears - but insofar as the engines are shown in ICS to be easily dismountable for replacement/maintenance, this doesn't seem like an implausible idea, either).

I do actually have a lot of love for the Venator too, mind you.

I think this is a combination of a lot of small details:

* The Nebula isn't carrying ten thousand troops and their landing barges, AT-ATs and other vehicles and equipment. That takes up a huge space
* The Nebula probably has compact fighter-hangar arrangements - according to Cracken's Threat Dossier, the type is designed for a mix of Defender fighters and K-wings; Defenders are ultra-compact, smaller than the V-wing or the Eta-2, while the Black Fleet books depict K-wings being incredibly tightly deck-parked, and both types are sublight designs, implying easier maintenance and a smaller ground crew and less spare parts (and no astromechs), but a limited mission profile of defensive cover and short-range attack runs; the Nebula can swap these for hyperdrive types like the E-wing and A-wing, but deck space and numbers might be tighter.
* The Nebula has a crew of about 7,000, while the ISD has six times that number. The why is never fully explained, but the number is part of the explanation.
* The ISD carries "consumables" for between four and twelve times as long as the Nebula, depending on source - this is magnified by the fact that the ISD carries about six times the crew.
* By extension, the Nebula relies on tenders for resupply, and possibly also for spare parts and specialist techs.
* The Nebula also depends heavily on other ships for tactical support. While the Majestic-class heavy cruiser carries a full suite of anti-starfighter lasers, the Nebula is statted with precisely none, and relies for point defence on a screen of cruisers, frigates, and gunships.

One other thing worth mentioning is a difference in doctrine between the Empire and the Rebellion - the WEG material emphasised the idea that Imperial turbolasers were not particularly accurate, and Mon Calamari cruisers, although only packing a smaller battery of medium-calibre weapons, compensated somewhat with greater accuracy. This system was perpetuated in the smaller Majestic-class heavy cruiser, which is designed to ougun an ISD at long ranges even though the ISD has three times the number of turbolasers.

At closer ranges, that difference in accuracy becomes less relevant, which is where the Nebula comes in. The Nebula carries 80% of the turbolaser armament of the ISD-II, a hefty firepower for any NR ship, and heavier shields and armour. I would infer - and this is what I think was the intention in the Black Fleet novels and Cracken's Threat Dossier - that this is a close-range brawler designed to fight an ISD (or a pair of VSDs) in slugging fights, and the only elements of the ship's loadout which are superfluous for that role are the K-wings. There isn't even anti-starfighter flak.

Another question is just why the ISD carries such a huge crew - perhaps the ISD has three full watches of techs capable of handling all the ship's running requirements, whereas the Nebula's crew might include a large proportion of specialist personnel who get roused out of their bunks when required? The reference in Cracken's Threat Dossier to the role of the ISD as a command platform also contains another hint at the difference - there may simply be a lot more "rear area" personnel aboard an ISD.

On the other hand, something that I was pondering recently before this particular question came up... is the Empire running a recruitment drive or conscription system specifically to put huge numbers of people through the military, and reshape Galactic society by those means? Is this more about social engineering than practical military requirements?

I'd always taken the Rejuvenator-class from TUF to be based on the Rejuvenator in VP, which is just an ISD hull with upgraded systems.

A Ranger is, in loose terms, a Corellian gunship (WARFARE, p. 63), so block engines aft and narrow hull with side wedges and a cockpit at the front (whether you think the Warrior/Agave should be part of this tradition too is up to you, but that was probably K-Mac's intention in using the "gunship" designation, in which case the Ranger is simply a flak-oriented Warrior).

The Imperial Proficient is strange - the stats and engines and class-designation of a Carrack on a hull that's 850m rather than 350m. I almost want to call that a typo.

And the Strident is a continuity tangle. The impression is of a big but minimal ship (I have a clear mental image that has absolutely no basis in canon ).

As to the naming practices, I think the general rule is to imagine the movie types or something similar - so a "frigate" is normally a Nebulon-B, a "corvette" is a hammerhead, and a "gunship" follows the Corellian layout. Whereas a "fleet tender" is the New Class escort hull-type... whatever that is.

Had the web stuff on SUDUVU continued after WARFARE, I'm pretty sure we'd have given you guys a lot of those ships.

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Tidbit for the day: The Rebel Files states that the Empire was still manufacturing Venator-class star destroyers in the time 14-17 years after the formation of the Empire.

 

The Dawn of Rebellion sourcebook states that every Arquitens-class light cruiser that survived the clone wars, while upgraded to imperial standards, was eventually scrapped in favour of newer, more reliable ones. I'd guess that's also the case for Venators and perhaps GAVs too, like AT-TEs and AT-APs (also stated to still be in production).
This could also explain why we see so many being scrapped on Bracca while they would keep being in service for a while.

 

Newer, more reliable ships of the same class? I could buy that.

 

Yep, same class.
I'm wondering what sort of updating imperial Venators received, presumably some internal modifications to more easily accomodate TIEs (the usual racks?).