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

Thanks guys, I think that’s the Sentinel mystery solved! Come to think of it why was it called a Sentinel rather than given a greek alphabet name?
I guess they hadnt established a naming convention yet

Wow, I did not realise how much the interdictor on the front cover of the essential guide to vehicles and vessels matches the design in rebels, right down to the those to those little red lights!


Think I also seen something amusing about the Immobilizer 418! One of the main differences between the original interdictor design and the Immobilizer 418 is those prongs or antenna sticking out the front of the Immobilizer and the Vindicator. Looking at that Doug Chiang sketch, I wonder if when interpreting that design to create the Immobilizer they took the gridlines sticking out the front of the ship to be an actual feature

Spoiler

 

Yeah, as far as I know the "greek alphabet rule" started with the Theta shuttle from ROTS and then continued with the Eta, Nu, Zeta etc.; before that the Lambda name came from the shape (not unlike an X/A/Y-Wing fighter) but the presence of tri-winged shuttles in The Clone Wars might make it a coincidence in-universe now. Old EU sources also stated that the Sentinel came after the Lambda, so it makes sense that the original craft would be the one named after the shape.

 

Who wants to talk about the Mon Cala ships from the "Mutiny at Mon Cala" and "Hope Dies" arcs?

Seriously, were the worst designs ever for the four new types. We got next to nothing info on them and when the Assault on the Mako-Ta Ship Docks went ahead. We got only one ship named -- Hera's Geist (which makes her ship and Lajaie's ship the MC80 Geist-type Star Cruiser I suppose). No name for Willard's cruiser, Lajaie's cruiser or even what poor Hudsol's ship looked like. If I had my two cents, they'd have just been variants of the MC75, MC80A, MC80 winged Liberty types, MC80 wingless Liberty types and heck, maybe the two easily identifiable background ships from ROTJ that EG Henry has dubbed Mon Calamari corvette and a Mon Calamari frigate.

 

Of course they were bad, they were drawn by Salvador Larroca.

 

There was this thing: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Delta-class_JV-7_escort_shuttle

 

There was a Gamma-class before that:

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Gamma-class_Light_Personnel_Carrier

first appearance - June 1992, in the adventure The Abduction:

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/The_Abduction

 

Totally forgot about these two! The Gamma might not have had the classic tri-winged configuration that names the Lamdba, yet the Delta (plus another one that comes to mind, the https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Alpha-class_Xg-1_Star_Wing/Legends) was indeed guilty of that and it predates the Theta-class shuttle by quite a while.

 

Quick reply...

The Gamma-class shuttle originated in 1989's The Imperial Sourcebook, one of the most detailed depictions of an off-screen ship in STAR WARS continuity, along with a throwaway reference to a Delta-class design.

I'm going to have to spam the thread with my longpost analysus of all the Greek-name designs, amn't I...?

@FiveFireRings, @A8T - yeah, figuring this out has been real fannish fun, I hope the rest of you're having as much of a blast...

@Daneira - Larocca can do way better than this, that's what really annoys me (huge fan of his work with Claremont on X-Treme X-Men).

Sinre - you would!! Do you have a page reference for that?!

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Good point - I was thrown by Wookieepedia's claim that the Gamma Class Shuttle's first appearance was in Jedi Search. Maybe that was only first appearance in a story, with, as you say, it being named and described in The Imperial Sourcebook?

 

Considering that the artists got lazy and just traced.

 

There were some interesting designs like the giant flying wing one. Would love to see Fractalsponge or EC Henry take this one on.

 

Wish it got named. Wish all of them got named. Lazy, lazy, lazy. Nothing to contribute. And without an Essential Guide for canon engagements, we will never know

Guess I'll have to do it myself and send the list over to Star Wars Sourcebooks on Facebook. Or we could ask the writers and illustrators if they bothered.

 

Yeah such a high detail take by ECHenry or Fractalsponge I wished for myself with this one.

I always imagined special functions for the large wing pods. Like a Mon Cal Interdictor Cruiser with Interdictor pods, but doubt they had anything like that. So maybe those are oversized detacheable escort ships? What else could they be? Or just a design variant with habitation pods for longrange travel and colonisation? Freight pods?

StarWarsSourcebooks from Fb is right here on TFN too if you need us, I am one of the Admins there

Intriguing.. then again, we already knew the Sith to predate 7000BBY Darklording... so lets wonder if it refers to...

a) .. the Sith Species actually?
b) .. Darksiders and Dark Jedi just called Sith in retrospective as the term became synonymous with that in later history?
c) .. Neither a) nor b) but someone else adopting the term Sith, be it through Killik Joinerhood or other origins of the term?
d) .. shocker, the Sith species never had that name always but adopted it and named itself after it/someone/something, and this is IT, the Sith that made an entire species rename itself in its honor. Their gods? Their ideal? Previous lords of them before their Jedi Lords?

 

The Sith (neither species, nor lords, nor order or cult, but whatever they originally were) once ruled the galaxy and as you said, are more an idea than a species, a cult or an order. That they got mostly attributed to such was a later aspect of history revision and lack of records of previous times to correct the picture one had of the distant past.

Now to something interesting (sorry after that I will return to fleet junkie mode!):

Sith'ari is synonymous with Chosen One. Maybe the Sith term is derived from this word and not the other way around, this word from the Sith species name? Did the species name themselves Sith after a Chosen One? Did they want to be a Chosen Species, the holy tribe so to speak? Are they the descendants of a previous Chosen One even?

The Sith use kittat, the Old Tongue is called ur-kittat in the TROS VD. A precurser to the Sith kittat as well as a precurser to Aurebesh and many other languages as Aurekfonts on twitter proved with his overview and on his github website. With the Old Tongue predating Aurebesh and the Sith once "having rules the galaxy" with the Old Tongue the pre-Basic/Aurebesh galaxy uniting tongue and writing system, this "Sith" that once ruled the galaxy are neither Sith species nor Dark Lords but actually the Sith'ari and his/her kind. A previous Chosen One's lineage and holy family with divine blood uniting and ruling the galaxy as Godkings, as Sith, Chosen by the Force. After their blood was diluted, their downfall and splintering of the galaxy in long forgotten lost times before the Rakata, Kwa, Gree, Sharu and others, the Old Tongue remained spread far and wide, and many roots that stem from them, carried still the name Sith proudly in memory of the golden age that was before. Last lifeline to bear this name would be the Sith Species and their Jedi Lords as well as few others you mentioned.

After the rise of the Je'daii Bendu of Tython, Ach-to, Jedha and elsewhere to take the lost Chosen bloodlines place in reuniting the galaxy, old Chosen bloodline and new would fatefully meet and merge as the Dark Lords tried to unite the past holy blood with the new, their own to become more, ultimately powerful. But did the Force intend that? Did it give a new Chosen bloodline to destroys the old? To merge with it? Any lineage intended ever at all? The rest is history.


Back to fleetjunkymode now...

While mostly discussing ships lately, how about galactic tactics and strategies of warfare and spacebattles? Most are handled like 2D gameboards by authors ignoring the 3D element. Likewise the galaxy map has many strategic points and not always are those accounted for by authors. Does this warrant Fleetjunkies or its own topic?

 

Yes, exactly that. The "Sources" box that follows is chronologically separate from the "Appearances" list, even if the sourcebook is framed from an in-universe POV. Though Wookieepedia isn't always accurate about these things, either...

Nice. Is that Larocca? I'm going to call that Mon Sal, if so...?

I have you now.

"Sith-backed uprisings" on the Outer Rim? Well, that's unexpected... but not insane, especially as this doesn't imply that the Sith are being overt (Abhean's in just the right place geographically, too).

On the one hand, that's what the First Order are... and on the other hand, I can see this sort of thing as deep background behind the hints at prior clandestine encounters between the Old Republic and the Dark Lords, before the Daragons show up... I'd just assumed that there was nothing before Ajunta Pall... but I'd happily revise that...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Some more looks at the TROS Mon Cala ships--I didn't even realize that there were variants of the Profundity in there too (I glimpsed models of the ship itself, but not the variants we see five minutes in, which I like a lot). In my headcanon these are those New Republic remnants that some hoped for, finally mustered into one place for Exegol...

 

Yes, there are quite a few new designs from those arcs. I'm more inclined to see MC-designations as architectures or principles of design, with letter suffixes to designate extrapolations (MC80A, supersized extrapolation of MC80 principles), and off-five/tens to designate deviations, e.g. MC40 to Howie Day's MC42, which deviates somewhat from the principles of the MC40.

Let's look at those others...



Look at that! Three not-Libertys One is smooth, one is lumpy, neither have the right number of engines, and the wings are set right in the middle on both rather than swept back. The lumpy version has a covering under its five engines, and has one variant without wings and a Profundity style underslung tower.

This lumpy ship is reminiscent of XWA's MC80:



The lumpy ship's profile, front and back is quite unlike the Liberty




It has distinctive MC80A like pods, too, which set it apart.

And then there are these two:




Now we just need Mel to make them....

 

@Sans_Fi look above! What do you think?

 

They certainly got a lot of mileage out of slightly altering the basic winged designs. And rescaling them also, I think? Home One types have appeared at assorted sizes in different issues (such as the last Mutiny of Mon Cala issue) or the Republic vs Executor. How big were H1s in the Battle of the Dreadnoughts fan video, though?

 

@Ton_G - some of those are very neat indeed. While some of them are obviously relatively rapid copy/pastes, there's been a sincere attempt to create a real diversity of designs and variants... even the "copies" tend to be a little tweaked.

I tend to think that each designation denotes a variaton of a specific set of key components, but that could be a hull type or a set of engineering systems (and perhaps an associated weapons/sensor package), alternatives that allow a fundamental variety of designs.

You're right enough on both points. And Ajunta Pal is called "blood heir" of Adas, which suggests an older connecton of some sort. The irony, of course, is that within this arrangement, the Old Republic is the successor state to the Infinite Empire...

Hmm, I wonder if "infinite" and "old" are synonyms here...

Abhean's - a, if not the, major RFS yard - is situated just before the Perlemian enters the Outer Rim - very much a forward position towards Tion and the Sith. Suggests that whoever placed Abhean there for ATLAS was paying attention to the backstory?

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Well we got Infinite and Galactic Empires... Ancient, Old, High, Galactic and New Republics...

Is it time for an Infinite Republic?

After all it still stands to question how much influence the Genoharadan really have on galactic politics...

Who pupetteers the puppetteers?