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

I knew those designs looked familiar, but I couldn't place it.

 

Oh, I like that as a retcon. I'd been thinking we just don't have a generic Tagge ship that's not a big pointy or a specialised design, and retconning the type as a pre-Endor design is perfect...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

The TIE bomber's missile launcher being retconned into a viewport came from Rebels, not the Haynes manual:

Spoiler

The manual probably refers to this variant when it mentions the "improvised bomber-shuttles", although in the episodes these are probably meant to be regular TIE bombers (even though both pods have seats and the corridor is empty to allow passengers to move between them).

 

Yeah, it took me a fair amount of staring at the picture before I figured out why they seemed familiar. And in fairness, looking closely they aren't drawn consistently which would make identification harder.

Indeed.

Plus, I always liked that design as the empire's big cargo ship and was a bit sad that the rebels/bad batch container ship seems to have replaced it, so it being TaggeCo's main ship is a good home for it now.

 

Nice to see. Which makes me think of the controversy that semi-regularly comes up of fan designs showing up in various Marvel series. Seems like a better option for Marvel artists is to mine old Dark Horse material - LFL owns all of that stuff outright anyway plus old time fans get the thrill of seeing obscure ships recanonized. I remember not liking the art on Dark Empire way back when it first came out (mainly the funky colours) but looking over things the ship designs and the sheer number of new ships thrown in were really impressive. Lots to toss in an issue here and there. THAT'S how we get our MC90!!

 

My guess is that the Raddus was disarmed when it was decommisioned, as having a fully armed heavy warship would be seen as breaking the Military Disarmament Act. So I think it's entirely possibly that the MC85 is a lot more heavily armed than the Raddus was
.
The Military Disarmament Act would also likely impact the construction of more Starhawks and MC85s, which means we may only see ones which began or completed construction before it was enacted. Some or most of these are likely already decommisioned by the time of the tv shows, as even the flagship (Dawn of Tranquility/Raddus) of the home fleet was decommisioned early into its service - we really need more info on the Raddus as we don't know when it was commissioned, how long it was in service, or even when it was acquired by the Resistance.

The bombing scenes from ESB is a bit over the place with the bombs locations. On the scene where the bombers are heading towards the camera, the left bomber's bombs appear to be either coming from the ordnance pod, or coming from the chute (for a couple of frames at the end a bomb is seen clearly leaving the chute), but the right bomber's bombs appear to be coming from either beside the chute, or from the ordnance pod itself.
The scene where we are looking down on the bombers the bombs appear to be coming from either the ordnance pod/chute or the centre section.
The bombing scenes start at the 3:25 mark in this video.

Long Snoot already mentioned it but the viewport is from Rebels. The ordnance pod was first seen to have crew space in Homecoming and we see more of it in The Antilles Extraction (I'd completely forgotten that they used one in this episode). Both pods are connected by a short corridor and have enough room for a few people.

I'm not sure if I really like the ordnance pod being manned (I don't mind it having more than one crew member), partially because it leaves less space for munitions, and partially because it reduces the separation between the two pods - having the two pods separate means that if something goes wrong in the ordnance pod there is more chance for the pilot to survive. There is also the problem that the corridor connecting the two pods wouldn't work as depicted, as on the movie model the centre section where it connects to the pods isn't as tall as the Rebels version - basically it would be crawling height only.

At least with the more advanced or bigger TIE variants it can be explained as them having additional power generators - so they don't need to have as large a wings - but this still leaves the TIE Interceptor which doesn't add any additional structures for extra components. I do have some theories about the TIE Interceptor and it using some clever engineering to get it's performance:

• The smaller wings reduce its weight making it lighter than a standard TIE; giving it better thrust to weight ratio
  
• Moving the lasers to the wings clears space inside the cockpit for additional components like a larger fuel tank or even a power generator. The lasers may also be less energy intensive than a standard TIEs as they don't necasserily have to fire in burst like the standard TIEs can - looking at ROTJ I noticed the TIE Interceptor and Fighter both put out a similar number of shots to each other, with Interceptor firing single shots and the Fighter firing in burst.
• It could have Ion engines that are more energy efficient, or alternatively it could burn more fuel to make up for the reduction in solar panel size.

There is also the possibility it has much more advanced tech than the standard TIE, but if it does there isn't much stopping that tech from being integrated back into the TIE fighter.

 

So, now there are four major Tagge ships in NU Canon:
1. Returned Modular Taskforce Cruisers
2. Acquisitor
3. Donut-like smaller ships, somewhat resembling Juggernaut-class from Alien.

Spoiler

4. Ships from the first story arc

Spoiler

 

Well, I do think the plagiarism issues have usually been the result of careless google search rather than intentional thefts of fan designs, but yeah there are so many existing designs I would love to see back, so it would be cool if the artists were given some big book of existing designs to tap into when they need something.

And concept art for that matter - lots of cool designs that never saw the light of day and yet would work great in the setting. The High Republic is doing to this to some degree and I like it, so I hope it catches on - though even then they seem to be sticking to the movie art, and while that alone is a treasure trove there are a lot of cool video game art designs out there as well.

A pretty good selection for a corporation mostly appearing in one line of comics.

 

Yikes. I'd never noticed that properly and completely forgotten it. Going to have to rewatch those episodes to see how they handle the idea of a corridor between the pods, in particular...

I think it's got a different function - the tall freighter is a glorified truck cab, and in age-of-sail terms, it's the equivalent of a short-range bulk-cargo type like a collier or Dutch fluyt, whereas the big Tagges might be more like a treasure galleon or East Indiaman with its long voyages and high-value cargo...

Am I allowed to grumble about the fact its flight-deck is the most important part of the design...?

Also, considering how rubbish the MG-100 and K-wing are, whoever the Y-wing back in production knew what they were doing...

"... it's not a navy, sir... it's just... snubfighters..."

Aye, that one moment where the bomb seems to come from the underslung greeblie is quite suggestive, but it's too ambiguous overall for me to make a confident screen-canon extrapolation (okay, I'm liking the idea that the chute is further forward, because it fits the way I think the type should work)...

I'm with you on the corridor not seeming to work with the movie version, but I can't really comment on this unless I rewatch the episodes.

I'm still very keen on the pre-reboot idea that the whole purpose of the TIE is that it doesn't carry conventional power-generation tech - the panels provide the energy it uses, so it lacks the fuel constraints and weight penalties of a fighter like the X-wing, though in the process it also lacks deflectors (the GFFA equivalent of the ultra-lightweight Zero)...

I personally like the idea of advanced tech being gradually rolled back to the basic chassis with the Interceptor, which I think was the design intention - the Advanced, Bomber and Interceptor are using fancier pannel arrays which provide more energy - though the straight-wing type might persist because the basic design is simpler to produce and maintain...

To be fair, they have been showing up since the 1970s!!

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Posting for good ole' times sake.

RE: Starhawks and Mon Calamari cruisers in the New Republic Navy

For starters, I happen to love the Starhawk AND the plethora of Mon Cala ships that the NRDF fields. We have a total of FOUR Starhawks that are canon- the namskae Starhawk prototype, Concord, Amity, and Unity. Of which, by the time of the Galactic Concordance, only the Unity remains. So from a replacement standpoint, the Starhawk was IMO never intended to supplant the Mon Cala hulls in NRDF service.

It is telling that the even larger MC85 cruiser also seems to have had a very limited production run. They saw service just prior to Jakku, only to be quickly mothballed or relegated to member navies shortly after the Concordance. The Dawn of Tranquility/Raddus was lost, but we see around 6-7 of them in the Citizen's Fleet at Exegol. Again, pointing to the large, powerful, and crew intensive MC85's having a short naval career as well.

In my mind, the NRDF probably only fielded maybe a dozen total combined Starhawks/MC85's. Designed to service as flagships, centerpieces of larger fleets, etc.

Which brings us back to the more standard Mon Cala hulls. While not canon, I think that given the sheer number of MC95's we see at Exegol, we can assume that these cruisers are almost certainly a post-Concordance vessel (or at least they didn't start appearing in numbers until then). Unlike the MC90 of Legends, I am willing to be that the New Republic wanted a new cruiser that was less crew intensive, and almost certainly less heavily armed. I think it is safe to assume that given the preponderance of MC95 variants that this cruiser line was affordable and marketed to both the NRDF and Republic member worlds. If we assume it had a long production run in peace time, it would explain why so many were still in service at Exegol.

Now, I can hand wave away the comparative lack of MC80 and MC80A as being lower counts due to being mostly in Rebel service.

HOWEVER.

The HUGE number of MC75 cruisers/variants at Exegol needs a good explanation. OOU, it is clear that they had a modern digital asset from Rogue One and they used it in TROS. But, what would be a good reason for this cruiser to be more common than their MC80 and MC80A cousins? I could think of several plausible ones, but the fact remains that this cruiser is super common because of it being a newer digital asset.

Hell, the MC95 only exists because they needed a cruiser for Rise of the Resistance and they decided to kitbash a Home One model. Which in turn meant that this modern digital asset was also available for TROS.

Anyways, always fun to muse about stuff like this.

--Adm. Nick

 

It's possible! Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if when the New Republic and Mon Calamari commissioned the MC95 line that they were smart enough to make them easily upgradable. Sure, the baseline models in the NRDF and PSF's of the member worlds are probably lightly armed, but I bet they are easily modifiable.

--Adm. Nick

 

Oh no. So we're back to "the Republic was technically demilitarized, but the local sector fleets were armed to the teeth".

 

This is what I am thinking...PSFs were not standardized. You would have wealthy and powerful worlds with the best of the best including the largest warships to protect themselves and their interest. On the other side you would have worlds that could not afford to do that and had a handful of older ships and fighters.

Not necessarily all of them.

 

So, here's the thing. Mon Mothma's decision to cut military spending my 90% once the war with the Empire ended is often misconstrued. Yes, her plan was to reduce the spending (at peak wartime levels, when the NR is churning our exponentially growing numbers of new warships) of the NRDF and remodel it into a "peacekeeping force" sounds rather extreme. But folks overlook the other part of her plan.

"Democracy is not in need of defense. People are. And it's why we'll keep that ten percent. A peacekeeping force. The rest of our efforts will go toward training the militaries of other worlds."

So, regardless of whether Mon overstepped on reducing the NRDF, she ensured that the member worlds of the New Republic had well trained navies. Yes, that is harder to coordinate and maintain vs. a single federal navy. But, as we saw at Exegol, when the chips were down and the galaxy had a moment to step up or live in darkness for a millenia, they stepped up. 16,000 ships.

So it paid off in the end. Not saying I'd advocate for the same thing for New Republic 2.0, but is worth pointing out.

--Adm. Nick

 

Which nicely aligns with the Populist faction (versus the Centrists that advocated for a strong central authority) as depicted in Bloodlines. Mothma isn't part of the Senate at the time (I don't think) but it is easy to see her position as being part of the precursors to the Populist factions views of decentralized authrority (in this case decentralized military power). I think the Populist faction is most likely carrying on Mothma's ideas (what with them being depicted primarily as the "good" faction of the Senate in Bloodlines - in so far as the Centrists go on to join the First Order anyway.

The idea of decentralized militaries leads back to the question of how heavily armed the ships that made up the fleets would be. Here, I agree that ships built pre or right after Jakku like the Raddus probably were more heavily armed upon completion but stripped before leaving the New Republic navy. I like the idea of an MC95 as more advanced and customizable but less heavily armed in standard configuration - I think it is very likely we will not get any official confirmation, but as you say, fun speculating (the so far theoretical MC90 I will hold in my heart as the last of the wartime conceived cruisers)

 

Oh, excellent point, that makes a lot of sense. And nice sailing ship comparison.

Technically I suppose, though there have definitely been big gaps between their major appearances.

Perhaps even more strange is how Squadrons used the MC75 as the main new republic capital ship, even though I am pretty sure they have MC80 models.

Course, I am remembering that the early model Mon Cal cruisers were civilian ships modified for war, so it is possible that after the war many returned to such roles - so it might be that the MC75s were more likely to be demilitarized, and thus survived the war until Exogal. Or perhaps it is the other way around and they were more likely to remain military ships and thus volunteer for Exogal...not the most air tight explanation but better than nothing.

Come to think of it, I wonder if the number of MC95 variants might, in universe, be because it is a return to the variable designs of old, with civilian as military roles, after the standardized and militarized MC85s and MC90s. (And MC80Bs)

Yeah, I have to admit I am also frustrated by how often this gets discussed while leaving out the bit about helping build up local militaries. That the new republic fleet was more decentralized than disarmed.

I mean, it does have the obvious downside of risking any internal conflicts turning into Clone Wars 2: No Actual Clones edition, but that isn't what happened and isn't what most of the criticism of her policy out of universe talks about.

It also gets left out that even the much reduced New Republic fleet is, by all accounts, still pretty powerful, quite possibly stronger than the First Order fleet if one discounts Starkiller. I mean, there is a reason that the First Order tried to keep off the NR's radar until Starkiller was fully ready, avoiding confrontation even a few months before hand - heck, even Hux makes a comment about the New Republic's "cherished" fleet which implies its existence is a particular sore spot for the First Order and something the New Republic takes pride in.

Though ironically I got the impression Leia was more a Centrist in her policies and was with the populists out of personal loyalty to Mon Mothma and dislike of the imperial apologist branch of the Centrists.

 

True, the TFA Visual Dictionary says that essentially the New Republic Defence Fleet outnumbered the First Order's before Starkiller. And the Home Fleet was spread across the entire Hosnian system and ready to respond at a moment's notice. The High Command would likely have coordinated with other small fleet groups spread across major systems as well. When that was cut off and the Home Fleet (the largest portion of their Navy) was destroyed, these smaller fleet groups were essentially at the whim of surviving governments. No doubt most of them went into hiding with local defence fleets waiting for a chance to strike but the First Order had already taken control of galactic comm relays and got them isolated. No doubt they didn't know Starkiller was gone and Leia's Resistance was still out there until Lando told them everything through whatever he did prior to Exegol. Won't be too surprised if a sizable number of those Mon Cal ships were actually the New Republic Defence Fleet remnants.

 

In the expanded novelization of TLJ by Jason Fry, he makes clear that surviving NRDF task forces are basically scattered among the various homeworlds of the surviving senators. You could take the cynical view that the senators were only focused on their own worlds, OR the view that given the complete decapitation of the New Republic government and military high command that this was the PRUDENT thing to go. Preserve what's left of the NRDF to augment local PSF's of member worlds.

And yes, I am 1000% of the opinion that there were surviving NRDF warships at Exegol.

--Adm. Nick

 

Makes sense. We think so negatively of the New Republic per Bloodline but at the same time, it wouldn't surprise me if they saw Leia as the Cassandra of their time. She was right all along. But now they feel it's too late. Wouldn't surprise me if Xiono thought the same way after Hosnian Prime was destroyed.

 

Grumble away.
Talking flight decks and hangars I wonder how extensive the MC85 ones are?
Based on the movie and ISC the ship has two protected fighter hangars and two other large hangars on the sides; one on the port side during the opening sequence of the movie (it appears to be somewhere in front of the port fighter hangar), and another larger one on starboard side (this is positioned lower than the other hangars) when they evacuate the ship.
The two side hangars appear to be indirectly linked (implying a large internal hangar system) as the shuttles arrive in the port side hangar, but later in the movie they are seen in the starboard hangar. They are likely protected by an armoured door when not in use, as they are only visible during certain scenes in the movie.

I think the MG-100 has a bit of a bad rep. The only time we see it used is in a role it wasn't designed for (it's a space to ground bomber, not an anti-ship bomber), and even then it performed reasonably well with many of them taking dozens of shots without major damage. They only really failed when one of them had a TIE crash into the bomb bay, just after the bombs were armed causing the bombs to detonate. This took out all but one bomber, but could have easily been avoided if they weren't flying so close to each other, or if they had delayed activating the bombs.

Another source for the underslung greeble being a bomb chute is Rebels. Homecoming is a good example as we see bombs being launched from it when they attack the carrier.

This image give an idea on the difference between the Rebels and movie TIE bomber.

The middle section isn't as tall on the movie Bomber and the bottom part doesn't connect directly to either pod, leaving not enough room for a walk-able corridor.
It also looks like they used the cockpit window of a TIE and unmodified wings of the TIE Advanced when they modeled it.
The other major difference, which can't easily be seen here, is that the bomb chute is mounted on the front half of the ordnance pod, compared to the movie Bomber where it is mounted on the rear.

As far as I know the reboot TIEs are the same as the pre-reboot, in that they get their power from the panels. The only mention I know of an additionally power generation being used is as an upgrade to the standard TIE to fix power issues with the lasers during a prolonged battle (Haye's manual).
My mentioning of power generators was more an attempt to explain how more advanced TIEs can power extra components, like shield generators, hyperdrives and additional lasers, while also having improved performance over a standard TIE.

There is some indication of advances in tech being rolled into the standard TIE. The Haye's manual mentions that the TIE's Ion engines are upgraded at some point from SFS P-s3 to P-s4s, which have a 15% better fuel efficiency and upgraded heat exchangers.
I also like the idea that the First Order TIE came about from them integrating newer tech from advance tie models back into the standard TIE, as a way to cut costs, and eventually they kept upgrading and refining its design until we got the TIEs we see in the sequel movies.

That's the general impression I got, but it's likely that the fleets were limited in, size, armaments and what type of ships they could use, as they still had to respect the Galactic Concordance.

My guess would be that early into the war the MC75s were superseded by MC80s and ended up in defensive roles like planetary defence. At the end of the war these ships were still in good condition, but unneeded by the NR, so they were sold or given to local planetary defence forces where many stayed until TROS.
As for why the MC80 aren't seen. I think it can be explained by some being damaged enough during the final battles of the war that they were deemed easier to scrap for materials and spare parts than fix them for sale. The rest either were mothballed or stayed in service until they were eventually superseded by the MC90/95, and because they were technologically inferior to these new ships, there was little demand for them from local defence forces, so most of them ended up as scrap.

Of course, as you pointed out, the real reason is that there isn't a movie quality asset out there for the MC80s. Hopefully at some point they'll make models for the winged and wingless versions (I really want a wingless version, as it is the most underrepresented Mon Cal ship outside of ROTJ), and while they are at it, maybe they can make an ISD2 and accurate Home One as well.

 

While this is PURELY speculation on my part, I do wonder if the surviving NRDF task forces and even some member world PSF's decided to return to their "Rebel roots" and scatter. Considering the shock of Hosnian Prime and the fact that the entire period between TFA and TLJ is +/- a year, it makes sense that it would take time for the various resistance groups to form up. It says in the new Star Wars Encyclopedia series that Leia was in contact with other rebel groups across the galaxy post-TLJ, so I'm honestly not surprised.

We know that many major worlds fell during that period. Corellia, for example. Mon Cala falls a bit later, but only after they allow their defense force to join the Resistance. Either way, given how much had to happen in that year period and how small the First Order was (hence the need for the Sith Eternal Fleet), they were definitely unable to fully occupy the galaxy OR hunt down all these hidden fleets of various rebel groups/resistance cells.

--Adm. Nick