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

Spoiler

Hope that pirates' larger ships will participate in a confrontation with the NR forces and will not just serve as background during scenes in the station's hangar.

 

Those are really nice details, typically good work from Ryder Windham - Rigorra's palace is the one used as a base by Governor Beltane in Dark Empire II, and you can add his brother Groodo's orbital shipyard at Esseles, which is obviously meant to be the same one that ends up serving the Sector Group in The Far Orbit Project, which I mentioned just a few months ago. The implication is that all this is stuff that was taken over by the Empire and became their key Core infrastructure...

The question is, how did this affect actual control - do we imagine Rigorra sharing his palace with Beltane? Is there any reason to think Fondor didn't remain part of Sienar? And does this mean that Groodo also controls Damorian?!

Those are pretty neat, and again, typical Windham - I seem to recall that the Hasty Harpy in the Secret Missions series is nicely characterised as well...

Yeah, that's a typo, corrected already in my revised draft...

Ugh, another typo from me - SWAJ #14 has the Empire annouce the victory on 38:6:9, not as I said previously 38:5:7...

That's exactly the sort of thing I think is important...

Agreed. Maybe Shadows of the Empire has something more precise...?

You'll notice a pattern...

Do you have an alternative suggestion?

The ages seem pretty consistent and planned-out in the first half of the NJO - regardless, that's the sort of thing that I give priority to. I understand absolutely why ATLAS fitted its dates to the OOU timeline instead, but that approach just doesn't interest me...

Is there a specific clash of continuity, or just a lack of precise indications?

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Spoiler

Agreed, that would be fun for finale.

I mean, I know the kids are the focus and that limits how much time can be spent on the battle itself, but even just having it in the background as the kids do something would be enjoyable.

 

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Especially since it would be the first rather large-scale battle including NR forces in live-action format.

 

I pretty much put the Battle of Hoth at 38:6:8 GrS.

Just as I have Naboo around 3:4:19 GrS, Geonosis around 13:5:22 GrS, Coruscant at 16:5:20 GrS, Yavin at 35:3:7 GrS and Endor around 39:3:6 GrS.

 

That's nearly the same as me. 38:6:7 or 8 for Hoth. Yavin at 35:3:9 generally. And Endor sometime before day 9 of 39:3. At least, since the Atlas put it into third month.
Coruscant, meanwhile, is often said to have gone on for days.

As for the Rebel new year - they may not have shifted the month as well as the year, to be a 'start point'. Beyond that, it's unclear.

And with Mindor and JK1, the issue is mainly in what order they go in (although the Jedi Knight illustrated book heavily implies 11 months after Endor for the chapter at Milagro, in partnership with the Essential Chronology...)

 

I'm currently reading Planet of Twilight and now I have a puzzle.

What classes are the Borealis and the Adamantine? The former is a cruiser of some description, possibly a Mon Calamari ship while the latter is referred to as an escort cruiser, both blunt nosed and arrow-shaped.

 

Thanks to the early release of the new Star Wars Encyclopedia in the UK, we now know that the New Republic cruiser Vesper is a Defender-class cruiser built by the Mon Calamari shipyards!

Given that we see them also being built by Corellia in Ahsoka, I assume that the Defender-class is another joint Mon Cala-CEC design like the MC85 star cruiser.

--Adm. Nick

 

Well - that's another one to add to the ole 'Defender Project' from way back when, then...

I wonder if the old ATL fighter / Defender-type will also make a comeback...

Meanwhile, Rebelscale.com estimated Home One at 3.2 km in the footage. The Vesper may also be less than half that (1200-1524 m?)

 

Interesting question!

The two of them together are said to have enough firepower to discourage an attack by Moff Getelles, who has a fleet of actual Star Destroyers; Adamantine is described as a "blunt-nosed silver shape" and a "silvery arrowhead", with "gleaming sides" and "lights along" them, and apparently a single "shuttle bay" and at least nine decks; the only type described elsewhere as an "escort cruiser" seems to be the Sacheen-class from the New Class program, which is a 375m light cruiser type, and the bright metal of the Adamantine's hull matches the "mirror finishes" of the "attack cruisers" at the start of Before the Storm, which seem to be a variant of the type; the shuttle bay similarly fits with the Sacheen's single hangar that can carry twelve snubs or six K-wings, but the "arrowhead" description sounds approximately triangular, so I wonder if we should think of them as Quasar Fire hull variants (with hangar space reduced and reconfigured for extra decked areas), the "blunt-nosed" description being defined by the side view of the bridge pod?

Borealis is implied to be the smaller ship, and relatively small in general, in a passage comparing them both to the "even" smaller ship sent from Nam Chorios, but, outside of a loose reference to them as two "battle cruisers", only seems to be described as a Leia's "flagship"; it seems to have a single "boat deck" hangar and "stabiizers", a term that is used elsewhere in the same novel for steering/balancing modules (on the Falcon, a B-wing, and an XP-38 landspeeder), implicitly not very prominent visually, though at one point it may also describe a B-wing's main wing... I wonder if it might be some sort of gunship, small but well-armed and fast, and vaguely evocative of Tantive IV, but I can't think of anything that specifically jumps out to identify the design with...

The main objection to this idnentification is that a Sacheen without fighters only has a relatively limited turbolaser armament to threaten opposing capital ships - they may have the same range/accuracy advantage as the larger Majestic, and adding CM-9s on the Borealis might significantly increase the pair's punch, though...

Could be the existing 700m Defender-class assault carrier on the Majestic hull...

Or, and this I like, they're actually Viscount-class Star Defenders - Viscount, Vesper...

Beyond that...

I want to check thoroughly for typos before my next attack run on the timeline, but...

I wanted to share a random detail I found when looking for timeline details in the Black Fleet novels, which speaks to the question of Star Destroyer crew locations that was discussed back around May - based on the NR inspection of the wreck of the Gnisnal, the area of an ISD comprising the "aft third" of the hull above deck 26 (implied to consist of the aft superstructure above fragmentary engine wreckage, though some areas beneath the superstructure at the stern do remain intact down to level 96), accommodates approximately 12,000 personnell at battle stations, and 7,400 on an ordinary watch.

To those of us who take a completed approach to lore, that might suggests that a large proportion of an ISD's standard watch, perhaps a majority of them, are based in and around the tower, but at general quarters, most of the off-watch personnel who would rotate to those stations deploy to duty elsewhere in the hull, and the discrepancy is especially glaring if a three-shift watch system is being used - are they deployed in duplicate control rooms or as damage-control teams...?

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Given pirates in Skeleton Crew... I hope we get a glimpse at the Sovereign Latitudes Pirate Nation's very own Superstardestroyer Liberty's Misrule aka formerly known as Annihilator in Action.

 

Spoiler

I hadn't thought of that. It would be interesting to have the first big battle be against pirates rather than imperials.

Though that would go a long way to explain why the New Republic is more concerned with pirates than imperial conspiracies. Heck, the biggest ship at the pirate port does seem a lot bigger and potentially better armed than Gideon's light cruiser, which was called out as something shocking for him to have, suggesting the remnant has hidden all its larger ships from common knowledge.

Wait, another defender class? Popular name.

(Also, any stated connection to the Gaze Eletric that based on the same concept art?)

Oh yeah, forgot about that. This would fit in very well to that project.

That would be very cool.

Though the trailer seems to me to be about a small band after the kids, rather than the whole pirate fleet.

 

Little tangent, but I was rewatching the Clone Wars S4 episode where the Luxury Yacht 3000 appears, and I realized they based the bridge layout off its appearance in Galaxies. The door is in the right place, the locations of consoles and even the nook behind the co-pilot's seat.

I'm sure people noticed that back in 2012 when the episode aired as well.

I mean, that's assuming Galaxies was the first medium to use that layout for the bridge.

 

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Canon Defender largely shares the Nebula’s role and capabilities. NSD was a core element of the Legends Defender program, after all.

 

I like that sort of reference - I suspect you're right, and Galaxies was the first place they showed the PLY-3000 cockpit in detail, though there's a great cross-section/deckplan for the Lady Luck in one of the WEG guides, which gave us a slightly different configuration, and a top deck with a hot-tub and external balcony...

I'm a huge fan of the PLY-2800 from The Freemaker Adventures, which reduces the length of the "penthouse" section to create a genuine heavy starfighter with a decent-sized cabin at the back, but keeps the top deck with its hot-tub and external balcony...

I think we need to include the Star Defender as well...

Also, something that came from thinking too much to myself in another thread, but which probably really belongs here, shared here in a vague effort to be on-topic and just in case anyone finds it interesting / can see any glaring errors in it...

I mean, the underlying point here is that Black Sword was building and refitting ships for Thrawn - upwards of twenty big pointy, "none smaller than a Victory-class Star Destroyer", were scheduled to depart the yards before the Yevetha took N'Zoth and are therefore still missing - we're talking ISDs and VSD-IIs and a pair of SSDs...

Moreover, most of the ships known to have been captured by the Yevetha are not among the missing ships, because the descriptions don't match - the ISD Redoubtable is a damaged straggler from Endor, both the experimental EX-F and the interdictor Imperator are just 600m, as is the vanilla Dreadnaught added by the Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia, while the multiple "old medium cruisers being upgraded and recommissioned" might be as small as 450m Strike-class ships, and the ship renamed as Beauty of Yevetha is a Corellian Corvette...

The only two captured ships of which anything is known that might be among the missing forty-four are the VSD Valorous and the SSD Intimidator - this certainly seems to be the case with Intimidator, as it was moved to N'zoth to complete fitting-out and make its big shipway available for another hull for Black Sword at "the command's home shipbuilding yard" in the Core; but that doesn't quite confirm its presence on the list; the fact that it could be identified individually based on the third added dome of a "late-production Super-class" ship is nicely ambiguous too - does it mean it was the only post-Endor ship among the three SSDs on the list, or does it mean it's the only unaccounted post-Endor SSD, added provisionally to the ships that the New Republic think might be in Koornacht by a wider review before the footage arrives? Either way, it implies that the other missing SSDs were older, whether there were two or three of them, and that means they were probably completed...

Similarly, the novels name at least four shipyards in Koornacht, with Cracken's Threat Dossier implying at least seven, but of those it says five are unaccounted, and the only ones we know for sure that the Yevetha captured intact in the first place are Black Fifteen (because we see its capture) and Black Nine (because we see it under their control); the Encyclopedia suggests we should add Black Eleven, but "Black Eleven fleet" may be a misleading NR designation based on Ackbar's hypothesis that one of the shipyards was at the relevant Yevethan fleet's rendezvous at Doornik-1142; there's no indication that Black Eight or any other yard was ever actually captured.

And although the original intention in the novel may have been for the nine "Star Destroyers" building for the Yevetha at Black Nine to be ISDs or VSDs, the description of the Type II yards in in Cracken's Threat Dossier characterises the type's frame as a "cubical" 1.2km-wide design that's presumably only able to build one ISD, so the ships in a nine-bay configuration are implicitly relatively small (600m Vindicator types, or 450m "medium cruiser" hulls?); Black Nine, which has its nine bays in a flat grid and can park an ISD in one shipway and an SSD moored nose-in to another, is implicitly a larger structure about 5km square, and probably a high-end deepdock for the Oversector command, comparable to Zsinj's even larget (10km-wide) Rancor Base (is that two deepdocks joined together?)...

Thoughts?

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Looks like a Defender escorted by Defenders and launching Defenders.

 

I'm hopeful that the Battle of Jakku comic series will give us some fleet stuff to chew on.

We've only seen NR assets in the Anoat sector, which seem to be a few frigates and corvettes plus some fighter squadrons. The force Lando arrives with in issue #4 (which Leia notes is because the NR is stretched thin at the moment) consists of a single CR90 corvette and half a dozen X-wings. Plus the Lady Luck!

--Adm. Nick

 

Also worth noting the Encyclopedia confirms the E-wing as a FreiTek design. Nothing specific beyond that.

 

While short, this has a couple of interesting scenes

For Andor, it looks like he is stealing a tie avenger or something similar.

For Skeleton Crew, there is a shot of a pirate ship flanked by a pair of silver and blue fighters or airspeeders which get blown up. I am assuming they are some time of police or militia vehicle.

 

Seems like a prototype.

I like its design, somewhat like Gozanti, but more flat.

 

Definitely.

Interestingly, it seems to have a very different drive system than any tie I can remember off the top of my head:

Spoiler

Yeah, it is a sleek and fun design.

The escorting craft are nice too. I think they might be based on some of proposed cloud car designs, though I am not sure.