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

The unique Liberty-model MC80 cruiser Justice could carry ten squadrons. She must have been one of a kind, as Justice was the task for the Rapid Response Task Force. General Skywalker thought she looked a bit pregnant. The hull must have been expanded to carry so many snubfighters.

 

Given the prominent role that Home One played in Ahsoka, I've been wondering about the fates of the other MC80A cruisers that the Alliance had. Canonically, I believe we've only had six confirmed MC80A cruisers: Home One, Republic, Aurora Flare, Nautilian, Defiance, and Independence. Of which, we could even arguably remove the Aurora Flare, as she was an unconverted ship that was a pure merchant vessel.

Of the five remaining, only two are known to be lost- the Republic at Mako-Ta and the Nautilian at Endor.

While it is entirely possible that there were additional MC80A cruisers that the Alliance and later New Republic used, I do rather like the idea of them being more unique and far more specialized than the standard MC75 and MC80. I'd argue we have enough evidence to state they were designed to serve as flagships, as well as serve as large carriers with their 10 squadrons. Not to say that the MC80A isn't a capable gunfighter, as those 29/36 quad turbolasers that we used to affectionately call "Big Momma Fish Guns" would be capable of dishing out some serious firepower.

I'll do a bit more canon research, but I am pretty sure we don't have evidence of more of them, even at Endor (which can be tricky due to how similar the bow angle of the MC80 wingless can appear very similar to the MC80A).

--Adm. Nick

 

My working theory is, that they kept converting city ships throughout the war into MC75s and their variants, but as more MC80s and other newer ships entered service, most of the MC75s ended up being removed from the front lines and sent to do less dangerous but still vital jobs(ground support, protecting planets, convoys, shipyards, etc) freeing up the newer ships to focus on more offensive actions.
This meant that at the end of the war there was a large number of MC75s that had taken little to no damage during the war, and could easily be sold or transferred to local PSFs.

Never realised they upped the fighter count to 96. Pretty impressive! It does bring up the question of whether it always had that capacity, and ships like the Mon Remonda just weren't carrying their full fighter complements? Or did they refit them at some point with larger hangars to fit those extra squadrons?
Either way the ship likely does have enough space inside its hull to fit that many fighters, so either one works.

And yes to bringing the MC80B back. It's one of the legends ships that I think could easily slot into new canon, with it being designed during the war, and launched either in the last year of the war, or just after it ended.
Or alternatively if they ever make an MC80 model, maybe the MC80B could be a variant of it, where the base hull has been stretched out to slightly wider than the winged version. Sort of like how the E variant of the MC95 is a wider version of the base ship.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure there aren't any more MC80A cruisers at Endor (at least in the movie), other than the three we already know about. While the bows are similar between the MC80 and MC80A, the bulges on the two ships are different enough that I think it's possible to tell the two apart.

Top is Home One (from when it jumps in), middle two are the base MC80 (top one is mirrored, probably to match the light direction), and I added the winged versions a the bottom as a bonus.

 

@Grevious_Coward

I really, really like that image above. After all these years, I never noticed how they inverted the wingless on screen! I'm gonna save this image and post it on Bluesky, with full credit given to you!

All possible theories. One that I am partially fond of is the ties back to Dan Wallace's idea of the Telaris cometary cloud being the hiding place for refuge Mon Cala city ships and the first Rebel site for coverting ships into cruisers. We know that the Telaris yards were responsible for ships like Profundity, Home One, and Nautilian, plus I am betting other MC75's like the Temperance and Accordance. My assumption is that there were many other city ships at Telaris waiting conversion, but the Alliance lacked the resources or crews to do them all at the time.

Flash forward post-Endor, the New Republic then starts cranking them out at Telaris and/or the newly liberated Mon Calamari shipyards.

IIRC, the assumption is that later generation MC80B's like the ones we see in service were the first ones to have the expanded fighter wings. I think the idea of eight squadrons comes from an NJO short story or book, but I'm admitedly a little rusty on my Legends lore these days.

--Adm. Nick

 

Wait, don't we see plainly on-screen that the Imperial fighters outnumbered the Rebels almost ten-to-one? Even if the Rebels had a ton more fighters off-screen to make up the balance, how do we explain the line "there's too many of them"? Even if Rebel fighters are better than Imperial ones, they're not good enough to beat those odds, and I don't think they're good enough to stop all those Star Destroyers from chewing up the Rebel fleet. I still feel like the outcome of this battle was a deus ex machina.

 

Spoiler: Fear of the Jedi #1 preview

Seems like finally a detailed look on cloudships.

 

I find it hard to believe that the big scary Imperial fleet from the previous two movies could turn out to be so incompetent.

Even if all the TIEs got shredded by Rebel capital ships, wouldn't the Rebel bombers still have to reload multiple times to kill all those Star Destroyers? All while their motherships are engaged in point-blank combat with said Star Destroyers. And then there's Executor...in the NJO a SSD annihilated a Yuuzhan Vong fleet despite the inexperience of its crew and captain. How is it that it Executor, with the Empire's best officers, doesn't perform similarly at Endor?

 

Something worth pointing out, the Endor fleet was not a surprise, what was a surprise was that the fleet was ready for them and was blocking their retreat, the death star was operational, and the ground garrison was more ready than anticipated.

When Han saw the Executor this is his reaction

The Executor was not treated as anything special but rather as an expected defense fleet for this kind of project. In fact SSDs being treated as basically superweapons rather than just big ships is a purely EU interpretation that doesn't align well with the movies.(in naval terminology destroyers are small fast ships meant to defend cruisers and dreadnoughts, the Executor is referred to only as a "command ship", implying they are simply the expected size for a command ship, and which the empire has "lots" of).

The rebel fleet and the imperial fleet were roughly equivalent besides the support provided by the Death Star, the rebels fought in a way that negated that advantage and began cutting down ships like the executor, and they destroyed it because they brought enough firepower to destroy it, and already expected it.

I would personally say the two fleets were roughly on par both in terms of ships and in terms of starfighters as the empire was never hiding its fleet in the movie.

Additionally there is no reason to assume that the fighter group led by lando was all they had, they are the group attacking the death star when th y assumed it was unshielded, the rebels would keep a reserve because they would have expected to eventually fight a fleet, because again the executor was not a secret and everyone on Tydirium saw it with no suggestions that its presence means they should run. Plus we can infer that there were scouts before then, considering th y had a readout of the station and the shield generator.

Any EU source that tried to state the rebels were outnumbered 10 to 1 tends to overcomplicate the battle and add extraneous details that in truth add nothing. The rebels are still the underdogs if the fleets are just roughly on par.

 

The Alliance knew that a fleet was there -- though likely not the strength of the fleet in terms of number of Star Destroyers and support craft -- so they brought every available ship they could and fighter units (with Lando's primary wings of Gold, Red, Blue, Green and Gray Squadrons likely in the lead) to Endor just in case they would have to fight off any Imperial ships though hoped to take them by surprise as well. Facing 1 SSD, 2 battlecruisers, 33 ISDs and 3 Tectors were likely not what they anticipated though they faired well taking down 11 ISDs and capturing 4 relatively intact.

 

Poor Wedge tried to lose the battle and ended up winning because Chief of State Pwoe put a somewhat competent commander in charge and it dropped right in the middle of the enemy formation, panicked and engaged . I still laugh at that and Tycho's comments afterwards.

 

I tend to assume that yes - the Empire DOES have lots of command ships. Few are twelve miles long, though...

And yes, the Rebels came loaded for a big fight. But multiple battlecruiser scale ships and dozens of destroyers (not to mention an Interdictor screen) was always likely to screw them over heavily.

I also assume reserve fighter waves were ready to go at the DS2 too. Unclear what size a 'group' was for the main ones, though (possibly 18 to 24 ships at outside? But could sometimes be more)

 

I mean just going by the movie, it looks like the Rebels are massively outnumbered and completely screwed, right? The movie shows 2-3 Mon Cal cruisers at most in a shot (excepting that final shot at the end I guess) contrasted with 20+ Star Destroyers. It shows hundreds of TIEs flying in, contrasted with a small handful of Rebel fighters. It should be safe to say that the movie is attempting to convey that this is a massive Imperial juggernaut about to crush a much smaller Rebel force, right? If anything, we're reaching for the EU to explain how the Rebels emerged victorious.

 

If we look at the battle logically and based on dialogue, the fleet battle was not saved by last minute intervention from unlikely allies or by sudden one in a million shots, it was won by shooting ships until their shields went down and then continuing to shoot until the sensor domes are destroyed and then the bridge, and of course an absurd amount of guts, and the Rebels were actually winning the space battle even before the shield went down or the death star was destroyed. This alone feels like plenty to imply they were roughly peer level fleets even if the visuals do not necessarily match.

Visually speaking, lets be honest, OT space visuals have always been somewhat janky. Models could not be damaged so damage is conveyed through fire effects, laser blasts come from arbitrary areas of a ship. I vaguely remember an interview where an effects artist states that if they had the technology and means the Endor battle would have looked like the Coruscant battle (where the Invisible Hand snapping in half as a major focal plot point reads like flexing in this context). Worth noting the drafts emphasize the size of the Rebel fleet and make no mention of being visually smaller than the incoming imperial fleet

There are also a few times that the ESB script called for star destroyers and smaller ships surrounding the Super Star Destroyer, even though the movies never delivered on those ships.

 

It's not visible when they first arrive - it is visible right after "Break off the attack, the shield is still up" and the Rebels notice it "Admiral, we've got enemy ships in sector 47". The novel suggests that the fleet had hidden behind Endor and had just come round from the planet in two big flanking waves:

On the Rebel Star Cruiser bridge, alarms were screaming, lights flashing, klaxons blaring, as the mammoth space cruiser abruptly altered its momentum, trying to change course in time to avoid collision with the shield. Officers were running from battle stations to navigation controls; other ships in the fleet could be seen through the view-screens, careening wildly in a hundred directions, some slowing, some speeding up.
Admiral Ackbar spoke urgently but quietly into the comlink. “Take evasive action. Green Group steer course for Holding Sector. MG-7 Blue group—”
A Mon Calamari controller, across the bridge, called out to Ackbar with grave excitement. “Admiral, we have enemy ships at Sector RT-23 and PB-4.”
The large central view-screen was coming alive. It was no longer just the Death Star and the green moon behind it, floating isolated in space. Now the massive Imperial fleet could be seen flying in perfect, regimental formation, out from behind Endor in two behemoth flanking waves—heading to surround the Rebel fleet from both sides, like the pincers of a deadly scorpion.
And the shield barricaded the Alliance in front. They had nowhere to go.

 

The fleet moved behind Endor waiting to be called to ambush the Rebels, but the SSD was in very plain sight before then and all of the people on Tydirium saw it and treated it as no big deal, therefore the fleet was at the very least expecting to face an SSD, viewing it as the expected type of garrison for a project of this magnitude.

 

The Rebel forces were likely expecting some ships to be guarding the Death Star II. So the presence of the Executor and a couple of ISDs wasn't really unexpected (especially with the Emperor visiting), but because their attack was supposed to be a surprise, they weren't expecting a full Imperial fleet to be there waiting to ambush them.

On the battle itself, I think that the Rebels were on the back foot for the majority of it, with them being both outgunned and outnumbered from the start, with all of there actions being to buy time until the shields went down, and then after that to buy time for Red and Gold groups to destroy the main reactor.

But if we were to look for a turning point in the space battle (other than the DS2 shields going down), I would say it would be the destruction of the Executor. Its sudden and rapid lose would have greatly impacted Imperial morale and sown discord amongst the fleet with the sudden lose of fleet command - The Rebels were extremely lucky that the Executor lost control and crashed into the Death Star when the bridge was destroyed, because even without the bridge it could have continued to fight, dragging out its demise and potentially taking out some Rebel ships in the process.

The finale blow to the Imperials force would have been the destruction of the Death Star, which would have crushed any morale left within the fleet. There's also the potential that a part of the fleet was taken out with it as they likely weren't expecting it to explode, and with the loss of command any warnings may have been slow to respond to, or even outright ignored.

 

The point-blank range manoeuvre suggested by Lando also likely worked to the Alliance's advantage during the battle since it meant the Star Destroyers had likely never faced such an engagement, particularly with the rebel fighters likely making attacks against the shield generator domes such as the one that got Grizz Frix (Red Five) killed thus allowing for the Mon Cal Star Cruisers to finally prove themselves very capable against Imperial warships in direct combat rather than standard long range combat. We don't know exact numbers of losses amongst the Rebel capital ships (Liberty, Nautilian (I still don't like that name) and the Neutron Star-class bulk cruiser Urjani were lost to the Death Star II's superlaser) aside from the novelisation indicating a cruiser that collided with a Star Destroyer in battle but we do know that aside from the Executor and the battlecruiser Pride of Tarlandia, the Empire did lose 11 Imperial-classes (and a further four were captured) and a single Tector-class. The Alliance certainly put a dint on Imperial fleet morale in combat. A fact that clearly continued after Endor.

 

I think that it is likely that the main reason the Empire lost was morale. Iirc it was Palleon who insisted , that if the surviving Imperial fleet had regrouped and attacked, they would have crushed the rebels right then and there.

So it seems that even after the loss of the Executor, the Death Star and half their ISDs the Empire could have still won had they not scattered.

 

RE: Endor fleet numbers

Canonically, we know that the Empire had the SSD Executor, the "battlecruiser" Pride of Tarlandia, a single Tector-class Star Destroyer, and 30 Imperial-class Star Destroyers as their main fihgting force. With some smaller escorts and Interdictors deployed throughout the system.

The Alliance navy was clearly outnumbered and outgunned both based on what we see onscreen in the film and in the current canon we have on the battle. If you take the highest end estimates of the total number of Mon Cala cruisers in the fleet, you still barely get 20. While I don't doubt that the Alliance fleet at Endor was bigger than shown on screen, I still see no reason for the entire force to consist of more than ~80-100 vessels, including at least 14-16 GR75 transports.

--Adm. Nick

 

It's not "clear" really, its inconsistent from shot to shot. If you look at the scene just before the A-wing crashes into the Executor's bridge, there are seven mon calamari cruisers and 4 ISDs, with maybe one more hiding behind Piett's second and that is just a narrow slice of the battle. Additionally the ROTJ novelization references "correllian battle ships, cruisers, destroyers, carriers". The mon calamari do not have a monopoly on ISD peer ships within the Rebellion, even if they are the only ones modeled and shown onscreen. Much like extended lore... and the movie drafts themselves, imply the Empire had more at Endor than just ISDs and an executor.

As for the Executor, the reason why the bridge shields failed was because the rebels were concentrating fire on it, the reason why the A-wing got through was because the Executor shields were going down. While the movie doesn't show the actual warships dealing damage to each other due to technological restrictions, it still implies that the Executor was taking a poiunding before the bridge is taken out. While the A-wing accelerated its destruction, the scene heavily implies the Executor was not doing good even before then, and likely would have been destroyed eventually with continued barrages from the Rebellion.

If the rebels knew or suspected an SSD would be at Endor, then they likely brought enough firepower to take it down, an Executor is literally 200x larger than an ISD and presumably roughly equal amount of extra firepower. Pride of Tarlandia, being the "communcations battlecruiser" in the novelization, was also destroyed before the shield around the Death Star even went down. The rebels were basically winning the fleet battle before the Death Star was destroyed. Of course destroying the enemy fleet would not have been a true victory if they are sitting ducks for the Death Star, but the fact is that the story itself implies and shows the battle to be far more even than later lore would attempt to paint it as, and I personally prefer to assume that the Rebels, when pulling every single ship together into what could possibly the most important battle in their lives, can match up to what is essentially much less than 1% of the Empire's might.

As for Pellaeon, he was an imperial hardliner throughout the Thrawn trilogy fantasizing about how the Empire could have won and the trilogy ends where Pellaeon began, calling a retreat from a battle after his direct superiors died. Then in Dark Tide he acknowledged that the Empire would not have won against the Vong, because the Rebellion/NR defeated them, consistently. My point being that Pellaeon is not an unbiased observer especially in TTT and his arc forces him to acknowledge that no, the Empire lost to the Rebellion fair and square.

EDIT: The EU throws too many extraneous details and explanations for Endor sp I'm sure there are sources that directly state that the Rebels were completely and utterly outmatched, but I prefer the Occam's Razor explanation that the Rebels can and did hold their own. If the Rebels were actually as utterly outmatched as some imply where it was 20 mon cala ships(who might not even be equal to ISDs) against an SSD and 30+ ISDs and 2 battlecruisers, then Lando cancelling the retreat is suicidally throwing away lives on the off-chance the shields come down to fight an enemy that outmatches them by an entire order of magnitude.