Books The Essential Guide to Warfare by Jason Fry and a pseudonymous Scotsman

Loronar's role in the development of the Death Star has never been explored, although long implied by the existence of the torpedo spheres.
Come to think of it, we really haven't heard much about them during the Clone Wars, have we?

 

I always thought that the CIS Core Ships were begging to be retrofitted into torpedo spheres.

 

I just had an idea about the constant usage and reappearance of the same or similar ships throughout the GFFA. PRoven technology vs R&D costs.
Take the Dreadnought class Heavy Cruiser. It shows up say 100 BBY as a new class, aftr spending who knows how much in R&D and development. It has a light armament, slow engines, large crew, but is tough and reliable. Over time, we may see some minor refits. Then about 40-30 BBY there is a need for warships with smaller crews, perhaps to cut costs. Instead of spending time and money to design a brand new clss of ships, they research the slave circuit and integrate it into the dreadnought design, since the rest of the ship is a proven and useful design. Crews and builders are familiar with it, parts are plentiful, logistics can handle it, so its far better to just redesign it some and not start over. Katana fleet fails, so they abandon that approach and start using more droids. Then the Separatist crisis starts showing up, and more powerful warships are needed. Again, instead of new ships, Dreadnoughts are refitted with large blisters with heavy gun batteries and defensive measures, with the new model being what Car'Das refers to.

Essentially, instead of trying to build new ship classes all the time, it is easier and more cost effective to modify existing designs to suit new needs. Some times, this is not enough, like the Clone Wars and its rapid arms race, but in more peaceful periods, new ships tend to appear as refits of prior designs, like the Victory-Victory II-Republic or the Imperial-Imperial II or the 15 different sets of stats that exist for Dreadnoughts.

 

You're assuming an egomaniacal Sith Lord with delusions of God-hood cared about "legitimate reasons" to build world-destroying superweapons. Heck, it's practically proven that there wasn't a damn thing able to legitimately challenge the Starfleet even before the Executors and the Death Stars started coming into service; offhand, I'd say this was not a government that cared about justifying it's decisions to anybody.


You always gotta figure in the fact that the Emperor had one sole goal-the collection of power, typically by terrorizing or otherwise manipulating the galactic populace. Logic need not apply.

 

Wes, there's also the 'cyclical' technology that crops up, like interdictor tech, cloaking tech or personal shield tech - it crops up, falls out of favor, and a couple thousand years later the wheel is reinvented, so to speak.
The Star Destroyer bridges both - it's a recycled idea that, once brought back, is consistently made over the course of a hundred years (although the titanic 'dreadnaught' SDs are only apparently made for a fraction of that time).
I wonder if the Star Defender design philosophy made it to the Legacy era, or it was abandoned sometime along the way.

 

Loronar and Rendili's construction of large Imperial battleships (Illustrated Guide to SW), should also be interesting to explore.

 

I assume you're referring to this quote:
"Spidery docking and starship repair yards ride high above the planet, providing reconditioning facilities for the largest of spaceliners. Spherical self-contained colony vessels, Imperial Star Destroyers, and huge luxury yachts are built in the space-dock centers. The Emperor has commandeered other, more sophisticated space construction centers in other systems, notably the Kuat Drive Yards and the Rendili and Loronar space construction facilities, for assembling his largest battleships and special weapons platforms."
Which we have indeed already seen assembling his largest battleships (KDY) and special weapons platforms (Rendili and Loronar).

 

The quote says notably among the companies, listing three. So they are the most notable amongst companies building the largest battleships and special weapons platforms for the Empire. Nothing in there about who does what and since the quote hints about more than just Kuat, Rendili and Loronar, there's potentially more companies to add for the book. Humbarine would undoubtably be in there, given the sector is still intact and Humbarine was turned into a fortress world (The Essential Atlas). Rothana made the Eye of Palpatine and some other heavy projects for the Empire (TEA). Then there's Patriim, Byss, Allanteen Six, Bilbringi, plenty of systems to expand on.

697 m spheres into 1900 m ovoids? Better used for Imperial freight as part of the original LH-3210 configuration, imho.

 

Hoth's theatre shield was enough to hold off a 19 kilometer dreadnaught and its ISD goon squad; more powerful shields would be capable of holding up to even more powerful. Sure, the torpedo spheres can get around such problems but it takes quite a bit of time for those to detect shield weaknesses. In comparision, the Death Star can simply vaporize planets in little time at all.

Who's to say that the CIS wasn't the first group to invent and make use of torpedo spheres? It wouldn't be the first thing that the Empire stole from them.

Be careful what you wish for: taken literally, that staement could mean that those shipbuilds constructed 19 km Executors (ie. the Emperor's largest battleships) rather than unique Loronar and Rendili designs.

 

That's a risk I'm willing to take, I'm sick to death of Executors by now. Even if something like Rendili never got any impressive designs of their own made in the Imperial era, doesn't mean they can't be doing work for others. Since Fry's Atlas had Patriim and Rothana involved in the Tarkin and Eye of Palpatine projects, I have a good feeling on this.

Re: core ships. We have seen them performing other tasks and be heavily refitted, so you might just have a point. Fleets of Acclamator-IIs and modified core ships used to bombarding planetary shields, I like it.

 

Why would you take a world, that suffered from a BDZ and turn it into a fortress world?

 

I don't know, but it's on the Fortress World map in TEA, ca. Truce At Bakura. Either that, or it's for the Humbarine system and the planets outside of Humbarine itself.

 

Or maybe that system's shipyards were left intact by General Grievous, and the Empire later set up defensive batteries on the ruined planetside along with defense platforms as necessary to protect the shipyards.

 

Loronar is an interesting little company - apparently it was originally a small company that specialized in miniaturized, self-motivating spy droids, and grew into one of the most diversified conglomerates in the galaxy. It almost seems to represent the spirit of the Corporate Sector - it's said to never have openly supported political groups, and only covertly supported them when profit was involved (apparently sold to both the Alliance and Empire during the Galactic Civil War). Despite the events of POT, the corp continued to thrive, although the canceling of the purchase of Strike cruisers by the NR almost caused them to go into bankruptcy.
They make some interesting stuff - the Planetary Defense Cannon, for instance - but their ship production is scanty. Apart from the torpedo spheres and a system patrol cruiser, there's really only the Strike-class and Belarus-class (which is essentially the next generation of the Strike cruisers).
It's strange that only time we've actually been to Loronar is the first Rogue Squadron game...
Rendili - considering its age, I presume the "Rendili Hyperworks" of the KOTOR era is the forerunner of Rendili Star Drive. Said to have been originally a military shipbuilding firm, so it's not surprising the OR turned to them. The Essential Atlas called their home fleet during the Clone Wars "massive". By the Rebellion Era, it's said to have lost most of their market share to KDY and focused on more "efficient" designs, and during the NR era is known for research and innovation. Their main focus for the Empire appears to be customs ships and space platforms. Also known for manufacture of space docks, and of course the massive Black Ice.

Exactly my point. There's nothing about it that says "Loronar and Rendili made huge battleships during the Rebellion Era".

 

And now for something completely different:

With TOR coming out now that WOTC is no longer publishing new SW material, how much of the burden of establishing details about the TOR-era Republic and Sith forces will the EGTW have to bear? It could be a long, long time before the SW franchise gets another chance to describe in a single source the various starships, vehicles, and troops used in this time period.

One last thing: is there anything that precludes the possibility of retconning clones into established wars before the PT? I never thought the Clone War as we know it now seems likely to have developed the Republic's paranoia of clones which the earlier EU claims to be a result of that war...

 

Dexter said the Kaminoans were "damned good ones, too" when he mentioned their main occupation. Which implies that not only is cloning a potential industry known throughout the galaxy (Obi-Wan didn't seem overtly surprised, at least), but other clone army-builders are most likely out there. The Kaminoans at least got some additional army-details with the Leech Legion in The Unknown Regions. Could do with some more.

As for the obvious baiting attempt in the post before yours, it doesn't work. The line says other systems are used for creating the Empire's "largest battleships and heavy weapons platforms", with the notable systems being Kuat, Loronar and Rendili. Reading the line by itself, it just says those three systems are the most notable among those. Since it's "and" and not "or" I can only assume the three build both battleships and heavy weapons platforms. Then again, English isn't my strong suit.

 

Jason:

When do you want us to start begging for art requests? Cause I can think of a hell of alot of ships that are in desparate need of a picture.

--Adm. Nick

 

Elements A and B are found within the sum of groups C, D and E. It doesn't rule out the possibility, but nothing about the quote states that these hypothetical "battleships" exist - and the wider canon doesn't support it.
But like before, the main point was to have the full quote available for people to make up their own minds.

 

good question...i have also a kandidat for the job...i think the best! ;-)

 

Jason, will we be learning anything new about the New Academy for Space Pilots or Zukonium rays?

 

Yes, Nick, I have a huge list of ship-images I want to see. Preferably all on one page to save space, like the old Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels.

The quote from Illustrated SW is about systems who produce product A and B, contrasted with the shipyards over Coruscant, which themselves built Star Destroyers, giant luxury yachts and spherical colony ships. Three systems are named that are "notable" from a larger group of systems.

How one goes from that simple sentence to "A was only made by this system and B was only made by these latter two systems in the selected group of ship-making systems" is an achievement in itself.

Especially since the sentence says "battleships and heavy weapons platforms", not "battleships or heavy weapons platforms, which preclude the other being made by a given system".

As far as I remember, the Cardan-class of military stations were still made by Kuat and Rendili had at least made battleship-sized command ships and components for other ships later used as battleships, in their own past. The wider canon doesn't say much more than that.

 

I don't want to overlap with The Essential Guide to Zukonium Rays, so no.

The conversation on capital-ship classifications was very helpful, but so too is hearing what people want covered. So by all means hit me with art requests -- or any other questions you have.

Next up for me is tackling Chapter 6, Decline of the Republic. Which will look at, among other things, the Militarists, the Iotran Guard and Corellian Engineering. Plus D'harhan -- I've loved this character ever since encountering him in the Jeter books, and so grabbed the chance to do more with him. Once that chapter's done, we'll be at the prequel era. Which is an excellent time to take stock of where we are, make sure the book holds together so far, and see if the broad themes are being woven through appropriately.

 

*crosses his fingers*


TECTOR STARDESTROYERS PLEASE, use, abuse, evolution, similiar designs/ships in later Empire spawned by them despite their brothers the Venator winning the praxis contest.+ TECTOR image

and *crosses his fingers* timelinewise a solution to when what ship was availeable in the Clone Wars (hello TCW series and troubles hehe) thus explaining how/when they were developed, fieldtested and fully massproduced (early appearances might be fieldtests with elite forces of Skykwalker and Kenobi or Jedi Councilers only maybe)

and while not really military I want to see ships Anakin Skywalker has flown and improved listed and a chronology for them... solving the mess of his old and new TCW continuity ships


lots of regional craft, smaller ships and NON-cruiser ships in employ of the republic and separatists should get more light shed upon them, like in the empire later all the TIE-FIGHTER and X-Wing series games campaigns and ships unique to them.

system patrol crafts, star galleons, etc. they were fun in the games.

I also want details on the conspripted personnel of the GAR and Republican armies, sector forces and the unique for each speicies ships, fleets and defense forces that had been pooled togehter into the GAR and where they had been employed.

 

Jason:

My wish list mostly revolves around the new warships and starfighters unveiled during the New Jedi Order series and Legacy of the Force.

For the NJO alone, the entire NRDF/GADF fielded an incredible number of new designs. Off the top of my head, the following major vessels have not a single image:

1. Mediator-class battle cruiser
2. Republic-class cruiser (apparently a major, mass produced design)
3. Rejuevenator-class Star Destroyer
4. Ranger-class gunship

In reality, you could kill several birds with one stone, if there was a shot of the NRDF during a major battle like Coruscant, Dac, or even a lesser known battle like the one at the Black Bantha. A shot that shows the vessels above, as well as some of the fleet mainstays like MC90's and New Class warships, which are themselves under prepresented visually.

For LOTF, there is the Galactic-class battle carrier, the Mon Cal heavy carrier, the Aleph-class starfighter, the Eta-5 interceptor. Hell, I would be happy with a XJ-series X-wing. I presume that they look at least slightly different from the old T-65's.

In terms of my "WISH LIST" for topics in the guide, there is TONS of stuff to talk about regarding the changing design philosophies of the Galactic Alliance from 28 ABY up to 130 ABY and beyond. There is a few year period of uberships like the Stra Defender being prevelant, followed by several decades of new Mon Cal cruiser and Star Destroyer designs, ultimately followed by the massive shift to a large, federally controlled fleet of smaller battle cruisers and escorts, as we see during the Legacy-era. Given that this major shift was based on military, political, and economic reasons, it deserves to use up soem printing ink!

--Adm. Nick