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

It really is broken if you think about it and look at map.

 

I've been banging on about this too, of course, but WAIT -- I seem to have possibly been wrong about this not reusing any bits of the Consular rig. I hadn't noticed that wedgey bridge thing, which as far as I know is kind of unique to the Consular and not a thing that's ever been shown on a DP20 or the concept art on which they're based.

 

How long does it take for the Falcon to fly from Tatooine to Alderaan in ANH? On-screen, a little under seven minutes. That's not the entire travel time, of course; off-screen Chewie had enough time to come out and start a dejarik game with Artoo, and Luke and Ben had enough time to start some lightsaber drills with the remote. Maybe fifteen or twenty minutes? It can't be too much more than that, unless you're comfortable assuming Han spent hours or days just doing nothing in the cockpit before finally deciding to come out and let his passengers know they'd outrun their Imperial pursuers. You could, I suppose, headcanon in a new scene where the Falcon travels for some desired period of time, stops somewhere before reaching Alderaan, and then has to outrun an entirely different set of "Imperial slugs"... but just going by what's on-screen in ANH, and even accounting for the Falcon being much faster than most other ships, one has to conclude that either the galaxy is very very small, or traveling through hyperspace is very, very fast.

(Obviously in current canon it's the latter, but consider for a moment the fact that if you go strictly by what's on-screen in ESB, the original intent of the filmmakers appears to have been for the Falcon to travel from Anoat to Bespin using sublight alone - and to do so in a few hours or days at most. (Their use of a "backup hyperdrive" was a retcon introduced by WEG.))

 

He says "We should be at Tatooine at 0200" - which implies a few hours rather than a few minutes total journey time.

 

I'd agree, except he says that about three minutes before they actually do arrive at Alderaan (so at around 0157, presumably). The only ways I can think of to work even a few hours of travel time into the scene and have all of Han's dialogue make sense is to a.) assume Han stayed in the cockpit for those hours before coming out and bragging about losing their pursuers back at Tatooine, b.) assume additional and unseen "Imperial entanglements" somewhere between Tatooine and Alderaan, or c.) assume that Han was wrong in assuming they were "coming up on Alderaan" at the end of that scene in the Falcon's hold. Any of those can be headcanoned to work some travel time in, but I can't help but believe from what we see and hear on-screen that GL's intent was a very fast trip from Tatooine to Alderaan.

 

I think in one of the books (The Life & Legend of Obi-Wan Kenobi?) Ben actually takes a nap on the Falcon before putting Luke through that training exercise.

 

Han could have spent half an hour to an hour just running diagnostics on whether the Empire is trailing them or not. Either way, the quick trip to Alderaan in the Core from Tatooine in the Outer Rim is consistent with the quick trip from Coruscant in the Core to Mustafar in the Outer Rim in ROTS.

 

I'm just sticking with 'speed of plot'.

 

Now that I've checked - it was the newcanon novelization of ANH, that portrays Ben taking a nap. In between

"In my experience, there's no such thing as luck"

and

"Looks like we're coming up on Alderaan"

there is a 20 minute gap, in which Ben lies on one of the bunks, and Han and Luke talk.

So, after the training, rather than before.

Han also did a certain amount of fixing of the Falcon between the hyperspace jump and "I told you I'd outrun 'em" - Luke and Ben are training for most of that period, and Luke complains "How can I learn anything in just a few hours".

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't reference material be the entity that creates the contradictions here? As far I as recall Canto Bight's position in the galaxy compared to the fleet is never mentioned in VIII, so it's the visual dictionary that "messed up" by placing it so far away. This is even more true for the OT, where the movies obviously predate galaxy maps by a lot.

Now, the hyperspace jumps themselves? That's one thing that I agree was handled pretty badly in the new movies lore-wise, and not just the sequels. I love Rogue One but the Jedha jump still pisses me off a bit, and there are several similar instances in IX.

 

I'm sharing this close up just because I love. That's it, that's the reason.



Until we get the hi-res digital release, the far right of the screen is easiest to distinguish classes from because it is A) less crowded and B) well lit. Visible classes include:

• MC85
• MC80
• MC75
• Neb-BF
• Neb-C (including kitbashes of it)
• Neb-B
• Baleen-class
• Pelta-class
• Vakbeor-class

And many, many more!

--Adm. Nick

 

Not just the B-wings - the X-wings and the Y-wings are in play as well, and arguably the A-wings (in the pre-reboot continuity, they threw in all kinds of things - the Virgilians also brought Z-95s, for instance). I do think they give the Rebel fleet an extra capacity. The Imperials may not have helped themselves by drawing up in a single massive gun-line with their fighter pickets thrown well forward, which complicated their ability to fight their own anti-starfighter perimiters. Hold that thought?

As to big-ship gunnery, the normal scenario is a conventional manoeuvring engagement between an individual MC80 and ISD - at "normal" combat ranges, the heavier firepower of the Imperial is enough to cause problems for even tough Mon Cal deflectors, but the Imperial's guns aren't particularly accurate (to a certain extent, they're probably designed to be low-maintenance), so in a long-range running fight, the greater accuracy of the Mon Cal guns means they gain an edge in hit-rate.

Conversely at Endor, the fleets are much bigger, and the typical Rebel tactic of keeping the range open simply gave Jerjerrod a selection of targets that weren't masked against his own ships - by closing to point-blank, far closer than normal, the Rebels not only prevented the superlaser being used, they also put themselves in a position where they may have discovered additional advantages - if several MC80s are attacking a single ISD simultaneously, their tough shields (over multiple targets) and combined firepower would probably give them an edge (we see a hint of this in Ackbar's call for the fleet to "concentrate all fire" on Executor) while the Imperials are unable to reposition to counter them, because they're stuck in a fixed formation that's designed to block the Rebels' route to hyperspace.

... which always seemed odd, but which I now I suddenly realise is because they're sitting on top of the exit for the artificial hyperlane.

This will destabilise the Imperial fleet, as the most heavily engaged elements are either forced to retreat (Harrsk) or knocked out of line completely (Executor). A counterattack on the model of Marengo might have stabilised the situation (or compare the first phase at Jutland, where the German battle cruisers - in theory, the smaller and less strongly-armed force - were working their way through their RN counterparts with their concentrated gunnery until the four Queen Elizabeth-class fast battleships arrived), but Pellaeon pulls the fleet back to prevent complete disintegration.

Feel free to share your crazy ideas.

Oh, that's clever too. Not necessarily necessary, as Scarif seems to be on a relatively important hyperlane - but entirely plausible.

Oh yeah, I can see a couple of those on the extreme right!

- The Imperial Ewok

 

SToP MaKIng StAR WaRS poLitiCal!

 

I did a roster of all Rebel ships in both canon and legends. Including the current unarmed classes of ships seen on screen added to what we know the Alliance had in both canon and legends, I got at least 45 capital ship / transports / freighter classes while starfighters I got up to at least 15 (including the two types of X-wings and Y-wings). The Alliance was pretty diverse. Though don't discount the Empire bringing more than 1 SSD, 2 battlecruisers, 33 ISDs and 3 Tectors to Endor. We know at least 1 Raider (Canon), 2 Victory Star Destroyers and 1 Carrack (Legends) were there and Interdictors were beyond range of the rebel fleet. So its possible they had their own Nebulon-Bs, Loronar Strike Cruisers, Tartan patrol cruisers, Victory frigates and their own CR90s and DP20s as well as Imperial Patrol Craft to the battle.

 

Interesting, I'll have to haul my copy out of storage and check it out. Good find! What you describe doesn't line up terribly well with what's on the screen, but there's no law that says it has to - and honestly, that version of events squares better with other stories that imply that Luke and Ben spent enough time together for Ben to impart at least a little bit of knowledge and training. A ten or fifteen minute trip to Alderaan doesn't allow much time for that, but a few hours certainly does.

 

So other then the Nebulon-BF, we haven’t really seen any entirely new ships from a side angle in the screenie we got? Damn.

 

I'm assuming it would have surfaced here if we had gotten any legit info on the Neb-BF, right? It's interesting that we haven't because we have a pretty good read on what it really looks like by now (unlike the Gunship which even has some here thinking it's a digital matte). Most everything else we've ID'ed matches up to previously known wireframes, right? Are there any other real "what the hell it that" ships left?

 

From what I can gather... not really. We all picked up the Neb-BF from the front and side, and then the Corellian Gunship, which is probably a digital matte. There was also that weird CR90 with the engine block going vertical, but that’s probably also a digital matte.

 

I actually agree that reference material is the problem but Poe does say a line in TLJ about Canto Bight being too far out of the way to be feasibly reached in time to save the fleet.

However, given the extenuating circumstances of a literal chase being on, any planet that isn't within short jump distance could be "too far out of the way" to help.

 

I don't think they are mattes. The Gunships in the shots are at different angles, albeit slightly.

 

RE: Rebel Fleet at Endor

I've, to the surprise of no one in this thread who knows me, spent A LOT of time analyzing the shots of the Battle of Endor. While I don't think it is possible to get an exact count on the Alliance fleet, one methodology I've used is counting the max number of ships of a given class on screen and using it as a minimum. I'll post a link to my Twitter thread on this from last year, but based on my count, the Rebel Fleet at minimum processed the following ships:

MC80A Home One = 6
MC80 Liberty = 2*
MC80 wingless = 8
Neb-B = 9
CR90 corvette = 4 (jump to Hyperspace sequence)
Dornean gunship = 4
GR75 Medium Transport = 14
Total: 47

*Only one at a time, but at least one show post-Liberty

Link below, each tweet analyses a particular shot of the fleet:



--Adm. Nick

 

By contrast, I haven't spent any time analyzing the ROTJ shots. But just a casual glance could tell you that the Empire has more Star Destroyers than the Rebels have CR90 corvettes. So the Empire has a massive fleet, and the Rebels have a puny one. The Death Star is subtracting a Calamari cruiser every few minutes. And on top of that, the Emperor is using battle meditation for about half the battle. How do the Rebels win? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

The Death Star stopped firing the moment the two fleets merged, to be fair.

 

Not really any side angles, I’ve analyzed all the scenes we have, even a pirated copy of the film, and I haven’t seen a full side or back view for the gunship like we have the Neb BF

 

You're right, so far. But the two closest examples are seen at different angles (see green vs. red).