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

Oh wait, is that rathtar level in Lego: The Force Awakens canon...or based on something that is?

 

This right here...how about ships that look like they can carry fighters in a hangar? I bet the maintenance crews hate having to put on space suits to service the fighters.

 

Or you use droid maintenance which can operate in space... or build fighters that need less maintenance in the first place. Not everything has to be ragtag like in the good old Rebel days.

 

So in my mind, there's cheap converted freighter-carriers that have hangars...and then there's the even cheaper freighter-carriers that would just strap fighters to their exterior. The latter would basically operate just like a large hyperspace ring...you won't be doing maintenance or re-arming the fighters. Just get in, detach fighters, then pick them up later and bring them back to base.

 

Yes, the bonus levels in the TFA LEGO game are meant to be canon as in they happened, but just not in the silly LEGO-style.

 

My point is external docking should be the exception and not the rule.

 

I also think external docking probably shouldn't be done for combat ships. Maybe you can launch the fighters before going into battle, but depending on how that battle goes you might not have the opportunity to pick them up again. By contrast your converted freighter-carrier stays far away from the battle and out of sensor range, launches the fighters, and then (if they're not being chased down by swarms of enemy fighters) they can meet back up with the carrier and dock.

 

You think Nebulon-B fighter capacity is confusing. What about CR90 corvettes? In Champions of the Force, Wedge orders Tresk Ortola to abandon his ship (possibly the NovaFlare) and it had starfighters aboard (possibly one whole squadron considering that the numbers that battle Daala's remaining TIE compliment). So unless every corvette was modified like the Night Caller/Ession Strike or even Farstar, how does a standard corvette carry a whole squadron of X-wings or Y-wings (since A-wings weren't indicated to being present at the Battle of the Maw Installation)?

 

I'm fairly sure they mentioned all the new ships they made up are also meant to be canon; and if I recall the official design for the crimson corsair's ship was taken from theirs.

 

Maybe not every CR90...but the Night Caller / Ession Strike shows how they can be designed to. Could be the Rebels/NR converted several.

But that is something that should be clarified in the text.

 

Yes, crew complements could be a major problem if you gut most of the Nebulon bow interior to make a hangar. The Far Orbit Project deckplans struggle to fit accommodations for 400 people in the visible quarters, let alone 920, so I imagine that would only get worse with an even longer, and taller, hangar.
Regarding the Nebulon series, I also worked up my own conjectural background to them:

Class-C frigate - 200 metres, initial concept from which later designs evolved; Old Republic design.
Aurora-class patrol frigate/freighter? 160 m plus - Rand Ecliptic, as seen in Making of Baron Fel? (plus is also a patrol craft cut from ESB, that resembles Nebulon-B bridge pod with underside fins, some 60-70 m long)
Nebulon-A frigate - uncertain; test model? Perhaps more fleet orientated, than escort; enclosed?
Nebulon-B frigate, early Empire; originally enclosed, later stripped down and designed to be modular, assigned more to escort roles and light patrol; 300 m to 338 metres, depending on the versions of neck and bow module used; commonly found in regional defence forces for a while? Nebulon-B2 is a further stripped down version, 253 metres long, with reduced crew, expanded hangars.
Nebulon-C frigate, early New Republic (though initially designed for the Empire?) Used increasingly in support ship roles, or as a fighter tender, rather than as a full fledged line/escort vessel.
Nebulon-D/E frigate, 267 metres or more; introduced just prior Thrawn crisis, as cheaper mass produced New Republic design, with added ion / missile armaments. Seen in Dark Empire comics, repeatedly.
Nebulon-G frigate, 275 metres; evolved into separate Corona-series of Line frigates. Did away with neck altogether in favour of enclosed main body, with greater hangar space.
Nebulon-H frigate; support/medical/escort ship, updated version of Nebulon-C.
Nebulon-K frigate; newest version, uprated line and escort design, 600-675 metres, circa 25/28 ABY.

 

That’s right. They adapted the Meson Martinet from the LEGO design.

 

While WEGs version had the hangar to one side only...


some eager fans decked out a version with hangars to both sides maxing out the capacity in addition to WEGs docked X-Wings even.



Thus you can dock 3 X-Wings or fighters exterior to the tubes on either side, that is half a Squadron, whereas the other half is inside the hangar, three on either side if X-Wings, maybe more for A-Wings.

 

General thoughts? The size of a TIE Fighter seems to be important in a lot of the discussion here. I've completely lost track of the official size.

And while the kitbashed frigates unquestionably look funky, the prevelance of the "standard" designs on-screen suggests there ought to be a rationale for the configuration being reasonably fixed - the one exception is the KDY trade frigate, which is explicitly POV'd by Hux as a pirate-modified type in the TLJ novel, so presumably the ones in the wall of ship are all modified in the same way...

... unless, that is, we see the wall-of-ship as containing a nod to the Fallanassi, as well as all kinds of other "hero ship" references, which would explain why all the TLJ reprise ships look like a Wialu-style mirroring of the one-off ships we thought got vaped in IX...?







Okay, I officially like that.

I missed the fact that the TIE Fighters dropped differently in Secret Cargo. Hold that thought?

A TIE Defender isn't actually that much wider than a standard TIE, because the pylons are tucked behind the cockpit and then rotated down. One thing that hits me here is that a TIE Interceptor and a TIE Fighter are the same width, so if the straight-wing TIE can slot in vertically, the TIE Interceptor can as well, and the sideways slot is presumably actively favoured for easier hatch access...

Of course, all this depends on how wide a TIE actually is - based on the OT cockpit-set they might be less than 6m wide, which gets us back down towards a 200m ship again for the ones that are innately plausible - i.e. vertically-stowed straight-wing TIEs or side-slotted Interceptors and Bombers; we could squint at the side-slotted straight-wings in Secret Cargo or say that they're a "short-winged" version (perhaps that's part of why there's a "short-winged" version), which only leaves us the TIE Defender to require a modified slot on the cruiser, though that might not be everyone's preferred interpretation.

If the hull-top module is a version of the same one seen on the Lambda, there's space for a full deck inside there - the internal deck level of the full-sized Lambda in Jedi actually coincides with the top of the wider lower section. That makes sense to me as something to carry over to the Sentinel, especially given what's shown of the ladder access to the upper part of the hull and thus the cockpit, but I know some people might disagree.

The cockpit deck-level presumably steps down, again like the Lambda, to retain a full height beneath the slope of the viewport.

Makes sense. I was trying to rationalise why we only see two pairs of "docking hatch" details and usually only two TIEs carried.

So the quesion then becomes which version of the hull to use. I feel the TCW/REBELS hull-proportion has a certain authority as the primary design, though obviously not photorealistic...

Do you have an external height/diameter for the docking ports? Those can be scaled approximately based on their internal size (and, along with the escape-pod units, they very much imply to me that the ship is only one deck "deep" in the main hull, with only the bridge superstructure and the sections between the engines at the rear being much taller - there's also a deeper ventral structure, but that looks more like hangar or engine space)...

This is true, but the type of armament makes a difference - on the one hand, four twin-turrets mean you have a salvo of eight shots from any angle except directly on the broadside, whereas the Carrack-class cruiser used to be statted with ten fairly-heavy turbolaser emplacements and twenty anti-starfighter lasers, but fixed so they could only produce a salvo of two or three turbolaser shots and five laser bolts on each angle, whereas the Nebbie-B had twelve medium-calibre turbolasers and twelve anti-starfighter lasers, but they were grouped with six of each firing forward, three and two on either flank, and just two anti-starfighter lasers firing aft... but on the other hand, we don't know how they compare in terms of calibre, accuracy and rate of fire - if the individual guns in the twin-turrets are comparable to the heavy turbolasers of the Carrack, the can actually throw a heavier wall of fire in any given direction, and even if they're comparable to the Nebbie-B, they can still outfight that ship. I doubt they're as small as anti-starfighter lasers, but you never know.

Funky. Back in the day, I was big on adding a hangar to the keel pylon for snubfighters, but having seen how well they can be carried externally in REBELS (Secret Cargo also has Y-wings stowed that way), I'm completely without any particular bias here.

So, what, not only is the ship they actually used completely awesome, but so is the discarded alternative design?!

- The Imperial Ewok

 

WEG's numbers have always been complete crap. They blatantly contradict what's shown on film, and since assuming visuals are inaccurate means burning the entire movie it means that the film's correct and the EU is unambiguously wrong despite what McEwok and others like him say (his arguments that the films are impressionistic and that the WEG numbers were accurate is complete garbage)

 

6.7m wide currently. In WEG they were 6.3m long and 6.4m wide according to Wookieepedia:

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/TIE/LN_starfighter


for a short period they were 9.125m wide (to match the 8.9m or 8.99m length) and now, thanks to Rogue One, they're 6.7m wide.

Newcanon (Haynes manual):


Late-period Legends/Early period Newcanon (They've gotten Width and Height mixed up here - TIES are supposed to be higher than they are wide or long)



The Haynes Manual seems to be the odd one out - the WEG one and the Deluxe Model Book one (with corrections) both make the TIE slightly longer than it is wide.

WEG - 6.3m long, 6.4m wide
Deluxe Model book - 8.9m long, 9.125m wide (8.9m is possibly rounded down from Databank's 8.99m long)
Haynes - 7.2m long, 6.7m wide (7.2 m rounded down from Rogue One Visual Guide's 7.24m long)

Saxton's figures make the TIE longer than it is wide, like the Haynes figures - though his version is slightly smaller:

https://www.theforce.net/swtc/tie.html
The stated dimensions of the special effects model of the standard TIE Fighter are 36cm x 38cm x 48cm. The model was built to the 1/16 scale convention, so its absolute width, length and height are (with appropriate precision) equal to: 5.76±0.08m, 6.08±0.08m and 7.68±0.08m.

So "Haynes TIE" is the first one to be shaped like "Saxton TIE" even if it is bigger.

 

I have a question I feel is best for the fleet junkies, but if I am mistaken please let me know. I was wondering if anyone recalls a name or reference to Leia Organa Solo owning a personal starship in Legends. I could be misremembering, or even fabricating this memory, but I could swear that Leia had a ship in one of the Bantam-era novels. If I recall correctly it was created for a story and never used or referenced again. It was a story where she didn't have Han Solo or the Falcon on hand, I'm thinking it could be The Crystal Star or Planet of Twilight, but any help or hints would be appreciated.

 

You are correct - her ship was the Alderaan, and it first appeared in The Crystal Star, and went on to appear in The New Rebellion.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Alderaan_(yacht)

 

Excellent, thank you. Soon as I got the notification for a quote I thought "it's probably Iron_Lord" lol

 

...WEG just pulled numbers out of whatever.

 

Speaking of weird stuff that was estabilished early despite of what we see in the movie, who did originally come up with the idea that the Interceptor only has 4 lasers? It's even weirder now that in Rebels we see the Defender's missile launchers are identical to some of the interceptor's guns, yet books still stick to the old notion that the other weapons are merely cosmetic for whatever reason.
EDIT: now that I think about it, it's mildly ironic that the Bomber's guns were instead made up in Legends since they are not visible in the movie model.

 

The Advanced TIE Defender's missile mounts being where Saxton put some of the Interceptor's guns, actually lends credence to the idea that, on the Interceptor those are not guns, they are empty missile mounts.

I'd speculate that the Interceptor was originally designed to carry missiles, then, when they discovered there weren't enough missiles to go around, those mounts were left empty and the missiles reserved for the Advanced TIE Defender and similar craft.

As for the Interceptor's chin guns, their lack of use can be explained by their being inferior to the wing guns, and there being limited power to spare, so they normally depower those guns and only have the four wing guns activated.