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

Star Cruiser, 1,000 - 1,500 meters in length perhaps?

 

star cruiser simply means what it says, a ship you use to cruise the stars... no size limits indicated at all

 

That's what I was afraid of. In that case, any ship is a star cruiser, right?

 

Anything with multiple cabins, yeah. I think the Razor Crest and Slave I are just small enough that they are more patrol boats and dropships with hyperspace functionality then cruisers but if the Naboo cruiser can be a cruiser then even the Millenium Falcon is one.

 

I'm impressed that they went to the trouble of associating those Episode IX designs with systems like Hynestia and Lothal - and I've been trying to work out if the Wall of Ship version of the Gozanti (the sides and engines of which seem to be a close match to the TPM/TCW version) has a really big set of forward viewports like the Carrack, or should just be seen a a "kitbash" representing a different and smaller ship...

Anyone got a good pic of that one?

As to the definition of a "cruiser", I tend to think the terminology fits the real-world usage, where the name is used for two separate types - pleasure yachts ("cabin cruiser") and military types that are neither battleships nor pickets (though it's important to emphasise that historically, a cruiser was not necessarily a large ship)... ships like the Falcon seem too well-armed and/or with too much cargo capacity to really fit the designation...

Oh, that's awesome. I've been wanting that view for ages.

Fits with what we see in TPM, confirming that this is another "classic Corellian" gunship type, disguised with the wider "carapace deck" added on top - the main additions to what could be inferred from earlier pics are those escape pods, though it's interesting that the side landing legs are in wrap-around farings attached to the "carapace deck" rather than the main hull, and there might be a third one at the front (though this isn't seen on screen, and might just be a hull detail). Is there a "standard" variant without landing skids, and if so, how do you get on board - docking-ring in the bows?

Really helps me to visualise Rannulf Tarkin's Invincible from the Stark Hyperspace War as a variant as well, with longer side wedges to accommodate the larger pods, and the narrower and boxier superstructure substituted...

But is this the 80m length that sources say, or something slightly different...?

- The Impeiral Ewok

 

I'd say that's about the right range for a Star Cruiser class. Also fits with my headcanon that puts the Hynesian Cruiser at 1,200 meters.

 

"Star cruiser" just makes me think of the Ewok movie where that's the first thing in Basic that Wicket learns and for the first half of the film, 90 percent of his dialogue (I'm probably exaggerating - it's been a while) is just him saying "star cruiser."

 

I still want crosssections of Noa's ship and the Towani family "star cruiser"... or toys of them. Anything!

 

Yes...exactly...

As far as length...there is the Anaxes War College system that puts 1000-2000 meters as destroyers.

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Anaxes_War_College_System

I know not everyone likes it and that in universe it is completely hosed by putting 'frigate', 'cruiser', etc... on any ship of any length.

 

That's only for Legends though, right? I don't think Disney canon has any established classification system.

 

Ah, thank you.

But no, it is not them. More compact and pod like, with three engines, a swivel gun under the nose, and a shark mouth paint job...assuming my memory is accurately.

The gunship looks interesting as well, though it is too blury for me to make out its name.

Between it, the Halo, the Razorcrest, and the Wookiee gunship, it seems like there is a common look for most gunships in star wars.

Going back to the origins of the term cruiser, I think the key factor might be their ability to operate for long periods of time on their own, to cruise around as it were.

Agreed. They are interesting designs, and I am intrigued by the idea of space version of a family van.

As an aside, I remember as a kid thinking the Towani family ship was a T-Wing.

 

Is Gideon's light cruiser a different class than the Arquitens??

Not sure. I like the system in theory....but like I said...there were decades of ships being called whatever before it was introduced.

 

I think it's probably implied to be a modernised variant, what's not clear is if it's a unique modification made by Gideon or a late war "Arquitens-II". They mention that "back in the day it required 750 people to crew it" which is coincidentally the same stat as the Arquitens.

 

Yeah...problem was a whole bunch of sources just slapped "frigate" or "cruiser" onto the name willy-nilly. So we have things like the Carrack, Arquitens, Munificent, and Subjugator classes which would all be incorrectly labeled if we were going by this system.

 

Honest question...

Would you consider two ships of the same size, one crewed by humans with according deck heigth etc. the other by Gascon's tiny people.

Again size is the same, but to one species it feels larger and can take more crew and thus also more weaponry due to less crew space needed. To the tiny species it could be built and armed as if it were a way larger human-sized/crewed battlecruiser.

The difference would be species requirements and how decked out it is with arms, not size.

Are both cruisers then, or only one or neither?

 

The number of weapons and shield generators is generally correlated to the ship's size, though. Even if you had smaller crew members, I doubt that really frees up very much space for more weapons. Actually, I would imagine that a ship crewed by those guys might need more crew members in order to operate everything.

 

Aaahhh....the Zentraedi analogy....

 

I'd previously estimated the Hynestian Cruiser (to me it will ALWAYS be the 'new Assault Frigate' though) at about 900 to 1000 metres, scaled to the Pelta-class and Nebulon-B class ships shown near it, as I recall.

I'm assuming the Corellian Star Shuttle is smaller than the Consular-class - yet the latter was potentially meant to be under 100 metres long, and perhaps as small as 75, from cockpit and interior scales.

 

First, some general thoughts on Mando...

Spoiler

Well, that was about as detailed a view of the Moffship as we could ask for. I've still not had time to do a thorough rewatch, but we get a good look at a lot of key hull areas, and a really nice set of... cross-sections.

I guess that's one way to establish the ship's size and layout in screen canon.

Actually, that's just the English dub - "pointy space battleship" is a more literal translation of the Basic term.

To be fair, most people are working to a system - WEG introduced a system that was already portrayed as rather forcibly modified during and after the Clone Wars by accommodating the big new Star Destroyers, and most Imperial and New Republic ships have respected that system, with some acknowledged exceptions (there were always undersized cruisers like the Carrack and Bayonet, and the rebel frigate and cruiser designs did not fit the size brackets either); ICS introduced a different system based around massive lumbering battlewaggon types, and WARFARE introuced a third system that was designed to accommodate a wider range of scaling (Jason did not accept his co-author's argument that battle cruisers ought to be larger than dreadnoughts)...

But I've never been the type to think there should be one system.

I'd be happy enough for this to be an Arquitens II or some such, but...

Spoiler

... based on the Eidolon-style TIE launch system, which may be a deliberate callback, considering some of the other Battleground: Tatooine parallels here...

... I'm wondering if this is a Strike Cruiser (we already had an anomalous 300m variant of that design in the Black Fleet novels)...

That also has the advantage of letting the 215m Arquitens stay at the size it is in TCW/REBELS...

I can't not see them as Assault Frigates, either. And there's no reason an Assault Frigate has to retain the 600m hull size...

I'm good with that. In theory, scaling both of them from the plan for the full-sized sets (cockpit and boarding ramp) ought to be possible for LFL...

Ironic correction: I asked about where you could find room for a hatch comparable to the ones on the Consular, Blockade Runner, VCX-100, etc., and then I follow the link from which the image came, and see that there's a docking arm at the stern.



A quick check of TPM confirms you can just see that as the Perpetuus comes into land at Theed.

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Wait, so what exactly are those other systems? Do they still use size as the criteria?

 

Arquitens question -- after noting how totally, wonderfully BSG78 everything about that ship looked and acted onscreen! -- is there any kind of origin to the name of the ship, or is it just something that kind of "sounds Star Wars"? Somehow I'd never thought of that until watching a review video and hearing it pronounced "Arquintes" or something similar and thinking "that's not right, but what's up with that name anyway?"

I mean, same thing for Gozanti and a bunch more, but Arquitens just sounds like a reference to... something.

Edit: So we still don't have a canon ID on Gideon's ship beyond "light cruiser"? I mean, if the class matches the Arquitens and it's otherwise doing a whole lot of quacking very much like a duck...

 

According to TV Tropes, it means "rainbow maker" in Latin.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Funny/StarWars

 

Yes, they do. The "standard Imperial system" from WEG is what we get the idea of 100-200m corvettes, 200-400m frigates, and 400-600m cruisers from, with the Star Destroyers being added during the Clone Wars as a larger subclass in the cruiser category and the Super Star Destroyers being rare and megalomaniacal Imperial expressions of his process of enlargement (almost every pre-reboot Imperial or New Republic type was classified to fit this system, though there have always been some light cruisers that drop down to frigate size).

I'm not sure the ICS system ever had its details entirely laid out, and I certainly can't remember them as clearly without looking back at my old notes, but the basic posit seems to have been the idea that the 900m VSD and the 1.6km ISD were only "destroyers" and thus relatively small vessels, with the cruiser and capital ship designations being used for much larger ships which made Executor's size comparatively less obscene...

The Anaxes system was introduced in WARFARE specifically to widen the range of in-continuity tabulations and provide one that more easily spanned the whole size-range from Tantive IV to a Mandator IV.

EDIT: I should probably make clear that this was essentially the work of Jason rather than his Ewok-sidekick co-author.

The varying approaches reflect different perceptions of the overall range of Star Wars ship-sizes, but are essentially pre-retconned to reflect different perceptions - the WEG system is the official Navy one inherited from the Old Republic's Judicials and reflects the practicalities of GFFA-sized deployments, the ICS system is one that was used by the largely stationary defense forces of large Core Worlds, and probably went back to earlier events like the Alsakan Conflicts (I think I nodded to this in WARFARE), and the Anaxes system is the one that's taught to cadets at the premier Naval Academy...

Such things aren't unusual. For comparison, the French system of "rates" in the sail-and-broadside era was different from the familiar Royal Navy one, and the German Kreigsmarine had an odd capital-ship system of panzerschiffe, schlachtschiffe and kriegschiffe, all of which might be translated as "battleship". Even today, the US Navy's destroyers and cruisers, the Royal Navy's frigates and destroyers, and the French navy's corvettes and frigates do not really correlate directly...

*facepalm* !

No, arquitens is eccentric poetic Latin for "bow-holder" as in "archer". The proper "dictionary" form is arcitenens, and the more usual poetic form is arcitens but a quick google indicates that this version shows up in a manuscript of Macrobius' Saturnalia (in the form of in a quote from Naevius' Bellum Punicum), and also in manuscripts of Manilius' Astronomicon, which I'd never heard of before, and I think in some early copies of the Aeneid. The form is reasonably obscure, but the meaning is clear enough (tagging @Ton_G for fun, who can disagree if he thinks I'm pushing this too far)...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

So, the background ships in the Rebel Fleet in ESB and ROTJ?

Any ideas for each of the ship types? I could spend an entire entry with ALL those unnamed ships...

 

Good point - I'm guessing whoever thought it was to do with rainbows, was misled by the "arc" bit.