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

I'm going to admit that my headcanon Falcon is still the "small Falcon" from ANH, with just three landing legs, and no second corridor or deep maintenance space beneath the deck.

Some general observations about the Falcon's layout:

* The "entrance" area of the forward hold, with the navacomp, dejarik table, couch and bunk, looks like it ought to be in the centre of the ship beneath the mandibles, with the larger cargo-carrying hold-space beyond it being pushed out into the starboard hull. The most obvious trick to make the interior "fit" would be skewing its shape off-square as much as necessary - if necessary.

* The most obvious "error" in the interior is the position of the straight cockpit corridor, which seems to be one bay too far forward relative to the hatch into the forward hold. But hold that thought.

* This straight corridor also has to slope upright, because the cockpit is pretty much level with the upper gun turret. The ladder between the gun turrets also has to be a whole lot shorter than it is on-screen (and even then, you probably either have to say there's less space behind the turret seats than allowed in the sets, or the Falcon is bigger externally than she is in ANH).

* Thank goodness these things can all be explained by the conversion of the footage from holo to flatscreen movie!!

* The Falcon's ramp is actually a flatbed, which is designed to drop straight down on all six arms so cargo can be pushed on, and pivots diagonally to act as a ramp by holding up the two arms at the inner end, and using concealed double-piviot "ankle" joints to cope with the swing in the geometry on the other four. I decided this was too obscure for this thread in 2013. Then they built the set in a way that it broke, and it broke Han's foot. That's given me a slight never underestimate how useful sithposting Fleet Junk might be attitude...

* There's also a switchback in the boarding ramp - the external ramp runs up to the centre of the ship, adjacent to the lower gun turret - the "proper" way into the ship is probably through a hatch into Luke's gun turret then up the central ladder!! The only way to get to the separate hatch in the corridor as seen in the movies would be to step left, into a hold area between the rear landing legs (where there's a flat deck projecting beneath the saucer) from where you swing up again by a separate ramp.

* This has two implications. Firstly, it means that the Falcon has a two-level hull, with the aft hold beneath the engines at the back. Second, it means the hatch from the ramp into the ring corridor doesn't have to be facing towards the side of the ship, so there's some room for manoeuvre in the relationship between the ring corridor and the cockpit corridor...

* That rotation of the corridor leaves the arrangement with the forward hold very confusing, especially because the back of the hold butts into the area where the gun turrets should be.

To return to the original question, though, I'd say that the best place to access hold space in front of the forward hold is from a hidden hatch in the side of the straight corridor to the cockpit. The back of the bunk works too, though...

And regardless of your preferred size of Falcon, the easiest way to make sense of the layout is to assume that all these spaces - gun-turrets, forward hold, smuggling compartments - are actually the result of a TARDIS-style "bigger-on-the-inside" trick...

But if I'm honest, I'm nostalgic for several of the different plans, and I really like that there are multiple interpretations of the Falcon - everyone can choose the one that works for them!!

- The Imperial Ewok

 

I see you have not been putting too much thought into this.

 

No, I really haven't!! That's just a quick ad lib distillation of various casual reflections I've had on this before, most of which are a decade or two old.

If I'd been giving this any thought at all, there would be picture links and three-dimensional schematics.

- The Imperial Ewok

 

It would be super interesting to find out how Galaxy's Edge manages the trick of fitting the Falcon's interior into its exterior, especially that bit about the cockpit corridor having to slope upward to place the cockpit where it needs to be. Obviously some areas of the ship didn't have to be built for the attraction, which increases the available space for the parts that were, and of course they probably didn't build out the under-the-floor maintenance and "secret compartment" areas, but still.

I'm reminded of this famous illustration showing the difficulties involved in correctly aligning the Falcon's interior and exterior (movie magic, y'all!):

Spoiler: Size

 

Well they cheat... a lot! For one, the Falcon outside is never entered. The ride has it flown to where you can board it as per its queue story and you enter it via a docking tube if I recall a walkthrough video right. So no ramp either which is closed off inside by a door. Basically you enter it from the not-cockpit side of the ship, go to the main room, and then for the ride itself on towards the cockpit. Which is all inside the ride and not within the exterior Falcon on display!

 

Back to my "they need to make more ships" gripe...but in this episode is makes it seem like the only ships that can land as Mos Espa are those particular model of starliners. I am assuming as busy as Mos Espa it that it should have ships of all kinds coming and going from the landing field. Passenger ships, freighters, personal transports. Pull whatever is in the archive from all the previous live action ships and use them. How many ships from the Citizens Fleet from TRoS could have been used to show some diversity at the port? And pony up some of that Disney money to create a few dozen 'stock ships' that can be used to fill space and space ports.

 

That is indeed a lot of cheating! I watched a couple walkthrough videos when the ride first opened, remembered none of them, apparently. Still incredibly cool. I'll get there to see it one day.

 

That Falcon pic that TPF shared is a deserved classic, but things start to get eaiser if you start by aligning the cockpit corridor, and drop the second corridor added in ESB. I'm really curious about just what you need to do to fit the interior properly in the hull...

And I'm mildly amazed that Galaxy's Edge didn't go with the boarding ramp and find a way to push the "interior" out on the less visible off-side of the ship...

A quick Fleet Junk question for everyone: Wookieepedia says that the Vibre Assault Cruiser uses a Lotek 11P generator, a power core which according to a throwaway line in Adventure Journal #5 was barely adequate for the smaller, slower, civilian HT-2200 freighter... this was added in 2009 in an anonymous edit along with a very fanonical-looking claim about power levels that was eventually binned in 2015, and certainly isn't based on anything in the JASB, Ships of the Galaxy or Pirates & Privateers, or indeed SWAJ #5... but is anyone able to quickly check Official SW FactFile #30 just to confirm that it's pure fanon...?!

Thanks!!

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Another interesting oddity of the Falcon is the console situated in the foreground of the below photo, the one with two green screens and an old-timey keyboard. This console appears only very briefly in ANH, disappears entirely for ESB and beyond, and has never to my knowledge shown up on any set of floorplans, but still frequently appears in still shots of this scene. Maybe it's a wheeled console Han pulls out for system diagnostics or something.

Spoiler: For size

 

Does anyone know if there are any ship layouts for corellian corvettes? They seem pretty big on the inside but small on the outside to me...

 

Aside from the cross section I think the only ones are fan made. I really wish they would get on that and give some of the attention the Falcon go to other ships.

Disregard...I think this was in the old WEG Rebel Sourcebook.

 

Ah yes, that works wonderfully. Many thanks!

 

I recall there being a Corellian Corvette floorplan in the canon book Princess Leia: Royal Rebel. Unfortunately my copy is inaccessible at the moment, but if I remember correctly it may have been identical, or at least lined up very closely, with the WEG plan above.

 

So it doesn't look to me like there's any room on board a Corellian corvette for a hangar bay, and yet we often see these ships depicted carrying starfighters...

 

They could be carried on the outside, connected with the ship through the airlocks

 

Well we've got Tantive III in ROTS carrying Grievous's fighter internally...and much worse, Night Caller somehow able to cram in all of Wraith Squadron's fighters, also internally. I'm pretty sure there's other examples, but I don't remember them.

 

Then there are the four Corellian Corvettes in Wedge's task force in Champions of the Force. The Yavaris carried two squadrons of X-wings and yet Y-wings were present to engage Daala's Gorgon and her TIE fighters. So we can assume they managed to cram at least a squadron of bombers into them. (Or part of a squadron since one Corvette was destroyed at the start of the operation at Maw Installation and a second - Ortola's ship NovaFlare? (I don't have the sourcebook to tell me more about that ship, someone got it?) - was evacuated and abandoned when its power drive was removed to stop the Installation's power generator from going boom.

 

That is the Tantive IV set up as a consular ship for the House of Alderaan. So others may be configured differently from the factory or modified after purchase.
For example the FarStar from the WEG day..



But Overall I don't think a CR90 would carry as much as some of them were shown to from the books.

I could buy that the Tantive III could have a small internal hangar so that a courier could land to deliver sensiitve information.

But between Wraith Squadron and the Battlefront novelization...CR90s are shown to be capable of carrying a whole lot of fighters or troop ships. Which make me think the writers should have gotten a little creative and used some other ships for those books.

 

That pic s a no show for me

 

Better?


And the link to Wookieepedia..
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/FarStar

 

There are many greeblies like this console that vanish or are never explained sadly BUT, the exactly same dishes and cups always are in the same spot behind the holotable seating next to the bunk, as if they never did the dishes since ANH till TESB lol.

Do we ever see it hardwired to the ground? Otherwise it could be mobile or even some part of cargo he has on board?

The Corvette sadly has even more issues than the Falcon as most plans assumed it is larger than movies show it to be. And even then it is a ship with mostly corridors and not enough room left for rooms.

SW is funny with its ships as their designs focus on some specialities and forget about the rest too often. The Falcon has plenty of ways to get on or off board (docking tubes, ramp, escape pods, cargo lift, freight gate between mandibles, etc. etc. more even!) whereas the Blockade Runner has lots of corridors and next to no "movie on screen" rooms to justify them.

But, several wildly different Blockaderunner floorplans we got so far (WEG, Incredible Crosssections, Star Wars Galaxy Magazine, etc.) do not truly fit the set-size of the ship from TROS. TROS deliberately even cheated by creating it way too small to save costs so that now the supposed to be smaller ROTS Blockade Runner looks in a hangar (Polis Massa, etc.) larger than the TROS one that is supposed to be larger.

Question is, were one to attempt a realistic interior for the ship like we did for the Falcon (mostly! with some tweaks), is that even doable? The tiny version would look more like the proto-Falcon it was evolved from I guess.

 

Also, where the airlock that connected it to the Profundity?

 

That does make a lot of sense.

Also, I really like the FarStar's design. That is something they should definitely bring back in modern canon

Yeah. Or a private shuttle or racer or pleasure craft for getting on and off the ship without having to try and park a corvette.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention it, but Twilight Company using a CR 90 as a troopship was on my mind when I asked about its layout.

Though I suppose if they are modular it might be possible to turn them into better troop carriers.

Well said and agreed.

 

But then you get into the space for drop ships which would be bigger than star fighters. Think of the LAAT's of the Republic Army or the Razor Crest.

 

Externally carried perhaps? Or a FarStar modification with a far larger hanger?

I think there was a modified consular cruiser with a lot of drop pod ships in the Stark Hyperspace War