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

I always pictured the Ranger-class as basically being a corvette. A gunship should be something like the VT-49, Skipray blastboat, upgunned YT transports, etc.

 

The real question I'm asking, as I'm sure you know, is whether a small Falcon can fit through the hangar opening in a 1.2km Home One...

You've convinced me! So, where did the idea that it's an ISD-I come from?!

Also, next question! Is this a hasty/temporary modification of the ESB model, a duplicate casting of the hull plates (which would probably be easier to accomplish for the ESB model), or just a matte painting worked up on a still photograph of the model?!

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Because I accidentally hit "reply" too quickly, and had to hastily edit up the completed version of my response above, I'm double-posting with the rest of my reply...

Most important, @Sly442 has done a brilliant job with the Adz there. My own headcanon of it as a Raptor corvette with some sort of tower cannot cope with Cracken's Threat Dossier awesomeness of that magnitude...

And his take on the mysterious Rebellion ship is really good as well - seeing it from the rear like that really emphasises how rather like the Storm Commando Escort Carrier it is...

As to the rest, well, it's good to know that after however many thousand posts, we're still caught up in the unclear details of the New Class program...

I generally tend to think that, unless otherwise specified, the NJO frigates and cruisers tend to be boxy "utility" types, more like the Lancer than the Nebulon-B - consider the Proficient, which is certainly a long box, and although it's not quite explicitly described, might be a Carrack-class hull variant with a much longer hull midsection for cargo or starfighters...

The Ranger gunship is plausibly a derivative of the New Class Warrior hull, but what that hull looks like I have no idea. Interestingly, am I remembering right that the Ranger is armed primarily with quad lasers, like the Lancer frigates that get reactivated and indeed the old Rendilli bulk cruisers? Are we seeing a shift to flak ships?

Some types are simply continuity paradoxes - for example, the dagger-hulled Imperial frigate from the Force Heretic trilogy is so clearly an Arquitens it's almost silly...

When I read "Corellian frigate", I immediately think of the type that was refitted as a droid ramship in Showdown at Centerpoint, which I think we got a picture of in The Essential Guide to Droids...



But in hindsight I tend to think that any Corellian frigate ought to be a version of the classic gunship type, three engines at the back and a long narrow hull, a length around 150m...

Similarly, I'd always assumed that Mon Valle and Corulag were boxy Rendilli types, but in fact they could easily be Quasar Fire class, as they'd already been established in The Truce at Bakura, the associated WEG sourcebook, and the original Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels...

And I'd always assumed Commenor was using ISDs, but now I'm wondering if there's a mix of types... VSDs and Vindicator/Interdictor hulls...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

My head canon is that:
-Short-range fighters, interceptors, escort fighters, starfighters, patrol fighters, assault fighters, strike fighters, fighter/bombers, and light bombers are small 1 or 2 crew craft.
-Blastboats, missileboats, gunboats, escort shuttles, and bombers are larger, 20-50 meter craft with a small crew (3-12), and can land in (some) capital ship hangers - if needed.
-Patrol ships (~90 m), gunships (~120 m), and corvettes (~150 m) are the smallest capital ship types.

 

I figure that TEGTW's making its first being produced in the Clone Wars era like the ISD-I, rather than post-Clone Wars like the ISD-II, may have contributed to, for example, fanon art of the Tector (such as that of fractalsponge) giving it ISD-I flavoured detailing (tractor beam targeting array, sensor/shield bridge domes, engine vanes, gun turrets).

 

Revenge of the Sith Incredible Cross-Sections is likely where most people got the idea that the Tector was an ISD-I variant. It mentions that the Venator's production was slowing in favour of the Imperial class and the hangar-less Tector class. Why they decided to make it was an ISD-I variant, I don't know, and the SWTC doesn't really say anything that indicates a specific model...

Yes, the Falcon would fit, but you wouldn't be able to fit the shuttle as the hangar would be too short - the studio model hangar entrance would be around 40m wide and 15m tall.

It's likely a modification of the ESB model. The model was already design to have a removable reactor bulb, as that is the mounting point for the stand (not sure where the other ones are), so the only things that were needed to modify the model would be covers for the two hangars bays and stand hole.

 

So this may in fact be my fault?!

I honestly think it's a whole lot funnier if this is on me.

I got ~18m, which considering the shuttle's own vaguely indeterminate height, is arguably just doable, especially if the shuttle skims really low to the deck. We have to imagine that the matte painting "looks wrong", with a narrower opening than the flight deck, but it does that anyway, compared with the exterior model...

And I also noticed that the shuttle's preicse hull length, as given on the other sheet of the hull plans, is actually just 24'00" + 35'9" = 59'9" = 18.22m, plus a little overhang for the fin at the rear... I suspect it works out a little more compact than the often-cited 20m (the overhang doesn't look like it's as much as 5'10" / 1.78m), with a correspondingly reduced height for the vertical...

Okay, that makes sense. The only tricky part is fiting the cover for the main hangar over the bay greeblies, but that's maybe not a particularly big ask. I know the ANH version had a second mounting point on one side (you can see it exposed in some pics) so the ESB one may have had something similar...

That sort of works, or is it just an undersized Marauder corvette?

- The Imperial Ewok

 

I don't know if it was intentional, but I really like how closely the bridge resembles the one on a Vengeance-class SSD. Perhaps they were from similar manufacturers or design teams?

 

Bad Batch finale

Spoiler

I've been waiting this moment for the entire show

 

Boy, those are some gorgeous fascist triangles.

 

Or an undersized Marauder-corvette relative Around, eh, 75-78 metres long.

Yes, whilst Imperial 'cruisers' could be any of a number of generic designs: Strike-class, Vindicator, or Arquitens... depending on era.

Corellian frigates - come in maybe a variety of sizes, from 150 (pre Empire) to maybe even 400 m? I recall the CC-7700 is often scaled around 450 metres, on many fan sites. Or we have the supposed 'heavy gunships' from Dark Empire, shown around 225 metres, on the Warlords mod. And assorted similar designs (like the Trebutor - again, based on a Dark Empire image)

The Corona - I had already head-canoned as the Nebulon-G, in essence, previously.
And yes, I really quite like that redesign of the Adze-class. Not too shabby.

(oh, and X-Wings, modern wise, are likelier nearer to 13.4 m long, which matches a 4.6 cm R2 unit dome quite well, plus cockpit width? This can also throw off the Home One platform shots, potentially)

 

Spoiler

Jeeze, almost looks like the Rogue One model

 

Disney/Lucasfilm needs to do more stuff like this. The lesser known EU ships being put on screen whether live action of animated.

That was fun to finally see.

 

Going of the matte painting the hangar does appear to be a tiny bit higher than the entrance, but still I feel like anything under 20m is just too close a fit for the shuttle and that's not whether it would look right when you have both the shuttle and Falcon next to each other.

Funnily enough I had just recently taken a photo of that shuttle plan (it's in the blueprint book), but some of the measurements were a bit easier to read in those images. I noticed that the head length is slightly longer at 24'10", so the hull length ends up as 60'7"(18.47m).
I also did some measuring of the plan and got around 19.92m(give or take a couple of centimetres) for the full length, which is pretty close to the cannon length of 20m - the side view plan may give a slightly longer length as the fin appears to have a bit more overhang.

Had a look at some behind the scenes footage on youtube and the second mounting point looks to be somewhere on the rear of the ship. I think the likely location is the middle engine, as it looks like it would line up with the internal support tube that runs through the centre of the ship.

Was not intentional on my part. I was aiming more for the design of the bridges on AT-AT barges like the Y-85 Titan dropship.

Spoiler

I was hoping that we might get one appearing at the end(especially with it appearing the Tales of the Empire trailer)... Glad I was right, as it was pretty awesome.

 

Do they...

Spoiler

... explicitly identify that ISD by name as the Executrix...?!

That works, doesn't it?

Maybe, just as the 800m Proficient class seems to be a 350m Carrack cruiser with a lengthened midsection, the 195m Marauder from the Corporate Sector Sourcebook is a verison with a lengthened midsection, and the standard type depicted in the schematics and other appearances is just 70-80m...

Or bulk cruisers, or even old Dreadnoughts. I think they'd tend to call an Arquitens a frigate, but I like the idea that there are reasonable numbers of Quasar Fire-class hulls, another thing we didn't know we'd seen until later material revealed it...

The Charger-class frigate of the Clone Wars is supposedly ~140m, but really ought to only be about 115m, if it shares the Consular-class hullform without significant changes, as it seems to...

But... there's also the "larger Rebel ship of the line" from the old OT-era comics, which is explicitly rather bigger than what we now call a gunship - it's obviously based on the blockade runnder design in its early "pirate ship" configuration with Falcon cockpit and round sensor dish, but different enough that in this case I think we'd be justified as seeing it as a bigger Corellian ship...

Do we have any accurate scaling for the full-sized version seen in the OT? That, to me, is probably a more compelling metric than the VFX miniatures...

Surely we can have a wider internal deck that can accommodate both ships, irrespective of how we resolve the inconsistency about the size of the exit...?

I stand corrected - and that 10" and change really does make all the difference. 20m, near as dang. WEG were, for once, absolutely on the money.

That would make good sense - it's a position that is easy to conceal on the model, and the two supports can be used to film most angles except for low-aft shots that include both the engines and the dome, which explains why they used the ISD-I for that "first catch of the day" shot in ESB...



- The Imperial Ewok

 

Ugh, double post. Delete it, passing Mods or Admins?

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Spoiler

No, but it's definitely implying that this thing is a new ship that hasn't been seen before chronologically in-universe...and Tarkin is on board.

 

While we're talking about sizes - turns out both the old 8 km and new 19 km length for the Exeuctor are wrong. As far as I'm concerned the direct statement by an ILM employee of "we scaled it out to be 11 miles (17.6 km) long on screen" settles the question.(Photo analysis comes out to roughly the same figure, confirming it.) Has there even been a statement by anybody from ILM as to how big they scaled out the Home One to be? If so, there's that would answer that debate. Personally I follow a photo analysis conclusion that the Home One was 3800 meters long.
Sometimes figures from right after the films came out have a tendency to be more accurate. In this case the figure of 29 batteries of 5 turbolasers (145) and 36 ion cannons seems to be about right. Which is still woefully undergunned for a ship that massive. However.... The Rebel Alliance government spent the war based on the fleet; more specifically, that means the Home One. I'd suspect that most of its displacement was given over to housing the Rebel government, rather then combat power. Possibly coupled with limits on how much the ship's power output could be increased within the time and facilities available.

 

I noticed that when I was looking at smaller Imperial ships I could draw details from. Really cool.

 

I had a look through Star Wars: the Blueprints book and none of them seemed to list the full length. The closest I got was one which had measurements going almost the full length, but was missing the engines and nose cone measurements. Presuming I added all the measurements up right, the X-wing is 34'2.25" or 10.42m long; minus the nose and engine. The nose and engines likely add another 2-4m, which would bring it rather close to the current X-wing length.
I also measured another blueprint of the X-Wing in a water tank (for the swamp scenes) and that got around the 12.5m mark, so it could be either size.

Yeah, could have a wider internal deck, or maybe just increase the height of the side bays so that the Falcon can fit partially in them. Still wouldn't make it any easier for the shuttle to leave... In which case it would be easier to just increase the hangar's size by around 30% and solve most of the issues in one go.
[/QUOTE]

Good question, and something I've been pondering about.
Both Mon Cal models are around the same size (2.39m for Home One) and are rather close in size to the ESB Star Destroyer(2.59m). It's possible that they were built to be in scale with the Star Destroyer, but it also could just be a good size for filming, as the SSD model(around 2.8m) is rather close in size as well.
If they are to scale, this would mean that they are rather close in size to the ISD, and if you've ever seen photos from Star Wars Identities exhibition, it doesn't really look off scale wise.
There's also the question of whether both Mon Cal cruisers are supposed to be the same scale?
Both models are around the same size, and if my suspicions are right, they both started from the same base vacuum formed hull shape, but I also feel that the movie depicts Home One as bigger than the other rebel ships - the start of the flyby scene is one scene that I feel that shows this, with the wingless Mon Cal cruiser appearing to be smaller than Home One.

I do feel that the 3.8km length is flawed, as I think there are a lot of problems with the original SWTC measurements - some of which I've listed in previous posts. I'd say the upper limit of the ship's size is closer to 3km, and going of the Dornean gunship in the flyby scene, the lower limit is around 1.9km, but I'd need to go properly over the SWTC measurements to say for sure.

On its armaments, my general thoughts are that the majority of its armaments are heavier guns designed to engage large targets like ISD. These would take up much more space (especially if they are mounted in the hull) and use more power than the larger number of smaller turrets on a ISD, so it wouldn't be able to mount as many as its size would imply - the exception to this would be the 8 heavy turrets (and quad trench turrets on the ISD-I) on the ISD that would likely be larger and more powerful. This heavy armament would also mean it has limited defence against smaller ships, and would have to rely on its strong shields, support ships and starfighters for defence.

 

I went with this site: https://www.theforce.net/swtc/mcc.html#dimensions Which seems to have the best and most well-founded math. (Which may well be the ones you're referring to.) Would be interesting to update based on more accurate A-wing and Lambda sizes. I also figure that typical star cruiser turbolasers are about a quarter heavier then those on star destroyer brim batteries - which themselves aren't actually all that big. They don't really need anti-starfighter weapons since TIE's aren't really a threat to capital ships because they lack missiles or torpedoes. That, and general Rebellion stafighter superiority.

Also, I think "a good size for filming" played into the decision on model size pretty heavily. Also a headcannon - the officer's common area on the Home One is water filled. After all, the Mon Cal are an aquatic species and can breathe underwater.

 

Spoiler: The Acolyte trailer

 

Did The Clone Wars ever call the Venator by name? I only ever remember characters saying Jedi or Republic Cruiser.

I think Bad Batch might be the first non-book/comic/game to use the name Venator.