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

Spoiler

Looks nice, though. There seem to be a lot of good-looking "Corellian-style" ships in this, though I want to get a good look at them before I comment much...

A bit of both, really - but it was a niche New Class thread to begin with, and it... drifted?

And credit where credit's due, because the link at the start is broken, the Admiral's original even more niche thread about the Endurance class which inspired it is here...

That's my hunch, though it's one of those kites I fly as much for artillery practice as anything... the name-pattern seems to imply they're from the same place, and when you look at how well they work with Karrde and Garm, there's a nice theme there about how people from different backgrounds can work together even with distinctive "tribal" or "genetic" paradigms in play - emphasising that it's possible to move past the conflict simmering in the novel while maintaining individuality and difference...

Quality over quantity.

You're giving us zingers and accurate 3D modelling, wheras I'm just thinking out loud, trying to edit what I write freeform down into something readable, and giving up...

Well, 24 screen-accurate TIE Fighters is what I'm needing to rack in there, so that works for me...

I can see KDY being the types who'd revise the design to make the pods narrower, to fractionally reduce the amount of metal they need to procure for each hull...

The top of the viewport's only just out of frame at the top of the pic of Leia in your link - you can see the curve leading round to it - but unless they've airbrushed the top right corner, I'm going to have to admit that the viewport's slightly over one Leia tall...

That said, I really like the implication that this space on Redemption and the bacta bay at Echo Base are elements of the same "architectural complex", whether it's designed to go into a Nebulon-B hull or not...

The real problem is the officer standing behind Veers. Because the cockpit is cleverly realised on-screen from a minimal set with just the hatch and scope and tight camera angles, we could say that is a "2d conversion" composited from discreet holofootage elements, but that's not entirely satisfying...

Aye, I was using the established size of the Action IV to constrain the hull proportions, rather than extrapolating from the size of an AT-AT (15m variant? 22m variant? 10m tall mini-AT-AT drone?)...

And if you can get the transport in the hangar, that's good. Now we just need to work out where they're stored...

I'm not sure what's going on at the sides of that hangar...

Honestly, I like the idea that the TIEs come down from the roof as standard, but the idea it's a separate pod isn't a bad one, and probably fits the movie version better - but is it a free-moving unit that deploys out of a hull hatch, or just an add-on that only sone ISDs have?

Aye, I'd prefer a roof hatch for access to the deep storage hangars... I wonder if they had any idea the concept existed in the lore?

The TIE Bomber has been shown in a hangar rack since Return of the Jedi (and again on the Quasar Fire at Ryloth in REBELS) so it's not a huge issue if they have to be separate from the others - the lack of compatibility with slots designed around the standard cockpit/pylon size was explicitly noted (with regard to the hangars of the standard Army garrison) way back in The Star Wars Sourcebook...

"... the ball cockpit and ion engine assembly of Sienar Systems' basic TIE Fighter--a commodity which, after hydrogen and stupidity, was the most plentiful in the galaxy..."

I like how it looks like it comes from the same design lineage as the Longbeam and the Pacifier...

Adds a whole new meaning to the old phrase about Star Wars continuity, "canon go boom!"

Seriously, though... it makes sense that a standard Nebulon-B has more guns than the Redemption, which has always been statted as being partially disarmed, and those could be the "chin turrets" mentioned on the Bloodprice in the Black Fleet trilogy...

I wonder if there are any other added turrets...

I'd thought that the it might be able to come round to about ninety degrees, but if it won't, it won't...

That's great - with a little work, you could probably use the measurements to work out a very precise height for the cckpit at 15m and 22m... but you've probably done that already for your version...

The side hatch we see in Jedi leads into a side-space backed by a bulkhead - this does't have to be the standard layout (the hatch configuration here is different) but the ESB model seems to depict corresponding side spaces that don't have solid decks, flanking the fully-enclosed "boxy" space mid-hull where, as you say, the "detonator hatch" has to be. And the space in the rear hull where ICS places the hangar isn't properly enclosed on the ESB model either - the panels of side armour flank an undecked open space with some sort of cylindrical module in it, clearly seen in the shot of the detonator explosion...

Now I'm wondering if the "boxy" central space is, counter-intuitively, where the cockpit is - it would mean that the cockpit didn't swing around, and would certainly have enough headroom at 15m.

That sounds about right!!

You expect me to give an opinion on that without citing every single possible pertinent page-reference?

A quick "erratum slip" for the list of mid-Bantam ship references, which I thought I'd completed - I forgot the Corellian Trilogy. Assault at Selonia is the only one in which there seem to be any NRDF ships. The "Mon Calamari cruiser" Naritus, identified in Cracken's Threat Dossier as an old MC80a, and "two or three other ships currently on patrol duty in the Coruscant system" are diverted for a mercy mission, with the cruiser later described as "the flagship for the three warships and eight large transports", leaving it a little bit ambiguous whether the count of three ships includes the Naritus or not. The other warships seem to be of unspecified type, but they may be smaller, as they aren't mentioned explicitly in a passage referring to movement between the hangars of the Naritus and the transports.

And I also missed a list of additional ships placed under Garm's command for the information raid in Vision of the Future. Freedom's Fury, Spirit of Mindor, Starline Warrior, Stellar Sentinel, Welling's Revenge, Garfin, Beledeen II, and Webley. We don't seem to know anything about them except a hint that Garfin and Beledeen II are expected to arrive together and that Alex Winger is the captain of the Webley. I have a vague idea that Charlene Newcomb may have once referred to the intended class for the Webley in an interview or online article, but I can't find anything now...

And now for something a little different - an unplanned tangent completely derailing what was originally supposed to be a succinct, methodical summary of the pre-reboot novels' details about NRDF capital ship formations in the New Class era, because I realised there's something surprising going on with the fighters...

* In general, the mid-Bantam novels are characterised by a remarkable lack of references to carrier-based fighters. In the four novels which span the timeframe between JA3 and the Black Fleet trilogy, the only fighters actually seen aboard any NRDF ships are three "scout A-wings" provided by Ackbar to Madine for a SpecForce insertion team, which deploy from "the launching bay" on the Galactic Voyager in Darksaber, and a single B-wing which Luke uses to reach Nam Chorios, deployed from the "shuttle bay" of Borealis in Planet of Twilight, neither of which is directly indicative of NRDF practice.

* In Darksaber, not one fighter is associated with Galactic Voyager, Dodonna or even Yavaris, nor are any associated with Adamantine, Corbantis and Empyrean in Planet of Twilight. Even in the Black Fleet Trilogy, there's no real indication of fighters with Colonel Pakkpekatt's task force - the "baby birds" taking hangar space on the Glorious could easily be sensor trucks like ferrets and flatfish, and maybe even 190m interdictor pickets.

* Even the Fifth Fleet, the obvious example of a NRDF capital ship formation with a carrier focus, may actually deploy surprisingly small fighter numbers - in theory, there should be hangar capacity for something like a thousand fighters, but in the opening display at Bessimir there are somewhere "more than two hundred warships, large and small" in total with all hangar craft deployed, including "transports and gunboats", and a total capital ship count of "106 principal vessels" stated in the next novel, so crunching the numbers suggests there might not be much over one hundred fighters, with the rest of the hangar space being given to assault shuttles and perhaps larger reconnaissance craft - a squadron of eight 48m prowler sensor planes are used in place of fighters as fleet pickets, and there are two squadrons of 28m drone ferrets.

* Even this modest total includes at least one specialised thirty-ship attack formation (eighteen K-wings paired with an escort of twelve E-wings, 24th Bombardment Squadron and 16th Fighter Squadron) and at least one Recon-X scout unit with eight planes (21st Recon Group; A'baht says he would have to commit "all" his prowlers, of which he has eight, if he didn't use them; as there are twenty-four scout runs in total, this incidentally confirms the count of sixteen drone ferrets and clarifies the Fifth Fleet's task force structure); that leaves perhaps as few as five or six squadrons of E-wings and A-wings for the superiority role, perhaps just one screening squadron per task force.

* As of Doornik-319, the fleet flagship Endurance, leading an outsize task force of 31 capital ships, has a minimum count of eight "interceptor" flights - "interceptor" in these novels is used once or twice specifically for A-wings, but it's also used for screening fighters regardless of type, and flights can sometimes be as small as three fighters ("Flight Two and Flight Four are on the deck and hot"; "Interceptor Two, Five, Eight, Fighter Red, Gold, Black, are on the deck and hot."); the three "colour" callsigns might be temporary tactical designations paired off to the three flights involved, or else a different, non-standard category such as Recon-X formations - the minimum count here is just 24 fighters, which fits with the implied totals for the fleet.

* If these numbers hold, there's a drastic change at the end of the Koornacht crisis; the NRDF reverses its policy of relegating the X-wing to training and recon roles, and at ILC-905 the Indomitable is carrying five squadrons, and the standard screen for a detached cruiser is said to muster three squadrons; even this isn't really enough - the screen has to be reduced to two squadrons so that the twelve K-wings can be assigned two E-wing squadrons for cover...

* In The New Rebellion, as noted above, Wedge's three capital ships are accompanied by a screen of fighters, but there's no direct indication that they use hangars on his cruisers.

* In Ambush at Selonia, the Mon Cal cruiser Naritus shows up to support a flight of six Y-wings patrolling in the Coruscant system, but there's no particular reason to imagine the cruiser is their carrier; there is, however, a "flight deck", where implicitly Kalenda's stolen X-TIE, Luke's X-wing and Lando's PLY-3000 are brought in, and more certainly Wedge lands his X-wing later in the novel; at this point, Rogue Squadron are probably staging their X-wings off the cruiser, although it's not entirely clear - Wedge's POV is that he's mostly doing courier duty as an excuse to fly the fighter in between shuttle runs, but he then thinks of what he's just flown as a a "patrol sorting out the latest foul-up"; and this is the nearest thing to a clear example of ship-based NRDF fighters outside the Black Fleet novels in the entire mid-Bantam timeframe...

* Instead, NRDF fighters are generally based on space stations or at ground bases. In Darksaber, there's Chardaan Depot, a space station with starfighter production lines for X-wings, Y-wings, A-wings, B-wings and E-wings, guarded by fighters "new and old", specifically "dozens" of X-wings (though it's possible these aren't regular NRDF units); in Planet of Twilight, there are "E-wing squadrons" defending the orbital base at Durren; and we see fighters on Coruscant - in Darksaber, X-wings provide a flypast and fireworks at the Imperial Palace for a ceremony designed to evoke the movie tonality of the Ewok party in Jedi, and in The New Rebellion, there's a large fighter contingent housed in an old TIE Fighter base directly beneath the Palace - Leia refers to "the entire squadron" of X-wings being sabotaged, as if there's only one duty squadron of them, but there are "dozens of X-wings" in total, perhaps reflecting a central starfighter maintenance facility, and there are also "Y-wings and A-wings", which may account for the fighters deployed with Wedge's fleet; and in the Black Fleet Trilogy, replacement fighters for the Fifth Fleet deploy directly from Coruscant, although in theory they may be rotated off Home Fleet ships. Then in Specter of the Past, we see seventy-two X-wings and one hundred and eight A-wings sharing the surface base at Morishim, and it's even possible that at least two of the three squadrons in the Katana task force generally tag along from bases rather than using hangar decks.

Exactly what this means is hard to say. I'm not really convinced that the mid-Bantam NJO's lack of carrier fighters was a coordinated piece of conscious authorial metaplot; but within the Black Fleet trilogy the pivot of the X-wing back to a combat role looks like a deliberate narrative theme even though it's not spelled out explicitly, so the switch to stronger fighter screens may be part of the same subtext; and in other novels, the lack of "movie tonality" around snubfighters seems almost self-conscious - in hindsight, the lack of support for the capital ships in Darksaber and Planet of Twilight is actively surprising, and even where there are fighters, as in Champions of the Force and The New Rebellion, the lack of movie-style cockpit scenes is blatant to the point of being actively lampshaded...

As usual, anyone reading this should feel encouraged to speak up if they have thoughts to share or insights to add, or simply to point out obvious details that I've missed...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

On the topic of size estimations:

Spoiler

Anyone got an idea how big the pirate ship from the opening is? I figure looking at the humans in the tunnels and the tunnel size compared to the rest of the ship should give some basis.

In particular, the databank calls the pirate ship a frigate, but given its size compared to other ships at Port Borgo I got the impression it was bigger than that.

 

https://www.starwars.com/databank/pirate-frigate

Dimensions

• Height: 237.19m
• Width: 185.42m
• Diameter: 283.65m

--Adm. Nick

 

Ah, missed that part.

Hmm...it doesn't list length but for star destroyers and mon cal cruisers it only lists length...odd

 

But does it carry fighters?

 

Given that the much smaller Cumulus Corsair does, I would expect so.

Especially since I saw a screenshot of its front (on Mel's Miniatures' bluesky page) where it seems to have a decently big hanger.

 

I'm guessing diameter is supposed to be length.

It likely can, as it has a large hangar in the front.

 

OK...I kinda see it in the front view. Best I could find.

 

Here's a closer view of the hangar

Some observations

Spoiler

• Along with the three boarding tubes it uses, the pirate frigate has an additional two on the same side, so 5 boarding tubes on each side.
• It pretty heavily armed. Including the previously counted 18 turrets on top, there is an additonal 12 on the neck and another 6 on the bottom. Bringing the total to 36, and it wouldn't surprise me if it had more, as some of the antenna like things could be weapons, and it might have some hidden weapons as well .

• I'm wondering if the bottom of the ship can detach and act as a separate ship. It does have engines so it could be a possibility.
  
• The ship it boards looks to be bigger and more heavily armed than a CR90 . From the brief glimpses of it weapons, it looks like it have at least 6 turrets; 4 at the front and 2 underneath closer to the rear (one is the turret that gets blown up, and there should be another on the opposite side).
• The little inflatable dinghies are neat, and I like their compact flexible docking tube - it's sort of how I imagined the Lady luck's one would look like in the Black Fleet trilogy.
• The Onyx Cinder has what looks like a ton of smaller thrusters visibly firing on the bottom when it takes off. Nice detail that we don't see on many ships.

 

Thanks. I really like this one better than the Corsair which I had split feelings over. On the one hand a new ship, especially in live action, is cool. But the open top hangar deck just seems like a problem to me.

 

This pirate frigate puts off some Hoersch-Kessel Drive Inc vibes to me. I see bits of things that just remind me of some of the design elements/shapes of the Munificent-class frigates of the Banking Clan.

--Adm. Nick

 

Arr, 'tis a frigate because 'tis a big pirate ship, savvy?

Spoiler

But it's also a really nice design - the topside turrets feel like a Star Wars evocation of the broadside and quarterdeck of a frigate, and the keel gives a sense of tallness without literally referencing sails; the boarding tubes and the boarders going across on lines to disable the treasure ship's guns remind me of the sort of stunt we'd see in an Old Holywood movie, or a scene in Jason's Jupiter Pirates kids' novels.

So, young Wim Hawkins is going to end up in a fight with Vane at the bottom of the mizzen antenna, right

I'd be interested to know what gives you that vibe, because I don't really see it - the keel reminds me of the concept art that was used for the Corporate Alliance Fantail, and the boarding spikes immediately made me think of Assaj's Trident from the Clone Wars movie (a Colicoid design); I suppose it's a bit like the Captor, with the rounded forward hull and the hangar opening brought into the centre, but that's getting towards general Star Wars warship style...

And now, back to my regular longposting!!

First, some additional errata...

* Looking through the Jedi Academy trilogy again to try see exactly what details are given about Galactic Voyager, I was amused to realise that the big hangar complex underneath the Imperial Palace already appears repeatedly - it's not something that I'd really registered before, because it's used largely for narrative transitions as a character moves from one scene to another, but it's empatically there, and it already has the prominent fighter-maintenance role we see in The New Rebellion...

* At the end of Showdown at Centerpoint, Ackbar arrives in person with a fleet of "twenty-five modern ships with modern weapons"; it's "not that big a fleet" - it's what later novels would call a task force - and it's not described in any detail beyond arriving with all the John Williams flourish of a Return of the Jedi-style reversion from hyperspace, and as the Bakuran flagship has just taken out much of the opposing fleet by exploding, it doesn't have much to do, but it's a substantial NRDF force nonetheless. I'm not sure how I'd forgotten this, especially as I have a vague memory of someone like Sinre or the Admiral calling it to everyone's attention earlier in the thread...

This is what happens when I do all this hastily in odd moments, and try and not let myself get distracted from the NRDF focus by the clash between the Bakuran Defence Force and a Corellian pirate navy of vaguely Imperial type...

* There's one really obvious candidate for Ackbar's fleet of "twenty-five modern ships" at Corellia, and that's flag task force of the Fifth Fleet - the fact it's composed entirely of modern ships suggests it's from the Fifth, the fact it's above standard twenty-one-ship strength suggests the flag task force, and in addition the other two Endurance-class carriers in the Fifth Fleet, Venture and Ballarat, both took serious hangar damage in Koornacht, so they're less likely to be fully refitted and worked up back to combat-ready by this point (Ballarat may, in fact, have been a constructive total loss); but obvious isn't in any way a necessary conclusion, and I very much doubt this was a deliberate nod-across...

* On the other hand, a little more Ewok overthinking reveals that the "cruiser" Mandjur in Tyrant's Test has to be Sacheen-class, and this I'm much more confident about. The known elements of the Fifth Fleet - thirty-one capital ships in the flag task force at Doornik-319, twenty in Task Force Blackvine and eighteen in Task Force Aster, eight prowlers, and sixteen ferrets - add up to ninety-three ships, and only leave thirteen ships for the Ballarat's task force, so you have to subtract five or ten ships from the Doornik-319 flag task force and swap them over; those have to include the two extra heavy cruisers (Stalwart, Illustrious, and/or Liberty, the Vigilant being confirmed as part of the flag task force "proper" elsewhere in the text), and displace Mandjur down to a Sacheen.

And finally, we get back to what I thought was going to be a relatively quick bit of self-contained overthinking, some observations on NRDF fleet structure (though it's sprawled to the point I'm hiding it behind spoiler tags to keep it out of the way of the discussion of Skeleton Crew)...

Spoiler

* Now, I doubt that there was any collaboration between Zahn, KJA and K-Mac on this (it's slightly weird to realise Darksaber and the Black Fleet novels were written simultaneously), but the fleet that shows up at Yavin in Darksaber, with its five big pickles, its mix of Assault Frigates and Strike Cruisers, Corellian corvettes and Carrack-class "gunships", is intelligible both as a prototype of the NRDF task force structure from the Black Fleet novels and a modified version of the Imperial structure from earlier sources.

* The Imperial Sourcebook states that an ISD is always deployed as the command ship of a battle squadron, with two attached attack lines of at least three cruisers each, and a pursuit line of at least four light cruisers or corvettes. The classic Imperial fleet formation introduced in Heir to the Empire has its Star Destroyers screened by Strike Cruisers and scouting Carracks; the Strike Crusiers correspond to one of the two attack lines in each battle squadron, the Carracks are the pursuit line; the second attack line absent from the combat configuration presumably accommodates the additional support types like Star Galleons that are shown attached to the ISDs elsewhere in the Thrawn trilogy.

* These arrangements are perpetuated in the NRDF task force - flagship; four cruisers and light carriers for screening; five gunships for scouting; four escorts and other miscellaneous support ships - the connection becomes really obvious in Darksaber when the ships acccompanying a big pickle are also Strike Cruisers and Carracks, especially when the Carracks are called "gunships".

* The parallel continues with the larger NRDF battle group, a flexible layer that serves for both the intermediate Superiority Fleet and Force Superiority commands in the Imperial system, and the full build of the Fifth Fleet in Cracken's Threat Dossier has 25 ISD-sized flagships, making it the equivalent of the 24-ISD Sector Group that the Empire would drop on problems with a Grand Moff at the helm.

* Like I said, I don't think anyone did this deliberately - it's just there...

* But the point remains - NRDF fleet structure is derived from Imperial Navy fleet structure...

* The other formations in Darksaber obviously weren't designed with the NRDF task force in mind; the typical arrangement is a single big ship with a screen of between three and six smaller ones - Yavaris and the corvettes, Galactic Voyager and the gunships; the addition of the Dodonna to bulk out the first of these formations in the second novel it appears in is literally an afterthought.

* The cue KJA was using here is almost certainly movie tonality, calling back to the scenes in Empire and Jedi depicting the Alliance fleet, which explains the choice of the relatively small Nebulon-B for Wedge's flagship in Champions of the Force - a Mon Calamari cruiser would have been too large for the role, and the frigate was the only other reasonably large movie design available. I also wonder if KJA intended the Galactic Voyager, characterised in Darksaber as the Big Squid's "favourite" flagship, to be the same ship that had the callsign "Home One" in Jedi - it's only in the JASB that it seems to be established as a new MC90.

* Look a little deeper, though, and KJA may have been taking his cue from WEG's Rebel Alliance Sourcebook, which certainly provided him with the Yavaris, the Assault Frigate and gunship designations, and the tactic Ackbar uses in the training manoeuvres at Nal Hutta; the combination of ships at Nal Hutta - a Mon Calamari cruiser, an Assault Frigate, a Nebulon-B, six corvettes and three or four gunships - suggests the Alliance "battle line" structure, consisting of a minimum of two "ships of the line", cruisers or carriers, plus miscellaneous support; in tetms of the details given in the RASB, the Mon Cal and Assault Frigate are the two cruisers, designated as the main line, the escort frigate and the corvettes are close support, and the small gunships are the picket line...

* In short, this smaller force is a classic Alliance-style "roving line" - a battle line detached from the main fleet for a specific duty...

* But wait! There's more!!

* In Planet of Twilight, we have the "two cruisers" Caelus and Corbantis based at Durren, and the "two cruisers" Ithor Lady and Empyrean based at Cyblock XII - "two cruisers", "two cruisers", in both cases supported by several smaller ships - Cyblock XII seems to have around four or six smaller capital ships, including two Corellian gunships; Durren has at least one gunship and two other capital ships, and squadrons of E-wings staging from a space station...

* In the Black Fleet novels, Leia sends the Gol Storn and Thackery to Galantos, Jantol and Farlight to Wehttam, and "two cruisers" from the Fourth Fleet to Nanta-Ri. Pairs, again; "two cruisers", again.

* They're all Alliance-style roving lines, built around two cruisers each!

* Did anybody do that deliberately? No idea...

* These roving lines, referred to idiomatically as "fleets", are often split into smaller formations - in Darksaber we see Ackbar command the Galactic Voyager and the gunships personally, while Wedge's "arm of the fleet" consists of the Assault Frigate, the Nebulon-B and the corvettes; in Planet of Twilight we see the pairs of cruisers sent off without their smaller escorts to chase pirates, and two gunships from Cyblock XII patrolling separately.

* Evidence that these pairs are symmetric is slight to non-existent - RASB made clear that the cruisers of a battle line could be as varied as an MC80 and a bulk cruiser with a few flak guns serving as a carrier; in Darksaber, we see a new 1255m MC90 and a 600m Assault Frigate with a much-refitted hull that probably predates the Clone Wars; in Planet of Twilight we see a "battlecruiser" that might be a Majestic paired with a "scout cruiser" that might be a Sacheen hull-variant. The two ships Leia has at Nam Chorios, an "escort cruiser" paired with a smalller "flagship", might also represent another roving line, though given the lack of smaller ships and the impresion that Borealis is only corvette-sized, I'm not entirely sure...

*There's also a third configuration beyond the standard task force and the battle line. In the Black Fleet novels, Colonel Pakkpekatt has a Strike Cruiser as command ship, two Sacheen-class escorts, and a miscellany of smaller types - an old gunship, a converted racing yacht, three interdictor pickets, a drone ferret; this is described once as a "Force Two armada" configuration. We might define it loosely as cruiser, two frigates, and several small screening ships, some of them with a missile-attack capability.

* Wedge's fleet in The New Rebellion can, by way of retcon, be matched with this configuration - we have a "battleship" with a general in command controlling a single squadron of B-wings, which might be as small as an Assault Frigate, Strike Cruiser or MC40; two "Mon Calamari Star Cruisers" with relatively limited firepower, weak hulls and lots of seat-controlled flak lasers, which I'm very tempted to retcon as MC30 frigates even though one of them is the temporary command ship of a more senior general; and an additional screening force of about two squadrons of snubfighters that may be deployed from a surface base. That gives us one mid-sized cruiser, two frigates, and a screening force, this time entirely composed of fighters...

* The Peregrine task force in Specter of the Past has a Katana-fleet dreadnaught, two Nebulon-Bs, and three fighter squadrons of X-wings and A-wings. That seems very straightforward - a cruiser, two frigates, and a screening force, again with three squadrons of fighters instead of larger pickets.

* Thus, the "Force Two" configuration consists of one crusier, two frigates, and a screening force, either of small pickets or fighters depending on the role. The B-wings attached to the Calamari and the Rogues on the Peregrine have the specific missile-punch role of the gunship paired with Glorious in Pakkepkatt's task force.

* I'm aware that this is essentially a retcon, especially for Wedge's fleet in The New Rebellion. I don't seriously think that collaboration extended to matching the formation structure across the novels... but it fits?

* These various potential structures all interlock rather neatly. A standard NRDF task force can generate two roving lines by detaching its pairs of cruisers and carriers and a mix of escorts and pickets as required, or a pair of "Force Two" configurations by detaching its two cruisers, each with two of its four frigates plus some screening forces - it's notable it's not designed to split off the two light carriers in the same way, as we never see this configuration without a "gun cruiser"; but instead it retains the basis of a single relatively gun-light and fighter-focused roving line with two carriers and smaller ships of corvette/gunship type.

* The fact that the task force flagship's going to be left with a few pickets isn't actually a problem - that's basically the formation we see with Galactic Voyager in Darksaber, with Indomitable and the screening Vanguard and Folna at ILC-905, and - very explicitly - with Rejuvenator and its Ranger-class gunships at the start of the NJO. I can't believe that was done with any deep thought about NRDF fleet structure, but it's there.

* Alternatively, you can sometimes just divide a task force into two roving lines - a battle line doesn't distinguish between the "flagship" and "cruiser" roles, so you could just split the larger ships three and two, and it seems that not every task force necessarily has a flagship of the usual ISD-analog size, so some will probably split straightforwardly into two cruiser/carrier pairs; and the fact that you can do that means you can also create a task force by combining two battle lines.

* Even so, it's possible that some parts of the NRDF remained organized directly into battle lines, without a task force superstructure...

* There's an emerging simplification into just two capital ship types - the cruiser, now implicitly defined as a ship which is large enough to have a usefully-sized hangar (with Star Destroyers and true carriers as subtypes), and the gunship, a compact ship which doesn't have a hangar - there are no new "frigate" or "corvette" types, the Sacheen, although called an "escort", is really in the light cruiser category, and is probably too small and skimpy for the role anyway, and the Agave is only called a "picket" rather than a "gunship" to distinguish its flak-and-sensor hull-variant from the standard Warrior...

* Gunships are considered the most potent of the NRDF's smaller warships, at least by Han Solo - this is implied in both Planet of Twilight, where Han seems to regard the Courane and Fireater as more useful the "half a dozen smaller cruisers" with them, and in Vector Prime, where there are again "a few smaller cruisers" in addition to the ISD Rejuvenator and the six Ranger gunships, but Han thinks the gunships are "the second-best thing" on-hand after the ISD, and this is supported by the fact that the cruisers aren't exactly prominent in combat. Presumably these "cruisers" are something like Sacheen-class and maybe even Agave-class. Exactly why the gunship is perceived as better is isn't explained, except that Han obviously likes Corellian ships - possibly they pack a hefty missile punch?

* All of this is of course very much backfill - except the part where the Mandjur is a Sacheen-class escort cruiser. That's hard-coded page-canon...

tl;dr - you can draw a straight line from the Imperial battle squadron to the New Republic task force, and somewhat squinter ven diagrams around Alliance-style roving lines and a more compact cruiser-frigate-frigate-screen configuration...

And that's enough for now. Next time on McEwok Talks Too Much... I'm going to really, really annoy any Ackbar fans in the audience...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

I have the disappointing feeling that Skeleton Crew will give us a wealth of new ships...yet a dearth of information about them.

 

I often wonder which flag officer is leading these reinforcements. I tend to (when I read and put my OCs and assorted elements in) goes to my female admiral who is "named" in RotJ by Ackbar but she deferred speaking so he moved on to General Madine. Though I wonder if it could be Firmus Nantz, Kir Vantai, Ragab, Chel Dorat, Hiram Drayson, Nammo, Tolokus, Tyr Taskeen, Areta Bell or Willham Burke (assuming Vantai, Ragab, Dorat, Nammo, Taskeen and Burke survived beyond the Dark Empire year 10-11 ABY).

Don't forget its "cruisers", whatever class they are.

I've felt the same way since The Mandalorian S1. Give it another five-twenty years.

 

Hmm, so I've been reading the Last Flight of the Harbinger comic, and there's this sequence where Leia keeps yelling about trying to get the hijacked ISD's cannons online...and at the end she finally mentions that they are ion cannons. The cannons get fixed and start firing...and the next panel shows the ISD's main battery guns firing green bolts. Hey why does this sound familiar? Oh yeah, because in TROS they also had that admiral yelling about firing ion cannons when it should have been turbolaser cannons. Also...this comic came out three years before TROS.

 

There are no blue ion cannons on screen in the OT. Even the planetary ion cannon on Hoth shoots pinkish bolts. Blue equaling ion started as a video game convention I believe. Though some guidebook I believe did try to say that the clone wars era blue blaster bolts is because they are partially ionized to be better against machinery and droids, presumably internalizing said video game conventions... Though you would assume all ships would be using blue bolts regardless of era then. Unless you take the "empire was just preparing for the Vong" interpretation to further levels of conspiracy.

Then there is of course the Malevolence which was purplish I believe.

I do think that there should have been some visual difference between the turbolasers and ions in episode 9, but ions being green is not inherently bad... Actually it does allow the interpretation of some of the bolts shooting at the Tantive in ANH being ions which makes alot of sense come to think of it.

 

Don't get me wrong. I am not saying it is a new feeling. There are so mant ships throughout all the different media that suffer the same fate.

 

There’s a bunch of new stuff here, but I’m not sure if they’re traced fanart or canon designs we haven’t seen yet…

And I’m still waiting to see what the mystery NR heavy cruiser looks like. Three were lost at Jakku, so fingers crossed for a glimpse of them.

 

We also have possible 'ion cannons' when Anakin fires on the shields of Invisible Hand's hangar above Coruscant, from his Eta-2 interceptor.

These are, once more, green too.
Meantime, both TFA seem a bit loose with their weapons terminology. Hux talks of training guns on Poe and Finn's TIE, but a missile battery is instead shown, etc.

Blue ion bolts may also have been inspired by the 'stun ring' that disabled Leia in Episode IV. Torpedoes going from pinkish in ANH and reddish in ROTJ, to blue, may have been a similar conceit?

As for the Empire ONLY outnumbering the Alliance 15 to one in terms of warships and transports - that could beget several interpretations.

But taken literally, that implies up to more than 111,000 active Alliance warships and transports, and perhaps more. Perhaps split among assorted allied cells, governments and discreet backers?

If the full naval forces are 17 percent of the Empire's navy, it may instead be 645,400 plus vessels - again, a huge amount.
And if it's only 15 times smaller than one average sector Group, then that becomes only 108 vessels (equal to one escort Fleet) and thus, too small.

 

I'm pleasantly surprised by the provision of official scaling figures. The reboot-era lack of detail does feel deliberate, but I can never decide whether it represents wariness based on past debates, or an active attempt to provoke discussion to drive engagement (but seriously, in both cases, why?! - you can't really control how this fandom's going to react)...

Yes, exactly.

Your questions are exactly the sort of things that the line is designed to inspire, but I have no answer - and certainly not one I'd try and foist on anyone who doesn't want to agree...

You'd get a very different result if you restrict yourself to sectors where the Alliance is actively engaged, if you include corvettes but exclude smaller Imperial types like Sienar Guardians and Blastboats, and if you count the Alliance's entire inventory of dropships and hot-rod YT-1300s against the Empire's numerically larger but proportionally very limited provision of Telgorn Betas and Gammas, and then give those a proportionally heavier statistical weight in terms of raw numbers compared with capital ships... but that, to me, is a realistic framing of the Alliance's corsair-and-commando capability vs. the Empire's ability to defend and counter...

On the other hand, Riders of the Maelstrom's stated sector average of 1.5m Imperial Army troops (which even I'd probably take as a median, lower than the real average) correlates on a thousand-sector basis to 50 million Alliance personnel, and that doesn't seem excessive (and you still have a huge amount of variation depending on just how much of the Alliance it includes - it's probably exclusive of snubfighters and capital ships, for example - and while the relatively modest corps of infantry and vehicles directly controlled by Alliance High Command aren't supposed to number more than around 150,000 personnel based on the unit structure in Rules of Engagement, even that's negotiable)...

Let me see...

That looks like a Raider corvette from Battlefront II at bottom left, a Corona-class frigate from Cracken's Threat Dossier middle left, a Davide Fabbri consular variant from Star Wars: Republic at top right, and an Arquitens with a creatively-modified bridge tower at bottom right... by the look of them, they've actually gone to the effort of redrawing everything, too, and the whole thing's very much evocative of Cam Kennedy's fleet shots in Dark Empire...

Something for everybody, in other words.

8-9 ABY! Don't remind me I still have my revised timeline notes to post!

One thing I haven't done is rechecked WARFARE to remind myself exactly what we did with the fleets and flag officers there - I didn't want that influencing my reading notes. And I don't think I want to actively speculate on this, but I'd observe that Areta Bell probably ought to be in command of Endurance already at this point, which would exclude her from this pickle-centred battle group, and I'd add two more names to your list of senior flag officers - Garm (which, tangentially, reminds me that Harbinger is a candidate for one of the big pickles involved) and the Bothan Jid'yda, mentioned alongside Nantz in Shield of Lies as a leading candidate to take over the Fifth Fleet (his Borsk-backed candidature would be stronger here with Leia and Ackbar both off Coruscant); or it could be that in Ackbar's absence, the senior task force commodore simply took command, whoever that might be...

I caught them a couple of paragraphs later - they're described as "smaller cruisers", the same words used for the ones that accompany Couranne and Fireater in Planet of Twilight, and whereas Han's POV that their combat value is weaker compared with the gunships is only implied there, it's explicit here - a very unexpected and perhaps accidental (but very nice) bit of cross-continuity between novels...

Contrary to what I'd initially thought, there's nothing in the novel about elements of the task force being detached, but we're hardly talking Majestic-class Star Destroyers here, or even Strike Cruisers; the obvious candidates among known NRDF hull-types are the Sacheen and maybe even Agave (at 190m it would be visibly larger than a 120m Ranger, and it's statted with very slight deflectors, though the same stats give it four flak turrets with all-around fire angles, a decent armament for a linear anti-starfighter screen, and just the thing you need for skip-baiting), but there's also a style of 200-300m "gun cruiser" sans fighter hangar, represented by older types like the KDY Class 1000, the Sienar Bayonet, the Damorian Tartan and the Elrood Prosperity - and for comparison, as @Carib Diss recently reminded us, Star Wars Gamer 5 has the little Imperial warlord-enclave in the Centrality building 250m strike cruisers with a flak laser armament...

Also, @Noash_Retrac, would my current notes on the Bantam ships be any interest - these don't go through the Glove books, the X-wing series (I have something special planned), Courtship, or the Thrawn Trilogy, but they kick off with JA3 and go in line from there...?

And now, a little longposting!

This one's an attempt to finally conclude my somewhat ad hoc survey the mid-Bantam novels with a selection of random observations...

* When you pay too much attention to the ship movements in Darksaber, you realise that KJA does not actually portray Ackbar as any better at fleet command than Daala - in the manoeuvres at Nal Hutta, Wedge baits him with a formation that invites him to use his favourite tactic (the Ackbar Slash from The Rebel Alliance Sourcebook), and he walks straight into the trap like it's a door and he's a Fett clone; and then he simply runs away from Daala's fleet like he's being chased by the Killer Hoojib of Mos Dustcrepe.

* Endurance-class fleet carriers are explosions waiting to happen. The Endurance gets annihilated at Orinda, which is excused by the rather singular mistake of getting in the way of a cranky Super Star Destroyer; but at Doornik-319, the Venture has a catastrophic fire on the hangar deck which burns out all three bays on one side of the hull, destroys fourteen fighters, and implicitly kills hundreds of crewers (with a total of just nineteen snubfighters and one frigate destroyed in the actual battle, the balance of "well over a thousand" casualties are aboard Venture and the cruiser Phalanx); at N'zoth the Ballarat takes two missiles near one of the midships bays which set off a chain of explosions through the hangar complex, destroying three squadrons of fighters in the process and possibly damaging the ship beyond repair. The Intrepid just avoids taking any punches. And the Empire's insistence on tucked-in hangars and fighters that don't use fuel or missiles suddenly seems a whole lot smarter.

* The K-wing is also an explosion waiting to happen. The idea is a compact ground-attack two-seater which can swing-role into attacks on capital ships - but it lacks the manoevrability to defend against opposing fighters, and its open-carry egg-baskets are probably blaster-bait; the unsupported attack displayed in the manoeuvres at Bessimir isn't even attempted in practice, but instead at Doornik-319, the K-wings are covered by E-wings on a 3:2 ratio, and they still take brutal losses to opposing fighters; at ILC-905 the K:E ratio is officially raised to 1:1 and then doubled again to 1:2, at the expense of a proper screen on their carrier; and they still take at least 50% losses...

* This is, of course, movie tonality. Two fighters sit at the back to absorb tail-chase blaster fire on their rear deflectors while the guy in front tries - and normally fails - to make a shot. The concomitant movie tonality is that TIE Fighters will shred a typical New Republic fighter attack.

* That stuff Wedge does with free-manoeuvring wing-pairs which dodge around the danger zone, dogfighting as required and making their attack runs from random angles when clear? Not standard tactics...

* Reflecting this, one point the mid-Bantam novels make is that properly-handled TIE Fighters remain dangerous. Kueller's droid-piloted TIEs simply take apart Wedge's A-wings and B-wings - at least, they seem to be droid-piloted, but hold that thought for later, because I'm pretty sure it's unreliable narration... and Han feels thorough professional respect for Getelles' Imperial pilots when they chase the Falcon off Exodo II.

* There's an interesting background theme in Planet of Twilight, largely expressed through Han's POV, where it's observed that a "wilcat pirate fleet" or "planet-hopper fleet" depends on having bases where it can set down its small ships to resupply, and that's contrasted with having a ship which can act as a carrier in areas where unsupported fighters can't function - a type that Han instinctively thinks of as a Star Destroyer. Partially, that's a reflection of Han's own background, and the Empire's organizational quirks - dreadnaughts and bulk cruisers never carried enough to do more than provide a screen, he left the Empire before escort frigates and escort carriers became commonplace, and in his later adventures, Star Destroyers became the main platform for deploying useful numbers of opposing fighters - but considering that TIE Fighters on almost any non-Star Destroyer are tight-packed and in limited numbers, and it's going to be worse for snubfighters, I wonder if it also has something to do with hold-space and logistics - smaller carriers need more regular resupply themselves, making them into larger "wildcat" or "planet-hopper" hulls tied to their bases, and a Star Destroyer's the type you need to fight an unsupported campaign...

* Tracking backwards into Children of the Jedi, we see that Han knows what he's talking about and Hambly knows what she's doing. When faced with the very limited destruction inflicted on Plawal, Han spontaneously observes that this was done with "two or three carriers and a bunch of TIEs, tops. All the way out here with no assault wing? No destroyers?" Or, in a register where his underlying professionalism isn't showing through quite so idiomatically, the attack involved neither bombers nor turbolasers, and does not conform to the Empire's usual pattern. What Han isn't consciously seeing, what's barely whispered in the novel, is that when the Eye was sabotaged, Vader just strode in and solved the problem with a few straight-wing TIE Fighters and a detachment of stormtroopers...

* That, again, is very much movie tonality. The same movie tonaity as above, in fact. And the same non-standard tactics, too...

"What's the pilot's call sign, sir?"
Wedge considered it, then said, "Vader."

...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

While I don't spend much time these days thinking about Legends, I do maintain an opinion that I've held for years, namely that the New Class of starships was ultimately deemed either a) an outright failure or b) too focused on specialized functions to be useful.

Sure, OOU, we know that most authors barely chose to use the New Class, with a few scant mentions to Nebula-class and Endurance-class ships popping up here and there. However, IU, we know that by the time of the Gavrisom-Pellaeon Treaty and leading up to the NJO, the New Republic's navy was primarily dominated at a capital ship level by Mon Cala cruisers and Star Destroyers. As @Thrawn McEwok noted, with 5% of the NR's entire budget being devoted at times to Mon Calamari ship construction, it isn't surprising that these ships are so prevalent. In the case of the ISD, the sheer number of captured ones in NR service and the control of yards at Kuat, Fondor, and Corellia gave the New Republic considerable experience with that vessel type.

The Mon Cala cruiser and Star Destroyer may look very different, but in practice, they both are the same. Multi-role capital ships capable of carrying a large number of ship to ship weapons, fielding dozens or hundreds of starfighters, and being the ideal hybrid of a battleship/carrier/command ship. I'd argue that the Nebula-class was closest to this concept, hence why some were kept around.

But, facts are facts. By the NJO, the New Republic and later Galactic Alliance's main fleets were all built on the backbone of Mon Cala cruisers like the Viscount-class, Mediator-class, MC80B, MC90 and on Star Destroyers of the Imperial-class, Rejuvenator-class, Nebula-class, and modified versions of the same.

The New Class reminds me a bit of the US Navy's failed attempt in the 90's to design a more specialized warships- a smaller littoral ship, an advanced gun focused destroyer, and an air-defense focused cruiser. Of which the navy didn't get the cruiser, got three of the gun destroyers that were too costly (the three Zumwalt-class), and a few dozen Littoral Combat Ships that are being sold off or decommissioned after less than a decade of service because they are underarmed and not particularly useful in current world geopolitics.

--Adm. Nick

 

True, but the green bolts are still emanating from what are clearly the main barbettes of the ISD's main battery.

I dunno, I just headcanon that the New Class aren't fundamentally different from any of the ships that came before. They fulfill the same roles for each ship of their size class, and aren't significantly better or worse than others that came before. They're just newer hulls. And just because OOU authors didn't depict them doesn't mean they're not still there off-screen.

I think LCS wasn't a bad idea, it just suffered from design creep and was mismanaged to the point where the cost skyrocketed. Also LCS was built for war with Iran, and with China taking a much bigger priority these days, basically its mission disappeared. As far as I can tell the Arleigh Burke-class is an air defense cruiser...it's the size of a cruiser, and air defense is he only mission that justifies having one. Sure it can perform anti-surface and anti-submarine roles, but it's too expensive to risk doing either. And I don't know why the Zumwalt-class existed at all.

 

Consider that the New Class was built at a time of peace, one where apparently the most likely threat would be a world like Bessimir, as Operation Hammerblow showed. That is more akin to fighting an Iran than facing down a peer fleet like China.

Again, we know why OOU the New Class disappeared- authors and fans didn't latch on to it and it is hard to use new stuff when casual fans are drawn to the familair shapes of X-wings, Mon Cal cruisers, Star Destroyers, and TIE's. That is why it is fun/interesting to think why the New Class seems to fizzle out IU. Even if it isn't an outright failure, it is clear that more familiar ships became the core of the fleet before the NJO.

For better or worse, the core of the fleet remained, to paraphrase the Ewok, a mix of pickles and wedges.

--Adm. Nick

 

Nice picture, and excellent observations

Spoiler

The preview images from the top down made it seem a tad undergunned, but seeing the bottom side this thing is blistering with weapons.

Interesting design, very different from most weapon distributions on star wars ships. Also, makes me notice the shadows in the opening pirate attack suggest this ship attacked the freighter from above to disable it, then came alongside to board. Also fits with the frieghter's surviving turrets being on its underside.

Aye cap'n.

That does fit with star wars vibes based classification anyway.

(Honestly the main reason I asked because I was imagining a hypothetical squadrons 2 with a pirate playable faction, and I was wondering if this would be the big centerpiece ship or one of the support frigates)

Also an excellent analysis. I agree completely, it is a great design.

Or the droch boarding vessels from the Clone Wars show.

That does seem to be the case with most pieces of media. Like, even back in the legends day I feel few ships got much info in their initial appearances, and it was mostly the essential guides and tabletop rpg books that provided most of the background info. Sadly both are in rather short supply these days.

 

Yeah, NJO fleet battles onwards aren't easy to picture when the standard "cruiser", "destroyer", "frigate", "corvette", "gunship" etc etc is used almost all the time. So for Vector Prime, I just go with Belarus-class medium cruisers being with the Rejuvenator and the six Rangers at Helska IV, Corona-class frigates part of the fleet protecting Ithor in Dark Tide II: Ruin and refurbished Nebulon-Bs with the Errinic and the Mediator (I headcanon its called the Dodonna and is successor to the Assault Frigate Mark I from Darksaber and predecessor to the battle carrier Dodonna) at Ord Mantell in Agents of Chaos I: Hero's Trial.

Please please please. I love to know the thoughts of official writers who worked, particularly with the original EU.