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

I'll cast my vote for Fleet Junkie Flagship- The technical discussions of the GFFA

 

Most of the 2km+ warships would probably belong to the strategic OoB, leaving the Moffs with ISDs and possibly some Tectors.

I just had another thought: Suppose the Comm Cruiser at Endor wasn't that "big blot" shown at the Emperor's throneroom, but another, presumably smaller ship. (And that 6km+ blot was the Shockwave, perhaps?)

 

FTeik: Funny, how can the Dreadnought-Class-Cruiser (better termed a frigate) be supposed to be a "ship of the line", if there has been peace for at least thousand years, the Old Republic itself had no standing military and the ships it commanded are not part of a Navy, but the JudicalDepartment, in other words part of a police-force?

A Dreadnaught is a ship of the line because that's what all the sources say she is, outside the orbit of SWTC-inspired fanfic.

SWTC's warship-designation arguments are not based on a lucid, judicious and even-handed use of information, but on selective presentation to fit uncanonical frameworks, peppered with high-profile howlers. This happens, it's human nature; I've done similar things myself, I've seen other people do it, and in this case, it shouldn't take away from Saxton's undoubted abilities or the overall scope and depth of SWTC. But when it happens, it needs to be pointed out, and (to use a word beloved of SWTC's fans) corrected.

Now, because a lot of SWTC, probably the vast bulk of its content, is very good, and because most sane people can't be bothered to look into these arguments very deeply, Saxton has been able to become the living fanboy dream, and work on ICS and ItW; and as part and parcel of that, we get the Proccy, the Mandy, and the Mandy-II. Power to him - even with the superships, if that's what rocks his boat.

But his canon work can't reinterpret the Dreadnaught directly without creating a fairly blatant continuity contradiction. So what we now have are 600m ships of the line, and unneccessary multi-mile behemoths whose rationale is unknown and whose usefulness is unclear.

And if there has been peace for at least a thousand years, you could equally ask why Kuat is wasting its money on Mandator-class irrelevancies.

Personally, I think that the excision of the term "Navy" from Prequel EU sources was unneccessary; but that cannot in itself undermine the idea that Judicial Forces, the Outland Regions Defence Force, and potentially other military units regarding themselves as federal forces, employed Dreadnaughts, or that Dreadnaughts were ships of the line.

Of course, to achieve this "fix", a distinction should be drawn between the Navy and the Army - but it always has been: "During the days of the Old Republic, the Army degenerated into a poorly-trained police force in fancy uniforms" (ISB, p. 43).

Gladiuus: Thoughts?

You're welcome to try... though my last attempt didn't take off...

Maybe that was because it was me?

EJ: heh ewok obviously you misread or I failed to convey exactly the point of 2km+ warships I was talking about.

Heh. Seperated by a common language?

I never, in the scope of the current discussion, said they were front line and common ships (I said fleet flags and command bases, special fleets, defensive roles, kingpin ships and intimidation usage, all stuff you agree with)

I know. But you did ask if I could "find justification for between 500 and 1000 2km+ ships in the entirety of the empire". I am, politely, sceptical of this, especially if you mean ships with a combat role, rather than support/transport ships, or ships built around large systems like superlasers, specialist communications equipment or big, fast engines. I simply don't see any reason or logic for these ships - they're expensive, complicated and unwieldy; nor do I see canon evidence for their existence...

My preferred model is to imagine:
[ul][li]A bracket of ~2km battlecruisers, comms. ships, etc.; not assigned to typical sector fleets, and not actually superior in firepower to "common" Star Destroyers - exactly how many, I don't know: dozens; hundreds; a thousand?[/li]
[li]An exponential leap from up to a very small handful of massive ships - Mandy-IIs, Eye of Palpatine, Giel's flagship, and then the SSDs; only with the Ex-class would such monsters appear in any great numbers; perhaps only with the Ex[/

 

Well, i have to vote for my own suggestion:


THE TFN-SHIPYARD.


Simple, elegant, without being an attention-whoring title and without negative connections (i'll never feel comfortable with a word like "junkie").




As for the current discussion:

The point you obviously missed is: How can it be a ship of the line, if there were no battles for ship of the lines?

Typical rhetorical blunder: "Saxton is a nice guy, a competent man, BUT ..."

A correction of the correction? That would be counter-productive.

Thank you for insulting me, everybody else here, who agrees with Saxton and the people at LFL, who hired him and edited his writings, that we "didn't look into these arguments to deeply".

After all McEwok knows more than everybody else and is not a dishonest hypocrite, who wants us to value everything WEG created as gold - although those sources themself admit to be incomplete, probably flawed (since they're supposed to be "in-universe"-documents) and don't fit the movies and the selective conditions they give us - and to ignore every other source like the ICSs or ITWs.

There is no contradiction: The Dreadnought-Cruiser is the strongest ship the UN-like OldRepublic employs in its police-force. Once the clone-wars begin they're assigned frigate-duties in support of Victories and Venators (if they are used at the front-lines at all). The Dreadnought-Cruiser being ships of the line is hyperbole by Rebel-Alliance propagandists, who don't even know on which side the clones of the clone-wars fought and who are completely ignorant of the role Venators and Acclamators played.

Several reasons or a combination of them are possible:

a) As protection in case of corporate-warfare (which became widespread during the last decades of the OldRepublic),
b) the officials of Kuat are smarter, than the officials of the OldRepublic,
c) the OldRepublic could do without ships bigger than a Dreadnought-Cruiser, because it was confident, that in case of emergencies it could rely on the strong Navies of its member-states (like already said, the OR looks a lot like the UN, but while the UnitedNations lack air-craft-carriers or even decent destroyers, its members like the UnitedStates, GreatBrittain and so on have them).

 

Fteik: be careful of the WEG created costs, if we call into question WEG's pricing we get a much easier justification for a lot of the iconsistancies (IE tie fighter cost, ion cannon cost, the cost capital ships up to star destroyers and beyond) many of these 'pricing' problems go away if we take the weg costs as being too low (there are many incosistancies in utility/firepower of ships in the pricing, modular taskforce cruiser being perhaps the ultimate one in my book, a specialized destroyer sized and decently gunned vessel that is less than the cost of a single gunship!)


I will agree to disagree with you ewok on the point that large ships are not more useful, but again, thats my personal opinion.
I still think the biggest reason large ships are useful is in territory holding of strategic areas and in combined usage with support ships and interdictors. A large ship with its expected increase in shielding and reserves for weapons provides the hammer to crack open the enemies surface defenses and its larger vessels, leaving the smaller warships to worry less about total damage inflicted on them. IMO it would be unwise to initate a battle that while you will win, that you will have to repair afterwards. A large ship provides the umbrella that draws fire from the support ships.

 

First-I vote for the current name.

Thanks for the info.

Back to the whole cruiser debate-here's another monky-wrench-the Gozanti crusier, a ship that is not very big at all. I'm starting to think they have no naming theme whatsoever. I supose after 25 thousand years of space travel, it can be hard to keep track of.

 

Alright, folks, I decided to have a go at setting up an all-fleet message board here:

[link=http://s2.phpbbforfree.com/forums/swfleethq.html]Fleet Junkie Headquarters[/link]

Let me know what you think. It's an experiment, and I don't want to step on any toes especially since I'm not exactly a regular poster in this thread. When you sign up, PM me (here, on TF.N) with your username over there and I'll give you access to a private forum where all you original fleet junkies can discuss where you want the site to go, or if you think it's even necessary at all.

 

Without alternatives we have to take, what we can get. However for the firepower-cost-ratio of an ISD in comparison to the Executor we don't need WEG-numbers.

Darksaber establishes, that an SSD is "worth 20 ISDs" and from the ITWT we get the weapons the Executor carries in comparison to an ISD: 78times as many turbolasers.

 

Are you kidding me McEwok? The Dreadnaught-class as a "ship of the line"? As of the Clone Wars, the Dreadnaught-class cruisers are dwarfed by just about every warship in use by the CIS and Republic. The Munificent-class Star Frigate is larger than the Dreadnaught. The ships are extremely inefficient and are severely outclassed by a true warship. Case in point, the comic arc Republic -- Dreadnaughts of Rendili tells that the Dreadnaughts are an aging ship design. Not only that, but they have serious design flaws that allow a single starfighter to be able to cripple its entire navigation suite. In addition, FIVE anti-pirate Dreadnaughts were unable to destroy a SINGLE attacking Acclamator-class assault frigate (the RSS Sundiver). What does this tell of the Dreadnaughts potency as a warship?

ROTS ICS also tells us of Utapau's defences, which apparently also include Rendili Dreadnaughts. Each one is only one fifth the size of a Trade Federation Battleship, and if it takes a flotilla of Venator-class Star Destroyers (each one much more powerful than an Acclamator) to collapse the shields of a TFBB, it would probably take dozens of Dreadnaughts to destroy even one. Dreadnaughts are glorified police ships, nothing else. Perhaps to minor pirate bands they are a great threat, as they make great "Coast Guard" patrol ships, but when they're pitted against a true warship, they are grossly outclassed.

 

That is fine. You make a good point, The2ndQuest. Go ahead and change the title of the thread and add any links that make it look official. Also, feel free to add my little summary. I had alot fo fun with it.

BTW, do we have a title yet?

--Adm. Nick

 

So... anyone check out the new boards?

 

A Dreadnaught is a ship of the line because that's what all the sources say she is, outside the orbit of SWTC-inspired fanfic.

There is no fanfiction on SWTC. Exactly what are you referring to?

SWTC's warship-designation arguments are not based on a lucid, judicious and even-handed use of information, but on selective presentation to fit uncanonical frameworks,

Cry me a river, envious one. SWTC's warship-designation is the single most coherent, logical observation of SW vessels available on the internet, are certainly more reliable than poorly researched RPG sourcebooks and "Essential Guides" who cut and paste from those sourcebooks. People who fondle 20 sided dice shouldn't be relied upon to represent the definitive, correct minutae of the GFFA.

How many Saxton-bashing posts are you going to make in lieu of actual argument? Look, blubbering into one's pillow "It shoulda been meee!" nightly over the fact that Saxton's observations on the GFFA landed him a job as an EU author over oneself shouldn't generate post after post after post on a web board of simpering anti-author sentiment and envy. That's what blogs are for.

Buck up.

But his canon work can't reinterpret the Dreadnaught directly without creating a fairly blatant continuity contradiction.

No one's reinterpreted "Dreadnaught". However, the Executor-class Star Dreadnought has been given its properly place thanks, not to a "fanfic", but a full-on LFL product, "ITW:SWT". The term "dreadnought"has been used to describe ships of a bigger class from one another since the Marvel SWcomics. (You can tell these apart from RPG products by the fact that they didn't come with dice.)

900km is not the canonical size of DS2.

Yes, it is.

Inside The Worlds Of The Star Wars Trilogy

[blockquote]pg. 43: Secretly constructed in orbit around the remote Forest Moon of Endor, the second Death Star is over 900 kilometers (550 miles) in diameter[/blockquote]


CINEFEX July 1983 issue

Interview with Richard Edlund of Industrial Light & Magic, regarding the effects of Return of the Jedi.

[blockquote] pp.7-8: " The Deathstar, I think, will be a lot more interesting than the one in the first Star Wars ? mainly because it is under construction ... Plus, it will be MUCH bigger. In Star Wars, it was really difficult to establish the scale. It was supposed to be miles in diameter, but with a full sphere it was hard to tell. The NEW one is SUPPOSED TO BE MORE like FIVE HUNDRED MILES in diameter, but since we're not dealing with a sphere all the time, we'll be able to establish landmarks and get a better sense of scale."[/blockquote]

Oh, and for any lurking "VIPs" : Hi there!!!

 

The Death Star is ~900km, thanks to the movie scaling.
Construction time of the this station is sighted, low-end, at 6 months.

Even if it took two years to build, do you understand how many 1.6 Km long Imperators a station 900km in diamater could be used to create?

Something on the order of a 1e15 or more if my math is within an order of magnitude, give or take.

So 1e10 to 1e15 worth of Destroyers = the DS2. Roughly, with crappy math.

I think it is more than plausible that there are hundreds in not thousands of vessels larger than and superior to the Imperator design within the Empire.

 

If someone referred to a Dreadnaught Cruiser as a ship of line, chances are, that person would probably belong to some planetary government's so called navy.

 

FTeik: The point you obviously missed is: How can it be a ship of the line, if there were no battles for ship of the lines?

And your evidence that there were no major battles (as opposed to no Galactic-scale wars) is...?

Presumably they were "ships of the line" inasmuch as they were deemed appropriate as the premier warships of their age, and a core around which to build combat forces if war did break out - the same reason that anyone else has ships of the line in peacetime, in other words...

Does that article on the Mandos give the date of the Mandalorian Dreadnaughts that inspired the design, btw?

Typical rhetorical blunder: "Saxton is a nice guy, a competent man, BUT ..."

No; a genuine, sincere respect for Saxton and for a lot of what SWTC has done, designed to emphasise that I'm not simply trashing uncritically or out of hand. I'm sure my phrasing is less than perfect - that's just a part of the human condition: but I'm doing my best to make clear where I'm coming from on this... which is that SWTC (presumably accidentally) manipulates its sources to fit its interpretive frameworks...

A correction of the correction? That would be counter-productive.

No, it would be the removal of errors and the refining of the evidence.

Thank you for insulting me, everybody else here, who agrees with Saxton and the people at LFL, who hired him and edited his writings, that we "didn't look into these arguments to deeply".

After all McEwok knows more than everybody else and is not a dishonest hypocrite, who wants us to value everything WEG created as gold - although those sources themself admit to be incomplete, probably flawed (since they're supposed to be "in-universe"-documents) and don't fit the movies and the selective conditions they give us - and to ignore every other source like the ICSs or ITWs.[/i]

No, that's not what I'm saying.

I'm urging an inclusive approach, embracing as much as possible the spirit and the letter of the movies, WEG, novels, and ICS/ItW alike, based on a balanced, rational approach to the evidence, and the possibilities of meaning inherrent in the various "sources". I probably have a knee-jerk reaction against ICS/ItW for the way that badly-thought-out fanboy stuff was allowed to override established canon (though, as I said, stuff like that happens); but I have two valid criticisms here, one for the fanboy use of the material, and the other for the material itself:
[ul][li]We don't actually know much about the Mandy-II: it exists (at least under construction), it's very large, and it can supposedly match about 200 VenStars, in some circumstances. About the Procurator and the Mandy-class, we know even less. For neither class do we know numbers, speed, manoeuvrability, crew compliment, weapons outfit... you get the idea.[/li]
[li]The problem that the Mandy-II causes is not just with WEG CPOV stuff, but with remarks and implications throughout the novels. The Dreadnaught is repeatedly identified as a major warship of the pre-Clone-Wars period. This isn't a contradiction per se, but it does define how we should interpret the Kuati behemoths.[/li][/ul]In laymans terms, I'm trying to fit as much as possible in.

Last time I looked, that was part of LFL's official canon policy.

There is no contradiction: The Dreadnought-Cruiser is the strongest ship the UN-like OldRepublic employs in its police-force.

In its Navy. In its Judicial Forces. In the Outland Regions Defence Force. Any references to these as "police", please? And are these sufficient to allow the sort of police/navy dichotomy you're creating in your own usage?

Once the clone-wars begin they're assigned frigate-duties in support of Victories and Venators (if they are used at the front-lines at all).

Yep. The first Star Destroyers supercede the Dreadnaught. We know this.

The Dreadnought-Cruiser being ships of the line is hyperbole by Rebel-Alliance propagandists, who don't even know on whic

 

You're joking. Death Star II is now 900km? I must have missed that.

Now bigger than Centerpoint's 150km. Why so large? How wasn't 160 klicks big enough?

 

I think "Fan Supposition" would be a better term for the SWTC.

The Munificent might mass less than the Dreadnaught (considering that a large part of the Munificent's interior is hollow)

Some of the design flaws Nawara Ven mentioned in SotP were things like breaking down turbolifts (not usually fatal under any reasonable definition of the word)

As for the RotS ICS Utapuan Dreadnaught quote: Page 22 "Their biggest anti pirate Rendili Dreadnaught is one fifth the sze of a Trade Federation Battleship"

The Death Star II would be 900km, if you scale it according to Endor and to the Executor hitting it.

 

G-level Canon is a lovely thing is it not?
I especially like how it overrides all other levels of Star Wars lore.

Based on relatively accurate scalling of G-level material the Second Death Star is approximately measured at some 900km in Diameter.
If you missed the proper size of the Death Star, you can always pop in ROTJ and look at it.
The truth of the matter is simple, either Lucas re-edits the ROTJ images or the G-Level Canonical Diameter for the DSII is 900km.

There are physical laws, even to a sci-fi universe, and these laws stipulate an approximate size for Endor to ensure relatively standard gravity.
The Death Star is a certain size compared to Endor, which must be a certain size itself, ergo the Death Star can be scaled....and has been.

900 km is the approximate ROTJ established G-Level Canon.

Accept it, dont accept it, it doesn't matter.

The great thing about Canon Designations are that they are, well, Canon.

 

Pelranius: I think "Fan Supposition" would be a better term for the SWTC.

Really? Hmm. Okay.

The Munificent might mass less than the Dreadnaught (considering that a large part of the Munificent's interior is hollow)

And then there are the gaps in the design. Shove the two framed and plated sections together, scrunch up the rest to something of similar density, and you're talking Dreadnaught-sized... similarly, the Recusant-class is a long ship, but you could scrunch her back into herself and get a Dreadnaught-sized vessel...

And I'm starting to think that a VenStar doesn't actually necessarily outgun a Dreadnaught much, either... so, sure, Dreadnaughts are old, underpowered, and badly-shielded - but heavily armed and compact, worth refitting... the advantage of the VenStar is her starfighters...

Some of the design flaws Nawara Ven mentioned in SotP were things like breaking down turbolifts (not usually fatal under any reasonable definition of the word)

If damage control teams need to get across the ship in a hurry, though...

As for the RotS ICS Utapuan Dreadnaught quote: Page 22 "Their biggest anti pirate Rendili Dreadnaught is one fifth the sze of a Trade Federation Battleship"

Hmm? A single Dreadnaught as command ship of an anti-pirate squadron I have no trouble with... So, about the firepower of a VenStar, in other words?

The Death Star II would be 900km, if you scale it according to Endor and to the Executor hitting it.

Scaling according to Endor, yes... but the Executor impact I always found faintly laughable: "measurements of the curvature of the Death Star horizon during the collision scene are imprecise. The curvature of the horizon is so very slight that it is difficult to wrangle the figures to obtain a Death Star diameter of less than a thousand kilometres", according to [link=http://theforce.net/swtc/ds/#executor]SWTC[/link].

Err... yes, presumably because the DS surface is a flat model, just as in ANH. I've never been quite sure whether this is embarrassingly anal, or wilfully capricious...

IceHawk-181: G-level Canon is a lovely thing is it not?
I especially like how it overrides all other levels of Star Wars lore.

You're obviously new here.

The problem with G-canon is quite simple: the bloopers. The Falcon interior sets don't fit inside the hull; the Tyderium is radically different in scale and proportion depending on whether it's a matte, a physical set prop, or an FX model; the curve of Executor's bridge viewports doesn't match that of the outside node and the ImpStar-style shuttlebay Vader returns to in ESB:SE is likewise not visible on the hull.

Nowhere, to my knowledge, has anyone ever said explicitly that the narrative override inherrent in G-level canon extends to an automatic assumption of visual accuracy...

If they have, I'd be grateful for the references, and then I could shut up...

Accept it, dont accept it, it doesn't matter.

That much, I might actually agree on...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

AotC tells us there was no war for thousand years - so it is up to you to prove, that there were battles.

You make the claim, that the Dreadnought-Cruiser is a ship of the line - show us, where it served in that role.

And as Sharky already pointed out five of them are barely able to fight an Acclamator-variant. Which were around at least since TPM.

Presumably accidentally? I'm sure everything on SWTC is written on purpose and there is no manipulation - just a correction of poorly researched material, THAT DOESN'T understand what ANH, TESB and ROTJ show: The ISD as smallest canonical imperial warship, which is easily taken out by a single planetary artillery-piece or dwarfed several hundred times by Executor.

A point of view that is CONFIRMED, by the PT (so perhaps you should take your complaints to George Lucas), by the comic Darklighter (Class2-frigate) and even the early sources, where we have 700 meter long AssaultFrigates.

600 meter long Dreadnought-Class-ships as ships of the line were an error.

Established canon?

Official material is the best you can hope for.

Because established canon shows the ISD as the smallest imperial warship, gives us the Executor as an upper benchmark and therefor a wide range to put intermediate designs into and two DeathStars confirming the industrial power of the empire.

Established canon also gives us the battle of Hoth, where a theatre-shield in a recently established small rebel-base is strong enough to resist any kind of bombardement by DeathSquadron and where a planetary artillery-piece takes out an ISD with two shots.

Seriously, whoever made the ISD the top battleship of the empire either didn't watch the movies or is an idiot.

Aside from that you have constantly failed to explain, why we should take your "established canon" at face value, if your sources THEMSELF admitt, that they are incomplete, flawed and from the POV of persons INSIDE the SW-universe, who by their limited nature of being human beings are fallible?

 

New here, perhaps.
New to this debate, not even close.

This debate has raged for the better part of the last decade and I have taken part in more than my fair share.

Everything has been done over and over again, for instance?
The generally accepted size of the Death Star II is 900km in Diameter, Executor?s Length at 17.6 km, and the Falcon?s length at ~55 meters.
We know that the Empire had the resources and manufacturing capabilities to build Billions of Star Destroyers if it wished.
Etc?

Also, never tell Wayne Poe, Michael Wong, or Curtis Saxton they are wrong, it?s a big no-no. You?ll have so many loyal fans jumping at you, well, lets say you?ll be heavily outnumbered?

It is generally understood that FX errors do not count as Canon, and are rationalized as such and dismissed. It is also recognized that, as there is no dialogue as to the size of vessels in SW, we accept the Visual depictions.

The Executor did not bankrupt the Empire; indeed it was not even close to that actuality. The G-Level Canon indicating an Imperial economy capable of supporting two Death Star Projects and an Imperial Navy contradicts every statement made to that effect.

The yield on the Rendil Dreadnought batteries is less than the standard Heavy Cannons on an Imperator-class.
Dreadnoughts are armed with, at best, some form of medium Turbolaser.
Remember, Iblis was forced to refit his Dreadnoughts to oppose Thrawn?s Destroyers, and even then it took Six Dreadnoughts with special Ion Cannon load outs to suppress a single ISD.
Dreadnoughts are old, under-armed, over-crewed, slow, and generally worthless against modern capital ships in groups smaller than half a dozen.

The Venerator Star Destroyers would be able to overwhelm a Dreadnought with just its fighter compliment, let alone its Heavy Turbolaser Cannons.