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

Meh, I still think a battle group of Viscounts are the better way to go, especially up against the FO's new and improved models. Not to sound like a broken record, but it'd be nice to see the good guys have super ships for a change without Palpatine involved.

Moving on; I also predict the Raddus will get its own cross-section pages and those 3 ships will be named but not fully described; it'd be a happy miscalculation if they are, however. We'll see.

As for my assumptions:

That ship at the top left of the Raddus in the new pictures is definitely the one that's blown away in the 2nd trailer when the TIE Silencer approaches the Raddus from behind; the corvette and frigate descendants from that scene are also accounted for in those snapshots.

In addition, looking back to the TV Spot with BB-8 'punching it' for Poe I also noted the Raddus in the background flanked by 3 much smaller long-ish ships which are now confirmed to be the ones depicted in the new pics. Hence, a paltry fleet of 4, not counting the bombers and A-Wing reinforcements.

But that's what happens when we don't get a timeksip.....And apparently due to the fact that the fanbase has spooked Lucasfilm into not wanting to use too much CGI. God forbid....

 

DP

 

Anything's possible. Remember when the destruction of Hosnian Prime was somehow seen from planets millions of miles away? Or how in Abrams previous big blockbuster sci fi film, Spock saw the destruction of Vulcan from millions of miles away, and a "star exploding" somehow threatened to destroy the entire galaxy?

When writers who don't understand that space is really big try to make the Rebels/Resistance/Whoever the underdogs, they tend to overdo the whole "outnumbered and outgunned" thing and make it seem improbable that the underdogs could liberate the state of Maine, let alone a whole galaxy.

 

Han saw a hyperspace anomaly not the destruction of Hosnian Prime

 

A) Abrams isn't doing this film

B) I wasn't trying to argue what was 'realistic', I was saying that what we actually see onscreen in the trailer suggests that the Resistance has more than four capital ships in the movie. Though I suppose MasterPrince13 could be right and it's just the same four regularly and from lots of different angles (which might actually be kinda cool) - i's just not the way it looks to me.

 

What I have to wonder is if they had any capital ships at all why weren't they helping against Starkiller base. Once the shield was down, an orbital strike on the occiliator would have been quicker than the fighter strike, know.

I mean, I am assuming that Starkiller base probably has defenses against exactly such a scenario but the resistance is pretty desperate at the moment so why not use everything rather than just sending in one fighter squadron?

 

99 percent certain these all joined up after the war began. TFA-era material indicates they only had two old Mon Cal cruisers.

I've generally gotten the impression that as opposed to OT stuff where we're seeing only a part of the Rebellion, up until now what's appeared onscreen of the Resistance is all there is to it, because it's a special volunteer force and not a widespread movement. Only once the First Order actually attacks is that changing. Certainly it seems like D'Qar is "the" base, not "a" base or even just a main base.

 

Yes this is my impression as well. During the battle, one of their comms guys says something like "That's half our fleet down" and he's talking about the X-wings. That's literally all they have. It emphasises how alone they and Leia are in their efforts, and indicates too that the support of the Republic is very thin in practical terms. Of course, it that makes no difference to the FO who are eager to exploit this tenuous connection to provide casus belli for their war.

 

I wonder more about why they didn't bother to pack more commandos and/or soldiers on the Falcon rather than just have a three-person infiltration team, all just on Finn's still not quite reliable word. But then that didn't happen at Yavin so not like they can deviate from their rip-off plot that much.

I hope by IX they can draw on more survivors or volunteers. TLJ starts very soon after TFA, so I'm not expecting that much. At least by the time of the Battle of Yavin, the opening implied that the Rebel Alliance had grown strong enough to stage an operation to steal the Death Star plans, and that took decades of preparations. Although the Rogue One movie showed it was a lot more slapdash than I had expected (or hoped for). The old EU Death Star plan scramble was way too chaotic, but at least there it seemed more like a concentrated effort rather than a bunch of volunteers just sneaking onto a base and a late arriving fleet over the protests of a really wimpy Rebel government (which grows more stupid with each new source).

I hope the Resistance won't have to start from scratch like the proto-Rebels did post-RotS, but... well, we'll see. At least TLJ's trailers have already shown more ships than most of TFA did. Well, when they redo the Battle of Endor around Starkiller Base II I just hope modern graphics can top even the Battle of Coruscant.

 

Question -- what's known about the cut subplot with the Resistance's "superweapon", the Sledgehammer or whatever, which Leia was supposedly reluctant to use (or was that pure rumor)? How far did that get into the process? As I recall it did involve a larger fleet presence at SKB, but at minimum it suggests that at some point in development, the Resistance was meant to have greater resources than what made it onto the screen in TFA. I'm just wondering if the precise paltriness of the Resistance fleet was a side effect of losing that plot thread, and now they're stuck with having to draw in additional forces, or if it was pretty much set that way when filming commenced.

 

The inside of one of the bombers, eh? Not sure how I feel regarding the aesthetic of that helmet.

Regarding the SKB conundrum, the reason there were no capital ships with the Resistance fighters was the same reason there weren't any Star Destroyers guarding SKB but we saw earlier on in the movie that there were:

They don't wanna be in the line of fire or deal with the recoil when and if a weapon of that size fires, even when we see the Finalizer, you can tell it's a good distance away from the laser as Kylo watches.

I'm frankly hoping they manage to top the Battle of Coruscant too, but I won't hold my breath at this point. There were at least 200 ships per side in the battle, the FO doesn't have that many and the Resistance definitely doesn't. I'm hoping a timeskip will change that.

People are still too antsy regarding Star Wars and CGI, so....

 

A few notes:

• It is silly & futile to judge fleet sizes. Take the OT. ANH showed just a handful of fighters, TESB showed us a frigate with a paltry assortment of transports, and ROTJ showed us a full Rebel battle fleet. As always, the size of a fleet in the movies is first and foremost as big as the plot requires.
• The Raddus is a gorgeous ship. As others have noted, it is very reminiscent of the old EU Star Defenders.
• I'm curious at the size of those three escort ships. Considering that the Raddus is 3km, those various ships could be far larger than the Rebellion's CR90's and EF76's.
• The one in the upper right hand side is definitely inspired by the Neb-B, though it appears that the ships have two sets of vertical and horizontal pieces coming off the main hull.
• The middle ship is very cool, very Corellian looking to me.
• The final ship vaguely reminds me of a MC30 light frigate.

All in all, getting very excited!
--Adm. Nick

 

If I had to change one thing about TFA it would have been going with this idea. The Warhammer was featured in the TFA art book. There might have been another picture in there, but I found this one online, I will have to look when I get home. For me personally, I would have loved to see this happen in the movie rather than the more typical Star Wars story elements, lucky hyperspace jump, sabotage, starfighter attack exploiting a technical flaw etc.... I sure hope the next two movies feature some great capital ship fights though.

 

Specifically, the Warhammer was a fancy giant carrier that was designed to ram a planet's shields and then launch its own fighters through the whole it makes. Presumably the rest of the battle would have been more or less the same, just with a justification for why only a small fighter element had the main job while the Resistance fleet duked it out with FO ships in orbit.

If I remember correctly, it got scrapped because "the good guys don't use super weapons" or something, which is a bit odd since it wasn't an especially destructive one. Though, I could see concerns over how a ragtag, covert groups had a weapon like this, or why, and just overall being a bit of a dues ex machina (though arguably less so than what did happen, so eh...).

 

The Resistance being rag tag is part of the nature of storytelling. Despite what hardcore fans may want, people enjoy the classic underdog vs. overwhelming evil story form. The Resistance has been consistently portrayed as being rag tag, operating less than a handful of capital ships (Echo of Hope and Home One), and being mostly composed of starfighters, though even these are few and far inbetween.

Note, many of the sources (ie, TOS Databank) refer to the Resistance being "reinforced", so I suspect many of the new fighters, bombers, and capital ships we will see are former NRDF units that are linking up with Leia's Resistance following the loss of Hosnian Prime and the destruction of SKB.

--Adm. Nick

 

Some might say the First Order or the Trade Federation would be "ragtag" if this is the criteria.

In other news, there's a nice BFII map up on Wookieepedia showing multiple Neimodian shuttles and a Coruscant shuttle bus.

 

'Rag Tag' yet they actually have the resources to stand on their own two feet and come up with units to call their own; the Resistance relies solely on the goodwill of the few of the NR who didn't bury their heads in the sand.

 

Yeah, I don't consider the First Order (with Star Dreadnoughts, super weapons, and Star Destroyers) or the Trade Federation (with battleships, droid armies, and deep pockets) rag tag under any definition of the phrase.

To think, two weeks from today we'll have all these wonderful sourcebooks and guides coming out chalk full of details about the new warships and fighters in TLJ.

--Adm. Nick

 

Hear, hear!

 

The comments about the Raddus's support ships amuse me. If we didn't have GR-75s at Scarif the Rebels would probably have just had four or five ships.

 

Last I recall, there was:
1x MC75
3x Nebulon B
3x Hammerhead
8x CR90
6x GR75
4x Dornean
1x VCX100
2x U-wing
Indeterminate amount of X-wings and Y-wings, roughly 30 of the former, and 15 of the latter by my estimate

I may be under- or overstating the amount of Dorneans, CR90s, and GR75s by one or two, I don't remember exactly.

 

Top down view of the Mandator-IV:

 

Not a bad roster, all considered. Kind of sad it took them nearly 20 years to just gather this meager force, but the Empire was pretty good about ensuring they were the only major superpower in the galaxy.

For a time...

All the more galling the Rebels have more forces in RO than the Resistance does....Damn you, Mothma!!

Then again, I suppose Poe's worth about three capital ships.

 

Bit bummed about the trapezoidal rear, I was hoping it would be completely flat-assed to "round out" the parallel line aesthetics.