New Republic Capital Ships - still sorting out the mess... (Fleet Junkies- HO!)

EvilleJedi: It would be best if you hold any comments about carrying capacity until you've actually looked at the ship's insides. You have no idea how much of the ship is dedicated to what.

BTW, I'm sure that Saxton took care to have an absolutely accurate size estimate for all the ships. He probably had a lot more angles and probably saw the LFL scaling charts up close, so his numbers are likely to be a whole lot more accurate than yours. Especially considering all we've had to rely on are the "200 meter" yardstick and the "kilometers-long" quote. Both of which seem to be in error. But hey, the visuals take precedence over LoE.

 

I've always wanted to see a cross section of an ISD with like the crew recreation areas, maybe a swoop track, or a indoor ski area, so much space to fill... but I'm just going off of previous books where the reactor core and propulsion are a good % of the ship just looking at the Providence I'd say the entire aft behind the hanger bay is powercore and engines, the hanger doesn't have too much above and below it especially because of structure... well I guess I'll go look for the book tomorrow.

how does this compare to the carrying capacity of a true mega frieghter like the lucrehulk though?

 

I do know that the Trade Federation Battleship can cary a hell of a lot more than the Providence-class. One battleship can carry 550 MTTs, 6,250 AATs, 1,500 troop carriers, 50 C-9979 landing craft and 1,500 droid starfighters. Compare that to the Providence's 240 droid starfighters, 160 MTTs, and 280 other assault vehicles. A TF BB can commit 61,600 droids to a surface attack in a single wave. A battleship likley has millions more droids stored in its cargo holds.

 

Four to six can outgun a Venator-class or Victory-class Star Destroyer, but it would take 1,000 Recusant-class ships to take on Kuat Drive Yard's Mandator II Star Dreadnaught.

"It would take a thousand ships, with more firepower than..."

I really hope that number's not meant to be taken seriously. It seems to imply something in the region of 200 VicStars to take down a single Big Freudian Phallus-class übership...

Then again, you do have to factor starfighters into the combat capability of a Star Destroyer. Pass the X-wings, somebody?

And the good news is that a Seperatist destroyer, while relatively long in the keel, is a somewhat different sort of baby from any sort of Star Destroyer, and significantly less powerful...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

By Vader's breath, where do they come up with these quixotic names???

Lucrehulk ... Nantex ... Nsiss ... Sheathipede ... Aethersprite ... Recusant

 

I'm gone for less than one day, somebody posts a few stats from the ROTS:ICS and the entire Capital-ships-thread goes hysterical.

The relatively low number of weapons on the Venator in comparison to the InvisibleHand can be easily explained by a vast difference in destructive power for the individual weapon. The heavy guns of the Venator are already close to the massive guns that line the superstructure of the ISD-I from the classic trilogy.

If each gun of the Venator is ten times more powerful, than its counterpart from the InvisibleHand, the InvisibleHand needs ten times more guns to achive equal firepower. The advantage of huge numbers of smaller guns is, that you can target a lot of smaller enemy-combatants (Acclamators, frigates and so on) at the same time.

One thing that cought my eye is the mention of a maximum speed for the InvisibleHand of 2,000 Km/h. For open space this is redicilously low so it must be the speed in atmosphere. If this is a feature important enough to mention, it is very likely, that the IH enters atmospheres not only to land or take-off, but for combat, too. Given the kind of combat in the clone-wars we have seen most, that would be ground-combat, where less powerful weapons would be better. Proton-torpedoes in the teraton- or high-gigaton-range would be to much, if your own troops are on the ground or you want the planet largely intact.

Concerning the MandatorII, i have to say i really like this quote.

For once it tells us about the power-relation between VenStar and VicStar. Although the VenStar is almost 300 metres longer, than a Victory both ships are obviously equally powerful, no doubt because of the much larger capacity of the VenStar as carrier (an idea i honestly don't approve of).

That said i have no problems with the huge number of fighters. A real-life Nimitz-Class-AirCraftCarrier has up to ninty birds, which are a lot larger, than SW-fightercraft on a less than 340 meter long flight-deck. One could argue, that ISDs and VSDs are underpowered as far as fighter-craft are concerned and not the other way around (hint for Brett: this brings us AWAY from the ISD being a multi-role-ship).

Back to the MandatorII: We (should) know, that volume and (fire-)power of a SW-vessels, which are comparable in make-up, are more or less linear.

An ISD is almost six times as large, as a Victory. If it takes 5 CommerceGuild-destroyers to destroy a Victory, it would take 30 CG-Destroyers to destroy an ISD.

Using the 1,000 CG-destroyers necessary to overpower a Mandator-Class Star Dreadnaught Mark2, it would take 34 ISDs to overpower a Mandator. Compare this to the Executor, which would have between 80 and 120 times the firepower of a canonical ISD.

 

Well, the comment about VicStars being old might be referring to the possibility that some corporate entity or sector gov't operated the VSD for sometime before the Republic military got it.

Well those eight turbolasers on the Venator could be for duelling with large warships and orbital platforms, while the medium turbos and those fifty two "point defense lasers" deal with fighters and smaller capital ships.

And over two hundred Republic starfighters is a matter that no sane Separatist commander should laugh at.

(The Imperials may have shifted emphasis towards the more weapon orientated ISDs since turbolasers are typically more effective for applying the Tarkin Doctrine than a whole load of starfighters)

 

The Victory was first mentioned at about 21 months after Geonosis right? That's before the Venator (i.e, "older"), but comfortably past the middle of the war I think to where they're still "new" in the grand scheme of things, keeping all the references about it being introduced at the tail end of the Clone Wars intact.

 

I'm really surpriced that the VenSD is so large, yet so weak.Overall looks a lot weaker than the Providence class.
Also I doubt it was meant to carry 400 fighters-V-Wings an Eta-2's are simillar in size so I'd guess it can carry 192 of either types.

Some thing that really bothers me are the speeds of different vessels in atmosphere-wasn't the X-Wing able to achieve only 1.200km/h (the TIE F/ln 800km)?!
How could 20 years older (and a lot more havier ships) be able to go as fast as 37.000km?!

Does anyone have any info on the smaller, most numerable Seppie ships at Coruscant?Are those the Geonosian Dreadnoghts?

Finally, I really can't believe what happened here-3 pages over night...lol...
If Lucas sees this topic I bet he'll make another SW movie with one large Space battle!

 

Counting the guns is pointless as long as we don't know the firepower the indiviadual cannon can deliver.

As long as we don't know that we can't say, how weak or strong a ship is in comparison to another ship.

 

http://boards.theforce.net/Literature/b10003/11918689/p51

I see you joined too late for it, but something like this popped up in the EP2:ICS too.

FTeik

Counting the guns is pointless as long as we don't know the firepower the indiviadual cannon can deliver.

For order of magnitude work, there's always scaling the gun, if good quality shots exist.

Pelranius

Well those eight turbolasers on the Venator could be for duelling with large warships and orbital platforms, while the medium turbos and those fifty two "point defense lasers" deal with fighters and smaller capital ships.

That is almost certainly what they are stuck en masse for. After all, they barely consume power next to the big guns. The apparent lack of AA weapons in official statistics has long been a significant neglect. This density is much more realistic and proper.

Brett_Bass

That all said, I saw the information regarding the new ships from Revenge of the Sith posted on the last couple of pages. All I have to say is, "wow". I never thought I'd live to see the day when Dr. Curtis Saxton would peg the largest ships in a major battle as being less than ten miles long!

And what finer proof than this of his integrity? Lucas and his film-makers only put in small ships, so he wrote it honestly. Given the usual critical analysis ability of the average fan, if he bluffed and said they were 10km long ... guess what, he would have been believed. People have only failed to notice a 2:1 disparity already...

2) The Venator's stats writ large don't look normal. I think that the aforementioned fix wherein the "point defense guns" are in actuality very heavy blaster cannon or turbolasers can work to a certain degree, but the fact that she carries almost two hundred snubfighters is just odd. She's got to have a knock somewhere... Maybe her endurance is virtually nill?

Actually, they don't look normal because Saxton does not adhere to WEG restraints. See the size of the Executor's bays (the one that almost eat a Star Destroyer) and tell me two wings are all it carries, or just explain to me how a ship that's well over 5 times larger even by their own reckoning would only carry 2x the fighters...

Noldor

But you know... it does lend credence the NR's New Class warships...

Actually, it proves what we know already ... that Endurances suck as a design. The Venator is broadly comparable in size (or at least length). The Endurance has 2 wings (72, at most 144). The Venator has about 400 plus a real ground attack complement.

As an aside (and to repeat what others have mentioned), the weapons look smaller in number for the simple reason Saxton uses real stats rather than WEG. So instead of "50 HTLBs", he has 8 octuple HTL turrets.

Ton G

Max Acceleration: 3000 G <--- Pointless Saxtonism

Can anybody explain to me how defining performance in Real Life, Universal Units is Pointless, or more pointless than some gameplay unit like "Space Unit", which IIRC is supposed to change in size based on condition?

crew: 7400 <---- Quite Low, No?

See crew of Vic-I

52 point-defense laser cannons <---- The drugs must be good...---> These could be all the guns we have seen within the ship- which IIRC, were called turbolasers by Insider.

PD laser cannons are so tiny that on the resolution of the drawing, they might not bother drawing them at all. Remember the Acclamator? IIRC, they didn't draw in the 24 PD lasers as well.

 

Borleias: It is entirely possible that WEG didn't write the stats properly (with an adequate benchmark). There were few ships at that time that were of the same size as the Venator and WEG wrote lots of ships based on VSD stats (which is also erroneous). Like FTeik said, we don't know the firepower of each individual gun. The previous AOTC:ICS book had some details on the firepower of the gun, I've been asking for similar data.

 

I asked this earlier, but I never got a clear awnser. What are the official names of the different vehicles.

i.e. Republic Gunship = Rothana Heavy Engineering LAAT/i

 

Borleias:

As an aside (and to repeat what others have mentioned), the weapons look smaller in number for the simple reason Saxton uses real stats rather than WEG. So instead of "50 HTLBs", he has 8 octuple HTL turrets.

That is a very good point. I guess the problem that many people are having is that most of the EU ships are all given stats in the old WEG method. They look extremely different from the stats given by Dr. Saxton in the ICS books. I guess I wish that either all the EU ships were given stats comparable to the Prequel ships or vice-versa.

Perhaps the good Dr. Saxton could put out a book that has similar sets of stats for all warships and fighters seen in the Expanded Universe. At least that way we would all have a set standard to follow.

--Adm. Nick

 

Perhaps the good Dr. Saxton could put out a book that has similar sets of stats for all warships and fighters seen in the Expanded Universe. At least that way we would all have a set standard to follow.

Because this will detract from his purpose, one of which is to wean all those WEG-believers off WEG. Maybe if you asked him to write a book that has many of the present ships (only mentioned in WEG) and use real life stats, you might have more success.

 

KansasNavy: You could go check www.starwars.com. The Databank is somewhat extensive.

I think we have to reorientate our thinking about how ships are armed.

It also suggests however, that the Mon Cals could be more powerful than suspected. For one thing, it took 10+ ships to bring down the Executor and they were pounding the ship non-stop. They are definitely more powerful than the Venators at the very least.

 

Yeah, but im talking about the new stuff from the ICS. I just want to know who makes the different ships and vehicles, and what their actual designations are.

 

As for the WEG/WOTC stats, they would need to change a heckof a lot of stuff and do it in one fell swoop to make it make sense. Essentially a genre wide readjustment for every vessel ever mentioned (cause the problem is for us RPG people the 'official' prequel stats don't mesh with OT 'official' stats) if you ignore the RP world then yeah you can say whatever you see on the model, but unfortunately (because of lucasrevisionism) we have almost 15 years of ingraining of incorrect stats in the RPG which while not directly approved by lucas, is a liscenced product, so you would think they would keep some sense of consistancy.

I'd say either rewrite every ships stats very well based upon a stadardized technology base and actually think about why the ship would be armed that way, put it in one huge book. Or have different stats for the same ship depending on if its RP or 'canon' and just label the RP stuff as class-q(uestionable) cannon

cause we already have huge disparities in existing ships

ISD I visually has 6 heavy double TL turrets, 2 heavy double ion turrets, 2 quad heavy turbolaser cannons and numerous other things COMPARE TO 60 medium TL batteries, 60 medium ion batteries

ISD II visually has 8 octal medium/heavy TL turrets, PDS guns and 2 quad heavy TL cannons COMPARE TO 50 heavy TLs, 50 medium/heavy TLs, 20 heavy ions

I mean the discepency has always been there, and it has been left uncorrected through numerous revisions for 15 years

 

Borleias:

Interesting points, in general. However, I managed to find a copy of the Revenge of the Sith trailer (and afterwords found out it's normally viewable off of starwars.com, blargh), and it could be that the large, crew-served turret that we see blowing up and sending stormtroopers flying all over is one of the "point defense guns" that the cross-sections book lists. If so, they're very large, and could conceivably be very powerful asl well. That said, the angle and resolution weren't optimal, so I couldn't tell if the weapon had multiple barrels or not.

As you point out as well, it could also be that the VenStar's armament only looks comparatively small because her cannon are just very, very powerful. Perhaps approaching the main heavy cannon installed on ImpStars a few decades later (as I believe you also point out is a possibility). It could just be that the trend of highly powerful cannon extends to the point defense guns as well.

How's it going, by the way?


FTeik:

Howdy!

Anywho, I still think that the broad definition of 'destroyer' holds, as the ImpStar can serve as a planetary assault platform, a conventional battleship (generic usage), a carrier, et cetera. I think that the same rough guidelines apply to the VenStar as well, altough it could be that her role as a direct space combatant is limited by the simple lack of cannon she has. Regardless of power, she would still be vulnerable to attacks by numerous opponents.

T McE:

It could just be that these destroyers aren't particularly durable. Remember that the description of them mentions countless models lost and replaced. They seem to have more emphasis on direct firepower than anything else.

 

I am curious what Dr. Saxton would find if he did a close examination of the Mon Cal cruiser models from the battle of Endor. I imagine he would count the small weapons blisters and then estimate the number of turbolasers or ion cannons that each one held.

Brett:

Good points. I imagine that once Revenge of the Sith comes out that we will get a better look at the types and positions of the weapons on ships like the Venator-class and Providence-class.

--Adm. Nick

 

"That said, the angle and resolution weren't optimal, so I couldn't tell if the weapon had multiple barrels or not."

A clearer view:
[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v191/Qu_klaani/burninate.jpg]

 

Borleais

See crew of Vic-I

Indeed, I was wrong about the crew. I had the notion that the crew of a Victory Clas Star Destroyer was roughly 15,000. I was wrong.

Can anybody explain to me how defining performance in Real Life, Universal Units is Pointless, or more pointless than some gameplay unit like "Space Unit", which IIRC is supposed to change in size based on condition?

As to the acceleration, yes it appears to be useful. I will admit that I am prone to bold accusations. But that doesn't nessecarily prohibit my accuation from being correct.

My first objection to this lies in the fact that it is a simply a scalar value. This presumably indicates that this is the accleration forward[/b]. It looks wonderful some might say because it lends sceintific credence to Star Wars. This looks sceintific and it useful, but is it?

Again, it is but one value. What purpose does it serve? Yes, it does allow one to determine how fast it can go forwards. But is this enough? No. What of the acceleration on all of the thrusters? There is no indictation of maneuverability in terms of rolling, turning and deceleration. Without these values, we simply have a ship with a forward speed (certainly not velocity) that may be determined.

And what does this lend itself to? This again may be another bold accusaction, but it could be said; synthetic scientific credence. The stats look scientifically credible (as a motif, not in actuality). Without the complementary information, this sole acceleration elnds an air of science in a superficial manner.

And to what end? Why should this be added, if it is only superficial? To lend sceintific credence to Star Wars? To discredit the WEG stats? For Saxton to leave his own fingerprint on Star Wars? This is certianly open to conjecture.

PD laser cannons are so tiny that on the resolution of the drawing, they might not bother drawing them at all. Remember the Acclamator? IIRC, they didn't draw in the 24 PD lasers as well.

If the point defense laser cannons aren't misinterpreted trench guns (which they shouldn't be, keeping point defense guns in such specific locations is decidely inane) then they must be unseen, as Borleias sugested.

To quote a pan-handler I know, this is a "prodigious quagmire". We have two scenarios, both in which Dr. Saxton's lauded credility falters.

The first is as follows; he did indeed call the interior trench guns "Point Defence Lasers". If this is the case, then his reasoning in calling them "Point Defence lasers" could be seen as folly, as aforementioned.

The second case is that the so-called "Point Defence lasers" are indeed very small and scattered arouund the vessel effectively. Now one asks, "what of those numerous trench guns, of which we have seen actice in both trailers?". This would be a blatant oversight on Dr. Saxton's part.

Of course, we are all human and fall easily to our own frailties of body, mind and spirit. He could have missed them in the trailer, he could have forgotten about them- or is simply pushing is own agenda- as Borleias alluded to (namely "weaning people off of WEG"), by imposing a certain form of statistics.

As to a greater discussion on supposed weapons vs. visible weapons, one can allude to occasions in the movies where turbolasers seem to fire from the ship itself- without any turrets or visible weapons. Take image the broadside duel between the Nebulon-B and an ISD-II in RotJ. The Turbolsers on the Nebulon-B seem to emerge from the hull! I think there must be a degreee of suspension of disbelief.

 

Nick:

Thanks. I think that the current vital statistics provided by the cross-section book will only really work once we see the movie. That way we can determine if the "point defense guns" are, in fact, the "trench guns" that we see the VenStars blazing away with.

As for the Invisible Hand, the number of missile launchers she has ins't all that unbelievable when one considers that such a number of warheads might be necessary in a Star Wars context, since guided munitions are demonstrably not difficult to simply target and destroy with blasters (see then-Admiral Pellaeon in Specter of the Past).

The other rationalization is that the weapons are small-scale, a la the concussion missiles from a Victory I. Another factor to remember is that the missile armament was eventually reduced to a secondary or tertiary weapons-system on the Victory II, perhaps as a result of the apparent need of huge numbers of them in order to be effective. Perhaps the reliance on giant numbers of warheads was a marginally unsuccessful Clone Wars-era trend that went out of fashion.

Qu_Klaani:

Thanks for the picture!

That said, those could be two single-barreled cannon or one double-barreled cannon. We can't see the base of the weapon(s?). The two ports in the outer hull seem to imply two weapons to me.

Ton:

Interesting post.

 

For all those with Hyperspace the feature about the art od star wars revenge of the sith includes an interesting painting of a Venator hangar, of course it may have changed since then, but it is in the film, which should be interesting. Anyway, the hangar shows an exit through the side of the ship, so Im thinking maybe its here:

[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v191/Qu_klaani/hangardoor.jpg]

Which would go part of the way to explaining the sheer number of fighters onboard, because they have the one at the bottom, and another on either side of the ship, maybe. Still, those doors have to be for something.