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

"Somehow, does anyone else besides me find that using a couple million soldiers (as in the case of the Empire) to conquer a well developed planet, even with ISD support, is a bit low?

Not to mention a typical Imperial garrison supposed to control an entire planet?"

Depends on the planet and what is of value for the empire on it.

Ground-troops would be either used to destroy or take over the shield-generators or to take over the most important facilities (communications-centers, seat of government, ...). That would be the phase of take-over.

After that they would keep to their garrisons and the most important objects of interest, while ImperialIntelligence and patrolling troops would search for trouble-makers. Local police-forces or military units would be integrated into the imperial forces or forced to cooperate (see TLC or take CorSec as an example).

In case of a bigger uprising:

Place one garrison in control over the planetary shield-generator and a Strike-Cruiser or a Dreadnought in orbit. If people revolt, lower the shields and let the ship open fire.

 

Rule by Fear of force, rather than force itself. It makes sense, beside people know if they revolt more enemies will come.

 

JC: Sorry about that. But I'm sticking to my original point. The TIE Avenger was developed BEFORE the TIE Interceptor, and the Interceptor was chosen for mass production b/c it was cheaper. The Empire believed in disposable ships & disposable pilots. They also didn't want their fighters to operate autonomusly to instilldependence on higher authority in its pilots. IIRC, the advanced stuff (Missle Boats, TIE Defenders, etc.) was mostly used against elements INSIDE the Imperial Navy--not against the Rebels.

Just because something looks sleek and cool doesn't necessarily mean it's more technologically advanced.

Pelranius: You sound like a man who's seen a '63 Mustang--you are so right...

Brett_Bass: Sorry for misquoting you...DOWN W/ SAXON!!!

 

seeker_two

What's your reasoning behind this theory?

I might agree that Vader's TIE Advanced x1 was created before the Interceptor, but there seems little doubt to me that the Avenger (called the TIE Advanced in TIE Fighter) was the newer craft.

 

Brett:

Thanks for asking Brett.

It shows that you have much respect for the opinions of those who post on this thread.

I tip my hat to you sir.

While this thread is technically about NR capital ships and the "mess" about them, we have always had several side topics as well. This thread has discussed Imperial warships, composition of NR fleets, current NJO books, etc. It would seem that the spirit of this thread does seem to include anything that pertains to capital ships. I guess that I personally have no problem with the discussion of Saxton, as long as it says respectful of each other.

FTeik:

My only request is that we be respectful of each other. At a few times you posts on the matter can get somewhat heated and you begin to get insulting and use profanity. The beauty of this thread is that we all can come together and discuss the topics that intrest us. In that spirt, let us all respect each others opinions.

I did not mean to single you out, it is not personal.

All of should be careful in what we say and how we say it.

So, I believe that it may be time for all of us to begin reaching some concenus on the topics we discuss. As Brett mentioned on the previous page, we have several areas that many of us have differnet views on. I think now is as good a time as any to try to merge our ideas and present some united front. If we can do this, perhaps we could then present our work to the greater JC Lit community. Perhaps even this very website will use our work as the basis for a new feature?

Anyone have any thoughts?

 

JC: My source for the Interceptor/Avenger debate is EGVV.

What makes you think the Avengers are newer than the Interceptors?

 

Thanks for the hat-tipping, Nick.


Hey, I try.

Seeker & Joruus:
[image=http://www.decipher.com/starwars/cardlists/dagobah/dark/images/tieavenger.gif]

 

Well I'll be damned...

Though the EGVV and NEGVV don't say much about the Avenger, just about the Advanced x1, Interceptor, and Defender.

Regardless, production on the TIE Advanced models never stopped until Zaarin's secession, and that was only due to their factories being lost.

 

Brett: At any rate, I just want to first clear any such discussion with Thrawn McEwok, as he created this thread. If you think it falls within the spirit of this particular forum, then I'll feel compelled to respond.

I have no trouble with it in principal (but maybe if everyone watches themselves for making it personal). Then again, my attitude to 'off-topic', and my concept of what constitutes the truly OT, is kidna wayward...

FTeik: And Darksaber didn´t show a full orbital bombardement because Daala was an incompetent imbecile, who decided to sent her troops to the surface.

Yep. I think it's somewhere in this thread that I tried to work out quite how fast the Knight Hammer could have flash-fried everything within sight of the Jedi Temple... 0.0002 seconds, IIRC. But no... Daala sends down her troops before she opens fire...

So the empire built a moonsized battlestation when its Stardestroyers could reach the same results (remove planetary shields and kill every living being on a planet)?

If you make your castles out of Hijarna Stone...

The shield at Echo base was "strong enough to resist any bombardment"... that doesn't, IMHO, mean "strong enough to resist five ImpStars and the Executor"... Rebel worlds (like Alderaan) can defy the Empire (ever so slightly hypocritically) from behind their planetary shields...

You also haven´t considered the possibility, that the shields couldn´t be kept up for the time of the bombardement (because of the mechanical components of the shield-projectors). If i remember Tales of the Empire correct, the bombardement lasted for almost two days. Under normal circumstances enough time for re-inforcements to arrive (see TTT), but the New Republic had sent its forces to far away. Now that wouldn´t be the case, if you can bring down planetary shields within seconds or threat to destroy the entire planet, don´t you think?

A torpedo sphere or two might have helped... some sort of specific shield-kicking weapon, anyway. But Coruscant has double shielding... if one perimiter collapses, even partially, the other should hold until it can be repaired...

But I don't remember us having much more than one civillian's POV of what was happening, did we? It's possible that it wasn't nearly so simple as pounding the shields until they collapsed...

Or do you want to suggest, that those are the vessels only shield-projectors?

That, unfortunately, is just what the EU suggests... most recently, TUF...

Take the bridge-towers and scale up to lenght.

But is the film right? If so, where did the five-mile SSD design in the WEG/EU stuff come from...?

Ton_G: Rule by Fear of force, rather than force itself. It makes sense, beside people know if they revolt more enemies will come.

Hmm. I can see how this could make the Alliance worse than the Empire... rule by the Force, rather than by fear of the Force...

But as to the TIEs, yep... this way, it makes the Empire look far more credible, IMHO...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Well, i don´t try to be insulting on purpose, but to use an example from this thread ...

If somebody uses the low-power display by Daalas forces as benchmark for imperial firepower and claims in the same post, that he has read HoT, where three ISDs are tasked to BDZ Bothawui, not to mention, that we get descriptions what really happens to a planet that fell victim to such an operation, then i have to wonder, if this person really doesn´t know better or if this person is trying to pull my leg (In the best case. In the worst case it would also be a case of dishonest debating and spreading misinformation).

To put it in another way:

If i say A and only a short time later or in the same context i claim B, although B clearly contradicts A ...

... wouldn´t that justify every reader smart enough to notice to ask himself "what is this guy smoking" and to call me an idiot?

Or at least to call what i said idiotic?

We shouldn´t confuse disrespect for the argument with disrespect for the person. That would be cowardly hiding behind political correctness. Disrespect for the person isn´t intended and disrespect for the argument has to be dealt with with a better counter-argument.

And if i managed to confuse you by now, let me say, that i didn´t intended to insult anybody or think, that anybody of the people around here is an idiot or dishonest in his way of debating.

 

How many are there? Castles, i mean (smiles).

I guess this is sarcasm on your side.

We don´t know, if Coruscant had still a double-shield at that point of time. If there had been one or more torpedo-spheres the siege would have been over after a few hours. And if one perimeter collapses, enemy-ships will be below it before it can be repaired.

True. But considering that those six imperial commanders didn´t seem to belong to the brightest (they started to fight each other after all) and considering the damage caused to Coruscant (compare this to my point about a bombardement of Hoth) i suppose it was simply done by using raw power.

So this piece of EU is in line with other pieces of EU. Except for the topic that should be a comforting thought. And while i don´t want to spoil my fun, would you mind to provide me with a quote?

According to LFL-canon-policy the films are always more right, than anything else. No matter how many other sources claim different. As for the five-mile-debacle, i think it is based from misinterpretation of the TESB-sript "... the large imperial star destroyer was even bigger than the five star destroyers accompanying it."

As for the TIEs, i believe the huge cost-thing is just misinformation on the empires side because they don´t want to admit, that they lost most of their production-facilities during Grandadmiral Zaarin´s coup. Consider also how many TIEs the empire would have had to replace. Alone for the 25,000 ISDs it would have been 1,500,000 TIEs and that isn´t including garrisons, Victories, Vindicators, Escort Carriers ...

It is also interesting, that the empire used those advanced fighters against imperial mutineers instead against the rebel-alliance (like at the battle of Endor). This clearly shows again, that the emperor considered the rebels to be an insignificant threat.

 

Brett: Thanks...

JC: Not arguing w/ you on continued production post-ROTJ, but they were limited runs. The Empire didn't intend for the TIE/AD to be deployed everywhere. Back to the "dependence on higher authority" thing mentioned in the first Cross-Sections book.

FTeik: We don´t know, if Coruscant had still a double-shield at that point of time. If there had been one or more torpedo-spheres the siege would have been over after a few hours. And if one perimeter collapses, enemy-ships will be below it before it can be repaired.

Unless the perimeters don't allow enough room for a SD to get underneath...

If somebody uses the low-power display by Daalas forces as benchmark for imperial firepower and claims in the same post, that he has read HoT, where three ISDs are tasked to BDZ Bothawui, not to mention, that we get descriptions what really happens to a planet that fell victim to such an operation...

Was there any mention of how many SD's BDZ'd Caamas? I'd thought the three SD's deployed by "Thrawn" were mainly tasked to hit the capital & major population centers. Not to completely destroy the planet.

TMcE: I don't know where to begin...

 

I don't think it was ISD's that BDZ Bothawui, it was Palp's private army, according to HoT.

 

I tend to agree, I don't think it was ever implied that it was a naval bombardment that turned Caamas into a lifeless rock.

 

Roger that, time to commence firing.

*locks and loads*

FTeik:

So you are claiming, that we should accept planet-destroying superlasers (magnitudes more powerful than 200 gigatons), lightsabres, hyperdrives, but no cooling-system advanced enough to deal with the heat of a turbolaser? You should hear yourself arguing.

200 gigatons would give off emough heat to incinerate the planet Earth. If a single turbolaser has a wattage of 200 gigatons, a BDZ would last about one second, because a single shot would be more than sufficient to devastate an entire world...

In addition, the heat efflux from the firing of such a weapon would at least burn out every sensor on the surface of a starship. The wattage is just plain insane.

And Darksaber didn´t show a full orbital bombardement because Daala was an incompetent imbecile, who decided to sent her troops to the surface

Irrelevant. A single shot from a 200 gigaton turbolaser should have burned the entire surface of Yavin 4 to a charred cinder, leaving the moon and all of its inhabitants as dead as dodos. But more evenly distributed across a very large area. As ash and various molecules.

And i answered, that it is conservative for the energy-requests of a BDZ-operation and asked you to do a calculation on your own:

You take an earth-sized planet, calculate the size of its surface and multiply it with the depth of you BDZ-operation (several hundred meters at least for deep-shelters and mines). Then you take an element that was spread very generously when god created earth (like silicium), calculate the mass of matter you have to melt and use the melting point and the specific heat (that is the energy (joules) needed to heat up one kilogram by one degree kelvin) to get the energy requested to "slack a planet".

It will be vastly above 200 gigatons.

So...in your book, a Base Delta Zero is carried out with one or two shots? From a cannon that would melt the ship that was firing it? Despite all of the textual evidence to the contrary?
?

Base Delta Zeros take multiple shots, not one omnipowerful blast of Biblical proportions... That's what the Death Star did.

Based off of the facts that multiple shots from the Knight Hammner proved incapable of creating massive nuclear-weapons-scale fireballs, the Chimaera's repeated shots at the Coral Vanda didn't boil the majority of the ocean, and the Lusankya--again, with dozens if not hundreds of shots--didn't utterly destroy Borleias, I think that it's more than a little safe to assume that a 200 gigaton wattage for a single turbolaser blast is preposterous.

So the empire built a moonsized battlestation when its Stardestroyers could reach the same results (remove planetary shields and kill every living being on a planet)?

Yes! The Death Star was militarily pointless, along with the Super Star Destroyers, the Sun Crusher, and any number of other Palpatine's superweapons. The man wasn't a military planner--he was a tyrannical dictator. He wanted grossly oversized weapons to terrify the galaxy beyond the point where they could resist him. It wasn't like the Imperial Starfleet sat down one day and said, "we really, really need this gigantic moon-sized, world-destroying superweapon".

Where the results of a BDZ are described: No survivors (complete destruction), no witnesses (nobody escaped and the attack didn´t requested much time) and even fourty years later it would have been easier to find another planet and terraform it instead of repairing Caamas.

If you have really read that, care to explain why you bore me with Darksaber?

A "fleet" of ships is described as killing Caamas. It can't be "repaired" because it doesn't have an atmosphere left. Or at least, not a breathable one.

And again, I point you to the fact that multiple shots fired from capital starships onto a planetary atmosphere have

 

TIE Avengers would probably be more common than some speculations as there's still a significant cost difference between producing Avengers and Defenders, and the money saved by producing x-amount of Avengers over x-amount of Defenders could go into another area of the Remnant's war budget.

 

Brett: Hit the bullseye on that one. Good job...

Pelranius: And the cost savings of producing X-amount of TIE Interceptors instead of X-amount of Avengers could be used the same way--or to make even more Interceptors. Pre-ROTJ, Interceptors fall into the Imperial philosophy more than Avengers. Post-ROTJ, the Remnant won't have the resources to field more expensive craft like Avengers or Defenders. They'll come out in lesser numbers & saved for more important missions....

And the Emperor didn't BDZ Bothuwathi (sp). He BDZ'd Caamas. And Vader left a little mark on the Falleen, too...

(I only WISH he'd BBQ'd the Bothans... )

 

"Post-ROTJ, the Remnant won't have the resources to field more expensive craft like Avengers or Defenders. They'll come out in lesser numbers & saved for more important missions.... "

On the other hand, under Thrawn, TIE Interceptors became Avengers in all but name anyway, with shields added. I suspect they got a few more performance tweaks as well, as not to be left behind in the wake of the TIE Bomber seeing widespread replacement by the Scimitar.

Plus, they could probably upgrade an entire Star Destroyer's Interceptor squadrons for the cost of a few new Avengers, plus training and indoctrination.

 

I always like the look of TIE Avengers. They are sleek and tough.

Too bad they are never mentioned in any EU books....

 

Here's one that's more than a little off the wall, at least for this thread...

What's the deal with the Star Destroyers seen in the early Marvel runs? Basically pancake-flat from front to back, maintaining a wedge shape from the whole length, but not deep at the stern and tapering at the bow, a consistent height for most of the superstructure. The bridge tower assembly is similar, but much more blocky, no layers as we know them now. No shield towers in the usual sense, but there are ventral docking bays. Usually, four engines laid out side by side at the stern, rather than three primary, multiple secondary. Too distinct to be labeled as "poorly drawn", especially given their repetition, such as Crimson Jack's ship all the way to the ones in the Empire's service at the Wheel casino.

 

Awfully-drawn Vindicators?

 

Umm, this is my first post, and based on my name I'll bet you'll all be able to figure out about what i'm going to primarily talk about.
Anyhoo, about the TIE Advanced, ie "TIE Avenger", being created before the TIE Interceptor, I think you have to take this comment with a grain of salt. This statement comes fro the decpiher card game's TIE Avenger, which despite using the same TIE Fighter manual i'm betting many of us have, is inaccurate (cehck out the rotating image on their website, horrible inaccurate solar panels, and it is based on this information that was put into the Essential Guide to Vehciles and Vessels, both editions. The TIE Fighter Stele Chronicles clearly states that the TIE Advanced is one of their newest models, and it dosen't say "oh we're phasing it out because it's soooo good". As for the Essential Guides, as great as they are, it's not like they aren't chock full of errors anways (VSD and ISD schematics in the first one, the TIE Defender in the newer one [Solar panels are wrong! Wrong!])And as far as I know, and i'm a huge TIE Fighter fan, although the manufacture of T/As was severely crippled by Zaarin, I don't think it was completely destroyed. Feel free to prove me wrong.

 

Welcome aboard, TIE Defender Pilot!


Anywho, The Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels predates the Decipher CCG (1996 vs. 1997 for the Dagobah Expansion Set that had the Avenger in it). As such, the information in the EGtV&V is what was used to inspire the CCG.

I suspect that the different solar panel configuration(s) simply represent minor variartions of the fighters. Also, remember that the contents of the video and computer games (including TIE Fighter) are not necessarily canonized and official. The Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels' representation of the TIE defender seems to be the most widely accepted, as it reccurs in The New Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels, Decipher's CCG, and a handful of other sources as well. The 'long-panel' variant in TIE Fighter is probably either an earlier prototype of the ship, or simply a limitation of the graphical capabilities of the graphics engine.

 

Alright, lets get of the gloves:

In other words you still haven´t done the calculations i asked you to do.

Considering this, i could also ask you to do a study on, lets say, asteroid-impacts and their consequences for global live and you would ignore that, too.

Okay, lets do the maths:

200 gigatons of TNT equal 8.4*10^20 Joule.

It takes 4.18 Joule to heat up one gram of water by one degree (H.J.Paus: Physics in Experiments and Examples).

So with 8.4*10^20 Joule you would be able to increase the heat of 2.01*10^20 gram of water by one degree.

That would be 2.01*10^17 kilogram of water.

That would be 2.01*10^17 litres of water.

A volume of one cubicmeter can contain 1,000 litres.

So we get 2.01*10^14 cubicmeters.

A cubicKILOmeter contains 1 BILLION cubicmeters.

So we get 210,000 cubic-kilometers of water which is ONE degree warmer.

That would be a square one kilometer deep and with a lenght and wide of 458 kilometers.

You want to boil the water. That means if your starting temperature is 10 degree, you have to heat it up to hundred, which would be an increase of ninety degree.

So you get 2.23*10^18 gram of water, that boil.

Which would be 2.23*10^15 kilogram or litres.

Which would be 2.23*10^12 cubicmeters.

Which would be 2.233 cubic-kilometers.

Which would be a square one kilometer deep and with a sidelenght of 47.26 kilometers of boiling water.

Hardly enough to incinerate the planet earth or to turn Yavin 4 to charred cinder or to be an omnie-powerful blast of biblical proportions..

As you can see above "one or two" shots are hardly enough to boil the entire water of the middle-sea or the lake Michigan.

Contrary to me you only make misleading statements without backing them up.

Which would equal 4*10^38 Joule (9.53*10^19 Gigatons or 95,238 Yotatons) to do what it did: Blow up Alderaan and spread the debris over an area of at least twice the planetary diameter in less than two seconds.

First, why should the destructive effect of a beam-weapon be similar to a nuclear bomb exploding?

Why should the Knight-Hammer fire with full power, if Daala wants to drop groundtroops (what again shows, that she is stupid).

Same for the Chimaera and the Coral Vanda, they wanted to capture Captain Haffner.

As for Borleais, you know, that there were still NR-troops on the surface?

 

Brett

"Awfully-drawn Vindicators?"

Seems doubtful to me, they seem WAY too big for that, at least VSD sized, probably bigger. My guess is that they're either a post-VSD, pre-ISD model, lighter on fighter and troop capacity, but still heavily armed, kinda like a baby Allegiance, or that it's a competing manufacturer's answer to the ISD. Bridge tower was most definately not KDY or Rendili, making me think it may be Corellian. I'll see if I can track down a pic.

TIEDefenderPilot

Zaarin did destroy the TIE Advanced plants in the Omar system, effectively ending the Empire's ability to produce them. From the way it sounded, it wasn't much of a stretch to convert TIE Advanced plants to TIE Defender production.

Also, welcome to the thread!