Post Legacy Comic Fleets- for Fleet Junkies

As with everyone else I was saddened when Legacy ended with only 50 issues, an end to the GA/Imperial/Sith story and the fleets. The fleets, both Imperial and GA, were huge reasons why I liked it so much. All the ships were well thought out, had solid in story reasons for their design (example the GA using smaller ships due to economics), and the concept art of the ships themselves in the comics was a nice touch.

So, assuming the Legacy was ever launched again and that the story takes place shortly or right after Legacy War, what changes/improvements would you like to see made both faction's ships? Minor tweeks or complete redesigns, same ships, new ships or all of the above?

 

Empire needs more smaller ships.
GAR needs more non-Mon-Cal designed ships. CEC, Sorosuub, Fondor, ect. designs.

 

I think that all sides should definitely have a greater variety of starfighters. The best starfighter from Legacy was definitely Krayt's Anihhilator-class.

 

I would of liked to see more of the fighters introduced in the Legacy Era Campaign Guide. I was really a fan of the BB-2 Starfire and the I-4 Ionizer.

Regarding more non-Mon Cal warships, part of the reason that designers like Dac and CEC keep getting used is because they have an iconic shape & look. Same goers for Kuati warships. I sincerely would love it if someone gave SoroSubb warships a general "shape" that made them identifiable.

--Adm. Nick

 

Dauntless-class heavy cruiser, Liberator-class cruiser, Quasar Fire-class bulk cruiser, Bantha-class assault shuttle (co-designed with the Mon Calamari). Hmm, any recurring features?
I see some sharp angles on the Liberator and Quasar Fire, blocky command & control centers on the Dauntless and Liberator, but not much else...

 

The Dauntless-class always stuck me as too similar to a Mon Cal cruiser, so if I had to "pick" a design style for the Sullustans I would probably go with the Liberator-class. It is a cool looking warship, plus it is rather unique when compared to the designs of Dac, Kuat, Rendili, or Corellia. In fact, there are enough similarities between the Liberator and the Quasar Fire-class carrier to give the Sullustans their own "feel".

Of course, part of the reason that the Sullustans don't make capital ships for the open market could be that they dominate other markets like small trasnports, cargo ships, blasters, and just about every other commodity that isn't a warship or starfighter.

--Adm. Nick

 

Looking over all the SoroSuub designs on the Wook, forward-facing hangars seem to be a trend on their capital ships, though there aren't that many samples. Protruding command pods, too.

Their fighter and yacht designs seem to have a common trend of rear-mounted wings with dual engines mounted at the rear (usually at the base rather than the ends of the wings on fighters, and usually at the ends on yachts) and a forward-jutting cockpit. They also seem to have a lesser thing for forward-jutting wingtips, as seen on the Liberator and here, here, and here.

Also, there seems to be an interest in juxtaposing linear, angular segments with rounded ones, usually with the curves at the fore of the vessel and the angular lines in the aft. I'll note that there are only two, limited instances of an angular front and rounded rear that I can observe; the only common looks are uniformly rounded, uniformly angular, or rounded front/angular rear.

There's a very, very clear design philosophy running through their landspeeders, with rear-mounted engine pods, usually on struts, dual or triple, behind a curved (or sometimes angularly pointed) forward passenger compartment. The engine pods fit the uniformly angular/uniformly rounded/rounded front and angular rear design trend.

So, overall, I'd say the angular/rounded justaposition is their overall defining trend, which is pretty remarkable that it's so coherent over the course of all kinds of independent design work. Of course, there are multiple examples that don't fit, but it's hardly surprising that the company's designs wouldn't all be completely uniform. When they do play with lines, it's done in a very distinct way. There doesn't appear to be one definite capital-ship design aesthetic aside from the overall front/rear lines trend, though we can point at the command pod and hangar similarities we have in our small sample, but there are absolutely rock-solid design trends running throughout the entirety of their landspeeder, fighter, and yacht lines, with about one exception to each throughout pretty large catalogues.

Edit: I'll just stick up some images to illustrate.

Forward-facing hangars:
[image=http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/a/a7/Liberator_cruiser.jpg]
[image=http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/d/d6/Qfire.JPG]
The Dauntless may have an underslung forward-facing hangar, but I can't tell for sure from the angles I have.

Protruding command pods:
[image=http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/e/e2/Dauntless_cruiser.jpg]
[image=http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/d/d6/Qfire.JPG]
[image=http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/3/3d/BanthaClassTroopCarrierAssaultShuttle.jpg]
[image=http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/6/6e/UwanaBuyer.jpg]
This can also be noted to a lesser extent on the Liberator, with its bridge apparently at the front end of the elevated spine running along the ship.

Fighter design philosophy:
[image=http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/4/46/Cutlass-9_patrol_fighter_SofG.jpg]
[image=http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/a/a8/BB-2_Starfire.jpg]
[image=http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/2/21/Preybird-SotP_Back.jpg]
[image=http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/a/ae/Planetaryfighter.JPG]
[image=http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/f/f9/Fury_starfighter.jpg]
[image=http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/8/89/Drexl-tur.jpg]

Yacht design philosophy:
[image=http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/b/b7/PersonalLuxuryYacht3000.png]
Note that SoroSuub has a line of yachts, without canonical images, that are said to resemble the 3000.
[image=http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/2/2c/Jade_Shadow.jpg]
[image=http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/6/6e/UwanaBuyer.jpg]
Somewhat of an outlier, as it's vastly upsized over your typical yacht an

 

Civilian ships and vehicles are going to have more variety.

As for captial ships, the Dauntless is a modified passenger liner, and the Quasar-fire is a bulk freighter. The Liberator is the only defined warship of the bunch.

 

Good points, but one would presume some sort of similarity in the overall designs. Though I am all for the Liberator-class being the defining warship for Sullustan ships, partially cause I love those things so much.

--Adm. Nick

 

I would vote for the GA to return to having some large capital ships like they did in early years... so evolutions of the Republic class SDs or Mediators, Star Defenders and Viscount...

 

A few bulwarks to protect important systems couldn't hurt. Just look at the defense of Calamari during the Yuuzhan Vong War and the psychological effect of ships like the Executor, Starcrusher and Malevolence.

 

Yeah, any major power that posesses a galactic-level navy needs a handful of dreadnoughts to protect key systems. As you said, the defense of Dac during the Yuuzhan Vong War is great example of a few large dreadnoughts backing up a conventional battle fleet that is outnumbered and helping it prevail.

The area Dr. Saxton and I disagree on is the "gap" between standard EU battleships (ie, Star Destroyers and Mon Cal cruisers) and ships like the Executor or Viscount. I love uber-ships, but I don't see the need to have multiple classes in-between.

I think that is why I love the Galactic Alliance Defense Force. With the possible exception of the Mediator-class (size TBD, based on conflicting sources), the GADF basically is a navy built around 1.2km Mon Cal cruisers & 1.6km Star Destroyers as their main capital ships, BACKED UP by a handful of massive dreadnoughts that can defend whole systems, engage other dreadnoughts or turn the tide of major fleet engagements.

--Adm. Nick

 

Actually, thanks to TCW, he's not the only one anymore. The CIS is shown to have exactly the kind of variations I hope to see laid out in the Imperial Navy as well, a few dreadnoughts/battleships for massive firepower, some battlecruisers for deep strikes on faraway installations and fleet elements, heavy cruisers/destroyers carrying a lot of fire-support/ground units for individual fleets, along with the regular cruisers/destroyers doing most of the ship-to-ship fighting, frigates to support in groups or with remote patrolling, corvettes for spacelane/home system patrols, tankers and other logistics vessels of all shapes and sizes. So even LFL is going with this, to some extent.

EDIT: trying to find some equivilant Imperial units. There's the Executors, of course, heavy battleships. There's the Field Secured Container Vessels, Cardan-class stations and Deepdocks for big logistic purposes. Some SSDs working as comm vessels, repair ships and heavy carriers. There's the Star Cruisers for smaller SSDs, but no stats or anything on roles. They have the regular ship-to-ship fighters like the ISDs, frigates and corvettes, just nothing concrete on the battlecruiser/heavy cruiser range, like the CIS. Not that much left to fill, but I'd appreciate any info on the Star Battlecruisers and such.

 

Yeah, the CIS navy definately falls into the type of a battle fleet that Dr. Saxton is a fan of. I would argue that there is no direct evidence of these uber-ships being very numerous, but there is no doubt that they have many different size classifications.

On a separate note, we should probably move this discussion to the Fleet Junkie Flagship. We aren't really discussing post-Legacy battle fleets.

--Adm. Nick

 

Why the demands for them being numerous? Ever seen the size-to-amount graph that's still up on the Tech Comm site? It's like a handful of Executors, dozens of smaller dreadnoughts, hundreds of battlecruisers and thousands of cruisers that are bigger than Star Destroyers. And that's a hypothetical throughout the Empire, nothing says they all have to come from one place. If you have a hundred shipyards making ten battlecruisers each and they have decades to do it in (some made during the late Republic, some throughout the Empire), you'd have a massive fleet of them, yet the economic side of things wouldn't approach something like, say, the Executors, given the time-span and the decentralized productions.

Based on what Jason Fry said last year on the Warfare thread, there might mostly be designs that are a bit smaller and more limited in number than what Saxton once estimated, but it's still cool. We know the Trade Federation fielded thousands of Lucrehulk freighters and a significant fraction were militarized. If a regional government/corporate organization can manage a feat like that, the galaxy-wide mega-government can manage dozens or hundreds of battlecruisers that go between the ISD-cruiser range and Executor- or even Sarlacc-battleship range. We have a few examples so far, but they're mostly aged and outdated designs used by PDFs, like the Invincible-class, the Pelagia Star, the Rokak'k Baran (though that's a civilian transport, weaponized).

Well, it's kinda hard to avoid some of the previous generational trends and how they might play out in the future. Maybe there'll be another period where the Core sectors who can afford it, field their own fleets including heavy designs out of paranoia.

 

I think that SoroSuub's trademark is that they don't have a "set design" - a reason, perhaps, that they didn't seem to be affected (at least as much as other alien-run corps) by the New Order's anti-alien prejudices. That they have a more universal production line, rather than concentrating on one specific area, might mean they are more interested in seeing what consumers want instead of having an iconic look.

Did we get a sense of how Sullust/SoroSuub fared in the Legacy Era?

 

Wonder what the Ubrikkian lines would look like. Ubrikkian keeps showing the plated, brownish designs in tanks and speeders. What would their spaceships look like, especially with the Hutts so deep in Ubrikkian affairs. Would the Hutts decide on a specific look, or differ based on the individual clans or gangsters?

 

If I remember from the Legacy Era Campaign Guide right, and I just checked Wookieepedia to confirm, under Darth Krayt SoroSuub was somewhat taken over by the Empire. They were forced to make mostly Imperial vessels, but Sorosuub built secret underground factories to make their own stuff. The problem is that those underground facilities could be discovered at any time, so they were still in constant danger.

Anyway, aside from the (eternal) debate about battleships and cruisers or whatever, while I'd like the GA to have a few dreadnoughts, I can understand the reasoning for why they didn't seem to have any at the time of the Sith-Imperial War. The Viscount was originally designed to counter Executor-class Super Star Destroyers, but by the time it was finished there weren't many left, not to mention the New Republic had captured several by then. And short of another threat like the Vong invading out of nowhere, those kinds of warhips aren't needed that much in peacetime (although its anybody's guess by now how "peaceful" the post-NJO Legacy era will be), despite their impressive showing at certain key battles (although as mentioned in the one-hit wonder thread, you'd think those super ships would show up more often, but that's an OOU reason mainly). So unless the Empire cranks out more dreadnoughts, the GA probably won't bother to do so. Or at least nothing on the scale of the Executor, although a few multi-kilometer ships to defend key systems might be nice. I do so wish the Imperious had been something like that, since Imperials (especially a Sith-run Empire) would be more likely to go for a bigger is better ship philosophy. But then giving Stazi a dreadnought probably would've helped the GA Remnant too much (which is usually the OOU reason for why the good guys rarely have the big ships, even when they're part of a large government).

I'm more curious about where the GA will be getting their ships from now. The Legacy-Era GA fleet seemed to be made up mostly of Mon Calamari ships originally. Dac is a dead world now, although the orbital shipyards might be repairable, eventually, not sure they ever bothered to fix the damage from when the Indomitable crashed into them. And there are still billions of Mon Calamari around, and possibly at least several shipbuilders survived. I also wonder if maybe Mon Calamari design philosophy will change after losing their world. Sorry to bring up Trek as an example, but from early TNG to later on after the Borg attacked, ship designs changed a bit in most of the newer designs (for instance, Starfleet actually designed a warship).

Although by the end of Legacy the GA Core Fleet was pretty mixed, with stolen Star Destroyers and the remaining Scythe cruisers. Heck, Stazi's flagship was a Star Destroyer. So they could always just go buy more Kuat designs. The GA and Empire will have to remain vigilant for a very long time as there are probably still a lot of Sith out there. The One Sith have hidden their fleet, going more for infiltration now, but the rest of the galaxy wouldn't know that, so a powerful fleet is still needed. Not to mention there's always the old standby of rogue Imperials, those who never defected back to the Fel Empire and might make a run for it instead.

I wouldn't mind seeing more Corellian designs either. The YZ-2500 was a nice ship, just too bad we only saw it once (before it was blown up), not to mention there might be quite a lot of them lying around as its officially a transport. Too bad we didn't get to see Corellia in the Legacy Era much. With the Mon Calamari shipyards ruined, it might be an opportunity for other shipbuilders to get new contracts (well, hopefully someone aside from Kuat, they're always around in this century). There's always Rendili (I think they're still around?). Although I was never sure how many other shipyards the Mon Calamari had other than around their homeworld (for instance the Quarren built a lot at Pammant dur

 

I posed the question of Dac's shipyards and its eventual resortation to John Ostrander when Legacy: War ended. I paraphrase slightly, but his basic comment was that Dac's shipyards would be a vital military asset for the new galactic government. Considering how important the Mon Calamari were to the Rebel Alliance, New Republic, Galactic Alliance, and GA Remnant, I have zero doubt that one of the first priorities of the new Galactic Federation Triumvirate is the rehabilitation and resettling of Dac.

--Adm. Nick

 

Given the amount of time the Executor and the ships of its class show up, they're almost getting more exposure than their numbers would indicate (less than two dozen vs the tens of thousands of ISDs, with their story appearance ratios being much lower than that). As for OOU reasons why other designs don't show up, lack of creativity, really. Too often creators, and fans, are just content getting another ISD or VSD with a new name.

It's been improving in recent years, though. The Calamari battlecruisers and heavy assault cruisers in NJO, Saxton and Luceno namedropping some Star Battlecruisers in the DK books, the battlecruiser Maelstrom in the Living Force campaign and Jason mentioning having a distinct battlecruiser class inbetween the cruisers/Star Destroyers and dreadnoughts for Warfare, so this ship role is getting more attention.

Which brings me to wonder how the post-Legacy Era deals with this, will they even produce dreadnoughts to guard important worlds/lead massive fleets or battlecruisers/heavy cruisers to patrol and strike far from home, like a more conventionally armed Malevolence? Do they have enough cruisers and frigates to afford any of those? Or will it be like the post-Sith War period, pushing out cheap, small cruisers to cover as much terrain as possible and appear in control? The Scythe, sharp as it was, was the result of a budgetary situation.

 

Well, working under the assumption that the post-Krayt galaxy is governed by a restored Galactic Alliance, several factors would probably point to a reliance on conventional sized warships. For starters, we have the historical precedent of the NRDF/GADF using warships of the 1.2-1.6km size range as their primary battleships. This trend lasted over a century. Factor in that ecomonic and political factors led to the GADF fielding a compact battle cruiser like the Scythe-class as the backbone of it's fleets, and it is probably safe to assume that this trend woudl continue.

Secondly, the primary efforts of the post-Krayt galactic government will be to "knit" the galaxy backtogether. Worlds like Dac, Ossus, Da Soocha, and others will need to have their entire ecosystems restored. That is not counting the hundreds of worlds that were devastated by the Sith sabotage of the Ossus Project. In addition, the galaxy suffered two major wars in just over a decade. While alot of the fighting of the Sith-Imperial War and the Third Galactic Civil War occured "off screen", there is no doubts that the wars were brutal and that Krayt was not inclined to take care of his holdings.

Several dreadnoughts (ala the Viscount-class) would undoubtedly be useful, as a single ship could defend an system, turn the tide of a battle, act as a mobile fortress, or be used as a humanitarian asset during a major crisis. Maybe even a handful of mid-sized craft as well. But at the end of the day, I don't see the heirs to the Rebel Alliance moving away from having ships like Mon Cal cruisers or Star Destroyers as their primary ships of the line.

--Adm. Nick

 

Good point, but, again, I don't think we're quite on the level. The main combatants (if that's what you're referring to as "ships of the line") have always been the cruisers of any era. Their sizes and capabilities have fluctuated, but their designations and roles usually stay the same. Even when there's a comparable boon of heavier combatants, they're not usually supposed to do most of the fighting in any given battle or be the main crutch of a navy's strategy.

*In the TOTJ-era, we have command ships like the Reliance I leading smaller cruisers and battleships, with the latter two doing a lot of the work.
*In the KOTOR-era, the Inexpugnable command ship and the Centurion battlecruiser led Hammerheads and Indictors, but the latter two were still meant to do most of the actual fighting.
*In the TOR-era, there's the Thrantas in every battle, backed up by the larger Capitol Ships. We've yet to see what their specifications are, but this might be one of the exceptions to the rule, if the CS is meant to do more fighting as a battlecruiser/dreadnought-scale ship or if it's just a large cruiser.
*The NSW-era stories so far have the Hammerheads cropping up again.
*The 1000-year peace time has cruisers like the Rendili Dreadnaught take the lead. Though that may be subverted if the Republic considered them peace-time "dreadnoughts" and DID have their strategy depend on them, which the lore so far indicates.
*CW-era has the Venator and increasing Star Destroyer designs, which would in previous eras have been comparable to their relatively rare heavy ships, now taking the standard cruiser roles while the heavier designs keep expanding.
*The Empire and New Republic/Galactic Alliance then continues the Star Destroyer-level focus, up to before the Sith-Imperial War, where the GA tries to combine heavier firepower with a smaller frame, essentially turning their battlecruisers into compact mobile reactors with armor on top, instead of the usual designs where the power equipment takes up only a fraction of the ship's total bulk.

With that development, will the future bring a return to the Hammerhead thinking or take a risk and do more Star Destroyer-level cruisers?

 

Yeah, the Executor kind of shows up too often, but that's partially because it is Darth Vader's flagship, so wherever he goes, the Executor is likely to at least make an appearance, and its just a really cool design.

You'd have thought the big ships would have shown up in the NJO more often, but they rarely play an important role. Like we don't see any of them during the Fall of Coruscant and its not like any of the commanding officers there moved their flag to a big ship. During the Black Fleet Crisis they said they didn't have any left, but that was during Bantam, whereas by the end of the GCW, we know the New Republic had at least three huge ships (the Guardian, Lusankya and the Viscount). Heck, the Lusankya is then thrown away during the defense of Borleias. Its used quite well, but still, one of the few SSDs left and then its gone. Not to mention whatever happened to that Imperial SSD seen in Destiny's Way. At least the Guardian was used as a mobile HQ for a while to explain why it wasn't part of say the Liberation of Coruscant.

I expect the Empire will stay with its 1km+ size ships as their main force, although they also fielded quite a few frigates. GA Scythes were able to keep up with Pellaeon-class Star Destroyers, so the design works, but guess that depends on what state the galaxy is in. There's lot of rebuilding to do, but there's still the Sith threat out there too. I don't think they'll bother with dreadnoughts much, if the Imperials under Krayt didn't actually build a new dreadnought, then I doubt a restored GA would do so. Not unless Stazi turns out to be really militant.

The Scythe was probably enough for a long while as the Mon Calamari build good ships, no matter what the size, and it could go up against the larger Star Destroyers. Of course that then goes back to where they'll get more ships with Dac still dead. Restoring Dac or at least resettling the Mon Calamari refugees somewhere is a high priority, but there are going to be lots of high priorities after a war.

If I had to guess, probably more smaller cruisers. Not just building a dreadnought, but designing one too takes a long while. The Viscount took years to finish (although there was also a lot of battles at Mon Calamari), the same with the Eclipse (although it was moved from Kuat to Byss). With the Sith fleet hidden, there probably be quite as much need for large battles, but maybe quicker response to whenever the Sith pop up then. Unless they dig out old blueprints for some dreadnoughts and then just update them. We saw classic Venators, Imperials and MC-cruisers as part of Stazi's fleet, so they're still useful, so updated dreadnoughts could work too.