Trade Federation Battleships: How many, and how powerful? (Fleet Junk: TFBBs are the new SSDs)

We see a lot of very high figures for the numbers and capabilities of the Trade Federation cargo haulers, modified as ?battleships?, which serve as the main ?bad guy? capital ships in the Prequels. This thread is an effort to seperate ?fact? from fanon; its primary purpose is to put together the avaliable canon evidence, with as much precision as possible.

At least for the initial post, this can be divided up under three heads: Numbers, Firepower and Shields...

1.) Numbers

It's often said that there are a thousand TFBBs, or even ?thousands?, in the Naboo blockade. But what's the canon basis of this?

On screen, I count no more than twenty.

The TPM shooting script describes Naboo as ?surrounded by hundreds of Trade Federation battleships?; now this certainly has a G-canon value to supplement the movie, but this could be hyperbole, a vague indicator for ?lots? - and it's by no means clear that, by calling them ?battleships?, George necessarily intended these (ultimately unseen) ships to all be the familiar multi-mile TFBBs.

So, twenty, maybe a few more than that - maybe even a few hundred; but even ?hundreds? are well short of a thousand....

So, where does this ?thousands? figure come from? Well, there's a line in the TPM novellization (p. 24), in the scene corresponding to the start of the movie, that refers to ?Naboo and the cluster of Trade Federation fleet ships that encircled it?.

From this, SWTC makes the following comment: ?It is implied that they are distributed around the planet in a ring. If they are evenly distributed at the density shown in the movie then there must be at thousands of them.?

This seems to me to place too much stress on a particular word choice; there's a semantic tension in the sentence between the description of the TFBBs as a ?cluster? (a group collected together), and the statement that they're ?encircling? a planet (looped in a ring around it); of course, the movie footage shows a ?cluster? of TFBBs, and it's possible that the reference to them ?encircling? the planet simply describes the way these ships seem to curve around Naboo - very limited in terms of overal geometry, but impressive as seen from the approaching Republic cruiser...

Either way, I don't think we can really trust the novellization to indicate some sort of complete envelopment formation, and even if we did make that assumption, SWTC itself does acknowledge that it's only hypothetical that this ?encircling? formation is of an even density.

Admittedly, when the Royal Yacht is fleeing Naboo, they have to run through a group of at least eleven TFBBs, described by Ric Olie as ?the blockade? ? a fact which might indicate that there?s a dense formation of TFBBs around the whole planet. Alternatively, however, it may be that one or more relatively small TFBB formations can move to interdict any large or important ships trying to leave the surface.

Pushing further into speculation, the Neimodians might have laid orbital minefields ? cheaper, more economical, and probably more effective than thousands of TFBBs; the blockade formation would thus be covering the only exit window that isn?t mined, so the fleeing ship has to go through the blockade?.

At any rate, the evidence for ?thousands? of TFBBs at Naboo seems to be distinctly lacking in the sources I?m aware of? the minimum figure is twenty, and there?s a vague maximum of ?hundreds?.

So, is there other evidence?

I don't know. Anyone?

If there's not, the claim of ?thousands? of TFBBs at Naboo would seem to be mere fan-speculation; it depends on the double assumptions that the ?encircling? formation described in the novel is a complete ring, and that that formation is of even density. A more accurate statement would be that there?s a hard minimum of at least twenty TFBBs in the blockade, with numbers possibly extending upwards into the hundreds.

2.) Firepower

How heavily armed are TFBBs? In the movie, I think I count ten or twelve q

 

*Runs off and cry*

 

Numbers:

A few hundredthousands to a million considering, that several billion vulture-droids and tri-droids had to be carried around during the clone-war (now where could that number be coming from?).

Power:

Based on the volume of the thing and the weapons shown on the picture on hyperspace of the ROTS-model (~58 heavy weapons, ~880 quadlasers and ~560 longbarreled cannons) 5-6 times as powerful as an ISD.

 

Galactic gallery over at the OS has a schematic of a TF battleship gun emplacements from ILM I think... let me find it. And if I remember correctly there are hundres of laser batteries and such.

EDIT: found it... hope you have hyperspace

 

In regards to the shields, we see a Trade Federation Battleship with its shields intact during the battle over Coruscant, even though a lot of the other ships had lost theirs.

 

They may have gone turtle. Pumping all their available power to their shields and devoting a little of it to point defence.

 

Is there any evidence to assume that the Naboo era TFBBs are still designed to operate as freighters, similar to armed merchantmen, rather than proper battleships? In CoD, there are two different of the LH freighters, one described as being more powerful than the other. By the Battle Coruscant, can it be assumed that the TFBBs there had dropped any pretense of cargo capacity, and reduced their storage areas in favor of more armor/shields/powerplants/guns?

 

A helpful breakdown for those that don't have Hyperspace ? the graphic shows the core, engine block and one arm of the TFBB, seen from above. The title is:

Trade Federation Battleship
Gun Placement Guide
EP3 01/09/04
A Mcbride ILM

Guns are shown in three types, distinguished by different-coloured dots, and with pictures underneath: long guns look like RotJ sketches for trench guns; Quad guns are the familiar four-barreled lasers, and the Heavy gun looks like a Red Bull can.

The disposition of guns is as follows:

1.) ENGINES:

32 quad lasers
26 long guns
4 heavy guns

STARBOARD HANGAR ARM:
149 quad lasers
112 long guns
11 heavy guns

PORT HANGAR ARM:

Not shown; as starboard arm?

CORE SHIP:

Starboard:
31 quad lasers
17 long guns
1 heavy gun

Port:
23 quad lasers
16 long guns
1 heavy gun

Centerline:
2 quad lasers
0 long guns
1 heavy gun

There?s something odd here, because the guns on the core aren?t symmetrical ? and for whatever it?s worth, the symmetrical arrangement of the ?broadside? on the central section of the hangar arm is off by one long gun.

Additionally, I don?t have any idea how the ventral guns are arranged ? and for what it?s worth, somewhere (AotC ICS?) it says that the core ship is armed with 280 light lasers, which doesn?t really add up, though I presume that might mean 70 quads as of the Battle of Geonosis...

All in all, it looks as though the TFBB did get massively up-gunned over time, but there are some issues with the lack of overall symmetry? and on top of that, we don?t actually know what these guns do!

The overall firepower is probably somewhere around 800 quads, 550 long guns, and 60 heavy guns? which seems very OTT to this Ewok, but which I assume is canon, rather than just some idle "how many guns can we give this thing?" doodle?

60 heavy guns, though? Sounds like an ISD!

EDIT: AdmiralWes, are both types definately Lucrehulk-class? We know from Rogue Planet that there are smaller TF cargo haulers built to the same general ring-and-core design... and, as to up-gunning, bear in mind that in military configuration, the cargo space is given over to battledroids, MTTs, PACs, AATs, and Vulture Droids...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Going by WotC, the TF "War Freighter" and TF "Battleship" look identical, going by card images. Granted, it may be game mechanics, but WotC is not stingy about using CGI for new ships rather than using movie images.

 

There are thousands; Cloak of Decept

 

It takes 5 Venator-class Star Destroyers to lower the Lucrehulk's shields and keep them down ("a flotilla of these warships can take down a Trade Federation Battleship's shields") or something like that. Taken from ROTS:ICS.

 

Because a published work says so doesn't always mean it's correct.

Neither N/EGVVs said Impstars have missiles. Doesn't that make it official? Of course not. Books have showed them; and your own common sense brain must know they're planetary siegers. No missile capability? Right.

 

I always assumed that when ISDs bombed planet, they did so with Turbolasers like Malak's attack on Taris.

 

i add my own 2 cents here sense i love TFBB

i always see them as lumerbing powerfull ships that can take massive damage, yet they are only aremd with quad lasers.

1) this is probably just me though i like EU i never care when they give a number out of the blue, like the 1000 TFBB from cloack of deception

2) i always think that the more number, the less important a ship looks, yet there are many of them for the blockade of naboo. about 20 TFBB. i wonder did the invasion force came from all 20 TFBB or just a few???

another thing of intrest: imagine the begening of ROTS, but the space battle there are 20 TFBB for the seppies instead all those smaller ships that we see. i reckon that 20 TFBB during the battle of Coresucant would have been a mighty force to knockout. which leads me to think that perhapes Lucas back in the writing days of TPM, he just perhapes overestimated the numbers of TFBB

anyways, there are two types of fans of SW ships:

the ones going by the movies
the ones going by the EU, which claims that Empire had 20,000 ISD and 1,000s of TFBB

i am of the former group, that means less numbers even though i know it is a galaxy and there are hunderth of thousends of systems. why? becuase, as an exmple, for me takes away the greatness of Battle of Endor where 30 ISD participated.
omehow 20,000 - 30 is still a big number ... i know, i know the emperor was there et al. but still its not my cup of tea. same goes for EU-prediction of TFBB numbers


like i said, i always see them as lumerbing powerfull ships that can take massive damage, yet they are only aremd with quad lasers. and i think Lucas got the idea from the Guild Heiglighner of DUne that had monopoly over space travel

 

Battle for Naboo supports a non-planet-wide blockade, since it shows orbital minefields and droid-control relay satellites, with few (no?) TF ships in sight.

Its possible that not all the ships in the Naboo blockade were the standard battleships. Some could have been dedicated troop transports, or have other specialties.

 

I was under the impression that the blockade took off after the droid army invaded and secured the planet.

 

5000 3000km megafreighters? Bite my horse tail and screw your face up, that certainly takes the Incom too far!

I'd rather someone ask what happened to the business trade if most of the Trafed freighters were warring with the Republic. This is why I call the Clone War (book) series superficial for all the depth you got.

 

Obviously, it went in the toilet.

 

Then, presumably, most of the Outer Rim worlds had an economic crash, without interstellar trade.

 

Well, I'd say that's obvious..

But yeah. While places like Tatooine that seem to be pretty much self-sufficient colonies probably weren't terribly bothered, I'd bet places like Bakura and Naboo got hit pretty damn hard.

 

Or smaller companies and even individuals were able to fill the gap. It was certainly a good thing, that the monopol of the TF was broken.

 

Oh, definitely. Although just how many smaller companies were available to fill the gap seems debatable though; CoD seems to make it clear that in the Outer Rim during the prequels, you trade with the TF or you don't trade at all.

I reckon smuggling had a great couple years there.

 

On the page about Separatist warships in the ROTS ICS, the CIS Navy is said to consist of millions of ships. Later on the same page, the book states that dozens of battleships and thousands of frigates and destroyers were used in the attack on Coruscant. If we assume that the Separatist fleet at Coruscant was of normal composition (and we have no reason to believe otherwise), then that means the CIS has a minimum of 24 battleships for every 2,000 frigates and destroyers (battleships are 1.2% of the fleet). Assuming that the CIS Navy consists of only 2 million ships, we get 24,000 battleships.

Keep in mind that these are only low-end estimates. It's very possible for the CIS to possess several million more ships, and for battleships to make up a larger percentage of their forces. These numbers are also for a mere shipping company, and not the military of a galactic government.