Venator-Class SD: Ship of Riddles

Help me fleet junkies, you are my only hope.

I apologize if this issue has ever come up before, I did a search but could find nothing on the topic.
Being a long time lurker, but first time poster to this forum, I might be out of line with my question, if so, again, I apologize.

I am having trouble trying to wrap my head around the ?official? statistics for the Republic Venator Class Star Destroyer. Being a long time WEGer, I had always assumed the Victory class to be the queen ship of the Clone Wars. Of course, Episode 3 changed this with the appearance of the Venator?a very cool ship, and I am not at all displeased. The Victory, I assume, was just ?off camera,? along with the carrack class ships (according to the E3 novel).

But, the stats for the Venator claim that it is 1137 meters in length, 237 meters longer than the Victory, and second only to the Imperial-class in ship length. Also, the Venator has almost as many turbo laser batteries as the Victory.

If this is all true, then why do we continue to see the Victory in use even after the Battle of Endor, yet the Venators were apparently mothballed and abandoned before the Battle of Yavin? It does not seem logical that a ship that large and powerful would be so easily abandoned by the Empire, while a subordinate class would still be seeing service in the time of Galactic Civil War.

In the film, the Venator is shown primarily in the role of a star fighter carrier platform. According to the Incredible Cross Section, the Official Website, and Wookiepedia, the fighter complement of the Venator is just ridiculous. 420 star fighters? If the republic followed the same figher organization of the Empire, and the Alliance, that is 35 squadrons of fighters per ship. An Imperial Star Destroyer only carried 6, and the Home One (the largest Alliance ship at the Battle of Endor) carried 10. In comparison, the Executor carried 144 TIEs, or a full TIE wing of 12 squadrons. A 1137 meter long ship cannot carry that many fighters.

Here is why I say that, and why I have been thinking about this ship of riddles in such earnesty. I am a scale model builder, and I am trying to create the most accurate replica of the Venator I can (complete with tiny fighter complement) in 1/2555 scale. 420 fighters simply will not fit.

Has any one found a solution to both the reason for the Venator?s disuse, and the fighter complement issue? Has these been addressed before? Will the new WOTC ship guide answer this, or just perpetuate the current information?

Thanks for letting be vent, y?all.

MTFBWY
Jammies

 

first off let me say I do not believe there are any "official" answers to your questions:

However, there has been discussion of such things:

In terms of the disuse of the Venator class, most statements revolve around the unitasked capability of the Venator in service post Clone Wars. the Venator is a terrific carrier platform...but she was a fleet ship...and not responsive to solo missions, or other tasks, such as diplomatic missions, bombardments, interdictions, etc. And as the Empire ages, the advent of things like the Imperial Carrier would provide for similar fighter support, without the expense of such a huge fleet-only vessel.

As far as fighter complements...yet another case of somebody going gun crazy in that department...but in-universe...atleast until somebody gives us a more realistic number...is that a Venator had the capacity to "service" that many vessels...this does not mean stage them for combat readiness...that does not mean it could house that many pilot and squadron crews...it merely means that crammed onto all flight decks...all access portals...and perhaps even attached to the outer hull via umbilical...a Venator could "hold" 420 fighters.

Take for example the modern air craft carrier of today...usually something like 75-100 planes are "stationed" onboard...but most carriers if forced, could carry nearly 300...it just isn't tactically feasible.

 

I would simply assume that Mr. Lucas was not concerned with the fighter complements set out by West End games, just a guess. Considering everything thats been established in the EU 420 snubfighters does sound like a very silly amount, and I thought the Venators carried ground forces as well, oh well I'm sure someone will have a good answer?

 

Wow, never really thought about that, but that is incredibly absurd. Just one of those things where the universe gets too big for its own good and no one remembers to cross-reference stuff to eliminate inconsistencies. A fleet of 10 Venators could have 4200 fighters...whew.

 

Thanks guys, I am glad to see I'm not the only one who thinks 420 fighters is crazy. Robimus, you are right, the ship ALSO house ground craft, I just don't know where.

The Revel model kit is in 1/2555 and at that scale a fighter is about the size of a cheerio. I could not fit 420 cheerios inside the plastic hangerbay, allthough it did make for an interesting breakfast.

 

Jedimarine is probably right that the 420 number is packed to the total max, not the usual opperating number. In addition, almost all of the interior is juse one giant hangar deck with tons of racks. And Eta's and to and extent V-wings are relatively small ships. I wonder how many ARC's they can hold though. It is a fairly ridiculus number, but not completely unworkable.

As for Venator vs Victory, while the Victory is an older ship, it was very versatile and served well through most of the clone wars (IIRC one of the first battles where a Victory was used was the battle of Duro). However it seems in the last year or so the Republic's shipyards were working on the next generation battleship, and there was a bit of a format war. The Venator, which was pretty much a carrier, I think was finished and put into duty first, but more or less at the time of ROTS the Imperator, which was more of a true warship, was put into active duty as well. The Imperator I would assume would tend to work better with the Victories, which must have formed a large part of the existing fleet, and tended to favor the Empire's future fear tactics, allowing shows of force such as the BDZ, and had more than endough fighters and firepower to opperate on it's own. Overall, the the Imperator was a better ship for the Empire and so it won out, and I can only assume production of the Venator largely stopped, while older, but tried and true ship models like the Victory and the Acclamator remained in production, now to fill more of a support role.

Though I'm sure as time goes on we will see more and more Venators in the later EU, just as it took some time for Acclamators to show up.

 

The Venator-class was a dedicated carrier, it had many hangars to accompany its 420 compliment of Starfighters. The Executor-class, you should know that 144 is probably the minimum, the 19,000 meter vessel could probably hold thousands.

 

For reference, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier can carry about 90 aircraft. Its dimensions are 317m x 40.8m x 11.9 m.

A Venator is about four times as long; scaling the Nimitz up gives a dirty estimate of about 360 fighters. 420 could be possible, if the fighters are packed tightly onto racks.

 

Also if you consider that the average F-18 is larger than both the V-Wing and Jedi Interceptor that make up a majority of the Venator's complement.

 

420 fighters is more than a reasonable compliment for a ship as large as the Venator-class. As has been pointed out, modern supercarriers carry over 90 aircraft on a far smaller craft. The volume dedicated to small craft bays on the Venator-class and the small size of the primary craft carried makes it a perfectly acceptable number. As for Imperial and Executor class ships, I think WEG numbers are at fault here and are revealed to be far too small. A 1600 meter long ship with that much volume, but only 72 embarked fighters. That would almost have to be a normal, peacetime load, not a warload of fighters. Currently, US supercarriers embark 70 some aircraft since they downsized the complement of over 90 during the Cold War.

 

Except those US carriers are just that: carriers. ImpStars carry fighters, but that's not their primary purpose; they're warships, designed to and able to participate in the fight on their own merits instead of launching fighters and then sitting back hoping they don't get hit.

 

yeah, the Vicstar/Impstar/Executor/etc are all like rolling a Nimitz-class carrier, an a Iowa-class battleship, and a Wasp-class amphibious assualt ship all rolled into one and scaled up.

so it makes sense that they would have fewer fighters, as they cover several roles.

but it appears the Venator is almost pure-carrier, so it can pack alot more into it's hull.

 

Perhaps someone with the ICS onhand could do a quick eyeball of the Imperial, but I'm willing to bet it has more volume dedicated to its fighter bay than a Nimitz-class does to its hanger and flight deck. Since SW fighters are not significantly larger than modern aircraft (in many cases are smaller) there is no logical reason for the Imperial and Executor class ships to be so limited in fighter numbers, aside from WEG making up what they felt was a reasonable number. And from what I remember of the ICS entry, while the Venator-class is maybe more carrier oriented than Victory or Imperial class, but its still fully capable of acting as a frontline warship and is not limited to merely a carrier role.

 

In truth the Venator?s starfighter compliment was the first truly realistic conception of just how much you can fit into a kilometer long vessel.
Imperial-class vessels carry only 6 dozen with a basic compliment, however Right to Rule was stated to launch ?hundreds? of fighters at some point during the Vong Invasion, and an Imperial-class obviously has the room given Tie Fighters seem to stay around 6-12 meters in length at most.

The Venator-class was a venerable warship in its own right, and based on comparisons in ROTS:ICS likely more powerful than a Victory-class. However, the Imperial Navy?s admiralty was always biased against fighter-oriented strategies, going so far as to redefine the ImpStar?s role in Sector Fleets in order to maximize funds for capital ships.

In general its likely the Imperial brass killed any future use of the Venator in major fleet actions, both to prevent a redefinition of Naval Strategic thinking away from battleships, and likely because the Empire?s views on starfighters were predominantly as close-range-expendable craft.

However, as was said, there is likely no canon reason?yet.

 

Honestly I don't beleive that whoever did the Venator's statistics was really looking at the Imperial or Executor classes' respective data when the came up with the numbers. They probably just forgot about whatever came beforehand and decided to throw out an overkill estimate meant to make the ship look really impressive....which is why I don't even take these canon statements seriously.

Also, if these things were dedicated carriers rather than battlecruisers, then why were they being hurled into the point-blank range fight over Coruscant? If they could field hundreds of fighters each then they'd be better off staying out of range and letting the ARC-170's pound the enemy into dust.

 

We have the Victory class as a combat warship, with a minimal fighter screen and large numbers of anti-capital ship weapons (Assault concussion missiles)

The Venator is more of a combat carrier. Well armed, large fighter bays, but lesser armor. Good at it's roles, but not so good outside a fleet.

The Imperator is a jack of all trades. Moderate fighter complement for both defense and attack, pre-fab garrison and troop compliment for ground support, heavy armor and guns for fighting other warships, and a large engine array for chasing down smaller ships. Impstars are not the specialist ships that the victory and venator are, they are lone wolves, meant to patrol the galaxy, where the previous two were fleet vessels designed to fight against enemy war fleets and support larger battleships.

 

In my WEST END GAMES, I have a simple solution.

"Imperial Star Destroyers were also known in some circles as Imperator-class star destroyers."

"Likewise, the first Victory Star Destroyer was the Venator."

;-)

 

And why should "whatever came beforehand" be taken seriously? Why do you believe, that a vessel a hundred times larger than an ISD, a vessel with proportionally a lot more space devoted to hangar-facilities carries only the double number of fighters?

Not to forget that - as already mentioned - we have hundreds of fighters taking of from an ImpStar (Right to Rule) or thousands of bombers alone aboard an Executor-Class-vessel (Knighthammer in Darksaber).

Maybe you also want to blame the people, who gave the Lucrehulc-Class 1,500 fighters?

The Venators combine the role of carrier with that of battleship. They are not dedicated carriers like the NRs Endurance-class (which has a ridicilous number of fighters for a vessel supposed to be a dedicated carrier of that size). And why they didn't let the ARC-170s pound the enemy to dust? Because fighters alone are worth nothing against capital ships, no matter what those horribly biased X-Wing-games and novels claim.

 

Actually, I assumed the CIS fleet drew in close...they were the aggressors in the battle. Perhaps the Republic picket lines broke down and the CIS were mowing through the center of the Republic Fleet.

Now granted, from our perspective, a Venator spanks Invisible Hand...but perhaps that was an exception in the strategy. Or perhaps it was simply a related strategy to the rebels at Endor...get in close to make the Republic ships think twice about shooting and risk hitting their own.

In any event, it doesn't have to indicate the Republic charged their carriers into the thick of it.

In actuality, the opening shot of Ep III shows a Venator outside the main assault theater.

 

The CIS-fleet was almost within the atmosphere of Coruscant and the fleet of the Republic tried to prevent them from escaping with the Chancellor by physically blocking their escape-routes (makes you wonder, where that interdictor-technology from the EU went).

I'm also not surprised, that a Venator owned the IH. The IH was highly modified to be a command- and communications-vessels, not to mention its carrier-role. According to the ROTS:ICS its main reactor has less than a third of a Venators reactor-output.

 

That's explained by interdictor technology being very uncommon as of the PT. So much so that some sources have stated that it was completely unknown until the Empire came along (which we now know is untrue, but that's another problem entirely...)

Also recall that the Republic had Mandators and Procurators, yet they were also missing from the Battle of Coruscant, as far as we know.

 

And yet at the time of Darth Maul: Saboteur it was so common, that scavangers had access to it, IIRC.

Concerning missing Mandators and Procurators, they could accompany the majority of the fleet to the OR-sieges (as mentioned in LoE) or we don't see them in the parts of the battle shown in ROTS (we certainly don't see Carracks and Dreadnoughts in the movie, but we know they are there thanks to the novel).

 

I'm hesitant to use a single, anecdotal example to extrapolate the scope of a technology's usage in the entire galaxy. I haven't read Saboteur, so I can only speculate how they obtained the interdiction generator. The most likely explanation is that they, well, scavanged it from somewhere. The Republic had a type of interdictor way back in the KotOR era, though that may have been different kind of interdiction technology, since the ships don't have the charactaristic "balls." Its possible that the scavengers found an old wreck and "borrowed" the components.

You are quite correct on the second part. The very same argument could be made as to why there were no interdictors there, either.

 

"The way I think it ought to be is fact, no matter what canon says."

And it's the people who disagree with you who are intellectually dishonest?

 

If we didn't have 10+ different sources giving independent verification of a Victory's appearance, maybe.