Your opinion on Curtis Saxton

Because you are a moronic fool who cant debate? I'm just saving JR55 the trouble of replying BTW, he would've said something to that effect in all likelyhood. But I can't read minds so...

 

Also worth noting that in the upcoming Empire at War, the Imperial-class Star Destroyer is the most powerful standard battleship in the game.

 

And that they still call Super Star Destroyers Super Star Destroyers, not "teh uber-leet Star Dreadnoughts that can kill 1000 ships OMG!!!1!!!1111"

 

As it is in every SW game that doesn't feature an SSD.

Coincidence?

No, not really.

 

And ICS is NOT a higher canon source than WEG and what, a dozen or so novels, so it cannot overrule it. Just as the Black Fleet Crisis could not rewrite Coruscant to have large oceans.

 

Obviously they didn't include Executors and her ancestors since they will cause serious gameplay balance issues. The Rebellion never really had heavy warships to go up toe to toe with those monsters, and even if they threw in the Bulwark, those ships, as noted in NEC, aren't close to the firepower of those behemoths.

 

That's not the point he's trying to make, I don't think - he's making the point that the SD is the standard for the heaviest class of battleship with the exception of the SSD's, which are not terribly common in the galaxy anyway, according to most canon sources.

- Keralys

 

It'd be fun to have a fleet of 40 MC80s gang-bang it though...bah, someone will mod it in.

 

Edited for "false politeness".

 

Dauntless- and Bulwark-class ships were clearly uncommon. I'm not even sure if any were present at Endor (they weren't in the movie). So that's why they're not in Empire at War, most likely (I think)...which is probably the same reason that Giel and Tagge's respective flagship types aren't in it, either, and nor are Saxton's maximalist ships.

EDIT - Tense confusion fixed.

 

You know, without JR55, this thread is, dare I say it, boring! Quick, TMcE, make up some crazy theory so we can do something in the meantime.!

 

I say, give him some time and cut him some slack. Those of us in disagreement should keep in mind that there's basically one person on that side of the discussion and about five or six of us over here, at least. He's got a much more difficult job than we do, if nothing else.

- Keralys

 

JimRaynor55: "So the Death Star's firepower is greater than (but not THAT much greater than, otherwise he would have used another fraction) than that of the fleet. How the hell am I wrong?"

You presumed it was the Imperial fleet. Why do you suppose a Rebel general would say "the star fleet" in reference to the enemy star fleet?

Since the General elaborates further that the Death Star was built with defenses aimed towards fleet engagements...

Need I go further?

"THAT duped that they thought the Imperial fleet was spread out, when in fact it was concentrated in one spot?"

They think it's spread out. They don't make any indication they know where it is. Do the movies suggest some constant stream of information being beamed to the Rebels of the Imperial fleet's exact locations?

"Do you think America can dupe the rest of the world so badly that they wouldn't notice it if every-single-one of their warships disappeared and met up in one location?"

A galaxy is a big place, fella. Far bigger than any ocean.

"If you're setting a trap, you do NOT make any obvious moves like gathering ALL your forces into one nearby location."

You make it sound as if the Imperials made no effort to hide themselves. Traps require lies, deception, concealment, and occassionally blinding stupidity on the part of the victims.

Of course, what do you suppose the Rebel attack was supposed to be? A surprise attack, maybe?

Vader: "What of the reports of the Rebel fleet amassing near Sullest?"



Thrawn McEwok: Turbolasers, probably. The rest of the general's conversation talks about the defenses of the Death Star, and how fighter attacks are better than fleet engagements with the Death Star.

Thereby, the Death Star probably has firepower of more than half the Rebel fleet.

 

Indeed, this topic is already moving along pretty fast. I find it exhausting debating three people at a time and Jim is right now getting pounced on by a half-dozen.


And besides you nerds, it's Super Bowl time. Trying to post replies during commercials is hard.

 

Kud: I think "Demolisher-class frigate" is a SWTCism... but no, Admiral Giel's flagship is just called "Admiral Giel's flagship"...

Ker: agreed.

EH_Pilot: Turbolasers, probably. The rest of the general's conversation talks about the defenses of the Death Star, and how fighter attacks are better than fleet engagements with the Death Star.

Thereby, the Death Star probably has firepower of more than half the Rebel fleet.



But the "Starfleet" is normally the Imperial fleet - no?



And, on the question of what it takes to take down a Super Star Destroyer...

From the very beginning of their operations, Wedge and Tycho had agreed that the only way they could defeat the Lusankya was to overwhelm it with proton torpedoes and concussion missiles. The problem they had was that to do the job correctly they would require twelve or more X-wing squadrons--squadrons they didn't have. Taking a lesson from the conquest of Coruscant, they decided that freighters equipped with launchers and missiles would give them the launching platforms they needed.
- The Bacta War

Canon evidence is a beautiful thing...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Nuts to the Super Bowl. Its Puppy Bowl time.

 

Excellent.

The Im-418 Interdictor is not a Star Destroyer either, despite its shape...it's because Sienar apparently wasn't part of the Star Destroyer line contract. And neither was CEC, then...?

 

I appreciate the work of Saxton, as much of it is high-quality and well-thought out. I also appreciate him advancing the more correct 17.5 km designation for

However, I dislike Saxton's ship designation scheme. He says that destroyers are always bigger than cruisers, but it simply isn't true. Interdictors aren't called "picket ships," as he claims. They're crusiers. That's the official designation, and he flies in the face of all canon sources by claiming otherwise. In the EU, cruisers range from 200 meters to around 1300 meters with almost everything in between, making the term almost worthless. At that's even if you only count Imperial ships. Nevertheless, it's still canon. He simply assumes that the Star Wars galaxy has a sensible designation system, when there's absolutely no evidence for that.

Some of his other scientific analysis also seems unneccesary. For example, discusses sound in space, and argues for the Endor Holocaust. In short, sometimes he tries to make it make more sense than it actually does, at the expense of canon.

Other than those major problems, most of his stuff is great.

I personally dislike Michael Wong, but I appreciate his convincing anti-Trekkie arguments.

 

You realize the rest is accepted as canon right?

If you can address this ONE point I'd appreciate it.

 

Saxton does list a Star Monitor.

TF Battleships are improvised from cargo ships, so they might not qualify as true warships.

And pretending that there's some "underfleet" of crappy Dreadnaughts, Carracks, or Lancers isn't? [/quote]

I don't think either idea disrespets the films any more than say, bringing back Palpatine.

Anyways, there's a big record of this underfleet. Tons of novels. There's not nearly as much direct evidence for there being very many Executor-sized ships. So it's not "pretending," it's simply the reality of the EU. Zahn wrote the TTT, and it featured Dreadnaughts. That's a fact. However, in a vast array of EU history, I can't think of any battle that had more than a few Star Dreadnaughts. BTW, I don't have any problem with the term; a little confusion is realistic.

 

All good points, NOWIS... on the last count, I'd like to further point out that basically all sources in universe say that there were very few of the Executor-class destroyers ever produced, and that in fact they were incredibly rare. It was a big deal to see one. A very big deal. Which does not make sense if they're as common as they're often purported to be.

- Keralys

 

Executor class warships are relatively new compared to ISDs. We do know that the Empire was slowly flexing its industrial muscle to produce them. There were supposedly 4 by the Battle of Hoth and more were on the way.

 

As flagships...

...replacing the old Corellian-built VIP command battleships?

 

True. At the same time, I think that lends weight to the argument that they were a good bit of work for the Empire to produce - especially when one takes into consideration that even with nearly all of its production structure intact even after the... death... of the Emperor, only a few more were constructed until the New Republic started building them.

- Keralys

 

Perhaps the Empire was trying to up the scale of their fleet by attempting to make progressively larger and larger ships "ships of the line"? That would make a lot of sense. The Venator-class Star Destroyer was 1,137 meters in length and was the Republic's ship of the line and most powerful ship in common fleet usage (with some larger ships seeing planetary defense duty and maybe limited offensive action, but clearly no real participation or presence at major battles). By the time of the Battle of Yavin and probably actually several years prior, the 1,600-meter-long Imperial-class Star Destroyer has assumed that role exactly. The strategy here seems to make the most powerful common-usage ship the backbone of the fleet, because economic restrictions are hardly present when you control that much galactic territory and have no qualms about using robotic or slave labor or extinguishing entire races to get a hold of some resources.

So, perhaps the Empire was trying to make larger ships the standard ships of the line, backbone of the Imperial Navy. The process is clearly not rapid. It took 4,000 years to progress from the Republic's ships of the line being ~250-meter-long Corellian frigates to being 1,137-meter-long Venator-class attack carrier/cruisers, and maybe fifteen or so, plus a major economic overhaul and assumption of a dictatorial, imperialist regime, to graduate up to a 1,600-meter-long Imperial-class battlecruiser. Ambitiously, the Empire seems to have made an attempt to make much larger Super Star Destroyers the ships of the line (after the Corellian Engineering Corporation deal fell through somehow, leaving them with no alternative besides the much huger Kuati designs to upgrade their fleet with?), and the timeframe that would have taken was far longer than the four or so years alotted before the Death Star II was destroyed and the Imperial government and high command was thrown into total disarray.

Perhaps the relatively new Saxton-mentioned ship designations were part of a redesignation effort made by the Empire to conform to or bring about that shift to yet bigger ships as standard ships of the line of similar prevalence to the currently-dominant Imperial-class Star Destroyers...? Perhaps still not widely accepted by the time of the Emperor's "death" and the subsequent (it can be assumed) scrapping of said upsizing project (certainly not still in effect by the time that Grand Admiral Thrawn became Imperial Supreme Commander, outside of the Deep Core [read: Byss] and in other Imperial territory, where Imperial-class ships and smaller were in most common production, as evidenced by Bilbringi). At Byss, the clone of Palpatine and his advisors (or would-be controllers, as I interpret it) Sate Pestage and Umar Leth continued the upsizing project with a crop of short-lived various gargantuan Super Star Destroyers that apparently never saw mass production, at least not for long enough to become fleet staples, possibly trying to find a perfectly suited ship to succeed the trusty Imperial-class as the primary battleship and enforcer of the Empire. (These were possibly the Sovereign-class warships, or possibly even the World Devastators.)

Also likely at Byss, a "Frankenstein Fleet" (recall the "kitbash" hybrid Federation ships from Deep Space Nine for best comparison) was cobbled together from whatever the Deep Core Loyalists could get their hands on. Further possible was that many of these pieced-together monstrosities barely functioned, and were kept in Byss orbit mostly for show, or because their hyperdrives or sublight engines were inactive and they were fit only for planetary defense platform duty, or for further modification and/or repair. That would explain many of those odd silhouttes which mysteriously are little to no factor in either Dark Empire or stories taking place chronologically after it.