Something I’ve been working on for the past few days.
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Katyusha
What sort of role do you envision the Allegiance-class as having? Flotilla leader? It seems kind of awkwardly-sized for any other role (overkill for a DD, too small to be a proper CL).
Fractal design it as a heavy fleet combatant/escort for capital ships like Bellators, Assertors, executors etc.
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Steve
Is there like a non-canon fractal sponge AU story somewhere or something? If so I’d love to read it 😀
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PhantomFury
As far as I know, Fractal don’t create stories but is instead more interested in making technical-rich vessels that you could impliment into a story. Backstage role, if you will. (I could be wrong)
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Steve
Got ya, Its just inspiring my muse is all and i’m like “I wanna write!”
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PhantomFury
I get you. I too feel ecstatic about all the detail and want to make a narrative about the,.
I have my own ideas, but I’m not going to be superimposing them on anyone else’s since I don’t get to write the canon. But, I’m also much less interested in official canon than coming up with a universe backstory structure that I enjoy and that I can design stuff around. For your RPG/adventure, do whatever you want as long as you credit me for the art if it goes public.
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PhantomFury
Yeah, I always take your universalized canon in its own special place in hope that a compromise can be met between the two canons instead of the current wishy-washy actual Canon.
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Steve
Will do 🙂 It won’t be anything offical or stuff just a drabble 🙂 I’ll link it here when done and of course all credit to you!
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Valoren
Holy sh*t, the point-defense is strong with this one !
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Valoren
I count about 70 of those just on this side of the superstructure.
Fractal when you do the aft of the Allegiance redux would you put in the garbage disposal chute like the Imperator?
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Daib
For those who aren’t really aware, the official tabletop fleet battle game from FFG, Star Wars Armada is releasing an Executor class Star Dreadnought expansion pack. Unfortunately, from the preview stats, it’s barely twice the firepower and survivability of a stock ISD, which is a travesty.
The Allegiance would make a lot more sense as the Empire’s top end brawler, with maybe the Secutor as a faster multirole counterpart.
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Shaun
Yeah, but it’s 2′ long!
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Zarrov
For me this was never design for new star destroyer type, called Allegiance. For me this always was and will be Imperial II class. To name a subvariant of Imperial I in this way, when the only difference is weapon compliment-is an error.
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Valoren
It’s clearly not the “only difference”. The allegiance is 600m longer than the standard ISDI and has a significantly different dorsal superstructure, as well as no hangar cavity and a larger weapon complement.
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CRMcNeill
The Dark Empire comic series was a continuity dumpster fire, but it did at least give us the basis for some of Fractal’s best work; the Bellator and Secutor can both be seen in the background in various panels.
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cScott
Perhaps if this was a Tector-class SD, I could see where you’re coming from. The AWCS considers this a battlecruiser, more precisely a star cruiser. So despite the Allegiance having a SD classification in its name its always been thought of has a “heavy” SD, a lot of emphasis on heavy. The Imperial class is sort of multi-purpose oriented while the Allegiance class was intended solely for ship to ship combat even with ships a bit larger than itself. You can call it the Imperial II if you want to, I just think its a really big jump in terms… Read more »
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STONEhenk
The weapon output is 5 times (counting the HTL’s) that of an ISD1 while having maybe a little bit more than 2.5 times ISD volume.
Well the Allegiance’s main weapons are 3 axial single ball 720 teratons Heavy Turbolasers, 14 quad (2 of them being ball turrets in the middle trench) 175 teratons Heavy Turbolasers and 4 trench triple ball 175 teratons Heavy Ion Cannons. While the Imperator’s weapons are 8 octuple 40 Teratons Heavy Turbolasers, 9 (3 axial, 6 ventral) triple 40 Teratons Heavy Turbolasers and 2 trench quad 70 Teratons Heavy tubolasers. Basically Allegiance is for fleet warfare while the Imperator is for Multi-role. Also the Tector have a same role as the Allegiance but Imperator sized. Speaking of size Both Imperator and… Read more »
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PhantomFury
Just curious, where did you get the information regarding weapon tonnage of the turbolasers?
Aside from the fact that Imperial II subclass already exist, Allegiance-class is larger and served a completely different combat roles than your more commonplace ISDs. It’s smaller hangar, gargantuan reactor, and numerous turbolaser emplacements is clearly made for inter-ship combat and perhaps even a command vessel for a sector group
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Zarrov
You all guys missed the point of my entry. Visually speaking, in terms of looks Allegiance class should have been Imperial II. Size, weapon compliment, role-those all are irrelevant because you can change the lore to match this choice. First, there was design, then there was the lore. This class can be smaller, bigger, better or worse equipped. I don’t care about established canon or lore here, I’m seeing the very similar design to Imperial-class, but “upgraded”, Im seeing nonsensical stats for Imperial II, and I argue for a change in lore. What is called Imperial II should be “Tector”;… Read more »
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PhantomFury
So, if I am understanding this clarification correctly, you wish to say that Allegiance-class is better sited to be Imperial II by retconning all of its orignial specifications so it can fit under the constraints of the ISD subclass? Or perhaps a that it shoud be labled as an ISD subclass when it is produced with a different enough purpose to warrant it’s own class? As for the Tector-class, it is different enough that the novelization called it a communications ship and have since established a lore for itself.
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Zarrov
Yes, the first option: retcon. Big chunk of SW lore is nonsensical anyway; I dont see the reason why we should stick to it blindly, especially after nuking canon by Disney. The new canon does not make much sense either. A “class” of ship requires significant changes in design; as it stands Imperial I and II are identical and it makes no sense. If one wants to have new class in Imperial line one should choose more significant design changes that would justify naming it “Imperial II”. What in canon is called “Imperial II” does not deserve this name. Allegiance… Read more »
I will say that I follow the idea that “Imperial” is a ship class name rather than the notion that all Star Destroyers are designated “Imperial”, which I find quite odd. It’s colloquial at best, like “Super Star Destroyer” describing every warship bigger than an ISD, whether 2km or 17+km. Also, Executor isn’t 12km. 19km is an upper bound of the estimate – I prefer something around 17.5km, but 12km is plainly too small. This isn’t a “well I think so” statement – it follows from consistent visual scaling. 12km was never an original number – it showed up briefly,… Read more »
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Valoren
I don’t see how 12 km is supposed to be more « reasonable ». First of all it doesn’t match with it’s onscreen scale (which is admittedly a little inconsistent, but some of the close-up shot, like the one of the Falcon skimming its trench in TESB would actually make it far larger than 19 km), and secondly, we’re talking about the people who built a 120km large space-station, got it destroyed and decided to build a second one even bigger. There’s literally no reason that would make a 12 km ship more believable than a 19’ one.
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STONEhenk
Well, recently I read a thread about the SD bridges in the old trilogy on boards.theforce.net.
According to the size of the bridge structures, there a Imperial/Imperatos SDs with different lengths in the old trilogy and rogue one. The sizes range from 900 meter (rogue one)to 1200 to 2300. Some people there scaled the executor on 12km with the same bridge size as normal SD’s.
The only thing that makes sense to me is that all the SD bridge modules are approximately the same, and thus all the various ISD variants are all roughly the same, and blame VFX limitations for any discrepancies scaling to sets. After all, the scale difference is far larger than, say the lambda scaling of Home One. Even for eminently scalable sets (in theory), the Millenium Falcon set is impossible to fit into the actual ship without modification.
This is before taking into account the dramatically different scales of the studio models (Devastator vs Avenger vs the small metal ones, etc.).
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Crulak
Hands down, my biggest issue with Lore in its current form is going to be accounting for the massive building of ships.
Pick whatever size you want for the ships – but consider the number of years it takes to build a real world naval ships. The Republic, Empire, Rebellion, and New Republic generate thousands of capital class ships from say.. 25BBY, to 7 ABY.
The CIS half built the Death Star, which is volume is many thousands of destroyers on its own. SW industrial capacity is enormous. KDY shipyards literally form a ring world around a planet, easily several Death Star volumes in and of themselves.
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Crulak
Sure – but consider the time component here. 35 years, 4 major factions each with a large number of ships for their respective era. This means the numbers are likely in the tens of thousands range over that full period. How many would we say could be built in a year. 100? 200? 500? And this is while the empire is being stripped of resources to build the death star(s). Let’s say they can resource this – the issue is the speed, especially for the New Republic. They go from nothing to a larger, more advanced, more powerful force than… Read more »
I’m not sure why any of this surprising. Say KDY was 50% building slips by circumference, and it’s an Earth sized planet, that’s enough to have 20,000 ISD sized ships under construction at once. Death Star 2 was on the order of 600,000-700,000 ISD volumes, and was built in 3 years. The SW galaxy draws on millions of inhabited planets, and billions of potential planets for resources alone. Some of those individual planets can have populations a thousand times that of Earth. The exponents of 10 start adding up fast. It’s not a great scale if you want nice cozy… Read more »
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Crulak
Sure, but the cost of each ISD was listed in as more than the entire yearly GDP of most systems.
I don’t disagree on space to build, although the logistics of which would be pretty insane. I have difficulty with speed at which they were built. Not to mention engineered, crewed, etc.
I do agree that crew (reliable, trained crew) was probably the bottleneck, at least once they stopped using clones.
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Shaun
For comparison, based on the numbers observed during the Kepler mission, there’s an estimated 100 billion planets in the Milky Way, 40 billion of which are Earth-like, and 11 billion of those orbit G-type stars like our sun (theoretically supporting life as we know it). That’s easily 20 billion planetary systems.
I’m pretty sure I remember something, from somewhere, that suggested a parity in size between the Milky Way the one LAAFFA… So… That’s a sh!t ton of resources.
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CRMcNeill
The actual quote is:
“There are whole star systems whose gross domestic product is less than the cost of a single Star Destroyer. There are whole nations which, throughout their entire history, do not use as much energy as a Star Destroyer expends to make a single hyperspace jump.” (Star Wars Sourcebook, 2nd. Edition, pg. 34-35, WEG)
It’s not MOST systems, just some systems. What’s the GDP of Hoth? What’s the combined energy consumption of, say, Luxembourg?
The bar is actually set pretty low.
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CRMcNeill
*relatively speaking.
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Sephiroth0812
Going by the sheer scale of the Star Wars galaxy and the available planets and resources I’ve actually found most of the given ship- and fleet-numbers to be comparatively low. 25.000 Imperial-class Star Destroyers overall of both subtypes? That sounds rather ridiculous when one keeps in mind the Empire controlled more than 5 million star systems and each sector fleet was supposed to have at least 24 Star Destroyers with still a sizeable reserve being held back in the core worlds. Granted, some of these numbers can be other classes like Victorys, Venators, Procursators or Tectors but it still comes… Read more »
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Shaun
Which is why the ‘Rule by Fear’ idea made sense when the majority of your territory was backwater yokels that pooped their pants when a ISD I parked itself in orbit. More bang for their buck… And loosing several dozen would have zero effective impact on your industrial/military complex.
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CRMcNeill
It depends on their intended mission, I think. Based on the in-universe evidence, a “destroyer” is more of a combination dreadnought / carrier / assault transport, basically combining a modern Navy’s carrier battle group, surface action group and amphibious assault groups into a single platform. The US Navy rarely has more than four carriers available for deployment at any given time (the other ~8 are usually in the maintenance/overhaul or deployment work-up pipeline), but still manages to project power on a global scale simply by moving the carrier to wherever it’s needed. So yeah, 25,000 is pretty low-ball on an… Read more »
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Steve Bannon
Sure, the Empire has incredible levels of strategic mobility, but so do its enemies. A destroyer might only be hours away, but a Rebel MC80 raider can destroy an industrial target and jump away in minutes, only to hit another target in another sector long before rapid-reaction forces even show up to the first target. The very nature of hyperspace makes it nearly impossible to suppress a well equipped adversary willing to employ asymmetrical warfare, making it sort of like Afghanistan in Space. There’s a reason why the only polity that lasted more than a few decades was the ultimate… Read more »
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CRMcNeill
But not every planet in the galaxy is going to have the sort of strategic resources that would necessitate a strike by an MC80. Nor are Imperial Star Destroyers the only asset in the Empire’s bag of tricks; “fixed” assets, like orbital battlestations, planetary shields, theater shields, anti-orbital weaponry and the like are all possibilities if a planet is of sufficient importance. An important planet could even double as one of the nodal positions from which Star Destroyer groups are based, such that there will nearly always be at least one SD in-system.
I’ll say it again – destroyers or any multirole capable ships only play those roles in context. Historically, destroyers were absolutely capital ships vs coastal craft but as fleet escorts remained absolutely expendable if it meant a capital ship stayed in action. That remains true today. Agreed about refit cycles – though with SW mobility available vs not is likely much better than 1:2. Even ships working up would be able to be available in an emergency, while transit considerations mean on station time is much lower for terrestrial navies doing global deployments. I would imagine normal Sector planets actually… Read more »
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Steve Bannon
How self-sufficient do you reckon most planets are? Given the truly absurd logistical requirements for something like a city-world, perhaps they’re not importing trillions of tons of food a week with all the hypermatter expenditure that requires. My model for city-worlds has most of the food coming from nearly self-sufficient arcologies that recycle waste into food and fresh water at very high levels of efficiency. Shielding is great when you’re expecting an attack, but keeping them raised for extended durations is a really fast way to drain your reactant tanks and impede lawful commerce. Most raiders probably wouldn’t be Mon… Read more »
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CRMcNeill
That’s what the myriad of smaller Imperial ships are for, unless you’re picturing some pretty powerful Q-Ships. Historically, Q-Ships were only useful against warships if they could pull off a successful surprise attack, but lacked the maneuverability and durability to go toe-to-toe with a warship in a stand-up fight. So, depending on the asset, you have one or more corvettes / frigates in system, which are going to be a tough proposition for a converted freighter. Maybe add in an armed space station as an orbital transfer point, along with a few fighter squadrons for system patrol, plus any ground… Read more »
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PhantomFury
In terms of self-suffiency, from the Legends source, around 80% of the Core World’s power can be traced back to one planet: Sarapin. In addition to this, there are other notions of dedicated agricultural worlds made to supply the Core World with food. So it’s pretty decent to say they aren’t very efficient in their recycling programs.
80% of Core’s Power, lolololololololol. My god there is so much trash in the EU. And the Grand Army was only a million troops. Pull the other leg!
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CRMcNeill
^this. And it can’t even be blamed on the pre-Disney EU; the source is “The Force Awakens Beginner Game.” When I heard Disney was doing away with the old EU, I really did hope for higher standards of continuity and verisimilitude. Nope, just making room for more ridiculous silliness.
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TheIcthala
I lost a lot of hope in the Disneyboot’s internal consistency when Twilight Company claimed that a Gozanti-Class Cruiser’s turbolasers and proton torpedoes were a terrible threat to a CR90 and a Braha’tok. The canon Gozanti-Class’s armament (according to all other sources, before and since) is 1 twin medium laser turret and 1 single heavy laser turret.
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Sephiroth0812
You can actually make a rough general calculation with these numbers. If one insinuates that a sector has averagely 1.000 star systems and the Empire controlled around 5 million that would be exactly 5.000 sectors. 24 Star Destroyers per Sector Fleet x 5.000 sectors adds up to to a requirement of 120.000 Star Destroyers in total not counting actual Imperial attack- or rapid response fleets or the strategic reserve held in the core worlds. Let’s further estimate the Empire has probably a surplus of around 10.000 to 15.000 Venators left over from the Clone Wars Republic and, I dunno, around… Read more »
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TheIcthala
A good estimate with mostly solid numbers. As I recall (I’m at work, so I can’t check them), the RoTS, and Complete, ICS both state that the Republic Navy had 50,000 Venators at peak numbers, and that production only slowed down after the Declaration of a New Order. Given that, I would tend to estimate that Venator numbers, at least early on, were more like 35,000-40,000. In support of your calculation: Legends sources stated that the Imperial Navy Order of Battle was the ideal fleet composition that the Empire was working toward, but never got close to reaching. Wookieepedia (unreliable,… Read more »
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Sephiroth0812
Wow, those numbers for Venators during Republic times are actually pretty high, especially considering that each single Venator can carry 420 fighters. Yet on the other hand, in Legends canon it is said that more than 1.000 Venators participated at the Battle of Coruscant alone and by the third year of the Clone Wars with a full war economy running the Republic was steadily reducing the numerical advantage of the CIS fleet so such numbers would make sense. Of course this would mean even higher numbers for escort and support ships like Acclamators and Arquitens cruisers. Ah, of course, the… Read more »
Arriving at a number for the overall fleet strength of the Imperial Navy is actually surprisingly easy, believe it or not… and it puts it at a hell of a lot more than the ridiculous 25,000 number that is given by writers more accustomed to thinking about narratives than the maths of galactic-scale Type 2.5/Type 3 civilisations. This quote is old but gold, and also higher canon than any of the minimalist stuff in Legends: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXSVfwGfvDY We know the DS1 put out about 1e38 J destroying Alderaan. Assuming this was a full-power blast, its reactors were generating _at least_ 1.6e33w.… Read more »
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CRMcNeill
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but that’s a lot of conjecture based off a single line in the film…
Well it is a pretty unambiguous way of saying that ‘the fleet is very, very big’ and gives us enough information to arrive at some figures. It’s a very important line, because it’s the only real information we get about the strength of the Imperial Navy as a whole. It also stands to reason, in a galactic civilisation, that they would have a LOT of ships. 25,000 doesn’t even scratch the surface, it is but a spec… As to escorts and smaller ships making up the rest of the fleet, sure… but one ISD is as powerful as, say, a… Read more »
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Bob
And by no means are there many thousands of Dreadnoughts. Just because the galaxy could theoretically support the number, what we know of Imperial history ends that thought. Resources were spent on the Death Star projects, and those in favor of Dreadnoughts were not given the resources or priority. The funding wasn’t funneled into those projects until after Yavin, the Executor languished for years in dry dock until it was completed. We have about 12 known Executor class, some not completed until 10 ABY. Legatos aren’t canon, but given the Republics stretched finances, I can’t imagine more than one being… Read more »
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Sephiroth0812
Having several thousand Star Dreadnoughts is certainly economically possible, but I too doubt that so many were built. Of the Mandator I-class I know that only 7 or 8 were ever built and 3 of those were always held in reserve to defend the Kuat Sector. Mandator II I dunno, but I would theorize them to have a production run in the low two digit area and the same goes for the Legator. The 12 Executor number is from the new Disney canon and even there Rebel Alliance intelligence is not sure if more exist. In Legends, we have at… Read more »
The Eclipse class (which there are 2 Eclipse 1 and Eclipse 2) and the Sovereign class (which there are 4 the names being Sovereign, Autarch, Despot and Heresiarch).
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Bob
While I generally agree with your thoughts, “rumored to exist” and actually existing aren’t the same necessarily. Maybe we bring the number down by 30-40 to a total of 130-140 probably being built for certain, with the high 170 number as an outside possibility. Really, we have a 2-3 year span where the Imperial Dreadnought designs would be cranked out before the Emperors death. That’s a lot of multi-kilometer ships churned out and crewed in a short span. Oh, we have those missle busses of Republic design Fractal has been working on, but they’d fall into the battlecruiser size range.
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Bob
They don’t have access to all those beings for crew. The New Order was humanocentric, human supremacist. Crews are human only, the only alien we see is the special case of Thrawn.
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Bob
Another point, 25,000 ISD ‘s is referring to a ship class, not every star destroyer in the fleet, only the pattern. In cannon, there would also be surviving Venators, Victorys, Tectors, Secutors filling out the role. Add in designs like Procursators, which you could probably produce at twice the rate of Imperial class, and that’s a lot of star destroyers. The crewing of the ships is a limiting factor, not every person is suitable for the job, the Empire limits the job to a single race, and then they have to pass through the Academy system. Remember there is an… Read more »
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Bob
But you’re only looking at star destroyers. They need consorts to function and cover their flanks, then you need convoy escorts, patrol vessels, support vessels, etc. For every star destroyer there’s probably a dozen frigates, as many corvettes or more, then various patrol vessels on the order of a sloop, then you have your logistical vessels. There’s probably 50 capital ships of lesser scale for every star destroyer, not counting support ships.
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CRMcNeill
Per the WEG sources that generated the 25,000 number, there were roughly 100 other ships of various types for every star destroyer, not including orbital bombardment platforms, troop transports and their escorts.
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Crulak
This is probably fairly accurate number. Star Destroyers, (according to Legends) like most imperial designs, were extremely crew inefficient – with crew sizes around 20,000 for an ISD1 compared to 7200 for a Venator.
In conventional military forces there are typically between 8 and 12 support elements for every combat element. The non-combat logistical forces marshaled to support even a single ship of that size would be significant and would require a large number of support ships for remote operations.
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Chris Bradshaw
Is 20,000 for an Imperator actually inefficient? ISDs are about three times the volume as a Venator, and have to make do with human recruits, rather than absurdly elite Fett clones trained from birth. Lean manning sounds tempting to a peacetime navy like the modern USN, but it just leaves you understaffed when the shit hits the fan and you need to throw bodies at damage control. Besides, the Empire has city-worlds with hundreds of trillions of inhabitants to recruit from. Surely a decent number of them want to see the galaxy from a Star Destroyer, even if they start… Read more »
20,000 is quite reasonable for a ship…3 times the volume and power of a ship manned by 7200…
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Crulak
A significant portion of that space is in the engineering core and the storage space. To reach numbers like that you’d need nearly 15-1 support crew to ship crew (Insane) for the weapon loaded out and combat element of an ISD. (Modern naval equivalent is around 3 to 1 on a ship). The Venators had 7200 crew with an ARMY of 2000+ onboard. If you buy what Wiki sells – the ISD is listed as having 9000+ Officers, 27000 crew, and 9000+ Ground troops. 1 in 3 officers? No? For further perspective. USS Enterprise – 3200 ship crew, 2000 aircrew.… Read more »
I don’t think an Imperial Venator would only man with 7200, any more than I trust a Wookiepedia breakdown of ISD crew, for that matter. Going from clone crews to live born volunteer crews are going to impose a cost in efficiency. I’d figure Venators were designed as pretty lean manned all around, and quite possibly designed for grinding attritional battles rather than independent operations with all the self-maintenance and support that entails. If we assume 37000 crew for an ISD, I’d estimate a Venator in Imperial service with complement ~12000. I don’t think there’s going to be an exactly… Read more »
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CRMcNeill
2000+ isn’t an Army; it’s more of a reinforced Battalion or under strength Regiment. An actual Field Army would be 100,000 or more, and require at least 3-4 Consolidators to transport it.
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Sephiroth0812
A Venator also carried a single prefabricated Garrison base, 40 LAATs, 6 or 8 Juggernauts and at least 24 walkers to establish a military outpost so I’d guess that the 2000+ infantry carried on board was intended to be used to man that base as well as perform duties like defending against boarding parties on the Venator itself. Then again, Venators very rarely operated alone. The most common variant was 3 Venators working together at all times although groups of 4 or 5 vessels existed as well. So it is certainly possible that a single Division was spread out across… Read more »
Part of the crew delta for an ISD vs Venator might be support elements for the increased ground complement and its supporting small craft.
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CRMcNeill
@Fractalsponge – Possibly, but if so, it’s oddly phrased. I expect you’re right about the crew breakdown, but considering the modular nature of carriers, it’d be nice if that number was declared separately from the ship’s actual operating crew. That way, if needed, the Venator could pull its fighter wing to carry more troops (there are real-world contingency plans for doing this with aircraft carriers and the 101st Air Assault). @Sephiroth0812 – A better parallel would be the US Marine Corps’ MEU(SOC), a marine battalion with large numbers of vehicles attached to give the unit greater flexibility. Depending on the… Read more »
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Crulak
Yeah. I tried to edit it to italics to better show my sarcasm at 2000 being listed as an army, but alas the post was locked. Few of the data points make a whole lot of sense given that the raw support element + flight crew for the air wing element of a Venator would likely exceed that total crew volume. I suspect Ansel is correct in that the idea was to pare down the crew / run minimal due to the highly capable Clones. Given the role of the Venators, a MEU is probably a good analogy, thought I… Read more »
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STONEhenk
You take the droid??? Droids are the enemy!!! Even more if they can handle munition.
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Sephiroth0812
A Venator needing quite some extra personnel to keep its huge fighter complement operational is also reasonable as you need more than just the pilots to keep the fighters in top fighting condition and a Venator carries a whopping 420 of those. The ARC-170 also requires a crew of 3 if I recall correctly and a Venator has 36 of them meaning 108 people alone to man the ARC-170s.
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Zarrov
“Imperial”->class name. I dislike “new” name of Imperator. From my native tongue point of view Imperator souns too close to emperor (Palpatine). It sounds weird, much wierder than “Imperial”, especially when you are not translating it, but leaving in English. Im well aware of problems with Executor size. The 12 km version was never well supported by visual canon, and 8km was exisitng only in writing. However 8 km never made sense in context of thevmovies; similarly 17-19 km estimate. Visuals are poor justification; on the basis of them we have also estimates of Death Star I being 900 km.… Read more »
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Sephiroth0812
“Imperator” is a latin term and simply means commander/commandant of a military force which fits with the general naming theme of capital ships used by the Galactic Republic such as Acclamator, Venator, Tector and so on which are ALL LATIN. Imperator-class is the official Republic designation for this ship class which was changed to “Imperial”-class only after Order 66 and the birth of the Empire. So when someone speaks about the “Imperator-class” they’re referring to the Star Destroyer-class while under Republic control and there is nothing wrong about that as it is official part of the Legends canon.
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Zarrov
Yeah well, still dont care about that; decades ago that was correct way of naming the class, I got accustomed to this because of various reasons (again-in my native tongue thats the same word ofr “emperror”) and now I have hard time changing. BTW isnt it funny that the most iconic starship of Star Wars has very poor name and numerous naming problems?
“The number 12 km is simply logical choice in between extremes. 8 km is pretty small and goes against visuals, feel of the movies and overwhelming firepower Executor was supposed to have-as established in writing and on screen. 19 km is way too big. Ship of this size would single handledy win Battle of Endor. 12km is the happy middle, based on really poor visual justifiction (bridge size) that makes little to no sense, however it allows to reach reasonable size that is not too big and not small either. It is still humongous, but not to the extent that… Read more »
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Zarrov
You are ignoring everything else I said. Number 12 km is not arbitrary. 1. It came up in old lore discussions, it is established 2. Visual language of the cinema 3. It cannot be too small but cannot be too big 4. The minimal size in old lore was 8km, the upper size is 19 km. Something that is between those two extremes is better than any of them 5. Since number 12 already popped up and it is in the middle between those two-it has been chosen But just for people who do not want to think in this… Read more »
OK, fine, point by point then. 1) No, it’s not. https://www.theforce.net/swtc/ssd5mile.html 12km appeared transitioning from 8km 2) No, the 17+km estimate was established from the films: 3) No, that’s just you saying something vague, not anchored on any kind of evidence 4) What do you really want to argue here? The old lore was wrong and has been retconned. The new lore is 19km. What makes “old” lore better than “new” lore? Visual evidence from movies suggests that 19km is much more plausible than 8km. So I know which one I’d go with. 5) You chose it. Based on your… Read more »
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Zarrov
1. Yes it did come up: bridge size comparisons. 2.O rlly. What models of ISD were used? Which model of executor and how shot? 3. 3rd point was about reaching logical conclusions; chosen size is not arbitrary because it has to be set within logical constraints 4. Im arguing for 12. 8 is too small, 19 is too big, creates inconsistencies. 12km is diminishing them. 5. “gut feeling” is misrepresenting everything I said so that you can build a strawman. Executor of 8 km is LESS overpowering. but its blatantly incorrect size. Executor of 19km is absurdly overpowering. Less overpower… Read more »
Your opinion: 12 miles feels right, so everyone else is wrong.
#LooksLegit
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Zarrov
You didn’t read what I wrote, the use of miles instead of kilometers clearly indicates that. the logic used is this: 1. 8km is way too small due to way how warfare in SW is presented, as well as how Executor is presented trough visuals; 2. 19 km is too big, though thats literally what we have on screen because ship of this size would single handedly win any battle 3. There is need to reconcile two opposites so that we can explain how Endor was won; 4. Less inconsistency is better, more incosistnecy is worse; therefore the bigger Executor… Read more »
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STONEhenk
“Pick whatever you prefer, but remember that the smaller Executor the smaller the problem it creates for the ENTIRETY of canon.”
So with the giantic Death Stars in ANH and ROTJ, the Rebel Alliance cannot survive if it had to be realistic. Even if the Empire has 6 executors of 50 km in lenght, the Alliance succeed because the story requires it.
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CRMcNeill
Tl;dr. Let it go, dude. No one cares.
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Bob
We need a eye-roll emoticon. Just for that guy.
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Shaun
e_e
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Bob
The Executor was ordered NOT to engage the Rebels, by Emperor Palpatine. No such mental gymnastics are required for your alleged justification. The Rebellion could not survive any conventional engagement with the Imperial Navy, Army, or Stormtrooper Corps. That is a given. You are trying to add in logic to a story put together by a guy who based the Rebellion on the Viet Cong, who was apparently ignorant of the fact said body was wiped out by the 1968 TET offensive they initiated, and who was unaware of the fact the North Vietnamese failed at every attempt to defeat… Read more »
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CRMcNeill
Per WEG, this was actually the Alliance’s strategic goal; create enough havoc in the Outer Rim Territories that Palpatine would be forced to leave Coruscant and come deal with the Rebellion in person. Of course, Palpatine was savvy enough to know this, and use it for his own ends.
So in other words you can call other people obtuse, but people cannot call you obtuse. Mkay.
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PhoenixKnight
It sounds like you’re trying force your own opinion bad smooth. That or are you trolling?
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Zarrov
No, I’m rejecting counters to what I said, because people countering misunderstood what I said, they are patronizing; and they misrepresent logic used or blatantly ignore what I said. I don’t care about acceptance of my point of view at this point and I knew from the beginning that what randoms on Internet will get from it is ” well I think so therefore its right” strawman, thus I was not hoping to convince anybody; just drop the idea, defend it and that’s it.
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PhoenixKnight
If people are still not understanding what is it your saying… after all this time…well… that usually means your points been poorly executed and your counter points are contradictory in itself
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Zarrov
And with that I can agree; I didn’t think out well what I’m trying to convey. I was trying to present a certain method of thinking about canon, an alternative that allows fans to be more free in their speculations but at the same time more faithful to the source material. And I failed. I will try again later.
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Sephiroth0812
“BTW isnt it funny that the most iconic starship of Star Wars has very poor name and numerous naming problems?” – Lol, you can blame tyrannical regimes for that with their stupid habit to rename everything to fit their ideology more once they are firmly in power. After Order 66 Palpy and co. took great efforts to erase even traces of the Republic and everyone and their Ewok were renamed to include the word “Imperial” in it. Imperial-class or Imperial I-class still means the exact same ship so when someone uses “Imperator” it’s just acknowledging its Republic origins. Some sites… Read more »
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Crulak
Except for the logo. Clear relational basis between the logo of the Galactic Republic and that of the Galactic Empire.
People must have their symbols.
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TheIcthala
Even with the logo the change made a clear statement. IIRC the 8 spokes and one disc of the Republic insignia represented the beneficent presence of the Force in the Galaxy. The Emperor removed 2 of the spokes to distance the symbol from the light side of the Force while maintaining visual continuity, so that the people would still think ‘that’s the symbol of the galactic government’ but wouldn’t think ‘the Force is looking out for me’.
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cScott
Holy hell the point defense! It’s like someone in the KDY design department finally realized that the whole Tarkin Doctrine fear thing wasn’t stopping Rebel snubfighters
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Chris Bradshaw
Eh, for a Fractal ship, the actual density of CIWS emplacements isn’t any higher here than pretty much every other capital ship. It’s nice that they’re all rendered though. So much decent Star Destroyer art out there doesn’t even bother, including most of the official comics/game material.
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Valiran
For all of Tarkin’s success at climbing the Empire’s ladders of power, the man was a fool. Furthermore, he failed to understand that ruling with fear only works for an authoritarian ruler if said ruler takes measures to ensure that they don’t become HATED, because hate will make people willing to suffer just to oppose you. It’s rather ironic how a government run by a Sith never seemed to understand this.
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PhantomFury
Machiavelli, is tha you? But yes, as someone that read through and understand the efficiencies of Tarkin Doctrine, that subtle caveat is the primary problem with the Empire’s rule.
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Valiran
Yep, I got that from Machiavelli. Satire or not, The Prince lays out a very pragmatic approach to authoritarian rule, and I look forward to the day when a character in some fanfic quotes it at Tarkin, Vader or Palpatine.
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Valoren
To be fair to Tarkin, the hate of the population toward the empire wouldn’t have really mattered if the death star had been the inopposable weapon it was imagined to be. you wouldn’t just suffer by opposing them. You would be obliterated along with your entire planet.
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Chris Bradshaw
Well that’s kind of the point of a Death Star, to be the ultimate siege engine. A well prepared and heavily shielded world might be able to defy conventional fleet units for weeks, if not months, giving them time for other worlds to break free and come to their aid. A Death Star changes that strategic calculus by ending a siege before it has even begun. Either that, or Tarkin maneuvered his way into control of the project because he was plotting to depose Palpatine and seize the Imperial throne for himself, and the Death Star was the perfect tool… Read more »
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PhantomFury
Ah my favorite “mini” Super Star Destroyer…! Will this Redux have less of those Hoth Ion Cannon-style turrets of the original model and more of the ISD’s trench-quad HTL?
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STONEhenk
And some people still say Imperial Capships lack fighter defences.
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Arvenski
Allegiance getting a visual upgrade? This’ll be fun. Say, I had a thought: What would you think of doing some First Order capital ships? Their roster needs fleshing out (especially smaller stuff, like corvettes and frigates), and it would be interesting to see your take on designs for them. They could have a new, ‘futuristic’ aesthetic, based on the Imperial design aesthetic that you’re used to working with, but a bit different.
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TheIcthala
I would like to refer you to the Information on Commissions link at the top right of the page.
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Cdr. Rajh
So… What are the differences between this new redo of the allegiance and the old one…? From what I can see its mostly small details and a slight redoing of the bridge tower, but the basic shape hasn’t changed much..
The old model was a decade old so most of the details were blocky especially the trenches.
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Valiran
Okay, I gotta ask, do you ever sleep? Because you keep pumping out these awesome models and WIPs one after another after another, and as much as I LOVE your work I don’t want you to keel over from exhaustion!
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Taghmata Omnissiah
Don’t listen to him! You will rest after death, more ships!
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J.J.
Don’t get impatient. We will keep getting new ships if he lives a long happy life. If he dies early all of us lose.
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Taghmata Omnissiah
We can rebuild him, we have the technology.
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Admiral Drakkmar
This is exactly the attitude I would expect coming from the Adeptus Mechanicus. Lol. Just kidding.
What sort of role do you envision the Allegiance-class as having? Flotilla leader? It seems kind of awkwardly-sized for any other role (overkill for a DD, too small to be a proper CL).
Fractal design it as a heavy fleet combatant/escort for capital ships like Bellators, Assertors, executors etc.
Is there like a non-canon fractal sponge AU story somewhere or something? If so I’d love to read it 😀
As far as I know, Fractal don’t create stories but is instead more interested in making technical-rich vessels that you could impliment into a story. Backstage role, if you will. (I could be wrong)
Got ya, Its just inspiring my muse is all and i’m like “I wanna write!”
I get you. I too feel ecstatic about all the detail and want to make a narrative about the,.
I have my own ideas, but I’m not going to be superimposing them on anyone else’s since I don’t get to write the canon. But, I’m also much less interested in official canon than coming up with a universe backstory structure that I enjoy and that I can design stuff around. For your RPG/adventure, do whatever you want as long as you credit me for the art if it goes public.
Yeah, I always take your universalized canon in its own special place in hope that a compromise can be met between the two canons instead of the current wishy-washy actual Canon.
Will do 🙂 It won’t be anything offical or stuff just a drabble 🙂 I’ll link it here when done and of course all credit to you!
Holy sh*t, the point-defense is strong with this one !
I count about 70 of those just on this side of the superstructure.
Fractal when you do the aft of the Allegiance redux would you put in the garbage disposal chute like the Imperator?
For those who aren’t really aware, the official tabletop fleet battle game from FFG, Star Wars Armada is releasing an Executor class Star Dreadnought expansion pack. Unfortunately, from the preview stats, it’s barely twice the firepower and survivability of a stock ISD, which is a travesty.
The Allegiance would make a lot more sense as the Empire’s top end brawler, with maybe the Secutor as a faster multirole counterpart.
Yeah, but it’s 2′ long!
For me this was never design for new star destroyer type, called Allegiance. For me this always was and will be Imperial II class. To name a subvariant of Imperial I in this way, when the only difference is weapon compliment-is an error.
It’s clearly not the “only difference”. The allegiance is 600m longer than the standard ISDI and has a significantly different dorsal superstructure, as well as no hangar cavity and a larger weapon complement.
The Dark Empire comic series was a continuity dumpster fire, but it did at least give us the basis for some of Fractal’s best work; the Bellator and Secutor can both be seen in the background in various panels.
Perhaps if this was a Tector-class SD, I could see where you’re coming from. The AWCS considers this a battlecruiser, more precisely a star cruiser. So despite the Allegiance having a SD classification in its name its always been thought of has a “heavy” SD, a lot of emphasis on heavy. The Imperial class is sort of multi-purpose oriented while the Allegiance class was intended solely for ship to ship combat even with ships a bit larger than itself. You can call it the Imperial II if you want to, I just think its a really big jump in terms… Read more »
The weapon output is 5 times (counting the HTL’s) that of an ISD1 while having maybe a little bit more than 2.5 times ISD volume.
Well the Allegiance’s main weapons are 3 axial single ball 720 teratons Heavy Turbolasers, 14 quad (2 of them being ball turrets in the middle trench) 175 teratons Heavy Turbolasers and 4 trench triple ball 175 teratons Heavy Ion Cannons. While the Imperator’s weapons are 8 octuple 40 Teratons Heavy Turbolasers, 9 (3 axial, 6 ventral) triple 40 Teratons Heavy Turbolasers and 2 trench quad 70 Teratons Heavy tubolasers. Basically Allegiance is for fleet warfare while the Imperator is for Multi-role. Also the Tector have a same role as the Allegiance but Imperator sized. Speaking of size Both Imperator and… Read more »
Just curious, where did you get the information regarding weapon tonnage of the turbolasers?
Right here: http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?p=3376574#p3376574
Sweet, the picture don’t exist anymore though, what was it?
Ok here are the turrets: http://fractalsponge.net/?p=1260
Aside from the fact that Imperial II subclass already exist, Allegiance-class is larger and served a completely different combat roles than your more commonplace ISDs. It’s smaller hangar, gargantuan reactor, and numerous turbolaser emplacements is clearly made for inter-ship combat and perhaps even a command vessel for a sector group
You all guys missed the point of my entry. Visually speaking, in terms of looks Allegiance class should have been Imperial II. Size, weapon compliment, role-those all are irrelevant because you can change the lore to match this choice. First, there was design, then there was the lore. This class can be smaller, bigger, better or worse equipped. I don’t care about established canon or lore here, I’m seeing the very similar design to Imperial-class, but “upgraded”, Im seeing nonsensical stats for Imperial II, and I argue for a change in lore. What is called Imperial II should be “Tector”;… Read more »
So, if I am understanding this clarification correctly, you wish to say that Allegiance-class is better sited to be Imperial II by retconning all of its orignial specifications so it can fit under the constraints of the ISD subclass? Or perhaps a that it shoud be labled as an ISD subclass when it is produced with a different enough purpose to warrant it’s own class? As for the Tector-class, it is different enough that the novelization called it a communications ship and have since established a lore for itself.
Yes, the first option: retcon. Big chunk of SW lore is nonsensical anyway; I dont see the reason why we should stick to it blindly, especially after nuking canon by Disney. The new canon does not make much sense either. A “class” of ship requires significant changes in design; as it stands Imperial I and II are identical and it makes no sense. If one wants to have new class in Imperial line one should choose more significant design changes that would justify naming it “Imperial II”. What in canon is called “Imperial II” does not deserve this name. Allegiance… Read more »
I will say that I follow the idea that “Imperial” is a ship class name rather than the notion that all Star Destroyers are designated “Imperial”, which I find quite odd. It’s colloquial at best, like “Super Star Destroyer” describing every warship bigger than an ISD, whether 2km or 17+km. Also, Executor isn’t 12km. 19km is an upper bound of the estimate – I prefer something around 17.5km, but 12km is plainly too small. This isn’t a “well I think so” statement – it follows from consistent visual scaling. 12km was never an original number – it showed up briefly,… Read more »
I don’t see how 12 km is supposed to be more « reasonable ». First of all it doesn’t match with it’s onscreen scale (which is admittedly a little inconsistent, but some of the close-up shot, like the one of the Falcon skimming its trench in TESB would actually make it far larger than 19 km), and secondly, we’re talking about the people who built a 120km large space-station, got it destroyed and decided to build a second one even bigger. There’s literally no reason that would make a 12 km ship more believable than a 19’ one.
Well, recently I read a thread about the SD bridges in the old trilogy on boards.theforce.net.
According to the size of the bridge structures, there a Imperial/Imperatos SDs with different lengths in the old trilogy and rogue one. The sizes range from 900 meter (rogue one)to 1200 to 2300. Some people there scaled the executor on 12km with the same bridge size as normal SD’s.
Here it is:
https://boards.theforce.net/threads/the-star-destroyer-bridges-of-the-original-trilogy.50044307/
Personnally I think all ISDs are all the same size.
The only thing that makes sense to me is that all the SD bridge modules are approximately the same, and thus all the various ISD variants are all roughly the same, and blame VFX limitations for any discrepancies scaling to sets. After all, the scale difference is far larger than, say the lambda scaling of Home One. Even for eminently scalable sets (in theory), the Millenium Falcon set is impossible to fit into the actual ship without modification.
This is before taking into account the dramatically different scales of the studio models (Devastator vs Avenger vs the small metal ones, etc.).
Hands down, my biggest issue with Lore in its current form is going to be accounting for the massive building of ships.
Pick whatever size you want for the ships – but consider the number of years it takes to build a real world naval ships. The Republic, Empire, Rebellion, and New Republic generate thousands of capital class ships from say.. 25BBY, to 7 ABY.
Thousands.
The CIS half built the Death Star, which is volume is many thousands of destroyers on its own. SW industrial capacity is enormous. KDY shipyards literally form a ring world around a planet, easily several Death Star volumes in and of themselves.
Sure – but consider the time component here. 35 years, 4 major factions each with a large number of ships for their respective era. This means the numbers are likely in the tens of thousands range over that full period. How many would we say could be built in a year. 100? 200? 500? And this is while the empire is being stripped of resources to build the death star(s). Let’s say they can resource this – the issue is the speed, especially for the New Republic. They go from nothing to a larger, more advanced, more powerful force than… Read more »
I’m not sure why any of this surprising. Say KDY was 50% building slips by circumference, and it’s an Earth sized planet, that’s enough to have 20,000 ISD sized ships under construction at once. Death Star 2 was on the order of 600,000-700,000 ISD volumes, and was built in 3 years. The SW galaxy draws on millions of inhabited planets, and billions of potential planets for resources alone. Some of those individual planets can have populations a thousand times that of Earth. The exponents of 10 start adding up fast. It’s not a great scale if you want nice cozy… Read more »
Sure, but the cost of each ISD was listed in as more than the entire yearly GDP of most systems.
I don’t disagree on space to build, although the logistics of which would be pretty insane. I have difficulty with speed at which they were built. Not to mention engineered, crewed, etc.
How many systems are there? 50 million.
I do agree that crew (reliable, trained crew) was probably the bottleneck, at least once they stopped using clones.
For comparison, based on the numbers observed during the Kepler mission, there’s an estimated 100 billion planets in the Milky Way, 40 billion of which are Earth-like, and 11 billion of those orbit G-type stars like our sun (theoretically supporting life as we know it). That’s easily 20 billion planetary systems.
I’m pretty sure I remember something, from somewhere, that suggested a parity in size between the Milky Way the one LAAFFA… So… That’s a sh!t ton of resources.
The actual quote is:
“There are whole star systems whose gross domestic product is less than the cost of a single Star Destroyer. There are whole nations which, throughout their entire history, do not use as much energy as a Star Destroyer expends to make a single hyperspace jump.” (Star Wars Sourcebook, 2nd. Edition, pg. 34-35, WEG)
It’s not MOST systems, just some systems. What’s the GDP of Hoth? What’s the combined energy consumption of, say, Luxembourg?
The bar is actually set pretty low.
*relatively speaking.
Going by the sheer scale of the Star Wars galaxy and the available planets and resources I’ve actually found most of the given ship- and fleet-numbers to be comparatively low. 25.000 Imperial-class Star Destroyers overall of both subtypes? That sounds rather ridiculous when one keeps in mind the Empire controlled more than 5 million star systems and each sector fleet was supposed to have at least 24 Star Destroyers with still a sizeable reserve being held back in the core worlds. Granted, some of these numbers can be other classes like Victorys, Venators, Procursators or Tectors but it still comes… Read more »
Which is why the ‘Rule by Fear’ idea made sense when the majority of your territory was backwater yokels that pooped their pants when a ISD I parked itself in orbit. More bang for their buck… And loosing several dozen would have zero effective impact on your industrial/military complex.
It depends on their intended mission, I think. Based on the in-universe evidence, a “destroyer” is more of a combination dreadnought / carrier / assault transport, basically combining a modern Navy’s carrier battle group, surface action group and amphibious assault groups into a single platform. The US Navy rarely has more than four carriers available for deployment at any given time (the other ~8 are usually in the maintenance/overhaul or deployment work-up pipeline), but still manages to project power on a global scale simply by moving the carrier to wherever it’s needed. So yeah, 25,000 is pretty low-ball on an… Read more »
Sure, the Empire has incredible levels of strategic mobility, but so do its enemies. A destroyer might only be hours away, but a Rebel MC80 raider can destroy an industrial target and jump away in minutes, only to hit another target in another sector long before rapid-reaction forces even show up to the first target. The very nature of hyperspace makes it nearly impossible to suppress a well equipped adversary willing to employ asymmetrical warfare, making it sort of like Afghanistan in Space. There’s a reason why the only polity that lasted more than a few decades was the ultimate… Read more »
But not every planet in the galaxy is going to have the sort of strategic resources that would necessitate a strike by an MC80. Nor are Imperial Star Destroyers the only asset in the Empire’s bag of tricks; “fixed” assets, like orbital battlestations, planetary shields, theater shields, anti-orbital weaponry and the like are all possibilities if a planet is of sufficient importance. An important planet could even double as one of the nodal positions from which Star Destroyer groups are based, such that there will nearly always be at least one SD in-system.
I’ll say it again – destroyers or any multirole capable ships only play those roles in context. Historically, destroyers were absolutely capital ships vs coastal craft but as fleet escorts remained absolutely expendable if it meant a capital ship stayed in action. That remains true today. Agreed about refit cycles – though with SW mobility available vs not is likely much better than 1:2. Even ships working up would be able to be available in an emergency, while transit considerations mean on station time is much lower for terrestrial navies doing global deployments. I would imagine normal Sector planets actually… Read more »
How self-sufficient do you reckon most planets are? Given the truly absurd logistical requirements for something like a city-world, perhaps they’re not importing trillions of tons of food a week with all the hypermatter expenditure that requires. My model for city-worlds has most of the food coming from nearly self-sufficient arcologies that recycle waste into food and fresh water at very high levels of efficiency. Shielding is great when you’re expecting an attack, but keeping them raised for extended durations is a really fast way to drain your reactant tanks and impede lawful commerce. Most raiders probably wouldn’t be Mon… Read more »
That’s what the myriad of smaller Imperial ships are for, unless you’re picturing some pretty powerful Q-Ships. Historically, Q-Ships were only useful against warships if they could pull off a successful surprise attack, but lacked the maneuverability and durability to go toe-to-toe with a warship in a stand-up fight. So, depending on the asset, you have one or more corvettes / frigates in system, which are going to be a tough proposition for a converted freighter. Maybe add in an armed space station as an orbital transfer point, along with a few fighter squadrons for system patrol, plus any ground… Read more »
In terms of self-suffiency, from the Legends source, around 80% of the Core World’s power can be traced back to one planet: Sarapin. In addition to this, there are other notions of dedicated agricultural worlds made to supply the Core World with food. So it’s pretty decent to say they aren’t very efficient in their recycling programs.
80% of Core’s Power, lolololololololol. My god there is so much trash in the EU. And the Grand Army was only a million troops. Pull the other leg!
^this. And it can’t even be blamed on the pre-Disney EU; the source is “The Force Awakens Beginner Game.” When I heard Disney was doing away with the old EU, I really did hope for higher standards of continuity and verisimilitude. Nope, just making room for more ridiculous silliness.
I lost a lot of hope in the Disneyboot’s internal consistency when Twilight Company claimed that a Gozanti-Class Cruiser’s turbolasers and proton torpedoes were a terrible threat to a CR90 and a Braha’tok. The canon Gozanti-Class’s armament (according to all other sources, before and since) is 1 twin medium laser turret and 1 single heavy laser turret.
You can actually make a rough general calculation with these numbers. If one insinuates that a sector has averagely 1.000 star systems and the Empire controlled around 5 million that would be exactly 5.000 sectors. 24 Star Destroyers per Sector Fleet x 5.000 sectors adds up to to a requirement of 120.000 Star Destroyers in total not counting actual Imperial attack- or rapid response fleets or the strategic reserve held in the core worlds. Let’s further estimate the Empire has probably a surplus of around 10.000 to 15.000 Venators left over from the Clone Wars Republic and, I dunno, around… Read more »
A good estimate with mostly solid numbers. As I recall (I’m at work, so I can’t check them), the RoTS, and Complete, ICS both state that the Republic Navy had 50,000 Venators at peak numbers, and that production only slowed down after the Declaration of a New Order. Given that, I would tend to estimate that Venator numbers, at least early on, were more like 35,000-40,000. In support of your calculation: Legends sources stated that the Imperial Navy Order of Battle was the ideal fleet composition that the Empire was working toward, but never got close to reaching. Wookieepedia (unreliable,… Read more »
Wow, those numbers for Venators during Republic times are actually pretty high, especially considering that each single Venator can carry 420 fighters. Yet on the other hand, in Legends canon it is said that more than 1.000 Venators participated at the Battle of Coruscant alone and by the third year of the Clone Wars with a full war economy running the Republic was steadily reducing the numerical advantage of the CIS fleet so such numbers would make sense. Of course this would mean even higher numbers for escort and support ships like Acclamators and Arquitens cruisers. Ah, of course, the… Read more »
Arriving at a number for the overall fleet strength of the Imperial Navy is actually surprisingly easy, believe it or not… and it puts it at a hell of a lot more than the ridiculous 25,000 number that is given by writers more accustomed to thinking about narratives than the maths of galactic-scale Type 2.5/Type 3 civilisations. This quote is old but gold, and also higher canon than any of the minimalist stuff in Legends: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXSVfwGfvDY We know the DS1 put out about 1e38 J destroying Alderaan. Assuming this was a full-power blast, its reactors were generating _at least_ 1.6e33w.… Read more »
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but that’s a lot of conjecture based off a single line in the film…
Well it is a pretty unambiguous way of saying that ‘the fleet is very, very big’ and gives us enough information to arrive at some figures. It’s a very important line, because it’s the only real information we get about the strength of the Imperial Navy as a whole. It also stands to reason, in a galactic civilisation, that they would have a LOT of ships. 25,000 doesn’t even scratch the surface, it is but a spec… As to escorts and smaller ships making up the rest of the fleet, sure… but one ISD is as powerful as, say, a… Read more »
And by no means are there many thousands of Dreadnoughts. Just because the galaxy could theoretically support the number, what we know of Imperial history ends that thought. Resources were spent on the Death Star projects, and those in favor of Dreadnoughts were not given the resources or priority. The funding wasn’t funneled into those projects until after Yavin, the Executor languished for years in dry dock until it was completed. We have about 12 known Executor class, some not completed until 10 ABY. Legatos aren’t canon, but given the Republics stretched finances, I can’t imagine more than one being… Read more »
Having several thousand Star Dreadnoughts is certainly economically possible, but I too doubt that so many were built. Of the Mandator I-class I know that only 7 or 8 were ever built and 3 of those were always held in reserve to defend the Kuat Sector. Mandator II I dunno, but I would theorize them to have a production run in the low two digit area and the same goes for the Legator. The 12 Executor number is from the new Disney canon and even there Rebel Alliance intelligence is not sure if more exist. In Legends, we have at… Read more »
The Eclipse class (which there are 2 Eclipse 1 and Eclipse 2) and the Sovereign class (which there are 4 the names being Sovereign, Autarch, Despot and Heresiarch).
While I generally agree with your thoughts, “rumored to exist” and actually existing aren’t the same necessarily. Maybe we bring the number down by 30-40 to a total of 130-140 probably being built for certain, with the high 170 number as an outside possibility. Really, we have a 2-3 year span where the Imperial Dreadnought designs would be cranked out before the Emperors death. That’s a lot of multi-kilometer ships churned out and crewed in a short span. Oh, we have those missle busses of Republic design Fractal has been working on, but they’d fall into the battlecruiser size range.
They don’t have access to all those beings for crew. The New Order was humanocentric, human supremacist. Crews are human only, the only alien we see is the special case of Thrawn.
Another point, 25,000 ISD ‘s is referring to a ship class, not every star destroyer in the fleet, only the pattern. In cannon, there would also be surviving Venators, Victorys, Tectors, Secutors filling out the role. Add in designs like Procursators, which you could probably produce at twice the rate of Imperial class, and that’s a lot of star destroyers. The crewing of the ships is a limiting factor, not every person is suitable for the job, the Empire limits the job to a single race, and then they have to pass through the Academy system. Remember there is an… Read more »
But you’re only looking at star destroyers. They need consorts to function and cover their flanks, then you need convoy escorts, patrol vessels, support vessels, etc. For every star destroyer there’s probably a dozen frigates, as many corvettes or more, then various patrol vessels on the order of a sloop, then you have your logistical vessels. There’s probably 50 capital ships of lesser scale for every star destroyer, not counting support ships.
Per the WEG sources that generated the 25,000 number, there were roughly 100 other ships of various types for every star destroyer, not including orbital bombardment platforms, troop transports and their escorts.
This is probably fairly accurate number. Star Destroyers, (according to Legends) like most imperial designs, were extremely crew inefficient – with crew sizes around 20,000 for an ISD1 compared to 7200 for a Venator.
In conventional military forces there are typically between 8 and 12 support elements for every combat element. The non-combat logistical forces marshaled to support even a single ship of that size would be significant and would require a large number of support ships for remote operations.
Is 20,000 for an Imperator actually inefficient? ISDs are about three times the volume as a Venator, and have to make do with human recruits, rather than absurdly elite Fett clones trained from birth. Lean manning sounds tempting to a peacetime navy like the modern USN, but it just leaves you understaffed when the shit hits the fan and you need to throw bodies at damage control. Besides, the Empire has city-worlds with hundreds of trillions of inhabitants to recruit from. Surely a decent number of them want to see the galaxy from a Star Destroyer, even if they start… Read more »
20,000 is quite reasonable for a ship…3 times the volume and power of a ship manned by 7200…
A significant portion of that space is in the engineering core and the storage space. To reach numbers like that you’d need nearly 15-1 support crew to ship crew (Insane) for the weapon loaded out and combat element of an ISD. (Modern naval equivalent is around 3 to 1 on a ship). The Venators had 7200 crew with an ARMY of 2000+ onboard. If you buy what Wiki sells – the ISD is listed as having 9000+ Officers, 27000 crew, and 9000+ Ground troops. 1 in 3 officers? No? For further perspective. USS Enterprise – 3200 ship crew, 2000 aircrew.… Read more »
I don’t think an Imperial Venator would only man with 7200, any more than I trust a Wookiepedia breakdown of ISD crew, for that matter. Going from clone crews to live born volunteer crews are going to impose a cost in efficiency. I’d figure Venators were designed as pretty lean manned all around, and quite possibly designed for grinding attritional battles rather than independent operations with all the self-maintenance and support that entails. If we assume 37000 crew for an ISD, I’d estimate a Venator in Imperial service with complement ~12000. I don’t think there’s going to be an exactly… Read more »
2000+ isn’t an Army; it’s more of a reinforced Battalion or under strength Regiment. An actual Field Army would be 100,000 or more, and require at least 3-4 Consolidators to transport it.
A Venator also carried a single prefabricated Garrison base, 40 LAATs, 6 or 8 Juggernauts and at least 24 walkers to establish a military outpost so I’d guess that the 2000+ infantry carried on board was intended to be used to man that base as well as perform duties like defending against boarding parties on the Venator itself. Then again, Venators very rarely operated alone. The most common variant was 3 Venators working together at all times although groups of 4 or 5 vessels existed as well. So it is certainly possible that a single Division was spread out across… Read more »
I think he meant army personnel.
Part of the crew delta for an ISD vs Venator might be support elements for the increased ground complement and its supporting small craft.
@Fractalsponge – Possibly, but if so, it’s oddly phrased. I expect you’re right about the crew breakdown, but considering the modular nature of carriers, it’d be nice if that number was declared separately from the ship’s actual operating crew. That way, if needed, the Venator could pull its fighter wing to carry more troops (there are real-world contingency plans for doing this with aircraft carriers and the 101st Air Assault). @Sephiroth0812 – A better parallel would be the US Marine Corps’ MEU(SOC), a marine battalion with large numbers of vehicles attached to give the unit greater flexibility. Depending on the… Read more »
Yeah. I tried to edit it to italics to better show my sarcasm at 2000 being listed as an army, but alas the post was locked. Few of the data points make a whole lot of sense given that the raw support element + flight crew for the air wing element of a Venator would likely exceed that total crew volume. I suspect Ansel is correct in that the idea was to pare down the crew / run minimal due to the highly capable Clones. Given the role of the Venators, a MEU is probably a good analogy, thought I… Read more »
You take the droid??? Droids are the enemy!!! Even more if they can handle munition.
A Venator needing quite some extra personnel to keep its huge fighter complement operational is also reasonable as you need more than just the pilots to keep the fighters in top fighting condition and a Venator carries a whopping 420 of those. The ARC-170 also requires a crew of 3 if I recall correctly and a Venator has 36 of them meaning 108 people alone to man the ARC-170s.
“Imperial”->class name. I dislike “new” name of Imperator. From my native tongue point of view Imperator souns too close to emperor (Palpatine). It sounds weird, much wierder than “Imperial”, especially when you are not translating it, but leaving in English. Im well aware of problems with Executor size. The 12 km version was never well supported by visual canon, and 8km was exisitng only in writing. However 8 km never made sense in context of thevmovies; similarly 17-19 km estimate. Visuals are poor justification; on the basis of them we have also estimates of Death Star I being 900 km.… Read more »
“Imperator” is a latin term and simply means commander/commandant of a military force which fits with the general naming theme of capital ships used by the Galactic Republic such as Acclamator, Venator, Tector and so on which are ALL LATIN. Imperator-class is the official Republic designation for this ship class which was changed to “Imperial”-class only after Order 66 and the birth of the Empire. So when someone speaks about the “Imperator-class” they’re referring to the Star Destroyer-class while under Republic control and there is nothing wrong about that as it is official part of the Legends canon.
Yeah well, still dont care about that; decades ago that was correct way of naming the class, I got accustomed to this because of various reasons (again-in my native tongue thats the same word ofr “emperror”) and now I have hard time changing. BTW isnt it funny that the most iconic starship of Star Wars has very poor name and numerous naming problems?
“The number 12 km is simply logical choice in between extremes. 8 km is pretty small and goes against visuals, feel of the movies and overwhelming firepower Executor was supposed to have-as established in writing and on screen. 19 km is way too big. Ship of this size would single handledy win Battle of Endor. 12km is the happy middle, based on really poor visual justifiction (bridge size) that makes little to no sense, however it allows to reach reasonable size that is not too big and not small either. It is still humongous, but not to the extent that… Read more »
You are ignoring everything else I said. Number 12 km is not arbitrary. 1. It came up in old lore discussions, it is established 2. Visual language of the cinema 3. It cannot be too small but cannot be too big 4. The minimal size in old lore was 8km, the upper size is 19 km. Something that is between those two extremes is better than any of them 5. Since number 12 already popped up and it is in the middle between those two-it has been chosen But just for people who do not want to think in this… Read more »
OK, fine, point by point then. 1) No, it’s not. https://www.theforce.net/swtc/ssd5mile.html 12km appeared transitioning from 8km 2) No, the 17+km estimate was established from the films: 3) No, that’s just you saying something vague, not anchored on any kind of evidence 4) What do you really want to argue here? The old lore was wrong and has been retconned. The new lore is 19km. What makes “old” lore better than “new” lore? Visual evidence from movies suggests that 19km is much more plausible than 8km. So I know which one I’d go with. 5) You chose it. Based on your… Read more »
1. Yes it did come up: bridge size comparisons. 2.O rlly. What models of ISD were used? Which model of executor and how shot? 3. 3rd point was about reaching logical conclusions; chosen size is not arbitrary because it has to be set within logical constraints 4. Im arguing for 12. 8 is too small, 19 is too big, creates inconsistencies. 12km is diminishing them. 5. “gut feeling” is misrepresenting everything I said so that you can build a strawman. Executor of 8 km is LESS overpowering. but its blatantly incorrect size. Executor of 19km is absurdly overpowering. Less overpower… Read more »
History of the “5 Mile” Fallacy, by Star Wars Technical Commentaries
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/ssd5mile.html
Size of the Executor, based on analysis of screen evidence, by the Star Wars Technical Commentaries:
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/ssd.html#size
Your opinion: 12 miles feels right, so everyone else is wrong.
#LooksLegit
You didn’t read what I wrote, the use of miles instead of kilometers clearly indicates that. the logic used is this: 1. 8km is way too small due to way how warfare in SW is presented, as well as how Executor is presented trough visuals; 2. 19 km is too big, though thats literally what we have on screen because ship of this size would single handedly win any battle 3. There is need to reconcile two opposites so that we can explain how Endor was won; 4. Less inconsistency is better, more incosistnecy is worse; therefore the bigger Executor… Read more »
“Pick whatever you prefer, but remember that the smaller Executor the smaller the problem it creates for the ENTIRETY of canon.”
So with the giantic Death Stars in ANH and ROTJ, the Rebel Alliance cannot survive if it had to be realistic. Even if the Empire has 6 executors of 50 km in lenght, the Alliance succeed because the story requires it.
Tl;dr. Let it go, dude. No one cares.
We need a eye-roll emoticon. Just for that guy.
e_e
The Executor was ordered NOT to engage the Rebels, by Emperor Palpatine. No such mental gymnastics are required for your alleged justification. The Rebellion could not survive any conventional engagement with the Imperial Navy, Army, or Stormtrooper Corps. That is a given. You are trying to add in logic to a story put together by a guy who based the Rebellion on the Viet Cong, who was apparently ignorant of the fact said body was wiped out by the 1968 TET offensive they initiated, and who was unaware of the fact the North Vietnamese failed at every attempt to defeat… Read more »
Per WEG, this was actually the Alliance’s strategic goal; create enough havoc in the Outer Rim Territories that Palpatine would be forced to leave Coruscant and come deal with the Rebellion in person. Of course, Palpatine was savvy enough to know this, and use it for his own ends.
Yeah, ok, we’re done. Bye.
So in other words you can call other people obtuse, but people cannot call you obtuse. Mkay.
It sounds like you’re trying force your own opinion bad smooth. That or are you trolling?
No, I’m rejecting counters to what I said, because people countering misunderstood what I said, they are patronizing; and they misrepresent logic used or blatantly ignore what I said. I don’t care about acceptance of my point of view at this point and I knew from the beginning that what randoms on Internet will get from it is ” well I think so therefore its right” strawman, thus I was not hoping to convince anybody; just drop the idea, defend it and that’s it.
If people are still not understanding what is it your saying… after all this time…well… that usually means your points been poorly executed and your counter points are contradictory in itself
And with that I can agree; I didn’t think out well what I’m trying to convey. I was trying to present a certain method of thinking about canon, an alternative that allows fans to be more free in their speculations but at the same time more faithful to the source material. And I failed. I will try again later.
“BTW isnt it funny that the most iconic starship of Star Wars has very poor name and numerous naming problems?” – Lol, you can blame tyrannical regimes for that with their stupid habit to rename everything to fit their ideology more once they are firmly in power. After Order 66 Palpy and co. took great efforts to erase even traces of the Republic and everyone and their Ewok were renamed to include the word “Imperial” in it. Imperial-class or Imperial I-class still means the exact same ship so when someone uses “Imperator” it’s just acknowledging its Republic origins. Some sites… Read more »
Except for the logo. Clear relational basis between the logo of the Galactic Republic and that of the Galactic Empire.
People must have their symbols.
Even with the logo the change made a clear statement. IIRC the 8 spokes and one disc of the Republic insignia represented the beneficent presence of the Force in the Galaxy. The Emperor removed 2 of the spokes to distance the symbol from the light side of the Force while maintaining visual continuity, so that the people would still think ‘that’s the symbol of the galactic government’ but wouldn’t think ‘the Force is looking out for me’.
Holy hell the point defense! It’s like someone in the KDY design department finally realized that the whole Tarkin Doctrine fear thing wasn’t stopping Rebel snubfighters
Eh, for a Fractal ship, the actual density of CIWS emplacements isn’t any higher here than pretty much every other capital ship. It’s nice that they’re all rendered though. So much decent Star Destroyer art out there doesn’t even bother, including most of the official comics/game material.
For all of Tarkin’s success at climbing the Empire’s ladders of power, the man was a fool. Furthermore, he failed to understand that ruling with fear only works for an authoritarian ruler if said ruler takes measures to ensure that they don’t become HATED, because hate will make people willing to suffer just to oppose you. It’s rather ironic how a government run by a Sith never seemed to understand this.
Machiavelli, is tha you? But yes, as someone that read through and understand the efficiencies of Tarkin Doctrine, that subtle caveat is the primary problem with the Empire’s rule.
Yep, I got that from Machiavelli. Satire or not, The Prince lays out a very pragmatic approach to authoritarian rule, and I look forward to the day when a character in some fanfic quotes it at Tarkin, Vader or Palpatine.
To be fair to Tarkin, the hate of the population toward the empire wouldn’t have really mattered if the death star had been the inopposable weapon it was imagined to be. you wouldn’t just suffer by opposing them. You would be obliterated along with your entire planet.
Well that’s kind of the point of a Death Star, to be the ultimate siege engine. A well prepared and heavily shielded world might be able to defy conventional fleet units for weeks, if not months, giving them time for other worlds to break free and come to their aid. A Death Star changes that strategic calculus by ending a siege before it has even begun. Either that, or Tarkin maneuvered his way into control of the project because he was plotting to depose Palpatine and seize the Imperial throne for himself, and the Death Star was the perfect tool… Read more »
Ah my favorite “mini” Super Star Destroyer…! Will this Redux have less of those Hoth Ion Cannon-style turrets of the original model and more of the ISD’s trench-quad HTL?
And some people still say Imperial Capships lack fighter defences.
Allegiance getting a visual upgrade? This’ll be fun. Say, I had a thought: What would you think of doing some First Order capital ships? Their roster needs fleshing out (especially smaller stuff, like corvettes and frigates), and it would be interesting to see your take on designs for them. They could have a new, ‘futuristic’ aesthetic, based on the Imperial design aesthetic that you’re used to working with, but a bit different.
I would like to refer you to the Information on Commissions link at the top right of the page.
So… What are the differences between this new redo of the allegiance and the old one…? From what I can see its mostly small details and a slight redoing of the bridge tower, but the basic shape hasn’t changed much..
The old model was a decade old so most of the details were blocky especially the trenches.
Okay, I gotta ask, do you ever sleep? Because you keep pumping out these awesome models and WIPs one after another after another, and as much as I LOVE your work I don’t want you to keel over from exhaustion!
Don’t listen to him! You will rest after death, more ships!
Don’t get impatient. We will keep getting new ships if he lives a long happy life. If he dies early all of us lose.
We can rebuild him, we have the technology.
This is exactly the attitude I would expect coming from the Adeptus Mechanicus. Lol. Just kidding.
Do not blaspheme the Void Drag…um….Machine God.