Ok Fractal since you may didn’t saw the question that I have posted i’l ask again.
What the polygon count for the new Allegiance?
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DarthKarnage
I would love it if you had a shot from the bridge viewport area , just so we could see what it would be a little like commanding this ship…
Just a thought.
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wusolja
@Jonathan C
41 dual defense turrets pointing aft
53 dual defense turrets each, pointing left and right
17 dual defense turrets pointing forward
6 quad turrets ventral
16 quad turrets each, pointing left and right
3 quad turrets pointing forward
12 quad turrets pointing aft
9 ball turrets total (ion guns?)
6 Heavy quad guns each, pointing left and right
seems like the total armament for this ship!/?
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Ragnrok
That 14th shot is so epic!
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PhantomFury
Oh man what a beautiful ship…
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OmegaS
‘Lets shoe horn a star cruiser into as small a hull as possible’, the ship. Beyond the lack of flexibility, I imagine that it has well above average maintenance and logistical requirements for something its volume. If you have a fleet large enough to justify a relative specialist like this, it can work well, but only if you have an actual need for it. Generally, the Empire needed coverage above all else, which its obsession with big ships didn’t help with. Rather than the ISDs, a far lesser number of Allegiances supported by a far larger fleet of sub-capitals would… Read more »
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Hecatomb
I personally think this is what the First Order destroyer should have been. Not a completely new design, but late-generation Imperial warships that eluded the New Republic following the battle of Endor. It would have made much more sense for the First Order to build its fleet from the Imperial Remnant, and perhaps we could have then seen the Bellator and Assertor on screen.
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PhantomFury
I mean, we get enough (justified, in my opinion) complaints about First Order assets resembling Imperial gear too much and if this showed up on the big screen, I’ll rant even harder. However, I love this design and I wouldn’t mind seeing it from an expanded universe source, though.
Really, that was a major strand of criticism? I’m firmly in the camp that there should’ve been closer visual design with Imperial ships. I think where they went that route (Supremacy and Resurgent) the results looked good, great even, but when they tried something new (the doompizza) the design looked like shit, however good the technical execution of the models were (and they were very pretty at a detail level).
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Daib
I think one of the biggest lines of criticism what that the First Order TIEs looked virtually indistinguishable from Imperial TIEs with white trim, especially when the Empire was already in the process of upgrading to Interceptors at Endor. There was some slick concept art for TFA with what looked to be a TIE Hunter inspired FO fighter, but instead we got a reskinned TIE/ln.
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Shaun
That’s actually just Merchandizing 101.
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PhantomFury
I mean, I have now seen both sides of the argument and I was originally expecting them to further develop the design into something that have virtues in their own right, such as the in-lore design development that went from Venator-class to Imperial-class in about a decade, so I want to scrutinize the design team for only adding another terrace while squatting the bridge as the only noticeable defining features from Imperial to Resurgent class in 20+years. Now, I’ve heard people defending it, saying it makes sense from the ideological and training perspective, but visually, I kinda wish they did… Read more »
I like the Resurgent in general, apart from the weird skeletal negative space at the prow that doesn’t really make any sense to me. Also bridge asymmetry was a little bit odd, not bad necessarily, but not enough impact – too odd but in a subtle way. But the way they blended the terraces and the overall profile I do actually like.
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Adam J
I’ll agree with you there. I personally love the Resurgent-Class destroyers. There’s a number of other FO capital ships that have showed up in the comics that I hope to see in more detail on the screen someday… or here…
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PhantomFury
Fair enough, and from a design standpoint, it isn’t bad really; it’s just that it doesn’t have it’s own…feel, and more like it’s hitchhiking on the Imperial designs a bit much (which is, again, justified in some view points) which (outside of lore) is fine if it isn’t a high canon source with people putting large sums of money into designing.
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Anon
Except Disney blatantly rejected anything of the Expanded Universe with common sense out the waste-chute of their dumb-ass corporate empire. They refused to look at what could have been salvaged and made up their usual mickey mouse crap.
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Jonathan C
Can’t wait for some committed soul to count all the guns on this one. (particularly the medium quads and pd combos)
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Twitcheh
There are at least 20.
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Steve
I’d say more than four *nods*
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PhantomFury
I mean, if we want to be accurate, greater than or equal to 1 is the number you want.
For once, I will save you guys some trouble. I count 58 quad MTL, 234 point defense mounts.
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PhantomFury
234 point-defense seems considerably less than what goes through my head for a ship nearly twice the size of ISD for some reason…
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STONEhenk
~2.5 times ISD volume. Don’t know how that translates to surface but his ISD redux has 83 point-defense turrets. So it seems considerably more.
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Chris Bradshaw
Don’t forget that larger MTL and even HTL batteries can engage fighters with those flak bursts we always see, even if their efficacy at hitting named characters is in the toilet.
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AlexHurlbut
I always thought the flak bursts were from the laser bolts impacting their shields without punching through.
I’m not sure what one might expect necessarily. If it weren’t for me, there wouldn’t be any visible Imperial point defense at all :p
For some very vague numbers, a 3km+ lucrehulk with much higher surface area had fewer point defense mounts (about 200 light quad laser batteries between the ring and the core ship). It’s also equivalent in mounting positions to 9 Venators (I assume 26 twins based on the cross sections), and it’s got on the order of 8x the surface area of that ship. 234 point defense mounts is also the equivalent of 12 Lancers.
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Adam J
Speaking of Cross-Sections, do you have any plans on making some on here for your more custom designs?
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Chris Bradshaw
Well we would expect the Lucrehulk as a converted freighter rather than a dedicated warship to be proportionally under-armed and poorly optimized for combat. Besides, an Allegiance without a fighter complement is far more vulnerable to fighter attack and thus reliant on PD than a Lucrehulk with ten thousand vultures.
First of all, there’s purely geometric and aesthetic concerns – there’s only so much space and mounting as many light guns as the chassis allows will not end well – you could hypothetically power millions of kiloton-scale light lasers on a star destroyer-sized and -powered ship. More in universe, if you don’t like the Lucrehulk, look at the Venator. Or on smaller antifighter escorts. It boils down to “what do you actually think the appropriate PD complement for a given warship by size is?” Lucrehulks, Venators, Acclamators and Lancers provide the best quantitative baseline I can think of, role differences… Read more »
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Phoenixx
That’s true Fractal but it was only the pre-war variant that had only 42 quad turbolasers.
The actual war lucrehulk had about 700-800 weapons on it.
So a ship with >>2x the surface area has…about 2x the number of PD gun barrels?
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Daib
Would we ever see you mount a missile-based PD system, like SeaRAM, or just pure gun fits?
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Chris Bradshaw
I wanted to say that the Star Wars aesthetic is supposed to be WW2 in Space, not Cold War gone Hot in Space, but then I remembered that the Unrotated Projectile and the Henschel Hs 297 Föhn were a thing. Carry on.
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rodney
Sir, do you have any plans or are you working on the executor? I like this ship very much
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TheEpicDude
this is truly amazing, love it
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Steven Cross
whilst I know the Alliegiance class is a real thing in canon, this is my headcanon take on Fractal’s version. Thoughts and comments are most welcome! Allegiance class Battlecruiser The so called ‘Heavy Star Destroyer Project’ came about due to a doctrinal holdover from the Clone Wars. In the Clone Wars the Republic navy used the Venator class as its general purpose craft and deployed the Victory class Star Destroyer as a pure anti-ship vessel. The Victory’s greater firepower and durability let it outlast and outgun CIS Warships, even larger ships like the Lucrehulk and Providence class ships were outgunned… Read more »
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PhantomFury
Excellent headcanon! I just thought that perhaps instead of dating the origin back to the days of the Clone Wars, perhaps the origin should have its roots in the Tarkin Doctrine? After all inciting fear and the concept of capital ship superiority is a result of such ideology.
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Steve
Oooh I like that idea Phantom 😀
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Jonathan C
Ahh very nice. I thought I remembered the three center ball cannons mentioned as superheavy 600-700 TT turbolasers though. If that is the case, than the 4 (2 on each side) ball mounts perhaps have triple ions in them, with the center side ball mounts having quad 150-250 TT turbos in them.
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CRMcNeill
Because of the difference in naming conventions, I would think an Allegiance would be a Rendili project. All of the KDY ships are agent nouns (as in, an entity that performs an action) – Imperator, Venator, Acclamator, Tector, Executor, etc. – whereas Victory and Allegiance are both abstract nouns (as in, referring to an idea, quality or condition).
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Chris Bradshaw
So we’re just discounting the Eclipse, Nebulon-B, Vigil, Star Galleon, Pelta, Ton-Falk, Arquitens, Broadside, Vengeance, and whatever the Arc Hammer was? KDY makes plenty of ships that don’t follow that convention.
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CRMcNeill
I suppose it depends on what degree of chaotic schizophrenia you’re willing to accept from the EU.
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Daib
I don’t think you can get more canon than the Nebulon B, and the Pelta/Arquitens come pretty close.
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CRMcNeill
Naming conventions shift based on size/mission of craft. A Navy could easily feature both large capital ships classified by agency nouns and dinky convoy escorts classified by numeric designators, like the Royal Navy’s alphabet series. The Allegiance is close enough in size to things like the Imperator, Venator, Secutor, etc, to be part of the same “type” insofar as naming convention.
And the backstory of the Pelta / Arquitens stem from the same story group that made the MC75 from Rogue One a converted building, so again, it’s up to you how much chaotic schizophrenia you want to accept.
Things can just be random too. Sort of like Gvozdika/Akatsiya/Giatsint/Pion -> Msta?! Thanks guys for fucking with the pattern.
Or perhaps the faux-Latin names are Kuati products, largely initiated and designed by the in house team, but Allegiance was something imposed from on high, and perhaps named accordingly?
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Anon
TBH, the Arc Hammer was a specialist factory ship. It only existed to be a mobile space-borne factory for the DT program. I refer to it as the term used by Command and Conquer; M.C.V. (Mobile Construction Vehicle.) But more of a specialized mobile droid barracks for specific autonomous non-organic infantry.
Allegiance is just first ship we see named, and it’s become entrenched in the absence of any other information, so there’s no better class name. This developed well before the fashion of naming stuff with pseudo-Latin.
Would it fit better maybe with a pseudo-Latin name? Sure. Am I going to stick my neck out there and pick one when the existing name is cool? No. If I had to? Castigator.
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CRMcNeill
Fair enough. Still, it would be nice to see Rendili get /some/ business thrown their way. Instead, every EU fluff-writer seems to automatically assume that anything resembling a Star Destroyer has to be a KDY project, even though the Victory pretty clearly breaks that mold.
P.S. In the back of my mind, I keep hoping you’ll make some ridiculously oversized super star dreadnought and call it the Overcompensator-Class.
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Steve Bannon
There’s probably more of a political than technical reason for the KDY monopoly under the New Order. The Separatist coup on Rendili and subsequent battle during the Clone Wars painted a huge political target on Rendili’s back, which would leave it devoid of Imperial contracts even if it could deliver quality ships. Perhaps some divisions were nationalized, and the engineers were forcibly transferred to KDY in a sort of a Sharashka Gulag manner. By the time of the original trilogy, Rendili is so marginalized by the Empire that they’re refitting Assault Frigates for the Alliance. No wonder Palpatine didn’t give… Read more »
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CRMcNeill
The source for that is the Empire at War video game guide, and video games are of debatable use as canon sources. It’s far more likely that the “Alliance engineers” mentioned in the original write-up for the Assault Frigate included a high percentage of former Rendili engineering personnel who had defected to the Alliance. It’s highly improbable that a major ship-building company (which Rendili still was, even if nowhere near the scale of KDY) would take the chance of accepting a “commission from the Rebel Alliance” any time before Endor. The word for that is treason.
Why wouldn’t Rendili get work anyway? We’ve seen companies don’t need to design the stuff they end up building. At the very least, ISDs are built of Corellia, and I’m pretty sure KDY doesn’t own CEC, or have much production infrastructure in CEC’s back yard.
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Steve Bannon
There’s quite a gap between being a secondary contractor responsible for assembling prefabricated components of someone else’s design and being the primary contractor that’s responsible for moving the entire project forward, and taking the lion’s share of profit and publicity. Also, I thought it was clear that Rendili would never publicly declare their allegiance (pun intended) to the Alliance, but if substantial numbers of malcontent engineers are defecting and bringing their hardware with them, then the Empire was probably smart to not trust Rendili with anything crucial. Besides, when a regime changes, a major defense contractor can shrivel up very… Read more »
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Anon
Its been done but mostly as a joke. The “Ultra-class star Destroyer” ‘The Imperium.’ 200 kilometers in length I think…
That a nice class name for the Allegiance if it is not named Allegiance in the first place. But you could use that name for a possible Multi-role heavy destroyer variant of the Allegiance.
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gorkmalork
Dunno how much demand there would be for a de-specialized Allegiance variant, though I could see a bow-cutout fast carrier ala our host’s Impellor class.
No volume for carrier functions without a totally different hull frame. And at that point, it’s a Compellor.
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CRMcNeill
Theoretically, at what point does it become counter-productive to go with specialized platforms over multi-role ones? As near as I can tell, the emphasis on large, multi-role ships in the SWU is heavily influenced by the RPG; past a certain size/power level, capital ships can no longer be seriously threatened by a half-dozen PCs with a modded light freighter or a handful of starfighters, so there isn’t much need for nuance in big ship design. You’re obviously operating several orders of magnitude above that, but what are your thoughts on the point of diminishing returns for the various mission designs?
I really don’t think this has much to do specifically with any RPG. Not many people have played the game or thought about it at that level. Not many people have thought about it at all. Which is why we always get to see people go on about ventral turrets and constantly trying to cram fighters in because fighters are cool. The specialized vs multirole argument has no answer, in real life or otherwise, and I think it’s a fool’s errand to try to set any hard breakpoints. Specialized designs will always win as long as you get to use… Read more »
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CRMcNeill
Historically, though, a lot of the early EU has its roots in the WEG game. Multiple sources have stated that Timothy Zahn was given a box of WEG books to use as source material for the original Thrawn trilogy, and even the ships from Dark Empire have come to be defined by their WEG stats. People may not think much about it, but a lot of the things we fans “know” to be true have their roots in the WEG game. Of the seven official SD and SSD types featured in WEG material, only the two smallest (Victory I/II) are… Read more »
Oh, no doubt the game has been very influential in general terms, sometimes to my great dismay 🙂 But in terms of generalist vs specialized ships, I don’t think so. The game laid out some extra ship classes because there weren’t enough in the movies to support very much of an RPG universe, but a lot about specialized vs generalized usage was added later. The VSD series were just baby ISDs, almost literally in some depictions. And on the face of it, they have almost exactly the troop and fighter complements you’d expect from an uncritical reading of the initial… Read more »
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CRMcNeill
Going by their own descriptions, though, the VSDs were specialized to a degree, with the Victory I leaning more toward planetary bombardment and assault, and the Victory II being more a space combat counterpart to it. The main distinction is the II trading in the I’s concussion missiles for ion cannon, as well as having a somewhat more modern energy weapons loadout. I left out the Venator because RotS was released 12 years after WEG’s Dark Empire Sourcebook, as that gap left a big window of time for WEG-centric views of the SWU to establish (metastasize?) themselves. There was a… Read more »
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gorkmalork
Setting aside whether WEG’s stats would make any sense outside game-mechanic convenience (I err toward ‘nope’), I’ve tripped over two threads (on FFG & SDN respectively) & a Wookie page which quote Eclipse as packing 500 TLs, 550 heavy lasers & 75 ions of unspecified scale. Even compared to the ‘8-klick fallacy’ weapon stats for Executor (1000 turbos/ions/launchers), that doesn’t strike me as a conventional weapon count even vaguely commensurate with the thing’s surface area. Feel free to thwack me if none of this introduced anything new, of course.
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CRMcNeill
Not much here I can disagree with, and I’m the last person to defend WEG game stats as some paragon of infallibility. The /really/ amusing thing about those stats is that the Heavy Lasers are the anti-capital ship weapons, while the Turbolasers are the anti-starfighter weapons; errors like this are not uncommon in the game stats. However, the deeper argument is that the further removed a game stat gets from the smaller-scale forms of combat or pursuit (starfighters and light freighters, pretty much), the less important accurate stats become as a practical matter. The reason for that is, past roughly… Read more »
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Chris Bradshaw
Did the WEG writers ever even see ANH? I distinctly remember some Imperial gunnery crew complain that the Alliance snubfighters were too small to be effectively targeted by the Death Star’s turbolasers.
From a pure RPG standpoint, it probably doesn’t matter if something like an Allegiance or Eclipse isn’t properly statted, but they damn well should have put some thought into the capital ships before turning the books over to Tim Zahn and telling him to use them as reference.
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CRMcNeill
It’s a complicated question. Certainly, the WEG writers had to have seen Star Wars, but their interpretation of Star Wars did not stand the test of time. The biggest collective error I can see is that WEG kept making changes to their rules over time without fully analyzing the ways in which those changes had unintended consequences for other aspects of the game. The basis is there for a good, coherent gaming system and universe, but it needs a lot more playtesting to iron out the wrinkles. The Death Star battle is a case in point; to make it work,… Read more »
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Chris Bradshaw
I’m glad that Zahn didn’t take all the gun counts at face value, but the legacy of WEG on the Thrawn books is one of relentless minimalism based on the fluff. We got a universe where 200 medium frigates is a game changer, major fleets have a handful of line destroyers, and the industrial base that put together two death stars seems to have evaporated overnight. That’s the disappointment.
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CRMcNeill
I’d argue that Zahn’s minimalist approach actually fit with the scale of the universe as it was accepted at that time. By that measure, those frigates were actually heavy cruisers, and ships larger than ISDs were few and far between. It wasn’t until the prequels started introducing larger and larger ships, and Fractal started fleshing out some of the doodles that passed for ships in the various Dark Horse comics releases that the scale started to go up. This ties in, IMO, with one of the main things WEG got right, and that is the focus on the efforts of… Read more »
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gorkmalork
Eh, I’d argue that the mere existence of Executor & especially both Death Stars (much less DS2 being a secret project) not-so-subtly hints at a vaster scale than the sorts who insisted on ten-Impstar fleets guarding Coruscant or Kuat wanted to acknowledge. Plus, niche as it might be Curt Saxton’s documentation of stuff from Dark Horse & Marvel material predated the prequels by at least a few years. I get the whole ‘players gotta feel relevant’ thing, but am still not sold on having this ‘verse’s, well, verisimilitude dictated *entirely* by script-handy golden-BB events. Can’t help thinking some sort of… Read more »
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CRMcNeill
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but considering that Lucasfilm at that time had the final say as to what was “official” Star Wars, and that it was Lucasfilm referencing WEG material (and ultimately sending WEG books for reference) when talking to Zahn, it wasn’t like he had a lot of choice. WEG had, with Lucasfilm’s blessing, established a minimalist pattern which Lucasfilm themselves perpetuated by forwarding it to Zahn, who in turn set the standard for all of the EU before the prequels. An author writing in someone else’s IP universe has to walk a fine line, and Zahn did… Read more »
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gorkmalork
I can understand Zahn rolling with the framework given him & keeping main-character challenges at a manageable scale, though the more I mull this over…hell, I’m just not sure the two paradigms necessarily had to clash in the first place. If anything, a maximalized galactic stage as backdrop seems good for accentuating character heroics by driving home just what’s been foiled/circumvented/averted through grit, courage, camaraderie & cunning (unless, of course, one cheeses out with force storm-tier powers). Plus, as you note with WEG’s original ‘leave fighting fleets to fleets, genius’ policy, cinematic central cast-size groups get ample mileage out of… Read more »
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CRMcNeill
The most plausible explanation I’ve heard for Starkiller Base is that it was originally built by one of the SWU’s ancient races (the Rakata are a good candidate) who subsequently abandoned it for unknown reasons. Then, thousands of years later, the First Order discovered it out in the Unknown Regions, figured out how it functioned, then built their own facilities around and on top of the original works. Hux’s bloviating about “you built this” would’ve just been hyperbole and propaganda.
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gorkmalork
Ah, so like a less-hollow, nowhere-near-Corellia Centerpoint Station. I also dig the meta WRT First Order ‘breakthroughs’ mainly being coattail-riding + spittle-spraying bullroar. Makes sense for a rehash regime whose boss uncannily resembles a defective Palpaclone(R) himself.
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CRMcNeill
And that’s as good an explanation for Snoke as I’ve heard so far, too.
No, the scale that Zahn’s stuff ignored wasn’t set by me. That scale was set by the production of several hundred thousand ISD equivalents twice over 3 years embodied by both death stars in highest and earliest SW canon. It’s a low bar to expect some consistency with the setting as it was originally laid out, and not expecting fortune-telling on the part of the worldbuilder.
P.S. I like Zahn’s stuff story wise, but the minimalism is AWFUL.
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CRMcNeill
The official explanation at the time was that the Death Stars were of unprecedented scale, and only the direct command of the Emperor was able to gather that much time and effort and material into a single project. Realistic? Probably not, but it did fit with the minimalist official approach at the time. I think you’re right insofar as Star Wars viewed realistically, but is Star Wars supposed to be realistic? My understanding was always that it was more space opera than hard sci-fi Personally, I was willing to write off most of the stuff on the Saxton compilation as… Read more »
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Chris Bradshaw
Sure, the Death Stars are marvels of mega-engineering instituted from the top, and not something your typical Post-Endor Moff could put together, but they’re still THE benchmark of the galactic industrial base. Besides, they were built in almost complete secrecy, which suggests that they were a small fraction of total Imperial production capacity rather than something that every workshop and factory was mobilized for.
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gorkmalork
Right, the ‘why are you stopping to count all this, just RUN’ approach makes sense for player groups tooling around in Falcon or Lambda equivalents. It’s when peeps try to patch the fluff attached to said context into broader theories & trends WRT capital-scale combat, some of which seem to *contradict* its original intent (hello, Trench Run Disease) that the migraines & 80-page debate threads set in. Which is why I’ll confess to finding our host’s ‘pull back & look at the design sans game-balance lenses’ approach immensely refreshing. Anyhow, having squinted at Eclipse I & II’s lack of fleet-slaughtering… Read more »
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CRMcNeill
Based on film evidence, the same could be said about the Executor. We never really get to see exactly what it could do in a gun duel against another capital ship. Mostly what it does is hover nearby looking ominous.
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gorkmalork
Ah, the annoyances of plot shielding, rules of engagement dictated by same & only tertiary characters helming SW heavies ’cause nobody wants to let go of the snubs or Falcon (well, besides Vader, but he’s more of a roving trouble-choker). Suppose I’m just nursing dead-horse annoyance with the way peeps have regurgitated the Fifteen-Panel Palpywagon’s hype every other time any given sci-fi page rolls around to SW capitals.
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StormCommando
Great background, sounds very plausible. Bit of a mistake at the beginning though, imo: you say the Victory could go toe to toe with the Lucrehulk – did you mean 1 on 1? If so, this is underestimating the LH. Based on the size of all its reactors, its listed shield strength and its weapons, its power output is almost certainly around 7.7e25w – making it 8 times more powerful than an ISD-II (while 22 times bigger, it has a much lower overall:reactor volume ratio because it’s a carrier and its ‘mandibles’ are enormous, with none of that space dedicated… Read more »
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gorkmalork
Fair assessment WRT cruiser-refitted Lucrehulks being more than a single Vic (or even a Vic+-Venator 2-ship) should be expected to slug it out with, though I suspect a deftly-helmed Allegiance could just about solo one depending on who gets off the first telling volley.
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Chris Bradshaw
Lucrehulks have sizable reactors, but commercial power plants optimized for cost-efficiency and long-haul reliability probably don’t stack up to military reactors designed for maximum surge output. Lucrehulks are also incredibly unmanueverable, and while an Allegiance can’t dance like a Victory, it sure as hell would be able to evade much more return fire than the Lucrehulk. To make things even more lopsided, the Lucrehulk’s firing arcs are pretty awful, while an Allegiance would be able to pound it with its full armament, making this not really a contest. A single well-handled Imperator might even be able to take on a… Read more »
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Zarrov
ISD version 2.0. Once presented next to each other this really looks like Allegiance class should be renamed ISD II. I never understood the lack of fighters on Allegiance. This is a huge ship, 2.2 km, it is unfathomable that they couldn’t squeeze in at least the same amount of fighters as ISD has. I get why lore-wise such decision was made but it seems not to make much sense.
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gejemica
Venators and ISDs are both middle-of-the road ships that are part battleship, part carrier.
The Venator steers more towards the carrier side, the ISD more towards the battleship side.
A dedicated carrier will always be more effective in that role than one that sacrifices hangar space for more firepower. A dedicated battleship will always be more effective in that role than one that sacrifices firepower for hangar space.
Take a Venator’s carrier side to the extreme and you get the Secutor.
Take the ISD’s battleship side to the extreme and you get the Allegiance.
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Steve
Also Zarrov and gejemica you might wanna look at my post above your one with the headcanon idea for the Alliegiance.
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PhantomFury
Imperial combat doctrine (stemmed from Tarkin Doctrine) never paid much attention to the effectiveness of starfighter combat, as to them, the fighters isn’t the thing that win battles and conquer/hold systems, but rather the warships is the one with such a responsibility. Not to mention this ship is just full of anti-air batteries, additional hangar space is just a waste of interior that could be used for other things.
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Valoren
I think the allegiance actually has a small launch bay where the secondary shuttle bay would be on a standard ISD (which make sense really, there has to be a way for the crew to get in and out). No idea if it can accommodate fighters though…
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Chris Bradshaw
It probably could fit a few fighters, just like you could potentially fit an AV-8B Harrier II in the hangar bay of a Burke destroyer IRL, but they don’t do that because fighter coverage for the fleet is better served by specialist vessels.
As 3D artist myself, I’ve never been able to get the sort of blue-gray material with the hull plates. Is it a bit too silly to ask for a hex value? 😛 I’ve gone all over google for hull plating textures etc, I’ve got a python script to generator plates and greebles, but where do you get these images from? Would you share them?
It’s not just the hex value – it’s more the lighting and color correction that happens afterwards. Won’t look the same depending on those settings. My stuff is procedural except for a few mild bitmaps.
I just use direct spotlights or very small area lights for relatively sharp shadows. I occasionally will use HDRI lighting for smaller ships, or if I desperately want specific kinds of reflections. On a big ship I’ve found it doesn’t matter too much. I guess if you wanted a “photoreal” light setup like as if it was a physical model, HDRI lighting would be the way to go.
Nice another redux done. There are 2 things I want to ask you about Fractal.
1. What the polygon count on this redux?
2. Will the Procursator get a redux as well?
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Steven A Futrell
id love to see you do the Titan class Stealth Dreadnought.
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Steve
Stunningly good! There’s definately a brutal power to her clean lines!
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Arvenski
That is incredible. My god.
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RhysT
Question. I know anything to do with the Sequel Trilogy is sorta a source of much controversy, but is there any chance we’ll eventually see ships from those movies depicted by you? Say the Resurgent class or something?
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Daib
This thing has made it to 5+ EAW mods of varying caliber, and it’s laughably under-gunned in every single one of them.
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gejemica
Based on sheer volume it would be about 2 and a half times as powerful as an ISD, but the reactor is proportionally much bigger so who knows.
Reactor volume is all that counts, and that’s 6x. The rest of the hull is proportionately stripped away. High power to weight, low overall size to make it a smaller and better shielded target.
That one it has 12 octuple barbette turbolasers, like 40-60 missile launchers as well as at least 20-50 minimum other light laser cannons, point defense or light turbolaser batteries.
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Twitcheh
SECONDED on the EAW Remake-Light version of the mod. Holy hell. That thing is a straight up beast. I’m late game right now, swapping ISD-II’s with them. Those missiles are definitely powerful.
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Phoenixx
Yeah easily one of the most cost effective and powerful ships in the mod and just a powerful ship in general.
And yeah it’s heavy missiles are no joke, still not as powerful as the super heavy ones the Kandosii has though.
Ok Fractal since you may didn’t saw the question that I have posted i’l ask again.
What the polygon count for the new Allegiance?
I would love it if you had a shot from the bridge viewport area , just so we could see what it would be a little like commanding this ship…
Just a thought.
@Jonathan C
41 dual defense turrets pointing aft
53 dual defense turrets each, pointing left and right
17 dual defense turrets pointing forward
6 quad turrets ventral
16 quad turrets each, pointing left and right
3 quad turrets pointing forward
12 quad turrets pointing aft
9 ball turrets total (ion guns?)
6 Heavy quad guns each, pointing left and right
seems like the total armament for this ship!/?
That 14th shot is so epic!
Oh man what a beautiful ship…
‘Lets shoe horn a star cruiser into as small a hull as possible’, the ship. Beyond the lack of flexibility, I imagine that it has well above average maintenance and logistical requirements for something its volume. If you have a fleet large enough to justify a relative specialist like this, it can work well, but only if you have an actual need for it. Generally, the Empire needed coverage above all else, which its obsession with big ships didn’t help with. Rather than the ISDs, a far lesser number of Allegiances supported by a far larger fleet of sub-capitals would… Read more »
I personally think this is what the First Order destroyer should have been. Not a completely new design, but late-generation Imperial warships that eluded the New Republic following the battle of Endor. It would have made much more sense for the First Order to build its fleet from the Imperial Remnant, and perhaps we could have then seen the Bellator and Assertor on screen.
I mean, we get enough (justified, in my opinion) complaints about First Order assets resembling Imperial gear too much and if this showed up on the big screen, I’ll rant even harder. However, I love this design and I wouldn’t mind seeing it from an expanded universe source, though.
Really, that was a major strand of criticism? I’m firmly in the camp that there should’ve been closer visual design with Imperial ships. I think where they went that route (Supremacy and Resurgent) the results looked good, great even, but when they tried something new (the doompizza) the design looked like shit, however good the technical execution of the models were (and they were very pretty at a detail level).
I think one of the biggest lines of criticism what that the First Order TIEs looked virtually indistinguishable from Imperial TIEs with white trim, especially when the Empire was already in the process of upgrading to Interceptors at Endor. There was some slick concept art for TFA with what looked to be a TIE Hunter inspired FO fighter, but instead we got a reskinned TIE/ln.
That’s actually just Merchandizing 101.
I mean, I have now seen both sides of the argument and I was originally expecting them to further develop the design into something that have virtues in their own right, such as the in-lore design development that went from Venator-class to Imperial-class in about a decade, so I want to scrutinize the design team for only adding another terrace while squatting the bridge as the only noticeable defining features from Imperial to Resurgent class in 20+years. Now, I’ve heard people defending it, saying it makes sense from the ideological and training perspective, but visually, I kinda wish they did… Read more »
I like the Resurgent in general, apart from the weird skeletal negative space at the prow that doesn’t really make any sense to me. Also bridge asymmetry was a little bit odd, not bad necessarily, but not enough impact – too odd but in a subtle way. But the way they blended the terraces and the overall profile I do actually like.
I’ll agree with you there. I personally love the Resurgent-Class destroyers. There’s a number of other FO capital ships that have showed up in the comics that I hope to see in more detail on the screen someday… or here…
Fair enough, and from a design standpoint, it isn’t bad really; it’s just that it doesn’t have it’s own…feel, and more like it’s hitchhiking on the Imperial designs a bit much (which is, again, justified in some view points) which (outside of lore) is fine if it isn’t a high canon source with people putting large sums of money into designing.
Except Disney blatantly rejected anything of the Expanded Universe with common sense out the waste-chute of their dumb-ass corporate empire. They refused to look at what could have been salvaged and made up their usual mickey mouse crap.
Can’t wait for some committed soul to count all the guns on this one. (particularly the medium quads and pd combos)
There are at least 20.
I’d say more than four *nods*
I mean, if we want to be accurate, greater than or equal to 1 is the number you want.
For once, I will save you guys some trouble. I count 58 quad MTL, 234 point defense mounts.
234 point-defense seems considerably less than what goes through my head for a ship nearly twice the size of ISD for some reason…
~2.5 times ISD volume. Don’t know how that translates to surface but his ISD redux has 83 point-defense turrets. So it seems considerably more.
Don’t forget that larger MTL and even HTL batteries can engage fighters with those flak bursts we always see, even if their efficacy at hitting named characters is in the toilet.
I always thought the flak bursts were from the laser bolts impacting their shields without punching through.
Or energy blasts impacting with debris.
I’m not sure what one might expect necessarily. If it weren’t for me, there wouldn’t be any visible Imperial point defense at all :p
For some very vague numbers, a 3km+ lucrehulk with much higher surface area had fewer point defense mounts (about 200 light quad laser batteries between the ring and the core ship). It’s also equivalent in mounting positions to 9 Venators (I assume 26 twins based on the cross sections), and it’s got on the order of 8x the surface area of that ship. 234 point defense mounts is also the equivalent of 12 Lancers.
Speaking of Cross-Sections, do you have any plans on making some on here for your more custom designs?
Well we would expect the Lucrehulk as a converted freighter rather than a dedicated warship to be proportionally under-armed and poorly optimized for combat. Besides, an Allegiance without a fighter complement is far more vulnerable to fighter attack and thus reliant on PD than a Lucrehulk with ten thousand vultures.
First of all, there’s purely geometric and aesthetic concerns – there’s only so much space and mounting as many light guns as the chassis allows will not end well – you could hypothetically power millions of kiloton-scale light lasers on a star destroyer-sized and -powered ship. More in universe, if you don’t like the Lucrehulk, look at the Venator. Or on smaller antifighter escorts. It boils down to “what do you actually think the appropriate PD complement for a given warship by size is?” Lucrehulks, Venators, Acclamators and Lancers provide the best quantitative baseline I can think of, role differences… Read more »
That’s true Fractal but it was only the pre-war variant that had only 42 quad turbolasers.
The actual war lucrehulk had about 700-800 weapons on it.
So a ship with >>2x the surface area has…about 2x the number of PD gun barrels?
Would we ever see you mount a missile-based PD system, like SeaRAM, or just pure gun fits?
I wanted to say that the Star Wars aesthetic is supposed to be WW2 in Space, not Cold War gone Hot in Space, but then I remembered that the Unrotated Projectile and the Henschel Hs 297 Föhn were a thing. Carry on.
Sir, do you have any plans or are you working on the executor? I like this ship very much
this is truly amazing, love it
whilst I know the Alliegiance class is a real thing in canon, this is my headcanon take on Fractal’s version. Thoughts and comments are most welcome! Allegiance class Battlecruiser The so called ‘Heavy Star Destroyer Project’ came about due to a doctrinal holdover from the Clone Wars. In the Clone Wars the Republic navy used the Venator class as its general purpose craft and deployed the Victory class Star Destroyer as a pure anti-ship vessel. The Victory’s greater firepower and durability let it outlast and outgun CIS Warships, even larger ships like the Lucrehulk and Providence class ships were outgunned… Read more »
Excellent headcanon! I just thought that perhaps instead of dating the origin back to the days of the Clone Wars, perhaps the origin should have its roots in the Tarkin Doctrine? After all inciting fear and the concept of capital ship superiority is a result of such ideology.
Oooh I like that idea Phantom 😀
Ahh very nice. I thought I remembered the three center ball cannons mentioned as superheavy 600-700 TT turbolasers though. If that is the case, than the 4 (2 on each side) ball mounts perhaps have triple ions in them, with the center side ball mounts having quad 150-250 TT turbos in them.
Because of the difference in naming conventions, I would think an Allegiance would be a Rendili project. All of the KDY ships are agent nouns (as in, an entity that performs an action) – Imperator, Venator, Acclamator, Tector, Executor, etc. – whereas Victory and Allegiance are both abstract nouns (as in, referring to an idea, quality or condition).
So we’re just discounting the Eclipse, Nebulon-B, Vigil, Star Galleon, Pelta, Ton-Falk, Arquitens, Broadside, Vengeance, and whatever the Arc Hammer was? KDY makes plenty of ships that don’t follow that convention.
I suppose it depends on what degree of chaotic schizophrenia you’re willing to accept from the EU.
I don’t think you can get more canon than the Nebulon B, and the Pelta/Arquitens come pretty close.
Naming conventions shift based on size/mission of craft. A Navy could easily feature both large capital ships classified by agency nouns and dinky convoy escorts classified by numeric designators, like the Royal Navy’s alphabet series. The Allegiance is close enough in size to things like the Imperator, Venator, Secutor, etc, to be part of the same “type” insofar as naming convention.
And the backstory of the Pelta / Arquitens stem from the same story group that made the MC75 from Rogue One a converted building, so again, it’s up to you how much chaotic schizophrenia you want to accept.
Things can just be random too. Sort of like Gvozdika/Akatsiya/Giatsint/Pion -> Msta?! Thanks guys for fucking with the pattern.
Or perhaps the faux-Latin names are Kuati products, largely initiated and designed by the in house team, but Allegiance was something imposed from on high, and perhaps named accordingly?
TBH, the Arc Hammer was a specialist factory ship. It only existed to be a mobile space-borne factory for the DT program. I refer to it as the term used by Command and Conquer; M.C.V. (Mobile Construction Vehicle.) But more of a specialized mobile droid barracks for specific autonomous non-organic infantry.
Allegiance is just first ship we see named, and it’s become entrenched in the absence of any other information, so there’s no better class name. This developed well before the fashion of naming stuff with pseudo-Latin.
Would it fit better maybe with a pseudo-Latin name? Sure. Am I going to stick my neck out there and pick one when the existing name is cool? No. If I had to? Castigator.
Fair enough. Still, it would be nice to see Rendili get /some/ business thrown their way. Instead, every EU fluff-writer seems to automatically assume that anything resembling a Star Destroyer has to be a KDY project, even though the Victory pretty clearly breaks that mold.
P.S. In the back of my mind, I keep hoping you’ll make some ridiculously oversized super star dreadnought and call it the Overcompensator-Class.
There’s probably more of a political than technical reason for the KDY monopoly under the New Order. The Separatist coup on Rendili and subsequent battle during the Clone Wars painted a huge political target on Rendili’s back, which would leave it devoid of Imperial contracts even if it could deliver quality ships. Perhaps some divisions were nationalized, and the engineers were forcibly transferred to KDY in a sort of a Sharashka Gulag manner. By the time of the original trilogy, Rendili is so marginalized by the Empire that they’re refitting Assault Frigates for the Alliance. No wonder Palpatine didn’t give… Read more »
The source for that is the Empire at War video game guide, and video games are of debatable use as canon sources. It’s far more likely that the “Alliance engineers” mentioned in the original write-up for the Assault Frigate included a high percentage of former Rendili engineering personnel who had defected to the Alliance. It’s highly improbable that a major ship-building company (which Rendili still was, even if nowhere near the scale of KDY) would take the chance of accepting a “commission from the Rebel Alliance” any time before Endor. The word for that is treason.
Why wouldn’t Rendili get work anyway? We’ve seen companies don’t need to design the stuff they end up building. At the very least, ISDs are built of Corellia, and I’m pretty sure KDY doesn’t own CEC, or have much production infrastructure in CEC’s back yard.
There’s quite a gap between being a secondary contractor responsible for assembling prefabricated components of someone else’s design and being the primary contractor that’s responsible for moving the entire project forward, and taking the lion’s share of profit and publicity. Also, I thought it was clear that Rendili would never publicly declare their allegiance (pun intended) to the Alliance, but if substantial numbers of malcontent engineers are defecting and bringing their hardware with them, then the Empire was probably smart to not trust Rendili with anything crucial. Besides, when a regime changes, a major defense contractor can shrivel up very… Read more »
Its been done but mostly as a joke. The “Ultra-class star Destroyer” ‘The Imperium.’ 200 kilometers in length I think…
That a nice class name for the Allegiance if it is not named Allegiance in the first place. But you could use that name for a possible Multi-role heavy destroyer variant of the Allegiance.
Dunno how much demand there would be for a de-specialized Allegiance variant, though I could see a bow-cutout fast carrier ala our host’s Impellor class.
No volume for carrier functions without a totally different hull frame. And at that point, it’s a Compellor.
Theoretically, at what point does it become counter-productive to go with specialized platforms over multi-role ones? As near as I can tell, the emphasis on large, multi-role ships in the SWU is heavily influenced by the RPG; past a certain size/power level, capital ships can no longer be seriously threatened by a half-dozen PCs with a modded light freighter or a handful of starfighters, so there isn’t much need for nuance in big ship design. You’re obviously operating several orders of magnitude above that, but what are your thoughts on the point of diminishing returns for the various mission designs?
I really don’t think this has much to do specifically with any RPG. Not many people have played the game or thought about it at that level. Not many people have thought about it at all. Which is why we always get to see people go on about ventral turrets and constantly trying to cram fighters in because fighters are cool. The specialized vs multirole argument has no answer, in real life or otherwise, and I think it’s a fool’s errand to try to set any hard breakpoints. Specialized designs will always win as long as you get to use… Read more »
Historically, though, a lot of the early EU has its roots in the WEG game. Multiple sources have stated that Timothy Zahn was given a box of WEG books to use as source material for the original Thrawn trilogy, and even the ships from Dark Empire have come to be defined by their WEG stats. People may not think much about it, but a lot of the things we fans “know” to be true have their roots in the WEG game. Of the seven official SD and SSD types featured in WEG material, only the two smallest (Victory I/II) are… Read more »
Oh, no doubt the game has been very influential in general terms, sometimes to my great dismay 🙂 But in terms of generalist vs specialized ships, I don’t think so. The game laid out some extra ship classes because there weren’t enough in the movies to support very much of an RPG universe, but a lot about specialized vs generalized usage was added later. The VSD series were just baby ISDs, almost literally in some depictions. And on the face of it, they have almost exactly the troop and fighter complements you’d expect from an uncritical reading of the initial… Read more »
Going by their own descriptions, though, the VSDs were specialized to a degree, with the Victory I leaning more toward planetary bombardment and assault, and the Victory II being more a space combat counterpart to it. The main distinction is the II trading in the I’s concussion missiles for ion cannon, as well as having a somewhat more modern energy weapons loadout. I left out the Venator because RotS was released 12 years after WEG’s Dark Empire Sourcebook, as that gap left a big window of time for WEG-centric views of the SWU to establish (metastasize?) themselves. There was a… Read more »
Setting aside whether WEG’s stats would make any sense outside game-mechanic convenience (I err toward ‘nope’), I’ve tripped over two threads (on FFG & SDN respectively) & a Wookie page which quote Eclipse as packing 500 TLs, 550 heavy lasers & 75 ions of unspecified scale. Even compared to the ‘8-klick fallacy’ weapon stats for Executor (1000 turbos/ions/launchers), that doesn’t strike me as a conventional weapon count even vaguely commensurate with the thing’s surface area. Feel free to thwack me if none of this introduced anything new, of course.
Not much here I can disagree with, and I’m the last person to defend WEG game stats as some paragon of infallibility. The /really/ amusing thing about those stats is that the Heavy Lasers are the anti-capital ship weapons, while the Turbolasers are the anti-starfighter weapons; errors like this are not uncommon in the game stats. However, the deeper argument is that the further removed a game stat gets from the smaller-scale forms of combat or pursuit (starfighters and light freighters, pretty much), the less important accurate stats become as a practical matter. The reason for that is, past roughly… Read more »
Did the WEG writers ever even see ANH? I distinctly remember some Imperial gunnery crew complain that the Alliance snubfighters were too small to be effectively targeted by the Death Star’s turbolasers.
From a pure RPG standpoint, it probably doesn’t matter if something like an Allegiance or Eclipse isn’t properly statted, but they damn well should have put some thought into the capital ships before turning the books over to Tim Zahn and telling him to use them as reference.
It’s a complicated question. Certainly, the WEG writers had to have seen Star Wars, but their interpretation of Star Wars did not stand the test of time. The biggest collective error I can see is that WEG kept making changes to their rules over time without fully analyzing the ways in which those changes had unintended consequences for other aspects of the game. The basis is there for a good, coherent gaming system and universe, but it needs a lot more playtesting to iron out the wrinkles. The Death Star battle is a case in point; to make it work,… Read more »
I’m glad that Zahn didn’t take all the gun counts at face value, but the legacy of WEG on the Thrawn books is one of relentless minimalism based on the fluff. We got a universe where 200 medium frigates is a game changer, major fleets have a handful of line destroyers, and the industrial base that put together two death stars seems to have evaporated overnight. That’s the disappointment.
I’d argue that Zahn’s minimalist approach actually fit with the scale of the universe as it was accepted at that time. By that measure, those frigates were actually heavy cruisers, and ships larger than ISDs were few and far between. It wasn’t until the prequels started introducing larger and larger ships, and Fractal started fleshing out some of the doodles that passed for ships in the various Dark Horse comics releases that the scale started to go up. This ties in, IMO, with one of the main things WEG got right, and that is the focus on the efforts of… Read more »
Eh, I’d argue that the mere existence of Executor & especially both Death Stars (much less DS2 being a secret project) not-so-subtly hints at a vaster scale than the sorts who insisted on ten-Impstar fleets guarding Coruscant or Kuat wanted to acknowledge. Plus, niche as it might be Curt Saxton’s documentation of stuff from Dark Horse & Marvel material predated the prequels by at least a few years. I get the whole ‘players gotta feel relevant’ thing, but am still not sold on having this ‘verse’s, well, verisimilitude dictated *entirely* by script-handy golden-BB events. Can’t help thinking some sort of… Read more »
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but considering that Lucasfilm at that time had the final say as to what was “official” Star Wars, and that it was Lucasfilm referencing WEG material (and ultimately sending WEG books for reference) when talking to Zahn, it wasn’t like he had a lot of choice. WEG had, with Lucasfilm’s blessing, established a minimalist pattern which Lucasfilm themselves perpetuated by forwarding it to Zahn, who in turn set the standard for all of the EU before the prequels. An author writing in someone else’s IP universe has to walk a fine line, and Zahn did… Read more »
I can understand Zahn rolling with the framework given him & keeping main-character challenges at a manageable scale, though the more I mull this over…hell, I’m just not sure the two paradigms necessarily had to clash in the first place. If anything, a maximalized galactic stage as backdrop seems good for accentuating character heroics by driving home just what’s been foiled/circumvented/averted through grit, courage, camaraderie & cunning (unless, of course, one cheeses out with force storm-tier powers). Plus, as you note with WEG’s original ‘leave fighting fleets to fleets, genius’ policy, cinematic central cast-size groups get ample mileage out of… Read more »
The most plausible explanation I’ve heard for Starkiller Base is that it was originally built by one of the SWU’s ancient races (the Rakata are a good candidate) who subsequently abandoned it for unknown reasons. Then, thousands of years later, the First Order discovered it out in the Unknown Regions, figured out how it functioned, then built their own facilities around and on top of the original works. Hux’s bloviating about “you built this” would’ve just been hyperbole and propaganda.
Ah, so like a less-hollow, nowhere-near-Corellia Centerpoint Station. I also dig the meta WRT First Order ‘breakthroughs’ mainly being coattail-riding + spittle-spraying bullroar. Makes sense for a rehash regime whose boss uncannily resembles a defective Palpaclone(R) himself.
And that’s as good an explanation for Snoke as I’ve heard so far, too.
No, the scale that Zahn’s stuff ignored wasn’t set by me. That scale was set by the production of several hundred thousand ISD equivalents twice over 3 years embodied by both death stars in highest and earliest SW canon. It’s a low bar to expect some consistency with the setting as it was originally laid out, and not expecting fortune-telling on the part of the worldbuilder.
P.S. I like Zahn’s stuff story wise, but the minimalism is AWFUL.
The official explanation at the time was that the Death Stars were of unprecedented scale, and only the direct command of the Emperor was able to gather that much time and effort and material into a single project. Realistic? Probably not, but it did fit with the minimalist official approach at the time. I think you’re right insofar as Star Wars viewed realistically, but is Star Wars supposed to be realistic? My understanding was always that it was more space opera than hard sci-fi Personally, I was willing to write off most of the stuff on the Saxton compilation as… Read more »
Sure, the Death Stars are marvels of mega-engineering instituted from the top, and not something your typical Post-Endor Moff could put together, but they’re still THE benchmark of the galactic industrial base. Besides, they were built in almost complete secrecy, which suggests that they were a small fraction of total Imperial production capacity rather than something that every workshop and factory was mobilized for.
Right, the ‘why are you stopping to count all this, just RUN’ approach makes sense for player groups tooling around in Falcon or Lambda equivalents. It’s when peeps try to patch the fluff attached to said context into broader theories & trends WRT capital-scale combat, some of which seem to *contradict* its original intent (hello, Trench Run Disease) that the migraines & 80-page debate threads set in. Which is why I’ll confess to finding our host’s ‘pull back & look at the design sans game-balance lenses’ approach immensely refreshing. Anyhow, having squinted at Eclipse I & II’s lack of fleet-slaughtering… Read more »
Based on film evidence, the same could be said about the Executor. We never really get to see exactly what it could do in a gun duel against another capital ship. Mostly what it does is hover nearby looking ominous.
Ah, the annoyances of plot shielding, rules of engagement dictated by same & only tertiary characters helming SW heavies ’cause nobody wants to let go of the snubs or Falcon (well, besides Vader, but he’s more of a roving trouble-choker). Suppose I’m just nursing dead-horse annoyance with the way peeps have regurgitated the Fifteen-Panel Palpywagon’s hype every other time any given sci-fi page rolls around to SW capitals.
Great background, sounds very plausible. Bit of a mistake at the beginning though, imo: you say the Victory could go toe to toe with the Lucrehulk – did you mean 1 on 1? If so, this is underestimating the LH. Based on the size of all its reactors, its listed shield strength and its weapons, its power output is almost certainly around 7.7e25w – making it 8 times more powerful than an ISD-II (while 22 times bigger, it has a much lower overall:reactor volume ratio because it’s a carrier and its ‘mandibles’ are enormous, with none of that space dedicated… Read more »
Fair assessment WRT cruiser-refitted Lucrehulks being more than a single Vic (or even a Vic+-Venator 2-ship) should be expected to slug it out with, though I suspect a deftly-helmed Allegiance could just about solo one depending on who gets off the first telling volley.
Lucrehulks have sizable reactors, but commercial power plants optimized for cost-efficiency and long-haul reliability probably don’t stack up to military reactors designed for maximum surge output. Lucrehulks are also incredibly unmanueverable, and while an Allegiance can’t dance like a Victory, it sure as hell would be able to evade much more return fire than the Lucrehulk. To make things even more lopsided, the Lucrehulk’s firing arcs are pretty awful, while an Allegiance would be able to pound it with its full armament, making this not really a contest. A single well-handled Imperator might even be able to take on a… Read more »
ISD version 2.0. Once presented next to each other this really looks like Allegiance class should be renamed ISD II. I never understood the lack of fighters on Allegiance. This is a huge ship, 2.2 km, it is unfathomable that they couldn’t squeeze in at least the same amount of fighters as ISD has. I get why lore-wise such decision was made but it seems not to make much sense.
Venators and ISDs are both middle-of-the road ships that are part battleship, part carrier.
The Venator steers more towards the carrier side, the ISD more towards the battleship side.
A dedicated carrier will always be more effective in that role than one that sacrifices hangar space for more firepower. A dedicated battleship will always be more effective in that role than one that sacrifices firepower for hangar space.
Take a Venator’s carrier side to the extreme and you get the Secutor.
Take the ISD’s battleship side to the extreme and you get the Allegiance.
Also Zarrov and gejemica you might wanna look at my post above your one with the headcanon idea for the Alliegiance.
Imperial combat doctrine (stemmed from Tarkin Doctrine) never paid much attention to the effectiveness of starfighter combat, as to them, the fighters isn’t the thing that win battles and conquer/hold systems, but rather the warships is the one with such a responsibility. Not to mention this ship is just full of anti-air batteries, additional hangar space is just a waste of interior that could be used for other things.
I think the allegiance actually has a small launch bay where the secondary shuttle bay would be on a standard ISD (which make sense really, there has to be a way for the crew to get in and out). No idea if it can accommodate fighters though…
It probably could fit a few fighters, just like you could potentially fit an AV-8B Harrier II in the hangar bay of a Burke destroyer IRL, but they don’t do that because fighter coverage for the fleet is better served by specialist vessels.
As 3D artist myself, I’ve never been able to get the sort of blue-gray material with the hull plates. Is it a bit too silly to ask for a hex value? 😛 I’ve gone all over google for hull plating textures etc, I’ve got a python script to generator plates and greebles, but where do you get these images from? Would you share them?
It’s not just the hex value – it’s more the lighting and color correction that happens afterwards. Won’t look the same depending on those settings. My stuff is procedural except for a few mild bitmaps.
Nice, procedural stuff is the best. What sort of lighting do you use? Is it custom setups or do you use HDRIs?
I just use direct spotlights or very small area lights for relatively sharp shadows. I occasionally will use HDRI lighting for smaller ships, or if I desperately want specific kinds of reflections. On a big ship I’ve found it doesn’t matter too much. I guess if you wanted a “photoreal” light setup like as if it was a physical model, HDRI lighting would be the way to go.
Ahh I see, Do you use Blender to make these?
3dsmax
Nice another redux done. There are 2 things I want to ask you about Fractal.
1. What the polygon count on this redux?
2. Will the Procursator get a redux as well?
id love to see you do the Titan class Stealth Dreadnought.
Stunningly good! There’s definately a brutal power to her clean lines!
That is incredible. My god.
Question. I know anything to do with the Sequel Trilogy is sorta a source of much controversy, but is there any chance we’ll eventually see ships from those movies depicted by you? Say the Resurgent class or something?
This thing has made it to 5+ EAW mods of varying caliber, and it’s laughably under-gunned in every single one of them.
Based on sheer volume it would be about 2 and a half times as powerful as an ISD, but the reactor is proportionally much bigger so who knows.
The important factor is that it looks pretty.
Reactor volume is all that counts, and that’s 6x. The rest of the hull is proportionately stripped away. High power to weight, low overall size to make it a smaller and better shielded target.
Look. At. That. Butt.
Yeah, she’s thick in all the places.
I’d say all except the EAW Remake-Light
That one it has 12 octuple barbette turbolasers, like 40-60 missile launchers as well as at least 20-50 minimum other light laser cannons, point defense or light turbolaser batteries.
SECONDED on the EAW Remake-Light version of the mod. Holy hell. That thing is a straight up beast. I’m late game right now, swapping ISD-II’s with them. Those missiles are definitely powerful.
Yeah easily one of the most cost effective and powerful ships in the mod and just a powerful ship in general.
And yeah it’s heavy missiles are no joke, still not as powerful as the super heavy ones the Kandosii has though.