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UmbraCursor
UmbraCursor
5 years ago

It brings joy to this old Star Wars fan heart whenever I see any of your wonderful works.

Ryadra777
5 years ago

So Fractal since you said this new Bellator have a reactor of 40-50+ ISDs (4-5e26W+) (100-125 Petatons) it made me wonder what the reactor of the Praetor?

Ryadra777
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

I didn’t say the Preator was change I just want to know what the Praetor’s reactor is so that I can know if the New Bellator’s reactor is either now more powerful or still weaker than the Praetor’s reactor.

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago
Reply to  Ryadra777

I’m pretty sure this update doesn’t grant the Bellator much more of an edge than it already might’ve had against a Praetor. The two seem evenly matched enough (better thrust/handling vs. more protection?) for skill & luck to be more decisive than anything.

EDIT: Checked the first WIP, and talk about open-mouth-insert-foot; over half again the original output is certainly a noticeable difference. Still doesn’t strike me as an impossible gap for the aforementioned intangibles to bridge.

TheEpicDude
TheEpicDude
5 years ago

i must say “most inexpressive” and “your lack of a job at Lucasfilm is disturbing”

Mason
Mason
5 years ago

love the Bellator. but the Secutor is my favorite one. also, is there a place i can see what your going to make next or do you just go with the flow?

Sephiroth0812
Sephiroth0812
5 years ago

Speaking of armament layout and possible other stats, is there a sort of framework how to estimate what a hull of certain size can accommodate? Can a stronger reactor compensate for a lesser number of individual turrets and/or cannons?
I recently had to come up with stats for a fanon Star Dreadnought of the Republic for a roleplay, using the Veragitor-class made by Jeroenimo as a visual base.
The values I came up with are as thus:
Stats:
Ship Type: Star Dreadnought
Length: 8500 meters
Width: 2000 meters
Height: 780 meters
Crew: 65000 personnel
Troops: 12000 Soldiers
Cargo Capacity: 72000 tons
Supply Stock: 5 years
Complement: 840 Starfighters/bombers
Armament:
28 Heavy Twin Turbolaser Turrets
8 Heavy Quad Ion Cannon Turrets
240 Medium Twin Turbolaser Turrets
8 Concussion Missile Launchers
4 Heavy Mass Driver Cannons
120 Multi Purpose Twin Laser Cannons
16 Tractor Beam Projectors

Yet I’ve no idea if those make the ship under- or overpowered or if they’re sufficient for a ship of those supposed measures.

ferunii
ferunii
5 years ago
Reply to  Sephiroth0812

imo its lacking alot since is 8.5km

Revan
Revan
5 years ago
Reply to  Sephiroth0812

That’s way too underpowered IMO, take three ISD II and they have more firepower, I’d even say two ISD II have more. But in saying that, the ISD II is Increadibly OP for its size.

Sephiroth0812
Sephiroth0812
5 years ago
Reply to  Revan

Figured something along those lines. I guess these values are more in line with a ship around 2.500 meters in length rather than a 8500 meter one. Perhaps I should use the Legator as a reference for the overall armament numbers?

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago

Sweet sithspit is that dorsal superstructure shaping up neatly. Any plans to tweak the squared-off/trapezoid-capped portion near its bow?

Spaceman 28
Spaceman 28
5 years ago

What are the outputs on the new-looking two barrel Turbolasers?

countvertex
5 years ago

This looks very promising! As always I’m amazed about the quality of detail and the time these projects are finished – would take me years and wouldn’t look half as good. Still I managed to finalize something recently and once the Bellator is finished (and you should get bored) consider the following ship to be on my wishlist: https://countvertex.tumblr.com/

STONEhenk
STONEhenk
5 years ago
Reply to  countvertex

Nice. But this ship is even easier for a A-wing to crash into.

PhantomFury
PhantomFury
5 years ago
Reply to  countvertex

Huh, never thought of Carrack having that big of a viewport…but considering the scale, I guess it truly is massive.

Chris Bradshaw
Chris Bradshaw
5 years ago
Reply to  PhantomFury

Viewports have been getting bigger as a trend. Just look at how absurdly large the windows are on the Type 45 destroyers and Queen Elizabeth class carriers. That being said, didn’t Fractal already do a conceptual redesign of the Carrack role into the Velox?

CRMcNeill
CRMcNeill
5 years ago
Reply to  Chris Bradshaw

The Velox doesn’t preclude the existence of the Carrack. The original source for the Carrack also mentions a recon modified light cruiser, which could just be a modified Carrack, or something like the Velox. In fact, both could exist, with the Velox being a replacement / upgrade for the aging Recon Carrack.

Revan
Revan
5 years ago
Reply to  Chris Bradshaw

The Type 45 is still the best guided missile destroyer in the world though, by far.

Steve Bannon
Steve Bannon
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

Sure, the Darings are fine AAW ships, but I imagine that the South Koreans are laughing at them for only having 48 VLS cells compared to the Sejong’s 128.

Steve Bannon
Steve Bannon
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

Yeah, the west really dropped the ball on replacing Harpoon, which was okay in the 80s… maybe. LSRAM should be pretty nifty whenever that comes around, but the Russians have BrahMos today. While it probably wouldn’t be that politically feasible, I kinda wish that NATO fleets would look towards procuring Hsiung Feng 3 in the meanwhile, which seems to be the best ASM built by the free world.

Since the Koreans don’t have that many hulls and a lot of missions to potentially conduct, it makes more sense for them to make the tradeoff for a hefty missile load, although I understand why other navies don’t do that. The trend altogether is still for bigger destroyers, as the PLAN type 055 starts showing up in numbers. ( the debate as to whether it’s a destroyer or a cruiser reminds me of Anaxes system debates here )

Precision ammo stocks for a prolonged high end war is definitely one of NATO’s biggest weaknesses, with an embarrassing deficit after Libya. That being said, if you’re sharing VLS cells with ASROC, ESSM, and Tomahawk, the US should still have enough missiles for a couple of South China Seas sorties.

CRMcNeill
CRMcNeill
5 years ago
Reply to  countvertex

This would seem to run counter to the Carrack’s design principle of toughness by compartmentalization. I always figured that the cockpit canopy-looking front end was composed of flat-plate sensor arrays and/or shield projectors

Admiral Namus
5 years ago

Amazing as always! Is it new that there is a gravity wall generator dome on the ship or was it already planned?

TheEpicDude
TheEpicDude
5 years ago

going to be a amazing ship

SEETHER
SEETHER
5 years ago

Something occurred to me. You have produced a number of these models with the engines under power. what we have zero models doing…. firing weapons. How cool would that be to see these big behemoths firing main weapons… and firing broadside weapons… and defending against fighters with AA firing away making a cloud of bolts…

PhantomFury
PhantomFury
5 years ago
Reply to  SEETHER

I dunno, I’d just find that distracting in a still image, like look at the Lucasarts commissioned pic of an Assertor-class doing BDZ, it just have a rain of bolts that is a bit visually messy (as cool as it was). Now if it’s a video, that could be interesting.

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago
Reply to  PhantomFury

I find myself dunno-ing your dunno: time it just right, and a Bellator pic lit up by the fiendish emerald backwash of a simultaneous half-broadside could be a real keeper. ‘Course, replicating the tracers from all those barrels seems like quite the rate-hike-worthy chore, much less *animating* said conflagration.

gejemica
gejemica
5 years ago
Reply to  SEETHER

Not his biggest model, admittedly…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tauELa7xpWw

Steve
Steve
5 years ago
Reply to  gejemica

this is awesome 😀 But..the point defences on the entirity of that Procursator class ship are probably just what’s dotted along the superstructure that we’re seeing here on the Bellator :p She’s gonna have LOT of guns :p It would be a horror to fly though!

TheIcthala
TheIcthala
5 years ago

Turret count so far, for those who are interested:

PD turrets: 170
Quad Medium Turbolaser turrets: 74
Octuple Heavy Turbolaser barbettes: 8
Twin Ultraheavy (I’m no good at estimating muzzle energy) turrets: 5 (or 7, depending on whether or not those ones on the edge of shot in bellator19 are Twin Ultraheavies)

TheEpicDude
TheEpicDude
5 years ago
Reply to  TheIcthala

thanks!!

PhantomFury
PhantomFury
5 years ago

I really want to see the process that goes into modelling all this! Can we get a timelapse of a scratch build one day?

Ryadra777
5 years ago

Nice a gravity well generator and judging from it’s size it is Immobilizer sized.
So how many more gravity wells are there going to be Fractal?

Steve
Steve
5 years ago
Reply to  Ryadra777

We dunno if that is a Grav generator, but it would make sense, the Bellator’s got all that extra power and a higher tactical and strategic speed thanks to its dual reactor setup, so it would make sense that a gravity well generator or two would be fitted to stop someone from doing a runner when you jump into the system

Steve Bannon
Steve Bannon
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

While I’m not against having a grav-well projector on this Bellator II, there has to be a decent reason that they’re not installed on every ship larger than a line destroyer. Personally, I like the explanation that their activation interferes with the sensor suite or tensor fields of the ship using them, which makes projectors much more suited for a lightly armed 2nd-line specialist vessel than a battlewagon that would need to make compromises in precision gunnery at range or survivability while using the projectors.

Under that theory, perhaps the Executor was equipped with grav-well projectors, and its usage of them to keep the Rebels from going into hyperspace at Endor had a negative effect on its own combat performance.

CRMcNeill
CRMcNeill
5 years ago
Reply to  Steve Bannon

WEG introduced something like that in their backstory of the Battle of Endor, but did it with a taskforce of Immobilizers in the system outskirts. Having a multi-layered blockade, with the first layer being projected by a ship of sufficient size that gravity well projectors would be vanishingly small, makes sense as well.

CRMcNeill
CRMcNeill
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

The concept behind the Hapan Pulse-Mines isn’t particularly clear in how it’s used in-universe. The idea as described simply creates a “pebble” field in hyperspace that damages ships that pass through it, sort of like a bird-strike for aircraft, but in hyperspace. It doesn’t prevent from jumping to hyperspace, but will shred any ship that jumps into hyperspace in the field or that passes through the field while in hyperspace. The authors who used the tech in-universe apparently did really grok the tech and just assumed it was another kind of gravity well projector.

Steve Bannon
Steve Bannon
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

I think Daib mentioned this in the other thread, but Republic Sienar Systems was launching Interdictors hundreds of years ago, which makes the tech fairly mature, while certainly not being something that Sienar would be likely to forget.

Another thing I want to reiterate is a possible reason why all those Clone Wars era heavies in Imperial service didn’t have projectors. The key question is why the Dominator’s frigate sized projector globes even exist, rather than just having the smaller, seemingly more efficient 418 style globes on the ISD hull. With the extra volume, cost, and energy put into the much larger globes, they must be correspondingly more effective in terms of either interdiction range, and/or the ability to snare larger and more energetic targets.

The late Republic heavies that formed the core of the early Imperial starfleet were all designed to engage peer targets like Providences, Lucrehulks, and Subjugators, with much more powerful hyperdrives than most of the stuff the Alliance is fielding. Having a few small globes on a Praetor just wouldn’t do much to stop a CIS battle line from running, so they weren’t included in the design. When the Alliance shows up, the 418 became a viable option, as the majority of outer rim raids are being conducted by dinky little fighters, light freighters, and corvettes. Against something like an MC80, I strongly suspect that the 418 would be virtually powerless to do anything about it, which leads to larger and larger interdictors.

Steve Bannon
Steve Bannon
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

I was under the impression that the KOTOR era Interdictor was a Republic design, built en masse over Corellia and then later duplicated by the Sith after the first vessel defected. Perhaps the Republic decided to abandon a prototype design that became so associated with the enemy, and instead produce cheaper, tried-and true craft instead in the following war.

It does some like the technology should be ubiquitous, and it almost seems necessary for fortress worlds to exist. How can anyone expect to reasonably defend a planet when attacking fleets can emerge with complete impunity only a few hundred kilometers from the surface, rather than being dragged out of hyperspace on the system periphery and be forced to fight their way in, past all the fixed defenses? Heck, without defensive gravity well projectors, the threat of astro-terrorism seems almost impossible to effectively counter if you don’t want to keep the planetary shields constantly raised. Perhaps the 418 was revolutionary because it managed to miniaturize the technology into something small enough to put on a frigate, whereas the prior generation of projectors had to be mounted on cruiser sized stations or Star Dreadnoughts?

CRMcNeill
CRMcNeill
5 years ago
Reply to  Steve Bannon

Considering how sparse information is on exactly what the KOTOR-era Interdictor does, I’d be tempted to say that it simply generates a gravity well centered on itself, and that the later technological breakthrough with the Immobilizer’s gravity wells was the ability to project the gravity wells at some distance away from itself.

Chris Bradshaw
Chris Bradshaw
5 years ago
Reply to  CRMcNeill

Even that limited ability to generate a gravity well on yourself seems pretty damn effective in the context of the prequel trilogy. Had the Trade Federation Lucrehulks over Naboo or Republic forces at 2nd Coruscant possessed that sort of hardware, we wouldn’t have had a plot.

CRMcNeill
CRMcNeill
5 years ago
Reply to  Chris Bradshaw

Maybe they /did/ have it. It might explain the dramatic running-the-gauntlet scene, as opposed to just jumping to hyperspace from low orbit. Under the old canon, ships had to get a certain distance away from a planet before they could safely jump to hyperspace, but Disney seems to have thrown that out along with everything else.

PhantomFury
PhantomFury
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

I think I have read it from somewhere that the KOTOR era projectors were more in line with the tractor beam technology and used like a dragnet of sorts to snag things into realspace. But as hyperdrive technology improved, the method was no longer viable until the Immobilizer came along.

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago
Reply to  Steve Bannon

My problem with relegating grav-wells to light specialists: unless you’re churning ’em out at something approaching ‘stereotypical TIE doctrine’ levels, what’s stopping anything Acclamator-tier or punchier from murdering them to enable its task force’s escape (well, besides attrition, but imagine the morale nosedive for 418 crews once their expendability sinks in)? I suppose there’s careful placement & escorts, but there’s only so much either (‘specially the former) does without compromising the dragships’ job (much less the odd Legends commander strategizing to *exploit* enemy 418 use). If nothing else, a Mandator-weight heavy could rig 418-scale projectors on an expendable bow or fantail extrusion (cable-towed/tractored platform? Antenna?) and *still* retain a ludicrous survivability edge on anything but a sector group’s tonnage in Immobilizers. Offhand, the ‘recently refined tech’ & ‘scale escalation to trap heavier ships’ angles make rather more sense to me.

Chris Bradshaw
Chris Bradshaw
5 years ago
Reply to  gorkmalork

Well that’s the point of the Dominator, eh? While the 418 is more than enough to trap fighters, dinky freighters, and CR90s in the rim, the survivability and redundancy of an Imperator chassis really helps against actual warships. I suspect there are larger still interdictors on cruiser hulls, but until Fractal gives that a go and Disney blatantly steals it, that will have to to remain speculation.

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago
Reply to  Chris Bradshaw

*braces self to squint balefully next time a Disnarvel artist plays file-the-serial-numbers*
Quite right WRT Dominator, whose individual projectors might outbulk the 418; between that design & Eclipse I, I’m pretty sure Imp (remnant) design teams would’ve amassed enough combat data to notice if that tensor/sensor-degradation theory upthread applied.

CRMcNeill
CRMcNeill
5 years ago
Reply to  gorkmalork

In the context in which it was introduced, the Immobilizer was a heavy cruiser equivalent, and it had point defenses roughly equal to a Lancer. On top of that, the gravity well projectors were extreme stand-off weapons, and if you go by the Thrawn trilogy, hyperspace route calculations weren’t accurate enough to drop ships out of hyperspace right on top of another ship. So, ships like Immobilizers could sit around the perimeter of the battle zone well out of range of enemy weaponry, then drop the gravity wells and jump to hyperspace if seriously threatened.

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago
Reply to  CRMcNeill

Yeah, I recall a couple X-wing books where 1-2 squads with proton torps could threaten a 418 but generally not beat down its shields fast enough to stop a sharp retreat. If anything Disneyboot media’s buffed their ship-to-ship punch (one finishes off a Nebulon-B in ‘Rebels’) but rendered the things ludicrously sabotage-able (granted, Acts of Force/main character). As for standoff capability with the grav-wells, I suppose that keeps Immobilizers economical for convoy-raider-trap duties; it’s just harder to buy OT-and-after-era grav wells as actively detrimental to their parent vessel’s systems/integrity (outside sabotage or crew SNAFU, anyhow).

CRMcNeill
CRMcNeill
5 years ago
Reply to  gorkmalork

That must be a Disneyboot invention, as there is no mention in the WEG rules of a gravity well projector in normal operation being detrimental to ship systems apart from general power drain when the thing was active. The closest it gets is a rule in which the projector will burn out if it is powered up too fast.

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago
Reply to  CRMcNeill

Apologies for the confusion; that ship-systems-detriment factor was actually a theory posited by Steve earlier as one explanation for grav-well dome scarcity. I recall one of Rebels’ sabotaged 418s basically reeling in an Arquitens corvette tractor-beam style for a fatal collision, and ships that attempt jumps within a working Disneyboot interdiction field seem to get ‘pulled’ out of hyperspace within 2-3 ship lengths (and jolted sideways to boot).

CRMcNeill
CRMcNeill
5 years ago
Reply to  gorkmalork

I pulled that scene up on YouTube and ended up rolling my eyes hard enough to get whiplash. That’s not how this works; that’s not how ANY of this works! Interdictors as intended just trick ships into dropping themselves out of hyperspace by spoofing the automated safety systems into thinking the ship is about to run into a stellar object. And what’s the point of repulsorlift if a ship can’t use it to resist the pull of gravity?

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago
Reply to  CRMcNeill

I suppose a panicking crew at point-blank range *might* not get the time to think of repulsor use in such an odd situation…but srsly, stuff like this is why I take recent non-film anecdotes with a mountain of salt.

Chris Bradshaw
Chris Bradshaw
5 years ago
Reply to  CRMcNeill

I never really liked the “spoofing the safety system with a fake threat” explanation for a gravity well projector. That seems like a trick that would only work a handful of times before everyone caught on and installed a manual bypass override for the safety systems. There has to be some actual physical impediment to activating a hyperdrive, and possibly a way for a sufficiently energetic hyperdrive to brute-force past it, or we might end up with edge cases of a frigate-scale interdictor preventing a Death Star from jumping.

CRMcNeill
CRMcNeill
5 years ago
Reply to  Chris Bradshaw

Like it or not, this is how gravity well generators are supposed to function, per the source material. The entire system is contingent on several basic principles of hyperspace and hyperdrive operation per the WEG write-ups.

The manual bypass trick is mentioned (and is likely what Cassian Andor used to get the U-Wing off of Jeddha), but the risk of a blind collision (and resulting complete annihilation of the ship) is considered so great that it’s only attempted in the direst of emergencies (as in, we’re going to die anyway, so let’s just try it).

And there isn’t really a need for a brute-force approach; an Interdictor would have to be generating black hole-level gravity fields to physically restrain even the lightest starships, assuming hyperdrives didn’t figuratively burst out laughing at the attempt.

While your Death Star scenario is possible, that doesn’t make it probable. The rarity of both Death Stars and non-Imperial Interdictors makes it highly unlikely, and considering the sheer amount of firepower a Death Star brings to the table (and the arrogance of its command team), it’s not likely something they worry about overmuch.

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago
Reply to  Chris Bradshaw

I could see the ‘spoof ’em outta lightspeed’ factor being handy to kick off an engagement on the grav-well users’ terms; heavier ships might be able to plot a manual escape, but that’s dependent on crew skill/Force-wielder presence & the ability to at least briefly withstand whatever trapping force the interdictor’s supporting.

Chris Bradshaw
Chris Bradshaw
5 years ago
Reply to  gorkmalork

Within the concept of operations of dragging unsuspecting vessels out of hyperspace, sure, the spoofing idea works. However, once you’ve got them into realspace, it seems like you’ve only got a tiny window of time to exploit your ambush with ion fire and tractor beams before they recharge their hyperdrive, disable their safety locks, and make a short distance microjump away before re-enabling their safety features and proceeding to their original destination. However, that doesn’t really correspond with every interdictor ambush we’ve seen in the EU, where the rebels are forced to try high-risk shenanigans with torpedoes or just attacking the interdictor in order to get away. Something’s got to give, and I think the whole spoofing concept is weaker.

I don’t like the idea that an interdictor is projecting singularity-scale gravity wells to physically restrain a ship either, but given how absurd the whole physics behind hyperdrive are in the first place, I would accept a vaguely technobabbly proposal as to how the interdictor uses ( insert particle x here) to generate fields that prevent the hyperdrive from accumulating sufficient (insert particle y here) for lightspeed. Besides, there has to be some reason by some projectors are much larger than others, or otherwise everyone would use the 418 scale globes.

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago
Reply to  Chris Bradshaw

I suppose bigger generators might enable greater range, or some wacky mix of spoofing targets from lightspeed *then* disrupting their drives. A 418’s usual prey (snubs, light freighters, corvettes, etc.) might not get enough time to arrange manual escape jumps before they’re gobbled up by its frigate/destroyer entourage. But srsly, your guesses are materially better than mine.

CRMcNeill
CRMcNeill
5 years ago
Reply to  Chris Bradshaw

And considering how much of the old EU Disney has thrown out, that might’ve been a better option. Unfortunately, they decided to keep “gravity well projectors”, whose function is predicated on certain assumptions about the nature of hyperspace and hyperdrives. The hyperspace pulse-mass emitter might’ve been a useful alternative, as it very nearly parallels what you suggest by creating a “virtual physical obstacle” in hyperspace. However, as written, rather than keeping ships out of hyperspace, a pulse-mass field just shredded ships attempting to pass through it in hyperspace.

And that narrow window wasn’t as narrow as you’d think; with four gravity well projectors, a well-handled Interdictor could steer gravity wells onto a fleeing ship to keep it pinned in place for some time, and had more than enough range to do so

I think it’s also noteworthy that “high-risk shenanigans” only really came into play (the only example that comes to mind, at least) is when a single X-Wing was ambushed by an Interdictor and an elite-level Imperator II-Class under the command of Thrawn. Not exactly a run-of-the-mill opponent. Most other in-universe uses of the Interdictor were more conventional, which was kind of the original intent, as an Interdictor is a great way to introduce a “random encounter” in space for a paper-and-dice game.

Oddly enough, it was Zahn who fleshed out a lot of the details on gravity wells. Apart from a paragraph or two of fluff in the description for the Interdictor, the practical application of gravity well projectors in-game was pretty bare-bones. In the 1E version of the WEG rules, a Gravity Well was a point-effect weapon, had to be fired every round to maintain the effect, and on a successful hit, the targeted vessel couldn’t jump to hyperspace. That’s it. The 2E version added the stand-off range (double the effective range of cap-ship turbolasers) and nothing else. The later 2R&E rules (in WEG’s Wanted by Cracken book) were developed from what Zahn had done with the Interdictor in Heir to the Empire.

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago
Reply to  CRMcNeill

If nothing else, this discussion is a treasure trove of interesting early lore (now I’m visualizing a customs corvette-scale micro-interdictor which operates under 1E regs)-and a real eye opener WRT the lethal potential of those Hapan mines. Don’t suppose you recall whether shields mitigated pulse-mass field damage at all?

CRMcNeill
CRMcNeill
5 years ago
Reply to  gorkmalork

WEG never clarified, and were actually (as is typical) pretty contradictory. The Pulse-Mass Emitter was introduced in the Imperial Sourcebook in a chapter describing various experimental weapon systems, and the only game stats (as a weapon system for the Hapan Battle Dragon) basically treats it like a gravity well projector (just blocks hyperspace travel). Various fan-made versions that inflict damage are drifting around, usually included in Immobilizer variants with Pulse-Mass Emitters replacing the Gravity Well Projectors. General consensus among fans is that shields would be effective, but that’s more of a default position than because there’s any evidence one way or the other.

Your other idea is theoretically possible, assuming there aren’t miniaturization barriers to gravity well projectors. However, the gravity well projectors on the Immobilizer are something of a cadillac-package; they’ve got extreme stand-off range, can be aimed in any direction, and a single projector can mimic the gravity signature of an Earth-type planet. A customs corvette platform could conceivably be fitted with a much reduced projector with, say, shorter range, much more limited fire arc and much smaller gravity well equivalent size (like a large asteroid instead of a planet).

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago
Reply to  CRMcNeill

Ah, so whether or not pulse-mass fields are an active threat or spammable grav-well platform substitute is somewhat up for grabs. Given the BD-launched variant’s scale, I’d handwave a single ‘damages inbounds’ mine as roughly medium-frigate-hurting yield; even if they’re charged by the parent vessel’s capacitors or something, Battle Dragons are both lower-volume & rather less specialized than 418s. No idea what their effective range would be, but ‘much less than an Immobilizer’ seems like a safe guess.

As for hypothetical pocket interdictors, I was definitely angling for something a pirate group, syndicate hit squad or low-budget planetary network might keep around to hassle Plucky Main Characters’ light freighters. As you’ve noted, 418s are rather tough to give the slip unless directly threatened or contending with post-ROTJ Luke.

CRMcNeill
CRMcNeill
5 years ago
Reply to  gorkmalork

I’d err toward them being an active threat. WEG’s quality and continuity control always had issues, but it got worse toward the end, and the book in question is one of the casualties. As far as the Battle Dragons, it’s specifically stated that they deployed pulse-mass mines, which I presume are immobile pulse-mass field emitters operating under their own power.

And I should also note that the one real counter to a 418 in a gaming scenario is to simply run from it, as running the gravity well projectors has a significant impact on the ship’s speed and maneuverability. Where 418’s are at their most formidable is when working in concert with something that has the speed and firepower to capture / destroy a fleeing ship. So your pocket Interdictor would work best as part of a pirate fleet, with other ships to do the actual capturing.

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago
Reply to  CRMcNeill

Swinging back to the grav wells’ effect on speed/handling, does this strike anyone as an innate effect of their operation, or ‘simply’ the matter of 418s not packing quite enough reactor to run standard systems *plus* the projectors at full, and opting to compromise thrust instead of shields? And given the relative scale of its domes (even with Impstar-grade power generation), seems like Dominator might run into the same issue (though it could certainly settle for ‘only’ several times an Immobilizer’s output).

CRMcNeill
CRMcNeill
5 years ago
Reply to  gorkmalork

Now that I think about it, the power drain was introduced in the post-Zahn rule write-up; in the 1E and 2E game rules, it wasn’t a factor at all (and I haven’t read Zahn for a long time, so I can’t recall if it was an issue in the HttH trilogy). Under the original rules, an Interdictor could use all four projectors while maintaining the same acceleration as a CR90 or ISD. The primary weakness was low accuracy when firing at something the size of a fighter or light transport.

The power drain may have been a game balance choice, as the post-Zahn rules made the gravity wells an area-effect weapon, which greatly reduced the ability of smaller ships to run from it. The trade-off was reduced rate of fire (30+ seconds to drop a gravity well and generate another one in a new location) and the performance drop on the Immobilizer.

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago
Reply to  CRMcNeill

I re-read Dark Force Rising 1-2 years back & don’t recall anyone mentioning power drain, though I *think* the half-minute escape window gets used by Mara Jade & Karrde to barely evacuate their smuggling core crew from Myrkr (the 418 arrives with their ships off-planet & prepping the jump).

CRMcNeill
CRMcNeill
5 years ago
Reply to  gorkmalork

That’s included in the game rule, but is separate from the power drain. It may have just been that the power drain was added as a counter-balance to how much more effective the gravity well projectors became as an area-effect weapon. When it was a point-effect, the result was a simple “can the ship jump to hyperspace?: yes/no.” With the area effect, it just applied a Difficulty modifier to the pilot’s Astrogation skill DC that was effective even if the gravity well missed the ship by quite a bit. Throwing in the power drain might’ve been because the new rules made an Interdictor /too/ good.

CRMcNeill
CRMcNeill
5 years ago
Reply to  gorkmalork

Here’s the full write-up on Hyperspace Pulsemass Generators from the Custom Ordnance chapter of the Imperial Sourcebook…

“Certain leaders within the DMR [Department of Military Research] have a tendency to overlabel everything. The hyperspace pulsemass generator is an example of this, as the ordnance is simply a huge “pebble spreader” in space. The generator produces tiny spheres of hyperenergy that are shot out into an area of space. When ships traveling through hyperspace cross the equivalent area of realspace, they come in contact with the hyperenergy spheres. These spheres overwhelm the blocking capacity of the ship’s shields and shred the craft.

These hyperenergy spheres do not affect ships in realspace, but if a ship enters a field of spheres and then jumps to lightspeed it comes in contact with the deadly pulses. A region mined with hyperenergy spheres is dangerous for only a few minutes, for then the energy dissipates.

This weapon can be devastating to large fleets, but the luck involved in successfully employing the pulsemass generator is enormous. You literally have to catch your opponent napping to mine a region of space and have him hyperspace through it before the energy spheres fade.

Now in experimental and limited use, the Empire is working to make this form of attack more profitable and more exacting. If it does succeed in improving the versatility of the hyperspace pulsemass generator, then fleets of enemy ships quickly escaping into hyperspace will become a threat of the past.”

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago
Reply to  CRMcNeill

So wide spread, but narrow threat window unless the generator’s working with enough juice to regularly saturate a sector. Seems like a handy widget for, say, cruiser-grade system defense stations.

CRMcNeill
CRMcNeill
5 years ago
Reply to  gorkmalork

The two workarounds are either A) a system that can keep up a constant stream of pulse-masses into the targeted sector, or B) a sequential firing system, such as having an Immobilizer with all four gravity well projectors replaced with pulse mass projectors, each firing in sequence to maintain a constant field of pulse-masses. There’s also static pulse-mass minefields, ala the Hapan ones, that could be deployed en masse around a defense station, all firing and recharging in sequence to keep a constant field of pulse-masses in place.

One idea I’ve gotten from this discussion is the possibility of a pulse-mass variant that inflicts ion damage instead of impact damage. This would be a much better explanation for what happens to the CR90 in the Rebels episode where they introduced the Immobilizer. A gravity well projector wouldn’t have the disabling effect seen on screen, but an ion-pulse-mass projector would.

Chris Bradshaw
Chris Bradshaw
5 years ago
Reply to  CRMcNeill

In the Star Wars Armada tabletop game from FFG, the Immobilizer has a variety of projector options instead of locking you to one gravity well generator choice. The tabletop choices are mostly just varieties of “stop moving in a certain way”, but the idea of a modular housing system with several interchangeable projector modules for the Immobilizer’s globes is certainly appealing to explain why different interdictors have different effects.

CRMcNeill
CRMcNeill
5 years ago
Reply to  Chris Bradshaw

Considering that the Immobilizer is essentially a highly modified Vindicator, a lot of different alternate variants have been suggested in the fandom: fire support platforms, fleet scouts, armed cargo ships, troop transports, etc. I even jokingly suggested the Collector-Class Imperial Taxation Cruiser, with the gravity wells projectors replaced by Revenue Extraction Beam Projectors.

Chris Bradshaw
Chris Bradshaw
5 years ago
Reply to  CRMcNeill

Well, if you ever pay for a commission….

Chris Bradshaw
Chris Bradshaw
5 years ago
Reply to  CRMcNeill

While I still love classic Zahn, I think Rogue One has pretty heavily retconned the ability of a warship to make a precision combat jump onto an enemy fleet… unless we want to speculate that the Death Star or some other offscreen Imperial platform was providing a gravity well signature for the Devastator to calibrate its jump coordinates.

CRMcNeill
CRMcNeill
5 years ago
Reply to  Chris Bradshaw

I don’t think there’s enough there to assume that this is a normal occurrence, although Rogue One definitely narrowed the window for how far a ship must be from a planet to safely enter/exit hyperspace. I’d be more inclined to say that Vader used some Force power to plot a hyper-accurate course; Instinctive Astrogation has long been recognized an official Force ability in the Legends canon.

CRMcNeill
CRMcNeill
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

I’d say that both would qualify as a closing vector on the planet itself, although the Rogue One ingress jump was much more precise (fortuitous?) than Endor. The key problem is real-time location data. It would be extremely difficult to predict a target ship’s exact location in orbit around a planet and time a jump from dozens or hundreds of lightyears way to come out right on top of it. It’s possible that the Shield Gate at Scariff was in a repulsorlift-assisted geosynchronous low-level orbit over the, which would make it slightly easier, but for the Devastator to drop out of hyperspace directly in the path of a fleeing Rebel fleet right at the moment it was about to jump to hyperspace would require either a lot of luck or the Force.

CRMcNeill
CRMcNeill
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

I can’t think of a single hyperspace jump in the OT/PT that didn’t occur some distance from the planet in question. This low-altitude stuff is entirely a Disney invention. It was suggested in WEG’s last iteration of the Interdictor rules that a jump could be made closer to a planet at the cost of greater jump calculation difficulty, but the skill level slope required to pull it off was pretty steep.

PhantomFury
PhantomFury
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

Holy cow, that’s a scary thought

Steve
Steve
5 years ago

When there’s more light turbolasers and quad laser mounts defending a single section of your hull than on the entirity of a Lancer class frigate..the point defence is very very real. And it is terrifying! Amazing amazing work and detail, just jawdropping attention to detail as always! 🙂

Road Warrior
Road Warrior
5 years ago

That’s just perfection. Love the high detail turret in particular.

Rep
Rep
5 years ago

Are those totally new turbolaser turrets?

TheIcthala
TheIcthala
5 years ago
Reply to  Rep

I think they are. They look to be a lot bigger than any of the previous turrets of this style.

JoEsMo
JoEsMo
5 years ago

This thing has so many details it’s amazing

Victor Golf
Victor Golf
5 years ago

The details on this ship are amazing!