Star Battlecruiser WIP#1

So I’ve been thinking about a 3-4km star battlecruiser. I wanted an old-timey comics feel to the design, so I started messing about, then realized that I had a hull that would work – my old Victory-class concept, which obviously wouldn’t be a destroyer now. That had a deliberate mix of PT and OT elements (makes sense, right, late Old Republic/early Imperial design). So I started scaling, then grafting on superstructure bits. I tried making the bridge a little different (in my mind this design is definitively Old Republic KDY, maybe even older than the standard hexagonal bridge module, but refitted for the Clone Wars and Imperial era). Here’s what I got.

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Admiral Drakkmar
Admiral Drakkmar
5 years ago

I love this battlecruiser design. It is sort of reminiscent of the Tagge Battlecruiser design from the Marvel comics. It definitely has the correct aesthetics for that time period.Thank you for sharing this Fractal.

darkelf2x1
darkelf2x1
5 years ago

It seems to have a bit of Pellaeon-class Star Destroyer as well (the general geometry of the hull)

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago

Thus far this puppy seems very Praetor-I/newspaper/80’s Marvel evocative, so good call on the greebling density & extra command-tower distribution of same. I’d be sorely tempted to halve those aft command-module winglets, though shaving ’em too far might mitigate that whole silhouette efect. Color me very curious about that octagonal module near the bow-backup sensor station?

Soren
Soren
5 years ago

Beautiful ship! What sort of role would a ship like this have? It looks very command ship-y…

Steve Bannon
Steve Bannon
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

Well, it’s certainly leagues above any previous attempt to model the Procurator. 8e25w on the main reactor perhaps?

Steve Bannon
Steve Bannon
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

Unless you believe that there’s a significant technology gap in power generation between this bruiser and the next generation, why wouldn’t this one also be a specialized ship killer?

Old Republic KDY designs are primarily focused around sector defense of static targets, which removes the need for endurance, intervention troops, extensive command & control, and arguably even fighter bays.

The only thing left to do with volume is cram it with reactor/capacitor, which should make it very deadly for its size.

Steve Bannon
Steve Bannon
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

The problem with figuring out what’s actually going on in Old Republic astropolitics and their relation to fleet dispositions is how inconsistent legends information seems to be.
If we treat the Stark Hyperspace War from legends as a data point, a minor pirate skirmish in the outer rim was consequential enough to draw in the Trade Federation, the Jedi Order, the Eriadu sector, and the Senate itself. When Tarkin’s uncle Ranulph went in to kill to kill the pirates that had caused all this nonsense, his heaviest unit was a light corvette. Eriadu is recognized elsewhere in canon as a fairly substantial industrial and political power, and so if Tarkin had access to true destroyers and Star Battlecruisers, he wouldn’t and shouldn’t have rode to his death in an oversized Consular corvette.
That kind of rampant minimalism (Goddamn Katana Fleet) irks me too, but we just don’t really see anything post SWTOR and pre-Clone Wars regarding ship sizes/numbers to make informed guesses, other than the Legator/Mandator/Praetor/Procurator/Acclamator combat-refit? existing.

My best assumption is that within the Republic, the core industrialized systems are so federalized and interconnected that inter-sector conflict is beyond unthinkable, in the same way that Missouri would never threaten Iowa with the B-2 bombers of its Air National Guard. In this sort of extremely peaceful core/kinda dangerous periphery environment, you wouldn’t necessarily need divisions of ground troops on your heavy warships, as there isn’t really any evidence that those heavy warships would be doing anything beyond fleet exercises, Republic day parades, and sucking up budget.
Regarding endurance, ships seem to only blow through reserves during intensive combat situations with maximum shield replenishment, tactical sublight and hyperdrive maneuvering, and of course turbolaser salvos. If I recall correctly, standard Imperator-Is had 6 years worth of consumables, making extended patrols/blockades very feasible.
What’s weird is that the ICS proportion of ship mass dedicated to reactant storage is really inconsistent between classes. The Acclamator transport variant has at least four huge silos totaling at least 30% of the main reactor’s volume, as does the Munificent frigate, but the Venator, Imperator, and Resurgent (ugh) ICS diagrams show tiny (>10% of reactor volume) fuel tanks or none at all, when it should really be the other way around. Anyways, I think your Procurator model is shaping up really nicely, and that Old Republic Kuat being relatively inefficient in starship design is perfectly reasonable. Eager to see a finished model!

Dan
Dan
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

What weapons does this have and what weapons does the legato have?

Steve Bannon
Steve Bannon
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

Shouldn’t Eriadu’s outer-rim status imply that it should need more, not less military spending than somewhere pleasant in the core? The gradient of Republic control seems to peter out around there, with Hutt-controlled planets only minutes away.
Regarding your Poland and Belgium point, Poland needs a large conventional military because there’s a far larger conventional military with a long history of trying to annex Poland minutes away, (If Lukashenko allows them to stage in Belarus) while something like Operation Reforger would take weeks. My point is that there isn’t really evidence of conventional forces outside of the Republic worth mentioning until the Trade Federation starts arming up. The coreward systems seem to all be Belgiums which aren’t really meddling with each other at all, unless I’ve missed or forgotten a source.
The appropriations committee origin story for the Allegiance is amusingly realistic, but I always thought that limiting factor on the expansion of the Imperial Starfleet wasn’t money, industrial capacity, or hypermatter, but fanatically politically loyal and somewhat competent human personnel willing to burn planets for Palpatine, but not for any other reason. Feyadeen Saddam type guys.

Steve Bannon
Steve Bannon
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

I thoroughly agree that that the galaxy isn’t absolutely homogeneous in terms of wealth and conflict, but perhaps the Holy Roman Empire isn’t the best comparison with the Republic. There isn’t a single century in the H.R.E in which some elector principality, breakaway Italian city-state, or independence minded low-countries county didn’t fight a fairly significant war within the empire. During the interregnum, they even suffered a mass proliferation of virtually independent pirate Raubritter, or literal robber barons.
The Republic on the other hand is extraordinarily stable and peaceful on the whole, a polity with a recognizable structure for 25,000 years, and unbroken galactic peace for at least 1000.
Even with psychic supermen enforcing the peace, no state with constant cold wars, massive internal rivalries, and decentralized control remains stable for that length of time. As a counterexample to the H.R.E, I’d like to suggest that the Old Republic is more akin to the 13 Cantons of the early modern Swiss Confederacy, different nationalities bound together by a mutual commitment to peace, commerce, and increasing federalization through the Tagsatzung Diet.

In the various Clone Wars content we get, Jedi, Senators, and Republic personnel repeatedly comment to the effect that this war on an inter-system level is the first we’ve gotten for millennia, showing that unless there are Sith pulling strings, the Republic is essentially peaceful and stable indefinitely.

Publius’s New Order in Power is fascinating, thanks for sending that to me. Keep up the good work with the Procurator.

Anonymous
Anonymous
5 years ago
Reply to  Steve Bannon

So that what this ship base off

Anonymous
Anonymous
5 years ago
Reply to  Anonymous

sorry didn’t finish it “so this ship was base of the procurator class battlecruiser then like this one?comment image/revision/latest?cb=20150620043511 “

DanielShenise
5 years ago

It is very old time comics in feel, I had a lot of them as a kid. Right now the only change I’d make on esthetics is either extending the squished/flattened octagonal section aft of the bridge forward, or dropping it altogether. It looks just added on right now. I’d stop it at the notch on the underside of the neck in your last picture. I’d consider doing a big recess in the bottom too, ala Executor. I think it would work as a compliment to the busyness of the dorsal side. It might seem odd to have more of the armored reactor ball exposed, but who are we kidding this is SW and everyone accepts Nebulon B’s and their skinny spars connecting the 2 ends. That’s not exactly sound warship design either.

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago
Reply to  DanielShenise

The Nebulon thing kinda depends on *what* they’re accepted as, IMO-ships that have any business being the biggest thing in a fight with star destroyers (Rogue One and at least a single X-wing book strongly hint otherwise), or generally useful light support for small convoys & movements strapped for *any* large-ish craft. I find myself leaning toward the latter. As for big hangars on superdaggers, that does seem like much less of a compromise than Neb-style design, depending on your murderwedge’s role & how much attention from peer-tonnage foes you can expect.

DanielShenise
5 years ago
Reply to  gorkmalork

In my head the Neb-B was never an Imperial design. Whose design, I really don’t care but it’s an Alliance vessel. With the big prow turbo laser it’s stand-off sniper, using range to deliver punches while starfighters get in close and mix things up.

But back to our current murder dagger, I just think it’d be cool to have a “mirrored” recess in the bottom roughly analogous to the superstructure above. It’s less about practical design, more on aesthetics. I also think the ventral plane of the ship should be flatter and not trapezoidal, again keeping with the old time comics. There were some really cool designs in the regular newspaper comics too. They were all a bit more Flash Gordon though.

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago
Reply to  DanielShenise

I’d be very skeptical about that main gun’s capacity against Acclamator-tonnage targets or bigger with so little reactor space for that *and* shields/engines/whatnot, but perhaps it was originally intended for picking off pirate corvettes before the Rebels started commandeering ’em.

Those newspaper strips’ line work came c/o Al Williamson, a Flash Gordon regular, so talk about aesthetic continuity. The ventral stuff you suggest also neatly parallels some of those Executor concept-sketches from ESB.

Killswitch
Killswitch
5 years ago

Wow. I love where this is going. I love cluttered and “busy” aesthetics, especially with lots of gun batteries. Can’t wait to see how this turns out.

AdmiralStrang
AdmiralStrang
5 years ago

It’s cluttered. It’s industrial. It’s absurd.

It’s beautiful.

Anonymous
Anonymous
5 years ago

Wow and I though the first order star battlecruiser was ugly enough!

Anonymous
Anonymous
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

But i do like the look of it because it is ugly in the good unique way unlike the Resurgent which is also ugly but in the bad boring way just a squash ISD while this one look new and bizarre which really stand out among imperial warships in my honest opinion.

Soren
Soren
5 years ago
Reply to  Anonymous

I kinda like the First Order’s battlecruiser, more so than the ISD. I find beauty practicality though, so having the ISD and its massively stand out bridge tower, which is just a big ol’ target, the Resurgent-class doesn’t have that problem (at least not a big as the ISD). And it is more flexible mission-wise since it also doubles as a carrier unlike the ISD.

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago
Reply to  Soren

Eh, Resurgent’s flat bridge doesn’t seem *that* much better when it’s in the same general area as OT-style towers & still seems to take up its share of hull surface. Certainly wouldn’t throw off your Plucky Resistance Snub Squad(R) or Stalwart Cruiser Gunners(TM) if they’re fighting at Coruscant/Endor-style spitting distance & exploit a Plot-Convenient Shield Breach(R). Might give the dorsal turrets a clearer field of fire directly ‘above’/behind the ship, though. As for its carrier functions, can’t help feeling that big hollow bow could use fewer random brim-trench support struts for pilots to thread through on ingress/egress.

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

Yeah, after a certain point it’s less “how exposed to fire are your components if shields fail?” as opposed to “how quickly can we bug out or stop whomever’s shooting?” That said, just once I’d like a fakeout scene where somebody’s main bridge takes a wreckin’…and then we switch to the command crew wincing from secondary control. “Well then. Jump plotted?”