Where do you get your reference photos?
It looks so great!
J.J.
4 years ago
If the light is from plasma rockets, and that plasma is approximating a black body, then the blue color means the plasma is very hot. Hot plasma contains faster ions.
While waiting for Fractal to finish the final 5% I’m happy to share my newly finished model – a Tie variant that has been around since the 80s but never really shown in proper detail as far as I know. Fractal, I hope you don’t mind me putting the link here: https://countvertex.tumblr.com/
I’d say you’ve spruced up that troop-tub with plausible-looking structural bracing, landing gear, engine/exhaust arrangement & just enough snazzy lighting. A light missile tube/turret or two might help compensate for the fore/aft guns’ somewhat limited coverage, but it’s not like these things should be short of escorts anyhow. Altogether another worthy extrapolation of early Legends material.
At the scale the lander is working at, there seems to be a lot of role overlap with the Sentinel. Perhaps the TIE is cheaper, but I prefer the Sentinel aesthetic.
From what I can tell:
Sentinel lands a platoon or two in hostile environments and/or transports very light vehicles/small amounts of cargo – not necessarily in the same system as its base/home ship (thank you hyperdrive).
TIE Lander puts an entire company, plus light combat vehicles, on the ground in the same system as its home ship.
This makes Sentinel a good all-round utility ship that’s capable of participating in out-of-system light assault missions/special forces incursions when required, whereas TIE Lander is a specialist heavy troop lander for the initial stages of a full ground invasion.
I could be wrong, that’s just my take on it.
Good point re: the per-unit scale gap, though Lander might well be hyperdrive-equipped. Can’t see much reason to omit that feature besides doctrinal paranoia (which, granted, could be a huge factor).
Nice stuff! I love the crazy, old-school comics and RPG ships. If you’re looking for inspiration, there’s lot of old stuff buried in this online archive: https://rpg.rem.uz/
So Fractal sorry if your getting annoyed by this type of comment many times but how is the Imperator redux progress so far? Or you are busy with life work again which I bet is most likely to be and if so when it is finish? Just want to know since it is almost 2 months since your last model upload.
Awesome and when you said forward hanger you mean the small one that take shuttles right?
mason
4 years ago
fractal how do you make these 3d models im interested on starting to do spaceships. and i love the secutor, its my wallpaper wight now, and it looks beautiful.
Hey Fractal there a problem with my two comments that I tried to post it but it say “Comment awaiting moderation” and it only showing it to me but not to the others including you I bet, so is there anything you can do to fix it?
One could very well argue that’s it’s another Anon3 (or Anon2) – let’s be honest they are all scribbles. Anon2 and Anon3 are already extremely similar in profile. They can be 3 classes or 2 (or variants of the same basic template), depending on your mood. I can make them in various forms, but it’s more on the artist’s whim than anything solid in reference.
Yeah seems fair anyway speaking of cruisers Fractal about the communication ship in the Battle of Endor if you were going to make it how big would it be like between 4-5 km long and would it have those huge sensor globes that the Legator have since it is a communication ship or not?
Conor McGuire
4 years ago
Some amazing work Fractal!
Tell me are any of these models going to be seen in Stellaris Fallen Republic Mod?
You should really get a quote from disney and Lucasarts I wager you could have designed something better than that price of shit they called the FO Dreadnaught
So Fractal I was thinking since the Vic 2 was basically a multi-role ship while the Vic 1 was a missile boat. I wonder what the missile boat variant of the Imperator would be like and how practical it is any thoughts?
IIRC, Fractal figures the Vic-1 mainly needed its big honkin’ missile battery for defense of fixed positions and/or extra damage potential against big Clone Wars-era opponents like the Lucrehulk. Since Impstars are markedly bigger, heavier-gunned & intended as a pursuit-capable ‘jack of most trades’ type, there might not have been much demand/need for extra anti-ship torp carriage, though the bow brim notches could probably fit a decent box-launcher set.
Anonymous
4 years ago
Hey would you be so kind as to maybe find the time to finish your flying fortress, or whatever it was, and your star galleon? I really liked where you were going with those and would like to see them completed. If you’ve already completed them could you please link me to the finished product?
Hey Fractal, It would be cool if you could make a “Supremacy” or a “Resurgent-class” ship.
And what is your next Project after the Imperator-class?
valoren
4 years ago
fractal, will you ever have a go at modeling old republic/sith empire era warships like Derriphan frigates, the reliance one command ship or even tetan assault ships ?
So about the hyperspace ramming in The Last Jedi I found two videos talking about how it work (with the former being star wars lore from Star Wars Explained and the latter being what would happen if something like that happen in real life from Nerdist but with Because Science with Kyle Hill) here are the links to them.
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RumNBu_KJjk
2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1M95njhovw
PhantomFury
4 years ago
Hey, Fractal, I’m getting started on 3D modelling and in layman’s term, how do you make models of these ships so detailed yet not crash your computer from the sheer poly count?
3d software has come a long way since when I learned on 32-bit systems. If you have a reasonable gaming GPU and a decent 4-core CPU, on the modeling side you can handle pretty much anything until you get to truly enormous scenes, at which point it’s likely you’re not really “in training” any more. I did the superstructure for the ISD on my laptop (quad core/16gb ram/quadro k1100). I did almost all of Infinity on an old quad-core laptop as well. Those are 15-30 million poly projects.
Now you should be working in layers and such, so you don’t have to display everything at once, but really, you can get these results with a perfectly normal computer. Rendering though, well, then faster the better :).
You can get pretty far, especially in terms of learning the software. Build objects at first, not giant ships. Easier to slowly work up from basics rather than look at a massive ILM studio model and get depressed at how much work it will be to reproduce 🙂
You know what one of the things that I don’t understand in star wars legends is that why the hell did the galactic alliance replace the T-65 X-wing with this freak of machine known as the CF9 Crossfire:/revision/latest?cb=20070706012440
That’s actually a better-looking rendition than anything I recall from the pages of Legacy, though the thing still seems more like a vaguely B-wing-derived gunboat than anything you’d assign interceptor duty. At least most of that series’ capital craft seemed conceptually solid.
So Fractal since heavy blaster cannons and light turbolasers can be use as point defense on large warships like star destroyers and star cruisers could the gatling laser cannon (like the one on the A6 Juggernaut) be use as point defense as well?
Just realize that since this is Easter holiday you might be busy with you family for a while which make me felt stupid for not noticing it, so sorry if you feel being rushed by me.
Aeriosus
4 years ago
Yo Fractal, do you have a “MBT of Star Destroyers” designed?
A modern MBT is the size it is because of transport/logistics/terrain constraints. In the infinite vastness of space, those things stop restricting you from adding combat power by adding size, until you end up with the Death Star.
Yeah, but I mean MBT for a warships doesn’t make sense in the way that MBTs combined Infantry and Cruiser tank roles. If you mean multirole, then sure, ISD fits.
I find myself torn ‘tween the original Impstar’s nifty-looking comm-antenna tower & bulky dual mains vs. the Deuce’s octuple batteries (though your current project’s retained brim-trench quads strike me as a decent compromise).
So Fractal there a YouTube video recently made by Kyle Hill from Because Science about how the Last Jedi plot holes (Mostly the ships slowdown after their fuel run out and the bombs dropping on the dreadnought) are not actually plot holes.
Here the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPTIjLPPdIM
I can see how the out-of-gas thing is more a matter of losing the ability to maintain relative acceleration vis-a-vis FO pursuit (plus uneven thruster shutdowns to account for frigate tumbling), and the bombers likely had *some* means of ejecting/propelling their ordnance besides mark-1 momentum (repulsors? tractor beams? Little of both?)…it’s more the latter crafts’ ponderous crawl to spitting distance that bugs me. They needed a character-shielded Hero Pilot(TM) to strip off their more/less stationary killslab target’s ludicrously piddly dorsal defense singlehandedly, and even with that starting edge were butchered by a late-arriving TIE screen. ‘Desperately-repurposed naval minelayers’ is the closest thing to a rationalization I can manage.
The problem is the maintaining relative acceleration bit. Acceleration is not speed. Yes a ship no longer adding thrust “falls back” in relative terms but the ships had been accelerating for hours. At 1000g for 3hrs the ships would all be doing one third lightspeed when the fuel cut out. They look like they’re doing 0.3c?
Clarification appreciated-and if ships just dropping out of lightspeed start with zero sublight momentum, the Falcon would have one helluva job matching angles & velocity for Rey’s express delivery to Team Snoke. Ditto for the saboteur squad + Del Toro, whom I recall winding up on a *perpendicular* approach to the fleet’s underbelly.
Really, Being able to distinguish between 0,3c and 0,003c is only a matter of relative Speeds between ships, and since they’re all accelerating in the same direction…
What really make that entire explanation crumble is that Leia, after 5 full minutes in space, was able to go back inside the Raddus when she realistically should have smashed against the supremacy’s bridge window by that point.
My point is what the scene should look like with ships relative to starfield in the background at 0.003c vs 0.3c? At significant fractions of c you’d get strong color shifting.
This is a fundamental problem with scifi that even approach “hard” scifi – encounters in space, especially deep space, should be fleeting, and sustained cinematic treatments of a lot of things in shared visual fields should be really difficult. Not to say it can’t be done – the OT and PT and RO battles were always around fixed points and the other stuff was shown in snippets. I don’t think OT and PT made this choice for this reason, but by luck it worked out for them. But for TLJ, they didn’t even try in the layout of the space chase – they explicitly strung all of it together in a contiguous storytelling scene that meant you really couldn’t make any sense out of it.
The Leia explosive decompression sequence jumped the shark so badly I can’t even address that with a straight face.
So Fractal since you said the Imperator is quite fast and agile at speeds of between 3500g-3700g how long does the Imperator take to turn the other way round like going from north to south?
You can probably calculate it based on hypothetical off-center thrust distribution (and ignore mass distribution) – but I’m not going to do it. I would guess it’s much better in yaw than pitch, given how off axis the lateral thrusters are compared to the secondaries and the better weight distribution.
So good straight-line acceleration & lateral turns, but doesn’t loop or dive as sharply. Seems to jive with what we see in the OT, though I still wish R1 had thrown in an line about Profundity tractor-beaming the un-ionized Impstar just before that collision.
I somewhat doubt that the Profundity had enough power output to wrangle an Imperator all while feeding enough power to shields to avoid destruction at the hands of the destroyers.
You could probably attribute the other Impstar’s lack of timely ship-handling to an undermanning, , generally low crew/officer experience, battle fatigue, and serious problems with the chain of command. Even before ionization, neither destroyer was maneuvering to present better gun arcs, or even using more than a handful of HTL turrets, which suggests serious crew deficiencies in number and/or ability.
Oh, granted that tractor shenanigans wouldn’t have helped prior to one of the Scarif destroyers getting ion-torped, or if either ship had been helmed worth a damn in the first place. Even slapping tractors on too early might’ve tipped a savvier crew off (or lit a fire under the Scarif gunners’ seats). I just figure a ship as near-idle as the R1 Impstars might have need more time to power out of said tractoring than the Hammerhead gambit allowed…though as in ESB & now TLJ, at least half the real problem can be chalked up to ludicrously tight cinematic formations.
We see tight formations in pretty much every instance of capital ships operating together, so there really has to be an in-universe explanation for that kind of doctrine. My best guess is that it comes back to the pervasiveness and ubiquity of ECM jamming.
The tight cinematic formations aren’t conducive to levels of maneuvering that would effectively utilize 3000g+ levels of acceleration, but if jamming equipment that could block intership communications at more than visual ranges was available to pretty much anyone, then perhaps formations start making sense. Alternatively, if capital ships can project shields onto their damaged squadron-mates Death Star II style, but only at point-blank range, the problem is also solved.
If the Scarif garrison fleet is doing something nonsensical, then it’s fair to chalk it up to stupidity, but if Ackbar is doing it at Endor, there has to be a good reason.
Eminently fair take from ol’ Arthur Doyle’s point of view. Still seems like actual WWI, much less II-era ships (or hell, even age-of-sail) gave each other more breathing room than some SW formations.
You know, all this talk about that RO scene still leaves one shining question upon me: how did an unshielded star destroyer slice into a fully shielded ISD? It’s literally a warm stick of butter slicing into a knife. And if the victim’s shield overloaded how come the ionized ISD was largely intact? Both of them have similar hull integrity, and if anything the disabled warship should have weaker, having slammed into the shields.
It was the sharpest, and structurally strongest, part of one ISD (edge of the main hull, with two heavily armoured slabs almost meeting at a very acute angle) slamming into one of the weakest points on the other ISD (where the superstructure protrudes from the main hull, with very little armour on the face which took the main blow and an armour slab above to catch on the other ISD and peel the superstructure up). It was less ‘warm butter somehow slicing through hot knife’, more ‘best cutting edge of slightly weakened sword snapping through weak point in the flat of an unweakened sword’.
Let us also not forget that ESB showed us how useless ISD shields are against kinetic impacts. I doubt the shields had much to contribute.
Could’ve sworn the torp run only focused on one Impstar, and the other one was just (somewhat ineptly) trading salvos with Profundity ’till it got ker-thwacked. As for deflectors meaning near-nil WRT kinetics…against a ship of equal mass being slowly shunted into a soft spot, sure, but R1 also gives us at least one GR-75 splattering against Devastator with no apparent (or at least remarked-upon) harm. Might be a matter of greater density (plus a ton of prior offscreen impacts) on the ESB asteroids’ part, and sufficient mass *plus* relatively prolonged contact for the R1 collision.
The ion torpedo strike was concentrated on the Persecutor but, after that, every turbolaser in the Alliance fleet was focused on the Intimidator. The fleet may not have been particularly heavily armed, but they should have had some effect.
Oh, agreed on that-pretty sure Profundity was the only Rebel combatant packing Impstar-ballpark guns, but every bit of energy-weapon fire Intimidator had to deflect would either hurt or nibble at its energy budget (though I wonder how busy the Nebulons & CR90s were with TIE-swatting duty). I’m mainly scratching my head WRT (a) whether capital shields have more trouble with split-second warhead impacts or peer collisions (likely depends on the yield & duration of either) and (b) the efficacy of ‘average’ missile barrages against line-warship defenses in isolation, ’cause clearly saturating a target with anti-capital missiles *and* TL fire opens up opportunities for one or the other. And since energy weapons are at the very least faster, they take up a target’s power-budget priority, enabling the pinpoint projectile antics we see at Scarif & Endor. Still no guarantee the golden BB always gets through, but that’s where Acts of Plot and/or Force come in.
Hm, yes you got a point that the ionized ISD sliced into the first or the second terrace of the victim, with its hardened edge and at an acute angle (which reminds me that the physics of that maneuver would have not worked since the hammerhead was pushing it off center and certainly not move the entire ISD and simply pivot it, but hey it’s Star Wars and physics…) And if what you said about the shields weakened enough on the target ISD enough to be negated from the equation, the slicing could happen….
Neat and also some parts that will be mirrored like the trench and the oct heavy turbolasers barrettes but I know you do that.
Although I wonder Fractal since you said this model will be a template for both the Tector and the Dominator which one of these will you do first after you finish the Imperator?
PhantomFury
5 years ago
I want to get a VR headset so I could just “fly” around that thing and soak up the detail!
So Fractal about the updated sensors domes and tower on top of the Imperator’s tower bridge like these: https://fractalsponge.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/isd2_3.jpg
Will those be on your other ship models that have the outdated versions (Like the Victory, Procursator, Allegiance, Fulgor, etc.) or not?
Taghmata+Omnissiah
5 years ago
Fractal, some long time ago you did start WIP on X-70B Phantom. You plan to finish it one day or it is abandoned for good?
Considering the Star Destroyers rear defense: I’m counting 8 turrets with a rear fireing arc (provided the four ones that are visible are mirrored on the other side). Did I miss any? What scale of lasers are those?
If I remember correctly, they’re single light turbolaser with single heavy laser turrets. I think Fractal initially developed them for the Crusader-class a few years back.
vendi i modellini?
Where do you get your reference photos?
It looks so great!
If the light is from plasma rockets, and that plasma is approximating a black body, then the blue color means the plasma is very hot. Hot plasma contains faster ions.
Very well done.
While waiting for Fractal to finish the final 5% I’m happy to share my newly finished model – a Tie variant that has been around since the 80s but never really shown in proper detail as far as I know. Fractal, I hope you don’t mind me putting the link here:
https://countvertex.tumblr.com/
I just want to say I really like your stuff!
Nice.
I’d say you’ve spruced up that troop-tub with plausible-looking structural bracing, landing gear, engine/exhaust arrangement & just enough snazzy lighting. A light missile tube/turret or two might help compensate for the fore/aft guns’ somewhat limited coverage, but it’s not like these things should be short of escorts anyhow. Altogether another worthy extrapolation of early Legends material.
At the scale the lander is working at, there seems to be a lot of role overlap with the Sentinel. Perhaps the TIE is cheaper, but I prefer the Sentinel aesthetic.
From what I can tell:
Sentinel lands a platoon or two in hostile environments and/or transports very light vehicles/small amounts of cargo – not necessarily in the same system as its base/home ship (thank you hyperdrive).
TIE Lander puts an entire company, plus light combat vehicles, on the ground in the same system as its home ship.
This makes Sentinel a good all-round utility ship that’s capable of participating in out-of-system light assault missions/special forces incursions when required, whereas TIE Lander is a specialist heavy troop lander for the initial stages of a full ground invasion.
I could be wrong, that’s just my take on it.
Good point re: the per-unit scale gap, though Lander might well be hyperdrive-equipped. Can’t see much reason to omit that feature besides doctrinal paranoia (which, granted, could be a huge factor).
Nice stuff! I love the crazy, old-school comics and RPG ships. If you’re looking for inspiration, there’s lot of old stuff buried in this online archive:
https://rpg.rem.uz/
So Fractal sorry if your getting annoyed by this type of comment many times but how is the Imperator redux progress so far? Or you are busy with life work again which I bet is most likely to be and if so when it is finish? Just want to know since it is almost 2 months since your last model upload.
The model is >95% done. All that’s left is the forward hangar, ventral little surface details, and cleanup and mirroring.
Awesome and when you said forward hanger you mean the small one that take shuttles right?
fractal how do you make these 3d models im interested on starting to do spaceships. and i love the secutor, its my wallpaper wight now, and it looks beautiful.
Hey Fractal there a problem with my two comments that I tried to post it but it say “Comment awaiting moderation” and it only showing it to me but not to the others including you I bet, so is there anything you can do to fix it?
Anything with an image needs to be approved.
Hey you fix it thank you although the other one doesn’t have a picture but a video but I guess those need to be approve by you as well.
So Fractal I’m sure you already know this picture: http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/comics/de/starfleet2.jpg
We already know about the 2 Anonymous Star Cruisers with the #2 at the middle ( http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/diagram/dagger/200cruiser2.jpg ) & #3 at the top ( http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/diagram/dagger/200cruiser3.jpg ) but there is another ship that is similar to the other two cruisers at the bottom which Saxon have somehow miss it.
So any thoughts of this unknown possible star cruiser?
One could very well argue that’s it’s another Anon3 (or Anon2) – let’s be honest they are all scribbles. Anon2 and Anon3 are already extremely similar in profile. They can be 3 classes or 2 (or variants of the same basic template), depending on your mood. I can make them in various forms, but it’s more on the artist’s whim than anything solid in reference.
Yeah seems fair anyway speaking of cruisers Fractal about the communication ship in the Battle of Endor if you were going to make it how big would it be like between 4-5 km long and would it have those huge sensor globes that the Legator have since it is a communication ship or not?
Some amazing work Fractal!
Tell me are any of these models going to be seen in Stellaris Fallen Republic Mod?
You should really get a quote from disney and Lucasarts I wager you could have designed something better than that price of shit they called the FO Dreadnaught
So Fractal I was thinking since the Vic 2 was basically a multi-role ship while the Vic 1 was a missile boat. I wonder what the missile boat variant of the Imperator would be like and how practical it is any thoughts?
IIRC, Fractal figures the Vic-1 mainly needed its big honkin’ missile battery for defense of fixed positions and/or extra damage potential against big Clone Wars-era opponents like the Lucrehulk. Since Impstars are markedly bigger, heavier-gunned & intended as a pursuit-capable ‘jack of most trades’ type, there might not have been much demand/need for extra anti-ship torp carriage, though the bow brim notches could probably fit a decent box-launcher set.
Hey would you be so kind as to maybe find the time to finish your flying fortress, or whatever it was, and your star galleon? I really liked where you were going with those and would like to see them completed. If you’ve already completed them could you please link me to the finished product?
https://fractalsponge.net/?p=1881
https://fractalsponge.net/?p=2214
Hot
Hey Fractal, It would be cool if you could make a “Supremacy” or a “Resurgent-class” ship.
And what is your next Project after the Imperator-class?
fractal, will you ever have a go at modeling old republic/sith empire era warships like Derriphan frigates, the reliance one command ship or even tetan assault ships ?
So about the hyperspace ramming in The Last Jedi I found two videos talking about how it work (with the former being star wars lore from Star Wars Explained and the latter being what would happen if something like that happen in real life from Nerdist but with Because Science with Kyle Hill) here are the links to them.
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RumNBu_KJjk
2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1M95njhovw
Hey, Fractal, I’m getting started on 3D modelling and in layman’s term, how do you make models of these ships so detailed yet not crash your computer from the sheer poly count?
3d software has come a long way since when I learned on 32-bit systems. If you have a reasonable gaming GPU and a decent 4-core CPU, on the modeling side you can handle pretty much anything until you get to truly enormous scenes, at which point it’s likely you’re not really “in training” any more. I did the superstructure for the ISD on my laptop (quad core/16gb ram/quadro k1100). I did almost all of Infinity on an old quad-core laptop as well. Those are 15-30 million poly projects.
Now you should be working in layers and such, so you don’t have to display everything at once, but really, you can get these results with a perfectly normal computer. Rendering though, well, then faster the better :).
Actually, how is the rendering time on a project like this? Is it a ‘let it chug overnight’ process or is it more manageable?
Uh, like 5min a frame at 4k. Less for WIP and more if I want to bring the noise down more.
Oh. Well, that’s anti-climactic! LOL…
I was thinking it’d be more in line with the architectural and landscape rendering I’m used to, but it’s definitely not!
My computer specs have 8 gb of RAM and only 2-core CPU, how extensive can I get?
You can get pretty far, especially in terms of learning the software. Build objects at first, not giant ships. Easier to slowly work up from basics rather than look at a massive ILM studio model and get depressed at how much work it will be to reproduce 🙂
I see, thanks for the advice!
First off, awesome design!! Second, what software are you using to generate these designs?
So Fractal any progress on the Imperator redux so far?
He’s doing this in his spare time, so let’s use this time to build up anticipation 😛
You know what one of the things that I don’t understand in star wars legends is that why the hell did the galactic alliance replace the T-65 X-wing with this freak of machine known as the CF9 Crossfire:
/revision/latest?cb=20070706012440
If I remember correctly, this is legacy era craft, which would make T-65 a maintenance nightmare in that time period.
That’s actually a better-looking rendition than anything I recall from the pages of Legacy, though the thing still seems more like a vaguely B-wing-derived gunboat than anything you’d assign interceptor duty. At least most of that series’ capital craft seemed conceptually solid.
So Fractal since heavy blaster cannons and light turbolasers can be use as point defense on large warships like star destroyers and star cruisers could the gatling laser cannon (like the one on the A6 Juggernaut) be use as point defense as well?
Probably. I guess AA defense is already part of its intended purpose on the juggernaut. I have no idea what its rate-of-fire is though…
Fractal what do you use to model youre ships
He use 3ds Max.
So Fractal how much progress on the Imperator redux so far right now?
Just realize that since this is Easter holiday you might be busy with you family for a while which make me felt stupid for not noticing it, so sorry if you feel being rushed by me.
Yo Fractal, do you have a “MBT of Star Destroyers” designed?
What do you mean by MBT of star destroyers?
‘Main battle tank’? Suppose the Allegiance would qualify in that regard.
A modern MBT is the size it is because of transport/logistics/terrain constraints. In the infinite vastness of space, those things stop restricting you from adding combat power by adding size, until you end up with the Death Star.
Yeah, but I mean MBT for a warships doesn’t make sense in the way that MBTs combined Infantry and Cruiser tank roles. If you mean multirole, then sure, ISD fits.
So Fractal out of all the Imperator designs that was in the movies which one of these designs is your favorite the ANH, ESB, ROTJ or Rouge One?
ESB, by some distance (yes I know they are all really similar).
I find myself torn ‘tween the original Impstar’s nifty-looking comm-antenna tower & bulky dual mains vs. the Deuce’s octuple batteries (though your current project’s retained brim-trench quads strike me as a decent compromise).
So Fractal there a YouTube video recently made by Kyle Hill from Because Science about how the Last Jedi plot holes (Mostly the ships slowdown after their fuel run out and the bombs dropping on the dreadnought) are not actually plot holes.
Here the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPTIjLPPdIM
I can see how the out-of-gas thing is more a matter of losing the ability to maintain relative acceleration vis-a-vis FO pursuit (plus uneven thruster shutdowns to account for frigate tumbling), and the bombers likely had *some* means of ejecting/propelling their ordnance besides mark-1 momentum (repulsors? tractor beams? Little of both?)…it’s more the latter crafts’ ponderous crawl to spitting distance that bugs me. They needed a character-shielded Hero Pilot(TM) to strip off their more/less stationary killslab target’s ludicrously piddly dorsal defense singlehandedly, and even with that starting edge were butchered by a late-arriving TIE screen. ‘Desperately-repurposed naval minelayers’ is the closest thing to a rationalization I can manage.
The problem is the maintaining relative acceleration bit. Acceleration is not speed. Yes a ship no longer adding thrust “falls back” in relative terms but the ships had been accelerating for hours. At 1000g for 3hrs the ships would all be doing one third lightspeed when the fuel cut out. They look like they’re doing 0.3c?
Clarification appreciated-and if ships just dropping out of lightspeed start with zero sublight momentum, the Falcon would have one helluva job matching angles & velocity for Rey’s express delivery to Team Snoke. Ditto for the saboteur squad + Del Toro, whom I recall winding up on a *perpendicular* approach to the fleet’s underbelly.
Really, Being able to distinguish between 0,3c and 0,003c is only a matter of relative Speeds between ships, and since they’re all accelerating in the same direction…
What really make that entire explanation crumble is that Leia, after 5 full minutes in space, was able to go back inside the Raddus when she realistically should have smashed against the supremacy’s bridge window by that point.
My point is what the scene should look like with ships relative to starfield in the background at 0.003c vs 0.3c? At significant fractions of c you’d get strong color shifting.
This is a fundamental problem with scifi that even approach “hard” scifi – encounters in space, especially deep space, should be fleeting, and sustained cinematic treatments of a lot of things in shared visual fields should be really difficult. Not to say it can’t be done – the OT and PT and RO battles were always around fixed points and the other stuff was shown in snippets. I don’t think OT and PT made this choice for this reason, but by luck it worked out for them. But for TLJ, they didn’t even try in the layout of the space chase – they explicitly strung all of it together in a contiguous storytelling scene that meant you really couldn’t make any sense out of it.
The Leia explosive decompression sequence jumped the shark so badly I can’t even address that with a straight face.
So Fractal since you said the Imperator is quite fast and agile at speeds of between 3500g-3700g how long does the Imperator take to turn the other way round like going from north to south?
You can probably calculate it based on hypothetical off-center thrust distribution (and ignore mass distribution) – but I’m not going to do it. I would guess it’s much better in yaw than pitch, given how off axis the lateral thrusters are compared to the secondaries and the better weight distribution.
So good straight-line acceleration & lateral turns, but doesn’t loop or dive as sharply. Seems to jive with what we see in the OT, though I still wish R1 had thrown in an line about Profundity tractor-beaming the un-ionized Impstar just before that collision.
I somewhat doubt that the Profundity had enough power output to wrangle an Imperator all while feeding enough power to shields to avoid destruction at the hands of the destroyers.
You could probably attribute the other Impstar’s lack of timely ship-handling to an undermanning, , generally low crew/officer experience, battle fatigue, and serious problems with the chain of command. Even before ionization, neither destroyer was maneuvering to present better gun arcs, or even using more than a handful of HTL turrets, which suggests serious crew deficiencies in number and/or ability.
Oh, granted that tractor shenanigans wouldn’t have helped prior to one of the Scarif destroyers getting ion-torped, or if either ship had been helmed worth a damn in the first place. Even slapping tractors on too early might’ve tipped a savvier crew off (or lit a fire under the Scarif gunners’ seats). I just figure a ship as near-idle as the R1 Impstars might have need more time to power out of said tractoring than the Hammerhead gambit allowed…though as in ESB & now TLJ, at least half the real problem can be chalked up to ludicrously tight cinematic formations.
We see tight formations in pretty much every instance of capital ships operating together, so there really has to be an in-universe explanation for that kind of doctrine. My best guess is that it comes back to the pervasiveness and ubiquity of ECM jamming.
The tight cinematic formations aren’t conducive to levels of maneuvering that would effectively utilize 3000g+ levels of acceleration, but if jamming equipment that could block intership communications at more than visual ranges was available to pretty much anyone, then perhaps formations start making sense. Alternatively, if capital ships can project shields onto their damaged squadron-mates Death Star II style, but only at point-blank range, the problem is also solved.
If the Scarif garrison fleet is doing something nonsensical, then it’s fair to chalk it up to stupidity, but if Ackbar is doing it at Endor, there has to be a good reason.
“…there really has to be an in-universe explanation for that kind of doctrine.”
Yeah. It’s called sloppy writing and snappy visuals…
Eminently fair take from ol’ Arthur Doyle’s point of view. Still seems like actual WWI, much less II-era ships (or hell, even age-of-sail) gave each other more breathing room than some SW formations.
You know, all this talk about that RO scene still leaves one shining question upon me: how did an unshielded star destroyer slice into a fully shielded ISD? It’s literally a warm stick of butter slicing into a knife. And if the victim’s shield overloaded how come the ionized ISD was largely intact? Both of them have similar hull integrity, and if anything the disabled warship should have weaker, having slammed into the shields.
It was the sharpest, and structurally strongest, part of one ISD (edge of the main hull, with two heavily armoured slabs almost meeting at a very acute angle) slamming into one of the weakest points on the other ISD (where the superstructure protrudes from the main hull, with very little armour on the face which took the main blow and an armour slab above to catch on the other ISD and peel the superstructure up). It was less ‘warm butter somehow slicing through hot knife’, more ‘best cutting edge of slightly weakened sword snapping through weak point in the flat of an unweakened sword’.
Let us also not forget that ESB showed us how useless ISD shields are against kinetic impacts. I doubt the shields had much to contribute.
The ISDs were also disabled at least partially, presumably by the same capital strike/ion torpedo combo.
Could’ve sworn the torp run only focused on one Impstar, and the other one was just (somewhat ineptly) trading salvos with Profundity ’till it got ker-thwacked. As for deflectors meaning near-nil WRT kinetics…against a ship of equal mass being slowly shunted into a soft spot, sure, but R1 also gives us at least one GR-75 splattering against Devastator with no apparent (or at least remarked-upon) harm. Might be a matter of greater density (plus a ton of prior offscreen impacts) on the ESB asteroids’ part, and sufficient mass *plus* relatively prolonged contact for the R1 collision.
The ion torpedo strike was concentrated on the Persecutor but, after that, every turbolaser in the Alliance fleet was focused on the Intimidator. The fleet may not have been particularly heavily armed, but they should have had some effect.
Oh, agreed on that-pretty sure Profundity was the only Rebel combatant packing Impstar-ballpark guns, but every bit of energy-weapon fire Intimidator had to deflect would either hurt or nibble at its energy budget (though I wonder how busy the Nebulons & CR90s were with TIE-swatting duty). I’m mainly scratching my head WRT (a) whether capital shields have more trouble with split-second warhead impacts or peer collisions (likely depends on the yield & duration of either) and (b) the efficacy of ‘average’ missile barrages against line-warship defenses in isolation, ’cause clearly saturating a target with anti-capital missiles *and* TL fire opens up opportunities for one or the other. And since energy weapons are at the very least faster, they take up a target’s power-budget priority, enabling the pinpoint projectile antics we see at Scarif & Endor. Still no guarantee the golden BB always gets through, but that’s where Acts of Plot and/or Force come in.
Hm, yes you got a point that the ionized ISD sliced into the first or the second terrace of the victim, with its hardened edge and at an acute angle (which reminds me that the physics of that maneuver would have not worked since the hammerhead was pushing it off center and certainly not move the entire ISD and simply pivot it, but hey it’s Star Wars and physics…) And if what you said about the shields weakened enough on the target ISD enough to be negated from the equation, the slicing could happen….
Any chance for the Venator joining the lineup?
Eventually, though likely a variant rather than an ROTS spec Venator.
What do you mean by “variant” ?
I think it most likely these that Fractal was talking about: http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?p=4005130#p4005130
I’m hoping for the Gladiator.
Ooh, good megathread-excerpt. Digging the cut of Venator III’s jib-we could use more single-gravwell dragships.
hi, sorry for the Off Topic
@Fractalsponge, someone is selling your designes
https://www.shapeways.com/product/A6ZY5UKU4/dreadnaught-v2-1-7000
https://www.shapeways.com/product/LUHAQG5NM/3x-dreadnaught-v2-1-7000
Crusader-class too
https://www.shapeways.com/product/A5KATRUYL/armada-crusader-corvette
So Fractal right now how close is the Imperator redux to being finish?
Probably like 90% finished. Hangars and ventral hull panels and surface details, and that’s really about it.
Neat and also some parts that will be mirrored like the trench and the oct heavy turbolasers barrettes but I know you do that.
Although I wonder Fractal since you said this model will be a template for both the Tector and the Dominator which one of these will you do first after you finish the Imperator?
I want to get a VR headset so I could just “fly” around that thing and soak up the detail!
This is specced out at ~3700g, right?
So Fractal about the updated sensors domes and tower on top of the Imperator’s tower bridge like these: https://fractalsponge.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/isd2_3.jpg
Will those be on your other ship models that have the outdated versions (Like the Victory, Procursator, Allegiance, Fulgor, etc.) or not?
Fractal, some long time ago you did start WIP on X-70B Phantom. You plan to finish it one day or it is abandoned for good?
Not abandoned but no real rush to get back to it.
Considering the Star Destroyers rear defense: I’m counting 8 turrets with a rear fireing arc (provided the four ones that are visible are mirrored on the other side). Did I miss any? What scale of lasers are those?
If I remember correctly, they’re single light turbolaser with single heavy laser turrets. I think Fractal initially developed them for the Crusader-class a few years back.
Right then guess all that left is the Imperator’s ventral with the power generator dome and hanger bays and is all finish right fractal?