I think this is a great idea. This is like a Ticonderoga class Amphibious Assualt Island ship used to launch tons of soldiers and vehicles. I can imagine AT-ATs lining up on the center of the ship waiting to get ferried by Gozanties.
Markov
2 years ago
Fractal do you think it can launch a c9979 landing craft out of the ventral hangar? If so, I can just imagine this landing on umbara during the clone wars (assuming it gets close enough to land).
Tragically common for the Internet, really. I understand the impetus – Star Wars is a visual universe, and it helps to have an image of a ship in your head to go with the concept you envision – but he’s far from the first person to poach an image and re-size it as something that it can’t possibly be.
He also labeled the thing as a First Order ship, and gave the Kontos to the Chiss Ascendancy. This clearly isn’t something with any basis in canon, but hey at least he credited Ansel for the art.
It’s not a starfighter carrier, though it can probably carry the Ground Support Wing of an Imperial Army corps (I suspect it might even be able to carry a full Imperial Wing or more, given the description of the original craft this is based on, but I am not sure).
A fighter wing is a ridiculously small volume compared to a regiment of AT-SPs. Configured appropriately internally, this ship could carry thousands of TIEs.
the thing that confuses me is that all of the bays come in a variety of sizes, many of which are too small for a tie fighter. maybe those atomospheric tie varients would fit, that would make sense for a rapidly deployable ground base. some of these bays would probably have to be for cargo and ground troops, which is probably the job of the bays closest to the bottem obviously. the rest is either for landers or cargo shuttles probably.
this is coming from a perspective of complete ignorence towards the insperation keep in mind, im just trying to infer based on this rendering.
What gives you the impression that any of those bays are too low for a TIE fighter? Scaling from the Chi-Class heavy dropship sitting up front in the bottom image, I’d say all of the bays are at least tall enough for TIE/ln to operate from.
The purpose of the ship is to land an entire Imperial Army Corps on a hostile planet, away from significant enemy forces. If TIE/sk ever made it into full production they would probably be the fighters it carried, because this entire ship is geared toward landing and supporting an invading army.
PokemonSoldier
4 years ago
Disney needs to hire fractal full-time to create the new starship classes. And they need to give him pretty much free-reign over it.
Alex Adamai
4 years ago
This looks like a venator who ate a piece of the death star!
I originaly wondered if this ship even would need to/could land. It has enough hangars, that I guess, that it could easily carry enough dropships to deploy all of it troops without even landing. Similar to amphibic assault ships of our time. Those also dont land themselfs and instead carry both the troops aswell as the landing crafts/helicopters necessary to bring them onto the coast.
well, to be honest, if you removed the walker’s legs and replaced them with repulsor lift (like, what’s on the separatist command modules when they land, or Jabba’s barge, and pretty much every speeder/swoop/spaceship in the galaxy) you wouldn’t even need the drop ships. You just put yourself on an appropriate ballistic entry profile, turn off gravity in the bay, reverse thrusters, and let them fall in.
the same repulsors for moving around can control your decent, and slow you down so you don’t go splat. their control would be similar to a quad copter, in how the thrust is increased, tipping the craft to change it’s thrust vector, effectively sliding it around.
You would likely need some kind of heavy-lift craft to get them back, but by that time, speed is not critical.
Iscandar
4 years ago
This would definitely be the ship landing once I secured a landing zone
Jesus, you could probably fit the entire USMC in this thing!
Kenny Brand
4 years ago
This is a vessel I would use as mobile beachheads. Atmospheric landing warships carrying multiple battallions as well as dropships, bombers and vehicles while being heavily armored and laying down large volleys into attacking enemy forces or nearby fortifications. A couple of these ships landing with the assistance of fleet support and straggling gunships would create an instant, highly formidable beachhead. You turn a field into a heavily fortified FOB in an instant. I’d definitely have a lot of these in my fleet if I wanted to occupy a planet.
That make sense. Although it would be neat if Fractal made a hanger bay comparison to see different type of hangers and what do they carry, like what he did with the ship turrets here: https://fractalsponge.net/?p=1260
Mank
4 years ago
So what’s the dimensions on this?
Cad Bane
4 years ago
I really have to say i dig this concept very much, expecially the twin bridge with the hangar trench dividing it as well as the unique front section.
I have however spotted, or at least i thinki i have spotted some “oversights” if you want on the model, the big flat-edged rectangles on the front part of the double bridge pylon section seems to be marginally wider than the bridge pylon section itself, expecially visible in Pic #11. the second thing i have spotted is the weird looking offset of the lower ion cannons to either side of the outer bottom hull, they look like they´re moved too far outward. Is that intended in the design of this ship? No hate just thought i´d share it and can´t wait for the next uploads, i adore your work.
Grand Admiral Declann
4 years ago
Very interesting concept, Fractal. However I think that it might be a bit unwieldy in atmosphere, given its shape. And then there is the amount of thrust those massive engines would be able to put out compared to the drag ratio of the front section of the hull(I don’t think “bow” would be quite sufficient here, as it is a space faring warship, and the section is far larger than the term “prow” would refer to). Overall, it appears to be the opposite of the ISD, with most of the offensive armaments on the bottom of the hull. I think that if its shields were downed by enemy fire, which from what I am seeing is fairly likely (in terms of weaponry while in the landed configuration it only has 28 Quad Turrets to defend itself), it would have to leave fast to save itself, with no shields for streamlining in the atmosphere and all that drag, it could lose something.
Drag and shaping are irrelevant. Repulsorlifts are all. VSDs and Venators are not aerodymanic, nor are ISDs, and they all operate in atmosphere just fine. Repulsorlifts are so good they are magical – they waive all sorts operating limitations. Good thing they are so ubiquitous droids can have them. I actually think a common way for the ship to operate is floating in lower atmosphere on repulsorlift, not landed at all – it becomes a mobile base at that point, rather than an actual dropship (of which it has many).
The armament is actually quite distributed, but the heavy firepower is from 3 720-teraton single HTLs mounted ventrally. Why ventrally? Because they are bombardment weapons. The ship is not designed to fight against warships – that’s what its escorts are for, so the primary battery is a large number of MTLs to kill frigates and such. The big guns are to destroy strong points as it comes in from orbit. Having any serious use in antiship would be down to luck rather than design.
And yeah, if it loses shields on the surface, it’s sorta screwed. But all SW ships losing shields can easily get screwed. And it’s an amphib not a line warship. Having warship grade shields allow the ship to get past some defenses to allow its dropships and repulsorlift vehicles to deploy – it’s not to withstand heavy attack indefinitely.
I think of it as a starfaring analogue to a Bayfield class Attack Transport. A couple of destroyer caliber guns for bombardment, a whole battery of lighter autocannons to take care of small craft and fighters, but mostly a slow, fat hull chock full of landing craft, light vehicles, and angry young members of the Greatest Generation.
Yeah, I unwind here by getting into dumb arguments about fictional spaceships when I’m not trying to shut down the Mueller probe and dismantle the Post-War European democratic consensus. /s
…sad thing is, at this point I’m not even sure that would surprise me much.
Sephiroth0812
4 years ago
While this baby has unmistakable elements similar to the Acclamator and Venator, its overall shape and role make me also think of a massively scaled-up, military grade Star Galleon-type vessel.
Would’ve been even better with (a) one of these monsters spitting out speeders & repulsortanks in the background and (b) an AT-SP damn near squashing Young!Han plus half his squad as it clunks over the trenches, but agreed. Plus, that snap transition from the prior scene.
Not even showing the Mimbanese was an interesting thing to take from Dunkirk, although it does seem odd for a unit described in the accompanying materials as an armored division to be seemingly comprised of mostly light infantry.
I guess there’s the whole “draftee & prisoner team up to get the frak outta Dodge” plotline to focus on, but a few frames more armor/gunship action wouldn’t have hurt. That noted, color me amused by that Cthulhu cameo halfway through our (re)introduction to the Maw.
Just so long as (a) she actually gets to knock out a Mon Cal or two and (b) we *don’t* get Kyp Durron, the Sun Crusher, or that Death Star prototype/Darksaber crap back as a package deal. Sequel trilogy’s got enough superweapons & super-prodigies as it is.
Is this your representation of the KDY/Evakmar Corps Landing Ship from the Imperial Sourcebook? I tend to get a mental image of this design whenever is see the Landing Ship referenced.
Anthurak
5 years ago
This thing looks awesome, but does it actually have any way of directly loading/offloading ground units? I’m not seeing any loading ramps or elevators to ground level.
The big square bottom hatches are elevators (see the landed view with the Chi). But really it’s supposed to be more of a dropship base once landed than say, an Acclamator. Any repulsorlift vehicles can fly off any of the hangar bays as soon as it hits atmosphere. Heavier units can be disembarked directly, but they’d probably need some other transport anyway; heavy walkers are too slow and you wouldn’t want to ground the assault ship too close to the battlefield.
Good to know. Though now that I think about it, wouldn’t just having elevators be kind of inefficient compared to having at least one ramp? The elevators can only hold so much per ride and considering their load they probably can’t move very fast compared to having a constant stream of units moving on or off the ship.
There’s no reason the elevators couldn’t support a collapsible ramp as well – lots of switchbacks though. Main issue is that the ship is actually insanely large to be actually *landing* – think like half-kilometer long ramps, which look a bit odd. Really the ship was designed more as a mothership and base than a direct lander like the Acclamator.
Possible counterexample: At Kashyyyk we saw that the Venator was parked only a few hundred meters behind the beach defense line, although we didn’t get to see it fire.
Venators still seem much closer to an Acc’s tonnage than either design would be to this lump, but that is curious. Emergency fire support and/or evac for Yoda & friends?
I don’t think that it can’t land near the battle, but that it doesn’t make much sense. This ship is not really designed to launch heavy vehicles right into the front lines. Venators don’t carry that much, and I think they could conceivably have ramps for more rapid launches. But after that they could just sit there just like the Consolidator would. But having your launch cycle be within tactical artillery range is not really a good idea unless you have to do it. Let the Acclamators risk that while you mass a dropship wave from this thing to reinforce from a safe-ish distance.
Come to think of it: artillery surprises aside, parked capital support=no opposing theater shield, which seems to indicate any remaining CIS threat was very localized. They might’ve gotten lucky enough to pick off a Jedi Council bigwig, but otherwise the Kashyyk offensive was done (well, prior to Palpy’s conference-call coup).
I don’t know where it was from but I think in one comic it was shown that the “landed” Venator on Kashyyyk unleashed a few of those Juggernauts/Turbotanks (those with the ten big wheels) directly to the battlefield while at the same time LAAT gunships and ARC-170s could be released from the dorsal hangar for air support. If the landed Venator then also faces the correct way it can additionally use its own HTLs as additional artillery support.
The Venator’s main advantage was versatility after all.
CIS theatre command might have approved the Kashyyyk operation under the assumption that the fleet forces concentrated to raid Coruscant would be significantly more successful than it actually was at drawing off and destroying Republican naval assets.
Regardless, there’s a line regarding the CIS starting up a main power generator, and I can’t think of anything it would be powering except for a theater shield, although it is odd that a C-9979 landing barge carrying the better part of a brigade was allowed to land within line of sight of the Venator’s flank HTL batteries without any challenge.
Right, atmosphere-roasting death for unprotected friendlies, though you’d think lighter TLs or ion would’ve remained on the table. Theater shield in the way, perhaps?
Venators do carry some medium turbolasers though, in official canon they have two dual medium turbos (one on each side near the bow in the trench) and an unknown number of lighter broadside cannons were shown in RotS itself which don’t seem to be PD lasers. They don’t have any Ion cannons though.
Technically. Funny how it looks just like a twin heavy turbolaser though…
cScott
5 years ago
Love the shape and angles of the ship. Looks like it could be one hell of a brute and just bully smaller & similar sized ships just by ramming them. Be cool if there was a variant sorta like ancient Trireme vessels, that had some sort of a fixed forward blade like the MC140s, solely for ramming other ships
Revan
5 years ago
Does anyone know the carry capacity for this? (Troopes, ground vehicles, starfighters etc)
Here is what I copied that Fractal posted about this ship originally… however this was quite some time ago and he might have newer vehicle and drop ship numbers. 😉
——–
“I started with the Imperial Sourcebook for rough numbers of vehicles per subformation, and took measurements of a bunch of my and EU/canon vehicles. Then I adjusted dropship complements a bit and worked out a hypothetical average Corps level formation:
Dropships are LAAT equivalents, and based on the 80 per division of an Acclamator. The company drop barge is purely hypothetical, designed to move masses of individually not very large repulsorlift vehicles, but in large quantity. Works out to be about light corvette-sized.”
I haven’t re-checked the numbers, but it’s within the ballpark of that old estimate. Obviously you can swap back and forth as long as the volumes all work out. The company barge evolved into the Chi-class.
You know Fractal about the infantry dropships are the Sentinel kinda already are infantry dropships? but since you separate it then what are the differents? the only different I can think it those infantry dropships are smaller than the Sentinels.
Oh so the LAAV/i are the infantry dropships you talking about right?
As for the sentinels’s size yeah I do see them being big as they are 38 meters long.
Edit: Just realize that the DX-9 stromtrooper transports are also kinda like infantry dropships so that one make more scene.
DX-9s are fairly overkill for atmospheric work – they have hyperdrive, ion, a huge warhead load, and shields and acceleration to sort of survive starfighter attack. I think the purely terrestrial/surface vehicles just work on a totally different power scale from starships, which helps to explain why starfighters are effective against walkers but speeders built for atmospheric as opposed to space work are not. It makes sense, since you don’t want casual gigaton scale firepower when the scenery can’t take it.
Now that I think about it DX-9s was use for assaulting and boarding capital ships while the LAAV/is was use for ground assault. Does this make sense Fractal?
Would that fill up the entire capacity of the transport? In theory, according to the Imperial Sourcebook an Evankmar-KDY should be able to carry any Corps in any configuration, with room to spare. If this behemoth doesn’t match that- well maybe the Imperial Sourcebook was just wrong (not impossible, given that it notes that the information is supposedly actual intelligence gathered by the Alliance)? I find it hard to believe the Empire would need anything bigger than this for this role.
gorkmalork
5 years ago
Gotta love how shading & thruster bloom highlight’s this beast’s profusion of greebles, gaps & antennae. Plus, I retain a soft spot for big corvette/frigate-whacking ball turrets.
RRep
5 years ago
What is the overall length?
And also great use of windows! IMO the best windows on any of your designs. Really helps the reveal scale which, as I am sure you know, is a trick used by ILM since the first Star Wars.
This mobile troop-hive seems to be roughly 2 km; for further visual reference, our host cranked out a handy corvette-to-heavy-destroyer lineup some time back: https://fractalsponge.net/?p=895
The Chi launching from the ventral bay for scale is a nice touch. When first I saw the Venator, I used to think that having two separate command towers for a warship was an unrealistic choice, but then the Brits launched the HMS Queen Elizabeth and proved me wrong.
The venator has one bridge for commanding the ship in combat situations and piloting the ships all together and the other for better coordination of its starfighter compliment
Considering the Venator is primarily a carrier and secondarily a (medium) destroyer, this layout makes some sort of sense, also in light of how big the fighter complement of a single Venator is.
There are some things I really like about this ship: Its sheer bulk, the imaginative iteration from the Acclamator design, the many small windows. Not to mention the superb modelling as always. What I don’t like at all is the amount of far too many hangar bays. They completely draw attention from the otherwise great design and override much of the coolness factor of the ship. There has surely been put some thought in including them, but I think form should not follow function in this case. Also from a technical point of view each opening in the hull is a potential atmosphere breach and each of those vacuum seals requires maintenance, so you don’t want any more then needed. I think removing 80% of those hangars would be a big improvement to this otherwise very nice design.
A ship exists for its function – this is an assault carrier, and its goal is to get its (very large) complement of carried vehicles and troops into action. The hangar bays are there to allow for dropships and repulsorvehicles to sortie quickly – the ship itself is not a fleet combatant. Close off 80% of the hangars and you reduce your sortie rate by 80% – and you increase the risk that the ship is prevented from deploying its carried forces by local damage. It’s like saying an aircraft carrier having such a large flight deck makes it a big target. It does, but that’s beside the point.
Ok, I think I understand the philosophy. What could maybe have worked then would be joining some of the smaller hangars into larger ones and making them less prominent – like recessing them a little into the bulk and somewhat reducing the neon-billboard effect of the lights. But that’s ok – I’ll eagerly await your next design. If it conveys the same sense of scale and massiveness as this guy I’m more than happy.
I can see that working, and I get the aesthetic point. However, if you went with fewer big bays then you’d have the problem of having giant apertures instead – so if you drop shields to sortie from the big bay, the *entire* bay becomes open. Tradeoffs.
Suppose a similar principle applies to large ramps, with the added hassle of their deployment/retraction mechanisms. Granted, if this thing’s getting pounded hard enough to compromise any of that its escorts are clearly not doing their job.
Honestly, I don’t think the aesthetic issue is the number or placement of the bays, but rather the shield glow around them is too bright. Take your Impellor class carrier, for instance. You’ve got similar densities of bays, but the shield outline of the hangers is much dimmer and the bays are open, which tends to reduce the eye catching effect. Dim down the other hangers to the same level as the 4 small hangers just forward of the beginning of the hull taper and I think it would be fine.
I think this is a great idea. This is like a Ticonderoga class Amphibious Assualt Island ship used to launch tons of soldiers and vehicles. I can imagine AT-ATs lining up on the center of the ship waiting to get ferried by Gozanties.
Fractal do you think it can launch a c9979 landing craft out of the ventral hangar? If so, I can just imagine this landing on umbara during the clone wars (assuming it gets close enough to land).
Fractal, what about this:
https://www.deviantart.com/iankeenanarts/art/Chart-One-Secondary-Starships-801169166
You can debate the internal stuff but size the consolidator at 700m is ridiculous
Tragically common for the Internet, really. I understand the impetus – Star Wars is a visual universe, and it helps to have an image of a ship in your head to go with the concept you envision – but he’s far from the first person to poach an image and re-size it as something that it can’t possibly be.
He also labeled the thing as a First Order ship, and gave the Kontos to the Chiss Ascendancy. This clearly isn’t something with any basis in canon, but hey at least he credited Ansel for the art.
But how many craft can it hold? Specs please!!!
It’s not a starfighter carrier, though it can probably carry the Ground Support Wing of an Imperial Army corps (I suspect it might even be able to carry a full Imperial Wing or more, given the description of the original craft this is based on, but I am not sure).
A fighter wing is a ridiculously small volume compared to a regiment of AT-SPs. Configured appropriately internally, this ship could carry thousands of TIEs.
looks like a combination of the acclimator and Venator with a lot more internal volume.
the thing that confuses me is that all of the bays come in a variety of sizes, many of which are too small for a tie fighter. maybe those atomospheric tie varients would fit, that would make sense for a rapidly deployable ground base. some of these bays would probably have to be for cargo and ground troops, which is probably the job of the bays closest to the bottem obviously. the rest is either for landers or cargo shuttles probably.
this is coming from a perspective of complete ignorence towards the insperation keep in mind, im just trying to infer based on this rendering.
What gives you the impression that any of those bays are too low for a TIE fighter? Scaling from the Chi-Class heavy dropship sitting up front in the bottom image, I’d say all of the bays are at least tall enough for TIE/ln to operate from.
The purpose of the ship is to land an entire Imperial Army Corps on a hostile planet, away from significant enemy forces. If TIE/sk ever made it into full production they would probably be the fighters it carried, because this entire ship is geared toward landing and supporting an invading army.
Disney needs to hire fractal full-time to create the new starship classes. And they need to give him pretty much free-reign over it.
This looks like a venator who ate a piece of the death star!
And I love it xD
I originaly wondered if this ship even would need to/could land. It has enough hangars, that I guess, that it could easily carry enough dropships to deploy all of it troops without even landing. Similar to amphibic assault ships of our time. Those also dont land themselfs and instead carry both the troops aswell as the landing crafts/helicopters necessary to bring them onto the coast.
well, to be honest, if you removed the walker’s legs and replaced them with repulsor lift (like, what’s on the separatist command modules when they land, or Jabba’s barge, and pretty much every speeder/swoop/spaceship in the galaxy) you wouldn’t even need the drop ships. You just put yourself on an appropriate ballistic entry profile, turn off gravity in the bay, reverse thrusters, and let them fall in.
the same repulsors for moving around can control your decent, and slow you down so you don’t go splat. their control would be similar to a quad copter, in how the thrust is increased, tipping the craft to change it’s thrust vector, effectively sliding it around.
You would likely need some kind of heavy-lift craft to get them back, but by that time, speed is not critical.
This would definitely be the ship landing once I secured a landing zone
Jesus, you could probably fit the entire USMC in this thing!
This is a vessel I would use as mobile beachheads. Atmospheric landing warships carrying multiple battallions as well as dropships, bombers and vehicles while being heavily armored and laying down large volleys into attacking enemy forces or nearby fortifications. A couple of these ships landing with the assistance of fleet support and straggling gunships would create an instant, highly formidable beachhead. You turn a field into a heavily fortified FOB in an instant. I’d definitely have a lot of these in my fleet if I wanted to occupy a planet.
Who else saw the tertiary bridge?
I saw it on many ships, and I wonder: what are the smallest hangar bays (like the ones on the side) carrying?
Dropship bays, for stuff like LAATs.
Neat but which small bays the one in fours or the one right next to the shuttle bay?
Also I though they where starfighter bays.
Most bays can probably be multipurpose. For something this big, it shouldn’t be hard to configure a bay for either starfighters, dropships, or tanks.
That make sense. Although it would be neat if Fractal made a hanger bay comparison to see different type of hangers and what do they carry, like what he did with the ship turrets here: https://fractalsponge.net/?p=1260
So what’s the dimensions on this?
I really have to say i dig this concept very much, expecially the twin bridge with the hangar trench dividing it as well as the unique front section.
I have however spotted, or at least i thinki i have spotted some “oversights” if you want on the model, the big flat-edged rectangles on the front part of the double bridge pylon section seems to be marginally wider than the bridge pylon section itself, expecially visible in Pic #11. the second thing i have spotted is the weird looking offset of the lower ion cannons to either side of the outer bottom hull, they look like they´re moved too far outward. Is that intended in the design of this ship? No hate just thought i´d share it and can´t wait for the next uploads, i adore your work.
Very interesting concept, Fractal. However I think that it might be a bit unwieldy in atmosphere, given its shape. And then there is the amount of thrust those massive engines would be able to put out compared to the drag ratio of the front section of the hull(I don’t think “bow” would be quite sufficient here, as it is a space faring warship, and the section is far larger than the term “prow” would refer to). Overall, it appears to be the opposite of the ISD, with most of the offensive armaments on the bottom of the hull. I think that if its shields were downed by enemy fire, which from what I am seeing is fairly likely (in terms of weaponry while in the landed configuration it only has 28 Quad Turrets to defend itself), it would have to leave fast to save itself, with no shields for streamlining in the atmosphere and all that drag, it could lose something.
Drag and shaping are irrelevant. Repulsorlifts are all. VSDs and Venators are not aerodymanic, nor are ISDs, and they all operate in atmosphere just fine. Repulsorlifts are so good they are magical – they waive all sorts operating limitations. Good thing they are so ubiquitous droids can have them. I actually think a common way for the ship to operate is floating in lower atmosphere on repulsorlift, not landed at all – it becomes a mobile base at that point, rather than an actual dropship (of which it has many).
The armament is actually quite distributed, but the heavy firepower is from 3 720-teraton single HTLs mounted ventrally. Why ventrally? Because they are bombardment weapons. The ship is not designed to fight against warships – that’s what its escorts are for, so the primary battery is a large number of MTLs to kill frigates and such. The big guns are to destroy strong points as it comes in from orbit. Having any serious use in antiship would be down to luck rather than design.
And yeah, if it loses shields on the surface, it’s sorta screwed. But all SW ships losing shields can easily get screwed. And it’s an amphib not a line warship. Having warship grade shields allow the ship to get past some defenses to allow its dropships and repulsorlift vehicles to deploy – it’s not to withstand heavy attack indefinitely.
I think of it as a starfaring analogue to a Bayfield class Attack Transport. A couple of destroyer caliber guns for bombardment, a whole battery of lighter autocannons to take care of small craft and fighters, but mostly a slow, fat hull chock full of landing craft, light vehicles, and angry young members of the Greatest Generation.
So Steve Bannon if you don’t mind me asking but are you the real Steve Bannon?
Yeah, I unwind here by getting into dumb arguments about fictional spaceships when I’m not trying to shut down the Mueller probe and dismantle the Post-War European democratic consensus. /s
…sad thing is, at this point I’m not even sure that would surprise me much.
While this baby has unmistakable elements similar to the Acclamator and Venator, its overall shape and role make me also think of a massively scaled-up, military grade Star Galleon-type vessel.
So Fractal have you saw solo yet and if so what is you thoughts on it?
Personally, I though the whole WW1-style battle scene at the beginning of the movie was brilliant. They really nailed the atmosphere on that one.
Would’ve been even better with (a) one of these monsters spitting out speeders & repulsortanks in the background and (b) an AT-SP damn near squashing Young!Han plus half his squad as it clunks over the trenches, but agreed. Plus, that snap transition from the prior scene.
Not even showing the Mimbanese was an interesting thing to take from Dunkirk, although it does seem odd for a unit described in the accompanying materials as an armored division to be seemingly comprised of mostly light infantry.
I guess there’s the whole “draftee & prisoner team up to get the frak outta Dodge” plotline to focus on, but a few frames more armor/gunship action wouldn’t have hurt. That noted, color me amused by that Cthulhu cameo halfway through our (re)introduction to the Maw.
Surely that means we’ll get Daala back at some point then.
Just so long as (a) she actually gets to knock out a Mon Cal or two and (b) we *don’t* get Kyp Durron, the Sun Crusher, or that Death Star prototype/Darksaber crap back as a package deal. Sequel trilogy’s got enough superweapons & super-prodigies as it is.
… And then here comes TROS w/ the ExGo- class SDs
Is this your representation of the KDY/Evakmar Corps Landing Ship from the Imperial Sourcebook? I tend to get a mental image of this design whenever is see the Landing Ship referenced.
This thing looks awesome, but does it actually have any way of directly loading/offloading ground units? I’m not seeing any loading ramps or elevators to ground level.
The big square bottom hatches are elevators (see the landed view with the Chi). But really it’s supposed to be more of a dropship base once landed than say, an Acclamator. Any repulsorlift vehicles can fly off any of the hangar bays as soon as it hits atmosphere. Heavier units can be disembarked directly, but they’d probably need some other transport anyway; heavy walkers are too slow and you wouldn’t want to ground the assault ship too close to the battlefield.
Good to know. Though now that I think about it, wouldn’t just having elevators be kind of inefficient compared to having at least one ramp? The elevators can only hold so much per ride and considering their load they probably can’t move very fast compared to having a constant stream of units moving on or off the ship.
There’s no reason the elevators couldn’t support a collapsible ramp as well – lots of switchbacks though. Main issue is that the ship is actually insanely large to be actually *landing* – think like half-kilometer long ramps, which look a bit odd. Really the ship was designed more as a mothership and base than a direct lander like the Acclamator.
Possible counterexample: At Kashyyyk we saw that the Venator was parked only a few hundred meters behind the beach defense line, although we didn’t get to see it fire.
Venators still seem much closer to an Acc’s tonnage than either design would be to this lump, but that is curious. Emergency fire support and/or evac for Yoda & friends?
I don’t think that it can’t land near the battle, but that it doesn’t make much sense. This ship is not really designed to launch heavy vehicles right into the front lines. Venators don’t carry that much, and I think they could conceivably have ramps for more rapid launches. But after that they could just sit there just like the Consolidator would. But having your launch cycle be within tactical artillery range is not really a good idea unless you have to do it. Let the Acclamators risk that while you mass a dropship wave from this thing to reinforce from a safe-ish distance.
Come to think of it: artillery surprises aside, parked capital support=no opposing theater shield, which seems to indicate any remaining CIS threat was very localized. They might’ve gotten lucky enough to pick off a Jedi Council bigwig, but otherwise the Kashyyk offensive was done (well, prior to Palpy’s conference-call coup).
I don’t know where it was from but I think in one comic it was shown that the “landed” Venator on Kashyyyk unleashed a few of those Juggernauts/Turbotanks (those with the ten big wheels) directly to the battlefield while at the same time LAAT gunships and ARC-170s could be released from the dorsal hangar for air support. If the landed Venator then also faces the correct way it can additionally use its own HTLs as additional artillery support.
The Venator’s main advantage was versatility after all.
CIS theatre command might have approved the Kashyyyk operation under the assumption that the fleet forces concentrated to raid Coruscant would be significantly more successful than it actually was at drawing off and destroying Republican naval assets.
Regardless, there’s a line regarding the CIS starting up a main power generator, and I can’t think of anything it would be powering except for a theater shield, although it is odd that a C-9979 landing barge carrying the better part of a brigade was allowed to land within line of sight of the Venator’s flank HTL batteries without any challenge.
Maybe the Captain of the Venator didn’t want to risk too much collateral damage from a HTL bombardment?
These things are already pretty destructive in space so I could imagine them being even more effective on a planet’s surface.
It’s also not the Empire yet so they would still cling to the, to quote Sheev: “Hypocritical morality of the Republic”.
Right, atmosphere-roasting death for unprotected friendlies, though you’d think lighter TLs or ion would’ve remained on the table. Theater shield in the way, perhaps?
Venators don’t carry lighter TLs or Ions, only HTLs and PD cannons.
Venators do carry some medium turbolasers though, in official canon they have two dual medium turbos (one on each side near the bow in the trench) and an unknown number of lighter broadside cannons were shown in RotS itself which don’t seem to be PD lasers. They don’t have any Ion cannons though.
Technically. Funny how it looks just like a twin heavy turbolaser though…
Love the shape and angles of the ship. Looks like it could be one hell of a brute and just bully smaller & similar sized ships just by ramming them. Be cool if there was a variant sorta like ancient Trireme vessels, that had some sort of a fixed forward blade like the MC140s, solely for ramming other ships
Does anyone know the carry capacity for this? (Troopes, ground vehicles, starfighters etc)
Here is what I copied that Fractal posted about this ship originally… however this was quite some time ago and he might have newer vehicle and drop ship numbers. 😉
——–
“I started with the Imperial Sourcebook for rough numbers of vehicles per subformation, and took measurements of a bunch of my and EU/canon vehicles. Then I adjusted dropship complements a bit and worked out a hypothetical average Corps level formation:
24 AT-SP
40 HAVw A6
48 AT-SE
72 SPHA
80 AT-AT
576 scout walkers
4674 repulsorlift (all classes, mix AFV and support)
12 Titan drop barge
48 company drop barge
160 Theta drop barge
72 sentinel/ATR landers
400 infantry dropships
It would divide into:
Battlegroup/legion (x2): 3x regiment (2x repulsorlift, 1x light armor, 1x heavy armor battalion); 1x artillery regiment; 1x HAVw A6 regiment; 80x infantry dropship
Battlegroup/legion (x2): 3x regiment (2x repulsorlift, 1x scout walker, 1x heavy armor battalion); 1x artillery regiment; 1x AT-AT regiment; 80x infantry dropship
Corps HQ: 2x AT-SP regiment, 1x AT-SE regiment, 2x SPHA regiment, 40 dropships, 1 regiment equivalent vehicles
Dropships are LAAT equivalents, and based on the 80 per division of an Acclamator. The company drop barge is purely hypothetical, designed to move masses of individually not very large repulsorlift vehicles, but in large quantity. Works out to be about light corvette-sized.”
I haven’t re-checked the numbers, but it’s within the ballpark of that old estimate. Obviously you can swap back and forth as long as the volumes all work out. The company barge evolved into the Chi-class.
You know Fractal about the infantry dropships are the Sentinel kinda already are infantry dropships? but since you separate it then what are the differents? the only different I can think it those infantry dropships are smaller than the Sentinels.
I was thinking stuff like my LAAV/i. Sentinels are pretty big actually.
Oh so the LAAV/i are the infantry dropships you talking about right?
As for the sentinels’s size yeah I do see them being big as they are 38 meters long.
Edit: Just realize that the DX-9 stromtrooper transports are also kinda like infantry dropships so that one make more scene.
DX-9s are fairly overkill for atmospheric work – they have hyperdrive, ion, a huge warhead load, and shields and acceleration to sort of survive starfighter attack. I think the purely terrestrial/surface vehicles just work on a totally different power scale from starships, which helps to explain why starfighters are effective against walkers but speeders built for atmospheric as opposed to space work are not. It makes sense, since you don’t want casual gigaton scale firepower when the scenery can’t take it.
Now that I think about it DX-9s was use for assaulting and boarding capital ships while the LAAV/is was use for ground assault. Does this make sense Fractal?
Yes
Neat
So since the company barge are Chi class does that mean the Consolidator carry 48 Chi class heavy dropships Fractal?
Would that fill up the entire capacity of the transport? In theory, according to the Imperial Sourcebook an Evankmar-KDY should be able to carry any Corps in any configuration, with room to spare. If this behemoth doesn’t match that- well maybe the Imperial Sourcebook was just wrong (not impossible, given that it notes that the information is supposedly actual intelligence gathered by the Alliance)? I find it hard to believe the Empire would need anything bigger than this for this role.
Gotta love how shading & thruster bloom highlight’s this beast’s profusion of greebles, gaps & antennae. Plus, I retain a soft spot for big corvette/frigate-whacking ball turrets.
What is the overall length?
And also great use of windows! IMO the best windows on any of your designs. Really helps the reveal scale which, as I am sure you know, is a trick used by ILM since the first Star Wars.
This mobile troop-hive seems to be roughly 2 km; for further visual reference, our host cranked out a handy corvette-to-heavy-destroyer lineup some time back: https://fractalsponge.net/?p=895
I believe it’s 1854m
The Chi launching from the ventral bay for scale is a nice touch. When first I saw the Venator, I used to think that having two separate command towers for a warship was an unrealistic choice, but then the Brits launched the HMS Queen Elizabeth and proved me wrong.
The venator has one bridge for commanding the ship in combat situations and piloting the ships all together and the other for better coordination of its starfighter compliment
Considering the Venator is primarily a carrier and secondarily a (medium) destroyer, this layout makes some sort of sense, also in light of how big the fighter complement of a single Venator is.
There are some things I really like about this ship: Its sheer bulk, the imaginative iteration from the Acclamator design, the many small windows. Not to mention the superb modelling as always. What I don’t like at all is the amount of far too many hangar bays. They completely draw attention from the otherwise great design and override much of the coolness factor of the ship. There has surely been put some thought in including them, but I think form should not follow function in this case. Also from a technical point of view each opening in the hull is a potential atmosphere breach and each of those vacuum seals requires maintenance, so you don’t want any more then needed. I think removing 80% of those hangars would be a big improvement to this otherwise very nice design.
A ship exists for its function – this is an assault carrier, and its goal is to get its (very large) complement of carried vehicles and troops into action. The hangar bays are there to allow for dropships and repulsorvehicles to sortie quickly – the ship itself is not a fleet combatant. Close off 80% of the hangars and you reduce your sortie rate by 80% – and you increase the risk that the ship is prevented from deploying its carried forces by local damage. It’s like saying an aircraft carrier having such a large flight deck makes it a big target. It does, but that’s beside the point.
Ok, I think I understand the philosophy. What could maybe have worked then would be joining some of the smaller hangars into larger ones and making them less prominent – like recessing them a little into the bulk and somewhat reducing the neon-billboard effect of the lights. But that’s ok – I’ll eagerly await your next design. If it conveys the same sense of scale and massiveness as this guy I’m more than happy.
I can see that working, and I get the aesthetic point. However, if you went with fewer big bays then you’d have the problem of having giant apertures instead – so if you drop shields to sortie from the big bay, the *entire* bay becomes open. Tradeoffs.
Suppose a similar principle applies to large ramps, with the added hassle of their deployment/retraction mechanisms. Granted, if this thing’s getting pounded hard enough to compromise any of that its escorts are clearly not doing their job.
Honestly, I don’t think the aesthetic issue is the number or placement of the bays, but rather the shield glow around them is too bright. Take your Impellor class carrier, for instance. You’ve got similar densities of bays, but the shield outline of the hangers is much dimmer and the bays are open, which tends to reduce the eye catching effect. Dim down the other hangers to the same level as the 4 small hangers just forward of the beginning of the hull taper and I think it would be fine.
Damn this thing looks good
good lord this thing is huge.
An Acclamator on a very bad steroids 🙂
Rather result of inbreding Venator, Acclamator and Ton-Falk
Could you mabye do the nebulon-k frigate next please?
Love it, can we get any stats on this thing?