Are those quad turbolasers the same as the Arquitens quad turbolaser?
Katyusha
7 years ago
What sort of role do you envision the Allegiance-class as having? Flotilla leader? It seems kind of awkwardly-sized for any other role (overkill for a DD, too small to be a proper CL).
As far as I know, Fractal don’t create stories but is instead more interested in making technical-rich vessels that you could impliment into a story. Backstage role, if you will. (I could be wrong)
I have my own ideas, but I’m not going to be superimposing them on anyone else’s since I don’t get to write the canon. But, I’m also much less interested in official canon than coming up with a universe backstory structure that I enjoy and that I can design stuff around. For your RPG/adventure, do whatever you want as long as you credit me for the art if it goes public.
Yeah, I always take your universalized canon in its own special place in hope that a compromise can be met between the two canons instead of the current wishy-washy actual Canon.
Fractal when you do the aft of the Allegiance redux would you put in the garbage disposal chute like the Imperator?
Daib
7 years ago
For those who aren’t really aware, the official tabletop fleet battle game from FFG, Star Wars Armada is releasing an Executor class Star Dreadnought expansion pack. Unfortunately, from the preview stats, it’s barely twice the firepower and survivability of a stock ISD, which is a travesty.
The Allegiance would make a lot more sense as the Empire’s top end brawler, with maybe the Secutor as a faster multirole counterpart.
For me this was never design for new star destroyer type, called Allegiance. For me this always was and will be Imperial II class. To name a subvariant of Imperial I in this way, when the only difference is weapon compliment-is an error.
It’s clearly not the “only difference”. The allegiance is 600m longer than the standard ISDI and has a significantly different dorsal superstructure, as well as no hangar cavity and a larger weapon complement.
The Dark Empire comic series was a continuity dumpster fire, but it did at least give us the basis for some of Fractal’s best work; the Bellator and Secutor can both be seen in the background in various panels.
Perhaps if this was a Tector-class SD, I could see where you’re coming from. The AWCS considers this a battlecruiser, more precisely a star cruiser. So despite the Allegiance having a SD classification in its name its always been thought of has a “heavy” SD, a lot of emphasis on heavy. The Imperial class is sort of multi-purpose oriented while the Allegiance class was intended solely for ship to ship combat even with ships a bit larger than itself. You can call it the Imperial II if you want to, I just think its a really big jump in terms of firepower, design, capabilities & intended purpose of the Imperial class to that of the Allegiance class
Well the Allegiance’s main weapons are 3 axial single ball 720 teratons Heavy Turbolasers, 14 quad (2 of them being ball turrets in the middle trench) 175 teratons Heavy Turbolasers and 4 trench triple ball 175 teratons Heavy Ion Cannons.
While the Imperator’s weapons are 8 octuple 40 Teratons Heavy Turbolasers, 9 (3 axial, 6 ventral) triple 40 Teratons Heavy Turbolasers and 2 trench quad 70 Teratons Heavy tubolasers.
Basically Allegiance is for fleet warfare while the Imperator is for Multi-role. Also the Tector have a same role as the Allegiance but Imperator sized.
Speaking of size Both Imperator and Tector 1.6 km, Allegiance 2.25 km.
Aside from the fact that Imperial II subclass already exist, Allegiance-class is larger and served a completely different combat roles than your more commonplace ISDs. It’s smaller hangar, gargantuan reactor, and numerous turbolaser emplacements is clearly made for inter-ship combat and perhaps even a command vessel for a sector group
You all guys missed the point of my entry. Visually speaking, in terms of looks Allegiance class should have been Imperial II. Size, weapon compliment, role-those all are irrelevant because you can change the lore to match this choice. First, there was design, then there was the lore. This class can be smaller, bigger, better or worse equipped. I don’t care about established canon or lore here, I’m seeing the very similar design to Imperial-class, but “upgraded”, Im seeing nonsensical stats for Imperial II, and I argue for a change in lore. What is called Imperial II should be “Tector”; though I never understood the necessity for explaining every little mistake in the original trilogy by creating new ships, classes etc. So, to put it bluntly-established canon does not make sense for me here, this should be retconned. Just look how Allegiance design logically flows from Imperial. It is doing everything that Imperial I was doing, but more.
So, if I am understanding this clarification correctly, you wish to say that Allegiance-class is better sited to be Imperial II by retconning all of its orignial specifications so it can fit under the constraints of the ISD subclass? Or perhaps a that it shoud be labled as an ISD subclass when it is produced with a different enough purpose to warrant it’s own class? As for the Tector-class, it is different enough that the novelization called it a communications ship and have since established a lore for itself.
Yes, the first option: retcon. Big chunk of SW lore is nonsensical anyway; I dont see the reason why we should stick to it blindly, especially after nuking canon by Disney. The new canon does not make much sense either.
A “class” of ship requires significant changes in design; as it stands Imperial I and II are identical and it makes no sense. If one wants to have new class in Imperial line one should choose more significant design changes that would justify naming it “Imperial II”. What in canon is called “Imperial II” does not deserve this name. Allegiance however-does.
Allegiance makes sense visually and design-wise as next class in Imperial line. It is upgraded Imperial I; more guns, more mass, more energy, and presumably-also bigger, though personally, I’m not so convinced by current length-2200 m.
As for Tector-Tector is simply and error made by special effect guys. Lore was created in order to explain-away it; and it was an error too, just like many other decisions regarding consistency of lore (see Executor size, from way too small 8km to absurd 19km now. It should have always been 12km). In lore as it is Imperial II has zero point defense, no ion cannons. Instead it has more turbolasers. In short, it is heavy artillery ship. Tector as seen on screen has no hangar bay. It makes sense to assume it was traded for something else. It makes sense to assume that this was sub-class that currently in lore is called “Imperial II”. No hangar bays, no point defense, just turbolasers. It does not make sense to assume that this is communication ship, since entire fleet at Endor was already linked via Executor and each SD has sophisticated equipment of this type on its own, because each SD is already fleet-command vessel. If we have to explain obvious errors by creating lore; then lets put more effort and thought into it.
I dont care about established lore too much; it lost its allure years ago; is inconsistent, does not make sense. Nobody cared to create rules for star wars battles, so there is no setting behind this part of universum, and as result everything is about “muh feeling what is right”. So this is muh feeling what is right.
I will say that I follow the idea that “Imperial” is a ship class name rather than the notion that all Star Destroyers are designated “Imperial”, which I find quite odd. It’s colloquial at best, like “Super Star Destroyer” describing every warship bigger than an ISD, whether 2km or 17+km.
Also, Executor isn’t 12km. 19km is an upper bound of the estimate – I prefer something around 17.5km, but 12km is plainly too small. This isn’t a “well I think so” statement – it follows from consistent visual scaling. 12km was never an original number – it showed up briefly, splitting the difference between the obviously wrong but somehow-adhered-to old 8km number in some EU crap and the 17-18km derived from visual scaling of the model and the movie shots. Then LFL went and gave it a 19km length, which is just plausible but I think a bit of an overreaction, largely PR if you can call it that rather than considered from available VFX evidence.
I don’t see how 12 km is supposed to be more « reasonable ». First of all it doesn’t match with it’s onscreen scale (which is admittedly a little inconsistent, but some of the close-up shot, like the one of the Falcon skimming its trench in TESB would actually make it far larger than 19 km), and secondly, we’re talking about the people who built a 120km large space-station, got it destroyed and decided to build a second one even bigger. There’s literally no reason that would make a 12 km ship more believable than a 19’ one.
Well, recently I read a thread about the SD bridges in the old trilogy on boards.theforce.net.
According to the size of the bridge structures, there a Imperial/Imperatos SDs with different lengths in the old trilogy and rogue one. The sizes range from 900 meter (rogue one)to 1200 to 2300. Some people there scaled the executor on 12km with the same bridge size as normal SD’s.
The only thing that makes sense to me is that all the SD bridge modules are approximately the same, and thus all the various ISD variants are all roughly the same, and blame VFX limitations for any discrepancies scaling to sets. After all, the scale difference is far larger than, say the lambda scaling of Home One. Even for eminently scalable sets (in theory), the Millenium Falcon set is impossible to fit into the actual ship without modification.
This is before taking into account the dramatically different scales of the studio models (Devastator vs Avenger vs the small metal ones, etc.).
Hands down, my biggest issue with Lore in its current form is going to be accounting for the massive building of ships.
Pick whatever size you want for the ships – but consider the number of years it takes to build a real world naval ships. The Republic, Empire, Rebellion, and New Republic generate thousands of capital class ships from say.. 25BBY, to 7 ABY.
The CIS half built the Death Star, which is volume is many thousands of destroyers on its own. SW industrial capacity is enormous. KDY shipyards literally form a ring world around a planet, easily several Death Star volumes in and of themselves.
Sure – but consider the time component here. 35 years, 4 major factions each with a large number of ships for their respective era. This means the numbers are likely in the tens of thousands range over that full period.
How many would we say could be built in a year. 100? 200? 500? And this is while the empire is being stripped of resources to build the death star(s). Let’s say they can resource this – the issue is the speed, especially for the New Republic. They go from nothing to a larger, more advanced, more powerful force than the loyalist empire in 3 years.
I’m not sure why any of this surprising. Say KDY was 50% building slips by circumference, and it’s an Earth sized planet, that’s enough to have 20,000 ISD sized ships under construction at once. Death Star 2 was on the order of 600,000-700,000 ISD volumes, and was built in 3 years. The SW galaxy draws on millions of inhabited planets, and billions of potential planets for resources alone. Some of those individual planets can have populations a thousand times that of Earth. The exponents of 10 start adding up fast. It’s not a great scale if you want nice cozy adventures for a plucky band of 4. But those are the implications of truly galactic civilization of the scale seen in the movies. Scale matters.
The NR was a bit of a special case too – I personally think much of their forces were actually defected Imperial forces or former Imperial materiel taken over under local governments and loaned to the NR. Plus they simply never pushed military expansion in the way the Empire did after the Clone Wars – too much pacifist overreaction to the example of the Empire.
Sure, but the cost of each ISD was listed in as more than the entire yearly GDP of most systems.
I don’t disagree on space to build, although the logistics of which would be pretty insane. I have difficulty with speed at which they were built. Not to mention engineered, crewed, etc.
For comparison, based on the numbers observed during the Kepler mission, there’s an estimated 100 billion planets in the Milky Way, 40 billion of which are Earth-like, and 11 billion of those orbit G-type stars like our sun (theoretically supporting life as we know it). That’s easily 20 billion planetary systems.
I’m pretty sure I remember something, from somewhere, that suggested a parity in size between the Milky Way the one LAAFFA… So… That’s a sh!t ton of resources.
“There are whole star systems whose gross domestic product is less than the cost of a single Star Destroyer. There are whole nations which, throughout their entire history, do not use as much energy as a Star Destroyer expends to make a single hyperspace jump.” (Star Wars Sourcebook, 2nd. Edition, pg. 34-35, WEG)
It’s not MOST systems, just some systems. What’s the GDP of Hoth? What’s the combined energy consumption of, say, Luxembourg?
Going by the sheer scale of the Star Wars galaxy and the available planets and resources I’ve actually found most of the given ship- and fleet-numbers to be comparatively low. 25.000 Imperial-class Star Destroyers overall of both subtypes? That sounds rather ridiculous when one keeps in mind the Empire controlled more than 5 million star systems and each sector fleet was supposed to have at least 24 Star Destroyers with still a sizeable reserve being held back in the core worlds.
Granted, some of these numbers can be other classes like Victorys, Venators, Procursators or Tectors but it still comes over as relatively low compared to overall galactic scale.
Which is why the ‘Rule by Fear’ idea made sense when the majority of your territory was backwater yokels that pooped their pants when a ISD I parked itself in orbit. More bang for their buck… And loosing several dozen would have zero effective impact on your industrial/military complex.
It depends on their intended mission, I think. Based on the in-universe evidence, a “destroyer” is more of a combination dreadnought / carrier / assault transport, basically combining a modern Navy’s carrier battle group, surface action group and amphibious assault groups into a single platform. The US Navy rarely has more than four carriers available for deployment at any given time (the other ~8 are usually in the maintenance/overhaul or deployment work-up pipeline), but still manages to project power on a global scale simply by moving the carrier to wherever it’s needed. So yeah, 25,000 is pretty low-ball on an absolute scale, but what if a sector (average of 1,000 systems) only needs 24 destroyers (or the equivalent) to cover it? Put frigates and corvettes in all the low-priority systems to serve as a trip-wire, with destroyers in strategic locations (or patrol circuits within the sector) as a rapid reaction force. Then, if a sector REALLY lights off, forces can be surged in from neighboring sectors on short notice, or from the Oversector fleets or from reserve fleets in the Core as needs be. System control doesn’t require parking a destroyer in every system, the fact that a destroyer is only hours or days away, with the massed striking power of the Imperial Navy behind it.
Sure, the Empire has incredible levels of strategic mobility, but so do its enemies. A destroyer might only be hours away, but a Rebel MC80 raider can destroy an industrial target and jump away in minutes, only to hit another target in another sector long before rapid-reaction forces even show up to the first target. The very nature of hyperspace makes it nearly impossible to suppress a well equipped adversary willing to employ asymmetrical warfare, making it sort of like Afghanistan in Space.
There’s a reason why the only polity that lasted more than a few decades was the ultimate expression of Laissez-faire. Trying to impose a coherent ideology on that kind of galaxy is just an exercise in futility, no matter how many capital ships you have.
But not every planet in the galaxy is going to have the sort of strategic resources that would necessitate a strike by an MC80. Nor are Imperial Star Destroyers the only asset in the Empire’s bag of tricks; “fixed” assets, like orbital battlestations, planetary shields, theater shields, anti-orbital weaponry and the like are all possibilities if a planet is of sufficient importance. An important planet could even double as one of the nodal positions from which Star Destroyer groups are based, such that there will nearly always be at least one SD in-system.
I’ll say it again – destroyers or any multirole capable ships only play those roles in context. Historically, destroyers were absolutely capital ships vs coastal craft but as fleet escorts remained absolutely expendable if it meant a capital ship stayed in action. That remains true today.
Agreed about refit cycles – though with SW mobility available vs not is likely much better than 1:2. Even ships working up would be able to be available in an emergency, while transit considerations mean on station time is much lower for terrestrial navies doing global deployments.
I would imagine normal Sector planets actually rarely see Imperial ships, which are mostly in reserve with light forces and automated surveillance. What makes that tolerable is likely the ubiquity of shielding, which allows a planet or station habitat to hold out against raids and make them merely disruptive rather than destructive. My model for SW warfare is pretty different from what we might think of as warfare now. Given the inter-dependency of the system, it’s possible for large swathes of territory to declare neutrality or switch sides if their main resources inputs are cut off. I.e. a city world will starve without food imports. Actually accessing that territory and its resources are different, but controlling things like food and energy supplies might force entire sectors out of active conflict for the other side if they get cut off. Now, whether they *can* be cut off depends on how you think hyperdrives really work.
How self-sufficient do you reckon most planets are? Given the truly absurd logistical requirements for something like a city-world, perhaps they’re not importing trillions of tons of food a week with all the hypermatter expenditure that requires. My model for city-worlds has most of the food coming from nearly self-sufficient arcologies that recycle waste into food and fresh water at very high levels of efficiency.
Shielding is great when you’re expecting an attack, but keeping them raised for extended durations is a really fast way to drain your reactant tanks and impede lawful commerce. Most raiders probably wouldn’t be Mon Cal cruisers, but rather privateer Q-ships that appear civilian until they open fire. It’s tough to devise countermeasures against that sort of raider unless you’re willing to detain and inspect merchants at a checkpoint far from the planet itself, like how Kuat set up its transfer ports.
That’s what the myriad of smaller Imperial ships are for, unless you’re picturing some pretty powerful Q-Ships. Historically, Q-Ships were only useful against warships if they could pull off a successful surprise attack, but lacked the maneuverability and durability to go toe-to-toe with a warship in a stand-up fight.
So, depending on the asset, you have one or more corvettes / frigates in system, which are going to be a tough proposition for a converted freighter. Maybe add in an armed space station as an orbital transfer point, along with a few fighter squadrons for system patrol, plus any ground defenses.
Plus, this isn’t going to be true of every system. The more valuable a system is, the more robust the in-system defenses are likely to be. Systems with minimal defenses will likely be because they have little or nothing worth defending. Even then, there are certain targets the Alliance is unlikely to touch for ethical reasons; an ag world may be relatively defenseless, but the Alliance isn’t going to slag it from orbit just to starve out the massively overpopulated sector capital.
In terms of self-suffiency, from the Legends source, around 80% of the Core World’s power can be traced back to one planet: Sarapin. In addition to this, there are other notions of dedicated agricultural worlds made to supply the Core World with food. So it’s pretty decent to say they aren’t very efficient in their recycling programs.
^this. And it can’t even be blamed on the pre-Disney EU; the source is “The Force Awakens Beginner Game.” When I heard Disney was doing away with the old EU, I really did hope for higher standards of continuity and verisimilitude. Nope, just making room for more ridiculous silliness.
I lost a lot of hope in the Disneyboot’s internal consistency when Twilight Company claimed that a Gozanti-Class Cruiser’s turbolasers and proton torpedoes were a terrible threat to a CR90 and a Braha’tok. The canon Gozanti-Class’s armament (according to all other sources, before and since) is 1 twin medium laser turret and 1 single heavy laser turret.
You can actually make a rough general calculation with these numbers. If one insinuates that a sector has averagely 1.000 star systems and the Empire controlled around 5 million that would be exactly 5.000 sectors.
24 Star Destroyers per Sector Fleet x 5.000 sectors adds up to to a requirement of 120.000 Star Destroyers in total not counting actual Imperial attack- or rapid response fleets or the strategic reserve held in the core worlds. Let’s further estimate the Empire has probably a surplus of around 10.000 to 15.000 Venators left over from the Clone Wars Republic and, I dunno, around 20.000 Victory-class vessels. Together with the 25.000 ISD-class vessels this makes at optimum a number of 60.000 Star Destroyers available. Half of the required number for the sector fleets alone. If you now add additional classes like the Tector, Secutor and Procursator (which I think Fractal mentioned being a quick-to-build emergency destroyer) you might actually reach this required number eventually. I’d also add the Victory II-class SD but it was explicitly mentioned in Legends sources that the Victory II had a rather low production run meaning not many of them were build.
A good estimate with mostly solid numbers.
As I recall (I’m at work, so I can’t check them), the RoTS, and Complete, ICS both state that the Republic Navy had 50,000 Venators at peak numbers, and that production only slowed down after the Declaration of a New Order. Given that, I would tend to estimate that Venator numbers, at least early on, were more like 35,000-40,000.
In support of your calculation: Legends sources stated that the Imperial Navy Order of Battle was the ideal fleet composition that the Empire was working toward, but never got close to reaching. Wookieepedia (unreliable, I know, but I don’t have the book so stay with me) cites The Essential Guide to Warfare stating that “many Navy formations like the Systems Force and the Sector Group were understrength (sic) throughout the Galactic Civil War.”
I’d say it’s reasonable to think that sectors a long way from known Alliance targets might simply not have any SDs at all, relying on smaller ships because the jobs were much smaller.
Wow, those numbers for Venators during Republic times are actually pretty high, especially considering that each single Venator can carry 420 fighters. Yet on the other hand, in Legends canon it is said that more than 1.000 Venators participated at the Battle of Coruscant alone and by the third year of the Clone Wars with a full war economy running the Republic was steadily reducing the numerical advantage of the CIS fleet so such numbers would make sense. Of course this would mean even higher numbers for escort and support ships like Acclamators and Arquitens cruisers.
Ah, of course, the difference between theory and reality. The Empire wanted to have 24 Star Destroyers per sector but couldn’t actually do it. That’s then where the mothball third line vessels like Dreadnaught class Heavy Cruisers, Bulk Cruisers, Fractal’s Proclamator or dedicated smaller units like Vindicators and Strike Cruisers come into play to fill gaps.
Arriving at a number for the overall fleet strength of the Imperial Navy is actually surprisingly easy, believe it or not… and it puts it at a hell of a lot more than the ridiculous 25,000 number that is given by writers more accustomed to thinking about narratives than the maths of galactic-scale Type 2.5/Type 3 civilisations.
We know the DS1 put out about 1e38 J destroying Alderaan. Assuming this was a full-power blast, its reactors were generating _at least_ 1.6e33w. “Greater than half” implies something around 60% of the entire fleet (not more than 100%, or he would have said “greater than the entire”) which places the entire fleet at a power of around 3e33w. Note he says ‘firepower’, but I think he’s referring to total power output there – most ships can channel all of their power to their weapons. If he’s referring to firepower alone as something less than the total output of the fleet, then that makes it even larger.
So, we have a total power output of the Imperial fleet – and it is a low estimate, mind you. 3e33w / 9.3e24w = 322.6 million ISDs. So it might be reasonable to assume that ISDs make up 1-2% of the fleet, numbering at 3-7 million.
The Galaxy comprises about 1 million member worlds; ~1000 per sector along with a further 50-70,000 “colonies” (minor settled systems), which brings us to a total of about 70 million inhabited systems. The majority of these will be militarily unimportant (but when a rebellion can hide anywhere, every system becomes important), but it makes sense to have at least 1 ISD (the Empire’s front line force-projector) to every 5-10 inhabited systems.
The crew requirements for such a gargantuan force of ISDs would reach 120 billion, which is very small in the Star Wars scale of things – 0.00012% of the Galaxy’s 100 quadrillion beings if I’m not mistaken. This is actually surprisingly low, considering the British Empire’s Navy (a comparable real-world force) around 1850 employed about 3.8% of the country’s population. That said, (very roughly speaking) that would be about 0.2% of the whole world’s population at the time – point being, not every planet would be contributing an equal percentage of its own population to the ranks of the Empire. Alien populations would be left out of the loop.
Something someone else said on here gave me a thought; it may be that the number of ISDs they decided to build was based off of some kind of scenario, like “how many important industrial and population centres are there in the Galaxy that we would have to protect/suppress with ISDs in the case of ‘x’ happening.” Who knows what the rationale was, but it may have had something to do with quantifiably having enough ships to defend military, industrial and population centres simultaneously without any chinks in the Empire’s armour. Idk, pure speculation.
At any rate, the Empire’s navy was demonstrably larger than most think, and canon has never even begun to do it justice. The rest of the fleet is another more complicated question entirely, because if there are 3 million ISDs, what makes up the other 99% of the fleet in power output? Hundreds of billions of frigates? Seems a bit OP. I’d like to think that there were other superweapon projects he was referring to which comprised 20% of the fleet, and a huge number of battlecruisers and dreadnoughts which also took up the slack. It would ‘only’ take 750,000 Assertors to make up the entire fleet after all. All still seems a bit vast… But hey, it’s what Dodonna said in ANH.
Well it is a pretty unambiguous way of saying that ‘the fleet is very, very big’ and gives us enough information to arrive at some figures. It’s a very important line, because it’s the only real information we get about the strength of the Imperial Navy as a whole.
It also stands to reason, in a galactic civilisation, that they would have a LOT of ships. 25,000 doesn’t even scratch the surface, it is but a spec…
As to escorts and smaller ships making up the rest of the fleet, sure… but one ISD is as powerful as, say, a dozen strike cruisers. So if there were 36 million strike cruisers, that would only be another 1% of the fleet.
The 3e33w figure for the power output of the Navy might become more reasonable when we account for huge space stations, deep space stations, fuel depots, other small superweapons, many thousands of dreadnoughts (one for each sector is not unreasonable when each one has 70,000 worlds to be patrolled – several dreadnoughts per sector suddenly makes sense when you look at the numbers.) The fleet would also comprise many millions of destroyer-sized vessels, tens of millions of frigates, and hundreds of millions of smaller patrol craft.
And by no means are there many thousands of Dreadnoughts. Just because the galaxy could theoretically support the number, what we know of Imperial history ends that thought. Resources were spent on the Death Star projects, and those in favor of Dreadnoughts were not given the resources or priority. The funding wasn’t funneled into those projects until after Yavin, the Executor languished for years in dry dock until it was completed. We have about 12 known Executor class, some not completed until 10 ABY. Legatos aren’t canon, but given the Republics stretched finances, I can’t imagine more than one being completed for each over sector command fleet, so upwards of 20 of them. Perhaps as many Madators were built during that war. There would probably be twice as many Bellators as other dreadnaught types built by the Empire, perhaps as many Assertors as Executors, and more of the battle cruisers than the Dreadnoughts combined. It’s because of Imperial doctrine, which is the ultimate limiting factor. It isn’t like the Rebels had fleets of Battleships to counter.
Having several thousand Star Dreadnoughts is certainly economically possible, but I too doubt that so many were built.
Of the Mandator I-class I know that only 7 or 8 were ever built and 3 of those were always held in reserve to defend the Kuat Sector.
Mandator II I dunno, but I would theorize them to have a production run in the low two digit area and the same goes for the Legator.
The 12 Executor number is from the new Disney canon and even there Rebel Alliance intelligence is not sure if more exist. In Legends, we have at least 14 named Executors and about 20 more rumored to exist which would also put them in the lower two digit area in terms of fielded vessels.
Now which classes are missing? The Vengeance-class Star Dreadnought? Of that class only two vessels are known, Vengeance herself which was commanded by Dark Jedi Jerec and the Javelin.
Assertor, Mandator III and Bellator, probably in the same ballpark in terms of active vessels.
So if we generously assume around 30 vessels for each Executor, Assertor, Mandator III and Bellator we have:
30 Executor
30 Assertor
30 Mandator III
30 Bellator
2 Vengeance SSD
8 Mandator I
20 Mandator II
20 Legator
That are 170 Star Dreadnoughts in total.
Did I forget a class?
The Eclipse class (which there are 2 Eclipse 1 and Eclipse 2) and the Sovereign class (which there are 4 the names being Sovereign, Autarch, Despot and Heresiarch).
While I generally agree with your thoughts, “rumored to exist” and actually existing aren’t the same necessarily. Maybe we bring the number down by 30-40 to a total of 130-140 probably being built for certain, with the high 170 number as an outside possibility. Really, we have a 2-3 year span where the Imperial Dreadnought designs would be cranked out before the Emperors death. That’s a lot of multi-kilometer ships churned out and crewed in a short span. Oh, we have those missle busses of Republic design Fractal has been working on, but they’d fall into the battlecruiser size range.
They don’t have access to all those beings for crew. The New Order was humanocentric, human supremacist. Crews are human only, the only alien we see is the special case of Thrawn.
Another point, 25,000 ISD ‘s is referring to a ship class, not every star destroyer in the fleet, only the pattern. In cannon, there would also be surviving Venators, Victorys, Tectors, Secutors filling out the role. Add in designs like Procursators, which you could probably produce at twice the rate of Imperial class, and that’s a lot of star destroyers. The crewing of the ships is a limiting factor, not every person is suitable for the job, the Empire limits the job to a single race, and then they have to pass through the Academy system. Remember there is an equally vast, all human Imperial army, and the Stormtrooper legions. Humans meeting the physical standards, indoctrinational standards, and having the requisite talents would not be a limitless resource. The Republic was able to draw on all species for its armed forces, the Empire can only draw on one.
But you’re only looking at star destroyers. They need consorts to function and cover their flanks, then you need convoy escorts, patrol vessels, support vessels, etc. For every star destroyer there’s probably a dozen frigates, as many corvettes or more, then various patrol vessels on the order of a sloop, then you have your logistical vessels. There’s probably 50 capital ships of lesser scale for every star destroyer, not counting support ships.
Per the WEG sources that generated the 25,000 number, there were roughly 100 other ships of various types for every star destroyer, not including orbital bombardment platforms, troop transports and their escorts.
This is probably fairly accurate number. Star Destroyers, (according to Legends) like most imperial designs, were extremely crew inefficient – with crew sizes around 20,000 for an ISD1 compared to 7200 for a Venator.
In conventional military forces there are typically between 8 and 12 support elements for every combat element. The non-combat logistical forces marshaled to support even a single ship of that size would be significant and would require a large number of support ships for remote operations.
Is 20,000 for an Imperator actually inefficient? ISDs are about three times the volume as a Venator, and have to make do with human recruits, rather than absurdly elite Fett clones trained from birth. Lean manning sounds tempting to a peacetime navy like the modern USN, but it just leaves you understaffed when the shit hits the fan and you need to throw bodies at damage control. Besides, the Empire has city-worlds with hundreds of trillions of inhabitants to recruit from. Surely a decent number of them want to see the galaxy from a Star Destroyer, even if they start out as Assistant Tensor Field Repairman Third Class.
A significant portion of that space is in the engineering core and the storage space. To reach numbers like that you’d need nearly 15-1 support crew to ship crew (Insane) for the weapon loaded out and combat element of an ISD. (Modern naval equivalent is around 3 to 1 on a ship). The Venators had 7200 crew with an ARMY of 2000+ onboard. If you buy what Wiki sells – the ISD is listed as having 9000+ Officers, 27000 crew, and 9000+ Ground troops. 1 in 3 officers? No?
For further perspective.
USS Enterprise – 3200 ship crew, 2000 aircrew. 300m~
USS Gerald Ford – 2600 crew, 1800 aircrew. 340m~ Both have comparable air-wing components.
USS Missouri – 1850 Officer and crew. 270m~
I don’t think an Imperial Venator would only man with 7200, any more than I trust a Wookiepedia breakdown of ISD crew, for that matter. Going from clone crews to live born volunteer crews are going to impose a cost in efficiency. I’d figure Venators were designed as pretty lean manned all around, and quite possibly designed for grinding attritional battles rather than independent operations with all the self-maintenance and support that entails. If we assume 37000 crew for an ISD, I’d estimate a Venator in Imperial service with complement ~12000.
I don’t think there’s going to be an exactly linear relationship between volume (so displacement and not length for real world examples) and crew complement, but I do think that it’s not an awful extrapolation if you had nothing else to go on. But what is awful are those perspectives you listed – a far better comparison are two ships with similar roles of roughly the same generation (and thus manning policy). Compare HMS Dreadnought at ~18000t ~700-800 crew vs HMS Nelson at ~34,000t with ~1300-1400 crew, and that’s with savings going from coal to oil firing with increased onboard automation. If you want a carrier example with closer tech bases, see USS Enterprise ~20000t/2300 men vs USS Midway ~45000t/~4100 men.
If you want to see manning policy screw with extrapolations, take HMS Queen Elizabeth 65000t/700(!) vs a Ford-class – 100000+/2600.
2000+ isn’t an Army; it’s more of a reinforced Battalion or under strength Regiment. An actual Field Army would be 100,000 or more, and require at least 3-4 Consolidators to transport it.
A Venator also carried a single prefabricated Garrison base, 40 LAATs, 6 or 8 Juggernauts and at least 24 walkers to establish a military outpost so I’d guess that the 2000+ infantry carried on board was intended to be used to man that base as well as perform duties like defending against boarding parties on the Venator itself.
Then again, Venators very rarely operated alone. The most common variant was 3 Venators working together at all times although groups of 4 or 5 vessels existed as well.
So it is certainly possible that a single Division was spread out across a single Venator flotilla.
@Fractalsponge – Possibly, but if so, it’s oddly phrased. I expect you’re right about the crew breakdown, but considering the modular nature of carriers, it’d be nice if that number was declared separately from the ship’s actual operating crew. That way, if needed, the Venator could pull its fighter wing to carry more troops (there are real-world contingency plans for doing this with aircraft carriers and the 101st Air Assault).
@Sephiroth0812 – A better parallel would be the US Marine Corps’ MEU(SOC), a marine battalion with large numbers of vehicles attached to give the unit greater flexibility. Depending on the mission, they could be deployed as light infantry, air assault or combined arms (infantry & armored vehicles), as well boarding / counter-boarding or manning the garrison.
Yeah. I tried to edit it to italics to better show my sarcasm at 2000 being listed as an army, but alas the post was locked. Few of the data points make a whole lot of sense given that the raw support element + flight crew for the air wing element of a Venator would likely exceed that total crew volume. I suspect Ansel is correct in that the idea was to pare down the crew / run minimal due to the highly capable Clones. Given the role of the Venators, a MEU is probably a good analogy, thought I think most of the Lore gets this wrong (Clone Wars Series, etc). You don’t use a MEU to fight prolonged/pitched battles or hold terrain. You use an Army for that.
That said, there would have been and should have been a significant number of ancillary roles capable of being filled by Droids. (Interesting side note, Lucas trade marked the term “droids”). The same goes for the entire SD line. At this point in the technical development, the only reason to pad crew staff that high is if you still have room attendants and other similarly menial tasks performed by sentients. Given the choice between a munitions droid and 6 dudes carrying around warheads – I’d take the droid. I don’t have to feed or pay the droid.
A Venator needing quite some extra personnel to keep its huge fighter complement operational is also reasonable as you need more than just the pilots to keep the fighters in top fighting condition and a Venator carries a whopping 420 of those. The ARC-170 also requires a crew of 3 if I recall correctly and a Venator has 36 of them meaning 108 people alone to man the ARC-170s.
“Imperial”->class name. I dislike “new” name of Imperator. From my native tongue point of view Imperator souns too close to emperor (Palpatine). It sounds weird, much wierder than “Imperial”, especially when you are not translating it, but leaving in English.
Im well aware of problems with Executor size. The 12 km version was never well supported by visual canon, and 8km was exisitng only in writing. However 8 km never made sense in context of thevmovies; similarly 17-19 km estimate. Visuals are poor justification; on the basis of them we have also estimates of Death Star I being 900 km. Visuals are therefore not proof of anything. They are indicator, they show direction, but they cannot-and are not-the definite argument.
The number 12 km is simply logical choice in between extremes. 8 km is pretty small and goes against visuals, feel of the movies and overwhelming firepower Executor was supposed to have-as established in writing and on screen. 19 km is way too big. Ship of this size would single handledy win Battle of Endor. 12km is the happy middle, based on really poor visual justifiction (bridge size) that makes little to no sense, however it allows to reach reasonable size that is not too big and not small either. It is still humongous, but not to the extent that would make general feel of lore inconsistent. Justification for this sieze is irrelevant though, its happy coincidence.
But I digress. I dont think we understand each other. I have to make my perspective clearer. I will use the current discussion about size of Star Wars Galaxy to illustrate my point.
The story presented in Star Wars is using visual language to convey concepts. Star Wars was enver particularly sophisticated, coherent setting, because its storytelling was done ONLY trough visuals. Those visuals were supposed to convey feelings, emotions and general concepts. They never were systematized according to some principles. Instead, they were based on visual cues from other movies and historical events like naval warfare of World War II. The lore created in writing after movies became successful was largely ignoring that. As many franchises it was a collection of various perspectives, additions, authors – and everyone had their own take on things they saw on screen. As result some parts of the lore are nonsensical, weird and they feel off even if they are canon. This is the result of having zero setting coherence. In such instance the only way how you can argue something is and is not Star Wars and has place in universe is your ability to understand core material. And core material, as I already said, is very loose because it was never supposed to be conveyed i n ritten form, but in language of the cinema.
Let us look at this language and what it is conveying. Exeuctor is huge, dwarfs other ships. The point of Exeuctor is not to have exact specifications, length of X kilometers etc. The point of Executor is to show power of the Empire, present Rebelion as insignificant tiny force that has no chance of winning. Dread, fear, awe. Arguing how big Exeuctor is and what is its firepower, counted to the last turbolaser is to miss the point. Specs are supposed to fit the visual feeling, visual language, and not be autuistically concentrating on actual measurements and estimates. The fact that people went with a liner, put it on screen and started to count how many tiems Executor is longer than ISD is missing the point entirely. The point is “Exeuctor is huge”. And nobody during production of the movie, writing the screenplay etc. did not cared about scale, size, specs. However this does not mean that you can make Executor small. Or weaker than ISD. There is limit to what you can do, but range of your interpretation is pretty wide. In order to hit “the golden spot” of this interpretation you have to look at the ENTIRETY of visuals of Star Wars and deduce ona basis of that the correct conclusions.
Look at the battles of Sar Wars. How many ships do you see? How many fighters? Do you really see galaxy-wide spanning empire, or maybe somhething much much smaller? The size of imperial fleet at Endor is laughable if you think, that Empire spanns 65 million planets. How many ships are there? 30? 40? something in-between plus Executor. And no, we dont see any smaller ships or antyhing of other type ANYWHERE, so you have to forget about argument “there are hundreds of ships, they are just small”. They never appeared on screen. Empire was using ISD’s and Executor. But even if we would grant this argument merit, then still question remains: this is Empire that supposedly controls the entire Galaxy… 65 millions of planets. Lore claims it had 20 000 ISD’s. Those numbers make sense if you take real galaxies, calculate how many stars they have, how many planets they may have that can support life etc. But those numbers do not make sense when you look at screen. Empire is powerful… but somehow it can muster only 30-something ISDs to protect Death Star II. This is the biggest battle of Original Trylogy, folks. Numbers do not add up.
Look at prequels. The biggest battle of this era is Coruscant battle, 3rd episode. How many ship do you see? 40, 50… something around that amount. Of BOTH sides. However the visuals are crammed, indicating that we are seeing only small part of the enitre picture. So how many ships did participate in this battle? 100, 200? maybe 300. Writing claims that there were thousadns of ships. But we dont see that. The feeling of battle, is scale, urgency, intensity is portrayed on screen, but it is portrayed with minimal amount of ships. If you think about it-it again doesnt make sense if Old Republic is supposed to be around the size of Empire.
The reason behind this stylistic choice is this: in World War II naval skirmishes were of this size. Navies had dozens of ships and they were commited often on numerous fronts, hence each battle was small. Big engagements were concentrating most of fleet in one place, numbers in two digits. Star Wars is using the same language, and has the same scale as result. In order for this language to make sense in context of galactic scale, one has to reject notion of 65 million planets and huge, easily accesible galactic disk; things that were not mentioned in movies in the first place.
Therefore we have to conclude, that assumptions about size of civilized galaxy are incorrect. Galaxies are big, and there is no reason to think Star Wars galaxy is any different. However the size of fleets does not add up. Yes, we can argue that because space is so huge it requires fleets to be dispersed; so thousands of ships are present, but we dont see them because they are travelling between those millions of planets… but even then numbers do not add up. Major battles go against this logic; in SW hyperspace allows you to move your forces rapiddly between edges of galaxy. So in event of major battle, especially one that is a trap (Endor) we would expect that Empire, Republic or CIS would gather overwhelming forces. And visuals suggest, that they did…yet we don’t see thousands of ships. We see dozens…
This points out to the possibility that SW galaxy, civilized one, the part in which story happens – is actually mucch, much smaller. Therefore the amount of industrial capacity at its disposal is smaller, and the fleets – as result – also are much smaller.
The size of Empire’s fleet, 20 k ISD’s and millions of supporting vessles-does not make sense. It makes sense if you ignore movies, and base your estimates only on real numbers, assuming that civilized galaxy spans 75% of physical galactic disk. But it doesnt make sense when you look at visual feel of universe, language of cinema.
Of course, one can declare in writing whatever one wants. We can conjure whatever explanation we want; but that is NOT the correct way of doing things. By doing so we are overriding setting rules established in movies, however loose they may be; and then written lore detaches itself from movie-based one, creating more and more conflicts between what is written and what is shot on screen. Ultimately it destroys the core idea that movies were trying to convey troguh their visual language.
Therefore, if we want to follow logic of the movies and base our conclusions on their language; we have to question the size of Galaxy, Empire, industrial capacity.
I propose the following solution: SW galaxy is much smaller. However, physically it is as huge as cureently in lore. what is smaller is amount of space that has been mapped and therefore belongs to “civilized galaxy”. Hyperspace travel requires existence of corridors that are free of gravitational obstructions. Some hyperspace corridors are pretty long and allow for travel from core of galaxy to its edges, and established written lore is based around that idea. This idea has not much gorudnign in movies; but it has been already developed and can be adopted as solution to our problem. Its better to use something that already exists in lore; than to invent new creations. However, established written lore gets here everything else wrong in that regard. Hyperspace needs to be mapped, and this process requires time, trail and error approach, in “nuked”canon thats the case thousands of years ago. This is idea that provides good solution to our conundrum: most of travel and discovery happened along long hyperspace lines. Space around them is part of “civilized” galaxy, that is linked via hyperspace travel. In short, actual known, mapped, inhabited and “civilized” galaxy looks more like tentacles of octopus, ranging from core to the edges. In between those tentacles-there is unknown space, that awaits to be mapped, discovered and travelled to. There are no hyperspace lines there that exist that we know of, and hyperspace travel takes a lot of time because existing hyperspace windows are very short and they rarely allow for fluid travel; you have to traverse huge distances in regular space. This means, that communication with those parts of galaxy often is not possible; it takes hundreds of years or millenia even. As result those parts of galaxy are not linked to Coruscant and thus “galactic civilization”.
Within “known space” there are billions of star systems, yes; but only few of those host planets that are inhabitable, or from which life evolved. If we make known SW galaxy smaller in the way described above it is not unresonable to shrink amount of inhabited worlds to one million; an arbitrary number yes, but also not so big as to create beformentioned problems with scale. Known, civilized galaxy will still be huge, and Empire controlling it will still be humongous; but now we would be able to shrink its size to more relaistic-in face of visual language of the movies-scale.
In such view, Star Wars Galaxy is divded into “known space” centered around major hyperspace lines; and majority of galactic disc is part of “uknown space”; sorrounding each “tentacle” of known space there is “wild space” of poorly connected systems, and this is the fringe of “civilived” galaxy. As result something akin to 15%-20 of galactic disk is actually part of galactic civilization. This gives us estimate of around 9.7 million planets. In this version of Star Wars, galaxy is very loosely inhabited, therefore we can say that most of those planets are uninhabited, underdeveloped, or were colonies for short period of time and now are abandoned. The permanent settlement would be therefore limited to around 1 million planets, with rest of inhabitable worlds-8,7 million-being small colonies, outposts or not-independnt smaller centers of population.
Such “galaxy” is still huge; spaces vast, thousands of potential intelligent lifeforms exist and controlling it via force still is immensly difficult task. thanks to making galaxy smaller we can finally scale down our expectations of sizes of the fleets to match the battles that we see. In this version, Empire can rapidly, over few decades, produce around 2000-3000 ISDs; but those ships-immensly powerfull, used to supress dissent and rebellion all around 1 million worlds and 10 million inhabitable systems and much, much more non-habitable systems in between – have to be present all around known space. Thus, Empire has no ability to amass quickly all of them to destroy particular enemy. However it can easily take out of various areas enough of ISD’s to protect Death Star II at Endor. Around 40 of those ships is significant number, if we estimate their total count at 2-3k; and it is very reasonable to assume, that Empire was able to call them rappidly to Endor to create trap for rebel forces, without weakening their grip over known space.
This vision still fits with informations such as KDY having ring of shipyards over their planet; KDY is serving the entire galaxy, producing millions of units of various sizes for civilization spanning 1 million worlds, untold trillions of intelligent beings; not to mention remaining 8-9 million of small outposts, colonies etc. But now, since we made galaxy smaller, it significance increases, especially for the Empire; KDY now TRULY becomes THE imperial shipyard, producing most of its fleet; Kuat is the center of industrial power of the Empire. In addition to creation of 2-3 k of ISD’s (and counting), it produced many times more of smaller ships, figthers etc. Loosing Kuat (or Fondor for that matter) would be indeed a major blow to the Empire. This isnt the case in situation where we have humongous galaxy, spanning many times more densly inhabited worlds. Loosing Kuat woddl be met with shrug by the Empire.
Anyway I wrote this for purpose: to present my way of thinking about SW lore. The same methodology (Look at movies: what do they convey?) I used to reject lore about Allegiance class. Visually this is glorified ISD. Naming “ISD II” something that has just different weapon compliment does not make sense; but naming ship that looks like current Allegiance class – an ISD II – does. Size, specs etc – are secondary issues. What matters is coherence based on analysis of visual language, on which SW is based on.
Of course, we can – and we should – finally systematize the way how SW galaxy works; in context of this site: how actually warfare there works. The current approach is inherently inconsisten and illogical; things like range for instance are not explained at all; acceleration; firepower; types of damage; how shields actually work-those are core questions that were NEVER answered. But we can reverse-engineer those from visual cues seen on screen, and then make coherent system. Just look at current categorization of ships: Anaxes system. Its preposterous! its based on lenghth! were on Earth you have seen such approach to military systems? Fractalsponge knows very well that what counts is volume, mass, energy production… Not legnth! Even historical basis for this nonsense-categorization of naval ships before II World War-was NOT based on size. It was based on CAPABILITY and ROLE. But, alas, we are stuck with Anaxes nonsense, one of many, such us “20 000 ISD’s”, “65 million inhbaited worlds” etc.
Its time to seriously kick all of this in the butt. Who cares what Disney et consortes write and do. At this point, after nuking original canon, there are no sacred cows. There is nothing that is not questionable. If we can create-like Fractal does-ships that did not existed on screen; why not to do it properly? Look how this approach-analyzing visual language of the movies-already impacted Star Wars. Were do you think estimates of turbolaser powers comes from? Let us continue with it.
“Imperator” is a latin term and simply means commander/commandant of a military force which fits with the general naming theme of capital ships used by the Galactic Republic such as Acclamator, Venator, Tector and so on which are ALL LATIN. Imperator-class is the official Republic designation for this ship class which was changed to “Imperial”-class only after Order 66 and the birth of the Empire. So when someone speaks about the “Imperator-class” they’re referring to the Star Destroyer-class while under Republic control and there is nothing wrong about that as it is official part of the Legends canon.
Yeah well, still dont care about that; decades ago that was correct way of naming the class, I got accustomed to this because of various reasons (again-in my native tongue thats the same word ofr “emperror”) and now I have hard time changing. BTW isnt it funny that the most iconic starship of Star Wars has very poor name and numerous naming problems?
“The number 12 km is simply logical choice in between extremes. 8 km is pretty small and goes against visuals, feel of the movies and overwhelming firepower Executor was supposed to have-as established in writing and on screen. 19 km is way too big. Ship of this size would single handledy win Battle of Endor. 12km is the happy middle, based on really poor visual justifiction (bridge size) that makes little to no sense, however it allows to reach reasonable size that is not too big and not small either. It is still humongous, but not to the extent that would make general feel of lore inconsistent. Justification for this sieze is irrelevant though, its happy coincidence.”
This is basically “because I want it to.” A certain grounding in some evidence is required, short of just absolute technical error in production.
You are ignoring everything else I said. Number 12 km is not arbitrary.
1. It came up in old lore discussions, it is established
2. Visual language of the cinema
3. It cannot be too small but cannot be too big
4. The minimal size in old lore was 8km, the upper size is 19 km. Something that is between those two extremes is better than any of them
5. Since number 12 already popped up and it is in the middle between those two-it has been chosen
But just for people who do not want to think in this manner and have a problem with an argument based on “language of cinema” we can point out to the old discussion about Executor and argument on the size of the bridge. It does not make sense on the surface, but apart from visual confirmation as on screen, we can look into the size of the inside of the main bridge itself. It is comparable if not of the same size as a bridge of ISD.
I personally reject this argument, because it is an irrelevant factoid, that if treated seriously would limit the lore not expand it and is too rigid for storytelling; but if you really cannot bring yourself to think in the above manner, take the old rationale for 12 km.
Executor around 19 km is so huge, that you CANNOT win with it with the fleet that Rebels had at Endor. Its actual, not declared in ridiculous canon, weapon compliment would be so absurd, that there would be noway it could loose, not to mention that his shields would be unpenetrable. Other choices that you have that would reconcile this include much bigger changes into canon and lore; than tinkering with the size of Executor. Hence it is better to change its size.
1) No, it’s not. https://www.theforce.net/swtc/ssd5mile.html 12km appeared transitioning from 8km
2) No, the 17+km estimate was established from the films:
3) No, that’s just you saying something vague, not anchored on any kind of evidence
4) What do you really want to argue here? The old lore was wrong and has been retconned. The new lore is 19km. What makes “old” lore better than “new” lore? Visual evidence from movies suggests that 19km is much more plausible than 8km. So I know which one I’d go with.
5) You chose it. Based on your gut. Great. My gut says you’re being obtuse.
Executor @8km would be equivalently overpowering at Endor. The interpretation is that the fleet held fire under orders (stated in film). But the Rebel fleet was not in itself insignificant – 3 battlecruisers and dozens of destroyer-class ships. It’s not outlandish either way. I agree than in open full-power combat, Executor should’ve wiped out the Rebel fleet, but that wasn’t Endor.
1. Yes it did come up: bridge size comparisons. 2.O rlly. What models of ISD were used? Which model of executor and how shot? 3. 3rd point was about reaching logical conclusions; chosen size is not arbitrary because it has to be set within logical constraints 4. Im arguing for 12. 8 is too small, 19 is too big, creates inconsistencies. 12km is diminishing them. 5. “gut feeling” is misrepresenting everything I said so that you can build a strawman.
Executor of 8 km is LESS overpowering. but its blatantly incorrect size. Executor of 19km is absurdly overpowering. Less overpower is better, because it diminishes incossitneices and allows to reconcile what was seen on screen with what logically should happen. Plausibility increases. Therefore you should always argue for smaller Executor, unless you want to increase insistencies.
Obtuse? look who is speaking. Im not arguing for maintaining absurd stuff in lore, you do, on basis of “I took liner and put it on screen”. You disregard conssistency in favor of… I have no idea what.
You didn’t read what I wrote, the use of miles instead of kilometers clearly indicates that.
the logic used is this:
1. 8km is way too small due to way how warfare in SW is presented, as well as how Executor is presented trough visuals;
2. 19 km is too big, though thats literally what we have on screen because ship of this size would single handedly win any battle
3. There is need to reconcile two opposites so that we can explain how Endor was won;
4. Less inconsistency is better, more incosistnecy is worse; therefore the bigger Executor the worse it gets;
5. Thus we are in need of finding solution
6. Solution is within range of 8 and 19 km, unacceptable extremes
7. The middle ground is 12 km not because “I said so” but because this number came up in discussion about Executor size at one point; 12 km was based on size of the bridge comparison (Executor bridge was assumed to be of the same size as ISD). This is poor argument. However it established precedent; number was mentioned at some point; it is irrelevant to what degree it is convincing on its own; by the same token ANY argument for SMALLER size than 19 km is preferable (for instance size of shield generators-16 km).
8. Because something that was established is better than something not established; because it minimizes subjectivity of choice
9. As result 12 km makes sense as compromise size even if the argument that supports it is weak on its own
10. alternative 8 or 19 km’s have better support of lore (km, retroactively changed) or visual direct literal confirmation, screen evidence (19km); however both of those numbers create inconsistency for the entirety of canon; thus they are questionable and the fact that their source is better documented is irrelevant
11. In simple words 19km is so big that what we have seen in ROTJ: destruction of Executor; is not possible. The firepower of this ship would allow Empire to win the battle;and Executor had support too. Nothing we seen on screen allows us to conclude that Rebels had any chance; thus in order to reconcile the most important part of canon: what happened and how with declared numbers sizes and firepowers; we need to diminish numbers. Change the specs. They are way too big. Decrease them and you will allow suspension of disbelief to be maintained.
It is not “because Is aid so”. It is “it doesn’t make sense, therefore, we have to change it”. The same way how 8 km size didn’t make any sense. It is not the number that is important, its the logic how it is reached; a point all of you ignore systematically. The idea is to make Executor smaller to eliminate the problem with overpowering in Battle fo Endor. Thus anything smaller than 19 km and anything bigger than 8 km is better; the mathematical average is 17,5; midpoint: 14. smallest number within these ranges ever mentioned: 16. the smallest number outside of extremes: 12. Pick whatever you prefer, but remember that the smaller Executor the smaller the problem it creates for the ENTIRETY of canon. You have to wage values here; not get autistic with a liner.
19km is unacceptable in the same way 8 km is unacceptable. It is as simple as that.
Either start arguing on point or admit, that you are choosing 19 km because this is what current canon says and move on. Attack methodology; attack way of thinking-just re-stating what has been said and what we all know about executor size is pointless, thats not an argument! use logic and critical thinking to dismantle idea.
“Pick whatever you prefer, but remember that the smaller Executor the smaller the problem it creates for the ENTIRETY of canon.”
So with the giantic Death Stars in ANH and ROTJ, the Rebel Alliance cannot survive if it had to be realistic. Even if the Empire has 6 executors of 50 km in lenght, the Alliance succeed because the story requires it.
The Executor was ordered NOT to engage the Rebels, by Emperor Palpatine. No such mental gymnastics are required for your alleged justification. The Rebellion could not survive any conventional engagement with the Imperial Navy, Army, or Stormtrooper Corps. That is a given.
You are trying to add in logic to a story put together by a guy who based the Rebellion on the Viet Cong, who was apparently ignorant of the fact said body was wiped out by the 1968 TET offensive they initiated, and who was unaware of the fact the North Vietnamese failed at every attempt to defeat the US Army militarily, or understand the war was lost on the home front, not in the Rice Paddies and Jungles of Vietnam. Just like the British pretty much kicked George Washingtons ass in nearly every battle of the American Revolution, and ultimately, the British public sickened of that war.
In the end, the only way the Rebellion could win was by killing Palpatine. Given his constant playing off Imperial factions against each other, and in having no heir (he was supposed to live forever, after all, and wanted no heir), the Empire fell to factions fighting each other, more so than any coordinated strategy of the rebels themselves.
Per WEG, this was actually the Alliance’s strategic goal; create enough havoc in the Outer Rim Territories that Palpatine would be forced to leave Coruscant and come deal with the Rebellion in person. Of course, Palpatine was savvy enough to know this, and use it for his own ends.
No, I’m rejecting counters to what I said, because people countering misunderstood what I said, they are patronizing; and they misrepresent logic used or blatantly ignore what I said. I don’t care about acceptance of my point of view at this point and I knew from the beginning that what randoms on Internet will get from it is ” well I think so therefore its right” strawman, thus I was not hoping to convince anybody; just drop the idea, defend it and that’s it.
If people are still not understanding what is it your saying… after all this time…well… that usually means your points been poorly executed and your counter points are contradictory in itself
And with that I can agree; I didn’t think out well what I’m trying to convey. I was trying to present a certain method of thinking about canon, an alternative that allows fans to be more free in their speculations but at the same time more faithful to the source material. And I failed. I will try again later.
“BTW isnt it funny that the most iconic starship of Star Wars has very poor name and numerous naming problems?” – Lol, you can blame tyrannical regimes for that with their stupid habit to rename everything to fit their ideology more once they are firmly in power. After Order 66 Palpy and co. took great efforts to erase even traces of the Republic and everyone and their Ewok were renamed to include the word “Imperial” in it.
Imperial-class or Imperial I-class still means the exact same ship so when someone uses “Imperator” it’s just acknowledging its Republic origins. Some sites or encyclopedias also use the Imperator/Imperial I writing variant to emphasize it truly being the same ship all around. Any of these designations is correct.
Even with the logo the change made a clear statement. IIRC the 8 spokes and one disc of the Republic insignia represented the beneficent presence of the Force in the Galaxy. The Emperor removed 2 of the spokes to distance the symbol from the light side of the Force while maintaining visual continuity, so that the people would still think ‘that’s the symbol of the galactic government’ but wouldn’t think ‘the Force is looking out for me’.
cScott
7 years ago
Holy hell the point defense! It’s like someone in the KDY design department finally realized that the whole Tarkin Doctrine fear thing wasn’t stopping Rebel snubfighters
Eh, for a Fractal ship, the actual density of CIWS emplacements isn’t any higher here than pretty much every other capital ship. It’s nice that they’re all rendered though. So much decent Star Destroyer art out there doesn’t even bother, including most of the official comics/game material.
For all of Tarkin’s success at climbing the Empire’s ladders of power, the man was a fool. Furthermore, he failed to understand that ruling with fear only works for an authoritarian ruler if said ruler takes measures to ensure that they don’t become HATED, because hate will make people willing to suffer just to oppose you. It’s rather ironic how a government run by a Sith never seemed to understand this.
Machiavelli, is tha you? But yes, as someone that read through and understand the efficiencies of Tarkin Doctrine, that subtle caveat is the primary problem with the Empire’s rule.
Yep, I got that from Machiavelli. Satire or not, The Prince lays out a very pragmatic approach to authoritarian rule, and I look forward to the day when a character in some fanfic quotes it at Tarkin, Vader or Palpatine.
To be fair to Tarkin, the hate of the population toward the empire wouldn’t have really mattered if the death star had been the inopposable weapon it was imagined to be. you wouldn’t just suffer by opposing them. You would be obliterated along with your entire planet.
Well that’s kind of the point of a Death Star, to be the ultimate siege engine. A well prepared and heavily shielded world might be able to defy conventional fleet units for weeks, if not months, giving them time for other worlds to break free and come to their aid. A Death Star changes that strategic calculus by ending a siege before it has even begun.
Either that, or Tarkin maneuvered his way into control of the project because he was plotting to depose Palpatine and seize the Imperial throne for himself, and the Death Star was the perfect tool to do it with. Perhaps that explains why Vader was also posted to it, to put a lightsaber through Tarkin’s neck if he tried.
PhantomFury
7 years ago
Ah my favorite “mini” Super Star Destroyer…! Will this Redux have less of those Hoth Ion Cannon-style turrets of the original model and more of the ISD’s trench-quad HTL?
STONEhenk
7 years ago
And some people still say Imperial Capships lack fighter defences.
Arvenski
7 years ago
Allegiance getting a visual upgrade? This’ll be fun. Say, I had a thought: What would you think of doing some First Order capital ships? Their roster needs fleshing out (especially smaller stuff, like corvettes and frigates), and it would be interesting to see your take on designs for them. They could have a new, ‘futuristic’ aesthetic, based on the Imperial design aesthetic that you’re used to working with, but a bit different.
I would like to refer you to the Information on Commissions link at the top right of the page.
Cdr. Rajh
7 years ago
So… What are the differences between this new redo of the allegiance and the old one…? From what I can see its mostly small details and a slight redoing of the bridge tower, but the basic shape hasn’t changed much..
The old model was a decade old so most of the details were blocky especially the trenches.
Valiran
7 years ago
Okay, I gotta ask, do you ever sleep? Because you keep pumping out these awesome models and WIPs one after another after another, and as much as I LOVE your work I don’t want you to keel over from exhaustion!
Are those quad turbolasers the same as the Arquitens quad turbolaser?
What sort of role do you envision the Allegiance-class as having? Flotilla leader? It seems kind of awkwardly-sized for any other role (overkill for a DD, too small to be a proper CL).
Fractal design it as a heavy fleet combatant/escort for capital ships like Bellators, Assertors, executors etc.
Is there like a non-canon fractal sponge AU story somewhere or something? If so I’d love to read it 😀
As far as I know, Fractal don’t create stories but is instead more interested in making technical-rich vessels that you could impliment into a story. Backstage role, if you will. (I could be wrong)
Got ya, Its just inspiring my muse is all and i’m like “I wanna write!”
I get you. I too feel ecstatic about all the detail and want to make a narrative about the,.
I have my own ideas, but I’m not going to be superimposing them on anyone else’s since I don’t get to write the canon. But, I’m also much less interested in official canon than coming up with a universe backstory structure that I enjoy and that I can design stuff around. For your RPG/adventure, do whatever you want as long as you credit me for the art if it goes public.
Yeah, I always take your universalized canon in its own special place in hope that a compromise can be met between the two canons instead of the current wishy-washy actual Canon.
Will do 🙂 It won’t be anything offical or stuff just a drabble 🙂 I’ll link it here when done and of course all credit to you!
Holy sh*t, the point-defense is strong with this one !
I count about 70 of those just on this side of the superstructure.
Fractal when you do the aft of the Allegiance redux would you put in the garbage disposal chute like the Imperator?
For those who aren’t really aware, the official tabletop fleet battle game from FFG, Star Wars Armada is releasing an Executor class Star Dreadnought expansion pack. Unfortunately, from the preview stats, it’s barely twice the firepower and survivability of a stock ISD, which is a travesty.
The Allegiance would make a lot more sense as the Empire’s top end brawler, with maybe the Secutor as a faster multirole counterpart.
Yeah, but it’s 2′ long!
For me this was never design for new star destroyer type, called Allegiance. For me this always was and will be Imperial II class. To name a subvariant of Imperial I in this way, when the only difference is weapon compliment-is an error.
It’s clearly not the “only difference”. The allegiance is 600m longer than the standard ISDI and has a significantly different dorsal superstructure, as well as no hangar cavity and a larger weapon complement.
The Dark Empire comic series was a continuity dumpster fire, but it did at least give us the basis for some of Fractal’s best work; the Bellator and Secutor can both be seen in the background in various panels.
Perhaps if this was a Tector-class SD, I could see where you’re coming from. The AWCS considers this a battlecruiser, more precisely a star cruiser. So despite the Allegiance having a SD classification in its name its always been thought of has a “heavy” SD, a lot of emphasis on heavy. The Imperial class is sort of multi-purpose oriented while the Allegiance class was intended solely for ship to ship combat even with ships a bit larger than itself. You can call it the Imperial II if you want to, I just think its a really big jump in terms of firepower, design, capabilities & intended purpose of the Imperial class to that of the Allegiance class
The weapon output is 5 times (counting the HTL’s) that of an ISD1 while having maybe a little bit more than 2.5 times ISD volume.
Well the Allegiance’s main weapons are 3 axial single ball 720 teratons Heavy Turbolasers, 14 quad (2 of them being ball turrets in the middle trench) 175 teratons Heavy Turbolasers and 4 trench triple ball 175 teratons Heavy Ion Cannons.
While the Imperator’s weapons are 8 octuple 40 Teratons Heavy Turbolasers, 9 (3 axial, 6 ventral) triple 40 Teratons Heavy Turbolasers and 2 trench quad 70 Teratons Heavy tubolasers.
Basically Allegiance is for fleet warfare while the Imperator is for Multi-role. Also the Tector have a same role as the Allegiance but Imperator sized.
Speaking of size Both Imperator and Tector 1.6 km, Allegiance 2.25 km.
Just curious, where did you get the information regarding weapon tonnage of the turbolasers?
Right here: http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?p=3376574#p3376574
Sweet, the picture don’t exist anymore though, what was it?
Ok here are the turrets: https://fractalsponge.net/?p=1260
Aside from the fact that Imperial II subclass already exist, Allegiance-class is larger and served a completely different combat roles than your more commonplace ISDs. It’s smaller hangar, gargantuan reactor, and numerous turbolaser emplacements is clearly made for inter-ship combat and perhaps even a command vessel for a sector group
You all guys missed the point of my entry. Visually speaking, in terms of looks Allegiance class should have been Imperial II. Size, weapon compliment, role-those all are irrelevant because you can change the lore to match this choice. First, there was design, then there was the lore. This class can be smaller, bigger, better or worse equipped. I don’t care about established canon or lore here, I’m seeing the very similar design to Imperial-class, but “upgraded”, Im seeing nonsensical stats for Imperial II, and I argue for a change in lore. What is called Imperial II should be “Tector”; though I never understood the necessity for explaining every little mistake in the original trilogy by creating new ships, classes etc. So, to put it bluntly-established canon does not make sense for me here, this should be retconned. Just look how Allegiance design logically flows from Imperial. It is doing everything that Imperial I was doing, but more.
So, if I am understanding this clarification correctly, you wish to say that Allegiance-class is better sited to be Imperial II by retconning all of its orignial specifications so it can fit under the constraints of the ISD subclass? Or perhaps a that it shoud be labled as an ISD subclass when it is produced with a different enough purpose to warrant it’s own class? As for the Tector-class, it is different enough that the novelization called it a communications ship and have since established a lore for itself.
Yes, the first option: retcon. Big chunk of SW lore is nonsensical anyway; I dont see the reason why we should stick to it blindly, especially after nuking canon by Disney. The new canon does not make much sense either.
A “class” of ship requires significant changes in design; as it stands Imperial I and II are identical and it makes no sense. If one wants to have new class in Imperial line one should choose more significant design changes that would justify naming it “Imperial II”. What in canon is called “Imperial II” does not deserve this name. Allegiance however-does.
Allegiance makes sense visually and design-wise as next class in Imperial line. It is upgraded Imperial I; more guns, more mass, more energy, and presumably-also bigger, though personally, I’m not so convinced by current length-2200 m.
As for Tector-Tector is simply and error made by special effect guys. Lore was created in order to explain-away it; and it was an error too, just like many other decisions regarding consistency of lore (see Executor size, from way too small 8km to absurd 19km now. It should have always been 12km). In lore as it is Imperial II has zero point defense, no ion cannons. Instead it has more turbolasers. In short, it is heavy artillery ship. Tector as seen on screen has no hangar bay. It makes sense to assume it was traded for something else. It makes sense to assume that this was sub-class that currently in lore is called “Imperial II”. No hangar bays, no point defense, just turbolasers. It does not make sense to assume that this is communication ship, since entire fleet at Endor was already linked via Executor and each SD has sophisticated equipment of this type on its own, because each SD is already fleet-command vessel. If we have to explain obvious errors by creating lore; then lets put more effort and thought into it.
I dont care about established lore too much; it lost its allure years ago; is inconsistent, does not make sense. Nobody cared to create rules for star wars battles, so there is no setting behind this part of universum, and as result everything is about “muh feeling what is right”. So this is muh feeling what is right.
I will say that I follow the idea that “Imperial” is a ship class name rather than the notion that all Star Destroyers are designated “Imperial”, which I find quite odd. It’s colloquial at best, like “Super Star Destroyer” describing every warship bigger than an ISD, whether 2km or 17+km.
Also, Executor isn’t 12km. 19km is an upper bound of the estimate – I prefer something around 17.5km, but 12km is plainly too small. This isn’t a “well I think so” statement – it follows from consistent visual scaling. 12km was never an original number – it showed up briefly, splitting the difference between the obviously wrong but somehow-adhered-to old 8km number in some EU crap and the 17-18km derived from visual scaling of the model and the movie shots. Then LFL went and gave it a 19km length, which is just plausible but I think a bit of an overreaction, largely PR if you can call it that rather than considered from available VFX evidence.
I don’t see how 12 km is supposed to be more « reasonable ». First of all it doesn’t match with it’s onscreen scale (which is admittedly a little inconsistent, but some of the close-up shot, like the one of the Falcon skimming its trench in TESB would actually make it far larger than 19 km), and secondly, we’re talking about the people who built a 120km large space-station, got it destroyed and decided to build a second one even bigger. There’s literally no reason that would make a 12 km ship more believable than a 19’ one.
Well, recently I read a thread about the SD bridges in the old trilogy on boards.theforce.net.
According to the size of the bridge structures, there a Imperial/Imperatos SDs with different lengths in the old trilogy and rogue one. The sizes range from 900 meter (rogue one)to 1200 to 2300. Some people there scaled the executor on 12km with the same bridge size as normal SD’s.
Here it is:
https://boards.theforce.net/threads/the-star-destroyer-bridges-of-the-original-trilogy.50044307/
Personnally I think all ISDs are all the same size.
The only thing that makes sense to me is that all the SD bridge modules are approximately the same, and thus all the various ISD variants are all roughly the same, and blame VFX limitations for any discrepancies scaling to sets. After all, the scale difference is far larger than, say the lambda scaling of Home One. Even for eminently scalable sets (in theory), the Millenium Falcon set is impossible to fit into the actual ship without modification.
This is before taking into account the dramatically different scales of the studio models (Devastator vs Avenger vs the small metal ones, etc.).
Hands down, my biggest issue with Lore in its current form is going to be accounting for the massive building of ships.
Pick whatever size you want for the ships – but consider the number of years it takes to build a real world naval ships. The Republic, Empire, Rebellion, and New Republic generate thousands of capital class ships from say.. 25BBY, to 7 ABY.
Thousands.
The CIS half built the Death Star, which is volume is many thousands of destroyers on its own. SW industrial capacity is enormous. KDY shipyards literally form a ring world around a planet, easily several Death Star volumes in and of themselves.
Sure – but consider the time component here. 35 years, 4 major factions each with a large number of ships for their respective era. This means the numbers are likely in the tens of thousands range over that full period.
How many would we say could be built in a year. 100? 200? 500? And this is while the empire is being stripped of resources to build the death star(s). Let’s say they can resource this – the issue is the speed, especially for the New Republic. They go from nothing to a larger, more advanced, more powerful force than the loyalist empire in 3 years.
What?
I’m not sure why any of this surprising. Say KDY was 50% building slips by circumference, and it’s an Earth sized planet, that’s enough to have 20,000 ISD sized ships under construction at once. Death Star 2 was on the order of 600,000-700,000 ISD volumes, and was built in 3 years. The SW galaxy draws on millions of inhabited planets, and billions of potential planets for resources alone. Some of those individual planets can have populations a thousand times that of Earth. The exponents of 10 start adding up fast. It’s not a great scale if you want nice cozy adventures for a plucky band of 4. But those are the implications of truly galactic civilization of the scale seen in the movies. Scale matters.
The NR was a bit of a special case too – I personally think much of their forces were actually defected Imperial forces or former Imperial materiel taken over under local governments and loaned to the NR. Plus they simply never pushed military expansion in the way the Empire did after the Clone Wars – too much pacifist overreaction to the example of the Empire.
Sure, but the cost of each ISD was listed in as more than the entire yearly GDP of most systems.
I don’t disagree on space to build, although the logistics of which would be pretty insane. I have difficulty with speed at which they were built. Not to mention engineered, crewed, etc.
How many systems are there? 50 million.
I do agree that crew (reliable, trained crew) was probably the bottleneck, at least once they stopped using clones.
For comparison, based on the numbers observed during the Kepler mission, there’s an estimated 100 billion planets in the Milky Way, 40 billion of which are Earth-like, and 11 billion of those orbit G-type stars like our sun (theoretically supporting life as we know it). That’s easily 20 billion planetary systems.
I’m pretty sure I remember something, from somewhere, that suggested a parity in size between the Milky Way the one LAAFFA… So… That’s a sh!t ton of resources.
The actual quote is:
“There are whole star systems whose gross domestic product is less than the cost of a single Star Destroyer. There are whole nations which, throughout their entire history, do not use as much energy as a Star Destroyer expends to make a single hyperspace jump.” (Star Wars Sourcebook, 2nd. Edition, pg. 34-35, WEG)
It’s not MOST systems, just some systems. What’s the GDP of Hoth? What’s the combined energy consumption of, say, Luxembourg?
The bar is actually set pretty low.
*relatively speaking.
Going by the sheer scale of the Star Wars galaxy and the available planets and resources I’ve actually found most of the given ship- and fleet-numbers to be comparatively low. 25.000 Imperial-class Star Destroyers overall of both subtypes? That sounds rather ridiculous when one keeps in mind the Empire controlled more than 5 million star systems and each sector fleet was supposed to have at least 24 Star Destroyers with still a sizeable reserve being held back in the core worlds.
Granted, some of these numbers can be other classes like Victorys, Venators, Procursators or Tectors but it still comes over as relatively low compared to overall galactic scale.
Which is why the ‘Rule by Fear’ idea made sense when the majority of your territory was backwater yokels that pooped their pants when a ISD I parked itself in orbit. More bang for their buck… And loosing several dozen would have zero effective impact on your industrial/military complex.
It depends on their intended mission, I think. Based on the in-universe evidence, a “destroyer” is more of a combination dreadnought / carrier / assault transport, basically combining a modern Navy’s carrier battle group, surface action group and amphibious assault groups into a single platform. The US Navy rarely has more than four carriers available for deployment at any given time (the other ~8 are usually in the maintenance/overhaul or deployment work-up pipeline), but still manages to project power on a global scale simply by moving the carrier to wherever it’s needed. So yeah, 25,000 is pretty low-ball on an absolute scale, but what if a sector (average of 1,000 systems) only needs 24 destroyers (or the equivalent) to cover it? Put frigates and corvettes in all the low-priority systems to serve as a trip-wire, with destroyers in strategic locations (or patrol circuits within the sector) as a rapid reaction force. Then, if a sector REALLY lights off, forces can be surged in from neighboring sectors on short notice, or from the Oversector fleets or from reserve fleets in the Core as needs be. System control doesn’t require parking a destroyer in every system, the fact that a destroyer is only hours or days away, with the massed striking power of the Imperial Navy behind it.
Sure, the Empire has incredible levels of strategic mobility, but so do its enemies. A destroyer might only be hours away, but a Rebel MC80 raider can destroy an industrial target and jump away in minutes, only to hit another target in another sector long before rapid-reaction forces even show up to the first target. The very nature of hyperspace makes it nearly impossible to suppress a well equipped adversary willing to employ asymmetrical warfare, making it sort of like Afghanistan in Space.
There’s a reason why the only polity that lasted more than a few decades was the ultimate expression of Laissez-faire. Trying to impose a coherent ideology on that kind of galaxy is just an exercise in futility, no matter how many capital ships you have.
But not every planet in the galaxy is going to have the sort of strategic resources that would necessitate a strike by an MC80. Nor are Imperial Star Destroyers the only asset in the Empire’s bag of tricks; “fixed” assets, like orbital battlestations, planetary shields, theater shields, anti-orbital weaponry and the like are all possibilities if a planet is of sufficient importance. An important planet could even double as one of the nodal positions from which Star Destroyer groups are based, such that there will nearly always be at least one SD in-system.
I’ll say it again – destroyers or any multirole capable ships only play those roles in context. Historically, destroyers were absolutely capital ships vs coastal craft but as fleet escorts remained absolutely expendable if it meant a capital ship stayed in action. That remains true today.
Agreed about refit cycles – though with SW mobility available vs not is likely much better than 1:2. Even ships working up would be able to be available in an emergency, while transit considerations mean on station time is much lower for terrestrial navies doing global deployments.
I would imagine normal Sector planets actually rarely see Imperial ships, which are mostly in reserve with light forces and automated surveillance. What makes that tolerable is likely the ubiquity of shielding, which allows a planet or station habitat to hold out against raids and make them merely disruptive rather than destructive. My model for SW warfare is pretty different from what we might think of as warfare now. Given the inter-dependency of the system, it’s possible for large swathes of territory to declare neutrality or switch sides if their main resources inputs are cut off. I.e. a city world will starve without food imports. Actually accessing that territory and its resources are different, but controlling things like food and energy supplies might force entire sectors out of active conflict for the other side if they get cut off. Now, whether they *can* be cut off depends on how you think hyperdrives really work.
How self-sufficient do you reckon most planets are? Given the truly absurd logistical requirements for something like a city-world, perhaps they’re not importing trillions of tons of food a week with all the hypermatter expenditure that requires. My model for city-worlds has most of the food coming from nearly self-sufficient arcologies that recycle waste into food and fresh water at very high levels of efficiency.
Shielding is great when you’re expecting an attack, but keeping them raised for extended durations is a really fast way to drain your reactant tanks and impede lawful commerce. Most raiders probably wouldn’t be Mon Cal cruisers, but rather privateer Q-ships that appear civilian until they open fire. It’s tough to devise countermeasures against that sort of raider unless you’re willing to detain and inspect merchants at a checkpoint far from the planet itself, like how Kuat set up its transfer ports.
That’s what the myriad of smaller Imperial ships are for, unless you’re picturing some pretty powerful Q-Ships. Historically, Q-Ships were only useful against warships if they could pull off a successful surprise attack, but lacked the maneuverability and durability to go toe-to-toe with a warship in a stand-up fight.
So, depending on the asset, you have one or more corvettes / frigates in system, which are going to be a tough proposition for a converted freighter. Maybe add in an armed space station as an orbital transfer point, along with a few fighter squadrons for system patrol, plus any ground defenses.
Plus, this isn’t going to be true of every system. The more valuable a system is, the more robust the in-system defenses are likely to be. Systems with minimal defenses will likely be because they have little or nothing worth defending. Even then, there are certain targets the Alliance is unlikely to touch for ethical reasons; an ag world may be relatively defenseless, but the Alliance isn’t going to slag it from orbit just to starve out the massively overpopulated sector capital.
In terms of self-suffiency, from the Legends source, around 80% of the Core World’s power can be traced back to one planet: Sarapin. In addition to this, there are other notions of dedicated agricultural worlds made to supply the Core World with food. So it’s pretty decent to say they aren’t very efficient in their recycling programs.
80% of Core’s Power, lolololololololol. My god there is so much trash in the EU. And the Grand Army was only a million troops. Pull the other leg!
^this. And it can’t even be blamed on the pre-Disney EU; the source is “The Force Awakens Beginner Game.” When I heard Disney was doing away with the old EU, I really did hope for higher standards of continuity and verisimilitude. Nope, just making room for more ridiculous silliness.
I lost a lot of hope in the Disneyboot’s internal consistency when Twilight Company claimed that a Gozanti-Class Cruiser’s turbolasers and proton torpedoes were a terrible threat to a CR90 and a Braha’tok. The canon Gozanti-Class’s armament (according to all other sources, before and since) is 1 twin medium laser turret and 1 single heavy laser turret.
You can actually make a rough general calculation with these numbers. If one insinuates that a sector has averagely 1.000 star systems and the Empire controlled around 5 million that would be exactly 5.000 sectors.
24 Star Destroyers per Sector Fleet x 5.000 sectors adds up to to a requirement of 120.000 Star Destroyers in total not counting actual Imperial attack- or rapid response fleets or the strategic reserve held in the core worlds. Let’s further estimate the Empire has probably a surplus of around 10.000 to 15.000 Venators left over from the Clone Wars Republic and, I dunno, around 20.000 Victory-class vessels. Together with the 25.000 ISD-class vessels this makes at optimum a number of 60.000 Star Destroyers available. Half of the required number for the sector fleets alone. If you now add additional classes like the Tector, Secutor and Procursator (which I think Fractal mentioned being a quick-to-build emergency destroyer) you might actually reach this required number eventually. I’d also add the Victory II-class SD but it was explicitly mentioned in Legends sources that the Victory II had a rather low production run meaning not many of them were build.
A good estimate with mostly solid numbers.
As I recall (I’m at work, so I can’t check them), the RoTS, and Complete, ICS both state that the Republic Navy had 50,000 Venators at peak numbers, and that production only slowed down after the Declaration of a New Order. Given that, I would tend to estimate that Venator numbers, at least early on, were more like 35,000-40,000.
In support of your calculation: Legends sources stated that the Imperial Navy Order of Battle was the ideal fleet composition that the Empire was working toward, but never got close to reaching. Wookieepedia (unreliable, I know, but I don’t have the book so stay with me) cites The Essential Guide to Warfare stating that “many Navy formations like the Systems Force and the Sector Group were understrength (sic) throughout the Galactic Civil War.”
I’d say it’s reasonable to think that sectors a long way from known Alliance targets might simply not have any SDs at all, relying on smaller ships because the jobs were much smaller.
Wow, those numbers for Venators during Republic times are actually pretty high, especially considering that each single Venator can carry 420 fighters. Yet on the other hand, in Legends canon it is said that more than 1.000 Venators participated at the Battle of Coruscant alone and by the third year of the Clone Wars with a full war economy running the Republic was steadily reducing the numerical advantage of the CIS fleet so such numbers would make sense. Of course this would mean even higher numbers for escort and support ships like Acclamators and Arquitens cruisers.
Ah, of course, the difference between theory and reality. The Empire wanted to have 24 Star Destroyers per sector but couldn’t actually do it. That’s then where the mothball third line vessels like Dreadnaught class Heavy Cruisers, Bulk Cruisers, Fractal’s Proclamator or dedicated smaller units like Vindicators and Strike Cruisers come into play to fill gaps.
Arriving at a number for the overall fleet strength of the Imperial Navy is actually surprisingly easy, believe it or not… and it puts it at a hell of a lot more than the ridiculous 25,000 number that is given by writers more accustomed to thinking about narratives than the maths of galactic-scale Type 2.5/Type 3 civilisations.
This quote is old but gold, and also higher canon than any of the minimalist stuff in Legends: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXSVfwGfvDY
We know the DS1 put out about 1e38 J destroying Alderaan. Assuming this was a full-power blast, its reactors were generating _at least_ 1.6e33w. “Greater than half” implies something around 60% of the entire fleet (not more than 100%, or he would have said “greater than the entire”) which places the entire fleet at a power of around 3e33w. Note he says ‘firepower’, but I think he’s referring to total power output there – most ships can channel all of their power to their weapons. If he’s referring to firepower alone as something less than the total output of the fleet, then that makes it even larger.
So, we have a total power output of the Imperial fleet – and it is a low estimate, mind you. 3e33w / 9.3e24w = 322.6 million ISDs. So it might be reasonable to assume that ISDs make up 1-2% of the fleet, numbering at 3-7 million.
The Galaxy comprises about 1 million member worlds; ~1000 per sector along with a further 50-70,000 “colonies” (minor settled systems), which brings us to a total of about 70 million inhabited systems. The majority of these will be militarily unimportant (but when a rebellion can hide anywhere, every system becomes important), but it makes sense to have at least 1 ISD (the Empire’s front line force-projector) to every 5-10 inhabited systems.
The crew requirements for such a gargantuan force of ISDs would reach 120 billion, which is very small in the Star Wars scale of things – 0.00012% of the Galaxy’s 100 quadrillion beings if I’m not mistaken. This is actually surprisingly low, considering the British Empire’s Navy (a comparable real-world force) around 1850 employed about 3.8% of the country’s population. That said, (very roughly speaking) that would be about 0.2% of the whole world’s population at the time – point being, not every planet would be contributing an equal percentage of its own population to the ranks of the Empire. Alien populations would be left out of the loop.
Something someone else said on here gave me a thought; it may be that the number of ISDs they decided to build was based off of some kind of scenario, like “how many important industrial and population centres are there in the Galaxy that we would have to protect/suppress with ISDs in the case of ‘x’ happening.” Who knows what the rationale was, but it may have had something to do with quantifiably having enough ships to defend military, industrial and population centres simultaneously without any chinks in the Empire’s armour. Idk, pure speculation.
At any rate, the Empire’s navy was demonstrably larger than most think, and canon has never even begun to do it justice. The rest of the fleet is another more complicated question entirely, because if there are 3 million ISDs, what makes up the other 99% of the fleet in power output? Hundreds of billions of frigates? Seems a bit OP. I’d like to think that there were other superweapon projects he was referring to which comprised 20% of the fleet, and a huge number of battlecruisers and dreadnoughts which also took up the slack. It would ‘only’ take 750,000 Assertors to make up the entire fleet after all. All still seems a bit vast… But hey, it’s what Dodonna said in ANH.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but that’s a lot of conjecture based off a single line in the film…
Well it is a pretty unambiguous way of saying that ‘the fleet is very, very big’ and gives us enough information to arrive at some figures. It’s a very important line, because it’s the only real information we get about the strength of the Imperial Navy as a whole.
It also stands to reason, in a galactic civilisation, that they would have a LOT of ships. 25,000 doesn’t even scratch the surface, it is but a spec…
As to escorts and smaller ships making up the rest of the fleet, sure… but one ISD is as powerful as, say, a dozen strike cruisers. So if there were 36 million strike cruisers, that would only be another 1% of the fleet.
The 3e33w figure for the power output of the Navy might become more reasonable when we account for huge space stations, deep space stations, fuel depots, other small superweapons, many thousands of dreadnoughts (one for each sector is not unreasonable when each one has 70,000 worlds to be patrolled – several dreadnoughts per sector suddenly makes sense when you look at the numbers.) The fleet would also comprise many millions of destroyer-sized vessels, tens of millions of frigates, and hundreds of millions of smaller patrol craft.
And by no means are there many thousands of Dreadnoughts. Just because the galaxy could theoretically support the number, what we know of Imperial history ends that thought. Resources were spent on the Death Star projects, and those in favor of Dreadnoughts were not given the resources or priority. The funding wasn’t funneled into those projects until after Yavin, the Executor languished for years in dry dock until it was completed. We have about 12 known Executor class, some not completed until 10 ABY. Legatos aren’t canon, but given the Republics stretched finances, I can’t imagine more than one being completed for each over sector command fleet, so upwards of 20 of them. Perhaps as many Madators were built during that war. There would probably be twice as many Bellators as other dreadnaught types built by the Empire, perhaps as many Assertors as Executors, and more of the battle cruisers than the Dreadnoughts combined. It’s because of Imperial doctrine, which is the ultimate limiting factor. It isn’t like the Rebels had fleets of Battleships to counter.
Having several thousand Star Dreadnoughts is certainly economically possible, but I too doubt that so many were built.
Of the Mandator I-class I know that only 7 or 8 were ever built and 3 of those were always held in reserve to defend the Kuat Sector.
Mandator II I dunno, but I would theorize them to have a production run in the low two digit area and the same goes for the Legator.
The 12 Executor number is from the new Disney canon and even there Rebel Alliance intelligence is not sure if more exist. In Legends, we have at least 14 named Executors and about 20 more rumored to exist which would also put them in the lower two digit area in terms of fielded vessels.
Now which classes are missing? The Vengeance-class Star Dreadnought? Of that class only two vessels are known, Vengeance herself which was commanded by Dark Jedi Jerec and the Javelin.
Assertor, Mandator III and Bellator, probably in the same ballpark in terms of active vessels.
So if we generously assume around 30 vessels for each Executor, Assertor, Mandator III and Bellator we have:
30 Executor
30 Assertor
30 Mandator III
30 Bellator
2 Vengeance SSD
8 Mandator I
20 Mandator II
20 Legator
That are 170 Star Dreadnoughts in total.
Did I forget a class?
The Eclipse class (which there are 2 Eclipse 1 and Eclipse 2) and the Sovereign class (which there are 4 the names being Sovereign, Autarch, Despot and Heresiarch).
While I generally agree with your thoughts, “rumored to exist” and actually existing aren’t the same necessarily. Maybe we bring the number down by 30-40 to a total of 130-140 probably being built for certain, with the high 170 number as an outside possibility. Really, we have a 2-3 year span where the Imperial Dreadnought designs would be cranked out before the Emperors death. That’s a lot of multi-kilometer ships churned out and crewed in a short span. Oh, we have those missle busses of Republic design Fractal has been working on, but they’d fall into the battlecruiser size range.
They don’t have access to all those beings for crew. The New Order was humanocentric, human supremacist. Crews are human only, the only alien we see is the special case of Thrawn.
Another point, 25,000 ISD ‘s is referring to a ship class, not every star destroyer in the fleet, only the pattern. In cannon, there would also be surviving Venators, Victorys, Tectors, Secutors filling out the role. Add in designs like Procursators, which you could probably produce at twice the rate of Imperial class, and that’s a lot of star destroyers. The crewing of the ships is a limiting factor, not every person is suitable for the job, the Empire limits the job to a single race, and then they have to pass through the Academy system. Remember there is an equally vast, all human Imperial army, and the Stormtrooper legions. Humans meeting the physical standards, indoctrinational standards, and having the requisite talents would not be a limitless resource. The Republic was able to draw on all species for its armed forces, the Empire can only draw on one.
But you’re only looking at star destroyers. They need consorts to function and cover their flanks, then you need convoy escorts, patrol vessels, support vessels, etc. For every star destroyer there’s probably a dozen frigates, as many corvettes or more, then various patrol vessels on the order of a sloop, then you have your logistical vessels. There’s probably 50 capital ships of lesser scale for every star destroyer, not counting support ships.
Per the WEG sources that generated the 25,000 number, there were roughly 100 other ships of various types for every star destroyer, not including orbital bombardment platforms, troop transports and their escorts.
This is probably fairly accurate number. Star Destroyers, (according to Legends) like most imperial designs, were extremely crew inefficient – with crew sizes around 20,000 for an ISD1 compared to 7200 for a Venator.
In conventional military forces there are typically between 8 and 12 support elements for every combat element. The non-combat logistical forces marshaled to support even a single ship of that size would be significant and would require a large number of support ships for remote operations.
Is 20,000 for an Imperator actually inefficient? ISDs are about three times the volume as a Venator, and have to make do with human recruits, rather than absurdly elite Fett clones trained from birth. Lean manning sounds tempting to a peacetime navy like the modern USN, but it just leaves you understaffed when the shit hits the fan and you need to throw bodies at damage control. Besides, the Empire has city-worlds with hundreds of trillions of inhabitants to recruit from. Surely a decent number of them want to see the galaxy from a Star Destroyer, even if they start out as Assistant Tensor Field Repairman Third Class.
20,000 is quite reasonable for a ship…3 times the volume and power of a ship manned by 7200…
A significant portion of that space is in the engineering core and the storage space. To reach numbers like that you’d need nearly 15-1 support crew to ship crew (Insane) for the weapon loaded out and combat element of an ISD. (Modern naval equivalent is around 3 to 1 on a ship). The Venators had 7200 crew with an ARMY of 2000+ onboard. If you buy what Wiki sells – the ISD is listed as having 9000+ Officers, 27000 crew, and 9000+ Ground troops. 1 in 3 officers? No?
For further perspective.
USS Enterprise – 3200 ship crew, 2000 aircrew. 300m~
USS Gerald Ford – 2600 crew, 1800 aircrew. 340m~ Both have comparable air-wing components.
USS Missouri – 1850 Officer and crew. 270m~
I don’t think an Imperial Venator would only man with 7200, any more than I trust a Wookiepedia breakdown of ISD crew, for that matter. Going from clone crews to live born volunteer crews are going to impose a cost in efficiency. I’d figure Venators were designed as pretty lean manned all around, and quite possibly designed for grinding attritional battles rather than independent operations with all the self-maintenance and support that entails. If we assume 37000 crew for an ISD, I’d estimate a Venator in Imperial service with complement ~12000.
I don’t think there’s going to be an exactly linear relationship between volume (so displacement and not length for real world examples) and crew complement, but I do think that it’s not an awful extrapolation if you had nothing else to go on. But what is awful are those perspectives you listed – a far better comparison are two ships with similar roles of roughly the same generation (and thus manning policy). Compare HMS Dreadnought at ~18000t ~700-800 crew vs HMS Nelson at ~34,000t with ~1300-1400 crew, and that’s with savings going from coal to oil firing with increased onboard automation. If you want a carrier example with closer tech bases, see USS Enterprise ~20000t/2300 men vs USS Midway ~45000t/~4100 men.
If you want to see manning policy screw with extrapolations, take HMS Queen Elizabeth 65000t/700(!) vs a Ford-class – 100000+/2600.
2000+ isn’t an Army; it’s more of a reinforced Battalion or under strength Regiment. An actual Field Army would be 100,000 or more, and require at least 3-4 Consolidators to transport it.
A Venator also carried a single prefabricated Garrison base, 40 LAATs, 6 or 8 Juggernauts and at least 24 walkers to establish a military outpost so I’d guess that the 2000+ infantry carried on board was intended to be used to man that base as well as perform duties like defending against boarding parties on the Venator itself.
Then again, Venators very rarely operated alone. The most common variant was 3 Venators working together at all times although groups of 4 or 5 vessels existed as well.
So it is certainly possible that a single Division was spread out across a single Venator flotilla.
I think he meant army personnel.
Part of the crew delta for an ISD vs Venator might be support elements for the increased ground complement and its supporting small craft.
@Fractalsponge – Possibly, but if so, it’s oddly phrased. I expect you’re right about the crew breakdown, but considering the modular nature of carriers, it’d be nice if that number was declared separately from the ship’s actual operating crew. That way, if needed, the Venator could pull its fighter wing to carry more troops (there are real-world contingency plans for doing this with aircraft carriers and the 101st Air Assault).
@Sephiroth0812 – A better parallel would be the US Marine Corps’ MEU(SOC), a marine battalion with large numbers of vehicles attached to give the unit greater flexibility. Depending on the mission, they could be deployed as light infantry, air assault or combined arms (infantry & armored vehicles), as well boarding / counter-boarding or manning the garrison.
Yeah. I tried to edit it to italics to better show my sarcasm at 2000 being listed as an army, but alas the post was locked. Few of the data points make a whole lot of sense given that the raw support element + flight crew for the air wing element of a Venator would likely exceed that total crew volume. I suspect Ansel is correct in that the idea was to pare down the crew / run minimal due to the highly capable Clones. Given the role of the Venators, a MEU is probably a good analogy, thought I think most of the Lore gets this wrong (Clone Wars Series, etc). You don’t use a MEU to fight prolonged/pitched battles or hold terrain. You use an Army for that.
That said, there would have been and should have been a significant number of ancillary roles capable of being filled by Droids. (Interesting side note, Lucas trade marked the term “droids”). The same goes for the entire SD line. At this point in the technical development, the only reason to pad crew staff that high is if you still have room attendants and other similarly menial tasks performed by sentients. Given the choice between a munitions droid and 6 dudes carrying around warheads – I’d take the droid. I don’t have to feed or pay the droid.
You take the droid??? Droids are the enemy!!! Even more if they can handle munition.
A Venator needing quite some extra personnel to keep its huge fighter complement operational is also reasonable as you need more than just the pilots to keep the fighters in top fighting condition and a Venator carries a whopping 420 of those. The ARC-170 also requires a crew of 3 if I recall correctly and a Venator has 36 of them meaning 108 people alone to man the ARC-170s.
“Imperial”->class name. I dislike “new” name of Imperator. From my native tongue point of view Imperator souns too close to emperor (Palpatine). It sounds weird, much wierder than “Imperial”, especially when you are not translating it, but leaving in English.
Im well aware of problems with Executor size. The 12 km version was never well supported by visual canon, and 8km was exisitng only in writing. However 8 km never made sense in context of thevmovies; similarly 17-19 km estimate. Visuals are poor justification; on the basis of them we have also estimates of Death Star I being 900 km. Visuals are therefore not proof of anything. They are indicator, they show direction, but they cannot-and are not-the definite argument.
The number 12 km is simply logical choice in between extremes. 8 km is pretty small and goes against visuals, feel of the movies and overwhelming firepower Executor was supposed to have-as established in writing and on screen. 19 km is way too big. Ship of this size would single handledy win Battle of Endor. 12km is the happy middle, based on really poor visual justifiction (bridge size) that makes little to no sense, however it allows to reach reasonable size that is not too big and not small either. It is still humongous, but not to the extent that would make general feel of lore inconsistent. Justification for this sieze is irrelevant though, its happy coincidence.
But I digress. I dont think we understand each other. I have to make my perspective clearer. I will use the current discussion about size of Star Wars Galaxy to illustrate my point.
The story presented in Star Wars is using visual language to convey concepts. Star Wars was enver particularly sophisticated, coherent setting, because its storytelling was done ONLY trough visuals. Those visuals were supposed to convey feelings, emotions and general concepts. They never were systematized according to some principles. Instead, they were based on visual cues from other movies and historical events like naval warfare of World War II. The lore created in writing after movies became successful was largely ignoring that. As many franchises it was a collection of various perspectives, additions, authors – and everyone had their own take on things they saw on screen. As result some parts of the lore are nonsensical, weird and they feel off even if they are canon. This is the result of having zero setting coherence. In such instance the only way how you can argue something is and is not Star Wars and has place in universe is your ability to understand core material. And core material, as I already said, is very loose because it was never supposed to be conveyed i n ritten form, but in language of the cinema.
Let us look at this language and what it is conveying. Exeuctor is huge, dwarfs other ships. The point of Exeuctor is not to have exact specifications, length of X kilometers etc. The point of Executor is to show power of the Empire, present Rebelion as insignificant tiny force that has no chance of winning. Dread, fear, awe. Arguing how big Exeuctor is and what is its firepower, counted to the last turbolaser is to miss the point. Specs are supposed to fit the visual feeling, visual language, and not be autuistically concentrating on actual measurements and estimates. The fact that people went with a liner, put it on screen and started to count how many tiems Executor is longer than ISD is missing the point entirely. The point is “Exeuctor is huge”. And nobody during production of the movie, writing the screenplay etc. did not cared about scale, size, specs. However this does not mean that you can make Executor small. Or weaker than ISD. There is limit to what you can do, but range of your interpretation is pretty wide. In order to hit “the golden spot” of this interpretation you have to look at the ENTIRETY of visuals of Star Wars and deduce ona basis of that the correct conclusions.
Look at the battles of Sar Wars. How many ships do you see? How many fighters? Do you really see galaxy-wide spanning empire, or maybe somhething much much smaller? The size of imperial fleet at Endor is laughable if you think, that Empire spanns 65 million planets. How many ships are there? 30? 40? something in-between plus Executor. And no, we dont see any smaller ships or antyhing of other type ANYWHERE, so you have to forget about argument “there are hundreds of ships, they are just small”. They never appeared on screen. Empire was using ISD’s and Executor. But even if we would grant this argument merit, then still question remains: this is Empire that supposedly controls the entire Galaxy… 65 millions of planets. Lore claims it had 20 000 ISD’s. Those numbers make sense if you take real galaxies, calculate how many stars they have, how many planets they may have that can support life etc. But those numbers do not make sense when you look at screen. Empire is powerful… but somehow it can muster only 30-something ISDs to protect Death Star II. This is the biggest battle of Original Trylogy, folks. Numbers do not add up.
Look at prequels. The biggest battle of this era is Coruscant battle, 3rd episode. How many ship do you see? 40, 50… something around that amount. Of BOTH sides. However the visuals are crammed, indicating that we are seeing only small part of the enitre picture. So how many ships did participate in this battle? 100, 200? maybe 300. Writing claims that there were thousadns of ships. But we dont see that. The feeling of battle, is scale, urgency, intensity is portrayed on screen, but it is portrayed with minimal amount of ships. If you think about it-it again doesnt make sense if Old Republic is supposed to be around the size of Empire.
The reason behind this stylistic choice is this: in World War II naval skirmishes were of this size. Navies had dozens of ships and they were commited often on numerous fronts, hence each battle was small. Big engagements were concentrating most of fleet in one place, numbers in two digits. Star Wars is using the same language, and has the same scale as result. In order for this language to make sense in context of galactic scale, one has to reject notion of 65 million planets and huge, easily accesible galactic disk; things that were not mentioned in movies in the first place.
Therefore we have to conclude, that assumptions about size of civilized galaxy are incorrect. Galaxies are big, and there is no reason to think Star Wars galaxy is any different. However the size of fleets does not add up. Yes, we can argue that because space is so huge it requires fleets to be dispersed; so thousands of ships are present, but we dont see them because they are travelling between those millions of planets… but even then numbers do not add up. Major battles go against this logic; in SW hyperspace allows you to move your forces rapiddly between edges of galaxy. So in event of major battle, especially one that is a trap (Endor) we would expect that Empire, Republic or CIS would gather overwhelming forces. And visuals suggest, that they did…yet we don’t see thousands of ships. We see dozens…
This points out to the possibility that SW galaxy, civilized one, the part in which story happens – is actually mucch, much smaller. Therefore the amount of industrial capacity at its disposal is smaller, and the fleets – as result – also are much smaller.
The size of Empire’s fleet, 20 k ISD’s and millions of supporting vessles-does not make sense. It makes sense if you ignore movies, and base your estimates only on real numbers, assuming that civilized galaxy spans 75% of physical galactic disk. But it doesnt make sense when you look at visual feel of universe, language of cinema.
Of course, one can declare in writing whatever one wants. We can conjure whatever explanation we want; but that is NOT the correct way of doing things. By doing so we are overriding setting rules established in movies, however loose they may be; and then written lore detaches itself from movie-based one, creating more and more conflicts between what is written and what is shot on screen. Ultimately it destroys the core idea that movies were trying to convey troguh their visual language.
Therefore, if we want to follow logic of the movies and base our conclusions on their language; we have to question the size of Galaxy, Empire, industrial capacity.
I propose the following solution: SW galaxy is much smaller. However, physically it is as huge as cureently in lore. what is smaller is amount of space that has been mapped and therefore belongs to “civilized galaxy”. Hyperspace travel requires existence of corridors that are free of gravitational obstructions. Some hyperspace corridors are pretty long and allow for travel from core of galaxy to its edges, and established written lore is based around that idea. This idea has not much gorudnign in movies; but it has been already developed and can be adopted as solution to our problem. Its better to use something that already exists in lore; than to invent new creations. However, established written lore gets here everything else wrong in that regard. Hyperspace needs to be mapped, and this process requires time, trail and error approach, in “nuked”canon thats the case thousands of years ago. This is idea that provides good solution to our conundrum: most of travel and discovery happened along long hyperspace lines. Space around them is part of “civilized” galaxy, that is linked via hyperspace travel. In short, actual known, mapped, inhabited and “civilized” galaxy looks more like tentacles of octopus, ranging from core to the edges. In between those tentacles-there is unknown space, that awaits to be mapped, discovered and travelled to. There are no hyperspace lines there that exist that we know of, and hyperspace travel takes a lot of time because existing hyperspace windows are very short and they rarely allow for fluid travel; you have to traverse huge distances in regular space. This means, that communication with those parts of galaxy often is not possible; it takes hundreds of years or millenia even. As result those parts of galaxy are not linked to Coruscant and thus “galactic civilization”.
Within “known space” there are billions of star systems, yes; but only few of those host planets that are inhabitable, or from which life evolved. If we make known SW galaxy smaller in the way described above it is not unresonable to shrink amount of inhabited worlds to one million; an arbitrary number yes, but also not so big as to create beformentioned problems with scale. Known, civilized galaxy will still be huge, and Empire controlling it will still be humongous; but now we would be able to shrink its size to more relaistic-in face of visual language of the movies-scale.
In such view, Star Wars Galaxy is divded into “known space” centered around major hyperspace lines; and majority of galactic disc is part of “uknown space”; sorrounding each “tentacle” of known space there is “wild space” of poorly connected systems, and this is the fringe of “civilived” galaxy. As result something akin to 15%-20 of galactic disk is actually part of galactic civilization. This gives us estimate of around 9.7 million planets. In this version of Star Wars, galaxy is very loosely inhabited, therefore we can say that most of those planets are uninhabited, underdeveloped, or were colonies for short period of time and now are abandoned. The permanent settlement would be therefore limited to around 1 million planets, with rest of inhabitable worlds-8,7 million-being small colonies, outposts or not-independnt smaller centers of population.
Such “galaxy” is still huge; spaces vast, thousands of potential intelligent lifeforms exist and controlling it via force still is immensly difficult task. thanks to making galaxy smaller we can finally scale down our expectations of sizes of the fleets to match the battles that we see. In this version, Empire can rapidly, over few decades, produce around 2000-3000 ISDs; but those ships-immensly powerfull, used to supress dissent and rebellion all around 1 million worlds and 10 million inhabitable systems and much, much more non-habitable systems in between – have to be present all around known space. Thus, Empire has no ability to amass quickly all of them to destroy particular enemy. However it can easily take out of various areas enough of ISD’s to protect Death Star II at Endor. Around 40 of those ships is significant number, if we estimate their total count at 2-3k; and it is very reasonable to assume, that Empire was able to call them rappidly to Endor to create trap for rebel forces, without weakening their grip over known space.
This vision still fits with informations such as KDY having ring of shipyards over their planet; KDY is serving the entire galaxy, producing millions of units of various sizes for civilization spanning 1 million worlds, untold trillions of intelligent beings; not to mention remaining 8-9 million of small outposts, colonies etc. But now, since we made galaxy smaller, it significance increases, especially for the Empire; KDY now TRULY becomes THE imperial shipyard, producing most of its fleet; Kuat is the center of industrial power of the Empire. In addition to creation of 2-3 k of ISD’s (and counting), it produced many times more of smaller ships, figthers etc. Loosing Kuat (or Fondor for that matter) would be indeed a major blow to the Empire. This isnt the case in situation where we have humongous galaxy, spanning many times more densly inhabited worlds. Loosing Kuat woddl be met with shrug by the Empire.
Anyway I wrote this for purpose: to present my way of thinking about SW lore. The same methodology (Look at movies: what do they convey?) I used to reject lore about Allegiance class. Visually this is glorified ISD. Naming “ISD II” something that has just different weapon compliment does not make sense; but naming ship that looks like current Allegiance class – an ISD II – does. Size, specs etc – are secondary issues. What matters is coherence based on analysis of visual language, on which SW is based on.
Of course, we can – and we should – finally systematize the way how SW galaxy works; in context of this site: how actually warfare there works. The current approach is inherently inconsisten and illogical; things like range for instance are not explained at all; acceleration; firepower; types of damage; how shields actually work-those are core questions that were NEVER answered. But we can reverse-engineer those from visual cues seen on screen, and then make coherent system. Just look at current categorization of ships: Anaxes system. Its preposterous! its based on lenghth! were on Earth you have seen such approach to military systems? Fractalsponge knows very well that what counts is volume, mass, energy production… Not legnth! Even historical basis for this nonsense-categorization of naval ships before II World War-was NOT based on size. It was based on CAPABILITY and ROLE. But, alas, we are stuck with Anaxes nonsense, one of many, such us “20 000 ISD’s”, “65 million inhbaited worlds” etc.
Its time to seriously kick all of this in the butt. Who cares what Disney et consortes write and do. At this point, after nuking original canon, there are no sacred cows. There is nothing that is not questionable. If we can create-like Fractal does-ships that did not existed on screen; why not to do it properly? Look how this approach-analyzing visual language of the movies-already impacted Star Wars. Were do you think estimates of turbolaser powers comes from? Let us continue with it.
“Imperator” is a latin term and simply means commander/commandant of a military force which fits with the general naming theme of capital ships used by the Galactic Republic such as Acclamator, Venator, Tector and so on which are ALL LATIN. Imperator-class is the official Republic designation for this ship class which was changed to “Imperial”-class only after Order 66 and the birth of the Empire. So when someone speaks about the “Imperator-class” they’re referring to the Star Destroyer-class while under Republic control and there is nothing wrong about that as it is official part of the Legends canon.
Yeah well, still dont care about that; decades ago that was correct way of naming the class, I got accustomed to this because of various reasons (again-in my native tongue thats the same word ofr “emperror”) and now I have hard time changing. BTW isnt it funny that the most iconic starship of Star Wars has very poor name and numerous naming problems?
“The number 12 km is simply logical choice in between extremes. 8 km is pretty small and goes against visuals, feel of the movies and overwhelming firepower Executor was supposed to have-as established in writing and on screen. 19 km is way too big. Ship of this size would single handledy win Battle of Endor. 12km is the happy middle, based on really poor visual justifiction (bridge size) that makes little to no sense, however it allows to reach reasonable size that is not too big and not small either. It is still humongous, but not to the extent that would make general feel of lore inconsistent. Justification for this sieze is irrelevant though, its happy coincidence.”
This is basically “because I want it to.” A certain grounding in some evidence is required, short of just absolute technical error in production.
You are ignoring everything else I said. Number 12 km is not arbitrary.
1. It came up in old lore discussions, it is established
2. Visual language of the cinema
3. It cannot be too small but cannot be too big
4. The minimal size in old lore was 8km, the upper size is 19 km. Something that is between those two extremes is better than any of them
5. Since number 12 already popped up and it is in the middle between those two-it has been chosen
But just for people who do not want to think in this manner and have a problem with an argument based on “language of cinema” we can point out to the old discussion about Executor and argument on the size of the bridge. It does not make sense on the surface, but apart from visual confirmation as on screen, we can look into the size of the inside of the main bridge itself. It is comparable if not of the same size as a bridge of ISD.
I personally reject this argument, because it is an irrelevant factoid, that if treated seriously would limit the lore not expand it and is too rigid for storytelling; but if you really cannot bring yourself to think in the above manner, take the old rationale for 12 km.
Executor around 19 km is so huge, that you CANNOT win with it with the fleet that Rebels had at Endor. Its actual, not declared in ridiculous canon, weapon compliment would be so absurd, that there would be noway it could loose, not to mention that his shields would be unpenetrable. Other choices that you have that would reconcile this include much bigger changes into canon and lore; than tinkering with the size of Executor. Hence it is better to change its size.
OK, fine, point by point then.
1) No, it’s not. https://www.theforce.net/swtc/ssd5mile.html 12km appeared transitioning from 8km
2) No, the 17+km estimate was established from the films:
3) No, that’s just you saying something vague, not anchored on any kind of evidence
4) What do you really want to argue here? The old lore was wrong and has been retconned. The new lore is 19km. What makes “old” lore better than “new” lore? Visual evidence from movies suggests that 19km is much more plausible than 8km. So I know which one I’d go with.
5) You chose it. Based on your gut. Great. My gut says you’re being obtuse.
Executor @8km would be equivalently overpowering at Endor. The interpretation is that the fleet held fire under orders (stated in film). But the Rebel fleet was not in itself insignificant – 3 battlecruisers and dozens of destroyer-class ships. It’s not outlandish either way. I agree than in open full-power combat, Executor should’ve wiped out the Rebel fleet, but that wasn’t Endor.
1. Yes it did come up: bridge size comparisons. 2.O rlly. What models of ISD were used? Which model of executor and how shot? 3. 3rd point was about reaching logical conclusions; chosen size is not arbitrary because it has to be set within logical constraints 4. Im arguing for 12. 8 is too small, 19 is too big, creates inconsistencies. 12km is diminishing them. 5. “gut feeling” is misrepresenting everything I said so that you can build a strawman.
Executor of 8 km is LESS overpowering. but its blatantly incorrect size. Executor of 19km is absurdly overpowering. Less overpower is better, because it diminishes incossitneices and allows to reconcile what was seen on screen with what logically should happen. Plausibility increases. Therefore you should always argue for smaller Executor, unless you want to increase insistencies.
Obtuse? look who is speaking. Im not arguing for maintaining absurd stuff in lore, you do, on basis of “I took liner and put it on screen”. You disregard conssistency in favor of… I have no idea what.
History of the “5 Mile” Fallacy, by Star Wars Technical Commentaries
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/ssd5mile.html
Size of the Executor, based on analysis of screen evidence, by the Star Wars Technical Commentaries:
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/ssd.html#size
Your opinion: 12 miles feels right, so everyone else is wrong.
#LooksLegit
You didn’t read what I wrote, the use of miles instead of kilometers clearly indicates that.
the logic used is this:
1. 8km is way too small due to way how warfare in SW is presented, as well as how Executor is presented trough visuals;
2. 19 km is too big, though thats literally what we have on screen because ship of this size would single handedly win any battle
3. There is need to reconcile two opposites so that we can explain how Endor was won;
4. Less inconsistency is better, more incosistnecy is worse; therefore the bigger Executor the worse it gets;
5. Thus we are in need of finding solution
6. Solution is within range of 8 and 19 km, unacceptable extremes
7. The middle ground is 12 km not because “I said so” but because this number came up in discussion about Executor size at one point; 12 km was based on size of the bridge comparison (Executor bridge was assumed to be of the same size as ISD). This is poor argument. However it established precedent; number was mentioned at some point; it is irrelevant to what degree it is convincing on its own; by the same token ANY argument for SMALLER size than 19 km is preferable (for instance size of shield generators-16 km).
8. Because something that was established is better than something not established; because it minimizes subjectivity of choice
9. As result 12 km makes sense as compromise size even if the argument that supports it is weak on its own
10. alternative 8 or 19 km’s have better support of lore (km, retroactively changed) or visual direct literal confirmation, screen evidence (19km); however both of those numbers create inconsistency for the entirety of canon; thus they are questionable and the fact that their source is better documented is irrelevant
11. In simple words 19km is so big that what we have seen in ROTJ: destruction of Executor; is not possible. The firepower of this ship would allow Empire to win the battle;and Executor had support too. Nothing we seen on screen allows us to conclude that Rebels had any chance; thus in order to reconcile the most important part of canon: what happened and how with declared numbers sizes and firepowers; we need to diminish numbers. Change the specs. They are way too big. Decrease them and you will allow suspension of disbelief to be maintained.
It is not “because Is aid so”. It is “it doesn’t make sense, therefore, we have to change it”. The same way how 8 km size didn’t make any sense. It is not the number that is important, its the logic how it is reached; a point all of you ignore systematically. The idea is to make Executor smaller to eliminate the problem with overpowering in Battle fo Endor. Thus anything smaller than 19 km and anything bigger than 8 km is better; the mathematical average is 17,5; midpoint: 14. smallest number within these ranges ever mentioned: 16. the smallest number outside of extremes: 12. Pick whatever you prefer, but remember that the smaller Executor the smaller the problem it creates for the ENTIRETY of canon. You have to wage values here; not get autistic with a liner.
19km is unacceptable in the same way 8 km is unacceptable. It is as simple as that.
Either start arguing on point or admit, that you are choosing 19 km because this is what current canon says and move on. Attack methodology; attack way of thinking-just re-stating what has been said and what we all know about executor size is pointless, thats not an argument! use logic and critical thinking to dismantle idea.
“Pick whatever you prefer, but remember that the smaller Executor the smaller the problem it creates for the ENTIRETY of canon.”
So with the giantic Death Stars in ANH and ROTJ, the Rebel Alliance cannot survive if it had to be realistic. Even if the Empire has 6 executors of 50 km in lenght, the Alliance succeed because the story requires it.
Tl;dr. Let it go, dude. No one cares.
We need a eye-roll emoticon. Just for that guy.
e_e
The Executor was ordered NOT to engage the Rebels, by Emperor Palpatine. No such mental gymnastics are required for your alleged justification. The Rebellion could not survive any conventional engagement with the Imperial Navy, Army, or Stormtrooper Corps. That is a given.
You are trying to add in logic to a story put together by a guy who based the Rebellion on the Viet Cong, who was apparently ignorant of the fact said body was wiped out by the 1968 TET offensive they initiated, and who was unaware of the fact the North Vietnamese failed at every attempt to defeat the US Army militarily, or understand the war was lost on the home front, not in the Rice Paddies and Jungles of Vietnam. Just like the British pretty much kicked George Washingtons ass in nearly every battle of the American Revolution, and ultimately, the British public sickened of that war.
In the end, the only way the Rebellion could win was by killing Palpatine. Given his constant playing off Imperial factions against each other, and in having no heir (he was supposed to live forever, after all, and wanted no heir), the Empire fell to factions fighting each other, more so than any coordinated strategy of the rebels themselves.
Per WEG, this was actually the Alliance’s strategic goal; create enough havoc in the Outer Rim Territories that Palpatine would be forced to leave Coruscant and come deal with the Rebellion in person. Of course, Palpatine was savvy enough to know this, and use it for his own ends.
Yeah, ok, we’re done. Bye.
So in other words you can call other people obtuse, but people cannot call you obtuse. Mkay.
It sounds like you’re trying force your own opinion bad smooth. That or are you trolling?
No, I’m rejecting counters to what I said, because people countering misunderstood what I said, they are patronizing; and they misrepresent logic used or blatantly ignore what I said. I don’t care about acceptance of my point of view at this point and I knew from the beginning that what randoms on Internet will get from it is ” well I think so therefore its right” strawman, thus I was not hoping to convince anybody; just drop the idea, defend it and that’s it.
If people are still not understanding what is it your saying… after all this time…well… that usually means your points been poorly executed and your counter points are contradictory in itself
And with that I can agree; I didn’t think out well what I’m trying to convey. I was trying to present a certain method of thinking about canon, an alternative that allows fans to be more free in their speculations but at the same time more faithful to the source material. And I failed. I will try again later.
“BTW isnt it funny that the most iconic starship of Star Wars has very poor name and numerous naming problems?” – Lol, you can blame tyrannical regimes for that with their stupid habit to rename everything to fit their ideology more once they are firmly in power. After Order 66 Palpy and co. took great efforts to erase even traces of the Republic and everyone and their Ewok were renamed to include the word “Imperial” in it.
Imperial-class or Imperial I-class still means the exact same ship so when someone uses “Imperator” it’s just acknowledging its Republic origins. Some sites or encyclopedias also use the Imperator/Imperial I writing variant to emphasize it truly being the same ship all around. Any of these designations is correct.
Except for the logo. Clear relational basis between the logo of the Galactic Republic and that of the Galactic Empire.
People must have their symbols.
Even with the logo the change made a clear statement. IIRC the 8 spokes and one disc of the Republic insignia represented the beneficent presence of the Force in the Galaxy. The Emperor removed 2 of the spokes to distance the symbol from the light side of the Force while maintaining visual continuity, so that the people would still think ‘that’s the symbol of the galactic government’ but wouldn’t think ‘the Force is looking out for me’.
Holy hell the point defense! It’s like someone in the KDY design department finally realized that the whole Tarkin Doctrine fear thing wasn’t stopping Rebel snubfighters
Eh, for a Fractal ship, the actual density of CIWS emplacements isn’t any higher here than pretty much every other capital ship. It’s nice that they’re all rendered though. So much decent Star Destroyer art out there doesn’t even bother, including most of the official comics/game material.
For all of Tarkin’s success at climbing the Empire’s ladders of power, the man was a fool. Furthermore, he failed to understand that ruling with fear only works for an authoritarian ruler if said ruler takes measures to ensure that they don’t become HATED, because hate will make people willing to suffer just to oppose you. It’s rather ironic how a government run by a Sith never seemed to understand this.
Machiavelli, is tha you? But yes, as someone that read through and understand the efficiencies of Tarkin Doctrine, that subtle caveat is the primary problem with the Empire’s rule.
Yep, I got that from Machiavelli. Satire or not, The Prince lays out a very pragmatic approach to authoritarian rule, and I look forward to the day when a character in some fanfic quotes it at Tarkin, Vader or Palpatine.
To be fair to Tarkin, the hate of the population toward the empire wouldn’t have really mattered if the death star had been the inopposable weapon it was imagined to be. you wouldn’t just suffer by opposing them. You would be obliterated along with your entire planet.
Well that’s kind of the point of a Death Star, to be the ultimate siege engine. A well prepared and heavily shielded world might be able to defy conventional fleet units for weeks, if not months, giving them time for other worlds to break free and come to their aid. A Death Star changes that strategic calculus by ending a siege before it has even begun.
Either that, or Tarkin maneuvered his way into control of the project because he was plotting to depose Palpatine and seize the Imperial throne for himself, and the Death Star was the perfect tool to do it with. Perhaps that explains why Vader was also posted to it, to put a lightsaber through Tarkin’s neck if he tried.
Ah my favorite “mini” Super Star Destroyer…! Will this Redux have less of those Hoth Ion Cannon-style turrets of the original model and more of the ISD’s trench-quad HTL?
And some people still say Imperial Capships lack fighter defences.
Allegiance getting a visual upgrade? This’ll be fun. Say, I had a thought: What would you think of doing some First Order capital ships? Their roster needs fleshing out (especially smaller stuff, like corvettes and frigates), and it would be interesting to see your take on designs for them. They could have a new, ‘futuristic’ aesthetic, based on the Imperial design aesthetic that you’re used to working with, but a bit different.
I would like to refer you to the Information on Commissions link at the top right of the page.
So… What are the differences between this new redo of the allegiance and the old one…? From what I can see its mostly small details and a slight redoing of the bridge tower, but the basic shape hasn’t changed much..
The old model was a decade old so most of the details were blocky especially the trenches.
Okay, I gotta ask, do you ever sleep? Because you keep pumping out these awesome models and WIPs one after another after another, and as much as I LOVE your work I don’t want you to keel over from exhaustion!
Don’t listen to him! You will rest after death, more ships!
Don’t get impatient. We will keep getting new ships if he lives a long happy life. If he dies early all of us lose.
We can rebuild him, we have the technology.
This is exactly the attitude I would expect coming from the Adeptus Mechanicus. Lol. Just kidding.
Do not blaspheme the Void Drag…um….Machine God.