Versus Series: Ship Combat in Star Wars (Revived)

[Patroklos]

Quite. Though the Bellator is also a much larger target and would thus have to absorb a much larger portion of the blast. Whether that is enough for the blast to overcome her defenses is anyone's guess.

Volume scales much faster than surface area for shapes, so given how we have been scaling shield strength to volume in this thread no matter the increased surface area exposed to the job blast the shield strength per unit of surface area will be much greater compared to the Venetor example.

[Simon_Jester]

That said, it's an open question whether the Bellator's shields actually benefit from the volume boost that far. I mean... if that were the case, how did Executor ever experience any threat from Rebel ship fire at Endor, given that she had 1000 times the volume of the Rebel ships?

Also true.

Still, my money's on the Bellator's shields. In part because despite it's initial effectiveness, no-one decided to go the super ion route even when bigger ships became more common.

They may have lacked blueprints for the weapon, which the CIS had?

Also, most of the supercapitals were Imperial designs; the Empire wasn't really designing its supercapitals to kill other supercapitals, at least not until maybe the era of the old EU where you have clone Palpatine on Byss building an Eclipse with a superlaser that could plausibly one-shot any captured Rebel super star destroyers.

[The Romulan Republic]

Also true.

Still, my money's on the Bellator's shields. In part because despite it's initial effectiveness, no-one decided to go the super ion route even when bigger ships became more common.

That's the strange thing: the Subjugator is portrayed as a devastatingly effective design in the few episodes it appears in, and yet no one else ran with the idea.

Possibly more ion-resistant shielding was subsequently invented? Actually, The Empire Strikes Back might corroborate that. That was supposedly a battlecruiser-grade ion canon, correct? Well, the Subjugator class I've seen described alternately as a cruiser or a battleship, so given its role as a commerce raider/cruiser killer, I tend to split the difference and call it a battlecruiser. The Hoth gun didn't have as large an area of effect, but that doesn't mean its less powerful. It may even be more focused, efficient use of firepower. And while an ISD is a fair bit more powerful than a Venator, its notable that multiple shots from the Hoth gun only partially disabled one, where a single shot from Malevolence utterly crippled three with loads of power to spare.

So either the Hoth canon is far less powerful, I suspect, or ships became more ion-resistant in the intervening time, possibly even in response to the success of the Subjugator class.

[Patroklos]

That said, it's an open question whether the Bellator's shields actually benefit from the volume boost that far. I mean... if that were the case, how did Executor ever experience any threat from Rebel ship fire at Endor, given that she had 1000 times the volume of the Rebel ships?

Like I said, I was basing that comment on the trend in this thread to equate shield power to power generation, and power generation to volume.

Its also assuming a monolithic single part shield that shares damage across its surface and its either all up or all down a la Star Trek. There are lots of reasons to doubt this (the double front from ANH, the specific mention of a bridge deflector shield on Executor in ROTJ). The fact is there have been multiple vague explanations of how shields work, most of them contradictory, and its possible all of them exist concurrently. Rogue One and TFA have essentially fucking any description of they system up because hack writers don't give a shit about mangling setting continuity to produce the most convenient plot hole to escape their own shit writing (I digress...).

For instance in the old EU we were constantly told MonCals were tough because they had all these extra shield generators. If shields are monolithic and shield power is based on power generation this shouldn't matter. You either have the generators needed to project around your ship or you don't. Extra shield generators would just be a system redundancy in case of physical malfunction of or damage to the generators. Having more would not make your shields more powerful because there is no more energy to project. And if shields are not monolithic then having a higher shield generator to power generation number means you are subdividing the shield in to small sections. You would have smaller areas left undefended when a generator fails, but then the pique shield power for any one of those sections is reduced for every generator you add.

But what if shield generators are more like capacitors which store energy vice they just project whatever the reactor can generate? Then power generation doesn't necessarily equate to how strong your shield is but rather how long it takes to charge them back up. In this system the number of shield generators dictates the strength of your shield if the shield is monolithic. If you have a high ration or shield generators to power generation you could have a ship with very powerful shields but no longevity for slug matches. Theoretically you could survive a few hits from super powerful weapons but at the same time even light weapons might eventually whittle your shield down. Which would dictate armament and employment.

Or the other way around, you have lots of power for a fewer number of generators. Your pique shield strength might be lower meaning you shouldn't go head to head with a dreadnaughts main battery, but you could essentially shrug off light or medium fire indefinitely.

Of course if you add factors like a max energy storage rating, a max recharge rating , or the energy bleed rate of an active shield ( is this higher or lower than the recharge rate so maybe it can't just be kept on all the time) and the ratio of all of this to weapons draw demands you can muddy the picture even more.

[fractalsponge1]

That said, it's an open question whether the Bellator's shields actually benefit from the volume boost that far. I mean... if that were the case, how did Executor ever experience any threat from Rebel ship fire at Endor, given that she had 1000 times the volume of the Rebel ships?

Its volume is much larger than destroyers, but its increase in surface area to destroyers relatively-speaking outpaced that volume increase. And if you increase volume without using the same proportion of it to fit in a huge reactor, then protection is relatively weakened assuming power~shielding. Big SW reactors seem to be spherical, by and large, and they seem to do better the bigger they get. Executor's shape is really not good for mounting those. Very good for hangars and cityscape, though.

If this line of thinking is correct, absent shaping/gun arc/engine placement concerns, a ship designed for survivability and overall power output for the shape would end up being a sphere...which, sorta makes sense given the end of the curve is anchored by the Death Stars.

Plus, Endor had a lot of ships, and all of them were could convert maximum reactor power to firepower during the critical stage. If ships are designed with a miss-rate in mind (i.e. an optimal range of engagement), then that and the fact that half the participants were not playing by Lanchester's assumptions might pretty easily explain what happened to Executor. Even then, if the ship hadn't crashed then it's entirely possible they could've withstood a lot more damage, just under secondary control.

[Q99]

Endor was a golden BB situation. It's total shields weren't down and it had plenty of power, it just had an opening.

[Simon_Jester]

Its also assuming a monolithic single part shield that shares damage across its surface and its either all up or all down a la Star Trek. There are lots of reasons to doubt this (the double front from ANH, the specific mention of a bridge deflector shield on Executor in ROTJ). The fact is there have been multiple vague explanations of how shields work, most of them contradictory, and its possible all of them exist concurrently. Rogue One and TFA have essentially fucking any description of they system up because hack writers don't give a shit about mangling setting continuity to produce the most convenient plot hole to escape their own shit writing (I digress...).

Actually, TFA provided us with some really good support for an explanation that (I think) Shep came up with: that Star Wars shields, at least on capital ships, aren't perfectly hull-hugging*, but are instead projected as a series of big flat panels some distance away from the hull. The panels (hopefully) interlock to form a solid barrier around the ship, or at least present relatively few gaps that can be penetrated by incoming fire.

This explains why fighter craft are constantly getting up in the capital ships' faces and crippling them with weapons that ought to inflict no more than scratch damage. They're physically flying under the shield panels, bypassing the shield either by flying between the panels or by using their own shields as a penetration aid, and attacking the ship from inside its own defenses. If so, Poe knocking out some defense turrets on Kylo Ren's star destroyer before making his escape in the captured TIE is just an unusually blatant example of something people in Star Wars do all the time.

It also explains why you can lose shield coverage to one part of the ship without losing other coverage, for obvious reasons.
__________

*Like, it's easy enough to make hull-hugging shields on small craft designed to withstand small craft weapons, but for stuff that can eat heavy turbolaser fire you end up having to use big flat 'wall-shaped' force fields and stuff... And maybe you need some standoff range between the force field barrier and the hull, just so that when a gigaton-sized blast smacks into the force field it doesn't recoil backwards and leave a dent in the hull or somehow short out and explode or something.

For instance in the old EU we were constantly told MonCals were tough because they had all these extra shield generators. If shields are monolithic and shield power is based on power generation this shouldn't matter. You either have the generators needed to project around your ship or you don't. Extra shield generators would just be a system redundancy in case of physical malfunction of or damage to the generators. Having more would not make your shields more powerful because there is no more energy to project. And if shields are not monolithic then having a higher shield generator to power generation number means you are subdividing the shield in to small sections. You would have smaller areas left undefended when a generator fails, but then the pique shield power for any one of those sections is reduced for every generator you add.

But what if shield generators are more like capacitors which store energy vice they just project whatever the reactor can generate? Then power generation doesn't necessarily equate to how strong your shield is but rather how long it takes to charge them back up. In this system the number of shield generators dictates the strength of your shield if the shield is monolithic. If you have a high ration or shield generators to power generation you could have a ship with very powerful shields but no longevity for slug matches. Theoretically you could survive a few hits from super powerful weapons but at the same time even light weapons might eventually whittle your shield down. Which would dictate armament and employment.

True. Also, going with Shep's idea, more generators may also mean more shield panels, which means you can 'shape' your shields for better coverage, fewer gaps, overlap to cover critical areas, and so on.

[Esquire]

Especially if the generators and panels are mutually-redundant and overlapping - i.e; a Mon Cal cruiser has five shield panels per aspect to an ISD's three, but each of the five is just as strong as any of the three and could cover a third of the ship if it really had to. Or something.

[Q99]

Especially if the generators and panels are mutually-redundant and overlapping - i.e; a Mon Cal cruiser has five shield panels per aspect to an ISD's three, but each of the five is just as strong as any of the three and could cover a third of the ship if it really had to. Or something.

Or even if you could only have as much total strength as the three, temporary damage won't make openings.

[Q99]

Hope Rhadamantus doesn't mind, but I'm posting one:

The MC-140 Scythe Class cruiser (note: read the description rather than the stat block for weapons, for some reason it has stuff like 3 heavy turbolaser batteries listed instead of 30 and such)

vs

The Imperial Mark-1 Star Destroyer


The Legacy high-offense battlecruiser vs the larger but older first gen Imperial Star Destroyer

[Esquire]

Just off the top of my head, it seems like the bizarre design choices made for the Scythe will hamper its effectiveness; that forward blade limits the ship's alpha arc to a few-degree angle directly ahead, while an ISD can maneuver much more freely besides being more heavily-armed to begin with. I don't know much about Legacy; is there any reason to suspect significant advances in weapons technology from the Galactic Civil War-era?

[Q99]

Ostrander did mention something of notably faster firing guns iirc, I'll look that up to make sure I'm not misremembering. The fighters are definitely better too (according to the RPG, Predators have speed and maneuverability in the league of a TIE Defender, though without the Defender's huge gun load). General impression is tech has marched on incrementally.

And yes, it definitely has a smaller arc... and it's facing one foe and noted for having impressive engines to help keep targets in sight. Heavy frontal durability too.

ISDs have better coverage with their heavy guns, which means less of their heavy guns pointed directly against the sole heavy opponent. They're meant more for diving into enemy formations while Scythes are meant to focus fire on targets.

[Esquire]

Which is all well and good as a design theory, but I don't know that the physics of three-dimensional combat actually bear it out. An ISD's alpha arc is above and ahead of the main hull, so lateral movement relative to the target is still possible without losing firepower; any time the opposite broadside battery would be masked in two-dimensional combat, just roll the ship 45-90 degrees around the long axis. The Scythe, however, basically just has to sit there and take fire if it's not going to bring at least half the guns off-target. Worst-case scenario, if ISD turrets haven't got as much elevation to play with as they really ought, the ship can still roll around the edges of a cylinder drawn from it to the target, getting at least some evasive maneuvering in without losing much if any offensive capacity; I'd expect that to be decisive against a similarly-powered opponent without the same relative freedom to maneuver.

Of course, there's more to consider here - the Scythe's fighters seem a lot more dangerous (though still very odd-looking) than the ISD's wing; even if they are slightly outnumbered, enough Crossfires, specifically noted for durability and possessing rear defense turrets to offset the extra TIEs, would probably survive after working through the enemy to conduct torpedo attacks, potentially causing significant damage and definitely constraining the ISD's tactical options. On balance, I think this might be down to crew and commander skill; superior design for the ISD, superior fighters for the Scythe, and not enough of a difference in absolute firepower (fewer vs. less-advanced guns) to matter one way or the other. It's also possible that I'm imposing my private opinions of how SW combat should work on source material which doesn't really support them, of course.

[Q99]

Which is all well and good as a design theory, but I don't know that the physics of three-dimensional combat actually bear it out. An ISD's alpha arc is above and ahead of the main hull, so lateral movement relative to the target is still possible without losing firepower; any time the opposite broadside battery would be masked in two-dimensional combat, just roll the ship 45-90 degrees around the long axis. The Scythe, however, basically just has to sit there and take fire if it's not going to bring at least half the guns off-target. Worst-case scenario, if ISD turrets haven't got as much elevation to play with as they really ought, the ship can still roll around the edges of a cylinder drawn from it to the target, getting at least some evasive maneuvering in without losing much if any offensive capacity; I'd expect that to be decisive against a similarly-powered opponent without the same relative freedom to maneuver.

The Scythe class is noted to be faster and more maneuverable than it's contemporaries, but all it needs to do is keep it's nose on to be at maximum effectiveness anyway. I'm picturing a bit of rotating being pretty much it needs to keep on target in a duel.


Ideally they'd want to attack the ISD out of the ISD's opening arc, and I'd think the ISD would be mostly focusing on rotating to prevent that, with actually getting out of the Scythe's arc entirely pretty unlikely without other forces to make it present a vulnerability.

I view a bad-case scenario for a Scythe being facing most of the ISD's guns most of the time, and a good-case being spending a good potion of the fight only taking some of the ISD's guns. With it probably taking a rookie move or risky move to actually let the ISD get a flank or rear on it- in which case it would be totally dead.

[Rhadamantus]

Which is all well and good as a design theory, but I don't know that the physics of three-dimensional combat actually bear it out. An ISD's alpha arc is above and ahead of the main hull, so lateral movement relative to the target is still possible without losing firepower; any time the opposite broadside battery would be masked in two-dimensional combat, just roll the ship 45-90 degrees around the long axis. The Scythe, however, basically just has to sit there and take fire if it's not going to bring at least half the guns off-target. Worst-case scenario, if ISD turrets haven't got as much elevation to play with as they really ought, the ship can still roll around the edges of a cylinder drawn from it to the target, getting at least some evasive maneuvering in without losing much if any offensive capacity; I'd expect that to be decisive against a similarly-powered opponent without the same relative freedom to maneuver.

Of course, there's more to consider here - the Scythe's fighters seem a lot more dangerous (though still very odd-looking) than the ISD's wing; even if they are slightly outnumbered, enough Crossfires, specifically noted for durability and possessing rear defense turrets to offset the extra TIEs, would probably survive after working through the enemy to conduct torpedo attacks, potentially causing significant damage and definitely constraining the ISD's tactical options. On balance, I think this might be down to crew and commander skill; superior design for the ISD, superior fighters for the Scythe, and not enough of a difference in absolute firepower (fewer vs. less-advanced guns) to matter one way or the other. It's also possible that I'm imposing my private opinions of how SW combat should work on source material which doesn't really support them, of course.

The Scythe's fighters might be better, but with just 48, I'm not sure how much impact they can have. Neither of them seems to be carriers as a major role.

[Esquire]

They've got very heavy torpedo armaments for antiship work, and are specifically described as being extremely durable, which combined with their rear guns should let the Crossfires either destroy or hold off the TIEs well enough attack the ISD with at least a squadron or two; how many hundreds of Legends and Disney-canon examples do we have of squadron attacks being at least mildly concerning to capital ships? And in any case their primary effect, to me, would be to constrain Imperial tactical options for maneuvering and power focus (both guns and shields).

[Rhadamantus]

Thread Revival (Is this ok?)
ROUND ELEVEN INCONCLUSIVE

ROUND 12

Allegiance Class Heavy Destroyer (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Allegian ... tlecruiser) vs.
Resurgent Class Heavy Destroyer (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Resurgen ... tlecruiser).

Two post-endor imperial heavy destroyers. Which one wins?

[Q99]

(Yay, thread back!) This seems a solid win for the Resurgent- it's not only bigger, it's got a fighter hanger unlike the Allegiance. Granted, that probably means the Allegiance is both tougher and pound-for-pound has more firepower, but while that could conceivably make up some of the size difference, it's not going to make up size difference and two wings of fighters working on it and niggling for weak points without any fighter opposition to speak of, just gunfire. Meaning also the Resurgent can focus even it's small guns on attack, while the Allegiance has to divert some of it's firepower to fighter defense.

That, and it coming from a bit further down the timeline, means I give it to the First Order ship.

[Batman]

Anakin and folks were sure as hell flying the proto-Y wings when they took on the Malevolence, and they staged out of a Venator.

[Ave Dominus Nox]

Figured a vs series was a good place to ask this

I've been watching EckhartsLadder's verses series lately and one of the things he keeps mentioning is that Imperator/Imperial Star Destroyers, among others, aren't equipped with any anti-aircraft weapons/point defense weapons which seems...odd.

additionally I was always under the impression that turbolasers had the ability to fire in a "flak" mode which might not be the best anti-air weapon it would be better than firing a regular turbolaser shot. Was that ever a thing or am I just remembering fanon

[Galvatron]

Aren't Resurgents supposed to be ridiculously up-gunned compared to their Imperial counterparts?

[DarthPooky]

Aren't Resurgents supposed to be ridiculously up-gunned compared to their Imperial counterparts?

Well the info we have of the Resurgent's are that they have Kyber crystal enhanced Turbolasers which means they must be pretty powerful.

[Q99]

Star Destroyers can certainly fire at fighters, but they aren't optimized for it, they can just put multi-purpose guns to the task.

[Patroklos]

Aren't Resurgents supposed to be ridiculously up-gunned compared to their Imperial counterparts?

Well the info we have of the Resurgent's are that they have Kyber crystal enhanced Turbolasers which means they must be pretty powerful.

While I would agree this is a good assumption given the simplistic way some authors approach tech, is this actually stated anywhere. They stipulate it as a change, and I doubt its a change to the negative due to need a suboptimal resource substitute or some such, so again I think its a good assumption that their inclusion provides a benefit. However, that benefit doesn't have to be actual firepower delivered per shot between a Resurgence and an Allegiance. They could both have the same firepower delivery but perhaps the new Resurgence guns are more power efficient, or can be smaller (either via above deck or below deck volume) for the same firepower, or more maintenance efficient per operational hour.

[The Romulan Republic]

Star Destroyers can certainly fire at fighters, but they aren't optimized for it, they can just put multi-purpose guns to the task.

Star Destroyers (if you mean the classic ISD, at any rate- there are a lot of types) are not really optimized for anything, are they? They're jack of all trades ships, which can function as troop transports/fighter carriers, escorts for larger warships, or patrol vessels operating alone/in small groups, but aren't really optimized for any of those roles. They're usually good enough to get the job done, because they're bigger and better-armed than most of the local ships and there are a lot of them, but I doubt they'd represent the peak of theoretical capability of Star Wars tech. in any single arena.

Edit: I guess you could say that the ISD is optimized for the multi-purpose duties of patrolling and maintaining order in the Outer Rim. Maybe.