How complex is capital ship combat?

[Mad]

How starfighters may alter this, I'm not sure. I have always liked the idea that a squadron of Y-Wings, if properly escorted, could kill an ISD2 with a hail of protorps.

Very simple Fighters turn unshield ships sections into tinnny bits of unshield ship sections along with alot of other things


Big ship smacks down shield,
Other ship rolls to present full powered section
Fighters blow large holes through downed shield section

Basic idea

The same idea can work in reverse at times. For smaller capships, a volley of torps can go a long way to taking shields down, as well. A squadron of fighters can fire enough torpedoes to take down a shield section of a VSD2 temporarially, if timed properly (as shown in The Bacta War). Even if the shields hold, they'll be in a weakened state. The next volley from the capship in that same section is gonna hurt. (Not to mention the effects of ion cannons on the ship.)

The same tactic could work against larger ships, too, but it'd be less effective since the fighters probably won't be able to down a shield section entirely.

If the fighters can get a coordinated strike off early in the battle, then the opposing ship will have a shield section taken down (smaller ships from the torps, bigger ones from torps and assisted by turbolasers) and then take hull damage (from turbolasers) very early in the battle, which gives the shielded ship the upper hand. And then there's disabled systems from ion cannon fire. That's why it's important to prevent enemy fighters from getting their torpedoes off.

Fighters, by themselves, can't do this tactic, because an enemy can roll before the fighters can launch another volley of torpedoes. And then by the time they're ready for another volley, the first shield section is likely to be back up again, meaning the fighters have no chance left of doing any kind of critical hull damage. It takes a capital ship to take advantage of the downed shield section.

If the fighters are distracted too long, then the capship will probably wear down the enemy shields before they can launch their payloads. At that point, the fighters can go in and accelerate the hull damage. But the friendly capship will probably have its shields in a weakend state, as well.

[Lord Pounder]

Also i would like to point out that the "Tanks at 10 paces" theme of the battle of Endor was a very very rare thing. Even Ackbar with all his tatics hadn't a clue what to do, he was trying to bluff the Imperial Forces.

AFAIK, Ackbar essentially created the Republic's close-in melee fighting doctrine then and there.

No Ackbar did it on the suggestion of Lando

Lando - "Closer, Move closer and engage those Star Destroyers at point blank range"

Ackbar - "At that range we won't last long against those Star Destroyers"

Lando - "We'll last longer than we will against that Death Star. And we might just take a few of them with us"

The point i was trying to make was contrary to what certain people are trying to say SW naval combat isn't tanks at 10 paces. THe same ppl use the Battle Of Endor to prove it. The thing i was saying was even with Ackbars Tatical abilites learned from Tarkin even he hadn't a clue what to do.

[pellaeons_scion]

So from this I glean that one of the most important factors for a SW capital warship would be roll rates. Wouldnt that make it harder for the gunners? Or perhaps SW firecontrol can cope with this. Even so, they'd have to retarget every time the ship needed to roll. Also wouldnt it take a huge amout of torps to drop a shield facing? particularly as a great deal of the torps would be shot down by PD fire.

Ion cannon. Potentially a very damaging weapon, but AFAIK ion cannon arnt too effective until the shields are down. We know that they can disable a ship by shorting out controls etc.....maybe the begining of a battle is all ion guns, then the turbolasers rip the target apart. Or, maybe Ion cannon is used to cause short-lived weaknesses in a shield facing, weaknesses that TL's could exploit in the meantime taking out guns and other components. Maybe thats why the TL's and Ion are mounted in batteries to maximise this usage? Could that be why control is decentralised and batteries have their own sensors etc to detect this?

Does a Capship shield facing fail totally? or can peices of it be disabled, creating gaps whilst still protecting other parts of the facing, or when a shield collapses, the vessel loses an entire facing.

On the rolling to bring shields to bear, would a valid tactic be to use a zig-zag approach, either horizontally or vertically, to attempt to keep a strong shield facing at the enemy, whilst allowing at least half of your guns to maintain fire on a target?

I have only read the thrawn books and KJA (May Vader forgive me). I havent read NJO so I dont know what happens in them.

Just an off point: Anyone think that the Battles in SW:Rebellion really reflected SW combat?

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

I would think the PD factor is why the Rebel fighters have to get so close. The torpedoes might never get through at long range, either due to ECM (remember, the jamming is so strong that even against a LARGE target, the lock on distance is often like a few kilometers for the FIGHTER sensor, so one can see the chances for the piddly torpedo sensor) or plain getting shot down.

And you don't *have* to roll all the time. You can draw power off the other shield surfaces and re-establish the shield quickly.

Ion cannon do seem to have a certain suppressive effect even when the shields are up. I'll think they'll pretty much salvo with everything they've got, laser and ion, until the shield goes down.

The SW firing philosophy seems relatively dependant on local control. There may be a director for every few batteries, but the bridge gunnery officer seems to use more verbal commands rather than a fully automated fire direction system where he can control the whole armament by himself.

Whether that has to do with a fear of overcentralization (Katana fleet) is unknown.

The shields can collapse. But often the screen stays up mostly and a few shots get through. It takes an overwhelming salvo to cause the shield to collapse altogether - hell, the VSD-II *almost* withstood the torpedo salvo, but then several opportune torpedoes managed to penetrate. It is even possible if it was perfectly timed, they might not have penetrated!

it will probably be a valid tactic, but you don't have to zig when you can roll.

Remember that there are lots that we don't know about SW combat. All we hear are a few words from bridge officers.

[pellaeons_scion]

I guess thats the real kicker. We dont have much detail on the internal operations of a SW capital vessel. The best it seems we can do is make comparisons to known naval operations. Like you said, we only ever hear a select amount of comments from the bridge crew, and not too many at that.

Also, I theres no real-world equivalent of a SW ship in terms of firepower etc. Not even the mighty Yamato and Musashi. Even looking at a Aircraft carrier, which is so large and has so many systems, we would be hard-pressed to visualise how it would engage in a ship-to-ship combat ( yes I know carriers use aircraft for that, but its just an example).

With the ships being so decentralised I dont believe we could even put these ships into position of a Battleship. Battleships mostly attacked by broadside when they could from a central firecontrol, and very rarely did turrets act independantly. However, with the size and amount of weaponry SW ships carry, it appears that a SW ships batteries can do this. Perhaps when a SW vessel goes into combat, batteries have set fire plans to deal with common vessels, and when in action act according to those plans, rather than waiting for orders from the chief weapons officer on the bridge.

I dont know...too many unknowns. BTW thanks Kazuaki, MOO, Mr Bean and the rest for giving your opinions still fairly a newbie so thanks for your patience

[phongn]

Also i would like to point out that the "Tanks at 10 paces" theme of the battle of Endor was a very very rare thing. Even Ackbar with all his tatics hadn't a clue what to do, he was trying to bluff the Imperial Forces.

AFAIK, Ackbar essentially created the Republic's close-in melee fighting doctrine then and there.

No Ackbar did it on the suggestion of Lando

Lando - "Closer, Move closer and engage those Star Destroyers at point blank range"

Ackbar - "At that range we won't last long against those Star Destroyers"

Lando - "We'll last longer than we will against that Death Star. And we might just take a few of them with us"

Oh, he did it at Calarissian's behest, but it seemed to be the first of the close-range fleet engagements in some time. He still had to coordinate his fleet to last long enough.

[pellaeons_scion]

I think Calrissians order was based on desperation. It was valid though, as it did place them amongst the imperial fleet, so there was an equal chance if one ship was destroyed by the DS, that it might take an Imperial with it.

That, and when they got that close the imperials might hit each other as they engaged the rebels. That and neither vessels could take advantage of overlapping fire very well as it turned into a brawl

[pellaeons_scion]

**Removes the word "that" from his dictionary and eats it

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The court's split on this point now, due to a lack of detailed data. Half of us (I once did this on ASVS) think that Pellaeon should have maintained the superior position prepared by the now dead-Thrawn and bombard the rest of the Rebel fleet, assuming that his fleet was in relatively good order. The other half thinks that the fleet seems to be in too severe a disarray to continue, and Pellaeon was right to retreat.

Just for the record, I've finally come down and concluded that Pellaeon should have held his ground here. The fleet was disciplined to exacting standards and trained to better ones, the battle plan was already laid out, and there was no need to tell anyone that the Admiral had been killed. Pellaeon should have "Kept his flag flying", so to speak, and let each man do his duty.

[BenRG]

The court's split on this point now, due to a lack of detailed data. Half of us (I once did this on ASVS) think that Pellaeon should have maintained the superior position prepared by the now dead-Thrawn and bombard the rest of the Rebel fleet, assuming that his fleet was in relatively good order. The other half thinks that the fleet seems to be in too severe a disarray to continue, and Pellaeon was right to retreat.

Just for the record, I've finally come down and concluded that Pellaeon should have held his ground here. The fleet was disciplined to exacting standards and trained to better ones, the battle plan was already laid out, and there was no need to tell anyone that the Admiral had been killed. Pellaeon should have "Kept his flag flying", so to speak, and let each man do his duty.

I don't want to trigger any flames here, but I got the impression that Pellaeon didn't have the self-confidence to go into battle without Thrawn in charge. Although later experience showed that Pellaeon is a fine flag officer and capital ship commander, at that stage of his career he was highly dependent on Thrawn's leadership. With the Grand Admiral dead, Pellaeon lost his nerve and ran. Ironically, the Imperial fleet might have still triumphed. However, Pellaeon didn't think that he had the tactical or strategic ability to achieve a victory without his Admiral's advice.

[pellaeons_scion]

Im going to have re-read the Thrawn trilogy before I can adequately comment on that one. There must have been some reason for Pellaeon to flee rather than press the attack. As I need to read the books again, perhaps there was a greater rebel fleet on route that outgunned them?

Pellaeon is around 50years old, most of it spent in Imperial service. Why would a veteran officer act so strangely. Did he rely on thrawn too much, to the point where he didnt have any confidence in his own decisions? Doesnt seem right to me, a bridge officer of his rank should have been able to take command of that battle and make a better showing.

*goes back to his bookcase*