StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I’ve been kicking around some notes on the Imperial Starfleet for fanfic reasons for some time now, and I decided that posting them up here was probably a good idea.
Partly so I can see if I’m on the right track or not, partly simply for fun, but hopefully as some kind of basis for further discussion.

I have tried to enumerate and codify everything I could find, that existed as more than individual flukes anyway.

Couple of general notes first; I am not really at home in the physical sciences. My degree was History (well, half of it, anyway, and I’m too embarrassed to admit to the other half), and while I had a decent secondary school grounding in physics, I have forgotten a hell of a lot of it. Obviously I’m going to try and be as right as I can, but past a certain point it’s head scratching time, and over to you.

Any numbers I hang on anything, other than quoting the official stats, are provisional. What I really want to do is thrash out something like a complete set of stats for the Imperial Starfleet, in SI units, that should turn out to be somewhere not too far off the canonical stats if and when they are ever fully released. Sort of EU;ICS. Just without the drawings. Again, as far as I can.

My intention is to be, at least at first cut, inclusive; take everything seriously, see how it pans out, write it up, and then see if it has any actual usefulness.

Computer and WEG game mechanics; these I tend to treat as measures of the ship’s reputation. Where there are good numbers to use instead, great- but otherwise, it’s rule of thumb time; fast, slow, well armed, poorly shielded, etc. Wizards of the Coast- that’s not a mechanic, it’s a technical drawing student.

As far as authority to do anything of the sort goes, well, as long as I stick to sound methodology, why not? Useful things should emerge, even if they are guesswork with no official status.


As far as I can tell, the fleet list is;

Dreadnoughts; Mandator- I, Mandator-II, Executor, Sovereign, Eclipse

Battleships; Giel’s Star Battleship (“Prolocutor”?), Anon battleship II “Defensor”, III “Conducor”, IV “Temperor”
Anon (“Aquila”?)Star Carrier


Battlecruisers; Vengeance, Procurator, Praetor, Ultor (?)/Tagge’s, Wermis’s/(“Adversor”)

Cruisers; Anon- I “City”, Anon-III “Senator”, Anon-II “Admiral”, Anon- IV “Starburst”, Anon-V “Sector” classes, Torpedo Sphere


Heavy Destroyers; Invincible, Allegiance, Anon SD VII “Ordinator”, Anon SD III “Proelium”, Shockwave

Line Destroyers; Tector, Imperator-I, Imperator-II, Anon Interdictor SD “Dictator”, Dominator, Anon SD IV “Retexor”

Light Destroyers; Venator, Anon SD II “Arrogant”, Anon SD VI “Spoliator”, Karu, Harrow/ “Excrucior”, Victory-I, Victory-II, Anon SD I “Victory-III”


Heavy Frigates; Acclamator, Ecliptic, “Meridian”/Acclamator-II, Vindicator

Medium Frigates; Centax, Demolisher, “Pabulator”/Neutron Star, Broadside, “Verberor”/Strike, Dreadnaught

Light Frigates; Fulgor, Interdictor, CC-2200 Detainer, “Comitor”/Escort Carrier, Anon Prison ship II “Moderator”


Heavy Corvettes; Anon prison ship I “Quaestor”, Anon Corvette II “Servator”, class 1000, Carrack

Medium Corvettes; Bayonet, Anon Corvette I “Vagor”, Anon Star Monitor “Oppugnator”, Nebulon B, Nebulon B2

Light Corvettes; Marauder, DP20 Corellian Gunship, CR90 Corellian Corvette, Assassin mod corvette, Lancer, Prosperity “Praecurror”, Rendili Light Corvette

All non-official names provisional suggestions, of course.

To start with, the light corvettes;


CR90 Corellian Corvette;
150m hammerhead, aft engine block, bitty midsection, the estimate is vaguely right and therefore irresistible- 90,000 m3; power output mid-E18 W, endurance varies drastically, nominal 3 months

various weapon fits, nominal 4 to 6 LTLs, twin dorsal and ventral turrets, tower mounts forward of engines or on hammerhead; bizarre armed escape pods- doesn’t being armed make them a viable military target, or are survivors shot at on a routine basis anyway?

Acceleration varies from 1800 to 2750 ‘g’, usually 2100 ‘g’, more radical versions possible as one-off, standard x2 hyper, often modified

Shields and integrity highly variable; judging by Tantive IV, dispersal above single LTL, requires maybe 50-60 LTL hits to burn through the shielding and achieve component damage

crew estimates vary by role, 30-165 usual given figure; carriage- either one squadron of fighters, company of troops, not both.

The resident polymorph of Star Wars, a ship that can turn into anything, apparently. Or, considering that, the resident Ford Transit? The basic hull has been put to so many different uses that referring to one as a corellian corvette is only slightly more descriptive than calling it a ship.
There are more of these out there than there are of many starfighter types. Total production run is probably over a billion. The Starfleet probably dislikes them largely on that account, forced to use ships that are no better than civilian- many of them are going to be auxiliaries, basically unarmed or relying on PD. Corvettes operating with patrol squadrons generally have the fighter bay, on more centralised duties the troops?


(DP-20?) Corellian Gunship- 120m, sawn-off cone bow, cylinder midsection, squared engine block; because of the size of the midsection mainly, works out slightly larger- 97,000 m3- than standard corvette,
power output probably comparable, higher but not very much so, percent rather than magnitudes, so also mid E18 W

crew estimate as 91, just over half of which are weapons branch, no deployable troops or fighters

8 twin LTLs, 6 quad PD lasers, 4 antiship concussion missile tubes; very well armed by comparison, so substantially higher weapon power requirement, but how much good a four round missile salvo really is in the face of point defence- more use against merchants or in melee than an open ship to ship.

2400 ‘g’, standard x2 hyperdrive; average, slightly faster than the heavy variants of the corvette

shields and integrity, numbers available are purely game mechanic derived, but given the ship’s ancestry and role I would expect it to be better, ton for ton, than the Corvette- but when you get right down to it it’s still a very small ship. Able to drain away three or four simultaneous LTL, heat builds up and shields break down at, estimate, ninety. Single MTL and it’s toast.

designed to lob missiles at much larger ships, better off in groups for mutual support. It is more sensible than most pure missile ships which suffer from the drawback of being vulnerable to conventional attack, but it is still slow and designed for essentially positional warfare, as a supporter in main fleet engagements rather than a fast outrider/striker.


KDY Lancer-250m long, relatively fat cylinder with unfortunately shaped bow, volume (est) 490,000 m3,
power output – almost entirely drive driven. Lots of light weapons requiring relatively little energy overall (hundreds of KT- (~E14-E15 per shot), thousands to tens of thousands of shot per second theoretical), the main driver for this ship’s requirements must be her sublight drive. I would guess high E18- to possibly low E19 W.

endurance 1 week (?!), crew 810, carriage- troop platoon, fighter flight;

twenty quad heavy PD lasers, spaced around structure- tower mounted for increased individual sweep, but no alpha arc

2650 ‘g’, x2 hyperdrive,

Shields and integrity; game mechanics indicate moderate hull, moderate to good shielding- given the thing’s size I reckon it should be able to take a fair amount of punishment, possibly one or two MTL hits, but a fighter torpedo time-on-target has been enough to take one down before.

This ship, I consider a mistake. It is simply too vulnerable to combined arms, and there are inherent hazards to hanging around directly adjacent to a starship the enemy are lobbing HTL shot at.
The official blurb describes it as comparable in expense to other ships of the size, and nowhere nearly as effective. The fire control system was overambitious, and effectively trades performance for availability.

The correct way to deploy these ships seems to be to weld a pair of them to your Star Destroyer just forward of the bridge tower. That and the quoted endurance figure must be a mistake- that would make them completely unsuitable for escort and patrol work.


Rendili Customs Corvette- 180m long, volume (approx) 68,500m, block with arms and wings, power output probably high E17 W, endurance 3 months,

crew 54, carriage- platoon, no actual hangar but large capture bay- 1 light freighter

6 twin area defence lasers (cut down LTL or extended fighter lasers- full turbolaser effective range, sub- megaton yield), two banks of three turrets on superstructure sides

3670 ‘g’, class 2 hyperdrive

shields and integrity; the low power estimate derives from the fact that the ship is built to civilian transport standards, like most customs craft apparently. They are very tough and very well shielded- for transports. Twenty to thirty LTL to burnthrough.

Officially a customs ship, but the screening mission- it is significantly more vulnerable but definitely faster and more agile than the Lancer, making it much more able to avoid fire. It has area instead of point defence lasers giving it the vital ability to hit fighters before they can hit it, shooting the archer not the arrows.
The question is how many of them the customs can do without, and I reckon it’s simply too useful to not find it’s way into the Starfleet proper- it’s a better antifighter ship than the Lancer. Also much cheaper.


Republic- Sienar Marauder-195 m long, aerodynamic, estimate 180,000 m3, wedge-headed quasi-blended-wing with two concave dents in leading edge, power output est. high E18 W, endurance (standard design target for small craft?) 3 months

Crew 177, carriage- fighter squadron, two platoons

8 twin LTL turrets,

3000 ‘g’, class 2 hyperdrive

Shields and integrity; difficult to estimate except by reputation. Assumption; comparable ton for ton to the Corellian Corvette plus fifty percent, for being a strictly military design, which means a hundred and fifty to a hundred and eighty LTL hits to crack the shielding.

This does seem to be a fast, efficient light warship, basic capacity and usefulness in most roles- underrepresented in the Republic, increasingly used by the Empire. It has the speed to be an effective convoy attack ship, using it’s fighters as point defence or escort depletion, or to be a counter to same.


Elrood Prosperity customs “frigate”-300m long, bulbous body with side pods and short atmospheric/ radiator fins- grossly obese shark in appearance; volume (est) 540,000 m, power output (estimated on size and acceleration) low E20 W, endurance 6 weeks,

crew 100, carriage- one platoon

6 area defence heavy lasers, single mounts spaced around structure; good coverage, limited alpha arc

4400 ‘g’, class 1 hyperdrive; extraordinarily fast.

Shields and integrity; relatively little margin left over for damage tolerance, I would guess the ship performs very differently under acceleration than not, but relatively fragile hull; very good shielding, though. 100-120 LTL hits to drop.

This ship basically comes from a minor star yard in the hind end of nowhere, and between that and it’s extraordinary speed, I’m inclined to think it is a razee- a much larger ship that was downgraded in specification, although in this case on the drawing board. Probably an unsuccessful attempt to design a heavy corvette, put to some use by having the powerplant and drives, and probably shields also, from that mated to a much lighter hull frame and weapon load.

As fringe as it is (Elrood Sector, [Planets of the Galaxy vol 3, WEG]), there are not many of them- although as it can outpace the overwhelming majority of Imperial starfighters, I think the fleet would have use for them, probably having them license-built nearer to the core, as couriers, scouts (insofar as game mechanics are meaningful at all, they have an excellent sensor suite) and interceptors, although they may need to be rearmed with full- yield LTL for that in Starfleet service. Renamed Praecurror (Outrunner)?


CR90B?-Assassin Mod Corvette; the fully upgraded-to-naval-service version- 140m hammerhead, more heavily braced, and fatter and boxier around the midsection, 105,000 m3, power output high E18 W, most of the difference being weapons, and extra engine power to haul more armour

Crew similar to a pure combat version of the Corvette, probably 80, carriage- company, fighter squadron

6 twin LTL, good individual fields of fire but very thin alpha arc

2650 ‘g’ as standard- towards the upper end but not beyond standard Corvette performance, usual x2 hyper, often upgraded

Shields and integrity; as an estimate, towards or slightly past the upper end of conventional corvette performance- 65-70 LTL to drop.

So, this is what happens to a corvette when you put it through a proper refit- and the idea that even lowest-bidder contractors can make it better really makes me start to worry about the standard corvette.


So much for the bottom tier of the fleet list. That’s all I have ready at the moment.

Good all around, and Yes, the Correllian Corvette does seem to be the Technical equivalent of the galaxy, except it's not just modified in the boonies, some parts of it can apparently actually make the blasted things. They seem to be in the hands of private citizens as well as the fleets to boot. Maybe it would be more apt to compare them to a Jeep that still has the machine gun mount on the windshield and often comes with the gun. And is made by Toyota, Volkswagen and Ford. I'd have to guess that the escape pods only mount their lasers before they separate from the rest of the ship, when the power feeds are cut they also probably loose the power needed to fire the guns and cut them loose. But that's pure speculation.

Since when was the Carrack a 'Heavy Corvette'? It's supposedly a Light Cruiser, and every source refers to it as such (as far as I'm aware). I don't see how we can just assign it to a different ship type, even if it seems too small to be even a Light Cruiser.

The Carack is only a cruiser if we assume that an ISD is a battleship or Dreadnought equivalent. This fleet list is trying for realism, and not what I believe it's author considers the trumped-up designations pasted onto glorified system defense ships.

Lazarus wrote:Since when was the Carrack a 'Heavy Corvette'? It's supposedly a Light Cruiser, and every source refers to it as such (as far as I'm aware). I don't see how we can just assign it to a different ship type, even if it seems too small to be even a Light Cruiser.

He's probably labeling it as a corvette because he's trying to come up with a single, consistent classification system including everything from the tiny EU ships to Star Destroyers and Star Dreadnaughts. WEG's classifications are minimalistic and canonically just one of several different classifications covering ships of a single (smaller) scale.

Saxton also found a mention of the Carrack-class as "gunships" in the novel Darksaber, which is presumably what they are when comparing them to the big ships. In real life this could very well be a "mistake" on the part of the writer, but using suspension of disbelief we can rationalize it so that it's actually very sensible.

EDIT: Carrack quote at bottom of the page.

I'm going with the expanded designation scale- assuming that the term Star Destroyer deserves to be taken literally and that they are, in fact, destroyers, and that all the other craft fall into place around that.

There are two scales; one which predates the Clone Wars, and is accurate as far as the brushfire wars of the late Republic go, and to which the rebels, in particular, hark back to.
By that scale, the Carrack is indeed a light cruiser, and the Mon cal MC80/Liberty/MC-80A lineage do qualify as star cruisers.
In universe, don't forget, the Imperial Sourcebook we have is a Rebel Alliance publication- a collection of intercepts and intelligence analyses that, while they may be accurate, are certainly not from the Imperial viewpoint.

This is the catch; the Alliance, in particular, holds to the old scale from the old, peaceful days, and does actually consider a Carrack a light cruiser. Whereas I personally reckon that cruisers are somewhere above destroyers in the table of ranks, and the designation, on the expanded system, starts at three kilometres in length and around a cubic kilometre in volume.

It is simply not logical to try to fit ships like the Mandator, Procurator, etc, on to the small scale system, when there is a perfectly logical and rational progression they do form part of.

The classic example- I'm using this to illustrate the confusion involved, not as a specific answer- is Rendili's Dreadnaught. The sourcebook calls it a heavy cruiser; in peacetime, it fulfilled many of the missions of a heavy cruiser. In wartime, it clearly does not deserve to stand in line alongside the likes of http://theforce.net/swtc/dagger.html#cruiser5- I would say the Dreadnaught would barely count as a bug on the windshield, but there have been bad experiences with bugs on windshields in the Star Wars universe in the past. I rank the blasted thing as a medium frigate.

So where would the Carrack, and it's compatriots that similarly have no canonical place on the expanded scale, rightfully go? What should the wartime designation of a three hundred and fifty metre long, 1,350,000 m3 (approx) ship be?

It's larger and a lot tougher than the ships which I've lumped into the light corvette band, but equally there is not a hope in hell of a Carrack standing toe to toe with an Acclamator, even less it's pure- combatant relatives. Obviously, it belongs somewhere towards the lower end of frigate or the upper end of corvette status.

It may well be a better fighting ship than some of those I consider light frigates, the escort carrier in particular, but in the end I felt that it's size and bulk fitted more appropriately in the upper end of corvette designation.

I'm working through the medium corvettes at the moment, I'll get to the Carrack eventually and we can argue it over in more detail then.

All right, that was less than perfectly coherent and Jim Raynor put it better than I did. Anyway, medium corvettes; and here is where I start displaying the extent of my ignorance, and crawling out on to branches and starting to saw them off behind me.

Medium corvettes, then- start with the extremely familiar;

KDY Nebulon-B “Frigate”; 300m long, aft engine block, long pole, forward vertical building/fin, estimate 188,000 m3, power output est. high E18 to low E19 W, stated endurance usually 2 years- on hotel load, without burning hypermatter at combat rates;

Crew 854, extraordinarily large for a ship with that little volume, must be very poorly automated, carriage- 2 platoons, 2 squadrons of TIE fighters; shuttles, etc on external clamps.
Volume; if the TIEs are stored wing to wing and nose to nose, three abreast should come in under 20m (including walkway space between), eight nose-to-tail around fifty metres at a rough estimate, height 7m, say, then why would the 7,000 m required be a real problem? Asuming the existence of a hangar deck and support facilities, the Neb-B devotes a high but not insupportable proportion of it’s volume, say 8%, allowing two decks and workshop space, to aviation. Reasonable, considering the importance of fighters in the way the ship seems to operate.

Weapons; twelve single light turbolasers, twelve point defence lasers; no alpha arc, weapons arranged to cover all sides

2,000 ‘g’; an estimate, and this is the reasoning. Look at real world, sea- going warships. They all tend to cluster around the same speed values. Whatever the state of the art happens to be, less the individual compromises made in the design.
I think the curve is a lot flatter, and the difference between a fast and a slow ship is the same as the difference between a tall and a short man- in absolute terms, not very far apart, in relative terms massive.

The 1200-g figure on Wookiepedia must have been put there by someone from the technical side of the fan community; the reason I’m disagreeing with it is that I think it’s operationally limiting. An escort’s job often does, or did, involve counterattack- it’s speed requirements have got little to do with the ships it’s escorting and much more to do with what it’s defending against. At that, it is still not fast enough. Which is true to it’s reputation- most sources show it as a slug, IIRC.

Estimate for calculation purposes, a fully fuelled nebulon-B weighs three quarters of a million tons. Power 2E19 W, mass 750 million kg- thrust required for two thousand g, 1.4745E13 Newtons, assuming the engines require the full power output of the ship 1.354 MW per Newton- and this point is where I put my hands up and defer to someone who really does know what they’re talking about, because I have no idea whatsoever, and little clue how to find out, how much electrical power it takes to get particles up to the speed where they deliver the momentum to give that kind of thrust.
What sort of mechanism that could plausibly be called an ion drive takes about a megawatt of electrical power to put out one Newton of force? Or lower in proportion as the fraction of the ship’s power required for engines decreases.

Oh, aside; 250,000 tons- which was the fuel load I was thinking of as a first approximation- has energy equivalence of 2.25E25 W, which at 2E19 means 1,125,000 seconds at full power- 312.5 hours of operation, from the equivalent of two and a quarter seconds’ worth of fuel from an Imperator.

Oh, yes; x2 hyperdrive.

Shields and integrity; it’s a small ship with a lot of surface area for it’s size. If that matters to shielding, this is not the best possible shape, making them spread thinner than would otherwise be the case.

If I can get away with another general meander, a six megaton equivalent light turbolaser is 2.51E16 J; which raises the problem- how thinly are these ships- all ships of this general size- actually protected?
It is supposed to be that these craft are fairly dangerous to each other; which if they were shielded in the same proportions as the known Acclamator, would make them virtually invulnerable to each other’s weapons.

Do the shields have some kind of thermal capacitance? Do they absorb and store energy, and slowly bleed it off through the neutrino radiators- so that tactically, below the bleed capacity attacks are basically irrelevant, a ship this size could take blaster fire more or less indefinitely; between the bleed capacity and the total, it builds up until the shields melt down and fail.

Are there local burn throughs? Hits that affect a sufficiently small proportion of the shield that it cannot absorb enough energy, fast enough, and let some through to the hull?

Anyway, continuing the practise of weapon hits to drop the shielding, to be honest the Nebulon mainly qualifies as a medium corvette on the strength of it’s fighter group. It’s not that big and not that tough. 80-90 LTL to drop the shielding, and that shape means boom hits are fatal.

General ramblings; given the size and armament of the Nebulon-B, it’s really not a first line warship. It can neither give or take enough punishment to be really useful- I reckon it’s closer to a coast guard cutter, an anti- pirate rather than a fleet operations ship. Naturally, it did get pressed into more service than it was really fit for, simply because it was there.


Anon corvette I “Vagor” (wanderer)?- 200m, strangely dark hulled, blocky w/pronounced aft superstructure- est 515,000 m3, power output (largely weapon driven) est mid E20 W

Actually, subject worth considering, volumetric comparison; given that an ISD’s reactor is ~140m across, giving it a volume of 1,436,755 m3, that gets an output of 6.96E18 W per cubic metre- making two assumptions along the way. It scales linearly; and the interior surface of the reactor bulb isn’t the important part.
If it is we have 61,575 m2 of generating surface developing 1.62E20 W per square metre. The reactor plant will scale differently, being proportionately much more generous to small power units and the ships that carry them. I’m not sure which take- small ships having that much power in proportion or not- is closer to canon.

Crew; guessing based on volume and power requirements, a fairly simple, straightforward, rational design, crew ~300; carriage unpredictable, but in it’s role I would expect there to be some provision for boarding troops and fighters- 2 platoons, flight or squadron, fat enough fore-end to include a hangar bay possibly significantly larger than that.

Armament; two main turrets, another slightly smaller lump that may be a turret aft, plus point defence and light weapons too small to make out. No evidence of ion cannon, main guns probably MTL, if we assume hundred gigaton yield that gives a power requirement of 4.2E20 W per shot per second. If we make the assumption that the one visible example had been damaged and there should have been a turret there on the other side as well, that gives a symmetric, and interesting, arrangement.

It can bring it’s full power output to bear in every direction, but not all at once; which fits the tactical requirements of what? It can manoeuvre radically while retaining full freedom to channel it’s power onto a target- is this ship designed to be ambushed? Is this, in short, what a proper, purpose built convoy escort ought to look like, as opposed to the cheapass stopgap Nebulon-B?

Alternatively, the single aft turret is meant to be there, and either is or isn’t an actual gun turret. Sensor dome, mine pod? Lighter weapons would be a point defence fit- four LTL, eight single heavy PD lasers. The main gun fit points largely forward, then, making this ship a more likely attacker than defender.

It is a bulky ship, but the power requirement for the weapons give it very good power to weight, so it can be as fast as it’s mission requirements allow; I would assume it’s average, at about 2500 ‘g’, and x2 hyperdrive.

Shielding; how much better than other craft of the same general size is it likely to be? Specifically, the Prosperity and Lancer. Better than the lightweight hulled Prosperity/Praecurror, and designed to be shot at by bigger guns than the Lancer, it should be reasonably good. Say a heat dispersal of ~2-3E17 W, which means it can take large numbers of LTL- drain away eight to twelve, it would need a sustained battering from a lot of light guns to drop it, but a peak capacity of 1E20- a single hit from it’s own guns would leave it crippled at best.


Anon Star Monitor “Oppugnator” (attacker)?-300m, slab with pronounced superstructure tapering slightly forward; my eyes hurt when I try to count pixels, but est 230,000 m3, power requirement weapon dependent, high enough that a high proportion of that volume has to be generator- and I suspect the flat fore end may be radiator surface. Low E21 W.

Crew again purely an estimate, by comparison with other ships I would assume around two hundred, forty of whom would be weapons branch. Fighters unlikely, troops- given the mission, I would also doubt it.

Weaponry; no wonder this thing rates as a monitor. Two very large main guns, almost certainly HTL. On a platform this size, I’m assuming it’s a gun with a generator attached and engines bolted on as an afterthought. Obviously not literally, but it does have a very oversized weapon fit, enough to make me query the rate of fire.

Am I making a mistake, when I interpret ‘Channel all it’s power through the weapons’ as meaning that the whole of the reactor output, less efficiency losses, ends up as yield? I don’t think this ship can charge it’s guns at more than low single-digit teratons a second. (And to think that that actually counts as small…) I can see an awful lot of use of stepdown modes. It’s not going to be able to put out enough volume of high yield fire to get decent hit probabilities, either- but almost anything it’s own size it does hit is going to get hurt, and for ‘hurt’ read ‘vapourised.’

It almost certainly does have a point defence and light gun fit to go with that, probably 4 LTL, 4 medium PD (fighter weight) lasers at an estimate.

Shielding; although it has a massive power grid for it’s size, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t have sufficient shielding to survive the amount of hostile interest it’s likely to get in return. It’s main purpose might not be space combat at all. 8-10 MTL hits to burnthrough.

Mobility; well, yes, it has a lot of power- but the sheer weight of the guns, generators and fuel load work against it. This ship ought to be a slug. 1,800 ‘g’ or less, x2 hyperdrive.

Looking at the numbers I’ve hung on it, this could be the Republican mini- equivalent of the torpedo sphere, designed to crack mobile and low powered theatre shields, used in cleared space under the protection of escorts.


Nebulon B2 Mod “Frigate”, 254m, oppositely tiered engine block from the base Nebulon, and two angled out foreblades- estimate 260,000 m3, power output mid E19 W.

Crew; could be a lot less, with increased automation, (the absurd image has just occurred to me that the Nebulons have a lot of humans because they are, after all, very vertical ships with that fore-blade, and the droids aren’t very good at stairs) but probably isn’t; closer to 900, with the increased weaponry. Carriage, assuming the fighter bay is at the head of the blade joint, probably reduced- one fighter squadron, but more internal volume, so troop company.

Armament; three twin MTL turrets- but again, power. Guns only charge at ~100 gigatons/second assuming 5E19 W, and I actually thought this was a good idea until I worked that out. One on dorsal surface engine block, one on the outside of each foreblade- reasonable coverage, but very tiny alpha arc, and an underside/aft blind spot. Light guns- 8 LTL, 8 PD lasers.

Shielding; some improvement over Nebulon-B, better power grid, but enough to take the equivalent of it’s own weapons? Unlikely. 140-150 LTL to drop the shielding.

Mobility; some more weight, lots more power- still generally slow, but not cripplingly so. 2,300 ‘g’, x2 hyperdrive.

General Blurb; for some reason, I look at this thing and think ‘Sherman Firefly.’ It’s still in the same general category because, despite it’s overhauled weapon load, it retains many of the same failings and problems as the original Nebulon-B.


Sienar Bayonet “Light Cruiser”- 200m, fairly blocky with a lot of antennae towards the nose, 770,000 m3 estimate, power output low E20 W- 500 gigatons/second.

Crew; 150, carriage reinforced platoon, half squadron of fighters

Armament; a real illustration of the difficulty of making sense of game mechanics and Wookiepedia. By the original WEG stat, they carry eight main guns, all the same throw weight. By Wookie, ‘heavy turbolasers’. On a two hundred metre hull- fairly fat hull, but nonetheless. ‘Heavy Turbolaser’ is pretty vague- ranging from single digit teraton possibly, all the way up to massive planetary defence mounts, and what I expect the main guns on a Mandator to be capable of, throwing single bolts equal to a full Imperator alpha arc salvo. No way this ship’s guns are genuine HTL. Medium turbolasers, no alpha arc, at most it can bring five guns to bear on one target. Six heavy point defence lasers backing that up.

Mobility; is described as being fast, and has the power for it, so 3200 ‘g’, x1 hyperdrive

Shielding; was fairly mediocre, actually. Good for it’s power, but can drain say ~100 megatons/second, total capacity 100 gigatons- single MTL hit to burnthrough

general blurb; the original write up of these ship describes them as obsolescent, and then through the mechanics ascribed qualities to them that bore no relation to the description. I wouldn’t call that firepower and speed obsolescent. By the standards of much larger craft, it is indeed an eggshell; very little ability to take fire. By the standards of it’s own weight class, it’s a wolverine. Hit and run, fade and evade- it lacks the carriage to be a true all rounder. It is probably the Carrack’s main modern competition for the fleet outrider role- taking over from the older Servator- and actually suits Imperial doctrine more closely if the TIE fighter is anything to go by.

To be honest, I can't believe I'm getting away with this. I keep expecting Ender or Surlethe or someone to fall on me from a great height, and I know I need to go back and make a lot of changes and do some analysis on my own analysis, look for a consistent pattern then enforce it more rigorously.


Anyway, now the heavy corvettes.

KDY class 1000 “Light Cruiser”; 300m long, ovoid squashed-cylinder hull tapering after 2/3 it’s length to complicated antenna-studded prow, aft tower, midships down-angled short fins; 574,000 m3, high E19 W power output est.

Crew, 580, carriage fighter squadron, two companies of troops

Armament; interestingly problematical. Twenty-eight single turrets for light turbolasers, no alpha arc- high proportions of the Class 1000’s weapons are in broadside mounts. Maximum 16 on any one target. Twelve light ion cannon, symmetrically placed- no more than six on any one target.

Considering the Bayonet, Nebulon-B2, Vagor and Oppugnator all outgun this ship, why does she class as a heavy corvette?
As a general convention, I reckon anything with an energy output in the kilotons per shot is a fighter-grade weapon, mounted on a ship as point or area defence, anything with megaton-range output counts as light, gigaton-range as medium, teraton range as heavy. The Imperator-I’s main guns are sometimes called superheavy, which I don’t think would be appropriate considering they’re only about a hundred and fifty, two hundred teratons.

So, lesson one, for myself, more specific. I should go back and add yield figures to all the weapons enumerated so far. The other point is that this ship’s armament implies to me that she’s an escort, not primarily intended to fight above her own weight class like the DP-20 Corellian Gunship, Oppugnator and Bayonet, but to screen larger ships from them, beating them off with showers of LTL fire. As such, her lasers are, I think, relatively heavy for light turbolasers, probably up in the hundred megaton range. Ion cannon probably around tactical parity with that.

Mobility; mediocre- dead average, in fact, and not enough to screen most destroyers and cruisers. Probably one of the reasons the ship is considered to be a low-priority assignment. 2,500 ‘g’, x2 hyperdrive.

Shielding; mediocre, but for a heavy corvette that’s still likely to be impressive. The smaller ships do underperform; depending on how long the Tantive IV had been running for, it took Devastator that time to burn through the shielding, landing two to three hits a second. Given the speed advantage of an Imperator over a Corellian Corvette, I don’t think the chase could have been much longer than as seen on screen- 28 seconds of the Tantive IV firing on Devastator, 21 seconds of return fire to the disabling hit.

NB; greedo redux- the rebels did, indeed, fire first. Leia and everyone on board, should have made themselves liable to execution as pirates for that. They committed a criminal act, it would have been perfectly legitimate on the part of the Imperial state to try them and string them up them for it, and probably worth propaganda points. (Peaceful Alderaanians, my arse.) Because of the information it was carrying, Lord Vader chose to handle the situation as a cloak and dagger operation, though.

Assuming the close defence LTL of an Imperator class destroyer to yield 6 megatons each, that puts the corellian corvette at an estimate total load to shield failure of 1.5E18 W- less than a second of her own output, and vastly below what would be expected from extrapolation from a properly defended ship like the Acclamator. Considering how high the reputation of the corellian corvette stands, I doubt the others in her class are much better, ton for ton.

At some point, the abysmally low proportion seen in the light corvettes has to start going up to meet the solid shielding seen on heavy frigates and light destroyers. Accordingly, trying to form a consistent curve and subject to revision, I estimate a drain of 2.5E18 W, (600 megatons/second) total load to failure of 2E21 W, 480 gigatons.

General notes; mostly contained in the subheadings already.



Anon Prison Ship I “Quaestor” (Investigator)? 360m, and slablike hull form- 1,200,000 m3, estimate high E19 W, mainly engine power

Crew; a moderately large ship, but designed at an unknown period, so what manning policy was in effect at the time, who knows? If post-Clone War, could be into the low thousands, if from the last days of the peacetime republic could be high hundreds, if designed for a clone crew low hundreds. If much older, from the Light and Darkness War, search me.
I reckon this is an older ship, from the peacetime republic, so around 600 crew, with a hangar bay large enough for a 2- squadron fighter complement and 2 companies of troops- although the capacity may not be fully used.

Armament; there are no major structures on the illustration that could be a heavy weapon mount. It’s blue sky time, complicated by the fact that as a prison ship, she is most unlikely to have had her full design armament. Even if the known example was only serving as a guardship for a surface penal facility, it’s still not usually a duty a first line warship would get set to.
Assuming that lack of heavy weapon mounts is meaningful, and the armament is primarily intended for defence against breakouts and rescue attempts, ten twin light (50 megaton) turbolasers, arranged around the rim, no alpha arc, eight twin light ion cannon, arranged port and starboard, twelve heavy point defence lasers.

Mobility; engine nozzles are not infallible- look at the TIE series. They should be, there’s every reason to expect a correlation, but a lot of the time it just doesn’t seem so. Anyway, this thing has Styled by a Vogon written all over it. There’s no good reason to expect it to be fast, it looks slow as shit, and it’s not in a job where it needs much speed. 2200 ‘g’, x2 hyperdrive.

Shielding and damage tolerance; bulky, but how much of the internal structure is void space, my guess is fairly large. This ship would have a distinct fighter complement, and actually drop barges for troops would take up more space. Average to poor once the shields have been breached, and estimate there of drain of 3E17 W, total load to failure 7E18 W, based on an estimate of what the ship properly ought to be capable of and an estimate of how much this, like most small craft, fails to live up to it.

General comment; observed acting as a guardship for a penal facility. Trust me on the subject of prison ships, I’m British, we had quite a lot of them once. An actual prison hulk is usually a decommissioned warship, stripped of most of her drives (masts and sails, but by analogy), and all except whatever internal-security armament she would possess.
In that case, it would be interesting but even more of a leap of logic to stat up the original hull, before disrating; there really would be nothing to go on. This thing doesn’t appear to be a prison ship in itself- certainly fulfilling some related function, probably acting as guardship.

Yes, I know the empire purpose-builds craft like the Lictor-class Dungeon Ship, which I’m not listing because I consider it in the same category as the Star Galleon- a fleet auxiliary, not a warship. (The Neutron Star is in, because it can be converted to an escort carrier relatively easily.) Penal transports were usually merchantmen with upgraded internal security. That’s an effect of the scale of the Empire- that niche expands to be big enough to warrant a specific type to fill.
The fact that the observed example was under the command of a Colonel, IIRC, either means that it belongs to the ISB or to the starfighter corps- which would likely make it a light carrier, which would be a useful choice for conversion.



Damorian Carrack “Light Cruiser”- 350m, unfortunate hull form- fat hexagon with larger rectangular engine section and rounded-faceted bow (with utterly, ridiculously huge window on some images), 1,350,000 m3, power output mid E20 W.

Crew 1,092, carriage 1 company of troops, external fighter flight

Armament; primarily, ten of what Wookiepedia, absurdly, calls ‘Heavy Turbolasers’- none visible on any of the images I’ve seen. No alpha arc, maximum of five on any one target, and they are in all probability standard hundred to two hundred gigaton medium turbolasers. Twenty point defence lasers, evenly distributed.

Mobility; known to be fast, valued and deployed as such; 3400 ‘g’, x1 hyperdrive

Shielding; I reckon the Carrack is the Imperial Starfleet’s primary fleet outrider, intended to act as scout, pathfinder and screen for larger ships, and as such is probably the first ship that isn’t ‘below the resolution’ of heavy turbolaser fire. Something has to be the first to stick it’s head up, after all.

Actually, given the ramp up theory, isn’t it possible to get a partial hit? The target slides in and out of the beam focus faster than the gun can react, or the gun fails to hold focus on target. Usually, I would expect this not to happen- for all that it ought to, we see too little sign of evasion by large ships, and I don’t think it’s a mechanical issue with the accelerations these ships are capable of, rather a command issue- turbolasers simply fire too fast. By the time the captain’s had time to think of a move and order it and the helmsman to acknowledge and act on it, the gunner on the other ship’s had time for another two shots. The decision cycle is shorter.
So it can happen- but I doubt that it does often enough to be more than a statistical curiosity.

If this ship is to be protected against heavy turbolaser fire, that raises two issues. First, if it can withstand that kind of energy and manage a teraton range hit well enough to dissipate it, why isn’t it much more powerful in it’s own right? Why is it’s power grid so far in excess of what it itself can do?
Second, why is it so far above the curve- why do the other ships in it’s class fail to do the same?

The only thing I can think of is a technically weak argument that has some continuity, at least. When and how often would small craft like this ever be exposed to that kind of power? When do the big guns ever really come out to play? In time of major war, of course. Until and unless, the common run of things are large merchants and pirates armed with, at most, light turbolasers. They trade fire with each other, and all is good. World- burning, continent-removing heavy weapons are simply not a part of ship design, or at least come no closer than a ship designer’s nightmares- until a time of major war.

I’m not overwhelmingly convinced myself, either technologically or just plain logically; the most rational thing to do would be to give this ship a rating in parallel with it’s power systems, down in the mid gigatons, but I don’t think that would square with the reputation and use of these ships.

Shielding to the load to failure value of forty teratons, which should be enough to take single main gun shot from most ships short of Imperator and Tector class; drain 200 gigatons/second, and significantly higher than average survivability once the shielding is breached.

General rambling; usually, form follows function. There’s a reason a class title is usually a pointer towards a particular size of ship, because that size is what the ship type needs. Battleships are as big as they need to be to effectively transport and protect their weapons, the size of a carrier’s hull is determined by the flight deck it needs to fit under (at sea- around, in space), classical cruisers were long haul ships, the wooden frigates they descended from were the best available compromise between enough weaponry to do the job (take merchantmen) on a hull compromised between speed and endurance, destroyers’ size has always been determined by weapon load and the amount of power that has to be put under it to get the torpedoes or missiles to where they’re needed.

The problem with this system here is that it is in danger of going by weight rather than function. There may have to be redrafts later. Anyway, the ‘gunship’ quote; the carrack does have a point defence fit, but I don’t think it’s primarily an antifighter vessel. “This vessel’s 10 turbolaser batteries allow the Carrack to engage larger vessels with a reasonable chance of success”-[Imperial Sourcebook p58]- that doesn’t sound like an antifighter escort to me, and there are other ships that can fulfil that role anyway, at varying degrees of hazard to themselves.

I think the Carrack is a combatant in it’s own right, and the Starfleet’s workhorse at the lower end of the scale.



Anon Corvette II “Servator” (Watcher, Preserver)? 400m, fascinatingly not quite a true wedge- tapered, but lumpy and irregular hull, mostly superstructure apparently, estimate 1,823,000 m3, mid E20 W

Crew; large, but again crew size depends on the manning policy in force at the time of construction. I think this ship was the Carrack’s predecessor, either during or just after the Light and Darkness War; a boundary marker, intended to be the line between militarily useful small warship and third force/local force semi-combatant. 1,400 crew, carriage 2 fighter squadrons, batallion.

Weaponry; moderately impressive- three twin MTL in the 150 gigaton range, twin medium ion cannon, eight twin LTL in the 10 megaton range. Missile fit? No evidence either way.

Mobility; given the age of the ship, not as good as it once was.
My theory here, now that I’ve had to think about it, is that the chronological age of a starship is very nearly irrelevant. If they’re tough enough to take the kind of abuse they get from their own drives and engines, then mere time passing isn’t going to be that big a deal in any but the most gargantuan dosages. That use and abuse, on the other hand, should be the key factor.
A useful measure of the durability of a ship might be the number of full loads of fuel it can cycle through before requiring refit or repair, and ultimately becoming uneconomical to maintain. A hard-used ship will have undergone significantly more wear and be in significantly poorer condition than a lightly used, much older ship.
This runs dead against my own fanfic, and also the existence of the Millennium Falcon, which must have burnt through thousands if not tens of thousands of loads in it’s long and dubious career. Oh well. Call that an upper limit.
That in mind, I think the design goal for this ship was 3200 ‘g’, most are no longer capable of that and are down around 2900 ‘g’ or less, and can no longer sustain a flat x1 hyperdrive speed, being around 1.5 now.

Shielding; role- based estimate in the low teratons. Load to failure 15 teratons, from an initial standard of 25, drain 150 gigatons.

General rambling mostly contained in the section comments anyway.

A few random comments from a newbie:

Neutron Star (and the essentially identical Battle Horn) bulk cruisers - I'm not sure they should be included in this list at all. Every source I've ever seen for them has implied that they were designed for use as security vessels by large corporations and planetary militias. As such they would not be built to true military standards (the game stats for them also give this indication), and I doubt the Empire would consider using them (I don't recall any source that has them being operated by the Empire either), especially since they are described as being prone to breakdowns and expensive to operate and maintain. While they can be easily converted to escort carriers, the KDY Escort Carrier would be a preferable craft for the Empire to use for a variety of reasons - not the least of which would be the fact that the Escort Carrier has double the fighter capacity.

Marauder Corvette - I've always liked this ship, but I've never seen any source that has the Empire using them. Based on the design, I think that they'd be useful in the Imperial Navy, but everything I've ever seen about them has said that for political/bureaucratic reasons the Empire never bought any Marauders.

Elrood Prosperity Frigate - Again, I don't really think that the Empire would use this ship. As presented in Planets of the Galaxy it's an excellent ship for running down smugglers and run-of-the-mill pirates, but there's very little it can do that can't be done by smaller customs cutters (like the Guardian). As it was built by such a small shipyard without the economies of scale that you would see from the larger producers, presumably it's more expensive to build than something that KDY for example might be able to produce. If the Empire up-gunned the ship, it could serve usefully in the roles that you describe, but I can't help but think that it would make more sense for them to simply get the big military ship builders to place bids on a different design that would fill that role.

KDY Lancer - I completely agree with you on this one. A very flawed ship design pushed through for political reasons.

Nebulon-B - Based on various game statistics, appearances, and descriptions of the Nebulon-B, I've always figured that it was never really designed to be up to military specifications. It's an escort frigate designed to protect freighter convoys - it's not designed for fleet operations. The most important attribute of a convoy escort is that it be available. As such, I figure that many corners were cut on the Nebulon-B, allowing it to be quickly and cheaply built at shipyards across the galaxy - many of which might be civillian shipyards that aren't capable of producing a true warship. The most versatile and effective weapon of the Nebulon-B is its complement of TIE fighters. A reasonable Rebel attack force against an undefended convoy might consist of a single squadron of Y-wings or X-wings, possibly supported by a ship like a Corellian Corvette. With its TIEs to take care of the Rebel fighters, the Nebulon-B can focus on the Corellian Corvette. The Neb-B doesn't even have to win the battle - it just has to keep the Rebels busy while the convoy escapes. As far as the speed being too low, I'm not sure I agree. If you're producing these ships in the quantities that the Empire would need, you're going to have a lot of relatively inexperienced commanders operating them. If you give an inexperienced commander a ship that's faster and/or more powerful, he's going to be more inclined to pursue any attackers, which is not always desirable since it can lead to him abandoning his convoy. This would be a common ploy for commerce raiders who have split their forces in order to ambush the now defenseless freighters. Another feature of the Neb-B that you might want to include in your analysis is that sourcebooks say that it's got a significantly better communications suite than most vessels its size. This is obviously so that it can more easily command and coordinate the convoy that it's protecting.

I'd like to take a few moments to talk about the Shields on the Tantive IV. You are basing your estimate on time to take those shields down for the ISD and assuming that the entire exchange was seen by us, rather than being a chase in progress. It is by definition a lower limit, albeit one that has some supporting evidence in the form of fighters de-fanging corvettes with Megaton ranged torpedos. Maybe there is a problem with miniaturizing neutrino heat-sinks to that degree that limits radiation capacity. Maybe it's just volume creep, more tonnage and space devoted to shields. They don't seem to be a large system is the only problem with that theory.

Damn this unreliable computer that crashes in mid reply...and sod you too, Murphy. (In the sense of Murphy's Law, of course. If any actual Murphies are offended by this, then, well, you have the law of bad luck named after you, what do you expect? Double PS, in Larry Niven's Known Space moderately-hard-SF universe, it is in fact known as Finagle's Law.)

The Neutron Star first showed up in the Rebel Alliance Sourcebook, and I'm not entirely certain what the author's intent was, given that it makes no actual sense.
There is a thread on this forum started by Isolder74 which discusses the Neutron Star in some detail, and basically condemns it as at best a second class battleship fallacy, at worst a worthless piece of crap.

It's big, it's bulky, it's flaccid, it seems to be the result of a deliberate attempt to expensively purpose- build a third rate stopgap. The reason it's actually in the fleet list is that I find it hard to believe anyone could be dumb enough to build it the way it's written up.

Up to the end of the age of sail, large merchantmen frequently carried armament equivalent to a medium warship of the day- look up the East India Company, and for a good laugh the Battle of Pulo Aor. by WWI and WWII, Armed Merchant Cruisers were fast civilian craft, usually liners, given the gun fit of a quite large warship- cruiser class usually, and ordinary merchantmen were given far lesser armament purely to defend themselves, the gun fit of a light destroyer or less.

This is important because I reckon there was severe mental model confusion involved in writing the ship up, and it got given the role of an Indiaman with the speed and armament of a Liberty Ship, in effect. I intend to take a fresh stab at it, and see if anything that size and that load hauling capacity really can be that useless.


The Marauder- again, this is a question of where you draw the line between member states of the Empire and the Empire itself. It was certainly in use by the Corporate Sector Authority, and was license built by them. There's no bar to it entering Imperial service, it is rather useful, and although I doubt that many did, there were probably more than none.

The Prosperity- again, this is a minority design that I don't think deserves to be. I'm not thinking in terms of customs use- although there is defnintely one thing that it can do, that smaller customs ships can't; survive LTL fire. It is one of the fastest, if not the fastest, capital ship designs out there, and I'm thinking in terms of scout and interceptor.

The Lancer, there's actually an interesting issue there. There is a big and artificial gap in West End's game rules as written, between capital and starfighter scale, and I think the Lancer was designed very much with the rules of play in mind. Accordingly, it carries short range starfighter-grade weaponry. Low-power, single digit megaton LTL would be almost as useful, at least against heavily laden bomber types, and make the ship much more survivable against corvettes. Oh well.

Skill and experience in the Imperial starfleet is a separate issue that deserves consideration separately; I'll get back to you on that, once I've done some figuring on the likely size of the Republic fleet during the Clone Wars and the expansion it underwent, but my gut feeling is that the Imperial Starfleet as a whole outruns it's pool of war-experienced personnel pretty quickly, especially as it is twenty years later and the older generation including the backbone noncoms are getting towards the end of their hitches.

Convoy defence, too, is something that needs analysis, but the other problem is that if something is there, it's going to be used. The danger with using a very limited ship is that it's going to get drawn into operations for which it is simply not fit- and, yes, suckering a Nebulon into pursuing that fleeing corvette onto the guns of an MC-40 is a good way for the Alliance to get themselves a Nebulon-B. Restrict them to close escort and use something else as distant or fighting escort.

As a general rule, looking back, it seems to be that light corvettes tend to have light weapons and defences, medium corvettes end up with medium weaponry and light defences, and heavy corvettes achieve medium weaponry and defence.

(edited in)
Oh, yes, and; Vehrec, I have to admit I don't understand either why the light corvettes should be so poorly shielded- and my own estimate of the viability of the Carrack and Anon Corv I "Servator" assumes that it is possible to mount a radically higher proportion of shielding than the Corellian Corvette does.

They should be better, but unless the chase lasted three thousand seconds rather than about thirty there's no way to use that to bring them up to where they should be. That length of engagement is difficult considering that the Imperator is the standard line destroyer precisely because it is such a good blend of qualities, and one of those includes speed. With, depending on the corvette, anywhere from a seven hundred and fifty to fourteen hundred 'g' advantage- the estimate I'm using for the Imperator class is 3,500 'g'- then Devastator should have been able to force action and close the range much more quickly than three thousand seconds.

The practical upper limit is probably the time it would have taken for the corvette to plot a hyperjump and escape; isn't five minutes the usually accepted value for that, without Jedi powers? That gives fifty-four hundred megatons to shield failure, given 6-megaton LTL, which is better but still low.

Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:Double PS, in Larry Niven's Known Space moderately-hard-SF universe, it is in fact known as Finagle's Law.)

Exactly where my user ID comes from in fact!

Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:The Neutron Star first showed up in the Rebel Alliance Sourcebook, and I'm not entirely certain what the author's intent was, given that it makes no actual sense.
There is a thread on this forum started by Isolder74 which discusses the Neutron Star in some detail, and basically condemns it as at best a second class battleship fallacy, at worst a worthless piece of crap.

I'll look up the thread. In the meantime, I always assumed that the Neutron Star was intentionally built to a lower-than-military standard in order to market the craft to organizations that weren't legally allowed to operate military ships. Of course that does tend to make it a huge steaming lump of crap.

Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:The reason it's actually in the fleet list is that I find it hard to believe anyone could be dumb enough to build it the way it's written up.

OK, so you're basically going to significantly change it from the official description. In that case it may have a place in the fleet.

Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:This is important because I reckon there was severe mental model confusion involved in writing the ship up, and it got given the role of an Indiaman with the speed and armament of a Liberty Ship, in effect.

You're probably right about that.

Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:The Marauder- again, this is a question of where you draw the line between member states of the Empire and the Empire itself. It was certainly in use by the Corporate Sector Authority, and was license built by them. There's no bar to it entering Imperial service, it is rather useful, and although I doubt that many did, there were probably more than none.

OK, I understand your reasoning. Personally I've always considered states like the CSA to be effectively completely removed from the Empire aside from paying taxes. Likewise, I wouldn't be surprised if a few Marauders entered Imperial service directly, but from the official description of the ship I'd expect the number to be relatively insignificant, even though it is a nice little design.

Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:The Prosperity- again, this is a minority design that I don't think deserves to be. I'm not thinking in terms of customs use- although there is defnintely one thing that it can do, that smaller customs ships can't; survive LTL fire. It is one of the fastest, if not the fastest, capital ship designs out there, and I'm thinking in terms of scout and interceptor.

Those are definitely roles that it can fill, but I can't see a ship from such a minor, backwater shipyard being used by the Imperial Navy (well, maybe in the Elrood sector itself). I think that ships from larger manufacturers would fill that role, even if they weren't quite as good at it as the Prosperity. Politics, kickbacks, bidding processes, etc. would all have an effect.

Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:Skill and experience in the Imperial starfleet is a separate issue that deserves consideration separately; I'll get back to you on that, once I've done some figuring on the likely size of the Republic fleet during the Clone Wars and the expansion it underwent, but my gut feeling is that the Imperial Starfleet as a whole outruns it's pool of war-experienced personnel pretty quickly, especially as it is twenty years later and the older generation including the backbone noncoms are getting towards the end of their hitches.

Yeah, that's my feeling too. I figure the huge military buildup would have to have led to a whole slew of officers with some experience being promoted above their actual level of competence. Like you say though, that's really another issue altogether.

Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:Convoy defence, too, is something that needs analysis, but the other problem is that if something is there, it's going to be used.

That's true - I didn't mean to imply that the Neb-B would only be used for convoy protection - just that it seems to me that when it was on the drawing board it was never intended to serve in any other role. To me it seems like a ship which is nearly ideally suited to convoy protection, but very poorly suited to almost anything else. In that respect, I might compare it to the Flower-class corvettes of WWII.

here is a link to the thread

Bulk Cruiser

One should never underestimate the importance of rigorous documentation of sources. Your project, while formidable and impressive in its depth, suffers from a rather pointed lack of citations. Supposing one wished to find canonical details regarding, say, the anonymous corvette "Servator" model; where would one find this? It would be a tremendous boon to your work to document evidence clearly, as it would increase its utility to other commentators.

At the very least we'd like citations for exact numbers, at least a couple examples of observed (generally or specifically) acceleration, firepower for specific batteries listed (such as "LTLs"), and volume. A simple citation to the SWTC for an image or example at Wookieepedia would be desired.

First of all, thank you both for considering this more than the deranged ramblings of a gearhead gamer with too much spare time.

The reason I'm writing something like this is, fundamentally, because I want to read it; and the more effort I put in, the more I realise why somebody more technically literate than myself hasn't already.

There is relatively little to go on, and reasoning from one example to another, establishing consistent principles that can be applied to unknowns, well, what you really need is someone only just bright enough to do the work, but not bright enough to realise how much work there is involved.

There is a reason the thread title was 'Guesses Towards'- in part I suppose I am covering myself, but also, what if there is almost no evidence?
Two examples; the dark hulled Anon Corv I from SWTC http://theforce.net/swtc/dagger.html#corvette1 which I have assigned the provisional name "Vagor"(Wanderer) to, about that thing's speed there are two facts known; it has four engine nozzles taking up approximately 8% of it's stern, and it makes a 'Varoooom' noise when it takes off from a planetary surface.

The most I can do in a circumstance like that is make an estimate based on it's volume of how much it masses, an estimate of it's available power based, in that case, on it's weapon load- and work out from there what it ought to be capable of, and show my assumptions throughout so they can be held up to scrutiny.
In that case, in particular, at an assumption of 4 tons/m3 through advanced materials and semicollapsed matter, and 1 mw/newton of thrust, 5.06E19 W is enough to give the thing 2,500 'g'- well under the power it needs to serve the weapon load I estimated it had. It can move and attack freely with only a small reduction in rate of fire, which suits the role of a small hunter-killer.

There are at least four assumptions in there- engine power requirements, average mass, the ship's role and armament- that are questionable, and this is speculation supported by analysis much more than it is analysis extended by speculation.


The second problem, when inherent probability collides head on with canon; take the Neutron Star class armed merchant.

The power estimate. On it's own weapon load, as first set out in the Rebel Sourcebook and quoted on Wiki and in HTTE, the thing has a total weapon output in the low megatons (30 quad weapons- 120 barrels at 500kt/shot, estimate from the discussion of corellian quads here on SDN, ROF better than one a second- assumption 3 shots/second). Liberty ship. Point defence only.

Working backwards using the same set of estimations for power required, and a more generous 2.5 tons/m3 for nonmilitary construction, and a target assumption of 1,000 'g', the power plant is capable of forty gigatons/second output. That's credible as an armed merchant cruiser.

Looking at the after module and trying to work out how much room is available for the reactor, and then going from that via the power density of an ISD's reactor, that comes closer to a 30m- diameter sphere giving twenty-three teratons per second. Well into credibility as an East Indiaman analogue.

So what's the truth here, and what's the best policy for me writing this up? I suppose I ought to show my speculation as well as my working.


I have actually been thinking a lot of this out as I go, which is why the early entries are pretty unspecific. For fanfic purposes, I have a full list of imprecise estimates, stubs like this;

Rendili Vainglorious class cruiser- considered outdated by the start of the civil war; abortive upgrade to Dreadnought?
This would be the heavy frigate type- bloody odd name to give to a ship, though. Inherently negative, against themselves. Rename them simply Glorious, or Illustris.
Upgrade this- 660m, similar shape to computer versions- loses a lot of weight around the midsection; significantly lower volume, very much lower crew requirement.
5 HTL-a, 10 MTL, 10 extended range quad LTL, 10 quad PD lasers, 2400 ‘g’, 4 squadrons, 2 batallions.
Why wasn’t this successful? Am I being too generous to it, or has it lost too much bulk and too much damage tolerance along the way- no longer fit for the main line pounding the original was designed for?


Thrashing something like that out, refining the assumptions and calculating properly- being forced by scrutiny to do a proper job- is the point of this, and I've done a lot of that along the way. A sensible thing for me to do now, I think, would be to answer both concerns by going back and redrafting, being more rigorous and more specific, and adding references to sources as I go.
Thank you for taking an interest.

I get what you're doing now, and I think a demand for absolute evidence-based assertions is unrealistic given what the apparent intention of the list is. The available sources conflict considerably in many cases, and otherwise are often completely absent, so rough guesses at a coherent system is in my mind better than the haphazard, nonsensical information we have currently. This is in terms of rationalising the universe for fan purposes only, of course, it can't be applied as evidence, but it's still a very praiseworthy goal.

I hope this doesn't count as necromancy; I really did take too long to get back to this project, juggling too many projects (trying to get a roleplaying game published- no joy so far, and damn all chance of making me any money when it does).

Anyway, Lazarus, that was what I had originally intended, but if I'm going to get that kind of attention, then I have an obligation to produce something that can stand up to scrutiny- or at least that isn't obviously nuts.

I'llfinish the redrafts first then push on up into the frigates; for now, here are some notes, assumptions and explanations, and a fresh stab at the CR90.

General Redraft- 1); basic assumptions.

Starships don’t float, except on repulsors. It’s possible to get a stupidly high figure for the average density, if you assume ‘neutronium’ as being anywhere near literally correct. Which it almost certainly isn’t.
I do think that SW material technology is well in advance of our own, both in terms of the amount of mass that can usefully be crammed into a given area and the amount of strength that can be got out of a given amount of mass, but I don’t really have the knowledge to specify by how much.

I assume, commonly across the board, that an ion engine requires 1 mw of electrical input to produce 1 newton of thrust. I have no definitive piece of proof for this, only that it produces, so far, answers for power and acceleration that are roughly on par with what is already specified in the ICS to be the case.
The other reason is that it is a nice round number, and so easy to do the calculations to substitute with a more accurate figure if one becomes available.

Given that, not all starships are going to have the same average density. Actually, it’s backwards; a fast ship is likely to be more heavily built to survive the strain placed on her by her engines than to be built for minimum mass.
For calculation purposes, I assume a figure of 4 tons/m3 for average military construction at average speed, 2 tons/m3 for civilian.

Power output; looking at the ICS, its fairly obvious that although an Imperator’s reactor delivers 6.96E18 W per cubic metre, that kind of power density is at least an order of magnitude above what a small craft’s reactor can do.

Case in point, the Naboo J-type diplomatic yacht. Quoted at 3E18 W, it has four reactor chambers built into the engine nacelles- whether these are actually hypermatter or fusion, I don’t know; considering the ‘pressurised’ fuel tank and their being built into the engines, something fairly exotic must be happening, and I’d be plucking theories out of the air trying to specify what it was, so I won’t.
I will state that this is what the designers chose to mount instead of a small hypermatter plant, so they must have felt it gave some advantage.

The numbers. Each of the four reactors is an approximately 4.5m diameter, 6m long cylinder. 254 m3 each, 1018 m3 total- at ISD standards, that should produce 7.08E21 W. It doesn’t. The ship actually has 2,361.47 times less power available than if it had an ISD comparable power plant.
The obvious conclusion is that there are considerable economies of scale involved in hypermatter power systems, and smaller ships have lower power outputs (and at least possibly, larger ships higher power outputs) than a calculation of power plant volume would indicate.

I tend to estimate power plant based on tactical need; either what the ship requires to move at the acceleration it’s role and reputation suggests, or what it needs to serve it’s guns. Small and poorly designed ships might have requirements that are vastly out of step with each other, ships with payloads, such as quasi-cargo types like the corellian corvette, may have excess power to maintain speed under heavy loading.


Shielding; trying to come up with a coherent mental model is tricky. I’m thinking of a particle wall, held in suspension by the ship’s generators. There are at least three numbers to be had here, and even AotC; ICS only specifies one.
Firstly, and specified in the ICS, shielding capacity; the only way I can make sense of this is if it’s an expression of the amount of energy the shields and radiators can dissipate. A hit on a ship with a power less than the target can dissipate is effectively wasted; Obi-Wan’s Aethersprite took extended streams of fire from Slave 1 with no noticeable ill effect.

Second, total load to failure- the amount of power that can be pumped into the shields before the generator loses control of them and they can no longer withstand fire. My assumptions; two equally matched ships will take each other apart, all other things being equal, in a time frame of minutes, could be as short as three minutes, given more likely hit rates could be as long as thirty. So my basic approximation here is 100 to 150 seconds- depending on reputation- of a ship’s own power output as it’s shield load to failure, for a nominal, averagely well protected ship.

Third, and I have no way how to calculate this, the proportion of a hit, or the proportion of hits, that are deflected away. It exists- there is an argument, I’ve forgotten who to credit it to, Surlethe?- argues flak bursts may be just that, bolts splashing off the shielding; clearly this is a good thing, any power that can be immediately re-radiated away without passing through the ship’s own power system is good, less of a burden on the ship- but how it’s engineered for, and how to tell the difference between a good and a bad design? Actually, the surface of the ship is probably a good guide. A flat surface sharply angled relative to the likely approach of shot might be best; another point in favour of the dagger form.

Fourth, turbolasers have recoil and turbolaser bolts deliver momentum. This is transferred by the shield to the shield generator, and in theory absorbed by the ship’s structure- but there has to be a limit, and the closest existing, reliable figure is the acceleration as it stands.


Weapons; the general rule of thumb is, less than megaton yield, it’s a fighter weapon or an anti-fighter weapon (point and area defence lasers). Megaton range, light turbolaser. Gigaton range, medium turbolaser. Teraton range, heavy turbolaser.
Petaton range weapons- possible; I would expect a mandator’s main guns to be in this bracket, but considering the entire power output of a star destroyer only runs to 2.2 petatons, I would not expect many weapons of this calibre to be found below battleship class. They would be worth rating as superheavy turbolasers.
Known figures, 1 kiloton/shot from each of 4 barrels on the Delta-7 Aethersprite, 143 tons/shot equivalent from the blasters, 2 kilotons/shot from the laser cannon, 191 megatons/warhead missiles, 11,945 megatons per mine from Slave 1, 8kt/shot trade fed core ship PD, 2.4kt/shot from the Nantex starfighter, 6 mt/shot from the Acclamator’s light turbolasers and 200gt from the main guns.

Because of the ability of weapons to fire below their full yield, it is sometimes worth carrying a bigger gun. I’m pretty certain that the relatively lightly powered Recusant and Munificent classes could not power their forward main guns to one shot per second.

Anyway, while it might be useful to have a big gun capable of overwhelming the shields of an enemy ship, it stops being useful when it becomes too big to point on a target quickly and accurately enough to deliver it’s power. I wonder if there are ‘sweet spots’ that are particularly easy to engineer for, semi-standard yield figures?
In the absence of any real evidence, I’m assuming that there’s a continuum. That raises another issue.

That pointing issue, anti- fighter work, and dual purpose weapons. Assuming a weapon has to be designed for the maximum energy it can take, and I’d be very surprised if it was any way else, past a certain point it’s going to become too heavy and too clumsy to point on a small, manoeuvring target like a fighter or an unusually intelligent missile. So at what point does a dual purpose light turbolaser, with some antifighter/antimissile use, become too heavy and too clumsy to be capable of that?

My default assumption that all the ‘LTL hits to shield failure’ notes are based on is the 6-megaton ICS figure, and that this represents something towards the upper limit for a true dual- purpose weapon, instant kill on most fighters and light enough to bring to bear, effective against small warships with sustained fire. Given the absence of other forms of point defence from a ship which is very likely to come under fighter and missile attack, I would be surprised if the 6-megaton weapons weren’t capable of that.


Carriage; how much space do troops, and fighters, take up?

Armpit-to-armpit, WWII standards, I think we’re looking at about five cubic metres a man. So an Imperial army line company with 180 men all told (and 118 droids, give them half the space of a human) takes up a minimum of 1,195 m3.
A single AT-AT, on the other hand, assuming the legs do fold and they’re carried stored that way, could easily take up 3,500 m3, and that multiplies up the size of the facilities required to service and support them, never mind deploy them; I reckon the main reason for the relatively small fighter complement of the Imperator- class is the huge proportion of what is probably actually a generous allocation of bay space that is taken up by other than fighters, and that’s mainly AT-AT dropships and landing barges.
More facilities and better conditions obviously take up more space; even a holographic firing range has to have some volume, and then there’s the issue of repairs of equipment and vehicles requiring on board workshops, or return to central facility.

Fighter volume- now, they will require on board maintenance and workshop space, ordnance, accommodation space for the ground crew, and I have to wonder if there’s actually a folding-wing version of the TIE, because they’re astonishingly inefficient at filling out their dimensions. It takes a minimum of 300 m3 to park a TIE/ln, without accounting for the larger varieties- and all the facilities required to support and service are going to multiply that up, to the point where I reckon we’re looking at one fighter taking up the same onboard space as an infantry company. (The Neb-B’s facilities, I was assuming to be pretty basic, and the TIE’s virtually parked on top of each other.)
Worse yet, that’s one small, lightweight fighter. For something in the Xg-1 StarWing class, nearly four times that.

The main reason to use a dropship rather than bring the parent vessel down is probably operational vulnerability. A grounded starship would be relatively vulnerable, limited horizon, interaction effects with the atmosphere, sensor haze- better to use a dropship and keep the parent vessel free to manoeuvre and react, as well as offer fire support. But damn, do they take up a lot of space.


General note on designations and classifications;
Yes, there are multiple designation systems in use. Yes, the designation of some ships is not entirely logical. Yes, there seems to be a mix of inaccurately used earth- naval terminology in effect. What I’m doing here is saying ‘damn the contradictions, full speed ahead’. Attempting to fit everything into one coherent picture, seeing how it hangs together, then going back to hammer out the details. Corvettes range from the armed civilian through the semi- military up to something that could almost be called a warship (Carrack); to save the time I’ve already spent too much of away from this project, I’ll just the list the additional detail, sources and clarifications to be added to each original entry.


CR90 Corellian Corvette;
Sources- well, starting from ANH; the first really ‘Star Wars’ thing ever seen on screen. Repeatedly mentioned and referenced throughout the EU.


Endurance varies drastically by variant; to the nearest round number, the lifesystem can deliver- taking the average of the estimates for 30, presumably inert-cargo hauler configuration, and 165, as a passenger craft, 8,000 being- days. Power endurance-?


Acceleration is suggested by Wookie to be 2,100 ‘g’; this seems- first of all, it’s good to see a real number, but that aside, it’s low. This- the first real redraft figure- seems as good a place as any to ramble generally about acceleration.
I am making an assumption here, that the difference between a fast ship and a slow one is relatively small- well, smaller than the absolute difference between slow and stop, anyway. It’s the size of the difference that is crucial.
Given the power endurances available, I have to wonder what the point of being able to accelerate at 3,000 ‘g’ is if the ship can only hold that for less than ten thousand seconds. The answer, I think, has to be reaction time and relative advantage. Needing to outmanoeuvre another ship- that pushes the acceleration upwards.

We know from the ICS that the very fastest starfighters peak out around the 5200- 5250 ‘g’ range. Starships- not so sure. The Acclamator is very fast, especially for a class of ship very seldom if ever built for peak speed. How many seagoing LSTs ever broke a speed record? Compared to the other numbers that we know, I think the only way to make sense of why the Acclamator is so far above the curve here is to assume that she is in fact a derivative of SWTC’s Anon Star Frigate #2 or the Ecliptic class, reduced armour and weapon systems, consequent power output and fuel space reductions, to accommodate the troop and fighter complement. More on that later.

A cut down frigate, a razee. Or, if you consider the army as a projectile to be fired by the navy, a B-58 equivalent. I think, and this goes some way to support it, that fighter and ground complements are relatively light for the bulk they take up, and tend to make a ship lighter- and faster.

I reckon 2,500 ‘g’ is about average; 2,000 ‘g’ would be dangerously easily outmanoeuvred, and about the lower limit for viability as a warship; 3,000 ‘g’ is acknowledgedly fast, capable of outmanoeuvring most of the big gun ships out there; 3,500 ‘g’ is about the upper limit for a well- balanced ship that does not sacrifice anything more than money and design talent for it’s speed. Faster is possible, but only at the price of serious tradeoffs in weaponry, survivability, payload, endurance- or all four.

So what, specifically, is a CR90 capable of doing? It doesn’t make those tradeoffs, it is a reconfigurable light multirole with an odd configuration, but one was famously out-accelerated and caught by an Imperator/Imperial- class star destroyer.
Let’s see. 3E18 W, so three teraNewtons of thrust. Ninety thousand cubic metres, military construction (let’s give it that), four thousand kilos per cubic metre- eight hundred and thirty-three ‘g’. H’m. Maybe not.

Quasi- military construction, 3 tons per cubic metre, from 5E18 W? 1852 ‘g’? Still pathetically low. Assuming 8E18W, that gives a much healthier 2,963 ‘g’. Which is much more power than I initially thought the thing had available, but which does give a number more in line with it’s reputation.
Which, in a way, makes more sense; if it is that widespread and popular, I would expect it to have something more than mere brand- name keeping it at the head of the pack.

Weaponry; the example seen on screen in ANH was a non- military ship, a diplomatic transport, and it still had two twin LTL and the armed escape pods- four long guns, possibly heavy point defence in the 100kt range there, and the LTL dual- purpose in the 6 megaton range throwing 2-3 bolts per barrel per second.
If it has that much power, it can mount substantially heavier weaponry, up to 1,900 mt/sec. No wonder it gets customised so often- but note, this is coming directly out of engines. Firepower at the expense of speed.

Shields, integrity and survivability;
Assuming the chase was only twenty-eight seconds long, the Imperials only fired for twenty-one of them, and Devastator carries the same six-megaton dual purpose weapons, hitting twice a second on average, that’s a low end of 252 megatons to shield failure, less drain.
Assuming the Tantive IV was on the verge of completing a nav solution before the disabling hit, 300 seconds being hit for 12 megatons/second, so 3600 megatons load to shield failure, could be far more if Devastator was firing heavier than dual purpose LTL.

What I actually think is the case- I lean to the lower estimate, about 500 megatons to failure.

Glancing; it’s a complex, irregular hull, so I wouldn’t expect it to be good at this.

Heat dispersal; there are engine vents, going by Complete ICS- and they’re tiny. Eleven spots, one per engine, maybe two metres diameter. 34.556 m3 total. If these are it, then that’s a lot of energy density, they can shed massive amounts of heat per square metre. ~E16 to ~E17, depending on the efficiency of the engines?
That would actually make sense, low overload threshold but high dissipation, can take light weapons fire very easily, accepts vulnerability to heavy weapons which is pretty much inevitable anyway- if that estimate wasn’t higher than the total load to failure.
In view of that, I’d say single digit, mid to low megatons, 3-5 mt/sec (1.26E16- 2.1E16 W) dispersal.

Payload; for a ship supposed to haul cargo, where’s the cargo bay? Forward mid section and the lower half of the hammerhead? That could be as much as 20,000 m3 all told. Depending on how close you want to cram them together, that probably could be two leg infantry battalions or a walker company. Probably not more than one fighter squadron in the forward midsection and a troop company in the lower hammerhead.

Ender is back in town, I don't know how often or whether he'll notice this himself, but I'd shoot him an email or PM. He'll probably be able to give you much more likely/exact density figures and engine performance.

Specific issues: all reactor power plants for military-range vessels and high-acceleration vessels in general are probably hypermatter annhiliation cores; they may differ in configuration and performance, but generally you're not going to get anywhere without the energy density of full E=mc^2 and the dial-a-yield you get with hypermatter or matter/antimatter (the latter is much less preferable for obvious volatility concerns and attendant storage density difficulties). Hypermatter is likely less volatile (check Saxton's pages on power generation, shielding, and engines).

Search Ender, me, phongn, Mike, Surlethe, etc. on power generation, reactor, hypermatter, ion engines, the like. Read the meatier discussions. Here's one on this page.

I'll think of more later.