StarDestroyer.Net BBS

With the ever increasing knoweldge of various things in Star Wars, as well as the revelations that the sizes and numbers of most ships are two low for their sizes, I have a question.

Do you guys think that the numbers within the rpg for the various stats (crews, troop capacity, fighter capacity, weaponry numbers, even sizes [not for Executor, I know that was officially changed]) are too low, just right or too high.

If you think that they are are too low or too high how would you adjust them.

I am looking for thoughts on the various classes of Imperial starships mostly (ISDs, Executors, Victory's, etc) but other ships in Star Wars would be interesting as well.

By the way, I should not that this is not for the EU Fic project (unless people want it to be, but that is out of my hands). Its mostly for my want of an understanding of how the realistic nature of ship sizes would effect crew numbers, weapons and fighter deployment.

How can anyone make a blanket statement about stats across the entire RPG publications?

I didn't mean across the blanket rpg world. I meant particular ship stats. For example, somebody might comment on the stats for the Imperial Star Destroyer and mention that crews are too low. Or the Executor class, or the Eclipse, or the Victory, Venator or whatever.

Its a general question but with specific requests for information.

I keep hearing how ISDs are supposed to be able to carry more than 72 TIE fighters, given their size and stuff.

Darth Ruinus, that is exactly the sort of question I created this thread to try and figure out. I hope that others, more experienced in terms of this particular area, come in and we could have some stats.

Another question is whether an Executor Star Destroyer could contain the prefabricated parts to assemble something like these things:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Telgorn_shipyard

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Type_II_ ... epair_yard

The Type II stations have hyperdrives slapped on them for evasive maneuvers? Crazy.

This deals with your general question, but not your specific inquiry for some of the floatier details (this post is rambling and written over two days so I can't gaurantee it makes a heck of a lot of sense)

The WEG weapon power to damage system is vastly superior to the WOTC ones concerning orders of magnitude because of the probability in its outcomes when compared across scenarios . Essentially making it so that a star fighter weapon cannot hit a capital ship unless a force point is used or a very rare combination of chained rolls occurs. (now in practice the capital ship can roll low and the fighter can roll high, but if we look at the tendancy it is skewed tremendously in favor of the weapon or hull with more dice, even then the fighter rolls better it needs to be using torpedoes and roll very high.)

the WEG model is to roll (Hd6) hull+ (Sd6) shields vs damage (Dd6) and compare the difference to determine the type of damage suffered (+3 to actually do any damage, +6 does damage more often, +9 is considered a solid hit damaging a system most of the time) this ends up being a near exponential model between 1D weapons and 15D weapons (with two scale jumps both being a 2D adder, essentially making the scale 1D to 19D when including the eclipse) it boils down to 'what is the probability of N 6 sided dice achieving a result 3 higher than M 6 sided dice.' (I've never derived the equations because of some additional rules about chained rolls, but I have simulated it programatically)


wotc stats are basically hit points with a random adder meaning that the scaling is linear. The WOTC model is 'what is the probability of N M-sided dice exceeding a constant C' and damage being a simple subtraction of another N M roll from a starting total.

the WEG model represents the tie of armor and shielding because it treats particle shielding as an innate 2D of the hull value and the shielding as a user controlled adder to an arc of hull, but at the same time it only simulates burn-through and kinetic failure of the shield mechanism, it does not account for heat death of the vessel very well. Shield regeneration is tied to the subsystems and is not numeric (simply how many dice do you have in an arc and make a repair roll to restore it) Additionally there is no accuracy roll, the shot either does damage or does not.

the WOTC model treats shields as hit points with a damage reduction value (damage-DR=damage to shields) regeneration is a fixed rate per round. Hull is treated as points as well, but in most cases is handled after the shields reach zero.

(IMO an ideal system would use the WEG model, but have some sort of heat tracking mechanism through points)

The main problem beyond the scale of the weaponry of the systems themselves is that in both cases they are very very short combats. when considering capital ships they can essentially evaporate themselves in seconds (4-5 rounds). This leads to odd issues with survival of the vessels in comparison to smaller vessels, essentially an Xwing will last the same amount of time fighting itself as an ISD would fighting itself.

okay enough about the numeric portion of the systems.


WEG and WOTC don't even attempt to count visible guns let alone scale them even based on visual queues so right away their numbers are not useful for an analysis of weapony other than attempting to compare the numbers relative to each other.

consumables, crew counts, hanger space are seemingly randomly assigned, but I am attempting a volumetric analysis of various vessels at fixed densities to see which vessels grossly violate believability. cargo capacity is entirely non-sensical

my main problem is with small ships mounting heavy guns and specific ships having weapon counts that don't fit their hull forms or reactor capacity.

I personally do not have a problem with the dreadnaught mounting 7D guns because of the small number and the dimensional scaling for reactor size is in proportion with an ISD, but a carrack mounting 7D guns or even a strike cruiser is near impossible (either their reactors are more efficient than 100% conversion or they have better energy delivery to the weaponry or their fire rate is greatly reduced) the last option is possible, giving them burn through power, but not sustained fire. This holds true across all of the small vessels, gunships for example would have to have reactors that are 200% efficient and still fire a single one of their 4D turbolasers barrels every 20 seconds. (this actually really depends if reactor surface area is used or reactor volume, but the effect is the same.) the issue here is probably just time dependency of the recycle rate of the guns to the reactor capacity.

as for specific ships...

I take tremendous issue with the recent starships book claiming that Jerec's Vengeance is anything similar to the Executor in capabilities, if nothing else it is a skeletal space frame of a large cruiser that was rebuilt to a custom vessel

Mon Remonda needs to be pushed to a Home One sized vessel at minimum.

MC class cruisers in general need to get heavier weaponry to make any sense and need to be torn out of the 1200m 'every MC is different, but the stats are the same' crap. especially home One-like vessels

THe general shrinkage of the NR vessels (Nebula, MC90, Republic) all of these vessels claimed to be superior or equal to an ISD that don't even have printed stats that meet those claims.

THe entire NEw class pile of worthless fugly crap that ignores the matched hull form variant and the statements that majestic cruisers and warrior gunships are 'capable of engaging a star destroyer' surviving to run away, yes, acting in mixed fleets with heavier vessels, check, singly engaging and not getting slagged in seconds... uh...

Hapan battle dragons are way too underpowered to match any of their described uses as well.

my general opinion is that WEG numbers can be used to get general guidelines of comparison between ships but aren't at all useful for what you are looking for, a lot more can be done with volumetric analysis and simply extrapolating gunnery and hanger requirements for crew, which is possible for smaller vessels, but on larger vessels you basically get tremendous open areas with no use even if you attempt to minimize crew areas....

Most of the stats for ships in the RPGs are silly and have no basis in anything,other than game balance. and the fact that they found their way into canon is horrid.

evillejedi

Thanks for that analysis, and yeah, I agree with it. Your points on the differences between WEG and D20 are certainly well made. As is your point about neither system trying to actually count weapons.

Your mention of a project which will use appearance to try and calculate internal features is an interesting one and one in which I wish you luck on. That, and I hope to see it when your finished.

A direct question for you though, with your knoweldge how many starfighters would you say a starship like an ISD would be able to carry. Something tells me that it would be way more than measly 72.

As I think I mentioned, I am trying to come up with population and capability stats for a story-setting that I am working on. And while I could use the basic numbers listed in the rpg some of it seems unsatisfactory to me. Like crew, troop and fighter numbers as well as weapons.

DrStrangelove

Your right, the numbers used for weapons and speed and stuff relate strictly to the rpg game and should be placed in the same place as the computer game mechanics, though sadly it is not.

I am posting this here to see if these numbers could make sense based on the sizes of the ships in question. So I'm pretty much asking if the numbers below are feasible based on the size of the ships and the rules of science.

They have different numbers from canon because of the modification made to them by their superiors.

25km Super Star Destroyer Starfighter Capacity (this has a carrier role)
*60 Starfighter Wings (4,320 fighters) (on the Throne)
**20 Standard Starfighter Wing
**10 Heavy Assault Wing
**10 Cloaked Assault Wing
**10 Heavy Bomber Wing
**10 Scouting & Reconissance Wing
*10 Standard Ground Support Wings (720 fighters)

5 KM Star Destroyer
*10 Starfighter Wings (720 fighters) (On the carried Crimson)
**5 Standard Starfighter Wing
**2 Heavy Assault Wing
**1 Cloaked Assault Wing
**1 Heavy Bomber Wing
**1 Scouting & Reconissance Wing
*5 Standard Ground Support Wings (360 fighters)

Allegiance-class Starfighter Capacity
*2 Starfighter Wings (144 fighters)
**1 Standard TIE Wing
**1 Advanced TIE Wing
*Support Ship Unit

ISD Starfighter Capacity
*10 Starfighter Wings (720 fighters)
**5 Standard Starfighter Wing
**2 Heavy Assault Wing
**1 Cloaked Assault Wing
**1 Heavy Bomber Wing
**1 Scouting & Reconissance Wing
*Support Ship Unit
*2 Standard Ground Support Wings (144 fighters)

VSD Starfighter Capacity
*5 Starfighter Wings (360 fighters)
**3 Standard Starfighter Wings
**1 Advanced Starfighter Wing
**1 Scouting & Reconissance Wing
*Support Ship Unit
*1 Standard Ground Support Wing (72)

with the exception of the prefab garrision here is one possible hangar layout (I know it doesn't match the cutaway view, but the cutaway leaves no room for any transports

http://warlords.swrebellion.com/junk/isddeckplan.jpg

http://warlords.swrebellion.com/junk/po ... layout.jpg

the load out shown here
1x modified corvette (for reference)
4x assault transports
2x assault shuttles
8x escort/lambda shuttles
15x stormtrooper transports
20x landing barges (these may be a bit big, but they probably need to be)
2x escort transports
8x assault gunboats
4x skipray blast boats
16x combat utility vehicles
12x sentinel landing craft
16x tie shuttles
56x tie bombers
384x tie l/n or interceptors

The framing represents the area that could be dedicated to hangar space after structure and armor would be accounted for (it is only about 1/50th the volume of the ship or about 3e6 m^3, even here only about 1.5e6 M^3 is actually used for decking launchers or ships the rest could be for workshops, equipment and other ship functions.

with exception of the rack launches and landing barges this allows every ship a clear exit into interior hangars or directly into open space, it allows recovery space and routing for the rack launchers as well as leaving 3 racks open for maintenance.


if you are going for pure star fighter capacity I have no issues with that (except the cloak fighters...) but anyway the main consumer of space is support craft. The VSD would probably have a tough time with 360 fighters in any practical arrangement and then probably only fit 2 shuttles. the other ships you could configure much higher because of the insane volumes but they would be limited by issues with traffic control and routing.

I'm still analyzing your post, because I find it very interesting and quite informative. So, yeah, I am looking at the numbers and image closely.

The cloak fighters are related to TIE Phantoms and they are here because the fleet that these ships come from are like top of the line in authority and expense. Thats a fluff point.

I didn't write down support ships numbers yet because I was planning on doing that later. I needed to do some research to see what the basic number is currently, so that way I can make the numbers make sense in my updated and modified version.

Using the basics of what I wrote, what changes would you make and how would you organize the Support Unit (my term for the non starfighters being held).

Your opinion is very much wanted.

it really depends on the role and specific mission of the vessel. Obviously you could cram a star destroyer full of assault shuttles and storm trooper transports rather than walker barges to facilitate boarding operations on orbital platforms and other ships.

You would be hard pressed to cram more walker transports or landing craft into an ISD without putting them in the open hanger (probably could ferry another 50 or so easily) but planetary occupation missions would have to be launched from dedicated troop transports.

The ISD is a very multirole vessel so its complement reflects that, in normal sector patrol its large transport count makes sense, multiple shuttles and support vessels may be deployed to cover many worlds in different operations in a single day. In pure fleet operations (like oversector commands) they would probably carry fewer support vessels and more heavy bombers allowing dedicated vessels more suited to the landing craft role.

In the case of an ISD it isn't carrying walker barges to capture a civilized planet, it is carrying them to make an Imperial presence on a backwater world or to eliminate a specific target on a world that is not practical to strike at with orbital or aerial bombardment and that is not hostile enough to immediately deter clunky transports dropping from orbit.

I would think traffic routing is the biggest constraint on support ships onboard. In fleet operation environments the deck may be clear of transports to facilitate rapid fighter deployment and recovery in combat or to pick up craft from disabled vessels or vessels that left combat for other reasons.

Vessels like the Allegiance and Tector would have both limited shuttle space and limited star fighter space because of launch and recovery rate issues from their small service hangers. One possible repercussion is that these vessels would carry higher survivability fighters like the advanced, defender and gunboats in fewer numbers.

On larger vessels the real constraint of support ships would be the practical use of having them onboard. If you carry around hundreds of walker barges, shuttles, transports etc, what are you going to use them for in a tour of duty? Each smaller vessel needs crew, fuel, replacement parts, maintenance and operational readiness checks just sitting there. Additionally this is a lot of material that is at risk sitting parked there if the ship is lost in combat or is pulled out of service for maintenance.
In a deployment the dedicated transports, tenders and service vessels would probably park a few minutes or hours away in interstellar space waiting for specific mission goals to be completed or as a rendezvous point for vessels exiting combat. The transports would only be needed once their odds of insertion are relatively high.

A very large star fighter complement would be best served through dedicated carriers like the one in Giel's armada or vessels with massive bays like the Executor simply because of the huge hanger's ability to deploy and recover the fighters at a extremely high rate.

I think there is room for Marine fighting transports and carriers, designed to make beachheads under fire (like the Acclamator, though I'd not make it actually land).

I've always wondered about what resources the empire had to employ to subdue planets that didn't capitulate to the new order that couldn't be conveniently bombarded. Until a full deployment of sector deepdocks was done what did the logistics arm of the imperial navy look like? the modular taskforce cruiser seems like something that should have been around since the republic era (in fact would support the smaller and more mobile republic peacekeeping duties better)

The main roles we would have to fill...

fleet tenders (mobile repair yards, supply ships, armored fuel tankers, munitions transports)

Troop ships and light force deployment

Hospital/evacuation vessels

communication/command and control vessels (when a warship isn't needed)

heavy material lift transports (for dropping prefab factories and massive equipment)

armed assault transports (acclamator, but there has to be others)

we have some references to the Alliance/NR support mechanism including the pelagia (ancient troop ship that is very odd looking) Hospital vessels and mon cal evac cruisers all of these probably in the 1km range.

I would imagine that there would be surplus left over from the Clone War. Much of it could have been sold off or refitted, but the Empire would still need a large influx of vessels.

fleet tenders (mobile repair yards, supply ships, armored fuel tankers, munitions transports)
heavy material lift transports (for dropping prefab factories and massive equipment)
Hospital/evacuation vessels

These could be handled by civilian ships and companies, and vessels could be converted and crewed by naval personnel for areas where enemy action could be expected. The SW galaxy has been space faring for thousands of years, not much need to redesign the wheel, just requisition and build.

communication/command and control vessels (when a warship isn't needed)
armed assault transports (acclamator, but there has to be others)
Troop ships and light force deployment

These would obviously need to be kept under military control, but could be a mix of converted civilian and purpose built vessels.

evillejedi wrote:I've always wondered about what resources the empire had to employ to subdue planets that didn't capitulate to the new order that couldn't be conveniently bombarded.

The Empire deploys an Assault Fleet when needed to assault planets. First, Superiority forces will clear enemy starships out of the system. If there is a defensive shield up, a Torpedo Sphere will be brought in to disable it.

The Assault Fleet consists of 2 Transport Forces and 2 Force Escorts, averaging 376 ships.

Each Transport force has 2 Troop Squadrons, a Heavy Squadron and a Light Squadron. The Troops Squadrons have 2 Troop Lines, an Attack Line and a Skirmish line. The Troop lines have 2 transport vessels and 2 Strike frigates or equivalent escorts.

Each Transport vessel can carry a full Corps level command, for a total of 16 corps within the Assault Fleet, forming 4 Armies, each transported by a Troop Squadron.

Page 101 describes a Sector Army as including all the troops in an Assault Fleet, 775k troopers, 1.18m personnel total, 67k repulsor craft and 14k heavy tanks.

so taking those numbers I come out with an interesting observation

2 forces in a fleet with 2 squadrons in a force, 2 lines in a squadron and 2 transports in a line equaling 16 transport vessels

this would mean on average 74K personnel, 4187 repuslor lift vehicles and 875 heavy vehicles on each transport.

rough ratios to get scaling of the space needed would be

4m^3 per person
16 m^3 per light vehicle (average from troop transports to speeder bikes)
and 200 m^3 per heavy vehicle (walkers, heavy tanks)

this requires ~ 540,000 m^3 which is something that easily fits into an acclamator or modular taskforce cruiser. so in reality other than ultra heavy lift vessels the transport needs are easily taken care of by known vessels.

To make a couple clarifications, they actually rarely deploy more than a squadron in a system. It takes specific permission from a Moff, a Grand Moff or the Emperor for more then a squadron to be in a single system. The normal 4 line troop squadron could be augmented with 2 add'l troop lines , an extra attack line, and a heavy attack line and it still counts as a single squadron.

Also, there are 4 types of Corps:
Line (48.5k troopers; 2599 repulsorlifts; 371 heavy tanks)
Armored (48.2k; 5128; 1219)
Mobile (48.5k; 5548; 1113)
Assault (48.4k; 3385; 795)

One each Corps is grouped into the Army command. 4 Army commands in a Sector Army.