StarDestroyer.Net BBS

In view of the idiocy that seems likely to result from the latest KT effort- as a result of people reading it and having brain embolisms if nothing else- I present a modest alternative, culled and worked up from random background notes.

Some of this is probably wrong and a lot of the rest is indubitably crazy, but here we go anyway.


General Random Notes;
The republic fleet must have been politically hamstrung. Most of the people whom it should have been shooting at were in it’s chain of command, or at least had political influence. For that matter, most of the struggles that disfigured the late Republic were probably driven by renegade, seized or simply more loyal to home than high ideal- elements of the Republic Starfleet. Fortunately, many of it’s larger warships were in mothballs, and unfit for duty without major reconstruction when they came out.
New construction held the line until the old ships could be reactivated, and then took most of the offensive jobs, initially(?) with clone crews. What were the ordinary people of the galaxy supposed to be doing while their destiny was being fought out over their heads? What are they, sheep?

Basically, we get four or five generations-
old republic, deep past; leftovers from the last war and what peacekeeping, police, planetary engineering, search and rescue elements the politicians thought the navy needed.
Republic, terminal phase; the ships built, some by the republic but most by smaller parts of it, like the early Separatist fleet, built to protect their users from, or for that matter exploit, the decline of the Republic.
Height of the Clone Wars; the ships built to fight in the clone war, some of them survived into the aftermath.
Post war Imperial; the ships built to enforce and protect the New Order.
Civil war Imperial; ships built during the period of the Rebellion and after.

The actual technology changes little, if at all; I have to admit I don’t believe in the assumption of social and political stasis. It seems both unfeasibly dull, far more likely to be the result of real opposing pressures cancelling out than actual peace, and not justifiable in terms of the characters we meet. Peaked out scientific stasis does seem feasible, possibly through floods of data- there’s simply so much to know, that it is practically impossible within a human lifetime to comprehend enough of it to find somewhere new to start meaningful research on.
In any case, wasn’t the original greek meaning of ‘stasis’ something much closer to cyclic turbulence, more like a state of too much change destroying long term progress and achievement than a state of no change forbidding it?

Anyway, just because there’s no difference in the limits of the possible doesn’t mean there isn’t a vast variation in the actual. Mainly in falling short- poor usage, sloppy design, etc.
An Imperator is a vastly more powerful and effective ship than a Dreadnaught, but not because of any advance in technology. Mainly the political will was there, to make the investment and commission a bigger and better ship.
Speaking of which, the EU loves to pick holes in the Imperial- class; my own personal retcon is that under severe political pressure, they were rushed into service before the design was properly complete, and yes, there were a lot of bugs and problems. Almost all of them would have been identified and eliminated as the ships went in for refit.

‘Superlaser’ is a weird- sounding name to apply to as low powered as a 300GW beam, like the LAAT’s turrets. One from the star wars wiki seems to describe them better as ‘composite beam’ weapons- composite or continuous, the abbreviation’s the same. CB lasers are inherently more useful- not that they necessarily get more killing ability for their energy input, but that they put more energy out faster, and continuously so you can ‘hose’ a smaller target, or burn through a larger ship’s shields. They’re also suitable for heavy weapon mounts- overcoming the individual barrel size problem. So at what point do they appear? Heavy destroyer? Cruiser? Apparently CIS Transports had them.

Even the ‘bayless’ designs would have troop complements, if only to defend against enemy boarders. Their main problem is probably logistics and timing; Resupplying ships like the Allegiance, with crews of tens of thousands, one or two shuttle loads at a time must be a painfully slow process.

Area; assuming a thousand sectors, Sector Group has to cover at least a thousand inhabited planets- members of the sector representation?- probably as many as fifty thousand; and how many stars? What’s the astrography of a sector? If it’s an even share of the galaxy, which we know it isn’t, that could be four hundred million stars. Some sectors will be much smaller, and some much larger to make up for that.

There’s a limit to how easily even a galactic economy can cope with ships that cost as much as a star system’s gross domestic product. Long range fixed sensors can achieve a lot, but the first requirement of an Imperial Starfleet that even pretends to fulfil it’s mandate must be to monitor space. That means doing at least sensor flybys of the hundreds of millions of officially barren systems that an enemy, or a Rebellion, could exploit, which means a very, very large number of probably very small ships.
I reckon a two, even three or four, tier system; patrol units spot trouble, report it to larger units who go and deal with it, if it’s too big for them they pass it to the next level up. Star Destroyers are probably the third or fourth tier.

It cannot be efficient to micro- manage an entire galaxy; at some point, the system has to default to local responsibility. Planetary defence has to be based on what the planet or planetary system can afford. They choose their units from those approved by the Starfleet, are probably regularly inspected for compliance- and competence- by the Starfleet, but composition and manning must be a local responsibility.

Similarly, there’s no reason to assume a Sector Group is any more a cookie- cutter, interchangeable organisation than a sector is. They would be mad if the size of the sector group didn’t vary with what there was to oversee and defend; it makes no sense to give a fifty billion population industrial world the same oversight as a three-researchers-and-a-cranky-droid jungle planet.
The limit to how much a Sector Group can be is not financial; the money can go anywhere it needs to. The upper limit is probably that of yard space. Bigger ships like Star Destroyers can go back to KDY or Rendili, but for repair, refit and resupply, local forces have to do that locally.

Service lives and costs; can the Imperial Starfleet afford to retire anything? Once it already exists, unless it’s so dangerously flawed as to be pointless to operate, it’s better to keep a ship in service than break it up for scrap. With the real world’s relatively fragile, relatively highly stressed technology- I reckon a modern warship spends far more of it’s time, virtually all the time it’s under way, closer to the limits of it’s materials than an SW ship does- the ratio of purchasing to running cost is even higher, up from ten to one to maybe fifty to one. It only makes sense to retire ships that are either damaged beyond economic repair or you know you’re not going to need for a long, long time.


Ship speed; if I fall in with Dr. Saxton’s theories on Hyperspace, and I don’t know enough on the subject to contradict him, then it would seem to be possible to manoeuvre, probably very counterintuitively, in hyperspace. That probably means that a ship’s performance in hyperspace is much more closely tied to it’s sublight performance than the West End and WotC stats, and even some relatively respected parts of the EU, suggest- the hyperdrive just translates you across the light barrier.

On the subject of ratings, it’s highly possible that there are two rating systems- BoSS’s (Bureau of Ships and Services, the Old Republic’s version of the DMV or DoT), which rates ships by results, speed as a benchmark against an average (the x2, x3, x0.5, etc system), and the Imperial Starfleet’s, which uses the “point somethingorother past lightspeed”- which presumably makes sense to in universe physicists. Fractions of what? Energy bled off for tachyonic speed?
(Han’s other comment- on Alderaan, “that’s impossible, it’d take a thousand ships with more firepower than-” I can only assume he’s talking about battlewagons, Praetors and upward.)

Fighter theory;
The problem isn’t that the TIE is cheap, but that the Empire cannot take full advantage of that. Above a certain value- say a million creds- put an equal value of TIE fighters and Rebel fighters against each other, and who wins? I’d reckon the TIEs, at least sixty- forty. Cards are easy to tear up, yes? One sheet out of a phone book- trivial. A pack of cards or a phone book- much harder.
The TIE’s best defence is the numbers it’s supposed to come in, and while a TIE is a light, cheap hotrod, a squadron of TIEs should be a serious threat to anyone. Actually, their guns are towards the upper end of fighter power; they should smash through the thin shields of Actis and Nimbus types, surge overload and instant kill, and were probably designed to.

I would guess that the limit on the number of TIE fighters available is not cost, or production, but training; the Empire can probably turn out more fighters than it can find suitable pilots to fly them. So many places it has to garrison, too- I would reckon there are tens of billions of TIE/ln out there. When, if ever, do they get the chance to concentrate against the enemy? The proportion of Imperial forces that get the chance to go out looking for trouble, to outnumber, swarm and slaughter their enemies the way the TIE is supposed to, is probably worryingly low.

With the larger ships, simply to prevent confusion, minimise attrition from accidents, carry guns big enough to be of measurable use, it has to start being better at some point to load up with small ships rather than actual fighters. An Imperator can’t benefit from this probably, but for, say, a Sector class cruiser, a bay-full of IPVs and customs frigates could be a very healthy alternative.

Rebels;
I don’t like the lower estimates of Rebel strength, that they were outnumbered a thousand to one, and suchlike. The politics of it don’t make sense. A 99.9% approval rating for Palpatine? Neither does the seven- to- one estimate.
Much as I would prefer a real, honest-to-Asimov cosmic dustup- you know, Star Wars- the Rebellion just doesn’t have the basis for it. ‘Star sporadic guerrilla action’ doesn’t have the same ring, does it?
Assume, for the sake of argument, that the Empire is more or less a good thing. It brings the law, order, peace and stability so spectacularly absent from the latter days of the Old Republic. Who is there who wouldn’t like it?

Criminals, for a start. As embedded as organised crime seemed to be in the higher echelons of the Old Republic, it could be a generational project to dig it out. Vader made a good start by blowing Xizor to fallout, at least.
Idealists. People who look to what the Old Republic claimed to stand for, not to what it actually lay down and let walk all over it.
Idiots and chancers, like most of those who live on the Outer Rim.

To believe that these elements make up only 0.1% of the population is to be living in Cloud Cuckoo Land. I can easily believe that the Rebellion, in an honest poll, would reach a galactic public approval rating of 15-20%. The honesty of the voters might be questionable, though.
Turning that support, or at least dislike of Empire, into practical military power is not going to happen on anything like a 1 to 1 basis. A lot of them are basically pacifists, for a start; they have relatively little industry, for a more major problem.

I would estimate, in terms of pure numbers, the Rebellion has 2%- 5% of the military strength of the Empire. Somewhere from 500 to 1250 Mon Cal cruisers, for instance. In terms of quality of equipment, halve those numbers. Rogue elements- the people the Rebels are trying to recruit, independent stellar nations and economic blocs like the Corporate Sector, might make another 20-25% by weight, lower than that by quality.
Potentially dubious elements of the Imperial fleet, on the other hand- when you get right down to it, the Imperial Starfleet’s only credible opponent is itself.

Worth noting, though; the Emperor himself, in his identity as Darth Sidious, masterminded the development of a secret military force capable of challenging the existing order. In fact, he did it twice. Granted none of the rebel alliance leadership are operators of his calibre, it’s still possible.
Elements of the Starfleet not directly engaged against the rebellion still have a part to play- in deterring it. There are over eighty worlds per Imperator, at least, probably as many as two thousand; they must be in perpetual motion, showing the flag, deterring criminals and lawbreakers, intimidating would be revolutionaries.


A career open to talent? Promotion and patronage in the Imperial navy

So- a lot of the sources suggest that many families of the aristocracy have traditions of naval service going back generations, sons succeeding fathers in the Starfleet. I am unconvinced.
For one thing, the top canon suggests there simply wasn’t enough Republic fleet to go around for them to serve in.

The late-Republic, Clone Wars to early Empire fleet grows so much, so quickly, from a glorified police and search-and-rescue outfit, unfit to do much about the endemic brushfire wars of the disintegrating Republic even if the political will existed, to a galaxy- bestriding titan, that there seems far more likely to be a complete breakdown of tradition and continuity than a smooth evolution.

Massive growth is usually accompanied by severe growing pains; where were the men competent to handle this to come from? Even neuro- programmed clones can only be trained to the state of the art, and if the state of the art is thin and underdeveloped, then… There is simply not enough skill to go around.
The Clone Wars era Republic Starfleet is all too likely to have learned a lot of it’s craft as it went along, trial and error- the errors meaning lost men, lost ships, lost battles.

Promotion, for those with distinguished pre- war records and those with natural ability, is likely to be extremely rapid- but also inherently uncertain. The men are not trained to high standards of discipline, the officers not trained to high standards of command; it is going to be a raw, unprofessional fleet.

The severity of later Imperial discipline is believable as a reaction to the chaotic early days, or at least as an excuse for it- so who’s going to rise, in these circumstances?

The most appropriate historical model I can think of is the French Revolutionary armies, where meteoric rises- and falls- were a daily occurrence and the service could afford to turn away no-one, but was too poorly administered- and staff officers to administer it need to be trained too, a long and complicated process- to identify talent in any coherent way.

A great deal of promotion was self- promotion, and it helped a lot to have friends, especially political friends. You could do a great deal of harm to your career by crossing someone else who had more than you, though.

In such an environment, especially with existing political interference with the armed forces, the New Order party is going to have a field day.
None of this seems very Geonosian, does it? The clones could not have made up the numerical majority of the Republic armies and Starfleet, but they must have made up the professional glue that held them together. For a long period at the start to middle of the Clone War, it seems more inherently likely to be clone officers and noncoms leading live-born rank and file rather than the other way around.

Chains of patronage and dependence are likely to form, some of them the remnants of old Republican loyalties, a lot more of them tied to the social structure of the day. The existing powers- the names and numbers are likely to have a field day- are going to grab as much of the Starfleet for themselves as they can.
They're certainly going to go for contracts and tenders, even if they don't necessarily want to get shoved into the firing line.


I may be being too conservative with the character limit- this is likely to be a three parter, I'll put this up now.

Formations;
basically, this all started when I tried to put together battle groups using the Imperial Sourcebook. Samey, poorly optimised groups, thinking small and trying to build big from that, too little variety. The more I work with it, the less respect I have for it- then there were the ship types of SWTC to try to fit in. I decided to start with task- optimised squadrons and use them as the building blocks.


Starting from the beginning,
Prewar Old Republic Sector Fleet;
Heavy destroyer flagship, four to six either light destroyers (1-2) or heavy frigates, six medium (Dreadnaught, Neutron Star or Demolisher), six light (Fulgor, Moderator) frigates, six heavy (Quaestor, Servator, Carrack), twelve medium (Bayonet, Vagor, Oppugnator), twenty- two light (Gunship, CR90) corvettes

Early Clone Wars Republic Fleet;
Heavy destroyer, four light destroyers- no more than one Venator, and that only half the time- eight heavy frigates, four Acclamator and four Ecliptic usual, four medium frigates, usually Dreads or Demolishers (Neutron Stars relegated to cargo variants), six light frigates, mix of Fulgor and Moderator, ten heavy corvettes- four Carrack, two each Quaestor, Servator, 1000- twelve medium corvettes, eight Vagor usually, four either Oppugnator or Bayonet, twenty- five light corvettes, usually DP20s and CR90s

Late Clone Wars Republic Fleet;
Three combat divisions,
each Venator, one or two Karu, Excrucior or Victory- major combat unit, one Acclamator and two or three Ecliptic or Meridian- assault and manoeuvre element, four Neutron Star logistic support frigates, three Servator, three Carrack, six Bayonet- scout and escort, four Gunship or CR90- courier


Imperial Starfleet;

Patrol squadron; the bread and butter, surveillance and control work of the fleet, observe and react to a large volume of space; the most bottom- heavy formation in the fleet, but probably also the most common
Three sweep (“web”) lines, one reaction (“spider”) line

Each sweep line; Nebulon B, Vagor, two DP20 Gunship, three Rendili corvette, four CR90 corvette

Reaction line divides into two elements; investigation and response
Investigation; Escort Carrier, KDY1000, two Bayonet, two Marauder, three CR90
Response; Demolisher, Interdictor, Servator, two Carracks

Patrol squadron totals; one medium, two light frigates; four heavy, eight medium, thirty- two light corvettes.
Carriage; 29 fighter squadrons, 7 batallions, one excess platoon


Escort squadron; intended to exercise close, positive control over a small area
Three escort lines, each divides into close escort element and distant escort element, one support line

Close escort (split up among multiple convoys); Dreadnaught, Quaestor, KDY1000, Escort Carrier, three Nebulon-B, four CR90 or rendili corvettes
Distant escort- Strike, three Carrack, three DP20 Gunship or Marauder

Support; Ecliptic, two Vindicator, three Fulgur

Escort squadron totals; three heavy, six medium, six light frigates; fifteen heavy, nine medium, twenty-one light corvettes
Carriage; 46 fighter squadrons, army corps- less two companies


Assault Squadron; invasion force, escort and proximate support force, this is the mk 1 planetcracker

Divides into four lines, beach-head, troop, logistic and support

Beach-head line; two Acclamator, two Dreadnought, Escort Carrier, KDY1000, two Nebulon B
Troop line; four Evakmar-KDY Transports, Vindicator, Demolisher, two Servator, four Nebulon-B, four Lancer or Rendili corvette
Logistic line; two cargo Neutron Star, two Star galleon, four Action VI, one Super Transport XI
Support line; two Ecliptic, two Strike, two KDY1000

Assault squadron totals;
5 heavy, 5 medium, 1 light frigates, 5 heavy, 6 medium, 4 light corvettes, one huge, four large, four medium non or semi combatant,
Carriage; 30 light fighter, 37 2/3 fighter squadron, assuming no reinforcements in the logistic line 5 full Corps and one extra division, 7 companies understrength
N.B.; the Evakmar-KDY transport is a corps level transport, I would actually prefer a battle group- stuff it, divisional carrier. Two reasons; WEG, where the things originate, basically had an Imperial standard division as very little other than infantry. The given Order of Battle just screamed ‘kill me’. Given a choice between four of those and an armoured division, no contest. So give the thing one armoured division, not four of cannon fodder. This is the choice, because of volume of equipment. The other reason is that I reckon the biggest single bottleneck in planetary assault is drop ship capacity. I’d rather have a divisional transport that can enter atmosphere and ground, walkers walk and repulsors fly out, than a corps- level transport restricted to repeated shuttle runs.
N.B. ps; ‘division’ rather than ‘battle group’; I want to keep ‘battle group’ as a separate term for an improvised or composite force crossing normal organisational boundaries. Kampfgruppe.


Pursuit Squadron; or Light Destroyer Force, this is a local hunting group, probably the commonest type of heavy formation

Divides into four lines, 2 recon, one sweep, one strike

Recon line; Ecliptic or Meridian, Demolisher, 2 Strike, 2 Quaestor, 3 Carrack, 3 Bayonet, 4 Marauder
Sweep line; Demolisher, 2 Escort Carrier, Quaestor, 2 KDY1000, two Nebulon-B, three Marauder, four CR90
Strike line; Imperator, 2 fast light destroyers (Venator, Arrogant, Spoliator, Vic-III), 2 Fulgor, 2 Carrack, 2 Bayonet

Pursuit squadron totals; 1 Imperator, 2 light destroyers, 2 heavy, 3 medium, 7 light frigates, 10 heavy, 10 medium, 15 light corvettes
Carriage; varies widely depending on presence of Venator; without, 63 squadrons, 2 divisions and regiment 6 platoons short; with, 66 heavy and 32 light fighter squadrons, 3 divisions and additional 6 platoon short regiment


Enforcement Squadron; the standard defensive and area control element, sometimes used as a dumping ground for the slower and older ships assigned to the fleet, mainly conducts positional warfare;

Three blocking, one counterattack line

Blocking line; Acclamator or Meridian flag, at least two Dreadnaught, one more Dreadnaught or Strike (Strikes progressively replacing Dreadnoughts), two Moderator, three Quaestor, two class 1000, four Oppugnator, Vagor or Nebulon-B, six Marauders, Gunships or CR90 corvettes

Counterattack line; two slow destroyers (Karu, Excrucior, Vic-1, Vic-II), two strike frigates, Interdictor, two Moderator, three Servator, three Carrack, two Bayonet, six Marauder

Enforcement Squadron totals; 2 light destroyers, 3 heavy, 11 medium, 9 light frigates, 18 heavy, 18 medium, 24 light corvettes
Carriage; assuming two Meridian and an Acclamator, 107 squadrons, Army Corps plus extra 3 regiments, batallion

Light Hunter Squadron;
Essentially based around a heavy frigate group, this is a template pattern for an aggressive search and destroy force, more likely to be found in regional and oversector forces without territorial responsibilities than sector groups.

Strike line, pursuit line, 2 recon lines

Strike line; Meridian, Acclamator, 2 Ecliptic, 2 Broadside
Pursuit line; 2 Centax, 2 Fulgur, 3 Carrack
Recon line; Verberor, Comitor, 2 Bayonet, 4 Assassin or CR90

Totals; 4 heavy, 6 medium, 4 light frigates; 3 heavy, 4 medium, 8 light corvettes
Carriage;

Battle Division;
The standard battle squadron divides into divisions, each basically one capital ship with it’s associated escort;
Usually one light cruiser- City class with a battleship, Senator class with a battlecruiser-
a heavy destroyer, most likely Allegiance or Proelium,
and four line destroyers; usual combination is one Dominator or Dictator, three Imperator;
an outer shell, scouting and interdiction group, frigate- based, possibly equivalent to a light hunter squadron


Fleet Destroyer Squadron;
Usually an administrative unit, assigned to a sector group then broken up to flagship light forces;
Composition varies, but the standard deployment is a City or Senator class light cruiser flag, two heavy destroyers- Ordinator, Proelium or Shockwave, the Invincibles are largely obsolete and the Allegiance heavy reserve; at least one Dominator or Dictator, at least one Retexor, usually six Imperator- I or II.


Regional Command;
Assuming that a region constitutes 20 sectors, establishment would be likely to be
1 Executor, command unit, 3 Mandator, strike force leaders,
battle squadron- two Aquila or anon-III carrier, six Prolocutor, anon-II or IV
battle cruiser squadron; six battlecruisers
heavy cruiser squadron-eight Starburst and/or Sector class ships
light cruiser squadron- four divisions, each three City, Senator or Admiral class
fourteen fleet destroyer squadrons

Imperial Sourcebook standard formations

Light Squadron (A);
Two attack lines, skirmish line, recon line; average supposedly 20 to 30 ships

Attack Line;
Varies, more powerful ships= lower numbers, nominal 3 medium frigates, 4 light frigates, 5 heavy corvettes, or 6 medium corvettes

Skirmish Line; 4 to 20 small combat starships (stellar vagueness levels, guys); predominantly corvettes- old scale, actually meaning CR90; relatively limited numbers- one in three to five- of Assassin, DP20, Marauder, possibly one in ten Bayonet or 1000

Recon Line; two to four “light cruisers”- lower scale, usually meaning Carrack, Bayonet, class 1000- modified for increased sensors and thrust at the expense of weaponry.
Reactor power seems to be the key to both these things, and given the same reactor power, you gain thrust by either fitting more engines to use the reactor to its limit, which shouldn’t physically get in the way of the guns in most designs and means the design was sloppy if it didn’t do that already, or losing weight- how heavy are TL mounts anyway? If they are heavy, implying neutronium hydraulic shock absorbers, that might work.

Totals; amorphous, say Strike, Dreadnaught, carrier version Neutron Star, Interdictor, 3 Escort Carrier, 2 Carrack, three stripped down Carrack and three stripped Bayonet, one Bayonet, one Class 1000, two DP20, eight Corellian Corvette-
3 medium frigate, 4 light frigate, 6 heavy corvette (3 mod), 4 med corvette (3 mod), 10 light corvette

Light Squadron (B)
2 recon lines, skirmish line, pursuit line

Skirmish Line; 4 to 20 small combat starships; predominantly corvettes- old scale, actually meaning CR90; relatively limited numbers- one in three to five- of Assassin, DP20, Marauder, possibly one in ten Bayonet or 1000

Recon Line; two to four “light cruisers”- lower scale, usually meaning Carrack, Bayonet, class 1000- modified for increased sensors and thrust at the expense of weaponry.

Pursuit line; 4-10 ships with reasonable speed- the usual suspects, plus faster subtypes of corvette, incl. Customs

Totals; 4 mod Carrack, 4 mod Bayonet, 2 class 1000, 4 Marauder, 4 Assassin, 10 CR90, 4 Rendili corvette
6 heavy corvette (4 mod), 4 med corvette (all mod), 22 light corvette

Heavy Squadron (A)
Two heavy attack lines, attack line, recon line

Heavy attack line; from four to eight ships, none smaller than a light cruiser- old scale; this really means med corv and upwards, potentially all the way to light destroyer

Attack Line;
Varies, more powerful ships= lower numbers, nominal 3 medium frigates, 4 light frigates, 5 heavy corvettes, or 6 medium corvettes

Recon Line; two to four “light cruisers”- lower scale, usually meaning Carrack, Bayonet, class 1000- modified for increased sensors and thrust at the expense of weaponry. I really am starting to get fed up with this idea. How many of the Starfleet’s light cruisers were supposed to be of this bizarre customised configuration, that appears in no stats anywhere at all? When something becomes this routine, it isn’t an exception any more, and should have had more attention paid to it.

Totals; 8-16 ships from the heavy attack lines- heavy frigate flag, 4 med- Demolisher, Broadside, Strike, Dread-, 4 light frigates- Interdictor, Comitor, Fulgor, Moderator-, 6 Servator, 1000 or Carrack,
2 mod Carrack, 2 mod Bayonet, recon
Strike, Escort Carrier, Servator, two 1000 from the attack line

Heavy Squadron (B)
Three heavy attack lines, skirmish line

Heavy attack line; from four to eight ships, none smaller than a light cruiser- old scale; this really means med corv and upwards, potentially all the way to light destroyer

Skirmish Line; 4 to 20 small combat starships; predominantly corvettes- old scale, actually meaning CR90; relatively limited numbers- one in three to five- of Assassin, DP20, Marauder, possibly one in ten Bayonet or 1000

Totals; probably one destroyer, most likely Victory-class, possibly Excrucior, Karu, other light. Assuming averages, 1 heavy frigate, likely Ecliptic or Vindicator, 4 mediums, Centax, Demolisher, Strike, Dreadnaught types, 3 light frigate, probably Interdictor and two Comitor, 6 heavy corvette, two Carrack, four Class 1000 or Servator, 4 medium corvette, probably Bayonet, 12 light corvette, three Assassin, nine CR90

Battle Squadron
Imperator- class destroyer (battle line), two attack lines, pursuit line

Attack Line;
Varies, more powerful ships= lower numbers, nominal 3 medium frigates, 4 light frigates, 5 heavy corvettes, or 6 medium corvettes

Pursuit line; 4-10 ships with reasonable speed- the usual suspects, plus faster subtypes of corvette, incl. Customs

Totals, typical example; line destroyer, Verberor, Interdictor, 2 Comitor, 3 Carrack, attack line 2- Servator, 2 class 1000, 3 Rendili corvette, 3 Marauder, 2 Bayonet

Troop Squadron;
2 troop lines, attack line, skirmish line

Troop line; two Evakmar-KDY corps level transports, two escorts, nominal Verberor, possible Demolisher or Dreadnaught

Attack Line;
Varies, more powerful ships= lower numbers, nominal 3 medium frigates, 4 light frigates, 5 heavy corvettes, or 6 medium corvettes

Skirmish Line; 4 to 20 small combat starships; predominantly corvettes- old scale, actually meaning CR90; relatively limited numbers- one in three to five- of Assassin, DP20, Marauder, possibly one in ten Bayonet or 1000

Typically, 4 transports, 4 Verberor, Demolisher, Comitor, 2 Moderator, 2 Carrack, 2 class 1000, 3 DP20, 12 CR90 Corvette



Build numbers, take 2;

All right, what about a more generous take on the vessels of the Starfleet?
Start with a dead average sector. One thousand sector senate member worlds, populations in the hundreds of millions at least, up to the trillions; fifty thousand non- member worlds, colonies in the political sense, populations potentially in the billions but rather more likely to be tens of millions at best- the theory being that they are colonies precisely because they are smaller, less populated and less important. How much tax revenue do these people generate? How much of it goes on the military, and how many starships can you buy for it?

This is another argument against economic stasis; the Star Wars galaxy is more or less a free market. That means competition, change, liquidity, striving for advantage, turbulence. I don’t even know if there are hard numbers available for the imperial economy, never mind what they are. Most of the price details that do exist come from role playing sources, and they are maddeningly vague, the simple ‘not available for sale’ driving me completely and totally bonkers. (As if you needed to be told that…) For everything really interesting, there’s no known price tag.

I’m going to take a stab at it, and in the interests of being shot down in flames, here’s the basics.

How much is available? Well, looking at the prices of consumer electronics, vehicles, gadgets and gizmos (what wouldn’t you give for one edition of the Coruscant branch of the IEEE’s newsletter?)- I’m going to ballpark the average annual income at 25,000 credits. It’s probably an underestimate, but shouldn’t be more than a factor-of-3 out each way. Either that, or this stuff was built to last, price tags far higher than earth equivalent.
I used to know what mean, mode and median meant, but have forgotten. This is probably artificially inflated by those on higher incomes- the actual, bulk of the population once you take off the top ten percent, average is probably closer to twenty or seventeen and a half thousand. Tax rate- on average, high but not unjustifiably so. There will be places where punitive taxation is exacted, but by and large, the Empire returns the infrastructure and domestic peace to make a, say, average 30% rate seem not unreasonable.
Assume (wow, assumptions) 33% of that is military in nature.

So,. On average, the imperial military gets 2500 credits out of each citizen.
How many citizens? Again, wild ass (wild haggis?) guesswork, tune as you see fit. One hundred quadrillion people across fifty million worlds, that produces a hundred trillion people in a fifty thousand world sector.
That’s assuming there actually are a thousand sectors. Counting senators, the number may be two to four times that. That hundred trillion estimate gives a military taxation yield of 250 quadrillion credits per sector.

And the purchasing power of the credit is? Strange, actually. Some things that should be relatively cheap- datapads- are actually pretty pricy, some things which should be more expensive aren’t- amazingly cheap ray guns- and, in general, things that go boom could stand having another zero added to their price. The average person could buy a TIE fighter on his, her or its credit card, at 60K new, 25K used.
This is bizarre, and doesn’t even scale well internally. The existing figure for the Neb-B seems to be 194 Million credits; 3,233 new or 7,760 used TIE fighters. Even in a straight-up, no fighterwank, physics driven fight, I’d give that one to the TIEs.

The other side are in a similar state; that’s the cash value- and exactly who is paying exactly whom?- of 1,293 X-wings. If I was the Alliance, I’d start ransoming stolen Neb-B’s back to the Imperial Starfleet at this rate. If I was the empire, I’d be selling them off as fast as I could to pay for 3.88 billion credit Imperial star Destroyers, at twenty times the price and five hundred times the volume, mass, and probably damage tolerance as well.

There are basically two advantages to a starfighter over a capital ship; the equivalent value can be in far more places at once, and they have the speed and manoeuvre advantage to be creative. They don’t have to fight straight head to head battles; flank, englobe, strike weak points, find the soft underbelly and pick off subsystems. Stuff like that.
There is no way they should be able to give you more raw firepower for your buck.

So…how much should these things cost?
It’s impossible to square the cost of major items with the cost of minor. If you can almost buy your own ship for fourteen thousand credits, a blaster rifle should be a lot less than five hundred. I’m sorely tempted to throw it all away and start again.

Steel is cheap, but durasteel isn’t; the idea that with a modern warship, the actual hull is relatively inexpensive compared to the electronics- I don’t think it applies in Star Wars. Even something like a hull is a pretty impressive product of technology- the veins of neutronium for a start, the force fields built in- all of this pretty much is electronics.

The ‘steel is cheap’ model disadvantages fighters- makes them more expensive than their tactical worth; but the alternative, which I think is the case, means prices should rise much more closely in line with the raw bulk of the ship, so exponentially with it’s length. There should be a rough average cost per ton, which only exceptional capability or incompetence in design should deviate much from.

How much this costs relative to the average civil income depends in part how wide the production base is, how much call for it there is outside the military- as well as many other factors. The Star Wars galaxy is, when you come down to it, relatively lawless. For minor military equipment, small arms and what would have been starfighter- scale under the old WEG system (up to heavy PD lasers, all blasters, light PD ions) probably is fairly cheap. As the throw- weight goes up, self defence becomes a less viable excuse and the public need goes down, so the price rises.

How many tons per credit, or how many credits per ton? For that matter, how many tons per ship? I know it’s been discussed, and I think the term ‘lost in the mists of argument’ applies.
(Technically, if you stick with the established costs, at that tax rate it only takes just over one and a half million people to buy an Imperator. Annually. That’s just bloody ridiculous. I don’t care how good it sounds, it’s still crazy.) That might be a key to the problem; how many people should it take to pay for a ship?

I’m going to assume that a light freighter is roughly equivalent in price to a house- in some universes, this would be a spectacularly generous assumption. Houses don’t need shields, high-sublight engines, compensators- etc. Basically, it can take about a third of your annual income for about half of your working life at least, and almost certainly more. Assuming that people in the Star Wars universe remain active longer, maybe looking at life spans up to about a hundred on average, active till eighty, sixty year working life- doesn’t seem to be contradicted by establishment, anyway.
That would work out at an average 280,000 credits for a YT equivalent, up to 700,000 credits; seems reasonable. That would mean that Luke’s “almost buy our own ship for that much” was referring to the down payment. Does this contain a built- in underestimate?

Another reason to ignore WEG’s estimates- they quoted that price once for a stolen Nebulon-B. Garbage.

Scaling from there- going by mostly tonnage equivalent would make fighters very cheap, interestingly; their actual price is probably closer to their used price. Which baffles me a little- how cheap ought they to be?
No more within the means of the average individual than a dedicated combat vehicle is nowadays? Star Wars is pretty well armed, but not that well.
TIE’s are superbly engineered pieces of machinery; the main issue they have is the strategy letting them down. They definitely get more bang for their tonnage, and credit value, than a comparable Rebel unit- but when if ever do they get to fight on level terms? The rebels can concentrate to hit the Empire, locally outnumber, do damage and fade away.

Anyway. Start with the fifty thousand world, hundred trillion person, two hundred fifty quadrillion credit sector as a working estimate. The balance I’d like to set out of that- roughly 20 percent goes to the army, 15% on running costs including paying Imperial Army troopers (would the clone troopers eventually recover their costs in wages not paid them? You have to wonder…) and 5% on new equipment, units and facilities;
60% to the navy, 50% on running costs, maintenance repair and refit, 10% on replacements and new construction,
20% as the Sector’s share of contribution to theatre and regional fleets, and special projects like the Executor class and the Death Stars.
All of these numbers mean little without a firm idea of what you get for your credit, being purely scalar.

What does it need? Assume that it’s not fifty thousand worlds, but fifty thousand mainworlds. That is to say, each ‘planet’ has solar power stations on the inner planets nearest the sun, asteroid mining as far out as the kuiper belt, gas mining on the gas giants in the system, farm cylinders in orbit, secondary colonies, space habitats, outpost domes, further developments everywhere. A star system is an archipelago in it’s own right, not a dot.
That means lots of insystem patrols, and lots of local TIE garrisons and IPV’s; even the insystem police/customs are probably faster microjumping reaction forces between planets.

Back to common sense on the sectoral level.
Capital ship presence? Not really enough dreadnoughts to go round- and if anything should be reserved as region or theatre forces, it’s them. Oversector, maybe.
The flag waving requirement;
A sector group probably does have a battleship or battlecruiser flagship, if not a battleship or battlecruiser squadron.
At least one mixed cruiser squadron, probably a heavy and a light cruiser squadron.
There should be a squadron of heavy destroyers, for capital ship escort, plus heavy destroyer flagships for line and light destroyer squadrons- many of these squadrons would be administrative only, broken up into smaller, possibly single ship, task groups for practical operations.

The patrol requirement;
Assumption; light and medium corvettes are employed on the scanning barrens and outsystems detail; heavy corvettes and light frigates patrol inhabited planets; medium and heavy frigates serve as first- order intervention and reaction forces, light and line destroyers as second- order.

The barrens; assume the ships alone are not solely responsible. How visible is the ion flare from a large warship? From how far away can it be seen? How wide is the cone of visibility? That represents an outer limit. To be more than a mind- numbing boondoggle, an inspection program has to observe a barren system frequently enough that it is likely to spot rogue or rebel activity before the flares of engines reveal it anyway.
Ideally, it would inspect frequently enough to limit the time they have to develop any form of base.
So a sector’s light forces have to inspect four hundred million stars- possibly less in practise given the unsuitability of many of them- more often, in years, than the average travel time for light between them and the nearest inhabited planets.
Hyperdrive speed is dependent more on precision of navigation than mechanical qualities of the drive, it seems; the journey times are going to be barren to barren, nowhere to nowhere, probably longer than average. How long does it take to scan a system?

Assume eight hours from star to star, sub- and hyper- space sensors being used actively, enough junk to justify it. These ships will have survey data; they will be looking for anomalies and deviations from it. Some of the analysis is going to be done on sensor log data en route to the next target, that can save a few hours, and there are going to be some systems that are just a star and others that are huge mazes of rock and gas- the simple end probably predominates. These systems are likely barren for a reason. Four hours, wild guess.
That’s twelve hours per system, and assuming a 70-30 activity cycle, pretty generous historically, 515 systems per year.
Ten year scanning window, that gives 5,152 system inspections before the cycle has to begin again, and a requirement for 77,640 light and medium corvettes on the deep range patrol.
Such is entropy, this force is more likely to be under strength than over.
If I go with my own plan, the template patrol squadron devised earlier, that would be 1,941 patrol squadrons- ominous numbers indeed- with that many medium frigates- Demolishers, although they could be replaced by Strikes or Dreadnaughts; 3,882 light frigates- Escort Carriers and Interdictors; 7,764 heavy corvettes, Servators, 1000’s and Carracks, 15,528 medium and 62,112 light corvettes, carrying a total of 56,289 fighter squadrons, 214 army Corps, 3 regiments, 5 platoons.


Protecting the inhabited planets;
One thousand major and fifty thousand minor inhabited systems. Hmmm. Tempting though it is to park a warship over each of them, it’s probably better, in view of the actual threat- not least from rogue warships of the Starfleet- to have a less frequent Starfleet presence, but in much greater power when it does appear.
A stationary target is an easy target. Better to keep them out and keep them moving. There will be a few guardships, over relatively quiet planets, but-
Again, I probably should go with my own take on it, if for no other reason than the courage of my convictions. This would be where Escort and Enforcement squadrons come in.
Escort squadrons cover trade between worlds, Enforcement squadrons patrol worlds themselves; how many of each?

One thousand major worlds, fifty thousand minor; the number of escort squadrons is going to vary by astrography- simpler networks of jump routes require fewer escorts than complex multi- branchings; how to set a number on that? (‘Trade protection’ might be a better term than Escort, because only the most major trading vessels are going to get an actual close protection. Most of the time, it’ll be scream for help and the cavalry arrives.)
Ballpark estimate time again. One escort squadron for every five quadrillion credits of trade revenue the sector generates.
In practise, one per five member, per hundred colony worlds?
Seven hundred escort squadrons, then.
Twenty-one hundred heavy, forty-two hundred medium and forty-two hundred light frigates, ten thousand five hundred heavy, sixty-three hundred medium, fourteen thousand seven hundred light corvettes, carrying a total of 32,200 fighter squadrons, 689 army corps.

Enforcement squadrons; their function is to deter Imperials from joining the Rebellion at least as much as it is to protect worlds from the rebels, or whatever else might happen to be out there. There are probably fewer of them among the settled member worlds, and more among the colonies which are the main Rebel target.
One per ten member, one per fifty colony worlds?
Eleven hundred enforcement squadrons.
Twenty-two hundred light destroyers, thirty-three hundred heavy, twelve thousand one hundred medium, ninety-nine hundred light frigates, nineteen thousand eight hundred heavy, nineteen thousand eight hundred medium, twenty-six thousand four hundred light corvettes, 117,700 fighter squadrons, 1,186 army corps less one regiment

Assault and pursuit squadrons are assigned based on need; the patrol outfits monitor and warn, the escort and enforcement protect and defend, the assault and pursuit units attack. At this point, the “25,000” canon figure starts to wobble.
Actually, thanks to the troop capacity of existing units, Dreadnought and Acclamator in particular, I’m starting to wonder if Assault squadrons are even necessary. The proportion of ‘problem’ planets is stated to be one in eighty, use that as the basis for an estimate?

Divide three to one, three assault to a pursuit squadron, from a base requirement of 640?
160 Pursuit, 480 Assault squadrons?

From the assault squadrons;
2400 heavy, 2400 medium, 480 light frigates, 2400 heavy, 2880 medium, 1920 light corvettes, 480 huge, 1920 large, 1920 medium non or semi combatant, 32,480 fighter squadrons, 10,027 army Corps, 2 divisions

Pursuit squadron totals; 160 Imperator, 320 light destroyers, 320 heavy, 480 medium, 1120 light frigates, 1600 heavy, 1600 medium, 2400 light corvettes, 15,680 fighter squadrons, 129 Corps plus extra regiment

Sector Group Grand Totals, Starfleet contingent;
Battleship, 2 heavy cruisers, 4 light cruisers,
24 heavy destroyers, 160 line destroyers, 2,520 light destroyers,
8,120 heavy frigates, 21,601 medium frigates, 19,582 light frigates,
42,064 heavy corvettes, 46,108 medium corvettes, 107,532 light corvettes,
247,738 warships in all;
254,349 fighter squadrons, 12,245.6875 army corps (195,931 regiments) worth of naval troopers, army units assigned to naval cooperation, and stormtroopers.

(Add an ‘000’ for all of these estimates to make them Empire- wide. That’s not even taking into account Army and fighter garrisons, smaller ships assigned as escorts and outriders to units of regional and strategic forces.)

Command and formations; this includes one battle and two cruiser squadrons, three heavy destroyer squadrons, one hundred and sixty pursuit, four hundred and eighty assault, seven hundred escort, eleven hundred enforcement, one thousand nine hundred and forty-one patrol squadrons.

There are almost certainly subsector area commands, and zonal commands within them. In terms of naval command- the senior officer within a squadron commands the squadron, probably. That seems to square with sense and precedent.

The Imperial Sourcebook used too many made- up ranks which it is not intuitively easy to think in, as well as putting commodore under admiral; the standard system runs, or used to run, past captain,
Commodore Second Class- commander of a group of ships, but still retains prime responsibility for his own ship. Probably equates to Captain of the Line.
Commodore First Class- commander of multiple ships with no specific responsibility; someone else commands the flagship directly. Effectively an acting rear admiral.
Rear- Admiral and Vice-Admiral are often functionally little different, Vice being definitely senior but in terms of forces available less distinct. Originally, in large sailing fleets, the Admiral commanded the fleet from somewhere near the centre, the Rear-Admiral commanded the rear division- the last third of the ships, the Vice-Admiral was the Admiral’s second in command and led the fore division. Yes, it was that literal.
Admiral is a less important rank than it seems after about, oh, 1740, largely because by the time anyone reaches it, they’re too old for active service.
Admiral of the Fleet, equivalent to Grand Admiral, was less an active combat than an administrative rank, sometimes almost honourary for long and distinguished service. Originally a royal household appointment.


Two hundred and fifty thousand ships, fifty thousand inhabited systems and four hundred million stars; the command structure?
Civil political control, if Moffs can be called civilian government, and the administrative and non- combat services, leave aside for the moment.
Assume a regional fleet is commanded by a full Admiral. That’s the battlewagons taken care of. Also, it would probably be an Admiral’s job to command an oversector fleet.

So, is it made up rank time? Afraid so.
Tempting though it is to get it deliberately wrong, introduce an eye-boggling anachronism, ‘Sector Admiral’ is probably right.
How many subsectors? Four, six, eight? Vice Admiral’s commands- if there are eight, each consists of 240 patrol, 137 enforcement, 88 escort, 60 assault and 20 pursuit squadrons- 545 in all.
Rear Admirals; at this point, it breaks down again into force specific commands. Three patrol commands, two enforcement, two escort, two assault and one pursuit- far and away the most sought after and usually deputy-designate.
So, a Sector Admiral, eight Vice-Admirals, eighty Rear-Admirals,
Type-and-subarea? Escort Units zone twelve, subsector F? A Captain (for a Patrol), Captain of the Line (Post-Captain equivalent?) for an Escort or Enforcement squadron, a Commodore Second commands an Assault or Pursuit squadron.
Zonal Type Commands are in the hands of commodores first class, probably, or is this structure going to get in the way of force cooperation?

The other question that needs answering with all this money; what was it doing before the Empire decided to put it to use? Why was the Republic Starfleet so ineffectual- or, for an alternative explanation, how does the Empire come by all this money that the Republic didn’t have access to?

Larger army formations; the usual line runs division/battlegroup, corps, army, army group- but an army group is only sixty-four divisions, by establishment; and there are nearly forty-nine thousand in a sector. What comes after army group? The only formation I know of that fits is a Strategic Direction, which could serve as four Groups- no, postpone that.
Army Group, Front (4 AG), Strategic Direction- 4 Fronts, 1,024 divisions. Which is still only a shade over one and a half million men in the front line, not counting support units. It can’t be the men; I think it must be the hardware that matters. After Strategic Direction, the next level must indeed be the Grand Army, best to make that the last intermediate between SD and Sector Group, say a Grand Army consists of six Strategic Directions, meaning one Grand Army per subsector?


So, Major General (O8)= corps command,
Lieutenant General (O9)= army command,
General (O-10) army group command,
Marshal (0-11) front command,
Grand Marshal (O-12) strategic direction,
General of the Army(O- 13) Grand Army
Sector Marshal (O-14) Sector Army

Fighter forces, same issue. Squadrons group together into six- squadron Wings under an O-5 Wing Commander, but above that? Russian forces had a more rational, army- based organisation, considering one craft equal to a platoon, one company as four fighters or three bombers, Air Batallions, Regiments, Divisions etc.
Nah. Go with the deliberately distinctive approach.
Wings form into Groups- four to six wings to a group, under a Group Captain O-6;
groups into Commands- eight to twelve Groups per Command, Air Commodore O-7 or Air Vice Marshal 0-8;
Commands into Forces, five to ten per, under an Air Marshal O-9;
the whole under an Air Chief Marshal O-10

so a Force ranges from 960 to 4,320 squadrons;
a shade over forty-eight Strategic Directions and ninety-six Fighter Forces, to square with the fleet’s eighty sub-area commands.

Okay, I feel really stupid asking this about your estimate of fighters but I'm genuinely curious to find out what your take is.

There are basically two advantages to a starfighter over a capital ship; the equivalent value can be in far more places at once, and they have the speed and manoeuvre advantage to be creative. They don’t have to fight straight head to head battles; flank, englobe, strike weak points, find the soft underbelly and pick off subsystems. Stuff like that.
There is no way they should be able to give you more raw firepower for your buck.

I don't disagree at all that starfighters, or smaller vessels in general, have more utility as far as being able to disperse and spread out the target area as well as concentrate their firepower. However, I will argue that the miniaturization necessary to fit all the necessary components in a hyperdrive-equipped starfighter make it vastly more expensive vis-a-vis a capital ship, which can (theoretically) easily spare the space for a navigation computer and targeting systems. So its not just the durasteel that goes into the cost of the fighter, and using solely a per-ton cost analysis of the situation is not going to work unless you want to include the necessary costs of miniaturization.

Well, thank you for taking an interest, but you know this thread is going to get closed down faster than a kitten cannery- the original pair of posts was seventeen months ago. I certainly hope my thinking's evolved a bit since then, but...

that was actually on the basis of comparing the prices, not the tonnage. The cost of a Nebulon B is stated as being 194 million credits in the West End sourcebook Pirates and Privateers- which has apparently since then been retconned and had a zero knocked off. Low canon, but until a more explicit and accurate statement comes along it'll have to do.

Same story with the TIE/ln. Sixty thousand new, twenty- five thousand used, EU data. The numbers thsat say 7,740 to one are the numbers of the money, not the mass.

Yes I did discover that little tidbit about not re-opening really old threads about 10 minutes after I responded to this one.

Even if you look at costs, fighters can be cheaper for their offensive armaments (they can carry more guns for the same amount of money) but there is no way you get the same survivability for the same amount invested in a capital ship.

recon20011 wrote:Yes I did discover that little tidbit about not re-opening really old threads about 10 minutes after I responded to this one.

Bull! This is the second bit of thread necromancy you have done in as many days. Vympel was kind enough to tell you about thread necro yesterday and he was kind enough to let the thread you necroed continue afterwords. This is a bit of an insult to his generosity to do this after he told you not to necro threads.

Yes he was, and thats when I discovered it. When he told me. I saw his response after I posted my first answer to this.

recon20011 wrote:Yes he was, and thats when I discovered it. When he told me. I saw his response after I posted my first answer to this.

I double checked the times and you are right about the timing of the thread necro. Sorry.

I will grant this as a justifiable necro since it was a legitimate, thoughtful question intended to spur discussion, as well as existing in a quieter forum.

SapphireFox wrote:Bull! This is the second bit of thread necromancy you have done in as many days. Vympel was kind enough to tell you about thread necro yesterday and he was kind enough to let the thread you necroed continue afterwords. This is a bit of an insult to his generosity to do this after he told you not to necro threads.

If I catch you backseat moderating again, unpleasant things will happen to your profile.

recon20011 wrote:Even if you look at costs, fighters can be cheaper for their offensive armaments (they can carry more guns for the same amount of money) but there is no way you get the same survivability for the same amount invested in a capital ship.

Although now I'm thinking back about what I said about miniaturization... there is definitely something to be said for economies of scale... but also something to be said for the extra costs of miniaturizing components to be built into starfighters. With your standard TIE/Ln's you don't really have the shield generator or the hyperdrive which would make them a lot cheaper. They also dont have as much armor, again, the whole survivability thing. The question really is, how many TIE fighters could a Nebulon B take out in a scrap if a TIE fighter is barely a one-hit wonder... in other words, the heavy anti-starfighter laser of a capital ship only has to hit it once, and quite possibly the resulting explosion could take out its wingman as well. Of course, for such cheap vessels they do appear to survive remarkably well, or the gunnery departments aboard capital ships just arent up to scratch.

Wow. If this had come up after I joined I'd have been all over it...

Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:Even the ‘bayless’ designs would have troop complements, if only to defend against enemy boarders. Their main problem is probably logistics and timing; Resupplying ships like the Allegiance, with crews of tens of thousands, one or two shuttle loads at a time must be a painfully slow process.

Could some of those ships have bays normally kept covered by doors that we don't see?

In combat it doesn't make much difference whether the bay doors are open or shut, assuming you can put a shield over the open space. Because anything that can breach those impossible shields is going to make hull plating flow like liquid helium under a blowtorch. And keeping the doors closed opens up the possibility of some indecently clever gunner being able to spot-weld your hangar bay shut.

So hangars that are going to be used by combat spacecraft may be kept open during combat, or even not doored at all if there's no place to put the doors when they're open (insufficient hull space to either side of the hangar). But if a hangar is only used for underway refueling and such... it may have its own hatches just to keep an ambush from striking straight up into the main fuel tank while the ship's at standby power.

Similarly, there’s no reason to assume a Sector Group is any more a cookie- cutter, interchangeable organisation than a sector is. They would be mad if the size of the sector group didn’t vary with what there was to oversee and defend; it makes no sense to give a fifty billion population industrial world the same oversight as a three-researchers-and-a-cranky-droid jungle planet.

Sectors may be sized in inverse proportion to the economic power of individual planets; with poorest sectors being the biggest ones. That would tend to average out the diversity of organization somewhat, though the poor and large sectors will tend to have far more patrol units and far fewer capital units than the rich ones in the Core.

So many places it has to garrison, too- I would reckon there are tens of billions of TIE/ln out there. When, if ever, do they get the chance to concentrate against the enemy? The proportion of Imperial forces that get the chance to go out looking for trouble, to outnumber, swarm and slaughter their enemies the way the TIE is supposed to, is probably worryingly low.

On the other hand, that suggests another motive for making the TIE cheap. If you have to build enormous numbers of them to garrison every rock in the galaxy, they'd damn well better be cheap. And making them agile and heavily gunned will serve them fairly well against certain kinds of opposition- commerce policing, hammering on light freighters in squadron strength, that sort of thing.

So- a lot of the sources suggest that many families of the aristocracy have traditions of naval service going back generations, sons succeeding fathers in the Starfleet. I am unconvinced.
For one thing, the top canon suggests there simply wasn’t enough Republic fleet to go around for them to serve in.

Could the older generations have been in the planetary defense forces, maybe? Naval mercenary forces, insofar as those existed? I mean, you might not think a family would take pride in being old money from generations of condottieri... but then you remember the real life families that built their money on the slave trade.

The Clone Wars era Republic Starfleet is all too likely to have learned a lot of it’s craft as it went along, trial and error- the errors meaning lost men, lost ships, lost battles.

True, though the droid fleets may not have been any better. Servile robots programmed to obey merchants... not a good combination. If their infantry tactics are any indication, the battle droid fleets may have been even less effective than the mass-conscripted Republic Starfleet.

I used to know what mean, mode and median meant, but have forgotten. This is probably artificially inflated by those on higher incomes- the actual, bulk of the population once you take off the top ten percent, average is probably closer to twenty or seventeen and a half thousand. Tax rate- on average, high but not unjustifiably so. There will be places where punitive taxation is exacted, but by and large, the Empire returns the infrastructure and domestic peace to make a, say, average 30% rate seem not unreasonable.
Assume (wow, assumptions) 33% of that is military in nature.

!
The US spends 23%, and we're the de facto military of last resort for many places that don't pay us any taxes... that's a very heavily militarized Empire.

And the purchasing power of the credit is? Strange, actually. Some things that should be relatively cheap- datapads- are actually pretty pricy, some things which should be more expensive aren’t- amazingly cheap ray guns- and, in general, things that go boom could stand having another zero added to their price. The average person could buy a TIE fighter on his, her or its credit card, at 60K new, 25K used.

Blame it on the fact that you're using RPG sourcebooks. They have to make weapons trivially cheap, because PCs will use them up like water...

So…how much should these things cost?
It’s impossible to square the cost of major items with the cost of minor. If you can almost buy your own ship for fourteen thousand credits, a blaster rifle should be a lot less than five hundred. I’m sorely tempted to throw it all away and start again.

Hmm.

Use the highest of high canon as a baseline: Episode IV. For ten thousand (plus an unknown percentage for a teenager's overoptimistic "almost") you can buy a (very shoddy, used, slow) ship capable of carrying two passengers on an interstellar hop, if one of them feels like doing hyperspace navigation calculations with a slide rule handcomp and a pad of paper. And it won't carry cargo, and it'll probably eat its own price in maintenance in the first six months.

The sort of thing whoever managed to outcon Watto at the last and take his junkyard would sell you, in other words.

This is equivalent to the kind of used car you can get for a thousand dollars; anything decent will cost an order of magnitude more even if all you want is a passenger runabout. Anything milspec will be about a two orders up; anything milspec and good three. Capital ships (equivalent to, say, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier or an SSBN) will cost five, six, or even seven orders of magnitude more than the trashy used-car ship... a hundred billion credits and up. If you're feeling ambitious, make that the price of the down payment, and add another order and a half to that.

TIE’s are superbly engineered pieces of machinery; the main issue they have is the strategy letting them down. They definitely get more bang for their tonnage, and credit value, than a comparable Rebel unit- but when if ever do they get to fight on level terms? The rebels can concentrate to hit the Empire, locally outnumber, do damage and fade away.

Hmm. The TIE makes more sense as a fighter designed to combat the Swarming Gribbly Hordes from Andromeda... Wait. That actually makes a lot of sense, doesn't it, given the context?

The barrens; assume the ships alone are not solely responsible. How visible is the ion flare from a large warship?

If they use clever hyperdrive navigation and throttle down to 1g or less for terminal maneuvers? Still visible, but not all that much so, making the inspection program smarter than it sounds.

That’s twelve hours per system, and assuming a 70-30 activity cycle, pretty generous historically, 515 systems per year. Ten year scanning window, that gives 5,152 system inspections before the cycle has to begin again, and a requirement for 77,640 light and medium corvettes on the deep range patrol.

If I go with my own plan, the template patrol squadron devised earlier, that would be 1,941 patrol squadrons- ominous numbers indeed- with that many medium frigates- Demolishers, although they could be replaced by Strikes or Dreadnaughts; 3,882 light frigates- Escort Carriers and Interdictors; 7,764 heavy corvettes, Servators, 1000’s and Carracks, 15,528 medium and 62,112 light corvettes, carrying a total of 56,289 fighter squadrons, 214 army Corps, 3 regiments, 5 platoons.

Inspection fleets are liable to skimp on the relatively heavy elements. Statistically speaking they just aren't needed; a heavy reaction force will have to hyper in to aid a ship in trouble anyway, so there's really not much point in making it organic to a force that's never all in the same system anyway. So use nothing but corvettes (or, hell, hyperspace-capable shuttles and unarmed light freighters) to do most of the sensor sweeps, and keep a heavy reaction force of frigate-types in wait to pounce on anyone audacious enough to attack your scouts.

The other question that needs answering with all this money; what was it doing before the Empire decided to put it to use? Why was the Republic Starfleet so ineffectual- or, for an alternative explanation, how does the Empire come by all this money that the Republic didn’t have access to?

Easy-peasy. A lot of it vanished into various senior officers' pockets, or into the Republic's equivalent to the Ministry of Defense. A lot more was never collected- de facto tax farming out to corporations who used it to build up the CIS fleet, money spent on system defense forces that did something stupid with it. Another fraction went to hardware that got blown to bits in the opening phase of the Clone Wars, as a mutual attrition against all the stuff the CIS built with farmed taxes.

Insufficient hull space? Whatever reasons there may be for NOT bothering with physical hangar bay doors, THAT is not one of them, given that you could easily have the hangar bay doors fold out into empty space.

Batman wrote:Insufficient hull space? Whatever reasons there may be for NOT bothering with physical hangar bay doors, THAT is not one of them, given that you could easily have the hangar bay doors fold out into empty space.

Hmm. You could, though it increases target profile. And masks fire from any point defense near the hangar, and blocks line of sight for sensors near the hangar. Might be easier to rig the doors to telescope...

It was a handwave and I admit it.

Still doesn't critically harm my point: while there may be reasons to leave bay doors open in combat, there could still be doored bays on other ships where we don't see the bays.

Would there be any reason for doors to be closed during jumps into hyperspace? I understand reasons for having them open and having them closed during combat. But is it possible that they may be necessary during trips through hyperspace?

Just curious.

Well, I id originally intend this as a long, rambling hypothesis, to be taken apart or not as necessary- so what does better evidence suggest the true numbers are? What percentage of the average citizen's income goes to fund the military, and what- given what we do know about the economy of the GFFA, should the true costs be?

I think, looking back, that I went for a high estimate, modern nation in state of very high commitment to war, as a placeholder, numbers that could later be cut down to fit more accurate data. Let's do that.

When the citizens are counted, even going with the hundred quadrillion population estimate (which may be lowballing it, by some sources- it was an official number from a fairly minimalist source,) we're still looking at incomes in the thousands of credits, and if any very substantial percentage of that goes to the government, the Imperial Starfleet, Army and the New Order Party should be swimming in money. Either that or the existing costs for military equipment are fantastically low.

Daft thought; tax evasion might be the Rebel Alliance's most effective weapon...


There are real economic questions to be asked about the relative cost of fighters and capital ships, too- for a start, which is closer to the civilian economy, and benefits more from the civilian economy's established trading links and economies of scale?

Miniaturisation makes sense, but how much of a stretch away from the established civil economy is that really? here are small air vehicles that use much lower spec but conceptually similar systems, within reach of many of the citizens; there are personal transports and small public transports that use similar systems, and the already existing prewar security market.

By contrast, what roots do capital warships have in the civil economy? There are large merchants and liners, yes. The Mon Cal achievement in militarising their passenger ships is well known. However, they did have the resources of one of the yard worlds of the CIS to work with and it's possible they were laid down with militarisation in mind from the start.

Mainly the weaponry and electronics, I think, has no equivalent in the civil market; how many people need a heavy turbolaser? The firepower and independent sensor suite of a warship- there should be little need for ECM, ESM, etc- set it apart. There is a civil use for heavy shielding- planetary defence happens in peacetime too, against stray rocks but rather more likely starship accidents, possibly more on takeoff (careless ion beam, whoops there goes the starport) than landing.

There are major elements of the role of a warship that cannot be duplicated by the civil economy, but all of the functions of a fighter can, by an industry which has already had to deal with these problems- on the basis of that I reckon fighters probably are comparatively cheaper.


While it occurs to me, on the subject of "bayless" ships; I would be very much more surprised to see Imperial sailors breaking bulk and manhandling things through the companionways than I would to find some kind of cargo handling system, containers carrying loads of onboard modules that are shuttled around the ship to the relevant facility- but that's another issue, and one with insufficient evidence.

I'm sure, for logistics and resupply, that "bayless" ships do have some landing space, probably behind armoured shutters, possibly in the brim trench; manual loading by fatigue parties, an armload at a time, through the personnel hatches just doesn't make sense.

Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:Well, I id originally intend this as a long, rambling hypothesis, to be taken apart or not as necessary- so what does better evidence suggest the true numbers are? What percentage of the average citizen's income goes to fund the military, and what- given what we do know about the economy of the GFFA, should the true costs be?

I think, looking back, that I went for a high estimate, modern nation in state of very high commitment to war, as a placeholder, numbers that could later be cut down to fit more accurate data. Let's do that.

When the citizens are counted, even going with the hundred quadrillion population estimate (which may be lowballing it, by some sources- it was an official number from a fairly minimalist source,) we're still looking at incomes in the thousands of credits, and if any very substantial percentage of that goes to the government, the Imperial Starfleet, Army and the New Order Party should be swimming in money. Either that or the existing costs for military equipment are fantastically low.

I really think we might be able to get some good out of using a bit over ten thousand credits as the down payment on the cheapest, least reliable imaginable FTL-capable runabout, and scaling up from there.

Daft thought; tax evasion might be the Rebel Alliance's most effective weapon...

Not least because it works, if anything, better on Imperial controlled worlds...

Just had a daft thought of my own. On your side of the pond you're probably not familiar with the American agencies that advertise "Have unpaid back taxes? Want to lower your tax burden? We'll negotiate with the Internal Revenue Service for you! Call 1-800-555-555 now!"

But you may be able to imagine what kind of highly specialized bunch of accountants would run a place like that in a society with a tax code as Byzantine as the US system. Now imagine such a thing run as a Rebel front operation on a Core world...

Mainly the weaponry and electronics, I think, has no equivalent in the civil market; how many people need a heavy turbolaser? The firepower and independent sensor suite of a warship- there should be little need for ECM, ESM, etc- set it apart.

But military grade fighters need all that too; there's no much evidence I know of for capital ships being all that much better at detection and jamming than fighters are.

There is a civil use for heavy shielding- planetary defence happens in peacetime too, against stray rocks but rather more likely starship accidents, possibly more on takeoff (careless ion beam, whoops there goes the starport) than landing.

Heh. If I were a port authority in Star Wars, I'd mount turreted tractor pressor beams all around the port and not allow anyone clearance to fire their main engines below ten or twenty thousand meters. Not that that would be enough to save the port in the event of a major engine misfire, but at least it gives me time to raise shields after the freighter clears the dock and before it goes underway on its own power.

Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:Daft thought; tax evasion might be the Rebel Alliance's most effective weapon...

It could be... but I am positive that the Empire would have an IRS-equivalent, and if there were entire planets evading their taxes... well that would throw up a huge red flag and the Navy is probably going to be called in. Even if the Empire lost several entire planets' worth of tax income its not really going to effect the bottom line by much, it will only bring the Empire's wrath down upon those planets. Even if, say, 10% of the population hid their income from the Empire and refused to pay taxes, well, the Imperial IRS is going to be having a field day, wouldn't you think?

Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:There are real economic questions to be asked about the relative cost of fighters and capital ships, too- for a start, which is closer to the civilian economy, and benefits more from the civilian economy's established trading links and economies of scale?

Miniaturisation makes sense, but how much of a stretch away from the established civil economy is that really? here are small air vehicles that use much lower spec but conceptually similar systems, within reach of many of the citizens; there are personal transports and small public transports that use similar systems, and the already existing prewar security market.

It is hard to say exactly how the two markets for the smaller vehicles mesh, because it is always changing. Most technologies that are used in civilian speeders and small single- or double-seater spacecraft will have been originally created and manufactured for military speeders and starfighters. Thus when the technology first came out, its going to be far more expensive because of its high R&D costs.
But considering that we believe EU tech to have reached a general plateau this is probably not the case. But there are certain components of starfighters that civilian equivalents won't have: shield generators, faster engines, weapons capable of producing more damage per shot, and also being able to fire more shots than a civilian vehicle would carry (if it carries any at all). All of those demand more power, so either there is going to be a larger reactor, or a more expensive, more powerful, yet smaller reactor.
The hull of a military craft is going to have different requirements as well, its going to need to be hardened, and quite possibly some systems redundancy, but very little in a starfighter. Engines, again, will be bigger/more powerful.
There is always going to be enough similarities that certain parts can be exchanged between the two sectors of manufacturing, but even the differences in quality would be enough to discourage too much usage of civilian parts in military starfighters.

Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:By contrast, what roots do capital warships have in the civil economy? There are large merchants and liners, yes. The Mon Cal achievement in militarising their passenger ships is well known. However, they did have the resources of one of the yard worlds of the CIS to work with and it's possible they were laid down with militarisation in mind from the start.

Mainly the weaponry and electronics, I think, has no equivalent in the civil market; how many people need a heavy turbolaser? The firepower and independent sensor suite of a warship- there should be little need for ECM, ESM, etc- set it apart. There is a civil use for heavy shielding- planetary defence happens in peacetime too, against stray rocks but rather more likely starship accidents, possibly more on takeoff (careless ion beam, whoops there goes the starport) than landing.

The basic design of a civilian vessel and a military vessel are not the same. Civilian vessels are designed to provide the maximum volume (or passenger space) for the minimum of materials and crew, with the minimum of effective protection as well. Military vessels should be designed for optimum combat efficiency. They should be designed to withstand extended combat operations (survivability), meaning they should have thicker, and denser armored hulls, and have shield generators and back-up generators, as well as many damage control stations strategically placed around the ship. Their outer hull should facilitate fields of fire for its weapons systems and its inner hull should be honey-combed with blast doors to compartmentalize any damage. Then you get into the specifics of the systems, military-grade weapons, shields, sensors, etc. The infrastructure and know-how necessary to produce a warship are vastly different from those needed to produce a merchantman.

recon20011 wrote: It could be... but I am positive that the Empire would have an IRS-equivalent, and if there were entire planets evading their taxes... well that would throw up a huge red flag and the Navy is probably going to be called in. Even if the Empire lost several entire planets' worth of tax income its not really going to effect the bottom line by much, it will only bring the Empire's wrath down upon those planets. Even if, say, 10% of the population hid their income from the Empire and refused to pay taxes, well, the Imperial IRS is going to be having a field day, wouldn't you think?

Is there indications that the Empire has a central taxation authority?
Wouldn't it be more practical, given the previously decentralised nature of the Republic that the Empire simply collect taxes from the sector states? There is a Moff and planetary governor afterall.

The basic design of a civilian vessel and a military vessel are not the same. Civilian vessels are designed to provide the maximum volume (or passenger space) for the minimum of materials and crew, with the minimum of effective protection as well. Military vessels should be designed for optimum combat efficiency. They should be designed to withstand extended combat operations (survivability), meaning they should have thicker, and denser armored hulls, and have shield generators and back-up generators, as well as many damage control stations strategically placed around the ship. Their outer hull should facilitate fields of fire for its weapons systems and its inner hull should be honey-combed with blast doors to compartmentalize any damage. Then you get into the specifics of the systems, military-grade weapons, shields, sensors, etc. The infrastructure and know-how necessary to produce a warship are vastly different from those needed to produce a merchantman.

Anyone still thinks its possible that the Mon Cal simply received a cruiser blueprints and redesigned it as a passenger liner?

PainRack wrote: Anyone still thinks its possible that the Mon Cal simply received a cruiser blueprints and redesigned it as a passenger liner?

They could have, based on their emphasis for craftsmanship in their vessels though, they may simply have built the hull to be far more solid than a standard merchantman/liner. Look at many old buildings built by hand, they're often pretty solid. Compare that to the new standardized houses that are prefabricated, and they aren't quite as solid. Could that also be the case with the Mon Cal ships?

Yes, but they almost have to have originally designed the ships with armament in mind in order to build them capable of crossing swords with first-class Imperial line destroyers. It's not so much the solidity of the hull as having the power trunking for heavy turbolasers, the racks for all the electronics mounts, that sort of thing.

You could argue that since the Mon Cal liners were designed to carry passengers (and for space exploration, if I remember reading an article on wookieepedia correctly), thus necessitating several things, notably:

• *Compartmentalization - its important for a passenger liner to have airtight compartments honeycombed throughout the ship, as is often seen on warships
  *A large power grid - you need to provide power to all those staterooms, right? How else are you going to get it there? You're going to need large mainlines and smaller secondary lines, and then even smaller lines that provide the power to the each room. Just plus the heavy turbolasers/equipment into a main, or secondary power line.
  *Empty rooms - rooms that have no purpose other than to house passengers, when the passengers are gone the empty rooms can be used to hold racks of sensor equipment, or many small shield generators spread throughout the ship (instead of a few large ones).
  *Each room is already connected to a built in power distribution system, thus eliminating the need to jury-rig one, which you would have to do when converting a cargo hauler into a warship.

In my opinion all these things would make it easier to convert the vessel into a first-rate auxiliary warship. There's no need to build bulkheads, you already have them for the safety of your previous civilian passengers. You can modify existing rooms to hold weapons or equipment, in some cases the size of the components you can install (shield generators anyone?) will be limited, but the Mon Cals made up for that by installing more, albeit weaker, shield generators. Instead of having to build main power lines from the reactors to the weapons mounts when refitting a Mon Cal liner you can actually place the weapons mounts close to the main power lines because you already have the power grid in place. And for fitting in racks for sensors... well you still have some empty rooms, just build some racks for the equipment.

recon20011 wrote:You could argue that since the Mon Cal liners were designed to carry passengers (and for space exploration, if I remember reading an article on wookieepedia correctly), thus necessitating several things, notably...

*Compartmentalization - its important for a passenger liner to have airtight compartments honeycombed throughout the ship, as is often seen on warships

Yes, but bulkheads tough enough to shrug off the sidescatter from extinction level event-range beams?

*A large power grid - you need to provide power to all those staterooms, right? How else are you going to get it there? You're going to need large mainlines and smaller secondary lines, and then even smaller lines that provide the power to the each room. Just plus the heavy turbolasers/equipment into a main, or secondary power line.

Ah... this really should not work. Even in terms of things like household appliances, there is a HUGE difference between a line that carries a few hundred watts to a couple of light bulbs and one that carries a few kilowatts to your oven. Something that carries a few dozen kilowatts to a search light is different again, and so on.

By the time you get up to the power trunking for main battery turbolasers... you cannot just plug those puppies into wall sockets. Nor would it be safe to plug your lightbulb into a socket you can plug main battery turbolasers into.

...In my opinion all these things would make it easier to convert the vessel into a first-rate auxiliary warship. There's no need to build bulkheads, you already have them for the safety of your previous civilian passengers. You can modify existing rooms to hold weapons or equipment, in some cases the size of the components you can install (shield generators anyone?) will be limited, but the Mon Cals made up for that by installing more, albeit weaker, shield generators. Instead of having to build main power lines from the reactors to the weapons mounts when refitting a Mon Cal liner you can actually place the weapons mounts close to the main power lines because you already have the power grid in place. And for fitting in racks for sensors... well you still have some empty rooms, just build some racks for the equipment.

But the grid has to be built ludicrously far above its logical specifications in order to do the job. In effect, you're building a warship hull with the milspec equipment removed and hiding it as a passenger liner, not building a liner and sticking milspec equipment in to make it a warship.

Any competent engineer who looks over the design will realize that the power trunking is about nine orders of magnitude more capable than it needs to be, and so on. Otherwise, you'll still have to scrap most of the ship and start over during the conversion process.

So I think the Mon Cal's success with those Star Cruisers is remarkable, but that what's impressive is that they were able to build warships, disguise them convincingly as passenger liners, and then hide that achievement from the rest of the galaxy for so long.

I didn't say you wouldn't still have to do major modifications. you would. You would have to upgrade everything, reinforce the bulkheads, go into the power grid and replace the civilian stuff with military-grade equipment. But the point is that you don't have to rebuild the structure of the ship.

Simon_Jester wrote:

*A large power grid - you need to provide power to all those staterooms, right? How else are you going to get it there? You're going to need large mainlines and smaller secondary lines, and then even smaller lines that provide the power to the each room. Just plus the heavy turbolasers/equipment into a main, or secondary power line.

Ah... this really should not work. Even in terms of things like household appliances, there is a HUGE difference between a line that carries a few hundred watts to a couple of light bulbs and one that carries a few kilowatts to your oven. Something that carries a few dozen kilowatts to a search light is different again, and so on.

By the time you get up to the power trunking for main battery turbolasers... you cannot just plug those puppies into wall sockets. Nor would it be safe to plug your lightbulb into a socket you can plug main battery turbolasers into.

I don't disagree at all that there are huge differences between civilian and military grade power grids. My point was that you can replace the wiring to the rooms with the ECM and sensors equipment with wiring that will actually work. But you don't have to build the entire infrastructure from scratch, you are simply relaying more powerful cables through existing crawl spaces, etc.
I also did not mean that they could plug the weapons stations into the standard power grid for the rooms, they'd be plugged into the main lines directly from the reactor.
Of course I truly don't know enough about electrical engineering in general, nor even the power requirements to run a heavy turbolaser mount.

recon20011 wrote:I didn't say you wouldn't still have to do major modifications. you would. You would have to upgrade everything, reinforce the bulkheads, go into the power grid and replace the civilian stuff with military-grade equipment. But the point is that you don't have to rebuild the structure of the ship.

Well... if you designed the ship for the job in the first place. And the replacements in question would pretty much involve a one for one swap.

You could at least build a liner structured like a battleship, but unless the liner already was a battleship (only with the guns and other milspec equipment removed), I doubt you'd save much time.

I don't disagree at all that there are huge differences between civilian and military grade power grids. My point was that you can replace the wiring to the rooms with the ECM and sensors equipment with wiring that will actually work. But you don't have to build the entire infrastructure from scratch, you are simply relaying more powerful cables through existing crawl spaces, etc.

The problem being that you're routing cables that can ferry million-megaton range energy per second through crawlspaces that originally carried copper wire for wall current... It's not going to work unless you specifically designed the ship so that you'd be able to do this, in which case a lot of components must be heavily overbuilt.

I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm saying that it's not something you can do as an afterthought. Taking a normal passenger liner and saying "Hey, let's make it into a battleship" is foolish, and your best bet is to melt the ship down and make a new one from the material. But it's much more reasonable to posit that the Mon Cals knew perfectly well what they were getting into, and built what really was a battleship, only with nice furniture and lightweight, easily removed bulkheads separating passenger suites. Passenger furniture installed in a military hull, rather than military furniture installed in a passenger hull.

It could be, and it would make sense. But I'm curious as to why Wookieepedia says that the Empire took the specifications/blueprints for Mon Cal warships, if the Mon Cal simply built every ship structured as a warship anyways. Wouldn't the empire have been better served to simply eliminate the Mon Cal shipyards? And thus, at least in theory, all the designers, etc.