StarDestroyer.Net BBS

As I understand it, the outer hull of an Imperator/Imperial Star Destroyer is thicker in some regions than others (for example, the reactor bubble is thicker than the hull armor on other parts of the ship, if I recall correctly).

My question is, are there sources or information that folks could point me in the direction of concerning how thick the hulls are at various points? And perhaps what the components of their construction are? I've been told that the inside of the reactor dome is lined with carbonite (although I dont know what source that is from) and durasteel as well as some other materials are involved.

Any help or direction on this point would be apreciated, thanks.

ICS. It has cutaway pictures.

Might be able to use that. Any others? Perhaps ones that explicitly state that kind of information?

I actually just did some early scaling on this this week.

Based on a movie shot provided by brian Young, the armor is ~11 meters
Based off the shot in EGVV, the armor is ~17 meters

NOte that the discrepency is likely due to the poor quality of my scaling tech (I use MS paint)

The heavy armor covers ~70% of the surface area, with the standard durasteel making up the inside and rest. THe durasteel is <1 meter thick, looking 25-50 cms eyeballing.

Hope that helps.

It does. What pic of BY's are you using?

Medium TL turret armor (from the EGW&T) is a meter thick on the guns. The same source says in the introduction to capital/fighter starship weapons that capital TLs are designed to penetrate "meters" of armor (implying armor is at least two meters thick.)

And on top of that, there is a reference for a repulsor-driven "blaster artillery" emplacement having an output equal to a Star Destroyer's medium TL (they don't acknowledge the existence of the HTLs) being able to punch through 20 meters of durasteel. Since ISD armor typically is not "punctured" in one shot by these guns, its probable that the armor is at least 20 meters (or more) thick.

Given what we've seen from SW blaster impacts (in particular, the damage to Obi-wan's craft in AOTC, where the armor ablated but some tubing remained) it seems possible that there is a SIF-sorta thing going on in SW armor, reinforcing it to a point beyond what its thickness would suggest.


Just idle thought though, by no means do I consider this certain.

IIRC, isn't durasteel used for the hull and internal bracing rather than for the external armor?

Howedar wrote:Given what we've seen from SW blaster impacts (in particular, the damage to Obi-wan's craft in AOTC, where the armor ablated but some tubing remained) it seems possible that there is a SIF-sorta thing going on in SW armor, reinforcing it to a point beyond what its thickness would suggest.

The holes in Obi-wan's ship were much wider than they were deep... the hull armour (or some property of it) must have conducted the energy outwards through the armour instead of allowing it to penetrate.

What I was referring to is that there are components that were encased in the hull of the fighter that survived, even when the armor ablated. This suggests to me some form of active protection within the armor.

There are tensor fields that exist that structurally enhance materials, but this is generally against extreme forces (for example, enhancing landing gear or supplementing the mostly-hollow hull of the Acclamator.) Particle shields do operate in a similar function.

LAAT gunships according to the AOTC ICS also had " powered" armor, which may hint at a shield-like function. It should be noted though that deflectors normally operate not only above the shield but are anchored somewhat "under" the hull as well (three dimensional nature, remember)

Marc Xavier wrote:It does. What pic of BY's are you using?

A shot from ESB when the Executor shows up. I think its the Avenger. I scaled the armor to the trench.

My theory is that those tersor fields help alleviate some of the stresses put on the materials that Mr. Wong describes on his Size Matters page.