StarDestroyer.Net BBS

So I was thinking the other day (suprise) and with some of the spoilers for RotS and in particular the Venator Stardestroyers, there seems to be an early design spec of some semblence of a *tail* to early Stardestroyers.

The Doomgiver (a JKII Outcast vessel) has this tail like design. Would it be more or less, acceptable to theorize that the Doomgiver is a late Republic/ early Empire design?

From the top the ships also look quite similar to the ones in Darth Malak's fleet (though they had more complex, rounded undersides as well).

That kind of design methodology obviously goes back a long, long way.

Vendetta wrote:From the top the ships also look quite similar to the ones in Darth Malak's fleet (though they had more complex, rounded undersides as well).

That kind of design methodology obviously goes back a long, long way.

I don't recall the Leviathen having a tail?

Specificaly intersested in Illuminates Prime and Ender's thoughts, but any welcome.

Can we deduce linage from major design features? Corellian desings have very common features, KDY is easilly spotted.

EU makes it hard with various extra's though at the same time makes it easier.

YT 2000, YT 27400 are obvious advances on the YT 1300. The Republic cruiser is an obvious predecessor to the Blockade Runner.

Same with alot of the Stardestoyers, Acclamator to Victory to Imperator.

Knife wrote:

Vendetta wrote:From the top the ships also look quite similar to the ones in Darth Malak's fleet (though they had more complex, rounded undersides as well).

That kind of design methodology obviously goes back a long, long way.

I don't recall the Leviathen having a tail?

No, but it does have a very similar bridge tower.

The Doom giver is probaly a prototype (or other type one-of a-kind ship) and probaly has no desing linage (it has features from multiple different companies desings (Acclamator tail, leviathan type bridge and the uncommon hull.)

It could also be a refitted civilian ship, if Desann got it before he allied with the Imperials.

Knife wrote:Specificaly intersested in Illuminates Prime and Ender's thoughts, but any welcome.

Can we deduce linage from major design features? Corellian desings have very common features, KDY is easilly spotted.

Yes. The KDY vessels share a common command tower as seen in the Imperial- (or soon to be Imperator if Saxton's streak keeps going ) class and Executor-class vessels.

Different aesthetics of construction can also be deduced. Single bank, bell-mouthed engine designs with gray hull plating and no fantail seem to be a staple of older Imperial, and perhaps KDY vessels, consider the ISD itself, and ships such as Wermis' and Tagge's Star Battlecruisers.

Later designs such as the Executor-class Star Dreadnought, follow an apparent aesthetic shift by Kuat Drive Yards, in using longer, more needle-like designs as opposed to the broad wedges of earlier times. The Executor and Jerec's Vengeance typify this new style of long blade-like vessels with banks of cylindrical engines, sometimes in multiple banks in a fantail, like the Executor.

A Clone Wars-era aesthetic belonging to Rothana Heavy Engineering (and perhaps Kuat Drive Yards, depending on the manufacturer of the Venator-class Star Destroyer) is a thin fantail halving a bank of staggered engine cylinders. However unlike the late-Empire KDY vessels, they exhbit the classic grey hull plating. They also use a less massive, and smaller round command tower.

Other styles can be deduced. Admiral Giel's mighty flagship is a broad and thick grey wedge, having the proportions of a Imperial-class Star Destroyer but on the order of five to seven times as large in every dimension. However, it has a conspicuous absence of the KDY standard tower and a overhanging superstructure off the aft resembling some other Corellian Engineering Corporation designs. The engine bells are also different. Although bells like earlier KDY designs, they are recessed into the thick aft armor plating, making them simply appear as hollow sockets in the rear of the vessel, as opposed to say--the ISD's protruding and defined bell nozzles, distinct from the hull.

In any case KDY seemed to have said goodbye to the needle-like astethics with the Eclipse and the Sovereign.

Lacking images of the Doomgiver or Levithan, my comments can be limited, but the possibility of a design linear is not impossible. The question is more "is it a result of designer preference" or "is it a case of form follows function"?

There are clear examples of both. The standard KDY bridge is one, but function also appears in the sensor globes on the loronar strike class picket cruiser, or the wedge shape of large corellian craft.

Certain things are also the result of engineering requirements. For example, the choice of cylinder engines vs bell engines seems to be dependent on an unknown power:mass factor. Cylinder engines, by virtue of being more self contained, are used on more powerful ships because they can then be more widely disbursed to lower the stress on the ship. Bell engines are better protected, but are clustered together, increasing stress. In the same vein, I'd expect the "tails" to be a heat disbursing mechanism, incresing surface are for the heat exchangers like the tail of the Acclamator or the panels on the Executor's tower.

It would be easier to answer this if we knew what companies they were from or if the designers of the game or movie where intentionally doing it.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:Later designs such as the Executor-class Star Dreadnought, follow an apparent aesthetic shift by Kuat Drive Yards, in using longer, more needle-like designs as opposed to the broad wedges of earlier times. The Executor and Jerec's Vengeance typify this new style of long blade-like vessels with banks of cylindrical engines, sometimes in multiple banks in a fantail, like the Executor.

I believe that has more to do with stress and materials limits then a design shift (withing intratextual terms of course). The longer needle design of the Executor allowed for different placement of the engines, which would increase surface area and thus decrease pressure to minimize stress.

FTeik wrote:In any case KDY seemed to have said goodbye to the needle-like astethics with the Eclipse and the Sovereign.

Yes, the Soveriegn-class, Eclipse-class, Eclipse II-class Star Dreadnoughts does appear to be the third-generation of KDY vessels.

Adding a dorsal spine and keel and returning the engines to single-bank, bell nozzle (at least in the Soveriegn- and Eclipse II-classes; the original Eclipse has multiple banks of cylinders staggers over a short area and is probably interim from the second generation of the Executor and Vengeance to the Soveriegn and Eclipse II) adding a new large command tower more proportional with the larger designs than the original ISD bridge (though the Eclipse II seems to return to the ISD standard tower, but perhaps this is for expedency sake), but retaining the black hull plating.

Ender wrote:I believe that has more to do with stress and materials limits then a design shift (withing intratextual terms of course). The longer needle design of the Executor allowed for different placement of the engines, which would increase surface area and thus decrease pressure to minimize stress.

No, the Eclipse II was just as long, at least twice if not more like four times as massive, and returned to a single bank of huge bell nozzle engines.

Perhaps with the increasing scale of the war protection of thrusters and the ventral side of ships became more important again, so the design was shifted from the "Executor-approach" back to the "ISD-approach".

Preservation of internal space for other things might also be an important factor, if ships have a tail-section.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:

Ender wrote:I believe that has more to do with stress and materials limits then a design shift (withing intratextual terms of course). The longer needle design of the Executor allowed for different placement of the engines, which would increase surface area and thus decrease pressure to minimize stress.

No, the Eclipse II was just as long, at least twice if not more like four times as massive, and returned to a single bank of huge bell nozzle engines.

True, but was it capable of the same acceleration? And what did it's internals look like, did it have larger support beams and better mechanims to deal with the force? We don't know.

Ender wrote:True, but was it capable of the same acceleration? And what did it's internals look like, did it have larger support beams and better mechanims to deal with the force? We don't know.

If they could build a similar size vessel to Executor with "larger support beams and better mechanisms" than the suggestion that the fantail and engine banks is necessity is wrong by default. That's exactly what we were arguing.,

And with the stress dispersal of the Death Star II, I'm skeptical that the Executor design was necessity.

Ender wrote:There are clear examples of both. The standard KDY bridge is one, but function also appears in the sensor globes on the loronar strike class picket cruiser, or the wedge shape of large corellian craft.

What large Corellian ships have we seen?

Admiral Giel's cruiser was supposedly of Corelian lineage. At least, according to Bob Brown. link

Howedar wrote:

Ender wrote:There are clear examples of both. The standard KDY bridge is one, but function also appears in the sensor globes on the loronar strike class picket cruiser, or the wedge shape of large corellian craft.

What large Corellian ships have we seen?

Presumably Giel's flagship and his huge carrier.