Specific problem areas I've targeted for editing:
While this system did not remain completely static even over the period from the Clone Wars to the Yuuzhan Vong invasion
Fails to acknowledge different scales (Clone Wars era). What problems exist with the NJO ships? Anything besides Star Defender?
Cruisers — all ships with a length of 400m upwards, and more than 1,000 crewers; major combat warships.
Star Destroyers — larger warships introduced during the Clone Wars, still technically rated as large cruisers, but generally treated as a distinct sub-category.
I tried editing this to mention how the cruiser definition was "loosened," but McEwok (Arkady Hodge) had it quickly reverted. Supposedly, he dealt with the HttE sourcebook it in the passage below, and there was no need to "overload" things.
In addition, it can be noted that the basic "cruiser" designation was very broad; it encompassed everything up to and including the massive Executor-class Star Destroyers, the largest warships in commission during the key years of the Galactic Civil War, and excluded only a few "bizarrities" such as the Death Star battlestations. In part, this reflects the fact that the Old Republic saw no need for warships larger than the 600m Dreadnaught Cruiser, and the larger Star Destroyers which began to appear in the Clone Wars were regarded from the first as essentially a new class, although the officials and analysts of the Empire and even the New Republic were unwilling to quite dissociate them from the old cruiser designation. In practice, a length of about 850-900m might be considered the break-off point between cruisers and Star Destroyers - though here as elsewhere, insisting on over-rigid definition is perhaps unwise, and reality will always slip out from under the rigid matrix of any abstract system.
-As you can see, he's a fucking liar who likes to play semantics games. Despite his claim, the HttE sourcebook quote is completely ignored. The cruiser definition is just said to be "broad," fitting in with the EU fanwhore belief that Star Destroyers are just cruisers with a fancy name, generally large size, but no definite meaning.
-
Executor-class
Star Destroyer? McEwok (Arkady Hodge) likes to slip in these little bits of minimalism where he can.
Even within the navies of the major galactic powers of the period, there were seemingly odd exceptions to this system. During the Clone Wars, the 752-meter Acclamator-class vessels assigned to the Grand Army of the Republic were normally described as "assault ships", although they would fall into the cruiser bracket according to the standard system,
He's such a fucking WEG zombie that any designation that wasn't explicitly mentioned in his one precious RASB passage is "odd" and in violation of canon. I noticed that through numerous edits, VT-16's
Empire At War info about Acclamators being designated as frigates was removed. Now, it just points out how strange it is that they're called "assault ships" when they should be cruisers.
While ships are often classified by size, size is NOT completely independent from function; many ships do the things they do in part BECAUSE of how big (or small) they are. The Acclamator is an assault ship because it's meant to land troops. Also, McEwok (Arkady Hodge) again fails to consider the possibility of more than one scale here.
At first sight, it seems as though a hierarchical pattern can be discerned here — and this may at one point have been the intention; but in practice, the terminology has been stretched and slackened in several directions, particularly to accommodate the large, spearhead-shaped ships colloquially known as "Star Destroyers". Most obviously, at 1600m in length, the standard Imperial-class Star Destroyer is significantly longer on the keel and almost certainly larger in internal volume than a common contemporary Star Cruiser class, the 1200m Mon Calamari design known as the MC80 — when in a hierarchial system based on size, an ascent from destroyer to cruiser would seem more rational.
The different shipbuilding traditions of Dac and the human-dominated drive-yard systems of the Core may play a role in this discrepancy, but Imperial and New Republuic officers used the "Star Cruiser" designation for Mon Cal ships without hesitation, so it cannot be casually assumed in the absence of direct evidence that Star Destroyers "should" or "must" be smaller than Star Cruisers.
-AGAIN, McEwok (Arkady Hodge) fails to consider the existence of multiple scales. He's using the existence of smaller
Calamari starships to portray
Kuat Drive Yards' observed scale as crap. He's also blatantly lying about the lack of absence that KDY Star Cruisers are larger than Star Destroyers. I've shown this ItW quote to him NUMEROUS times in the past:
"Eventually designated the Executor-class after the vessel assigned to Vader's personal use and commanded by Admiral Ozzel, it is usually referred to in rebel slang as a "Super Star Destroyer" --
a term that covers many warship classes bigger than a Star Destroyer, from Star Cruisers to ultimate Star Dreadnaughts like Executor. Over one hundred times more massive than a common Star Destroyer and almost 12 times as long, the Executor bristles with more than 5000 turbolasers and ion cannons, and carries wings of star fighters and two pre assembled garrison bases."
That crap about characters on both sides calling MC80s "Star Cruiser" is also meaningless; Imperial officers frequently refer to their
own ships in Rebel slang.
Moreover, it can be noted that some Star Destroyers are almost double the length and more than twice the tonnage of others (and the 1137m design is known interchangeably as an "attack cruiser"),
Meaningless, since the size discrepancies between different ships in SW are much, much bigger than they are in real life. An ISD might have several times the volume of a Venator, but a Star Dreadnaught has several HUNDRED times the volume.
and on an even larger scale, the terms "Star Destroyer" and "Star Dreadnought" have both been applied to the Executor-class design.
Once again ignoring the ItW quote, which puts a limit on Star Destroyer size, states the
Executor's true designation, and is logically more credible since it's intended to clear up confusion from slang.
Behind the Scenes
All of our quotes need to be posted here, to expose McEwok (Arkady Hodge) for the moron he is.
