Something big

[CetaMan]

Noticed the asymmetry as well, interesting design choice.

[Rhadamantus]

Anyone made a guess at the mass of the Raddus?
If, as Rhadamantus guessed, (viewtopic.php?p=4033632#p4033632) the Supremacy had an output of 5E28-1E29 then it really should have tanked it. If ISD is 40,000,000 tons (disputable really, but that's another matter), Raddus should be between 100-200MT.

At light speed, that's 1.8e27 joules - Supremacy can tank between 9-18 of these hits if 1/3 of its energy is diverted to shields. Why is Krennic panicking, besides the fact that they made a sissy of his character in TLJ...? Their response should have been a smug chuckle and cracking out the champers!

Cheers chaps! That's the end of this insignificant rebellion!


As has been suggested, it can only be explained as piss poor planning or some kind of hyperspace/realspace babble. Or, maybe, it's some shield limitation (whether general or specific to this ship) whereby not enough power could be diverted to the impact zone quickly enough (took 13 microseconds for the ship's full length to impact against the shields)

I'm going to guess it's a good bit heavier. An ISD is about 90 million cubic meters, I think, and I'm pretty sure it's a good bit denser than water. I would guess about 4 or 5 billion tons, at 1/3 c. That's 2.4E28W, and the Supremacy is probably more like 3E28 W, so plausible it would lose to that.

[fractalsponge1]

Fractal, amazing Job as ever.

I would never have the patience to not make the details symmetrical. Which brings up the question of why weaponry would be asymetrical, (other than not needing the detail for filming angles) It's just something that has always bothered me that a line warship has that amount of variability

I made the arrangement slightly asymmetrical to follow *potential* light gun positions on the model, but the details won't be completely asymmetrical. I followed the model asymmetry for regions where you'd see both sides at once, but the starboard side terraces are much much less detailed and I don't really think that's worth re-interpreting, so those bits will be mirrored.

Also, normally I don't make asymmetrical details, but this is a special model, so it warrants a special level of attention

As to armament - I plan to make the positions asymmetrical but still keep the same coverage from side to side. The PD guns are so small and seemingly structurally inconsequential that I bet they are largely bolt-on mountings, and so internal equipment access and volume demands are more important and the light guns get shuffled around as needed. The main guns are symmetrical though. Big ships presumably don't have the same space constraints and thus don't have to have slightly disordered layouts.

[InsaneTD]

That isn't a certain ship from a certain story on this site is it? Cause I would love to see it modelled. (Especially as I'm planning for it to make an appearance in a future campaign I'm gonna run. )

[fractalsponge1]

It's not THAT asymmetrical.

[Commander Veers]

Yes, 40MT always seemed a bit low. I think it's in canon continuity, and I presume whichever author put it in there just pulled the weight off of this page: http://weblog.st-v-sw.net/2010/01/star- ... nsity.html

0.75 tons per cubic metre is too low imho, considering most of the construction is very heavy. The armour and structural framework aren't inconsiderable, as we see the ISD's armour being at least a metre thick where it is visible. He also estimated ISD volume as half of what you did at 54 million cubic metres. Would 2.5 tons/m3 be more realistic? That would make for a 225MT ISD if 90 million m3, so a 1-1.5GT Raddus (it really isn't very big compared to ISDs as you can see) at your stated 1/3c would exert 5e27 - 7.5e27 joules. As you said above though, where does the small little Raddus get all this energy from? The only explanation can be that it's some kind of hyperspace-realspace interaction gone awry.

What makes you suggest 3e28 by the way? The shipyard-oriented role of the Supremacy?
What I find amazing about it is that, while very slender, it could still accomodate multiple 2km+ radius reactors with lots of room to spare.

It looked cool but I still would have rather seen the Raddus splatter on the shields haha.

Sorry if I'm derailing here

[Rhadamantus]

Yes, 40MT always seemed a bit low. I think it's in canon continuity, and I presume whichever author put it in there just pulled the weight off of this page: http://weblog.st-v-sw.net/2010/01/star- ... nsity.html

0.75 tons per cubic metre is too low imho, considering most of the construction is very heavy. The armour and structural framework aren't inconsiderable, as we see the ISD's armour being at least a metre thick where it is visible. He also estimated ISD volume as half of what you did at 54 million cubic metres. Would 2.5 tons/m3 be more realistic? That would make for a 225MT ISD if 90 million m3, so a 1-1.5GT Raddus (it really isn't very big compared to ISDs as you can see) at your stated 1/3c would exert 5e27 - 7.5e27 joules. As you said above though, where does the small little Raddus get all this energy from? The only explanation can be that it's some kind of hyperspace-realspace interaction gone awry.

What makes you suggest 3e28 by the way? The shipyard-oriented role of the Supremacy?
What I find amazing about it is that, while very slender, it could still accomodate multiple 2km+ radius reactors with lots of room to spare.

It looked cool but I still would have rather seen the Raddus splatter on the shields haha.

Sorry if I'm derailing here

It's big, but the construction of that thing isn't a ship killer. They're not trying to make a Bellator type ship.

[Abacus]

Just had an interesting discussion regarding fighter craft capacity. If someone decided to make the Imperial-class more of a carrier, and as a result losing out on it's compliment of walkers and half to three quarters of it's other small craft (and the prefab base); how many additional strike craft do you believe the ISD would be capable of holding (with the intent of using them in combat and not just transport), Fractal?

I was arguing with a friend that it'd be more practical to simply use the Ton-Falk Escort Carrier, and that even that that ship is low in how many craft it should be capable of carrying.

[fractalsponge1]

Just had an interesting discussion regarding fighter craft capacity. If someone decided to make the Imperial-class more of a carrier, and as a result losing out on it's compliment of walkers and half to three quarters of it's other small craft (and the prefab base); how many additional strike craft do you believe the ISD would be capable of holding (with the intent of using them in combat and not just transport), Fractal?

I was arguing with a friend that it'd be more practical to simply use the Ton-Falk Escort Carrier, and that even that that ship is low in how many craft it should be capable of carrying.

At least 3 wings. TIEs are so compact and ISDs are so large that if you wanted to do a full fighter arrangement it could very easily handle Venator air groups.

An AT-AT represents the volume of about 20 interceptors (the most compact common fighter - in rack storage terms probably about a squadron). An ISD is supposed to have what, 20? The associated dropship for the AT-AT is about the same volume, and walkers are probably not stored within the dropship given the available depictions of walkers in hangars in other places. Let's say there's clear servicing space for ~4 at once that walkers cycle in and out of, and double the volume for access around the vehicle in the repair bay. So that's now 48 volumes of AT-AT freed, which is an extra 48 squadrons of interceptor. The fighters will need their own servicing space, but you can see it's easily several wings worth of fighters.

[evillejedi]

if you rack mount the ties in a relatively compact fashion vertically you should be able to carry 1500-2000 ties in the hangar space available. This doesn't support recovery and maintenance operations, but it gives you the idea of how much space is available. Now imagine a field secured container vessel leaving Seinar ports with a half million ties per bubble :-p

[Rhadamantus]

The Assertor is apparently canon now, from an RPG that was semi-recently released. They also managed to butcher the numbers, giving it 120 fighters.

[evillejedi]

maybe 120 fighters on CAP? the rest of the airwing at ready? I remember a game I ran where the players had to escape a Golan III platform as it was being picked apart by an Allegiance and its battlegroup. Just to keep it moving I didn't bother rolling damage, I just had fudge dice (-/+) as a battle tracker and used counts of +/- as trigger for events like bulkheads shutting and the power/ artificial gravity going out. Once they got to a ship the ties were essentially endless waves until they got to hyperspace and the sporadic fire from the fleet was just a bunch of dice if something scored a hit, the actual numbers were essentially irrelevant since no one was focus firing on them.

[Weedle McHairybug]

The Assertor is apparently canon now, from an RPG that was semi-recently released. They also managed to butcher the numbers, giving it 120 fighters.

If you're referring to the RPG book Command and Control, that's ambiguously Canon, ambiguously Legends.

[Abacus]

I don't think Disney has made a firm decision on whether the RPG books are canon or not. If they said they're canon, that'd be a huge boon to the Maximalist camp.

*goes off to find and torture Minimalists with Force lightning*

[NecronLord]

FFG's RPGs and games are not considered canon. Like SWTOR they are legends-still-in-production.

[Patroklos]

A straight up volume comparison between AT-ATs and TIEs is probably not a very accurate measure. While we can't assume that there is a similar tech/maintenance/support equipment disparity between SW air/space and ground vehicles as exists between real world military jets and ground vehicles, the first takes up a LOT more room for the same vehicle occupied volume.

[NecronLord]

I'd normally consider it more from a two-dimensional perspective, even then there's plenty of options to increase the ISD's loadout, though in my offsite convo with Abacus I was mostly arguing that the ISD's standard load out was based around being a mobile oppression palace, rather than a war machine, which I think fits.

[fractalsponge1]

A straight up volume comparison between AT-ATs and TIEs is probably not a very accurate measure. While we can't assume that there is a similar tech/maintenance/support equipment disparity between SW air/space and ground vehicles as exists between real world military jets and ground vehicles, the first takes up a LOT more room for the same vehicle occupied volume.

Yeah but if we actually look at what these vehicles are like I'd bet that AT-ATs proportionately take up a huge amount of volume for maintenance. A TIE series craft looks like it has an intergrated powerpack, and is incredibly small to begin with compared to a walker. I wouldn't be surprised if hangar maintenance of a TIE was classically Soviet - unwrap a replacement assembly from Sienar and send the rest back to a factory. A walker has actual gears to deal with, and has moving parts individually almost the volume of some TIEs.

Add to that that maintenance requirements tend not to scale linearly with size - they tend to get even worse the bigger the vehicle gets. So in volume terms yes, stripping/replacing an engine on an F-15 takes a lot more room proportionately than a powerpack replacement on a tank that's about 10x smaller volume. Now imagine an AT-AT that's 20x the volume of a TIE - maintenance is going require even more space proportionately. If anything, a straight volume scale is underestimating how many fighters you'll get by removing the AT-AT complement and its logistical tail from the ship. And unlike F-15s, AT-ATs have dropships that also need to be serviced.

[Commander Veers]

Fractal have you ever considered doing cross sections with your ships? Like modelling internal components and rendering something akin to the ICSs with them?

[fractalsponge1]

Fractal have you ever considered doing cross sections with your ships? Like modelling internal components and rendering something akin to the ICSs with them?

Consider, then recoil from in horror.

I love looking at cross sections but there are 2 problems:
1) I think it requires a certain presumption about the mechanics that I wouldn't feel comfortable with unless I got charged to do it by LFL/Disney.
2) Cross-sections in CGI are insanely time consuming - every surface needs something in order to look decent, and I don't like doing interiors in general because scaling becomes super important, and you start noticing all sorts of little things that need to be added, like guardrails and ladders and light fixtures etc. that wouldn't be a problem on most exterior shots.

[Patroklos]

It might be intersting to just do some rough in shapes so we can see where your head is at when you arrange things. Reactor bulbs, weapons penetrations, rough storage volumes for fighter/embarked troop staging.

Nothing textured, just basic shapes.

[Commander Veers]

Yes, I can see where you're coming from. This was described in an interview Jason Fry did for the TLJ ICS: "And it let us include more ships without reducing poor Kemp [CG artist] to a twitching, gibbering wreck, to be found hunched and drooling over his desk. I’m fond of Kemp, so I’m glad I didn’t have to see that."

Much easier for a watercolour artist presumably. What is a few strokes of a brush for them is time-consuming 3D modelling for you. Makes it all the more surprising that the new cross sections appear to consist of quite a lot of CGI.

That said, patroklos' idea sounds good if it's something you'd be interested in doing. You are among a few I'd consider "uniquely qualified" to make educated guesses about layouts. We have the ICSs as references after all.

[fractalsponge1]

I wonder what kind of contract Kemp signed? More ships = more work = more money

[Captain Seafort]

It might be intersting to just do some rough in shapes so we can see where your head is at when you arrange things. Reactor bulbs, weapons penetrations, rough storage volumes for fighter/embarked troop staging.

Nothing textured, just basic shapes.

So, more stuff along these lines?

[Elheru Aran]

I actually didn't think the ICS for TLJ had that much more ships than usual.

Pretty sure there was at least SOME CGI'ing going on as well, if only outlining basic shapes or perhaps adding in gribbly detail by the zillions. I am not a professional vehicle designer, I don't know how this works, I'm just spitballing