Something big

[Rogue 9]

this ships are the best i ever seen in the internet

great work...really

what class name has the carrier?and what is the status?when will it be finished?

i wish you could make a picture where we could see a imperial fleet at a BDZ

Check Fractalsponge's site. He has a BDZ picture and a carrier design in the making.

You know, until this very moment I'd somehow never connected "Price of Defiance" with his work here.

[fractalsponge1]

How many other fractalsponges are out there?

[Rogue 9]

I'd wager not very many. I didn't originally see it on your site, though...

[fractalsponge1]

Hm, update check: ortho time!

This is a BIG shot, I BS you not:



Almost 0.5m/pixel. Very close.

[fusion]

Hm, update check: ortho time!

This is a BIG shot, I BS you not:



Almost 0.5m/pixel. Very close.

Wait... how is 15000 meter long ship on an 8000 pixel picture, .5 meter/pixel....

[Thanas]

^That Image is marvellous work.

Fractalsponge, what are the dimensions of this ship in terms of width and height? I am asking because I was curious how it corresponds to a Sovereign class in terms of dimensions and volume comparison.

Have you also finalized troop carrying capacity/fighter wings? I would suspect the two are relatively small considering how much power and space it gives to weapons/shields.

[Rogue 9]

"We Brake for Nobody..."

An excellent shot.

[Alyeska]

Just something to consider. When you start getting that size, shouldn't there be even larger weapons? They wouldn't be useful against smaller ships, but one would think that some heavy guns that could clobber an ISD with one or two shots would be most useful. I keep looking at pictures of an Iowa class Battleship and can't help but note that your guns look like pea shooters in size comparison.

[Havok]

Yeah, if you are going to make ships this size, you might as well make the guns to match.

[Thanas]

Nah. The weaponry is already scaled up to very high turrets - in fact, there are turrent sizes on there that we never see in Star Wars. Unless you are talking about superlasers, the ship has already way larger weaponry than any other design.

[fractalsponge1]

Wait... how is 15000 meter long ship on an 8000 pixel picture, .5 meter/pixel....

Ach, can't do math, I meant almost 2m per pixel

Fighter and troop complements:

Let's see. Obviously they'd be less than an Executor with that absolutely gigantic bay, but there's still quite a large amount of volume available. I've not finalized the design of the hangar area yet, but I'm envisioning double-triple the length of the Bellator's bay area, under the same sort of inward-facing internal sliding armored doors. That would figure out at about 18 wings, 3 corps for triple the Bellator complement. Little in the way of heavy armor vehicles (AT-AT limit), might up the fighter complement instead. But minimum 12 wings, to a max of around 24. Quite reasonable given that there'll probably be more volume than four 6-wing Venators in the hangar area, even if they are mostly external to the main hull a la the Bellator.

I assume you're using evillejedi's Sovereign interpretation and Saxton's ~15km estimate? Looking at that silhouette, the volume probably works out at with an edge to Sovereign. Depends on what you think the beam actually is though. If it's Executor's beam then the volumes will probably be very close, bigger advantage to Sovereign if the beam is actually wider. I imagine Sov's a better siege platform with that "big miniature" superlaser, but probably less agile and maneuverable than my dreadnought, and less well armed with conventional weapons. Both much better than the Eclipse ship-to-ship.

This comparison would be with evillejedi's ship catalogue. I disagree with a few of the interpretations, notably the Mandator and Procurator (though his Mandator model works well in my opinion as an interpretation of Anon cruiser 4). Some of the larger block-outs I'm not sure of the provenance of, I assume background DE ships, but I don't have the comic and they do not appear in Saxton's catalogue.



Current dimensions are 15031.3m overall length, 7615.6 overall beam, 2342.1m maximum depth.

Just something to consider. When you start getting that size, shouldn't there be even larger weapons? They wouldn't be useful against smaller ships, but one would think that some heavy guns that could clobber an ISD with one or two shots would be most useful. I keep looking at pictures of an Iowa class Battleship and can't help but note that your guns look like pea shooters in size comparison.

That assumes that it is common practice to scale weaponry linearly with ship size. From the examples known, that doesn't seem to be the case. The Executor had very small turrets for its size, and there are no visible turrets at all on the Eclipse. The use of smaller caliber guns on the newer ISDII suggests also that caliber isn't everything it's cracked up to be. I mean, I could mount 100+m diameter rolling path W-165 and v-150 turrets, but I personally think it's a bit overkill. 720 teratons is also already fairly large; a single turret matches a light destroyer. Just having a big gun doesn't necessarily mean you'll fire quickly or track reliably enough with it to hit anything that could be one-shotted by it.

Some more big shots with different lighting, and I uploaded a better contrast version of the big ortho:

[Alyeska]

That assumes that it is common practice to scale weaponry linearly with ship size. From the examples known, that doesn't seem to be the case. The Executor had very small turrets for its size, and there are no visible turrets at all on the Eclipse. The use of smaller caliber guns on the newer ISDII suggests also that caliber isn't everything it's cracked up to be. I mean, I could mount 100+m diameter rolling path W-165 and v-150 turrets, but I personally think it's a bit overkill. 720 teratons is also already fairly large; a single turret matches a light destroyer. Just having a big gun doesn't necessarily mean you'll fire quickly or track reliably enough with it to hit anything that could be one-shotted by it.

Big ships designed to fight little ships. Had the Rebellion been capable of building such large ships, it would have forced larger guns into existence.

[Thanas]

Why? These are not projectile weapons. It should make little difference how you deliver the energy to the target - and as lots of little bolts cannot be as easily intercepted/evaded as a few large ones...There is a reason why the ISDII has smaller guns - I believe this is it.

Also, the Viscount was designed to engage Executor class ships and it does not have large guns. And it is not like the Dreadnoughts are designed to fight little ships - there were large classes before the Executor in existence and still there are no large guns.

[fractalsponge1]

I can see larger bolts being tougher to stop if there were such a thing as local burn-throughs for shield, but you could always just link multiple turrets together for time-on-target salvos, which also allow you to engage multiple smaller targets when the need arises. There might be plenty of other reasons against mounting proportionally heavier artillery with bigger hulls; cost, complexity, recoil, rate of fire, tracking accuracy for the mounting, dispersion of armament, flexibility against multiple targets... Super-heavy guns are obviously doable given things like the Munificent siege guns and W-165/V-150s, but just might not be cost effective. The real thing that gives me pause is that we never see such large turreted weapons on Imperial ships. Giel's battleship, which seems to be the largest heavy-fleet combat oriented vessel seen so far, has no obvious big guns either (you can argue laziness on the part of the artist, but you could as easily interpret that as massing smaller artillery pieces is a well-founded standard practice for large SW ships).

[Thanas]

Well, there is also the subjugator - which was basically a wreck due to its main armament having been destroyed. Furthermore, there is the possibility that larger weapons are just not worth it. For example, in the aforementioned subjugator class, the heavy ion blast (why not just a turbolaser that huge? Do turbolasers have a certain "limit" after which there is just no reason to pump more energy in them due to diminishing returns?) seemed to travel very small as well.

And without it, the ship was basically scrap and could not defend itself from a few Venators.

[Serafina]

And without it, the ship was basically scrap and could not defend itself from a few Venators.

This.

Once the shields are down, everything can be taken out with bomber strikes.

Which means that large, individual weapons are more vulnerable without offering any significant advantage.

Of course, the explosion also took out shields, presumably most of the power and the hyperdrive.
Which crippled the ship even further.

Do turbolasers have a certain "limit" after which there is just no reason to pump more energy in them due to diminishing returns?) seemed to travel very small as well.

No, they do not (hint: Superlaser).
However, they do not offer an "area"-effect - the Malevolence took out three Venators with one shot (and more would have been possible).
If it had used a large laser, it would have taken down one of them and needed to recharge.

[Thanas]

Do turbolasers have a certain "limit" after which there is just no reason to pump more energy in them due to diminishing returns?) seemed to travel very small as well.

No, they do not (hint: Superlaser).

First, there is no evidence the two are the same. We have a field artillery weapon that utilizes similar technology, but there is no direct link between that similar technology and the weapons of Imperial starships.

Second, only on a ship that is very, very huge. The DS had both the volume and the reactor space to pump out that much energy. For a ship the size of an ISD or small dreadnought it would be too much and both the Eclipse and the Sovereign lose IMO too much space on it. For example, the eclipse has almost no engines and is very, very slow.

However, they do not offer an "area"-effect - the Malevolence took out three Venators with one shot (and more would have been possible).
If it had used a large laser, it would have taken down one of them and needed to recharge.

That could have been avoided by using three or four heavy turbolasers instead of one giant ion cannon. Recharge rate is something that can be controlled by using fewer shots.

[JointStrikeFighter]

Judging by the relative size of the tail region compared to other ships I get the impression the hyper speed of the Dreadnought is fuck slow?

[fractalsponge1]

Hm? Even assuming the whole fantail is a hypderdrive it's still almost the size of the Executor's.

[JointStrikeFighter]

Hm? Even assuming the whole fantail is a hypderdrive it's still almost the size of the Executor's.

It seems proportionally smaller than other ships; exe, accy, venstars

[fractalsponge1]

No it's not. If anything, it's proportionately much bigger than the Venator's.

[Atlan]

No it's not. If anything, it's proportionately much bigger than the Venator's.

Yeah, but you've stuffed a big honking ion drive in there. This will severely restrict space in the tail, even if the actual drive itself is not that deep. You still need all the structural supports and power couplings for it.

[fractalsponge1]

Do you have any scaling of hypderdrive systems for different sized ships? I've always assumed that the hyperdrive motivators take up a trivial amount of internal volume relative to the rest of the ship. The Acclamator's and Venator's modules are tiny compared to the rest of the ship, under 5% and probably closer to 1% of total volume (guesstimate). The ICS for the ISD does not shown the hyperdrive systems at all. Do you know something I don't? If so, share, dammit

[fractalsponge1]

Actually, measured off of an Acclamator 3D model. An approximate total hull volume is on the order of 1e7 m3. The corresponding area devoted to the hyperdrive from the ICS clocks out at something on the order of 2e5 m3. Under 1% of total volume.

[fractalsponge1]

Ah, so I finally made the transition to windows 7 and 3dsmax 2010. And got some work done on the ventral side.