Guns of Star Wars capital ships

[Terralthra]

And if we were talking about terrestrial battleships, that would be relevant. We're talking about ships whose design considerations we simply have almost no clue. We don't even know if a situation wherein an ISD would encounter an equivalently sized ship with the ability to salvo fire could even occur.

Regardless of environmental setups there are still certain elements that remain fundamental in any situation, and sustainable high volume firepower is critical in any ranged battle. Being able to volley fire rapidly compared to staggered fire for equivalent ships, even if merely abstracted, is still a distinct advantage to have in terms of energy delivery.

You're assuming that there is an equivalent ship that CAN volley fire. Which part of "we don't know the design considerations" is too difficult to understand?

[VT-16]

Well, the placement of the guns just seems more natural for an escort vessel rather than something that's primarily meant to face an opponent head on. But that would make the Star Destroyers actual destroyers and god forbid we have any evidence of that instead of WEG morons telling us they're cruisers or battleships.

[Illuminatus Primus]

It would've been nice if the original "Holocron" writers and background people had bothered to come up with a sensible group of principles. We still have no idea how SW combat really works, which is why we have so many contradictory and shitty slapdash depictions of it.

[montypython]

You're assuming that there is an equivalent ship that CAN volley fire. Which part of "we don't know the design considerations" is too difficult to understand?

And my point is that regardless of the actual feasibility on a particular ship design, the CONCEPT is better for all things being equal.

[Terralthra]

You're assuming that there is an equivalent ship that CAN volley fire. Which part of "we don't know the design considerations" is too difficult to understand?

And my point is that regardless of the actual feasibility on a particular ship design, the CONCEPT is better for all things being equal.

Oh, well, as long as we're talking about 'concepts' instead of actual feasible and practicable ship design, an ISD can effectively fire volley fire on its HTLs, because it can just load twisted tibanna gas and fire curved TL bolts that all end up going straight forward.

[Darth Ruinus]

You're assuming that there is an equivalent ship that CAN volley fire. Which part of "we don't know the design considerations" is too difficult to understand?

And my point is that regardless of the actual feasibility on a particular ship design, the CONCEPT is better for all things being equal.

Oh, well, as long as we're talking about 'concepts' instead of actual feasible and practicable ship design, an ISD can effectively fire volley fire on its HTLs, because it can just load twisted tibanna gas and fire curved TL bolts that all end up going straight forward.

Like Stark said, it doesnt matter that only 2 of the guns can aim forward, since those two guns will have the reactor power diverted to them alone, thereby packing the punch of all the other guns in them.

Unless you guys are talking about somethign else entirely

[VT-16]

That might not be possible on the ISD-II, which has a wall infront of the foremost heavy battery, thus making even this useless.

[The Original Nex]

Cannot the ISD simply tip its nose down to bring all its heavy guns to bear on a forward target? Remember that starships operate in 3 dimensions...

[Batman]

Cannot the ISD simply tip its nose down to bring all its heavy guns to bear on a forward target? Remember that starships operate in 3 dimensions...

Of course it could. But one of the prime purposes of turrets is to establish a warship to bring as many guns as possible to bear WITHOUT having to maneuver.

[The Original Nex]

Cannot the ISD simply tip its nose down to bring all its heavy guns to bear on a forward target? Remember that starships operate in 3 dimensions...

Of course it could. But one of the prime purposes of turrets is to establish a warship to bring as many guns as possible to bear WITHOUT having to maneuver.

True, which with star ships would beg the questions of having a ventral surface totally devoid of any medium or heavy weapons.

[Darwin]

True, which with star ships would beg the questions of having a ventral surface totally devoid of any medium or heavy weapons.

Well, any ship that can produce and handle tens of thousands of gees of acceleration should also be able to roll 180 pretty snappily too.

The lack of heavy ventral guns on the ISD is simply a product of its design: they never fight alone, and can cover each other. It's simply unnecessary and adds redundant systems that bump up the cost and complexity.

[Darth Wong]

One could speculate all day, but there isn't enough information for that. But it wouldn't be hard to come up with theories; we know that the recoil from heavy guns is so large that it threatens the structural integrity of the ship without reinforcement fields. The ability to fire all eight turrets forward simultaneously may simply be unsustainable, so it would be totally pointless to design the ship in such a manner as to make this possible.

For an adhoc design that may make sense, but for a purpose built combat vessel not having the ability to fire its entire main armament simultaneously would be the equivalent of a terrestrial battleship only capable of stagger fire, which would be a fatal liability against any equivalent ship with full salvo fire.

Do you grok the concept of why recoil limitations would prevent full volley fire? Because if you did, you would understand how retarded it is to say that it needs this ability to fight other ships its size which have it.

[evillejedi]

To a certain extent longer gunnery ranges (>100km) or bombardment missions do not need very much if any turret traversal, turning the ship might be faster than moving each heavy turret into view, but the layout still suffers from the ability to fire all batteries or provide effective coverage with minimal maneuvering.

I'm curious about the design history of the Venstar with respect to the turn around on the vessel from the beginning of the clone wars to when we see them in ROTS (and partially in the clone wars animated series) I have an unsubstantiated opinion that Venstars were rushed to production to meet the needs of having a large fast fleet carrier with heavy gunnery, essentially producing a structurally unsound hack job of a ship with insufficient reactor volume and storage to sustain operations. They have the definite look of something designed by committee, cut out 90% of the content and tack on a bunch of geewiz bullet points.

[Darth Wong]

To a certain extent longer gunnery ranges or bombardment missions do not need very much if any turret traversal, turning the ship might be faster than moving each heavy turret into view, but the layout still suffers from the ability to fire all batteries or provide effective coverage with minimal maneuvering.

Naturally. I've been saying this for a while; people seem to think that all space combat is supposed to be like Trek space combat, or that bizarre special-circumstance battles like the Battle of Coruscant or the Battle of Endor should be assumed to be the norm.

I'm curious about the design history of the Venstar with respect to the turn around on the vessel from the beginning of the clone wars to when we see them in ROTS (and partially in the clone wars animated series) I have an unsubstantiated opinion that Venstars were rushed to production to meet the needs of having a large fast fleet carrier with heavy gunnery, essentially producing a structurally unsound hack job of a ship with insufficient reactor volume and storage to sustain operations. They have the definite look of something designed by committee, cut out 90% of the content and tack on a bunch of geewiz bullet points.

Is there any particular evidence that it suffered from poor performance due to shoddy design and conflicting design goals, other than your subjective impression?

[Connor MacLeod]

It could be that energy distirbution, or more specifically energy distribution between the heavy guns and engines, is a reason for the "Broadside arrangement."

A ship facing "forward" will only have two of its turrets able to be brought to bear. But in most situations when you'd be facing forward you probably would be accelerating towards an enemy, or manuvering. In such cases the engines are going to be consuming a fair bit of power and that means less energy available for the guns to use. However, when firing broadsides, your ability to move is going to be more limited, and in any case diverting all power to guns will mean you don't have much reactor power available for manuvers anyhow.

The one sticking parrt on this I can think of is engines as recoil-countering mechanisms - using the engines in that way is going to consume power (probably similar to what the weapons output) which is also going to influence how many turrets you can power. Broadsides would only likely be usuable when you're in or around a larger mass that you can use repulsors or tractor beams to "brace" against (and transfer momentum to) like a moon or a planet. Or in cases when you've built up a large quantity of speed that you can afford to shed in firing the guns.

Also from the broadside, its quite possible for the ISD to simply "roll" to bring an undamaged side to bear on the enemy (assuming you aren't surrounded). You can't do that as easily "bow on".

As Mike has said, given that the heavy guns are going to be used at long ranges (when the slow rotation rates are less of a liability to tracking and accuracy), having them dorsally mounted in a broadside arrangement is not a critical drawback in design.

Hell, for all we know, this is a big factor dictating the tactics employed in combat. Nothing says SW ships must ALWAYs utilize their heavy guns at maximum power in all cases.

Granted with all that, I see no real reason why you couldn't superfire at least some of the turrets on the ISD or Venator or Acclamators, because it could still let you fire forward under some of the examples above. And nothing in the ICSes I could observe WRT to placement of the guns seems to suggest that an alternate arrangement would be problematic to the gun's operation. (At the very least, sticking them on higher elevations shouldnt - turbolaser "towers" are establisehd in canon...)

An alternate method is to do what the Acclamators did and stick some of the heavy guns in the brim trenches - the ISD-1 seemed to follow this idea too.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Well, let's be serious. We hack up ST ships all the time for having conflicted, misguided design goals. In a navy where the ships can be basically anywhere within a day or two, typically without refueling too, having a combination troopship (that LANDS), destroyer (fast escort vessel with some multi-role characteristics), and carrier (must be able to host a meaningful and useful number of fighter craft well) seems pretty stupid. Especially when they have a dedicated troopship (that can, again, actually land). We know they can afford and do put a lot of hulls in space, so why not split those into some dedicated designs as opposed to the rather schitzophrenic requirements of the Venator-class? Naturally we don't know enough about the fundamental design trade-offs regarding the Venator in particular and fundamental technological and economical principles regarding SW ship combat in general to say we objectively know what lay-outs are good and which are bad. There is a gray area from which we can make excuses. Still, we could say the same thing about ST ships at times, but we don't tend to cut them much slack.

Also, my quip about the deck guns has nothing to do with the theory they must be used at long-range. The brain trust of fanboys has apparently they decreed that they are "flak guns" - despite the fact they'd be most useless at that of any role.

He did say unsubstantiated, as well.

[Darth Wong]

Well, let's be serious. We hack up ST ships all the time for having conflicted, misguided design goals.

Yeah, of course. How unfair of us. It's not as if we see shipboard operations in considerable detail and hence have clear empirical evidence of these shortcomings in action or anything.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Well, let's be serious. We hack up ST ships all the time for having conflicted, misguided design goals.

Yeah, of course. How unfair of us. It's not as if we see shipboard operations in considerable detail and hence have clear empirical evidence of these shortcomings in action or anything.

Conceded.

[Vehrec]

I'm curious about the design history of the Venstar with respect to the turn around on the vessel from the beginning of the clone wars to when we see them in ROTS (and partially in the clone wars animated series) I have an unsubstantiated opinion that Venstars were rushed to production to meet the needs of having a large fast fleet carrier with heavy gunnery, essentially producing a structurally unsound hack job of a ship with insufficient reactor volume and storage to sustain operations. They have the definite look of something designed by committee, cut out 90% of the content and tack on a bunch of geewiz bullet points.

Is there any particular evidence that it suffered from poor performance due to shoddy design and conflicting design goals, other than your subjective impression?

The Venator's unrefueled range is quite short, and would not be enough for it to cross the galaxy twice. Or even once. Wookiepedia quotes an unrefueled range of 60,000 light years, which seems very short for a true warship of the Galaxy. The space needed for its massive fighter wing has obviously cut into its own stores and power reserves. Less energy to go around means that the Venator might have trouble with running dry in long battles that place demands on its turbolasers and shields.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Truthfully, we don't know the mission profile for the Venator-class versus other comparable ships, and the Acclamator-class could be their equivalent of an armed landing craft for behind-enemy-lines insertion, so it requires a fast speed and a very long range. Not to mention historically destroyers were more dependent on support than cruisers or battleships. They were very fast but not independent.

[VT-16]

In ROTS:ICS the Venator is given the profile of escorting battleships, hunting blockade runners, leading independent attacks on enemy bases, basically the same duties as the ISD. This in addition to heavier carrier-duties than the later models, although the Republic Navy also had their own dedicated carriers, according to the same book. Those big guns do look better aimed at firing on enemies coming from the sides.

[evillejedi]

The primary argument I have with the Venstar being a cobbled together design is that the hull volume is minimized tremendously for the components, the notches for the side doors, the lack of a built up superstructure, the narrow hull angle in general. there are lots of exposed components, large bay doors, the engines are not armored, the slender structure of the bridges, even if there is redundancy. the tremendous internal space taken up by hangers.

A lot of this could be explained by an over-reliance on shields and an operational mentality that a vessel that took any hull damage is not worth repairing, but there is a strong argument that a venstar would have issues maintaining its shields or acceleration in a battle due to the reactor draw of its weapons compared to even vessels like the Victories. ( a victory has roughly 1.5x the reactor volume for a nearly equivalent surface area)

1)
If the maximum volume for a reactor as shown in the ICS is used including the backup/subordinate reactors the volume of that reactor would be around .9M m^3, compare this to an ISDs 9M m^3 reactor

to meet the arguably fannon guesstimate of the ISD consuming 100,000 tons of fuel the Venstar would have to be 9 times more efficient by volume in annihilating matter (huh?) essentially a reactor an order of magnitude smaller than an ISD would be outputting half the total power. Either an ISD eat 380,000 tons of matter a second, the venstar has some crazily improbably efficient reactor or reactor fuel consumption per volume is inversely non-linear IE bigger reactors consume less fuel per volume.

either the venstars 40,000 ton fuel consumption is an unsustainable overload amount for hyperspace jumps and for full power TL shots, it is an amazingly over efficient reactor, or technology/risk managment was better in the prequels. ( remember the ISD II prototype was stated as having a reactor roughly 2x better than the ISD, but it was unstable, that is still another 4x less efficient than the venstar if the 100,000 ton estimate is true)

2)
If we make an assumption that the Venstar turrets are roughly equivalent to the ISD 1 turrets (and I do mean roughly, since we have no cannonical description of the power level of the ISD I turrets other than that they have considerable power feeds to them) Then we have a tremendous energy draw capability for those weapons. ISDs have a large assortment of other mid range weaponry distributed across the hull whereas the Venstar has only the two lateral double turbolasers.

3)
the range of the venstar is short, its onboard consumables and storage capacity are low, it seems to be used as the vanguard in most attacks, rushing to the next system where it can deploy its star fighters and fire off a few heavy salvos.

4)
the afore mentioned duplicated role of the vessel, there are other dedicated armored troop ships. A dedicated carrier would make more sense if it was deployed correctly in the battle and escorted with warships. (deploying fighters in a battle still is suicide in my opinion)

[Illuminatus Primus]

Where'd you get this 100,000 ton/sec annhiliation estimate?

You should correspond with Ender, he has some really good spreadsheets and work on the volume/power relationships and fuel consumption.

[Aaron]

Where'd you get this 100,000 ton/sec annhiliation estimate?

You should correspond with Ender, he has some really good spreadsheets and work on the volume/power relationships and fuel consumption.

Ender is unfortuantly not around and I don't know if he has access to email or SDN at his location (I doubt his employers are paying for access to SDN).

[Darth Wong]

The Venator's unrefueled range is quite short, and would not be enough for it to cross the galaxy twice. Or even once. Wookiepedia quotes an unrefueled range of 60,000 light years, which seems very short for a true warship of the Galaxy.

60kly is roughly 1/4 the ICS range of the earlier Acclamator vessel. I hope you have a better source for this figure than Wookipedia.

The space needed for its massive fighter wing has obviously cut into its own stores and power reserves.

How the fuck did the Acclamator achieve 4 times the range with a similar design, then?

Less energy to go around means that the Venator might have trouble with running dry in long battles that place demands on its turbolasers and shields.

Not if the primary restriction is overheating, which it seems to be according to ROTS.