Guns of Star Wars capital ships

[Illuminatus Primus]

Oh, that's right, he's aboard Truman.

[Connor MacLeod]

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).

I've got his email addy. I can try mailing him if someone has quiestions.

[Connor MacLeod]

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.

I do, and its in the ROTS ICS as he says. The Venator has a range of 60,000 LY.

The Separatist destroyer has a range of around 30,000 LY,. The IH has a range of 40,000 LY.

The Separatist frigate, however, has a range of 150,000 LY.

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

Venators combine warship roles, starfighter carrier roles, AND ground assault roles into the same package. I don't know how many troops the Venators carry, but I'd imagine quite a bit given its vehicle capacity (Thousands?) Even with the increased size, I imagine that wedging in the fighter capacity and all the weaponry (as well as all the related systems like power feeds, capacitors and whatnot.) took up alot of space.

Hyperdrive range isn't just related to power draw/fuel supply or the speed of the hyperdrive itself. Navigation can affect speed (avoiding obstacles and whatnot) and the hyperspacee/realspace interaction between a ship and matter (such as the interstellar medium, nebulae, etc.) can affect speed (because the shields have to protect the ship against such collisions, IIRC the sources correctly.)

[Darth Wong]

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.

I do, and its in the ROTS ICS as he says. The Venator has a range of 60,000 LY.

The Separatist destroyer has a range of around 30,000 LY,. The IH has a range of 40,000 LY.

The Separatist frigate, however, has a range of 150,000 LY.

That is bizarre. But it's interesting that the ranges of the Clone War-era vessels are comparable; if the Separatists also had plenty of vessels which had relatively short range, it could be that for whatever reason, they felt that the range of the Acclamator was unnecessarily long.

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

Venators combine warship roles, starfighter carrier roles, AND ground assault roles into the same package.

That wasn't true of the Acclamators? They were transports, warships, and they could land on the ground. From the ICS, it looked like a pretty large percentage of the interior volume was cargo space.

I don't know how many troops the Venators carry, but I'd imagine quite a bit given its vehicle capacity (Thousands?) Even with the increased size, I imagine that wedging in the fighter capacity and all the weaponry (as well as all the related systems like power feeds, capacitors and whatnot.) took up alot of space.

Hyperdrive range isn't just related to power draw/fuel supply or the speed of the hyperdrive itself. Navigation can affect speed (avoiding obstacles and whatnot) and the hyperspacee/realspace interaction between a ship and matter (such as the interstellar medium, nebulae, etc.) can affect speed (because the shields have to protect the ship against such collisions, IIRC the sources correctly.)

There must be something rather distinct about the Venators relative to the Acclamators, if there is a 4x range difference despite the outward similarities.

[Connor MacLeod]

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)

Why would the Venator have trouble maintiainng its shields. Are you assuming shields are instrinsically a huge power draw for no discernable reason (and if so, where does all the energy go, pray tell?)

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

1 - what makes you assume they neccesarily run the subsidiary reactors at full power the same time they run the primary ones?

2 - The ISD's reactor actually sticks out through the underside of the ship, so I would imagine they devote more volume of the bulb to armouring/protecting it from attack, which is going to influence the internal volume. Nevermind the conjecture over safety issues or cooling systems or whatnot (or where they store the fuel. Depending on the diagram you go by, such as the SWTJ one, the ISD stores its fuel close to the engine/reactor assembly.)

3 - This assuems they're all the same kind of reactor. Some ISDs apparently run hypermatter reactors, but not all neccesarily do. The ISD reactor in the OT:ICS and the Venator's don't look the same.

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.

Setting all your above assumptions aside, there's nothing suggesting 100,000 tons is the absolute "upper limit" on ISD power generation. Some sources (such as the DS novel) have indicated the ISD could annihilate 300,000+ tons a second easily.

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)

Only if the buttload of assumptions you made hold 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.

Why would we assume they're comparable? The ISD turrets are VASTLY larger than the VEnator's.

Moreover, the ROTS ICS makes it explicit that "all true warships" like a Venator can divert nearly all their power into their guns - that's how we determine a Venator's HTL firepower. Why would the same not apply to the ISD, pray tell? Is it not a "true warship?"

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.

The Venator is also a ground assault ship remember, so one presumes that limited range/supplies is not an issue because they'll have access to a supply base or line in some form or another (either captured from the enemy, or from an already established Republic base, or whatnot.)

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)

We know there are dedicated carriers and there are hangarless ships (the Tector). The usage of "multi-role" ships seems to be something of a compromise in the same way with ISDs - a Venator (like an ISD) is expected to be able to carry out at least a little bit of everything at any given time (space battle, carrier ops, ground attack, patrols, etc.). The concept of a "multi-role" warship is not a new one, its just compromising the efficiency at one particular task to allow it to perform others in some capability.

[Darth Wong]

It's too bad that there's not more information about battles and campaigns during the Clone Wars. That could shed some light as to whether it was a good idea to have these multi-role ships. In theory, dedicated special-purpose ships working in complementary battle groups will work better, assuming they are commanded properly. But then again, if the Republic Navy has a surplus of poor strategic commanders (entirely possible, since a lot of command decisions are being made by Jedi Knights who have little or no training in such matters), one may actually be better off with a fleet of multi-role ships.

[Illuminatus Primus]

That is bizarre. But it's interesting that the ranges of the Clone War-era vessels are comparable; if the Separatists also had plenty of vessels which had relatively short range, it could be that for whatever reason, they felt that the range of the Acclamator was unnecessarily long.

Well we know that some of the Seperatist ships pre-dated the Clone Wars, but the Acclamator was supposed to be the first of a new generation of truly pan-galactic-ranged warships. Presumably the grandfathered-in warships of the early CIS navy would be of the previous generation of at-most regional-ranged warships. We definitely know they were using upgunned Lucrehulk-class freighter-battleships even at the end of the war in crucial battles, and we definitely know that design predated the war considerably.

The CIS frigate's fluff adds that the Intergalactic Banking Clan (its commissioner) has bases and banking vaults outside the primary galaxy in the halo, globular clusters, and nearby/satellite galaxies. Therefore it presumably needed a very long range.

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

Superficially the Venator seems to have a proportionally smaller "tail" than the Acclamator and the Clone Wars-era KDY/RHE ships seem to concentrate their hyperdrive mechanisms there.

That wasn't true of the Acclamators? They were transports, warships, and they could land on the ground. From the ICS, it looked like a pretty large percentage of the interior volume was cargo space.

The Acclamator was apparently optimized for the self-defense and planetary assault role, not ship-to-ship combat like the Venator.

There must be something rather distinct about the Venators relative to the Acclamators, if there is a 4x range difference despite the outward similarities.

It'd be nice if we had comparable information on the ISD and the other KDY later vessels.

[Lord Revan]

Well last major conflict was the Sith War that ended at the battles of Ruusan (there was 6 of them IIRC), about 1000 years before TPM. This would support the theory that the navies lacked properly trained command personel , but it wouldn't confirm it ofc.

[Connor MacLeod]

That is bizarre. But it's interesting that the ranges of the Clone War-era vessels are comparable; if the Separatists also had plenty of vessels which had relatively short range, it could be that for whatever reason, they felt that the range of the Acclamator was unnecessarily long.

My guess for the Separatist frigate is that given that one of its roles is to act as mobile Holonet emitters (IIRC) and scouting purposes, which would necessitate a logn range,

Maybe the Acclamator's long range is a result of it being some sort of "rapid assault" vessel or something, or maybe designed to hit multiple targets in one "trip" or something like that. There might be some "cruising" or "patrol" roles too (huunting for targets of opportunity to attack behind enemy lines, perhaps?)

By contrast, Venators, the Separatist destroyers, and the IH type vessels seem to be more "direct" combatants - that is they mainly just go from point a to point B and are expected to engage, hence the shorter range.

Maybe we can ask Curtis...

That wasn't true of the Acclamators? They were transports, warships, and they could land on the ground. From the ICS, it looked like a pretty large percentage of the interior volume was cargo space.

The Acclamators weren't true warships. They had something like a e23 watt reactor output, but the TLs only put out somethingl ike 200 GT per shot (single or double digit TT per volley IIRC, unless they fire at like dozens of shot a second each (which I admit might be possible, but...) Those aren't even comparabel to the light or heavy guns on a Venator (some of which, like the goofy broadside miniguns, never get mentioned in the ICS.)

The Venator its worth noting carries at least 24 walkers and 40 gunships as well as those hundreds of fighters. Acclamators carry something like 48 walkers (plus 36 SPHA-Ts) and 80 gunships, but no fighters.

We dont know how many "heavy" vehicles a Venator can carry, but we know it could carry juggernauts as per ROTS, so I would imagine it could carry at least some. Also, the Venator's troop complements aren't given. wookieepedia (based on some SWRPG crap IIRC) mentions onlyt 2,000 troops (which seems like a ripoff from the Victory Star Destroyer.) but I suppose its canon (Even though ROTS seems to suggest they carry more, anyhow.)

Acclamators always struck me as troop transports with some warship capability (at least an ability to defend against smaller ships) though from what I recall most of its offensive output (Turbolasers and torpedoes at least) are designed for planteary assault ratner than ship to ship.

There must be something rather distinct about the Venators relative to the Acclamators, if there is a 4x range difference despite the outward similarities.

Its worth noting the Venator has a class 1 hyperdrive, an Acclamator has a class .6 Hyperdrive.

Perhaps the Venator's hyperdrive is slower/shorter ranged as a cost saving measure over the Acclamator's (given the other roles.)

[evillejedi]

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)

Why would the Venator have trouble maintiainng its shields. Are you assuming shields are instrinsically a huge power draw for no discernable reason (and if so, where does all the energy go, pray tell?)

Joules on target vs Joules needed to deflect/absorb/radiate that energy. If you have a good model for how shields are able to be maintained and absorb/deflect near instantaneous energy impulses in the high GT low TT range let me know. Keep in mind if you had shields that only needed to be maintained by burning 100 tons of fuel to withstand TT blasts. Why not just beef up the shields and make your ship nearly invincible by using the full reactor output during combat? The ships can certainly operate in full combat for days if not weeks given the fuel cell ratios to consumables so there isn't a resource shortage of fuel. What are you using 40,000 tons of fuel per second to do otherwise...

Afaik the only real described power draws that would need max output of the reactor are full power TL shots and hyperspace jumps. there is no reason to burn thousands of tons of fuel a second doing other stuff so that means the reactor output would be wasted, or dialed down by many orders of magnitude between salvos/jumps. So I'm open to lots of interpretations on what power draw shielding has.

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

1 - what makes you assume they neccesarily run the subsidiary reactors at full power the same time they run the primary ones?

2 - The ISD's reactor actually sticks out through the underside of the ship, so I would imagine they devote more volume of the bulb to armouring/protecting it from attack, which is going to influence the internal volume. Nevermind the conjecture over safety issues or cooling systems or whatnot (or where they store the fuel. Depending on the diagram you go by, such as the SWTJ one, the ISD stores its fuel close to the engine/reactor assembly.)
reactor


3 - This assuems they're all the same kind of reactor. Some ISDs apparently run hypermatter reactors, but not all neccesarily do. The ISD reactor in the OT:ICS and the Venator's don't look the same.

1) unless there are other issues with maintainability or cooling why wouldn't you be running everything at 100% to kill targets as quick as possible? Besides the other reactors are a small addition in total volume.

2) do they devote an order of magnitude of volume to armor and safety/cooling?

3) hence why I mentioned that the reactor could be different design, but it's matter anihilation per volume, it is 'hard' to go above 100% matter to energy unless you say hypermatter ignores anything we can compare. My calculations are based on standard matter to energy to conversion, all numerical estimates are pointless as soon as hypermatter is involved because we have no rules for it.

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.

Setting all your above assumptions aside, there's nothing suggesting 100,000 tons is the absolute "upper limit" on ISD power generation. Some sources (such as the DS novel) have indicated the ISD could annihilate 300,000+ tons a second easily.

Haven't read the DS novel so I was unaware of this. 380,000 tons then does seem reasonable, the 100,000 was parroting estimates I have seen here before. Note that I didn't say it was my estimate.

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)

Only if the buttload of assumptions you made hold true.
[/quote]
I presented a conjecture and by definition it is disproved by eliminating the validity of its assumptions, thanks for reminding me of something I already knew :-p.

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.

Why would we assume they're comparable? The ISD turrets are VASTLY larger than the VEnator's.

Moreover, the ROTS ICS makes it explicit that "all true warships" like a Venator can divert nearly all their power into their guns - that's how we determine a Venator's HTL firepower. Why would the same not apply to the ISD, pray tell? Is it not a "true warship?"

I debated putting in a clause that stated that the ISD batteries were superior, basically rephrasing the statement that an ISD exceeds the Venstar capability thus anything the venator could do would be able to be accomplished by the ISD. (even if the TL shots had to be fired at 10% maximum output) I would think that much would be obvious, I'm sorry that I wasn't clear.

calculations were carried out to satisfy the BDZ requirements and have 100% output to weapons. 100% output to weapons by definition means that nothing is being diverted to anything else. I never made any statement that the ISD is less powerful than the Venator in total, only that the relative efficiency per volume of the reactor is less.

Also the definition of '100% power to weapons' does not necessitate that all power is devoted to A single weapon. It could be interpreted that 100% of the reactor output can be diverted to all of the guns and that the guns themselves are limiting elements based on cooling or other reasons. Given that the BDZ requirement does not consider output per weapon, but only as a total output of the ship per second there is no reason that all main batteries at once firing full power is distinguishable from a single gun firing 100% of the output.

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.

The Venator is also a ground assault ship remember, so one presumes that limited range/supplies is not an issue because they'll have access to a supply base or line in some form or another (either captured from the enemy, or from an already established Republic base, or whatnot.)

I'll concede that.

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)

We know there are dedicated carriers and there are hangarless ships (the Tector). The usage of "multi-role" ships seems to be something of a compromise in the same way with ISDs - a Venator (like an ISD) is expected to be able to carry out at least a little bit of everything at any given time (space battle, carrier ops, ground attack, patrols, etc.). The concept of a "multi-role" warship is not a new one, its just compromising the efficiency at one particular task to allow it to perform others in some capability.[/quote]

I have no problems with multirole warships, just when the internal volumes of the vessel are not practical for everything that are crammed into them do I start getting skeptical. Maybe my big argument is that we didn't see a variety of ships in EP3 fulfilling different roles for the Republic even though we know they existed and instead got a wank-ship that seems to good to be true.

[Connor MacLeod]

Joules on target vs Joules needed to deflect/absorb/radiate that energy. If you have a good model for how shields are able to be maintained and absorb/deflect near instantaneous energy impulses in the high GT low TT range let me know.

Does a wall or any other sort of physical barrier need "joules" of energgy to impede something (collision, sunlight, whatever)?

An energy absorption/reradiation system (using heat sinks and radiators, which we know SW ships employ) would not neccesarily use large quantities of energy either. This is covered on SWTC and on this forum as well. I believe Mike has commented on it before.

So again, by what logic do you assume shields NEED to consume lots of energy, and then where does all that energy go?

Keep in mind if you had shields that only needed to be maintained by burning 100 tons of fuel to withstand TT blasts. Why not just beef up the shields and make your ship nearly invincible by using the full reactor output during combat? The ships can certainly operate in full combat for days if not weeks given the fuel cell ratios to consumables so there isn't a resource shortage of fuel. What are you using 40,000 tons of fuel per second to do otherwise...

You're not explaining why you think shields need to expend massive quantities of energy to actually protect a ship. This is, as I have pointed out, not neccearily the case, and assumign shields consume large quantties of energy for no reason is a borderline violation of thermodynamics.

Afaik the only real described power draws that would need max output of the reactor are full power TL shots and hyperspace jumps. there is no reason to burn thousands of tons of fuel a second doing other stuff so that means the reactor output would be wasted, or dialed down by many orders of magnitude between salvos/jumps. So I'm open to lots of interpretations on what power draw shielding has.

We dont know the actual enegy expenditure in Hyperspace transits (although its implied in some novels like rogue Squadron, to be tiny compared to sublight engines.) Its the sublight engines and weapons that consume the MOST energy, as far as we know. Hyperdrives consume large quanttites of energy only in the run up to or down from lightspeed (acceleration up to near-c)

1) unless there are other issues with maintainability or cooling why wouldn't you be running everything at 100% to kill targets as quick as possible? Besides the other reactors are a small addition in total volume.

Because it puts wear and tear on the reactor components? Because it leaves no safety margin in the case of damage or danger? Because fuel consumption is an issue (as is heat dissipation?) Or, as Mike has noted, recoil limitations (It may not always be possible or practical to fire full powered broadsides continuously.)

I'm sure Mike, as an engineer, could come up with alot more reasons I havne't thoguht of, but those work well enough for my purposes.

2) do they devote an order of magnitude of volume to armor and safety/cooling?

Why are you asking me? you're the one making the assumptions about the relationship, its your responsibility to double check those sorts of things.

Haven't read the DS novel so I was unaware of this. 380,000 tons then does seem reasonable, the 100,000 was parroting estimates I have seen here before. Note that I didn't say it was my estimate.

If you're referring to the e25 watt power output from SWTC, its not set in stone. Its a lower limit (IIRC) based on the ion engine acceleration output of a given efficiency.

I presented a conjecture and by definition it is disproved by eliminating the validity of its assumptions, thanks for reminding me of something I already knew :-p.

You presented it as a fairly constrained number of choices, and (as I noted) you evideently didn't consider other alternatives.

I have no problems with multirole warships, just when the internal volumes of the vessel are not practical for everything that are crammed into them do I start getting skeptical. Maybe my big argument is that we didn't see a variety of ships in EP3 fulfilling different roles for the Republic even though we know they existed and instead got a wank-ship that seems to good to be true.

Venators seem to lack alot of the "intermediate" medium guns an ISD has, ,and does not seem to have nearly as extensive an anti-fighter defense setup. It also lacks alot of the ion cannons (And possibly warhead launchers) the ISD has. There are almost certainly differences in armour/mass as well. ISDs also seem to be designed with greater operational range/independence in mind, as well as adding other roles (repair facilities, IIRC) to the mix.

[evillejedi]

Joules on target vs Joules needed to deflect/absorb/radiate that energy. If you have a good model for how shields are able to be maintained and absorb/deflect near instantaneous energy impulses in the high GT low TT range let me know.

Does a wall or any other sort of physical barrier need "joules" of energgy to impede something (collision, sunlight, whatever)?

An energy absorption/reradiation system (using heat sinks and radiators, which we know SW ships employ) would not neccesarily use large quantities of energy either. This is covered on SWTC and on this forum as well. I believe Mike has commented on it before.

So again, by what logic do you assume shields NEED to consume lots of energy, and then where does all that energy go?

Keep in mind if you had shields that only needed to be maintained by burning 100 tons of fuel to withstand TT blasts. Why not just beef up the shields and make your ship nearly invincible by using the full reactor output during combat? The ships can certainly operate in full combat for days if not weeks given the fuel cell ratios to consumables so there isn't a resource shortage of fuel. What are you using 40,000 tons of fuel per second to do otherwise...

You're not explaining why you think shields need to expend massive quantities of energy to actually protect a ship. This is, as I have pointed out, not neccearily the case, and assumign shields consume large quantties of energy for no reason is a borderline violation of thermodynamics.

The ship hull acting as a unitary heatsink and neutrino radiators fine. Heat hits armor (a real physical thing) and is dumped elsewhere so that it doesn't compromise physical material. It may also be guided by fields on or near field to the hull as a supplement. No argument there. You would only need to use power to maintain a field in or on the hull and waste heat from the generation of that field goes out with the rest of the heat in the ship through standard radiative channels.

Once you get talking about directional shaped projected fields in empty space away from the ship hull I think there is no real physical or mathematical assumptions we can or cannot make that have much basis in reality given the field intensity and geometry necessary.

Like I said I'm open to interpretations on how deflector shields and projected shields work and the energy use for them necessary to shape and project a pure energy field (gravitational, EM?) into a desired shape capable of deflecting both high energy radiation and physical objects completely. Please point me in the direction of any links that would further my understanding of this area because I have not seen it on SWTC or this site in my searching.

Afaik the only real described power draws that would need max output of the reactor are full power TL shots and hyperspace jumps. there is no reason to burn thousands of tons of fuel a second doing other stuff so that means the reactor output would be wasted, or dialed down by many orders of magnitude between salvos/jumps. So I'm open to lots of interpretations on what power draw shielding has.

We dont know the actual enegy expenditure in Hyperspace transits (although its implied in some novels like rogue Squadron, to be tiny compared to sublight engines.) Its the sublight engines and weapons that consume the MOST energy, as far as we know. Hyperdrives consume large quanttites of energy only in the run up to or down from lightspeed (acceleration up to near-c)

clarification , the entry and exit of hyperspace, not the maintenance of travel.

Sublight was mentioned as an output, but in the battles we have witnessed high acceleration and full firepower are not present at the same time for large vessels. Though with maneuvering that can be seen on screen displacement or rotation wouldn't need the same amount of energy as the output of the reactor (heck you could vent the fuel directly and use some additional fuel to accelerate it rather than putting it in the reactor to get the desired effect) If sublight maneuvering and weaponry compete for power then the desired velocity and orientation for engagement must be reached in the times that the vessel is not charging or firing its weapons.

1) unless there are other issues with maintainability or cooling why wouldn't you be running everything at 100% to kill targets as quick as possible? Besides the other reactors are a small addition in total volume.

Because it puts wear and tear on the reactor components? Because it leaves no safety margin in the case of damage or danger? Because fuel consumption is an issue (as is heat dissipation?) Or, as Mike has noted, recoil limitations (It may not always be possible or practical to fire full powered broadsides continuously.)

I'm sure Mike, as an engineer, could come up with alot more reasons I havne't thoguht of, but those work well enough for my purposes.

fine I'll take the secondary reactors out. put reactor capacity at 50% and I'm still outside a explainable range by more than four times, however this seems to have been resolved due to the information you provided from the DS novel. So I have adjusted the calculations and I am much more satisfied.

2) do they devote an order of magnitude of volume to armor and safety/cooling?

Why are you asking me? you're the one making the assumptions about the relationship, its your responsibility to double check those sorts of things.

without more in universe detail this is an unarguable point. I was just appealing to the audience for their opinion. I just went by the assumption that things scale relatively well. (which to make any comparison between ships like the Venstar and ISD should be considered given our current information)

I presented a conjecture and by definition it is disproved by eliminating the validity of its assumptions, thanks for reminding me of something I already knew :-p.

You presented it as a fairly constrained number of choices, and (as I noted) you evideently didn't consider other alternatives.

I forgot that I need to post full proofs of assertions on these boards. I am deeply apologetic about my lack of formality. :-p

[Illuminatus Primus]

Joules on target vs Joules needed to deflect/absorb/radiate that energy. If you have a good model for how shields are able to be maintained and absorb/deflect near instantaneous energy impulses in the high GT low TT range let me know. Keep in mind if you had shields that only needed to be maintained by burning 100 tons of fuel to withstand TT blasts. Why not just beef up the shields and make your ship nearly invincible by using the full reactor output during combat? The ships can certainly operate in full combat for days if not weeks given the fuel cell ratios to consumables so there isn't a resource shortage of fuel. What are you using 40,000 tons of fuel per second to do otherwise...

This is not the X-Wing game; the limitation on a passive protective system, regardless of it being armor or shielding, is not operational power requirements. It is its ability to absorb, store safely, and reradiate energy. The constraint on reradiation is surface area and the technology. The constraint on storage is the mass and specific heat of the heat sinks and the temperature at which they reach a phase transition and become potentially damaging to the ship. The constraint on absorption is geometry, intensity of the impact, etc.

Shields work like this, basically. Energy is fed through a shield generating system, which projects a shield into space around the vessel (in SW, presumably it is somesort of magic force field that interacts with high-energy events but not low-energy ones [you can see through it]). An incoming turbolaser strikes the shield. Some of the energy can be deflected from the shield (bolts can be coherently deflected in TPM, e.g.: Anakin's fighter), it can be reemited directly by an emission of radiation (the "shield interaction" flashes), it can be slowly absorbed by splintering the beam through the volumetric shield. Anyway, all of these characteristics together cause a certain wattage to be absorbed by the shield system. Obviously the shield itself is limited in how much wattage it can tolerate before being pierced directly (frequently we observe that beams can be partially absorbed with a low-power "bleedthrough" hit still impacting the hull). This energy must be routed through coolant tubes or some other heat transfer to a heat sink. These routes will have limits on the wattage they can probably move from the shield apparatus to the heat sinks. The heat sinks are limited in how much energy they can store before they evaporate (destructive to the ship). The heat sinks are also routed to radiators (thermal and neutrino) which allow the absorbed heat to escape by means of radiation of particles. The surface area and nature of the radiators limit the wattage that can be radiated at any given time.

Afaik the only real described power draws that would need max output of the reactor are full power TL shots and hyperspace jumps. there is no reason to burn thousands of tons of fuel a second doing other stuff so that means the reactor output would be wasted, or dialed down by many orders of magnitude between salvos/jumps. So I'm open to lots of interpretations on what power draw shielding has. So you see, burning more fuel in the reactor just creates more heat which must be gotten a rid of, it cannot force the absorbed heat to reradiate faster.

1) unless there are other issues with maintainability or cooling why wouldn't you be running everything at 100% to kill targets as quick as possible? Besides the other reactors are a small addition in total volume.

If one does the Delta-V and fuel consumption rate, one finds that one can only maintain at most maybe a day or so of peak reactor output. Furthermore, waste heat from maximum burn will add to the burden on the radiator system. Not to mention, in thermodynamics, the energy must go somewhere if the reactor is burning; if the drives are not at full power or the guns are not firing at maximum, the ship must glow white hot, or must not be at full power. That heat must escape.

3) hence why I mentioned that the reactor could be different design, but it's matter anihilation per volume, it is 'hard' to go above 100% matter to energy unless you say hypermatter ignores anything we can compare. My calculations are based on standard matter to energy to conversion, all numerical estimates are pointless as soon as hypermatter is involved because we have no rules for it.

You're assuming that the reaction doesn't go up in efficiency with larger reactors - think: a larger reactor can burn more fuel faster proportionally because it won't get as hot as quick. I don't have Ender's work but it seems to be more of a log relationship. We know different D-T fusion reactors have very different output; we're building bigger ones all the time with higher energy density. Its not a linear relationship. There may be many factors which increase geometrically with size, not linearly.

Post the Acclamator, DS2, DS1, Mandator, ISD, etc. power outputs vs. estimated reactor volume on a chart and see what relationship you get out of it.

Haven't read the DS novel so I was unaware of this. 380,000 tons then does seem reasonable, the 100,000 was parroting estimates I have seen here before. Note that I didn't say it was my estimate.

Saxton has posted his max reactor power estimate on SWTC; take it and work backward from J/s with E=mc^2 to get metric mass annhiliated per second.

I have no problems with multirole warships, just when the internal volumes of the vessel are not practical for everything that are crammed into them do I start getting skeptical. Maybe my big argument is that we didn't see a variety of ships in EP3 fulfilling different roles for the Republic even though we know they existed and instead got a wank-ship that seems to good to be true.

:sigh: You don't have to tell me. I wish GL's fetish for "ubiquity" would die a quick death. It gave us the WEG nonsense with "no intermediates" for the Executor vs. the ISD, it gave us Acclamators in the cartoon posing as line warship, etc., etc. You don't need to have there literally be one model of ship to show fascist conformity.

[Vehrec]

Perhaps the Venator's hyperdrive is slower/shorter ranged as a cost saving measure over the Acclamator's (given the other roles.)

That makes a lot of sense. As you say, it's very much a 'point A to B' type of ship. And it's not like the Clone Wars were fought with relatively long supply lines anyways. There should always have been a Republic Fuel Depot or Tender within range. And if there wasn't the ability of the Republic fleet to resuply it's hungry workhorse would be able to reach out across the stars. If the Empire can drain a world's oceans away, then the Republic can get fuel to a few empty starships.

If there was some kind of combat reserve of fuel in those calculations (Like say the ability to fire the turbolasers on full for half an hour) then it would help even out some more of the inequalities.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Well the Acclamator-class' range of 240,000 light-years is disclaimed as "fully-fueled", whereas the Venator-class' range of 60,000 light-years is labeled "effective". Makes sense when the former just essentially needs to disgorge its troops, whereas the latter must be expected to fight whereever it is.

[Lord Revan]

btw IIRC at least for some ships shield capability was greater then the total out-put of their reactors/power-cells so this would suggest that shields energy requiverments are insignigant compared to deflection/absorbiation rate (it makes no sense otherwise, as ship could never run their shields at full power).

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Well the Acclamator-class' range of 240,000 light-years is disclaimed as "fully-fueled", whereas the Venator-class' range of 60,000 light-years is labeled "effective". Makes sense when the former just essentially needs to disgorge its troops, whereas the latter must be expected to fight whereever it is.

Acclaimators are also used for orbital bombardments though and possibly troop support. Acclaimator IIs in particular carried more weapons than Acclaimator Is.

[Surlethe]

Well the Acclamator-class' range of 240,000 light-years is disclaimed as "fully-fueled", whereas the Venator-class' range of 60,000 light-years is labeled "effective". Makes sense when the former just essentially needs to disgorge its troops, whereas the latter must be expected to fight whereever it is.

Acclaimators are also used for orbital bombardments though and possibly troop support. Acclaimator IIs in particular carried more weapons than Acclaimator Is.

Are they regularly used for orbital bombardments, or are they capable of orbital bombardments?

[NecronLord]

Minbari gunports don't really need to be explained. We see visually that their main weapons have huge fields of fire, sometimes even being able to fire beyond ninty degrees behind their mounting, and they are able to traverse with extreme ease, one weapon picking off earth fighters in succession very quickly. At the very least, they tend to 'slice' over some arc when firing.

For explanations, such 'ports' may either protect the Sharlin cruiser's missile launch mechanisms (it has six missiles, presumably there's something to launch them) or be related to the main guns on their spikes. Perhaps the firing mechanism of these retracts, or may be covered by some kind of iris or clamshell mechanism to protect the optics when the weapon is not in use.


As for ISDs, I like to imagine that the 'excuse' for their layout is that they're intended to blockade or bombard planets 'above' them. The target will then be unable to fire on the hangars, reactors, and if you do it right, engines. The majority of the guns are dorsal, and so can fire back, and the armour is usually heavier on the dorsal side (The Vengance-class springs to mind) and the officers in their tower can get a nice view. The later Excecutor and Vengance classes even have armour overlaps that would protect their engines from incoming fire in such a position.

[Surlethe]

As for ISDs, I like to imagine that the 'excuse' for their layout is that they're intended to blockade or bombard planets 'above' them. The target will then be unable to fire on the hangars, reactors, and if you do it right, engines. The majority of the guns are dorsal, and so can fire back, and the armour is usually heavier on the dorsal side (The Vengance-class springs to mind) and the officers in their tower can get a nice view. The later Excecutor and Vengance classes even have armour overlaps that would protect their engines from incoming fire in such a position.

Can the guns elevate to be sufficiently vertical for this? Also, I'd imagine that the ideal target position is not above the ship per se, but around some arc between θ=15° and θ=75° in the plane through the nose of the ship, the reactor, and the bridge.

[Darth Wong]

Minbari gunports don't really need to be explained. We see visually that their main weapons have huge fields of fire, sometimes even being able to fire beyond ninty degrees behind their mounting, and they are able to traverse with extreme ease, one weapon picking off earth fighters in succession very quickly. At the very least, they tend to 'slice' over some arc when firing.

It's been a while since I've been a B5 battle, but do we actually see a beam emerge from the side of a Minbari ship and shoot 90 degrees behind it, as opposed to a beam firing from somewhere near the rear of the ship? That doesn't make a whole lot of geometric sense unless the gun actually physically emerges from the porn and can rotate.

As for ISDs, I like to imagine that the 'excuse' for their layout is that they're intended to blockade or bombard planets 'above' them.

What's wrong with simply presuming that they're built for long-range gunnery? A modern battleship can't shoot anything that's too small and close to it either.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Acclaimators are also used for orbital bombardments though and possibly troop support. Acclaimator IIs in particular carried more weapons than Acclaimator Is.

Are they regularly used for orbital bombardments, or are they capable of orbital bombardments?

They are certainly capable yes. The AOTC:ICS mentions that torpedoes and turbolasers are used for bombardment. Designing a more orbital bombardment capable Acclaimator II while eschewing the troop complement seems to suggest that there was a strong need for it. Orbital bombardment seemed to be part of military strategy. I believe there was a comic involving a Venator bombarding and destroying a Separatist cloning facility.

[Darth Wong]

Important note: look at the range where the ISDs stopped approaching in the Battle of Endor. They were ready to blast the fuck out of the Rebel fleet from that range, but were ordered to hold fire. The point here is that this is probably a good indication of normal space combat tactics in SW: the kind that these vessels were designed for. They were arranged facing forward, so that only one of the heavy side turrets could orient toward the enemy, but all of their lighter guns could probably fire forward. If they had any gunport armaments like the old Venators, they would be unable to use them in that orientation.

Moreover, none of them were making any effort to re-orient themselves to point a broadside at the Rebel fleet, even as a preparatory gesture. This lends credence to the notion that either the heavy guns cannot fire a full broadside at all, or they are so ponderous and/or inaccurate that they would be useless against moving targets and are actually meant for space stations or planetary targets.

[VT-16]

I think the new SOTG book actually says the torpedos used by the Acclamator II, were early versions of the ones used by the Torpedo Spheres, so they were meant for shield weakening/penetrations as well.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I remember Ender suggesting that the placement of the turrets were such that the ship could absorb the recoil from the firing of the turrets.

There is the Quad Turbolaser positioned midway on the ISD which could most certainly fire forward. The turrets however have always had some ambiguous role because the only time we ever saw them working was in ROTS. Notice that in ROTS, the Gualara had to be actually side by side with the Invisible Hand before it opened fire. from the way it looked, it appeared that at least the front most turret could traverse and fire from the start, but it did not.