Mandator vs. Executor

[Coiler]

I was wondering how these two Star Dreadnaughts compared to each other in terms of combat power. In a hypothetical one-on-one duel between the two, which would be more likely to win?

[Maxentius]

Does any quantitative information on the Mandator even exist?

[VT-16]

Recusant/Victory or Venator (6:1)
Recusant/Mandator (1000:1)

Ergo: Victory or Venator/Mandator (167:1)

All we need is the ratio for Victory/Venator to Imperial and we're set, given that the Executor is 100 times or more stronger than it.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

For the Executor, http://www.theforce.net/swtc/exec.detail.html may help; basically, LTL not resolvable at that scale, HTL- assuming symmetry, 942 heavy turrets, equivalent to Imperator-I's heavy twins or lighter octuples.
If these are standard model cannon, and powered to the same rate of fire, that gives a ratio of 117.75 to 1, Executor to Imperator.

Both those assumptions are just that, default assumptions, which in the absence of any evidence or reason to assume the contrary I expect to be the case. Although, thinking about it, there is one big problem here.

As far as power and presumably firepower goes, the Venator's ICS- stated annihilation of forty thousand tons per second puts it at 36% of the power output of an Imperator (on the standard 1E25 W estimate), and a final 'score' of 327 to 1, Executor to Venator.

And, roughly, 1.95:1, Executor to Mandator. So, it seems that the Empire's supercapital is significantly larger and more powerful.

What worries me now is how a ship roughly a thousand times the size of an Imperator class destroyer manages to produce only a hundred and eighteen times the firepower?
Are they, in fact, incapable of routing all their power through weapons- is the load from engines and tensor systems so much that their gun fit can only be given ~ten percent of their power output?

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

Why are you assuming the Executor is one-thousand times the volume of the Imperator? It may be over ten times as long, but it's not ten times as wide (the Executor is ~6km wide and the Imperator ~.9km wide) and certainly not ten times as tall (closer to three), even ignoring that much of the Executor's length is the narrow "tail" and that its hangar is the size of several Imperators.

[Anguirus]

^ An excellent point, IMO.

Are they, in fact, incapable of routing all their power through weapons- is the load from engines and tensor systems so much that their gun fit can only be given ~ten percent of their power output?

This wouldn't surprise me at all. The Mandator I was a peacetime battleship, whose hyperdrive didn't have sufficient range for effective force projection. Presumably the Mandator II is just a refinement of that, so I see no reason for it to be as efficient as an ISD.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Actually, I find both of those claims to be specious; the fact is that the Kuati Mandator-class was the supercapital around which their starfleet seems to been arrayed, and we're talking about an era where blockades of thousands or tens of thousands of 2-mile doughnut combat carriers is "trivial". Gunboat diplomacy and corporate filibustering are at their height, and on the local level the galaxy is already almost constantly in some state of civil war. The situation has deteriorated to where KDY felt it necessary to have a standing fleet in the Rothana system at all times to guarantee their investments - and that's before outbreak of the poorly-named Clone War(s). The Republic's Mandator-class build superficially seems to be their primary line battleship and this is at a time of unprecedented galactic war; the Executor was built primarily as a multi-role centerpiece for task forces dedicated to roles other than general war and a prestige flagship for VIPs. If anything I'd expect the postwar ships to be based around long-deployments and low-intensity but long-duration, COIN-type operations. I would not be surprised to see they skimp on dedicated roles for versatility, flexibility, and staying power and political concerns. I expect much of the "off-screen" wartime build-up of the Republic to be based much more around conventional warmaking.

[Ender]

The Executor is somewhere between 1.67 - 3.87 times more powerful then the Mandator. That is an edge, but not an overwhelming one. Tactics will carry the day here, but we don't know enough about the Mandator to speak with any certainty about it.

[Ender]

For the Executor, http://www.theforce.net/swtc/exec.detail.html may help; basically, LTL not resolvable at that scale, HTL- assuming symmetry, 942 heavy turrets, equivalent to Imperator-I's heavy twins or lighter octuples.
If these are standard model cannon, and powered to the same rate of fire, that gives a ratio of 117.75 to 1, Executor to Imperator.

LTL power is effectively negligible, HTL comparisons are the better way.

Both those assumptions are just that, default assumptions, which in the absence of any evidence or reason to assume the contrary I expect to be the case. Although, thinking about it, there is one big problem here.

We can also estimate based upon its volume and an assumed density (5000 kg/m^3 seems common) and engine performance, or hyperspace jumps. There is also the square cube law, but that only really meshes with other values when you go from the Acclamator, likely due to the difference in proportions.

As far as power and presumably firepower goes, the Venator's ICS- stated annihilation of forty thousand tons per second puts it at 36% of the power output of an Imperator (on the standard 1E25 W estimate), and a final 'score' of 327 to 1, Executor to Venator.

And, roughly, 1.95:1, Executor to Mandator. So, it seems that the Empire's supercapital is significantly larger and more powerful.

As a range, yes.

What worries me now is how a ship roughly a thousand times the size of an Imperator class destroyer manages to produce only a hundred and eighteen times the firepower?

Simply by not being a thousand times the size of it but only a few hundred. Post your math and we will check if you like, but the Ex should only have a volume of ~10^11 m^3

Are they, in fact, incapable of routing all their power through weapons- is the load from engines and tensor systems so much that their gun fit can only be given ~ten percent of their power output?

That doesn't make a great deal of sense - the force max acceleration provides requires that peak power be sufficient to power both the tensor fields and engines at full power, it is a few OOM above the theoretical physical maximum that atomic bonds provide IIRC. So the question there would be firing all the guns on full and engines at the same time. But engines are optional and gun layout is such that firing them all at the same time would negate the recoil (approx equal coverage all around on the big ones with clear fire arcs) and if you don't fire them all at the same time you can stagger engine firing with gun firing.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

LTL don't matter in the power calculation, no disagreement there; I was just noting that there doesn't seem to be any way to establish from the model how thick the point defence coverage actually is, so it's back to the closeups from the movie.

'Roughly a thousand times the size' was just a top of the head estimate, to the nearest round number essentially, and I realise now that it was way too big.

As a first approximation simply based on the relative dimensions- 11x the length, 7.2x the beam, 5.6x the draft, that comes out at 450x the volume- not a proper estimate, and I'm not trying to pretend it is. I'll make a better stab at it when my brain isn't quite so fried, get the angles and make a calculation that takes the actual shape of both ships into account, I'll be happy to post that for you to critique, but it's nearly one in the morning here so I'll have to get back to you on that.

The bit at the end was just speculation- there's still going to be a factor of three to five in efficiency to explain, not an order of magnitude but still substantial.

[Anguirus]

Actually, I find both of those claims to be specious; the fact is that the Kuati Mandator-class was the supercapital around which their starfleet seems to been arrayed, and we're talking about an era where blockades of thousands or tens of thousands of 2-mile doughnut combat carriers is "trivial".

Since when is that trivial? It only decided the fate of the galaxy, after all, and the Republic was promptly thrown into disarray over it. And those "combat carriers" were retrofitted freighters with glaring weaknesses.

Also, I see no reason why the Kuatis would need to invade other systems pre-Clone Wars. It wouldn't surprise me if their legal right to construct battleships was predicated on only equipping "local" hyperdrives.

[Ender]

At a rough upscale from the old 17.6 km figures I recall, the Executor should be 1835 m draft, 7017 m wide, and 19000 m long. As a very rough approximation of a pyramid that is 8.15*10^10 meters^3, compared to the 2.17*10^8 meters^3 for the Imperial. That is a difference of 319x. But that is assuming a pyramidal shape. In any case, the Ex is low 10^27, the Mand is high 10^26. Pretty close.

If we are going to get real involved in it, why not use Blender to model it to evaluate it? That software offers a number of other tools that would also be useful for evaluating starships.

[white_rabbit]

we're talking about an era where blockades of thousands or tens of thousands of 2-mile doughnut combat carriers is "trivial".

A little off topic, but what does this refer to ?

[Lord Revan]

we're talking about an era where blockades of thousands or tens of thousands of 2-mile doughnut combat carriers is "trivial".

A little off topic, but what does this refer to ?

refers to that in the TPM novelization Qui-Gon dismisses the Trade-fed blockade as trivial when they arrive to Naboo(might be also in the movie not sure).

[Lazarus]

Slightly on a tangent, but what's the evidence that Saxton's used to show the positions he's indicated on the Executor are HTLs? The complete lack of symmetry and random spacing goes against it. I know it's not a bad idea, but how can it be proven or even shown to be likely?

[VT-16]

Well, it could be that if they are turrets, they can recess into the main hull similar to the quads on the Lucrehulk.

[Sarevok]

Well, it could be that if they are turrets, they can recess into the main hull similar to the quads on the Lucrehulk.

Given how Rebel starfighter pilots love to strafe the "city" that dominates the Executors surface that is a pretty sound idea. Now if only the Executor had a retracting bridge tower as well...

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Ender, if I knew how to make Blender work- if I had a copy, for that matter- I'd love to try doing that, but as it is, I was dumb enough to do it pen and paper- and I came up with a much smaller figure for the Imperator class, roughly 1E8 m3, so much smaller that I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong now.

Basically, starting with the ventral shot from SWTC and measuring- actually, stretching a measuring tape across the screen - I ended up with the usual 1600m long, 992m beam- probably a measuring error on my part- and 245m deep through the stern. That's the loosest of the measurements, but as draft to beam of one to four seems to be consistent through most of the images I could find, including scenes from the movies.
I estimated the superstucture and bridge tower as separate blocks, the main structure half the width of the ship and slightly less than half the length- 700m at most- and stretching roughly 60m above the main hull, and the bridge tower as 400m across, 4/5 the width of the superstructure, 200m long, 120 metres high.

That works out, using the formula for a pyramid- volume of a cube with the sides of equivalent length divided by six, probably an overestimate- the main hull came out at almost 70 million m3, the superstructure at 21 million m3, the bridge tower at 5.76 million m3- grand total 96.366 million m3.
That's so much lower than your estimate that I'm wondering what mistakes I've made.

Executor has a much broader brim trench, so she isn't quite a pyramid form; I made the assumption that half her draft was in the brim trench or the cortex, and that the fantail was a quarter of the length of the ship and half the average draft.
So, the main hull, a triangular prism 1.2 kilometres long and 6.5 kilometres across the base, 1.7 kilometres through, a quarter of which is lost to the slope of the hull- and then the docking bay has to be subtracted from that.
Estimates based on TESB freeze-frame, forty percent of the length of the ship, fifty percent of the beam, extending forty percent of the depth of the hull- subtracting that, although it's probably still covered by the ship's grav, shields and tensor systems and so has to be accounted for in the ship's energy budget- I end up with 5.78E10 m3.

I'm happier about the estimate for Executor than I am about the Imperator estimate; I suppose the moral of the tale is "learn Blender."

[evillejedi]

Depending on if you are using the Avenger or devastator model reference you will get significantly different numbers for volume. The Devastator is fatter and deeper hulled (pretty obvious overlaying the SWTC model shots)

the 130M m^3 is about the largest you could get with the Devastator hull and the Avenger coming in at ~115.

about 80M for the hull is really close to what I get from the avenger model (less the bays)

My Ex model is ~7.4*10^10 from model measurements rescaled with the dimensions Ender stated, but that seems really fat and heavy, scaled to fit some of the SWTC profile shots I get closer to 3.9*10^10

that comes to 307 for the volume ratio, but the much more interesting thing is the comparison of bulk surface area (I doubt the detailed crenelations on the Ex help in dissipation because of their overlapping profiles and inset valleys)

the Ex has 2.2 *10 ^8 m2 and the ISD 3.9*10^6 m2 which is only a ratio of 57:1 !

This also works for reactor volumes, though the reactor config of the Ex I am guessing at, either cylindrical or distributed spherical. This comes to about 170x larger and meets the proper order of magnitude, however it is constrained by the narrower profile (the Eclipse at 17.5km may have well in excess of 4x the reactor of an SSD volume easily available in a single sphere because of its very deep hull)

obviously the kinetic absorption capabilities of the Ex's shields far exceed that of an ISD (the impacting ISDs on the EX vs a large asteroid physically crippling an ISD) and its firepower is very much in excess, but assuming everything else being equal in the technology the thermal dissipation area is not scaling with the size because of the similar geometry (ISDs may have a smaller % of their surface available for re-radiation, but not enough to say that there isn't a loss due to the scale factor)

as a final note the engine emitter surface area is only about 34x greater on the Ex

[Adam Reynolds]

we're talking about an era where blockades of thousands or tens of thousands of 2-mile doughnut combat carriers is "trivial".

A little off topic, but what does this refer to ?

refers to that in the TPM novelization Qui-Gon dismisses the Trade-fed blockade as trivial when they arrive to Naboo(might be also in the movie not sure).

Just because the dispute itself was trivial doesn't mean that the ships involved were, why should we assume that those ships were not a threat. Also remember that this was before those ships were up armed for the Clone Wars, I believe that they had only a collection of quad laser cannons.