Galactic Republic carrier focus

[PainRack]

Why would the Galactic Republic focus so much on Venators and Accalamators, warships with large numbers of starfighters? Even against the Lucrehulk warships, would starfighters in such large numbers be effective? To make matters worse, the Republic would always be at a numerical disadvantage against Vulture fighter waves.


The Galactic Empire supposedly have a a bias against snubfighters as expressed by General Dodonna. Would this be a backlash against the Republic focus on fighters and lessons from the Clone Wars? How would this be addressed when the Rebel Alliance effectively used snubfighters to raid Imperial convoys?

[Sarevok]

The lessons of the first droid rebellion lead to the construction of 12 Venators, each from one of 12 original founding members of the Republic. Equipped with numerous fighter crafts they were more than a match for Trade Fed baseships.

Well in a more serious note a Venator is nearly a mile long. Unless the entire ship is a solid chunk of metal there would be plenty of unused space inside. The real question is are the fighters an after thought to fill empty space with fighter bays or are they the main punch of the ship instead of the primary gun system.

[Lord Revan]

well the Imperial/Imperator-class is a mile long and it has a small fraction of the fighter numbers of the Venators (6 squadrons on Imperial and 35 squadrons on venators) so empty space is hardy the reason for the difference.

also aren't Acclamators troop transports not carriers.

also Fighters are probably effective against ground targets, light capital ships (like corvettes), unshielded capships and other fighters.

with separtist fleets/bases having alot of fighters it would make sence to have reasonble number of fighters as well, how ever with Clone Wars over few battles Empire was involved in would not face large number of fighters, also basic vulture fighters seem to rely more on numbers then actual "skill" to defeat their opponents

[Knife]

Could be just a change in tactics. The Venators had huge airwings to screen against Vulture fighters. Imperial doctrine would just have the Stardestroyer destroy the enemy capital ship to reduce the threat?

[Sarevok]

Could be just a change in tactics. The Venators had huge airwings to screen against Vulture fighters. Imperial doctrine would just have the Stardestroyer destroy the enemy capital ship to reduce the threat?

Maybe ISDs can just ignore anything fighters can shoot at them. Snubfighter guns and missiles are not even going to register against their powerful shielding. So there would not be a critical need to use some kind of interceptor type fighter to keep star wars equivalent of a torpedo bomber away.

[Lord Revan]

Could be just a change in tactics. The Venators had huge airwings to screen against Vulture fighters. Imperial doctrine would just have the Stardestroyer destroy the enemy capital ship to reduce the threat?

Maybe ISDs can just ignore anything fighters can shoot at them. Snubfighter guns and missiles are not even going to register against their powerful shielding. So there would not be a critical need to use some kind of interceptor type fighter to keep star wars equivalent of a torpedo bomber away.

or maybe there wasn't enough enemies that used massed fighter attacks like the separtists, after all fighters are still dangerous should your shields fail, but since few if any opponents had the numbers/carrier space to field the number of fighters CIS did so fewer fighters would be needed to protect against the fighters that did escape the destruction of the carrier.

[Sea Skimmer]

Republic warships in the middle of a full scale conventional war are naturally going to have larger complements of star fighters onboard then the Empire bothers to embarked on. Pilot training requirements alone should see to that. In fact if you look at ICS the Imperators starfighter hangers are shown to each be capable of holding at least twice as many fighters as they normally do, if only a second row of storage racks was added. That extra space is probably for wartime mobilization capability.

Seriously, the main rebel base had all of 30 star fighters to send against the Death Star; rebel conventional firepower cannot have been very significant, and having 72 TIEs on one of thousands of destroyers is more then good enough. The only real problem is finding the Rebels, not destroying them once located.

[Desdinova]

That being said, I was always intrigued by the Imperials' heavy use of Assault Gunboats for long range recon in the old X-Wing and TIE Fighter games. I've long wondered why these apparently standard operations have never been mentioned again in official sources.

With regard to the OP, I have to agree that the Rebels, local pirate groups or other assorted enemies of the Empire likely couldn't throw out the sheer numbers available to the CIS. Fighters were evidently still considered a significant enough threat to develop point-defense frigates like the Lancer, but it seems clear that the Galactic Civil War was won and lost on the "big guns".

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

How much did fighter armament change between the Clone Wars and Civil War? A possibility and a couple of theories.

On the Venator's air wing, they can't be the ship's main punch; of thirty-five squadrons, sixteen are armed only with light lasers- the Nimbus aka "V-wing"- sixteen squadrons are armed with long- barrel lasers which can, at least (only?) in the hands of a Jedi Knight, damage exposed components on a large ship, and a mere three have any kind of warhead capacity.

Consider the change from Actis to TIE. The TIE/ln is, disregarding the wings and fins, not very different in size- certainly less than a factor of two, and they're pretty small already.
The Actis is also a lot faster, 1100 'g' over the usual estimate, than the TIE- which supposedly sacrifices a lot including combat shielding, to speed and agility.

So why the TIE? My pet theory here is that the main change was in the armament. To speculate;

The Actis' guns are enough against a light enemy fighter, but the TIE is designed at least in part for the area control role- it and the other fighters of it's generation do have enough hitting power to knock down light ships, as witness surface damage on the first death star and at Endor.
It's heavy lasers outgun the Actis' long- barrels by a factor of several, eough that the Imperator's fighter complement with four fighter squadrons, one of them maybe Interceptor, can deliver at least as much firepower on target as the thirty-two of the Venator.

Taking the relatively common assumption that torpedoes are necessary on anything much above Corellian Corvette class; as for the bomber complement, the two squadrons of TIE/sa Bombers carrying twelve torps each colelctively outgun the Venator's ARC-170 complement by a third.

I'm not sure that the smaller fighter complement was actually a backwards step at all.

[Ender]

Because they were fighting a war,and fighters are better air support then capital ships.

Think about it - there is a limit to the flexibility in yield from the ships guns which constrains what they can do for air support. Even if they just drop something from orbit it will be packing a given level of energy from gravitational acceleration. Plus lasers and explosives behave in a fundamentally different way. On top of that, it appears that ground armies bring out artillery dedicated to taking out capital ships if they come over the horizon - the SPHA-T provided a rather object lesson about that at Geonosis and the Confederacy did the same at Mon Cal. Finally, ships won't always be free to support the troops - I'd expect a large part of any attack/siege will consist of the ships positioning and repositioning to deny access to their opponents.

Compare that with fighters - faster and smaller make it harder for air defense to take them down, they can pack a wider variety of ordinance to support the troops, they won't be constrained by the other fleet, and their speed and fuel supply means they can be on target every bit as swiftly as a capital ship.

In an intense ground war, fighters are superior to ships for air support.

[PainRack]

Because they were fighting a war,and fighters are better air support then capital ships.

In an intense ground war, fighters are superior to ships for air support.

The problem is we keep seeing transports and Venators used in naval battles. Including dedicated battles and naval patrols. Would this be an actual focus on carrier battles or simple desperation?

[Ender]

Because they were fighting a war,and fighters are better air support then capital ships.

In an intense ground war, fighters are superior to ships for air support.

The problem is we keep seeing transports and Venators used in naval battles. Including dedicated battles and naval patrols. Would this be an actual focus on carrier battles or simple desperation?

I'm not usre desperation is the correct word, but they are being used because they have sufficient punch to make it through enemy lines to land hostile troops. That same punch can be used in ship to ship combat rather easily, so they make use of it.

[Knife]

Because they were fighting a war,and fighters are better air support then capital ships.

In an intense ground war, fighters are superior to ships for air support.

The problem is we keep seeing transports and Venators used in naval battles. Including dedicated battles and naval patrols. Would this be an actual focus on carrier battles or simple desperation?

One can see the Acclamator as an assualt lander, it's weapons giving it the ability to smash through orbital defenses to land troops. Doesn't take a huge leap to think those anti orbital defense weapons can be used on ships.

[lord Martiya]

Because they were fighting a war,and fighters are better air support then capital ships.

In an intense ground war, fighters are superior to ships for air support.

The problem is we keep seeing transports and Venators used in naval battles. Including dedicated battles and naval patrols. Would this be an actual focus on carrier battles or simple desperation?

I think that those were stop-gap measures. At the beginning the Republic lacked of true warships, her mainstay being the so-called Dreadnought, so a few Acclamators were given better weapons and shielding to deal with the enemy waiting something better, like the Victory Star Destroyer. A VSD was apparently enough to deal with CIS initial ships, but the introduction of something better on their side made necessary something more powerful, like the Venators, powerful enough to beat the Invisible Hand toe-to-toe and with a lot of fighters to deal with CIS ones waiting for the commission of the Imperators and Tectors, more powerful and armoured ships that, according to the ICS, were about to begin service at the time of ROTS.

[PainRack]

One can see the Acclamator as an assualt lander, it's weapons giving it the ability to smash through orbital defenses to land troops. Doesn't take a huge leap to think those anti orbital defense weapons can be used on ships.

But naval battles...... Its as if one argues that since the Tarawa carries Harriers and other forces on board, indeed, it has more planes than the British Invicinbles, they should be acting as fleet carriers instead of the more powerful Nimitz.

For the Galactic Republic, despite the presence of more powerful warships, we don't really see them being represented in the EU in most battles. Muunilist was invaded by mostly Accalamators, Geonosis was Accalamators, we see an Accalamator respond to Sev call for aid in a naval battle....... thankfully, the Battle of Coruscant sees Venators and Accalamators restricted to their proper, auxillary roles in naval warfare.

[Lord Revan]

it wasn't until well into the Clone Wars that the Republic had any actual fleet, sure the member states had fleet but those were a) short ranged b) only as loyal as said member state.

think it this way, what if there was no federal armed services in the USA, but only state militias and for some reason USA had to (re)build said federal armed services. It would take time to finish the big guns and until they were finished you'd have make do with what you had.

and Also at least Venators were multipurpose vessels with an emphasis on carrier duty rather then pure carriers.

[Connor MacLeod]

I rather like the idea of largge s hips landing on planets, despite some of the technological problems it implies.

For one thing, it makes for both a highly mobile and virtually impregnable base of operations. With shields up, its virtually impossible for an enemy to bombard it without getting close - the firepower needed to breach the shields would risk too much collateral damage on inhabited planets (or might even throw the planet into an extinction event!)

It gives your troops access to secure resupply/repair and recovery facilities, and supportt from the ship's sensors, communications (and electronic warfarE) and its guns (lighter and heavier)

As for the fighter issue.. remember that the huge numbers on a Venator usualyl are prequel-era micro-fighters. From what I've understood (or at least as far as my analysis can go) most of those micro-fighters are smaller even than Imperial TIEs or the A-wing in terms of internal volume (Save perhaps the ARC-170), and that size/volume issue is going to influence carrying capacity. On top of that, ISDs are meant to carry other vessels, including some larger ones (blastboats, assault gunboats, assault transports and shuttles, etc.)

A Star Destroyer, on the other hand, seems to be first and foremost a warship first, and a carrier/assault ship second. And even then, it has other roles - it can serve as a sort of repair/drydock facility, a command ship, a patrol/escort vessel, and so on and so forth. And remeber they DO carry garrisons.

Edit: as for acclamators and venators acting as warships... remember that they ARE designed to support planetary bombardments, up to and including Base Delta Zero. I'm sure a certain measure of firepower is needed in suppressing planetary shields or cracking local theatre shields (like the one in the first Rogue Squadron novel). Since extinction level firepower is generally on par with what is needed for capital ship combat, it makes sense for a dual-purpose role (at least in the Venator's case.)

As for fighters... Fighters also can act as long range (esp hyperspace capable like ARC-170s) munitions deployment, precision attack (esp in support of capital ships) and so on and so forth. With a tradeoff in fighter volume vs number over the Clone War vs Galactic Civil War era, it probably means that you have bigger craft carrying more (or heavier) payloads than the smaller (but more numerous) fighters. It might also mean differences in survivability. The change by the OT era may also reflect changes in warfare - shield penetration technologies employed against Imperial ships may be less effective than they were in the Clone Wars era, which also lead to a (temporary) decline in the usefulness of fighters absent warship support.

[Knife]

But naval battles...... Its as if one argues that since the Tarawa carries Harriers and other forces on board, indeed, it has more planes than the British Invicinbles, they should be acting as fleet carriers instead of the more powerful Nimitz.

I think your missing my point in that Republic tactics seem centered around getting the troops on the ground and use the Acclamator to punch through defenses in system and/or orbit to get them there.

For the Galactic Republic, despite the presence of more powerful warships, we don't really see them being represented in the EU in most battles. Muunilist was invaded by mostly Accalamators, Geonosis was Accalamators,

Works well with my model, those battles needed troops on the ground as a primary objective, naval battles were supporting roles. Punch through, get the troops there, let them do their missions, support from the ground and/or take off and orbit to support there.

we see an Accalamator respond to Sev call for aid in a naval battle....... thankfully, the Battle of Coruscant sees Venators and Accalamators restricted to their proper, auxillary roles in naval warfare.

Sure.

[Saberist]

But naval battles...... Its as if one argues that since the Tarawa carries Harriers and other forces on board, indeed, it has more planes than the British Invicinbles, they should be acting as fleet carriers instead of the more powerful Nimitz.

During OEF, the KHawk had to be converted because none of the other ships could support the deep ranging (large CH-53E and possibly C-130) deployments. This will get worse as the V-22 comes online because you will have a medium and a heavy lift disparity in force projection by both payload and hours (the helo is much slower but has almost 1.5 times the internal carriage) even as each CH-46 replacement is the same size as the larger Stallion.

With this in mind, it makes no sense to assume that an assault carrier can be 'self escorting' because the residual deckload and combat cycle is going to compromise the number of F-35Bs that can be carried.

Thus, when you are facing a 'From The Sea, Forward' (technically beyond the littoral region) you have no choice but to go to a larger basing mode because you need to push your troops as much as 400nm inland and you have to stay _over the horizon_ (minimum 25nm, preferrably as much as 100nm) to avoid coastal defenses.

The irony being that a larger carries gives you the ability to hold a FORCAP cycle of at least 4 fighters, plus a 2X2 escort role for the deep penetration airmobile force using the bow as VTOL spot and the keeping the waist cats available for conventional jets. So that you end up with something like 2 or 3 X 10 plane Osprey/Stallion squadrons and 1X18 plane F-35B/C which is more than double what a Tarawa could manage (typical 6-8 plane 'detachment' of Harriers).

What you then end up with is a system whereby the landing force is given a secure harbor or beachhead by either political means or the direct action of the principle expeditionary force airwing, calling in air, cruise and NGS strikes. While secondary amphibious dock type ships (LPD-17) with much smaller flight decks supported by above-deck hangars and a larger well deck do the actual landing of the heavy assault force once things like the coastal defense AShM are taken out (With modern PGMs you don't need a 'perimeter' effect ala Normandy to sterilize defenses).

I see much the same problem for the Acclamators and Gunships. It being improbable in the extreme that the latter Hind lookalikes can penetrate atmosphere (they have 'environmental shields' to allow opening the sidedoor/landing skids in a vacuum but nothing that will give them an aero-shape sufficient to penetrate atmosphere) and yet, at the same time, they have a decided advantage: they can bring THE ENTIRE SHIP INLAND.

Which means that rather than invest in separate hulls or high ticket transatmospheric craft, they simply exit hyperspace and deorbit in one surge of 'we're here!' approach, on the far side of a planet from any local defenses, and then use the local horizon effect to rapidly transit to the assault debarkation point THROUGH the air blanket. This being supported by the fact that there are no sonic booms or indeed any other sign (vapor trails, ionized shields, glowing hulls) of a rapid deorbitating on Geonosis.

What this means is that you don't waste your time on things like LCACs and LCVP or even AAVs to 'cross the water' (space, whatever) but can concentrate hull volume on things like tanks and mechanized forces.

>>
I think your missing my point in that Republic tactics seem centered around getting the troops on the ground and use the Acclamator to punch through defenses in system and/or orbit to get them there.
>>

I would doubt that. With only 3 million clones after ten years vs. 2 droids every ten seconds = 36,000 robots /per day/ from a single manufacturing site; further value-determined by the fact that said troopers can do _nothing_ until they are landed, it makes no sense to use your assault carriers as defense suppression battering rams. Lose a battleship and that's 3-5,000 men gone plus a slightly less secure amphib anchorage. Lose a regiment sized troopship and thats 1,500-2,000 men who will never arrive to execute the ground operation and thus the entire theater mission is compromised. In this, it goes without saying that the Navy exists to ferry armies to the point where we can fight lubber wars. We are not fish.

For the Galactic Republic, despite the presence of more powerful warships, we don't really see them being represented in the EU in most battles. Muunilist was invaded by mostly Accalamators, Geonosis was Accalamators,

I only go by what I see on screen. When it comes to guns and shields, the TESB Hoth fight suggests that regional is not planetary shields and large scale 'supergun' ground defenses have swung the tide of battle to the point where exposing a capital class ship is now unwise and so landed forces require separate assault craft.

>>
Works well with my model, those battles needed troops on the ground as a primary objective, naval battles were supporting roles. Punch through, get the troops there, let them do their missions, support from the ground and/or take off and orbit to support there.
>>

This gets into the strategies of the GAR and Separatists as a whole. If you have 50 million worlds and only 3 million clones you cannot maintain even a paltry battalion sized (minimum 1,000 man unit considered capable of independent combat ops in the Marines) garrison on more than a handful.

What you have to do is allow the threat in and then use naval forces to bombard them from orbit as they attempt to circumnavigate under any terrestrial orbital defenses.

This would, if anything (in combination with KOTOR footage), suggest a much larger Republic Navy as the standing force counter to _standing army_ (Why? There hasn't been a war since 'the founding of the Republic' 20,000 years ago...) assets of most local system and cluster alliances.

Obviously, you run into a hard 'collaterals' risk condition wherein winkling out imbedded forces from among a civilian production infrastructure using air or orbital strikes could hurt more than it was worth.

But go they will. Because a ship, even a mere fighter ship, can mass more firepower, from greater standoff, than an infantry/mech force mix can match.

If nothing else, I would expect to see large scale Federalization of civil ships and equipping them with high yield atomics or 'seismic charge' equivalent devices as Rods From God weapons that could be slingshot into planetary regions to either directly attack the threat or to create massive area denial zones (molten sludge down to 3-6 feet below surface level as a mini-BDZ) while other forces scrambled to meet the threat.
Even as a razed earth policy it is better to deny the threat your asset than it is to expect them to yield it up, intact, once they are evicted.

I also think this is the basis of the reasoning behind much more capable planetary defense systems and local shielding. To prevent the direct air envelopment assault (if I wanted to kill AT-ATs I would put 'seismic charge' minefields across the approaches to a given city) and to shoot at both Separatist and even Republic threats which were engaged in what amounts to desultory terrorism against infrastructure. It certainly makes more sense to put massive cannons on the ground than to try and haul all that metal into space and then shield it.


Saberist.

[phongn]

I see much the same problem for the Acclamators and Gunships. It being improbable in the extreme that the latter Hind lookalikes can penetrate atmosphere (they have 'environmental shields' to allow opening the sidedoor/landing skids in a vacuum but nothing that will give them an aero-shape sufficient to penetrate atmosphere) and yet, at the same time, they have a decided advantage: they can bring THE ENTIRE SHIP INLAND.

I think we've actually seen exoatmospheric operations conducted with the LAATs (the "Hind-lookalike" gunships). You're discounting Star Wars material science a bit: with their available thrust, antigravity systems and extreme thermal resistance, re-entry just isn't a problem for them.

This gets into the strategies of the GAR and Separatists as a whole. If you have 50 million worlds and only 3 million clones you cannot maintain even a paltry battalion sized (minimum 1,000 man unit considered capable of independent combat ops in the Marines) garrison on more than a handful.

Here on SDN we've pretty much discounted the puny three-million-clone army as ridiculous.

[Illuminatus Primus]

The LAAT/i exoatmospheric performance begs several questions? Are these really LAAT/i's? Or perhaps a lookalike or -B model that is a HAAT/i? Does "low altitude" in a SW context refer to low orbit and below? The engines shown in AOTC ICS are atmosphere-breathing; can these atmosphere-breathing engines transition to pure rockets for genuine exoatmospheric ops?

[phongn]

The LAAT/i exoatmospheric performance begs several questions? Are these really LAAT/i's? Or perhaps a lookalike or -B model that is a HAAT/i? Does "low altitude" in a SW context refer to low orbit and below? The engines shown in AOTC ICS are atmosphere-breathing; can these atmosphere-breathing engines transition to pure rockets for genuine exoatmospheric ops?

"Low-altitude" may refer simply to their normal operating regime. As for multimode engines, it'd hardly be a problem for SW to perform.

Hell, for all we know, their motherships use their tractor beams to guide them en masse into atmosphere.

[Connor MacLeod]

"Low-altitude" may refer simply to their normal operating regime. As for multimode engines, it'd hardly be a problem for SW to perform.


Hell, for all we know, their motherships use their tractor beams to guide them en masse into atmosphere.

[/quote]

or just some sort of attached rocket boosters I suppose. Hell if its just in terms of "entering/exiting" an atmosphere, ,Repulsors coudl arguably do straight line movments (Dooku's transport could do 5-20 thousand gees in AOTC, remember, and there was no evidence of direct thrust.) Generally though I'd just say some might have ion engines of some kind, since ion engines can be pretty damn compact.

As I also recall the LAAT's are all equipped with inertial compensators to help keep/protect crews from sharp movements and stuff, and they can probably either close up the sides of the transports or use atmospheric containment shields to protect the crews.


Anyhow, one place where an Acclamator and Venator will have a HUGE drawback over an LAAT gunship (or assault shuttles, or transports, or dropships or anything like that.) is also its size. That sheer size will defeat any attmept to use the Acclamator/Veantors for purposes of stealth (its going to be a much bigger emitting source, even if its shields/engines are minimal or shut down.) Moreover, its size also makes it difficult for the transport to move safely at speed - at least not if you care about anything on the ground, at least. And even if it isn't it will still make the stealth issue even more improbable.

Also, a big ship can only be in one place at any one time. Transports can allow for greater coverage if/when you have minimal threats.

[Ender]

Shatterpoint specifically says that the LAAT/i engines were modified for space flight for the craft used in that attack, I'd be surprised if this wasn't the case for others. However that was a stopgap, it was later replaced with a craft with dedicated ion engines for those attacks.

[Saberist]

Phongn,

I think we've actually seen exoatmospheric operations conducted with the LAATs (the "Hind-lookalike" gunships). You're discounting Star Wars material science a bit: with their available thrust, antigravity systems and extreme thermal resistance, re-entry just isn't a problem for them.

Localized hits from blasters (Geonosis Arena: the LAAT flares to a hover and several flashes across it's belly are shown) are one thing. Massive Q and Thermal increases across the entire front half of the ship are different.

In 'The Clone Wars' /cartoon/ there is obvious sign of LAATs in orbit as the final Separatist Assault gets underway, including opening the side doors on a nominally free vacuum hangar. I never doubted that either repulsorlift tech works in space (something I've assumed ever since ANH when X-Wings bank and pitch and maintain constant forward thrust without acceleration) or there is some other equivalent zero point theorem propulsion in action.

I just don't see the utility of making all these nominally cheap 'hueys' into transatmospheric capable ships IF they are going to be brought into atmosphere by motherships to operate at sub 300 knot, sub 15K foot, altitudes.

Economically (replacement costs) and by deckspot/mass it just doesn't make much sense to halve your total force size to double the price of a system that you then turn right around and bring into atmosphere anyway.

Particularly since cleaning up the airframe (via new design) can only help in terms of _active shield envelopes_ and blaster deflection as well. In the original Han Solo trilogy, the use of shields to smooth the spaceframe of the YT-1300 is mentioned several times as the Falcon 'glows' after Han makes a smuggler's descent to impress a girl.

Further, given the gaping engine holes, projecting (tiny) gun tubes and generally poor in-atmosphere (straight wing) design of ships like the X-Wing, it is virtually impossible to believe that these ships are EITHER entering or exiting atmosphere at the kinds of accelerations shown in the original ANH (speeds they would have to be able to achieve to intercept the Death Star while /circumnavigating a gas giant/; Jupiter being some 280,000 miles around) without an active-ablative shield technology.

Anymore than a meteor or small asteroid would be able to survive 40,000mph (i.e. 4-5 times less than the X-Wings achieve at Yavin) speeds.

And if shields are necessary for atmosphere penetration then this-

>
Infantry gunships were equipped with atmospheric containment shielding and could be deployed from space, although their optimal fighting range was still in the lower atmosphere, where they could reach speeds in excess of six hundred kilometers per hour.
>

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/LAAT/i

Would not be the only _environmental_ protection system mentioned.

Nor would this-

>
The HAET-221 was 17.2 meters long, and armed with antipersonnel blasters and a larger anti-vehicle laser cannon. These short-range ships were launched from low orbit, and used positional rockets to help them reach their target destinations. Once they entered the lower atmosphere, repulsorlift units were used to propel these craft. The HAET-221 usually flew at a low altitude of several meters, although it was capable of reaching an altitude of several kilometers. Once in a planet's atmosphere, these ships were incapable of returning to space on their own.
>

http://encyclopedia.wizards.pro/index.php/HAET-221

Be necessary as a followon/supplemental system.

Such is why I believe that, as the war wound on and both the sizes of the deployed forces grew and the 'coastal defense' equivalent systems prevented heavies from penetrating atmosphere; it became necessary to invest in both fewer, larger, transport hulls to transport larger numbers of forces (probably conscript).

And to compensate for increasing costs by by removing atmosphere penetration (or at least /landing/) capabilities and letting smaller assault craft take in the forces with fewer troops at risk, per load.

This gets into the strategies of the GAR and Separatists as a whole. If you have 50 million worlds and only 3 million clones you cannot maintain even a paltry battalion sized (minimum 1,000 man unit considered capable of independent combat ops in the Marines) garrison on more than a handful.

Here on SDN we've pretty much discounted the puny three-million-clone army as ridiculous.[/quote]

Fair enough, I suppose Spaarti Cylinder improvements might be fast enough to create larger forces though the age-acceleration problem of raising up forces with, ahem, 'considerably less than 10 years' worth of growth cycle (the actual Clone War was what, 3-4 years, long?) would still leave a lot of psychological and phystical problems.

Indeed, probably the biggest farce of the entire PT is the notion that droids which weight 300-500lbs and are made from metal 'through and through', while able to sustain running speeds compatible with fast moving ground vehicles (Geonosis battle plain) are somehow more vulnerable to direct fire than 200lb Clones wearing, essentially, plastic armor. Lucas effectively makes The Jedi look like idiot has beens in dire need of replacement and then makes a 5'7", pudgy, Temura Morrison into the superman followon force without a single comment as to 'how that works'.

Because he knows it cannot.

You don't use GE and Clone tech to make slaves. Indeed, if you're going to invest the HUGE amount of time, money and educational resources inherent to artificially creating life, making mindless flesh-'bots is ridiculous because, as Obiwan himself said: "Well, if droids could _think_, none of us would be here...". And absolute loyalty to orders = absolute lack of creative tactical innovation on the battlefield = soldiers who don't live very long against physically superior battle droids.

OTOH, if you make your creation as perfect and all-doing as possible as a cadre` force. Then you fill out the ranks with conscript troops whose childhood rearing is already paid for and who (as adults) can be trained in a matter of months, not years.

Now you have a force to be reckoned with.

Once you acknowledge that simple fact as well as 'readmit into evidence' the things that ONLY the Jedi can do (crush 5-6 droids at a time, run celerically, augment armor with saber defense), your choice of archetype to model your 'perfect warrior' from becomes obvious.

For whatever reason, Lucas hates The Jedi so much that he avoids common sense as much as counter-elitist notions of what cloning is really good for. Again, 'only in America' (land of the free, home of the all-volunteer professional military), do we see such contradictions in what works (5 trillion beings in the SWU) vs. what is necessary (the best commandos you can find).


Saberist