Bad design in Star Wars

[fractalsponge1]

To my knowledge, not unambiguously, no. Kuat Sector is known to have had multiple Mandator and Procurator ships (though I suppose squadron operation can be debated). Azure Hammer is vaguely described as Whelm and 57 capital ships, but no indication of what those ships were; they could well have been full battle and battlecruiser squadrons, with escorting destroyer-sized ships being an afterthought. Giel's squadron, though specifically stated as being the largest yet assembled, had at least his flagship and potential half-sister carrier variant. The Byss security cordon, if it was a cohesive unit, had numerous Star Cruiser sized ships and above.

But whether or not such squadrons are common or not still doesn't remove the incongruity between the sizes and projected power of the ships in question. Star Destroyers are bugs compared to the larger vessels in the universe; they can only hope to prevail in DD/TB style mass attacks. From that alone the idea that they can operate at anything like the equivalence suggested by the term "battleline" is suspect, imho. I also don't see what's wrong with a effective classifications blurring depending on deployment; ISDs can group together as a "battleline" when faced with largely destroyer-sized opponents, like frigate squadrons forming line in the Age of Sail. But they will not be able to do so against real capital ships, again unless it's in massive numbers.

[Darwin]

BUt is there any canon evidence for such squadrons existing? All we have is one Dreadnought as flagship, accompanied by many ISDs. The best we have is a three Dreadnought squadron (Black Sword), but the only real heavy unit we know of there is the Intimidator, the other are two dreadnoughts of unspecified design.

The Endor fleet explicitly had at least 3 capital vessels, Executor, the communications ship, and at least one Tector. As per the novelization, the communications ship was 'one of the larger cruisers' And the Tector is the same size as an ISD, so it's implied there were more than two >1.6km Imperial warships in the fight.

[Thanas]

To my knowledge, not unambiguously, no. Kuat Sector is known to have had multiple Mandator and Procurator ships (though I suppose squadron operation can be debated). Azure Hammer is vaguely described as Whelm and 57 capital ships, but no indication of what those ships were; they could well have been full battle and battlecruiser squadrons, with escorting destroyer-sized ships being an afterthought.

I doubt this, considering that it seems standard practice to have one Executor and one Executor only as flagship surrounded by ISDs. For example, the fleet of Grand Admiral Grunger only had one Executor, 30 star Destroyers and over 160 cruisers of all sizes.

Giel's squadron, though specifically stated as being the largest yet assembled, had at least his flagship and potential half-sister carrier variant.

But that is no indication for widespread use of Dreadnoughts. That means that the largest armada had two ships that probably did not even rival one executor class ship in volume when combined.

The Byss security cordon, if it was a cohesive unit, had numerous Star Cruiser sized ships and above.

If by numerous you mean probably about a dozen, then yes. But these were not that huge in size - not a single one of them even rivals one Executor class ship.

But whether or not such squadrons are common or not still doesn't remove the incongruity between the sizes and projected power of the ships in question. Star Destroyers are bugs compared to the larger vessels in the universe; they can only hope to prevail in DD/TB style mass attacks. From that alone the idea that they can operate at anything like the equivalence suggested by the term "battleline" is suspect, imho. I also don't see what's wrong with a effective classifications blurring depending on deployment; ISDs can group together as a "battleline" when faced with largely destroyer-sized opponents, like frigate squadrons forming line in the Age of Sail. But they will not be able to do so against real capital ships, again unless it's in massive numbers.

See, here is the problem. To me, the ISD-sized ships are the true capital ships (as evidenced by RotS, where not a single larger-sized ship was used) with the larger units being true flagships and more heavily armed. They are undoubtedly much better in combat with standard ISDs not having a chance against them, but they are not common enough to fulfill the roles of capital ships. There is no evidence for them being standard sector flagships. The ISDs are battleships and/or heavy cruisers and employed in those roles. (something that is very much appearant in the nomenclature of the rest as well - we have a steady progression from corvettes, frigates, cruisers and then to Star Destroyers. By that place alone, they are worthy of being called heavy cruisers.

The Endor fleet explicitly had at least 3 capital vessels, Executor, the communications ship, and at least one Tector. As per the novelization, the communications ship was 'one of the larger cruisers' And the Tector is the same size as an ISD, so it's implied there were more than two >1.6km Imperial warships in the fight.

The communications ship was the retrofitted ISD Avenger, iirc. So it cannot have been that much larger than an ISD.

[fractalsponge1]

The communications ship was the retrofitted ISD Avenger, iirc. So it cannot have been that much larger than an ISD.

That doesn't explain the intermediate-sized vessel seen in silhouette here:
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/dvd/zs ... view1x.jpg

I doubt this, considering that it seems standard practice to have one Executor and one Executor only as flagship surrounded by ISDs. For example, the fleet of Grand Admiral Grunger only had one Executor, 30 star Destroyers and over 160 cruisers of all sizes.

Hm, but Black Sword Command specifically had three large vessels. Also, it seems to me that operating divided, single-dreadnought task forces for Kuat Sector's multiple Mandator/Procurator ships wouldn't make much sense in such a restricted region (the ships were range limited, after all).

Many of the forces seen in detail are Rebel-hunting task forces, where a single large flagship and many more smaller ships for hunting and patrol duties would make sense.

Grunger's total force would be outgunned by two Mandators, and as such would be useless in probably one of the main tasks for the central Starfleet; threatened suppression of rogue Core Worlds. Grunger's Executor outmasses and massively outguns the entire collection of other ships under his command; the comparison between Grunger's force and another Star Dreadnought-equipped formation hints at the near irrelevance of destroyer-sized ships at that scale of conflict. With the example of Azure Hammer, if those 57 ships were ISDs, then they would still be doubled in power by just one more Executor, and overmatched by just one Mandator. This for a fleet designed to maintain the security and Imperial dominance of a substantial slice of the Core?

Major Core powers are known to possess multiple units of that level of force; the Imperial Starfleet needs enough large units of its own to threaten those forces with destruction. And these ships make much more sense operating together as squadrons. Again, most of the Imperial formations we see are Rebel hunters, not strategic units whose raison d'etre might be maintaining strategic balance with powers that vastly outgun the Rebellion.

If by numerous you mean probably about a dozen, then yes. But these were not that huge in size - not a single one of them even rivals one Executor class ship.

Still, by volume twelve Star Cruisers is a far more credible match for an Executor than a few dozen ISDs.

But that is no indication for widespread use of Dreadnoughts. That means that the largest armada had two ships that probably did not even rival one executor class ship in volume when combined.

The Executor was a large advance on the [presumably] size and the power of the previous super-heavy dreadnought, the Mandator. The majority of the Star Battleship-sized vessels in service could easily have been the size of Giel's flagship, or the vessel seen here:
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/comics ... rtant1.jpg

It is also never stated (to my knowledge, please correct me if I'm wrong) that we see the entirety of Giel's command. If we took all the ships seen in the comic panels on SWTC together, it wouldn't even match the volume of Whelm (presumably an SSD). It would then hardly the largest armada in Imperial history.

Dreadnoughts are such large concentrations of power that a single one seriously threatens all known collections of Star Destroyer sized ships. That single Core worlds like Kuat might field multiple numbers of them suggest that the Imperial Starfleet has access to a larger (or at least more powerful) number of similar vessels in reserve. The remaining ships can be dispersed as prestige flagships, even if they are not really called for.

See, here is the problem. To me, the ISD-sized ships are the true capital ships (as evidenced by RotS, where not a single larger-sized ship was used) with the larger units being true flagships and more heavily armed. They are undoubtedly much better in combat with standard ISDs not having a chance against them, but they are not common enough to fulfill the roles of capital ships. There is no evidence for them being standard sector flagships. The ISDs are battleships and/or heavy cruisers and employed in those roles. (something that is very much appearant in the nomenclature of the rest as well - we have a steady progression from corvettes, frigates, cruisers and then to Star Destroyers. By that place alone, they are worthy of being called heavy cruisers.

I have no problem with ISDs taking the role of battleships in small-scale conflicts, but it seems to me that saying they are in a same scale as a ship several hundred times bigger and more powerful is not completely reasonable. Is it reasonable to say the difference between adjacent size ranges is over four orders of magnitude, which is what we'd be doing if we compare Carracks and Star Destroyers? Why do mental contortions for this if there is a natural progression of known vessels in two different size ranges for different scales of conflict?

Again, I'm not saying ISDs don't act in a battleship role when faced with shoals of smaller vessels, but they are rounding errors when one considers Star Battleship or Dreadnought engagements. Larger ships may well be retained under central command, not dispersed to Sectors.

[CaptHawkeye]

Light cruisers, per definition, cannot stand in the line of battle.

ISDs do.

Do we ever see ISD's in a battle line in any of the movies? No, we see them either performing patrols or better yet, in a formation around bigger ships such as Executor. The ISDs at Endor most certainly were NOT in a line, but were dispersed a manner highly indicitive of capital ship escort. Everything we see ISDs doing in the movies indicates they are light warships.

Again, I'm not saying ISDs don't act in a battleship role when faced with shoals of smaller vessels, but they are rounding errors when one considers Star Battleship or Dreadnought engagements. Larger ships may well be retained under central command, not dispersed to Sectors.

I agree with this idea. Destroyers and Cruisers frequently formed battle lines at Guadalcanal and other battles even into late WW2. As long as their opponents were also DDs and Cruisers why shouldn't they after all?

[Simon_Jester]

Faulty information or not it would have been a major stretch for them to have expected any part of the reactor to be a viable target. If they got there and found that there was a way to strike at it nice side benefit. Otherwise the main objective had to have been the exterior equipment of the Superlaser and the Death Star's Engines and Hyperdrive. Access to the reactor being available nice but that couldn't have been the primary target of the operation!

You keep side stepping the point!

I think we disagree on what the single truly important point is.

If you contend that the truly important point is "given a completed Death Star hull, the only possible targets would be the superlaser, engines, and hyperdrive," then yes, sure, granted. I don't think it's a particularly important or all-overriding point myself, but I basically agree.

I think the truly important point is "the X-wing attack was not intended to vaporize the Death Star*, but instead to do localized damage with megaton/gigaton-range weapons to whatever expensive targets of opportunity came up, probably based on the assumption that the hull was not complete and would offer access to internal systems." Your point strikes me as a subsidiary or secondary issue, since I haven't got the faintest idea of whether they expected to be able to target the reactor specifically.

*Which, as Serafina said, it obviously could not do.
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That is to say, I consider the term "Star Destroyer" to be literal. I do believe Star Destroyers are in fact, just DDs.

By that standard, you could equally well conclude that they are capable of destroying a star... [ Think about it. Is it true that a "dreadnought" literally needs to dread nought, even several ships of its own class?

Class names are flexible things, and they don't always translate well, either. We call relatively small gun/missile-armed warships "destroyers" for historical reasons that don't make all that much sense taken out of context. Certainly they aren't used against torpedo boats all that often these days. Why assume that because a ship built a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away is named "destroyer," it must be used to name the same kind of "relatively small gun/missile-armed ship" that we would call a "destroyer?" Especially when the same ship class is often referred to as a "cruiser," which to us at the turn of the millenium means "medium gun/missile-armed ship."

"Destroyer" is a very generic name.
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If they even were numerous enough to serve as flagships, which I would dismiss based on the evidence of ISDs acting as sector flagships even for Grand Moffs.

Maybe. But even a very senior admiral may command from a cruiser, especially if they're commanding in a sector where no significant threat to a vessel of cruiser strength are expected. Heavy capital ships are great for prestige, but in a lot of places that's all they're going to be good for. In a place like that, given a choice between a squadron of medium-to-light capital ships and a single heavy capital, the smart Moff would pick the squadron even if it means sacrificing the awesomeness of having his own ten-kilometer long flagship.
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Light cruisers, per definition, cannot stand in the line of battle.

ISDs do.

Do we ever see ISD's in a battle line in any of the movies? No, we see them either performing patrols or better yet, in a formation around bigger ships such as Executor. The ISDs at Endor most certainly were NOT in a line, but were dispersed a manner highly indicitive of capital ship escort. Everything we see ISDs doing in the movies indicates they are light warships.

Why would a line formation, specifically, be adopted in space anyway? If you're trying to maximize your ability to fire in all directions*, you'd adopt a three-dimensional formation with some kind of weird staggering pattern to minimize the number of ships that any single ship blocks from a given angle. It would end up looking more like a WWII heavy bomber formation than a line.

*And in Star Wars you need to; enemy ships can be frighteningly agile over the distance scales of effective weapon range.

[fractalsponge1]

Why would a line formation, specifically, be adopted in space anyway? If you're trying to maximize your ability to fire in all directions*, you'd adopt a three-dimensional formation with some kind of weird staggering pattern to minimize the number of ships that any single ship blocks from a given angle. It would end up looking more like a WWII heavy bomber formation than a line.

*And in Star Wars you need to; enemy ships can be frighteningly agile over the distance scales of effective weapon range.

I think we're all using the term "battleline" in the sense of a "generic grouping of capital vessels," not literal line formations. Just like how we're saying "cruisers" in the old sense of the word, not the modern definition of a fleet combatant of intermediate size.

[Raesene]

There are heavier ships mentioned as flagships: the Allegiance in Dark Empire was termed Super Star Destroyer (not the size of a Star Dreadnought, but powerful enough not to be a called simply Star Destroyer) and the Shockwave in Darksaber, powerful enought to destroy a Victory-class SD in a single salvo.

They are the ships that fit into the Star Cruiser category if the standard ISD is just a destroyer.

Regarding Death Squadron, doesn't the novelisation make it a 100+ ship formation ? I misplaced my book, so I am unavble to check the literature , but that could include a lot of offscreen vessels surrounding Hoth to block other escape routes of a composition comparable to the group led by Vader personally (Star cruiser + a few destroyers).

[Isolder74]

Faulty information or not it would have been a major stretch for them to have expected any part of the reactor to be a viable target. If they got there and found that there was a way to strike at it nice side benefit. Otherwise the main objective had to have been the exterior equipment of the Superlaser and the Death Star's Engines and Hyperdrive. Access to the reactor being available nice but that couldn't have been the primary target of the operation!

You keep side stepping the point!

I think we disagree on what the single truly important point is.

If you contend that the truly important point is "given a completed Death Star hull, the only possible targets would be the superlaser, engines, and hyperdrive," then yes, sure, granted. I don't think it's a particularly important or all-overriding point myself, but I basically agree.

I think the truly important point is "the X-wing attack was not intended to vaporize the Death Star*, but instead to do localized damage with megaton/gigaton-range weapons to whatever expensive targets of opportunity came up, probably based on the assumption that the hull was not complete and would offer access to internal systems." Your point strikes me as a subsidiary or secondary issue, since I haven't got the faintest idea of whether they expected to be able to target the reactor specifically.

*Which, as Serafina said, it obviously could not do.

I am contending that the mission of the X-Wing attack in Death Star had to be a Mission Kill, as in destroy mission critical equipment, rather then destruction, to buy time to try and figure out what to do against it. It might also have been to buy time to get their hands on more information to make disabling it fully possible. If the Death Star didn't have it's fighter cover already then they may well have been able to pull that off. The active Superlaser and Turbolasers only took out the TF Battleship. No Ties and they still might have been able to damage the Superlaser enough to put it out of service.

[Simon_Jester]

I think we're all using the term "battleline" in the sense of a "generic grouping of capital vessels," not literal line formations. Just like how we're saying "cruisers" in the old sense of the word, not the modern definition of a fleet combatant of intermediate size.

I was not aware of the use of cruisers in the old sense by others here, though it certainly makes sense to do so. It seemed a bit ambiguous to me.

Thank you for clearing up the misunderstanding, though if we're using "battle line" in general terms, then I think it would be reasonable to say that the SDs at Endor did form a "battle line," though it might be hard to tell. It looks as if the Executor is forming the lead of some kind of cone formation, which makes sense: the Executor has more guns than anything else in the fleet, so you don't want anything between it and the most likely direction of outgoing fire.

I am contending that the mission of the X-Wing attack in Death Star had to be a Mission Kill, as in destroy mission critical equipment, rather then destruction, to buy time to try and figure out what to do against it...

...Which was my point all along. So I don't really think I've been sidestepping your point, seeing as how I was making it before you were. Destroying a (presumably powered down, under construction) reactor would fall under the heading of mission-kill, not total destruction, except for a truly stupid reactor design, I'd think.

[Thanas]

I'll reply to any points raised in this post tomorrow, right now I am just too wiped out. So please don't take this as me bailing on the debate.

[bz249]

Why would a line formation, specifically, be adopted in space anyway? If you're trying to maximize your ability to fire in all directions*, you'd adopt a three-dimensional formation with some kind of weird staggering pattern to minimize the number of ships that any single ship blocks from a given angle. It would end up looking more like a WWII heavy bomber formation than a line.

*And in Star Wars you need to; enemy ships can be frighteningly agile over the distance scales of effective weapon range.

Yet the gunnery arrangement of an ISD suggest that this kind of ship is used in a way, that the intended target is in front of and slightly above the star destroyer. Under such conditions all 6 main turbolaser turrets, the two heavy ion guns, both wing turrets and the centerline medium turrets can shoot the same target.

Thus the gunnery arrangement of this type of ship is ideal for pursuiting the enemy or going head on the target. This behavior is also supported by the fact that star destroyers are fast both on sublight and in hyperspace.

[Thanas]

The communications ship was the retrofitted ISD Avenger, iirc. So it cannot have been that much larger than an ISD.

That doesn't explain the intermediate-sized vessel seen in silhouette here:
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/dvd/zs ... view1x.jpg

Is that really intermediate or merely closer to the camera/ error?

Hm, but Black Sword Command specifically had three large vessels.

Three super-class destroyers, which can be anything from the small Allegiance up to the Executor.

Also, it seems to me that operating divided, single-dreadnought task forces for Kuat Sector's multiple Mandator/Procurator ships wouldn't make much sense in such a restricted region (the ships were range limited, after all).

Many of the forces seen in detail are Rebel-hunting task forces, where a single large flagship and many more smaller ships for hunting and patrol duties would make sense.

But this argument flies directly in the face of the actual defences we see at Kuat. For example, in the second Battle of Kuat, the entire defence force had just one Executor class dreadnought and only ISDs and smaller vessels. In the third battle of Kuat, not a single dreadnought was present, indicating that the destroyed Annihilator was the single dreadnought there.

This seems to indicate that the Mandators and Executor-class dreadnoughts are very, very uncommon.

Grunger's total force would be outgunned by two Mandators, and as such would be useless in probably one of the main tasks for the central Starfleet; threatened suppression of rogue Core Worlds. Grunger's Executor outmasses and massively outguns the entire collection of other ships under his command; the comparison between Grunger's force and another Star Dreadnought-equipped formation hints at the near irrelevance of destroyer-sized ships at that scale of conflict. With the example of Azure Hammer, if those 57 ships were ISDs, then they would still be doubled in power by just one more Executor, and overmatched by just one Mandator. This for a fleet designed to maintain the security and Imperial dominance of a substantial slice of the Core?

Well, in addition to the numerous other planetary forces.

Major Core powers are known to possess multiple units of that level of force; the Imperial Starfleet needs enough large units of its own to threaten those forces with destruction. And these ships make much more sense operating together as squadrons. Again, most of the Imperial formations we see are Rebel hunters, not strategic units whose raison d'etre might be maintaining strategic balance with powers that vastly outgun the Rebellion.

Yes, but the Republic/Empire was always less militarized than the sum of its parts. Even with a massive shipbuilding program, I find it unlikely that they would outgun planets that had a seperate Navy for thousands of years.

If by numerous you mean probably about a dozen, then yes. But these were not that huge in size - not a single one of them even rivals one Executor class ship.

Still, by volume twelve Star Cruisers is a far more credible match for an Executor than a few dozen ISDs.

That is of course true. But the force at Byss did not have a single Executor class or larger present, discounting the Eclipse, which was the Emperor's flagship and neither a standard deployment at Byss nor that much of a succesful design.

The Executor was a large advance on the [presumably] size and the power of the previous super-heavy dreadnought, the Mandator. The majority of the Star Battleship-sized vessels in service could easily have been the size of Giel's flagship, or the vessel seen here:
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/comics ... rtant1.jpg

It is also never stated (to my knowledge, please correct me if I'm wrong) that we see the entirety of Giel's command. If we took all the ships seen in the comic panels on SWTC together, it wouldn't even match the volume of Whelm (presumably an SSD). It would then hardly the largest armada in Imperial history.

But to assume that there are other large ships that are not shown is essentially an argument ex nihil, especially when there are different ways to denote largest armada. For example, the Spanish armada was certainly larger than Nelson's fleet by number of ships involved, but there is no doubt Nelson's fleet would have annihilated it.

Dreadnoughts are such large concentrations of power that a single one seriously threatens all known collections of Star Destroyer sized ships. That single Core worlds like Kuat might field multiple numbers of them suggest that the Imperial Starfleet has access to a larger (or at least more powerful) number of similar vessels in reserve. The remaining ships can be dispersed as prestige flagships, even if they are not really called for.

So why do we not see them at Kuat when Kuat is threatened?

I have no problem with ISDs taking the role of battleships in small-scale conflicts, but it seems to me that saying they are in a same scale as a ship several hundred times bigger and more powerful is not completely reasonable. Is it reasonable to say the difference between adjacent size ranges is over four orders of magnitude, which is what we'd be doing if we compare Carracks and Star Destroyers? Why do mental contortions for this if there is a natural progression of known vessels in two different size ranges for different scales of conflict?

Again, I'm not saying ISDs don't act in a battleship role when faced with shoals of smaller vessels, but they are rounding errors when one considers Star Battleship or Dreadnought engagements. Larger ships may well be retained under central command, not dispersed to Sectors.

I can get behind that, but my main problem is not characterizing ISDs as ships of the line when that is their main job. No doubt about it, Star Dreadnoughts are something much different, but for all intents and purposes the ISD is the battleship.

The Dreadnought are a whole other dimension, which is why I get why they are called Star Dreadnoughts. But that does not mean the ISDs are not heavy cruisers/battleships.

I was not aware of the use of cruisers in the old sense by others here, though it certainly makes sense to do so. It seemed a bit ambiguous to me.

Well, as SW is most analogeous to the Navies of the 1920s, this seems to be the best designation for the ship classes.

Thank you for clearing up the misunderstanding, though if we're using "battle line" in general terms, then I think it would be reasonable to say that the SDs at Endor did form a "battle line," though it might be hard to tell. It looks as if the Executor is forming the lead of some kind of cone formation, which makes sense: the Executor has more guns than anything else in the fleet, so you don't want anything between it and the most likely direction of outgoing fire.

Yes, that is what I gather from the movie as well.

[Simon_Jester]

Yet the gunnery arrangement of an ISD suggest that this kind of ship is used in a way, that the intended target is in front of and slightly above the star destroyer. Under such conditions all 6 main turbolaser turrets, the two heavy ion guns, both wing turrets and the centerline medium turrets can shoot the same target.

Thus the gunnery arrangement of this type of ship is ideal for pursuiting the enemy or going head on the target. This behavior is also supported by the fact that star destroyers are fast both on sublight and in hyperspace.

Yes, but the dagger-form ISDs also have to worry about their light batteries for small-craft defense. The main battery is clearly optimized to fire forward and up (at a more or less arbitrary angle determined by the vertical angular traverse of the main guns). But it's less clear what the optimal angle of fire is for the Executor-class, and the ISDs have at least a limited amount of flexibility in their angle of fire; they're not spacegoing assault guns with their main battery on a fixed spinal mount. So a cone formation with the heavy supercapitals at the apex is probably a good compromise, since it affords all ships a clear shot forward and gives at least half the ships a clear shot in any direction, provided that they're able to roll ship around their line of flight to bring their batteries to bear on targets to the side of the formation. If the ships' roll angle is fixed or difficult to change, things get trickier, of course.

The steeper the cone, the broader the angle into which the fleet can deliver roughly half its fire to targets on the flanks, but the narrower the angle into which the fleet can deliver all its fire to targets directly forward. However, as long as you keep the supercapitals at the tip of the cone, your biggest and most numerous guns will ALWAYS be able to bear on targets near your line of advance, and the escorts will only mask your fire to sternwards. Moreover, the escorts correspondingly mask the enemy's fire, buying the supercapitals time to respond or escape in the event of a flank attack.

Note that a wedge is a special case of a cone for this purpose, being a 2D cross-section of a 3D cone.
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The problem is that however you design your ship's main battery, it will have some optimal direction of fire. You might as well make that direction "forward" as any other direction, if you're not constrained to the kinds of hulls that work on an ocean. Oceans force you to design ships optimized for broadsides; space doesn't.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The real problem with the ISD is that their forward arc exposes a large cross section to enemy fire. Now if I were an ISD captain, and I'm up against a foe of equal power, I would rather use my side firing arc and reduce the cross section, and at the same time use line formation tactics to maximize the firepower that can be used on a single target.

If however, the ISD followed a pyramidal shape similar to the Pellaeon class, then the ship could instead fire all its forward battery. But for some reason, someone in Lucasfilm didn't think of it.

[Agent Sorchus]

Yet the gunnery arrangement of an ISD suggest that this kind of ship is used in a way, that the intended target is in front of and slightly above the star destroyer. Under such conditions all 6 main turbolaser turrets, the two heavy ion guns, both wing turrets and the centerline medium turrets can shoot the same target.

Thus the gunnery arrangement of this type of ship is ideal for pursuiting the enemy or going head on the target. This behavior is also supported by the fact that star destroyers are fast both on sublight and in hyperspace.

Where is it said that ISD's were fast in hyperspace? Everything I have ever read is that they are not really fast, and actually are slower than Victory Star destroyers. Victorys are noted as the slower than ISD in sublight acceleration but superior in FTL, source The Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels. I would love to hear your source for ISDs being fast in hyperspace.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

ISD hyperdrive motivators are rated at x2 if I recall, while the hyperdrive motivators for Venators and Victorys are rated x1 I think.

[fractalsponge1]

Isn't all this talk about firing arcs and formations missing the point a bit? Most battles would not be like Endor or Coruscant, where two sides sail along slowly in a restricted area and pound at each other point-blank like ranks of infantry. If I were an star destroyer captain in a fight with an equal opponent, I'd be trying to wring every one of my 3000+g out of my engine array and drawing weird and unpredictable shapes in the sky trying to avoid getting hit. Optimum firing arcs basically serve to constrain how violently you can maneuver and still maintain full weapons output. Actual optimum firing arcs probably aren't as important as how well you can move.

[Simon_Jester]

In a one on one duel between ships that's totally true. When large numbers of ships must congregate in a single fleet to defeat a powerful opponent, you have to figure out some way for them to operate without crashing into each other or flying into another ship's line of fire... which is where formations come back into play and you'd better pray your ECM is up to the task of making up for your restricted mobility.

[fractalsponge1]

When turbolasers are ranged in the light minute range (even if the effective range for a decent hit probability is lower), what's to stop you taking up station a few hundred kilometers from your neighbors and maneuvering in the space defined? I don't think Endor and Coruscant are valid counterexamples to this, given how narrow the conditions for those battles were.

[fractalsponge1]

To Thanas:

Is that really intermediate or merely closer to the camera/ error?

It is possible that it is an error, but there's nothing I've heard that confirms that. If it were simply closer to the camera, it is one ship significantly closer than the rest of the fleet (note that the ISD-sized silhouettes are all roughly consistent in size). Moreover it clearly does not have the shape of an ISD; it is proportionately far longer.

Thank you for clearing up the misunderstanding, though if we're using "battle line" in general terms, then I think it would be reasonable to say that the SDs at Endor did form a "battle line," though it might be hard to tell. It looks as if the Executor is forming the lead of some kind of cone formation, which makes sense: the Executor has more guns than anything else in the fleet, so you don't want anything between it and the most likely direction of outgoing fire.

But this is against a formation of other star destroyers (minus two? Home One-class).

Three super-class destroyers, which can be anything from the small Allegiance up to the Executor.

As I do not have the book, I will concede that.

As an aside (not directed at you Thanas):
The stupid "Super-Xxxx" ambiguity is infuriating. Everything in the three orders of magnitude in size from ISD to Eclipse can be called "Super-Star Destroyers." Why don't we just call the Death Star a Super-class Golan?

But this argument flies directly in the face of the actual defences we see at Kuat. For example, in the second Battle of Kuat, the entire defence force had just one Executor class dreadnought and only ISDs and smaller vessels. In the third battle of Kuat, not a single dreadnought was present, indicating that the destroyed Annihilator was the single dreadnought there.

This seems to indicate that the Mandators and Executor-class dreadnoughts are very, very uncommon.

So why do we not see them at Kuat when Kuat is threatened?

Genuine question: how do the events of the EAW campaign plot rank in canon? There's certainly a lot of gameplay-limited crap in the EAW series games, but I'm not certain of the actual major plot points. How did the battle play out in the game? Nonetheless, the ICS explicitly attributes Mandator and Procurator-class ships to Kuat Sector. To take the game plot at face value, are we to believe that Kuat and the Empire removed the equivalent of those defenses?

With the example of Azure Hammer, if those 57 ships were ISDs, then they would still be doubled in power by just one more Executor, and overmatched by just one Mandator. This for a fleet designed to maintain the security and Imperial dominance of a substantial slice of the Core?

Well, in addition to the numerous other planetary forces.

The other Oversector Command, AZHAMMERCOM included the “Super Star Destroyer Whelm and fifty-seven other capital ships” (presumably Star Destroyers, not counting lesser warships) and was responsible for defense of Imperial Center Oversector, stretching from Imperial Center to Kiribi, nearly 5,000 light years away; Coruscant and the Core Worlds describes AZHAMMERCOM’s AOR as “a wedge encompassing about a third of a circle and hugging the Deep Core to the ‘southeast’ of Coruscant.”

I am working off of the quoted passage from Publius' "Rattling the Saber" essay. A third of the Core is a gigantic stretch of territory in the most highly developed region of the galaxy. Even assuming that the Sector Group commands are the minimum stated by the Imperial Sourcebook, and say 100 sectors, then the deployed minimum Imperial local-service squadrons of that region have 2400 ISDs, which is the firepower equivalent of 20 Executors. Does it seem credible that Azure Hammer is expected to be able to function to police and potentially overwhelm a significant chunk of that level of firepower, to say nothing of whatever firepower is at the disposal of the wealthy member states of the Empire in that region? Against that level of force, is an Azure Hammer of 120?x+57xISDs even significant? Also, is it not specifically stated that a substantial proportion of the Empire's military is not deployed to Sector Groups but kept in reserve? Where are these forces if not embodied in commands like Azure Hammer, which operated in a third of the Core? 3x57 star destroyers does not such a reserve make.

The ICS states that Kuat Sector had Mandator and Procurator class vessels. If it even possessed two of each of these classes, that would be potentially sufficient to match one of the principal military commands of the Imperial Core forces if that command only had 1 "Super Star Destroyer" (which is not even specifically stated to be an Executor), and 57 ISDs. That is one member state, not inclusive of the potentially dozens of others in the Core that could support similar forces.

Yes, but the Republic/Empire was always less militarized than the sum of its parts. Even with a massive shipbuilding program, I find it unlikely that they would outgun planets that had a seperate Navy for thousands of years.

Yes, but those local Navies would have at most a few Sectors to be responsible for, while the Empire was building enough tonnage to cover a whole galaxy. It's not as if they would never retire vessels to maintain themselves at the level required for that relatively local chunk of space. I would really like to know if it is known for certain that the combination of member state militaries could challenge the combined forces of the Empire at its height. It seems to me stupid to say that the Empire could not deploy enough un-committed forces from a third of the entire Core to crush a single member planet, when there are a 1 million full member worlds, and who knows how many dozens of Kuat-level member states.

That is of course true. But the force at Byss did not have a single Executor class or larger present, discounting the Eclipse, which was the Emperor's flagship and neither a standard deployment at Byss nor that much of a succesful design.

A dozen assumes that the shown ships of the cordon represent the entirety of the squadron available, and that this is a truly signficant part of Imperial forces that were already deploying for Shadow Hand. The Republic during the Clone Wars had enough firepower at Coruscant alone to keep a force of dozens of lucrehulks and thousands of light destroyers at bay and still prosecute the Outer Rim Sieges and major military operations across the galaxy.

But to assume that there are other large ships that are not shown is essentially an argument ex nihil, especially when there are different ways to denote largest armada. For example, the Spanish armada was certainly larger than Nelson's fleet by number of ships involved, but there is no doubt Nelson's fleet would have annihilated it.

Fair enough, but using sheer hull numbers to denote power in a universe where smaller ships are essentially the point defense batteries of some larger vessels seems absurd. You could argue that the Naboo blockade consisted only of the ships specifically shown in that section of sky at the beginning of TPM as well.

Is it reasonable to say the difference between adjacent size ranges is over four orders of magnitude, which is what we'd be doing if we compare Carracks and Star Destroyers? Why do mental contortions for this if there is a natural progression of known vessels in two different size ranges for different scales of conflict?

...my main problem is not characterizing ISDs as ships of the line when that is their main job. No doubt about it, Star Dreadnoughts are something much different, but for all intents and purposes the ISD is the battleship.

The Dreadnought are a whole other dimension, which is why I get why they are called Star Dreadnoughts. But that does not mean the ISDs are not heavy cruisers/battleships.

They are not battleships if we compare them to all the intermediate ships known to exist between Star Destroyers and Star Dreadnoughts. We know explicitly there is a Star Battlecruiser (Quaestor, Procurator) in the same naming scheme (ep2,3 ICS). We know that Venator Star Destroyers act as screening vessels for "battleships" (ep 3 ICS). The difference in power between ISDs and Venators and these larger, but intermediate ships ranges over two orders of magnitude.

Again, I'm not saying ISDs don't act in a battleship role when faced with shoals of smaller vessels, but they are rounding errors when one considers Star Battleship or Dreadnought engagements.

I'll repeat I have no problems treating ISD-sized vessels as battleships in a local, low-intensity conflict sort of scenario. But there are obviously larger ships where ISDs take on a screening, DD-style role. We know fleets of these larger ships exist. The naming scheme fits into what we know about that role and the size and power differences between real Star Battleships and Star Destroyers. I really don't understand the aversion to a dual nomenclature system; an ISD might well have been designed as a DD-style vessel for bigger ships and fleets, named as such, and simply adopted the "battleship" role in the limited Sector Group-scale warfare in which they most often found themselves. Just like an Arleigh Burke is a battleship to a dhow off the coast of nowhere, but merely a small escort to something like a Nimitz.

[Thanas]

It is possible that it is an error, but there's nothing I've heard that confirms that. If it were simply closer to the camera, it is one ship significantly closer than the rest of the fleet (note that the ISD-sized silhouettes are all roughly consistent in size). Moreover it clearly does not have the shape of an ISD; it is proportionately far longer.

Alright, so we have got one larger ship at Endor besides the Executor.

But this is against a formation of other star destroyers (minus two? Home One-class).

Eh?

But this argument flies directly in the face of the actual defences we see at Kuat. For example, in the second Battle of Kuat, the entire defence force had just one Executor class dreadnought and only ISDs and smaller vessels. In the third battle of Kuat, not a single dreadnought was present, indicating that the destroyed Annihilator was the single dreadnought there.

This seems to indicate that the Mandators and Executor-class dreadnoughts are very, very uncommon.

So why do we not see them at Kuat when Kuat is threatened?

Genuine question: how do the events of the EAW campaign plot rank in canon? There's certainly a lot of gameplay-limited crap in the EAW series games, but I'm not certain of the actual major plot points. How did the battle play out in the game?[/quot€]

Here is the summary: Link.

Nonetheless, the ICS explicitly attributes Mandator and Procurator-class ships to Kuat Sector. To take the game plot at face value, are we to believe that Kuat and the Empire removed the equivalent of those defenses?

Well, even if the events of EAW were non-canon, when Zsinji makes his attack on Kuat later, there is not a single Dreadnought maneuvering to stop him.

I am working off of the quoted passage from Publius' "Rattling the Saber" essay. A third of the Core is a gigantic stretch of territory in the most highly developed region of the galaxy. Even assuming that the Sector Group commands are the minimum stated by the Imperial Sourcebook, and say 100 sectors, then the deployed minimum Imperial local-service squadrons of that region have 2400 ISDs, which is the firepower equivalent of 20 Executors. Does it seem credible that Azure Hammer is expected to be able to function to police and potentially overwhelm a significant chunk of that level of firepower, to say nothing of whatever firepower is at the disposal of the wealthy member states of the Empire in that region? Against that level of force, is an Azure Hammer of 120?x+57xISDs even significant? Also, is it not specifically stated that a substantial proportion of the Empire's military is not deployed to Sector Groups but kept in reserve? Where are these forces if not embodied in commands like Azure Hammer, which operated in a third of the Core? 3x57 star destroyers does not such a reserve make.

The ICS states that Kuat Sector had Mandator and Procurator class vessels. If it even possessed two of each of these classes, that would be potentially sufficient to match one of the principal military commands of the Imperial Core forces if that command only had 1 "Super Star Destroyer" (which is not even specifically stated to be an Executor), and 57 ISDs. That is one member state, not inclusive of the potentially dozens of others in the Core that could support similar forces.

Which other dozen worlds do have the industrial power of Kuat and are not under direct or indirect Imperial control already? Where is the evidence that it is even necessary for the empire to have so many forces considering many of the Core worlds are fortress worlds by the Empire and the primary doctrine by the empire was not concentrated on ships, but on fortress worlds as stated in the Essential Atlas?

Furthermore, what is your explanation of Star Dreadnoughts not being present at the Battle of Coruscant in ROTS? There is not a single Star Dreadnought present there. If ships that are less capable than ISDs considered to be the enough to defend Coruscant in the clone wars, why should this change during the empire?

A dozen assumes that the shown ships of the cordon represent the entirety of the squadron available, and that this is a truly signficant part of Imperial forces that were already deploying for Shadow Hand. The Republic during the Clone Wars had enough firepower at Coruscant alone to keep a force of dozens of lucrehulks and thousands of light destroyers at bay and still prosecute the Outer Rim Sieges and major military operations across the galaxy.

None of those forces included a Dreadnoghts.

But to assume that there are other large ships that are not shown is essentially an argument ex nihil, especially when there are different ways to denote largest armada. For example, the Spanish armada was certainly larger than Nelson's fleet by number of ships involved, but there is no doubt Nelson's fleet would have annihilated it.

Fair enough, but using sheer hull numbers to denote power in a universe where smaller ships are essentially the point defense batteries of some larger vessels seems absurd. You could argue that the Naboo blockade consisted only of the ships specifically shown in that section of sky at the beginning of TPM as well.

No, because they are expressively mentioned in the novel and movie dialogue.

They are not battleships if we compare them to all the intermediate ships known to exist between Star Destroyers and Star Dreadnoughts. We know explicitly there is a Star Battlecruiser (Quaestor, Procurator) in the same naming scheme (ep2,3 ICS). We know that Venator Star Destroyers act as screening vessels for "battleships" (ep 3 ICS). The difference in power between ISDs and Venators and these larger, but intermediate ships ranges over two orders of magnitude.

So did the capabilities of the Spanish dreadnoughts and the Richelieu class, but both are still considered battleships. The difference is that there is an open end to Star Wars ships, whereas earth navies ran into industrial and practability problems.

I'll repeat I have no problems treating ISD-sized vessels as battleships in a local, low-intensity conflict sort of scenario. But there are obviously larger ships where ISDs take on a screening, DD-style role. We know fleets of these larger ships exist. The naming scheme fits into what we know about that role and the size and power differences between real Star Battleships and Star Destroyers. I really don't understand the aversion to a dual nomenclature system; an ISD might well have been designed as a DD-style vessel for bigger ships and fleets, named as such, and simply adopted the "battleship" role in the limited Sector Group-scale warfare in which they most often found themselves. Just like an Arleigh Burke is a battleship to a dhow off the coast of nowhere, but merely a small escort to something like a Nimitz.

No, my beef is not with the dual nomenclature. It is with the IMO overestimation of the abundancy of dreadnoughts, especially considering the ISD is the mainstay in not only local, but sector and special groups as well. Even Black Sword Command had mostly ISDs.My main beef is that this seems to relegate the ISDs to nothing important in the grand scale of things, when this is not the case and not even in Dark Empire do Star Dreadnoughts take the main role. Even the attack of Sedriss on Balmorra was led by Star Destroyers.

[Serafina]

The difference between naval and stellar shipclasses is (in SW) that the smaller starships actually can damage the larger ones most of the times. Unlike naval vessels, where you need the battleship guns to actually bring down battleships.

Which means that an Exectuor-sized vessel can be brought down by a reasonable number of smaller vessels - as seen in ROTJ. Therefore, they are not comparable to to naval battleships - and ISD-sized vessels can stand in the frontline/line of battle.

Actually, large vessesl are good at engaging medium-sized fleets. As long as the shields are not penetrated, you take NO lasting damage.
An SSD engaging 3-4 ISDs will blast them to bits without sustaining any damage on its own. A fleet of 10 ISDs could loose one or two vessels due to concentrated fire.
Of course, there is also a significnt psychological element to these ships.

[Captain Seafort]

The difference between naval and stellar shipclasses is (in SW) that the smaller starships actually can damage the larger ones most of the times. Unlike naval vessels, where you need the battleship guns to actually bring down battleships.

On the contrary - small starships need to be massed to do serious damage, whereas in naval warfare a few torpedoes from a destroyer or submarine can cripple or destroy a battleship. Even if you only count gun actions, there are plenty of cases where serious or fatal damage was inflicted on capital ships by destroyer or cruiser calibre weapons.

[Thanas]

Actually, large vessesl are good at engaging medium-sized fleets. As long as the shields are not penetrated, you take NO lasting damage.
An SSD engaging 3-4 ISDs will blast them to bits without sustaining any damage on its own. A fleet of 10 ISDs could loose one or two vessels due to concentrated fire.
Of course, there is also a significnt psychological element to these ships.

I think you are severely underestimating the strength of a true SSD. A true SSD would eat 10 ships for breakfast and not even shrug, if it is competently lead.