Imperial damage control tecnhiques

[Venator]

Did you miss the Eclipse?

The Eclipse wasn't much bigger than the Executor. If anything, the size/firepower gap between the two is something much more familiar to historical naval vessels.

The other issue is that the ISD is quite literally refereed to as a destroyer. We then see an Executor with that before mentioned size gap over an ISD along with a real world notion of what a destroyer means and its not illogical to imagine intermediate vessels between them.

I think some of it can be hubris in assuming that a galaxy-spanning empire with the resources of millions of worlds would use the same interpretation of ship classes as we do.

A standard ISD is fast and tough enough for patrol duties, is "small" enough to dock at most ports, and can serve as an escort for much bigger ships. So, it's a decent destroyer.

At the same time, it can glass a planet or mount a small invasion on its own and take on an entire squadron of small or rag-tag enemies unassisted. So the value of having an intermediate class is diminished compared to sending two or three ISDs - which you have mass production set up for, and can standardize crew training for, and you can send to two or three places at once.

[Patroklos]

The Executor and Eclipse might be similar in length, but the Eclipse is many times the volume of the other.

[The Romulan Republic]

Did you miss the Eclipse?

The Eclipse wasn't much bigger than the Executor. If anything, the size/firepower gap between the two is something much more familiar to historical naval vessels.

The other issue is that the ISD is quite literally refereed to as a destroyer. We then see an Executor with that before mentioned size gap over an ISD along with a real world notion of what a destroyer means and its not illogical to imagine intermediate vessels between them.

I think some of it can be hubris in assuming that a galaxy-spanning empire with the resources of millions of worlds would use the same interpretation of ship classes as we do.

A standard ISD is fast and tough enough for patrol duties, is "small" enough to dock at most ports, and can serve as an escort for much bigger ships. So, it's a decent destroyer.

At the same time, it can glass a planet or mount a small invasion on its own and take on an entire squadron of small or rag-tag enemies unassisted. So the value of having an intermediate class is diminished compared to sending two or three ISDs - which you have mass production set up for, and can standardize crew training for, and you can send to two or three places at once.

Yeah, the ISD is pretty obviously set up as a jack of all trades ship in the films. It carries its own fairly heavy weaponry, fighters, and a contingent of ground troops. It is used for blockades, escorting a command ship, fighting in the line of battle, chasing down small smugglers' ships, and ferrying VIPs. And it operates solo, in groups, or accompanying a larger capital ship.

Going back to the original topic of this thread, I wonder how that effects its damage control capabilities. It has to be able to function in a wide variety of roles, possibly on its own for long periods of time.

[Patroklos]

While obviously not an intention of any writer, the ISDs large crew may make it more effective at damage control. In a world where ion cannons can render any automated system useless and with them being commonplace on SW warships lots of bodies may be a benefit. Anyone who has done naval damage control in the real world will tell you people and lots of them is what works.

[Adam Reynolds]

The Executor and Eclipse might be similar in length, but the Eclipse is many times the volume of the other.

Interestingly, the Executor actually has much more conventional firepower than the Eclipse according to the stats. So that superlaser simply takes the majority of the ships power rather than allowing it to do well in a conventional slugfest.

Given how relatively easily the Executor went down over Endor, it makes me wonder if there is a question of diminishing returns in larger capital ships. While something like the Death Star is obviously effective because it is so absurdly large, something smaller might fall victim to a score of smaller vessels somewhat easily. This also happened to the Malvolence as well.

While obviously not an intention of any writer, the ISDs large crew may make it more effective at damage control. In a world where ion cannons can render any automated system useless and with them being commonplace on SW warships lots of bodies may be a benefit. Anyone who has done naval damage control in the real world will tell you people and lots of them is what works.

But if you got hit with an EMP in the real world, how effective would you be at damage control? People are great, but if they don't even have useful tools to work with, what can they do?

In any case, ion cannons are not really all that commonly seen in major engagements. That was a WEG idea. The only main ion weapons we see of consequence are the Rebel cannon at Hoth and the Malvolence, both of which require massive power generation in order to be effective.

[lPeregrine]

In any case, ion cannons are not really all that commonly seen in major engagements. That was a WEG idea. The only main ion weapons we see of consequence are the Rebel cannon at Hoth and the Malvolence, both of which require massive power generation in order to be effective.

But if we throw out the EU examples of ion cannons being used in fleet battles and commonly mounted on starships then we also don't have very many examples of major engagements. And we have none with a significant focus on the capital ships where we could reasonably say "we didn't see any ion shots, so they must not have happened". Nor do we have any evidence that the ion cannon at Hoth required an exceptional amount of power and wouldn't be practical on a conventional starship. So, WEG idea or not, there's no compelling argument against it besides "I don't like the EU".

And of course nobody treats the Hoth ion cannon as anything special. They just calmly announce "the ion cannon will keep them out of your path" as if an ion cannon is just another gun that everyone expects to see, there's no "we have a new superweapon that will disable them with a single shot" or "OH GOD THE REBELS HAVE AN ION CANNON WHAT WILL WE DO". So they're pretty clearly common enough that their effects need to be considered when designing damage control strategies.

[cmdrjones]

In any case, ion cannons are not really all that commonly seen in major engagements. That was a WEG idea. The only main ion weapons we see of consequence are the Rebel cannon at Hoth and the Malvolence, both of which require massive power generation in order to be effective.

But if we throw out the EU examples of ion cannons being used in fleet battles and commonly mounted on starships then we also don't have very many examples of major engagements. And we have none with a significant focus on the capital ships where we could reasonably say "we didn't see any ion shots, so they must not have happened". Nor do we have any evidence that the ion cannon at Hoth required an exceptional amount of power and wouldn't be practical on a conventional starship. So, WEG idea or not, there's no compelling argument against it besides "I don't like the EU".

And of course nobody treats the Hoth ion cannon as anything special. They just calmly announce "the ion cannon will keep them out of your path" as if an ion cannon is just another gun that everyone expects to see, there's no "we have a new superweapon that will disable them with a single shot" or "OH GOD THE REBELS HAVE AN ION CANNON WHAT WILL WE DO". So they're pretty clearly common enough that their effects need to be considered when designing damage control strategies.

There may have been a moment like that on the bridge of the Tyrant.... remember the Imperials didn't know about the Ion Cannon until they dropped the shield and lit them up.... the Probe droid blew up after transmitting images of the main generator, not the ION cannon

[Eternal_Freedom]

The Executor and Eclipse might be similar in length, but the Eclipse is many times the volume of the other.

Interestingly, the Executor actually has much more conventional firepower than the Eclipse according to the stats. So that superlaser simply takes the majority of the ships power rather than allowing it to do well in a conventional slugfest.

Given how relatively easily the Executor went down over Endor, it makes me wonder if there is a question of diminishing returns in larger capital ships. While something like the Death Star is obviously effective because it is so absurdly large, something smaller might fall victim to a score of smaller vessels somewhat easily. This also happened to the Malvolence as well.

I'm not sure which stats you're referring to, but at present there are no official stats for the Executor that I know of, and the Eclipse doesn't even exist. If you are referring to the Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels, that was written with the Eclipse being 17km long and the Executor being only 8 IIRC, the intention was clearly to have it be twice the size.

Also, raw firepower is a bit of a misnomer, since that superlaser will one-shot even the strongest Rebel vessels, and again IIRC the shields and hull were strong enough that she could simply ram other capital ships with no fear of damage.

As for diminishing returns, well, the New Republic clearly thought so, as they opted for smaller vessels, relying on their couple of captured Executors (Lusankya and Guardians) to handle similar-sized Imperial threats for years before they built the Viscount class Star Defenders.

Indeed, of the roughly twelve Executors I can recall, only three were lost in fleet engagements (Executor, Iron Fist and Annihilator) and all three took heavy damage from fighter strikes before succumbing or otherwise being destroyed. Lusankya, Razor's Kiss, and Terror were killed by massed fighter strikes whilst Night Hammer succumbed to sabotage. Reaper, Guardian and Intimidator's fates are unknown.

So, yeah, diminishing returns is a factor. It may explain why for some time both before and after the OT era capital ships are rarely outside the 1-2km length bracket, that may simply be the ideal balance for warship design. Though I suspect it's not that larger vessels are ton-for-ton less effective in battle, it'd more that smaller ships are more effective when you average combat and non-combat time. They can be spread further, can be built/repaired more easily, need less crew, each loss is less of a blow to your fleet strength, etc.

Heck, the big Executors would probably have been an excellent choice if they were fighting another large galactic-scale power (like, say, the Yuuzhan Vong that the Emperor knew about apparently) but were likely the worst choice for fighting off a mobile Rebel fleet that was never concentrated enough for the big ships to make a real difference.

[Purple]

One thing that I think you guys need to consider is that the classification a navy uses is going to depend on more than one factor. Firstly it is going to depend on what that navy needs doing. The pre-Yavin Empire has no realistic military competitor that is going to be putting up lines of battleships and waging large scale space battles against them. The rebel alliance simply does not have that capability at that point in time. Thus the Empire in this period has absolutely no use for what we would call a battleship because it is not going to be fighting "battles". What they need is a bunch of intermediary to long range cruise ships to patrol space and chase away the occasional smuggler, pirate or rebel ship that it comes across whilst ensuring that the imperial presence is felt. So that is what a Star Destroyer is. The Executor class ships are what the logical next step in development that happens as a response to the rebels acquiring large fleets. Suddenly the Empire needs battleships so they build them.

And besides. It's rather obvious that the name was chosen for propaganda reasons. It's a star destroyer. It destroys stars. Do you want to fight it?

[Patroklos]

Its actually not obviously because we have the term "Star Cruiser" as well.

Also while I agree with your assessment of needing many smaller vessels for the Outer Rim that again is because that's were the narrative we see takes place. The Empire, however, does not exist solely in the Outer Rim and in many sources that whole region of space and the entire Rebel Alliance proper is an after thought for the Empire and the rest of the galaxy until the events of ANH and even then its just one of many things on their mind. The fleets primary purpose and audience was not the Outer Rim but rather the powerful Core planets that have been described over and over again as having their own ambitions and indeed sometimes even armies/fleets and the Emperors political intrigues to keep them in line, a fleet in being of giant battleships being his unspoken but highly visible trump card at his disposal.

[Adam Reynolds]

I'm not sure which stats you're referring to, but at present there are no official stats for the Executor that I know of, and the Eclipse doesn't even exist. If you are referring to the Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels, that was written with the Eclipse being 17km long and the Executor being only 8 IIRC, the intention was clearly to have it be twice the size.

The stats I saw were in The Essential Guide to Warfare and gave the Executor more turbolasers than the Eclipse. Though it is true that Eclipse should be larger regardless.

Also, raw firepower is a bit of a misnomer, since that superlaser will one-shot even the strongest Rebel vessels, and again IIRC the shields and hull were strong enough that she could simply ram other capital ships with no fear of damage.

I meant in a conventional fleet action. After it has fired its only shot, it would be less effective than an Exeuctor because it had less turbolasers. Though it might have more survivability, if its shields are able to channel the excess power intended for its superlaser. As long as it lacks the same weakness as Malvolence(that it is more vulnerable when preparing to fire its main weapon).

As for diminishing returns, well, the New Republic clearly thought so, as they opted for smaller vessels, relying on their couple of captured Executors (Lusankya and Guardians) to handle similar-sized Imperial threats for years before they built the Viscount class Star Defenders.

In an extreme case, the Solo fleet that went after Iron Fist only had a pair of slightly larger Mon Cal cruisers and a handful of star destroyers. In fairness to Allston, he did make his assumption based on the idea that an SSD was only 8 km long. So the 5 km Mon Cals appeared to be a a closer match than they should be.

Indeed, of the roughly twelve Executors I can recall, only three were lost in fleet engagements (Executor, Iron Fist and Annihilator) and all three took heavy damage from fighter strikes before succumbing or otherwise being destroyed. Lusankya, Razor's Kiss, and Terror were killed by massed fighter strikes whilst Night Hammer succumbed to sabotage. Reaper, Guardian and Intimidator's fates are unknown.
[/quote]
I wonder if fighters are the weakness that Executors can't properly deal with. Though I disagree with him, Brian Young has argued that Imperial shields are semi-permeable to fighter attacks*. Perhaps Executors have worse shielding against fighter attacks than standard ISDs.

* My theory is that they are semi-permeable only when weakened(with the exception of the Death Star, stated by Dodonna to lack a tighter defense). Given that the Death Star's shields were semi-permeable when undamaged, perhaps shielding becomes proportionally less effective as it scales up. Though this doesn't fit with planetary shields completely lacking this weakness. The only thing that comes to mind is that it has something to do with being anchored to the mass of a planet.

So, yeah, diminishing returns is a factor. It may explain why for some time both before and after the OT era capital ships are rarely outside the 1-2km length bracket, that may simply be the ideal balance for warship design. Though I suspect it's not that larger vessels are ton-for-ton less effective in battle, it'd more that smaller ships are more effective when you average combat and non-combat time. They can be spread further, can be built/repaired more easily, need less crew, each loss is less of a blow to your fleet strength, etc.

I wonder if they are ton for ton less effective when you consider the greater risk of fighter attacks.

And crew requirements go down as one scales up. According to the numbers on Wookiepedia, the Executor has a reactor output of 7.73E26 W to the 9.28E24 W of an ISDII for a ratio of 83 times the output. The crew sizes, by comparison, give ratings of 279,144 for an Executor to 37,085 for an ISD, giving a ratio of only 7.5 times.

Heck, the big Executors would probably have been an excellent choice if they were fighting another large galactic-scale power (like, say, the Yuuzhan Vong that the Emperor knew about apparently) but were likely the worst choice for fighting off a mobile Rebel fleet that was never concentrated enough for the big ships to make a real difference.

The Yuuzhan Vong will never be even remotely canon again. And Palpatine knowing about them is frankly a terrible concept. Though I did like this Han Solo quote on the subject:

"What the Empire would have done was build a super-colossal Yuuzhan Vong–killing battle machine. They would have called it the Nova Colossus or the Galaxy Destructor or the Nostril of Palpatine or something equally grandiose. They would have spent billions of credits, employed thousands of contractors and subcontractors, and equipped it with the latest in death-dealing technology. And you know what would have happened? It wouldn't have worked. They'd forget to bolt down a metal plate over an access hatch leading to the main reactors, or some other mistake, and a hotshot enemy pilot would drop a bomb down there and blow the whole thing up. Now that's what the Empire would have done."

And if Executor sized ships are effective against peer enemies, why were they not common during the Clone Wars? We never see the Republic fleet use anything heavier than Venators, even against the Malvolence. And the Malvolence was a failed one off, also somewhat easily mission-killed by fighters. TF battleships are at least somewhat effective, but perhaps again not when one considers their tonnage.

[Patroklos]

Perhaps it takes some expertise to build giant warships effectively and in numbers, expertise the Republic didn't have due to being essentially demilitarized relative to the Clone Wars era for millenia. That actually makes sense, the larger warships are the end result of what they learned from the Clone Wars, lessons that were not necessarily relevant to the conflicts they eventually found themselves in until fighting themselves post Endor.

[Purple]

Also while I agree with your assessment of needing many smaller vessels for the Outer Rim that again is because that's were the narrative we see takes place. The Empire, however, does not exist solely in the Outer Rim and in many sources that whole region of space and the entire Rebel Alliance proper is an after thought for the Empire and the rest of the galaxy until the events of ANH and even then its just one of many things on their mind. The fleets primary purpose and audience was not the Outer Rim but rather the powerful Core planets that have been described over and over again as having their own ambitions and indeed sometimes even armies/fleets and the Emperors political intrigues to keep them in line, a fleet in being of giant battleships being his unspoken but highly visible trump card at his disposal.

Thing is, just because those planets are powerful does not nesecerily mean they can actually field a battle fleet. Certainly not a modern one. After all, Alderan was an important core world and it had no fleet to speak off, same goes for Naboo. In fact, I do not know of a single world that in current cannon has a proper fleet. The main threat for the empire seemed to be planetary shields (hence the DS) and not enemy fleets.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I'm not sure which stats you're referring to, but at present there are no official stats for the Executor that I know of, and the Eclipse doesn't even exist. If you are referring to the Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels, that was written with the Eclipse being 17km long and the Executor being only 8 IIRC, the intention was clearly to have it be twice the size.

The stats I saw were in The Essential Guide to Warfare and gave the Executor more turbolasers than the Eclipse. Though it is true that Eclipse should be larger regardless.

huh, I hadn't realised that that book had stats for Executor, I'll have to go back and read it again now.

Also, raw firepower is a bit of a misnomer, since that superlaser will one-shot even the strongest Rebel vessels, and again IIRC the shields and hull were strong enough that she could simply ram other capital ships with no fear of damage.

I meant in a conventional fleet action. After it has fired its only shot, it would be less effective than an Exeuctor because it had less turbolasers. Though it might have more survivability, if its shields are able to channel the excess power intended for its superlaser. As long as it lacks the same weakness as Malvolence(that it is more vulnerable when preparing to fire its main weapon).

You can't just limit the Eclipse to "a conventional fleet action" though, since it will be using it's superlaser (unless it's captain is a total fucking idiot) to take out the heavier ships while using the strong shields to tank fire from smaller vessels. And AFAIK the Eclipse superlaser isn't a one-shot-per-day like the DS1, I'm pretty sure it had a much higher rate of fire. If we go by what we see her do at the Battle of Kuat then it's once every few minutes at least.

As for diminishing returns, well, the New Republic clearly thought so, as they opted for smaller vessels, relying on their couple of captured Executors (Lusankya and Guardians) to handle similar-sized Imperial threats for years before they built the Viscount class Star Defenders.

In an extreme case, the Solo fleet that went after Iron Fist only had a pair of slightly larger Mon Cal cruisers and a handful of star destroyers. In fairness to Allston, he did make his assumption based on the idea that an SSD was only 8 km long. So the 5 km Mon Cals appeared to be a a closer match than they should be.

True. Oddly enough there is an engagement in open space between Iron Fist and Mon Remonda, where the latter is moving to block the former from jumping to hyperspace. Zsinj has them target the Rebel's engines to let them sneak past, rather than just obliterating the enemy as you might expect.

Indeed, of the roughly twelve Executors I can recall, only three were lost in fleet engagements (Executor, Iron Fist and Annihilator) and all three took heavy damage from fighter strikes before succumbing or otherwise being destroyed. Lusankya, Razor's Kiss, and Terror were killed by massed fighter strikes whilst Night Hammer succumbed to sabotage. Reaper, Guardian and Intimidator's fates are unknown.

I wonder if fighters are the weakness that Executors can't properly deal with. Though I disagree with him, Brian Young has argued that Imperial shields are semi-permeable to fighter attacks*. Perhaps Executors have worse shielding against fighter attacks than standard ISDs.

* My theory is that they are semi-permeable only when weakened(with the exception of the Death Star, stated by Dodonna to lack a tighter defense). Given that the Death Star's shields were semi-permeable when undamaged, perhaps shielding becomes proportionally less effective as it scales up. Though this doesn't fit with planetary shields completely lacking this weakness. The only thing that comes to mind is that it has something to do with being anchored to the mass of a planet.

Hmm. I suppose I should amend my list as I realised I haven't been really fair to the SSDs. Executor, Iron Fist and Annihilator took fighter damage, but were also under sustained capital ship fire as well. Of the others, Lusankya is an odd case, she was gradually hurt over weeks by fighter attacks, so General Antilles pulled the guns off her to mount on other ships and rigged her up as a giant kamikaze to take out a Death Star-sized Worldship. Terror was in drydock and unfinished at the time IIRC. Razor's Kiss had a crew of about thirty aboard at the time and was running on automatic and her topside shield gnerators had been taken out by a fighter that "crashed" aboard her hours before.

Also, during the Battle of Selaggis, Iron Fist suffers massed fighter strikes as well (she'd eft her own fighters behind for some reason so had no CAP) with four to six times the number of fighters as the group that killed Razro's Kiss. The ship takes some damage but her shield's aren't penetrated and for the next hour or so those fighters are constantly attacking her and being little more than an annoyance.

I would say that if Executors have a weakness it's that the EU never took advantage of it's sheer size to give it the thousands of fighters it's size would suggest. Seriously, even when it was only 8km long, sources stated their fighter compliment to be only 144, merely double that of an ISD! Logically they should have had many many more fighters.

So, yeah, diminishing returns is a factor. It may explain why for some time both before and after the OT era capital ships are rarely outside the 1-2km length bracket, that may simply be the ideal balance for warship design. Though I suspect it's not that larger vessels are ton-for-ton less effective in battle, it'd more that smaller ships are more effective when you average combat and non-combat time. They can be spread further, can be built/repaired more easily, need less crew, each loss is less of a blow to your fleet strength, etc.

I wonder if they are ton for ton less effective when you consider the greater risk of fighter attacks.

And crew requirements go down as one scales up. According to the numbers on Wookiepedia, the Executor has a reactor output of 7.73E26 W to the 9.28E24 W of an ISDII for a ratio of 83 times the output. The crew sizes, by comparison, give ratings of 279,144 for an Executor to 37,085 for an ISD, giving a ratio of only 7.5 times.

I hate to say it, but I think the films (and the old EU especially) greatly oversell the danger of fighter attacks. Yes, it worked on the Death Stars, due to two sets of highly improbable conditions. It worked on the Executor, only because of the bombardment of the entire damn Rebel fleet. It worked on a couple of the other SSD's I listed, again, because those ships weren't at full capacity (no fighters, barely any crew, in drydock and couldn't run, etc). True, we also have the attack on Malevolence, but I'd argue that wasn't a warship and more a flying space gun.

As best I can recall, one of the reasons the New Republic steered clear of large hips is precisely to avoid comparisons to the Empire

Heck, the big Executors would probably have been an excellent choice if they were fighting another large galactic-scale power (like, say, the Yuuzhan Vong that the Emperor knew about apparently) but were likely the worst choice for fighting off a mobile Rebel fleet that was never concentrated enough for the big ships to make a real difference.

The Yuuzhan Vong will never be even remotely canon again. And Palpatine knowing about them is frankly a terrible concept. Though I did like this Han Solo quote on the subject:

"What the Empire would have done was build a super-colossal Yuuzhan Vong–killing battle machine. They would have called it the Nova Colossus or the Galaxy Destructor or the Nostril of Palpatine or something equally grandiose. They would have spent billions of credits, employed thousands of contractors and subcontractors, and equipped it with the latest in death-dealing technology. And you know what would have happened? It wouldn't have worked. They'd forget to bolt down a metal plate over an access hatch leading to the main reactors, or some other mistake, and a hotshot enemy pilot would drop a bomb down there and blow the whole thing up. Now that's what the Empire would have done."

I know they'll never be canon (which is a shame, there were some good books in that series) but it is an interesting idea that may explain why Palpatine was building such vessels. It certainly wasn't to fight the insignificant Rebels.

And if Executor sized ships are effective against peer enemies, why were they not common during the Clone Wars? We never see the Republic fleet use anything heavier than Venators, even against the Malvolence. And the Malevolence was a failed one off, also somewhat easily mission-killed by fighters. TF battleships are at least somewhat effective, but perhaps again not when one considers their tonnage.

Well, as I can recall (having not seen much of Clone Wars beyond SFDebris reviews) most of the engagements are ones that you wouldn't expect to have big dreadnoughts on. They're engagements by small task forces or flotillas. As for the Battle of Coruscant, we regrettably see only a tiny part of that battle, mostly centered around Obi-Wan's reinforcement fleet, which had Venators because, I dunno, they're faster in hyperspace than the dreadnoughts?

If you want to include old EU sources, then Kuat had whole fleets of short-legged Star Dreadnoughts defending it's sector (the Mandator classes) that got nationalised for the Clone Wars I think.

[The Romulan Republic]

Regarding the shortage of fighters on the Executor, I suspect (barring evidence to the contrary, of course) that a large amount of space on the Executor was devoted to facilities specifically for its role as a command ship/flagship. Ie special communications equipment, luxury VIP quarters, docking areas for shuttles, and so forth.

Maybe prison facilities as well, like how the Death Star had a large detention area aboard.

[Eternal_Freedom]

While that's almost certainly true (and we know in at least three ships (Lusankya, Iron Fist and Guardian) such facilities did exist) there is simply no way that such flag facilities would take up enough volume that they woudl have to cut back on the number of fighters.

[The Romulan Republic]

Maybe, but there's got to be some explanation for the fighter shortage.

Well, its sort of a moot point now, unless they include the low fighter numbers in the new canon.

Edit: Of course, we need an explanation for why the apparently fairly small Rebel fighter force at Endor wasn't overwhelmed.

[Lord Revan]

While that's almost certainly true (and we know in at least three ships (Lusankya, Iron Fist and Guardian) such facilities did exist) there is simply no way that such flag facilities would take up enough volume that they woudl have to cut back on the number of fighters.

true but the Executor might also greater number of ground forces per ship or the empire doesn't simply consider that Executor needs more fighter then it has, after all pre-ROTJ we never see Executor-class ships in solo ops so normally the fighter cover would carried by the escorts.

[The Romulan Republic]

Another thought: Since I'm not aware of the Empire having any dedicated medical ships like the Rebellion had, perhaps the Executor, as one of the largest and safest vessels in the fleet, would have also acted as a hospital facility for any wounded during a campaign? Is their any evidence to back this up?

What I'm getting at is that the reason that the Executor wasn't tougher in battle might be because it wasn't intended to have direct combat power proportional to its size, but to act as a command ship and support vessel- essentially a mobile base.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Well, after it was refitted for New Republic service the Lusankya did have vastly expanded medical and quarantine facilities, as the shipyards "realised thy could do more with the space than just a warship" (or words to that effect). They are also stated to hold 150,000 troops and all their equipment.

As for it being built as a command/support ship, it's possible but I find it unlikely. With the exception of the few American purpose-built command ships, all real-world flagships/command ships have been among the most powerful and/or important vessels available. They are (in the EU at least) intended to be heavy combatants and are capable of inflicting, and taking, a lot of damage. The Battle of Orinda, for instance, where the SSD Reaper obliterates the Rebel fleet carrier Endurance in one or two salvos.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well the Executor is evidently more powerful than an ISD, the most common type of Imperial warship in the OT. Just not as powerful as it could have been.

I'm thinking of it as a command/support ship which is tough due to its shear size (having been built very big both to carry what it needs for the aforementioned roles and for intimidation) and carrying enough shields, weapons, and fighters that it won't get easily destroyed (but not as much as it could carry if it was designed to be the ultimate dreadnought).

To my knowledge, their is nothing in canon that contradicts this, although feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I can see your point, and there is nothing in current canon to dispute it, but as far as I am aware there is nothing in canon to particularly support it either, apart from Han and the Emperor referring to Executor as "a/the command ship" which doesn't really say anything either way.

[Elheru Aran]

Thing is, just because those planets are powerful does not nesecerily mean they can actually field a battle fleet. Certainly not a modern one. After all, Alderan was an important core world and it had no fleet to speak off, same goes for Naboo. In fact, I do not know of a single world that in current cannon has a proper fleet. The main threat for the empire seemed to be planetary shields (hence the DS) and not enemy fleets.

Point of order; Alderaan didn't have a large military fleet because of the explicitly pacifist beliefs the planet's people held. The Naboo were not dissimilar to the Alderaanians in this, based upon the expanded-universe material. While Naboo was not particularly powerful or wealthy, Alderaan was definitely high-profile and prosperous, and could very likely have afforded at least a small fleet. They did maintain ships for system defense, IIRC Rogue Squadron finds one (though I could be wrong about that).

[Adam Reynolds]

You can't just limit the Eclipse to "a conventional fleet action" though, since it will be using it's superlaser (unless it's captain is a total fucking idiot) to take out the heavier ships while using the strong shields to tank fire from smaller vessels. And AFAIK the Eclipse superlaser isn't a one-shot-per-day like the DS1, I'm pretty sure it had a much higher rate of fire. If we go by what we see her do at the Battle of Kuat then it's once every few minutes at least.

Was that the one from Forces of Corruption? That is probably game mechanics and thus not quite canon. Though it might be able to fire somewhat often as long as it never fires on full power. Though any decent enemy would maneuver in close and get out of the line of fire of the superlaser, as the Rebel fleet did at Endor.

True. Oddly enough there is an engagement in open space between Iron Fist and Mon Remonda, where the latter is moving to block the former from jumping to hyperspace. Zsinj has them target the Rebel's engines to let them sneak past, rather than just obliterating the enemy as you might expect.

The only way to reconcile those events with the canon fact of Executor's length is to make the Mon Remonda bigger. Though in that case it would also need more fighters. Unless it was more of a dedicated warship and thus actually pound for pound more effective than a standard Mon Cal cruiser. That would actually justify things nicely.

Hmm. I suppose I should amend my list as I realised I haven't been really fair to the SSDs. Executor, Iron Fist and Annihilator took fighter damage, but were also under sustained capital ship fire as well. Of the others, Lusankya is an odd case, she was gradually hurt over weeks by fighter attacks, so General Antilles pulled the guns off her to mount on other ships and rigged her up as a giant kamikaze to take out a Death Star-sized Worldship. Terror was in drydock and unfinished at the time IIRC. Razor's Kiss had a crew of about thirty aboard at the time and was running on automatic and her topside shield gnerators had been taken out by a fighter that "crashed" aboard her hours before.

I was actually thinking of my theory based on what happened to Executor and Malvolence, the two visual sources. Your list simply backed up my theory. Brian's theory is based on the films and Clone Wars, not the EU as it was created after the new canon policy.

His theory is that similarly to theater shields and battle droids as seen in TPM, it is possible for fighters to push their way through capital ship shields in the right fashion. This canonically happens with the Death Star. My theory is that it is only possible at the seams between overlapping shields, the points where they intersect. And it would become easier with damage(as happened with Executor). The Death Star simply has weaker shields against this threat, as stated by Dodonna. The mechanism is that it would require the attacking ships shields to merge with and push through the target. This would explain why the Rebel fighters had to put their deflectors on double front when passing through the Death Star.

Also, during the Battle of Selaggis, Iron Fist suffers massed fighter strikes as well (she'd eft her own fighters behind for some reason so had no CAP) with four to six times the number of fighters as the group that killed Razor's Kiss. The ship takes some damage but her shield's aren't penetrated and for the next hour or so those fighters are constantly attacking her and being little more than an annoyance.

I had forgotten the details of that. If it were still canon it would be excellent evidence against my theory.

I would say that if Executors have a weakness it's that the EU never took advantage of it's sheer size to give it the thousands of fighters it's size would suggest. Seriously, even when it was only 8km long, sources stated their fighter compliment to be only 144, merely double that of an ISD! Logically they should have had many many more fighters.

Though in fairness the films never do this either. The Empire should have had vastly more fighters than it did over Endor.

I hate to say it, but I think the films (and the old EU especially) greatly oversell the danger of fighter attacks. Yes, it worked on the Death Stars, due to two sets of highly improbable conditions. It worked on the Executor, only because of the bombardment of the entire damn Rebel fleet. It worked on a couple of the other SSD's I listed, again, because those ships weren't at full capacity (no fighters, barely any crew, in drydock and couldn't run, etc). True, we also have the attack on Malevolence, but I'd argue that wasn't a warship and more a flying space gun.

Fighters can be effective in the right circumstances in that they allow easier victories. They cannot destroy opposing capital ships on their own, but they can get in close and do damage after the shields have been weakened sufficently. It was undoubtedly a major factor in the Rebel sucess over Endor. While the Empire wasted their TIEs in an early unsupported attack against the Rebel fleet with fighter support, the Rebel Alliance did the opposite. They used their capital ships to wear down the Imperial fleet, which allowed their fighters to finish them off more quickly and prevent additional damage to the Rebel fleet.

Though I would agree that Malvolence is an unusual case. Though I continued it, I'm not sure we should be building theories based on the old EU.

As best I can recall, one of the reasons the New Republic steered clear of large ships is precisely to avoid comparisons to the Empire

If that were their goal they should have avoided using star destroyers as well.

I know they'll never be canon (which is a shame, there were some good books in that series) but it is an interesting idea that may explain why Palpatine was building such vessels. It certainly wasn't to fight the insignificant Rebels.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that issue. I personally hated the concept of the Yuzhaan Vong. Keep biowank crap out of Star Wars. Though for me, the deeper problem of the Vong was that they were a lazy enemy that allowed all of the traditional factions to fight on the same side. Peace by a common enemy isn't. That was also a problem I had with the ending of Mass Effect 3.

And the Palpatine theory is simply another way to justify the Empire. Personally, I think the Executors were not to fight the Rebellion but were instead a means to deal with the potential threat of worlds like Mon Calamari who had proper fleets of their own. Standard star destroyers could also deal with such a threat, but not nearly as well as an Executor.

Well, as I can recall (having not seen much of Clone Wars beyond SFDebris reviews) most of the engagements are ones that you wouldn't expect to have big dreadnoughts on. They're engagements by small task forces or flotillas. As for the Battle of Coruscant, we regrettably see only a tiny part of that battle, mostly centered around Obi-Wan's reinforcement fleet, which had Venators because, I dunno, they're faster in hyperspace than the dreadnoughts?

It is true that most of the engagements in Clone Wars are rather small. And the larger vessels are generally said to be slower in hyperspace. But against Malvolence it was odd that no larger vessels were seen, even as they were complaining about how long it would take to destroy.

If you want to include old EU sources, then Kuat had whole fleets of short-legged Star Dreadnoughts defending it's sector (the Mandator classes) that got nationalised for the Clone Wars I think.

That is what the AOTC ICS indicated, that the Acclamators were the first dedicated warships that were designed with range in mind in centuries. The only long ranged vessels were much smaller, like the idiotically named Dreadnaughts that made up the Katana fleet. And it is likely that larger vessels have a primarily defensive role, even in the era of the Empire.

Executor is likely only an exception because it is Vader's personal ship. As for Han's comments, the placement at Endor would make sense if it were defending the new Death Star.

Regarding the shortage of fighters on the Executor, I suspect (barring evidence to the contrary, of course) that a large amount of space on the Executor was devoted to facilities specifically for its role as a command ship/flagship. Ie special communications equipment, luxury VIP quarters, docking areas for shuttles, and so forth.

Maybe prison facilities as well, like how the Death Star had a large detention area aboard.

I wonder if the space was at least partially taken up by fuel. From the AOTC ICS we know that larger vessels tended to be rather short ranged. While undoubtedly that was at least partially political, there could have also been technical reasons for this limitation. That as one scaled up it was harder to move through hyperspace and required proportionally higher fuel expenditures. The Death Star could have gotten around this by having such a massive reactor output that it didn't matter.

This would justify a smaller fighter force, especially if Executor also served as a tanker for its escorts as modern aircraft carriers do.

Maybe, but there's got to be some explanation for the fighter shortage.

Well, its sort of a moot point now, unless they include the low fighter numbers in the new canon.

Edit: Of course, we need an explanation for why the apparently fairly small Rebel fighter force at Endor wasn't overwhelmed.

One possibility is that all of the Imperial fighters never launched. Though this would be beyond stupid as the battle progressed and the Empire began losing Star Destroyers. Another possibility is that the Empire simply never considered fighters enough of a threat to matter and thus the low numbers are accurate. Even an ISD has too few fighters in relative terms. The Venator class carried several hundred. Though given that they were defending the Death Star, which they had to know was vulnerable to fighter attacks, that would be even worse than not launching all of their fighters.

Though it could be that the Executor did have hundreds of fighters, just not the thousands that it potentially could. Even the first Death Star was only stated to have thousands of fighters.

Point of order; Alderaan didn't have a large military fleet because of the explicitly pacifist beliefs the planet's people held. The Naboo were not dissimilar to the Alderaanians in this, based upon the expanded-universe material. While Naboo was not particularly powerful or wealthy, Alderaan was definitely high-profile and prosperous, and could very likely have afforded at least a small fleet. They did maintain ships for system defense, IIRC Rogue Squadron finds one (though I could be wrong about that).

That was the case in The Bacta War.

[Eternal_Freedom]

You can't just limit the Eclipse to "a conventional fleet action" though, since it will be using it's superlaser (unless it's captain is a total fucking idiot) to take out the heavier ships while using the strong shields to tank fire from smaller vessels. And AFAIK the Eclipse superlaser isn't a one-shot-per-day like the DS1, I'm pretty sure it had a much higher rate of fire. If we go by what we see her do at the Battle of Kuat then it's once every few minutes at least.

Was that the one from Forces of Corruption? That is probably game mechanics and thus not quite canon. Though it might be able to fire somewhat often as long as it never fires on full power. Though any decent enemy would maneuver in close and get out of the line of fire of the superlaser, as the Rebel fleet did at Endor.

That was indeed Forces of Corruption. But IIRC the "official" result of that battle was that the superlaser fired and one-shotted the Annihilator, an SSD. At any rate, we know the DSII could fire in lower-powered mode at intervals of a few minutes, I see no reason why Eclipse couldn't do the same.

True. Oddly enough there is an engagement in open space between Iron Fist and Mon Remonda, where the latter is moving to block the former from jumping to hyperspace. Zsinj has them target the Rebel's engines to let them sneak past, rather than just obliterating the enemy as you might expect.

The only way to reconcile those events with the canon fact of Executor's length is to make the Mon Remonda bigger. Though in that case it would also need more fighters. Unless it was more of a dedicated warship and thus actually pound for pound more effective than a standard Mon Cal cruiser. That would actually justify things nicely.

Old EU material did say that the MC80B's (the class Mon Remonda belonged to) was the first purpose-built warship rather than civilian conversions, so this might fit.

Hmm. I suppose I should amend my list as I realised I haven't been really fair to the SSDs. Executor, Iron Fist and Annihilator took fighter damage, but were also under sustained capital ship fire as well. Of the others, Lusankya is an odd case, she was gradually hurt over weeks by fighter attacks, so General Antilles pulled the guns off her to mount on other ships and rigged her up as a giant kamikaze to take out a Death Star-sized Worldship. Terror was in drydock and unfinished at the time IIRC. Razor's Kiss had a crew of about thirty aboard at the time and was running on automatic and her topside shield gnerators had been taken out by a fighter that "crashed" aboard her hours before.

I was actually thinking of my theory based on what happened to Executor and Malvolence, the two visual sources. Your list simply backed up my theory. Brian's theory is based on the films and Clone Wars, not the EU as it was created after the new canon policy.

His theory is that similarly to theater shields and battle droids as seen in TPM, it is possible for fighters to push their way through capital ship shields in the right fashion. This canonically happens with the Death Star. My theory is that it is only possible at the seams between overlapping shields, the points where they intersect. And it would become easier with damage(as happened with Executor). The Death Star simply has weaker shields against this threat, as stated by Dodonna. The mechanism is that it would require the attacking ships shields to merge with and push through the target. This would explain why the Rebel fighters had to put their deflectors on double front when passing through the Death Star.

That is possible. However, SSD's clearly require either a shitton of firepower (an entire fleet) or a great deal of luck to take out.

Also, during the Battle of Selaggis, Iron Fist suffers massed fighter strikes as well (she'd eft her own fighters behind for some reason so had no CAP) with four to six times the number of fighters as the group that killed Razor's Kiss. The ship takes some damage but her shield's aren't penetrated and for the next hour or so those fighters are constantly attacking her and being little more than an annoyance.

I had forgotten the details of that. If it were still canon it would be excellent evidence against my theory.

Indeed.

I would say that if Executors have a weakness it's that the EU never took advantage of it's sheer size to give it the thousands of fighters it's size would suggest. Seriously, even when it was only 8km long, sources stated their fighter compliment to be only 144, merely double that of an ISD! Logically they should have had many many more fighters.

Though in fairness the films never do this either. The Empire should have had vastly more fighters than it did over Endor.

True.

I hate to say it, but I think the films (and the old EU especially) greatly oversell the danger of fighter attacks. Yes, it worked on the Death Stars, due to two sets of highly improbable conditions. It worked on the Executor, only because of the bombardment of the entire damn Rebel fleet. It worked on a couple of the other SSD's I listed, again, because those ships weren't at full capacity (no fighters, barely any crew, in drydock and couldn't run, etc). True, we also have the attack on Malevolence, but I'd argue that wasn't a warship and more a flying space gun.

Fighters can be effective in the right circumstances in that they allow easier victories. They cannot destroy opposing capital ships on their own, but they can get in close and do damage after the shields have been weakened sufficently. It was undoubtedly a major factor in the Rebel sucess over Endor. While the Empire wasted their TIEs in an early unsupported attack against the Rebel fleet with fighter support, the Rebel Alliance did the opposite. They used their capital ships to wear down the Imperial fleet, which allowed their fighters to finish them off more quickly and prevent additional damage to the Rebel fleet.

Though I would agree that Malvolence is an unusual case. Though I continued it, I'm not sure we should be building theories based on the old EU.

This is certainly true. Though if the Empire had actualy had the thousands of TIEs it shoudl have had the swarm attack may have been more successful. Or if they included the bombers that were suspiciously absent on-screen.

As best I can recall, one of the reasons the New Republic steered clear of large ships is precisely to avoid comparisons to the Empire

If that were their goal they should have avoided using star destroyers as well.

And they largely did. They had one extra class of star destroyers, the Nebulas, and the rest were things liek the fleet carriers, heavy cruisers, Bothan Assault Cruisers etc.

I know they'll never be canon (which is a shame, there were some good books in that series) but it is an interesting idea that may explain why Palpatine was building such vessels. It certainly wasn't to fight the insignificant Rebels.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that issue. I personally hated the concept of the Yuzhaan Vong. Keep biowank crap out of Star Wars. Though for me, the deeper problem of the Vong was that they were a lazy enemy that allowed all of the traditional factions to fight on the same side. Peace by a common enemy isn't. That was also a problem I had with the ending of Mass Effect 3.

And the Palpatine theory is simply another way to justify the Empire. Personally, I think the Executors were not to fight the Rebellion but were instead a means to deal with the potential threat of worlds like Mon Calamari who had proper fleets of their own. Standard star destroyers could also deal with such a threat, but not nearly as well as an Executor.

Either explanation would work I think. The third possibility is that the various Admirals, being veterans of the Clone Wars, are building ships to fight the last war, as large numbers of Executors woudl have come in quite handy in those battles I would think.

Well, as I can recall (having not seen much of Clone Wars beyond SFDebris reviews) most of the engagements are ones that you wouldn't expect to have big dreadnoughts on. They're engagements by small task forces or flotillas. As for the Battle of Coruscant, we regrettably see only a tiny part of that battle, mostly centered around Obi-Wan's reinforcement fleet, which had Venators because, I dunno, they're faster in hyperspace than the dreadnoughts?

It is true that most of the engagements in Clone Wars are rather small. And the larger vessels are generally said to be slower in hyperspace. But against Malvolence it was odd that no larger vessels were seen, even as they were complaining about how long it would take to destroy.

For the Malevolence case, it was probably "what have we got that's ready to go fight right now" rather than assembling an optimum task force.

If you want to include old EU sources, then Kuat had whole fleets of short-legged Star Dreadnoughts defending it's sector (the Mandator classes) that got nationalised for the Clone Wars I think.

That is what the AOTC ICS indicated, that the Acclamators were the first dedicated warships that were designed with range in mind in centuries. The only long ranged vessels were much smaller, like the idiotically named Dreadnaughts that made up the Katana fleet. And it is likely that larger vessels have a primarily defensive role, even in the era of the Empire.

Executor is likely only an exception because it is Vader's personal ship. As for Han's comments, the placement at Endor would make sense if it were defending the new Death Star.

That sounds reasonable, and it woudl fit with the idea I mentioned earlier, that Imperial officers and ship designers geared up to fight the last war and not the current one.