Something big

[Knife]

That turned out incredible Ansel.

The only negative I can think of is just opinion, but not a fan of the cat whiskers on the missile wings. Other than that, it turned out beautiful.

[Abacus]

I'm assuming that the stats will be identical to the old EU stats?

[Abacus]

Also...if we are judging by the old stats...there appears to be a dual heavy turbolaser battery missing. There were 10 in the old stat-line, but there appear to be only nine on your's, Ansel.

[Sea Skimmer]

Same logic as the Altor:
1) Artwise, it needs to look like a tanker, and individual tanks look good. Fully enclosed it looks like any other warship.

I like it! Make a JUMBO version with giant additional drop tank-barges! And a unlimited post death star war emergency variant of that in which the tank-barges have added guns and crew pods, to prevent rebel theft of fuel while dropped at forward space depots.

2) Design wise - spend mass and cost on armor, or on more fuel carried and shields?

Heck make them bigger and more exposed if anything. Realistically if its a tanker the fuel tanks might be the strongest part of the ship, and could offer a lot of protection if its a double hull actually made of armor type material.

As is the form of this ship suggests like an AOE, something that has a lot of cargo too under that upper shell, then just a tanker to me. A tanker could be crazy on tanks, though I suppose maybe it wouldn't be if it was say a specialist tanker, like a TIE fuel tanker instead of an ISD fuel tanker?

[fractalsponge1]

I'm assuming that the stats will be identical to the old EU stats?

I wouldn't. Right now the armament is 18 70-teraton HTL (compared to 16-20 for the Venator), 80x heavy missile launchers, 40x 200GT MTL, 48 LTL equivalents.

Same logic as the Altor:
1) Artwise, it needs to look like a tanker, and individual tanks look good. Fully enclosed it looks like any other warship.

I like it! Make a JUMBO version with giant additional drop tank-barges! And a unlimited post death star war emergency variant of that in which the tank-barges have added guns and crew pods, to prevent rebel theft of fuel while dropped at forward space depots.

2) Design wise - spend mass and cost on armor, or on more fuel carried and shields?

Heck make them bigger and more exposed if anything. Realistically if its a tanker the fuel tanks might be the strongest part of the ship, and could offer a lot of protection if its a double hull actually made of armor type material.

As is the form of this ship suggests like an AOE, something that has a lot of cargo too under that upper shell, then just a tanker to me. A tanker could be crazy on tanks, though I suppose maybe it wouldn't be if it was say a specialist tanker, like a TIE fuel tanker instead of an ISD fuel tanker?

Yep it is similar in concept to AOEs. I just put fleet tanker in as a name shorthand. I imagine a SW tanker could be FSCV sized and wouldn't need the same kind of underway fuel handling apparatus, nor would it need fleet acceleration and warship shielding or heavy point defense. There's flank bays for utility craft to haul some supplies carried internally, but most of the cargo space is for fuel. Final detail pass will see turrets - I'm thinking light frigate MTL armament and a good chunk of bolt-on LTL light defense guns.

Also, this design is a lot smaller than an Altor - the big tank seen here is one of the six main tanks of the Altor:

[Sea Skimmer]

Fascinating. Many thanks for the insight of ammo load as a portion of cost. Had never really considered that as a pre-war trade-off, nor its repercussions, particularly in the early part of the war. Any word on the quality of particular batches? (the shortcomings of British shells are well known, and I know they were point of emphasis post-Jutland, but do we know if prewar stocks were more, less, or differently inferior to wartime production?)

During the war all APC ammo was made by expansion of production of the five companies already making it prewar. So it wasn't like the land caliber shell supply where random screw companies suddenly made 10 million shells and fuses. The shortcoming of British shells were from the low proof conditions more or less, which had been 'good' until about 1911, the British shells always seem to have been carefully lot tested to conform to those specs. The later Greenboy shells with hard AP cap and proof specs that matched what German did in 1911-1913 were not all identical each of those five companies did its own work to make rounds that passed tests.

Germany also had non trivial improvement in its armor about 1911-Baden, enough that it made some difference against British ammo, but this only affected a few ships, and heavy plates. A lot of German armor was highly vulnerable to even uncapped British fire, because the British had simply gone and made the guns bigger. That didn't improve the 20 degree target angle limit of testing (Germany went 30, at 1/2 gun caliber plate) but it did mean anywhere a British shell could bite it was going to hurt if it was 13.5in or 15in. 35cm thick German armor could still rebound a 15in 1916 era round, the Greenboy allowed some penetrations.

The German rounds never improved much further, and in WW1 they still had serious problems with long delay-high order detonation reliability. But they were better at oblique hits and much less likely to break while holing armor. Thing is the British shells could hole typical German turret and barbette armor fairly well (look at Jutland damage) and that meant the big British guns were entirely capable of putting the German ships out of action. Only Baden had both the armor and the firepower to hit back well at long ranges was the reality, the Germans low caliber armaments nerfed any chance of gaining a serious advantage from the improved shell tech. The British blewup because of stupid at the end of an era of SUPER PENNY PINCHING in warship design. Cost inflation since oil firing is insane.

Also keep in mind all armor and shells in WW1/2 were subject to random quality failure, even with good proof testing. The reality was steel making was still full of dirt and shit, and major breakthroughs like the basic oxygen process were needed to get past this for high grade material. So any random shell might have some tiny nugget of silica somewhere that will make it fail on impact. This might not stop penetration but it would stop any chance of a high order burst inside.

Even a low order burst though, merely holing a turret or ammo trunk structure though would mean everyone in the ammo train gets killed by gas. Gas masks don't help either, you need an OBA and nobody had those until after just WW2.

Fair points both. Funny to think of the ISD being the Crown Vic of the space lanes.

It makes sense if the typical semi trailer is actually armed like a East Indiaman of sail with 32 four pounders was, a lot of weapons but not necessarily of all that high a caliber. Just by mounting a few big guns the ISD could cream this kind of vessel notionally.

[Sea Skimmer]

Yep it is similar in concept to AOEs. I just put fleet tanker in as a name shorthand. I imagine a SW tanker could be FSCV sized and wouldn't need the same kind of underway fuel handling apparatus, nor would it need fleet acceleration and warship shielding or heavy point defense. There's flank bays for utility craft to haul some supplies carried internally, but most of the cargo space is for fuel. Final detail pass will see turrets - I'm thinking light frigate MTL armament and a good chunk of bolt-on LTL light defense guns.

Some kind of major anti ship weapon sounds good yes. Tankers would be prime for the rebels to capture since of course, and that way the rebels can't simply force one to surrender with a corvette and a few X-wings.

As an amused though, I now consider just how much water tankerage would have been needed to fill the plumbing on the death star. The thing could recycle like crazy but it still needs to suck up a sea of fresh potable water to flush the toilets the first time.

[Patroklos]

Many US auxiliaries carried 5" armament up to the 90s.

Just a thought on flavor, but to you intend these to be 100% Imperial military manned? Maybe you can speculate on some sort of auxiliary service or merchant marine type organization for a portion of the crew.

[fractalsponge1]

Many US auxiliaries carried 5" armament up to the 90s.

Just a thought on flavor, but to you intend these to be 100% Imperial military manned? Maybe you can speculate on some sort of auxiliary service or merchant marine type organization for a portion of the crew.

Publius described the concept that merchant shipping would be armed and sent into contested territory on basically unofficial combat patrols. I'm not sure what the source was. I think for specialized ships like this, it would be largely military manned. I don't remember there ever being an RFA or Reserve system described in SW before, but someone more knowledgeable on the EU in its various forms should probably chime in over me on that.

Some kind of major anti ship weapon sounds good yes. Tankers would be prime for the rebels to capture since of course, and that way the rebels can't simply force one to surrender with a corvette and a few X-wings.

Pretty much this - keep off small ships with MTL fire, and take big ship fire on shielding, long enough to run the hell away or get escorts to respond.

As an amused though, I now consider just how much water tankerage would have been needed to fill the plumbing on the death star. The thing could recycle like crazy but it still needs to suck up a sea of fresh potable water to flush the toilets the first time.

That world in Rogue One looks like it has a lot of water on it... It'd be very grimdarky to have the construction world stripped completely for feedstock for the garrison after the station was done. Do we even know how much of the DS was inhabited/inhabitable?

[darthscott]

I wouldn't. Right now the armament is 18 70-teraton HTL (compared to 16-20 for the Venator), 80x heavy missile launchers, 40x 200GT MTL, 48 LTL equivalents.

Fantastic work as always. What do you think its missile complement breakdown would look like? Mostly dedicated to ship to ship combat or a mix between that and orbital bombardment?

As I mentioned before, I like the idea of there being some high yield missiles, bombs, or kinetic energy weapons at the disposal of the Star War naval forces. They did pop up in the Legends universe here and there, but I always imagined the Victory-class assault concussion missiles would give an unshielded planet a very bad day.

[Reyvan]

That world in Rogue One looks like it has a lot of water on it... It'd be very grimdarky to have the construction world stripped completely for feedstock for the garrison after the station was done. Do we even know how much of the DS was inhabited/inhabitable?

At some point in Catalyst it's mentioned that only the crust of the Death Star would have habitation modules, the rest of the station was devoted to power generation and such.

Of course there's no statement of how deep the crust is, besides, just the crust is still a lot of area on a 120km sphere.

[Abacus]

I forget sometimes that you count individual barrels and not turrets, Ansel. That said, nice! This fellow should be well on par, turbolaser wise, with the Venator, but have the kind of anti-capitol ship missile capability to hit far above it's weight class if necessary.

[Elheru Aran]

That world in Rogue One looks like it has a lot of water on it... It'd be very grimdarky to have the construction world stripped completely for feedstock for the garrison after the station was done. Do we even know how much of the DS was inhabited/inhabitable?

At some point in Catalyst it's mentioned that only the crust of the Death Star would have habitation modules, the rest of the station was devoted to power generation and such.

Of course there's no statement of how deep the crust is, besides, just the crust is still a lot of area on a 120km sphere.

Well. If you go by the ICS (I have no idea whether those are still canon or not, I want to say they are though) the DS-I has a pretty good amount of large void spaces around the central power generation core and the superlaser assembly. Possibly as much as a quarter or a third of the DS-I is empty space as a result.

But it's so freaking big that even if they had manufactured... I'm blanking on the correct term right now, inhabitable space? buildable space? whatever, inside the DS, it'd have taken them a long time to actually fill those spaces, whether with bodies, machinery, supplies, whatever. I can absolutely buy the DS being deployed with only a bare-minimum crew in Rogue One, and even in ANH they've probably only started filling it up with troops and other personnel.

[Shroom Man 777]

fractalsponge

Is this your art being used in Wookiepedia? LINK

@Ellheru:

A lot of those empty spaces might also be free space saved up for future additions - maybe more power generations, maybe larger vacuum tubes, skyscraper-sized difference engines of the newest type to perform analogue computations a staggering five times faster than previous models, etc. They could be heat shunts, they could be... huge seemingly empty routes where currents of air or neutrinos or whatever are shunted for cooling... they might even be spaces for aircraft-carrier-sized maintenance vehicles to maneuver and access/manipulate/(re)move huge internal components in.

Imagine huge internal spaces for inertial dampeners and actual physical recoil-absorption systems! Depending on the kinetic impact the Death Star is taking, some components might be mechanically shifted within its guts - like a preposterous kind of clockwork tectonic/seismic shift.

There could be blowback panels - if a skyscraper-sized wound is gouged on the Death Star, those huge gaps might be important to prevent damage in one component from reaching another component.

Steam could be shunted there!

Gasp. Preposterous.

[Weedle McHairybug]

fractalsponge

Is this your art being used in Wookiepedia? LINK

In all fairness, that particular artwork was designed by Ansel Hsiao for the Essential Guide to Warfare.

[Shroom Man 777]

Ah, the top post of this page has someone call fractalsponge Ansel so...

[Abacus]

fractal is Ansel...

[Shroom Man 777]

Yeah, I feel like an idiot.

It would be so nice if some of these things appear in SW Rebels or something. I don't get the reluctance of showing Imperial designs that are larger than the ISD but smaller than the Executor...

[Sea Skimmer]

Publius described the concept that merchant shipping would be armed and sent into contested territory on basically unofficial combat patrols. I'm not sure what the source was. I think for specialized ships like this, it would be largely military manned. I don't remember there ever being an RFA or Reserve system described in SW before, but someone more knowledgeable on the EU in its various forms should probably chime in over me on that.

The big reason we need reserves in real life is the long transit time of the ships. The Imperials had lots of supply depots and transport ships in the old EU, but they seemed to be all point to point traffic. A military logistics arm makes sense for the Imperial Navy, since it would be an outgrowth of the Clone War fleet and before that the Republic had no navy or naval bases to build upon.

That world in Rogue One looks like it has a lot of water on it... It'd be very grimdarky to have the construction world stripped completely for feedstock for the garrison after the station was done. Do we even know how much of the DS was inhabited/inhabitable?

The old ICS did the station in great detail and had the thing setup with the outer decks pinned to the curvature and the inner decks stacked, and a huge amount of space taken up by equipment. Crew numbers in the EU were always given as silly low, but it would stand to reason that while large areas of the station would be inhabitable they might see very little human activity unless something went wrong. The size of the station seems to be driven by the superlaser assembly completely, everything filled in is bonus space. The empire would be silly not to use it as a secure supply depot, but even that role probably wouldn't physically need all the spare room.

My pet theory is the Death Star would have become a literal Sith moving death world engaging in endless cloning and human genetic experiments to make stronger sith or destroy the force had it not been stopped when it was. Why wouldn't it even be more evil?

[Shroom Man 777]

Someone should go crazy and make a metal-as-fuck chart or infographic where the Death Star schematics show the locations of, say, Sidious' wrist-slit corridors and which bottomless pits are actually meant to be used for vats of accumulated Twi'lek blood for obscene Sith alchemic rituals and so on. Like, while Tarkin and Krennic think it's just a typical military station, deep in his lair Sidious has this chart - written in the blood of padawans and etched on the skin of said padawans - showing the modifications he plans to install when nobody can stop him.

[Sea Skimmer]

Summon all hands to the Execution Deck once the Sith features are finished!

[Shroom Man 777]

All the Moffs and Krennics will have a huge zero-gravity pool party at one of those huge pit-decks and Palpatine just Force Lightning's them!

[fractalsponge1]

Update (basically done). Small gantries for fueling small ships like the Intersector. Armament going up - right now 24 MTL and 36 LTL.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I know that big mount on the topside is some kind of crane, but damn if it diesn't look like a stereotypical giant gun turret.

[Elheru Aran]

I know that big mount on the topside is some kind of crane, but damn if it diesn't look like a stereotypical giant gun turret.

It really does. Makes me think of a Halo style dual railgun or something like that.