Something big

[Abacus]

What other hot buns do you have cooking away in the oven, Ansel? I'd love to see more frigates and cruisers.

[fractalsponge1]

What other hot buns do you have cooking away in the oven, Ansel? I'd love to see more frigates and cruisers.

Right now finishing up the Ton Falk, then real life hell at work for a while so not much else solidly in the pipeline.

Commissions upcoming would be a dropship/gunship with Mando touches, and a Mandalorian ground vehicle of some type (can you tell what style is being requested a lot yet? ).

For purely personal projects, toying with doing an 8km KDY battleship (tentatively Anonymous 4 based). The desire to rebuild my 14 year old ISD mesh grows daily - eventually it will become irresistible. Otherwise am open to ideas.

There aren't a lot of obvious gaping holes in my order of battle right now, otherwise it'd be obvious where I should be focusing the next ship. There are tons of projects part way blocked out or even part finished that I just haven't gotten around to completing. Nothing is sending up a giant "finish me" flare at the moment.

[Shroom Man 777]

Stubby flexible wings? Active aerolastics, either servo-jointed or like flexi smart-materials... Thrust vectoring drives - mechanical vectoring and magnetodynamic and force field-based. Verniers (we see the Ghost have those in SW Rebels actually...). Repulsors.

You'd get racing winged-spheres...

Then there'd be obstacle courses where the craft would need limbs to navigate jungle gyms and bars and whatnot.

They become acrobatic GUNDAM!

You lot are insane

Hey, considering that Skimmer has a point that a lot of the ship drive's thrust is perhaps shunted into hyperspace or some other hyperfield doohickey, explaining why people don't get toasted to death when engine thrust tosses them aside... and if hyperjumping involves a more profound use of these hyperfields and hypershunting to shunt the entire ship and make it FTL (and hopefully not go splat against gravity wells and whatever hyperwakes they have...) then everything I've brought up is probably peanuts to SW-tech.

There are probably people who move around low-grav habitat-mazes by surfboarding on waves of liquid metal T-1000 stuff. Like COWABUNGA DUDE.

[Commander Veers]

Hi Fractal, love the work.
I've been working on a scale recreation of the Fulgor-class Pursuit Frigate, a sublime design I might add, in Minecraft for a few weeks now (using those handy orthographic images you provided.) I am just checking in to see if you wouldn't mind me sharing it online, provided I give full credit? At the moment it is just the exterior for the most part, but I intend to design an interior as well.

It's in early development as you can see. I've used a few of your smaller designs (turrets) in the past, giving full credit for the design and linking to your website. Turrets here and here. Yes, I know, they're the wrong size - I realised after I built them

Just checking if it's all ok with you. I'm also curious about some of the greebles and their function as I intend to design the interior with those in mind... For example, I'm uncertain where targeting array for the ship is - unlike ISDs, this lacks the horizontal apparatus atop the bridge. I was also wondering about the crew complement (guessing in the 5,000 range?). There are other questions, but I'll hold on to those for now.

[fractalsponge1]

Hi Fractal, love the work.
I've been working on a scale recreation of the Fulgor-class Pursuit Frigate, a sublime design I might add, in Minecraft for a few weeks now (using those handy orthographic images you provided.) I am just checking in to see if you wouldn't mind me sharing it online, provided I give full credit? At the moment it is just the exterior for the most part, but I intend to design an interior as well.

It's in early development as you can see. I've used a few of your smaller designs (turrets) in the past, giving full credit for the design and linking to your website. Turrets here and here. Yes, I know, they're the wrong size - I realised after I built them

Just checking if it's all ok with you. I'm also curious about some of the greebles and their function as I intend to design the interior with those in mind... For example, I'm uncertain where targeting array for the ship is - unlike ISDs, this lacks the horizontal apparatus atop the bridge. I was also wondering about the crew complement (guessing in the 5,000 range?). There are other questions, but I'll hold on to those for now.

Looks great. Go ahead and share it .

I thought the linear array was for comms? It's certainly not a tractor beam targeting array!

Complement I would guess to be in the 3-5k range. Depends on if Clones or live crew are used.

Not sure if I will have any other detailed answers (and the ones I do have are of course guesswork), but feel free to ask.

[darthscott]

What other hot buns do you have cooking away in the oven, Ansel? I'd love to see more frigates and cruisers.

For purely personal projects, toying with doing an 8km KDY battleship (tentatively Anonymous 4 based). The desire to rebuild my 14 year old ISD mesh grows daily - eventually it will become irresistible. Otherwise am open to ideas.

Would love to finally see a Mandator-class dreadnought come to life, I mean every planet in the Core wants one for defense. I would also like to see your take on some more Old Republic warship designs. In the Legends universe at least, I always wanted to see some large Coruscanti/Alsakan/Corellian battleships duke it out during the Alsakan Conflicts as eluded to in EGTW.

[Commander Veers]

Looks great. Go ahead and share it .

I thought the linear array was for comms? It's certainly not a tractor beam targeting array!

Complement I would guess to be in the 3-5k range. Depends on if Clones or live crew are used.

Not sure if I will have any other detailed answers (and the ones I do have are of course guesswork), but feel free to ask.

Thanks very much
Yes you're probably right, I get confused with that array because on the ISD 1 there's a tractor array in its place, and then on the Executor's bridge in Complete Locations it's described as a Tractor targeting array as well. I presume communications is the remit of that big old dish on the dorsal side of the Fulgor?

As for greebles, I am particularly intrigued by these three: I cannot figure out what they might be for.

The ones which are boxes with flat panels facing astern. Are they something to do with scanning? Perhaps emmissions monitors, or rear-facing scanners?

And a general question: what size and shape did you envision the main reactor to be, if at all? I.e. spherical or more 'oblong' a la the Acclamator reactor?

_________________________________________________________________

As to your call for ships that might be interesting to design, I have some suggestions. They're really obscure and don't even appear on wookieepedia. No reliable info beyond their function and appearance. I presume they are from legit sources because they look like background ships from some kind of comic, but no idea where.


Deepspace-class Sensor Ship is the name that's provided.
http://www.angelfire.com/mi4/mdnyteshad ... sop1.shtml Spoiler

"This ship was developed together with the Broadcast-class communications ship and came into service shortly after the famous Imperator-class. They were meant to take care of all needs of dedicated recon and communications for the Imperial Navy. Although not a lot of documentation covers the exploits of these ships, it is but another testimony to their success. While the Boradcast-class is meant to operate as part of fleets, the DeepSapce-class is meant to be independant. It requires only a small crew, perfect for long-duty missions deep in unknown territories or enemy space. A large part of the ship is dedicated to an immense sensor wing containing extremely sensitive equipment, enabling the crew to get a very exact and detailed view of the surrounding space. Its sensor range is one of the largest in the Empire. The DeepSpace is only lightly armed, but has enough firepower to deal with pirates in depth of space. For additional protection of the ship, there is half a squadron of fighters onboard. The ship also houses another 6 TIE/rc reconnaissance fighters to help completing the sensor view on difficult space terrain, such as asteroid belts, rifts, etc. It also carries 20 self-guided sensor buoys which can be deployed up to 100 ly away from the mothership."

Sounds pretty interesting imo, it would be nice to see more ships with highly specialised roles like this one. And it would certainly round out your fleet even more.

Broadcast-class Communications Ship
http://nifrpg.net/irm/ships/broadcast_com_ship.shtml

They could probably do with new names

Found them on some RPG website ages back. Anyway, they are described as being about 250 metres in length but they look longer to me... More like 500+.

[Elheru Aran]

As for greebles, I am particularly intrigued by these three: I cannot figure out what they might be for.

That's the thing with greeblies, I'm not sure even *he* knows

[Sea Skimmer]

There aren't a lot of obvious gaping holes in my order of battle right now, otherwise it'd be obvious where I should be focusing the next ship. There are tons of projects part way blocked out or even part finished that I just haven't gotten around to completing. Nothing is sending up a giant "finish me" flare at the moment.

Ultimate Fleet Salvage Tug! Also are you familiar with that silly ship Japan built to transport Yamato turrets?

I now have amusing ideas in my head for the Empire sending out a fleet of transport ships to try to physically collect all the Death Star 1 debris at 10% of the speed of light and vacuum up the vaporized plasma so they can deny it ever existed or got destroyed.

Makes you wonder how many space scrappers were collecting up metal chunks of Alderaan's core for the slag mills.

[Commander Veers]

As for greebles, I am particularly intrigued by these three: I cannot figure out what they might be for.

That's the thing with greeblies, I'm not sure even *he* knows

That makes sense; on a ship with so many greebles, lord knows how long it would take to figure out exactly what each little thing does...

[fractalsponge1]

There are *some* individual greebles that have defined function, but not that one

Ultimate Fleet Salvage Tug! Also are you familiar with that silly ship Japan built to transport Yamato turrets?

I now have amusing ideas in my head for the Empire sending out a fleet of transport ships to try to physically collect all the Death Star 1 debris at 10% of the speed of light and vacuum up the vaporized plasma so they can deny it ever existed or got destroyed.

Makes you wonder how many space scrappers were collecting up metal chunks of Alderaan's core for the slag mills.

Kashino right? Some insane catamaran thing the size of a cruiser? Was it just for secrecy or just that there wasn't any other way to move large pieces from Kure to wherever the hell else was building Yamatos? Dunno much about the history of it beyond that. Either way that kind of effort figures for people that built a goddamn sisal curtain to hide Musashi that started to choke national supplies for fishing nets or something. Imperial turrets seem pretty small so dunno about that particular role, unless you are thinking "insane auxiliary for the shits"

Ultimate Fleet Salvage Tug I would do as an FSCV variant. Instead of the bubble generator it'd be a skeletal modular frame with many projectors that could with enough segments enclose a Star Dreadnought and yank it along in hyperspace. Plus a big hangar section to cradle sublight frigate-sized tug/repair boats with huge-ass tractor beam turrets and modular manipulator arms bigger than corvettes.

I bet that system got shut down real fast - but that kind of resource collection wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. Mining Guild must be doing that regularly, though maybe not disrupting planetary mass at escape velocity...

[fractalsponge1]

Another thing I was thinking of was a dreadnought-sized defense platform - repulsorlift and station keeping thrusters, big reactor, large caliber turrets and not much else. I'd make it look like a space Vauban star fort, because of course I would.

[Shroom Man 777]

That would match the triangular aesthetic of the Empire - the geometries would be made to sort of resemble intersecting ISDs or maybe even the Imperial sigil. Prettier than a Golan.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Another thing I was thinking of was a dreadnought-sized defense platform - repulsorlift and station keeping thrusters, big reactor, large caliber turrets and not much else. I'd make it look like a space Vauban star fort, because of course I would.

Oh I LIKE THIS!!!
Star forts are rather underwhelming in StarWars given the Tech level.. And the only real production line ones we see repeatedly are the "Golan" ones.
Also I would imagine any "Ultimate Fleet Salvage" Ship should have something similar to a "Word Devastator" Industrial Furnace complex thing, Except produced for less Destructiony things ;P

[Shroom Man 777]

I guess for some, the attack-defense potential of hyperdrive-equipped vessels trumps a static super-defense platform. Which is why for blue water forces like the US Navy, you don't see them making weaponized oil rigs and they don't have much coastal defenses in the mainland US because of the sheer distance... the sheer speed of hyperdrives might mean that a warship can swing from offensive to defensive roles really fast.

Hmm... maybe for worlds and systems that don't have external interests and no wish to blow things up from afar, but pressing need to protect their worlds, a static defense platform would be something suitable for em.

[Sea Skimmer]

Another thing I was thinking of was a dreadnought-sized defense platform - repulsorlift and station keeping thrusters, big reactor, large caliber turrets and not much else. I'd make it look like a space Vauban star fort, because of course I would.

You should channel the wonders of some of those Italian and Austrian forts with armored turrets integrated into masonry works. Huge squad coupla mounts should be used instead of boxy naval pattern turrets, because apparently deflection does matter in Star Wars, and at that point the fortress coupla is excellent.

For a role though you could think along two lines. First is plain boring orbital gun platform, probably employed to defend an orbital anchorage and other orbital structures. How valuable they are depends on how much you think armor is worth, since that's your best place to upgrade cheaply at high mass.

The other is the system scale fortification/siege weapon concept, which comes into play in heavily developed systems where multiple worlds and or moons have planetary scale shielding, and where the largest orbital structures presumably at least rival capital ships for scale, if not power generation. This sets up the role of space forts to be that of a system wide fort, since even token propulsion, let alone using something like a destroyer as a tug, would allow you to wage campaigns through the system during siege operations. Forts might for example protect communications between a planet and its moon from constant raids, but then be redeployed as a siege battery to retake the outer system. This would favor much more grand fortress design, and forts that are directional, or bi directional (so you can repair the masked side, then flip it around to keep shooting!) so they can keep up maximum firepower on frontal targets.

The best part is once you get the station moving you can stop pushing it or using the engines and just drift towards the enemy. Whole formations could be advanced on the enemy in this manner.

[fractalsponge1]

The other is the system scale fortification/siege weapon concept, which comes into play in heavily developed systems where multiple worlds and or moons have planetary scale shielding, and where the largest orbital structures presumably at least rival capital ships for scale, if not power generation. This sets up the role of space forts to be that of a system wide fort, since even token propulsion, let alone using something like a destroyer as a tug, would allow you to wage campaigns through the system during siege operations. Forts might for example protect communications between a planet and its moon from constant raids, but then be redeployed as a siege battery to retake the outer system. This would favor much more grand fortress design, and forts that are directional, or bi directional (so you can repair the masked side, then flip it around to keep shooting!) so they can keep up maximum firepower on frontal targets.

The best part is once you get the station moving you can stop pushing it or using the engines and just drift towards the enemy. Whole formations could be advanced on the enemy in this manner.

This is *exactly* how I would design it. I've been mulling over what a fortress system, or at least one valuable enough to really defend in depth, actually looks like. I was thinking shipyard world (lots of onsite fabrication potential, rare enough to be galactic strategic assets) - if the orbital facilities are big enough to be unitary like Kuat they would have their own planetary scale shield (or shields), or if widely distributed in orbit dreadnought-scale shielding on individual facilities (by capacity though perhaps not dissipation).

Platforms in this scenario would be dreadnought scale structures, mobile in semi-tactical time (hundred g range thrust). Dreadnought shielding, dreadnought reactor. I was thinking two configurations:

1) Literally doubled starfort - one on top, mirrored on the bottom. Big single weapon mount or large weapon cluster top and bottom, with turret batteries layered on the glacis. Symmetrical in z, so can be flipped, or can cover both hemispheres with fire. This would be the semi-mobile system-wide forts - kept in interplanetary space to prevent raids and keep attacking ships from close orbit. Maybe points of a cube format around the main planet. Expansion of the pattern would simply be limited to the resources of the planet.

2) Half of 1), split by vertical plane - the flat side has repulsor array facing the planet. This would be more of a static gun battery, kept largely in close orbit protection duties.

For something like Kuat the ring itself would be armed, and collectively the batteries would outgun entire fleets. Which is perfectly reasonable for something approaching Death Star volume and can build entire fleets as a batch order. But systems like that could probably be counted with fingers. Most heavily fortified systems would just have a shield and an array of the forts, plus whatever passes for minefields in SW (I guess cheapo ion weapons with a capacitor attached, or missile tubes).

Even for a hugely well shielded planet, mobile forts, turret fields, etc. would be useful to prevent enemy fleets from exploiting interplanetary space as a safe zone, where surface gun batteries suffer from unacceptable lag but planets with predictable orbits can still be hit. The time taken to reduce one of these forts (basically killing a star dreadnought) would be enough time for a world with large amounts of orbital traffic to safely raise a full shield and for defenders closer in to mass to deal with an attacking fleet.

[Shroom Man 777]

[darthscott]

I know in the Legends universe one of the early needs for planetary shields was to deal with mass drivers, which I wish we saw more of, but I have always wondered how planets defended against hyperspace collisions. There were a few instances when such an event took out a planet, or was described that that it would seriously damage the world in question. Since planets don't seem to have that planetary shields are up all of the time, maybe there was some sort of defense against that, or some sort of gravity well projector in place and on guard.

Anyway, it would be cool to see such fortifications one day in the Star Wars universe in some form.

[Shroom Man 777]

I'm imagining that an object in hyperspace - to go FTL - its mass is probably shunted to said wonky-dimensions so when they hit a gravity well... whatever hyperdimensional aspect of that gravity well and of that world that extends into hyperspace that is what kills the hyperspatial ship. So the impact won't be like a normal .c-fractional object hitting a planet.

[Khaat]

Legends had it that a ship's hyperspace motivator/shunt would burn out (or cut out) as a safety measure when encountering a gravity well of significance, thus the Interdictor-class with gravity-well projectors to prevent FTL escape. We see this can be disabled in TFA: the Falcon exists hyperspace at its customary STL velocity under the planetary shields.

It would also follow that since the rest of what we see suggests Physics Works, hyperspace follows other physical rules, where distance isn't the same, thus ships in hyperspace aren't moving c-fractional velocities (even though when they re-emerge into normal space, they've covered c-plus time/distances.) The Falcon is fast in hyperspace (for a freighter) because it's fast in normal space (for a freighter - it keeps up with fighters in RotJ!), not because it has a better hyperdrive (yes, I know it's supposed to have a better hyperdrive - but it can't be that much better, or it would require specialists of Great Significance to repair.)

This would mean that a ship in hyperspace that impacted a planet should have the same effect as just normal-space splatting on a planet. Anything more would require more involved, like the StarKiller unleashing a star's energy in a beam (through hyperspace), or maybe dragging some hypermatter through with the ship back into normal space. Since hypermatter reactors are a thing, obviously this stuff is super-duper energetic in normal space (since if it were that energetic in hyperspace, ships would have to be much better shielded or damage resistant to travel there to the point that weapons would have to be even more powerful. Or maybe it is, and that's why shielding is so significant....)

So I guess the question is: where are the hypermatter weapons?

[Abacus]

I'm assuming that that is a repair craft of sorts? Looks awesome! What's the source?

[Abacus]

Legends had it that a ship's hyperspace motivator/shunt would burn out (or cut out) as a safety measure when encountering a gravity well of significance, thus the Interdictor-class with gravity-well projectors to prevent FTL escape. We see this can be disabled in TFA: the Falcon exists hyperspace at its customary STL velocity under the planetary shields.

It would also follow that since the rest of what we see suggests Physics Works, hyperspace follows other physical rules, where distance isn't the same, thus ships in hyperspace aren't moving c-fractional velocities (even though when they re-emerge into normal space, they've covered c-plus time/distances.) The Falcon is fast in hyperspace (for a freighter) because it's fast in normal space (for a freighter - it keeps up with fighters in RotJ!), not because it has a better hyperdrive (yes, I know it's supposed to have a better hyperdrive - but it can't be that much better, or it would require specialists of Great Significance to repair.)

This would mean that a ship in hyperspace that impacted a planet should have the same effect as just normal-space splatting on a planet. Anything more would require more involved, like the StarKiller unleashing a star's energy in a beam (through hyperspace), or maybe dragging some hypermatter through with the ship back into normal space. Since hypermatter reactors are a thing, obviously this stuff is super-duper energetic in normal space (since if it were that energetic in hyperspace, ships would have to be much better shielded or damage resistant to travel there to the point that weapons would have to be even more powerful. Or maybe it is, and that's why shielding is so significant....)

So I guess the question is: where are the hypermatter weapons?

What what I figure is that it's possible to account for a known gravity force and still jump into hyperspace. The fact that ships would shunt themselves out of hyperspace when encountering an unknown gravity well or source was, as you say, a safety measure. So a navigational computer can be programmed to ignore that usual safety measure when given known data to work from.

At least, that's my theory.

[Shroom Man 777]

I'm assuming that that is a repair craft of sorts? Looks awesome! What's the source?

John Berkley

[Abacus]

I'm assuming that that is a repair craft of sorts? Looks awesome! What's the source?

John Berkley

John Berkey, that's the one! Thanks for reminding me, Shrooms.