Something big

[U.P. Cinnabar]

A Star Destroyer on repulsorlifts. Or vector jets. Or both.

President Hammer would like twelve dozen, please.

[PhoenixKnig]

Is LTL on top

[U.P. Cinnabar]

A selling point for the Slammers.

[cadbrowser]

It took me 3 days to get through all 141 pages. Skimming over most of the verbiage on the geek out discussions for SW stuffs (i'm not THAT well versed in such topics).

From one 3D Modeler to another...fractalsponge1, you are badass all the way. The evolution I have witnessed to your skills constantly improves and I am always awestruck by your talent.

Exceptional work and attention to detail. I will continue to follow this thread and check out your website.

It is a damn shame that you haven't been contacted by Disney for SW to do more paid work. You would be an extremely valuable asset to their team, IMHO.

Keep up the excellent work!

[Xenospartan653]

Hey, somewhat new here - I was doing the math for super-rough SSD volume, and basically come up with if the Executor is 12x the length of an ISD, and *roughly* 12x the width and 12x the height...it would have, roughly, 1,728 times the volume, right? Which means a thousand times greater power generation for weapons and shields?

If this is the case, how did the Executor in the Battle of Endor even have it's shields breached if it had an order of magnitude greater power generation than the thirty-odd ships in the rebel fleet?

[U.P. Cinnabar]

11x the length of an ISD is the generally accepted figure, IIRC, but the rest of your math makes sense.

In answer to your question, Ackbar ordered all the Rebel fleet's firepower concentrated on the Executor, which, in turn, resulted in the deflector screens for the bridge tower being taken out, leaving it vulnerable to being demolished by the damaged A-Wing.

Apparently, the SSD's secondary control center wasn't able to assume command in time to prevent it from crashing into the second Death Star.

[Elheru Aran]

Also, it's possible that shield strength might simply not scale with power generation and/or ship size. Law of diminishing returns or whatever. Something like the Executor might be 11x the length of the ISD, but only have like... 8x the shield strength, or whatever.

That's just an off the cuff guess though. It's been a very long time since I bothered to follow technological discussions.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

More power to maintain the same level of shielding as or a level slightly better than the smaller ISD.

[fractalsponge1]

Um, the Executor is nowhere near 12x the width or height of an ISD. That's the problem with your volume calc. In addition, the shape is different enough that it's hard to scale reactor from an ISD (proportionately speaking). There's no visible bulb and power depends on whether there are a lot of small reactors or just one small reactor or whatever. That means there's a big error bar on power.

I do think existing data suggests that rather than diminishing returns for volume, there is increasing efficiency in hypermatter reactors as volume increases.

Shields? Meh, who knows. I personally think it's safe to assume a roughly linear relationship between shielding potential and reactor power. I don't think there's any serious evidence to suggest otherwise, and imho it's a fairly unobjectionable starting premise.

Anyway, all of this means that Executor's power generation could well be matched by several dozen destroyers and at least 3 star battlecruisers. I categorically refuse to accept this bullshit that Home One was 1.3km. It's one of the easier ships to scale from purely movie footage. Minimum high 2km range, much more comfortably scaled at low 3km.

[evillejedi]

SSD should be roughly 250-340x the volume of an ISD based on the model geometry, but only about 120X the surface area


There are probably a couple of limiting elements on linear scaling. If we assume that an SSD uses effectively the same tech as an ISD, things like internal bracing, power efficiency, inertial damping , heat rejection and re radiation would all have the same fundamental limiting values, a power cable would be paralleled, bracing would be more substantial, but the material limits of the equipment would be the same, just improved engineering and all around thicker, deeper, etc. To get around this, paralleling and redundancy of systems would be important as well as localized distribution or routing of heat, shock/inertial absorption and power distribution. This is the same issue as elevators in a sky scraper, eventually the entire internal volume of the building is consumed by the elevator system unless you start changing how elevators work. Or taken to a larger extreme, unless you change materials you can't build a sky scraper out of concrete and steel over a certain limit ( I think it is 4 KM) as the stress on the foundation would melt the materials. Obviously super weapons and potentially critical systems of star dreadnoughts would be worth investing in more advanced materials and exotic designs, but facilities to produce and assemble higher quality or more exotic may be limited or limited by exotic materials, time to construct or methods.

The second major limiting factor on shields might be surface area. Even if the larger reactor can create a higher 'deflection' capability, the absorbed energy through inertia into the shielding system still has to be converted to a non damaging quantity, it seems that neutrino radiators are the go to tech for dissipating internal heat (unless there is some exotic energy capture that can be used to put the energy into the weapons and radiate the energy that way.) so that the ship does not die in a heat bath these systems are critical and as Fractal has pointed out before, because of the decreasing ratio of surface area on larger ships, the hull area tends to get crammed with weapon systems just to get the energy from the reactor out. unless the shielding, inertial damping and radiation systems become an order magnitude more efficient through improved tech the per unit value of energy absorbed into the ship should be the same and it has to be re radiated over an effectively smaller surface area. This isn't a problem when a large ship is facing small one, but a large ship vs an equal offensive power (either hundreds of smaller ships or one equivalent ship) this effect probably gets problematic.

I think it is worth saying that there must absolutely absurd efficiencies for ships to even run their reactors at idle without the entire ship vaporizing from waste heat . At the power levels that most combat vessels can use even a infinitesimal fraction of losses in power routing to the weapons would be catastrophic. when exponents are in the e17-e24 range for 'normal operation', abnormal operation must be very very short and the safety factors are insane.

A larger ship can alpha strike smaller ships and overwhelm them. In a engagement with multiple opponents however it then becomes a question if the focus fire can traverse between targets fast enough to keep up with the energy input. It is conceivable that the rebels strategy to encircle the Executor at Endor at absurdly close range allowed them to divide up the SSD's batteries so that the over whelming firepower was so divided that it became a damage per second rate that the Mon cals shields could tolerate.

Once shields are penetrated the opening can probably quickly be made larger by continuing to fire into the hole and damaging systems from the inside. it is doubtful that once armor is penetrated anything other than extremely critical systems have any internal protection since those systems primary function is to feed the external protective and offensive functions.

[Elheru Aran]

A larger ship can alpha strike smaller ships and overwhelm them. In a engagement with multiple opponents however it then becomes a question if the focus fire can traverse between targets fast enough to keep up with the energy input. It is conceivable that the rebels strategy to encircle the Executor at Endor at absurdly close range allowed them to divide up the SSD's batteries so that the over whelming firepower was so divided that it became a damage per second rate that the Mon cals shields could tolerate.

IIRC, though this is from long ago and I have no inclination to look it up at the moment since it's old canon anyway: Mon Cal shields were supposedly better designed or slightly stronger than Imperial shields? At the very least, it would make some sense that some factions might have better technology than others. How much of a difference it makes is probably offset by things like possibly different materials science, inefficiencies in design (adapting a Mon Cal ship optimized for water-dwellers to air-breathers?), etc. Simple brute force is a quality all of its own, of course (read: power generation + simple number of guns/missiles/etc available).

It may be (I don't know if this will make any sense, but I'll roll with it and take the blowback if any) that the Mon Cals (assuming my memory of their slightly better shields is correct) may have decided to go with like... cruiser-size? ships bigger than ISD's but not SSD-size, in order to optimize quantity of firepower x shield output, as smaller ships might have not had enough firepower for their taste even if shields were adequate. And of course building SSD's is an enormous resource sink, where they could build at least two or three Home One-size craft for the same cost and thus have more options, potentially more firepower-- more surface area available to put guns on.

[evillejedi]

I've just never bought into the MC series being 'luxury liners' or converted buildings or whatever. I think a better explanation is that the Mon cal ship yards built hundreds if not thousands of luxury liners and just happened to covertly built a small percentage of warships for a home defense fleet that followed the same external profile as the luxury liners. Because each ship was 'unique' the paperwork trail left for imperial inspectors would be nearly impossible to sort out and various strategies such as duplicate registrations, transponder codes, engine signatures etc would be used to cover up the fact. Additional bulkheads, oddly empty spaces, reinforced bracing would all be passed off as 'architectural elements or necessary for exotic clientele. As the alliance stockpiled weaponry and shield generators the 'warship' hulls would get refitted at some mobile deep dock. It's a work around to the 'conversion' story, but it makes a lot more sense in universe and allows the MC ships to be truly robust vessels with intentional designs.

some mon cal goodness viewtopic.php?f=46&t=166702#p4060032

[Weedle McHairybug]

Just so people are aware, fractalsponge posted the fourth WIP of the Heavy Repulsortank, and he has specified not only the crew compliment, but also the weapons variants (of which there are four total). See for yourself: http://fractalsponge.net/?p=3615

[U.P. Cinnabar]

A larger ship can alpha strike smaller ships and overwhelm them. In a engagement with multiple opponents however it then becomes a question if the focus fire can traverse between targets fast enough to keep up with the energy input. It is conceivable that the rebels strategy to encircle the Executor at Endor at absurdly close range allowed them to divide up the SSD's batteries so that the over whelming firepower was so divided that it became a damage per second rate that the Mon cals shields could tolerate.

IIRC, though this is from long ago and I have no inclination to look it up at the moment since it's old canon anyway: Mon Cal shields were supposedly better designed or slightly stronger than Imperial shields? At the very least, it would make some sense that some factions might have better technology than others. How much of a difference it makes is probably offset by things like possibly different materials science, inefficiencies in design (adapting a Mon Cal ship optimized for water-dwellers to air-breathers?), etc. Simple brute force is a quality all of its own, of course (read: power generation + simple number of guns/missiles/etc available).

It may be (I don't know if this will make any sense, but I'll roll with it and take the blowback if any) that the Mon Cals (assuming my memory of their slightly better shields is correct) may have decided to go with like... cruiser-size? ships bigger than ISD's but not SSD-size, in order to optimize quantity of firepower x shield output, as smaller ships might have not had enough firepower for their taste even if shields were adequate. And of course building SSD's is an enormous resource sink, where they could build at least two or three Home One-size craft for the same cost and thus have more options, potentially more firepower-- more surface area available to put guns on.

Mon Cal ship's had multiple redundant generators, according to EU/Legends canon, not more efficent generators.

[Elheru Aran]

A larger ship can alpha strike smaller ships and overwhelm them. In a engagement with multiple opponents however it then becomes a question if the focus fire can traverse between targets fast enough to keep up with the energy input. It is conceivable that the rebels strategy to encircle the Executor at Endor at absurdly close range allowed them to divide up the SSD's batteries so that the over whelming firepower was so divided that it became a damage per second rate that the Mon cals shields could tolerate.

IIRC, though this is from long ago and I have no inclination to look it up at the moment since it's old canon anyway: Mon Cal shields were supposedly better designed or slightly stronger than Imperial shields? At the very least, it would make some sense that some factions might have better technology than others. How much of a difference it makes is probably offset by things like possibly different materials science, inefficiencies in design (adapting a Mon Cal ship optimized for water-dwellers to air-breathers?), etc. Simple brute force is a quality all of its own, of course (read: power generation + simple number of guns/missiles/etc available).

It may be (I don't know if this will make any sense, but I'll roll with it and take the blowback if any) that the Mon Cals (assuming my memory of their slightly better shields is correct) may have decided to go with like... cruiser-size? ships bigger than ISD's but not SSD-size, in order to optimize quantity of firepower x shield output, as smaller ships might have not had enough firepower for their taste even if shields were adequate. And of course building SSD's is an enormous resource sink, where they could build at least two or three Home One-size craft for the same cost and thus have more options, potentially more firepower-- more surface area available to put guns on.

Mon Cal ship's had multiple redundant generators, according to EU/Legends canon, not more efficent generators.

Thanks for the correction. I knew it was *something* different from what Imperials used, just not what exactly.

In that case then the advantage was in being able to keep your shields up consistently even if a few generators got destroyed via feedback from excessive amounts of incoming fire. A good notion. If ship size plays into this, that might explain why some Mon Cals (if not all that I remember from ROTJ) are bigger than ISD's?

[U.P. Cinnabar]

The MC80as, and the MC90s were overall larger than the ISD, Some of the MC80s as well, such as Home One.

Mon Cal ship's had a very general commonality of design in any given series, but no two MC80s, for example, were alike.

[Weedle McHairybug]

I've just never bought into the MC series being 'luxury liners' or converted buildings or whatever. I think a better explanation is that the Mon cal ship yards built hundreds if not thousands of luxury liners and just happened to covertly built a small percentage of warships for a home defense fleet that followed the same external profile as the luxury liners. Because each ship was 'unique' the paperwork trail left for imperial inspectors would be nearly impossible to sort out and various strategies such as duplicate registrations, transponder codes, engine signatures etc would be used to cover up the fact. Additional bulkheads, oddly empty spaces, reinforced bracing would all be passed off as 'architectural elements or necessary for exotic clientele. As the alliance stockpiled weaponry and shield generators the 'warship' hulls would get refitted at some mobile deep dock. It's a work around to the 'conversion' story, but it makes a lot more sense in universe and allows the MC ships to be truly robust vessels with intentional designs.

some mon cal goodness viewtopic.php?f=46&t=166702#p4060032

Good work with the material you have.

As far as the modified luxury liners thing, I could buy it. The Rebels were a ragtag guerrilla group who were explicitly stated by George Lucas in both his own words and his development notes more importantly to be based on the Viet Cong and to a certain extent the North Vietnamese Army (and if you ask me came closer to that source material than the Ewoks did with their stone-age weaponry, something the VC never utilized even with their infamous use of traps). I'm pretty sure they can jury-rig civilian vessels to act as warships if they wanted to. Besides, in Resident Evil, the Umbrella Corporation actually used luxury liners as makeshift viral labs in secret.

Well, hopefully WIP 05 for the Heavy Repulsortank comes up soon, as I already posted the link for WIP 04.

[Marko Dash]

i thought the consensus for mon cal shipbuilding was that they built warships for the CIS, and after the clone wars they kept building the same ships just pulled the weaponry out, put in some passenger cabins, changed the wallpaper and called them "cruise liners".

thus the rebellion is just knocking down the drywall and bolting guns back on.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

The Quarren, Mon Calamari's other native sentient species, and rivals to the Mon Cals, built warships for the Separatists, while the Mon Cal remained loyal to the Republic.

[fractalsponge1]

Repulsortank gallery is up:

Naming it HAVr A10 Scythe

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/XAJVy

[Reyvan]

I've just never bought into the MC series being 'luxury liners' or converted buildings or whatever. I think a better explanation is that the Mon cal ship yards built hundreds if not thousands of luxury liners and just happened to covertly built a small percentage of warships for a home defense fleet that followed the same external profile as the luxury liners. Because each ship was 'unique' the paperwork trail left for imperial inspectors would be nearly impossible to sort out and various strategies such as duplicate registrations, transponder codes, engine signatures etc would be used to cover up the fact. Additional bulkheads, oddly empty spaces, reinforced bracing would all be passed off as 'architectural elements or necessary for exotic clientele. As the alliance stockpiled weaponry and shield generators the 'warship' hulls would get refitted at some mobile deep dock. It's a work around to the 'conversion' story, but it makes a lot more sense in universe and allows the MC ships to be truly robust vessels with intentional designs.

some mon cal goodness viewtopic.php?f=46&t=166702#p4060032

You could also get a situation where some luxury liners are converted. They have light shields added and a few light guns hidden in the blisters. They could be deployed alongside the purpose built Mon Cal warships to inflate their fleets apparent strength. An Imperial commander might not know which ships are actually a threat until battle is joined.

The rebels might also pretend a warship is a cruise ship by firing only a few light guns until it gets into an optimal position to fire their heavier guns.

This could also explain in universe how the conversion myth becomes believed, since there are some converted Mon Cals fighting with the rebels, enough people might also think that the warships are also converted cruise ships.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Or, more simply, the purpose built warships have similar lines to the luxury liners, explaining the myth that way.

[Esquire]

I've just never bought into the MC series being 'luxury liners' or converted buildings or whatever. I think a better explanation is that the Mon cal ship yards built hundreds if not thousands of luxury liners and just happened to covertly built a small percentage of warships for a home defense fleet that followed the same external profile as the luxury liners. Because each ship was 'unique' the paperwork trail left for imperial inspectors would be nearly impossible to sort out and various strategies such as duplicate registrations, transponder codes, engine signatures etc would be used to cover up the fact. Additional bulkheads, oddly empty spaces, reinforced bracing would all be passed off as 'architectural elements or necessary for exotic clientele. As the alliance stockpiled weaponry and shield generators the 'warship' hulls would get refitted at some mobile deep dock. It's a work around to the 'conversion' story, but it makes a lot more sense in universe and allows the MC ships to be truly robust vessels with intentional designs.

some mon cal goodness viewtopic.php?f=46&t=166702#p4060032

You could also get a situation where some luxury liners are converted. They have light shields added and a few light guns hidden in the blisters. They could be deployed alongside the purpose built Mon Cal warships to inflate their fleets apparent strength. An Imperial commander might not know which ships are actually a threat until battle is joined.

The rebels might also pretend a warship is a cruise ship by firing only a few light guns until it gets into an optimal position to fire their heavier guns.

This could also explain in universe how the conversion myth becomes believed, since there are some converted Mon Cals fighting with the rebels, enough people might also think that the warships are also converted cruise ships.

I like this quite a bit; combined with the obvious 'yes, of course these are purpose-built luxury liners, pay no attention to the suspiciously HTL-emplacement-shaped cabins amidships' option, it seems to cover all the available information.

[Crazedwraith]

I mean the available information is "they converted their liners into warships". Literally. No if, no buts, no rumours or fake outs. That's canonically (as far as the old canon is concerned) what they did and they don't care if you think it makes engineering sense or not.

[Weedle McHairybug]

I mean the available information is "they converted their liners into warships". Literally. No if, no buts, no rumours or fake outs. That's canonically (as far as the old canon is concerned) what they did and they don't care if you think it makes engineering sense or not.

Yeah, and besides, given the Rebel Alliance was meant to be a ragtag guerrilla group/irregular military outfit anyhow, it if anything actually makes MORE sense engineering wise for them to convert liners into warships as a form of guerrilla warfare than for them to make their own ships (since they shouldn't even have the funding or manpower to develop their own ships without outside help. Even the American Minutemen, let alone other guerrilla groups, required some help from nations like France regarding procuring weapons and materiel.). Heck, Metal Gear Solid V actually had something along those lines as well where Diamond Dogs managed to purchase an old whaling vessel and effectively turned it into a spy vessel by extensively upgrading its communication gear and ESM systems while also making the ship look intact.