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Dark Flame wrote:Is it possible that perhaps they were indeed built originally as cruise ships, but were made so as to be easily converted into warships? That would be quite a feat of engineering, I would think. Not only to look pretty, but to be very easily converted into effective warships would make the Mon Cal and Quarren pretty skilled ship builders.

I don't know if this has any validity to it, I'm just throwing out an idea here.

Meh, when you're basically looking at reactor output for the primary offensive and defensive systems of a warship, it doesn't seem too far out there as an idea. Of course you still need to look at support for those systems, firing arcs and cross section of the ship to incoming fire and a host of other things too.

Isolder74 wrote:

Pint0 Xtreme wrote:I've never heard of that but even if the Mon Calamari and Quarren did play big roles as military vessel producers during the Clone Wars, I don't see how that contradicts, in any way, the idea that the Mon Calamari cruisers were once passenger starships. If anything, it reinforces that thought as it would make sense that the Mon Calamari, experts at military ship construction, could adequately convert their peaceful vessels into dedicated warships.

Its also possible that they converted warships from the Clone Wars into Luxery Liners after the war then reinstalled everything to make them warships again as well.

That seems more likely than converting ships built explicitly as passenger liners into warships. For an analogy, consider converting a cruise liner into a battleship, and then consider the problem of converting a battleship into a cruise liner and back again. I would think it requires fewer structural changes.

Knife wrote:Meh, when you're basically looking at reactor output for the primary offensive and defensive systems of a warship, it doesn't seem too far out there as an idea. Of course you still need to look at support for those systems, firing arcs and cross section of the ship to incoming fire and a host of other things too.

Rerouting reactor output for the primary offensive and defensive systems is rather involved. You need to restructure the entire hull to get that energy to the weapons without disrupting the ship's ability to maneuver or compromising the structural integrity of the hull.

Rerouting reactor output for the primary offensive and defensive systems is rather involved. You need to restructure the entire hull to get that energy to the weapons without disrupting the ship's ability to maneuver or compromising the structural integrity of the hull.

Huh?

Not discounting the fact that you'd have to have dedicated powerlines or whatever....why would that be? Any hyperspace capable ship should by default have a shit load of power available for other uses, one would assume non combat ships would just have that power reserve slated for shield operations.

Why would realloting that power and rerouting it to a weapon system disrupt maneuvering or compermise the hull? I grant you that refitting a luxury liner into a warship would take a refit, as it were, but since the underlying system is in place (namely the reactors and power distrabution network in some form) I'm not seeing the major problem.

That said, I see nothing wrong with the idea that the Mon Cal made their M-whatevers as wannabe warships with the luxuray liner brand name. Don't the Corellians do pretty much the same? It's a *wink-nod* cargoship?

Knife wrote:

Rerouting reactor output for the primary offensive and defensive systems is rather involved. You need to restructure the entire hull to get that energy to the weapons without disrupting the ship's ability to maneuver or compromising the structural integrity of the hull.

Huh?

Not discounting the fact that you'd have to have dedicated powerlines or whatever....why would that be? Any hyperspace capable ship should by default have a shit load of power available for other uses, one would assume non combat ships would just have that power reserve slated for shield operations.

It's the dedicated powerlines that I'm talking about. You'll have to tear out walls, put in a power distribution column that would be able to route most or all of the reactor's power to guns on the surface, put in military-grade shield generators. It's got the power available, but I think you're underestimating the amount of work that the dedicated powerlines are going to require. You're going to have to mess with the ship's internal structure, and then you're going to have to compensate for that with tensors or soemthing, and that's going to require more messing with it ... . Refitting a cruise liner into a warship is quite the engineering undertaking.

Why would realloting that power and rerouting it to a weapon system disrupt maneuvering or compermise the hull? I grant you that refitting a luxury liner into a warship would take a refit, as it were, but since the underlying system is in place (namely the reactors and power distrabution network in some form) I'm not seeing the major problem.

Because of the amount of power that you're redistributing, you're actually messing with the ship's center of gravity and the guns will . For example, the ISD has its main guns sitting back right next to the reactor and fuel silos, which is the ship's center of gravity. The main power column runs parallel to the ship's thrust vector, again presumably because the sheer amount of energy that runs through the column has a mass equivalent significant compared to the ship's mass.

That said, I see nothing wrong with the idea that the Mon Cal made their M-whatevers as wannabe warships with the luxuray liner brand name. Don't the Corellians do pretty much the same? It's a *wink-nod* cargoship?

That wouldn't surprise me at all.

Surlethe wrote:The strongest evidence for an Alderaanian rearmament that I've seen is the presence of a military-grade planetary shield, and it can be nominally passed off as protection from asteroids and other errant planetoids.[/u]

No it doesnt. In fact it could tell us the opposite. If I dont have a decent fleet to protect my planet then I am going to make damn sure I have the best alternative available which would be a planetary shield.

Geez, I forgot about this thread...

Regarding the "converted" freighters, if we're going to pull the Mon Calamari analogy, then you should follow it through to its logical conclusion. The Mon Cals "modified" their own starships for combat. And even then, it would be absurd to assume they continued building warships for years after contributing their fleet to the Rebels as "peaceful" ships and then went back and converted them. They'd build them from the ground up as warships after their initial vessels were converted. (And in the four or so years post-Yavin there would be plenty of time to build new warships.)

In any case we have no evidence that they were somehow provided or crewwed by anyone other than the Alderaanians - the context of the quote is that warships from every member of the Alliance (includinb the Mon Cals, Corellians, Bestinians, Kesselians, Sullustans, AND Alderaanians) were assembled (along with other vessels not specifically identified as belonging to those parrticular groups.) without further evidence ifor the "possibilities" being suggested I fail to see why they should even be considered simply because "ALDERAAN MUST BE PEACEFUL!!"

As for the whole "Alderaan providing money for munitions rather than munitions itself - why the hell would they say "munitions" if they meant money? Money is a much more liquid asset than weapons are - the Rebels could use them to purchase much more than just weaponry (ships, medical supplies, food and drink, vehicles, etc.) And most of those would probably be more plausibly denied than munitions would. (IIRC from the Radio Drama Princess Leia used the pretext of humanitarian aid to beleagured systems to spy for the Rebels.)

Oh, and as a last bit I forgot about this tidibt. I don't remember where the "fleet numberS" bit came up, but its worth noting:

Rebel Alliance sourcebook, page 91 wrote: "As you can see, by the numbers, the picture is pretty bleak. The Empire's forces outnumber the Alliance forces by a factor of almost 30 to one in raw manpower, by better than 12 to one in equipment, and by about 15 to one in warships and transports. The numbers are equally grim when you compare weapons research, intelligencee, and supplies"

How those numbers actually break down is not specified, however, and there is some room for interpretation. It is worth noting, however, that such numbers would be a requirement for the Post-Endor activities of the Rebels - they would need a substnatial fleet available (nevermind other forcese) if they were to successfully prosecute an offensive war to take territory from even a disorganized Empire.