Alyeska wrote:Umm, the empire has a fuckload more then just 25,000 destroyers. ISDs are cruisers. Given the bare minimum number of total ships listed for the Empire, the ISD most definately is NOT a destroyer. It merely means the Sovereign is a super battleship and the Eclipse just magnitudes higher.
With all the observed ship classes, the
Imperator-class falls into the midrange scale and generally would be associated as a lighter vessel like a destroyer. Neither destroyer nor cruiser in the classic wet navy sense well-define the
Imperator-class designation.
The
Imperator, in a "yesterday's war" sense, was designed as a destroyer. However, in meeting new capabilities it dedicated much volume and operations to C4I, carrier/troopship duties, and interdiction/law enforcement, etc. The agility and high-hyperspeed remind one of its destroyer roots however.
The
Imperator-class Mark I is the first step in the transition. It appears based on perhaps the heavy destroyers of yesteryear; a huge Victory-class. It begins to show its new role above.
The
Imperator-class Mark II is definitely more of a destroyer shoehorned into a battleship or heavy cruiser when compared against Rebel Star Cruisers. It has flexible and impressive anti-ship weaponry.
The destroyer designation is further supported by Imperator-like vessels which appear to occupy true destroyer roles in fleets. The destroyer varient which appeared escorting Admiral Giel's battleship in its quest for the Teezl, is such an example.
However, the matter of numbers is quite misleading. The cited quote from Admiral Pelleaon is already flawed--he states that the Empire dominated 1 million worlds, where we already know that the total number of worlds was over 50 million--and must be reinterpreted as it is. To suggest that the 25,000 figure is somehow the sacrosant part of the quote, even though it is contradicted by WEG scale materials which indicate no less than 48,000
Imperator-class vessels, and the Starfleet/Navy duality is dubious. The actual number of
Imperator-class Star Destroyers, much less the other varients of Star Destroyer such as the
Victory- and
Alleagance-class, is probably much higher.
Furthermore, the KDY "Star Battlecruisers," "Star Dreadnoughts," and the Calamarian "Star Cruisers" obviously indicate a nomenclature where the "Star Destroyer" label indicates that the Imperator, is, in fact, a destroyer.
I choose to ignore erroneous WEG claims of "Super-class Star Destroyers" and the like because they are the disfigured children of the "5-mile fallacy" and not based on correct in-film references, where the
Executor is repetatively and more commonly addressed as a "command ship."
Keep in mind what I am saying: the
Imperator might be labeled by KDY and perhaps utilized in the grandiose Giel-style armadas as fleet destroyers, but that doesn't mean they were always or even often utilized in that role. Against minimalistic Rebel vessels and threats, they usually occupied all manner of roles as the primier Imperial ship-of-the-line.
