Clone Wars series (SPOILERS)

[Bounty]

I have to ask, what do you guys use? I use MS paint and doing scaling is a bitch and a half.

Both the GIMP and PDN have built-in rulers, plus you can draw your highlight lines on separate layers to keep things from getting cluttered.

[Bounty]

Let's see if a third scaling attempt gets the same numbers, shall we? Doing some very dirty guesswork, I get this:

I Reference side-shot



702 pixels total length. I've decided to take the inside of the lit ion cannon "cross" as a reference, since the outer ring seems to stick out a bit, making it harder to pin down.

II With Venator



Here I get 77 pixels for the ion cannon's "cross", and 55 for the height of the Venator.

I know the Venator's angled downward and part of it is covered by an explosion. I overlayed another Venator image at the same angle to guesstimate where the bridge dome would end, but don't expect this to be within 10 pixels. Also, this doesn't compensate for the tilt.

In the first image, assuming a 55 pixel high Venator, at 268 meters that gives us ~4.9 pixels per meter, making the "inner cross" 354 meters high.

In the second image, assuming a 354m high "inner cross", we get a length of 8284 meters for the Malevolence as a whole: keeping in mind that this is sloppy scaling based on fuzzy, skewered images.

Incidentally, won't this mean the windows are ridiculously high?

[Ender]

Incidentally, won't this mean the windows are ridiculously high?

This is my problem with all the scalings. Lack of internal consistency in the layout of the ship. It it is many km long, wide, and tall, then those windows are multiple stories tall.

Building from the windows, or by scaling Grievous to the rest of the bridge to the viewport to the rest of the ship seems much more secure to me.

Back when I did my review thread I predicted that the Malevolence would be a size changer.

[Bounty]

Eyeballing by the windows and the pod in the back, she doesn't look much bigger than the Invisible Hand, and at that size the windows would make a hell of a lot more sense. I estimate around 24 decks in the lit section between the two bow "mandibles"; at a good 4 meters per deck, that's about a hundred meters, which would work out to a sub-2km ship.

The problem with the windows is that they're hard to scale without knowing what they're supposed to represent. Portholes? Deck-high transparent walls? Hangars? Them being so squashed together doesn't help things either.

ETA: scaling from a guesstimated between-deck height of 4m, and using the narrow row of windows at the top of the lit section of the bow in the images I used earlier, I get ~1800m.

[Ender]

Of course, on the other end of that, it take Anakin and his squadron about a minute to fly the length of the thing. ANH has fighters on a bombing run moving about 2 km/s, so using that gives us a length of 120 km long.

This thing is a real headache.

[Ender]

WRT windows, note that the ones in the "jaws" are far FAR bigger than the little dots of light on the gun terraces. In that view, it makes much more sense for those to be windows and the large openings to be hangar bays. So what about using said terrace points as windows and scaling from there?

[Bounty]

I'm not sure you can get a usable figure from those at the resolution of the source image. Even the big windows are barely a few pixels high, so one pixel more or less will change the size by 50% in one go.

[Ender]

I'm not sure you can get a usable figure from those at the resolution of the source image. Even the big windows are barely a few pixels high, so one pixel more or less will change the size by 50% in one go.

I used the higher resolution pics of the model I posted on page 6. I scaled the window at 2 pixels high, and the center "cross" you used above at 78 pixels high. At a 4 meter deck it is simple enough to multiply by 2 and get 156 meters. Using the rest of your above scaling this works out to 3650.4 meters long.

[Bounty]

You're assuming even the small windows go floor-to-ceiling?

Oh, and those sideviews on page 6 are the same ship? Damn, those are going to be useful. Back in a tick...

EDIT: there's a row of windows just below the pod in the back who look like they might be a fraction of even the bow's small windows' size. I'm going to be very surprised if there's ever an official scaling for this thing that fits all the views.

[Ender]

You're assuming even the small windows go floor-to-ceiling?

Ones on the bridge of the Imperator class go nearly so. Even if they should only be 3 meters to allow for the lower bit the thing drops to 2740 meters long

Oh, and those sideviews on page 6 are the same ship? Damn, those are going to be useful. Back in a tick...

Yeah, I capped them from the "making of" video. We almost get a full broadside of the model in high resolution. Another second of pan back and some quick photoshopping would have made us very happy.

[Bounty]

Where would this section be from? is it the front of the bow or the front of the pod in the back?

[Ender]

Where would this section be from? is it the front of the bow or the front of the pod in the back?

Dead on view of the bridge, which is at the pod at the back tower.

[Bounty]

Going by the frontal bridge view:



I'm guessing the yellow highlighted area in the image above is the same as the highlighted area below; from the "lip" underneath the bottom row of lights to the "lip" jutting out above the top row. The red highlight is what I believe to be one full deck; for the large windows, this works out as a window going from the ceiling to about a foot above the floor (assuming the lighter lines indicate floor height), and the smaller windows would be equivalent to what is normally considered a window (ie, roughly half the usable height of the room).

At 12 pixels, and assuming a 4m height floor-to-floor, this would make the yellow area 74.6 meters high.



Extrapolating to the side view this gets us about 12 meters per pixel, and for an 850px ship (seems I accidentally picked the small version of Wookieepedia earlier), this makes the Malevolence 10568 meters long.

With a substantial margin of error, of course, so conservatively it's in the 8km ballpark.

EDIT: not mention that, if this is right, the "windows" in the bow could swallow other ships whole.

[VT-16]

I think some of those elongated windows in the bow "maw" might be launching stations/hangars.

[Bounty]

I think some of those elongated windows in the bow "maw" might be launching stations/hangars.

Having now suffered through two episodes of the series - yeah, that's probably right. The ship has quite a few hangars that might look like windows when lit a bit generously.

A,d it's definitely in the 8-10km range from the episodes. The shots were it dwarfs Venators are impossible to reconcile with a 2km ship.

[Fire Fly]

Couldn't the really big "windows" be hangars? That would be a better explanation for them instead of being windows.

[seanrobertson]

A,d it's definitely in the 8-10km range from the episodes. The shots were it dwarfs Venators are impossible to reconcile with a 2km ship.

Agreed (and great work, all of you. You've stolen my thunder ).

I worked on some images today, but at this juncture, it's perhaps prudent to dust off this old shot. I cleaned it up a little:



As you can see, the Venator-class ship at the right-hand side of the picture is well aft of Maleovence. (They all are, but let's focus on the Venstar farthest right.) Further, it's difficult to see the destroyer's full width, but we can somewhat reliably measure half that.

Half a Venstar's width is 274m, so we're looking at 3.34m/pixel.

The ion cannon's housing, which is larger than its luminescent ring, is, therefore, 772m tall in this image.

Since Maleovence is closer to the camera in the first shot, we're already dealing with an upper-limit; and as you can see, I'm about to compound that with an overly-generous estimate of the "white ring's" diameter:

(Bounty, I hope you don't mind that I'm borrowing your beautiful port view picture; it's much sharper than mine.)



I get 854 pixels for the whole ship and 55 for the white ring in the ion cannon -- a 15.53/1 ratio (very slightly larger than the 15/1 I mentioned back on page 4 or 5 of the thread). Thus, based on these two pictures, Maleovence is less than 11,989m long.

Needless to say, we all know these estimates can't be so refined. That's a ball-park upper-limit ... one could just as easily call it <12 km.

In any event, the ship CANNOT be that long. But I am confident it is every bit of 6 km long and more like 8, perhaps as much as 10 in ... err, reality The safest thing to do is do as Babtech does and state its upper-limit right alongside its minimum possible size/lower-limit. For now, something between ~8-12 km is all we can say with any degree of certainly; still, I fully expect some numbnuts at SW.com or a nimrod WEG stat-lover to squeeze a fucked-up figure into a future publication

[Bounty]

For now, something between ~8-12 km is all we can say with any degree of certainly

Certainly something in that region. We've had, what, four? independent scalings now ranging from 7.8 to 11.9 kilometres based on three different source images; assuming the animators used any degree of consistency when drawing this ship, I'd be very surprised if the 'official' length won't be in the ballpark of 10+/-2 kilometres.

Is there anything like a Clone Wars technology guide planned? Or episodes with another ship of the class?

Wookieepedia now lists it as 7.892km+. Now where do I recognise that number from

[VT-16]

That was me. ^_^

[VT-16]

There's a new and interesting interview made with Filoni and Gilroy. Lots of interesting tidbits.

TFN: Describe how you see the Jedi viewing the clones, and vice-versa.

Henry: In my mind, the Jedi see the clones as individuals, living beings that have the same right to life as any other being, but understand that they have a job to do. I’d rather not get into the Jedi’s philosophical issues about an army of living beings created to fight, but the Jedi are in a tough spot themselves, being peacekeepers turned warriors trying to save the Republic. The clones see the Jedi as their commanding officers on one hand, but also, at least subconsciously, they look to them for clues to social \ moral behavior. Some clones may find themselves getting philosophical leadership from the Jedi that helps them answer some of the deeper questions of life. We saw Yoda demonstrate this in Ambush.

Dave: I truly believe that the Jedi try to humanize their clones and make them more individual, as Henry says. I think we saw that in Revenge of the Sith, when the Clones were colorful and named under the Jedi Generals, and then in the final shots of the film with Palpatine and Vader near the new Death Star, the ships are grey, the color and life is sucked out. The Stormtroopers are only numbers and identified by black and white armor or uniforms in A New Hope. Tie-fighters don’t have shields, the soldiers have become disposable to the Emperor — that is something the Jedi would never do. The color leaving the Clone’s armor is representative of the Clones becoming Stormtroopers and the army losing it’s individuality —it was the death of the “good soldier”. At least that’s how I see it.

What? No evil Jedi task masters?

[VT-16]

Episode 11 was interesting, mostly because it was so laid back. No real big fights (guess that's for next week in this second-parter), but it still stayed interesting. That's mostly due to the new characters and settings. Those Weequay pirates (actually namedropped in the episode, a nice touch) had some interesting gear and architecture. It's nice to see such a dull-looking species being more fleshed out, they even looked slightly abnormal compared to their usual humanoid selves in the movies. And no sign of Hutt fealty culture either, though I guess the planet Florrum could be an independent Weequay colony.

Also, Spoiler

flying saucers

for the win!

[Bilbo]

Watching ep11 brought a few things to mind.

1. Poison gas? Maybe Jedi resistance to gas is not a common ability and this little incident results on Obiwan and Anakin training so that when Mustafar comes along both are able to walk around ignoring the poisonous atmosphere easily.

2. Dooku must not have much in the way mind control abilities since he made no attempt to use this ability to escape.

3. Jedi prisons appear to be common enough or fairly easy to make. This is the second time we see a Jedi locked in floating magnetic cuffs and both times they are effective enough to preclude easy escape.

4. Jedi really do not respect foes that are not sith. Once they saw Dooku there is no reason for Anakin and Obiwan to hang around. They could have returned to their fleet and remained safe until the money arrived. Instead they stayed there just begging for something to eventually happen.

[VT-16]

A bit OT, though it is relevant to the show. The New Campaign Guide is out somewhere, with early copies bringing spoilers. The biggest one for me is the name and designation of the Malevolence's class: Subjugator-class heavy cruiser.

The CIS's biggest battleship is classified as a "heavy cruiser"... Yeah. Is this some weird tie-in to the Star Cruisers of the later Empire, I wonder? Either way, we now have a 600m Dreadnaught-class heavy cruiser, a 2km Invincible-class Dreadnaught heavy cruiser and a 7,8km+ Subjugator-class. What does this all mean?

[Darksider]

hmmm. Not that Subjugator isn't a cool class name, but I don't care for it because it doesn't fit with established naming conventions for separatist warships. Seems more like an imperial-class name to me.

[The Romulan Republic]

hmmm. Not that Subjugator isn't a cool class name, but I don't care for it because it doesn't fit with established naming conventions for separatist warships. Seems more like an imperial-class name to me.

I'm more interested in the heavy cruiser classification. While the struggle against Star Wars minimalism is certainly aided by the presense of multi-kilometer Sep ships designated as mere cruisers, I'm not sure it fits, given the stated presense (at least according to VT-16) of far smaller ships that also bear the heavy cruiser label. Personally, I would probably have pegged the Malevolence as a battle cruiser.