Something big

[Galvatron]

How do you guys feel about this?

[Imperial528]

It more or less matches my thoughts. Throughout the OT and the PT, Star Destroyers are presented as being proper capital ships. Larger warships are rarely seen and the only example of a Super Star Destroyer is presented as a specialized fleet leader ship. This relationship holds more or less in the EU and New EU as well.

Given the roles a Star Destroyer performs (sector patrol ship, main line warship, planetary invasion platform, etc.) I don't think they at all fit in the modern paradigm of ship classifications, but they work nonetheless.

[fractalsponge1]

Is there anything new in it? I feel like I'm really tired of this argument.

A ship can do whatever role it can do. That's different from what it was designed for. Like if a destroyer was designed as an escort for bigger ships and a wolf-pack boat, but spends its entire time playing battleship in the boondocks against armed freighters and gunships, it's still the same damn ship, designed for the same damn thing, but just used differently.

Like you know, when destroyers fight motor boats they are battleships, but they are also still destroyers and can be called destroyers. It's what happens when things scale across orders of magnitude.

[evillejedi]

Maybe could be a possibility of a modular task force Cruiser hull? I see some similarities in design profile.

partially, that was a piece of the original inspiration, plus a few other oddball Dark Empire background ships. I think my original version was more in the 4-5 KM range, but kept the very narrow profile as to reduce exposed area to planetary defenses.

The concept was a fleet cruiser version of the torpedo sphere, essentially vomiting out hundreds of corvette sized baradium warheads at theater and planetary shields and having a minimal hull and superstructure.


There is also a theory around the class of vessels such as the Vengeance SSD (Veric's from Jedi Knight) and some of the far background ships in Dark Empire employing a different, potentially older cruiser design philosophy of having a very elongated hull in a sword blade design with critical components far in the aft. Eliminating almost everything else of the vessel other than reactor, guns, necessary propulsion and enough superstructure to hold it together. (I can't find the in-universe reference right now) A big gun cruiser with punch, but no endurance, with the essential role of hyper in to the edge of the theater, alpha strike and hopefully no one consequential can shoot back. As long as you can approach the enemy head on and at range, the elongated forward hull gives ample room for armament, heat radiation and redundant shielding and bulkheads without producing a large target. Contrast this with the standard Daggerator class ship that fulfills multiple roles including babysitting systems, carrier functions and providing combat support functions that all take volume and expand the frontal profile of the vessel.

[PhoenixKnig]

Maybe could be a possibility of a modular task force Cruiser hull? I see some similarities in design profile.

partially, that was a piece of the original inspiration, plus a few other oddball Dark Empire background ships. I think my original version was more in the 4-5 KM range, but kept the very narrow profile as to reduce exposed area to planetary defenses.

The concept was a fleet cruiser version of the torpedo sphere, essentially vomiting out hundreds of corvette sized baradium warheads at theater and planetary shields and having a minimal hull and superstructure.


There is also a theory around the class of vessels such as the Vengeance SSD (Veric's from Jedi Knight) and some of the far background ships in Dark Empire employing a different, potentially older cruiser design philosophy of having a very elongated hull in a sword blade design with critical components far in the aft. Eliminating almost everything else of the vessel other than reactor, guns, necessary propulsion and enough superstructure to hold it together. (I can't find the in-universe reference right now) A big gun cruiser with punch, but no endurance, with the essential role of hyper in to the edge of the theater, alpha strike and hopefully no one consequential can shoot back. As long as you can approach the enemy head on and at range, the elongated forward hull gives ample room for armament, heat radiation and redundant shielding and bulkheads without producing a large target. Contrast this with the standard Daggerator class ship that fulfills multiple roles including babysitting systems, carrier functions and providing combat support functions that all take volume and expand the frontal profile of the vessel.

Are you referring to aggressor class destroyer?

[evillejedi]

Maybe could be a possibility of a modular task force Cruiser hull? I see some similarities in design profile.

partially, that was a piece of the original inspiration, plus a few other oddball Dark Empire background ships. I think my original version was more in the 4-5 KM range, but kept the very narrow profile as to reduce exposed area to planetary defenses.

The concept was a fleet cruiser version of the torpedo sphere, essentially vomiting out hundreds of corvette sized baradium warheads at theater and planetary shields and having a minimal hull and superstructure.


There is also a theory around the class of vessels such as the Vengeance SSD (Veric's from Jedi Knight) and some of the far background ships in Dark Empire employing a different, potentially older cruiser design philosophy of having a very elongated hull in a sword blade design with critical components far in the aft. Eliminating almost everything else of the vessel other than reactor, guns, necessary propulsion and enough superstructure to hold it together. (I can't find the in-universe reference right now) A big gun cruiser with punch, but no endurance, with the essential role of hyper in to the edge of the theater, alpha strike and hopefully no one consequential can shoot back. As long as you can approach the enemy head on and at range, the elongated forward hull gives ample room for armament, heat radiation and redundant shielding and bulkheads without producing a large target. Contrast this with the standard Daggerator class ship that fulfills multiple roles including babysitting systems, carrier functions and providing combat support functions that all take volume and expand the frontal profile of the vessel.

Are you referring to aggressor class destroyer?

In this case no, I wasn't referring to that directly, though it is an obvious conclusion of the philosophy to just have a massive axial weapon. I was thinking of vessels that follow the Vengeance SSD profile that still maintain batteries of star cruiser scale weapons.

[Scottish Ninja]

Is there anything new in it? I feel like I'm really tired of this argument.

A ship can do whatever role it can do. That's different from what it was designed for. Like if a destroyer was designed as an escort for bigger ships and a wolf-pack boat, but spends its entire time playing battleship in the boondocks against armed freighters and gunships, it's still the same damn ship, designed for the same damn thing, but just used differently.

Like you know, when destroyers fight motor boats they are battleships, but they are also still destroyers and can be called destroyers. It's what happens when things scale across orders of magnitude.

I think a destroyer can credibly be a virtual capital ship - if you look at the modern day, an Arleigh Burke is a destroyer, one which is more powerful than 90+% of other warships out there. Only a handful of navies have ships that can match it; many whole navies would struggle to fight one.

I think his definition of a destroyer is definitely the wrong way around, though; I believe what fundamentally defines a destroyer is that it's meant to screen capital ships against asymmetric threats - in 20th century history, first torpedo boats (hence the name Torpedo Boat Destroyer), then submarines, and then aircraft. In the period of the world wars destroyers did also absorb the role of the torpedo boat and played a role in attacking larger warships, but even before the missile age heavy antiship weapons were disappearing from destroyers - note that the Forrest Shermans had fewer torpedo tubes than their WW2 predecessors, and had those replaced by lightweight ASW torpedoes. Modern western destroyers carry a very limited amount of dedicated antiship missiles and even the Russian Sovremennyys carry only eight of their heavyweight Moskits, versus the much larger number of SAMs that predominate.

Now here's the rub: I don't think an ISD is very much of a destroyer by this definition, either! While we see them escorting what is certainly a capital ship, in official materials I don't believe we see much in the way of asymmetric threats beyond fighters, and I don't really see ISDs being effective anti-fighter screening ships. I think they're more properly cruisers (as they're referred to exclusively in ANH), for which I'll offer the following definition: a ship which is able to sail independently and project power (particularly for threatening tin-pot little countries and protecting trade), with a subsidiary fleet antiship role. The ISD fits this definition magnificently, with its firepower, demonstrated independence, and integral air wing and ground assault complement. It should be noted that cruisers are key ships for maintaining an empire, which is why Britain was so keen on imposing limits on their size in the interwar period, in order to be able to afford more of them. (Note that by this definition an Arleigh Burke is a cruiser as well! I don't think it's mutually exclusive with being a destroyer. Curiously enough, Japan has been giving their Burke derivatives their traditional first-class cruiser names.)

Of course the ISD is still officially called a destroyer. Can we think of a real-world ship class labeled a destroyer, but which fits that role badly and fits the role of a cruiser quite well? Yes, it's the Zumwalt-class, 15000 tons of being useless at fleet air defense or ASW and built around guns designed for the sole purpose of bombarding targets ashore - and being useless in that role, being reworked to fight surface ships. Almost a perfect match for the role and description of an ISD except that the ISD isn't just a hot mess.

I should note that in the context of Star Wars I lean towards ship classifications based on role, rather than size, with a number of caveats. Size seems more useful in the context of primarily symmetric warfare, as in the Age of Sail; the number of guns a ship carried was a useful proxy for its size and what it was able to effectively fight. That system decayed as ships trended towards carrying a smaller number of guns (making even battleships technically classed as sloops, with fewer than 18 guns) and the automobile torpedo introduced new opportunities for asymmetric naval warfare, and was replaced with classifications based on roles. However, it's still unclear to me the degree to which space warfare in Star Wars is symmetric or asymmetric; it seems like asymmetric tactics keep getting presented as "really extremely effective, but everyone is absolutely terrible at them". I do have some thoughts on how to square that circle, but I think it needs to wait for another fuckin' essay.

[Knife]

I don't agree with him at all. Why any sci fi franchise should be shoehorned into WWII naval designations is asinine. And when talking about huge vessels with massive power output, no sense in NOT having multiple roles like battlehip/carrier. In fact, I always though a Battlestar was pretty common sense. If you have a frame with that much space, might as well toss a shit ton of weapons on it as well.

And though not the first, I'd also point out that the current US fleet's Destroyers are nothing like WWII destroyers and would be pocket battleships in any other era. Destroyers were never really that smaller than Frigates, unless you go back to Torpedo Boat Destroyers. And it would be ridiculous in a 3D environment like space to have ships with only one firing arc.

The space dock dude is totally lost in the over used and tired WWII framework for sci fi fleets.

[PhoenixKnig]

EJ I pm you

[PhoenixKnig]

4K VicStar out now

[Abacus]

4K VicStar out now

It's quite a nice one. I like the details on the VicStar.

[Abacus]

Speaking of awesome stuff, that Tyrant missile cruiser is looking siiiick AF! It's awesome.

[PhoenixKnig]

Speaking of awesome stuff, that Tyrant missile cruiser is looking siiiick AF! It's awesome.

Thanks

[mr friendly guy]

I have a question about the video. The author thinks ideally a carrier should be purely to carry strike fighters and relies on other ships to protect it. I have very little knowledge of naval warfare so try not to kill me for this but here goes... while the US certain deploys carriers like this with battle groups, don't Russian carriers have the ability to operate somewhat independent of battle groups due to the fact they don't have the cash to create that many ships to accompany the carrier? If that's true, then doesn't that sort of run counter to his narrative that sci fi ships should sort of match the functions of modern naval ships if SOME modern naval ships are designed with different duties to those he thinks they should do.

[Imperial528]

As far as classifying starships goes I got the sense that he follows a role-leads-to-design convention for what he ultimately ascribed to narrative desire. E.g. he believes that strictly noncombatant or reluctant combatant carrier designs are more narrative interesting even if they are not necessarily built that way for doctrinal or technological reasons the way surface carriers are.

Which is valid enough in his own works but I did get the feeling that he projects this desire onto other works where the reasons he uses to justify this convention do not hold water.

For clarification of my earlier post, I was agreeing with his specific point that Star Destroyer=/=DD in space, rather than the entire video.

[ACupOfDarjeeling]

I know this is a rather abrupt change in the conversation, from the debate of classifications of ships and the like, but I'm rather curious as to what Fractal's take on the Vengeance-class would be. Or any of your takes on the Vengeance, actually, seeing as it's a ship we never really knew much about before the Legends Decision happened.

[evillejedi]

I can't speak for fractal, but Here's something I've had on the back burner for a while, that is very unfinished that might give you an idea of how weaponry might be arranged. The gun batteries shown here are the same size and shape as the Assertors primary batteries, all the guns have a clear forward alpha arc and the reactor space should be enough to power this number of weapons, though it would not handle anywhere near the secondaries, ion canons and the axial laser and other weapons. Other than on the hull trench there really isn't clearance or room for more large gunnery, so point defense systems or missile batteries might be the option in the forward hull. the wings could support another battery, but in this case they are on the underside, there isn't enough thickness to stack them top and bottom.

https://imgur.com/a/MykU8Ua

[fractalsponge1]

I will say that I find the Vengeance to be a very attractive ship, but I find it hard to believe that it is a very efficient ship. In many respects it seems to be doubling down on speed and firepower and maybe hangar capacity (do we have a decent reference of that at all?) rather than durability or sustained power output like Executor, but without the sheer size of Executor to make up for it. Though the size may have changed... I vaguely remembering it being in the 10-12km range, with almost zero depth so barely any reactor volume. So particularly bad for the surface area/power ratio. Wouldn't be surprised if it had true destroyer acceleration though. O-class battlecruiser concept - wouldn't want one in a slugging match, but probably terrifying for destroyers.

[evillejedi]

I originally thought it was 12km as well, however more recent books put it at 19km, which looking back at the size of the Arc Hammer next to it in cutscenes is a possibility, but 12.9KM is the number I always had for it. I would also add that it would be terrifying to anything that wasn't prepared, essentially a first strike or bust. Given that there are multiple ships similar in Dark Empire with varying profiles I would hazard that it is a hull form that has different classes based off the same principle.

[Abacus]

@Fractal

I was going through the battlecruisers again and happened to wonder: which is the more powerful -- that Procurator-class (or Procurator II as you likened it in a comment on your website) or the Allegiance-class? They both seem to be in a similar role, but judging by weapon emplacements, it seems as if the Procurator-class outguns the Allegiance by a fair margin.

[Galvatron]

I will say that I find the Vengeance to be a very attractive ship,

Will you model it? I always wanted to see a properly textured Vengeance.

[Elheru Aran]

I will say that I find the Vengeance to be a very attractive ship,

Will you model it? I always wanted to see a properly textured Vengeance.

As opposed to the low poly flying sheet of glass the Jedi Knight FMV's rendered it as?

[ACupOfDarjeeling]

I will say that I find the Vengeance to be a very attractive ship, but I find it hard to believe that it is a very efficient ship. In many respects it seems to be doubling down on speed and firepower and maybe hangar capacity (do we have a decent reference of that at all?) rather than durability or sustained power output like Executor, but without the sheer size of Executor to make up for it. Though the size may have changed... I vaguely remembering it being in the 10-12km range, with almost zero depth so barely any reactor volume. So particularly bad for the surface area/power ratio. Wouldn't be surprised if it had true destroyer acceleration though. O-class battlecruiser concept - wouldn't want one in a slugging match, but probably terrifying for destroyers.

I'm rather sad to say that the only images I could find of the Vengeance in its entirety are both non-official. The first comes from the Thrawn's Revenge mod for Empire at War. The other comes from an Eckhartsladder video on the ship- which was actually thing that reminded me the Vengeance actually existed at all, really.

I'll keep looking, see if I can any other attempts at a full-body shot.

[fractalsponge1]

Allegiance getting a redux version with visible PD guns

[Crossroads Inc.]

Nice!
tasty tasty PD guns! Always a plus!