ISD. A serious design flaw.

[JodoForce]

Well, I stand by my belief that the ISD HTL configuration is no design flaw in fleet actions in the SW universe--i.e. I don't think you need to retreat to saying things like 'it wasn't meant for that'...

Why not let's try to dream up some fleet combat situations that can defeat an ISD where similar ship with different HTL placements would have won?

Here's some scenarios I thought of for a start:

1. 2 Mon Cals microjump into kilometres under an ISD's belly and start shooting right away. By the time the ISD turns around to face them with its dorsal weapons it has lost its fighter bays, the main reactor is offline and can't power the HTLs... (let's assume the ISD could have taken on the 2 Mon Cals from the dorasl side and won--I'm not too familiar with ship power comparisons )

Say the ISD has 50% of its HTLs relocated to the ventral side. Unless it can penetrate a Mon Cal's shields and disable its weapons before it has turned its ventral side out of their fire, it's not going to make any difference to the outcome, the ISD is going to be just as damaged after the roll, and if it hadn't already lost main power it would have 50% less firepower to engage for the rest of the conflict. And now it may not be able to engage the two Mon Cals even if it had got wind of their arrival and pointed the right side at them. (2 cases, 1 win for ISD, 1 win for modified ISD)

2. An fleet of ISDs is in fleet action firing full broadsides against some fleet or other, then a big ship jumps to a position under one ISD and starts firing; the LTLs and MTLs can't deal with it and ventral shields are starting to fail. If the ISD rolls to engage that ship its belly would come under even heavier fire from the other side.

How would a modified ISD have fared?
It dispatches the ship on its ventral side but the battle is lost anyway due to the reduced firepower available to the whole fleet on the dorsal side.

Actually the original ISD could have dealt with the situation by rolling so that it faces its two targets with port and starboard and thus having 50% HTL firepower on the ship on the far side. (1 case, 1 win for ISD, 0 for modified ISD)

3. A swarm of Corvettes microjump to under an ISD's belly and start firing. They somehow manage to stay on the ventral side of the ISD and it is destroyed, while if only 30% if its HTLs were available on the ventral side it would have defeated them.

Of course the modified ISD wins this one. But if two ISDs had been present against double the number of corvettes the ISDs would have won by having the two ISDs' dorsal guns pointing in opposite directions and protecting each other's underside. Having one ISD around by itself was a bad idea in the first place. (2 cases, 1 win each)

So its 3 for the original ISD and 2 for an ISD with modified HTL placements. And 1 'win' is for a situation that should have been avoided in the first place.

Your turn, Frank?

[Master of Ossus]

That's the point, though. IT IS NOT POSSIBLE to design a group of smaller ships to have the same firepower as a volumetrically equally-sized larger ship in SW, so long as the larger ship is of approximately equivalent technological development. The technology DOES NOT WORK that way.

You're overlooking the manuverabilty advantage of smaller ships when abusing an overlyfocused weapons configuration. And claiming the ISD would have backup is pointless too because the opponents would have backup as well.

I'm not overlooking anything. A smaller ship is not a threat to a larger ship, except in substantially larger numbers. If your enemy already has greater resources than you do in a battle, there's almost no way to win in the first place. I'm not saying that the ISD requires backup to defeat a large fleet of smaller ships, I'm saying that the ISD's weapons placement is designed for a specific role, and you are ignoring its design specifications while calling it a design flaw.

It could have longer range weapons like a Victory, or better shielding systems like Mon Cals that would let them fight just as long as a bigger ship.

But the light Mon Calamari cruisers are NOT AS POWERFUL as an ISD. In fact, they lose fairly badly to ISD's in straight slugging matches, even if the ISD has a thirty second handicap. The ISD's are not as powerful as the heavy Mon Calamari Cruisers, but those ships are actually LARGER than the ISD! The same is true for a Victory class star destroyer. It's not really a threat to an ISD, in large part because the ISD is so much larger. I'm not even sure that three Victory class ships could defeat an ISD.

So, how does this make the ISD's weapons placement a design flaw?

Did I ever say that the ISD had a major design flaw in its weapon configuration?? NO.

I only stated what I would want on my ship and have only been defending the design for debate purposes. [/quote]

Okay, then, WHY would you want your ship to have such a diffuse weapons arrangement? It would not make sense in the SW universe, since smaller ships do not threaten ISD's.

[Master of Ossus]

Was it a design flaw that made Plate-mail armor worn in the Middle Ages vulnerable to high-caliber firearms?

Eh...not the best analogy...I'd say wooden ships not being able to sink ironclads, as it happened in that time period and not centuries later.

EDIT: Unless you mean the first high-caliber firearms made near the end of the Middle Ages...

I did mean the first high-caliber firearms (the earliest weapons were up around .60 CALIBER!

[Lord Pounder]

It seems that in fanfics ISDs often work in pairs, with their dorsal side pointing in opposite directions when they are expecting the unexpected, but pointing to the same side when the enemy is coming from a certain direction.

Fanfics rank where in the degree of whats canon?

[RTN]

It seems that in fanfics ISDs often work in pairs, with their dorsal side pointing in opposite directions when they are expecting the unexpected, but pointing to the same side when the enemy is coming from a certain direction.

Fanfics rank where in the degree of whats canon?

Well, Saxton seems to hold them fairly highly or at least uses them to fillin gaps. I have noticed his a great many of his pictures for new stardestroyer and Mon Cal classes are from the comic books. As I have 2 or 3 comics myself I can't help but wonder if they were supposed to be new classes or if comic artists (talented as they may be) just don't care about specific starship details so long as the reader can tell its a stardestroyer ect.

[RTN]

It seems that in fanfics ISDs often work in pairs, with their dorsal side pointing in opposite directions when they are expecting the unexpected, but pointing to the same side when the enemy is coming from a certain direction.

Even if they aren't cannon enough to support that we did see two stardestroyers in one of the movies try to cut off the Falcon's escape. This was the time that the pursuing stardestroyer had to make an exceptionally impressive roll rate to avoid collision with the incoming two.

[nightmare]

IIRC, the turrets can elevate.

A full 90 degrees, I believe.

I meant the turrets themselves. They can raise up to fire above each other. Was it His Divine Shadow that presented that? It should be somewhere around here.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Well, Saxton seems to hold them fairly highly or at least uses them to fillin gaps. I have noticed his a great many of his pictures for new stardestroyer and Mon Cal classes are from the comic books. As I have 2 or 3 comics myself I can't help but wonder if they were supposed to be new classes or if comic artists (talented as they may be) just don't care about specific starship details so long as the reader can tell its a stardestroyer ect.

Some are ambigious.

But when some ISDs a la the movies are shown (DE), and than a similiar but consistently different vessel is drawn (Alleagance) I do not think it is unreasonable.

[Frank Hipper]

IIRC, the turrets can elevate.

A full 90 degrees, I believe.

I meant the turrets themselves. They can raise up to fire above each other. Was it His Divine Shadow that presented that? It should be somewhere around here.

If that's true, several of the points I'm trying to make are pretty much moot. Especially as regards fore and aft fire.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

I meant the turrets themselves. They can raise up to fire above each other. Was it His Divine Shadow that presented that? It should be somewhere around here.

I'm interested in seeing the appropriate evidence for an extendable superfiring system for the ISD octuples. That idea sounds cute (and would afford about 10-20 more degrees of elevation arc for the HTLs,) but there are technical problems, versus say a Fixed Superfiring turret configuration.

Sure, now you can retract the turret to the lowest (and presumably most secure) position before a hyperjump. Beyond that, it is hard to see any advantage. The Extend-Retract device reduces structural integrity when the turret is in the Raised Position and is another failure point. And how does go from Retract to Extend. Is it some kind of pneumatic system, so the gun goes "hiss" and goes straight up? Or is it some kind of slow, screwlike system so the gun has to turn several rounds counterclockwise before going to the raised position?

[vakundok]

The elevation of the turrets is possible, and maybe can be reasoned as well (the turrets can be elevated to superfiring position either to the front or to the rear), but it did not happen in the movies and was not described in the novelizations.

Without elevating turrets the ISD has to loose some maneuverability and show larger than minimal target surface to the enemy. (With a larger surface of the tower too, which seems to be the most sensitive part of the ship, especially to ion cannons.) It is far from optimal, so it is a flaw.

One thing seems to be forgotten:
Energy redistribution can be done far more quickly than ammunition redistribution. So, you can build a ship with more weapons than the generators could support and simply leave the currently unused weapons unpowered. So if your target is moving down (toward your ventral side)you will be able to simply transfer the power from the aftmost dorsal turrets to the foremost ventral turrets. As a maximum, you will loose one volley of the turrets switched off. No need to roll, no 30 seconds. What do you think about it?

About the "ventral side facing" pair of ISDs:
It can be extremely dangereous if an enemy manages to position itself between the two ships.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

I don't remember any evidence of superfiring turrets anywhere either, let alone EXTENDABLE superfiring turrets. Anyway...

Only a bit of acceleration is lost. At 10 degrees down, you are retaining Cosine 10deg = about 0.98 of your original forward acceleration. Similarily, there is only a slightly increased area of tower exposure - it is so big that I doubt a little bit more would hurt. Plus coincidentally you covered the hangar and the reactor from ion hits.

At worst it is a compromise. Warships make compromises all the time. They are not necessarily flaws. Is a battleship's inability to maintain 100% end-on fire a flaw? No, just a compromise. The Richelieu class can maintain 100% end-on fire, AND 100% broadside fire, but it has NO rear fire

As for adding more turrets, well, who wouldn't want that. Let's add 200 turrets while we are at it, so that half of them can be knocked out and I can still reroute and maintain full fire by picking 8 or so from the 100 that still works.

The point is that there is a cost-benefit analysis to be drawn here. We don't know how much a extra turret and its associated support equipment takes to install. How much space? How much bracing that is intruding onto the Engineering Compartment (seeing that current HTLs are mounted right over the Engineering Space along with the Tower) How much reduction in the ship's overall integrity from the extra large mounting. And if nothing else, how much more MONEY, ever the universal concern?

You balance that with the advantages. Is the money worth saving X seconds in a roll against enemies that probably aren't a threat anyway? Should we instead spend extra money on power generation and distribution so that the extra turrets can also be powered? If we do that, why don't we put those new POWERED turrets all on the dorsal side, so they can be more concentrated? And so on...

The ventral facing each other ...well, it depends on how far they are apart. As the spacing gets less, the enemy that gets past becomes less significant. If worst comes to worst, they can merely CRUSH the small enemy between themselves using a coordinated application of vector thrust.

[vakundok]

Only a bit of acceleration is lost. At 10 degrees down, you are retaining Cosine 10deg = about 0.98 of your original forward acceleration. Similarily, there is only a slightly increased area of tower exposure - it is so big that I doubt a little bit more would hurt. Plus coincidentally you covered the hangar and the reactor from ion hits.

As a statement, it is untrue. It depends on whether you can compensate (without further loss on the thrust) for the (now) vertical component of the thrust and/or moment of rotation or not. If not, the result will be an interesting maneuver, but not a forward acceleration.
10 degrees, you said. http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/Xbradford/ISD_Guns.jpg It is hihgly questionable if the ion turret can fire front at all. (50 degs is top, not front.)
However, let's say 10 degrees (or 15 to really cover the bulb) is enough. It is enough to fire on a completely non-moving (downwards) opponent. If the barrels can be elevated up to 90 degrees, the most effective turn would be around 50 degrees providing the line of sight toward the enemy between 15 and 85 degrees.

At worst it is a compromise. Warships make compromises all the time. They are not necessarily flaws. Is a battleship's inability to maintain 100% end-on fire a flaw? No, just a compromise. The Richelieu class can maintain 100% end-on fire, AND 100% broadside fire, but it has NO rear fire.

Does a Richelieu have to maneuver NOT to face with an enemy with its rear? If usually not (designed for attack), it is a compromise. If usually yes (designed for retreat), it is a flaw.

As for adding more turrets, well, who wouldn't want that. Let's add 200 turrets while we are at it, so that half of them can be knocked out and I can still reroute and maintain full fire by picking 8 or so from the 100 that still works.
The point is that there is a cost-benefit analysis to be drawn here. We don't know how much a extra turret and its associated support equipment takes to install. How much space? How much bracing that is intruding onto the Engineering Compartment (seeing that current HTLs are mounted right over the Engineering Space along with the Tower) How much reduction in the ship's overall integrity from the extra large mounting. And if nothing else, how much more MONEY, ever the universal concern?
You balance that with the advantages. Is the money worth saving X seconds in a roll against enemies that probably aren't a threat anyway?

(Like fighters to the Death Star or speeders to AT-ATs? )
Yes, of course, it is true completely. But saying that the cost of 8 additional turrets with power distribution, crew, but without generators is considerable to the already extremely high costs of an ISD ...

The ventral facing each other ...well, it depends on how far they are apart. As the spacing gets less, the enemy that gets past becomes less significant. If worst comes to worst, they can merely CRUSH the small enemy between themselves using a coordinated application of vector thrust.

Crushing? During combat? With the opposite side where the real enemy is? Risky, I think. A corvette allways has the chance maybe a (rolled) Nebulon-B has it too.

[JodoForce]

About the "ventral side facing" pair of ISDs:
It can be extremely dangereous if an enemy manages to position itself between the two ships.

As I understand it the manoeuvre is such that one ISD is following the other behind its tail, not under its belly.

[vakundok]

JodoForce: Thanks! I was wrong.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

You can of course, do thrust vectoring in an "off-axis" move. In that case, it depends on the thrust baffle's vectoring efficiency.

What I was thinking is just pitch down ten relative to target. The thrust is not VECTORED, but just flows straight back, so there is no thrust loss. You can just chase a target until (if you are gaining on it) you get into a position where your guns can bear even if you are "level" with the enemy ship, like this:

Me----------------------You

So I pitch down and maneuver, until it becomes like this:
---------You
Me------

Hopefully, this diagram would actually come out right when I post it. Notice that I've caught up, now looking up at you at a angle more suited for dorsal gun shooting, so I can level out.

You are right that the heavy ion cannon can be a problem. On the other hand, I'm thinking (I think most people are) thinking of ISD-II scenarios. You are of course right to try the target within the center of your fire arc, but my idea was to try and reduce the other disadvantages, so I tried to JUST bring it in within arc.

I see that you've agreed that if Richelieu isn't REALLY crippled by a lack of rear-firing capability most of the time, it can be considered a compromise. Similarly, if the ISD would rarely be critically threatened by the lack of a ventral HTL capability, it can be considered a design compromise. It would certainly SEEM that the KDY engineers thought it would be a good compromise, seeing that they apparently pulled off the relatively heavy ventral firing guns off the ISD-I when they switched to the -II model. If ventral firing was a real necessity, even if they didn't add guns to the bottom, I doubt they'd take away guns that were already on the original.

As for the additional "dummy" turrets, the point is that we do not know exactly. You will notice that nobody ever tried it. Not even one set put on any location in the hull AFAIK. One would think if the price in terms of cost, structure, reliability...etc were acceptable, at least we'd see some ships with this kind of stuff. Hell, a second set of HTLs means one can alternate using them, allowing more time for them to cool down ala the Hapan revolving gun scheme. This would probably increase the life of the guns. That's good, right? But no one ever does it.

[vakundok]

I did not criticize the lack of the ventral turrets. It would require knowledge I do not have. (Are there medium ships maneuverable enough to be able to stay constantly under the ISD or not?)
I criticized that the main turrets are not superfiring (and the main turrets of the ISD II canot even fire directly forward).

Without elevating turrets the ISD has to loose some maneuverability and show larger than minimal target surface to the enemy. (With a larger surface of the tower too, which seems to be the most sensitive part of the ship, especially to ion cannons.) It is far from optimal, so it is a flaw.

Problem 1:
Thrust vectoring in space is not enough because it causes rotation as a side effect. Since the ISDs use maneuvering thrusters but have no visible thrusters to compensate for the rotation (I think they would be most effective on the forward ventral surface), we can assume that the ISDs capability to go off-axis is extremely limited or non-existent. It means that the ISD II canot follow a target and fire on it with the main guns at all.
This problem appears only when the enemy retreats, so an ISD II is very- very vulnerable to tactics based on retreating.

Problem 2:
At 15 degrees, the ISD will show app. 74% larger target surface. (I counted the horizontal surface as three times the vertical: T*cos15+3T*sin15=1.74T It is rough and I may be incorrect, of course.)

These problems would be easily eliminated by superfiring (to the front) main turrets, and the technology exists (see the superfiring three barelled turrets of the ISD I in front of the superstructure).

The dummy turrets are only fiction. I asked whether it would be a good idea or not.
Besides, the theory that ISDs roll and pitch down in combat is not supported by the movies (the only one I saw upside down (maybe rolled) was a different subtype).

[vakundok]

To the ventral turbolasers:
What happens if a frigate manages to position itself directly (as close as possible) under an ISD? If the ISD rolls it will collide to the frigate, which is risky, especially if fighters and other hostile ships are nearby. If doesn't, the frigate will remain largely unharmed.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

Certainly in the novels they do, and 3D maneuvering is a part of every space vessel. If the Captains can't use it, it is their tactical stupidity. The best design cannot compensate for tactical stupidity.

Well, Dreadnaughts DO have maneuvering thrusters (Hutt Gambit) so I can't see why the ISD would not. You will notice my strategy requires NO thrust vectoring, just a usage of both the horizontal and vertical planes to "dive" down into the ideal attack position, which is ventral and up the enemy's ass - about as good as any Captain could ask for.

The ISD's length is 1600m, its width is about 880m and its height is about 455m (scaling from the EGVV diagram.)

A frontal aspect is width times height: 880*455.

Find a picture or diagram of a Star Destroyer side view (plenty of those floating on the web. Cut the Star Destroyer out as closely as you can. I cropped mine accurate to a few pixels - I used Paint.

My original picture (unrotated) had a height of 181 pixels. After a 15 degree rotation of the Star Destroyer, I cropped out the space around the Star Destroyer again. It blew up to 271 pixels in height. Only 50% larger, and a Star Destroyer is already so big that does it matter?

Yes, we all know superfiring would solve THIS problem. But just because superfiring works for a small gun turret does not mean it'll work with those big behemoths, with their much larger recoil and support requirements.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

To the ventral turbolasers:
What happens if a frigate manages to position itself directly (as close as possible) under an ISD? If the ISD rolls it will collide to the frigate, which is risky, especially if fighters and other hostile ships are nearby. If doesn't, the frigate will remain largely unharmed.

Easy: Execute a sliding maneuver. Coordinate thrust vectoring and maneuvering thrusters. Sideslip while you roll in a fast, sudden maneuver. By the time the frigate Captain catches on, you'd be in a position to blast it.

Not that the Captain shouldn't be punished for letting so large a ship get so close

[RTN]

To the ventral turbolasers:
What happens if a frigate manages to position itself directly (as close as possible) under an ISD? If the ISD rolls it will collide to the frigate, which is risky, especially if fighters and other hostile ships are nearby. If doesn't, the frigate will remain largely unharmed.

Easy: Execute a sliding maneuver. Coordinate thrust vectoring and maneuvering thrusters. Sideslip while you roll in a fast, sudden maneuver. By the time the frigate Captain catches on, you'd be in a position to blast it.

Not that the Captain shouldn't be punished for letting so large a ship get so close

Correct me if I'm wrong, but no one has established an ISD can slide sideways. Forward and backward, easy, simple inertia left over from previous movement. Thrust-Vectoring, easy, it has to turn somehow. But I still see no method to propell an ISD to the side laterally.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but no one has established an ISD can slide sideways. Forward and backward, easy, simple inertia left over from previous movement. Thrust-Vectoring, easy, it has to turn somehow. But I still see no method to propell an ISD to the side laterally.

It is within technical capability of Maneuvering Thrusters and Main Thruster Thrust Vectoring. If you don't like that solution, you can also execute a sudden deceleration, and then pitch down hard. That also works.

[JodoForce]

To execute a 'sudden deceleration' you need engines as large as the ones on the back, but at the front

[JodoForce]

Interesting idea really--IF a frigate can get this close, the ISD is pretty much toast, unless it hypers away then returns somewhere further away, or something. Without the ability to roll, any other conventional manoeuvres you can think of can easily be matched by the frigate.

The same would apply for any enemy ship up to almost the same size and manoeuvring class as the ISD!

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

To execute a 'sudden deceleration' you need engines as large as the ones on the back, but at the front

IIRC, the ISDs at Endor moved around the moon. They had to have decelerated from their movement sometime, which implies a reverse thrust ability. Unless you think they slowly turned around and engaged reverse thrust. And Drysso did order a All Back Full maneuver in Bacta War.

Probably the baffles arced the reaction particles enough for reverse thrust or something.

What is important in a world with 70km/s/s maneuvers is probably suddeness. Even if the enemy is more maneuverable, a sudden, 70km/s delta-v on an enemy that's just sitting on your bottom should throw him off.

The ship can also risk the maneuver and just roll REGARDLESS of the frigate. In a battle environment, if the ISD is under threat from collision, so is the frigate. Just play a game of chicken. This game favors the larger ship, and the enemy captain would probably wimp out and take evasive action.