StarDestroyer.Net BBS

It is well known that nearly all guns on an ISD are on the "top" and that normally when needed, an ISD will simply 'roll' over to present it's guns to a ship that tries to come up from behind or undernieth.

However, If you had a siezable and powerful that was FASTER then an ISD in all respects, that could move and keep pace with an ISD so that no matter how fast it tried to 'roll' the ship would always keep pace, could you not simply 'park' yourself and blow away an ISD with impunity from the bottom?

How can you have a ship that is that much faster than an ISD and more powerful than it is? Those things roll VERY quickly.

Master of Ossus wrote:How can you have a ship that is that much faster than an ISD and more powerful than it is? Those things roll VERY quickly.

Bah, It need not be "More" powerful, I am simply saying faster, perhaps with one of those "Inertialess" drives so it can continue moving whil staying dirctly under an ISD.

And, yes, ISD's are VERY fast, the point of this 'what if' is that you would have a ship faster.

I think there are atleast some guns on the bottom, especially around the hanger. Also I think the main role of the fighters is to keep people from doing just that.

One of the key things about space warfare is that the traditional advantage of height is useless and in fact impossible to have, what with there not being a true up and down (unless your fighting in low orbit as in Episode 3) This would mean that the ingrained idea amongst us that being above a foe is a good thing would not be important to a space fleet, so star destroyers would find it actually advantagous to be under a foe in a line battle.

Your idea of hiding below a SD would likely work, as SDs appear to have very poor maneuverability from what we see in Empire Strike Back (they are bloody big after all) The problem would be that firstly the SD would have to be on its own as another SD or smaller escort frigates would simply blow you away and that you would have to survive the approach.

Also the SD could possibly do a short hyperspace jump to get out of the trouble spot.

A Corellian Gunship may be able to keep pace and has a big proton tube load.

You know what a foolproof way to screw an ISD is? Have a bigger, more powerful ship that's captained by a competant commander. Also, having more than one ship that together outgun the ISD. Those seem about the only guaranteed ways to screw an ISD.

The problem i see with this scenario is, that if the opponent for your ISD comes from the same technological base, you have to sacrifice one thing to get the other.

If you want to be fast enough to run circles around the ISD, you have to sacrifice mass, what means probably armor, if not shield- and firepower, in which case you can't expect to hurt the ISD and if the ISD gets a lucky hit you're done. Missiles might be the great equalizer as might be turbolasers charged up for some time (like the heavy guns of a Munificent), but even those are only effective in a quick strike and not for any kind of prolonged battle.

The ISD can keep pouring on angular momentum until it's spinning like a top. The only limiting factor would be its structural ability to resist the angular momentum from tearing itself apart.

Considering the linear acceleration values an ISD can withstand due to the strong materials from which its superstructure is constructed, and the gravitational manipulation fields of some sort that reduce the stresses and/or hold it together.. an ISD can probably spin pretty darn quick, given time to build up said spin.


Whatever the case, we know an ISD can direct some firepower downward. The opening scene of the first Star Wars movie to come out shows turbolaser fire originating from the underside of an ISD.
Furthermore, the guns in the brim trench can depress downward (that's the purpose of the notches along the edges of the wedge).

There's also its complement of fighter craft, including TIE fighters, interceptors, and perhaps most relevant in this case.. bombers.

For all we know ISD's actually do have those bizarre Hangar guns that the Venators have got. Either to keep stuff out of that bottom pocket or for ground pounding or who knows what.

Thing is, ISD's don't seem to LIKE doing much at high speeds. They're fast in theory, but we've never really seen them move very quickly in combat. Neither Venators or ISDs like to blast past at a few kilometers per second or anything. They're moving really quickly all things considered, but it wouldn't be impossible at all to more than match the speeds they've exhibited in combat.

Also, fighters here are again the issue. ISDs have fighters so they're never 'alone' essentially. However, from our Fighter versus Capship thread it's more or less stated as fact that fighter's can't hurt a military ship with full shields. Your vessel could carry some fast snubfighters as well to help exploit this though. The ISD would want to angle it's shields down to combat you, leaving the back face on the top more weakly shielded, allowing your bombers to drop some precision torps, possibly messing stuff up.

You also want to make sure you're big enough not to get knocked around by an ISD's hangar tractor array, but not so big that the trench guns can hit you. Something below and partially behind--just a little--would be the best way to avoid an ISD's counter-fire.

You don't need an inertialess drive for that. You just need quality maneuvering jets. SW ships aren't designed for this, but there's nothign saying you couldn't make one.

Hmmm... Interesting ideas all around. Does anyone have calcs for just how quickly am ISD can turn/roll? Also, what the upper limits of their tractor beams are in terms of moving other ships?

Also, has there ever been a case of a "Kicking in the butt" sneak attack where a large warships hops out of HS right behind the main engines of an ISD, lets loose with a heavy salvo to try and disable it, and zip away?

Not quite, but at the Battle of Ciutric 2 Vics dropped out of hyperspace behind the Reckoning, thanks to the gravity well created by the Interdictor cruiser Binder, and hit it with a full salvo of warheads. This didn't destroy it outright, but the 2 Vics took it down eventually.

As far as I'm aware an ISD has 60 TL and 60 IC turrets as secondary armament after the heavy guns. There's nothing anywhere about distribution of the like we've seen with the Lucrehulk's, but I'd guess that between 20 and 30 of each of these weapons loadouts would be concentrated on the vessels lower plane.

Crossroads wrote:

Hmmm... Interesting ideas all around. Does anyone have calcs for just how quickly am ISD can turn/roll? Also, what the upper limits of their tractor beams are in terms of moving other ships?

Check the main site I seem to recall that a calc was done on the Tyrants "turn" in TESB. As for the tractors beams there's no way to no for sure first you would have to the mass and accelerative capabilities of the target to generate the force. Then estimate the strength of the tractoring ships structural bracings and tensor fields. From the films and EU though we know that its not something that you try with a vessel approaching your own mass. Generaly tractors are only used on much smaller vessels that are often already disabled.


Also, has there ever been a case of a "Kicking in the butt" sneak attack where a large warships hops out of HS right behind the main engines of an ISD, lets loose with a heavy salvo to try and disable it, and zip away?

Well the problem with that is your already talking about a vessel that must outclass an ISD, because an ISD doesn't have sufficent firepower to take out another ISD with a single salvo. It would take a not insignificant amount of time to overload its heat sink capacity. On top of which the would see you coming, as you have to decelerate of a long distance, never mind there hyperwave sensor with a range of several light days. Finally looking at the Clone Wars cartoon, jump in on top of an enemy is a good way to die in a post jump collision.

The only time such a tactic was truly effective was in Dark Empire win the Liberator bushwacked the Allegiances task group over Mon Calamari. That only work because: 1. the Allegiance and her escorts were transmitting high band hyperwave signal to Byss, and couldn't see the Rebels comming. 2. The ships all had their ships down, and weren't even at battle stations. 3. The rebels were only able to intercept the task group because, they gave themselves away by transmitting those hyperwave signals to Byss.

So, yes its possible but that was a very unique situation. That was only made possible by the Emperor's insistance on watching the Mon Cal's destruction.

This idea reminds me of those Bugs Bunny cartoons where Bugs stays behind Elmer Fudd so that Elmer can't see him, and he uses SuperSpeed Toon movement to stay behind Elmer even when Elmer does a quick 180. The geometry of the situation automatically means that you must have far greater maneuverability than the target to pull this off.

Given the screen evidence you're better off pulling a Solo and landing a ship ON the ISD, sawing through the shields and hull in a very specific area, or just clamping a gigantic freighter-sized directional weapon to it.

Crossroads Inc. wrote:It is well known that nearly all guns on an ISD are on the "top" and that normally when needed, an ISD will simply 'roll' over to present it's guns to a ship that tries to come up from behind or undernieth.

However, If you had a siezable and powerful that was FASTER then an ISD in all respects, that could move and keep pace with an ISD so that no matter how fast it tried to 'roll' the ship would always keep pace, could you not simply 'park' yourself and blow away an ISD with impunity from the bottom?

You’d need to be able to move your ship sideways faster as the ISD can roll, it must be faster since your ship is making a cricle around the target. That would require an enormous advantage in maneuverability and a freedom of moment which is quite unlikely to exist in a battle. Probuabbly any ship which could pull off that kind of constant sideways sliding would be too small to acutally take advantage of the situation.

what about using sucicde bombers, or droids around the size of a corvette to do your idea, but just latch on to the reactor and detonate?

Aren't there guns on the lower surface of the ISD? I recall the hanger has a few guns lining the sides. Further more, aside from ramming, I doubt a smaller ship can withstand hits from the trench guns which as many noted can depress low enough to hit ships there.

The only weakness I can recall is the rear. As for the Reckoning, I believe half her shields were down and the VSDs dropped by the unshielded side and pounded her to pieces.

Oh, for....

If you want to screw with an ISD, do what the rebels did

Stick a massive explosive into a shipping crate, insert it into a shipment going to a stardestroyer via a shuttle you stole, and blow up the explosive on the inside.

(Ref: X-wing series Cut Scence)

end of ISD

^ Funny, I thought of that scene while reading this thread, too. You wouldn't even need a "special experimental explosive" to frag the whole Destroyer like in the game, even a nuke would cause all kinds of hell.

That's because the inside of an ISD is not super heavy armored like the exterior.

Blowing something like that on the outside will just damage the paint, nothing more

Another way to screw with an ISD would be a horde of Magpulse Torpedoes to disable it's weapons systems, then just pound on it with Ion Cannons

Aside from the trench guns (which have twice been noted as being able to depress downward), there is significant firepower on the ventral side of an Imperator.

I remember a cutscene from one of the Rogue Squadron games. Two ISDs were bombing Ralltiir with guns that looked like they were situated in the hangar bay.

Well, I think by now that settles things, at this point it would take more effort to try and "screw" an ISD my way, then good old fasion brute force, or just being sneaky.

I'll let the thread wander where it may, but my question is answered.

Perhaps tractor and repulsor beams could be used to prevent the opponent from rolling. Or one could target the thrusters and engines with projectiles or ion cannons, making it unwise to have shield holes there for the thrust to leave. That, or some sort of weapon that more directly prevents thruster operation, however that might be done.

what prevent the ISD from using it's hyperdrive for tactical repositioning?

Some gunships, like the Warrior, are made to take advantage of speed and maneuverability to harass larger ships. It's by no means a foolproof win.