StarDestroyer.Net BBS

In the trailer for the next episode, you can see big rows of turbolasers lining the dorsal area in front of the command tower. This thing's packing, even without the ion cannon.

It occurs to me that Battle Droids act as if they probably haven't been wiped in a long time - indeed, like they probably aren't maintained as well as they ought to be, which we could chalk up to the inherent cheapness/stinginess of the Trade Federation. Which may also explain their bizarre behaviour.

Connor MacLeod wrote:It occurs to me that Battle Droids act as if they probably haven't been wiped in a long time - indeed, like they probably aren't maintained as well as they ought to be, which we could chalk up to the inherent cheapness/stinginess of the Trade Federation. Which may also explain their bizarre behaviour.

The numbers and loss rate also probably come into it. They're cranking out quadrillions or quintillions of droids and then losing them at an enormous rate and then throwing in the replacement droids. Given the general reliability of Star Wars tech and the size of the maintenance section needed to handle that many droids, it's not unbelievable that they're overloaded just handling serious damage and that routine maintenance for apparently functional droids gets pushed onto the back burner.

If this is the case, I wouldn't be surprised if the only memories that do get wiped are of those droids that have serious damage.

Ender wrote:I think scaling based off the windows on the Malevolence would be the best route to go down, I'm personally expecting a length in the 2-3 km range. That said, based off sizes ranging from 3.3 km - 6 km I'd estimate her power at 3e25 to 1e26 based off the IH. That's cruiser to battlecruiser range, but most estimates on the Lucrehulk put it in the low to mid 10^26 range.

I discontinued my satire thread over copyright concerns, but all the scans are still up on my imageshack page if someone wants to try scaling from those.

I tried by the windows.. its hard to get a solid image of the command pod thingy on top to scale by because its seen from an angle, but I come up with figures ranging from more than 2 km to somewhere around 4 km.. so unless I'm screwing up big somehow, I think the lower end estimates are reasonable. Not sure I'm inclined to believe the thing is much over 7-8 km myself, though, now.

Braedley wrote:If this is the case, I wouldn't be surprised if the only memories that do get wiped are of those droids that have serious damage.

I'd have thought droids with serious damage would just be recycled. The rate of production seen in AotC would seem to indicate that its faster to build than to repair.

Well they do recycle some parrts, (which is supposed to be why they fall apart so easily) but you can't rebuild all the parts.

(honestly though, the ability to cannibalize droids to rebuild or repair them is just another reason droids are probably better than clones. And it makes droid armies a bit more nasty.)

Going just by the card image, the Venator would be at least one third the size of the Malevolence. Then there's the Malevolence being built like a bulging cylinder with a massive stalk and command pod at the back. It's as big as several flotillas of Venators, at least. (Going by the mention of a flotilla being at least three ships, as said in an official episode commentary/rundown).

The HoloNet news wasn't too bad. It was interesting to hear. Of course the whole 8,12,17 is bullshit and I'm sure it was thrown in there to make light of everything. I cant' wait to see tonight's episode.

Gas Gophers? WTH are those supposed to be, outer space gooberfish?!

I call bullshit! But I like the Y-Wings.

Apparently the droids still can't shoot for shit, but most of the Republic Cruiser's shots seemed on target.

I saw the Malevolence up against those Venators.. the things look fricking huge. In fact I think Sean and I drastically underestimated the size of that thing (I didnt get a good look at the ep yet for any real scaling, but the benchmarks seemed to suggest that the ion cannon ring was a good fraction of a Venator's length.

And I rather liked the Clone medical facility.

VT-16 wrote:In the trailer for the next episode, you can see big rows of turbolasers lining the dorsal area in front of the command tower. This thing's packing, even without the ion cannon.

Thats an understatement. The thing seems to be literally BRISTLING with guns, and some of them look like they might be similar to the DBY-827s the Venators use.

Count Chocula wrote:Gas Gophers? WTH are those supposed to be, outer space gooberfish?!

They were not my favorite thing about the episode, but I do like how they didn't seem to take any particular interest in the ships. They didn't even seem to notice the ships, which was somewhat refreshing, considering that as soon as I saw them, I thought they would actually chase after the Y-wings

I call bullshit! But I like the Y-Wings.

As did I. And it was weird seeing non-Alliance pilots in those particular ships.

I hope we see a shot of these Y-wings undergoing maintenance somewhere, stripped of their outer shell, showing the "familiar" Y-wing.

From the original image in the guide I got between 4-4.4 km for malevolence, however I didn't realize that their were two Ion cannon spheres side saddle, so I greatly underestimated the girth of the vessel before ep2 showed up, it's also nice to see a solid engine shot of the vessel, I will look into using the engines as a measuring point from the providence engines (might use the same engines just in a larger array if it's built at the same yard) I would say some scenes it looks larger, but I especially liked the utter devastation just a few TL hits on the unshielded venators did, the impact fireballs were a good 200-300 m wide (compare to ROTS in the IH vs Venstar scene) and it took only 4 or 5 hits to slice the venstars in half.

The focus of the third episode is interesting, 60,000 clones in an outerrim hospital platform, the republic could have many deep space platforms scattered in remote systems to provide services in a sector (tractor tugged into orbit around some strategically useless rock or in open space anywhere). There really should be no reason that they should need to move anyone outside of a sector given the medical facilities that even a small vessel can provide unless it's a full scale abandonment of operations. I think the most interesting insight is that they still need large central hospital facilities even given the assignment of good sized dedicated medical vessels above backwater systems (medstar) as well as the novel but creepy interchangeability that clones give you in reassembling them in field hospitals and pushing them back into active duty. The only other explanation I can come up with is that the facility is very specialized for clones only (noting the Kamino that is there) which maybe explains why it doesn't have any other republic casualties. (and might indicate the long term focus of Dooku on eliminating all vestiges of the Kamino cloners)

I don't know if anything from the episode is really applicable to calculating lower limits on the clone forces deployed to that area of space, but given the lethality of weapons and tactics, as well as the risk of thousands of clones being killed on board a vessel in orbit (as seen repeatedly in ep2 and implied of past engagements), the number of wounded troopers seems like it would be of a much lower percentage than those that are fatalities. (our modern wars range from a ratio of 1 fatality for every 1.6 hospitalization wounded to about 1:10, given the on screen representation clones seem expendable and believe they are expendable which points to a very much high mortality.) Those that are not killed instantly and are carried off the battlefield probably have a pretty high recovery and redeployment rate in a very short turn around using just field medicine (days/weeks) given the advanced medical technology that even a company/squad medic has on their back. Even if their hospitalization casualty rates are 1-2%, comparable to US long term injury rates in WWII or vietnam (50% non hospital/50% hospital), 60,000 clones at any given time would indicate a minimum of 3-6 million active clones in the service territory of that hospital platform alone. This would be further compounded by decreased hospital stays due to bacta and ultra advanced surgery with non-rejectable cloneable bodyparts and infection control. Given what medstar showed us the field hospital in the RIMSOO was capable of essentially reassembling clones from scraps of others and reattaching limbs and handling severe trauma, with the frigate in orbit only providing extreme trauma care and bacta immersion for recovery.

I thought the series has been pretty decent so far. I always like seeing more big ships like the Malevolence in the SW universe, especially it playing a prominent role in this hunt the Bismarck like story. However it would sure be nice to see a Mandator or another large ship from the Republic or the Core worlds shoot it out with the Malevolence.

I also liked the Count Dooku line saying that the Clones are outnumbered a 100 to 1 in the first episode. With Quintillions of Battle Droids you got 1E16 Clone Troopers. That’s sure better than 3 million.

Count Chocula wrote:Gas Gophers? WTH are those supposed to be, outer space gooberfish?!

I call bullshit! But I like the Y-Wings.

She called 'em Gas Gulpers. They're Giant Space Manta Rays, not Gophers.

Call me crazy, but I loved the Nebulae scene. It gave everyone something to fly around and maneuver about so it wasn't just a straight shot. Plus it gave us some large space creatures. What was there NOT to love about that!

At least now we know the Malevolence is in excess of 5 kilometers long.

VT-16 wrote:At least now we know the Malevolence is in excess of 5 kilometers long.

How do you figure?

That Venator is in front of it, closer to the camera. I did a cheap copy paste to add Venators along the length of the Malevolent, and it takes more than five in a row to cover the whole length. It's over 5 km, easy.

VT-16 wrote:That Venator is in front of it, closer to the camera. I did a cheap copy paste to add Venators along the length of the Malevolent, and it takes more than five in a row to cover the whole length. It's over 5 km, easy.

I haven't seen the episode, but going by that screencap that Venator is definitely further away from the camera then the Malevolence man. For one the shots are partially obscured by the body of the Mal herself - note that the rain of fire starts on her belly instead of showering from all along the hull. Secondly we can clearly see the windows on the Mal, but the features of the Venator are obscured. Unless the Mal has massive viewports it is closer. Third look at the lighting - the Mal is occluding the light falling on the Venator. Mal is bright and well lit on the forward dorsal, falling into shadow as it goes aft and away. The Venator is in shadow except for the light from the explosions.

Trust me, the scene in motion shows the turbolaser bolts streaming down at an angle from the port batteries of the Malevolence. The Venator is closer to the camera.

Now I want a gif of this shot.

EDIT: Made gif.

VT-16 wrote:Trust me, the scene in motion shows the turbolaser bolts streaming down at an angle from the port batteries of the Malevolence. The Venator is closer to the camera.

Now I want a gif of this shot.

EDIT: Made gif.

The Venator is definately closer to the camera. Here's the video--watch it while you can. You can clearly see the batteries facing the camera firing down at an angle into the Venator, which is languishing in the foreground. It starts just after minute 2. A few seconds in you get to see the Malevolence's massive ion weapon behind a Venator, and the ship seems almost smaller than it, and you also get to see the Shadow of the Malevolence (that's the episode title, btw) fall across those three ships. It's huge.

That's a bigass ship

The scene immediately after the one VT-16 provided is alot closer up and with the Mal in the background with the ion ring, you can clearly see how huge it is relative to the ship. Half a kilometer to a kilometer (or more) in length for the ion cannon ring isn't unreasonable, which would suggest the ship is nearly 8 km to 14-15 km long.

I'm guessing those medical transports too, which look Corellian, are at least a couple hundred meters long, possibly longer.