Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

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Crazedwraith
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Re: Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

Post by Crazedwraith »

The Strange thing about the Lancer is that if you take its weaponry and use it to replace the Ions on the Carrack light cruiser. You get a much better platform for doing its job. Carracks are able to be able to keep pace with X-wings. And have turbolasers to help fight off capital ships.

Though generally Lancers were designed to defended Star Destroyers from fighter attack, you don't need to outrun fighters in that role. They should be coming to you.
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Re: Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

Post by Fingolfin_Noldor »

GA Thrawn's solution to the Lancer's vulnerability was to park them in space right next to the ISDs to serve as an escort. That way, no fighter could possibly approach any ISD without facing walls of fire, and highly accurate one at that.

Ultimately, starfighters are best hunted down with starfighters. But that does not preclude the possibility and necessity that ships must still have some degree of anti-starfighter protection, especially ships such as the Tectors.
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Re: Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

Post by bz249 »

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:GA Thrawn's solution to the Lancer's vulnerability was to park them in space right next to the ISDs to serve as an escort. That way, no fighter could possibly approach any ISD without facing walls of fire, and highly accurate one at that.

Ultimately, starfighters are best hunted down with starfighters. But that does not preclude the possibility and necessity that ships must still have some degree of anti-starfighter protection, especially ships such as the Tectors.
Yes but this way they are in the middle of capital ship vs capital ship combat, not the right place for an anti starfighter ship. I would expect horrible losses for the Lancers in standard linear battle. Escorts are not meant to be in the battleline and if they can not be next to the ISDs during a battle (the highest concentration of fighters) then they are mostly useless.
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Re: Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

Post by fractalsponge1 »

^Indeed.

How hard is it really to add 20 quad laser turrets onto a standard ISD or Tector/Allegiance/*-or Star* ship anyway? Must be cheaper than fielding a few starfighter squadrons if you're using them for point defense alone, and definitely cheaper than a whole Lancer.

For low-intensity convoy defense where a dedicated anti-fighter unit would probably be far more useful, you could probably get by with upgraded Customs Corvettes for that.
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Re: Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

Post by Fingolfin_Noldor »

bz249 wrote:Yes but this way they are in the middle of capital ship vs capital ship combat, not the right place for an anti starfighter ship. I would expect horrible losses for the Lancers in standard linear battle. Escorts are not meant to be in the battleline and if they can not be next to the ISDs during a battle (the highest concentration of fighters) then they are mostly useless.
Combined Arms warfare. Let's put it this way, if we went by your logic, there won't be much use of small cruisers and frigates and corvettes, which aren't much more survivable than a Lancer.

Smaller ships have always existed largely to complement the larger Star Destroyers and Star Cruisers and assist them when the fighting comes close.
fractalsponge1 wrote:How hard is it really to add 20 quad laser turrets onto a standard ISD or Tector/Allegiance/*-or Star* ship anyway? Must be cheaper than fielding a few starfighter squadrons if you're using them for point defense alone, and definitely cheaper than a whole Lancer.

For low-intensity convoy defense where a dedicated anti-fighter unit would probably be far more useful, you could probably get by with upgraded Customs Corvettes for that.
I think to be truly useful, one has to go with more than just 20 quad laser turrets, because the density of fire won't be as high. I would imagine that it is entirely possible, really. Why no one has done it, eludes me.
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Re: Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

Post by fractalsponge1 »

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:Combined Arms warfare. Let's put it this way, if we went by your logic, there won't be much use of small cruisers and frigates and corvettes, which aren't much more survivable than a Lancer.

Smaller ships have always existed largely to complement the larger Star Destroyers and Star Cruisers and assist them when the fighting comes close.
Well, if the logic fits... Seriously, given the disparities in durability and power generation, the only reasons a collection of corvettes would escape rapid destruction in a fight between star destroyers or better are : 1) they ran like hell out of effective range of the opposing capital ships, or 2) they're not worth the trouble to kill when there are more pressing targets to go around.

They are, of course, extremely useful convoy, raider, patrol, and low-intensity combat ships. That's more than enough reason to have them around, just not when the heavy metal comes out to play.
I think to be truly useful, one has to go with more than just 20 quad laser turrets, because the density of fire won't be as high. I would imagine that it is entirely possible, really. Why no one has done it, eludes me.
Yeah, how many quad turrets can you buy, emplace, and man, for the price and crew of a single Lancer? I'd wager quite a lot more than 20.
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Re: Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

Post by Patroklos »

It should also be remembered that the Lancer was developed specifically because of the hit and raid tactics of small vessels that the Rebels used. For the most part we don't find the Rebels allowing their capital ships to get involved in fleet actions (which they are almost always assured to lose), so the Imperials designed hulls to compliment their battle line when fleet on fleet engagements are not the norm.

If big capital ships show up the Lancers and other smaller ships simply retire behind their battle line.

If you think about modern day militaries this makes a lot of sense. The bulk of our militaries are still focused on nation state warfare because if that type of warfare broke out it has far more potential to be damaging to us and the weapons to fight it can't be pulled out of thin air. In the mean time though there are still low intensity conflicts that the military still has to fight and they will design and field weapons specialized to do so. That doesn't mean they intend to use those same weapons if a nation state war breaks out.

Also, we are assuming that the Lancer's were placed in between opposing fleets. This doesn't make much sense. Enemy fighters are not going to want to be between the opposing fleets any more than light capital ships, both don't want to be caught in the cross fire. I would imagine that the Lancer's would always operate in behind the cover of the capital ship they are protecting to prevent flanking from fighters. The Imperials would especially need this, their vessesl being designed to have very powerful forward firing arc but a very week aft firing arc. If I were a fighter attacking an ISD I would be sure to try and get around it to attack the aft portion of the ship, if there is a Lancer there that is far more difficult.
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Re: Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

Post by fractalsponge1 »

Patroklos wrote:Also, we are assuming that the Lancer's were placed in between opposing fleets. This doesn't make much sense. Enemy fighters are not going to want to be between the opposing fleets any more than light capital ships, both don't want to be caught in the cross fire. I would imagine that the Lancer's would always operate in behind the cover of the capital ship they are protecting to prevent flanking from fighters. The Imperials would especially need this, their vessesl being designed to have very powerful forward firing arc but a very week aft firing arc. If I were a fighter attacking an ISD I would be sure to try and get around it to attack the aft portion of the ship, if there is a Lancer there that is far more difficult.
Behind or not, if they (i.e. corvettes like a Lancer) are within effective turbolaser range, they are going to be easily destroyed by any opposing destroyer or better. And if they stay beyond turbolaser range then they aren't going to be able to cover their own capital ships very well, eh? Unless action is always happening right at the edge of effective range (and maybe they are). There is always going to be extreme risk in bringing them into the same action as real capital warships, no matter how brilliant they might be at the lower-intensity stuff.

I fully agree with your point about ships like the Lancer getting shoe-horned into uses it probably was not meant to do, but it does not mean that it will be able to manage those new roles well, or survive them without very careful handling.
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Re: Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

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bz249 wrote:Yes fighters are almost impossible to shot down, that is why the Millenium Falcon (whatever modifications it have, it still a freighter) destroyed three TIE-s with her quad laser cannons in less than five minutes. Do you think that a star destroyer can not afford the volume to have similar fc hard- and software as the Millenium Falcon?

But you are right fighters are viable component. As recce and fire control aides and of course destroying the other sides recce and fire control aides. That is the normal usage of fighters.
It's not that bad. A large enough force of fighters can carry out a strike mission against an enemy capital ship, assuming they mount enough heavy torpedoes and bombs. They won't be able to do it with their blasters, because they might as well be throwing spitballs compared to the durability of large capital ship shields.

But it takes a very large commitment of fighter forces to do that reliably, and to do it without capital ship support of their own. A lone fighter cannot do the job, and even with a respectable group you really do need a weak point in the design that a smart designer should have been able to eliminate (such as a poorly shielded power conduit, which seems to have been the culprit in the attack on the Malevolence).

The result is that while capital ships can be killed by fighters, they are relatively resistant to a fighter attack of comparable cost to the capital ship itself. Thus, neither side can do without capital ships of their own, because they cannot rely on their own small craft to destroy the enemy's heavies. So the situation doesn't resemble the one Transbot9 describes, because starfighters in Star Wars aren't analogous to 20th century air power, and space battleships aren't just wet-navy battleships IN SPACE.
Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:One of the most perplexing things about the Imperial class design for me is just how ground oriented the things are. The drop ships, when you reckon on 22.5m long AT-ATs and their landing barges, and the storage and handling volume required for them- compared to the measly 6.7m TIE Fighter, they take up an enormous amount of room. By volume investment, it starts to look as if the marine detachment was the priority, and the fighter wing something of an afterthought.
Makes sense to me. Wasn't the ship class designed (or at least finalized) in an era when the Empire had just destroyed the last major starfaring fleet in the galaxy? They weren't worried about having to refight Second Coruscant; they were worried about trying to police several million worlds' worth of restless natives. For that, you want:

1)Fast ships, so that you can shift them around the galaxy to deal with unexpected problems, and so that you can win straight-line chases against fleeing opponents as part of your police duties (as Devastator did to Tantive IV).
2)Locally overwhelming ships. You're mostly worried about uprisings on individual planets, so you need a ship that can jump into a star system and trash anything in the vicinity. For this purpose, anything in the mid-destroyer weight class is good enough, because the average militarization level in Star Wars works out to something like one corvette per planet, if that. A destroyer-weight ship can jump into the average star system and threaten to do a Base Delta Zero on the planet, and there's nothing the locals can really do to stop it because they simply don't have the requisite teratonnage to shoot holes in it.
3)Strong ground component. This ship is being used heavily for police and occupation duties, remember? Having a large Marine detachment is practically a must.

Space-to-space capacity matters, but simply making the ship big enough takes care of most of that, provided the main battery is commensurate with its tonnage. So you can live without a massive fighter wing, but you can't live without a massive ground component, because if your new star destroyers can't drop a division-strength ground force they'll have to call for backup and wait for a troopship to arrive in a lot of situations.

Also, remember that the shuttle wing is far more likely to be called on for air support of the ground troops than the fighter wing (let alone the main battery, which doesn't have any power settings below "extinction level event"- compare main battery turbolaser fire to the 100 teraton Chicxulub impact). Thus, having a shuttle wing that can win in any probable air-to-ground engagement, as distinct from space-to-ground, is well worth the effort. Since you're never going to be able to obtain locally overwhelming numbers on the ground, you definitely need superior firepower for your ground element.
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Re: Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

Post by bz249 »

Also don't forget, the strategic doctrine behind the Imperial Navy, namely the Tarkin-doctrine. Under these conditions the Empire does not garrison every backwater shithole (or garrison it very lightly) and relies on its ability to cause significant damage if the locals do something stupid. The ISD, the stardard Imperial capitol ship then should project an aura invincibility, the easiest way to reach this, is to build the thing oversized. So in that respect wasted volume makes sense.

The job of the ISD is to show presence, to show the Imperial banner to the locals. How many times does an ISD fires her main battery in anger per year? How many real operation it takes part? I guess not much, it is not the main purpose of the ship. That's why the number of starfighters is not really important. ISD-s are fleet in being, their job is to look great, and make the enemy crap into their pants by their sheer size.
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Re: Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

Post by fractalsponge1 »

bz249 wrote:Also don't forget, the strategic doctrine behind the Imperial Navy, namely the Tarkin-doctrine. Under these conditions the Empire does not garrison every backwater shithole (or garrison it very lightly) and relies on its ability to cause significant damage if the locals do something stupid. The ISD, the stardard Imperial capitol ship then should project an aura invincibility, the easiest way to reach this, is to build the thing oversized. So in that respect wasted volume makes sense.
The Imperators were coming online at the end of the clone wars, so before the Tarkin Doctrine was promulgated. ISDs might be used under the tenets of that doctrine, but they weren't designed for it. If you want that, maybe you should look at the Vengeance - big black blade-thing without any volume to do anything except look scary :p
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Re: Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

Post by Simon_Jester »

bz249 wrote:Also don't forget, the strategic doctrine behind the Imperial Navy, namely the Tarkin-doctrine. Under these conditions the Empire does not garrison every backwater shithole (or garrison it very lightly) and relies on its ability to cause significant damage if the locals do something stupid. The ISD, the stardard Imperial capitol ship then should project an aura invincibility, the easiest way to reach this, is to build the thing oversized. So in that respect wasted volume makes sense.

The job of the ISD is to show presence, to show the Imperial banner to the locals. How many times does an ISD fires her main battery in anger per year? How many real operation it takes part? I guess not much, it is not the main purpose of the ship. That's why the number of starfighters is not really important. ISD-s are fleet in being, their job is to look great, and make the enemy crap into their pants by their sheer size.
Well... not that simple, I'd say. First of all, if your ship is too inflated in size, it will suffer humiliating defeats at the hands of nominally weaker enemy ships. It doesn't do wonders for your aura of invincibility if your ship has a reputation for losing to ships of half its own weight. Second, the ships do have to actually be able to perform in a crisis, because crises will still arise. You can hardly rule by fear without demonstrating that your fleet is something worth being afraid of; you need crisis situations to demonstrate how badass you are.

So I contend that wasted volume would not make sense, but that the large ground detachment space on an Imperial isn't actually wasted. For ships that are intended to police and occupy, it's a necessity.

...For that matter, even under the Tarkin doctrine, how big is a "small" Imperial garrison on a whole planet? If nothing else, you need enough eyes on the planet to report back if they start doing anything you'd want to crush them for. A platoon isn't going to cut it. And once you're talking about garrisons in the brigade or division level, you start needing ships the size of star destroyers to cart them around.
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Re: Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

Post by bz249 »

fractalsponge1 wrote: The Imperators were coming online at the end of the clone wars, so before the Tarkin Doctrine was promulgated. ISDs might be used under the tenets of that doctrine, but they weren't designed for it. If you want that, maybe you should look at the Vengeance - big black blade-thing without any volume to do anything except look scary :p
Well the sea controll-sea lane denial was widely used before Mahan came up with the theory... I guess the same thing happened with the Imperial doctrine, since the conditions were given: too much planets to cover with too few ships. So the logical choice was something which always have local superiority and capable of threatening a world with total devastation. Tarkin just summarized, formulated a theory on it and polished the pschychological aspects of doctrine already in use.
Simon_Jester wrote: Well... not that simple, I'd say. First of all, if your ship is too inflated in size, it will suffer humiliating defeats at the hands of nominally weaker enemy ships. It doesn't do wonders for your aura of invincibility if your ship has a reputation for losing to ships of half its own weight. Second, the ships do have to actually be able to perform in a crisis, because crises will still arise. You can hardly rule by fear without demonstrating that your fleet is something worth being afraid of; you need crisis situations to demonstrate how badass you are.
Since the usual enemies do not have anything half of an ISD weight it is not really concern. And an ISD facing corvettes and at maximum light frigates can demonstrate how badass it is. Anyway it was still more powerful than the preceeding Victory or Venator-classes, but not with the margin it outmassed them.
Simon_Jester wrote: So I contend that wasted volume would not make sense, but that the large ground detachment space on an Imperial isn't actually wasted. For ships that are intended to police and occupy, it's a necessity.
For a ship of line it is a wasted volume. In space combat the marines have no real use, their equipment, crew quarters are just inflate the volume of the ship.
Simon_Jester wrote: ...For that matter, even under the Tarkin doctrine, how big is a "small" Imperial garrison on a whole planet? If nothing else, you need enough eyes on the planet to report back if they start doing anything you'd want to crush them for. A platoon isn't going to cut it. And once you're talking about garrisons in the brigade or division level, you start needing ships the size of star destroyers to cart them around.
I won`t say the troop contingents are useless, indeed they are very useful. Under normal circumstances a BDZ is not the first option and the right choice would be to send the troopers planetside and either do the fighting or the COIN work. Indeed since most places are undergarrisoned having a large mobile component is a must.
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Re: Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

Post by Simon_Jester »

bz249 wrote:Since the usual enemies do not have anything half of an ISD weight it is not really concern.
I disagree. Remember, quite a few planets will have at least limited fixed defenses designed to deter the average pirate; your "police star destroyer" needs to be able to beat down the typical fixed defense, not just the typical mobile unit. Also, you want the individual ISDs to be able to police, say, 99.99% of star systems effectively, not just 99%. You want them to be strong enough that even the planets whose defensive capabilities are two or three standard deviations stronger than the norm will have to surrender to them. Where even those relatively tough worlds cannot hope to overcome your ISD. Otherwise, some of the tougher star systems will bet on their own defenses, and some of them will win... and the next thing you know you're losing an ISD every other week. That kind of running sore isn't a problem materially, but it is a problem politically, because it makes you look inept.

So you need a ship that cannot conceivably lose when fighting ships that any approximately normal planet could support by itself. You can't afford to waste too much volume.
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For a ship of line it is a wasted volume. In space combat the marines have no real use, their equipment, crew quarters are just inflate the volume of the ship.
So what? The Imperial class aren't pure line vessels. Come to think of it, the "ships of the line" that originated the name weren't, either. In both cases, the capital ships were also intended to be able to detach large ground forces for raids, garrisons, and occupation duty. That is part of their mission, and space used to make sure they can perform the mission is not wasted unless it directly interferes with other parts of the mission. Which it doesn't, because the Imperial-class was quite adequate as a line combatant against all plausible threats the Empire actually faced. It might not throw quite as many megatons of firepower per ton of ship as it could without the ground combat element, but that didn't make it fundamentally inferior or poorly designed.
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Re: Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

Post by bz249 »

All I am saying that integrating a line combattant and a troopship into the same hull makes sense pschychologically, by making the line combattant bigger and more menacing hence increasing its deterrence factor. :wink:
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Re: Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

Post by Abacus »

Going back to the argument about starfighters and anti-starfighter ships; in my opinion the reason why an ISD had starfighters is because of the age old addage: fight fire with fire. In WWII the best thing to use against a tank was another tank, etc. So what is the best thing to use against a starfighter? Another starfighter. You should also take into account that a starfighter has much more maneuverability and therefore advantage in a fight than a larger ship would. Meaning that the fighter can take advantage of a larger ship's blind spots. That being the case of how starfighters could be a great danger to capitol ships. You would never see a present day navy sending solely battleships against an enemy fleet made entirely of aircraft carriers; the destroyers would be slaughtered, even if their AA-defenses were to be semi-effective. So I hope you get my point, and the point that Fingolfin_Noldor was making, that SW combat, like any combat, was an effort of different avenues of attack by different types of weapons.

---

I was going over details on ISDs and I found an interesting bit of knowledge concerning the speed of an ISD that I wanted to bring before everyone here concerning the cruising speed of an ISD.

[quote="Timothy Zahn's "Heir to the Empire" Ch4 P39 L1"]It took the Chimaera nearly five days at its Point Four cruising speed to cover the three hundred fifty lightyears between Myrkr and Wayland.[/quote]

As this suggests, the average cruising speed of an ISD is 70 AU in a single day. It makes for an interesting debate as to what distance they could cover going at a lower "Point Cruising speed." According to Wookieepedia the max acceleration of an Imperial-class Star Destroyer is 2,300 gs. I'm working through the math at the moment and trying to figure out increments, but I wanted you guy's input as well.

At "maximum acceleration" a ISD is going 22,540 meters per second at an unknown "Point Cruising Speed" but quantified as "max acceleration." (aka the 2,300 Gs)

In a single day covering a distance of 70 AU that same ISD (while going Point Four cruising speed) is eating distance at a rate of 109,475,875,810.2 meters per second.

Does that mean that the "max acceleration" is in fact "Point One Cruising Speed"? I'm not entirely sure and am redoing my math again to triple check, but again I'm interested in your input.

----------

@bz249: The reason that an ISD has a troop compliment is because it can be used to conquer and then garrison. You forget that each ISD also has a full pre-fab base it can set up on the ground. It's simply part of its many-faceted abilities and uses.
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Re: Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

Post by Vehrec »

Timothy Zahn is in some ways one of the best authors Star Wars has ever had. In other ways, he's a damn headache. Star Destroyers cruising 70 light years a day in hyperspace is one part of this, his inability to appreciate the size of the universe is another part of it. Zahn would have a wonderful sense of scale if the entire galaxy was condensed down into a single sector, but as it stands his depictions of area, speed and size of the empire always leave me slightly embarrassed for him. To put it lightly, he had no idea how big the galaxy really was when he started writing, and to some extent even his latest works still don't appreciate how big the Imperial Armed forces really were, although this is a common failing.
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Re: Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

Post by fractalsponge1 »

bz249 wrote:All I am saying that integrating a line combattant and a troopship into the same hull makes sense pschychologically, by making the line combattant bigger and more menacing hence increasing its deterrence factor. :wink:
The point isn't to add stuff to the design just to make it [/i]bigger[/i], but to make it more effective at a given role. A Venator could already do many of the things an ISD could, but was a highly dense design (probably the same for the Victory). The ISD may well have been a natural development of the Venator/Victory concept that was an attempt at a better balanced design, more equalizing fighter and troop loads, a larger but less highly strung reactor for better speed and firepower, and increased size for better habitability, endurance, and staying power.

I'm totally agreed about Zahn, btw, Vehrec.
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Re: Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

Post by NoogDeNoog »

Vehrec wrote:Timothy Zahn is in some ways one of the best authors Star Wars has ever had. In other ways, he's a damn headache. Star Destroyers cruising 70 light years a day in hyperspace is one part of this, his inability to appreciate the size of the universe is another part of it. Zahn would have a wonderful sense of scale if the entire galaxy was condensed down into a single sector, but as it stands his depictions of area, speed and size of the empire always leave me slightly embarrassed for him. To put it lightly, he had no idea how big the galaxy really was when he started writing, and to some extent even his latest works still don't appreciate how big the Imperial Armed forces really were, although this is a common failing.
Isn't 350 light years the distance between the systems, not the actual distance the Chimaera travelled in 5 days. I was under the impression that you travelled in hyperspace on well established routes/paths. Maybe to get from point A to point F, the Chimaera had to pass through points B, C, D, and E.
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Re: Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

Post by Eleventh Century Remnant »

By Wookie, the maximum acceleration is ">2,300 g"- greater than 2300, but with no note or citation to back it up.

Dr. Saxton- specifically in http://theforce.net/swtc/propulsion.html uses photoanalysis and geometry to extrapolate their acceleration from their speed across the background at Endor, and twenty-three hundred 'g' is the firm lower limit that evidence will support, depening on the assumptions made about Endor in particular.

We know from the main site- look for the part on why size matters- that the Executor class have to be orders of magnitude more heavily built than the Imperator to survive the same acceleration, and that speed was the speed of the fleet, the speed of the flagship to be precise.

The Executor class's power to weight, judging by their observed armament, is also lower- so no, there's no absolute proof that the Imperator/Imperial class's thrust is higher than 2,300 'g', but there are solid reasons for it to be more than that, and solid potential for it to be more than that, and comparisons indicating it ought to be more than that.

For added entertainment, look at the section on manoeuvrability, especially the bit about the actual physical potential of off- axis main engine thrust.

You're conflating sublight and hyperdrive performance. 'Point X' has nothing at all to do with ion drive, it's an index number, a relationship to a benchmark established as standard (and canonised in the ICS, incidentally) for hyperdrive performance, and that performance is expressed in time.

A Standard One hyperdrive takes the benchmark time over a given course, a Standard Point Five takes half the time- which I reckon is what Han meant by "she'll do point five past lightspeed", although there really should be a comma in there, it's not sufficiently clear that the meaning is that once on the other side of the light barrier, her rating is point five. Standard two is twice as long...et cetera.

Yes, this argument has occurred many times before, in case you were wondering.


To go back to answer an earlier point about the Executor's shielding, I think there are filmic reasons why she's not going to be shielded in proportion to her mass. Practical reasons, more later after a little thinking time- let me get back to you on that one.

The filmic reason, of course, is that it's impossible for heroes to slay properly behemothesque ravening monsters unless the ravening monsters have a suitable weak point. Although I have to laugh at the idea of how Piett would react to having that description applied to him face to face...he really didn't suit it, did he? A competent technocrat, but not a natural warrior spirit- perhaps Executor's real weak point was her command staff. Piett wasn't monstrous enough.

Ackbar didn't order component shots, but I'll grant that perhaps he didn't need to. If that was the only way to do it, and his captains knew their jobs, they would have come to that conclusion themselves without being micromanaged to it.
So, point in favour of it being the specific centre superstructure/bridge shield panel that was pounded down...hold it a second. How close is Executor's bridge to the geometric centre of the ship- to the prime aiming point? Hmmm.

Anyway, there are too many EU instances of ships of the class being destroyed far too cheaply than should have been the case for me to be comfortable with, and while some of them were cheap shots and writing without a sense of proportion and scale to hand, the established pattern is not good.

The other reason to suspect something funny in general is up is the respective shielding and armament of smaller ships, and how they seem to change. Small ships carry shielding in proportion to their weapons, not their drives and total power rating- they're drastically underprotected, evidenced by the fact they're able to hurt each other at all.

I actually suspect a bell curve, although I'd hate to have to swear to that based on the data to hand.
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Patroklos
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Re: Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

Post by Patroklos »

I disagree. Remember, quite a few planets will have at least limited fixed defenses designed to deter the average pirate; your "police star destroyer" needs to be able to beat down the typical fixed defense, not just the typical mobile unit. Also, you want the individual ISDs to be able to police, say, 99.99% of star systems effectively, not just 99%. You want them to be strong enough that even the planets whose defensive capabilities are two or three standard deviations stronger than the norm will have to surrender to them. Where even those relatively tough worlds cannot hope to overcome your ISD. Otherwise, some of the tougher star systems will bet on their own defenses, and some of them will win... and the next thing you know you're losing an ISD every other week. That kind of running sore isn't a problem materially, but it is a problem politically, because it makes you look inept.

So you need a ship that cannot conceivably lose when fighting ships that any approximately normal planet could support by itself. You can't afford to waste too much volume.
The Imperail-class Star Destroyers were just that, Destroyers. We can wax on about whether the term "Star Destroyer" actually corresponds to a role or size description commonly refered to as "Destroyer" in our real world sense, but the overall role of an ISD is jack of all trades master of none (thats on the Imperial scale mind you, an ISD would still seem like a master of all trades to most other players in the SW universe).

We need to remember that there were powerful Core dominions that maintained fleets easliy equal to an average Imperal sector fleet, maybe even a few region scale militaries. Dominions like Corellia or Kuat were themselves the source of the Imperial war machine, so there should be no doubt that they could not field large and advanced vessels.

I only mention that to refute the idea that the ISD was supposed to be some undefeatable behemouth. It only appears that way because we are seeing the story from the eyes of backwater Rebels fighting on the outskirts of the galaxy for the most part.
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Abacus
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Re: Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

Post by Abacus »

I only mention that to refute the idea that the ISD was supposed to be some undefeatable behemouth. It only appears that way because we are seeing the story from the eyes of backwater Rebels fighting on the outskirts of the galaxy for the most part.
I've never made that remark and I can only say that I agree wholeheartedly. While I do think it is extreme to say that it was a Jack of all trades, but master of none.
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Patroklos
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Re: Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

Post by Patroklos »

That was not meant to be an indictment against the class. You need ships like that for all the reasons given in this thread.
bz249
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Re: Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

Post by bz249 »

Maybe the best real life analogy

http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/f125-frigate/

A well armed and quite oversized frigate, designed for extremly long patrols in the proximity of low intesity third world conflicts and accomodate 50 special forces troops.
fractalsponge1
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Re: Evolution of the Imperial Star Destroyer

Post by fractalsponge1 »

Yeah but F125s were specifically designed for low-intensity work. The ISD was a development of the same ideas for the Venator and Victory, which are definitely high intensity warfare-focused ships.
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