Darth Culator wrote:
Gotta step in here as a Wookieepedia admin and say that we do the best we can with what we're given. I've always found EU minimalism annoying and illogical, but we're pretty much stuck with it. That being said, Wookieepedia is not the topic of this thread, and I really just want to come in here and suck up to the artist.

In the Tommy Lee Edwards Photoshop "art" on page 165, are any of your designs besides the Bellator visible in the window? I thought I saw an Allegiance or two in the full shot it's based on but I can't quite tell for sure if they fit in there. Also, in the other TLE Photoshop job on page 212, is that Bellator (and Procursator? Is that the one furthest in the distance?) part of the New Republic fleet, or are they running away from it?

The Nebula/Endurance are just great, that's a mess that has needed to be cleaned up for a LONG time. Any chance those will be posted here or on your website anytime soon?

No question wookie is quite useful! Some of the article content is definitely controversial, though perhaps that is always intrinsic to the wiki process...
The p165 piece does have a Bellator. See original for background:
http://fractalsponge.net/gallery/images/index.html#Strategic%20Reserve.jpgp212 piece has a Bellator and a Procursator, and I have no idea what they are doing

.
Nebula just got posted, and there are some numbers attached to it from my notes. I knew that 1.04km was a pretty well established length, so that hasn't changed. What I wanted to figure out was how a ~1.1km multirole ship was competitive with a 1.6km multirole ship with basically the same technology and without specific optimization.
I tried to rationalize the gun armament seen in the latest sourcebook illustrations of the Nebula with this. One super-heavy turbolaser turret (twin 320 teraton) in the center, backed by 4x3 70-teraton Venator-caliber guns and 8x2 32-teraton ISDII caliber weapons. Total throw weight ~2 petatons, vice an ISD's 2.5. Comparable and competitive, especially given the size of the ship, but there were tradeoffs to accomplish this.
Basically with these numbers I came up with the idea that the Nebula designers opted for a
very heavy armament on a light, cheap-ish hull in return for worse acceleration, less survivability and reliability, and shorter range compared to an ISD. Classic warship design trade-offs really. In defensive action in-system, a squadron of Nebulas would be competitive with their weight and cost in ISDs, but in a fast-moving action in open space, the ISDs would be superior. I figured that this would be both a realistic technical explanation of the text descriptions comparing Nebula and ISD, and in tune with the known philosophical biases of the New Republic as they were building their central military forces.