Versus Series: Ship Combat in Star Wars

[Elheru Aran]

It's also worth noting that Republic fighters seem to be slightly 'harder' than Imperial fighters; they've got Y-wings, ARC-170s, V-wings, Z-95s, and LAATs (okay, the LAAT isn't a fighter, but presumably the Venator might be able to use it in a boarding action...) on hand, all (IIRC) of which have shields. So it's possible that even if the Venator carries less fighters, they might come out better against the Liberator due to their fighters being able to take more damage.

Um...the Liberator is a Rebel Alliance craft.

NOW you people tell me that Then they're on a more equal keel, *maaaaaaaaaybe* the more 'advanced' Rebel fighters could have a hair of an edge over the Republic fighters.

[Crazedwraith]

Um...the Liberator is a Rebel Alliance craft.

Well in that case it's like that scene in Braveheart with the irish conscript.

They just fly past each other waggling their wings and rendering passing honours.

[Batman]

Um...the Liberator is a Rebel Alliance craft.

NOW you people tell me that Then they're on a more equal keel, *maaaaaaaaaybe* the more 'advanced' Rebel fighters could have a hair of an edge over the Republic fighters.

Yeah. I mean it's not like the specs Abacus linked to mention this or anything.

[NecronLord]

We can't say because those Liberator stats are bunk. What they did was take the game weapon ratings and act as if they were a literal count, which is clearly not the case - otherwise the ISD II would have 500 heavy TLs and 500 ion cannons, which is not reflected by any other source.

All that could really be said is that it can carry six squadrons of fighters. Everything else is game mechanic nonsense and vague fluff about "advanced" engines, sensors, etc.

Completely agreed. It's more advanced according to its fluff than the Venator, but whether those advancements are meaningful is open to question.

Being a pure carrier it is rather hard to see how the Liberator would stand up to ships which have similar numbers of fighters, but also heavy main batteries for ship to ship battles. Don't really need specifications to determine this. Its simply a lesser scale of warship. Meanwhile the Venator replaced the Acclamator, and it seems very unlikely that its ship to ship capabilities were downgraded in the process.

I'd hesitate to call it a fully dedicated carrier, the Liberator, game-wise, wasn't a pure carrier, it could carry three regiments of troops (same as the ISD) and was armed broadly equivalent to a Victory I star destroyer (A touch less turbolasers, more ion cannons). By comparison there were dedicated carriers in the game like the Quasar Fire or the Imperial Escort Carrier that had extremely weak armament.

That said, the game stats aren't really relevant at all. But there's not much else about the ship to know other than its tactical role, which seems to be a sort of all-purpouse light star destroyer like the Venators and Victories.

Purely as a thought exercise - if ISD game stats : ISD technical specs :: Liberator game stats : Liberator technical specs, then the Liberator ought to have thirty 'heavy' turbolasers with no geometrically-possible alpha arc,

It looks to me like it has six heavy turrets in the style of a star destroyer, with all of them being able to superfire in the forward arc.

as compared with an ISD's sixty and a fairly good one. However, since it's significantly smaller than an ISD, (and since we can't see a even a proportionally-large reactor bulb)

Frankly the models in Rebellion were not to any sensible scale. I have no idea how big it is, I'd say it needs to be chunky to carry the same fighters and troops as an ISD.

A raiding cruiser against a monitor, (minus their respective fighter forces), if you will. I give this to the Venator in any plausible single-ship engagement, and its margin for victory would only increase in larger actions.

I'd be inclined to agree that the Venator might outgun it. The real in-game advantage of the Liberator is that it's cheap and easy to maintain, while giving you the same tactical options as an ISD in terms of plantary operations, anti-fighter missions, and so on; it's not nearly as tough as an ISD but it's also faster.

That said, the Liberator does have several advantages, it will basically get to pick its engagement, as it is supposed to be faster strategically and all its fighters are hyper-capable. I'd say it could win the fighter duel by lurking at range and picking off the enemy's V-wings.

I'd say this one is down to crew skill again.

[Esquire]

Well, mea culpa concerning the turret arrangements; it didn't occur to me to look more closely at the image. I'm less sure about the Liberator getting to pick off the Venator's fighter complement; I don't believe we've got reason to think that Star Wars capital guns are accurate enough to do that from far enough out that the Venator couldn't smash up the Liberator before it finished working through a few hundred V-wings. Possibly the Rebels could use their fighters' hyperspace capability to set up local ambushes... but that's got a fairly obvious counter in not dividing the Venator's fighter forces below wing-strength, and if the Liberator goes in to rescue its hopelessly-outnumbered squadrons and ends up being jumped by a Venator at close range, well...

Although, as that's pure tactics and not really open to empirical debate, I think I've just talked myself round into things depending on crew skill. I still think the Venator has more natural advantages, especially in a fleet action, but the Liberator could win if it were well enough handled and the Venator were willing to play its games.

[NecronLord]

It's not so much a matter of playing games. In real combat the Liberator could say, fuck off a parsec or two, send its wing to raid a nearby target of value to the Venator, and then force the Venator to either go defend them with everything or send out its much-smaller number of ARC-170s (which would likely be destroyed). If it goes with everything to defend that target, then the Liberator can zip in (it's got a faster drive remember, and its own recon-craft no doubt) and pound whatever the Venator wants to defend.

If the Venator wants to bring it to battle, it has to find something the Liberator really wants to defend, otherwise the (low replenishment-cost, at least by game-stats) Liberator can force it to heave its slow (or at least not so quick) ass around after it at much greater cost and just keep withdrawing and raiding.

The Liberator's a rebel ship, so is built around the notion that the enemy will have lots of targets to raid and most of its own supporters will be politically non-viable to attack (Chandrila etc) or hidden.

In a straight up 'Q has transported them to neutral territory and forces them to fight' then having lots of non-hyperspace fighters is more beneficial than somewhat less high-quality raider ships is an advantage; in their actual war where these craft would fight, the rebel craft are very good at what they do.


Really lots of these will come down to circumstance and crew skill; if the ships are from the same setting and the same weight class, that's how things usually work.

[Esquire]

Fair enough. In a 'real-life' scenario, though, we really ought to be factoring in the Imperial materiel advantage if operating costs are going to be a factor in the Rebels' favor, and a single Venator will not be the force of choice to hunt down a Rebel light battlecarrier. I'd expect an additional flight of patrol corvettes at the very least, possibly an Interdictor as well, or else something that could hold the Liberator in place long enough for the Venator to show up. A heavy frigate of some kind, maybe? Some kind of battle-variant Acclamator, or at least something built to a similar scale?

Broadly, I agree with you, but if we're going to allow asymmetrical victories we should remember why they're necessary in the first place.

[NecronLord]

And yet there's a massive volume of literature showing that the rebels are effective raiders despite that advantage; the Imperials really didn't have the galaxy so locked down that the rebels couldn't mount successful campaigns - if they did they'd have lasted.

[Esquire]

I certainly can't disagree there.

[Agent Sorchus]

In one potential case I'd give it to the Liberator, thanks to her heavy Ion cannon armament. Consider that the Victory 1 is meant to be a sister type to Venators, and one of the to changes made when upgrading to Victory 2 was the addition of Ion Cannon's to the armament indicating that the Imperial designers saw potential in the weapon that previous designs missed out on. Reading further on Wookiepedia even Imperial 2's gain Ion cannon's over the mark 1's.

When we see Venators that were hit by the Malevolence's Ion Cannon of Doom they were very susceptible to the attack. Now reasonably the Malevolence is a much more powerful vessel than a Liberator, but if that entire generation of starship design wasn't built to take that type of attack into account then the Venator would be at a disadvantage in a fight.

Umak Leth: "An ionic cannon capable of surprising and wiping out entire capital ship task forces would require a ship of unreasonable proportions. Something on the magnitude of at least eight kilometers in length."
Nasdra Magrody: "Twelve."
Bunt Dantor: "Seventeen."
―A Republic panel of experts debates the technical details of the Malevolence

Malevolence is only 4.8km yet the republic's experts are off by at least a factor of 2 on scale of the ship potentially indicating that Ion cannon weapons had had some sort of a break through in there designs. Or that the Malevolence is just plain silly.

Still the Venator has a very large carrier deck so perhaps the Ion cannon advantage wouldn't actually matter.

PS: the Liberty can probably force a confrontation using it's superior Ground support cappacity (Supposed to be equal to an ISD so an ~9k soldiers), and those same troops would be a pretty good deterent from the Venator trying any boarding action shennanigans.

[Sea Skimmer]

Malevolence is only 4.8km yet the republic's experts are off by at least a factor of 2 on scale of the ship potentially indicating that Ion cannon weapons had had some sort of a break through in there designs. Or that the Malevolence is just plain silly.

Maybe they were assuming an Ion cannon that could be pointed and aimed, rather then the fixed weapon on Malevolence. That would probably easily explain that kind of size disparity.

Dumb but the whole point of the well, Star Wars, was that Republic was run by moron political hacks and they may well have appointed nothing but hackjob advisors too.

Another possibility would be very limited durability of the weapon.

[Agent Sorchus]

I agree that the Malevolence is a weird case that by itself shouldn't be used to argue the point, but the idea that a large number of later warship start mounting more and more Ion cannon's after the clone wars is the adds meat of the idea.

Note: I don't think this is a large factor, but rather that this exists in the sphere of possibilty for a battle between the two ships.

[Sea Skimmer]

I'd muse that the proliferation of ion cannons could be directly linked to the end of large scale conventional warfare, and the transition towards more of a colonial policing-counter piracy role. The Ion cannons would be more relevant for disabling ships in that context, even if they still cause some major physical damage. The Empire had plenty of reason to want prisoners, even when it engaged actual rebel warships. Of course this does run afoul the inability of the EU stuff to really ever decide what Ion Cannons do. The Clone Wars IIRC implied both the 'disables electronics' thing and the 'just a different kind of turbolaser' angleas I recall. I'll rewatch some clips tomorrow since its been years and those are easy episodes to find. Being the first ones and all.

Course end of the day, we can probably speculate better about Star Wars combat by looking at galley warfare then anything...modern.... emphasis on capture over destruction is if we measure it by the century, the default rather then the exception in real naval warfare! Even the Greeks quickly found the famous Trireme and its world history guided ramming abilities negated by other people simply building bigger ships who's framed (Triremes are built like a unibody with no framing, to be simple) hulls could simply shrug off the ram strikes. A bigger ram would work in principle, but bigger ships were too slow to make that effective.

Its kind of dumb, but we can't ignore how boarding happy Star Wars is under basically all circumstances without. Perhaps their hull technology is actually far ahead of shields and weapons on a relative scale? They can build the Death Star after all.

[Formless]

I can actually see a couple of ways that the Liberator could win this, given some of the things Sorchus and Necronlord pointed out. Primarily, I'm focusing on the Liberator's superior troop compliment more so than its ion cannons, but they both play a role here.

In a pure space battle (as in "Q put both ships in a generic neutral territory and let them have at it"), the Liberator could attempt to mount a boarding action and capture its counterpart. This is contingent on both its greater troop count and its ion cannons. The ion cannons make the boarding action easier by knocking down the Venator's shields and systems, the superior Rebel fighters make it possible for boarding craft to reach their target, and the superior troop numbers make the fight theoretically easier. Theoretically; I'll concede that Rebel troops aren't always as well equipped as Republic/Imperial troops for this sort of mission. But then, its implied that the Liberator was a design the Rebels were able to field later in the war, so who knows what their relative strengths were at that point?

In fact, a lot could be contingent on whether this is a Republic Venator or an Imperial Venator from early in the Empire's reign. Particularly in the next scenario.

Scenario 2 is a real-war scenario where raiding and asymmetric warfare is possible. In this case, the Liberator can hyperspace into enemy territory above a planet and mount a ground assault on the Republic/Imperial target and draw in the Venator. The Rebels could even use the fighter's hyperdrives to turn this into an ambush, or to use the fighters as a diversion elsewhere. Either way, when the Venator comes to the planet to counter attack, they now have to drive off the Rebel troops on the ground, and given the relative speed of the Liberator's hyperdrive the Rebel forces in this situation could have a lot better odds than in boarding action as they have time to prepare. Once the Venator arrives, its troops are already outnumbered and potentially dealing with dug in Rebel soldiers, so the Venator's commander now has to make an unpleasant choice: divert firepower to bombard ground targets and risk being effectively outgunned by the Liberator, or divert starfighters to aid the ground assault and have an even greater disadvantage against the Rebels in that arena? In this kind of situation, the Liberator's relative strengths may weigh the odds in favor of a Rebel victory. Hell, the superior speed alone means that the Liberator can probably mount several strike operations without ever being caught, although that means the direct engagement everyone wants to see simply doesn't happen.

However, scenario 2 is again dependent on whether they are fighting the Republic or the Empire, since the Empire's ground assault capabilities may make up the difference.

IMO, the Liberator was designed decades after the Venator and was designed specifically for asymmetric warfare, with lessons taken from the Clone Wars and from years of fighting against the Empire. If its allowed to fight on its own terms, I can definitely see it being superior to the Venator given their relative mission profiles and time periods. "More advanced" may be vague, but can be considered in terms of being more optimized for the change in tactics that took place between the defeat of the CIS and the rise of the Rebellion.

[NecronLord]

Well in scenario 2 we've pretty much got to be talking about an Imperial Venator, or we get Crazedwraith's passing honours scenario.

[Adam Reynolds]

Ion cannons are one of those things that have always been problematic, just like stun blasts. For writers, having a weapon that disables rather than kills tends to ruin the story, even in space battles, so they tend to be bad about using them. So much of the continuity seems to ignore their existence, especially the animated series.

What is problematic about the supposed ubiquity of ion cannons is that in the films or even Clone Wars/Rebels(that I have seen anyway) we never actually see them used by normal warships. The only two direct instances of ion cannons I can remember are Malvolence and Hoth, which were overpowering cases that were charged up and then fired, requiring a recharge between shots.

Even when out to disable, as against Tantive IV or the Millenium Falcon, the star destroyers still only ever seems to use turbolasers in much the same fashion as a modern warship would shoot to disable using a deck gun. Ion cannons are mentioned in the fluff and to a lesser extent the EU but never actually shown in visual media apart from the two outliers. Standard warships tend to use turbolasers. Even a B-wing is shown using a composite beam turbolaser instead of ion cannons in Rebels.

As for boarding operations, ion cannons are not even needed. Because shields are semi-permeable in many cases, getting through them even when raised is certainly possible. Especially with dedicated craft as used by the CIS in Clone Wars. Anakin even pulls it off directly out of hyperspace with a shuttle.

Armor in Star Wars is also likely an active system, given the direct dialog references in ESB against AT-ATs as well as the hull flashes apparent in ANH when Tantive IV fires upon Devastator. I suspect that because the ship is in pursuit and diverting power towards engines, it is not relying on primary shields, instead relying on armor and possibly localized bridge shields. This is also backed up by the dialog in ESB, when Avenger turns on its shields only after the Millennium Falcon turns around in an attack profile.

Also, because I am now thinking about it, whether or not stun blasts could stop Jedi is something in particular that the old EU couldn't decide on. On one hand we had Darksaber in which stun blasts apparently expanded and were impossible to be blocked by a lightsaber or for a Jedi to absorb. This was based on an inaccurate recollection of the film, they only appeared to expand because they were traveling towards the camera. We then have I, Jedi, in which stun blasts are harmless as Jedi can absorb energy and even redirect the energy. We finally have Clone Wars in which they are effective against Jedi but somewhat easily blocked by lightsabers, as they should be.

[FTeik]

"I, Jedi" doesn't count in regards to Jedi being able to absorb stun-blasts, because that was a special talent of Corran Horn's family-line (as well as their inability to do proper telekinises).

Also where on wookiepedia are we getting a hyperdrive-rating for the Liberator-class cruiser? We have one for the Venator (class 1) but not for the Liberator. So we can't say, that the Liberator has a speed-advantage and can pick the time and place of battle.

[Crazedwraith]

"I, Jedi" doesn't count in regards to Jedi being able to absorb stun-blasts, because that was a special talent of Corran Horn's family-line (as well as their inability to do proper telekinises).

The Horn (Halycon really) familly was especially good at it. But it wasn't unique to them. It's based on Vader's bolt catch in TESB. Other Jedi have done similar things. (Anakin Solo survives a forest fire using it for example in the NJO) and Maul was also stun resistant in Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter. (He stunned in back and only goes down for a few seconds)

[Formless]

Well in scenario 2 we've pretty much got to be talking about an Imperial Venator, or we get Crazedwraith's passing honours scenario.

Which begs the question then of whether the Empire had ATAT's during its early reign, as they are generally portrayed as the Empire's biggest force multiplier on ground assaults. Not that the Rebellion lacked combat vehicles, of course.

Also where on wookiepedia are we getting a hyperdrive-rating for the Liberator-class cruiser? We have one for the Venator (class 1) but not for the Liberator. So we can't say, that the Liberator has a speed-advantage and can pick the time and place of battle.

Most ships don't have an official hyperdrive rating. We can still figure out their relative speeds, however. The design intent of the Liberator was that it is a low cost, low maintenance, somewhat undergunned Rebel equivalent to an ISD, but also that its faster than the average warship. Notably, its faster than a Victory SD, so we don't need to know its exact hyperdrive rating. The logical conclusion is that its most likely faster than a Venator, and that is all that really matters for the purpose of discussion.

Besides, Hyperdrive Ratings are useless technobabble anyway. End of the day, all we want to know is which ship is faster. On a similar note, all we know about the Liberator's troop count is that its got three regiments, which is the same in-game as an ISD. An ISD has 9000 combat troops at its disposal according to other sources, but there is contradictory statements in the EU stating that in the Empire's era a regiment was 2500 combat troops and 1000 support personnel. So how many active combat troops does a Liberator have exactly? It doesn't matter. We know that a Venator has only 2000 combat troops at its disposal, which is less than a regiment by Republic standards (that is, a little over 2600 combat troops)! So using the more conservative estimate based on regimental size, a Liberator's troops outnumber the Venator's troops by more than three to one. The less conservative estimate has it at nearly five to one. Either way, clearly the Liberator is the superior troop transport, while the Venator is the superior fighter carrier in terms of absolute fighter capacity (though not necessarily by fighter quality).

This is similar logic to the matchup between Rebel and Imperial corvetts upthread. That involved video game warships as well, but just because video game statistics are useless doesn't mean we can't take what we do know about these ships and extrapolate.

[Agent Sorchus]

Also where on wookiepedia are we getting a hyperdrive-rating for the Liberator-class cruiser? We have one for the Venator (class 1) but not for the Liberator. So we can't say, that the Liberator has a speed-advantage and can pick the time and place of battle.

That is because Rebellion is weird and doesn't use common star wars terms in it's ship technical terms. For instance Corellian corvettes have standard hyperdrive speeds rather then the x2 they "should" have. The only ships in game (I beleive, though I didn't go through the empire's ship list) that have something besides the standard x1 are troop transports (at x2), the Imperial assault transport and the Millenium Falcon both at x.5. Oh and for some reason all starfighters are at x.75. Probably because they can't actually independantly raid they balanced starfighters by making them easy to reinforce garrisons with.

But when they say Liberators have advanced engines they mean sublight speed where they can run down bombers and outpace most other capital starships.

[Elheru Aran]

Well in scenario 2 we've pretty much got to be talking about an Imperial Venator, or we get Crazedwraith's passing honours scenario.

Which begs the question then of whether the Empire had ATAT's during its early reign, as they are generally portrayed as the Empire's biggest force multiplier on ground assaults. Not that the Rebellion lacked combat vehicles, of course.

I want to say there were AT-AT's in a few late episodes of Clone Wars. There were definitely walkers very similar to the AT-AT in the original Clone Wars cartoon, and in the Rebels cartoon there are AT-AT's.

[Terralthra]

Umak Leth: "An ionic cannon capable of surprising and wiping out entire capital ship task forces would require a ship of unreasonable proportions. Something on the magnitude of at least eight kilometers in length."
Nasdra Magrody: "Twelve."
Bunt Dantor: "Seventeen."
―A Republic panel of experts debates the technical details of the Malevolence

Malevolence is only 4.8km yet the republic's experts are off by at least a factor of 2 on scale of the ship potentially indicating that Ion cannon weapons had had some sort of a break through in there designs. Or that the Malevolence is just plain silly.

This is a pretty obvious nod to the SSD length controversy. 8, 12, and 17 km were all lengths given by various sources for the Executor and her sisters, before Disney/LFL finalized it at 19km and retconned a bunch of stupidity to explain the wrong estimates and retcon the "Super-class" of some Legends sources.

[RogueIce]

Notably, its faster than a Victory SD, so we don't need to know its exact hyperdrive rating. The logical conclusion is that its most likely faster than a Venator, and that is all that really matters for the purpose of discussion.

Where do you get that it's faster than a VSD? In the game, they have the same Hyperdrive Rating: 60.

If it goes with everything to defend that target, then the Liberator can zip in (it's got a faster drive remember, and its own recon-craft no doubt) and pound whatever the Venator wants to defend.

Actually the argument could be made that they have the same hyperdrive speed. Because the Carrack and VSD I, both contemporary ships with the Venator, have the 60 Hyperdrive Rating and Legends says they're equipped with Class 1.0 hyperdrives, the same as the Venator.

Rebellion is pretty consistent with that and the relative speeds, in fact. Of those that have a hyperdrive class listed on Wookieepedia and are in the game:

Dreadnaught | HR80 | Class 2
Bulk Cruiser | HR80 | Class 3
Med Transport | HR100 | Class 4
Bulk Transport | HR90 | Class 3
Escort Carrier | HR80 | Class 2
Corvette | HR80 | Class 2
Gunship | HR80 | Class 2
Escort Frigate | HR80 | Class 2
Star Cruiser | HR60 | Class 1
Assault Frigate | HR80 | Class 2

Carrack | HR60 | Class 1
VSD I | HR60 | Class 1
VSD II | HR60 | Class 1
ISD I | HR80 | Class 2
ISD II | HR60 | Class 2
Star Galleon | HR80 | Class 2
Escort Carrier | HR80 | Class 1
Lancer | HR80 | Class 1
Strike Cruiser | HR80 | Class 2
Interdictor | HR80 | Class 2
Super Star Destroyer | HR80 | Class 2

There are only a few variations, and those it can be argued were for game balance reasons (making the Lancer same as the Gunship, improving the ISD II to match the Alliance Dauntless with a HR60, Escort Carriers being aligned, not having the Bulk Cruiser suck quite as much).

Which means, while it is game mechanics, the Liberator's HR60 is likely equivalent to a Class 1.0, which is the same as the Venator. Strategically, they can move at the same speed.

[JamesStaley]

"Any plan of battle is a good one, until the battle starts". Thus is is possible that any ship can defeat another at any time depending upon how gutsy/brave/motivated/well-trained/poorly-trained/etc. the crew is. History has born this out time and time again. So it's a fun exercise to play "what if", but ultimately futile to know until the actual battle begins, losses start occuring, people start making stupid mistakes that get them killed or do heroic things that save the day.

[Q99]

It's also worth noting that Republic fighters seem to be slightly 'harder' than Imperial fighters; they've got Y-wings, ARC-170s, V-wings, Z-95s, and LAATs (okay, the LAAT isn't a fighter, but presumably the Venator might be able to use it in a boarding action...) on hand, all (IIRC) of which have shields. So it's possible that even if the Venator carries less fighters, they might come out better against the Liberator due to their fighters being able to take more damage.

In the movies, even tough fighters like Y-Wings go down to single good bursts from TIEs. So I wouldn't overrate that, shields on fighters are helpful for glancing hits, but they're relatively small factors. A faster firing gun may be a larger advantage than the possession of shields in a good number of cases.

Some fighters are better than others, but how hard they are is only one factor. I'd bet on TIEs over Z-95s a lot of the time.