Simon_Jester wrote:
Which just makes Baffalo's point all the stronger: scoring a mobility-kill on an ISD is much more difficult than scoring a mobility-kill on a Federation ship, all else being equal, just because of the hullforms.
This ties into my comments about target profile and such: insofar as it's possible, you do want to screen important bits of the ship from enemy fire using less important bits, especially when that fire is coming in along an axis you want to point the ship in order to fire at the enemy.
Well if you're targeting the warp nacelles sure, but not the impulse engines (those things are postiively tiny.. at least contrasted to the huge thrust nozzles on an ISD). Or maybe I'm just missing something here, which if I am I apologize.
At Star Wars yields, with the whole "vaporize cubic kilometers of iron" stuff going on, this is likely to be true.
At Star Trek yields, where most of the weapons seem within shouting distance of what existing nuclear weapons are capable of, or below that point... I'm honestly not so sure. You can armor kilometer-scale objects (like ISDs) to at least make them more resistant to that kind of fire, and we know Star Wars material science is somewhat in advance of ours.
I would not at all be surprised if ISDs had at least a limited 'armor belt' to mitigate certain kinds of "light" damage within their own setting: minor leakage through the shields, fire from fighter-weight energy weapons*, kinetic impacts that might somehow bypass the shields**. A few meters of steel plate (or its futuristic equivalent) would do them some good in that department, and would serve fairly well against Trek ships' main battery armament, too.
Trek ships would probably, should probably, have the same thing... but it would be to a much lower scale because of the smaller physical size of the ships, the higher surface-to-volume ratio making it more mass-expensive to armor them, and probably lower levels of material science sophistication.
*(such as you might get if the rebels send some X-Wings in to harass your ship while it's in drydock, shields down)
**(such as crashing into a ten meter-scale rock when Darth Vader stops being concerned by asteroids)
Mike once suggested that the heat sinks for the shields might double as armor belts on the ship, because they are designed to absorb lots of energy, that would be a definite damage-mitigation mechanism, especially if the armor is linked to it. Given all the properties ascribed to armor, it probably sounds more like armor is designed to basically "radiate" away the energy hitting it by any method, even if it has to destroy itself in the process (which in most cases, I suspect it does.) If they can link the armor into the shield heat sink/radiatior mechanisms too, what you describe is quite plasuible.
That said, I still think its a big question mark, since it depends on the assumptions (esp WRT defensive mechanisms) you make, and the calcs you use. Like I've said, just becuase they chuck out multi-TT yields at full power doesn't make them typical combat yields (We have seen SW ships destroyed in single hits, even capships.) One could certainly argue that based on the fact we've seen fighters inflict even superficial damage on capital ships suggests it can be damaged by lower yields (it just may not easily
penetrate.)
I honestly was kinda thinking that the "bare" un-defended armor could be damaged by megaton, even kiloton level hits. Of course, armor need not be uniform, and the heat sinks may be nigh-impenetrable to ST weapons. But if the "non forcefield" shield mechanisms are still active, even the armor might be able to resist some level of multi-GT firepower (although still taking damage in the process.)
Would be interested to hear you expand on that.
It's probably best to just quote part of the Wiki article, since details have changed a bit since the data I have, but:
New Class program
to simplyfy the bulk of the data I was going to add, which is from Cracken's Threat Dossier, the new class program involved basically a more technologically advanced, smaller, and more specialized fleet.
In terms of ship design and capability.. I'll quote the last three paragraphs form Cracken's threat Dossier
CTD, page 75 wrote:
New Class heavy combat ships are optimized for the long range duel, carrying fewer heavy turbolasers than Imperials, but of euqal power and superior fire control [note: in WEG stat terms, they were equal in power to ISD-2s, which was "standard" post ROTJ. The TLS were VASTLY superior to an ISD-1's TLs individually.], allowing new Republic ships to get more hits at long range. Impreoved manuverability and speed keeps the New Republic at their preferred range. The Majestic Class heavy cruiser [note: 700 meter long ship], for example, can score as many hits at long range as an Imperial STar Destroyer can at medium range with fewer heavy guns, and can stay at that range for as long as it has space to run in.
The New Class ships also reflect a tend toward more compact, specialized ships. The Warrior gunship is a dedicated anti-capital ship, fully capable of taking down prey nine times its size [note: 195 meter long gunship, not sure if "size" is length or mass, but presumes length given performance.], but nearly useless for any duty but combat. This trend is not absolute - the Sacheen escort curiser is deisgned for screening and patrol duties, and can be used for long range operations. Furthermore, the New Class ships havea wider variety of weaponry than Imperial ships of equivalent size, including turbolasers, ion cannons, tractor beams, and matter weapons.
Logistical concerns hold these ships to their operational space and they must be constnatly resupplied by fleet tenders. REcovery and repair is less of a concern today than in previous years. Increasing firepower tends to result in ships being destroyed rather than simply damaged. THere is little attention paid to ship recovery in the New Class program.
To add a few final notes and some speculation: ISDs typically had something like 6 years worth of consumables , many of the bigger warshps have only 5 months (others, like the gunship, have much less.. no more than 3 months.) They also have considerably smaller crew complements than ISDS (the largest have 7-8 thousand crew, tops, not including troops, but that may or may not carry many troops and certainly carry no ground vehicles I am aware of. There would probably be dedicated craft for that, although none are outlined.)
Also, given the "defensive" mindset implied in the progrma, they probably cut down quite a bit on hyperdrive range, possibly speed (response time matters, as they have to cover a larger area, but they don't want the ships to be able to travel too far from their assigned routes, at least not without the logistics to support it.) I imagine the reduction in size also cuts down a great deal on armor mass/volume and redundancy (being smaller than an ISD is going t naturally make them more destructive, since the "per shot" power certainly doesn't change.)
Another key thing to note is that the "New Class" had a more thorough emphasis on picket/Elint ships and general recon and dedicated sensor craft (including stealthed ones) as well as recon drones and such. I imagine the need for greater information is meant to offset teh smaller size by making it easier to track/locate the enemy, as well as relaying fire control data for long range shooting.
Personally I always thought it was an interesting take on the SW Universe and how ship combat is done. I honestly was never totally comfortable with the idea that the trend ALWAYS goes upwards, with bigger and ibgger ships, but would never stray aside from that (EG everything was Exeuctors and nothing else. No "small" battleships.)
