Warp drive or low performance hyperdrive?

[bz249]

The hyperdrive of an ISD consumes staggering amount of energy, which is of course no problem in the GFFA since hypermatter is cheap and abundant. However under the usual conditions (small Imperial unit... a DesRon or something similar size stuck in the Milky Way) when they had only a very limited source of hypermatter this could cause some headache.

Since the main source of hypermatter are black holes and people tend to live on normal planets (with a healthy distance between the star and the black hole, maybe some tens of lys) transporting it is vital for SW economy and military. What do you think what will be the preferred solution?

a.) use freighters with low performance hyperdrive (class 5-10)? I do not know whether the fuel consumption is affected by a speed of the ship or the length of the journey. But maybe this decreases fuel consumption drastically. The advantage of such method is that they are using safe, simple and proven technology.

b.) try to modify a warp ship to accomodate a small hypermatter reactor... the main advantage of the warp drive is, that we know that it can run on a much lower power level (the reactor output of the Ent-E is smaller than the Slave I), of course its not beneficial if long trips are included. The modifications may require lots of engineering work, but the improved safety could worth the cost.

c.) use the ST standard M/AM reactor driven warp drive... which is more dangerous, but can run without the (now) precious hypermatter. Maybe some engineering could improve safety also in this case.

Thoughts?

[Aaron]

I have no idea what a DesRon is but if there is a small Imperial Fleet stuck in the Milky Way and it does not have the ability to manufacture new hyperdrives than it seems the best thing to do is to simply seize a local ship and press it into service or trade for the goods they need.

[bz249]

I have no idea what a DesRon is but if there is a small Imperial Fleet stuck in the Milky Way and it does not have the ability to manufacture new hyperdrives than it seems the best thing to do is to simply seize a local ship and press it into service or trade for the goods they need.

DEStroyer squadRON... (I do not know whether they organize star destroyers into squadrons).

My question was not about that they can manufacture new hyperdrives, I assume that a star destroyer group have the equipment and manpower to manufacture at least civilian level drives. This goes also with hypermatter extraction, those are millenia old technologies with continous and wide spread application after all, so they should be able to do this at a certain level.

I would like to know however how they should re-organize the fleet train... based on their own technology or try to adopt the local infrastructure as much as possible?

[EnterpriseSovereign]

My gut reaction is that it's easier to fit a warp ship with a hypermatter reactor than the other way around, as I understand it the hyperdrive does not have the equivalent of warp nacelles. I imagine trying to retrofit a ship like an ISD with warp nacelles would be a major engineering headache. I'm guessing there's no way to run a hyperdrive on antimatter?

[bz249]

My gut reaction is that it's easier to fit a warp ship with a hypermatter reactor than the other way around, as I understand it the hyperdrive does not have the equivalent of warp nacelles. I imagine trying to retrofit a ship like an ISD with warp nacelles would be a major engineering headache. I'm guessing there's no way to run a hyperdrive on antimatter?

For an ISD i think it's impossible. For a light freighter (which could refuel the ISD with hypermatter) maybe, I do not know.

[Darth Ruinus]

Hypermatter comes from black holes? A while back in another thread IP (I think it was him) gave me the impression that hypermatter is just stuff that they send into hyperspace and then trap in real space (while still at high relativistic speeds) to harness its energy.

Black holes are used to harvest "space-time knots" for repulsor technology though.

[NecronLord]

DEStroyer squadRON... (I do not know whether they organize star destroyers into squadrons).

Not necesserily analogous to a USN destroyer squadron, but the term 'squadron' is certainly used. The excecutor and its escorts made up the core of 'Death Squadron.'

[Illuminatus Primus]

Which, despite what WEG may say, despite being a Squadron was a very large combat formation.

[Ender]

Which, despite what WEG may say, despite being a Squadron was a very large combat formation.

New Clone Wars campaign guide, which is positively bipolar in its scale, has IIRC, squadrons being hundreds of ships, fleets being thousands, and then armadas being hundreds of fleets. IIRC Death Squadron was >400 ships, so that fits squadron sized.

[Connor MacLeod]

Death Squadron I recall vaguely was able to Blockade Yavin (along with some other ships, one other group being a fleet belonging to House Tagge IIRC - been a long time since I read the WOTC dealing with the outer rim stuff.) and that definitely implied hundreds of ships.

We know from varying sourcecs that Death Squadron (in and around Hoth) had different craft as well as the six ISDs

- at least one VSD (one of the WEG supplmenets, the Adventure Journals is what I'm thinking of here.)

- attack frigates, troop transports (Tales of the Bounty hunters) and "half a dozen Star Destroyers" (either they got another Star Destroyer from somewhere or these were separate from the five ISDS with the Executor. Given that this fleet was observed grouped together, this may be possible - we know the ISDS spread out to enfold the planet.)

- twenty "battleships" and a 'protective squadron of smaller warships" (separate entries.) We dont know what the "battleships" were - I sometimes guessed some of them were other (smaller) battleships disperesed to scout out for the fleet, and that they may have had a similar distribution of ships (implying possibly hundreds of vessels of various kinds.) but that's largely conjecture. Hundreds sounds right, but its been a long time and I've forgotten all the evidence/arguments I put together for Death Squadron (or that it wasn't unique, that there were other mobile squadrons like it including Ardus Kaine's Scourge Squadron.)

[Connor MacLeod]

Which, despite what WEG may say, despite being a Squadron was a very large combat formation.

New Clone Wars campaign guide, which is positively bipolar in its scale, has IIRC, squadrons being hundreds of ships, fleets being thousands, and then armadas being hundreds of fleets. IIRC Death Squadron was >400 ships, so that fits squadron sized.

The ISB put fleets at that size as well, (6 ISDs an average of 390 ships), which would match up with the conjecture about Death Squadron. They're also designated a "Sector resource" - to be available for action anywhere in the Sector, ,and that they are also the "smallest unit" transferred between Sectors.

Interestingly, it was implied that Sector groups may be distinct from the Imperial Navy as well under the "Bombard squadrons" enty. This would mesh with the novel/Radio drama references to Death squadron as a "star fleet", implying they were separate units perhaps from the Navy (and more mobile).

All of this would also mesh with the idea Executors were intended to be "Sector Level" commands. Put them in a Squadron and you'd have mobile assets reay to respond to any potential crisis, in addition to whatever the regular Sector Group had (I'd guess there'd be another Executor for the Sector Group as well.)

Publius and I once discussed (I think) the possibility that Pellaeon's 25,000 ISD figure may have referred to the mobile "fleet" assets s well.