Colonial Chrome

Hello, everyone.

I'd like to first praise the Admiral on his wonderful site. The technology sections especially are a bit of a help in sorting out how to logically consider the various questions of ship customization - the tech 101 stuff was the first bit of sensible insight I could find into a question that's been bugging me recently, which revolves around housing starfighters.

In the films, we have some idea of shipboard launch bays and planet-side hangars, and of hardware used in maintenance of your vessel, which is all fine and dandy. But I'm afraid I'm not engineer enough to sort out how much space is necessary to house all your tools, including the hardware for allowing a pilot to board and sticking in the astromech if applicable, repairing a vessel, and orienting it toward the aperture it uses to actually get into space.

Obviously this will differ between your spaceships and your starships - the one has foundries to manufacture parts, and the other does not. But in the hangar and maintenance bays themselves, I suppose there is a great amount of similarity between the two.

Modern conventions provide a certain amount of help in terms of spaceships, at least, but as starfighters don't usually need a runway, one must assume those conventions are a bit skewed. I figured I would ask someone with an engineer's mindset instead of guessing, and so here I am.

So, any thoughts on how much space is needed to comfortably manage a starfighter? A squadron thereof? Is there a ratio we might employ, and does it stay constant as the number of ships involved increases?

I will admit this is aimed mostly at getting good rules of thumb for hangar deck and small-carrier floorplans, some for p&p and a few perhaps for some 3d work, modding included. I'm quite tired of people trying to ram starfighters into the side of a tiny ship, as was done for example in the darkstryder campaign. I figure one can do better.

I'm generally prone to defaulting from direct observation of the movies to the sources of inspiration that created them. We see various options occurring in the films, but the one I think are most telling are the scenes in the Massassi Temple and aboard Home One. Both of these show a LOT of space for each given fighter, with a comparable amount of support hardware to WWII fighter bases.


Well, that does depend; a star battleship for example would usually be large enough to feature quite extensive support for its fighters.


Yes, generally the support needed to keep a fighter operational is the same regardless of the size of the ship - bigger ships can support greater numbers.


So, any thoughts on how much space is needed to comfortably manage a starfighter? A squadron thereof? Is there a ratio we might employ, and does it stay constant as the number of ships involved increases?

Well, it would vary, possibly enormously, depending on your local resources. But as things to consider, I'd bear in mind that -

Starfighters must have free range of movement to traverse their docking space. They must be able to get to and from landing zones and their housing areas, ideally fuelling and munitions loading areas would be separate and they must also be able to get to repair and maintenance zones as well. To do that they must have 'road's of space between these zones, and there must be sufficient leeway to allow for errors in judgement by the ship handlers, be they pilots or ground crew. Floating a Y-Wing into another Y-Wing is never going to result in a good day, and you'd minimise the chances of that happening whenever you could. So, every fighter needs a 'park' position, these can be fairly tight squeezes if you have to, but must allow for other means of extracting the vehicle to be used if the ship is completely depowered. A fighter then would be moved to a tech bay of sorts, though this may well just be an area of flat-top painted with different stripes, to be given a pre-flight, then off to be loaded and fuelled, and then to the launch area. That's a LOT of flat top, BUT much of it will end up being shared by other ships.

Pilots generally require areas to stand by in, 'ready rooms' if you will. The size of these would obviously depend on the number of pilots you'd have on hand, bearing in mind that in most real world bases, these areas tend to be where the pilots hang out even if they're not required to do so for duty - if they're awake, and on the base, you'd usually find them here.

Ground crew also require such spaces, those these can be further out - ground crew on duty will almost never have 'nothing to do'.

Fuel requires space, quite a lot of it for fighters. In RW environments this is handled by a variety of solutions from fuel tankers to under floor lattice tanks. Actual fuelling as seen in ANH involved snaking a pipe up from the ground (So we assume underground tanks) and there would be a limited number of these pipes. Fuelling from a tanker would require the tanker to get close enough to the ship to deploy a hose in a similar fashion, and THAT means the tanker's needs of movement must be accounted for.

Munitions loading is dangerous as all hell, and requires specialist hardware. Torpedoes and missiles have to be stored somewhere safe, then transported safely, usually on specialised carts, and loaded, often with special loading cranes.

Getting a pilot in and out of a fighter would require little other than a basic ladder, usually. Even these are often unnecessary as with a few kick panels and strategic gizmos, most pilots can climb down the outside of their fighter. Loading astromech requires, usually, a crane. This was ceiling mounted in both Yavin and Home One, but carts so equipped would, I'm sure, be commonplace.

Getting crew and misc stuff around would often necessitate having 'jeep' style vehicles (We see one or two on Yavin).

In the RAF these resources would generally be issued to a pool of around four fighters, so one fuelling van, 'jeep', munitions loading cart possibly a munitions crane and a mobile crane for every group of four ships.

In general terms you'd expect each fighter to go through around a half dozen minor replacements per day, fuses, capacitors, air filters etc. these are ideally done according to each individual fighter's log book, which tell the crew chiefs exactly when they need to swap parts out. (This is also the part of having fighters that puts most players off them, and the part most often overlooked by GMs) Additionally two serious jobs would occur in an average week. These would be things like replacing a hull-plate, stripping down a landing gear element to clean it, or degaussing the entire CRMS system. A major repair would occur every three to six weeks, and these would be things like replacing an entire ion drive assembly, re-coring the hyperdrive skewers, or, in the case of the Alliance, cleaning the damn things.

These repairs etc require a large supply of spare parts, and the means to get to do them, for example, if you need to scrub out a landing gear element, you need to be able to support the fighter without it. Engines are heavy and require cranes and transport to shift, so there'd be another level of support vehicles for these purposes. In general these sorts of heavy lift vehicles would average around one per squadron, or twelve ships depending on how you organise them.
On a ship, many of these functions can be built in overhead systems, and that makes things a lot easier.



As a real rule of thumb, I'd say in general I would allocate nine times more floor space than the size of the fighter, but that would end up pretty tight.


I concur entirely.

In games I run, I have fighters as being very dangerous pieces of equipment, and their power and usefulness is countered directly by how much time effort and money you need to sink in them to get them to work at all. When I have had players with them, I usually devise complicated charts for random malfunctions for each ship, based on how much support they get. There's a special kind of joy to be experienced as your maverick pilot boxes in that Imperial shuttle full of dignitaries only to find that for want of swapping out the thermal interlink cooler fuse when it said to in the manual, the magnetic launch tubes for the torpedoes won't work.

So anytime the various sources start jamming these things in like tuna in a net, I get agitated.

Thanks much for the prompt reply. I suppose I've a follow-up question or three for you. I should mention that I intend to apply your advice rather directly in throwing together a few vessels for some playtesting - I've a certain perverse interest in pocket carriers, so I figure if I'm going to indulge it to whatever extent, it'd be preferable to do it intelligently.

In terms of shipboard systems - which might be placed overhead somewhere in a hangar - and your nine to one ratio between support floorspace and fighter parking, am I right in guessing that one might lessen this ratio if one were to park these systems overhead, at the cost of deck spacing elsewhere?

I mean, if you've got small, 'short' fighters (a Belbullab as opposed to a B-wing, say), you can maybe hang some of that diagnostic hardware above it, sure. But either you're using valuable hangar space which could house heavier starfighters, or you're going to be paying a manufacturer with a ready facility and plans to build you a modified vessel from the ground up - minus a regular deck, which will be part of your new repair and maintenance bay.

Also, I suspect that a fighter parking place, unlike a bunk bed (oh, that poor sap in the space monkey corps), does and should not have multiple levels without significant separation between 'stacked' craft. I would further guess that this is because, in the event of some critical failure, this might prevent the top starfighter in such a 'stack' from falling down towards the deck at whatever the hangar's gravatic acceleration rate might be. Admittedly most of my recollections of hangars in the films involve the Falcon in a bay on the Death Star, Anakin playing around in the Theed hangar, and Luke getting into an X-wing, so hey, I could be way off base as to there even BEING gravity in the hangars - it's likely possible to train a crew to work in zero-g, though not necessarily desirable.

Also, I've taken a quick look at a few of your capital ship pages. One that stands out in reference to this is the Marauder, which houses a squadron of small fighters and a pair of shuttles in what is likely a cramped hangar. I'm wondering if you could provide some clarification as to the use of space there - I can see there's a significant amount given over to repair bays, crew and troop quarters, parking, and all the rest, but I'm not sure as to exactly what counts with respect to your nine-to-one ratio above. Counting the repair bays, hanger aperture, nearby canteen, galley, and crew quarters on the above deck, and so forth, we get into the neighborhood of three or four to one; perhaps more if we account for systems integrated into the hull and decking, or systems slung overhead. Would this be a correct reckoning? Not calling you out, there, but I figure it's best to know what makes the list before I go and draw something unrealistic.

Lastly, I will speculate that among the many reasons vessels like the FarStar don't make sense are mass distribution problems - you cannot weld on a couple decks on one end of the ship without, for example, a ballasting system as described on your page for the Beggar's Solace, especially if it ever enters atmosphere. You also need to go and do funny things to the shield emitter, the power distribution systems, and any elevators or lifts in the area, but most of all you have to look at weapon arcs - shame if your fighters are launching right next to a stressed-out gunner in a turbolaser turret, or worse yet, the extra decks you magically attached to the ship without crippling the internal structures block out a third or more of a turret's firing arcs. So all this extra space one might need to mess around with fighters absolutely has to be placed carefully, or better yet, not altered at all.

Sure, but it might not reduce the space needed by all that much, and it raises other issues too; obviously fighters need very tall environments as they are both taller than most people tend to think and they float further up still. So, if you place lots of mobile gantries and what-not above the ships, it'll reduce the footprint on the deck but increase the needed height of the room. You trade up in one area for another.


IMO, ALL carriers are designed to be so from the ground up - the requirements of fighter operations are so comprehensive that retrofitting them would tend to be more expensive than building a brand new ship.


I'd say having fighters stacked would be exceedingly unwise. On the other hand, SW gravity being what it is, I can see no real problem with having the 'ceiling' of a hangar have a 180 degree grav field, and thus becoming another whole flight deck. That way it'd be the gravity systems of the main ship that would keep the fighters down, so a failure of the fighter wouldn't matter much.


Oh yes, indeed, always, really. I firmly believe that one of the ways SW Tech works is to make life on ships a close to second nature for the people on board as possible, gravity is certainly one of those elements.


Yes, it is worth noting perhaps that as far as I am concerned, Marauder's have atrocious mission capable ratings for their fighters, and the shuttles are essentially airspeeders, with minimal needs for maintennence.


Well, they don't really. The thing about IRDs are, they're really small, and only just fighters at all. There are mitigating factors involved with these ships - as I mentioned before, the mission ready status of the fighters is very poor. Also, IMO, it is standard practice for there to be a permenant CAP of two to four fighters when in realspace, which opens up the whole bay. Also, the main launch doors can be closed, and ships parked on that, though that can get messy.


Actually I wouldn't normally count these as being part of the 9:1.

With the Marauder I was forced to include these given ships as every text dictates their being there, but the form of the mothership only allows a certain amount of space. Were I free to, I would not include them at all.

in any case, the hangar systems on that ship are cramped int he extreme, exceedingly dangerous, and tend to result in a much lower rate of available ships than would generally be considered ideal.

I don't have any 'real' fighter decks on my plans, one of the main reasons for this is that such a hangar would be large, and THAT would mean a very large ship overall, so large that it would undoubtedly be outside my comfort range to plan.

Better sources to look at would be the plans for Echo Base or Tierfon station.


Actually it matters slightly less in atmosphere as the air flow tends to negate the weight effect.
But yes, asymmetry is a big problem, and the FarStar would have been much better (and almost plausible) if it had had a pair of hangars, rather than one.


Yeah, all these reasons and many more contribute to my position that carriers are built as such, not cobbled together.

...Wait, let me get this straight. Almost plausible if the thing had, say, a pair of hangars, or a large symmetrical extension up and out from the main hangar, say back towards the engine section?

I mean, the extremely time- and effort-intensive conversion aside, the engine adjustments aside, if they're going to maintain anything the size of an X-wing in the damned thing they can't possibly fit more than perhaps three in per flight deck unless they like explosions.

Admittedly, with the two-for-one concept you refer to with gravity field reversal - the Flurry is depicted using it, in an astonishingly smart move when it comes to that entire EU story arc - and a stupendously large hangar section, and perhaps those expansions they slapped on the Sundered Heart...you'd have an entirely new class of CEC corvette/pocket carrier, which would require being laid down that way intentionally, from the ground up, to be believable.

Still cramped as all get-out, though. And probably dimwitted.

I guess a better question is whether anyone has an idea for a decent carrier ship, preferably supported in the better parts of EU semi-canon, that's under 250 meters in length.

Anyway...How automated might a Starfighter's maintenance get? Let's say we've got a very droid-heavy vessel/facility, with pit droids ala TPM, only perhaps a bit smarter. These would be cared for by a mix of several droid technicians and automated maintenance, overseen by a crew chief. I suppose you could further reduce everything by making your pilot a crew member or even its chief, but unless he doesn't sleep his skills will suffer unless you ram him full of cybernetics - even more expensive.

Then again, Star Wars entrusts things as complicated as surgery and medical diagnostician roles to specialized droids. Hmm.

Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, as they say.
About the only thing I like in the Far Star is that the illustrator carries the ship's lines through fairly naturally, with twin bays instead of one I'd start thinking this could almost make sense as a new ship class.


I'd agree, though I'd say two each side would be more likely.

Admittedly, with the two-for-one concept you refer to with gravity field reversal - the Flurry is depicted using it
<?> Uh, no, the Flurry has a large flat main deck and racks to suspend the remaining fighters on the ceiling. It'd make more sense for that to be another reversed gravity deck, IMHO, but they didn't do it with that ship. The Flurry is, I say grudgingly, about the only carrier mod that makes sense, but only in that you can fit fighters in it, it would still be better in everyway to have a dedicated patform. It'd be rather like landing fighters on a super-container ship, technically you could flatten enough of the deck to get smaller fighters on it, but you'd be missing all the myriad other things that make carriers work.

The single best source I have for carrier operations is Carrier by Tom Clancy On Amazon here

It really does give a good idea of the logistics involved. Along with little gems like a good break down of a nimitz's capacity to operate aircraft simultaeneously. For full-on no holes barred combat they can generally put up about a third of their total air wing, so fully two thirds of its aircraft are effectively held in reserve.


I'd generally say very little. I think one of the most telling lines in a SW film is Obi-Wan saying to Dexter - "Well, if droids could think there'd be none of us left."
You'd have droids doing lots of the actual work, perhaps, but they'd never, IMO, work with fuel or munitions, and even basic work would be checked by an organic.


I suspect that, after talking lots with both ground crew and pilots in the RAF, that neither group would relish that prospect.


True, though I'd argue that they're fairly good at doing micro-surgery and basic care, they can't diagnose for shit.

From my understanding of Star Wars, droids can be compared (in most cases) to unskilled labor goons, armed with a set of hightech tools. If someone without a dedicated education is able to do it with the best tools available, a droid is likely to be available for the job as well and do moderately.

The only portrayed exception to this (in some aspects) is R2D2, but even most of the things he does is eventually not very impressive on an intellectual level. He may be the smartest rolling toolbox with holoprojector, lockpick and hacking skills around, but he is neither a genius, nor could he replace a skilled technician.

Only the most specialized droids shown anywhere in Star Wars are actually really good at what they do and that very thing is very limited in those cases. The Droideekas are a good example. They excel at blasting stuff with lots and lots of firepower and a tough shield. That is pretty much all they can do and at least they do it good. Most other droids just stumble around, make weird noise and need constant orders to do anything properly.

Now back to starfighters, I can actually imagine droids handling things like fueling or munitions. Those are actually very simple tasks, even though they are vital. Handling ammunitions requires caution and concentration. Those are things a droid can be outfitted with and he will never be tired, careless or distracted, unless he is programmed miserably. Repetitive manual tasks, simple to reproduce.

The droid will not be able to make any reliable decision on which exact ammunition should be fitted, though. If the starfighter in question is not exactly in a state in line with it's specifications, the droid will be unable to make reliable adjustments. Say a starfighter had some repairs to it's thruster systems, that needed some tinkering to make it run again, or some jury rigging. The droid won't be able to adjust it's fuel mixture slightly to accommodate that, unless a human took the time to determine it exactly and feed that data to the droid.

Since there is little to no unskilled labor involved in servicing starships and starfighters, droids will not be able to make up for much personnel. What they could easily make up for is machinery. Droids can make some things more flexible and mobile, that would otherwise be fixed installations. They can bring things to a starfigter, where you'd normally take the starfighter to. So all in all, they will reduce the required crew a little bit, but more importantly they will enable a ship to function properly with more decentralized machinery and a little bit smaller overall hangar space.

They make life a bit easier, but they do not perform any miracles.