Colonial Chrome

Just out of curiosity... I was wondering if you have thought about working on some grounded vessels such as the Digger Crawleror A-5 Juggernaut. Now before people start thinking that theres no use for such vehicles, the 'Crawlers were left abandoned a very long time ago on Tatooine, its not unusual to see one not claimed by Jawas. And the Juggies were retired and sold off when the Empire moved to the AT-AT as their primary land vehicle. The Hutts owned a few hundred of them.

Ideally I would like to see what can be done with the deckspace, not really what the Jawas use the deckspace for, or the way the Republic laid out their Juggies. The way I see these two vehicles is in the realm of private cargo vessels or possible RV-like mobile residences.

If this request isnt too out of right field then great, if it is, feel free to say so.

On another note... does anyone know of a ship that could carry a single cargo item like one of the A-5's listed above? They measure 22m x 15m x 9m (from ground to top of upper turret, spotter tower is retractable). Or even the Crawler which is 37m x 17m x 17m (approx)? Im afraid something like this would be a capitol ship, but i was hoping maybe we could find something a bit smaller.

Thanks,

Diji

Since I don't know mass of both those things, I cannot be sure. However, I suppose whatever you choose, would fit into the Capital scale. Try some bulk freighters, maybe a CEC Action-series. However, judging from Admiral's deckplans, you'd probably have to apply some major modifications to the loading apparatus / cargo bay entrance.

Damn, we're talking about a slab on wheels that is 22 meters long (though the other dimensions I'm not sure of, Wookiepedia says it is 15m high - but it might be with the spotting tower fully extended), i.e. a little shorter than 4 standard 20" shipping containers placed in a row, and little higher than 8 such containers (they're 8' /2,4m high) placed on each other. In modern shipping terms, this is one hell of an oversized cargo (i.e. no standard ship is going to accept it, should you need to ship something that big, you would be forced to chater a special ship capable of carrying oversized cargo (they tend to call it "project cargo").

While we're talking about SW, we have to assume that such big combat vehicles are norml thing, this only means the the military would have ships capable of 1. accepting this "slab" into their holds, 2. sending them off into planet surface. But then, hardly anyone except the navy...

For comparison, a modern army can send out their tanks on a regular breakbulk freighter, though ro-ro and car-carriers are preferred. Still, the same cargo hold sized would be enough to fit landspeeders and repulsortanks of SW, and - having visited some ship holds (I've worked in a seaport for a while) I'd say that even some big ones, like a floating fortress or maybe an AT-ST would be able to to fit there.

I have, yes, but in general the utility versus time expenditure rules them out. There's almost no open space on either vehicle, nor on other similarly sized vessels and as such, there's no real utility to have them planned (that is, they'd be of little to no use on the table top) but they would represent a lot of time invested.

On another note... does anyone know of a ship that could carry a single cargo item like one of the A-5's listed above?
You're going to be talking about Acclimator landing craft at a minimum. To move these things you need a ship that's big enough that it does so as a matter of course, and that makes them BIG, way too big to seriously consider deckplanning them.

Try some bulk freighters, maybe a CEC Action-series.
Nah, there's no way you could put one on board even an A6.


Well, no, there certainly would be ships that can move it, just none that could and would also be compact enough to deckplan.

True but a C-17 can load Abrahms tanks just fine. They're just designed to be able too. You can get too focussed working like this, a MEU SOC will move its tanks by ship because they're a Marine unit. The 82nd Airbourne fly all of their tanks because they're airbourne. If you're judging based on experience in a naval port you can forget that it is possible to airdrop the things too.

I understand the abilities and limitations of modern shipping... I have spent more time that I care to admit on a Nimitz class carrier and I have worked on an Airforce Base as well (working all too close to those C-17's and C-5's).

As for the SW side of the spectrum, I was just curious as to whether or not it was a possibility to find a ship smaller than capital size to transport one of these beasties. I was leaning toward a Action V or VI, for purchase rather than charter, but I wasnt sure how many modifications a ship like this would need to house something like this. The 'Crawler would be more difficult as its as tall as it is wide... and its 2x the size of the Juggy A5. I think it will fit, with modifications to cargo bay entrances, though Im not entirely sure... While dimensions are listed, theres not weight to determine the bulk of these things.

Anyhow, just curious.

Diji

@ Admiral - "oversized cargo" means just "cargo so big it cannot fit the standard hold / shipping container". I've seen an 800-ton gate-crane (several meters high) being loaded on a "project cargo" ship with my very eyes. And I'm sure you can find photos of that US Navy's destroyer (was it USS Jonathan Cole?) that was damaged in the Persian Gulf, and had to be shipped out for repairs - they've actually put the whole warship on a "project cargo" vessel, and sailed away!

As for C-17, I'm not sure how many Abrams tanks can such a bird take, but if I'm not mistaken, it is only one at a time. Sure, you can airlift even bigger cargos, like space shuttles (Boeing 747 can carry one piggy-back). My point is elsewhere: to move slabs as big as the Juggernaut, you'd need either something purpose-buildt (there are AT-AT dropships, though I don't recall if they are hyperspace-capable - so it would be logical to assume there were Juggernaut dropships as well), or something that is capable of carrying equivalent volumes of cargo for different purposes.

A dedicated transport would be hard to get. Even though you might be able to get your hands on a decomissioned equivalent of a LST (Landing Ship, Tank), a Juggernaut-capable one is much bigger than repulsortank-capable one. Besides, it seems that in SW, military units are transported in bulk on capital-sized carriers.

I suppose Diji - with his Navy background - could tell us more about that, but...
The Polnocny-class medium landing ships (Warsaw Pact standard for the Cold War) could take, IIRC, 5 tanks, i.e. half of a company.
Rotterdam-class landing ship-docks, which are really big, can take 33 main battle tanks or up to 170 vehicles, plus about 600 soldiers, which, IIRC, makes them able to transport about one battalion. It is 160m long, circa twice as much as Polnocny-class, and carries its own compliment of landing craft.

Now compare this to your plain vanilla Imperial-class star destroyer with its 9'700 troops, 20 AT-ATs and 30 AT-STs (plus, most likely, assorted support vehicles) and enough landing craft to deliver these to the surface. Sure, it is an all-around ship, a dedicated troop carrier doesn't need to be that big.
But...

I mean, look at the scale we're talking about...

Admiral - "oversized cargo" means just "cargo so big it cannot fit the standard hold / shipping container". I've seen an 800-ton gate-crane (several meters high) being loaded on a "project cargo" ship with my very eyes. And I'm sure you can find photos of that US Navy's destroyer (was it USS Jonathan Cole?) that was damaged in the Persian Gulf, and had to be shipped out for repairs - they've actually put the whole warship on a "project cargo" vessel, and sailed away!


Yes, it is just one at a time, however it is worth noting that the 82nd have over two hundred tanks at are capable of delivering all of them by air with less than six hours of preperation, a remarkable feat that was demonstrated on September 18th 1994 when they did precisely this in response to the Haitian coup.


As I pointed out, the Empire has ships capable of moving these things with ease, the Acclimators can and do carry dozens of them, as can any destroyer sized ship.


Sure, but this was the point I was making, no? That there certainly are ships that can handle these cargoes, but they're too big to deckplan.

Since the Imperial Grand Army is geared for assault, anything they use must logically be mobile with little or no preparation, and that dictates that there does exist the capability to do just this.

Ah, so we stand for the same opinion, though we tend to reach it via different logical paths.

I've simply began my reasoning from Diji's starting point, i.e. (as I got it, no pun intended) "I have a privately-owned Juggernaut, and want to apply some starlifting* capacity to it. And why the heck I cannot avoid using a capital-scaled vessel for that...? (BTW it would be a plus for it to not turn heads...)"

* per analogy to airlifting

Now, as for C-17 - I recall a Tom Clancy's book about US Armored Cavalry, where he mentioned that these birds are just a handful, and therefore airlifting tank units isn't practical, especially given the fact there's much more war material that might be airlifted into the conflict zone. Naturally, when he was writing it (somehen back in the 90s), the armored battalions of the US airborne units were still equipped with these old Sheridan tanks that were indeed air-potrable due to low weight.

For me, SW fleets seem to work best along seaborne, not airborne analogues. That's why I've ignored Galaxys, Globemasters, Ruslans (NATO: Condor, An-124) and Mirias...

Yes, though a few points;
Armored Cavalry was published in '94, when there were ten C-17s total. Airbourne was published in '97, when there were thirty total.
In 2009 the USAF has 185 C-17s, along with 126 C-5s and several hundred other cargo aircraft. The USAF has demonstrated several times, as I said notably in Haiti, the capacity to move very large military units by air with little or no notice.

This is possibly related to what I said earlier - the capabilities of military units is constrained to a degree by the mindset of those units. The 82nd is airbourne, so all their tanks end up being flown. The 3rd is a cavalry unit, so they don't fly. Well, not much. A MEUSOC is composed of Marines, so all their tanks end up going by boat. It's partly a product of practicality - you train with the equipment you have, and fight with the training you do, and partly the product of a diversified military, if you had an Armoured Cavalry regiment fully capable of doing airbourne actions, then they'd no longer BE an Armoured Cavalry regiment, they'd be an Airbourne Armoured regiment.


Well, that's fair enough. To me the IGA is purely an assault force - they maintain limited abilities to hold ground, but they don't really have to - the worlds that make up the Empire operate their own local military that act in a defensive role. This is what Tarkin is talking about when he says the Senate has been disbanded and the regional governors have taken direct control of their terratory - the Empire has dissolved the federal nature of the Empire in favour of direct autocratic authority. The Death Stars were constructed to enforce this, a world that opposes direct rule would simply be destroyed. When the first Death Star is destroyed, the Alliance is able to go on a direct offensive, the IGA cannot and was never able to, control the billions of systems by occupation. The fleet is instructed to attempt to engage the Alliance because that's how the fleet works - if they know where the enemy is they go in with over-whelming firepower and speed and smash it in place, then theoretically replace the dissenting government with one that's more in tune with Bob's will. With the Alliance being essentially a guerilla force, this is ineffective. Since Bob cannot go back and restore the Senatorial powers, he has no choice but to construct a second Death Star as quickly as possible. The Alliance know that if this one is finished there will be nothing that can stop it, and the Empire will win control of the Galaxy with no effective opposition. Thus, when they hear of the location of the second Death Star 'the time for their attack has come' it's an all or nothing desperate move, whomever wins, wins control of the known universe.

In every case where we see how the Empire's military works, it does so entirely in accordance with a rapid reaction assault force. As such, if the Empire uses a given piece of military equipment, then it follows there certainly does exist a mechanism whereby that piece of equipment can be moved at speed and deployed very quickly.

As for airlifting - I stand corrected. Well, that's how you end if you're not keeping up with up-to-date information...

Regarding the Empire - yup, that sums it up pretty well...

Having a Director of the Ministry of Defence as a father in law helps, as does keeping many contacts in various armed forces around the world

Well I guess this request needs some background... Admiral already knows a bit about my character... but essentially I see him as a character much like Talon Karrde (if Karrde sided with the Empire rather than the Alliance). He has a base of operations in the Talus Mountians. He has a team of people that assist him in his smuggling/bounty hunting. ... This base is essentially a small town, having a decent sized area for houses for his teammates as well as some others (keep in mind this character started from SWG, where Diji ran a guild of imperial crafters who lived in a small sity on Talus). He does own quite a few ships, most of which were the luck of a good hand of sabacc where Diji won a small used starship lot. He has had a good run of luck smuggling and bounty hunting, but selling off the scrap of the used ship lot yeilded him most of his fortune.

Now back to the quote before me. I like the idea of using one of these vessels as a RV-like home/office/workshop, etc on wheels. Now Diji may be financially sound, but he certianlly cant afford a capitol ship like an ISD. A smaller ship would be something like the Dreadnaught, but since Diji grew up during the clone wars and lived his adublt life during the rebellion and new republic, there are very, very few dreadnaughts before the Katana fleet was discovered, and even after it, the fleet was pretty much not usable once the battle with the Chimaera was over. Seeing as capital ships are pretty much out of Diji's reach, this only leaves large freighters, like the Action class ships.

All methods aside... all deckplans aside (I wasnt really requesting one, just putting a question to those with more knowledge about such things than myself), I was just wondering is such a vehicle could be transported via cargo... or would it be wiser to look into specific dropships.

Anywho... I think the Action VI (or V for that matter) can do it, with modifications to the holds. Attached is a render I did of the Action VI at 125m next to the A5 Juggy at 22m. Looking at Chrome's Action Deckplans, I think with modifications to the Cargo decks... if possible, it may work, leaving as much cargo space as probably 2 or 3 light freighters... (just a guess). Seeing as the habitable decks are in the front "box-like" area, in the tunnel, and the upper part of the rear "box-ish" area.



Thanks for the input guys!

Diji

I could see these things being carried (individually or in pairs) by some sort of bulk cargo lifter. The giant ground vehicles (assuming they are able to operate and protect their inhabitants from vacuum) clamped to the underside of a ship that consists mostly of a massive repulsorlift and a hyperdrive, and an airtight connection to the ground vehicles upper hatch.

the length is totaly irelavent and in truth so is the weight those are not where the problem lies width can be problimatic as well but hight is more of a problem i'm not sure how much dead space is between the cargo decks of the A6 but just using the stated average deck height of 200cm ie 2 meters and given the three decks of cargo space that gives you 6 meters we can be very sure there is gona be less then 2 meters total of dead space except maby in small areas or we whould have another deck. witch leaves you consibely short of the even 9m for the jug i saw near the top much less either the 15m or 17m figure i saw for the sand crawler and if that was ment or is in feet you can ignore this though if i rember correctly the at-at was only 40 feet tall some where around 13m so those hights seem on the more then slighly to large side considering most of the at-at's hight is leg and not body

I think what Xerty is trying to say is;

The length is totally irrelevant, and in truth so is the weight. Those are not where the problem lies. The width can be problematic, but height is more of a problem. I'm not sure how much dead space is between the cargo decks of the A6, but just using the stated average deck height of 200cm (ie 2 meters) and given the three decks of cargo space, that gives you 6 meters. We can be very sure there is going to be less then 2 meters total of dead space, except maybe in small areas or we would have another deck, which leaves you considerably short of the even 9m for the juggernaut I saw near the top, much less either the 15m or 17m figure I saw for the sand crawler, and if that was meant or is in feet you can ignore this, though if I remember correctly the AT-AT was only 40 feet tall, somewhere around 13m, so those heights seem on the more-than-slighly too large side, considering most of the AT-AT's height is leg and not body.

There are a few points I think needs to be made here;
Length is as relevant a measurement as either breadth or height.
Weight certainly is a factor, though I'd suggest that unless there's some reason to think the Juggernaut is denser than other cargoes, we can pop it in the category of a large but not unduly massive load.
The deck to deckhead height is, as stated at Chrome, around fifty centimeters.
I don't know where you think the average headroom on a deck is stated at being two meters, but it is certainly not from Chrome. Deck headrooms are on average two hundred and fifty centimeters in habitable areas, and vary between this and three meters in cargo bays.
It is not always the case that having enough room to fit another deck invariably results in a deck so being fitted. This is especially true of cargo areas.

Just so we're clear, the dimensions for the following vehicles reflects their stowed configuration - legs folded, retractible towers sucked in, tyres let down.

Name L W H
A5 Juggernaut 22 9 9.5
A6 Juggernaut 49 19 21
AT-AT 20 6 12
Sandcrawler 37 22 20

Just to put that in a visual context...


Any stats you may have read elsewhere are irrelevant, though I will mention that the AT-AT's unstowed height is twenty two meters, which is a little over seventy two feet.

Now, in the largest possible dimension the cargo bay of the Action series measures L 43 W 10.6 H 8.

We can see now, I assume, that none of the above vehicles would fit into the space available. This is without getting into the dimensions of the required loading hatch, nor of the ability of the vessel to fly when you've cut through almost all of her ribs.

Holy Shizzle! I never realized the A6 was that big.

Neither did I..

That yellow box is representing the Action's cargo bay, Admiral?

That yellow box is indeed the cargo bay of an Action freighter.

And yeah, shizzle seems to fit, the things are DAMN big.

That is one of the most obsured armored vehicles i have ever seen, people and there silly land ships. Oh and before when I said legnth and weight were not importent, I ment they did not matter because they could be accounted for. I'll also try to work on the grammer and spelling i know there bad got to lazy.

After some thought, and playing around with the models... I am beginning to see that the Action VI is probably not the right ship to be hauling these things... if anything it would take something much larger... almost like the AA-9 or something in the capital ship range like the Dreadnaut (capital ships are hard to come by as the empire / rebellion / republic, etc usually have first dibs on them, hence why us little people result to freighters).

Im also starting to rethink the "land-ship" (thanks Xerty for that phrase) aspect as theres really no place that a land-ship can go to that a starship cant... if theres something a Starship cant get to, then its probably too tight for a vessel the size of the A5 Juggy, and hence would either require a journey on foot or by speeder. Plus the starship can allow for a faster exit if needed.

Well thanks for the info, If anything, this thread may have help shed some light on the ability of freighters to haul large cargo.

Diji

You could always stick a large vehicle in a suitably big box and have a Gallofree "Rebel" transport carry it. With a cargo capacity of 19,000 metric tons and what amounts to a large open cargo area it should be able to transport any of the vehicles with ease.

Kirijama

Heh, when it comes to hauling vehicles, the cargo size of most of the SUs medium freighters is questionable - many can't fit a family sized civilian speeder through the hatches, no matter what their internal space and load capacity would allow them to hold...

This is part of the reason I generally refer to 'party sized' freighters as being couriers. When you use the word freighter at least part of the imagery that comes up is what we would term freighters in the RW, very large vessels that move a LOT of cargo. This role in the SWU certainly exists, but the scale you end up talking about is on the order of the Trade Federation freighters, and they're VAST.
The ships I do certainly aren't going to be large enough to consider the kinds of logistics needed to haul things as big as sandcrawlers around. That they are moved around dictates there are ships that do it, but as I've said before such things are impractical for deckplanning, as well as being pretty redundant - deckplans exist partly to let you know where you can move and shoot, and do interestingthings on board, and on really big ships, you can just let fly with a pen and sketch up somewhere and be confident that it'd be perfectly reasonable that this area could exist on board.
On the GF-40 Gallofree transports, I'm seeing that there would be issues with the lower hull panels, they're not completely open. I'd also suggest that the hyperdrive fields, not to mention the centre of gravity would preclude them having such an oversized cargo on board.

A little more than slightly off topic, but I can't get it out of my head: do you think one could, if one had the opportunity, run an AT-AT over with an A6? I mean, is it possible to make AT-AT "roadkill"?

Well, the A6 is heavier, and we know how fast it moves, so I'd imagine if you hit an AT-AT in the legs with one, it'd go arse over tit and be completely incapable of righting itself. I'd think though that were you to ram an AT-AT's body afterwards, you'd do as much damage to the A6.

AT-ST's though are often found flattened by the sides of juggernaut highways...

Heh, I'm generally thinking more along the lines of a haulage company. The average small freighter in the SU has the cargo capacity of 2 or 3 articulated lorries but nowhere near the ease of loading/unloading that one would expect from a vehicle whose primary stated purpose is to carry cargo, actually reducing the potential cargoes the owner of such a ship can take on.

Of course, that is to be expected in a universe in which the primary function of any vessel is to "look cool" and the actual job it is supposed to do is often a relatively minor consideration.

Which makes your ability to take the SW designs and produce floorplans that actually work for the vessels stated purpose all the more impressive, though sometimes the results are less than ideal due to the limitations the original artist places upon you...

Well, this is part of what I'm talking about. If you associate the average party sized ships with real freighters, or even with artics, I think the paradigm falls apart. Instead, if you think of things like the Falcon as being closer to a motorcycle courier you get something which kinda feels right. There's a scale thing going on, where our things like this are more like this than this

Basically, the way I see it is that in the SWU it's never going to be cost effective to haul a few hundred tons of something fairly banal, like grain, or mining equipment. Whilst people do haul these things, they're done so in mega- or giga-ton loads on huge ships because we're talking about satisfying those needs on a planetary scale. The courier's role is to take specific, rather than generic, things at high speed to their destination.


The bane of my life

It would be quite interesting to see what designs people could come up with if they *started* with the idea of the ships practical purpose and designed outwards

I'd very much like to see more standardised cargo pods, for example - there are a lot of different ships that appear to use cargo pods but every one seems to have a different shaped pod, which defeats the purpose somewhat...

SWDA have been doing this to a degree. One of the things that is most evident is that if you're trying to be pragmatic you end up with a flying space box. Personally I'm going to stick to making the outside look Star Wars, and then fitting everything in.

I know what you mean about the pods, however, most ships small enough to use them will be local area ships - they won't go far from home. So, in their own corner of the galaxy the prevalence of a given design of pod could make them more useful. The idea of having a standardised cargo pod on a galactic scale could only really start after the fall of the senate, and would be a very slow process.

I will see your Courier theory and raise you the RV theory... I personally see ships like the Falcon, and others much like it as more of an RV (recreational Vehcile) than a cargo carrier of any sort. I think they really nailed the stereotype on the head when they replaced the YT-1300 with a winnebago in Spaceballs. Just look at the deckplans these ships present... you have living quarters, lounges, food prep/eating areas, and a small storage space (called a cargo bay)... how are these things any different than an average sized Motorhome?? Maybe because I was raised by a family that spent a log ot leisure time in these kinds of RVs I can see the connection...

I wouldnt call anything smaller than a Action VI a freighter, but looking at the limitations of the hull (cargo access hatches, etc) that would probably be closer to a courier to me than a true freighter. Now these ships like the Jumpmaster, where you have a small life-support section and this vessel attaches itself to a larger cargo pod, that can be a freighter to me. But indepentantly, I see it back in the RV category.

Keep in mind, these "freighters" that we hear about, much like the Falcon, are used mostly by smugglers... and while they do haul cargo, most of them are small enough they can be stowed in a closet. So a larger Freighter like an Action wouldnt be necessary (although, Talon Karrde did in fact carry a great deal of stuff, including temporary buildings... so he employed a fleet of Actions.)

The way I work to lay out my ships is much like a mobile house... or an RV. Though I do work to find ships that do have a distinct cargo bay, so this allows me to still carry things I need, I still try to make sure they are comfortable enough that you could spend a month or so in the ship.

Anyhow, now that Ive ranted that much, I guess its time for bed...

Heh, it's not a theory, it's the policy under which Chrome operates.


Mainly by by having a cargo bay. The proportions of living area to cargo stowage is much greater. To fit the mobile home model it would be a mobile home towing a flatbed.


There is a certain amount of similarity, however I'd point out that when you holiday (vacation, for the colonials) in a caravan (trailer, for the colonials) you spend a lot of time not IN it - caravans are cramped and generally uncomfortable with the basics for survival built in, you stay in them only because they're cheaper than a hotel. Similarly, you can stay on board a ship indefinitely, but realistically, you'd do just what Solo does - you land, get a room on world, and stay there.
Granted, there are ships with much better accomodations, these are typically yachts, though, with an entirely different mission profile.


I presume you mean 'most of these ships that are used by characters in the game are smugglers' not 'all these ships in the SWU are smugglers'.
This is true to an extent - a player group typically uses their ship in ways that were not intended by the designer.
The way I make ships, however, is to build them and map them as they were intended to be used. I feel that this makes the ships more plausible, and the more plausible they are, the easier it is to believe in them.

I see your point of a trailer vs a ship... this is why I purposed the motorhome version, since with these vehicles, we do ride in them and live in them at our destination. Though I do see the point you made about Solo leaving his ship at a hangar and sleeping in a room when he reaches his destination. Although the Falcon didnt offer much in accomodations, a ship like the Jade Shadow or the Lady Luck would provide nice accomodations, probably much nicer than most backwater planets... thus placing it in the luxury RV category for me. Even the Wild Karrde had luxurious accomodations for a Action VI, but I assume Talon put a good deal of credits and effort into customizing it.

Another issue I have with the "get there and get a room" idea is we hardly see anything besides SW characters using these vehicles for transport. If they reach a destination, we rarely see an overnight stay (if we do, its because they have been detained, although there is the Cloud City scene in EpV), but even in the books, we hardly see many overnight stays, except when the characters are where they call "home".

Now I understand your comparison to a RV towing a flatbed, but keep in mind we are talking a "long time ago... in a galaxy far far away" so they have technology we dont and most RVs top out at around 37 feet long, not 50 meters. And our RVs are restricted to the width of a lane of travel on a highway (although now we have the option to have a pop-out installed on the RV). Either way, while I can see that this kind of ship can fit into the Courier category I see couriers as the SW equalivent of FedEx vans, so it just seems rather lackluster to me, maybe thats why I like the RV classification better.

Anyhow, it seems we are just going back and forth over terminology, but it still seems we disagree with the classification of freighter.

PS...
Yes, your assumption is correct, it would be wrong to assume all such ships would be used in smuggling, there are ships that are used for their proper intention. As for the way they are planed out... I agree with creating deckplans as to how the ship was intended, if we were to deckplan these ships as to how they are retrofitted then we would be including things that might not be possible for the average party. I mean come on, would the average party be able to find a YT-1300 with the Falcon's hyperdrive and streamlined hyperspace system?? But deckplanning them for their intended use provides a starting point for those who would like to take the time, effort, and credits to retrofit their ship themselves.

Well, obviously whatever you do in your own game universe is entirely up to you. I make sure that my players understand things like - the beds are small and uncomfortable, the food is dire, the ship generally smells, it makes noise all the time. SWU ships aren't the anti-septic clinical homes they are in the STU. Most of the time decent players get this intuitively and act accordingly. Obviously this doesn't apply to ships that are either used by Royalty or are yachts. Both of those, however, are incredibly expensive at least partly to overcome the inherent problems with starships.

.
No, they're both yachts - very expensive ships designed to have decent accomodations.

I think you've perhaps got fixated on this RV idea, and are seeing elements that concur with your model, and ignoring elements which do not.


That is a limitation of the cinema media. It is never relevant to the story, and would take time and money to shoot. With time and money the only defining limitations on film, if it is not important, it won't get filmed.
The six SW films do, however, imply a few things.


I wouldn't say that is true at all. On the contrary, in many of the SWU 'books' we see characters in one place for extended periods and I can recall only one time anyone stays on the ship, and that's Chewbacca in Heir to the Empire, and then it is specifically stated that his wanting to sleep on the ship is peculiar. There are bountious examples in the Thrawn books, I, Jedi and the Bounty Hunter wars of people living in buildings rather than on the ships they arrived upon.


It's not the size factor that's relevant to the analogy - it's the ratio of crew space versus storage. There's lots of space on an RV to stow your gear, your food, clothing tents, books whatever crap you pack around. This is also true on a courier - double bunks have plenty of stowage beneath them, most cabins have large containers in them, benches and couchs have stow bins under the cushions and there's often dedicated little cupboards dotted around the place.

BUT

Couriers also then have these large compartments that do NOTHING but carry cargo.


Having a functional analogy is intrinsic to understanding how the vessels work in their universe, that allows you to intuit how to build them, and that makes it easier to make the plans, and those plans are better for it.


This is why I also have a Unique section, these ships detail, usually, post modification 'partyised' ships.


Depends on what you mean by it. In my SWU the Falcon is fast, very fast in fact, but I take the 'fastest ship in the galaxy' as being hyperbole, as I think it was clearly intended.
My rules on hyperdrives have adapted to the prequel canon evidence regarding hyperspeed, and accordingly focus more on the fuel efficiency than the actual speed. Whilst hyperdrives do affect the actual 'distance-over-aether' speed element, they do so in conjuction with other factors, chiefly the main ion drive. The primary measure of speed over distance, however, is how often you need to stop and top up the tanks.

To contextify that, say we have a hundred kilometers of road, and two cars. One, we'll call him 'The Plush' can cruise at 100kph, the other, 'Dr Spangly' at 60kph. The Plush has a fuel capacity sufficient to go 30 km, Dr Spangly, however, has a fuel capacity sufficient to go the whole 100 km. The Plush can refuel in ten minutes. At the end line, the Plush will arrive after 100 minutes - one hour travel, forty minutes fueling. Dr Spangly will also arrive after 100 minutes, but won't have had to refuel four times, which costs money.

In WEG terms we could say both ships have a hyperdrive rating of, say, 2 in that in a simplified game we're not going to be concerned about the minutiae of running the ship itself, and how we count hyperdrive speed is the total amount of time it takes to get somewhere.
After the prequels demonstrated very specifically quite how fast ships are in the SWU (Around 500,000c) the time taken to stop for fuel is absolutely critical, in the above example as soon as we start increasing the time it takes to refuel, we see that Dr Spangly gets comparativly MUCH faster very quickly. in the Canon SWU we're talking about it taking about a quarter to half the time to do a single fuel stop as it does to cross the entire galaxy.

The Falcon has some nice features - its ion drives are very fast for a ship its size, the hyperdrive is a fairly (but not amazingly) high end one, and it has almost supernatural fuel efficiency. These combine to make it unusually fast for a ship that size. The Falcon is not, however, the fastest ship in the galaxy. For example, the ISDs are quite a lot faster when they get a steam on.

Anyhoo, long winded way of saying parties in my SWU can get Falcon kinds of performance, but it's a lot more complicated and prone to breaking down, which, if you go by Canon, the Falcon doesn't suffer from.[/b]

Hmm, I see your point, though I could equally see the arguable point that making multi-planet stops with a massive bulk freighter might be equally uneconomic. So you'd ship into one location in system (akin to a modern container ship arriving in a port) then offload onto smaller vessels for local distribution.

***

But I can definitely see the validity of the m/c courier model too, even if, extending the analogy to sw ships means we have couriers that have a cubic foot of cargo space but the opening in the box can only accept packages 2"x4"x6", meaning that to shift anything alrger you need to hire a van...

My point would be that if you're shipping anything to any planet like this its going to be in such large numbers that it would be outside the scope of the ships presented here. planets are very big, with lots of people, so if the planet has to import something at all, then it's going to do so on a planetary scale.
To stretch the analogy - it would be like a container ship parking, offloading, and then each individual bag of flour being motorbiked to the end user.


People don't seem to have a problem with this in the real world, though, I can, theoretically, post just about anything through Royal Mail, but I still have to fit it through an eight by two slot if I don't want to have to go out of my way to a distribution node.
Plus, starships have other concerns that dictate how big the doors can be such as structural integrity and airtightness.

I assume that the military transports for the AT-ATs and Juggernauts would be little more than a powerplant, repulsorlifts, ion drives, and magnetic clamps for attaching to the cargo - with a cockpit strapped on as an afterthought. This seems to be a logical extension of the repulsorlift transport used for the walkers in Episode 2 during the battle for Geonosis (hope I spelled that right... ), and the little detail that while the troop transports in the prequels could land on a planet, Star Destroyers - the primary military transport of the Empire in the original movies - can not.

As such, there would be little point to a floorplan, as it would be pretty much just a couple seats and a lot of controls. On the other hand, a picture of it would be pretty cool... but beyond the scope of the Admiral's work.

BTW - AWESOME work, Admiral. I love this site.

Yes, but this would be more from a staging area in combat than for flying through hyperspace.


Actually we see several Star Destroyers landed just fine in RotS.

It's also implied quite strongly that the Invisible Hand can land, and that's very large indeed.


Always nice to hear

In which scene did we see those Star Destroyers land in RotS? And what version, Acclamator, Venator, Victory, Imperial or something else?

The Acclamators can land, but I don't recall seeing the Venators land - but then I could have missed it...

The ISD, on the other hand, is a whole lot bigger than either, which brings its own problems to landing. And in Episode 5, it is implied that the troops are landed by 'small craft' (relative to the ISD's, anyway - something that can land an AT-AT is going to be pretty frickin' huge!) while the ships remain in orbit to keep the rebels from escaping.

Of course, nothing in any of the movies say the ISD's cannot land on a planet either. So we could well be just arguing somantics here. Although personally I think it would be more efficient to use some sort of landing craft, I have nothing to base that on than my own opinions. Certainly nothing canon says one way or the other.

And I totally agree, the Empire would not bother with a hyperdrive on those hypothetical landing craft. They would simply be a local transport for getting AT-AT's from the ISD to the ground. The FTL part would be handled just fine by the ISD's themselves...

PS: What the heck is the Invisible Hand?

Not that it is terribly relvent because you guys are talken cannon, but in the imperial source book 2nd ed under battlion organization there is a implied refrense that a imperial landing barge can drop a heavy armor battlaion, but not a light armor battalion.

They do, I nearly choked when I saw it, it validated a theory I've had for a long time. I'll slap RotS in in a mo and see if I can get a time stamp.

Righty, Chapter 18 'Brother's Farewell' about fifty minutes in, Obi and Ani are talking in a walkway looking down on several Venators. S'true.


But a whole lot smaller than the Invisible Hand, so,


Yes. Personally I reckon AT-ATs are sufficiently large that they must have come down from the Executor, not the ISDs. Actually I'm verging on certain Blizzard Force is more or less Vader's personal army - nothing came off the other destroyers.
And yes, I think they used a combat deployment system, something like the LAAT / AT-TE combo. That doesn't mean they can't be deployed from transport ship, just that at Hoth, they probably didn't.


Or indeed semantics, unless you're implying that Star Wars films put you to sleep


Technically no, but movies have a whole subtext and style that is distinct from other media. In short - if one Star Destroyer can land, then they all can, its just the way the genre works. Likewise, if it looks like a stormtrooper, and we know they were clones at one point, unless there's a damn good reason, they're clones the rest of the time too.

There's a link in that section to the Lurker's Babylon 5 site, reading through JMS' comments on produicing B5 are one of the best examples of how TV and Movie writer / creators think and work. I'd recommend spending the time to go through.


Yes, it's analogous to amphibious ships and the landing craft - ships can handle the ocean, landing craft can't.


It's General Greivous' flagship at the Battle of Coruscant. trust me, it's really, REALLY big.

The large ships landing alwes buged me, but considering how esay they make exiting an atmosphere, the energy cost of heavy lift must be negligble in the SW universe.

Personally I like having them land, it's just the sort of grandiose over-the-top image that Star Wars is good at.

And yes, repulsors are both powerful, 100% reliable and more or less free.

I would generally say SDs land for large scale loading and refitting, they'd spend as much time as practical in space.

However, I do love the idea that Executor has, somewhere, some really stonky landing gear.

get me to accept it, yes, like it never and huge landing gears are just one more thing to stick into those over croweded hulls. Not to mention if you could not take them in to atmo you could save on space, either by elimantaing, or reducing repulsars.

But you don't build a hull and then try and see how much stuff you can bung in it, you build a hull that's big enough to fit all the stuff you want in it.

agread but more stuff means larger engines if you want to maintain the speed you wanted to achive in your origonal design specifcation and bigger engines take up more space and mass. i think you get what i'm saying though it mostly comes from my slight distaste at super effecent heavy lift tech wierd i know but there it is. If i'm acualy making some sense please tell me between my own lack of knowledge and lack of sleep not sure if i'm just rambling or not.

Yes, but that's ALL things you take care of in the design phase, we're not talking about modifications - Star Destroyers can land and take off, that's canon, so they CAN take off and land.

Fair enough.

I imagine, as a practical thing, ISDs (and Supers) wouldn't land very often. Most naval bases wouldn't have the several square km to spare for a landing field of that magnitude... Or would they? I guess it would depend on how often the need arises. After all, they had fields big enough to land several Acclimators and Venators on a world as crowded as Coruscant. Who's to say there aren't bigger ones out there?

I suppose the 'Can ISDs land' question would have to be answered by the GM for his own game, because while canon strongly imples they can, most game sourcebooks and EU stuff states they cannot.

To each their own.

As to the Invisible Hand - I imagine that thing's design was why the Imperials started mounting ion cannon on their capitol ships. Mounting that bridge way out there on its own like that would have made a very inviting target for an ion bombardment, and a cheap kill.

True, though, from what we see in AotC and RotS the Imperial Grand Army is primarily a rapid shock force. There are a comparitively small number of fleets that stay at their local base of operations, and go out to engage specific threats when they appear. This is why, IMHO, when we see them doing their job in the OT, they're very good at it - Battle of Hoth, but when they're doing something they're not really intended to do, they suck at it - pretty much the rest of the time. You don't use shock troops to guard things, they get bored and resentful. So, there doesn't need to be that many places where they are expected to land much, by which we mean places where they can fuel, arm, board troops and embarked vehicles etc etc.
Then again, I'd argue that most ships land with their repulsors on, so effectively weigh a lot less than they ought to. On that basis, as well as making sense practically, Star Destroyers can set down anywhere where there's enough fairly flat space.


True again, though the EU is constrained to keep as much of their material 'live' as they can - they want to sell books comics and computer games for as long as they can, and having great swathes of it invalidated doesn't help. So we end up with retcon after retcon in a ceaseless attempt to keep it all valid, but it's all just to keep selling bad books and terrible games.
As a GM, you're not required to adhere to this. I feel part of the role of a SWGM is to keep the stories and atmosphere as close to the movies as possible, if the players don't feel that this story fits with them, then you're not really playing Star Wars at all, just 'generic sci-fi game with Star Wars memes'.
To me, this means throwing a lot of the EU straight out the window in a joyous blitz of purging, and starting with a clean slate. Then you start adding back, slowly, those bits of the EU that you like, and that fit.


The bridge is way down on the hull, of course, it's the throne room that's at the top of the spire. Worth noting that Grievous kept Palpatine up there, probably as a deterent, whilst he was down in the ship proper

Whoops... my bad, I forgot that was the throne room. The bridge is on the nose, isn't it?

While I do like this idea as well, we now have canon (thru Force Unleashed) that shows us that the Executor was built in space, much like the international space station. Now this is not to say that it cant land, but it does differ slightly from the capitol ships of the clone wars era... we also have canon thru some of the EU novels that desingates spacestation-like facilities where star destroyers are built.

It seems that once the empire started upgrading to the larger capitol ships we went from a "dry dock"-shipyard like construction, to a "space station" like construction. Again, while this is noting the difference in construction methods, it does not change the fact that these ship can possibly land. Though while I would still love to see something like the Executor land, I would probably bet some money that it never saw atmosphere (assuming that it was lost in the destruction of the second death star). I would venture to say that with a ship as large as the Executor, the curvature of the planet it is intending on landing on would come into play as well as openspace large enough to allow it to land.

Anyhow, with all this being said... my vote is that the Star Destroyers can land.