Star Wars Fleets

[Mr. Oragahn]

Yeah, one of the two ISDs was indeed destroyed by ramming, that was the Peremptory, and that was using one of the slave-rigged Katana fleet Dreadnaughts into. I believe the Wookiepedia source claims that the ion cannons on Iblis' Dreadnaughts were responsible for heavily damaging the Peremptory's shields, and thus excusing their relatively weak performance against a KE attack. I don't have Dark Force Rising handy, so you're mileage here may vary. :-)
-Mike

I got the books, but they're translated. However, the biglines are still the same.

[Mike DiCenso]

It actually got me thinking now that I'am reminded of this tactic, why no one on either side of the conflict ever bothered to build a bunch of robot suicide ships (IIRC, there similar, but makeshift vessels used in the Battle of Endor according to the RoTJ novelization) that could be rammed into another. Just a basic hull, shields, propulsion, and a ton of ion cannons to weaken enemy ship shields.

You basically get one helluva potential deterrence value out of something like this.
-Mike

[Jedi Master Spock]

Here is a decent image of a Dreadnaught (CGI), but is fairly close to the RPG source material drawings:

http://galactic-voyage.com/Dark%20Side- ... naught.htm

It's a kind of long, blocky looking thing, with a tapered bow, and block-shaped stern
-Mike

Something really funny about that link - it calls them "Star Frigates." Almost all other online sources call them "heavy cruisers," although IIRC the Thrawn books just called them "dreadnaughts" rather than saying anything about class names.

I will grant, though, that seeing as the Assault Frigate is a modified Dreadnaught, it's reasonable to term it that.

In defense of the ion cannon explanation, the current edition of the SWRPG does have ion cannons being fairly effective vs shields, IIRC.

[CrippledVulture]

Star Wars classes seem to have little to do with the naval classes they get their names from.

A Star Destroyer is not a destroyer at all.

from Wikipedia:

...a destroyer is a fast and maneuverable yet long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet or battle group and defend them against smaller, short-range but powerful attackers (originally torpedo boats, later submarines and aircraft).

For the EU-phile, I'd say the Star Destroyer is a large cruiser. It can act independently or as part of a fleet, it's not the biggest ship around, and it is a multi-purpose vessel.

I would argue that the films alone don't show the SD to be much more than a carrier. Look at how well the rebel capships performed against the Star Destroyers at Endor.

The point is that we can't infer much about a Star Wars vessel from its class designation, because they don't seem to mean much when compared to modern naval terminology.

Keep in mind that there was a time when a frigate was the toughest kid on the block. It's only natural to assume that these terms change with technology.