Starfleet Jedi

Conjecture: Star Destroyers are the backbone of the conventional Imperial Fleet in all reasonable interpretations of Star Wars.
Supporting fact: When restricted to the movies alone, Star Destroyers are the only capital ships of the Imperial fleet. It is therefore only the EU which we must examine closely to test the conjecture.

Supporting hypothesis for the conjecture: The fighting ability of a capital ship is proportional to its size.
Fact (physics and engineering): The mass, fuel storage, and fuel capacity of ships can be expected to be proportional to size.
Fact (physics and engineering): Power plants generally scale in terms of power.
Problem (naval tactics): The total offensive output of a ship tends to be proportionate to its endurance multiplied by its firepower.
Complication (EU): An X-Wing is expected to burn through its fuel in a week of normal operation, and a Star Destroyer in two years - meaning that either it carries proportionally less fuel, or burns that fuel at a proportionally higher rate.
Complication (engineering and design): Smaller ships generally have smaller combat endurance, meaning they can afford to allocate space for larger reactors at the cost of the extra supplies. Larger ships also carry supplies for smaller ships.
Complication (physics): Larger ships are easier to hit. Since accuracy is an issue in Star Wars, a target twice as large in every dimension is going to get hit four times as much.

Math:
It's reasonable to say that shields and firepower both scale roughly linearly with power, which scales to bunkerage divided by endurance. However, frequency of hits scales with the 2/3 power of size.

Bunkerage scales to size roughly linearly, but endurance tends not to scale with the inverse of size. If anything, endurance seems to correlate roughly with length, or the cube root of size. So power should scale per 2/3 power of size.

Since shields and frequency of hits both scale per 2/3 power of size, we then expect the total durability to be size-invariant in Star Wars. (Actually, that seems about right.) We then have a correlation of the 2/3 power between total combat capability and cubage.

So, in examining this conjecture, we shall begin by guessing that the overall combat capability of a warship scales per the 2/3 power of size based on the physics of the matter, and testing this against known Imperial vessels and known Imperial deployments in the EU.

We will then examine it next in comparison with fighter/capship matchups, which pose some initial problems.

Table of expected combat values, based on size (units: ISD-equivalents, using lengths provided in EU, i.e., 1600m for the ISD):

Super Star Destroyer (17.6 km): 38.44
Super Star Destroyer (12.8 km): 20.34
Super Star Destroyer (8 km): 7.94
Imperial Star Destroyer: 1.00
Republic Attack Cruiser (Venator Star Destroyer)*: 0.51
Victory Star Destroyer*: 0.32
Republic Assault Ship (Acclamator Troop Transport)*: 0.22
Interdictor Cruiser*: 0.14
Nebulon-B Frigate: 0.023
Corellian Corvette: 0.011
Dreadnought-class heavy cruiser (600m): ?
Strike cruiser (450m): ?
Bulk cruiser (600m): ?
Lancer class frigate (250m): ?
Carrack light cruiser (350m): ?
Home One: 3.44
Mon Calamari Cruiser**: 0.55
TIE Fighter: 0.000043
X-Wing: 0.000064

*Assuming ISD shape and using the common EU length.
**Using Home One shape and a typical 1280m EU length.

These figures actually seem a little more reasonable than I had expected, although the fighters are problematic; substantially fewer than 15,000 X-Wings are required to measure up to an ISD in the EU, IMO. Clearly there's a breakdown on the fighter end.

I think I recall reading in one of the older EU books that three Victories were roughly equal to an Imperial, and five Imperials to a [five mile long] Super Star Destroyer, which actually fits quite well with the above. For now, I'll assume that Strike cruisers, Bulk cruisers, and Dreadnaughts all have the effective combat power I've assigned to Interdictors, and the Carracks half that.

Sample fleet: Thrawn's normal order of battle.

Expected distribution of power:
6 ISDs (6.00) - 66.1%
12 Strike cruisers (1.68) - 18.5%
20 Carrack light cruisers (1.4) -15.4%

In one of Zahn's books, 3 Dreadnaughts were capable of beating an ISD.

Praeothmin wrote:In one of Zahn's books, 3 Dreadnaughts were capable of beating an ISD.

Easily or through clever tactics?

I'll note, by the way, that the Dreadnaught class is as brick-like as ships get in Star Wars. If I scale it as a 120x120x600m brick, which is actually pretty close, I get an estimated power of 0.31 ISDs.

I think that during the assault of Sluis Van, Thrawn engaged a number of capital ships he had at his disposal (not that much) and the Chimaera lost shields on her starboard side I think, so Thrawn decided to destroy all the batteries of a frigate, and pull it close to the destroyer with tractor beams to use it as a shield.

Most ships at Sluis Van were completely disabled, and several were being actually robbed. The plan was largely thwarted because Lando and Solo came in and used Lando's code to disable drilling moles.

There were not many ships back then, even for the Republic. IIRC, all the moles were stored inside a cargo which also contained TIE fighters, which were cloaked inside. The cargo had a lot of inertia for a ship supposedly empty.

Several moles were used on each capital ships.
I remember that the number of stolen moles is given, as well as the number of ratio of republic ships Thrawn stole. This could probably be used to get an estimation of the NR fleet at Sluis Van - which I think was a point where most of their ships were concentrated or so.

Praeothmin wrote:In one of Zahn's books, 3 Dreadnaughts were capable of beating an ISD.

I believe that you are refering to the six Dreadnaughts that Senator Garm Iblis used to hold at bay temporarily the ISD Judicator during the Battle for the Katana Fleet (Dark Force Rising), along with a variety of other craft from Karrde's smuggling fleet. Essentially while the ISD's TIEs and auxilery craft were fairly relatively easy to destroy, the whole battle itself with the the Dreadnaughts versus the ISD were mostly a standoff, until Luke and others managed to sabotage the Judicator, or take advantage of weak spots ( e.g. Mara Jade's extremely detailed knowledge of ISDs) to win the day and drive off the ISD.
-Mike

I think it's worthwhile to get a better estimate of Dreadnaught volume. Granted, the Katana fleet is also substantially older than the Star Destroyers, which may add to the difference in power, but having the exact size rather than just the length might give us a better measure of how well this scheme fits with the old dreadnoughts.

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

Mike DiCenso wrote:

Praeothmin wrote:In one of Zahn's books, 3 Dreadnaughts were capable of beating an ISD.

I believe that you are refering to the six Dreadnaughts that Senator Garm Iblis used to hold at bay temporarily the ISD Judicator during the Battle for the Katana Fleet (Dark Force Rising), along with a variety of other craft from Karrde's smuggling fleet. Essentially while the ISD's TIEs and auxilery craft were fairly relatively easy to destroy, the whole battle itself with the the Dreadnaughts versus the ISD were mostly a standoff, until Luke and others managed to sabatoge the Judicator, or take advantage of weak spots ( e.g. Mara Jade's extremely detailed knowledge of ISDs) to win the day and drive off the ISD.
-Mike

If I recall correctly, Mara had all the fighters fire on the belly shield section, in the dome zone. (Woah, the Dome ZOne? that sounds kewl!)

Even more, I think they used one of those dreadnoughts to ram an ISD, if I'm not wrong, and this quite destroyed it. But check the reference, cause it's been a long while... a dark period.

Mike DiCenso wrote: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

Yes, that's it. The Katana fleet, IIRC, had darker dreadnaughts. Huh, I suppose they're called star-cruiser-class battle dreadnaughts or something...

Errm... the NR frigates were actually modified dreadnaughts. A horrible design, in the pure good line of lame EU designs.

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

Mr. Oragahn wrote:

Mike DiCenso wrote:

Praeothmin wrote:In one of Zahn's books, 3 Dreadnaughts were capable of beating an ISD.

I believe that you are refering to the six Dreadnaughts that Senator Garm Iblis used to hold at bay temporarily the ISD Judicator during the Battle for the Katana Fleet (Dark Force Rising), along with a variety of other craft from Karrde's smuggling fleet. Essentially while the ISD's TIEs and auxilery craft were fairly relatively easy to destroy, the whole battle itself with the the Dreadnaughts versus the ISD were mostly a standoff, until Luke and others managed to sabatoge the Judicator, or take advantage of weak spots ( e.g. Mara Jade's extremely detailed knowledge of ISDs) to win the day and drive off the ISD.
-Mike

If I recall correctly, Mara had all the fighters fire on the belly shield section, in the dome zone. (Woah, the Dome ZOne? that sounds kewl!)

Even more, I think they used one of those dreadnoughts to ram an ISD, if I'm not wrong, and this quite destroyed it. But check the reference, cause it's been a long while... a dark period.

Mara first hit the sensor blind spot, then used the collision of her fighter to hit the Judicator in her hanger bay.
-Mike

Mr. Oragahn wrote:

Mike DiCenso wrote: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

Yes, that's it. The Katana fleet, IIRC, had darker dreadnaughts. Huh, I suppose they're called star-cruiser-class battle dreadnaughts or something...

Errm... the NR frigates were actually modified dreadnaughts. A horrible design, in the pure good line of lame EU designs.

The Katana fleet were generally painted a dark grey. As for the design, they look exactly like something an old gaming company would cook up in a hurry for a source book, and with no real imagination towards depicting something "different" from the pre-Imperial days wedged-shaped Star Destroyer type ships.
-Mike

Jedi Master Spock wrote:Table of expected combat values, based on size (units: ISD-equivalents, using lengths provided in EU, i.e., 1600m for the ISD):

Super Star Destroyer (17.6 km): 38.44
Super Star Destroyer (12.8 km): 20.34
Super Star Destroyer (8 km): 7.94
Imperial Star Destroyer: 1.00
Republic Attack Cruiser (Venator Star Destroyer)*: 0.51
Victory Star Destroyer*: 0.32
Republic Assault Ship (Acclamator Troop Transport)*: 0.22
Interdictor Cruiser*: 0.14
Nebulon-B Frigate: 0.023
Corellian Corvette: 0.011
Dreadnought-class heavy cruiser (600m): ?
Strike cruiser (450m): ?
Bulk cruiser (600m): ?
Lancer class frigate (250m): ?
Carrack light cruiser (350m): ?
Home One: 3.44
Mon Calamari Cruiser**: 0.55
TIE Fighter: 0.000043
X-Wing: 0.000064

*Assuming ISD shape and using the common EU length.
**Using Home One shape and a typical 1280m EU length.

These figures actually seem a little more reasonable than I had expected, although the fighters are problematic; substantially fewer than 15,000 X-Wings are required to measure up to an ISD in the EU, IMO. Clearly there's a breakdown on the fighter end.

I think I recall reading in one of the older EU books that three Victories were roughly equal to an Imperial, and five Imperials to a [five mile long] Super Star Destroyer, which actually fits quite well with the above. For now, I'll assume that Strike cruisers, Bulk cruisers, and Dreadnaughts all have the effective combat power I've assigned to Interdictors, and the Carracks half that.

Welll, reasonable estimation FOR LASERS. X-Wings are dangerous because they can concentrate a fire on small part of the ship and because in SW weapons prevail over shields (i.e. weapons of a ship can ususally destroy a much more powerful ship)