For years, I adored the Star Wars Technical Commentaries. These take Star Wars remarkably seriously. When discussing the ships of the empire, they use this schema:
gunboat -- a small vessel of shallow draught and with relatively heavy guns. [Oxford]
monitor -- a heavily armed warship of shallow draught. [Oxford]
corvette -- a small, lightly armed, fast vessel, used mostly for convoy escort, ranging between a destroyer and a gunboat in size. [Macquarie]
frigate -- a naval escort vessel between a corvette and a destroyer in size. [Oxford]
destroyer -- a fast warship with guns and torpedoes used to protect other ships. [Oxford]
cruiser -- a warship of high speed and medium armament. [Oxford]
battlecruiser -- a warship of maximum speed and fire power, but with lighter armour than a battleship. [Macquarie]
battleship -- a warship with the heaviest armour and the largest guns. [Oxford]
In tonnage then, more or less:
gunboat << monitor << corvette << Frigate << destroyer << cruiser << battlecruiser << battleship.
in modern warfare, the battleship has largely been replaced with the carrier. And heck, that's being replaced with drones, but let's put the last twenty years aside for a moment.
Within Star Wars -- the original series mind you -- we see the following ships, more or less in increasing tonnage:
-- X-wings & Tie Fighters, and a variety of other starfighters.
-- The Falcon
-- Leia's consular ship
-- The medical ship where Luke gets his hand fixed up at the end of Empire.
-- Mon Cal Cruisers, such as Ackbar's ship in Jedi.
-- Vader's ship in A New Hope. Lots of other vessels of the same class, commonly called star destroyers
-- The Executor, Vader's command ship in Empire and Jedi
-- Death Stars
Where, if anyone, do those ships fit within the framework above? Does the framework make sense for the sort of war depicted in Star Wars? Or, as Carriers and drones have done to this sort of schema, does this not align at all to Star Wars? Or, something more esoteric?
I have a couple different perspectives on this, and think I can guess what a few of you would say. I'm interested to test my ability to know other people's minds.
Oh, and I promise this is related to gaming. Take my word for it, I am likely to explain later.
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I don't really have any answers to your questions, but I do remember reading a very strongly-worded blog post around 15 years ago that argued if Vader's flagship was Executor, and it was, as it appeared to be, the first in its class, then they would not be called Super-class Star Destroyers, but Executor-class, since that's how the "class" designation is meant to work, dammit. "Super Star Destroyer" was, at best, an informal nickname.
ReplyDeleteThe traditional nautical schema makes no sense any longer and doesn't account for the asymmetry of the Mach 2.5 anti-ship missile, the suicide speedboat, the drone - each a force multiplier out of step with its cost to instantiate. Similarly the Star Wars universe runs on cinematic logic that also makes no sense.
ReplyDeleteAdam D I remember something like that, too! I think we hear Super Star Destroyer once, from Ackbar, when he tells everyone to focus on it. I don't imagine the rebellion was big on playing nice with the Empire's schema.
ReplyDeleteJason Morningstar That's pretty close to what I expected you to say! My theory of other people's minds may not be as broken as I feared.
ReplyDeleteI had no idea of the details -- like super fast anti-ship missiles! -- but figured any answer from you would be rooted in history and that you'd know the details before talking.
That is a relief.
William Nichols yeah, I think you're right. Either Ackbar or one of the other Rebel commanders.
ReplyDeleteI feel like Jason's comments are on-point. The cinematic schema doesn't fit the real world and even the real world schema doesn't really fit the real world any more. Which I guess leaves the Star Wars games nerd with two options:
1) Make up whatever sounds cool; or
2) Make up a deeply-researched and internally-consistent scheme (and hope you love lonely fun).
:)
Caveat: I've played a lot of Star Wars based videogame, and they basically nailed this down:
ReplyDelete*-Wing/TIEs are starfighters, not naval equivalent.
Shuttles, Transports (both seen on screen), and the Falcon, are gunboat equivalent.
Leia's Corellian Corvette is a corvette.
(big dividing line here)
The medical ship (similar ships also seen in the big fight) is a frigate (which is to say, a small capital ship).
Mon Calimari Cruisers are cruisers.
Imperial-class Star Destroyers (most of the ones on screen) are battleships.
The Executer and Death Star are one-offs, and don't belong in a general categorization.
Jonathan Beverley I don't have a working simulation of your mind, so this doesn't help me judge if my guesses about people are right or wrong.
ReplyDeleteBut, BUT BUT
Yes. I was specifically not calling things out as to what I think they are, so as to not give definitions. I mean, if I called an ISD an ISD, or mentioned a Victory, then I'd influence what folks called them. If I said an ISD has 72 TIE fighters, on par with a modern super carrier, then it'd be obvious to call it a carrier. If I said it had 60 Turbolasers, more than any battleship, it'd obviously be a battleship. If I said it had an entire division of strormtroopers, then it'd obviously be a troop carrier.
If I called the medical ship a Nebulon B Escort Frigate, then it'd be obvious it is a frigate.
The CC has got to be a Corvette, or else its there's no point to naming things. From there, the others fall into place. As for the Executer, I think she could be called a command ship. Which is a special & fun way of saying she's in a class of her own.
Agreed on the Death Star, and the rest.
Addendum: The ww2 naval hierarchy is based on gun caliber and penetration. Battleships are a class above cruisers because they're basically immune to cruiser shells. ASMs and drones (and bombers before) overturn this because small things are beating up big things.
ReplyDeleteIn Star Wars ships have shields. Big, thick, ablative defenses. There's no difference between 100 smalls shots and 1 big shot. All that matters is the total energy involved. This makes classes basically irrelevant. How much firepower do you wish to build? How much shielding for it? Ok, do that. Then build as many as you want/can afford. Bigger ships have economies of scale, but that's about it.
Also, all capital ships are gunship/carrier hybrids. Because reasons.
Jonathan Beverley Do we know that about Star Wars shields? And what about armor?
ReplyDeleteThat is, is there any reason to believe that a thousand YT-1300 light freighters shooting at a Star Destroyer would have any chance of hurting it?
We know that starfighters were doing strafing runs on ISDs.
ReplyDeleteJonathan Beverley That's true. That's jedi true, so unassailable. And maybe they were going after weak spots, but that'd suggest the terrible design weaknesses of the Death Star were throughout Imperial design schematics, which seems a less charitable interpretation.
ReplyDeleteSo, ok, I'm agreed: star fighters have sufficient fire power to harm star destroyers. X-wings have 4 laser canons, Y-wings have two, as I believe A-wings do as well. Apparently this is sufficient to do real and lasting harm to a ship with 37,085 crew.
Perhaps Jason Morningstar has a point. Maybe this makes no sense.
He's entirely correct. Why are there tactically effective starfighters? So that Luke can turn the battle flying one. SW naval battles make as much sense as Quidditch, and for exactly the same reason.
ReplyDeleteSure, bit I want it to. 😀
ReplyDeleteWell, there's a lot of flexibility due to the relatively small amount of hard canon. One obvious option is that capital ships have surface mounts that starfighters can shoot off, thus lowering the ships effectiveness. Another is that ships are really tough, but every shot counts (in XW/TF, an ISD took 1440 shots to kill, strafing helps, but you need to do a lot). Another is they were just providing cover for the ships that were firing torpedoes.
ReplyDeleteWhat sort of sense do you want it to make?
Jonathan Beverley The sort where it makes sense to send Luke in with an X-wing to take out a defect of the Death Star, but it doesn't make sense for Lando to fight against Star Destroyers.
ReplyDeleteI think that's a combination of surface mounts and covering fire, with a nod that if the shields go down, plastisteel ain't gonna stop a suicidal A-wing.
So, one where it can make sense for RPG-like heroes to matter, but where the capital ships aren't just glass cannons waiting to explode.