M E A T B A G
I’ve seen this come up a few times, both in judging submissions and in the odd discussion thread, but it’s never gotten a dedicated suggestion thread - well, until now. So, it’s me - your favourite idea guy here with another suggestion for Starships in the Factory.
In the other recent thread that was posted, I’ve dealt with my thoughts on the matters of the whole… Starfighter/Support Craft conversation, and even included a suggestion towards making it better and more aligned with Canon, and Chaos’ present selection of submission templates. But, that doesn’t cover everything that Canon would theoretically allow us to do, as there’s something missing.
It’s the ability to ferry smaller starships within a larger starship.
As seen in Rogue One, where the MC75 - a retrofitted Civilian Star Cruiser - the civic atrium was hollowed out to make room for a CR90 to nestle itself inside. That’s a 150 metre ship, within a ~1,200 metre ship, which also has the capabilities of ferrying Starfighters into battle.
Another example is the canon ImpStar II - which was not only capable of ferrying an entire wing of Starfighters (Imperial standard, being 6 Squadrons) alongside an almost equal collection of shuttles, gunships and transports - and two Gozanti-class Cruisers within the ventral docking area.
I’m sure I could find more examples if I spent more than a few hours deep-diving into Wookieepedia, but if you’re reading this - I’m sure you’ve gotten the point by now.
So, what I’ve been building up to is a Squadron Exchange chart. A supplementary addon for the current ruleset that anyone and every could reference and utilize when creating their ships. Ideally, it will also benefit those folks that wanna actually update the capabilities of canon designs, without “feeling” like they have to make several technological steps backward in order to forge ahead. This will also ideally cement something that’s already allowed on Chaos, as there’s been a few folks - including myself - who’ve submitted and had their starships approved with this capability already.
Length is often the most common denominator when it comes to judging, or even classifying what starship fits within the Anaxes War College System. And since my examples mentioned Length - perhaps the best way to go about this would be to follow in the template’s footsteps, and make the exchange chart based around that definitive, and dimensional factor. But, the biggest issue we’ve got at the moment - is where we should start. What vessels should be allowed to carry additional capital ships within their holds, in exchange for giving up their ability to carry small spacecraft?
Honestly, I think it’d be best to start with Star Destroyers, Battlecruisers and Star Dreadnoughts, as those ships - both by the provided examples in post, and by the previously submitted items that’ve been approved through the Factory - make the most sense to ferry their smaller kin into the fray.
I’m going to do a bit of math to show where my thought process is going to go with this, so I hope that I get my numbers right and don’t lose anyone along the way. As per the template we currently have, a Squadron is considered to be Twelve Starfighters as an average, and the average Starfighter is considered to be 12.5 metres. So, when breaking that number down into a Length metric - every squadron would roughly have 150 metres dedicated to themselves inside of a starship. Seems familiar, no? One CR90 has the same Length, as linked above.
While there are other factors such as height and width that would ideally need to be taken into account - they’re of little concern when Length is the determining factor. So, from there, we’d have our base metric. One Squadron = One Corvette (150m.) That’s still using the average metric, as depending on how they’re used - an average squadron of starfighters can equal the combat prowess of a corvette, and vice-versa. When it comes to items that aren’t average, be they weaker or stronger according to their ratings - that shouldn’t matter when concerning Carrying Capacity. So long as the metric we’ve established is adhered too, then it’ll work for the sake of this suggestion.
I’ll get into the issues that have already spawned from those words, and the numbers involved with higher squadron counts later. For now, I wanted to focus on the basis of the suggestion.
Should this be a firm value? I don’t think so. I think it’s definitely a value that best paints every possible submission in the same light. A few extra metres probably won’t “break or game” the system, but when those Corvettes start to get into the combined length of +200 metres - that’s when people should be flagging submissions, and ensuring that they’re balanced.
Now, as Corvettes were the largest items that were ferried into battle by the examples I’ve provided, I think that they should be the largest items that Chaos’ version of Star Destroyers should be able to carry as well. For the more visual-based individuals amongst us, I wanted to create two examples using the ship’s I’ve linked above to show you what I mean.
MC75 Star Cruiser
Since I mentioned that I’d detail some of the problems that’d come from this design, I figured I’ll mention the ones that I thought of here. Yes, you could alter the CR90 to be a carrier. Essentially creating the scenario of having a Carrier within a Carrier. While these would be few and far between - I believe that it’d be blatantly obvious what someone’s trying to do when they place their submission up for review. If they wanted to have a Star Destroyer that was capable of carrying X amount of Corvettes into battle? Why not let them - so long as their submission is balanced and makes sense.
You’d be entering the battlefield with what amounts to a ball of paper mache, as a lot of the internal structure would be given over to housing X amount of Corvettes. Shoot that baby with a mass-driver and, ideally, you’d be coring through the vessel - alongside whatever it was transporting.
When it comes to dealing with Battlecruisers and Star Dreadnoughts, I think the Corvette metric should remain the same. However, I wanted to see if this idea garnered any interest or traction with both the memberbase and Factory staff before continuing. As if this suggestion may get swept under the rug like my last few, then I see no point in pursuing the concept until a later date.
In the other recent thread that was posted, I’ve dealt with my thoughts on the matters of the whole… Starfighter/Support Craft conversation, and even included a suggestion towards making it better and more aligned with Canon, and Chaos’ present selection of submission templates. But, that doesn’t cover everything that Canon would theoretically allow us to do, as there’s something missing.
It’s the ability to ferry smaller starships within a larger starship.
As seen in Rogue One, where the MC75 - a retrofitted Civilian Star Cruiser - the civic atrium was hollowed out to make room for a CR90 to nestle itself inside. That’s a 150 metre ship, within a ~1,200 metre ship, which also has the capabilities of ferrying Starfighters into battle.
Another example is the canon ImpStar II - which was not only capable of ferrying an entire wing of Starfighters (Imperial standard, being 6 Squadrons) alongside an almost equal collection of shuttles, gunships and transports - and two Gozanti-class Cruisers within the ventral docking area.
I’m sure I could find more examples if I spent more than a few hours deep-diving into Wookieepedia, but if you’re reading this - I’m sure you’ve gotten the point by now.
So, what I’ve been building up to is a Squadron Exchange chart. A supplementary addon for the current ruleset that anyone and every could reference and utilize when creating their ships. Ideally, it will also benefit those folks that wanna actually update the capabilities of canon designs, without “feeling” like they have to make several technological steps backward in order to forge ahead. This will also ideally cement something that’s already allowed on Chaos, as there’s been a few folks - including myself - who’ve submitted and had their starships approved with this capability already.
Length is often the most common denominator when it comes to judging, or even classifying what starship fits within the Anaxes War College System. And since my examples mentioned Length - perhaps the best way to go about this would be to follow in the template’s footsteps, and make the exchange chart based around that definitive, and dimensional factor. But, the biggest issue we’ve got at the moment - is where we should start. What vessels should be allowed to carry additional capital ships within their holds, in exchange for giving up their ability to carry small spacecraft?
Honestly, I think it’d be best to start with Star Destroyers, Battlecruisers and Star Dreadnoughts, as those ships - both by the provided examples in post, and by the previously submitted items that’ve been approved through the Factory - make the most sense to ferry their smaller kin into the fray.
I’m going to do a bit of math to show where my thought process is going to go with this, so I hope that I get my numbers right and don’t lose anyone along the way. As per the template we currently have, a Squadron is considered to be Twelve Starfighters as an average, and the average Starfighter is considered to be 12.5 metres. So, when breaking that number down into a Length metric - every squadron would roughly have 150 metres dedicated to themselves inside of a starship. Seems familiar, no? One CR90 has the same Length, as linked above.
While there are other factors such as height and width that would ideally need to be taken into account - they’re of little concern when Length is the determining factor. So, from there, we’d have our base metric. One Squadron = One Corvette (150m.) That’s still using the average metric, as depending on how they’re used - an average squadron of starfighters can equal the combat prowess of a corvette, and vice-versa. When it comes to items that aren’t average, be they weaker or stronger according to their ratings - that shouldn’t matter when concerning Carrying Capacity. So long as the metric we’ve established is adhered too, then it’ll work for the sake of this suggestion.
I’ll get into the issues that have already spawned from those words, and the numbers involved with higher squadron counts later. For now, I wanted to focus on the basis of the suggestion.
One Squadron = One Corvette (150m.)
Should this be a firm value? I don’t think so. I think it’s definitely a value that best paints every possible submission in the same light. A few extra metres probably won’t “break or game” the system, but when those Corvettes start to get into the combined length of +200 metres - that’s when people should be flagging submissions, and ensuring that they’re balanced.
Now, as Corvettes were the largest items that were ferried into battle by the examples I’ve provided, I think that they should be the largest items that Chaos’ version of Star Destroyers should be able to carry as well. For the more visual-based individuals amongst us, I wanted to create two examples using the ship’s I’ve linked above to show you what I mean.
MC75 Star Cruiser
- Hangar Space: 1000m [Base: 1 | Very Low: 3 | Low: 4 | Average: 5 | High: 7 | Very High: 9 | Extreme: 11] (We’ll go with the High rating for this submission, because I believe it has lower than the “standard” amount of armaments - not only since it was a refitted ship, but because a lot of its interior space was torn out to act as a transport.)
- Hangar Allocations:
- Three Squadrons of Fighters - 36 Small Craft (One New Republic Starfighter Wing.)
- Three Squadrons of Transports, Gunships, or Shuttles.
- One Corvette - CR90 Comparable (Maximum Length: 150m.)
- Hangar Space: 1500m [Base: 2 | Very Low: 4 | Low: 6 | Average: 8 | High: 10 | Very High: 12 | Extreme: 15] (We’re going with High on this one again, as the armament count on the ImpStar II is considerably lower in comparison to the previous generation, and houses a large internal complement.)
- Hangar Allocations:
- Six Squadrons of Fighters - 72 Small Craft (One Imperial Starfighter Wing.)
- Three Squadrons of Transports, Gunships, or Shuttles.
- Two Corvettes - Gozanti Comparable (Maximum Length: 128m [64m x 2.])
Since I mentioned that I’d detail some of the problems that’d come from this design, I figured I’ll mention the ones that I thought of here. Yes, you could alter the CR90 to be a carrier. Essentially creating the scenario of having a Carrier within a Carrier. While these would be few and far between - I believe that it’d be blatantly obvious what someone’s trying to do when they place their submission up for review. If they wanted to have a Star Destroyer that was capable of carrying X amount of Corvettes into battle? Why not let them - so long as their submission is balanced and makes sense.
You’d be entering the battlefield with what amounts to a ball of paper mache, as a lot of the internal structure would be given over to housing X amount of Corvettes. Shoot that baby with a mass-driver and, ideally, you’d be coring through the vessel - alongside whatever it was transporting.
When it comes to dealing with Battlecruisers and Star Dreadnoughts, I think the Corvette metric should remain the same. However, I wanted to see if this idea garnered any interest or traction with both the memberbase and Factory staff before continuing. As if this suggestion may get swept under the rug like my last few, then I see no point in pursuing the concept until a later date.