Star Destroyers are really big (Shocking, I know!)

[Yora]

While putting together a list of ships that fit in the time and place I have in mind for a campaign I am planning, I also made a column for ship length, to have an indication if there is a size category that is underrepresented.

And that had me realize how stupidly big Star Destroyers are.

I usually consider the well established and proven Strike class medium cruiser as a good benchmark for what passes as the biggest ship that an autonomous planetary defense force would be able to obtain. If pirates are cruising around in a Strike Cruiser, things have seriously gotten out of hand. They are 450 meters in length.

I remember the Dreadnought heavy cruisers being described in older works as being these huge, enormous... ... dreadnoughts! Behemoths from the Clone Wars that represent the might and power of the Old Republic that has stood for a thousand generations. More or less taking the role and reputation of Imperial Star Destroyers during the Empire. They are 600 meters in length.

And Victory Star Destroyers are 900 meters long. Those are the small ones!



"Look at the size of that thing!"

Aside from the Mon Calamari cruisers, there is nothing else even remotely in this size category in the early EU. And a Liberty cruiser being much thinner, it's probably still only the total mass of a Victory Destroyer.
An Imperial Star Destroyer has no natural enemies. I remember from way back in the day that there was a frequent quote that a single ISD is enough to take complete control of an entire system. As raw firepower is concerned, that's probably true. It would probably takes a dozen Strike cruisers or half a dozen Dreadnoughts to be a serious threat to one. And remember how Thrawn made the New Republic fear to be conquered? With 4 ISDs?

Star Wars writers like to constantly outdo each other with bigger ships and bigger fleets. Even in the first movie an ISD seemed ridiculous, and The Empire Strike Back had to follow it with the Super Star Destroyer, which is just completely ludicrous. We're long past the point where you can impress anyone by giving your villain a ship that is even bigger! It only gets more dumber and less convincing. And thinking of it, you rarely ever see these behemoths actually fight something.They always get destroyed by one plucky hero with way more luck than sense.

When it comes to running games, having even something like a Strike cruiser at their command would seem like incredible power to most players, unless they are all playing admirals. And at that scale, even the appearance a Victory Destroyer becomes a massive problem.
(An Imperial Star Destroyer is not a problem. When one comes for you, you actually won't be having any problems ever again.)

I feel that like how the mighty elite stormtroopers have become nonmemorable victims for starting heroes, the giant Star Destroyers are regularly being treated as the generic Imperial warship. But I think a lot can be gained by reframing them as what they were originally meant to be. A ship that is a entire fleet by itself, completely outside the realm of the comprehensible for ordinary people, and the absolutely worst case that can ever happen to you in space.
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"Adventure? Eh... Excitement? Eh... A Jedi does not crave these things."

Iridium Moons Retro-futuristic Space Opera

[Grimace]

I felt that Rogue One (I know, that show you don't like) did much for re-establishing the Star Destroyer as a fearsome beast. When Vader's ship shows up and a Rebel Transport demolishes itself against the Star Destroyer and the volley of fire from the Star Destroyer annihilates a Nebulon-B Frigate in a manner of second and pummels the Profundity into submission, it really shows what an Imperial Star Destroyer can do.

[garhkal]

Rogue one really show cased an ISD's weaponry/ Prior to that, we saw at most only 4 gun batteries on an ISD ever firing before.. in ANH when vader chased down the corvette leia was on.
Hell, other than some anti fighter fire, in ROTJ i don't even remember seeing any cap to cap ship blastings..
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[Grimace]

There was only one other instance of ship to ship combat, and it was in an extremely brief portion of the space battle in Return of the Jedi. A couple of smaller ships fly between a Nebulon-B and a Star Destroyer that are blasting away at each other.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F4pxFB-6AvUZi6409JlXa6C_723kvwQS/view?usp=sharing

But Rogue One really opened the door and showed the awesome might of a Star Destroyer ready for battle and doing battle (contrary to the two Star Destroyers that were obviously NOT ready for anything and thus used to not only destroy one another but also to destroy the gate station and drop the planetary shield)

[Grimace]

But more to the point of the whole thread..... YES, the Star Destroyer has been grossly under-represented for what it really is.

The problem is that besides the Nebulon-B and the Corellian Corvette, there was never a smaller Imperial warship EVER represented in a movie. There are no cruisers, no frigates, nothing small than a Star Destroyer. We never even got to see a Victory Class Star Destroyer in a movie! That is a ship that would have been half the size of an Imperial Star Destroyer.

Only if you were ever involved in the roleplaying game would you ever know about the Strike Cruiser, the Dreadnought cruiser, the Interdictor and the Lancer Frigates. But those ships are what likely would have made up the bulk of the Imperial Navy and the support ships for the Star Destroyers. So instead the Star Destroyer gets relegated to being the "weak" ship that the Rebels can thrash when it needs to do so. Instead, it should be the ominous monstrosity that shows up after the Rebels trounce a Strike Cruiser or something and proves to be the epic thing that the Rebels can either barely defeat or simply cannot defeat with what they have and instead have to run from it. That would have shown the true "might of the Empire".

[Ray]

The thing is, the Imperial-Class Star Destroyer fits the Empire's esthetic entirely.

It's big, it's powerful, it's heavily armoured, we've only seen them destroyed with unorthodox tactics (oh, and a bridge gets taken out by a asteroid.).

Why would they need smaller vessels?

Smaller vessels aren't powerful enough to fit into the line of battle as far as the Empire is concerned. If you need less firepower, the Star Destroyer works. If you need more firepower, send two. Or a Super Star Destroyer.

It's right up there with the idea of oversized, overpowered, overly ostentatious, overpriced superweapons like both Death Stars and Starkiller Base.

Notice what the Empire uses as "smaller ships". Clone Wars-era vessels, or quick-and-very-dirty designs like the Nebulon-B (which has cramped crew quarters, IIRC), the Lancer-Class Frigate (which was useful ONLY against Starfighters!), and Bulk Cruisers (up-armoured and weaponized medium/heavy freighters.). There are a few designs that were thought out, but they're obviously the exception to the rule.

It's like how the Empire doesn't seem to have anything between a Stormtrooper, an AT-ST, or a AT-AT. (Speeder bikes are specialized Scout vehicles.).

This is an aesthetic choice in the movies to show the arrogance of the Empire as well as how powerful it thinks it is, while the Rebels use a whole range of vessels from actually GOOD starfighters, corvettes, frigates, and various ranges of cruisers, demonstrating that they have various tools and options available to them other than "my big hammer, my bigger hammer, or a bunch of big hammers!"

[Yora]

The weird thing about the Imperial Navy is that it's a military navy in a galaxy in which it is the only one. The Empire does not have any external enemies. The only function of the Imperial military is to crush revolts and destroy particularly heavily armed organized crime.

Though I guess in that case, you can afford to not be super stringy with your budget, and weapons that look more scary than they are practical become more reasonable.
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"Adventure? Eh... Excitement? Eh... A Jedi does not crave these things."

Iridium Moons Retro-futuristic Space Opera

[garhkal]

[Grimace]

Yeah, I was originally troubled by that as well. I wondered why in the world the Star Destroyers never launched fighters and why they never opened fire on the Rebel ships. It really was JUST the gate station that responded to the threat.

What I chalk it up to is as follows:

Scarif was deep in the Imperial zone of space. That is, it was essentially the "rear support zone".

So those two Star Destroyers were basically billeted there as "guard duty", and had probably been there for years. Their crews had become completely complacent. No gunners were at their post, or those that were on station were busy jawing or gambling or whatever. TIE Pilots weren't on standby as nothing ever comes through that ever warrants the need for it. The ship officer's didn't think there was any threat that would ever come at them, so they never kept their subordinates on task. No drills were ever run. (except for maybe the Stormtroopers) and even the bridge crew really didn't pay close attention to things.

So when the Rebel fleet shows up, you get a minute or two of realization that "Those aren't our ships!" By then the Rebels have flown the bulk of one squadron through the open gate and the rest of the Rebel fighters have begun to take out parts of the gate station.

There was probably a frantic call of "Red Alert! The station is under attack!" and the lazy, unresponsive, undrilled crew goes "Yeah...okay. Sure." Some Junior Officers, like the one in charge of the flight deck, probably felt the same way. So after 4 minutes or so, the crews start to scramble to their ships and the gunners start to scramble to their gun batteries. That's when the Y-Wings hit one of the Star Destroyers with Ion torpedoes, rendering it inoperable. Crews get to guns that don't have power. Pilots get to their fighters and cannot launch because the arms won't retract due to now power.

Meanwhile, aboard the gate station, those pilots finally get in gear and BOY HOWDY do they come out in force!

Then, while the crews of the crippled ship try to get their systems back running, and the other Star Destroyer finally gets it's crews ready to engage, the Rebels decide on a radical maneuver and ram a ship into the crippled star destroyer and start pushing it towards the other. The crews of the operating Star Destroyer, instead of now focusing on the enemy, are desperately trying to avoid a collision, but it's too late.

It was laziness, lack of discipline, and the REMF nature of where they were that lead to those two Star Destroyers looking inept in every way.

Vader's Star Destroyer, though, had it's crews ready for action. Gunners at their positions, flight crews ready to go, and when they show up they demonstrate what a properly manned and ready Star Destroyer can really do.

[RyanDarkstar]

[Grimace]

[garhkal]

[Yora]

One ship I initially decided not to include in the size comparison is the MC80 Liberty class star cruiser, which is somewhat of the default ship for Rebel fleets at Star Destroyer scale.

Because their length is a four digit number (1200m) like an ISD (1600m) and not a three digit number like a VSD (900m), I always kind of assumed that they are similar in size to an Imperial Star Destroyer.

Put side by side, that clearly is not the case.



The MC80 is actually only marginally larger than a Victory Destroyer, with an internal volume of probably just a third of an Imperial Star Destroyer.

They are still massive ships, but an ISD is still even massiver.
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"Adventure? Eh... Excitement? Eh... A Jedi does not crave these things."

Iridium Moons Retro-futuristic Space Opera

[RyanDarkstar]

Seeing it compared from above, the ISD is huge!

I'm re-reading Operation: Elrood, and I thought having only 2 ISDs for the sector seemed low. Now I'm not so sure.
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[garhkal]

Its not just their size, its the fact they contain iirc, TWO full Garisons they can drop on a planet, have SIX full squadrons of fighters/bombers, they can deploy, AND all their weaponry, that makes them so fearsome.
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