Starfleet Jedi

Mith wrote:I don't ever recall Leo1 actually ever being held accountable for his actions. The only ban he's ever gotten is voluntary (which is just stupid). And this debate is just an example of how fucking poor standards are.

Speaking of Leo1 getting away with something:

Leo1 wrote: A small point on the kind of shipbuilding capacity that the UFP has to deal with.
According to Starships of the Galaxy (2001 Edition):-
A single ISD takes 640 weeks to build in one standard shipyard slip- this takes way too long, so shipyard's divide construction of large ships amongst multiple slips.
Because the ISD is a "Colossal" scale ship, its construction can be divided amongst up to 12 slips.
Kuat Drive Yards - the best shipyard in the galaxy (refer below) - has 5,781 slips.
Because it's the best shipyard in the galaxy, it has a construction multiplier (i.e. due to the skill of its workforce/ excellence of its facilities) of 0.5 - the highest number. By comparison, the Mon Calamari have only 0.75.
One ISD, divided amongst 12 slips, by Kuat Drive Yards would therefore only take 26.7 weeks to build.
At full bore, if every slip was devoted to ISDs, KDY could churn out 481.75 ISDs per six months, or 963 ISDs a year.
Or how about a Super Star Destroyer? KDY could build one every 88 weeks, divided amongst the same number of slips.
And that's just KDY. There are many other shipyards (those of Fondor, Bilbringi, and Seinar Fleet Systems spring immediately to mind).

He's using game mechanics. Which contradict, among other things, ROTS ICS fuel consumption rates, and in that very same sourcebook, tell us that an ISD has 250 shield points and 730 hull points. In that sourcebook, an X-Wing's lasers deal 14-140 damage per hit. Even taking off the 30 DR, that means a dozen X-Wings can take down an ISD in pretty short order if it doesn't shoot back.

Without using their proton torpedoes. But he's not just using game mechanics, he's using them dishonestly:

Leo1 wrote:The Rebellion has the tiniest fraction of Imperial fleet strength, and avoids battle with the Imperial fleet whenever possible. Even running full bore, the Mon Calamaris shipyards couldn't hope to provide more than one cruiser per six months, plus smaller ships.

KDY alone can churn out almost 500 ISDs in the same time.

Starships of the Galaxy (2001 SWRPG sourcebook) wrote:Mon Calamari
(1,000 slips, construction multiple 0.75)
The world of Mon Calamari has numerous shipyards in orbit.

For those of you following the math, the KDY shipyards can average (5781)/(640*0.5)=18.06 ISDs/week, while the MC shipyards can average (1000)/(640*0.75)=2.08 ISDs/week. A ratio of 8.7:1, not 500:1. Note that MCCs are smaller and more efficient warships than ISDs. Both shipyards will, of course, be producing other things, but the KDY shipyards are about as important to the Imperial navy as the Mon Calamari shipyards are to the Rebels.

He's made a math error, too - 18.06 x 52 weeks would be 940, or times 70 Star Wars weeks per year gives 1260 - but the important bit is that he's mixing and matching sources very selectively.

While we're on the topic of EU completism, the Mon Calamari are variously referenced to have have shipyards in Ruisto (attacked in 2 ABY by the Empire) and Krinemonen, while the Quarren, similarly, are given Separatist shipyards in Minntooine and Pantan during the Clone Wars. (Pantan was destroyed).

I think that's rather interesting that it takes the Empire over 12 years to build an ISD with a single slip, while we have seen the Dominion design and produce a 1.3 km battleship or the much larger 5-6 km varients seen in WYLB in less than 2 years time.
-Mike

The whole week/slip thing is rather messy, but I agree on the massive error he made in the estimation of the ratio.

You have KDY's 5781 / 0.5 against Mon Cal's 1000 / 0.75. The ratio is 8.6715:1, indeed.

Which territory wise, would actually give the Rebels a tremendous advantage.

It's particularly interesting that Leo1 cites the 1 cruiser/6 months figure. That would put the maximum Imperial production of ISDs, by using all of KDY, at 8.6715 ISDs /6 months (of that brain liquefying calendar).

The slip system, if understood properly, points to the principle of dividing the work between different sections of the yards, but it doesn't really address the point about the time taken to assemble the various pieces. No matter how much modular the design would be, checking that all pieces properly lock into place is not a quick thing to do. It has to be verified. Fusing two pieces together also takes time, and then comes the part about making sure the network for computers and other electronic terminals works as well, and considering they use wires, you can imagine the mess techs have to go through.

If this wasn't enough about the system leaving much to be desired, I noticed the following problems:

Table 3-1 lists the number of maximum slips which can be attributed to the construction of a given ship, based on its size. The colossal range is the biggest. That said, an ISD is a "colossal" ship. Which makes you wonder what would the figures be for the made up Super-class SD (8 km) and the Executor-class (retconned at 19 km from the initial 17.6 km -- I'll never understand the need for another figure for a ship which was plagued by various sizes, including the 12 km figure). If an ISD is allowed 12 slips, why couldn't bigger ships be allowed more slips?

"Chapter Two, Space Stations" has a top banner which background image is that of the Executor!
In Table 2-1, Space Station Size, the chart for the relative volumetric magnitude of space stations, the shortest length for a colossal is 1001 meters.
Interestingly, the maximum is 200 km, which would happen to be the size of the DSII if you used the size of the DSI and multiplied it by almost two (ROTJ novelization's "nearly twice as big" as the first DS).

Of course the very fact that these charts work by steps shows the limits of those game mechanics when it comes to calculate certain numbers, like realistic costs, since a mere difference of one meter can double the "construction points".

Wait, that's not all. Go to "Chapter One, Desiging Starships" and you'll see something rather amusing. Table 1-1, Ship Size, shows that the colossal's maximum length is 2500 meters. Left out are the bigger Star Destroyers. In that chapter, Victories and Imperials are mentioned, so they clearly belong there.

So I find Leo's quick comment about SSD rather amusing since by the system he used, such ships are in a completely different league, one where its own colossal referent is not the same as the one applied to space ships.

Besides, the credit values for the ships are ridiculous. All through Star Wars' EU, you'll see character exchanging small amounts of credits like you'd use a couple pounds. Of course, in our world, large warships and other aircrafts cost billions, and cleverly enough, the WEG figures I found, which were all established outside of game rules, proved to be logical. An ISD-I, for example, was rated at more than 3.88 billions. This was actually based on the figure from the Shantipole RPG supplement, which in the background material, established the cost of the new Nebulon-class frigate at 194 M credits.
In comparison, the rules of Starships of the Galaxy would have the ISD-II would cost only 145,670,000 credits, according to Wookieepedia. Looking at Table 1-12 Base Price on page 12, 500 construction points correspond to a starting point of 72.98 m. An ISD-Ii is worth 640 points of construction. This would bring it to 93.4144 M. Add stuff, shields, sensors, this and that and I suppose that you reach the figure given by Wookieepedia, unless it's explicitly mentioned somewhere in SotG. The price alone would be below that of WEG's Nebulon-B cost.
It also means that compared to our reality, an Imperial Credit would simply be too expensive. Anyone carrying one of such credit would be akin to you carrying a thousand pounds or more in your pocket, with one coin or less. When you think that the smallest fractional unit of the credit is a decicredit, WOTC putting the cost of ISD-IIs in several millions strikes me a simply absurd and impossibly too low to be practical.
The only time a ruling body would actually mint nomisma where a single monetary official token would be worth thousands, in order to make it practical again at least on the street level, would be when said ruling body would be falling apart during a massive recession of epic proportions. It would, of course, only be a paint job. The currency would actually be so worthless that everyone would try to switch to something else.
Just to highlight the illogical nature of such values, the true price of a warship would actually inflate, reaching trillions instead of going down to millions. Of course, private sectors would probably drop the Imperial credit, securing their wealth in large complements of precious metals and in a more solid money, like the currency used in Hutt territories. Also, private sectors wouldn't bother with the Empire's fiat money. Being worthless, there would be no point selling Star Destroyers to the Empire when it would really coerce businesses into accepting the falling money.

Mike DiCenso wrote:I think that's rather interesting that it takes the Empire over 12 years to build an ISD with a single slip, while we have seen the Dominion design and produce a 1.3 km battleship or the much larger 5-6 km varients seen in WYLB in less than 2 years time.
-Mike

It's also strategically alarming for the Empire that their production capabilities are so concentrated.

The in-game economy is off. It is interesting that the Executor is built using the Space Station rules rather than the Ship rules, but ultimately, the game mechanics shouldn't be relied on for precise numbers, and they have holes in them. At best, they're qualitatively accurate, but pretending that they're quantitatively accurate (as Leo1 did to try to claim KDY could crank out about a thousand ISDs a year) is a bad idea.

In this case, I think the only useful information we can get out of the SotG book regarding shipyards is that the Mon Calamari shipyards are above average for a major shipyard, which in turn constitute a minority of the "hundreds of shipyards" in the galaxy, most of which are too small to put out even a single line of ships. In other words, Mon Calamari shipyards are a big deal. For those of you who don't have the book, here's the list of "some of the most noteworthy major shipyards":

1. Kuat Drive Yards 5781/0.5 = 11,562 (produces SDs and their Lancer and Nebulon escorts)
2. Corellian Engineering Corporation 3650/0.75 = 4,867 (freighters and corvettes)
3. Sienar Fleet Systems 4227/1.0 = 4,227 (TIEs, shuttles, interdictor cruisers)
4. Sorosuub 3008/1.25 = 2406 (yachts and freighters)
5. Incom 2234/1.0 = 2234 (X-Wing and other starfighters/small craft)
6. Kuat Systems Engineering 1200/0.75 = 1,600 (KDY's small craft/freighter/refit subsidiary)
7. Mon Calamari 1000/0.75 = 1,333 (MCCs)
8. Freitek 410/0.5 = 820 (E-wing)
9. Alderaan Royal Engineers 325/0.75 = 433
10. Gallofree Yards Inc. 500/1.25 = 400
11. Silvuit Corporation 400/1.0 = 400 (Lambda shuttle w/Sienar)
12. Koenseyr 452/1.5 = 301 (Y-Wing)

Wookieepedia says the top three on this list really are the top three, and there aren't too many ship classes whose main manufacturer isn't on this list - the only real notables are the CIS ships (which didn't exist in 2001), the Dreadnaught class (EU), the N-1 fighter (TPM), and the B-Wing (ROTJ).

Mr. Oragahn wrote:

Mike DiCenso wrote:I think that's rather interesting that it takes the Empire over 12 years to build an ISD with a single slip, while we have seen the Dominion design and produce a 1.3 km battleship or the much larger 5-6 km varients seen in WYLB in less than 2 years time.
-Mike

It's also strategically alarming for the Empire that their production capabilities are so concentrated.

Indeed. One of the fatal flaws in Leo1's reasoning is that in order for the Empire to put out that level of ISD production, it must first force KDY or any of the other major shipyards into stopping work on everything thing else they are doing and build nothing but ISDs, and even then someone willing enough to utilise a weapon of mass destruction could take out the KDY yards and potentially severely cripple their ship building efforts.

However in DS9 we saw that the Dominion/Cardassian alliance was able to build and construct without support from the Gamma quadrant many large Dominion battlecruisers (the largest observed ships before the battleship and dreadnaughts) as well as large the larger Cardassian ships such as the Galors and Keldons at the Monac shipyards, and even after the loss of Monac and even before that, the Torros III shipyards, they still kept building at an impressive rate.

Also with Star Trek 2009, we know know that the Romulans could, if they chose to, build ships in the range of 5-12 km (the Narada) in addition to putting out large numbers of the 1.3 km D'Deridex warbirds.
-Mike

Jedi Master Spock wrote:The in-game economy is off. It is interesting that the Executor is built using the Space Station rules rather than the Ship rules, but ultimately, the game mechanics shouldn't be relied on for precise numbers, and they have holes in them. At best, they're qualitatively accurate, but pretending that they're quantitatively accurate (as Leo1 did to try to claim KDY could crank out about a thousand ISDs a year) is a bad idea.

In this case, I think the only useful information we can get out of the SotG book regarding shipyards is that the Mon Calamari shipyards are above average for a major shipyard, which in turn constitute a minority of the "hundreds of shipyards" in the galaxy, most of which are too small to put out even a single line of ships. In other words, Mon Calamari shipyards are a big deal. For those of you who don't have the book, here's the list of "some of the most noteworthy major shipyards":

1. Kuat Drive Yards 5781/0.5 = 11,562 (produces SDs and their Lancer and Nebulon escorts)
2. Corellian Engineering Corporation 3650/0.75 = 4,867 (freighters and corvettes)
3. Sienar Fleet Systems 4227/1.0 = 4,227 (TIEs, shuttles, interdictor cruisers)
4. Sorosuub 3008/1.25 = 2406 (yachts and freighters)
5. Incom 2234/1.0 = 2234 (X-Wing and other starfighters/small craft)
6. Kuat Systems Engineering 1200/0.75 = 1,600 (KDY's small craft/freighter/refit subsidiary)
7. Mon Calamari 1000/0.75 = 1,333 (MCCs)
8. Freitek 410/0.5 = 820 (E-wing)
9. Alderaan Royal Engineers 325/0.75 = 433
10. Gallofree Yards Inc. 500/1.25 = 400
11. Silvuit Corporation 400/1.0 = 400 (Lambda shuttle w/Sienar)
12. Koenseyr 452/1.5 = 301 (Y-Wing)

But these ratios are part of the game mechanics as well.

Mr. Oragahn wrote:But these ratios are part of the game mechanics as well.

Well, that's the core of it, isn't it?

To the degree that I'm willing to look at the SW EU (and you can make the case for not paying any attention to it at all), I feel I should probably approach SW game mechanics in the same way I did WH40k game mechanics in my debate with Thanatos:

Use it for qualitative, but not quantitative, information, and be careful with the qualitative information, paying close attention to when game design considerations come into play. In the case of Star Wars, it only makes sense to use quantitative data from a game if you have no other choice.

In this case, we have quantitative data on what the production capabilities of these major shipyards are, ranging from 301 construction points per week to over 11,000 construction points per week; that's unusable. That it translates to about a thousand ISDs per year of construction at full capacity; that's unusable. Leo1's particular use of SotG is not, IMO, something that can be defended logically.

The fact that KDY can produce more than SFS - provided they have enough funds and parts flowing in - I would say, is usable. Or, in this case, the fact that the Mon Calamari shipyards have 32% of the production capacity of the third-largest shipyard company in the galaxy (SFS) is not usable, but the fact that it is one of a very small number of major shipyards, and ranks pretty well within that select group of major shipyards? That is usable.

I have to agree with JMS here. So long as it has something you can attach it to, mechanics can be used for those purposes. However, we should look into fluff examples to be sure they match up, since fluff is always held in higher regards.

This is producing some interesting discussion on the GE's potential ship production rates. Maybe this should be moved to it's own thread in the Trek/Wars section?
-Mike

Perhaps it should. We are a little off the original topic of Thanatos's moderation.

However, I have to say I'm amazed nobody has called Leo1 out explicitly on his abuse of game mechanics, and in fact, it's gotten worse:

Leo1 wrote:If an Imperial II Star Destroyer takes 640 weeks to build in a single slip.

It will take 53.3 weeks to build amongst 12 slips (it's size allows it to be split amongst a dozen slips).

Applying the KDY multiplier, it will take only 26.7 weeks to build.

Dividing 5,781 slips by 12, KDY can build up to 481.75 Imperial II class Star Destroyers every 26.7 weeks, at its maximum capacity.

Similarly, KDY can build 481.75 Executor-class Star Dreadnoughts in 87.9 weeks.

Note - this is merely a calculation of the maximum capacity of KDY, and is in no way intended to indicate that this is what KDY actually did. Only what it could do.

As for the shipyards of the galaxy, SotG notes there are "hundreds", with the highest density being in the galactic core, with a few major shipyards having the capability to build entire lines of starships.

Apart from KDY, major known Imperial shipyards include:-

* Fondor Shipyards (a well-known shipyard, also built SSDs like KDY, so it is clearly a multi-thousand slip shipyard);

* Bilbringi Shipyards (built ISDs), a major supplier of the Imperial Starfleet;

* Seinar Fleet Systems (4,227 slips), provided the Empire with the bulk of its starfigther force together with major warships like the Immobilzier-418 Interdictor Cruiser and the Vindicator-class Heavy Cruiser;

* Corellian Engineering Corporation (3,650 slips), which builds both civilian ships and military grade capital vessels used by the Empire;

* Incom Corporation (2,234 slips) which was nationalized by the Empire after they gave the Alliance X-Wings;

* Kuat Systems Engineering (1,200 slips), reacquired by KDY after the Clone Wars, used to supplement KDY's income; and

* Sluis Van shipyards (unknown how many slips, but was of critical importance to the New Republic after the loss of Fondor during the YV War), also a major supplier of the Empire, and one of the few major shipyards located in the Rim as opposed to the Core.

Further, we know that Imperial oversector forces had their own unnamed shipyards - the SSD Intimidator of Black Sword Command was built at an unnamed Core shipyard, and was sent to Black Sword's shipyard 'Black 15' for finish work - presumably to free up a slipway at the Core facility.

He's listed half the shipyards in the book. He must know that it gives Mon Calamari the yard capacity for producing over a hundred ISDs per year using the exact same stretch of game mechanics, and just isn't saying a thing about it. He has to know that the old D6 RASB is completely incompatible with the D20 SOTG game mechanics.

I'll remind you that the D6 RASB says the Mon Calamari are "driving themselves and their orbital ship-construction facilities far beyond capacity." There is literally no way to reconcile that with the D20 SOTG shipyard figures, which are a factor of a hundred higher, or the fact that two critically important major CIS shipyards were located in the Mon Calamari sector.

He's also started to make some unjustifiable assumptions, like Fondor having anywhere near the capacity of CEC, SFS, and KDY because it built one SSD. If you're playing strictly by game mechanics, it doesn't matter how many slips you have; if you have at least 12, you can construct a Colossal ship as fast as anybody else in the galaxy.

Well I was going through some of these claims, and frequently forgets that KDY is really the main supplier of SDs. It's confirmed in the Rebel Era Sourcebook as well.
He cites the existence of countless of other shipyards, but we're not given any information about them. And yes, he tends to forget that he had the ratios wrong, and doesn't think the Mon Calamari would also produce many ships by the same logic. Knowing the ability of the Rebel fleets, it would actually be far more problematic to the Empire that is forced to have static forces across its territorial holdings.

KDY had a large production capacity noticeably because of the ring structure around the planet I believe.
I think little people are addressing this because now the thread is crawling with warsies.
It has only gotten worse the moment CPLF came in and blurred the line between his prerogatives as a mod, and his position in defense of Leo, because Mith wasn't paying attention to his arguments.

Yes, unfortunately it now seems we'll have to put down this argument as well. Fortunately, it seems there is more information on ship building then fleet deployments. I realized this might be a rather large problem when Leo1 tried to the Begging the Question fallacy in his response.

Well, the D20 material's authors did read the D6 stuff. At least some of it, since there are sections in the D20 sourcebooks which are taken from their older D6 cousins without any alteration, or so few.
Sometimes, though, there seems to be disagreements. For example, on the ship building capacity.
There is also that big problem about the tenth of the fleet kept as backup, yet three different sources saying that the Imperials didn't have enough ships to crush Dac without losing the higher ground in other regions or dismissing other duties.

There's the whole military-industry complex thing and the construction of the Death Star.
The Death Star book had Tarkin say he diverted funds from two different departments, but we don't know how much.

I was trying to get an estimation of the cost of the Death Star and compare that to some varying hypothetical GDP figures, but while this seemed to be possible with D20 examples of costs outside of game rules, the costs in D20 are ludicrously low, to the point where ANH's "ten thousands!?" is not just impressive, it's simply silly, unless these were not standard credits.
D20 puts a SD' cost at 145 M or so. In D6 books, a Nebulon-B was 20 times less expensive than an ISD. If the multiple remains the same, a Nebulon-B would have been rated at 7.25 M credits. So basically the cost of the stipend Solo was going to make Kenobi and Skywalker pay was less than a thousandth of the cost of a large warship.
Ahem.

I tried guessing the GDP of Coruscant based on what we have. This exercise was rather interesting, especially since we do have a scale example of the GDP of the Corporate Sector, a very rich and important sector on its own, taxed at 3%.

Also, on another note, an argument that crawled in is that post ANH the Emperor didn't care anymore as he was preparing the Death Star II and knew it was just a matter of time before he'd win. But this is forgetting a couple of things.

First, the Rebels had the entire plans of the second Death Star, and Palpatine allowed the plans of the second one to fall into their hands as well (bait).

Secondly, based on the drawings of the ITW about Geonosis, the superlaser weapon was apparently a scaled up version of a large ore melter.
Then let's remember that the Rebels had more ties with the CIS than the Empire ever had, especially when the Empire clearly displayed blatant xenophobia.

Thirdly, the same Geonosians were planning to build such a weapon. We don't know how big it was going to be (Leo attacked me on this but he simply doesn't have any evidence of the size of their weapon) and we know that a smaller version was planned, sans superlaser.
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Expediti ... _Planetoid

Fourth, we know that the superlaser alone could be mounted on other crafts. Two very large ones, the Tarkin, and the Darksaber, built by/for the Hutts, with a Taurill labour force, from stolen plans. Then the superlaser tech was downsized and mounted onto the Eclipse and Eclipse II, at 2/3 of the DET power of first Death Star's energy.

These engines of death could be built elsewhere than around a planet, so Palpatine could never know that he had no reason to fear the Rebels coming with their own superweapons, and he also could not be guaranteed that they'd try to attack his own battle station directly. The more Palpatine would blow planets up, the faster the race would become to build superweapons to match the Death Stars, and the degree of destruction spreading over the known territories would be mad. Soon people on both sides would try to backstab leaders and sabotage everything from within to stop this madness. Depending on how far the Rebellion would go to build those superweapons and the targets it would choose to attack, you could soon see something as crazy as disgruntled ex-Imperials and ex-Rebels banding together to crash both sides and sabotage their superweapons.

Also, the idea that the Empire could control an entire galaxy and destroy all Rebels spread over thousands of systems would be terribly silly. The revelation of a second Death Star to the public's eyes would certainly keep antagonizing many worlds. From the moment the Empire would start blasting more planets, including Dac, it would be the equivalent of getting the death note.
It would rot from within faster than imaginable. Systems would maintain a facade of Imperialism, but wish for only one thing, for the Empire to fall. Core Worlds would not feel safe, and soon enough the reality of the situation in the rest of the galaxy would reach those worlds. Chandrilla alone would be such a beacon, and would need to meet a fate similar to Alderaan to be silenced, but this would not solve Palpatine's problem.
It's been rather clear that the New Order worked because it apparently brought strength, peace and stability, with a powerful Navy and politicians still dreaming of the Old Republic. Seeing the Senate, although useless, being dismantled, certainly didn't help the Empire. If you disregard the firepower feats of the Death Star, politically wise, the Empire was at its height around the decade before ANH. The Senate was useless safe for the illusion it maintained, the Alliance wasn't there yet, Palpatine was still in control of that sort of "false flag" organization, and the Death Star had not blasted Alderaan yet.

Two things. First, it's not bad that there is a reserve fleet--I'm not questioning such a thing. What I am questioning is that there is a large reserve force doing nothing and basically waiting around just so Leo1 can try and win the debate. That reserve fleet would be quickly deployed in order to help quell the Rebellion. The fact that the Empire was struggling suggests that anyone with any competence would have deployed them. This is supported by the fact that the entire fleet was too busy with other operations against the Rebels.

The secons is that it may not be as easy to replicate the DS as you think. The reason being that it requires a special crystal to make the power source work. Now, clearly that isn't the only crystal and there may be ways of either getting another one from that planet or using an alternate method (the Geonosians sure as hell didn't intend to use it), but it would still be rather difficult. Granted, Palpy might have been banking on that in time to finish his Death Star and kill them all off.