Retiarius-class Fleet Carrier

[Sal Katarn]

Intent: To develop a very large starfighter carrier for the Empire
Development Thread: none
Hero Unit: No
Manufacturer: Mon Calamari Shipyards
Model: Retiarius-class Fleet Carrier
Affiliation: The Empire
Modularity: minor customization
Production: Minor
Material: durasteel
Description:
The Retiarius is equipped with some anti-starfighter weaponry on par with other capital ships, including the general purpose missile launchers which can fire 1 proton torpedo per launcher or 10 concussion missiles per launcher, but it lacks any heavy weapons such as turbolasers that can be used effectively against other warships. Instead, it relies on its massive compliment of starfighters and bombers to protect it against enemy ships. Another configuration of the carrier makes it suitable for planetary assaults. It is equipped with jammers capable of cutting off communication within a 400 kilometer radius at their maximum range. It also wields a gravity well projector.

Classification: Fleet Carrier
Role: Carrier
Height: 800 meters
Width: 1,000 meters
Length: 1,900 meters
Power Core Generator/Reactor: Solar Ionization Reactor
Hyperdrive Rating: 2
Minimum Crew: 10,000
Optimal Crew: 21,000
Armaments:

• 20 General Purpose Missile Launchers
• 40 Tractor Beams
• 60 Point-Defense Laser Batteries

Hangar:

• 35 Assorted Starfighter/Bomber Squadrons (420)
• 30 Arcturus Gunboats

or

• 10 Starfighter Squadrons
• 500 Dragoon-class Dropships
• 70 AT-TTs
• 100 S90 MAAT Gunships

Non-Combative Attachments:

• x4 220-SIG Tactical Sensor Jamming Devices

Passenger Capacity:

• Fighter Pilots (450)
• 1 Stormtrooper Regiment (2,000)

or

• 1 Stormtrooper Division (10,000)

Cargo Capacity: 15,000 tons
Consumables: 1 year
Sublight Speed and Maneuverability: 8

 

[Ayden Cater]

First thing I HAVE to ask:

Why did you make it 1,999 meters in length?

 

[Sal Katarn]

because it's funny. And if it's over 2,000 it has to be rped out and I suck at roleplaying tech creation.

 

[Ayden Cater]

Understand that this does not look well on your part. Taking the ship's size to the literal limit and stopping only because you don't want to do a tech creation thread is rather poor form, especially considering that it's pretty rare to find a ship in Star Wars with a listed length of something like 1,999 meters.

The next matter at hand; how do you justify a carrier at 2km in size having over 2,000 fighters when an Eclipse-class Star Destroyer has 600.

 

[Sal Katarn]

Humor doesn't translate over the internet. It was a joke. However, it is still 1,999 meters.

The Eclipse-class also has 500 turbolasers and a ridiculous amount of troops and a superlaser. The Empire was never overly concerned with starfighters as they considered them obsolete besides the might of capital ships, much to their later chagrin.

 

[Ayden Cater]

Make your edits.

 

[Sal Katarn]

edited down a bit.

Here is justification.
http://starwarsrp.net/topic/974-charon-class-star-destroyer/

this is 2,200 meters, carries 180 starfighters along with an additional 30 AT-SATs, 300 dropships, and hundreds of tanks. Instead of having a bunch of tanks AND starfighters, the Retiarius gives the option of having either or. And because there are no tanks, AT-SATs, or dropships (AT-SATs alone take up like 25 meters) there is enough hangar space in this vessel (only 300 meters smaller) that it could carry double the amount of starfighters.

Now I never was good at math but here are some basic calculations. Pardon me if I'm incorrect:
V = l x w x h

1,900 x 1,000 x 800 = 1,520,000 volume.

That's a lot of room to store stuff. Now just taking a fifth of that for hangar volume would equal 304,000 cubic meters. Tie nexuses are 3x3x3 meters, or 27 cubic meters. Theoretically it should hold 11, 300 TIE nexuses. But I'm not asking for that.

Considering it also doesn't have ANY turbolasers that also frees up space for more starfighters.

Now let's take a look at canon.
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Venator-class_Star_Destroyer

The venator from the clone wars. It is eight hundred meters shorter in length than the Retiarius, five hundred meters shorter in height, and five hundred meters shorter in width, but has the hangar capacity for this:

• Alpha-3 Nimbus-class V-wing orV-19 Torrent starfighters(192)[1]
• ARC-170 starfighters (36+)[1]
• Eta-2 Actis-class light interceptors (192)[1]
• LAAT/i gunships (40)[1]
• Military walkers (24)[1]
• Various shuttles[1]
• Prefabricated garrison base(1)[1]

I feel like, given those specs and the Charon's, I should realistically at least be getting around 500 fighters.

 

[Ayden Cater]

There are multiple counter-points to this. Let's address them all:

On the topic of addressing ship calculations: Calculating pure hangar space is inaccurate, as is vessel internal space - you're talkng about a non-cuboid shape and assuming standard LWH volume, which is grossly out of proportion; it'd be less than half of that, for one, considering a) it's not flat and b) there is a massive chunk missing out of the middle, which reduces your available space by more than a third, easily. Then, there's more than just fighters to account for. You need maintenance bays, weapons storage, fuel storage, pilot ready rooms - and that's just the hangar. Any ship's internals require double-thickness bulkhead doors and walls to secure to an airtight state due to oxygen considerations when a ship closes up to general quarters, crew storage, maintenance, engineering, weapons, space for wiring, et cetera. A ship is space-consuming.

To address your Venator argument, TIEs have a unique design feature in which they must be stored on very space-consuming internal racks. These racks are a feature of the fact that TIEs do not have landing gear and thus cannot safely land on solid ground like most standard fighters, so pilots are inserted by their topside entry hatches, which these gantry racks allow access to. Remember, TIEs are cheap and efficient, right? So, there's going to be less space for them than you've accounted for. The Venator did not have to do this and could stack its fighters up due to their considerably lesser height. And to add to the point, many of the Venator's other vessels on board other than the Eta-2 (which we will use as point of comparison due to its similarity to the Nexus' dimensions) were smaller. Ships from the Clone Wars era typically were not large at all - a standard highest measurement of ~7 meters compared to the TIE standard length of 13. Some, like the ARC, are larger, but on the Venator there are few of them.

As for the Charon, you're looking at a ship that was approved before our current policies and guidelines went into effect. I have also made a post proclaiming an intent to seek updates for older entries to bring them in-line with our current expectations. Its hanger complement will be modified as a part of this.

I informed you in the PM that including a gravity well projector would lower your capacity to carry fighters. If you intend on keeping it, your hanger capacity should reflect this, and you need to list it as a part of your armaments.

There is a reason many carrier designs, and for that point almost every ship design, barely ever goes over a single wing; carrier designs in Star Wars are highly inefficient, particularly Imperial designs, due to their insanely needy requirements, IE ship stresses and security, as well as walkways and other storage. Your highest number of acceptable wings would be 2 in a ship this size, perhaps 3, which means a maximum of about 216 starfighters at best, and even this is pushing approval boundaries.

 

[Sal Katarn]

Already removed the internal gravity well projector.

Okay, now onto the math. Like I said, I'm not good at it, so we'll just stick with what I do know which is star wars canon ships.

The Venator and Ties

I'm not sure from what source you're pulling the information about landing struts vs TIE racks? I've never heard that argument before in the SW ship R&D debates I've been in. From my observation it would seem that having multiple hangars or multiple floors within a hangar to accommodate for fighters with landing struts would take up more volume than a single giant hangar with racks of TIEs.

Starfighter type. Even if the above holds true and starfighters with struts are better, then how about I make that a statement in the design. "No TIEs" I can either update/use canon fighters, or make some starfighters with struts. There are plenty out there. In this case, shouldn't I still be getting more fighters than the Venator because 1) it's either, or...either x amount of squadrons or dropships/walkers...and 2) it has 900 meters on the Venator as well as 500 meters in width ?

There is a reason many carrier designs, and for that point almost every ship design, barely ever goes over a single wing; carrier designs in Star Wars are highly inefficient, particularly Imperial designs, due to their insanely needy requirements, IE ship stresses and security, as well as walkways and other storage

I'm not sure where this comes from, but I quickly point you to the Venator and say that it seems to be highly efficient.

The whole point about this design is not to have more fighters than the enemy for gratuitous reasons, but to have more starfighters/bombers than the enemy in order to act as a screen and an attack force considering it literally has 0 turbolasers.