Star Wars Roleplay: Chaos

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Factory Suggestion: Squadron Exchange Supplement

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.

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.)
Imperial II Class Star Destroyer
  • 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.])
As we can see, each of these ships is using the established ruleset already provided by the Templates. There’s no fundamental changes to what we’ve got in place. What I am suggesting, however, is that we work together to establish a supplementary addition to the Factory to bring our system into line with what’s already in play via the new standards of Star Wars Canon.

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.
 
Grand Admiral, First Order Central Command
I wonder if the concerns of carrier-within-a-carrier have been addressed before?


:thenk:
 
There were some folks that liked to slap cruisers/frigates in their SSDs for some exchange of squadrons so its been done relatively recently in some capacity.

Could go for 100 meters = 2 Squadrons or equivalent exchange (IE, however big the ship you are trying to park is, use its Extreme Rating Hangar for how many squadrons it displaces).

Just to avoid going full Russian nesting doll.
Authentic-Russian-Nesting-Doll-Apples-2-947841_1024x1024@2x.jpg
 
Grand Admiral, First Order Central Command
I think 1 Squadron = 100m is a fair trade, and it accounts for if you want a full size corvette (at 200m) it takes up more room than one half that size,

It also scales up for frigates onboard larger ships, if necessary, It's also, as far as exchange ratio goes, specifically inferior to a dedicated carrier.

Some common sense should apply. Only ships over a certain size should be able to carry other proper ships, and there should be a large enough hanger to accommodate. I.e. a 1000m Cruiser with 'very low' hanger probably can't fit a corvette at all because of confined hanger space. I'd say the simplest way to do it would be you have to have at least an 'Average' Hanger to fit anything over 50m.
 
Good direction, but here's my thinking - and again, this is just the 'how someone could willfully misunderstand for exploit purposes.' You have it at 1-2 Kerunoses (Kerunoi)? per squadron removed, but a Kerunos could be said to include its four external fighters, so in theory you clean out a 12-to-16-fighter squadron, cram in a couple of these, and you've traded 12-16 fighters for two patrol ships and 8 fighters. That cancels out to a pretty slim exchange rate. So again, I like the direction, but I think the numbers need a tweak and/or some clarification re: the Kerunos' own fighter complement.

This is something that I have taken into consideration as I was drafting this suggestion. While it may not be the exact wording, but the notion was along the similar vein. As it stands, any ships with external docking rings - be they assumed or otherwise - houses the ability to carry additional small spacecraft into battle. And yes - it does add up exponentially if we add that into consideration. But, there is the issue as hangar capacity deals with internal carrying capacity - not with the external capacity. You could argue that it encompasses both external and internal - but if that was the case? Then the template wouldn't be listed as hangar space - it should be listed as carrying capacity, or something along those lines.

However as those concerns are four years out of date, especially considering that the templates and judging criteria have changed dramatically since then. I'd argue that they our current roster of Factory Staff would ideally, and hopefully judge these carrier within a carrier submissions on a situational basis of them being the exception, rather than the case.

Naturally, this would lead to submissions being ideally fleshed out with additional weaknesses to account for such factors. But, as that's a rabbit hole I don't really wanna go down at the moment, as we'll likely be here until Tef stops paying for the server, lol.

___
Personally, I'm not entirely a fan of trading Two Squadrons for a Single Corvette. The Metric that was used with one of the Submissions I made had Three Squadrons exchanged for a single Corvette, with Six Squadrons being swapped out for a single Frigate. It's a bit overzealous in my mind - which basically prompted this suggestion. I'd rather have something that's more direct in terms of exchange. Like I mentioned in the OP - One Squadron of X-wing's is 150 metres, but using their longest dimension as the "Length." That's the exact size of the CR90 I've used in my example, and when rendered onto the same - top-down floor plan, it roughly occupies the same area.

That aside, however, I think it'd be more sensible to reduce that 150m limit and go with the One Squadron to One Corvette / 100 metres as that'll make things immensely easier to scale up in regards to larger ships.

Inb4 we have SSD's carrying Impstars.
 
Grand Admiral, First Order Central Command
I mean on a very basic level just say if you're storing a hanger-capable vessel in a hanger, it can't carry in its hanger.

Not strictly realistic but whatever, makes it easier for everyone including the handful of people who care about fleeting, because as you mentioned the possibility of russian nesting ships exists and should be stamped out immediately.
 
That could easily be listed as a restriction, and maybe even inspire a new generation of submissions to be created - where specially built corvettes and/or frigates dump their hangar stats to get bonuses elsewhere.

I'll see about making edits to the original idea to incorporate the changes we've all mentioned, alongside the restriction too. Can't promise it'll be tomorrow or the day after, but it'll definitely be soon as I'd like to see this idea - as well as the other one regarding support craft - implemented into the grand scheme of things.
 
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ADM. Reshmar

Directorate Officer Fleet Admiral SJC 3rd Fleet
Make it 1 squadron = 50 meters. A corvette can have up to 4 squadrons now. If a squadron = 50 meters it would work out the same. No Carrierception

I have listed pickets as part of a ships wing. usually, I do 3 50 meter ships as a support squadron exchange but even that is a bit high considering the volume of a ship. 12 fighter do not = a large corvette. yeah length wise maybe but when you put them in a straight line you have a 10 to 15 meter wide 5 meter tall 150 meter line. a vette is usually much wider and taller than that.

Listing a ship as able to dock a corvette is done all the time but to use that Vette you have to count it towards your fleet limit. That works to unless you're trying to get around the Fleet limit with nesting corvettes in a ship.
 

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