Cargo Expectation of a Heavily Modified YT-1300

[vanir]

crmcneill, have a good look at the Bespin platform scene for better scaling of a YT-1300, it's much bigger than the 3/4 scale mockup used in the Mos Eisley scene.

The thick part of the disc has three decks too. The thickness of the edges is one deck thickness, towards the centre there's another deck above (airlocks, etc.) and engineering deck below (when chewie was working on the engines under there in ESB end scenes).

It's just a much bigger spacecraft than the WEG stats say. It's 40m long, some 30m wide and has three decks.

[Fallon Kell]

[CRMcNeill]

[cheshire]

[CRMcNeill]

[cheshire]

Oh, there's plenty wrong with the deckplans for sure. I just sort of roll my eyes and say "Oh well." There's a lot that can be done, but most of the time the nitty gritty details aren't even important for my games. There are questions on "where are you" when boarding parties get started, or if the players are hunting down some criminals playing hide and seek on a ship.
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Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind.

[CRMcNeill]

I find that accuracy and detail helps me better visualize the interior, and that makes it easier to roleplay action related to the ship. The greater the detail, the easier it is to close my eyes and picture myself in it.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[vanir]

I certainly agree it's a well thought out analysis crmcneill and works very well for you obviously, which is excellent. I've been finding an ad hoc "half length again" rule on most of the WEG tramp freighters stats has been working for me, based on another website's analysis of SW footage and revision of scaling for star destroyers (especially the Executor from which the revised length wound up in Gry's? Starships pdf), the death stars (DSI is about right at 120-150km but DSII should be around 900km diameter), and Falcon sizing based on the Bespin landing pad and clamped to the star destroyer bridge scenes.

One point of note is the YT-1210 is around 30m across the disc in WEG stats yet physically is essentially a YT-1300 without the avionics prongs. That would make a YT-1300 scaled against a YT-1210 somewhere in the vicinity of 38m long.

But the guts of what you're relating are quite true, fact is they used a variety of models for the filmwork and some 3/4 scale mockups. Correct scaling of the Falcon should really vary for flight scenes from 35-45 metres long depending which scene (whether clamped to the bridge, or doing the rebel fleet flyby, or a hangar scene, or the Bespin landing pad scene, they all seem to vary in scaled size), whilst the ~27m WEG stats and old LucasArts canon can at least be said to be based upon the 3/4 scale mockup for the Mos Eisley and landed scenes that actors are actually walking around the ship in.

It is a very well thought out deckplan you have, I can't fault it and love the detail (especially the engine section), but do personally feel it's slightly underscale particularly when I'm looking at the cockpit and scale bar and then the ship, my gut tells me it's still just slightly underscale but I prefer to err on the side of bigger is better anyway with freighters and transports in SWU, since they are action locations as well as vehicles. If I've got a little too much space for extra nooks and crannies to receive boarders from or place another shield generator in, all the better.

And plus it just worked out quick and easy for me to tell the Players "just add 50% to the size of freighters on the WEG stats for how big they actually are in our game"
Just so we don't need detailed floorplans for every single ship, but can just scribble them as needed on the fly, but still have a baseline system for resizing all the ships that works easy.

[atgxtg]

If it helps, I do have have a way of working out SPACE speed for a ship using it*s mass and thrust. Basically it is F=ma, so if you add 40% or so to the ships mass you need to add 40% more thrust )and 40% more tons of engines to keep the same SPACE speed. You don't really need to know what the exact mass of the ship is, just the percentage of change.


BTW, I also did a little reverse engineering work with the Incredible Cross Sections book, and it looks like the guys wrote wrote it made a math error on the G rating of *Annakin's Hot Rod Airspeder*. Unless I missed something it look like the authors either forgot to convert newtons into kg thrust, or to divide the meters per second per second acceleration by the gravitational constant to get acceleration. So the acceleration is off by a factor of ten or so. And that is probably true for ALL the phenomenally high accleration stats. It looks like they confused 1m/s^2 with 1G.

[vanir]

hey atgxtg, do you have any renditions of what some of the rise of the republic/clone wars era spacecraft should move at in space, comparative to the rebellion era spacecraft like the X-Wing and A-Wing, etc.?

It's just that I've been finding the listed specs on things like the ARC-170 and Jedi Starfighters a little too nonsensical for inclusion into our game as written. I've toned them down using just simple personal judgement really, I kept the atmospheric speeds as listed since that's aerodynamic and not strictly related to Space speeds, but the ARC-170 I cut back to Space: 6 (given it has half the engines of an X-Wing, triple the crew and double the weapons/shields power requirements, plus the written description says most starfighters can outspeed it and that it's heavy and slow but makes up for this with weapons/shields), the Delta-7 I kept at Space: 8 but the Eta-2 I cut back to Space: 9 since I simply feel a TIE/ln would be slightly faster. I certainly feel an A-Wing just by visual and era appearances would be much quicker, the engines on an A-Wing are huge and tiny on an Eta-2.

The explanation I've given my players is that in different eras the size of space units has changed, so that a Space: 10 in and Old Republic starship translates to a Space: 5 in the Rebellion era due to different scale of the space units. It makes a nice little simple explanation for what is essentially a GM preference.

But I'm interested if anyone has made some kind of independent examination of what the speed ratings of some of the Prequel starships should be if a used one is encountered in a later era. Let's face it, if the ARC-170 did 100MGLT (Space: 10) like Wookieepedia says, then you'd never build the X-Wing and nobody would ever use a Y-Wing. But in any case the engines on these later craft visually display much more thrust capacity than the big heavy ARC-170 plus they're thirty years later in production, it just doesn't make sense.

[atgxtg]

Well the are the write ups in the compiled stats and D20 conversions, but I assume you mean some direct comparion from Lucasfilm ratings.

Yeah, I do.
Most ships seem to conform to a conversion of 1 SPACE per 410Gs acceleration.


As far as the high speeds of the older era fighters, there really is a good reason for it. Those old ships tend to by tiny. The delta-7 is smaller and lighter than a A-Wing. I got a design system I6ve been working on and the Delta 7 appears to have about 80% of the mass of an A-Wing, and about 80-90% of the thrust.

A lot of the stats for the older ships make more sense if you look at the relative size of the ships and reduced capabilities in other areas. Such as the Delta'7s air supply (5 hours).

The Eta-2 is also a very small fighter, and that is what gives it a goof thrust-to-mass ratio.


Newer isn't always slower. Look at real world aircraft. THere are planes from the 60s that are as fast, and even faster than planes in use today, but are inferior in other categories.

[ZzaphodD]

Also, what is 30 years difference when routine starship travel has been around for thousands of years.. If there would be large differences between rebellion and clone wars era ships, then ships from Jedi era would be going backward..
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My Biggest Beard Retard award goes to: The Admiral of course..

[Fallon Kell]

[vanir]

Well like I said I kept the Delta-7 at the listed rating of Space: 8 anyway. I just trimmed the Eta-2 back to 9 and the ARC-170 to 6, the V-19 and V-Wing to 8, things like that.

Look at the ARC-170, same engines as the Clone Z-95 that moves at 8...
Look at the engines of the Eta-2 visually and compare them to an A-Wing.
I do agree about the Delta-7, it has beefy engines and not much mass so I'm surprised it's listed as slower than, not faster than the Eta-2 (which is also more heavily armed), I would've rated its speed around Space:10 but kept it at 8 for the older production than a cutting edge A-Wing.


I do know a thing or two about aircraft tech. The high speeds gained by 2nd gen fighters like the century series haven't been increased in the 3rd gen and later models you're right...in the US (Soviets/Russians are a different case). In fact the speed capabilities of modern composites is less, they have neither the acceleration or the high mach performance of the older, sleeker models. The Eagle is speed restricted to 1.78 Mach, the F-16 can't carry anything more than a pair of sidewinders to get anywhere near 2 Mach, even the 1958 world speed record holder the F-4 Phantom is a 1.6 Mach fighter tops, speed record attempts were specially prepared using non-serviceable flight regime. The published claims popularised in commercial media was part of the US propaganda war during the Cold War.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with technological capability, it has everything to do with doctrine. Priorities changed. The century series were firstly dangerous in handling characteristics as slow speeds and their very high attrition rate (pilot deaths were commonplace), was almost singly due to this fact, the vast majority of fatalities were during landings. It was so common they got nicknames like widowmaker, pig, brute and landing one was described as a sabre dance (coined for the F-100 but came to describe landing in any century series fighter).

So the first priority for the new composites was to improve low speed handling, ostensibly without reducing high speed performance. Swing wings appeared right about then, for this reason obviously but there are problems with them, notably weight and complexity. About as small and light as you can get a Light Fighter (for the F-104/F-5/F-16 role), is the Russian MiG-23 which is basically a swing wing MiG-21 with updates. Look at the weight increase, people often think of the Flogger as a Phantom contemporary, not an F-5/F-16A contemporary.

Other thing was low speed thrust, the dry ratings in thick air and fuel efficiency. The older fighters ran their tanks dry in minutes flat at afterburner. The newer turbofans have double the take off thrust, but actually at high mach they're not really more powerful, ancient turbojets don't lose much thrust supersonic (especially with a bleed system like the Foxbat and Flogger) where modern turbofans do, they're very ineffecient at high mach.

Next priority was transonic handling. It was found by US studies that most combat would occur at high subsonic and transonic speeds, due to airspeed bleeding in manoeuvres and greater stresses at lower altitudes, where combat was moving towards (as SAMs improved and high altitude attack/interception became no longer immune from groundfire, the new trick became using ground clutter to spoil enemy radar locks, and strike models became low altitude penetration missions rather than high altitude, high mach precision dashes).

Now the thing about aeronautical engineering is you can build a plane that handles well at low speeds, or a plane that handles well at high speeds. You cannot actually do both with the same airframe unless you fudge the figures by specially preparing say a Streak Eagle for high mach speed runs, install an engine management override to blow the engines during the high speed run, things like that. Which the air force did to get budget approval for the Eagle which is in fact a transonic fighter in practise. The contract requirements were dogfighter performance, ferry range...and a speed of at least 2.5 Mach. They delivered the other two but fudged the 2.5 Mach rating in ways that plane just can't see in service, it's nominally speed restricted to 1.78 Mach which is typical for the modern composites.
That was just about getting approval despite ridiculously unrealistic congress expectations.

These simply weren't designed as high mach warbirds like the century series were designed single mindedly for high speed at any cost. And the published figures that show no loss of performance for this change in air force doctrine for how fighters are used in combat, is mostly salesmanship. To help people embrace the new composites, just as good as the older fighters only better. Actually they're not as fast but it's not technological, it's doctrinal.

Russians went other routes but their design/deployment doctrines are completely different. They have requirements like production ease (for the Fulcrum), climb rates and range (for the Flanker), and speed performance (for the Foxhound). The SuperMiG can actually cruise with a full warload at 2.35 Mach on light afterburner for hundreds of miles routinely, no other modern fighter can do that, and its 2.83 Mach dash is again with a full war load and reliable in regular service, plus it'll do around 1.4 Mach on the deck which very few models can do and then land on a snow covered field and sit uncovered for months with no maintenance and just run up and leap into combat, which no US front line fighter can do without breaking. Different requirements. Russian engineering was a bit more linear than US, America really changed their requirements with the composites because they did a complete revision of their fighter doctrine during the 50s-60s back when they were doing all those super expensive special projects like the Blackbird and Valkyrie and learning lots of cool stuff about high speed and all round handling flight regimes.

Most Russian fighters, from a Cold War Flogger to a 90s Fulcrum can easily out speed any modern composite above something like 35,000 feet, because Russian high mach performance is so good, but as soon as they enter combat and start making turns and avoiding missiles or radar lock, everybody bleeds back to the transonic realm, drops altitude to keep their speed up and that's when the US composites start to reign supreme. Russians come in tough, the US gets tougher and tougher as the fight continues.

It's not really about technological capability in speed performance. The Russians who did stay linear, will easily outspeed any century series fighter with any supersonic in their inventory, in the speed stakes pretty much nothing can out-accelerate or outspeed a Flogger or a Foxhound at any height in a straight line.

The real kicker is during the Gulf War when some old Foxbats were encountered by US pilots, the combat record showed them to be even faster than was believed in the west. It was believed they had poor low altitude performance, but an encounter between two on 3 Eagles showed this to be quite wrong as they easily out accelerated and outsped the Eagles going fast supersonic just above the desert floor, right on the deck. And avoided several missile shots using energy manoeuvres (the missiles used up all their energy trying to match speed so were easily diverted with countermeasures and a slow turn by the time they got there). They found you have to be point blank to get a sidewinder onto one, which means you need to cut an intersecting flight path capable of intercepting one of these monsters to wind up right on his tail, and that means GCI or AWACS and some smart tactical planning on where you point the nose if they come onto the battlefield and you actually want to catch one.

[ZzaphodD]