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garhkal
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 Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2017 2:09 am Post subject: 8k,19k Super star destroyer discrepancy? |
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Over on Gateworld's Starwars sub-forum where we are discussing Rogue 1, someone commented that those 'ISD mark 1's that they saw, didn't look like they were the 1.4k that ISDs normally are.
Someone else then commented, well they do look small when compared to the SSD from ESB and ROTJ.. And another commenter mentioned about the whole 8k or 19k issue..
So i went looking..
The first WEG book that listed the Executor was the Galaxy guide 3, ESB, which listed it at 8,000 meters length.
Then we have the same 8k for SSds in the Imperial sourcebook.
Then we had Wanted by cracken, which also lists it at 8k.
Then GG 4, RotJ also listed it at 8k.
Heck, even the 1996 printing of the Star wars Essential guide to vehicles and vessels says its 8k.
So does ANYONE know where/when the first mention of SSD's being 19k came from??
ADMIN EDIT: History of the 5-Mile Fallacy
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Sutehp
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| Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2017 2:29 am Post subject: |
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| Wookiepedia-Super Star Destroyer Entry wrote: | Behind the scenes
Since 2004, the Executor-class were described as Star Dreadnoughts at 19km in length. Some controversy was made over the issue as many older sources described the Executor as either an 8 km or 12.8km long Super-class Star Destroyer.
On March 9th 2006, the Wizards of the Coast SW Q&A section reiterated that the Executor was 19 km, "as are all Super Star Destroyers of the same class" (Jedi Counseling 84). This kept the 8 km Super-class as a possibility, as these ships could be regarded as belonging to a different class from Executor. However, with the Starship Battles Preview 1 preview article on October 19th 2006, the Super-class was retconned as explicitly fake, being used to hide the much larger Executor Star Dreadnought class.
On November 16th 2007, the Official Databank updated the Executor article, pointing out that the term "Super-class Star Destroyer" was only used as an unofficial term, alongside "Super Star Destroyer", with "Executor-class Star Dreadnought" being the ship class's real designation. The updated edition of Starships of the Galaxy repeated the information, even adding more SSD variants to the mix and using both "Super Star Destroyer" and "Super-class Star Destroyer" interchangably as general descriptions. |
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Error
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Joined: 01 May 2005
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Location: Any blackberry patch.
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| Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2017 8:42 am Post subject: |
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I can't answer your last question about where the first mention of Executor-class ships being 19 km came from, though I do have something tangentially related:
The term "super star destroyer" is in-universe slang for this beast used by both the Rebel Alliance and the Galactic Empire rank and file. They are technically known as Executor-class Star Dreadnoughts. Since they are usually the largest ship in any convoy, the name "command ship" has also come up and stuck, and is a more technical term for them because it better encapsulates their role. In fact, the Executor is never mentioned by name in the original trilogy; it is only ever referred to as a "command ship" by Imperials or once in RotJ as a "super star destroyer" (this last only by Admiral Ackbar).
As you can see in the film TEsB, Executor is very obviously closer to 19 km than 8 km because the Imperial II-class craft in the foreground of some shots are 1.6 km long themselves and are tiny by comparison.
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Urban Spaceman
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2017 10:16 am Post subject: |
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The first concrete analysis I saw of it was on the Star Wars Technical Commentaries over at TheForce.net. The article on the "Executor-Class Star Dreadnought", as they called it, cited a scene in ROTJ, where an ISD casts a shadow on the Executor's hull. Working from that visual, SWTC deduced that the Executor was at least 11 times longer than an ISD. 1,600 x 11 = 17,600, and 19 kilometers is a nice, even number to round up to.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2017 6:01 pm Post subject: |
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So basically it was wotc that edited it to being that long from what it seems.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2017 11:20 am Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | So basically it was wotc that edited it to being that long from what it seems. |
The history actually traces back to the ESB novel, where the Executor was described as being "more than five times as large as its escorting destroyers." It's likely that WEG simply used this as a reference point (since it was the only official estimate) and just multiplied an ISD's 1,600 meters by 5 to get 8,000.
If you haven't checked out the Star Wars Technical Commentaries, I highly recommend it. They cover all kinds of Star Wars tech in great detail.
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CRMcNeill
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garhkal
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| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2017 4:14 pm Post subject: |
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I did read it. BUT i still feel 8k is MORE than adeuquate. Otherwise the stats for the Dark Empire Eclipse and Soverign need to also be updated....
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Sutehp
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| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2017 4:39 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | I did read it. BUT i still feel 8k is MORE than adeuquate. Otherwise the stats for the Dark Empire Eclipse and Soverign need to also be updated.... |
Not necessarily. The Sovereign and the Eclipse might be roughly the same length as the Executor (give or take) but the Sovereign and the Eclipse are significantly more massive. Take a gander at someone who built the canon length Executor and the Eclipse out of Legos here and here. There's a more accurate chart found here.
Remember that the Eclipse and Sovereign stats were written up with an 8km Executor in mind. Also remember that stats for a 19km length Executor do exist and can be found at the Shipyard. I don't know much about stats, but compare the stats for the 19km Executor and the stats in Dark Empire Sourcebook for the Sovereign and the Eclipse (or just look at their Shipyard links) and see if they make sense to you in a side-by-side comparison.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2017 6:25 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | I did read it. BUT i still feel 8k is MORE than adeuquate. Otherwise the stats for the Dark Empire Eclipse and Soverign need to also be updated.... |
Just to clarify, you're willing to ignore clear visual evidence that the Executor's WEG assigned length is in error, all to avoid restating two even rarer ships that are next to impossible to use in a game in the first place? Not that I'm all that surprised: i just wanted to make sure.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2017 7:33 pm Post subject: |
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Its more that for DECADES we have had the stats for the SSD even in the essential guide to vehicles and vessels as being 8K.. And as of 12 years ago someone decided to change it cause of what HE thought it should be...
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Sutehp
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| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2017 8:07 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | Its more that for DECADES we have had the stats for the SSD even in the essential guide to vehicles and vessels as being 8K.. And as of 12 years ago someone decided to change it cause of what HE thought it should be... |
In other words, a mistake was made decades ago regarding the true size of the Executor, that mistake persisted for decades until 12 years ago, when one person out of many who recognized the error from the beginning managed to yell loudly enough to provide evidence that the mistake was wrong. In other words, a retcon was made to a glaring error in the SWU and you seem to have trouble accepting it for some reason.
Is that about right?
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Whill
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| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2017 10:37 pm Post subject: Super Star Destroyer |
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I remember when I first got the Imperial Sourcebook in 1989 and watched TESB and RotJ afterwards thinking that the 8000m length was was a typo because the ship looks a lot bigger in the films. It hardly mattered to my game though because I'm sure that in all these years, a super star destroyer has not appeared in my game more than a background set piece.
| garhkal wrote: | | Its more that for DECADES we have had the stats for the SSD even in the essential guide to vehicles and vessels as being 8K.. And as of 12 years ago someone decided to change it cause of what HE thought it should be... |
That is incorrect. In-universe, the super star destroyer does not have a variable length. It has an exact length. He presented film evidence as a sound estimation of a more accurate length. There was no conspiracy to screw up WEG stats. He probably doesn't even play the game.
garhkal, the WEG SW RPG was made to simulate the universe of the Star Wars films for the purpose of creating new stories that take place in that universe. I think you putting an error in WEG over the films is putting the cart before the horse. WEG is not the God of Star Wars. But whatever. If you want to keep the WEG stats, you have two options:
You can say the Empire had another ship in between ISDs and the Executor class, and the WEG SSD stats are actually the stats of the new ship that was never seen in the films. Knowing that you don't like technology in the classic era that doesn't appear in the classic films, you probably hate this option.
OR
You can say that your SWU is an alternate reality to the film universe, and in your SWU, SSDs are shorter than in the films. But even if you choose this option, surely you can understand why the rest of us want our SSDs to match the movies when an error was obviously made and perpetuated.
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Sutehp
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| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2017 11:01 pm Post subject: Re: Super Star Destroyer |
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| Whill wrote: | I remember when I first got the Imperial Sourcebook in 1989 and watched TESB and RotJ afterwards thinking that the 8000m length was was a typo because the ship looks a lot bigger in the films. It hardly mattered to my game though because I'm sure that in all these years, a super star destroyer has not appeared in my game more than a background set piece.
| garhkal wrote: | | Its more that for DECADES we have had the stats for the SSD even in the essential guide to vehicles and vessels as being 8K.. And as of 12 years ago someone decided to change it cause of what HE thought it should be... |
That is incorrect. In-universe, the super star destroyer does not have a variable length. It has an exact length. He presented film evidence as a sound estimation of a more accurate length. There was no conspiracy to screw up WEG stats. He probably doesn't even play the game.
garhkal, the WEG SW RPG was made to simulate the universe of the Star Wars films for the purpose of creating new stories that take place in that universe. I think you putting an error in WEG over the films is putting the cart before the horse. WEG is not the God of Star Wars. But whatever. If you want to keep the WEG stats, you have two options.
You can say the Empire had another ship in between ISDs and the Executor-class, and the WEG SSD stats are actually the stats of the new ship that was never seen in the films. Knowing that you don't like technology in the classic era that doesn't appear in the classic films, you probably hate this option.
OR
You can say that your SWU is an alternate reality to the film universe, and in your SWU, SSDs are shorter than in the films. But even if you choose this option, surely you can understand why the rest of us want our SSDs to match the movies when an error was obviously made and perpetuated. |
And if you choose to exercise the first option, there are already D6 stats drawn up for both the 8km Super-class SSDs and the 19km Executor-class SSDs at the Shipyard as well as a plethora of other Star Dreadnought command ships, any of which would make for a long-time and recurring encounter for your PCs.
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