Redesigning the Starfortress
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ส.ค. 2024
- We deviate a little bit from the channel's norm and explore a possible redesign of the MG-100 SF-17 Starfortress in an attempt to make it a more functional and threatening bomber platform.
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Honestly, there was a way to make even the original design functional in combat. Not as bombers, but as a screening rearguard of minelayers. If a wing of starfortresses just flipped their orientation perpendicular to a pursuing fleet and then just flung all their ordinance like buckshot through the space between fleets, that would create a nightmare situation of a moving field made up of tens of thousands of tiny, nearly impossible to spot explosives.
That's not a bad idea actually and they'd certainly function very well in that way.
I like the idea of it basically being a baby torpedo-sphere
On a much smaller scale, yes.
Now I'm thinking about just giant ICBM launchers, we know nuclear weapons exist in starwars because mandalore (yes thats why the surface is baren in the clone wars) so just nuclear missles launched forward are absolutely practical
I always felt they should have gone with something along the lines of the Legends K-Wing.
Either that or something as simple as the B-wing would have worked.
A stand off missile battery that could smack an unwary capital ship down, with the problems that it is slow, cheap, intended for in system defence. Sounds like a good redesign.
Y'know, People talk about how the bombers are meant to represent WWII heavy bombers. However, in this situation, that doesn't work. What they should have done is have them be Torpedo bombers, such as the Devastator or the Avenger, rather than the B-17. Alternately set up the scene differently. Have it be a New Republic squadron trying to attack a planetside First Order base. The bombers would make a lot more sense with that change.
I understand the idea behind their inspiration of course. The sight of massed formations of B-17s and B-24s flying over their targets and dropping massive bomb payloads is rather iconic, but I think as I've described and as you pointed out, that there are better ways to execute that in Star Wars.
had always assumed the Bombers were not intended to attack Starships. They were long-range strategic bombardment craft used because they were the only thing available with enough firepower to seriously harm a Dreadnought. That said the Forward launch system would make them unbelievably dangerous to a starship. even a "dumb" bomb fired by the hundreds would be enough to oversaturate a Star Destroyers' defensive guns.
But that brings up the question of use-case. There really is no role for a "Stragegic Bomber." In a world with capital ship orbital bombardment. If US battleships could shell Berlin from the coast, we would not have had to send lights of B-17s inland. Plus Strategic Bombing is unarguably a terror tactic unsuitable for any non-evil faction that has the technology to avoid it. Hell, even its use in the real world is often criticized.
I've had my own redesign of the Starfortress that keeps the vertical bombing system but adds the ability to attach/detach large missle/rocket pods to the exterior of the the bomb bay.
I also headcanon the Starfortress to be a converted model of transport ship meant to drop cargo/ possible emergency relief supplies over remote areas.
Thus giving the Starfortress more role flexibility and a more realistic in-universe origin.
That would certainly explain why it seems so ill-suited to combat in the film.
If it was a converted civil ship instead of one purpose built for military operations. Not a bad idea at all.
@@StarWarsDidYouKnow It also pays respect to how the Resistance is just the Alliance 2.0 and how the Alliance fleet from the OT used converted civilian ships as capital ships.
@@26th_Primarch Valid, though I would argue that ultimately is part of the problem with the Sequels as a whole rather than something to be encouraged.
@@StarWarsDidYouKnow I agree.
It's always good to show respect for what's came before while trying out something new.
It doesn't need to be one or the the other.
@@StarWarsDidYouKnow There's a (Canon?) book that describes the Star Fortress being used for the purpose Zacharias suggested as well as for mining (breaking up ice/rock). The book is called "The Last Jedi: Cobalt Squadron."
The redesigned bomber looks awesome in the last art work!
Enjoyed the video, and I really like the idea of forward launching missile platform.
Glad you enjoyed it.
I still think they should've had something like a Y wing to go with this, to spread out the enemy's attention to threats even more. considering it takes 4-6 or 8 people to fly the thing, it seems a bit of a waste of resources to have a few (while potentially very deadly) fortresses to face against the enemy, when you can have 6 y wings being able to attack at different vectors at the same time
Probably would have been wise, but for whatever reason B-wings and Y-wings were labeled as a bit of a no-go for this movie. Not sure what the reasoning behind that was but they really wanted to have something new instead of bringing back the older designs which is funny since they were more than willing (and arguably eager) to showcase the new versions of the X-wing and A-wing.
Well i actually follow Colourbrand on deviantart and his latest post of these artworks brought me here. Great content, you just got another subscriber. :)
Welcome to the channel, I hope you'll enjoy it.
Definitely a better design. Woe to the world that the movie version is the one we got.
it's honestly what I thought we'd be getting when I saw the trailers.
Silly me for thinking that I guess.
@@StarWarsDidYouKnow more like silly Ryan for NOT thinking.
you know. seeing that still again, I had thought those bombers were actually a form of Nebulon B. didn't even notice the size difference, and didn't even think about it when I saw the movie
I remember having that conversation with you actually.
My thoughts were literally as I describe them in this video. I thought we were going to see some sort of missile platform, though some sort of variant of the Nebulon-B I could see, given their shape.
I always thought that this design would have worked better as a sort of frigate, rather than a bomber.
To be honest, that's what I thought it was when I first saw the trailers.
Welp I'll be the first to admit it, you did good with this one. I despise the bomber, its look and all. But your spin off its idea actually makes me like it, even its design when put to such a concept.
That was the goal, to make this lumbering behemoth something actually worthy of consideration as a viable combat platform.
@@StarWarsDidYouKnow well I'll admit the art coupled with the suggestion makes it actually terrifying and an interesting idea to work with. Think that's the greatest tragedy of the sequels. It isn't about failing to succeed, it's to see how close some of its nuances miss the mark like this bomber.
such a simple design change too! shows the lazy minimum effort put into the "original"
@@JeanLucCaptain that was ultimately the point of this redesign. I wanted to change as little as possible and show how one simple thing could have made this ship and the scene so much better both visually and narratively.
@@StarWarsDidYouKnow ALSO in the cross-section book it states the bomb rack is a seperate modular system that can be swapped for any number of alternatives. This is just one of them😎
Great idea, also with rose's sister sacrificing her life by ramming into the first order ship kinda mirrors fin's sacrifice at the end
Theres a missile cruiser just like this in the logh. Honestly a constant stream of missiles hitting any target would be a better use of ot than what we got. Great job
Are you talking about the Broadside cruiser or Marauder corvette's missile variant?
I based this redesign heavily on real-world missile submarines, so a standoff weapon that would just throw ordnance at a target and it could just as easily have worked in the scene we got in the movie.
Glad you liked the remake.
@@StarWarsDidYouKnowoh i was talking about the Alliance missile cruiser in a series called legend of the galactic heroes (logh). During a battle they were used to launch an stream of fusion missiles to devastating effect
@@clpfox470 oh I see! I thought you had somehow misspelled 'lore' and so was going off of that. I've never actually seen Legend of Galactic Heroes, though it is one that looks rather awesome.
@@StarWarsDidYouKnow ohhhh i see how that could be configured haha, i would really recommend it
it's a shame how disney wasted such a good looking ship design
When I first saw this. My first thought was it was designed to fire large quantities of missiles and torpedoes designed to overwhelm a capital ships defences such as shields or point defense turrets allowing fighters to give the killing blow.
One of the biggest issues with the Starfortress is its use-case. There really is no role for a "Stragegic Bomber." In a world with capital ship orbital bombardment. If US battleships could shell Berlin from the coast, we would not have had to send lights of B-17s inland. Plus Strategic Bombing is unarguably a terror tactic unsuitable for any non-evil faction that has the technology to avoid it. Hell, even its use in the real world is often criticized.
That is the key issue, and something many people point to in order to justify its use here. Saying that it was a design pressed into a role that it wasn't meant to fill, and that's fine, but I still think it is silly that the Resistance didn't refit it to be more functional for the role they needed it to fill. The Rebellion did that all the time.
@@StarWarsDidYouKnow The main issue I have is that their intended original role doesn't make sense in the setting. You can just move a corvette over the target area and use the turbolaser.
@DIEGhostfish yeah, fully agree. If it had originated as a civil craft, like perhaps a firefighting craft of some kind, that then was converted into a very poor bomber? Then sure, but an actual military vessel? It just beggars belief.
Another useful idea be filling the Lower wing with a F U size sensor array and basically make it an AWAC.
Just have it flying in the back line helping guide the fighters onto the target pointing them to problem areas and even being used as a booster relay.
That's actually a very clever idea, turning it into a combat controller would definitely work with how much space there would be after removing all the ordnance and launching mechanisms.
@@StarWarsDidYouKnow Heck apparently that entire lower wing is a BIG old module that you can change out as well.
So...
Can be all
And I add a bit of fan theory. Maybe this fortress was for large-scale bombardment of planets from orbit where a planet has a shield or really good defenses. maybe the booms that have been seen are very powerful by themselves in mass and are catastrophic together. Here is an idea maybe the bombs can pass through shields. That heavy ship still had shields. We see no damage to the ship except to its gun emplacements until the bombs fly right through at a slower rate than missiles and energy weapons. Like rolling a bomb (in cannon) under Droideka shields. And if planetary shields like the Gungan Shields you can slowly pass through it so the slower power bombs could pass through. yes, they should have had better shields and guns, moved faster, and jumped closer to the ship to hit and run. Do like your idea of missiles and torpedoes, maybe they should have had both.
Add the firing sequence & sound effects of the ww2 Katyusha rocket launcher and you've got a terrifying weapon, but not quite depicting a struggling heroic resistance.
Yes and no.
They're still big lumbering targets and if you have the First Order actually being militarily competent instead of a slapstick joke at the start of the movie it could very much come across as a struggling resistance being overwhelmed in a desperate attempt to hold their foes at bay.
Modern day bombers almost never fly directly overhead instead they launch from stand off point and mass lot of air to surface missiles and guided bombs
hehe giant flying katusya go brrr, i love the design btw
Admittedly, I based it off of SSBNs rather than MRLS, but I can definitely see it.
Funny fact the b-17 fortress when it first appeared in world war 2 it scared the absolutely scared the shit of of axis pilots because just how much gun's the B17, and massive amounts of axis pilots ended up getting shot down in the beginning of the US entrance of world war 2 it was only later on after the axis pilots realized that the b-17 flying fortress 1 or 2 30 Calabar belt Fed machine guns in the nose cone, meaning intercept fighters would be forced to fly around the b-17 and come in directly from the front.
I love this video !!!! I have a lot of feelings about this ship. Personally I love the ship and the idea behind it of having a big slow ship that drops massive amounts of payload. But I agree they they made them completely incapable and wrong. Your design is PERFECTION. Great work man!!!!
Also I like your design 1 small change I’d make is to have a bottem launch in addition to the middle bay. So the bottem of the middle bay would open up allowing traditional bombing runs over land targets. Missiles can still be the same but when dropped they rotate vertically and are on a delayed missile ignition and take off towards the ground target.
@@tacotots_132 wouldn't be the first time we've had multipurpose craft in terms of bombers. Both the Y-wing and TIE Bomber can do both after all.
XG-1 missile boat but it's a huge bomber! Edit: I found this through the Deviantartist here: www.deviantart.com/colourbrand/art/Commissioned-Stafortress-Re-design-871776488
The Gunboat and Missile Boat both served as part of the inspiration for this concept.
It helps too that the Starwing (XG-1) is still canon which means that the missile system that forms the basis for this redesign is still in universe.
@@StarWarsDidYouKnow cool! I posted this on Reddit 😎
@@JeanLucCaptain nice, will see what happens I suppose.
Have gotten a little bit of social media hate for this but most people seem to be taking it well.
Personally, this design seems more of a niche than as a strategic bomber. If what we saw were meant to be just that, then it really should be in an older time, basically Old Republic Era rather than at any point in main saga
That's actually something I have been saying for years: the Sequels should never have been the Sequels, they should have been set in the Old Republic at some point. There are literally thousands of years to play with, and they chose to muck about in the one part of the setting that had the most lore prior to the canon wipe.
The star fortress isn't really suppose to be attacking spaceships. Its suppose to be a ground target attacker only. Since they had no y-wings they had to use these. The version presented here is still muuuuch better then what we got.
The thing is though that after the movie came out it was said that the compartment that holds the bombs was supposedly modular, which means that a package similar to what I've described isn't out of the realm of possibility. They just really wanted to go that B-17 route.
Cool
Glad you think so.
It just doesn’t make sense when they have the falcon. The falcon alone could’ve done the job of all those Star fortresses. Considerably faster, more maneuverable, has hull armor from a Star destroyer, and is capable of carrying thousands of tons of cargo. It also conveniently has 5 escape pod ejection spots in the center of the cargo bay. Something that could easily be modified into a release mechanism.
To be fair, a lot of that movie seemed to not make sense, which seems to stem from the lack of unifying oversight for the trilogy.
Love this concept nice video
Glad you enjoyed it.
Awesome redesign for the MG 100 makes more sense to be armed this way
Glad you like the idea.
Also linked this to others, hopefully it bumps some views on this heh
Nice
Very kind of you.
@@StarWarsDidYouKnow eh, I try heh. Isn't like I'm some influencer
@@deathwatch1169 every little bit helps.
Or, hear me out here, you could just have K-Wings.
Question why did they not go with the Mosquito when getting inspiration from WW 2 bombers. It was a ridiculously fast British bomber, on its first deployment they went so fast the bombs actually missed the target because they would pennate through the buildings they were targeting and then explode on the other side of the building. And it was undetectable on radar because unlike most other bombers in WW 2, they were made completely out of wood and only used metal in necessary components. Hence why they can go incredibly fast, they were built with speed in mind and would hit targets and be able to leave before any fighters could reach them to intercept. So why did Disney not just design a fragil but fast bomber, just say it barley had any armor and shielding, because it would slow it down too much.
As stated by the big man himself he wanted a big fat cow for the Resistance to protect in that scene, the Mosquito is about as far from that as you can get and still be called a bomber. Also, "undetectable" is an extreme overstatement of how effective wood is at protecting against radar; it's transparent yes, but unless you can make the engines out of wood it just equates to having a car body made out of glass and expecting it to be invisible to the naked eye
It was a matter of design philosophy. Rian Johnson wanted to recreate the big bomber formations of WWII that we saw with the heavy bombers like the B-17. Unfortunately that really doesn't translate well into a space battle and ends up looking comically ineffective.
It's strange that they would use the starfortress to bombard a spaceship, It would have been better as to bombard imperial outposts far from outpost defensive cannon's and etc
Allegedly, part of the idea of using the Starfortress in that fashion was to showcase how desperate the Resistance was at the time. That they'd use a starship not equipped for ship-to-ship combat in a space battle. Personally I think that's a weak excuse and just highlights the lack of imagination in that scene.
They could have just shown it rotating to use the bombs shoot few at a time like the ship being a big gun with engines.
That certainly would have been interesting if nothing else.
I had the exact same idea of how those bombers should've be designed
It isn't too big of a leap to make honestly and several people thought this was what we were going to see when the trailers dropped.
@@StarWarsDidYouKnow Totally wished that they just added another one or two more braincells or give themselves a second thought when putting the design together.
Though coming from the Concept Design line, i have an idea why they went with something like this and its cuz of final choice by the ones in charge.
@@hitsunakousaka9497 You mean in regards to the intent to make them big slow and lumbering?
Or something else?
@@StarWarsDidYouKnow abit of that and when they put the design together, no one stopped and say, "Hey, don't anyone else think this is silly?"
@@hitsunakousaka9497 Yeah, I do feel like there was a failure of feedback in the design process.
Yeah, star destroyers didn't really have point defense weaponry
Is it possible to turn it into a ac130 gunship?
I consider it to be a really good design used really poorly
Maybe if it was meant to only ever attack surface targets.
I can see it excelling in that role. Anything that requires it to fly against even partially defended capital ships though it is quite evidently a clear failure.
I mean if this was what they were and had that capability then conceivably the first order could have launched its fighter compliment straight away instead we are treated to a an exchange that makes general hux and most of the first order stupid and inept so that when they are ultimately stopped the audience is like well no duh they're useless
Yeah this would be more scifi then just havig bomb dropping it felt too realistic and too much inspiration on real world bombers
There's a line with a lot of science fiction where something feels too much like our world to be believable and I think the Starfortress strayed over that line.
The Starfortress was the worst idea ever seen , it looks like a flying Food blender ..