Think YOU Know the Imperial Star Destroyer? WRONG!!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 ก.ย. 2024
- Every nerd jsut thinks they know EVERYTHING about Imperial Star Destroyers - WELL ACTUALLY; you MAY be WRONG!! Here is why! A complete breakdown of Star Destroyer features!
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Long time Star Wars nerd here. This all comes from information available pre 90s.
The spheres are referred to as sensor domes and it is stated that the feedback from the sphere’s destruction temporarily shorted out the bridge shields on the Executor. (I can’t remember if it was the ROTJ novelization or possibly in a role playing supplement) The Imperial II class star destroyers (used post Yavin) each had 40 Turbolaser Batteries, 40 Ion Cannons and 40 Torpedo Launchers as well as the super heavy’s you can easily see(Technical Journals and Roleplaying Supplements)
I believe all maneuvering on the big ships in Star Wars is done using Repulsor Engines which do indeed manipulate the gravity around the ship, smaller versions are used on speeders and other vehicles
Torpedoes weren't mentioned in WEG stuff but later on some like the Chimera had them added.
Maneuvers in deep space are by various thrusters and "etheric rudder" but I always took thst to be a form of thrust vectorimg
@Felix Wang Maybe, but also I don't know if the Rogue One reference is valid because it was quite clear that the star destroyer had been "disabled" by ion weapons. If disabling it implies no engines, it probably implies that a "gravity well anchor" would be offline as well.
Thank you, Ryan Sargent.
I hate getting irritated about sci-fi techobabble, but sometimes you have to.
You definitely stated clearly what I was thinking, in that the gravity tech repulsor engines are what do most of the fine manuvering. It really irritates me when people try to use current understanding of physics to explain sci-fi tech when its obviously waaaay more advanced than our own. If we could explain how it's done, then we would have these in real life.
@@GyorBox Yeah but that does conflict with other things tat say Repulsors rely mostly on having other outside gravity to manipulate and reverse and such.
Well to be fair the original designers never properly explained everything very clearly and the film makers only perpetrated the confusion to the future writers and game designers.
if i might about the lack of underside heavy turrets, the Star destroyer has been shown to be able to operate on planets (maybe not in the original trilogy but defiantly the prequels with the venator. it might just be that simple gravity prevents them from being used on the underside hull, a real life example of this is when the KMS Bismarck sank she rolled over and her turrets fell out due to nothing holding them in place. now this is star wars we are talking about but it might just be more cost effective not to put them on the underside and using the power for say repulsers and such somewhere else
That happened to a lot of ships. The turrets couldn't be fixed in place in order to rotate.
but they absolutely have ventral guns the Devastator in the new hope clearly fired from the bottom as well at the tantive IV!
@@laisphinto6372 i should have specified big guns like the quad and octuple turbo laser turret, a small lighter gun i would assume isn't as difficult as a massive turret like those
@@laisphinto6372 The Tantive IV's ventral turrets appear to be either connected to an object that cannot fall out (such as the ventral escape pods being armed with light laser cannons) or (in the case of the ventral turbolaser) directly connected to a dorsal weapon system to prevent them falling out.
The Devastator did fire from the bottom. However, there are no heavy turbolasers visible on the underside of the hull. As such, we can hardly claim that they had a significant ventral armament.
My thought regarding ventral guns was that the shields there might be differently oriented, to protect the open hangar, which would prevent the guns from firing from underneath. That is, they would need to drop the ventral shields to allow guns there to fire, which would leave a big open hole in the hull for the enemy to shoot at. To protect that exposed hangar, the shields are stronger, too strong to shoot through.
The problem with explaining the ships of Star Wars is people ignore the Star Wars Universe physics of space and instead use real world physics of space. If you watch all the Star Wars movies and shows you will notice that Star Wars space acts more like air than space and it is consistent enough property of Star Wars space that it is canon even if it has never been recognized.
It follows the Luminiferous Aether theory, apparently.
@@nicholaswalsh4462 - I don't think it does as space in Star Wars does not act like a vacuum and has an impact on physical objects which, from what I read, Luminiferous Aether would not effect physical objects. So with Luminiferous Aether an object in motion in space would remain in motion while in the Star Wars universe we see objects in motion in space come to a complete stop when it shouldn't.
@@socipathicgaming5914 I primarily base my assumption on the description of etheric rudders in Heir to the Empire. Admittedly a limited sample size upon which to base an assumption but I am also biased towards Zahn anyways.
@@nicholaswalsh4462 I always figured Etheric rudder was a bit of a nickname for a type fo theust vectoeing that simulated rudder.
@@DIEGhostfish the problem with that is that X wings lack any sort of thrust vectoring nozzles at the engines. The lack of any sort of articulated engine nozzles requires an alternative solution.
It is stated in the lore that the solar ionization reactors are the main reactor for the ISD and has no interaction with gravity projection and it a misunderstand of the gravity well projector technology as it has ability is to cause ship to leave hyperspace by mimicking gravitational well created by planets and celestal bodies.
Yes. This was the principle behind the Interdictor-class cruisers.
I think one thing to take into consideration is that in the opening scene to A New Hope, we clearly see the ISD chasing the blockade runner firing shots from areas that didn't have those super large turrets. Lots of shots come from what looks like smooth sections of hull, or the trench around the ship. The official cannon lists an Imperial I SD as having 60 heavy turbo lasers batteries and another 60 heavy ion cannons, so there are way more weapon emplacements on those ships than are shown on the models used in the films.
I'm pretty sure starwars engines must have reverse thrust, we almost never see forward thrusters on any ship but we've seen fighters stop on a dime in hangars. Also in ep3 when a Ilan is piloting the falling invisible hand he keeps the thrusters on and activates what appear to be flaps to redirect thrust backwards instead of turning them off entirely to avoid accelerating into the grounds.
In the beginning of Revenge of the Sith, Grevous' ship uses the same sort of thrust reversers you see on airliners. Big scoops that drop behind the exhaust, and redirect it forward.
This is exactly what I thought about when the reverse vector was mentioned in the video. Also on occasion during some free time I like to work on a little sci-fi project of mine where I was inspired by the typical sci-fi ships (no forward facing thrusters) and came up with the idea that if I needed my ships to go reverse, they would have to somehow block the backwards thrust and then open up some side shafts that would have an arc facing the back of the ship, so it would redirect the thrust forward. And then I remembered that I've already seen this in Revege of the Sith and my creative powers were "oh, too weak".
No, the big reactor is a reactor, not an anti-gravity system, which do exist on Star Wars vessels. The repulsorlift is an actual technical concept that has its roots in the first descriptions of anti-gravity tech in the original Star Wars novelization by George Lucas (actually ghost written by Alan Dean Foster). Luke when he, Ben, and the droids arrives at Docking Bay 94 is musing over the role antigrav and hyperspace drive systems play in spaceflight. Basically the antigrav system is what does the real work in lifting a ship off the surface of a planet or landing it safely by pushing against the planet's natural gravity field. But it can only work effectively in a gravity well and it must propel a ship beyond it for the hyperdrive to work.Smaller repulsorlifts are what allow landspeeders, speeder bikes, and skyhoppers, and other craft to hover with thrusters only providing a means to control direction and orientation.
As for the large dorsal main guns. They don't change in elevation. We actually see a bombardment in Star Wars: Rebels Season 3 Episode 22 "Zero Hour: Part Two" carried out by Admiral Thrawn's fleet of Imperial-class Star Destroyers against the rebel base on Atollon, the guns are shown rotating into position, the guns elevating upwards, but no extendable turret barrettes. What's also interesting about this is these are the only guns used in the bombardment and the shots that miss the shielded base, hitting sand dunes or rocky features are very low-power, implying in turn that this is at or close to the limits of effective range for these guns.
agreed its central postion makes sense as a reactor pule whic would free up internal colume for use elsewhere. the Generators and Engines are always going to makes up at least 1/3rd of your ship.
Another bombardment was shown recently in the Star Wars: Bad Batch series finale. It is very unimpressive to say the least and was using large turbolasers mounted on the bow of Venator star destroyers'. At least these large bow cannons appear to have adjustable gun elevations, but they could've just as easily tilted the ships to bring the big ventral cannons to bear on Tiopaca city.
The explanations of the reactor for the ISD’s that I can recall go with the theory that it is basically a fusion reactor pod harnessing the power of a small sun. If true it could easily double as a gravity manipulation device even allowing operation in atmosphere as depicted in recent media.
Some points about the Yamato’s AA guns. First they were very inefficient designs; the triple 30(35?)mm AA guns did not use large ammunition hoppers, instead each of the three guns in the triple array had a box magazine with a relatively small amount of ammunition (I think less than a hundred in each magazine) each gun had to be reloaded with fresh magazines frequently. There were three guys assigned to each one of these AA guns whose job was to keep loading and reloading these box magazines. There are some clips from a Japanese movie (think it’s called Yamato) you can watch on TH-cam which showcase how this would’ve looked. Additionally the rate of fire and method of firing of these guns was crap; each gun would fire one after the other in the array, rather than simultaneously.
Second the ranges that the Yamato’s AA guns could cover did not overlap well; meaning that the density of fire its AA could put out was ineffective as a deterrent against large numbers of fast moving aircraft.
One other thing, a misconception a lot of people have about AA in is that it is supposed to shoot down enemy aircraft this isn’t the intent of having AA weapons. The intent is to deter and deny enemy aircraft the ability to make effective strikes against whatever the AA is guarding. If the AA doesn’t shoot down a single aircraft (or in SW case starfighter) trying to attack what it is guarding, but the attacking aircraft are unable to do any significant damage to what is being guarded, then the AA has done its job hasn’t it?
25mm AA guns that were Japanese copies of French Hotchkiss autocannons of the same caliber. Sufficient for the time and comparable to 20mm Oerlikon guns, but the IJN really needed to have increased their magazine size from 15(!!!!!). Even doubling the ammo supply for each gun would've made them much better, but the weird intermediate caliber between light and medium AA would've then negated most of the gains in effectiveness for these guns, since you had the effectiveness but not the light weight of smaller guns, whilst having the large size but not the weight of fire of larger guns. Add onto this the poor sights, excessive vibration when in their multi-gun mounts, and horrific speed for elevating and traversing the weapon (seriously, a medium-caliber AA mount with small-caliber AA weapons is not a good mix), and the guns were basically doomed from 1940 onwards
@@williamnixon3994 Indeed. Japan had quite the arsenal at the beginning of the war, but once the U.S. got involved, their economy couldn't keep up, and neither did their tech. Once state of the art guns became obsolete.
@@jonathansullivan6706 I actually do wonder sometimes what would've happened had they managed to adopt and mass-produce a smaller-caliber 20mm cannon instead of the Type 96, while retaining and updating their stocks of pom-poms to new mounts and homeland manufacturing
@@jonathansullivan6706 . Those Hotchkiss copies were never state of the art even when they were new. There was a reason the french army didn't want them.
AA works for destroying aircrafts too. Just because japanse and in parts all axis nations ship based aa was kind of shity you cant forget the brutal effect of the 40mm bofors on american and later british warships and the 20mm oerlikons.
this guys has really started to make a comeback i've watched since " why corporations on eve online fail " but stuck around for all the other well created graphic created ships in other videos.
The X-wing books make mention of the titular spacecraft's "etheric rudder", and I feel like this indicates that all ships have virtual control surfaces that act on space itself much like control surfaces on an airplane act on the atmosphere to enable maneuvers. Perhaps it's some device that acts on spacetime using gravity manipulation, as you suggest, and in effect allows a vessel to not only steer itself by pushing through the medium of space while pushing against it to turn in any particular direction, but also acts as "flaps" to slow the ship or even stop it relative to other nearby celestial bodies. It wouldn't even necessarily have to be the big bulb under the ship, because that's a feature seemingly unique to Star Destroyers. It could be an effect channeled through the hull itself, or maybe contained in large fin-like projectors, which explains why so many ships in Star Wars have big, blocky fins that don't seem to serve any purpose.
The bulb on the ventral side of both the ImpStar and ImpStar Deuces is the reactor dome.
@@shadekerensky3691 I was addressing Ressurrected Starships, who supposed in the video that it might be a gravity tug of some kind. I never said it wasn't the reactor, and in fact believe that it is the main reactor.
Fighters are always moving as if they are dealing with something resembling drag, and since Star Wars was never supposed to be scientifically accurate it seems that it´s universe is different and that the rudder is meant to interfere with whatever causes this just like normal rudder interferes with water.
some ships do have flaps and control surfaces such as grevious's dreadnought in ep 3 having what appeared to have airbrakes and possible thrust reversers on the main engines
Why have turret elevators when you can just tip the ship, it moves. And I think it slows for combat with whatever inertial dampening tech they use to not die going to light speed. Just 0 out the inertia and stop
Off the top of my head, you can see that turbolaser towers (at least, the Death Star ones) can rotate and elevate really quickly, whereas Star Destroyers have pretty poor maneuverability despite having a surprisingly high top speed. It would benefit the ship to have towers and embedded weapons that can rotate and elevate on their own because they can traverse and elevate much faster than you can "aim" the ship. In addition, if you have fixed weapons then you must rely on all enemy targets being in just the right spot at all times, because you can't reposition your weapons to give more or less coverage in any one spot.
@@millenniumf1138 I kinda think that was the imperial plan (not a good one) and they built and planned to only fight someone right in front of them. It's why the very small rebellion was able to win. Very poor planning :p
@@redhairdavid I agree that the Empire's plan - specifically Kuat Drive Yards' plan - was to build enormous siege weapons as starships. Actually, it worked really well initially because the point of the Imperial fleet was intimidating worlds into submission, till people realized that this was basically their only plan and that they figured on using TIE Fighters and PDWs for countering threats. The Rebellion then started using space superiority fighters like the X-wing a quick, maneuverable ships like the Nebulon-B frigate and CR-90 corvette to make quick hit-and-fade attacks, which saw enormous success and forced the Empire to create a more versatile fleet, which destabilized their plans for galactic subjugation and made their eventual fall all but inevitable.
One argument in favor of structurally superfiring turrets (the Fractalsponge solution as he calls it) would be that by tipping the ship forward you increase the visible cross-section exposed to enemy fire, meaning that more of the surface area of your ship will be subjected to fire, and your ship overall will be easier to hit as it presents a larger surface area to target. For an ISD the smallest cross-section it can present is directly forward-on with the nose pointed straight at the enemy. This also puts as much of the ship's mass as possible between enemy fire and critical components like the hyperdrive, SI-Reactor, drives, and main power lines and capacitor banks for it's turbolasers which are all highly volatile when damaged.
@@youtubeisapublisher6407 I agree totally, but some accountant would be like, that will cost x credits, tipping the ship costs nothing, the rebel school scum can't break the shields anyway, so it's not like the hull will take damage :p
The shields don't stop proton torpedoes. That was the whole reason they needed to use them against the first Deathstar's exhaust port. Because it was ray shielded.
That's why you need a fighter screen. To keep enemy fighters from hitting your vulnerable parts.
And the reason they need to be all exposed like that is likely tied to how they function. Like why you can't have a C.R.O.W.S. inside your vehicle. It would hamper it's function.
Ray shields are vulnerable to proton torpedoes, deflector shields are both particle and ray shields layered, protecting against physical ordinance and plasma based weaponry respectively
Nope, the deflector shields on ImpStars will definitely stop projectile weapons.
The exhaust port was only ray shielded. Meaning only energy weapons were stopped, physical objects could pass through easily.
Deflector shields are both ray shields and particle shields, meaning they stop both energy and physical objects. Otherwise you would be up shit creek without a paddle given all the random crap and debris floating in space
I wouldn’t put crows inside any vehicle.
This old sillyness again. Ray shields only stop directed energy weapons. Not projectiles. However, Star Wars shields have other types: Particle shields are another example, which do stop physical projectiles. The exhaust port, for some technobabble reason, only could have ray shielding. Star Wars vessels are largely immune to projectile weaponry both based on shielding and armor in most cases. Only extremely powerful projectile weapons even damage them. Some parts of a ship are not able to be particle shielded all the time. For example, the drive clusters, as otherwise the thrusters wouldn't be able to produce thrust. This isn't much of a weakness though due to the insane engine wash of an ISD.
The flaw in your logic, especially with regards to the lack of ventral canons, is that you assume they are designed to operate independently. In fact, just like modern naval fleets, it is more likely they are designed to operate in small or large formations where one ISD can cover the flank of another ISD. This is seen at the Battle of Endor when the rebel fleet turns and is confronted with the imperial fleet, the ISDs and Executor are arranged in a formation where they can protect each other. This formation does seem to fall apart as the battle goes on, which is why the Executor eventually fell victim to a single fighter attack.
Another possibility is the fact that in space there is no "up". Although that is the only way the fleets and ships are portrayed in the movie, a logical formation for the ISDs would be in more of a ring or circle, with the undersides all pointing in and the guns all pointing out. As little as three ISDs could create this formation, protecting each others ventral side while concentrating fire from multiple ships on a single target.
I agree, but they shouldn´t rely on these formations. They would have to fight as packs of 2 or 3 ships moving together as one, making fleet of 12 separate units into one with 6 or 4, and whenever the fleet would have to maneuver, for example dealing with flanking or doing that themselves, this would limit what they can do. I think that adding few turrets on the ventral side would definitely be worth the extra versatility.
@@baronvonbrunn8596 : Placing the turrets along edges (especially the centerline) would be even better.
It's because the A-Wings fired their concussion missiles at the shield domes and concussion missiles penetrate shields. So even if the shields were at full it still wouldn't have mattered.
I like the gravity well theory. Main thrusters for forward acceleration, RCS for yaw, pitch and roll, and gravity well projector for braking/reversing. Some sort of gravity manipulation would also be necessary for such a massive ship to operate in-atmosphere, which ISDs have been shown to do.
Great video my dude.
you could probably could have it work double duty. people have stated that Star Wars has different physics and that is why that is a speed limit in space. but what if it's the gravity on ship that is doing that. you want to go faster well there is a push back from the gravity projector seeing to it that you don't get flattened under 50g. it also explains why small ships go fast, with more engine to possibly occupied space ratio. as it has to assume there are people everywhere there is empty space.
Repulsors are gravity based technology in star wars. It's how ships fly in atmosphere, and from what I understand they do have applications in space as well.
Yaw control can be gained also by varying main engines thrust. Then there is Revenge of the Sith's Clamshell Thrust Reverser.
@@smartfrenandromax6651 Certain old-skool airliners from the 60s and 70s had reversers very much like the ones seen on the Invisible Hand. PROPER Star Wars ship designs often take inspiration from IRL vehicles.
But if that is true and ships in the Star Wars universe need gravity to, say, slow down from hyperspace travel, then where are the gravity well generators in smaller ships like the Millennium Falcon or Tantive IV or the Imperial shuttles like Tidyrium?
The shield generators have shielding you have to literally bypass the shield via proton torpedos or going under the shield to actually damage them
I would like to believe that the star destroyer slows down pretty much the same way as the starship Enterprise, by manoeuvring thrusters and reducing power to the engines.
The Imperial Star Destroyer and its various descendants are, effectively, two heavy cruisers and an escort carrier traveling in VERY close formation. Also, the carrier is sailing upside down relative to its escorts.
The massive engine bells at the rear of the ship have almost nothing to do with its maneuvering, other than fortuitous placement to optimize whatever thrust they DO generate. Field-effect drives are the only possible explanation for how all ships maneuver in the Galaxy Far Far Away. The engines bells are part of the power generating system.
Resurrected Starships, Eckhart's ladder made a video on star wars physics which are more different from real life. The title is called: Why ships in star wars behave so differently in the star wars universe.
I can't put into words how much I appreciate videos like this.
If I remember correctly, this ship has some dozen tractor beam emitters, I know it doesn't sound like it from the name alone, but these weren't only useable as a means to anchor other ships, it could also be used to manipulate the propulsion and movement of the vessel they're on
tbh i love the imperfections that has been presented in this video which you tried to make solutions of
its like irl fighter planes during ww2 don't have back guns to fend off any flanking enemies from the rear, though they make up for it by the pilots skill of maneuvering, and i like that its like the same thing that you said for the star destroyer needing to show its more aggressive side by tilting forward a bit which could also provide cover for the fighters/bombers deploying from the belly.
it might look stupid in action but the practicality to it is very interesting
Like others have stated, I believe that the dome on the underside is actually the reactor as it is on other ships as well, however the star destroyers DO have repulsors which allow star destroyers to hover effortlessly in an atmosphere defying gravity. Maybe it's those that do the gravity slow down thing.
The domes might've been inspired by radar domes in naval vessels, however that doesn't necessarily imply that they are such. In legends they were sensor devices that had a "crown" of shield nodes on them. However in canon they are undoubtedly shield generated as shown by Rebels, where we see that smaller man-portable Imperial shield generators had a similar shape and design to an ISD's bulb of dubious intent. In regards as to why they are so exposed or why they fail when they get shot at despite being where the shield-ness should be at its most potent is up for debate.
The main batteries are super-firing, the only variant of the ISD that does not have this capability is the ISD-1 and their twin heavy turbolaser batteries, however the more common ISD-2 and their octuple barbette batteries can super-fire directly forward.
The ventral surface of the ISD likely lacks any heavy armament so as to not interrupt the operations of the hangar bay, just imagine you're in the middle of a really intense battle and you board your TIE Fighter, then as soon as you fly out of the hangar you get accidentally vaporized by a friendly turbolaser bolt. Doesn't sound fun to me.
And finally in regards to decelerating and maneuvering, ISD's most definitely use the same technology starfighters and freighters and every other small air/space craft use to maneuver and decelerate. We don't know what **exactly** this technology is but its present on X-wings, TIE Fighters, Civilian Freighters, and Airspeeders, so its probably present on a space warship as well, just on a greater scale.
The bulge on the ventral surface of the ISD is the additional armor layer around the reactor to make up for the lack of a superstructure like what the dorsal surface has which acts as additional armor on the dorsal hemisphere of the reactor.
While I agree with most of this, whenever ISDs fire on screen, it never comes from the turrets, instead it seems to just come from the hull, both dorsal and ventral, making the turret’s firing arcs appear to be a moot point in normal combat. To me, this makes it seem like both the octuple barbettes and heavy turbolaser turrets were a specialised siege weapon, for use in orbital bombardments or some other long range heavily armoured engagements, where super-firing is less of a priority as you could orient yourself with your dorsal face to the target and fire while stationary
I have to disagree with your third point. Any fire from ventral turrets could be coordinated with flight control so as to not cause friendly fire casualties. They would launch fighters one way and fire turbolasers in another. TIEs would also be equipped with IFF systems to tell gunners not to shoot at them.
theirs always the argument the shields emit dangerous levels of energy that are harmful to humans and so to preserve their officer core, the bridges shields are kept outside of the ship, unlike the rest of the ships shields, poor crewmen.
you can see in rouge one that the isd 1 can only fire its 1st turrets each side forward, but isd2 how been shown to fire all of them, i think the real reason for this is just the size of the turrets, as the isd1 turrets are very tall and bulky which means inorder to fire them all you really need to pitch down the front of the ship so the turrets can fire over. where as the barbette are much smaller in hight allowing the isd2 you pitch down much less giving you that aiming over each other
"However in canon they are undoubtedly shield generated as shown by Rebels"
They have been referred to as radar domes by people working on the movie, and in Disney canon as well. Their placement also indicates that they are sensors, since sensors works best if they have a clear line of sight. Besides, one would expect that both had to be destroyed to drop the bridge shield and not just one. Also, other ships in Star Wars has their sensors mounted on top. Star Destroyers shouldn't be any different.
I myself have been working on a crossover / fanfic setting and have had a lot of stuff like this come up in my development. My whole solution to the reverse thrust issue was all ships having separate reverse shield projectors that can effectively channel the thrust in a way that allows ships to pivot or reverse in any direction. It functions similar to the blast shields that appear on the Invisible Hand's thrusters in RoTS, but with it being a shield that can bend and mold in different ways, it only appears when the ship is reversing and doesn't conflict to its original aesthetic.
Something to note- if you can use it to reverse thrust, then you should also be able to use it to just angle thrust (for turning), as well as to increase the length of the engine bells for better performance.
The star destroyer slows down the sane way the other craft in the franchise do: by not being in a fully-newtonian universe. Engines have to continuously fire and craft slow down if they don't. There is a dedicated up direction.
But what i do find interesting is your theory of the ball thing being a gravity generator, especially as ships with dedicated gravity field generators also seem to house them in large spherical protrusions
I always handwaved the lack of ventral weaponry with "That's what the fighter bay's for."
For slowing down, the Invisible Hand had the engines have a reverse thrust vector system to slow down. The Imperial class could have something similar. One, the reverse thrust Grevious ordered as the Hand first started to fall to Corusant or the large plates Anakin used as the Hand made the final decent.
The problem with reversing thrust is, again, physics. Where does that force go? Into the ship? If so, that seems like it's really bad for the health of the crew.
@@eruantien9932 Just use some engineering knowledge and creative thinking and the problem is solved.
Personally, my view on the ISD is that it is a ship designed to fill the role of a fleet battleship but pushed into the role of a multipurpose vessel for economic reasons. It was almost certainly designed to operate as part of a battle group but building enough ships to fully establish those groups was prohibitively expensive, especially with other requirements.
I'd say that they're "gunboat diplomacy" ships with a bit of mobile base built in. If you assume that most planets are minor, then ISDs won't actually have real competition from most worlds- the locals might have some fighters (older designs like Cloakshapes, fit for fighting the average pirate, but not much else), a few medium sized ships (for customs checks & such), but none of their vehicles would be able to compete with post-Clone Wars vehicles. So, an ISD shows up, it's TIEs outfight the local fighters and cause damage to the mid-size vessels, the ISD's _normal_ turbolasers finish off the mid-size vehicles, and anything large gets targeted by the main guns. It's like Iowa class battleships attacking pre-WW1 defenses- the old stuff gets wiped out. For more impressive worlds, you put together a squadron, or even a fleet.
It is plausible for the ventral bubble to be gravity well manipulation technology. Given the design of the Interdictor Cruiser and it having EIGHT bubbles that are similarly shaped and protruding from the hull, and it is well known that they are explicitly gravity well manipulation technology, it makes sense that a single bubble like that would be the primary drive and the thrusters at the back are something to do with Hyperspace jumps.
Some things to remember about Star Destroyers is that one ship was expected to defend an entire star system. and a SD has 72 fighters on it as well as axillary craft, when seen on screen a SD seems to only launch a very small portion of it's fighters, this is mainly due to plot armor, if that was not an issue it would have launched 20-30 fighters to deal with Han's ship.
The star destroyer is better to think of as a mobile space station then a battleship/carrier, in various official art the SD can be seen bombarding a planet with numerous laser placements on its ventral side, maybe that is why there are no heavy turrets on the bottom, it is all dedicated to planetary bombardment systems. Also a single SD has a prefab base stored inside as well as 6 ATAT and their landing craft and 12 ATST ( those numbers may be wrong) That is bound to take up ALOT of space.
ISDs are.... destroyers. Larger ships like praetors, belators, and executors are the battleship of the imperial navy. Theyre expexted to defend against pirates and rebels. But not an actual navy.
The main turrets I think are specialized weapons intended for striking very large or heavily shielded targets. A Star Destroyer has numerous single and double turbolaser emplacements all around the hull, making it easier to engage numerous smaller vessels. I think the globes on the towers could be either shield generators or sensor domes. It might make sense for such a large vessel to have huge shield generators to cover a star destroyer and to provide the power for shrugging off multiple turbolaser salvos. That grid of shield generators at 4:44 could just as easily be targeting systems for individual turbolasers. If you have a fast enough computer you can shoot down missiles like on modern warships imagine what dozens of such computers could do. The domes on the tower would be heavily shielded either way. if you pour enough fire into a hole in the shield you can still hit that generator and take it down entirely.
Yes by all means do tactical examinations of Thrawn's battles! It would be stunning to see a 3D battle breakdown of the Battle of Sluis Van and Bilbringi, or the Chimaera's bombardment of Coral Vanda!
I've always imagined that the ventral hull had the most physical armor and slightly less sheild coverage.
A set-up like that could have advantages in group operations and sieges.
Good video 👏🏻
For the venator class this is even canon. In one clone wars episode a group of venators approached a cis fleet showing their armored underside. This way the vulnerable hangars were protected and the fighters could launch under cover at point blank range.
The ISD however has its hangars on the ventral side.
The solar ionization reactor was essentially a ball that held within it hypermatter to create a Star that was used for energy within the ship.
It’s literally just a Star-fueled reactor
Some lines line from wookie about it “Often described as a "miniature sun", and incorporating one of the largest single hyperspace field generators ever designed, the massive reactor system occupied more than half of the Imperial-class Star Destroyer's interior. Unlike the reactor system on the older Venator-class, the reactor on board Imperial-class vessels was large enough relative to the rest of the ship to protrude with a ventral bulb. It also forced the troop and crew compartments to be located on the upper half of the superstructure.”
The slowing down bit, I've always attributed it to the engine nozzles themselves having Thrust Reversers like a modern Jet where plates flex and redirect the exhaust forward. In some detailed models of the engine bells you can see some sort of ring structure and plates mounted on them. It wouldn't be a stretch to say they are some form of magnetized armored plate redirecting the thrust from the ion engines in a new direction allowing the massive ship to slew to a new course or to slow down.
A while ago I was writing some fanfiction about this and reasoned that the ISD is, as we would understand it, a battleship-carrier hybrid - the purpose of this hybridisation is to offer maximum tactical flexibility when operating across large and poorly reinforced sectors of space where enemy attack can appear without warning. I liked to think this could be a hangover from the Clone Wars and the ISD's Venator predecessor. The Venator was the first mass-produced Republic battleship in generations (that I know of) and, as such, was over-designed with maximum flexibility in mind to give it the best possible chance of survival given the relatively unknown doctrines of war at that time. This philosophy then carried on into the ISD. I liked to think that the Tector was a dedicated battleship capable of levying greater armour and firepower. It was designed to operate with a large supporting fleet of carriers, frigates, and destroyers (like real WW2 navies), and that the centralising political philosophy of the Empire was reflected in that more strictly organised and stratified strategic model. However, politics then entered the equation - consistent failures in the face of brilliant Rebel leadership (often comprised of defected former Republic staff) leads to the catastrophic loss of the Death Star - on which was housed the experienced veteran admiralty and civil administration subordinate to the regional governors (Moffs). The obliteration of this traditional ruling structure resulted in the personal rule, in a military and civil capacity, of Vader and Sidious. They might not have been so concerned with fine strategic nuance, leading to the commission of "spectacle" pieces like the Executor and continuation of the carrier-battleship model. This emphasis on less efficient "spectacle" culminates in the Emperor's second Death Star, the destruction of which shatter's the Empire's already gutted military and civil staff.
The ISD is a destroywr. Ships like the praetor, belator, or executor are the battleships of the imperial navy. With ships like the victory 2 as frigates. Then tartans as corvettes. Ofc in space bigger is more efficient. So hangars on any large ship is just common sense to allow for some level of self sufficiencey. But something like the secutor is a carrier. Or the venator.
Ships like the Executor can actually justify themselves as _fleet support_ ships- in fact, I think the Exrcutor's main bay is actually close to the right size to hold an ISD inside it.
As for the ISD philosophy, if you assume that most planets are minor, with weak defenses only fit for chasing off pirates (e.g. Naboo or similar), then a single ISD could completely dominate them. It would actually be the opponents they _couldn't_ defeat that would be unusual.
I think when it comes to star wars, its more stylized than most sci fi series and so looking deep into it would kind of break immersion as there are a lot of technicalities that do not really make sense, a lot of the stuff is added to further the plot and show the spectacle. I mean all scifi series are stylistic, I just think that Star Wars is the most, after all its more of the fantasy of scifi fantasy. There are very few sci fi that somewhat follow Newtonian physics, obviously the expanse, but even battlestar which was quite a step forward is not that close given the magical gravity, same with star trek etc. Case in point is the exhaust port on the deathstar, there is no need for an exhaust port in space as the most efficient cooling in space would be heat sinks, but it is what moves the plot along and gives a nice explosion which is stylistic, if somehow a 'realistic' version of it was made, I am sure the attacks would focus on the heat sinks and it would just overheat and shut down, not really very interesting visual wise.
I think its time for sci-fi to get harder and more 'science' like; and the Expanse has demonstrated the coolness of this.
@@resurrectedstarships And I think I'm going to put space magic in mine
Heat sinks... that implies cooling by convection. And that is wrong on so many levels.
The most efficient way of cooling in space is by emitting (high energy) radiation; the second most effective way is by emitting particles. There is no convection cooling, since there is no medium which could flow over the surface and take the heat away with it. So, an exhaust port is actually a pretty smart and efficient way to cool the DS (it is way too small, however... a reactor of that size would generate gigawatts to petawatts of excess heat even with close to perfect efficiency, and that power needs to be taken somewhere - and a 2x2m exhaust port really does not cut it at all - in fact, if you were to do it like that, the particle beam ejected from such a small hole would be a rocket of size and efficiency that Elon dreams about in his sleep).
@@lucemiserlohn Well, Star Wars engines are already incredibly efficient.
But it's also established that that exhaust port is one of many.
maybe the exhaust port is the heat sink pipe line, and the death star trench is the actual heat sink, and it has gases flowing through it to quickly vent anytime the death star needs to vent beyond its normal vent systems, sort of like the emergency water gates on dams that can be openned to let lots of water through if the pressure is too much on the dam.
As far as I have always known Star Wars has "repulsors" to explain how speeders and other floating craft work. I always just assumed that the same technology was adapted for use in manoeuvring spacecraft with no visual RCS thrusters or other means of propulsion in all directions. I heard something about the victory 1 star destroyer having those large plates having something to do with repulsors to improve manoeuvrability and atmospheric performance(a problem for such big ships).
You could always make the argument that the large repulsors needed on big ships are not intended to be primary engines and cannot be run for the length of time or provide the power that the regular more visible engines can, thus limiting their application.
I don't know if I am right (however right one can be about sci-fi not really intended to be scrutinised in this way) or not, I just think star destroyers are cool.
Honestly, I think _Revenge of the Sith_ highlights how a Star Destroyer could slow down, but not as crudely as simply putting metal plates over the engines & redirecting the trust that way…
That was a Prividence-class, but why not? ISD has a thrust vector contron as well...
Precisely, @@user-lc7vi6yc7e.
Thanks for taking the time to address the lack of reversing engines. It has bugged me for years, I don't think there is any true workable fix for this oversight.
th-cam.com/video/EwEECZjnPEM/w-d-xo.html
This one is one when in the clone war which use outdated mechanically large reverse thrust and vulnerable to damage from fighting
In the empire age, the reverse thrust function is more hidden and intergrated with the engine to reduce the chance of getting destroyed.
For how do ships in Star Wars slow down in space, there was a book ages ago that I read that explained that the “space” in Star Wars is slightly different than the “space” we have. All the vehicles move and turn as if they were submarines in an ocean of aether, so drag is what slows them down.
With massive thrusters on the back end like that, I kind of expect it to hug the donkey. That is to say, a parabolic (or even circular) trajectory: keep the nose pointed at the targetted structure while swinging the ass of the boat around. Which also means never actually flying *directly at* the target, but to dial in a heading that is tangential to the intended circular path. With engines that big, you can maintain a rather tight "orbit".
Otherwise, yeah, that's a sensor dome. I'm ready to put the shield projector idea to rest. I think your hypothesis is right: that bridge officer exclaiming that the deflectors are down is only happening to mention it pursuant to the sensor dome blowing up prompting him to check shields. After all, it wouldn't have blown up if the shields weren't down. The fact that the sensor dome popped INFORMED him, "what the fuck was that, oh no that means the shields must be down, let me check the deflector capacitor status readout ... Aw crap."
I've also figured for a long time it was an error to believe those were shield generators. I think it might be the computer game X-wing that really propagated that myth.
The original script for Return of the Jedi apparently had a more elaborate sequence of taking the Super Star Destroyer down. Madine was commanding MC80s to attack it and such. I think in that script, the significance of the A-wings blowing up the dome was the ships targeting was impaired and it could no longer accurately track star fighters.. so fighters began missile runs trying to hit the bridge.. ending in the scene we know. But most of the setup was cut for time, just like the scenes of rebels shooting the Falcons turrets.
th-cam.com/video/bhTAUzP_zjI/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=70sSciFiBoy
its amazing to think that return of the jedi could have been even more epic with all that :)
In fact if Lucas had found a way to put that into the special editions, i think no one would argue the importance of the special editions after that.
I mean still grumbling and wanting originals alongside them, but they would be even more respected, and the background editions to Empire strikes back are already impressive... I suppose they could have added a huge ice city in the background of Hoth but that would require a huge rewrite and reshoot of stuff. Perhaps if they ever make the greivious choice to reboot the whole series :p
West End Games has a lot to do with this brain bug, and a number of other misconception.
There have not been many "helpful" games in regards to the shield dome thing.
Take Empire at War for example, where Rebel ships not only do not have shields to target, but also usually have the ability to regenerate them faster.
Heir to the Empire might give a solution to the slowing down of ISDs (and most Star Wars ships in general). The novel mentions fighters using Etheric Rudders to make sharp turns which shouldn't be possible under newtonian physics. Zahn proposed the idea that etheric rudders enable the ships to push against the vacuum/zero-point energy of the universe itself thus explaining why SW ships behave like they do in the movies.
So capital ships could have some type of etheric 'aero'-brakes that enable them to slow down despite having no retro thrusters.
Those brakes deploying automatically in case of an engine failure (to prevent the ship drifting off into space) would also explain why ships tend to decelerate when their engines are taken out.
Might have been mentioned already, but its been said that space in the star wars galaxy is like a fluid, hence the banking turns of star fighters, and why there is thrust in only 1 direction, and max speeds. Otherwise, great work! a fresh perspective on the ISD's features. One note of the "deflector domes" (now radomes), I've not seen other ships with such devices on display, the projectors on the falcon, for example, are nestled along the hull. And the point about the AA guns makes sense too. Very interesting concept with the main battery.
So, pretty sure the shields work in a similar manner to Droideka shields or Gungan shield generators. They are designed to shield from energy weapons, not physical objects, and the shield probably didn't wrap around the ship as one might think, rather they create a bubble that surrounded the ship. One of the flaws of the Star Destroyer and other Imperial capital ships was that they were designed to subjugate planets and combat larger, slower moving ships. When they did have to combat fighters, the idea was to keep them to a distance using the TIEs. Keeping their capital ships bunched together as in the Battle of Endor was a tactical mistake which only played to the weaknesses of the Star Destroyers (i.e. Star Destroyers lacked a point defense system.)
Iv never had an issue with weapon placement, the films show that it’s common to mount weapons internally making it possible for the ISD to fire in any direction.
I like to think the star destroyers original design (that of the manufacturer) is that they were meant for planetary defense, so the majority of the armament face upward where the enemy is supposed to be. Its because the bottom is supposed to face the planet.
The lack of the forward/aft firing arc as well as the absence of ventral turrets could be largely mitigated by taking advantage of the 3D space it dwells in. Superfiring position could be achieved by pitching the ISD enough to give a clearance since you won't be pointing straight onto the opponent in most circumstances anyhow (you have covered this a bit when talking about station engagements), and ventral firing can be achieved by rolling the ship as desired (you can see a fan rendition of this in the second IMPS short film). Of course, it's still highly directional in its firing arc, but that's a principle that Imperial doctrine goes by.
On other notes, thanks for bringing up the shield generator-sensor globe discrepancy! It is a long feuded debate and one that probably won't end any time soon. While sure, assuming that the shield generators are projecting purely ray shields and not particle shields to stop the torpedoes, you have to ask questions on why such structures are not present on any Rebel ships? And the best answer I can give to that is that Imperial ships are dedicated warships and has a significantly more potent sensor suite than converted warships of the Rebellion.
As for slowing down the Star Destroyer (or other flight maneuvers we see in SW that is more aircraft characteristics over spacecraft), I've encountered two explanations so far from the people I've talked to about this:
- Extended use of repulsorlifts to push against celestial bodies.
- Force bleed off from the inertial compensators. SW ships have an absurd amount of acceleration of thousands of G's and without the inertial compensators, everyone inside would find themselves as a bloody sludge down the hallway. The compensators would take this force of inertia away and dispel it somehow. An option is to project it forward, creating essentially drag in space, which allows you to slow down when the engines power down (as it happens in SW). You can also directionally control this so you can bank and perform other maneuvers that requires some kind of drag.
May I make a request? I would love to see a battle breakdown of the Second Battle of Bilbringi but follow Admiral Thrawn's ideas of what the battle would be like if he had survived the assassination.
I’d say that the main purpose of the Star Destroyer is to serve as main mobile operating bases for the empire. They were obviously great battleships, but they serve more so to extend the empires reach allowing them to maintain control of the systems which were further away from a large space station or fleet. That’s why a Star destroyer serves so many purposes, as flagships of a fleet, heavy siege weapons, troop transportation, fighter carrier, transporting supplies to and from worlds, ground invasion capability, policing, and so on. Most of the time Star destroyers would be on their own as they can cover so many roles, which meant it was rarely ever nesscary for the empire to send more then one to handle a situation (even though sometimes they may send a whole fleet for intimidation). However in space combat it does have quite a few weaknesses. They have ALWAYS had a problem dealing with fighters without support ships or ties, and that bridge is obviously overexposed.
In ROTS, in the scene where Anakin crashes Grievous' ship on Coruscant, we got to see "thrust reverser" type mechanisms on the ion engines (similar to the thrust reversers on a DC-9). Maybe that's how big ships slow down.
Yes! Thank you! I agree that the globes on top of the communication bridge were never intended to be shields generators. They were either long-range sensors, or radar related. They were defined as shields by artists and developers out of convenience.
Cool video. I agree with most of your theories, but I do have one grevience.
Yes, those bulbs are sensor arrays, along with the structure in between them, however, they also contain shielding technology. The general distinction between Imperial Shielding technology with something like Mon Calamari Shielding is that Imperial Shielding is stronger, but has only 1 or 2 layers, and no redundancy, while Mon Calamari Shielding is weaker but very redundant. It has also been theorized that starfighters can slide underneath a capital ship's shields, which explains how the A-wings could damage it.
Or... Those shields generator are projecting their shield AROUND the bridge superstructure. Meaning, a small fighter going under the shield can attack them directly. There's many example of fighters being "inside" the shields of a capital ship. (Or Deathstar)
I got to spend about an hour, mostly one-on-one, with Timothy Zahn a few years ago. However I did NOT talk about Star Wars! (Probably why he let me hang around.) I can say that he is very intelligent and very down-to-earth, dad jokes and all. He probably understood at least as well as any of us Star Wars nerds about the potential flaws in the design of the Star Destroyer.
As an aside I made a good impression on Mr. Zahn at least in part due to the book I brought for a signature; Icarus Hunt. This is a book he wrote before he got to play in the Star Wars setting. The grin he had when I presented that, and not a Star Wars novel, was priceless.
The D6 Star Wars West End Games rules for ship combat had rules for angling the deflector shields (which was a comment made in one of the movies). When the shields are up, they can protect against some fire but have holes in them when they try to cover all arcs equally. A crew member operating a shield console will angle the deflector shields to focus the protection against incoming fire. The narrower you can focus the shields, the more damage you can block at the expense of leaving other firing arcs vulnerable. Shields will still block some fire from all directions when angled to another direction, but angling the shields leaves gaps in the shields not being focused on which can be exploited (which left the generators vulnerable to the A-Wings).
Here's a thought. Having served in the Navy, and at Naval Air Station Atlanta, we had several Marine Corps functions that were connected to the Station. One of which was a massive radar which was housed in a sphere completely identical to those spheres on the Star Destroyer. I posit that those are sensor arrays, not shield generators. One could lose a sensor array and also simultaneously, due to concentrated fire from multiple vectors, have lost another function of the ship.
The old X-Wing book series often mentioned 'Etheric' (or 'Aetheric'? I forget) Rudders, that was supposedly why starfighters usually fly like they're a plane in atmo, rather than a ship in space. Disengaging it briefly lets you pull the kinds of shenanigans that a craft can in a fully Newtonian six-axis environment, instead of the kinds of swooping turns and things that Star Wars ships generally use. The (a)etheric rudder evidently gives some large bonuses that make it not only worth using despite those hindrances, but also mean that only elite pilots ever disengage it, and then only briefly.
If we assume larger ships in the GFFA have equivalents, this could be how Star Destroyers slow down - rather than a gravity anchor, an (a)etheric one, presumably (since the aetheric theory of outer space was debunked over a century ago) acting on some sort of interaction between normal space and hyperspace. It could also be how smaller ships slow down, since there's no visible retrothrusters on anything bar *maybe* the X-Wing and other ships with what look to be intakes for turbines - TIE Fighters and A-Wings and stuff need to be able to slow down in combat, even though they don't generally come to a stop, so the (a)etheric rudder might be the answer.
Certainly it's the only thing I can remember from either canon that suggests an existing device that could function in this manner.
I mean, even George Lucas eventually accepted the shield generator theory possibly as early as 2006, because that's when empire at war came out and one of the main in space battle features is that you can see and target hard points on a ship and the game identifies those 2 big balls as shield generators!
The ISD has plenty of Turbolasers on the bottom of the ship. They just aren't on the same level as the top main batteries and are small enough to not be identifiable.
an interesting thought I saw somewhere was that star wars takes place so long ago that the universe itself is still dense enough that there's actually still mass in space, like an atmosphere on a planet but everywhere. Space would be dense enough that you could slow down or maneuver by just vectoring or turning off and on certain engines, but sparse enough that stuff could pass through it.
there is some gibberish about luminiferous aether in the star wars universe that magically McGuffins their physics for maneuverability, such as how things slow down.
No one's gonna se this. But for me the thrusters are not expelling stuff out to propel the ship, but are the main exit points for the repulsorlift fields that encompass the whole ship and propels. Involving the huge amounts of energy involved in this small of a place, it ionizes the interstellar medium or dust, giving the appearance of glow. As the repulsorlift fields adjust and concentrate on the back, or are given more power, the glow brightens because there's more energy passing through those points. That's why so many thrusters (including the isd's ones) glow in a frecuency similar to Cherenkov's radiation. Other colors could be explained with different repulsorlift frecuencies or smth like that.
I like this idea!
In a previous scene, Admiral Akbar orders the fleet to focus fire on the super star destroyer. Executor was taking a beating, and was experiencing multiple failures across its systems (The novelization goes into this some more, and isn't contradicted by the screen evidence, so it stands).
other sources have placed some deflector shield projectors on the sensor domes, so as to not entirely piss off everyone.
Star Wars universe isn't our universe, and its space is full of aetheric medium, which explains why constant thrust needs to be applied to maintain speed, and why all ships have a conventional top speed in space.
About the maneuvering of starships in SW I'm pretty sure it has a lot to do with their known technologies of hyperspace manipulation, gravity generation, inertia and mass manipulation and enormous energy production. Regardless of the mentioned technologies they still use basic rockets and turbines to propel ships through space, but those rockets are ridiculously small to move these ships to any kind of real speed. Therefore I believe they use a technology to transfer a large portion of their mass into hyperspace, which is then subject to much different natural rules. Mulch like a sailing ship uses the wind to propel itself over the ocean, the more a ship can transfer its mass into a higher dimension, the greater its ability to effect maneuvers in realspace. Then, to stop along its own vector, all they have to do is reduce the amount of mass they're projecting into hyperspace until their own natural inertia slows them down naturally. There are similar technologies in SciFi properties used for inspiration of SW, like the Lensmen series, so it's not actually too far fetched.
I think much of this is the fact that writers have been lazy in explaining imperial tech and tactics. Timothy Zahn is one of the few people who actually help build up the imperial effectiveness in combat. Doing this actually makes for a better story as fighting a capable enemy raises the stakes. Instead they rely on mediocre tactics and corny new variations of the original Death Star super laser as a plot device. Honestly if they’re really that bad at their job they should just have the doctrine be, “shoot rebel planets on sight”
Actually the ship can also roll in it’s longitudinal axis so the guns can be facing what used to be the underside. Reaction and gyroscopes would be enough to do the (admittedly slow) job but can use thrusters as well for speed.
I’d like to guess that the sphere below must make a gravity field of 1g evenly throughout the ship. I know a few smaller placed units properly placed in the ship can do the same job. But it was never shown in the movies about separate gravity fields in the large ship like structures. Also one large structure can be more effective than many small ones contributing for the same result. Less use of resources, more robust, and simplifying the build.
Of course it’s my POV.
The Star Destroyer doesn’t have to turn around to slow down and stop because space in the Star Wars galaxy is filled with ethereal substance, it’s not a vacuum. Also, it’s why people don’t blow up when vented out into space.
Main engines on ALL starwars capitol ships are NOT primarily for sublight thrust, but for hyper-space acceleration and power generation. This is why they only need to be forward facing.
When exiting hyperspace most of that energy is absorbed by shields. {supposidly but I can imagine the balance if way off}
Another thing is that the idea of WW2 battle ships is evident in the 2D nature of the ship, when in actual likely scenario would be that ships travel up, not forward. In this configuration the grav-plating pushes everything in the ship down, including the ship, . this means a breaking action is constantly being acted upon the entire ship, the engines would then be a balancing act of countering the effect of the grav-plating pushing everything down and the engines continually pushing the ship "forward" I mean up. To slow down the ship just turn off the main engine thrust and the grav-plating does the rest.
Problem solved - but that means you need to realize that the top of the ISD is in actual fact not the bridge but the arrow ...
*evil grin*
If an ISD can hover a "few" meters over a planets surface without any kind of thrusters, there should be no problem for it to stop/move in space. Starships in SW are also most likely using obital mechanics to their advantage.
Literally the best sci fi breakdowns in all of youtube.
Those are sensor domes. Due to a huge flaw in their power grids, blowing up a sensor dome on top of a Star Destroyer's bridge causes a short in the shielding.
Depending on conditions, it could be a temporary problem to the death of the ship, as seen with the Executor.
As for the giant dome on the underside, that's basically where the actual reactor and computing center for the whole ship is.
Blow that up, the ship loses power. Hence, it's one of the heaviest-armored parts of the ship, so repeated torpedo strikes are one of the few ways to really punch into the reactor casing.
Lastly, for the reverse-thrust problems of the ISD and many other SW ships, you've gotta remember it's science fantasy, so some handwaves are a given. I personally think the ISD just has a shitload of small RCS thrusters hidden in a variety of places, as the ISD is following the idea of having all the armor and guns it can get it's grubby mitts on, while neglecting speed. Think the historical All-or-Nothing armor scheme as the primary influence.
Assuming there's only enough power to run 8 guns, you'd put them all on the same side and roll the ship to engage the target. I've always had a problem with the Millenium Falcon for exactly that reason, that it cannot bring both gun emplacements to bear on a single target
If I remember, the lower gun emplacement is _much_ lighter than the upper- the upper is some scavenged light turbolaser emplacement or something (fit for slapping Arcitens in the face), while the lower one is a more vehicle-appropriate laser cannon (good for shooting fighters).
Also, that layout is probably meant to fight off pirate fighter craft or something, not to actively attack enemy ships.
I like the Idea the visible engines are the exhaust of a generator system, where the function of the engine is to make the power for the magic gravity manipulation machine. The main function of the visible engine is to vent out heat do not want. I like this theory because the ships always are running the engines even when stopped. I believe even when we have seen the star destroyer stationary in an atmosphere the blue glow is still coming from the back of the ship. Ships in Star wars Do not move like RCS craft, maybe the aircraft like flight is a by product of the gravity magic machines that keep star destroyers floating in atmosphere and let star fighters land vertically.
The EU books and stories don't get enough love
In SWRPG (WEG d6) we had to make a lot of judgement calls to reconcile gaming source book material, the films and canon and the players all being fairly well versed in general physics. Ultimately the game guide advice for gamers was appropriate, to engage the RPG more cinematically than technically but we did still wind up with an extremely technical game where GMs put in a lot of personal time developing our own sourcebooks and game technologies, as well as redeveloping existing technologies like starships for what we considered more interesting and sci-fi based gaming as opposed to pure space opera and sci-fantasy. Meanwhile the Force allowed for nonsensical technology like lightsabres and other mystical-science hybridisation.
We enjoyed playing that way, very technically. We rewrote starship technical details in gaming data to reflect models, the game ISD did not include the heavy turrets in weapon stats and those it did provide weren't on the model, they were from a LucasArts cutaway guidebook and didn't reflect the film models but unfortunately do comprise lower case canon. So we knew off the bat we'd have to modify the game stats on everything and did so with a fair bit of discussion and as much logic as we could muster, some of us were also military enthusiasts with a lot of knowledge in that area which helped.
Especially when players were using specific technologies we really expanded the stats on them for modification and detail for immersion. PCs became based upon an ISD at one point so the degree we detailed those wound up extreme. Then this of course translated into NPCs and villains using the same equipment, making them a lot tougher than basic game stats.
The ISD ended up an extremely powerful warship, every bit justifying its reputation. Shield coverage zones, subsidiary weapons emplacements, redundant systems command centres throughout the ship, dozens of small shuttle bays and workshop hangars, it becomes a combined battle station, warship, siege weapon and logistical support vessel, essentially a mobile battlefleet in one vehicle. When small craft come within a certain distance the gravitational mass forces them into atmospheric flight so you have the duality of fast paced capital space battles at distance and close in station strafing with fighter sized craft moving at immediately reduced relative velocities but still breakneck atmospheric speeds weaving among the superstructure. It's a scaling feature.
Since things like the heavy turrets were not in the original game stats for ISD we also added point defence and other weapons, also not included in the game stats originally. Our explanation of the sparse under belly of the design was in siege warfare. We argued the hull underside was far more heavily armoured than the upper which contained lots of superstructure to be protected by shielding systems. When engaging fortress defences, particularly planetside extremely heavy ion weapons would be faced and these defied shields, assault vehicles relied upon hull strength to resist them and so the ISD would keep its underside faced towards the planetary defences whilst operating as a carrier vehicle for ground assault craft, when approaching within range of these tremendous ground based weapons. Orbital bombardment would be performed on approach to orbit using the greater range of space based capital weapons but once in orbit and within range of the ground based capital weapons, which needed to overcome atmosphere and thus reduced effective reach the ISD would then assume a keel facing position to protect the superstructure, its heaviest hull armour facing the fortress weapons. It also doubled for protection for the superstructure from atmospheric drag if skimming atmosphere at high speed or entering atmosphere by using the heavy lower hull as a heat shield rather than trying to dissipate energy shielding feedback.
We never really touched on the fairly nonsensical physics of Star Wars space flight, it's entirely cinematic and essentially translates atmospheric flight into space flight simply at far higher velocities and acceleration capabilities, with even those nonsensical physics magically nullified by technologies like "inertial dampeners" and "s-foils". Nonsensical air intakes for thruster engines in things like the X-Wing we simply translated as some of the starship modification sourcebook material like atmospheric fuel scoops that just weren't written into the craft description so we added them as an X-Wing feature, for example in our gaming stats. So food consumables was limited to 1 week for the X-Wing but raw engine fuel for example was simply dependent upon finding atmospheric worlds to offer molecular resupply and you could make planetfall and forage for food consumables, so vastly increase the range of these craft if uncomfortably.
Can't really reconcile the fact they just don't move like spacecraft in space however. Well equipped spacecraft do employ repulsorlift technologies, in conjunction with ion thrusters for acceleration and hyperdrives, the notable exception is the TIE fighter which relies entirely on its ion engines for motive and directional power but the theory is overall mass is kept low enough for this to work and the pilot life support suit contains some of the systems required to keep a pilot alive under such extreme conditions, where the repulsor technology in a snubnose fighter mediate some of the forces involved for these heavier and more complex craft and light space transports or couriers are better equipped for human accommodations and survivability again, also reflected in increasing prices, size and complexity. Ultimately however described what you are working with during space battles is movement through a medium of resistance when in space, in Star Wars if your engines shut down or you completely lose power your space ship will slow down as governed by the depiction of space flight in Star Wars generally. We fudged that in our game so that's not what happens but, generally speaking small spacecraft move as if in atmosphere and large craft move as if through water in Star Wars space travel, and hyperspace is like going over a waterfall or going supersonic. It's just nonsensical like the mystical technologies also in Star Wars. I mean technically if you put telekinesis in sci-fi there has to be a physics based system at work for the power to function and in turn an available technology to employ the system, so if you can telekinesis anything with your mind you can also buy a device that manipulates subatomic particles in the same way to do it at the press of a button and no training at all. There's no real pure mysticism in sci-fi, just the ignorance to a technology. There's a point where you have to say, oh Star Wars is just being cinematic here.
The star destroyed actually has multiple (about 20) smaller turrets specifically on the bottom of the ship as seen in Star Wars battlefront 2
Ok we are talking about a star wars galaxy where disabled Star Destroyers fall "down". Idk there's friction in space... If the giant ball was not a power generation #1 what powers the ISD #2 Why was the interdictor class SD created? If you had 4 ISD's you could recreate the same effect as an interdictor. About the shielding... It was explained in some book that the shields were placed on the highest point of the ship to cover it completely, reducing the amount of shield generators needed to cover the ship. The turrets barrels could aim up and spin around avoiding hitting any other turrets. The ISD has to angle down to allow these turrets the clear the other one. You can look at some images online of the Barbette Turbolaser Cannon. The cannon design is smaller than you think. The reason for no ventral turrets is because the ISD generally needs to angle down to get all of its cannons firing forward.
The Interdictor has MASSIVE grav generators. Larger than the ISDs dome. It is possible that the ISD and Interdictor employ similar devices, but with different power levels. Sort of like how fighter aircraft and AWACs have radars but AWACs radars are significantly more powerful than fighter radar.
@@nicholaswalsh4462 Fair point I just looked up an image of the legends interdictor, I assumed that a ship with grav wells would need a lot of power, meaning larger power dome(assuming its for power ofc) but the interdictor has no visible central dome. This could support the idea that it is indeed a grav anchor. Could just mean 3 are grav wells 1 is a power dome... prob not though. Not sure if that made much sense lol. Really interesting conversation though...
I always thought the star destroyers lack of "super firing" main guns wasn't an issue since it just has to tilt forward and you are good
The Star Destroyer doesn't have to slow down unless it's either going too fast, or gets out-maneuvered. Instead, when it tips down in relation to it's target, it's _also_ starting to _circle around_ that target. It just keeps circling while firing until it decides to do something else.
I like to think that the spheres are part of a sensor array system. One for the short range stuff and one for the long range stuff.
Regarding the reverse thrusters issue, we saw a solution to that problem in Revenge of the Sith. If we assume that the nozzles on the main engines can contain moving parts, then they could easily have reverse gates like a modern jet boat, applying a braking thrust while still keeping the engines safely out of the line of fire.
I think that star wars engines can just reverse, dont ask me how that works XD but in Rogue One, when the Star Destroyers are getting pushed into one another, the bridge officer orders the crew to reverse the engines at full power, so maybe they can invert the rotation of the engines, allowing the ship to well...... go in reverse
One important clarification I am certain many people have mentioned is the existance of repulsors in the SW universe. These allow ships to float and turn in specific ways, and remember that SDs usually can go into an atmosphere and float around. It makes sense that these devices can also allow for the maneuvering of the ship wihout using directional thrusters, just like fighers do.
Those domes look like classical radar domes so before that scean in SW6 I assumed them to be some kind of sensor system. My guess was that the Executor may have had some kind of design flaw causing some kind of chain reaction when the sensors was destroyed. My "idea" was that the shield was effected by a short curcuit and went down. A further design flaw could explain why control of the vessel wasn't taken over by an auxiliary bridge. Another idea could be that rebel supporters among the crew took control and sent the ship into a suicide dive once the main bridge went down.
I think the SSD's anti-gravity failed along with flight control and the Death Star's gravity pulled it in.
Eve online acthually happens to have a lore explenation for its lack of frontal thrust as well, similar to this. "the warp core enduces a drag" Hence you can effectively skim and manouver in space like you would an air current. It can also explain why imperial star destroyers keep their engines visibly online and burning durring manouvering. You have to counter the drag to keep momentum.
My quick thoughts on the gravity anchor concept are based on a star wars technical description that stated the generator in the "giant ball" on the bottom of the ship is actually an artificial star. So whether or not it IS a miniature artificial star, or it is an energy generator that emulates a star, is not what is important. What is important is the effect. Consider how Einstein explained how Planets and stars warp the fabric of space/time, and the gravity effects based on that, and there could be many potential options for controlling momentum, and the X/Y/Z Axis' in space.
For instance if you needed the ship to move hard to port the generator could increase the output of the port side of the "star"generator field, weaken the starboard side of the field, and effectively have the ship "fall" to port while any conventional thrusters fight to push the ship to port. It would be like having control of your terrain as well as your ship. Like having a tank on flat ground and you need to move left quickly, so you shift the land so that now the flat ground becomes a hill and the tank falls to the side.
Intense energy and gravimetric forces can cause all kinds on possible movement capabilities in space. It would be WAAAY too cumbersome to try and explain to the general audience in a movie, or book, without losing most of them. Just my thoughts on it.
One thing worth mentioning here, RCS thrusters and especially control moment gyros do not scale particularly well because mile long ships are just gonna be difficult to rotate.
the big dome is a reactor and from an engineering standpoint its positioning allows direct power to a number of essential systems, such as the engines, and main batteries, and a vertical straight shoot up to the command island to provide power to those systems.
if we are going off of newtonian physics, there could be another solution to keeping the nose of the star destroyer pointed at a stationary target, if it kept the “nose down” heading it would fly just past its target, at which point it could start “orbiting” the target by constantly thrusting towards the target to circle it
My theory has always been that the shield at the bottom of a star destroyer is much stronger than the top or a single massive shield that can't be penetrated when up. This makes sense as Star Destroyers release all their Tie fighters at the beginning and collect them at the end. Since the main power generator is also on the bottom you want it to be the strongest shield. I think the weapons are on the top because the top array of shields are sectional so sections can be dropped to allow the turbo lasers to fire. It would lock down the docking hangar during battle to not allow easy boarding during a battle.
It’s the same tech that inexplicably causes a ship to lose momentum in space when it runs out of fuel.
wookiepedia states they are in fact radar domes, but they contain shield projecting vanes. therefore, destroying them (or more specifically, the spikes on them), weakens shields in that area. destroying them also limits sensor capability, which is arguably much more crippling in an enduring fight.
In most large fleet engagements of the Clone Wars I suspect some sort of battle lines were used, there wasnt much in the way of flanking with your capital ships. So you only need your big guns facing one direction, and smaller guns on the bottom for targetting fighters and smaller ships that DO flank. If for whatever reason you do get enemy battlelines on both sides of you, you would also assume you are in a group, the strategy would be to have your destroyers align "belly to belly" their hangers facing each other with main guns facing out both directions. It would be uncommon in those days for capital ships to be operating independently. But later with relative peace, the newer destroyers became fewer or more spread out, and were expected to operate in independent posts, and the rebels or pirates were unlikely to have the ships to field an actual battleline, so it was not usually an issue to need multiple destroyers.
I've always felt that the big things on the back of Star Wars ships aren't reaction thrusters at all, but just the radiators for the reactionless drive or 'gravity manipulation' widget or whatever, and they're put on the back to keep them out of harm's way.
Thermal control is an issue even for the little tin can spaceships we make that just generate a few kilowatts of energy; Star Wars drives must be in the terawatt range, and probably need to dump a lot of heat. Damaging them could put a warship out of action, unable to maneuver (or power weapons) effectively until repairs are made. If you're being shot at from the front, the best place to put them would be on the back.
I'd have to rewatch it, but in the crash scene in Episode 3, thrust redirection is shown with massive "flaps" on the engines. I'd imagine Star Destroyers use something similar, but not as large.
Phenomenal video, never seen such a good breakdown video