Death to my enemies!!!!

[Meste17]

Okay, so is anyone willing to help do something?

I have the following as either die cast models or game pieces:

CAPITAL SHIPS:
1 DS-1 Orbital Battlestation (or Death Star I)
1 Executor-class Star Dreadnought, or Executor-class Super Star Destroyer
1 Viscount-class Star Defender
1 Subjugator-class heavy cruiser, known as Malevolence
1 Lucrehulk-class battleship
4 Imperial I-class Star Destroyers
1 EF76 Nebulon-B escort frigate


SMALL SHIPS:
1 Firespray-31-class patrol and attack craft, aka Slave 1
4 YT-1300 light freighters
1 Sith Infiltrator, named Scimitar
1 Hound's Tooth YV-666 light freighter

STARFIGHTERS:
1 TIE Advanced x1, or TIE/x1 starfighter
4 Incom T-65 X-wing starfighters
1 Low Altitude Assault Transport (LAAT), aka LAAT-series gunship
2 RZ-1 A-wing interceptors
1 TIE/LN starfighter
1 Delta-7 Aethersprite-class light interceptor, aka Jedi starfighter
1 Eta-2 Actis-class light interceptor, aka Jedi interceptor
1 Aggressive ReConnaissance-170 starfighter, aka ARC-170 fighter/Advanced Recon fighter
1 Vulture-class droid fighter
1 BTL Y-wing starfighter
1 Mankvim-814 light interceptor, aka Techno Union starfighter, or Rattletrap

So I found that I can carry a maximum of 11,920 fighters. Problem is I ONLY have those certain types of fighters mentioned above. So anyway willing to help me find out how many of each fighter type mentioned above that I can have? (for example, we know that an Imperial Star Destroyer carries 72 total TIE fighters)

[McAvoy]

Wait what?

So you want to calculate how many fighters you may have for your die cast fleet?

Honestly I always thought 72 fighters was too low for something that is five times the length of a aircraft carrier. But that is just me.

[Teaos]

You could easily add a 0 to it.

[Jim]

A Star Destroyer is not meant to be used as an aircraft carrier. An Iowa class is 80% the length of a Nimitz yet it carries 0 aircraft compared to the Nimitz's 85.

[Meste17]

Wait what?

So you want to calculate how many fighters you may have for your die cast fleet?

Honestly I always thought 72 fighters was too low for something that is five times the length of a aircraft carrier. But that is just me.

Yes, out of the types that I have mentioned above, like how many X wings, how many Y wings, etc etc.

[McAvoy]

A Star Destroyer is not meant to be used as an aircraft carrier. An Iowa class is 80% the length of a Nimitz yet it carries 0 aircraft compared to the Nimitz's 85.

A Star Destroyer is huge and in Star Wars fighter battles are common. Fighters can damage capital ships. So it would be important to have fighters on a ship.

Oh and that is a false equivalency. Iowa class ships were never designed with fighters that would fight other fighters. They had seaplanes and later helicopters for spotting. A star destroyer has a fighter complement. I am saying it could easily be bigger.

Unless you think Star Wars ships need to be big because of fuel/reactor size/technology size etc?

[Meste17]

A Star Destroyer is not meant to be used as an aircraft carrier. An Iowa class is 80% the length of a Nimitz yet it carries 0 aircraft compared to the Nimitz's 85.

A Star Destroyer is huge and in Star Wars fighter battles are common. Fighters can damage capital ships. So it would be important to have fighters on a ship.

Oh and that is a false equivalency. Iowa class ships were never designed with fighters that would fight other fighters. They had seaplanes and later helicopters for spotting. A star destroyer has a fighter complement. I am saying it could easily be bigger.

Unless you think Star Wars ships need to be big because of fuel/reactor size/technology size etc?

Still, the question remains: How many fighters of each type mentioned above can I carry on ALL the capital ships mentioned above?

[Captain Seafort]

A Star Destroyer is huge and in Star Wars fighter battles are common. Fighters can damage capital ships.

Fighter battles are certainly common, but the only way fighters can hurt capships is if their shields have already been disabled by other capships. Even then,the only way they can do serious damage (i.e. ignoring flukes like the Ex's engines misfiring and ramming her into DS2) is by the insane stunt of flying inside the ship to target power systems (as happened to DS2, the Endor communications ship and Triggit's Implacable).

[McAvoy]

Obviously a fighter lasers will not do much if anything to a capital ship's shields. Fighters are there for more pin point strikes. But still 72 fighters is too low and if I remember correctly that is just a number thrown up similar to the 8km figure of the Executor. In that it was made up without any evidence or background info to support it and people for a long time accepted it.

[Jim]

A Star Destroyer is not meant to be used as an aircraft carrier. An Iowa class is 80% the length of a Nimitz yet it carries 0 aircraft compared to the Nimitz's 85.

A Star Destroyer is huge and in Star Wars fighter battles are common. Fighters can damage capital ships. So it would be important to have fighters on a ship.

Oh and that is a false equivalency. Iowa class ships were never designed with fighters that would fight other fighters. They had seaplanes and later helicopters for spotting. A star destroyer has a fighter complement. I am saying it could easily be bigger.

Unless you think Star Wars ships need to be big because of fuel/reactor size/technology size etc?

I strongly disagree that fighter battles were common. Endor was the only relatively large scale fighter battle of note. The only (mostly) space battles they had were against the rebels and the rebels didn't have that many ships, nor did they often attack in mass. Space battles were not a major concern of the Empire. The majority of the Empire's strength was shown on the ground. They used groud presence to keep cities/planets under control.

There are more than a handful of class of Star Destroyer, but the Imperial class is the most common and the one that most people think of when you picture one. Imperial Class Star Destroyers were more like mobile space stations rather than carriers or battleships. They carried 72 TIEs including bombers and interceptors. They also had a few shuttles. However, as the Empire showed it's power on the ground, Star Destroyers held a lot of ground oriented items. They held 9,700 troops, AT-ATs (20), AT-STs and the craft to get those to the ground. They even had a quite large ground base that could somehow be put on a planet.

Even the Executor class, (The huge SD in Return of the Jedi, 10 times bigger than an Imperial class) was more ground orientated. It carried only 144 TIEs but had 38,000 ground troops and increased numbers of AT-ATs etc.

The VAST amount of conflict in Star Wars was on the ground.

A majority of the interior was reactor/machine space. This is the best pic that I could find right now:

[Captain Seafort]

But still 72 fighters is too low and if I remember correctly that is just a number thrown up similar to the 8km figure of the Executor. In that it was made up without any evidence or background info to support it and people for a long time accepted it.

1) The problem with the 8km Ex is that it's directly contradicted by visuals from the film. There's no such contradiction regarding the fighter complement of the ISD.

2) As Jim has pointed out, the proportion of an ISD's internal volume assigned to its TIE wing is tiny. The ship is a counterinsurgency platform, not a carrier, so there's no need to cram in vast numbers of fighters. Just give it sufficient support craft to provide the support necessary for it to perform its role.

[stitch626]

It would seem to me that the fighter compliment numbers would be for standard operating procedures.

If the ISD is similar to the Venator, then it carries not just fighters but also gunships and drop ships and shuttles. It also has space for frigates and other small starships.

Perhaps it could carry a few hundred fighters, but the Empire seems to care much more for JoaT ships than ones with dedicated purposes (as long as blow stuff up is included).

[McAvoy]

My point is that they can carry far more than what is suggested. 72 fighters all of which are smaller on average then the ones carried on a Nimitz class carrier. Both of which carry roughly the same amount. Assuming they operate like the USN. They will have six squadrons of 12 fighters/ bombers each. One or two will be hangwe queens (fighters acting like spare parts until a rare but key part is found to fix it) so that leaves 10 to 11 fighters potentially ready to do missions. At least one or two are 'hard down' which means they are broke for the day or next day. That leaves 8-10 fighters per squadron operational. One plane per squadron will operate as a CAP. If a battle starts this fighter will be the first off of the battlefield to refuel and restock. That leaves 56 fighters ready to leave a ISD at a moment's notice. Assuming they do not break when they start up prior to launch.

That is a average day. Sometimes a squadron will have several down fighters. I remember one day we had only three good jets.

Something that is easily 25 times more massive than a Nimitz class carrier could house at least double the 72 complement.

[Captain Seafort]

Something that is easily 25 times more massive than a Nimitz class carrier could house at least double the 72 complement.

Not if it's carrying a reinforced infantry brigade, a full armoured regiment, assault landing craft for the troops, a few blastboats that seem to be halfway between an Apache and an AC-130, and eight heavy turrets. Could they build a ship with a far greater fighter complement? Sure - the Venstar. About seventy times the volume of the Nimitz, 400+ fighters (including the big ARC-170s), plus a couple of thousand troops and eight heavy turrets (albeit smaller than an ISD's). The difference is that the Venstar didn't have the range of heavy support craft, had a much smaller infantry complement, and was probably much more lightly built given that they had far better acceleration than a Vicstar (effectively a mini-ISD), on the same power and greater volume.

[McAvoy]

Keep in mind that a Nimitz class carrier carries 5,000 people including a giant open space in the hanger. The ship is equipped multiple small craft too and I never mentioned the helicopters in addition to the detached C-2 Cods.

The USN also has a separate ship for that. The LHDs or mini flattops.

That reactor and those heavy turrets must take up a lot of space.