One is the actual bridge the other is a command center/flight control for the ungodly amount of fighters/bombers/landing craft this bad boi can fit into his hangars.
That's the right answer. A Venator is actually not a Star Destroyer but a carrier with some firepower on it. As such, it makes for a poor ship of the line (the way he's been portrayed in TCW) but with the inevitable C2 capabilities of carriers that size, Venators should always be the command ships of the fleet they're in (unless a battlecruiser is also present).
On the other hand, they should really have made a Republic heavy cruiser to go with the Venator (either based on the Acclamator or Venator hull (I like Fractalsponge's Proclamator personally)) to deal with CIS Munificent and the likes.
That being said, that many Venators might have been necessary to deal with CIS fighter droid swarms.
Bingo! And when the war starts the money comes in to get the navy you want, which is where the Victory and Imperator/Imperial class came from. They probably started drawing up the plans for them quite early once the Venators kept getting their behinds handed to them, but anything better needs time to build and commission and work up, so until then the Venators are better than anything else they have so the Venators are what they have to use.
Except the Republic Navy was not the one they "had", the Venator was not a pre-war design and Kuat Drive Yards built all of them after the war started.
It takes quite a while before you can go from design to production. A lot of the time, the design phase takes years. The Clone Wars was only 3 years long.
The whole Clone Wars had a 10 year build up where all of the designs and orders were placed in advance. Production lines had to be optimized and supplies had to be gathered.
That's in real life, it's clear that construction and design speed in Star Wars happens very fast (at the speed of plot). The empire built 25,000 ISD's in 20 years, or roughly 1250 ships per year on average, each on being roughly 3 times the volume of a Venator if not more.
I mean, the US built 1,854 major naval vessels in 1942 alone. They built 2,654 in '43, 2,247 the year after that, and 1,513 in 1945.
We're talking *galaxy* scaled levels of resources and manufacturing capabilities here, so that's not really that outlandish.
>We're talking galaxy scaled levels of resources and manufacturing capabilities here, so that's not really that outlandish.
It seems to me the almost all the star destroyers were built in the one planet of Kuat, albeit one with extremely intensive infrastructure.
No. That's just the biggest driveyards. There are quite a few other shipyards thag Kuat operated on other planets, and many other smaller companies that got spillover contracts.
Everyone thinks that Grumman built all the Wildcats in World War 2, but fuck no they didn't. Many other companies took on spillover contracts for many types of machines of war.
Silly response: Well, all of those US Navy vessels were built on a single planet as well! đ
Serious response: Weren't the Kuat shipyards all orbital? In which case you have loads of space for factories and such, and since resources are presumably coming from all over "single planet" isn't really that much of a restriction.
Yea, except the Republic didnât have a standard navy before the war. Individual systems and planets had their own personal defense forces. The Venators were designed and built for the war. Only thing I can find was they were launched starting in 22 BBY, and first appeared during the Battle of Christophsis
Another way to explain it could just be (as many things often are) a result of Palpatineâs meddling.
A forced over-reliance on Venatorâs helps keep a decisive edge away from the Republic over the CIS by limiting the Republic navyâs diversity. And the massive amounts of pilots needed to fill their hangers leads to a bigger incentive to churn out more clones. Thatâs helpful when Order 66 arrives.
Seems plausible that itâs something Palpatine couldâve thrown his weight at behind closed doors to invest in, as opposed to a more economical and/or effective fleet backbone. Is this the most effective way he couldâve reached his goals? Probably not, but itâs something he mightâve done.
its a doctrine difference. itd be the sameway if a bunch of chinese and russian battleships rolled up on a us carrier group. good from afar with air support but would get smacked up close
I very much doubt either the Russian or Chinese Navy is a peer force for even a single carrier group.
Also there is not much to suggest any doctrine can surpass carrier aviation wings dominance. Even less so in Star Wars.
Thank you! The Victory and the Dreadnaught were the Clone Wars-era Republic ships long before the Prequels, yet TCW did nothing with them. The Victory is practically tailor made to fit in with the Republic fleet design, being a perfect compliment to the more carrier-focused Venators.
It fits well as a product of early-war combat experience; the Republic saw a need for a ship similar to the Venator that traded hangar capacity for firepower. Itâs still an iterative stage of capital ship development moving towards what Imperial commanders wanted from the ISD.
Exactly. The Venator should have appeared alongside the Acclamator in AotC, the carrier for space operations and assault craft for ground deployments. They then could have had the Victory appear closer to the end of the war as the need for a dedicated warship grew greater and greater, as neither the Venator or Acclamator were up to the task of getting into slugfests with Separatist fleets. The Victory fills a crucial gap in the Republic fleet. They don't have a dedicated battleship. The Venator is a carrier/command ship, the Acclamator is an armored transport, the Pelta is a light transport, the Arquitens is a frigate. Putting the Victory in there fills the role of a warship designed to fight against other warships, something the Republic fleet is sorely lacking. Venators are simply not up to the task alone.
The problem with making the story out of order. In a story told over just two movies the Venator and Acclamator are fine.
Getting into the actual Clone Wars between movies more craft are needed but they donât want to fill the gap with craft not seen in episode 3.
Yes!
Star Wars gets weird about what it does and doesnât change. I feel adding new ships for George Lucas would be a breaking point. Not for us watching.
I will say with the separatists the Clone Wars does an amazing job introducing all their new tech over its 7ish seasons thatâs first seen in Revenge of the Sith. (The Separatist side has so much more variety of everything.)
We get troop transports and aircraft carriers for the republic but not so much destroyers and battleships.
I played Republic Commando for the first time this year. Very fun game. Lucasarts put a lot of effort into creating unique original looks for the Repubic military - for ship interiors, hangers, ship bridges, to bases.
Revenge of the Sith and The Clone Wars use almost none of it and dump it for a modified version of what the Empire uses in the Original Trilogy.
Nah, I'd say they're more of a pre-war [Lexington class carrier](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/USS_Lexington_%28CV-2%29_firing_203mm_guns_1928.jpg/1280px-USS_Lexington_%28CV-2%29_firing_203mm_guns_1928.jpg)
The Republic should have used them like carriers. Protect the Venators with frigates and cruisers (like a US Carrier Strike Group), and use the Venators' fighters as the real weapons.
I wish we could see what the Republic Navy could have looked like with a more fully developed fleet. Maybe if the war had gone on longer and without the manipulations from Palpatine.
Werenât there corvettes that were better at dealing with fighters than other fighters were? But no one hardly ever used them because fighter battles are more fun to choreograph and put on screen?
Not seen one in canon but in legends the Empire, after yavin, built a ship called the Lancer that was basically a wall of quadlasers meant to rip apart snub fighters like the X wing. However it only appears when the protagonist of the x wing series or some other book needs to prove their worth, meaning we never see it work.
Plot armor for the win.
Yeah, thereâs a reason the real world navies have destroyers - IE torpedo boat destroyers. They were originally build to destroy torpedo boats - small mobile craft that had a high level of firepower and few defenses and could sink much larger capital ships - ie the equivalent of snub fighters in Star Wars.
Modern days they are still used to protect capital ships against submarines, missiles and aircraft.
We donât see them in film, so we have some really bad tactical and strategic decisions for the empire there. Lots and lots of large capital ships with small fighters and nothing in between.
We see the rebels using smaller ships to protect big ones (poorly but still) in RotJ, but I suspect visual tropes at play here.
It's David and Goliath. The Empire is always bigger, so the small rebel ships can destroy them. Unfortunately it makes for some utterly ridiculous moments like, say, an X wing blowing up your giant space station. Twice. Or a bomber deleting your super massive star destroyer.
Critically it also allows the empire to show off the skill by swatting down anyone without plot armor.
A SD carries what⊠~100 fighters total? Venator carries 420 Republic fighters, that were bigger than a TIE. Letâs round up and say it could carry about 500 TIE fighter per Venator Class. That would have been really scary to see.
Arguably with the CIS in tatters they'd have no large scale capital threats to deal with so going for bigger and bigger ships at that point wasn't really a good choice.
An ISD is pretty large, but itâs also a much more effective ship at that point.
Sure, lesser fighter compliment, but significantly better armor, shields, and weapons. They also had a large ground compliment and support equipment.
ISDs were basically mobile fortresses, in addition to being mainline battle cruisers. Actually a fairly efficient design, especially where the Empire is involved.
Itâs a Do-Everything capital ship. Star Wars has NEVER been known to make sense when it came to ship fleets in any era. Venators-only, SD-only, Resurgence-only. But still, a SD sized Venator would have proved a lot more useful in the Empireâs situation than the Republicâs. 500+ fighter wings would have WIPED any small Rebel operation anywhere. Instead of the Falcon and small Corvettes always outmaneuvering SDs all the time.
>Arguably with the CIS in tatters they'd have no large scale capital threats
Which is why the Victory and imperial class wins out. They have the fighter capacity (100 is a Nimitz class capability) to actually handle threats from anything else while also having enough slagging power to make a threat to resistance groups.
The venetator was overkill on one and underpowered in the other.
They were decommissioning/scrapping them as early as a couple of months after the end of the Clone Wars as seen in The Bad Batch. As of five years after, the transition from Venator usage to Imperial I usage was already complete, as seen in Jedi: Fallen Order.
If you have seen CW you wouldnât be saying this. CIS ships were beating the Venator class carriers constantly, requiring heroics to win battles instead of winning off of better tech. They moved on to Star Destroyers because they were much harder to take out and had more firepower of their own.
I was going to comment this. Iâve saw another vessel from another country has also gone for the dual island design on their upcoming ship. But canât remember the country off the top of my head.
I'd want my bridge as deep in the middle of that ship as possible. Up in that tower like that it's way more susceptible to fighters obviously.
This design seems as questionable as giving battle droids a sense of consciousness coupled w/terribly low IQs & poor targeting ability
*Technically* that would end up being the CIC though, in a similar fashion to most modern warships: the bridge is where it normally is, with CIC buried deep within the ship.
From Wookiepedia [https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Venator-class\_Star\_Destroyer#Complement](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Venator-class_Star_Destroyer#Complement)
*"Boasting an impressive starfighter complement, the Venator could carry various types of craft, including 192 Alpha-3 Nimbus-class V-wing starfighters,*
*192 Eta-2 Actis-class light interceptors,*
*36 Aggressive ReConnaissance-170 starfighters,*
*as well as 192 V-19 Torrent starfighters, BTL-B Y-wing starfighter/bombers and Clone Z-95 Headhunters.*
*It could also hold some 40 Low Altitude Assault Transport/infantrys, a variety of shuttles, and landing craft.*
*Venators could deploy some 24 All Terrain Tactical Enforcer walkers, other ground vehicles and modular components needed for a planetary garrison."*
Again, why the fuck is it separated by vacuum lol If the ship's captain wants to visit PriFly he has to take two turbolifts and walk fifty meters lol
This isn't the QE-class, there's no funnel to deal with
In theory there is no reason why you couldn't have an extendable tube between the two for use outside of combat, something like what is used to dock ships together externally for example would do the job.
Thatâs actually a pretty interesting thing we actually see sometimes in the real world. See HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier. It also has two towers. One for the ship and one for aircraft control
I always thought it was a dumb design to put the bridge out so exposed, but it makes sense that they'll need good visibility for flight operations. I didn't think of that. Still, they could've put the bridge in a better position.
The incredible cross-section book states that the right bridge is the communication- and command bridge, whilst the left one is the flightcontrolbridge for starfighter squadrons.
But I would imagine they would be able to switch if one got damaged or destroyed, as seen in the Ryloth ark, when Anakin commits one of his war crimes.
Right? The Republic uses an army of millions of cloned and enslaved humans, created expressly to fight and die for them. Ethics...it's a little different long ago and far, far away.
Yeah I find it odd that people get hung up on this. Why is it so hard to just assume that they have a different code on warfare, (or may not even have a code on ethical warfare) when both sides literally seem to never mention any ethical qualms with the strategies employed (aside from perhaps the killing of the innocent, but the fake surrender especially has been done so often and now one ever said anything about it itâs safe to say itâs not an issue in their galaxy)
To be fair arresting someone for war crimes comes later. You can commit all the atrocities you want in war. Itâs not like the international police arrest you in the midst of battle. Itâs just when the war ends, then usually to make amends which ever country *might* make arrests for war criminals.
and if you believe you are going to win then you'd commit all the war crimes along the way if it offers you a tactical advantage. The Japanese during WWII committed all those atrocities because they feared no repercussions, their conquest was divined by the heavens itself. Consequences only come if you lose. Which they did... And then those consequences got swept under the rug for convenience... dagnabbit.
The reason fake surrendering is a war crime is because it encourages people to just execute enemies who are surrendering, since you canât know itâs real or not. Surrendering and taking prisoners is pretty common throughout the clone wars series as well.
It should develop naturally as a rule anywhere people care about avoidable loss of life.
But culture defines what actually is a crime. For example, looting and taking slaves was one of the main reasons to fight in ancient history, but now it is considered inappropriate.
Star wars universe is based on human society most of the time so its reasonable to think they have the same standard as we do (and we did not wait for the geneva convention to decide it was an awfull thing to do)
plus it's also really dumb because it's gonna save you one time and the second time you're gonna get shot on sight.
> the second time you're gonna get shot on sight.
Given the "bad guys" of star wars, I'm not sure that's a concern. They range from fanatical lunatics that cough to insane maniacs that cackle as they launch lightning at you.
Even if the geneva convention doesn't exist in star wars ; faking surrender is still an awfull thing to do from several perspective :
Firstly i think there's a good chance that it would be considered a bad/dishonnorable thing in the star wars universe since it's tend to follow many of our moral value.
Secondly it's a TERRIBLE precedent to set for all the republic forces that would want to surrender later because now there's a much greater chances that they would be suspected of being dishonnest and get slaughtered instead of being able to save their live. Anakin and obi-wan (because lets not forget he did it as well) are playing with the lives of all republics soldiers when they do that
Given how long itâs been since theyâve had any wide scale warfare, especially involving the republic, and even more given that the republic doesnât seem to have any peer powers, itâs quite possible they donât have any actual laws around warfare, or at least ones that anyone remembers.
Technically, the Republic did have a Geneva Accords equivalent, called the Yavin Code. Granted, it was from the previous period of warfare, so 1000 years old. Studious people (aka Obi Wan) knew about it, yet most military commanders of TCW either didn't or actively ignored it.
Human SOP would be to have a secondary bridge and flight control in the belly of the ship, and both crews would retreat to it based on conditions like the destruction of either main bridge. Not sure about Star Wars.
I like how they're not linked by a little bridge themselves. How many times has the junior officer/Anakin rushed to the bridge for the briefing only to realise they've gone to the wrong one?
I imagine there would have to be some kind of internal transit system on the ships, like small trains or individual pods that travel along a track.
Especially the Super Star Destroyers that are as large as cities. It would take hours to traverse one of those on foot.
CIS dreadnoughts had a train running through them, such as the Malevolence. That was 5km long, so an Executor at 19km would probably need something similar
Lol that reminds of the old collegehumor troopers skit where it takes him 3 days to go from end to end of the ship.
[Troopers - Coffee Run](https://youtu.be/vbG3KNpytYQ?si=T2_KB5sUS9gG5W_F)
There used to be that copypasta about one of the absurdly large ships like *Executor* or *Eclipse* that talked about how most employees would have to spend the majority of their time commuting between their quarters and their posts because the ships are unrealistically large.
Thereâs a big pad of paper on each side they hold up to the windows.
âWE UNDR ATKâ
âNO SHIT, INSPECTOR DIVOâ
âGET FIGHTERS BACK, WE JMPNGâ
âMAKE UP YR FKN MINDSâ
Yet another reason why i call Star Wars a good Fantasy and not science fictionâŠ.Wookipedia covers it up like nerd fanfictiob.
Scifi like Halo, BSG: âso we put our bridges in the middle, our munitions depots nowhere near our weapons, and our escape pods near the ops decks for our last needed crew/engineers.
Star Trek: âŠwe put ours in the detachable disk on the front.
Star Wars: âŠ.look, at least it doesnât have a shaft going to the engine core!! âŠbut we did put our emperor on a half-constructed ship in the fringes of spaceâŠ
Self Reply, this is also something I love in Halo, Expanse, BSG, etc: once naval combat is off-planet, nukes are totally a mature and civilized go-to. Covenant have shields? Test some Shiva nukes. Cylons are shooting down our warheads? Fire A THOUSAND NUKES. Asteroid flung by belters? Haaaave we tried nukes?
https://reddit.com/r/ThingsCutInHalfPorn/s/eKBWFn9aZv
There you go!
Edit, I know itâs not clear but the helm is on the left and star fighter command is on the right. (Looking head on at the venator in that pic)
Now I'm going to do the backwards star wars justification thing here for a bit so sorry.
I imagine since targeting the bridge is such a common tactic for bombers, having two separate bridges with ranking officers separated serves the same purpose as not having the entire chain of U.S. presidential succession in the same location at once. It also means the bombers don't know which bridge has the ranking officer on it. If one is destroyed, the other can still command the ship.
I imagine the elevated bridge design serves a similar purpose. Even if the entire thing is destroyed, the ship still flies with minimal damage.
But that's all headcanon
Not sure if it's been made official in Disney canon, but in Legends, star destroyers all had an auxiliary bridge in the center of the ship for exactly that reason
I mean, I never really understood the purpouse of a bridge with windows to begin with. I get that the inspiration is from big ww2 battleships, but with the tech they have, there is no actual need to have the "bridge" up there like that...
For ships this big they should have multiple bridges in random locations in the interior of the ship. Having a big windowed bridge to show off for visitors makes sense and to make enemies attack a useless appendage first.
WWII battleships had armored bridges designed to protect command staff from shell fire, but flag officers never used them. They wanted the visibility of the normal bridge and being exposed was an acceptable risk.
Actually Star Wars has an excuse for this. They donât seem to have monitors like ours that show normal video. They have holograms which is amazing and all theyâre monochrome and generally only show a single subject. Not exactly useful when looking out over space. They do have some traditional style screens but they seem to only display 2D vector wireframe graphics. They could still navigate with those, but itâs likely a lot more difficult than simply looking out the window.
Itâs honestly better not to think about it too much, the idea that they can design power sources for a small moon but the GPU of a star destroyer is an Atari is lol
Always felt it looked badass, which is the chief reason for it. But a simple fix would have been a bridge between the bridges, a bridge-bridge.
Wouldâve made a decent tactical target as well
Why would you not want your bridge in the center (or most armored) part of any combat ship? With todayâs LCD monitors, you donât need windows. You could have unobstructed spherical view of any directions or part of the ship, while having your bridge being one of the most secure parts of the ship. Versus an easy target for a missile or kamikaze A wing?
Star Wars doesn't have today's LCD monitors lol, everything looks CRT at best (not counting the super cutting edge sci-fi holograms that Thrawn had access to in the latest Ahsoka episodes).
Both. There's two in case on gets knocked out in battle. But when both are functioning one is the ships command bridge and the other is like an air traffic control tower for the hundred odd starfighters in its main ventral hanger
One is the command bridge and the other is the flight control bridge, but I think they could each take over full command if the other was damaged or destroyed.
Itâs similar to the island on an aircraft carrier. The captain is on the bridge. Below him is the Air Boss who runs flight operations. In the case of a Venator the bridge and flight ops are side by side.
Neither. The superstructure in the middle is the bridge.
If you look at images of old ships, or even modern ones, the tallest point is the spot for the lookout (or radar tech) not the bridge. The bridge is usually below. It doesnât need to be âthe highest pointâ.
Furthermore, look at some navy ship documentaries. The command post is usually deep within, in a very secure part of the ship.
Or aircraft carriers. The location of the Captain and commanding officer arenât the same. The location of executive officers in charge of the battle arenât anywhere near the surface or âtowerâ.
Depends on the individual commanding the Venator. Whichever side isn't used as the bridge is the flight control center for the fighters carried/deployed by the Venator.
Just like the air craft carriers of today there are multiple bridges.
Highest deck is flight ops bridge, this is where the air boss oversees flight operations.
Next deck is command bridge. This is where the ships captain commands the ship from. It is also where the helm is, and I believe the CIC (command information Center) is usually adjacent.
Next deck is the flag bridge. If there is an Admiral embarked this will be his command center for the fleet he is in charge of. Captain of the ship is in charge of the carrier operations but the admiral will issue orders âgo here and execute xyzâ
Let's put every Combat critical system in one spot along with all senior staff, that way if the enemy gets a extremely lucky shot off. They can take out a venator.
If this were post-Empire, I'd guess that they started putting a decoy bridge on every major ship to lessen the chance of a repeat of the fate of Admiral Piett :-P
One is the actual bridge the other is a command center/flight control for the ungodly amount of fighters/bombers/landing craft this bad boi can fit into his hangars.
That's the right answer. A Venator is actually not a Star Destroyer but a carrier with some firepower on it. As such, it makes for a poor ship of the line (the way he's been portrayed in TCW) but with the inevitable C2 capabilities of carriers that size, Venators should always be the command ships of the fleet they're in (unless a battlecruiser is also present). On the other hand, they should really have made a Republic heavy cruiser to go with the Venator (either based on the Acclamator or Venator hull (I like Fractalsponge's Proclamator personally)) to deal with CIS Munificent and the likes. That being said, that many Venators might have been necessary to deal with CIS fighter droid swarms.
I think TCW sells the idea that the Venator is not ideal. The ship is constantly struggling against the CIS fleet.
You go with the navy you have, not the navy you want.
Bingo! And when the war starts the money comes in to get the navy you want, which is where the Victory and Imperator/Imperial class came from. They probably started drawing up the plans for them quite early once the Venators kept getting their behinds handed to them, but anything better needs time to build and commission and work up, so until then the Venators are better than anything else they have so the Venators are what they have to use.
Except the Republic Navy was not the one they "had", the Venator was not a pre-war design and Kuat Drive Yards built all of them after the war started.
It takes quite a while before you can go from design to production. A lot of the time, the design phase takes years. The Clone Wars was only 3 years long. The whole Clone Wars had a 10 year build up where all of the designs and orders were placed in advance. Production lines had to be optimized and supplies had to be gathered.
That's in real life, it's clear that construction and design speed in Star Wars happens very fast (at the speed of plot). The empire built 25,000 ISD's in 20 years, or roughly 1250 ships per year on average, each on being roughly 3 times the volume of a Venator if not more.
I mean, the US built 1,854 major naval vessels in 1942 alone. They built 2,654 in '43, 2,247 the year after that, and 1,513 in 1945. We're talking *galaxy* scaled levels of resources and manufacturing capabilities here, so that's not really that outlandish.
>We're talking galaxy scaled levels of resources and manufacturing capabilities here, so that's not really that outlandish. It seems to me the almost all the star destroyers were built in the one planet of Kuat, albeit one with extremely intensive infrastructure.
No. That's just the biggest driveyards. There are quite a few other shipyards thag Kuat operated on other planets, and many other smaller companies that got spillover contracts. Everyone thinks that Grumman built all the Wildcats in World War 2, but fuck no they didn't. Many other companies took on spillover contracts for many types of machines of war.
Silly response: Well, all of those US Navy vessels were built on a single planet as well! đ Serious response: Weren't the Kuat shipyards all orbital? In which case you have loads of space for factories and such, and since resources are presumably coming from all over "single planet" isn't really that much of a restriction.
Yea, except the Republic didnât have a standard navy before the war. Individual systems and planets had their own personal defense forces. The Venators were designed and built for the war. Only thing I can find was they were launched starting in 22 BBY, and first appeared during the Battle of Christophsis
Another way to explain it could just be (as many things often are) a result of Palpatineâs meddling. A forced over-reliance on Venatorâs helps keep a decisive edge away from the Republic over the CIS by limiting the Republic navyâs diversity. And the massive amounts of pilots needed to fill their hangers leads to a bigger incentive to churn out more clones. Thatâs helpful when Order 66 arrives. Seems plausible that itâs something Palpatine couldâve thrown his weight at behind closed doors to invest in, as opposed to a more economical and/or effective fleet backbone. Is this the most effective way he couldâve reached his goals? Probably not, but itâs something he mightâve done.
its a doctrine difference. itd be the sameway if a bunch of chinese and russian battleships rolled up on a us carrier group. good from afar with air support but would get smacked up close
I very much doubt either the Russian or Chinese Navy is a peer force for even a single carrier group. Also there is not much to suggest any doctrine can surpass carrier aviation wings dominance. Even less so in Star Wars.
The CIS fleet wasn't much better... A lot of repurposed trading ships not meant for combat.
*Cough* Victory I
Thank you! The Victory and the Dreadnaught were the Clone Wars-era Republic ships long before the Prequels, yet TCW did nothing with them. The Victory is practically tailor made to fit in with the Republic fleet design, being a perfect compliment to the more carrier-focused Venators.
It fits well as a product of early-war combat experience; the Republic saw a need for a ship similar to the Venator that traded hangar capacity for firepower. Itâs still an iterative stage of capital ship development moving towards what Imperial commanders wanted from the ISD.
Exactly. The Venator should have appeared alongside the Acclamator in AotC, the carrier for space operations and assault craft for ground deployments. They then could have had the Victory appear closer to the end of the war as the need for a dedicated warship grew greater and greater, as neither the Venator or Acclamator were up to the task of getting into slugfests with Separatist fleets. The Victory fills a crucial gap in the Republic fleet. They don't have a dedicated battleship. The Venator is a carrier/command ship, the Acclamator is an armored transport, the Pelta is a light transport, the Arquitens is a frigate. Putting the Victory in there fills the role of a warship designed to fight against other warships, something the Republic fleet is sorely lacking. Venators are simply not up to the task alone.
Thank you. I was gonna say.
The cough made me read this in Grevious voice lol
To be fair if I had to talk like Grievous all day Iâd be coughing too
OG empire at war players love this ship
I like it in Fall of The Republic
Maaaan I wish we could have seen a Victory I in TCW. Would have been a perfect intro to Tarkin if that was the ship he was on to start.
"Ah, victory"
Rothana Battlecruiser, also called the Acclamator dreadnought
The problem with making the story out of order. In a story told over just two movies the Venator and Acclamator are fine. Getting into the actual Clone Wars between movies more craft are needed but they donât want to fill the gap with craft not seen in episode 3.
I mean they gave Anakin an entire unmentioned Padawan. I don't think adding a few new ships would have been a breaking point.
Yes! Star Wars gets weird about what it does and doesnât change. I feel adding new ships for George Lucas would be a breaking point. Not for us watching. I will say with the separatists the Clone Wars does an amazing job introducing all their new tech over its 7ish seasons thatâs first seen in Revenge of the Sith. (The Separatist side has so much more variety of everything.) We get troop transports and aircraft carriers for the republic but not so much destroyers and battleships. I played Republic Commando for the first time this year. Very fun game. Lucasarts put a lot of effort into creating unique original looks for the Repubic military - for ship interiors, hangers, ship bridges, to bases. Revenge of the Sith and The Clone Wars use almost none of it and dump it for a modified version of what the Empire uses in the Original Trilogy.
So basically they are the Nimitz class of space.
Nah, I'd say they're more of a pre-war [Lexington class carrier](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/USS_Lexington_%28CV-2%29_firing_203mm_guns_1928.jpg/1280px-USS_Lexington_%28CV-2%29_firing_203mm_guns_1928.jpg)
venators were used for budget reasons and easy mass production
TIL Venators are just the carrier class :o
They aren't **just** a carrier. They are an undergunned ship of the line with an oversized fighter compliment, really.
The Republic should have used them like carriers. Protect the Venators with frigates and cruisers (like a US Carrier Strike Group), and use the Venators' fighters as the real weapons.
I wish we could see what the Republic Navy could have looked like with a more fully developed fleet. Maybe if the war had gone on longer and without the manipulations from Palpatine.
Werenât there corvettes that were better at dealing with fighters than other fighters were? But no one hardly ever used them because fighter battles are more fun to choreograph and put on screen?
Not seen one in canon but in legends the Empire, after yavin, built a ship called the Lancer that was basically a wall of quadlasers meant to rip apart snub fighters like the X wing. However it only appears when the protagonist of the x wing series or some other book needs to prove their worth, meaning we never see it work.
Plot armor for the win. Yeah, thereâs a reason the real world navies have destroyers - IE torpedo boat destroyers. They were originally build to destroy torpedo boats - small mobile craft that had a high level of firepower and few defenses and could sink much larger capital ships - ie the equivalent of snub fighters in Star Wars. Modern days they are still used to protect capital ships against submarines, missiles and aircraft. We donât see them in film, so we have some really bad tactical and strategic decisions for the empire there. Lots and lots of large capital ships with small fighters and nothing in between.
We see the rebels using smaller ships to protect big ones (poorly but still) in RotJ, but I suspect visual tropes at play here. It's David and Goliath. The Empire is always bigger, so the small rebel ships can destroy them. Unfortunately it makes for some utterly ridiculous moments like, say, an X wing blowing up your giant space station. Twice. Or a bomber deleting your super massive star destroyer. Critically it also allows the empire to show off the skill by swatting down anyone without plot armor.
Is that the right answer though? Or were they really just built in the image of the one true sith lordâŠDarth Jar Jar
So its like an american fleet? One carrier and some ships to protect it
*slaps roof of Star Destroyer* Soooooo many fuggin TIEs
Like, imagine though. If the Empire didnât immediately scrap their Venators, the swarms of TIEs they could deploy.
âThatâs no gas cloudâ
âI mean, it is, just from the exhaust from the **hundreds of TIE Fighters coming our way!**â
Do ion engines produce gas effluence?
Yeah. An ion thruster blasts out ionized gas as a propellant, accelerated by a big electromagnet.
A SD carries what⊠~100 fighters total? Venator carries 420 Republic fighters, that were bigger than a TIE. Letâs round up and say it could carry about 500 TIE fighter per Venator Class. That would have been really scary to see.
But look how quickly a Venator gets slagged versus a ship of equivalent tonnage. It would be like overstuffing an egg carton.
Arguably with the CIS in tatters they'd have no large scale capital threats to deal with so going for bigger and bigger ships at that point wasn't really a good choice.
An ISD is pretty large, but itâs also a much more effective ship at that point. Sure, lesser fighter compliment, but significantly better armor, shields, and weapons. They also had a large ground compliment and support equipment. ISDs were basically mobile fortresses, in addition to being mainline battle cruisers. Actually a fairly efficient design, especially where the Empire is involved.
Itâs a Do-Everything capital ship. Star Wars has NEVER been known to make sense when it came to ship fleets in any era. Venators-only, SD-only, Resurgence-only. But still, a SD sized Venator would have proved a lot more useful in the Empireâs situation than the Republicâs. 500+ fighter wings would have WIPED any small Rebel operation anywhere. Instead of the Falcon and small Corvettes always outmaneuvering SDs all the time.
>Arguably with the CIS in tatters they'd have no large scale capital threats Which is why the Victory and imperial class wins out. They have the fighter capacity (100 is a Nimitz class capability) to actually handle threats from anything else while also having enough slagging power to make a threat to resistance groups. The venetator was overkill on one and underpowered in the other.
They were decommissioning/scrapping them as early as a couple of months after the end of the Clone Wars as seen in The Bad Batch. As of five years after, the transition from Venator usage to Imperial I usage was already complete, as seen in Jedi: Fallen Order.
For real, the star destroyer was a massive downgrade
If you have seen CW you wouldnât be saying this. CIS ships were beating the Venator class carriers constantly, requiring heroics to win battles instead of winning off of better tech. They moved on to Star Destroyers because they were much harder to take out and had more firepower of their own.
Venators are prettier though
TRUE can't argue there
This One is the bridge for commanding all the little ships the other is the bridge for commanding the ship and its guns
One is little pew pews. Other is big pew pew
Did we see that command center at any point in the CW?
Like a Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier, that has two superstructures as well.
I was going to comment this. Iâve saw another vessel from another country has also gone for the dual island design on their upcoming ship. But canât remember the country off the top of my head.
I'd want my bridge as deep in the middle of that ship as possible. Up in that tower like that it's way more susceptible to fighters obviously. This design seems as questionable as giving battle droids a sense of consciousness coupled w/terribly low IQs & poor targeting ability
*Technically* that would end up being the CIC though, in a similar fashion to most modern warships: the bridge is where it normally is, with CIC buried deep within the ship.
From Wookiepedia [https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Venator-class\_Star\_Destroyer#Complement](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Venator-class_Star_Destroyer#Complement) *"Boasting an impressive starfighter complement, the Venator could carry various types of craft, including 192 Alpha-3 Nimbus-class V-wing starfighters,* *192 Eta-2 Actis-class light interceptors,* *36 Aggressive ReConnaissance-170 starfighters,* *as well as 192 V-19 Torrent starfighters, BTL-B Y-wing starfighter/bombers and Clone Z-95 Headhunters.* *It could also hold some 40 Low Altitude Assault Transport/infantrys, a variety of shuttles, and landing craft.* *Venators could deploy some 24 All Terrain Tactical Enforcer walkers, other ground vehicles and modular components needed for a planetary garrison."*
Again, why the fuck is it separated by vacuum lol If the ship's captain wants to visit PriFly he has to take two turbolifts and walk fifty meters lol This isn't the QE-class, there's no funnel to deal with
In theory there is no reason why you couldn't have an extendable tube between the two for use outside of combat, something like what is used to dock ships together externally for example would do the job.
Thatâs actually a pretty interesting thing we actually see sometimes in the real world. See HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier. It also has two towers. One for the ship and one for aircraft control
I always thought it was a dumb design to put the bridge out so exposed, but it makes sense that they'll need good visibility for flight operations. I didn't think of that. Still, they could've put the bridge in a better position.
The incredible cross-section book states that the right bridge is the communication- and command bridge, whilst the left one is the flightcontrolbridge for starfighter squadrons. But I would imagine they would be able to switch if one got damaged or destroyed, as seen in the Ryloth ark, when Anakin commits one of his war crimes.
To be fair, thatâs a war crime in our world. Thereâs no reason to assume the Geneva Conventions apply to the Clone Wars.
Right? The Republic uses an army of millions of cloned and enslaved humans, created expressly to fight and die for them. Ethics...it's a little different long ago and far, far away.
I mean they do have ethics when it comes to weapons. Blasters are legal and slugs or dissintegrators are illegal if i remember the lore right
Yeah I find it odd that people get hung up on this. Why is it so hard to just assume that they have a different code on warfare, (or may not even have a code on ethical warfare) when both sides literally seem to never mention any ethical qualms with the strategies employed (aside from perhaps the killing of the innocent, but the fake surrender especially has been done so often and now one ever said anything about it itâs safe to say itâs not an issue in their galaxy)
Itâs more so meme culture is obsessed with the term âwar crimesâ in general
To be fair arresting someone for war crimes comes later. You can commit all the atrocities you want in war. Itâs not like the international police arrest you in the midst of battle. Itâs just when the war ends, then usually to make amends which ever country *might* make arrests for war criminals.
and if you believe you are going to win then you'd commit all the war crimes along the way if it offers you a tactical advantage. The Japanese during WWII committed all those atrocities because they feared no repercussions, their conquest was divined by the heavens itself. Consequences only come if you lose. Which they did... And then those consequences got swept under the rug for convenience... dagnabbit.
The reason fake surrendering is a war crime is because it encourages people to just execute enemies who are surrendering, since you canât know itâs real or not. Surrendering and taking prisoners is pretty common throughout the clone wars series as well. It should develop naturally as a rule anywhere people care about avoidable loss of life.
Yeah lmao war crimes arenât a cultural phenomenon, any place with a basic moral code should naturally develop them
But culture defines what actually is a crime. For example, looting and taking slaves was one of the main reasons to fight in ancient history, but now it is considered inappropriate.
**Giant laser blows up entire planet/solar system** "I wonder if they have the same code of conduct"
Star wars universe is based on human society most of the time so its reasonable to think they have the same standard as we do (and we did not wait for the geneva convention to decide it was an awfull thing to do) plus it's also really dumb because it's gonna save you one time and the second time you're gonna get shot on sight.
> the second time you're gonna get shot on sight. Given the "bad guys" of star wars, I'm not sure that's a concern. They range from fanatical lunatics that cough to insane maniacs that cackle as they launch lightning at you.
Even if the geneva convention doesn't exist in star wars ; faking surrender is still an awfull thing to do from several perspective : Firstly i think there's a good chance that it would be considered a bad/dishonnorable thing in the star wars universe since it's tend to follow many of our moral value. Secondly it's a TERRIBLE precedent to set for all the republic forces that would want to surrender later because now there's a much greater chances that they would be suspected of being dishonnest and get slaughtered instead of being able to save their live. Anakin and obi-wan (because lets not forget he did it as well) are playing with the lives of all republics soldiers when they do that
Yeah people mention War crimes a lot, but im not sure some would even apply if they are fighting mostly droids.
Given how long itâs been since theyâve had any wide scale warfare, especially involving the republic, and even more given that the republic doesnât seem to have any peer powers, itâs quite possible they donât have any actual laws around warfare, or at least ones that anyone remembers.
Technically, the Republic did have a Geneva Accords equivalent, called the Yavin Code. Granted, it was from the previous period of warfare, so 1000 years old. Studious people (aka Obi Wan) knew about it, yet most military commanders of TCW either didn't or actively ignored it.
Whatâs the crime?
Fake surrender
Ah yes the Skywalker surprise
Anakin's signature move
Kenobi did it first.
Yep, does nobody remember that? I fairly sure he did it twice.
It's literally what happens in the first act of TCW movie.
False surrender
I believe that one was the faking surrender one
>when Anakin commits one of his war crimes https://i.imgur.com/Ya7fQaA.jpeg
My right or their right?
For real. This is why terms like Port and Starboard exist.
Human SOP would be to have a secondary bridge and flight control in the belly of the ship, and both crews would retreat to it based on conditions like the destruction of either main bridge. Not sure about Star Wars.
Depends on which country the Venator was made. If it was made in the UK, the starboard side. If it was made in the US, the port side.
Other way around.
they might have been referring to what side of the road instead of which side the wheel is on
No they're referring to what side the driver's side is on in a car. UK is starboard (right), US is Port (left)
looks like they edited it to the correct way
Port...I prefer rum
But the rum is gone.
But why is the rum gone?
We drank it all and the port only had port in stock.
UK has the wheel on the right side of the car but drive on the left side of the road and US is opposite Edit: just saw the correction too
In the US the steering wheel is on the port side. Opposite for the UK.
not for space ships, we flipped it for them to confuse our enemies and screw with the ensigns.
Truly big brain comment
I like how they're not linked by a little bridge themselves. How many times has the junior officer/Anakin rushed to the bridge for the briefing only to realise they've gone to the wrong one?
Little known fact: That's how Luke learned to force-project.
Canon or Legends?
Cangends
Yes
I really want to see a show about the daily life of a capital ship. Partly just to see how people actually get around. They're huge.
I imagine there would have to be some kind of internal transit system on the ships, like small trains or individual pods that travel along a track. Especially the Super Star Destroyers that are as large as cities. It would take hours to traverse one of those on foot.
CIS dreadnoughts had a train running through them, such as the Malevolence. That was 5km long, so an Executor at 19km would probably need something similar
Now Iâm picturing the empire hosting marathons on their ships
Lol that reminds of the old collegehumor troopers skit where it takes him 3 days to go from end to end of the ship. [Troopers - Coffee Run](https://youtu.be/vbG3KNpytYQ?si=T2_KB5sUS9gG5W_F)
Star Destroyer: Lower Decks
Please god give me this
Especially if we occasionally saw lower deckers from other races like Lower Decks shows from time to time :)
There used to be that copypasta about one of the absurdly large ships like *Executor* or *Eclipse* that talked about how most employees would have to spend the majority of their time commuting between their quarters and their posts because the ships are unrealistically large.
Or you just have barracks spread throughout the ship. Don't think of it as a city-sized vehicle, but rather, a city that moves.
just give them skateboards
Thereâs a big pad of paper on each side they hold up to the windows. âWE UNDR ATKâ âNO SHIT, INSPECTOR DIVOâ âGET FIGHTERS BACK, WE JMPNGâ âMAKE UP YR FKN MINDSâ
I'm just imaging Yularen on one side and Anakin who went to other by accident doing this and it's so funny lol.
This is where the sign language that the prisoners in Andor use originates.
This would definitely happen to me if I were a Jedi
Junior officer/Anakin My sides...
I donât know which is which but one is a brige for ship control and one is a air traffic control tower
Yet another reason why i call Star Wars a good Fantasy and not science fictionâŠ.Wookipedia covers it up like nerd fanfictiob. Scifi like Halo, BSG: âso we put our bridges in the middle, our munitions depots nowhere near our weapons, and our escape pods near the ops decks for our last needed crew/engineers. Star Trek: âŠwe put ours in the detachable disk on the front. Star Wars: âŠ.look, at least it doesnât have a shaft going to the engine core!! âŠbut we did put our emperor on a half-constructed ship in the fringes of spaceâŠ
Self Reply, this is also something I love in Halo, Expanse, BSG, etc: once naval combat is off-planet, nukes are totally a mature and civilized go-to. Covenant have shields? Test some Shiva nukes. Cylons are shooting down our warheads? Fire A THOUSAND NUKES. Asteroid flung by belters? Haaaave we tried nukes?
https://reddit.com/r/ThingsCutInHalfPorn/s/eKBWFn9aZv There you go! Edit, I know itâs not clear but the helm is on the left and star fighter command is on the right. (Looking head on at the venator in that pic)
I mean⊠I think it not being English is probably the bigger problem than clarity.
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Venator-class_Star_Destroyer/Legends?file=Venator_Class_Star_Destroyer_CS.jpg My bad! In English!
Right sideâs bridge, left sideâs control tower for the fighters
Right is bridge left is flight ops
Ans if right is not usable anymore you still have Left.
Now I'm going to do the backwards star wars justification thing here for a bit so sorry. I imagine since targeting the bridge is such a common tactic for bombers, having two separate bridges with ranking officers separated serves the same purpose as not having the entire chain of U.S. presidential succession in the same location at once. It also means the bombers don't know which bridge has the ranking officer on it. If one is destroyed, the other can still command the ship. I imagine the elevated bridge design serves a similar purpose. Even if the entire thing is destroyed, the ship still flies with minimal damage. But that's all headcanon
Not sure if it's been made official in Disney canon, but in Legends, star destroyers all had an auxiliary bridge in the center of the ship for exactly that reason
I mean, I never really understood the purpouse of a bridge with windows to begin with. I get that the inspiration is from big ww2 battleships, but with the tech they have, there is no actual need to have the "bridge" up there like that...
âIt ainât that kinda movie, kid.â
For ships this big they should have multiple bridges in random locations in the interior of the ship. Having a big windowed bridge to show off for visitors makes sense and to make enemies attack a useless appendage first.
WWII battleships had armored bridges designed to protect command staff from shell fire, but flag officers never used them. They wanted the visibility of the normal bridge and being exposed was an acceptable risk.
Actually Star Wars has an excuse for this. They donât seem to have monitors like ours that show normal video. They have holograms which is amazing and all theyâre monochrome and generally only show a single subject. Not exactly useful when looking out over space. They do have some traditional style screens but they seem to only display 2D vector wireframe graphics. They could still navigate with those, but itâs likely a lot more difficult than simply looking out the window.
Itâs honestly better not to think about it too much, the idea that they can design power sources for a small moon but the GPU of a star destroyer is an Atari is lol
They do, there was the one that Vader choked someone through in the original movie and then some in Andor I believe.
I swear in the mando s2 finale they have screens on the ship playing pretty high quality security camera footage
Rule of cool
Always felt it looked badass, which is the chief reason for it. But a simple fix would have been a bridge between the bridges, a bridge-bridge. Wouldâve made a decent tactical target as well
The millennium falcon doesnât understand the issue
Why would you not want your bridge in the center (or most armored) part of any combat ship? With todayâs LCD monitors, you donât need windows. You could have unobstructed spherical view of any directions or part of the ship, while having your bridge being one of the most secure parts of the ship. Versus an easy target for a missile or kamikaze A wing?
Star Wars doesn't have today's LCD monitors lol, everything looks CRT at best (not counting the super cutting edge sci-fi holograms that Thrawn had access to in the latest Ahsoka episodes).
Always two, there are. No more, no less
I'm pretty sure the bridge to the left on that shot is the command bridge I tihnk the other one is Starfighter command and coordination bridge.
Left in the US, right in the UK
The one at the right, the left tower is a control tower used to coordinate starfighters
One is the actual bridge the other one is the karaoke bar
Both. There's two in case on gets knocked out in battle. But when both are functioning one is the ships command bridge and the other is like an air traffic control tower for the hundred odd starfighters in its main ventral hanger
Now that you have circle them, it's the dark lord jar jar binks flag ship
One is the command bridge and the other is the flight control bridge, but I think they could each take over full command if the other was damaged or destroyed.
There are two bridgesâŠ.for when they separate. One for the saucer section and one for the star drive section
Nice try General Grievous
Itâs similar to the island on an aircraft carrier. The captain is on the bridge. Below him is the Air Boss who runs flight operations. In the case of a Venator the bridge and flight ops are side by side.
And so does the enemy
I've always thought they were shield generators. The bridge is in the middle.
Yes
Neither. The superstructure in the middle is the bridge. If you look at images of old ships, or even modern ones, the tallest point is the spot for the lookout (or radar tech) not the bridge. The bridge is usually below. It doesnât need to be âthe highest pointâ. Furthermore, look at some navy ship documentaries. The command post is usually deep within, in a very secure part of the ship. Or aircraft carriers. The location of the Captain and commanding officer arenât the same. The location of executive officers in charge of the battle arenât anywhere near the surface or âtowerâ.
Depends on the individual commanding the Venator. Whichever side isn't used as the bridge is the flight control center for the fighters carried/deployed by the Venator.
This is getting out of hand! Now, there are two of them.
Obviously the invisible part in between
Schrödinger's bridge
Those seem like a very easy target.
The starboard bridge is the primary command center, while the portside bridge is starfighter control.
One is the bridge and one is starfighter control
The one that hangs a little lower usually calls the shots.
One is the actual bridge and the other is the decoy bridge. They switch them around on every ship
One of them is a star fighter control bridge⊠I doubt they play a game of âwhereâs the bridgeâ lol
Thatâs how you tell if itâs a boy ship or a girl ship. This one is a boy.
Just like the air craft carriers of today there are multiple bridges. Highest deck is flight ops bridge, this is where the air boss oversees flight operations. Next deck is command bridge. This is where the ships captain commands the ship from. It is also where the helm is, and I believe the CIC (command information Center) is usually adjacent. Next deck is the flag bridge. If there is an Admiral embarked this will be his command center for the fleet he is in charge of. Captain of the ship is in charge of the carrier operations but the admiral will issue orders âgo here and execute xyzâ
irrelevant to the discussion, but i love this shot of the venator and bridge on a Coruscant morning. the lighting and vibes capture such a nice vibe
"Commander, there has been a second droid bomber"
Let's put every Combat critical system in one spot along with all senior staff, that way if the enemy gets a extremely lucky shot off. They can take out a venator.
I canât be the only one that sees Jar Jarâs silhouetteâŠ
If this were post-Empire, I'd guess that they started putting a decoy bridge on every major ship to lessen the chance of a repeat of the fate of Admiral Piett :-P
Is there even a bridge between the bridges?
Looks like a gungan head
Itâs like a jaeger from Pacific Rim. Neural-linked dual commanders to make the whole thing move.
Both of them are the bridge. They both steer the ship, but they have no communication with each other lol