Knaar-class Corvette

[Apillis]

Official Name: Knaar-class LSE-10 Assault Corvette
Faction/Affiliation: Sith Empire
Classification: Corvette / Capital ship

Stock/Custom: Stock

Dimensions-
Height: 30m
Width: 65m
Length: 150m

Manufacturer: Muunilist Shipyards / Laitra Manufacturers

Energy Source: STM-20 Quad-Energy Core

Hyper drive rating: Class 4 (Class 12 backup)

Crew Necessity: 30 (7 minimum)

Armament:

• Light Turbolasers x3
• Low-Velocity Bomb Launcher***
• *Bomb Bay:
  
  • STM-010d Proton Bombs**
  • STM-05c Ion Bombs**
  • STM-07a Plasma Bombs**

[/ul]
* Bomb payload amounts and types vary pending mission(s)/target(s), the maximum amount of bombs the vessel can carry is naturally determined by its bomb bay weight capacity. See "Other" below.
** Anti-Capital Ship ordnance
*** Able to release/drop up to 15 bombs consecutively.

Passenger Capacity: 150
Cargo Capacity: 1000 metric tons
Consumables: 1 year
Hanger Facilities/Starfighter Capacity: N/A

Other:

• Bomb Bay: 500 metric ton capacity
• STM-07a Plasma Bomb, STM-010d Proton Bomb, STM-05c Ion Bomb each weigh 1300kg
• Maximum amount of bombs the vessel's bomb bay can hold is 385
• Additional armor plating on bomb bay doors
  

Statistics-
Speed: 9
Maneuverability: 3
Effectiveness vs. Starfighters: 1
Effectiveness vs. Capital Ships: 7
Armor: 5
Shielding: 5
Sensors: 7
Reliability: 3

Description/role:

((Picture by AdamKop))

One of the first vessels the Laitra designed for the Sith Empire, the flaw of its design was the thought process of primarily a few Laitra/Strata overseeing what would be an entirely droid crew. It was designed to operate with the precision of droid and Force-Sensitives running the entirety of the vessel. Thus while it was made to function at astounding speeds, highly acute sensors, solid shielding, and a strong armament capable of aggressively assaulting capital ships; because of these high performance functions, it also hinders its reliability as those high performance systems for a vessel this size tend to over tax it. Which is why for such a ship design it was done with the mindframe of droids and Force-Sensitives maintenancing and running the ship able to keep the vessel running at optimized levels, which an ordinary human, near-human, humanoid, etc crew may struggle to accomplish as keen or precisely. That is to say with an ordinary crew of such, for a well-trained crew of non-droid and/or non-Force-Sensitives could keep this vessel running optimally so long as they were each fully devoted to their tasks.

The purpose of this vessel is primarily to break through blockades while delivering a hard blow to a capital ship, or it can be utilized like many corvette capital ships, which is as an over-glorified escort ship or delegates vessel. But this was a vessel with assaulting or being able to barrage capital ships with proton bombs in mind, while also being able to carry a heavy payload and/or numerous military personnel. It was not ever intended to deal with starfighters and like any ship its size has no hope of out-maneuvering them--a smart captain of this vessel would do well to instead try to use its tremendous speed to outrun starfighters to swing back around for another barrage upon the capital ships or escape the scene altogether. A natural blockade runner because of its immense speed, it can carry a fair amount of supplies past enemy lines with great efficiency.

[Lemur, The Kool-Aid Guy]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't corvettes anti-fighter?

[Apillis]

Corvettes are simply a capital ship that's smaller than a frigate. Their role can be whatever a ship that size can handle or be utilized for or whatever you need it to be. Most times they're used for convoys or as escort ships, i.e. like Princess Leia's Corellian Corvette.

[ramboneil]

I thought hyperdrives below class 4 or 3 were highly restricted. Unless it works by channeling some force handwavium through super plot-advancing coils to speed up plabotnium propagation. In that case pftttt. Ignore me.

[Apillis]

Class 2 hypredrives you see on canon vessels for this era, some custom, some stock. I think you maybe thinking of Class 1, which is ultra-rare.

[Lemur, The Kool-Aid Guy]

It's listed as restricted under the forbidden aspects page.

[Apillis]

Oh super, another thing that was never really issue in canon has become an over-inflated one here. Yeah, that isn't getting old...

[Ghostie]

Usually Arh likes to have a set number for how many missiles you carry, like how many per launcher.

Other than that, I'd just make sure you have enough crew to fly the ship and man the guns and run everything. Thirty SEEMS a bit low, but I'm sure it's fine.

Speed also SEEMS a bit high for a capital ship. But it is a corvette. And I'm probably just not used to seeing nines in an app.

This looks like it could be a fun little ship. I like it, from the design to the function it looks awesome.

[Apillis]

The dimensions of the ship and crew size I actually pretty much ripped right off of the Corellian Corvette. XD

[Lemur, The Kool-Aid Guy]

Speed looks way too high for me. I think 7 should be about the ceiling for a capital ship, otherwise there's no point to starfighters and bombers.

[Apillis]

Bombers are typically slow. I'd suggest looking at the TIE Bomber as an example of that. And attempting to outrun starfighters via extreme speed is part of the point of this vessel as per its description. Essentially it can go really, really fast in a straight line, and that's pretty much it (*points at manueverability*). Also, there's nothing saying capital ships only move slowly. A ship's size doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be slow. Bear in mind Imperial Star Destroyers with their gargantuan size could outrun most freighters, frigates, and other capital ships, even some starfighters when they (Imperial Star Destroyers) were moving at full speed. The problem being because a ship moves so quickly it taxes its systems far more, hence why the very low reliability. The point of starfighters isn't necessarily to outrun every ship out there, that'd be ludicrous, the point of starfighters in the case of attacking capital ship is to overwhelm via shear numbers.

[Lemur, The Kool-Aid Guy]

What would be the point of dispatching bombers or fighters to intercept a capital ship if the ship could just outrun them? Draw an analog to modern naval combat. Your carrier launches a strike force with the knowledge that the target can't outrun them. If you aircraft carrier goes as fast as a fighter, then there's no point even having fighters.

[Apillis]

That's why they have carriers and capital ships to transport said fighters and bombers. It's the carriers and capital ship that intercepts said enemy capital ship, and it's the bombers and starfighters that swarm it at that point. My point being not all fighters are faster than capital ships. Size doesn't determine speed in space, it's the power of the engine able to push the mass of the ship through space. In cases of gravity, you have a very solid point. But in space there is no gravity and everything is weightless to very, very minimal weight. Thus what determines the speed of something to fly through space is the power of the propulsion able to push its mass through the vaccuum of space. Size at this point determines very little outside of how strong the propulsion system needs to be to generate the ship's acceleration which will determine its speed through space.

[Lemur, The Kool-Aid Guy]

Point is, asking for a 9 is ridiculous for a capital ship, unless you made everything else terrible to compensate. Sacrifices have to be made.

[A®heim]

Generally, yes, starfighters should be able to outrun the capital ships they are sent to intercept. However, a better analog would be between fighter-aircraft and slow-moving bomber formations as far as speed parallels go. After all, The "fighter" was only invented after bomber pilots got tired of shooting at one another with their handguns. A dedicated aircraft was invented with the express purpose of being able to chase down, outmaneuver, and destroy bombers which, in response, equipped defensive turret weapons. In the end, it works out much like fighter v. capital ship battled do in Star Wars--swarms of fighters destroying larger ships through sheer numbers.

That said, a few times along the lines, someone throws a technological curve ball and builds a bomber designed to never be caught be fighters in the first place. A lot of these managed that by having a higher flight ceiling than most conventional fighters, but sometimes by outright outrunnning them. For example, the XB-47 Stratojet could actually fly faster than pursuing F-80 fighters. The downside, of course, is that these craft have to devote a lot more space and power to their engines which greatly cut down on the core aspect of a bomber: firepower.

Now then, back to Star Wars. While it is possible to build a capital ship, especially a corvette, around the above concept, this particular design has a few flaws that could prevent that.

It has a very powerful hyperdrive for its size and 6 weapons with an extremely high energy requirement. A barrage from 6 turbolasers on a ship a fraction of the size of a destroyer usually mounting these weapons combined with the power being dumped into the engines would drain your reactors faster than you can say, "bring us around for another pass."

Your intended roles don't line up much, either, as the weapon loadout is that of a long-range pocket destroyer, but from the sound of it, it is intended to act more like a blockade runner, flying straight at the enemy in strafing runs or engaging in boarding operations. When boarding, you often have to deal with dedicated fighter screens to prevent such a thing and since you can't be simultaneously outrunning them and boarding a ship, you're left wide open for a couple fighters to just park in the hangar with you and blast away without fear of retaliation from the complete lack of anti-fighter weaponry (hangar-bay defense guns could be targeted by the turbolasers, but you really don't want a blast that size going off so close to your ship in an oxygenated environment). You also don't have any boarding-specific equipment like a reinforced hull, boarding tube, or docking claw.

Finally, you may want to hold off for the time being as the tech section is about to go through several major revisions, including one pending change that would greatly change how stats are decided on for ships in this size range.

[Apillis]

Hmmmmm. Would if I lowered the Turbolasers to Light Laser Cannons?

The boarding ship idea most came about because of its speed, but I didn't think of other starfighters taking pot-shots at it while sitting there as the boarding is taking place, which is pretty damn important the more I think about it. So scratch the boarding ship crap. <.< But I really want it to be an extremely fast blockade runner or something designed to blast past enemy lines (with a payload/supplies), can hit a capital ship hard and then just keep moving (because it's not something I want to stick around a warzone because that's not really its purpose). Suggestions, Arh? =o

Now the hyperdrive issue I really am going to need this ABCed to me, because maybe I'm just dense (I can concede to that). But, here's the thing, I get my ship ideas and designs literally off of canon ships of both the movie era, KotOR era, and TOR era (which is basically this era despite not being the same setting). So, when I see canon stock ships have these specs, I think to myself, "Ok, this works.", yet I'm told "Nope, it doesn't.", and I have absolutely no idea why. It can't be because it's "OP", why don't think it's OP? Because I mean, it's just a hyperdrive. It's just trivial things like this that makes me go "Wut?" some times despite on the norm I tend to back up Mod rulings. Because if it's OP, that suggests someone can godmode it, and until I see a thread where someone is (somehow) godmoding a hyperdrive in it--I'm just going to continue thinking restrictions on a Class 2 or 3 hyperdrive for capital ships to freighters as being... odd. So, I really just need the reasoning for that one explained to me, because I just don't understand it as a massively pedantic SW nerd when it comes to matters of canon.

[ramboneil]

You know, the ship could just carry boarding pods in some kind of bomb bay type thing. The ship accelerates as fast as it can towards a bigger ship, release a boarding pod into one of the hangers and GTFO like hell caught fire. Think of ODSTs only the pod holds maybe 8 dudes and replace the dropping from high orbit with a kind of crash land in the hanger and bust open the door to kill everything around it. You can still shoot things if you really need to, but it would be a bit more like dogfighting then a proper ship to ship thing.

Also, hyperdrive, I guess it's more of making sure there's at least a fair chance of escaping. If you have a say . . . class 0.12 hyperdrive, the other guy has no chance of escaping, even if he managed to make a jump. You track the jump signature and ambush the poor sucker, twice, maybe even three times before he goes down.

[Apillis]

The best hyperdrive in this era is a Class 1 hyperdrive (or something equal to it), there aren't any ships (that I'm aware of other than the Ebon Hawk and a couple other ships from KotOR to TOR era, which have Class 1 hyperdrives) that have anything more advanced than that. So the existence of a "0.12" hyperdrive would be impossible.

And well, quite honestly. I'm not big on the boarding ship idea, it was literally something I tacked on there because I thought it would work out with its immense speed. But Arh brought up a good point I didn't think of in regards to it.

Really, what I'm looking for with this thing is what I mentioned in my last post there.

[ramboneil]

Well, it could potentially work if it were just a bunch of guys in powered exoskeletons jumping off the ship. It would take maybe 30 seconds to 2-3 minutes depending on if it's just an infantry squad or a platoon. If they use the force or they have powered suits, they could take the fall.

[A®heim]

The problem with the official canon is that honestly the fanon has better continuity, which is just sad. Star Wars has a notoriously terrible continuity particularly when it comes to technology. They'll state in a source book that hyperdrives with a rating below 2.0 didn't come around until the Clone Wars era and then the Ebon Hawk has a class 1. They'll say that turbolasers are massive, anti-capital ship weapons that require incredible amounts of energy and then slap a pair of quad ones on a small freighter. Basically, what it comes down to is that we have to invent and adhere to our own technological scale and take each advancement as a case-by-case basis. It's the only way to keep the bad continuity from infecting us too much.

Anyway

I wouldn't just replace the turbolasers with light laser cannons--this would flip-flop your role from anti-capital to anti-fighter. The weapon configuration you have is decent, but I think I would tweak it slightly: downgrade the turbolasers to light turbolasers so you can devote more power to your engines. I would also eschew the assault concussion missiles in favor of faster, more numerous anti-fighter munitions to give you some defense against fighter screens you'll be passing through to get those strafing runs.

Alternatively, you could replace the turbolasers with rapid-fire medium laser turrets (and plant another trio of turrets on the bottom) which will give you good defense against light and medium craft and then replace the missiles with space bombs and basically treat the corvette like a massive, short-range strike bomber.