They were also armed with proof of the secret research projects it had worked on, and were determined to make as big as stink as possible about that in the Galactic Senate.
Meanwhile, the Jedi moved forward with outfitting their cause.
Roughly a third of the large ship cargo transported in the galaxy was Imperial war material. The remaining capacity was filled by private goods. In short, even after stealing so many ships, the Jedi's total cargo capacity to date was not even close to the Empire's monthly capacity. Probably not even close to their weekly capacity.
It was a vast amount.
For a while they didn't need so much, being a small and localized operation. But anyone who plans to conquer territory either knows going into it that they'll have supply lines or they learn. To plan for those in advance was a mark of wisdom, as even if the combat fleet had little need for outside goods the taking of planets and bases would be impossible without the ability to support them, and the Empire's network would retreat with their naval ships.
So it was down to two main choices: either to build the ships or obtain them from other sources. Now a wise man would say that there was merit to both choices, and he would be right. But while Ranma's build capacity was stuck in combat warships he wanted to divert as little as he could to transport production, and he had many of the same ideas to apply.
Namely, to find ships nobody wanted and take them for his own. He could later refit them if he got the inspiration, or if it was required to better suit his needs.
So it was a Marauder corvette appeared out of hyperspace at one of the major battle sites of the Clone Wars, among many drifting relics and forgotten hulks. It then began to deploy shuttles. The presence of several shot-up Dreadnoughts was noted and logged for later retrieval (extent of their refit little mattering whether the initial cruiser were intact or not other than a slight increase in spare parts consumption) but what the engineers were here for was something else entirely.
They were actually here to scour the battle site for ships from the other side, specifically the abandoned hulks of the Trade Federation.
A Trade Federation Battleship was actually a converted Trade Federation container ship. Since the war those ships carried so great a stigma no one, not even criminals, would use them; most for revulsion of the beings who'd chiefly caused the war, others for fear of those who despised them enough to shoot on sight - a sentiment common among most officer rank stormtroopers, and therefore put the would-be pilot at risk from all Imperial ships. All Federation equipment was made illegal to support this sentiment, and it was too distinctive to hide. Which made it too great a risk even for Jabba the Hutt and similar criminal gangs.
Besides, for all the vaunted name of Battleship, their armament was extremely light for their size - on the level of a medium cruiser where the things had a diameter of almost twice the length of an Imperial Star Destroyer. Ancient, underarmed Dreadnoughts compared gun-to-gun for them and had significantly superior armor. Except these 'battleships' carried lasers where the Dreadnoughts carried turbolasers, far superior when one fights other cruisers. Even the wedge-shaped Republic Acclamator class Assault Transports carrying their clone armies and all of their gear from battle to battle mounted turbolasers.
The Federation Battleship was, in short, a failure as a warship of the line, at least in trading fire in naval engagements. It was comparable to Assault Transports in all but an overly-glorious name.
From the very first stages of planning to build a secret army, the Trade Federation's armaments committee had in mind to use their large commercial fleet of container ships for transporting weapons of war. But that was the core weakness. They had been designed for army, not naval, purposes. They could win a battle on ground but not in space.
And the Assault Transports were comparable at both.
There were other races, other organizations in the Separatist Movement, supplying their own starships and droid armies into the combined force used to combat the Republic, but those of the Trade Fed had a peculiar stigma and shortfall.
Unless you had ability to beat the other side's cruisers you generally lost space battles. Fighters of the day were weak enough armed that even the best had trouble taking out big ships. You needed cruisers back then to duke it out with opposing cruisers, and the TF Battleship didn't serve well in that capacity, gaining a reputation as warships as poor as their social stigma.
Further, only about one in twenty of those massive vessels had been converted into Droid Control Ships. The reason, besides as a cost-saving measure, was a security precaution. Like other space navies, the Trade Federation had as many ambitious bureaucrats and ship commanders as not. It was easier to keep them in check if they couldn't act independent of each other or Federation command.
But from as early as the blockade of Naboo enemies of the Trade Federation learned that to disable whole armies all that was required was to destroy the control ship. Their soldiers, fighters, and even the crews of the battleships would lose power and fall down when that was done. So no matter how large the fleet engagements, Republic forces had focused all their power on destroying control ships. That would effectively remove all Trade Federation forces from a battle, leaving the Republic ships free to combat other foes in the encounter. They could safely ignore the remaining Trade Federation relics.
So they did.
What this meant was Ranma's techs began scouring old battle sites from the Clone Wars, pulling out huge loads of Trade Federation equipment in perfect order, from entire (and many) battleships down to drifting fighters, just abandoned when they lost power after the Droid Control Ships were destroyed. Very few control ships were salvaged except in the most battle-ravaged condition.
Another reason they were finding so much in mint condition was salvage experts had a couple huge disincentives beyond the stigma. The federation droids, fighters and so forth had parts common only with other Trade Federation equipment, so there was no market for stripped parts after the war. Another item was the Destroyer Droids were common as bodyguards for the alien officers of the Federation, and after the Battle of Naboo the droids serving as bodyguards were upgraded to serve independent of a broadcast control signal to avoid a repeat of the tremendous disaster of their Viceroy's capture.
The destroyer droids had no hands, only blaster weapons, so the ships they were on the destroyers couldn't operate even if they had the programming to do so, which they didn't. But they would remain a permanent threat to boarding attempts.
No independent salvage team wanted to go spelunking in a dark and drifting ship knowing that some of the most aggressive and dangerous combat droids in the galaxy were waiting for them. It wasn't worth it. The ships were valueless and there was nothing on board worth risking your neck for.
Perhaps not to others, but it was worth it to Ranma.
They were container ships, and if stigma was a problem he could redesign their outward appearance. They weren't very good as warships, but that wasn't what he wanted them for. They were the largest, unclaimed fleet of self-escorting cargo ships available anywhere. As he could get the droids for free, and tractor the fighters back on board, they brought them along too. They'd figure out a use for them.
As for the destroyer droid still lurking on board, Ranma had captured large stocks of MSE mouse droids (scuttling little boxy things as seen on the Death Star in Episode IV), and releasing hundreds of these fitted with disabler guns (as used by Jawas on R2) into the ships cleared out the destroyers nicely. Their shields couldn't remain on when they moved, and the mouse droids just scuttled everywhere playing hit and run.
They lost some, but who cared?
As the ships were already fitted for droid crews it was awkward for anyone else to try to fit into the control stations. But that didn't matter. They had their own droids. Particularly useful were the Astromechs, once the reactors and power were brought back online the handy little droids controlled the necessary hyperjumps themselves.
Once brought back to his headquarters fleet, Ranma's techs would reprogram the battle droids, outfit bases and ships with their own short range transmitters, and use them as a labor force, running farms, industry and mines as well as crewing the cargo ships as they were designed to do. The sudden influx of millions of these droids reprogrammed as a labor pool gave Ranma's sectors an incomparable boost.
Suddenly every farm or factory he could set up was fully crewed and running at maximum capacity. Former Federation container ships were hauling ore, mine products and foodstuffs to his refineries and the products to his factories. Even his shipyards received enough extra hands to be running a hundred times their previous rates, as even despite program limits on the droids leaving their labor only semi-skilled that was enough for most tasks and freed up his human engineers for better things (or quick training until they could do those better things).
As the droids and container ships kept flooding in, requiring only minor efforts to get useful, their chief need became to have more work for them to do, so much they immediately began to lay plans to expand the territory, naturally in the direction away from the Empire, adding yet a third secret sector of space.
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(Posted Thu, 06 May 2004 22:23)
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