For example, the Dreadnought was an old class of ship. It had fallen behind technology on so many things the Imperial Navy chose to replace instead of upgrade them. Ranma had most of those problems licked to where it became a premier warship, but in his first draft of partial Force meditative designing it was not yet flawless.
He'd had ample evidence of its failings from the plentiful pirate raids they'd done. First draft Flamberges, while far from weak, had disproportionately more firepower than they could stand up to. So while they could threaten larger vessels, without the advantage of surprise they couldn't stand toe to toe with them for very long.
Perfectly acceptable a flaw for a raider, but these were meant to be heavy hitters on the battle line. They had to be able to take damage as well as dish it out. There wasn't any way out of needing that. You were going to get hit sometimes, best to be able to take it.
Next problem he wasn't at first sure he could call a problem, but already it had endangered them. His designs gave them very small crews and, while excellent for most purposes, it made the Flamberge vulnerable to enemy boarding actions. There would be times when their droids were not sufficient to stop a foe, or the droids could be off taking another ship elsewhere and someone snuck an assault shuttle up to a Flamberge.
As with firepower, in boarding actions you have to be able to take as well as to receive. If he was going forward on making those a standard tactic of battle, sooner or later someone would find a way to fight him on those terms. Stormtrooper clones had ample experience fighting droids. They'd learn to surprise him, he was sure.
The second draft of the cruisers went much better. When he'd completed the redesign back on Alderaan he'd managed to upgrade their defenses, add armor, reinforce the hulls, and strengthen shields. Force-assisted design incorporated Carrack-style compartmentalization and modularization at next to no cost of internal space, greatly assisting damage control for his design. That aided him substantially in adding to their internal defenses, also, putting in automated weapons, chokepoint bunkers, remote operated defenses and even a few traps that could be activated by the captain on the bridge (but required the correct codes - he'd used enough Star Destroyers' anti-mutiny gasses to know better than to make them too accessible to just anyone).
Then there was their disturbing weakness toward enemy fighters.
Weapons had gotten deadlier in the years since the Clone Wars and armor had done things to catch up. He incorporated those. Places to mount laser towers were added without reducing other weapon emplacements, seeing as how he had the power to spare.
Getting the guns for the production line would be a separate issue, and a sore one at that.
So far his turbolasers were still old models that had fallen well behind the technology curve, but they'd captured enough high-end Star Destroyer models to make the Katana Fleet run cutting edge, extremely heavy damage with computer assisted targeting for use in a limited extent against starfighters. They were going in to receive that upgrade now.
Where he'd get enough of those to do the same for the rest of his burgeoning fleet was another issue.
This new upgrade gave a Flamberge the hull strength of an Impstar at a fraction of the size. Granted, the hulls on the ISD class weren't what they could be, with all that space and mass spent rather without genius and working out inefficiently, a problem compounded by a lack of spacedock quality safeguards. His Flamberges, on the other hand, once they'd received their second upgrade, would be built a bit like tanks: Solid and rugged and dependable, monstrously tough for their size.
Truth be told, once the second upgrade was completed he'd be getting something roughly equivalent to the ISD's fighting power in a much smaller package; cheaper to produce, too. And that was without mentioning that he was getting most of his materials free. Depending on the captains of both sides, a second-stage Flamberge came much closer to being able to fight one on one with an Imperial Star Destroyer on equal odds.
That made it possible to fight this war.
Of course, it was around this time that Naval planners finally got their way in the Empire, and a class of cruiser was being introduced to supplant all of the smaller, older warships currently being retired and recycled into Ranma's navy.
This new cruiser was modular, so that it could play supporting vessel to the many Imperial Star Destroyers planned for (and the reason this design got accepted was that supporting capability). Interestingly, in spite of power and size classing it as merely a medium cruiser, it was actually superior in firepower to the Dreadnoughts and other old cruisers it was going to replace. The mean little monster had much a stronger armored hull as well. Able to take the same pounding of a Victory Star Destroyer at much reduced size - it floated at less than half the length of the Victory.
Amazingly, it could be mass producible in a limited amount of time and at significant savings over comparable ships. It finally resolved an availability problem that had been plaguing Imperial Military planners as the old ships got phased out. What was most miraculous was it appealed to the needs of virtually every Admiral, Moff and General who was badgering the naval planning commission.
They called it the Strike Cruiser.
Production began at once. Although accompanying this announcement were dramatically increased numbers of older ships coming up for mynock-paste yard assignments, where Jedi agents saw to it they could not be reintegrated to Imperial service as rebel activities increased, simply by not being available to the Empire. Those ships would be elsewhere, serving the Jedi in increasing numbers.
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(Posted Tue, 11 May 2004 03:37)
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