The logo did that thing at the beginning again lol, I have no idea why! It's not showing up in Premiere. I don't really mind though. Thanks for watching guys!
The Dreadnought seems like the backbone of a fleet, the jack of all trades meant to fill gaps, the mortar holding the more specialized classes together.
Indeed, give that fleet an interdictor (or several) and a few carriers and Lancer-Frigates and you have something that is nearly unbeatable, especially if you add some ISDs as well :)
Actually according to Wookiepedia and other online sources, the Dreadnaught class under the Empire was refurbished to hold 12 TIE class fighters. It would make sense that Thrawn would have rotated Katana Dreadnaughts to be similarly modified. I think I even remember flying off of a Dreadnaught in a couple of missions in the TIE Fighter game during the 1990's. Also the true advantage of the Katana fleet was reduced manning. 2200 personnel per Katana Dreadnaught versus the 16000 for a standard Dreadnaught vs the 37000 for an Imperial mk I or Mk II Star Destroyer. Given this requirement, given the Imperial Remnants' smaller size, it would be more cost effective to man the Katana Fleet for operations. Put roughly, you would be able to man nearly 17 Katana Dreadnaughts for the crew of one Imperial class. As to your other points, you hit the nail on the head about what made the Katana Fleet so dangerous. balanced capability, mission flexibility, and sheer number of hulls would make them nearly unstoppable as a unit and allow coverage of a large amount of space .
Ohkay so I know I'm super late, but I discovered the sw eu about a yr and a half ago, I've read the heir to the empire thrawn trilogy. But I don't understand how the katana fleet relates to Kyle katarn?? Wasn't he a good guy? Or were u just joking
Going to cite Grand General Cassio Tagge's words again for my thoughts on how a fleet (and military as a whole) should be. "The starfleet is a sea. It is endless, cannot be beaten, and, given enough time, turns even the strongest rocks to sand. Our larger plans cannot be based around any individual asset. Not a Death Star. Not you, Vader. Such assets are best used...as a force multiplier." Yes, the Executor did serve in a force multiplier role as flagship of Death Squadron, and still ended up as a juicy target for the Rebel Fleet, but I her loss was really more due to bad luck more than anything else. They'd lost their conning tower shields before the A-Wing took the bridge out, but the ship is still heavily armored and carries thousands of weapons emplacements, so if she did go down by a more traditional means at Endor it would've been a lot messier. Same thing at Jakku; the Imperial battle line was virtually impenetrable until they pulled that move with the Concord's tractor beam, in no small part because the Empire leveraged the Ravager's firepower very well.
Nice. I think the biggest thing playing EAW:FOC and the various mods made me realize was that the SSDs are incredibly useful, provided they are properly supported and screened. The same for ISDs. The Empire really should have had just an entire planet devoted to making lancer frigates and pinned two or more to every capital ship.
I love that you are looking into the Katan Fleet! I'd love to see the Gladiator Class Star Destroyed pitted against a Neb B or maybe something a little bigger.
The main reason the katana fleet was so important in the Thrwan trilogy wasn't because it was a lot of decent ships (Though that did help) It was because the ships let Thrawn shore up defenses on planets he held while still attacking the New Republic. Also for his stealth ship/shield trick.
@LEo Ryff Uh yeah. To paraphrase and quote: "wasn't because it was a lot of decent ships(insert safe comment here), it was because the ships let Thrawn (insert point about reserves)" Usually it wouldn't mean that a contradiction is in hand. But the way you worded your comment means you were explicitly arguing that the point 'having a lot of decent ships' wasn't the primary reason. Duh. So Chenault argued that the quality of the fleet is, in fact, the main reason. You said A-Chenault responds with B ("Nuh Uh"). Which contradicts what you argue. Well, semantics. But seriously, what-you-said is different from what-Chenault-said. Words have meaning. Who knew? ______________________________________________________ As for your point, I kind of disagree. I think quality is more important than the reserve function that you mention. logically-speaking, the act of finding reserves to build an advantage (your main point) can be fulfilled by Thrawn either building new ships, or using the functional ones he conveniently found lying around. Hell Thrawn could *technically* use trash ships to be that reserve, if they aren't fighting on the front lines (risky solution, but if it comes down to it...). Thrawn doesn't completely need the katana fleet to act as that reserve, but because of the katana fleet's qualities, finding the fleet makes that problem much easier to solve. Which is an advantage. In context of Thrawn's strategy, it's hard to see how available, functional ships wouldn't be an important requisite to success. Meanwhile, I think any armada can shit out a "reserve," with either trash spacecraft or waste valuable front-line star destroyers for that passive task. In other words, I don't disagree that those reserves are an important byproduct of the katana fleet, but I think that the katana fleet's decent-ish quality can't *not* be the reason why those dreadnaught-class ships can act as workable reserves! Your point is encapsulated in what eckhart says in the video. Relating those two competing variables, the function of the fleet vs. the quality of the fleet, I think quality is the factor that enables the mere function to become a significant advantage, especially since those dreadnaught ships seem general-purpose.
Da fuq? I was relating a point made in the novels. Both the New Republic and Thrawn wanted Katana fleet to bolster their forces and break the stalemate that they were in. Thrawn got most of them, which let him go on the offensive for his plans sooner. I never said they weren't decent ships or that fining the fleet was faster than building new ones, but the main reason they were a focus in the story was that both armies wanted them for the boost they'd give. That's why they were in the story. That was their plot coupon role. I said nothing contradicting the video and yet I have now received a small essay criticizing my comment? What?
Another brief point, is that because these were Katana fleet dreadnoughts, instead of standard ones, Thrawn was able to repair/crew/ and mobilize them even sooner with clones than he otherwise would have. Being able to deploy them against the New Republic even more unexpectedly quick. (just my 2 cents)
And at the time, hard numbers for the New Republic fleet had not been established. It was only later they were said to have some 2,000 ships in their strategic fleets, with implied separate forces for each sector.
Which SW faction had the best military leaders? Which SW faction had the best officer corps? Which SW faction had the best heavy vehicle? Mandator I/II vs Subjugator Class Heavy Cruiser Your perfect fleet VS all the forces at the Battle of Endor
Man i hated that scene where poe dameron destroys mandator's defenses,i mean come on disney!if u want to show that first order are scary and competent,don't screw things like that,the whole scene was cringy.
Darth Vader Don't forget that "hilarious" joke about Hux's mother before Poe took on the Dreadnaught. Definately feeling the intimidation that the First Order has.
Imagine this fleet during the Yuzzhan Vong war or during the battle of Coruscant, there could see the potential of this fleet at its maximum level, by the way, the dreathnougth class heavy cruiser is my favorite "real" cruiser of the saga
Oh I love the Dreadnaught, it is one of my favourite ships. It might be built for a different time and be a bit on the smaller side but it shows a lot of experience in ship design. Small yet filled to the brim with turbo lasers and none of the weaknesses of a star destroyer. As a result I love the Rebel Mk I class frigate, not the Mk II though. It looks nothing like a dreadnaught and that ruins the whole point. It looks like a mix of a Mon Calamari and an Basilisk design. Btw, has anyone noticed the similarities between the Katana fleet and the Eternal fleet?
In a West End Games RPG campaign that lasted for several years IRL, I had a character that I had mostly given over to the GM, but he let me have some fun with General Kane now and then. I had a fleet consisting of 3 Dreadnaughts as the core of the force, 4 Lancer frigates, 6 Corellian gunships, and 2 Nebulon B's. We had a total of 7 squadrons of fighters of various makes, I was always partial to having at least a squadron of Y-Wings. It was the Blackstar Fleet, named that because of a big blast mark on the nose of the Dreadnaught that I took as my Flag vessel (we eventually painted over the scorch to make it a proper design). I miss those days.
Fuck 12 fighters. 6 fighters are fine. Even if it's just to defend the parent Dreadnought, that is still a VERY strong defensive Buff. Remember, it DOES have its own laser cannons.
Their shape and size reminds of the smaller classes of cruisers(smaller than the Jupiter class Battlestars) used in the Colonial Fleet in Battlestar Galactica. Say between the First and Second Cylon War. Kind of like the Valkyrie Class Battlestar. Like the one William Adama commanded before the Galactica.
I really love the Dreadnaught-class, I think it could be a fantastic ship even during the Imperial Era if given a redesign to minimize its weaknesses and maximize its strengths. Also, building them with modern technology and materials would do wonders to increase their effectiveness. I feel such a Dreadnaught could be considered the counterpart to the Carrack and Vigil, in that it would be an extremely effective and well-rounded ship.
Let's upvote this one, peeps! :-) I would also love to learn more about the Hapes Consortium (especially their fleet). I only remember reading about them in the book "The Courtship of Princess Leia".
i really think they would be the great base for a film, a modified courtship of princess leia where luke and han are on coruscant, it would be a expanded universe aka legends film but still awesome, plus the hapes are a awesome pirate race spanning two hundredish worlds and combine asian african and european people in looks i think unless lucas went and made them mostly aliens, ooo or native americans
Aurora Uplinks in the novel The Courtship of Princess Leia, the Hapes cleaned up the Imperials. Their Battle Dragons did some really serious damage to the Imperial vessels. I agree with you, it would be awesome to see some of that Legends content on the silver screen. :-)
At the time that they were designed there were restrictions in place on the military which limited naval vessels to around that size, so at the time they were essentially dreadnaughts.
the HMS dreadnought was what could be considered the first modern battleship. Where previous battleships had primary armaments consisting of multiple guns of different calibers, the dreadnought was the first battleship to have what was called an all big-gun armament, with smaller calibers used only as secondary/tertiary armaments. Having its primary armament all the same caliber simplified aiming as well as logistics. Other innovations of the dreadnought type included super-firing turrets (where adjacent turrets were elevated above the other, saving space and improving firing arcs as well as allowing turrets to be mounted behind eachother), more advanced propulsion systems, as well as improved hull designs. Some of these features and concepts were carried over all the way into the last generation of battleship.
If you want to get a little wacky, the Daleks from Doctor Who would fare well against the Flood. They usually destroy all life on a planet they take over, or set up shop on a planet with little in the way of plant and animal life to begin. Their metal shells would be difficult for the Flood to penetrate and get inside. They would have no qualms about employing weapons that destroy most organic life, being confident they would survive it.
Protoss Psionics would be difficult to near impossible for the Flood to deal with, as it was something that the Zerg of the SC universe were terrified of (and set the whole plot into motion)
In Star wars rebellion(game), these ships had one fighter squadron and one troop regiment if I recall correctly. The Victory class was a step up with 2 squadrons.
A group of Dreadnought Cruisers can be very affective, especially when there's 200!! As you say their good against both fighters and capital ships, answer when packed together just put out massively over whelming fire no matter what it's going up against. Very useful only thing like you say definitely abit on the slow side. Awesome video on an Awesome fleet!!! P.S. as you say some fighter carrying ability would be extremely useful. Cheers
I don't think it would make a difference, I mean the rebels had like 12 cruisers (mc-80s) as far as I could remember and thran had like, 5-6 star destroyers... also Admiral akbar is competent enought not to be fooled by thrawn
GhostOfMuliz Thawn’s fleet is the Seventh Imperial Starfleet. If it’s the same one he used to attack Atollon, then it should consist of: 6 Imperial-class Star Destroyers, including Thrawn’s flagship: the Chimera A full TIE fighter compliment for each ISD 2 light combat cruisers 2 Interdictor-class cruisers
I frame EVERY single one of your videos in the reference of playing Star Wars Rebellion. 200 dreadnaughts would beat anything. BTW, the the game Rebellion, they are updated to hold one squardron of fighters. Great video!!!
In Star Wars Rebellion - the old school strategy game - the dreadnought was the fastest and most efficient way to get turbo lasers as the republic. On the harder difficulties you basically had to amass massive fleets of dreadnoughts while you teched up.
Large fleets of smaller ships give flexibility and better firepower. This can be seen in all modern navies, battleships were only useful when they effectively invulnerable to the attacks of smaller ships. When naval artillery ruled the ocean battleships were needed to fight battleships. Once smaller combatants were able to effectively engage their larger counterparts it has become rare to find anything larger than a light cruiser in any navy. The exception being of course platforms designed to project air power whose size is dictated by their function rather than combat potential. The other part of the equation is unit cost. Fielding multiple platforms for the cost and equivalent combat power of a single large platform is a tactically and strategically sound choice. As Stalin is often quoted “quantity has a quality of its own”
Gerardo Reyes it's pretty decent,but you wouldn't wanna try to use one of those ships to go head to head against a capital ship like let's a calamari class cruiser but it is pretty damn balanced
Hey, have you seen a youtuber called ResurrectedStarships? He likes Dreadnaught Class Heavy Cruisers just as much as you do. He even made a few custom c3 models for it, even one pirate refit that is similar to what you wanted to add to them, some ability to carry fighters.
The Thrawn trilogy mentions that three Katana/Dreadnaughts were the rough combat equivalent to an Imperial Star Destroyer. This is demonstrated in a battle where six take on two ISDs and inflict heavy damage before withdrawing, suffering little significant damage in return. 200 of them would have torn through both fleets at Endor and (assuming they could take down the shield) outmaneuvered the half-constructed DS II and taken it down as well. However, it's likely casualties would have been significant, if not heavy.
Eck you should do a video where you theorize how a live action Star Wars series would go and possible topics for the show. Like the canon book about Thrawn, for example.
I want to see a four way battle between the best of Thrawn's fleets, the best of Ackbar's Fleets, the best of Tranch's fleets and the best of Yularen's fleets. all in one battle.
At 600 meters this ships was basically the largest warship allowed after the Ruusan reformation. On the issue of fighters, there was a hanger big enough for the Falcon to land, so they could defo house a starfighter force.
I think that a single large ship such as an executor is useful as they will generally draw fire away from more vulnerable ships such as interdictors as the enemy will have to focus on it rather that softer targets or it will decimate an enemy fleet. It's a catch twenty two- they target important targets like an interdictor that is stopping them escaping, take heavy lossses or get wiped out, or target large targets like an executor then finally take it down only to find neglecting the other targets are still there and have decimated the enemy fleet Edit: typos
I always thought the empire was crazy for not having smaller ships among the Star destroyers that were specifically designed as anti-fighter ships; considering the rebellions fighter advantage over the empire (fighters with shields hyper drive). Anytime I play is the empire on the game ‘Empire at war’, I always make sure to include a bunch of tartan class cruisers with my fleet.
I mean, this is an amazing idea despite it's vulnerabilities. But I am in more favor of Droid style automation. But this is a decent mix of the two doctrines.
Totally with you on the fleet design idea. Building a flexible, multi-staged fleet with many ships is much better than building a fleet of only a few ships based around one large super-ship. Super ships go down too easily, because they are the perfect target. If I had a choice between the Imperial Fleet at the Battle of Endor and the Katana Fleet, it's Katana Fleet all the way. Though it would have been nice if Katana Fleet could have had a few fighter squadrons to fly interference, or carry bombs in. Some V-19's, or TIE's, or something.
I think a big part of why you need a flexible fleet is if you're an expeditionary fleet or are a rebellion. Big ships with huge firepower make a lot more sense if you're a peacekeeping or planetary fleet. Defense vs. offense.
This is a late comment but I wish to point out a few things: a) Adding 12 Tie-fighters is what the Empire did to their old (non-Katana) Dreadnoughts in Legends and I agree with Eckart that it is a smart move that makes the ship more powerful. b) Dreadnought is one of my favourite SW ships. I like the fact that it doesn't have an obvious and vulnerable bridge like many of the SW ships have, I like the look of the ship and how it is a decent sized all rounder rather than a massive SUPER ship. I specifically like how the Katana fleet version manages to cutdown the massive amount of crew that the original design had. Granted that by the time of the rebellion the Dreadnoughts in use have droids to help cut down the amount of "live" crew by half at least. ...Though at least in Legend-canon the lack of automation and slave-systems was explained by fear of something like the disappearance of the Katana fleet happening again I am a bit amused at how much crew SW ships need. c) My take was that Katana fleet changing the situation had more to do with the clones. The war was waged on galactic scale and the access to rapidly grown clones helped the Empire-remnant raise troops faster than the New Republic. Thrawn was already pumping out ships as fast as possible from Imperial shipyards, buying any combat-capable ship he could from neutral merchant and ship-thieves like Ferrier but he knew that he still wouldn't be able to get ships faster than he got crew for them. Suddenly getting almost 200 Dreadnoughts from the Katana fleet was a massive boost to his fleet and more importantly it was a quick boost compared to the constant trickle of new ships from other sources.
I really like where you're coming from here, agree with it pretty much across the board. I think Katana-fleet resources and the tactics they allow would have been especially helpful during the Ving invasion, the way their defenses work (singularities that can't be overloaded, but can be overcome by volume of fire that they can't catch) would be especially vulnerable to swarms of ships out putting decent firepower. Combine this with the fact that the Vong have trouble coordinating large groups because of the nature of their communication tech, something Katana Fleet ships are extremely good at, and my bet would be you could easily overwhelm most Vong warships with ~20 Katana dreadnoughts at the most. Thier PDC could handle the uncoordinated coralskippers and they could encircle capital ships and tear them apart.
yes the dreadnaughts were older, but it wasn't until the victory destroyers that any ship could stand against them. i envision my refit with "newer" engines and added maneuvering thrusters, + a bsg styled hanger pod ventral mounted with additional laser cannons and a small reactor for them. though this takes MONEY. another idea would be to arm it with ion cannons as primary weapons, and ancient naval ordinance of something like the british 12"/50 Mk XIV, us 5"/54, and russian AK 630. of course all would be auto-loading. this load out would be great for defense and the saved power from the reactor could be force fed to the engines and shields. but that's just my opinion. :)
I think you could make the case that if the Katana fleet was designed with low crew requirements in mind, putting a star-fighter squadron on every cruiser wouldn't be the best idea. Those star-fighters would require pilots, repair crews, fuel crews, ordinance crews, support personnel, etc. Its not just a matter of fitting the fighters, its a lot of overhead to get a squadron up and into battle.
Different legends sources give the dreadnaught a complement of 12 TIE starfighters, but they mainly refer to the upgraded and refitted versions so saying they don't carry starfighters would be accurate if you're talking about the pre-clone war era katana fleet, but for the modern upgraded dreadnaughts the 12 TIE fighters (or I guess anything of comparable size) is something to keep in mind.
I actually really love the Dreadnought Heavy Cruiser. Aside from it being old, there really isn't any glaring weakness. It doesn't have any particularly glaring blind spots, it's weaponry was balanced and suited to a wide variety of situations... all in all an incredibly effective little vessel. Which is why I would much rather have 200 small but powerful vessels than 1 massive vessel and 10-20 smaller vessels. It's just more versatile and frankly capable of a wider variety of tactical maneuvers.
another thing thats important is the number the katana fleet had 200 ships 8 of those where taken and sold off by capt. hofner who was selling them to garm beliblis. garm refit them and gave them better and modern upgrades. Thrawn also did the same as he had more resources from the imperial remnant and a steady stream of clones to crew them. plus of the original 200 8 where sold to garm while by the time the NR got to the site only 15 where left and one of those was used to ram and destroy a star destroyer meaning 14 where left meaning a total of 22 of the 200 where in the NR's hands and the remaing 177
There was a old game call Star Wars Rebellion. In it you could build your fleet. Both Empire and Rebel factions could build the old Dreadnaughts. I did a game were I built only Dreadnaughts playing the Rebels (those Dreadnaughts could carry one squadron of fighters and one regiment of troops if I remember right). In one fight I had 6 Dreadnaughts against 1 Star Destroyer and 2 escorts (a couple of Carrack class light cruisers i believe). My fleet was wiped out and i quickly changed strategy. However, in that game, the Dreadnaughts did not have very good anti-fighter firepower as the designers consentrated on their anti-ship firepower. Ships could be classified as good anti-ship or good anti-fighter, not both. So when the Empire fleet wiped out my fighters (the Carrack class was anti-fighter), my ships had to deal with TIE's and Carracks distracting my ships from concentrating on the Star Destroyer. In further playing the game many times over, I did find that building and using Super Star Destroyers (and even the Death Star) was counter productive. While playing the Empire and fighting in one of the Sectors (about 10 systems in one area) I and the Rebels were going all in. My entire fleet and their entire fleet was fighting world to world, and i was loosing the sector system by system. My fleet was centered around Super Star Destroyers (about 4 to 5) supported by Star Destroyer II's, Victory Star Destroyers, and Interdictors with a few Lancer Frigates in tow for fighter defense. I would inflict enough damage to hold the Rebels from advancing again for months, but I would need this time to replace my loses (usually all my SSD's and most of my SD II's). I finally got smart as my SSD's were fire sponges and would be taken out first, quickly reducing my firepower. I replaced my SSD's with more SD II's (about 8 to 11 more than I would normally have). Fighting for the last system I still held in that sector, my fleet finally won the fight and I completely destroyed the Rebel fleet allowing the retaking of the entire sector in only 2 months. In closing, yes a larger number of more capable ships does trump a small number of large powerful ships. I never built another SSD in any other time i played that game and even stopped building the Rebel equivalent call the Bulwark class Battle Fortress.
An alternative to adding bigger hangars would be to use CW era Droid Fighters and Hyena Bombers- they can all ride on the outside of the hull and launch as soon as the ship drops from hyperspace. That would make a pirate or Imperial Dreadnought a force to be feared.
I'd say that the Katana fleet was meant to supplement existing republic defenses pre clone wars. Most planets then had their own planetary defense forces which consisted of everything from huge battle cruisers to small snub fighter forces depending on the money the planet had. Having the katana fleet slaved all together made it much easier for the judicial forces of the Senate to respond to calls for help to poorer planets
The Dreadnought is the ultimate example of a ship designed to fight a war of attrition on a galactic scale; it's designed to be the backbone of a larger mutually supporting fleet of ships without being weighed down by the unnecessary equipment needed for transporting a ground combat contingent or fighter squadrons (there are dedicated ships for that), and its all built to the same standardized design for you can mass produce them, quickly repair them, and easily train the crews. Compare it to a Star Destroyer which is basically a mobile base that just happens to be a warship as well, designed with the idea that it needs to confront every issue from a local uprising to an enemy raid in a system or even a whole sector on its own. To paraphrase another Sci Fi franchise: The Star Destroyer is a weapon of terror, its meant to intimidate the enemy; the Dreadnought is a weapon of war, its meant to kill the enemy.
Even with a quarter squadron of 3 medium to heavy snub fighters on each Dreadnaught you would have 600 snub fighters or 50 squadrons backed up by or backing up 200 heavy cruisers, that's still impressive.
The dreadnaught is the kind of ship with a almost perfect design. It may be outdated but that's because nobody in universe ever seemed to care to update the design more to keep up with newer tech. The Katana fleet seems to be the last real upgrade the ship got before it was mostly discarded in favor of poorer designed capital ships.
So the Katana Fleet is basically what I tend to do in RTS games, take a mid-tier well-rounded unit with no glaring weaknesses, spam like 200 of them and lob them in the enemy's face xDD
As far as I remember the stats from the D6 SW RPG, the Dreadnought class was able to carry up to 12 Starfighters, the hangar bay is located in the underside of the ship.
Yes the the Katana variant did not, but you said Dreadnought's in general didn't. If given time they could have been refited as well but I think Thrawn focused on gettign their weapons serviced first. ANd I think you overplay the Dreadnought strength. SHe's a decent ship and very good for supporting larger ships but the Katana Fleet vs the Endor Fleet. Nope. The fleet would have more fighters. more turbolasers and better shields. The were important during the Thrawn campain because of the shortage of ships. Hell the NR coverted some warships to cargo ships because so many cargo ships had been destroyed.
dreadnoughts originally carried a squadron of fighters and did not come with ion cannons, those were modifications made by Bel Ibis on his dreadnaughts, the stats in games released soon after the Thrawn trilogy supported this point
I can’t be the only one who sees the inspiration for the Dreadnaught’s design. Slap on a pair of flight pods and you have a battlestar ready to wreck some toasters.
i think having a few large ships is important to provide heavy fire power in a concentrated package but they should be supported and supplemented by lighter more flexible ships. this actually follows sea based naval doctrine you only have a handful of your premiere ships but they are heavily supplemented by smaller ships which provide additional fire and screening for the larger ships.
forgot to mention all ships should have regular refits to keep them as capable as possible and should be retired or given another mission if the design is completely antiquated for a battle fleets useand there is another craft that fills the roles it filled.
One of the most versatile and effective ships in the entire Star Wars universe. I would have loved to see a modernized Dreadnought-class in canon, they would have been quite a good asset for both the First Order (they would have been quite a flexible support ship in conjunction with the Resurgent-class) and the Resistance (with a lot of automation, to compensate their lack of personnel). Instead we got some ludicrously specialised ship which make very little sense, both strategically and tactically speaking (like the Mandator IV, when the Bellator required only incremental improvements to keep her up to date)
Hey Eck, two things. After watching your quick video on the Last Jedi it made me reconsider how i felt about the new saga. I re-watched both episode 7 and 8 and have to say you are pretty spot on about the 8th movie unfortunately... My proposition for videos today are as follows. I would love for you to talk about the in universe science behind a hyperspace ram and if it is indeed possible to ram 1 let alone several ships through hyperspace. My second idea is for a new series. I would love for you to take an iconic "supercapital" ship like the eclipse, give it a small escort fleet and pin it against a fleet that would leave the playing field even. The fleet make up and size would be completely up to you; whatever you feel stands a chance against the super's. I personally would love to see videos like this because they would help me understand the power of these supercapital ships and I have a feeling you would have very interesting fleet composition and dialog
Actually one of the last surviving Katana fleet dreadnaughts (now FULLY rigged with droidbrain) was used by Grand Admiral Pelleaon at the battle of Borask as a decoy to free imperials captured by slave ship at Bastion. the ship actually lasted slightly longer then expected even then. I would say if build by an up-to date technology from the start - with a place for fighter complement but keeping the design - it could be absurdly good vessel. Even when Thrawns ships - recommisioned by army of cloned flashlearned best empire could had technicians - they were an issue to tackle for Mon calamari cruisers- their rebuild was done by best avaiable technology of the time.
3 Dreadnought-class Heavy Cruiser vs Imperial-I class Star Destroyer or Imperial-I class Star Destroyer vs Keldabe-class Battleship or Keldabe-class Battleship vs Kandosii-type Dreadnought or Kandosii-type Dreadnought vs Keldabe-class Battleship or Kandosii-type Dreadnought vs Imperial-I class Star Destroyer.
Weapon standard compliment: 10 turbolaser cannons, 20 quad turbolaser cannons, & finally 10 turbolaser batteries! With the slave-rigging, a crew of 2,000 can run the entire fleet! Refitted Dreadnaughts can be outfitted with a flight deck, which includes a squad of 12 Tie-fighters! You need to fact-check your Intel! You were including info on 'Rebel Assault Frigates', which are the Rebel Alliance's version of a refit for the Dreadnaughts! The hyperdrive is class 2(slow), & it's hull & shields are older tech, which makes them much weaker than new standards of armor & shields! However, they are alot like bees! A few won't hurt, but a swarm will kill!
An idea for a future video. Maybe a little far fetched, but the city of Atlantis from Stargate: Atlantis vs 2 Imperial II Star Destroyers, or something like that.
Grand Admiral Pellaon used one of the last Dreadnaughts empire had left in battle of Borask as a decoy to deliver Jedi Strike team onboard Yuuzhan vong slave carrier... he generaly prefered flexible forces like Thrawn... sure he was in love with Chimera but he also liked victory class destroyers...
Split it up into groups of twenty and add in a few dedicated carriers and you have one hell of a harassing group. Lightning raids against shipyards to deny reinforcements from being built/ repaired and you could nibble the new republic to death.
I don't think the Katana Fleet with TIEs or A-wings could have done much during the Fall of Coruscant, but 200 Dreadnaughts at the follow-up Battle of Borleias, or Battle of Ebaq 9, BOTH would have done nicely there
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The logo did that thing at the beginning again lol, I have no idea why! It's not showing up in Premiere. I don't really mind though. Thanks for watching guys!
I liked your review of this legendary fleet. I also liked your re-visit of The Corvettes in the top 5. Good vid.
EckhartsLadder
Love the channel 👍
EckhartsLadder I think with Thrawn in command the Katana fleet could defeat the Covenant fleet at Reach.
I would have at lest 4 to 800 dreadnought class heavy cruisers in a 10 to 50 fleets.And half will have fighters in them.
EckhartsLadder How cool would it be if there was a game where you could walk through these ships and fly them. Maybe even with other people
Ah the Dreadnaught-Class. The Toyota Corolla of warships.
so one speedy boi
Yes.
also looks a lot like the Battlestar Galactica especially the front
Reliable, easy to operate, and frequently stolen.
those traits tend to go hand in hand.
The Dreadnought seems like the backbone of a fleet, the jack of all trades meant to fill gaps, the mortar holding the more specialized classes together.
Yeah, it's versatile.
Yeah in empire at war they saved me a few times,. In large groups they rock.
Indeed, give that fleet an interdictor (or several) and a few carriers and Lancer-Frigates and you have something that is nearly unbeatable, especially if you add some ISDs as well :)
Actually according to Wookiepedia and other online sources, the Dreadnaught class under the Empire was refurbished to hold 12 TIE class fighters. It would make sense that Thrawn would have rotated Katana Dreadnaughts to be similarly modified. I think I even remember flying off of a Dreadnaught in a couple of missions in the TIE Fighter game during the 1990's.
Also the true advantage of the Katana fleet was reduced manning. 2200 personnel per Katana Dreadnaught versus the 16000 for a standard Dreadnaught vs the 37000 for an Imperial mk I or Mk II Star Destroyer. Given this requirement, given the Imperial Remnants' smaller size, it would be more cost effective to man the Katana Fleet for operations. Put roughly, you would be able to man nearly 17 Katana Dreadnaughts for the crew of one Imperial class.
As to your other points, you hit the nail on the head about what made the Katana Fleet so dangerous. balanced capability, mission flexibility, and sheer number of hulls would make them nearly unstoppable as a unit and allow coverage of a large amount of space .
Slaving 200 Dreadnoughts to each other was the only way the Republic could hope to match the power of Kyle Katarn.
Ohkay so I know I'm super late, but I discovered the sw eu about a yr and a half ago, I've read the heir to the empire thrawn trilogy. But I don't understand how the katana fleet relates to Kyle katarn?? Wasn't he a good guy? Or were u just joking
@@kevinvassago Kyle Katarn is the Chuck Norris of Star Wars, with the same style of jokes.
@@spamviking 😂😂😂 truu, he even has that chuck norris look to him
Going to cite Grand General Cassio Tagge's words again for my thoughts on how a fleet (and military as a whole) should be.
"The starfleet is a sea. It is endless, cannot be beaten, and, given enough time, turns even the strongest rocks to sand. Our larger plans cannot be based around any individual asset. Not a Death Star. Not you, Vader. Such assets are best used...as a force multiplier."
Yes, the Executor did serve in a force multiplier role as flagship of Death Squadron, and still ended up as a juicy target for the Rebel Fleet, but I her loss was really more due to bad luck more than anything else. They'd lost their conning tower shields before the A-Wing took the bridge out, but the ship is still heavily armored and carries thousands of weapons emplacements, so if she did go down by a more traditional means at Endor it would've been a lot messier. Same thing at Jakku; the Imperial battle line was virtually impenetrable until they pulled that move with the Concord's tractor beam, in no small part because the Empire leveraged the Ravager's firepower very well.
Nice. I think the biggest thing playing EAW:FOC and the various mods made me realize was that the SSDs are incredibly useful, provided they are properly supported and screened. The same for ISDs. The Empire really should have had just an entire planet devoted to making lancer frigates and pinned two or more to every capital ship.
GintaPPE1000 Thank you.
I love the Dreadnought class. It's so balanced and realistically designed.
Of all the star wars RUclipsrs I think you realy are the only one to do legends justice
I love that you are looking into the Katan Fleet!
I'd love to see the Gladiator Class Star Destroyed pitted against a Neb B or maybe something a little bigger.
Do a video on the Outbound Flight (attempt 4)
Dont do a video on the outbound flight (attempt 1 )
Do a video of R2-D2 repeatedly trolling Milenko
I think the better question Eckhart is, what if the Katana Fleet had the high ground?
The main reason the katana fleet was so important in the Thrwan trilogy wasn't because it was a lot of decent ships (Though that did help) It was because the ships let Thrawn shore up defenses on planets he held while still attacking the New Republic.
Also for his stealth ship/shield trick.
.....Duh? Not that that contradicts anything I said, but duh?
@LEo Ryff
Uh yeah.
To paraphrase and quote:
"wasn't because it was a lot of decent ships(insert safe comment here), it was because the ships let Thrawn (insert point about reserves)"
Usually it wouldn't mean that a contradiction is in hand. But the way you worded your comment means you were explicitly arguing that the point 'having a lot of decent ships' wasn't the primary reason. Duh. So Chenault argued that the quality of the fleet is, in fact, the main reason. You said A-Chenault responds with B ("Nuh Uh"). Which contradicts what you argue.
Well, semantics. But seriously, what-you-said is different from what-Chenault-said. Words have meaning. Who knew?
______________________________________________________
As for your point, I kind of disagree. I think quality is more important than the reserve function that you mention.
logically-speaking, the act of finding reserves to build an advantage (your main point) can be fulfilled by Thrawn either building new ships, or using the functional ones he conveniently found lying around. Hell Thrawn could *technically* use trash ships to be that reserve, if they aren't fighting on the front lines (risky solution, but if it comes down to it...).
Thrawn doesn't completely need the katana fleet to act as that reserve, but because of the katana fleet's qualities, finding the fleet makes that problem much easier to solve. Which is an advantage. In context of Thrawn's strategy, it's hard to see how available, functional ships wouldn't be an important requisite to success. Meanwhile, I think any armada can shit out a "reserve," with either trash spacecraft or waste valuable front-line star destroyers for that passive task.
In other words, I don't disagree that those reserves are an important byproduct of the katana fleet, but I think that the katana fleet's decent-ish quality can't *not* be the reason why those dreadnaught-class ships can act as workable reserves!
Your point is encapsulated in what eckhart says in the video. Relating those two competing variables, the function of the fleet vs. the quality of the fleet, I think quality is the factor that enables the mere function to become a significant advantage, especially since those dreadnaught ships seem general-purpose.
Da fuq? I was relating a point made in the novels. Both the New Republic and Thrawn wanted Katana fleet to bolster their forces and break the stalemate that they were in. Thrawn got most of them, which let him go on the offensive for his plans sooner. I never said they weren't decent ships or that fining the fleet was faster than building new ones, but the main reason they were a focus in the story was that both armies wanted them for the boost they'd give. That's why they were in the story. That was their plot coupon role.
I said nothing contradicting the video and yet I have now received a small essay criticizing my comment? What?
Another brief point, is that because these were Katana fleet dreadnoughts, instead of standard ones, Thrawn was able to repair/crew/ and mobilize them even sooner with clones than he otherwise would have. Being able to deploy them against the New Republic even more unexpectedly quick.
(just my 2 cents)
And at the time, hard numbers for the New Republic fleet had not been established. It was only later they were said to have some 2,000 ships in their strategic fleets, with implied separate forces for each sector.
Which SW faction had the best military leaders?
Which SW faction had the best officer corps?
Which SW faction had the best heavy vehicle?
Mandator I/II vs Subjugator Class Heavy Cruiser
Your perfect fleet VS all the forces at the Battle of Endor
Providence class Carrier vs Harrower class Dreadnought. Attempt #6. Make it happen.
Do you think that the weapon systems are on the same level? Just if I'm alone in thinking this.
ANUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!! CHEEKI BREEKI IV DAMKE!!!!!!!!!!!
Holy crap those look like battlestars in the thumbnail.
Just finished these books and honestly this answered some questions I had, thanks man
Man i hated that scene where poe dameron destroys mandator's defenses,i mean come on disney!if u want to show that first order are scary and competent,don't screw things like that,the whole scene was cringy.
Darth Vader Don't forget that "hilarious" joke about Hux's mother before Poe took on the Dreadnaught. Definately feeling the intimidation that the First Order has.
True, that was Rebels-level ridiculousness.
Logan Smith i was feeling sorry for hux cos he is a bastard son after all...
Lord Vader the rebel terrorists on Endor is eliminated sir
Well m'lord there was one good part of that scene. Rare competent Imperial officer... captain Moden Canady.
Imagine this fleet during the Yuzzhan Vong war or during the battle of Coruscant, there could see the potential of this fleet at its maximum level, by the way, the dreathnougth class heavy cruiser is my favorite "real" cruiser of the saga
Oh I love the Dreadnaught, it is one of my favourite ships. It might be built for a different time and be a bit on the smaller side but it shows a lot of experience in ship design. Small yet filled to the brim with turbo lasers and none of the weaknesses of a star destroyer. As a result I love the Rebel Mk I class frigate, not the Mk II though. It looks nothing like a dreadnaught and that ruins the whole point. It looks like a mix of a Mon Calamari and an Basilisk design.
Btw, has anyone noticed the similarities between the Katana fleet and the Eternal fleet?
In a West End Games RPG campaign that lasted for several years IRL, I had a character that I had mostly given over to the GM, but he let me have some fun with General Kane now and then. I had a fleet consisting of 3 Dreadnaughts as the core of the force, 4 Lancer frigates, 6 Corellian gunships, and 2 Nebulon B's. We had a total of 7 squadrons of fighters of various makes, I was always partial to having at least a squadron of Y-Wings. It was the Blackstar Fleet, named that because of a big blast mark on the nose of the Dreadnaught that I took as my Flag vessel (we eventually painted over the scorch to make it a proper design). I miss those days.
Fuck 12 fighters. 6 fighters are fine. Even if it's just to defend the parent Dreadnought, that is still a VERY strong defensive Buff. Remember, it DOES have its own laser cannons.
Their shape and size reminds of the smaller classes of cruisers(smaller than the Jupiter class Battlestars) used in the Colonial Fleet in Battlestar Galactica. Say between the First and Second Cylon War. Kind of like the Valkyrie Class Battlestar. Like the one William Adama commanded before the Galactica.
Never change your background music, this shit is dank af
Great video man! I always love hearing about the Katana fleet. The Thrawn trilogy friggin rocked in novel and comic book form.
I really love the Dreadnaught-class, I think it could be a fantastic ship even during the Imperial Era if given a redesign to minimize its weaknesses and maximize its strengths. Also, building them with modern technology and materials would do wonders to increase their effectiveness. I feel such a Dreadnaught could be considered the counterpart to the Carrack and Vigil, in that it would be an extremely effective and well-rounded ship.
could you talk about the hapes consortium ECKHARTS
Let's upvote this one, peeps! :-) I would also love to learn more about the Hapes Consortium (especially their fleet). I only remember reading about them in the book "The Courtship of Princess Leia".
i really think they would be the great base for a film, a modified courtship of princess leia where luke and han are on coruscant, it would be a expanded universe aka legends film but still awesome, plus the hapes are a awesome pirate race spanning two hundredish worlds and combine asian african and european people in looks i think unless lucas went and made them mostly aliens, ooo or native americans
would be cool to see hapes dealing with imperial moffs and admirals trying to control their fleets and worlds
Aurora Uplinks in the novel The Courtship of Princess Leia, the Hapes cleaned up the Imperials. Their Battle Dragons did some really serious damage to the Imperial vessels. I agree with you, it would be awesome to see some of that Legends content on the silver screen. :-)
funny how they call a cruiser a dreadnought
At the time that they were designed there were restrictions in place on the military which limited naval vessels to around that size, so at the time they were essentially dreadnaughts.
Milk 7504 well in the days before ww1 the hms dreadnought was a british royal navy cruiser (ignore everything I said it was not a cruiser
the HMS dreadnought was what could be considered the first modern battleship. Where previous battleships had primary armaments consisting of multiple guns of different calibers, the dreadnought was the first battleship to have what was called an all big-gun armament, with smaller calibers used only as secondary/tertiary armaments. Having its primary armament all the same caliber simplified aiming as well as logistics. Other innovations of the dreadnought type included super-firing turrets (where adjacent turrets were elevated above the other, saving space and improving firing arcs as well as allowing turrets to be mounted behind eachother), more advanced propulsion systems, as well as improved hull designs. Some of these features and concepts were carried over all the way into the last generation of battleship.
Jason Burn Jason I'm aware its a battle ship I was thinking of the has hood a heavy cruiser armed like a bttle ship
dominic vucic
Isn't the term for that a Battlecruiser?
Protoss from Starcraft vs the flood, I think the Protoss are one of the few sci-fi factions that actually have a chance
We can see that on Aiur
If you want to get a little wacky, the Daleks from Doctor Who would fare well against the Flood. They usually destroy all life on a planet they take over, or set up shop on a planet with little in the way of plant and animal life to begin. Their metal shells would be difficult for the Flood to penetrate and get inside. They would have no qualms about employing weapons that destroy most organic life, being confident they would survive it.
the flood are able to access computer systems as well and i do not want to see the flood gaining access to a dalek. that would be bad.
Protoss Psionics would be difficult to near impossible for the Flood to deal with, as it was something that the Zerg of the SC universe were terrified of (and set the whole plot into motion)
In Star wars rebellion(game), these ships had one fighter squadron and one troop regiment if I recall correctly. The Victory class was a step up with 2 squadrons.
Can you please do which faction had the best sniper/specialist class also love your vids, keep up the good work!
Snipers is pretty tough, sniping is not a very common practice is SW.
Commander we have spotted a Jedi near here sir
Ready weapons and prime grenades
Commander Doom sir yes sir...
A group of Dreadnought Cruisers can be very affective, especially when there's 200!! As you say their good against both fighters and capital ships, answer when packed together just put out massively over whelming fire no matter what it's going up against. Very useful only thing like you say definitely abit on the slow side. Awesome video on an Awesome fleet!!! P.S. as you say some fighter carrying ability would be extremely useful. Cheers
The Rebel Fleet at Endor (Canon) vs Thrawn's Fleet at Lothal.
The Lothal fleet was fairly small, wasn't it? I'm pretty sure the Rebels would stomp that one. I could be remembering wrong, though.
GhostOfMuliz Don't forget that Thrawn is the commanding officer of the fleet. His tactical prowess would give the Rebels quite a hard time.
I don't think it would make a difference, I mean the rebels had like 12 cruisers (mc-80s) as far as I could remember and thran had like, 5-6 star destroyers... also Admiral akbar is competent enought not to be fooled by thrawn
The rebels would destroy thrawns forces. He has tactical superiority but they just outnumber him
GhostOfMuliz
Thawn’s fleet is the Seventh Imperial Starfleet. If it’s the same one he used to attack Atollon, then it should consist of:
6 Imperial-class Star Destroyers, including Thrawn’s flagship: the Chimera
A full TIE fighter compliment for each ISD
2 light combat cruisers
2 Interdictor-class cruisers
I frame EVERY single one of your videos in the reference of playing Star Wars Rebellion. 200 dreadnaughts would beat anything. BTW, the the game Rebellion, they are updated to hold one squardron of fighters. Great video!!!
Do a video on the Greater Maldrood.
In Star Wars Rebellion - the old school strategy game - the dreadnought was the fastest and most efficient way to get turbo lasers as the republic. On the harder difficulties you basically had to amass massive fleets of dreadnoughts while you teched up.
TIE Droid vs Vulture Droid
Good one!
Daniel Chavez I wanna see it
personally i think vulture takes this fight but would like to see eckharts opinion
Vulture droid
The TIE Droid from Dark Empire? If so, TIE Droid all the way. 30+ years of technological advances. The TIE Droid was shown taking out X-Wings!
The dreadnought heavy cruiser is one of my favorite ships and would definitely have them in my fleet
Large fleets of smaller ships give flexibility and better firepower. This can be seen in all modern navies, battleships were only useful when they effectively invulnerable to the attacks of smaller ships. When naval artillery ruled the ocean battleships were needed to fight battleships. Once smaller combatants were able to effectively engage their larger counterparts it has become rare to find anything larger than a light cruiser in any navy.
The exception being of course platforms designed to project air power whose size is dictated by their function rather than combat potential.
The other part of the equation is unit cost. Fielding multiple platforms for the cost and equivalent combat power of a single large platform is a tactically and strategically sound choice.
As Stalin is often quoted “quantity has a quality of its own”
It looks powerful.
Gerardo Reyes it's pretty decent,but you wouldn't wanna try to use one of those ships to go head to head against a capital ship like let's a calamari class cruiser but it is pretty damn balanced
I used to use these over Star Destroyers in Rebellion. They were effective and had cheaper maintenance costs too.
Hey, have you seen a youtuber called ResurrectedStarships? He likes Dreadnaught Class Heavy Cruisers just as much as you do. He even made a few custom c3 models for it, even one pirate refit that is similar to what you wanted to add to them, some ability to carry fighters.
The Thrawn trilogy mentions that three Katana/Dreadnaughts were the rough combat equivalent to an Imperial Star Destroyer. This is demonstrated in a battle where six take on two ISDs and inflict heavy damage before withdrawing, suffering little significant damage in return.
200 of them would have torn through both fleets at Endor and (assuming they could take down the shield) outmaneuvered the half-constructed DS II and taken it down as well. However, it's likely casualties would have been significant, if not heavy.
Eck you should do a video where you theorize how a live action Star Wars series would go and possible topics for the show. Like the canon book about Thrawn, for example.
Thrawn's Lothal Blockade VS Admiral Trenches Christophis Blockade (4th or 5th try)
Dragon Templar4 brilliant idea!
I want to see a four way battle between the best of Thrawn's fleets, the best of Ackbar's Fleets, the best of Tranch's fleets and the best of Yularen's fleets.
all in one battle.
At 600 meters this ships was basically the largest warship allowed after the Ruusan reformation. On the issue of fighters, there was a hanger big enough for the Falcon to land, so they could defo house a starfighter force.
I always wondered about what they looked like , the novels can only describe so much.
I think that a single large ship such as an executor is useful as they will generally draw fire away from more vulnerable ships such as interdictors as the enemy will have to focus on it rather that softer targets or it will decimate an enemy fleet. It's a catch twenty two- they target important targets like an interdictor that is stopping them escaping, take heavy lossses or get wiped out, or target large targets like an executor then finally take it down only to find neglecting the other targets are still there and have decimated the enemy fleet
Edit: typos
I always thought the empire was crazy for not having smaller ships among the Star destroyers that were specifically designed as anti-fighter ships; considering the rebellions fighter advantage over the empire (fighters with shields hyper drive).
Anytime I play is the empire on the game ‘Empire at war’, I always make sure to include a bunch of tartan class cruisers with my fleet.
Please do this video
Space Battleship Yamato vs Super Star Destroyer Eclipse
Mr.Snapple Yamato’s repair crews and plot armor could take on the whole empire!
I think the better comparison would be between the wave motion gun and the Eclipse's super laser.
I mean, this is an amazing idea despite it's vulnerabilities. But I am in more favor of Droid style automation. But this is a decent mix of the two doctrines.
Totally with you on the fleet design idea. Building a flexible, multi-staged fleet with many ships is much better than building a fleet of only a few ships based around one large super-ship. Super ships go down too easily, because they are the perfect target. If I had a choice between the Imperial Fleet at the Battle of Endor and the Katana Fleet, it's Katana Fleet all the way. Though it would have been nice if Katana Fleet could have had a few fighter squadrons to fly interference, or carry bombs in. Some V-19's, or TIE's, or something.
Sweet! A HOME song for your intro
I think a big part of why you need a flexible fleet is if you're an expeditionary fleet or are a rebellion. Big ships with huge firepower make a lot more sense if you're a peacekeeping or planetary fleet. Defense vs. offense.
The canon equivalent would be a fleet made entirely of Munificient-class cruisers.
These ships appear in Disney canon (in Rebels) in addition to Lucas Canon
@@kylorevan7116 Really? Episode?
The final arc in the series. They are on wookepedia for both canons.
This is a late comment but I wish to point out a few things: a) Adding 12 Tie-fighters is what the Empire did to their old (non-Katana) Dreadnoughts in Legends and I agree with Eckart that it is a smart move that makes the ship more powerful. b) Dreadnought is one of my favourite SW ships. I like the fact that it doesn't have an obvious and vulnerable bridge like many of the SW ships have, I like the look of the ship and how it is a decent sized all rounder rather than a massive SUPER ship. I specifically like how the Katana fleet version manages to cutdown the massive amount of crew that the original design had. Granted that by the time of the rebellion the Dreadnoughts in use have droids to help cut down the amount of "live" crew by half at least. ...Though at least in Legend-canon the lack of automation and slave-systems was explained by fear of something like the disappearance of the Katana fleet happening again I am a bit amused at how much crew SW ships need. c) My take was that Katana fleet changing the situation had more to do with the clones. The war was waged on galactic scale and the access to rapidly grown clones helped the Empire-remnant raise troops faster than the New Republic. Thrawn was already pumping out ships as fast as possible from Imperial shipyards, buying any combat-capable ship he could from neutral merchant and ship-thieves like Ferrier but he knew that he still wouldn't be able to get ships faster than he got crew for them. Suddenly getting almost 200 Dreadnoughts from the Katana fleet was a massive boost to his fleet and more importantly it was a quick boost compared to the constant trickle of new ships from other sources.
I really like where you're coming from here, agree with it pretty much across the board. I think Katana-fleet resources and the tactics they allow would have been especially helpful during the Ving invasion, the way their defenses work (singularities that can't be overloaded, but can be overcome by volume of fire that they can't catch) would be especially vulnerable to swarms of ships out putting decent firepower. Combine this with the fact that the Vong have trouble coordinating large groups because of the nature of their communication tech, something Katana Fleet ships are extremely good at, and my bet would be you could easily overwhelm most Vong warships with ~20 Katana dreadnoughts at the most. Thier PDC could handle the uncoordinated coralskippers and they could encircle capital ships and tear them apart.
Idk about yall but this is one reason i love legends over canon
The fleets were bigger more badass and more varied
yes the dreadnaughts were older, but it wasn't until the victory destroyers that any ship could stand against them. i envision my refit with "newer" engines and added maneuvering thrusters, + a bsg styled hanger pod ventral mounted with additional laser cannons and a small reactor for them. though this takes MONEY. another idea would be to arm it with ion cannons as primary weapons, and ancient naval ordinance of something like the british 12"/50 Mk XIV, us 5"/54, and russian AK 630. of course all would be auto-loading. this load out would be great for defense and the saved power from the reactor could be force fed to the engines and shields. but that's just my opinion. :)
I think you could make the case that if the Katana fleet was designed with low crew requirements in mind, putting a star-fighter squadron on every cruiser wouldn't be the best idea. Those star-fighters would require pilots, repair crews, fuel crews, ordinance crews, support personnel, etc. Its not just a matter of fitting the fighters, its a lot of overhead to get a squadron up and into battle.
I completely agree with your analysis, the Katana Fleet really hit above its weight class.
Different legends sources give the dreadnaught a complement of 12 TIE starfighters, but they mainly refer to the upgraded and refitted versions so saying they don't carry starfighters would be accurate if you're talking about the pre-clone war era katana fleet, but for the modern upgraded dreadnaughts the 12 TIE fighters (or I guess anything of comparable size) is something to keep in mind.
I actually really love the Dreadnought Heavy Cruiser. Aside from it being old, there really isn't any glaring weakness. It doesn't have any particularly glaring blind spots, it's weaponry was balanced and suited to a wide variety of situations... all in all an incredibly effective little vessel. Which is why I would much rather have 200 small but powerful vessels than 1 massive vessel and 10-20 smaller vessels. It's just more versatile and frankly capable of a wider variety of tactical maneuvers.
Cool video eck.
You should create the perfect fleet using multiple sci-if universes
That would be pretty cool.
Just take 40k ships... but cool idea
Michael Cochran just take zeelee nightfighters or culture GSV's
another thing thats important is the number the katana fleet had 200 ships 8 of those where taken and sold off by capt. hofner who was selling them to garm beliblis. garm refit them and gave them better and modern upgrades. Thrawn also did the same as he had more resources from the imperial remnant and a steady stream of clones to crew them. plus of the original 200 8 where sold to garm while by the time the NR got to the site only 15 where left and one of those was used to ram and destroy a star destroyer meaning 14 where left meaning a total of 22 of the 200 where in the NR's hands and the remaing 177
could you make a video explaining why she disappeared and what happened to the crew
There was a old game call Star Wars Rebellion. In it you could build your fleet. Both Empire and Rebel factions could build the old Dreadnaughts. I did a game were I built only Dreadnaughts playing the Rebels (those Dreadnaughts could carry one squadron of fighters and one regiment of troops if I remember right). In one fight I had 6 Dreadnaughts against 1 Star Destroyer and 2 escorts (a couple of Carrack class light cruisers i believe). My fleet was wiped out and i quickly changed strategy. However, in that game, the Dreadnaughts did not have very good anti-fighter firepower as the designers consentrated on their anti-ship firepower. Ships could be classified as good anti-ship or good anti-fighter, not both. So when the Empire fleet wiped out my fighters (the Carrack class was anti-fighter), my ships had to deal with TIE's and Carracks distracting my ships from concentrating on the Star Destroyer.
In further playing the game many times over, I did find that building and using Super Star Destroyers (and even the Death Star) was counter productive. While playing the Empire and fighting in one of the Sectors (about 10 systems in one area) I and the Rebels were going all in. My entire fleet and their entire fleet was fighting world to world, and i was loosing the sector system by system. My fleet was centered around Super Star Destroyers (about 4 to 5) supported by Star Destroyer II's, Victory Star Destroyers, and Interdictors with a few Lancer Frigates in tow for fighter defense. I would inflict enough damage to hold the Rebels from advancing again for months, but I would need this time to replace my loses (usually all my SSD's and most of my SD II's). I finally got smart as my SSD's were fire sponges and would be taken out first, quickly reducing my firepower. I replaced my SSD's with more SD II's (about 8 to 11 more than I would normally have). Fighting for the last system I still held in that sector, my fleet finally won the fight and I completely destroyed the Rebel fleet allowing the retaking of the entire sector in only 2 months.
In closing, yes a larger number of more capable ships does trump a small number of large powerful ships. I never built another SSD in any other time i played that game and even stopped building the Rebel equivalent call the Bulwark class Battle Fortress.
An alternative to adding bigger hangars would be to use CW era Droid Fighters and Hyena Bombers- they can all ride on the outside of the hull and launch as soon as the ship drops from hyperspace.
That would make a pirate or Imperial Dreadnought a force to be feared.
I'd say that the Katana fleet was meant to supplement existing republic defenses pre clone wars. Most planets then had their own planetary defense forces which consisted of everything from huge battle cruisers to small snub fighter forces depending on the money the planet had. Having the katana fleet slaved all together made it much easier for the judicial forces of the Senate to respond to calls for help to poorer planets
The Imperials did modify their Dreadnoughts so that the larger cargo hold on it’s under side was turned into a hanger that could hold a squad of TIEs
Love the model of the Dreadnought-class Cruiser.
Typical refit for Dreadnaughts in Imperial Navy was replacing part of cargo space in to hangar for squadron of TIE's. So here you go as you like.
The Dreadnought is the ultimate example of a ship designed to fight a war of attrition on a galactic scale; it's designed to be the backbone of a larger mutually supporting fleet of ships without being weighed down by the unnecessary equipment needed for transporting a ground combat contingent or fighter squadrons (there are dedicated ships for that), and its all built to the same standardized design for you can mass produce them, quickly repair them, and easily train the crews. Compare it to a Star Destroyer which is basically a mobile base that just happens to be a warship as well, designed with the idea that it needs to confront every issue from a local uprising to an enemy raid in a system or even a whole sector on its own.
To paraphrase another Sci Fi franchise: The Star Destroyer is a weapon of terror, its meant to intimidate the enemy; the Dreadnought is a weapon of war, its meant to kill the enemy.
You take those Katana fleet ships, and add fighter launch bays on the sides, it starts looking very much like the Galactica.
Even with a quarter squadron of 3 medium to heavy snub fighters on each Dreadnaught you would have 600 snub fighters or 50 squadrons backed up by or backing up 200 heavy cruisers, that's still impressive.
The dreadnaught is the kind of ship with a almost perfect design. It may be outdated but that's because nobody in universe ever seemed to care to update the design more to keep up with newer tech. The Katana fleet seems to be the last real upgrade the ship got before it was mostly discarded in favor of poorer designed capital ships.
So the Katana Fleet is basically what I tend to do in RTS games, take a mid-tier well-rounded unit with no glaring weaknesses, spam like 200 of them and lob them in the enemy's face xDD
Nebula class vs. Resurgent class
As far as I remember the stats from the D6 SW RPG, the Dreadnought class was able to carry up to 12 Starfighters, the hangar bay is located in the underside of the ship.
It could, but the katana fleet ships did not
Yes the the Katana variant did not, but you said Dreadnought's in general didn't. If given time they could have been refited as well but I think Thrawn focused on gettign their weapons serviced first.
ANd I think you overplay the Dreadnought strength. SHe's a decent ship and very good for supporting larger ships but the Katana Fleet vs the Endor Fleet. Nope. The fleet would have more fighters. more turbolasers and better shields. The were important during the Thrawn campain because of the shortage of ships. Hell the NR coverted some warships to cargo ships because so many cargo ships had been destroyed.
The Jedi Academy game also added a hangar in place of the lower sensor dish.
dreadnoughts originally carried a squadron of fighters and did not come with ion cannons, those were modifications made by Bel Ibis on his dreadnaughts, the stats in games released soon after the Thrawn trilogy supported this point
The battle of Scariff. I'd say 10 Kitana Dreadnaught Cruisers with Admiral Radis's fleet would have given the Empire a serious bloody nose.
I can’t be the only one who sees the inspiration for the Dreadnaught’s design. Slap on a pair of flight pods and you have a battlestar ready to wreck some toasters.
i think having a few large ships is important to provide heavy fire power in a concentrated package but they should be supported and supplemented by lighter more flexible ships. this actually follows sea based naval doctrine you only have a handful of your premiere ships but they are heavily supplemented by smaller ships which provide additional fire and screening for the larger ships.
forgot to mention all ships should have regular refits to keep them as capable as possible and should be retired or given another mission if the design is completely antiquated for a battle fleets useand there is another craft that fills the roles it filled.
Thrawn used them that way. a fleet consisting of one ISD and 6 Katana Dreadnoughts
One of the most versatile and effective ships in the entire Star Wars universe. I would have loved to see a modernized Dreadnought-class in canon, they would have been quite a good asset for both the First Order (they would have been quite a flexible support ship in conjunction with the Resurgent-class) and the Resistance (with a lot of automation, to compensate their lack of personnel). Instead we got some ludicrously specialised ship which make very little sense, both strategically and tactically speaking (like the Mandator IV, when the Bellator required only incremental improvements to keep her up to date)
I wonder how the Katana Fleet would have changed the balance of the Battle of Jakku, had it been available to one side or the other.
Hey Eck, two things. After watching your quick video on the Last Jedi it made me reconsider how i felt about the new saga. I re-watched both episode 7 and 8 and have to say you are pretty spot on about the 8th movie unfortunately... My proposition for videos today are as follows. I would love for you to talk about the in universe science behind a hyperspace ram and if it is indeed possible to ram 1 let alone several ships through hyperspace. My second idea is for a new series. I would love for you to take an iconic "supercapital" ship like the eclipse, give it a small escort fleet and pin it against a fleet that would leave the playing field even. The fleet make up and size would be completely up to you; whatever you feel stands a chance against the super's. I personally would love to see videos like this because they would help me understand the power of these supercapital ships and I have a feeling you would have very interesting fleet composition and dialog
Actually one of the last surviving Katana fleet dreadnaughts (now FULLY rigged with droidbrain) was used by Grand Admiral Pelleaon at the battle of Borask as a decoy to free imperials captured by slave ship at Bastion.
the ship actually lasted slightly longer then expected even then. I would say if build by an up-to date technology from the start - with a place for fighter complement but keeping the design - it could be absurdly good vessel.
Even when Thrawns ships - recommisioned by army of cloned flashlearned best empire could had technicians - they were an issue to tackle for Mon calamari cruisers- their rebuild was done by best avaiable technology of the time.
Great video
Dreadnought-class Heavy Cruiser vs Keldabe-class Battleship or Dreadnought-class Heavy Cruiser vs 2 Nebulon-b Frigates
You should do a top 5 Star Wars frigates video
I seem to remember that the Dread variant in SW Rebellion (the old video game) carried two fighter squadrons. I guess that was a common refit.
3 Dreadnought-class Heavy Cruiser vs Imperial-I class Star Destroyer or Imperial-I class Star Destroyer vs Keldabe-class Battleship or Keldabe-class Battleship vs Kandosii-type Dreadnought or Kandosii-type Dreadnought vs Keldabe-class Battleship or Kandosii-type Dreadnought vs Imperial-I class Star Destroyer.
Weapon standard compliment: 10 turbolaser cannons, 20 quad turbolaser cannons, & finally 10 turbolaser batteries! With the slave-rigging, a crew of 2,000 can run the entire fleet! Refitted Dreadnaughts can be outfitted with a flight deck, which includes a squad of 12 Tie-fighters! You need to fact-check your Intel! You were including info on 'Rebel Assault Frigates', which are the Rebel Alliance's version of a refit for the Dreadnaughts! The hyperdrive is class 2(slow), & it's hull & shields are older tech, which makes them much weaker than new standards of armor & shields! However, they are alot like bees! A few won't hurt, but a swarm will kill!
An idea for a future video. Maybe a little far fetched, but the city of Atlantis from Stargate: Atlantis vs 2 Imperial II Star Destroyers, or something like that.
Grand Admiral Pellaon used one of the last Dreadnaughts empire had left in battle of Borask as a decoy to deliver Jedi Strike team onboard Yuuzhan vong slave carrier... he generaly prefered flexible forces like Thrawn... sure he was in love with Chimera but he also liked victory class destroyers...
FINALLY!!!!! and don't forget the War Frigates!!!!
Split it up into groups of twenty and add in a few dedicated carriers and you have one hell of a harassing group. Lightning raids against shipyards to deny reinforcements from being built/ repaired and you could nibble the new republic to death.
I don't think the Katana Fleet with TIEs or A-wings could have done much during the Fall of Coruscant, but 200 Dreadnaughts at the follow-up Battle of Borleias, or Battle of Ebaq 9, BOTH would have done nicely there
How about for your next versus do the mammoth mk2 from command and conquer vs the AT-AT. Would be a nice one to see
AT-M6 vs metal gear REX
Death Trooper DT-101 I'll go with the atm6
Well, being honest here, Rex would just nuke the succa. But, if we exclude the nuclear launcher Rex would get completely *d e v a s t a t e d*
Death Trooper DT-101 Metal gear?! It can’t be!
A weapon to surpass METAL GEAR???
How about against Sahelanthropus?