Considering that the Galactic Republic hasn’t fought a massive war for the past thousand years, it is not difficult to see some captains or admirals using these ships as battleships instead of carriers as they were design as. Though as the Clone Wars progressed many surviving captains and admirals learned from their mistakes and used these ships to effectively defeat any opponents that stand in their way.
You mean jedi, as the admirals were treated like sh*t and ignored whenever they suggested tactics that were far better than jedi. Like usual the jedi hot headed ego thinking they are gods gift and invincible against everything to the point they use these to take the fight to the clankers. Which is why all the admirals defected with barely any issues. Granted the republic never really had their own Navy. So it's no surprise they did this, their ignorance and arrogance go hand in hand most of the time. Anakin being the worse, but even the humble Obi-Wan is guilty of it. Battle of Sarrish which broke commander codi is proof of this flaw they jedi had.
@@ryanfreebody6881 They admirals usually proposed tactics that were more effective, but I think the division was more than just because of tactical effectiveness. We have to remember a lot of these admirals went on to become Imperials. At least half of them easily switched to the Empire, maybe 90% at most. They weren't all as horrific as Tarkin, but it seems common for them to not care about collateral damage and civilian losses. Of course the Jedi's efforts to minimize civilian casualties usually meant battles lasted longer and led to further Republic losses, but in all honesty without the Jedi the Republic military likely would have fought just as ugly as the Separatists. To be fair, at least these officers have experience in fighting pirates and criminals while most Jedi mostly acted as diplomats with events like the Invasion of Naboo being exceptions. It's a pretty complex situation. Overall if the officers had full control of the GAR and Republic Navy, they would have pushed their clone troopers to be more brutal and vicious, but they at least would have won the war far sooner than Palpatine hoped for. The Jedi meanwhile made sure to respect their allies, neutral worlds, and even their enemies at times and encouraged their clone troopers to be more like people. However their efforts usually lead to key Separatists making their escape and thus keeping the war going for longer. Hence why the Jedi became unpopular the closer you were to the capital of the Republic and more popular the further out you went. Citizens on worlds engulfed in the war of course hate the fact that their is a war destroying their home, as many planets basically died in the war. However the Jedi at least tried to preserve lives as seen on Ryloth, winning the respect of not just their troops, but people on the frontlines. But deep in Republic territory as the quality of life went down as more resources were devoted to the war effort, people began to hate how the Jedi couldn't just end the war. It likely didn't help with the fact that Dooku was formerly a Jedi. They didn't understand the horror of war like the people in the Outer Rim and other regions between the there and the Core Rim. However over time in the war everything was changing for the combatants of the Clone Wars. While the clone troopers began to grow more independent and individualistic thanks to the influence of the Jedi, the war made the Jedi grow more bitter and darker. Give it a few more years and the Jedi and Clones may have partially switched places personality-wise. All in all, it kind of shows how despite unprepared the Republic really was. The Jedi were reluctant to become generals and fight a war, the officers had little compassion and little patience. And in the middle were the clone troopers torn between both of these leaders. Of course things probably weren't so smooth in the CIS military. Sure, Dooku chose a good chunk of the officers and all an officer would have to worry about was if their droids malfunctioned as they would follow any order given to them. But the idealists and corporate officers along with a number of mercenaries also hired likely argued over how to fight as well. The corporate's and mercenaries at least had Dooku who always granted them authority over the idealists, while Palpatine had to play a balancing act to pretend to be a Jedi ally while also finding officers who would suit his purposes in the Empire.
@@ryanfreebody6881 there's very little evidence that non-Jedi commanders were, as a whole, any better than the Jedi, quite the opposite actually, when these non-Jedi commanders took over after the establishment of the Empire, Imperial military efficiency generally got *worse*. Tarkin is the best example of this, the Tarkin Doctrine was a massive failure and a major part of why the Empire fell as it was inflexible and couldn't react to Rebel tactics. There are of course exceptions, most notably Thrawn who thought Tarkin was a bit of a moron, but there were good Jedi generals too. The Jedi also had more of an excuse too since the Clone Wars kind of snuck up on them while Imperial commanders were experienced but still incompetent.
look no further than John Beatty in the battle of Jutland, who took his fleet of cruiser killer scout ships and used them as front line ships against German capital ships, mostly because he wanted the glory of sinking German ships. As such, he lost like 1/2 his ships, and sank 0 german ships.
If the GAR was unnerfed, the simple solution would have been to make a variant that replaced the hangars with magazines for torpedoes and lots of extra launchers, and removed the doors instead just having reinforced armour. It could have obliterated enemy capital ships with massive salvos in one barrage, while tanking the return fire. And it wouldn't need a whole new production line and development cycle. If the GAR was also playing smart, they would have kept it's external appearance identical with fake doors and so on. Who am I kidding, the GAR would have painted it in different colours.
@@doughboidays3039 Take this idea to its logical conclusion: mount another weapon system, camouflaged, in the secondary bridge. Another SPHA-T would work if you're not feeling very creative.
The Venators - symbol of the Grand Army of the Republic before they were replaced by Star Destroyers when Palpatine reorganized the Republic into the Empire.
The Republic had good carriers, they just needed bigger battleships during the Clone War. Ironically this would lead to the Empire under emphasizing the use of carriers during the Galactic Civil War, which would be one of their biggest weaknesses. Reminds me of the quote people always plan to fight the last war, not the next one.
The Empire actually had ships that compensated for the ISDs weak spots, but Lucasfilm just hates watching the Empire not being crushed in space battles.
Battleships are dumb, that's why we quit using them. Jets do most of the work now, so the starfighter would do that here. And the rest is handled by small boys like frigates, destroyers, and cruisers. If you take out a small boy you hurt the battle group. But if you take out a battleship you kill the fleet, like taking out a super carrier would today. Expect unlike a carrier a battleship doesn't have dozens of fighters protecting it, attacking you, and running interference along with the ones that are actually going on the hunt.
@@richardhicks5031 The Principles remain the same. A fighter is just a small, fast moving, hard to hit powerful gun/missile/bomb. Having hundreds of those vs 60 turbo laser is no contest. Why waste time and energy on cannons when fighters are your cannons? Also if you destroy the cannon, you damage the ship. If you destroy the fighter the ship is still fine. Instead we have space battle in sci-fi that mimic 1800s naval war. How is that better or make more sense?
To be fair to the Venator, it had 16 Heavy Turbolasers which actually outranged those on CIS warships so it could snipe enemy ships while it's fighters fought up close with the support of lighter capital ships.
@@antonisauren8998 Nope, if you check their weapons the Munificents carried two heavy turbos while Recuscants had a couple more heavy turbos but nothing heavier that the VSD's heavy dual turbolasers. This is the quote the info about range comes from: Republic-allied engineers ensure Star Destroyers can be operated by a relatively small crew, and weapons designers have created more powerful turbolaser cannons with increased range and accuracy, giving the Republic Navy a strong advantage against Separatist warships. This comes from Star Wars Complete Vehicles New Edition, it's canon.
It's more a giant assault carrier meant to shrad the enemy with it's star fighters and escorts then if they are still alive pound them with their guns then make a space head on a planet... Or stay beyond range of the mainly battleship enemy and play star fighter games with them till hopefully they win.
In Jedi’s defense, they had extremely limited tools with how barren the Republic Navy was to begin the war. Venators were the best option for most of the war. If anyone is to blame, it’s Rendili for taking so long to finish the Victory and get it into service, by the time it was ready, the Republic already had formed most of its tactics. Even that’s unfair though, nobody was expecting the war to escalate this quickly.
@@Quecojo tbf the Jedi was put in such position as the plan of palpatine, it wasn't their request and they definitely not a war organization, the same way you wouldn't let Christian priests be war officers
The Victory wasn’t really designed as a front line warship either though, its primary role was a missile boat. It was better suited to move up than the Venator, but it wasn’t a true solution so much as a lesser of two evils. That’s really why the Imperator Class was designed so soon after the Victory, and why it stuck around for 20 years before being replaced (with its replacement only being a minor update). Edit: All that said, the easiest solution would've been to just use Dreadnaught-class heavy cruisers. They were designed by Rendili (same company that designed the Victory) and used by the Republic in the Clone Wars according to the Thrawn Trilogy (which was written way before the Prequels), could be produced in large numbers, and had the armor and fire power to serve as excellent front line warships (it was shown that 3 Dreadnaughts with fighter support could realistically match an ISD despite being less than 1/5th the cost to produce, clearly very good bang for your buck). Their weaknesses (besides things that were simply a byproduct of being an old design like an outdated hyperdrive and shield systems, which could both easily be updated with minimal delay in production time or cost) were a lack of hangars and point defense weapons, meaning they'd be an excellent pair with Venators that provided those in great numbers.
I always felt like Rendili stole or borrowed from the Venator design when they first created the Victory. They were already looking to reduce the massive manpower requirement of fielding dreadnoughts and, after the Katana Fleet incident, were probably heavily marketing the Victory. With the GAR always on the back foot compared to the CIS when it came to man(droid)power, I can't imagine them being excited over dreadnoughts. I also only recall an example of 3 modified Katana Dreadnaughts locking down an ISD with ion cannon. I thought it took all 6 of them to actually challenge one in a straight up fight.
@@SkitFireS valid points, I didn't even think about the manpower issue. I assume there was some kind of advancement in technology between the Katana fleet disappearance since the Venator is over twice the size of a Dreadnaught but requires less than half the crew, but applying that advancement in technology to the Dreadnaught design would likely be about as much work as designing a whole new ship, so it makes sense they'd just move on to the Victory. If that problem could be solved though, I think the Dreadnaught's effectiveness is considerable. I used the battle for Katana fleet as the main measuring stick where 6 Dreadnaughts (and fighter support), were more or less evenly matched with 2 Star Destroyers, and were able to outright win thanks to Han ramming an additional Dreadnaught into one of the Star Destroyers, completely destroying it. The remaining Star Destroyer was able to escape but was stated as heavily damaged, implying to me the Dreadnaughts could have defeated it with enough time. The exact comparison of strength is hard to measure, the book implies the battle could have gone much worse before Han rammed the extra Dreadnaught into the ISD, but if Dreadnaughts can even compete with an ISD, then they should have no trouble dealing with the much more fragile bulk of the CIS navy like Munificent and Recuscant cruisers, while leaving the fighters to a Venator's interceptor compliment and the heavier ships like the Providence and Lucrehulks to strike craft and the Venator's Turbo lasers.
@@Kairyu_Gen1 Carrack is more modern, less crew intensive cruiser for the republic. WEG stats give it similar main battery, shields and armor, with double speed and 1/15 crew. There is no need to build new dreadnaughts by Clone Wars era. Those who serve, are PDF remnants from past era.
The biggest issue they you see in almost all star wars media is the lack of actual battle groups. There's hardly ever any destroyers (frigates in star wars) or baseline cruisers providing pickets for large capital ships. Most of the venators or ISDs flaws would be solved with a full on battle group and angling the venators maximizing the armors effectiveness while also removing the hangar from direct line of fire while giving the turbo lasers better firing arcs.
Given how long it'd been since the last time the Galactic Republic had been in a war, I wonder if it had affected their ability for strategy when using their Ships.
Certainly. A thousand years of no war and not having a functional standing military would lead to incredible institutional decay on any states ability to wage a war. A state wouldn't have anyone whom would have the slightest clue how to organize and lead such a large military. As bad as it was to put the Jedi in charge of the GAR, given how long it had been since the last war, regular military admirals and generals would not have done any better.
@@ryuukeisscifiproductions1818 That would also explain that one time where clones ran at savage, most of them not even getting a shot off before they died.
They also had 4000 years of detailed and recorded naval battles and warfare to look to. It’s not the same as actual experience but it’s still something. Enough to know how to build fleets and basics of naval engagement
@@Daedalus33 so did the jedi enclave, but just because there are the basics available for people, it doesn't mean people will properly study them much less bother to. There is also the issue of practical experience, it's easy to tell people how to fight, a lot harder to implement it especialy when having to do it in the middle of a battlefield. Certainly, officers who studied suh battle tactics and space warfare, might be able to do well, but that is if you know the enemies battle style and tactics. There is also the issue that some of the enemy commanders have more experience than the admirals of the republic, several cis members had already honed their tactics, when the republic had only just started in the war. only a few admirals had the actual experience against pirates, but the cis commanders fought in actual wars before becoming apart of the cis.
The Venator was more of an assault carrier, The problem is that it was used with wrong tactics in mind. The GAR had no true battleships but there were better ships that could run as frontline offense or defense for the Venator while the Venator provided support and staging for assault if necessary. That’s the odd thing about Star Wars, The original trilogy was based on WW2 ships and tactics while the prequels had ships & tactics closer to modern times. This kind of makes the Empire seem incompetent since something like an updated Venator design paired with some scale down ISDs with better point defense systems serving as destroyers and cruisers would have a been set up that allow the empire to patrol and secure their territory with fewer ships and better power projection post clone wars.
At 2:06, I like the 'Rebellion' Venator. But, I would have had smaller hangers, replace the former hollowed areas with extra power, shielding, crew quarters so the personnel could be closer to their quarters, kept the central strip for small corvettes meant for anti-fighter and patrol duties, the smaller hangers would be fitted with specialized ARC-170's that were modular, added extra turbo lasers and other weaponry that was both defensive and offensive, and to keep this short, as I have a whole 'essay' of what I would want my Venator to be, a third higher tower, in-between the other two and above.
I think just placing the turrets in less restricted areas would make a big difference. Also placing some flaks on the underside, and hooking up the side hangars with the main one, and getting rid of the door would help
@@johnnowak4620 I would perma delete the ventral (except on dedicated assault/carrier variants) hanger and put a big f**k off gun (or two/four if feasible, a pair or two of SPHATs should be enough to give anyone/thing second thoughts about diving under to escape the mainguns/torpedo batteries) there, additional shielding units, and more power generation (if needed, the Venator's reactor was very powerful for it's time). It's not like it was used very often or would significantly impact the number of embarkable strike craft.
The Venator as a Command Ship and a dedicated Carrier works wonders. But as a Battleship, well... not so much. The Victory as a Light Missile Cruisers is a temporary fix but, usage of more dedicated, Ship-to-Ship combat vessels is what the Republic needed. Perhaps the mid-war refit of the Clone Armor and some new ships, like the Victory, could've been given more attention at places like Kuat Drive Yards
The GAR needed the Victory II and the Imperator (aka, the Imperial). But the Victory II was a post war design and Palpatine deliberately hid and slowed the design and fielding of the Imperator.
Don't diss my baby,she is beautiful.She is great as a carrier and worked well with acclammator,arquintens and victories.I do think they could have used another front liner to take the damage, while the venator acted the backup
while I love the venator, it would be a terrible space ship for combat. In space, when every ton counts, multiroles arent great. a dedicated carrier can carry more space planes and a dedicated anti ship platform can have tons upon tons of more guns. Say you have 50k tons to work with, 20k tons of that is going to be engines (40% is pretty typical for both sea faring vessels and in most scifi space vessels) so you really got 30k tons left. I dont know how hyperspace works in starwars so im going to just assume that you need a dedicated hyperspace engine as obiwan had that ring that he attached to his ship to go into hyperspace. so thats another 5 to 10 tons. Now youre only down to 25k tons, another 5-10k on armor so now youre at 20k and you havent even added any weapons or sensor systems. Now youre at an impasse, you could only give it the bare minimum of sensors for maybe 2-5k tons and then the ship can at least see whats in range, or you could make it a "multirole" and give it kickass sensors to see the entire system its in, but then thats going to be 10k tons more. And at that, your 50k ton super battleship is only 10k tons of guns
@@agentbarron3945 the hyperdrive would be build inside the main engines, notice how the X-wing used its engines to travel normally and in hyperspace. I think the republic needed to multirole because of the suddenness of the conflict. The Venator worked well enough within its assigned roles, it was when overzealous leaders drove them into enemy fire that it couldn't survive by itself.
Seriously, the Venators would have made great fleet mates of Imperial-class. You could even cut most of the Imperial's hanger/troop space and make it smaller. Or give it more guns, your choice. You could also remove a few turrets from the Venator to free up space and maybe even connect up the hangers. As the Venator could do any carrier/transport role far better, and still possess enough firepower to handle almost any Rebel battlegroup if the Imp goes down (provided any Mon Cala cruisers present where destroyed/fled). Through in a couple of Victory 1's, (The 2's lost most of the missiles/torpedoes and where basically mini imps, and one Imp (especially if it's a 2 or Tector) is enough to handle most Rebel battlegroups, and I'd prefer to rely on additional AA guns and the Venator's strikecraft to protect the Imps against hostile strikecraft) For long range missile support and a close escort for the Venator, and suddenly the Rebellion (or anyone else for that matter) are going to have a much harder go of things.
Imagine: you're on a Venator and there are a full 2k passengers, that mobile base and all the supplies. It's 1.1Km stem to stern and you gotta share bunk space bunk space in shifts. You hope those hyperdrives will get you there soon because you're bloody well tired of smelling 9K versions of yourself.
All being well put..... one has to remember, that structure and disposition of Republic Forces were NO ACCIDENT. They were DESIGNED like this ON PURPOSE to make war drag on. Also, remember that in SW Universe Venators could have been probably built 'on the cheap' more easily than heavily armed and armoured ships of the line.
the venator wasn't a battleship, but a multi role battl carrier, the last image isn't of the vicotry, but the onager, an empire project, based on the same technology of the death star main gun
It was an excellent fleet carrier, it'd even be a great fleet carrier post galactic civil war given a modernization overhaul. What it needed was a battleship variant with most of the hanger facilties stripped out, and more heavy turbolaser turrets added.
@@mapleflag6518 That's the plan with such refit. While the Side and Bottom hangars and the Bridges would be remaining, the redesign for a Battleship Venator would use that space to either add new Turbolaser/Ion Cannon Batteries (and/or even rearrange the Heavy Turbolasers the Venators have already so they cover more of the Ship) as well as Reinforced Hulls and Stronger Shields
Why not build a whole new class better optimized for frontline role? That new variant would require so many alterations that it would be cheaper to start a whole new class. When you need to replace critical components like reactor ( Venator's reactor output was just enough to operate all it systems) then it is not worth it.
I've always loved the Venator since I first saw it on Episode III. Such a beautiful ship. I know a lot of people like to designate it as a Carrier but it is so much more.
To me, it seems as if the Venator didn't exactly know WHAT it was...a fighter/bomber/troop carrier.....OR....a dedicated battle ship. So it ended up being a Jack-of-All-Trades-But-Master-Of-None kind of ship through out much of the Clone Wars. The Republic should've done itself a logistical favor and created dedicated Venators to fill each role separately. That way, the Republic would've had dedicated carriers, with extra space that losing some of the Venators cannons would have provided. And dedicated battleships mounting extra heavy firepower. Then combined these two different, dedicated vessel types into combined arms fleets. This would've increased the GAR's combat capability by lending greater flexibility and combat stamina to its attack forces simply by such a dedicated fleet being able to carry MORE of everything.
Honestly I always assumed they used them as battle ships because their shields were stronger than the acclimators, and, while lacking many of them, their guns were still bigger and had more punch through. They were also likely expecting fighter and bomber coverage to protect them. It was a dumb tactic.. but I assumed thats why.
a bif 2 big flaws of the Veator could be fixed if we have AI operated point defense lasers along the spine of the ventral hanger to add protection from enemy ships as well as help increase its firepower, and then mirror all of it's gun's on top to bottom to increase it's firepower and coverage
The Venator Class ship was meant as a counter for the Trade Federation droid controlled ships. The number of droid fighters they could launch was daunting. The Republic neede a ship that could ferry a sizable of small attack craft & ground support vehicles for clone battalions.
I love the venator, The Venator is a Battle-Carrier it serves this role perfectly, But the republic also needed was a full-fledged battleship. It one of the best carriers in the Star Wars galaxy. My love for the Venator will never change its a powerful Battle-Carrier. Every ship as Pros and Cons.
I think this is probably one of my favorite videos of yours. I love the Venator class and it's use in the cartoons, and limited use in Ep. III. It's weaknesses are that of most carriers in the flight deck area - I thing the Battle of Midway proved that factor. Thanks for that.
Not much. I’m fully aware of its flaws & thus, despite acquiring two Victory-class Star Destroyers to act as escorting battleships, I would still use it as a rear starfighter carrier AND something more synonymous to the Acclamator-class as Yoda did in the Battle for Kashyyyk in _Revenge of the Sith_ (i.e. it leads the battlegroup when a breach is made by the starfighters, the Victorys would hold the opening open, & the Venator that has dedicated itself in carrying the ground forces would squeeze right through, while the starfighter dedicated Venator stays behind for the battle above the planet)…
You forget that a Venater can't operate inside an atmosphere! That's what Acclamators are for! Hell, before House of Mouse ruined 'Wars and turned it into the unrecognizable Disney Wars no Star Destroyer (except a Victory-Class - and only the base model, the Victory-II-Class ISD also couldn't!) could operate within an atmosphere, it was what made the Victory-Class special...and what made Grand-Moff Tarkin use one to literally crush a few thousand protesters by landing his ship on them!
@DreaningFlurry : **Forgets the venators that were in the atmosphere of the 2nd Battle of Geonosis AND LANDED on both Coruscant and Kashyyyk in Revenge of the Sith.**
Hell everything they had was an advantage but with gaps , they only lacked a powerful battleship esk one and needed better smaller ships for escort and screening than the arquitens and c70
The true biggest flaw with the venator is that it only ever seemed to carry one or two squads of fighters. Like during the battle of bothiwuii in the 2007 clone wars a SINGLE SQUAD of V-19s is deployed from THREE venators. THREE. At least during 2003 clone wars the things deployed actual swarms of fighters into combat instead of what could at best be an honor guard for an incoming shuttle.
It does at least seem like the venators get portrayed as more carrier-like than the OT's ISDs. Which is pretty amusing when it gives the impression that the GAR was making the mistake of using a carrier to fight battles intended for battleships, while the ISDs were battleships where the Empire seemed to need more fighter spam. Murphy's Law in space you could say...
I’ve always thought of the thing as a Battle Carrier (Battleship/Carrier Hybrid). It has massive amount of guns, and a massive fighter capacity. The problem is committing to one of the two extremes, normally means the other suffers. Reguardless they still preformed pretty well.
the venator should have filled the roll of command/carrier ship, being surrounded by other ships that we're more capable of going toe to toe with other Cis battleships, I also think that it should have have smaller vessels with laser turrets screening fighters for it, that's why the Cis fleet was so good mainly because it was so balanced and varied
Exactly, the main hangar of the Venator, resembles aircraft carriers, which the only objective was launch aircraft as a means of air support/air superiority.
Exactly, the main hangar of the Venator, resembles aircraft carriers, which the only objective was launch aircraft as a means of air support/air superiority.
While the points you make about the wrong use the Venator had and the flaws it had by default are logical and true, we must not forget than, despite of all the flaws, multiple times we have seen the Venator beat down Munificent class and Recusant class warships in the series, movies and other media, using both its weapons and fighter complement. The ship wasn´t as awful as one might think in a capital ship engagement, in fact it could defeat many of the Confederacy ships in a fight even without fighters; however, many upgrades could be made to make it more appropiate for, either it´s intended role of a battle carrier, which would mean relocating it´s point-defense weapons throught the most imprtant and vulnerable areas, or to make it able to fulfill both roles more properly by reducing certain hangar areas in favor of better armament (more turbolasers, along with some ion cannons and/or mac guns), along with better weapon distribution, and reinforced armor plating to make it sturdier and eliminating important weakspots. On the other hand, while the Munificent and the Recusant were deadly ships in their own right, I do not consider them as ships the Venator struggled greatly in base of what we were shown, that title would go to the Providence carrier/destroyer (also the Luckrehuk but that would be unfair), which is basically what I believe the Venator could have been and can be modified into, since the Providence had a great carrying capacity while also having a very powerful and better distributed arsenal, all of that while being even shorter than the Venator in lenght.
The Invisible Hand had just had it's fuel cells ruptured by Obi Wan and Anakin in a deleted scene which was causing the equivalent of internal bleeding for a star ship. The Venator's barrage got an extremely lucky shots where they take out a proton cannon. That explosion cause further damage causing the ship to go critical (we literally see droids on the bridge explode due to the explosions in the ship)
I think a better option would be to have one ship assigned for carrier roles and another ship assigned as an actual battleship. Having them split into multiroles would have negated their effectiveness in the fields.
You are correct, and the Empire would eventually adopt this general strategy of using Imperial-Class Star Destroyers as their primary front line battleship, with dedicated carriers behind them like the Quasar-Fire and Ton Folk (as well as other specialized ships like Lancer Frigates that filled roles the Imperial-Class wasn't optimized for), but this was only over 23 years of experience and development, the Republic didn't have that kind of time, it had to come up with a fleet capable of at least competing with the Separatists (who Geetsly's have explained had an amazing fleet design in other videos) in as short of a time period as possible. Best way to do that was to make a few simple designs that filled multiple roles, and the Venator did that exceptionally well. Geetsly's is correct it had its flaws, hence why it was phased out later when better designs could be made, but it did its job and Legends and Canon both take inspiration from it for the future.
In the battle of midway, the japanese carriers got blown up and lit on fire, with like 2 bombs each because they had lots of munitions lying around which ignited and caused their downfall, so now imagine having many times more munitions and a open hangar door, and not much protection on those areas, you can imagine the explosion
In Downfall of a Droid we literally see 8 additional DBY-827 Turbolaser Cannons on the ventral side of the Resolute. Obviously an animation error as it was the first Clone Wars thing ever produced. But it is interesting that they considered having ventral weaponry.
Venators were GREAT command craft. There should have been 4 to 5 Venators, 10 to 12 Victory Class, 18 to 20 Acclimators, and ~25 CR-90 sized ships in a GAR battle group. That formation would have given the GAR a lot of firepower that could quickly and definitively take on a comparable CIS fleet.
Hmm if I didn’t know any better I’d say someone within in the GAR was influencing The Navy’s strategic decision making, so that they wouldn’t be able to have decisive space victories. The same could be said for separatist ground forces; the battle droids were threatening but couldn’t hold a candle to a clone. Idk, if there was a mysterious shadowy figure who somehow profited from prolonging the conflict controlling both sides, he set up his game pieces perfectly
Please cover how the ARC-170 was misused by the Republic and how it could have been better optimized. I personally would mount a Gatling gun on it so that it would be more like an A-10 Warthog
@@michaelandreipalon359 Technically you can say Newtonian physics says they could just lob hyperaccelerated projectiles at a target. You just have to hope they actually hit, or you have live ammo floating through space until it DOES hit something.
Disney should use the Errant Venture story from star wars legends and reimage it as a civilian-use Venator captained by Hondo Onaka. The ship would basically be a mobile trade port that travels to different systems and many adventures ensue.
If the GAR used the venator such as we did in the pacific theater it’d through off the sep strategy all together. We know they probably had stolen or pirated venators so they knows the weak spots
I still reeeeeeally wish GL had used the victory star destroyer that was already in book canon. It feels like a more primitive star destroyer and was still heavily armed. 12 quad turbos, 40 dual turbos, 80 concussion missile tubes, and a hanger for (later) 2 squadrons of TIEs. It could also fly in atmosphere.
Ya it's not the best battleship but it's lethality as a carrier makes it far more superior than one. There's a reason why aircraft carriers replaced battleships in our world. If I could choose to command or pilot any ship in Star Wars I'd still pick the Venator without a second thought they're beautifully designed and the carrier capacity makes it better than most other ships including the Imperial Star Destoryers if handled properly.
Space is much different from our oceans, logically battleships seem they would be more popular in star wars given the infinite line of sight space provides
@@joshuahadley776 yes but with a carrier you can deliver attacks from multiple directions and overwhelm their defenses. You also have superior reconnaissance capabilities with smaller ships like the ARC 170 and not have to risk your entire carrier scouting out locations.
@@rc59191 I mean why even have carriers with hyperspace capable fighters, if you need recon just send fighters, the occasional utility of fighters doesn’t erase the power of big gun
The reason battleships are no longer used is because they could no longer fill their roles. Their whole job was to be a wall of guns and prevent the enemy from advancing to the softer targets. We now have missiles carried by destroyers that could take one out in two or three hits from beyond their range. The destroyers are cheaper faster and carries more than enough of a payload to wipe out a few battleships. Carriers are used now because they can deliver these explosive payloads at much further range than even the destroyers, along with support craft and troops. Star wars still has a need for battleships because most fleet battles follow the same rules as ww2 just on a three dementional field instead of two. I'm not trying to be mean or anything just thought you should know.
The venator during the middle of the war was replaced by the Victory 1 as a main-line battleship (it was unique for being able to go into atmosphere with its shields still up, which most ships couldn't do due to the energy required to keep them against gravity), it had decent turbolaser coverage but it had a lot of missiles. During the Battle of Courascant, the victory 2 (an ion boat), imperator (imperial 1) and tector (imperial 1 star destroyer with more weaponry instead of hangar) were introduced
They were fleet carriers, not even proper battlecarriers because they didn't even have enough guns to take on a ship in their weight class. The excellence of the Republic starfighter corps is what allowed them to be successful. Fill a Venator with TIEs and watch it fail, fast. Another thing to note is that the main guns had variable settings allowing them to perform AA duties as well as mainline combat. Real world battleships sometimes had similar capabilities, the Yamato could shoot massive flak shells from it's 18.1 inch guns.
The Venator is a perfect relief ship. Being used to transport supplies after a disaster, or retrofitted to be a massive hospital either in orbit or on ground. After retirement it could even be used as mobile black market trade hubs. With the massive hangar space it's easy to make a market place for any illegal goods. You have a full workshop for any kind of off the books ship modifications. Full mess hall (or possible cantina), along with sleeping quarters(or suites). Not to mention the class 1 hyperdrive and armament can get you and all your clientele out of any unwanted interuptions.
it is still super beautiful as a ship class! the red line adds so much to it rather than dull grey. as others have said making a variant that was less carrier and more boom boom is doable, but then how can you manipulate a war if one side would easily win.
Wonder if this was not a part of the Sith design for the war. Palpatine and Plaguis designed it to be evenly matched to bleed the galaxy, though it has no right to be. Even if the Republic forgot how to fight a war, the Sith had not, given what Palpy had of Malgus writings and designs for the Harrower-class ship from the Great Galactic War... maybe even something about ships from the Star Forge (speculation yes, but we know from the Book of Sith, the Sith had access to Malgus writings who was a strategic genius in large scale battles.) Given that they knew the Jedi would he ones to want to lead from the front and charge straight in in a battleship role, why not give them a ship uniquely unsuited for they role - a carrier. KDY for sure knew how to build a ship made for front line battle like the Victory or the early Mandator dreadnought. Yet they were barely built and woefully underused. Another way to bleed the Jedi dry and turn the galaxy against them was to use their bravery against them into headlong battles with equipment not meant for it vs a well equipped, well designed mixed force that had their own weaknesses - being converted freighters or protection craft rather than ships of the line until much later in the war. The Venator would have made a great picket ship for planetary sieges in a defensive role, letting its fighters interdict.. And they won the sieges. But in open battle, they were outclassed with blood and less jedi prolonging the war. A Win-Win for Palpatine.
As you may know, the Force Unleashed Campaign Guide for the Saga Edition Star Wars RPG has a second-generation Venator, which was used in the early days of the Empire, and had extra point-defence laser cannons positioned to protect the main hangars
The venator was never classified as a battleship but a capital ship of the time the victory was more a battle ship but the venator has lots of options in a fight than later capital ship the venator yes is more of a assault carrier but at the time it size was capital ship size for the time the classification sizes change all the time considering how well the venator performed i doubt your claim that it was built badly it was built for the job It needed to fill considering that in the future the imperial significant lack of fighters and lack of anti fighter guns ended up causing lots of problems for the empire
The victor intiative had a heavy carrier and heavy destroyer esk partner .ships Maybe like the clones it was Palpatines manipulation that led to venator being underpowered and flawly designed and the victory and imperator being backlined for his personal fleets
I like to think of it as a Nimitz or Ford class carriers IRL, if i were a general in the clone wars, I'd have a fleet a 4 Venators, calling it a Venator strike group.
Yes. Also, the Republic suffered from a chronic lack of manpower, particularly fighter pilots. This made a carrier-focused main battle ship even less suitable for them. The ship's biggest strength, its enormous fighter-capacity, seems more like a cumbersome obstacle than a strength for the GAR. How often do you think they could even field as many fighters per Venator as it was supposed to carry?
The perfect SW warship in my opinion would be something similar to an enlarged harrower class from the old republic with updated technologies, more armour and more weapons and more anti fighter weapons too
Something to remember is that there will never be a “perfect” warship. A ship with zero weaknesses will undoubtedly be too expensive to mass produce and will never be able to justify its cost over building multiple, cheaper ships that cover each other’s weaknesses.
Venators were excellent star fighter carriers, and were designed as such. It was the GAR/Jedi who insisted on using it for jobs that it was not built for.
You know I never did the Venator give much thought but your right the Venator was a terrible choice for Frontline battles the Victory Class would most likely be efficient.
I have thought about this for awhile and realised the venator and ISD are exact opposites one had great battleship potential while having terrible star fighters capabilities while the venator was the opposite if only they were used together it would create one of the best fleets imaginable in a v shape with victoryd in the front to act as a wall to destroy capital ships and shield lesser ships such as frigate and venator in the rear sending out support turbo lazer and spat cannons while safely deploying swarms of fighters .
So this must mean that the Republic Navy's plan for destroying enemy capital ships was through the use of fighters alone? or did they possess other vessels or weapons designed to for-fill this role?
Good video. Fleet diversity for the win. I have one thing to add up on the Venators though: what's one of them and some V-Wings doing on Mandalorian hands in one of the tutorial missions for Empire at War: Forces of Corruption's campaign?
The Battle of Mandalore of course While it belongs officially to Disney's Canon. Filoni was actually planning Season 7 (as part of Season 6 which became the Lost Missions) and even the entire plot of Rebels. long before Lucasfilm was even bought by Disney. So his work can be considered as part of the Original Canon as well
@@alpha34098 I disagree. Filoni retconned so many things about legends pre-disney (including Republic Commando, stuff about ARC troopers, stuff about Ventress, Star Wars Galaxies, etc) that fitting his stuff with old stuff simply doesn't work
How would the weapons of the GOAT Tri Droid fair against the underside of the Venator? If they were really that strong (as I hope they do, I love em), could they damage it?
A tri droid couldn't bring its guns to bear on a venator, the venator would, have to be in atmosphere, and then the tri droid would have to be on a cliff under it, however a hundred of them couldn't get through a single venators shields, but if it was unshielded eventually they'd be able to get through, but that can be said for any weapon, even a blaster pistol
See the thing is that the turbo lasers were great for ship-to-ship combat. From a long, LONG range. It definitely needed support to protect and draw fire while fighters did most of the damage
Hmm. In Thrawns Revenge a EAW Expansion there was a sub mod that you can make Venators for the New Republic. And there Variant is so far the Best. You Get Howl runners Y wings and shielded Tie Fighters. Though they should of Had the 170 in stead of Ties no matter
Agree with everything venator would be great carrier if empire exclusively used star destroyers and SSD AND with venator as a support carrier/frigate they could of gotten rid of like 5 different classes of ship the Empire actually ended up using but were less effective in their roles then even the venator was in a battleship role. Ones like a gizanti class, quasar class starfighter carrier, imprial light cruiser, im sure they could of made black hole genterator version that stops ships going to hyperspace. Etc. All of then no longer needed and also they should kept the laat gunship those were peefect for the roles and their replacements sucked
The Venator is definitely not a battle-line ship. At most, with it's type of firepower, it could dominate lighter CIS ships but given what it does its kind of Carrier/Assault ship hybrid. A pure carrier like the Quasar Fire typically doesn't embark troops but the Venator has this role as well with all of it's LAATs and troopers. It's kind of a design step beyond the Acclimator which is a pure Assault Ship with nearly with no fighters but good firepower for orbital fire support and defense against enemy ships. Anti-fighter coverage indeed lacking.
I think of the venator as a Aircraft carrier, it shouldn't ever been in the frontlines, it should be rear guard covering the acclamators pushing foward
I think the Venator was better in a role as sector control function. The reach were much higher which is more fitting for a asymmetrical warfare against the rebellion. Which in turn forced the rebellion into a battle of attrition, which in turn they would lose because of their dimished ressources. Mixed together victory class star destroyer they would give the rebellion a hard time. The imperator class was a waste of ressources in an assymetrical warfare. Too costly, too few to control an entire sector and very vulnerable to disrupted logistic. They were made practically for conquering but not for controlling a sector. But maybe a redesigned Venator II Stardestroyer would be much better, with addressed the flaws and better point defense and long range weapons.
From looking at a lot of Star Wars media most battles are seemingly decieded by the number of fighters you have, how good the pilots were, and the quality of those fighters. It doesn't matter how fancy your battleship is when a few torpedoes and bombing runs can cripple it. A lession the Empire continued to refuse to acknowledge all the way to the end of Sequel Trilogy.
Well, the clones were terrible pilots, the droids had the best navy in Star Wars since their bombers were the quickest and deadliest. Hyena Bombers and Vulture droids alone could probably destroy any capital ship in existence including fighter complements (aside from Lucrehulks maybe).
Anyone else notice the Venator class also looks oddly like a giant Jarjar Binks head stalking through space? "Anny Anny! Meesa head is ah beeg bad starship! BOOMA WOOSHA!"
Uh, the Canon version of the Victory class 1 Star Destroyer had so many flaws that it was called an unlucky ship and a spacefaring coffin. And it seems when the Empire began the Victory 2 program, the new Victory class didn’t eliminate all of the worse flaws making an assignment to the ship be a mark of shame. To be fair though, the other options for battleships and dreadnaughts in the Republic navy were either be very old or so large that they cost far too many resources to maintain. The Victory 1 was probably the best shot for Canon Galactic Republic to get a ship that can go face to face against Separatist warships. I have to wonder though why when it comes to naval warships, the megacorporations that joined the Separatists got around Ruusaan Reformation bans in the years leading up to the Clone Wars and made dangerous warships while the Republic corporations that revel in building ships made first products that paled in comparison to what they made later for the Empire. They just have made half of the ships for Republic PDF’s during this era of peace and yet it’s the corporations that are situated further out in the galaxy who make the more dangerous ships, at least until the latter era of the Clone Wars.
Keep in mind this was all planned by the Sith. But for a less cop-out explanation: The Trade Federation used increasing pirate attacks (and lots of money) as a way of getting special permission to up-gun thier ships. Other CIS groups used lack of Republic oversight in the Outer Rim to hide thier actions. Meanwhile the main Republic shipyards where under extreme scrutiny (because they where in the Core and because the future CIS was secretly paying people off to put them under additional scrutiny).
The logical idea would have been the construction of a variant that did away with the main hangar, and used it for extra armor, power supply, shield generators, and turbolasers running down the length of the bow where the doors used to be. It can still retain the side and ventral hangars for storage of defensive star fights and still allows for the standard Venator to stay in service as a dedicated carrier and lighter warship.
I live the venator like everyone and understand that it was used wrong, but I think if they mounted a few SPHA in the main hanger which charge up a reserve and then unleash a devastating barrage before they close the hanger doors to allow them to save up more energy, it would make a single ship very exposed, but that much firepower in a fleet could target down important vessels in place of y wings, while also allowing the republic to get have more orbital bombardment options when they are offering fire support on planets in combat
Are the Victory Class Star Destroyers even Canon? If so what sources are they used in. There are a lot of books and sources that reference all sorts of things, that aren't necessarily Canon. I'd just like to know if it's worth hoping to see some in future media or not
Honestly, if anything, the Venator is too well armed. Should it have less turbolasers, I doubt anyone in his/hers right mind would take it anywhere near gunfire range, and instead would use its way too OP carrying capacity more effectively. This said, I agree it shouldn't be used as a battleship, but it should be exactly as popular (as a carrier) as it was, considering the proven effectiveness of starfighters in the clone wars. Edit1: The Point Defense problem is really inexcusable. Yet to say the Victory is a far better ship is to buy in the Imperial doctrine of better frontlineships=better ships. In essence, yes the Victory complemented nicely the Venator, and would greatly add to the Republican fleets, but it was not a replacement for the Venator.
No wonder why Lucasfilm still used the Imperial Class Star Destroyer in Promotional Material, Here I am asking why didn't they use Clone Wars Stuff in Secondary Material and why Clones weren't the Iconic Troopers in photos
A true battleship refit for a Venator would look to me as follows: -The secondary flight command bridge would be stripped, and the main one lowered and centered into the bridge "neck". -The dorsal hangar bay's door-opening mechanism would be removed, keeping the extra armor the doors provide. -The entire dorsal hangar bay is removed (and filled up with solid armor and decentralized extra reactors). -On the main hull, along the sides of the former doors, smaller flak turrets are added. -On the hangar bay door, a line of 4 more, super-firing _main guns_ would be added. -The whole broadside "sandwich" area in between the upper side and the lower side is up-armed with dozens of anti-capital ship broadside mass drivers. -The broadside hangar bays would be kept, but armed with extra flak guns to either side. -The ventral hangar bay is removed and replaced by a rectangular protrusion, equipped with extra shield generators and even a standardly equipped SPHA-T turret. -Another SPHA-T is placed dorsally at the point where bridge neck and hull meet (roughly exactly where the other one is below). -The entire front bow section in the former hangar bay is filled to the brim with torpedo and missile tubes. An expensive refit for sure, but one that certainly is better suited in all ways than the Venator-class carrier for front-line heavy duty brawling. A different variant, one less bent on pure destruction, would feature heavy Ion turrets instead of the 12 _main guns_ and the 2 SPHA-T turrets.
Just one heavy solar ionisation cannon mounted on a CIS capital ship could bypass shields and get a shot at a vulnerable system, if the CIS were unnerfed as well. If they were fitted to say a munificent class frigate that otherwise looked normal, that ship might be able to line up one hit kill shots on fully shielded Venators.
Venator1 & venator2 are Carriers for landing assault task forces . However SPHA main weapon got them inaf firepower to be equal with Federation Galaxy - class Enterprise, and if Enterprise can launched many different types of warheads, Venator overwhelming Enterprises with mass of starfighters
Wasn’t the Victory ment to be the frontline battleship from the start? I remember reading somewhere that because of delays in designing it they weren’t ready when the war started
Lots of people forget that palpatine was playing both sides and he was trying to pretend he was making effective warships. I'm sure the ship being completely hollow really helped even the odds against the vastly superior clone tactics
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Considering that the Galactic Republic hasn’t fought a massive war for the past thousand years, it is not difficult to see some captains or admirals using these ships as battleships instead of carriers as they were design as. Though as the Clone Wars progressed many surviving captains and admirals learned from their mistakes and used these ships to effectively defeat any opponents that stand in their way.
You mean jedi, as the admirals were treated like sh*t and ignored whenever they suggested tactics that were far better than jedi.
Like usual the jedi hot headed ego thinking they are gods gift and invincible against everything to the point they use these to take the fight to the clankers.
Which is why all the admirals defected with barely any issues.
Granted the republic never really had their own Navy.
So it's no surprise they did this, their ignorance and arrogance go hand in hand most of the time.
Anakin being the worse, but even the humble Obi-Wan is guilty of it.
Battle of Sarrish which broke commander codi is proof of this flaw they jedi had.
@@ryanfreebody6881 They admirals usually proposed tactics that were more effective, but I think the division was more than just because of tactical effectiveness. We have to remember a lot of these admirals went on to become Imperials. At least half of them easily switched to the Empire, maybe 90% at most. They weren't all as horrific as Tarkin, but it seems common for them to not care about collateral damage and civilian losses. Of course the Jedi's efforts to minimize civilian casualties usually meant battles lasted longer and led to further Republic losses, but in all honesty without the Jedi the Republic military likely would have fought just as ugly as the Separatists. To be fair, at least these officers have experience in fighting pirates and criminals while most Jedi mostly acted as diplomats with events like the Invasion of Naboo being exceptions. It's a pretty complex situation. Overall if the officers had full control of the GAR and Republic Navy, they would have pushed their clone troopers to be more brutal and vicious, but they at least would have won the war far sooner than Palpatine hoped for. The Jedi meanwhile made sure to respect their allies, neutral worlds, and even their enemies at times and encouraged their clone troopers to be more like people. However their efforts usually lead to key Separatists making their escape and thus keeping the war going for longer.
Hence why the Jedi became unpopular the closer you were to the capital of the Republic and more popular the further out you went. Citizens on worlds engulfed in the war of course hate the fact that their is a war destroying their home, as many planets basically died in the war. However the Jedi at least tried to preserve lives as seen on Ryloth, winning the respect of not just their troops, but people on the frontlines. But deep in Republic territory as the quality of life went down as more resources were devoted to the war effort, people began to hate how the Jedi couldn't just end the war. It likely didn't help with the fact that Dooku was formerly a Jedi. They didn't understand the horror of war like the people in the Outer Rim and other regions between the there and the Core Rim. However over time in the war everything was changing for the combatants of the Clone Wars. While the clone troopers began to grow more independent and individualistic thanks to the influence of the Jedi, the war made the Jedi grow more bitter and darker. Give it a few more years and the Jedi and Clones may have partially switched places personality-wise. All in all, it kind of shows how despite unprepared the Republic really was. The Jedi were reluctant to become generals and fight a war, the officers had little compassion and little patience. And in the middle were the clone troopers torn between both of these leaders. Of course things probably weren't so smooth in the CIS military. Sure, Dooku chose a good chunk of the officers and all an officer would have to worry about was if their droids malfunctioned as they would follow any order given to them. But the idealists and corporate officers along with a number of mercenaries also hired likely argued over how to fight as well. The corporate's and mercenaries at least had Dooku who always granted them authority over the idealists, while Palpatine had to play a balancing act to pretend to be a Jedi ally while also finding officers who would suit his purposes in the Empire.
@@ryanfreebody6881 there's very little evidence that non-Jedi commanders were, as a whole, any better than the Jedi, quite the opposite actually, when these non-Jedi commanders took over after the establishment of the Empire, Imperial military efficiency generally got *worse*. Tarkin is the best example of this, the Tarkin Doctrine was a massive failure and a major part of why the Empire fell as it was inflexible and couldn't react to Rebel tactics.
There are of course exceptions, most notably Thrawn who thought Tarkin was a bit of a moron, but there were good Jedi generals too. The Jedi also had more of an excuse too since the Clone Wars kind of snuck up on them while Imperial commanders were experienced but still incompetent.
look no further than John Beatty in the battle of Jutland, who took his fleet of cruiser killer scout ships and used them as front line ships against German capital ships, mostly because he wanted the glory of sinking German ships. As such, he lost like 1/2 his ships, and sank 0 german ships.
@@ryanfreebody6881 bro you sound personally offended. Take a chill pill
If the GAR was unnerfed, the simple solution would have been to make a variant that replaced the hangars with magazines for torpedoes and lots of extra launchers, and removed the doors instead just having reinforced armour.
It could have obliterated enemy capital ships with massive salvos in one barrage, while tanking the return fire.
And it wouldn't need a whole new production line and development cycle.
If the GAR was also playing smart, they would have kept it's external appearance identical with fake doors and so on.
Who am I kidding, the GAR would have painted it in different colours.
Haha yeah pretty much.
Great idea though
Basically a Victory built on the frame of a Venator
@@josesanchezrodriguez1783 so why not just use a victory… they were smaller and more space and rescorce efficient.
You’d also need to fix the goofy double bridges.
@@doughboidays3039 Take this idea to its logical conclusion: mount another weapon system, camouflaged, in the secondary bridge. Another SPHA-T would work if you're not feeling very creative.
The Venators - symbol of the Grand Army of the Republic before they were replaced by Star Destroyers when Palpatine reorganized the Republic into the Empire.
For a safe and secure society
@@davidvasquez08 that will blow up your planet if you rebel.
@@fishyfinthing8854 lol
@@fishyfinthing8854 peace is not a given, it has to be enforced. As I like to say whenever I am mayor in anomic: "empty streets are safe streets".
The Republic had good carriers, they just needed bigger battleships during the Clone War. Ironically this would lead to the Empire under emphasizing the use of carriers during the Galactic Civil War, which would be one of their biggest weaknesses. Reminds me of the quote people always plan to fight the last war, not the next one.
in fairness the emphasis on bigger beefier capital ships wasn't because of any failing in the clone wars
The Empire actually had ships that compensated for the ISDs weak spots, but Lucasfilm just hates watching the Empire not being crushed in space battles.
Battleships are dumb, that's why we quit using them. Jets do most of the work now, so the starfighter would do that here. And the rest is handled by small boys like frigates, destroyers, and cruisers. If you take out a small boy you hurt the battle group. But if you take out a battleship you kill the fleet, like taking out a super carrier would today. Expect unlike a carrier a battleship doesn't have dozens of fighters protecting it, attacking you, and running interference along with the ones that are actually going on the hunt.
@@majinjason comparing space and naval combat isn't very smart
@@richardhicks5031 The Principles remain the same. A fighter is just a small, fast moving, hard to hit powerful gun/missile/bomb. Having hundreds of those vs 60 turbo laser is no contest.
Why waste time and energy on cannons when fighters are your cannons?
Also if you destroy the cannon, you damage the ship. If you destroy the fighter the ship is still fine.
Instead we have space battle in sci-fi that mimic 1800s naval war. How is that better or make more sense?
To be fair to the Venator, it had 16 Heavy Turbolasers which actually outranged those on CIS warships so it could snipe enemy ships while it's fighters fought up close with the support of lighter capital ships.
Outranged? Both Munnificent and Recusant had few heavier cannons, so they had to close in a bit anyway.
@@antonisauren8998 Nope, if you check their weapons the Munificents carried two heavy turbos while Recuscants had a couple more heavy turbos but nothing heavier that the VSD's heavy dual turbolasers.
This is the quote the info about range comes from:
Republic-allied engineers ensure Star Destroyers can be operated by a relatively small crew, and weapons designers have created more powerful turbolaser cannons with increased range and accuracy, giving the Republic Navy a strong advantage against Separatist warships.
This comes from Star Wars Complete Vehicles New Edition, it's canon.
but it didnt
Carriers are never meant to be in direct combat. Did tarkin make up this strategy?
Lol, just what I was thinking, totally sounds like something Tarkin would do.
It's more a giant assault carrier meant to shrad the enemy with it's star fighters and escorts then if they are still alive pound them with their guns then make a space head on a planet... Or stay beyond range of the mainly battleship enemy and play star fighter games with them till hopefully they win.
Nope! You can mainly blame the jedi for this… sadly they made horrible generals/admirals.
In Jedi’s defense, they had extremely limited tools with how barren the Republic Navy was to begin the war. Venators were the best option for most of the war. If anyone is to blame, it’s Rendili for taking so long to finish the Victory and get it into service, by the time it was ready, the Republic already had formed most of its tactics. Even that’s unfair though, nobody was expecting the war to escalate this quickly.
@@Quecojo tbf the Jedi was put in such position as the plan of palpatine, it wasn't their request and they definitely not a war organization, the same way you wouldn't let Christian priests be war officers
The Victory wasn’t really designed as a front line warship either though, its primary role was a missile boat. It was better suited to move up than the Venator, but it wasn’t a true solution so much as a lesser of two evils. That’s really why the Imperator Class was designed so soon after the Victory, and why it stuck around for 20 years before being replaced (with its replacement only being a minor update).
Edit: All that said, the easiest solution would've been to just use Dreadnaught-class heavy cruisers. They were designed by Rendili (same company that designed the Victory) and used by the Republic in the Clone Wars according to the Thrawn Trilogy (which was written way before the Prequels), could be produced in large numbers, and had the armor and fire power to serve as excellent front line warships (it was shown that 3 Dreadnaughts with fighter support could realistically match an ISD despite being less than 1/5th the cost to produce, clearly very good bang for your buck). Their weaknesses (besides things that were simply a byproduct of being an old design like an outdated hyperdrive and shield systems, which could both easily be updated with minimal delay in production time or cost) were a lack of hangars and point defense weapons, meaning they'd be an excellent pair with Venators that provided those in great numbers.
I always felt like Rendili stole or borrowed from the Venator design when they first created the Victory. They were already looking to reduce the massive manpower requirement of fielding dreadnoughts and, after the Katana Fleet incident, were probably heavily marketing the Victory.
With the GAR always on the back foot compared to the CIS when it came to man(droid)power, I can't imagine them being excited over dreadnoughts.
I also only recall an example of 3 modified Katana Dreadnaughts locking down an ISD with ion cannon. I thought it took all 6 of them to actually challenge one in a straight up fight.
@@SkitFireS valid points, I didn't even think about the manpower issue. I assume there was some kind of advancement in technology between the Katana fleet disappearance since the Venator is over twice the size of a Dreadnaught but requires less than half the crew, but applying that advancement in technology to the Dreadnaught design would likely be about as much work as designing a whole new ship, so it makes sense they'd just move on to the Victory.
If that problem could be solved though, I think the Dreadnaught's effectiveness is considerable. I used the battle for Katana fleet as the main measuring stick where 6 Dreadnaughts (and fighter support), were more or less evenly matched with 2 Star Destroyers, and were able to outright win thanks to Han ramming an additional Dreadnaught into one of the Star Destroyers, completely destroying it. The remaining Star Destroyer was able to escape but was stated as heavily damaged, implying to me the Dreadnaughts could have defeated it with enough time. The exact comparison of strength is hard to measure, the book implies the battle could have gone much worse before Han rammed the extra Dreadnaught into the ISD, but if Dreadnaughts can even compete with an ISD, then they should have no trouble dealing with the much more fragile bulk of the CIS navy like Munificent and Recuscant cruisers, while leaving the fighters to a Venator's interceptor compliment and the heavier ships like the Providence and Lucrehulks to strike craft and the Venator's Turbo lasers.
This is the best response. Agreed.
@@Kairyu_Gen1 Carrack is more modern, less crew intensive cruiser for the republic. WEG stats give it similar main battery, shields and armor, with double speed and 1/15 crew. There is no need to build new dreadnaughts by Clone Wars era. Those who serve, are PDF remnants from past era.
There were 2 variants of the Victory class. The Victory ll was more designed for front line ship to ship combat.
The Venator was more a carrier like those of WW2 and armed like one.
The biggest issue they you see in almost all star wars media is the lack of actual battle groups. There's hardly ever any destroyers (frigates in star wars) or baseline cruisers providing pickets for large capital ships. Most of the venators or ISDs flaws would be solved with a full on battle group and angling the venators maximizing the armors effectiveness while also removing the hangar from direct line of fire while giving the turbo lasers better firing arcs.
Given how long it'd been since the last time the Galactic Republic had been in a war, I wonder if it had affected their ability for strategy when using their Ships.
Certainly. A thousand years of no war and not having a functional standing military would lead to incredible institutional decay on any states ability to wage a war. A state wouldn't have anyone whom would have the slightest clue how to organize and lead such a large military. As bad as it was to put the Jedi in charge of the GAR, given how long it had been since the last war, regular military admirals and generals would not have done any better.
@@ryuukeisscifiproductions1818 That would also explain that one time where clones ran at savage, most of them not even getting a shot off before they died.
They also had 4000 years of detailed and recorded naval battles and warfare to look to. It’s not the same as actual experience but it’s still something. Enough to know how to build fleets and basics of naval engagement
@@Daedalus33 so did the jedi enclave, but just because there are the basics available for people, it doesn't mean people will properly study them much less bother to. There is also the issue of practical experience, it's easy to tell people how to fight, a lot harder to implement it especialy when having to do it in the middle of a battlefield. Certainly, officers who studied suh battle tactics and space warfare, might be able to do well, but that is if you know the enemies battle style and tactics. There is also the issue that some of the enemy commanders have more experience than the admirals of the republic, several cis members had already honed their tactics, when the republic had only just started in the war. only a few admirals had the actual experience against pirates, but the cis commanders fought in actual wars before becoming apart of the cis.
The Venator was more of an assault carrier, The problem is that it was used with wrong tactics in mind. The GAR had no true battleships but there were better ships that could run as frontline offense or defense for the Venator while the Venator provided support and staging for assault if necessary. That’s the odd thing about Star Wars, The original trilogy was based on WW2 ships and tactics while the prequels had ships & tactics closer to modern times. This kind of makes the Empire seem incompetent since something like an updated Venator design paired with some scale down ISDs with better point defense systems serving as destroyers and cruisers would have a been set up that allow the empire to patrol and secure their territory with fewer ships and better power projection post clone wars.
At 2:06, I like the 'Rebellion' Venator.
But, I would have had smaller hangers, replace the former hollowed areas with extra power, shielding, crew quarters so the personnel could be closer to their quarters, kept the central strip for small corvettes meant for anti-fighter and patrol duties, the smaller hangers would be fitted with specialized ARC-170's that were modular, added extra turbo lasers and other weaponry that was both defensive and offensive, and to keep this short, as I have a whole 'essay' of what I would want my Venator to be, a third higher tower, in-between the other two and above.
I think just placing the turrets in less restricted areas would make a big difference.
Also placing some flaks on the underside, and hooking up the side hangars with the main one, and getting rid of the door would help
@@johnnowak4620 I would perma delete the ventral (except on dedicated assault/carrier variants) hanger and put a big f**k off gun (or two/four if feasible, a pair or two of SPHATs should be enough to give anyone/thing second thoughts about diving under to escape the mainguns/torpedo batteries) there, additional shielding units, and more power generation (if needed, the Venator's reactor was very powerful for it's time). It's not like it was used very often or would significantly impact the number of embarkable strike craft.
The Venator as a Command Ship and a dedicated Carrier works wonders. But as a Battleship, well... not so much.
The Victory as a Light Missile Cruisers is a temporary fix but, usage of more dedicated, Ship-to-Ship combat vessels is what the Republic needed.
Perhaps the mid-war refit of the Clone Armor and some new ships, like the Victory, could've been given more attention at places like Kuat Drive Yards
The GAR needed the Victory II and the Imperator (aka, the Imperial). But the Victory II was a post war design and Palpatine deliberately hid and slowed the design and fielding of the Imperator.
Don't diss my baby,she is beautiful.She is great as a carrier and worked well with acclammator,arquintens and victories.I do think they could have used another front liner to take the damage, while the venator acted the backup
while I love the venator, it would be a terrible space ship for combat. In space, when every ton counts, multiroles arent great. a dedicated carrier can carry more space planes and a dedicated anti ship platform can have tons upon tons of more guns. Say you have 50k tons to work with, 20k tons of that is going to be engines (40% is pretty typical for both sea faring vessels and in most scifi space vessels) so you really got 30k tons left. I dont know how hyperspace works in starwars so im going to just assume that you need a dedicated hyperspace engine as obiwan had that ring that he attached to his ship to go into hyperspace. so thats another 5 to 10 tons. Now youre only down to 25k tons, another 5-10k on armor so now youre at 20k and you havent even added any weapons or sensor systems. Now youre at an impasse, you could only give it the bare minimum of sensors for maybe 2-5k tons and then the ship can at least see whats in range, or you could make it a "multirole" and give it kickass sensors to see the entire system its in, but then thats going to be 10k tons more. And at that, your 50k ton super battleship is only 10k tons of guns
@@agentbarron3945 the hyperdrive would be build inside the main engines, notice how the X-wing used its engines to travel normally and in hyperspace.
I think the republic needed to multirole because of the suddenness of the conflict.
The Venator worked well enough within its assigned roles, it was when overzealous leaders drove them into enemy fire that it couldn't survive by itself.
Seriously, the Venators would have made great fleet mates of Imperial-class. You could even cut most of the Imperial's hanger/troop space and make it smaller. Or give it more guns, your choice. You could also remove a few turrets from the Venator to free up space and maybe even connect up the hangers. As the Venator could do any carrier/transport role far better, and still possess enough firepower to handle almost any Rebel battlegroup if the Imp goes down (provided any Mon Cala cruisers present where destroyed/fled). Through in a couple of Victory 1's, (The 2's lost most of the missiles/torpedoes and where basically mini imps, and one Imp (especially if it's a 2 or Tector) is enough to handle most Rebel battlegroups, and I'd prefer to rely on additional AA guns and the Venator's strikecraft to protect the Imps against hostile strikecraft) For long range missile support and a close escort for the Venator, and suddenly the Rebellion (or anyone else for that matter) are going to have a much harder go of things.
Imagine: you're on a Venator and there are a full 2k passengers, that mobile base and all the supplies. It's 1.1Km stem to stern and you gotta share bunk space bunk space in shifts. You hope those hyperdrives will get you there soon because you're bloody well tired of smelling 9K versions of yourself.
All being well put..... one has to remember, that structure and disposition of Republic Forces were NO ACCIDENT. They were DESIGNED like this ON PURPOSE to make war drag on. Also, remember that in SW Universe Venators could have been probably built 'on the cheap' more easily than heavily armed and armoured ships of the line.
the venator wasn't a battleship, but a multi role battl carrier,
the last image isn't of the vicotry, but the onager, an empire project, based on the same technology of the death star main gun
It was an excellent fleet carrier, it'd even be a great fleet carrier post galactic civil war given a modernization overhaul.
What it needed was a battleship variant with most of the hanger facilties stripped out, and more heavy turbolaser turrets added.
Turbolasers and torpedo facilities, with inproved shields.
That little bastard would tear you a new A.
The side hangars would stay but the main one wouldn’t.
@@mapleflag6518 That's the plan with such refit. While the Side and Bottom hangars and the Bridges would be remaining, the redesign for a Battleship Venator would use that space to either add new Turbolaser/Ion Cannon Batteries (and/or even rearrange the Heavy Turbolasers the Venators have already so they cover more of the Ship) as well as Reinforced Hulls and Stronger Shields
Why not build a whole new class better optimized for frontline role?
That new variant would require so many alterations that it would be cheaper to start a whole new class.
When you need to replace critical components like reactor ( Venator's reactor output was just enough to operate all it systems) then it is not worth it.
@@huntermad5668 Then it would not be ready for the Clone Wars or it would be coming too late to make a difference
I've always loved the Venator since I first saw it on Episode III. Such a beautiful ship. I know a lot of people like to designate it as a Carrier but it is so much more.
The Venator was a good assualt carrier.
@Geetsly's we got scam bots
The Venator was the GAR’s favourite because it mixed the firepower of a destroyer class vessel with the unit carry capacity of an aircraft carrier
To me, it seems as if the Venator didn't exactly know WHAT it was...a fighter/bomber/troop carrier.....OR....a dedicated battle ship.
So it ended up being a Jack-of-All-Trades-But-Master-Of-None kind of ship through out much of the Clone Wars.
The Republic should've done itself a logistical favor and created dedicated Venators to fill each role separately.
That way, the Republic would've had dedicated carriers, with extra space that losing some of the Venators cannons would have provided.
And dedicated battleships mounting extra heavy firepower.
Then combined these two different, dedicated vessel types into combined arms fleets.
This would've increased the GAR's combat capability by lending greater flexibility and combat stamina to its attack forces simply by such a dedicated fleet being able to carry MORE of everything.
And left the troop carrying to the Acclamators. Would have freed up a fair amount of space for more fighters or guns.
Honestly I always assumed they used them as battle ships because their shields were stronger than the acclimators, and, while lacking many of them, their guns were still bigger and had more punch through. They were also likely expecting fighter and bomber coverage to protect them. It was a dumb tactic.. but I assumed thats why.
a bif 2 big flaws of the Veator could be fixed if we have AI operated point defense lasers along the spine of the ventral hanger to add protection from enemy ships as well as help increase its firepower, and then mirror all of it's gun's on top to bottom to increase it's firepower and coverage
The Venator Class ship was meant as a counter for the Trade Federation droid controlled ships. The number of droid fighters they could launch was
daunting. The Republic neede a ship that could ferry a sizable of small attack craft & ground support vehicles for clone battalions.
I love the venator, The Venator is a Battle-Carrier it serves this role perfectly, But the republic also needed was a full-fledged battleship. It one of the best carriers in the Star Wars galaxy. My love for the Venator will never change its a powerful Battle-Carrier. Every ship as Pros and Cons.
I think this is probably one of my favorite videos of yours. I love the Venator class and it's use in the cartoons, and limited use in Ep. III.
It's weaknesses are that of most carriers in the flight deck area - I thing the Battle of Midway proved that factor.
Thanks for that.
Go away Separatist clanka
Not much. I’m fully aware of its flaws & thus, despite acquiring two Victory-class Star Destroyers to act as escorting battleships, I would still use it as a rear starfighter carrier AND something more synonymous to the Acclamator-class as Yoda did in the Battle for Kashyyyk in _Revenge of the Sith_ (i.e. it leads the battlegroup when a breach is made by the starfighters, the Victorys would hold the opening open, & the Venator that has dedicated itself in carrying the ground forces would squeeze right through, while the starfighter dedicated Venator stays behind for the battle above the planet)…
You forget that a Venater can't operate inside an atmosphere! That's what Acclamators are for!
Hell, before House of Mouse ruined 'Wars and turned it into the unrecognizable Disney Wars no Star Destroyer (except a Victory-Class - and only the base model, the Victory-II-Class ISD also couldn't!) could operate within an atmosphere, it was what made the Victory-Class special...and what made Grand-Moff Tarkin use one to literally crush a few thousand protesters by landing his ship on them!
@DreaningFlurry : **Forgets the venators that were in the atmosphere of the 2nd Battle of Geonosis AND LANDED on both Coruscant and Kashyyyk in Revenge of the Sith.**
@@Kyzen_Wrell I was just thinking that.
The Jedi were the only real advantage the Republic had.
Pretty much. Especially with Tarkin influencing their military decisions.
And y wings
And clones
Hell everything they had was an advantage but with gaps , they only lacked a powerful battleship esk one and needed better smaller ships for escort and screening than the arquitens and c70
Nah, the only real advantage the republic has is that Darth Sidious control everything and he needs the republic to win to take over it later
The true biggest flaw with the venator is that it only ever seemed to carry one or two squads of fighters.
Like during the battle of bothiwuii in the 2007 clone wars a SINGLE SQUAD of V-19s is deployed from THREE venators. THREE.
At least during 2003 clone wars the things deployed actual swarms of fighters into combat instead of what could at best be an honor guard for an incoming shuttle.
It does at least seem like the venators get portrayed as more carrier-like than the OT's ISDs. Which is pretty amusing when it gives the impression that the GAR was making the mistake of using a carrier to fight battles intended for battleships, while the ISDs were battleships where the Empire seemed to need more fighter spam. Murphy's Law in space you could say...
Pretty much the shows fault. The battles in the 3d show seemed smaller in the beginning seasons.
Tbh thats not really a problem with the ship, that was a choice from the show maker, not a limitation of the ship
To be fair in the 2003 clone wars they primarily showed the acclamator deploying hundreds of ships.
A shortage of fighters and pilots might have something to do with that.
What does the Republic Navy have in common with the Royal Navy?
They both think Aircraft carriers are battleships.
I’ve always thought of the thing as a Battle Carrier (Battleship/Carrier Hybrid). It has massive amount of guns, and a massive fighter capacity. The problem is committing to one of the two extremes, normally means the other suffers. Reguardless they still preformed pretty well.
the venator should have filled the roll of command/carrier ship, being surrounded by other ships that we're more capable of going toe to toe with other Cis battleships, I also think that it should have have smaller vessels with laser turrets screening fighters for it, that's why the Cis fleet was so good mainly because it was so balanced and varied
Exactly, the main hangar of the Venator, resembles aircraft carriers, which the only objective was launch aircraft as a means of air support/air superiority.
Exactly, the main hangar of the Venator, resembles aircraft carriers, which the only objective was launch aircraft as a means of air support/air superiority.
While the points you make about the wrong use the Venator had and the flaws it had by default are logical and true, we must not forget than, despite of all the flaws, multiple times we have seen the Venator beat down Munificent class and Recusant class warships in the series, movies and other media, using both its weapons and fighter complement. The ship wasn´t as awful as one might think in a capital ship engagement, in fact it could defeat many of the Confederacy ships in a fight even without fighters; however, many upgrades could be made to make it more appropiate for, either it´s intended role of a battle carrier, which would mean relocating it´s point-defense weapons throught the most imprtant and vulnerable areas, or to make it able to fulfill both roles more properly by reducing certain hangar areas in favor of better armament (more turbolasers, along with some ion cannons and/or mac guns), along with better weapon distribution, and reinforced armor plating to make it sturdier and eliminating important weakspots.
On the other hand, while the Munificent and the Recusant were deadly ships in their own right, I do not consider them as ships the Venator struggled greatly in base of what we were shown, that title would go to the Providence carrier/destroyer (also the Luckrehuk but that would be unfair), which is basically what I believe the Venator could have been and can be modified into, since the Providence had a great carrying capacity while also having a very powerful and better distributed arsenal, all of that while being even shorter than the Venator in lenght.
Another problem with the Venator is the ground complement: they take space for the bombers' supplies and more starfighters.
Tell that to the seppies. I distinctly remember a single venator very nearly taking down the Invisible hand in only a few broadsides.
The Invisible Hand had just had it's fuel cells ruptured by Obi Wan and Anakin in a deleted scene which was causing the equivalent of internal bleeding for a star ship. The Venator's barrage got an extremely lucky shots where they take out a proton cannon. That explosion cause further damage causing the ship to go critical (we literally see droids on the bridge explode due to the explosions in the ship)
You mean the one ship the entire Republic fleet was hunting down? The guarlara Just got lucky that the Providence wasnt at full capacity
I think a better option would be to have one ship assigned for carrier roles and another ship assigned as an actual battleship. Having them split into multiroles would have negated their effectiveness in the fields.
You are correct, and the Empire would eventually adopt this general strategy of using Imperial-Class Star Destroyers as their primary front line battleship, with dedicated carriers behind them like the Quasar-Fire and Ton Folk (as well as other specialized ships like Lancer Frigates that filled roles the Imperial-Class wasn't optimized for), but this was only over 23 years of experience and development, the Republic didn't have that kind of time, it had to come up with a fleet capable of at least competing with the Separatists (who Geetsly's have explained had an amazing fleet design in other videos) in as short of a time period as possible. Best way to do that was to make a few simple designs that filled multiple roles, and the Venator did that exceptionally well. Geetsly's is correct it had its flaws, hence why it was phased out later when better designs could be made, but it did its job and Legends and Canon both take inspiration from it for the future.
In the battle of midway, the japanese carriers got blown up and lit on fire, with like 2 bombs each because they had lots of munitions lying around which ignited and caused their downfall, so now imagine having many times more munitions and a open hangar door, and not much protection on those areas, you can imagine the explosion
I always found it confusing how they said it could take on 6 munificents. Buts always lost when fighting a recusent or providence. Lol.
The venator should be classified as a cruiser/carrier. It only got the star destroyer tag cause it was the mainline ship of the navy
In Downfall of a Droid we literally see 8 additional DBY-827 Turbolaser Cannons on the ventral side of the Resolute. Obviously an animation error as it was the first Clone Wars thing ever produced. But it is interesting that they considered having ventral weaponry.
Venators were GREAT command craft. There should have been 4 to 5 Venators, 10 to 12 Victory Class, 18 to 20 Acclimators, and ~25 CR-90 sized ships in a GAR battle group. That formation would have given the GAR a lot of firepower that could quickly and definitively take on a comparable CIS fleet.
Hmm if I didn’t know any better I’d say someone within in the GAR was influencing The Navy’s strategic decision making, so that they wouldn’t be able to have decisive space victories. The same could be said for separatist ground forces; the battle droids were threatening but couldn’t hold a candle to a clone. Idk, if there was a mysterious shadowy figure who somehow profited from prolonging the conflict controlling both sides, he set up his game pieces perfectly
Please cover how the ARC-170 was misused by the Republic and how it could have been better optimized. I personally would mount a Gatling gun on it so that it would be more like an A-10 Warthog
Didn't Eckhart's Ladder do a similar video on that?
Slugthrower gatlings won't work on space though.
@@michaelandreipalon359 Technically you can say Newtonian physics says they could just lob hyperaccelerated projectiles at a target. You just have to hope they actually hit, or you have live ammo floating through space until it DOES hit something.
The real question isn't why they were misused, it's how no one contracted KDY to make anything but carriers.
Disney should use the Errant Venture story from star wars legends and reimage it as a civilian-use Venator captained by Hondo Onaka.
The ship would basically be a mobile trade port that travels to different systems and many adventures ensue.
If the GAR used the venator such as we did in the pacific theater it’d through off the sep strategy all together. We know they probably had stolen or pirated venators so they knows the weak spots
I still reeeeeeally wish GL had used the victory star destroyer that was already in book canon. It feels like a more primitive star destroyer and was still heavily armed. 12 quad turbos, 40 dual turbos, 80 concussion missile tubes, and a hanger for (later) 2 squadrons of TIEs. It could also fly in atmosphere.
Ya it's not the best battleship but it's lethality as a carrier makes it far more superior than one. There's a reason why aircraft carriers replaced battleships in our world. If I could choose to command or pilot any ship in Star Wars I'd still pick the Venator without a second thought they're beautifully designed and the carrier capacity makes it better than most other ships including the Imperial Star Destoryers if handled properly.
Space is much different from our oceans, logically battleships seem they would be more popular in star wars given the infinite line of sight space provides
@@joshuahadley776 yes but with a carrier you can deliver attacks from multiple directions and overwhelm their defenses. You also have superior reconnaissance capabilities with smaller ships like the ARC 170 and not have to risk your entire carrier scouting out locations.
@@rc59191 I mean why even have carriers with hyperspace capable fighters, if you
need recon just send fighters, the occasional utility of fighters doesn’t erase the power of big gun
id take a modernized Harrower better gun batteries and almost the same amount of strikecraft and a less exposed bridge
The reason battleships are no longer used is because they could no longer fill their roles. Their whole job was to be a wall of guns and prevent the enemy from advancing to the softer targets. We now have missiles carried by destroyers that could take one out in two or three hits from beyond their range. The destroyers are cheaper faster and carries more than enough of a payload to wipe out a few battleships. Carriers are used now because they can deliver these explosive payloads at much further range than even the destroyers, along with support craft and troops. Star wars still has a need for battleships because most fleet battles follow the same rules as ww2 just on a three dementional field instead of two. I'm not trying to be mean or anything just thought you should know.
The venator during the middle of the war was replaced by the Victory 1 as a main-line battleship (it was unique for being able to go into atmosphere with its shields still up, which most ships couldn't do due to the energy required to keep them against gravity), it had decent turbolaser coverage but it had a lot of missiles.
During the Battle of Courascant, the victory 2 (an ion boat), imperator (imperial 1) and tector (imperial 1 star destroyer with more weaponry instead of hangar) were introduced
They were fleet carriers, not even proper battlecarriers because they didn't even have enough guns to take on a ship in their weight class. The excellence of the Republic starfighter corps is what allowed them to be successful. Fill a Venator with TIEs and watch it fail, fast. Another thing to note is that the main guns had variable settings allowing them to perform AA duties as well as mainline combat. Real world battleships sometimes had similar capabilities, the Yamato could shoot massive flak shells from it's 18.1 inch guns.
The Venator is a perfect relief ship. Being used to transport supplies after a disaster, or retrofitted to be a massive hospital either in orbit or on ground.
After retirement it could even be used as mobile black market trade hubs. With the massive hangar space it's easy to make a market place for any illegal goods. You have a full workshop for any kind of off the books ship modifications. Full mess hall (or possible cantina), along with sleeping quarters(or suites). Not to mention the class 1 hyperdrive and armament can get you and all your clientele out of any unwanted interuptions.
it is still super beautiful as a ship class! the red line adds so much to it rather than dull grey. as others have said making a variant that was less carrier and more boom boom is doable, but then how can you manipulate a war if one side would easily win.
Would a Venator focused on ship to ship combat with an elevated spine with gradually increasing step platforms for heavy turbo lasers?
Wonder if this was not a part of the Sith design for the war. Palpatine and Plaguis designed it to be evenly matched to bleed the galaxy, though it has no right to be. Even if the Republic forgot how to fight a war, the Sith had not, given what Palpy had of Malgus writings and designs for the Harrower-class ship from the Great Galactic War... maybe even something about ships from the Star Forge (speculation yes, but we know from the Book of Sith, the Sith had access to Malgus writings who was a strategic genius in large scale battles.)
Given that they knew the Jedi would he ones to want to lead from the front and charge straight in in a battleship role, why not give them a ship uniquely unsuited for they role - a carrier. KDY for sure knew how to build a ship made for front line battle like the Victory or the early Mandator dreadnought. Yet they were barely built and woefully underused.
Another way to bleed the Jedi dry and turn the galaxy against them was to use their bravery against them into headlong battles with equipment not meant for it vs a well equipped, well designed mixed force that had their own weaknesses - being converted freighters or protection craft rather than ships of the line until much later in the war.
The Venator would have made a great picket ship for planetary sieges in a defensive role, letting its fighters interdict.. And they won the sieges. But in open battle, they were outclassed with blood and less jedi prolonging the war. A Win-Win for Palpatine.
As you may know, the Force Unleashed Campaign Guide for the Saga Edition Star Wars RPG has a second-generation Venator, which was used in the early days of the Empire, and had extra point-defence laser cannons positioned to protect the main hangars
The venator was never classified as a battleship but a capital ship of the time the victory was more a battle ship but the venator has lots of options in a fight than later capital ship the venator yes is more of a assault carrier but at the time it size was capital ship size for the time the classification sizes change all the time considering how well the venator performed i doubt your claim that it was built badly it was built for the job It needed to fill considering that in the future the imperial significant lack of fighters and lack of anti fighter guns ended up causing lots of problems for the empire
The victor intiative had a heavy carrier and heavy destroyer esk partner .ships Maybe like the clones it was Palpatines manipulation that led to venator being underpowered and flawly designed and the victory and imperator being backlined for his personal fleets
I like to think of it as a Nimitz or Ford class carriers IRL, if i were a general in the clone wars, I'd have a fleet a 4 Venators, calling it a Venator strike group.
We forget that Palpatine was pulling every string on both sides to make the war last as long and costly as possibly.
Yes. Also, the Republic suffered from a chronic lack of manpower, particularly fighter pilots. This made a carrier-focused main battle ship even less suitable for them. The ship's biggest strength, its enormous fighter-capacity, seems more like a cumbersome obstacle than a strength for the GAR. How often do you think they could even field as many fighters per Venator as it was supposed to carry?
The Venator was more of an aircraft carrier more than a battleship which is why it was replaced by the Imperial Star Destroyer.
When I think of the Venator, I think of a mutated, giant and metal slice of pizza
So, the Interdictors?
@@michaelandreipalon359 good point
The perfect SW warship in my opinion would be something similar to an enlarged harrower class from the old republic with updated technologies, more armour and more weapons and more anti fighter weapons too
Something to remember is that there will never be a “perfect” warship. A ship with zero weaknesses will undoubtedly be too expensive to mass produce and will never be able to justify its cost over building multiple, cheaper ships that cover each other’s weaknesses.
Venators were excellent star fighter carriers, and were designed as such. It was the GAR/Jedi who insisted on using it for jobs that it was not built for.
Venators kinda reminded me of Soviet carriers who were a strange hybrid of a cruiser and aircraft carriers.
You know I never did the Venator give much thought but your right the Venator was a terrible choice for Frontline battles the Victory Class would most likely be efficient.
Thank you for the like and Silver the Hedgehog is still awesome.
I have thought about this for awhile and realised the venator and ISD are exact opposites one had great battleship potential while having terrible star fighters capabilities while the venator was the opposite if only they were used together it would create one of the best fleets imaginable in a v shape with victoryd in the front to act as a wall to destroy capital ships and shield lesser ships such as frigate and venator in the rear sending out support turbo lazer and spat cannons while safely deploying swarms of fighters .
So this must mean that the Republic Navy's plan for destroying enemy capital ships was through the use of fighters alone? or did they possess other vessels or weapons designed to for-fill this role?
Good video. Fleet diversity for the win.
I have one thing to add up on the Venators though: what's one of them and some V-Wings doing on Mandalorian hands in one of the tutorial missions for Empire at War: Forces of Corruption's campaign?
The Battle of Mandalore of course
While it belongs officially to Disney's Canon. Filoni was actually planning Season 7 (as part of Season 6 which became the Lost Missions) and even the entire plot of Rebels. long before Lucasfilm was even bought by Disney. So his work can be considered as part of the Original Canon as well
@@alpha34098 I disagree. Filoni retconned so many things about legends pre-disney (including Republic Commando, stuff about ARC troopers, stuff about Ventress, Star Wars Galaxies, etc) that fitting his stuff with old stuff simply doesn't work
How would the weapons of the GOAT Tri Droid fair against the underside of the Venator? If they were really that strong (as I hope they do, I love em), could they damage it?
A tri droid couldn't bring its guns to bear on a venator, the venator would, have to be in atmosphere, and then the tri droid would have to be on a cliff under it, however a hundred of them couldn't get through a single venators shields, but if it was unshielded eventually they'd be able to get through, but that can be said for any weapon, even a blaster pistol
The underside of a Venator tanked the combined fire of four Munificent Frigates in Storm Over Ryloth. The Tri Droid would do nothing to it.
A single one wouldn’t have much of an effect
A squadron of them would
@@josesanchezrodriguez1783 That was plot armour, they couldn't actually take that.
Aesthetically speaking, the Venator class is by far "battleship" with the Executor Class being my favorite dreadnought class ship.
I liked the Venator from the first time I saw it, but I always been shaking my head over how it have been used.
See the thing is that the turbo lasers were great for ship-to-ship combat. From a long, LONG range. It definitely needed support to protect and draw fire while fighters did most of the damage
They needed other ships to serve as a defensive shield and offensive spear
Hmm. In Thrawns Revenge a EAW Expansion there was a sub mod that you can make Venators for the New Republic. And there Variant is so far the Best. You Get Howl runners Y wings and shielded Tie Fighters. Though they should of Had the 170 in stead of Ties no matter
love your star wars videos
Agree with everything venator would be great carrier if empire exclusively used star destroyers and SSD AND with venator as a support carrier/frigate they could of gotten rid of like 5 different classes of ship the Empire actually ended up using but were less effective in their roles then even the venator was in a battleship role. Ones like a gizanti class, quasar class starfighter carrier, imprial light cruiser, im sure they could of made black hole genterator version that stops ships going to hyperspace. Etc. All of then no longer needed and also they should kept the laat gunship those were peefect for the roles and their replacements sucked
The Venator is definitely not a battle-line ship. At most, with it's type of firepower, it could dominate lighter CIS ships but given what it does its kind of Carrier/Assault ship hybrid. A pure carrier like the Quasar Fire typically doesn't embark troops but the Venator has this role as well with all of it's LAATs and troopers. It's kind of a design step beyond the Acclimator which is a pure Assault Ship with nearly with no fighters but good firepower for orbital fire support and defense against enemy ships. Anti-fighter coverage indeed lacking.
I think of the venator as a Aircraft carrier, it shouldn't ever been in the frontlines, it should be rear guard covering the acclamators pushing foward
I think the Venator was better in a role as sector control function. The reach were much higher which is more fitting for a asymmetrical warfare against the rebellion. Which in turn forced the rebellion into a battle of attrition, which in turn they would lose because of their dimished ressources. Mixed together victory class star destroyer they would give the rebellion a hard time. The imperator class was a waste of ressources in an assymetrical warfare. Too costly, too few to control an entire sector and very vulnerable to disrupted logistic. They were made practically for conquering but not for controlling a sector.
But maybe a redesigned Venator II Stardestroyer would be much better, with addressed the flaws and better point defense and long range weapons.
From looking at a lot of Star Wars media most battles are seemingly decieded by the number of fighters you have, how good the pilots were, and the quality of those fighters. It doesn't matter how fancy your battleship is when a few torpedoes and bombing runs can cripple it.
A lession the Empire continued to refuse to acknowledge all the way to the end of Sequel Trilogy.
Well, the clones were terrible pilots, the droids had the best navy in Star Wars since their bombers were the quickest and deadliest. Hyena Bombers and Vulture droids alone could probably destroy any capital ship in existence including fighter complements (aside from Lucrehulks maybe).
Anyone else notice the Venator class also looks oddly like a giant Jarjar Binks head stalking through space?
"Anny Anny! Meesa head is ah beeg bad starship! BOOMA WOOSHA!"
Uh, the Canon version of the Victory class 1 Star Destroyer had so many flaws that it was called an unlucky ship and a spacefaring coffin. And it seems when the Empire began the Victory 2 program, the new Victory class didn’t eliminate all of the worse flaws making an assignment to the ship be a mark of shame. To be fair though, the other options for battleships and dreadnaughts in the Republic navy were either be very old or so large that they cost far too many resources to maintain. The Victory 1 was probably the best shot for Canon Galactic Republic to get a ship that can go face to face against Separatist warships. I have to wonder though why when it comes to naval warships, the megacorporations that joined the Separatists got around Ruusaan Reformation bans in the years leading up to the Clone Wars and made dangerous warships while the Republic corporations that revel in building ships made first products that paled in comparison to what they made later for the Empire. They just have made half of the ships for Republic PDF’s during this era of peace and yet it’s the corporations that are situated further out in the galaxy who make the more dangerous ships, at least until the latter era of the Clone Wars.
Keep in mind this was all planned by the Sith. But for a less cop-out explanation: The Trade Federation used increasing pirate attacks (and lots of money) as a way of getting special permission to up-gun thier ships. Other CIS groups used lack of Republic oversight in the Outer Rim to hide thier actions. Meanwhile the main Republic shipyards where under extreme scrutiny (because they where in the Core and because the future CIS was secretly paying people off to put them under additional scrutiny).
The logical idea would have been the construction of a variant that did away with the main hangar, and used it for extra armor, power supply, shield generators, and turbolasers running down the length of the bow where the doors used to be. It can still retain the side and ventral hangars for storage of defensive star fights and still allows for the standard Venator to stay in service as a dedicated carrier and lighter warship.
I live the venator like everyone and understand that it was used wrong, but I think if they mounted a few SPHA in the main hanger which charge up a reserve and then unleash a devastating barrage before they close the hanger doors to allow them to save up more energy, it would make a single ship very exposed, but that much firepower in a fleet could target down important vessels in place of y wings, while also allowing the republic to get have more orbital bombardment options when they are offering fire support on planets in combat
Venator is mainly an carrier 500 fighters With good point defense rather excellent support ship
They were aircraft carriers
Are the Victory Class Star Destroyers even Canon? If so what sources are they used in. There are a lot of books and sources that reference all sorts of things, that aren't necessarily Canon. I'd just like to know if it's worth hoping to see some in future media or not
Honestly, if anything, the Venator is too well armed. Should it have less turbolasers, I doubt anyone in his/hers right mind would take it anywhere near gunfire range, and instead would use its way too OP carrying capacity more effectively.
This said, I agree it shouldn't be used as a battleship, but it should be exactly as popular (as a carrier) as it was, considering the proven effectiveness of starfighters in the clone wars.
Edit1:
The Point Defense problem is really inexcusable. Yet to say the Victory is a far better ship is to buy in the Imperial doctrine of better frontlineships=better ships.
In essence, yes the Victory complemented nicely the Venator, and would greatly add to the Republican fleets, but it was not a replacement for the Venator.
No wonder why Lucasfilm still used the Imperial Class Star Destroyer in Promotional Material, Here I am asking why didn't they use Clone Wars Stuff in Secondary Material and why Clones weren't the Iconic Troopers in photos
The Victory class was a little "Aggressive" to bring out in bulk in front of the Jedi. 😂
A true battleship refit for a Venator would look to me as follows:
-The secondary flight command bridge would be stripped, and the main one lowered and centered into the bridge "neck".
-The dorsal hangar bay's door-opening mechanism would be removed, keeping the extra armor the doors provide.
-The entire dorsal hangar bay is removed (and filled up with solid armor and decentralized extra reactors).
-On the main hull, along the sides of the former doors, smaller flak turrets are added.
-On the hangar bay door, a line of 4 more, super-firing _main guns_ would be added.
-The whole broadside "sandwich" area in between the upper side and the lower side is up-armed with dozens of anti-capital ship broadside mass drivers.
-The broadside hangar bays would be kept, but armed with extra flak guns to either side.
-The ventral hangar bay is removed and replaced by a rectangular protrusion, equipped with extra shield generators and even a standardly equipped SPHA-T turret.
-Another SPHA-T is placed dorsally at the point where bridge neck and hull meet (roughly exactly where the other one is below).
-The entire front bow section in the former hangar bay is filled to the brim with torpedo and missile tubes.
An expensive refit for sure, but one that certainly is better suited in all ways than the Venator-class carrier for front-line heavy duty brawling. A different variant, one less bent on pure destruction, would feature heavy Ion turrets instead of the 12 _main guns_ and the 2 SPHA-T turrets.
"Why the Venator Actually SUCKED as a Battleship" - because it was a Carrier!
Just one heavy solar ionisation cannon mounted on a CIS capital ship could bypass shields and get a shot at a vulnerable system, if the CIS were unnerfed as well.
If they were fitted to say a munificent class frigate that otherwise looked normal, that ship might be able to line up one hit kill shots on fully shielded Venators.
Venator1 & venator2 are Carriers for landing assault task forces . However SPHA main weapon got them inaf firepower to be equal with Federation Galaxy - class Enterprise, and if Enterprise can launched many different types of warheads, Venator overwhelming Enterprises with mass of starfighters
Wasn’t the Victory ment to be the frontline battleship from the start? I remember reading somewhere that because of delays in designing it they weren’t ready when the war started
The Senate was the Republic’s most famous politician.
Lots of people forget that palpatine was playing both sides and he was trying to pretend he was making effective warships. I'm sure the ship being completely hollow really helped even the odds against the vastly superior clone tactics
Honestly my opinion about the venator hasn't changed and i came up with a mk2 design when i was younger that corrected most of the weaknesses
There is already a Victory 2, although not much is known of it.