The Malevolence episodes were based on the hunt for the Bismarck. The initial losses of Plo Koon’s fleet to the Hood and Prince of Wales, Y-Wings to the Swordfish torpedo bombers, ect. I mean, the whole concept of a massive, advanced ship with an even bigger target painted onto it, is literally just the Bismarck.
They really played into the Bismarck and Tirpitz comparison didnt they. After the Bismarck sank the Germans where to scared to deploy Tirpitz and just sailed it around Norway. Despite never seing battle Britian was terified of it and spent ages tring to hunt it down while in dock.
Hilariously the ship survived a shell half the size of the fucking ship and it was a bunch of missiles or bombs or whatever in some spit fighters that killed it.
@@Prophetofthe8thLegion The torpedoes from the Swordfish biplanes didn't sink Bismark. One just happened to damage the rudder, which prevented it from steering properly and slowed it down. It was concentrated shellfire from multiple Royal Navy warships that pounded Bismark to bits, and either the shellfire sank it or the ship was scuttled when it was clearly lost.
Super Star Destroyer looks like a knife cutting across the galaxy. This looks like a giant pincer breaking everything apart with brute force. Love the designs.
A subjugator's giant ion cannon seems better served as a planetary defense platform weapon. Place it floating off a main hyperspace lane exit and fry anything you don't like popping in
Remember that Palpatine was so cocky, the Empire's capital ships had orders not to fire on the rebels, just so the Death Star could do all the work. If Endor had been fought with anything resembling a sane strategy, it would have been different.
@@davidlundquist1979 Looking at it like this it seems he got old. Imagine a mastermind play a galactic chess with all pieces in his hand and even setting up order 66 to ensure his win, and 20 odd years later he just messes up that bad.
@@Sekir80 Got bored to death probably. He got all he ever wanted and worked for, so why bother? You got right ppl, they are smart enough to do everything on their own, right?
The Malevolence episode serving as a Star Wars version of "Sink the Bismarck!" and Landing At Point Rain likewise being a Star Wars version of "A Bridge Too Far" are two of my favorite elements of The Clone Wars.
Just one of the most imposing ships in Star Wars that ultimately was destroyed because of a torpedo hitting one specific part of the ship. I wonder where they got that idea from🤔
I'm surprised the Empire didn't at least have a superweapon project focused around refining the ion cannon design. It could've helped to have a specialised Star Destroyer equipped with one at the Battle of Endor, stick it at the front of the Imperial Fleet, use it once the Rebel Alliance get boxed in and then let the rest of the Star Destroyers mop up everything.
This is the Empire we're talking about though. They had the best designed anti-fighter point defense ship ever created in the Star Wars universe and they never put it into large scale production to defend their vulnerable assets from the Alliance's hit and fade attacks.
I feel like super ion weaponry - purely for shield destruction as a variant of the chiss peltast - would be cool. Like a modern, updated subjugator or i’d like to see a pirate group that has taken and heavily modified one of these bad boys and uses it for capture raids
I don’t know where exactly it is from but in a comic somewhere there was a heavily modded subjugator that had its ion cannon changed to be like the unsc infinity cannon
in the remake mod the consortium (they are basicly a pirate group) can get a subjugator class that is simular to the Devastation, as it has 2 super turbolasers instead of 2 super ion cannons.
4:49 Given that the Malevolence was based on the Bismarck, that's a nice little nod to the fact that when the Bismarck first fired its main guns, it damaged its own radar systems.
Loved the Malevolence episodes. That thing was so ridiculously huge and tough. It was on fire near the end and. Just. Kept. Going. It had its own internal transport rail system, which you would need to move supplies and droids around something that large. And it sorta kinda looks like the Nautilus from Disney's 20.000 Leagues Under The Sea.
The subjugator line never fails to inspire my own creative process, but sadly my imagination put paces my artistic skill to put the ideas to the page I enjoyed the discussion of the comic at the start as well, I had similar memories of finding cool stuff and realising I didn’t really have anyone to share those discoveries with
My friend...You didn't mention the Devastator from the SW Jedi alliance game, the sister ship to the subjugator which was tasked to literally nuke Courosaunt. a rogue nightsister literally tried to kill sidious after he told Douku to nuke dathomir
There's another issue. That class of ship was primarily crewed by battle droids. Unless the Empire opted to continue that practice (unlikely), it's life support system and crew support network (crew berthing, food and waste services, medical, etc) would have to be redesigned from the ground, up.
Something to point out - it was only Anakin's sabotaging on board the Malevolence while rescuing Padme that took it out. And even putting aside it's historical inspiration - truth is that it is a battleship, and to have it operate independently, when unlike reality it is known how effective fighters can be is actually completely stupid of them to do. Without the ion cannons, in terms of anti-ship Subjugator's have 25x as many turbolasers compared to a Venator - and while some sources say Malevolence only had 5 point defense guns the class as a whole got as high as 400. Thing is much as it'd take coordination to keep friendly ships out of the way, at the center of a proper fleet - it'd give the Republic a ton of trouble with just how outgunned it's Venators would be. Build around it a few more classic cruiser and destroyer type equivalents - the typical 3 Venator fleets would be mopped up or fleeing in most cases probably given the losses and damage we see them take in fights with lesser ships. In the Civil War/New Republic era - yeah the advancement of fighters, much like reality, makes 'battleship' type ships somewhat archaic outside certain uses - but Clone Wars era, nah the ship makes sense to build beyond a symbol, it just needs to be used better, and maybe have omitted the ion cannons on later ships/removed them.
In the era before hyperspace interdiction, the malevolence would be a god teir ship for hit and run tactics. Imagine the Malevolence hyperspacing around diabling all republic hospital stations, hitting republic shipyards with a support fleet then dipping. In space battles, disabling an enemy ship is the same as destroying it as long as you clean up afterwords.
Dont think interdiction will make much of a difference. Quickly disable source using really long-range weapon and run away if you dont want to fight. Without SSD or something like it interdiction is worth close to nothing with ship like that.
I played that game back in the day. The night sisters in that game use some of the earliest cross guard lightsabers seen in Star Wars. It’s probably the reason I titled the vents on my cross guard saber up in Jedi Survivor.
The Malevolence arc was my favorite arc of the show until Umbara and Siege of Mandalore (I'm basic, I know), and I think it would have worked much better as the pilot movie than the movie we got. It would have eased the transition and made it more palatable because Star Wars audiences are already used to superweapons like this. They'd just have needed to slap on the Christphsis chunk to the beginning to explain where Ahsoka came from, then they go after Plo and the Malevolence instead of Rotta
I think Malevolance was a great start for the Clone Wars. It's similar enough to ANH to be easily digestible, but has enough fresh ideas that the arc keeps you on your toes. Honestly, I wish they'd released the Malevolance arc in theaters instead of the clone wars movie, and I remember them using clips of the ion cannon charging in the movie trailers.
I could be wrong about this, but I remember seeing a giant forward facing plasma cannon variant somewhere. It was from some comic and Metanerdz did a video on it years ago. Must be incredibly obscure because that's the only place I've seen and heard of it.
@@marcelxd1633 The aggressor is a star destroyer and it has both a big plasma and ion cannon. The devastation as I've relearned, only has a plasma cannon and is obviously much bigger than the aggressor.
The Malevolence is awesome but completely impractical warship of the Separatists due to how massive it is and how it's gonna be a pain to maintain, refuel and repair it.
Much like the ship it’s history based off The Bismarck a battleship which had very few other heavy ships along side during the second world war, really solely built as a “fuck you!” To the London naval treaty
@@williambeisel5686 That completely wrong take. It was build as a part of german naval strategy as kind of super-long range U-boat with enough firepower to sink any convoy without battleship. That was before german navy focused solely on submarines after they were proven capable enough to remove the need. That was also a reason for building super-cruisers like Sharnhost or Spee, same but build to take out heavy-cruisers. Nothing is done without some kind of reasoning behind it, even if it is outdated and not in favor anymore. Real "fuck you" would`ve been H-class (especially final one, basically Yamato in atlantic with no clear use), since why it was never build or even saw some real work besides concepts.
For some reason as a kid I always thought the ship was supposed to be a special Republic ship stolen by the CIS and not because of the ion super weapon. Thinking back that would be a cool story though
It would be a cool story, a Republic superweapon so classified that when it was stolen, they didn't even bother to tell the Jedi about it for fear of losing face. Or maybe so secret that they didn't even know about the project in the first place because it was done at some super remote or hard to reach black ops site.
Having actually played Jedi Alliance, B-tier is the right word to describe it. There were certainly some pretty cool elements, but there were also a lot of repetitive ones and little kid me could not keep up with the quick-time events or solve the puzzles beyond the Aurebesh one on Rodia to save her life.
I find it fascinating that in an interview it was revealed that the Subjugater was supposed to be 3 times as long as it actually ended up being but it had to be made smaller due to budget and time constraints, which is why the interior seems to be so much larger then the exterior.
The most interesting thing about the Malevolence in the clone wars episode if you know your history of WWII battles. Its base off the Last battle of Bismarck. The German built Bismarck-class battleships. There were only two made, they were massive for a battleship. And its whole deployment in the Atlantic ocean during Operation Rheinubung only work when the Allie forces didn't know the ship existed. Thinking that a column of normal sizes battleships were the cause of the damage to the supply convoy ships. Only when finding out about the Bismarck existence did a British task force using a 4 stage plan, which started out with torpedo bombers making a first run at the ship disabling the steering. The second phase where the British and Polish battleship following and harassing the Bismarck. With the 3rd phase using the King George V sinking the Bismarck. Again, another case of WWII influence in Star Wars story writers.
The huge ion cannon could be impractical in some battles. For example, if it was fired in the battle over Coruscant, it would likely hit several allied ships as well.
Ironically, a giant ion weapon would be useful against the shield-heavy Mon Calamari cruisers. But really, the Malevolence was dependent on secrecy and surprise. If the Republic fleets just spread their ships out, the ion cannon would become far less effective, and the fact that the ship has to broadside to use the superweapon rather than attack from the front makes it inconvenient to use or vulnerable to kiting - there's no way that thing can turn on a dime.
That bit what you said about about the Star Destroyer and around that, reminded me of what I like about the Venator, it was a well armed battlecruiser yet also a carrier.
That why it sucks. Being in direct line-of-fire while exposing extremely vulnerable parts of ship and throwing living pilots straight in fire...that just stupid. It lack a power of real battleship and lack capacity of a carrier, while having disadvantages of its own paired with disadvantages both these class have.
Back when I was in either Elementary School or Middle School, there was a Star Wars Club run by Scholastic or something. Every month they sent members a new issue of their magazine which contained various articles, factoids, puzzles, and often a comic at the end. But there was also a book-and-card based adventure game series that came with it. The book had the adventure as well as what limitations were placed on the characters/weapons/vehicles you could use, all of which had their own card. I remember being so obsessed with this club and game when I was a kid. Towards the end of it's run, it was giving behind the scenes info for the then upcoming/newly released Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones.
the problem with a lot of these animated shows and their new technologies is that they're so op but never used again or expanded upon. palpatine just sits on all these designs for super weapons
@@emberfist8347 that they could fix, also not always. the star destroyer that stops lightspeed is the perfect weapon but used like once, the supertank was only beat because it was sent over a weak easily collapsible bridge, etc.
@@nameynamename3758 The Interdictor showed up many times in later episodes. And the Supertanks had the factories they were built in blown up and the designer was captured by the Republic. And flaws were always crippling ones. Like the Malevolence you can’t fix the issue of the ion cannon getting destroyed and crippling the ship as you need a single massive reactor to to power both cannons.
@@emberfist8347 the malevolence was built in a rush, if the empire could make a planet destroying weapon they could refine the tech. as for the interdictor, that's my point they show up for these shows and are so op but never used again
@@nameynamename3758 The Interdictor has shown up many times in the franchise. Canonically the Empire didn’t built enough of them and didn’t use them in the right restricting them to customs enforcement.
I assume nobody believed the Subjugator-class could exist not because it was impossible to build, but because it was believed that the Separatists could never be capable of it.
The Malevolence has always been one of my favorite ships, and I see your point with it’s practicality. In my opinion I think it could’ve been used pretty effectively in maybe hit and run tactics, and I think this ship only thrives through secrecy. Either way, awesome breakdown Eck!
I just wish Hot Wheels would remake some of the old titanium line like they have been doing with the 3 inch ships. This included. A Venator alone goes for over 100.
Makes absolute sense. Once the cat was out of the bag with the Malevolence, the Republic pooled it’s extensive special operations resources together to have any new ships of that class identified and destroyed before construction could be completed or before they could deal significant damage to Republic forces. This is likely why Doku didn’t want any survivors and ordered Grevieous to keep the ship illusive and intangible. The General‘s hubris was a major blessing for the Republic, as well as Skywalker and Ahsoka‘s loyalty to Master Plo and their Clone subordinates.
My understanding about the Malevolence’s weapons was that it was thought that a ship large enough to power such an ion cannon would be several times larger, and would be very expensive to build. Clever engineering (recycling waste heat) allowed the fitting of the enormous ion cannons to a Subjugator-class ship instead of something even more enormous.
It was actually them making the ship massively large to recycle waste heat and but they needed to discharge that energy regular so the design was attached to an Ion Cannon for that purpose.
My head canon is that there are easy tactics/methods to deal with them, when you know what you were up to. Before I saw the episode, I heard only the audio book version, and the ship seemed like a menace. But not only because it is a powerful warship. Compared to other fleets fights, there were no survivors, and no coms left, as if the republic fleets just vanished. For the admirals it must have felt like being attacked by an unstoppable ghost, and I think it is fair to assume every clone on every ship in the entire navy felt unsafe just knowing this beast is out there somewhere just ready to kill the next small fleet
Im not fully versed in the subjugators lore, but if I didn’t know any better, I would say that that ion cannon looks like an afterthought, kinda a tacked on kind of look, makes me think that the class might have fared better without the super weapon feature.
Hey loved the video, always wanted some more information on why this ship was a one off thing. I would love to hear some more about the mandator class ship you mentioned at the end, it really looks like a potentially amazing concept but I’ve never heard anything about it!
For me I think they'd went into the road of miniaturizing the tech, thus creating the Ion cannons built into a ship's turret or surface to space like in hoth. Afaik, ion tech wasn't prevalent during clone wars (mostly emp for droids but no dedicated ion weapons for shields)
No they had ion cannons for ships before this. The Malevolence was them taking the design to its logical extreme. A good analogy would be the 18.1 inch guns of the Yamato-class or the Gustav Gun both are weapons that are the largest ever built and nobody attempted something like that again as it was dead-end that was too impractical.
I feel like a Subjugator should be paired with an Indicator. One pulls the prey out of hyperspace unexpectedly, and before they can react, the other knocks out it's systems. Add a Lucrehulk to then dump Vulture droids out and swarm the sitting duck and pick them apart and then drag resources back to the Lucrehulk. I might have just made a droid pirate fleet ...
I honestly find this ship to be one of the best Fleet leads in star wars. It needs a fleet around it to capitalize on the giant fleet breaking power of its Ion cannon, its a massive multiplier to the danger of a fleet and a great support tool.
The Subjugator class was a capital ship by design but unlike most Confederate vessels that had some bit of protection for the engines the Subjugator extremely exposed them Another down side is it OVER reliance on the ion cannon for offensive/defensive purposes, they should have placed perhaps another power station that acted as backup power and fed the armaments not to mention the amount of space left open that could have been more gun emplacements or tactical monitors The large empty space between the two Bridges could have been used for other purposes such as another “bridge” that could be used as a intelligence and espionage center for the Confederacy The Malevolence was a prototype at best, but needed escorts to ensure the survival of this capital ship
Maybe the Subjugator class was primarily expensive because of it's generators'/energy potential outstripping even a Mandater's energy production/needs for the ion cannon. Maybe those power systems were not useful for star destroyers in general but eventually adapted for the Imperial-class to provide more room for other systems, and extremely scaled down for Tie Fighters to maximize their laser power and minimize their expense for materials and minimize their size around the cockpit/generators. Maybe the systems were extremely expensive like trying to buy a hadron collider in modern-day or some as of yet to be mass produced super battery.
True. This thing have enough power to essentially one-shot whole fleet, mandater would not disable whole fleet in few mins without fight or even damage.
the gameplay was a weird flashback, I completely forgot that this game existed and just now I remember how clunky it could be from time to time, especially that escape from the reactor.
The Subjugator-class wasn’t more prominently used because the first couple ships were destroyed by sabotage. Also they were in a way testbeds forced into combat. And the Empire didn’t want it as they were more interested in blowing up planets.
The weirdest things about this ship to me were 1: It needed to be kept a secret, since ion weapons are anything but new 2: It wasn't reproduced and used more, considering how impossibly surprised the republic was by its existence. This is like dropping napalm and finding that it's incredibly effective because somehow the enemy has never heard of it, then just giving up on it once they shoot down your only napalm armed plane Similar to the virtually identical emp bomb that the republic used exactly once, found it to be ridiculously effective, instantly destroying hundreds of droids with no collateral damage, and then never again.
1: the reason it was kept secret was that the Republic wouldn’t know what exactly was terrorizing their space lanes. If they knew what they were facing they would counter it. Also the Ion Cannon was on a unprecedented scale in terms of size and power and this was meant as a super-battleship so they wouldn’t want anyone to know what they were doing. In real life lots of stuff are classified by the government that is using proven technology. For example Israel only recently declassified it has a anti-tank missile launcher platform designed to look like a regular tank. ATGMs are proven technology and nothing new and they are even used on some tanks. 2. The Malevolence was both a incredible investment in resources and a flawed design. The Ion Cannon would sometimes backfire and knock out things like the shields and communications after firing. The fact it was so reliant on the Ion Cannon is also shown to be an Achilles Heel. There were sister ships but they were also destroyed quite quickly. 3: The Electro-Proton Bomb did have collateral damage. It disabled everything in a several hundred mile radius far exceeding what it should have including the Republic’s own vehicles. It also opened a massive sinkhole that woke up a Kaiju.
It wasn’t a super ship it was a battleship class ship, one of the rare few battleships in starwars. For anyone curious battleship is a particular designation for large attack ships, normally when referring to ships used by a navy they would be referred to as warships as a generalisation.
It’s designated as a heavy cruiser, so I can only imagine what a battleship would look like for Star Wars, maybe the Executor-class? The CIS “Battleships” (the ones that look like donuts with a sphere core) are really more command centers than dedicated brawling warships.
A dreadnought with the capability to completely disable ships with an ion blast is a great concept in and of itself. Sending it out with zero support to screen enemy ships or to go in for the kill after disabling a ship is _not_
I would like a movie about the criminal underworld locating a subjugator that was constructed at the end of the war but was shut off when the droids were decommissioned and is now floating in an astroid belt. And when they get it, they wreak havoc on trade stations and have to be stopped by the new republic.
Star Wars takes a lotta inspiration from historical naval warfare. As others on here have pointed out, the class is based on Second World War German surface raiders. Specifically "pocket battleships", which have the firepower to ambush and overwhelm smaller craft, while being able to outrun anything that can threaten them. However, at the sacrifice of not having any sort of adequate escort. The last thing you want to do with that style of ship is get caught in a drawn-out engagement in enemy space. This, and without screens to protect from enemy fighter craft, proved to be the downfall of most of the Subjugators.
One thing is that it's harder for this ship to operate in a fleet because of the risk of friendly fire. And when your fleet is mostly droids and ion weapon would probably be more damaging to CIS vessels than Republic ones.
I like the parallels one can draw between the Malevolence and the history of naval warfare on Earth. It really just made more sense for the resources going into a single battleship, or even super-battleships in the case of the Yamamoto, to instead be used in creating more cruisers or carriers. It also just reflects on the idea of superweapons in general, alongside the Death Stars. Both in Star Wars and real life, creating superweapons looks good on paper, but ignores the fact that to create one, you have to take resources away from other weaponry. And while yes, quality is almost always superior to quality in war (look at literally any war in the last 200 years), having several good weapons is almost always better than one fantastic one. Unless that fantastic one is several times more useful than one of the lesser-quality weapons, its not worth it. We've seen this with ship designs, tanks, infantry weapons, and planes. And the biggest flaw of a superweapon? The enemy will really, really, really want to destroy it. And it doesn't matter how good you make something, it will always have a weakness. Unless your superweapon deals more damage to the enemy than it cost to make, it wasn't worth it. And due to depreciating returns (a weapon made pretty good is still probably going to have most of the usefulness as a perfect weapon that's several times more expensive), its unlikely that your weapon will kill more than it cost.
I think it would have been an interesting plot to have the Rebel Alliance stumble across one of these derelict somewhere and try to overhaul it to fit their philosophy. It already has a design that could easily fit the Mon Cal look, and replacing the superweapon with massive shield generators would be an interesting shift of its purpose. It could function like a superpowered version of those shield generators in Ep I. Supercapitals like this are not usually in the realm of possibility for the Alliance, but they might add one as a sort of trump card if they were to find it in a repairable state.
That does sound like a really cool idea. I just don't think the alliance would ever pour that much resources into a single large ship. Especially when the empire had larger ships roaming the galaxy and interdictor cruisers.
@@endosaurus1404 I agree, I think the RA would rather dismantle the ship and use it's resources to build smaller and faster ships than try to repurpose it to fit their needs while the Empire's on their ass
It didn't do the Holdo manoeuvre - it crashed into a moon, and did nothing positively for itself. ruclips.net/video/gCZjBUpfd2U/видео.html The Holdo Manoeuvre allows ships going into hyperspace to retain their speed upon hitting an object, damaging them as you'd expect an object of their speed to do - something that big, moving that fast, should actually damage a planet considerably. We are talking massive chunk of moon flying off into space type destruction here. Instead we get a little light which is about the same visual we'd see at a sublight speed impact. Lightspeed has always had a risk of flying into a planet and killing the ship - the Holdo manouvere changes lightspeed from a hazard ships need to work around, to a weapon a smaller ship can use against a larger ship/force. In short, an X-Wing should regularly be killing Star-Destroyers - with Astro-mech pilots acting as the guidance computers - and the X-Wings becoming little more than anti-ship missiles.
I remember watching a video about the original creation of the malevolence. They said that they wanted what is essentially the Bismarck. Thr whole episode was just space hunt for the Bismarck and my fellow naval history nerds know that the Bismarck design was incredible in it's own right, but had design and construction flaws that helped doom the ship. Id even go to say that the Malevolence's sisters had some historical references as well because if i remember correctly. Wasn't Tirpitz bombs whilst under construction? I know Prinz Eugen, Scharnhorst and her sister were bombed that way. The only difference is that the Bismarck class were designed to defy all the treaties and help build strength for the German people. Their construction helped empower the German people. We must remember that at that time. Its was difficult thanks to things like the great depression (which hit Germany) and all the political stuff like all the treaties. The subjugator class is more of a terror weapon.
> the Bismarck class were designed to (…) help build strength for the German people. Their construction helped empower the German people. nice propaganda attempt lol, next time try being less obvious
Okay right away, the comic, at least this one, isn’t UK only! I recognized it right away on the first panel. I’ve got the German version of it. Now of course the text would be different, but the illustrations are the same. Also, a concept art thingy for the malevolence does exist, I’m not sure wether any of the pages from the original booklet are online but I might’ve taken pictures of it in the local library and would be happy to share them somehow
Oh yeah I also have like 20 issues of this although I don’t know wether they’re the same as the UK ones, but they always feature a short story like this one in the first half, facts and stuff in the middle, and an issue spanning story in the latter half that usually was like 5 issues long
True interdictor cruisers made them obsolete. After that the fleet didn’t need to worry about a massive ion canon, they could simply hold the rebels in place and destroy them.
the Subjugator could also have been seen as a CiS Answer to Republic dreadnboughts like the mandators with it's giant ion cannons being able cripple them
A problem i think, with the malevolence, is that it was deployed alone without escort. Also I think she would have been the perfect counter to rebel fleets, which usually have a need for manuevrability and speed. Yet if you can hit an entire fleet of rebel starships, you can then come in with your star destroyer and absolutly maul them to death
How I see it, lager ships can and could exist, the only real hinderance is the power production and resource sink into making the power reactors actually produce power. As far as I know, some ships also have multiple power reactors giving power to different systems, such as communication, weapon arrays the kitchen so on so forth.
I'll never understand why droids were needed to make stations on a ship. If a computer intelligence is capable enough, why not just build it into the ship?
A vcery interesting video and totally agree that the subjugator class had lost its value as a weapon of terror, the CIS would have been much better off using the credits and resources pumped into creating the other vessels of that class and use them to build several dozen or so of the providence class dreadnaught instead..
For any one wondering any printed media has a copy at the national library. It one of the largest literature collections comprised of billions of articles. Further more it is all available too the public
the one thing that never made sense to me is that it is the cis, a droid filled army that are specifically vulnerable to ion weapons, use a superweapon that's main weapon is an ion pulse cannon
Not really. The ship was designed for destroying capital ships and did so quite well. Handheld ion weapons were the Republic’a thing but the last time they tried something more massive they awoke a Kaiju.
I always found it really weird that the separatists built the ship with the giant ion cannon and not the republic. Using that against a droid ship would cripple both the ship and the crew, it just seems like a really odd choice.
My boys the b1s are the only reason that ship was a menace. No b1s, no ship.
Real Droid Hours
@@CottonHill91 dirty fricken CLANKERS😡
Truuuu
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@OOM-26 you’re welcome
The funniest part about this ship was how it completely and cartoonishly annihilated all 3 of those ships in the first episode it was seen
It was glorious
That's because it is an expy for the Bismarck.
Well, I guess it was like 5 times the tonnage of a venator
It wasnt even first fleet. Multiple big fleets disappeared and that was whole reason to search for it.
@@alexturnbackthearmy1907exactly it was hunting well before the episode showed it
The Malevolence in general is pretty much star wars' version of the Bismarck.
The Malevolence episodes were based on the hunt for the Bismarck. The initial losses of Plo Koon’s fleet to the Hood and Prince of Wales, Y-Wings to the Swordfish torpedo bombers, ect. I mean, the whole concept of a massive, advanced ship with an even bigger target painted onto it, is literally just the Bismarck.
So then I would assume that the Devastation was Star Wars' version of the Tirpitz?
Right down to it taking critical damage from torpedo bombers! All it needed was a single polish ship to loudly harass it for a day an a night.
Though the Bismarck was generally an out of date ship in many ways that had an audacious crew and a boatload(heh) of Luck... Until it ran out.
and I'm so happy for that. Bismarck is amazing.
They really played into the Bismarck and Tirpitz comparison didnt they. After the Bismarck sank the Germans where to scared to deploy Tirpitz and just sailed it around Norway. Despite never seing battle Britian was terified of it and spent ages tring to hunt it down while in dock.
*Bismarck (which you spelled right the first time and then spelled wrong the second time) and *Tirpitz
Hilariously the ship survived a shell half the size of the fucking ship and it was a bunch of missiles or bombs or whatever in some spit fighters that killed it.
@@Prophetofthe8thLegion The torpedoes from the Swordfish biplanes didn't sink Bismark. One just happened to damage the rudder, which prevented it from steering properly and slowed it down. It was concentrated shellfire from multiple Royal Navy warships that pounded Bismark to bits, and either the shellfire sank it or the ship was scuttled when it was clearly lost.
@@TimberWolf99 I was talking about the Tirpitz. Although to be honest I was kinda half bullshitting.
@@TimberWolf99 Since this post is picking up traction I mayas well fix the mistakes. TBH I'm so use to other social media not leeting me do this.
Super Star Destroyer looks like a knife cutting across the galaxy. This looks like a giant pincer breaking everything apart with brute force. Love the designs.
I always thought it looked more like a shark
A subjugator's giant ion cannon seems better served as a planetary defense platform weapon. Place it floating off a main hyperspace lane exit and fry anything you don't like popping in
It’s a great hit and run vehicle.
Ion mines are a far more cost effective way of doing that.
@@N0Vanity999 They also cost like 1/1000000000 what it costs to build a Subjugator, and require smidgen of the facilities
@@regthedroid9533He didn't mean an entire subjugator. Only the ion cannon.
@@projectpitchfork860 Still massively more expensive and much easier to destroy then ion mines
Picture a death-star wrapped in the malevolence weapons. Endor would have been real different.
It was.
The rebels just kept their asses back from the thing.
Remember that Palpatine was so cocky, the Empire's capital ships had orders not to fire on the rebels, just so the Death Star could do all the work. If Endor had been fought with anything resembling a sane strategy, it would have been different.
@@davidlundquist1979 Looking at it like this it seems he got old. Imagine a mastermind play a galactic chess with all pieces in his hand and even setting up order 66 to ensure his win, and 20 odd years later he just messes up that bad.
@@Sekir80 Got bored to death probably. He got all he ever wanted and worked for, so why bother? You got right ppl, they are smart enough to do everything on their own, right?
@@davidlundquist1979If Thrawn was present at the Battle of Endor, the rebels would’ve been flattened
The Malevolence episode serving as a Star Wars version of "Sink the Bismarck!" and Landing At Point Rain likewise being a Star Wars version of "A Bridge Too Far" are two of my favorite elements of The Clone Wars.
What is Umabara inspired by?
@@MileHiGuy95Vietnam as a whole if I remember correctly
Just one of the most imposing ships in Star Wars that ultimately was destroyed because of a torpedo hitting one specific part of the ship. I wonder where they got that idea from🤔
It's like poetry.
Bismarck probably
@@SlurpeeBoy9999 It does rhyme.
@@smokingpiggy5425 That entire episode was The Battle With The Bismarck reference.
@@gaskamp2 Yamato :
I'm surprised the Empire didn't at least have a superweapon project focused around refining the ion cannon design. It could've helped to have a specialised Star Destroyer equipped with one at the Battle of Endor, stick it at the front of the Imperial Fleet, use it once the Rebel Alliance get boxed in and then let the rest of the Star Destroyers mop up everything.
This is the Empire we're talking about though. They had the best designed anti-fighter point defense ship ever created in the Star Wars universe and they never put it into large scale production to defend their vulnerable assets from the Alliance's hit and fade attacks.
They did. The Aggressor Class. Unfortunately it was stolen by the Zann Consortium.
@@Reddotzebradid it actually use a computer instead of manual operation?
I feel like super ion weaponry - purely for shield destruction as a variant of the chiss peltast - would be cool. Like a modern, updated subjugator
or i’d like to see a pirate group that has taken and heavily modified one of these bad boys and uses it for capture raids
I don’t know where exactly it is from but in a comic somewhere there was a heavily modded subjugator that had its ion cannon changed to be like the unsc infinity cannon
So it could shoot from the front on the ship
@@jeffthenotkiller I think you're talking about the Devastation, from the DS game Star Wars the Clone Wars: Jedi Alliance.
in the remake mod the consortium (they are basicly a pirate group) can get a subjugator class that is simular to the Devastation, as it has 2 super turbolasers instead of 2 super ion cannons.
@@StarWarsExpert_ Remake mod for Empire at War, right?
4:49 Given that the Malevolence was based on the Bismarck, that's a nice little nod to the fact that when the Bismarck first fired its main guns, it damaged its own radar systems.
Loved the Malevolence episodes. That thing was so ridiculously huge and tough. It was on fire near the end and. Just. Kept. Going.
It had its own internal transport rail system, which you would need to move supplies and droids around something that large.
And it sorta kinda looks like the Nautilus from Disney's 20.000 Leagues Under The Sea.
The subjugator line never fails to inspire my own creative process, but sadly my imagination put paces my artistic skill to put the ideas to the page
I enjoyed the discussion of the comic at the start as well, I had similar memories of finding cool stuff and realising I didn’t really have anyone to share those discoveries with
My friend...You didn't mention the Devastator from the SW Jedi alliance game, the sister ship to the subjugator which was tasked to literally nuke Courosaunt. a rogue nightsister literally tried to kill sidious after he told Douku to nuke dathomir
There's another issue. That class of ship was primarily crewed by battle droids. Unless the Empire opted to continue that practice (unlikely), it's life support system and crew support network (crew berthing, food and waste services, medical, etc) would have to be redesigned from the ground, up.
The “knocking out their own systems” reminds me of the KMS Bismarck and the early Tirpits.
Something to point out - it was only Anakin's sabotaging on board the Malevolence while rescuing Padme that took it out. And even putting aside it's historical inspiration - truth is that it is a battleship, and to have it operate independently, when unlike reality it is known how effective fighters can be is actually completely stupid of them to do. Without the ion cannons, in terms of anti-ship Subjugator's have 25x as many turbolasers compared to a Venator - and while some sources say Malevolence only had 5 point defense guns the class as a whole got as high as 400. Thing is much as it'd take coordination to keep friendly ships out of the way, at the center of a proper fleet - it'd give the Republic a ton of trouble with just how outgunned it's Venators would be. Build around it a few more classic cruiser and destroyer type equivalents - the typical 3 Venator fleets would be mopped up or fleeing in most cases probably given the losses and damage we see them take in fights with lesser ships. In the Civil War/New Republic era - yeah the advancement of fighters, much like reality, makes 'battleship' type ships somewhat archaic outside certain uses - but Clone Wars era, nah the ship makes sense to build beyond a symbol, it just needs to be used better, and maybe have omitted the ion cannons on later ships/removed them.
In the era before hyperspace interdiction, the malevolence would be a god teir ship for hit and run tactics.
Imagine the Malevolence hyperspacing around diabling all republic hospital stations, hitting republic shipyards with a support fleet then dipping. In space battles, disabling an enemy ship is the same as destroying it as long as you clean up afterwords.
Dont think interdiction will make much of a difference. Quickly disable source using really long-range weapon and run away if you dont want to fight. Without SSD or something like it interdiction is worth close to nothing with ship like that.
I think the Devastation from the pretty bad ds game was a pretty cool concept for a sidegrade of the Subjugator-class
I played that game back in the day. The night sisters in that game use some of the earliest cross guard lightsabers seen in Star Wars. It’s probably the reason I titled the vents on my cross guard saber up in Jedi Survivor.
The Devastation is just a knockoff of thr Eclipse right?
Imagine the rebels capturing a Malevolence of their own, just to use it on Vader
The Malevolence arc was my favorite arc of the show until Umbara and Siege of Mandalore (I'm basic, I know), and I think it would have worked much better as the pilot movie than the movie we got. It would have eased the transition and made it more palatable because Star Wars audiences are already used to superweapons like this. They'd just have needed to slap on the Christphsis chunk to the beginning to explain where Ahsoka came from, then they go after Plo and the Malevolence instead of Rotta
I think Malevolance was a great start for the Clone Wars. It's similar enough to ANH to be easily digestible, but has enough fresh ideas that the arc keeps you on your toes. Honestly, I wish they'd released the Malevolance arc in theaters instead of the clone wars movie, and I remember them using clips of the ion cannon charging in the movie trailers.
If I'm not mistaken, the GAR high command made all subjugator class heavy cruiser a priority target during the clone wars
I could be wrong about this, but I remember seeing a giant forward facing plasma cannon variant somewhere. It was from some comic and Metanerdz did a video on it years ago. Must be incredibly obscure because that's the only place I've seen and heard of it.
Do you mean the Aggressor class?
The Devastation, a subjugator class heavy cruiser. Currently only in Legends right now
@@tigermaster7410 That's what it was, cool.
@@marcelxd1633 The aggressor is a star destroyer and it has both a big plasma and ion cannon. The devastation as I've relearned, only has a plasma cannon and is obviously much bigger than the aggressor.
@@endosaurus1404
I thought you mean Aggressor lol
The Malevolence is awesome but completely impractical warship of the Separatists due to how massive it is and how it's gonna be a pain to maintain, refuel and repair it.
Much like the ship it’s history based off The Bismarck a battleship which had very few other heavy ships along side during the second world war, really solely built as a “fuck you!” To the London naval treaty
@@williambeisel5686 That completely wrong take. It was build as a part of german naval strategy as kind of super-long range U-boat with enough firepower to sink any convoy without battleship. That was before german navy focused solely on submarines after they were proven capable enough to remove the need. That was also a reason for building super-cruisers like Sharnhost or Spee, same but build to take out heavy-cruisers. Nothing is done without some kind of reasoning behind it, even if it is outdated and not in favor anymore. Real "fuck you" would`ve been H-class (especially final one, basically Yamato in atlantic with no clear use), since why it was never build or even saw some real work besides concepts.
For some reason as a kid I always thought the ship was supposed to be a special Republic ship stolen by the CIS and not because of the ion super weapon. Thinking back that would be a cool story though
It would be a cool story, a Republic superweapon so classified that when it was stolen, they didn't even bother to tell the Jedi about it for fear of losing face. Or maybe so secret that they didn't even know about the project in the first place because it was done at some super remote or hard to reach black ops site.
@@ReddotzebraPrototype Victory Class? 🤔
Basically the plot of the Hammer Station mission in SWTOR
Having actually played Jedi Alliance, B-tier is the right word to describe it. There were certainly some pretty cool elements, but there were also a lot of repetitive ones and little kid me could not keep up with the quick-time events or solve the puzzles beyond the Aurebesh one on Rodia to save her life.
Despite the many flaws of the Subjugators....they are undeniably my favorite starship in Star Wars.
I find it fascinating that in an interview it was revealed that the Subjugater was supposed to be 3 times as long as it actually ended up being but it had to be made smaller due to budget and time constraints, which is why the interior seems to be so much larger then the exterior.
Interesting
The most interesting thing about the Malevolence in the clone wars episode if you know your history of WWII battles. Its base off the Last battle of Bismarck. The German built Bismarck-class battleships. There were only two made, they were massive for a battleship. And its whole deployment in the Atlantic ocean during Operation Rheinubung only work when the Allie forces didn't know the ship existed. Thinking that a column of normal sizes battleships were the cause of the damage to the supply convoy ships. Only when finding out about the Bismarck existence did a British task force using a 4 stage plan, which started out with torpedo bombers making a first run at the ship disabling the steering. The second phase where the British and Polish battleship following and harassing the Bismarck. With the 3rd phase using the King George V sinking the Bismarck.
Again, another case of WWII influence in Star Wars story writers.
I like the obscure comic segment, alwasy a fan when obscure pieces of media get spotlight, nice video.
The huge ion cannon could be impractical in some battles. For example, if it was fired in the battle over Coruscant, it would likely hit several allied ships as well.
We know how Grievous values the droids under his command.
You can easily disable all ships, then your cannons only target the Republic ships
@@emberfist8347Random B1: “We’re just droids, sir. We’re meant to be expendable.”
General Grievous, the kindest cyborg in the galaxy: *”Not to me.”*
Ironically, a giant ion weapon would be useful against the shield-heavy Mon Calamari cruisers.
But really, the Malevolence was dependent on secrecy and surprise. If the Republic fleets just spread their ships out, the ion cannon would become far less effective, and the fact that the ship has to broadside to use the superweapon rather than attack from the front makes it inconvenient to use or vulnerable to kiting - there's no way that thing can turn on a dime.
That bit what you said about about the Star Destroyer and around that, reminded me of what I like about the Venator, it was a well armed battlecruiser yet also a carrier.
That why it sucks. Being in direct line-of-fire while exposing extremely vulnerable parts of ship and throwing living pilots straight in fire...that just stupid. It lack a power of real battleship and lack capacity of a carrier, while having disadvantages of its own paired with disadvantages both these class have.
Back when I was in either Elementary School or Middle School, there was a Star Wars Club run by Scholastic or something. Every month they sent members a new issue of their magazine which contained various articles, factoids, puzzles, and often a comic at the end. But there was also a book-and-card based adventure game series that came with it. The book had the adventure as well as what limitations were placed on the characters/weapons/vehicles you could use, all of which had their own card. I remember being so obsessed with this club and game when I was a kid. Towards the end of it's run, it was giving behind the scenes info for the then upcoming/newly released Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones.
I love you talking about obscure star wars stories
the problem with a lot of these animated shows and their new technologies is that they're so op but never used again or expanded upon. palpatine just sits on all these designs for super weapons
Not really it makes sense. They have their flaws.
@@emberfist8347 that they could fix, also not always. the star destroyer that stops lightspeed is the perfect weapon but used like once, the supertank was only beat because it was sent over a weak easily collapsible bridge, etc.
@@nameynamename3758 The Interdictor showed up many times in later episodes. And the Supertanks had the factories they were built in blown up and the designer was captured by the Republic. And flaws were always crippling ones. Like the Malevolence you can’t fix the issue of the ion cannon getting destroyed and crippling the ship as you need a single massive reactor to to power both cannons.
@@emberfist8347 the malevolence was built in a rush, if the empire could make a planet destroying weapon they could refine the tech. as for the interdictor, that's my point they show up for these shows and are so op but never used again
@@nameynamename3758 The Interdictor has shown up many times in the franchise. Canonically the Empire didn’t built enough of them and didn’t use them in the right restricting them to customs enforcement.
Deep dives into lore is why I like and subscribe.
I still will never understand the need for externally located bridges, especially during battles.
I assume nobody believed the Subjugator-class could exist not because it was impossible to build, but because it was believed that the Separatists could never be capable of it.
The Malevolence has always been one of my favorite ships, and I see your point with it’s practicality. In my opinion I think it could’ve been used pretty effectively in maybe hit and run tactics, and I think this ship only thrives through secrecy. Either way, awesome breakdown Eck!
Those "nearly lost" comics like that would be a really interesting video/series of videos!
I just wish Hot Wheels would remake some of the old titanium line like they have been doing with the 3 inch ships. This included. A Venator alone goes for over 100.
Makes absolute sense.
Once the cat was out of the bag with the Malevolence, the Republic pooled it’s extensive special operations resources together to have any new ships of that class identified and destroyed before construction could be completed or before they could deal significant damage to Republic forces.
This is likely why Doku didn’t want any survivors and ordered Grevieous to keep the ship illusive and intangible.
The General‘s hubris was a major blessing for the Republic, as well as Skywalker and Ahsoka‘s loyalty to Master Plo and their Clone subordinates.
My understanding about the Malevolence’s weapons was that it was thought that a ship large enough to power such an ion cannon would be several times larger, and would be very expensive to build. Clever engineering (recycling waste heat) allowed the fitting of the enormous ion cannons to a Subjugator-class ship instead of something even more enormous.
It was actually them making the ship massively large to recycle waste heat and but they needed to discharge that energy regular so the design was attached to an Ion Cannon for that purpose.
It's always great to hear about these little small comics from various magazines. I would love to see more if they can tie into another video.
Calling a ship class "subjugator" is real on the nose.
It looks like a well engineered and well balanced hand tool of some sort.
My head canon is that there are easy tactics/methods to deal with them, when you know what you were up to. Before I saw the episode, I heard only the audio book version, and the ship seemed like a menace. But not only because it is a powerful warship. Compared to other fleets fights, there were no survivors, and no coms left, as if the republic fleets just vanished. For the admirals it must have felt like being attacked by an unstoppable ghost, and I think it is fair to assume every clone on every ship in the entire navy felt unsafe just knowing this beast is out there somewhere just ready to kill the next small fleet
This was the Bismarck of Star Wars.
Yamato :
Great video, thanks for talking about the comic I don't think I'd ever heard of it!
Im not fully versed in the subjugators lore, but if I didn’t know any better, I would say that that ion cannon looks like an afterthought, kinda a tacked on kind of look, makes me think that the class might have fared better without the super weapon feature.
I remember staying up "late" as a kid to catch the Malevolence episodes. I was so invested lol!
Hey loved the video, always wanted some more information on why this ship was a one off thing. I would love to hear some more about the mandator class ship you mentioned at the end, it really looks like a potentially amazing concept but I’ve never heard anything about it!
The question is… how many heifers can we haul in it?
Anyone remember the count down timer Cartoon Network had for this episode on that Friday night all these years ago
For me I think they'd went into the road of miniaturizing the tech, thus creating the Ion cannons built into a ship's turret or surface to space like in hoth.
Afaik, ion tech wasn't prevalent during clone wars (mostly emp for droids but no dedicated ion weapons for shields)
No they had ion cannons for ships before this. The Malevolence was them taking the design to its logical extreme. A good analogy would be the 18.1 inch guns of the Yamato-class or the Gustav Gun both are weapons that are the largest ever built and nobody attempted something like that again as it was dead-end that was too impractical.
Great vid, the rare comic part was awesome too!
It would be a sick Bad Batch plot if the Batch discovered the Empire working on a partially-complete Subjugator.
Was unusual since that critter sometimes (like on the show) even flew sideways to have its weapon facing a ship they were pursuing.
I loved the design of this ship and episode. Shame it was so short.
I feel like a Subjugator should be paired with an Indicator. One pulls the prey out of hyperspace unexpectedly, and before they can react, the other knocks out it's systems. Add a Lucrehulk to then dump Vulture droids out and swarm the sitting duck and pick them apart and then drag resources back to the Lucrehulk. I might have just made a droid pirate fleet ...
I honestly find this ship to be one of the best Fleet leads in star wars. It needs a fleet around it to capitalize on the giant fleet breaking power of its Ion cannon, its a massive multiplier to the danger of a fleet and a great support tool.
That comic plotline makes me wonder if during RotJ Vader was thinking "Man, I'm having serious Deja vu... Wait a minute... OH, SHI-!"
The Subjugator class was a capital ship by design but unlike most Confederate vessels that had some bit of protection for the engines the Subjugator extremely exposed them
Another down side is it OVER reliance on the ion cannon for offensive/defensive purposes, they should have placed perhaps another power station that acted as backup power and fed the armaments not to mention the amount of space left open that could have been more gun emplacements or tactical monitors
The large empty space between the two Bridges could have been used for other purposes such as another “bridge” that could be used as a intelligence and espionage center for the Confederacy
The Malevolence was a prototype at best, but needed escorts to ensure the survival of this capital ship
Maybe the Subjugator class was primarily expensive because of it's generators'/energy potential outstripping even a Mandater's energy production/needs for the ion cannon. Maybe those power systems were not useful for star destroyers in general but eventually adapted for the Imperial-class to provide more room for other systems, and extremely scaled down for Tie Fighters to maximize their laser power and minimize their expense for materials and minimize their size around the cockpit/generators. Maybe the systems were extremely expensive like trying to buy a hadron collider in modern-day or some as of yet to be mass produced super battery.
True. This thing have enough power to essentially one-shot whole fleet, mandater would not disable whole fleet in few mins without fight or even damage.
@@alexturnbackthearmy1907 could i ask what your name refers to? turn back the army, seems like a curious name choice.
@@aurorauplinks A red alert meme. An ancient one.
@@alexturnbackthearmy1907 oh i love red alert, the command and conoquerr series? how fun. ok that sounds somewhat familiar
@@alexturnbackthearmy1907 this isn't great but i set ssome star wars footage to the red alert theme ruclips.net/video/oFgAWfpwEjs/видео.html
the gameplay was a weird flashback, I completely forgot that this game existed and just now I remember how clunky it could be from time to time, especially that escape from the reactor.
OK, so it would have been a nice addition for those of us not so steeped in SW lore to have an explanation of just what the weapon on this ship did.
5:21
I'm one with the FPS drops and the FPS drops are with me
The Subjugator-class wasn’t more prominently used because the first couple ships were destroyed by sabotage. Also they were in a way testbeds forced into combat. And the Empire didn’t want it as they were more interested in blowing up planets.
The weirdest things about this ship to me were
1: It needed to be kept a secret, since ion weapons are anything but new
2: It wasn't reproduced and used more, considering how impossibly surprised the republic was by its existence. This is like dropping napalm and finding that it's incredibly effective because somehow the enemy has never heard of it, then just giving up on it once they shoot down your only napalm armed plane
Similar to the virtually identical emp bomb that the republic used exactly once, found it to be ridiculously effective, instantly destroying hundreds of droids with no collateral damage, and then never again.
1: the reason it was kept secret was that the Republic wouldn’t know what exactly was terrorizing their space lanes. If they knew what they were facing they would counter it. Also the Ion Cannon was on a unprecedented scale in terms of size and power and this was meant as a super-battleship so they wouldn’t want anyone to know what they were doing. In real life lots of stuff are classified by the government that is using proven technology. For example Israel only recently declassified it has a anti-tank missile launcher platform designed to look like a regular tank. ATGMs are proven technology and nothing new and they are even used on some tanks.
2. The Malevolence was both a incredible investment in resources and a flawed design. The Ion Cannon would sometimes backfire and knock out things like the shields and communications after firing. The fact it was so reliant on the Ion Cannon is also shown to be an Achilles Heel. There were sister ships but they were also destroyed quite quickly.
3: The Electro-Proton Bomb did have collateral damage. It disabled everything in a several hundred mile radius far exceeding what it should have including the Republic’s own vehicles. It also opened a massive sinkhole that woke up a Kaiju.
It wasn’t a super ship it was a battleship class ship, one of the rare few battleships in starwars.
For anyone curious battleship is a particular designation for large attack ships, normally when referring to ships used by a navy they would be referred to as warships as a generalisation.
It’s designated as a heavy cruiser, so I can only imagine what a battleship would look like for Star Wars, maybe the Executor-class? The CIS “Battleships” (the ones that look like donuts with a sphere core) are really more command centers than dedicated brawling warships.
The outro is everything
A dreadnought with the capability to completely disable ships with an ion blast is a great concept in and of itself. Sending it out with zero support to screen enemy ships or to go in for the kill after disabling a ship is _not_
I would like a movie about the criminal underworld locating a subjugator that was constructed at the end of the war but was shut off when the droids were decommissioned and is now floating in an astroid belt. And when they get it, they wreak havoc on trade stations and have to be stopped by the new republic.
Star Wars takes a lotta inspiration from historical naval warfare. As others on here have pointed out, the class is based on Second World War German surface raiders. Specifically "pocket battleships", which have the firepower to ambush and overwhelm smaller craft, while being able to outrun anything that can threaten them. However, at the sacrifice of not having any sort of adequate escort.
The last thing you want to do with that style of ship is get caught in a drawn-out engagement in enemy space. This, and without screens to protect from enemy fighter craft, proved to be the downfall of most of the Subjugators.
One thing is that it's harder for this ship to operate in a fleet because of the risk of friendly fire. And when your fleet is mostly droids and ion weapon would probably be more damaging to CIS vessels than Republic ones.
I like the parallels one can draw between the Malevolence and the history of naval warfare on Earth. It really just made more sense for the resources going into a single battleship, or even super-battleships in the case of the Yamamoto, to instead be used in creating more cruisers or carriers. It also just reflects on the idea of superweapons in general, alongside the Death Stars. Both in Star Wars and real life, creating superweapons looks good on paper, but ignores the fact that to create one, you have to take resources away from other weaponry. And while yes, quality is almost always superior to quality in war (look at literally any war in the last 200 years), having several good weapons is almost always better than one fantastic one. Unless that fantastic one is several times more useful than one of the lesser-quality weapons, its not worth it. We've seen this with ship designs, tanks, infantry weapons, and planes. And the biggest flaw of a superweapon?
The enemy will really, really, really want to destroy it. And it doesn't matter how good you make something, it will always have a weakness. Unless your superweapon deals more damage to the enemy than it cost to make, it wasn't worth it. And due to depreciating returns (a weapon made pretty good is still probably going to have most of the usefulness as a perfect weapon that's several times more expensive), its unlikely that your weapon will kill more than it cost.
I think it would have been an interesting plot to have the Rebel Alliance stumble across one of these derelict somewhere and try to overhaul it to fit their philosophy. It already has a design that could easily fit the Mon Cal look, and replacing the superweapon with massive shield generators would be an interesting shift of its purpose. It could function like a superpowered version of those shield generators in Ep I. Supercapitals like this are not usually in the realm of possibility for the Alliance, but they might add one as a sort of trump card if they were to find it in a repairable state.
That does sound like a really cool idea. I just don't think the alliance would ever pour that much resources into a single large ship. Especially when the empire had larger ships roaming the galaxy and interdictor cruisers.
@@endosaurus1404 I agree, I think the RA would rather dismantle the ship and use it's resources to build smaller and faster ships than try to repurpose it to fit their needs while the Empire's on their ass
In all seriousness I’d love to hear more about the magazine comics.
the first ship to be used in a holdo maneuver and nobody complained about it when it happened.
It didn't do the Holdo manoeuvre - it crashed into a moon, and did nothing positively for itself. ruclips.net/video/gCZjBUpfd2U/видео.html
The Holdo Manoeuvre allows ships going into hyperspace to retain their speed upon hitting an object, damaging them as you'd expect an object of their speed to do - something that big, moving that fast, should actually damage a planet considerably. We are talking massive chunk of moon flying off into space type destruction here. Instead we get a little light which is about the same visual we'd see at a sublight speed impact.
Lightspeed has always had a risk of flying into a planet and killing the ship - the Holdo manouvere changes lightspeed from a hazard ships need to work around, to a weapon a smaller ship can use against a larger ship/force.
In short, an X-Wing should regularly be killing Star-Destroyers - with Astro-mech pilots acting as the guidance computers - and the X-Wings becoming little more than anti-ship missiles.
Kinda wish we'd have a proper Lego Subjugator Class (we don't talk about that one), this ship's too much hype for it's own good, and I love it
Wait, but I have a Lego Malevolence... or is that the one we don't talk about?
@@skitzocalypso5840 If it's the official one, then yes, that's the one we don't talk about
@felps_4500 (whispers) why not?
@@skitzocalypso5840 *whispers* just look at it, it's ugly af (Imo anyway)
I remember watching a video about the original creation of the malevolence. They said that they wanted what is essentially the Bismarck.
Thr whole episode was just space hunt for the Bismarck and my fellow naval history nerds know that the Bismarck design was incredible in it's own right, but had design and construction flaws that helped doom the ship.
Id even go to say that the Malevolence's sisters had some historical references as well because if i remember correctly. Wasn't Tirpitz bombs whilst under construction? I know Prinz Eugen, Scharnhorst and her sister were bombed that way.
The only difference is that the Bismarck class were designed to defy all the treaties and help build strength for the German people. Their construction helped empower the German people. We must remember that at that time. Its was difficult thanks to things like the great depression (which hit Germany) and all the political stuff like all the treaties.
The subjugator class is more of a terror weapon.
> the Bismarck class were designed to (…) help build strength for the German people. Their construction helped empower the German people.
nice propaganda attempt lol, next time try being less obvious
The Mandator II class was also in service in the clone wars, being the only battleship of the war but never seen on screen.
Okay right away, the comic, at least this one, isn’t UK only! I recognized it right away on the first panel. I’ve got the German version of it. Now of course the text would be different, but the illustrations are the same. Also, a concept art thingy for the malevolence does exist, I’m not sure wether any of the pages from the original booklet are online but I might’ve taken pictures of it in the local library and would be happy to share them somehow
Oh yeah I also have like 20 issues of this although I don’t know wether they’re the same as the UK ones, but they always feature a short story like this one in the first half, facts and stuff in the middle, and an issue spanning story in the latter half that usually was like 5 issues long
I have the comic book so I remember this comic, and I still didn’t know where this was going.
True interdictor cruisers made them obsolete.
After that the fleet didn’t need to worry about a massive ion canon, they could simply hold the rebels in place and destroy them.
the Subjugator could also have been seen as a CiS Answer to Republic dreadnboughts like the mandators with it's giant ion cannons being able cripple them
A problem i think, with the malevolence, is that it was deployed alone without escort. Also I think she would have been the perfect counter to rebel fleets, which usually have a need for manuevrability and speed. Yet if you can hit an entire fleet of rebel starships, you can then come in with your star destroyer and absolutly maul them to death
I think with a escort the problem would be that the malevolence hit them
@@marcelxd1633 If your commanding admiral is terrible at his job, then yes. If executed properly, then no.
Imagine having the best outro on youtube 🤔
“Now witness the firepower of this fully operational battlecruiser!”~Dooku Probably.
Yet the funniest thing is that this crusier can pretty much easily end republic cruisers.
How I see it, lager ships can and could exist, the only real hinderance is the power production and resource sink into making the power reactors actually produce power.
As far as I know, some ships also have multiple power reactors giving power to different systems, such as communication, weapon arrays the kitchen so on so forth.
I'll never understand why droids were needed to make stations on a ship. If a computer intelligence is capable enough, why not just build it into the ship?
A vcery interesting video and totally agree that the subjugator class had lost its value as a weapon of terror, the CIS would have been much better off using the credits and resources pumped into creating the other vessels of that class and use them to build several dozen or so of the providence class dreadnaught instead..
For any one wondering any printed media has a copy at the national library. It one of the largest literature collections comprised of billions of articles. Further more it is all available too the public
the one thing that never made sense to me is that it is the cis, a droid filled army that are specifically vulnerable to ion weapons, use a superweapon that's main weapon is an ion pulse cannon
Not really. The ship was designed for destroying capital ships and did so quite well. Handheld ion weapons were the Republic’a thing but the last time they tried something more massive they awoke a Kaiju.
The subjugator class ship was likely to be the biggest thing that it came from the CIS docks
I always found it really weird that the separatists built the ship with the giant ion cannon and not the republic. Using that against a droid ship would cripple both the ship and the crew, it just seems like a really odd choice.
Let me get this clear, I am not responsible for the Malevolence's crash, okay？