Some years before WEG got the SW license, GDW released Supplement 9: Fighting Ships for Traveller. To say the artwork was...atrocious...is really an understatement. Paul Jaquays did the art for that supplement and I see a lot of similarities with the art in Cracken's. Back then, the late 70s and 80s, good artwork was a plus and not the reason we bought the products - we bought the products for the text content and pretty much accepted that the art would be substandard unless it came from someone like William H. Keith (in fact, the Marauder from The Bad Batch has a very, very Keith inspired vibe). I think that the level of quality of the supplements - both writing and artwork - would be substantially different today given the internet and CGI. Not better, not worse, just...different. I guess I'm showing my age when I say I prefer the older products - they had heart and soul where the writer poured his all into it. I can't say that about today's products.
Contrary to looking ugly, the Defender Star Destroyer is one of the coolest ship designs I've seen period. Very memorable, sleek, and I love the engine fins. Subjectivity am I right?
@@kmarchery Star Destroyers are called Star Destroyers because they're destroyer... in space. Just like a Star Fighter is a fighter jet in space. A destroyer is just a generic class of ship.
When I saw the original artwork for the ships.....'unpleased' was a understatement. I'm SO glad someone took the time to fix their appearance into what we see now.
3:15 The Belarus is a very stylised lounge chair from the 90's with a entertainment system and mini fridge built in, and the wheel on the front is to help you move it around.
I am pretty sure the ship was just called the "Bakuran Destroyer", the term Star Destroyer, had nothing to do with real-world naval classifications of ship types. This is evident in the Dreadnaughts of the Katana Fleet. Ships larger than that were supposed to have their own unique classification system, with Star Destroyer being a generic term for a huge ship (a super star destroyer was a REALLY huge ship). It was much later, post WEG, that the more Military minded fans started retconning things to fit with their known doctrine, and classifications became much more diverse. (Ah, I remember fondly the old Compuserve debates on this from the late 80s....)
The Starhome is pretty awesome, much like with the Enterprise-D I love the idea of a ship being its own mobile little world. However, also like the Enterprise, I would be concerned with its abilities in combat given the bulk and the amount of power going to non vital, non combat systems to support non combat personnel.
I remember being a kid, and being excited to get the first edition of The Essential Guide To Vehicles and Vessels, and being really disappointed by the design of the Ssi-Ruuk ships. If you remember that book from years back, then you know.
Republic Class Star Destroyer is actually my favorite EU ship. It is basically Victory class redesigned with Mon Calamari armor built by subcontractor. It was unpopular class for many reasons but there are many reasons to like it as well. Crew did not like the hallways and crew quarters to be utilitarian and not the giant waste of space as we are used to in Star Wars (giant bottomless pits on every ship ring a bell?), but I like the look of it, even if it still has the nice big target on it in the form of the bridge. They took whatever worked previously and made it smaller and more efficient. If it came out in earlier eras everyone would go nuts over them, but they were victim of people being too used to comfort and size of Imperium class and even SSDs. I think the artwork in CTD needed to be run trough continuity checks by Lucasfilm at least ten times before being published so it would look more uniform and they could have used better images than just sketches, but I loved the models the moders put into Thrawn´s Revenge.
I actually kinda think the Republic class isn’t too bad, it’s stylistically a merger between the Mon Cala ships with their space sea cucumber look and the tower & citadel vibe of the old ISD. The lore seems like it could use work, as written it seems overpowered. The Defender looks Ok, but not as a Star Wars ship. It’d be right at home in Gundam though. It’s no beauty queen, though. At least it’s symmetrical? I think the Belarus is supposed to be taking design cues from the Dornean gunship, but makes a bit of a mess with them. Everything else is either unremarkable or ugly as sin!
Depriving us of your voice crack speed cut. Thanks for this, I've been going through your vids for a house game I'm building up. Tabletop Roleplay game, StarWars based and fleet centric, players are ships in a fleet or small wing. The help in your insight and vids has been immeasurable! May the force be with you
Honestly, Eck was very accurate with the title. He probably has a little knowledge on fighting since yeah, the area of the mouth is your general area of target in a fist fight, more specifically between the bottom of the nose and upper lip.
Never aim for the mouth. A friend of mine punched a guy in the mouth, somehow got a cut from a tooth and it went full sepsis because human mouths are filthy. Nose or mandible are preferable.
I think a lot of em could be sold by less wonky-looking drawings, I always kinda figured they had a pile of stuff from a sketchbook and that was mostly what they had by press time. (In more than one sourcebook, really. )
I've seen that book around but never got to check it out. After seeing all that, I'm going to put forward another theory: the artist was actually a huge macross fan, who still bitter after the whole harmony gold train wreck, decided to port his ideas over to a galaxy that had enough imperial lawyers that he would never have to worry about it again. (Or so he thought) Side note from the game footage. I had no idea that world devastators had anti collision lights lol. I guess the nigh invincible superweapons didn't want any aviation accidents while they strip the living flesh from doomed worlds. Safety first.
The Endurance, I'd almost guess, could have been part of the inspiration for the Andromeda Carrier sub-class for Starblazers: Space Battleship Yamato 2202 that came out in 2017 (the carrier variant of the Andromeda has the carrier deck attached aft of the conning tower).
Great video as usual Ek, thanks so much! EaWX's interpretation of all the NR ships in the dossier is really good I feel, and I love that you included footage from the mod. They do a great job at interpreting and integrating key aesthetics and elements that distinguish the ships in the original illustrations with more logical shapes and a common design language. Even the Republic-class looks pretty cool, although I agree that it needs a little more Star Destroyer DNA present in the design. I do enjoy that it's almost like an Imperial-Mon Cal hybrid though. I also adore EaWX's Defender/Nebula and Endurance designs and how they harken back to the more 'civilized' era of the Clone Wars Republic. I agree with you on the topic of Star Destroyer for sure! In my head cannon I've just viewed ships like the Bakura-class as just a 'destroyer' or 'frigate' classes as they are defined in modern naval terminology i.e. long endurance class of escort warship that is equally fast and maneuverable. Similarly in my own head cannon I also view ships like Defender/Nebula and Endurance as proto-Star Defenders-classkind of felt like they were a steppingstone towards the NR's eventual shift to larger warships post-Black Fleet crisis. Thanks again for your great work!
I can see some design reasons for certain features, like the one where the front section spreads out to shield the hanger bays.. The other being style over substance.. they have a certain style to them. With it being design by committee which makes sense, as the new republic was pretty much constantly bickering and getting nothing done because everyone was out for themselves or their species first instead of the republic as a whole. So a bunch of managers pushing for X feature and making compromises is a very good explanation for the designs being a hodgepodge of ideas slapped together... like many modern military designs were
I absolutely LOVE the WEG sourcebooks. To this day I am still part of a group that plays using modified WEG d6 rules (though in fairness I've not been active in some time). The lore, the factions, the details, the stats for things you never knew you needed, and some absolutely bonkers things thrown in for flavor (like the Charon from otherspace). I unfortunately lost all my hard copies in Hurricane Katrina, but I occasionally catch a sourcebook or an 'essential guide to...' at a thrift store, or find one that's been made into a PDF, and I relive all those roles, all those stories, and all that sense of being lived in that the universe has. Meaning it is not all sterile and clean like Star trek, nor is it over the top dark like 40k. You also learn pretty quickly as a new adventurer that stormtroopers will mess you up, and their armor actually DOES work for something. Anyway, love the sourcebook and lore videos. They're among my favorites.
Defender Star Destroyer (5:13) looks like something from classic era Gundam. What would this be ... late 1980s? Early 1990s? Japanimation nerd artist! Also, D fighter (6:18) is very much like a classic era Gundam Core Fighter. My guess is that the artist was a fan of some stuff like classic Gundam, Gundam 0083, maybe Char's Counterattack ... this stuff wasn't picked up by the english translated anime industry yet, but there were some importers of (untranslated) videos from Japan, as well as grey market video rental places for tapes just plain recorded off of TV in Japan and mailed over ... some early fan translation script stuff ... VERY early fansubs just starting up ...
Quite a few of them feel more 'Gundam' than SW to me. Defender-class looks like a rejected Earth Federation ship from roughly the Zeta Gundam - Char's Counterattack era. The Endurance-class gives me Zeon vibes, like almost a Musai-class but then again not.
@@Chilling_Chilling Yeah, that's why I was guessing inspiration from 0083. I remember watching an early episode at the Cornell anime club ... this was before fansubs, but there was a fan translation being read by a club member out loud along with the shows. A few years later, I saw fansubs of 0083. So this was right around the transition from VERY small obscure anime clubs in the USA to the early fansub community.
5:13 you know what, I kind of like it. The fore reminds me of an Ancient battleship from STARGATE ATLANTIS, and those baffle fins over the thrusters look kinda like something from a GUNDAM anime. I bet they can thrust-vector to make the ship more maneuverable
See, I think this does drift into "The Star Wars Universe is too small" to an extent, because, why would a universe with so many millions of cultures have the same 4 sensibilities for "aesthetics." Not everything should look like it's made by Kuat, Incom, Mon Cal, Sinear, or Corellia. Not every ship should "look like Star Wars" because then it gets into problems people had with Prequel ship designs. Those didn't "look like Star Wars" either, but they were mostly made by completely different manufacturers and cultures. ...but I'm punching the the Hapan Battle Dragon designer. I'm sorry, that theme park carousel is the goofiest thing and I wish it wasn't in so many mods.
Scaled down and given a glass canopy the illustration of Bakura class would make a nifty star fighter, so much so that I think that's what it was originally sketched as.
I remember from legend canon that the new republic fleet admirals had to acknowledge that the imperial star destroyer was a perfectly designed warship, however, they could not just go forward building and using them for obvious political reasons. So they tried to design and commission ships that were basically star destroyers but tried their best to hide it, mixing in Mon Calamari design elements. That's the in universe explanation for the distinct ugliness of the New Republic capital ships.
Man I haven't thought about those books in forever. I don't remember much from the other two but I recall bits and pieces from Black Fleet Crisis. I remember having difficulty imagining what a K-Wing looked like from the description, for one.
On the use of the Star Destroyer title, the essential guide to warfare notes that the name was essentially Kuati branding that became synonymous with a particular size classification in the late clone wars/Early Empire. This the providence was really too early to catch this trend and the New Republic largely avoided the term due to the links with the Empire, hence the use of the Star Cruiser and Star Defender instead.
1:40 So, we are actually getting a few High Republic source books such as "The High Republic: The Lightsaber Collection" and "Chronicles of the Jedi: An Illustrated to the Galaxy's Golden Age", which has me really excited.
I'm actually a big fan of the Belarus, not juts because of it's unique name, but the little yo yo at the front helps sell it's complete lack of weaponry at the front and really hammers home I think it's Min max to be a great Line ship at the expense of flexibility. I also love the large gun/sensor antenna that stick out forward and the way it slopes back to the blocky engine section.
The Endurance's saucer section separates and becomes its own vessel. It's an important development in The Imperium's war against the Cylon and the Goa'uld.
Star Wars: Galaxies introduced a number of love- and hate-inducing ship designs. It was frustrating that they didn't use the X-Wing games' ships, but some of the new SWG ships were inspired. The Decimator and Nova Courier were beautiful and appeared in later EU. The Hutt fighters had a consistent grounded style. But the Black Sun fighters were a jumble of consonants and polygons (the Rihkxyrk grew on you and was fun to fly) and Freedom Station is like a Belarus pointed down.
The republic-class one looks great to me lol, especially that 3d model. It's a good meeting point between Mon cala ships and the older Republic or Imperial classes
Lystrosaurus was a herbivorous dicynodont synapsid from the late Permian to the Early Triassic Period (roughly 255 to 240 million years ago). It was 1.5 meters long, vaguely pig shaped with sprawled out legs and a head with a short beak and a pair of tusks. It was notable for surviving the Permian/Triassic Extinction Event, the worst Extinction Event in Earth's history which killed off 70-90% of all life on Earth. After the dust settled, Lystrosaurus was one of the few things left alive in a largely empty world. Soon up to 95% of all Land Vertribrates by mass were Lystrosaurus.
The thumbnail ship I've only seen once, and it was in a comic that also had one of the most imposing pira-private ships I've seen in a while. Basically a massive f_ck off cannon with a conning tower, engine, and point defense turrets. So the silly was balanced out with surprisingly smooth brutal design thinking.
"No one calls a Providence a Star Destroyer." Except Curtis Saxton and his reference books where he insists the ISD is not a battleship, but the equivalent to a Fletcher or Fubuki in WW2. :P
The Belarus class honestly looks like someone tried to take the classic Swoop design- the same model used in the ANH special edition- and convert it into a starship. I have no idea WHY anyone would want to do such a thing, but the overall flow of the body shape looks so identical to me that it feels like it can't be a coincidence. Fantastic to see some love for the WEG sourcebooks! Really enjoying this series!
6:50 "No one calls a Providence class a 'Star Destroyer'..." I wish that were so! Regrettably, the onlie begetter, Lucas himself, calls it that in the commentary on Episode 3! And honestly some of these look pretty cool- that Republic class really does it for me Totes agree on the endurance and that claw-bottomed thing
"Stardestroyer" is a type of ship, like a cruiser or a freighter or a dreadnought. Though I get it, the imperal one is very iconic and most people don't care about naval naming conventions
I mean to be fair, they do just call it a "Destroyer" not a Star Destroyer. The term Star Destroyer at that point in history also has alot of negative connotations too so it makes sense they'd just drop the star, plus star destroyer is basically a ship size class too
Seems like the Bakura class vessels are described as "Destroyers" and not "Star Destroyers". The drawing would make much more sense if that was the case. Even looks like the upper spine section is a canopy, underneath is an engine intake. I 100% agree that it doesn't make sense for this to be a SD class ship. Looks ready for atmospheric combat (maybe). Apologies if this was already pointed out. I continue to learn so much about SW canon and other SW content, so thank you.
Thumbnail hilarious *especially* during ads cus it’s just Steve down there 5:55 love when a failed starfighter launch takes out the forward tower of my ship
All those ships have the generic 70s Sci-Fi look to them. They probably just hired a couple of sci-fi novel and magazine artists and told them draw us some ships for a RPG, and just stuck them to the descriptions as they saw fit.
space pirates stoned on spice sufficiently to actually believe their ugly type starfighters cobbled together from random existing ship designs in a frankenstein manner is state of the art technology.
i always had the impression that the pictures of all the ships are Tiny, basicly the Opposite of a Fractal Sponge Project And well, if you need to scribble a ship on a 5x3cm Square, you need to make the characteristics to stand out
Somehow this video made me realize just how weird star wars must look to somebody who isn't super familiar. For instance, I know little to nothing about Star Trek, but I've noticed how a lot of the ships in there have that distinct round shape, and are just a bunch of variants of the same ship design, but now Ive come to realize star wars is the same way, just with triangle shapes.
Gotta hand it to the 3D artists behind the Thrawn's Revenge interpretations. Took a look at those bizarre sketches, adapted them to fit far more successfully into the Star Wars universe, whilst preserving the identity and features of the original works. The mod's Republic class for instance looks 100% plausible as a Mon Calamari designed star destroyer. I just wish that the new class ships were more powerful in the mod, it sucks that ISD's will win against them one on one. It's kinda weird that a ship that's an older design, is plagued with serious design inefficiencies and other major flaws, is one of the most effective ships in the game. And I say all this as someone who loves his ISD's.
I was not expecting to hear “Belarus” in a star wars video. Seems out of place next to ships named after abstract concepts like “Victory” “Endurance” “Defender” etc.
I've always thought that the term "Star Destroyer" was just another reference to rl navies, just "space-ified." But I get what you are saying. In SW it does feel like a pretty specific title, so definitely gets confusing when they start trying to use it for too many different types of ships. 🤷
Could’ve sworn that the Star destroyer designator in the Anaxes war college system was originally something else before KDY used its influence to change it. Maybe I’m getting confused with something else? #askeck who is ultimately responsible for ordering the destruction of Alderaan? Was it Palpatine or did he just give the authorization for it? Lore ship Versus video request: Resurgent vs. Starhawk Tie Striker vs. New Republic V-Wing World Devastator vs. Vong Worldship Tie Silencer vs. X-83 Twintail Tie Silencer vs. Tie Defender (legends version) Keldabe vs. ISD II MC90 vs. Nebula class star destroyer Nebula class vs. Pellaeon class Majestic class vs. Bothan Assault Cruiser EAWX: FOTR’s Mandator II portrayal vs. Subjugator Praetor vs. Subjugator EAWX: TR’s Mediator portrayal vs. Resurgent Starhawk vs. Bulwark MK III
I will say the Republic class star destroyer reminds me of a mon-cal spin on the venator, which was the predecessor to the isd. While it looks funky, I'd say it might be the closest to being an actual star destroyer on this lost
A lot of these designs in that particular source book look much more at home in the Wing Commander series than they do Star Wars. Perhaps that's just a byproduct of the era the books were produced in.
The Majestic Heavy Cruiser was actually a really cool looking ship cause it was different in it's design, and it's is my favorite New Republic ship along ship the Republic and Defender class star destroyer, the new designs one not the old ones btw. I'm glad that people like Fractalsponge made WAY better and cooler designs of them
I've always thought you had two kinds of capital ship, Star Destroyers and Star Cruisers. I'd call A Providence-Class from the clone wars a Star Cruiser most certainly. And a predecessor to the MonCals later Star Cruisers, at least the ones that aren't retrofitted cruiser liners or literal sky scrapers for some dumb reason.
Star Destroyer is a kind of weird nomenclature to adopt: it didn't exactly redefine an entire era of tactics the way something like the Dreadnought did, or even go so far as something like the Dido class, where it at least has a very specific role. The only reason to adopt a similar name would be if a class of ship is more about being a symbol of fear than an actually effective ship, and the Republic has no reason to do that.
The Bakura-Class looks like a Zeon Musai ship variant from the original Gundam timeline. Thinking from that way I dont actually mind it because I love the aesthetic of Zeon spacecraft.
From a Navy standpoint Destroyer, Light Cruiser, Heavy Cruiser, Corvette etc. ALL have their specific size and number of crew, you can't just design a ship and call it a DESTROYER if it has half the crew of what a "Destroyer" has.
I think it could be fun to go through and "how would I design this" could be fun. I also think building my own fleet sounds interesting, see what theme pops out.
Justin thanks for your videos as always. Weirdly find myself at the Budapest Airport for several hours today and this video was somehow exactly what I needed in the moment.
A Borg Cube would be more effective as a Star Destroyer. No unused space. It doesn't have to have Aero principles, flat surfaces for a myraid of gun placements.
