First session of an SW5E campaign I was running, I had Sepratist forces occupying the Jedi Enclave on Dantooine with one of these in the Enclave landing pad and my party though it was a good idea to start a firefight during what was supposed to be a stealth mission. Needless to say, the Bantha poodoo hit the fan.
I think most people are completely unaware how absolutely MASSIVE ships in Star Wars are, up to and including the people responsible for showing these ships in media and giving statistics for them. They're given an official length of 210 meters, or about 688 feet. That's slightly longer than three 747s sitting wingtip to wingtip, although we don't know if that's the bow to stern or wingspan measurement. Their maximum capacity has also varied from just under 400 battledroids to about 2500. Personally, I find underestimating the amount of pain one of these could dispense forgivable.
I always assumed the craft had to store most of it's cargo in its wings, as I can't possibly see all those droid transports and tanks fitting in just that central hull.
I thought it was one of those funky "lore only" things but there they are right in the movie when Anakin goes inside the droid control ship. - hoojiwana from Spacedock
Since the wings have modular interiors, I feel like it would be possible to turn one of these into a mining craft. Have the living quarters for the miners and a sensor suite for determining what can be mined in 1 wing, supplies for them to live in another, a sensor suite in a 3rd wing that stores any and all mining equipment, and the 4th wing for storing the minerals/materials mined. Once storage is filled, they take off and go to offload their cargo
That probably happened quite frequently with surplus craft after the end of the war, especially with smaller, independent groups of miners. They would likely detach the wings into a makeshift camp rather than leave the craft intact, and reattach them when they leave.
@@corrinestenman5683 Not likely. You would need a full repair bay with all it's equipment to detach and re-attach those wings. I would imagine that while many did see other uses right after the Clone Wars, it did not last as the increased maintenance requirements of those wing connections would become cost prohibitive.
@@davidtherwhanger6795 What if you shortened the wings? While I was watching the video, got the idea of shortening the wings so they don't NEED the tensor field generators, but leaving them in for more turbulent flights. Still would have heaps of space, spread the sections (living quarters, sensors, supplies, gathered material) among the wings to balance out the weight, upgrade all systems including hyperdrive, add life support, mobile home or worksite...
@@LordCastigator That would be one hell of a balancing act. Adding a bunch of stuff while drastically shrinking the space you have to put it. The cost of modifying those would probably come close to just buying a purpose built craft new. Think about it like this. You are taking an old Duce and a Half army surplus truck and turning it into a mobile home with extra fuel efficiency as well to make it go farther. By the time you have done that, you could have bought a brand new mobile home that did all that you wanted already cheaper.
@davidtherwhanger6795 perhaps, but it wouldn't be just the about the cost, although if you have the right contacts & suppliers that could help. To some people, it would be the challenge of working on the old design and bringing something new out of it. They would be working with the same kind of energy as the kind of people who turn old buses into mobile homes, beat up cars into car show competition winners and so on. Plus some planetary systems could be a bit of a backwater, making new ships harder to come by, but if Droid Army equipment is plentiful, modifying might be the way to go...
During the age of sail cannons were typically not rated by their bore diameter, but by the weight of shot they fired. A 24 pounder cannon fired a 24 pound cast iron ball. A ship's firepower was thought of in terms of it's "Weight of Iron", the mass of cannonballs it could fire in a single broadside. In the late 18th century, the British designed a special type of cannon based around maximizing this: the Carronade. It was short and stubby but fired a larger projectile than the conventional long-gun cannon, all be it with a reduced power charge. Carronades could be quite powerful at short range.
I'm so glad to see a new ship breakdown video, and I'm also ecstatic that you chose a CIS vehicle, they seem to get a lot less attention than the Republic unfortunately
-Convince me. -Well, my Lord, our design has enormous wings that are easy to aim at, and that consume energy just to maintain attached to the hull, and it can unload troop slowly due to the foot being its only way of exit. -That is very bad. -Our design is easily recognizable. -You convinced me.
For whatever reason I have a memory of these things deploying racks of battle droids directly from the wings with a lowering scaffold, even though that's never been the case. Seeing as that apparently they have a 45 minute deployment time, maybe a system like that could make them more efficient at launching troops.
@@LizardSpork I could see the design being part of a copyright for the manufacturers, where the unique appearance is for brand recognition rather than effectiveness. Anyone can make an effective platform, the problem is remembering who the manufacturer is and buying replacements/maintenance from only them.
I learned A LOT about this ship from this video, really interesting stuff! I'm a sucker for the CIS so this was a treat for me! Was always fascinated by the Lucrehulk and its landing craft
Watching this, I had an idea. Bring 1 of these landing ships to a adequately equipped workshop, and it wouldn't be hard to shorten the wings enough that it doesn't NEED the tensor field generators but leave them in for more turbulent flights, upgrade all the equipment including hyper-drive, add multiple life support units to cover each other through redundancy, then convert it into a mobile home for yourself.... It would basically be the ultimate campervan :P. Throw in some internal & external defenses (any Droidekkas lying around ready to play turret gunner?), and you could go into not-as-comfortable territory...
It is still a piece of military kit, purpose designed for deploying specific droids and vehicles to a planet's surface from orbit. I'd wager just about every internal component is dependent on a robust supply chain, especially since the Trade Federation were very involved in the design process. Also, shortening the wings means losing most of the internal space, as that's where things are stored. The central "foot" is mostly just an exit ramp and elevator. Even if none of that was an issue, you'd be left with a mobile home the size of three 747s parked wing-to-wing that all of galactic society has spent the better part of 3 years learning to hate and fear.
Fair enough. I'm just saying, if you've got a few of these around abandoned by the Droid Armies (did see that during the Clone Wars series, bunch of Droid stuff left on a planet they put an anti-escape laser network around) or shut down after the war, got the right equipment to safely modify them, you could make yourself a sizable mobile home, even with the wings trimmed shorter. I've seen people turn buses and other random things into homes, this would just be another 1 of those kinds of projects... For some, it could be a cheaper option than trying to get something new or even 2nd hand to the area. To others, it could be the chance to create something unique like those car show love doing... As for recognition as a hated and feared vehicle, make sure you customise it visually so it's obviously yours and not some random invasion craft...
Kind of wonder if the C-9979 had a "civilian" use (at least on paper) as short-range freighters, especially since they're often carried by the massive Lucrehulks which are supposed to be super-sized freighters. Like, C-9979s carried by a Lucrehulk would be loaded with the Lucrehulk's cargo and ferry it down to a planet's surface (or to orbital stations) when a Lucrehulk is delivering to a system that doesn't otherwise have the orbital docking facilities for a Lucrehulk.
That's my thought on the ships. As I figured that since the Trade Federation wasn't a military force but effectively a corporation then these things would've been used to move trade cargo from larger ships to a planet or vice versa.
I know they wanted a unique look to the ship's, but I find it was more practical to have a long barge with port and starboard impulse engine nacelles -- "This isn't Star Trek!! 🤦" Anyways, one long barge, port and starboard ENGINES, load from the back ramp, offload from the front.
why would you load from a different ramp than you unload? that just adds unnecessary complexity to a design supposedly meant to be practical. there is no reason you can't just load it up the way you want to unload it but in reverse.
My C-9979 would’ve been a SF Carrier. Armed with 8 medium turbolasers and 32 laser canons while carrying 24 y-wings in the wings or more on external clamps.
The Encyclopedia of Starfighters and Other Vehicles also establishes that the C-9979 landing craft can carry up to 361 battle droids, while the 2019 source book Rise of the Separatists establishes that the C-9979 can carry up to 2,500 battle droids and droidekas, depending on its configuration. As Rise of the Separatists is the more recent source, the article makes the assumption that the newer source is correct.
i think that it depends if we count the droids stored into the MTTs and Troop Transports. Even then if we go by that, the number of battle droids (b1) is 4368, in 11 MTTs, and 28 Transports (112 droids in each) without counting the drivers (or the C-9979 crew, 88, for that matter)
Who do you suppose had the best landing strategy. The Republics fast and agile LAAT based tactics, or the well armored Mobil base C-9979 ships of the CIS?
Depends what you're looking for, because both ships are used very differently. C-9979 is more like Chinook helicopter or maybe landing craft, used by CIS to deploy large platoon/company size force in low danger zones with low probability of AAA fire. LAAT on the other hand is more in the ballpark of UH-1 or Blackhawk helicopter. Fast, deploying troops straight into combat zone, often to hot LZ with ability to provide fire support. Later in Clone wars CIS caught up with Droid Gunships. So overall I think that LAAT's are better, faster more agile approach. They don't provide one huge slow target, and also allow more flexibility with ability to deploy troops in wider area than a single big craft. And being smaller, more pinpoint deployment too as they don't need so much space to land.
@@jeremigaezki3618 the C-9979 is like a flying LST, the LAAT is like a flying Higgins boat. you kind of need both. LAATs simply lack the bulk to land mass deployments, they can't do a full landing on their own. C-9979s can, so long as a landing zone can be prepared. which since it comes with a fleet you will be able to do so except when there is a planetry shield but such targets can't be landed upon anyway. planets are big and the enemy can't cover everywhere at once. LAATs clearly lack the ability to do truely mass sustained deployments otherwise they wouldn't bother with Acclamator classes landing. and they are vulnerable to relatively light weapons. this leaves them as rather niche deployment method just like the blackhawk. where the enemie's air defenses are light, but not so light you can't just land a heavier transport.
@@matthiuskoenig3378 yeah I totally agree with your assessment. But since OP asked preference between the two, I really much prefer going fast and hard in LAAT, then slow in C-9979. Besides LAAT in my opinion have better dynamics with larger ships like Aclamators. Latter providing mass deployment afterwards, being able to land planetside. C-9979 provide better mass transport capacity but are vulnerable without faster smaller ships like Droid Gunships. And it still lack volume in comparison to Aclamators. But it's difference in doctrine and ship size. Trade Federation doughnuts can't go planet-side.
its wings several meters thick, the wings are the cargo bays. and the wings are held on by tensor fields, what makes you think those are weaker than trees?
My question is, is there multiple versions? Cause in Clone wars and show there are multiple sizes shown, ones that can carry giant mtts, ones that carry barely 2 mtts, and ones that carry just a battalion of droids
I think they switched to a smaller version because the original was too big, literally being wider than a nebulon b is long. Plus the cost and technical issues
Other than to look cool, why would that thing need wings at all? 😆 It would just need to be generally aerodynamic for atmospheric entry. Tie fighters do just fine without wings 😄
SD you should do a video on the Yamato rip off ship from Rebel Moon next. Because let’s face it Zack Snyder really needs help on making his films any good due to him being indecisive and is obsession with slow mo taking priority over good storytelling.
Wait... you mention a 114 assault tanks @ 2:07... Sorry, but assuming the tanks in question are the ones seen in The Phantom Menace, then i would say that number is way off. I think it be closer to 14 tanks, then a hundred and 14...
Its 114, the AAT get tetris'd overlaping over each other into it, with 24 in each front wing and 33 in each rear wing, this is shown in the Complete Cross sections books
i would argue a 114 is an under estimate for maximum capacity: as shown in the cross section [which fits with the scale shown in phantom menace] there are 3 rows of 7 directly shown for only a portion of 1 wing, with the portion not shown on said wing being partially shown in the wring behind it adding atleast an adtional 5 rows [possibly more as we do not know it it cuts off at the same section, there is also a remote chance its less but i'll adress that in a moment], and the cut out for the other front wing shows the other part of the front wing is 1 row of AATs and 2 rows of MTTs, so should be another 2 rows of 5 assuming similar cutt offs. this is where the 114 comes from. ( 12*3*2 for the back wings, 72. plus (7*3)*2 for the front wings, another 42, so 114. assuming the wings are cut off at the same place and the rear wings hold only AATs. the front missing bits of the front wings are shown holding 1 MTT leaving a row that has another MTT in it, and that there are 3 rows, atleast 2 have MTTs in them. the central 1 has AAT [either because its full of AATs or because other other vehicles in that row already left. so thats atleast 8 MTTs in the wings and upt to 12, we only need 11. this also shows that each wing can hold 7 AATs plus 2 MTTs, and since the MTT is shown to be the length of 5 packed AATs, that means each row can hold 17 AATs. furthermore the hull is shown with 4 MTTs in it and space for a 5th. that means there is enough length in the rows and hull for another 12 MTTs or 60 AATs. this is obviously the space for the 28 PACs. and this is with large wasted spaces between rows, you could easily add another 2 rows or so to each wing. so if anything they are under packed.
@@mitwhitgaming7722 more accurately the clone wars didn't care about scale, and so lore writers had to posthoc write in the lore for different sized ships of otherwise identical design.
@Spacedock As an idea can you guys cover the ships from the show Andromeda? It had such promise and an interesting setting and designs but got ruined later by bad writing. And Kevin Sorbo.
These have always screwed with me because their size on screen is way smaller than they should be given their stated capacity of 100+ AATs. They should be the size of a five-story building.
Rather inefficient these things are. You would think anyone designing a dropship would consider having more than one entry/exit for loading/unloading. I much prefer the Dropship designs from Battletech for this very reason. Multiple doors to reduce the amount of time a dropship must spend on the ground to the lowest it can be. Transports are safest when they are not in the combat area, so limiting their loading/unloading times as much as possible is preferred.
doors add structural weakspots, you want as few doors as possible in any vehicle. so its a balancing act between the advantages of speedy disembarkation and the weaknesses of increaseing that speed. realistically hotdrops should be rare if they exist at all because it requires the defense of the drop ships to be superior to the air defenses, and not only does firepower tend to outcompete defense in near pear warfare, but the limitations will often result in hotdrops being not worth it even when the dropping side has a major tech advantage. the majority of your transports should be intended for landing in passified zones, even when hotdrops are possible. which is what the C-9979 is.
This was such a terrifying and cool design, ever since I saw the cut away art in Incredible Crossections I knew seeing even one of these would mean a small army's worth of droids would quickly engulf a battlefield.
I always assumed that these things were designed with a civilian use in mind first, and were converted into military transports later. They might not be the most efficient designs for a military transport, but they seem like they're ideal for unloading directly and continuously onto a cargo conveyor system. The wings could be loaded separately and attached to a drive component, allowing for relatively good throughput of cargo unloading from a ship to a surface.
why would they be impractical for military transport? its basically identical to real life large military transports in terms of methods like the LST of ww2, and those took longer to disembark fewer vehicles (60 minutes for 70 vehicles, vs 45 minutes for 153 larger vehicles).
This ship would only be good at deploying troops outside of a combat zone. It’s a slow lightly armed landing ship that’s easy pickings for AA or artillery and tanks once they’ve landed. I’d rather have an LAAT gunship thanks.
That is definitely the design philosophy, we don't see them tossed into hot zones. They come in to drop an army, and get the droid gunships later to fill the role of LAAT. Honestly these and LAATs would both be good to have
Yeah, lots of weird design decisions with this one. I feel like the cannons on top of the wings might do well to protect it against other aircraft, but they're useless for protecting your disembarking troops: Having some underslung turrets or turrets mounted on either side of the "foot" could help a lot in securing the landing zone while you deploy. And speaking of deploying, that 45 minute disembark time, oof. If the only thing those wings are used for is cargo, there's no reason they can't open the bottom up on landing and deploying racks of droids on a lowering scaffold, saving the foot for embarking troops or disembarking large vehicles. That way you can completely empty out the wings in about a minute rather than the 45 it takes to dump them all out of that bottleneck. That being said, I wouldn't compare this to a LAAT gunship. I think this is more meant to be the separatist answer to the Acclamator assault ship.
IRL design is definitely subjected to the rule of cool, and visuals on screen. In universe, it's poorly designed ship in my opinion. Slow, hold together by special fields because wings are to heavy. Also not armed enough to provide fire support during deployment. Given it's max dimensions, you could have much bigger rectangular hull with much more usable ramps on sides for rapid deployment. So overall form over function, movie logic vs practical functionality.
@@kevingriffith6011 you seem to forget military operations are a group effort. the transports SHOULDN'T be the ones securing their own landing zones. specialised craft should be doing that. its the lesson we learnt with beach landing craft and then had to learn again with helicopters. and 45 minutes is short for 150 vehicles, real life tank transports take an hour to offload 20 tanks. FYI the wings are where the tanks are stored.
@@jeremigaezki3618 its a transport, it SHOULDN'T provide fire support during deployment. its something real militaries have to keep learning with helicopters. trying to use a transport as the firesupport is a bad idea. you end up with firesupport not fire supporting as they land and ground troops not getting to the ground as their transport acts as firesupport. combat is a group effort. don't try and make things to everything, because then they'll be good at nothing and too buisy to do everything anyway. and 45 minutes for 150 vehicles is rapid. it takes real life transports twice that long per vehicle ATLEAST. that said, it should have multiple offloading elevators. and the gap between the wings is useless (haveing 4 separatable "wings" for ease of storage is a good idea, but considering those are also the cargo bays and it doens't use lift forces to fly? its silly. my redesign would essentially be 5 subcomponets that combine to form a giant flying wing. with multple collapsing eleveators that come out the bottum, using deflector shields rather than hull armouring to protect the elevators and cargo during disembarkment. this allows the vehicle to have 50% extra cargo and can reduce the unloading time (if we go for 6 elevators you can disembark 50% more cargo in 1/4th the time, ie 11 minutes 15 seconds).
"Sir, these wings are a massive drain on power, and can bend when parked." - "I said I wanted a ship that looked like an H on the back of a slug! Now get back to work!"
hello if i remember correctly from some years ago, there was a "types of sci fi warships" video on this channel that i can't seem to find anymore, can i ask what happened to it?
