I've been a fan of the Mon Calamari's cruisers, and most of the curvy designs on Star Wars. It was nice to get some variance from all the clean lines and hard industrial look.
I feel like they're also just more visually idealistic than most of the other ships of the alliance. Sleek and graceful vessels that ought to be plying the space lanes of a galaxy at peace.
The Mon Cala cruisers are pretty great as a philosophical and visual shorthand for the entire alliance. Like everything in the Alliance fleet, they are repurposed, vessels built for peace and refitted to serve in war. They're also prominently crewed by one of the Alliance's most visually unusual species who fearlessly take their ships into slugging matches with Imperial Star Destroyers that will not hesitate to rain fire down on them. The fact that they're so different from the empire's harsh angular ships is just a really great shorthand. Yet they're still mechanical enough to feel like they belong in the Star Wars universe.
I believe originally they were luxury liners, then converted into warships for the alliance. I'm pretty sure it's Disney cannon that they were buildings to a large underwater city.
best explanation was they were cargo ships. Of course they could of also been luxury liners or exploration ships. Point is the base model would have had common hulls that were modified independently for war.
I always loved that the water tubes and the arboreatum stayed in the various moncal ships. When your a struggling alliance of different species trying to fight the empire, its nice to have a place on the ship where you can relax and recouperate after those long raids and patrols. This and the fact your fleet is so far from the regular spacelanes you can't just drop in for a weekend on a planet to get some R&R, very much the rebels needed this kind of vessel to survive the mental and physical aspects of waging a galaxy wide rebellion.
Just a heads up, the Mon Calamari had arguably THE BEST shields for their ships in the galaxy, so despite their lack of Turbo laser emplacements they could rival a Star Destroyer on a duel.
I wish bridges and command centers weren't so vulnerable and obvious in the star wars universe. Where would you aim firepower in a battle, with so many holographic projections and sensors, radar, you could be in the middle of a cruiser protected and still command the ship.
One of my biggest complaints about Star trek is the exposed nacelles or engines on all the Starfleet ships except for the Defiant and maybe the Steamrunner, they just scream shoot me here and the fact that ST has no starfighters that could exploit that fatal weakness is just silly.
@@keonisan yes, ST has Fighters, watch Deep Space 9. They're not used often as frankly they're not very useful when small, agile capital ships are so capable and powerful. Also, warp nacelles are positioned how they are through a combination of safety (to save the ship if they go boom) and also utility, to better create warp fields for more efficient travel.
spaceships usually have powerful defense of CC and they fight on large distance, so it is too hard to shoot accurate on far, small and moving targets. Just imagine how it's impossible to hit exactly that small part of the ship what u wish to hit, and it's much better to save as much space in the ship as it's possible. Well, all of this is very strange and I think it's obviously what is the problem of decisions like this...
Even in Star Trek, the bridge is located at the top-most of the saucer section (even the Defiant's bridge is on top). This is a rather ridiculous concept carried by modern navies where the bridge is prominently placed high on top a ship where it has the best viewing angle around. Irony though is that "mission ops" (proper name escapes me right now) is actually down below, windowless, and relies 100% on cameras, RADAR, and other viewing measures to execute mission. They are the ones who actually press the "FIRE" button, not the bridge. Hopefully when humans ACTUALLY venture out into space, we don't make the same stupid mistake. Viewscreens are a thing here in 2022, so placing the bridge deep in the middle of a ship would make the most practical sense from a tactical and space debris point of view. Save the top deck for the observation lounge and make it transparent aluminum glass (yes, it IS a real thing ;) ). As for the exposed nacelles? That's a necessary function, as per Star Trek "tech", the geometry of the nacelles have to be as such to establish a warp bubble around the entire ship. Ships like the Defiant and Steamrunner break tech canon, but I also note that their nacelles are also radically angled. Perhaps this gives the writers a way to have their cake and eat it too.
They're not the "coolest" looking ships on paper and in schematic like here, but in the movies they do a great job of showing such a striking contrast to the imperial ships with their organic looks, brightly lit interiors, multi panel colors a bit reminiscent of the refit-Enterprise' famous aztec pattern, and a more "intimate" and cool command bridge contrasting to the cold, wide imperial command bridges where lower officers are literally stuffed below the floor the higher officers walk upon. Beyond that, even their design language tells so much of a story. Despite how utilitarian imperial ships *appear* to be, Mon Calamari cruisers are so much more sensible and well rounded. They're not as needlessly huge (and with interior space so optimized they even have space for an atrium. Just think of how much empty space are in Star Destroyers.), they have superior sensor equipment, their guns aren't as destructive but are far more accurate and with coverage while imperial engineers didn't even consider their turrets be able to reach behind, and most of all redundancies like backup shields and modular parts. It tells a story that while Star Destroyers are big and scary, they're just flying giant guns that point in one direction, while the rebel ships are so much smarter.
Statistic for Home one varied from 1400m to 3800m(Saxton); Saxton oversizad DS2 also; DS2 had 11.6 less diameter than Endor which has 4900 km; this gave 422km for diameter of DS2. In some more acurate version, 1800meters is valid approx of Home one length;
I like the water tunnels, can imagine Ackbar using them to get away from some annoying Bothan. Maybe them being used in a book, with the ship boarded and the crew doing hit and run attacks on the boarders through them.
awesome videos sir amaizing ships i can only imagine if we humans could get one of those ships to travel on space and go to several places in our solar system
People ask why star wars vessels are so large compared to Trek...its logistics. Star Trek features extensive regenerative life support facilities and they recycle their own "waste" as part of their food supply. as well as air and water
You can certainly make that assertion, and it's a cool piece of head canon, but really the ships are the size they are to suit the needs of their stories. Keep in mind Trek Ships also tend to travel for much longer periods of time without making a port of call. Travel in Star Wars is relatively quick by comparsion. One thing that I kind of miss from early TNG was how the Enterprise was treated almost as a mobile space station, hosting diplomatic events, taking on and disembarking scientists and crew as they rotated to other ships, picking up supplies from other vessels to deliver them to locations on their schedule route, etc. It made sense given the relatively slow rate of travel in the Trek Universe.
Interesting that you did a piece on the Mon Calamari cruisers… many years ago, as a ardent Star Wars fan I had wrote while I was in the entertainment business at the time, a treatment for what would have then been episode V II. Being a fan of the old books and not really a fan of the universe books, I took the old stuff that George Lucas had put out there with people he authorized and came up with a backstory based upon his canon for the Mon Calamari people, and the value of their cruisers - as well as the value to the rebel fleet. I had some fairly interesting tech and economic tidbits about their cruisers, but I felt bought more of a more grown-up geopolitical reality to the Star Wars universe, as I had a few people read the treatment, which is a ground works for a script, I got good reviews on it at the time. And it’s interesting, because it ties in with the way ISD’s deal with Mon Calamari cruisers, if you notice when star destroyer‘s jump in from hyperspace, they always tag team their cruisers from the aft port side… I ventured a reason for that. I noticed that through several films, so I built plot lines and other suggestions around that. Very cool post
I respect the Mon Calamari. Brave, Courageous, Balls of Steel. And their fleet brought the Imeprial Navy to heel. Including Admiral Raddus. He gave the Empire hell before he was cut down.
Film special effects technology limitation in episode 6. The newer sequels taken over by Disney aren't into star wars anymore. Instead, we get to see more of their capabilities from spinoff. Hope Disney loses rights to star wars
There was a line in the movie that had the imperials pulling back outside of the range of the MonCal cruisers. So the death Star could take them out without risking the imperial fleet. When they did move in closer range, there were a couple of scenes of capital ships engaging in broadsides and close quarter firing but it was more of a battle of fighters and carriers than battleships alone. As admiral Akbar said, they have no ship that could last long against the Star destroyers and they never intended to engage them in close combat, they only did it to cover themselves from the death Star super laser.
I just saw Star Wars rebels and they have a ship scale in thr artwork for an episode and it shows the Mon Calamari Home One class being 2000 meters long
Mc80 were quite good for cruisers that were retrofitted to become warships. Sadly, due to this, if they had to fight an ISD, they would need another Mc80 to make it more fair on the odds, a thing that the Rebel Alliance could not do at every ISD encounter.
Home One was larger, the average MC80b was smaller, I think. The problem with the Mon Cals was that very few of them were standardized so their size gets misrepresented a ton. I've seen Home One suggested at being around 3000m?
@@maevethefox5912 Yes, I get 3,100 to 3,200 m, upper limit of 3,840 m, by scaling the starboard hangar exterior (and interior) In concept art for Star Wars: Rebels, it seems about 20 percent longer than an ISD, also. I do not recall any shots of an ISD and Home One together, though - maybe from the cover of the Rebellion video strategy game? Or a publicity photo. MC80b may be around 1250 metres. And Home One weapons are now updated to 36 turbo, 36 ion and 50 quad lasers, I think.
Funny... when he put the Home One side by side with the Imperial Star Destroyer, it looked like a slice of pizza before being eaten and then a slice of pizza after being eaten.🤣
I appreciate the Mon Cala designs for their ships as they are look unique and add to star ship diversity. I all stand by the statement that all Mon Cala designs looks like literal turds.
Ick, never cared much for the look of Calimari ships. Too much junk in the trunk, and too ‘polite looking’ too - doesn’t quite strike that primal fear that an ISD could. Obviously q lot of people LOVE them, so I apologize if my comment offended anyone.
