Let's talk Star Destroyers!

[lurker]

Ok, I can't help with 'official' or 'expanded' information. You all are much better read on that than I am.

I can help a little with my real world experiences (though with the navy they are more limited than the other branches) - I was stationed on Guam in a joint command & lived and worked in a navy environment. With them I was next to navy guys some of which were on destroyers AC carriers and 1 even on the Mighty Mo before it was decommissioned. A friend on my team was a Coast Guard medic and rescue swimmer before he came over to the Air Force. When on the teams, I liaisoned for a bit when my unit was going to do a joint exercise - but I didn't go underway with them so darn the luck I spent a week on the beach sending back observations and surveys instead of sucking on the ship .

1st. Officers only eat with officers and even then only with those of similar rank. The Same is true with Chiefs, NCOs and lower enlisted. There are places on ships that an 'O' never goes. They do not want to go into those areas & the 'Es' don't want them there. Admittedly, there are exceptions, and the smaller the crew is the less the 'cast' system is in effect, But on something as large as an ISD …

2nd, the living quarters are Spartan for everyone. Only a Captain (Full bird Colonel in the other branches) or higher has his own privet quarters and latrine and even that is a broom closet sized room. Everyone else below that rank either shared a latrine with others (say a Commander or Lt Commander having 2-4 to a room & 4-8 to a bathroom. All the chiefs will be similar to that. Everyone else will be in mass barracks and share latrines.

3rd. The ground troops/Army would be kept way away from the ship's crew. Big navy does not like the SOF guys (even their own SEALS) and hates any land guy on their ship. This animosity is returned by the ground guys, so when at all possible, the 2 groups are kept well away from each other! Of course this is lessoned when the ship's 1 job is to carry said troops and drop them off (a Gaiter Freighter carrying a Marine Amphibian force).

4th. Things can get mixed up in the ship's layout anytime the ship is upgraded or retrofitted … My buddy on the Mighty Mo, when it was being decommissioned, said that as they were going through the ship, they found an old blue print that showed a repair room in an area that was walled off. They cut through the wall and found a hall (can't remember the navy term for a hall …) that lead to a fully stocked repair shop with everything for metal fabrication. Even some works that were not finished. Also there was a calendar from before one of the big retrofitting to the ship. (I add this so that when you are designing the floor plans, and have a space that needs to be filled, but you don't have anything to put there, you can wall it off and have an excuse for it being a void wasted space.

5th. As much as possible, the layout from one ship will be used an another and things will be as modular as possible. It is for ease of design and building. If all rooms in section X are the same size, then the workers can weld them up from pre cut standard cookie cutter parts. If there was verity, then the workers would have to measure & cut everything onsite. (This makes everything in the ship look the same soooo if you do not know how to read the marking code above the bulk heads, you get WAY LOST and that is from experience ) For this, once you get a standard layout of anything, you can just wash rinse and repeat it as much as needed.

For med bays and things like that, there will be 1 or 2 main med bays and then 'first aid' stations around different sections. Same same for MWR and other 'support' functions (hair cuts, PT, etc).

Ok, that is about the depth of my knowledge on this … hope it helps a bit …
_________________
"And so I am become a knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows!" - Mark Twain

Forgive all spelling errors.

[Mojomoe]

Lurker, this is GREAT firsthand experience!

If you don't mind, I'd like to pry a little more -

You say 1 or 2 main med bays - that's spread over how many crew? How many decks would you have to go at a maximum to get to one, or how far would you have to walk? For instance, is it reasonable to have one med bay per section of the ship (crew/stormtroopers/flight deck/officers/command)?

You also mentioned PT, hair cuts, etc. What else would we need at a MINIMUM for an ISD crew? Anything you can think of will help!

[Mikael Hasselstein]

[Mojomoe]

^ Having read that TFN treatise on deck spacing, I'm a little confused - are they actually postulating 10 meters between decks, with a 3m standard deck size? I'm having trouble following their logic:

According to an examination of the externally-visible portals, the total number of decks in the standard bridge tower of a Kuat Drive Yards warship is somewhere between twenty and thirty, with an average spacing of about three metres. At a few locations there are portals appearing at intervals halfway between the main decks. Presumably these correspond to inhabited chambers, rooms or shafts which span more than one level. According to presently-available images, the greatest number of decks consecutively spanned in this fashion at any one point is three, on the Executor and the multi-nodular towers.

Although the bridge nodules are about ten metres thick in the vertical direction, the scale of the bridge interior is much smaller. The distance between the deck and ceiling is about three or four metres for the command walkways and about one and a half metres more for the control pits. Although this is quite spacious, it amounts to just over half of the total thickness of the bridge nodule.

The externally-visible windows are close enough to the bottom of the nodule to rule out the existence of any deck below the bridge but there is a substantial space above the bridge level. We could postulate the existence of a windowless deck above the bridge proper, but it would be cramped. The rest of the nodule's space above the bridge ceiling must be filled with something other than living space. We're faced with the prospect of just a single deck with generous space surrounding it. This may hold life-support, computers and the powerful bridge deflector shield generators. The thick cylindrical structures running along the bridge ceiling also indicate some kind of important mechanism being carried out in the ceiling. It seems most probable that the cylinders are power conduits associated with the bridge deflector shields.

If the extraordinary thickness of the structure above and below the bridge is not due to the bridge shields or other unusual requirements of the bridge systems then we may have an important clue regarding the general nature of the starship technology of the Galactic Empire. If the spacing between decks on a star destroyer is consistently ten metres then we also stand a good chance of being able to calculate limits on the total deck area of any particular class of warship.

EDIT - ok, NOW I see what they're talking about. They're ONLY counting decks with portals/lit windows, which is a little too literal for my taste. I had taken it as obvious that there would be decks with no windows on a ship this size, with tens of thousands of people aboard. I think we can safely reject the 3m/10m spacing. But the 3m deck height I think is still valid.

[Mikael Hasselstein]

I take it that you're referring to this line: "Although the bridge nodules are about ten metres thick in the vertical direction."

I'm not sure what that means. A 'bridge nodule', seems to refer to slight protrusions on the face side of the command tower. I'm guessing that the protrusions are about 10m tall. With the bridge itself being (by my reckoning and what I surmise from their text) two decks thick. So that would leave the protrusion to begin at the deck below and end somewhere in the deck above. Essentially, I'm reading this as something that's about the external look, and not something we need to concern ourselves with.

"Move along, move along."

[Mojomoe]

Specifically, I was referring to the line "If the spacing between decks on a star destroyer is consistently ten metres then we also stand a good chance of being able to calculate limits on the total deck area of any particular class of warship. "

But on re-reading that, however, I can interpret it as "the space from floor to floor is ten meters," meaning you have a 3m deck and 7m of... other stuff between decks.

I still think this is too much, however. I'd assume the between-deck space is less than or equal to deck height, unless anyone can argue convincingly otherwise - while it's an established sci-fi trait that between-deck spaces are fairly thin, I think we can also point to some other Star Wars ships and find examples of decks (including grav plating and power conduits) being less than the height of the deck itself, by a significant margin.

The question then is, if we're set on power conduits that are a full deck height in diameter, do those run between decks, or in walled-off sections of the decks themselves? I'd assume the latter, but I can be swayed. Again, we might look to the Venator-class for inspiration!

[Mikael Hasselstein]

I can't fathom a 10 meters between decks. Let's just ignore that.

My vote goes to 3 meters, floor to floor, with 0.5 between ceiling and floor above.

Regarding the ducting and power cabling - yes, those are huge, but they wouldn't be between every deck. To use an organic metaphor, it would be like arteries in a body, with habitable decks being more like muscle tissue. When the bloodstream hits the muscle (just as the power, atmosphere, liquids, etc. hit the habitable spaces) the flow is distributed, just as the effluent (waste and atmosphere) is collected to be recycled.

What we see in the cross-cut of the turbolaser turret in the Venator is that way because I'm sure there are main arteries along the equatorial trench to distribute power, atmo, etc. through the 'wings' of the ship and around the cavities of the hangars.

A question I've been having. Looking at the Venator, there are those large docking vestibules on either side. The ISD also has 'cut-outs' along its trench. The smaller ones towards the rear seem to be there to house laser batteries, but what about the longer ones which are half-way forward of the main hangar bay and ending at about the secondary hangar. I don't see anything that looks like a vestibule, do you?

Finally, what about those two 'hood' looking-like things on the top-side of the foreship, where we know the hangars are underneath. Can these open the way that they could on the Venator? They're certainly raised panels.

[Mojomoe]

Apologies if someone already mentioned this site, but I have a great resource.

Photographs of the Avenger ISD-II studio model, in detail:

http://www.modelermagic.com/?p=19630

Additionally, here are Fractalsponge's 3D renders of same. I've noticed a very few tiny inconsistencies between the two, but structurally they're very, very similar down to very small details. I think it's close enough that we can call the 3D model, with some vetting using the studio model, our starting point.

http://fractalsponge.net/gallery/ISD/index.html

[Mikael Hasselstein]

Those are cool.

So, what is our next step? Do we want to fileshare and each make our own mock up of the outline?

[garhkal]

[Ral_Brelt]

Chiming in for a bit of additional support. In Black Fleet Crisis book one, they find a derelict ISD, don't know if they reference type I or II, but they talk about the size of the comp core and the book gave the impression that it was large, as in multi-deck. Depending on how far the EU stretched for you all they also have an X-wing fit in the solar generator of another ISD in one of the X-Wing novels and chew it up from the inside. In the TIE Fighter game by Lucas Arts they also have a service tunnel from the main hanger to the TIE hanger. I like the intent and idea you've got here and if I hit upon anything else in wanderings, I'll share if you guys want.

[Mikael Hasselstein]

Thanks Ral.

I've adjusted the Ortho image from earlier. I found that not all views were the same scale. (the top and down view were shorter than the port and starboard side views.) The image linked here (.png, 4MB) has scaled those images to depict the length of the ship at 1600px long (which is also the width of the image. I've scaled the other views to be to scale. I posted these measurements in the top-right hand-corner. There were some slight discrepancies (e.g. the top view @1600px long was 4px narrower than the bottom view), but these should not really matter for our immediate purposes.

What I am going to do is to place the 'big stuff' (listed above) in there, to communicate my sense of things. I'll jot down the dimensions that I come up with. I suggest that you do the same and we compare notes.

=======
Some notes:

On Wookieepedia, I found this:

"Often described as a "miniature sun", and incorporating one of the largest single hyperspace field generators ever designed, the massive reactor system occupied more than half of the Imperator/Imperial-class Star Destroyer's interior. Unlike the reactor system on the older Venator-class, the reactor on board Imperial-class vessels was large enough relative to the rest of the ship to protrude with a ventral bulb. It also forced the troop and crew compartments to be located on the upper half of the superstructure." (link)

So, the round thing at the bottom is the protrusion of this reactor. I'm drawing a ball centered at the height of the thrusters, and protruding right at the spot where the model has it protruding. Wow... the image from the Incredible Cross-Sections is underestimating the size of it, if the text above is accurate. Of course, that text cites the 'Incredible Cross-Sections', so I'm not sure what to make of this.

[Ral_Brelt]

Sure thing. Also bear in mind you'll need space for the ground assault forces an ISD carries, AT-ATs, STs, Juggernauts, Ulavs, and prefab garrison base structures. Also landing barges for the AT-ATs. In some of the novels, ship captains had large spaces for their offices, like Thrown in his trilogy. Granted he was a Grand Admiral, but I doubt that they'ld have consulted with him to build it. Also, you might want to have a secondary bridge in case the tower got damaged in battle. In another EU novel the Falcon gets snared by an ISD and locked down on board. When they later escape, the have to fly through access ways and up one vehicle lift.

[Mikael Hasselstein]

Okay, so this is going slow, and I'm being meticulous.

here is the image from before, but now with the main reactor and the fore-reactor plugged in (as white rounds) with a manifold between them (slight grey).

I'm operating off the image from the Incredible Cross-Sections that I mentioned before. However, in my latest image you'll notice that the main is considerably larger than the fore, which is my way of marrying the cross-section with the text of the gargantuan main reactor.

Your thoughts?

If this is something that can be 3D-modeled, rather than this amateur hour on my end, I'd like to hear about it. I do have Blender on my laptop, but I don't know enough about it in order to use it without more autodicactic learning on my part, or some pointers on yours.

[Mojomoe]

I had similar questions setting this up, whether it wouldn't be better to do in 3D. The 3D mesh that Fractalsponge made is available, but until I can investigate I'll stick to my original plan, which is a 15px/1m pixel map.

My thought is that 3D sounds like a smart route, but I fear it's a short step to "why don't you just make an entire 3D interior?" ...at which point, this will never happen .

I have a similar startup that I've begun that includes the main drive shafts as well that I'll post as soon as I can get to my pc. It's interesting that I came to similar decisions about the axial bulge before reading that, mostly because all of the main features of the ISD are starting to interlock like puzzle pieces. Unfortunately - and I've double checked the studio model - the cross section has the turbo laser batteries connecting directly to the port and starboard drive shafts just abaft of the secondary reactors that run laterally into the main turbine. This is a nice idea, but completely unfeasible as the secondary reactor has to turn towards the turbine in the wrong place for that to work. Happily though, other parts of the cross section DO line up, such as the anti-resonance plates that bisect the turbine, which line up with a lateral support beam that sits directly below a division on the superstructure.

TL;DR - some things line up nicely, I'll post a pic.