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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16178
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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 Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2023 5:54 pm Post subject: |
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The office lengths for the Bulwarks do not concern me; the ship has been butchered beyond recognition by the EU, and it is utterly silly to have such massive variation in length between different Marks of the same Class.
I made up the 4,500 meter length at a time when the Executor was still 8,000 meters long and the EGtW had not yet established the initial length at 1,000 meters. It just needed to be plausibly long enough to have the volume for a big enough reactor to enable it to trade punches with an 8,000 meter Executor.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16178
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2023 8:00 pm Post subject: |
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Anyway, here is a comparison of the relevant Rebellion game stats of the Bulwark and Executor:Shields: 1100 / 1200
Hyperdrive: 60 / 80
Hull: 3000 / 5000
Tractor Beam: 6 / 6
Sublight: 3 / 2
Maneuverability: 2 / 1
Bombard: 4 / 3
Turbolasers
-Fore: 600 / 500
-Aft: 120 / 150
-Port: 300 / 300
-Starboard: 300 / 300
Ion Cannon
-Fore: 200 / 200
-Aft: 80 / 100
-Port: 150 / 200
-Starboard: 150 / 200
Laser Cannon
-Fore: 0 / 0
-Aft: 0 / 0
-Port: 0 / 0
-Starboard: 0 / 0 This breaks down to the following ratios for the Bulwark relative to the Executor:Bulwark (Percentage of Executor)
Shields: 0.92
Hyperdrive: 0.75
Hull: 0.6
Tractor Beam: 1.0
Sublight: 1.5
Maneuverability: 2.0
Bombard: 1.33
Turbolasers
-Fore: 1.2
-Aft: .8
-Port: 1.0
-Starboard: 1.0
Ion Cannon
-Fore: 1.0
-Aft: 0.8
-Port: 0.75
-Starboard: 0.75
Laser Cannon: 1.0 To generate the stats for the Bulwark, my general approach is to break the relevant stat down into pips, apply the multiplier, then convert back into dice. For weapons, I just apply the appropriate multiplier to the equivalent weapons on the Executor. For my purposes, I treat the Bombard rating as a measurement of Ordnance Strength. Also, I went a different route by giving all warships some degree of defensive laser cannon, so while Rebellion doesn't give them any, my Bulwark will have equal starfighter defenses to what I put on the Executor.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10297
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2023 2:13 am Post subject: |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | So, a conversation in the Fractalsponge Discord got me thinking about the Bulwark in particular, and the backgrounds of the other Rebellion ships in general.
Regarding the Bulwark, its meta progression in the canon has been erratic to say the least. It started as a ship that allowed the Alliance to field a ship that had a one-on-one chance against something like the Executor (when it was still only 8,000 meters), and my original stats reflected that. Then, when the Executor got buffed up to 18+ kilometers, the Bulwark got mega-nerfed (by the author of the EGtW) down to 1,000 meters, and had it get trounced by a group of VSDs.
...
The office lengths for the Bulwarks do not concern me; the ship has been butchered beyond recognition by the EU, and it is utterly silly to have such massive variation in length between different Marks of the same Class.
I made up the 4,500 meter length at a time when the Executor was still 8,000 meters long and the EGtW had not yet established the initial length at 1,000 meters. It just needed to be plausibly long enough to have the volume for a big enough reactor to enable it to trade punches with an 8,000 meter Executor. |
I'm finding this discussion hard to follow. The Executor was never 8,000m long.
The effects team intended it to be "eleven times" the length of an ISD (thus about 17.6km), and their intention was very successfully realized on screen. The "five mile fallacy" was an error first made an unofficial reference work in 1984, and that error was repeated by WEG and other officially published works, both before and after ILM explicitly stated their intention in 1995.
However, an official reference book in 2004 established an Executor as being "nearly a dozen times the length of a star destroyer," and from this point forward the "five mile fallacy" stopped being perpetuated in Star Wars.
You said you statted the Bulwark "when the Executor was still 8km." Your linked post was in 2014. The five mile fallacy was finally obliterated in 2004, and The Essential Guide to Warfare came out in 2012. Are your stats older and you just didn't share them here until 2014? Or did you still think the 8km length of the Executor was official in 2014 and you didn't find out otherwise or get TEGtW until after that?
| Quote: | I’ve struggled with what to do with the Bulwark, but what occurs to me is to treat the “1,000 meters” as a typo, and bump the Bulwark’s actual length up to 10,000 meters. Combined with its large mass relative to its length, this gives it enough reactor output to be able “punch above its weight” against ships like the Executor or Mandator.
Another factor is that the Rebellion ship development system, while appropriate for the game, is complete unsuited to R&D for the Alliance in-universe. The Alliance is basically stuck using Clone Wars era surplus or ships that defect / mutiny. Worlds with powerful navies in open rebellion against the Empire (like the Mon Cals) are few and far between. A massive super-capital warship able to stand up to a Super Star Destroyer will take a lot of time and resources to build, and will almost certainly attract extreme Imperial displeasure in the process.
However, a somewhat unrelated discussion posited the existence of Separatist super-capital warships as a counter to something like the Mandator-Class, even though there’s no official evidence of such a thing. As such, I’m thinking of making the Bulwark into a Separatist ship, with the Alliance managing to gain possession of a handful as the core firepower of their main fleet. Also, making them older ships makes it a lot easier to justify the “plagued with faulty electronics” portion of their official background.
Obviously, capital ship battles at this level aren’t going to be a factor in anybody’s game, but since I’ve updated the Executor’s stats, it feels incomplete to me that the Bulwark hasn’t been buffed up to match. |
I completely agree that the Alliance should not be able to manufacture a ship like the Bulwark for the reasons you stated. However I see an issue with your solution. The Republic had no ship like the Executor, so why would the Separatists ever have a ship that could match it?
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16178
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2023 5:36 pm Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: | | The Executor was never 8,000m long. |
When I originally did D6 stats for the Rebellion ships, I was still trying to keep them approximate to official WEG stats, including the “official” 8,000 meter version of the Executor. A lot has changed since then w/r/t to my stat write-ups and house rules.
| Quote: | | The Republic had no ship like the Executor, so why would the Separatists ever have a ship that could match it? |
I addressed this in the quoted text, specifically:However, a somewhat unrelated discussion posited the existence of Separatist super-capital warships as a counter to something like the Mandator-Class, even though there’s no official evidence of such a thing.
The Mandator-Class is an official vessel that existed during the Clone Wars, despite never being seen on screen. The idea here is that the Bulwark was intended to counter the Republic’s Mandators, which are the predecessor of things like the Executor. I’m picturing as overmatching Mandator I’s and II’s, but being relatively outdated against follow-on classes like the Executor. It’s not that they were developed specifically to fight Executors; more that they preexisted the galactic civil war (having been developed by the Separatists) and, despite their age, are one of the only classes of super-capitals available to the Alliance.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index
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