Excuse me if I just haven't found it in the CRB but I have a question. On the large ship or vehicle components chart 7-11 pg. 245, Landing Gear, it says that ships silhouette 6 and up are unable to enter the atmosphere.

Is this always the rule or just the rule when the landing gear is damaged? I haven't put a silhouette 6 ship on a planet but I didn't think it was impossible or against the rules.

Would you say that the Star Destroyer looking ships in Clone Wars, that I think have entered the atmosphere on the show, are silhouette 6?

Wookiepedia says most Star Destroyer models can enter atmosphere. But I can't find any real information regarding specific ships or how common it is for other larger ships to not be capable of entering the atmosphere.

Haven't Mon Cal cruisers been shown landing on open water? I believe that they might be submersible too.

Is it important for your game that they can? If the answer is yes, then they can.

With that being said, I would wager that if there are facilities that can support a star destroyer landing for whatever reason, then they can. But for ships that large, they're probably not made to land in just any type of environment.

I'd limit where one could touch down. Something that immense would need to leave some kind of repulsor system on, there is no way it could just sit on landing gear on any surface. I do like big ships in the atmo though, very science fictiony cool I think.

Those giant Republic Venator-class Star Destroyers land all the time in Clone Wars. Not sure what silhouette they are but I bet it's bigger than 6.... However, I agree with kaosoe and 2P51, it does what you say it does as the GM, since you can make it happen believably.

FWIW, the Star Destroyers we know and love from the movies are silhouette 8 according to AoR.

In the Age of Rebellion Beta, Victory-class Star Destroyers are listed Silhouette 8. According to Wookieepedia, they're 900m long, where the Venators are 1137m long, and Imperial-class are 1600m, which are also Silhouette 8. Assuming from this Venators would also be a Silhouette 8 starship. The Venators have been shown to land in specialized yards on Coruscant. It's also noted that Victory-class SDs are capable of operating within an atmosphere.

So Silhouette 8 seems to be a fairly broad category of anything from 900-2000m long. As they said, there's not a hard and fast rule for conversion, but silhouettes are essential exponential. Even these big beasties seem to be capable of low atmospheric operations, and even landing if the docking equipment is available. Chances are the repulsorlift technologies would still be operating even if the Venator had "landed."

Back in the days of West End Games, before we had the wonders of Wookipedia to call upon, the rules stated that Imperials (and Imperial II), and Supers Could not enter atmosphere, and Victories could. Those were the only Star Destroyers we knew about at the time.

We also know that at least one Super Star Destroyer was built under a cityscape and took off from beneath it. Basically anything that can fly in space seems to be powerful enough to fly through atmosphere and, if not land, hover right above the ground on repulsorlifts for as long as necessary.

Thanks guys. I have no plans to put a Sil 6 ship on a planet, but it wanted to know how it worked, just in case.

Count me in the 'big ships might be able to land given specialized dockyards' camp. Mostly because of the immense bulk of such vessels, it's hard to imagine them actually being built with sufficient landing gear to maintain structural integrity when landed. (The same issue you'd have if you tried to 'park' an aircraft carrier on dry land without specialized support structures.)

Water landings would be much more believable, as the support would be stretched evenly across the entire lower surface of the vessel, leaving only the question of the ship's ability to support it's own bulk without crushing the lower decks.

Note: For a 1km vessel, the surface of an Earth-sized planet would have roughly 0.2m (8") of 'uplift' between the fore and aft of said vessel.

The SSD that was built hidden on Coruscant's surface was *built* there, and only managed to lift off due to external, add-on repulsorlift pods designed to lift the massive craft off the surface. It sustained fairly heavy damage in the process, IIRC.

I think it depends on the design really. I don't see a Neb-B landing due to its shape but a Corona Armed Frigate (Which will probably be silhouette 6 if ever officially converted From Saga to ETE) has been shown landing in TCW, and Acclamator class ship s (Which will probably be silhouette 7 or 8) were designed to land and deliver troops to battlefields.

I don't have a concern over the ship's structure supporting itself. Anything that's doing what starships do is built quite robust I'm sure. I think more in terms of whether or not the surface it's resting on will support it's weight or will it sink into the ground like a tent peg in soft dirt. Major airport runways are generally several feet thick between concrete and aggregate base. If you've ever seen the footprint of a large skyscraper think about that times probably about ten to set a S 8 sized ship down on.

One of the reasons large ships don't enter planetary atmospheres is that they lack repulsors. They're built in space and are never meant to operate inside a planet's gravity well, so why bother with repulsor engines? The Super Star Destroyer that HappyDaze spoke of, the Lusankya, needed an extensive system of attached rocket boosters to get itself clear of Coruscant's surface.

The part about sinking into the surface is also an issue. The airport near where I live sometimes get visits from huge Galaxy transport planes from the US Air Force. They have to be moved every hour, otherwise their landing gear starts sinking into the concrete. Literally. Those things are huge, but a Star Destroyer is even bigger.

Of course, if your story calls for a capital ship to enter the atmoshpere and/or land on the surface, then by all means let it. You can handwave it as having special equipment installed, or just not bring the issue up at all.