Most of the people who claim they can't have internal bays overestimate how much space such a bay would take IMO. In history there have been much smaller ships have carried fighters internally, and Star Wars fighters don't require nearly as much space to launch as historical fighters.

The Long Island class Escort carriers from World War II were less then half the length of a Nebulon-B but carried 16 fighter or fighter bomber craft in an internal hanger with more then twice that being stored in the flight decks..

While that is true, at the same time those ships were completely given over to being Carriers.

Presumably, a Nebulon-B wouldn't be in the same boat and would only have a small bay with enough for a couple fighters/freighters.

Looks like enough for 25 (including the maintenance rack) TIE fighters to me... Will be a bit trickier to cram in 12 X-wings, but it's doable, especially if you can reconfigure the racks to accept them. and this deckplan includes a couple small shuttle/transport bays to boot.

Landing a Lamda shuttle might be tough because it's so tall, but Delta-class transports and Gamma-class shuttles should doable. Maybe even Gamma class transports if you rescale them to be their depicted size instead of the ludicrous size listed in the tech library.

And comparing the Falcon to the Frigate will give us an idea of how much space could be given over to Hangers.

And has already been stated, you can't. The medbay window insert, the full frigate, the falcon, and the docking spare were all made to different scales, so you can't really use them for anything other then their original intended purpose, to act as a visual cue for the audience to know where each character was. Use the models as reference and the Neb-b is smaller than a CR90.

I don't doubt you can fit a bunch of TIEs into a Nebulon. I doubt you can do it without sacrificing a significant amount of the Nebulon's normal offensive firepower.

Not only do they need space for the ships, but also spare parts, fuel, extra pilot/maintenance crew quarters, bulky maintenance equipment, etc...

TIEs are a little more compact than X-wings and Y-wings for sure.

From your Diagram, that hanger is realistically looking at needing at least another 2 decks for part and fuel storage. Not to mention any extra ships.

If you are just talking about a Nebulon thats a dedicated carrier, you could probably have a total of 3 of those Hanger bays before you completely ran out of space. And you'd then only have some minimal ship weaponry.

Most of the people who claim they can't have internal bays overestimate how much space such a bay would take IMO. In history there have been much smaller ships have carried fighters internally, and Star Wars fighters don't require nearly as much space to launch as historical fighters.

The Long Island class Escort carriers from World War II were less then half the length of a Nebulon-B but carried 16 fighter or fighter bomber craft in an internal hanger with more then twice that being stored in the flight decks..

While that is true, at the same time those ships were completely given over to being Carriers.

Presumably, a Nebulon-B wouldn't be in the same boat and would only have a small bay with enough for a couple fighters/freighters.

Looks like enough for 25 (including the maintenance rack) TIE fighters to me... Will be a bit trickier to cram in 12 X-wings, but it's doable, especially if you can reconfigure the racks to accept them. and this deckplan includes a couple small shuttle/transport bays to boot.

Landing a Lamda shuttle might be tough because it's so tall, but Delta-class transports and Gamma-class shuttles should doable. Maybe even Gamma class transports if you rescale them to be their depicted size instead of the ludicrous size listed in the tech library.

And comparing the Falcon to the Frigate will give us an idea of how much space could be given over to Hangers.

And has already been stated, you can't. The medbay window insert, the full frigate, the falcon, and the docking spare were all made to different scales, so you can't really use them for anything other then their original intended purpose, to act as a visual cue for the audience to know where each character was. Use the models as reference and the Neb-b is smaller than a CR90.

I don't doubt you can fit a bunch of TIEs into a Nebulon. I doubt you can do it without sacrificing a significant amount of the Nebulon's normal offensive firepower.

Not only do they need space for the ships, but also spare parts, fuel, extra pilot/maintenance crew quarters, bulky maintenance equipment, etc...

TIEs are a little more compact than X-wings and Y-wings for sure.

From your Diagram, that hanger is realistically looking at needing at least another 2 decks for part and fuel storage. Not to mention any extra ships.

If you are just talking about a Nebulon thats a dedicated carrier, you could probably have a total of 3 of those Hanger bays before you completely ran out of space. And you'd then only have some minimal ship weaponry.

Check "The Far Orbit Project" where that diagram came from. The amount of space you are concerned about is quite available, and while I'm not sure it's readable there, the diagram does say the deck below is open hanger space. There's another small VIP shuttle/launch type hanger a couple decks down (and the diagram does show that one as being at least 2 decks tall) and there's a third bacy in the aft section appropriate for holding a couple of transports like the DX-9.

The 300m scale gives the ship a similar length to a Ford-class supercarrier, but it only carries about 1/4th the number of aircraft. Heck even a real-world Perry-class frigate is less then 150m and carries a pair of seahawk helicopters. Without the need for a flight deck I suspect real world carriers would carry even more aircraft.

Also (if you really wanna get nerdy) if the ship class was commissioned after the adoption of the TIE series of starfighters then the TIE's requirements would be factored into the design (as the Empire would be the primary customer). So there's reduced concern in the design for things like the warhead storage you see when talking about a modern real-world carrier. Even the need for spare parts can be questioned if you start pulling in the fluff about the low maintenance requirements of the TIE series.

Furthermore as an escort ship it's probable that the fighters weren't expected to see the same amount of flight time as you'd see on a proper carrier. So again, fuel reserves and spare parts would be lower then those seen aboard a dedicated carrier, with the assumption being that the frigate could be resupplied between escort missions, or have it's carried craft and the support thereof augmented by a dedicated carrier or attendant supply ship.

Also I'm not sure why you feel aircraft would take away from on board weapons. The weapons carried are actually pretty modest, and unlike shell cannons, laser cannons don't need ammo magazines. Again, a real world carriers weapons are limited by things like the need for a full flight deck, there's just no place to put more then a couple missile launchers and point defense cannons. Star Wars doesn't have that problem since it's fighters don't need a silly runway...

I guess I feel that it's alright if Star Wars has whole classes of capital-scale ships that don't carry starfighters.

These vessels have a different role in the fleet.

As you said, Ghostofman, there are many types of vessels in the US Navy that don't carry fighter aircraft. Helicopters don't count, as their analogy in Star Wars would be like a shuttle of some kind. In my view, this is one of those type craft for the Star Wars universe. In either fleet, the Neb-B is a picket ship of some kind, meant to keep the starfighters and other smallish ships from bothering the big captial ships.

I find it completely reasonable to assume that if you'd like to wholesale re-configure such a vessel (as a light carrier of sorts, or a medical frigate, or a Intelligence gathering outpost) trade-offs would be made with respect to the baseline unit. You add some, and take away some to match. Seems logical to me.

Your reference to the vessel being "300m long" completely misses the fact that the Nebulon-B is almost completely empty space! We're talking about volume, not total linear length of a spindly spar.

Evanger, what exactly are you arguing for ? If you want a Neb-B to lose armament when it plays carrier, then cool. Ghostofman doesn't seem to agree with you, and given we're arguing about the merits of a non-existent star ship in a galaxy that doesn't even exist I'm not sure how you're going to convince anyone about how the Neb-B should or should not be represented in a hobby where most of the practitioners tend to do whatever they want anyway.

Evanger, what exactly are you arguing for ? If you want a Neb-B to lose armament when it plays carrier, then cool. Ghostofman doesn't seem to agree with you, and given we're arguing about the merits of a non-existent star ship in a galaxy that doesn't even exist I'm not sure how you're going to convince anyone about how the Neb-B should or should not be represented in a hobby where most of the practitioners tend to do whatever they want anyway.

Welcome to the internet!

Your reference to the vessel being "300m long" completely misses the fact that the Nebulon-B is almost completely empty space! We're talking about volume, not total linear length of a spindly spar.

No, I considered that. A Ford class is 330ish meters long and is designed to carry 90 aircraft including fighters, transports, helicopters, UAVs, and special mission craft like spyplanes, EW craft and so forth, and it carries them on essentially 2 decks (The flight deck, which runs the full length of the ship, and the hanger that's about half.)

A carrier in Star Wars doesn't need the flight deck (no need for runways). So just roughing it out, you remove the flight deck and can now carry around 45 aircraft. Half that number again to consider the front section of a nebulon-b and you've got 22.5 craft. So it's well in the 24+1 fighter ballpark, and that's on only one 100ish meter hanger deck. I can't say that the Far Orbit deckplan is 100% accurate about it's placement of every support system, but from a rough big picture perspective there's ample room for the fighters, shuttles, and plenty of external hull space for the cannons.

Naval aircraft just don't require that much space at the end of the day, it's actually one of the critical acquisition requirements.

Also just a secondary thought, do carriers even carry that much by way of space parts? I'm sure they carry plenty of common replacement components. It just strikes me that if you're on a combat cruise and a plane comes back too shot up to safely fly to a land base, and too damaged to repair on the ship you'd probably just strip it for useful components, and shove whatever was left over the side. I mean in Empire we see that a Star Destroyer normally dumps it's garbage (including light freighter sized... things) before jumping to hyperspace. So dumping a few TIE hulls is certainly in the cards...

Now, as to the Star Wars doctrinal dependance on fighter craft... yeah that I don't totally get that beyond "fighters are cool."

Laser cannons might not need ammo storage, but they'll still need substantial generator space as well as capacitors.

Unless Star Wars generators are providing truly obscene amounts of power they're going to need a lot of generators.

I guess I feel that it's alright if Star Wars has whole classes of capital-scale ships that don't carry starfighters.

These vessels have a different role in the fleet.

As you said, Ghostofman, there are many types of vessels in the US Navy that don't carry fighter aircraft. Helicopters don't count, as their analogy in Star Wars would be like a shuttle of some kind. In my view, this is one of those type craft for the Star Wars universe. In either fleet, the Neb-B is a picket ship of some kind, meant to keep the starfighters and other smallish ships from bothering the big captial ships.

I find it completely reasonable to assume that if you'd like to wholesale re-configure such a vessel (as a light carrier of sorts, or a medical frigate, or a Intelligence gathering outpost) trade-offs would be made with respect to the baseline unit. You add some, and take away some to match. Seems logical to me.

Your reference to the vessel being "300m long" completely misses the fact that the Nebulon-B is almost completely empty space! We're talking about volume, not total linear length of a spindly spar.

They do have a number of capital warship models which carry few or no fighters. The thing is it really makes a lot of sense IMO for a vessel designed for convoy escort to carry fighters if its viable to do so in the size allowed for the ship. The fighters allow the escort frigate and its fighters to easily be ready to engage hostile craft approaching from multiple directions.

Lets say there's an escort vessel with no fighters. Its guarding a convoy when suddenly a group of pirates or raiders (Lets call them group A) drops out of hyperspace ahead of the convoy. The Escort moves to engage those but while its moving to intercept group A a second group of hostiles, lets call it group B drops out of hyperspace to the rear of the convoy. Now the Escort has to decide does it press the attack against group A and hope it can finish off or drive A away before B does any serious damage to the convoy, or does it turn to engage Group B and run the same risk of group A badly damaging the convoy?

But if the Escort has its own fighter compliment then it can deploy fighters against group B while pressing the attack against group A or send some fighters after group B and keep others to aid against group A and as a reserve against a possible group C.

And yes you could deploy multiple escort ships but as much territory as the Empire has even if you give the Imperial starfleet 30 smaller capital warships for every Star Destroyer it had in Legends that would still be less then one capital ship per system, much less having more then one per system and convoy.

Looking to use a nebulon B in an upcoming session, I am claiming it has two small foward bays (4 fighters each, on each side of the hull) and 16 fighters docked along the spar. Tie bombers, Boarding Ties and Tie Shutttles use the bays where they can be reloaded between missions, while the Intercepters and Tie/ln use the external racks.

Evanger, what exactly are you arguing for ?

Good question. I guess even I don't know any more.

What I can say is this: Star Wars frequently makes my "internal universe consistency alarm" go off.

Travel times through hyperspace, ship designs and functions, weapon art work, and countless other things seem to get under my skin from time to time.

The best (and only) answer I have is to remember the George Lucas quote that I don't really like, but does "explain" all these discrepancies:

"Star Wars isn't about answers."

Exactly, evanger. Star Wars is a fantasy universe, it's not meant to be a specific one-to-one simulation of the real world.

"Goldilocks and the Three Bears" still works as a story because it's fantasy. We all know bears don't eat porridge, but the story can still be told.

There's lots of internal inconsistencies in Star Wars, but it's a fantasy world with its own rules...

There's lots of internal inconsistencies in Star Wars, but it's a fantasy world with its own rules...

...sometimes.

That's the problem.

That was kinda my point.

There are probably bears walking around in the woods that Goldilocks came through to reach the house of the bears who eat porridge and sleep in beds.

Goofy is a dog who walks around, Pluto is a dog who lives in a doghouse. Fantasy worlds just kinda have their own rules that may or may not make sense.

IMO what's more important is the 'feel' of it rather than trying to make literal sense of how every specific thing works.

I think progressions is right on. Many people call Star Wars science fiction, but they're wrong. It's not, it's pure fantasy mythos best retold with sparse language around a rough campsite. There's not a logical internal consistency, because that's not the point. Yeah, it bothers me too sometimes, but I just shrug and have a drink.

I think progressions is right on. Many people call Star Wars science fiction, but they're wrong. It's not, it's pure fantasy mythos best retold with sparse language around a rough campsite. There's not a logical internal consistency, because that's not the point. Yeah, it bothers me too sometimes, but I just shrug and have a drink.

I think you are right.

But I think it is sooooooo close to being internally consistent. Sooooooo tantalizingly close.

If it were completely off base, it would bother me less.