1 minute ago, ImpStarDeuces said:

You're right but the way they have the ship oriented compared to the other reveals make it somewhat plausible they screwed that up. Just sayin.

I don't know what you mean. I saw front and back pictures of it. The orientation of the ship is like the carrier I posted about Ace Combat 6.

It is possible there is a mistake and they meant to say width is 60km, but this is Disney releasing product. Do you really think it got checked off without anyone catching that glaring error? Maybe, but I find it unlikely. This isn't FFG editors hahaha

2 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

I don't know what you mean. I saw front and back pictures of it. The orientation of the ship is like the carrier I posted about Ace Combat 6.

It is possible there is a mistake and they meant to say width is 60km, but this is Disney releasing product. Do you really think it got checked off without anyone catching that glaring error? Maybe, but I find it unlikely. This isn't FFG editors hahaha

This is the pic I was talking about. It's a longshot but you never know. A width of 60KM would still probably raise a few eyebrows though.

Two more pictures of the engines

Personally I LIKE the design but hate the size. Even if it was 60km of width instead of length it would be too large for my taste too.

15 minutes ago, Forresto said:

I dont think a lack of resources was the Empire's main problem with buidling large vessels rather the time it wold take to harvest the resources to build the ships so they have to prioritize. Space is absolute friggin massive and even in known space it would take probably millions of years to deplete areas of the galaxy of all resources.

Keep in mind as well the Empire had to maintain control of a MASSIVE TERRITORY. That takes considerable resources. They also had to keep projects hidden from insurgent groups and the main governing body to prevent all out rebellion.The First Order didn't have those same limitations. They have access to untouched mineral wealth in wild space and no prohibotove political ramifications to be concerned with and thirty years of being unchallenged by any other power. Keep in mind also the First Order benefits from all of the Empire's research on all their crazy projects.

Did they also bring a galaxy's worth of mining and refining equipment to use those materials? And people/droids who know how to maintain and run it all? And equipment to fabricate the parts for all their new toys?

It just doesnt add up, to me. I'm sure they'll release a book in 5 years that explains everything in some hand-wavey way, but for now I'm pretty sure they just wanted big cool ships and didn't bother to think of any good reason they exist.

1 minute ago, melminiatures said:

Two more pictures of the engines

Personally I LIKE the design but hate the size. Even if it was 60km of width instead of length it would be too large for my taste too.

Indeed. How can you 3D print something of that and still be in respectable scale to your SSD? That thing would be massive!

2 minutes ago, Blinkus Maximus said:

Did they also bring a galaxy's worth of mining and refining equipment to use those materials? And people/droids who know how to maintain and run it all? And equipment to fabricate the parts for all their new toys?

It just doesnt add up, to me. I'm sure they'll release a book in 5 years that explains everything in some hand-wavey way, but for now I'm pretty sure they just wanted big cool ships and didn't bother to think of any good reason they exist.

I don't know if this will make you more angry or not but the First Order are basically space nazi pirates. They brainwash everyone and take what they want at gunpoint. They basically don't have to pay for anyone/anything.

https://twitter.com/pablohidalgo/status/903624157853655040

Pablo confirms it's 60 km in wingspan. So 3.75ish Executors across.

3 minutes ago, Blinkus Maximus said:

Did they also bring a galaxy's worth of mining and refining equipment to use those materials? And people/droids who know how to maintain and run it all? And equipment to fabricate the parts for all their new toys?

It just doesnt add up, to me. I'm sure they'll release a book in 5 years that explains everything in some hand-wavey way, but for now I'm pretty sure they just wanted big cool ships and didn't bother to think of any good reason they exist.

Highly improved robotic and automated mining?

Star Wars is already laughablly and unrealistically behind techologically for galactic civilization as old as it is. Sure they're building stuff on an impressive scale but across the board their basic equipment and quality of life tech is not much better then what we're capable of today and in some cases far worse. Turbolasers are eyeballed by gunners for instance.

In Star Trek for instance spacefaring civilization at its oldest in the canon timeline is five hundred years old (as opposed to Star Wars which is meant to be several millenia) and yet most of their tech is by that point far beyond what they have in the Star Wars universe.

31 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_measurements

Beam is side to side. Length is front to back. Tis a ship after all.

Pablo confirmed wingtip to wingtip.

10 minutes ago, ImpStarDeuces said:

I don't know if this will make you more angry or not but the First Order are basically space nazi pirates. They brainwash everyone and take what they want at gunpoint. They basically don't have to pay for anyone/anything.

They stole enough to make new armor for everyone, make a new fleet, make a ship the size of 4 SSD's and turn a dwarf-planet into a star-eating laser that destroys entire systems?

When just the Death Star tilted the entire galactic economy with how much it took?

And they did this after/while hiding in wild space?

And the new republic was still surprised by them when they showed up with said new giant toys?

3 hours ago, Undeadguy said:

Am I the only one wondering where they get the resources to build this stuff? The Empire spent years building the Death Star. It began construction at the end of RotS and finished in Rogue One, roughly a 20 year span. Am I to believe the FO did the same thing but to a whole planet? And now they have a 60km ship?

Aren't these guys on the fringes or something? They don't have an entire galaxy to draw raw materials and slave labor from.

Of course somebody has thought about it, and of course they wrote a finance paper on it, enjoy:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1511.09054

I wasn't going to get involved, but where does this kind of hate come from. I mean, I know Star Wars fans are the most passionate fandom on Earth, but for goodness sake.

"Overwhelming disappointment"?

I think that's an opinion that lacks perspective. Especially since the sequels thus far are just the "sequel"... as in singular....

I've heard TFA be compared to ANH as if it was literally the same movie. I've listened to the EU fans complain to no end about how this or that arc would have been better. (As a Thrawn fan and long time reader of the EU, I get it).

Disney acquired Star Wars and everyone assumes they just saw dollar signs and went stupid, and I think that's some of the dumbest BS I've ever heard. You don't spend billions on a franchise just to milk it dry.... You spend that kind of money to create a future for it.

Disney has a very hard job when it comes to Star Wars, and I don't think many of the spoiled little fanboys from my generation get that.

They have to bridge a 40 year gap in fans. They have to make a product that kids in the late 70s and kids 2017 would both like.... Their job is to make a product that bridges Reaganites and millennials.

Think about that...

Of course they wiped the EU, not only was it clustered and disorganized, there was no way to make the movie canon ever live up to it. More than that, stories from the EU contained subtle themes of that political era, it was a timeline those two groups of people, their target demographic, would never have seen eye to eye on.

Yes, TFA held similar major plot points from ANH, but I think that was less for the nostalgia of the older fans, and more to hook new fans the same way they did back in the 70s. When new fans, who've never seen OT Star Wars before watch the current movies they'll go, "wow, that was amazing, who's this Luke guy? Was Han such a Bad*** in the other movies? let's watch the originals". It won't be nostalgia for them, they get the experience of seeing Star Wars in an order that get's better as they go.

I think TLJ will contain similar plot points as well, but I do not get the impression that they're going for "Bigger and better" just because they made bigger ships.

They have a story to tell.

Let them tell it before you do the stereotypical "angry star wars fan" thing. For Pete's Sake...

You know what it's probably the engine section of an even BIGGER star destroyer. They will interlock Voltron style and form the Galaxy Destroyer ( or sum such nonsense). That is how ep 9 will start. Calling it now, you may curse or deride me, either way that suits you.

15 minutes ago, Noosh said:

You know what it's probably the engine section of an even BIGGER star destroyer. They will interlock Voltron style and form the Galaxy Destroyer ( or sum such nonsense). That is how ep 9 will start. Calling it now, you may curse or deride me, either way that suits you.

Well someone suggested that the divot in the top of the Mandator IV was for a finalizer to fit into. Maybe several Mandators connect to the front of the Mega Destroyer, forming the Ultra Destroyer (TM)

2 minutes ago, GrandAdmiralCrunch said:

Well someone suggested that the divot in the top of the Mandator IV was for a finalized to fit into. Maybe several Mandators connect to the front of the Mega Destroyer, forming the Ultra Destroyer (TM)

New from Hasbro! Get it this Black Friday in the toy department!

19 minutes ago, ianediger said:

Pablo confirmed wingtip to wingtip.

Because that makes so much more sense.... How much its volume may be? About 30 times as much ans an SSD?

I've come to the conclusion the design team accidentally got switched with their 8 years and under focus group. The names sound a lot like what I was making up when I was a kid. The scale of ships keeps getting bigger and bigger for no logical reason. In the Original Trilogy, Star Destroyers were huge and scary. You see a single SSD and it's even scarier. What's the point of this? With that size, everything will look like dots next to it. Next they'll have the Ultra Star Destroyer...

I try not to nitpick and just enjoy movies (though my wife would disagree) but this all feels so weird. I feel like you could easily make a few modifications to old designs and it would still be cool. Heck, my base's F-16s are 30+ years old and are still getting modifications.

In the end, I'm just depressed. When I heard Disney was buying Star Wars, I was excited to see them create some new movies, tidy up all the EU stuff, and overall polish the universe , separating the wheat from the chaff. Instead, we've gotten a focus group-led movie and what is essentially a fan film. This isn't looking any better.

24 minutes ago, ianediger said:

Pablo confirmed wingtip to wingtip.

Well that is great!

That ship looks like a batarang, will we at long last discover that Snoke is Bruce Wayne? Seriously some one loves DC comics over there.

9 minutes ago, Norell said:

Because that makes so much more sense.... How much its volume may be? About 30 times as much ans an SSD?

It's pretty flat.

https://twitter.com/SpacedockHQ

3 SSD lengths x 2 SSD widths x 2 SSD "depths" = 12x volume. Might end up being more than that, but it would surprise me a bit if its volume is 30 SSDs.

41 minutes ago, Forresto said:

Do you think all the countless eclipse Star Destoryers and World Destroyer super weapons of the week we got didn't take as many resources to build as this monster? The EU was ridiculous for resource allocation. If the galaxy can afford to wage near constant war or amped up military production fron the Clone Wars to the post Palleon era then the canon galaxy can afford one Mega Star Destroyer after thirty years of peace.

You miss my point. I'm not complaining about the amount of resources committed to this ship, about whether or not constructing the ship is possible. I'm complaining that it is not reasonable for the Supremacy to exist, let alone in hiding. Prior to the end of the EU, there were nineteen known Star Dreadnoughts of the Executor class, most started before the Battle of Endor, and most finished afterwards (two destroyed before being completed and fitted out). There were two Eclipse class ships, and the number of World Devastators is unclear. However, in a galaxy of trillions of planets, the resources for that are entirely reasonable. The Star Dreadnoughts were commissioned by the Imperial Admiralty as a counter-play to the end of the first Death Star, in an effort to keep themselves from sliding into irrelevance. Not quite by mistake, they built ships of such unprecedented combat power that they dominated galactic affairs, as well they should for their ability to cow entire battle fleets into submission. The First Order is in hiding in the Unknown Regions. Given what Thrawn was able to accomplish with the Empire of the Hand, I really don't have any trouble with the First Order finding resources, I object that a force nominally in hiding is building gigantic warships apparently just because. Could Supremacy be built and be kept a secret from the galaxy at large? Yes. Could it be done reasonably? I don't believe so, and breaking my suspension of disbelief is really g****** hard. (I enjoyed Pacific Rim for God's sake.) As for the galaxy waging continuous war, I think you sorely overestimate the scale of the Galactic Civil War's destruction or follow-on crises, particularly compared to the Clone Wars and the galaxy at large.

Moving away from arguing about the specifics of canon points between the AU and the EU, my larger point is that the AU is violating the norms of the EU, and whether that is for good or for ill, those are the norms I associate with Star Wars, and the greater ferocity with which the new canon ignores the old, the less I'm going to appreciate it. I'm not going to sit here and argue that the EU is without fault, but there is a difference in tone and intent between what I would almost consider two separate franchises sharing a name. Certainly the Expanded Universe had its share of ridiculous superweapons (the Tarkin , the Galaxy Gum, the Sun Crusher), but by and large it used them as tools to advance stories about characters and their interactions with the galaxy at large. With the Darksaber, we got a more detailed investigation of General Madine, Wedge Antilles, and Admiral Ackbar in the years after Endor, dring their campaign to retake the galaxy. When Luke was aboard the Eye of Palpatine , the ship was not the plot, but the vehicle for the plot to engage Luke with Callista, even as Leia searched for the Jedi the Eye was set to destroy. In large part, the EU arose organically, with authors telling stories without serious oversight or direction. This created the retcon issues for which it is justly derided, but it also created a universe that to many readers and viewers felt lived in, and reasonable .

By contrast, the AU is very much a mechanically built franchise optimized for long-term profitability and sustainability. This is not necessarily a bad thing; it created Rogue One, which I still hold to be the finest of the eight Star Wars films (an argument for another thread). My issue is that the new franchise does not appear to be using its expansive creative freedom to any great effect. Snoke's base could be anywhere, anything. Instead we get a Mega -class Star Destroyer. That name sounds like it was picked by the same group that picked the All Terrain Megacaliber 6, which, as someone with a deep understanding of how military affairs actually works and sounds, sounds stupid as ****. They dogwhistle to fans like me, that sustained Star Wars between movies, but can't bother to give us the respect of trusting us and our intelligence. Even at its pulpiest (something some orange juice brands can't even touch), I never felt like the EU insulted my intelligence. I groaned, I grimaced, I muttered "C'mon" more times than I'm willing to count, but I got original stories that didn't rely on rehashing the films and moved on into new parts of the galaxy and explored them and the characters and stories to be found there. I had a fluff, that while often a little ridiculous, tried to take itself seriously, and clearly was not wandering around because it had a profit motive as blatant as the Mouse, but because it thought it was cool. The Supremacy was not built because it was cool or could be used to advance an interesting story in an interesting way, the Supremacy was built because viewers could think it was cool, and there is a world of difference between those two motivations. The fluff isn't being written because the writers care about the universe they are building for their fans, the fluff is being written to sound as cool as possible to as many people as possible, whether or not it makes sense or adheres to the tone or unwritten rules of either the universe or practicality. The fluff is being written to move as many toys as possible, and to hype as many people into those theaters as possible. For better or for worse, whether it's my engineering training, my preexisting knowledge of the Star Wars EU, my insistence that science fiction be reasonable, whatever it is, those marketing efforts (at the end of the day, all we know about the Supremacy isn't for the movie, it's a marketing ploy) aren't appealing to me, they're repulsing me. This is the problem I had with all The Force Awakens, this is the problem I had with the dreadnought revealed a couple weeks ago (or whenever it was), and the Supremacy is doing nothing to dispel the spell of disillusionment the Mouse somehow has managed to cast on me since the staggering cinematic triumph otherwise known as Rogue One.

I know I diverged from the original point of discussion, and I don't mean to be a downer, but I think from now on, barring specific requests for opinions, it will probably serve my blood pressure better to avoid threads like these discussing the AU, not for all of you wonderful folks, but because at the end of the day, it's not what I want, and there's nothing any of us can do about that. Have a good afternoon, I'll be around the rest of the forums as per usual.

3 hours ago, Undeadguy said:

I'd give it 2/3 completion. It started construction after the first was destroyed, so the Empire already had supply lines established. It's much harder getting everything in order to begin mass production.

Was that ever established for sure, in those words?

Because reading the Rogue One prequel 'Catalyst'...the Republic team building DS1 were pretty sure the Separatists were building their own Death Star. It stands to reason, after all - the plans were originally designed by the Separatists. That's one of the ways to get normal people to work on weapons like that, too - if 'the enemy' is building one, too, and the only thing that could stand against it is one of your own...well, then.

Now, of course, 'we' know that Palpatine was behind both sides - and I can't imagine he'd object to having two Death Stars. So...probably both started being built at roughly the same time, by different teams, to slightly different designs (certainly in scale)...when the war ended, Palpatine had work on one of them stopped to finish the other sooner. Once the first ended up destroyed...work on the second resumed?

16 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

I wasn't going to get involved, but where does this kind of hate come from. I mean, I know Star Wars fans are the most passionate fandom on Earth, but for goodness sake.

"Overwhelming disappointment"?

I think that's an opinion that lacks perspective. Especially since the sequels thus far are just the "sequel"... as in singular....

I've heard TFA be compared to ANH as if it was literally the same movie. I've listened to the EU fans complain to no end about how this or that arc would have been better. (As a Thrawn fan and long time reader of the EU, I get it).

Disney acquired Star Wars and everyone assumes they just saw dollar signs and went stupid, and I think that's some of the dumbest BS I've ever heard. You don't spend billions on a franchise just to milk it dry.... You spend that kind of money to create a future for it.

Disney has a very hard job when it comes to Star Wars, and I don't think many of the spoiled little fanboys from my generation get that.

They have to bridge a 40 year gap in fans. They have to make a product that kids in the late 70s and kids 2017 would both like.... Their job is to make a product that bridges Reaganites and millennials.

Think about that...

Of course they wiped the EU, not only was it clustered and disorganized, there was no way to make the movie canon ever live up to it. More than that, stories from the EU contained subtle themes of that political era, it was a timeline those two groups of people, their target demographic, would never have seen eye to eye on.

Yes, TFA held similar major plot points from ANH, but I think that was less for the nostalgia of the older fans, and more to hook new fans the same way they did back in the 70s. When new fans, who've never seen OT Star Wars before watch the current movies they'll go, "wow, that was amazing, who's this Luke guy? Was Han such a Bad*** in the other movies? let's watch the originals". It won't be nostalgia for them, they get the experience of seeing Star Wars in an order that get's better as they go.

I think TLJ will contain similar plot points as well, but I do not get the impression that they're going for "Bigger and better" just because they made bigger ships.

They have a story to tell.

Let them tell it before you do the stereotypical "angry star wars fan" thing. For Pete's Sake...

I get it, I really do. And I am giving the films their chances. To be fair, TFA was better for me after a second amd third watch, because I was at least partly over my disappointment that it was ANH with blackjack and hookers. Unfortunately, a bigger part was that I had read the Aftermath series that explained what the **** The First Order actually is, what happened to the Empire, and filled in a few other little bits that made it more enjoyable for me.

That being said, it makes me a little sad that to enjoy the movie I had to read prequel books, watch it multiple times, and ignore that it was a rehash of ANH. Yes, I'm glad they at least made some new characters (complaints about Mary Sueness aside) and have a main villain who isnt just a clone of Darth Vader (complaints of emo tantrums aside).

Like I said, TFA has its merits, but for me it was a bit painful for it to be more of "new" star wars than a completely new story, and the extra work I had to put in just to see it in that light.

What I will give Disney props on is the side movies (Rogue One) pulling away from the tales of new Jedi learning the force that has been every movie up to this point and finally allowing us to see other parts of the universe on the big screen.

2 minutes ago, xanderf said:

Was that ever established for sure, in those words?

Because reading the Rogue One prequel 'Catalyst'...the Republic team building DS1 were pretty sure the Separatists were building their own Death Star. It stands to reason, after all - the plans were originally designed by the Separatists. That's one of the ways to get normal people to work on weapons like that, too - if 'the enemy' is building one, too, and the only thing that could stand against it is one of your own...well, then.

Now, of course, 'we' know that Palpatine was behind both sides - and I can't imagine he'd object to having two Death Stars. So...probably both started being built at roughly the same time, by different teams, to slightly different designs (certainly in scale)...when the war ended, Palpatine had work on one of them stopped to finish the other sooner. Once the first ended up destroyed...work on the second resumed?

Wookiepedia Legends say DS2 got the approval right as the DS1 was destroyed. So whatever the time lapse is between ANH and RotJ is the time it took to make the DS2 in it's current state.

To be honest as long as it doesent get destroyed in episode 8, i think it looks fine really. It should probably be in a fight of episode 8, but just crush them by shear size. Then ill be all for it. Give them an extra movie to rethink their strat since this kind of ship wont die head on. **** unless its build like stupid again, they could even blow half of it and it would still be able to put up a fight. Its how it should play out instead of instant one explosion death like death stars and starkiller base. Honestly we need ships that dont instantly vanish off the fight, even in the more recent books, star destroyers dont instantly combust, we need more of that **** in the movies.