Can someone explain to me why the HWK, while clearly smaller than most freighters/transports, is Small base?

Surely it's at least as big as say an ARC?

Purely a holdover for 1st ed?

Not that it matters game-wise, the size is what it is, just wondering.

I feel like it's pretty believable at the size of a fighter. It's real estate is just more like an SUV than a two-door sports car.

1 minute ago, Bucknife said:

I feel like it's pretty believable at the size of a fighter. It's real estate is just more like an SUV than a two-door sports car.

Yeah, and I'm ok with that, but why then does stuff like the ARC be medium?

But ok, it doesn't really matter.

I found this. Not sure if it's official or not, but if this is the size of the craft then yes a small base makes sense.

In its first appearance (PC game Dark Forces) the Moldy Crow was shown as small, roughly X-Wing sized but a touch bulkier, and that stayed the same in the sequel games. Aside from one errant figure in an RPG book somewhere there's never been any real variation on that. The ARC is definitely bigger.

5 minutes ago, rawbean said:

In its first appearance (PC game Dark Forces) the Moldy Crow was shown as small, roughly X-Wing sized but a touch bulkier, and that stayed the same in the sequel games. Aside from one errant figure in an RPG book somewhere there's never been any real variation on that. The ARC is definitely bigger.

Dark Forces... I know I played that back in the day. No recollection of the size of the MC however.

I clearly remember Dark Forces, and standing next to the HWK on I think Nar Shadaa. Definitely about the right size and should be a small base going by the in-game model.

1 hour ago, Green Knight said:

I found this. Not sure if it's official or not, but if this is the size of the craft then yes a small base makes sense.

That's not official, no. It's fan made.

It's very well done, and I love that they made it look like the old cross sections books, but I also don't believe it's quite accurate.

It's very close, but I think it's a shade on the small size. The pilot and copilot seats don't take up quite as much cockpit real estate, and there's more of a pronounced separation between the two.

Take a look at this scene from Jedi Knight to see what I mean(you might need to pause, it's not on screen very long). Kyle is much further forward from Jan than that diagram would appear to show. You can see the scale mismatch within the diagram, in fact. Look at the circular protrusion on the top surface. It's (accurately) labelled docking collar, but it's way too small relative to those pilot seats for a person to fit through. The hatch is scaled correctly vs the rest of the ship exterior, which you can see if you locate it on the FFG model. Pause here to see Jan's head in relation to the whole ship . The HWK is not a big ship, but is bigger than an X-Wing. I'd say longer by between a third and a half again. The official stats FFG used are 16m, which is on the lower end of that scale for a 12m X-Wing.

I think that makes the FFG HWK a shade small - 18m feels more accurate to me, but it's still definitely a small base.

Remember that base size is also about how it handles. The Crow is a heavy fighter, but it's still pretty nimble. The ARC got bumped to medium base partly because of its massive wingspan (it is a big model, even compared with the HWK) and partly because it flies more like a Firespray or K-Wing.

57 minutes ago, rawbean said:

In its first appearance (PC game Dark Forces) the Moldy Crow was shown as small, roughly X-Wing sized but a touch bulkier, and that stayed the same in the sequel games. Aside from one errant figure in an RPG book somewhere there's never been any real variation on that. The ARC is definitely bigger.

One errant figure in a sourcebook from a series known for its errors (though admittedly they didn't quite get as much obvious stuff wrong as their predecessor, WEG), but it's dogged the HWK ever since. The number of times this stupid size debate comes up despite the Crow being super consistent in DF and JK is staggering.

That was also the first source to label it a freighter, despite the fact it's way too small to haul cargo and looks and handles like a heavy fighter in all its appearances in Dark Forces and Jedi Knight. But good guy lone wolf Star Wars characters all have to have freighters, apparently, so Kyle and Jan got the Solo treatment.

@GuacCousteau thanks, very useful. Don't think I ever played DFII, just the first one.

OK, so its obvious the HWK is MUCH smaller than say a YT-series ship. It's also definitely NOT the correct scale in the cross section image, way too small in that image. It looks like it has a spacious cockpit for 2 people. So small size fits well enough. Let's call the HWK the larger end of small, and the ARC the smaller end of medium, and I'm a happy camper

1 hour ago, GuacCousteau said:

That was also the first source to label it a freighter, despite the fact it's way too small to haul cargo and looks and handles like a heavy fighter in all its appearances in Dark Forces and Jedi Knight. But good guy lone wolf Star Wars characters all have to have freighters  , apparently, so Kyle and Jan got the Solo treatment.

It is the Star Wars equivalent of a pick-up truck (perhaps "technicalized" one). It can carry some cargo but not a lot of it. Very much a multi-role ship.

1 hour ago, GuacCousteau said:

Take a look at this scene from Jedi Knight to see what I mean(you might need to pause, it's not on screen very long). Kyle is much further forward from Jan than that diagram would appear to show. You can see the scale mismatch within the diagram, in fact. Look at the circular protrusion on the top surface. It's (accurately) labelled docking collar, but it's way too small relative to those pilot seats for a person to fit through. The hatch is scaled correctly vs the rest of the ship exterior, which you can see if you locate it on the FFG model. Pause here to see Jan's head in relation to the whole ship . The HWK is not a big ship, but is bigger than an X-Wing. I'd say longer by between a third and a half again. The official stats FFG used are 16m, which is on the lower end of that scale for a 12m X-Wing. 

It's strange that watching those cut scenes again feels more like Star Wars to me than the current trilogy.

Yeah, HWK is perfectly scaled to it's Dark Forces and Jedi Knight Renditions. Calling it a freighter is also a bit of a stretch. I'd like to think of it more of a performance SUV compared to an X Wing which is more of a sports car.

7 minutes ago, Woorloog said:

It is the Star Wars equivalent of a pick-up truck (perhaps "technicalized" one). It can carry some cargo but not a lot of it. Very much a multi-role ship.

To restate my point another way: says who?

This is what I'm saying. The WotC sourcebook called it a freighter out of basically nowhere and everyone ran with it afterwards. The Millennium Falcon first appears in ANH and within ANH, an Imperial calls it a freighter when describing it to Tarkin - it was clearly meant by the designers to be a freighter. This is not true of the Moldy Crow.

There's nothing about the Crow's original design and appearances in the games that created it to suggest it hauled cargo of any sort. It's a badass ship that's meant to be fast and powerful enough to get Kyle in and out of his missions. There's all sorts of roles a ship that size could had, from heavy fighter to scout ship to data courier but WotC were boring and decided that Star Wars protagonists always fly freighters so Kyle's ship must be a freighter too.

It's been a long, long time since I read the Dark Forces novellas, but I don't remember them calling the Crow a freighter either.

All I'm saying is that if we can acknowledge WotC got the size wrong, why not throw out the rest of their description of the ship too?

And lastly, you know that in the real world a pick up truck and a freighter are two entirely different things anyway, right? Why would you class a ship as a freighter (a dedicated bulk cargo hauling vessel) if it's only got enough space for a small bedroom's worth of furniture?

12 minutes ago, Tyhar7 said:

It's strange that watching those cut scenes again feels more like Star Wars to me than the current trilogy.

I don't want to turn one a thread about one of my favourite ships into a ST complaint thread but... yeah.

I think it's the cheese level. It's just about perfect. It's stylised, but earnest. And it manages to avoid the cringe levels of the PT's cheese.

Plus the Crow's engine and gun sounds are just perfect. There's some great sound design in the ST - lightsabers feel badass, for example - but there's not enough of the sound 'iconography' we got from the OT or even PT - the rolling, unfolding and blaster sounds of the Droideka are instantly recognisable, as is the LAAT/i's throaty engine. I can't think of much from the ST on that level at all.

12 minutes ago, GuacCousteau said:

And lastly, you know that in the real world a pick up truck and a freighter are two entirely different things anyway, right? Why would you class a ship as a freighter (a dedicated bulk cargo hauling vessel) if it's only got enough space for a small bedroom's worth of furniture?

You get entirely too worked up about single ship.

Star Wars ships don't make much sense no matter what, so a small ship that offers space for crew of 2 to 3 (the HWK has way more interior space than a typical fighter, having bunk space for example) that is a fighter while also having cargo capacity fits right in. Far from the silliest thing out there.

The Millenium Falcon is a poor freighter with very limited cargo space (and it being a cargo pusher isn't strictly speaking canonical IIRC), yet it is around, so why not even smaller ones? Consider: The prequels show a freighter converted to passenger ship (don't recall designation, in EP2) that is far larger than the Millenium Falcon, and the Rebel freighters in ESB are also rather large. Why have small ships like the Millenium Falcon? Just as a smuggling ship?

If the YT series has a place, why not something even smaller? Call the HWK a courier (hence "light freighter"). It has enough cargo space for something small that doesn't fit in a snubfighter's cargo hold (typically something like 60kg, basically short term emergency survival kit) but doesn't merit a larger ship. I don't agree with the RPG size for the ship, but the freighter aspect always worked for me. I never saw the ship as a fighter, it maneuvers pretty badly in Jedi Knight's cutscenes (though perhaps Kyle is a bad pilot) but it does look like it has speed. For an agent, it is ideal ship, offering a place to rest and carry equipment while being possibly capable in combat with modifications.

9 minutes ago, Woorloog said:

You get entirely too worked up about single ship.

I'm not getting worked up at all, I'm just saying your analogy doesn't fit with the description.

A pickup truck is not a freighter. If the HWK is a pickup truck, it's not a freighter. Simple.

11 minutes ago, Woorloog said:

Star Wars ships don't make much sense no matter what, so a small ship that offers space for crew of 2 to 3 (the HWK has way more interior space than a typical fighter, having bunk space for example)

Source?

I don't remember anything that says the Crow has bunk space.

If the source is the RPG sourcebook discussed earlier then I'm going to ignore it because they described a ship twice the size of the HWK.

12 minutes ago, Woorloog said:

that is a fighter while also having cargo capacity fits right in. Far from the silliest thing out there.

No I agree, it's not silly at all.

A heavy fighter/scout ship/whatever having some small cargo space makes total sense. Doesn't make it a freighter, though. Even the X-Wing has cargo space, it's where all of Luke's kit on Dagobah comes from.

13 minutes ago, Woorloog said:

The Millenium Falcon is a poor freighter with very limited cargo space (and it being a cargo pusher isn't strictly speaking canonical IIRC), yet it is around, so why not even smaller ones?

Granted, but technically the YT-1300 has always been called a light freighter.

It isn't really an accurate use of the term. The Falcon is a bit small to really be bulk hauling cargo. Although given the mismatch between interior and exterior Falcon sets, it's hard to say how much space the Falcon has in the cargo bay we never see.

The argument 'why not even smaller ones' doesn't hold any water. There has to be a limit somewhere. Otherwise the Jedi Interceptor could be just a really really tiny freighter.

As you've already stated, the YT-1300 is already on the small side of what a freighter would actually be like, so maybe it's fair to call that the absolute bottom limit?

17 minutes ago, Woorloog said:

Call the HWK a courier

Okay. Let's do that. Fits really well, actually. "The HWK is a courier ship."

18 minutes ago, Woorloog said:

(hence  "light freighter   ") 

No. There's no link there. If it's a courier, it's a courier not a freighter. The two words mean different things and describe vehicles with different roles.

20 minutes ago, Woorloog said:

It has enough cargo space for something small that doesn't fit in a snubfighter's cargo hold (typically something like 60kg, basically short term emergency survival kit) but doesn't merit a larger ship.

Again, while this is a possible role for the ship - super lightweight cargo carrier - why default to the assumption that all Star Wars ships carry cargo in the first place? It's boring.

This is all I've been saying all along. There is no indication from the creators of the ship that it carries cargo. WotC just lazily slapped that label on it. While we can quite happily sit here and rationalise that label after the fact by saying what it could do, I'm saying I disagree with its use in the first place. The only information WotC were working on were Dark Forces and Jedi Knight. How they played those games (hint: they probably didn't), saw the Crow and thought "yeah, that's a big cargo carrier" I just don't know. There is no basis for such a conclusion in the games.

It's Star Wars for christ's sake! Just say it was a limited run ship designed to get lone badasses in and out of hostile territory and literally nothing else and it would be perfectly believable. You don't need to couch it in this silly idea that originally it was just a boring cargo ship and only Kyle Katarn was badass enough to think of turning one into a badass ship.

28 minutes ago, Woorloog said:

I never saw the ship as a fighter, it maneuvers pretty badly in Jedi Knight's cutscenes 

Hence 'heavy' fighter. No one claims the Y-Wing or the ARC-170 is a freighter just because they don't maneuver so well.

Also, it absolutely smokes that TIE Bomber and is implied to have been able to deal successfully with a TIE Interceptor and two TIE Fighters.

30 minutes ago, Woorloog said:

though perhaps Kyle is a bad pilot

If you're talking about how he can't even dodge the rock that eventually kills the Crow then bear in mind that

a) the Crow is being bounced around by a shockwave

b) Kyle doesn't have the goggles on and so literally can't see where he's going.

Ah, yes, the time-honored tradition of arguing about which stated size for a Star Wars ship is correct.

In the Kanan comic, and thus canon-ish, it is depicted as a significantly more spacious ship than that technical readout.

15 minutes ago, Jehan Menasis said:

In the Kanan comic, and thus canon-ish, it is depicted as a significantly more spacious ship than that technical readout.

Yeah, there is another shot from the comic showing them walking out of a hatch in the back of the ship, putting the scale of the ship much larger than the Dark Forces version. Since Lucas/Disney hand-waved away with the Legends stuff, the Kanan comic is now the canon version, and the HWK is a larger ship, but too many people love Dark Forces to let that deter them from their Internet discussions.

2 hours ago, CaptainIxidor said:

Ah, yes, the time-honored tradition of arguing about which stated size for a Star Wars ship is correct.

It's a rite of passage.

8 minutes ago, kris40k said:

Yeah, there is another shot from the comic showing them walking out of a hatch in the back of the ship, putting the scale of the ship much larger than the Dark Forces version. Since Lucas/Disney hand-waved away with the Legends stuff, the Kanan comic is now the canon version, and the HWK is a larger ship, but too many people love Dark Forces to let that deter them from their Internet discussions.

It's never referred to specifically as a HWK-290 in the comic.

It could be another variant, like the HWK-1000 FFG added to their RPG.

Also relying on comics for things like scale is a useless endeavour. Pablo has already waved off a bunch of stuff from Clone Wars, Rebels and comics as being artefacts of the medium and not 'true' depictions.

No, I'm not going to let this go. Jedi Knight was my childhood. The Crow was my first EU ship love and yes I have a bit of a complex about it all, why do you ask?

The HWK-290 being properly scaled is WHY I got into this game. FFG ended the debate forever. They got it right.

The debate ONLY exists because the guy who wrote the novelization is an IDIOT.

3 hours ago, Tyhar7 said:

It's strange that watching those cut scenes again feels more like Star Wars to me than the current trilogy.

You should go back and watch Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure!

20 minutes ago, Captain Lackwit said:

The HWK-290 being properly scaled is WHY I got into this game. FFG ended the debate forever. They got it right.

The debate ONLY exists because the guy who wrote the novelization is an IDIOT.

Ah, there you are. I was starting to think I was going to have to tag you.

As for the general “freighter” terminology in Star Wars, don’t assume the word means exactly the same as it does on earth, think of it more as “cargo hauler”. The HWK is a pickup, or maybe even an el Camino, the falcon is a utility van (souped up, with lots of bells and whistles taking up the “cargo space”), the gr-75s are u-hauls, above that you’ve still got 10-wheelers, semis, land trains, and actual ocean going freighters.

2 minutes ago, Forgottenlore said:

As for the general “freighter” terminology in Star Wars, don’t assume the word means exactly the same as it does on earth, think of it more as “cargo hauler”. The HWK is a pickup, or maybe even an el Camino, the falcon is a utility van (souped up, with lots of bells and whistles taking up the “cargo space”), the gr-75s are u-hauls, above that you’ve still got 10-wheelers, semis, land trains, and actual ocean going freighters.

I think Han and Chewie’s space-monster-zoo-ship in episode 7 would probably qualify as the Star Wars equivalent to an ocean-freighter.

As for the size of the HWK, I’ve accepted captain lackwits arguments, but I’ve said it before, the scenes from the original DF game still make it look a lot bigger to me.

Doesn't matter though, video game visuals are THE ABSOLUTE WORST source to judge something’s size, the limitations of the medium require radical distortions, especially of interiors.