I've been messing around with the Old Republic ships and looking at the Centurion-class it only has 6 medium turbolasers and 6 point-defense laser cannons. With it being a little longer than a Venator-class Star Destroyer is the ship just bad? I mean, it can carry 96 fighters, 7000 soldiers, and runs for 5 years but is that worth the trade off in your opinion? Is this just a symptom of the Old Republic era technology? This seems like a large ship to have almost no weapons.
Does the Centurion-Class Battlecruiser suck?
Well scale it to FFG standards, remember that ISD's weapons are nerfed to all heck. Do the opposite the Centurion.
Different erra's, different standards of firepower. Also remember that the Venator was designed for war and an ISD was dialed up to 11 due to the empire's motto of rule through fear and crush everything that opposes you.
Generally in my experience for small capital ships you multiply the number of batteries by the number of gunners to get D6 or FFG loadouts. For larger ships you multiply thr number of weapons by the number of gunners then multiply the results by 2 though in the case of the MC80 if memory serves you follow the large ship procedure to get the turbolaser armerment but the small ship procedure for the Ion cannons.
Nobody put that much thought into these ships when they were making them. The weapon load outs are based almost entirely on what was needed in the narrative at the time, or what the writer thought would be impressive, or how many turrets the artist thought would look good. Plus, the actual weapon selection tends to vary from one occurrence to another as most writers/artists don't bother doing much research (because, well, consistency is not that big a deal, Star Wars isn't serious military fiction).
FFG have done a fairly good job of calibrating the ships they've statted to a roughly consistent power level. Rescale the ships to match the power level you expect. It has 6 'medium turbo laser batteries' - that could be 6 quad medium turbo lasers. Everything listed on the page is a battery, so just whack up the linked rating to 3 and add an Accurate on as with quad laser cannons.
6 quad medium TL, 6 quad lasers and 6 quad heavy ion cannons still won't be much of a competition to an ISD, but you can always add enough proton torpedo launchers to make it worthwhile. Consider the assault concussion missile launchers on the Victory Star Destroyer, maybe add assault PT launchers that're stronger.
On 5/27/2019 at 7:33 PM, Rozial said:I've been messing around with the Old Republic ships and looking at the Centurion-class it only has 6 medium turbolasers and 6 point-defense laser cannons. With it being a little longer than a Venator-class Star Destroyer is the ship just bad? I mean, it can carry 96 fighters, 7000 soldiers, and runs for 5 years but is that worth the trade off in your opinion? Is this just a symptom of the Old Republic era technology? This seems like a large ship to have almost no weapons.
Probably a little of everything.
I mean part of the issue here may be a simple problem of Doctrine and the wonky doctrine that militaries in Star Wars tend to have.
Something that carries 96 fighters suggests that naval combat doctrine relies heavily on those fighters, using them to extend the range or capabilities of the carrier. Which... sorta? Sith fighters are just reskinned TIEs, so their capabilities are kinda limited. Though with Maxed out minion groups they can chip away at a much larger foe with reasonable effectiveness. And I'll assume the Sith would also have other more appropriate strike craft like Torpedo Bombers and such. And the Sith do appear to subscribe to the "LAUNCH All the Fighters Ever!" tactic of just outright overwhelming the enemy.
But then looking at other Old Republic Era stuff... eh? I mean the Hammerhead Cruiser is more like a Heavy Corvette or Frigate by OT standards. So assuming the Centurion-class is comparably scaled down vs. OT stuff probably isn't a hugely out of whack idea...
A Centurion is roughly the same as an MC80 but it seems to be you are ignoring a key fact. The Centurion design is almost 4,000 years older then the Imperial Star Destroyer and running the conversion I mentioned it has more guns not fewer. Its main disadvantage is the main guns are weaker and that both the penalties for older ships versus modern ships and bonuses for newer ships facing ancient ships apply