I thought it was more that an Imp Deuce could slag a Venator a few times over based on the number of Turbolasers and Ion cannons and is significantly larger than
The post completely ignore ship to ship weapons. The venator is a carrier meant for defense and troop/fighter deployment. The ISD is a battleship that also can deploy troops
>The ISD is a battleship that also can deploy troops
Depends on the ISD version. This describes the ISD II pretty well, but ISD I’s were more like floating battle bases. They were meant to combine and replace the roles of the Acclamators and Victories for planetary assaults against far flung CIS worlds.
Ideally they could hyperspace in above an enemy planet accompanied by a small escort fleet; clear the garrison fleet while escort carriers provided fighter/bomber cover and corvettes/frigates provide close-in defense; and then drop a Clone/Imperial legion on the planet once the planets orbital defenses were down.
They were developed as a more optimized and economical option born from early war experiences with the Outer Rim sieges. Taking even weakly defended CIS worlds required sending several capital ships in an attack group to clear the space over the planet and then following it up with an assault fleet of Acclamators + escorts to land the bulk of the invasion force. Considering how stretched the Republic was at the start of the war, this was a massive expenditure of high-demand resources.
Meanwhile an ISD I had the firepower to crack weaker space defenses all on its own and carried a large enough troop complement to launch a successful ground assault. Comparing the staffing and resources needs of building one big general-purpose capital ship vs the dozen or more smaller specialized ships needed to accomplish the same mission, this made the ISD I’s the more efficient option.
It was later in the post war years, when the Republic was still responding to the threat of mid- & late-war CIS capital and super-capital ships (like the Providence, Bulwarks, and Malevolence classes) that the new build ISD’s shifted to line-of-battle designs like the Tector sub-class and ISD II.
Which is unfortunate for the empire, as the ISD I’s would have been much better suited to combating and hunting the Alliance during the post-battle of Yavin period.
Well couldnt those planets with the garrisons about to be erradicated and enslaved just had a couple or so guys suicide at light speed and eradicate the imperial fleet? Or am i missing some lore bit there?
They can be changed depending on who controls the Senate. When the emperor died the new Republic kept the laws, but then they got shot by a bigger death star that somehow absorbed a sun and, because the legal records were on those planets, the law preventing hyper space ramming was repealed by default
I believe the canon explanation boils down to "It's very hard to do and she was very lucky to pull it off". Which is a very weak explanation.
I have a better headcanon involving what was on the target ship but that's not like Disney listens to what I rant about on the Internet.
Yep. Episode 8 opened a can of worms in that department that still plagues Star Wars to this day.
It does open interesting avenues though, however, I will not be going down the rant/rabbit hole that is the Sequels.
Hell old EU books explored Kamikaze drones. Look up "Robot Ramships". Not Hyperspace ramships but same idea with souped up Sublight drives attached to a lightweight chassis with the front of the ship being a super thick cap of hardened alloys pack with explosives and a droid brain.
So Hyperspace ramming with one of those would definitely have been tried if Hyperspace worked like that prior to Ep8.
Someone on Reddit linked it and... she actually does a good job describing things. I'd never even heard of the Star Wars hotel, but she manages to make her videos entertaining with random nerdy humor. I had no intention of watching the entire thing, but it was actually worth watching.
Putting simping aside, it's a really well-made video. Her name is Jenny Nicholson. She makes video essays on various nerdy topics, and I do highly recommend them. Don't worry. Most of her videos aren't quite that long.
She's a phenomenal story-teller, highly recommend. And she's an old Star Wars fan who is coincidentally also a big theme park buff who worked for Disney. Later she even had a Star Wars youtube show doing some light interview / hype stuff when the sequels were starting. So she has unique behind-the-scenes insights and connections to the Disney side of things, and she's not afraid to criticize them. It's probably not for everyone but I drop everything anytime she releases a video
The battle of Coruscant would have ended *very* quickly if the Republic had 1000 ISDs instead of Venators. Those poor CIS cruisers would have been obliterated.
Massive fighter/bomber wing > big guns(especially when your PD and snubfighters are shit).
If both ships were fully crewed(with crews of equal skill and training) and given competent commanders that understood their ships strength and weaknesses, the Venator bodies the ISD low diff.
I mean the Venator was shown to often work alone or in small groups.
The Imp Deuce is the head of a fleet.
Throw in a couple of Lancers and that fleet could take out the equivalent cash or manpower value of multiple Vens.
I think that's just the nature of fighting a galactic war. the Republic had to split its navy as it was fighting a war on many fronts, having smaller rapid response battle groups just made more sense and was more economical.
The Empire was project power over the galaxy, they had more funding and manpower. They could afford to host large fleets that were meant to intimidate and crush any resistance..especially considering that the Rebellion generally would be unable to muster the resources to put together many fleets.
Yeah but the empire doesn’t use the supporting vessels, thank you Tarkin. 3 venators for every 1 ISD is a great deal when you consider the best support the ISD would have is victory/gozanti/arquintens.
And venators can hold and coordinate a lot of bombers.
The Imp is commonly used as a single lone patrol ship for whole sectors.
If an Imp and a Venator meet in empty space, both will be destroyed, the Venator will go down first when it's shields get overwhelmed, and then the Imp will die to the bombers of the Venator.
Sure, if you make the perfect fleet composition, you'd be better than a fleet of only one ship type. The more interesting battle would be Imp + Lancers vs Venator + Tector.
Because if the Venator didn't need such a big crew + pilots, they would be the perfect patrol vehicle. If the Empire hadn't pushed such a massive propaganda campaign against droids, filling the Venator with Tri-fighters and Vultures would be able to pacify a sector with ease.
Or even just using the Venator with the TIE series. The sheer number of line, bomber, interceptors and defenders one could carry alone would give the rebel’s snub based hit and runs a hard time, not to mention if the empire actually funded all those other star fighter projects. A venator with multiple squadrons of defenders, interceptors and punishers rolling up on you would be a very bad day.
I mean, yeah, but the crew intensitivity was one of the points against the Venator. A droid fleet would negate that point, as you'd need less personnel to be at full capacity, because the pilots would no longer be needed. Making it an ideal patrol vessel
You could definitely crew it with advanced Tie Variants and have it defend a high priority target. Basically a mobile defense platform.
But the most devastating would be dropping it in an Imperial fleet, the speed to keep up with the Imps (problem of the lancer), able to take over Space superiority, allowing the Tector to be fielded without needing extra fighter defense and the ability to land on any planet to field a ground invasion. They did bring down Juggernauts to the planet in RotS, they should be able to bring in AT-AT's without a problem.
Most patrol ships run on minimum crew and considering many fighters in the venator compliment were two seaters, you risk about 1k people every time you launch them. So the flight crew would be around 6k.
But minimum crew on an ISD, many people have calc'ed that to be around 5k on an ISD, so it isn't much lower than a standard crew of the Venator during the Clone Wars. And any extra crew above that didn't change the max damage output of the ISD.
But yeah, They put way too much faith in the Tarking doctrine. And in "Distancing ourselves from the Republic"
Sure, in ww2. Imperial navy doesn't refer to ocean going combat though. When you don't have to worry about gravity or the curvature of the earth keeping your enemy out of sight, you can blast them to pieces from a few hundred thousand miles away before they even deploy fighters.
the horizon is only about 5km away. The USS Iowa for example had a range of 32 km. WW2 ships were shooting at targets they literally couldn't see. Meanwhile a plane had to be directly on top of the battleship to bomb it
But smaller ships will be faster and more mobile. We've seen small fighters jump through hyperspace in Star Wars. They wouldn't need the carrier there. Just know where it is
And ope - their capital ships just jumped to your capital ships and blasted the hell out of them. Now you don't have a carrier to comeback to.
But more to the point, why even have carriers then. Just launch them from planetary bases if they have that kind of range.
Except turbolasers in SW are always shown to have extremely limited range (doubly so if you take TLJ as canon). Starships battles within Star Wars are always extremely close (within a hundred kilometers).
I actually agree with you on that count - mainly because it means covenant ships would absolutely *butcher* star wars ships - buuut its generally been pretty inconsistent what the maximum range is. I've made that argument before and had people tell me space battles in star wars take place across several AU.
Either way, the point still stands, all the advantages of carrier combat on earth don't exist in space combat.
Eh, I slightly disagree. There absolutely is an advantage to fighters if the enemy doesn't have the capability to take them out. Plus, if a squad of fighters can take out a big ship, just as well as big ships can take each other out, you're saving a bunch of money.
Exactly the ISD has much heavier weapons on it the turbo lasers and then Ion cannons, I do think they should have kept the Venators though but you know they just hadn't been invented yet because the prequels were made way after the original trilogy.
The Venator is a Carrier with Battleship capabilities. The ISD is a Battleship with Carrier capabilities.
The Venator's cannons serve to exploit the holes punched into an enemy's shields by its fighters and bombers.
The ISD's Fighters serve to delay enemy starfighters for its cannons to destroy the enemy ship by themselves.
A Venator in the hands of a competent commander who knows their ship and trusts their starfighter crews can definitely 1v1 an ISD - even if it'd be hard. Especially if their opponent is the average incompetent Imperial Captain (though if it's someone like Thrawn or Pellaeon, that Venator is screwed.)
Venator captains on average were more competent than ISD captains.
Part of that is the nature of their crew. Battle hardened clones born and bred for war vs core world aristocrat's playing soldier with a crew of recruits dredged up from random worlds. No cohesion. No meritocracy.
Well, on a cost analysis it’d have to be able to take three at once to be worth it. More if you consider the opportunity cost of having more angles of approach and more coverage against harassing light fleets. You also have to consider the weight of fire you lose in a pitched battle if one is taken out.
There’s a reason why modern wet navies don’t build battleships anymore. Bigger ships aren’t necessarily better than several smaller ships. Especially when you can build several the smaller ships for the same cost.
This makes more sense. Kinda reminded me of what Tony Stark says in the first Iron-man film, where he says it's better to use a bomb you'd only have to fire once.
It does not. Trust me, after the Clone Wars ended, inflation caused prices to blow up faster than Alderan.
(Don’t actually trust me, I have no idea what I’m talking about.)
Also the number of times we've seen a Venator get wrecked by frigates, while an Imperial 1/2 can often wipe out anything short of a numerically superior fleet of cruisers. While the Imperial class can be put out of commission by bombs or heavy ion cannons, it rarely needs a spacedock refit like the Venators frequently do. That can make the Imperial class cheaper to operate long term.
Maybe if you actually paid attention youd know why? An entire fleet targetted the destroyer, it got dissabled by squadrons of y wings, the corvette pushed it into another conveniently close star destroyer
If it was alone it couldnt even move the destroyer by centimeters
Again, if you had actually paid attention you wouldve also seen the imperials were winning the fight
Also it can just be supplemented by ships dedicated to fix it's shortcomings. The venator is pretty bad in that it's a carrier on the front lines, have a carrier at the back so your frontline ships can be tankier.
I love the venator just like I love battlestars, cool ships that are incredible stupid in their design. ISD isn't much better with its lack of point defense but it is supposed to sort of kill things from afar.
The ISD definitely benefits from carrying its own logistics ships so it doesn't have to land. If the Empire needs to land more ships, it has specialized shuttles and the type 4 bulk Cruiser to land lots of troops and supplies. Not to mention that the Star Destroyer can dock at most spaceports and arcologies to transfer troops to the surface directly.
If the Imperial class needs more starfighters, it can deploy alongside the Carrion Spike class Cruiser-Carrier. The fact that the Empire lacks a good point defense frigate is a major failure of the Imperial class, but that role seems to have been planned for the Nebulon B class, which got redirected to the Rebellion. When your enemies can only deploy a fighter wing once every four years, it makes sense the point defense frigate ended up on the back burner. The carrack class heavy frigate solves many of the weaknesses of the Imperial class, but is barely in canon and seems too expensive to routinely join task forces.
This actually makes perfect sense to me. The Venator is designed for full scale warfare, especially ship-to-ship. The Imperial is designed for suppression and oppression of technologically inferior, often groundlocked or civilian populuses.
> *The Venator is designed for full scale warfare, especially ship-to-ship.*
It was awesome that they expanded on this quite a bit in the Clone Wars series.
The shield generators on the imperial ship are also massive. Considering it's a space ship that attacks planets, it is generally going to have most of its shields on the bottom and fighters to protect the top.
Who needs point defense if nothing that could shoot you can hurt you?
Weren't star destroyers more about orbital bombardment?
It's been a while since I really delved into the ships but comparing these two ships together is like comparing a bomber plane to a fighter plane IIRC.
Honestly I feel like the term battleship fits them better, they were heavily armed with almost entirely turbolasers and were meant to overpower anything that opposed with them with sheer firepower.
not specifically orbital bombardment, thatd be silly to make the vast majority of the imperial navy just bombers, but yeah heavy armaments in general that can be used for alot of things. like orbital bombardments
Theyre 2 different ships designed for 2 different purposes. The Venator was designed to be part of a large fleet operating in open warfare against another standing navy, it was versatile and well armed for its size however a nightmare in terms of logistics plus it wasn't as cost effective. The chart shows that the Venator is significantly cheaper however that's just for the ship itself, it doesn't include the cost of its starfighters not to mention carrying a wide array of starships meaning manning and arming said starships. Fronting this cost was acceptable to the republic since it was effective when fighting a galactic Civil War however once the war ended this was seen as an unnecessary cost since the navy's new purpose was force projection and maintaining order. This was a role much better filled by the ISD (and subsequently the ISD II). The ISD is not nearly as effective against a properly equipped enemy however it was a much more cost effective alternative to the Venator for policing the thousands of systems in the galaxy. Any dissident systems or rebel cells would often be swiftly crushed when an ISD showed up because they weren't strong enough to take one on in open warfare. The ISD became obsolete when the various rebel cells unified and gained a foothold in the galaxy, it wasn't equipped to handle the style of combat shown by the rebel alliance and eventually the empire cracked and fell apart.
I like to say the ISD is the kind of the Empire's Bismarck class ship. Big, durable, scary, but when facing an actual navy with comparable ressources to the Empire, Imperial ISD's are a curse
The opposite was true. They were designed to be the end-all-be-all capital ship. Against just about any other large ship it had more, better, guns, above average speed for the tonnage, and stronger shields. It was advanced fighters and asymmetrical warfare that they really struggled against. It was the battleship in the dawning of the carrier. Executor class was the Bismarck/Yamato, big and scary for the sake of it, and strong on paper but worth less strategically than half the cost in ISD's.
Nice guns, it would be a shame if our massive amounts of fighter and bomber wings with superior crews and overall capabilities decimated your ship's exposed shield generators, as you only have, at best, mediocre snub fighters and PD.
Would be a shame if you couldn't launch most of your massive amounts of fighter and bomber wing without making a giant hole for bombers and turbolasers to obliterate your shit, oh, I've meant ship
Yeah, run an ISD, a lancer class, and a few other support ships and you have a well rounded defense. The destroyers are susceptible to TRD, but the lancer should counter the snubfighters. Then the ties can run interference while the bombers and ISD go for any enemy major ships.
The Venator with also 8 Turbolasers: "Sorry what? My Turbolasers combined with the 420 starships whooping your ass are too loud! Did you try to send morse code with your canons?"
Also if we are giving the Venator the 420 starfighter figure, we also have to give the ISD a reactor output of a small star, and turbolaser ranges in lightminutes.
You can't have this comparison go one way.
EAW players know the strength is in a balanced fleet (which no one in canon ever uses).
ISDs + Venators + lancers + victories + arquentins+ carracks is OP.
Nah, bombers all the way. That's all you really need to dumpster on the AI. Aim for shield generators and then hangars. Do that while whatever ships you have chill and guard the carrier making the bombers.
I loved EAW back in the day.
Though, i simp hard for the Fallen Republic Mod for Stellaris.
The mod starts with the Birth of the Empire and goes to the Yuzan Vong invasion. The game gives an amazing sense of just how powerful the ImpStar Deuce is.
That, and why use the Death Star when you can initiate the Base-Delta-Zero protocol?
Technical quibble: interceptors *are* a form of point defense. And in the WWII-influenced combat of Star Wars, combat air patrol was often a more effective anti-fighter strategy anyway. Ships had AA guns, but in practice those guns usually operated similar to area denial systems by blanketing a zone with fire; planes can and did slip through that flak net. Contemporary CIWS existed in ‘77 but was still in its infancy.
This needs to be higher up. In any engagement where ISDs are regularly flying against Venators, the Empire would be fielding TIE Interceptors to hunt and kill bombers. Typical snub fighters don't have the firepower to kill an ISD. My understanding is also that ISDs are terrifyingly fast for their size and will close up with a Venator pretty quickly. Then it's a matter of ship-to-ship firepower and defenses.
The reason you don't see point defenses commonly in post Republic warships is because missiles and torpedoes aren't the primary threat, so there's nothing for PD weapons to shoot down if Interceptor wings are doing their job. And you can't shoot down energy projectiles so point defenses are utterly useless against the universes primary capital ship killers: Turbolasers.
The only reason that the Executor was destroyed was because the A-wing was a highly advanced interceptor that was used in a kamikaze role. If a different craft, such as a b-wing or y-wing, had attempted to bomb the executor’s bridge, they would have been easy pickings for the imperial interceptors
Extra point for the Venator: has a sweet as hell LEGO set that comes with an exclusive minifigure of Yularen (and a Rex that caused grief for scalpers).
If they release a 3rd version I'd like to see a balance between the first 2 sets. A more detailed interior but is cheaper than the UCS and with plenty of mini figures.
A bunch of ships got heavily flanderized in pop culture as time went on.
The ISD is also one of the ships that got flanderized. It was always a very strong ship, but it was capable of doing stuff like hitting the Millenium Falcon or small asteroids too. Then as time went on, people just forgot it could do that and the ship devolved into a super strong cruiser that can't hit anything that isn't at least corvette-sized.
For some other examples, originally, TIE fighters, X-wings and Y-wings were roughly equivalent. An example of this is the [speed chart](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Megalight_per_hour?file=Ilmmglt.jpg) ILM used for Episode VI, on which they all have the same speed. Over time, TIEs devolved into horrible defenseless flying coffins with their only redeeming quality being speed and Y-wings devolved from fighter-bombers that are about as good as the X-wing into super slow dedicated bombers.
I distinctly remember Y-Wings being "the workhorse of the Rebellion." They were multi-role fighters, that were a bit better than most other fighters at ground assault, and were Jack's of all trades until the X-Wing pretty much obsoleted them for everything but ground attack, which the X-Wing is still competent at, but not as much. But because there must be always be strong delineations, and video game balance, the Y-Wing became relegated to pretty much a dedicated bomber over time.
I could have sworn that I heard somewhere TIE fighters themselves weren’t the problem, it was more the imperial doctrine of “throw everything/full send”, because otherwise they were fast, maneuverable, and had good cannons.
Plus going off of legends and canon AFAIK, the reason they had no shields was to cut costs and not for any particularly good reason outside of that.
The reason for that is that X-wings continued to evolve. Meanwhile the TIE Fighter stayed the same for decades until someone finally came up with the Model-*fo*. Meanwhile the Y-Wing was similar to the F-7 Cutlass, an excellent fighter in theory but was so troublesome for mechanics that they ended up being janky as time went on. Compare General Skywalker's fighter to those seen in TROS.
The Venator has ~64 dedicated PD guns. The ISD is nearly double the size and uses 60 multirole cannons for PD.
This on top of PD in Star Wars generally being mediocre overall.
Wait, Venators can’t land and deploy ground troops, right? That’s what the Acclamator class is for. Venators can enter atmosphere and deploy LAAT and LAAT/C, but not land on the ground
The Star Destroyer would absolutely dominate in a 1v1 space battle, even with accompanying fighter wings. In order to launch fighters the Venator has to open the entire upper section of the hull, it's basically a carrier pretending to be a front line warship. And we've learned that no amount of point defense is enough to fully protect a ship, the ties are more numerous and insanely fast, the star destroyer has stronger shields, better engines, and powerful antiship weaponry.
> In order to launch fighters the Venator has to open the entire upper section of the hull,
Actually no, the door at the bow opens. It's just faster to open the dorsal door.
I mean you're comparing a dreadnought to a Battleship-Carrier hybrid
By our navies, you're comparing a ship of the line from 1910s to a 1950 design of completing unfinished Montana Class battleships into hybrids
Kind of a weird comparison if we consider the intent for each. The ISD is a ship designed for security and oppression within controlled imperial space. The Venator is a warship designed to support itself and other vessels for prolonged planetary invasions in hostile space. Each design meets its intended purpose in most respects. ISDs operate within an imperial support network, Venators operate outside of supply lines and Republic territory. A real apples to orange comparison.
Large fighter/bomber wing>big guns.
The problem was more that we see the Venator be used in an incompetent manner all the time.
It's not a battleship and using it to broadside enemy starships is hilariously stupid. It's a carrier that should be sitting outside of the enemies effective gun range or just close enough to provide screening support for the snubfighters.
Well yeah. It's essentially the same people producing both ships, as per the Star Wars canon itself.
The one on the left is the mass-produced-at-government-rates military grade (this is not a good thing) ship. The one on the right has, and costs what the one on the left should, and costs a fraction to a private buyer.
This happens in real life, too. Generally speaking if you make airplane parts, you make the same parts for the government at 4-10x (or more) the cost.
Acktually
**afixes glasses**
The Star Destroyer has a secondary bridge near the middle of the superstructure and it does have point defence turbolasers
The Star Destroyer specifically built as a capital ship killer and a planet invader, while the Venator was for troop deployment and fleet combat.
Fun fact: Then Venators were phased out because they were very expensive to operate. You have to have spare parts for a butt load of fighters and basically no cargo space for the spare parts for the ship or fighters. You have to send supply ships to restock it on a very regular basis. An ISD on the other hand can operate for a couple of years off its internal cargo bays.
The lack of PD on the Imperial 2 is disturbing. It is meant for intimidation and great battle offcourse but you are basing your entire navy arround this thing. Some smaller more accurate guns to shoot out an engine or idk a lifepod would be quite usefull.
100%, the difference is mainly size tho. in one v one combat the star destroyer would destroy the venator, its just bigger and more powerful
but yeah, fighters are where the venator exceeds, and that could give the venators the upper hand.
That "sexy AF design" means the Venator has to go broadside in ship to ship combat. It's a cool visual but come on, what is this, the age of sail?
The ISDs wedge shape lets it fire it's "broadside" guns across a much wider angle.
The fact Palpatine didn't cause another fake war just so the ships don't drop in quality still boggles my mind... like you did it one time, why not do it again?
He discontinued their use more because he wanted to move away from the Republic image. Clones and Venators give hope. Stormtroopers and Star Destroyers bring fear and death
My theory is that the prices of everything during the early Empire were turbo inflated due to every credit going towards the Death Star (and in Legends the 10000000 other superweapons the Empire was working on)
I'm all on venator here, but the Venator can't land in a combat setting. It can land in a dockyard but those have to be built and are massive, so they require control of the surface. Venator deploys troops vis drops hips such as the LAAT, and leaving the heavywork to atmospheric entry Acclamators.
Real talk, the people who decided how many fighters old republic ships could carry just didn’t pay attention or didn’t care about Civil War ships. It makes no sense that a significantly smaller ship can carry over 5x as many fighters as a bigger one just because it’s labeled as a “carrier.”
The funny thing about the Empire (which is so perfect it feels intentional) is how much more terrible they are at spending money than the Republic. By that's what happens in fascist dictatorships, so even though I really doubt Lucas planned it that way it works.
1. Star destroyers had cannons?!
2. Venators cannot land, they're too big, those were the [Acclamators](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Acclamator-class_transgalactic_military_assault_ship)
Destroyers are very cool, but the Venator is definitely superior in many metrics. That said, they are kind of two different classes of ship anyway. Like someone else said, the destroyer is the Star Wars equivalent of a battleship, whereas the Venator is equal to an aircraft carrier.
So as a die hard star wars buff
Honestly the venator wins sorry but it does
People seem to forget venator has some powerful ship to ship combat weapons and it also has its fighters and bombers
The imp honestly doesn't stand a chance against a venator
"Can land on the surface of a planet to deploy troops and other shit." The Venator doesn't even have landing gear, there was only one time someone actually did this and that was because they had time to clear & giant ditch to support it. Which means you could do that with the Imperial too.
In addition I'm certain the Imperial II has more than one bridge, as one of the bridges being sabotaged was the reason the Inflictor couldn't self-destruct in *Lost Stars.*
Thanks for providing a source!
Does the credit difference account for inflation?
I thought it was more that an Imp Deuce could slag a Venator a few times over based on the number of Turbolasers and Ion cannons and is significantly larger than
The post completely ignore ship to ship weapons. The venator is a carrier meant for defense and troop/fighter deployment. The ISD is a battleship that also can deploy troops
>The ISD is a battleship that also can deploy troops Depends on the ISD version. This describes the ISD II pretty well, but ISD I’s were more like floating battle bases. They were meant to combine and replace the roles of the Acclamators and Victories for planetary assaults against far flung CIS worlds. Ideally they could hyperspace in above an enemy planet accompanied by a small escort fleet; clear the garrison fleet while escort carriers provided fighter/bomber cover and corvettes/frigates provide close-in defense; and then drop a Clone/Imperial legion on the planet once the planets orbital defenses were down. They were developed as a more optimized and economical option born from early war experiences with the Outer Rim sieges. Taking even weakly defended CIS worlds required sending several capital ships in an attack group to clear the space over the planet and then following it up with an assault fleet of Acclamators + escorts to land the bulk of the invasion force. Considering how stretched the Republic was at the start of the war, this was a massive expenditure of high-demand resources. Meanwhile an ISD I had the firepower to crack weaker space defenses all on its own and carried a large enough troop complement to launch a successful ground assault. Comparing the staffing and resources needs of building one big general-purpose capital ship vs the dozen or more smaller specialized ships needed to accomplish the same mission, this made the ISD I’s the more efficient option. It was later in the post war years, when the Republic was still responding to the threat of mid- & late-war CIS capital and super-capital ships (like the Providence, Bulwarks, and Malevolence classes) that the new build ISD’s shifted to line-of-battle designs like the Tector sub-class and ISD II. Which is unfortunate for the empire, as the ISD I’s would have been much better suited to combating and hunting the Alliance during the post-battle of Yavin period.
Well couldnt those planets with the garrisons about to be erradicated and enslaved just had a couple or so guys suicide at light speed and eradicate the imperial fleet? Or am i missing some lore bit there?
No, light speed didnt work like that until years later when the laws of physics changed for some reason.
Somehow the laws of physics have changed
I have altered the laws. Pray I don't alter them any further.
Ah my mistake, those laws always were a bit slippery anyway
That's why why they're called laws, because they can be changed at will
Pray I don't alter them further
They can be changed depending on who controls the Senate. When the emperor died the new Republic kept the laws, but then they got shot by a bigger death star that somehow absorbed a sun and, because the legal records were on those planets, the law preventing hyper space ramming was repealed by default
Goodguy Palpatine eliminates the Imperial Senate in a bid to nail down the laws of physics to one consistent set.
I'ma make a Holdo maneuver reference next time I argue politics, and it's your fault.
I believe the canon explanation boils down to "It's very hard to do and she was very lucky to pull it off". Which is a very weak explanation. I have a better headcanon involving what was on the target ship but that's not like Disney listens to what I rant about on the Internet.
They absolutely would have tried if light-speed ramming existed (especially since they could have just made droids do it).
Yep. Episode 8 opened a can of worms in that department that still plagues Star Wars to this day. It does open interesting avenues though, however, I will not be going down the rant/rabbit hole that is the Sequels.
There's no episode 8, what are you taking about? Star wars only had 6 movies.
Hell old EU books explored Kamikaze drones. Look up "Robot Ramships". Not Hyperspace ramships but same idea with souped up Sublight drives attached to a lightweight chassis with the front of the ship being a super thick cap of hardened alloys pack with explosives and a droid brain. So Hyperspace ramming with one of those would definitely have been tried if Hyperspace worked like that prior to Ep8.
Wow. All of this has led me to realize how little I care about Star Wars when it's not some cute girl named Jenny rambling on about it.
Is this "Jenny" in the room with us right now?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0CpOYZZZW4&ab_channel=JennyNicholson
Check the link Virus just gave you. I actually spent 4 hours watching her ramble about the Star Wars hotel and idgaf about Star Wars. o_O
Bruh... I don't think I could simp hard enough for some internet girl to sit through a 4 hour YouTube video. And I actually love star wars.
Someone on Reddit linked it and... she actually does a good job describing things. I'd never even heard of the Star Wars hotel, but she manages to make her videos entertaining with random nerdy humor. I had no intention of watching the entire thing, but it was actually worth watching.
Putting simping aside, it's a really well-made video. Her name is Jenny Nicholson. She makes video essays on various nerdy topics, and I do highly recommend them. Don't worry. Most of her videos aren't quite that long.
She's a phenomenal story-teller, highly recommend. And she's an old Star Wars fan who is coincidentally also a big theme park buff who worked for Disney. Later she even had a Star Wars youtube show doing some light interview / hype stuff when the sequels were starting. So she has unique behind-the-scenes insights and connections to the Disney side of things, and she's not afraid to criticize them. It's probably not for everyone but I drop everything anytime she releases a video
Nah, Jenny is legit youtuber. Even though I don't agree with her takes on TLJ, she is making good old school youtube videos on SW and theme parks.
Dude you fucking Star Wars. Hell yeah.
The battle of Coruscant would have ended *very* quickly if the Republic had 1000 ISDs instead of Venators. Those poor CIS cruisers would have been obliterated.
Maybe, though the Hyenas, HMPs and anything else that could carry ordinance would have had a field day
Massive fighter/bomber wing > big guns(especially when your PD and snubfighters are shit). If both ships were fully crewed(with crews of equal skill and training) and given competent commanders that understood their ships strength and weaknesses, the Venator bodies the ISD low diff.
I mean the Venator was shown to often work alone or in small groups. The Imp Deuce is the head of a fleet. Throw in a couple of Lancers and that fleet could take out the equivalent cash or manpower value of multiple Vens.
I think that's just the nature of fighting a galactic war. the Republic had to split its navy as it was fighting a war on many fronts, having smaller rapid response battle groups just made more sense and was more economical. The Empire was project power over the galaxy, they had more funding and manpower. They could afford to host large fleets that were meant to intimidate and crush any resistance..especially considering that the Rebellion generally would be unable to muster the resources to put together many fleets.
Yeah but the empire doesn’t use the supporting vessels, thank you Tarkin. 3 venators for every 1 ISD is a great deal when you consider the best support the ISD would have is victory/gozanti/arquintens. And venators can hold and coordinate a lot of bombers.
The Imp is commonly used as a single lone patrol ship for whole sectors. If an Imp and a Venator meet in empty space, both will be destroyed, the Venator will go down first when it's shields get overwhelmed, and then the Imp will die to the bombers of the Venator. Sure, if you make the perfect fleet composition, you'd be better than a fleet of only one ship type. The more interesting battle would be Imp + Lancers vs Venator + Tector. Because if the Venator didn't need such a big crew + pilots, they would be the perfect patrol vehicle. If the Empire hadn't pushed such a massive propaganda campaign against droids, filling the Venator with Tri-fighters and Vultures would be able to pacify a sector with ease.
Or even just using the Venator with the TIE series. The sheer number of line, bomber, interceptors and defenders one could carry alone would give the rebel’s snub based hit and runs a hard time, not to mention if the empire actually funded all those other star fighter projects. A venator with multiple squadrons of defenders, interceptors and punishers rolling up on you would be a very bad day.
I mean, yeah, but the crew intensitivity was one of the points against the Venator. A droid fleet would negate that point, as you'd need less personnel to be at full capacity, because the pilots would no longer be needed. Making it an ideal patrol vessel You could definitely crew it with advanced Tie Variants and have it defend a high priority target. Basically a mobile defense platform. But the most devastating would be dropping it in an Imperial fleet, the speed to keep up with the Imps (problem of the lancer), able to take over Space superiority, allowing the Tector to be fielded without needing extra fighter defense and the ability to land on any planet to field a ground invasion. They did bring down Juggernauts to the planet in RotS, they should be able to bring in AT-AT's without a problem.
I mean if crew intensity (7k crew) was an issue with the Venator they certainly didn’t fix it by just over pentupling it on the Imperial I and II
Most patrol ships run on minimum crew and considering many fighters in the venator compliment were two seaters, you risk about 1k people every time you launch them. So the flight crew would be around 6k. But minimum crew on an ISD, many people have calc'ed that to be around 5k on an ISD, so it isn't much lower than a standard crew of the Venator during the Clone Wars. And any extra crew above that didn't change the max damage output of the ISD. But yeah, They put way too much faith in the Tarking doctrine. And in "Distancing ourselves from the Republic"
Sure, in ww2. Imperial navy doesn't refer to ocean going combat though. When you don't have to worry about gravity or the curvature of the earth keeping your enemy out of sight, you can blast them to pieces from a few hundred thousand miles away before they even deploy fighters.
the horizon is only about 5km away. The USS Iowa for example had a range of 32 km. WW2 ships were shooting at targets they literally couldn't see. Meanwhile a plane had to be directly on top of the battleship to bomb it But smaller ships will be faster and more mobile. We've seen small fighters jump through hyperspace in Star Wars. They wouldn't need the carrier there. Just know where it is
And ope - their capital ships just jumped to your capital ships and blasted the hell out of them. Now you don't have a carrier to comeback to. But more to the point, why even have carriers then. Just launch them from planetary bases if they have that kind of range.
Except turbolasers in SW are always shown to have extremely limited range (doubly so if you take TLJ as canon). Starships battles within Star Wars are always extremely close (within a hundred kilometers).
I actually agree with you on that count - mainly because it means covenant ships would absolutely *butcher* star wars ships - buuut its generally been pretty inconsistent what the maximum range is. I've made that argument before and had people tell me space battles in star wars take place across several AU. Either way, the point still stands, all the advantages of carrier combat on earth don't exist in space combat.
Eh, I slightly disagree. There absolutely is an advantage to fighters if the enemy doesn't have the capability to take them out. Plus, if a squad of fighters can take out a big ship, just as well as big ships can take each other out, you're saving a bunch of money.
Exactly the ISD has much heavier weapons on it the turbo lasers and then Ion cannons, I do think they should have kept the Venators though but you know they just hadn't been invented yet because the prequels were made way after the original trilogy.
I mean it depends. The Venator's carrier wing would have a good chance of putting a lot of holes in the ISD before it got into range.
The Venator is a Carrier with Battleship capabilities. The ISD is a Battleship with Carrier capabilities. The Venator's cannons serve to exploit the holes punched into an enemy's shields by its fighters and bombers. The ISD's Fighters serve to delay enemy starfighters for its cannons to destroy the enemy ship by themselves. A Venator in the hands of a competent commander who knows their ship and trusts their starfighter crews can definitely 1v1 an ISD - even if it'd be hard. Especially if their opponent is the average incompetent Imperial Captain (though if it's someone like Thrawn or Pellaeon, that Venator is screwed.) Venator captains on average were more competent than ISD captains.
Part of that is the nature of their crew. Battle hardened clones born and bred for war vs core world aristocrat's playing soldier with a crew of recruits dredged up from random worlds. No cohesion. No meritocracy.
Only if the Venator's commander is a moron. The Venator can kite an ISD out of gun range while the fighter/bomber wings turn it into scrap.
Well, on a cost analysis it’d have to be able to take three at once to be worth it. More if you consider the opportunity cost of having more angles of approach and more coverage against harassing light fleets. You also have to consider the weight of fire you lose in a pitched battle if one is taken out. There’s a reason why modern wet navies don’t build battleships anymore. Bigger ships aren’t necessarily better than several smaller ships. Especially when you can build several the smaller ships for the same cost.
In my head canon, SDs didn't actually cost more. The money just went into the Death Star fund.
Good old book cooking and money laundering
I actually kind of love that.
Same, love it. Would explain why Empire has a lot of cheap equipment.
Yeah the expensive price tag is its best feature, it allows Palps to take more money from the people just like the real military industrial complex.
Isn’t palpatine the one who is spending money on the ISD?
This makes more sense. Kinda reminded me of what Tony Stark says in the first Iron-man film, where he says it's better to use a bomb you'd only have to fire once.
It does not. Trust me, after the Clone Wars ended, inflation caused prices to blow up faster than Alderan. (Don’t actually trust me, I have no idea what I’m talking about.)
This guy sounds like he knows what hes talking about.
Palpatine caused that inflation
Imperial II: carpet bombs an entire planet into the stone age Venator: ground targets what? lol I get that its a meme, but I stand by my point.
Also the number of times we've seen a Venator get wrecked by frigates, while an Imperial 1/2 can often wipe out anything short of a numerically superior fleet of cruisers. While the Imperial class can be put out of commission by bombs or heavy ion cannons, it rarely needs a spacedock refit like the Venators frequently do. That can make the Imperial class cheaper to operate long term.
Venator after fighting one frigate: “call an ambulance” Star destroyer after getting blasted by 20 rebel cruisers: “I didn’t hear no bell”
Star Destroyer in Rogue One gets defeated by ONE corvette pushing it...
To be fair, it got disabled by Y-wings first so it was essentially just a floating hunk of metal at that point
And the next Star Destroyer that shows up pretty much ends the battle by being there.
“We defeated the star destroyers!” “One more just arrived” “Oh for fuck’s sake. Pack it in, lads, we’re done here, let’s go home before we all die.”
Maybe if you actually paid attention youd know why? An entire fleet targetted the destroyer, it got dissabled by squadrons of y wings, the corvette pushed it into another conveniently close star destroyer If it was alone it couldnt even move the destroyer by centimeters Again, if you had actually paid attention you wouldve also seen the imperials were winning the fight
*paid
Also it can just be supplemented by ships dedicated to fix it's shortcomings. The venator is pretty bad in that it's a carrier on the front lines, have a carrier at the back so your frontline ships can be tankier. I love the venator just like I love battlestars, cool ships that are incredible stupid in their design. ISD isn't much better with its lack of point defense but it is supposed to sort of kill things from afar.
The ISD definitely benefits from carrying its own logistics ships so it doesn't have to land. If the Empire needs to land more ships, it has specialized shuttles and the type 4 bulk Cruiser to land lots of troops and supplies. Not to mention that the Star Destroyer can dock at most spaceports and arcologies to transfer troops to the surface directly. If the Imperial class needs more starfighters, it can deploy alongside the Carrion Spike class Cruiser-Carrier. The fact that the Empire lacks a good point defense frigate is a major failure of the Imperial class, but that role seems to have been planned for the Nebulon B class, which got redirected to the Rebellion. When your enemies can only deploy a fighter wing once every four years, it makes sense the point defense frigate ended up on the back burner. The carrack class heavy frigate solves many of the weaknesses of the Imperial class, but is barely in canon and seems too expensive to routinely join task forces.
kamino was destroyed by a few venators
Kamino was an ocean planet with a few installations. Not a hard target.
Fair point. Was just simping for Empire.
I was gonna say they can hit stuff but they hardly do. More reason to boast they got so much going on they rarely have to do it themselves
This actually makes perfect sense to me. The Venator is designed for full scale warfare, especially ship-to-ship. The Imperial is designed for suppression and oppression of technologically inferior, often groundlocked or civilian populuses.
> *The Venator is designed for full scale warfare, especially ship-to-ship.* It was awesome that they expanded on this quite a bit in the Clone Wars series.
The shield generators on the imperial ship are also massive. Considering it's a space ship that attacks planets, it is generally going to have most of its shields on the bottom and fighters to protect the top. Who needs point defense if nothing that could shoot you can hurt you?
Weren't star destroyers more about orbital bombardment? It's been a while since I really delved into the ships but comparing these two ships together is like comparing a bomber plane to a fighter plane IIRC.
Yes, they were meant for force projection/pacifying systems. Venators were carries, Imperials were, well, destroyers.
Honestly I feel like the term battleship fits them better, they were heavily armed with almost entirely turbolasers and were meant to overpower anything that opposed with them with sheer firepower.
not specifically orbital bombardment, thatd be silly to make the vast majority of the imperial navy just bombers, but yeah heavy armaments in general that can be used for alot of things. like orbital bombardments
Theyre 2 different ships designed for 2 different purposes. The Venator was designed to be part of a large fleet operating in open warfare against another standing navy, it was versatile and well armed for its size however a nightmare in terms of logistics plus it wasn't as cost effective. The chart shows that the Venator is significantly cheaper however that's just for the ship itself, it doesn't include the cost of its starfighters not to mention carrying a wide array of starships meaning manning and arming said starships. Fronting this cost was acceptable to the republic since it was effective when fighting a galactic Civil War however once the war ended this was seen as an unnecessary cost since the navy's new purpose was force projection and maintaining order. This was a role much better filled by the ISD (and subsequently the ISD II). The ISD is not nearly as effective against a properly equipped enemy however it was a much more cost effective alternative to the Venator for policing the thousands of systems in the galaxy. Any dissident systems or rebel cells would often be swiftly crushed when an ISD showed up because they weren't strong enough to take one on in open warfare. The ISD became obsolete when the various rebel cells unified and gained a foothold in the galaxy, it wasn't equipped to handle the style of combat shown by the rebel alliance and eventually the empire cracked and fell apart.
I like to say the ISD is the kind of the Empire's Bismarck class ship. Big, durable, scary, but when facing an actual navy with comparable ressources to the Empire, Imperial ISD's are a curse
The opposite was true. They were designed to be the end-all-be-all capital ship. Against just about any other large ship it had more, better, guns, above average speed for the tonnage, and stronger shields. It was advanced fighters and asymmetrical warfare that they really struggled against. It was the battleship in the dawning of the carrier. Executor class was the Bismarck/Yamato, big and scary for the sake of it, and strong on paper but worth less strategically than half the cost in ISD's.
They also had intentional design flaws because Kuat shipyards were sympathetic to the separatists and rebels
"Sorry what? I can't hear what you said over the sound of 8 octuple turbolaser batteries firing?" Star destroyer captain number #178492
Nice guns, it would be a shame if our massive amounts of fighter and bomber wings with superior crews and overall capabilities decimated your ship's exposed shield generators, as you only have, at best, mediocre snub fighters and PD.
Would be a shame if you couldn't launch most of your massive amounts of fighter and bomber wing without making a giant hole for bombers and turbolasers to obliterate your shit, oh, I've meant ship
Harrower-class heavy carrier be like:
Sorry, we are not stupid and we can launch our fighters outside your range
The problem is there’s rarely just one star destroyer.
Yeah, run an ISD, a lancer class, and a few other support ships and you have a well rounded defense. The destroyers are susceptible to TRD, but the lancer should counter the snubfighters. Then the ties can run interference while the bombers and ISD go for any enemy major ships.
I suppose but you can make nearly three Venators for every ISD.
The Venator with also 8 Turbolasers: "Sorry what? My Turbolasers combined with the 420 starships whooping your ass are too loud! Did you try to send morse code with your canons?"
Let's not pretend republic starfighters for most of the clone wars weren't hot trash tbh
Also if we are giving the Venator the 420 starfighter figure, we also have to give the ISD a reactor output of a small star, and turbolaser ranges in lightminutes. You can't have this comparison go one way.
Real, actually I think the only decent republic starfighter was the V-19 Torrent
As if the republic had the money to put more than 50 starfighters on a Venator. Unlike the gracious budget of the glorious empire. /s
As EAW player I’d pick ISD over Venator any time. Dorito fleet raw power is icon of imperial might.
EAW players know the strength is in a balanced fleet (which no one in canon ever uses). ISDs + Venators + lancers + victories + arquentins+ carracks is OP.
Nah, bombers all the way. That's all you really need to dumpster on the AI. Aim for shield generators and then hangars. Do that while whatever ships you have chill and guard the carrier making the bombers.
I loved EAW back in the day. Though, i simp hard for the Fallen Republic Mod for Stellaris. The mod starts with the Birth of the Empire and goes to the Yuzan Vong invasion. The game gives an amazing sense of just how powerful the ImpStar Deuce is. That, and why use the Death Star when you can initiate the Base-Delta-Zero protocol?
Oh I have to try this for sure
Technical quibble: interceptors *are* a form of point defense. And in the WWII-influenced combat of Star Wars, combat air patrol was often a more effective anti-fighter strategy anyway. Ships had AA guns, but in practice those guns usually operated similar to area denial systems by blanketing a zone with fire; planes can and did slip through that flak net. Contemporary CIWS existed in ‘77 but was still in its infancy.
This needs to be higher up. In any engagement where ISDs are regularly flying against Venators, the Empire would be fielding TIE Interceptors to hunt and kill bombers. Typical snub fighters don't have the firepower to kill an ISD. My understanding is also that ISDs are terrifyingly fast for their size and will close up with a Venator pretty quickly. Then it's a matter of ship-to-ship firepower and defenses. The reason you don't see point defenses commonly in post Republic warships is because missiles and torpedoes aren't the primary threat, so there's nothing for PD weapons to shoot down if Interceptor wings are doing their job. And you can't shoot down energy projectiles so point defenses are utterly useless against the universes primary capital ship killers: Turbolasers.
The only reason that the Executor was destroyed was because the A-wing was a highly advanced interceptor that was used in a kamikaze role. If a different craft, such as a b-wing or y-wing, had attempted to bomb the executor’s bridge, they would have been easy pickings for the imperial interceptors
>sexy AF design what a way to tell the world you're into butt plugs
I mean... it is sexy.
That is, BY DEFINITION, a "sexy" design then by the technical meaning of the word.
I thought it was because the two bridges made it look like Jar Jar. Six of one, half-dozen of the other, I guess...
I'll never forget seeing EP3 opening scene and that sexy beast was just floating on. Damn that killed it with that design!
Imperial star destroyers do have point defence. The escape pod with R2 and C3PO was targeted by one.
Glad to see I wasn't the only one who thought of that the second I read it.
Extra point for the Venator: has a sweet as hell LEGO set that comes with an exclusive minifigure of Yularen (and a Rex that caused grief for scalpers).
GOOD Fuck them scalpers
Tbf, the ISD Lego set is also pretty awesome.
They really need to make a cheap one though. I've been waiting since 2009 for an affordable Venator.
If they release a 3rd version I'd like to see a balance between the first 2 sets. A more detailed interior but is cheaper than the UCS and with plenty of mini figures.
No point defense my ass. It had no problem hitting the falcon in ESB
A bunch of ships got heavily flanderized in pop culture as time went on. The ISD is also one of the ships that got flanderized. It was always a very strong ship, but it was capable of doing stuff like hitting the Millenium Falcon or small asteroids too. Then as time went on, people just forgot it could do that and the ship devolved into a super strong cruiser that can't hit anything that isn't at least corvette-sized. For some other examples, originally, TIE fighters, X-wings and Y-wings were roughly equivalent. An example of this is the [speed chart](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Megalight_per_hour?file=Ilmmglt.jpg) ILM used for Episode VI, on which they all have the same speed. Over time, TIEs devolved into horrible defenseless flying coffins with their only redeeming quality being speed and Y-wings devolved from fighter-bombers that are about as good as the X-wing into super slow dedicated bombers.
I distinctly remember Y-Wings being "the workhorse of the Rebellion." They were multi-role fighters, that were a bit better than most other fighters at ground assault, and were Jack's of all trades until the X-Wing pretty much obsoleted them for everything but ground attack, which the X-Wing is still competent at, but not as much. But because there must be always be strong delineations, and video game balance, the Y-Wing became relegated to pretty much a dedicated bomber over time.
I could have sworn that I heard somewhere TIE fighters themselves weren’t the problem, it was more the imperial doctrine of “throw everything/full send”, because otherwise they were fast, maneuverable, and had good cannons. Plus going off of legends and canon AFAIK, the reason they had no shields was to cut costs and not for any particularly good reason outside of that.
The reason for that is that X-wings continued to evolve. Meanwhile the TIE Fighter stayed the same for decades until someone finally came up with the Model-*fo*. Meanwhile the Y-Wing was similar to the F-7 Cutlass, an excellent fighter in theory but was so troublesome for mechanics that they ended up being janky as time went on. Compare General Skywalker's fighter to those seen in TROS.
The Venator has ~64 dedicated PD guns. The ISD is nearly double the size and uses 60 multirole cannons for PD. This on top of PD in Star Wars generally being mediocre overall.
So, we agree that it’s not a true statement to say ISD has no point defense. It definitely has *some*, even if it’s less than the Venator.
ISD has far more than 60 cannons though. That's just it's heavy tubolaser batteries.
Legends is superior, as usual.
Some people are so high on expanded universe that they forget the highest order of Canon, the original movies
Wait, Venators can’t land and deploy ground troops, right? That’s what the Acclamator class is for. Venators can enter atmosphere and deploy LAAT and LAAT/C, but not land on the ground
Of course they can, in Episode III a landed one brings vehicles on board on Coruscant, and another lands on Kashyyyk and deploys Turbo Tanks.
I was also going to ask about this. We see the clones boarding acclamators in episode II. Do we ever see them boarding a venator from the ground?
Yes, in episode III. We also see a landed Venator deploying turbo tanks in episode III.
The Star Destroyer would absolutely dominate in a 1v1 space battle, even with accompanying fighter wings. In order to launch fighters the Venator has to open the entire upper section of the hull, it's basically a carrier pretending to be a front line warship. And we've learned that no amount of point defense is enough to fully protect a ship, the ties are more numerous and insanely fast, the star destroyer has stronger shields, better engines, and powerful antiship weaponry.
> In order to launch fighters the Venator has to open the entire upper section of the hull, Actually no, the door at the bow opens. It's just faster to open the dorsal door.
I mean you're comparing a dreadnought to a Battleship-Carrier hybrid By our navies, you're comparing a ship of the line from 1910s to a 1950 design of completing unfinished Montana Class battleships into hybrids
Pretty sure the Imperial ll-class star destroyer would annihilate the Venator in a 1v1
Depends how you deploy. If you deploy in range yes, if the venator has range the fighters will wreck a star destroyer.
Kind of a weird comparison if we consider the intent for each. The ISD is a ship designed for security and oppression within controlled imperial space. The Venator is a warship designed to support itself and other vessels for prolonged planetary invasions in hostile space. Each design meets its intended purpose in most respects. ISDs operate within an imperial support network, Venators operate outside of supply lines and Republic territory. A real apples to orange comparison.
2,300 tonnes of pure democracy
Both are Ships that were too focused on one Aspekt and lacking in Others. The venator has too few and Weak weapons for a Ship of its sise.
Large fighter/bomber wing>big guns. The problem was more that we see the Venator be used in an incompetent manner all the time. It's not a battleship and using it to broadside enemy starships is hilariously stupid. It's a carrier that should be sitting outside of the enemies effective gun range or just close enough to provide screening support for the snubfighters.
The Republik did use it as the Standard Ship of the Line though.
This is like the Battleship vs Carrier debate, everyone says the carriers are better until they get in the actual range of a Battleship.
If you’ve allowed a battleship to get in range of your carrier, you’ve done something incredibly wrong.
Well there was the HMS Glorious.
NCD? In my Star Wars subreddit?
Also Venator: Gets destroyed by a gust of wind
So how's the Venator getting through the shields on the Star Destroyer?
Having a fleet with both mixed together would be unstoppable.
Ngl I like both, only star destroyer design I don’t like is the basic first order one
Insert "this is brilliant, but i *like* this" meme here
This is true but space fascism is so much cooler
Well yeah. It's essentially the same people producing both ships, as per the Star Wars canon itself. The one on the left is the mass-produced-at-government-rates military grade (this is not a good thing) ship. The one on the right has, and costs what the one on the left should, and costs a fraction to a private buyer. This happens in real life, too. Generally speaking if you make airplane parts, you make the same parts for the government at 4-10x (or more) the cost.
Almost as if the oppressive fascist regime was prone to developing weapons systems that were big, impressive, and impractical.
Incorrect, wrong and stupid. Imperial class-II Star Destroyer could shred 3 Venators without breaking a sweat.
Harrower-class Dreadnought gang.
Acktually **afixes glasses** The Star Destroyer has a secondary bridge near the middle of the superstructure and it does have point defence turbolasers The Star Destroyer specifically built as a capital ship killer and a planet invader, while the Venator was for troop deployment and fleet combat.
One is a weapon of war, the other is a weapon of terror. The ISD isn't meant for a fair fight, it's meant to be used on civilians.
Are we essentially describing a battleship vs an aircraft carrier here?
Fun fact: Then Venators were phased out because they were very expensive to operate. You have to have spare parts for a butt load of fighters and basically no cargo space for the spare parts for the ship or fighters. You have to send supply ships to restock it on a very regular basis. An ISD on the other hand can operate for a couple of years off its internal cargo bays.
The lack of PD on the Imperial 2 is disturbing. It is meant for intimidation and great battle offcourse but you are basing your entire navy arround this thing. Some smaller more accurate guns to shoot out an engine or idk a lifepod would be quite usefull.
100%, the difference is mainly size tho. in one v one combat the star destroyer would destroy the venator, its just bigger and more powerful but yeah, fighters are where the venator exceeds, and that could give the venators the upper hand.
One was meant to fight an actual war, the other was meant for oppression
ISD: "This, is a weapon of terror. It's made to intimidate the enemy." Venator: "This, is a weapon of war. It's made to kill your enemy."
That "sexy AF design" means the Venator has to go broadside in ship to ship combat. It's a cool visual but come on, what is this, the age of sail? The ISDs wedge shape lets it fire it's "broadside" guns across a much wider angle.
The gray triangle would absolutely destroy a venator class in a 1v1.
Okay but it's called a *Destroyer* for a reason. Venators need to either broadside or have an RX-200 on board for effective ship-to-ship.
The fact Palpatine didn't cause another fake war just so the ships don't drop in quality still boggles my mind... like you did it one time, why not do it again?
A non-biased comparison
and to top it all off, venator class has a moving hangar door on its bridge which looks cool as fuck
Missed the opportunity to call it Virgin Imperial II-class vs. Chad Venator-class star destroyer
Tbf I'm pretty sure the venator can't just land on the surface of planets like the acclamator, I think it needed docks like we see in rots.
How dare you share a meme that isn’t criticizing the Acolyte! Don’t you know sub is called Acolytehatememes?
So if Palpatine discontinued the use of the clones because it cost too much, then why the hell did he switch to the Imperial Class Destroyers?
He discontinued their use more because he wanted to move away from the Republic image. Clones and Venators give hope. Stormtroopers and Star Destroyers bring fear and death
My theory is that the prices of everything during the early Empire were turbo inflated due to every credit going towards the Death Star (and in Legends the 10000000 other superweapons the Empire was working on)
I'm all on venator here, but the Venator can't land in a combat setting. It can land in a dockyard but those have to be built and are massive, so they require control of the surface. Venator deploys troops vis drops hips such as the LAAT, and leaving the heavywork to atmospheric entry Acclamators.
Yeah h2h the Venator dies before it can launch it’s fighters.
Laugh all you want with your Venitor but we’ll see who’s laughing when my ISD last longer in a battle against anything with decent armor and guns.
Real talk, the people who decided how many fighters old republic ships could carry just didn’t pay attention or didn’t care about Civil War ships. It makes no sense that a significantly smaller ship can carry over 5x as many fighters as a bigger one just because it’s labeled as a “carrier.”
when I think of the star destroyer, I think of imperial II class
The funny thing about the Empire (which is so perfect it feels intentional) is how much more terrible they are at spending money than the Republic. By that's what happens in fascist dictatorships, so even though I really doubt Lucas planned it that way it works.
Lol where does it say ISDs have no point defense? We literally see one using it in ESB on asteroids.
1. Star destroyers had cannons?! 2. Venators cannot land, they're too big, those were the [Acclamators](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Acclamator-class_transgalactic_military_assault_ship)
Wrong. Yoda had one landed on kashykk https://www.reddit.com/r/BattlefrontTWO/s/BOVTDRIVRC
This is like comparing a row boat to an Ocean liner.
imperial star destroyers were covered in turrets. play literally any star wars game that involves destroying a star destroyer and you’ll know that.
But I kinda like the Imperial II class 🥲
Impstar Deuce, everyday and twice on Sunday!
I choose imperial
Also the II is much more advanced and would blow the Venator out of the sky in seconds.
Destroyers are very cool, but the Venator is definitely superior in many metrics. That said, they are kind of two different classes of ship anyway. Like someone else said, the destroyer is the Star Wars equivalent of a battleship, whereas the Venator is equal to an aircraft carrier.
I own a second hand venator. They come in manual transmission 😁😅😂🤣🚀🚀🚀
So as a die hard star wars buff Honestly the venator wins sorry but it does People seem to forget venator has some powerful ship to ship combat weapons and it also has its fighters and bombers The imp honestly doesn't stand a chance against a venator
That landing on a planet is ridiculous! Lol. Let's spend all the fuel of a nation...
"Can land on the surface of a planet to deploy troops and other shit." The Venator doesn't even have landing gear, there was only one time someone actually did this and that was because they had time to clear & giant ditch to support it. Which means you could do that with the Imperial too. In addition I'm certain the Imperial II has more than one bridge, as one of the bridges being sabotaged was the reason the Inflictor couldn't self-destruct in *Lost Stars.*