Jedi's Easy Guide To Star Destroyers

It has come to my attention that someone on this forum (Not to name names, but it's Targ) doesn't understand the differences between the various classifications of Star Destroyer. This thread is dedicated to fixing that.

First off, Star Destroyers are some of the most important ships in Star Wars. The term refers to a broad range of large warships rather than to a specific ship, and it's sometimes debatable whether a given ship is really a Star Destroyer or not. For example, Mon Calamari MC-80s fulfill roughly the same role for the Rebellion as Imperial-class Star Destroyers do for the Empire, and are roughly the same size, but are generally not considered Star Destroyers. In-universe, ships are only classified as Star Destroyers if they're between about 1 and 2 kilometers long. More usually, though, any warship larger than maybe a kilometer long could be arguably called a Star Destroyer. Most Star Destroyers also have a similar dagger or arrowhead shape, but this isn't necessarily true of all classes.

Important Star Destroyers:

1. Imperial-class: One of the most common and iconic ships seen in Star Wars. These are fairly heavy units fielded by the Galactic Empire. They're designed mostly as hard-hitting direct combat ships, and carry 72 TIE fighters. They're divided into two types, Imperial I and Imperial II, but the two are similar enough that you don't really need to worry about that. When someone just says 'Star Destroyer', this is what they're talking about. Also often called ImpStars because that's much easier to say. 1.6 kilometers long.

Spoiler:

2. Executor-class: Officially called a Star Dreadnaught, but more commonly called a Super Star Destroyer. These are the single largest warships anywhere in Star Wars unless you count Yuuzhan Vong worldships and maybe a few other weird things, which I generally don't. The only one of these seen in the movies is Darth Vader's personal flagship, the Executor, and only a few others exist in Star Wars canon. When someone says 'Super Star Destroyer', this is what they're talking about. 19 kilometers long.

Spoiler:

3. Venator-class: A Republic Star Destroyer that appears in Revenge of the Sith and extensively in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Also sometimes called Jedi Cruisers. These are smaller than the Imperial-class but carry vastly more starfighters, because the entire length of the ship is a giant hangar. They were also used by the Empire in its early days. 1.137 kilometers long.

Spoiler:

Those are the only ones you really need to know from the movies. There are a lot more in the Expanded Universe, and I'll go into a few of those now.

4. Eclipse-class: Another Super Star Destroyer. Only two of these were ever made, and both served as the Emperor's personal flagship. Notable features include a single superlaser only marginally less powerful than the Death Star's. 17.5 kilometers long.

Spoiler:

5. Victory-class: More or less a smaller version of the Imperial-class. Like ImpStars, these are divided into Victory Is and Victory IIs. 900 meters long.

Spoiler:

6. Pellaeon-class: These were used by the Fel Empire more than a hundred years after the movies. It's not clear exactly how big they are, but they're bigger than ImpStars.

Spoiler:

7. Gladiator-class: These aren't very big and don't appear in very many places. They were used by the Empire. Only 500 meters long, but still counted as a Star Destroyer.

Spoiler:

8. Imperious-class: Like the Pellaeon-class, this was used more than a hundred years after the movies. They were built for Darth Krayt's Empire, but were stolen and used by the Galactic Alliance Remnant.

Spoiler:

9. Nebula-class: These were built by the New Republic and served during the Yuuzhan Vong War. They're only 1040 meters long but have firepower equivalent to some Super Star Destroyers. As a result, they're hideously expensive and only a few were ever made.

Spoiler:

10. Bellator-class: Not important at all, but they're my favorite ships in Star Wars, so I thought I'd mention them. They're Super Star Destroyers, 15 kilometers long. Used by the Empire.

Spoiler:

11. Tector-class: This is really important only as a curiosity. It appears very briefly in the Battle of Endor in Return of the Jedi, and never again anywhere. This is the only picture that really exists of it, other than a line-drawing illustration in the novel version of RotJ. The only information about it is that it's an Imperial ship and that it doesn't have the ventral hangars of an Imperial-class, because that's what you can see from the picture.

Spoiler:

That's nowhere near a complete list, but it should be plenty to get you through most discussions that we might have on here.

Executor, Lusankya, etc, all those sister ships are Super class according to the books.

Comrade Tiel wrote:

Executor, Lusankya, etc, all those sister ships are Super class according to the books.

Quote :

The continued use of Super-class Star Destroyer and Super Star Destroyer for these bigger warships, now as colloquialisms instead of nomenclature that describes the ship type, limits any potential continuity errors.

Nevertheless, they are officially Executor-class Star Dreadnaughts. Super-class is like Star Destroyer-class, in that it was kind of a thing when the EU was young but is no longer. I believe it exists as an in-universe slang term for Super Star Destroyers in general, but it's not the official name of any ship.

Legacy era is stupid.

I don't agree.

I don't agree with your disagreement.

It tries and fails to add edgier elements to the traditional sci fi fantasy Star Wars relies on, resulting in a ridiculously corny plot and all but two dimensional characters.

Oh, and the art design sucks. I'd really like to hunt down the genius that went 'WELL VERTICAL WINGS MEANS MOAR GUNS, RITE? PRACTICABILITY AND AESTHETIC APPEAL IS NOT ISSUE!'

If the Alliance were using FotJ era equipment and the Fel Empire had starfighters that weren't flying spaceballs with fins, it might have been acceptable. As it stands, though, I personally refuse to view it as canon.

Maybe Jacen beat Jaina in that duel and accomplished his goal. Somehow I find that a much more preferable outcome to the garbage you call 'Legacy'.

Whether you like the fin design on some of the ships in Legacy, there's a ton of precedent for that in Star Wars, whether you want real-life old Nebulon-Bs or in-universe old Hammerheads and whatnot. I don't love TIE Predators either, but I think all the TIEs look pretty bad, and they're still doing vastly better than solid, GCW-era TIE Raptors. It doesn't make any sense to me that the GA would be using FotJ era stuff; that crap's ninety bloody years old by the time Legacy roles around. You've got to assume that stuff would have changed in the nearly a century since that was state-of-the-art. If countries today were still using battleships built in the 20s, that would work.

Last_Jedi_Standing wrote:

Whether you like the fin design on some of the ships in Legacy, there's a ton of precedent for that in Star Wars, whether you want real-life old Nebulon-Bs or in-universe old Hammerheads and whatnot. I don't love TIE Predators either, but I think all the TIEs look pretty bad, and they're still doing vastly better than solid, GCW-era TIE Raptors. It doesn't make any sense to me that the GA would be using FotJ era stuff; that crap's ninety bloody years old by the time Legacy roles around. You've got to assume that stuff would have changed in the nearly a century since that was state-of-the-art. If countries today were still using battleships built in the 20s, that would work.

Acclamator...


And I'm honestly not seeing it for 'prow wings' on capital ships - never seen them before in-universe. Even so, they still look stupid. The Crossfire's, well, crossfire, obstructs a substantial portion of a pilot's FOV, and did I mention it looks stupid?

For me, it's like seeing a gradual evolution from the Aurek to the V19 to the Z95 to the ARC-170 to the X-wing all the way up to XJ7, I think, and then WTF is this? Someone glued a bloody cross onto an engine and called in a day. And don't tell me about the TwinTail, while admittedly that looks much better it also makes very little sense.

Income design meeting -

DESIGNER 1 shuffles notes, clears throat: So hey guys, I was thinking we should relocate all propelsion systems aft, extended on miniscule poles for maximum vulnerability.

DESIGNER 2 and TECHNICIAN 1 scratch their beards.

DESIGNER 2: Wouldn't that mean sacrificing any cargo and subsystems space in the area?

TECHNICIAN 1 says, nonchalantly: Well, it can't be any worse than the Predator. Our brand needs a new style or we'll lose all our business to their sexy balls with triangular appendages.

DESIGNER 1 and 2 nod eagerly. DESIGNER 2 says eagerly: We'll make a killing on the materials we save! And those GA kreetles will never know!

TECHNICIAN 1, exhilarated: BRILLIANT! RAISES FOR EVERYONE, MEETING ADJOURNED!

Comrade Tiel wrote:

Acclamator...

Fair enough, I suppose. Remember, though, that an Acclamator's just a transport. Having new transports matters a lot less than having new dedicated warships.

Comrade Tiel wrote:

And I'm honestly not seeing it for 'prow wings' on capital ships - never seen them before in-universe. Even so, they still look stupid. The Crossfire's, well, crossfire, obstructs a substantial portion of a pilot's FOV, and did I mention it looks stupid?

Spoiler:

The Nebulon-B doesn't exactly have wings, but it's the same idea. The Hammerhead looks pretty much exactly like whatever those ships are in the Legacy picture. I'd have to look up their names.

Comrade Tiel wrote:

For me, it's like seeing a gradual evolution from the Aurek to the V19 to the Z95 to the ARC-170 to the X-wing all the way up to XJ7, I think, and then WTF is this? Someone glued a bloody cross onto an engine and called in a day. And don't tell me about the TwinTail, while admittedly that looks much better it also makes very little sense.

I dunno. I'm not really seeing that. Lemme see:

Spoiler:

The two X-wings are obvious, and the Z-95 and ARC-170 are both intentionally designed to be predecessors to the X-wing, although I'm not clear on which is supposed to be first, but neither the V-19 nor the Aurek really looks like the others, and neither was even made by Incom. The Crossfire looks more like an X-wing than either of those, and its Wookieepedia page says that "Although it shares an indirect design lineage with the X-wing, the Crossfire is noticeably different in its configuration". The TwinTail was obviously at least somewhat inspired by the real-life P38, so I dunno. I don't think any of these look worse or are less practical than a standard TIE/ln.

EDITED because my images were all broken.

Ooh, fun. I always love reading some ship lore and then seeing a photo of it.

Also, does the ImpStar seem a little under-gunned? As far as I can tell, they just have those 8 smallish turrets lined up near the command tower and carry a hundred or so bulky, but lightly armed fighters. Am I way off on this, or do those cannons have more pew-pew than they seem to?

Eclipse-class is bad design honestly , the rest are fine .

Can you make a post like this with rebel ships, please?

Well there are in this thread , star destroyers are not only imperial ships.

Laserbilly wrote:

Also, does the ImpStar seem a little under-gunned? As far as I can tell, they just have those 8 smallish turrets lined up near the command tower and carry a hundred or so bulky, but lightly armed fighters. Am I way off on this, or do those cannons have more pew-pew than they seem to?

Armament for an Imperial II-class is listed as:
Octuple barbette turbolaser or Ion cannons ( (These are the ones you see next to the command tower. IIRC usually 6 were turbolasers and 2 were ion cannons, but that was variable)
Heavy turbolaser batteries (50)
Turbolaser batteries (50)
Additional turbolaser batteries (26+)
Heavy ion cannons (20)
Phylon Q7 tractor beam projectors (10)

Most of the weaponry kinda blends into the hull. Some of the bumps you see on the otherwise-flat parts of the ship are turbolaser batteries, and there are a bunch more in the area between the upper and lower halves of the ship. The weaponry isn't the same on ImpStar 1's and 2's, though.

Iv121 wrote:

Eclipse-class is bad design honestly , the rest are fine .

The only problem that I have with the Eclipse is that it's black while all the other Imperial ships are grey. That's always annoyed me.

Julo wrote:

Can you make a post like this with rebel ships, please?

Sure. There aren't nearly as many cool Rebel Alliance/New Republic ships, though. The Expanded Universe gave the Empire dozens of different warship classes, but the Rebellion didn't get that many. Mon Calamari Star Cruisers are pretty much as far as it goes until you get into the New Class program that gives us the Nebula-class and a few others.

Iv121 wrote:

Well there are in this thread , star destroyers are not only imperial ships.

You'll confuse them!  

Unlike Star Destroyers, there is no real general term for a Rebel assault craft but 'scum', if you're an Imperial - they have very few ships of the line and generally make do with what they have. By comparison to the Empire the Alliance fields a fleet of refurbished transports and ancient combat ships, or as Iv pointed out, even stolen Imperial combat vessels, all in the Alliance fleet under the command of Admiral Ackbar. Here are some of the most heavily used/iconic ships, ordered from smallest to largest.

CR90 class Corvette: This iconic gunship is more commonly known as the 'Corellian Corvette', coined thus by virtue of its manufacturer, the Corellian Engineering Corporation. It has no qualms about selling to unsavory characters, and thus these small craft have found their way into all manner of services across the galaxy, from blockade running (from which it derives yet another name, the Blockade Runner), to piracy and even corporate security. The Rebel Alliance uses them primarily for fighter screening on account of their six dual turbolasers with high ROFs, but two or more can prove a threat to smaller makes of Star Destroyer. It is 150 meters long.

Spoiler:

Assassin class Corvette: Noteworthy only due to its nature as a military variant of the CR90. Assassins are far and in between among Alliance forces due to their pricetags, though are much more commonly deployed in Empire task forces. So, if you wish, consider it the CR90's 'evil twin brother' of sorts that happens to be better in almost every way. Only seen in the X-Wing series of fighter sims. It is roughly 140 meters long.

Spoiler:

Marauder class Corvette: Unlike most vessels utilized by the Alliance, the Marauder was designed as a warship. Like most Alliance ships, however, it is absolutely ancient. This is a pre-Clone Wars design, which to put this in perspective means at the time the Empire is using spanking new ships like the Imperial I and II, or final versions of prototypes deployed during the Wars, such as the Victory, the Rebels are essentially using hand-me-downs. It would be like taking a WW2 era destroyer up against a modern day cruiser, so to speak. That aside, the Marauder was a decent combat ship, capable of caring up to 12 starfighters and possessing eight turbolasers, and had a hyperdrive capable of accelerating the ship faster than a Victory II (a star destroyer designed for maximum hyperspace speed, mind you). Some Rebel cells replaced the turbolasers with missile launchers so as to maximize the damage inflicted in hit and run raids. However, this left them very much vulnerable to close-in attacks. It is 200 meters long.

Spoiler:

Unknown Corellian Frigate: In truth, you won't see these anywhere except the comics where artists were applying creative license in lieu of any designs provided by Lucasarts (or lack thereof), but they're cool enough looking that I feel they warrant a mention. It is likely they are merely a larger model of the DP20 'Corellian Gunship', which can be seen in the image. Relative scaling puts them at about ~260 meters.

Spoiler:

Pulsar Fire class Carrier: Moving away from obscure hull classes, the Quasar Fire was quite literally designed as a freight bay with engines attached, but has since been converted by the Alliance into a 'bulk carrier' capable of fielding six squadrons of starfighters. Some are fortunate enough to possess upgraded shield hardware to fit their new combat role, but far more often Quasars release their charges with little more than the paper-thin armor their manufacturers saw fit to equip them with as freighters. They similarly possess no weaponry.

Spoiler:

Nebulon-B Frigate: Another widely recognized Alliance traditional, the Nebulon is actually one of the many Imperial specifications that find themselves being fired upon by their former owners on a daily basis. This frigate was originally designed to carry a modest fighter complement alongside its formidable armanent of 12 turbolasers and 12 ion cannons, and be deployed in areas that necessitated a show of force, but not quite that represented by a hulking Star Destroyer. The class was typically used in border patrol operations until Rebels began to target the far-flung frigates and integrate them into their own navy as centerpieces of their task forces. It is 300 meters long.

Spoiler:

Assault Frigate MK I & II: One of the very few ships in the Alliance fleet that are distinctly 'Rebel'; the Empire does not field any of these, and would sooner send them into the heart of a star than use the things in battle. The ship class called the 'Assault frigate' is actually an extensively modified Dreadnaught class, well, dreadnaught - starships from the days of the Old Republic. So basically even more ancient than the Marauder, and with a high crew requirement to boot. Alliance engineers brainstormed several alterations to bring it down to a manageable size, and in the process stripped down most of the hull to increase speed and efficiency (there is no friction in space, but generally battles occur within gravity wells which subtly tug at all combatants). The end result was the Assault Frigate MKI, which has 2 starfighter squadrons, 15 laser cannons, 20 quad laser cannons, and 15 turbolaser batteries, and is 700 meters long.

Later on as the Rebellion grew in scale and new technologies became available from dissenting engineers in top companies, the MKII was devised, possessing a Mon Calamari shield unit and several other performance increasing addons. The ship itself began to lose all traces of the Dreadnaught frame it had originally been built around, though remained more or less the same size.

Mark I:

Mark II:

MC30c Frigate: Another Rebel Alliance original, though this time actually designed as a warship from scratch by the Mon Calamari and built at various sympathetic shipyards across the galaxy. While it can be assumed one or more may have been captured by the Empire at one point or another, like most Calamari designs of the era it could only be crewed by the amphibious aliens, so the Imperials would have found them useless. In terms of combat ability, the MC30 mounts several turbolaser and laser cannon batteries, as well as multiple torpedo launchers - a rarity on ships of its size following the Clone Wars due to the cost involved in procuring capital-grade torpedoes. However, in practice the ship functions as a 'glass cannon': it has very little armor and can easily be crippled by concentrated fire. The deadly payload it carries does not help matters for the vessel in such a scenario, to say the least, though the MC30 design integrates a shield generator within the center of the frigate - meaning it will only stop regenerating the defensive barriers when the ship itself is destroyed. It is roughly 580 meters long.

Spoiler:

MC80 'Liberty' class Cruiser: Literally the largest ship classification ever deployed by the Rebel Alliance, the Liberty saw its origin in a deep space luxury cruise liner prior to Mon Calamari entering the war on the Rebellion's side. Despite their decidedly rapid conversion into warships, combat effective MC80s possessed extreme firepower, enough to take on the Empire's Imperial class Star Destroyers, and even the Executor when attacking in groups. As such, the 'Mon Calamari cruisers', as they were commonly known, served the Alliance as heavy capital ships and command vessels (such as Home One, the ship directly under Ackbar's command), toting 48 turbolaser batteries and 20 ion cannon banks along their ~1350 meter lengths.

Spoiler:

There are a ton more, but these should give you a good idea.

Oh yea the bubbly things, these are the true abominations of the SW universe

Iv121 wrote:

Oh yea the bubbly things, these are the true abominations of the SW universe

What about this guy?

Comrade Tiel wrote:

<snip>

Tiel mentioned it briefly, bit it's worth emphasizing how frequently the Rebellion and New Republic used Imperial, Republic, and even CIS ships. One of the X-wing novels mentioned that the Alliance had about as many ImpStars as it did Mon Calamari cruisers, and they used loads of Dreadnaughts, Lancers, Victories, etc. Pretty much any warship manufactured within a hundred years or so of the GCW showed up somewhere in the Rebel fleet.

I'm going to raise a doubt as to the X-Wing bit, I really find it kinda unbelievable the Rebellion had upwards of forty Impstars. The cost of maintaining them would be astronomical.

Comrade Tiel wrote:

I'm going to raise a doubt as to the X-Wing bit, I really find it kinda unbelievable the Rebellion had upwards of forty Impstars. The cost of maintaining them would be astronomical.

<sigh>

Now I'm going to have to go through an entire nine-book series trying to find that line. I know I remember it in one of them, and I think it was Solo Command, but I'm not certain. Let me try Wookieepedia for a while first.

I'm not doubting it being in a book, I'm arguing that perhaps it's a continuity error such as the Super class Star Destroyer.

I dunno. It's a question of scale, I guess. The Rebellion of 0 BBY would have had trouble maintaining that kind of fleet, but by the time we get to the Zsinj Campaign they're the New Republic, they control Coruscant, and they're a legitimate power on a galactic level. The cost of maintaining 40 ImpStars (Where'd you get that number, BTW? I'm not doubting it, but I haven't been able to find it anywhere) would surely be small compared to the rest of the fleet. The MC80s in particular were all individual, which led to much annoyance while trying to keep them running because @#$% wasn't always in the same place on each ship, and it wasn't always quite the same part. IMO they'd have a harder time obtaining large numbers of ImpStars in the first place than they would running them once they had them, because even once they'd captured important shipyards like Fondor or Bilbringi they didn't manufacture new ImpStars. All the ones they had they got from capturing/stealing them or from defecting Imperials, and I've got to think that that would be the main limiting factor. It's awfully hard to get away with a mile-long ship that's got nearly 40 thousand people on it. Wookieepedia lists them as having captured at least three at Endor, although I thought the figure was more like six or seven. Regardless, though, they had decades of war and hundreds of battles to capture that many, although I'd guess that more were stolen without much of a fight from shipyards before they were activated.

So, every ImpStar that the Alliance took that's on Wookieepedia's List of Captured Starships:
Binder (actually an Interdictor, but one of the ones built into the hull of an ImpStar as opposed to an Immobilizer 418 cruiser)
Crynyd
Accuser (later Emancipator)
Virulence (later Errant Venture. Yeah, I know, technically not NR, but it certainly fought with them)
Avarice (later Freedom)
Adjudicator (later Liberator)
Tyrant (later Rebel Dream)
Wolf's Claw

OK, eight. About a tenth of all the ships listed as being captured anywhere in Star Wars. By comparison, Wookieepedia lists twenty MC80 Liberties. That's close enough that, given that these numbers of course represent whatever small fraction of the ships they actually had, I think the claim is reasonable.

Last_Jedi_Standing wrote:

I dunno. It's a question of scale, I guess. The Rebellion of 0 BBY would have had trouble maintaining that kind of fleet, but by the time we get to the Zsinj Campaign they're the New Republic, they control Coruscant, and they're a legitimate power on a galactic level. The cost of maintaining 40 ImpStars (Where'd you get that number, BTW? I'm not doubting it, but I haven't been able to find it anywhere) would surely be small compared to the rest of the fleet. The MC80s in particular were all individual, which led to much annoyance while trying to keep them running because @#$% wasn't always in the same place on each ship, and it wasn't always quite the same part. IMO they'd have a harder time obtaining large numbers of ImpStars in the first place than they would running them once they had them, because even once they'd captured important shipyards like Fondor or Bilbringi they didn't manufacture new ImpStars. All the ones they had they got from capturing/stealing them or from defecting Imperials, and I've got to think that that would be the main limiting factor. It's awfully hard to get away with a mile-long ship that's got nearly 40 thousand people on it. Wookieepedia lists them as having captured at least three at Endor, although I thought the figure was more like six or seven. Regardless, though, they had decades of war and hundreds of battles to capture that many, although I'd guess that more were stolen without much of a fight from shipyards before they were activated.

So, every ImpStar that the Alliance took that's on Wookieepedia's List of Captured Starships:
Binder (actually an Interdictor, but one of the ones built into the hull of an ImpStar as opposed to an Immobilizer 418 cruiser)
Crynyd
Accuser (later Emancipator)
Virulence (later Errant Venture. Yeah, I know, technically not NR, but it certainly fought with them)
Avarice (later Freedom)
Adjudicator (later Liberator)
Tyrant (later Rebel Dream)
Wolf's Claw

OK, eight. About a tenth of all the ships listed as being captured anywhere in Star Wars. By comparison, Wookieepedia lists twenty MC80 Liberties. That's close enough that, given that these numbers of course represent whatever small fraction of the ships they actually had, I think the claim is reasonable.

Not talking about NR, which would have had no problem running any number of SDs as they were the domineering galactic power. The number of MC80s is unknown, but The Return of the Jedi novel notes that there are forty of them in Ackbar's command fleet, which should decidedly be a majority of them seeing as Endor was an 'all or nothing' endeavor.

Comrade Tiel wrote:

Not talking about NR, which would have had no problem running any number of SDs as they were the domineering galactic power. The number of MC80s is unknown, but The Return of the Jedi novel notes that there are forty of them in Ackbar's command fleet, which should decidedly be a majority of them seeing as Endor was an 'all or nothing' endeavor.

Err... I'm talking about the NR. I'm pretty sure the novel was Solo Command, which is about the Zsinj Campaign, from 6 to 8 ABY, and solidly the NR.

Last_Jedi_Standing wrote:

One of the X-wing novels mentioned that the Alliance had about as many ImpStars as it did Mon Calamari cruisers.

I don't see anything about the NR there.