Alright, now that my work shifts from the abyss are over with and I'm not working 22 hours in a span of about 40 hours without sleep, back to getting stuff done!
Also, if you haven't bothered with
the survey here, I highly suggest you do so, it's not too late, and your input helps me structure things to your liking before I put them up here.
Now, before we move forward with the capital ships chaps, I want to get you brief run down of the fleet structure of the Navy as was composed a good long time ago. It really hasn't floated around publicly as much as we'd like (most likely due to the lack of structure on our side of the wiki, and the wiki structure in general). But I hope you can find it quite informative.
- OOC:
- Although the whole of the Vast Imperial Navy can work as an entirely synchronous military unit, it is usually more convenient to break it down into smaller units, upon smaller units, each reporting to the unit directly above it.
First off are the Fleets of the Imperial Navy. There are four primary fleets that are employed by the Imperial Navy, the others represent various forces outside the Navy itself. The first fleet serves as the Defensive Fleet, Second as the Offensive, Third as the Support, and finally the Fourth as Reserves.
The fleets are then broken down into various Task Forces, which are fully autonomous units capable of holding or taking an entire sector with 20 hostile worlds and keeping it in line and prevent the enemy from performing any operations in the sector, as well as hinder any in nearby sectors.
Task forces are then broken into two to ten Battle Groups, which typically patrol various areas or protect/assault a critical strategic location with a sector. They have the more specific role of ensuring the complete absence of hostile craft within the orbital space of controlled worlds, and no chronic enemy ship activity within the entire system. There can be anywhere from two to ten battlegroups in a Task Force, depending on its duties.
Battlegroups are further broken down into four to twelve Detachments, which are typically acknowledged as the smallest truly independent operating unit of the Imperial Navy. Detachments may be used for specific planetary assaults, defense of certain stations, or even as strike forces. The New Republic designates units of similar construction as fleets, not to be confused with the much larger fleets of the Imperial usage.
Detachments then are divided into three to eight Lines of Battle, or simply Lines. The line is the most amorphous level of organization with the Starfleet, divided into seven types: attack, heavy attack, reconnaissance, pursuit, skirmish, troop, and bombard. Attack and heavy attack lines aggressively engaged enemy starships in combat, reconnaissance lines gathered intelligence of the disposition of enemy forces, pursuit lines chased and trapped retreating enemies, and skirmish lines harassed capitol starships and engaged enemy picket lines.
Lines are composed typically of between 6 to 25 starships, with the exception of the Imperial Navy considering an Imperial-class Star Destroyer a line in itself. While an Imperial-class Star Destroyer may have been able to act as an attack line and its complement of starfighters as a skirmish line, the decision to give commanders the option to field a heavy cruiser as a line until itself was more political than tactical. After a naval staff study back in the glorious days of the Empire suggested that a Star Destroyer was the field equivalent of the smallest of Detachments, the Admiralty decided that, as there were more lines than detachments, designating the Star Destroyer as a line unit would get them more Star Destroyers. This thinking prevailed and is still operated to this date.
Following backwards:- Line has 6-25 starships
- Detachment has 3-8 lines, which comes to 18-200 starships
- Battlegroups contain 4-12 detachments, or 12-96 lines, or 72-2,400 starships
- Task Forces contain 2-10 Battlegroups, thus 8-120 detachments, or 24-960 lines, or 144-24,000 starships.
It is highly important to note that the top numbers are simply theory and rarely actually obtained. A taskforce will rarely ever hit 500 ships, as there is no possible way the Vast Empire can fully stock all those lines. Also, Special Forces units or special task groups may very well differ significantly from the above methods.
Now, what we are using for our PCs is a Special Task Force Group designated as Task Force Onith.
Broken down into three battle groups of two lines each, ignoring detachments. The PCs will be placed into the first battlegroup, the other two will generally not be with us unless we call for additional support.
Our focus right now is of course the first battlegroup. Seven ships forming an elite force to perform special operations for the Vast Empire, be it in VE or otherwise space. We will not be assigned to seize star systems and the subjugation of locals, but rather high-priority missions with plenty of writing opportunities outside of just doing patrols and threatening violence to get our way without actually firing shots.
Let's be honest, it's nice and all to be part of a huge task force and take star systems, but that does not give us plenty of unique writing opportunities. And it can get quite messy and repetitive.
With this smaller group, vast arrays of tactical operations and writing outlets arise, letting us do a great many different things. Our versatility will, in short, be our greatest plot line driving... thing.
Now, our flagship. This will be a modified star destroyer, which I am revealing details bit by bit on
this story in the Naval Story Board. Currently she's unnamed, (well technically she
*had* a name, but I'll get to that later). It should be an interesting ship with lots of character in her hull. Expect some more posts on that later today and over the course of the week.
Now, we have six supporting ships with that.
- Modular Task Force Cruiser
- EF76 Nebulon-B Escort Frigate
- Strike-class Medium Cruiser
- Strike-class Medium Cruiser
- TBD
- TBD
If you have any suggestions of what to add for the last two, please shoot them my way. Focus is obviously on the versatility of the battlegroup.
Right now, I see us employing PCs on three of these ships and then branching out later to the currently NPC-operated ones as our member-base grows/promotes. Obviously our flagship is in the PC group. The other two will be determined base on your input. So let me know which you feel are most excellent for your story-writing capabilities.
PCs will fill a wide berth of roles on the ships from Command, to Bridge Officers, to the lowliest crewmen. I'll have another topic up on that as to avoid cluttering way too much information in here.
Now, I may hear some objections to this, stating we're a big navy, etc, etc. I want to establish a few things based on that. It has been established in VE-canon that we only have approximately 35 star destroyers. That is a
small number compared to the hundreds that the Galactic Empire had at its height. As such most taskforces can only lay claim to one star destroyer (few exceptions, such as the defense fleet's taskforce dedicated to the defense of our capitol system).
I know it's going to be hard getting the big royalty navy that was hammered into your heads for a while out, but this gives us a lot richer means of character development and more interesting stories. Just writing plain line battles is a rather dull affair, as after the first one it quickly become repetitive.
If it helps, think of your small battlegroup as something along the lines of the fleet in Battlestar Galactica. Naturally we won't have as many civilians onboard, but think of how the ships had their unique living community, ripe for all sorts of stories to be written.
Now, what I really want from you folks is the last two ships to round out the battlegroup and names for all the ships. Imperial Credit compensation is in place as usual.
However I have an additional reward of a bit more worth than our little VE-currency this time around for whoever can put for the "nickname" the Battlegroup we are going to be using.
This is something similar to how squadrons are named, although all squadrons are known as something similar to the 867th Imperial Star Corps TIE Squadron, they might have a nickname like the "Angels of Death Squadron" (although most go with something less corny).
But yes, whoever provides the name will win a
copy of Empire at War Gold, steam redeemable game*.
* Free Steam account required to redeem, download, and play. Game will be sent by Oops to the winner through the Steam Inventory system. If the winner already owns the game, Oops will work with them to provide a comparable alternative, discussed after winner selection.
Oops is not responsible for any inability to play the game received, he will not upgrade your crappy computer system or provide a high speed internet connection to download it faster. He gave you a free game, be grateful bastard.
Estimated worth of the game is 19.99 United States Dollars plus any applicable taxes.
Contest is void to ewoks, members of the New Republic military, George Lucas, jerkwads, and where prohibited by law.
- OOC:
- As usual, to separate the discussion from contest entries, please use OOC tags to submit your entries. Also, you are prohibited from editing your post in this thread, to prevent potential "cheating" of editing entries. If you forgot the OOC tag, tell me, and I will do the editing for you. If you manage to come up with more, double posting is allowed if an hour has passed.
Please feel more than free to comment or ask questions here, regardless of your Naval status (or lack thereof, army chaps may partake in the contests and such as well). I aim to make sure this is a sound plan, and hope you folks can assist me with fixing any issues that appear.
