#airsupport

[Tiender] That doesn’t seem like enough fighters, not to defend capital ships in three dimensions and provide air support for ground troops? Weirdly, there’s no split between atmo/space craft. The lack of specialisation leaves some big holes in their capability; the difference some ground attack craft would make is huge. LAAT/i’s are nice, but far too general purpose to be heavy hitters, either air-ground or air-air.

Do you have any information on troop carriers versus cruisers? I hadn’t gotten into the Space Navy bits yet except to try and figure out how long an average deployment would last and what their onboard maintenance would have to be like. There’d probably have to be a Space Merchant Marine to keep them supplied. I guess the troop carriers would be more like mobile barracks with a hairdresser, etc, etc.

As a generic rule, I tried to devolve responsibility as far down the chain of command as possible* so I ignored everything in orbit in favour of an embedded air support forward observer. This would also make infantry feel better because the guy calling in the airstrikes has an incentive to get it right, plus if your capital ship needs to make a sudden jump you don’t lose comms. I think you’re right in that the Republic High Command probably *wants* everything to get sorted at as high a level as possible because they’re control freaks who fear clones, but I also think clones are very pragmatic/goals oriented and liable to ignore the rules when the rules make no sense.

*this is a very subjective choice. In my opinion, clones tend to trust each other to make the right decisions, so they’re less hung up on getting an OK from higher command; if you think you need artillery, you’re probably right, let’s dial it in.

[Biscuit] Yeah, 40 pilots per regiment does now seem stupidly small. More anon.

And you’re also very right about the hamstrung capabilities of the larty, dear as it is. Apparently they do very badly in goo: [Essential Warfare] “Light shielding and detachable external drives enable the LAAT to orbit-drop from a spaceship, although sustained friction interaction reduces the effectiveness of this deflector in atmosphere to essentially nil, and the standard LAAT is unable to return to orbit from a surface launch.” (<– I am struggling with how to interpret that? Thoughts?)

The new book says they’re for “low atmospheric flights” and that later models could make short trips through deep space. So it sounds like it can drop from low orbit but the entry burn eats up its entire shielding capacity up to make it a soft target, and the earlier models can’t break atmo under their own power. If you weren’t a shitty commander, you’d probably get your capital ships as low as possible to make them less of a target/limit the time when their deflector is compromised, on insertion, and on exfil you’d have to risk your ship or leave the clones and LAAT/is behind. If they were deployed with something like Super Hornets that would make me much more comfortable.

The book also has two new TIE variants specifically for atmospheric combat, so maybe Anakin noticed the gap and fixed it? IIRC the LAAT/i is based on the Hind, which was originally designed in 1972. Even though the Hind was and is a good airframe, it was also part of a larger helicopter fleet, not to mention the fixed wing jets and cargo planes! They’re great for low-alt battlefield mobility and fire support roles on-planet but not for getting on and off planet and I just can’t let it gooooo sorry.

[Biscuit] Again, your distinction is super interesting because it kind of loops back to what I was saying about rapid planetary insertion being the order of the day? It goes without saying, this is STAR Wars, but the militaries are very space-centric; maybe KUAT really believed most of the fighting would be orbital/interstellar and the intensity of the aerial/dirtside war was underestimated, so they never got around to developing good in-atmo craft. (But if we start getting into the corporate rivalries and profit forecasts that underpinned the Clone Wars, we’ll be here all night!)

But you can’t even do a rapid drop in them! Felix Baumgartner broke the speed of sound jumping by himself and a LAAT/i top speed is apparently only half that. So you’d have to have definitely space superiority before considering landing troops, and if you have space superiority, why not just sling your rubbish down the gravity well and take out a city or two with frozen lumps of extra ration cubes? (because you’re not trying to destroy the cities, I just liked the mental image)

It’s also not what we see on Umbara; there was an ongoing space battle where the 212th was trying to destroy the supply ship after landing a lot of troops. But then again the Umbarans can field ICBMs of over 100megatons and didn’t shoot down anything in orbit, or a capital ship dropping low for deploy, so I’m not sure they can be helped. I bet the Weapons Research Division was all over the planet after it’d been ‘pacified’ though.

Mostly, it’s implausible in a way that ruins my suspension of disbelief, and I can’t find a decent workaround. Even if you assume that in-atmo craft are mostly designed and built at a planetary level, while space craft are mostly built by huge galactic conglomerates, Senators represent planets/systems and have a vested interested in the GAR using their weird kitout, useful or not. 

I do indeed have limited specs for carriers versus cruisers :D This info comes from the old cross-section books – again, better than nothing, but the ratio of technobabble to any meaningful insights into the built environment of these ships is dismal.  

image (According to Essential Warfare, 20 Acclamators carried troops from Kamino to Geonosis and the Senate was so delighted with them, that they promptly ordered 1000 more.)

There’s nary a starfighter in sight in the cross-section of the Acclamator in my book – this is very much a GAR transport with limited orbital bombardment and defence capabilities. Bunks galore and probably some rad gyms, a subsidized bar with the best fried nuna wings this side of Corellia, and that hair salon and dentist :)

Meanwhile, the Venator cruisers (imo I hate using the term ‘Star Destroyer’ in the TCW-era) are very much Republic Navy battleships where starfighters and shit-kicking turbolasers are given pride of place and the pilots and “passengers” are stuffed into ducts and corners like so much dirtside detritus, lol.

… so my favorite trope of “Antics Aboard the Resolute” is really incorrect :P

Honestly when you think of thousands of semi-bored clones (ie, we’re not being shot at right now) in close quarters antics are going to escalate into shenanigans and beyond very quickly. Sort of like toddlers: if you don’t keep them occupied you deserve what you get. This is not meant to infantilise them at all, it’s just a thing that happens.

How long is it going to take to get 1k capital ships commissioned, FFS? Somewhere, some weakly Force-sensitive logistics manager in Kuat woke up in a cold sweat from a string of nightmares.

UNLESS:  If we assume that a crew of 7,400 for a cruiser is the ideal, but that it can operate with a skeleton crew of far less, then you actually could just squeeze a regiment (including its support personnel) into a cruiser, and maybe have your support folks and grunts do-double duty manning non-essential posts on the ship.

Cross-training would limit the amount of time they have to cause trouble, while upping the skill with which they could cause it. A lot of time is probably just spent doing PT to keep them in the physical condition they’ll need to fight. Hopefully that’ll also tire them out.

They might also partially crew with droids to lower the oxygen demands on the ship’s atmosphere/automate a lot of the processes.

Again still haven’t done the math on whether that theory aligns with the complement of a cruiser (and I’d have to make some of those ~2300 troopers per regiment be pilots), but until this happy thought is undermined by numbers, I’m going to assume that a cruiser could function as ‘home base’ for a general’s chosen regiment, but that cruisers are generally not how troopers are ferried about the galaxy.

The 501st apparently has barracks on Coruscant, the jammy bastards. Probably courtesy of the Chancellor, so everyone else maybe has barracks scattered around places where their Senator didn’t have the pull to put it somewhere else. Half-habitable moons/biomes are probably favorites. Away from the normal people, anyway.

And Space Merchant Marine XD  That or the Republic just commandeers everything. Maybe both!

They probably do as much as they can, and tell themselves it serves the Seppies right.

Can definitely get behind clones demanding planetside HQs for combined-arms ops; Rex calls in an airstrike from the field at the beginning of Umbara and Anakin says something like “let’s hope they’re not too busy helping Obi-Wan” (who is also on the ground). It’s hard to say if Rex contacted an orbiting cruiser or a forward dirtside command post for those Y-wings. There have to be other examples of units stranded on planets in TCW with no orbital support … it’d be interesting if any fighters make appearances in those instances.

Rex also calls in an airstrike in Landing at Point Rain, and Yularen tells him to fuck off because they’re busy defending the ship (I think this is the bit where I started yelling at the screen because i) Rex and ii) how can you expect a ground invasion to work against a winged species without dedicated air support, wtaf). Yularen also OK’s an airstrike later after a Jedi asks for it, but it could be him being a dick because a clone is asking, or concern for the flagship. Or both. In any case, the dichotomy should never have arisen if they’d done any adequate contingency planning.

But I 100% agree with you on the idea that there would be some serious mistrust between clones and non-clone top brass (Jedi excluded – general clone respect for the Jedi is a hill I’m camped on) about who calls the shots. Reluctance to escalate things beyond CCs if they can help it, &c. Just, clones looking out for each other man … *wipes tear*

Of course they respect the Jedi; they’re trained to and it’s literally unthinkable for them not to. Whether or not the individual Jedi deserve that respect is something else again, Ki-Adi-Mundi and your war crimes, I’m looking at you. Not you, Luminara Unduli, you’re OK.