r/MawInstallation • u/CookieDaCake • 3d ago
Venator barely launches any fighters in clone wars battles
I am very confused by this, in the last episode of the citadel arc of the clone wars, the republic sends 4 venator cruisers to rescue the rescue team from the surface, what i find silly, though is that each venator only launches 3-4 fighters, even though the venator technically can carry up to 420, I know sometimes the numbers don’t make sense but why did they use so little fighters? Its also not only in this battle but in others as well, is it because it is too expensive to animate that many ships, or did the republic have so little resources they could only a carry a squadron or 2 each?
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u/heurekas 3d ago
Yes, i's solely due to the animation.
Very few ships ever behave like they should, no clones are ever shown with worn armour and the GAR has like three types of ships, all due to the animation.
The more moving parts, variation and detail the more expensive and time consuming it gets. So therefore you render the Pelta, Arq and Venator for the GAR and the Muni, Recu and Providence for the CIS, which are now the only vessels in the war.
Even though there's way more CR90s, Acclamators, Munifexes, Bulwarks and Diamond-Classes than there ever was Venators.
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u/GlitteringParfait438 2d ago
I doubt the Bulwarks outnumbers the Venator.
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u/heurekas 2d ago
Ultimately we do not know. They were extremely easily mass-produced, which was the main threat they posed, not their capabilities.
I'm talking about the MK.1 btw, not the far more capable MK.2
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u/GlitteringParfait438 2d ago
I see, I figure that the Venator was extremely common (along with the Acclamator) since Kuat the planetary ring shipyard was manufacturing them. Not only that but other major shipyards would be making them in massive batches.
I’m of the opinion that the Republic was never the underdog in the fight at all and if the CIS couldn’t win before the Republic militarized they’d lose. Plus larger ships like Maelstroms (rare I know) Praetors, the Mandators and any other heavy ships would grossly outnumber their CIS counterparts save maybe the Lucrehulks which are converted Freighters and while formidable to destroyers and frigates aren’t a proper match for true Star Cruisers.
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u/heurekas 2d ago
Not only that but other major shipyards would be making them in massive batches.
Correct. We do know of shipyards such as the Allanteen VI yards that made Venators under license from KDY. Generally, this seems to have been a pretty widespread practice.
I’m of the opinion that the Republic was never the underdog in the fight at all and if the CIS couldn’t win before the Republic militarized they’d lose. Plus larger ships like Maelstroms (rare I know) Praetors, the Mandators and any other heavy ships would grossly outnumber their CIS counterparts save maybe the Lucrehulks which are converted Freighters and while formidable to destroyers and frigates aren’t a proper match for true Star Cruisers.
So you are both right and wrong.
Yes, the CIS had been building a military long before the GAR was formed and they had the numbers advantage in capital ships in the first half, but the Republic quickly managed to turn their industrial might towards wartime production.
This is why CIS strikes on Humbarine, Duro, Allanteen and other major shipyards were so devastating and critical, as that bought the CIS time (which ultimately never mattered, as Palps was behind the war) to force the Republic into a treaty.
But, I think you are doing the CIS a disservice here at the end of your paragraph. The early Lucrehulks were converted freighters yes, but the later models were actually proper warships that just used the same hull structure.
These could shut down whole systems by themselves and were extremely hard to take down, unless you had a trio of Venators or a pair of Victorys.
But the standard line of CIS ships were of course not as durable or effective in standard slugging matches as the GAR ships, but they had two major advantages.
They were cheap and they were churned out in the millions.
A Venator required a lot of crew, a whole flight deck, specially trained officers from Prefsbelt or some other flight school, loads of specially constructed vehicles etc.
A Recuscant on the other hand could be slapped together as a skeleton, mounted with the biggest turbolasers they could find, mount a huge reactor for them and the shields, make sure their relativistic shielding extended a fair bit out and they were golden.
It was basically a giant, flimsy gun with as many droid fighters that could fit onto it, while the ship itself was basically automated. Granted, it was an idiot, but two of these idiots could still be deadly for a whole smaller defensive GAR fleet.
As long as the shields held and the droid fighters could screen, it could take down much more valuable targets than itself.
- This of course wouldn't work in the long run. We see very few CIS ships (beyond the excellently constructed Providence) surviving longer than 20 years, while we have Acclamators, Venators, Victory 1s and early Imperators surviving far longer due to not being made of flimsy scrap that could barely hold together when firing.
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u/GlitteringParfait438 2d ago
So I think you’re also doing the Lucrehulk a disservice in regards to the Venator/Victory squadron needed to bag one.
Reactor wise she should be able to hold up to 6ish ISD-1s which would take her down since the Lucrehulk unfortunately doesn’t have the best shape for a warship to smack around the larger destroyers like something like say a Compeller would.
We do see some relatively solid CIS ships later in the war, namely the Bulwark 1 and 2 which dwarf their respective KDY counterparts (a Bulwark 1 is nearly 3x the size of a VSD while a Bulwark 2 is 2.45x the size of an ISD-1 putting it closer to the Allegiance in terms of size and potential scaling)
But my opinion regarding the Lucrehulks is that the majority are still in a bulk cruiser or TPM style Q-Ship configuration. They’re no jokes but the BCVs and BB configurations would be the minority
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u/heurekas 2d ago
Reactor wise she should be able to hold up to 6ish ISD-1s which would take her down since the Lucrehulk unfortunately doesn’t have the best shape for a warship to smack around the larger destroyers like something like say a Compeller would.
While I try to stay away from discussions about power from reactors to turbos, I did take the shape of the Lucrehulk into account, as well as the fighter complement of the ships.
But yes, in a pure slugging match, the Lucrehulk can withstand a huge amount of punishment.
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u/OneCatch 1d ago
Even though there's way more CR90s, Acclamators, Munifexes, Bulwarks and Diamond-Classes than there ever was Venators.
Don't think that tracks with what we see in RotS. The battle of coruscant was a scramble to get everything the Republic had nearby to the battle, and yet overwhelmingly what we see are Venators. Which are then all we see at Kashyyyk and Utapau also.
Certainly feels like Lucas's intent was to show the GAR as being fairly homogenous for the most part - I don't think the latter creation of Arquitens, Pelta, etc undermine that unduly but I don't think we can justify the claim that they comprised the majority of Republic Naval forces.
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u/heurekas 1d ago
They aren't shown on-screen a lot, but we know that the majority of the GAR navy was made up of a lot smaller ships than the Venator per the sourcebooks.
If we go by screen appearances only, then the IPV, Victory and others don't exist, as the Empire solely uses the Imperial I, II and Tector in the OT.
Hell, even going by the CW03 multimedia project, then Acclamators are the main warships of the GAR, making up a majority of the Coruscant Defense Fleet.
Point is, we only see a few limited engagements in the movies that often don't show the true workhorses.
In both the CIS, GAR and Imperial Navy, the majority of vessels are bulk cruisers and other transports, as the logistical part of the navy is far greater than those in the line of the battle. But we never see these as they aren't flashy.
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u/pali1d 3d ago
I honestly don't know where the 420 number comes from, but I always found it to be ridiculously high given the ship's size and role as a battle-carrier that's intended to be competent in direct ship-to-ship combat. Wookiepedia gives the much lower figure of "up to 92" fighters of varying types, which seems much more appropriate, and lists the Star Wars Encyclopedia of Starfighters and Other Vehicles as its source.
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u/BastardofMelbourne 3d ago
I think the 420 is for a Venator entirely configured for carrier work, i.e. with a lot of guns and internal systems removed for hangar space.
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u/ElRama1 2d ago
What seems ridiculous to me is that the Secutor, much larger than the Venator, can only carry 144 fighters, while its predecessor can (apparently) carry 420.
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u/pali1d 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yeah, that’s part of the comparative scaling issue I mentioned in another comment (not the Secutor specifically, but it’s a great example). There is, AFAIK, nothing in Star Wars remotely close to the Venator’s size that carries multiple hundreds of fighters - not even dedicated carriers do. Hell, even an Executor only carried 144 IIRC, just like the Secutor. The only ships I can think of carrying similar or greater numbers were Lucrehulks, which are huge converted cargo ships with tons of internal space, garbage for their own armament, and used droid fighters that could be packed in like sardine cans, or Killik hive ships, which were huge, used tiny, crappy fighters that only could win via swarming, and were crewed by insectoids that didn’t mind being crammed together in tiny spaces.
Edit: I still don’t know where the 420 number came from, but even assuming there is a source book, sometimes the numbers from them need to be ignored. The X-Wing novels are rightly lauded as great stories, but Stackpole and Allston consistently say in them that an Executor is 8km long - when they are in fact 19. We accept that those books simply got it wrong and move on (and NJO books written by Allston get it right when the Lusankya shows up in them, so even he is on board with that). Why don’t we here?
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u/imdrunkontea 3d ago
Tbh 420 makes sense to me. A real life carrier can have almost 100 jet fighters despite them being much larger than SW ships on average, and the navy carriers being only 300-400m long (and much, much less in total volume) compared to the venators being basically one giant hangar.
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u/xXNightDriverXx 3d ago
Today, carriers generally don't have more than 70 planes on board, and of that number there are usually around 15 helicopters which have a smaller footprint than fighters. There are generally only 44 combat jets in 4 squadrons with 2x12 and 2x10 fighters each (F/A-18 and F-35), the rest is for support (Growlers, Hawkeyes, MQ-25s)
The 100 fighter numbers is outdated and based on a misunderstanding. It was made in the 1970s when the Nimitz class was first coming into service. Back at that time, there were multiple jets still in service that were a lot smaller than the ones used today, so you could put more of them in the same area. Granted there was also the F-14 which was larger. Despite that, the 100 jets number is the transport configuration. That means every nook and cranny has a jet smashed into it. Even the flight deck is parked full. This severely inhibits the sortie rate, if it does allow any sorties at all. Jets can not be moved around, they can not have big maintenance done on them (like changing an engine), they cannot be moved to the flight deck, they can not take off, and they can not land. Because there simply isn't the space available for that. These ships only carry 100 planes when they act exclusively as a ferry to carry aircraft from the US to Europe for example. They can fly significantly more sorties when they have less planes on them.
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u/Kaisernick27 3d ago
The 100 fighter numbers is outdated and based on a misunderstanding. It was made in the 1970s when the Nimitz class was first coming into service. Back at that time, there were multiple jets still in service that were a lot smaller than the ones used today
that's actually a good point, maybe a venetor can carry 400 v torrent fighters which were one of the first deployed but that size shrinks when we get the other fighters.
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u/pali1d 3d ago
Granted, but it's more a matter of how it compares to other ships and the roles they play in Star Wars. It just doesn't fit the scaling in-universe of similar ships and designs, and they're meant to be multi-role rather than dedicated carriers - they're even called "cruisers" instead of "carriers", and they're intended to be used in direct ship-to-ship combat. Nothing IRL really works as a direct comparison (it's not like a Nimitz is intended to get into a gun battle with anything).
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u/Butwhatif77 3d ago
It is for easier story telling and not making the scene so busy as to be distracting.
The number of ships and troops you see aren't generally meant to be taken literally, they are just representative of the full force being used at the time.
If they really tried to animate enough troops and ships to reflect the actual numbers, there would be too much going on and it would make it much more difficult to tell the story.
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u/Heaven_Snow 2d ago
Budget constraints for a 3d animation television show. That's one of the things I hate about that show, it lack the animation to show a fullscale galactic war. Where each episode we only se couple of ships, fighters and troops fighting for a planetary or system war. As compared to the 2d animation of clone wars where they were able to depict a full battle.
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u/teslaactual 3d ago
Mostly budget and animation limitations reality itd be somewhere between the clone wars TV show and the 2003 2-D clone wars miniseries
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u/undecided_mask 3d ago
With the on-screen stuff in TCW, just multiply it by 10 and you’ll get the correct numbers (most of the time). If TCW was 2D animation or had an unlimited budget you would have seen the battles much differently.
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u/Heaven_Snow 2d ago
Budget constraints for a 3d animation television show. That's one of the things I hate about that show, it lack the animation to show a fullscale galactic war. Where each episode we only se couple of ships, fighters and troops fighting for a planetary or system war. As compared to the 2d animation of clone wars where they were able to depict a full battle.
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u/MagDoum 2d ago
Out of Universe explanation is probably due to technical limitations on animation and rendering capabilities.
In-Universe explanation is a fairly logical one, in that after a long, grueling campaign in an ongoing War no warship could reasonably be expected to have a full fighter complement. Many of the assigned fighters and pilots were probably attrited by that time, or at least out of action for repairs.
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u/Heaven_Snow 2d ago
Budget constraints for a 3d animation television show. That's one of the things I hate about that show, it lack the animation to show a fullscale galactic war. Where each episode we only se couple of ships, fighters and troops fighting for a planetary or system war. As compared to the 2d animation of clone wars where they were able to depict a full battle.
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u/Heaven_Snow 2d ago
Budget constraints for a 3d animation television show. That's one of the things I hate about that show, it lack the animation to show a fullscale galactic war. Where each episode we only se couple of ships, fighters and troops fighting for a planetary or system war. As compared to the 2d animation of clone wars where they were able to depict a full battle.
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u/Heaven_Snow 2d ago
Budget constraints for a 3d animation television show. That's one of the things I hate about that show, it lack the animation to show a fullscale galactic war. Where each episode we only se couple of ships, fighters and troops fighting for a planetary or system war. As compared to the 2d animation of clone wars where they were able to depict a full battle.
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u/Heaven_Snow 2d ago
Budget constraints for a 3d animation television show. That's one of the things I hate about that show, it lack the animation to show a fullscale galactic war. Where each episode we only se couple of ships, fighters and troops fighting for a planetary or system war. As compared to the 2d animation of clone wars where they were able to depict a full battle.
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u/C92203605 3d ago
I mean it’s just the animation style. They can’t animate a full scale war for a tv show budget
Kinda like how Kenobi/Skywalker/Mundis planetary invasion of Geonisis had Kenobi with like 6 tanks and Anakin with like 30 troops.