That in turn drew its inspiration from the design for a prototype for the early (as in '70's) original Palitoy/Kenner Troop Transport toy. The detail on that thing looked awesome.
I've been trying to come up with a modified LAAT for years. Nothing really worked at that scale till I saw the kenner toy. I didn't like the center detail, so I gave it a stormtrooper nose
Looks like a great idea.Had a problem with the LAAT,the troopers were required to hang on by straps whist standing during hard maneuvers.Fast dropship/gunships should have fold able seats and 360 degree turrets for self protection and quick deployment.Just a thought.
I've been messing about with the idea of doing a proper assault ship that isn't an Acclamator. Part of the question is exactly how big it would have to be. A modern division may have about 1000 AFVs, but then thousands of trucks, other logistics and support vehicles. In Star Wars terms, what would this look like?
I started with the Imperial Sourcebook for rough numbers of vehicles per subformation, and took measurements of a bunch of my and EU/canon vehicles. Then I adjusted dropship complements a bit and worked out a hypothetical average Corps level formation. It would divide into:
Battlegroup/legion (x2): 3x regiment (2x repulsorlift, 1x light armor, 1x heavy armor battalion); 1x artillery regiment; 1x HAVw A6 regiment; 80x infantry dropship
Battlegroup/legion (x2): 3x regiment (2x repulsorlift, 1x scout walker, 1x heavy armor battalion); 1x artillery regiment; 1x AT-AT regiment; 80x infantry dropship
Corps HQ: 2x AT-SP regiment, 1x AT-SE regiment, 2x SPHA regiment, 40 dropships, 1 regiment equivalent vehicles
Dropships are LAAT equivalents, the sizes based on my WIP one, and numbers based on the 80 per division of an Acclamator. The company drop barge is purely hypothetical, designed to move masses of individually not very large repulsorlift vehicles, but in large quantity. Works out to be about light corvette-sized. A scaling layout follows:
Works out to approximately a 1500mx1000mx80m space, simply for garage storage. Storage across 6 vehicle decks, equivalent to 1 superheavy vehicle/dropship deck, 2x heavy vehicle/dropship decks, 4x dropship rack levels. Spread it across more levels and that obviously reduces the footprint. An actual assault ship would need more volume to have vehicle handling spaces, mostly for the large walkers. This exercise shows how voluminous walkers actually are, especially when you compare to even the largest rack-mounted imperial fights (Scimitar and Defender wings shown for scale). Barrack volume is relatively minimal.
Dropships are mostly important for the massive vehicles. For smaller ones I imagine that they can self-deploy into atmosphere if they're repulsorlift. I always figured the main difference between a repulsortank and say, a gunship or atmospheric fighter is the maneuverability, not the ability to fly. Still, you'd want dropships able to land an assault echelon or to support detached landings away from the ship. The ship itself would deploy troops from orbit, or "land" (i.e. hover and stabilize with some barely-load-bearing landing gear) if there was a secure site.
Right now it's turning out to be a very obese Acclamator. We're looking at about quadruple Acclamator volume necessary at a minimum. I'm attempting to keep it near ISD length, just more volume. Most of the dropships and barges can deploy from the sheltered trench hangar on the dorsal surface. Why dorsal? Because the ship has to be able to deploy things while landed. Large barges transit from flank bays, and gunships and small craft, and repulsorlift, can deploy from any bay.
Heh, yeah, I was thinking that too. Careful, once you go Gungan there's no turning back.
All joking aside, I'm not loving the overall shape. I think a lot of what makes Star Wars ship designs work so well is the fact that though they are highly complex and detailed, when it comes to the basic shapes they're quite simple, and the basic shape of this thing is hard to get a handle on. Maybe if you committed to a more full on diamond shape with cutaways for the engines at the rear and the greeblefest hangar trenches (which I absolutely love by the way) you have on the sides? I like the thought you're putting into this, and that image illustrating just how much hardware needs to be transported really brings it home how massive a ship will be needed to carry it all. Perhaps enlarge the thing a little more to perhaps 2 or 1.5 times the length of a standard ISD so it looks less like the Acclamator that ate all the pies, to give you a bit more room to play with? What is the idea with the cutout in the dorsal hull passing between the two bridge towers? Do you see that trench as space for more hangar entrances, landing strips etc? Definitely going to be interesting watching this one develop.
As far as your Imperial LAAT is concerned that is coming along nicely, though I wonder if that nose weapons array is a little overkill. Is that how well armed the similar ship in The Force Unleashed was? A lot in that game was overkill to say the least.
I agree with Talon,the nose guns are too bulky,maybe two instead of four.The rest look great.
The assault ship is interesting,though maybe the bottom spine looks odd.But love to see where you go with it.
How many troopers can the dropship carry?
Re: the gunship noseguns, I agree with Talon and Jedi. I'm also a bit turned off by the pointy nosecone thing you've got going on though. Might I suggest a protrusion that's a bit flatter? Might be a good idea to have a central pilot station there, with a shielded viewport akin to what we see on AT-ATs (since this seems to have a similar aesthetic).
On the overweight Acclamator: As Talon said it's hard to get a grip on the shape. I do like the idea of a "tubby" carrier though, and I love the embiggenated trench concept. The diamond shape for the larger hangars I'm not too sold on; have you considered putting the large docking bays into the dorsal insets instead? You could make it a big through-deck hangar then, ala the ship from ROTS, and the flight ops pylon could oversee it relatively easily...
Proof it all fits (being generous with the deck clearances here). Reactor will be ~ISD sized and placed immediately in front of the engine array in the aft cutout.
Detailing:
I'm debating keeping the dorsal side hangars - I think I can use the volume there better...
So where are the fighter and bomber wings deployed from? I couldn't see them in the above see-through renders, are they deployed from that central trench?
the two command towers really do shout gungan eyes - might look better or at least less like jar jar if it was a more imperial command tower design - but otherwise detailing is impressive as ever
Fractal, I'm flat out amazed you haven't just trolled us yet by actually overlaying a Gungan's head onto this (yet), or your previous (mini-) capship. That or gone and done some epic trolling by actually putting in miniature gungan heads into the various greebles and then see if we can find/count them all. Maybe it says bad things about me, but considering the amount of 'it looks like a Gungun...' comments, I'd have done it.
Not that I'm saying they're bad, mind you. I like em.
*quietly shoves a 'ITS A TRA....GUNGAN!' sign under the desk*
I'm loving the details on the bridge area. Not sure about the overall shape of the ship, though…
And I can't stop wondering about how many hours (days?) it would take to unload all those vehicles from a single ship that big as opposed to several other smaller ships…
I haven't done the full calculations, but I think the lift capacity in one go from dropships is something like a quarter of the existing vehicle capacity. If the ship is in atmosphere, the repulsorlift vehicles can deploy themselves. My guess is on the order of several hours for the entire Corps from low orbit. It would not be anything close to days.
Posts
never finished it...
^ I LOVE that!
This next thing may or may not work. Bare minimums of detail right now just to get a feel for things.
Was any inspiration drawn from it or is it just "convergent design" starting from a similar "Imperial version of the Republic gunship" idea?
imperial_troop_transport_prototype2.jpg
Interesting start Fractal, what inspired you to go in this direction?
I've been messing about with the idea of doing a proper assault ship that isn't an Acclamator. Part of the question is exactly how big it would have to be. A modern division may have about 1000 AFVs, but then thousands of trucks, other logistics and support vehicles. In Star Wars terms, what would this look like?
I started with the Imperial Sourcebook for rough numbers of vehicles per subformation, and took measurements of a bunch of my and EU/canon vehicles. Then I adjusted dropship complements a bit and worked out a hypothetical average Corps level formation. It would divide into:
Battlegroup/legion (x2): 3x regiment (2x repulsorlift, 1x light armor, 1x heavy armor battalion); 1x artillery regiment; 1x HAVw A6 regiment; 80x infantry dropship
Battlegroup/legion (x2): 3x regiment (2x repulsorlift, 1x scout walker, 1x heavy armor battalion); 1x artillery regiment; 1x AT-AT regiment; 80x infantry dropship
Corps HQ: 2x AT-SP regiment, 1x AT-SE regiment, 2x SPHA regiment, 40 dropships, 1 regiment equivalent vehicles
Dropships are LAAT equivalents, the sizes based on my WIP one, and numbers based on the 80 per division of an Acclamator. The company drop barge is purely hypothetical, designed to move masses of individually not very large repulsorlift vehicles, but in large quantity. Works out to be about light corvette-sized. A scaling layout follows:
Works out to approximately a 1500mx1000mx80m space, simply for garage storage. Storage across 6 vehicle decks, equivalent to 1 superheavy vehicle/dropship deck, 2x heavy vehicle/dropship decks, 4x dropship rack levels. Spread it across more levels and that obviously reduces the footprint. An actual assault ship would need more volume to have vehicle handling spaces, mostly for the large walkers. This exercise shows how voluminous walkers actually are, especially when you compare to even the largest rack-mounted imperial fights (Scimitar and Defender wings shown for scale). Barrack volume is relatively minimal.
Dropships are mostly important for the massive vehicles. For smaller ones I imagine that they can self-deploy into atmosphere if they're repulsorlift. I always figured the main difference between a repulsortank and say, a gunship or atmospheric fighter is the maneuverability, not the ability to fly. Still, you'd want dropships able to land an assault echelon or to support detached landings away from the ship. The ship itself would deploy troops from orbit, or "land" (i.e. hover and stabilize with some barely-load-bearing landing gear) if there was a secure site.
Right now it's turning out to be a very obese Acclamator. We're looking at about quadruple Acclamator volume necessary at a minimum. I'm attempting to keep it near ISD length, just more volume. Most of the dropships and barges can deploy from the sheltered trench hangar on the dorsal surface. Why dorsal? Because the ship has to be able to deploy things while landed. Large barges transit from flank bays, and gunships and small craft, and repulsorlift, can deploy from any bay.
All joking aside, I'm not loving the overall shape. I think a lot of what makes Star Wars ship designs work so well is the fact that though they are highly complex and detailed, when it comes to the basic shapes they're quite simple, and the basic shape of this thing is hard to get a handle on. Maybe if you committed to a more full on diamond shape with cutaways for the engines at the rear and the greeblefest hangar trenches (which I absolutely love by the way) you have on the sides? I like the thought you're putting into this, and that image illustrating just how much hardware needs to be transported really brings it home how massive a ship will be needed to carry it all. Perhaps enlarge the thing a little more to perhaps 2 or 1.5 times the length of a standard ISD so it looks less like the Acclamator that ate all the pies, to give you a bit more room to play with? What is the idea with the cutout in the dorsal hull passing between the two bridge towers? Do you see that trench as space for more hangar entrances, landing strips etc? Definitely going to be interesting watching this one develop.
As far as your Imperial LAAT is concerned that is coming along nicely, though I wonder if that nose weapons array is a little overkill. Is that how well armed the similar ship in The Force Unleashed was? A lot in that game was overkill to say the least.
The assault ship is interesting,though maybe the bottom spine looks odd.But love to see where you go with it.
How many troopers can the dropship carry?
On the overweight Acclamator: As Talon said it's hard to get a grip on the shape. I do like the idea of a "tubby" carrier though, and I love the embiggenated trench concept. The diamond shape for the larger hangars I'm not too sold on; have you considered putting the large docking bays into the dorsal insets instead? You could make it a big through-deck hangar then, ala the ship from ROTS, and the flight ops pylon could oversee it relatively easily...
Detailing:
I'm debating keeping the dorsal side hangars - I think I can use the volume there better...
So where are the fighter and bomber wings deployed from? I couldn't see them in the above see-through renders, are they deployed from that central trench?
Not that I'm saying they're bad, mind you. I like em.
*quietly shoves a 'ITS A TRA....GUNGAN!' sign under the desk*
And I can't stop wondering about how many hours (days?) it would take to unload all those vehicles from a single ship that big as opposed to several other smaller ships…
I haven't done the full calculations, but I think the lift capacity in one go from dropships is something like a quarter of the existing vehicle capacity. If the ship is in atmosphere, the repulsorlift vehicles can deploy themselves. My guess is on the order of several hours for the entire Corps from low orbit. It would not be anything close to days.