|
|
Site Information
The following notes explain the methodology
this site uses. It is necessary to read this in order to
understand the rest of the site, and certainly before
emailing me.
Format
Each ship is listed with its "common" name for easy
identification. This common name is generally just a
nickname; the "real name" (such as the name originally given
to the ship by its manufacturer or government of origin) is
a component of the "Name:" field in the statistics.
The ship descriptions do not contain all known
information about a particular craft; instead, they are
meant to briefly explain the design and purpose of a given
vessel. Any inconsistencies or other odd information
relating to the ship is in green. For further details, a
book/game that includes the ship is listed, along with (in
some entries) links to other Web pages.
Entries have images included wherever possible, in the
event that a reader is unfamiliar with what a particular
ship looks like. These images were scanned/digitized
exclusively for this page.
Statistics
The statistics for each vessel contain only the most
commonly-requested information.
The following classifications can be found in the "Type:"
field:
- Starfighter: A small, fast one- or two-person attack
craft
- Transport: Any unarmed and usually civilian ship used
to transport goods and materials
- Corvette: A small, lightly-armed, fairly fast
warship, usually used for escort purposes
- Gunship: Similar to a corvette, but slower and with
more weapons
- Frigate: A warship larger and more well-armed than a
corvette, but still relatively small
- Destroyer: A medium-size, well-armed vessel, used to
protect or attack other ships
- Cruiser: A large, heavily armed warship, used to
attack other large ships or stationary targets
- Battlecruiser: A larger and more heavily armed
warship than a cruiser
- Battleship: Similar in size to a battlecruiser, but
slower and with better armor
- Command Ship: Used for command purposes, usually
similar to but with fewer weapons than a battleship
- Carrier: A warship used to carry smaller assault
craft
The warship designations are usually assigned according
to how large a ship is, and what organization uses it.
Vessels used by the Empire tend to be larger than those of
the Alliance/New Republic, and so the baseline size for a
classification is adjusted accordingly. Also, many minor
corporations tend to produce small ships, so that their
"cruisers," for example, are only frigate-sized. This is
corrected in the "Type:" field.
The "Speed" fields vary according to what sources a ship
has appeared in:
- WEG speeds are from the West End Games RPGs
- Ships from games have LucasArts speeds
- Some of the smaller craft from the films were given
speeds by ILM; thus the "ILM Sublight" for those ships
The term "speed" here is actually a misnomer, since
acceleration, not speed, is the limited factor in space
travel.
Many different types of weapons have been named
(especially in the RPGs); I have simplified those ("double
heavy turbolaser cannon" becomes "turbolaser cannon," and so
on).
Canon
The only true canonical sources for Star Wars are the
original movies and derivatives (such as the radio plays and
novelizations of the films). Everything else is "official";
although those such products are authorized to be sold as a
Star Wars product, the "canon" sources take precedence over
them in the event of a conflict. For example, nearly all
recent licensed books give the length of the
Executor as 8000
meters, although the ship is clearly ~11 times the size of
the destroyers we see in the films, making the Executor
~17,600 meters.
Occasionally, an "official" source will conflict with
another "official" source; in this case, I generally assume
the source in which the ship originally appeared is correct.
This is a prominent issue with the WEG book Cracken's
Threat Dossier, in which the illustrations and
statistics for most ships do not match information from the
novels the ships originated in, or other established
information:
- Many REC-produced
warships are known to be similar or identical in design,
but the pictures of the ships are all entirely different.
- The Bakuran destroyers are given lengths greater than
the Bakuran cruisers, yet the Corellian trilogy implies
that the opposite is true.
- The Rendili-built
Republic-class destroyer doesn't have any design features
common on Rendili ships.
This page was last updated on August 29, 1999. If you want to email me, take the
hostname of the site and change the first dot to an "at" symbol.
|