I've always kind of headcanoned these as being essentially flight-deck cruisers like the Kievs. Given that the Venator and Victory were developed more or less in parallel, the obvious conclusion is that the Victory was meant to be the primary line destroyer with the Venators acting mainly as carriers with a secondary ship-to-ship role. But the Victory ran into some sort of developmental delays and the Venator got shoehorned into the line role.
If I recall correctly the 2nd bridge is used for that purpose. Tho they don't say it in any material besides maybe an obscure book. But I like the theory of the the victory being ment to fight along side the venator
The Venator was a carrier that doubled as a ship-of-the-line. Development started prior to the war, and it entered combat weeks after Geonosis. The Victory 1 was developed far later into the war and entered combat (in Legends) during the Battle of Corescant. And the dual bridges aren't dual bridges; one is the flight control tower.
The Venator: Hey, let's build a Carrier. Also, let's make it our primary battleship Also, let's not change any of the useful carrier bits in the process of making it a battleship Also, let's put guns on it in the most inefficient way for a battleship Seriously, in the right doctrine, the Venator is a BEAST. In the Doctrine of the Republic....the Venator is hot garbage.
However, it does make sense when you consider that the entire lead-up to the war on both sides was being engineered by the same conspiracy group, with the goal being to drag it on as a a bloody back-and-forth stalemate to justify both conspirator giving themselves more emergency powers (that they had no intention of giving up when the war ended). Also, the Republic was generally a corrupt mess and liked to design things by political committee.
The reason no Earth navy has ever built* a hybrid carrier/battleship is because it is a terrible idea. The requirements for a good carrier are very different from the requirements for a good battleship. The result of any hybrid of the two is a multirole ship that sucks at every role you put it in. *In WW2, the Japanese did convert a couple of their older battleships to hybrid carriers by replacing the rear main turrets with flight decks, but this was a desperation move after their fleet carriers developed a bad case of being on the ocean floor. The hybrid ships only carried recon planes, and were never actually deployed.
@@st3vorocks290 pretty sure Japan tried the carrier battleship hybrid late in ww2 by modifying some existing battleship hulls to be a hybrid. Don't think it worked very well for them
The Venator is a carrier with battleship ambitions. Personally i like it, weird twin bridges aside, it has hangar entrances at the flanks as well, sadly we never see them being used... If they would get rid if the ventral and dorsal hangar openings, the ship would be much better, and they should STACK the turrets, so more than one can shoot forward.
@@st3vorocks290 The Kiev class, while not quite a battleship carrier hybrid (I'd say it's more of a missile cruiser carrier hybrid) is somewhat close, as far as surface to surface combat those things packed a punch.
As I understand it, the second bridge is solely for carrier ops. The Venator is much more a carrier than the Imperials, indeed its primary role is to deliver a bunch of small craft to a fight and vomit them out as quickly as possible (thus the massive open hangar bay), and then deliver broadside fire in support.
And hyperspace capable fighters means you can launch your defensive/offensive fighters for a screen as a you jump into system, fight through enemy battle line, then afterwards launch landing forces once the enemy space forces are neutralized. Theoretically. Better option would be when working in a larger fleet would be what the US did in WW2 with its fleet and escort carriers, have certain ships dedicated to fighter ops, other holding back with landing forces, and a screen of ships acting as battleships to protect the ones running fighters. Benefit being that any loss of one carrier can be substituted with one of the other ships, and any of the ships can retrieve launch fighters.
Also, the real world Queen Elizabeth class of Carriers from the UK has a two tower setup with this exact system, one for controlling the ship, the other for landing/launching fighters, although as Although with the Venator I'd question why the "aircraft" control tower is where it is, given that the fighters can VTOL out of the big central bay, and wouldn't it be more useful to have a control tower located closer to the main hangar/launch deck(and ideally able to have a layout that can also oversee launch preparations before the big doors are opened?) If you're going to have big holographic displays for the higher officers, and loads of screens for the lesser officers and bridge staff to use, does the bridge even need to be so separated from the ship, even more so with bright red "shoot here for best effect" paint?
@@MandoWookie too be fair, hyperdrives weren't common on fighters during the Clone Wars. They did exist during the Venator's service life, but due to cost and space it still made some sense not to field an entire navy with such fightercraft.
@@torinnbalasar6774 But the Republic did field fighters with them. I figure that could be a fanon reason for the ARC-170s, an ostensible recon fighter, to be armed like a bomber. They could act as an advanced screen, keeping back both capital ships and fighters while the Venators launched the rest.
@Kabuki Kitsune not exactly the same thing, firstly the two bridges on the venator are in effectively the same position, on the QE carriers the front tower controls ship functions and navigation and is in the best postion for that role, the rear tower is set up for air operations control, and is in the optimal location for them, and even then if it wasnt for the need for two funnels for the engines and thus a choice between one long island or two smaller ones and a large aircraft elevator. Venator on the other hand doesnt gain anything from the double bridge set up, if the control centers are so close together they may as well be one structure
You have to cut them some slack given that they are coming off a thousand years of peace. During that time all actions were police actions. The war itself was only 3 years, and the development of the ship was so rushed that is was in battles during the first year. The Acclamator class was no match for any enemy ship. The Venator borrowed a lot of Acclamator design features, but doubled many of them (two similar bridges, & twice the engines). Given the need to rush it into production, one would guess that it was designed to fill all roles. The Victory class was in production in the last year of the war, and shows that the Venator flaws did not go unnoticed.
Yeah the republic has never faced anything more than criminals for the longest time, in fact the separatists appearing was a massive surprise by everyone this is a fact, it was mentioned a lot in the movies and the shows, so the victory class was pretty much a stance of authority than actual combat, and the Jedi are “peace keepers” not generals or admirals, so their tactics would be perusing retreating bandits/pirates not facing actual military fleets so that would explain why they mostly charge head first instead of a broad side, same with hangers being on every side of the ship it’s a police vehicle hastily turned into a military ship so massive flaws are bound to happen.
The tactics used at the beginnings of most wars tend to mirror tactics that proved successful in the previous war. Which often results in catastrophic losses because new technology rendered those tactics obsolete. In WW1 the Germans tried to repeat what succeeded in their war against France in 1870/71 - fast paced maneuvering to force a decisive battle. They hadn't accounted for how much technological advances favoured defenders and got bogged down in trench warfare they weren't prepared for. In WW2 France tried to repeat that by by building massive defenses (the Maginot line) along the expected attack vector. The didn't account for how much motorization and the role aircraft progressed which allowed Germany to move through terrain that was deemed "unsuitable" for fast advances, by they outmaneuvered the French and forced to capitulate. But I wonder: In what kind of technological environment does the "carry tons of fighters and then move in to exchange broadsides" make any tactical sense? Isn't the point of fighters to destroy the enemy before they can attack the carrier?
@@MrAranton The point was probably Shield Saturation of large ships and Defense against mechanized Droid Units. The Republic Starfighters were Leagues above anything produced in the Galaxy except a few Individual Ships like Jango's Slave 1 and a single well equipped Venator would have annihilated any Pirate outpost. A rather effective Tactic is: Launching your Fighter Swarm, Driving towards the enemy ship, let your Anti Fighter Cannons destroy the enemy Fighters while tanking enemy fire with the honestly ridiculous durability of the Venator and decimating the Enemy Ship with your Bombers and Main Turrets. Less intelligent on modern Carriers, but let's just say you have more Leway if you have the Shield Power Advantage
In my opinion the Venator is amazing for what it was “supposed to do” It was clearly designed as carrier ship that could launch hundreds of fighters very fast, hence the enormous hanger bay, the problem is that the republic jammed it into the attack ship role because of delays with their other ship designs and the lack of aclamators being produced. It was actually stronger than most CIS ships alone, the problem is that the CIS was very good with their military doctrines when it came to space battles, as they had usually pretty weak ships by themselves good at few roles, but combined them in configurations and formations that were very hard to break by the republic. Generally (for a blockade) they had 2 command ships in the back, which being repurposed freight ships could launch thousands of fighters, they didn’t need them to be fast because they weren’t battleships, they had only 2 jobs, giving commands to the fleet, and launching a ton of fighters. Then they have a heavy destroyer or 2 at the front, flanked by cruisers with light armor, but double cannons that could punch through nearly anything. I could go on, but basically the CIS really had it figured out, and probably would have won the war if it weren’t for the sith.
It's to be expected given that the CIS had some amount of experience from earlier conflicts which their members had fought in that their fleets would be better handled and more suited in a doctrinal role. In addition, having droids designed to perfectly wield these ships from the doctrinal standpoint would make them more effective than republic fleet officers during the war, at least for a little while. You are right though; the Venator was perfectly designed to do what is was supposed to do, and was pretty damn good at it too. In addition, it was well designed for a war effort that demanded building an entire navy effectively from scratch and developing doctrine to use these ships effectively, and the only real way the republic was ever going to have a hope in hell of achieving any kind of victory was to make the ships as uniform and as brain dead to use as possible. Given that the Jedi were commanding them a good portion of the time and not seasoned fleet officers you can kind of understand why this was so. The only two real design flaws in the venator is that the bridge is not centrally located in the citadel of the ship (given how many other ship designs on both sides of the war suffered from this exact flaw, it isn't really a flaw in their line of thinking) and that there aren't a matching set of guns to cover the underside of the ship. Remember that space isn't a linear battlefield, it's 3 dimensional, and if all your guns are on the (relative) top of the ship you have nothing to cover the underside if anyone decides to maneuver under your ship and fire at it. The one thing I disagree with in his analysis is the placement of the guns; all it takes for the commander of a venator to have all of his guns on target from the front is to tilt the ship downward slightly. It will give the enemy a larger target to shoot at, but you don't have to depress the bow of the ship massively to obtain this effect. It would be better from a logical standpoint to set the turrets in a super firing configuration, but then if the venator is caught in a broadside fight the undersides of the turrets will be able to be targeted and destroyed by the attacking ship.
The Biggest sin against the Venator though, is that the empire ditched it after the clone wars. It was a design that could have been perfectly adapted for counterinsurgency ops and was ditched for the all big guns shitfest that was the Imperial Star destroyer.
@@PrinceOfDolAlmroth the Problem was the imperial star destroyer were made first and only later they had the idea of making carriers but then needed to give in universe explanations which generally turns out badly.
@@PrinceOfDolAlmroth But that makes sense, as Empire never feared Rebels up to the point of Empire Strikes Back. TExcluding Yuuzan Vong plot, their focus on big gund etc kinda have sence. We know from our world taht it is often a thing with military to prepare for previous war. Empire was more consumed on possibility of large-scale uprising similliar to separatist movement, or even outer rim worlds uniting to stop possible expansion of the Empire. In New Hope Rebels are kinda weak faction, with small fighter fleet and founded only by few senators. It was after destruction of Alderaan that they slowly started to get massive support... and it's all makes sense. Empire was never ready to deal with rebelion of that kind, their fleet was build around doctrine of conquering systems and large battles, their counter intelligence treated possible rebels as spies of enemy state, becouse that was their doctrine.
Looking at this ship. I can imagine a doctrine where two lines of these jump in. The forward lines turn or tilt-forward and engage as attack ships and the rear launch fighters. The two lines then switch places. Then all the capital ships maneuver to keep maximum guns engaged with enemies. I do wish the guns were terraced though.
The Venator is like a flying example of "opportunity cost". It can land a couple battalions of troops, it can launch and recover huge numbers of fighters and bombers, and it has battleship-caliber big guns, all in one package - but good luck using more than one of those abilities in any given engagement, because picking any option means the other two have to stay benched. If it's in a gunfight, its armored hangar doors need to stay closed, preventing the use of strike craft or dropships, or else a hit to the Venator's brightly lit center of mass will wreck the hangars, with their stores of fuel and munitions. If it's landing troops or using strike craft, its zipper is open and it better not get into gunfights until those operations are over - hours or days - because it may need to recover its launched assets in the near future. On top of that, launching either type (dropships or strike craft) means the other has to wait its turn, and the traffic that Flight Ops needs to manage gets increasingly complicated.
@@barrybend7189 V-19 and alpha-3 didn't had hyperdrive and ARC-170 were more of recon wing like XG1 on ISD. If your fleet uses hyperdrive capable strike fighters, why bother with assautl carier, when you can launch and form up before jumping into action?
@@antonisauren8998 exactly if I'm not mistaken I'm pretty sure that's why the rebellion didn't have any dedicated carriers is because most of their fighters had hyperdrives but tie's have to be garrisoned in facilities or ships since they didn't have any
Is anyone gonna mention that the ship has literally no weapons on the bottom of it and a Jedi had to modify their ships to add a laser at the bottom to give it some defense
About launching fighters quickly not being a big deal: Its a huge deal in the Star Wars universe, especially in the situation that the Republic was in. The CIS (Also known as the Confederacy Of Independent Systems) Used fast and light fighters deployed in huge numbers, like the TIE fighter. The Republic tended to use slower fighters such as the ARC-170. So if the CIS launched 500 fighters per say at a moments notice, if you slowly launched fighters, lets say 10 at a time, they would get picked off one by one until the reserves were low. If you launched 1/2 of these high quality fighters all at once, they would at least put in major breathing room for the other half to deploy, therefore giving you fighter superiority, and having the ability to have bomber support. I agree with everything else you talked about, except for this statement.
the double bridge: star wars tech is stuck in the seventies, the captains need to use their eyes to see what they need to shoot at though i do agree that the second bridge could be moved down to the dorsal armored section under the primary bridge. the guns, eh i see that as a back up ie the venator was meant to be a dedicated carrier but the war forced the ship to be changed into an assault ship party way through design.
Perhaps the other bridge is a dedicated flight control tower for the sorties the venator deploys. It would "kiiinda" make sense but is a bit of a stretch.
@@tokenfinnishguy8714 It is a bridge for fighter ops. One bridge handled normal battleship commands, so that splits the responsibilities between them and it helps both sides focus on their respective jobs.
This reminded me of a general scifi gripe w the designs. I first noticed it as a kid watching ST. And then they hung a hat on it in st2. Non 3d thinking. You could for instance bring all of a venators guns on target if they could elevate enough and you rolled the ship. Granted, that would increase your profile, but its give and take. So far the expanse has done the best job in general for logical design. But for a space wizard universe, why not coopt one of the shield ships designed w a whacking great forward "shield" for use around stars, cut out weps emplacements, and just charge in guns blazing? They already dont care about aft weps or sensor coverage.
@@bobmcbob49 the "rolling if youre on fire" made me think that the really sad part is that i can actually imagine some hollywood asshat whos seen Memphis belle too many times trying to pitch that as an awesome shot "the ship pitches over and heads towards the planet to try to extinguish the flames..."😂
@@bobmcbob49 oh i totally agree, offhand the best non expanse shots i can really think of are from BSG, like when the pegasus comes charging to the rescue from off plane. Hell, im a huge fan of it but even b5 fell into that trap w their capital ships.
Here's my criticism of the Venator: it was a jack of all trades, a master of none. Against the capital ships of the Confederacy, most of which are just cargo transports and communications frigates stuffed with more guns, this was fine, as the Venator was stronger than any of them. However, it was nowhere near as strong in ship combat as say, an Imperial-class Star Destroyer, which had far more anti-warship guns (ISDs have five dozen heavy turbolasers, Venators have 8 heavy turbolasers) and far heavier shielding. The ISD was the natural evolution, since even with its impressive firepower, the Venators during the Clone Wars were stretched thin against larger enemy warships like the Providence-class Carriers and the Subjugator-class dreadnoughts. It also needs to open up its central hangar to unleash the majority of its fighters, which will leave it vulnerable if the enemy is firing at you. In contrast, an ISD can release TIEs from its side hangars or its bottom hangar, which keeps the ship safe while the fighting is going on. Sure, the Venator would do fine against outdated pirate vessels and Separatist remnants, but once those large Mon Calamari ships of the Rebel Alliance start showing up, they'll tear the Venators to shreds, since they have six times the amount of heavy turbolaser guns the Venators do. That, and the Rebel fleet is typically protected by corvettes which are good at shooting down enemy fighters, so carrying more fighters won't turn the tide. The Venators would do better as backup ships, staying behind the Imperial Star Destroyers and letting the latter dish out heavy firepower while taking the brunt of the damage, while the Venators hang back, release wave after wave of TIEs, and act as fire support for the ISDs.
Don't forget that by the time the ISD's and MC's came along, the Venerators were obsolete. Any that were still in service wold have been in training roles or in backwater postings where they would be unlikely to run into that sort of opposition.
@@robertharris6092 they were still using victory class star destroyers in the galactic civil war and the Imperial remnant also used victories like crimson command
@@jayvhoncalma3458 they were using victory IIs. Which replaced the long range missile ordanance for additional turbo lasers and ion cannons as well as more powerful engines. And i think better shielding. But yes. The victory was a fast, mid sized ship that packed a lot of fire power which was basically a frigate.
I suppose you could dip the nose of the ship relative to your target to bring all turrets to bare on it, but then you're exposing the flight deck to enemy fire.
I see the Venator in canon as Kuat Drive Yards' attempt at a Harrower class Dreadnought of the Sith empire in 3650BBY. Heck in Kotor era there was the Centurion that for being 100 meters longer carries equally as much support craft, greater firepower and troops. So i blame how short the war is and 1000 years of stagnate ship design.
I love the venator, but yeah it’s not the best design. I wanna give the designers the benefit of the doubt and say it’s flaws were on purpose, but I know it was likely accidental. Lore wise it makes sense. The acclimator is too small and lightly armed for a line role as it’s supposed to be a troop transport, the victory class is being developed to be a proper attack ship but isn’t ready yet, and the venator should be a carrier but it gets stuffed into a line/ battleship role. And the Imperator/Imperial 1 is too late to be of any use during the war it was developed for. And following the war the failings of the venator class are so glaring that the empire shifts its entire battle doctrine away from carriers and strike craft. The designers of the venator accidentally did a good job justifying the empire being brain dead when it comes to strike craft. But yeah. No real arguments from me here. The top bay doors take forever to open btw It might be better if the doors were in sections that could be opened and closed individually, but instead if you want to launch a squadron of fighters you have to open the whole top section which is dumb.
Despite this being my favorite ship, I don't disagree with any of this. Number one thing with Star Wars is visual asthetics and the Venator takes that to the max
The Jedi love em because they're carriers first and foremost, and a Jedi's preferred position in a space battle is in the cockpit of a fighter- at least, the ones we follow in Clone Wars.
@@pouncepounce7417 and on the Mercury class, dedicated auxiliary craft bays along the sides so that main deck operations can be kept clear for combat landings.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the glaring weakness of the lack of underside guns on this ship! It's one of the things me and my group of friends point out all the time. So yea, I gotta admit, I've never liked the idea of commanding one of these ships. But like others have pointed out, the venator was baby steps towards the imperial class and whatnot
I've not looked this up for a long time- but I think I recall reading somewhere that one bridge is for ship control and general navigation, communication and operations and the other one is specifically for the flight control operations of the ship as a Carrier - (so fighter operations) but may also have been responsible for cargo management. As for the open Dorsal bay doors - this is because the spine of the ship is accessible to cargo and fighters across most of the ship - the same is true of a Later model Star Destroyer but the central corridor is covered over and the exits are on the side not the top. A First Order Star Destroyer is an odd mix of enclosed and exposed that to be honest may be way worse. The Venator class dorsal unloading is a trifle "weird" though - especially in an atmosphere - but still perhaps less weird than Voyager's landing legs in Star Trek. Perhaps another way to look at it is like cargo loading doors on a ship. But the speed with which the Venator can launch and recover fighters is a bit odd - the logistics of getting them all back in could work - or could be an epic fail - The Battlestar Galactica method may be more sensible - with fast deployment and normal landing & recovery through the main bays. But it does have a side bay so there is nothing stopping the fighters from using that too to land a few at a time rather than in a swarm that could smash into each other. I did read a suggestion that they could "tightly pack" fighters for pick up and they all sit there and wait or travel in a tight formation and the Ventaor class ship could do a Z+ axis manoeuvre and swallow them all whole and immediately jump to lightspeed before even shutting the doors moments later. - But seems more like wish fulfilment to me to think that could safely happen often.
From what I remember (correct me if I’m wrong) the venator was designed last minute and rushed into production into a galaxy that hadn’t so much as heard or war in around a millennium or so. And when used properly by non plot armored Character it was typically in a carrier fleet formation as a carrier/flag ship. Escorted by acclamators and other support vessels. But the show/ movies don’t show that to well because it’s not flashy for the screen. I will say your review was extremely accurate to the in galaxy flaws that lead to its abandonment after the clone wars.
“Noooooooooooooooooo...!” I assume that was the real reason for Anakin’s anguished scream at the end of Episode 3; he was just told of the Venator/Jar Jar similarity.
Here’s what I would do to improve the venator Number 1: Make the bridge on a much lower stock and add camera sensors on top Number 2: Take away the broadside guns , And add 2 on the front side , the other pair will go inward, so they both can fire Number 3: Angle down the hull slightly to make more room Number 4 , place the secondary bridge inside the hull Number 5: Take away that massive plate in the top and add hangars in some other place . Number 6: Add 2 turrets on the back to cover the engines.
As I understand it, the Venator is primarily a troop transport/space craft carrier first and formost. The heavy turbo laser batteries were clearly secondary function. Crappy space tactics were apparently the fault of the Jedi generals who never bothered to learn to become semi-competent about space combat despite having final say on how entire battle fleets operated. Rank and file officers mostly hated the Jedi for their space to space incompetence in addition to being in final command of the fleet.
When it comes to space based warships, I'd have a standard deck template that comprises all the basic requirements of bridge, power generation, medical bay, storage, waste processing, recycling and "chilling out" (and all other things I've likely forgotten) repeated over and over from bow to stern in a "rocket ship" dual configuration that has the entire concept mirrored on the ceiling of each deck. Well, basically heavily armed rugby ball at least 500 metres long with engines aft and forward that has more redundancies and backups than a Borg ship.
The second bridge isn’t a backup, it’s a star fighter control bridge, but of course we didn’t get to see it in operation. But overall the exposed bridges, on most of it’s ships, are silly. Well, the biggest issue is that ship was designed as a carrier, but it was designated and used as sort of a battle carrier, and while it’s guns could be powerful, it’s main weapon were supposed to be their to 420 Star fighters and/or other ships it supposedly could carry. Basically what they do on the show is drive their equivalent to the Nimitz up to the line of enemy battleships and get surprised why they get their ass handed to them again and again. So, the ship itself, if used properly could have been much more effective, although you need to remember that ultimately neither side was meant to win this war, as the Chancellor Palpatine was basically commanding both sides. But the reality is, they added a few guns to a super carrier and thought that it could function as a carrier and battleship, and of course we never saw more than a dozen or two fighters deploy from any single Venator. I mean this about it, in that final image, those 4 ships should have been able to deploy over 1,600 fighters, bombers and small gunships, which should have been deployed from close, but safe distance, and with a screen of actual destroyers be between the Venator and the enemy fleet to protect the carrier from enemy ships, fighters and bombers and to mop up after the fighters and bombers are done with the enemy fleet.
Well if you want to attack an enemy in front of you with this thing then you could just angle your course so that you fly slightly below the enemy rather than coming straight at them. That way all eight turrets could fire up at the enemy at once. Or you could even just angle your ship itself to fly straight at the enemy while slightly tilted forward which would achieve the same effect. This would mean however that writers have to acknowledge that space combat takes place in 3D space not along a plain like sailing ship combat, which to my knowledge no mainstream series has yet to do.
My idea on how to fix the fact that both bridges are identical and right next to each other is that there could be a SINGLE bridge up on top like the Acclamator class assault ship while the secondary backup bridge could be located lower in the superstructure where it's more heavily fortified.
Nice breakdown and I agree. A couple of questions though, say you did a breakdown of the Battlestar Galactica would you need to separate the 1978 version from the 2006 version or would you break them down as just one ship? Second any thought on the Star Trek 2 wrath of Khan battle between the Enterprise vs. the Reliant?
The two Galacticas are sufficiently different - especially with the retractable flight decks - that they're probably worth talking about independently. The Wrath of Khan battle was definitely a welcome departure from Star Trek's usual "all ships are on the same plane, looking at each other like they're in a 2D universe" setup, and had more than a little call-back to submarine fights. Clone Wars also had an interesting example of sub-type combat in an episode with a stealth ship.
My personal take on the Lucrehulks: it had a very solid design for a dedicated fleet carrier, and would probably have been the best carrier in the war if used as such. Separatists decided it should serve the role of a battleship.
@@martenkahr3365 the lucrehulk was alwayw a carrier first and formost. It carried hundreds if notvthousands of fighters. And it was a retrofitted cargoship.
As I understand it From lore persoective The Venator was supposed to be a purely carrier role and with the Victory class being the command and main attack ship however due to reasons they werent be able to be built in time and enough numbers to be widely used by republic forces
if I remember correctly, before the clone wars animated 3d series the venator launched the fighters from the side hangars (old battlefront games), there's a small door in the dorsal part of the ship, and the lower hangar was for bigger ships to dock in, and also stored a huge laser canon thing, but the huge dorsal doors were added for the cartoon (those were featured also on the 2004 2d cartoon because it looks cool i guess) but the movie version doesn't have the huge dorsal hangar doors.
The in-universe reasoning for the double bridge is that, for being a carrier/star destroyer hybrid, one of the bridges acts to command the ship, while the other commands the air group. And, if I really wanted to look at it in too much of a detail, the ventral hangar door is positioned aft relative to the massive dorsal one, so it is feasible that some from of a keel is indeed in place, it just runs on the ventral side of the front part of the ship and then switches to the dorsal side of the aft part of the ship.
SW ships in general are pants-on-head (and not just ships...), but would it really hurt them to, I don't know, put 4 turrets ventral, 4 dorsal in a 'Y' or 'T' letter arrangement (one forward, 2 lateral, central superfiring), for 8 turrets forward coverage, 6 broadside?
The Venator may be an aesthetically pleasing ship but its problems are quite serious when thoroughly analyzed along with what was said in the video. When it comes to this ship we have to take a few considerations in mind, this design was probably made to only look similar to the ISDs but also as something refreshing with a clear design lineage although this ship would end up just being a background ship for Revenge of the Sith. Furthermore, since this vessel was now canon the Clone Wars TV show was stuck having to use this ship design although luckily we did get some more ships and a refitted consular. I believe canonically these ships were also hastily designed and put into service because of the millennium of peace and the sudden war. How to fix the Venator Class Star Destroyer Step 1: This isn't a physical change but a doctrine change for this vessel. Instead of being used as a front line multi-role capital ship which was honestly a horrible idea but rather use this as a fleet carrier for massive amounts of fighters. The Republic used these ships for close quarters combat which time and time again proved this vessels inability in. Republic commanders also used venator's as ground attack transports which took away from potential fighter storage and further removed the vessels combat ability. The Acclimator exists, let that ship do what its meant to do as a ground attack/transport ship. Step 2: Removal of the dorsal hangar door. This thing is beyond unnecessary and with its removal increases its usable internal structure which allows for not only more places for potential shield generation, power generation or weapon emplacements but also increases the amount of fighters that can be stored aboard the ship while leaving the ship better protected. Step 3: Deletion of the command towers. Who wants to be commanding a fighter squadron from these things? Imagine trying to direct your fighter force when the idiots in bridge 2 block your sight with they're entire bridge wing! This frees up tonnage, power drain and cost to be placed into a redesigned superstructure that incorporates a bridge system. Step 4: Use the new space from the deleted bridge area for sensory equipment or more weapon emplacements. Step 5: Stagger the primary weapons as said in the video and fill in the small gaps below the turrets. (yes they are there if you look) Step 6: Place an identical weapon placement in the ventral part of the ship which is also super-firing as stated in the video. Including point defense weapons, anti-fighter missiles and what not that's needed to fight fighters and other enemy ships. Step 7: The Addition of a dual turbo-laser emplacement on each corner of the rear wings of the ship for not only firing forward and to the sides, but to the rear as well. Step 8: Down the center superstructure of the venator we have a long slope, use that slope for potential weapon emplacements like we see in FractalSponge ship designs to further the ships combat ability, I see no reason why this isn't possible. Step 9: Decrease hyper-drive speed rating from 1 to either 1.5 or 2 to decrease power requirements and cost for the hyper-drive. Step 10: Redesign of the broadside weaponry. The broadside weaponry on this ship is pretty weird, in Revenge of the Sith we see these artillery rooms which also showed a serious vulnerability to ammo detonations in broadside combat plus combined with the huge ventral hangar door caused venator loses which we can see in the clone wars. Either have less but heavier weapons be spread out along the side or more mixed weaponry, more anti-capital ship proton torpedo tubes/launchers wouldn't hurt. Step 11: Place more ion cannons throughout the ship to disable starships and other craft. Step 12 (Optional): Replace the heavy dual turbolasers this ship has with single but much larger turbolaser emplacements that has similar firing modes. This gives the ship 16 primary f**K you guns for anti-ship combat. That just about sums it up!
3:00 - Yeah this actually happens in-show as well, in one instance a Venator is under attack and has one of the bridges destroyed, and you'll never guess what takes the brunt of the explosion and debris of the exploding first bridge...... the other bridge, what a shock.
I like this. You touched on weakness that don’t normally talk about, (usually getting bogged down on it lacking armament) But I think the main issue is that it’s too much of a jack of all trades, but fails to optimize anything other than its fighter complement
the Venator is actually more heavily armed and armored then ISDs by feats. the whole Star Destroyer category of Battle Carriers is fucking stupid, but the Venator would be ok if it got a refit to move the Planetary Operations Command into an armored location, fix the double-tower configuration, and add citadel rises to the existing citadel to get the mounted cannons able to superfire. The other major change that the Venator needs would be to switch the side its main hangar doors are on, from the top to the bottom. This wouldnt stop the ship's core issue of breaking in half if it gets Bow to Bow rammed, but it means they could use the upper glacis as both Keel and primary armor, and not make the independent roles of a battle carrier suffer for their individuality.
I agree with all your points. Excellent analysis. I not only modify the turrets as you mention, I put some over the "wings" to cover the rear and also the forward.
On the Ventnor class The two bridges served separate purposes. The port side was a typical bridge. The starboard side was used for flight ops and air traffic controll. They may be referred to as "Destroyers/cruisers" but they are much more of a carrier or armored transport.
Just found your channel. I liked what I saw enough that I am starting from the beginning and hoping to watch your entire catalog. Funny, entertaining, and educational plus lots of science fiction fun.
All they'd have to do is to mount superfiring gun turrets where the large red hangar door is, and launch fighters from the port and starboard sides. Those make a whole lot more sense given how those are protected from a head-on attack position, and also would allow ships to enter one side and leave out the other when fuelled and armed up.
I just realized that the best strategy with the venator may well be to launch all the fighters before you're in range, go full speed at the enemy, then disable the inertial dampeners and yaw sideways to use all four cannons in a sort of drift.
It’s a unibody design by a Stage Scene designer who thought military service was a waste of time (his). Disney designed the dorsal hanger bay for its marketing department. Toy sales, fingers can get in to “launch” ships.
You can point all eight turrets at the enemy as long as you're willing to present the enemy with the largest target possible with both your bridges and your launch slot exposed.
I can understand the venator being a precursor to the already established imperial star destroyer, and thus you want to see design progression with the later improving upon the former, but super firing turrets, as you said, were figured out in WW1
The more I think about it... given the hangar bay entrance, you'd not want to have that exposed while engaging in a heavy ship-to-ship fight with another capital ship. So.. the broadside cannons make sense insofar as they're not leaving the gaping vulnerability out there to be shot at. However.. it'd make more sense to have the hanger bays entrances on the side, so that when the Venator charges towards the enemy, they have the least targetable cross-section presented, with guns positions so all could fire, while leaving the gaping holes to the ship's interiors out of the direct line of fire. Given some rumours that the Venator was a carrier pressed into service as a battle cruiser second.. that it's sort of bad at that second role makes sense.
8:26 in fairness is looks more like a really badly designed gunboat with a wedge shaped garage strapped to the front like a trailer lashed onto the front of a tank. missed the low-profile side-mounted weapons? that's FINE, you probably hit the bridge-structure or the rear-hangar entrances with your massed firepower. I still like the shape but those weapons are terribly placed, imagine if they were mounted in a front mounted quad (2 down, 2 up, or even 2 by 3 with the others on the endpoints of the "wings" for standoff purposes) on the front of the bridge structure ramp with the other 4 nearer the rear-section on a flare-out from that wedge in the back (like a turret on the side of a fort that's still connected by a wall). same broadside firepower but all 8 weapons capable of firing forward.
Honestly I'd have just mounted the 8 guns horizontally going diagonal across the hull on either both sides of the hangar or the "wings" toward the aft. You have more firing arcs that way and even if you spread the guns out across the hull you still have maximum gun coverage.
I get the feeling that Papa Palps wanted a way to bring the Sith designs back but also realized that he'd need some form of "capital" ship that would help with his "war" against the CIS in some way. It's likely that KDY was told to make a carrier fleet first, and then focus on the actual attack fleet.
And that's all from Episode One of Sacred Cow Shipyards. Please remember that any ships left in the docking area for more than 24 hours will be compressed into a cube and sold for scrap.
technically the massive doors covering the hangars are armored to the same level of the hull (or at least that is how they are treated in universe), how they manage that is another question
Venator is like an Hybrid Battlecruiser-carrier (something like Ise-class or Kiev-class but more aggressive) designed to get in the fight as fast possible (even in atmospherics) and their primary role of the ship itself is command their squads, provide space/land support and finally give heavy firepower (in a 3D space) One of my friends have a really nice official Star Wars guide and it details every single part of the Venator Class (and other "large" ships) with a wonderful visuals Of course has their serious design problems, but your breakdown lacks of some important information (like bottom hangar, double bridge 1 for the ship & 1 for the carrier mode, and more) but you have some nice points that I like Sorry, my english is a bit poor
The second bridge isn't actually a back up bridge. Its the flight ops section of the ship. One bridge is dedicated to controlling the ship, navigation, etc. while the other controls and commands the fighters and serves as a sort of ATC
The Venator's Starboard bridge is just that: A bridge from where the ship is flown. The Port side "bridge" is basically an Air Traffic Control tower completely devoted to its own hangar system. There probably is some Citadel Bridge in the ship that we haven't heard of yet.
the best move(for damage) would be to aim the top of the ship at the enemy so you can use all 8 guns at once. the 2nd best move(while taking in how big a target you are) would be sideways so you can at least use 4 guns while not presenting the biggest target. but they do neither. the actual best move would be to move the guns to diagonal lines so you can use all 8 while charging if they want to fix the double bridge problem, just put the second bridge at the base of the build-up-to-the-bridge(I don't even know what it's called, the 45 degree angle between the garage door and the bridges)
Jedi used this carrier as a battleship. Also, I knew someone who put a snow plow on a Ford Ranger. What something is build for, and what dumb people use them for are different. At least the Venator's MANY hangar access points were covered with solid doors AND shields. - The turret placement is unforgivable on this and all Star Wars pizza-slice ships. And Star Wars is positively addicted to putting the bridge out in the open with fragile windows, when it is FAR smarter to put your battle bridge in the mass-center of the ship, surrounded by as much armor as you can afford to put around it.
One of the things that is not really mentioned about the bridge layout is that there is a second room behind the traditional "navigation bridge" as it were that contains command & control elements, and is also sealed behind a blast door. Perhaps this is meant to be the battle bridge?
If someone bumps it from the bottom and splits it in two, each half will have it's own bridge... So it can just continue to function as two half-ships...
"Destroyer" has only been a ship class designation for a bit over a century. Same with "cruiser." "Destroyer" meaning "Battleship" as used in Star Wars and Babylon 5 works just fine - the ship that absolutely destroys all opposition. And how do you assess the two islands on the RN's QE class?
The dual islands on the QE's were dictated by the exhaust pipes for the powerplants. Joining the pipes together to allow for a single island would have taken up too much internal volume, so they went for double islands.
I don't think Destroyer is even a ship class in Star Wars, although there are ships that fulfill that role by our standards. They jump from corvette to cruiser to dreadnought. Star Destroyer is a style of ship, regardless of class, but usually reserved for cruisers.
The battle bridge of battleships was called conning tower. The citadel was the area protected by the main armor belt, which included the most critical parts of the ship, like the machinery and magazines. It also had enough boyancy to keep the ship afloat, should the ship take a lot of damage but the citadel remains unbreached.
The secondary bridge is for fighter control and organising the "airspace" for the carrier operations which the ship would regularly carry out. It serves the same purpose as the the new British carriers.
I always assumed that the double bridges are not a backup, but one is for ship operations, the other is for parasite craft or soldier operations. And then, I assume somewhere in the interior are two backup bridges.
I just realized that the front profile of the ship about 3-4 minutes in looks a little bit like Jar-Jar's head. I mean, it *could* be a coincidence... but I am skeptical of that.
I actually agree with pretty much everything you said, but I would like to mention 2 things. The Venator had a significant number of flaws and could have been used far more effectivly, but it was shown in broadside a number of times in the cinematic universe (although those were not as popular as the head on approach). I would argue that the main flaw of the Venator was not actually it's role in ship combat though, the problem was that it had to be used for every aspect of combat because it was one of the only capital ships fielded by the Republic. It had to be adept at not just space combat, but at landing troops for land invasions as well, which is why it had such a significant amount of hangar space. During most land invasions, the Venator had to field both troop transports and fighters to defend them, as well as bombers. Honestly, the Republic should have fielded two capital ships, a dedicated carrier as well as a main battleship, similar to how the CIS fielded both Lucrehulks for troop/aircraft transport, as well as Munificent class frigates (and eventually providence-class destroyers). The Venator was truly a jack of all trades, but because of that it was unable to fulfill any role perfectly.
so you got assigned to a Oliver hazard target, or is that a kidd class?, then assigned to a fleet aux. well hey least you weren't assigned as a EWO on a such classes as Allen M summer DD's, a C.F Adams class DD's, a Leahy Class DLG/ CG, and a Knox class FF/ FFG. no that was my grandfather's luck in his entire navy career.
I noticed the bridges problems on the Venator and the CIS ships as well, but the thing is, it's not a major flaw in star wars, as it is in real life, because in SW they don't shoot at bridges unless the plot requires it (except for maybe a few times? I've watched clone wars a long time ago). In short, it becomes a flaw only when the plot want it to be a flaw... sadly, as stipulated at the end of the video
@@shadowlord1418 Right on. The Venators' main batteries had a range of 10 light-minutes. Tall ship combat like the Battle of Coruscant would be uncommon in the extreme.
If you wanted to use all 8 cannons you could point the whole ship down, but with the significant downside of making yourself a larger target (shooting that giant central weak spot with all the fighters and ammo) and nullifying any armor you could of had.
It’s a carrier with extra guns and I never understood why they don’t put the guns in kinda a spear head formation so they could all fire forwards and to the sides. Or stager them like you said.
It's like outdated battleship doctrine made love to a carrier, and then the designers got shit faced when they were told to make a battleship carrier hybrid.
The Venator is a fantastic carrier, and has enough heavy guns and armor/shields to qualify as an attack carrier (something which I'm pretty sure only exists in fiction), but I agree 100% that it absolutely isn't a battleship.
for the cannon problem i imagine that they transfer the power allocated to all the turrets just to the front two when forward firing allowing for higher power and rate of fire. though why it was designed like that I cant think.
I know this is probably not going to get any attention, but I remember hearing in the lore that the starboard bridge wasn't a command deck. Rather, it was an air traffic control tower for the ship's fighter complement.
Thing about the Venator-class is that it's designed primarily as a carrier, same as the Secutor-class Star Destroyer that would be its spiritual successor, that's why it has two bridges. The biggest issue is that it was supposed to be used in tandem with actual front-line vessels like the Victory I-class Star Destroyers or Imperator-class (later known as the Imperial I-class) Star Destroyers though ships like the Victory I-class and the Imperator-class didn't come out till later into the war.
I've always kind of headcanoned these as being essentially flight-deck cruisers like the Kievs. Given that the Venator and Victory were developed more or less in parallel, the obvious conclusion is that the Victory was meant to be the primary line destroyer with the Venators acting mainly as carriers with a secondary ship-to-ship role. But the Victory ran into some sort of developmental delays and the Venator got shoehorned into the line role.
If I recall correctly the 2nd bridge is used for that purpose. Tho they don't say it in any material besides maybe an obscure book. But I like the theory of the the victory being ment to fight along side the venator
The Venator was a carrier that doubled as a ship-of-the-line. Development started prior to the war, and it entered combat weeks after Geonosis. The Victory 1 was developed far later into the war and entered combat (in Legends) during the Battle of Corescant.
And the dual bridges aren't dual bridges; one is the flight control tower.
Nice
@@JointedSpagel it is the 2nd bridge is the flight operations bridge.
This is exactly what happened. Palpating didn’t want the victory to come too soon so the republic was weak enough for him to continue the war.
The Venator: Hey, let's build a Carrier.
Also, let's make it our primary battleship
Also, let's not change any of the useful carrier bits in the process of making it a battleship
Also, let's put guns on it in the most inefficient way for a battleship
Seriously, in the right doctrine, the Venator is a BEAST. In the Doctrine of the Republic....the Venator is hot garbage.
However, it does make sense when you consider that the entire lead-up to the war on both sides was being engineered by the same conspiracy group, with the goal being to drag it on as a a bloody back-and-forth stalemate to justify both conspirator giving themselves more emergency powers (that they had no intention of giving up when the war ended). Also, the Republic was generally a corrupt mess and liked to design things by political committee.
The reason no Earth navy has ever built* a hybrid carrier/battleship is because it is a terrible idea. The requirements for a good carrier are very different from the requirements for a good battleship. The result of any hybrid of the two is a multirole ship that sucks at every role you put it in.
*In WW2, the Japanese did convert a couple of their older battleships to hybrid carriers by replacing the rear main turrets with flight decks, but this was a desperation move after their fleet carriers developed a bad case of being on the ocean floor. The hybrid ships only carried recon planes, and were never actually deployed.
@@st3vorocks290 pretty sure Japan tried the carrier battleship hybrid late in ww2 by modifying some existing battleship hulls to be a hybrid.
Don't think it worked very well for them
The Venator is a carrier with battleship ambitions.
Personally i like it, weird twin bridges aside, it has hangar entrances at the flanks as well, sadly we never see them being used...
If they would get rid if the ventral and dorsal hangar openings, the ship would be much better, and they should STACK the turrets, so more than one can shoot forward.
@@st3vorocks290 The Kiev class, while not quite a battleship carrier hybrid (I'd say it's more of a missile cruiser carrier hybrid) is somewhat close, as far as surface to surface combat those things packed a punch.
As I understand it, the second bridge is solely for carrier ops. The Venator is much more a carrier than the Imperials, indeed its primary role is to deliver a bunch of small craft to a fight and vomit them out as quickly as possible (thus the massive open hangar bay), and then deliver broadside fire in support.
And hyperspace capable fighters means you can launch your defensive/offensive fighters for a screen as a you jump into system, fight through enemy battle line, then afterwards launch landing forces once the enemy space forces are neutralized. Theoretically. Better option would be when working in a larger fleet would be what the US did in WW2 with its fleet and escort carriers, have certain ships dedicated to fighter ops, other holding back with landing forces, and a screen of ships acting as battleships to protect the ones running fighters. Benefit being that any loss of one carrier can be substituted with one of the other ships, and any of the ships can retrieve launch fighters.
Also, the real world Queen Elizabeth class of Carriers from the UK has a two tower setup with this exact system, one for controlling the ship, the other for landing/launching fighters, although as
Although with the Venator I'd question why the "aircraft" control tower is where it is, given that the fighters can VTOL out of the big central bay, and wouldn't it be more useful to have a control tower located closer to the main hangar/launch deck(and ideally able to have a layout that can also oversee launch preparations before the big doors are opened?)
If you're going to have big holographic displays for the higher officers, and loads of screens for the lesser officers and bridge staff to use, does the bridge even need to be so separated from the ship, even more so with bright red "shoot here for best effect" paint?
@@MandoWookie too be fair, hyperdrives weren't common on fighters during the Clone Wars. They did exist during the Venator's service life, but due to cost and space it still made some sense not to field an entire navy with such fightercraft.
@@torinnbalasar6774 But the Republic did field fighters with them. I figure that could be a fanon reason for the ARC-170s, an ostensible recon fighter, to be armed like a bomber. They could act as an advanced screen, keeping back both capital ships and fighters while the Venators launched the rest.
@Kabuki Kitsune not exactly the same thing, firstly the two bridges on the venator are in effectively the same position, on the QE carriers the front tower controls ship functions and navigation and is in the best postion for that role, the rear tower is set up for air operations control, and is in the optimal location for them, and even then if it wasnt for the need for two funnels for the engines and thus a choice between one long island or two smaller ones and a large aircraft elevator.
Venator on the other hand doesnt gain anything from the double bridge set up, if the control centers are so close together they may as well be one structure
"its a shame the empire could not come up with better captains" The problem was they were too paranoid to teach their captains good tactics.
You have to cut them some slack given that they are coming off a thousand years of peace. During that time all actions were police actions. The war itself was only 3 years, and the development of the ship was so rushed that is was in battles during the first year. The Acclamator class was no match for any enemy ship. The Venator borrowed a lot of Acclamator design features, but doubled many of them (two similar bridges, & twice the engines). Given the need to rush it into production, one would guess that it was designed to fill all roles. The Victory class was in production in the last year of the war, and shows that the Venator flaws did not go unnoticed.
Yeah the republic has never faced anything more than criminals for the longest time, in fact the separatists appearing was a massive surprise by everyone this is a fact, it was mentioned a lot in the movies and the shows, so the victory class was pretty much a stance of authority than actual combat, and the Jedi are “peace keepers” not generals or admirals, so their tactics would be perusing retreating bandits/pirates not facing actual military fleets so that would explain why they mostly charge head first instead of a broad side, same with hangers being on every side of the ship it’s a police vehicle hastily turned into a military ship so massive flaws are bound to happen.
Wasn't this designed by a child in real life?
The tactics used at the beginnings of most wars tend to mirror tactics that proved successful in the previous war. Which often results in catastrophic losses because new technology rendered those tactics obsolete. In WW1 the Germans tried to repeat what succeeded in their war against France in 1870/71 - fast paced maneuvering to force a decisive battle. They hadn't accounted for how much technological advances favoured defenders and got bogged down in trench warfare they weren't prepared for. In WW2 France tried to repeat that by by building massive defenses (the Maginot line) along the expected attack vector. The didn't account for how much motorization and the role aircraft progressed which allowed Germany to move through terrain that was deemed "unsuitable" for fast advances, by they outmaneuvered the French and forced to capitulate.
But I wonder: In what kind of technological environment does the "carry tons of fighters and then move in to exchange broadsides" make any tactical sense? Isn't the point of fighters to destroy the enemy before they can attack the carrier?
@@MrAranton The point was probably Shield Saturation of large ships and Defense against mechanized Droid Units. The Republic Starfighters were Leagues above anything produced in the Galaxy except a few Individual Ships like Jango's Slave 1 and a single well equipped Venator would have annihilated any Pirate outpost.
A rather effective Tactic is: Launching your Fighter Swarm, Driving towards the enemy ship, let your Anti Fighter Cannons destroy the enemy Fighters while tanking enemy fire with the honestly ridiculous durability of the Venator and decimating the Enemy Ship with your Bombers and Main Turrets. Less intelligent on modern Carriers, but let's just say you have more Leway if you have the Shield Power Advantage
In my opinion the Venator is amazing for what it was “supposed to do” It was clearly designed as carrier ship that could launch hundreds of fighters very fast, hence the enormous hanger bay, the problem is that the republic jammed it into the attack ship role because of delays with their other ship designs and the lack of aclamators being produced. It was actually stronger than most CIS ships alone, the problem is that the CIS was very good with their military doctrines when it came to space battles, as they had usually pretty weak ships by themselves good at few roles, but combined them in configurations and formations that were very hard to break by the republic. Generally (for a blockade) they had 2 command ships in the back, which being repurposed freight ships could launch thousands of fighters, they didn’t need them to be fast because they weren’t battleships, they had only 2 jobs, giving commands to the fleet, and launching a ton of fighters. Then they have a heavy destroyer or 2 at the front, flanked by cruisers with light armor, but double cannons that could punch through nearly anything. I could go on, but basically the CIS really had it figured out, and probably would have won the war if it weren’t for the sith.
It's to be expected given that the CIS had some amount of experience from earlier conflicts which their members had fought in that their fleets would be better handled and more suited in a doctrinal role. In addition, having droids designed to perfectly wield these ships from the doctrinal standpoint would make them more effective than republic fleet officers during the war, at least for a little while. You are right though; the Venator was perfectly designed to do what is was supposed to do, and was pretty damn good at it too. In addition, it was well designed for a war effort that demanded building an entire navy effectively from scratch and developing doctrine to use these ships effectively, and the only real way the republic was ever going to have a hope in hell of achieving any kind of victory was to make the ships as uniform and as brain dead to use as possible. Given that the Jedi were commanding them a good portion of the time and not seasoned fleet officers you can kind of understand why this was so. The only two real design flaws in the venator is that the bridge is not centrally located in the citadel of the ship (given how many other ship designs on both sides of the war suffered from this exact flaw, it isn't really a flaw in their line of thinking) and that there aren't a matching set of guns to cover the underside of the ship. Remember that space isn't a linear battlefield, it's 3 dimensional, and if all your guns are on the (relative) top of the ship you have nothing to cover the underside if anyone decides to maneuver under your ship and fire at it. The one thing I disagree with in his analysis is the placement of the guns; all it takes for the commander of a venator to have all of his guns on target from the front is to tilt the ship downward slightly. It will give the enemy a larger target to shoot at, but you don't have to depress the bow of the ship massively to obtain this effect. It would be better from a logical standpoint to set the turrets in a super firing configuration, but then if the venator is caught in a broadside fight the undersides of the turrets will be able to be targeted and destroyed by the attacking ship.
The Biggest sin against the Venator though, is that the empire ditched it after the clone wars. It was a design that could have been perfectly adapted for counterinsurgency ops and was ditched for the all big guns shitfest that was the Imperial Star destroyer.
@@PrinceOfDolAlmroth the Problem was the imperial star destroyer were made first and only later they had the idea of making carriers but then needed to give in universe explanations which generally turns out badly.
@@PrinceOfDolAlmroth But that makes sense, as Empire never feared Rebels up to the point of Empire Strikes Back. TExcluding Yuuzan Vong plot, their focus on big gund etc kinda have sence. We know from our world taht it is often a thing with military to prepare for previous war. Empire was more consumed on possibility of large-scale uprising similliar to separatist movement, or even outer rim worlds uniting to stop possible expansion of the Empire.
In New Hope Rebels are kinda weak faction, with small fighter fleet and founded only by few senators. It was after destruction of Alderaan that they slowly started to get massive support... and it's all makes sense.
Empire was never ready to deal with rebelion of that kind, their fleet was build around doctrine of conquering systems and large battles, their counter intelligence treated possible rebels as spies of enemy state, becouse that was their doctrine.
Looking at this ship. I can imagine a doctrine where two lines of these jump in. The forward lines turn or tilt-forward and engage as attack ships and the rear launch fighters. The two lines then switch places. Then all the capital ships maneuver to keep maximum guns engaged with enemies.
I do wish the guns were terraced though.
Personally I like trying to command a Fighter wing with half my view cut off by those bastards in tower B
god DAMNIT tower B!
I hate those guys. Every time I look over there they're pretending to hump each other or flipping us off or something
@@AreGeeBee it's like those Twix commercials
I never thought about that either 😂
The Venator is like a flying example of "opportunity cost". It can land a couple battalions of troops, it can launch and recover huge numbers of fighters and bombers, and it has battleship-caliber big guns, all in one package - but good luck using more than one of those abilities in any given engagement, because picking any option means the other two have to stay benched.
If it's in a gunfight, its armored hangar doors need to stay closed, preventing the use of strike craft or dropships, or else a hit to the Venator's brightly lit center of mass will wreck the hangars, with their stores of fuel and munitions. If it's landing troops or using strike craft, its zipper is open and it better not get into gunfights until those operations are over - hours or days - because it may need to recover its launched assets in the near future. On top of that, launching either type (dropships or strike craft) means the other has to wait its turn, and the traffic that Flight Ops needs to manage gets increasingly complicated.
One advantage is by most of the fighters having hypdrives they could launch Squadrons into battle and also retrieve them when Hyperspace out.
@@barrybend7189 V-19 and alpha-3 didn't had hyperdrive and ARC-170 were more of recon wing like XG1 on ISD. If your fleet uses hyperdrive capable strike fighters, why bother with assautl carier, when you can launch and form up before jumping into action?
@@antonisauren8998 exactly if I'm not mistaken I'm pretty sure that's why the rebellion didn't have any dedicated carriers is because most of their fighters had hyperdrives but tie's have to be garrisoned in facilities or ships since they didn't have any
You can recover via the ventral Bay so as long as everything is launched it can stay buttoned up
If you have a fleet (3or more )one can launch fighters, one can launch bombers and last when if gets a chance and launch what ever is needed
Is anyone gonna mention that the ship has literally no weapons on the bottom of it and a Jedi had to modify their ships to add a laser at the bottom to give it some defense
He did make a hell of an effective group of ships with that change. His fleet was hella effective in the Battle of Coruscant.
About launching fighters quickly not being a big deal: Its a huge deal in the Star Wars universe, especially in the situation that the Republic was in. The CIS (Also known as the Confederacy Of Independent Systems) Used fast and light fighters deployed in huge numbers, like the TIE fighter. The Republic tended to use slower fighters such as the ARC-170. So if the CIS launched 500 fighters per say at a moments notice, if you slowly launched fighters, lets say 10 at a time, they would get picked off one by one until the reserves were low. If you launched 1/2 of these high quality fighters all at once, they would at least put in major breathing room for the other half to deploy, therefore giving you fighter superiority, and having the ability to have bomber support. I agree with everything else you talked about, except for this statement.
the double bridge: star wars tech is stuck in the seventies, the captains need to use their eyes to see what they need to shoot at though i do agree that the second bridge could be moved down to the dorsal armored section under the primary bridge. the guns, eh i see that as a back up ie the venator was meant to be a dedicated carrier but the war forced the ship to be changed into an assault ship party way through design.
Perhaps the other bridge is a dedicated flight control tower for the sorties the venator deploys. It would "kiiinda" make sense but is a bit of a stretch.
@@tokenfinnishguy8714 It is a bridge for fighter ops. One bridge handled normal battleship commands, so that splits the responsibilities between them and it helps both sides focus on their respective jobs.
Oh come on, why don't you like the assualt-carria-cruiser? It's got everything you need.
It's got what plants crave
Saying this in my old timey salesman voice with a good ole slap on a thing is my favorite thing today
Specialization is actually a good thing
Space Bradley
@@khartog01 F L E S H
This reminded me of a general scifi gripe w the designs. I first noticed it as a kid watching ST. And then they hung a hat on it in st2.
Non 3d thinking. You could for instance bring all of a venators guns on target if they could elevate enough and you rolled the ship. Granted, that would increase your profile, but its give and take.
So far the expanse has done the best job in general for logical design.
But for a space wizard universe, why not coopt one of the shield ships designed w a whacking great forward "shield" for use around stars, cut out weps emplacements, and just charge in guns blazing? They already dont care about aft weps or sensor coverage.
space magic says that if your space ship is big you aren't allowed to pitch or roll it unless it's on fire
@@bobmcbob49 the "rolling if youre on fire" made me think that the really sad part is that i can actually imagine some hollywood asshat whos seen Memphis belle too many times trying to pitch that as an awesome shot "the ship pitches over and heads towards the planet to try to extinguish the flames..."😂
@@blackc1479 I'm just saying the only time you see a large ship pitch or roll in star wars is if it's "crashing"
@@bobmcbob49 oh i totally agree, offhand the best non expanse shots i can really think of are from BSG, like when the pegasus comes charging to the rescue from off plane.
Hell, im a huge fan of it but even b5 fell into that trap w their capital ships.
Here's my criticism of the Venator: it was a jack of all trades, a master of none. Against the capital ships of the Confederacy, most of which are just cargo transports and communications frigates stuffed with more guns, this was fine, as the Venator was stronger than any of them. However, it was nowhere near as strong in ship combat as say, an Imperial-class Star Destroyer, which had far more anti-warship guns (ISDs have five dozen heavy turbolasers, Venators have 8 heavy turbolasers) and far heavier shielding.
The ISD was the natural evolution, since even with its impressive firepower, the Venators during the Clone Wars were stretched thin against larger enemy warships like the Providence-class Carriers and the Subjugator-class dreadnoughts. It also needs to open up its central hangar to unleash the majority of its fighters, which will leave it vulnerable if the enemy is firing at you. In contrast, an ISD can release TIEs from its side hangars or its bottom hangar, which keeps the ship safe while the fighting is going on.
Sure, the Venator would do fine against outdated pirate vessels and Separatist remnants, but once those large Mon Calamari ships of the Rebel Alliance start showing up, they'll tear the Venators to shreds, since they have six times the amount of heavy turbolaser guns the Venators do. That, and the Rebel fleet is typically protected by corvettes which are good at shooting down enemy fighters, so carrying more fighters won't turn the tide.
The Venators would do better as backup ships, staying behind the Imperial Star Destroyers and letting the latter dish out heavy firepower while taking the brunt of the damage, while the Venators hang back, release wave after wave of TIEs, and act as fire support for the ISDs.
Don't forget that by the time the ISD's and MC's came along, the Venerators were obsolete. Any that were still in service wold have been in training roles or in backwater postings where they would be unlikely to run into that sort of opposition.
The ISD originates from the victory class. Which was being developed at the same time as the venator but was delayed.
@@robertharris6092 they were still using victory class star destroyers in the galactic civil war and the Imperial remnant also used victories like crimson command
Venator had a bottom hanger for the main hanger and two side hangers that I'm not sure are connected to the main hanger or not.
@@jayvhoncalma3458 they were using victory IIs. Which replaced the long range missile ordanance for additional turbo lasers and ion cannons as well as more powerful engines. And i think better shielding. But yes. The victory was a fast, mid sized ship that packed a lot of fire power which was basically a frigate.
“From the clone wars series of animated shows by Disney”
Cartoon Network: WE STAND HERE AMIDST MY ACHIEVEMENT, NOT YOURS!
I suppose you could dip the nose of the ship relative to your target to bring all turrets to bare on it, but then you're exposing the flight deck to enemy fire.
Well, the flight deck does have the heavily armoured dorsal doors.
you could re route power to just the front two cannons for more power and rate of fire, that's my head cannon atleast
I see the Venator in canon as Kuat Drive Yards' attempt at a Harrower class Dreadnought of the Sith empire in 3650BBY. Heck in Kotor era there was the Centurion that for being 100 meters longer carries equally as much support craft, greater firepower and troops. So i blame how short the war is and 1000 years of stagnate ship design.
The Acclamator class outguns the Harrower in every capacity though.
@@GonnaDieNever I also mentioned the Centurion as well.
I love the venator, but yeah it’s not the best design. I wanna give the designers the benefit of the doubt and say it’s flaws were on purpose, but I know it was likely accidental.
Lore wise it makes sense. The acclimator is too small and lightly armed for a line role as it’s supposed to be a troop transport, the victory class is being developed to be a proper attack ship but isn’t ready yet, and the venator should be a carrier but it gets stuffed into a line/ battleship role. And the Imperator/Imperial 1 is too late to be of any use during the war it was developed for. And following the war the failings of the venator class are so glaring that the empire shifts its entire battle doctrine away from carriers and strike craft. The designers of the venator accidentally did a good job justifying the empire being brain dead when it comes to strike craft.
But yeah. No real arguments from me here. The top bay doors take forever to open btw It might be better if the doors were in sections that could be opened and closed individually, but instead if you want to launch a squadron of fighters you have to open the whole top section which is dumb.
Despite this being my favorite ship, I don't disagree with any of this. Number one thing with Star Wars is visual asthetics and the Venator takes that to the max
The Jedi love em because they're carriers first and foremost, and a Jedi's preferred position in a space battle is in the cockpit of a fighter- at least, the ones we follow in Clone Wars.
Not counting Kenobi
@@Sephiroth144 "I hate flying"
I guess this is where Battle Stars got it right by not making their landing pods a structural Support.
plus launchtubes, in case you want to launch lots of fighters quick...
@@pouncepounce7417 and on the Mercury class, dedicated auxiliary craft bays along the sides so that main deck operations can be kept clear for combat landings.
I just don't like how it looks like a Gungan from the front. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the glaring weakness of the lack of underside guns on this ship! It's one of the things me and my group of friends point out all the time.
So yea, I gotta admit, I've never liked the idea of commanding one of these ships. But like others have pointed out, the venator was baby steps towards the imperial class and whatnot
What about all the underside and rear of the ship that are basically defenseless?
As someone who loves history I like how you make parallels to its earth history counterparts
I've not looked this up for a long time- but I think I recall reading somewhere that one bridge is for ship control and general navigation, communication and operations and the other one is specifically for the flight control operations of the ship as a Carrier - (so fighter operations) but may also have been responsible for cargo management.
As for the open Dorsal bay doors - this is because the spine of the ship is accessible to cargo and fighters across most of the ship - the same is true of a Later model Star Destroyer but the central corridor is covered over and the exits are on the side not the top.
A First Order Star Destroyer is an odd mix of enclosed and exposed that to be honest may be way worse.
The Venator class dorsal unloading is a trifle "weird" though - especially in an atmosphere - but still perhaps less weird than Voyager's landing legs in Star Trek. Perhaps another way to look at it is like cargo loading doors on a ship.
But the speed with which the Venator can launch and recover fighters is a bit odd - the logistics of getting them all back in could work - or could be an epic fail - The Battlestar Galactica method may be more sensible - with fast deployment and normal landing & recovery through the main bays.
But it does have a side bay so there is nothing stopping the fighters from using that too to land a few at a time rather than in a swarm that could smash into each other.
I did read a suggestion that they could "tightly pack" fighters for pick up and they all sit there and wait or travel in a tight formation and the Ventaor class ship could do a Z+ axis manoeuvre and swallow them all whole and immediately jump to lightspeed before even shutting the doors moments later. - But seems more like wish fulfilment to me to think that could safely happen often.
From what I remember (correct me if I’m wrong) the venator was designed last minute and rushed into production into a galaxy that hadn’t so much as heard or war in around a millennium or so. And when used properly by non plot armored Character it was typically in a carrier fleet formation as a carrier/flag ship. Escorted by acclamators and other support vessels. But the show/ movies don’t show that to well because it’s not flashy for the screen. I will say your review was extremely accurate to the in galaxy flaws that lead to its abandonment after the clone wars.
As soon as you become aware that the Venator resembles Jar Jar's head complete with eye stalks, you can never unsee it.
“Noooooooooooooooooo...!”
I assume that was the real reason for Anakin’s anguished scream at the end of Episode 3; he was just told of the Venator/Jar Jar similarity.
I just noticed that while watching this video!! Why have I never seen that before?!?
Here’s what I would do to improve the venator
Number 1: Make the bridge on a much lower stock and add camera sensors on top
Number 2: Take away the broadside guns , And add 2 on the front side , the other pair will go inward, so they both can fire
Number 3: Angle down the hull slightly to make more room
Number 4 , place the secondary bridge inside the hull
Number 5: Take away that massive plate in the top and add hangars in some other place .
Number 6: Add 2 turrets on the back to cover the engines.
You sir are the kind of sci-fi-techno-realism nerd that I have been looking for. Thank you.
Explaining the bridges made me laugh. It’s like I could hear how you saw it as so blatantly dumb, you wondered why you had to explain it.
Sacred Cow Shipyards. "You should be up in arms because I'm ripping your ship apart."
Me: "He's right you know."
As I understand it, the Venator is primarily a troop transport/space craft carrier first and formost. The heavy turbo laser batteries were clearly secondary function.
Crappy space tactics were apparently the fault of the Jedi generals who never bothered to learn to become semi-competent about space combat despite having final say on how entire battle fleets operated. Rank and file officers mostly hated the Jedi for their space to space incompetence in addition to being in final command of the fleet.
Well, in this case, crappy tactics were a byproduct of crappy design, which was apparently fractally wrong.
When it comes to space based warships, I'd have a standard deck template that comprises all the basic requirements of bridge, power generation, medical bay, storage, waste processing, recycling and "chilling out" (and all other things I've likely forgotten) repeated over and over from bow to stern in a "rocket ship" dual configuration that has the entire concept mirrored on the ceiling of each deck. Well, basically heavily armed rugby ball at least 500 metres long with engines aft and forward that has more redundancies and backups than a Borg ship.
The second bridge isn’t a backup, it’s a star fighter control bridge, but of course we didn’t get to see it in operation. But overall the exposed bridges, on most of it’s ships, are silly.
Well, the biggest issue is that ship was designed as a carrier, but it was designated and used as sort of a battle carrier, and while it’s guns could be powerful, it’s main weapon were supposed to be their to 420 Star fighters and/or other ships it supposedly could carry. Basically what they do on the show is drive their equivalent to the Nimitz up to the line of enemy battleships and get surprised why they get their ass handed to them again and again.
So, the ship itself, if used properly could have been much more effective, although you need to remember that ultimately neither side was meant to win this war, as the Chancellor Palpatine was basically commanding both sides. But the reality is, they added a few guns to a super carrier and thought that it could function as a carrier and battleship, and of course we never saw more than a dozen or two fighters deploy from any single Venator. I mean this about it, in that final image, those 4 ships should have been able to deploy over 1,600 fighters, bombers and small gunships, which should have been deployed from close, but safe distance, and with a screen of actual destroyers be between the Venator and the enemy fleet to protect the carrier from enemy ships, fighters and bombers and to mop up after the fighters and bombers are done with the enemy fleet.
Well if you want to attack an enemy in front of you with this thing then you could just angle your course so that you fly slightly below the enemy rather than coming straight at them. That way all eight turrets could fire up at the enemy at once. Or you could even just angle your ship itself to fly straight at the enemy while slightly tilted forward which would achieve the same effect.
This would mean however that writers have to acknowledge that space combat takes place in 3D space not along a plain like sailing ship combat, which to my knowledge no mainstream series has yet to do.
In clone wars they once tilted a ship and used its bottom as protection but that is the only is ranch I recall
My idea on how to fix the fact that both bridges are identical and right next to each other is that there could be a SINGLE bridge up on top like the Acclamator class assault ship while the secondary backup bridge could be located lower in the superstructure where it's more heavily fortified.
Nice breakdown and I agree. A couple of questions though, say you did a breakdown of the Battlestar Galactica would you need to separate the 1978 version from the 2006 version or would you break them down as just one ship? Second any thought on the Star Trek 2 wrath of Khan battle between the Enterprise vs. the Reliant?
The two Galacticas are sufficiently different - especially with the retractable flight decks - that they're probably worth talking about independently.
The Wrath of Khan battle was definitely a welcome departure from Star Trek's usual "all ships are on the same plane, looking at each other like they're in a 2D universe" setup, and had more than a little call-back to submarine fights. Clone Wars also had an interesting example of sub-type combat in an episode with a stealth ship.
Though I’m curious what you think of the Seperatists and their navy’s capital ship be it the Lucrehulks or sleek Providence
*twitch*
I'll add them to the list.
My personal take on the Lucrehulks: it had a very solid design for a dedicated fleet carrier, and would probably have been the best carrier in the war if used as such. Separatists decided it should serve the role of a battleship.
@@SacredCowShipyards i thought the providence has 2 fake bridges on top of a tower and on the bottom
@@martenkahr3365 the lucrehulk was alwayw a carrier first and formost. It carried hundreds if notvthousands of fighters. And it was a retrofitted cargoship.
As I understand it
From lore persoective
The Venator was supposed to be a purely carrier role and with the Victory class being the command and main attack ship however due to reasons they werent be able to be built in time and enough numbers to be widely used by republic forces
if I remember correctly, before the clone wars animated 3d series the venator launched the fighters from the side hangars (old battlefront games), there's a small door in the dorsal part of the ship, and the lower hangar was for bigger ships to dock in, and also stored a huge laser canon thing, but the huge dorsal doors were added for the cartoon (those were featured also on the 2004 2d cartoon because it looks cool i guess) but the movie version doesn't have the huge dorsal hangar doors.
The in-universe reasoning for the double bridge is that, for being a carrier/star destroyer hybrid, one of the bridges acts to command the ship, while the other commands the air group.
And, if I really wanted to look at it in too much of a detail, the ventral hangar door is positioned aft relative to the massive dorsal one, so it is feasible that some from of a keel is indeed in place, it just runs on the ventral side of the front part of the ship and then switches to the dorsal side of the aft part of the ship.
SW ships in general are pants-on-head (and not just ships...), but would it really hurt them to, I don't know, put 4 turrets ventral, 4 dorsal in a 'Y' or 'T' letter arrangement (one forward, 2 lateral, central superfiring), for 8 turrets forward coverage, 6 broadside?
I honestly consider it a carrier… and i don’t know why they would try to use it as a battleship.
The Venator may be an aesthetically pleasing ship but its problems are quite serious when thoroughly analyzed along with what was said in the video.
When it comes to this ship we have to take a few considerations in mind, this design was probably made to only look similar to the ISDs but also as something refreshing with a clear design lineage although this ship would end up just being a background ship for Revenge of the Sith. Furthermore, since this vessel was now canon the Clone Wars TV show was stuck having to use this ship design although luckily we did get some more ships and a refitted consular. I believe canonically these ships were also hastily designed and put into service because of the millennium of peace and the sudden war.
How to fix the Venator Class Star Destroyer
Step 1: This isn't a physical change but a doctrine change for this vessel. Instead of being used as a front line multi-role capital ship which was honestly a horrible idea but rather use this as a fleet carrier for massive amounts of fighters. The Republic used these ships for close quarters combat which time and time again proved this vessels inability in. Republic commanders also used venator's as ground attack transports which took away from potential fighter storage and further removed the vessels combat ability. The Acclimator exists, let that ship do what its meant to do as a ground attack/transport ship.
Step 2: Removal of the dorsal hangar door. This thing is beyond unnecessary and with its removal increases its usable internal structure which allows for not only more places for potential shield generation, power generation or weapon emplacements but also increases the amount of fighters that can be stored aboard the ship while leaving the ship better protected.
Step 3: Deletion of the command towers. Who wants to be commanding a fighter squadron from these things? Imagine trying to direct your fighter force when the idiots in bridge 2 block your sight with they're entire bridge wing! This frees up tonnage, power drain and cost to be placed into a redesigned superstructure that incorporates a bridge system.
Step 4: Use the new space from the deleted bridge area for sensory equipment or more weapon emplacements.
Step 5: Stagger the primary weapons as said in the video and fill in the small gaps below the turrets. (yes they are there if you look)
Step 6: Place an identical weapon placement in the ventral part of the ship which is also super-firing as stated in the video. Including point defense weapons, anti-fighter missiles and what not that's needed to fight fighters and other enemy ships.
Step 7: The Addition of a dual turbo-laser emplacement on each corner of the rear wings of the ship for not only firing forward and to the sides, but to the rear as well.
Step 8: Down the center superstructure of the venator we have a long slope, use that slope for potential weapon emplacements like we see in FractalSponge ship designs to further the ships combat ability, I see no reason why this isn't possible.
Step 9: Decrease hyper-drive speed rating from 1 to either 1.5 or 2 to decrease power requirements and cost for the hyper-drive.
Step 10: Redesign of the broadside weaponry. The broadside weaponry on this ship is pretty weird, in Revenge of the Sith we see these artillery rooms which also showed a serious vulnerability to ammo detonations in broadside combat plus combined with the huge ventral hangar door caused venator loses which we can see in the clone wars. Either have less but heavier weapons be spread out along the side or more mixed weaponry, more anti-capital ship proton torpedo tubes/launchers wouldn't hurt.
Step 11: Place more ion cannons throughout the ship to disable starships and other craft.
Step 12 (Optional): Replace the heavy dual turbolasers this ship has with single but much larger turbolaser emplacements that has similar firing modes. This gives the ship 16 primary f**K you guns for anti-ship combat.
That just about sums it up!
3:00 - Yeah this actually happens in-show as well, in one instance a Venator is under attack and has one of the bridges destroyed, and you'll never guess what takes the brunt of the explosion and debris of the exploding first bridge...... the other bridge, what a shock.
I like this. You touched on weakness that don’t normally talk about, (usually getting bogged down on it lacking armament)
But I think the main issue is that it’s too much of a jack of all trades, but fails to optimize anything other than its fighter complement
the Venator is actually more heavily armed and armored then ISDs by feats.
the whole Star Destroyer category of Battle Carriers is fucking stupid, but the Venator would be ok if it got a refit to move the Planetary Operations Command into an armored location, fix the double-tower configuration, and add citadel rises to the existing citadel to get the mounted cannons able to superfire. The other major change that the Venator needs would be to switch the side its main hangar doors are on, from the top to the bottom. This wouldnt stop the ship's core issue of breaking in half if it gets Bow to Bow rammed, but it means they could use the upper glacis as both Keel and primary armor, and not make the independent roles of a battle carrier suffer for their individuality.
@@F14thunderhawk its only got 8 heavy turbolasers, some proton torpedo launchers, and a bunch of point defense guns.
The split like a matchstick bit happens in the 2003 animated clone wars mini series
I agree with all your points.
Excellent analysis.
I not only modify the turrets as you mention, I put some over the "wings" to cover the rear and also the forward.
On the Ventnor class The two bridges served separate purposes. The port side was a typical bridge. The starboard side was used for flight ops and air traffic controll. They may be referred to as "Destroyers/cruisers" but they are much more of a carrier or armored transport.
Just found your channel. I liked what I saw enough that I am starting from the beginning and hoping to watch your entire catalog. Funny, entertaining, and educational plus lots of science fiction fun.
Fun thing, the Venator has FOUR opening, two are on the sides where the trapezoid shaped concaved areas on the sides are
All they'd have to do is to mount superfiring gun turrets where the large red hangar door is, and launch fighters from the port and starboard sides. Those make a whole lot more sense given how those are protected from a head-on attack position, and also would allow ships to enter one side and leave out the other when fuelled and armed up.
I just realized that the best strategy with the venator may well be to launch all the fighters before you're in range, go full speed at the enemy, then disable the inertial dampeners and yaw sideways to use all four cannons in a sort of drift.
Pitch down instead of yaw. Why only use half of your fire power 8)
So basically it has to be a Initial D character to be good?
Hmm, sounds reasonable and I'm betting it would look cool as hell. (Rule of cool you know.)
@@SudrianTales Well, this is space, whenever the engines ar off, you're drifting, pun fully intended
It’s a unibody design by a Stage Scene designer who thought military service was a waste of time (his). Disney designed the dorsal hanger bay for its marketing department. Toy sales, fingers can get in to “launch” ships.
To be fair, the Venator was designed before the Disney buyout.
I love Venator, but i totally agree with you. But yes, most of the Star Wars ships have always sacrifized practicality for intimidating/ cool look.
Look where the sacred cow came from, and the quality, and that voice :o.... Got better with time, like fine wine
Well, mostly the recording equipment got better.
You can point all eight turrets at the enemy as long as you're willing to present the enemy with the largest target possible with both your bridges and your launch slot exposed.
Every time I see a Venator's silhouette, I look for the front post of the iron sights.
I can understand the venator being a precursor to the already established imperial star destroyer, and thus you want to see design progression with the later improving upon the former, but super firing turrets, as you said, were figured out in WW1
Pre WW1, though they weren't common, super-firing turrets were on a few ships though mostly one-off designs that saw little if any real use.
The victory is the precursor to the imperial class. Not the venator.
The more I think about it... given the hangar bay entrance, you'd not want to have that exposed while engaging in a heavy ship-to-ship fight with another capital ship. So.. the broadside cannons make sense insofar as they're not leaving the gaping vulnerability out there to be shot at. However.. it'd make more sense to have the hanger bays entrances on the side, so that when the Venator charges towards the enemy, they have the least targetable cross-section presented, with guns positions so all could fire, while leaving the gaping holes to the ship's interiors out of the direct line of fire.
Given some rumours that the Venator was a carrier pressed into service as a battle cruiser second.. that it's sort of bad at that second role makes sense.
8:26 in fairness is looks more like a really badly designed gunboat with a wedge shaped garage strapped to the front like a trailer lashed onto the front of a tank.
missed the low-profile side-mounted weapons? that's FINE, you probably hit the bridge-structure or the rear-hangar entrances with your massed firepower.
I still like the shape but those weapons are terribly placed, imagine if they were mounted in a front mounted quad (2 down, 2 up, or even 2 by 3 with the others on the endpoints of the "wings" for standoff purposes) on the front of the bridge structure ramp with the other 4 nearer the rear-section on a flare-out from that wedge in the back (like a turret on the side of a fort that's still connected by a wall). same broadside firepower but all 8 weapons capable of firing forward.
Honestly I'd have just mounted the 8 guns horizontally going diagonal across the hull on either both sides of the hangar or the "wings" toward the aft. You have more firing arcs that way and even if you spread the guns out across the hull you still have maximum gun coverage.
I get the feeling that Papa Palps wanted a way to bring the Sith designs back but also realized that he'd need some form of "capital" ship that would help with his "war" against the CIS in some way. It's likely that KDY was told to make a carrier fleet first, and then focus on the actual attack fleet.
And that's all from Episode One of Sacred Cow Shipyards.
Please remember that any ships left in the docking area for more than 24 hours will be compressed into a cube and sold for scrap.
"...you won't want to watch"
You can't tell me what to do. I'm watching.
technically the massive doors covering the hangars are armored to the same level of the hull (or at least that is how they are treated in universe), how they manage that is another question
Venator is like an Hybrid Battlecruiser-carrier (something like Ise-class or Kiev-class but more aggressive) designed to get in the fight as fast possible (even in atmospherics) and their primary role of the ship itself is command their squads, provide space/land support and finally give heavy firepower (in a 3D space)
One of my friends have a really nice official Star Wars guide and it details every single part of the Venator Class (and other "large" ships) with a wonderful visuals
Of course has their serious design problems, but your breakdown lacks of some important information (like bottom hangar, double bridge 1 for the ship & 1 for the carrier mode, and more) but you have some nice points that I like
Sorry, my english is a bit poor
The second bridge isn't actually a back up bridge. Its the flight ops section of the ship. One bridge is dedicated to controlling the ship, navigation, etc. while the other controls and commands the fighters and serves as a sort of ATC
The Venator's Starboard bridge is just that: A bridge from where the ship is flown. The Port side "bridge" is basically an Air Traffic Control tower completely devoted to its own hangar system. There probably is some Citadel Bridge in the ship that we haven't heard of yet.
the best move(for damage) would be to aim the top of the ship at the enemy so you can use all 8 guns at once. the 2nd best move(while taking in how big a target you are) would be sideways so you can at least use 4 guns while not presenting the biggest target. but they do neither. the actual best move would be to move the guns to diagonal lines so you can use all 8 while charging
if they want to fix the double bridge problem, just put the second bridge at the base of the build-up-to-the-bridge(I don't even know what it's called, the 45 degree angle between the garage door and the bridges)
Jedi used this carrier as a battleship. Also, I knew someone who put a snow plow on a Ford Ranger.
What something is build for, and what dumb people use them for are different.
At least the Venator's MANY hangar access points were covered with solid doors AND shields.
-
The turret placement is unforgivable on this and all Star Wars pizza-slice ships.
And Star Wars is positively addicted to putting the bridge out in the open with fragile windows, when it is FAR smarter to put your battle bridge in the mass-center of the ship, surrounded by as much armor as you can afford to put around it.
The windows are not made of glass but rather Transparasteel. It's just another hull plating but one you can see out of.
i just realized the arquitens is just the forward part of the venator compare them side by side omg
It's a common design pattern.
I found once, that this two bridges, aren't primary and secondary, but one for commanding the starfighters, and one for commanding the ship.
One of the things that is not really mentioned about the bridge layout is that there is a second room behind the traditional "navigation bridge" as it were that contains command & control elements, and is also sealed behind a blast door. Perhaps this is meant to be the battle bridge?
If someone bumps it from the bottom and splits it in two, each half will have it's own bridge... So it can just continue to function as two half-ships...
"Destroyer" has only been a ship class designation for a bit over a century. Same with "cruiser." "Destroyer" meaning "Battleship" as used in Star Wars and Babylon 5 works just fine - the ship that absolutely destroys all opposition. And how do you assess the two islands on the RN's QE class?
The dual islands on the QE's were dictated by the exhaust pipes for the powerplants. Joining the pipes together to allow for a single island would have taken up too much internal volume, so they went for double islands.
I don't think Destroyer is even a ship class in Star Wars, although there are ships that fulfill that role by our standards. They jump from corvette to cruiser to dreadnought. Star Destroyer is a style of ship, regardless of class, but usually reserved for cruisers.
Destroyer doesnt mean battleship... theres ships far bigger than an imperial 1.
What I am wondering is why they don't seem to have any turrets on the bottom?
I’m now waiting for you to do the Musai from Gundam.
The battle bridge of battleships was called conning tower. The citadel was the area protected by the main armor belt, which included the most critical parts of the ship, like the machinery and magazines. It also had enough boyancy to keep the ship afloat, should the ship take a lot of damage but the citadel remains unbreached.
It makes more sense to have the bridges as range finders and put the squishy commanders in the hull behind some armor.
The secondary bridge is for fighter control and organising the "airspace" for the carrier operations which the ship would regularly carry out. It serves the same purpose as the the new British carriers.
I always assumed that the double bridges are not a backup, but one is for ship operations, the other is for parasite craft or soldier operations. And then, I assume somewhere in the interior are two backup bridges.
I just realized that the front profile of the ship about 3-4 minutes in looks a little bit like Jar-Jar's head. I mean, it *could* be a coincidence... but I am skeptical of that.
I love the Venator like many others, but you are right in every single criticism you give. Love the vids, keep em coming!
I actually agree with pretty much everything you said, but I would like to mention 2 things. The Venator had a significant number of flaws and could have been used far more effectivly, but it was shown in broadside a number of times in the cinematic universe (although those were not as popular as the head on approach). I would argue that the main flaw of the Venator was not actually it's role in ship combat though, the problem was that it had to be used for every aspect of combat because it was one of the only capital ships fielded by the Republic. It had to be adept at not just space combat, but at landing troops for land invasions as well, which is why it had such a significant amount of hangar space. During most land invasions, the Venator had to field both troop transports and fighters to defend them, as well as bombers. Honestly, the Republic should have fielded two capital ships, a dedicated carrier as well as a main battleship, similar to how the CIS fielded both Lucrehulks for troop/aircraft transport, as well as Munificent class frigates (and eventually providence-class destroyers). The Venator was truly a jack of all trades, but because of that it was unable to fulfill any role perfectly.
so you got assigned to a Oliver hazard target, or is that a kidd class?, then assigned to a fleet aux. well hey least you weren't assigned as a EWO on a such classes as Allen M summer DD's, a C.F Adams class DD's, a Leahy Class DLG/ CG, and a Knox class FF/ FFG. no that was my grandfather's luck in his entire navy career.
I noticed the bridges problems on the Venator and the CIS ships as well, but the thing is, it's not a major flaw in star wars, as it is in real life, because in SW they don't shoot at bridges unless the plot requires it (except for maybe a few times? I've watched clone wars a long time ago). In short, it becomes a flaw only when the plot want it to be a flaw... sadly, as stipulated at the end of the video
It always annoyed me somehow that Star Wars ships rarely have guns on the bottom.
George Lucas liked to imagine space battles as ww2 dogfights. Real space combat will be rather anticlimactic
@@shadowlord1418 Right on. The Venators' main batteries had a range of 10 light-minutes. Tall ship combat like the Battle of Coruscant would be uncommon in the extreme.
I was under the assumption that those "two bridges" were actually two different functions, one the bridge, one the control tower
If you wanted to use all 8 cannons you could point the whole ship down, but with the significant downside of making yourself a larger target (shooting that giant central weak spot with all the fighters and ammo) and nullifying any armor you could of had.
It’s a carrier with extra guns and I never understood why they don’t put the guns in kinda a spear head formation so they could all fire forwards and to the sides. Or stager them like you said.
It's like outdated battleship doctrine made love to a carrier, and then the designers got shit faced when they were told to make a battleship carrier hybrid.
The Venator is a fantastic carrier, and has enough heavy guns and armor/shields to qualify as an attack carrier (something which I'm pretty sure only exists in fiction), but I agree 100% that it absolutely isn't a battleship.
Wow, I'm binging your content and its top tier! You are an excellent narrator, and you have a very cool perspective. Subbed, keep up the good work!
Welcome aboard!
Essentially a Lexington class carrier/battlecruiser with armor to match
for the cannon problem i imagine that they transfer the power allocated to all the turrets just to the front two when forward firing allowing for higher power and rate of fire. though why it was designed like that I cant think.
I know this is probably not going to get any attention, but I remember hearing in the lore that the starboard bridge wasn't a command deck. Rather, it was an air traffic control tower for the ship's fighter complement.
Thing about the Venator-class is that it's designed primarily as a carrier, same as the Secutor-class Star Destroyer that would be its spiritual successor, that's why it has two bridges. The biggest issue is that it was supposed to be used in tandem with actual front-line vessels like the Victory I-class Star Destroyers or Imperator-class (later known as the Imperial I-class) Star Destroyers though ships like the Victory I-class and the Imperator-class didn't come out till later into the war.