Ship Comparisons

Rules & Game Mechanics
#1

For fun, I decided to do an in-depth comparison between vehicles of similar category and class (light freighters, starfighters, gunships, etc.). I am not a statistician, but I can look at two values side by side and say which one is higher. So, let me break down my categories, and any particular criteria:

  • Silhouette: This is largely irrelevant for this, as I’m dividing vehicles based on their silhouette (mostly), so all ships of a certain category will be the same size (with necessary exceptions). For example, the first one I’m doing is large freighters and transports, so this includes things like some shuttles and yachts, but excludes things like the CR90, which will be put into sil 5 capital ships instead.
  • Speed
  • Handling
  • Defense: Calculated by adding all values up.
  • Armor
  • Hull trauma threshold
  • System strain threshold
  • Primary hyperdrive rating: Remember, the lower the number, the better the hyperdrive.
  • Backup hyperdrive rating: Same as above.
  • Crew: In this case, the lower the crew requirement, the better.
  • Encumbrance
  • Passengers: The higher the better.
  • Consumables: Calculated by counting them as months.
  • Price: The lower the cost, the better.
  • Rarity: The lower the better.
  • Hard points
  • Weapon systems: I waffled on this, but decided to simplify it and only count the number of weapon systems, rather than try and compare damage values and whatnot.

Other notes: For capital ships, I’m also counting starfighter complement, but not vehicle complement; the latter is often too vague a category, and often doesn’t list exact numbers. Any other smaller ships that might have a listed fighter or vehicle complement are being ignored. The same goes for special rules, which are too infrequent and too subjective to put a rating on.

Additionally, I am not comparing sensor ranges.

Finally, if there are any tied results, I will list them all. Some categories have outliers, which I will also make mention of.

First Category: Large Freighters and Transports
These ships are all at least silhouette 5 and are transports of some kind. They are: Action IV ; Action VI; Alidade; C-9979; CSS-1; Curich-class; Eta-class barge; GR-75; HT-2200; J-type (barge); Jadthu; L-2783; MB-C1; ND-47 Stalwart; Penumbra; Space Master; Starwind; TL-1200; Temple; VCX-100; Wayfarer; Xiytiar; Y164; YZ-775.

Speed:

  • Best: J-type diplomatic barge, at 4.
  • Worst: Tied between the MB-C1 and the Temple-class, at 1.

Handling:

  • Best: J-type barge, at +1.
  • Worst: 3-way tie between the L-2783, the MB-C1, and the Space Master, at -4.

Defense:

  • Best: ND-47 Stalwart, at 8.
  • Worst: 4-way tie between the Action IV, HT-2200, Jadthu, and LH75 at 3.

Armor:

  • Best: 4-way tie between the C-9979, the HT-2200, the Jadthu, and the ND-47 Stalwart, at 5.
  • Worst: 6-way tie between the Action IV, Action VI, Eta-class barge, Penumbra, Space Master, and Xiytiar, at 2.

Hull trauma threshold:

  • Best: Temple-class heavy freighter, at 75
  • Worst: The Penumbra-class stealth freighter, at 19

System strain threshold:

  • Best: C-9979 landing craft, at 45
  • Worst: The Penumbra-class stealth freighter, at 12.

Primary hyperdrive:
The outlier here is the Jadthu, which does not have a hyperdrive at all. The following scoring is for ships with actual hyperdrives.

  • Best: 3-way tie between the J-type barge, the Starwind, and the YZ-775, at class 1.
  • Worst: 4-way tie between the GR-75, L-2783, Penumbra-class, and Space Master, at class 4.

Backup hyperdrive:
Again, the Jadthu lacks both a primary and a backup hyperdrive; however, the Action IV also lacks a backup.The following scoring is for ships that have backup hyperdrives.

  • Best: J-type diplomatic barge, at class 7.
  • Worst: The Space Master, at class 25.

Crew:

  • Best: Tied with the Curich-class shuttle and the Eta-class barge, with a crew of 3.
  • Worst: The C-9979 landing craft, with 143.

Encumbrance capacity:

  • Best: The Temple-class heavy freighter, with a possible total of 30,000.
  • Worst: The Starwind-class yacht, with 85. (The Penumbra is second-worst, at 90).

Passengers:
There are two outliers: The C-9979 has the highest count (2500), but that’s for battle droids; the second-best is the Y164 (1200), but those are explicitly listed as slaves.

  • Best: CSS-1 star shuttle, at 200.
  • Worst: 3 way tie between the GR-75, the Space Master, and the YZ-775, with 0. (Note, the GR-75 says it can carry passengers in cargo pods, but I’m going off of stock configuration.)

Consumables:

  • Best: CSS-1 star shuttle, at three years (36 months).
  • Worst: C-9979 landing craft, at a measly 1 day. (The Jadthu is second worst, at 2 days).

Price:

  • Best: ND-47 Stalwart-class bulk freighter, at 70,000. This is the only ship under 100k.
  • Worst: C-9979, at 12 million. Dishonorable mentions to the J-type barge and L-2783, at 1 million and 6.5 million, respectively.

Rarity:

  • Best: YZ-775, at 3.
  • Worst: Penumbra, at 9.

Hard points:

  • Best: The L-2783, at 7
  • Worst: Tied between the J-type and the Penumbra, at 0.

Weapon systems:

  • Best: YZ-775, with 5 different weapon systems.
  • Worst: An eight-way tie between the Action VI, the CSS-1, Eta-class barge, GR-75, J-type barge, ND-47 Stalwart, Temple-class, and Xiytiar, which carry no stock weapons. If I had to pick one, however, it would be the J-type, which also lacks the hard points to arm it.

The overall best is hard to pin down. The J-type won the most categories, but it’s also third-worst in price and scored lowest in hard points and has no weapons. Overall worst, however, is probably the Penumbra, which scored lowest in six categories and highest in none of them; but that doesn’t account for the special stealth systems ruling.

You can check out the full spreadsheet below.
heavy-freighters-spread.pdf (77.2 KB)

2 Likes
#2

Good work!

A resource that might help you (at least to the extent of cutting out some gruntwork) is my spreadsheet, where I compile the stats of vehicles and such: SWRPG Equipment Spreadsheets

It isn’t comprehensive because I don’t have every book, but I have roughly half of the career supplements, all of the era guides, and Starships and Speeders, so it has most of them.

One cool addition to your analysis would be a “best for [role]” assessment. E.g., “Best pocket gunship,” “best smuggling ship,” “best courier ship,” etc. Somewhat subjective, but a very useful reference for someone looking to ship-shop. If you put that first and drop all of your data into a collapsible box, it’ll make this thread an even more convenient and accessible ship-shopping resource.

#3

Nah, that kind of subjective categorizing isn’t what I’m interested in. I don’t think there’s enough mechanical variance to cover that many broad categories.

#4

The next category of ships we’re looking at are silhouette 5 capital ships. Some of these are described as light cruisers, frigates, gunships, and corvettes. There’s a couple oddball choices I included in this category, which I will attempt to justify.

The first is the Consular, which I listed three times, because there are three different-but-similar profiles. The first is found in Age of Rebellion CRB, the ship next appears in Disciples of Harmony (because of course the book on Jedi Consulars has a ship called the Consular) and in Rise of the Separatists, and the final is a the Charger c70 refit, also found in RotS. Best as I can figure, these aren’t just the writers mucking things up (as has happened), but a logical set of three variants:

  • The one from DoH and RotS represents the unarmed diplomatic vessel as first seen in Episode I.
  • The Charger c70 represents the military variant seen in The Clone Wars cartoon.
  • The AoR profile represents a Galactic Civil War-era military refit done by the Alliance. I initially thought this was the c70, but only some of the stats line up–the c70 has a heavier armament, for one.

The next is the Barrage-class gunship, which is found in the freighter section of Keeping the Peace, but all of its descriptors would indicate its more of a corvette or capital gunship. However, some of its stats make it look more like a freighter. It’s a weird little ship, and I wish there was an actual physical description of it.

The final is the Paladin, otherwise known as the Crucible. It’s an odd inclusion in the books, because that ship absolutely exploded into tiny pieces in the show, but I’m including it anyway. It’s a bit of an outlier, though, because there’s no way of knowing if the Crucible reflects a stock Paladin-class or not.

Anyway, onto the breakdowns. The full spread will be added below (I also added in the mean, median, and mode values).

The ships listed are: Adz-class destroyer (F&D), Barrage-class gunship (KtP), Braha’tok-class gunship (KoF), C-ROC Gozanti (ND), Consular-class light cruiser (AoR, DoH, and RotS), CR90 corvette (EotE), CR92a Assassin-class corvette (SoF), DP20 gunship (EotE), Gozanti-class cruiser (AoR/FC–I’m using these armaments, FYI), Hammerhead (DoR), IPV-1 (BtR), IR-4F-class light frigate (F&D), Lancer-class frigate (AoR), Marauder-class corvette (EotE), Minstrel-class yacht (LoNH), Paladin-class/Crucible (DoH), Raider-class corvette (FLT), and Vigil-class corvette (AoR).

Speed:

  • Best: 3-way tie between the DP20, the IR-3F, and the Raider.
  • Worst: 3-way tie between the Adz-class, the Gozanti-class, and the Lancer-class.

Handling:

  • Best: Marauder-class corvette at +0.
  • Worst: Tied between the C-ROC and Gozanti at -3.

Defense:

  • Best: Tied between the IR-3F and the Raider at 2/2/2/2.
  • Worst: Tied between the Barrage-class and the DoH Consular, at 1/1/1/1 and 2/1/1/0, which comes out to be the same value overall.

Armor:

  • Best: 3-way tie between the Adz-class, the IPV-1, and the Minstrel-class, at 6.
  • Worst: 3-way tie between the Barrage-class, the IR-3F, and the Paladin-class, at 3.

Hull trauma threshold:

  • Best: Marauder-class corvette at 65.
  • Worst: Barrage-class at 18.

System strain threshold:

  • Best: C-ROC Gozanti at 40.
  • Worst: IPV-1 at 20.

Hyperdrive:
The strange outlier is the IPV-1 and IR-3F, which are completely without hyperdrives. That makes them the objective worst, but for equipped ships…

  • Best: The Lancer-class, with a class 1.
  • Worst: 6-way tie between the Barrage, Braha’tok, C-ROC Gozanti, Gozanti, Hammerhead, and Paladin, at class 3.

Backup hyperdrive:
Same as above, while also adding that the CR90 and Marauder have no backups either.

  • Best: Vigil-class corvette, with a class 10.
  • Worst: Tied between the CR92a Assassin and the DP20, with a class 16.

Crew (low is good):
The Paladin-class has a crew of 2, the lowest, but I’m listing it as an outlier because it’s weird.

  • Best: Barrage-class gunship, with 7.
  • Worst: The Lancer-class frigate, with 800.

Encumbrance:

  • Best: Tied between the Consular and the Charger c70, with 4000.
  • Worst: IPV-1, with 20.

Passengers:

  • Best: CR90, with 600.
  • Worst: DP20, with 0.

Consumables (in months):

  • Best: 7-way tie between the DoH Consular, the Charger c70, the CR90, the CR92a, the Minstrel, the Paladin, and the Vigil, at one year or 12 months.
  • Worst: The Barrage-class, Gozanti-class, IPV-1, and IR-3F, at one month.

Price (low is good):

  • Best: The Barrage-class gunship, at 145,000
  • Worst: The Lancer-class frigate, at 4.76 million

Rarity (low is good):
The outlier is the Paladin at 10, but it’s a unique and ancient vessel, so…

  • Best: 7-way tie between the Consular (all variants), CR90, IPV-1, Marauder, and Vigil, at 5.
  • Worst: 3-way between the Barrage-class, the C-ROC Gozanti, and the Hammerhead, at 8.

Hard points:

  • Best: 4-way tie between the C-ROC Gozanti, DoH Consular, Charger c70 Consular, and Paladin, at 6.
  • Worst: Tied betweent he Lancer and the Vigil, at 0.

Weapon systems:

  • Best: The Lancer-class frigate, at 20.
  • Worst: The DoH Consular and Paladin, at 0.

Spreadsheet below.
corvettes-spread.pdf (78.4 KB)

#5

So this category is one of the reasons why I started this. I’ve seen some say that both Gozantis are pretty OP ships, and comparing their numbers to other ships in this category, I kind of see why: they’re among the cheapest options in this category, while having stats that make them on-par with or better than their peers. I feel like a price tag of around 1 million or so would help balance them out a little. But YMMV.

The other thing is the IPV-1, which has a comically small encumbrance capacity for a ship of its size, and if you account for the official values (200 metric tons, which is twice that of the YT-1300). I know encumbrance capacity is a largely irrelevant abstraction, but it really feels like some of the writers were making up numbers for encumbrance with no actual guidelines or thought. Also, the IPV-1 is worse than its predecessor, the IR-3F, in several categories, which is also funny.

#6

I like your analysis on the Gozantis and the IPV.

The interesting thing about crew numbers is that a smaller crew requirement isn’t necessarily better—it depends on the workload. In game terms, that really doesn’t matter past ships with a maximum crew of around a dozen, but in practical terms you need enough people to run all of your systems well, replace injured crew members, work in shifts, etc. etc.

With ships in the Silhouette 4-5 range, it’s important. You want to maximize the action economy for weapons and ship systems, and if the crew limit is lower than the number of actions for weapons and systems, you end up with wasted potential because the ship can do things the crew can’t.

Ship crew requirements are something that the game designers/EU lore makers dropped the ball on, in my opinion. It’s scatter-brained and all over the place. In some places, it feels like they counted out the number of stations, and in others they ported crew numbers from real world ships or made them up out of whole cloth for what sounded cool, and there’s little rhyme or reason between ships. There are also no solid rules for running ships with large crews, but I don’t blame them much for that since it’s a monster issue to tackle.

#7

From a mechanical standpoint, crew requirements is more informative than useful, as its unlikely you’re going to have 800+ players to operate a Lancer. Its only important for small ships where your PCs are going to fill a slot. Otherwise, there’s either going to be a enough crew for the ship to operate or not at the GM’s will.

That said, the descriptions usually do indicate that large crew sizes is a downside, like the Lancer or the Dreadnought, so I went with that.