r/StarWars • u/BeltMaximum6267 • 1d ago
General Discussion I'm wondering how the three Venators class destroyers lost to one of the weakest CIS fleets like the Munificent-class star frigate.
538
u/Toothlessdovahkin Luke Skywalker 1d ago
It’s not what you have, it’s how you use it.
267
u/CordlessJet 1d ago
Grievous says within the same season that attacking from above with a larger fleet would put them at a disadvantage. We can just say this fight makes no sense and it’s manufactured as a Republic loss for the sake of the arc it was setting up
138
70
u/TheKBMV 1d ago edited 13h ago
The disadvantage would likely be because the Venators have more of their armaments on the top while the Munificents seem to have forward facing weaponry and top heavy armor. Thus it also stands to reason that if you're loosing to, say, a surprise attack by a pack of light frigates that outnumber you you will try to maneuver into a position where your attackers are at a disadvantage. Sinking your Venators into a gravity well forces the Munificents to follow from above earning you back some positional advantage. Unless of course they decide to let you off the hook and break pursuit.
I don't think it's a manufactured Republic loss, we're just seeing the last leg of a lost battle where the Republic commander is pulling a last ditch trick.
(Whether the series writers went into/intended this tactical depth is questionable of course, but I think at least a plausible in-universe explanation exists)
15
u/ammonium_bot 23h ago
you're loosing to,
Hi, did you mean to say "losing"?
Explanation: Loose is an adjective meaning the opposite of tight, while lose is a verb.
Sorry if I made a mistake! Please let me know if I did. Have a great day!
Statistics
I'm a bot that corrects grammar/spelling mistakes. PM me if I'm wrong or if you have any suggestions.
Github
Reply STOP to this comment to stop receiving corrections.22
u/WretchedMonkey R2-D2 1d ago
This. Do people think writers lay out a strategic map for these things? Look at the GoT battle of winterfell. Story writers have little to no aptitude for strategy, especially childrens tv show writers
20
u/CordlessJet 1d ago
I mean in most cases they absolutely should apply some reasoning to it. But in this case it was a 5 minute battle to set up another story, it’s not exactly worth diving into their reasoning like it was done as a creative choice
2
u/WretchedMonkey R2-D2 23h ago
agree but the fans still insist that every bit of canon must adhere to the laws of physics instead of whoever writing it just pulling it out of their arse.
1
u/tcrex2525 5h ago
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life” JLP
Tactics are important and all, but it doesn’t guarantee victory. I wouldn’t get too caught up in this and just enjoy the show.
-1
u/CordlessJet 5h ago
I’m literally not getting caught up in tactics, I already said it was clearly just a quick thrown together battle for the narrative
485
u/HyliasHero 1d ago
-Fall of the Republic flashbacks-
2 Venators without any escorts will absolutely get rolled by groups of dedicated ship killers like the Munificent. Plus those long range ion cannons would play hell with the Venators.
150
u/yisoonshin 1d ago
You know, I don't get ion cannons. They seem super OP to me and feel like they should be the main weapon
163
u/GamerDroid56 1d ago
Most ship-mounted ion cannons aren’t powerful enough to do more than heavily damage shields and, at best, mildly disrupt systems local to the impact zone. To fully disable a ship, you need a massive power source and cannon (like what the Malevolence and ion cannon in ESB had), or it won’t do much. To add on, they also don’t really cause real damage to the target ship beyond disabling them, so you’d need normal turbolasers to rip them apart anyway. This means that it’s generally more economical (monetarily and space-wise) to cover your ship with turbolasers more than it is to use ion cannons.
74
u/yisoonshin 1d ago
Ion and then turbolaser barrage in quick succession. Instant thought for anybody who's played FTL lol
39
u/shponglespore 1d ago
I didn't know how canonical it is, but what I remember from playing X-Wing way back in the day is that SW ion cannons aren't any better than lasers for taking down shields. They were really only useful for situations where you needed to disable a target so it could be boarded.
9
u/an-anonymouse-wolf 19h ago
For small ships and shuttles, yes, you'd only use an ion cannon for disabling them. Those ships have very weak shields, so it doesn't make much of a difference whether it's a laser or Ion cannon. Ion cannons are far more important when taking on ships like Star Destroyers and Dreadnoughts, because their shields are so much more powerful when compared to those of fighters or shuttles.
9
u/el_duderino88 1d ago
Yea similar to having a carrier group, a proper fleet would probably be made up of a few different ships with different purposes. One ship would be dedicated to primarily be a massive ion cannon and no other armaments besides some defensive turrets, the fleet would defend them with gunships and destroyers etc. Think rail gun ships
59
u/Just_Plain_Bad 1d ago
Probably more expensive to produce but we don’t get those kinds of logistics discussed much.
18
u/ThatFatGuyMJL 1d ago
They're basically EMP weapons.
If a ships shields are powerful enough they can survive a few hits.
And then they do basically no damage to the ship itself, they might knock out its systems for a little while but won't destroy it.
However in atmosphere turning off a ships engines is really fucking deadly
In space they're usually backed up by bombers or other ships with Hull splitting weaponry.
2
137
u/op4arcticfox 1d ago
Only weak in the star wars games. Even then not all of them. The front main weapons battery is a massive oversized turbolaser artillery cannon, and the armored shell could easily soak turbolaser fire. They were designed as communication nodes for the banking clans. So they were extra hardened and durable.
343
u/Interesting-Trash525 1d ago
What do you mean with weakest CIS Fleets?
The Munificent was one of the most feared Warships in the Clone Wars and easy "out gunned" a Venator.
There Main Weapons where two forward mounted Turbolaser Cannons capabel of blast-melting an ice-moon 1000 kilometers in diameter.
172
u/oemiii117 1d ago
Yeah I sometimes forget this and just think of how the Venator’s size is superior, but really its firepower is actually low compared to the munificent ship. Really the Venator should not be contending with ships up close unless necessary and should actually be relying on its fighter compliment.
203
u/Tyrinnus 1d ago
"why did my aircraft carrier lose a close range fight with a battle ship?"
🤷
35
u/That_guy1425 1d ago
It forgot to deploy the ani-battle ship fighters. Yuo there's your problem
5
u/xXxEdgyNameHerexXx 7h ago
I know ani was a typo but the entire clone wars cannon is literally deploy ani in a fighter = win so I laughed... I'm a simple man.
2
13
u/HorrificAnalInjuries 22h ago
For contrast, three Imperial II Star Destroyers could take on those frigates and win, but they are taking casualties.
11
u/BladeLigerV Mandalorian 18h ago
Yeah I see no strike craft buzzing around. They pull double duty as fleet carriers as well as destroyers. But imagine if they kept the hangers to an absolute minimum. The amount of turrets could be doubled.
14
u/EagenVegham 1d ago
I'm not sure there's a range in-system that a Venator's airwing is capable of outmatching a Munificent. Tactically, the best bet is to deploy your wing either through hyperspace or from behind a moon or large asteroid. With a bit more armor covering the engines and hull, the best strategy to use them on if you have to be close in would be a Marg Sabl.
3
u/MadMax2910 8h ago
The Venator is an (assault) carrier more than anything, its' job is to deploy fighters and ground forces.
Which means that if it gets into a fight against a dedicated warship, the kind built to destroy other ships, it will be in trouble.23
u/Leviathan117 1d ago
A munificent did not ‘outgun’ a Venator. Munificent’s are frigates and pack hunters, they were lightly armoured but heavily armed. They were essentially glass cannons that the CIS mass produced.
Venators could take on a handful of them alone when in a regular match up. When the separatists ambushed Venators then yes, they could win with less because of those overpowered forward guns but that’s really it.
The battle op is talking about is more about the limited resources that Lucasfilm has in Clone Wats season 1 where the only CIS ship models they had were Munificents and Lucrehulks and they needed to tell a story of the republic getting beat.
9
u/Top-Perception-188 17h ago
Munificents OUTGUNNED! Venators in Guns , Munificent class star frigates are in the HEAVY CRUISER weight range , they are called star frigates for diplomacy sake , like super cruisers instead of battleships or Battlecruisers and vice versa , and they carried Droids ,
39
u/eternalshackleford 1d ago
Couple things. The Clone Wars was kinda inconsistent with how powerful the Munificent was. Sometimes they're massively powerful and able to easily outgun a Venator, other times they're kinda cannon fodder.
I'd chalk it up to 2 things. Formation - Munificents seem to be deadly when grouped up and facing forward. I'd wager a lot of it's firepower is in those front guns, meaning if you can flank one or a couple, they melt like paper. But if they come at you head on, all your power is going to have to go to the shields just to keep them up.
The second thing you could use to explain it is variation in construction. Idk about canon but in legends the Munificent is a converted communication frigate. So maybe there are some non-converted ships mixed in with the upgunned Munificents we see tearing through Venators
9
u/HyliasHero 1d ago
I tend to think that the way they are depicted in Fall of the Republic is pretty accurate despite being a fan mod. They are glass cannons with extremely high firepower and not much defense. So both being able to outgun the Venator and being cannon fodder are true.
Venators are certainly capable of ship-to-ship brawls, but the kind of knife fight we see here would be deadly for a pair of fleet carriers without escorts.
13
8
u/Thepullman1976 1d ago
The Munificent’s armor is paper thin but that’s it. In addition to the like 80 light turbolasers each one has plus the ion cannons, they have a pair of turbolaser cannons which are described as being capable of blast melting a small (1000 KM diameter) ice moon. Venators have 8 heavy turbolasers, 12 mediums and then nothing else that can scratch a capital ship.
26
u/PhysicalWave454 1d ago
Nah, Munificents, especially in formation, pack a punch. A lot of people don't realise that if Sidious wasn't playing both sides, the CIS would have steamrolled the Republic. They had the numbers, the money, and the ships.
CIS fleets were diverse as well. The Republic just used the Venator, which should have been used as a battle carrier, not a front-line warship. The same problem came with the Empire. They didn't diversify their fleets while the Rebellion did.
11
u/AzulaThorne 1d ago
I say this as a Clone fan. But yeah, the Republic was not going to win the war at all. Over billions of droids, some who Clones were fucking useless against, to at most six million clones? Yeah, sorry chief.
Plus the CIS navy was far superior in that it was meant to fight battles. The Venator was ultimately not that great but gets shown as the only republic ship in the show and movies, meanwhile Acclamators are wondering if they’re jokes or not.
5
u/toonboy01 22h ago
Did the Separatists actually have billions of droids though? The only source for it seems to be from the merch description of a helmet set.
It seems like the Republic was mostly winning the war.
3
u/AzulaThorne 14h ago
It’s the only number we have and it makes logical sense considering what we see in the show and movies.
The CIS is indeed winning from the get go, they have better fleets, more troops, but Palps is giving away locations for the republic while keeping Dooku to keep Grievous on a leash.
Plus he also forced the CIS to do stuff like sending 90% of the fleet to Coruscant to ambush and kidnap the Chancellor in the belief that the Republic would surrender, for Grievous, and for Dooku that he would be captured and released with Order 66 on the Jedi to then ultimately have the CIS rejoin the Republic as heroes who got rid of the Jedi.
The war doesn’t make sense if the Republic is winning from any point before the Battle of Coruscant. As that is when the Republic is supposed to be winning for Order 66 to be used to its fullest effect.
3
u/toonboy01 12h ago
It's not actually the only numbers, as the actual show has Dooku state that the droids outnumber the clones 100 to 1. A hundred million is still a lot but not billions. The show also regularly shows the clones winning more often than the droids and the Separatists having to make use of underhanded tactics. I don't know why you think that them winning doesn't make sense.
3
u/Threedawg Chopper (C1-10P) 8h ago
Because they are using real world logic in a fantasy show.
Real world logic says droids win. Droids that are capable of independently moving around and shooting will always beat living beings. You simply cant out produce something that takes minutes or hours to make.
Thing is...it aint that kind of universe.
4
u/AunMeLlevaLaConcha 1d ago
I mean, of it weren't for the grand plan, i doubt the Republic would have allowed any separatist movement, hell, maybe it would have never come to any of that
4
u/Ok_Froyo3998 Grievous 1d ago
No, it would have. Dooku didn’t ‘make’ the separatist movement, it was already there. It just took him unifying it, if he didn’t then someone else certainly would have. If there was no Sith meddling it would probably be a Civil War with so many factions it would’ve probably been even more deadly.
1
u/AunMeLlevaLaConcha 1d ago
I never said Dooku did anything, the Separatist movement was derived by the Sith grand plan, that is, the corruption of the Republic, if they weren't involved, there's a chance nothing of the sort would have happened, the Republic would have solved it's own issues, the pieces were placed by the Sith.
Mind you, i'm going with the EU Sith, that goes waaay back, idk about the Disney canon and their Sith.
1
u/Ok_Froyo3998 Grievous 1d ago
There was debauchery and corruption even before Sith manipulation. The war was unavoidable.
1
u/AunMeLlevaLaConcha 1d ago
But why? Why would debauchery and corruption escalate to a war if not provoked? We don't have stories discussing the affairs of the Republic without the Sith meddling, they were always there, they made the push and manipulated everything, as far as i remember, all the stories that predate the Sith don't hint at a galactic conflict hitting the fan any time soon.
1
u/Ok_Froyo3998 Grievous 1d ago
Why would it escalate to war? Because as it has been said- it is debauched and corrupt. The Republic at its founding would have corruption even before Sith manipulation- the Sith moved things FASTER but it was always gonna be this way.
4
6
u/betterthanamaster 1d ago
Folks, the Venator is a good ship, but its major striking capability is in its fighter craft. It looks like most of that fighter craft isn’t launched.
The Munificent is a dedicated assault frigate.
The Munificents probably ambushed the Venators before they could scramble their fighters and bombers, making it suicide to launch them. And they’re blocking their escape out of atmosphere. Those Venators are sitting ducks with generally low firepower.
You’d need Acclimator escorts for this to be a fair fight.
7
3
u/Ryshrok 4h ago
You’ve got carriers used as frontline warships, operating without fighter cover or escorts, surprised from above, then boarded by combat droids specifically designed for this kind of thing. The Munificents aren’t weak, they’re just specialized. The Venators weren’t used properly. That’s the equivalent of sending an aircraft carrier into a narrow canyon and wondering why the coastal artillery is winning.
So yeah... "I wonder how" indeed.
3
u/Kaiser_Defender 3h ago
I recall reading something somewhere that the venators struggled heavily because of being in atmosphere, but that was years ago so don't consider it gospel.
2
u/iFuckingHateCrabs2 1d ago
The Munificent is a strong, dedicated ship killer
The Venetor is a carrier
These Venetors were running around without an escort
2
u/Typical-Western-9858 1d ago
Venators are basically carriers from what i can remember. Carriers have to move with a fleet of ships for protection. Also the CIS had starfighter superiority,
2
u/MistressCobi 1d ago
First reason: Munificent class frigate were more like small cruisers with considerably more firepower f Than other ships its size and Venator class was an aircraft carrier not a battleship.
If you were to put 3 light cruisers against 3 aircraft carriers minus their planes, you would get the same result irl.
2
2
u/CanisZero Rebel 1d ago
First of all the Mun is a moster. I'd argue its the backbone of the CIS fleet with its heavy armor and long range cannons its a dedicated ship killer. The Ven, is a battle carrier. Its a Pizza shaped Battlestar without the launch tubes. A brawl isn't where it belongs. Hanging back providing supporting fire to a swarm of V, Y and Z-95's is the place to be.
In legends lore the Ven was also supposed to, on paper, be supported by the Victory and Imperator class in a mixed fleet.
2
u/DeterminedEggplant 1d ago
The munificent looks like a weak skeleton ship until you take a closer look. Make no mistake. She’s a killer in ship to ship combat.
2
u/Interesting-Injury87 17h ago
The Venator was kinda crap as a Capital ship.
it had its crew and size split across basically 3 different roles.
Starship Carrier, Destroyer(star wars destroyer, not irl destroyer), and troop transporter.
It did non of these jobs particularly well especially for its size, minus maybe the carrier part.
It had more armaments then an Acclamator, but also cost considerably more with a larger hull. It didn't gain the equivalent of its Size increase in armaments. while also having more area to get pelted on to deplete its shields.
HECK i am almost certainly it would have been more cost effective to retrofit some Acclamators with a starship hangar instead of the LAAT compliment
2
u/blakhawk12 13h ago
There’s a ton of potential factors we just don’t know here. For one, Aayla’s Venators don’t seem to have any fighter screen. Have they been wiped out? Or maybe her fleet was undergoing repairs or a retrofit and had a lot of their defenses offline. They could have been ambushed and just been hit so hard at the beginning of the fight that they never recovered.
2
u/SonofLeeroy 9h ago
looked like the shields were down and explains the massive damage they suffered
2
u/250extreme 10h ago
The CIS won this battle due to beginning with a surprise attack and never losing the high ground
2
u/5O1stTrooper Grand Admiral Thrawn 9h ago
They probably shot down a lot more frigates before this scene started.
1
u/Billsinc3 1d ago
What's hard to believe about it? It was necessary for the plot and that's always the way Star Wars(and most fiction for that matter) works.
1
1
1
1
u/tertiaryunknown Ahsoka Tano 20h ago
Venators aren't frontline battleships, they're carriers, the shipyards could never get the intended frontline battleships created, so the Venators had to work to fill both roles.
Ships that weren't frontline battleships moved into that role and still did absolutely phenomenally in that role.
1
u/Top-Perception-188 17h ago
MY guess would be the Munificents dropped Ground warfare Battledroids onto the Venators as they were opening thier hangers , which would be easy as they were above the Venators , and destroyed their hangers negating thier starfighter Superiority, and given they are more than equal to the Venators in weaponry , easily had the upper hand
1
1
2
u/DESTRUCTI0NAT0R 1d ago
One thing I always didn't like about Clone Wars series is how they showed ship balance. The Venators, and really most Republic stuff was supposed to be way stronger on a 1:1 sense vs CIS stuff but in Clone Wars they always ended up wiped out by not that much larger fleets. I'd be like this here with 3 vs 2 the Venators should've crushed those frigates.
But every time they'd lose every ship and be forced to win or survive with a handful of Clones left. I know it's not really or ever was canon but the old Incredible Cross sections for Ep 3 said the Venators were like 1:6 match against them and like 1:3 again the Recusant class destroyers. Well in the battle of Corusant we see them doing very well in the close quarters fighting again the separatist fleet.
0
271
u/Jinn_Skywalker 1d ago
Likely the Munificents ambushed them with those long range Ion Cannons just above the prow turbolasers. I also don’t see that many fighters having been launched so the Venators must have been carrying ground troops sorta like Anakin’s fleet at Christophsis. Once the shields are considerably lowered the Munificents would be able to 1v1 them with some difficulty.