Posted October 9, 20195 yr At the Empire's height, a Task Force was led by one of the Empire's massive 1.6km Imperial Star Destroyers, and included advanced support vessels such as Raider Corvettes and Quasar Fire Cruiser/Carriers. Five years after the catastrophic Battle of Yavin, the remnants of the Empire are a shadow of their former selves. Task Force 113 was typical of a post-Jakku Imperial task force. With the catastrophic losses in the battles of Endor and Jakku, the Imperial remnant factions have found themselves forced to press older, smaller ships into service. Every single ship in the 113th Task Force it served previously in the Clone Wars. After extensive refits to prepare the venerable warships for the modern era, the 113th was launched from the shipyard at Nixor by the Triumvirate Navy in 5ABY. It was led by the Decimator, a Gladiator-II Star Destroyer. Measuring at 600m, the Gladiator was designed as an escort vessel, but proved itself perfectly capable of operating without support, becoming one of the Empire's most effective long-range patrol craft. Armed with heavy ordnance tubes and turbolasers, it was (and still is) capable of holding its own against vessels far larger than itself, and boasted a massive hangar bay for a ship of its size. Its only notable weakness was a small point-defence battery, making it vulnerable to bomber craft. For this reason, the Decimator was escorted by a quartet of CR-90 Corvettes, which have had their heavy twin turbolasers replaced with batteries of rapid-firing quad laser cannons. With their exceptional speed and anti-fighter targeting, they ably defended the Decimator from nimble bombers. The inclusion of a pair of Arquitens-Class Command Cruisers rounded out the 113th, giving the flotilla a potent weapon against corvette and frigate sized starships. With powerful dual cannons and docking clamps for additional fighters in between its bow prongs, the Arquitens has, despite its age, served the Empire well all throughout the Galactic Civil War. Consisting of fast ships and able to field a full fighter group, the 113th was a well-rounded task force ideal for system patrol and rapid response. -Overwhelming Force: The Imperial Navy (2nd Edition), Winter Celchu. BEHIND THE SCENES Spoiler I originally built the Decimator as a Broadside-Class Cruiser, an artillery vessel that shared a keel design with the Gladiator. After seeing Darth Bjorn's excellent Gladiator, however, I was inspired to properly take a crack at replicating my second favourite capital ship in Star Wars. Fortunately, as an Armada player I had a model to use as a reference point. I have endeavoured to match the model as closely as possible, at a size that was to scale with my Interdictor (In fact, EVERY SINGLE ship I have built for this challenge is to scale with every other ship, with the exception of the CR-90, which is a little too big but impossible to shrink down any smaller). Details I really wanted to include was the slanted gun-deck, the secondary launch bays on the sides of the craft, and little-seen areas such as the engine block and underside. Overall, I am very happy with how I did, and my combining of grey and blueish grey parts (a necessity, a lot of my collection is ancient) gave it a Clone-Wars vintage look that I quite like. This ship is, after all, about a quarter of a century old. As you can see in the above picture, I managed to replicate the engine block reasonably well given the scale. The two tiles represent the six secondary thrusters, and the two 1x1 rounded plates represent the main engines. As this picture shows, I was able to get some of the panel detailing, and used a pair of wedge plates on the bottom to get the way the outer prongs angle inwards towards the main hangar. You can also see the yellow of the two secondary hangar bays in this picture. Looking at the model, the beginning of the central superstructure, the front cannons and the secondary hangar bays all line up - forward of that point, the vessel is quite flat. I was able to replicate this in my model, as well as the two Venator-style hatches on the top of the hangar. Considering the small scale I am working at and the parts I had available, I am very happy with the end result. The Light Cruisers are about half the size of the Gladiator - which scales well. At this size, details like the gun turrets simply become too comically large, so I stuck to replicating the shape of the vessel as closely as I could. The central spine has a pair of hollow blocks that the studs of the slopes fit in nicely. The final block in the central spine instead has studs pointing out in each side, so I could get the cheese slopes to fan outwards to the engine block. Earlier versions did have a pair of binocular turbolaser cannons, but they were ludicrously oversized. The CR-90 Corvettes are the second-smallest ship I made for this challenge, at a mere four studs long. The main body is a pair of modified plates (the ones with the two round studs on a prong each side), which are held together by an ingot, representing the sloped sides of the ship. The engine block I would have loved to do horizontally instead of vertically, but no part in my collection would have permitted it without making the ship even longer. They are slightly too large to fit into the hangar bay of my Interdictor, so I may eventually try to shrink them even more (or increase the hangar bay size of the Pacifier). For now, though, I am quite happy with the result. Anywho, there's most of my fleet. Just three ships to go. Edited October 9, 20195 yr by Moff Wibbles Added wiki links for ships
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