The Rebel Faction

TNO - Venator class Troopship

Venator class Troopship

Name: Venator class Planetery Troopship

Description: In the days of the Old Republic, Ventaor and Victory class Star Destroyers found good service. Unlike the latter which was heavily loaded with weaponry at the expense of ground troops and starfighter capacity, the former was lightly armed with heavy weaponry, but instead had a large starfighter carrying capacity and troop transport capability. After the Galatic Empire had been founded and larger numbers of much more modern and capable Imperial Star Destroyers and support vessels began to comission the Venator found it's self being either retired to the core regions in reserve capacity, sold to second hand goverments in the outer-rim, or just scrapped as the prices for metal rose throughout the galaxy.

Now, a new purpose is being bred for these ships. After years of experiments and trials to find a dedicated long term Imperial Troop Carrier that could be more purpose-built and used, freeing up ISDs for deep space combat. The re-designed Venators are still bigger than Victory-class ships, although the engine drives, thrust nozzles, and other technology that took up massive portions of the hull has been more compacted and neat thanks to advances in technology.

The ship now has a much more convential bridge and has four medium sized thrust nozzles, located in two banks on either port or starboard size, and retains a sublight speed of about fourteen MGLT.

Defense is still the main focus of the ship, with it carrying shields way out of proportion for a ship's it's size, and very thick hull armour designed to resist a volley of proton torpedoes. The heavy turbolaser turrets had been removed and replaced with ten medium turbolaser batteries, while the other weapons have been replaced by twenty quad laser cannons on fast reflex mounts to deal with enemy starfighters. Tractor beams had also been placed along the ship's ventral side to help launch and recover starfighters and pods going to and from the surface.

There are now two main hangar bays, one forward dedicated to starfighters and vessels, and the after hangar bay dedicated to the pods. The forward hangar bay has a standard vehicle complement of four squadrons (48) Scimitar Assault Bombers or TIE Interceptors, and twelve Sentinel or Lambda Assault Shuttles, and four Raptor class Landing Ships. The aft hangar bay accomodates twenty pods, and each one can either carry 1 AT-AT with 1 Battalion (500) of troops, or 8 AT-STs with 1 Battalion (500) of troops, or thirty two (32) light hovertanks or artillery pieces with two companies (200) of troops for both of those, or 4 Battalions (2,000) of troops. Normal troop deployment consists of 10 pods with a total of (10 AT-ATs, 5,000 troops), 20 pods with a total of (160 AT-STs, 10,000 troops), and 5 pods with (160 light tanks or artillery pieces, and 1,000 troops), and 5 pods with (10,000 troops), which comes to a total of 330 vehicles and 21,000 troops, which is near standard strength for an Imperial mechanized division. Standard Imperial planetery assault force calls for ten Venators, carrying a total of several thousand vehicles and 200,000 troops, which also includes occupation forces.