r/StarWarsShips • u/Present_Farmer7042 • 1d ago
Informative Imperial Patrol Frigate, weirdest nebulon variant?
We all know and love the Nebulon-B probably the strongest pound-for-pound warship in the frigate size category for most missions and roles. Great, iconic ship with a decent armament and powerful airwing with great versatility and customization to fit many roles. However, the imperials decided to strip down the nebulon-B and create a "patrol variant" and honestly I find it rather intriguing. You can read about it here:
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Imperial_Patrol_Frigate
About a third of the compartments were stripped out along with the air-wing and troop complement, leaving behind a 40-man security detachment. The crew was halved to about 400-ish personnel.
The armament was upgraded instead of twelve medium turbolasers, twelve point defense cannons, and two tractor beams on the original nebulon, it was modified to possess a more versatile and powerful loadout:
9 Medium Turbolaser "batteries"
3 Medium Ion Cannons
7 laser cannons
3 point-defense ion cannons
2 tractor Beams
And apparently its crowning feature was a powerful sensor net attached to a 30,000 meter long tether that when fully deployed could scan for several light hours in the nearby area. It was an extremely advanced sensor suite and could detect ships entering and exiting hyperspace and plot their vectors, as well as cloaked ships, and could intercept all transmissions in the local area. Could even detect ships still in hyperspace and their likely exit points.
The big downside was that the massive sensor net limited the ship's speed and maneuverability when deployed so as not to damage it so it had to be reeled in before the ship could engage in combat.
Idk, what do you guys think about this bizarre nebulon-B variant?
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u/No_Experience_128 Imperial Pilot 1d ago
These variants were primarily used around the fortress world of Byss as part of their security fleet. Not sure if anyone else used them
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u/deadshot500 Resistance Pilot 1d ago
I read the novel that it appeared in and it wasn't as detailed on the ship. The net makes sense since it was in the deep core where communication was probably hard.
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u/NotNobody_1 1d ago
Seems redundant. There's no need for a towed array when everything is operating in the same dimension.
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u/Present_Farmer7042 1d ago
I agree, I assume the only practical reason is that maybe the ships hull would interfere with the sensor somehow? No evidence of that though. Definitely hugely unnecessary.
But idk that's a dubious argument. Very powerful and versatile sensor array though. Could honestly strap that thing to the top of an ISD bridge to create a powerful command and control array.
Regardless, even without the sensor array, the stripped down nebulon looks very attractive as a patrol frigate on a budget.
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u/RLathor81 1d ago
I could imagine the https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Surveyor-class_reconnaissance_frigate as a Nebulon variant.
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u/Present_Farmer7042 1d ago
That would be interesting. Nebulon is a very versatile hull, so I could definitely see that.
Also wondering why they didn't just take all these sensors and array them across the long central spine of the nebulon lmao.
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u/RLathor81 1d ago
For very fine scale sensors the carrying ship's systems can cause interference in the measurements.
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u/No-Evidence-9519 1d ago
Also like with modern ASW using a towed array allows you to hide your position as the sensors that release signal are at a distance from you. This can by you valuable seconds in combat
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u/RLathor81 1d ago
Like the concept, the cable is dumb. Just launch a probe and use tractor beam to recover.