The GREAT Imperial Ship they were too dumb to properly use

you know the Empire gets a lot of flack pun intended for having some pretty dumb Capital ships but as we've covered time and time again they actually did have some well-designed vessels they just sometimes didn't use them or sometimes they did but only after 2015 and I'm talking today about the Raider class Corvette and this has been a very highly requested ship for me to cover probably because of its prominent use in games like Star Wars squadrons and Star Wars Battlefront 2. the Raider has an interesting out of universe story and people often refer to this as a Star Wars Legend ship that's not really accurate the Raider was created for the X-wing miniatures game that game and other material like Fantasy Flight Game Source books has sometimes been put in this weird quasi-canon quasi-legend state but unsurprising given it was first talked about in 2014 the Raider not really a Star Wars Legends vessel according to Fantasy Flight games the Raider was designed so the Empire would have an analog to the Rebel Alliance Corvette admin they could have just used the cr90 but that chip wasn't actually used super frequently by the Empire and of course they wanted to introduce a new ship to sell to customers the Fantasy Flight games website mentions that they considered the Lancer for the role but the two really are different ships and the Raider is a Corvette analog at 150 meters long and as we'll discuss later a similar amount of weapons I quite like the design for the Raider it's purposely a combination between a fast looking Imperial TIE fighter and an iconic ISD it obviously has the general Hull design of the Star Destroyer with the solar panels and generators of the fighter but what about in Universe lore well that's fairly interesting as well coolant Drive yards started manufacturing the Raider in six BBY after its design by Lyra Wessex who created the ISD the ship was envisioned as both an anti-starfighter escort and the main ship for small raiding parties it has and I quote six dual heavy laser cannons providing more accurate fire against snub Fighters than the turbo laser batteries of its Star Destroyer cousins and the disruptive effects of its ion cannon in placement along with the efficiency of its localized command make it a powerful addition to a small Strike Force along with ffg's X-wing miniatures the Raider has also gotten some lore in Fantasy Flight games age of rebellion RPG series specifically in the friends like the Source book friends like these reiterates that the ship was created by Lyra wessic six years before the Battle of Yavin but adds that it didn't gain a whole lot of favor from the brass of the Imperial Navy because it was ultimately an ineffective Frontline warship which I mean of course it was that's not what it was designed for as mentioned the Raider is an ideal escort it's a great well raiding vessel but the Empire generally liked to throw big ships at the issue until it went away however its Effectiveness when used properly could not be ignored especially against the Rebel Alliance which obviously was heavy on the starfighters and smaller pirate groups thus the Raider 2 was developed one thing that's really interesting is how technologically advanced this ship was the guide says that the Raider used three massive solar panel Wings instead of an onboard reactor I don't quite know about that but certainly the ship did have more usable internal space additionally the Raider had state-of-the-art tracking for its laser cannons and experimental jamming systems which made enemies star Fighters and enemy coordination generally less effective and I want to take the second to briefly talk about the weapons I've alluded to the fact that it does have six double laser cannons these can actually be lowered into the ship's Hull but Additionally the Raider did have a chin mounted turbo laser so it wasn't totally useless against larger targets still the laser cannons are definitely what made the Raider famous the Raider 2's Focus meant that the Empire wanted it for more direct action so where's the Raider 1 often used a missile launcher the Raider 2 typically swap that for an ion Cannon rounding out the ship was a very small Hangar Bay and I think that's actually one of the weaknesses of the vessel the Raider has a great hyperdrive it can get into enemy territory do damage and Escape however it's in this really weird position where most of its Weaponry is defensively oriented or at least anti-star fighter so it's kind of hard for it to really lay out an enemy especially without the ability to carry a ton of starfighters with it this matter is made worse by the fact that the Empire didn't have too many hyperspace capable Fighters and we can see here what happens when the Empire tries to pigeonhole a ship into a role it wasn't really designed for this is an anti-star fighter Corvette the Raider 2 probably should have been a more drastic redesign if the Empire wanted to employ it aggressively in different situations I think something larger like a nebulon b or an architense could be used alongside a Raider which would provide nice fire support anyway talking about famous Raiders the ship of course appeared very prominently in my favorite star Star Wars game Star Wars squadrons the ship obviously appears in campaign but it was weirdly huge alongside the cr90 on the competitive side when you switch from offense to defense the other team spawns a Raider and taking it down is absolutely Paramount because it Awards you a large amount of morale when I was testing Star Wars squadrons the Raider was way tuned up and I swear anytime you got within like 500 meters of that thing you were instantly slagged but yeah in that game it literally is just Imperial cr90 more famously we have the corvus which is Inferno Squadron ship in Star Wars Battlefront 2 and also the tie-in novel The Chorus obviously plays a really prominent role but something really weird happens in the game where after inferno's Squad defects to the new Republic it gets completely made over it looks completely different almost like a little nebulous star destroyer and it's never explained so when I first played through the game I was super confused this was definitely something they wanted to expand on but just didn't have time the new Republic's corvus would have a ton extra armor as well as a completely new engine configuration which is again kind of weird but that's all I have on the Raider do you like this ship do you think it's overrated underrated let me know all of your thoughts down below and if there's a ship you'd like to see me cover sometime soon also leave it I'll be looking for ideas listen guys I got nothing to talk about right now your ideas would be much appreciated see you soon thank you [Music]

Channel: EckhartsLadder

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Id: 3gfYGnS4LWM

Length: 7min 10sec (430 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 11 2023