Friday, April 6, 2007

Ships of the Line!

One of the things I wanted to just for myself was to create a listing of the various flagships from the series of The Legend of the Galactic Heroes. I intend to do this by re watching the series and taking screen shots and talking about the ships if I have anything to say.

First what I have to say is a bit history. LOGH is sci-fi universe set I dunno at least a thousand or so years in the future, in time frame after like big Republic that unified everybody falls into a Empire that for the quirks of its leader takes on a very German feel to it. People don't like this and they revolt and flee to another portion of the galaxy and form the Free Planets Alliance and after a while the sides meet and get involved in a 150 long never ending war. The war lasts so long because there is only two passages to connect to each other, and thus the defender always has the advantage unless they completely screw up.

The series's two main characters (well technically three but there be spoilers if I talked about it now) are the Free Planet's Alliance Yang Wengli a guy who joined the military for an education is like the Robert E Lee of the FPA in terms of fighting at a disadvantage all the time against the Galactic Empire who has its Alexander the Great figure of Reinhard Lohengrim, who overthrows the corrupt nobility and becomes the Kaiser. There is also like a cast of at least 50 characters who their own back stories, plots and its all very War and Peaceish. And is a long series several novels that were the original basis, and a 110 episode series, plus movies, plus side stories OVAs, plus manga. All very big and complex.

The name of Fortress Iserlohn comes from this series, and its the big superfort on the border between the nations that is fought for several times.

A thing about this universe, the spacebattles are rather large. A normal fleet is more then ten thousand ships of varying sizes. Thus the battles are more of a combination that reminds me of Napelonic Warfare in 3d and the line of battle concept take to the ultimate extreme. Thus there is a certain amount of mass produced ships, generally the cruisers that you see exploded in all sorts of way as the battles goes on. Though to show some coolness of ship designs, generally admirals have their own unique battleship that their flagship and this what I am going to be taking pictures off.

















The Brunhilde. She is probably the most famous of the ships, and its Reinhard's flagship through the series. Its a pretty sweet looking ship, yet its really hard to see where the guns are on the damn thing. But like pretty much all Imperial ships is atmospheric capable of landing. She's probably the ultimate example of Imperial Star Fleet design of sleek ships. As a note Imperial ships take for the most part Germanic names.
















This is a standard Free Planet's Alliance battleship/flagship. The thing looks menacing no?
The FPA has for its philosophy of big boxy ships that have nothing but guns for its bow. Generally to me they seem to be more boxier and slower, but heavily armed and armored then Imperial ships. But really its hard to tell.

Also as seen by the giant Six on the side, this is the flagship of the ill fated Alliance Six Fleet that along with the 4th fleet gets destroyed by Reinhard's fleet during in the opening two episodes of the series that takes place in the Iserhlohn corridor.

Also this ship has the first of the dying admiral/hero scenes on a burning bridge. Generally in this show, when somebody who has screen time gets killed on his battleship, the show him critically wounded, commenting either about philosophy, on the nature of war, talking about old friendships or loves, or regretting the fact he failed or what have you.
















Again a standard FPA battleship. This is the flagship that Yang Wengli takes command of the survivors of the FPA fleet after the battle is joined with Reinhard's force. He pretty much forces a draw This ship is also interesting in that its the first ship to take the "Glancing blow of damage" which blows up only a portion of the bridge, and injures somebody. Generally in LOGH, when you get hit, you tend to explode, but battleships do have shields that show, and they can negate off centered shots a bit.
















Snow in space? Fuzzy screen? No. Those are all ships that are range in length of at least by guess 200 meters long to over a kilometer with some flagships. When LOGH nations go to war, they don't really fool around. And this battle was about average, and this is only a tiny portion of the fleet that is visible.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

People should read this.