Old Ghtroc
720
The great space-turtle of the galaxy! One of the most magnificently annoying
ships in all creation. Illustrated many times, but rarely well. Considering
that the amazing Mike Vilardi has shown many times that the ship is fairly
flat, and very sleek, it is a mystery to me why so many artists have chosen
to represent it as being a very boxy awkward monster. Seems sheer madness
to me, considering it is clearly designed after an aquatic creature.
In addition to the basic errors in shape, there are four main features that frequently and inexplicably get confused. The shoulder 'flippers' actually house the sublight engines. The three remaining features are the twin rear flippers, the dome, and the boxy bum section. The flippers are frequently depicted as housing additional sublight engines. This would be fine if it weren't for the unavoidable fact that the flippers end in tapered shapes that are identical to the docking rings on CEC couriers. What does this tell us? Well it might just tell us that these are in fact docking rings, not oversized extra engines (remember that the 720 is amazingly SLOW) and not escape pods. Escape pods that completely dominate the last half of a ship? Simply unfeasible. Unfortunately having the docking rings at the end of these features DOES mean there are a pair of very long corridors running up to the habitable section of the ship, which is really quite awkward. I'm still testing various theories as to the nature of the surrounding 'super-tubes' which may well justify the corridors.
The dome, given its position and design is most likely the skylight over a lounge. One of my pet hates if that people forget that these ships, the couriers and light freighters are not designed to be operated by special commando groups fighting the Empire, they're meant to be transports for normal people. A dome skylight is perfectly fair enough on a long duration hauler.
Lastly the boxy bum. I chose to house the escape pods systems there basically because the tapering fuselage left few other places to stow them.
This is the early 720, based mainly from the original WEG layout. A more recent version can be found here.
In addition to the basic errors in shape, there are four main features that frequently and inexplicably get confused. The shoulder 'flippers' actually house the sublight engines. The three remaining features are the twin rear flippers, the dome, and the boxy bum section. The flippers are frequently depicted as housing additional sublight engines. This would be fine if it weren't for the unavoidable fact that the flippers end in tapered shapes that are identical to the docking rings on CEC couriers. What does this tell us? Well it might just tell us that these are in fact docking rings, not oversized extra engines (remember that the 720 is amazingly SLOW) and not escape pods. Escape pods that completely dominate the last half of a ship? Simply unfeasible. Unfortunately having the docking rings at the end of these features DOES mean there are a pair of very long corridors running up to the habitable section of the ship, which is really quite awkward. I'm still testing various theories as to the nature of the surrounding 'super-tubes' which may well justify the corridors.
The dome, given its position and design is most likely the skylight over a lounge. One of my pet hates if that people forget that these ships, the couriers and light freighters are not designed to be operated by special commando groups fighting the Empire, they're meant to be transports for normal people. A dome skylight is perfectly fair enough on a long duration hauler.
Lastly the boxy bum. I chose to house the escape pods systems there basically because the tapering fuselage left few other places to stow them.
This is the early 720, based mainly from the original WEG layout. A more recent version can be found here.
