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The Mediator-class battle cruiser was an advanced warship developed by the Mon Calamari for use by the New Republic Defense Fleet.[1]
Characteristics
The Mediator-class was over half the length of the Viscount-class Star Defender[3] and was made to be a successor to the previous generations of Star Cruisers, including the MC80 Home One type, itself at one point the largest warship in the Rebel Fleet.[3]
Like previous Mon Calamari cruisers, they were heavily but conventionally armed with turbolasers and ion cannons, defensive shields and heavy armor, tractor beam projectors, and squadrons of starfighters. Evidence for their overall layout is slight, but one of the ship's main hangar bays had an opening located on the ventral side of the hull.[1]
The armor on the inside of the ship was strong enough to prevent a complete destruction of the vessel, even in the case of a nuclear detonation inside a hangar.[1] This was in sharp contrast to Imperial designs like the Imperial-class Star Destroyer, which could be blown up with a similar charge placed in a hangar.[5]
History
The Mediator-class ships were designed after the Black Fleet Crisis as more powerful successors to the previous classes of Star Cruisers built by the Mon Calamari Shipyards, along with the larger Viscount-class. The class also represented a move away from the alphanumeric designations which had been given to previous Mon Calamari ship-types, such as the MC80 and MC90. Instead, they used a conventional class-name based on the name of the lead ship, the Mediator.[1]
The new battle cruisers were introduced during the Osarian-Rhommamool conflict prior to the Yuuzhan Vong War[3] and saw service in the opening months of the galactic invasion. The class's namesake, the Mediator, can be considered the first major combat casualty of the conflict: while she was deployed to intervene in a dispute between the planets Rhommamool and Osarian, enemy infiltrator Nom Anor detonated a shuttle laden with nuclear explosives in her hangar section, severely damaging her.[1]
In the first months of the war, military analysts like Ayddar Nylykerka, the New Republic's head of Fleet Intelligence, believed that the Mediator-class ships already in service, when used in conjunction with Bothan Assault Cruisers and Star Defenders, were sufficient to engage the Yuuzhan Vong successfully, and a Mediator-class ship was the centrepiece of a battle group of New Republic and Imperial Remnant warships deployed at Ord Mantell early in 26 ABY, in anticipation of a Yuuzhan Vong strike there.[2]
However, during the Battle of Ord Mantell, this ship was destroyed after a vicious close-combat engagement with several enemy vessels, including a Miid Ro'ik. Not much is known of them after this event.[2]
Although Mon Calamari was believed to have been cut off before the end of the first year of the war, it appears that secret hyperlanes were in fact kept open, and that new ships continued to be supplied to the New Republic fleets—including the Mediator-class vessels to replace those lost and damaged in the opening stages of the conflict.
A number of Mediator-class ships were part of the combined Alliance fleet guarding Mon Calamari and its shipyards in 30 ABY. The ships served under Admiral Traest Kre'fey during the Defense of Mon Calamari and were also part of the final assault of the war during the Recapture of Coruscant.[4]
Behind the scenes
Some uncertainty exists as to the size of the Mediator-class battle cruiser. A lower limit is provided in The New Jedi Order: Agents of Chaos I: Hero's Trial, where a ship of this class is said to be "larger" than a 1.6km Miid Ro'ik, while in The New Jedi Order: Vector Prime, the Star Defender Viscount is described as "nearly twice the size" of Mediator: Viscount has subsequently been given a length of 17km, which would suggest that the battle cruiser is 8.5 kilometers long or larger. This was reinforced in The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia.
Appearances
- The New Jedi Order: Vector Prime
- The New Jedi Order: Agents of Chaos I: Hero's Trial
- The New Jedi Order: The Unifying Force