The Golden Dragon carrier-battleship was originally Garland Yutong Corporation's Golden Dragon starfreighter—an LH-3210-class freighter built by Hoersch-Kessel Drive. It measured 3,170 meters long, 3,009 meters wide, and 1,028.77 meters tall.
In Galactic Standard Year 4, when the Bespin Mandalorian Armed Forces Navy First and Second Fleets were operating at Rishi on the "Recover the Lost" mission, they rescued long-detained Garland Yutong employees from Hkig cultists and brought back two LH-3210 freighters—Golden Dragon and Full Fortune.
From the moment Golden Dragon and Full Fortune reached Bespin Sky City, Bespin Aerospace began converting both freighters into carrier-battleships, with technical support from a Corellian Engineering Corporation expert team. Unfortunately, during the First Defense of Bespin late in Galactic Standard Year 4, Full Fortune took a catastrophic strike from an unidentified bomber and was judged beyond repair.
In fact, before he ever arrived in this galaxy, a certain "offworlder" had already sketched out conversion plans for Golden Dragon and Full Fortune. Back when he was still watching films and holodramas, he'd long wanted to improve the Trade Federation battleship.
Before the Battle of Naboo, the Trade Federation hid its strength and did not openly mass-produce battleships or droid control ships. Whether they were converting LH-3210 freighters into warships or building new hulls, they did it quietly.
The equatorial batteries on Trade Federation battleships/droid control ships used retractable concealed mounts. In peacetime, the equatorial guns could retract fully into the hull.
That design let a Trade Federation battleship/droid control ship masquerade as a harmless LH-3210 freighter—but it also created a potentially lethal problem: even when the equatorial batteries were fully extended to firing position, the hull's structure still blocked their arcs, leaving them with very narrow firing lanes.
Those narrow equatorial arcs meant the ship's firepower was scattered and it couldn't concentrate fire effectively, while also creating enormous blind zones.
At Naboo, the pirate Nym of Lok (flying a Scurrg H-6 bomber) and the young Anakin Skywalker (flying a Naboo N-1 starfighter) seized on that weakness, cutting in through the blind zone and creating the battlefield miracle of a single craft destroying a battleship.
Max's improvement plan was simple, direct, and reliable: push the equatorial battery mounts as far outward as possible. With the guns placed on the outermost rim of the ship's equator, the hull obstructed them far less. Based on calculations and testing, a quad heavy turbolaser mounted on the outer edge of the equatorial rim could achieve a vertical firing arc of up to 270 degrees.
"But even with that placement, it's still hard to concentrate fire," a CEC expert said at the design review. "A ring-shaped hull has inherent flaws."
"How could it not concentrate fire?" Max rotated the ship model in the holoprojection by ninety degrees. "Space combat isn't fought on a 2D plane. It's three-dimensional. If you can't concentrate horizontally, concentrate vertically."
The CEC expert slapped the table. "Right—how did I not think of that? Lord Vizsla, you're brilliant!"
Max was no ship designer. But fire-lane layout and positional coverage were bread-and-butter for a field-grade commander. After years of fighting and building forces, he'd learned a few things the hard way.
Besides moving the equatorial guns outward, Golden Dragon used another equally blunt method to further reduce blind zones.
Bespin Aerospace installed 256 quad light turbolasers on the highest band of Golden Dragon's ring structure (128 on the dorsal side, 128 on the ventral side). With a point-defense mesh that dense, it would be brutally difficult for anyone—Max Vizsla, Aayla Secura, even Anakin Skywalker—to thread a starfighter through it.
In the final configuration, the Golden Dragon carrier-battleship carried 48 quad heavy turbolasers (equatorial), 12 heavy ion cannons (equatorial), 512 quad light turbolasers (256 equatorial, 128 dorsal, 128 ventral), 32 eight-tube point-defense concussion-missile launchers, and 16 tractor-beam projectors (mounted where the Trade Federation droid control ship's large droid signal receiver antenna structures would be).
In addition, the Golden Dragon carrier-battleship could house inside its structure 50–60 ships in the 300-meter class (C-9979 freighters/landing craft, MPO-1400 Purrgil-class, CR-12 Thranta-class, and so on) or 80 Marauder-class corvettes, plus 1,000–2,000 starfighters of various types. It could pack in every major combat asset Bespin currently fielded and still have space to spare.
The Ruusan Reformation-era arms control rules stipulated that cruisers longer than 600 meters—and any larger capital ships—could mount, at most, a Class 5 hyperdrive, and only for use within their own sector. To skirt those limits, the Golden Dragon carrier-battleship used a crude but effective "make-it-look-harmless" disguise.
Bespin Aerospace fitted every exposed weapons station with retractable protective shutters. In peacetime, shutters closed, and Golden Dragon looked like an LH-3210 freighter—just a slightly odd one. In wartime, shutters opened, and Golden Dragon showed its claws.
That kind of disguise wouldn't survive a serious inspection. In truth, the Trade Federation battleship/droid control ship "freighter disguise" wouldn't survive scrutiny either. But if you bothered to put on a mask, you could keep appearances intact—and with just a little "money talks" applied in the right places, the famously upright Judicial inspectors had no reason to make life hard for "law-abiding citizens."
In Max's planning, Golden Dragon would keep doing its old job in peacetime—running freight routes and collecting transport subsidies to keep the ledger healthy. One Golden Dragon run could relocate an entire Fygge Mining operation from Corellia to Ryloth in a single shipment.
In wartime, if conditions allowed, Golden Dragon would serve as a fast combat support ship—pushing up to the second line to provide medical support for front-line personnel and maintenance support for front-line equipment. If the situation turned urgent, it could also step up into the line and fight as a carrier-battleship in fleet action.
"Boss, Golden Dragon is ready. Request permission to depart."
"Permission granted."
PS: During the Clone Wars, a typical Trade Federation battleship loadout was 50 C-9979 landing craft, 1,500 Vulture droid starfighters, 1,500 Platoon Attack Craft, 550 Multi-Troop Transports, and 6,250 Armored Assault Tanks.
PPS: The Golden Dragon carrier-battleship's central core sphere cannot separate from the ring hull.
After the Trade Federation's defeat at Naboo, the Republic sanctioned them and ordered their converted/built battleships dismantled. To satisfy inspections, the Trade Federation removed the central core sphere—but did not fully break down the core and ring. Instead, they modified both components so they could rapidly reassemble into a complete Trade Federation battleship again.
The core sphere was refitted into an independently operable Trade Federation core ship, model designation LH-1740.
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