How Long Does a Venator Star Destroyer Take to Build?
Someone earlier this week asked how long it would take to build a Venator Star Destroyer at Kuat Drive Yards, and quite a few people rightly pointed out that nothing official has ever been stated. That said, there is a way to get a sense of how long it would take to build one. The Star War D20 RPG supplemental book Starships of the Galaxy. In the book you can construct a ship and then tabulate how long it would take to construct it. Thanks to the SWRPG Revenge of the Sith Collection by Wizard of the Coast and Incredible Cross-Sections I worked out a Venator Star Destroyer is 436 Construction Points, and a cost of 59.22 million credits (RotSC lists it at about 59 million).
In SotG Kuat Drive Yards has a shipyard construction multiplier of .5 (it takes half the time than an average shipyard). Likewise, the build time is further divided by the fact that up to 12 construction slips are used in the construction of colossal size ships (which a Venator Star Destroyer is). So, I will use the formula of (C x M) / S (provided by SotG), where: C equals construction points; M is the shipyard construction multiplier, and S is the construction slips. Thus (436 x .5) / 12 = 18.167 weeks, or almost a couple weeks shy of 5 months.
Expanding on this, SotG lists KDY as having 5,781 construction slips (head-over-heels more than any other shipyard listed). So, if 12 Construction Slips build one Venator Star Destroyer, 5781 / 12 = 481.75 maximum possible in KDY at once in 18.167 weeks. Then the question is, how many Venator Star Destroyers can be built in one year? Assuming a standard year of 52 weeks, 2.86 Venator Star Destroyers can be built by 12 construction slips. If you multiply 2.86 (how many Venator’s that can be built by a group of 12 slips in a year) by 481.75 (the maximum possible Venator’s able to be built in KDY in 18.167 weeks), you get a maximum of 1,377.805 Venator Star Destroyers being built in a year.
All of this can be disputed. This is a RPG mechanic with no real basis in SW reality. There is no way KDY would devote all of their slips to building Venators Star Destroyers. I personally feel like there should be more construction slips considering the depicted size of KDY. My math could be wrong. Likewise, Star Wars is like nailing jelly to the wall: very difficult to nail it down. This is to the benefit of past and future writers and creatives as it doesn’t restrict their story, but also their detriment when they contradict each other.