Home One/Legends

"Every Rebel in the galaxy, soldier and civilian alike, waited tensely in these ships for instructions. They were led by the largest of the Rebel Star Cruisers, the Headquarters Frigate."

- Description of Home One prior to the Battle of Endor

Home One, also known as the Headquarters Frigate, was an MC80 Star Cruiser in the Alliance to Restore the Republic's fleet, famous for its role at the Battle of Endor and as one of Admiral Ackbar's flagships. It was the namesake of the Home One type subclass.

Characteristics
Home One belonged to the Mon Calamari Star Cruiser line of warships, and like most Mon Cal ships, it had a long cylindrical hull. Blue-gray in color, it had a tapered nose, and a bulbous stern, and it lacked the flared wings seen on the MC80 Liberty type.



In her original form, the Home One was an unarmed civilian vessel, designed for deep-space exploration, and her hull was pierced by a number of large observation viewports that would have been vulnerable in a military role. However, it is possible that, viewport bubbles notwithstanding, she was protected from the outset by the heavy hull plating and triple-redundant deflector shields that she would later carry in Rebel Alliance service.

During the Galactic Civil War, the Home One was rebuilt to serve as a command ship, carrier and battleship. Her vast viewports were plated over, and she was outfitted with a heavy offensive armament. Most sources indicate that the ship's weapons included twenty-nine heavy turbolaser emplacements and thirty-six ion cannons, although some references cite forty-eight turbolaser batteries and twenty ion cannon batteries, the same as a standard MC80 Liberty type Star Cruiser.



More consistent are statements according the Home One's six tractor beam projectors, and ten squadrons of Alliance starfighters, plus shuttles and other support ships. The hull contained twenty hangars, two of which were capable of handling larger vessels, these presumably being the large bay on the starboard side of the hull, and the main hangar on the ship's underbelly. Two smaller bays were visible on the port side of the hull, approximately opposite the large starboard bay.

The ship was powered by four M8.0-StarDrive main engines and six M4.5-StarDrive maneuvering engines, a drive system also used on the Liberty type, although the thrusters of the two designs were arranged in different configurations: where the Home One had four large and six small nozzles, the Liberty had nine of varying sizes.

Home One had a standard crew of 5,156, plus 279 gunners, 1,200 troops and 20,000 metric tons of cargo: the minimum operating crew was 1,230. As with all early Mon Calamari cruisers, most ship bridge controls could not be modified for use by Human hands, so the command crews were almost exclusively Mon Calamari, but the rest of the crew were a mix of all Rebel species: for example, Plourr Ilo served as a technician during the Battle of Endor. The interior corridors, bridges and bulkheads of the Home One were pristine white.

History
As with most Alliance-era Mon Calamari warships, the Home One began as a civilian vessel built at the shipyards of Mon Calamari. She was designed as an unarmed exploration vessel, used to investigate deep space and to make contact with alien species.

When the Mon Calamari began to support the Alliance in earnest, the ship was selected for conversion into a warship, and became the flagship of the recently freed Ackbar. Home One became particularly important after the Alliance's defeat at the Battle of Hoth deprived Alliance High Command of a planetary headquarters, and she became the mobile base of operations of the Rebel leadership. As the flagship of Admiral Ackbar, Supreme Commander of the Rebel Fleet, the vessel was considered one of the most important assets to the Rebellion.



Home One was one of the largest ships in the Alliance fleet at the Battle of Endor and Ackbar commanded the Alliance fleet from its bridge. The vessel went on to serve as Ackbar's flagship for the next five years, serving as the home base of the famed X-wing unit Rogue Squadron and participating in numerous key battles, including the First Battle of Coruscant, the Battle of Bilbringi, and the Second Battle of Ciutric IV.

Ackbar's flagship was constantly in use, due to the Supreme Commander's tendency to command important engagements personally. As a result, the vessel needed to be maintained at a constant state of readiness, which was achieved by repair yards in orbit over Coruscant.

Over the years, however, more advanced Mon Calamari starships were developed, such as the MC80B and MC90, and by 10 ABY, Ackbar was commanding the fleet from a new MC90 Star Cruiser, the Defiance. But the Home One continued to be deployed in front-line roles. She served as the command ship in the hunt for Leonia Tavira's Invid pirates in 11 ABY, leading a taskforce that included Rogue Squadron and two Victory-class Star Destroyers, and Ackbar continued to use the venerable Star Cruiser as his personal flagship throughout his tenure as Supreme Commander, so she did not leave service until 23 ABY at the earliest.

It is unknown whether or not the Home One returned to service during the Yuuzhan Vong War.

Sister ships

 * Independence
 * Defiance

Behind the scenes


The Home One design is sometimes implied to be unique, for instance in the statement that it was "the largest of the Rebel Star Cruisers" in the novelization of Return of the Jedi. However, Star Wars canon shows other ships of the same design. At least one other ship appears in Return of the Jedi, being pulverized by the Death Star II's superlaser. The Star Wars Customizable Card Game uses movie images of Home One-type cruisers for two named ships: Independence, which is known from other sources to have survived the Battle of Endor, and Defiance, which could possibly have been the ship destroyed by the Death Star II.

Canon is inconsistent about the weapons array aboard Home One. The best-known (and apparently most frequently-stated) armament consists of 29 turbolasers and 36 ion cannons, and some fans argue that this is a very light armament for a vessel of this cruiser's size and importance, leading to a fanon suggestion that a more realistic armament would be attained by reversing the order of the number of weapons (i.e., 92 turbolasers and 63 ion cannons). However, the earliest known source to give the ship this armament, the 1984 first edition of A Guide to the Star Wars Universe, describes her as carrying 29 batteries of five turbolaser cannon each, for a more impressive total of 145 turbolasers and 36 ion cannons. Adding to the confusion, the Star Wars Trilogy Sourcebook - Special Edition gives Home One instead an armament of 48 turbolasers and 20 ion cannons, which had previously been given as the armament of a standard MC80 Star Cruiser. The Official Star Wars Fact File 12 cites the two contrasting armaments on consecutive pages.



In the novelization of Return of the Jedi and a number of other early sources, the name Headquarters Frigate was italicized as if it was the ship's name, and "Home One" (or "Home-one") was not, as if it was merely a callsign for the ship, comparable to "Red Leader." This problem was compounded by the designation of a ship named Independence as Ackbar's flagship in the X-Wing computer game. These problems have been clarified on StarWars.com Questions & Answers by Leland Chee, with Home One being the ship's real name, and Independence being a sister ship.

Some fans have wondered how a ship can be called both a "cruiser" and a "frigate," but a possible real-world parallel is found in the United States Navy, where the term "frigate" was used for all but one of the large surface-combat warships built between 1950 and 1975, the majority of which were reclassified as "cruisers" in 1975.

Direct scaling of Home One in Return of the Jedi implies a minimum length of approximately 1.5km, and some cinematic evidence suggests a length of over several miles. This contrasts with the 1,200-meter, 1,300-meter and 1,400-meter lengths given by Expanded Universe sources. X-wing Alliance, which provides the source for the 1,400 meter long Home One, also gives a length of 1,500 meters to Liberty-style cruisers and calls both types "MC80a"s. The most quoted size of 1,200 meters apparently originated with West End Games, and is often presented as the generic size of MC80 Star Cruisers. Only the Expanded Universe sizes are explicitly part of Star Wars canon. The ROTJ script and film novelization contradicts these later sources by describing Home One as the largest of the Rebel Star Cruisers, reinforcing its visual appearance in the film.



Dr. Curtis Saxton, author of several official Star Wars reference books, had previously played a pivotal role in increasing awareness of the larger size for Home One on his fan website, Star Wars Technical Commentaries. Other fans prefer the Expanded Universe size, and point out that the hangar exit, which plays an important role in his scaling calculations, is not the same on the outside (physical model) as on the inside (matte painting), thus making it unreliable for scaling purposes. However, this is only related to the positioning of some internal lights, which differ from scene to scene and do not affect the actual dimensions of the opening.

The game Star Wars: Empire at War scales Home One at approximately 3,200 meters. The game shows the Venator, Victory, Imperial, and Liberty classes in nearly perfect relative scale against each other, but the canonical lengths of the Tartan-class and Broadside-class cruisers are different from their size in the game, which means that the in-game size cannot be relied on completely. In addition, "character" vessels tend to be slightly larger than their counterparts, which suggests that Home One is not to scale.

Appearances

 * Star Wars: Empire at War
 * Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruption
 * Star Wars: Empire: "General" Skywalker
 * Star Wars Rebellion 12: Small Victories, Part 2
 * Entrenched
 * Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
 * Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi novel
 * Star Wars: Return of the Jedi 3: Mission to Endor
 * Star Wars: Return of the Jedi 4: The Final Duel
 * X-wing Rogue Squadron: The Warrior Princess
 * X-wing Rogue Squadron: In the Empire's Service
 * X-wing Rogue Squadron: Masquerade
 * X-wing: Rogue Squadron
 * X-wing: Wedge's Gamble
 * X-wing: Solo Command
 * The Last Command
 * X-wing: Isard's Revenge
 * I, Jedi

Non-canon appearances

 * Star Wars Infinities: Return of the Jedi
 * Star Wars Manga: Return of the Jedi
 * LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy
 * LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga

Notes and references
Heimat Eins