Brief History of the Orginal Long Reach Transport:

One of Sienar's first successful military transports, the TID-12/a "Long Reach" served the Republic fleet with the utmost efficiency for many years and even saw extended usage by the early Imperial Navy and then the Rebel Alliance.

Driven by three advanced Sienar Design Systems' h-ID mark II ion drives, the vessel could cruise at speeds far exceeding the average for its class - most transport vessels of its size were at least twenty percent slower at cruising speeds.

Equipped with a Class Three hyperdrive, the Long Reach soon became one of the Republic's most commonly used long-range transports. This,
combined with its modular design, gave the Long Reach the ability to
easily ferry troops, equipment, supplies and even ground vehicles from
planet-to-planet, ship-to-ship and most frequently, ship-to-surface.

The Long Reach's only design flaw was its inability to rapidly arrive at a planetary surface. Sienar never originally intended the craft to serve as a dropship or the vessel would have been designed accordingly, it was simply intended to ferry replacement troops, supplies and vehicles to secure landing zones, not the intense combat arenas in which the Republic was so eager to send it into.

Entering combat zones usually meant dealing with at least limited amounts of anti-air fire concentrated upon landing craft - if you can eliminate a landing craft on the way down then you essentially eliminate all of the troops and vehicles on board. The first wave of Long Reach transports saw heavy casualities during such operations as it presented quite a target profile. Instead of spending countless sums of credits to replace this new vessel, the Republic began installing more powerful shield generators to increase the protection to the ship's ventral surface where the majority of the anti-air fire hit. This modification was a huge success.

Armed with only a double blaster cannon mounted on a turret upon the ship's "chin," the Long Reach depended highly upon two things: safety in numbers and escorts (usually consisting of Republic Z-95 Headhunters).

The Republic sometimes opted to mount a pair of short-range starfighters (the original Mark I Z-95s) on external starfighter racks, similar to those found on the Carrack light cruiser. Planetary landings for these vessels required that the fighters be launched and the racks retracted. The pair of fighters could then intercept any enemy fighters and offer adequate air support for disembarking troops.

Ingress/egress hatches on either side of the vessels allowed for rapid loading and unloading of troops, vehicles and cargo while the chin turret provided a sufficient amount of supressing cover fire.

The Empire did not waste much time in finding a more "modern" replacement for the Long Reach. Actually, the Empire replaced it with several different craft including the Sentinel landing craft (which was referred to as the "Baby Long Reach" when it was first developed) and Kuat Drive Yards' Warhammer AT-AT transport. However, the Rebel Alliance made good use of the handful of Long Reaches it was able to get its hands on.

Ship Statistics:

Sienar Design Systems' TID-12/a "Long Reach"

Space Transport

Large (112 m long)

40 to 1,000 (depending upon configuration)

50 to 42,000 tons (depending upon configuration)

6 month

850 km/h

5 (Normal +2)

• Double Blaster Cannon

Fire Arc: Chin turret

• 4 Repeating Pulse Cannons

Can be equipped with up to two external starfighter racks.

Up to 24 repulsortanks or vehicles of equivilant size or 40 AT-PTs. Carrying vehicles reduces cargo and passenger capacity, if vehicle capacity is 50% then reduce maximum cargo and passenger capacities by 50% to reflect this. If vehicle capacity is 100%, then passenger and cargo capacity is at minimum levels indicated above.

Picture of the layout for the ship.