The Battle of Naboo (A question of tactics)

[Baffalo]

Alright, I was kicking around the Battle of Naboo (TPM) and I realized that quite a few mistakes were made. Big ones that could've turned the entire battle on its head and left the Trade Federation victorious and Queen Amidala and her cohorts either in chains or lying in a pool of blood on the palace floor.

1) No Orbital Bombardment
The Trade Federation is established early on in the movie to have a blockade around Naboo, with several of their large freighter/warships in orbit to stop all travel to and from the planet. At some point during Amidala's trip to Coruscant, the TF pulled some of their ships, leaving their droid control ships vulnerable. Pulling up the specifications on Wookiepedia, the droid control ship contained 42 quad-laser batteries scattered around the hull for point defense. However, one of the more normal vessels (the same ones to later serve the CIS) had several full turbolaser batteries comparable to an Imperial II-Class Star Destroyer. I'm not sure if they'd be the same calibre or of the same firepower, but if you look at the way the Gungan army was marching before the battle, you can see how a few turbolaser barrages from orbit would've either completely wiped out their forces or sent them scattering back to the swamps.

Gungan Army on the March

2) No Air Support
This is one of those problems that shouldn't raise it's head, and the reason I say that is because of how fast starships travel. We saw earlier in the movie that after Qui-Gon gets aboard, by the time he walks to the bridge they're already in space above Tattooine. We know ships are fast, and we know that there was more than one ship in orbit (I think it was in a picture somewhere but I can't find it) so the question becomes: if the viceroy knew the Gungans were coming, why didn't he send fighters to attack their marching column? Again, they were vulnerable. We didn't see anything capable of taking down fighters, only ground targets. Take out the shield generators on the first pass and I doubt there's anything that can be done to save the rest of the army. The Gungans would've died in the field, with no distraction to pull the main army from Theed, making Amidala's mission impossible. It might make the way easier for Bravo Squadron's attack on the control ship, but even that was a clusterfuck.

3) Lack of Droidekas
This one is perhaps the most difficult to understand, even from the beginning of the movie. You have powerful, shielded droids that can pin down an entire squad with little to no difficulty, even Jedi, and yet you station them either in small numbers or far away. The Viceroy, the most powerful man in all the Trade Federation, only has droidekas stationed in the palace hangar to keep watch on some starfighters. I'd personally keep them very, very close, possibly inside the throne room itself. Let them stay there, make the attackers come to them, and make them regret doing so.

4) No Sabotage to Enemy Fighters
The Trade Federation took Naboo with little to no actual resistance. The real resistance (if you believe the games) came afterwards. The goal of any resistance cell is to obtain weapons and prepare attacks. I'm pretty sure that fighters are a dangerous asset even if they are only used in hit and run attacks. So why are the fighters fueled and armed sitting in the hangar when the battle begins? If the Trade Federation had disabled the fighters, say by removing their engines and keeping them on mounts nearby, the entire attack on the droid control ship becomes impossible. Amidala's plan focused on getting the droid control ship knocked out so the army would fall, but if the ship remains intact, she's failed. The Gungan army is wiped out and Amidala is now stuck in the throne room with a hostage surrounded by an army. The second in command up on the control ship could order the Viceroy's execution as well as everyone else's, and the entire rebellion dies.

[Adam Reynolds]

In a general sense the reason for the incompetence of the Trade Federation is that they are businessmen and not soldiers and their lack of effective strategy is reflected by this. Compounding this problem is their tendency to use droids as battlefield commanders.

In terms of orbital bombardment, if the Trade Federation was to use weapons of mass destruction against the natives, it would be much harder to claim the legitimacy of their invasion. As your own source shows, at the time of the Battle of Naboo, the Trade Federation lacked significant firepower on their vessels. According to Cloak of Deception, the Trade Federation was just able to justify point defense weapons, not full turbolaser batteries, which would only be violated during the Clone Wars during a state of total war.

Regarding the lack of air support, this is a more major mistake, however the Droid army had nothing to fear from the Gungans in an open battle especially given that they probably had no idea about the Gungan shielding technology. Even without air support and tank support due to the Gungan shields it's not as if they suffered massive casualties and with a droid army it's not as if the casualties really hurt the Trade Federation in the long run.

The lack of droidikas in the throne room is a much larger error on the part of the Viceroy and is probably one of the most direct factors to his defeat. In this case, there could possibly be a technological reason for this as we have never seen droidikas being used as guards despite their effectiveness in this role, every time they appear controlled by the Trade Federation it is always in a reactive role(they weren't actually guarding the starfighters and only appear once the Naboo attack has already commenced). However it is possible that this application is doctrinal rather than technological as a droidika in Survivor's Quest is seen on sentry duty, though it was also seen firing in rolling configuration indicating that it may be improved from the base model.

The lack of sabotage for the Naboo fighters was another major mistake however your idea of removing the engines seems overly complex , there are much more effective approaches such as simply draining the fuel. In addition, once Padme had left, it was extremely unlikely she would return with pilots that could launch an attack and reclaim the fighters. Even in the games, the resistance was extremely limited and would be unlikely to launch an all or nothing gambit to reclaim the fighters. Air support is extremely difficult to maintain for a resistance force on the scale of Naboo and would therefore not be a high priority for them.

There is in fact two bigger flaws that you failed to mention. Almost certainly the biggest mistake was sending all but one of the Trade Federation battleships away. However this is likely justified by the fact that as a trade organization they were loosing money as their transports were in the blockade. The second biggest mistake was the Viceroy not fleeing at the first sign of an attack on the palace, though ironically that would have probably led to his death when the droid control ship blew up.

[The Romulan Republic]

The lack of turbolaser bombardment should not be surprising. It is quite rare to see such bombardments in canon- they're probably, as Adamskywalker007 noted, not politically popular, and with good reason. Also, honestly, they had no reason to expect such tactics to be nessissary. As we see on screen, their droid infantry and tanks were quite capable of routing the Gungans.

Air support might have helped, but unless the fighters have enough firepower to breach the Gungan shield, the battle would still have come down to an infantry engagement. And pulling fighters away from the ship would, as you noted, give Amidala's fighters a better shot.

The lack of Droidekas also should not be surprising. As far as I am aware they are an elite unit, and probably cost a good deal more to produce than standard battle droids. Their were Droidekas deployed in the palace, but they were probably only available in very limited numbers.

The only big mistakes I can see are not having a back-up control ship in orbit, not disabling the Naboo fighters or at least putting them under better security, and not keeping stronger security (even just a few dozen more standard droids) in the palace.

[Baffalo]

I agree that the Viceroy should've evacuated when the attack became an obvious diversion. I seem to recall him saying, "I thought the battle was going to take place far from here. This is too close." He had one of two options at that point: evacuate, or call for additional troops, maybe have some of his troops return from fighting the Gungans. Given that we saw the forces there easily overtake the Gungans, I think a few to bolster palace defenses wouldn't hurt that much.

I wonder... we saw in AotC that the core ship, the large ball in the center, can land on planets to conduct trade and offload supplies. I imagine they kept it in orbit to provide better coverage, but what if the core ship had landed on the planet? Would that have helped/hindered the attack? The reason I ask is they were shown to be tough bastards in AotC, with several artillery cannons working together to bring just one down. If the control ship had landed at Theed, then it would've been able to serve as both the control point and evacuation ship of Nute Gunray.

Also I wonder what would've happened if the Viceroy had been killed? Considering he wanted that treaty signed, I wonder if the Trade Federation would make it seem as if he was killed helping the Nubians against the rebel forces and Gungan warriors running amok, rather than corporate interests? It would've played right into Palpatine's hands, since he could justify a small army to help defend Naboo, then make it larger as time went on. Or maybe not. Just curiosity.

[Simon_Jester]

Alright, I was kicking around the Battle of Naboo (TPM) and I realized that quite a few mistakes were made. Big ones that could've turned the entire battle on its head and left the Trade Federation victorious and Queen Amidala and her cohorts either in chains or lying in a pool of blood on the palace floor.

1) No Orbital Bombardment
The Trade Federation is established early on in the movie to have a blockade around Naboo, with several of their large freighter/warships in orbit to stop all travel to and from the planet. At some point during Amidala's trip to Coruscant, the TF pulled some of their ships, leaving their droid control ships vulnerable. Pulling up the specifications on Wookiepedia, the droid control ship contained 42 quad-laser batteries scattered around the hull for point defense. However, one of the more normal vessels (the same ones to later serve the CIS) had several full turbolaser batteries comparable to an Imperial II-Class Star Destroyer. I'm not sure if they'd be the same calibre or of the same firepower, but if you look at the way the Gungan army was marching before the battle, you can see how a few turbolaser barrages from orbit would've either completely wiped out their forces or sent them scattering back to the swamps.

This is only an issue if the droid control ship has line of sight to wherever the Gungans are. If they don't, they don't- they're not going to move their starship to deal with a threat that their droid army is quite capable of dealing with on its own.

That's important to remember- the droid army was stronger than the Gungan army. They were winning handily right up until the control ship was destroyed. And given the evidence, it seems quite possible that most of their 'casualties' lost or damaged in the battle could have been repaired. We don't know how much damage those crackling blue energy balls the Gungans throw do, but they look electrical, and there may not be anything wrong with the downed battledroids hit by them that replacing some blown fuses can't fix.

So the Trade Federation may have accurately assessed the strength of that army and decided that there was no real need to do anything but send in the killbots to wipe it out.

Also remember that firing Star Wars beam weapons may be very expensive in terms of fuel or other resources. They're burning this exotic hypermatter stuff- for all I know, it might actually cost more to fire the main guns several times than to land ground troops and clear the enemy out that way. Sure, starship weapons are fired during major space battles where the outcome of planetary battles is at stake and where you lose ships if you don't fight back effectively, but would they be used for minor pacification operations that the ground units can handle perfectly well?

2) No Air Support
This is one of those problems that shouldn't raise it's head, and the reason I say that is because of how fast starships travel. We saw earlier in the movie that after Qui-Gon gets aboard, by the time he walks to the bridge they're already in space above Tattooine. We know ships are fast, and we know that there was more than one ship in orbit (I think it was in a picture somewhere but I can't find it) so the question becomes: if the viceroy knew the Gungans were coming, why didn't he send fighters to attack their marching column?

I could have sworn there was only one ship. That said, a quick fighter attack against their forces would have been sensible. Most explanations I can easily think of for why the Trade Federation didn't do it revolve around stupidity on their part- a "trade viceroy" or whatever is not necessarily a great general, and when he hears an army is coming for him, he may just order his own army to stop them without thinking about it very hard.

The one possibility is that they didn't just want to break up that army- they wanted to destroy it entirely, without having to worry about any guerilla warfare issues in the long run. Which would be easier if they can lure the Gungans into a decisive ground battle- air support can't walk over the battlefield making sure everyone's dead. Well, come to think of it, Trade Fed fighters can... (shakes head)

3) Lack of Droidekas
This one is perhaps the most difficult to understand, even from the beginning of the movie. You have powerful, shielded droids that can pin down an entire squad with little to no difficulty, even Jedi, and yet you station them either in small numbers or far away. The Viceroy, the most powerful man in all the Trade Federation, only has droidekas stationed in the palace hangar to keep watch on some starfighters. I'd personally keep them very, very close, possibly inside the throne room itself. Let them stay there, make the attackers come to them, and make them regret doing so.

The Viceroy was not all that worried about his personal security. As long as there were no Jedi on the planet, it was unlikely that anyone would be even remotely capable of storming his palace and reaching him, especially since he could always order the droidekas to bail him out just as he did on the flagship.

Whereas the Viceroy probably was worried about the fighters being stolen, so guarding them heavily makes perfect sense, and indeed the only question is why they were not guarded more heavily: I have no answer to your (4).

But as a rule, you put your strongest units to guard the most vulnerable target. The Viceroy himself is not the most vulnerable target- as we saw, so long as the droid control ship remained intact, he could easily get reinforcements to bail him out of any emergency, just as he did on the flagship before the invasion when Jedi were literally banging his door down.

[Agent Sorchus]

I'm only going to respond to a little bit of this because at least some of this would be clearer on another viewing of the movie.

1) No Orbital Bombardment
The Trade Federation is established early on in the movie to have a blockade around Naboo, with several of their large freighter/warships in orbit to stop all travel to and from the planet. At some point during Amidala's trip to Coruscant, the TF pulled some of their ships, leaving their droid control ships vulnerable. ...
Gungan Army on the March

Yes we see no orbital fire support, however there was explicitly only one ship and it is unknown it's relative position in orbit and location compared to the army. Either way the more important thing was that the battledroids were successfully engaging the Gungans, and when they finally lost the command ship had already been destroyed.

2) No Air Support
This is one of those problems that shouldn't raise it's head, and the reason I say that is because of how fast starships travel. ...

We saw no anti-fighter weapons, but likewise we saw no ground attack weapons on the fighters. It could be that such small and limited droid fighters were totally unsuited to ground attack, and that the Viceroy wouldn't know if the Gungans had any anti air weapons on them.

Basically you are too focused on speed and not other properties. A MIG-25 isn't useful for ground attack despite being one of the fastest fighters ever made.

3) Lack of Droidekas
This one is perhaps the most difficult to understand, even from the beginning of the movie. You have powerful, shielded droids that can pin down an entire squad with little to no difficulty, even Jedi, and yet you station them either in small numbers or far away. The Viceroy, the most powerful man in all the Trade Federation, only has droidekas stationed in the palace hangar to keep watch on some starfighters. I'd personally keep them very, very close, possibly inside the throne room itself. Let them stay there, make the attackers come to them, and make them regret doing so.

http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images ... kas-ST.jpg
That is what I thought at first you were going on about since the rest of the post talks up to here talks about. But since you are talking about the palace and it's defenses...

The destroyers might've actually been overwhelmed in firepower by the guards such that they couldn't be used as immobile indestructible weapons platforms, or do we forget how fast the tanks outside the palace itself were destroyed? In this case using them as mobile attack units to flank is actually the superior tactical choice. And that there was no warning of the Security forces attack, they shouldn't hold their "best" as the EU considers them in reserve when there is a actual army coming down on them.

4) No Sabotage to Enemy Fighters
The Trade Federation took Naboo with little to no actual resistance. The real resistance (if you believe the games) came afterwards.
...
second in command up on the control ship could order the Viceroy's execution as well as everyone else's, and the entire rebellion dies.

Gonna go out on a limb here and say that you should ignore the games. Besides just that you assume that the second in command wasn't down on the planet also and only computer nerds were up in the ship in orbit watching over the servers that control the droids. Also what is to say that the second would go out on a limb and kill his boss? AND BESIDES even that those fighters lost the battle versus the ship, if it weren't for Anakin. The TF dudes could've rightly said that the eight or nine little fighters were so inconsequential that there was no need to do anything with them.

What was more stupid is that the pilots were kept right next to their star fighters rather than in a concentration camp like the rest of the populace.

I could theorize that it is a case of if someone comes by the planet there needs to be some sort of farcical use of the Naboo pilots and fighters to imitate a world where every thing is going all right.

[Eternal_Freedom]

A better question would be: What happenned to the half-dozen Doirdekas that captured Amidala and her bunch? They are nowhere in evidence in the Throne room scene, so where did they go?

[Adam Reynolds]

What was more stupid is that the pilots were kept right next to their star fighters rather than in a concentration camp like the rest of the populace.

I could theorize that it is a case of if someone comes by the planet there needs to be some sort of farcical use of the Naboo pilots and fighters to imitate a world where every thing is going all right.

The pilots were actually not kept next to their fighters during the end battle, that only occured in the initial occupation. The pilots that attacked the droid control ship were all freed by Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan when they made their initial escape to Tatooine. At the end battle, the hanger was empty of Naboo until the Queen made her attack.

The destroyers might've actually been overwhelmed in firepower by the guards such that they couldn't be used as immobile indestructible weapons platforms, or do we forget how fast the tanks outside the palace itself were destroyed? In this case using them as mobile attack units to flank is actually the superior tactical choice. And that there was no warning of the Security forces attack, they shouldn't hold their "best" as the EU considers them in reserve when there is a actual army coming down on them.

It is interesting in that the main group we see fighting droidikas in Jedi and that the nature of those droids makes them almost ideally suited to fighting Jedi. It seems that a well-equipped military like the Clone Army would have almost no problem with them. In addition the second wave of Naboo soldiers seemed to have slightly heavier weapons due to the fact that they were not reliant on the ascension guns as Padme's group was. The visual dictionary also shows that Naboo security forces actually have thermal detonators in their arsenal.

A better question would be: What happenned to the half-dozen Doirdekas that captured Amidala and her bunch? They are nowhere in evidence in the Throne room scene, so where did they go?

According to the novelization, those droids were destroyed by Sabe(the decoy) and the main force of the Naboo guards. Padme and her group surrendered because they were outnumbers as much as they were outgunned. Also notice that this group of droidkas appeared to lack shields as well, meaning that they would be much easier targets.

[dworkin]

Alright, I was kicking around the Battle of Naboo (TPM) and I realized that quite a few mistakes were made. Big ones that could've turned the entire battle on its head and left the Trade Federation victorious and Queen Amidala and her cohorts either in chains or lying in a pool of blood on the palace floor.

In a PG movie? I suggest cutting down on the red meat in your diet there.

Real reasons

1) Palpy drew the short straw when applying for flunkies.
2) Palpy drew the short straw when applying for flunkies.
3) Palpy drew the short straw when applying for flunkies.
4) Palpy drew the short straw when applying for flunkies.

Transparently Bogus Reasons.

1) Shooting up bits of planet with capship weaponry is a naughty thing. Especially if th inhabitants are standing on it at the time. The Gungans, while isolationist are probably still capable of screaming to galactic society that some complete bastards shot up their Gungan Civil War society event. How were they to know the bloody Naboo and Trade Feds were fighting? Because, as you sift for traces of carbon in the big crater how do you prove otherwise?

2) A penny pincher in the TF compared the price of a transforming droid starfighter and a man-portable SAM. After recovering from the shock they send a memo declaring using fighters for ground support to be a firing offence.

3) Droidekas are expensive. Real expensive. Expensive to build, expensive to run, expensive to fix. They only have a few Droidekas, total.

4) The TF was planning on selling them. After the last lawsuit when they did sabotage the fighters, sold them and forgot to disarm the bomb on one, they decided not to bother.

[VF5SS]

I think we need to do some anal-sys on the cost to benefit ratio of building Droideeekaahs vs. starfighter sized robots that turn into starfighters. Or taking your standard robots and building tanks and toyetic vehicles that they physically pilot.

Consider the following design for an anti Jedi robot. Start with a three or four legged robot with perhaps a similar upper body to a previous design and equip it with retractable wheels for high speed movement while maintaining the ability to keep your shield up without doing the monkey roll. Now you've got the best of both world for high speed movement over level terrain and dexterity for rough ground while maximizing the bottom line.

Star Wars has the best military gear in the universe.

[Connor MacLeod]

I'm pretty sure they went into the "invasion" of Naboo not expecting to fight any sort of real ground war or anything. That tends to hamper you when you actually end up getting involved in a ground war, even when you are just a bunch of inept businessmen.