Should I buy the "The Essential Guide to Warfare" ?

[Crossroads Inc.]

So. Part of why I love Star Wars so much, is because they have awesome big spaceships.
Of the many MANY 'Essential' books out there, the only two I ever bought where the first two "Essential Starships" books. The first one I thought was awesome, and so I got the second one as well, till I realized the took out almost all of the Capital ships from it, which really is what I love most.

now when it comes to Awesome big starships, many of us here may know of FractalSponge, AKA Ansel Hsiao. Many of the ships that he has constructed in his thread here I have been told ended up in the Essentual Guide book. Which of course is awesome. (in fact it seems many of the small 'fanon' ships he has done have ended up being canonized by dint of being included in this book)
That said, my question is, are there ENOUGH awesome ships to justify getting the book? Aside from his ships, how many others are in there? Is the book 50% ships? 25%?

Curious to get some feed back before purchase!

[Darth Yan]

It's one of the better ones. Even though Thrawn McEwok (a notorious wanker) worked on it he appears to have been kept on a short leash. It fills out some interesting tidbits of history (The Pius Dea). Mostly it's history, military stuff

[Crossroads Inc.]

So...

It sounds more history and numbers and charts, and less pretty pictures then I take it?

[Darth Yan]

there are pretty pictures. Quite a few.

[Connor MacLeod]

text wise its another one of those guides that tries to 'fix everything' but only manages to sort of do so and only causes more conflict as a result. I mean that isn't to say Fry didn't mean well and tried hard, but Star Wars really isn't a universe where 'single answers' can solve things, if for no othe reason than some nerds will hate the answers.

[PainRack]

I got the book, haven't read it, but the pictures sure are pretty. Well, not in the sense of big powerful cap ships, although there are some, but the artwork looks quite gorgeous.

But then again, I haven't read it yet so............

[Connor MacLeod]

Now that the pictures are mentioend I remember fractalsponge had some stuff in there I believe.. some of the more interesting 'battlecruisers.'

I think the implied definitions of starships was a bit silly though (attempting to reconcile the ICS stuff on starship classification with everything else. The neverending struggle.) Although like I said, Fry tried to reconcile it so I give him marks for that and its not his fault for previous authors having their own ideas about how things work and SW canon being all inclusive.

[PainRack]

It's one of the better ones. Even though Thrawn McEwok (a notorious wanker) worked on it he appears to have been kept on a short leash. It fills out some interesting tidbits of history (The Pius Dea). Mostly it's history, military stuff

You know, having just read the book and knowing this, the sheer miminalism sucks.

We got 3 million for Clone Army without qualifiers.
The Rebel Alliance at its height comprised of a few percent of Imperial forces, but this rounds up to 15 Imperial sector forces. Sounds very impressive until one realizes this means the Empire only has 150 sector forces..... A fucking small force for over 1000 sectors, ignoring the existence of oversector forces and etc........

3 Star Dreadnoughts are considered a significant force.

And well, the book clearly tries to ignore the conflict of numbers but if so, they shouldn't be so specific on numbers also. What with 8 heavy Mon Cal Cruisers..........

And the more than 30 ISDs and other Imperial starships including interdictors.... well, its not utterly wrong but considering that fan count has easily counted the 44 starships in the Imperial flank, why couldn't he have used a better 40 count and then ignoring the capital ships at the outer reaches of the system?

The art however is fantastic:D

[Pelranius]

There's also how the construction of Mon Calamari star cruisers doubled every year after Endor, wonder when that stopped?

[General Soontir Fel]

The artwork is really good, and there's stuff from eras for which very few materials exist (pre-KOTOR Republic). As for the minimalism, it's there, but at least it doesn't go the "CIS numbers were Palpatine's propaganda" route.

However,

The Grand Army began as a vision of Sifo-Dyas, a Jedi Master from the Cassandran Worlds whose gift of precognition was tragically undercut by the fact that his peers rarely believed his visions to be true.

Really?

[Fire Fly]

Personally, it's not a book really worth getting. Initially, I was hoping the book would be slightly wikipedia-style battle articles with lots of battle diagrams and historical context. The book has the light touch possible towards that direction but it's not enough to make me throw money for it. Additionally, I feel there's not enough new material in the book to warrant purchasing it. I wanted to see the book talk about other campaigns and theaters during Thrawn's campaigns, during the reborn Emperor's resurgence, their subordinate commands, things like that. This isn't to fault the author for trying but I think I had really high hopes and the book simply couldn't meet my own personal expectations. I still think it's absolutely worth reading and pursing through as it has lots of nice graphics and historical tidbits but on the whole, it doesn't satisfy me personally.

[Pelranius]

The cut material from the books is pretty interesting, but it suffered from trying to cover 25,000 years of warfare (granted, it did a lot for the early Republic era that we previously had no data on).

[Abacus]

I personally wanted more details about the Orinda Campaign. I did get some -- but far from the detail that I desired.

[Darth Yan]

I'm not fond of forced unleashed (great gameplay crap story) but the account of mon calamari is actually pretty good. Basically Seggor Tals (the quarren who betrayed the planet out of hatred before being double-crossed) turned good repented of what he did and tried to work with akbar to atone for his crimes.
Even though he hated Seggor, Akbar realized that if he could work with Juno (who had committed atrocities far more horrible than anything tels had ever done) and forgive her her past and give her a chance, he had no right to deny Tels that same chance. If you can forgive a mass murderer you can forgive someone who lowered shields.

Their fleshing out the pius dea crusade was pretty cool. The Pius Dea guys were implied and hinted at (they led a theocracy that caused misery for 1000 years before being stopped by "an encounter". The overall idea was that the jedi formed an alliance with various groups wronged by the pius Dea, created a schism, and than overthrew the guy. They did seize control, but only to ensure a peaceful transition. It also explains why they acted that way in episode iii. They felt that since it helped end the misery of the pius assholes, it would work here.

[Abacus]

In other words it set a precedent that they could follow.

[Darth Yan]

Exactly. The republic was in the hands of a madman, and 1000 years of inaction had resulted in death and misery that still haunted the galaxy to this day. As such, they decided that they had to take them down now. Also, the Jedi did voluntarily surrender power once a new candidate was chosen.