A Consistent, Realistic SWU: Fixing EU Minimalism

[FTeik]

The only thing we get from the films, that indicates a large industrial infrastructure is the DeathStarII and there we don´t get a number for how long the empire is already building at the thing.

ANy construction would have been after ANH. Ignoring the EU, that only gives a few years. Thats including designing it.

It is still only a single incident. And we don´t get a hint, if the construction was done in secret or how much of the empire´s industrial base was devoted to it. The Bothan-spies only provided the location.

Even for the one million major worlds we have to turn to the ANH-novel and from the quote there this one million could include everything from Coruscant to Tattoine.

Well we're told there are "a lot" of Executor class ships by Han. That says something right there. They were common enough that seeing one at a relativly undefended construction site was nothing to worry about.

The same Han, who claimed, that the empire was unable to destroy Alderaan in ANH? The same Han, who didn´t know the difference between a parsec and an hour?

Not to mention, that 10,000 Jedi-Knights or 1,200,000 million clone-soldiers are considered large forces.

In the days of the Republic, which lacked a military.

Even in the days of the old republic were a lot of worlds to guard.

[Rogue 9]

The same Han, who claimed, that the empire was unable to destroy Alderaan in ANH? The same Han, who didn´t know the difference between a parsec and an hour?

Han wasn't in on the Death Star project, and therefore didn't know about it. *Smack* And the Kessel Run involves skirting the Maw. The closer you run to it the shorter the distance, but it increases the danger. Han ran closer to the black hole cluster than any other pilot had ever done before, shaving the distance to twelve parsecs.

[Illuminatus Primus]

It is still only a single incident.

Man I love it when Trekkie style idiots try to throw out data because it didn't happen all the time.

When exactly is the threshold for something to "count" reached? I'd love to know where this line in the sand is, because I'm never told.

And we don´t get a hint, if the construction was done in secret

It had to be done in secret because otherwise the Death Star II wouldn't have been a black project, would it?

or how much of the empire´s industrial base was devoted to it.

Enormous stresses on the galactic economy would've been noticed by the Rebels; they were totally ignorant until Xizor dropped the plans into the Bothan spies' lap and the Imperial officer defected in XWA.

The Bothan-spies only provided the location.

So what? We're also aware of the time and the fact it was all fabricated on-site.

The same Han, who claimed, that the empire was unable to destroy Alderaan in ANH?

How is this relevent or not? He was unaware of any weapons emplacement which could do that; why is he an authority on whether it was technologically and economically possible? And how does that automatically make everything he say unreliable?

Where do you get your terrible logic?

The same Han, who didn´t know the difference between a parsec and an hour?

This was fixed by the EU and you know it. Not to mention, from that point forward, you're saying that everything he says is inadmissible or wrong.

You're an idiot.

Even in the days of the old republic were a lot of worlds to guard.

The old Republic had a large fleet, probably larger than the New Republic in later years, simply concentrated in some highly dense and well-protected regions, and organized locally or regionally. The fact the central government had no military proves nothing.

[FTeik]

Don´t you get it or what?

Everything, that suggests, that the DSII was nothing more than a burp in the imperial budget comes from the EU. The same EU, that gave us this bloody minimalism or the explenation for Han´s screw-up about the parsecs.

[Illuminatus Primus]

What do you not get about hundred of millions of cubic kilometers worth of construction from raw materials without causing any economic troubles being in line with the canon idea of a developed galactic civilization tens of thousands of years old with billions of worlds just for mining controlled by a single corporate consortium?

The EU which better correlates with the picture given to us by canon is superior by definition. Those figures better correlate with the premises given by canon both filmic and secondary, than the rest of the EU shit.

Your logic is flawed. If what you said was true, I could say Stackpole had a beam of sense in calling an ISD less than a tenth the size of the Lusankya, but then would be hypocritical in saying his combat was bunk.

The fact that it comes from the EU is irrelevent; you take information on a case by case basis.

We can say the Death Star information is more correct because it makes more sense in the big picture--look at the millions of ships coming in-and-out of Coruscant daily, a corona of two-mile starships around Naboo, etc., etc.

However, merely these points about the Coruscanti traffic and TradeFed fleet tonnage cast EU information into doubt. When the minimalism is contrasted with opposing data--opposing data falls against the canon. Therefore the exception in the EU is taken as superior information.

You're basically saying "the EU is full of garbage, and when it isn't, well you can't take that either cuz there's other garbage."

[McC]

I'm curious...what if the Death Stars both saw simultaneous construction commencement as soon as Dooku brought the plans to Palpatine? The first Death Star, overseen by Tarkin, would be the "public" one, so to speak (and even then it'd be pretty damn secret) with the larger Death Star, naturally taking longer to build, being the ultra-secret one. Any possibility of this notion?

[Illuminatus Primus]

Both are contradicted by official information.

[McC]

Oh, I know. I wasn't proposing an actual scenario, I just meant to ask what the implications of such a scenario would be, as it relates to the discussion.

[Illuminatus Primus]

It would suggest a rather relaxed rate of construction; one would wonder why they wouldn't proceed more quickly.

Much of the galaxy's traffic already must be in this kind of scale; look at the fate of Gholondreine-Beta; the quantity of traffic coming in-and-out of Coruscant; etc.

[McC]

It would suggest a rather relaxed rate of construction; one would wonder why they wouldn't proceed more quickly.

Well, at the risk of sounding minimalist, perhaps to prevent the public from becoming aware of any significantly concentrated fund channeling. Over a long period, it's a lot easier to justify channeling what amounts to a large amount of funds.

[FTeik]

A quick construction would suit those needs better.

What do you not get about hundred of millions of cubic kilometers worth of construction from raw materials without causing any economic troubles being in line with the canon idea of a developed galactic civilization tens of thousands of years old with billions of worlds just for mining controlled by a single corporate consortium?

Since the empire has unlimited resources available and the degree of automated labour is extremely high (as seen in AotC) the empire (in theory) was able to built as much ships and stations as it wanted.

Its limitations must therefore be grounded in something else, might it be political will or the lack of properly trained manpower (is there any source, that suggests, that some of the crews of the ships were clones?). There is no need for a huge fleet, if the majority of the entire population is rather low, concentrated in a few overly crowded places or already a willing member of your club. The fifty million colonies, that can´t afford a full planetary shield can be easily dealt with common ISDs or smaller ships, especially with hyperdrives, that achive several million times the speed of c.

To give you an example:

The unlimited resources and degree of automated labour should negate the need for a large infrastructure for something like DSII. If a construction-droid manages to build a structure with a volume of 1 million cubicmeters (a cube with a lenght of 100 meters, a very conservative estimate) per day and needs one week to build another construction-droid you would have 1,048,576 droids after five months. Let them work on DSII for the final month of the six given by the EU and you have 3.14*10^13 cubicmeters of structure. Multiply that with 8,000 and you get your 60% of a 900 kilometer battlestation. So you "only" need eight-thousand construction-droids at the beginning. If on every of your one million major worlds is only one of those droids deployed you take less than 1% of your industrial capacity away.

The other way would be the following: If it was possible for Palpatine to build up the necessary industrial infrastructure for his huge military in a few years, why shouldn´t it be possible, that the entire complex broke apart in a similar short frame of time?

The EU which better correlates with the picture given to us by canon is superior by definition. Those figures better correlate with the premises given by canon both filmic and secondary, than the rest of the EU shit.

This only works, if there is absolutely no way to rationalize both claims of the EU, the ones, that fit better with the canon and those, that don´t.

Your logic is flawed. If what you said was true, I could say Stackpole had a beam of sense in calling an ISD less than a tenth the size of the Lusankya, but then would be hypocritical in saying his combat was bunk.

You can say his combat is bunk. This changes nothing about the fact, that it is still part of SW, if we like it or not.

The fact that it comes from the EU is irrelevent; you take information on a case by case basis.

Correct. But i must also weight it against other information i have and then try to find a way to make it fit.

We can say the Death Star information is more correct because it makes more sense in the big picture--look at the millions of ships coming in-and-out of Coruscant daily, a corona of two-mile starships around Naboo, etc., etc.

However, merely these points about the Coruscanti traffic and TradeFed fleet tonnage cast EU information into doubt. When the minimalism is contrasted with opposing data--opposing data falls against the canon. Therefore the exception in the EU is taken as superior information.

You're basically saying "the EU is full of garbage, and when it isn't, well you can't take that either cuz there's other garbage."

Wrong: Your approach is "parts of the EU are garbage, so lets throw them out of the window and keep only those parts, that aren´t", while i try to keep as much of it as possible and find way to make it fit with the rest (and i willingly admit, that this doesn´t always works or is influenced by my personal likings).

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

Excuse me?

The only thing we get from the films, that indicates a large industrial infrastructure is the DeathStarII and there we don´t get a number for how long the empire is already building at the thing.

There's also the Dodonna divide method. Either the ships are very much more powerful than we imagined, or there are more ships than even the most optimistic estimates from the EU.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Here's the big problem: why couldn't the Empire's military complex scale up, like all civilizations once political will was no longer a problem, and survival was an issue?

After Palpatine's death, for many regions, independence and/or survival became the leaders' motivation. Instead, industrial and logistical complexes seem to implode.

EDIT: My approach is not to throw out the EU at all. The entire point of this thread is thought games and questions--the idea I had was to formulate plausable solutions to maintain Suspension of Disbelief.

[FTeik]

Excuse me?

The only thing we get from the films, that indicates a large industrial infrastructure is the DeathStarII and there we don´t get a number for how long the empire is already building at the thing.

There's also the Dodonna divide method. Either the ships are very much more powerful than we imagined, or there are more ships than even the most optimistic estimates from the EU.

You´re right, i forgot about that.

[FTeik]

Here's the big problem: why couldn't the Empire's military complex scale up, like all civilizations once political will was no longer a problem, and survival was an issue?

After Palpatine's death, for many regions, independence and/or survival became the leaders' motivation. Instead, industrial and logistical complexes seem to implode.

EDIT: My approach is not to throw out the EU at all. The entire point of this thread is thought games and questions--the idea I had was to formulate plausable solutions to maintain Suspension of Disbelief.

Two things, that complete each other:

If the single parts of a ship are produced on a dozen or more different worlds, the loss (because of uprising of the local population, conquest by the enemy or destruction) brings the entire network down. Somewhere was a quote (i think in the SW-Sourcebook) that described, how thightly connected the galactic economy was.

As a second, with sudden independance from imperial occupation many worlds might allocate the resources they contributed to the imperial warmaschine until now into the defenses of their own world. There might have been hundreds or thousands of worlds during TTT and DE, that had dozens or hundreds of ships in orbit or close by, but those were missing in the free-moving strategic forces of empire and new republic.

[McC]

Somewhat related to your post, FTeik -- how widespread was distaste for Imperial rule? I can't imagine that it was as bad as Rebel propaganda would suggest, especially for the Core Worlds who must've seen tremendous economic boon from it. I just find it difficult to believe that people would throw off the Empire so easily. Sure, Palpatine was an ass, but the Empire itself, while brutal at times, was also exceptionally efficient and safe.