Mon Mothma´s position in the political spectrum

[Lord Pounder]

IIRC the big ship thing comes from the BFC. When the NR find out the Yevetha(sp?) are fielding multiple SSD's Leia and the collective Navy brass shit themselves because the had nothing that could stand up to a Executor class.

This is also the same NR that just a few years later had NO ships to rescue Corellia from a attempted coup and instead Leia had to go to a member world, and beg for the use of their 4, count em, 4 Destroyers.

My guess was that it wasn't untill contact with the Chiss Empire and their stories of unknown threats that the NR began to really beef up the Fleet.

[Chris OFarrell]

Actually, in Black Fleet Crisis it was just the massive capital ships in the weight-class of the Executor I though. Certainly the Republic is building ships in the same tonnage range as ISDs.

Where does it say that? Anyhow the most massive ships fielded by the NRDF in the 5th Fleet are Nebula/Defender-class Star Destroyers, at a paltry 1,040 meters in length (compared to the ISD II's 1,606 meters).

Tonage range is wrong, but that said, it makes sense. The NR has to do more with less. Its misleading in size.

The Defender class has TWICE the shielding of the Imperial class SD and much heavier armour plating, just about the same weapons loadout, plus 60 Starfighters. And its a third smaller. Its simply a much more advanced warship. There is no point building ISD sized ships if you can built a smaller ship with fewer resources which does the same job, if not a better job. And the Empire at this time period had lost just about all their larger ships. Plapy had shot his wad of big prototypes and command ships from the deep core and been defeated, whats left of the Empire were down to ISD's as flagships of small task forces.

So there is little reason at that point to build and crew far more expensive superships when, as mentioned in the BFC, a lot of the NRDF personal were retiring or moving to civilian life and nice high paid jobs in the corperate sector as the Galaxy really started to stabalise.

Of course Wedges flagship during the second half of the Vong War, ironicly nammed Mon Mothma, was the second flight of Defender class SD's that combined the durability of the Defender with gravity well projectors to interdict enemy forces.

And sorry, you are foresaking a huge weight class of starships if you're not building anything from 1 ISD mass to 100 ISD masses and only building stuff from 0 to .8 or so.

And you are wasting a huge amount of money if you do. The NR has a limited military budget, they are not Palpitines Empire here. They need more and smaller hulls to keep the peace and keep everyone from beating up on their neighbours, not massive Superdreadnaughts to install fear in the population. As far as they knew, there were no superships left or at least none in any real numbers. That Executor in the BFC would have been a bitch, but they had the newer ships and newer technology to deal with it on THEIR terms if needed. The fleet that the NR brought in to fight at Nzoth only margianly beat the Yevethera in shear numbers. But they were still confident of victory in the engagement, even with that SSD there. I think the General simply comments that 'Thats a small break' when the SSD has its slave circut engaged and comes screaming to a halt.

Then it looks like after the battle damage during this short war, the NRDF was sent in to undergo a massive repair and refit operation. Leia comments that they have a LOT of ships, just that almost all of the ones supposed to be on duty are in spacedock getting retrofits and upgrades. Luke then in the next book comments to himself that the rebels chose the perfect time to make their move as sixth months later, the NR would have been able to send a MASSIVE fleet. Probably as the ships come off their refit cycles and downtime.

AND he even comments to himself that Mon Mothma COULD have sent in a fleet to deal with the situation if necessary (and Ackbar did scrape up 20 Capitals ships by the end of the book), but she was playing politics by involving the Bukurans and making them feal like they were importaint and so on.