StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Inspired by this thread, specifically page three.

Imagine that, as Supreme Commander of the CIS, you have been tasked with the conquest of Coruscant. You have temporary naval superiority; Republic reinforcements will be arriving as soon as a fleet can be assembled, anywhere from a week to several months. The Republic fleet will be equal to your own, not superior, meaning that you can use naval assets for support until the enemy fleet's arrival.

To enable this goal, you have been given

1 billion battle droids
700 million super battle droids
100 million droidekas

several Trade Federation ships full of armor, though I can't see how it would be deployed in an entirely urbanized planet.

Opposing you are approximately one billion clone troopers, including a unit of ARC Troopers. The Jedi Order has been mysteriously removed from the equation; the Jedi Temple now houses an unobtanium processing plant.

Major goals:

Eliminated all enemy forces
Pacify the planet
Capture at least some of the Senate alive

How would you go about this?

Uh, I'd wait for Darth Sidious to tell me when to put on a good show.

As shown in Wedge's Gamble, Coruscant has (and has had) not just one but two planet-encompassing shields. As with other mentioned planetary shields, they make any naval bombardment or conquest by dropping troops from space a non-starter. Ackbar had a significantly-sized fleet, and wouldn't even start a battle for the planet unless the shields came down by sabotage before his fleet exited hyperspace.

The idea that this is something the GE dreamed up, and that the Republic-controlled Coruscant had no planetary shields, is poppycock. Until and unless you figure out a (non-Death Star) way of quickly overcoming planetary shields, your fleet sits impotently in orbit, and your quintillions of battle droids don't get to do anything.

Moving on...

Well, then, I seem to have scored fairly low on the Forethought Test. As such:

Darth Sidious has decided to see how this plays out, and has personally ordered you to take the planet.

The shields have been taken down by Separatist sympathizers. Or something. I'm more interested in seeing how people would adapt to combat in 5 mile high skyscrapers than in how they would take down the shields.

It's far more plausible for the CIS fleet to drop in really close to the planet and blast enough of the generators before the shield comes online.

Barring that, the only way the planet can be taken is to lay siege (which is what Ackbar had planned to do).

In this scenario, it's most important to take control of starports, destroy Republic garrisons, and take strategically and psychologically significant targets, while places like the Works and undercity can be ignored completely. If the attack is fast enough, the Seppies can probably knock out a good chunk of the Republic's air power on the ground If the CIS plan isn't to hold the planet, one can expect the Senate Hall and Jedi Temple to be flattened, and any amount of damage done to upper class residencies like Republica 500.

Eliminated all enemy forces
Pacify the planet
Capture at least some of the Senate alive

1. Wait until the Senate is in session.

2. Send in a fuckton of gunships and transports in a lightning raid with my troops, cramming as many Senators into the ships as I can (i.e. some).

3. IMMEDIATELY BDZ the planet.

4. ???

5. Profit!

Presuming your able to somehow bypass the shield (I think the second shield layer is added after the Empire is founded) you have little option but to resort to planetary bombardment as 1.8 billion droids are not enough to engage 1 billion clones who have the advantage of local support in the order of trillions of civilians as well as all the advantages of fighting defensively.

though I can't see how it would be deployed in an entirely urbanized planet

Separatist gunships would be the most useful but Coruscant has a large amount of pedestrian roadway that would allow tanks and such to traverse the city scape. Also it depends on how much life the repulsors on Sep tanks are capable of producing, we never see more than half a meter or so in the films but its plausible they could produce more lift as shown with the civilian speeders that can produce many km of lift.

unless you figure out a (non-Death Star) way of quickly overcoming planetary shields

Do the torpedo spheres exist yet or does something of similar purpose exist?

Wait until the Senate is in session

Why would they hold a session of the senate while the planet is under assault and the planetary shields breached?

I'm more interested in seeing how people would adapt to combat in 5 mile high skyscrapers

The land battles in the Clone wars cartoon are little more than pitched battles of infantry shooting at each other from very dense formations or heavy cover.

However I'd imagine that the ability of any defensive force to simply melt away from opposing forces (a 3 dimensional battlefield after all) would render anything but orbital bombardment or an obscene number of battle droids useless) Clone troopers therefore may not be the best defence but rather partisan militia units that can melt away into either civilian populations or the under city, thus forcing the Seps to resort to orbital bombardment.

Darth Tanner wrote:

unless you figure out a (non-Death Star) way of quickly overcoming planetary shields

Actually, wasnt there also a quote about each sector of Coruscant having it's own theater shields in the RotS Novelization?

Erm, I would like to add that for a world like Coruscant, BDZ is likely to take hours to days. In that time period, the defence force at Anaxes has more than enough time to react. Unless one is suggesting destroying the Senate hall and the surrounding area only. Such an act would be more than sufficient to destablise the Republic especially if there is no way to reorganize the Senate.

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:Erm, I would like to add that for a world like Coruscant, BDZ is likely to take hours to days.

The bombardment of Humbarine lasted one hour.

Why would they hold a session of the senate while the planet is under assault and the planetary shields breached?

Oh, I thought we could start the assault whenever we wanted. Ok, new plan: raid 500 Republica before BDZ.

NecronLord wrote:

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:Erm, I would like to add that for a world like Coruscant, BDZ is likely to take hours to days.

The bombardment of Humbarine lasted one hour.

Point. I guess with sufficient ships, and assuming one can annihilate the defence fleet, things are fine.

Darth Tanner wrote:Presuming your able to somehow bypass the shield (I think the second shield layer is added after the Empire is founded) you have little option but to resort to planetary bombardment as 1.8 billion droids are not enough to engage 1 billion clones who have the advantage of local support in the order of trillions of civilians as well as all the advantages of fighting defensively.

Your numbers are wrong. There are only 3 million stormtroopers (total) in the entire galaxy, so maybe 10,000-100,000 are on Coruscant. Also the population of Coruscant is much lower... only 10 billion or so. Clearly the Republic is fucked...








BTW - you're a moron and a douchebag if you fail to recognize the sarcasm

I suppose that you're a Trekkie...



Yes, I'm a moron.

I waste no time with the invasion. If I am looking at this as a member of the CIS I would waste not time attempting to occupy the planet. Instead telling everyone on the surface to start evacuating because the big guns I bring in won't be very kind to anyone on the surface. Coruscant is a huge waste of resources and material and has only a symbolic meaning. Battles on the surface of the world would be a nightmare and a waste of resources.

As for capturing the Senate? Do it while they are fleeing the planet. Chances are a good number could be intercepted if Space Superiority is acheived over the planet.

Perhaps use that huge number of battle droids to intitiate boarding procedures against a large number of Republic capital ships just to annoy them and make the battle that much more of a problem.

Darth Fanboy wrote:I waste no time with the invasion. If I am looking at this as a member of the CIS I would waste not time attempting to occupy the planet. Instead telling everyone on the surface to start evacuating because the big guns I bring in won't be very kind to anyone on the surface. Coruscant is a huge waste of resources and material and has only a symbolic meaning. Battles on the surface of the world would be a nightmare and a waste of resources.

As for capturing the Senate? Do it while they are fleeing the planet. Chances are a good number could be intercepted if Space Superiority is acheived over the planet.

Perhaps use that huge number of battle droids to intitiate boarding procedures against a large number of Republic capital ships just to annoy them and make the battle that much more of a problem.

It doesn't seem like a good idea to capture the Republic data files, credits, important bits of technology, etc. that are stored on the capital planet?

It doesn't seem like a good idea to capture the Republic data files, credits, important bits of technology, etc. that are stored on the capital planet?

If Sidious hasn't provided them already, then that sort of acquisition would be best made covertly prior to the assault on the planet, not with a few million droids arching down the streets warning people and giving them ample time to prevent such assets from falling into my hands.

TC Pilot wrote:It's far more plausible for the CIS fleet to drop in really close to the planet and blast enough of the generators before the shield comes online.

Barring that, the only way the planet can be taken is to lay siege (which is what Ackbar had planned to do).

In this scenario, it's most important to take control of starports, destroy Republic garrisons, and take strategically and psychologically significant targets, while places like the Works and undercity can be ignored completely. If the attack is fast enough, the Seppies can probably knock out a good chunk of the Republic's air power on the ground If the CIS plan isn't to hold the planet, one can expect the Senate Hall and Jedi Temple to be flattened, and any amount of damage done to upper class residencies like Republica 500.

The double-layered shields were always up. Ships wishing to land or take off had a section of the nearer shield lowered for them, and then once they were through, it was raised again, and a section in the other layer would be opened (similar to an airlock), pretty much to prevent exactly what you propose.

The Lusankya (Executor-class Star Dreadnaught), when taking off, had to devote pretty much every weapon capable of firing in the dorsal arc to take down one section, and keep firing at it with ventral weapons to keep it down while firing at the outer shield section. That's with the massive advantage of starting inside the shields: since most of Coruscant's defense grid was outside the shields, facing away from the planet, it was mostly unopposed except by ground-based snubfighters. In what pretty much everyone agrees would happen, the snubbies were completely ineffectual at even slowing the Lusankya's escape.

If I remember correctly, it blew a Golan defense station out of the sky in passing, as well. Some skyhooks too.

Darth Fanboy wrote:

It doesn't seem like a good idea to capture the Republic data files, credits, important bits of technology, etc. that are stored on the capital planet?

If Sidious hasn't provided them already, then that sort of acquisition would be best made covertly prior to the assault on the planet, not with a few million droids arching down the streets warning people and giving them ample time to prevent such assets from falling into my hands.

Gah! I keep forgetting my leader is the enemy's leader as well. Puts a rather...unusual spin on things.

What would I do?

First off I'd tell my fleet to go after any ships leaving or entering the system, but not attack Coruscant. I'd use interdictor cruisers to pull cargo ships out of hyperspace. While the Rebels are so busy guarding their precious planet, I'll let their population starve.

Looking at this logically, Coruscant is nothing but a big city; there is no wildlife, except in zoos. Algae in tanks provide oxygen and filter water. There are no mentions of farming operations, even hydroponics.

All that planetary shielding wouldn't do them any good if their people were starving, rioting, and panicking.

Then all I need to do is take a few shieldships and put them inbetween Coruscant and its sun.

Either way, I would place myself in an excellent bargaining position. Either they surrender and give me what I want, or I'll leave my battleships up there and let the entire population starve, or tell the shieldships to close their formation, and watch as Coruscant turns into a giant snowball. Even if they have got farming operations down there, the entire planet will freeze over if they are blocked out from their sun.

So either they surrender... or everyone dies, while my droid army is immune to the discomforts and delibitating prescence of the cold.

Davey, how long are you expecting it to take for the population to run out of food ?

How many shieldships would you need to block the sunlight ?
I have no idea how big these shieldships are, but I want to see your calculations showing how many you would need

How long till the planet freezes after you block the sunlight ?
Don't forget to take artificial heating into account.

All the time your waiting you have your fleet in one location, with the defenders free to gather up their fleet so that all their ships arrive at once.

That's a good point. Truth be told I haven't covered all the variables or done much. I'm tossing out a general idea, not a definite strategy, but I'll think on what you've said.

A large city would probably start to starve within three days if everything was cut off from the outside. But it would take a lot longer time for everyone to actually use up all their resources, so that's one more variable I've got to consider.

Might be possible to draw the other fleet of cover using a diversion, to keep them away from the shieldships.

Given the sheer scale of technology, yes, I guess artificial heating might be a viable option. In that case, I guess my strategy's flawed.

Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Well Davey, as you start to understand the situation better, you'll start to see how deep the flaws are.

Firstly, this has to be a lightning-fast hit-and-run. With the speed of hyperdrive, the Republic will have the time to gather up any (or every) ships they have available and within a matter of hours (days at most, if they have to pack up and get ready). A starvation-siege operation is out of the question.

Secondly, when it comes to temperature, one of the biggest questions we have is how Coruscant dumps all the waste heat generated by its immense power generation.. the question is how it avoids becoming an oven.
That's when we bring in purely hypothetical methods of heat disposal (though they don't exactly violate our scientific knowledge as we know it), with fantastic technologies such as neutrino re-radiation of heat into space, absorbed by heat sinks to cool the surface.
Freezing it is out of the question.

Actually, aside from the fact that heat dissipation plants are probably too numerous, independent and evenly spread out, targeting those might cause the population to cook

Right on, thanks.

My question is - if reinforcements can be mustered within an hour, what's stopping battles from devolving down to 'meat grinder' battles? Because I could certainly see that happening if reinforcements can just 'jump in' like that.

Tactical feasibility, and strategic depth.

To the first: Getting to the battlefield quickly does not mean a ship can be useful on the battlefield easily.

To the second: pull all your forces towards a battle, and you leave those targets unprotected. Thrawn effectively uses this tactic in the Heir to the Empire series: he directs hit-and-fade raids against a number of outlier systems, then strikes at the sector hub which has stripped itself to the bone to send out reinforcements to each raided system.