StarDestroyer.Net BBS

How many star destroyers do you think the empire has at its height

The bog-standard officially supported answer is the usual "Over 25,000" from the WEG sources and repeated ever since, by Zahn in HTTE, et cetera.

However, I'm feeling silly. Let's splurge. Between ransacking Wookiepedia and Marvel Star Wars via the SWTC, I come up with a complete list that runs;

Heavy Destroyers;
Allegiance, Shockwave, Invincible (superannuated), SWTC's Anon SD III,(swallowtail type), Anon SD VII (double bubble, possibly Interdictor dome)

Line Destroyers;
Imperator/Imperial- I, Imperator/Imperial-II, Tector (formerly Anon SD V), Dominator (Interdictor variant Imperator-II), Anon Interdictor SD (interdictor variant Imperator-I), Anon SD IV (Carrier-variant Imperator)

Light Destroyers;
Victory-I, Victory-II, Anon SD I (possibly Victory-III), Anya Karu, Harrow, Anon SD II, Anon SD VI (possibly interdictor type), Venator

Five heavy, six line, eight light destroyer types. There are much bigger ships out there, too- five cruiser types, two known and identified battlecruisers, two names without images and two images without names, then the battleships and dreadnoughts.

Admitting that the Imperial/Imperator-class is the workhorse of the fleet, and there are twenty-five thousand odd of them- and thousands of sector groups supposed to contain twenty-four each- my own personal conclusion is that the Starfleet had not yet built up to full strength, and there were many other, older or less optimal types filling in until they could be replaced- and probably retired to the second line; why junk a perfectly good ship?

The Invincibles, we know that two thousand years later, there were only a few hundred of them surviving under the CSA (Corporate Sector Authority). They are older ships that have been sold off; it is possible to believe, I suppose, that their poor performance is the result of slow upward technological drift- but I think they were competitive enough when they were built, and two thousand years of wear and tear is what we're seeing, not progessing technology.

Other numbers- few and far between.
If you assume a heavy destroyer flagship for each superiority fleet, or a fleet composed of heavier destroyers as the moff's personal hit squad, then that comes to a proportion of one in four to one in six- four to six thousand heavy destroyers to 25,000 Imperators.

Imperator variants, again, no official place for them in the Sourcebook's orbat- but that was written before most of them were catalogued, wasn't it? Fewer, but not necesarily very many fewer. Less than half, say ten thousand pure-gunship Tector, carrier and interdictor variations on the Imperator hull.

Lighter destroyers do fit in to the Orbat as part of Heavy Attack Squadrons; assuming two to a heavy attack line, that works out at a proportion of sixteen light destroyers to six Imperators in a Superiority Fleet, and probably eight in each escort force assigned to support troop, logistic, deepdock and bombard units- so there are a significantly higher number of light than there are line destroyers, possibly 112 to the 24 Imperators in a standard Sector Group.

So my semi- educated guess boils down to six thousand heavy destroyers, thirty-five thousand line destroyers, and a hundred and twenty thousand light destroyers.

The Empire had 25,000 Imperial mk.2 star destroyers at its height (endor), courtesy of Pelleon in the Thrawn duology.

The Mk2 only came into production post Yavin (Two years for the 25,000) as I understand it while the Mk 1 was in production since the close of the clone wars (twenty years)

So if production levels for Mk1 was equal to Mk 2 then there should be around 250,000 Mk1 star destroyers in service by the time of ANH

The Imperial Navy fielded an unknown number of Super Star Destroyers, consisting of: Star Cruisers, Star Battlecruisers, Star Dreadnoughts (their heaviest ships), according to Inside the Worlds of the Star Wars Trilogy.
Additionally, some SSDs were dedicated starfighter carriers, mobile repair bases or communications vessels. (Starships of the Galaxy 2007)

Following Endor, the Rebel Alliance is said to have as immidiate threats dozens of Imperial battlegroups, many of which were led by SSDs of some kind. (SOTG 07) With the Executor and Vengeance (not Jerec's ship) already destroyed, and the Eclipse and Eclipse II far from finished, that leaves plenty of additional SSDs that are unaccounted for.

The Deep Core worlds were given their own respective defense fleets at the beginning of the Galactic Empire. This along with the heavy planetary defenses on each world, earned them the name of "fortress worlds", of which the Deep Core had many. (Byss and the Deep Core Worlds) The Core Worlds were also given 10% of the entire Navy, to serve as reserve forces in case an emergency arose somewhere in the galaxy. (Star Wars Sourcebook)

At the Empire's height, Azure Hammer Command was a force charged with defending Sector Zero (Coruscant and other important systems) and was led by a SSD of unknown class. Black Sword Command was another Core defense force that defended against rimward invasion (from the "top" and "bottom" part of the galactic plane, not the Outer Rim Territories), and had three SSDs in its roster (one Executor-class vessel undergoing construction and two unknowns). (Coruscant and the Core Worlds)

Among some of the roving fleets were Scourge Squadron and Death Squadron, Vader's fleet. These fleets operated against Rebel targets in the Outer Rim and were led by Executor-class vessels. There was also the autonomous battle group under the Dark Jedi Jerec, led by his spesialized SSD, Vengeance. Another Vengeance, an Executor-class ship, led the Task Force Vengeance against Rebel forces in a rimward sector.
Other Executors led the defense of Coruscant (Guardian) and Kuat (Annihilator) and served as the Emperor's secret evacuation vessel (Lusankya).

The Empire also fielded an unknown number of Torpedo Sphere siege platforms, handed out a few planetoid-sized mobile headquarters to the Emperor's favored servants (like Hetrir's Rebirth), created battle stations that were much smaller than the Death Stars, built battleships at Kuat, Rendili and Loronar that were all bigger than ISDs.

And of course, tens of thousands of ISDs were built and fielded, with most being used for sector and hyperspace route patrols and escorting important ships. This on top of other tens of thousands or Star Destroyers, as well as millions of smaller warships.

Thousands of SSD as per Crackens Threat Dossier and Starships of the Galaxy 2007 (SSDs as Sector commands) and reinforced by Black Fleet Crisis. I believe that the DESB also hints at SSDs (one or more, in fact, as well as torpedo spheres and such) being assigned at the Sector level command.)

at least 24 SDs per Sector Group (higher if augmented, possibly double or more that size. I never figured out Sector group augmentation, but Publius did I bleieve.) Generally these "Star Destroyers" are ISDs, becuase by them the ISD was the main "Star Destrroyer" of the Empire - replacing the Venators and Victories. However, given Thrawn was able to recall VSDs into duty at a later point it suggests the Empire did have them around - they just were relegated to secondary roles. In anyy case, those numbers wouldn't be included here.

ROTS novel specifies at least 6,000 Sectors. 6000SSDs and 144,000 ISDs.

the ISB specifies there are "regions" of the galaxy that could comprise "Thousands" of Sectors each. There are at least 2 areas that represent that, but also a possible 4-5 others (such as Inner Rim, Mid Rim, Expansion Region, Colonies, etc.) This would lead to between 12,000-20,000 Sectors at least, with tens of thousands of SSDs and hundreds of thousands of ISDs.

We also know the Empire had at least a million member systems and millions/tens of millions of protectorates (as did the REpublic.) Technically this is an underestimate as a number of sources (Shadows of the Empire sourceebook, for example) indicate the Empire controlled billions of planets. The ISB also mentions that a Moff controlled "hundreds" of planets (which is roughly consistent with a Senator controlling "hundreds" of worlds). Assuming 51 million planets and a Moff controls an average of 1000 planets, that's 51,000 Sectors at least. (If we go with 200 planets per sector, its 255,000 Sectors.) Naturally thats between 50,000-250,000 SSDs and between 1.2 and 6 million ISDs. This is less "conservative" than the other estimates, but its not neccesarily an upper limit either (while we could infer that "hundreds" of planets refers to only member worlds, in which case there would be onl about 5,000 SEctors, we know moffs didn't deal with just member systems. Moreover, we know there are "billions" of worlds in the Empire.)

So, however you look at it, you can go with thousands/tens of thousands of SSDs and hundreds of thousands/millions of ISDs (of all variants, not just ISD1/ISD2 subclases - ie TEctors, Interdictors, etc.) Plus however many millions or more of VSDs, Venators, and other support ships, as well as however many Star cruisers and such (Tens or hundreds of thousands?)

Of course, the industrical capacity of the Empire is such they can field MUCH more massivel fleets if they need to, and well within a year, so the "present" fleet sizes tend to be largely irrelevant anyhow.

Yes, three sources at least, from three different "eras" so to speak, all say the same thing: SSDs were usually sector-level command ships. DESB literally states that an average sector commander or Moff (a sector governor) had access to SSDs and torpedo spheres as part of their military assets.

The battle groups mentioned in SOTG 07 are probably like Scourge and Death Squadron, large fleets that cross sectors as they please.

When the incompetent twat "Admiral" Daala went to work for Harrsk, he had a larger Star Destroyer of unidentified class as his flagship. It was bigger and more powerful than a standard ISD, but was disabled by ion cannon fire somewhat easily. This is the only instance I've read of such a Star Destroyer in the novels; generally, these sorts of ships appear in comic books and graphic novels.

She also became a credible threat to the New Republic with, if I recall correctly, a fleet of about a dozen ISD's (and possibly Harrsk's unknown SD, it's been too long since I read the book), a second fleet consisting of roughly seventy-five Victory SD's, and a single Executor-class dreadnaught. This could be an indication that the New Republic is spread woefully thin at this point, or it could be similar to the balance between Imperial and Republic power seen in the Thrawn trilogy, where the two forces were so evenly matched that Thrawn adding an additional two hundred ships, even smaller, obsolete ones, to his force allowed him the chance to strike at targets without diverting any of his forces assigned to counter New Republic fleet movements. The Empire and New Republic could have been in a similar position at this point in time as well, so that Daala murdering several warlords and taking their fleets meant she could strike with overwhelming force since the Republic was spread out to counter the rest of the Imperial force.

And, since we're on the subject of Star Destroyers, an in-universe explanation for why we don't see many Tector-class SD's (out-of-universe being that they didn't officially exist until recently) could be that they were unpopular with moffs and fleet admirals. Tectors are dedicated battleships designed to slug it out with capital ships of similar or greater size; not much use against small pirate bands, smugglers, or most encounters with the Rebellion at the time. The Seperatists were gone, so the chances of fleet action were slim at the time, even though the Rebel Alliance had numerous capital ships of their own. An Imperator/Imperial was good enough to go toe-to-toe with most Rebel capital ships and was far more flexible than the Tector since it carried a fighter/bomber wing and ground forces. In the early days of the Empire, we might have seen rapid production of Tectors since military commanders would have just been finished with major fleet battles and would be wanting ships that could really dish out some firepower, but once the last of the Seperatists had been mopped up and the Empire became largely concerned with police action and putting down insurrections, production slowed or stopped entirely and Tectors got shuffled off to secondary fleets or were chosen as flagships for local sector moffs. Considering the limited use of Tectors throughout much of the Empire's reign, there could have been as few as one or two assigned to each sector in case of the need for heavy firepower, but not assigned as patrol and response ships like ISD's. Once production of larger, more capable "Super Star Destroyers" began to catch up to demand and get assigned to sector and oversector fleets as command ships, Tectors could have been all but forgotten.

A note on ship sizes and how few ships we see in most of the EU. (Ala Katana Fleet)

In-Universe a single Star Destroyer has the ability to utterly reduce a planet to slag in just a few short hours(Base Delta Zero), a entire planet by itself. Meaning that with a day or so of spare time a Star Destroyer could easily clear an entire Star System of all military and civilian targets.

Combine this with the high speed of hyperdrive and you have an issue where leaving a system undefended is asking for it to get picked off. Most of the Imperial Fleet was tied in defending it's own system's as well as maintaing mobile forces at key nodes to make it impossible for a Rebel Mon Cal cruiser to hype into an area, cause a few trillion credits of damage and wipe out maybe ten to fifty years worth of investment and leave in just a few hours.

Likewise once the Rebel's became the New Republic they had the same issue with the majority of fleet's being tied down in static and mobile defense of populated worlds and settlements, since even one ship is effectively a world killer. The counter-balance to this came in the form of planetary shields, with a Planetary shield you can turtle up until your mobile defenses have a chance to respond and drive off the enemy ships sieging your world.

I read up on BDZ from Mike's page and I still am left with a question:

Does a BDZ operation assume an unshielded planet? Or does the static defense of a planetary shield of - say - half the power of Alderaan's no longer actually protect against a lone ISD?

-AHMAD

BountyHunterSAx wrote:I read up on BDZ from Mike's page and I still am left with a question:

Does a BDZ operation assume an unshielded planet? Or does the static defense of a planetary shield of - say - half the power of Alderaan's no longer actually protect against a lone ISD?

-AHMAD

A BDZ can not be preformed against a Shielded Planet, that's the point of planetary shields, they can repel the fire-power from a single Star Destroyer with ease, in the EU when talking about attacking a Shielded world, the general consensus is that you need multiple ships and it's slow going since you can only temporarily tear a hole through the shield, destroy one a shield station and achieve a local break-down in the shield itself. Doing that however takes time and allows the planetary defenders concentrate their forces near the area your hitting to stop you. Since blowing through takes several minutes it's easy with SW speed ships to shift any mobile fighter's to the area your bombarding.

Darth Vader in the ANH novelization comments that Alderaan's defenses were as powerful as any other in the Core, so the Death Star test was doubly useful. The DS was as we know, meant to take out planetary shields that were impossible for smaller craft to penetrate.

In ESB, we see one Star Dreadnought and half a dozen Star Destroyers kept out from Hoth by a shield generator bought on the black market. This was for one base populated by only a few thousand soldiers and technicians.

To be fair, Vader wanted to capture the base (and Skywalker), not obliterate it from orbit. The comment on the theater shield being able to repel "any attack" they could make from space probably meant "any attack that is going to leave the base as anything but a smoking ruin".



Worlds with planetary shielding require a siege to take. A whole fleet would have to be bombarding the shield constantly in hopes of taking down a small section of it, temporarily, so they could blast the surface beneath (taking out the local generator) and bring the shield down section by section. Of course, once they had a permanent hole in the shield, they could just land troops and take the generators out from beneath the shield.

Torpedo spheres are designed to break these sieges by finding 'cracks' where the shield from one generator meets another and firing through them. They're incredibly expensive and since they're of limited, specialized use they're not all that common either.

The Lusankya (Executor-class Super Star Destroyer) apparently brought down the defensive shields of Coruscant in a large enough area to escape the planet, launching from the ground (in The Krytos Trap; the actual event was "off-screen"). Since Coruscant's shields were among the most advanced in the galaxy, this may not speak well for shielding in general. However, one should bear in mind that the shielding systems had suffered considerable damage in the Battle of Coruscant a few weeks earlier and may not have been fully repaired at that point.

It's also possible that, since Lusankya was INSIDE the shield, it targeted the generators to bring it did. Or perhaps shields are more vulnerable to fire from inside than out (though I can't think of why that would be).

The Lusankya was disguised as a massive shield generator when it was lowered into the cityscape to begin with, according to SOTG. Perhaps that area of Coruscant had a slightly worse coverage of shields than other parts, because Lusankya occupied the space of a would-be generator?

Darth Hoth wrote:The Lusankya (Executor-class Super Star Destroyer) apparently brought down the defensive shields of Coruscant in a large enough area to escape the planet, launching from the ground (in The Krytos Trap; the actual event was "off-screen"). Since Coruscant's shields were among the most advanced in the galaxy, this may not speak well for shielding in general. However, one should bear in mind that the shielding systems had suffered considerable damage in the Battle of Coruscant a few weeks earlier and may not have been fully repaired at that point.

Three things

1. Local shield strength was terrible since the Lusankya's take-off had decimated a quote 100-kilometer area on take-off simply by taking off

2. Shields were being attacked from the wrong side

3. A SSD has the fire-power of a fleet onto itself gun wise

Its possible to bing down shields via planetary bombardment, but you typically need lots of ships, including multiple SSDs (Black Fleet Crisis) and you run the risk of fucking the planet up. Torpedo spheres (and related technologies) are meant to circumvent that.

The Lusankya didnt target shield generators - she actually blasted a hole in the shields and held it open. (both sets). This is a problem, but its not irreconcilable if we remember that not long ago (weeks as I recall) the Rebels had indirectly attacked the entire planetary shield network, so it may not be functioning totally well yet. Or, it wasn't at full power (running it at full capacity constantly would be a strain on the systems. Alternately, parts of it will need maintenance and repair from time to time as well.

Mr Bean wrote: 1. Local shield strength was terrible since the Lusankya's take-off had decimated a quote 100-kilometer area on take-off simply by taking off

If it had destroyed the generators, it probably would have kncoked out an entire section. Even knocking otu projectors would probably cause a localized failure.

Besides, its a dual-layer shield, remember. Taking out one generator/projector still leaves the other one (in fact, it would probably strengthen the second shield. THat happened in WEdge's Gamble)

2. Shields were being attacked from the wrong side

What difference would this make? If shields were "one-way" the shots would just pass through. If they're "double-blind", then the inside strength is bound to be no different than the outside strength.

3. A SSD has the fire-power of a fleet onto itself gun wise

So does the Executor (which the Lusankya copied) and the SSDs in Black Fleet Crisis.

Connor MacLeod wrote:
If it had destroyed the generators, it probably would have kncoked out an entire section. Even knocking otu projectors would probably cause a localized failure.

This is Courscant, after all, it's a city world, there are likely hundreds of backup shield generator areas, it could just so happen that the 100-km wide area the Lusyanka destroyed had absolutely zero shield generators in it, however, would you not agree there is a possibility that there were possibly shield generator's in the area along with associative backup power supplies and the like? Thus the chance that the area it was breaking out from was weaker than the standard shield set around the rest of the planet?

Besides, its a dual-layer shield, remember. Taking out one generator/projector still leaves the other one (in fact, it would probably strengthen the second shield. THat happened in WEdge's Gamble)

Both sets of shields would be affected if the shield generators generating them are destroyed.

Furthermore in Wedge's Gamble they attacked power lines that transfered power to the stations that powered the shield, not the shield stations themselves, what happened was the power for the inner shields was knocked out first, but the outer shield was still intact until a key power transit site was knocked out.

What difference would this make? If shields were "one-way" the shots would just pass through. If they're "double-blind", then the inside strength is bound to be no different than the outside strength.

Observed phenomenon, unless shield strengths are identical inside, then one side is by definition stronger, the side facing out. Of the three of my points this is the weakest I will freely admit.

3. A SSD has the fire-power of a fleet onto itself gun wise

So does the Executor (which the Lusankya copied) and the SSDs in Black Fleet Crisis.[/quote]
I've never read Black Fleet so I can't comment on those series, however the issue with the Death's Head Fleet smashing in the theater shield at Hoth was Vadar wanted people alive, as well gathering the fleet to smash the shields down would increase the chances of some of the Rebels escaping, why is not exactly explained but we have that to go on, the fleet could have taken the shields down, but chose not to.

Swindle1984 wrote:She also became a credible threat to the New Republic with, if I recall correctly, a fleet of about a dozen ISD's (and possibly Harrsk's unknown SD, it's been too long since I read the book), a second fleet consisting of roughly seventy-five Victory SD's, and a single Executor-class dreadnaught.

Daala had ~45 Imperators (ISD) and I believe around 120 VSDs. She sent either 12 or 17 ISDs (Depending on whether you believe Darksaber, which says 17 ISDs or NEC which says 12

This could be an indication that the New Republic is spread woefully thin at this point,

it is,and the NR didn't know where they were coming so they couldn't have moilized quickly.

And, since we're on the subject of Star Destroyers, an in-universe explanation for why we don't see many Tector-class SD's (out-of-universe being that they didn't officially exist until recently)

The Tectors and most of the Imperial Fleet was in the Core Worlds.

Connor MacLelod wrote:Its possible to bing down shields via planetary bombardment, but you typically need lots of ships, including multiple SSDs (Black Fleet Crisis) and you run the risk of fucking the planet up. Torpedo spheres (and related technologies) are meant to circumvent that.

not nesessarily, the fleet that drove the NR from coruscant after Thrawn died didn't have Executors, but a large amount of ISDs and Rendili dreadnaughts. Also, the world wasn't fucked up from the bombardment IIRC. The attack was described as clumsy and there was more collateral damage than normal, but most of the damage was due to the civil war that happened later on

Mr BEan wrote: In-Universe a single Star Destroyer has the ability to utterly reduce a planet to slag in just a few short hours(Base Delta Zero), a entire planet by itself. Meaning that with a day or so of spare time a Star Destroyer could easily clear an entire Star System of all military and civilian targets.

Combine this with the high speed of hyperdrive and you have an issue where leaving a system undefended is asking for it to get picked off. Most of the Imperial Fleet was tied in defending it's own system's as well as maintaing mobile forces at key nodes to make it impossible for a Rebel Mon Cal cruiser to hype into an area, cause a few trillion credits of damage and wipe out maybe ten to fifty years worth of investment and leave in just a few hours.

10-50 years? I'd say a month or a few months at most given the manufacturing speed and capacity (see DSII construction time). Also, I think the Imperials know that the alliance would not BDZ or unnecessarily target civilian targets, the Imps and Rebs know that would be automatic hipocrisy by the Alliance and propaganda by Imps.

EDIT:space button not working good.

EDIT 2: Fleet size. Imperial Sector Fleet ranges from 24-72 ISDs depending on location (Core Worlds get 72 ISDs + strategic defenses, Outer Rim gets 24.)

Swindle1984 wrote: Worlds with planetary shielding require a siege to take. A whole fleet would have to be bombarding the shield constantly in hopes of taking down a small section of it, temporarily, so they could blast the surface beneath (taking out the local generator) and bring the shield down section by section. Of course, once they had a permanent hole in the shield, they could just land troops and take the generators out from beneath the shield.

Yeah, because the planet spent all of their money on the shield generators and doesn't have a single ground-based-turbolaser to to blow your forces, who have to come through a clearly defined rather narrow choke point, right out of the sky.
Unless you're EXTREMELY certain the planet DOESN'T have ground-based defenses other than the shield in the area of the breach, you better hope your troops can either a) withstand whatever defenses there are or b) that you have enough troops to just keep pouring them on until enough of them make it through.