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While I do enjoy the ongoing Clone Wars series, I do find their depiction of the Clone Wars too minimalistic. Fleet engagements usually encompass about half a dozen or so ships on each side. That's pathetic. There was one episode where 3 Venators was all the Outer Rim command (or whatever) could spare. WTF?!?!

In the recent episode with the "major invasion" on Geneosis, I counted a little over a dozen ships. How is sending a dozen ships sufficient for a "major invasion"? Doesn't the SW verse have at least a dozen Star Destroyers as garrison forces for unimportant puny planets? I would think that a typical engagement should include dozens of ships, and full scale assault should numbers at least in the four digits.

This is no damn Rebel Alliance. Confederacy and Republic should have ramped up number of ships, especially considering that they have been at war for some time in the depiction of the Clone Wars series. Hasn't it already been determined that conservatively there are 20,000 ISDs in the Galactic Empire (not counting smaller support shops). That was during a relatively "peaceful" reign of Palpatine where the only nuisance was the Rebel Alliance. In war, there should have much more ships in service! The Old Republic should have at least as many ships the Empire have.

Let's not get started on ground combat. Based on visual evidence, the recent "major invasion" would have at most 30 tanks (about 10 from each Jedi general) assuming nobody got shot down. Even the United States sends more tanks to invade Iraq!

I have a strange feeling that the intended audience couldn't give a damn about this "minimalism" and neither do the people making it.

How is sending a dozen ships sufficient for a "major invasion"?

How many did you count invading the same planet in AotC?

How many Star Destroyers were dispatched in RotS to fight off entrenched Seperatists on Utapau and Kashyyyk? I counted one at Kashyyyk, maybe three at Utapau?

The Republic barely had a fleet before AotC. There are lots of ships but also LOTS of worlds that they are fighting on. Outer Rim Command only able to spare three ships huh? How many do you figure they NEED for day-to-day operations? The Outer Rim ain't small.

I haven't seen much of this show and maybe I'm talking out of my ass, but nothing you describe seems out of line from the way we see the Republic fighting the war in the films.

It bothers me somewhat, but its simple to remember that the war is being fought over the galaxy. Multiply the fights you see by who knows how many thousand for how many forces they have in action at any one time. Also just because say at Geonosis you see a dozen ships doesn't mean they're the only ships in the system.

I have no problem with how many ships they have but that they don't use them. It seems that lately beginning even with AOTC the starships become more of an irrelevant scenery and it's all about Jedi running with their lightsabers in front of dense Clonetrooper formations straight for a dense battledroid formation. Almost as if authors (perhaps even Lucas) wish they could change the setting to fantasy and be done with all the inconvenient space and air support that sci-fi setting provides.

I'll defend it on the current Geonosis arch; you are following in the show only one part of a global invasion. Anakin and company are assaulting the main complex/factory on the planet while other forces are attacking other parts of the planet. They made comment to that a couple times, most prominently when Anakin wanted air support and the Admiral dude wouldn't or couldn't give it telling him he was coordinating a global invasion and not just his attack.

Kane Starkiller wrote:I have no problem with how many ships they have but that they don't use them. It seems that lately beginning even with AOTC the starships become more of an irrelevant scenery and it's all about Jedi running with their lightsabers in front of dense Clonetrooper formations straight for a dense battledroid formation. Almost as if authors (perhaps even Lucas) wish they could change the setting to fantasy and be done with all the inconvenient space and air support that sci-fi setting provides.

Um...you DID see the figth in the Arena, did you? You noticed that Count Dooku would be dead if the gunship had any missiles left? You noticed that most of the Battle of Geonosis was fought by the clones?
And you did see the major fleet battle in RotS?

I think that it is nice to see some ground combat for a change - way to rare for Sci-Fi.

As I said: scenery. First there was no spacebattle in orbit of Geonosis, it would've been nice to actually see Acclamators and Trade Federation ships duking it out. Whoops our gunships have no missiles so we're useless-time for a lightsaber fight, Acclamators will just hang in the back doing jack shit while Mace Windu runs across a gigantic fucking field twirling his purple lightsaber deflecting enemy blaster bolts thus turning the tide of the battle by saving those few clonetroopers behind him. AWESOME!
A big-ass battle at the beginning of ROTS but nothing really happens, just ships exchanging fire in the background-Jedi board the ship and there goes more lightsaber twirling.

You realize, of course, that Star Wars really IS just fantasy in space, right? Lucas never, ever gave a shit about technical, strategic or scientific accuracy; he set out to make a fairy tale IN SPACE and that's exactly what he made.

Rommie2006 wrote:While I do enjoy the ongoing Clone Wars series, I do find their depiction of the Clone Wars too minimalistic. Fleet engagements usually encompass about half a dozen or so ships on each side. That's pathetic. There was one episode where 3 Venators was all the Outer Rim command (or whatever) could spare. WTF?!?!

On the contrary, if anything the Clone Wars has been less minimalist than a lot of recent Star Wars content. Not that that is saying much.

Consider: when a war is being fought over thousands or millions of systems, 3 capital ships in a single system is a lot. We see a lot of this throughout Star Wars: huge fleets on a galactic scale, but mostly individually small engagements. Its just par for the course. At worst, The Clone Wars is just following a pattern, and I'm not sure how fair it is to single it out.

In the recent episode with the "major invasion" on Geneosis, I counted a little over a dozen ships. How is sending a dozen ships sufficient for a "major invasion"? Doesn't the SW verse have at least a dozen Star Destroyers as garrison forces for unimportant puny planets?

No it doesn't. A Sector Fleet is around 25 ISDs plus support ships at the height of the Empire.

I would think that a typical engagement should include dozens of ships, and full scale assault should numbers at least in the four digits.

Wouldn't really fit with the canon, and in my opinion is borderline wank.

This is no damn Rebel Alliance. Confederacy and Republic should have ramped up number of ships, especially considering that they have been at war for some time in the depiction of the Clone Wars series. Hasn't it already been determined that conservatively there are 20,000 ISDs in the Galactic Empire (not counting smaller support shops). That was during a relatively "peaceful" reign of Palpatine where the only nuisance was the Rebel Alliance. In war, there should have much more ships in service! The Old Republic should have at least as many ships the Empire have.

Why should they? The Old Republic was severly under-militarized. They were basically building an army from scratch during the Clone Wars. Yes, Palpatine's Empire (pre-Endor) was more peaceful, but it was also to all appearences far more militarized. Palpatine kept order precisely by building a massive military.

Let's not get started on ground combat. Based on visual evidence, the recent "major invasion" would have at most 30 tanks (about 10 from each Jedi general) assuming nobody got shot down. Even the United States sends more tanks to invade Iraq!

Source for the "30 tanks" statement? Just because you never saw more than thirty on-screen at a time doesn't mean that's all they had on the entire planet.

Kane Starkiller wrote:I have no problem with how many ships they have but that they don't use them. It seems that lately beginning even with AOTC the starships become more of an irrelevant scenery and it's all about Jedi running with their lightsabers in front of dense Clonetrooper formations straight for a dense battledroid formation. Almost as if authors (perhaps even Lucas) wish they could change the setting to fantasy and be done with all the inconvenient space and air support that sci-fi setting provides.

Ships have been used routinely to land troops and engage other capital ships (the latter occuring in maybe a third to half of the episodes so far). They have not been used for planetary bombardment to assist a ground assault, but their are so many possible reasons for that.

Among other things, if the turbolaser energy output calculations on this site are sound, even the small capital ship energy weapons have power in the megaton/gigaton range. That's too big to be used for fire support of ground troops, because anything close enough to the ground troops to threaten them is close enough that they'd be inside the blast radius.

Simon_Jester wrote:Among other things, if the turbolaser energy output calculations on this site are sound, even the small capital ship energy weapons have power in the megaton/gigaton range. That's too big to be used for fire support of ground troops, because anything close enough to the ground troops to threaten them is close enough that they'd be inside the blast radius.

The Imperial Sourcebook says that they do use ship's turbolasers to support ground troops. I imagine they don't use them at full power, just enough to get the job done.

NoogDeNoog wrote:

Simon_Jester wrote:Among other things, if the turbolaser energy output calculations on this site are sound, even the small capital ship energy weapons have power in the megaton/gigaton range. That's too big to be used for fire support of ground troops, because anything close enough to the ground troops to threaten them is close enough that they'd be inside the blast radius.

The Imperial Sourcebook says that they do use ship's turbolasers to support ground troops. I imagine they don't use them at full power, just enough to get the job done.

That doesn't mean that they bombard the area directly around their troops. Megaton-range light weapons would presumably be used against concentrations of enemy troops and/or forts/defensive areas, well away from friendlies. Gigaton-teraton heavy and medium turbolasers are presumably limited to use in strategic bombardments, again likely well away from friendlies. Now, the point-defense guns would be capable of close-in support, but they have starfighters for more precise support.

I think when you consider the technical power that Star Wars vessels and technology are supposed to be capable of, it seems minimalistic--but overall, I think it's fine. It's just as probable that the handful we see in any given scene are multiplied thousands of times across other battlefields--not including space patrols, defensive fleets, losses, replacements, and pure space engagements currently ongoing.

It's like watching Full Metal Jacket and wondering why we only see one tank really put to any use, despite hearing about how awesome tanks are and how powerful tanks would be.

While it would have been nice to at least get the feeling that sometimes they fight with slightly more advanced methods than "unload the block of soldiers and take back off," I don't think it's really problematic. Within the movies, it's fine. Inside the larger canon context it looks odd, but if they had gone for ridiculously huger numbers or things it wouldn't have fit real well with the Original Trilogy's depictions of soldiery.

Having a capability and using it intelligently are two different things entirely. Its easy to forget in the context of a SW vs ST debate that the GE or Republic might be inefficient in some or many ways oftne because they aren't inefficient enough to cripple any of their significant advnatages - ie even a fraction of the industrial capability, firepower, defenses, or whatever would be enough to ensure victory in that case. In other casees (EG the clone wars) the same isn't neccesarily true, and inefficiencies can be more telling or relevant.

Ideas like the 3 million clones stretch credibility because its too fucking tiny a number to meaningfully impact a large scale conflict no matter how you try to cut the numbers (even assuming tens of thousands of systems rather than millions as implied in the ovels, 3 million troops isn't going to do shit, nevermind the significant chunk of the galaxy actually repreesnting the Republic.) But saying that "there can't be 3 million clones" doesn't automatically mean they neccesarily had or employed super huge legions of quintillions of clones because militaries don't neccesarily fight intelligently or at maximum capability. (Iraq, anyone?) And I daresay the Clone Wars is a very good example of stupid choices popping up (starting off with the Battle of Geonosis in AOTC and moving onwards.)

NoogDeNoog wrote:The Imperial Sourcebook says that they do use ship's turbolasers to support ground troops. I imagine they don't use them at full power, just enough to get the job done.

I'm skeptical. In real life, there are very few pieces of hardware that can operate efficiently over an energy range of more than, say, three orders of magnitude. Even if you dial down a capital ship turbolaser to 0.1% of its maximum firepower, it's still ludicrously overpowered for close air support, or even not-so-close air support. You don't use hydrogen bombs in direct support of ground formations, either, for the same reasons.

Fighters, gunships, shuttles, they might carry weapons light enough to do the trick. But capital ship guns are just too big for anything other than strategic bombardment of targets far from your ground forces.

Simon_Jester wrote:I'm skeptical. In real life, there are very few pieces of hardware that can operate efficiently over an energy range of more than, say, three orders of magnitude. Even if you dial down a capital ship turbolaser to 0.1% of its maximum firepower, it's still ludicrously overpowered for close air support, or even not-so-close air support. You don't use hydrogen bombs in direct support of ground formations, either, for the same reasons.

Fighters, gunships, shuttles, they might carry weapons light enough to do the trick. But capital ship guns are just too big for anything other than strategic bombardment of targets far from your ground forces.

Not necessarily, according to the AOTC ICS, the Acclamator features light weapons that are in the range of 6 megatons. Those weapons could potentially be scaled down to attack smaller targets.

EDIT: fixed the wording slightly

Simon_Jester wrote:

NoogDeNoog wrote:The Imperial Sourcebook says that they do use ship's turbolasers to support ground troops. I imagine they don't use them at full power, just enough to get the job done.

I'm skeptical. In real life, there are very few pieces of hardware that can operate efficiently over an energy range of more than, say, three orders of magnitude. Even if you dial down a capital ship turbolaser to 0.1% of its maximum firepower, it's still ludicrously overpowered for close air support, or even not-so-close air support. You don't use hydrogen bombs in direct support of ground formations, either, for the same reasons.

Fighters, gunships, shuttles, they might carry weapons light enough to do the trick. But capital ship guns are just too big for anything other than strategic bombardment of targets far from your ground forces.

Um, the Death Star? It could fire anything from planet shattering blasts to shots that *merely* vaporized shielded warships.

Kane Starkiller wrote:As I said: scenery. First there was no spacebattle in orbit of Geonosis, it would've been nice to actually see Acclamators and Trade Federation ships duking it out.

NItpick: There was one, just not depicted in the film. It is portrayed in the game "Jedi Starfighter"

between not seeing "the whole picture" of battles, size of the galaxy and the fact there's engagement where Jedi are uncommon or totally absent (according to what's implied in the medstar dualogy) while clones are used, any minimalism in the clone wars series doesn't bother me too much.

Darth Fanboy wrote:

Kane Starkiller wrote:As I said: scenery. First there was no spacebattle in orbit of Geonosis, it would've been nice to actually see Acclamators and Trade Federation ships duking it out.

NItpick: There was one, just not depicted in the film. It is portrayed in the game "Jedi Starfighter"

Oh, I remember that. That was indeed a pretty cool fight.
Now if only we could see it in something that more than a fraction of Star Wars fans would get to see...

Connor MacLeod wrote:Um, the Death Star? It could fire anything from planet shattering blasts to shots that *merely* vaporized shielded warships.

Hmm. You have a point. There was no overpenetration when the DS-II blew up the Liberty.

At a guess:
The Death Star fires a continuous beam*, which means that it may be practical to reduce total power output by reducing the duration.** Cut the duration to, say, a few nanoseconds, and the beam energy drops correspondingly. Moreover, a pulsed beam will not overpenetrate the way a continuous beam would, because the material dispersed by the head of the beam won't have time to get out of the way before the tail of the beam passes through.

The catch is that conventional ISD guns don't seem to fire on continuous beam, so they may not be able to do that. There's always a limit on how short you can make the pulses.

*as far as beam physics goes, two seconds is continuous.
**Beam duration tends to be easier to manipulate than beam intensity, at least for particle beams, though I can't prove that applies to Star Wars energy weapons.

And to add a little bit more, a huge chunk of the Republic fleet are also assigned to protect worlds, escorting convoys etc etc.

open_sketchbook wrote:You realize, of course, that Star Wars really IS just fantasy in space, right? Lucas never, ever gave a shit about technical, strategic or scientific accuracy; he set out to make a fairy tale IN SPACE and that's exactly what he made.

No shit, really? But nasty, evil EU authors KJA, Stackpole et al absolutely, positively, undeniably wrote purposely minimalistic and/or retarded books with malice aforethought and took great pains to think things over and intentionally portray numbers they considered wildly inappropriate to the scale of the setting, for the sole purpose of irritating the analyst fans/VS debaters. This is why most people see nothing wrong with lambasting them while Lucas is immune to criticism.

What point did you aim to make here, exactly?