MKSheppard wrote: ↑2021-12-10 06:35pm
Straha wrote: ↑2021-12-09 07:40pmNot to go back to the sacred texts of the old site but it's been demonstrated that ISDs can engage in massive firepower output that can effectively overwhelm planetary shields, and given the immense power of the Imperial fleet and the ability to control space and deploy resources thereof on planets actually obliterating a planet is absolutely unnecessary compared to, say, dropping asteroids on them.
Veers:
My lord, the fleet has moved out of lightspeed. Com-Scan has detected an energy field protecting an area around the sixth planet of the Hoth system. The field is strong enough to deflect any bombardment.
Death Squadron was 5 x ISDs and 1 x Executor. That's a lot of firepower.
Hoth isn't really a good example of this for a whole slew of reasons.
Most importantly, the Empire doesn't want to kill all the rebels. Vader and the Emperor definitely want Luke alive,
seemingly want Leia and other leadership alive (though whether or not that's simply as a tool to capture Luke is never made clear), and don't act in ways consistent where the goal is to obliterate the opposition.
If they wanted to actually devastate the rebellion in universe they could:
- Follow the plot of the movie to the point where they blow up the shield generators, pick up the forces on the ground, and then bombard the planet from space.
- Same as above but instead of bombardment have Tie Bombers/Fighters roll in and engage in mass devastation.
- Target the vast amount of the planet that isn't shielded, including the areas that are incredibly close to the rebel base (the empire is able to land and advance rather quickly), glass the surface, and trust the environmental and climactic devastation kill the Rebels while maintaining the blockade.
- Go to the nearby asteroid belt, pick up a few asteroids, and start dropping it on the planet for similar effect + greater kinetic force.
- Holdo the planet with a drone ship.
Also, once the shield was down the Empire could have been a lot more aggressive towards the fleeing rebels still on the ground. Instead, it lets significant numbers of them continue to organize and flee unharrassed, not even bombarding freighters and mobilizing fighters on the ground.
That the Empire doesn't do this after the shield is down only has two explanations. The first being that they can't engage in either widescale planetary bombardment to more pinpoint targeting of freighters and Ion cannon emplacements on the ground, which is contradicted by the canon of the EU. The other explanation is that they simply don't want to, which is consistent with everything seen on screen.
In that context, Veer's declaration makes more sense as "The firepower necessary to overcome the shield would be so devastating as to fail the remit of the rest of the mission, so it's off the table." which would add to Vader's frustration of having tools he could use to pin the rebels down taken off the table. It would also make Ozzel's decision to jump into orbit make more sense as someone who doesn't understand why a ground invasion and the taking of rebels alive matters.
This also fits with the ANH discussions of the Death Star which make clear its firepower is less than that of the whole of the imperial star fleet and that ~a thousand ships could engage in the same effect.
This, btw, adds another wrinkle to the efficacy of the Death Star as planetary pacification tool. In TPM, ESB, and the Last Jedi it becomes clear that the only way to engage in effective planetary blockades is to surround the planet and prevent every avenue of escape. The Death Star, as a singular ship in orbit, would be an absolute failure of a blockader when deployed. We also know from the one time we saw it try to blow up a planet it took forever to get into position to do, allowing important people to flee en masse and removing basically every step on the escalation ladder that a fleet can engage in.
25,000 x ISDs @ 37,000 crew each = 925 million men on just those ships. The Death Star's "canon" complement of 2 million is only about fifty ISDs; or two sector groups' worth. The Empire has thousands of sectors at their disposal.
Right, those two sector groups are far more useful and flexible than the Death Star, they can control more sectors at once, pacify threats more effectively, and have much much smaller supply chains. Further, they cost
far less to build which means that for the cost of a Death Star the empire could build many more sector forces.
Or perhaps it resulted from Sheev's in depth studies of previous Sith Empires and their downfalls? If planetary shields are a thing; then galactic "turtling" likely played a big role in the downfall of previous Sith Empires; by throwing roadblocks into things long enough for the Jedi to strike down whatever version of the Sith had gained power.
This assumes that the Death Star resolves planetary turtling in the face of concerted multiplanet opposition, which it doesn't, and that there are no other solutions to planetary shields, and I'm not even sold that planetary shields are a significant enough problem to warrant this level of investment in the first place.
So it seems to me that Sheev's deep thoughts were that in order for him to succeed where previous Sith had failed in building an enduring Empire, he had to solve two problems:
I think this falls apart at the premise that Palps wanted to have an enduring Empire. Palpatine never treats any of his apprentices (Maul, 'Dooku', or Vader) with a long-term vision, and he's very very happy to kill one and replace them with another when the time comes. Further, the EU makes clear that the Empire is basically held together by tinsel and fear and lacks anything like a popular mandate or political tools of stability to stay afloat absent him (see also: Coruscant celebrating immediately after he died in RotJ.)
As such, the Death Star as an act of long-term political stability makes limited sense (something the Imperial bureaucracy recognizes in the meeting scene on the Death Star in ANH!), and as a tool for flexible response to galaxy wide flareups makes even less sense, but as Sheev's Pimped Out Hot Rod of DOOM it makes perfect sense.
Right, and at no point do we ever see Palpatine ruling.
Do you really want an entire SW Disney+ series devoted to Palpatine dealing with the Imperial Bureaucracy for 20 years?
Yes.
But also, we never even
get the idea that he cared to rule for shit. What does the Empire stand for in terms of policies, taxation, etc.? Just about every time it gets discussed in the EU it's a hodgepodge mix of different local bureaucrats trying out ridiculous things and seeing it blow up in their faces.
Palpatine wanted to be the most powerful man in the Galaxy, he murdered his way to the top, got there, and had no more worlds left to conquer. He is, to loop back, the coyote after catching the road runner. Reconstructing Imperial policy from a deliberate and goals-driven perspective, as such, is useless. Reconstructing it as the whims of a guy who was a megalomaniacal pleasure seeker makes a whole slew more sense.
UNLIMITED POWER.
Palpatine's big trope is that he's the Evil Space Wizard dude; but that 20 year interval between ROTS and ANH with little if any overt acts against the Empire, along with the fact that the Empire remained loyal to him until his death at Endor (4 years after ANH); shows that he had to be a competent political operator at the least.
Does it? He's got no opposition. For most people life continues on as it did under the OId Republic, and people by and large seemed content with that. He stopped a war but kept the overwhelming military. This doesn't necessitate political savvy on any level.
Also, by the time of ANH the senior military leadership of the Empire is deeply concerned about the rebellion and has snowballing support in the Imperial Senate to the point where the Emperor has to abolish it and disrupt the bureaucracy it provides. This is not the situation of a canny political operator smoothly moving his opponents around where he wants them. But it would fit with a bored and understimulated sith lord who is now too distracted with his shiny new toy to bother keeping the Senate in line and potential rebellions pacified.