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We know a lot about how powerful and vast the Empire was. But what about the Rebellion ? What kind of fleets, industrial base, star sytems etc did they have ?

they had barely any worlds under their control, because any stable base was taken out by the empire. yes, they took control of mon calamari and hold it, but that's about it... they got their supplies from pirating, raiding the empire and from worlds which wanted to withdraw the empire, but secretly...

evilcat4000 wrote:We know a lot about how powerful and vast the Empire was. But what about the Rebellion ? What kind of fleets, industrial base, star sytems etc did they have ?

The Rebellion controlled no space per se, but their ideals held a lot of sway on many outlier world, such as Mon Calamari, which would lend them support in various forms from time to time.

The Rebellion's main HQ would hop around a lot in order to keep the Empire from crushing it, and would mostly be situated on uninhabited worlds to keep innocent people from being hurt. Dantooine, Yavin 4, and Hoth all fall into this category.

For an industrial base, they had very little. Ships were gained mostly from begging or stealing, at least until Mon Calamari threw its weight behind the Rebellion and provided with the MC80s.

There was quite a bit of an argument going about this very subject several months back. Let me see if I can dig it up.

Before the Battle of Yavin, the Rebellion didn't exist with any sort of military presence, and it held no inhabited worlds in its grasp. It had numerous cells and groups of people who stayed hidden in places closer to the Core, but their activities were mostly gaining information, theft, sabotage, and other terrorist actions. The only planets the Rebels did have were uninhabited Outer Rim worlds where the Empire was less likely to find them. Some worlds and corporations supported them in secret however like Incom and Cicarpous financers. They managed to hurt the Empire through acts of terrorism (Operation Ram's Head destroyed 4 Star Destroyers in dry dock, for example).

By ROTJ, the only world with any significant shipyards in their possesion was Mon Calamari. All other ships in their fleet were stolen, highly modified civilian vessels, or second hand models sold on the black market. It was only after Endor that the Rebels were able to actually start holding worlds in their possesion.

Weren't the 30 starfighters in ANH supposed to be a major portion of the Rebel "fleet"? I realize it's not totally accurate, since any cap ships couldn't assault the DS (due to that shield), but since ~3 squadrons is less than a single Mon Cal would carry, it kinda suggests there wasn't much of a Rebel fleet pre-BoY.

Thread Hi-Jacking in process.
How could Tarkin "crush the rebellion with one swift stroke"? Surely it should have been a cell-like organisation. So that attacking one small piece of the webb would'nt unravel the whole dam thing. Was Tarkin being overly-optimistic or was the rebellion ao badly organised that blowing up a single base would crush it?

I've never seen any real evidence the Rebels actually held Calamari, which always struck me as highly implausable, and that the fact that the Calamarian government-in-exile threw their former military and starliner fleet behind the Rebellion doesn't necessitate that the Rebels actually held the shipyards.

I smacked down an argument on this six months ago or so.

More proof the Empire is seriously undermilitarized...

AFAIK the Rebel Alliance didn't have a senate, capital or indeed any planet untill after Endor. Once Endor was over Mon Mothma declared her New Republic, formed the inner council (staffed mainly by the military), and they began the process of courting application of membership from Worlds. Untill Endor the largest ship we see in their posession is a Nebulon B Escort Frigate.

Lord Pounder wrote:AFAIK the Rebel Alliance didn't have a senate, capital or indeed any planet untill after Endor. Once Endor was over Mon Mothma declared her New Republic, formed the inner council (staffed mainly by the military), and they began the process of courting application of membership from Worlds. Untill Endor the largest ship we see in their posession is a Nebulon B Escort Frigate.

The Rebels had Mon Cals during Yavin.

And there was an interim government between the establishment of the New Republic and the Battle of Endor. After Palpatine's death, Mon Mothma and the High Command declared the Alliance of Free Planets (Kashyyyk, Sullust, Mon Calamari, and others were among the members) out of the Alliance to Restore the Republic. Six months later the Alliance of Free Planets was abolished and superceeded by the New Republic.

Lord Pounder wrote:Untill Endor the largest ship we see in their posession is a Nebulon B Escort Frigate.

Actually, the Rebels had their hands on Mon Cal Cruisers as early as mere months after the Battle of Yavin.

Adressing the planet itself, IP is correct: the world could not have been in the Rebellion's possesion. I don't think there's any specific date when Calamari was freed from Imperial oppression, but it was surely some time after Endor.

And while numerous sources say that the Mon Calamari pressed their ships into service shortly after Yavin, the words are up to inteprataion. They couldn't very well just take the fleet away from Mon Calamari, which, until after Endor, was under Imperial control. Perhaps through theft: Calamarian dockworkers surely could look the other way while Rebel commandoes seized the ships and escaped to lightspeed; Mon Cals probably wouldn't do it themselves since anything connecting them to the crime would mean dire consequences for their people still stuck on Mon Calamari. The Empire wouldn't simply abandon/destroy the exceptional shipyards because a few starliners and passenger cruisers escaped (of which would be taken elsewhere and modified for combat).

EDIT: Another way the Rebellion might have gone about obtaining the cruisers is simply capturing them while the cruisers are acting as luxury liners. The Imperials didn't shut down that operation (maybe because some of the profits from the luxury cruises were lining the local Imperial governor's pockets), so the cruisers could've sailed into open space, they're ships shields just "happened" to fail at the wrong moment, and incoming Rebel boarding parties took it over.

I was under the impression that the Mon Cal Cruisers were heavily modified by the Mon Cals themselves, and while I'm not sure that this was done planetside I sort of assumed it was.

Is there any actual cannon coverage of this?

To say that rebels hijacked them in a "wink wink" way can't be right because we know that the original Mon Cals could only be piloted by Mon Calamaris due to the controls and such being specifically designed for them.

Super-Gagme wrote:To say that rebels hijacked them in a "wink wink" way can't be right because we know that the original Mon Cals could only be piloted by Mon Calamaris due to the controls and such being specifically designed for them.

That's like saying Boba Fett couldn't handle Bossk's ship because the grooves and controls were fitted for a Trandoshan yet he can.~Jason

Soontir C'boath wrote:

Super-Gagme wrote:To say that rebels hijacked them in a "wink wink" way can't be right because we know that the original Mon Cals could only be piloted by Mon Calamaris due to the controls and such being specifically designed for them.

That's like saying Boba Fett couldn't handle Bossk's ship because the grooves and controls were fitted for a Trandoshan yet he can.~Jason

Except its more because of the displays being specially designed for spectrums only Mon Cals can see or something like that. I thought everyone was aware of this information?

Not everyone knows everything and I'd like to know where that came from.~Jason

Soontir C'boath wrote:Not everyone knows everything and I'd like to know where that came from.~Jason

Well I'm at Uni so all my resources aren't with me but if I remember correctly its in the Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels but I could be wrong, maybe someone else can help me out?

EDIT:
Okay theres this from the Tech Commentaries

All command and crew stations are occupied by Calamarians. It is not surprising that members of this rebel faction should assume the most prominent positions aboard their own vessels, but there are more pragmatic anatomical concerns involved. Monitors and readouts designed for their species' eye placement may be uncomfortable or inconvenient for humans to read. The keyboards and controls are suited to the Calamarians' greater number of fingers and different manual dexterity.

Maybe I was wrong about the spectrum thing.

Super-Gagme wrote:

Soontir C'boath wrote:Not everyone knows everything and I'd like to know where that came from.~Jason

Well I'm at Uni so all my resources aren't with me but if I remember correctly its in the Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels but I could be wrong, maybe someone else can help me out?

Yes, but they were merely for holographic projectors I believe. I think humans can still easily control the ship, unofically Madine led one at Endor but the scene was cut.

The keyboards and controls are suited to the Calamarians' greater number of fingers and different manual dexterity.

The Calamaries only has an extra finger in each of their hands and are longer then an average human hand, but I don't think it'll matter as long as you can press the buttons.

Judging from the consoles which are very small in my opinion a human is likely able to compute with it.
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/zs/rotj/mccrew2.jpg

Cyaround,
Jason

The design of the controls and displays themselves were designed for the Mon Calamari physiology and sensibilities. On some ships, the environment had to be adjusted for non-Mon Cals.

Destiny's Way, page 64:

...the bridge crew was made up entirely of Mon Cals. The brilliant display monitors, with their strange distortions, were configured for Mon Calamari eyes, and the chairs and instrument panels were adapted to their amphibious physiology.

Additionally, this was Keyan Farlander's Mon Adapyne, an MC80B cruiser.

They may have had human commanders, in some cases, with a Mon Calamari crew. Particularly until such time as the Mon Cals started producing officers with enough combat experience to command in a fight--weren't the Mon Cals pacifists up until the Empire took them over?

The fact that most of a Mon Calamari Cruiser is set to be comfortable for the Mon Calamari is mentioned in a few other books, too. I believe one of the X-Wing series books points out that the pilots' lounges and flight rooms were set to human comfort zones since there were few Mon Calamari starfighter pilots.

Crazedwraith wrote:Thread Hi-Jacking in process.
How could Tarkin "crush the rebellion with one swift stroke"? Surely it should have been a cell-like organisation. So that attacking one small piece of the webb would'nt unravel the whole dam thing. Was Tarkin being overly-optimistic or was the rebellion ao badly organised that blowing up a single base would crush it?

He was being optimistic. The Americans thought they could crush Al-Quaeda by blowing up some training camps in Afghanistan too.

The Rebellion also gained support in the form of the wealthy soroSuub corporation just prior to RoTJ, hence the "massing at Sullust"

I recall a lot of their A-Wingscame fromprivate shops and Im not sure about Incom's rogue designers that developed the X wing.

Darth Wong wrote:

Crazedwraith wrote:Thread Hi-Jacking in process.
How could Tarkin "crush the rebellion with one swift stroke"? Surely it should have been a cell-like organisation. So that attacking one small piece of the webb would'nt unravel the whole dam thing. Was Tarkin being overly-optimistic or was the rebellion ao badly organised that blowing up a single base would crush it?

He was being optimistic. The Americans thought they could crush Al-Quaeda by blowing up some training camps in Afghanistan too.

I would disagree considering what the Death Star's primary purpose was. The Death Star was constructed to keep the general population of the Empire in line with the threat of destruction on the global scale. You don't think that Tarkin destroyed Alderan simply to piss off Leia do you? He said it himself: "Fear...will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station."

Tarkin chose to destroy Alderan because he had proof they had been conspiring with the Rebellion. After that it would be much harder for planetary governments to pledge even the most minor support to the Rebellion which would deprive them of the critical hardware and allies that they needed to wage a successful campaign against the Empire. Sure the Rebellion could still exist as a terrorist organization, but their threat to the galaxy wide stability of the Empire would be minor. I didn't get the impression from Tarkin that he was only concerned about the Rebellion, but the actual galactic dissent that they were generating. It is no coincidence that the Emperor chose to disband the Senate immediately after the Death Star became opperational.

The Rebellion was laughable.

If the Emperor had already thought about what if he suddenly died, and installed mechanisms which would prevent any chaos, then the Empire could have simply said "Eat our shorts!". I mean, they were not 10% the threat that the seperatists were in the clone wars.