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From what I have read and seen in TPM the Trade Federation fleet entirely encircled the planet of Naboo. There must have been thousands of starships in that fleet. I think this is a bit of a overkill. The Naboo defenders only had a couple of starfighters and a small number of militia.

So how would you ensure the months-long total blockade of an entire planet without the use of thousands of ships?

EDIT: Additionally, your thread title is damn vague.

You don't need thousands of capships, you can use long range TLs, figher patrols, sensors, whatever. Anything that goes within range gets shot at and pursued by fighters and missiles and fighters with missiles, no need to jam pack the place with crap. Besides, capships can move too.

How many ships do we see on approach? Is the number "thousands" seen anywhere? I always thought it was hundreds.

Strange thing that one ship was able to go through the blockade if it were thousands of ships. Even if they were spread out.
If they were thousands then I get more impression the blockade was to hold off external forces and not forces launched from the planet itself.

Well, nobody accused the Trade Federation of being competent military...

Vympel wrote:How many ships do we see on approach? Is the number "thousands" seen anywhere? I always thought it was hundreds.

I think the math works out to the thousnads based off Mike's TPM comments page, I'm yet to check it out myself.

In anycase, the low acceleration of the battleships required the large number. It wasn't overkill, it was required because they didn't have a lot of smaller ships available at the time.

IUnknown wrote:From what I have read and seen in TPM the Trade Federation fleet entirely encircled the planet of Naboo. There must have been thousands of starships in that fleet. I think this is a bit of a overkill. The Naboo defenders only had a couple of starfighters and a small number of militia.

A blockade of an entire civilized world with access to access to the standard level of technology of the Galactic Empire is not going to be accomplished by just placing a ship or two in orbit and running fighter patrols to cover what the weapons of the big ships can't cover.

Naboo was the capital of the lightly populated Chommell Sector. That means 36 full-member worlds, 40,000+ settled dependencies (AKA colonies), and 300,000,000 stars with no settlements in their systems. Cutting a planet like Naboo off from resupply by about three dozen other fully developed worlds (which probably have an obligation to support their sector capital) would be a staggering task, possibly with thousands of commercial vessels of various sizes available for the task of resupply. Add in maybe as little as one light freighter (Millenium Falcon sized or so) per 10 colonies, and you've already got 4,000 potential additional supply ships.

The only way to enforce a blockade under those circumstances would be to use overwhelming numbers to make any attempt at resupply futile. (Well, and then stage an invasion, hold the population hostage and force the designated head of government sign an enforceable treaty that undercuts the basis for further resistance.)

Vympel wrote:How many ships do we see on approach? Is the number "thousands" seen anywhere? I always thought it was hundreds.

Say they're in low orbit; maybe 500 km? They're each about 16 km apart (10 miles). Now calculate the number of 16 sq km slots on a sphere with a radius of (Naboo's radius) + 500 km.

Geometry says there should be thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:

Vympel wrote:How many ships do we see on approach? Is the number "thousands" seen anywhere? I always thought it was hundreds.

Say they're in low orbit; maybe 500 km? They're each about 16 km apart (10 miles). Now calculate the number of 16 sq km slots on a sphere with a radius of (Naboo's radius) + 500 km.

Geometry says there should be thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands.

Except they don't cover the entire globe, just a band around the equator. Makes it trickier.

Didn't one source cite that the Trade Fed ships were only spread around the equator?

President Sharky wrote:Didn't one source cite that the Trade Fed ships were only spread around the equator?

Yes, the movie

Ender wrote:

President Sharky wrote:Didn't one source cite that the Trade Fed ships were only spread around the equator?

Yes, the movie

Where did it say that? The camera angles were too constrained to show whether there were similarly orbiting battleships at higher latitudes and the very nature of a blockade would argue for total englobement.