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I've been lurking for a while and keeping an eye out for a topic like this. I didn't see anything, but if it turns out that I'm blind and this is a rehash of an earlier thread, feel free to teach me the error of my ways. Anyway...

Palpatine, with the assistance of Darth Vader, initiated a galaxy wide purge of the Jedi. A number of Jedi died on Geonosis, and I'm certain a whole lot more will be overwhelmed in similar battlefield situations during the remainder of the Clone Wars. However, there are a whole lot of Jedi, (even if the population is infinitesimal relative to the galaxy at large) and I'm sure hundreds of them (at least) will survive the conflict and have to actively be wiped out by Palpatine.

Tasking Dark Side Force users (like Vader) to pick off the remaining Jedi seems to be the ideal situation, and in conversations I've had in the past, people seemed to be under the impression that Vader pretty much did this single-handedly. Vader, admittedly, is quite powerful, and capable of felling just about any Jedi you'd care to place him against. I find it hard to believe, though, that Darth Vader single-handedly stalked and killed hundreds (or more) of Jedi during Palpatine's pogrom, like some sort of Space Opera version of the Kurgan. "There can be only... two."

To me, at least, this begs the question: How does Palpatine wipe out all of these Jedi? There's only one Darth Vader, and he can't be everywhere at once. The quick answer is Stormtroopers, but Stormtroopers, although they are the elite, are mere fodder against a well-trained Jedi. Despite the efforts of cloning/recruiting, training, and equipping them, they'll tend to go down fast against even a relatively weak Jedi (and I'd tend to assume that anyone who survives the clone wars is something of a badass). This quickly becomes expensive. Palpatine has the resources to essentially throw an infinite number of troops at the problem, but someone like him won't respond in that fashion. He'll want to optimize the situation and get the most bang for his buck, as it were. Now, short of training large numbers of soldiers to be competent force users (out of the question), you can't really prepare them to fight Jedi on their own. So how do you get the most out of them? Equipment! It has occurred to me that a good old fashioned shotgun would be the ideal weapon for use against the Jedi by Stormtroopers. Streetsweeper, newbie-stick, auto-shotty, call it what you will, but it seems to me that it maximizes the strengths of the stormtrooper (armor, unit tactics) while minimizing one of the strengths of the Jedi (the lightsaber [ability to parry blaster bolts, close quarters superiority]). A Jedi isn't going to be able to parry a close range shotgun blast in any fashion, nor redirect the energy as Vader has done with blaster bolts. While he might dodge, the spread of the shotgun blast(particularly with pellets ricocheting off of metal deck plating or walls in tight ship corridors, for example) is going to be much more difficult to dodge than the narrow bolt of a blaster, and although he might scatter or shield himself from the pellets with the Force, it seems that a squad of stormtroopers unloading will quickly overwhelm even a fairly competent Jedi. Also, let us not forget that the stormtroopers' armor is going to defend them quite well from friendly fire, so that when the Jedi rushes into melee with them to negate the advantage of their ranged weapons, they can happily continue blasting away at him without fear of unduly harming their mates.

Now, I'm not suggesting that this will be managed without casualties, but it seems to me that (assuming they can locate the Jedi scum) a force of stormtrooper Jedi-hunters trained and equipped with shotguns would be able to take down a Jedi much faster and with a fraction of the casualties they would suffer if otherwise equipped with their standard blasters.

Any thoughts?

Shotguns aside, it is already clear that while Vader probably took out a high percentile of jedi relative to other people, the task of killing every jedi must fall to conventional forces, including the use of spaceborne assets to kill them, ergo, orbital bombardment.

If the ROTS-spoilers are anything to go by, Anakin will lead a group of clones into the Jedi Temple and slaughter everyone inside.

The rest of the Jedi will be wiped out by a concentrated effort of their own armies and navies. They will simply be overwhelmed.

If memory serves, we just had a thread recently where it was shown that shotguns would do exactly dick to a Jedi.

But yeah, sheer overwhelming firepower is the way to go.

Yeah, but annihilating them with turbolasers from space is even more expensive than killing them off with waves of stormtroopers, and it seems to me that successfully targeting something human sized, from orbit, in what is probably a populated area is not an ideal situation. What are they going to do, paint him with a laser targeter? Have spotters that call in his coordinates? I'm assuming that to accomplish something like this, you'd need to 1. flush the jedi out, and 2. hold them in one place long enough to target and blast them, which is not a mean feat considering how mobile they are when they want to be, and that getting painted by capital ship weapons probably trips serious danger sense flags in a Force user.

Vain wrote:Yeah, but annihilating them with turbolasers from space is even more expensive than killing them off with waves of stormtroopers,

How so? It's pretty cheap in terms of what it costs the Empire.

and it seems to me that successfully targeting something human sized, from orbit, in what is probably a populated area is not an ideal situation. What are they going to do, paint him with a laser targeter? Have spotters that call in his coordinates?

The sheer power of the ships is the advantage there. "Oh, he's somewhere in this city" "Right-O then" *commence BDZ*

I'm assuming that to accomplish something like this, you'd need to 1. flush the jedi out, and 2. hold them in one place long enough to target and blast them, which is not a mean feat considering how mobile they are when they want to be, and that getting painted by capital ship weapons probably trips serious danger sense flags in a Force user.

Nope. The smallest weapons on some of these ships have yields the size of Fat Man and Little Boy. The highest ones, more energy then all the nuclear weapons ever built. Accuracy isn't that big an issue in those circumstances.

VT-16 wrote:If the ROTS-spoilers are anything to go by, Anakin will lead a group of clones into the Jedi Temple and slaughter everyone inside.

Hey, speaking of spoilers, nice going marking them, ass!

Specially designed Jedi-killing droids, with multiple blasters all firing at different parts of the body at exactly the same time (unblockable). Droideka-type shields would help as well. Mass produced and sent on search and destroy missions.

I think hundreds is quite much taking in account in Geonosis 200 jedi were lost and there only 10 000 jedi pre-clonewars. Some jedi probaly fell to the dark side and most jedi that survive the clone wars were probaly very young (younglings) or very old (jedi masters). Youngling probaly become dark jedi. And there no reason kill jedi in a ground battle (if you have a choice).

DPDarkPrimus wrote:

VT-16 wrote:If the ROTS-spoilers are anything to go by, Anakin will lead a group of clones into the Jedi Temple and slaughter everyone inside.

Hey, speaking of spoilers, nice going marking them, ass!

Not saying he's in the right here, but the fact that Anakin kills a shit ton of Jedi and the Temple gets destroyed ain't exactly major spoilers. It ranks there with "Anaking goes over to the Dark Side" really.

Of course, there were people complaining about LOTR spoilers, so...

Ender wrote:How so? It's pretty cheap in terms of what it costs the Empire.

I'm not talking in terms of what it costs to fire a turbolaser. I'm talking about what it costs in terms of population and real estate and PR. What you're talking about is killing the cockroach on your dining room table by incinerating it with a flame thrower. Why not just hit it with a shoe?

Well, I didn't know it would happen in the movie, whereas I knew that he would fall to the dark side and become Vader.

According to The Force.net's books section, Michael Reaves will be writing a post-ROTS novel that picks up right after the end of the film and features the "clean up" of the remaining Jedi.

The novel is due out August 2005.

Vain wrote:

Ender wrote:How so? It's pretty cheap in terms of what it costs the Empire.

I'm not talking in terms of what it costs to fire a turbolaser. I'm talking about what it costs in terms of population and real estate and PR. What you're talking about is killing the cockroach on your dining room table by incinerating it with a flame thrower. Why not just hit it with a shoe?

*shrug* this is the Empire. Complete and total domination over the air waves. They can blow it up, attribue it to "renegade spereratists", "Jedi power useage", "rebel terrorists" etc. Then come in and rebuild something like a new clone center or somesuch. It's not like they didn't do that on a couple of Occasions. Vader wiped out the Falleeen capital to fix a Hazmat incident if memory serves.

BEWARE, GOD-DAMN SPOILERS APPROACHING!!!!!!!

the Temple gets destroyed

From what we see in the ROTJ DVD, and from what goes on inside when the shit hits the fan, the Temple itself is never destroyed. (Or if it is destroyed somehow, they might build it up again as Vader´s new palace or something.)

Ender wrote:It's not like they didn't do that on a couple of Occasions.

Yeah, but we're not talking about 'a couple of occasions'. We're talking about using this to the exclusion of conventional troops to kill off hundreds of jedi. What this happens 50 times, a hundred, six hundred? That quickly becomes unmanageable, even to something with the resources that the Galactic Empire can bring to bear. Also, remember that the Senate wasn't dissolved until the beginning of A New Hope, which means that during the persecution of the Jedi, there were still thousands of Senators who (at least nominally, even though Palpatine was calling the shots) had some say in the way things should be run and could at least get to the media if nothing else.

Palpatine is evil, I will grant you, and ruthless, I will grant you, but I feel that he is also efficient and would wish to finish the Jedi while leaving the least possible mess to clean up. Wiping out a city or a continent every time he wants to kill a Jedi doesn't seem like his style. Now, this might be a feasible and dare I say, ideal tactic on a remote planet like Dagobah or Tatooine, you're telling me that no Jedi ended up on a populated core world or even Coruscant?

Vain wrote:Yeah, but annihilating them with turbolasers from space is even more expensive than killing them off with waves of stormtroopers, and it seems to me that successfully targeting something human sized, from orbit, in what is probably a populated area is not an ideal situation. What are they going to do, paint him with a laser targeter? Have spotters that call in his coordinates? I'm assuming that to accomplish something like this, you'd need to 1. flush the jedi out, and 2. hold them in one place long enough to target and blast them, which is not a mean feat considering how mobile they are when they want to be, and that getting painted by capital ship weapons probably trips serious danger sense flags in a Force user.

You think that the Empire really cares if they wipe out an entire city to kill a few Jedi?

Praxis wrote:You think that the Empire really cares if they wipe out an entire city to kill a few Jedi?

They care when it happens so often that it can't be covered up anymore. They care when planets start seceding in droves and the Rebellion becomes orders of magnitude bigger because it has become common knowledge that the Empire is using weapons of mass destruction on its own population in order to enforce the law. What do you think would happen if the United States government used fuel-air bombs to wipe out residential Beverly Hills to take out a wealthy mafioso, when they could have just sent in law enforcement personnel to arrest him?

Vain wrote:

Praxis wrote:You think that the Empire really cares if they wipe out an entire city to kill a few Jedi?

They care when it happens so often that it can't be covered up anymore. They care when planets start seceding in droves and the Rebellion becomes orders of magnitude bigger because it has become common knowledge that the Empire is using weapons of mass destruction on its own population in order to enforce the law. What do you think would happen if the United States government used fuel-air bombs to wipe out residential Beverly Hills to take out a wealthy mafioso, when they could have just sent in law enforcement personnel to arrest him?

And if the Empire threatens to BDZ any world that breaks off? No one would defy them. Several worlds were enslaved or wiped out for protesting the Empire. When you have billions of world, it doesn't matter if a few get nuked.

Vain wrote:

Ender wrote:It's not like they didn't do that on a couple of Occasions.

Yeah, but we're not talking about 'a couple of occasions'. We're talking about using this to the exclusion of conventional troops to kill off hundreds of jedi.

No, we are talking in addition to troops.

What this happens 50 times, a hundred, six hundred? That quickly becomes unmanageable, even to something with the resources that the Galactic Empire can bring to bear.

Wow, your sense of scale is way off.

Also, remember that the Senate wasn't dissolved until the beginning of A New Hope, which means that during the persecution of the Jedi, there were still thousands of Senators who (at least nominally, even though Palpatine was calling the shots) had some say in the way things should be run and could at least get to the media if nothing else.

1) The senators have to find out accurately what is going on first. Ideal situation is report what happened, but attribute it to pirates or rebels. Outraged senator demands a larger naval presence and starts pushing for more military funding.
2) Even if they get to the media, the media is controlled by the Empire. They can alter it, spin it, not show it, whatever.

Palpatine is evil, I will grant you, and ruthless, I will grant you, but I feel that he is also efficient and would wish to finish the Jedi while leaving the least possible mess to clean up. Wiping out a city or a continent every time he wants to kill a Jedi doesn't seem like his style. Now, this might be a feasible and dare I say, ideal tactic on a remote planet like Dagobah or Tatooine, you're telling me that no Jedi ended up on a populated core world or even Coruscant?

There were ones that ended up on populated worlds. And he would send jedi hunters in at those times, like he did on most occassions. But lets not at all imagine that blasting apart a few hundred cities is going to phase people. Most didn't really care that Alderaan went boom.

Vain wrote:

Ender wrote:It's not like they didn't do that on a couple of Occasions.

Yeah, but we're not talking about 'a couple of occasions'. We're talking about using this to the exclusion of conventional troops to kill off hundreds of jedi. What this happens 50 times, a hundred, six hundred? That quickly becomes unmanageable, even to something with the resources that the Galactic Empire can bring to bear. Also, remember that the Senate wasn't dissolved until the beginning of A New Hope, which means that during the persecution of the Jedi, there were still thousands of Senators who (at least nominally, even though Palpatine was calling the shots) had some say in the way things should be run and could at least get to the media if nothing else.

Palpatine is evil, I will grant you, and ruthless, I will grant you, but I feel that he is also efficient and would wish to finish the Jedi while leaving the least possible mess to clean up. Wiping out a city or a continent every time he wants to kill a Jedi doesn't seem like his style. Now, this might be a feasible and dare I say, ideal tactic on a remote planet like Dagobah or Tatooine, you're telling me that no Jedi ended up on a populated core world or even Coruscant?

50 times, a hundred times, six hundred...no biggie. We're talking about an entire GALAXY here. Hundreds of trillions of people. Maybe more. While I doubt the Empire would fire on a Jedi on CORUSCANT, on most other worlds, if the military can't catch the Jedi, they just nuke him.

VT-16 wrote:

the Temple gets destroyed

From what we see in the ROTJ DVD, and from what goes on inside when the shit hits the fan, the Temple itself is never destroyed. (Or if it is destroyed somehow, they might build it up again as Vader´s new palace or something.)

It's possible that Palpatine turned the Temple into his Imperial Palace, but this wouldn't jibe with the EU/ISW (of course, the Purists wouldn't care).

Praxis wrote:And if the Empire threatens to BDZ any world that breaks off? No one would defy them. Several worlds were enslaved or wiped out for protesting the Empire. When you have billions of world, it doesn't matter if a few get nuked.

Not every naval captain or gunner is a conditioned automaton like a storm trooper or dark side aspected like Palpatines immediate cronies. Yes, Palpatine is evil, yes I'm sure he'd be thrilled to death to add more of that people-dying-dark-side-resonance to the Force. However, he is above all else, a politician. He's not the Emperor because he can throw force lightning. He's the Emperor because he's a slick son of a bitch who knows how to play that game. The secret to playing that game is not wiping out untold numbers of civilians to pick off tiny pieces of the forces arrayed against him. You're not talking about the behavior of a charismatic, thoughtful, intelligent and above all, political sociopath like Palpatine. You're talking about a frothing at the mouth psychopath who, realisticly, won't last long in office.

Ender wrote:There were ones that ended up on populated worlds. And he would send jedi hunters in at those times, like he did on most occassions. But lets not at all imagine that blasting apart a few hundred cities is going to phase people. Most didn't really care that Alderaan went boom.

Then I have no argument with you, with regards to the OP. I agree that in some situations an orbital bombardment may be called for, and you seem to agree that in some situations more specially trained troops would be a better situation.

However, I maintain that wantonly using WMDs on their own population is not something the Empire was in the habit of doing. Alderaan was an isolated incident. You can spin that as a natural disaster, some sort of cosmic catastrophe, or even as a necessary military action. When you blow up your fiftieth planet, EVEN if there are billions more, people are gonna freak. And regardless of the scale, you're talking about wasting resources. You don't rise to a position of absolute power like Palpatine did, you don't build things like the death star, you don't maintain a galactic population or a military the size of the one the GE had, by being wasteful. It was easily within the power of the United States to nuke Afghanistan and take out Osama that way. They didn't because of the political and economic realities of the situation.

Vain wrote:However, I maintain that wantonly using WMDs on their own population is not something the Empire was in the habit of doing.

TL's are not WMD. A weapon of mass destruction is a weapon that has far ranging uncontrolable after effects. A chemical cloud cannot be maintained, nor can a virus or widespread fallout. A TL has none of those properties. And yes, they were in a pretty good habit of doing it. Check Mike's TL page for some examples. Their ships were designed for it.

Alderaan was an isolated incident. You can spin that as a natural disaster, some sort of cosmic catastrophe, or even as a necessary military action. When you blow up your fiftieth planet, EVEN if there are billions more, people are gonna freak. And regardless of the scale, you're talking about wasting resources. You don't rise to a position of absolute power like Palpatine did, you don't build things like the death star, you don't maintain a galactic population or a military the size of the one the GE had, by being wasteful.

Actually, what little glimpses we have of galactic socitey we've had paint a picture that is incredibly wasteful. They seem to go for the "little bit spread out over a huge area" approach rather then exploiting everything to its maximum potential.

That said, taking out a single city or colony here or there isn't really going to do much. As long as it's shy of a BDZ you can still harvest it, you just have to bring in new equipment.

It was easily within the power of the United States to nuke Afghanistan and take out Osama that way. They didn't because of the political and economic realities of the situation.

Again, your sense of scale is off. To the empire, nuking a single city is about as big as a mortar shell hitting a house in Iraq is to us.