StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Every source seems to be different - WEG, Star Wars.com, this site, WOTC, etc.

Mike's analysis of the size and scope of the galaxy strikes me as the best (and probably most accurate) estimation. This means millions of inhabited worlds with countless citizens. Chances are that there are also more planets like Coruscant that are completely covered developed, especially in the Core.

If there are approximately 25,000 SD's at the height of the Empire, how many other ships are there? How many command ships, battleships, cruisers, frigates, and patrol vessels are there? In most modern naval forces destroyers are the principal combat vessel, outnumbering cruisers and frigates, although since the end of the Cold War a lot of navies have been scrapping their destroyers in favor of frigates and corvettes.

What about land-based forces? Just how big is the Imperial Army at its height? How large are the local naval forces? In the books Admiral Dravis (I hope I recalled that correctly) is a former Admiral in the Chandrila defense fleet? How big is that fleet, and what sorts of vessels does it include?

I'm asking because most of the post-RTJ books describe naval fleets and squadrons of only a few dozen vessels at most. The Black Fleet Crisis seems to indicate a 5th Battle Fleet of maybe 100-200 vessels (all pretty small), but I have a hard time believing that the entire offensive capability of the New Republic is comprised of 150 frigates, corvettes, and escort carriers, even if they are a bunch of leaf-eating peace-loving hippies by that point.

One other thing for the sake of comparison:

During WWII, the US Navy BUILT approximately the following numbers of warships:

30 Fleet and Light Carriers (+8 more built pre-war)
100 Escort Carriers
10 Battleships (+20 more built pre-war)
50 Cruisers (+40 more built pre-war)
350 Destroyers (+150-200 more built pre-war)
500 Destoyer Escorts (Frigates) (+100? more built pre-war)
200 Submarines (+80 more built pre-war)


The US Navy in the mid-80's looked like this:
15 Fleet Carriers
10 Helicopter Carriers
4 Battleships
50 Missile Cruisers
100 Missile Destroyers
5-10 Gun Destroyers
80 Frigates
20-30 Light Combat Vessels
100+ Amphibious Ships
100 Attack Submarines
30 Ballstic Missile Submarines

Just something to keep in mind about force distribution. A more coastal oriented navy (such as China or the USSR) would have a higher proportion of small craft and frigates compared to this blue water navy.

my understanding of the republic at that point is that they were just a pocket regime - the real powers were spending tens of thousands of ships trying to gain the emperor title.

SancheztheWhaler wrote: I'm asking because most of the post-RTJ books describe naval fleets and squadrons of only a few dozen vessels at most. The Black Fleet Crisis seems to indicate a 5th Battle Fleet of maybe 100-200 vessels (all pretty small), but I have a hard time believing that the entire offensive capability of the New Republic is comprised of 150 frigates, corvettes, and escort carriers, even if they are a bunch of leaf-eating peace-loving hippies by that point.

EU minimalisism.

One poster here (Duchess of Zeon) has estimated around three hundred million FTL-capable ships and about the same number of sublight ships.

The amount of supplies Coruscant needs everyday to be brought in to feed its trillions must be mindboggling alone!

In defense of the EU writers, I can see and somewhat appreciate their minimalism. At least with Zahn, he tries to make the Stardestroyers a semi-rare and powerful warship, "a mobile siege weapon."

Thanks for your thoughts. I think it's mind-bogglingly large as well, but I understand why the writers tend to scale things down.

For my money, that makes the books unrealistic and silly, but then we are talking about fiction to begin with...

There are calcs for FTL capabale warships that go into the billions, with most being corevettes. I believe most agree with the ~300 million figures.

This article goes way in depth about it.

SancheztheWhaler wrote:Every source seems to be different - WEG, Star Wars.com, this site, WOTC, etc.

The more associated with the Del Rey/WEG combine of EU authors and editors, the less likely it is to be reliable. These guys love to protect their nest.

SancheztheWhaler wrote:Mike's analysis of the size and scope of the galaxy strikes me as the best (and probably most accurate) estimation. This means millions of inhabited worlds with countless citizens. Chances are that there are also more planets like Coruscant that are completely covered developed, especially in the Core.

We know there are more than quintillions of citizens (AOTC ICS) and several Coruscant-like planets. We know there are 51 million inhabited worlds, 12 million of them major population centers and 1 million of them full-member worlds in the galactic government.

SancheztheWhaler wrote:If there are approximately 25,000 SD's at the height of the Empire, how many other ships are there?

Hundreds of millions. The 25,000 figure is highly suspect. It does not match up with even the absolute minimum Sector Group counts based on the Imperial Sourcebook.

SancheztheWhaler wrote:How many command ships, battleships, cruisers, frigates, and patrol vessels are there?

A lot, probably.

SancheztheWhaler wrote:In most modern naval forces destroyers are the principal combat vessel, outnumbering cruisers and frigates, although since the end of the Cold War a lot of navies have been scrapping their destroyers in favor of frigates and corvettes.

Its possible that the ISD was the prefered patrol destroyer in the Outer Rim, hence how common it is in the EU, with many other derivatives of destroyers more common elsewhere in the galaxy and especially Coreward.

SancheztheWhaler wrote:What about land-based forces? Just how big is the Imperial Army at its height?

Probably trillions of citizens, if not around a quadrillion. And keep in mind, this would be less than 1% of the galactic citizenry in the Armed Forces - much lower than the U.S. or most western European states.

SancheztheWhaler wrote:How large are the local naval forces?

The minimum force to hold down a sector consists of 24 ISDs, and 1,600 other combat warships. It goes up from there, with influencial Moff Governors capable of being assigned fifteen additional Star Destroyers (with attendant vessels in a ISB battle squadron) to their SGHQ alone. This, with some hundreds of thousands of Army troops.

Oversector defense fleets are greater in scale: BLACKSWORDCOM contained more than three Executor-class battlecruisers, and a missing component of it has 42 vessels, all larger than an Interdictor. AZHAMMERCOM contained over 50 "capital ships" (whether these are ISB, bigger than 100 m and has a hyperdrive "capital ships" or real capital ships as in battleships or battlecruisers, it is not known) and its flagship was the Executor-class battlecruiser HIMS Whelm.

SancheztheWhaler wrote:In the books Admiral Dravis (I hope I recalled that correctly) is a former Admiral in the Chandrila defense fleet? How big is that fleet, and what sorts of vessels does it include?

Probably comparable to something between AZHAMMERCOM and a standard sector group.

SancheztheWhaler wrote:I'm asking because most of the post-RTJ books describe naval fleets and squadrons of only a few dozen vessels at most.

Extrinsically: The EU authors are incompetent, minimalist morons.

Instrinically: The galaxy had just been thoroughly trashed by internicine civil war and much of the action takes place off-screen. The novels, remember, are focusing on just a few select individuals.

SancheztheWhaler wrote:The Black Fleet Crisis seems to indicate a 5th Battle Fleet of maybe 100-200 vessels (all pretty small), but I have a hard time believing that the entire offensive capability of the New Republic is comprised of 150 frigates, corvettes, and escort carriers, even if they are a bunch of leaf-eating peace-loving hippies by that point.

Extriniscally: K-Mac doesn't know shit about SW. This is the guy who thought that Coruscant was not a city-planet, that that was instead "Imperial propoganda", and it simply had a continent which was rather built-up with a coast resembling Miami Beach. And no, I'm not kidding. His reason? Impossible to sustain shipping to a city-world. Well Saxton solved that with a couple of the back-of-the-envelope calcs, and I don't know how he figured the Imperials managed to ship everything to either Death Star construction site.

Intrinsically: The New Republic as of the BFC occupies only 1.1% of the Galactic Empire post-Yavin. And the New Republic and the Core got re-trashed by Operation SHADOW HAND and Palpatine's return. And the NR is a bunch of leaf-eating pacifist hippie weaklings at this point.

Kaz can rant about this a lot more than I can.

While I can agree on some aspects of the minimalism argument(For example, the Clone Army must be in units bigger than one unit = one soldier), it gets quite silly as we move into warships.

Stop agreeing with the majority and think for a second. How many times in SW do we see multiple FTL-capable warships in orbit of a planet? It happens several times in the OT, but.. Wait. Those are Vader's personal ships. There's no sign of the hundreds-plus defense fleets that the larger estimates demand exist. Coruscant will, most likely, have assloads of ships in ROTS, but that's quite a different situation, and everyone here should realize that.

I have yet to hear a good argument against there being 24 battleship-carrier hybrids per sector. After all, hyperdrive speeds means these twenty four worldburners and blockade platforms are no more than minutes away at any moment, not to mention their one thousand six hundred FTL auxiliaries.

As for the Duchess' estimates? Obviously I disagree with her capital ship numbers. Though if that STL estimate counts TIEs, she's too conservative by a few orders of magnitude.