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Just how large was the Rebellion in the years leading to ANH and between ANH and RotJ?

I've always imagined them as a ragtag band of renegades, with only a hand full of battle worthy ships (namely the fleet seen in RotS), relying mostly on guerilla tactics and asymmetric warfare. But some of the stuff in WEG's RPG-manuals make them sound like a fairly formidable fighting force actually engaging the Imps toe to toe. Just looking for clarification on what the situation really was.

Not terribly large. Look at their facilities on Yavin, and that is their largest base. At that time, the Rebellion was largely limited to small terrorist cells. It wasn't until after the victory at Yavin that they managed to get any sort of wide-scale support, IIRC.

However, circa the events of TESB, the Rebellion lost several major battles in a row. I forget the name of the other major disaster, then, of course, the Battle of Hoth. After the events of TESB, the Rebellion was relatively reduced in size. However, during this time period they were able to expand on their fleet due to aid from the Mon Calamari.

Someone with more experience in the EU will likely correct me, however.

However, circa the events of TESB, the Rebellion lost several major battles in a row. I forget the name of the other major disaster, then, of course, the Battle of Hoth. After the events of TESB, the Rebellion was relatively reduced in size. However, during this time period they were able to expand on their fleet due to aid from the Mon Calamari.

Vader destroyed their hidden base in the Vergresso asteroid field, I believe.

Before the Battle of Endor, even after Yavin, the Rebel fleet was quite tiny, and handful of stolen or illegally purchased frigates and small cruisers, like the Redemption (Medical Frigate), along with a larger number of Gallofree transports and Corellian gunships, and of course their scattered fighter and smuggler cells. Indeed, the Mon Calamari's sudden support was the only reason they could oppose the Imperial fleet at Endor. However, after the battle was won, there was a suprising influx of support from at least a dozen alien worlds, IIRC, perhaps even some of it in the form of additional warships.

They lost a convoy at Derra IV, I believe. If the Rebellion hadn't secured the Another Chance, Hoth would have finished them.

I'm not sure how we can gauge the size of the Rebellion off of Yavin or Hoth since both seemed to be the Alderanian faction of the Alliance and I'm not sure how much support they could have possbily got after Alderaan blew up.

It's possible that the RotJ fleet would represent a sizable portion of the Alliance though, probably not all the ground side or support side, but offensive space side.

First off, the Empire is gigantic, so they'd have to be pretty dammed large in order to pose a threat to it.

My guess is that the guys we see in Yavin and Hoth are the big honchos, the leadership of the Rebels. The guys that can't affor to show their faces in any world that has an Imperial prescence, bounty hunters, or anyone else who might be willing to tell the Empire about the person who just walked in five minutes ago.

The Rebel Alliance itself is probably very large, but scatered over a very large area. They should have operatives and defectors operating at various levels of the Imperial military and within Galactic society. There are probably smuggling rings, covert supporters of various kinds, etc. Note that after they killed Palps the massive war that erupted didn't destroy them, so they must have been prepared.

They had a LOT more then most people think.

When they published the 'Decleration of Rebellion', a lot of major planets imediatly threw their support behind the rebels publicly, despite plees from the Rebels not to.

Naturaly the Imperials swiftly crushed these planets. BUT in this time they got a lot of material from lots of smaller cap ships (most of their Nebulon-B frigates come from this time) to ground equipment and especialy cash.

Hoth and Yavin were critical because they were the rebels HQ's with the politcal and military leaders. There were thousands possibly tens or even hundreds of thousands of cells from single squads to full sized resistence movements all over the Galaxy at least loosly tied to the allience, but becoming more and more tied in as time went on. But what made them so effecitve WAS the central co-ordination. Take that away and the allience suddenly becomes far less potent.

The Rebels line forces were realativly small which is why the hurried evacuation of Yavin, the loss of a lot of equipment on Hoth and the loss of the large convoy at Derra IV were body blows to convetnional warfair with the Empire, in the context of military strikes, hit and fade attacks e.t.c.

But the real power of the rebels were it's numerous insurgent movements and so on across the Galaxy which worked to make the Empires attempts to control the Galaxy so much harder. And then these movements did a lot to help speed up the fall of the Empire as a single unified force after the death of Palpitine.