The Imperials were very professional by-and-large, so don't get me wrong, we never see them make Federation-style lapses of judgement (if the Empire actually used a warp core ::shudder::, you can darn well bet it would eject if ordered to do so), but they do still tend to screw up in some pretty big areas. The attitude of invincibility that members of their leadership assume was directly exploited by the Rebel Alliance more than once.
And that required:
DS1: The Hand of God... err Force to deliver the Son of the Chosen One unto them barely trained, because they couldn't be bothered to even try to maintain security of their base. Even then the Hand... err Force had to once more intervene to get the son of the Chosen One to make the shot.
Even then the Imperials immediately have the design run over again and the flaw removed. Not to mention revamping their entire fleet to improve defenses vs starfighters.
Hardly overconfident on the Imperial side, despite it being a freak occurence. Remember the size of the Death Star, the surface damage they were doing to the surface was not really significant when you remember that. Now what was stupid is Tarkin not launching the TIEs, but Lucas would sort of be Out of Luck if he had. The Rebels on the other hand could have been competant without basically destroying the entire story. Might have made it better really.
Hoth: The Imperials playing it cautious and not just BDZ the surrounding countryside, because Lord Vader wanted Skywalker alive. The rebels still get their butts thoroughly kicked.
Only won in the sense of taking down some AT-ATs and supporting vehicles.
DS 2: The Hand of... err Force saw to it Palpy was getting blindsinded through the Force, and the rebels just happened to have one fluke after another happen in their favor.
RThurmont wrote:If you can describe building a massive, planet-destroying superweapon and not bothering to equip it with decent anti-starfighter defenses, and then refusing to evacuate it against the direct reccommendation of one of your most competent subordinates, as not being arrogant, I don't know what is.
Turbolaser towers.
The surfaces of the two operational Death Stars were defended by countless turbolaser and laser cannon emplacements of various power levels. Two known models exhibited fire rates of at least one blast per second. The distribution and character of Death Star I's emplacements was skewed towards a defense against capital ships because the designers had assumed that no starfighter attack could pose a serious threat to the battle station. Enemy starfighters were to be either ignored or swept away by the station's complement of TIE fighters.
The poverty of anti-starfighter defenses was corrected for Death Star II, with a substantial increase in the total density of guns and the proportion of lighter weapons with improved fire-control. Possibly the greatest concentration of turbolaser towers was in the vicinity of Emperor Palpatine's private observation tower, where the batteries were spaced only a few hundred metres apart. If the towers were spread over the entire station's surface at this density, and if the station was completed, then the total number of turbolaser towers would exceed a hundred million. Realistically, the region near Palpatine's tower must be more heavily defended than most, so the real total number is probably only a matter of millions rather than hundreds of millions.
In the new edition of A New Hope, rebel starfighters flying above the surface are seen to come under fire when they are at such a height that the battle station horizon shows significant curvature. The turbolaser fire was quite accurate, nearly hitting the fighters despite the fact that it is a heavy weapon intended for larger and less nimble targets. This means that the effective range of anti-captial ship turbolasers is no less than a few dozen kilometres.
Star Wars Technical Commentaries
Oh, and for the record, I don't carry potassium iodide, although hopefully in a few years times my firm's competitors will increasingly feel tempted to do exactly that.
Now to be honest I don't where your really are, but if you're in the US after minimal warning of potential terrorist use of nuclear weapons has been brought and you aren't carrying potassium iodide you are IMHBHAO around, if not more then, a 1,000x more arrogant and overconfident then Tarkin before the DS1 blew up. Tarkin is not Mr. I-See-The-Future I would remind you, and everything he had access to indicated there was no serious danger. Not to mention how it'd look if he had not been on the bridge at his moment of triumph.
Frankly you remove Skywalker from the equation, and Tarkin would have wiped them out with only minimal surface damage to show for it. Those X-wings weren't doing anything meaningful, and the non-Son-of-the-Chosen-One pilot's could _not_ make the shot. Find something else to harp on.
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