What is the Worst act of minimalism?

[nightmare]

Of peripheral interest is the quote in Vision of The Future by a Rebel operative that than an ISD is 100,000 design flaws waiting to be exploited. Obviously in a 1km long ship there are design flaws, especially for the operative, for whom a design flaw could just be elevators can jammed using wrench, stopping a turbolift shaft or some other thing that isn't important to the ship's operating ability.

Wasn't that Talon Karrde? It's hardly unepxected to find lots of minor errors on a ship as large as an ISD, but I sincerely doubt that he's counted them. In other words, I agree with you that it's just hyperbole.

[consequences]

Of peripheral interest is the quote in Vision of The Future by a Rebel operative that than an ISD is 100,000 design flaws waiting to be exploited. Obviously in a 1km long ship there are design flaws, especially for the operative, for whom a design flaw could just be elevators can jammed using wrench, stopping a turbolift shaft or some other thing that isn't important to the ship's operating ability.

180000 design flaws as I recall, by some form of Imperial Spec-ops guy. And yeah, not having triple redundant 100% coverage video/audio surveillance of all areas, running on its own physically separated computer network with fully independent power supplies is the sort of thing I'd consider to be a design flaw if I was in that profession. As far as the people in charge of budgetting and building the thing are concerned, that sort of coverage is an even worse design flaw.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

Why? It was never done in naval combat (with guns anyway) for a reason- you arrange your firepower in broadside fashion,

Actually, the Richelieu and Dunkerque will disagree with you with their bowchaser armament, with aft firing blocked with the superstructure.

you can deliver more firepower to the target than head on,

The Imperator's layout is not the centerline broadside layout that's used on most battleships. It is a more old fashioned layout with port and starboard "wing turret".

If an ISD wanted to do so, it could merely point its nose slightly downward and point all guns forward. It's space, it doesn't matter where it's pointed, no?

If you are chasing someone and your bow is off-axis with your engines, you'd have to use thrust vectoring, which of course means at least a little thrust loss. The only way this makes any sense is if the tower raised the center of gravity, so the slight bow down is indeed the correct orientation. Even then, one can't see why:
1) They can't space the guns out just a little more. All it'd take is a bit more space between the turrets on the sloping ISD hull, and you'd get superfiring.
2) Putting the guns on the centerline!

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

One word: Stackpole. Bite Zahn or BFC or even KJA all you want, but Stackpole takes the cake for me.

He's a minimalist in numbers. It is always a few ships in his world, all centered around a Rogue (ie: triple-wank) squadron. Zahn had Thrawn having 5 Star Destroyers and later added a couple hundred Dreadnaughts. BFC at least had small fleets. KJA did write Darksaber where there were dozens of destroyers - not great but all of them are still eons over Stackpole.

And he is a minimalist in weapons expenditure. Where else do you hear 4 starfighters taking out the shields of something compared to an ISD. 80 proton torpedoes taking out a Executor's bow shield (even making the allowance they are capship yield? 12 starfighter squadrons being able to take out a SSD by themselves (see Wedge's thinking in Bacta War)? These are atrocities that neither Zahn, BFC, KJA or the NJO can match!

The man shows little understanding of the scale of the galaxy and shows equally little understanding of the value of scale, even though the films made it blatantly clear that a starfighter is at best a supporting weapon.

[Lancer]

you know those "fwapp" sounds starfighters make in Star Wars games when they shoot off their heavy weapons to kill capships?

All Stackpole.

[Tychu]

i dont know if its considerd minamalist, it probally is so ill put my 2 cents in

first you should know its KJA so theres something right there

but the whole Jedi Trainees moving a ISD? out of orbit around Yavin. If that was true to a Jedi powers then why hasent any one else moved around ships?

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

i dont know if its considerd minamalist, it probally is so ill put my 2 cents in

first you should know its KJA so theres something right there

but the whole Jedi Trainees moving a ISD? out of orbit around Yavin. If that was true to a Jedi powers then why hasent any one else moved around ships?

Nah, that's Jedi-wank. Sad to say, KJA may actually be one of the less minimalist authors. He did make warlord fleets with dozens or low hundreds of SDs. He also had his (still 8km) SSDs carry thousands of fighters (instead of 144) IIRC. And of course, he did let the Hutts almost build a DS like superlaser, showing clearly it wasn't so magical. He also let a larger warship like Shockwave do one turn kills on Vics (though he put the character shields on the MC-90 Galactic Voyager).

[Noble Ire]

i dont know if its considerd minamalist, it probally is so ill put my 2 cents in

first you should know its KJA so theres something right there

but the whole Jedi Trainees moving a ISD? out of orbit around Yavin. If that was true to a Jedi powers then why hasent any one else moved around ships?

A small fleet of ISDs, actually.
That instance is in no way indicative of normal Jedi power. It involved a group of more than a dozen "padawans" so to speak focusing their power in a chamber specifically designed to channel Force energy, and one of them died in the process.

And no, its not really minimalism.

[General Soontir Fel]

And he is a minimalist in weapons expenditure. Where else do you hear 4 starfighters taking out the shields of something compared to an ISD. 80 proton torpedoes taking out a Executor's bow shield (even making the allowance they are capship yield? 12 starfighter squadrons being able to take out a SSD by themselves (see Wedge's thinking in Bacta War)? These are atrocities that neither Zahn, BFC, KJA or the NJO can match!

You want minimalist weapons expenditure? Try the Shadows of the Empire: Evolution comic book (the sequel to the novel). A one-man ship (not quite a fighter, but smaller than the Millenium Falcon or Slave I) takes out a Star Destroyer. And by "takes out" I don't mean "destroys the bridge and makes it lose control". The ship is blown apart into chunks of metal...

As for the worst minimalism overall, I'd have to go with 3 million clones.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

You want minimalist weapons expenditure? Try the Shadows of the Empire: Evolution comic book (the sequel to the novel). A one-man ship (not quite a fighter, but smaller than the Millenium Falcon or Slave I) takes out a Star Destroyer. And by "takes out" I don't mean "destroys the bridge and makes it lose control". The ship is blown apart into chunks of metal...

As for the worst minimalism overall, I'd have to go with 3 million clones.

Fine, so there are some exotics. I still stand that Stackpole is worst among mainstream material - there are all of 10 people that know about this silly comic book.

BTW, details. How did it do it? Did it smuggle its way to the interior? What weapon did it use?

[General Soontir Fel]

You want minimalist weapons expenditure? Try the Shadows of the Empire: Evolution comic book (the sequel to the novel). A one-man ship (not quite a fighter, but smaller than the Millenium Falcon or Slave I) takes out a Star Destroyer. And by "takes out" I don't mean "destroys the bridge and makes it lose control". The ship is blown apart into chunks of metal...

As for the worst minimalism overall, I'd have to go with 3 million clones.

Fine, so there are some exotics. I still stand that Stackpole is worst among mainstream material - there are all of 10 people that know about this silly comic book.

BTW, details. How did it do it? Did it smuggle its way to the interior? What weapon did it use?

That's the point: there was nothing fancy about it! It simply got ambushed, evaded the turbolaser batteries, and fired proton torpedoes. Star Destroyer goes KABOOM!, and Guri (the pilot) continues on her way as if nothing happened.

Yes. One salvo of proton torpedoes from a private vessel against a major Imperial warship.

[Kuja]

There's another such incident in Crimson Empire. A Scimitar bomber sets off its payload in an ISD hangar and rips a giant chunk out of the ship, killing everyone aboard.

[Adrian Laguna]

That doesn't make sense, we know ISD's have bulkheads. If only "a big chunk" was ripped-out I don't see why everyone died. Unless they ran out of air before help could arrive.

[General Soontir Fel]

There's another such incident in Crimson Empire. A Scimitar bomber sets off its payload in an ISD hangar and rips a giant chunk out of the ship, killing everyone aboard.

Yeah, but in the hangar. Guri fired her torpedoes from the outside.

Both are bad, but Evolution is worse.

[Vympel]

Actually it was a Lambda-class shuttle, and the explosion blew the ship in half. It's to be expected.

[Rogue 9]

The BFC should certainly get an honorable mention for the sheer number of examples. A NR of ony 10,000 systems with a navy of only 500 ships, Curuscant with natural forests and coastlines, and a single species with only a dozen planets being a significant threat to Galactic stability.

The Fifth Fleet was 500 ships. It wasn't the entire Republic navy.

[NecronLord]

Why? It was never done in naval combat (with guns anyway) for a reason- you arrange your firepower in broadside fashion, you can deliver more firepower to the target than head on, while retaining the flexibility to defend yourself from other threats that might appear during the engagement. The direction of travel doesn't really matter- what tactical advantage does it afford? If an ISD wanted to do so, it could merely point its nose slightly downward and point all guns forward. It's space, it doesn't matter where it's pointed, no?

Naval Combat is not space combat. In naval combat, you don't have, oh, let's see, light seconds of distance between you and the enemy, one of whom at least is probably pointed at the other. This would be a good time to be shooting your heavy guns, no?
And no, it matters where it's pointed, because that's the direction it's going. Not to mention, when it points its nose down, it has to increase its target profile. How does this make the placement of the guns one behind another, when they could easily be placed in a V shape, any less of a layout fuckup?

Most of their firepower however is unfortunately not much.

Err, the Munificent has a main gun that makes the ISD's look like a popgun. It takes forever to charge up, but it can destroy a 10Km 'grade 3' battlestation's shields in a single discharge. If it could actually get a hit in the opening phase of an engagement, a Munificent could one-shot an ISD.

Sure it is- it's heavy guns have freedom of swivel forward- more so than the ISD2, actually.

Humm. I withdraw that, the ICS made it seem like the terrace behind the guns [towards the centreline] was big enough to block firing forwards. Not so in the film.

[FTeik]

To be fair, Stackpole has his moments, too.

So he has Gavin musing in one of his novels, that the NR doesn't have enough troops to control Coruscant since the planet is so densly populated (show that to Karen Traviss, although that could be minimalizing the NR ) or he has the NR in Isard's Revenge worried, that the Cuirtut-Hegemony with 20 worlds can build a 40 kilometer large Pulsar-Station.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

So he has Gavin musing in one of his novels, that the NR doesn't have enough troops to control Coruscant since the planet is so densly populated (show that to Karen Traviss, although that could be minimalizing the NR )

That will depend on how many troops he figures the NR has, would it?

or he has the NR in Isard's Revenge worried, that the Cuirtut-Hegemony with 20 worlds can build a 40 kilometer large Pulsar-Station.

I must have missed the part where they said it was 40km in diameter, but otherwise this is a good point. Still doesn't make up for everything else he has done, though.

[Trytostaydead]

I forgot where, but in regards to small task forces, someone said something to the effect, "We were only fighting a very small portion of the Imperial Fleet. I don't think we realized how much of their resources were tied down to just pacifying their systems"

[Ace Pace]

I forgot where, but in regards to small task forces, someone said something to the effect, "We were only fighting a very small portion of the Imperial Fleet. I don't think we realized how much of their resources were tied down to just pacifying their systems"

I'm not sure who said that, but in Spectre of the past(Thrawn duology), its mentioned that regardless of the size of the Imperial fleet(tiny), half of it is just spent keeping the peace in their own planets.

[Crazedwraith]

It's Leia IIRC.

[Lord Pounder]

One act of minimalism thats always annoyed me is in the Corellian Trilogy. Every fucking spare warship in the NR is in drydock and Luke has to go and ask the Bakuran's for a loan of 4 Destroyers. Thats bad.

Stackpole was annoying with his idea of an Admirals having only a few lesser Cruisers to defend an entire sector.

[nightmare]

It would be nice to be able to fire more than one quarter of the ISD's heavy weapons in the direction of travel, no?

It struck me that considering that a "true warship" can put almost its entire output in a single gun, it's smarter to design them for split broadsides since you wouldn't need more than a couple guns forward. Daala's focusing of all power to a single ion cannnon matches this as well.

[Solauren]

You know, with the ISD design problems, that COULD have been Talon hoping that news would reach the right ears and they'd be willing to sell the destroyer to him cheap.

I mean, he was a smuggler/con man