How would you blockade a planet?

[Patrick Degan]

The ion cannon probably had a lot to do with that. The Tyrant's captain seemed pretty confident of his "first catch of the day" until his ship was neutralized by surface artillery.

That's rather the point, though. If planetary blockade is a remotely feasible strategem in terms of galactic warfare, it follows that blockade-running and counter-interdiction are also feasible strategems and that the weaponry and tactics to execute either are easily comprehensible to either side. The real question is force-levels and materiel —along with the not-trivial problem of actually achieving effective coverage of what would be a rather large volume of space. The "threat" is never going to be enough to dissuade attempts to run the blockade, and even a tight coverage will not stop every ship attempting to make the run.

[Galvatron]

Oh, I agree. I'm sure the number of ships one must commit to a blockade depends heavily on the area of space one must cover, which in turn depends heavily on the range of the defenders' surface artillery.

A sparsely defended Outer Rim world could possibly be blockaded by one or two star destroyers.

A heavily defended Core world might require an entire sector group or more.

I assume a full-blown siege would require committing even more forces.

Hence my long-standing pet theory on why the Death Star was necessary for the Emperor to finally achieve absolute rule.

[Starglider]

Oh, I agree. I'm sure the number of ships one must commit to a blockade depends heavily on the area of space one must cover, which in turn depends heavily on the range of the defenders' surface artillery.

As well as the frequency of blockade running attempts, the maximum number of ships you expect to try and get past you at once, the speed and combat endurance of those ships, your effective sensor horizon and what vectors you expect them to travel on.

Hence my long-standing pet theory on why the Death Star was necessary for the Emperor to finally achieve absolute rule.

That and the ongoing Sith fascination with superweapons.

[Karmic Knight]

I would probably set up four ISDs two in Polar orbit, two in opposite equatorial orbit. with a network of patrols in between.
the ISDs would act as bases for the patrols.

That would be the inner ring an outer ring of Intedicter crusiers and light firgates to pull out reiforcements.

[Jadeite]

What about simply keeping spaceports under your guns? If something prepares to take off, blow it out of the sky from orbit.

[Teleros]

Problem with that is you don't really need a spaceport to take off from, except perhaps in the case of larger ships, and maybe not even then.

[Starglider]

If this is a genuine blockade rather than a siege (i.e. planetary shields are not a factor), an Imperial commander may just use terror tactics: 'for every ship that attempts to leave, we will burn a nearby town/city to ash'. A few object lessons of that kind and the planet's own population is likely to lynch anyone they think might try to run the blockade. Somewhat wasteful, but that doesn't usually seem to bother the Empire.