Best Rebel Alliance/New Republic Capital ships

[Thanas]

An ISD is also expected to move several walkers and their transports, along with 3 prefab bases. A Nebula can only accommodate up 60 spacecraft and no more.

That is not really much of an argument considering the difference in total cargo capacity.

And a Tector would likely vape an Imperator I and probably II, and thus a Nebula by default.

Clearly showing the alliance went the wrong way when designing their ship killer.

[Connor MacLeod]

And with the significantly reduced volume, you could have two of them for an ISD II, or close there about. And the retconned design looked sweet, the original design must never be spoken of again.

Only in terms of resources used, assuming nothing rare/exotic is used somewhere (a'la Darktroopers.). Cost in terms of time and money and whatnot are another story...

Of course, then they put 60 fighters back on the design because they don't believe in trade offs for improvements in other areas...

60 fighters and shuttles, and that came from the first Starships of the Galaxy WOTC put out. WEG had them carrying only a single wing of starfighters (Which was open to interpretation but likely meant only 3 squadrons)

Bear in mind that back when WEg came up with all this "New Class" stuff, the Defender SD and carrier were meant to be paired with a defender class fighter (which is basically a micro-fighter, see here) which given its size you probably could pack alot of those buggers in. Hell, compared to the Venator, 60 Starfighters alone would be TRIVIAL!.

What it really comes down to is interpretation of sources and the size of the vehicles you're cramming into the carrier. There seems to be lots of wiggle room in that regard at least, and you can have complmeents varying. Bigger fighters probably leave less room, while micro fighters give you more fighters. A trade off, of sorts.

alternately, given "one fighter wing" oyu could assume that 36 of the 60 are starfighters and the rest shuttles of some kind or another.

A third option is to treat "Nebula" and "defender" class as separate variant classes on the same hull (since in essence the Endurance is also) and assume a tradeoff of some kind (the Nebula for example could have 36 fighters and the Defender 60 fighters, and the increased hangar capacity trades off some other capability such as firepower or manuverability. Likely in the weapons.)

Mind you it gets more messed up if you consider that Cracken's Threat dossier (mis)identified a single squadron as having 36 starfighters lol, but that book was also full of typos and errors (like missing text in some parts.)

Still, from the NR point of view it makes sense if you can get 2 or 3 Nebulas for the price of an ISD II, especially given how the Empire had been heavily diminished by this point in time and no other group had anything really like an ISD II to play with. They SHOULD have still kept up production of the MC-90 subtype to complement the fleets, ships that can take on the few heavier Imperial ships still left, as well as bulk up the battle line with considerable firepower if the Empire did become a threat again, as well as a handful of Star Dreadnaughts in deep reserve. The other direction has a solid enough standardized support fleet with 700 meter Heavy Cruisers that should be able to take on and win against a Victory II, then 400 meter long light cruisers, and 200 meter long corvette type ships, all of which are supposedly superior to their Imperial counterparts. Add in the heavy fleet carriers which SHOULD be carrying hundreds of enhanced NR fighters, including the awesome K-Wing which sadly vanished into nothing, and the NR fleet is set.

Defender/Nebulas were costly, however (Starships of the Galaxy) and they had slow construction rates (1 per year), and given their "supah ship" capabilities despite evne tradeoffs they probably aren't intended to be mass produced. My guess is that is what the Republic SDs were meant to be a sort of "cheap" alternative to the Defender/Nebula (lower cost = more ships despite less capability than the Defender).

I'm not going to get into the Majestic class heavy cruisers, since that one had some differences between WEG and BFG (IIRC).. sometimes WEG really did some shitty research into their novel adaptations. (The Bakurans in CTD had a 600-700 meter long ship with the power generation of an ISD!!! )

Of course, in the Black Fleet books, we have a major problem in that the author is a minimalist idiot, albeit not a Karen Travis, who really doesn't get the scope and scale of things, hence crazy talk like 'Oh we scraped the one SSD we captured from the Empire...except we captured two...and we didn't...' and forbidding the Republic from building their own comparable classes, to there only being a handful of fleets in the Galaxy, each with barely a hundred major and minor combatants...

That sort of mentality is hardly unique to Kube Mcdowell or Karen Traviss. STackpole insisted on injecting the X-wing/Tie Fighter videogames LITERALLY into the Star Wars universe, Zahn had his thrawn obsession/wankery (and minimalism too), the chick who wrote Children of the Jedi/Planet of twilight injected her OWN brand of shit in there.. and then there was the Corellian trilogy novels with Han Solo's cousin (that book is so very bizarre in terms of SW, despite the fact I kinda like it.) Oh yeah, and lets not forget The Crystal Star

Lets face it. Authors of Sw novels tend to write SW how they perceive it, and how they want to. Even someone we may like like Curtis did so. When you get so many different authors contributing to the figurative stewpot, things get bloody confusin (if not contradictory) because many of them don't agree.

And of course the nasty super blood crazy aliens of doom who are going to take on the whole Galaxy, with their 'genetic' ability to take apart Galactic technology and put it back together again, but BETTER!...

Okay, you got me there.

[Chris OFarrell]

SOME parts of the New Class had a lot of good points to say about them.

The Nebula class stats wise is a solid contender against an ISD I, and even an ISD II will have to be wary around one. The volume difference makes some degree of sense if you took it to have NO Starfighter wing, NO ground troops and the 6 month supply limit, sacrificing the flexibility of an ISD to much more of a pure warship role. And with the significantly reduced volume, you could have two of them for an ISD II, or close there about. And the retconned design looked sweet, the original design must never be spoken of again.

Of course, then they put 60 fighters back on the design because they don't believe in trade offs for improvements in other areas...

We had a discussion about this in the STGOD forum. Basically, the problem with the Nebula is that it doesn't really sacrifice enough. For starters, as you say, it carries 60 fighters, only 12 less than the ISD. Then, it carries 1600 ground troops. Why, I have no idea.

Finally, it carries 15000 metric tons of cargos vs 36.000 tons in an ISD. Which considering the various volumes is a tradeoff, but not that large one.

In comparison, the Tector is a far better ship-killing design than the Nebula.

Yes, hence why I said that it SHOULD have not carried those 60 fighters (IIRC that was a revision to the design), should not have carried the same level of non mission-critical cargo, and sure as hell shouldn't have carried the ground troops either, and with only a fraction of the long term fuel/supply of an ISD. I could then see, with the advent perhaps of newer technology, the ship then being able to go toe to toe with an ISD.

Of course, as I said, the writers just didn't get it, that you have to make major tradeoffs for that kind of firepower on a smaller frame, the big tradeoffs being the termination of the 'Jack of All Trades' nature of an ISD.

And while a Tector is a far better ship killing design, the Nebula wasn't designed to go up against a Tector, just the ISD. By this point in time its not like the Empire exactly had more then a handful of ships heavier then an ISD left after all. And to engage them, the NR had the MC-90 class in serial production (and I still hold that Mon Remonda was an early MC-90 prototype, not a 'supped up MC-80B).

The New Class worked well enough for what it was supposed to do, mostly. Its just that the writers who designed their stats really didn't get it.

[Thanas]

Defender/Nebulas were costly, however (Starships of the Galaxy) and they had slow construction rates (1 per year), and given their "supah ship" capabilities despite evne tradeoffs they probably aren't intended to be mass produced. My guess is that is what the Republic SDs were meant to be a sort of "cheap" alternative to the Defender/Nebula (lower cost = more ships despite less capability than the Defender).

This is what really cracks me up everytime. The Nebula cost 168,528,000 credits. An ISDII costs 145,670,000. And is way, way faster to produce. So in short, you just paid more for a ship that can carry less fighters, less troops, less cargo, takes longer to produce and may or may not stand up to the ship it was designed to fight.

Can we say design fiasco?

[Connor MacLeod]

We had a discussion about this in the STGOD forum. Basically, the problem with the Nebula is that it doesn't really sacrifice enough.

For starters, as you say, it carries 60 fighters, only 12 less than the ISD.

60 fighters and shuttles, as already noted. The only stated fighter alone capacity is a wing of fighters (which means 36). And that doesnt account for the size/volume of fighters, since we know of at least one microfighter design in the New Class program and we already have the Venator for "absurd fighter volume.)

Mind you, ISDs are supposed to carry blastboats and assault shuttles and various otheer things (probe droids, et all) ISDs also act in other functions (capable of acting as a sort of small scale repair facility) and that's in addition to the walkers/modular bases and whatnot Fingolfin mentioned.

Then, it carries 1600 ground troops. Why, I have no idea.

Surgical operations/special forces or sWAT type work maybe. ISDs carry nearly 10,000, so that's going to be a huge chunk away right there.

Finally, it carries 15000 metric tons of cargos vs 36.000 tons in an ISD. Which considering the various volumes is a tradeoff, but not that large one.

And it also carries half a year of consumables (as opposed to around 6 years for an ISD) and has a crew of around ~7000 (as opposed to 36K for the ISD). Frankly the greatly reduced crew complement to me is going to be THE big thing that cuts down on internal volume. Things like reactors and engines on an ISD (or weapons) take up proportionally TINY amounts of volume relative to the volume needed to carrry all the other stuff an ISD does (its a "do a bit of everything" generalist design really - and I do mean everything) and much of that tends to be hangar/fighter capability, ground combat roles, crew and life support functions, and whatnot. Throwing out alot of that (plus whatever roles you have like mobile repair drydock or whatnot) probably also cuts down massively on internal volume requirements.

Another factor is going to be the fact the Nebula is bsaically a high tech supership, and the New Class (IIRC the essential chornology) came about from some research into DS like technologies from The Crystal Star or some such which lead to certain technologocail improvements which likekly will lead to some reduction in the volume stuff takes up (The whole "scale and application" bit from Curtis' DK books, remember.) in addition to that more compact components will generally cost more.

Its also quite possible they incorporated other tradeoffs. Since the NR was defensively minded at the BFC period and the whole paranoia about govenmental navies as "tools of conquest" its probable that the New Class ships (or all ships of that period) also had much smaller, shorter ranged hyperdrives, which would cut down on internal volume even MORE.

Another thing I also remember from Cracken's Threat dossier (and just popped into my head) is that the New Class ships probably do away with alot of redundancy or durability - the idea of many ships was that they would be destroyed by heavy firepower anyways, so that repairing/rebuilding them just wasn't worth it and simply building a new ship would make more sense. So they prboably are alot less durable than, say, a mon Cal cruiser. Which is also going to save volume.

All in all I'd think of a Nebula/Defender as just a far more advanced/costly Venator in a more defensively designed format and greater firepower/toughness/mobility.

In comparison, the Tector is a far better ship-killing design than the Nebula.

The tector is bigger and more specialized, so thats no real surprise there. I've never heard or even believed the Nebula was meant to be a "pure shipkiller" in that respect, its more that it was a super ship specifically tailored to New Republic sentiments and purposes.

[Connor MacLeod]

This is what really cracks me up everytime. The Nebula cost 168,528,000 credits. An ISDII costs 145,670,000. And is way, way faster to produce. So in short, you just paid more for a ship that can carry less fighters, less troops, less cargo, takes longer to produce and may or may not stand up to the ship it was designed to fight.

Can we say design fiasco?

You do realize that is WOTCs 1st edition? The cost system in there was fucked up in so many ways, since WEG rated a Nebulon B frigate as being as costly as WOTC rates a Nebula, and an ISD is supposed to be 20x the Neb-B (so by WOTC you could buy 20 Nebulas or ISD-2s for a ISD-1! )

Starships of the Galaxy's revised edition threw out the cost on the Nebula, so I tend to disregard the first editions' costs, especially since they weren't firm values but only estimates.

Let's also not forget that the first edition of Starships of the Galaxy had the idiotic idea that the ISD-2 had weaker shields than an ISD-1 (YAY game balance!)

This is where we come into the "different authors have different ideas and it tends to fuck everything up" aspect I mentioned earlier.

[Thanas]

The tector is bigger and more specialized, so thats no real surprise there. I've never heard or even believed the Nebula was meant to be a "pure shipkiller" in that respect, its more that it was a super ship specifically tailored to New Republic sentiments and purposes.

I thought it was supposed to be paired with the endurance class carrier?

[erik_t]

Defender/Nebulas were costly, however (Starships of the Galaxy) and they had slow construction rates (1 per year), and given their "supah ship" capabilities despite evne tradeoffs they probably aren't intended to be mass produced. My guess is that is what the Republic SDs were meant to be a sort of "cheap" alternative to the Defender/Nebula (lower cost = more ships despite less capability than the Defender).

This is what really cracks me up everytime. The Nebula cost 168,528,000 credits. An ISDII costs 145,670,000. And is way, way faster to produce. So in short, you just paid more for a ship that can carry less fighters, less troops, less cargo, takes longer to produce and may or may not stand up to the ship it was designed to fight.

Can we say design fiasco?

Oh, not at all. As Connor notes, the Nebula requires only about 20% of the ISD's crew size. In the electronics-heavy era, the USN has found that crew size is the vast majority of the lifecycle cost of a ship, and that may well be here. Assuming these credits are the same as those Luke was using in ANH, we might suppose a yearly wage on the order of a few thousand credits (unless someone has a better idea).

Let's suppose an 24-year ship lifetime, about typical for an Earth ship (and only four full-length ISD missions). In that time, assuming only a 100 credit average yearly wage, the ISD would be responsible for 86.4 million credits of crew costs. The Nebula would spend only 16.8 million credits, for the same wage and same ship life. The Nebula is already cheaper in a lifecycle sense according to the costs you gave.

I think a 100 credit average wage is vastly too low, so the Nebula could pay for itself quite rapidly indeed.

[Connor MacLeod]

The tector is bigger and more specialized, so thats no real surprise there. I've never heard or even believed the Nebula was meant to be a "pure shipkiller" in that respect, its more that it was a super ship specifically tailored to New Republic sentiments and purposes.

I thought it was supposed to be paired with the endurance class carrier?

Dunno, depends on your source. WEg, WOTc, and the BFC novels tend to say a bit of differnet things.

For example, WOTC says that the Defender/Nebula was designed to act without escorts (1st edition starships of the galaxy), while in BFG Star Destroyers tpyically acted with escorts. oddly, second edition of SSG the saga edition mentions a Nebula having escorts.

WEG says that the Endurance was the command ship of battlegroups and described the Defender SD as a "carrier" (its part of the core of the new class program.. 3 ships, the DSd, plus the Endurance, and the Defender assault carrier, were described as the "backbone" of New Class fleets.) It says carriers are the bakcbone and that combat ships are support and defensive vessels for the carriers. Where the Defender/Nebula fits on that is going to depend on what you believe from all the available info (which lets face it is contradictory if you take it totally 100% literally)

Checking both starships of the galaxy, I dont see anything about acting as a complement to the Endurance (the Nebula entry in the Saga edition mentions the Endurance as a "Variant" design)

Personally I tend to think that the bulk of the evidence treats the Nebula/defneder Star Destroyers and endurance carriers as interchnagable and the "lead ship" in task forces/squadrons, and that all other ships in the new class act in support to that.

I will also make an admission of error about what I said before. Checking back on this I erred and WEG says that a DSD could carry TWO wings (a superiority wing and another wing like of Kwings) and the 2nd edition did mention carrying 60 starfighters and 12 shuttles, so my answer was partly wrong there 60-72 fighters (5-6 squadrons worth). although the other interpretations or theories I offered explaining that still fit (particularily the micro fighter bit, or the "Defender/Nebula" variant idea.) - which just goes to show you that hedging your bets in analysis is always a good idea.

[Connor MacLeod]

The thing about the Nebula isn't so much that its a "better" all around ship neccesarily. Its better than starships of its size, but by virtue of cost and technology can match some larger ships like an ISD2.

To me the Nebula simply represents that SW ship design basically is "whatever the fuck you want" and how big a deal tradeoffs make in SW ship design - the Nebula is custom-tailored to NR tastes and purposes - prior ot BFC they were compulsively biased against big "Imperial like" warships and offensive capabilities (to the extent it bit them on the ass.. big surprise there huh?) Its very powerful for its size, and it can take on bigger ships, but its not the "ultimate" Star destroyer, since, logically, if you scaled up to an ISD-sized vessel, or hell, even an Executor, the ship woudl be even MORE powerful.

Edit: note that as per WEG's original intent for the "new class" the warships were meant to, in principle act like glorified high tech battlecruisers- the emphasized fast and agile warships with long range firepower and better accuracy than competing Imperial models (better fire control, fewer but more idnividually powerful guns IIRC, etc.) so that sort of specialization is rather an important thing to kepe in mind.

[Connor MacLeod]

I'm quite sure that using droids as an anathema in warfare DOES have its reasons based on previous wars and experiences, more than just some biological arrogance: it appears that every time some power-hungry dictator or, as you called, lunatic tries to take on the galaxy, his first order of business is to establish a droid army. The Krath had theirs, Xvim the Despot had his, Confederacy had theirs and the resurrected Palpatine unleashed droid TIE fighters and shadow droids (and, of course, the Ssi-Ruuk actually stole people's life forces to power their droid hordes, not to mention the Sacorrian Triad using droid ramships during the Centerpoint Crisis). The mental association with power-hungry madmen and ambitious tyrants must be immense. After all, it's easier to raise a droid army than to train an army based on biological beings.

I'm well aware of all this. However, this only holds true if you assume that every single being in the galaxy will behave like a rational person and that certain technologies (like rapid fabrication, or hyperdrive) are highly restricted. Neither is true.

And it need not just be robotic armies. It could ismply be a matter of hyperdrive equipped relatavistic asteroids. That doesn't require any extraordinary robotics technology or collossal manufacturing - just access to some commercial technologies and an asteroid field. Or hell, just someone to manually operate such a construct into a habitable planet at FTL - the SW equivalent of a suicide bomber.

Robotic warships would be a trivial method too and its been done in secret - Eye of Palpatine, the robotic warships the Alderaanians built to guard Last Chance, the robotic ramships you mentioned, etc. And there's STILL no reason not to use robotic starfighters (or missiles).

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I would imagine any ship would need at least some token force to repel boarders. Best to have dedicated marines defending the ship than to let some random crew man go fight off marines when the ship is fighting for dear life.

[Samuel]

I would imagine any ship would need at least some token force to repel boarders. Best to have dedicated marines defending the ship than to let some random crew man go fight off marines when the ship is fighting for dear life.

Or you could just vent the sections and send in droids until your opponent stops moving. If you have ones that fold up, you can fit a large number in sections throughout the ship to be unleashed upon boarding.

[Starglider]

Or you could just vent the sections and send in droids until your opponent stops moving. If you have ones that fold up, you can fit a large number in sections throughout the ship to be unleashed upon boarding.

Simply having pop-out auto-tracking blasters installed at all the corridor intersections would inflict significant attrition on borders, and would take up even less volume. Obviously it's not as flexible as a mobile defence but I suspect it would be worth doing in combination with the combat droid idea.

[Jaevric]

Reasonably, how much of a threat are boarders in the Star Wars universe? You don't have Trek transporters that can beam troops over or Warhammer boarding torpedos that allow boarding actions against even functional vessels. Instead, you have transports that can haul boarders over -- but I'd imagine that trying to board a fully-functional starship of any significant size in one of those transports is going to be suicidal due to point defense weapons.

If the ship is so badly battle-damaged or disabled by other means that boarding assaults are really viable, wouldn't defeating the boarders just mean that the ship that sent them over in the first place is going to get cranky and blow the disabled vessel up?

The only time we see boarding a vessel in the movies is when Jedi do it (not exactly a common tactic!) and the Tantive IV (which was basically screwed no matter how good a job the troops did of repelling boarders).

[Jonen C]

Repelling boarders is far from the only reason to have troops onboard, though.

On a military vessel that will be spending a large part of it's service life doing patrols, you want to have troops with which to board and inspect civilian vessels - which does mean they will be doing boarding actions, but they won't be under fire.
Still, searching megaton freighters for contraband is going to suck up a lot of man hours.

[Karmic Knight]

If the ship is so badly battle-damaged or disabled by other means that boarding assaults are really viable, wouldn't defeating the boarders just mean that the ship that sent them over in the first place is going to get cranky and blow the disabled vessel up?

Boarding implies that the ship has something worth taking, so unless the goal is just to arrest the crew to execute them, a group attempting to board would not be willing to destroy the ship immediately. Repelling the borders allows you to fully destroy any sensitive information that may be on your ship, or to find a creative way of getting the information to someplace other than the ship.

[Connor MacLeod]

Reasonably, how much of a threat are boarders in the Star Wars universe? You don't have Trek transporters that can beam troops over or Warhammer boarding torpedos that allow boarding actions against even functional vessels. Instead, you have transports that can haul boarders over -- but I'd imagine that trying to board a fully-functional starship of any significant size in one of those transports is going to be suicidal due to point defense weapons.

Boarding operations aren't neccesarily impossible - there is "power armor" for that purpose afte rall (spacetrooper armor) and ships are equipped with ion cannon and tractor beams as well as offensive weapons. You might have to take a ship alive (to gain information, technical stuff, etc.) for some reason. Hell, that's what we saw in ANH after all as well as ROTS, as you yourself note.) But in combat ranges can get close enough to allow boarding also due to tractor beams too.

As for transports.. how are they any diff from boarding torpedoes? Point defense is an issue, but ion cannons can help fuck that up. As it is, SW has demonstrated that transports can be large and heavily armored-shielded (Stuff like Gamma Class Assault shuttles) If you need a canon example, think of how well the Falcon stood up to prolonged bombardment from ISD light guns and consider how long a military transport of similar or larger size might endure, especially with angled shields.

In nonmilitary applications there are other things troops on a warship might do. Piracy is always an issue (needing to board a pirate ship to recover captives or some such.. or just capture them alive for trial.). There's always stationary platofrms too that might need capturing for some reason or another.

Troops could also be quite useful in counter-terrorist or counter-insurgency operations, much like special forces. Rescuing hostages, for example.

[Kartr_Kana]

Don't forget internal security.

[evillejedi]

Personally the MC-90
my impression
http://warlords.swrebellion.com/g2/main ... temId=6060
http://warlords.swrebellion.com/g2/main ... temId=6057
http://warlords.swrebellion.com/g2/main ... temId=6048

followed very closely by the Nebula
(slightly differing from the new SOTG in attempt to fatten the ship up a bit and get its internal volume over the MC80 range of 30e6 m^3 )
http://warlords.swrebellion.com/g2/main ... alNumber=1

My impression of the Nebula/defender/endurance is that the Nebula is a wholly separate entity from the defender and endurance (which seems to be supported in the new SOTG and with the explicit re-designation of the original SOTG defender design to the nebula class) This leaves the defender/endurance sharing a hull which while ugly is salvageable. The defender having a very small complement and the endurance having a modular hanger attachment that allows larger ships to dock. Given the diameter of the disk it can easily fit transports and shuttles as well as many more fighters, perhaps the qutoed WEG number is simply a dedicated complement allowing the ship to host larger fighter wings depending on the mission.
defender http://warlords.swrebellion.com/g2/main ... alNumber=1 and endurance http://warlords.swrebellion.com/g2/main ... alNumber=4 re-imagining without completely scrapping the awful WEG abominations

My take on mon remonda is that it is closer in length to Home one, but because of its width is of much larger mass. Besides we have a broken designation for the MC-80 ranging from 900m to 4.3Km. Imagine the Mon remonda as a hull being built during the galactic civil war that incorporates requests specifically from the alliance high command to develop a vessel that can operate effectively around star cruisers and other heavy warships including star dreadnoughts for the inevitable battles that would need to occur in the core fortress worlds and imperial holdouts. It can be nearly as standardized as the MC90's, but its design is in flux due to changing design requirements and supply shortages of critical off world components.

After the battle of Endor it is completed, put into service and fights alongside the vessels it was meant to destroy as more worlds and commanders swing to the Alliance. Zsinj emerges as a threat that actively engages in a highly mobile scorched earth policy and has to be eliminated to maintain the Imperial defection rate and the mon remonda with associated battle group is assigned to the task for practical as well as symbolic reasons. (for some reason I have this awesome image of a 4km remonda flanked by various multi-km imperial battle cruisers engaging in stand off skirmishes with the Iron Fist)

As for the lack of droid armies and fighters in the Imperial and Alliance, palpatine had just demonized the concept of a droid army quite effectively with the clone wars. It was also in his interest to keep as much control in biological hands so that he or his darkside minions could coordinate, influence and interrogate them with the force. The Alliance probably just put a 'no combat droids allowed' in thier charter.
Additionally given the excessive amount of automation and feedback and minute corrections needed to even remotely direct a spaceship at anything other than an uncontrolled tumble of death my impression is that the 1970's blinking lights on control panels and cockpits amount to a very advanced human machine interface and adaptive control that stops just short of being fully automated (there are specific mentions of droids flying evasive patterns on bombing or approach runs while the human pilot is providing intentional input to the course and target) The biological exists in the feedback loop as both a controller of intent and as a socially important vestigial organic element as has been mentioned above in other posts. I have to imagine that the armor and helmets that soldiers wear in battle are of similar subtle technological use.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The Alliance did allow the use of Viper X-1 droids and Yuuzhan Vong droids. So there's no consistent policy that I know of. Palpatine's armies in Dark Empire had tonnes of War Droids.

Not to mention, the droids' rights brochure I remember seeing in the X-wing manual.

[Darksider]

X-wing pilots have a manual that tells them how to treat their droids?

I mean, given the relationship between a pilot and his R2 in the X-wing novels, anyone caught abusing their R2 Unit would probably get shoved out an airlock by the rest of the squadron, but an actual Manual?

[AniThyng]

X-wing pilots have a manual that tells them how to treat their droids?

I mean, given the relationship between a pilot and his R2 in the X-wing novels, anyone caught abusing their R2 Unit would probably get shoved out an airlock by the rest of the squadron, but an actual Manual?

Er no, I think he meant the in-universe portions of the X-Wing GAME manual