Serafine666 wrote:Simon_Jester wrote:Did he PM you something specific (if so, could you forward it to me), or did you read his existing posts on the subject of Empire vs. Tyranids?
He replied that he didn't have a clue what you were talking about but shared with me the general ridiculousness of the Tyranids as a realistic sci-fi race. As to his posts re Empire v. Tyranids, I didn't know he'd done any. I could forward his message on to you, though... I sincerely doubt there's anything in there he'd consider private or that he hasn't stated publicly before.
Hmm.
He may not be considering it "analysis" himself, I guess. You see, he's got an ongoing thread in Fanfics: "A Squelch of Empires," which is a Star Wars/40k crossover. Including the bit where an Imperial Star Destroyer runs over a Tyranid splinter fleet. That's what I was referencing, that and the subsequent discussion between the Imperial captain and the local Imperium authorities that can be paraphrased as "My God, you don't mean to tell me that those slobbering monstrosities are actually a
threat to you!?"
The whole scene has heavily influenced my idea of how Tyranids vs. the Galactic Empire would go, possibly more so than it should have. I think that the Tyranids are if anything
less of a threat to a Star Wars galactic civilization than most of the other 40k powers, mostly because they're not all that strong in space warfare. Since space warfare is is where the Star Wars setting has an advantage compared to 40k, that means they have a double advantage over the 'Nids.
Simon_Jester wrote:Assuming they can track objects travelling in the Warp, this is trivial. I doubt they can, because the Warp makes overt use of psychic abilities in ways that little or no Star Wars technology (except maybe the ancient Rakatan stuff alluded to in "Knights of the Old Republic") does. But, as above, the Tyranids are still screwed because they have to come out of the Warp so far from the target star system; that gives normal deep space tracking the time to acquire them and call in reinforcements from half a galaxy away?
Pound of feathers, pound of rock. In either case, the Empire has the clearly-demonstrated capacity to see the 'Nids coming from a million miles away and the similarly clearly-demonstrated capacity to put heavy warships in their way.
Ah, yes. I agree. Note the part where I say "the Tyranids are still screwed."
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Bakustra wrote:West End Games indicated in the Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 1st Edition that the Empire controls one million full member systems, together with 50 million colonies, dependencies, and protectorates. However, fifty-one million is incorrect, thanks to the statement in the Second Edition of the same, which indicates that the Empire controls "billions of worlds". This fits well with the "quintillions of planets" that the Mining Guild mined in the Spiral Arms in AOTC: ICS
I understand what went wrong here, but really... a quintillion Earth-sized planets would weigh in at about three trillion solar masses, five times more massive than the Milky Way. And that's
without considering the stars.
Ten thousand systems is roughly 1% of the member systems of the Empire. That's to the galaxy as the population of Chicago is to the US. Further, that is not the full extent of the Separatist movement, as that was since he invited the megacorporations to Geonosis, and does not include their numbers prior to the movie, when they were considered a clear threat to the Republic, enough so that the creation of an military was proposed. The ten thousand systems are spoken of casually, and are clearly not the majority of his strength, nor even a significant fraction.
Yes, but they're at least significant enough to deserve mention at a galactic-scale planning session. 1% of the civilized galaxy* would qualify; 0.02% would not.
*Including planets with a significant population and economy, but not including planets that are in the "full" count on the basis that someone dropped a flag on them from orbit a few thousand years ago, or the swarms of Kuiper belt objects that the Corporate Sector claims mining rights to.
Han's statement is "it would take a thousand ships with more firepower than I've-" while it is General Dodonna who notes that it carries a "firepower greater than half the starfleet." This is fairly vague, of course.
Yes. But consider not just what Han says, but how he says it, and the important phrase "The entire starfleet couldn't destroy the whole planet" that precedes it. He is not joking, and while he may be off by a small margin, he's informed enough about ships and the state of the Imperial fleet that his comment deserves to be taken seriously.
The majority of the tonnage of the Imperial Starfleet and Republic Navy would presumably be tied up in smaller corvette- or frigate-sized vessels, like the majority of EU ships, serving as a "Coast Guard". After all, there are no credible threats to galactic civilization under the Empire. The majority of naval endeavors would revolve around antipirate and customs work, for which smaller vessels would be more practical, with heavier destroyers and cruisers being used for larger gangs or to suppress rebellious worlds. Heavy cruisers and battleships would then be a small part of the fleet, though they would have taken on a larger role (perhaps due to the encounter with the Silentium in the years immediately before the Battle of Yavin, the possibility of Yuuzhan Vong scouts being discovered, etc.) had Palpatine's plan to outfit every Sector Group with an Executor-class been completed. What need is there for a full fleet of battleships when there is nothing for them to fight?
This makes things more reasonable, since corvette or frigate-class ships can credibly be outfought by the Rebels, allowing them to punch out or drive off unwelcome Imperial ships.
On the other hand, it also greatly reduces the aggregate tonnage, because individual corvette-class ships are so much less massive than Star Destroyers. Perhaps we could reconcile Pellaeon's 25000 star destroyers with a million-ship fleet by saying that there are ~30 to 40 customs patrol craft and other escort vessels per star destroyer?
Even so, though, we still wind up with a galaxy less militarized than 40k (which was my original point), at least in terms of tonnage. The Imperium has destroyer-weight ships where the Empire has frigates, and battleships where the Empire has destroyers (defining "destroyer" and "frigate" consistently across the settings in terms of mass and volume, if nothing else). On the other hand, the Imperium also has a power-to-weight disadvantage; they need a bigger ship to get the same level of firepower. And they have a colossal disadvantage in FTL speed... but even so they still manage to be more effective against the 'Nids in space than on the ground, despite the fact that they
excel at land warfare.
To me, that's a sign that the Tyranids must be quite bad at space combat (not a surprise, given their limitations)... in which case they stand a whelk's chance in a supernova when going up against the Galactic Empire, because they're never going to make planetfall anywhere the Empire doesn't want them to.
Besides, how do such comms work? And even then, we've got message pods from the Truce at Bakura, IIRC.
