What if the Empire invaded modern day Earth?

[ray245]

Goddamit, how old are you? You clearly have no idea what is engineering all about. Look, building a wooden ship on a large scale involves something more than historians knowing about the designs of the ships. You need workers with specialised skills to build all those 19th century ships. Problem is, it is almost impossible to find enough workers with that kind of knowledge in modern day.

You would have to take years, if not decades to train workers with those kind of specialised skills before we can even talk about building the ships.

And like Serefina pointed out, you also need to have the right tools to build things.

Clearly you quoted my post, and then ignored the parts of it that you don't like. THERE ARE REPLICAS OF SHIPS OF THE LINE! We have replicas today. If we wanted to build ship of the lines for some reason, WE ALREADY HAVE, and we can even upgrade them to have metal hulls and far more powerful cannons.

Yes, there are replicas. But did you bother to find out how difficult and how long it takes to build a replica? If you want to have build a significant amount of ships, it is beyond our limits to do so in a reasonable amount of time.

Now, building ICBM is even more difficult considering that it is even more complex than a 19th century ship, and we simply don't have the skilled expertise to build them again in a reasonable span of time.

[PeZook]

Since when would infantry and armored divisions have to use railroads? Heck, even supplies could be prepared and readied at, say, town and such.

They have to use railroads because you can only supply an armored unit via truck for about 400 kilometres. In a terrain that's conductive to this sort of operations: in dense jungle, mountains, etc. the distance grows shorter because your trucks become completely road bound.

Logistical costs of Iraq stemming from underdeveloped railway lines is part of the reason why that war is costing the US so much. Every bit of supplies, every litre of oil, spare tank engine or set of tracks will have to be trucked to the forward depots and then trucked again to the tank. These trucks need fuel, too: eventually, you have to run trucks to refuel the trucks which refuel the trucks that run the supplies. Costs skyrocket, vast snaking truck convoys clog up the roads, a single mechanical breakdown can hold up an entire army and one TIE fighter can annihilate your entire supply collumn in one strike.

Not to mention...that you may just plain not have enough trucks. Germans had this problem a lot during Barbarossa.

"rough terrain" - the imperials will be on the same rough terrain, have MORE logistical problems and no way to refuel their vehicles and starships. The international force would be marching through friendly territory with a sustainable supply line and with the ability to resupply their vehicles and airplanes.

The Imperial force is composed mostly of light infantry, which is not road bound as it doesn't require massive amounts of supplies: Soldiers can carry a week's worth of food and ammo with them more if they load up extra on their transports ; That's assuming they simply *poof* appear there and have no additional means of moving their supplies with them, which makes your OP really badly phrased (and, incidentally, vastly increases the amount of fuel available, since the limited number of transports have to move the supplies a vast distance to supply an army fighting in the Yucatan...)

Now, you see, when you combine the basic facts about the terrain: the dense, rough jungle and mountain areas, the extremely poor roads and lack of railways, you see that light infantry is the perfect fighting force. It's not road bound, it has light supply requirements (food and ammo and batteries) and Imperial light infantry can annihilate XXth century light infantry with trivial ease.

Furthermore, they're already there. They can undertake combat operations as soon as they do basic recon, if they want to: the international coalition, on the other hand, will have to make the decision, stockpile supplies, ship their soldiers in theater and then march across a thousand kilometres of poor roads in order to engage the Imperials.

Do you get it now, jackass, or will I have to repeat it again?

That depends largely on the speed and durability of the tie fighters, which still hasn't been quantified.

It has, you just refuse to acknowledge it: even your 1200 mph figure is mach 1.5, which combined with the TIEs' operational ceiling is more than enough to avoid any threat we can throw at them. Their approach vector is going to be very steep, they can descend from orbit, slow down, strafe their target and zoom back to unassailable altitude before any of our weapon systems can engage.

Actually, in that case they'd still have the logistical advantage. No military force of a national size is guarding Antarctica and supplies there would be slim. A blockade of ships could starve out a force a surrender to whatever defenders are there.

Yes, my analogy isn't perfectly identical to the situation it is illustrating! Do you want a medal for discovering that?

Um, no. Wooden boats are not beyond our capability to build (or we could build metal versions), nor are the cannons they used.

See above. You are an idiot if you think I meant "we never could build a wooden ship again", rather than "we currently have no infrastructure to build and maintain large wooden fleets"

Yes, but that would not take years in a war.

Why? Modern weapon are extremely time consuming to design,

Making a NEW fighter takes years. We've already made non nuclear ICBMS.

And real life is not an RTS game: if you only made a short run of a certain technology, you can't just click on the shiny button again to make more. Materials have changed, the missile types in use have changed, factory procedures and design rules have changed. You need to make new designs, produce prototypes, test them on actual missiles, design the tooling, make the tooling, install it in factories, then make the warheads at a certain rate and deploy them on ICBMs.

For an analogy, I know how to shovel dirt. I have shovelled dirt before. Unloading an container of dirt took me the entire day last time, and it will take me an entire day in six months when I will have to do it again.

EDIT: Also, please show me an operational ICBM type equipped with a non-nuclear warhead.

What about long range missiles from South American countries and US military bases in South America? What about cruise missiles from the sea?

I was talking about those. Only the US has a sizeable arsenal of long-ranged cruise missiles, and they are only good for use against entirely static targets you can pinpoint very precisely, because the missiles strike at given coordinates, not a given target. They can't track tanks: they are told where the tank repair depot is and go there and explode. If the depot was moved in the meantime, tough luck, they will hit empty space.

Actually the invasion force would often times be pretty stationary, or at least slow. AT-STs aren't very good at moving over forest like terrain. Stormtroopers would have to walk on foot (100 AT-ATs cannot carry 500,000 stormtroopers).

Doesn't matter if they're slow ; They'd be impossible to track with enough accuracy to fire Tomahawks at them. The missiles would only come into play once the Imperials have a presence in a country they chose to take over.

Also, you can shoot down cruise missiles with simple weapon systems, like the Shylka.

Stormtrooper armor would not deflect a direct hit from an artillery shell. Their defense against shrapnel may be good,; well, sort of. In the EU their armor is pretty darn uber, but in the movies there's a part in ROTJ where the armor cracks when a stormtrooper falls.

Did you even read what I wrote?

Um, that's pretty much speculation.

Why? Every army in the world can fuck with enemy communications ; Russians could knock out individual encryption units out of alignment so that they could track and target unit command posts. To think an Imperial army will have no EW capability when EW is a standard part of warfare in Star Wars is moronic ; To think they won't be able to jam radios is even more moronic.

(Hint: If SW tech was unable to jam radio and radar, everyone would start using radio and radar again really quickly)

Oh that one. Well, it isn't specified that it can take out shielded starfighters, but it probably can if it's used as an anti air device in Star Wars. However, particle shields on starfighters do not appear to be nearly as durable as their ray shielding. This seems to be common on their star destroyers as well.

Yeah, that would probably do quite a bit of damage to our aircraft, but how many stormtroopers out of 500,000 would actually carry one of those?

Let's do a little math, okay?

A single stormtrooper can easily carry the launcher and a spare magazine for it ; That's twelve missiles total. Let's assume half this loadout will be anti-air ordnance of some sort, and that their PK against modern planes (with their primitive EW suites...) is a measly 50%.

That means a single stormtrooper equipped with a PLX can engage and destroy three airplanes. Since the launcher can engage starfighters, the usual limitations of MANPADs do not apply: the PLX could engage low-flying attack aircraft as well as heavy bombers.

A Nimitz air wing consists of 90 airplanes total, fixed-wing and helicopters. Let's assume stormies would also waste missiles on helicopters (though with blasters, they could easily bring them down with small arms fire). So wiping out a Nimitz air wing would take a conservative estimate of 30 launchers. Less if we assume (not unreasonably...) stormie squads can carry more reloads amongst the squad.

Wiping out the air wings of the entire US carrier fleet would consequently take 360 launchers, or one launcher per brigade, while destroying every single aircraft in the US air force would take about 1860 launchers, or one launcher per company (again, less if we assume more than one reload per launcher). While leaving plenty of missile unfired to bust bunkers and other fortifications.

So...how is that air supremacy looking now? Or are you now going to say an Imperial army half a million men strong doesn't carry one guided missile launcher per company?

Take note that the actual amount of aircraft attacking the invasion force won't be anywhere near the full force of the USAF (I counted all the transport and trainers, too, just to make the numbers even more conservative), since they can't be based in theatre due to unsuitable airbases.

That would depend on a lot of things, such as how big the building was.

I honestly don't remember, Solo was expecting to blow apart an imperial prefab outpost with it.

Really? Oh, I don't remember them saying that. Still sort of begs the question as to why the stormtroopers didn't, like, check those compartments.

Yeah, I wonder why they didn't check the hidden smuggling compartments they couldn't detect.

How about to actually detect those ewoks? They clearly failed to do so.

Really, they failed to detect small animals moving through a dense forest full of small animals, or they did but did not interpret their movement as an ambush after operating a base inside that forest for months and never being ambushed by them?

Holy shit, their sensors must really suck.

Actually, there were some that advocated that, but that's beside the point. In the long term this invasion force would be a far greater threat than Cold War China (which still wasn't a threat to the world or the United States) or the USSR if they manage to set up a nation.

You keep going in circles. The US believed Communism was a dire threat to the world. A horde of Chinese communists engaged US armed forces directly and threatened to overrun a small South Asian country.

The US could destroy China utterly with neither China nor Russia being able to retaliate. At all.

They didn't, therefore they are not guaranteed to resort to mass nuking to save a South American country from being overrun.

Is the Brazilian government simply going to sit there and let them pass through?

If they decide to move over the border to Bolivia, what can the Brazillian government do? Magically block the border? Build a fence? Ask them nicely not to? We already covered the difficulty of getting troops there.

Wiping out the entire satellite network is hardly anywhere near the threat level of wiping out the human race.

First of all, Imperials are humans. At worst, they are a threat to national sovereignty, not humanity. Second, wiping out the satellite network will destroy most of our advanced communications, collapse the economy and remove much of our military power which is dependent on GPS.

In exchange for that, we can go and liberate some South American countries. Yay! I'm sure Joe Voter will be sooo satisfied!

If they set up a nation and get it going, they'll have the knowledge of technology thousands of years ahead of us. Once they get the proper resources and industrial capability they'll be able to field Star Wars era technology and supply their forces.

By the time they can produce SW level tech, it would've disseminated throughout the world, and their descendants won't be anything like the original Imperials who arrived here.

Since when are snipers mechanized infantry?

Snipers are worthless for destroying a half-million man army. You need lots of weapons that can engage the stormies directly and with sustained fire to cause an appreciable amount of casualties, and that means vehicles to carry them and their ammo.

Well maybe, the depends on whether or not you would replace the AT-STs with scout vehicles like humvees or tanks.

AT-STs are light scouts, so they should be pitted against light scouts.

How will they know any of that stuff? If they want to keep out of a war would they be flying tie fighters as recon over the USA?

Jesus christ...just roll into a random craphole of a town and tune into CNN via satellite. They could probably do it with their standard equipment, too.

They weren't moving at supersonic absolute speeds either, or not at mach 9 or anything like that.

Irrelevant ; Relative speed is not indicative of absolute speed (or, more precisely, speed relative to the atmosphere)

Again, their in atmosphere speed still hasn't been quantified. There are sources that list their in atmosphere speed at far lower than what the ICS's claim.

It's between mach 1.5 and mach 9, which is enough to know that can't be engaged by anything, due to the fact they'll be coming in for an attack at that speed, from orbit. Large SAMs won't be able to engage them due to the small engagement window, light SAMs won't be able to engage them because of their high speed, AA guns for the same reasons. Fighters won't be able to vector in and intercept the strike before the TIE is again too high to chase down.

The TIEs are untouchable, even with the lower speed.

Says who? They might not be ideal, but they can still fit tanks and supplies.

Just...no. You don't just run a ship marked "supplies" into a port and magically have a supplied division. You need a proper amount and throughput of supplies, and that means ports capable of taking ships of a certain size and unloading them in a certain amount of time and the infrastructure to move those supplies further inland.

A fishing port with no concrete quay, no cranes and a single dirt road coming out of it is worthless. Same for a large port that can't take and unload tankers, or that has no rail siding.

Any halfway competent Imperial supply officer would be able to pinpoint the correct ports after a month or so of researching Earth weapon systems. Or they can just ask a captured South American supply officer who will probably have a list memorized.

I thought that we were talking about a hypothetical naval invasion.

Yes, we were. Again, how are you going to force a landing when a single stormtrooper can take an LCAC out of action with his standard sidearm, and PLX launchers can blow apart helicopers with contemptous ease?

We've been in Iraq through several elections.

Iraq doesn't cost you thousands of men daily, and promises some nebulous gain in the future (cheap oil FTW!)

Air supremacy (once their tie fighters run out of fuel) might not win the war for them, but it would certainly be a big factor against the imperials.

It didn't work against the Germans in WWII ; It won't work here because the USAF could very well lose all its planes to shoulder-launched missiles.

As to how powerful stormtroopers are, it varies. Some times they are incompetent fools, other times they are uber powerful elite shock troopers.

As long as they can shoot straight and take cover, they're vastly superior to earth light infantry.

Actually, you simply have to capture or kill one stormtrooper and take their equipment.

And then watch the Hoover Dam get blown apart, their aircraft carriers taken out of comission and largest commercial ports heavily damaged.

If they are a threat to humanity, then yes.

They're human themselves. A threat to democracy, maybe, but so was communism.

Technologically advanced by thousands of years.

Yes, and? It doesn't mean they are threatening to wipe humanity out. They're a dictatorship ; Big deal, the US deals with plenty of dictatorships with a smile.

Actually, they may be able to mass produce advanced Star Wars tech if they set up a functional nation. Your analogy would be more accurate if it were whether or not a modern day military force could in 19th century Britain make superconductors.

They couldn't, because the materials science and machine tools with proper tolerances did not exist at the time and can't be easily recreated. The Imperials won't be able to, either, not in a single generation.

That wasn't the point.

Then what was the point?

That's contradictory. On one hand you make the USA seem to be indifferent to morals by helping the imperials, and then on the other hand you make the USA seem moral by making them not want to send people to die.

And you're an idiot. A country can help out bad people for its own gain while not wanting its own people to die, there's nothing contradictory about that: see my laundry list of US-supported asshole dictators.

And then run out of fuel.

As long as they make the counter-invasion untenable, it doesn't matter.

If left alone for a very long time, they could in theory becomes a threat to humanity.

After a very long time, they won't resemble SW Imperials ideologically at all.

No, but it would whittle down the non replaceable (short term) stormtroopers.

It won't, because Imperials can just send local troops to do the guerilla-hunting.

Since when? Guerrilla warfare is a valid military strategy. The imperials learned it the hard way.

No, the Imperials lost in a direct war with a well-equipped enemy. No guerilla force in history managed to defeat an organized army by guerilla tactics alone: they always have to come out from hiding and fight directly to throw their enemy out of his cities and strongholds. The purpose of guerilla tactics is to sap the enemy will to fight and hopefully either incite popular rebellion, or make the strong and powerful army leave.

Do those paper maps have maps of the worlds' satellites?

What? We were talking about ports...

Well, maybe the AT-STs are scout vehicles. Still not an excuse for their pathetically though.

[/quote]

Hit a hummvee in the side with a large log. See if it will drive afterwards.

[Batman]

So everything ELSE gets plenty of refuels, but since you ( that being Star Wars 888) were too stupid to understand how much of a game breaker the TIE fighters are, they do not. Yep, that's completely not an arbitrary limitation of the supplies a transamerican battle campaign WOULD have. I mean it's not like they'd want to use those TIEs for patrols or CAS (assuming they can dial down the guns far enough) or 'bombing' missions or against enemy air assets or something.
Everything ELSE gets enough supplies for what effectively boils down to 166 days of COMBAT OPERATIONS but the TIEs do not. Yep. No arbitrary limitation at all.

TIEs are interplanetary in range on a single fuel load. Let's take the minimum distance between Earth and Mars. That's 56 million km. Let's divide by 50 to compensate for the very probably much higher percentage of powered flight and the added drain of repulsorlifts and firing weapons (though there's no reason repulsorlifts need to consume massive amounts of power and to power generation tech that is basically only limited by e=mc^2 KT level shots aren't much of a drain). That's 1.12 million km. No point on Earth is more than 22,000 km or thereabouts from wherever the Imperials land. That's 50 sorties over that distance per TIE on a single fuel load. So even if they have to go halfway around the world EVERY TIME half the TIE force can reduce 2,500 major cities to rubble while the other half is available for other duties.

And excuse me? MAYBE AT-STs are scout vehicles? 'All Terrain SCOUT Transport?'
I'd like to see any MODERN vehicle short of an MBT survive that swinging log incident.

[Aaron]

That AT-ST went up because the logs set off the ammo didn't it?

Anyways, if you want to even it out a bit, remove the TIEs and replace them with AA vehicles.

[Junghalli]

You can't really translate range in space straightforwardly to range in atmosphere. The two environments are completely different. For instance in atmosphere you have to fight atmospheric and gravitational drag so maintaining the same speed takes constant expenditure of energy, in space it doesn't. By the opposite token in atmosphere you can push yourself forward by pushing air behind you, in space you need to carry all your own propellant.

A better approach would be to figure out the probable delta V, then figure out atmospheric and gravitational drag for flying around in the air, then figure out how long it will take that drag to burn through the delta V, then subtract from that energy needed to get up to cruising speed in the first place. That would give you a maximum flight time from which range can be derived if you know the speed, ASSUMING that the craft is not using an airbreathing engine for atmospheric flight.

[Batman]

Nothing says TIEs HAVE airbreathers. And I know space ranges don't really translate. Hence me reducing their range by a factor of fifty.
And also notice the TIEs DON'T have to go through the atmosphere all the time. Nothing to stop them from going orbital, moving to the target in space, and going straight back down.

That AT-ST went up because the logs set off the ammo didn't it?

Yes, or something else that could go kablooie. The logs did this by considerably crunching the hull of the AT-ST in question inwards so it would have been finished without the explosion.
Again, not that I see how any comparable modern vehicle would have fared better. We're talking the Wars equivalent of an AVR.

[Junghalli]

And I know space ranges don't really translate. Hence me reducing their range by a factor of fifty.

The main problem I have with that approach is it's a bad idea in general to treat spacecraft as having range in the same way aircraft do. A much better approach is to try to figure out delta Vs.

Earlier in the thread somebody cited Mike's website as saying ANH showed X-wings crossing several hundred thousand km within 5 minutes. That gives a figure in the range of 1-2000 km/s. That gives us a much more solid basis to work from.

Alternately, since you suggest the distance between Earth and Mars as a measure, if we knew how long the life support in a TIE fighter holds out we could do speed calculations from that. 1000 km/s gives a figure of ~21 hours to travel .5 AU (approximate distance between Mars and Earth at their closest approach).

Then we just need gravitational and atmospheric drag and we can calculate how long they can fly around in atmosphere. I think Atomic Rocket has a figure for atmospheric and gravitational drag on leaving Earth.

And also notice the TIEs DON'T have to go through the atmosphere all the time. Nothing to stop them from going orbital, moving to the target in space, and going straight back down.

That would probably be more efficient and also easier to calculate, as we simply need to know how fast they go to achieve suborbital speed with atmospheric drag being comparitively minor as they spend most of their time outside atmosphere.

[Solauren]

Star Wars 888 just backpedaled, and changed 'what he meant' and so forth.

Dishonest debate, dishonest discussion tactics.

Period.

[Batman]

We know from the EU that starfighters can get up to high fractional c speeds on internal fuel and TIEs are generally considered to be among the FAST ones. Assuming 80% the performance of an Eta-2 holds true for acceleration that's 4160 g. 2000kps best speed means less than a minute of endurance on full thrust. How about no.

[Junghalli]

We know from the EU that starfighters can get up to high fractional c speeds on internal fuel and TIEs are generally considered to be among the FAST ones. Assuming 80% the performance of an Eta-2 holds true for acceleration that's 4160 g. 2000kps best speed means less than a minute of endurance on full thrust. How about no.

Hey man I don't know shit about the EU. All I had to work with is the movies and a handful of books (mostly the Zahn ones) plus numbers other people have been giving ITT.

Anyway, knock yourself out trying to figure out TIE fighter endurance from the more precise sources you have access to. I'm just pointing out that your original method was not really reliable.

[Batman]

We know from the EU that starfighters can get up to high fractional c speeds on internal fuel and TIEs are generally considered to be among the FAST ones. Assuming 80% the performance of an Eta-2 holds true for acceleration that's 4160 g. 2000kps best speed means less than a minute of endurance on full thrust. How about no.

Hey man I don't know shit about the EU. All I had to work with is the movies and a handful of books (mostly the Zahn ones) plus numbers other people have been giving ITT.
Anyway, knock yourself out trying to figure out TIE fighter endurance from the more precise sources you have access to. I'm just pointing out that your original method was not really reliable.

Indeed it wasn't, and that's why I figured in a massive range reduction, at which point it probably STILL wasn't reliable.
I wouldn't have bothered to bring it up to begin with if Moron 888 hadn't tried to intentionally nix the TIEs when he realized how much they own modern day Earth.

[Star Wars 888]

Star Wars 888 just backpedaled, and changed 'what he meant' and so forth.

Dishonest debate, dishonest discussion tactics.

Period.

Actually, you made up your own interpretation of the OP. I didn't change it, I'm clarifying the OP, since I admit that it was unclear.

[Connor MacLeod]

And I said to Connor later on that big density also works. I love the quality of debate in this thread.

a) Some statement
b) YOU'RE FUCKING STUPID WAAAAA
c) YOU'RE A STUPID TREKKIE WAAAA
d) YOU'RE A HERETIC WAAAAA
e) Rational counterargument
a) That's a good point, conceded
c) YOU SAID SOME STATEMENT WAAAAAAA

Of course throw in plenty of fallacies and you've got it.

So again, what numbers do YOU find plausible for Star Destroyers, TIE fighters, etc. like I already asked? Frankly I'm getting tired of this whole "Compared to me the warsies are morons" attitude of yours, given you have demnstrated little willingness to actually do anything other than make a bunch of claims that you state as fact, apparently on the sole basis of your own authority. I mean you don't even think its neccesary to do research on the topic before you start spouting off claims (you admit to ignoring the EU, to not checking the movies, etc. Is ignoring the source material or data sample good logic now?)

I'd like to think I'm not being wholly unreasonable or inflammatory here but your sole interest seems to be in bashing the warsies and it grows tiresome. Please answer my damn question.

[Scottish Ninja]

We know from the EU that starfighters can get up to high fractional c speeds on internal fuel and TIEs are generally considered to be among the FAST ones. Assuming 80% the performance of an Eta-2 holds true for acceleration that's 4160 g. 2000kps best speed means less than a minute of endurance on full thrust. How about no.

Conveniently, the New Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels gives a TIE/ln a max acceleration of 4100 g, so there's a hard figure there in case anyone wants it.

[Surlethe]

3) The main site's asteroid calculations have mistakes a high school student would have been sharply marked down for. Adding on to that, their huge number of assumptions means they hold no weight. This doesn't necessarily mean they are wrong - see the fallacy fallacy.

For a set of calculations perhaps more to your liking, see http://theforce.net/swtc/isd.html#weaponry-asteroids (SWTC). He gives a range of uncertainty. You are more than free to duplicate his calculations to your preferred number of significant figures, but I am reasonably certain you will not significantly deviate from 300-2000 TW.

[Terralthra]

What concerns me about a dense core providing gravity is the tidal forces it would have. If the outer layer of the ship has 1/4 the gravity of the inner layer, that would be pretty bizarre.

What would the tidal forces be in this scenario?

But on-ship gravity can't be used for much since they have both artificial gravity and repulsorlifts, so they could neutralize any natural gravity inside.

True, but if you're going to have enough mass to create gravity, why waste energy powering an artificial gravity field?

I'm not in charge of the imperial engineering department, but they clearly did, since we can see from comparing internal/external views (such as when the Millenium Falcon is tractored into the docking bay) that the Death Star's gravity is aligned with the poles, even at the equator, not with the center of mass.

[Surlethe]

I'm not in charge of the imperial engineering department, but they clearly did, since we can see from comparing internal/external views (such as when the Millenium Falcon is tractored into the docking bay) that the Death Star's gravity is aligned with the poles, even at the equator, not with the center of mass.

I stand corrected --- I had recalled the ICS schematic backward. I would speculate, however, that it is more efficient to redirect a forcefield than to generate it from scratch (whatever that even means). (Anyway, it's not really an issue, given that we know they can create fields to nullify far greater forces.)

That looks decent, at least he gives a wide range, acknowleding that screen scaling isn't terribly precise. He says output each (he bolded it too), though there's no evidence for that - for all we know, the reactor output can only juice up a fraction of the total guns at a time, and there are several to improve coverage angles instead of firepower output.

Even if we grant that the ISD's fleet role is not as a main-line battleship, but instead as a fast, well, destroyer, it doesn't make sense for the reactor to only be able to juice up a fraction of the trench point-defense guns at a time.

The weird thing though is on the station as a whole: due to the inverse square law, if you double your distance, the gravity is sliced in half fourth. Remember the distance here is from the center of the sphere - not the surface. So the smaller the radius of the sphere for a given gravity, the more quickly gravity drops off.

Fixed, and I'm still not following you --- do you mean that gravity is four times greater halfway to the center of the station from the surface, if you're still outside the core? Of course.

[Thanas]

3) The main site's asteroid calculations have mistakes a high school student would have been sharply marked down for. Adding on to that, their huge number of assumptions means they hold no weight. This doesn't necessarily mean they are wrong - see the fallacy fallacy.

For a set of calculations perhaps more to your liking, see http://theforce.net/swtc/isd.html#weaponry-asteroids (SWTC). He gives a range of uncertainty. You are more than free to duplicate his calculations to your preferred number of significant figures, but I am reasonably certain you will not significantly deviate from 300-2000 TW.

Incidentally, Curtis Saxton, the guy who wrote those calculations, is also the one who wrote the ISD. So I guess that puts the "cheated on lab report" issue at rest.

[Junghalli]

Incidentally, Curtis Saxton, the guy who wrote those calculations, is also the one who wrote the ISD. So I guess that puts the "cheated on lab report" issue at rest.

I think that comment was about what Saxton said about the energy density of hypermatter, not the firepower.

[Xess]

Fixed, and I'm still not following you --- do you mean that gravity is four times greater halfway to the center of the station from the surface, if you're still outside the core? Of course.

Having not done the math myself I figure D13 means that the gravity would be 1G just outside the core but closer to .25G on the outer surface.

[Surlethe]

Even if we grant that the ISD's fleet role is not as a main-line battleship, but instead as a fast, well, destroyer, it doesn't make sense for the reactor to only be able to juice up a fraction of the trench point-defense guns at a time.

Well, it is possible that turbolasers aren't powered by the reactor at all. Maybe their ammo provides the power.

But anyway, I don't think it's too bad for the reactor not to be able to power them all. (In fact, I'd find it fine in the real world if the reactor can't power even one; if it charged capacitors over a longer time that discharge very rapidly in battle.) Think about it though - what are the odds that you'll need all the weapons at the same time? Building in that capability would be going way, way over even the normal battle output. We never see an nBSG style wall of iron spray'n'pray in SW, and that kind of thing is absurdly inefficient anyway.

My point was that the reactor at the very least has to be able to power a large fraction of the little guns, not every single one at once (this is kind of a lower limit thing too). Regarding capacitors, it seems like an unnecessary term to me. Why assume we have capacitors in the model when we can adequately explain what we see with reactor + weapons?

I'd imagine it is able to fire the main weapons at once though, well, unless they have them all are redundancy or cooling. (redundancy: if one gun fails, use the others, cooling: rotate through them so one cools while the others fire. Neither seems compelling for the ISD case.) Odds are firing all the big guns puts dwarfs all the little guns anyway so you're result is probably right, but I disagree with the reason.

Well, I had thought that perhaps it might make sense for an ISD to not be able to power the main guns at the same time as the small guns, especially if it's an anti-fighter platform. For firing the main guns, though, see, e.g., the Venator in the start of ROTS --- firing full main gun broadsides at what? 2/s? and IIRC the anti-fighter guns were firing too.

Instant coverage of all angles is a compelling advantage when dealing with snub fighters, even if you can't fire them all at once, since a fighter's advantage is in its mobility more than their numbers.

That's what I had been thinking the role of the destroyer was: more as an anti-fighter, anti-vette platform (also useful for policing) than as a capital ship. So yes, coverage of all angles (this would be why they put them in the trench anyway).

[Star Wars 888]

They have to use railroads because you can only supply an armored unit via truck for about 400 kilometres. In a terrain that's conductive to this sort of operations: in dense jungle, mountains, etc. the distance grows shorter because your trucks become completely road bound.

Ancient armies were able to travel more than 400 kilometers (albeit with difficulty) without the use of railroads.

Logistical costs of Iraq stemming from underdeveloped railway lines is part of the reason why that war is costing the US so much. Every bit of supplies, every litre of oil, spare tank engine or set of tracks will have to be trucked to the forward depots and then trucked again to the tank. These trucks need fuel, too: eventually, you have to run trucks to refuel the trucks which refuel the trucks that run the supplies. Costs skyrocket, vast snaking truck convoys clog up the roads, a single mechanical breakdown can hold up an entire army and one TIE fighter can annihilate your entire supply collumn in one strike.

I didn't claim that it wouldn't be costly.

Not to mention...that you may just plain not have enough trucks. Germans had this problem a lot during Barbarossa.

Or maybe we DO have enough trucks.

The Imperial force is composed mostly of light infantry, which is not road bound as it doesn't require massive amounts of supplies: Soldiers can carry a week's worth of food and ammo with them more if they load up extra on their transports ; That's assuming they simply *poof* appear there and have no additional means of moving their supplies with them, which makes your OP really badly phrased (and, incidentally, vastly increases the amount of fuel available, since the limited number of transports have to move the supplies a vast distance to supply an army fighting in the Yucatan...)

They'd have AT-ATs to transport supplies. However, the invasion force would have a big of a logistical problem, if not more, than, say, the USA.

Now, you see, when you combine the basic facts about the terrain: the dense, rough jungle and mountain areas, the extremely poor roads and lack of railways, you see that light infantry is the perfect fighting force. It's not road bound, it has light supply requirements (food and ammo and batteries) and Imperial light infantry can annihilate XXth century light infantry with trivial ease.

Stormtrooper armor is generally white though. That makes it rather easy to spot them. Not exactly the ideal camouflage color for a forest terrain.

[/quote]
Furthermore, they're already there. They can undertake combat operations as soon as they do basic recon, if they want to: the international coalition, on the other hand, will have to make the decision, stockpile supplies, ship their soldiers in theater and then march across a thousand kilometres of poor roads in order to engage the Imperials.
[/quote]

Yet if they are to set up this little empire that you claim they could, they'd still have to expand.

Do you get it now, jackass, or will I have to repeat it again?


It has, you just refuse to acknowledge it: even your 1200 mph figure is mach 1.5, which combined with the TIEs' operational ceiling is more than enough to avoid any threat we can throw at them. Their approach vector is going to be very steep, they can descend from orbit, slow down, strafe their target and zoom back to unassailable altitude before any of our weapon systems can engage.

IDK about that. Although their operational ceiling is far greater than that of any space craft we currently have, if we use the 1200 kph (not mph), missiles may be able to catch up with them before they can ascend beyond the missile's range. Although that would bring in the question as to how durable the tie fighters are.

Yes, my analogy isn't perfectly identical to the situation it is illustrating! Do you want a medal for discovering that?

Actually, there's a really big difference between the two analogies and it isn't proportional, basically, your Antarctica to South America invasion force logistics analogy was flawed.

]

See above. You are an idiot if you think I meant "we never could build a wooden ship again", rather than "we currently have no infrastructure to build and maintain large wooden fleets"

That would depend on what "large" would be.

Why? Modern weapon are extremely time consuming to design,

Yet industrial capabilities seem to scale linearly or possibly even faster than the resources required of producing new products does.

And real life is not an RTS game: if you only made a short run of a certain technology, you can't just click on the shiny button again to make more. Materials have changed, the missile types in use have changed, factory procedures and design rules have changed. You need to make new designs, produce prototypes, test them on actual missiles, design the tooling, make the tooling, install it in factories, then make the warheads at a certain rate and deploy them on ICBMs.


For an analogy, I know how to shovel dirt. I have shovelled dirt before. Unloading an container of dirt took me the entire day last time, and it will take me an entire day in six months when I will have to do it again.

Sherman tanks were mass produced a year after a prototype was developed.

EDIT: Also, please show me an operational ICBM type equipped with a non-nuclear warhead.

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/New_Ame ... ngers.html

http://gizmodo.com/5518192/non+nuclear- ... 30-minutes

I was talking about those. Only the US has a sizeable arsenal of long-ranged cruise missiles, and they are only good for use against entirely static targets you can pinpoint very precisely, because the missiles strike at given coordinates, not a given target. They can't track tanks: they are told where the tank repair depot is and go there and explode. If the depot was moved in the meantime, tough luck, they will hit empty space.

The invasion force wouldn't always be mobile. They'd have to take breaks, and AT-ATs aren't exactly hard targets to spot (stormtroopers and AT-STs would likely hang around the AT-ATs because the AT-ATs would provide defense and would be carrying the supplies. Unescorted AT-ATs can also be vulnerable due to their relatively vulnerable underbellies and "necks").

Doesn't matter if they're slow ; They'd be impossible to track with enough accuracy to fire Tomahawks at them. The missiles would only come into play once the Imperials have a presence in a country they chose to take over.

Weren't we talking about a counter-invasion?

Also, you can shoot down cruise missiles with simple weapon systems, like the Shylka.

What's that?

Did you even read what I wrote?

What did I miss?

Why? Every army in the world can fuck with enemy communications ; Russians could knock out individual encryption units out of alignment so that they could track and target unit command posts. To think an Imperial army will have no EW capability when EW is a standard part of warfare in Star Wars is moronic ; To think they won't be able to jam radios is even more moronic.

(Hint: If SW tech was unable to jam radio and radar, everyone would start using radio and radar again really quickly)

Did typical stormtroopers have radio jamming equipment? In FOTJ: Allies the Mandos and GA troopers laying siege the Jedi Temple had to bring in specialized jamming equipment, implying that jamming equipment isn't standard fare for typical Star Wars infantry.

Let's do a little math, okay?

A single stormtrooper can easily carry the launcher and a spare magazine for it ; That's twelve missiles total. Let's assume half this loadout will be anti-air ordnance of some sort, and that their PK against modern planes (with their primitive EW suites...) is a measly 50%.

That means a single stormtrooper equipped with a PLX can engage and destroy three airplanes. Since the launcher can engage starfighters, the usual limitations of MANPADs do not apply: the PLX could engage low-flying attack aircraft as well as heavy bombers.

A Nimitz air wing consists of 90 airplanes total, fixed-wing and helicopters. Let's assume stormies would also waste missiles on helicopters (though with blasters, they could easily bring them down with small arms fire). So wiping out a Nimitz air wing would take a conservative estimate of 30 launchers. Less if we assume (not unreasonably...) stormie squads can carry more reloads amongst the squad.

Wiping out the air wings of the entire US carrier fleet would consequently take 360 launchers, or one launcher per brigade, while destroying every single aircraft in the US air force would take about 1860 launchers, or one launcher per company (again, less if we assume more than one reload per launcher). While leaving plenty of missile unfired to bust bunkers and other fortifications.

So...how is that air supremacy looking now? Or are you now going to say an Imperial army half a million men strong doesn't carry one guided missile launcher per company?

Take note that the actual amount of aircraft attacking the invasion force won't be anywhere near the full force of the USAF (I counted all the transport and trainers, too, just to make the numbers even more conservative), since they can't be based in theatre due to unsuitable airbases.

According to Wookieepedia the PLX-2M's tracking system works by tracking the gravity distortion fields that repulsorlifts make. We don't use repulsorlifts at the moment.

I honestly don't remember, Solo was expecting to blow apart an imperial prefab outpost with it.


Yeah, I wonder why they didn't check the hidden smuggling compartments they couldn't detect.

OK, good point.

Really, they failed to detect small animals moving through a dense forest full of small animals, or they did but did not interpret their movement as an ambush after operating a base inside that forest for months and never being ambushed by them?

Holy shit, their sensors must really suck.

Except that it was a relatively huge ewok force coming rather quickly, and yet none of the stormtroopers seemed to even be suspicious or notice it.

And, in that case, wouldn't stormtroopers with their sensors mistake snipers for wild animals?

You keep going in circles. The US believed Communism was a dire threat to the world. A horde of Chinese communists engaged US armed forces directly and threatened to overrun a small South Asian country.

Yet the Chinese army did not pose any real threat to the US mainland at that time.

The US could destroy China utterly with neither China nor Russia being able to retaliate. At all.

???

They didn't, therefore they are not guaranteed to resort to mass nuking to save a South American country from being overrun.


If they decide to move over the border to Bolivia, what can the Brazillian government do? Magically block the border? Build a fence? Ask them nicely not to? We already covered the difficulty of getting troops there.

Well, to be honest I didn't specify where in Brazil the invasion force starts off in, but are you saying that the Brazilian military has no national guard or some other emergency force?

First of all, Imperials are humans. At worst, they are a threat to national sovereignty, not humanity.

To world sovereignty.

Second, wiping out the satellite network will destroy most of our advanced communications, collapse the economy and remove much of our military power which is dependent on GPS.

Why would the invasion force do that if they want to avoid a war?

In exchange for that, we can go and liberate some South American countries. Yay! I'm sure Joe Voter will be sooo satisfied!

The "New World Order" is viewed pretty negatively by most people.

Bowing down to the invasion force would pretty much be surrendering to an invasion force that the world could defeat if they tried hard enough.

By the time they can produce SW level tech, it would've disseminated throughout the world, and their descendants won't be anything like the original Imperials who arrived here.

Possibly, but the nation that the invasion force could set up might still be a threat.

Snipers are worthless for destroying a half-million man army. You need lots of weapons that can engage the stormies directly and with sustained fire to cause an appreciable amount of casualties, and that means vehicles to carry them and their ammo.

I'm not an expert in snipers, but although they may need to be transported, I doubt that they need vehicles to carry their ammo for them.

AT-STs are light scouts, so they should be pitted against light scouts.

Fair enough, but they're light scouts from Star Wars. Star Wars is supposed to be (and is in most cases) very advanced.

Jesus christ...just roll into a random craphole of a town and tune into CNN via satellite. They could probably do it with their standard equipment, too.

Because surely the USA would broadcast their military movements to the press.

Irrelevant ; Relative speed is not indicative of absolute speed (or, more precisely, speed relative to the atmosphere)

I was referring to both their absolute speed and relative speed.

It's between mach 1.5 and mach 9, which is enough to know that can't be engaged by anything, due to the fact they'll be coming in for an attack at that speed, from orbit. Large SAMs won't be able to engage them due to the small engagement window, light SAMs won't be able to engage them because of their high speed, AA guns for the same reasons. Fighters won't be able to vector in and intercept the strike before the TIE is again too high to chase down.

"high speed" - 1200 kph isn't that fast compared to the max speeds of modern day missiles and jet fighters.

The TIEs are untouchable, even with the lower speed.



Just...no. You don't just run a ship marked "supplies" into a port and magically have a supplied division. You need a proper amount and throughput of supplies, and that means ports capable of taking ships of a certain size and unloading them in a certain amount of time and the infrastructure to move those supplies further inland.

A fishing port with no concrete quay, no cranes and a single dirt road coming out of it is worthless. Same for a large port that can't take and unload tankers, or that has no rail siding.

Any halfway competent Imperial supply officer would be able to pinpoint the correct ports after a month or so of researching Earth weapon systems. Or they can just ask a captured South American supply officer who will probably have a list memorized.

Since when are they going to be invading fishing ports?

Yes, we were. Again, how are you going to force a landing when a single stormtrooper can take an LCAC out of action with his standard sidearm, and PLX launchers can blow apart helicopers with contemptous ease?

Because stormtroopers are still limited by human range and accuracy, and would be outnumbered. Attrition would wear them down.

Iraq doesn't cost you thousands of men daily, and promises some nebulous gain in the future (cheap oil FTW!)

If the USA succeeds, they get access to a lot of Star Wars era tech and possibly Star Wars era engineers and scientists.

It didn't work against the Germans in WWII ; It won't work here because the USAF could very well lose all its planes to shoulder-launched missiles.

The Germans had lost air superiority by the later parts of WW2.

As long as they can shoot straight and take cover, they're vastly superior to earth light infantry.

Actually, they don't always do that, but point taken.

And then watch the Hoover Dam get blown apart, their aircraft carriers taken out of comission and largest commercial ports heavily damaged.

Because one stormtrooper gets killed? Since when did Vader care?

They're human themselves. A threat to democracy, maybe, but so was communism.

A threat to democracy, communism, and pretty much any other political system other than a totalitarian (although communism and totalitarianism often times overlap)

Yes, and? It doesn't mean they are threatening to wipe humanity out. They're a dictatorship ; Big deal, the US deals with plenty of dictatorships with a smile.

Yet in this case they're dealing with a dictatorship that could actually be a threat to them.

They couldn't, because the materials science and machine tools with proper tolerances did not exist at the time and can't be easily recreated. The Imperials won't be able to, either, not in a single generation.

They'd have multiple generations, and they would get a huge technological advantage over the rest of the world. Long term they would be a significant threat, hence why it wouldn't make much sense for the Earth to leave them alone.

Then what was the point?

To be honest, I'll have to go back and check.

And you're an idiot. A country can help out bad people for its own gain while not wanting its own people to die, there's nothing contradictory about that: see my laundry list of US-supported asshole dictators.

Good point; what is the laundry list you came up with?

As long as they make the counter-invasion untenable, it doesn't matter.

They aren't. Logistics would screw the invasion force.

After a very long time, they won't resemble SW Imperials ideologically at all.

That's debatable.

It won't, because Imperials can just send local troops to do the guerilla-hunting.

And local troops won't be as formidable of stormtroopers would.

No, the Imperials lost in a direct war with a well-equipped enemy. No guerilla force in history managed to defeat an organized army by guerilla tactics alone: they always have to come out from hiding and fight directly to throw their enemy out of his cities and strongholds. The purpose of guerilla tactics is to sap the enemy will to fight and hopefully either incite popular rebellion, or make the strong and powerful army leave.

Guerrilla tactics can also whittle down the target's resources, and in this case they are not renewable in the short term.

What? We were talking about ports...

In this section of the post we were talking about paper maps.

Hit a hummvee in the side with a large log. See if it will drive afterwards.

[/quote]

Maybe a humvee would get badly damaged by that, but what about an APC or bradley (I don't think that it's a good idea to test that in practice, so unless if somebody has the mathematical calculations for the energy behind those swinging logs it's hard to tell).

[Serafina]

Ancient armies were able to travel more than 400 kilometers (albeit with difficulty) without the use of railroads.

That's because, you know - they were ANCIENT.
They had no supply needs other than food, which was plundered from the enviornment. Anyone with a working brain should recognize that this is not the case with a modern army. Such an army needs much, much more supplies. Hence, they need a good supply line. A railway is the best way to establish that, anything else is more vulnerable, expensive and limited.

I didn't claim that it wouldn't be costly.

Hey, fucktard - in a war, there is only so much equipment. Under these conditions, you could not sustain a large army, simply because you run short on fuel, trucks, spare parts etc.

Or maybe we DO have enough trucks.

As per you saying so. How about some proof?

Stormtrooper armor is generally white though. That makes it rather easy to spot them. Not exactly the ideal camouflage color for a forest terrain.

Easily solvable with some paint. Oh, wait, you moron are going to assume that they don't have any or are too stupid to use it.

IDK about that. Although their operational ceiling is far greater than that of any space craft we currently have, if we use the 1200 kph (not mph), missiles may be able to catch up with them before they can ascend beyond the missile's range. Although that would bring in the question as to how durable the tie fighters are.

As per you saying so. Missiles also have ceiling limits, you know? And are not infinitely maneuverable.

Actually, there's a really big difference between the two analogies and it isn't proportional, basically, your Antarctica to South America invasion force logistics analogy was flawed.

Again, as per you saying so. Both are hostile enviornments with next-to no (or no) supply base or distribution lines.

That would depend on what "large" would be.

How about "anything more than a handfull". Sure, we can build first-rate wooden ships if we want - a very limited number.

Yet industrial capabilities seem to scale linearly or possibly even faster than the resources required of producing new products does.

Design=/=production.

Sherman tanks were mass produced a year after a prototype was developed.

And they were much less complicated than a modern missile. The reason you could mass produce them is that they barely needed specialized production lines, you could repurpose existing ones easily for most of their parts.
That is not the case for missiles, who need specialised production lines nearly exclusively.

The invasion force wouldn't always be mobile. They'd have to take breaks, and AT-ATs aren't exactly hard targets to spot (stormtroopers and AT-STs would likely hang around the AT-ATs because the AT-ATs would provide defense and would be carrying the supplies. Unescorted AT-ATs can also be vulnerable due to their relatively vulnerable underbellies and "necks").

Sure, they would take breaks. So what? That doesn't make them immobile targets, since they can detect any approaching missiles and just move a bit to avoid them.

What's that?

Hey, moron - how about using another Wiki than Wookieepedia?

Did typical stormtroopers have radio jamming equipment? In FOTJ: Allies the Mandos and GA troopers laying siege the Jedi Temple had to bring in specialized jamming equipment, implying that jamming equipment isn't standard fare for typical Star Wars infantry.

Moron. Jamming equipment is not issued to individual infantrymen, because you do not need to employ it on such a small scale. It's specialised equipment employed stationary or on vehicles.

According to Wookieepedia the PLX-2M's tracking system works by tracking the gravity distortion fields that repulsorlifts make. We don't use repulsorlifts at the moment.

And of course, it can't possibly have secondary systems.

Except that it was a relatively huge ewok force coming rather quickly, and yet none of the stormtroopers seemed to even be suspicious or notice it.

And, in that case, wouldn't stormtroopers with their sensors mistake snipers for wild animals?

Again, you are a moron. If you see a bunch of animals together, do you immedeately thing "hey, a hostile army"?
And in case you do not know, human snipers would not be seen as animals (humans are animals, but we normally distinguish between the two).

Well, to be honest I didn't specify where in Brazil the invasion force starts off in, but are you saying that the Brazilian military has no national guard or some other emergency force?

Nothing that can scratch the imperial force.

Why would the invasion force do that if they want to avoid a war?

Because it would disrupt our ability to make war (not love, tough). And because it would show us "we can fuck you over whenever we want, so don't mess with us".

I'm not an expert in snipers, but although they may need to be transported, I doubt that they need vehicles to carry their ammo for them.

Moron. An army can't solely rely on snipers. You can't win a battle solely by snipers.

Fair enough, but they're light scouts from Star Wars. Star Wars is supposed to be (and is in most cases) very advanced.

And? does that mean that they can stop logs that weight tons at high speed? You have no understanding of engineering at all.

Since when are they going to be invading fishing ports?

You totally missed the point. Here it is in moron-language: You need large ports to unload stuff. Brazil doesn't have many large ports. Fishing villages are not large ports. You can't use fishing villages to supply an invasion force.

Because stormtroopers are still limited by human range and accuracy, and would be outnumbered. Attrition would wear them down.

Actually, they aren't. Their armor contains sophisticated sensors. And you do not understand attrition at all.

If the USA succeeds, they get access to a lot of Star Wars era tech and possibly Star Wars era engineers and scientists.

Oh, right. People are certainly willing to die by the millions for some shiny toys they can't figure out in a thousand years.

The Germans had lost air superiority by the later parts of WW2.

Yes. That was his point. Even with air superiority, you do not have an absolute advantage. You can not win a war solely by air power. That's why the allies needed to invade Germany.

Actually, they don't always do that, but point taken.

They demonstrate both capabilities in the movies.

Because one stormtrooper gets killed? Since when did Vader care?

Again, it's a message "do not fuck with us, or we fuck you over".

Yet in this case they're dealing with a dictatorship that could actually be a threat to them.

So? That was the case pretty often. Heck, if someone can threaten you, you do NOT want to go to war with him. Apparently, you do not understand basic politics either. Instead, you spout more "hurr huff, resistance at all costs"-bullshit.

And local troops won't be as formidable of stormtroopers would.

And? They are totally sufficient against guerillias, and they are expendable.

Maybe a humvee would get badly damaged by that, but what about an APC or bradley (I don't think that it's a good idea to test that in practice, so unless if somebody has the mathematical calculations for the energy behind those swinging logs it's hard to tell).

Do some basic math and physics.

[Xess]

According to Wookieepedia the PLX-2M's tracking system works by tracking the gravity distortion fields that repulsorlifts make. We don't use repulsorlifts at the moment.

The same Wookieepedia article also states very clearly that the missile also has a heat-seeking mode. In fact here is the relevant section;

This weapon had two "smart" missile firing modes. In one mode, the missile acted as a heat-seeker. In the other mode, the missiles homed in on the gravity distortion fields created by repulsorlift engines.

Try reading the whole article next time.

[Star Wars 888]

That's because, you know - they were ANCIENT.
They had no supply needs other than food, which was plundered from the enviornment. Anyone with a working brain should recognize that this is not the case with a modern army. Such an army needs much, much more supplies. Hence, they need a good supply line. A railway is the best way to establish that, anything else is more vulnerable, expensive and limited.

Ammo can be carried on truck transports. The US forces can establish a forward base where more fuel can be transported in.

Hey, fucktard - in a war, there is only so much equipment. Under these conditions, you could not sustain a large army, simply because you run short on fuel, trucks, spare parts etc.

Which goes both ways.

As per you saying so. How about some proof?

I didn't make the claim.

Easily solvable with some paint. Oh, wait, you moron are going to assume that they don't have any or are too stupid to use it.

Paint 500,000 stormtrooper armors, 100 AT-ATs (well, maybe not them since AT-ATs are easy to spot even with camouflage) and 1000 AT-STs? Where are they going to get that much paint?

As per you saying so. Missiles also have ceiling limits, you know? And are not infinitely maneuverable.

Did you even read my post?

Again, as per you saying so. Both are hostile enviornments with next-to no (or no) supply base or distribution lines.

South America is livable, has cities, ports, railroads, rainforests with lots of potential food and water and such. Antarctica is uninhabited by humans other than a few researchers that occasionally go there to do reaserch.

How about "anything more than a handfull". Sure, we can build first-rate wooden ships if we want - a very limited number.

"a very limited number"?

Design=/=production.

Ok, design=/=production...and?

And they were much less complicated than a modern missile. The reason you could mass produce them is that they barely needed specialized production lines, you could repurpose existing ones easily for most of their parts.


That is not the case for missiles, who need specialised production lines nearly exclusively.

I didn't claim that we could mass produce ICBMS as easily as we mass produced sherman tanks, but it wouldn't take years to simply start a production line if we really needed to start producing non nuclear ICBMs.

Sure, they would take breaks. So what? That doesn't make them immobile targets, since they can detect any approaching missiles and just move a bit to avoid them.

1. Prove that they can detect them.
2. Having to move around constantly at night when you're trying to sleep would have quite a bit of an effect on morale, wouldn't it?

Hey, moron - how about using another Wiki than Wookieepedia?

Actually, I searched Shylka on google.

Moron. Jamming equipment is not issued to individual infantrymen, because you do not need to employ it on such a small scale. It's specialised equipment employed stationary or on vehicles.

Then why bring it up?

And of course, it can't possibly have secondary systems.

You haven't proven that it does.

Again, you are a moron. If you see a bunch of animals together, do you immedeately thing "hey, a hostile army"?


And in case you do not know, human snipers would not be seen as animals (humans are animals, but we normally distinguish between the two).

Ewoks are not wild animals, btw.

Nothing that can scratch the imperial force.

"Nothing can scratch the imperial force" - bullshit. What about a 50 caliber bullet to the head?

Because it would disrupt our ability to make war (not love, tough). And because it would show us "we can fuck you over whenever we want, so don't mess with us".

"we can fuck you over whenever we want" - maybe, until they run out of fuel.

Moron. An army can't solely rely on snipers. You can't win a battle solely by snipers.

Strawman.

You totally missed the point. Here it is in moron-language: You need large ports to unload stuff. Brazil doesn't have many large ports. Fishing villages are not large ports. You can't use fishing villages to supply an invasion force.

You know that there's more than simply "large ports" and "fishing ports", right?

Oh, right. People are certainly willing to die by the millions for some shiny toys they can't figure out in a thousand years.

Which would put to shame the "zomg imperials give USA blaster to try and reverse engineer and USA is happy and leaves them alone!" idea, doesn't it?

Yes. That was his point. Even with air superiority, you do not have an absolute advantage. You can not win a war solely by air power. That's why the allies needed to invade Germany.

Is this seriously coming from the same poster that talked about the tie fighters easily subduing our armed forces and that they only need the tie fighters to "win"?

They demonstrate both capabilities in the movies.

Sometimes.

Again, it's a message "do not fuck with us, or we fuck you over".

Until they run out of fuel and get fucked over.

So? That was the case pretty often. Heck, if someone can threaten you, you do NOT want to go to war with him. Apparently, you do not understand basic politics either. Instead, you spout more "hurr huff, resistance at all costs"-bullshit.

The Rebel Alliance was capable of (and did, and won) threatening the Empire, and yet the two sides went to war for quite a while.

And? They are totally sufficient against guerillias, and they are expendable.

[/quote]

What about US Navy Seals and other special ops forces? And why would the locals even be willing to help out? Leaving conscripts to go about hinting guerrillas would cause mass desertions and "deaths".