Imperial Military Calculations Revisited

[Batman]

Mon Mothma and Crix Madine, for starters? We never actually see them be with the fleet once it arrives at Endor, they're only visibly present in the pre-departure briefings.

[vengence]

With naval tactics, things change significantly when you go from individual ships or flotillas to full fleets. When looking at the battle of Endor; the small rebel fleet would have been at a large disadvantage at range, where the entire imperial fleet could target their fleet. Whereas at close range the smaller more maneuverable rebel fleet could engage individual ships with only a few imperial ships being able to respond at a time. While ultimately numbers in the end would win out they would last a lot longer then had they stayed at range.

Also it would likely be a lot harder target the rebel ships with the imperial heavy turbolasers since it would require much greater turning distances. Something like fractions of a degree at long range compared to potentially up to 180 degrees as a ship flies by. This would force imperial ship to rely primarily on their light guns especially when the threat of hitting your own ships is quite real. Again buying the rebel forces more time.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Mon Mothma and Crix Madine, for starters? We never actually see them be with the fleet once it arrives at Endor, they're only visibly present in the pre-departure briefings.

Granted, we don't see them during the battle, but I wouldn't expect to see a politician on the bridge of a warship in a major battle.

As far as we know, they were aboard Home One before the fleet jumped to Endor. I can't recall offhand if we see Mothma at the celebrations on Endor afterwards.

However, clearly Mothma felt it was important enough to turn up and give part of the briefing personally. Also, wasn't Home One supposed to be the home of the Rebel leadership after Endor?

Besides, even if Mon Mothma and Crix Madine do survive the hpothetical annihilation of the Rebel fleet, their cause is still fucked. Their military assets are gone, their greatest military leaders and heroes are gone, and they have to regroup in secret after what would surely be a well-publicised battle.

Meanwhile, the Empire has to also regroup and establish a new leader, but they won't be acting in secret and the destruction of the DSII and the Emperor gives them a nice rallying cause to crack down further on Rebel activity. The rest of the Imperial military is still intact, so the Imperials will be in a lot better position than the Rebels would.

[Batman]

Note I'm not saying they 'did' survive, I'm saying they are not necessarily dead. And frankly the Rebellions military assets were never really important because there never was a chance they could beat the Empire militarily anyway. Convenient to have to be sure, but never really essential. And it's not like they started with them. As long as they have competent leadership, they can rebuild and reacquire that naval strength the same way they originally got it to begin with.

[Eternal_Freedom]

While that is true, the Empire always presented (IIRC) the Rebels as a fairly minor problem, nothing to worry about, move along. If they manage to blow up the DSII and the Emperor (even at the cost of the entire fleet and everyone on the ground) then the Imperials will pull out all the stops to hunt them down.

It's an interesting idea, really. The Empire might actually have been better off if everyone at the Battle of Endor was killed. No Emperor and Vader but no senior Rebel leaders and a big damn excuse to build more SSD's (clearly more effective than the Death Star, no?).

[PainRack]

Zahn is the source of the 25,000 ISD number. If you go by WEG, you get more like 250,000*.
WEG also says that 10% of the entire navy was held back in the core regions as a reserve. If you take 250k as a galaxy wide whole, then the 25k number works as the core reserve.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_Navy
Additionally, a full ten percent of the entire Imperial Navy was kept in reserve in the Core Worlds, so as to be able to quickly respond to threats throughout the galaxy.[19]

250k ISD spread over 51million inhabited systems** is still less the 1 ISD per 200 systems, with an average of ~4900 systems in a sector. (96 members, 4800 colonies)

*countless regions, some containing thousands of sectors, 24 ISD per sector fleet, plus oversector forces.
**Alternately, the wikia says 1.5million members and 69million colonies, for 282 worlds per ISD.

Zahn merely formalized the count. The 25 thousand Star Destroyers is from the earliest sourcebooks and was reinforced from anything like 24 ISDs per sector group and then multiplying that by 1 thousand.

Its just that Zahn was a miminalist whereas WEG and other early sources included examples that broke that count easily.

Remember, the early stuff about ISDs, including the Databank from the 90s was that ISDs were the equivalent of heavy cruisers, with one single star destroyer being able to cow a system into surrender and being able to face off any conventional rebel starship.


We SHOULD also note that the whole Destroyer thing was imposed by Saxton and his need to have a more consistent ship scale than the fracked version WEG introduced. The earliest info from the 80s, using toy merchandise as well as ANH novelisation described the ISD as an Imperial Cruiser. It was only during TESB that it was changed to an ISD.


Saxton attempts was to rationalize the ship scales, given the profileration of larger starships and the existence of the extremely large Executor...... not helped by the whole more powerful than 5 Star Destroyers blurb being extended into as large as 5 ISDs=8km.

It gets worse when one considers that in context, the initial statement was with reference to Death Squadron visible escorts as opposed to a factual statement about her firepower and shielding, something which WEG ran with.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Nah, that's a castle in the air. They're referred to as star destroyers as early as the escape from Hoth; "two snubfighters against a star destroyer?"

The twenty- five thousand number refers to Imperial class alone; probably doesn't even include Imperial- variants like interdictor destroyers, Tectors, carrier conversions, moff/admiral's custom flagships.

We saw Venators (and for that matter Recusants, if the Imperial Starfleet actually uses any) on screen, Victory- class 900m destroyers in roleplaying game and later book material, four other classes in comic book material- one long and thin with a dorsal protruding dome, one Victory sized with a much larger flight bay, one long thin and apparently bayless, and a whole bunch of other computer game and artwork inspired designs;

which according to the template formations outnumbered the larger and more powerful line Imperator/Imperial class usually around three to one, eighty to twenty- four.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Nah, that's a castle in the air. They're referred to as star destroyers as early as the escape from Hoth; "two snubfighters against a star destroyer?"

...which was still during TESB.

In ANH they are only ever "Imperial ships" or "Imperial cruisers."

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Which is still 1980. Not like it's something that only just turned up in the computer games- and off the screen, as far as I recall, both Greg Mandel's pre production drawings and the ANH script refer to star destroyers. They've been destroyers for a very long time, since square two at least.

[AniThyng]

Yeah but for some reason in those materials Star Destroyers are proper nouns while star cruisers are not.

[Patroklos]

And as I said, that hasn't been true since the Age of Sail. Even once anti-ship missiles appeared, gettign in close wasn't an advantage, because your opponent would have been firing at you all the way in.

No, getting in close is very important now with missiles because with systems like Aegis if it sees you at any range other than point blank it kills you. Thats why sea skimming to use the horizon to the max is what they do. Granted the shooter itself is happy to be further away, but missiles themselves are fundamentally different than direct fire guns or turbo laser for that matter as they are vehicles in and of themselves with waypoints, homing, retargeting and everything else.

Both of us are being two simplistic here. My comment regarding decreasing range was really only taking into account the assumed increace in accurate fire, while you are assuming everything regarding ballistic gunnery is about plunging shot without taking accuracy of fire or what you are actually shooting at into account.

As I think you agree too in space warfare and SW specifically the plunging shot comparison is not relevant, and a decrease in range will increase fire effectiveness measured by ability to put shots on target until you get into masking situations, I think we can stop beating this horse.

It will apply in Star Wars though, not because of any stuff about turbolaser bolts losing power, but simply because it is easier to aim at point-blank range. No jamming or ECM can stop you if you can aim the damn gun by eye. And from a physics standpoint, getting in close and staying there means they've matched the Imperials' course and speed exactly, to escape they'd need a lot of extra velocity.

We know this is not the case because from Ackbar's viewports we see SD's and Star Cruisers moving in opposite directions amoungst each other. There is the famouse broadside trading shots between an ISD and a Rebel frigate where they are going opposite directions. If I had to guess the SDs were not stupid and knew what the Rebels were doing (regarding hiding amongst them) and with specific orders to not engage the Rebels directly the Imperails were probably trying to get out of the way.

In fact given they say the DS was operational and attacking with their own eyes you wouldn't have to be a very cynical Imperial ship commander to come to the conclusion that the DS might just shoot through its own fleet to get at the Rebels anyway so getting out the firing line was probably on their mind. I am pretty sure Lando expected that too, because when he says "maybe we will take a few of them with us" I originally assumed he was directy refereing to the DS blowing up Imperials ships in the process of getting the Rebels. But maybe he was talking about the Rebel fleet taking down a few ISDs itself.

Also, your comments about risk prove that Ackbar thought he could prevail against Death Squadron. He risks losing all or part of his fleet to destroy the DSII. He would not run that risk if he knew he absolutely couldn't win the fight. He wouldn't take the risk if the odds were zero.

You are ignoring Lando and Ackbar's conversation. This was very much Ackbar's first assessment, that with the shield still up and now ALSO an operationa DS there was no hope of victory so why waste his fleet needlessly (note that is different from that fleet being relevant in universe with a fully completed DSII). Lando convinces him that even with the seemingly impossible odds it was STILL worth it to stick around on even the faintest hope of a chance at the DSII that they would likely never get again. Ackbar obviously agrees because he follows Lando's reasoning with action.

You might think Ackbar and Lando were stupid for doing that based on literally no feedback from the Endor strike team. I would agree. But thats the decision they made.

And your remarks about whether it was even possible for Ackbar to retreat are irrelevant. We have to go with what we see on screen, and Ackbar recgonizes the trap and moves out to engage nevertheless, because he thinks he can defeat or hold off Death Squadron for a sufficient length of time. Again, he clearly thinks the odds are better than zero. It's only whent he Death Star is added tot he mix that he says "fuck it, it's not worth the risk."

That is literally the exact opposite of what we see on screen. Ackbar directly tells us, straight up and without any ambiguity, that he will not only lose but lose quickly realtive to whatever a normal fleet engagement timeframe is.


Again, defeating Death Squadron and holding Death Squadron off long enough to make a starfighter attack on the DS are two different things. The second is the primary goal of the entire opperation and supporting that, NOT defeating present Imperail fleet units, is the stated purpose of the Rebel fleet from the briefing scene.

Also Ackbar does NOT engage the Star Destroyers initally. They are reported to him, he notes where they are and that it constitutes a trap, and then we see nothing bit Imperial starfighters engage him. ADM Piett tells us specifically they are NOT going to attack Ackbar. Again, from the briefing, we know the fleets only mission was to form a peremiter to protect the starfighters attacking the DS. Ackbar is between the DS and the Imperial fleet, but the Imperial fleet isn't closing with or attacking him. The fact that he is in a trap and can't escape himself is irrelevant to his fleets mission as long as his stike in the DS can still take place which at this point is only impeded by intact shield.

Ackbar only attacks the ISDs when confronted with the operational Death Star, and then only does because between the ISDs and the DSII he will last longer agains the ISDs (as Lando directly states). Picking the lesser of two evils says nothing about surviving against either.

Except that even if the DSII is dsetroyed and Palpatine and Vader killed, the Empire isn't instantly defeated. Hell, if we look at the EU, it took fifteen-odd years for the Rebels and the Imperials to finally make peace, and even then the Empire still existed.

If the Rebel fleet is annihilated, then the Empire wil ultimately prevail in a new form with a new leader, because all of the Rebel's senior leadership will be gone (Ackbar, Luke, Leia, Han, Lando for certain, Mon Mothmas most likely as well, plus Madine and others) and it's main means of fighting back is gone.

I seriously doubt Ackbar is willing to sacrifice absolutely everything on something that will not for certain destroy the Empire and restore the Republic. That last part is equally important as destroying the Empire. With no prospective Republic leaders left, the Empire will not be destroyed.

Except the Empire bouncing back, picking a new leader, and chugging along just fine is not what happened is it? The collapse of the Empire post Endor had little if anything to do with the whatever Rebel fleet survived that battle in the actual time line. The leadership of the Empire itself was a labyrinthine house of cards tied directly to and inseparable from the Emperor himself and without his influence collapsed into squabbling between all the stupid villains we were forced to endure through dozens of EU novels. In fact the EU novels rarely tell us exactly what happened to cause the fracture of the Empire or the loss of its fleet but there is no mention of the Rebels doing it. They capitalize on this fracture after the fact picking off feuding warlords and splinter factions. And you know what? I truly believe people like Mon Mothma and Organa who had served decades in the Empire and Republic before and being the experienced and astute politicians and power brokers we see knew something like that would happen if they removed the Emperor. It was certainly the case with many real world dictator states.

Now would taking on all those factions or even an Empire that recovered have been harder to do if there was no surviving Rebel fleet after an Endor victory? Sure. But would that be preferable to a fully functioning Rebel fleet but also a surviving Emperor and Vader, and a fully functional and as described to us by the Rebels themselves invincible planet busting battle moon serving the stable rampaging Empire we see in TESB and RTJ? Absolutely. In the second situation does the presence of a rebel fleet with a tonnage of 1% of the DS really matter? Nope. That’s why you get an all or nothing attack on the DS II when a chance, however small, existed to change that calculus.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Ok, I'm just going to concede this one because I really don't have the timeto go through all that point by point.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The calculations were intended as an upper limit, not a median or minimal estimate, which I feel was misinterpreted in this thread. I did not mean to imply the Imperial military was that big, just that its upper range was in that vicinity based on established EU sources. I had always hoped someone else would release more detailed median calculations rather than referring to my brief establishment of an upper boundary condition.

Also isn't this kind of pointless with the new canon?

[Abacus]

I had always hoped someone else would release more detailed median calculations rather than referring to my brief establishment of an upper boundary condition.

My original calculations always made it clear that the numbers I came up with were at a theoretical maximum. But left it open to finding a median.

A System force can therefore muster a (at best) maximum...(paragraph nine, last sentence, first mention of any fleet numbers)

Also isn't this kind of pointless with the new canon?

You're asking *that* question on *these* forums? lol