Star Wars Fleet Size

[Adam Reynolds]

I'm currently reading Twilight Company for the first time and, once again, the new EU has made reference to the Empire recently finding and using a scarce resource (i.e. tibanna) to increase their production of blasters ABY.

I wonder if we should start calling this the Tagge Doctrine.

I wonder how much rare resources like that are a bottleneck in Star Wars? It would certainly justify why the Empire doesn't have more Star Destroyers, if they lacked certain exotic elements in sufficient quantities.

[Galvatron]

It keeps coming up over and over in the new EU.

[Simon_Jester]

Possibly a favored plot for Disney?

There are a variety of ways to justify having some heroic small-scale action result in large scale consequences. "Destroy the enemy's critical resource extraction" is a favorite.

[Galvatron]

Why not? An enemy's production capabilities and supply lines have always been prime targets in any war, especially an insurgency.

And yes, it's certainly "cleaner" than showing the rebels murder innocent Imperial citizens in overt acts of terrorism.

[Simon_Jester]

Mainly remarking, because it's one of many possible favored plots, and it may be one we can expect to see a lot of in the future. If so, we'd better get used to the idea of finding out that there are dozens of miscellaneous types of unobtainium and rare minerals that are vitally necessary for the operation of Star Wars technology.

[Galvatron]

Which will at least justify the "minimalism" to a certain extent and put an end to the no-limits perception that so many have regarding the Empire's capability to produce an infinite amount of warships.

And before someone says, "Yeah, but the Death Star!" It's also possible that much of the Death Star was composed of the more common resources, with the rarer ones being used for the weapons, hyperdrive, etc.

[Lord Revan]

Which will at least justify the "minimalism" to a certain extent and put an end to the no-limits perception that so many have regarding the Empire's capability to produce an infinite amount of warships.

And before someone says, "Yeah, but the Death Star!" It's also possible that much of the Death Star was composed of the more common resources, with the rarer ones being used for the weapons, hyperdrive, etc.

Problem a lot of people here also have is not asking the right questions, the true question is "how many ships the imperial fleet should build to do its job" not "how many ships the Galactic Empire could build if it used all its resources on building warships". After all there's perfectly good, valid and logical reasons why the Empire has smaller fleet then it could potentially have. For example it has no external enemies and the internal ones aren't really that strong, massive fleets of thousands ISDs each are not really needed and might even be counter productive as the rebels wouldn't engage fleets they knew they had no hope of defeating (also there's the matter that it's quite hard for the Imperial Goverment to pretend everything is A-ok is it's on a clear war footing).

[Batman]

There's a lot of leeway between 'Why doesn't the Empire build a DS' worth of SSDs/ISDs' and the numbers we saw in the old EU.Yes, the Empire probably didn't need nineteen quadrillion ISDs (or whatever the DS amounts to) given the lack of (immediate, in the old EU) enemies, but I still venture 25,000 is seriously on the low side, and a measly 200 dreadnoughts tipping the scale in a war between the NR and the IR was ridiculous (at least with both of them allegedly controlling half of the old imperial territory).

And Tibanna can't be THAT important to blaster/laser/turbolaser technology given those were used with gay abandon in the Clone Wars.

[RogueIce]

Which will at least justify the "minimalism" to a certain extent and put an end to the no-limits perception that so many have regarding the Empire's capability to produce an infinite amount of warships.

And before someone says, "Yeah, but the Death Star!" It's also possible that much of the Death Star was composed of the more common resources, with the rarer ones being used for the weapons, hyperdrive, etc.

I don't care so much about the "not having millions of ISDs" for its own sake. There's really only two issues I have:

1) If this is some kind of slap at the more technical fans. Yeah they can get overzealous at times, but I'd really hope the LSG is above using their position to stick it to them and go with "see we're totally right how do you have questioned us before" or something like that. I really hope that is not the case for why they'd want to push the so-called 'minimalism' but instead do so for story reasons. The only reason I bring it up is that Pablo Hidalgo is kind of known for being a bit hostile toward that segment of the fandom (you can ask Vympel for more on that).

2) I hope hack authors don't use this device to give every fucking novel "fate of the galaxy" stakes. The Bantam EU was awful for this, and is a lot of the reason for the whole "shitty New Republic" meme. It's like, they don't get the difference between having big stakes for the characters as opposed to for the galaxy - and far too many authors would rely on the latter like a crutch, so their stories could be suitably 'important' and 'epic' or whatever nonsense.

Obviously, I'm more concerned with number 2, since there's no real way to know if number 1 is even an issue. But then I have by and large given up on the EU and I think I'll stick with the movies and TV shows at this point.

[Galvatron]

I think the new EU authors realize that they're no longer writing surrogate sequels to the OT any more. They don't have to be important and epic, they just have to be interesting filler stories that take place between the movies.

And I doubt the LFL Story Group is trying to stick it to the technical fans, but I do think they're emphasizing reasons why the Empire doesn't have a fleet to rival that of the Zentradi from Macross. I have no problem with that.

[Elheru Aran]

I suspect that LFL is aware that there are portions of their fanbase that are definitely concerned with technical aspects of their stories, and as such they're more concerned about addressing those, even if only by omission, than they were previously.

I also suspect that Disney is more aware of how shitty novels will affect their brand, now that they own Star Wars. There's a reason they straight-up junked the old EU, after all-- they wanted to wipe the slate clean.