Versus Series: Ship Combat in Star Wars (Revived)

[Alkaloid]

My own head cannon on the Empire entire agrees with the notion that the Empire views its limiting factor as politically reliable officers. Thus strongly favours mass action centered around easily controlable Star Destroyers. Despite the uniforms, expect them to act like Soviets and not like Nazi's who believed in discretion by low and mid level officers.

On fighter doctrine, TIEs pretty much exist as point defense for capital ships and holding territory. They don't want individual quality, they want something they can mass produce to cover everywhere. Hyperspace capable craft that can act indepedently as fighter bombers are particularly bad for them as the biggest problem the Empire faces is their unreliable people defecting to the enemy and a hypercapable one-man craft is the easiest thing to defect with.

Meanwhile, the most important thing for Rebel fighters is the ability to create temporary local superiority. So investing in slightly better individual units pays big dividends, while TIEs are almost worthless for the kind of war they need to fight.

Amusingly this is probably the explanation for the massive demilitarisation of the new republic people get so worked up about as well. even if the rebellion expanded massively between Endor and the time the civil war ended, they still won't have close to the number of people they need to reliably control even a fraction of the ex imperial fleet. Keep what you can and scrap the rest, that way no one can run off and play warlord, or worse start glassing planets they decided were collaborators.

[Q99]

That theory does have problems, though, given how many people there are in Star wars. If one in a million are true loyalists, that's still a trillion loyalists.

The higher the population, the more you need. Whatever the number, it's the ratio that matters.


Well, that and the bottlenecks of imperial academics, and a heck a lot of that population is on planets in the boonies that don't pay *that* much attention to the wider galaxy and where most have no strong position one way or another and in many cases may be barely contacted by it (groups like the Gungans and Tuskans, who only pay attention to their world).

[Galvatron]

I wonder how many Imperials remained truly loyal after the events of ANH. I'm sure quite a few of them joined up when the Imperial Senate was still maintaining the illusion of a constitutional monarchy and were disenchanted when the Emperor became an absolute dictator.

It being a civil war, I imagine that plenty of Imperial officers were more loyal to their homeworlds and their families than they were to the Emperor.

[AniThyng]

I wonder how many Imperials remained truly loyal after the events of ANH. I'm sure quite a few of them joined up when the Imperial Senate was still maintaining the illusion of a constitutional monarchy and were disenchanted when the Emperor became an absolute dictator.

It being a civil war, I imagine that plenty of Imperial officers were more loyal to their homeworlds and their families than they were to the Emperor.

Would help if they could arrange never having the captain and xo be from the same sector, and have the naval infantry and crew be as indoctrinated as possible but still be from different home worlds. That's on top of the stormtroopers as another backdrop to going rogue.

At the very least, for the most powerful and long ranged ships.

[Batman]

That sounds like a logistical nightmare.

[AniThyng]

That sounds like a logistical nightmare.

There's a lot of inefficiency involved when you need to have half the fleet police the other half from defecting/going rogue, yeah...

[Galvatron]

I wouldn't be surprised if many disloyal Imperials remained in the military and simply did their jobs badly, like Admiral Ozzel. It's been my belief for a long time that he was sympathetic to the rebellion and everything he did in TESB was done with the intention of helping the rebels.

[Esquire]

Care to say why?

[Galvatron]

I'm not insisting on it or anything, but he tried to dissuade Vader from merely investigating Hoth and then he botched the attack by dropping out of hyperspace too close to the system.

[Crazedwraith]

I'm not insisting on it or anything, but he tried to dissuade Vader from merely investigating Hoth and then he botched the attack by dropping out of hyperspace too close to the system.

No, he didn't. Vader assumed he botched it because the shield was up. But the shield was up and they were preparing to leave because they'd cottoned on to the probe droid.

[Q99]

I'm not insisting on it or anything, but he tried to dissuade Vader from merely investigating Hoth and then he botched the attack by dropping out of hyperspace too close to the system.

The main counter-argument I can think is how many people who are rebel sympathizers are brave enough to go that route? Rather than defecting and running off, choosing to stay when Vader is assigned?

[Galvatron]

I'm not insisting on it or anything, but he tried to dissuade Vader from merely investigating Hoth and then he botched the attack by dropping out of hyperspace too close to the system.

No, he didn't. Vader assumed he botched it because the shield was up. But the shield was up and they were preparing to leave because they'd cottoned on to the probe droid.

Um, no...

Rebel tech: "General, there's a fleet of star destroyers coming out of hyperspace in sector four."

Riekkan: "Reroute all power to the energy shield. We've got to hold them until all transports are away. Prepare for ground assault."

[Crazedwraith]

I'm not insisting on it or anything, but he tried to dissuade Vader from merely investigating Hoth and then he botched the attack by dropping out of hyperspace too close to the system.

No, he didn't. Vader assumed he botched it because the shield was up. But the shield was up and they were preparing to leave because they'd cottoned on to the probe droid.

Um, no. General Rieekan ordered all power to the energy shield only after the rebels detected the Imperial fleet coming out of hyperspace.

Rebel tech: "General, there's a fleet of star destroyers coming out of hyperspace in sector four."

Riekkan: "Reroute all power to the energy shield. We've got to hold them until all transports are away. Prepare for ground assault."

I'd forgotten that. Fair enough. They were presumably more prepared because of that advance warning though.

[Galvatron]

I'm not insisting on it or anything, but he tried to dissuade Vader from merely investigating Hoth and then he botched the attack by dropping out of hyperspace too close to the system.

The main counter-argument I can think is how many people who are rebel sympathizers are brave enough to go that route? Rather than defecting and running off, choosing to stay when Vader is assigned?

I guess that depends on how effective they'd be. If Ozzel had contacts within the rebellion, they may have persuaded him to remain where he was because that's where he could do the most good.

Look at how he gulps when Vader insists that the rebels are on Hoth. It's as if Ozzel knows he's right and that he failed to dissuade him.

[Shroom Man 777]

I wonder how many Imperials remained truly loyal after the events of ANH. I'm sure quite a few of them joined up when the Imperial Senate was still maintaining the illusion of a constitutional monarchy and were disenchanted when the Emperor became an absolute dictator.

It being a civil war, I imagine that plenty of Imperial officers were more loyal to their homeworlds and their families than they were to the Emperor.

Would help if they could arrange never having the captain and xo be from the same sector, and have the naval infantry and crew be as indoctrinated as possible but still be from different home worlds. That's on top of the stormtroopers as another backdrop to going rogue.

At the very least, for the most powerful and long ranged ships.

That sounds like a logistical nightmare.

There's a lot of inefficiency involved when you need to have half the fleet police the other half from defecting/going rogue, yeah...

Actually yeah. When the PRC had to crush the Tienanmen Square uprising, they had the local forces locked down in the garrison in some "preparedness drill" where they're told that any info from the outside world is disinformation as part of the drill, while out-of-province forces were brought in to run people over with tanks.

It's a basic rule of a lot of regimes, in the Middle East, etc. Local commanders and troops won't massacrate their fellow townsfolks and if you force them to, well... you'll end up like Gaddafi or something.

[Patroklos]

I'm not insisting on it or anything, but he tried to dissuade Vader from merely investigating Hoth and then he botched the attack by dropping out of hyperspace too close to the system.

No, he didn't. Vader assumed he botched it because the shield was up. But the shield was up and they were preparing to leave because they'd cottoned on to the probe droid.

Um, no...

Rebel tech: "General, there's a fleet of star destroyers coming out of hyperspace in sector four."

Riekkan: "Reroute all power to the energy shield. We've got to hold them until all transports are away. Prepare for ground assault."

Reroute to, not turn on. I believe you are right because Lucas isn't that talented in bad guy development but the language is ambiguous. It could be shields are harder to raise so they had it warmed up, then conserved power for other evacuation needs until the SDs showed up.

[Galvatron]

Reroute to, not turn on. I believe you are right because Lucas isn't that talented in bad guy development but the language is ambiguous. It could be shields are harder to raise so they had it warmed up, then conserved power for other evacuation needs until the SDs showed up.

Is that really a debate worth having? Esquire asked me why I thought Ozzel was a rebel sympathizer and I answered him. Do we really need to split hairs over my reasons?

[Esquire]

What he said - I'm not fully convinced, personally (the more parsimonious explanation is that Ozzel is incompetent, but basically loyal), but it's an interesting angle I hadn't considered before. How many of those do we generally get out of forty-year-old movies?

[Galvatron]

The idea that many of Imperials were well-intentioned and honorable men who served the Empire out of personal dedication and loyalty to what remained of the Republic is more appealing to me. Kinda like how Bail Organa and Mon Mothma didn't simply rage quit from the Imperial Senate after Palpatine's ascension to Emperor.

In my head canon, Ozzel was both horrified and disgusted by what the Empire had become, but he had risen through the ranks and was in so deep that he either decided on his own or was convinced that acting as a rebel mole was the best contribution he could make.

[Shroom Man 777]

Unlike Fulcrum/Kallus' methods, Ozzel's secret messages were more securely rerouted/bounced off Dash Rendar's shoulder pads. Impenetrable to Imperial surveillance. Only Darth Vader's Force abilities allowed him to detect Ozzel's subterfuge.

[Simon_Jester]

Although if I were the Rebellion I would NOT tell Ozzel where the rebel base was, so I choose to believe that even if he was a Rebel sympathizer he didn't actually specifically know that.

I mean seriously, the guy works for a badass evil psychic, and presumably the Imperials didn't lose their only terrifying floaty interrogator syringe-bot when the first Death Star exploded. So I'd hesitate to share with anyone like Ozzel anything he didn't urgently need to know to be useful to the Rebellion AND something Vader was already about to know anyway.

[Galvatron]

I actually agree. I prefer to believe that Ozzel was just as convinced as Piett was that the transmission they received from the probe droid was a solid lead, which is precisely why he tried to dissuade Vader from pursuing it. He may not have had any contact with the rebels at all, but he didn't really need to in order to sabotage the Empire's efforts at finding them.

[Q99]

Other possible theory- he just wanted a cushy job patrolling and didn't want to kill anyone or get in major fights. Like... not so much 'pro-Rebel' as 'Can't I just keep my cushy job and not do anything too bad?'. Which Vaders arrival kinda wrecks.

[Crazedwraith]

Over the Death Star, with all of the cards stacked in their favor, TIE units are still incapable of stopping Rebel fighters from making several attack runs. The only cases we see die are those making attack runs that cannot exactly dodge, as well as those that are caught off guard due to jamming.

Zero defect fallacy. The fact is the TIEs completed their mission, the Mk1 human Rebels did not. Luke only made it because he is a space wizard. Again, plot armor. All of the mooks, both Rebel and Imperial, had a chance to go toe to toe and the Imperials won.

Going back to this because it came to mind this morning. But if you're comparing X-Wings vs TIEs it's silly to decry them for not completing their impossible mission. Red Leader only failed because he was not a space wizard who could make the final, so the TIEs and Death Star defences didn't prevent completely his objective. The attack run.

Just counting Mooks. No unnamed imperials survive. An Unnamed Y-Wing pilot did. The Rebels won tactical engagement against the TIEs there. (Unless the Falcon seriously cleaned up off screen) They would have failled strategically to take out the Death Star if it wasn't for the force.

Granted one fighter is well within a margin of error so the Rebels clearly aren't massively superior.

[Lord Revan]

That sounds like a logistical nightmare.

There's a lot of inefficiency involved when you need to have half the fleet police the other half from defecting/going rogue, yeah...

Actually yeah. When the PRC had to crush the Tienanmen Square uprising, they had the local forces locked down in the garrison in some "preparedness drill" where they're told that any info from the outside world is disinformation as part of the drill, while out-of-province forces were brought in to run people over with tanks.

It's a basic rule of a lot of regimes, in the Middle East, etc. Local commanders and troops won't massacrate their fellow townsfolks and if you force them to, well... you'll end up like Gaddafi or something.

the funny thing is it doesn't even have to happen with internal conflicts if the ruler is paranoid enough, during the winter war most(if not all) soviet forces were from the southern part of the Soviet Union as Stalin though local forces would be too sympathetic to the finns, that came to bite the soviets hard as the forces were totally unprepared for the finnish winter (and the 1939-1940 winters was atypically harsh too) and was one of the many things that concributed to the disaster that was the winter war for the soviets. When your enemy is outnumbered at least 10 to 1 and is comically (in hindsight I'm sure no-one was laughing at the time) ungeared and unsupplied and you almost loose and have settle for conselation price rather then the conquest and subjucation of the enemy you were after and lets not kid ourselves that's exactly what Stalin was after even if he didn't officially demand it.