What was Pablo Hidalgo's Deal with Tech Heads?

[Darth Yan]

You’re supposed to have emotional control and not just run in like a moron too. It’s complicated. Sometimes going on feeling works and other times it fails

And the underlying issue is that Pablo is basically butthurt that the sources HE cherishes are being called sloppy

[Vendetta]

Not really, he's just exasperated by weird nerds being hung up on details of the franchise that matter less than when that one stormtrooper bonked his head on a door that didn't go up all the way.

[Darth Yan]

That’s……not really true. As pointed out he pushed for things that didn’t really make sense (handcrafted starships being common, advocating a blatantly inaccurate episode order). And he’s far more accepting of the WEG fans/hyperinclusionists (people who were INFINITELY more anal and childish). Given that most tech heads cheerfully admitted there were gaffes, didn’t try to cram every contradictory source in and were more likely to have lives than the idiots dressed up in costume and it came off more like Hidalgo being butthurt in his own way

He got his start on WEG and tech heads have attacked those sources. I can’t help but feel he took it personally. The problem is the film visuals are easy enough to verify that there’s no excuse other than laziness (heck the WEG numbers come from them misinterpreting the novel and failing to correct it).

Nerds being hung up over everything is bad. That’s no excuse for being lazy and Pablo’s just being lazy.

[KraytKing]

Handcrafted ships might make sense, actually. Obviously not in our understanding of the world through a lens of industrialization, but it could explain the minimalism that is so integral to Star Wars. Makes sense that the biggest fleet battle of the Civil War had about fifty capital ships involved (I think that's about the right count, but as long as it's not fifty thousand the effect is the same). Why are there so few? Because it takes a planet of people twenty years to build one.

WEG got one thing right in their first book, essentially what Vendetta has been saying. How big is a Star Destroyer? Big enough to destroy your shitty ship and not even notice. A mile long, that works. An SSD? Shoot, uhhh...bigger than that, by a LOT. The numbers don't exactly matter, they just threw out some things that looked close enough and filled in the gaps with "the important part is the story." Attacking it and taking it literally both seem kind of stupid, it isn't really designed for that.

[Ralin]

Given that most tech heads...were more likely to have lives than the idiots dressed up in costume

That's, uh. That's a citation needed.

[Darth Yan]

Handcrafted ships might make sense, actually. Obviously not in our understanding of the world through a lens of industrialization, but it could explain the minimalism that is so integral to Star Wars. Makes sense that the biggest fleet battle of the Civil War had about fifty capital ships involved (I think that's about the right count, but as long as it's not fifty thousand the effect is the same). Why are there so few? Because it takes a planet of people twenty years to build one.

WEG got one thing right in their first book, essentially what Vendetta has been saying. How big is a Star Destroyer? Big enough to destroy your shitty ship and not even notice. A mile long, that works. An SSD? Shoot, uhhh...bigger than that, by a LOT. The numbers don't exactly matter, they just threw out some things that looked close enough and filled in the gaps with "the important part is the story." Attacking it and taking it literally both seem kind of stupid, it isn't really designed for that.

Model maker notes were easily available. Also what happened is they misinterpreted one line in the novelization and never bothered to correct it. That’s just sloppy.

If an inconsistency only exists because you failed to do five minutes of research than no. You deserve to be pilloried.

Also you weren’t around in the aughts. The WEG fanboys (Thrawn McEwok and his ilk) were REALLY wedded to those numbers and went to absolutely absurd lengths to justify them.

[Darth Yan]

Basically I don't see how minimalism is necessary for star wars. If anything it just makes the Star Wars galaxy look puny. The behind the scenes notes describe the Death Star as 900 km wide and I don't see how that violates the feel of star wars. And given that the clone wars is supposed to be a galaxy wide conflict 3 million soldiers IS too small.

The other issue is that while on some level SOD is needed there also needs to be some thought and rigor put in or else everything just falls apart. If something can be verified by 5 minutes of research than no you're just being lazy. And the WEG fanboys on TFN could go to absolutely ABSURD lengths to justify their reading, and their motives were even more ridiculous (they wanted EVERY EU source to be canon no matter how silly). The tech heads at least had a clear methodology (if it contradicts the movies it's wrong and should be disregarded.)

[MKSheppard]

Looking through this I realize Pablo's problem; He got his start with WEG and the tech head approach would mean admitting WEG got a lot wrong/was badly researched.

WEG's biggest gift to SW was that they took the rather thin sketches that we got in the three movies of the Original Trilogy, and expanded it into a world sufficient to support a roleplaying game.

You also have to remember that WEG did all their original writing in a different era.

Today, it's trivial to email someone and go to the LucasFilm Archives or whatever, to get scale measurements or photos of the Executor SSD model and the ISD model -- or even hell..

...just freeze frame your Blu Ray or DVD of Empire Strikes back and do the scaling off that in photoshop.

That didnt exist when WEG was writing it all up.

WEG's biggest contribution besides the greater story was the inclusion of shades of gray to the Star Wars World; something that Tim Zahn ran with back in 1991.

For a lot of people, the larger universe created by WEG *is* Star Wars.

[MKSheppard]

Basically I don't see how minimalism is necessary for star wars. If anything it just makes the Star Wars galaxy look puny.

Since you're so hard on WEG, let's look at that old classic, the IMPERIAL SOURCEBOOK:

The Galactic Empire consists of a thousand-thousand worlds caught in the iron grip of tyranny. Using overwhelming armies and vast navies, the Empire instituted a reign of terror among the disheartened and enslaved planets. No world, no system, no species was immune to the terrible machinations of the New Order.

1000 x 1000 = 1 million worlds.

...

Policies of expansion established by the Old Republic were never rescinded, and exploration - and now conquest - continues. The Imperial Survey Corps, scientists and scouts charged with exploring the galaxy, has seen its funds cut sharply over the years. Still, a new system is being catalogued for the Empire every 207 minutes by the under-staffed ISC.

...

The Empire has not completely altered the governments of hundreds of thousands of worlds. Such a task would be impractical. The Emperor has left it to his advisors to modify the portions of a planetary government, be it government procedure or members of the ruling body, to conform to the will of the Empire. Less than one planet in 80 has been so modified.

...

A sector is an economic and political division which originated in the early days of the Old Republic. Originally a cluster of star systems with approximately 50 inhabited planets, the definition of a sector became vague and the average sector grew in size during the latter days of the Republic. Now unimaginably large sectors contain vast numbers of inhabited worlds with no regard to limiting factors. Sectors are governed by Moffs.

...

Sectors are grouped together into larger territorial entities called regions. The Empire has countless regions, which can contain from as few as three to upwards of thousands of sectors.

...

Under the New Order, the Galactic Empire continues to grow and expand, and new sectors and regions are being formed all the time.

...

The Emperor’s true ambition has finally been revealed - to be sole master of more than a thousand thousand worlds.

...

SAGroup is a contraction for Sub-Adult Group. SAGroup is the largest branch of COMPNOR. SAGroup has recently exceeded two trillion members, and it is still growing. SAGroup headquarters most resembles the original COMPNOR, an enthusiastic group who firmly believes the New Order is the best regime for the galaxy.

...

The Plexus encodes, categorizes, transmits, stores, receives and decodes more messages in a single standard day than most planetary communications nets will transmit in over 800 standard years.

...

Imperial Intelligence has placed millions of system cells throughout the galaxy. They exist on every inhabited world, and even on a few uninhabited ones which prove to be convenient jump sites or listening posts. While a system cell can theoretically be of any size from a single being to hundreds, they usually range from four to 20 beings.

...

The Emperor has ordered the pace of military build up - already staggering since the start of the New Order - increased even more. He does not want his forces found lacking when the next battle takes place.

...

The Imperial Star Destroyer has enough firepower to reduce a civilized world to slag...

...

There are whole star systems whose gross domestic product is less than the cost of a single Imperial Star Destroyer. There are whole nations which, throughout their entire history, do not use as much energy as an Imperial expends to make a single hyperspace jump.

...

While the organization and Order of Battle of a Sector Group has been outlined according to the numbers in these reports, these numbers can at best be considered averages. And in the wake of the Emperor’s command to mobilize the Imperial war machine, they may even be considered minimum levels of force.

...

If Army commanders deem the surface situation to be beyond hope of victory, or if the proper political authorities directly command it, the Navy is to execute a series of punitive attacks upon the target. The attacks are given code names which vary according to the mission and change frequently. The only code name which has not yet changed is "Base Delta Zero," the code for complete destruction of all "assets of production," including factories, arable land, mines, fisheries, and all sentient beings and droids. The code name has not yet changed so there can be no possibility of confusion when a Base Delta Zero is ordered.

...

A Sector Group can be expected to contain at least 2,400 ships, 24 of which are Star Destroyers, and another 1,600 combat starships. Thousands of Sector Groups are at the Emperor’s command as he seeks to bring the galaxy firmly under his control.

Then there's the whole "Augmented" thing in the WEG books.

For example, a baseline armored battlegroup has 10,090 troopers out of a unit strength of 16,346, with 1,132 repulsorlift vehicles and 318 tanks. If every unit were augmented in accordance with the planned growth of the OB, a full strength battlegroup would have 318,062 troops in a unit total 324,318, as many support droids as troops, 36,084 repulsorcraft and 14,480 heavy tanks. The limiting factor is not a lack of resources in the Army, but limited expansion of the Navy. The Army cannot expand faster than the fleets which are designed to carry it, and the fleets cannot be built any faster than they are now. For the present, expansion will be limited to those sectors with heavy recurrent fighting where the need for a large land-based force, regardless of naval support or transport, is evident. Such forces can be built, but are then bound to the planet.

Corps has 4 x battlegroups (expandable to 8 in fully augmented).
Army has 4 x Corps (expandable to 8 in fully augmented).
Systems Army has 2 x Armies (expandable to 4).
Sector Army has 2 x Systems Armies (Expandable to 4).

If we go by crude numbers, if we fully augment everything:

Augmented Corps: 2.5~ million men
Augmented Army: 20~ million men
Systems Army: 80~ million men
Sector Army: 320~ million men

"Thousands of Sectors" Fully Augmented = 32 trillion men in the Imperial Army alone.

The thing about WEG was that they were pretty smart when it came to military stuff.

When the Empire deploys a [Imperial Army] corps onto a world, it is retaking that world, regardless of the propaganda beamcasts. The military considers a corps to be a sufficient force to retake a world which has only recently slipped from the grasp of the Empire. Such a world would still contain a significant number of loyalists, and the Rebels would not have had time to build up an organized defense.

...

Armies rarely see action in the field as a coordinated unit. Increased success by the Rebellion has led to a revival and redevelopment of doctrine concerning the use of an entire army in the field.

...

The systems army is more of a bookkeeping level of organization rather than a unit that ever sees action in the field.

...

Huge Imperial Star Destroyers can carry battle ready stormtroopers into even the most heavily defended planetary system. The sheer size and firepower of the Star Destroyers allows them to brave planetary defense fires and land stormtroopers from orbit in a matter of minutes.

Every Star Destroyer carries a full division of combat-ready stormtroopers. On arriving in a system, stormtroopers and their vehicles are carried to a world's surface in heavily armed and armored assault craft. Stormtroopers hit hard and fast, and the presence of an orbiting Star Destroyer and its TIE fighters protects the landing stormtroopers from attacks by enemy starships. Once on a planet, stormtroopers move rapidly into the attack.

In situations where Imperial Command expects heavy opposition, task forces of three Star Destroyers, accompanied by huge transports carrying extra stormtrooper divisions, are dispatched. This is, of course, on worlds the Empire wishes to preserve either as forward bases, for their natural resources, or for their industrial capacity. On worlds of no strategic importance to the Empire, stormtroopers are rarely landed. Imperial command will instead land Army units, or even resort to reducing the planets to piles of smoking rubble using the devastating power of the Star Destroyers.


This was all hashed out 20 years ago, Yan:

"This is Grand Moff Miles, Lord Vader, I am heading to the Milky Way with my 24,952 ship Augmented Sector Group, I don't expect much resistance. Don't worry about sending Death Stars as support."

PS -- WEG could also be horrifically beautiful in atrocities, unlike the Sequel Trilogy writers at Disney:

If a planet is deemed to be of marginal value, the problem is handed over to the Imperial military. If a planet is considered to be of some value, Redesign will often augment the military's actions.

Redesign describes its works with the murky vocabulary of "state changes," "shock vectors" and "bifurcation manifolds." These neutral terms mask some of the most evil actions taken on behalf of the Empire. Redesign agencies rarely have the resources to handle more than one world in a sector at a time - a small mercy for the citizens of the Empire.

...

Destabilization (Destab)

Referred to as "the quiet branch," no one hears much about Destabilization. Part of the reason is that Destab keeps its operations very quiet. The rest of it is the fact that Destab operations make a large number of Imperial Intelligence agents queasy. Destab has been known to move from what agents consider legitimate intelligence operations into full-fledged atrocities. Given the shadowy ethics of Imperial Intelligence, this says quite a bit about Destab. Officially, Destabilization is the branch which specializes in "taking the fabric which holds a people, society or government together and unraveling it." Agents from other branches suggest Destab’s methods more closely resemble shredding.

[Galvatron]

Huge Imperial Star Destroyers can carry battle ready stormtroopers into even the most heavily defended planetary system. The sheer size and firepower of the Star Destroyers allows them to brave planetary defense fires and land stormtroopers from orbit in a matter of minutes.

Unfortunately, WEG had a huge blind spot when it came to planetary defenses. They crafted a universe where the Empire could bombard or invade any world with impunity, thus missing the entire point of the Death Star and reducing it to an unnecessary terror weapon.

[MKSheppard]

Unfortunately, WEG had a huge blind spot when it came to planetary defenses. They crafted a universe where the Empire could bombard or invade any world with impunity, thus missing the entire point of the Death Star and reducing it to an unnecessary terror weapon.

Actually, they didn't.

The Torpedo Sphere, a dedicated siege platform, is designed to accomplish one mission - to knock out a planet's shields. Planetary shields, whether full or partial, protect a world from orbital bombardment. It takes a lot of troops to assault a planet. It is easier and far less expensive to simply pound a planet into submission with the weapons of a Star Destroyer. But planetary shields prevent this.

It took until the availability of Curtis Saxton and the first generation of widely available prosumer digitization equipment for home video for PCs (and DVD's freeze frame feature) to analyze the Death Star blast and discover that Alderaan's planetary shield protected it.

Plus, there was already canon:

Veers:
My lord, the fleet has moved out of lightspeed. Com-Scan has detected an energy field protecting an area around the sixth planet of the Hoth system. The field is strong enough to deflect any bombardment.

...

Vader (after executing Ozzel)
Make ready to land our troops beyond the energy shield and deploy the fleet so that nothing gets off that system. You are in command now, Admiral Piett.

----------------

EDIT: Canon has never been quite clear on just how prevalent planetary shields are.

We know that High Level Worlds (Alderaan) have stuff strong enough to resist DS1 superlaser hits for 0.04 seconds.

We also know that they're common enough that the Rebels can get one that can protect Echo Base from the full firepower of Death Squadron (like 5 ISDs and one Executor) -- but not common enough that Ozzel thought he could gamble that the Rebels wouldn't have a planetary shield of that quality or magnitude.

[Galvatron]

Unfortunately, WEG had a huge blind spot when it came to planetary defenses. They crafted a universe where the Empire could bombard or invade any world with impunity, thus missing the entire point of the Death Star and reducing it to an unnecessary terror weapon.

Actually, they didn't.

The Torpedo Sphere, a dedicated siege platform, is designed to accomplish one mission - to knock out a planet's shields. Planetary shields, whether full or partial, protect a world from orbital bombardment. It takes a lot of troops to assault a planet. It is easier and far less expensive to simply pound a planet into submission with the weapons of a Star Destroyer. But planetary shields prevent this.

Aren't the two quotes somewhat contradictory then?

And I always wondered how torpedo spheres fared against long-range surface artillery.

[Darth Yan]

Looking through this I realize Pablo's problem; He got his start with WEG and the tech head approach would mean admitting WEG got a lot wrong/was badly researched.

WEG's biggest gift to SW was that they took the rather thin sketches that we got in the three movies of the Original Trilogy, and expanded it into a world sufficient to support a roleplaying game.

You also have to remember that WEG did all their original writing in a different era.

Today, it's trivial to email someone and go to the LucasFilm Archives or whatever, to get scale measurements or photos of the Executor SSD model and the ISD model -- or even hell..

...just freeze frame your Blu Ray or DVD of Empire Strikes back and do the scaling off that in photoshop.

That didnt exist when WEG was writing it all up.

WEG's biggest contribution besides the greater story was the inclusion of shades of gray to the Star Wars World; something that Tim Zahn ran with back in 1991.

For a lot of people, the larger universe created by WEG *is* Star Wars.

The fans for WEG were still ridiculous at times. McEwok and co were especially bad.

Basically I get that some form of sod is inevitable. Perfect consistency is impossible. But there needs to be SOME attempt at intellectual rigor and if something can be easily verified with five minutes research there's REALLY no excuse

[Darth Yan]

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... ilit=bunny

Here's an earlier thread about Pablo back in 04

[MKSheppard]

The fans for WEG were still ridiculous at times. McEwok and co were especially bad.

I posted this years ago:

A lot of the problems are from the unprecedented decision in 1990 that Lucasfilm made that:

1.) The new novel trilogy that they'd contracted Timothy Zahn to write would be considered "canon", as in the official continuation of the Star Wars story.

2.) They sent Zahn a box full of WEG RPG material and told him to use that where possible.

Before that, spin off novels and role playing games were considered kind of "licensed fanfiction" -- you had scores of novels, comics and games for all sorts of sci fi shows, from Star Trek to Battlestar Galactica, but they had no real effect on each other, everyone (including the writers of other books) ignored each other.

Case in point, the Star Trek licensed boardgame -- "Star Fleet Battles" -- outside the SFB universe, all the stuff in there doesn't exist. Same with FASA's Trek RPG.

Against this, LucasFilm's "SW-EU" was something new -- it was one of the first shared universes -- you could jump from:

Novels
Comics
Video Games (TIE FIGHTER, DA DA DA)
Pen and Paper RPGs (WEG)

and they'd try to respect each other and co-exist; making the stories feel like they COUNTED, instead of being disposable cash grabs for nerd dollars (Trek novels or videogames anyone?)

But there needs to be SOME attempt at intellectual rigor and if something can be easily verified with five minutes research there's REALLY no excuse

Again, 1986 is a lot different than now. I will give you points that WEG should have changed the size of the Executor in their later Sourcebooks; but by the time it was an issue in 1997 or so; WEG was going under.

Oh, and here's something from the WEG Writer's Style Guide for SW:

Create Real and Logical Characters

Star Wars Is a real universe. Star Wars Is more than good guys versus bad guys. People in the Star Wars universe are real people, with real motivations, goals, faults and weaknesses. Create three dimensional, Interesting, complex characters with depth. People have real motivations, Just like people In our world: to get a good job, to get rich, to find a date. They don't do things without reason. People are good and evil, and many have high and lofty Ideals, but many also have realistic motives.

Granted the Empire Is evil, but let’s see some realistic evil: the Empire is trying to control people and maintain power. They’re not going to execute people unless they think it will get them something — obedience from those who are around, for instance. The citizens of the Empire are, more often than not, just folks who don’t realize how evil the Empire can be because it never affects them personally.

The Empire has a great deal of control of Information, so most of the time people don’t hear about atrocities on backwater worlds. In the Empire proper no one is going to think about revolting against what they perceive as a “not perfect but could be worse" government. Besides, if someone does hear about an atrocity, they figure the victims were criminals and rabble-rousers who deserved what they got. It’s not that people don't care, but they, like lots of Americans, choose not to get involved.

Also... PPS

Stormtroopers Are Loyal!
Real stormtroopers are fanatically loyal to the Emperor. After the death of the Emperor, some Imperials might dress up normal soldiers in stormtrooper uniforms, but “real" stormtroopers still loyal to the remnants of the Empire are unswayable.

Fuck you, Finn.

[Rogue 9]

It's worth noting that Pablo Hidalgo is much higher placed at Lucasfilm now than he was during the production of the prequel trilogy, and his perception of it being "Bugs Bunny in space" might go a long way toward answering some of the egregious bullshit in the sequel trilogy.

[Vendetta]

If anything it just makes the Star Wars galaxy look puny.

Here's the thing though "How manly does our made up stuff look compared to other made up stuff" is not actually relevant. It does not help you tell good stories in the slightest. Versus debates are an idle pastime for the internet or the pub, not the point of writing fiction!

Nobody's numbers actually matter.

[KraytKing]

Well, that's not the ONLY purpose of numbers. Star Wars has always felt large in scale, but mostly through the feel, not the numbers. A Star Destroyer is shown to be an indomitable beast, and so Star Wars feels large by association. When we see dozens of those god-engines dwarfed by the Death Star, Star Wars feels even bigger. We want the galaxy to feel larger than all the stories, so we never think it's too crowded or there isn't room for more. Like 40k or the Foundation, the Empire is unimaginably vast.

Now, I do still side with Vendetta here. Yan seems to be taking it all too literally. Yes, Star Wars seems weak compared to other fandoms if there are hundreds of Star Destroyers instead of millions upon millions. But in relation to itself, the fuckoff-huge numbers would quickly devalue what we do see and have the opposite effect.

[Vendetta]

Yeah, if Star Wars ever had a problem with scale it was in the number of characters allowed to be relevant within the universe. With the extended universe being ever more focused on the doings of the same six people over and over again and then somehow managing to compress that further in the sequels with anyone who mattered needing to be related to someone else who mattered.

Like does anyone remember that David Brin column on Star Wars where he said it was basically about a Jedi aristocracy and the ultimate meaning was that if you weren't one of the genetic Ubermensch you didn't count? At the time just before the prequels that was an unfair criticism, Quite a lot of writers and fans though, including ones who ended up directing the future of the franchise *cough*JJ*cough*, looked at it and thought "that's my kind of Star Wars thanks for the suggestions Dave!"

[Darth Yan]

Well, that's not the ONLY purpose of numbers. Star Wars has always felt large in scale, but mostly through the feel, not the numbers. A Star Destroyer is shown to be an indomitable beast, and so Star Wars feels large by association. When we see dozens of those god-engines dwarfed by the Death Star, Star Wars feels even bigger. We want the galaxy to feel larger than all the stories, so we never think it's too crowded or there isn't room for more. Like 40k or the Foundation, the Empire is unimaginably vast.

Now, I do still side with Vendetta here. Yan seems to be taking it all too literally. Yes, Star Wars seems weak compared to other fandoms if there are hundreds of Star Destroyers instead of millions upon millions. But in relation to itself, the fuckoff-huge numbers would quickly devalue what we do see and have the opposite effect.

Having thousands upon thousands of star destroyers doesn't cheapen it in the slightest. And the other issue is the implicit laziness. There's a "who cares about consistency or logic" feel to a lot of it, or in the case of the old EU fans trying to jam pack everything in regardless of how much sense it made.

While some SOD is inevitable there needs to be INTERNAL consistency (or at least an attempt at it). Going to the WEG numbers.....what happened was that someone misinterpreted a line in the novelization and no one ever corrected it. That was a fairly easy mistake to avoid and the fact that SO many WEG advocates continued to cling to those numbers felt rather silly. It's the whole "it's precedent so it must be true" that a lot of judges use in court cases.

In addition I am well aware I know jack all about physics. If I were to debate someone I'd loose badly. Thing is, I acknowledge it. A lot of the WEG fans (and people like Pablo) either think they're knowledgable when they aren't or are PROUD of being ignorant. And that's what gave us Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan, and a lot of other conservative idiots.

[MKSheppard]

Here's the thing though "How manly does our made up stuff look compared to other made up stuff" is not actually relevant. It does not help you tell good stories in the slightest. Versus debates are an idle pastime for the internet or the pub, not the point of writing fiction!

Nobody's numbers actually matter.

Actually, numbers do matter.

You at least need to do "back of the envelope" numbers to "sanity check" things.

Mike's old SWvsST page did it nicely:

LINK on Death Star
LINK on Alderaanian Destruction
LINK on SW Acceleration

There's a lot, but I'll boil it down for you -- Mike basically pointed out that:

1.) If Alderaan's mass had been accelerated to merely escape velocity (11.2 km/sec); Mike pointed out that it would have taken 10+ minutes for the debris cloud from it's destruction to spread. Instead, analyzing frame by frame shows that Alderaan's debris was ejected at around 18,000 km/sec; or around 4% of the Speed of Light.

2.) The Death Star's acceleration capacity was about 670 km/sec2. while moving around the Gas Giant Yavin to get into firing position on the Yavin IV moon.

This one isn't from Mike, but from me using a physics calculator (LINK)
4.) If we assume that Star Wars craft can reach escape velocity from Earth-like planets (11.2 km/sec); in about ten seconds from a zero start (0 km/sec), we end up with an atmospheric acceleration of 1.12~ km/sec2.

With all this math done, you don't have to explictly state "Reactor output rate now steady at one to the thirty third power, Sir." -- that's boring and lazy.

What you can do from a story telling point of view with all those "back of envelope" numbers are things like this.

1.) You can figure out how late someone could leave Alderaan and not die from the debris ring.

The official SW site has a video showing that about 1.5 minutes elapsed from Leia arriving on the Death Star's oversector bridge and Tarkin ordering the superlaser to be fired.

If we assume that Leia was rousted from her cell and marched to the Oversector Bridge in advance of the DS1 dropping from hyperspace to minimize the amount of time separatists could escape from Alderaan; we can assume further that the total elapsed time from the DS1 dropping from hyperspace and the big gun firing was about two minutes.

Furthermore, using a displacement calculator:(LINK)...

with:

Starting Velocity of 11.2 km/sec (11,200 m/sec2) - Orbital Velocity.

Acceleration of 1,400 km/sec2 (1,400,000 m/sec2) - About 2 times faster than the Death Star - I think this is a reasonable estimate for large transports.

Time = 6 seconds

We get a distance travelled of 25,260+ km -- that's enough to get us out of the 15,000 km/sec "danger zone" for the debris ring's initial acceleration

Add in about ten seconds for leaving the atmosphere and reaching orbital velocity from a zero start on the ground.

So; from all this -- the minimum safe time for a last minute escape from Alderaan is about 16 to 17 seconds before the Death Star fires. Anything less than that, you stand a chance to be destroyed by the debris ring impacting you.

Thus, the only people who made it off Alderaan were:

1.) Criminal elements (smugglers) or ultrarich people who already had escape plans well in advance and were ready to go at the drop of a hat.

2.) Transports scheduled for takeoff in less than a minute when the Death Star showed up. It takes about 20 minutes to board an Airbus A380. This is not likely to change significantly for large transport spacecraft in the SW universe.

This has further dreadful implications.

Remember how in ANH, it didn't take the Imperials long to find the Millennium Falcon with a "short range fighter"?

Why were the TIEs out?

Not to defend the Death Star (remember, it was invulnerable to the starfleet); but to round up ships and craft like the Millennium Falcon which were moving in and out of the Alderaanian system as part of the routine space traffic scheduled that day.

Where did all that space traffic go when Alderaan was destroyed?

Was there a "Sanitization Operation" planned to ensure that the Empire's story of what happened in Alderaan was the only story that got out?

Was there a "second Alderaanian holocaust" when Luke destroyed the Death Star, and by extension the millions of Alderaanian refugees rounded up by Imperial forces and imprisoned on the Death Star until "stories could be gotten straight"?

===========================

Another point for "numbers do matter" / story matters is this:

Mike pointed out that with a conservative 1 day recharge figure for the Superlaser on DS1, you got a required power production rate of 1.2E33 watts for the Death Star's reactors. By contrast, the Sun's total output is 3.8E26 watts.

The Death Star is about 3.1 million times more powerful than the Sun; and the sun consumes about 5E16 kilograms of hydrogen per day.

If we handwave things away and say that hypermatter is efficient enough to make the consumption rate of the Sun and Death Star the same -- then you need to feed 5E16 kg of handwavium into the Death Star every time you fire the big gun.

Where is that handwavium produced? You could make a spy thriller story over tracking handwavium production to see if large amounts are being diverted from existing production facilities or if the Empire is building new production facilities as part of the Rebellion's efforts to make sure they're not caught flat-footed by the existence of a new Death Star type weapon again.

[MKSheppard]

Yeah, if Star Wars ever had a problem with scale it was in the number of characters allowed to be relevant within the universe. With the extended universe being ever more focused on the doings of the same six people over and over again and then somehow managing to compress that further in the sequels with anyone who mattered needing to be related to someone else who mattered.

The funniest part...is that WEG warned against this explicitly in their writer's guide:

Think Big

Don't underestimate the size and scope of the galaxy. There's a galaxy of billions of stars, with a hyperspace-linked culture that has been around for over 20,000 years. There is room for an astounding amount of diversity. Likewise, not everything or everyone should be from Tatooine or Bespin (Just like not everything Interesting happens in Boise, Idaho).

It is a universe of neat gadgets, cool aliens, mystery and a hint of magic. Espionage, military scenarios, Indiana Jones in space, westerns, old Star Trek, simple combat, lost cultures, lightweight cyberpunk, smuggling, “pirates in the Caribbean" and even horror themes all fit Into the Star Wars universe if done properly.

Use the Major Players Sparingly

Don't submit plots in which the major movie characters play a significant part. Maybe they guest star or have a short cameo for a scene or two. Think of Sean Connery’s role in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Don’t use Darth Vader, the Emperor, or other heavy adversaries.

[MKSheppard]

I think a big point in favor of the "sanitization operation" = prisoners from the space traffic and off-world facilities in the Alderaanian system is that when the Falcon showed up, the Death Star basically caught them in a tractor beam, instead of using turbolasers to vape them.

It wasn't until the falcon was on board that the Imperials did a 1+1 on the Falcon and connected the dots:

We've captured a freighter entering the remains of the Alderaan system. It's markings match those of a ship that blasted its way out of Mos Eisley.

EDIT: I think the reason for the "no vape" policy was the dissolution of the Imperial Senate was only hours old at that point -- a good way to get a favor from an Imperial Senator is by coughing up his favorite nephew, who was visiting Alderaan in his luxury yacht. You can't do that if you vape everyone in the system post big gun firing; and even with most of their power stripped; an Imperial Senator would still retain enough political power to make life tiresome for your average mid-rank Imperial Officer (NOTE: Tarkin is not your average Imp Officer).

[Lord Insanity]

It's basically the old "The Executor is only 8km long" nonsense all over again. Anyone that watches the movie can see that is wrong by at least double. (Hence the modern accepted length of 19km.)

See here's the thing. "anyone who watches the movie" can see that the Executor is Big. Bigness is a property communicated well by the model work and how it is showed compared to other established Big things.

How Big?

Doesn't matter.

Big is what's important because it makes it visually imposing and that adds something to the way the visuals communicate story.

He seems to have a genuine contempt for rigor and actual thought.

When applied to Star Wars, certainly. It's not that sort of story. It's a space fable where the problem is solved by trusting in feelings and an ineffable "Force" which guides the heroes to an enlightened true path. Intellectual rigour and actual thought are literally the thing that the Jedi have to learn not to do to be Jedi.

The problem here is that by merely watching the movie you can "eyeball guess gut feeling" the Executor as being 10x the size of a regular star destroyer. So when the 8km number is thrown out you can "guess gut feeling" that as only being like 5x the size of a regular star destroyer. So the natural "guess gut feeling" reply is: "What idiot approved that?" Then if you do the actual scaling math, you find that the "guess gut feeling" is in fact mostly accurate.

For some strange reason instead of merely fixing the numbers when that was pointed out it took years to correct. All the while the "8km defenders" were acting like a bunch of creationist idiots about it.

This leads to the blatant stupidity of a chunk of Death Star II magically appearing on a planet inexplicably shrunk and not destroyed. Even if we assume the smallest given size for the DS2 of only 160km the super laser dish would be "guess gut feeling" at least 30km high. That is not what the movie showed. Star Wars has been reduced to the level of creationist idiocy and Pablo is the damn pope.

[Vendetta]

It's basically the old "The Executor is only 8km long" nonsense all over again. Anyone that watches the movie can see that is wrong by at least double. (Hence the modern accepted length of 19km.)

See here's the thing. "anyone who watches the movie" can see that the Executor is Big. Bigness is a property communicated well by the model work and how it is showed compared to other established Big things.

How Big?

Doesn't matter.

Big is what's important because it makes it visually imposing and that adds something to the way the visuals communicate story.

He seems to have a genuine contempt for rigor and actual thought.

When applied to Star Wars, certainly. It's not that sort of story. It's a space fable where the problem is solved by trusting in feelings and an ineffable "Force" which guides the heroes to an enlightened true path. Intellectual rigour and actual thought are literally the thing that the Jedi have to learn not to do to be Jedi.

The problem here is that by merely watching the movie you can "eyeball guess gut feeling" the Executor as being 10x the size of a regular star destroyer. So when the 8km number is thrown out you can "guess gut feeling" that as only being like 5x the size of a regular star destroyer. So the natural "guess gut feeling" reply is: "What idiot approved that?" Then if you do the actual scaling math, you find that the "guess gut feeling" is in fact mostly accurate.

For some strange reason instead of merely fixing the numbers when that was pointed out it took years to correct. All the while the "8km defenders" were acting like a bunch of creationist idiots about it.

This leads to the blatant stupidity of a chunk of Death Star II magically appearing on a planet inexplicably shrunk and not destroyed. Even if we assume the smallest given size for the DS2 of only 160km the super laser dish would be "guess gut feeling" at least 30km high. That is not what the movie showed. Star Wars has been reduced to the level of creationist idiocy and Pablo is the damn pope.

No, see you still don't understand.

What you get from the movie is that a Star Destroyer is bigger than the heroes' ships, and it's pointy and mean. That's called good visual narrative communication. The baddie ships are big and threatening. The Executor is even bigger than that, and even pointier!

If it really cheeses your onions that some people think one specific number for how big it is and some other people think another, then you need to put the Internet down and get outside more. That does not matter. It is not important. It is not important to understanding anything that happens in Star Wars, why it happens, and why something else didn't happen instead.