Posted: 2005-03-07 03:25pm
Yeah, getting their first victory after nearly twenty years strikes me as absurd.
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No, I just realize that in order to reconcile the huge numbers cited in EU with what we see on screen, one has to jump through hoops.Jim Raynor wrote:The EU writers are the opposite of what you accuse them of being here. They're hacks, but minimilist hacks. On screen evidence does not imply small fleets at all. You're jumping to conclusions.
Mothma says the Death Star is "relatively unprotected". The reason they brought what large ships they could scrape together was in case there were any larger Imperial craft nearby. It's absurd to think that the Rebels come across a once-in-a-lifetime chance to thrash the Empire and possibly kill the Emperor at the same time -so they hold back capital ships. What are they saving them for?Jim Raynor wrote:Where was it stated that this was every ship they could muster? Furthermore, the Rebels did not count on the Imperials having much defenses. Their plan was for their capital ships to form a perimeter around the DS. They expected to be able to do this, which would have been impossible if there was a fleet there.
I'll be the judge of that.Jim Raynor wrote:That explains everything. No need to go further and contradict the EU.
Actually three -because Tattooine had something VERY important. They didn't have three at Bespin, Dagobah, Yavin, or Hoth (until Vader's squadron showed up).Jim Raynor wrote:This is ludicrously minimilist. ISDs are the smallest Imperial capital ships seen in canon. There were two of them around just Tatooine.
You're confusing what they theoretically could have built with what they might have actually built. The Empire doesn't seem all that impoverished, so maybe it's not a barracks state like Sparta or North Korea where everything goes to the military. For a real world comparison, keep in mind that countries like Spain, Holland, Portugal and most recently Britain managed to rule vast empires with small numbers of dedicated warships and small armies. It's easier, cheaper and more effective to pick up an armed force and carry it to trouble spots than to have garrisons everywhere.Jim Raynor wrote:The Death Stars are equivalent to millions of ISDs. There's no reason why the Empire can't build 25,000 ISDs, and lots of reasons why they should have been able to build much more.
Bullshit. She says the Imperial fleet is "spread throughout the galaxy in a vain effort to engage us." They're looking for the Rebel fleet and fighter bases, not uprisings or skirmishes.Jim Raynor wrote:Maybe they were engaging the Empire in numerous small conflicts across the galaxy? Mon Mothma says that's why the Empire's forces were spread out so much.
Actually some odd years before ANH, Emperor Palpatine ordered a fleet of 500 Imperial Capital Ships to blockade the Thon Bonka Nebula. The RotJ fleet was small in comparison.Gustav32Vasa wrote:Small fleet.![]()
That was the biggest fleet ever in the Empires history.
That would depend on when the Rebellion actually took up arms against the Empire. If they spent fifteen years of being screwed by the Empire and/ or working up the nerve and the means to do something about it, it's not so farfetched. Anyway, the opening crawl on ANH disagrees with you:Spanky The Dolphin wrote:Yeah, getting their first victory after nearly twenty years strikes me as absurd.
What is higher canon? The movie novels or.. eh wherever you got that from?Techno_Union wrote:Actually some odd years before ANH, Emperor Palpatine ordered a fleet of 500 Imperial Capital Ships to blockade the Thon Bonka Nebula. The RotJ fleet was small in comparison.Gustav32Vasa wrote:Small fleet.![]()
That was the biggest fleet ever in the Empires history.
I'm pretty sure he referred to the event described in the opening crawl of ANH (correct me if I'm wrong).VT-16 wrote:That was only the fighters from the Yavin base. Never said it was the first win for the entire Rebellion.The Rebels' first win came right before ANH.
We never see the entire Galactic Empire and it´s combined forces on-screen.in order to reconcile the huge numbers cited in EU with what we see on screen
Where does it say these fighters and that one base constituted the entire Rebellion? Oh, that´s right, it doesn´t.Anyway, the opening crawl on ANH disagrees with you:
It is a period of civil war.
Rebel spaceships, striking
from a hidden base, have won
their first victory against
the evil Galactic Empire.
I'm a bit of a fundamentalist when it comes to SW. It keeps things simple. If the SSD is listed as being only five times as long as an ISD, when my own two eyes tell me otherwise while watching ROTJ... See? Easy as cake.Gustav32Vasa wrote:What is higher canon? The movie novels or.. eh wherever you got that from?Techno_Union wrote:Actually some odd years before ANH, Emperor Palpatine ordered a fleet of 500 Imperial Capital Ships to blockade the Thon Bonka Nebula. The RotJ fleet was small in comparison.Gustav32Vasa wrote:Small fleet.![]()
That was the biggest fleet ever in the Empires history.
SW canon status is really complicated.
No, it isn't. A heirarchy is quite simple to understand: what's on top is better than what's bellow. At the same time, what's below supports what's on top.Gustav32Vasa wrote:What is higher canon? The movie novels or.. eh wherever you got that from?
SW canon status is really complicated.
The Empire can build millions of ISD, that is clear from the existence of DS2, but in RotJ novel it says that the fleet was the biggest in the history of the Empire. Unless the info you got is higher canon then the movie novels, its wrong.Stofsk wrote:No, it isn't. A heirarchy is quite simple to understand: what's on top is better than what's bellow. At the same time, what's below supports what's on top.Gustav32Vasa wrote:What is higher canon? The movie novels or.. eh wherever you got that from?
SW canon status is really complicated.
So in this case. Everything is canon, unless something from below is out-of-synch with what's on top. Then that becomes apochryphal. But that hasn't happened in this case. In order for the Empire to build the Death Star, it MUST have the resource and industrial capacity to build many thousands of ISDs. At the very least the capability is there in the film and can be inferred from it.
Why did the Emperor need to have hundreds of ISDs at Endor, exactly? His battlestation outmassed anything the rebels could ever hope to throw at him, and it was protected by a powerful energy shield. I suspect that if you reduced the Battle of Endor to the level of RISK, when it came to the Emperor's turn he rolled snake eyes. Repeatedly.
We never see 25,000 ISDs either.VT-16 wrote:We never see the entire Galactic Empire and it´s combined forces on-screen.
The Rebel bases are the center of the Empire's attention in ANH and TESB. Either they've only used small craft because that's all they have at this point or the fighters represent some kind of trump card for the Rebellion -the one advantage they have over the Empire.VT-16 wrote:Where does it say these fighters and that one base constituted the entire Rebellion? Oh, that´s right, it doesn´t.
The novels are below the movies, and therefore if the movies imply something significant, then the movies prevail. If the movies show us a large scale, 900km diameter long battlestation being built by an empire remotely (IE, not in orbit of a major industrial world), then we can infer from that impressive industrial resources; if the novels say differently, then they are wrong, because their place is in support of the movies and they are no longer doing that.Gustav32Vasa wrote:The Empire can build millions of ISD, that is clear from the existence of DS2, but in RotJ novel it says that the fleet was the biggest in the history of the Empire. Unless the info you got is higher canon then the movie novels, its wrong.
We don't have to. The Death Stars outmass 25K ISDs, which tells us the industrial capacity is there.Elfdart wrote:We never see 25,000 ISDs either.VT-16 wrote:We never see the entire Galactic Empire and it´s combined forces on-screen.
I always felt that Han's line, in reponse to Luke, directly implies Executor class ships, not just any old Imperial Ship with senior officers/officials.Elfdart wrote:I always took the "command ships" line to mean ships known to carry seniormost Imperials like Vader. Vader himself is seen on both versions of Imperator-class ISDs and the Executor.
I would think thats the correct one. Atleast thats what I thought when I read it.Stofsk wrote:3. 'technically' true, or a half truth. It's possible this actually was the largest gathering of ISDs for a fight up until that point, but this doesn't state even bigger fleets aren't possible. How big is the USN compared to it's Seventh Fleet? Perhaps the Endor fleet was the biggest fleet, but not the biggest organisation of Imperial ships up until that point (so IOW, a fleet could be something different to, say, a squadron or Sector Group).
I think that was the point.Elfdart wrote:
We never see 25,000 ISDs either.
Galvatron wrote:That always kinda bothered me. Why bring capital ships at all if only fighters were capable of destroying the Death Star?Elfdart wrote:1) ROTJ implies that this is an all-or-nothing gamble for the Rebellion, so every large ship they can muster is used. That's why their fleet at Endor is mostly made up (numberswise) of frigates, blockade runners and transports -ships that are completely outclassed by any model of Star Destroyer.
There is NOTHING to reconcile except your own unsupported notions. The only thing wrong with the EU numbers is that they're probably way too CONSERVATIVE. There might be 25,000 ISDs, but Dark Empire states that there are over 12 million inhabited worlds, and the Imperial Sourcebook says that there are 1 million member worlds and 50 million colonies, territories, protectorates, etc. Using the lower Dark Empire number, that comes out to only about 2 ISDs for every thousand worlds in the Empire. That's not a lot at all. If we go by the ISB's numbers, then you only have about 5 ISDs for every 10,000 worlds.Elfdart wrote:
No, I just realize that in order to reconcile the huge numbers cited in EU with what we see on screen, one has to jump through hoops.
The Rebels needed to have ships all over the galaxy to quickly take advantage of the Emperor's demise. They didn't expect any resistence at Endor. Thre is no reason for them to bring more ships than they needed to do the job.Mothma says the Death Star is "relatively unprotected". The reason they brought what large ships they could scrape together was in case there were any larger Imperial craft nearby. It's absurd to think that the Rebels come across a once-in-a-lifetime chance to thrash the Empire and possibly kill the Emperor at the same time -so they hold back capital ships. What are they saving them for?
There is absolutely NO reason to stick with a position when an alternate explanation exists that is both completely valid AND doesn't contradict the EU.I'll be the judge of that.
Bespin, Dagobah, Yavin, and Hoth aren't under Imperial control. Three of those don't even have any civilization, and Bespin only had one small floating city. There's no reason for there to have been ships there.Actually three -because Tattooine had something VERY important. They didn't have three at Bespin, Dagobah, Yavin, or Hoth (until Vader's squadron showed up).
The Empire is a military dictatorship based on fear and force. Every source describes it as having garrisons everywhere. It needs to maintain a presence on every world, many of which aren't particularly fond of it.You're confusing what they theoretically could have built with what they might have actually built. The Empire doesn't seem all that impoverished, so maybe it's not a barracks state like Sparta or North Korea where everything goes to the military. For a real world comparison, keep in mind that countries like Spain, Holland, Portugal and most recently Britain managed to rule vast empires with small numbers of dedicated warships and small armies. It's easier, cheaper and more effective to pick up an armed force and carry it to trouble spots than to have garrisons everywhere.
That could very well mean that they're chasing Rebel forces around, or that the Rebels are keeping them busy with hit and runs. TheBullshit. She says the Imperial fleet is "spread throughout the galaxy in a vain effort to engage us." They're looking for the Rebel fleet and fighter bases, not uprisings or skirmishes.
The DSII had more guns than the DSI, but I still doubt the density of turbolasers on its surface was very high. There's also the fact that a whole third of the station was incomplete and exposed to attack. The fighters could go in on that side, completely ignoring all the guns on other parts of the station. There weren't that many Star Destroyers there either, before the fleet came in to surprise the Rebels. I think it's far more likely that the capital ships were there to prevent escape.The combined firepower of both the Deathstar surface guns and the Stardestroyer Turbolasers would have utterly shreded an unsupported strike-craft attack, not to mention the massive amount of TIE fighters. Those rebel capital ships were acting as cover, forcing the Imperials to engage them AS WELL as the fighters.
Unsupported fighters<fighters supported by heavier capships.
There's another reason why this doesn't make sense. If ISDs are so few and uber, assigned only to protect the most vital assets or to elite roaming forces, it would be EXTREMELY obvious if all of them gathered up together in one area. If the USA gathered together the majority of its supercarriers, everyone in the world would notice. This was supposed to work when the object was to lead the Rebels into a trap? It makes far more sense if those ISDs were just from the local sector fleet, which is what the ROTJ novelization says.Elfdart wrote:
Maybe those thirty or so ISDs were the bulk of his top-of-the-line ships. Maybe Palpatine didn't have tens of thousands of ISDs and in fact, most of the Empire's fleet was made up of much smaller ships with the heaviest, most powerful ships assigned to guard key areas and to form roaming strike forces. With hyperdrive that can cover the entire galaxy in hours and weapons that can wipe out the surfaces of most planets, and the only real resistance coming from two score assorted Rebel ships, why build 25,000 ISDs and enough SSDs that any hack EU writer can pull one out of his ass in a futile attempt to give his lame story some credibility?
How many ISDs are needed to keep order in 10,000 worlds? Not many when you factor in hyperdrive, other ships and the possibility that like any other empire, the GE probably uses local quislings to keep order on all but the most important or troublesome worlds.Jim Raynor wrote: There is NOTHING to reconcile except your own unsupported notions. The only thing wrong with the EU numbers is that they're probably way too CONSERVATIVE. There might be 25,000 ISDs, but Dark Empire states that there are over 12 million inhabited worlds, and the Imperial Sourcebook says that there are 1 million member worlds and 50 million colonies, territories, protectorates, etc. Using the lower Dark Empire number, that comes out to only about 2 ISDs for every thousand worlds in the Empire. That's not a lot at all. If we go by the ISB's numbers, then you only have about 5 ISDs for every 10,000 worlds.
Have you considered a career as a proctologist? You really are pulling it out of your ass at this pointJim Raynor wrote:The Rebels needed to have ships all over the galaxy to quickly take advantage of the Emperor's demise. They didn't expect any resistence at Endor. Thre is no reason for them to bring more ships than they needed to do the job.
Jim Raynor wrote:There is absolutely NO reason to stick with a position when an alternate explanation exists that is both completely valid AND doesn't contradict the EU.
There's a very good reason for Imperial ships to be searching those planets: The Rebels.Jim Raynor wrote:Bespin, Dagobah, Yavin, and Hoth aren't under Imperial control. Three of those don't even have any civilization, and Bespin only had one small floating city. There's no reason for there to have been ships there.
Any system -even a totalitarian one- has to have the support, consent or indifference of the people. As you've seen so far in Episodes 1 and 2, many if not most people in the galaxy want a strongman to come in and clean house.Jim Raynor wrote:The Empire is a military dictatorship based on fear and force. Every source describes it as having garrisons everywhere. It needs to maintain a presence on every world, many of which aren't particularly fond of it.
Ahem, one million worlds, at the least.Elfdart wrote:How many ISDs are needed to keep order in 10,000 worlds?